Keep Your Wits.

Sanity-saving, Mindset Shifts, & Ways to Keep Going

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True Growth Comes through Being Supported

Just before throwing a party at my house last spring, my 25-year-old son said, “Mom you’ve grown so much, you’re not as stressed out like you usually would be back in the day.” I laughed and thought for a moment. Yes, I’d grown some, but there was something else—family members helped prepare for the day, cleaning, setting up lights, offering to pick up ice, etc.

“Yeah, I feel better because I feel supported.”

Growing up in the U.S., I think a lot of us have internalized the malignant message that we’re supposed to be independent above all else. That our independence is more important than showing up as the whole, imperfect humans we are. That somehow we’re supposed to be perfect and the more we take on the more impressive we are. As if interdependence is a weakness.

How many times have I thought, “Wow, I don’t know how she does it!”?

And the answer, most of the time is actually, “She doesn’t.” I mean sure in the gleam of social media content it might seem like everyone is doing better than I am, but deep down I think we all know it’s bullshit.

After a lifetime of this “hyper independence” training, it can be difficult or even excruciating to ask for help. Why? Because maybe we feel like we’re admitting defeat, or at the very least admitting that we can’t “do it all.”

The thing is, asking for—or even accepting—help can trigger a whole host of negative emotions because at its core there’s risk in placing your trust in someone else. And if you happen to be one of those kids who grew up too fast in order to take care of others (it me), that act can be triggering on a primal level.

Before I cover how to move past that, I’d love to share how doing that has helped me.

Here are a few examples of how opening myself up to support has made a difference:

  • When I listened to the intuitive pull I felt to move closer to family during the pandemic and engaged carefully in reconnecting, I felt a wave of building support that I haven’t had in decades.
  • When I found the right mentor and took the risk to hire her, my business and life changed for the better—dramatically.
  • When my clients have taken the risk to hire me and invest in their growth, they have had breakthroughs beyond what they ever expected.
  • When I invested time and effort into the friendships and professional relationships with people who showed me their goodness, we all received the kind of breakthroughs, support, and growth that compounds beyond the sum of our abilities.

Now, have there been people I placed my trust in who didn’t deserve it? Who screwed me over? Or hurt me? Yep, you betcha. But I’ll say that in every one of those situations, the core of my actions were based in fear. The signs were there, I just missed or ignored them. And that’s okay too. Because, it taught me how to pick myself back up, where I needed to heal, and eventually be brave again, but also, it showed me who THE REAL ONES are in my life. The people who had my back anyway.

This is why it’s so important to do a gut check, of course. I find that if I’m actually listening to my intuition, I’m much better off. That gorgeous bitch is always right. LOL.

So what does all of this have to do with author branding?

Well, everything in a way. Of course, our mission when we work together is to help you get the clarity you need about what makes you so awesome and who and how you serve, and how you can own that and show up for your people in a completely different and powerful way. This work is amazing and challenging, fun and explorative, and it requires support, kindness, and a “we’re in this together” mentality.

True transformation doesn’t happen in a void. Even if it must happen on an individual level, it’s always connected to our own interconnectedness. It’s not just about learning the skills or tools you need, it’s about having support. It’s about being able to be vulnerable enough to grow, together.

Where in your life could asking for help potentially create a major positive shift?

Where to Expend Your Energy Right Now

I’d like to share an easy 4-step process that helps me keep my sanity (mostly) in hard times and conserves my positive energy in the face of our “new normal.”

#1 Acknowledge the reality of what’s going on. 💣

Things are BIZARRE! It’s important to remind ourselves that we are going through extraordinarily difficult times. So go ahead, look around at the chaos, feel it. Give yourself a dollop of compassion even if you’re not feeling very normal right now. And as Viktor Frankl says in Man’s Search for Meaning, “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”

Now, take a deep breath.

#2 Acknowledge that you are, in fact, still here. ✅

Whether you’re doing well or barely hanging in, you’re still here and sometimes that’s enough. If you’ve got it in you, remind yourself of other hard things you’ve weathered before. Give yourself credit for being a survivor.

#3 Think about where you want your precious energy to flow. 💥

My mantra all week has been, Do I want to give my energy to this? What’s worthy of your energy? And what just isn’t right now? We are, as Deepak Chopra says, “infinite beings,” with finite energy. So what are you going to allow to take from that limited supply of energy?

#4 Finally, take breaks. 🙅🏾

We all need more respites than usual right now. I know I do. Perhaps you can allocate some snippets of constructive downtime into your life.

That’s it. See if you can run through these steps at least once a day over the next week. #3 alone helped me grab ahold of more of my inner peace this week when some wild things were happening all around me.

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Give Yourself a Damn Break

Do you ever have the kind of week where you ask yourself what evil karma you must have perpetrated in some other life so as to deserve such a shower of bullshit to be rained down upon you?

I’ve just come off a couple of wild-ass–WTF weeks of life, ya’ll. So many randomly negative things happened that my head is still spinning. Yet as stressful as it’s been I noticed something positive too.

Years ago, when I had a bad week my mind would go directly to the following line of questioning:

  • What did I do wrong in order to deserve this?
  • Can anything ever go right?
  • Why does this kind of thing always happen to me?
  • Am I cursed?
  • Am I just doomed? Or a loser, who can never do anything right? Will I just fail at everything my whole life?

That’s some next-level negative-self-shit-talking, huh? It used to be my impulse, my instinct, to kind of catastrophize. Woe is me. Not for no reason, I mean. I’d had more than my fair share of bad things happen to me, but still, the deep dark hole of mental despair did NOT do anything to help the situation.

As saccharine as this is going to sound, there is some serious power in being positive…or at least being neutral if you can’t muster the positivity.

What’s Guilt & Shame Got to Do With It?

Brené Brown describes the difference between guilt and shame in these terms:

Guilt is the negative feeling you have when you did something hurtful/wrong, etc. and feel the sting of it, and know you need to do better.

Shame is the negative feeling you have when you did something hurtful/wrong, etc. and feel the sting of it and tell yourself you’re the worst, damaged, no good, worthless, etc.

So what do you call it when something happens TO you–something you have no control over like say, your iPhone dying and your iCloud getting corrupted and years of files despite your best backup efforts, or maybe your dog gets sick and requires hospitalization (two of the personal gems I experienced this week)?

Maybe we should call the positive and negative feelings I started this email with Catastrophizing and Positive Spinning, or maybe Self-loathing and Acceptance? Or maybe you have some better terms. But you get the idea.

The Same Root

Whether you’re internalizing what happened to you because you doubt yourself or feel like a victim of life, or you accept what happened and move on, while still taking care to process your feelings of hurt, frustration, etc–I think these emotion options stem from the same kind of insecurity that shame does.

What I’m getting at here is something I think we can all relate to, especially during this wild-ass time we’re living in.

We always have a choice, even if it doesn’t feel like it, to internalize, catastrophize, or process, accept, and take action.

Speaking as someone who lived years in the zone of the former, the latter is a much better way to live. But like any other longterm change it takes years of practice to make it stick. And of course, nobody’s perfect; it’s not like I never get those ideas, it’s just a lot more rare these days. And that’s a relief.

These days, the thoughts that come up for me are more often along these lines:

  • Shit, this sucks. Okay, how do I keep going toward what I want even though this happened?
  • I need to vent/cry/scream/write it out, whatever, so I can move through this emotion and come back to a more peaceful, logical place.
  • Okay, I can’t control this situation, so how can I retain control of myself so I can see things clearly and move forward?
  • If this was bound to happen, at least it didn’t [fill in the blank with something worse].
  • Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening again? Or be more prepared if it does?
  • Give yourself a break. This is really fucking hard. Breathe. Take some time for yourself and your sanity.
  • Welp, you’ve survived XYZ in the past, you’ll survive this too.
  • What, or how can I learn from this?
  • How must people feel who go through this, have experienced this, or have it worse?* I’m going to show them more compassion. I’m going to remember this for later.

It’s a lot easier to deal with a catastrophe with a positive mindset than it is to deal with it while also compounding the catastrophe in your own head. 

*It’s important to note, however, that ignoring your emotions, pretending like it doesn’t matter, or reassuring yourself that someone has it worse aren’t healthy ways of coping. Nobody’s saying to DENY what’s going on. Acknowledging and Processing it is waaaaay different than denying it.

If you’re experiencing your own personal brand of shitstorm right now–and who isn’t, amirite–there’s a whole section of blog posts I wrote about how to get through. And also, I’d like to share this quote that my stepmom sent me this week. It’s a good one to hold on to right now.

“You’ve dealt with an unprecedented health crisis that has paralyzed the planet. You’ve had to alter the way you do just about everything. The level of difficulty of your current life is a few steps above Batman. Give yourself a damn break.”

​-John Pavlovitz​

Go ahead, give yourself a break!

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How do you know if you should keep going on this [project/ company/ mission]?

I’m gonna be straight with you. I’m exhausted. You may be too. Though I’ve always considered myself an ally of anyone disenfranchised, I see that the depth and breadth of racism in this country is much more staggering than I realized. If you’re BIPOC, you already know this. You might even be sick of white people talking about finally waking up. So I’ll keep my words short.

I think it’s better that I just share Arlan Hamilton’s words. If you don’t know her, you soon will. She’s a venture capitalist who started her fund five years ago while she was on Food Stamps. She’s a queer Black woman without a degree and she fucking achieved her dream anyway. These are the kind of people we all need to pay attention to right now–people like Arlan. In her new book, It’s About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage she says this:

“I’m asked all the time: “How do I know whether or not I should keep going or give up on this company or this project or this mission?” My answer is this: If you close your eyes and visualize the world five, ten, twenty years from now and feel okay with the thing you’re working on not existing, then it’s not urgent. But if you can’t imagine the world without it and want it to exist whether you get to enjoy the benefits of it or not, then not only is it important to you, it’s your calling.”

So, I ask you today to do just that. Imagine.

Change is coming.

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Using Crisis as an Opportunity to Regroup

As trite as this is going to sound, I have to say it:

Every crisis is an opportunity. To rethink. To assess. To Regroup. To change.

As this pandemic unfolds, we have seen the inequities and broken systems of government, society, and even community, surface with glaring clarity. Never before have the disparities of our society been so stark. Everyone is GOING THROUGH IT, at various levels. And it’s hard for everyone. But there is hope.

Crisis has the ability to give us a wakeup call like nothing else can. And when it happens on a global scale, whew, what does that mean? I think it means an opportunity like none we’ve seen in our lifetimes.

How many times have we heard stories about people who shifted the entire course of their life after a traumatic crisis? There’s nothing like pain to shake us back into remembering what’s most important.

When faced with a massive personal crisis, I see a handful of primary ways we humans react:

  1. Internalize it. 

We berate ourselves for not doing a good enough job dealing with it. Beat ourselves up for being fearful, lazy, unprepared, whatever. How could we not see this coming? We get on that negative feedback loop where we are constantly trying to make sense of why we aren’t handling this with superhuman ability. This mindset is damaging to say the least. It doesn’t help. But we all do it at some point.

  1. Shutdown. 

If you haven’t been through a major personal crisis before, you may not be as familiar with this one. But if you have, you know. Sometimes we shut down and close ourselves off in order to survive. I’ve done it. It’s an old protection mechanism. But it also causes a lot of damage. In fact, maybe more than internalizing it. When we go numb, we disconnect from our humanity. And it’s hard to get back to ourselves. But it is possible. Never fear.

  1. Deflect or Distract. 

Maybe we just use anger as our deflection tool. And with Trump on TV suggesting that we should test folks by injecting them with disinfectant, it’s easy to do. Or maybe we’re so busy helping others that we have no time for ourselves. Maybe we’re drinking too much, maybe we’re making excuses for ourselves. Maybe we’re obsessed with redesigning our living rooms. (Hey, I’m looking at myself here too. I do some of this. Not gonna lie.)

  1. Learn & Grow.  

Another way that can sometimes look like isolating or shutting down to people on the outside, is to go deep within yourself. Sometimes we’re capable of this during times of distress. Sometimes we are not. And either is OK! The last thing we need is to judge someone for not growing personally during this time. Fuck that. I know what it’s like to barely be able to function in crisis mode and I also know what it’s like to grow. There’s no “right answer” here. There’s just humanity.

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But here’s the thing: Humanity is on the ropes right now. And when humanity is on the ropes, I don’t know about you, but I want to look to those who’ve been through hell and survived, to guide me. Theirs are the opinions I want to hear most.

But here’s the other thing—I think Americans like to super-size our heroes. I think we have this obsession with only listening to the most extreme heroes and not as much the single mom next door. We’re most interested in the extreme cases because I think—and oh shit I’m going to say it—we look at them and think, well yeah, they can do that because they are extraordinary. We glean our little tidbit from their story, but rarely does it lead to massive change in our own lives. They are special. We are not. If we knew the hell our neighbor has survived we might feel inferior.

Well, here we are…as a planet trying to stay true to what’s most important. Trying to protect life and rights and everything we’ve ever known. I’ve been privileged in this time to be safe. I’ve also been privileged to know firsthand what it’s like to be on lockdown in a big city, and also a more suburban, rural one.

The biggest difference? You can feel it in the air. There’s a collective heaviness that’s markedly more profound in higher populated areas. Not to get all woo-woo on you but y’all know we’re all connected. And it matters. This is a time to both protect our own psyches but also let in the pain of our communities.

Now is the time to look to ordinary heroes.

Collective grief can turn into collective hope which can turn into collective change. 

So let’s look to our friends, family, and neighbors who have been through shit before. I’m guessing most of them are doing better than the majority of us mentally right now. They are our teachers. They will scratch at the places within us that have long been scabbed over to expose the vulnerable hearts we all have. The ones that call out to us to be the best versions of ourselves. To look at what we’re holding in our own two hands and see what we can offer our fellow humans.

Nothing else really matters, right? Except each other and our earth. So how do we turn things around, not just for ourselves on an individual level, but in our communities and our world? I don’t have the answers, but I do know where to start.

It must start with us. With you. With me. Healing our emotional injuries, being able to listen to those ideas and impulses that are calling to us now. You know the ones, the ones that are whispering, “please just try me” in your ear late at night or very early in the morning when no one else is up.

Where there is pain there is also hope. I promise. Think about childbirth, there is usually intense pain, but there is also intense hope of new life. I don’t want to use the tired old metaphor that we’re going through a rebirth. So I’ll just say this: what if the pain is the part that slaps us across the face and says “Wake up! Something so important is coming. This is your chance. Something better than you ever imagined is around the corner.”

 

Take a Quick Break with Me

Last Tuesday night, I stood in my kitchen knowing it would likely be the last time for at least a month or two. I downed my magnesium supplement and a spoonful of peanut butter in the hopes of canceling out my insomnia. It was 3am. I had to be up at 7:30am to do an 8-hour drive up to Northern California. My daughter and I had decided to leave our apartment in Long Beach to go stay with family where we’d have a yard for the dog and more space/less people during the pandemic lockdown.

As I looked around my living room, memories flashed of all of the late nights in the weeks and months following my mom’s death. She got sick the month we moved in and died two months later. I looked over at my stove and a memory of those early days of grief came up. The guy I was seeing at the time made baked chicken for me and my daughter. We had laughed and watched TV till 6am. It was a respite from our grief. Other friend-infused late night memories flashed through my mind.

I smiled, thinking how those were different times, times when we could socialize, have people over, hug, take a sip of a friend’s drink, without fear.

My chest tightened, the thought of leaving our home reminded me of the two times my children and I were homeless. Panic. PTSD. I reminded myself that this time was different, we still had a home. We were only leaving temporarily. My son had his apartment too. I took some slow breaths.

Loss has a habit of reminding us of other losses.

The next night we arrived at my Mapa and Stepmom’s home in Sonoma County. We air-hugged from six feet away. We are quarantining in their RV for 14 days before we move into the house.

We are lucky we have this option. We are lucky we have a loving family that has a nice home and that they are happy to have us. Even though the majority of my parenting days are over now, I’ve been head of household so long that it feels nice at a time like this to be part of a bigger family unit.

But by last Friday morning, between adjusting to a new space, WiFi issues, my daughter breaking out in itchy stress-induced eczema all over her body, and the daily onslaught of pandemic news, I’d reached my limit. I made the hard decision to cancel two meetings and took the day off. (Even forgot to send my weekly email, doh)

Again, I was lucky I could do that. I called my best friend and took a walk around the neighborhood while we talked.

We’re each other’s go-to when life feels like it’s going to squash us flat. She was one of my first calls when my parent’s neighborhood was decimated in the Tubbs fire a few years back. In October 2017, nearly 1,500 houses burned down in their neighborhood alone. They narrowly escaped the sudden firestorm, and miraculously their house was one of only a few hundred that survived.

In December of 2017, my kids and I drove through the neighborhood. Back then it was an eerie, charred wasteland in almost every direction. But now, the neighborhood is a mix of newly built homes, empty overgrown lots, and homes in various phases of construction.

Photos of a Santa Rosa, CA neighborhood, left to right, a new home being built with the blackened skeleton of a tree in the distance, an empty lot where a home once stood, filled with flowers and wildflowers, another empty lot filled with green and three charred but living redwoods just beyond the fence.

This is a community that knows overwhelming devastation, personal and communal. They are recovering, they are rebuilding, adapting. And now adapting to the pandemic.

Though we’ve never faced anything like this pandemic before, it gave me hope to see not only the neighborhood’s progress, but the wildflowers and grasses doing their part to make the empty lots look vital again. I couldn’t help but draw parallels with what we’re dealing with now.

Everyone is handling this crisis in their own way, and in waves of calm and chaos. My natural inclination is to fix things, come up with creative solutions. But it was all too much, and last Friday I was spinning hard. As I lamented to my friend that I just didn’t know what to do next, she said, “nobody knows what to do in a pandemic.” I laughed. She was right. My stress level dropped a few major notches.

We all have varying degrees of responsibilities, stresses, and capacities right now. On some level though, we’re all going through a major traumatic life event. 

So I think if anyone is going to offer advice on how to cope it needs to apply to the grocery store worker as much as those who have the privilege of working from home (me included), or the hospital janitor as much as the out-of-work waiter, hoping with fingers crossed they’ll have food next week.

So here’s what I know helps in just about any scenario (I can conceive of):

  1. Carve out any time you can for some alone time to do nothing but breathe, and maybe think (or not). Even if that’s 5 minutes a day alone in the bathroom, DO IT. Breathe consciously, a few seconds in through your nose, down to your belly, then a few seconds out slowly. Do this 5-10 times. Focus on the breathing. Or focus on the faucet dripping or the bird outside. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter just give your mind and body a break from the stressful things in your head. A stressed/traumatized mind needs breaks. And if you can get as much as a couple days off to do as little as possible, do that.
  2. Be gentle on yourself. Expect less. You are grieving losses on many levels, you are trying to adapt to this new reality. So cut yourself some slack. I know it’s hard, believe me. I used to have these mini mental breakdowns at some of the harder points in my life where I was convinced I was failing at EVERYTHING. Now, when those thoughts come up, I tell myself it’s bullshit and ask myself how I can honor how I’m feeling. Give yourself permission to treat yourself with the same kindness you would a friend. You’re not weak. Knowing when to take care of yourself is STRONG.
  3. Do something enjoyable that’s not going to drain you later. What I mean here is that some activities (drinking a couple bottles of wine for instance) might be fun in the moment but make you feel worse off later. Other things refill your well, bolster the good feels and help you access your more logical, peaceful side. So treat yourself to something you enjoy: paint with a $3 watercolor kit, dance to your favorite song in your living room, go for a walk, watch a comedy special, play a game, or just stand in the sun for 10 minutes. The point here is that you’re interrupting your mind’s roiling fight or flight response and helping re-access your prefrontal cortex which is the part of your brain that can problem solve, regulate emotion, etc.

And finally, yeah we don’t know how or when this will end and for so many of us that is torture. But it will end. There is a light at the end of the tunnel even if we can’t see it yet.

We will rise from the ashes of this catastrophe, but in the meantime our mission is to survive in the healthiest ways possible. Be good to yourself so you can survive, learn, and rebuild.

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How Writing Down My Ideal Vision Changed My Life

how writing down my ideal vision changed my life

There seem to be two answers successful folks have when it comes to the question: “Did you ever expect to have this kind of success?”

One answer is something like:

“No, this is crazy. I just got lucky. I wanted to do this ______________ and poof, it just took off…”

Or the other:

“Yes, I did know. I’ve always wanted this, always believed I’d get here, and I worked my ass off to get here.”

After years of reading books and listening to interviews about or with successful people I’m going to propose that in reality, both answers are just sort of different sides of the same coin.

I’m also going to propose that most success is the result of the following equation:

visualization/faith/belief in what you want + hard work + luck/magic/universe intervention = success

Of course, that’s super simplified and not at all thorough, but bear with me.

However, I’d also argue that the folks who answer in the first way fit into one (or more) of the following:

  • They’re lying (consciously or unconsciously to us, or themselves, or both)
  • They have an issue with giving themselves credit
  • Or they are genuinely the exception to the rule

I mean, think about it…how many lazy ass people do you know that just fall into success? To be clear, I’m not talking about the kind of lazy-asses who have trust funds, wealthy benefactors, or who happen to already be famous for some reason. Those are automatically disqualified from this because they are also exceptions to the rules that most of the world is governed by.

Even the people who’ve had extraordinary luck usually put a lot of love and/or a super special skill into play at the right time, before their success rained down on them.  For instance, we can get all uppity about how a YouTuber makes millions off her makeup tutorial videos, while we toil away at a low paying teaching job, but in all reality, she is likely successful because she’s fulfilling a unique need and putting in the hours (even if we perceive those work hours as “less important” work). Ouch, I know.

What I used to do

For most of my life I never really saw past the next year or two when it came to my career, or any real big life plans. I had plenty of “someday” ideas, but never really knew when they’d happen. Each new year, I’d make a list of goals, for things like: making more money, classes or activities for my kids, weight loss, new furniture, travel, etc. Most of these goals even felt doable, even if they were a challenge. And yet each year, like most Americans, I’d only accomplish a few of my goals (and not usually the things that mattered most to me).

Then I learned some new tools.

Over the years, I developed different tactics which helped me improve my goal-accomplishment rate. For instance, after reading Good to Great, I started setting more ambitious goals ala author Jim Collins’ Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). The premise was that you need to set huge goals, ones that may seem impossible in order to actually be excited enough to pursue them in earnest. After reading The 4-Hour Workweek, I learned the valuable tool of Dreamlining, where essentially you select your top goals in different categories, allot resources and set deadlines. Using these tools, some of the goals I accomplished were: getting a new minivan, going on a trip to Central America with my kids, starting a new business, and more.

And yet, my goals were very short term focused. And therefore, they didn’t really build on each other to create the overall life I wanted.

That’s just ONE of the benefits of creating a written Ideal Vision for your life and career, heretofore referred to as life-career. 😉

Then there’s an Ideal Vision

There is an innate human need to feel like we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. It’s why we align ourselves with communities, religions, political parties, fan groups, and of course, brands. We understand what those entities value, represent, and what they stand for. And our own associations with them helps us both define and communicate our own identities.

Right there, IDENTITY is the most important reason to have a bigger, specific vision for your own life.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t ONLY want to be defined by things outside of myself. I want to be the captain of my own destiny. In fact, I think a lot of times when we see people who reach great heights of success and then have a mental breakdown, its because they never took the time to understand what it was they alone wanted for their lives in the first place.

An Ideal Vision is comprised not just of your desires for what “success” looks like to you, but it is naturally embued with your reasons for WHY you want those things. There more you honestly explore your own internal desires for what ultimate success looks like, the clearer your vision and self-identity will become.

That’s also why it’s important to revisit your Ideal Vision on a regular basis as you evolve, grow, and even achieve some of those desires. As you evolve, so does your vision, and it will continue to be more accurate and a clearer representation of you as a person.

And what’s the purpose of all of this self-knowledge?

Motivation.

Nothing motivates us more than knowing why the hell we care so much about doing said thing, on such a deep level that it becomes a part of who we are.

That’s when we become unstoppable in the pursuit of what matters most to us.

Suddenly, we are able to see the activities, people, jobs, habits that serve us and our vision, and those that do not. Then removing or replacing them becomes exponentially easier.

How it changed my life

So how did adopting this powerful practice change my life? Well, since I have been actively writing and revisiting/rewriting my personal vision here are a few of the things I’ve accomplished (that are building on each other to get me even close to my big dreams):

  • attended the UCLA X Writers Program and became one of their Scholars,
  • wrote the first draft of my entire memoir,
  • served as Brand Director of a National Writing Conference,
  • served as an Advisory Mentor for the Queen of England’s Young Leaders Programme,
  • have been published multiple times,
  • launched my online personal branding course for writers,
  • spoke at ALT Summit,
  • traveled to Southeast Asia,
  • got the car of my dreams, etc., etc.
  • most importantly, though it gave me an enduring sense of peace and motivation to keep going even when times were rough.

What about your vision?

While you may have made resolutions or goals for a new year, I encourage you to set aside some time to download my handy-dandy Ideal Vision worksheet and write down a vivid Ideal Vision for your life-career. 

Then, I encourage you to take it a step further and compare the goals/intentions/resolutions you’ve already set and measure them against that Ideal Vision. Adjust accordingly.

 

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Who was the first woman to inspire you to be successful?

women selling Tupperware 1980s

“Pink Cadillac, cruising down the street…,” Mom would sing and do her signature shimmy, as we drove down the street in her blue Chevy Nova to another Tupperware party in a nearby town. Mom wanted the pink Cadillac—that was the big prize if you worked your way up being a top-performing Regional Manager in Tupperware. I can still remember going with her to pick up her orders, meeting her manager, Enid at the distribution center.

“You should be proud, it’s a hard thing to do what your mom has done,” Enid said. She didn’t need to tell me; I was so proud. I nodded, a big smile on my face.

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This week, coinciding with American Business Women’s Day, American Express released a new study about women business owners, based on information from 2014-2019. There are some pretty exciting numbers, like while the growth rate for the average business was 9%, for women-owned businesses it was over double that at 21%. Women are starting new businesses at a rate of about 1,800 new businesses per day. Businesses owned by women of color specifically grew by 43%! Women of color now account for 50% of all women-owned businesses!

Hot damn! This makes me so fucking happy.

Women’s economic independence is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. And for the record, it doesn’t always mean owning your own business, of course. Though more often than the past, I think our economic and social systems—and serious lack of living wages—make it harder than before to have a financially rewarding career in a traditional job setting. But that’s a conversation for another time.

What’s important is that we’re seeing a change, a rising tide of women taking control of our futures, stepping into the innate power we’ve always had, but haven’t been able (for a multitude of reasons inward and outward) to excel in before. When we see people who are like us, refusing to lay low, opening up to their power, and taking action, it can open up the same in us.

Inspired change inspires change.

Again, this is why representation matters.

And as we know, sad as it may be, in America—“he” who holds the gold makes the rules. We’re about to change all the rules, biatch!

As I thought about these amazing stats, I tried to recall the first time I saw a woman being successful in her career. At first, I thought it was the owner of the preschool I once worked at, or maybe the first woman I met who was my age at the time and owned a marketing firm. But no, I was pleasantly surprised to realize it was my own mama. And all those emotions—of being amazed and proud of her—came flooding back. Suddenly I was a little girl again, marveling at how my mom had done it.

Mom never did get the pink Cadillac, she left Tupperware shortly after—I’m not sure why. But a few years later she did buy herself a pale lime Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham “boat” as we called it. It had all the bells and whistles—power seats and windows, even cruise control! Sure, it was used like all our family cars but it was, after all, a Cadillac. My little brother and I would lean over and whisper, “Cadillac style!” and giggle till our tummies hurt.

I’m not sure if Mom realized it then, but she was planting a seed, not just for me, but for my brother too (now a proud feminist), the idea that women could sell, and could build success outside the home too.

I think that’s why I’m so excited to see the surge in women-owned businesses. The more visible we are, the more we empower other women to pursue economic independence alongside their dreams—I believe both are equally important, btw. I’ve never been particularly inspired by people who achieve amazing career success at the expense of their relationships with loved ones. That’s not my concept of success.

Let’s take a moment to celebrate this sea change that generations of women (and some men) have worked so hard to set up and build for where we are now. Let’s take a moment to think of the women who’ve inspired us. Maybe even thank them, if they’re still around.

And then, let’s take it a step further and think about how we might be able to inspire other women and girls, just by putting ourselves out there a bit more or perhaps even advocating for other women.

I’m excited to see how the world will change as women gain more economic, political, and leadership power. This is our time, sisters let’s stop playing small and step into the power we know deep down (beneath the self-doubt and fear) is waiting to be unfurled.

And hey, if you’d like to share the story of the first successful career woman you recall, please share in the comments below.

 

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Aretha Franklin’s Tough Choices
on the Way to Success

I was heartbroken to learn of Aretha Franklin’s death yesterday. It was the kind of loss you feel based on some wish that I’d had a chance to get to know her. Like now the (irrational) opportunity was definitely gone. I’ve always kind of seen her as a mama bear. As a kid I listened to the Oldies and Aretha was a big part of my soundtrack. There were definitely R-E-S-P-E-C-T singing sessions in front of the mirror. 😉 What I hadn’t known about until yesterday was just how hard Aretha Franklin’s life had been.

She just had that power, confidence, and strength to her voice—something I did not feel like I had.

When any famous person dies, we all know that there will be a deluge of all things Aretha for a month or so. While I don’t hold any secret knowledge of her, yesterday I was struck by a few facts about her that I hadn’t known before.

There is no question that Aretha had reached heights so many dream of. Many of us have our own personal connection to her songs. But I am always interested in the personal lives behind massively successful celebrities. I mean, I guess we’re all interested in that or there wouldn’t be so many biographies and shows like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, right? Americans are especially interested in how the wealthy and successful live.

I’m not so interested in that part though. What interests me is what she did to make her dream happen, while life was still pounding her with hardship.

The truth is that Aretha was very private. So maybe I’ll never know how her own mindset really fed into her career and life. But there are a few facts about her life I hadn’t known before her death, things that make me think.

A few milestones in Aretha Franklin’s Life:

Her parents’ relationship was strained and her mother left when she was only six.

Her mother died a few years later, just before Aretha’s 10th birthday.

Aretha was a pre-teen mom. 

She had her first child at twelve-years old. And her second at fifteen. Can you imagine what may have led to two pregnancies when she was just a child? I don’t know and I won’t assume, but it’s a helluva thing to be a mom when you’re still a child.

Despite losing her mother and becoming a mother so very young that she was able to set sights on her dream and continue to pursue it at such a young age. Her first album came out in 1956, when she was only 14. That was IN BETWEEN having those two children. Wow.

Her first husband abused her and their marriage ended in divorce.

Anyone whose been through a divorce knows how devastating the ripples of that shit-storm can be, let alone when abuse is involved. But she kept going. And not just in her career…

She was very active in the civil rights movement, even while her career was just taking off.

She and her family were friends with Martin Luther King, Jr. and she toured with Harry Belafonte to raise money for the movement. Her commitment to activism despite a life of complications, pain, triumph, and complexity astounds me.

When she signed on with Atlantic in 1967, she adamantly took creative control over her work.

She made sure that she had the final say on all lyrics and that no producer could usurp her vision for a performance.

Not only did she have an incredible gift that she used to the absolute fullest, but she fought for things she believed in, and kept going despite myriad of setbacks and personal pain that would knock any one of us on our asses. To me, that is even more incredible than her voice.

Her backstory—or rather the little bits of it we have access to—both inspires me and scares the shit out of me. 

I’m deeply inspired by her commitment to her dream and the incredible things she had to overcome to keep going. But I’m also daunted by her seemingly superhuman abilities.

On the one hand, I look at my own life and the things I’ve had to overcome (teen motherhood, abusive relationships, financial issues, mental health issues, etc. etc.) and feel a kinship in her story. A sort of, if she could overcome what she did, than I can overcome my own stuff, too.

On the other hand, I think we all have different gifts and abilities, and frankly, desires. I know deep down that there are certain things I don’t want bad enough to pursue come-what-may, while there are other principles that I would die for. Maybe my road and my capabilities are different than Aretha’s were—okay, not “maybe”—but I know what I want and what I’m willing to do (or not do) to pursue it.

The thing is, if we give up the things we aren’t really willing to give up in pursuit of our dreams we won’t be genuinely happy. Conversely, if we try to keep everything we want, we may endanger our dream by never stepping out of our comfort zones and making necessary sacrifices.

So I ask you (and myself) this:

What do you want so badly that you won’t allow anything to stand in the way?

What are you willing to give up, let go, or compromise for it? And what aren’t you willing to compromise on?

I think this is one of those considerations most of us avoid thinking about—like taxes, or your final will and testament. I think it’s also a major reason many people don’t pursue their dreams. They get stuck in the murky, sticky, paralyzing indecision phase so long that all of the sudden they’re 65 years old and wonder why they never pursued that dream that was so important to them.

There are always reasons or excuses to NOT do something. It takes faith and guts to risk in pursuit of dreams, but also decisiveness and a knowledge of boundaries.

I want to keep running confidently in the direction of my dreams. There’s a freedom in knowing ahead of time what you’re willing to compromise on, and what you’re not. Maybe that’s the only security when it comes to pursuing something that seems impossible—knowing what you’re willing or not willing to do.

I’ve been thinking about this and will continue to do so. I encourage you to do the same. Spend some time getting clear on what you really want, and where your boundaries are with what you’re willing to do or not do. Even if you’ve decided in the past, it’s good to revisit and adjust.

We only get this one life, so in the years we have left, how do we accomplish the dreams we hold most dear while still juggling the struggles too?

I believe it starts with figuring out where our boundaries are and just how badly we want to pursue the things we care about. And then, commit to them.

I’ll Do Well Anyway: How to Not Allow Failure to Define You

There’s a blurry video from 1986 making its rounds on Instagram lately. ​Have you seen that old video clip of Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes interviewing Oprah?

In December of ’86 The Oprah Winfrey show had just launched and our beloved icon was just stepping on to the national stage. She discussed how to not allow failure to define you in one pithy answer.

In the segment, she says something I think we should pay close attention to.

Mike: So this show that’s just getting underway, nationally…

Oprah: It’ll do well.

Mike: And if it doesn’t?

Oprah: And if it doesn’t, I will still do well. I will do well because I’m not defined by a show.

Ya know, I think we are defined by the way we treat ourselves and the way we treat other people.

It would be wonderful to be acclaimed as this ya know, talk show host that’s made it. That would be wonderful. But if that doesn’t happen there are other important things in my life.

Wow, right?

Just the other day I was talking with a friend, and full disclosure, I was being a real Debbie Downer.

“If in 10 years I still don’t fulfill my dreams then I’ll give up and crawl into a hole.” Of course, that statement was fueled by stress and being overtired, but it was total bullshit. I’m never flipping giving up, dammit.

Then I watched this video again and realized my focus was in the wrong place.

Imagine shifting our mindsets so that this thing we’re trying to do doesn’t define us completely. That it becomes only a part of who we are.

It’s Easy to Get Caught Up in Defining Ourselves by Things.

In my quest to follow my dreams of becoming a writer, speaker, and changemaker, I’ve gone through an evolution. There have been times when things don’t go as I’d like them to and moments like the one I just described above where I’m negative or overwhelmed. This is because I’m putting too much weight on numbers or “things” and not the daily work of who I am and how I treat others.

My dream is bigger than one thing. And like Oprah, I know (even though I don’t always feel it) that I’ll be okay. More than okay, I’ll do well.

I want you to know that you will be okay, and you will do well too. Regardless of the outcome of whatever you’re doing now.

I believe that if we’re going to do well, we should take a quick look back at the last part of what she said. “I think we are defined by the way we treat ourselves and the way we treat other people.”

For me, the way I treat myself is often the part that falls apart. For others, it might be the other way around. In any case, there’s a balance there and some deep truth, not only about the value of a human being, but how we pursue our dreams. ​

One of the biggest misconceptions of personal branding is that it pigeonholes you into being defined by something (a business, genre, service, product, etc.) that is too small to hold the wealth of your intricacies.

You don’t have to be constrained by one thing that you’re doing. Even if your book doesn’t sell, or your artwork doesn’t get in a gallery—or whatever your personal version of success might be—you can still do well.

Part of that “doing well” mindset is defining yourself and your personal brand by WHO you are and not just the work you’re doing.

Your personal brand is your foundation. You build, demolish, rebuilt, remodel but the core of your values and vision for your life ground you in your truth. Truth that can adapt to whatever is next in your life or career.

Don’t believe me? Think of Oprah. This woman has had a personal brand from the start, she’s done a lot of different things and sometimes failed. But she is a force, an example of what someone with a clear, working vision for her life can do. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the odds that were stacked against her as a black woman in America, one who had to prove herself more times than she should’ve had too.

But she did it, because she knew where she wanted to go and she kept at it. Even if she failed, she’d do well. And well she did.

The Other Side of Our Humanness

One of the things I love about Oprah, is despite her sometimes showwomanship, is that she breaks through and shows her true self, her vulnerable, flawed, and beautiful self.

So while that segment of the interview contained powerful truthtelling, I’d like to show you the context of that question and answer, a little before and after. (Don’t worry it’s only ~2.5 min).

A couple of things stood out to me. First, Oprah’s open insecurity about her weight, her appearance, and all she had to overcome in order to get her own show in 1986. And then Mike Wallace’s dick comment about a “fella” and Oprah’s visible discomfort at having to publicly define her love life. At having to guess at when her knight may come. And the weight comes up again.

Maybe it’s because I’ve gained 40 lbs since setting out toward my dream, but I so feel her struggle there. We all have our demons we’re wrestling, but weight is one of those not so easily hidden as others. As a woman, there are many times where I feel like a fraud because of my weight—like why should anyone listen to this chubby girl? Like I have to explain my weight gain, or call it out before someone else does, or like Oprah, wonder if [insert thing I want] will come along, once I lose some pounds.

Of course, that’s where her reminder—how someone treats themselves—comes in.

It’s also what’s so beautiful about this longer version of the video. She is clearly a badass and she is clearly human.

You can be both.

So I’d like to break down her wisdom and vulnerability into a quick list of affirmations for us (for the next time we’re tying our worth to a thing):

1. I am not defined by this _____________ (book, show, job, etc.).

2. I have other important things in my life (friends, family, travel, helping others, etc.).

3. I’m not perfect. I’m human.

4. I am defined by how I treat myself.

5. I am defined by how I treat others.

Let’s let the power of love and purpose define us as we run like hell toward our dreams.