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 Check-in #46: the Dreaded Diphth*ng edition
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.
Friday! Again!
Man, I am so ready to crash. Except that I have to make it through Roller Derby Finals. Watching them, I mean.
Yes, most exhausting spectator sport ever.
Anyway, here we are. The week that was.
The hard stuff
Afternoon at the dentist! Ayeeeee.
Ow.
Hard and painful and hurt-ey and expensive and stressful and uncomfortable.
Do. Not. Like.
Not being able to recover from the afternoon at the dentist.
So I don’t know if it was the anaesthesia (grrrrr, dreaded diphth*ng).
Or maybe HSPs (Highly Sensitive People) react weirdly to x-rays. I don’t know.
Or maybe it was just getting all shaken up and having my stuff come up.
But this week I was not myself.
Like, it threw me off of ME. And then I didn’t sound like myself all week and wrote posts that were very not-like-me and it was weird.
And I felt just kind of off. As in, off-balance. But also off like when food is off. Yuck.
Plus, all the things that normally bring me back to myself like Shiva-ing it up or meditating or yoga were just not acting like themselves either.
And there’s more dentist coming up, so now I’m worried about that too.
We got destroyed at Derby.
Watched my roller girls (the Guns N Rollers) give up a forty-point lead … to lose by eighty three points.
To the Betties.
In the semis.
Agony.
I had been thinking a lot about having Shiva Nata sponsor them next year. But now I’m totally doing it.
So I guess that brings us to the good stuff.
Because yeah! Shivanauts doing Derby!
The good stuff
Whoah. I’ve been doing this for a year.
So the one-year anniversary of this blog happened Tuesday and I totally missed it.
Because I have no sense of time going to the dentist made me loopy.
So I’m celebrating now. Mostly by rereading the first post and shaking my head.
Given that I was hoping I’d last more than a month, I’m willing to go out on a limb and call it a raging success.
Also, it made me and my duck internet famous. And we got to meet a lot of fabulous people.
And what the hell, I have fun doing it. Especially on Fridays.
Speaking of which, yay, Friday Chickens. Which, you’ll note, we’ve almost done a year of as well. Crazy.
A neat present.
So one of my clients from a while back is on a gratitude run.
Which is awesome because gratitude does all sorts of nifty things even when you don’t feel like it.
But also because it means I get presents.
She sent me an enormous box full of little wrapped gifts that have instructions about which date I’m supposed to open them on.
And each one is a thank you for something, but the sweetest part is that each one acknowledges a quality that I myself don’t appreciate enough.
Like, “I know you really like elegant solutions to things so …”
And I think, wow. How does she know that?
Very cool.
I did a thing that scared me.
I don’t want to talk about it but I’m really proud of myself.
Fresh homemade pita bread!
My gentleman friend is unbelievable.
Seriously.
Yum.
I have never, ever had someone make pitot for me before. It was weird and cool and sweet and they were fantastic.
Also, he found blueberries growing in the back yard. In addition to last week’s surprise strawberries.
I’m telling you, Hoppy House is a dream come true. It’s everything I asked for plus a bunch of wondrous surprises.
And … STUISMS of the week.
Stu is my paranoid McCarthy-ist voice-to-text software who delights in torturing me misunderstanding me. I can’t stand him.
My favorite this week was the ten times I tried to get him to say “just so you know”, which is something I say all the time.
But no. Stu was all, “just say no” and “I’m just eating out” and stuff. Stu!
*shakes fist*
Anyway, here are the rest of the gems from the week, including his random capitalizations and occasional acetyl Freudian slips.
- the absolved Romantic instead of “the Dissolve-o-Matic“
- gun outfit gleaned instead of “an outfit cleaned”
- tell Meany about him instead of “tell me about it”
- little Pokey Blitz instead of “little poky bits”
- The bear needs to detect the rows instead of “the barrier needs to protect the rose”
- and Tredegar instead of “entered the earth”
- Or press a ball instead of “irrepressible” (and his second guess for that was “her arsenal”. What?!)
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 weekend. And a happy week to come.
Ask Havi #24: What if my stuff is boring and useless?
Note: it is almost impossible to get on the Ask Havi list. This person got in by a. being one of my clients or students, b. flattering the hell out of my duck, and c. making life easy on me by being clear about what the question was and what details I could use.
Here’s the question. It’s a good one.
“You talk a lot about doing the thing and helping your right people. And I really (most of the time, at least) want to do my thing but I just can’t believe that my thing has any value.
“How do you have confidence that your thing is worth saying and/or offering and that it will be helpful for people? What if it’s boring? What if it’s not original?”
Oh, sweetie.
This has to feel really scary and frustrating.
And then on top of that, I’m getting that you’re also feeling anxious because you need to know that your work will actually help people.
And you want to be able to trust that focusing on doing your thing is a worthwhile investment of your time and energy.
That makes sense.
So … I think I might be able to help here.
A few thoughts. Three, to be exact.
Thought 1: Let’s assume your worst fears are correct.
Let’s pretend that what you have to say is boring, unoriginal and stupid.
Pointless, even.
You know what? It’s STILL going to help people.
That’s because there is a weird, almost magical thing that happens when one person connects with another person with the intention of destuckifying something.
There’s power to that intention. And power to getting an outside perspective.
Also to being heard and acknowledged and validated and all that good stuff.
So if the people who need your thing show up with their stucknesses and their fears and their doubts, and your thing helps them, as I’m sure it will … who cares if you think it was trite and uninspired?
When you share your thing, I guarantee that at least five people’s lives will be transformed. Even on the days when you think your thing is boring and pointless.*
*I have those days too. All the time.
And if you can have a part in transforming people’s lives, you’re not going to hide from the people who need you, right?
Thought 2: Your stuff doesn’t have to be helpful for everyone.
It doesn’t.
It just needs to be helpful for the people who need it in that form in that moment.
Those are your Right People. The ones who need your voice.
Anyone who doesn’t find it helpful? Probably not one of your Right People. Or not ready yet.
That person can go. Be there for the ones who do need what you have to say.
(For more on this theme, take a look at some of the other posts in the Blogging Therapy series.)
Thought 3: Original? What’s that? And who cares?
Helpful and original are two totally unrelated things.
All of us can be helpful. Original? Not so much.
Here’s a completely unoriginal thought that was probably just as unoriginal when it was written:
There’s nothing new under the sun.**
**Go buy Ex Libris and read Anne Fadiman’s hilarious essay on plagiarism with that title.
And even if there is new stuff out there, it’s just not necessary to be all innovative to facilitate the life-shifting understandings that people will have from interacting with your thing.
Saying what you have to say in your voice at the right time is everything.
The thought doesn’t have to be creative or inventive or original (really, nothing I’m saying in this entire post is original).
Original is overrated. Because it’s going to help them whether you like it or not.
The unique bit is the way that you phrase it or explain it or demonstrate it. Or the way they hear it.
Your particular flavor or take on something will lead them to their moment of OH!
You will be the facilitator of the OH. And the people who need that OH will be saying hell yeah.
That’s what I’ve got.
So if you’re worried about whether or not it has value — yes, it has value.
And if you’re worried about it not being original, it can’t be original. So much for that.
And if you’re worried about being boring, it won’t be boring for your Right People because it’s exactly what they need right now. That’s part of what makes them your Right People.
And if you still think it’s no good, I say that it will still help people anyway. And they need you to stop second-guessing yourself for a few minutes so they can learn what you have to teach.
But I’ll also say that it’s natural and normal and human to go through cycles of doubting and not knowing.
That’s one of the things that will help you be a terrific teacher. Because you’ll know what your people are going through and you’ll be able to identify with their pain.
And, as time goes by, you’ll be able to identify with their pain without always being in it. Which will help them become teachers too.
Twitter version of this post:
“The people who need what you have to say are waiting for you and they don’t care that you think it’s boring, unoriginal or lacking in value.”
Item! Have adventures with me!
A somewhat goofy mini-collection of stuff I’ve been reading, stuff I’ve been thinking about and oh, some completely random crap.
Basically the stuff that never gets mentioned here because I’m not the kind of person who can just make some teeny little point. Not into the whole brevity thing, as the Dude would say.
Actually, I’m under the strict compulsion to write ten pages about anything on my mind. So this is me. Practicing brevity.
They aren’t really adventures.
It’s more like stuff I want you to read.
But there are yarn adventures. And a skeleton. And many exclamation points!
Because it’s Wednesday again, which means … not a whole lot, but just that it’s about that time. For an Item! post, I mean. Shall we?
Item! Post No. 22 in a series that still doesn’t make sense and isn’t about to start making sense any time soon either.
Item! This is really quite a moving post.
From the lovely Holden aka SF Love Story:
I immediately went into my superhero mode, which is a little dance I’ve practiced since about the age of seven. It involves action. It does not involve wringing our hands, or ignoring the scene. I am the daughter of an alcoholic. This is all I know.
You can read the rest here.
She’s @sflovestory on Twitter.
Item! Yarn Adventure Club!
So I love Tara and I love everything she does. Come on, she’s the blonde chicken!
For knitters and people who are maybe thinking about becoming knitters:
You’ll get one skein of gorgeous hand-made yarn, at least a hundred yards, every month for three months! And she’ll hook you up with patterns and help. Did I mention she makes the yarn? Amazing.
If you know anyone who is into anything craft-ey, they need to hear about this.
And she’s @blondechicken on Twitter.
Item! “Swinging on the flippity flop” is the funniest thing you could possibly say, ever!
So everyone knows I love the Hater. Even though half the time I have no idea what she’s talking about.
But even someone as media-unplugged and generally pop-culturally challenged as I am can appreciate this bit called Kids Today Are Textin’ On The Flippity Flop. And really, quality hating is quality hating.
Hilarious.
But how can you know if you’re kids are sexting, or if they’re just sending random arithmetic problems back and forth to each other?
Thankfully, Fox’s Atlanta affiliate has put together a handy guide to help parents decode their children’s personal text messages: The Top 50 Text Acronyms Parents Need To Know.
And if you don’t remember the original and equally embarrassing reference — you’d better read this too.
Thanks, Amelie!
Item! The Stupid Post!
It’s actually not even slightly stupid.
Why is that? Sheer terror of course.
I’m afraid that whatever I write is just going to be impossible gibberish. I’m convinced that the entire internet will point and laugh.
So no. Not stupid.
But it’s The Stupid Post. From the Evil Genius.
Come on. How could you *not* read it?
Item! A vision of a skeleton! Plus the most beautiful letter ever.
I saw this image of a skeleton cringing as if from a blow.
It was the pattern of that familial hunch, and I knew I didn’t have to do it any more.
I stood up.
This is something I had the pleasure of putting up online over at the Shivanaut blog.
A Shivanaut, if you are not one yourself, is someone wacky daring enough to attempt the bizarre yoga-centric brain training work that I torture my clients with and teach around the world.
And, as Resident Head Shivanaut, I get to read lots of weird stories about the various hot buttered epiphanies that people get from doing Shiva Nata.
And this one — the one about the skeleton — is really, really great.
You should read it.
Item! Stuff Havi Thinks You Should Know!
So the Stuff Havi Thinks You Should Know About Testimonials & Referrals course is now available as a homestudy.
I haven’t raised the price yet, but I’m going to. A week from tomorrow.
There are recordings. There is awesomeness. There are things I didn’t promise in the class but gave anyway, like ebooklets. And worksheets. There’s even a transcript on its way.
Significant discount for regular blog readers. Take a look if you need ways to get people to talk up your cool thing without having to actually ask them to or to feel all awkward and weird about it.
Because it’s the stuff I think you should know.
That is all.
Happy reading.
And happy Blustery Windsday. See you tomorrow!
Unexpected kindness.
There’s a dry cleaning place in downtown Portland with this sign on its door:
“If you are unemployed and need an outfit cleaned, we will clean it for you for free.”
The idea isn’t unique, but that doesn’t matter. It’s still a genuinely kind offer and one that no one is expecting.
When I was at the dentist the other day, the first words she spoke were something that no dentist has ever said to me:
“Let me bring your chair up so it’s not like I’m talking down to you while I’m explaining stuff.”
I liked her instantly.
When you take one of Jen Hofmann’s Inspired Home Office organizing classes (or her delicious Spa Day for your office), she knocks you over by being astonishingly non-judgmental.
She’s an organizing expert, right?
So you think she’s going to tell you that those piles are the sign of a personality flaw, and how your life will be so much better without them.
But you know what she actually tells you? That those piles are a sign that you’re a creative, passionate person. That each piece of paper you collect represents something beautiful that you want to do in the world.
Jen loves that you collect ideas that excite you. And she believes in you too.
Unexpected kindness.
What these things all have in common:
They’re sincere.
They inspire people to talk about them. They become remarkable in the Seth Godin sense that we can’t help but remark upon them.
Speaking of useful Seth-isms, unexpected kindnesses are a lot like the “free prize inside” thing. Delivering something that no one would expect.
They create a kind of organic loyalty.
I now have fond feelings about a dry cleaning place that I’ve never been to and I don’t even have anything that needs dry cleaning.
I like my dentist because she treated me like a real live human being.
There are a million gazillion classes on organizing and decluttering, but I do Jen’s Office Spa day once a month. Because I’m hooked on her kindness.
What I’m wondering now …
I’m wondering what I could be doing to plant little unexpected kindnesses in the world.
In my business. On my blog. In my relationships. In my daily encounters and interactions.
I’m sure, of course, that some of the best little unexpected kindnesses just emerge naturally. And I can see how planning kindness could seem kind of manipulative or contrived.
But there’s also an element of mindfulness and intention to making this a practice, and that can be pretty powerful.
Because committing to unexpected kindness as a life practice is not manipulation. It’s actively cultivating a more conscious relationship with yourself and the world around you. And with your duck, if you happen to have one.
It doesn’t really matter whether you use this as a biggification or “marketing” practice … or as a “working on your stuff” practice.
Either way, you’re bringing kindness into the world, so rock on. Yay, kindness.
The part that excites me.
I want to know what would happen if I got even slightly better at noticing when I need a little kindness.
And noticing when kindness is showing up in my life.
Allowing it to be expressed in more aspects of what I do.
I have no idea which qualities will come into the world if I can pull this off, but here’s what I’m guessing:
Appreciation. Comfort. Reassurance. Serendipity. Generosity. Hope.
Good stuff. And unexpected.
Roses everywhere.
So usually when I talk to monsters or have long conversations with walls (or otherwise engage with my stucknesses in semi-wacky ways), there’s a lot of talking involved.
Words.
Because, you know, I’m that way. Verbal.
Not always necessarily all that articulate (see last sentence), but definitely word oriented as opposed to picture oriented.
You can imagine my surprise when non-visual me had a completely visual experience. An interesting and (potentially) useful one that I want to share with you.
Except that I’m used to reporting internal dialogue. Not drawing a picture with words.
So this is going to be experimental and possibly weird. Just so you know.
The rose.
The first thing I see is a rose.
It’s half open, half closed.
What do I know about this rose?
It wants open. It wants now. Because this rose is hot stuff.
Make no mistake. This rose is going to the top. This rose is Liza Minnelli in Cabaret. Unstoppable. Irrepressible.
But it can’t open more than halfway. Its energy might be unstoppable, but what do you know, something is stopping it.
What stops something from living out the thing it needs most?
I have to zoom out a bit to see what is blocking the rose from opening more fully and completely.
And it’s kind of a complicated rigged up contraption of wires and little poky bits.
Metal and sharp and rigid.
It’s not touching the rose, but if the rose tries to grow or expand, the little metal spikes contract inwards to block it.
The goal of a rose.
The goal (or maybe even the purpose) of the rose is to be glorious.
To celebrate being alive by being audaciously beautiful. By shouting from the rooftops.
“Would you look at this! I am a rose! Is that not the most fabulous thing in the entire world? Yes it is!”
That’s what the rose would say if this were not a surprisingly wordless visualization.
The goal of a barrier.
The goal (or the purpose) of the thing blocking the rose is to keep the rose from being glorious.
To prevent it from opening too wide or growing too big. To keep it where it is.
Cross-purposes
So there’s this conflict between the rose and the barrier. And negotiating internal conflict is kind of the thing I’m good at.
I go to ask the barrier what it needs.
But there are no words. Because I’m trapped in a visualization, which is the weirdest thing that ever happened to me. Well, not ever, but (ahem) at least in the last week or so.
My wordless question is wordlessly answered.
The barrier needs to protect the rose. The barrier knows that if the rose opens into its most glorious here-I-am state of fabulousness as it so desperately wants to do, things will go wrong.
Not really wrong, but it’s not good. It will just make the other flowers jealous. Also, people might come and try to pick the rose or take it away.
The barrier is the knight in shining armor. The Protector of the Rose. It’s on a mission.
And it doesn’t really care that its mission stifles the mission of the rose, because hey, it’s serving the rose in a deeper way.
Problem-solving.
We need a solution, I think to myself.
We need a way for the barrier to feel safe that it’s doing its job, while still allowing the rose to feel safe to do its glorious Liza Minnelli thing.
It’s all about safety. It’s about giving space and still having barriers. It’s about healthy boundaries.
And I’m wondering what to do, because I still don’t know how to navigate this wordless world. I don’t know how to insert myself into the picture.
But then, magically, the rose and the barrier find their own compromise.
That was unexpected.
The barrier, which had been tensing and flexing around the outside rim of the rose’s petals, began to climb down an invisible rope ladder.
It started folding in on itself until it came to rest in a circle where the stem of the rose entered the earth.
So there was still a barrier, just not to the growth of the rose.
The barrier had a new purpose, but really, it was the same purpose.
Instead of protecting the rose from growing into its glory, it was now there to protect the rose from being picked.
The rose, meanwhile, was expanding and stretching. Yawning after a deep sleep. Strutting its stuff. Taking over. Doing its sexy rose thing. Fulfilling its purpose.
And then I was done.
Stupid symbolism.
Once I could talk again, the first thing I said was this:
“The rose isn’t me, right? Because that would be so cheesy and ridiculous that I couldn’t stand it. Okay, fine. It’s me. But so is the barrier.”
Uh huh.
And so is the one who observes the rose and the barrier interacting.
And so is the one who loves them both.
And so is the one who resents them both and struggles with them.
And so is the one who thinks this is cheesy and ridiculous.
That’s just how it is.
Roses everywhere.
And then I saw that there were roses everywhere.
Inside of me. Around me. In the people I know. In the people I don’t know.
All of us going through similar internal struggles and wordless conversations. All expanding and stretching.
Everyone.
It was pretty cool, is all I’m saying.