In which I do something fabulously stupid and enjoy the hell out of it.

Some day scientists will isolate the part of the brain that thinks it’s fun to ignore the very sensible, practical things that everyone tells you.

You know — the rebellious part of the brain whose job it is to release joyful chemicals when you’re doing something that goes against all common sense and advice to the contrary. And they’ll probably give it a really cool name.

I have to say, I get a big crazy rush when this part of my brain takes over. It doesn’t happen that often but when it does, wheeeeee!

Two possibilities …

There are two ways this kind of decision can play out.

One is disastrously.

This is what is often known as “the stupid streak” — a phrase I took from one of my all-time favorite novels, Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool.*

[Aside: If you've read Russo's Empire Falls and thought "A Pulitzer? Meh", go read Nobody's Fool. It's the one that should have gotten the Pulitzer. I really don't know why they never ask me. Just saying.]

“Such sudden sensations of well-being … were, in fact, leading indicators of the approach of a condition that Sully had come to think of as a stupid streak, where everything he did would turn out wrong, where each wrong turn would be compounded by the next, where even smart moves would prove dumb in the particular circumstance, where thoughtlessness and careful consideration were guaranteed to arrive at the same end — disaster.”

Ah yes. I think we all know what that feels like.

On the other hand, the other way this thing can go is fabulously.

This is the gambler’s high. You go against the grain. You take the leap. You mix your metaphors. You do the thing you know you have to do and it ROCKS. Cue cheesy end-of-bad-hollywood-movie music.

That’s what I’m talking about, baby.

Anyway, I’m in it right now.

I’m doing something that is the exact opposite of every single piece of business advice I’ve ever received from every single person I respect.*

* Except for Naomi-my-internet-crush (who is also mad as a hatter) and my designer (who just really likes it when I’m happy).

It could be a stupid streak. But it feels more like wheeeeee!

Because no nooz is good nooz.

I’m sick of writing the noozletter. There. I said it.

It used to be a highlight. One of my favorite parts of having a business. Twice a month I got to put on my writing cap and be a writer. In an active “look, I’m doing the thing!” kind of way.

Obviously in my heart and head I’m always a writer. Just never got to be in writer-mode all that often. So writing the nooz was really fun.

Plus people really, really love it. Every time I send one off I get mad fan mail — just sweet, personal contact from the awesomest people ever.

It is a mystery to me how my readership seems to be entirely made up of really bright, thoughtful, inquisitive people, but wow. I’ve gotten to meet some of my favorite people ever through the noozletter.

But a lot has changed since December 2005 when I started writing it. For one thing, I wrote a bunch of ebooks and have other fabulous writing projects in the works.

For another, I has a blog. Which means I get to write all the time. And blogging? Way more fun than noozletter writing. The thing no one tells you about blogging is that it’s basically free therapy. It rocks.

So I began noticing resistance and “do-not-want”-ism showing up — and I started thinking about the life cycle of passion.

The life cycle of passion

My nooz is almost three years old. That’s really old.

Well, it is in internet years — where a blog that’s been around a couple months can already be a freaking establishment for crying out loud.

Here are the life stages of my baby:

1. Baby nooz is unsteady on its feet. Makes a very uh, select few people happy every month or so. I feel nervous and excited and hope I won’t drop it on its head.

2. Toddler nooz is already off-to-school nooz. I’m sharing techniques that I use with clients, and people are using them! Weird. Awesome. I feel curious and a little tired.

3. Nooz comes out every two weeks like clockwork. It’s totally its own thing with its own personality now. It’s separate from me.

I stop trying to give people big techniques and start focusing on little mind shifts that can help them do stuff a little differently right now. I’m meant to do this. I am a writer. I feel elated and giddy.

4. Teenager nooz has its own friends. People email my duck. Seriously. Anything I write will automatically get a ton of email responses. Which is cool. But ack! Responsibility. Adulthood kinda sucks. I feel conflicted.

5. My nooz is all grown up and off to college. I start blogging. I discover that writing every day or almost every day is more fun than doing it just every other week.

So what to do now?

Anyway, this is where I was as of last week. Pre-stupid streak. I mean, pre-ecstatic-high.

I was feeling frustrated because I knew that the noozletter was becoming a “should”. And oh boy, I don’t work well when I’m in resistance.

So on the one hand, I really needed to know I could trust myself to a. be there for the people who depend on me and b. do the right thing for my business.

And on the other hand, I was needing some reassurance that my life wasn’t going to have the fun sucked out of it. Because shoulds are bad for your mental and emotional health. And they’re bad for business.

There was some hair-tearing.

And then I started asking everyone I know for advice. Which was a mistake. Because they all told me what I didn’t want to hear.

Here’s what everyone said:

They told me what I already knew. That you gotta have a list. That writing a noozletter is how you connect to the people you want to help so that they can get help from you.

And so they can feel safe and comfortable with you, so that should the time come when your products and services are useful to them, they feel excited rather than anxious.

And then I would say:

Okay, but having a bunch of blog subscribers, while not as much of an intimate connection, is actually better. Because they do that whole interactive thing.

And then they would say: You have to have a newsletter. You have a relationship with the people on that list. You can’t just dump it.

And then I’d say: Well, I think the wave of the future is going to be blog-based relationships. People will use lists more like fan-clubs — as a way of giving people special attention — but the weekly or bi-weekly article is on its way out.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I realized that we could go back and forth until the cows are already home and tucked in bed, but it didn’t change the basic fact that I just didn’t want to write the noozletter.

It was clearly time to turn down the input from the logical part of my brain and check in with the other parts.

Here’s what my body said:

Blech. Yuck. Ack. Ptooey.

It said: resentment and resistance aren’t good for you. You know what’s good for you? A relaxed, happy state of mind is good for you. Writing is good for you. Creating is good for you. Go do some more of that.

And then I did some meditation and stuff and realized: my goal is still to help as many of the people I’m meant to help as possible. And the nooz just no longer feels like the right way to do it. The way to do it is to go where the mojo is.

I felt better.

So much better in fact that I yelled “OMG, I’m dumping the nooz!”

And that’s when the buzz kicked in. Wheeeeee!

Stupid streak? Maybe. But I don’t care.

The thing I’m taking from this.

My noozletter has grown up. It’s moving on.

It’s not old. I am not saying that my noozletter is old. It’s not wearing frumpy clothes. It’s not like we’ve reached “stick this baby on an ice-floe” time or anything …

It’s just that I’m done with it. Things are changing and shifting. I’m going with what feels like the right way rather than what sounds like the right way..

Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ll still get to hang out with all or most of the smart, wonderful people that I adore. All the teachings, the lessons, the insights, the goofiness — they’re not going away. They’re just going to be here – on the blog.

I’ll still use my list to connect up with because I adore them. I’ll give them special prices on my stuff and send out some case studies and things that I think are useful and important. But the every-other-week nooz is no longer a thing.

Maybe it will start a trend and all sorts of biggifiers will start dumping their noozletters too. Or maybe I’m an idiot and this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done to my business. I doubt it, but it’s possible.

In that case? Oh, well. Then we’ll rethink things and change course. Or I still won’t care. In which case you’ll find me right here. Writing up a storm.

P.S. Special thanks and a big fat kiss to my wonderful designer for the many gorgeous old-timey nooz designs. Showcased here: some of my favorites.

My cold cleared. (yay!)

You know how being sick kind of puts you in this heightened state — a weird place where you’re both more and less aware of everything?

I mean, you can’t concentrate because of the stuffiness and the fogginess and the not being able to sleep. But somehow with most of your brain turned off, you can plug in to other abilities and things come up. Useful things. Mostly.

It might have just been the crazy, evil and completely ineffectual chinese herbs I was taking (never again). Screw you, crazy evil ineffectual chinese herbs.

Sorry, got distracted there.

Did I mention that this was the worst cold I’ve ever had and that it was 103° in Portland?*

*That’s 39° celsius for my European and Israeli readers who want to sympathize with me.

And that I wasn’t taking stuff to help the symptoms because you can only stop taking the crazy, evil, ineffectual chinese herbs that taste-like-death once your symptoms stop on their own? I mean, with the “help” of the herbs?

Screw you, crazy evil ineffectual chinese herbs that taste like death and have zero noticeable positive effect on my ever-worsening cold for three days and three (sleepless) nights until I give up and curse you. And then get better.

Okay, guess I’m still annoyed. Annoyed enough to ignore all rules about using commas. Back to the point.

Clearing takes many forms.

Pretty much any time I get sick, it’s related to me avoiding some kind of confrontation.

I know that sounds a bit wacky, but I’ve literally gone from fevered and delirious to 100% fine just by biting the bullet and finally having that awkward, horrible conversation.

It’s happened so many times and with such reliable results that as soon as a cold comes on I stop everything and ask myself, “Okay honey, who are you avoiding?”. And usually dealing with that is enough to heal it. This time nothing really came up.

Well, fine. Lots of things came up. I mean, being human and all, I’m pretty much always avoiding or repressing something. But nothing that felt like it was “the thing”. So I waited it out.

And while I waited, I worked with two themes.

One was just letting stuff be miserable, because sometimes stuff is miserable. Letting myself be in the stuck. Letting myself not want to be in the stuck, but still be there.

And the other was looking for ways to symbolically clear out congestion and stuckness in my life.

What I did.

I started dumping stuff. Like a woman on a mission.

Of course, thanks to Jen’s cool “give your home office a spa day” thing last week, I was already kind of on an organizing kick. But this was hard core. I took on The Pile.

Yeah, baby. The pile.

The pile that started before I left for Germany and never got taken care of. Papers, ideas, filing, everything that needed attention and wasn’t going to get it.

This pile was obviously really just a pile, and a pretty orderly one at that. But in my mind it had already taken on vast propotions. Kind of like a larger-than-life Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoons. Trailing swarms of flies and clouds of dirt in its messy, messy wake.

I transformed the bed into a lumpy pile-sorting station. And armed with a box of tissues and a large bottle of pomegranite-blueberry juice, climbed right in.

The pile took the better part of an afternoon. Slog city.

Though I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t had to stop for nose-emptying breaks, recovering-from-evil-chinese-tea breaks and emergency-calming-techniques breaks, it could have gone much faster.

Every time I dumped something I said something cheesy and fabulous like, “Whee, look at me symbolically clearing out congestion and making room for new awesomeness!”

The dumping: it is fun.

When the pile was gone I went right on dumping. It was fun. It was addictive. It was cleansing. Plus, I was so on a roll.

I’d already broken up with my chiropractor this week, now it was time to break up with the herbalist (who is actually really, really fantastic and I adore her). Luckily I am the master of the really loving break-up, so it was okay and no hurt feelings.

Then I unfollowed about ten people on Twitter. Take that! Ha!

(I only do loving break-ups with people I’ve actually met).

Then I cleared stuff out of the refrigerator. Tossed some clothes. Recycled like crazy.

And now my nose is clear. My head is clear. My thoughts: slightly more lucid.

I’m not saying that the mad rush of de-pile-ing gets all the credit for it. I’m only saying that it was good for me to let go of a bunch of stuck horribleness.

And the take-away is …

1. Clearing stuff out is always useful, no matter what you’re trying to achieve with it.

2. If you can’t clear stuff out on one level, try another one.

I wasn’t getting anywhere with the herbs (which work on the physical level and the energetical level), but made big crazy progress with the cleaning and sorting (emotional level).

That’s it. Will update if there are further insights now that a. my brain is mostly functioning again and b. I’m almost well enough to get back to my yoga brain training epiphany wackiness.

More important: no more cooties! Snot-free internet hugs for everyone!

Because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in the week that was, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.

This week: The “maybe don’t store vitamins in a container that — though the perfect size — has the words ‘urinary tract infection’ on it, because really, is that the most appetizing thing to have on the table when there are guests?” edition.

The hard stuff

I ordered my first adult raincoat this week.

No, let’s rephrase that. I paid $150 for a raincoat.

That’s oh, about ten times what I paid for my last raincoat ten years ago, and the more I try to wrap my head around that the more insane that seems.

It’s not really about the money. It’s more that I don’t even want a fancy-pants grown-up raincoat. What do I need to look like a grown-up for? Isn’t that the whole point of working from home?

Yes, I believe it is. In fact, I have a job that allows me to be barefoot pretty much whenever I want, which — as it happens — is all the time.

But I’m going to this seminar in September. In Vancouver. Where it will be raining. Obviously. And also, it’s really time to make peace with the fact that I live in Portland where it also rains. (Cough. Understatement).

Also, you may recall that one of the lessons I learned teaching at the Berlin Yoga Festival this summer was: have a raincoat that a grown-up would actually wear.

Anyway, I’m a grown-up now, and it’s kind of weird. Whatever, this raincoat had better have the ability to deflect dragon attacks. Or at least come with a personal assistant.

Sick of being sick

So I had to miss the awesome work on your business with crayons event that I was all excited about. Because I got sick.

I don’t get sick very often, and because I’ve got degrees in wackiness and a bunch of ninja techniques, I can usually clear illness really fast.

This time nothing’s working. Acupuncture, acupressure tricks, meditation tricks, evil chinese herbs … bubkes.

It’s just me and the gazillion-degree heat and snot all over my face. I’m enjoying the time off and not fighting it, but will be really REALLY glad when it clears.

The good stuff

Tea and inspiration

Remember my friend Jennifer Hofmann from Inspired Home Office? The one I raved about because of her genius home office spa day?

We met up for tea this week. I don’t have a lot to say about this aside from the fact that every once in a while you just click with someone really fast in a big way and it’s awesome. Both awesome-cool and awesome-fearful.

Came away from our meeting with a ton of great ideas and even more adoration/appreciation for the amazingness that is Jen.

Speaking of friends

Speaking of friends, Mark Silver popped by yesterday out of the blue. Yes, having a cold is no fun, but the upside to being sick is taking the day off.

Which means I had unscheduled guilt-free time to hang out with Mark and talk up a storm about blogging and business and all sorts of other things. Fun!

Also, Mark’s a good guy. The kind of guy who doesn’t give you a weird look when you serve him juice in a wine glass. A Harley Davidson wine glass. Classy.

Bonus lesson in perspective

I remarked to my gentleman friend last night how lucky it was that when Mark popped by unannounced, we were totally prepared for it.

My evidence?
a. I was mostly dressed (despite the crazy heat),
b. there were fresh flowers on the table, and
c. just the day before I had finally dusted the cobwebs off of the mailbox and the door!

Score! Right?

To which my gentleman friend sweetly pointed out:
a. those flowers were in a whiskey bottle,
b. the table was sticky, and
c. there were piles of paper all over the living room.

He has a point. I mean, since we clean on Fridays, Thursday afternoon is pretty much the least attractive time to visit us.

So I said “oh”.

Not because I was upset or anything. I mean, he was absolutely right about all of those things. It also didn’t bother me because I feel comfortable enough with Mark that it’s not a big deal.

Actually, it probably wouldn’t bother me no matter who it was (well, other than the in-laws).

It was just funny how we were both there, looking at the same scene, absorbing identical information — and seeing different things. 

And a reminder that a. multiple versions of reality are completely possible and b. yours (well, mine) still will always feel right. And then we laughed and drank juice out of the Harley glasses. 

Also, I just want to say that I haven’t had a friend drop by unannounced since I lived in Tel Aviv (where it would happen at least a few times a week). Very cool.

That’s it for me ….

And yes, you’re totally welcome to join in my Friday ritual if you feel like it and/or there’s something you just want to say out loud too.

Happy weekend. Happy week to come.

Part Three in the “reworking my blog” series

Remember? I got my site reviewed by Men with Pens and promised to share all the neat stuff I learned with YOU.

Including what I’m taking from their useful advice, what parts I’m ignoring (even though maybe I shouldn’t), and why.

Just so we’re all clear … caveats, etc.

Remember how last time there was a bit of hullaballoo vocal discussion in the comments?

Well, even more landed in my inbox, and a couple of people who didn’t participate in the comments discussion didn’t realize that the advice I got from these lovely men (with pens!) was not completely random and unsolicited.

So I just wanted to say for the record:

1. Solicited? Hell, yeah. I went and asked Men With Pens for this advice.
2. In fact, I paid them for it. Not much, admittedly. $30 is an absurdly low fee to get professionals to review your website, but it was a transaction all the same, one you can take advantage of too.
3. It is completely clear to me that I don’t have to take any of their smart advice — and that they knew I wouldn’t feel obliged to actually listen to them if I didn’t feel like it.

Alright. Boring part over. Let’s talk about my website and — by extension — yours, and the extremely sexy important theme of navigation.

Talking about navigation …

This is actually the main reason I dropped $30 on their drive-by shoot-up-your-website thing.

I have a tormented and passionate relationship (well, let’s say “love-hate with the emphasis on love”) with website navigation. Specifically with what to name the different pages on my site.

Yes, this is another post about wordishness. I can’t help it. Words make me happy. Or, depending on how they’re used, drive me nuts.

And so I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what to call things and why.

For some reason, this is fun for me.

You’ll notice that there are eight little links in the navigation bar up top. Men with Pens zeroed in precisely on the ones I was most unsure about. Keep in mind that I’ve made some changes since their review, some based on their suggestions and others not … but that’s not the point.

The point is that there are certain parts of the navigation that I feel 100% about, and others that were meh — and Men With Pens immediately picked up on that.

Awesome. Great minds and all that.

Basically they don’t like the ones that I don’t like, and — here’s where it gets interesting — for entirely different reasons.

Sometimes their reasons are better than mine — and sometimes their reasons help me understand more about my reasons.

Let’s start with the something we definitely do agree on.

Men with Pens:

The navigation titles aren’t clear enough to the average visitor happening by your blog.

This is probably true. In fact, I’m sure it is.

I mean, it’s true for almost every website I’ve ever been on, and no matter what you do, there are always going to be people who just don’t get it. But you do want as many people as possible to get it.

Especially the people who are your right clients — the ones you most want to help.

Figuring out how to speak to those right people in the navigation is one of the things that anyone building a website agonizes over — and then constantly tweaks.

My navigation titles have changed more often than anything else on my site in the past three years. Some for the better, some still not sure about. So yay! Bring it on.

Issue #1: “Is this you?”

“Is this you?”… Well, yes, this is me. What of it? I have no incentive to click through and I’m not sure what I’ll read if I do.

Okay, this was actually cramp-inducingly funny for me, because it was a big gigantic lightbulb moment of the kind every business owner absolutely needs. This thing called “perspective” is the weirdest, coolest thing ever.

Let me explain. In the world I come from (self-help-ey, yoga-ey, coach-ey work-on-your-stuff stuff), everyone says “Is this you?” on their websites. I can think of fifteen sites just off the top of my head that do this.

Saying “Is this you?” is so completely de rigeuer where I come from that it didn’t even occur to me that this isn’t at all true outside of those places.

In fact, I was completely expecting James and Harry to have issues with “Is this you?”. It’s just that what I was imagining that what they’d say was this:

[In my head, yes? Not in real life!]

“Come on, do you really have to be a boring blah-blah-freakity-blah cliche like everyone else?”

Huh? At first I didn’t even understand what they were getting at, but then I took a step back — oh, right. We don’t swim in the same pool. Men with Pens don’t hang out in the version of the online world that I hang out in. And really, why would they?

Oh, is there anything better than the realization (again!) that the world is so much bigger and full of possibility than the slice of it you happen to inhabit?

So: “Is this you” is standard formula in my industry. Do I like it? Meh. Not married to it. Am I going to change it?

Well, I’ve been trying “Might be you?”, but just not digging it. “Sound like you?” is kind of a big silent screw-you to anyone who is visually oriented, which is most people and also everyone I know.

Yeah. I don’t know what to call it. I do know that this page (and its place in the navigation) has two functions:

The first thing is to make it extra-clear exactly what kind of people my work is for. It’s my red velvet rope, to use a Michael Port-ism.

The second function is to give me a place to send people when they think they want to work with me but actually they don’t. Because when you’re a consultant people will sometimes just call you up and want to give you their money.

Doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens. And sometimes these are people who are just not a good fit for your business. Instead of having to have a time-wasting “get to know each other” initial consultation, you just point them back to your “Is this you?” page — and they figure it out.

I love this page (hey, wanna read it?). I’m absolutely willing to call it something else that will fill the same function, but in a way, this is the most important page on the site.

Open to suggestions!

Issue #2: “Working together”

“Working Together” also isn’t clear, and “How I Work With You” may be a better choice. “How We Work Together” is another alternative.

Done! Changed to “How we work together”. Thank you. That was super helpful and answered a big silent question of mine.

Love it.

Issue #3: “Get stuff”

Men with Pens were not crazy about the “Get stuff” category. And they have a point.

[Note: this is the section that (as of this writing) is called The "Store".]

“Get Stuff.” What stuff? What is stuff? Clear that up again. “Free Goodies” might be a better choice (if the goodies are indeed, free). Everyone knows what that means.

“Get Stuff” also comes off as flat instead of lighthearted. “Free Stuff” is another choice.

Okay, this clearly isn’t clear. I was trying to be light-hearted. I was not trying to imply free stuff. This site is full of free stuff, but not there. In fact, it’s the one place that isn’t all free stuff.

Basically what I want is a word for “products” that isn’t products.

Because I hate the word products. It’s so sterile and cold and yuck. Pretty much all my associations are negative: factories, warehouses, executive suites, not to mention: more plastic junk the world doesn’t need …

Store? The word “store” is also annoying. Plus I think the shopping metaphor and associated terminology (”add to cart“, etc.) never translated well to the internet because buying something online is such a different experience than real-world “shopping”.

Yes, I’m aware that this ship has already sailed.

Still, it seems stupid to call something a store that has like, three items in it.

Tried calling it “resources”. Too vague.

Tried using “booth” for a while about a year ago but no one got it, obviously. Yes, I get that being clever is never a good idea. But I also don’t want to be lame. And “store” and “products” are kinda lame.

This is not about ‘improving sales”. Sales are fine. There is always room for improvement — such is the nature of business — but I’m certainly not complaining.

Yes, two people have written to me to say they couldn’t find my products, but coincidentally these were also two people who wanted me to consider switching to their shopping cart system. Grain of salt, yes?

I talked this over with the usual suspects (colleagues who do web consulting and copywriting) and they all said the same thing which was: “Whatever. ‘Stuff’ works for your audience, and you use it consistently. It’s the vernacular of what you do.”

But I’ve done some hard thinking.

And I really do want to be as clear as possible that hey, if you’re already looking for the place where you get to buy useful things that let you take this work home with you, here it is.

So … for now it’s the “store“. With what would be “airquotes” if we were “speaking”. (If that didn’t make you laugh, you need to spend more time at the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks.)

And just so you know, in the “store” you’ll find my Emergency Calming Techniques package, the Procrastination Dissolve-o-Matic, a Starter Kit for hard-core yoga brain training work, and some amusing commentary from me.

I’ll be creating more good stuff for the “store” as time goes by, though I doubt there will ever be so many things there that it will lose its “quotation marks”.

Issue #4: “Habits blog”

And the last bit of navigation I was unsure about was the link to the blog.

Lastly, “Habits Blog” could use another title too. “Good Habits Blog” might be a better choice, as habits in themselves have a negative connotation and association.

This was interesting — and a good idea. I just don’t want to use it.

And here’s where I can finally draw on expertise rather than gut feeling, because now we’re completely in my area (habits) and not their area (websites).

There is no such thing as a good habit. I teach about how habits work and how to rewrite them, but I don’t teach about “good habits“. As far as I’m concerned they aren’t ever good or bad.

This is really a theme that deserves its own post, but let me just note that any habit that is unconscious and automatic, even if it’s a “healthy” one, needs some love and attention. I also have no interest in helping people kick their habits (ow!).

It’s not about good habits. There are no good habits. It’s about making the patterns behind your habits conscious so you can shift them when you want to.

I don’t know how to say all that in one word. Hence: habits blog. Yeah?

Bottom line: I don’t like “Good Habits Blog” one bit, but I do get that Men With Pens have a valid point about not confusing people.

Luckily, this is now a non-issue, thanks to a technical quirk. Having changed “Working together” to “How we work together”, there isn’t any room up there to qualify the blog. Which is fine. Blog it is.

The Men With Pens mantra: “Be clear, never be clever.”

I’m working on it.

It’s not that I want to be clever so much as that I want to be a. personable (in a real-live Betty Boop way) and b. not annoying.

These suggestions from our Men with Pens have given me lots of nutritious food for thought, and I will absolutely let you know where I go with this.

But for now … ideas? Suggestions?

A way to say “Is this you?” that’s clear and non-cliche? What about the “store”? Do I need to rename the blog or does it work as is?

And yes, I will feel as free to consider and then maybe ignore your wonderful, well-intentioned, thoughtful, insightful advice as I did with that of Men With Pens. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the hell out of it, because I do.

Feedback: totally welcome and appreciated.

Wow, you say. That’s quite a title. Guess we’re not talking about habits-changing or business-biggification today, are we.

You are mostly correct. No, you are entirely correct.

Here’s what’s happening today. I introduce you to one of my favorite people on the internets, tell you an amusing tale full of coincidences and weirdness, and then make you an offer you can’t refuse. Or something.

Warning: slight shockingness to ensue.

If you’ve been reading this for a while, you know — or think you do — quite a bit about my reading habits. You know I mostly read stuff that’s related to my two themes of
1. self-work (rewriting your patterns and habits) and
2. biggification (growing your business in a smart, mindful way).

But, as it turns out, I also read a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with those themes. Because I am a writer. And because I am a sucker for anyone who can really, really write.

Today we’re talking about my second favorite blog in the world. This is about to get a little awkward because (cough) in order to tell you about it I am going to have to use the word vagina.

Yes, I just said VAGINA on my business blog. I wrote it actually, because saying it out loud (in the specific context of “hi, this is my business blog”) weirds me out a little.

Because I’m going to have to say VAGINA several times over the course of this post, I’d like to distract you by jumping in and mentioning that today’s post is actually brought to you by the word VAGINA. Like on Sesame Street.

And now I’m writing VAGINA again. 

About to do it again (sorry).

That’s because I’m trying to tell you about this one amazing blog I really like that you should read because it’s my second favorite blog in the entire world. And in order to do this I have to talk about the wind in your vagina.

Sorry. I knew I was going to mess that up. I didn’t mean the wind in your vagina. It’s the name of the blog, see? Ugh. Never mind.

I know that the wind in your vagina seems — on the surface — like a pretty horribly inappropriate theme name for a blog. Especially for a daddy-blog. Just trust me on this one.

There’s a beautiful explanation that will make you go “Oh!” and then become a rabid fan of Black Hockey Jesus..

Because Black Hockey Jesus — the anonymous, brilliant, twisted, compassionate man and daddy behind this blog — is a seriously terrific writer. I read his stuff religiously and madly love every touching, sweet, insane word of it.

A (very) short history of my affair of the mind with Black Hockey Jesus.

Black Hockey Jesus and I have oh, let’s say disparate ideas of how we met. The version on his blog is shaky at best.

If I were Black Hockey Jesus I’d respond to that with something bizarre, wise and inscrutable like “such is the mysterious nature of the universe”. But I’m not Black Hockey Jesus, so let me just point out that I’m the reliable one in this screwed-up relationship.

Here’s how it really happened.

I said something brilliant and witty on Twitter. As is my wont.

A short time later Black Hockey Jesus showed up in my inbox, swathed in layers of post-modern mystification (a disguise in disguise in disguise) and asked me to be his master.

At which point I went and consulted a certain good book. I refer, of course, to my rather bedraggled copy of “The All Powerful Master Handbook: Your Guide to Stepping on the Backs of Those Who Revere You”.

The guide reminded me gently but firmly that you are always to turn away anyone who comes to you, begging miserably for crumbs from your table of wisdom.

Saying no makes them come back and beg for more. And it makes you look busy. Busy is good. And I quote:

Thou shalt refuse all supplicants no less than three times. Perhaps two and a half times — if and only if on the third time you set for them a distasteful and/or monumentally boring task.

See also Chapter 21: Wax On, Wax Off.

I told Black Hockey Jesus that I would have to talk things over with Selma, my duck. He was impressed.

And he couldn’t let it go. I admit, his obeisance had a certain charm. When he asked me to play Dr. Phil to his Oprah, I tried to play coy by setting conditions (no mustache, no southern accent). In the end he won me over by calling me Black Havi Jesus.

No one has ever called me Black Havi Jesus. It gave me chills.

Also, he had the random coincidental weirdness of the universe on his side. My 9th grade crush on his friend Gabe, for example. Our mutual and obsessive channeling of Shiva, Hindu god of destruction and deconstruction. Stuff like that.

Where we’re going with this …

Well, you can read about it on that blog I was talking about (please note my attempt to sneak out of having to say vagina again).

Black Hockey Jesus explains it better and with more cursing, but basically the idea is that we will go all good cop, bad cop, bad duck on your problem or issue.

You throw out a habit or issue you’re working on and Black Hockey Jesus will try not to make fun of you mercilessly while Selma smiles beatifically.

Then I will do my guilt-free, non-judgmental meeting-you-where-you-are thing, and together we’ll give you some ideas.

Just like Oprah, Black Hockey Jesus gets to be the beautiful glowy one with all the charm, and just like Dr. Phil, I get to be the homely advice-giving sidekick. Is that fair? What is fair?

Never mind that. Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Leave a comment here so I know you know that I haven’t gone crazy, and that tomorrow or at least very, very soon we’ll be back to our regular habits-centric vagina-free programming.

2. Head over to The Wind In Your Vagina (ahh, it looks so much better in caps) and read everything he’s ever written.

3. While you’re there, leave your issue or collection of stucknesses in the comments section of his most recent post and/or send them to blackhockeyjesus@yahoo.com with “Black Havi Jesus” in the subject line.

That’s it for now. *shakes head*

I have been avoiding my homework.

And yeah, that’s not something you generally want to hear from a procrastination expert.

I have a sort-of excuse. Two sort-of excuses. For one thing, I didn’t realize it was “homework”, and for another, I didn’t realize I was avoiding it. Hear me out.

What’s happening is that tomorrow is this cool Biznik event.

And for the record, if you don’t Biznik, you should. It combines online networking (bonus tagline: “business networking that doesn’t suck”) with offline (i.e. real live human beings!) events.

And it’s pretty much the only online networking thing where you aren’t going to get lost among a bunch of suits. God, I just used the N-word three times. I’ll do it again. Networking.

Anyway, this particular event tomorrow is full of awesomeness. Seriously. It is very exclamation point worthy:

It’s in a park! Park! There will be crayons! Crayons! My twitter-pals @sparkyfirepants and @cheekyboots are going to be there! Friends!

And it’s Portland, so even though it’s a “networking event”, I can still be barefoot and stuff.

So I’m going. Plus, my duck loves outings.

Here’s where it gets all weird and annoying.

Thing is, this event is a follow-up to another event that happened while I was teaching in Germany. Hence, the homework to bring me up to speed.

The exercise is as follows: you ask yourself, “What do I need to make my business explode in the next half of the year?”

Then you break out the crayons and come up with some kind of interpretive drawing which shows what that might look like.

I haven’t felt like doing this, and just this weekend figured out that a. it’s more than just “not being in the mood” or “busy busy busy as usual” and b. I know why this is happening.

This exercise is bringing up lots of stuff for me.

My weird issue #1

I have pretty strong feelings about the power of words. You’ll recall my issue with Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid system (hint: I don’t want to be booked solid — I want to have freedom and spaciousness in my business).

When I think about my business exploding … well, it’s not attractive. Not appealing.

This might, admittedly, be the Israeli thing.

After all, back when I worked as a bartender in Tel Aviv, the business across the street did explode one Saturday night.

And my memories of that pretty much all involve bodies and glass and worrying about my boyfriend who had been driving down the street looking for parking. He was fine, thank you.

Also, is explode really, truly the right verb? I get how sales can explode or the number of subscribers can explode, but my business, well … should I want it to?

My weird issue #2

Even when I get over the taking-things-way-too-literally thing … I still don’t like it.

The reason I can’t do the stupid drawing is because the subject matter depresses me. The images that are coming up are awful.

Phone ringing off the hook. All my time sucked away. Having to hire a big pile of new assistants. Blech.

What I really need to be able to do is think about ways that my business could be reaching and helping more of the right people, while bringing in big piles of the monies, so that I can spend more happy afternoons in the park, recharging my batteries and playing with crayons.

I’m pretty sure that’s what they actually mean, too, so I’m trying to focus on that.

And yes, I’m cool with being even more successful in my incredibly great helper-mouse job — it’s just that I don’t want to be more busy than I already am, and now it’s time to focus on separating those two things.

You know: allowing huge success while moving away from the (warning: coach-ey word coming up) limiting belief that all that business = busy-ness.

What I did to get the heck over it.

Once I realized why I was resisting the whole thing … well, it was a huge relief. Sometimes it takes a minute for: “Hey wait a second! I’m totally procrastinating on this thing!” to sink in.

Right away I broke out some of my Dissolve Procrastination techniques from the Procrastination Dissolve-o-matic.

Which is the whole damn point of having techniques. You get calm and focused and you know what to do next.

Here’s what I knew I had to do. Wait, let me just let the voice in my head do the talking:

Enter Havi’s inner voice, stage left. Inner voice coughs politely.

Yeah, so I thought: okay, it’s clear now what I want. What I want is time. Time and a feeling of spaciousness.

The homework exercise is also intended to help me figure out what I want, but it’s stressing me out. I need to separate the “allowing myself to want” from the stress of imagining things going the way I think I’m supposed to want them.

What if … instead of asking how my business can explode, how about if I ask how my business can give me more time and spaciousness?

And then I can explore options that will help my business grow exponentially (see, that sounds way better than explode) in ways that give me more of that yummy goodness.

So I did some visualizing, and some thinking and some writing and came up with some pretty good stuff.

This is my image

My image is a big bed waiting for me to take a nap in it.

That’s what exploded business looks like to me.

More naptime, baby. More yoga. More acupuncture. More long walks. Taking that spaciousness and breathing it in, so that I can bring it into my work with clients and they get to soak it up too.

I also brainstormed some ideas about the how part of this — in fact just did some more thinking around ideas I was already working on. Dusted off some old ones too. Played with my marketing plan biggification plan.

It was surprisingly fun. I’ll tell you more about it as things unfold, but the main points that I’m taking from this whole thing are:

1. When something scares you and/or gets on your nerves, pay attention to it, because there’s useful information in there.

2. If a certain word is pressing all your buttons, change the word. Change the energy. Call it something else.

3. Homework sucks. Crayons are fun.

That’s it for now. I gotta go find some shoes.

p.s. wanna see my drawing?

The thing with the flowers is supposed to be a lamp.

Life before blog

There’s this funny thing that’s actually not funny at all that happens when you write a blog. You start writing posts in your head.

All the time.

It’s not you. No, no. Not you. It’s just that all sorts of semi-random concepts, incidents and overheard sentences start winking at you lasciviously with knowing come-hither smiles.

Or worse, they pout that if you don’t write a post about them, oh, they will be so sad.

Before you know it, you’re digging around in your bag for the cellphone you never use so you can Jott yourself six post ideas before they disappear into the ether..

Truth be told, I was blogging in my head for at least a year and a half before I launched this baby. Not exaggerating, unfortunately — I’ve got an illegibly scribbled mountain of forgotten genius to prove it.

Of course I wanted to be doing it not in my head. To put this stuff out there in real pixels. Here. With you. Like this*.

*Ohmygod, I’m doing it right now.

It’s just that I wasn’t entirely sure about a bunch of things … and it seemed like I ought to maybe wait until I was at least a tiny bit more sure about some of them. And so it kept getting pushed down to the bottom of the list.

But now …

Yeah, so now that I worked through some of my issues and am actually blogging it up in real life, it’s way more fun than I’d imagined.

But that’s not the point. The point is that now a bunch (does four count as a bunch?) of people have asked to hear my “Here’s how I got over the issues that were keeping me from blogging it up” story.

You know, in the hopes that it will inspire them to get their collective behinds in gear and all that. I’m actually not going to post about that right now. I will at some point, though. Try and stop me.

Right now what I’m hoping for is some assistance from you. If that’s cool.

It’s not that I don’t want to share my story, because it is fairly interesting and probably even useful. It’s more that a. it’s complicated, and b. the people who want to learn from my amusing tales of woe seem to have, for the most part, a very different list of what-ifs than what I was dealing with.

So let’s look at that list, shall we?

I’ve been collecting the big (and small) WHAT-IFs that keep people — some of whom are people who know that blogging was practically invented especially for them — from actually doing it. And what I want to do is address a few of these what-ifs in a series of posts.

So help me out, guys.

Here’s what I’ve got so far, off the top of my head. Well, and off the top of my inbox.

• “What if I get laughed off the internet? No one’s going to take me seriously.”

• “What if the technology makes me feel stupid? I might not be able to handle the learning curve.”

• “What about the freaking time-time-time commitment? I just won’t have the time.”

• “What if I get trolled or harrassed by jerks? Or sued? Because that’s really what I need right now, anonymous heckling from the ether.”

• “What if it’s just winking in the dark and the other gazillion bloggers are already doing it better? There’s too much competition from ‘real bloggers’ and people who know what they’re doing.”

• “What if I don’t have anything original to say? There’s probably nothing new that I can add, anyway. ”

• “What if I start and stop and feel like a failure? It’s pointless to start something I can’t finish.”
• “What if my angle changes? My business is too flexible to define it with a blog.”

And there’s more where that came from.

But what I’d like to know is: what’s running through your head? Is it stuff like this? Other stuff? Is there stuff I haven’t even thought to start worrying about yet?

Where I’m going with this.

Here’s what I’m not going to do: Lecture you, tell you why you’re wrong and how your fears are irrelevant, and then say something like “Get moving!”

Because, as you may have noticed, this is not a tough love blog. It’s not about facing your fears or getting yanked out of your comfort zone or other annoyingly in-yer-face life-coach-ey things.

It’s about consciously paying attention to your “stuff”. So that you can figure out what your patterns are telling you. So that you can rewrite those patterns and do things differently. With patience, smart techniques and as much (but no more) kindness as you can stand to receive in any given moment.

So my plan is to take a measured, non-preachy look at why these anxieties/issues and other scary bits show up, why they’re so depressing (because they are), and then talk about some of the stuff we might want to try.

You know, a few handy techniques to help diffuse the scary and work around it. Or at the very least feel okay with it.

So … whaddya got? If you are thinking about maybe eventually getting around to considering blogging it up, what kinds of things are getting in the way? And if you have a blog, but had to work through a bunch of what-ifs to get there, share away as well.

Or if you don’t have any issues because you blog like a sailor (not sure what that means but it sounds good) but just have some helpful hints, that’s cool too.

May throw in a case study or too for the fun of it. We shall see.

Most of you know that I’m pro-ritual. Big on rituals. Basically, the more the merrier.

Because they’re powerful and grounding and stuff. And because they gently nudge you towards having a more conscious interaction with time and how it passes.

Blame yoga, blame the Jews. I don’t know what the deal is. I just really enjoy the repetition of something, and having it be both familiar and new at the same time.

Anyway, Friday is my biggest ritual day because it’s the end of the workweek, and there’s the Jewish thing and that’s just how I do things.

There are the cleaning rituals and the bread baking rituals and the picking up books from the library rituals. There’s yoga and computer-back-up and master-minding it up with my friend Janet. And then meditation and candle-lighting. Fridays are intense.

But my favorite comforting Friday thing to do is Reviewing The Week That Was.

Perspective is trippy.

Sometimes when you Review The Week That Was, you realize you’ve totally left stuff out. And then you think, Oh boy, how did I repress that so ridiculously fast?

And other times it seems like a week that you thought went by in a flash was actually full. And not just full, but full of wonderfulness.

Or maybe a week that — at the initial moment of summing up — seemed like good times, actually had much more than its share of hard.

Anyway, taking that ten minutes or so to reflect is really one of my favorite things. I don’t mean this in a “Gee, what have we learned?” kind of way. It’s really more about noticing and observing and recognizing. And remembering. It’s useful.

What I’m getting at.

I thought it would be an interesting exercise for me to do some of my Reviewing The Week That Was here with you. To check in.

But out loud instead of just in my head.

And if it ends up being something that’s not horribly boring, maybe we’ll make that a wee little ritual of our own. Just tossing some of the hard stuff out there (in no particular order) followed by some of the good stuff.

Not some phony, forced “count your blessings” thing. Because yuck. But just noticing. Letting those “Good grief, what did happen this week, anyway?” moments dissolve. Letting little slivers of memory surface.

And if you want, you can do a little check-in too and report some of the good and/or hard moments of your own week. If you feel like it. You don’t have to.

As we say in the world of teaching workshops, you’re allowed to pass.

Okay, I’m heading into ritual territory here …. starting … now.

Some of the hard stuff ….

Healing can be slow.

I had a “let’s see where we are” meeting this week with my chiropractor. Haven’t made nearly as much improvement there as I’d hoped. Which is frustrating.

He tried to cheer me up by saying how flexible I am, and I was like, hello I’m a yoga professional.

I mean, a decade of daily stretching makes it easy to touch your toes the same way that being in Portland and having $1.75 in quarters makes it easy to catch public transportation to the Roller Derby.

But then during the treatment, listening to other people there moaning and grunting in pain, I realized, you know what? It’s still pretty great that my body is happy and pain-free. So not everything is in ideal alignment yet … but working on perspective.

Not being in Germany is weird.

Whenever I come back from my annual month of teaching in Berlin, I really just want to be in Berlin. Making peace with the fact that I’m actually not in Berlin has also become a kind of ritual for me. Right now still in the hard.

The world: it is full of pain sometimes.

A story I read about the life of Danielle, neglected child, is heart-wrenching. Neglect isn’t even the word for it. Ay. Awful.

She’s described as a “feral child” in this fascinating/depressing article from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. Just that concept alone is pretty hard to take in.

It’s pretty inconceivable that stuff like this can happen, period. But right next door to real, live human beings who for whatever reason weren’t able to do something? With the knowledge of authorities who for whatever reason didn’t do something? Ugh.

The kindness and good-heartedness of the family who took her in — while I’m not crazy about their methods — is completely inspiring. I still kinda wish I hadn’t read this though. So much pain.

Some of the good stuff ….

I won a thing!

Getting the weird-and-cool “successful and outstanding blog” award thing from Liz Strauss, and thereby getting acquainted in a “Hi!” sort of way with Liz Strauss and some other fun people: neat.

Still amazing, after all these years…

A dear friend from junior high school days found me on Facebook and we’ve been catching the heck up.

There’s some hard in this too. It’s hard knowing that I haven’t always been there for her. It’s hard knowing that one of the hands-down smartest, most talented people I’ve ever met has been bowled over by so many challenges that she hasn’t yet found a way to use those gifts.

But anything hard there is softened by how completely blissful it is to be back in her life, sharing her thoughts and words. Amazing.

Speaking of friends …

I’ve been hanging out a bit online with Emma McCreary aka @CheekyBoots if you’re a Twitterite. We know each other from both Twitter and Biznik. Yay, internets!

And this week she wrote a sweet, thoughtful post asking whether we really need to be aggressive to get sales — which was inspired by my sleaze-non-sleaze kosher-marketing continuum post. Yay, exchange of ideas!

Actually, I’ll get to meet her in person this Wednesday and am completely psyched. Yay, new friends! And for the record, she also has a duck. We could, like, have a playdate for our ducks. Don’t tell Selma I said that. She’ll freak out.

The way to my heart: through my stomach.

My gentleman friend — who as it is cooks up a storm of deliciousness for me every single day — made an especially mind-blowingly, neuron-meltingly tingle-worthy ratatouille. I may (finally, he says) have to marry him.

Life is beautiful.

If you really want a dose of pure joy, take a look at this.

My friend Myra Klarman, a seriously great photographer, spent an afternoon taking pictures of Suzie. Suzie got a “Make A Wish” chance to be a frog-charming princess, rather than the kid with leukemia. She’s doing better, gott sei dank.

Seriously, go look at these gorgeous and charming pictures (bonus: volunteer frog). They will make you so, so happy to be alive.

That’s it for me ….

You’re totally welcome to join in my Friday ritual if you feel like it and/or there’s something you just want to say out loud too.

Happy weekend. Happy week to come.

So … to give you some background for why we’re talking kosher and marketing and the combination of kosher and marketing on my habits blog of all places:

All my clients and students work on rewriting their patterns and habits, but most of them are dealing with patterns and habits related to the specific issue of biggification.

You know, biggifying themselves. Putting themselves out there. Growing that cool thing they do or that cool thing they want to start doing.

Without feeling like a sleazeball. Or being a sleazeball.

And that’s important, because fear of the sleaze plays a big role in your stuckification patterns (and of course, in mine too).

You know how it is.

There’s fear that you’ll have to start “selling yourself’ and it will be gross. Fear that you’ll lose yourself and become one of those sales-ey “but wait — there’s more!” types. Fear that you will begin to sink into the deep, dark pit of sleaze.

Or that you won’t, but then — (and here the what-ifs kick in) — you won’t make any money.

I promise to write a post or three about why you’ve got more choices than either:

• a. having integrity and not being able to make rent.
  b. becoming a slimy marketer and making piles of the monies while avoiding mirrors so as not be faced with your black, black soul staring back at you.

But that’s for another day. Today I want to talk about kashrut (the practice of keeping kosher) and how it relates to the bigger picture of marketing products and services.

And yeah, there is a point and it’s a good one. And it might shed some light on some other dusty, rusty links in your personal biggification issues pattern chain. Because hey, wouldn’t that be awesome.

The great continuum (or: everyone but you is an ass)

You might not know this, but I grew up in a kosher home.

If you don’t know from kosher (and if you don’t, the formulation of the first half of this sentence is probably a little weird too), let me explain.

Keeping kosher refers to the entire package of lifestyle choices that revolve around preparing and serving food in accordance with the fantastically complicated Jewish dietary laws and traditions.

How exactly people practice this and choose to interpret said complicated laws and traditions varies radically.

Take my parents, for example. They’re hardcore. They separate milk and meat, um, religiously, have a gazillion sets of silverware, and can quote you all sorts of obscure Talmudic texts about rules no one has ever heard of.

And when I was a kid, as far as I was concerned, there was no need to question our way of keeping kosher because obviously it was the one and only way to keep kosher.

The way we did it was simply the way it was done.

As for those people who wouldn’t dream of letting a non-kosher crumb into their home but would still have a cheeseburger at McDonalds? Heretics!

And my father’s super-religious sister and her family who take kashrut to such extremes that they refuse to eat in our full-on talmud-quoting kosher-ass house? Fanatics!

That’s just the way of kosher.

Anyone more strict than you is a mindless kosher-er than thou (I just it made that up) religious maniac obsessing over mischigas.

Anyone less strict than you are is a lazy, sloppy imbecile who doesn’t love his mother.

Because clearly your way is the reasonable, sensible right way — and everyone else is just doing it wrong.

Bringing it back to sleaze-free marketing.

Marketing — especially online — is a lot like that kosher continuum.

That ever-present voice in your head tells you that that people who push harder than you (or at all) are shameless, manipulative, highlighter-wielding self-promoting sleazeballs.

And the people who do less than you … well, they’re obviously just over-sensitive wallflowers who don’t know the first thing about promoting things.

Basically, no matter what you do (or don’t do, as the case may be), I can guarantee the following two scenarios:

• 1. There are going to be people who will think your marketing style is too aggressive, and others who will think it’s too subtle, and all of them will tell you that you’re doing it wrong.
  2. You will be interacting with other people whose too-aggressive or too-subtle marketing style will really get on your own nerves, and you’ll be tempted to tell them that they’re doing it wrong.

This can end up with you being paralyzed with worry, and not wanting to do anything.

Uh oh. It’s easy to get stuck wondering whether you’re doing too much or too little, but you gotta do something because people need to know about you.

Now I’m guessing this might a problem for some of you because (making an assumption here) marketing makes you uncomfortable. And yet (making another assumption) you’re a helper-mouse, and helping people is part of your mission on this planet.

So yeah, you’re going to have to learn how to put that mission out there so the people who truly need you can find you …

But I also get that this can be hard and scary, because hey, I’ve been in that process myself and am still in it to some degree.

Right. So if you’re ever going to feel comfortable shining your light so that your “right people” know where you are, here are a couple of important points that might help you think a little differently about how to approach this thing.

Important point #1: Embrace the continuum.

It’s all about the continuum. It’s all freaking relative. Even though people will just assume that their own way is the best one, there is no one right way. The number of individual “right ways” is infinite.

There will always be people who are more X than you or less Y than you, and that’s fine. Find the place that feels right and comfortable for you.

Important point #2: Life is change, my friend.

Nothing is written in stone, and that includes your place on the sleaze-non-sleaze-continuum. Get used to the idea that movement will happen. Flow with it.

I used to say that I’d never have a sales page. Now I do sales pages. I used to say that I’d never do one of those pages with a sales-y blue border. Well … it’s a soft, gentle, calm blue but what can I say, it’s undeniably blue.

It’s not that I always go in the direction of louder and more aggressive — I often pull back too. It’s more like waves, ebbing and flowing.

The point is though, that I’m always pausing to take my temperature. My goal is to help the people who need me, and it’s my job to do that from the place I feel most comfortable. Where exactly that is can change — and I’m getting used to that.

Which leads me to Important point #3 ….

Important point #3: It’s all about trust.

I know myself pretty darn well. I know that no matter what I do, it will be based on an intelligent, informed decision that will come from a combination of checking in with heart and head.

It’s this trust that lets me experiment and play with marketing techniques, knowing that a. I will never, ever screw anyone over, b. I will live according to my values and c. I will never become that person.

It’s this trust that lets me know that, even as my spot on the continuum changes, I’m still not going to use highlighters or screaming mile-high red headlines to make a point. And it’s this trust that lets me know I’ll never intentionally use emotional manipulation to make a sale.

I know myself and my marketing style, but mostly I know how to be true to myself. But I didn’t always know this. I’ve had to remind myself over and over again of this ability to stay with my truth, while asking my heart what it needs.

Learning to trust yourself is an ongoing practice, and it’s a valuable one, so jump in.

Important point #4: Take all criticism with a grain of (kosher) salt

Self-reflection has its place (no kidding), but it’s also important to remember that sometimes when other people’s criticism shows up, it’s not actually about you.

No matter what your marketing looks like, no matter what words you use to tell people about your show or your offer or whatever, there will always be people who’ll think you’re doing it wrong.

More specifically, there will always be people who think you’re being a sleaze and others who think you’re not being vocal enough.

That’s their stuff, not yours. That’s their personal style of kosher, not yours.

Your job is to work on your stuff. To figure out what’s kosher for you. And then to live by it. And to practice feeling okay with it.

Now go apply this stuff.

Uh huh.

Figure out what’s kosher for you and why, and then see if you can stop second-guessing yourself for five minutes. Just to find out what that would feel like.

How kosher is kosher enough? That question always has to be “How kosher is kosher enough for you right now? And you’re the one who gets to decide how to answer that, based on what the world looks like from your vantage point on the marketing kosherness ladder.

And since I’m a curious-mouse … can I ask?

When you reflect on the thing you’re trying to promote, and your spot on the sleaze-non-sleaze kosher marketing continuum, what does it look like from where you are right now?

Taking care of yourself when no one else will

While I was teaching in Germany this summer, I got to spend some time with an old friend of mine there. He’s going through some intense heartbroken misery right now, so that was pretty much all we talked about.

Anyone who’s ever been dumped and can’t figure out why knows how truly awful this is — and my friend has got it bad. It’s a serious case of the broken hearted blues.

And it’s been going on since February, which is a loooong time.

Anyway, it was obvious that he was a mess. And so, after we’d talked about it and processed for a few hours, I had to ask, “Honey, what are you doing to treat it?”

That was the point where he gave me the “now you’re being crazy” look. “It’s not like it’s a sickness“, he said.

Well, of course it’s a sickness. If you can’t eat and you can’t sleep and you’re driven to distraction by the (emotional) pain, it’s a sickness.

A heart sickness.

When you need to jumpstart the healing process …

If your body is telling you that it needs attention, you give it attention. Same goes for your heart. Lovesickness is just one of many, many kinds of sickness.

And when you’re sick, feeling bad, or when it just seems like something isn’t in flow, you’ve got to do something to let your body/mind know, “Hey, I’ve got your back!”

Let me toss a concept at you.

Whenever I’m working on something, I come at it from five different levels.

The big five are:

• Physical
• Energy
• Emotional
• Mental
• Awareness (or “spiritual”, but only if you’re into that kind of thing).

This five-levels thing is a concept I grabbed from yoga philosophy, and it’s really useful. Because if you work on all five levels at the same time, something’s gotta give.

The thing you’re dealing with could be a physical issue or an emotional issue, a combination or something else entirely — when you apply this concept, it doesn’t actually matter what specifically you’re working on.

It’s always helpful to combine work on all five levels (what we call “multi-directional work).

Anyway, here are some things (using these various levels) that my friend could do for his heart to start making peace with the pain. And you guys are smart so I know you’ll figure out how to apply this stuff to whatever you’re working on too.

If you still need some help, you’ll send me an email and I’ll give you some suggestions in an Ask Havi column.

Where do you even begin?

I’m just going to toss out a few things for each level. Since I could easily wear out my keyboard listing techniques (wait, it’s already worn out), we’ll just stick to the basics here.

On the Physical level:

Movement is good. Walking, biking, swimming. Yoga.

Note: if you’re using yoga for heartache, I would recommend starting with an energetic, physical, flowing type of yoga class, not a gentle, quiet, turning-inward class. You need to burn some pain first.

Unless you’ve been yoga-ing it up for a long time, in which case just do the kind that your body is asking for.

Also, physical level means giving yourself basic TLC …

Put yourself to bed at a reasonable hour. Give yourself naps. Feed yourself with love — and healthy food. You’re in recuperation mode — your body needs to recover.

On the Energy level:

There are a ton of energy techniques, but for heartache? Acupuncture, baby. Go get poked. Trust me, you’ll feel better.

There are acupuncturists out there who specialize in broken hearts and emotional pain, but really, any good acupuncturist can help you out here. Ask around for recommendations. Poking is kind of like therapy — you’d be amazed how many people already do it and don’t talk about it.

While you’re waiting on your acupuncture appointment, you can download this acupressure worksheet (PDF) to practice on yourself with. Wacky? Yeah. But what do you care? You’re in pain. Try it.

On the Emotional level:

Talk to friends. Sing in the shower. Draw your pain. Write about your pain. Cry. Give yourself permission to fall apart.

Give your pain legitimacy, while still reminding yourself that it’s temporary and does not actually define you.

If you own my Emergency Calming Techniques package, listen to the recordings. They will be super helpful for this (and they also work on the other levels).

On the Mental/Intellectual level:

Journaling. But not just writing out your pain. This time you’re looking for the patterns.

For example, what does this situation remind you of? When was the last time you had this feeling? What might have triggered this reaction? Where is the pain located in your body?

If you’re not seeing the patterns, doing ten minutes of Shiva Nata (my yoga brain training obsession) is a good way to clear your mind and start finding connections everywhere. (Warning: everywhere).

On the Awareness level:

If you’re deep in pain (whether physical, emotional or whatever), it’s probably going to be hard to concentrate long enough to do silent meditation.

But there’s yoga nidra (guided relaxation), or heart-based meditations (chanting, singing, repeating reassuring phrases).

Anything you can do to get just the tiniest bit of distance or separation from your pain in order to learn from it and give yourself some love … always good.

Don’t force the love …. just give yourself as much as you can stand to receive right now.

Got it?

Not to go all tough love on you, but you have a responsibility to take care of yourself. You have to take care of your illness or your hurt or whatever it is that you’re going through right now.

It’s not about fixing or curing it. It’s just about committing to a process of giving conscious attention to working through the hard so you can start getting better. It’s about making room for stuff to shift and move.

Just because it’s not something that can be detected with a stethoscope or an MRI … so what? It’s real.

Take your pain seriously. Treat it with respect.

And then start taking steps to do something to be with it, understand it and help it heal. Because that’s what you do.

So … what are you going to start with?