Tool for Tuesday: Get A Habit.

Posted on November 12, 2013 by dianabletter

No, I’m not talking about smoking or waiting for the tick-tick-tick toward 5 o’clock so you can pour yourself a drink. From the Latin, habire: to have. Something that gets so regular it becomes instinctive and you can save time by not having to think about it.

Habits are routines that save your time. If you have a family and small kids, habits limit negotiations on everything. Routines free up our brains to focus on the important things. Children need order, boundaries and limits. Of course, you can be flexible, but if your children know that 8 P.M. is bath, bed and beyond, they won’t waste time squabbling. (I posted this tip on Laura Vanderkam’s fabulous website about time and time management—see more tips here.)

Habits can help free us to avoid procrastination. If we get into the habit of going to our office at a certain hour, then we can forget the other things that need to be done and get to work.

I have a friend who goes on Date Night with her husband every Thursday. A couple needs time away from their kids. You can make sure that your birthday is spent doing something fun. And remember, don’t wait for someone to read your mind and plan something for you—plan it for yourself.

By

Tool For Tuesday: We can start a good habit today.

Related articles
Posted in Be Less You To Be More You, Transformation | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Q & A: How Do You Stop the Pain of Being Alive?

Posted on November 10, 2013 by dianabletter

I got a note from one of my friend Lily’s daughter’s friends, Erica, who agreed to let me share it:

“Dysfunctional relationships is all I’ve ever seen and especially at the moment I have my doubts if I will ever be able to have healthy relationships.
I am still looking for a source of happiness outside myself…even though I know that none of the sources I’ve tried so far (smoking, eating, alcoholic boyfriend, not eating, sex, attention) ever worked out, I still find myself escaping from everything to try another short cut. It is like fast food….you know you will feel worse afterwards but it tastes good for the moment.
Right now, I am separated from my ex…He cut off all contact with me. I try to eat normal, I stopped smoking…I had an affair witch turned out to be just a substitution for my ex- relationship…It’s the same communication (or lack of it) same unhealthy patterns same feeling of rejection and I am desperately looking for attention…behaving in a compulsive way and I can’t stand myself.
I am very desperate at the moment and I really don’t know how to deal with myself….”

Dear Erica:

You did great getting all that out.

We have to fill our own well. Sometimes we grow up in families where we don’t see appropriate ways to do just that. So we turn to anything: people places and things to fill ourselves up. Eating, not eating, going after unavailable men, going after inappropriate men, waiting for someone to rescue us…

We think if we change the outside environment we can change the inside environment but it is the other way around. We have to change our insides first and then the outsides change. We have to learn to take care of ourselves each day. If we don’t learn this, then every relationship we have is sick – we become codependent on others, we stop being authentic, and we feel miserable and desperate because those behaviors are all temporary fixes.

Women often use relationships men to avoid the pain of our aloneness in the universe. We crave the attention. It soothes us for a few moments but it still can’t fill our well.

Every day when we get up we can ask for the strength and direction to take care of ourselves just for today.

We can remind ourselves: Just as we are taken care of today, we will be taken care of tomorrow.

We can think of how we can be of service to someone else. This gets us out of our own problems. We can find one thing to do each day to help.

We can find something – one thing, anything – of beauty to focus on. Even a pebble. One that is smooth, one that is full of chiseled cracks.

We can eat right, get rest, get exercise, get prayed up, get to work on our goals just for that day.

We can consider therapy to get the individual support we need. We can attend a 12-step group meeting – OA for over- or under-eating, AA for having our arms around the alcohol, Alanon for having our arms around someone whose arms are around alcohol. That goes for drugs, too.

The pain doesn’t disappear overnight. But that pain won’t kill us, either. Remember, when we feel like shit, we’re being fertilized to grow. Wisdom and suffering go hand in hand. That’s the only way our spirits grow. Sometimes our pain seems endless and meaningless and unfair. But we can reach out to others and be comforted and recognize we’re not alone.

At night, before we go to sleep, we can find at least one thing that we can be proud about that we accomplished that day.

I know it is possible for you to find a healthy relationship–but first we have to develop a healthy relationship with ourselves. We’re all cheering you on. You can do this!

All you other wise women and men out there, what would you say to this dear young woman? The community forum is now open for your ideas and suggestions.

 

Posted in Be Less You To Be More You, Being a Hero In Your Life, countering depression | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Tool For Tuesday: Four Quick Ways to Eliminate Envy.

Posted on November 5, 2013 by dianabletter

Envy is a hostile form of self-pity. I didn’t write that but I wish I did. Oops! I just committed my first act of envy and I was only on the second sentence of this blog.

Envy is a hostile form of self-pity. I am repeating that because it is so brilliant. Envy robs us of gratitude, strips us of joy, fills us with negativity and deprives us of good will.

But it’s clearly something that has plagued us since—well, look at Cain and Abel. Cain was envious that God liked Abel’s offerings (first of the flock) rather than his own first fruit of the land. (Apparently, God was not a vegan.) It sounds silly but isn’t all envy about what we perceive someone else has that we don’t?

So how do we stop ourselves from the occasional winds of envy that breeze through our minds?

Here are a few quick tools:

We can remember that we are each given a certain amount of abundance.

For everything there is a season. If something absolutely amazing happens to someone else, we can be reminded that this very same kind of thing can happen to us.

We can focus on what we have and not what we lack. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude keeps our outlook on the up and up.

Oh, and there’s a big difference between having it all and having nothing. We are all somewhere in the middle between perfection, amazing achievements, and worthlessness.

Finally, what are we doing with what we have? What are the steps we can take to get what it is we think we want? We are each given the tools to make our own small dreams come true.

Tool For Tuesday: What we think, so we become. What we feel comes and goes. We can nudge aside envy and focus on the positive things in our lives. 

Related articles
Posted in Acceptance, Tool For Tuesday | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Tool For Tuesday: George Eliot’s Guide To Happiness.

Posted on October 29, 2013 by dianabletter

Last Tuesday I had no tool to offer you—I had no tool to offer myself. It was just one of those lousy days that I had to sit out.

Mama said there’d be days like this. Actually, my mother rarely had a day that wasn’t like this. She always said that only stupid people can be happy in life.

Fortunately, I don’t agree. I like the free-floating joy that I can usually find inside me if I go deep within. Just a genuine feeling when I don’t let my brain get in the way.

Happiness is an inside job. We can focus on what we have—not what we lack. What we were given, even if that was too soon taken away.

This is easy to say…hard to do when we’re in the thick of sorrow. Sometimes we just have to sit there and do nothing, remembering that our feelings aren’t facts. A bleak view of the world will always pass. And, force ourselves to get busy. Do something. One thing as George Eliot says in her amazing poem, “Count That Day Lost.”

I helped a student memorize the poem the other day and I’m reprinting it here:

Count That Day Lost

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went —
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay —
If, through it all
You’ve nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face–
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost —
Then count that day as worse than lost.

Tool For Tuesday: We can do one act most small, as George Eliot said.

Related articles
Posted in Tool For Tuesday, Transformation | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

One Word At A Time: NaNoWriMo Wants A Novel Out of YOU!

Posted on October 27, 2013 by dianabletter

Get cracking. No excuses this time. Join the 151,657 other writers who have already signed up to try to write a 50,000-word novel in November, sponsored by NaNoWriMo. That’s National Novel Writing Month.

I loved doing this last year and plan on doing it again. It is a great exercise. The best way to write a novel. The pressure is off and all you do is write. You don’t worry. You don’t fret. You lose your perfectionism, shed your inhibition, and go for it.

Last year, I was able to produce my first children’s book, “The Above-Ground Railroad Parrot Society.” I still have not gotten around to doing the editing, but I have it.

You don’t have time to sit there and think of that unforgettable first sentence. You go right into the lousy second sentence and keep writing. I averaged 1,672 words a day. You’re a winner if you write 50,000 words. A short, sweet, complete novel. Here’s the opening to my novel:

“Don’t stare,” Pete Tembel hissed. He stood behind the counter of his store, Pete’s Pet Shop, and glanced up from his cash register.

“I’m not,” said Jade Willoughby, but she couldn’t help noticing the woman with very puffy blond hair piled on the top of her head by the Quaker parrots’ cage in the front of the shop. Jade whispered, “I just don’t want that lady to buy my favorite parrot.”

I encourage all you you to try it. It’s really fun. You see that you can get a novel finished one word at a time.

Click here if you like to sign up on and tell us how you did. The guidelines are easy, it’s for free, and you feel like you’ve joined a symphony of human creation.

Related articles
Posted in Writers, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Publisher’s Weekly Book Review: The Lesson of the Book Title

Posted on October 24, 2013 by dianabletter
Avoid Criticism

Avoid Criticism (Photo credit: Celestine Chua)

 

A woman once approached my friend, Maggie, and asked her in a very smug way, “How could are you at accepting advice and criticism?”

Maggie shot her a withering look and said, “I don’t do advice and criticism. Only insights and suggestions.”

So, I don’t give advice and criticism. And the best part is that I’ve learned that if someone wants to give me advice, I can take it or leave it. I’m my own best expert. As for criticism, once I’ve figured out who I am, I can decide if the criticism is valid. For example, I have an acquaintance whom I call Hank (as in, Hank likes hanking my chain). Hank once told me I was very inconsiderate. Now, if he had called me a klutz or a perfectionist or judgmental (of myself as well as others) I would have paused and taken his comment to heart. But I know myself. I know I try hard to be considerate. So I can dismiss his comments.

Which brings me to the funniest thing – the book review I got from Publisher’s Weekly. The judge wrote,

“Author Diana Bletter has written a book about her trip to Alaska on her motorcycle.  The best part of The Mom Who Took Off on her Motorcycle is her passion for telling her story.  This is a riveting account of a personal adventure many would not even think about undertaking.  Full of observations and humor, this story of a 10,000-mile-journey is the inspiring tale of how one woman takes off to discover who she was before she had children and to find out who she could still become.  Mrs. Bletter can improve her book with a new title.  Many books sell well because the book is well packaged and well designed and seem to get the exposure that others do.  It has been said that a book takes three to five seconds to grab the attention of a casual browser.  The title of a book becomes even more important when the author is not well known.  A book’s title has the power to make or break a sale and this is definitely one of the important elements of book publishing.  Your book could stand out on a bookshelf with a title that really pops.”

How funny is that?!? A title that really pops? How more poppable can “The Mom Who Took Off On Her Motorcycle” get? Think: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. For Whom the Bell Tolls.

All in all, it’s a fabulous review, and for that, I’m grateful.

The key is, once we know ourselves, once we know what we like and dislike, what makes us tick, tock, laugh, cry, run for joy, scream, panic, what triggers us, what we harbor in our heart and soul, then nobody else’s approval or disapproval matter.

So thank you, oh anonymous book reviewer wherever you are! You provided me another spiritual lesson. You can’t judge a title by a book reviewer.

Once we really know ourselves, then we don’t have to get all worked up about what someone else says. 

Related articles
Posted in Acceptance, self-printing, Self-publishing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Tool For Tuesday: What Is NOT On Your To Do List?

Posted on October 15, 2013 by dianabletter

I got a comment from a student at UCLA who thanked me for my blog post, “If You Feel Like S—t, You’re Being Fertilized to Grow.” She said the posts help her and other students. That makes me grateful. I’m just passing on things I’ve learned. If they help you, that is great. Because writing these words helps me. I now understand that we can’t keep it unless we give it away.

Here’s today’s Tool For Tuesday: What NOT to put on your To Do List

On our mental and spiritual To Do List the top priority is taking care of ourselves. That comes first. We have to take care of ourselves because if we don’t, everything else falls apart. Our love relationships are tilted and twisted, our work trails off or becomes too much, our bodies bulge, our minds meander to those dark places they shouldn’t go.

Next comes, acceptance. We have to cope with trying people, places and situations. That means on our To Do List is learning coping skills. Sometimes we need to speak up for ourselves, sometimes we need to stay quiet. Sometimes we need to sit there and listen but sometimes we need to get up and walk away.

On our To Do List is also forgiveness. I was speaking to someone who told me she could forgive her brother for things he’d done, but she could never, would never forgive her co-worker who annoys her on a daily basis. Remember that not forgiving the people who upset us the most is like drinking poison and expecting them to get sick. An incredible transformation occurs within us when we are able to turn our resentments into acceptance and forgiveness. Our whole attitude changes and our lives follow.

What’s NOT on our To Do List is fixing, changing, manipulating, begging, intimidating other people. We can’t give away our glue to help someone fix themselves. We need to keep our glue to fix ourselves. We can see where other people are making mistakes but it is their job to comfort and take care of themselves.

Tool For Tuesday: What Is and Is NOT on Our To Do List

Related articles
Posted in Acceptance, Tool For Tuesday, Transformation, Your Best Chapter | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Tool For Tuesday: What Are You Waiting For?

Posted on October 8, 2013 by dianabletter

 

Gladys Bletter's cigarette was her best weapon.

Gladys Bletter’s cigarette was her best weapon.

Suppose you are on your death bed. What’s left to say?

I’d like to think I’ll say only the most meaningful things when the time is running out. I’d bring up all the love that is welling in my heart. I’d drop the resentments because I don’t want to trail them into the next part of my journey. (Though I’ve heard it said the people bear no grudges in heaven but why take chances?) I’d apologize to whomever I’d hurt and accept anyone’s apology to me. I’d open my heart wide, even wider, and embrace the people around me just as they are. I’d work hard, really hard, to turn whatever negative feelings I had into positive feelings—or at least to try to gain a different perspective so that I could accept and make peace with any person and every situation.

Often times, a woman would come into my mother’s antique jewelry store. The woman would try on a ring, let’s say, and then waffle about whether she wanted to buy it. “Don’t be a shmuck,” my mother would chide. “You want his second wife to get it all?”

We don’t know how much time we have in this life. Today might be it. What are we waiting for?

Tool For Tuesday: What Are You Waiting For?

Posted in Other people and us, Relationships | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Give Mourning Time Time. 10 Tips on Grief.

Posted on October 6, 2013 by dianabletter
My mother holding my sister, Cynthia, and me on visiting day in Camp Natchez, 1968

My mother holding my sister, Cynthia, and me on visiting day in Camp Natchez, 1968

“How’s your blob going?” my mother used to ask about this, my blog. Well, as you might have wondered, my blob fell off the edge of the earth as my mother died September 13. I’m not ready to write about her—and besides, she told me, “When you give your eulogy for me, lie.” So instead, I’m offering 10 lessons I’m learning about grief.

1. Give mourning time time. Whoa, you feel like you’ve fallen deep into the darkness. Ordinary life seems too odd to even participate.

2. You feel bad and then you feel bad when you feel happy. You don’t want to have any more sorrow and yet when it lifts for a moment and you laugh you feel awful.

3. You have to remember that just because you’re laughing doesn’t mean you didn’t love hard or that you love any less. Laughing is good. Joy is fundamental.

4. Find things to fill your well. Once you can, listen to music and you will hear its beauty in a profoundly new way. Smells take on new clarity. Tastes are sharper, too.

5. Hug a tree. Oh, I know, it seems so silly, especially if you’re caught hugging a tree in public but those trees have reminded me what it feels like to stand tall and sway in the wind and not break.

6. Be aware of your dreams. My mother has appeared twice in my dreams so far. The first time, my younger son was holding her under his arm and she was laughing. She had on make-up and her wig so you know it had to have been a special occasion.

7. Go gentle on yourself. You are in mourning time. It’s a totally different time. Slow as sand. You’re allowed to not be pumped up and ready for action. You’re allowed to just sit and look at the clouds.

8. Your heightened impatience with irritating people is directly proportional to your feeling that you can forgive everyone on the planet. We’re all human. We’re all doing the best we can.

9. Whatever soothes your soul, do that. Go pray. Go meditate. Go do finger painting. Go to where your soul finds consolation. Pour a gentle balm on your spirit.

10. And you’ll find yourself totally aware of your own mortality. You’re part of the next wave to hit the shore. This is it. Your turn next. Your turn, now, so live it up.

Posted in Transformation | Tagged , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Tool for Tuesday: You’re Only as Sick as the Secrets You Keep.

Posted on September 3, 2013 by dianabletter

 

Today–when searching for a tool for Tuesday–I read a quote from Charles F. Kettering, “A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.” A problem can be like a secret, something we’re ashamed to share.

But we need to remind ourselves that when we share our secrets or problems with someone we trust, then someone else will help us carry the burden. And the added benefit is that we realize the secret wasn’t so atrocious to begin with. Often the other person will say, “Been there, done that, too.”

I’m not saying to go out and tell that stranger on the bus your life story. Find someone you know who will be able to respect your story. Our stories are the greatest gifts we can give to another.

Tool For Tuesday: If I’m carrying around a burden in my heart, let me find someplace to put it down.

Posted in Self-care, Tool For Tuesday | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments