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Archive for March, 2008

The Strength of Curiosity and Your Dissertation

Posted in academic, coaching, curiosity, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, gratitude, hope, joy, positive psychology, Smart Tips, success, top strengths, using your strengths, writing, zest, tagged , , , on March 31, 2008 | 2 Comments »

One of the top 5 strengths that many of my dissertation clients share is curiosity.

It’s not surprising that motivated, high-achieving academic people would have curiosity as a top strength.

And as you write a dissertation and live your life, the benefits of curiosity are many. For one thing, curiosity is among those specific strengths which are most likely to make for a happy life.  Positive Psychologist Chris Peterson has found that along with gratitude, zest, hope, and capacity to love, curiosity is one of the strengths most closely related to greatest life satisfaction.  It has also been found in at least one study to be associated with a long life.

So what else can this wonderful strength do for you?

Assuaging your curiosity has its own built-in reward.  It is fulfilling.

Another way that curiosity rewards you for the effort is that the resulting learning usually produces more curiosity.  Knowing that there is more to learn or that you don’t know everything yet can induce greater curiosity.

If curiosity is one of your top strengths and you are using that strength, you know how excited and engaged you are when you are satisfying your curiosity or in a state of curiosity.  One of my clients used the word “joy” to describe the feeling when he is in this state.

What would you be willing to do to experience joy as you’re researching or writing your dissertation?

How are you feeling about your dissertation?

I’d love to hear from you.  I’d also love to send you my Smart Tips e-newsletter.  Go to my website at www.nancywhichard.com to sign up.

Until next time, unleash your curiosity!

Happy writing,

Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com

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A Gratitude Attitude May Help You Move toward Your Goal

Posted in academic, brave, coaching, courage, creativity, dissertation advisors, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, getting started, goals, Happier, hope, perseverance, procrastination, top strengths, using your strengths, writing, dissertation, tagged , , , , , , , on March 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

How would you like to make 20 percent more progress on your dissertation than you’re now making?

Bob Emmons, professor at the University of California, Davis, has found that having a grateful attitude can make that possible.

The author of Thanks!  How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, Prof. Emmons has made amazing research findings about living gratefully, but perhaps the most intriguing has to do with goal achievement.  He sees a positive relationship between gratitude and goal achievement.

In a study with participants equally divided between a gratitude condition and a non-gratitude condition, Prof. Emmons says that participants in the gratitude condition made 20 percent more progress toward their goals than did the other group.  In addition, the participants in the gratitude condition were more motivated to continue working than were the participants in the other group.

As writers, we look for ways to make our hard job easier.  We persevere.  We call on our courage.  We apply hints and strategies to increase our creativity and our motivation.  We take note of what works for us and try to repeat the pattern in order to get that momentum rolling.

Researchers have told us that if we can generate a somewhat happy frame of mind, starting our writing and sticking with it will be easier.  It makes sense, I think, that if we want to induce a relatively happy or calm frame of mind, we can choose to be grateful to someone for something.

This week two of my dissertation clients described the struggles they individually are having with their work.  One feels that her advisor has given discouraging feedback.  The other client procrastinates and resists writing.

Yet, in contrast to the mood each had when describing the struggles, they both had a hopeful confidence in their voices as they expressed the gratitude they feel toward their spouses.  The spouses read the dissertation drafts of my clients.

I don’t know if these two clients can make 20 percent more progress in their dissertation writing than they would have had their spouses not helped them.  But I was struck by the change in mood as they spoke of their gratitude.

I’m curious to hear what you think.  Would you be interested to hear more about Prof. Emmons’s studies in gratitude?  Would you be willing to try some gratitude interventions yourself?

Until next time,

Nancy
Your International Dissertation Coach
ancy @ nancywhichard.com

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Writing Matters and Others Matter—Prioritizing Fights Procrastination

Posted in academic, anxiety, balancing dissertation with work and family, brave, choice, coaching, commitment, courage, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, following through, getting started, goals, mental toughness, motivation, productivity, reasons for not writing, relationships, self-sabotage, Smart Tips, start writing, time, time management, using your strengths, writing, writing, dissertation, tagged , , , , , , , on March 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

If you’re like me, you don’t have uninterrupted time for writing.

Maybe you work full time in a demanding job or work two demanding part-time jobs or you take care of your children.

And when you get to the point when you do have time to write, you’re exhausted.  Just brain dead.

And that, of course, is the problem.  Waiting until we think we have time to write.

I work with writers from all over the world, and whether the client is in Germany or Norway or Seattle, Washington, a common problem for all, myself included, is that we procrastinate.

I can’t count the times that dissertation clients and other writers have told me that they do their best writing first thing in the morning. And I can’t tell you how many times clients have told me how they let early morning time get away from them.

Let me tell you about two people for whom writing is an important part of their jobs.

Both people procrastinate—neither is perfect.

Both have others depending on them.  Their writing matters.

One person, whom I’ll call Tom, procrastinates until it hurts—hurts him and hurts those around him.

He lets the writing back up until at times he hides out and avoids others. Or other times, he will become very engrossed in a new project, in which writing plays a smaller role.  The new project is always important and interesting.  But when the writing does not get done, there are major repercussions for himself and those around him.

The second person, whom I’ll call Tom, too, or Tom 2, is clearly anxious about the writing he needs to do.  Like Tom the first, Tom 2 is a good writer, but he also lets the writing stack up.  He has many responsibilities in his job and at home.  But somewhere along the way, Tom 2 learned to prioritize.  He learned to do the most urgent and important work early on, maybe not first, because he, too (he is Tom 2, you know), procrastinates.  But not only is he well aware that he is procrastinating, but he also feels deeply that others matter.  If he’s holding up other people, it’s obvious how bad he feels.  He often apologizes

But he doesn’t walk away from the work entirely.

You can almost see him getting up the courage and motivation (my grandmother would say he was “getting up steam”) to jump in.

He often goes to quiet places during the days he’s not required to be at work in order to make the needed commitment to the writing and to make a stab at the work

I think Tom 2 has little by little trained himself to be productive and to write even when it makes him anxious.  Being aware of his priorities gives him strength and helps him focus.   He gives himself a little slack, and then he makes a right turn directly into the messy storm of writing.

I learn a lot by watching other writers.  Writing matters and others matter.

If you learn from observing other writers (and from your own experiences), I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time!

Nancy
Your International Dissertation Coach
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
www.nwcoaching.com

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Boldly and Bravely Cut Your Dissertation Down to Size

Posted in academic, anxiety, brave, coaching, courage, determination, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, resilience, restart writing, restarting, showing up, Smart Tips, start writing, staying in the moment, top strengths, using your strengths, writing, writing, dissertation, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

When you’re going nowhere fast on your dissertation, it’s time to try something different.

In a blog post a few months ago I asked what bold action you would take for the sake of your writing (“What Bold Step Would You Take to Gain 2 Good Writing Days?”).  In today’s blog I want to share with you the story of someone bravely stepping out of the things-as-usual routine that had left her mired, stuck, and exhausted.

For the past several months she had been feeling awful because she wasn’t meeting deadlines and she wasn’t able to move forward on her dissertation.

It was time to try something different.

She took a week off, found a good deal on a hotel about an hour away from her house, and packed up her dissertation notes and drafts. She had no expectation that during the week of vacation she would do any work on the diss. If she made progress, that would be lovely, but she was not going to consider herself a failure if she did nothing.

Once in her hotel room, she spread her dissertation materials all over the entire room.  She sorted things into piles.  She could touch everything, look at it, and think about it.

Unlike her feelings about her diss over the past few months, she wasn’t anxious; she didn’t feel sick to her stomach.

As she told me later, she said to her diss spread over every surface in the room, “I’m just going to look at you.  You’re completely benign.  You’re not going to ruin my vacation.  I’m just going to be present with you.”

When she got up the next day, she was curious about the different parts of her diss spread around the room, and she began reading, and making notes. She felt as if she were involved in an exciting little adventure

She stayed in the hotel for a few days.   Each morning, she felt very positive and looked forward to the day, wondering what she would accomplish.  She worked through the day, not even thinking about food until evening.

At week’s end, when it was time to pack everything up and leave, she was sad, but the experience had helped her to look more clearly at her project.

It is a big project, she said, but it was all sitting there in that room.  There was nothing overwhelming about it.

The exciting adventure had helped her reframe her perspective.  Today she is choosing to view the diss as a manageable situation.  Her plan is to keep her vacation vibe going and to bring it into her space for writing in her house.

How about you? What brave investment are you willing to make for the sake of your writing?

I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time!

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
http://www.nancywhichard.com

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3 Strategies to Thwart Writer’s Flight and Emotional Eating

Posted in academic, anxiety, brave, coaching, courage, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, fears, following through, Lizard Brain, mental toughness, perseverance, procrastination, self-deception, self-sabotage, Smart Tips, top strengths, using your strengths, writing, writing, dissertation, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 9, 2008 | 4 Comments »

When my writing starts to come together, I am relieved, but I’m also anxious about what comes next.

My first response to those feelings of relief and a fluttering of anxiety almost always is to flee and to eat.

Be grateful if you don’t feel these urges.  Or pat yourself on the back if once you would have responded similarly, but you’ve now put in place better ways of coping.

It’s an ongoing struggle for me to hold at bay the twin urges for flight and food at such moments.

Here are 3 strategies I’ve found to be helpful for those times:

1) When I feel that flutter of anxiety, I take a slight flight.  If my Lizard Brain thinks that I’m in danger, as ridiculous as the idea that following through or achieving success might be dangerous, then it wants me to flee.  If I let my body have just a slight flight, I can ease my nerves.  You’d be surprised at the ease that can be gained from merely walking to the window. The resident Lizard Brain is soothed.

2)  While taking that slight flight, I also count to 19.  Counting slows my breathing and focuses me.  Plus, the counting reinforces the notion that this is only a slight flight, and I’ll return to my chair when I reach 19.

3) Since the urge to eat is just a variation on the urge to flee, I also delay eating by taking the slight flight and counting to 19. Putting off eating as an antidote to anxiety is crucial, as is the need to keep cookies and Fun-Sized Snickers and other such stuff out of my sight (and out of my house).

It’s important for me not to use food to dull the anxiety.

Escaping or eating to feel better temporarily is self-sabotaging.  It gets me off track.  It’s a time thief.  And it makes me question my abilities and strengths.

What my writing requires from me is perseverance, sticking with it when it’s going well or not so well.  And it’s my job to call on my character strengths and to leverage those strengths to make it easier to persevere.

What does it take to be successful in my writing?
Perseverance, discipline, determination, mental toughness, and, most of all, courage.

How about you? What will it take for you to be successful?

I’d love to hear from you about this.

Until next time!

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
ancy @ nancywhichard.com
http://www.nancywhichard.com

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What Is the University’s Responsibility to an ABD Struggling with Her Writing?

Posted in academic, accountability, advice, coaching, coherence, discourse, dissertation advisors, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, isolated, isolation, resilience, resources, setbacks, Smart Tips, struggling, teaching writing, training, unclear writing, underprepared students, word usage, writing, writing, dissertation, tagged , , , , on March 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

An ABD’s dilemmas with her writing underscore for me the problems dissertation writers have when they’re isolated from campus and from an advisor during the dissertation process.

As a dissertation coach, I don’t fix people’s writing, but I listen, and if a client sends me some text, I see what the writing looks like.

This morning a dissertation writer talked about several pages of a chapter. In these pages she writes, in part, the history of a movement.

She came to me because her advisor gives her no feedback.  She had sent him some pages, and it’s obvious he didn’t read the work or, if he did, he decided he wouldn’t involve himself in her process. He says she’s doing great!

The introduction to the survey of literature is murky, repetitious, hard to follow.  It goes on for page after page. She tries to write in what she thinks is the expected discourse. She hurries, compresses, meanders, and throws in rhetorical flourishes.

No one has told her that the convoluted language is confusing.  Nobody has told her, in effect, to choose a traffic lane and stick with it.

In the second half, where she presents the background material, she says, “I don’t have any concepts in here.’  It seems to me that her writing becomes clearer in this second half of the group of pages, but she dismisses that writing as “baby-ish.” She is in a hurry to wrap up the telling of the history because it seems obvious to her.

When she talks aloud to me about her ideas for the dissertation, she sounds competent and clear, but she knows that she has problems when she writes. She is spinning her wheels.

I have faith in her.  I know that she can turn this around, but she is looking at quite an investment of time.

I have to ask:  Did her university prepare her for writing this dissertation?
What responsibility does her advisor have toward her?

What do you think?

Until next time,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
http://www.nancywhichard.com

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Feel the Anxiety and Keep the Writing Going

Posted in academic, anxiety, brave, coaching, courage, determination, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, fears, following through, Lizard Brain, mental toughness, perseverance, self-sabotage, writing, dissertation, tagged , , , , , , on March 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Feeling anxious is no picnic, but it’s pretty common among writers.

When I’ve been struggling with my writing and finally feel that the fog may be starting to lift, here’s what comes up for me:

1. I feel relief.
2. And I feel anxious.

I feel relief because once again I’ve made it through.  And getting to that point is never a certainty.  So I start to breathe more easily, and I feel my shoulders relax.

And on the heels of that relief, I sense that feeling which almost always accompanies relief—a fluttering of anxiety.

The anxiety has to do with following through.  What do I do next?  How will it play out?  This is bound to be hard.  It would be so nice to stop now.

Following through is a problem for many of us.  Once we start to make sense of an idea, there’s an urge to knock off.

For some, it may be complacency. For me, I think it’s more about escape.

A client told me today that he feels in his comfort zone when he’s between the fear of success and the fear of failure. When he starts to make progress, he’s ready to back off.

By resisting whatever comes next and avoiding anxiety at all costs, we sabotage ourselves.  Instead of saying “Hurrah! I think it’s coming together,” and then digging in to see what’s ahead, we give in to the urge to seek the nearest exit.

By darting away, we’re losing the advantage we’ve created for ourselves.

And recapturing that moment takes effort.  Heck, even returning to the writing takes effort.  All that to avoid a bit of anxiety.

Feel the anxiety, and write past it.

Here’s to more writing for all of us!

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
http://www.nancywhichard.com

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