If I ever do learn to cook (one day mom, I promise!), I'm starting with this thing.

It’s time for another Crock-Pot post (yes, I just made that up): sometimes I get hit with so many unrelated miscellaneous links, articles, and cool things to share that I decide to throw it all into a big stew and serve it up. Bon appetite!

Happy Thoughts – Delivered Daily

I’m a sucker for daily inspirational emails, quotes or thoughts. Three lists I’ve been enjoying lately:

• The Daily Love – “Wisdom with Style” (Quotes on love and happiness)
• Positive Quote of the Day (Short, simple email with a great thought to start each day)
• TUT – Notes from the Universe (funny, wise and widely-known list)

I particularly appreciated today’s TUT Note (thank you Ruth Ann for sharing it!):

“Of all the things that matter, Jenny, that really and truly matter, working more efficiently and getting more done, is not among them.

Chill,
The Universe

And, quite accidentally, Jenny, such an appreciation leads to greater efficiency and more productivity. Not that that really matters.”

Other great stuff around the web:

• Colin Wright’s eBook, How to be Remarkable (the Least You Need to Know). Incredibly well done with powerful advice – a must-read!
• Matt Cheuvront’s Epiphany Moment video series (featuring yours truly)
• The full round-up of posts for Elisa Doucette’s February “All You Need is Love” series
• The reader comments on my Help a Reader Out: How Do You Make Decisions post: TONS of fantastic, insightful tips.
• My Dad’s Blog! I couldn’t be prouder. My dad and I take walks every Sunday and talk about life – I’m so excited that he’s now sharing all of his great stories, theories and art with the rest of the world!
• I signed-up for Formspring – ask me anything and I’ll answer (but keep it friendly and SFW, people!)
• There are lots more articles I find interesting (on writing, psychology, happiness, humor and more) on Delicious

My Policy on Book Reviews – and Live a Life You Love: Book Giveaway Winner

I’ve implemented a new policy on this blog for book reviews (on books that others send to me, not ones I choose myself). In the name of transparency, I’m sharing it with all of you:

1. I will only review books if I get two copies – one for me and one to give away to my readers; It’s no fun if I’m the only one getting a free book!
2. I will only agree to someone sending me a book in the first place if I find the description captivating. The book should meet at least one of the following criteria: useful/beneficial to me and my readers, related to topics I blog about, or fun/unique in some way.
3. I reserve the right to decide whether to write a blog post on the book until after reading it (at which point I can discern whether a majority of my readers will learn or benefit in some way).
4. Am I missing anything?

With that, I’m excited to announce that Clara is the winner of the Live a Life You Love book giveaway. Congrats, and thanks so much to everyone who commented to enter!

OK Go’s AWESOME New Music Video – This Too Shall Pass

I leave you with one final pick-me-up: OK Go’s new music video – it’s colorful, playful, creative, and just pure genius. (Plus – the contraptions remind me of the booby traps from The Goonies, one of my all time favorite movies.) Enjoy!

No related posts.

Dr. Susan Biali

Two years ago, when my parents and friends were my only blog subscribers and I had just started coaching, a woman named Susan Biali commented on my blog with a note of encouragement.

When I saw that she was a flamenco-dancing doctor, life-coach, author AND speaker who split her time living between Mexico and Canada? I almost fell out of my chair. She was (and still is) LIVING. THE. DREAM.  A version of my dream. The one in which I become an author-speaker-life coach-entrepreneur-extraordinaire; inspiring others while living a balanced, healthy, passionate life.

Susan has done more than inspire me these last two years. She has shown me the true meaning of generosity. Generosity of spirit. Generosity of time. Generosity of giving people one of the greatest gifts in the world: believing in them, and lifting them up when times get tough.

• Generosity is having a big full life, and sending a note to a no-name blogger.
• Generosity is writing one year later, sending that same blogger an email just to say hello, this time bursting from the seams with praise, support and encouragement.
• Generosity is agreeing to a phone call in the middle of a full schedule of speaking, traveling, writing and publishing a book.
• Generosity is proactively offering to have MONTHLY calls to support that blogger’s dreams, even while working so hard on her own.
• Generosity is sending two copies of her new book with hand-written notes on the inside, then making time for a call right in the middle of the book promotion frenzy.
• Generosity is offering help…even when the other person doesn’t quite know how to ask.

Don’t forget what a gift your time and attention is – and the difference it can make in someone else’s life.

Live a Life You Love: 7 Steps to a Healthier, Happier, More Passionate You

In her book, Live a Life You Love, Susan says “People first, life later.” She means it, and her generosity with me is proof of that.

Susan’s book – aside from leaving me brimming with pride and sheer joy for her success – has lifted me up after a physically and emotionally exhausting week. I picked it up and couldn’t put it down. It felt like Susan was sitting right next to me, reminding me of all the things that truly matter in life.

From the last chapter: “Under all the stress, fear, failures, and wrong choices you might have made in your life, you know who you really are, and how you’re meant to live. I hope I’ve successfully reminded you of how totally original you are, how worthy of love you are, how brilliant and wonderful your body is, and what you you need to thrive.”

Susan achieves her mission with flying colors in this book. She is vulnerable, relatable and wise. Her “gold dust” (our word for radiating joy and energy) sparkles on every page, and her generosity – which extends far beyond this book – has been a true gift to me (and many others).

With that, I am thrilled to share a signed copy with one of you! Just leave me a comment by the end of the day on Sunday, and I’ll pick a winner through Random.org early next week.

As Susan says, “May you live a life rich in meaning, health and happiness!” Wherever you are starting from this week, may you take one step closer to all three.

Happy Friday everyone

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The world is re-created in every instant of time, and this moment is always your life’s beginning. No matter how many years have been stolen from you by your own ignorance, by cruel fate, or by the acts of others, you have a clean, broad slate before you. In this instant – this one now – you can begin steering by starlight, and if you do, the rest of creation will conspire to guide, teach, and help you.

—Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight

Martha Beck is one of my ALL TIME favorite authors – she is sharp, hilarious, insightful, and I also find her story fascinating. Beck exhausted herself for years pursuing three Harvard degrees (including a Ph.D) while raising three kids (this after leaving the Mormon church and her family behind), then realized she wanted to become a life coach to save others from the physical and emotional misery she endured for so long. She’s been featured on Oprah, and now runs her own coach training program (which I discovered through fellow coaches Pam Slim and Cath Duncan).

I can honestly say that two of her books – Finding Your North Star and The Four-Day Win – changed my life. The former helped me navigate an emotionally turbulent time in my life, and the latter will forever change the way I think about food and health. Curious about what other gems of wisdom Martha had to share, I read Steering by Starlight over the holidays. The following are excerpts from the chapter on “lizard brain” fears that hold us back.

Excerpts from Chapter 2: Wizard vs. Lizard: The Battle for Your Brain
Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck

Photo Courtesy of Bogdan Suditu (Flickr)

• The entire purpose of your reptilian brain is to continuously broadcast survival fears – alarm reactions that keep animals alive in the wild.
• These fears fall into two categories: lack and attack. On one hand, our reptilian brains are convinced that we lack everything we need: We don’t have enough love, time, money, everything. On the other hand, something terrible is about to happen.
• [Focusing on lack-and-attack fear] ruins your relationships, your body, your life – and it doesn’t protect you from anything. In fact, it often creates what it fears.
• When we’re taken over by intense, high-adrenaline lizard fears about lack and attack, the people around us become anxious as well. They respond to our jitters by getting jittery, our defensiveness becomes defensive. Sociologists call this “social contagion.”
• Psychologists call it projection and reaction formation: Each person responds to the other by projecting her own sense of fear and grasping, then reacting violently against signs of fear (which come across as aggression) in the other. Your hideously controlling boss is so dictatorial that his employees really do want to rise up and depose him. The clingy friend who often shows up unannounced or refuses to leave, hoping to get every possible moment of your time? You avoid that person like the plague.
• A Catholic priest once told me the only thing the Devil can’t stand is being laughed at. This maxim suggests that learning to laugh at our fears is one of the best ways to conquer our own evil tendencies. This is ironic because most of the time, we unconsciously worship our fears, holding them deeply sacred.
• Don’t wait for your lizard fears to go away; they never will, as long as you have a brain. If you do nothing more than choose whatever feels most “shackles off” (freeing) to you, moment by moment, you will fulfill your best destiny.
• Freedom is available at any time, to anyone – and so is captivity. Moving away from fear is not nearly as realistic or productive as moving toward freedom.
• You will never realize your best destiny through the avoidance of fear. Rather, you will realize it through the exercise of courage, which means taking whatever action is most liberating to the soul, even when you are afraid.

***

I read a lot of books – connect with me on Good Reads to keep up!

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I loved your comments! Some of my favorites:

• Mark KS - Linked to Hans Rosling’s TED Talk (uses “cool data tools to show how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty”)
• Ryan – “I’m not sure this book would be suitable for my coffee table which currently features Men’s Health, ESPN the Mag, and Maxim Magazine. I can’t afford for people to realize I’m a dork – that would totally ruin the image I’ve so carefully crafted” (I don’t know Ryan, I think the cat’s already out of the bag…)
• Kristi R – “I think I might die and go to heaven if I’m ever fortunate enough to get people to send me books for free because I blog.” (Yes! It will happen – so set up that blog and send me the link ASAP!)
• David – “You get nerdier and nerdier every day. The nerdiness never ends. It’s hot.” (Thank you – I take that as the highest compliment!)
• Elisa – “Is there a chart in there for dating and love? If someone could break that down into a bar graph or something for me I’d be eternally grateful.” (Me too! I’d like some dating/love decision matrices that are masked in pretty colors to make the fact that I’m referencing them less depressing.)
• Royce – “That book is awesome. Is it nerdy if I would open that book up to appreciate the graphs and images, even if I completely ignored the actual content of those graphs? Too nerdy?” (Never! Nothing is ever too nerdy in my neck of the woods).
• Catherine – “I like lists, I like random facts, I like to organize, well, just about everything. But, to see such things in pretty graphical form?!? Sounds like my version of nerd heaven!” (Mine too – cheers!)

And without further ado – with screenshots from Random.org – congrats to Valerie M. and Doniree for winning the book giveaway!

VM_random2 VM_random1

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My blog has actually gotten to the point where I have more publicists offering to send books than I have time to review, which for a book worm is pretty cool! But when I heard that David McCandless of InformationIsBeautiful.net had a book coming out – I emailed them asking if I could have a review copy. Even better? I asked for two extras to give away (more details below).

The Visual Miscellaneum is the ultimate eye candy book for nerds – 255 GORGEOUS shiny, colorful pages with the most incredible info-graphics I’ve ever seen. I know I’m gushing, but this book is AWESOME.

From The Visual Miscellaneum Press Release:

Every day we are bombarded with facts and statistics that quickly become meaningless sound bites amidst the cacophony of the Information Age. It occurred to David McCandless, an award-winning London-based writer and graphic designer, that the best way to absorb this barrage of random information is by visually “mapping” facts in colorful and quirky ways.

The result, The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World’s Most Consequential Trivia, is a volume like no other: a simultaneously lighthearted and thought-provoking sourcebook to things both serious and goofy.

For amusement and edification, The Visual Miscellaneum compares coffee and cocktail ingredients, online viral videos, the lethality of cosmetic components, and video game sales. If a picture is worth a thousand words, The Visual Miscellaneum is a veritable library of culture, philosophy, spirituality, ecology, society, technology, history, economics, and pop culture.

Want to win a copy? Leave a comment!

When I like something, I tell people about it. When I LOVE something, I praise and promote like nobody’s business. Because I think this coffee-table book makes the perfect gift and I know it’s exactly the type of thing my readers (you) would love, I asked the publicist if they’d send me two copies to give away. Lucky for us, they said yes! So leave me a comment about your nerdy love for infographics (or anything, really) and I’ll pick two winners using Random.org. Comments will close at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, December 18.

Excerpts from the Book – Click image to enlarge in a new window:

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Phil recently published his book, Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel, after seven failed manuscripts over seven years. I admire his persistence and sense of humor. As one reviewer describes him, “Phil is a devious mastermind. He’d be the Lex Luthor of tightwads if Lex Luthor was hilarious.”

Phil is a contributing editor at Consumerist and a reporter for the Arizona Daily Star. His personal blog is called Because I Told You So (Free PORN – Pretty Original Rants n’ Stuff).

In this interview, Phil talks about:

• Wanting to be fired
• Why he will never be able to pull a fast one on his wife
• His love of criticism (complete with protesters at his first book signing)
• How he made his publishing dream happen after seven years of failure
• How to use aspects of yourself that you are ashamed of to your advantage

Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel: Interview with Phil Villarreal

Give us the 30-second elevator pitch on your book, Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel.

It’s a parody of personal finance books, filled with terrible advice that would get you in trouble with the law and pretty much rule out any chance of you ever getting to heaven, or laid for that matter.

But it’s funny and will make you laugh probably once every other page — unless you happen to be my wife, who couldn’t get past chapter 30, in which case I’d rather you not buy it because you’d be using money from our joint checking account and we have tons of free copies of it anyway, so really, that’d be wasteful spending since we’re in a recession and all.

How does your wife feel about your stingy techniques? You ever pull a fast one on her?

She was adamantly opposed to me writing the book from the very beginning, and was convinced it would get me fired, and in her words, “show everyone what a bad person you are for thinking of these things.” I thought about that and decided it would be a pretty good deal.

And there is no pulling fast ones on my wife. She is like the Oracle from the Matrix, seeing things before they happen, knowing what’s going on in your head and bizarrely being played by a totally different actor in the sequel.

But if I could do it all over again I totally would have tried to pull the legend of the cubic zirconium heirloom on her. That’s the chapter about buying a zirconium engagement ring and pretending it belonged to your grandmother. Sure, that would have meant I’d have to have lied to her every day for the past 4 1/2 years, but it would have saved me thousands of dollars and I would use that to buy a giant TV.

Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel has gotten a lot of flack (you even had your own protesters!). I don’t know if I could handle the criticism. Do you secretly enjoy it?

I am disappointed that there hasn’t been more criticism. Almost everyone who’s reviewed it has gotten my sense of humor and said very positive things, but what does anyone remember? The protesters at my first signing. Look at Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck — almost every sane person in the world thinks they’re blithering idiots and enemies of society, but they are at the top of the bestseller lists. I want in on that action but have so far been a near-complete failure.

As far as handling criticism, I’ve been a movie critic since I was 22, so I have nearly a decade of experience in dealing with obsessive hate mail. It’s not great for the ego but after a while it’s sort of comforting and I think I’d miss it if it were gone.

Publishing a book has been a dream of yours for a long time, and I know getting this one out to the world wasn’t easy. Talk to me.

It took me seven years of constant daily, hourly, minutely failure and seven manuscripts, all of which were either torn apart, laughed at (for the wrong reasons) and dismissed by anyone in the publishing world I showed them to.

Then a miracle happened — the economy collapsed. So publishers started looking for money books, and my agent was finally able to sell one of my manuscripts to Skyhourse. My success advice is to keep trying until some devastating tragedy befalls society and allows you to take advantage of it for profit.

What advice do you have for Life After College readers about making a big dream like this happen?

As far as general life advice, I would advise never shutting down a part of yourself that you might be ashamed of, instead finding a way to use it to your advantage.

If you’re a guy who thinks of inventive ways to kill people, don’t be a serial killer, be a crime mystery author. (Or if you do choose to be a killer, at least be a nice one, like Dexter.) If you’re too lazy to get off your couch, blog about the movies and video games you spend all your time on.

Everyone has a toolset of positive and negative traits, but they can all be beneficial somehow, some way. I must add this, though: If you’re someone who thinks of irreverent, immoral, silly ways of saving money, don’t write a book because then yours might be better than mine and then I’d feel bad about myself.

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This book is short and small, but really packs a punch. For me, it was more digestible and engaging than any other book I’ve read on on happiness, zen, the way, being present, being here now – you get the point. Even if those topics are too “woo woo” for you (wow that’s a lot of rhyming!) – you’ll still benefit from this simple approach to happiness.

As usual, these book notes are looong! Make sure you click on the title of the post (or the link at the bottom that says “read the rest of this entry”) to see the full version. If you want to print the notes, there is a little icon at the bottom of the post that says “print this post.” Enjoy!

***

Book Notes: Zen and the Art of Happiness
By Chris Prentiss

The Way

“Zen is simply the state of centeredness which is here and now.” –Alan Watts

• The Zen of doing anything is doing it with a particular concentration of mind, a calmness and simplicity of mind, that brings the experience of enlightenment and, through that experience, happiness.

We Are the Authors of Every Next Moment

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.”

• Your personal philosophy determines how you respond to events that come into your life. It is completely responsible for your state of happiness and well being.
• The answers are never “out there.” All the answers are “in there,” inside you, waiting to be discovered.
• You are like a railroad switch. Every time an event occurs you channel the activity onto the positive or negative track. Even though the event hurt you or took something away from you, you are still in charge of channeling it onto a positive or a negative track. You determine its future outcome.

The New Experience

“Every day is a good day.” –Ummon

• To reach the goal of happiness, act as though the following is true: “Everything that happens to me is the best possible thing that can happen to me.” (tape these notes around the house and your desk)
• Everything comes at the appointed time.
• It’s not necessary to have all the ingredients of a project in hand at the outset. They will come at the appointed time. Its only important that you move forward with the project until that appointed time arrives. With the energy you create by moving forward as if you had the ingredients to start, you actually put into motion a stream of events that lead to your success. Your actions create an “energy vortex” that draws in the necessary ingredients for your venture.

“If you really know how to live, what better way to start the day than with a smile? Smiling helps you approach the day with gentleness and understanding…Smile with your whole being.” –Thich Nhat Hanh

• Smile. Imagine the situation turning out wonderfully for you. Affirm what’s happening is going to be of tremendous benefit to you.
• The Universe doesn’t make mistakes. Everything is happening just as it should.

The Inner Road

• Neither happiness nor unhappiness is contained in the event itself.
• What determines each person’s state of happiness or unhappiness is not the event itself, but what the event means to that person. All the events of life work like that. It is the way you look at things and the way you relate to them that determines your state of happiness or unhappiness, not the things themselves.

Cause and Effect

Your worst enemy cannot harm you
As much as your own thoughts, unguarded.
But once mastered,
No one can help you as much.
–The Dhammapada

• You can feed yourself new information by choosing new ways of looking at and interpreting the events of your life.

“The highest nobility lies in taming your own mind.” –Atisha

A curse or a blessing?

• Each incident in life, even a painful experience, basically provides you with only two choices: you can either curse it and call it an “accident” or you can call it “good fortune.”
• Character is the bow from which we shoot the arrows of the future.

Adapting to Change

“Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.” –Chuang Tzu

• Change is a constant – we can count on that.
• A situation only becomes favorable when one adapts to it.

“Embrace simplicity…be content with what you have and are, and not one can despoil you.” –The Tao Te Ching

• Happiness comes from our response to the conditions of our lives.
• How you conduct yourself along the path that is your life determines how your life unfolds. You are the doorway through which your life unfolds.
• A strong personal philosophy does more than sustain us through the tragedies of life. It also sustains us daily in everything we think and do. It gives us optimism and hope. It frees us from the tyranny of events.

“When you can be calm in the midst of activity, this is the true state of nature…When you can be happy in midst of hardship, then you see the true potential of the mind.” –Huachu Daoren

Stress and Your Imagination

• One of the greatest obstacles between you and happiness is stress. By stress I mean a feeling in your mind of fear, anxiety, distress, worry, unease, or foreboding caused by using your mind to imagine a bad outcome to a past, present, or future event or situation. Nothing else causes stress.
• Stress comes from the way you relate to events or situations.
• Neither stress nor happiness is contained in things, events, or situations. Things are just things, events are merely events, situations are only situations. It’s up to you to supply your reaction to them. You get to choose.
• The tricky part in eliminating stress is controlling our imaginations to envision a happy outcome rather than a poor one.
• If you stay in control of your imagination, its impossible to feel fear or stress.
• One of the reasons any obstacle is in your life is so that you can grow from it and become strong.
• You’re only as strong as your area of greatest weakness.
• The Universe always strikes at your weakest point because that’s what most needs strengthening. Your challenges are, in effect, hand delivered by a loving Universe to make you stronger.
• It is by working your way through the problems that you will gain strength, wisdom and knowledge.
• Realize also that the goals you seek aren’t the be-all and end-all of life, even though you may think you are. It’s the path itself that’s the be-all and end-all. Reaching for your goals and searching for answers is what is leading you along the path you’ve chosen for this lifetime. The path itself is where the truth is to be found, where your destiny manifests itself, and where your happiness lives.
• Events are the language of the Universe.

Healing Your Past

Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is. The future
Has not yet come. Looking deeply at life
As it is in the very here and now,
The practitioner dwells in
Stability and Freedom
–Bhaddekaratta Sutta

• Forgive yourself for the things you regret having done to others, forgive others for the things they did to you; acknowledge the rightness of the events that you thought did not benefit you, and, more than that, acknowledge that each event was for your benefit or will turn out to be for your benefit.

“The present moment is a wonderful moment.” –Thich Nhat Hanh

• The moment we call now is all that exists.
• When we live in the now, keeping our awareness and concentration on the present moment, as zen encourages us to do, we rein in our runaway imaginations – not dwelling on the past, not worrying about the future, not judging events as they come and go.
• Meditation does not have to be long or complicated for you to receive its benefits. Start with five minutes a day. Follow your breath in and out – if you start to think of something other than your breath, gently pull yourself back.

The Secret and the Smile

• “Be Happy” means choosing to be happy whenever you have the choice. It is not a mindless happiness, but a mindful happiness because it is based upon the knowledge that whatever happens to you will benefit you – and benefit you greatly.
• Most of the time, we respond to life without taking a moment to choose the way we want to think and feel about a particular event or situation. It takes work to make the choice.
• The hardest work comes when the situation is hurtful or has taken something from us.

Author’s Note

I acknowledge you for your marvelous effort. I respect you for persevering on your path toward enlightenment. I bow low to you for your greatness of spirit, your warrior’s heart, and your search for the truth of your existence. May you attain to greatness, may your life be long and happy, and may you mount to the skies of happiness as though on the wings of six dragons! –Chris Prentiss

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Photo Courtesy of Chotda (Flickr)

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you.

Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don’t get in real life — wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves really stop and pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift.

My gratitude for good writing in unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean. Aren’t you? I ask.”

—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I’ve often joked that I’d be in heaven if only I could find a job where someone would pay me to read books all day. Less editor or reviewer; more distiller and summarizer. Hey – uber-wealthy people have personal shoppers, why can’t I be their personal reader? I’d get paid to curl up by the beach with a book, a blanket and a cup of coffee; I’d zip through each one, type up some book notes, then report on key findings.

All joking, dreaming and scheming aside, Cath Duncan, a wise coach and blogger at Mine Your Resources, has figured out a way to do almost exactly that. She started a program called the Bottom-line Book Club that I think is just brilliant. Even though I’ll admit that I’m a little jealous I didn’t think of it myself, I’m happy to see Cath benefitting the non-fiction aficionados among us with her fantastic program.

How it Works:
The bottom-line (heh, I just had to say it) is that each month Cath reviews a personal-development book. But you’re getting a lot more than a simple summary – Cath publishes a 15-20 page PDF summary, interviews the author and creates audio files with additional highlights and thoughts. The program is great if you are too busy to read the selected book (or not inclined to purchase it), and because it brings a depth to each featured book that you might not experience by reading it on your own. For example, even though I’ve read Pam Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation, I really enjoyed listening to the interview with Pam and appreciated Cath’s audio summary of the key takeaways.

Cath’s September selection is “The Flipside: Finding the Hidden Opportunities in Life” by Adam Jackson. In addition to the book summary package, Bottom-line Bookclub members also get daily self-coaching tips by email, access to the social network and bonus vouchers from Mine Your Resources (currently 20% off coaching sessions). Head over to the Bottom-Line Bookclub website to learn more.

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Awareness: Planting Seeds for the “Ah-Ha” Moment

“You can’t hit a target you can’t see. You can’t accomplish wonderful things with your life if you have no idea of what they are. You must first become absolutely clear about what you want if you are serious about unlocking the extraordinary power that lies within you.”

—Brian Tracy, Maximum Achievement

Earlier this year, when I was still a people-manager, I developed a workshop to help my team write one-year professional development plans. I created the workshop because when I sat down with our existing development template, I felt uninspired. Even I, a personal-growth nut, had the goal-setter’s version of writer’s block.

So I developed a new template (see below for the version I created for Life After College) that would help my team focus on the big picture of their lives first – in every area. Only later, after dreaming about what we wanted to be, do and have in our whole lives, would we whittle those ideas down into tangible goals for the next year at Google.

Beyond the deep satisfaction of facilitating a process that helped others focus on their dreams and inspirations, the workshop impacted me in two major ways. First, it clarified what I wanted in my life beyond the company, which was primarily to be working with people; inspiring and motivating others through coaching, tools and workshops.

Second, it planted seeds (or perhaps more accurately exposed existing seeds) of tension and discontent. Tension between what I longed to do and what my day-to-day work actually involved, which had become much more project- than people-focused. I realized my current trajectory was not lined up with my long-term goals. From that point forward, the tension and discontent only grew stronger.

Ignoring the Red Flags…Until I Had No Choice But to Listen

“When you are living in harmony with your highest values and your innermost convictions then you enjoy peace of mind. If, for any reason, you compromise your values, or go against your inner guidance, your peace of mind is the first thing to suffer.”

—Brian Tracy, Maximum Achievement

Mostly out of fear and comfort with the status quo (I had been on the same team for all of the 3.5 years I had been at Google), I did not spring into action after outlining my dream job. “It will happen someday,” I figured.

But day by day, things got worse, not better. Mostly because of my own mindset. The work was still challenging and objectively interesting, but after my responsibilities changed as a result of two team re-organizations, it became harder for me to stay engaged, particularly when I could not connect my daily work to my big picture goals or core values.

At first I felt spoiled and absurd for feeling this way, particularly “in this economy,” when so many others were without jobs altogether. But pretty soon, red flags started popping up. I became an emotional wreck. I was tired and stressed. Much to my humiliation, I cried more times than I would like to admit. At work. In meetings. Each time became the new lowest moment in my career.

I knew that something needed to change after the fifth, sixth and seventh red flag smacked me in the face. As I wrote in my journal at the time, I felt depleted of all energy, and a “a dreadful hum of anxiety permeated the background of my day-to-day activities.”

Martha Beck on Physiological Reactions to Being “Off Course”

Our bodies are smart. They tell us when something is wrong. Mine was starting to throw a temper tantrum. The more I ignored it, the louder the sirens blared.

In her book, Finding Your Own North Star, Martha Beck talks about how our essential self (your true personality, desires and identity) communicates through the body, given the dominance of our social self (the part of you that developed in response to society, family, media, etc) in our thoughts. Excerpt below:

“Because it takes enormous energy to shove the social self out of its command center in the rational, verbal part of your brain, the essential self usually ’speaks’ through parts of your being that aren’t under conscious control…

…When you leave your true path and start heading away from your North Star, your essential self will use any or all of its skills and tools to stop you. If your social self won’t pay attention to mild warnings, the essential self has to get more and more dramatic…

…Your true path will take you through frightening challenges, saddening departures, angry resistance, and a number of other profoundly unpleasant experiences. But the part you experience en route to your North Star feels clean, necessary and right to the essential self. That feeling of choked hostility, or numb depression, or nauseated helplessness is a sure sign you’re steering away from your North Star toward a life you were not meant to live. When you feel it, you must change course.”

—Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star

They say that what we resist persists – in this case, my body and mind continued sounding alarms until I finally listened and took steps to change the situation.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I talk about how I finally took action, found an open role, spruced up my resume and prepared for interviews.

***

To check out the Professional Development Strategy template I referenced earlier in the post, click here (or below) to copy the template into your Google Docs. If you like it, do me a favor and give it a rating! I am building a Google Templates empire…

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“Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it, and the more important it is to the growth of our soul.

If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.”

-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

From time to time I post notes on this blog from special books that I believe will really help people think about their lives in a new or different way.

I heard about The War of Art while reading Chris Guillebeau’s E-Book, 279 Days to Overnight Success. I saw the title and subtitle and without reading a single review or even the book description, I bought it. I was that desperate.

I hadn’t worked on my book in months, and it was eating away at me. As Pressfield describes it, “A low-grade misery pervades everything.” I thought I needed to figure myself out before continuing to write. After reading this book, I realized that while self-reflection is helpful, there are times that it is just plain procrastination wrapped up in a pretty bow. Or in my case, a complicated one.

What I loved about this book was the way it helped me frame my resistance, a sneaky form of inner critic that can seem very helpful at times. While this book is focused on writing, it applies to a much broader spectrum of efforts and touches upon procrastination, self-doubt, professionalism and fears that arise as we strive to fulfill our true purpose.

I believe we are all meant to be creative (check-out The Artist’s Way for the definitive book on this topic). To be creative is to be human, to be fulfilled. Pressfield helps break-down some of the common obstacles to creativity – he helps you get out of your own way.

Just like my last round of book notes, I preface this with a GET READY FOR A LONG POST! disclaimer. This book may not speak to everyone the way it spoke to me – but I hope that those who do read the full notes will come away with something truly valuable. Want to share books? Add me on Good Reads. 

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Steven Pressfield

Book One: Resistance – Defining the Enemy

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: it’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.

Does Resistance have to cripple and disfigure our lives before we wake up to its existence?

Any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity will elicit Resistance.

Resistance is Invisible: We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

Resistance is fueled by fear: We feed it with power by our fear of it.

Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher. It kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.

The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button.

Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.

Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to write my symphony.” Instead we say, “I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.”

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit.

Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don’t do it. If you’re doing it, stop.

What does Resistance feel like? Unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. There’s guilt but we can’t put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and lovable. We’re disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.

Self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire to do it.

Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it, and the more important it is to the growth of our soul.

If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.

Here’s the trick: We’re never alone. As soon as we step outside the campfire glow, our Muse lights on our shoulder like a butterfly. The act of courage calls forth infallibly that deeper part of ourselves that supports and sustains us.

There is a concept that one needs to complete his healing before he is ready to do his work. This way of thinking is a form of Resistance. What are we trying to heal, anyway? The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.

The part we create from can’t be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. In fact, the more troubles we’ve got, the better and richer that part becomes.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against true healing. We all need it. But it has nothing to do with doing our work and it can be a colossal exercise in Resistance. Resistance loves “healing.” It knows that the more psychic energy we expend on dredging and re-dredging the tired, boring injustices of our personal lives, the less juice we have to do our work.

It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.

Rationalization is Resistance’s spin doctor. What’s particularly insidious about the rationalizations that Resistance presents to us is that a lot of them are true. They’re legitimate. What Resistance leaves out, of course, is that all that means diddly.

Book Two: Combating Resistance

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” That’s a pro.

All of us are pros in one area: our jobs. Now: Are there principles we can take from what we’re already successfully doing in our workaday life and apply to our artistic aspirations? What exactly are the qualities that define us as professionals?
We show up every day.
We show up no matter what.
We stay on the job all day.
We are committed over the long haul.
The stakes for us are high and real.
We accept remuneration for our labor.
We do not over-identify with our jobs.

Resistance knows that an amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in his success and over-terrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him.

The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it.

A professional is patient: Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can’t sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.

The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work.

The professional will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind.

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows that once he gets out into the action, his fear will recede and he’ll be okay.

A professional accepts no excuses: He knows if he caves in today, no matter how plausible the pretext, he’ll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow.

A professional is prepared at a deeper level. He is prepared, each day, to confront his own self-sabotage.

The professional keeps his eye on the doughnut and not on the hole.

A professional self-validates: An amateur lets the negative opinion of others unman him. He takes external criticism to heart, allowing it to trump his own belief in himself and his work. Resistance loves this.

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had the guts.

I like the idea of being Myself, Inc. That way I can wear two hats. I can hire myself and fire myself. It reinforces the idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and-consciousness-running-the-show.

There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.

Book Three: Beyond Resistance – Higher Realm

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

The Mother of all Fears is so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed. That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess. We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us.

Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they’re better friends, truer friends. And we’re better and truer to them.

We can’t be anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

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