I am participating in a longitudinal study: What happens if a person doesn’t worry about whether they’re smart or not?

Granted, I'm the only one participating in this study. But that doesn't mean we can't learn something from the results.

I'm not saying that I don't care if I'm smart. It's just that, at a very early age, I developed enough confidence in my intelligence and capability to carry me through pretty much the rest of my life.

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I am not sure if I slept much last night.

I remember looking at the clock a few times and being surprised at what it said. I don't know why I was surprised.

I dreamed a lot. But the last dream wasn't really a dream. It was a work session. It laid out for me, in nerdy, procedural detail, a project that I was supposed to do, and exactly how I was supposed to do it.

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You know how we all have gifts that we take for granted because they're our gifts and therefore invisible to us?

Well, I'm starting to think that one of my gifts is reframing negative stories—particularly the ones people tell about themselves.

High-achieving people have a tendency to look only at their room for improvement. This focus on growth is a positive quality, but being unable to see or acknowledge the skills and strengths they've already gained is a distortion of reality that will prevent them from having the clarity they need to make decisions.

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In Paul Zollo's Songwriters on Songwriting, Jackson Browne talks about a moment in a concert in which he began playing a new song. The audience believed that they were hearing a familiar favorite because it apparently sounded so much like another song of his. They started applauding and cheering in appreciation, which was probably a little awkward when the song turned out to be something else.

I think of this often in my own work and creative pursuits, from songwriting to blogging to teaching.

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