Brain retraining, proofreading, English teaching and 'One Day'.

And why knowing how to write doesn't mean you're going to be any good at it

Hello dear reader,

This week I dove back into brain-retraining with a new-found enthusiasm. It’s helped lift me out of the rut I’ve been in for a while, so I’m glad I’ve stayed the course and not thrown in the towel, as I would have been inclined to do in the past. It hasn’t been easy, but change never is!

I’ve also been reflecting more on my writing process, and with that came a shift. I notice when writing this week that I found the process less anxiety-provoking…dare I say, even enjoyable at times? Whilst I’m not throwing my hands up in the air celebrating my successes just yet, I’m taking time to be grateful for the pockets of joy that I seem to experiencing on a more frequent basis, which is something I’ve never really done. It’s nice.

I feel like I’m moving in the right direction and bringing more structure to my writing was a good move.

All that said, here’s my thoughts for the week:

⬆️ I’m overachieving at….

🧠 Brain-retraining

Fellow brain-retrainers forewarned me that I may start to find brain-retraining more challenging around the 4 month mark (two months shy of the recommended 6 months)¹. But as humans we're very good at forgetting the warnings we're given. We're often too busy looking at the sunny road ahead to remember to look out for those pesky potholes as well.

So what happens at the 4 months mark? The theory is that your brain is changing a lot at this point and doesn’t like it. It tests you by ramping up the old neural pathways again, trying to force you back into old patterns. What does this ramping up feel like? It feels like a huge spike in anxiety, symptoms reappearing (or ramping up), and your brain telling you that brain retraining is boring, not working, and you are best to just give up.

The challenge is to not give in to its tricks and stay the course.

Unfortunately, this proved too much of a challenge for me this time around. Even though I’d been warned it would be unpleasant, and I expected the setback, I still freaked out when it happened. I re-engaged in old, unhelpful behaviours like restricting food, researching online, and seeking reassurance.

Despite this, I did have a breakthrough of sorts. I surprised myself by being able to recover quickly from this setback, more so than I would have in the past. I knew that berating myself was futile, and so I chose to accept that I had slipped up, refocusing my energy instead on getting back on track. Shame is an old pathway that I refuse to keep fuelling. This active choice to jump from one path to another has been a huge turnaround for me, and shows me the training IS working. So I'm motivated to push aside the boredom I've felt about retraining and keep jogging along anyway.

I'm attempting to inspire myself again by re-watching the DNRS program. I’m doing this with a beginner’s mindset, which means approaching it with curiosity rather than with a determination to master all the concepts. Doing this has already helped me inject more life into my stale rounds². I’ve been able to overcome to perfectionism trap and have fun. Some days I just want to visualise myself organising and decorating my perfect room, rather than imagining myself island hopping in Greece or scaling a Scandinavian mountain. And that’s okay. I'm okay doing whatever works for now.

They show this video as part of the program as a reminder that learning anything new takes times:

Equipped with my beginner’s mindset, the part that stood out to me this time around was his emphasis on knowledge ≠ understanding. This is a lesson I clearly haven’t understood yet! Who would have thought that learning takes time (maybe a teacher…? 🤦)! I’ve read lots of stories on the DNRS forums about people who practised for months, even years, before they saw any changes (honestly- kudos to them and their persistence!). Then one day, it was like things suddenly clicked in their brain and it totally changed everything.

I’ve had this experience in the past when learning at school. I can vividly remember this happening after struggling for what felt like an eternity with the concept of argument analysis. Then one day, poof! I just got it and it was as easy as pie. My niece seems to have had the same experience with day care. She was bothered by the whole thing until one day she wasn’t. Her brain clicked into ‘daycare’ mode and now she can’t stop talking about it.

I know my brain will click at some point. The challenge is to keep going even when it feels like I’m getting nowhere.

🥡 TAKEAWAY: There is truth to the old adage ‘good things take time’. There’s good things waiting on the other end-the challenge is to keep trying to get there even when storms hit.

⬇️ I’m underachieving at…

✔️ Proofreading

I cringed this week when I went back and read last week's newsletter.

So. Many. Errors.

This might seems bizarre given how honest I've been about how perfectionism has impacted my ability to write. If perfectionism is such an issue for me, then how am I allowing so many errors through?

This is one of the ironies of perfectionism. In the quest to make everything perfect, you’re more likely to make mistakes. Why? Because you get tunnel vision. I become so obsessed with the way a single-sentence sounds (is it literary enough? do I sound stupid? is it grammatically correct?) that I miss glaringly obvious mistakes like repeated words, missing letters, and spelling errors.

This isn’t uncommon and it’s why they suggest either a) having a proofreader, or b) taking some time to step away from your work before proofreading it. I haven’t had the courage to ask anyone to be my proofreader, and my tendency to leave everything to the last minute means I’m usually proofreading when I haven’t had the distance I need to see the mistakes I’ve made.

I have stuck to my daily commitment to write. What I’m still trying to tackle is understanding how long things are going to take me. I edit and rewrite a lot in the first few days of drafting a newsletter, and then realise I don’t have as much time as I thought I did to get out the final product. I also need to get better at trusting my instincts and not second-guessing myself at every turn. It wastes sooo much time and energy, and I don't want to give so much of those away anymore.

My OCD Coach and I discussed this problem and he challenged me to proofread once and once only. But I'm struggling to apply this.

One reasons is that editing is as much a part of the writing process as the writing itself. Discussing how she is applying the concepts in James Clear’s Atomic Habits to her writing, Maya C. Popa writes:

Consistency—only, the results won’t always look consistent. Here’s the thing: sitting down to write every day may mean you write 500 words on Day 1, erase 200 of them on Day 2, write another 50 words after scrapping an additional 100 on Day 3. That’s when defeat can set in—I said I was going to write, and I have less to show for it each day. This is what the process of writing looks like. It isn’t the miraculous final period in a novel or the moment a villanelle clicks into place. Those moments are for the highlight reel. Sitting down to write means all the messy fine-tuning on the road to clarity. Set aside notions of what the work should look like and focus instead on consistently showing up to the work. The compounding effect—the gradual improvement that is almost indiscernible in moments—is what matters. As Clear says: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

So I need to rewrite, but not so much that I don't get anywhere (I am determined not to become a Jane Bowles),. I need to break some seriously bad-habits to do this, and obsessive rechecking is one of them. One way I'm trying to get around this is using tools that do the work for me (e.g. Grammarly and Hemingway Editor). The other is accepting imperfection. My hope is that by fully allowing myself to make mistakes, and having other people see those mistakes, the pressure will be taken off. And with less pressure, I may be less inclined to make mistakes. Time will tell.

🥡 TAKEAWAY: You need to balance the proofreading and editing process. To much and you won’t get anywhere, not enough and you’re not learning how to be a better writer.

💭 A belief I’m challenging….

👩🏼‍🏫 I must be a good writer because I am an English teacher.

There are many layers to this belief that I’ve held so strongly, so for the sake of brevity I’m only going to address one today. But I have a lot of thoughts on education in general and so this is something I am going to speak about a lot. We'll start with a little taster today. I'm keen to see what people think!

What underpins this belief is the inaccurate assumption that being able to deconstruct someone else's writing, and judging that writing as good or bad, means you're going to be a good writer yourself.

The foundations for what I understood to be good writing were laid by the education system. Because I spent 18 years of my life in this system, I equated good writing with academic success. Good writing should be indicated by a good grade, right? Even when I became a teacher myself, and I began to understand how complex (and flawed) the grading system is, I couldn’t untangle myself from this idea.

This was due to the story I’d created about my writing prowess, a story based solely on the score I received for English in my final year at high school. I didn’t get a perfect score. I did well, but not well enough for my high standards. After that, it didn't matter that I spent three three years studying English at university, and then went on to become an English teacher. That one score still made me feel like an imposter. How could I possibly teach other students to do well in a subject when I couldn't myself? Remaining in the education system as a teacher only reinforced this belief. If this grade didn't mean anything, then why did our entire school system hinge on it? Why were my students' futures (and my performance as a teacher) decided by how well they did on their English exam?³

Becoming a English teacher did not empower me to feel more confident in my writing. Rather, it made me more scared to put myself out there. English teachers, and literary critics generally, are trained to become very good at pulling apart other people's work. They're good at setting the standard for what is 'great' writing and telling everyone else that this is the standard that must be met. But they aren't necessarily writing themselves. Sure, there were many opportunities for me to write when I was teaching- practice essays, articles for publications etc. But it was was very easy to avoid doing much writing at all. I’d gladly take the essays other teachers had written, not because I was too lazy to write my own, but because I trusted their expertise over my own. My students expected me to know what I was doing, and I felt like I didn’t, so I was too scared to throw my hat in the ring. There were too many ways I could stuff it up and I didn't want to be exposed for the fraud I felt I was.

What I really believed is that I shouldn’t find the writing process difficult because I knew what good writing looked like. If I knew exactly how to build the thing, then why wasn’t the building part easier? Why wasn’t my work perfect?

I've had to realise it doesn't work like this.

I've spent years judging other people's writing through the narrow lens of the English curriculum and its measure for success. Years believing that good writing meant writing quickly under pressure and getting a good grade at the end. Years filling my head with rule after rule, rules that I never questioned and that I was too afraid to break. I chose to spent my life admiring and editing other people's writing at the expense of my own creativity.

No more.

Stepping away from the education system has been so freeing. It's given me the space to think about writing in a different way. It's been difficult to let go of the rules I've live more than half my life by. One of the ways I'm attempting to do this is by applying what I've learned about good time-management to my writing practice.

I’ve revisited Oliver Burkeman’s fasincating book ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ to see what I could use. Burkeman’s main argument is that in trying to do too many things, we fail to do anything well at all, and so our only option is to try and do less. Being an English teacher made me a worse writer because of how many decisions it left me with. Writing became a classic case of decision-paralysis.

How do we overcome this? Burkeman says to pick our priorities and stick to them. And then work really hard to ignore all the other things that distract us from these priorities. So this is exactly what I’ve done. My priorities right now are to:

1. Learn to express my ideas in a clear and concise way (accessibility)

2. Connect with people

3. Rewrite old narratives by playing around with language (i.e. overcoming the negativity bias and have fun)

Since doing this it's become much easier to sit down and do what I need to. When that voice creeps in telling me I'm not using fancy enough words, I remind myself that it's not a priority to sound smart. I see that voice for what it is- a distraction. It's still there chatting away all the time, but it's becoming more annoying than scary. I look forward to the day when it's no more a bother than the gentle hum of an air conditioner on a hot day. I know it will happen if I just keep ignoring it.

🥡 TAKEAWAY: Being good at critiquing other people’s writing does not make you a good writer yourself. You still have to do the work.

✨ What I’ve been enjoying this week

🗒️ It’s Moloch, dear-self flagellating souls!-

Sarah Wilson

When faced with a world seemingly gone mad, we tend to seek culprits and scapegoats. We grasp at conspiracies, we “follow the money”. Is it Pfizer, Bill Gates, capitalism? What is the original thing? Is humanity inherently unable to respect what we have been gifted? But many of us here, I think, have the palpable sense that the problem is… all of it, all of us and none of us. It’s almost like there is some other force at play that overrides our agency. This is Moloch. Per the Hebrew myth, Moloch is a faceless force that sees us all sacrifice what we hold dear as a collective to an end that leaves us all categorically fucked. It’s a systemic monster that pits people against each other in a zero-sum game, a race to the grim bottom.

🗒️ Overcoming Life’s Biggest Problems-

Jen Hitze

So, what can we do about the smaller problems beyond our control? We can acknowledge and accept them.

If you can’t change your genes, your family, your childhood trauma, or your emotions, perhaps you should embrace them. After all, these are your problems. These factors define who you are, for better or worse, and they’re not going away. It’s easy to forget that we’re not alone in our struggles; countless others face similar challenges. What’s personal is also universal. To overcome our big problems, we must accept them, talk about them, and move past them. 

As long as a big problem persists, it will drain considerable amounts of energy and attention. Our primary focus should be on resolving the big problem to regain control of our lives. Avoiding the big problem by fixating on a smaller one will only add another problem into your life – one of a victim mentality.

If something can be done about your big problem, do it. Seek treatment or therapy. Distance yourself from toxic people and pollutants. Do what you must to take care of your inner and outer self. However, for factors beyond your control, like genetics or past events, don’t allow them to maintain their grip on you. Accept them as part of your human condition and address the physical and mental aspects within your control. 

📺 One Day (Netflix)

Emma and Dexter (Source)

How I failed to appreciate everything that is the ‘One Day’ phenomena up until this moment amazes me. I was 19 when David Nicholl’s book was released, just the right age to become totally obsessed it, and yet it somehow escaped my attention. I also never saw the 2011 film with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. And I’m thankful I never did until now, because I thoroughly enjoyed the emotional rollercoaster I found myself on following the lives of Emma and Dexter via the new Netflix adaptation. There’s been a lot of hype around this series and it’s for good reason. The 14 episode series follows the friendship/relationship of Emma and Dexter, who first spend the night together on July 15th 1988 after meeting at their university graduation party. The show visits their lives on the same day for the next 20 years, exploring how their relationship develops over that time. This is the first show I have binged in a while, and I forgot how much I love the experience of the glow of TV expanding so that the living room disappears and you’re completely absorbed in another reality. The show is funny, smart, moving…and earth-shatteringly sad. I cried inconsolably for an hour after it wrapped up (it was very cathartic). I’m meant to be avoiding these types of shows whilst completing brain retraining, but I’m glad I didn’t. I learned so much about life- how it ebbs and flows; how we handle (or don’t handle) our suffering; how fear holds us back and love propels us forward. There is so much I wish to discuss; the soundtrack, the fashion, the literature! A question that played on my mind was whether this kind of love story would be possible in today’s world. My thinking is that it wouldn’t be. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

🎶 Watching and listening to my niece sings songs to herself in her cot before peacefully drifting off to sleep. Maybe we should all try and lull ourselves to sleep with an enthusiastic rendition of ‘Row, row, row your boat’ or ‘This Little Piggy’.

☕ Coffee and walking dates with my dear friend Rachel. She gives me space to discuss some of the things I’m writing about, and it’s made such a difference to my writing process. Talking is the way I make sense of the mess in my head. I’m so grateful that she is kind enough to give away some of her time listening.

✉️ The comment, emails and messages I’ve had about my newsletter since it’s relaunch. It means the absolute world to me that people are choosing to give away their attention to the words that I write each week. Your encouragement is so appreciated!

Until next time! 🤟

1. As with any good recovery program though, they like to remind you that timelines are not helpful. I think they recommend 6 months because this seems to be the amount of time it takes the average person to comprehend exactly what the program is about and to accept that there are no quick fixes. It’s going to take most people much longer than 6 months to make the changes they want to make- me included. This is the exact same message that OCD Recovery promotes. No quick fixes, just a dedicated commitment to changing your thought and behavioural patterns over time.

2. ‘Rounds’ is the term used to describe the 15-10 minute blocks of training exercises you are required to do for an hour each day. Each round includes a rehearsed script that you say aloud and then combine with certain movements and gestures, followed by a visualisation sequence. Rounds are the foundation of the DNRS program and where most of the focus lies. I average around 40 minutes of rounds these days. I needed to take the pressure off myself and figured that less rounds were better than no rounds at all.

3. In Australia, most university courses require a certain score in English to qualify for admission. Hence the pressure on English teacher is very high.