Specify and care about inputs
I want to show up more confidently. I want to talk to the people that I want to talk to. To do that I've got to talk to them. I frequently don't intend to do what I want to do because I might do it and I might regret it.
This is insane, by the way, but it's a prosaic kind of insane. It's not the nuthouse kind, it's the kind of insane many of us are a lot of the time. What's going on is that I focused on the outcome, in part because I didn't specify or focus on the input (action or activity) that leads to the outcome. I forgot about the input, and so I necessarily also forgot to care about the input.
If instead I specify the input, then I can care about making it happen.
Let's say I am dancing and I want to mix things up. I want to "carry my weight" in making it an interesting or exciting dance. If I'm focused in the moment on how I'm going to do that then the experience can be vaguely unsatisfying because I spent a lot of the time thinking about what I need to do and whether I'm measuring up. It feels something like this:
Okay, what's the unusual thing I'm going to do now?
What's the thing?
What's the thing?
...
Oh no, while I was asking I just spent 48 counts doing sugar pushes and basic pass patterns...
This isn't very effective.
I recently tried specifying the input and it worked a hell of a lot better. I picked three patterns I haven't used much of, which I'm pretty sure I can handle. I wrote them down in a list in the notebook I bring with me to dance classes and parties (to write down notes from class, and people's names/memorable facts to connect them to). I said, okay, for the next ~month of parties, every time I dance west coast swing, I'm going to practice these three patterns until I've got them embedded in my brain. This takes away the pressure to think of something novel on the spot and gives me something to practice to expand my "toolkit" long term. It gives me the input so I can care about that in the moment, and revisit the question of the outcome another time.
I could apply this to social goals, too. Circling back to the confidence example, I could take my notebook and write down that at this next party, I'm going to talk to one person that I normally don't.
Writing it down by hand feels important.
Revisiting the intention also feels important. If it it's a one-off intention, it should probably not carry over to any similar event automatically — I may want to set a lower bar for next time. If it's a longer-term intention then I may want to revisit it periodically. Recall what I wrote down, look at it, consider if I want to continue with it, write down what I want going forward (especially if it has changed).
It's important for social goals especially to write down and recall/interpret the input in terms of what I can do on my own. The inputs must be independent of how another person responds.
For example, say I want to be more outgoing and friendly. I might write down as my input that I want to "talk to" someone I normally don't — a stranger, say, or someone I recognize but have never introduced myself to. If I interpret that to mean we have to have an extended conversation, that's no longer helping me as an input — they might not be in the mood and that's out of my control. It's better to interpret it in terms of what I can do: I can say something to them, and I can attempt two "recoveries" if at first we don't get a conversation going, and if after three attempts it's dead in the water I may intend to let the conversation die. The important thing is to interpret the inputs purely in terms of what I will do, so that I can feel good about producing the inputs even if they don't directly, immediately create an outcome I want.
The bottom line is that if I have an outcome I care about, specifying and caring about the inputs to that outcome will help me. Even if I don't get the outcome I want — even if I can't ever know or prove I've gotten that outcome — I can focus on doing the things that I want to do (the inputs). Once I do the inputs I want to do, I'll know better what I want to do next time — which might be different, if I didn't get the outcome I wanted. And if so, then I can specify that.