We recently connected with Ryan Neely and have shared our conversation below.
Ryan, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
It has been a journey of years–perhaps decades–to develop the confidence and self-esteem I have today. During the course of this journey, it might appear (from an outside perspective, at least) that nothing has changed. That I’ve always had the same level of confidence and self-esteem from day one. From the inside, it almost appears as though I’ve come full circle, moving from extreme confidence and self-esteem, to having almost none, and back to having that extreme confidence and self-esteem again. The difference, from the inside at least, is that the circle is more of a single spiral from a spring.
Yes, I have moved from extreme confidence and self-esteem, through soul-crushing doubt and massive imposter syndrome, and back to extreme confidence and self-esteem, but the beginning point and the end point are on two different levels. Two different planes of existence.
Let me tell you a story to illustrate this:
Back in the early 1990s (way back when I was in high school) my level of confidence was off the charts. I knew what I wanted. I knew how to get what I wanted. Things seemed to just fall into place for me. I didn’t have to work hard to get good grades. I had friends I liked who spent just the right amount of time with–enough to receive that dopamine hit of enjoying good companionship, but not so much that I became weary of their presence or annoyed with their personality.
That last bit there, that bit about being annoyed with people and not really wanting to spend too much time with people, that should have been my first clue that where my confidence was coming from was, maybe, not from the healthiest places.
Back then, it was easy to get good grades when you spent most of your time alone. When you didn’t go to parties or spend afternoons after school with other people. When you went home and studied and then read books or played video games.
The thing is, that confidence that I seemed to have in high school, I didn’t feel it. It wasn’t something I was aware of. It was a label that others placed on me. I didn’t know I was being confident any more than cardinal knows that its red. I just did what I did, when I felt like.
However, that confidence, the why behind my ability to just do things and not really care about how others were affected, that came from a place of . . . we could call it naiveté, but really it was inconsideration.
I could behave confidently because I didn’t care what people thought. Again, this wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t that I was born with some method of understanding that what other people thought or how they interacted with me didn’t have an effect on me.
It would be more accurate to say that it never occurred to me to wonder about what others thought or how my actions might affect them.
That last sentence there is super important. It never occurred to me to wonder how my actions might affect other people.
I was ignorant of how my actions affected others, and too self-absorbed to care.
Then, at the turn of the century, something I did really hurt someone I cared about. You could say that the person who was hurt was the only person I cared about (perhaps ever really cared about to that point in my life), and I did a thing that was monstrous.
I did the thing because I was still working from that ignorant place of not thinking about how my actions affect others. Yet, after the thing was done and I could see the chain of events that caused the hurt to this person I cared about, there was a sudden and very painful episode of cognitive dissonance.
Seeing how my actions so dramatically affected this other person’s life–this other person I cared about more than I cared about anyone else–it affected me so much that, for the next fifteen years whatever confidence and self-esteem I might have once had (or that I still portrayed to the outside world like some kind of mummer’s mask) had vanished entirely.
It was gone.
Every action I took, every statement I made, no matter how small, I would stop and think and analyze how that action or that statement might affect everyone else around me. Would it be good? Would it be bad? Would it cause strife or anguish or pain?
And I don’t just mean those closest to me: my immediate family, my significant other, my friends. I mean my colleagues at work, my neighbors, that guy who stands on the street corner every Saturday and Sunday morning begging for spare change.
If I could link a chain of causality from my potential action or statement to something negative happening to anyone along that chain (all the way to the degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon), I would modify my action until I was certain that no harm would ever come of it.
At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. At the time it seemed like the best course of action was to never cause anyone pain. Was to do anything I could to prevent it, if I could–and especially when the direct source of that pain would have been from my own actions.
It was a time of immense personal growth for me. I can’t say that I became successful during this time, but I was certainly able to repair relationships with people I had hurt in my late teens and early twenties. I was able to further cement the bonds between myself and those who were already my friends.
People would say things to me like, “I don’t know a single person who doesn’t like you,” or “You’re probably the nicest person I know.” Hearing statements like those made me redouble my efforts of analyzing every nuance of my behavior in the light of how others might react or be affected.
It reached the point that I was incapable of doing anything for myself because I was so caught up in making sure that everyone else was getting what they needed, both physically and emotionally. All of the goals I had set for myself, all of the plans that I had for life, they were unattainable no matter how hard I thought I was fighting for them. I was standing in my own way. I was letting my perception of the needs of others interfere with my ability to live life the way I wanted to live it.
That was when I went into therapy.
You have to understand one thing about me before you can understand what therapy did for me. When I have made a decision to do a thing, I can’t not do that thing one hundred percent. “You can’t do anything halfway, can you?” is something I hear from friends and family a lot.
My description of my fifteen years of living life attuned to the needs of others should be a good example of exactly that.
So, therapy for me wasn’t just about seeing a therapist. It was about spending every day focused on understanding why things were the way they were, understanding the way I really wanted life to be, and doing my best to come to a compromise that would work to give me what I needed while not destroying all of the work I had done growing into someone who actually cared about other people.
What I came to understand during this time is that, while it is important to do good, not not purposefully go out of your way to hurt people, the only way to actually get what you want from life is to do the things that make you happy and to forget how those things affect others.
This seems contrary to the sociocultural world we live in today where we must be all-inclusive to everyone under the sun. The thing is, as human beings, we have a great need for groups, for tribes, for cliques. Whether that is cultural or or whether it merely has to do with our interests, we need to find our own place to belong.
All those people I was trying to please for those fifteen years, the only thing it gained me was diluting my own needs while ensuring everyone else–people who probably shouldn’t have been a part of my tribe, my group, my clique–were able to get what the needed.
In a way, I’ve come full circle. I began in adolescence not caring about what other people thought. I was inconsiderate and (to be frank) a pretty mean person. Today, after working my through the extreme opposite position, I once more no longer care what [most] people think. Rather than being inconsiderate, however, I am very deliberate in my actions here.
I do the things that make me happy. Yes, I do my best to make sure that those things won’t create extreme issues for those I care about, but I focus now on what is important to me. I’d say I’m working at giving myself what I need sixty percent of the time right now.
That number may grow over the next few years. It’s hard to say.
What’s important here is: the world is too big, there are too many voices trying to get too much attention. I’ve realized that mine is just a small whisper in a sea of billions. There’s some liberation in that, but there’s also a need to work hard. If I do want to be heard, if I want my work to matter, then I need to make sure that what I want, what I think and how I feel, are as genuine as I can make them, and that means not placating to others, not kowtowing to others, not catering to the whims of others.
It means being true to myself.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m not a fan of the notion of “brand.” It’s meaningless in today’s environment, at least at the level I’m working at. It’s as pointless as the word synergy. I do appreciate Simon Sinek’s concept of “Why,” however, I don’t know if I know my “Why.”
I appreciate deep thinking. I appreciate consideration and thoughtfulness. I enjoy philosophical conversations that eliminate emotional reactions and focus on the “What if” questions that lead to an expansion of thought and awareness.
Because I like these things, I want to create these things, and what better way to do that than to tell stories that tackle these kinds of questions?
To that end, I write books. I tell stories. I spend my time thinking about the what ifs of life that challenge the way I look at the world, and then I create characters who find themselves in situations that illustrate those challenges.
What I find fascinating about this process is taking a concept to the nth degree. Taking it so far that it becomes so alien that no one experiencing it in that form (without the steps in between) would be able to understand its meaning and then trying to start the story from that place.
Right now I’m working on the sequel to my first novel, Maxwell Cooper and the Legend of Inini-Makwa. If I thought writing the first book was challenging, deciding that the book needed to be a series, and then outlining that series so that I could write a group of sequels that didn’t break the world I had created has been infinitely more challenging.
That being said, this series will now tackle an extremely interesting series of concepts that I find fascinating. Concepts that I think are fun to explore, to find the most extreme examples, and then trying to find a way for those examples to fit organically into the story without proselytizing and while maintaining the pure levels of entertainment for those who aren’t interested in thinking deeply about things.
I hope to have the second book out next year. In the meantime,
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
First, a good internal drive. I don’t think I would have accomplished what I have without the ability to drive myself, to be self-motivated.
I’m not sure I had this skill some years ago. After obtaining my first degree (in photograph), I reached out to several professional photographers in my area at the time (San Francisc0) to see if anyone was in need of an assistant. I didn’t have the start-up capital to start my own business, and I wasn’t interested in photographing weddings or senior portraits. I wanted to be a fashion or editorial photographer and I had always been told that the best way to get into that business was to work as an assistant for an already established photographer.
I think I emailed two-dozen photographers. Only one emailed me back, and his email contained only a single line. A question: Why would I hire someone with such a lack of drive?
It was an interesting question. Being the introspective person I am, and taking a leap that I could ask a question of this guy without being to impertinent, I replied back asking if he could elaborate.
His response was something along the lines of: “You emailed me instead of calling. Had you called, you would have called instead of coming to my studio. If you couldn’t even get out of your chair and come talk to me in person, you don’t have enough motivation or drive to work as my assistant.”
That became my benchmark for quite a long time. If I didn’t have the motivation to physically leave my chair–to put in at least enough effort to spend more than sixty second working on a project–then that project wasn’t for me. It was time to look for something else.
Now that I have found something that suits me, being able to stick with it has been easier, but I still must be my own taskmaster. I still must set myself goals and habits and rituals to make sure the work gets done.
This has become easier over time, especially now that I have come to see the work itself as the ultimate reward. It isn’t about getting that book out there. It isn’t about making loads of money or having accolades, or even about reading favorable reviews or hearing from readers how much they enjoy my work. It’s about the process, getting up in the morning to tell these stories–that work–that is what motivates me. It’s what gives me drive, and that has made all the difference.
Next, I’d have to point to having some pretty thick skin. When it comes to any kind of artistic endeavor there are going to be those who love your work, and then there are going to be those who hate it. Those who revile it. Those who want to burn it to the ground and wipe your name from the face of history.
It is against those latter people that one must have resilience, and this leads back to what I spoke about in my confidence and self-esteem.
It isn’t that those other people are wrong in their hatred of your work, it’s just that your work isn’t for them. That’s a part of being human. We all come from different backgrounds with different experiences and understandings of the world. We can’t all like the same things. We can’t all be expected to appreciate the same art.
To achieve that resilience, it’s important to accept that part about humanity, that we are all different and that that’s okay. That it’s okay that not everyone is going to like everything you do (or anything you do), and that has less to do with you and more to do with them. They aren’t wrong, but neither are you. You’re just different, and that’s okay.
Finally, I think it’s important to read. To be a writer you have to read. I don’t just mean free reading. We can all read a book. No, what you have to do (in my opinion) is read for an understanding of craft. How did this writer evoke that emotion? How did that writer make this character sound so real?
We need to read for analysis. We need to read for a better understanding of what storytelling is and how to use those techniques in our own writing.
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
The greatest obstacle I’m currently facing is the drive to overcommit. To do what most Americans seem like we have to: to attempt to do all of the things.
This is a part-time endeavor for me. I have the ability to spend about six hours a week on this job. The rest of my time is divided up between family and a day job and a volunteer job and the rest of the things that life requires (shoveling snow and balancing the checkbook and planning vacations and all of those things).
Around every corner is another person or organization asking for more time. More resources, and as much as I want to give those people what they are asking for, the bottom line is, time is finite and it is our most precious resource. In order to achieve the goals I have set for myself, I must (unfortunately) say no to so many other endeavors that sound fun and appealing.
The challenge is in accepting that doing so is okay, and the only way to come to that acceptance is instill a personal policy. You don’t have to tell people that what you’re telling them is some personal policy. Sometimes saying that sounds ridiculous, but you can create the policy and use it across the board with everyone who asks you to violate it.
“I’m sorry, I’m overcommitted at the moment. I won’t be able to help you.”
The trick is to make sure you’re implementing the policy across the board, with everyone. No cherry-picking. It needs to be consistent.
Contact Info:
- Website: simonhargreavesauthor.com
Image Credits
Ahr Neely
