Lie, Lie, Lie. It Might Open The Door.

Posted on October 11, 2012 by dianabletter

I had a penpal when I was in sixth grade. My penpal was from the Midwest. I wrote that I had five brothers and we lived on a farm. We had horses and cows and chickens. The truth was that I had one sister and lived in an ordinary house in Great Neck, New York. It might have been farmland at one time but when I lived there it was stately suburbia.

It was wrong to lie. If you, my dear penpal are reading this, please accept my apology. I’m sorry I don’t remember your name. Yet the experience taught me that the world of my imagination was far more creative and interesting than the standard version of reality.

On her blog today, Betsy Lerner writes about reading between the lines to find the lies. Or the make-believe. The pretend. And then the truth behind that. Is fiction a masked confession? And is confession sometimes fiction? (As in the famous case of James Frey‘s A Million Little Pieces.)

I lied as a child because my life seemed boring. And I often lied rather than face people’s wrath. But lying served its purpose because it opened the door to a new way of seeing, and that, in turn, opened the door to a new way of being. I realized along the way that I didn’t have to follow the script that had been given to me. I could choose a new way to be. In a way, you could say that lying bought me freedom.

Now I choose to be honest. Are there exceptions to the rule? Are there times when you find you still need to lie? And what have you learned? Is the truth over-rated?

Sometimes a lie can open the door to a new way of being.

Posted in Self-Talk, Writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Tool For Tuesday: 5 Guaranteed Ways To Avoid An Argument

Posted on October 9, 2012 by dianabletter

You don’t want to have another argument again. You just don’t. You don’t want to bicker, squabble or wrangle. You don’t want to be lassoed into another quarrel. But the other guy is dragging you into the boxing ring for another round. What to do?

Here are five sure-fire things to say to stop the dispute:

  1. You may be right. Ahh, how good does that sound to the other guy? It’s what they’re waiting to hear. Say it with feeling even if you don’t believe it.
  2. I’ll think about that. And I’m sure you will. Don’t ruminate (chew the mental cud too much) but maybe what they’re saying does have a molecule of validity.
  3. I hear you. Everyone likes to be heard. You can repeat what they said, too. What I hear you saying is that…and then say what they said. Even if it’s preposterous. Just say it.
  4. I’m doing the best I can. Nobody can argue with that. But are you? Maybe that’s not something to share with the other guy – but maybe you can share that with someone else. Are you really doing your best? Or is there something you can improve? Remember, we don’t have to share our weaknesses with everyone—only those we trust who won’t hold it against us. But we need to honestly do the work on ourselves.
  5. Oh. Oh? Oh…You can use this two-letter word like a Swiss Army knife. It comes in handy all the time. You can stall. You can pray. You can wait and wait and then say it again. Oh? Oh…

You don’t have to pick up the other end of the rope. It takes 2 to tango and 2 to play Tug-of-War. If you stay calm and use one of these sentences, the argument usually dissolves like sugar in mint tea.

Today’s Tool: Avoiding an argument is better than winning one.

As Gabrielle Bernstein says in May Cause Miracles, when we become more open and let go of our fear, we gain new perspective. So if we let go of the fear of being wrong, hounded, criticized and shamed, then we can open ourselves up to see things in a different light.

As the photo shows you, the Arguments Yard leads nowhere!

Hit Like if you used this technique and it worked! Tell me what happened! Don’t be shy–you’re among friends!

Posted in miracles, Self-care, Tool For Tuesday | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

How Your Dog Can Teach You How to Behave

Posted on October 7, 2012 by dianabletter

Happy-demonstrating the right to remain silent

I loved my dog, Happy, because he wasn’t an annoying barker like some dogs. He only barked when he really felt something. If something was truly important or if someone was truly in danger.

Why can’t we all be more like our canine friends? Only speak words of importance. You have the right to remain silent: use it! Don’t stand by and growl. Small dogs bark a lot because they don’t have another defense system. But after a while, nobody pays any attention to them.

Don’t bark and bark. Say something once. Twice, tops, and then let it go.

Don’t beg for treats at the table of life—go find your own indulgences. You deserve more than sitting around waiting for people to throw you a bone. You don’t have to be satisfied with leftovers.

Be loyal. Forgive people. Love them unconditionally, the way your dog loves you.

And finally, don’t wander in other people’s yards, digging in their dirt. Don’t gossip. Stay focused on yourself and what’s happening inside your own garden, the garden of your soul.

This is Happy modeling his former girlfriend, Coco’s, Luis Vuitton dog collar. My friend–I’ll call him Mr. Expendable Income, actually went out to buy Coco a collar at the nearest Luis Vuitton. Happy was modeling the collar. Hit Like if you like Happy modeling Luis Vuitton just as much as you like Keith Richards!

Be a hero in your own life. Don’t bark. Just get things done.

 

Posted in Being a Hero In Your Life, Your Best Chapter | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Which Part of Your Body Hurts? And What’s The Spiritual Message?

Posted on October 4, 2012 by dianabletter

My friend Lily was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. After treatment, she’s OK and feeling fine. She found a lense on www.Squidoo.com that discusses spiritual meaning of different physical ailments. It’s the soul-body connection. Where was Lily’s cancer? Left breast.

I’ve shared about Lily and her boyfriend, and how she always feels that he doesn’t love her enough here, and according to this site, the left breast, above the heart, signifies “Feeling unloved, refusal to nourish oneself. Putting everyone else first.”

So what ails you? As Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in The Scarlett Letter, “A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.”

So what’s ailing you? And what is your ailment? After I wrote my last post about “Face it, trace it, erase it,” my friend Ellen pointed out Dr. John Sarno’s book on the Mind-Body Perscrpion and the Mind-Body Connection about healing back pain. Are we holding things in? Refusing to be flexible in our hearts?

Cancer strikes people who feel loved, too, so I’m not entirely convinced tht all physical pains are linked to the soul. But what I like about this concept is that it gets you thinking. For example, on tumors, it is written, “Nursing old hurts and shocks. Building on remorse.” What is the solution? “Lovingly release the past and turn attention to this new day.”

That’s a perfect message for all of us for today. Let’s look at our ailments and figure out what spiritual message we might get from them.

What do you think? Hit Like if you think our sicknesses are soul-sicknesses and then convince me. Tell me if you disagree.

P.S> what I like about Squidoo is the honesty of the sharing. This is something about the signs and symptoms of the final moments on earth here: http://www.squidoo.com/death-signs-and-symptoms

Posted in Lily and her stories, Love, Transformation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Tool For Tuesday: Call A Friend. Share Your Commitment.

Posted on October 2, 2012 by dianabletter

I never make new year’s resolutions—I try to make a daily commitment.

I call a friend and we share our commitments. I might say, “Today I’m committing to writing at least 1000 words.” She’ll say, “Today I’m committing to going to the gym and working out for at least 30 minutes.” Here are 4 reasons why that works better.

We can’t change the world over the weekend–but we can change a small behavior that does change our world.

We speak our goals out-loud and that gives them bang and force.

When we hear ourselves speak we gain clarity. We’re not just daydreaming—we are taking positive steps. We are involved in reinvention, transformation.

Encouragement is a two-way street. (Hence the illustration.) En-courage is like em-power. By giving encouragement, we give courage. And get it back like winds behind our sails.

Today’s Commitment: Call a Friend. Share Your Commitment–just one thing you’re going to do today to unblock the pain, kindle the match, open the door, breathe the air, shut the door on past failures, flap your wings, try something new. Go on. Pick up that phone.

This post was inspired by Laura Vanderkam who wrote in a post that we have to substitute Someday for Monday. Meaning for right now, today, which is no longer Monday but Tuesday. Never too late. She has great ideas on time management — I interviewed her on my blog here.

Posted in Tool For Tuesday, Transformation | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Face it. Trace it. Erase it.

Posted on September 30, 2012 by dianabletter

I told Lily the whole spiel about my faux-pas the other day and she said, “It’s the cycle of suffering. Part of our purpose in life is to see our way out of our suffering.”
She explained that part of our “stuff” is the way we react to things. We’re not really reacting to the actual incident but to the emotional trigger behind the incident.

Remember what she had with her boyfriend and the towels? It wasn’t the towels that drove her crazy. It was the feeling behind the towels, that she wasn’t worthy enough to have a boyfriend who’d buy her new towels.

Often times, we’re pre-upset about things. We often live our lives as a sequel to things that already happened. Then the incident becomes the trigger.

So what do we do?

Face it, trace it, erase it.

Face the feeling. Trace it to its source. What is behind what you’re feeling? What is the real pain? The deep, deep childhood hurt that needs healing? Then when you know that you can release it, erase it.

Our purpose in life is to bring ourselves out of that suffering. We can do that by awareness. From awareness, we can say, “Ahhh.” Then comes acceptance. Then peace.

Face it. Trace it. Erase it. Let it go once you know it’s an old hurt.

Don’t you love Kathy Bates? She’s one of my favorite actresses, proving that you don’t have to be a Botoxed boob to be good! Here’s her yearbook photo here.

Posted in How to Change Your Life, Lily and her stories, Other people and us | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Life 101: Each Semester, New Lessons

Posted on September 28, 2012 by dianabletter

The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.” Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

We make a mistake, we have to go out and make amends. If we did something wrong, and we apologized and made a commitment never to do it again, it’s time not to keep beating ourselves up. We can’t let mistakes trigger our shame. We did wrong but we, ourselves, are not wrong.

We’re all in Life 101. Every day, we’re beginners. Each semester, we can learn from the past and try to do better. But we’re going to keep making mistakes. That’s part of being human and being alive.

How well do we recover from our mistakes? That’s what the learning is. That’s where the spiritual lessons are garnered.

To be a hero of our lives, we have to remember: No pain, no gain.

Posted in Being a Hero In Your Life, Self-care, Self-Talk | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Made a Mistake? Ouch. But Didn’t You Learn Something?

Posted on September 27, 2012 by dianabletter

There’s a period of life where we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside. —Pearl Bailey.

Yesterday was the day of doing a moral inventory of ourselves in the Jewish year and I was praying hard while sitting in a seat reserved for another woman…

She wasn’t there yet so I thought I’d sit until she got there—but once she got there, I didn’t budge. I sunk even lower in that plush chair, prayed harder, wanting the women around me to go away so I could sit there and keep praying.

Isn’t it funny how people are? And how hard it is to really change? I was praying for forgiveness about my past mistakes while committing another mistake. I got holier-than-thou, putting my relationship with the One Above higher than my relationship with the people all around me. Ouch!

I got called on my lousy behavior. It stung, it stung, it stung to realize that I acted in a totally inappropriate way. So unlike me—I’m usually considerate and super-sensitive to the needs of others.

But my mistakes are my best teachers. Here’s what I learned.

Smugness—I was smugly thinking I was superior to these women becauase they were gossiping while I was praying.

Judgmental—how often are we judgmental about others? They didn’t know what was going on in my head nor do I know what was going on in theirs.

MYOB—A woman told me afterwards, “You know, that was Sandra’s seat!” This woman wasn’t minding her own business…so she taught me not to get involved. (Unless it’s a case of real injustice!)

Spiritual progress not perfection—nobody’s a saint. Look at Bill Gates, who gives millions of dollars to charities. In an article here, I learned that Microsoft deliberately wasted power to pressure a small town in Washington not to fine the company $210,000. That’s about what the company makes in a minute. Sometimes we overlook the people closest to us in an attempt to go far.

Forgiveness—So, I made a mistake. Can’t keep beating myself up for it. Better to admit it and share it. Now I have to go apologize to the woman. But how freeing is that? That’s part of being human.

Humility—We have to keep going deeper and deeper and learn more spiritual lessons. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and think of the three A’s: Awareness, acceptance, action.

Live your best chapter: Your worst mistakes are your best teachers.

Posted in How to Change Your Life, Self-care | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Tool For Tuesday: M.Y.M.

Posted on September 25, 2012 by dianabletter

Are you doing unto others so that they will do unto you?

My friend Joelle said that she asks people in her family, “Do you want a cup of coffee? A glass of water?” she’s thinking, “I wish someone would offer me a cup of coffee…”

It dawned on her that she would have to get one herself. Or ask someone to get one for her. But she wanted to stop trying to manipulate those around her into reading her mind. She said, “I have to follow M.Y.M.” Mind Your Manipulation.

Go for direct communication. I didn’t grow up with it so I didn’t know how to do it. It’s like learning a new language. Did you grow up with, “Look how many things I’ve done for you. Couldn’t you just once [fill in the blank] ____wash the dishes, sweep the floor?”

Learning how to ask for what you want in a direct way is difficult. “Do you think you can sweep the floor?” is English that works fine.

If you live with younger kids, make a job chart that is age-appropriate so they know what they have to do and you don’t have to be a broken record. (Down the road, nobody will know what a broken record is. What will people say?)

If you live with a spouse and you’re bickering about who-does-what, when you’re both in a good mood, talk about who-does-what. Get it out in the open. Air that complaint in a calm way. Come up with a distribution of chores that seems fair. Make a list. Make it clear. You can work out solutions to any problem. Who takes out the garbage isn’t that big a problem.

There are ways to M.Y.M.

  1. Direct communication. Say what you want in a loving way.
  2. Remember that it’s OK for you to have needs. And to get those needs met.
  3. Nobody can read your mind.
  4. If you give someone a reminder, that’s being helpful. If you tell them twice, you’re being a borderline nudge. Three times, you’re overstepping your boundary. Even with kids.
  5.  Don’t do unto others what thou don’t wanna do. Ask thyself if you’re doing it to get something in return. You can say no, you know. You can say yes, but don’t think that your yes immediately begets someone else’s yes. They have the right to say no. So do you.

MYM. Strive for clean-cut communication. Use simple, direct speech. Don’t add a big spiel to your request (the story behind the story). If you’re thinking, “After all I did for Joe and Moe, they could just this once…” then you’re not living authentically. You’re doing to manipulate. And then you’ll get a whole bunch of resentments.

Don’t do unto others with the secret hope that that is what they’ll do unto you.

If you’re thinking of direct communication, join Cynthia Morris at Original Impulse in her online writing workshop for the writing fling zone. Got 15 minutes a day? Of course you do. That’s all it takes! Here’s her website address. She’ll be my guest, soon, on this blog!

Posted in Joelle's Adventures, Self-care, Tool For Tuesday | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Specific Versus Generic: Marketing Your Best Chapters

Posted on September 19, 2012 by dianabletter

My Cover, My Shelf (As in Book Shelf)

I’m all set to launch THE MOM WHO TOOK OFF ON HER MOTORCYCLE! I even made a cute little movie which I haven’t yet uploaded to youtube.com about the Mom Who Took Off’s important tips for raising kids. (Like, make sure you have a job chart so that your kids help around the house. You be the Mom, not the slave!)

I showed this cute little movie to a friend of mine, I’ll call him Harrison, who said nothing about my important tips (he has no kids, therefore no comments) but he did say, “Why are you self-selecting with your title? You’re losing a third of your readers who don’t relate to the word “Mom;” a third of your readers who don’t relate to “motorcycle;” and a third of your readers who don’t relate to a “Mom who took off and left her kids.”

“Call your book Ten Thousand Miles,” he said. “On The Road To The Great White North.”

Being an insecure mamby-pamby gotta-get-your-approval don’t-got-no-balls kinda person, I immediately said, Eureka! He’s right. And marketing-wise, I thought the book would have stronger appeal to a wider audience. Generic not specific. Appeal to the broad market not just the broad market. (Calling women broads  suggested immorality or coarse, low-class women, which was why with the rise of women’s athletics, the track and field broad jump was changed to the long jump in 1967.) That was an aside, or getting off the subject, my mind wandering. But don’t you love etymology?

OK. My book is about how I took off on my motorcycle with my husband, Jonny, on his motorcycle because I was facing an empty nest after my 4+2+1 kids (biological+step+semi-adopted) were leaving the house and Jonny was checking off items on his bucket list. And how I came back ready to make the next chapter (tie-in here to this blog!) the best chapter of my life.

Maybe Harrison was right, I thought. When my literary agent at Trident Media Group had sent the book around, one editor wrote in her rejection slip in a tone that I could hear her gasping, “Why would the writer do something so dangerous?” The book’s title implied that I was a bad Mom taking off…So perhaps my title was all wrong.

I had the book already planned, however. The cover is by wonderful Andrew Brown. (You can contact him here.) I thought it would be a bit more of an expense to change the cover to my new title and asked Andrew. He wrote back, “I would advise that you consider retaining your original title. Targeting is important and there is always a risk people lose their audience by trying to appeal too broadly. Clearly however the final decision needs to be one you are comfortable with.” If you want to learn more about what I told Andrew and how he works on cover designs can be found here on Steven Lewis’ blog.

Then I spoke to my friend Lily about this. She is a big shot in marketing at a fancy Swiss cosmetics company but I’m not allowed to write its name. “People work on marketing and thinking up one word for years,” Lily said. “Some books or products have very odd names and do great (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance); some have very generic names and do great (Cheryl Strayed’s Wild). The answer is that there is no right or wrong—it’s what you feel good with.”

“So, what do I do?” I asked.

“Well, The Mom Who Took Off On Her Motorcycle really reflects who you are,” she said. “It has your sense of humor and seems more you than Ten Thousand Miles. Maybe you need a good tag-line, like ‘Getting Away is Almost as Good as Getting Back Home’.”

My tag line now is “How One Woman Reinvented Herself on the Road to Alaska” because I thought it would appeal to all those folks who are fascinated with Alaska. And reinvention. Transformation! Becoming someone new! Starting life over again! But now I’m not sure about that. I’m keeping THE MOM WHO…because it makes me smile each time I see it. And because when I tell people, they also smile.

Any suggestions for a good tag-line? I’m thinking that all mothers need a break. That’s actually the new idea behind marketing wines directly to women which was written about in The New York Times the way beers were aimed at guys. Instead of drinking wine, however, you can read my book and dream of getting away for a while. A Time-Out for Moms.

And I want to avoid some of the mistakes that some indie writers make which Shannon of Duolit (they have wonderful suggestions for indie-publishing here, everything from making your own book trailers to the traits of successful self-published writers) spoke about on Catherine Ryan Howard’s blog:

http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/09/13/the-3-most-common-indie-oopsies-by-shannon-of-duolit/

So…I’m putting it out there. Any ideas on specific versus generic? What is your favorite book title? What works for you and why?

And what does this have to do with living your best chapter? Because one of my rules is: Isolation = desperation. We don’t need to do it all alone. We can be gigantically courageous and ask for help. Just put it out to the universe.

Here’s a woman doing the long jump, not the broad jump. We gotta jump right in!

Posted in How to Change Your Life, Writers, Writing, Your Best Chapter | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments