Rules for Being Human

20 Sunday May 2012

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I was rummaging through some old books the other day, when I found this little gem (Rules for Being Human) folded neatly inside one of them. Whoever gave it to me got it from the Dreamstreet Bookstore in St. Augustine, FL. It was found on a refrigerator in Toronto, Author Unknown.

Happy faces from Bhutan, by laihiu

Rules for Being Human

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called Life. Each day in the school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process and the experiment that ultimately “works”.

4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6. “There” is no better place than “here”. When your “there” has become a “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will, again, look better than “here.”

7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie inside. The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10. You will forget all this.

Revision vs. Resistance (watch out, writers!)

14 Monday May 2012

Posted by in Perfectionism

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If you’ve read Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, then you know about Resistance. Pressfield believes Resistance is an actual force (invisible, implacable & impersonal) whose aim is to prevent us from doing our work.

I happen to agree. I think it’s part of the Hero’s Journey of life. We get the Call to Adventure (the inspiration to begin a great undertaking, one that will transform our lives) and Resistance pops up. We might get scared and refuse the call. Ergo Resistance wins. Or we might answer the call and face more Resistance as we cross daunting thresholds, facing down Mother Gothels and 9-Headed Swamp Monsters and our own self-sabotaging traps.

Beatrix Kiddo vs. Gogo Yubari

But what happens when we forge ahead? What happens when Resistance has thrown everything at us, and we have managed to keep on truckin’? I think this is when Resistance gets really sneaky. It has to. If you have proven yourself to be clever, then Resistance has to get doubly clever in order to outwit you.

For writers, I think it sneaks into the writing sphere as Perfectionism. But it disguises itself! Why? Because it knows that if you know it’s actually Perfectionism, you won’t fall for it. So sometimes it adorns the cloak of Revision. This is incredibly clever, since every writer knows that revision is necessary. “Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten.” (Michael Crichton) But there also comes a point when revision does not make it better, it just makes it different.

But Resistance is a sneaky s-o-b. Cleverly disguised as Revision #347, it will tempt us on the journey of no return. It knows what we don’t know: that if it can keep us re-writing the book ad nauseum, the story may never see the light of day. We will overwork it to death. We’ll become overwhelmed and quit. Instead of finishing the thing, we will buy one more book on How to Write. And then, realizing our book will never be what so-and-so says all books should be, we will sigh…cry… and quit.

Beatrix Kiddo battles the Crazy 88′s

OR, we will fall into the Dependency Trap by seeking 88 different opinions on a single chapter, and then attempt to re-write that chapter (plus 10 other chapters) 88 times, in order to please 88 different people. Resistance knows this will make us crazy! We will become overwhelmed and stop. Or worse: we will seek 88 more opinions.

If Resistance gets its way, this is the beginning of the end. Writing is a lonely business. Stephen King compares it to sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub– plenty of room for doubt.  How can we sail across the sea of uncertainty, if we lack trust in ourselves? The answer is, we can’t. And if we think we can’t, we won’t.

The Call to Adventure ends there. Resistance smiles. Checks our name off its list. And then it plays its favorite song: Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.”

They key to beating Resistance is to acknowledge it. “The psyche has many secrets in reserve. And these are not disclosed unless required.” (from Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces)

Pai Mei trains Beatrix Kiddo to beat Resistance.

Only after we’ve learned some aspect of Resistance we didn’t know before are we then given the tools to combat it. We grow stronger. Wiser. We gain new Allies and return to the Ordinary World with the precious Elixir.

Now tell me: Doesn’t that make for a better story?

Conquering Fear through Creativity

06 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Fear, Inspiration

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For years I used to think of fear as Fear. Meaning I didn’t get specific about it. I just called it fear. “Oh, it’s just fear,” I would tell myself, and I would push forward in an effort to overcome it. But as soon as I overcame one fear, another reared its ugly head.

I felt like Hercules (only much smaller, non-mythical and female), who slays the most vicious lion on the planet, only to discover he must destroy a 9-headed swamp monster. If you know the story of Hercules, then you know it doesn’t end there. He has more tasks ahead, each one testing his courage and endurance.

I believe we’re all on a Herculean journey of some kind. We have our own lions and 9-headed swamp beasts. Sometimes we must descend into the murky underworld to have the wits scared out of us so that we can gain courage and new understanding. It happens. It’s life.

Which is why I believe that lumping our bold adventures into one category (Fear) is rather dull. Why not name our daunting tasks? Get specific. Study them, understand them, rename. Take out the Fear of…. and replace it with something creative.

  • Fear of Rejection becomes Capturing the Magical Bull of Persistence. Because every writer gets rejected. The difference is learning how to stay the course. If the name of the game is Persistence, learn about Persistence. Read biographies on persistent people. Or, contact them directly.
  • The Fear of Public Speaking becomes My Awesome Undercover Mission to Spy on Other Speakers. If we want to learn how to do something, we have to put ourselves in training. Going undercover is a fun way of learning how other people do it, observing what they encounter and how they handle it.
  • The Fear of Failing becomes Escaping the Deadly Pit of Perfectionism. Because that’s exactly what it is. If Perfectionism (aka Resistance) had its way, we would all be living in the stone ages. There would be no airplanes, cars, cell phones. Bookstores would be empty. Computers wouldn’t exist and light-bulbs wouldn’t light. Think about it.

After Renaming the fear, comes the next step: Developing a Battle Plan

I like to be creative here, and give my plan a heroic title: Battle Plan for Befriending [and here I insert a charming name for the fear, something like Jeremy] the 9-Headed Swamp Monster. I open a file on my computer and that’s what I call it

: BATTLE PLAN FOR BEFRIENDING

JEREMY THE 9-HEADED SWAMP MONSTER:

Yes, I actually drew this.

GETTING TO KNOW JEREMY: Next, I write a brief sentence about Jeremy’s fears. I develop a plan of action. I make it short, maybe 5 things, because if I list 50 or 100 tasks, I know it will get too overwhelming and I’ll quit. Five is a good number for me. Manageable. After I do those 5 things, I can do 5 more if I feel like it.

While I’m devising my Battle Plan, I spend time thinking about Jeremy, my poor little 9-Headed friend. I think, Poor Jeremy. 9 heads! It must be awfully hard to make a decision. Yes, I take pity on Jeremy. I have compassion for him and his situation. This way, he becomes less threatening. In fact, he actually becomes kind of cute. [See above drawing. Come on. Ain't he adorable???!]

FULL IMMERSION: I prefer to put my Battle Plan into action immediately. I’m usually psyched after outlining it. If I wait, I know the magic will wane and I’ll be in same predicament. So I charge into it full speed ahead. Full immersion. I map it out for the month, completing weekly tasks that fall under the battle plan.

TAKING HOME THE TROPHY: After I’ve done a task I congratulate myself. Pop open some bubbly, or grab a latte. I make little notes to myself. Observations about what I learned, or what new & exciting thing occurred to me. Because what I usually find is that beyond the fear is a butt-load of excitement.

Then Jeremy and I head on to Our Next Exciting Adventure…..

If you are battling fear right now, you’re welcome to borrow Jeremy. Take him home and play with him. He’s really quite witty after you get to know him. Develop your own Battle Plan and let me know how it goes.

Or, if you’re too mature to have 9-Headed Swamp Monsters running around your house, read this Rumi poem instead:   

Panic Attack or Lotus Moment?

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Those Pesky Emotions

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The other night I had an anxiety attack, in public, during a reading amidst a group of fellow writers. It caught me by complete surprise. It wasn’t the first time I’ve experienced anxiety like that, but it was the first time in many long years.

I wasn’t able to finish reading the piece I had written. I choked up, lost my voice, couldn’t breathe.

Our gracious facilitator gallantly stepped in and offered to read the rest for me, while I tried to calm my pounding heart and breathe.

As the “attack” continued, I grabbed a pen and jotted down a few mantras. I’ve been a novice Buddhist for years, learning from various books and inspired by fellow bloggers Thomma Lyn Grindstaff, Ilona Fried & the Rouge Buddha, as well as sites like Audio Dharma. During my attack, I quickly jotted down whatever mantras came to mind. It began to work, to slow my hammering heart. I was able to center myself just enough to fight the urge to flee… or faint…

Still, as soon as the evening ended, I rushed out the door– gracelessly, I might add, as I could not get the door open (!) and more or less tripped over the threshold. I heard voices behind me, “Oops. Careful there. You okay?” Geez, I thought. Will the humiliation ever end?

WTF was wrong with me, I wondered on the drive home. I considered myself an experienced writer, believed in the piece I had written and, moreover, thought I was well beyond the days of “panic attacks.” Only after I got home and settled into a meditation did I realize the problem was not in the experience, but in the label: panic attack.

Lotus Nelumbo, by Derek Ramsey

I don’t know who came up with this term (panic attack), and quite frankly I don’t care. Like so much of our language, it demonizes an uncomfortable experience, by implying that the body is the enemy, “attacking” us like some kind of terrorist. For the past 2 years, I’ve been doing regular workouts and daily meditations. If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that my body is not a terrorist. If it had a message to give me in that very uncomfortable moment, perhaps I ought to listen, respect and welcome it.

As I considered the piece I’d been reading when the discomfort came, I realized it was about grief. I had written about someone I lost many years ago, someone I LOVED immensely. The grief washed over me as I read, and it was so powerful I lost my voice. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, to grieve so deeply is a gift, an honored remembrance of Love, which is awfully hard to come by in this world (in my opinion). To have experienced it at all… is a beautiful thing.

And if I broke down in public? So what! If I choked up, lost my voice, turned 800 shades of red, so be it. We are conditioned to be ashamed of our vulnerabilities, and maybe that’s why we demonize so-called “weak” emotional states. But if you want my opinion, I think it takes more courage to embrace them. They may be murky and muddy, but hey. No mud, no lotus!

In fact, that’s what I decided to rename the experience: A Lotus Moment. Not a panic attack. Not my body attacking me, but remembering LOVE. A Lotus Moment.

The Second Gift: The first gift was the opportunity to find compassion for myself. But a second gift came when a fellow writer and dear friend emailed me with such wonderful, compassionate words that I cried (again). Whatever embarrassment I was holding on to evaporated. And my heart opened even more… So not only was it a Lotus Moment, but it was an opportunity to experience loving kindness from another. Pretty Freaking Awesome, eh?

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“Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.”  -Buddha

Beware of the Dream Stealers

01 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Inspiration

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Ever notice that when you’re on your game and the writing is good, someone in your life starts acting squirly? You might get sucked into a drama– and you can feel it, can’t you?– that big force sucking and sucking and sucking until you are completely drained and have nothing left to give the muses.

Congratulations. You’ve just been snared by what I call a Mother Gothel.

If you’ve seen the movie Tangled, then you know about the villainous Mother Gothel, who steals baby Rapunzel and keeps her locked in the tower for umpteen years. She wants the magic of Rapunzel’s hair, because Mother Gothel has no magic of her own.

The people who try to sabotage us are like Mother Gothel. Not knowing how to light the fire from within, they consciously or unconsciously try to steal ours. And they do it in a number of ways.

1.  Undermining Confidence (aka the Danger Darling! tactic): The people who unconsciously or consciously want to sabotage our dreams will warn us of the danger in pursing them. In doing so, they will sometimes cast themselves in the role of benevolent protector. There is danger, darling! I just don’t want you to get hurt. But underneath this clever message is another destructive message which undermines our self-confidence and keeps us imprisoned. We have no energy to create, because our energy is sucked up by fear.

—> Stop. Pay attention. Do you detect a giant sucking sound? Yep. That’s Mother Gothel, sucking your creative juices away by flattening your sense of worth.

2.  Twisting Your Innards (aka, Don’t Take Everything So Personally!): Sometimes, when one begins to see through a Mother Gothel, to question the back-handed compliments, these Dream Stealers & Energy Suckers will turn the tables. There’s nothing wrong with me, darling. You’re just taking everything so personally! Thus begins the innards twisting, the self-doubt, a depletion of energy so great we can’t create.

—> Stop. Pay attention. Do you detect a giant sucking sound? Yep. That’s Mother Gothel, sucking your creative juices away with another cunning blow.

3.  Masterful Manipulation (aka, Fatal Finesse): Dream stealers can be utterly charming. When they are really desperate (i.e. when they sense their energy source is moving away from them), they will lure us with silvery-tongued words. But once we are safely within their reach, the axe comes down. Another back-handed compliment, another blow to our sense of worth, another belittling remark. We might spend hours or days pondering the why’s, giving our energy to conflict instead of to our craft.

—> Meanwhile, there is a giant sucking sound around us. Yep. Mother Gothel strikes again, my friend.

There is a double danger when it comes to Gothels. Not only can our creativity be sucked away (thus killing the work we are meant to do!), but if we allow it to continue, it becomes self-sabotage. We risk turning into energy suckers ourselves, trying to fill the void we perceive is there because we’ve forgotten our own power and light. This is not the way to go.

What to do? Forget about trying to reason with Dream Stealers. They are not it in for the same reason you are. They have the need to feed and, because of this, they know no boundaries. But giving them your energy will not help them. The fire must be lit from within. Your energy belongs to you.

Remember, your craft is your light. In the movie, Rapunzel is compelled to see the floating lights. That is her dream and, unbeknownst to her, it’s also her destiny. As writers and artists, we are compelled by our dreams. Our dreams are our destiny. Our craft is our light. By following that light, that energy, a world opens which we never knew existed. When we leave the Gothels (and there will be many of them along the way), we discover new friends who are genuine, supportive and true.

If you have a Gothel in your life right now, the best advice I can give is to see this person for what he or she is: an empty, desperate soul who does not know how to find their inner light. Do not be unkind to this person. We don’t harm others without harming ourselves. Instead, have the compassion to walk away. Invest your creative energy in the craft, in the gift that has been given to you. Follow that light and let it lead you into new, unimagined worlds.

Write on, my friends!

Denise

Don’t Cram Everything into One Story

25 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in Inspiration

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As writers, we’re under a lot of pressure. True, writing can be a joyful, invigorating process, but there is also a great deal of stress involved: Scene development, dialogue, plot, characters and thematic questions, not to mention all those tricky points of grammar. There is pressure to get it all right.

Pressure is like crack to the Ego. It gets all wound up and comes up with this plan: Hey! Let’s cram everything into this one piece! We fall for it and start cramming, explaining, justifying plot within the text, mashing unrelated scenes and switching tones and revising and smashing and cramming more. The Ego is right there with us, screeching panicked orders: Better get it right! This is your only shot! Sometimes it will even threaten us with our own mortality, as in, Hurry up! You’re gonna die someday!

There are two reasons this doesn’t work. First off, trying to write with a maniac screaming in your ear is counterproductive. Secondly, following the Ego’s advice of trying to cram everything into one essay, short story or book is actually the antithesis of creation.

When we look at the principles of creation, we can see that it’s a vast, ever-changing process filled with diversity. We are part of that process. Our own creativity is part of the larger, vaster, infinite energy surrounding us.

Center of the Milky Way by European Southern Observatory

Think of the Universe. Scientists estimate that there are between 200-400 billion stars in the Milky Way. Since there are about 100 billion galaxies in the Universe, they estimate that there are 10 sextillion stars, which is more than the number of grains of sand on Earth.

Now, imagine those 10 sextillion stars crammed into your livingroom. I’m no scientist, but I’m pretty sure something is going to explode. Plus, the night sky would be empty. No more stars to gaze at. Nothing left to see, to ponder, to explore….

Do you get where I’m going with this?

Creation is not about cramming everything into one thing, but allowing many things to exist in different forms. In truth, we have many stories within us, each with its own unique voice. Recognizing this allows us to explore and appreciate the diversity within us and within the world around us. Instead of a blank sky, we have 10 sextillion stars. Instead of one flower, one tree, one body of water, and single-colored sunsets, we have countless varieties.

That is the power and the beauty of creation.

And that is the power and beauty of us, when we forgo the maniacal urge to cram and simply allow ourselves to create.

Arizona Sunset, by John Fowler

Next time the Ego is screeching in your ear, try answering its “Cram it!” cry with the words of Walt Whitman:

“I contain multitudes.”

 

The Deadly Ruse of Perfectionism

19 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Perfectionism

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I know too many people who get hooked into the idea that if their work isn’t flawless it must be crap. So until the book (screenplay, short film, opera) reaches 100% perfection it’s not worth putting out there. It’s a romantic notion in some ways, I suppose, but it’s also like the mythological Sirens, whose enchanting voices lured sailors to their death.

Shipwreck - Joseph Vernet

Perfectionism is a trap. It lures us in by making us think it is real. Attainable. Heck, it’s even considered noble in our society to strive for perfection. But surrounding this Isle of No Return (where countless works of art have crashed and burned) are the murky waters of human insecurity. Perfectionism seems like the answer to all of our doubts and fears. It’s not.

Why? Because the quest for perfectionism (as enchanting as it may be) is a trap. Think about it. If the goal is absolute flawlessness, the project will never be done. There will always be something to “fix”. Infinities could spin out from the cosmos, sparking new life and unimagined galaxies and the book (or screenplay, or short film, or blog post) will still be sitting in the editing phase.

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation. As a former “perfectioneer” I’ve come to believe that perfectionism isn’t about putting in the work. It’s not about best effort. It’s about finding defeat. In this way, it is actually the enemy of creation. It eliminates play, which is an inherent part of creativity and one that allows diversity to exist. It drowns the voice of the muse, suffocates intuition, slaughters poems, burns books, destroys films and utterly annihilates the individual song.

Who knows how many important works have already been lost to the cry, “My stuff isn’t good enough!”

Which is why I’m asking you (whoever you are) to soldier on. We probably need whatever project has inspired you to bring it to life. And if you let it crash on the shores of perfectionism…? Well, it may never come again.

Being Vulnerable

14 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Inspiration

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You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Never let ‘em see you sweat!” Meaning that showing our vulnerabilities is taboo. It goes against everything we’re taught, directly or indirectly. From the time we are children we repeatedly learn that being vulnerable equals being hurt. In order to survive, we toughen up.

This may be “surviving” as far as the Ego is concerned, but it doesn’t constitute living. And it certainly doesn’t make for good writing.

Writing requires risk. We must go where we’re afraid to go, say the very thing that we have been told never to say. Think of the stories which have inspired you. Are they stories about perfect people leading perfect lives, people who never sweat? Probably not. There is nothing inspiring about indestructibility. There is no nourishment for the human soul, no awareness, no connection, no motivation to learn and grow.

Moreover, stories without vulnerable characters only serve to keep us isolated from each other. When we let fear keep us silent, we ultimately live in bondage.

One of my favorite childhood books is There is a Monster at the End of This Book. Have you ever read it? From page one, Grover says he’s heard there is a terrible monster at the end of the book. He begs us not to turn any pages. He cries, sweats, builds brick walls, pleads. But when we finally get to the last page, guess what? No monster. Only sweet, loveable Grover.

At the end of the writing day, after we have stared fear in the face and sweated profusely, battled demons and pushed through, we discover there is no monster after all. It is only sweet, loveable us. Maybe it’s some part of us who was wounded long ago, locked inside a prison of fear. But because we have journeyed into that fear, we have freed that wounded self.

And when we take the risk to be vulnerable, not only do we discover that we are more than what we thought we were, we inspire others to do the same.

 

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