Flourishing Today

My friend,

Today I’m actually going to refer to something celebrating January 11, 2008. No, not because it was the First recorded case of snowfall in Los Angeles, California in 1949. Nor because United States Surgeon General Dr. Luther Leonidas Terry, M.D., published a report in 1964, saying that smoking may be hazardous to health. (Thereby being the first such statement ever made by the U.S. government.)

While these things are true, on the night of Friday, January 11, 2008, I narrowly avoided dying in a car accident, driving into San Francisco.

It was one of the best things to happen to me – because all of a sudden it hit me – like the cement embankment – that I was living life, pounding away… and what if I only had this night to live it in? Was this the life I wanted to leave behind?

No. Like Benjamin Zander, below. I too want to help people live life – One-Buttock.

My friend,

As I am laying up in bed with the flu, I got very vividly reminded by my boyfriend that there is a time to process, and a time to leave the heck alone. For example: I’m sick, I feel like crap, and anything that goes through my brain is just going to be a reflection and magnification of how bad I already feel! I’m hardly alone though.

How often do we start conversations late at night? Or on an empty stomach, or when we’re already strung out and in a “bad place.”

Processing not only isn’t going to help, but it will just either a) piss you off, b) make you feel worse, or c) likely just piss everyone else off too. Sure, there are valid things to process about, and valid times to process them… but as someone who has been on the receiving end of a bad perm, I know that over-processing will leave you brittle, Brillo like, and completely miserable.

Honestly, if you are feeling like either of these pictures;

Stop.

Collect yourself and take a break. Recognize that the stupid turkey is done and no amount of cooking is going to make it any better. Instead, take it out of the metaphorical oven. Take a nap, take a hot bath, take some tea, take some crayons and butcher’s paper, arrange for a controlled temper-tantrum… I don’t care, but do something else.

Now is not the time to evaluate your life, your relationship, or your effectiveness and worth as a human being. Take time to be aware that you’re already in a fragile condition and take a time-out. THEN, come back to the situation. You might even realize that it wasn’t what you thought it was.. but something completely different.

Like soup stock.

Ding!

Kaye

Dear Friend,

As the Western Year comes to a close, there are thousands of people who will be doing resolutions, goal setting, and swearing off chocolate. Some people are probably swearing off New Year’s resolutions while they’re at it.

Why? Because for a lot of people, they don’t work. They don’t have a clear idea of where they’re going, or how they plan to get there. Sometimes I’m one of them. In moments like that, what I am good at is figuring out who would know. I come back to Terry McBride’s triangle of “Be, Do, Have.” In short: What do I need to work on to Be the person who will Do the things that need doing.. in order to Have the things I want to have.

Losing weight? Who is the kind of person who will start making the kinds of lifestyle choices that allow those pounds to melt away? When do they get up in the morning? What do they eat? When faced with that leftover Holiday Fudge, what do they say? What kind of values do they have for themselves that makes these choices easy.

So as an experiment… take three goals and instead of writing the affirmations “I will rock the monkey tree.. (what ever your monkey tree will be..)” and flesh out what it would take to be that Rocker.

Yes.. “R” is for Rock On.

Humbly,

Kaye

My Friend,

After a day of helping talented photographer Jim Morris in his studio in Downtown Downey, California, something he said which caught my ear, and my heart. He was speaking of his past, of the silent scream of desperation he had once felt choking him and stealing his life from his very hands.

Being a writer, perhaps I’ve taken some poetic license with his words – but I trust the sentiment is there. How often have we, myself included, pushed forward with our lives out of silent screaming desperation without knowing any way out of our own boxes. When Kraft Foods steals the scoop on National Bureau of Economic Research in identifying America’s recession – what choice do we honestly have? Abraham Maslow, in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, talks about the fact that the drive to personal growth can only be met after the basic food, water, shelter, sleep needs are met.. but how? When doing the things it takes to meet those ends feels like a living death?

It comes down to this: For What Purpose? And in the middle of what may be winter — is that worth it to you? And if that purpose isn’t bright enough, ask yourself again: that purpose… for what even higher purpose? Thereby painting this purpose so bright that in all the darkness, its very existence rises up and brings you light once more.

Asking ourselves today, like Viktor Frankl did in his death-camp experience, as he realized: “The truth–that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

“He who has a why for life can put with any how.”
Frederick Nietzsche

My friend,

When was the last time you sat down and asked yourself whether your future actually appeals to you? Or is it a habit that you came up with, and forgot somewhere on autopilot. Do you ever wonder whether you’re getting the most out of each moment? And do we even know what getting the most out of each moment means?

How many of us sit down to craft our futures with the kind of attention that we…. well, you know.

And do we ever ask ourselves if there is a better way?

I have a tendency myself, to get bogged down in details. When all I see is the next step – first I pack my boxes, then I load them onto the truck, then eventually I will have magically moved to Los Angeles. But as embarrassing as it is to admit it, the truck kinda stopped there. Until I took a moment to sit down with my sharpies..

My friend,

So many things have a 2 year cycle – relationships, new businesses, the time between a hit and its sequel..

I’ll talk about the 2-year relationship revolving door another time, and leave the movies to another expert.

Having recently moved my practice from the San Francisco Bay Area, to Southern California, I get to go through the adventure of building something new, while getting settled in a new area around new people. In some ways, I’m blessed because I love an adventure. But the stress of such a move is still present and was brought to a head the other day when two new clients were no-show.

In a state of discouragement and flashes of downright depression I thought of my bank account, the struggle, and just how hard it has been to put down roots in a new place. I started to wonder whether I should just let go; find a good job and give up such dreams. What makes me think I can succeed when so many are struggling? So I was sitting there with myself in my empty office, contemplating closing up shop, playing Solitaire and even the cards weren’t coming out right. As I went through game after game, my mind poured over the statistics – one-third of businesses don’t make it past two years.. and I wasn’t even wining a third of my games of Solitaire.

My Friend

I had the interesting experience the other night of bumping into a rather interesting character. In one venue they were quite engaging; interesting, fun and easy to talk to. However as soon as we got one-on-one, the experience completely flipped.

I got told at length how they weren’t interesting, how they were isolate, that people judged them because they weren’t attractive enough. That as soon as they started talking about themselves and how isolate they were, it would be the last time they would hear from the person. In truth, it felt like getting treated to a buffet of reasons why there was no food.

What was interesting though, was how I felt myself go nuts – starting with wanting to reassure the person, then wanting to throttle the person and challenge them, to finally wondering why bother? If I was going to be told I’d do the crime- why fight up hill? Why go out of my way to prove them wrong?

How often do we find ourselves trapped in that space, where we’re not playing into our own patterns, but sucked into the patterns of others? And how often are we bringing others into our own stuff. In this situation – I could play by their patterns, cut them off, and be one more link in a self-fulfilling prophecy. I could try to fight them on it, but to what end? It is like my favorite light bulb joke: