What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Friday Chicken #109: there’s nothing funnier than being afraid of plums
Because it’s Friday AGAIN. And because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
Wow. Stuff actually happened this week. Instead of zap crackle smurf hey it’s Friday again.
However, I have no idea what these things are. It’s a blur. Let us see.
The hard stuff
Too much.
Somehow all the projects I am in excitement about were all wanting love and attention at the exact same time.
And I got a bit shaken up.
Not getting to walk as much as I’d like.
It was either too hot or too something or too many deadlines.
We meandered some, my duck and I. But not enough walking-walking. Movement. I get cranky when I don’t get it. We know this. But sometimes it still gets forgotten.
In the “I am a complete idiot” department ….
Apparently we sent out our letter announcing the Week of Biggification … with the wrong dates in the copy.
So it looked like six days when it’s actually EIGHT days (November 3-10).
And even though I have been living and breathing these dates since January, still managed to not get that right.
Oh, and then apparently we sent a faulty link too. Lovely. And I didn’t want to do the annoying biggifier thing of “Oh, wrong link, now I’m emailing you AGAIN.”
Though I still might have to fix that.
More mistakes.
Gah. Jackie was teaching Shiva Nata in Japan this month, and I forgot to look at my List of Things To Announce, and didn’t announce it.
It sucks. Sorry, everyone in Japan.
Ridiculous.
Also, I feel terrible about this. But not terrible enough to, you know, change my behaviour or anything.
I was at a cafe on Sunday afternoon, doing some decorating of hats, and computerizing with earplugs in.
A band came to play. They didn’t suck. I kind of liked them. But I had writing to do so I kept my earplugs in.
Also, no one else was in the cafe. So Selma (my duck) and I were the only audience.
And they played a two hour set.
[Insert depressing memories of teaching Shiva Nata in Berkeley to a class of two, once upon a time.]
I wanted to do something to … I don’t know, acknowledge their existence. I also really wanted to cheer them up. And give them some marketing advice.
But in the end the easiest thing to do was type away with my earplugs in and do my thing. And then I felt bad about … everything. If they’d had a CD I would have bought it, but of course they didn’t. Anyway. Ugh. Sorry.
Some almost-shoes.
Not so much shoes being thrown at me. And not so much reacting to shoes.
But a lot of negativity, jealousy, envy, resentment, etc being aimed at me this week.
The good stuff
The shoes didn’t land.
I could see them heading in my direction, but I couldn’t feel anything.
It was as if my force field is stronger than it used to be. Or more fabulous. Or both.
Because there was no pain involved. And no way that these particular shoes could reach me.
Verra nice.
An outstanding shivanautical epiphany.
I was dancing out some patterns, and then two hours later … zing!
Problem-solved a huge challenge without even trying to. Love.
My uncle! Is visiting! All is good.
Svevo is here at Hoppy House, and therefore life is especially awesome.
We danced at the post office, ate artichokes in a variety of ways, went plum-hunting, played at the Playground, philosophized about work and creativity and play, and generally had a wonderful time.
Everything is better when he’s around.
Advanced wishing!
First I spent an entire day with a client just working on her wishes.
We took two out of ten and whooshed them into being completely possible, do-able and on their way.
And then discovered that all the other wishes were actually sub-wishes of the first two, and that these were being taken care of too.
Then on Sunday I taught a class at the Kitchen Table on Advanced Wishing and Very Personal Ads — more of a practical, playful approach to figuring out how to be okay with wanting what you want, and then Taking Steps.
I don’t really know how to explain how much fun this is. But it just is.
Done.
After two years of the Bolivia post rattling around in my head, I finally wrote it.
And then somehow sidestepped my fears of the Pooblish button and put it to the world.
Thank you for being full of understanding. I completely appreciate this giant community of bright, kind, hilarious people willing to jump into my metaphor sandbox and play with me. Huge.
Foods. Again.
My gentleman friend made his unbelievable sourdough bread again with our Hoppy House yeasties.
And hummus. Lettuce from the garden and tomatoes from the farmers market.
Blackberries blackberrries blackberries. Plums from our neighbor.
Cider from our apples.
Bless this wonderful thing that is summer.
The Week of Biggification. Oh yes.
My wish for this week was to pooblish the HAT (Havi Announces a Thing) page.
The beautiful thing that is our Week of Biggification is now mostly public.
It’s also mostly full without me having to tell people about it.
Here is the link: https://fluentself.com//week-of-biggification-2010
Password: pickles
And the schedule. I will tell you in a while about why I am so falling-over-excited about the content and the location. Big things.
And … playing live at the meme beach house it’s the Fake Band of the Week!
Yes, that’s a Stuism too.
My brother and I have this thing where we come up with ridiculous band names and then say in this really pretentious, knowing tone, “Oh, well, you know, it’s just one guy.”
This week’s band is extra great. I hope they play to an audience of more than one, because they deserve to go big.
Irresponsible Adult Supervision
Last I heard, it’s really just one guy. Hat tip to @soapboxcreation.
And speaking of “just one guy” — you can take this quiz. Yes. Via Emmanuelle.
Stuff I enjoyed this this week.
Actually, I get to pretty much all the good stuff from Emmanuelle, who is a fabulously kooky person worthy of adoration. Like this (ohmygod!) and also beer bottle musical instruments!
And in non-Emmanuelle-related news …
God bless the Onion, especially for this: Texas Vows To Reclaim Title Of Most Regressive State From Arizona.
This wonderful post from Elizabeth about rethinking everything she thinks about Reiki. So much wise and kind in this.
“I like to think of it as a little flashlight that’s going through me, shining a light into dark and dusty and dim spaces and saying, ‘Oh, sweetie .. you really are ok. And if you’re interested, here’s something you might want to look at.'”
That’s it for me …
And yes yes yes, of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments bit if you feel like it.
Yeah? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day and a restful weekend-ing.
And a happy week to come. Shabbat shalom.
Jumbled (but important) thoughts about culture.
There is not yet a Lonely Planet guide to The Fluent Self, Inc — Pirate Ship At Large!
And yet, everyone who interacts with my business or the blog gets a visceral sense of what things are like around here.
Over the past few months I’ve been obsessively considering the elusive thing that is culture, and what makes spaces feel a certain way.
And wanting to put thoughts here, but they’re jumbled and disorderly.
So. Still processing the process on this one. But I’m convinced it’s one of the most vital elements of mindful biggification. So we need to talk about it.
A caveat.
I’m wary about the word “culture” because of its use in business circles to mean “how to force your employees to behave a certain way”, which is not what I mean.
Something more organic and less top-down. I mean the qualities, aspects and experiences that come together to form structures that contain this elusive something.
In my own business.
Just some of the qualities that the culture of this place includes:
[+ playfulness]
[+ mindfulness]
[+ curiosity]
[+ safety]
[+ sanctuary]
[+ support]
[+ silliness]
[+ joy]
[+ hilarity]
[+ healthy skepticism]
[+ wonder]
[+ unconditional love]
[+ self-inquiry]
[+ acknowledgment]
[+ spaciousness]
[+ quirkiness]
[+ ritual]
[+ freedom]
[+ belonging]
[+ trust]
[+ fluidity]
[+ flexibility]
[+ sovereignty]
[+ groundedness]
[+ intelligence]
[+ movement]
Some of the ways you might experience the qualities of this culture:
The comment space is welcoming and accepting.
There isn’t meanness. There isn’t arguing.
We state what we need. We appreciate each other. We make room for each other. Safety is a given.
People constantly remark on this phenomenon. And this is one of the only places I’ve ever been on the internet where this is true.
It is extremely rare that a tourist wanders in and can’t figure out how we behave and how we interact.
This also holds true at the Kitchen Table and on the Chattery (that’s the chat room) when I hold my wild bohemian salons (uh, teleclasses).
We agree to be mensch-like instead of having rules that force us to.
So, for example, confidentiality and not-giving-advices are always essential parts of any program I do.
But never presented as a rule — it’s just a thing we all care about that we agree to commit to.
I don’t do rules or guidelines. Qualities, yes. Rituals. Ways of being. Stuff like that.
No boringness.
A business like this requires certain things that are standardized — dastardly autoresponder messages that tell you what you need to know when you buy or sign up for something, for example.
My lovely First Mate and I have spent many a Drunk Pirate Council rewriting templates and forms to make them personalized, kind, loving, sweet, funny, alive.
Instead of a school or a studio, I run a glam pirate zen magical preschool-for-adults.
Even the “I promise not to sue you” release form at my Playground is pretty entertaining.
My partner is a duck. She’s on my card.
Special names. For spaces and experiences. But really, for everything.
We spend a lot of time with Metaphor Mouse. There’s even a Glossary.
I have a Pirate Queen Anthology instead of a business manual. We go on Rallies. We use The Log instead of Basecamp.
Stone-skipping instead of journaling. I decorate HATS instead of writing sales pages.
Instead of an application page to try to get into my Week of Biggification* program, there is a pickle page. With a pickle on it.
This makes everything better.
Also it gets things done. Because I would rather poke myself with sharp sticks than write sales pages, but actually decorating a HAT is kind of fun.
* password = pickles
Living what I teach.
This is how I transmit what culture looks and feels like, by modeling without explaining what I’m doing (except, you know, right now) .
For example, in the comment zen thing I model the culture by a) asking for what I need, b) stating clearly and lovingly what I do not want, and c) being clear about how we talk to each other here.
As always, there is a marked lack of prescriptive language. Everything is framed in terms of “so this is how we tend to do things around here.”
And I try to teach less by explaining concepts and more by sharing my own process with stuff I’m working on, including the parts that are hard, challenging and not fun.
Principles.
This is more subtle and hard to describe. But for example, I refuse to do emotional pressure/manipulation stuff in HAT pages. And it’s really important to me to always make clear that my people are my people whether or not they ever buy my stuff.
Or: when I play at the Twitter bar, it is play for the sake of play. Not once have I said anything remotely motivational or coach-ey.
Part of the culture of my business involves not having to act like an expert as well as the all-important if it’s not fun I’m not going to do it, dammit.
Yes, that’s actually on my dammit list.
Rituals for mindfulness, playfulness, curiosity, hilarity and acknowledgment.
Without saying “this is what you should do”, and just creating a space where it happens. Like the Friday Chicken. Or the Very Personal Ads.
These rituals are simple, pleasurable, meaningful, not-too-intimidating (I hope), and doing them together gives us a way to casually cheer each other on. Or up.
To give and receive comfort and reassurance but in an extremely informal setting.
Of course, there are other ways as well.
Like the look and feel of stuff we do (oh the fabulousness that is the Monster Coloring Book).
Like the clear explanations about how I connect with people, which is a way of demonstrating strong, loving, flexible healthy boundaries.
Or the things we do to maintain uh … I guess it’s called “brand integrity”. Gah. What a despicable word. I will invent a new one. But you know what I mean.
And then I haven’t even begun to cover how valuable and useful it is to have a culture that — even if hard to describe — is easy to sense.
I’ve never had to consider killing the comments here, the way so many biggified people have. We’ve had the same site design for five years. We don’t need policies.
Here’s the point:
The culture of this amazing place holds it all so that I don’t have to.
The culture of the pirate ship that isThe Fluent Self is so established, clear and filled with safety and permission for me and my people. At this point, it’s self-sustaining.
We can definitely talk more about how this works soon. For now — a useful theme.
And comment zen for today.
Talking about business and biggification stuff can be uncomfortable. I hope it’s clear my intention is to examine the culture here, not imply that yours is not good.
I am sure this theme will require some posts of explanations and reassurances. For now I will just say two things about culture:
- It’s not like yogurt. There is no way to contaminate the culture of your business.
- It’s is a reflection of qualities you already have. So even if you don’t have readers or customers yet, the culture is still a thing.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We try to let people have their own experience and meet each other with love.
p.s. We’ll be covering the how of building a culture that draws and welcomes your right people (and keeps mean people away) at the Week of Biggification in Asheville, November 3-10. I have not announced this yet. Most of the seats are already taken. Password: pickles.
*blows kisses to everyone*
Bolivia.
I am thirty three years old and have not once seriously considered moving to Bolivia.
It’s weird, because normally I wouldn’t even mention that.
But here we are. Most women do end up moving to Bolivia.
And by my age, you’re pretty much expected to have already moved there or at least you’re supposed to be trying really hard to get there.
To be clear: I have nothing against Bolivia. It seems like a lovely place. Just not one that pulls me. It has never called my name.
And even though I don’t talk about my relationship (or non-relationship) to Bolivia, we will talk about it today.
Because I have words that need to be said about loneliness, power and the extremely problematic word: “choice”.
Loneliness.
There is so much of it when it comes to this hard topic of Bolivia. Or maybe it’s not so much loneliness as isolation.
Every woman has her own experience, her own relationship with moving or not moving to Bolivia. These relationships are often painful, challenging, hard to express.
So you have the women (like my dear friend E.) who are desperate to get into Bolivia. They wait in lines, jump through endless bureaucratic hoops, do what they can.
Sometimes dying inside from the frustration of seeing how other women end up there with such ease.
Then those women — the ones who weren’t even planning Bolivia — they’re isolated too. An extra glass of wine and bam. Welcome to Bolivia.
There are women who aren’t in Bolivia and are happy. Women who aren’t in Bolivia and are unhappy. Women who wanted to move to Bolivia but now wish they hadn’t. Women who didn’t want to move to Bolivia but are now delighted to be there.
And the ones who don’t know if they’re going, but determined to be happy either way.
It’s hard for us to find each other and talk to each other, because each of us is having such a different experience. It gets lonely.
“Choice.”
This word. I have no more patience for it.
I feel frustrated and helpless when people ask me why I’ve “chosen” not to move to Bolivia because I don’t know how to answer.
And I feel uncomfortable when people support me, saying they defend my “choice”, because I need to know support is there even when choosing is irrelevant.
What choice? There has never been a question of choosing or deciding anything.
This concept makes no sense to me.
I didn’t choose not to move to Bolivia.
I didn’t choose not to move to Bolivia any more than I chose not to become obsessed with traditional Armenian embroidery.
I didn’t choose not to move to Bolivia any more than I chose not to take up water polo.
It’s not that anything is wrong with life in Bolivia or Armenian embroidery or water polo.
It’s this:
If it were not for the fact that so many of the women I know are either moving to Bolivia or talking about moving to Bolivia, it never would have occurred to me to even think about it.
The only reason I think about Bolivia is that so many of my friends now live there. And that so many people have opinions about me not being there.
But to say that I chose this life of Not Living in Bolivia? Impossible.
What is choice?
To me, choice generally implies at least some of the following characteristics:
[+ consideration]
[+ giving active thought to something]
[+ both sides have to be appealing or compelling in some way]
[+ caring about the outcome]
[+ weighing the odds]
[+ pros vs cons]
[+ following intuition]
[+ being pulled towards something]
[+ wanting]
It isn’t that I decided against Bolivia. That never came up. It didn’t need to.
There was no decision-making process, because Bolivia exerts no pull over me.
I heart Bolivia.
The food, the culture, the art. The warmth and friendliness. Yay Bolivia.
And I know a lot more about life in Bolivia than I’d ever planned to, now that so many friends and colleagues live there.
To be honest, certain aspects of life there sound pretty distressing to me. But then after they tell you about the awful parts, they gaze at you intently and wish it for you.
So who knows. It must be like when I lived in Tel Aviv for a decade and people thought it had to be awful when actually it was sublime. So I can be pro-Bolivia. And still not feel the desire to ever move there.
Things that are hard about not moving to Bolivia.
The social pressure. The assumptions. The way people ask you when you’re moving to Bolivia and you explain that you aren’t and they say “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
As if you’ve just said you were dying when you are actually expressing completeness.
Losing friends. Some of my friends who have moved to Bolivia are amazing. Like Pam and Naomi and Jen.* You can talk to them about Bolivia but also politics and business and art and creativity and seven thousand other things.
* Other neat people in Bolivia: Jesse and Amber and Jenny the Bloggess!
Other friends are full-time evangelists for Bolivian life. And while I’m happy to spend an hour looking at pictures or admiring the landscape, I can’t do all-Bolivia-all-the-time. I miss the opinionated, curious, hilarious women I used to know.
And the vocabulary of choice. The way it has to be about “decisions”. I don’t want to identify as “Bolivia-less by Choice”. Where are my people who also didn’t choose?
The pull of Bolivia.
I know this mysterious pull that Bolivia exerts on women must exist, because I keep hearing about it.
My biologist friends insist it’s a thing. Maybe.
Maybe a biological thing that not everyone is susceptible to, plus cultural programming and expectations that people are mostly unaware of. I don’t know.
All I know is that I have never felt it.
And that I have girlfriends who are considerably older than me and who also have never felt it.
And that they, like me, heard those hollow words over and over again: “When you’re older, you’ll change your mind about Bolivia.”
Without the pull, there’s nothing.
“Changing your mind” is another one of those choice things. Like decision. As if all I have to do is stop being so determined not to go there.
But I’m not “determined”. I just don’t understand why I should. And I’m pretty sure that if it were about choosing, and I weighed the pros and cons, my non-Bolivia life would win every time in the categories that matter to me.
Of course, if I had a burning desire to be in Bolivia, those other needs wouldn’t matter as much. They would pale in comparison.
And I’d find a way to make it work. Believe me, if I wanted to live in Bolivia, I would move mountains trying to get there.
But since there’s nothing that instills in me a desire to move there, it’s not about choices and choosing. It’s about living my life.
I’m living my life.
And loving my life.
Not because I made a choice. But because I’m here, and here — for me — is good.
And comment zen for today.
I’ve been wanting to write this post for years. And not wanting to at the same time.
Because I know that some people are not really capable of encountering a different way and still understanding that we are both allowed to have our way. Of knowing that my way doesn’t imply that your way is wrong.
I get my way. They gets theirs. Also, the entire culture supports the way that isn’t mine, so trying to tell me I’m wrong in what I know to be true for myself? Not cool.
Anyway. All that to say that this is a hard, sensitive topic. With so much potential for pain, misunderstanding, distortion.
I hope it is clear that I have love in my heart for women who live in a variety of ways. And that I am not picking on Bolivia. All places have their own charm.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We let people have their own experience. And we don’t give advice, unless someone asks for it.
What I don’t want: “I support (or don’t support) your choice”. This is not about choice for me. It’s about mindfulness and trust and many other things, but not choice.
What I’d love: Your stories. What you know about isolation and about completeness.
Copywriting advice courtesy of me-from-9-months-ago.
From my journal. About three weeks ago — shortly before the Rally (Rally!).
This was right when I was getting ready to write the HAT (Havi Announces a Thing) page for my Week of Biggification program this November.
And I knew I needed some mental and emotional preparation for this. So I decided to a) claim sanctuary in a blanket fort and b) talk to the person who knows how to write the copy, and also to the person who doesn’t want me to write it.*
* Yes, both of those people are me.
Anyway, it’s somewhat bizarre. No big surpise there. But useful.
And we begin.
It’s me from now. And the me who has issues and is scared, carrying all sorts of stuff from the past. She is … still in the past somehow. Past me.
I look around. We’re in a cave.
It is mostly round, with a remarkably high ceiling and four small shafts or openings in it that allow for light. The air is cool.
The ground is covered in thick layers of woven rugs that seem to have been casually thrown on top of one another but make for a floor that’s comfortable and stable.
There are candles. And a fat fireplace in a rounded corner, like a New Mexico adobe.
The messengers.
We have messengers. Apparently.
They’re kind of like royal assistants.
One brings us each glasses filled with mint leaves and a pitcher of hot water to pour over them. Another brings us plates of dates and figs.
Somehow we’ve moved from New Mexico seamlessly to the middle east, and I am equally happy in both. Edge of desert to edge of desert. I like the edge of the desert.
Me from then needs reassurances.
Me: It looks like you’re hurting. Tell us what you need.
Past Me: Need?
Me: I don’t know. What would give you comfort?
Past Me: I am so worried. So many worries! You can’t possibly want to hear them.
Me: Oh, sweetie. Of course I do. Anything that concerns you concerns me.
Past Me: But I need to know that my worries are legitimate. And they’re so tangled and intertwined I can’t keep track of them, it’s a neverending litany. And I’m so afraid you won’t like me anymore.
Me: Honestly? No one is judging you for having worries. You have lots of experience with things that give reason for worry. It is perfectly acceptable that you would have worrries based on that experience.
I don’t promise to take on your worries, but I respect your your experience, and appreciate you for being you. I mean, for being me.
The litany of worries. Here it is.
Past Me: So far you haven’t really made money at any of your live events and at most of them you’ve lost money, and you’ve spent crazy amounts of time working on them and planning and recovering from them, and that’s not even factored into the losses.
So it’s really like you’re not just losing money but losing everything.
But you can’t charge more because it’s already too much, and [A-lister friend] said she’d never charge more than what she does for X, even though she also makes no money on that event.
And by the time you factor in travel + car rental + hotel + staff time + reading applications + email back and forth + copying flyers + itinerary + creating the schedule and so on and so forth, you aren’t getting paid for the content or the actual time teaching.
But there’s pressure to fill the event, and pay the Inn. So many ways you can lose money on this! I don’t even know why you’d want this headache and heartache again.
Me: You’ve experienced a lot of headache and heartache, and you want to prevent a situation where that happens to me too.
Past Me: Yes!
Past me gets to help and give advice.
Me: I appreciate that. Thank you. You are very sweet. I also want to avoid headache and heartache. If you can help me plan effectively to avoid those, I would appreciate any advice you can give.
Past Me: Okay!
Me: You sound really cheerful.
Past Me: I didn’t think you were going to ask for my help. But now I have lots of ideas! If I’d known it would HELP you, I wouldn’t have minded all that pain so much. Helping!
Me: Alright. How can we avoid headache and heartache? Give me advice.
Her first piece of advice: everyone needs to pay in advance.
Past Me: At the Destuckification retreat, someone decided not to come. And didn’t even tell you she was canceling until it started. So you’d already paid for her room and food, and then you had to negotiate with her. Unpleasant.
It’s August now. People come in November. Three months. You need a higher deposit so you can pay the Inn from the participants tuition.
Otherwise it’s not a healthy, sustainable supportive way to run things, and it doesn’t help you do your best work.
Me: Got it.
Her second piece of advice. Calculate in EVERYTHING.
Past Me: Including your time. And the time of everyone who works for you. And the time you have spent so far finding the place and negotiating, which is close to 30 hours.
Not to mention the cost to your business of not working for a week, plus recovery time. You lose three weeks to each big event.
Obviously it ends up being like seven million dollars per person and you won’t actually charge that, but at least you’ll know what they’re getting and the copy can reflect that.
This may take time but it doesn’t matter. Everything!
Not just food, lodging and renting the space. Tissues! Gifts and swag! Photocopies! Worksheets. Staff tips. Whatever the center charges for serving water and whiteboard rental. Hiring consultants.
And write a blog post about how you calculate it and how you sit with the price until you get resonance. So they know what they’re paying is in a sense a symbolic price.
Her third piece of advice. Minimal payment options = less agony.
Past Me: Either your people pay everything at once (by paypal or check and get a bonus something) or they can do three monthly payments. Do not end up with fifteen options.
Last time your staff spent months negotiating payment options and invoices with a different set-up for every participant. Stressful!
Remind people to note which credit card they use because that’s the one that gets charged. And triple-check the email reminder system because last time it didn’t work and they (totally understandably) were upset. We can’t have screw-ups like that.
Her fourth piece of advice. The rooms.
Past Me: We went over the arrangement 700 times last time and it still came out wrong. This needs to get an entire dedicated Drunk Pirate Council.
And a chart for the office wall. So we can be extra clear. And not pay penalties.
Trash the application process. You don’t need it. Do something fun. With pickles!
Me: Okay. These are all really good. What other things do I need to look out for?
Past Me: I can’t remember. I’m getting a headache. Can I lie down?
Me: Of course, sweetie.
And then past me got to go on retreat.
Me: Can I say something else? Even though I am soliciting advice from you and I hugely appreciate everything you’re telling me, you do not have to run this program.
Pirate Queen me is going to run it with, along with many capable helper mice and with many forms of support, both visible and invisible.
You don’t have to do anything. Your hard, scary, stressful time is over. You get to retire.
Past Me: I do? Yay! What is retirement like?
Me: I don’t know, honey. What would you like it to be like?
Past Me: I want to be at the Week of Biggification! But not to participate.
I want to stay at the beautiful Inn and sleep in the soft bed and look at the mountain.
And I want to take the elevator down to the room and up to the lobby. I want to sit in the underground spa pools all day. And eat that one really good sandwich.
And drink cold beer and watch the sunset. Yes yes yes.
But she still might have a consulting gig.
Me: Go for it. We’ll get you a room.
Past Me: But I can still give you advice now? Like a consultant? And if I remember something else later?
Me: Absolutely. Not a problem.
And then she took off. And I realized it made sense that I’d been avoiding the copy. And remembered that avoidance is normal. Again.
Then I had an absurd conversation with the me who had already written the HAT, and promptly wrote up five pages of notes. Awesome.
Thank you, Past Me. Beer and sandwiches and sparklepoints for you!
And comment zen for today.
The thing is, talking to past versions of us can be … challenging. And even intimidating. It’s definitely one of those things that takes practice.
Some of the principles I’m trying to keep in mind while this is happening:
I want to acknowledge her experience, and the legitimacy of her pain/worry/fear without taking it on, or having it be true for me.
This lets me access potentially useful information without having to adopt any of her stuff — she can have her insecurities and I can know that these aren’t true for me.
Anyway, it’s a practice. Like everything.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We let everyone have their own experience, which means not giving advice (unless someone asks for it).
p.s. You can totally share disastrous planning stories of your own or anything else you’re working on. Kisses.
Sally the Rally. The recap.
So I promised to tell you more about the spectacular projectizing Rally (Rally!) and then forgot.
The Rally (Rally!) was completely inspired by this post, which in turn was inspired by scooter rallies, and which I was inspired to write about because of my gentleman friend.
A rally, if you’re wondering, is several days of intense projectizing (working on your stuff and also on your stuff) at the Playground, my pirate-ey center of silliness and wonder. It was a wild zen rumpus of the best kind.
And despite the fact that we, the Rally-ers, could not decide what to call ourselves, we managed to have the most brilliant, hilarious time ever.
Rallying is now my new favorite thing, and I’m working on my 2011 calendar to make room for more rallies. In the meantime …
Some of the realizations people had while rallying.
And by people, I mean the Keepers of the Rally. The Rallyconteurs. The Rallyganders.
“That my project wants me to visit its different parts in a non-linear fashion, which was really surprising because that’s not how I do things. It’s time to bring in more non-linearity and this is exciting!”
“Not going online while projectizing is hugely beneficial. I knew this intellectually but this was experiencing it and everything is different now.”
“My project wants a letter written to it!
“My project is a sentient being that needs to be treated with respect, autonomy, love, reverence.”
“There’s a lot I’m not in charge of. And this is a good thing. Oh.”
“It is possible to keep working on your project even when there is a scary thing happening with it that you don’t understand.”
“Now I’m working with my project instead of on my project. This is so much better.”
“Biggification is connected to rest and play! Resting and playing! That’s how I’m going to biggify — not from pressure and urgency.”
Some of the fabulous superpowers we discovered we had.
We being the Rallions, of course.
Fast typing!
Clarity. Patience.
Shape-shifting.
Focusing. Inspiration.
Victory dance!
Play. Rejoicing.
Closure. Completion.
Some of the actual things we got done.
We? The Rallyscallions of Doom. Each of whom I am now madly in love with.
Jesse got eighteen thousand words written on her novel.
And not just words but good words. Without the pressure, agony and abuse that can sometimes come with writing.
And Emmanuelle managed to get months of work done in our three days of rallying.
Someone showed a story that had never been shown.
Someone planned a world.
I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. And planned the timetables, content, copy and everything else for our Week of Biggification in Asheville in November.
Some of the experiences with Rallying.
From — in Jesse’s words — the Rallyites! The Rally Cabal! The One True Order of the Rallions!
One person described experienced EXTREME FOCUSING after a long time of not having access to anything even remotely like it.
Someone else had laser clarity that lasted two whole days, and turned everything around.
One person talked about the experience of not forcibly silencing the body anymore, and what a difference that makes to Projectizing.
We were inspired like crazy. It was like mainlining pure undiluted inspiration.
Someone else talked about what it was like to experience productivity without struggle, strain, pushing … probably for the first time in her life.
One person wanted to have more of herself in her project, and discovered that this was less complicated than she’d imagined it to be.
Some of the ways our projects wanted to be put to bed at night.
Our projects! Or missions, if you don’t like the word “project”, which is fine by us.
One project wanted to sleep under the stars.
One project wanted to have a pillow and sleep at the Playground.
One project wanted songs sung to it all night.
One project wanted extra snuggling time.
One needed to eat something orange.
Mine now insists on being put to bed every night.
Quotes from the Rally.
“You can take the girl out of the Playground but you really can’t take the Playground out of the girl.”
“Shiva Nata is like falling off a really complicated log.”
Q: You see a Queen, Flowers, Ziggy Stardust & Shiva’s Horns sitting in a circle & the Pirate Queen walks in…where are you? A: The Rally.
“Victoryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”
Favorite bits from the Rally.
Some of what the Rally mice mentioned:
The mad epiphanies from Shiva Nata, of course.
The chronicling (my techniques for processing the process).
Having trusty companions.
Not feeling alone.
Blanket forts.
Dedicated time and space.
Getting things done that you didn’t even think you needed to work on.
And all the other incredible things that happen when you’re in a supportive environment with warm, loving, zany people.
That’s it for now.
Usually when I review an event I’ve done (like I did with the Destuckification weekend in North Carolina or the week of destuckifying in California), there’s all this stuff I have to say about the things that went horribly wrong.
Not with the actual event, of course. We always have a crazy great time, and everyone gets phenomenal results. That’s a given.
But with the planning. Administrative crises. Things costing more than expected. Crossed wires with the retreat center. Stuff like that.
I have nothing to say about the Rally that isn’t completely positive. This is new for me, and I’m enjoying it.
In terms of comment zen for today? I would love cheering and appreciation for the wonderful thing that is rallying. One day we will get you to a rally somehow.
Or I will come to Australia or whatever far-away place you are, and rallying will happen there.
In the meantime, adoration from me and much enthusiastic waving from the Playground (while wearing fairy wings that Cairene gave me yesterday, of course).