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.
3 ways to annoy the people you want to help: Part Two
I’m in Vancouver at the moment, taking Michael Port‘s “Beyond Booked Solid” seminar. The whole “okay, your business is thriving madly, now you need better systems to keep you sane” thing.
If you’re wondering how I manage to be attending a seminar and writing blog posts, I’m not. My superpowers aren’t that super.
We’re in session ALL DAY, so this is something I wrote a few days ago… and we’ll be back (very, very soon) to talking about patterns and habits and how to change them.
Okay, this is the second post in a series of three about how to annoy the people you want to help, which of course you don’t actually want to do. You can read the first one here.
The idea is this:
Sometimes when we want to help a friend or family member do something differently, or to help our potential clients and customers feel safe and comfortable receiving help, there’s stuff we do that scares them off and gets on their nerves.
Even though that’s not what we actually meant to do at all. Even though our intention is clean and loving and all that stuff.
Yesterday we talked about the first way to annoy the people you want to help: Don’t speak their language.
Today it’s all about the second way to annoy the people you want to help:
Put them in an awkward, uncomfortable situation!
There are so many ways you could go about doing this.
A big one is just not considering the things that people might fear or have worries about.
If you give these things some careful thought, putting yourself in their shoes, you can reassure them that none of the things they fear are going to happen. By not doing this, you accidentally give them reasons to feel frustrated and resentful.
For example …
“How’d you like a sharp stick in the eye? No? Really?”
I love acupuncture.
Love it. Not like “oh, man, I love carrot juice.” No, I love acupuncture with my entire heart. I would marry acupuncture and it could have my babies and stuff.
Acupuncture has a branding problem, though, since — I know this is somehow surprising to practically everyone who works in the field — getting poked with sharp needles doesn’t actually sound like fun.
It doesn’t.
It took me years to try acupuncture. Years!
Like, at least a decade after the first person I like and trust told me that acupuncture was the best thing that had ever happened to her and that it had healed her lifelong allergies and made her whole life happy.
The reason I never went and tried it out is that I had two nagging questions. And these questions weren’t being answered in the brochures or the websites I was looking at.
One was “So how much will this hurt?” and the other was “Will I have to get naked?”
The “How much will this hurt?” question is sometimes addressed on websites but usually only very casually as in, “Don’t worry!” Well, if I am worried, just telling me not to probably isn’t going to help.
Just speak to my fear and recognize that I have it.
With the acupuncture example … can you say that it’s like a quick pinprick? That it hurts less than giving blood?
That it releases insane happy hormones that will blot out the smidgen of pain so quickly that you’ll forget it even happened?
As I eventually found out once I tried it, acupuncture can actually be one of the most blissful, joyous experiences in the world. And even on days when it’s not outrageously mindblowing, it’s still pretty fantastic.
If you’re an acupuncturist, find someone like me right now, and quote me saying that on your website. Maybe even on your business cards. Tell your ideal clients that it doesn’t really hurt. Or at least that it won’t hurt much. Or at least that it will be worth it.
The “do I have to get naked” question is never addressed anywhere, and — even though I know other people who also had this question — it took me a while to work up the courage to ask it.
You know what? There are people in this world with histories of abuse and horribleness. There are people who, for whatever reason, don’t want to take their clothes off in your office. If they aren’t going to have to (and I’ve never had to) … tell them.
Moral of the story: if you want more clients and you don’t want them feeling awkward and uncomfortable, think of every single concern that a person might reasonably have and answer it somewhere on your website.
People won’t always tell you what they’re feeling nervous about, but a combination of common sense, identifying with them, and interviewing friends and former clients will give you a pretty good idea.
But there’s also another way to make your people feel awkward and uncomfortable.
Don’t give them a price.
This is a long, complicated debate that a ton of people have written about. We can get into the details of that whole discussion some other time.
In the meantime, trust me when I say that using a sliding scale or being in any way vague about prices can be panic-inducing.
Next week I’ll be at Michael Port’s Beyond Booked Solid seminar [Ed. note: Actually, there right now] . It’s a two-day program that was originally priced at about $1100, if I remember correctly. I paid something like $500, which is an alumni rate.
That was cool. It seemed more than reasonable, and I knew it would be worth it to me just to hang out with him.
Hanging out with Michael! I’ve been a Michael Port fan for several years and have taken a couple of his programs. He’s the real deal. Michael is a sweet, kind, compassionate guy who’s also smart and fun and does Aikido. I just like him.
He ended up doing a promotion, though, for this program, that kind of freaked me out.
Basically one day he decided that people should just pay what they want for this seminar. Now, it’s weird enough when it’s an energy healer in Berkeley offering you a sliding scale, but we’re talking about someone whose smiling face appears in full-page ads in Inc. magazine.
So … what happens when a marketing superstar says “Pay what you want!”?
Well, I’ll have to ask him how that worked out for him.
But I imagine that some people probably felt awesome. Like YEEHAH, I so wanted to do this and couldn’t, but hey, now I’m paying $100 and it’s doable and it’s the bomb.
And some other people (including me) felt weirded out. And uncomfortable.
When he said originally “Hey, this is how much it costs”, I trusted him. I didn’t need to think about how much it should or could cost. There was pricing resonance. There was stability and safety.
It was clear what the thing was “worth” (whatever that means), and it was clear that people who do his programs regularly get special treatment which is always a perk. And that was it.
Because it’s all about safety.
When I found out about this new “pay what you want” thing though, I was really relieved that I’d already booked my ticket and flights. Because otherwise I might not have gone.
It would have been too awkward to pay less.
Or think about it like this: suppose this were my last $500 and I’d decided to spend it on a marketing seminar (uh, don’t do that, by the way).
You know what? That scenario still feels better to me than the embarrassing situation of having him know that even though I’m supposedly “booked solid”, whoops, I don’t actually have any money. Horrible.
And it would have also been annoying to pay $1000, knowing that I didn’t actually have to. The thing about having a price is, knowing what it is gives you a lot of security.
Even if that knowing is disappointing. Even if that price point means you can’t swing it right now.
It’s one thing to have a scholarship fund or something, maybe one seat you give away to someone who needs it. It’s another to put the burden of decision on the person who is already feeling vulnerable because they’re coming to you for help.
And yes, I’m going to ask Michael about this when I see him. Because I like him so much. Because I have so much respect for him both as a marketing expert and as a real live human being who cares about people.
Maybe he’ll explain it to me in a way that makes so much sense that I’ll write a post taking back everything I said today. And maybe he’ll say, whoah, I had no idea this was making people feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. Will keep you, um, posted… 🙂
Bottom line.
People have worries and concerns.
They’re allowed to have them. Even when these worries and concerns seem kind of irrelevant or even ridiculous to us, the people offering help.
Helping is what we do. So when we ignore these worries and concerns — which almost always happens by accident and yeah, it’s something I totally need to work on too — we’re neglecting the people we care about most.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an acupuncturist or a consultant or a lawyer or whatever. Make sure that everything you do is about creating a feeling of safety and support for the people who need your help.
And hey, go corner some of your happy clients and ask them what they were most nervous about before their first visit. I’ll go do that again too.
Okay, back soon. I’ll be checking in to hang out with you in the comments though…
3 ways to annoy the people you want to help: Part One
I’m in Vancouver at the moment, attending Michael Port‘s seminar on “Beyond Booked Solid”. It’s about the whole “okay, your business is thriving madly, now you need better systems to keep you sane” thing.
If you’re wondering how I manage to be attending a seminar and writing blog posts, I’m not. My superpowers aren’t that super.
Because man, it’s intense and we’re in session ALL DAY. I wrote this a few days ago!
I know you probably don’t want to annoy the people you want to help.
Or to scare them off. Or to do anything that would result in losing their trust completely.
But since a lot of us do that anyway, inadvertently, play along with me. Here are three ways to seriously annoy the people you so dearly want to help.
And — even though I’m talking about this mostly from a business perspective because that’s what’s on my mind — it doesn’t matter what kind of people come to mind for you. The people you want to help or support could be friends, clients, customers, students, someone in your family…
The point is: you have some sort of point you want to get across, so that they can receive this wonderful help you have to give. Here’s how to mess that up completely and ensure the most glorious backfiring of all time.
NOTE: Apologies to everyone who wants to get back to talking more specifically about patterns and habits and how to change them. We’ll return to regular programming soon, I promise.
Right. So this is a series. Three ways to annoy the people you want to help? Let’s start with the first.
Don’t speak their language.
There are so many ways to do this.
You could do it figuratively …
Like the yoga clothing company that sends me emails about how their clothes will help me be the hottest chick in the studio.
Um … if you know I’m a yoga professional, you should be able to guess that it’s a spiritual and/or personal development practice for me, not a hotness practice.
Or take products that help small business owners bring traffic to their websites. A bunch of these are designed for coaches, consultants and trainers. If you’re trying to appeal to these people, it’s in your best interest to remember that these people are helper-mice. They care about helping people.
So working in all those graphics of floating dollar bills isn’t really speaking to the thing they care about most. It might be an added benefit, but it’s not why they want traffic.
They want traffic so that the people they want to help can find them and receive that help.
It might even freak out the ones who are worried about people mistakenly perceiving them as only being in it for the money.
Yes?
Or you could do it literally …
For example, if you’re trying to get your teenager to engage in conversation with you and tell you about his day, say things like “groovy” or “far out” or whatever.
Or worse, you can use whatever slang he and his friends use in the hopes that they won’t fall over laughing, which they will. And no, I have no idea what those words are this year. I’m officially old.
Or much, much, much worse, you can use words that actively drive your readers crazy. Like this:
I got an email from a marketing biggifier a few weeks ago. This guy works with authors and writers to help them promote their books. If you’re someone (like me) who writes as part of their work, this is obviously (at least potentially) very useful.
Here’s the subject header:
Havi, join Tom Antion and I for a book marketing bootcamp Saturday night?
Just so you get the whole picture, this is an email going out to several thousands — if not tens of thousands — of authors. Authors. People who write for a living.
That sound you just heard? Tens of thousands of authors yelling “Join me! Me! Not “I”, you nitwit! Join me and Tom Antion for a blah blah blah! What’s wrong with you?!”
Okay, not all writers get so worked up about grammar that they have to run from the room shrieking, but you know what? Most of them do. And at the very least, every single one of them noticed and experienced that awful, awful nails-on-chalkboard feeling. Nice.
Of course, to be honest, the likelihood of getting me, personally, to sign up for anything that has “Bootcamp” in the name is pretty close to zero.
It’s the yoga thing again. Nonviolence is a given. It’s built into every single thing I do and how I do it … working with fears, dissolving procrastination, letting go of patterns and habits and so on. The whole bootcamp thing just grosses me out.
(And yes, I know there is such a thing as “yoga bootcamp” and I really, really, really don’t want to talk about it. Trust me.)
But whatever, let’s pretend I did want to go to a book marketing bootcamp. Now our biggifier friend just ruined the chances of that ever happening by having a glaring grammatical error in the headline for his promotion. The headline!
Now I pretty much don’t trust anything he has to say about book-writing, because the impression is that this guy doesn’t really read or write or care about grammar and/or proof-reading. Which kind of separates him from most of his readers.
Do I make grammatical mistakes? Oh, for sure. And yeah, I take quite a bit of, oh shall we say creative license with language. Do I proofread carefully? Mmm, not always. But I’m not trying to work specifically with authors. I don’t need them to listen to me. That’s the difference.
So … how do you speak their language?
Okay, now let’s pretend you do actually want the people you’re helping to feel safe and supported:
Obviously the answer to this question is material for at least a couple of months of posting, if not a book or two. So for today I’m just going to sum up quickly and mention a couple of useful resources.
What you need to do is this:
Figure out who your people are. Pay attention to details. Know who you’re talking to.
It helps if you also are one of these people, at least to some extent, so you can identify with them. If you aren’t, find a bunch of people who fit the bill and interview them.
Do your homework.
Learn what would drive them batty and then Don’t. Do. It.
Oh, and read these two books:
Start with pretty much any of the books in Suzette Haden Elgin’s “Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense” series. Because she’s a genius.
And of course Marshall Rosenberg’s book “Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life” (ignore the excruciatingly cheesy poetry that sometimes creeps in, and keep it by the bed for conflict emergencies.)
That’s it. Have fun. Talk to you soon.
Friday RoundUp #6: the weird dream 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.
The hard stuff.
Stress dreams? Really?
One of the things that used to suck about my life — and stopped when I opened my own business — is stress dreams.
I’ve had amazing jobs in my life. For example, working in a grapefruit orchard. In a vineyard. In a homebrew store. As a teacher. As a bartender. As a yoga educator.
And I’ve had terrible jobs. For example, working in a factory. Milking cows at three in the morning. As an office manager. As executive assistant to a nazi CEO. As a bartender. In a toy imports company run by the Moroccan mafia. Charming.
Yes, bartender shows up in both lists. It really depends on the bar. Let’s say we’re talking dive bars in south Tel Aviv. Let’s say people throw bottles at you and stuff.
Anyway, the stress dreams happened regardless of how good or how miserable the job was. The dreams weren’t constant, but they were there.
Whether it was endless barrels of malted barley, cows stampeding across my consciousness or having to make a round of passionfruit margaritas for a bunch of brain-dead jerks …. the stress: it showed up in my dreams.
So.
Four years without stress dreams because my job is really great. Working with clients is a blast. Leading workshops is the best thing ever. Writing: I LOVE it!
And then on Tuesday I had a stress dream. A ridiculous stress dream. Enjoy:
I’d woken up (in the dream, yes?) and realized: ohmylord, someone guest posted on the blog today. Apparently I had inadvertently arranged for the first guest post ever to happen the same day I was going to launch a new product.
Sonia Simone‘s husband, who, in my dream, is called George (but in real life is not, and at that point I didn’t even know if she had one) left a comment saying he didn’t understand the post and that I shouldn’t be confusing my readers. And then I woke up.
I kind of have nothing to say about that other than that I’m going to make some changes in parts of what I do.
Because as far as I’m concerned, having a stress dream that’s even tangentially related to a job that you madly love is a sign that something needs to shift.
Though dreaming about Sonia is pretty cool. Sonia rocks.
The good stuff
Catching up with a dear friend
My beautiful friend Michelle Marlahan — eternally amazing person and probably the best yoga teacher in northern California — was visiting from Sacramento, hooray!
We spent a whole day together, giggled like school girls, caught up on our life adventures and ate crepes. Crepes! It was pretty freaking perfect.
(Also, I’m getting kind of crepe-obsessed. If you’ve received an email from me this week that’s crepe-centric, blame Michelle.)
People use my words!
I’ve been seeing Fluent Self vocabulary (“biggification“, “stuckified“, etc) all around the internets. On Twitter, in blog posts, in email messages, in the comments — everywhere!
It is indescribably awesome to see how people are taking my invented words and running with them.
In our “non-icky self-promotion for people who hate self-promotion” course, some enterprising people even started their own practice group and called it Collective Biggification. Oh, the fabulousness! (I may even write next week about the birth of the word “biggification”… we shall see.)
The “non-icky self-promotion course rocks!
Seriously, I’m having the time of my life. The course is full of smart, funny, interesting people. The work is so much fun and so powerful … Naomi and I are still buzzing over all the amazing responses.
And … people are still signing up.
Really, really cool people. Some of whom are people we are mad fans of because they’re internet-famous (I don’t know if I’m allowed to namedrop?) and we’ve been secretly admiring them from afar for ages.
Now they’ll all be spending some time this weekend listening to the recording of the first call, reading the notes, leaving comments on the (optional) homework pages, and generally kicking non-icky self-promotion ass. Love. It.
That’s it for me ….
And 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 good and/or hard that happened in your week?
And of course: happy weekend. Happy week to come.
Talking truth to fear
A few years ago I took a course with some semi-famous biggified chick on getting over the fear of cold calling.
To be honest, I could not care less about cold calling. I was there for the fear.
Cold calling just isn’t really my style. And at this point in my business (gott sei dank), more people want to hire me than I care to work with.
So even if cold calling weren’t completely terrifying, the likelihood of me ever doing it … not so high. Actually? I pretty much don’t call anyone ever*.
*Which reminds me to go pick up the phone right this second before my mother pokes her head over here to “see what you’re doing on that blogsite of yours”.
Anyway, I didn’t want help with cold calls. What interested me, as someone who works with people on their stuck fear patterns all the time, was the techniques or insights she’d share for working through the fear.
I figured maybe I’d pick up a new cool thing to add to the repertoire. No.
You know what she said?
“Beyond fear is freedom.”
Your advice: it isn’t helpful.
I’m not even kidding. That was her whole thing. Beyond fear is freedom.
She put it out there, paused for dramatic effect to let this pearl of wisdom sink in and then repeated it about seventeen times.
It’s a good thing we were on mute or a hundred people would have heard me go, “Oh, puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeze.”
Okay, so beyond fear is freedom. That is true, yes.
It’s just that the truth of it is overshadowed by the fact that it’s a completely idiotic thing to say.
Well, let’s be fair. It’s equal parts true and stupid. True in that, “yes, that is what happens when you move past a fear.” Stupid in that, “hey, that is the most useless piece of advice ever.”
Even worse, that was pretty much the sum total of her advice. That if you just knew that once you got past the fear there would be freedom, you’d hurry up and do it already. Oh, and that you should just push through the fear like you’re a great big bulldozer.
A big, dumb, mean machine. Lovely.
To have fear is to be human.
Here’s the thing about fear. It is natural and normal. It’s a part of being alive. Fear and trepidation are going to show up all the time and in a lot of places. In the news. In your body. In your relationships.
Sometimes this fear is going to be based on things — or the possibility of things — that pretty much everyone would acknowledge to be legitimately, genuinely scary. Terrorism. Violence. Illness. Tragedy.
Sometimes this fear is going to slip quietly in to your unconscious mind and apply itself to things less obviously rational.
Like alektorophobia (fear of chickens). Or — if you’re Adrian Monk — fear of milk. Or — if you just got a weird feeling from the way I just juxtaposed those two fears — fear of things that aren’t kosher. Sorry about that.
Of course you can take conscious, intentional steps to work with your fear, dissolve your fear and get to know your fear — so you can distance yourself from it and heal it.
That’s part of life too. Maybe even the most important part.
But it’s interaction with your fear that is going to bring you into the place where talking about freedom is even relevant.
The interaction with your fear. Not the bulldozing through it or the stomping on it. And certainly not the knowledge that the freedom is there waiting for you to find it.
The myth of fear.
The myth of fear is that you’re supposed to overcome it or conquer it.
The truth about fear is that if you learn to talk to it and treat it with respect, it will teach you how not to be afraid.
Yes, it can be horrible and crippling and awful.
Trust me on this one. I know fear pretty well. I know the kind that causes full-body trembling and awful heart palpitations. And the kind that makes you think demons are flying at you through the windows. And the kind that has you sobbing and writhing on the floor.
Fear can be debilitating. So I don’t mean to be going off on some annoying spiritual kick about how it’s good for you or something. It’s just that you don’t want to battle it.
And not just because battling it makes the fear stronger (it does), but because — when you talk to it — your fear is the best teacher you will ever have.
As you might imagine, people come to me all the time wanting to know how to give their fears a good kick in the pants. And we always, always, always get through the fear together and back to the calm.
But we don’t do kicking.
Of course kicking sounds like more fun, and of course you want to do it. Good grief, I want to do it. I seriously wish it worked like that sometimes.
It doesn’t work like that.
Here is how it does work.
Your fear is a part of you. So kicking it is like kicking yourself.
You created it. Almost like kicking something you gave birth to.
You created it for a reason. It’s useful to find out what that is.
To protect you from stuff that is dangerous and bad for you. That’s a very legitimate reason.
Right now this protection mechanism isn’t working. Because this fear is paralyzing you instead of protecting you.
It’s not working because your fear — aka your desire to keep yourself safe — is preventing you from moving forward on the things you truly want to do. Exactly.
Instead of kicking fear, you can dissolve it. It can kick back, but it can’t dissolve *you*.
The only way to get the fear to dissolve is to interact with it. Just like you, it wants to be noticed and cared for.
Your fear needs to know that you are taking steps to keep yourself safe. So give it some reassurance.
Talking to your fear.
Think of it this way. Your fear is like a knight. It has a mission or a quest or whatever to keep you safe from failure and humiliation and things going horribly, horribly wrong.
So it keeps you from working on the thing you want to do. It shows up again and again, with worry and doubt and what-iffery.
A misguided strategy, yes. But well-intended. Annoyingly well-intended.
If you want your fear to stop scaring you silly, you’re going to need to reassure it that its mission has not been in vain.
In fact, you can tell your fear that you’re going to release it from its quest and take over the mission of looking out for your own well-being.
Talking to your fear is a great way to achieve distance from it. When you’re talking to your fear, it isn’t you anymore. It’s just a temporary part of you. You contain it, but you contain a lot of things.
This distance, paradoxically, allows you to befriend it.
Befriending it, paradoxically, allows it to become something else.
I know. Argh, stupid paradox. Is it scary to talk to your fear? To even acknowledge its shadowy presence in the room? Absolutely. I’m sorry. Hug.
Three ways to work with fear.
Obviously this stuff is part of a life-long process of working on your stuff. No “three tips” or “five tricks” are going to heal a lifetime of hurt. It’s just more stuff to use in your practice.
But hey, it’s better than being egged on with “beyond fear is freedom”, right?
So here you go. Three things I do to work with fear to achieve the distance that ultimately allows me to get closer to myself — the part of myself that isn’t living in fear.
1. Turning your fear into a duck.
Yes, this is a little odd. I pretend that I my fears have been turned into ducks. That they’re little wooden ducks that follow me on a string.
And then I turn around and say, “Oh, are you guys still there?”
2. Using “even though” sentences.
Even though I have this fear, I’m getting better at noticing when it’s showing up. Even though I want to kick it, I’m reminding myself that it’s a part of me and that it won’t be around forever.
The “even thoughs” acknowledge the fear and give it legitimacy, while still allowing you to introduce new ideas and new energy into the mix.
3. Reminding yourself about the quest.
If your fear is a stout knight sworn to defend you from harm, you’re the knight’s best friend who’s like, “Dude, the war is over. It’s time for you to go home and court Guinevere.”
You want to be constantly, lovingly reassuring the fear that some other part of you can this role of protector now and that you’re going to make sure that everything gets taken care of.
So — that’s the sum of my wisdom today.
Your fear is normal. Your fear is legitimate. Your fear is talking to you. Find out what you need to know.
Much love to you.
Tripping. Or: the thing you need most right now.
I have to tell you a story.
All true. It’s about the second-worst summer of my life.
And to understand the second-worst summer of my life you really have to understand the week or so preceding it.
Bad things come in threes?
I was 19. Living in Tel Aviv. Studying history at the University.
And though my life wasn’t exactly filled with joyful Disneyesque prancing in the forest, surrounded by obscenely cheerful birds, things were good.
You know how it is. It’s life. It works.
Most of the time. I had friends I liked, a new-ish boyfriend who was cute and sweet and funny. Having finally adjusted from the culture shock after a couple years in the Middle East, I was even enjoying my studies.
What happened next hit so quickly that I still feel a little startled blink of shock just thinking about it.
My roommate (my best friend in the country at the time) picked up and moved to London. All my other friends suddenly announced they were going to do a year abroad in Australia or India or something. All of them.
Then the boyfriend dumped me. Abruptly. And I’d always been the dump-er, never the dumpee, so it was a total shocker of a shoe on the other foot moment.
This woman who was basically a mix between adoptive mother and loving mentor to me got sick suddenly and died. I got kicked out of where I was living. And fired from my waitressing job.
The phrase “bad things come in threes” was starting to seem somewhat absurd.
Within about a week and a half, I was completely alone. With nothing. And stunned. Too stunned to even fully realize how devastated I was.
Salvation comes in weird ways.
My aunt and uncle took me in (for which I am forever grateful), and I stayed in my cousin Michal’s tiny closet of a room with all my stuff piled up in plastic bags. And I waited.
It wasn’t clear what I was waiting for, but some part of me knew I’d pull through it eventually.
Now, in hindsight, I’d describe what happened to me as depression. Nearly catatonic depression. Now, in hindsight, it’s obvious to me that this was a hard-core defense mechanism kicking in to keep me from falling apart completely.
In hindsight things make a lot of sense.
At the time, though, I was too much in shock to be able to process any of it. I spent three months doing nothing. By which I mean alternating between smoking, sleeping and watching TV.
Some other time I’ll write about how I got through this experience, how I healed, or how this experience was in many ways the catalyst for the work we do here now.
But today I want to tell you about the books.
Bonk bonk bonk!
My cousin Michal — the one whose room I was hibernating in — was in India at the time, getting her PhD in Sanskrit (because she’s cool like that) and she kept sending back books. Stacks of them.
Big stacks of books, tied together with string.
Some were large and some were small and they were almost all about yoga.
This was before I had anything to do with yoga. Their existence on my floor wasn’t interesting to me, or meaningful, or anything. They were just stuff to trip over.
These books had names like Heal Your Pain Through Yoga and Solve All Your Problems With Yoga and (I may be exaggerating here) Hey, Moron, Use Yoga To Make Your Life Better When Everything is Going Horribly, Horribly Wrong.
And I was tripping over them.
Bonk bonk bonk.
I didn’t pay any attention. I didn’t even open any of the books. Mostly I resented them for taking up space in this already tiny, already cluttered room.
I was literally (and figuratively) tripping over the thing that could have helped me the most. And cursing it for being in the way.
Salvation comes in weird ways …
No regrets, no complaints … everything unfolded when it needed to, and I did end up finding yoga at the time in my life when it was right for me. Much later. And it was the thing I that helped me.
It brought me back to myself at a time when I was divorced, bitter and hurting.
Yoga was also the one thing that kept me sane and healthy during the summer that actually did turn out to be the worst summer of my life. The one that made the second-worst summer of my life seem like a relaxed island holiday.
I like a juicy piece of irony as much as the next person, so I’ve had some good belly laughs over the absurdity of this moment. In fact, I like to imagine how tiresome it must have been for the universe to keep bonking me over the head like that — with no reactions at all.
You know, I pretend there were wacky spirits discussing my situation and saying things like, “Could she be any more obtuse? We really can’t make it any more obvious than this. What’s a wacky spirit gotta do …. write a message on the wall in blood? You want a burning freaking bush?!”
Because that would be funny.
It is funny. I mean, the symbolism was so in-your-face that it could have been a film student’s first production. It’s a white dove: it means peace. Here, let’s fly it across the screen six more times so you’ll understand what it means when it gets shot down!
Bonk bonk bonk.
And, by the way, it’s not so important how you understand this story. You can read it any way you like and take from it anything you like. Because whether it’s about the bonking of a higher power or just the occasionally amusing ironies of life, the lesson is pretty much the same.
Bonk bonk bonk.
The past is the past. What are you learning right this second?
It doesn’t really matter that I didn’t get the message. It doesn’t matter that I was in resistance to receiving help in any form. Apparently I wasn’t ready. I’m ready now, though.
So the real question is: what books am I tripping over now?
In fact, I often wonder about the following scenario.
It’s a few years into the future and I’m telling a friend (maybe even you) about right now. September 2008.
And I’m saying “This is so crazy. The thing I needed the most was right there in front of me. The most obvious thing in the world. It was right there and I couldn’t see it.”
And then we laugh and laugh and laugh.
Because I’m pretty sure we’re tripping over stacks of books all the time. I’m pretty sure that everything you need to know is inside of you right now and that it’s showing up right now.
Whether it’s helpful little fairies poking you with symbolism sticks, or just someone quietly telling you what you need to hear at the right juncture of space and time … maybe what you need to understand is right in front of you.
Maybe it’s even the thing you’re tripping over.
Making a wish.
I’m not going to give you a bunch of cliches about how everything is for the best. Because No one wants to hear that when they’re hurting, and who knows if it’s even true.
And I’m certainly not going to tell you that the thing that’s causing you hurt and pain is going to be the thing that helps you later. That’s just not a compassionate thing to say.
What I do want to say is this: It’s a useful and helpful practice, sometimes, to just pause and notice what’s there. Get a millimeter or two of distance from the hurt.
For example, I can stop and say, “hey, I’m willing and ready to learn what I need to learn in this moment … in the least painful way possible.”
Or: “Even though I’m probably not seeing or hearing or picking up on whatever it is I need to know, I’m ready for that information to be revealed to me.”
Or whatever. Phrase it however you like. Find a way of asking yourself for permission to stop tripping and to start receiving help. Because maybe it’s right there.
That’s what I wish for you. And also for me.