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.
Visibility. Invisibility. Power. More pirates.
I was at my friend Carolyn’s yesterday afternoon.
And I was feeling pretty upset about the whole awful gold-toothed hackers invading my website thing. Upset and vulnerable. Foggy, even. Like my brain had been hacked too.
She led me through a cool little process. Which is great, because I was in no position to think straight.
I’m going to share it with you because it’s fantastic. And because you guys are smart enough to be able to apply it to your own stuff.
NOTE: Carolyn is — weirdly enough — actually a real person. Not a character in my head. Not an internal monster. Not a fear. Not even a duck. I sometimes get crap from people who think having inner voices means you’re crazy instead of creative — just wanted to be clear on that!
Okay.
Taking it all apart.
Feelings and qualities.
Carolyn: Tell more about what it feels like to be hacked.
Me: I feel vulnerable. I feel uncomfortable. I feel upset. I feel unsure.
Carolyn: What kind of person would hack into your site?
Me: I don’t know.
Carolyn: What are the qualities of a hacker?
Me: Sneaky. Taking advantage of someone’s vulnerability. Nefarious? Long twirly mustaches?
Needs.
Carolyn: What do you think is going on here?
Me: It’s like they’re trying to hack into my head!
Carolyn: What does your head need?
Me: I need for my head what my super genius guy is doing for my site. No one should be able to get in uninvited.
What’s going on here?
Carolyn: And do you share any qualities with the hackers?
Me: Sits and thinks about it for a minute or two.
Looking for connections and not finding them.
Me: I honestly don’t see how. I mean, I do have the ability to get into someone else’s headspace because of my weird intuitive superpowers, so there’s a connection there. But I never do it unless a client has expressly given me permission to.
Carolyn: Okay. When would it be good to be a hacker? What about being a hacker could be useful and powerful for you?
Me: ???
Looking for qualities and finding lots of them.
Carolyn: Let me ask this a bit differently. Is there anything you admire about hackers? What qualities do they have that are useful?
Me: Sure. They’re smart. They’re quick. They’re highly capable and competent. They’re good at what they do. They’re goal-oriented. They’re invisible. They get things done.
Carolyn: Wow.
What qualities do I share? What qualities do I need more of?
Carolyn: So these are all good things.
Me: Yes. Absolutely.
Carolyn: Which are the traits that you share? Obviously you’re smart and quick and good at what you do. What about the other ones?
Me: I would love to get better at being goal oriented because I’m not at all. And I’d love to get better at getting things done. And I have weird issues around the word invisible, but I get that there’s a lot of power in there.
Tapping into the hacker’s power and taking it for myself.
Carolyn: What is the power of being invisible?
Me: No one can stop you because they don’t know what you plan to do. No one can stop you and no one can sabotage you and no one can criticize you.
Carolyn: So how would it be useful for you to be invisible?
Me: Oooh. I could have a magic hacker cloak of invisibility to protect both my head and the path to my goals… so that I can ultimately be more visible and more safe and more confident and more capable!
Carolyn: And get things done. Because you’re smart and you’re quick and you’re good at what you do.
Me: Yes!
Carolyn: Tell me more. Describe what it’s like to have a magic hacker cloak of invisibility and protection.
Transformation.
Me babbling excitedly while Carolyn tries not to crack up: Okay, so I can get this cloak of invisibility for my site and for my head.
And what this means is that no one can see how to get in, and no one can see where I’m going.
Sometimes we take the pirate flag down. And then we’re an invisible ship instead of a pirate ship! It’s like a disguise!
You know what, though? I like flying the pirate flag! Well, the pirate-duck flag. I feel annoyed and frustrated when I think about having to take it down.
But that’s stupid. We should just be faster than everybody else! A blur! Almost invisible! Actually, instead of flying the flag… it’s like we’re the ones who are flying. Trippy.
I really do want to be seen, though.
I don’t want to live an invisible life. It’s important to be seen sometimes because being a famous pirate helps inspire other people to lead interesting, adventurous lives.
It empowers them. And that’s important.
It’s just that I really need to protect my ship. And my head. And for that I need to be able to navigate between visibility and protection. And to trust my mission.
When is a hacker not a hacker?
Carolyn: So are you ready to take on some of the qualities of a hacker?
Me: Oh yes. Underneath my magical fog of invisibility that cloaks my pirate ship, I’m fast and capable and powerful.
Carolyn: What about the other qualities? Like “sneaky” and “taking advantage of vulnerability”? When is it useful to have those qualities?
Me: When there are people around who would (intentionally or not) try to get too close to my pirate ship.
Carolyn: For example?
Me: Like if there are hackers trying to get too close to my site. Or if there are critical people whose criticism is getting too close to my head. I can be sneaky about how I close up the openings into that space in order to protect myself.
Carolyn: Yay!
Back to the feelings.
Carolyn: How do you feel about the hackers now?
Me: They were just doing their hacker thing. It’s nothing personal. They have skills and they use them. They were just being bad pirates and I’m a better one. I’m a faster one, too.
Carolyn: So you’re not upset anymore.
Me: No. Bring it on! I have the fastest ship on the open seas and I can hide it whenever I want in a magical cloak! Or maybe in a giant igloo.
Carolyn: ???
Me: They’ll never look there! Good grief. I’m an adventuress. I’m a freaking pirate queen. They’ll have to try a lot harder than that to impress me. Pffft! Hackers.
And that was it.
Here’s the part that drives me crazy but that I also completely love:
The thing I despise contains something I desperately need.
The quality that will protect me is being demonstrated to me in a way that I can’t see it, but if I can find it, I can take its power and transform it.
Take experience. Add water. Stir. Etc.
Gah! Hackers. And craptastic spammy horribleness.
I would hope it would be spectacularly obvious that I would never, ever have pop-up ads or anything like that on here …
… but if you can see a big green sidebar selling dubious medical supplies, that’s evidence that my site has been hacked. By supremely evil asshats.
*shakes fist in direction of one of those countries where people have gold teeth*
Anyway, here’s the part that’s important:
1. We’re on it. My web guy put in five hours on this yesterday and now we’ve hired a super-genius expert to take care of it and build in even more fancypants protective stuff.
2. Your information is not in any way compromised. The part of the site that evil asshat hackers can get to has nothing to do with the shopping cart software or mailing lists or anything else.
3. Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. Sorry that you had to see something so stupid and annoying. If you can even see it. And apparently not everyone can (gott sei dank).
Love the irony though. Love that I’m the one who always talks about how the whole point isn’t selling stuff. It’s learning what to do so you don’t have to.
And now someone found a way to make it look like all I do is sell stuff. Tacky. Horrible. Bizarre.
Grumble grumble grumble. And more apologies. And things will be (knock on keyboard) back to normal soon.
Thanks!
Havi & Selma
42.
I have a bunch of points to make.
They need numbers.
But they’re really only in the order I dictate them to Stu (short for “work, you stupid piece of crap!” which is what you say a lot when you use voice-to-text software to save your arms) because I can’t be bothered to move them.
Okay. Ready.
- If you’re making it hard for me and my duck to tell the smart, interesting people we know about the cool thing you do, everyone loses.
- It’s not good for you because we don’t find out about your cool thing.
- It’s not good for your potential Right People who need your cool thing.
- It’s not good for me because I don’t get to be a connector mouse. And being a connector mouse makes me happy.
- When I say “tell the smart, interesting people I know about your stuff”, I mean the ones who read my blog (hi!), follow me on Twitter, or hang out with me “in real life”.
- Maybe these people are in the general Fluent Self orbit and maybe they’re not. But they tend to be good people and I like them.
- There are a lot of them.
- And when I talk about telling people “about the cool thing you do”, I mean whatever it is you talk about. Or write about. Or think about. Or are occasionally inspired to paint about. It doesn’t matter. There is you-ness involved.
- And I really, really like sharing good stuff I find with my people.
- Like the amazing homemade good-for-you face cream I got from Lauren at DressGreen. Or words of wisdom from Black Hockey Jesus. Or Leah’s painting.
- There are two ways you can make it hard for me to tell people about you.
- You can hide. Or you can do something that makes me not want to tell people about you.
- Hiding means that I don’t have anywhere to send people so they can find out more about the cool thing you do.
- Some ways of hiding are more obvious than others. Like, if you don’t have a website, you’re kind of hiding (I know, sweetie. You’re working on it. No worries). Or you’re not on Twitter yet. Or you’re there, but you aren’t talking to anyone.
- But there are other ways to hide. Maybe you have a site but there’s no way to subscribe to a noozletter or an RSS feed or something so that I can remember to go back there.
- Someone who used to hide that now — gott sei dank — I can tell you about: the wonderful Janet Bailey who writes about mindful time management, among other things. Brilliant. Useful. Tremendously reassuring.
- Of course I don’t worry about the hiding too much because hiding is natural and normal. Just like avoidance. You’ll come out and play when you’re ready.
- What I worry about a bit more is the people I want to tell you about but don’t.
- Like this guy who does Celtic chanting stuff. I freaking love it. But he’s overtly — and even weirdly — self-promotional on Twitter. Even relative to the sleaze-non-sleaze kosher marketing continuum. Not because he’s sleazy. He’s totally not. He’s just doing it in the wrongest way, so I can’t tell anyone to follow him.
- Or like this potter from Michigan who makes the most stunningly gorgeous ceramic pieces. I have two pitchers and a vase of his. And am lusting after some bowls. Will probably order this week.
- Normally I’d send everyone I know to him because his stuff is amazing and I love to support small, local do-it-yourself-ers and craft-ey people and Etsy people.
- But if I send people to follow him on Twitter, they won’t. Because he is always promoting his stuff and not hanging out.
- I know, I could just send you to his Etsy page, but if you’re not in the mood to buy something right this second, it’s a lot easier to hook you up with someone’s Twitter feed and then you can get to know him over time.
- My goal in all of this is to try to get people to be less strategic, not more strategic. Beyond knowing the basics.
- I should also add that if you’re thinking about taking my course with Pistachio on the strategy of not being strategic (aka how to use Twitter magic to get people to care about your cool thing without being manipulative, weird or not seeing results), well, now is a good time to sign up.
- Also, we moved the “last chance for the early bird price” all the way to this Saturday to give you an extra couple of days.
- Because I was in Lake Tahoe for four days this week and forgot to be here and tell you about it.
- Not because I was hiding. Though sometimes hiding is fun. More because I like you.
- Who this class is for: Oh, people who enjoy Twitter but aren’t making money there (and aren’t willing to start being an asshat in order to do so — good for them!).
- It’s also for people who don’t yet have a Thing-to-promote-in-a-non-icky way, but will eventually.
- Also people who want to grow their cool thing organically but not have to talk about it very much. People whose natural inclination is hiding. People who feel uncomfortable about promoting anything.
- We won’t try to make you change who you are. We’ll just help you feel more comfortable being who you are so that you can get the results without the horrible side-effects of having to hate yourself.
- Who this class is NOT for: People who think Twitter is a huge waste of time. We have enormously useful information to give out. We’re not going to convince people that yeah, it’s important.
- If you need convincing that Twitter is potentially useful after I told you how I make over a third of my income on Twitter without following a bunch of strategies or promoting anything out loud, probably not a good fit.
- I am an introvert.
- I have no interest in teaching you (or anyone) how to sell. I’m interested in teaching you what to do so that you’ll never have to.
- And talking about what you need to do so that you won’t need to hide but you’ll still feel safe.
- And what to do so that I will be inclined to send a chunk of Right People your way and feel good about it.
- Deadline for the Early Bird price is in a couple days. Saturday.
- No, I won’t be manually putting the price back up to what it should be. It happens automatically because
technology is awesomeI have mad geniuses on my Pirate Crew. - Oh, right. I should give you a link for the Strategy of Not Being Strategic course.
- Will see you here tomorrow, either way. Am planning on writing about what to do when external criticism triggers internal criticism. But we’ll see. Am willing to be surprised.
- I probably made some mistakes with the numbering because I pretty much can’t count and Stu really can’t count.
- I was going to end with 42 because it’s the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything but that totally didn’t work because I can’t stop talking.
The Negotiator, the Monster and the Scribe.
The thing with talking to monsters or having conversations with blocks is that it can be pretty freaking terrifying.
Understandably.
I mean, monsters! And stucknesses! Not the most fun company in the world. They say the meanest things. They know exactly where it hurts.
Oh, and they pretty much own guilt, shame, and the ability to make you feel crappy and incompetent.
So … a lot of people have been wondering how I do it without falling apart.
You know, aside from years of practice and having access to especially fabulous wackiness (like the emergency calming techniques, among other things).
At some point I’m going to have to write several posts about this, but for now I want to cover the art of mediation (no, not meditation, though that’s good stuff too), because that seems like the best place to start.
Mediating the experience.
If your life were an action-packed drama/thriller, you’d have someone brave and exceptionally competent whose job it is to negotiate with whoever is behind the hostage situation or the stand-off or whatever.
When it’s just you and your fears though, it can get pretty intimidating pretty fast.
Which is where mediation comes in.
Sometimes you bring in someone from the outside.
For example, with my clients I’m the one who gets to be the mediator.
That’s because one of my superpowers is that other people’s stucknesses talk to me. And they tell me the stuff they’d never tell you.
The book you’re not working on will tell me why it won’t let itself be written. Your fear will tell me why it’s trying to sabotage you and what it plans to do next. Your guilt will tell me what it needs to go away.
And since my other superpower is wacky intuitive stuckness-zapping, I know how to help the stuck dissolve and disappear once I’ve listened to it.
And sometimes you bring someone in from the inside.
You don’t have to use me. Or anyone from the outside, for that matter. Because you can learn to be a mediator too.
And if you can’t, you can try calling on one.
I do this too when I work on my own stuff.
You’ve probably read the posts where I negotiate with my fears and talk to my walls. That’s a pretty advanced form of internal mediation.
But sometimes there’s something that is so scary and so hard and so stuck that I don’t feel strong enough to encounter it by myself.
And when that happens, I take myself out of the picture and I ask for someone to do the mediation for me. Someone else gets to have the conversation in my place.
Who is this someone who gets to mediate for me?
The Negotiator. The Angel of Mediation. My duck. Whoever I want.
This mediator is (unlike me in that moment) calm and self-possessed. Not invested in one side or another … but still determined to keep me feeling safe and supported.
This mediator knows what to say when I don’t because I’m too busy cowering in terror.
And then, instead of having the conversation, I write it down. Which is an extra layer of mediation.
Let’s have an example, shall we? But first, a bunch of disclaimer-ey stuff.
Disclaimer-ey stuff:
This is not easy. I don’t want to imply that it is. And I always use the emergency calming techniques first. And yes, it helps that I have years of practice with this. And your mileage may vary.
And I’m not suggesting that this will solve all your stuck. Just sharing some of the things that have helped me. Okay. Let’s go.
A mediated conversation with Havi’s monster.
The cast of characters.
The monster: enormous, formless, everywhere, threatening, comes in the form of the belief that all money needs to be *earned* and that if Havi doesn’t work a gazillion hours a day to support herself, she’s an awful, useless, hateful person.
The negotiator: strong, steady, calm, patience, interested. The negotiator is not there to judge the monster or to vanquish it. The negotiator is there to listen to it and find out what’s going on between them.
The scribe: She tries to write down what she hears without thinking about it or interacting with it. Just taking dictation. Nothing to do with her. Also, she has a duck to keep her company.
And we’re off …
The negotiator: Hey there, Havi’s monster. I was hoping I could talk with you.
Monster: growls
The negotiator: Tell me a bit about this rule that all money needs to be “earned” through very, very hard work.
Monster: There is nothing to talk about.
The negotiator: Okay. Let me ask you a question then. Let’s pretend that the universe wants Havi to be provided for and taken care of. I’m just wondering … are there ways this could happen other than her working all the time?
Monster: That’s bullshit. It doesn’t work like that.
The negotiator: Interesting. Alright. I can tell you feel pretty strongly about this. I’m sure there’s a good reason for it. And I’m also kind of curious… whose rule is this?
Monster: That’s not your business. You don’t need to know that.
The scribe: Uh oh.
Checking in with both sides.
The negotiator: Let me ask you this. What would Havi’s life be like if she could access financial support in other ways than the kind that comes as a result of working impossibly long hard days?
Monster: I don’t know. I don’t know and I don’t care.
The negotiator: Well, let’s ask her. Hey, scribe? Can you get Havi?
[pause]
The scribe: Havi says she could rest more easily. She could take her time. There would be less pressure. She could actually get more done.
The negotiator: And are there downsides to this for her? Does she have a good reason for not wanting this to happen?
The scribe: Guilt. Lots and lots of guilt.
Monster: Good! Ha!
Asking questions.
The negotiator: So tell me, monster. Because I’m curious. Why does Havi need to feel guilty? What does that accomplish?
Monster: Because the money is a reward for her work. If she works and works and works, then she can receive support in exchange for that.
The negotiator: Do rewards always need to take one form?
Monster: I don’t know.
The negotiator: I’m just wondering … there are other people who are provided for without having to work themselves to the bone … is there reason why Havi can’t be provided for too?
Monster: Those are lazy and undeserving people. We don’t want Havi to be like that.
The negotiator: Interesting. What about say, Havi’s mother? She didn’t have a career and she was provided for.
Monster: Havi didn’t do her duty of having a family so she has to work hard for a living forever.
The negotiator: Ah. And (sidestepping that for now) why can’t she be provided for in a variety of ways that don’t all involve getting completely exhausted and worn out?
Monster: She needs to be taught a lesson.
Learning about the lesson. And the love.
The negotiator: And what will this lesson teach her?
Monster: How to be independent and take care of herself.
The negotiator: Oh. Oh. So you’re worried that she won’t be safe.
Monster: Of course! Why should I be all trusting just because she is? Trust is stupid! Trust is not enough!
The negotiator: Wow. You really care about her safety. I can tell. You just want to know that she’s going to be okay. That she’s going to be taken care of.
Monster: Well, obviously. I love her and I need her to be safe.
The negotiator: Clearly. Wow.
What got you here won’t get you there.
The negotiator: So tell me … what if part of Havi’s purpose is learning to receive?
Monster: I don’t know anything about that. I just want her to be safe.
The negotiator: Okay. Would it help if I promise you that she will be? She definitely has the skills to earn whatever she needs whenever she needs it, and that’s amazing.
Monster: I know!
The negotiator: And you’ve been a huge part of helping her learn how to do that. Which is really impressive. Right now though, she needs to rest and she needs to receive. Which means that this rule is blocking her and (kind of ironically) keeping her from the independence that you want her to have.
My work here is done.
Monster: Goodbye.
The negotiator: What? Is something wrong? Oh. Hey, scribe? Tell Havi she can come back now. The monster is gone. It doesn’t need to be here anymore.
The scribe: Wow, that was fast.
The negotiator: My work here is done. I’m going to get a snack.
The scribe: See ya.
A note about comments:
These posts about my talking-to-stucknesses are a way for me to let you to hang out in my process-thing. They are not an invitation for people to tell me what they think I should be doing to work through my stuff. They are a way for me to model one possible version of how someone might interact with the stuck.
You’re more than welcome to leave comments about your reactions and about your own stuff and about whatever else comes to mind. Keep in mind though that this is a highly personal experience that I’m sharing, and that I’m not looking for advice or how-to-ishness. Thanks.
Words gone wild
So not like this is a secret or anything, but I probably mention Seth Godin or some Seth-related-concept a dozen times a day.
At least.
His ideas and his vocabulary have changed the way I think about (and talk about) just about everything in my life.
They also explain things. Those guys on the corner with the Greenpeace stickers and clipboards? The ones everyone is ignoring? It’s not that we don’t care about saving the world. It’s that interruption marketing is over, guys.
Why did my business take off like crazy when I stopped hiding the fact that my business partner is a duck? Because it was remarkable in the sense that it made people remark on it.
And so on. And now he’s come up with the Baxter.
“But often, if you’ve created something worth talking about, it’s something that hasn’t been done before. Which means it needs a name.
So name it.”
Now I just happen to know (but only because of a bizarre late night game of Balderdash with my wonderful uncle) that baxter is the name for a female baker. Insane, I know.
But not anymore. I guess the Union of Female Bakers will have to come up with something else …
Because Seth Godin owns the concept now. Because he knows about doing magic with words — and teaches the rest of us how to do it too. Not just by example but by explaining what’s going on behind the scenes.
And since I am a huge fan of being a maker-upper of words (destuckification, biggification) and concepts (At the Kitchen Table, the life of the Pirate Queen) …
Well, let’s just say I’m looking forward to cooking up some Baxters of my own. No, not that kind.
p.s. I think adding to the collective vocabulary is one of the most powerful things you can do in your work and in your life.
p.p.s. Three more terrific thinkers I look to as great transformers-of-the-collective-conversation.
Malcolm Gladwell. Stephen Jay Gould. Dan Ariely.
For having given me new and wonderful words for important concepts that I didn’t realize were important concepts: LOVE.
p.p.p.s. Sometimes just playing around with unpacking a word (like we’ve done here on the blog with especially icky or potentially-icky concepts like “marketing” and “networking” and “thinking big“) can be a very useful practice.