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.
Blogging therapy: What do I even say?
Number four in our series on how to take some of the scary out of blogging.
If you want to catch up, here you go:
Part 1. What if people are mean to me?
Part 2. What if I throw a party and no one shows up?
Part 3. Why even bother when there are already other people doing it better?
And today we’re talking about the whole omg I don’t know what to saaaaaaaaaay problem.
And I know I’ve said this every single time but it does bear repeating: what we’re really dealing with is the process of working on your “stuff”. So even if you’ve never had a blog and don’t plan to — or if you’re a total A-list superstar, there should be something for you in here.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! I don’t know what to say!
Oh boy. We all know this problem. And yet, I’m kind of having the opposite one at the moment …
Yes, even though I’ve totally had this problem too, at the moment I have so much to say about this particular topic that I’m actually feeling a bit overwhelmed.
So, to avoid this morphing into a hundred different posts, I’m going to speak to a couple of specific questions I’ve been asked that relate to aspects of this problem … and (she types hopefully) come up with some useful points to consider.
Scenario 1: What if I the stuff I have to say isn’t interesting?
This is familiar stuff. Mostly fear of being judged and fear of being “found out”.
Because what if people figure out that you’re really not that great? Or — and maybe this is even worse — what if you discover that you’re really not that great?
I know. This feeling is awful. I’m sorry. Hug.
I’m not going to talk you out of it or tell you how great you are or anything. At the same time …
Things to think about …
Not interesting? To whom? So what?
There are what, six and half billion people on earth? If the tiniest sliver of a miniscule fraction of a percentage of those people find you interesting you’ll already have a ridiculously popular blog.
All you want to do is talk to your right people.
Your right people will never find you boring because they’re your right people. And they’re the ones you want to be talking to anyway!
Your writing is the best red velvet rope there is.
“Red velvet rope” is a Michael-Port-ism. It means that you want to welcome your “right people” in and keep everyone else out.
I’m sure lots of people find my blog dull as dirt. They couldn’t care less about self-work or biggification or non-icky self-promotion. They don’t even like my duck. (Don’t tell Selma though, because she might cry).
You know what? I don’t want those people here. And luckily, they don’t hang out here. Because the stuff I write about and how I write it is a big, fat, red velvet rope that says this stuff isn’t for them.
Anyone who doesn’t find your stuff interesting doesn’t need to be there.
Be yourself and it can’t be boring.
Yes, there are a ton of blogs out there that bore me to tears. But I’m 99% convinced that it’s not because the people who write them are boring.
I’m pretty sure that it’s actually because the people writing them are reining themselves in. Restraining themselves. Holding back from putting their true internal dialogue out there.
There’s something reserved or constrained. Some stuckification that’s keeping them from letting their inner goofball come out and play.
If you show up as YOURSELF it won’t be boring. It can’t be.
But even if I’m completely wrong and these people really are that boring, there’s still the “right people” thing. Maybe I’m just not their right people. And their right people will love them madly regardless. So either way, you’re good.
Scenario 2: I can’t talk about this stuff to total strangers.
Yes, blogging can get pretty personal. I’ve talked about the second worst summer of my life. About being poor and terrified and about falling apart completely over my friend who killed himself. About going back in time and healing my heart.
Is that hard? Absolutely.
And, as someone wrote in the comments to last weeks post:
I especially hesitate on issues of privacy. How much of myself do I want to expose to strangers? How much of my family?
Things to consider:
You don’t have to expose everything.
Start talking about stuff you’re comfortable with and gradually expand your comfort zone without having to leave it.
Set boundaries. (With yourself and with others)
You can make up nicknames for people. Or use initials. Or leave out certain bits.
Things will morph and shift and change anyway, but at least you’ll be interacting consciously with the process.
Maybe you want to agree with certain people in your life about which topics will be off-limits. Not everything needs to be shared.
Or whatever, you could go completely postmodern like the addictively great Black Hockey Jesus and have a blog that defies reality in all of its forms. He might or might not have a wife who might or might not have a hundred different names.
And is he just kidding about his four year old daughter’s fifteen year old phantasmagorical boyfriend? Is any of this happening at all? And does that matter?
Vulnerability and honesty are the highest currency online.
They’re also your protection against scenario #1. Trust me, you will not be boring if you’re talking truthfully about the stuff you really think about.
Being honest and vulnerable makes it easier for people to relate to you. It allows you to be human, which is the sexiest thing there is in the land of blog.
The biggest problem I see with blogs (yes, the boring ones!) is that the people writing them try to protect themselves by wrapping themselves up in Expertise. They talk down to me. They lecture me.
They give me lists and bullet points and concepts but there’s no one there to connect with. And it’s not the sexy kind of distance. It’s the lonely kind.
No one wants a flawless expert. We want empathy. We want to identify with you. We want to know that you understand our pain because you know it intimately and are moving through it. Well, that’s what I want.
You don’t need to be vulnerable in a “strategic” way (ew). You just want to let who you are shine a little brighter.
Bottom line: the more personality you show, the better. As Naomi says, show a little skin.
And given the fact that every time she writes about cowering under the covers in terror of failure she gets more clients, I think we could all use a bit more of that sort of thing.
Terrifying? Oh, absolutely. I’m feeling kinda nervous right this second telling you how nervous I sometimes get when I post.
But it’s honest. It’s a practice. A practice I get to do at my own pace in my own quiet, introverted way in my own room from behind a screen.
And — in a very weird, completely discomfiting and counter-intuitive way — it’s shockingly good for business.
In fact, ever since I realized I could just be myself on my blog and this is actually enough to support my entire business, I’ve dropped every single “marketing strategy” that I was either doing or — more likely — thinking I should be doing. But we can talk more about that some other time.
One last point.
This point actually works for just about any scenarios you could imagine. In fact, I could have probably skipped my other points and just made this one.
Because this is …. um, whatever you call the card that takes all in a really brutal game of poker. This is my ace of spades or something. I don’t know. You know. You’ll tell me.
Anyway. Here it is.
Blogging is nothing more than therapy you don’t have to pay for.
That’s it. Just think of it as the cheapest form of therapy known to man. It’s your own 50 minute hour with no one interrupting you!
Forget about all these people. Forget about your “target market” and “their needs” and all the stuff that the experts and biggifiers tell us we should be focusing on every second of the day.
Writing is healing. It will be healing for your right people when they read it. It will be their gift later. But right now — in the writing — it’s for you.
The rest is gravy.
Next week we’ll be talking about the other thing that keeps us from knowing what to say: perfectionism. Ahhhhh, perfectionism.
But this will do for now … and if not, I can work on my own perfectionism over the week and see what comes up. Or not. Either way I’ll probably be writing about it though.
I don’t care about time management.
There’s a giant semi-annoying cliche in the world of people who talk about time-management and productivity stuff: we need to make better use of our time.
The experts and biggifiers love to tell us about how we all have the same twenty four hours in the day which means, apparently, that some of us (them) make better use of these hours than the rest of us (us).
I don’t know about you, but I can’t hear this kind of thing without detecting a little self-satisfied smirk in the voice of whoever is saying it — and then wanting to punch them.
Yes, it’s true that there are, by most accounts, twenty four hours in each day. And sure, when it comes to time it’s “quality, not quantity” — but come on! These are such unhelpful things to say. And frankly, kind of boring.
And anyway, there’s so much more to it than that.
The thing about time:
It’s not about how you use your time.
It’s about how you treat your time.
It’s about the things you do to get in the zone when you need to be in the zone.
And it’s about the way you care for yourself when you’re not in the zone.
It’s your relationship to time. Which can change. Which will change. But it’s not just about being more “efficient” or “effective” or all that other boardroom jargon.
Of course I have way too much to say about this. But I managed to get it down to a few points. Okay, nine points.
1. You have to take time to make time.
Just like with spending money to make money. It’s investing in yourself.
The time you take for time out is an investment. A smart one.
If you take the time to stop and get in the zone, the time you spend doing the thing will be of a much, much, much higher quality. You’ll get more done and you’ll get it done faster. But you have to stop to get there.
2. Actual time. Not just counting to ten or something.
Sure, taking three deep breaths is lovely. Always. I’m for it. But that’s not the kind of “taking time” I’m talking about. Take real time.
Breaks. Pauses. Stopping. Conscious, intentional time to get focused and centered. As well as “soft” time to clear your head in a guilt-free way.
3. However, it doesn’t have to be a huge chunk.
This isn’t the David Allen you-have-to-take-two-weeks-off kind of thing. Or the “let’s all take regular vacations” thing.
You don’t need to put this off until that trip or sabbatical you might let yourself take when things calm the hell down.
Eight minutes of meditation. One ten minute Emergency Calming Techniques recording. Five minutes of Shiva Nata (wacky yoga brain training).
Six minutes of tapping on pressure points, resting on the floor with an eye pillow or repeating the words “It’s getting easier for me to make time and space for myself”.
Or even going for a short walk around the block. Taking a shower. Stretching.
Not all of those. One of them. Or anything else that allows you to tune into your internal rhythms, get some perspective and remember why you’re really doing what you’re doing.
4. The fear: if I don’t push, I’ll give up and it will never happen.
There’s an terrific phrase in Hebrew that describes this phenomenon: to go with your head against the wall.
You push push push and fight fight fight and it all happens in this frustrated, strained, high-stress way. And of course it always turns out that actually it’s the kind of door that you’re supposed to pull. Whoops.
Or that there’s a shortcut around the corner that doesn’t involve breaking through things.
Or that if you just ask nicely they’ll let you in.
Forcing yourself to make “better use” of your time by deciding that you have to just plow through and make it happen works … some of the time. But as a life philosophy it will wear you down.
Sometimes the most powerful thing is to meet that fear, and talk to it with love and a little logic:
“Hey, I get that you’re afraid that without pushing it won’t get done. That makes sense. I really want to reassure you that I’m also committed to getting this thing done. It’s just that I need to be in the zone to get this thing done faster. And to do that, I need to take time to get there.
And even though it seems like taking a break isn’t going to help, let’s just give it a shot. Because what if we can use these five minutes to really recharge and get focused … and then come back and just demolish this thing? World domination, baby!”
5. The truth: You always do better work when you stop to regroup.
This morning I woke up half an hour later than usual. I didn’t have a post written for today but I knew I wanted to write about time. About taking it and having it and relating to it.
So of course my first thought was “Well, if I skip my morning meditation I’ll have 45 more minutes for my writing!”
Luckily my sense of irony woke up faster than the rest of me, and pointed out that I actually write better and faster and enjoy it more when I write after meditating.
I had to admit that my sense of irony is right and that I might have to promote it. (My intuition is the CEO of my business, but maybe irony could be the VP of efficiency?)
We negotiated a little and the end result was that I would meditate until it felt like I was done … and if this took a lot of time or a little time I’d be okay with it.
Thirty minutes later I sat down to write. Here I am. I still don’t know what I’m going to say, but at least I’m feeling like I trust myself. Which is pretty huge.
6. Find out which times are even likely candidates for you to get in the zone.
Charlie Gilkey from Productive Flourishing has some great stuff about using heat mapping to determine what your productive times are and about how to work with those times in a way which actually works.
Because if it’s not a time that’s going to work for you, you either need to take time to make it work better for you … or maybe you can just give yourself permission to not have to be productive in that time. Ahhhhhhhh.
Lovely.
Charlie totally gets how important it is to shift your relationship with time not to have “more” time, but so that you’re not just abusing yourself or pushing because you think you should.
So that your relationship with yourself can be a healthy one.
7. Your relationship with time is a reflection of your relationship with yourself.
Roll your eyes if you want. I don’t mind. I was a cynical, anti-all-things-cheesy kind of person long before I was a yoga professional, and still abhor a good meaningless cliche when I hear one.
But I can appreciate the simple truth of this one.
Working on my relationship with time is in itself time well spent. Because it brings me closer to what I really need from myself.
The better I get at noticing the things that trigger my distress, the easier it is for me to meet those needs and give myself the kind of encouragement and motivation that actually works.
The more time I give to myself, the more time I have to give to everyone else. And they get to enjoy that time more too, because I’m focused and centered and able to give.
8. Even though we know this, we forget it.
My wonderful friend Pam Slim called me last week for twenty minutes of destuckification help as she gets closer to finishing her ridiculously awesome Escape from Cubicle Nation book.
She’s helped me with all sorts of things before and given me some much-needed pep talks, so I was more than happy to be there for her.
And Pam’s a seriously smart cookie, so she already knows this stuff. She knows about the power of taking breaks. She knows that thinking she needs to pressure herself to get more done is actually hurting her and not helping her.
Even when we know it, it’s so easy to get sucked back into the pushing. Into deciding there just isn’t time to rest. Because there are big crazy DEADLINES for goodness sake!!! This happens to me too. A lot. It’s okay.
So we were talking about the scary and about the power of tiny, restorative periods to get back into the groove and sustain the momentum. About how pausing isn’t actually taking a break from the book, it’s helping the book grow and nurturing it and stuff.
And since she knew all this stuff, it wasn’t like this was a new concept. But then when we did some emergency calming techniques she said, “Oh! It’s not stepping away from the book. This is totally what I need to do to get the book done!”
Sometimes you really just need one more penny to drop for you to get it in your body and not just in your mind.
It will come. I know this seems crazy but you’ve got time for this too.
Something will show up to help you. A new understanding. Or a little reminder. Or someone to give you permission to pause.
9. Yes, this is all yoga.
All this stuff I’m talking about is really all yoga stuff. And again, when I say “yoga” I’m really talking about the science of learning how you work and then liking yourself anyway.
All these points are, in one way or another, yoga principles and yoga concepts. So yeah, I really wrote this for Non-sucky Yoga Month.
And, more to the point, I am 100% convinced that while you could look at doing some non-sucky yoga as a way to spend half an hour or an hour, it will actually bring more time into your life in the form of calm, focus, patience, clarity and love. Stuff like that.
10. Read this:
If this whole “take time to make time” thing is new to you — or even if it isn’t, you might want to read these posts I wrote about the “but I have no time!” problem (which has a useful 45 second exercise) and about the science of taking breaks.
I’m done making points.
Because this is a lot of words. And because I need to go take a break.
To do a little breathing. Drink a little tea. Think about what I need right now. And then go do it.
See you tomorrow?
p.s. You know this is the last week of the non-sucky yoga month sale, right? It ends a week from today. Obviously I’m not going to give you any cliches about time, but I thought you might want to know. 🙂
Turkish food and other wonderful things
It is true that sometimes I complain about being internet famous and the enormous amounts of complaints, fanmail (sometimes excessively bizarre) and general weirdness (nearly always excessively bizarre) that it generates.
But the truth is that gems like this make up for everything.
The quite unique Douglas Buchanan who is 79 and a fellow Shivanaut — and altogether the most charming and delightful correspondent a person could wish for — sent me the following in response to last Friday’s post.
Dear Happy Havi and Splendiferous Duck,
At breakfast today I saw my wife Shirley reading a book on Turkish cooking. Apparently she read your blog before I did and picked up on your gentleman friend and his culinary prowess.
We have just totally reorganized our place and Shirley, who was once the recipe columnist of a newspaper I ran in Chicago, put a few dozen of her cookery books aside for our son. Among them was the Turkish book which your blog temporarily saved from expulsion.
Maybe you could ask your talented friend to make you Imam Bayildi which has a great story.
Apparently the Imam fainted when he first tasted it. Two reasons were given. His palate was so overwhelmed with pleasure that he lost consciousness. He fainted again apparently on learning how much olive oil was needed to make it. Pleasure and frugality.
I hope you can get REALLY good olive oil in Portland. I sop it up from a plate with Italian bread and high quality parmesan cheese made from caribou milk, a meal in itself.
My own limited experience with impossibly delectable Turkish cooking is from the Middle Eastern Restaurant in Chicago and from my first experience with Turkish coffee when I was an editor in Chicago and met a fellow alchemist on the premises.
You may like to read ‘Douglas discovers Coffee‘ 02/20/2008 on gatesofhorn.com and your talented friend may know the famous Turkish verse about the importance of coffee:
Gönűl ne kahve ister, ne kahvehane;
Gönűl sohbet ister, kahve bahane !That is the limit of my knowledge of Turkish but it’s a great verse. Sorry I couldn’t find the right accent for the u, it’s the same as over the ö.
A quicky precis of the Turkish verse is: It’s not the coffee or the coffee house, it’s the relationships that are important, the coffee is just a pretext.
Bliss filled caravans of pleasure from your kitchen to you,
Blessings and Hilarious Quacks,
Douglas
I know. I wasn’t kidding when I said best correspondent ever. He’s just marvelous.
And yes, my gentleman friend has — on more than one occasion — made for me Imam Bayildi, and it is completely worthy of a good swoon.
Where am I going with this?
Well, of course as soon as I read this I had to tell Douglas all about the best cookbook in the entire world.
And then I thought that I should probably tell you as well. Though now I’ll have nothing to give you for your house-warming party. Crap.
Anyway, the best cookbook in the entire world is Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Jewish Vegetarian Recipes from Around The World by Gil Marks.
If you’re thinking that Jewish + Vegetarian = not especially appealing, just take my word for it. Just this once. This book is outrageously fantastic. We have never made anything less than sensational from this book. ‘Tis the bomb, I tell you.
Plus there’s neat history tidbits! And fun things like maps that track the migration of stuffed peppers around the world! Awesomeness.
And while we’re telling amusing stories, I have one.
My amusing story:
It was a couple of years ago and my father was coming to San Francisco for a conference, so we arranged to spend the better part of a day together.
He handed me a beautiful package wrapped in gold paper and I said something like “Oh hooray, a present! For me!” and he said that no, it was actually for my gentleman friend.
And no, he wouldn’t tell me what it was since it wasn’t for me, it was for my gentleman friend.
I lugged around this box all day and then went home. My gentleman friend saw me enter with the box and we had the following exchange.
My gentleman friend: Oooooh! You got a present!
Me: Uh no, actually you did.
MGF: Huh?
Me: Here you go!
MGF: What is it?
Me: I don’t know. It’s for you.
MGF: Huh?
Me: I know!
MGF: (making box-open-ey noises) Oh wow. It’s a Jewish vegetarian cookbook. Looks like there’s amazing stuff in here.
Me: It’s a what?
MGF: OMG! Ethiopian braised cabbage! Spicy!
Me: You do realize that you’re not actually Jewish or vegetarian, right?
MGF: Well, you know how it is … close enough!
Me: Don’t you think that’s weird?
MGF: No. You’re Jewish and vegetarian. And I cook for you. Hey, I’m going to go make this cabbage thing.
Me: *sigh*
MGF: Oy. What a day. What a day.
Best. Cookbook. Ever.
I’m just saying.
Anyway, you should own it. I asked Douglas if I could reprint his email and here was his response:
Happy One…you have standing permission to use anything I write to you or for you in any way that your elvish and hippy duck loving thump thump thump desires.
Exactly.
Happy Sunday. Make something good to eat.
Friday Check-in #12: the “ducks in a row” 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.
Checking in again …
What a week. What a week. Who’s up for collapsing on a couch with me?
Selma is, apparently. Moving on.
The hard stuff
Needing comfort, support and stability and not always finding it.
Part of searching for a new home requires filling out incredibly obnoxious forms with enough invasively personal information to make one (okay, me) feel incredibly uncomfortable.
Even though I know it’s just “the way things are done”, each time it happens I pitch a fit.
Because really, it drives me crazy that I have to give a complete stranger my social security number, bank account numbers, credit card number and a hundred other things, and then just trust that a. they aren’t going to do anything nefarious with it and b. no one is going to break into their filing cabinet, you know?
Ugh.
Also I despise having credit reports done on me because I haven’t any credit. That’s what happens when you live abroad for over a decade. I wasn’t here.
But apparently it looks rather suspicious when you don’t have credit.
Luckily, every place I’ve lived the owners have fallen madly in love with me and my duck, so we just explain about living in the Middle East and Europe for years and years and then we all laugh about how crazy life is.
We’ll see how it goes this time.
Sad sad sad dreams.
I keep dreaming about my friend who killed himself. Not really about him so much as about me missing him.
It’s like, I’m over the grief during the day but then in my dreams I’m sobbing and falling apart and yelling at him for leaving me.
Sometimes I don’t even remember it was a dream until I stop and think, “Wait a minute, I couldn’t have been sitting on the edge of a bathtub and crying my eyes out, we don’t even have a bathtub!”
I keep telling myself that it will hurt less, but it’s really more that it just hurts different.
The good stuff
I voted!
Yes, this was my first time voting in an American presidential thing. Whee, I did the thing!
Though I must say it was ridiculously anticlimactic. Turns out that in Oregon you just mail your vote in. Very uninspiring.Â
I don’t care. It still goes belongs in the good rather than the hard. I was totally excited to exercise my civic something or other.
Who’s the freak now, huh?
Hey, I’m not the only one doing the Friday ritual anymore! Yay, Chas!
He talks about his week, he talks about ducks (well, getting them in a row but a duck is a duck, right?), and about yoga and about his “creative love child of a fluent self practice“. And about butternut squash ratatouille.
I mean, wow. Doing the Friday ritual and having my week. Weird, huh?
Best “testimonial” ever?
The fabulous Sonia Simone wrote a lovely post about not freaking out during the recession.
And among a list of awesome, biggified people and some uh, much more traditional ideas than anything I’ve talked about in a while, she also included me and Non-Sucky Yoga Month!
There’s no one better than Havi Brooks at taming the full-on freakout. She’s the ninja of nonagression, the contessa of calm, the diva of destuckification.
Isn’t she perceptive? I mean, nice? We love Sonia. Sonia rocks. Read her post.
We found the house!!!!!
Remember when I stuck my heart on my sleeve and wrote that charming personal ad to the house I want to crush on?
Well, the house found us. And it’s the one.
Spacious with high ceilings and wooden floors and light everywhere. There are cozy window seats. There is a garden with tomato plants. There is a meditation room. There is an enormous front porch with a swing. It is beautiful.
I have fallen madly in love with it which is wonderful and horrible as I can’t stop dancing around and being an on-and-off heart-breakingly enamored basket case while waiting for the owners to decide that yes, we are in fact the ones. (We are!)
So if all goes well (knock on laptop), we — that is, me, my gentleman friend, my duck and possibly my kid brother — will be moving in to this delightful space.
I’m giving you all credit for finding this place, given how many people were sending good rental vibes or whatever. And keep sending them! We need all the help we can get. *swoon*
Non-sucky Yoga Month is so so so cool.
I kind of figured that no one would care about Non-Sucky Yoga Month but me.
Given the amount of enthusiastic email and the fact that half the 54 packages have already sold, I’m going to say that a. I was wrong and b. it’s probably going to be a pretty short month.
So if it’s your kind of thing, or actually (and even better) if it totally isn’t your kind of thing, go pick up your Non-Sucky Yoga Package this weekend.
That’s it for me ….
And yes yes yes, absolutely join in my Friday ritual if you feel like it and/or there’s something you just want to say out loud too.
Yeah? What was something hard and/or good (or weird?) that happened in your week?
And, as always have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious weekend. And a happy week to come.
How to write a FAQ
So last week I had the excessive hubris (yes, of course hubris is always excessive, but mine somehow especially so) to think that if I answered a question-I-get-asked-all-the-time right here on the blog, I could save myself some time and energy and not have to answer a gazillion people by email.
Then, because I’m extra-clever that way, I thought I’d not only answer the question (is there a yoga dvd that doesn’t suck?) but take it a couple steps further.
My super-genius plan was to come up with something that would actually help people do non-sucky yoga rather than just thinking about maybe buying a dvd. Or buying it and tossing it on a shelf to feel guilty about later.
And yes, because you’re smarter than me (and you know my duck totally said this was going to happen) a thousand people sent me questions about the non-sucky yoga package.
If you’re laughing at me, it’s you and the gods, baby. Because hahahahaha, I should have known I’d never be able to get out of writing some sort of FAQ.
When the fates demand a sacrifice (a FAQrifice?), you have to pony up.
Also, if we ignore that last sentence for a second, I want to point out something that should be obvious and isn’t:
The most important thing to know about a FAQ is that — despite the overwhelming temptation to call it “Just the FAQs, ma’am” or “How the FAQ should I know?” — all the FAQ jokes have been made. Well, until a minute ago it was all of them but one. Now it’s all of them.
It’s over. Just accept it.
At least six things to consider when FAQ-ing it up.
Call a FAQ a FAQ.
Yes, I know I’m the one who recently referred to it as a QTAAWPF (Questions That Are Asked With Predictable Frequency), but that was a joke. Kind of.
People just want to know that you’re going to answer their questions.
Update often.
The reason there isn’t a Fluent Self FAQ at the moment is that even the last of my six hundred versions of one is old as Methuselah’s monkey and even less relevant.
Don’t be the person (excuse me while I go hide under the kitchen table) who has to write a post about how to write a FAQ because they don’t actually feel like writing a FAQ.
What you do — and how you talk about it — will be shifting and changing as a matter of course, because whatever you do (business, art, writing) is a reflection of who you are.
And you, my dear, are always engaged in the dynamic process that is being alive. And being alive is about flow and change.
So a FAQ that doesn’t change can be a sign that there’s some stagnation and stuckification happening. Or that you’re just really, really busy. Cough.
Make sure it’s only questions that are frequently asked.
It’s so easy for a FAQ to turn into you just going on and on about random stuff you want to tell people. Boring! That’s what your blog is for. *rimshot*
Oh, I amuse myself. It’s a bit early. I haven’t had breakfast.
But back to the point.
Make sure it really is stuff they want to know (and ask you about) and not just the stuff you want them to know.
What, you want an embarrassing example? Okay. When I first launched this website three years ago, everyone said that I had to get corporate work because that’s where the money was.
I didn’t actually want corporate work, but when you have no idea what the hell you’re doing and all the nice people at the SBA and at dinner parties think you should, you tend to think they’re right.
And yes, I could have done it. But really only if someone from Google or Apple had phoned me to say, “Hey, you’re a wacky brain training expert who knows how to change people’s habits so they can get more done and you can teach us how to generate epiphanies … willya do it? Willya?”
So my FAQ answered the (for me) completely fake and phony question “What can The Fluent Self do for my company or organization?” Ugh. Bleargh.
Don’t do that. And if there is stuff you want people to know about what you do, be honest and transparent about that.
Add a section to the FAQ and call it “Questions no one asks but I wish they would!”
Bonus lesson here: trust your instincts.
Replenish. Don’t make decisions from that panicky tight place. Make decisions when you’re feeling spacious and replenished and loved.
And if you’re not feeling those things, go take a nap or listen to my freebie Recoding the Mind meditation (link goes to mp3) which I can’t stand but people love.
Or splurge on my Emergency Calming Techniques package (which I am madly in love with) or read some of Mark’s stuff (awesome) or do some non-sucky yoga or something.
But do something.
You can also use your blog as a way to build a FAQ.
Cheating? Not really. You just use different blog posts to answer different questions, and then you can link to the individual posts from the FAQ page.
This is especially useful if you’re strapped for content, a problem which is apparently plaguing the blogosphere and a problem that I have never, ever had because hello, I do Dance of Shiva almost every day which has to be the most idea-generating practice of all time.
But if I wanted to answer a bunch of questions about Non-Sucky Yoga Month on my blog (I don’t, so this is only an example), I could write an Ask Havi post that started with a real, live question.
Like this:
“Will this yoga work for “big girls” who don’t look like barbie dolls?”
And obviously I could — aside from just answering her question with a resounding, reassuring YES! — talk about how this is actually the perfect yoga dvd to start out with for a “big girl” who doesn’t look like a barbie doll.
Because it’s all about working with your body as it is right now, and adjusting your movements to accommodate that. Because these poses work with deep tissue and fascia, so they don’t require a lot of strength or flexibility.
Because it gives you a really deep understanding of how your bones and muscles fit together, which is a great first step towards being able to give your body a lot of love.
But — and this is important — I could also talk about all sorts of things that would be interesting even to people who have no interest in ever doing yoga.
About identity. About how being able to practice kindness with yourself is so much more important than whether or not you can (or ever will) stick a leg behind your head or whatever.
About what it might look like to have a healthy, compassionate relationship with your body and how freaking hard that is most of the time.
Because you don’t want to bore the people who haven’t asked the question.
You want your content to be specific enough that you can help the person who came to you because she needs an answer, and yet broad enough that Joe the Plumber can still feel as though you’re talking to him too. Okay, not that broad.
What I mean is that you want your regular readers to still hang in there with you, just because you’re cool, so that it’s not all disconcerting that you’ve gone slightly off-topic.
If your FAQ is all on one page, keep the answers very, very short.
Like this:
QUESTION: I want to get your Non-Sucky Yoga package but I don’t have a yoga mat. Do I need a mat to do the practice?
HAVI & SELMA: Oh, absolutely not. You can just spread a couple blankets on the floor.
There are hardly any standing poses in this DVD anyway … and on the rare occasion that one comes up you can just step off the blankets and onto the floor for a little more support (and to avoid falling on your face which is embarrassing and leaves bruises).
See? If I were answering that question in a blog post, I’d feel fine rambling on about how yoga mats almost always unnecessary or ranting away about what a scam they are.
Or telling you about how my own teacher (the renowned Ukrainian yoga master) does downward-facing dog on ice.
And how we’re not doing crazy hard-core stuff like that for Non-Sucky Yoga Month because non-sucky yoga is all about creating a safe, comfortable place to hang out with your body and give it some love so it can love you back.
But if it’s just on the FAQ page? Get to the point.
Use your site navigation to answer questions.
The real, true most-most-most frequently asked questions should be answered in your navigation.
The things people ask me the most are “is this stuff for me?” and “how does it work?” and “how much does it cost to work with you?” and “are there more affordable ways to get awesome Havi goodness without having to actually hire you?”
I answer all those questions in the top navigation of the site. People go read Is this you? and Hire my duck! and it saves me at least an hour or two a week in email-answering time.
You can also take this even further by doing things like having a non-policy policy (with your comments or on your contact page) or a page for the media about how to contact you and how awesome the stuff you do is.
Which reminds me that I still haven’t told anyone about being quoted as a mind-body expert in Woman’s Day last year. Which, given that 99% of my readers wouldn’t be caught dead reading Woman’s Day outside of a dentist’s office, is probably not that impressive.
But if I put my mind to it, I’m sure I can find a way to work that into one of the FAQ bits too. Or we can just leave it here.
Uh, I think we’re done.
So yeah, there are at least twenty questions about Non-sucky Yoga Month for me to answer, but I’m at least in more of a mood to rewrite the dead FAQ. Or to create a new one altogether.
Questions? Oh, okay. Fine. Leave them in the comments and one of the smart people who reads this will answer them! 🙂
Or I will. But after breakfast.