Danika Dinsmore

Author / Educator / Activist

inspirational poop

Help Her! She Spoke French!

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Bonjour et bienvenue.

A few months ago I started learning French via the website Duolingo.

Anyone close to me knows just how amusing this is. I have a history of bludgeoning the French language. I’ve dropped out of two French courses. Small children have made fun of me for my particularly bad pronunciation. I can never keep the conjugations for “avoir” (to have) and “etre” (to be) straight.

My husband is from Quebec and speaks lovely French. When we were visiting Montreal, strangers would address him in French and then turn to me and speak in English, as if the words “Don’t even try” were stamped on my forehead. When people spoke French around me, I was sure they were making fun of me.

And still, I’ve always wanted to learn French.

On the outside, I laughed my French language inadequacies off (most of the time). I would say things like, “I’ve been banned from speaking French,” or “I’m wanted for murder of the French language.” Ha ha.

On the inside, I would shrink to the little girl me, feeling embarrassed and stupid. One time I lost it at someone for making fun of my American pronunciation of “croissant” one too many times. I tried to just let it go. Convinced myself I just wasn’t good at learning languages. Told myself I had numerous other talents.

window to the garden
artwork by Stefan Zsaitsits

I’ve had a fear of misspelling, mispronouncing, or misdefining words orally for most of my life. I’ve always attributed it to a specific event in third grade. Spelling Bee season. Each class had a spelling bee competition, then the winners would compete at each school, then each district, and so on until the National level.

It was my first time ever participating in a spelling bee, and I was eliminated in the very first round in the very first classroom level competition. I didn’t know what a “kiwi” was. I’d never heard of one before, so I had no idea how it was spelled. Crazy that for decades later, the same feelings of humiliation, embarrassment, and worthlessness could be conjured thinking about that moment.

(Ironic that I went into language arts education. What kind of masochist was I to go into a profession that required me to know how to spell, pronounce, and define words all the time?)    

I’ve told this story to friends before; it’s simultaneously sad and funny. But for a long time my gut would feel punched all over again if anyone ever said in response: “You didn’t know what a kiwi was?”

No, I didn’t know what a kiwi was.

What I’ve learned over the years is that even though this was a real life moment, the effect I allowed it to have over me was just a story I had been telling myself, which could, in particularly vulnerable moments, spiral into a deluge of negative self talk: I’m not a good speller, I’m not good at languages, I don’t know enough, I need to know more, my vocabulary sucks, people must think I’m stupid, I’m stupid.

I know I’m not the only one who beats herself up in this manner. I’m sure everyone has stories about their talents and abilities and accomplishments, or lack there of. How many of us chastise ourselves for not being “good enough” at something, for not being “good enough” period? I think it’s a rare soul who can just be what and who they are, have the abilities or inabilities they have, and be at complete peace. But perhaps we can get closer to that peace via acceptance or by taking on that which we fear.

Last year, after years of wanting to learn to play the drums, but feeling silly for even considering it, I started taking drum lessons. I’m doing it for no other reason than because it’s fun. I don’t need to join a band, make a living from it, or even do anything beyond jam (by myself or with others). I decided this year I could take the same approach to learning French. I don’t need to teach French or read French literature or even speak to French people. I can just learn for myself.

The thing about learning new skills is that there is always a curve. Sometimes, if that skill is particularly challenging for someone, they will give up when it feels like the wheels are spinning and they’re not getting anywhere new. Sometimes with children (and some adults, I’m sure) this frustration will disguise itself in an attitude of “This is stupid,” or “I didn’t really care about this anyway.”

With drumming, there were a few months I was completely frustrated. I could not get my right hand and right foot working independently of each other. I thought I would never get the hang of it. But since I didn’t have much attachment to being a rock star, I just kept banging away for fun and to get out of my busy monkey mind for a time. And what do you know, after a while, I started to get it. It started to feel like real, actual rhythm and music.

Three months after starting my online French adventure, I’m still not very good at speaking French. I still can’t always keep the conjugations for “avoir” and “etre” straight. But I’ve found that letting go of any expectation has allowed me to be able to do it just for fun, and I’ve committed to saying the words out loud and risk the mispronunciation. Every once in a while, I get something right without even thinking, and I realize that slowly, I am beginning to understand. And for once in my life that’s good enough for me.

What do you beat yourself up for not knowing or for continuing to struggle with when it seems easier for others? Where have you given up when you felt stuck?

*   *   *

YOUR WRITING WORKOUT

What wound has shaped your character’s perception of themselves? How does that hold them back from fully expressing themselves or fully participating in life? What would happen if they came to a place of self-acceptance? What if they faced their fears head on? What might they then accomplish?

TIMED WRITING GUIDELINES

Set your timer for 7 – 15 minutes per start line
(I increase the time with each start line: 7 min, 10 min, 12 min …)

When timer starts: write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

PICK FROM ANY OF THE BELOW START LINES
(use any character, doesn’t have to be your protagonist)

The wound that shaped MY CHARACTER’S fears looks like…

MY CHARACTER is still emotionally triggered whenever…

MY CHARACTER feels stuck whenever they…

MY CHARACTER must face their fears when …

Something shifts for MY CHARACTER when they begin to…

happy writing

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Shame On You**

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A few months ago I read Daring Greatly by Brene Brown and at one point she explains the difference between “shame” and “guilt.”  We feel guilt when we do something “bad,” which one can apologize for and move on. But we feel shame when we think we are bad. When we feel that as people we are not worthy, not enough.

Brown says the shame armour begins to go on around the middle grades when we begin being shamed by others for who we are. We internalize it to mean: I shouldn’t be this way, if I am, I’m not enough. I’m too fat, too skinny, not cool enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough.

The armour is new and awkward at first. As we grow into it, we get better at hiding. But even at 40, 50, 60 years old, our shame can get triggered and we’re back in 7th grade in that cafeteria.

“Shame is so painful for children because it is inextricably linked to the fear of being unlovable. For young children who are still dependent on their parents for survival—for food, shelter, and safety—feeling unlovable is a threat to survival. It’s trauma. I’m convinced that the reason most of us revert back to feeling childlike and small when we’re in shame is because our brain stores our early shame experiences as trauma, and when it’s triggered we return to that place.” – Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

Brown also discovered in her research that shame triggers for men and women differ. For men, the overarching message was that any kind of weakness is shameful. There was a whole slough of contradictory expectations for women that if they didn’t meet, triggered shame. For example, women, even in this more enlightened age, still believe they need to be nice, thin, naturally pretty . . . oh, and perfect. Be a perfect mother, wife, daughter.

I am aware of my own triggers around being “nice.” I very much want to be perceived as a nice person. I hate being perceived as not being nice. I hate when my good intentions are misinterpreted.

Even to me the issue of “stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest” sounds like an outdated problem, but the truth is that women still run into those demands whenever we find and use our voices. – Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

So, here’s one of my own junior high school moments. 7th grade. My friends and I were eating lunch in a circle and we started a very small food fight among us. Just a few harmless grapes and such. But then suddenly I turn and I’m staring at a pair of jeans. I look up and this girl I hardly know slaps me across the face. “Look at my jeans!” she yells down at me, pointing to a splotch of yoghurt on her pants. “You got yoghurt on my pants!”

There was indeed a small splotch of yoghurt on her pants, but it couldn’t have been mine. I wasn’t eating yoghurt. She had singled me out for some reason. Slapped me, yelled at me. I didn’t understand why. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I can’t recall what happened next, I know she stood there for a while with that yoghurt splotch in my face. Maybe I handed her a napkin, maybe I wiped it off myself. What I do remember is holding my embarrassment and shame in, rolling my eyes with my friends, and everyone nervously continuing the conversation. No one mentioned the slap to me then or ever. And on my way back to class, I told them to go on, I had to use the restroom, and in the privacy of a stall, I allowed myself to cry.

Being slapped meant I was bad and had done something horribly wrong. Only bad children got slapped. Everyone must have thought I had done something wrong, that I was a terrible person. But I hadn’t done anything wrong. I couldn’t contain those two ideas… I was a nice girl.

Even writing this 35 years later, I can feel my eyes well up. Why?

Have you seen the movie Inside Out? I think for me that slap is a “core memory.” Or, in dramatic writing speak, it’s one of the wounds that shaped my life.

I never wanted to be slapped ever again, especially not in front of my friends, so for years I went out of my way to be nice to people, to not rock the boat, to not hurt anyone’s feelings. I hated for anyone to think I was mean-spirited, selfish, unfair, uncompassionate… and it was a stake in my heart when someone either misinterpreted my intentions, or called me out – because God forbid I did something that wasn’t nice to someone!

YOUR WORKOUT

Set your timer for 5 -10 minutes per start line (I recommend increasing the duration each time from 5 to 7 to 10 minutes as it encourages the work to go deeper each time)

When you start your timer write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out. (just do it!)*

Start lines:

1) The WOUND that shaped my character’s life happened when . . .

2) The secret shame he/she feels around this incident manifests through . . .

3) My character fears that if this shame is revealed then . . .

4) The moment my character faces this fear and exposes his/her shame is . . .

Now write your next scene . . . :-)

*If you want to try various ways of writing try short sentences, long sentence release (no punctuation, just connect everything by conjunctions), or listing.

**Post posting note – I subscribe to my own blog via email to make sure the posts are going out. This morning I woke up to an email from myself with the subject line: Shame On You. I had an immediate physical reaction to seeing those words and was curious as to if anyone else had a reaction. I considered changing the title to be “nice” and spare people from feeling bad about themselves. lol.

 

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The Art of Uplift (aka – Be a Star Among Stars)

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up*lift


verb
1. to lift up; raise; elevate.
2. to improve socially, morally, or the like.
3. to exalt emotionally or spiritually.
4. to become uplifted.

noun
5. an act of raising; elevation.
6. the process or work of improving, as socially, intellectually, or morally.
7. emotional or spiritual exaltation.

For the past few months I’ve been thinking about the ideas of UP and DOWN in terms of language, emotion, and physicality. When we are UP we are high, exalted (“closer to the heavens”), floating, light, standing tall, open. We love looking up – – to the sky, birds, clouds, sun, moon, future. When feeling liberated, joyous, elated we throw our arms up. We want to “reach for the stars” not “dig ourselves” anywhere.

When we are DOWN we are de-pressed (I picture a giant thumb pressing into me, squishing me like a bug), hiding, covered, bent, small. You’ve heard of the lowly worm.*

After my recent bout with depression (the extreme side of down), I decided that I didn’t want a giant thumb pressing into me and squishing me like a bug. I wanted a really powerful antidote for myself instead. I wanted to be uplifted.

The opposite of DOWN is UP!

I began to think about the small ways (especially habitual or subconscious) I sometimes de-pressed myself. And then I began to see that sometimes I de-pressed the people around me. Not because I’m mean, not because I’m malicious or vengeful, but because I’m human and sometimes I can’t see the light and sometimes I am afraid.

But what if, in the moment before I said something spiteful or petty or threw a piece of my pain back at someone, I practiced using uplifting words instead? What if I paused and thought of them as bright stars waiting to be released into the sky? And what if I kept coaxing those stars, inspiring those stars, championing those stars so that more and more and more were released and we lit up the entire sky?

I decided to try a little experiment. A few months ago, I inked the word UPLIFT on the inside of my cell phone cover, so that every time I opened the cover to make a call, text, email, tweet, or to use facebook it was a reminder to be impeccable with my word and to use language as a means of raising the spirits of the people around me.

It always makes me proud to love the world somehow –
hate’s so easy compared.

~Jack Kerouac

I made it a rule (the cell cover a constant reminder) that I had to always act or speak from this idea of being uplifting. And as I did, it started to dissolve my own self-negativity. The act of consciously UPLIFTING others on a regular basis helped me to get out of my own ego. It helped me to choose being happy over the need to be right. It created a new kind of momentum that fed on itself (in a good way).

And if someone else was not in a space to be uplifted (as I wasn’t at the end of last year), I didn’t take it personally. It wasn’t my job to fix them. Being uplifting isn’t about providing the answer or giving advice.

Being uplifting isn’t just about saying nice things to people either. It’s about paying attention to others and their own fears, wants, and needs. It’s about being conscious in and of the world. It’s about giving people space and taking care of each other and being of service. It’s about affirmation. It’s about intention.

Now, as I go about my day, when I catch myself in a small moment of pettiness or jealousy, I envision myself being an agent of UPLIFT. I envision our communal star-ness, together in the bright sky.

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*in defence of “lowly worms” – I love worms. I help them across the sidewalk. I relocate them when I’m weeding. I mourn them when they are squished.

YOUR WORKOUT

In our fiction, it’s necessary to be mean to our protagonists. I always tell my students, Don’t be nice to your characters! Turn up the heat! Give them painful challenges! Make life hard! Pile it on!

I rarely talk about the moments that shine a little light on them. But, at some point in the story, I think a little uplift is in order.

By uplift I don’t mean everything solved in a grand deus ex machina moment, but something beautiful and meaningful and a bit more subtle.

When your character is at their lowest, when they’ve failed and failed and failed some more, when they have been beaten by the blows of life (or even the physical blows of bullies) it’s time to allow something to give. And if done well, it will break your reader’s hearts just a little.

It could be a memory. It could be a small act of kindness. It could be embodied in an invaluable object they take with them along their journey. Imaging in the movie version of it, the music turns melancholy, and a sense of hope or determination pierces the gloom.

 

Write without too much thinking, without stopping, and without rereading & editing

Start with any of the lines below (or all!) and keep writing for 7-10 minutes.

The most precious object in my protagonist’s life is . . . 

The voice in my protagonist’s head that gives him/her hope sounds like . . .

The kind gesture that comes when my protagonist least expects it happens when . . .

 

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This Space for Rent

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Moving Stats:

two cuts
six bruises
a round of kidney stones
two head/chest colds
an ear infection
one bookshelf dropped on head

~     ~     ~

Despite the physical ailments, the renters who flaked out on us TWO DAYS before we were to move, and the ferry schedule to get the Uhaul to the Sunshine Coast and back in one day, we have done it!

imgres

 

We have moved to a greener, slower, more remote location. And I already love it, even though it has been nothing but grey, and I am surrounded by unpacked boxes and unorganized kitchenware. I love the quiet growing of our surroundings. I love the nestiness of our new space.

It is much smaller, alas, so the Den of Destiny is no more, but I have found a fabulous new cafe that opens early. I have decided it is my new office:

 

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I’m far too mind-fuddled to write a truly original post today. But wanted to share that I have a story on QuarterReads called “Second Lives” (which I suppose you could call a literary memoir or prose poem or poetic memoir) about my father’s passing.

Wait, you haven’t heard of QuarterReads?

It’s a very clever site. Writers submit stories for online publication and readers pay .25 to read them. Writers get 88% of earnings and 100% of “tips” – which readers give if they really like the piece and are feeling generous. I don’t think anyone’s getting rich through the site, but it’s a lovely way to get a story out there and make new fans.

And also…

… as a bonus, I wanted to share one of my favourite reads this week:

From Maria Popova’s fantastically engaging website Brain Pickings:

What it Really Takes to be an Artist: MacArthur Genius Teresita Fernandez’s Magnificent Commencement Address.

Audio version of Fernandez’s whole commencement address may be found here.

Our ideas regarding success should be our own, and I urge you to pursue it simultaneously from both the inside and the outside…

 

As artists, it will be especially difficult to measure these ideas of what success may be because you have chosen a practice that is entirely dependent on being willing to possibly fail, over and over again regardless of any successes that do come your way.

~Teresita Fernandez

 

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The Drama of Packing Books and The Year of the Bookshelf

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I’ve been told before that “How you do one thing is how you do everything.” If packing to move were compared to my general flight path in life, I’d have to agree. What takes my far more focused husband a few hours, will take me days as I flit around and get distracted, inspired, or pulled into a side-project.

I started reading a fabulous book called THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. In her book she advises to do all your discarding first before any organizing, and to do it by one of five categories, rather than by room. She even suggests the order in which you discard (from “easiest to hardest”) starting with clothes. I loved that part. Giving away clothes that weren’t “bringing me any joy” knowing that someone else might find a better use for them.

But next on her list is books. And she admits that books are very challenging for many people to let go of. That’s an understatement for someone who once held a good-bye ceremony for a box of poetry books and cried the whole time.

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“Shelfie” – a selfie standing in front of one’s bookshelves

 

Of course, MOVING is not tidying up. Moving is picking up all your belongings and assembling them in what you hope will be a tidy and organized fashion on the other side. This time around, we’re temporarily downsizing in a new city. And as I’m not a big fan of long-term storage, I thought this book might help me to tidy first before we moved. Alas, the moving date is now a tidal wave and I’m still on the beach deciding which shells I want to keep.

Marie Kondo, I am sorry I did not follow your system of discarding books. I will be more disciplined next time.

I have moved 10 times in 20 years. I have made culling, packing, moving, unpacking, and reorganizing books an art form. I start early, knowing it will take weeks for the entire process. There will be drama and tears and at least one bookshelf landing on my head. (I currently have a tender bruise right above my “third eye.”)

I started with discarding the easy ones – I’ve read them, they don’t belong to a friend, and I’ll probably never read them again. I’ve been giving them away to anyone who stops by and on non-rainy days this box goes out in the yard:

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Since we’ll be in a smaller space for a while, I next created a “NOW BOOKS” box – books I have been thinking about reading for a while and “might” be inspired to read in the next 6 months.

Then there’s the box of “Poetry books I probably won’t read in the next 6 months but are too precious for me to store anywhere,” my “Oz Books” box (yes, they have their own separate box), my “books I keep in my bedroom for some reason” box, and another box of all my “educational / teaching” books JUST IN CASE.

The rest I taped up and created a fortress of boxes called “I’m okay with us putting these books into storage for 6 months. I think.”

But then yesterday, I was reading this lovely article and suddenly realized I had no Henry Miller in my box of “NOW BOOKS” and that article must have been sent to me by a higher force! Henry Miller must have something to tell me about this phase of my life!

It only took reopening two boxes of books for me to find this:

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Disaster averted!

~     ~     ~

Sometimes I look at my bookshelves and feel like a fraud. The majority of books on my shelves are of the “haven’t gotten around to reading” sort. And for some reason, when I see other people’s bookshelves I immediately assume they HAVE read all those books and all that juicy content is dancing around inside them. My friends assure me they, too, have neglected to read many of the books on their own shelves. So perhaps bookshelves are less of a trophy case after all and more of a to-do list.

In the past, when I packed up my books, I wavered from inspiration to melancholy to guilt. But this time, considering them an attractive to-do list, I thought instead, Why don’t I make this the Year of The Bookshelf List? The books are probably tired of sitting around getting dusty, only to get their hopes up when I reach for them for yet another move. It’s time to love some of them up and move them along.

So, in honour of this committment, I hereby dub this the

YEAR OF READING MY BOOKSHELVES

The deal I have made with myself is that for this entire year I will always be reading at least one book that has been on my “read someday” bookshelf list. And if it doesn’t bring joy (thanks Marie Kondo!), off it goes to bring it to someone else.

I just hope I put the right books in that “NOW BOOKS” box.

 

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

Pick a book from your shelves that you’ve been meaning to read. Go ahead, open it right now.

What is it? How does it make you feel opening it up?

 

Hellooooooo! Weekend Workout: We Got Talent

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Wow. It’s been over a month since I’ve blogged. I’ve been trying to get back to it, but life kept happening. I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say the circumnavigation included a computer death, a back injury (unrelated to the computer death), 3 elementary school visits (also unrelated to the back injury), a flashmob, a haircut, completing my latest rewrite on a new novel (yay), a dream about a roller coaster for executives. And this:

steaming jar of

The back injury happened while falling into a pile of logs trying to retrieve this one for my garden:

garden log

Okay, the part where I carried this by myself to the car may have exacerbated my back injury a bit. But lookie how cool my garden driftwood log is! And my free beach log only cost me $300 in massage and chiropractor expenses!

So, while I was grumbly and lying around recovering, I entertained myself by watching 2 seasons of The Killing – a really fantastic series (oh, but don’t tell my husband I watched season 2 without him) and inspirational youtube videos of X Factor auditions.

I’ve never watched X Factor, American Idol, The Voice, or any of these other singing shows, and I don’t think I’d watch a whole show or a whole season. But what I loved over and over again was when the person auditioning  took the judges by surprise. I loved when what they expected was turned on its head.

A few of my favourites included:

Jeffery Adam Gutt
Panda Ross
Tate Stevens
Luke Lucas
and from Britain’s Got Talent, Charlotte and Jonathan

The list goes on, really (I probably watched 100 videos). And it’s made me think both about expectation and inspiration. We can’t help but to judge people the moment we see them. It’s human nature. And I find it completely inspiring when my own expectations are blown out the door.

YOUR WORKOUT

Literary agent Donald Maas, author of Writing the Breakout Novel, says that to make your characters universal, you have to make them unique, which sounds like an oxymoron. But, he explains, that our uniqueness is the universal thing about us.

What’s unique about us might be a talent – a small one or a large one or a quirky one. Remember in BREAKFAST CLUB when Claire (Molly Ringwald) placed her lipstick between her breasts and put it on without her hands, claiming it was her only talent? John Green’s protagonist in AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES  has a talent for making anagrams.

What is your character’s talent? Is it integral to the plot or a bonus character trait? Does your antagonist or villain have a talent as well?

1) Pick one of your characters to use for this exercise.

SET YOUR TIMER for 7-10 minutes.

Start with the line:
If my character had nothing to do all day, he’d occupy himself by…

Write without stopping, crossing out, rereading, or editing.

2) SET YOUR TIMER for 10-12 minutes.

Start with the line: My character is most proud of the way he…

3) SET YOUR TIMER for 15-20 minutes.

Now write a SCENE in which another character comes upon your character doing this thing at which he or she is so talented.

Make the scene awkward for the character by either a) making the character ashamed of being caught, or b) making the person who catches him in the middle of this thing either critical or snide about it.

Start with the line: Character X walks into the room and laughs …

Write without stopping, crossing out, rereading, or editing.

Find Your Tribe!

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A friend of mine recently observed that this has been the year for me of finding my tribe.

It’s true, and it’s a very important thing to do, for everyone, but I’m thinking specifically for artists and writers and other creative types.

At the SCBWI (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) Summer Conference in Los Angeles last weekend, YA author Laurie Halse Anderson referred to us as the Island of Misfit Toys. Remember that place from the old animated Rudolph flick they showed on TV every year? I laughed because I’ve often thought of myself as one of those misfit toys. Since junior high school,  when all that insecurity begins.

Creatives tend to be the oddballs. The weirdies. The ones who think differently, feel awkward in social situations . . . can anyone out there relate to this? I was a square peg in high school. I didn’t belong to any particular clique. I was smart, too, and got good grades, which can also be a hindrance in high school (in the U.S. at least). I mean, I got teased for being smart by many of my classmates. I got bullied on a few occasions (physically threatened twice). I wrote poetry. I bought clothes from thrift stores and cut pieces out of them (my favourite shirt was a Mobile gas station shirt that had the name BRUCE on it – not very PC, but I loved that shirt). My friend Dawn and I would freak our make-up and clothes and lurk around Pier 39 scaring the tourists.

Even as an adult, I’ve walked into a crowded room and felt like that 14 year old misfit. Not hip. Not cool. Not happening.

But at the SCBWI conference, I immediately felt like I belonged. It was one giant celebration of childhood misfitness. Of all the gritty things that have bombarded us and made us the writers we are today. The ones who can articulate that awkwardness. Whose characters speak to the minds of children going through the same dang things we went through, whether we place them in a dystopian future or a fictional past.

When you find that place that feels like home (and I’ve found it other places as well, like at FaerieWorlds this summer!) I believe it not only means you are connecting with your purpose and passion, but you have found a safe and supportive place to be authentically you.

Seek out those like-minded people. Seek out those who celebrate who you are and your successes, and who empathize with your misadventures and misteps. Boo to people who shut you down. Boo to people who zap your energy.

One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is to bring that kind of light into your life, and to shine it back.

Find your tribe!

Weekend Workout: Making the Daily Matter

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This isn’t my regular kind of weekend workout. This one is about getting refocused for the New Year. (now that you’ve let go of all the junk that was holding you back)

I’ve been thinking about why I have been “dragging myself” into this new year. Part of it seems to be a feeling of having lost my way. I find myself asking questions like, “Am I on purpose? Am I following my bliss? Where did all the passion go?”

Eleven years ago I moved to Eastern Europe and traveled around for the better part of a year. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I was full of every kind of emotion, vulnerable and open, writing massive amounts of poetry and doing a lot of, dare I say it, “soul-searching.” Everything was about experiencing the here and now, living one adventure to the next each day, even if that just meant taking a tram to a new neighborhood store. And even though there were periods of utter loneliness, I was totally alive in that loneliness.

I can’t remember the last time I felt like that and sometimes it’s like I’m just going through the motions to get to some abstract reward at a later date. I decided I wanted to remember how to live in the moment and to have those moments support my purpose, which in turn nurtures my higher self.

But do I have to physically leave the country in order to be alive and passionate about what’s in front of me in the here and now? Even though, while I was wandering about Eastern Europe, I didn’t know what I wanted to do next in my life, I knew that I was exactly where I needed to be, doing exactly what I needed to be doing. I knew that it was serving some sort of higher purpose and that whatever was next for me would appear at the right and perfect time.

I think most of us would like to know that in all things we do we are serving our more “actualized” self. But that’s such an abstract idea. How do we serve our actualized self on a daily basis? Isn’t most of life about the mundane?

I wanted something physical I could look at every day to remind me of how I can do this. With each action, I can serve this higher self. Inspired by this idea, I ended up drawing this:

This demonstrates to me how I can view the small or “mundane” things I do on a daily basis as “serving.” Serving others, serving a higher purpose, serving a life worth lived. And by “serving,” my creative self is inspired and expressed (because serving, to me, is an act of love, and acts of love are necessarily creative).

Then, I started filling in each level of the pyramid. That’s when things got exciting.

Things to do on a daily basis: self-talk, read, write, communicate to my loved ones, play, rest, organize, appreciate, etc.

Things I do to serve: teach so that I inspire, write so that I connect, perform so that I open others to express, etc.

How this manifests creatively:  expressing myself through my stories with a true, radiant, and fearless heart, open wide to the joy it brings, connected to the divine

What would it mean to sit in my actualized self: balance, peace, joy, unity, connection

I actually have an image to put at the top, something I drew from a divination deck. I was going to post it here, but this is my personal image. I want you to find your own.

For a BLANK pyramid click: Actualized Self BLANK

I highly recommend this as an exercise this weekend. Using words and images, demonstrate how on a daily basis you can serve your higher purpose. What does this LOOK like to you? What do you see yourself doing? Your second and third tiers may be something other than what I’ve decided, but keep the bottom tier as the daily self, because I think that’s where we have to start, and the top as the actualized self.

Enjoy the process! Guaranteed to put a smile on your face or your money back.

The Best Year of My Life… Seriously?!?

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If someone told you that you could have the best year of your life, would you

a) fold your arms across your chest and go, “oh yeah? okay, give me the best year of my life.”

OR

b) jump up and down excitedly and shout, “awesome! what do I need to do? Tell me and I’ll do it!”

If you answered A, then this post isn’t for you. Well, actually it is for you, but you’re not ready. So, bugger off. Go on.

Okay, now that those A people are gone…

I think most people tend to want the outside world to make them happy. If only THIS would happen, then I’d be happy. I learned a long time ago that it’s the other way around. I have to get happy first.

A friend of mine desperately wants to find a partner. She’s even said to me, “oh, it’s easy for you, you have a husband.” I nearly burst a gut laughing. Yes, I just found a husband and suddenly life was great! I told her marriage is hard work and I’ve fantasized about the freedom of being single. I know plenty of unhappy married people. She wasn’t too appreciative when I told her that she needed to get happy first. Then she’d find the perfect husband.

Think about it… happy people make happily married people. Grumpy, bitter, resentful people… not so much.

The most important thing I’ve learned over the past several years is that I am the one responsible for my own peace and happiness. Stuff might happen out there, stuff that I consider bad, hurtful, wrong, immoral, but I am the one in charge of how I let it affect me. And, more importantly, how I let all those righteous feelings stop be from getting what I say I want.

I am in charge of my own success. I am the only one standing in my way. Trust me, if you made an effort to honestly look at how you stand in your own way, and then really get out of your way, I bet you’d be more successful then you could ever imagine. The ways I get in my way are sneaky ninjas. I have denied, justified, blamed, and made excuses. Many of those excuses I didn’t even REALIZE were excuses because I thought they were the truth.

In Debbie Ford’s book The Best Year of Your Life, she challenges readers to get out of their own ways and create the best year of their lives for themselves. My GBF and I took her up on that challenge. But preparing for this new best year took some time.

The first chapter is on setting your intention. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. It took us a week after we realized what a huge responsibility we are. Having this intention and being committed to that intention meant for an entire year we could no longer blame anyone else for anything. Not only did we have to stop denying the ways we sabotaged our own success, we had to do something about it. We had to take action. There would be no excuses.

One of the things Debbie tells readers to do is to post notes all over the house that say “this is the best year of your life” as a reminder. Did you just cringe a little? Yeah, me, too.

Most people live with other people. And a lot of the time we care about what they think of us. And sometimes we don’t do things just because they might think we are stupid or silly. As I was showing my GBF the signs all over my house. I pointed to one in my bedroom and said – I hesitated with that one. You know, cuz Baby might think I’m being silly.”

“Would you rather he think you’re being silly or would you rather be happy?” he asked.

The sign is still on my nightstand. There’s one on the refrigerator, too.

Start the Year with Kindness

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Several years ago I had the privilege of working for Puget Sound Community School in Seattle, WA. At that time, the school was only a few years old and had no fixed address. Classes were held in different places on each day of the week (from a retirement home to a community centre to a church to a frat house). Mondays we had field trips and/or community service and on Fridays students had mentorships in the community. There were no grades. Discipline happened democratically. The kids were amazing. I was having so much fun I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to work for them.

The founder and director, Andy Smallman, is a visionary educator, although I don’t know if his down-to-earth nature would call it anything other than passion. And his passion is contageous.

While I was working there, Andy facilitated an online “Kindness Class” – a way for the larger community to be involved with the school’s program. The assignments involved committing random acts of kindness and then sharing and discussing them.

He hasn’t run the class in several years and was inspired to bring it back last fall. Little did he know that when he did, the idea would spread around the globe!

We promoted [the Kindness Class] here and on the PSCS Facebook page. The idea spread and 250 people signed up. Steve sent a press packet about it to The Seattle Times. Their education reporter, Linda Shaw… came out and did a story (https://tinyurl.com/yct838d) that appeared in last Sunday’s paper. Local TV station channel 13 then did a quick news story on it last Sunday night (https://tinyurl.com/kindnessQ13 & https://tinyurl.com/KindnessQ13-Take2).
…I have been made aware by people interested in joining future classes that the Times article has been featured in newspapers in Raleigh, NC (https://tinyurl.com/y9o8n45), Greensboro, NC, Jasper, AL, Dayton, OH, Springfield, OH, Ontario, Canada, and likely others. It’s also making the rounds on Twitter, most notably having been “retweeted” by Deepak Chopra. And today it became the “Idea of the Day” on bestselling author Dan Pink’s blog (https://tinyurl.com/y8goczb). I’ve had people from as far away as Australia ask to join.

He had such a great response that he decided to run it again this term. I was so thrilled for Andy and PSCS that I signed up for the class, too. And, it’s not too late. YOU can sign up, too. It’s completely free:

…the idea is pretty simple. Each Sunday night I’ll post that week’s kindness theme via email and on a special blog set up for our class. Your job is to consider the theme and, in a way that is meaningful to you, act on it. After completing your act, you go to the blog and post what you’ve done so the rest of us get to learn about it. Imagine each of us interpreting the same theme each week in our own way and spreading ripples of positive action out in the world. It’s a revolution of kindness…


…As a virus, your acts will impact (some might say inspire) others, even people outside of the class. Being mindful, you’ll start noticing more of the kind things happening around you. You’ll become happier, more peaceful. You’ll sleep better. You’ll exercise and eat better. You’ll feel great. You’ll infect others with optimism.
How’s that sound for a way to start off the year?  Interested? E-mail Andy at pscs@pscs.org.

Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.
Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
-Scott Adams