how not to borrow trouble

One thing I've gotten good at in the last 37 years is borrowing trouble.  Making mountains out of molehills.  Playing the end of the act before the curtain even rises.  I look for every way something could go wrong, every way I could mess something up, and then obsess about it... until it actually happens.  Not because it was inevitable, but because I made it inevitable.

I'm a bit of a Girl Scout; I like to be prepared for every possible outcome.  In my purse at (almost) all times there are bandaids, Advil, Pepto Bismol, silverware, water, tampons, kleenex, even moleskin.  (You never know when a pesky blister is going to sprout!)  And there is something to be said for worrying -- it calms me down to look at all the way things could go wrong, and then to make contingency plans for those alternatives.  I'd rather have the bandaid and not need it than need it and not have it.

But that's only good up until a point.  There is a line where preparedness tips over into obsessiveness.  And I dance on that line like Philippe Petit between the towers.  

So what can you do if you're like me to make sure that your worrying hovers closer to self-soothing than obsessing?

1)  Be aware of your relationship to trouble

Know your tendencies.  And if you don't know your tendencies, observe yourself and ask your friends and family.  (I wouldn't phrase the question as "how obsessive do you think I am?" but rather, "can you think of a time my worrying was destructive rather than constructive?")  Watch your stress levels when you are worrying -- do they get better or worse?  And does worrying bring on more problems?  Ask yourself how your worrying is contributing to the continuation of your problems.  And then see what happens if you take a different tack.

2)  Make sure you can do something about what you're worrying about

There's a saying I love: "If you can do something about it, why worry?  And if you can't do something about it, why worry?"  This gets to the point -- do what you can about what you're worrying about and then let it go.  Accept that you can't plan for everything.  Allow yourself to make mistakes.  And if your worrying isn't leading to productive steps (like stocking your purse with bandaids or knowing an alternative route to get home from that party) drop it.

3)  Practice puppy training for the mind

Almost three years ago, my friend Rebecca wrote a guest post about puppy training for the mind, and it's an enormously valuable tool.  Don't let yourself get away with obsessing.  Make sure you're being productive and not just winding yourself up.

 

4) Shift from worrying to problem solving

At my old job, people would come to visit me and my fantastic office mate and complain about all their problems.  Then they'd leave, smogging up our office with their obsessions.  After a week or two of this, we told people they were welcome to visit, and even to talk about their problems, but after five minutes they had to shift from complaining to problem solving, or we would ask them to leave.  This is a great rule to have for yourself vis-a-vis worrying.  Set a timer and after the allotted amount of time, go back to step 3 and force yourself to drop it.

5) Allow yourself to make mistakes

Why do I carry bandaids?  Because if I need one, I don't want to spend $3.99 on a box to get just one.  But in the grand scheme of things, is $3.99 going to break me?  Absolutely not.  And is it worth not having to worry about having bandaids for $3.99?  Sure!  It's a perspective shift.  And if you allow yourself to make mistakes, realizing that some mistakes are more deadly than others, then you prepare only for the higher impact mistakes.

I told my team at work the other day that I know we're going to make mistakes, and that's ok.  I just don't want them to be the obvious ones.  I'm willing to stick a bandaid in my purse, but not an ace bandage.  

6)  Choose to roll with it

I recently got a call from my doctor's office telling me that a test I took required me to come back for another test.  Which sent me on a wild spiral of "what ifs," leading me directly to the big one, "what if I die?"  (Talk about playing the end of the act before the curtain rises!)  I talked to friends and family and calmed myself down with their help, and then decided to package up my worry until I could find out more information.  Since there was nothing I could do about it until my doctor called me back (which, for the record, she still has not done!) there was no point riling myself up about it.  It continues to be a choice I make every time the issue comes up; I have to remind myself I'm not going to worry about this right now.  

There's a great song by one of my favorite artists, Sean Hayes, that touches on this.  He says:

"You're always gonna find problems 

That's just the way things are
Now how you choose to deal with them
make problems what they are
make problems what you are"

So what do you do to keep from letting problems be what you are?

Oh, this explains it!

I'm in the thick of it.  I love my new job, but if I keep eating cookies, it could become a problem...

no regrets. (or, well, ok, at least not as many regrets)

Regret. It’s a big, heavy thing that I (like many, if not most people) try to avoid at all costs. I work hard to make sure I live a life I can be proud of and, barring that, that I learn from all my choices, good or bad. And to me, those are two key ingredients to the general lack of regret in my life.

Now, am I saying I have no regrets in my perfectly perfect life? Absolutely not. There are things I wish I hadn’t said, frogs I wish I hadn’t kissed, princes I wish I hadn’t let go, jars of peanut butter I wish I hadn’t eaten, and all sorts of things that, given the opportunity to go back and do it over again (knowing then, of course, what I know now) I’d absolutely do differently. But that doesn’t mean I regret having done them.

As an obvious example, I spent almost a decade of my life pursuing a job as a professional actor. It has had consequences – I’m still behind the eight ball as far as my career and compensation go. But what I learned in that decade, especially as it regards rejection, is invaluable. The benefits of that choice, for the most part, outweigh the costs.

So my guiding principles are: first, aim to live a mindful, well-considered life. Time and energy are precious, so I don’t want to fling them away on nothing. Then second, learn from my choices. What do they mean for me going forward? What will I do differently? How will I change and grow? If I can do this 80% of the time, I’m golden.

However, there are people who have thought about this far more than I have. Martha Beck, a popular and incredible life coach, is one of them. Her advice for “regret-proofing” your life is this:

1. Get past denial. Denial is thinking “this shouldn’t have happened” or “if only…” This only serves to make you more miserable.

2. Separate the feelings. Regret is usually a combo of anger and sadness and if you can articulate what’s making you sad and what’s making you angry, you can let go of them faster.

3. Grieve what’s lost. Take the time to let go of the sadness.

4. Identify and seek out what you were hoping to get. What has regret forced you to give up? And how can you get that back into your life?

5. Analyze your anger. Listen to it for instructions. Talk it out or write it out.

6. Learn to lean towards love. When we make choices based on love, they are harder to regret. At your next choice point, make the decision that is most loving.

You can read her whole article here. I’m betting you won’t regret it.

Combating stuckness with nothing

Ever since I got back from vacation, for a variety of reasons, I’ve been feeling really stuck. And I’ve been trying to motivate myself out of it in all kinds of ways – affirmations, promises, getting out in nature, trying to look on the bright side, eating chocolate, not eating chocolate... You name it, if it’s in a self-help book, I’ve tried it. And I’m still stuck.

I’ve been here before. It’s the stuck paradox. I’m so stuck, no amount of pushing against the stuck is going to unstick it. It’s kind of like when I get really bored – I know that if I just get up and do anything it will be less boring than laying there thinking about how bored I am, but I’m so bored I don’t have the energy to get up and do anything. (This was the story of my life while I was temping.)

What I’m working with now is the Let It Be technique. Basically, I’m just allowing myself to be stuck and trusting that, like the ocean, my life will come along again and sweep me back into itself. I’m talking about it (which is risky because, well, if I promise I can help other people get unstuck, but can’t seem to get unstuck myself, what does that say about me?) and I’m finding that the combo is starting to work.

How do I know it’s working? Well, I’ve been too stuck to write a blog post for the last few weeks and here I am writing again. Is it a full recovery? Not by a mile. But, as I once told a client, baby steps only move forward.

vulnerability

A dear friend of mine recently sent me a podcast about vulnerability that was part of an hour-long TED program created by NPR (a good remix if you're tired of listening to TED talks that rely heavily on visuals).  In this talk, Brene Brown -- a woman I had heretofore avoided because I saw she had been on Oprah and, well, that made me doubt how uncheesy she was going to be -- focuses on shame and vulnerability.  She defines shame as more ore less this fear:  "is there something about me, that if other people know it or see it, that I won't be worthy of connection?"

She tells the story about her struggle with vulnerability and the research she's done around people who are willing to be vulnerable.

It's a great listen:  http://www.npr.org/2013/03/11/174030515/making-mistakes

acceptance and forgiveness

I feel like acceptance and forgiveness are like the chicken and the egg -- which comes first?

I have a friend, who, when he was my boyfriend, dumped me three different times.  The first time he dumped me because he got a promotion at work and was too busy to see me.  The second time he dumped me because he freaked out and felt so overwhelmed by his life that he couldn't make time in it for me.  And the third time he dumped me, surprise surprise, he didn't have time for me.

The first two times, I forgave him (obviously), but I didn't accept that the way he was (and the reasons for which he was dumping me) wasn't going to change.  I thought, "oh, if only he gets a less stressful job," or "if only he chose to make having a relationship a priority, this could work."  Except that that's not who he is.  Work is his priority.  No matter how much he talks about wanting a relationship (and he does), until that core value of his changes, he won't have one.  Or at least not with me.

The third time he dumped me, however, I went beyond forgiveness into acceptance.  I finally saw him for who he is, for where he is, and for what he's capable of now, not in some distant, magical future.  I let go of his potential, and accepted his actual.  The funny thing is, I don't know how I did it.  All I know is that it's done.

He came to me recently and told me he had a choice between a job that would be less demanding (but potentially more spiritually fulfilling -- yay!) and one that would be more demanding (but potentially soul-crushing -- boo!).  I knew immediately which he would choose, even though I was hoping he could find it in himself to choose the other one.  When he told me, he was worried I would be disappointed in him.  And while I'll admit I was sad that he was going to miss another opportunity to take his life in a new direction,  I wasn't the least bit disappointed in him.  Because I can now accept him for who he is.

In this case, forgiveness came before acceptance.  Three times.

However, I'm struggling with a non-romantic relationship right now, and I'm feeling pulled to accept before forgiving.  I know the situation won't change.  I know that.  But I'm finding it hard to give up hope that it will.  And that hope is addictive.  It's alluring.  And it's what leads me straight to disappointment.

When I write it out, it seems perfectly clear:  If I can accept that things won't change and I can forgive this person for being who he is (and not being who I want/hope/need him to be) then I'm scott free.  If I can let that hope die, then I can also rid myself of the disappointment.

So why am I having such a hard time with it?  Did the chicken have this much trouble with the egg?

you're not a burden

Have you ever been so bored that you couldn't be bothered to do something to entertain yourself?  Well, the other day I had a similar situation -- I was so lonely that I couldn't stand to reach out to my friends, even though I knew they were just a phone call away.  I didn't want to be a burden.  I knew that I had nothing positive to offer them, just "blah" and "meh" and "waaaah."  And who would want that?

When I thought about it more, though, I realized that I would want that.  I would want my friends to reach out to me when they were sad or lonely or feeling empty.  And we could talk about it.  Or we could talk about nachos.  Or the crazy-assed hairdo I saw at the grocery store this weekend (seriously, it was epic).

Fittingly, not soon after I had that lonely spell, a great post came up on my friend's facebook page from a woman named Alyssa Royse.  I'm posting highlights below, but you can see the whole post here, and I recommend that you do.

She says:

When you allow someone to see you as fully human – good and bad, strong and weak, healthy and sick, brave and scared – you let them know that it’s okay for them to be fully human too. That lessens the burdens of fear and shame that hold us back. It shows us that we can be loved for our humanity rather than rejected and shunned for it.


Hoarding your humanity is a selfish act, when you realize the gift that it is for others.

She also says:

What’s worse, when you don’t let us in to the bad parts, you’re telling us that you didn’t think we could be trusted with them. And you make that knowledge the cause of your greater suffering. You let us increase your pain by not letting us share it. Is that really what you want to do? Tell us you don’t trust as and let us become something that increases your pain? I doubt it. I bet you hate that idea, so think of it that way. Because that’s what it is. We will second guess things that we could have, should have, would have done, if only you’d been honest.


You are not a burden. You are a human. You are a flawed and fabulous multi-faceted thing and when I say that I love you unconditionally, that means ALL OF IT.

So if you're feeling meh, or blah, or really want to talk about nachos, reach out and call someone.  Don't text, don't email, don't poke them on facebook.  Get old school.  Pick up the phone and have a voice-to-voice conversation.  See if it doesn't make things better.

I will.

do nothing

Over a recent brunch of silver dollar pancakes and two eggs (scrambled), I was complaining to my dear friend Jimmy about how I feel like I'm not making progress in the things that I want in my life.  He put down his birthday french toast, smiled, and gave me some wise advice. He said:

“You need to spend more time up a tree, with your shoes off, eating jellybeans and watching the clouds go by.”

(Like this, but with jellybeans* ---->)

"You have no idea," he said (and I am here paraphrasing) "how hard you work.  You need to take more time OFF.  Don't push for an outcome, just let it come to you."

"But, but, but..." I stammered.  I'd never get ANYWHERE if I did THAT.  And there are things that I want.  I, I, I... I don't know what to DO.

"Do nothing."  he said. 

After brunch, it started to hit me.  I've gotten much more gentle with my expectations in the past five years but I still drive myself, and hard.  I rarely screw up, but when I do, the gloves come off.  I hold my tongue when others don’t do what I have asked them to do THREE TIMES, but if I spend a weekend without checking off everything on my to do list, it was a “waste” of a weekend.

This isn't working.

Especially because, upon reflection, I have evidence that my weekend wasn't a waste.  I mopped the floor, baked a cake, took my friend out for birthday brunch, downloaded Office 2010 onto my computer, and watched several hours of Planet Earth, the nutritional supplement of television.  I didn't do nothing!

What I'm getting at is that it's time for me, once again, to question what it is that drives me.  Where did I learn my standards for what is and isn't ok, and am I willing to revise them?  Are they serving me?  Or are they holding me back? 

What good is going for perfection if it only makes me feel broken along the way?

Thanks, Jimmy.  Happy birthday!

* I may have made up the part about eating jellybeans, but it really should be in there, so I’m pretending it was.

holding the space

If I can say this without sounding too self-congratulatory, I will: people find it easy to talk to me. I guess I have one of those faces. They ask me for directions, guys admit things to me on dates that perhaps they shouldn't, and strays think I'm the cat's meow.

In the last few years I've gotten better at actually listening (instead of just waiting for my turn to talk), and I've developed a skill that has really surprised me -- my ability to hold the space for other people.

Now, "holding the space" is a really coachy phrase -- akin to "maximizing your potential" and, let's admit it "fully living" -- so what does it mean? It's the ability to be there with someone else who is experiencing emotions without feeling the need to shut them up, fix them, or get them to be anywhere but where they are right now. It's watching someone cry and waiting for her to ask for the box of tissues instead of passing it to her right away. It's opening your heart to the pain and suffering of someone else, trusting both yourself and the other person to make it through, to recover, to let this moment be what it is and also to let it pass.

I bring this up because I was at a workshop recently that really flexed this muscle, and it's one I don't think enough people are aware of, let alone "maximizing the potential" of.

What does it take to hold the space for someone else? Empathy. Support. Wanting to be there for someone else, to let him know that it hurts right now but it won't hurt forever. Trust. Faith. Acceptance. And it takes a real vulnerability. The emotional flexibility to dig deep, connect with your own strength and your own pain, and just breathe.

The next time you're with someone who's hurting, try this: just sit with him or her. Hug him so he knows you've got him, but not so that he feels he has to stop crying. Absorb just a little of the pain so it's not so intense for her. Rain blessings down on the both of you to make life just a little easier after this moment. And trust that, when the time comes, he or she will be there for you. And see what's different.

I'm a passionista!

In furtherance of the Year of Yes! (well, ok, the fourteen months of yes), this month's focus is on passion. And I'll be honest, I've really been struggling with it.

Part of my struggle is the fact that the Year of Yes! (well, ok, the fourteen months of yes) is really about doing things on my own. Being alone, but welcoming others to join me in my adventures. But the things that I'm most passionate about involve connection, communication, and otherwise engaging with people who aren't me. So I got a little stuck.

I've been refocusing my attention on passion, and trying to define what I mean when I say that someone "is passionate." Can a person be passionate without having an object of their passion? For example, can I simply say that Kate is a passionate person? Or do I have to say what Kate is passionate about? And if I say that Kate is simply passionate, what is it that she says or does that demonstrates that she's passionate? How do we recognize passionate people? And will identifying those qualities help us define passion?

Can passion stand alone? Or does it act as an amplifier to something else -- like being passionately angry, or loving passionately?

Another trap I fell into earlier in the month is thinking that passion is some all consuming thing. That it's bigger than life and only a scant few really have it. Because I think our society believes that's true. That passion is this driving force that keeps those dedicated people who are lucky enough to be in touch with their passion up until the wee hours of the morning, working to save the world. And maybe it is. But I think that passion is anything that's worth getting up early in the morning for. So I'm passionate about my family. And I'm passionate about a beautiful sunrise, or my job. (This wasn't always the case, my friends. Hooray for new jobs!) And if someone else would wake up early in the morning with me, I'd be more than delighted to have a deep conversation with them at 5:30 a.m. Because as I said before, connection is a huge passion.

But I have so many more questions.

Are there downsides to passion? Can it burn out like a flame, or burn up like a house on fire?

And what's the relationship of passion to compassion?

What do the major religious traditions have to say about passion?

What do YOU have to say about it?

Please join me for a phone conversation on passion this Sunday, February 20th at 4:30pm Eastern. Just call 712.775.7100 and use the participant passcode of 500681# to join.

just what I needed to see

This was shared with me at just the moment I needed it most. So in that spirit, I'm sharing it with you.

cultivate the good

The other day I was in a session with a client who has a very strong habit of focusing on the negative and totally disregarding the positive. It's a familiar habit, one that I have definitely engaged in myself, and one that leads to nothing but bleakness, sadness, and truly bad train karma.*

I did what I could to help my client to see that focusing on the negative is only going to bring more negative (boooooooo!), and that focusing on the good is only going to bring more good (hooray!). One of the tactics we tried was imagining that she was living in a sci-fi world where goodness was dying out. And that she was one of the few people left who could cultivate and protect goodness. So any time she saw something with even the faintest tinge of good to it, it was her responsibility to take that goodness, plant it in a garden, and tend to it.

She lit up with this idea, recognizing that "goodness" was not a judgment about whether or not an achievement was reached or someone was "worthy" of being deemed good, but rather a quality that could inherently exist inside something -- a situation, a person, herself...

So I closed the session feeling like I had cultivated some good, once again proving to myself that I do an excellent job of living what I teach.

And then the next day came.

I found myself getting twitchy about not having heard back from a guy I am dating. And when I catch myself doing that, I immediately call my sister (my cucumber cheerleader) because I know she's good at easing my twitch.

And, without going into too much detail, do you know what I was doing? Focusing on all the negative, and completely disregarding the positive! With blinders on, I was zeroing in on all the things that seemed "wrong" to me, and paying absolutely no attention to the things that were there to inspire me or give me hope that he was, in fact, interested!

Boy did I feel like a dummy.

But instead of focusing on how stupid I felt about not catching myself doing something it was so easy for me to see my client doing, I looked at how awesome it was that a) I did catch myself doing it, and b) I called someone who could help me get back on my path.

Sure, I could use this experience to prove to myself that I'm a horrible coach and can't possibly offer anything of value since I can't live it myself, or I can recognize (and celebrate!) the fact that I'm human, that I'm living it, too, and that life happens moment to moment.

And every triumph is worth a celebration.

(hooray!)

*the best way to cultivate good train karma? Focus on the times the train comes into the station right when you get there, and ignore the times you spend hours and hours waiting in the sauna for the train to finally come and then not be going to your borough. **

** I haven't gotten really good at this yet, obviously.

our lovely, imperfect selves

I was recently reading a post on the Sunday at Noon blog, in which matchmaker Marni Galison talks about how easy it is to fall into the trap of cutting off potential dates because they're not perfect. She says:

In most aspects of our lives, we can accept that the people we love are
flawed human beings but naturally we still love them anyway. Despite those
flaws, we recognize the qualities that make them the unique, wonderful people
they are and we cherish having them in our lives.

But for some reason, when it comes to dating, the minute we see that a new
love interest is less than perfect we rush to judgment. And often that judgment
is equivalent to the Spanish Inquisition – no one stands a chance from thereon
in.

She goes on to encourage us to forgive each other for not being perfect, which might make dating a little bit easier. (See the whole article here.)

I'd like to take that action even one step further -- I'd like to encourage us to forgive ourselves for not being perfect. When we accept, embrace, and even revel in our own imperfections ("that's right, I can be needy sometimes!") we are likely to be more forgiving of perceived shortcomings in others.

One of the things I try to do to give myself perspective on perfection and the challenges that other people face is simple: I put myself in their shoes. Given their situations, backgrounds, friends, fears, needs, etc., how would I act? Would I be different? And if so, can I at least understand better why they are they way they are?

It's a carry-over from my acting days when I used to put on all those things on behalf of a character, and I find it expands my generosity and patience with others immensely. (Which can come in handy when one is dating...)

curiosity did not kill the cat, it made the cat's life a LOT easier!

Curiosity is a quality we all have. It shows up when we look at puzzles and try to solve them, or when we meet someone new and want to find out more about that person. And I'd argue that we all like to think we know ourselves – because if we don't know ourselves, what do we really know? But when we act in ways that don’t serve us (or straight up hurt us) how well can we really know ourselves? If we were self-experts, wouldn't we avoid behaviors like that?

Finding out what drives our self-defeating or self-limiting behavior takes self-curiosity. And self-curiosity takes some detachment, the recognition of what’s going on inside of you, and a willingness to let go of the thoughts and emotions you may be holding deeply. This curiosity combo is one of the key tools in the battle against negative self-chatter.

Recognizing “I feel angry” and then asking yourself without judgment, “hmm, that’s interesting. I wonder what it is that is making me feel angry,” can be really freeing. Identifying the feeling, labeling it, and then taking it apart can help you turn down the volume of the judgments in your head and choose to behave in different ways.

So what I know about emotions is that they’re less dependent on what happens to you than they are on the thoughts you have about what that means about who you are – thoughts that are completely made up.

For example, one night I pigged out, eating more ice cream than I care to admit in public. And I woke up the next day angry, stressed out, and fairly miserable. I asked myself with curiosity, “hmmm, I wonder what is making me feel angry.” And I sat down with my journal to figure it out. After about half an hour of writing, I realized that I felt angry because I felt guilty. I felt like having eaten everything I ate, I’d never lose weight, I’d never have a boyfriend, and nobody would ever love me again.

All because I ate too much ice cream!

So I asked myself a simple question: What if all of those repercussions weren’t true? What if I just ate more ice cream than I needed (because I wanted something else that I wasn't getting), and in the future I could still lose weight, I could still have a boyfriend and lots of people would love me?

And when I believed that was a possibility, I sat back down and got curious again – what was I getting from beating myself up about it? And when I was really honest, I realized that I felt like I had transgressed in some way, and that I needed to be punished, so I was beating myself up.

So I asked myself another simple question: What if that wasn’t true, either? What if what I had done wasn’t actually bad, and that there wasn’t anything to be punished for?

You can see how this process of taking things apart one thought at a time, getting really curious about why I was thinking them, and then being gentle with myself around the answers made it easier to see that I was making it all up.

Now, do I still want to gorge on ice cream? Yes, sometimes I do. But the more I practice forgiving myself and letting go of my attachment to judgments about myself – the more curious I get about my own behavior – the easier it is to do the stuff I want to do and eliminate the behavior I don’t want.

life is not a dress rehearsal -- or is it?

I love actors. (I used to be one, so it's fair to say I'm biased.)

The dedication actors put towards mounting a show is amazing -- like marathoners training for a race, or chefs preparing for a banquet. They put so much energy into learning lines, understanding their characters, trying on costumes, mapping out blocking... it's all part of the work. Everything an actor does to prepare his or her role makes for a more fulfilling and galvanizing performance. And good actors take time every day to make sure that they're adequately prepared for opening night.

Another reason I love actors is that they're the perfect metaphor for personal growth.

Personal growth also takes time and energy. While there are no lines to learn, there are lines to unlearn (like the stories we tell ourselves inside our heads, or the beliefs we have about who we have to be) and that process takes quiet time spent with pencil and paper, or in discussion with others. Actors try on the lives of others, but you (assuming you're not an actor) can spend time trying on your OWN life. Studying your own character.

Here are some tips for exploring your own character, taken from my time as an actor:

1. What's my motivation?

When a character walks onstage, generally it's because he/she wants something. The playwright has chosen to show us this moment in time because it matters. In your life, every minute is also valuable, and you, too, are walking around with an agenda. From moment to moment, your motivation can range from "sixteen Oreos sounds like a good idea" to "I want to create world peace," but add up all those moments and there is an overarching agenda that helps define you as a character. Or, you know, a person.

When an actor learns and studies a character, she looks for that big arc (the one that carries the character from the beginning to the end of the play) and then looks at all the moments in between to see whether they are heading the character towards or away from the big picture. You, too, can do this. What is it that you want to do with your life? Who do you want to be? What are you passionate about? If your life were a play, what would you want your character's motivation to be?

Once you discover that, align your moment to moment motivation with that goal.

For example, if your overarching agenda is "to connect with people authentically," then moment to moment actions like writing letters, making phone calls, and having dinner with friends is in better alignment than eating alone, reading books, and playing video games. (Not that the latter are negative things -- they're great -- but they don't serve your character.)

Find more and more ways to connect your character to his/her agenda, and your "performance" will be deeper, richer, and more fulfilling.

2. Be accepting

It is impossible for an actor to fully embody a character on whom he or she is sitting in judgment. I once played the role of a psychic hooker, and there were many times when it would have been easy to say that she was stupid, easy, or a victim (because, hell, she got beaten up even though she was psychic!). But to do that would not have been in service of her, and I would have been warping the playwright's intention.

It's the same with you. You may have days when you FEEL stupid, easy, or like a victim, but if you judge yourself and label yourself that way, you'll never get to what's great about your character. The playing out of your life will ring hollow and false.

Sure, every character has a flaw (or twelve). But that's part of what makes drama so delicious. Think about the people close to you -- they all have flaws, don't they? And you still love them anyway, don't you? Allow your own character to have problems that don't define him or her and see what magic The Great Playwright in the Sky* brings to you.

3. Commit commit commit!

To my mind, there is nothing worse than a flaky or uncommitted actor. It is a profession wrought with challenges and to pursue it half-heartedly doesn't seem worth the (pathetic) effort. So many actors are out there following their heart's desire, and are hellbent on making art and connecting with people in a deep and meaningful way, and we can learn a lot from them.

Those dedicated actors are never late to rehearsal. They are off book when they say they will be. They have done the research on the time period. They're already wearing the character's shoes. They've read other plays by the playwright. They know the character inside and out -- because all of this matters to them.

You can do the same thing in your own life. Show your life some integrity. Be honest, live up to your potential, and commit to being the kind of person you want to be.

The one thing my high school drama teacher, Mr. Luongo, told us over and over and over again was "Be on time. Know your lines." And that means being responsible, reliable, and present.

*I'm painfully aware of the high cheese-factor of this statement.

getting rid of old (icky) beliefs in three easy steps!

Step 1: Identify the old (icky) belief
Step 2: Pick a new (non-icky) one to take its place
Step 3: Give it a whirl

The end.

Ok, ok, I'm oversimplifying, but only sort of.

Step 1: Identifying the old (icky) belief

How do you know when something you believe isn't serving you anymore? Here are a couple of ideas:

-- Listen to what your body has to say about it. Do you get a sinking feeling when you think that thought? Do your shoulders climb up to your ears? Would you rather just crawl back into bed forever? Or maybe you want to punch someone? All of these are good indicators that a belief isn't serving you. Even just a deadness or a flatness in response to a belief or thought can highlight an outdated (e.g. icky) belief.

-- Ask trusted friends or family members. (But only the ones you're ok with being right.)

-- Explore and define your belief. If you're thinking "I'm not meeting men because I have high standards," define each word carefully. What do you mean by "meeting" and "men" and "high standards"? Write out full definitions of what these words mean to you -- without consulting the dictionary. (Unless you wrote it.)

-- Gather evidence about your belief and its opposite. If your belief is "Taking time for myself is bad," look in your life and see where that is true and where that is false. (Again, be sure to explore and define your belief first.)

Step 2: Picking a new (non-icky) belief to take its place

This one seems harder than it is. Since beliefs are about how you interpret a situation, you're in charge of them. Yes, of course, you learned something was "true" when you were a kid -- and it may, in fact, have been true -- and you think it's still true now, but the odds are that if you learned ick as a kid, you don't need ick as an adult.

Think of beliefs as sweaters. Would you wear the sweater you wore to kindergarten on a date today? It just wouldn't fit. (And, man, would it hurt the eyes.)

Ways to generate non-icky ideas:

-- The easiest way is to flip around the old (icky) one you've been schlepping around your whole life. If you're "no good," pick "I'm good!" If you're "lazy" pick "I'm active." (Note, however, while this may be the easiest one to generate, it may be the hardest one to try on.)

-- Ask yourself what other ways you could see this belief? What other words could you use, or other ways you could define those words?

-- What belief might your best friend/mentor/parent/lover encourage you to have?

-- What belief have you always wanted to have?

-- What do your role models believe? (Or, what do you think your role models believe?)

Step 3: Give it a whirl

What's beautiful about this step is that no matter what new (non-icky) belief you pick, it stands a really good chance of being better than the old (icky) one you've been using all along, so you CAN'T GO WRONG!

Just sayin'.

Try on your new belief (like a sweater). See how it feels in your body. When you feel the old belief creeping back in, take a deep breath, and switch your mind back over to the new one.

A good way to really give this a whirl is to assign yourself a task that brings up the old belief. For example, if your old belief is "no woman would want to date me" then sign up for an online dating service. Every time you look at that site, you have an opportunity to try on the new belief. And when the new belief falters, look to see if there are additional old (icky) beliefs underneath that one.

And then repeat the process.

I promise you, you're worth it!

words of wisdom

I love Anne Lamott, and in her book, Bird by Bird, she dispenses a great deal of wisdom about writing... that happens to correspond directly with life. I find the following quote extremely useful on those days when I'm mad at myself for not doing/being/thinking what I want:

"I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place of friendly detachment towards myself, so I can look out at the world and see all those other things with respect. Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don’t drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor’s yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper. So I keep trying gently to bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and noted with a kind of reverence. Because if I don’t learn to do this, I think I’ll keep getting things wrong."


-- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

what are you carrying?

There’s a Zen story about two monks, who are walking by a river. They come across a woman dressed in fine clothing. One monk offers to pick her up and carry her over the river, which she accepts. Once across the river, he puts her down, she thanks him and goes on her way.

Several hours later, the second monk just can’t stand it anymore — “Brother, our teaching tells us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked her up and carried her across the river!”


The other replies, “I put her down when we crossed the river. Why are you still carrying her?”

What haven’t you put down yet? Maybe it’s that dumb thing you said last week while talking to the cute girl in the bar who took your number but never called. ("I shouldn't have said that. I'm so stupid.") Maybe it’s what your mother told you when you were younger – that you were pretty but plain. ("I'm ugly.") Maybe it’s the fear of failure that you carry around after a risk you took tanked. ("I never should have done that. I'm such a loser.")


It doesn’t matter what it is, what matters is that you see your judgments, and you make an effort to put them down. (You're not stupid, you're not ugly, and you're not a loser!) Beliefs you have about how you should be or have to be… well, they’re just beliefs.

I'm not saying that makes them easy to put down. (Let’s not kid ourselves here.) But observing the nasty beliefs that you’re lugging around with you may keep you from picking up more like them, and you might be surprised to find that, once you identify a garbagey belief, it slips away all by itself.

The world gives you evidence of your goodness and worthiness. Collect that evidence, and put the other stuff down. Try this: keep a list of compliments people pay you. Doesn't matter if they're big or small, just collect them. The guy who catcalled while you were on your way to work? He totally counts! When your dad says he loves you, hear the truth of his love and accept it. Your boss just said you did a great job -- did you even hear that? People go out of their way to pay compliments, and accepting them is not only polite, it's the best way to collect your evidence.

So the next time someone offers you a compliment, put down the ugly judgments you're carrying, don't offer any mitigating circumstances (like how cheap your new dress was at TJ Maxx) and simply say "Thank you."

(Then run to your list and write it down!)

how can I help you?

Has this ever happened to you: the phone rings and it's your friend, crying her eyes out over a guy. And you want to help, but you don't know what to say. Or maybe it's your boyfriend and his boss is doing that thing again that he just hates. Is it better to listen? Or should you chime in?

Lately, one of my best friends has been very depressed. And I don't mean just bummed out or "down," I mean depressed. Lots of crying, lots of tough issues causing her unbearable amounts of pain. And when she calls, I don't even worry about what to say. I'm not stressed out. Eight years ago, though, she was in a similar depression (albeit one less severe and with fewer mitigating circumstances), and at the time, it completely overwhelmed me. She would call, upset, and I wouldn't know what to say or do, and it would make me feel guilty, angry, frustrated, and, really, like a bad friend.


Since then, I've learned five very important words that have saved my sanity (and, arguably, my friendship): how can I help you? Because I want to help, she wants me to help, and yet, trying to read her mind to figure out how to help, and then come up with exactly the right thing to do is exhausting. (I imagine it's like teaching a pig to sing.)

By asking her how I can help, it not only takes the pressure off of me to make things better (or rather, takes the imaginary pressure off of me, since she's not actually doing anything but calling me) but, more importantly, it puts the responsibility for feeling better squarely on her. She has to identify what it is that would make her feel better and then accept it from me when I offer it.

This has worked enormously well for us. And I find I can carry it over into business, too. When my boss comes in with a complaint about so-and-so or a co-worker just can't stand her neighbor, I ask, "how can I help?" (or alternately, "what are you going to do about it?") Because complaining and whining, while it sometime feels good, doesn't solve anything.

"How can I help" shows others that you care about them without bulldozing them with advice they didn't ask for. It keeps you from having to guess what's broken and how best to fix it. And it cuts to the heart of the issue -- getting someone the support he or she needs, without any of our extra crap that they don't need.

fearless living (a totally different three day conference)

With all the fearless living conferences I go to, you'd think I'd be fearlessly ruling the world by now. Alas, I'm not. I'm focusing on conquering a far more complex and confusing terrain -- me.

Over the long weekend, I went to a Fearless Foundation Workshop, run by Rhonda Britten (of Starting Over fame) and, while I won't go into the specifics of exactly what we covered (as that would breach my agreement with the Institute) I will give you a basic outline of what I learned, and why it's important to me -- for free!

(Aren't I just the best?)

First, Rhonda argues, when we experience negative emotions (anger, anxiety, frustration, despair, etc.) it's because we're being triggered by fear. We have one major fear, and when we can identify that fear, take a step back and stop reacting to it, we have much more freedom in our lives to make choices that actually serve us. Additionally, she argues, there is an essential nature that each of us has, but which we have denied, and only when we stop reacting from fear will we start to access that essential nature and end up with what she calls our "wholeness." My essential nature, as I discovered this weekend, is compassionate. And that may not surprise many of you, as I believe I'm an extremely compassionate person... to other people. Inside my own head, however, it's a bar brawl, with Judgment duking it out with Mean-Spiritedness (who is tag teamming with Not-Good-Enough). There's definitely an element of this that has served me over time (pushing me to go to Yale, driving me to be better and less complacent in just about everything I do), but more than not, it has been a really good tool for me to use to drive myself crazy. (Just ask my ex-boyfriends. I think they'll back me up on this.)

However, the problem a self-judger faces when she feels she is now tasked with the job of being compassionate is that it's really easy to sit there and tell yourself you're not being compassionate enough, or compassionate in the right way, or compassionate at all. (This was how I spent my Sunday night and Monday morning. Don't do this at home. It's exhausting.) The upside, it turns out, is that any decision I can make from a place outside of fear is already compassionate, by default! (Yippee!) The more I can do to take a step back, examine my behavior, take a deep breath, or stand up for myself (especially in the face of my greatest fear), the sweeter I will be to myself. The more I will move towards forgiving myself. The awesomer I will become.

So, while the conference was draining, at times irritating, and I basically felt like someone had taken the Jaws of Life, cracked open my rib cage and just kept spreading and spreading and spreading until there was next to no life left in me, it was totally worth it in the Peace of Mind department.

If you're interested in learning more about any of this, please let me know, visit www.fearlessliving.org, or read Rhonda's book, Fearless Living. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, as it's really hard emotional work that will only benefit you if you're really ready for it, but if you feel stuck in a rut (either in your thoughts, career, behaviors, relationships, life, whatever) it'll totally help.

You may, in fact, never be the same again.