Yes, it's hard not to get distracted

I should be writing. I have loads of editing to do on my current work in progress or as I prefer to call it my baby:  Love At Close Range.  I have finished the second draft and let it for a week to stew around in my head.  I like to look in on the characters and see what they're up to. Boy, they've changed a few things since I stopped writing about them.  Which means a lot of work ahead.  Which is currently the reason why I am wasting time on social media.
 I am browsing Twitter for Tuesday Motivation - I'm not getting any, I have to admit. Who wants to hang off the edge of an iceberg while being stalked by a polar bear just to prove you can get over the hard times?  Yes, I know you have to never give up, keep going, pick yourself up, be kind, finish the novel, persevere to the end, love everyone and come up with a rose between your teeth... gasp! I admit to being hopelessly inadequate. I admit to having a very exclusive Twitter account (in other words, I don't really have that many followers) I admit to being a nobody because I do not have a Facebook account and therefore cannot admire all those cute photos of friends and family which everyone else keeps telling me about.
I just am, really. I enjoy writing but I also enjoy reading, walking by the sea, watching quiz shows on TV. I'm going to the Everyman theatre in Cork on Thursday night. The Factory Girls is a comedy and just what I need. I love to laugh. And I love the atmosphere of the theatre, especially The Everyman, because I feel like I've had a night out.
Having written all that, I feel free to return to my editing again. Just need a cup of coffee to keep me company.  Here's the cover of the new novel. It won't be available just yet. In fact if I don't start work on it, it will never get out there.

You talkin' to me?

How often have you talked to yourself? Pretty often?  Hardly ever?  Ashamed to admit how often?  According to recent research talking to yourself in the second person is highly motivational.  If you tell yourself "I can do it" it is not half so compelling as saying "you can do it" to yourself out loud or in a whisper or deep in your mind  That might be why President Obama's "yes we can" slogan has faded a little -'cause no one was specifically delegated, now if he'd said - but I don't want to go there.

I read an article on the findings of some research for this on the Forbes magazine website. Apparently some research results were also posted in the European Journal of Social Psychiatry.  I'll be honest, I skimmed through the article in Forbes and I didn't read the other one. The study was not considered complete because it was not known how this approach actually affected the carrying out of tasks. So your guess is as good as mine as to whether this really works. 
My guess for what it's worth is that it will work sometimes and other times not simply because in our deepest depths we know what we can and can't do.  I do not have a head for heights so it's no good me psyching myself up to climb a mountain by repeating "you can do it".  Sure I could do it - if there were 10 hungry grizzly bears on my tail and even then I have my doubts I'd get beyond the first ledge. But I wouldn't need to talk to myself about it, I'd just run and start climbing and that would be adrenalin and the determination to survive which is inbuilt in all of us.

I talk to myself about all sorts of things.  "Now where did I put that?" is a very frequent question.  It's normal and it does help.  I don't think we needed a clinical study to find that out.  Either it works for you or it doesn't.  With so much written on human behaviour, how to understand it and get the best for yourself out of it, you'd think we should be beyond all these new ideas and concepts.  The first work of this kind which I ever read was the Dale CArnegie classic How to Win Friends and Influence People.  I find it fascinating to this day.  Nothing has really changed in human nature since he wrote that book all those years ago.  The basic principles still hold good today.  It's both a sobering and a comforting thought.

So keep talkin' if that's what works for you.