“If Only ___ Would Happen, I’d Live My Best Chapter”

Posted on May 2, 2012 by dianabletter

How many of us are waiting for conditions to be perfect before we feel that we’re living our best chapter?

I used to think that if I won that Lottery, if I published this book, if I sold that article, if I could go on this trip …then I’d be able to live the life I dreamed of.

I’ve come to understand that many of the things I was waiting for were beyond my control. And more importantly, they were all outside of myself. If I kept waiting and waiting, I’d put off living my life.

I may not have everything I want. But I can take certain steps today to get those things. A flower doesn’t wait for the perfect garden to grow in: it makes that beauty happen. A snail keeps venturing across the path, even if it seems like it’s taking forever, it is still moving forward. We can start that symphony, skip down the street, sing a new song. We can be brilliant, divine and spectacular. We can shine.

“If only’s” are lonely. I don’t have to wait to start doing what I can to make this my best chapter. I can take the smallest step and begin today.

“Life holds so much — so much to be so happy about always,” said Arthur Rubinstein. “Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can be felt only if you don’t set conditions.”

What are you waiting for? What project or goal can you move toward, beginning right where you are, just for today?

Posted in Being a Hero In Your Life, How to Change Your Life, Your Best Chapter | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Tool For Tuesday: Say What You Mean. Mean What You Say. And Don’t Say It Meanly.

Posted on May 1, 2012 by dianabletter

Last week’s Tool for Tuesday was making sure our actions match our words. That segues into today’s tool which can help us live our best chapter:

Say what you mean. Mean what you say. And don’t say it meanly.

I was a real pushover for most of my life. I didn’t care what I had to do as long as I could get people to love me. I was horrified at saying no. The worst thing someone could call me was selfish. I didn’t mind being a doormat if it meant having people’s approval.

Learning that no was a complete sentence came hard to me. No? No! No. I was so scared that if I refused to do something for people, they’d be angry at me and that meant falling into a lonely precipice where I’d lost their love.

Once I recognized why I was doing what I was doing, I went to the other extreme. I was so pumped up with new power that when I said no, I practically shouted it. Maybe I was afraid my “no” wouldn’t taken seriously so I went on and on with my reasons. Sometimes I wasn’t nice at all. I was like a new convert to a religion who gets extreme for a while before gaining enough confidence to be moderate.

These days, I can say what I mean in a polite way. I don’t complain and I don’t explain. I don’t have to “speak my mind” the way I did in the past because I’ve learned that a lot is better off unsaid. And I’m no longer talking myself blue in the face to get other people to change their behavior or ideas. “You cannot change anyone except yourself,” the woman named Peace Pilgrim said. “After you have become an example, you can inspire others to change themselves.”

After, “don’t say it meanly,” I also ask myself, “Does it have to be said by me? Does it have to be said by me now? Does it have to be said at all?”

How do you say what you mean? Are there any tools you use?

Posted in Tool For Tuesday, Uncategorized, Your Best Chapter | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Meditation Makes A Difference

Posted on April 30, 2012 by dianabletter

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: Meditation Makes a Difference

True confession: I once had a cyst on my foot. My ex-husband said I could cure it with some herbal medicine he was using and gave me an assortment of pills. I was hopeful. Trusting and open. My heart was at peace. I was willing to put aside all my cynical beliefs and I prayed that the cyst would shrink to the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

Unfortunately, I ended up on a serious dose of antibiotics and a scar the size of a New York City cockroach. So I’m not going to convert to Christian Science, although I have a good friend who has been a healthy Christian Scientist for years.

Still, I believe that living our best chapter means making sure that all coordinates of our life – body, mind, heart, soul – are playing the same tune in the same symphony. That’s why I was curious to talk to Dr. Isaac Eliaz, who has been researching the connections between our spiritual, emotional and mental health — and our physical health.

Diana: What made you start your personal journey toward wellness? I know that sometimes people have to hit their rock bottom before they embark on their best chapter. Was there a personal crisis or revelation that triggered your journey?
Dr. Eliaz: My personal journey was not driven by a crisis. I actually started my interest at a very young age by raising bees. At the age of twelve, I was the youngest registered beekeeper in Israel. By watching the bees and seeing how they interacted, I developed a greater sensitivity to the connection and the relationship between nature and its inhabitants.
At the age of fifteen, I spent a year and a half in Korea where my father was an Agriculture Engineer. I learned Tai Kwon Do and afterwards, I learned yoga and meditation, and that is where my interest started. Although I was not a Buddhist, we spent many weekends visiting Buddhist temples and I think this had a subconscious effect on me.
I soon began practicing yoga very intensely, and became a yoga instructor while beginning medical school. I learned shiatsu, and also organized and took part in the first course for Chinese Medicine at the medical school I attended. So it was really an inner calling.
Diana: I look for practical suggestions that people can use to live their best chapter. (Each week I have a blog post, Tool for Tuesday.) What would you say are the 3 most important things people can do for themselves each day?
Dr. Eliaz: The one practice that can address many things is mindfulness. Mindfulness means being mindful or being aware of what is good for us from the point of view of taking care of our physical body, our mental health, our psychological health, and our spiritual health. So really the word “mindfulness” does not mean a certain kind of meditation—it means being aware of the tools that we have and reminding ourselves to use them. The three most important tools are:

1. Exercise and Movement – There is no better medicine than walking. If we can walk every day for 45 minutes, it has a profound effect on our well-being.
2. Stress Management – Use meditation, relaxation, music, art, humor – whatever healthy methods you can use to get stress levels down.
3. Hydration and Nutrition – I mention hydration first because most people are chronically dehydrated…like an engine running without oil.

Diana: Should people who are very busy still try to squeeze in 10 minutes of meditation a day? And if so, how could that help them live the best chapter of their lives?
Dr. Eliaz: The idea behind meditation – even for 10 minutes – is that it allows us to slow down, watch our breath, connect with our feelings, and connect with our body. Slowly, within the peacefulness, we start to develop a space between our thoughts and our experiences, which becomes a window into our soul and into our being.
Usually it’s not so useful to do mail-order meditation teachings – it is best to get meditation instruction in person, as there are transmission and inspiration qualities to an in-person instruction.

Diana: Could you please just share with us just one meditation technique? Pretty please?

Dr. Eliaz: You can follow your breath, repeat a certain mantra, or just look at a certain object. For example, focus your eyes on a pebble, and you focus your breath on the pebble by visualizing that you’re exhaling to the pebble and inhaling from the pebble. Focus your concentration on the pebble. Keep your spine and your back straight, and your eyes relaxed. By just focusing, slowly distractions fall away and you will feel an effect after ten to fifteen minutes, with profound health benefits.

Thank you, Dr. Eliaz!

Readers, I’m going to make a committment — just for today — to try the pebble meditation. If I can’t last for 10 whole minutes, I’ll go for five.

I usually try to write out my stress. I just write and write. What about you? Why don’t you share what you do for meditation and mindfulness and any other stress-reducing techniques you use?

Posted in How to Change Your Life, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Less Is More

Posted on April 29, 2012 by dianabletter

One of the things I’ve learned lately is: less is more.

The less wordy you are, the more impact you have. Like this.

The less you tell, the more you reveal.

In their classic book, The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White wrote, “Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.” (How’s that for a sensational sentence?)

My husband, Jonny, has a friend who gives such a long-winded explanation that sometimes, when he’s in the middle of circling and circling with his stories, Jonny tells him, “Just land the plane!”

Get to the point. The worst thing a writer can do is go on and on.

The same holds true when we relate to others. Living our best chapter means not being a verbal spammer. If I give you a suggestion once, that’s fine. If I give you a follow-up reminder, that is OK, too. But if I tell you the same thing for a third time, then I’m becoming a broken record — a nag, a noodge, someone who’s trying to manipulate you to do what I want when I want it. Then you’d stop listening to me after a while.

Sometimes more doesn’t make the most. Less is better. Less is more.

 

Posted in How to Change Your Life, Relationships | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Writer’s Question: What Course Should I Take?

Posted on April 27, 2012 by dianabletter

Media alert: I just got my award from Media Bistro for winning First Prize in Family Circle’s Fiction Contest! I get a one-year’s subscription to their how to video library – which includes 555 videos on so many subjects it’s dizzying – and I get to sign up for one of their online courses– for free! Now the question is: What course should I take? I need your help in making my decision.

There is so much to choose from. I could take a course in novel writing since I’m in the process of doing the third draft of my novel, “Downturn,” about a couple whose marriage falls apart as they both lose their jobs at the same time . I wrote the novel eight years ago and stuck it in a drawer, discouraged. Then, after I won the Family Circle contest, I decided to pull it out again. So, should I take a novel writing course?

The only drawback to that is this: I’ve already taken dozens of writing courses. I’ve studied with the best, including Diane Ackerman and Grace Paley.  Athough I haven’t managed to sell any of my novels — yet —  one of my novels was chosen as a semi-finalist in amazon.com’s breakthrough novel award. That counts for something. So, I’m thinking that maybe instead of focusing on the writing, I should focus on selling.

“You can keep writing novels the way Emily Dickinson wrote poems and never let more than a handful of people read what you wrote,” my friend Lily said. “Or you can do something different and try to sell them.”

Of course, the selling part of writing books is not half as fun as the writing and reading part. Many writers grouse about how much work goes into selling their books – sometimes even more than actually writing them. But that’s show business for you. Margaret Atwood doesn’t like going on book tours because her books sell themselves. But for most writers, we have to build – and keep – an online presence to sell books. It’s a business like any other.

Even a talented and very successful writer like Jennifer Weiner has a blog, a facebook page and a website…And she’s always connecting with fans and future readers. So maybe I should take a course in online marketing. There’s one course that will teach me how to “drive traffic and optimize sites through SEO, social media, and blog outreach.”

Or, I can take a course in where to put a link in my blog post, like right here, to get you to go to another post on my site. (Tricky, huh?) There’s another course in how to improve my rankings, and increase traffic to your blog, but that sort of seems like the other course. How do I tell them apart?

What about online marketing? Or branding? Or magazine writing? I’ve written for magazines before but media bistro offers one course, Stiletto Boot Camp, which teaches how to write for the best-paying women’s magazines and websites. That could be interesting. I’ve written for Glamour, Seventeen and Mademoiselle but I haven’t been able to break into O…Oh, is that the way to go? That would increase my salary but would it help me sell books?

At least I know that I don’t have to take a course in blogging. I’ve figured most of it out on my own with an extra pinch of pixie dust and help from Catherine Ryan Howard who has an incredibly lively blog, Catherine Caffeinated, which combines three spectacular things: strong coffee, writing, and Irish wit.

Do you think I should take a course that is good for me even though it doesn’t really intrigue me, the way you’re supposed to take vitamins because “they’re good for you”? Or, since I won the award and it’s free – sort of like throwaway money – should I take something that could be simple fun, like a writers’ festival with Susan Orlean, author of that wonderful book, The Orchid Thief…

All you writers, marketers, soothsayers and book mavens, help me out here. I will be publishing my own book on October 5, 2012. Which way should I go?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

All We Can Do Is Go Around Telling The Truth

Posted on April 26, 2012 by dianabletter

Literary biographer Virginia Spencer Carr died today. She’s author of one of my favorite biographies, The Lonely Hunter, about Carson McCullers, who was one of my favorite writers.

Carr’s book about McCullers was so compassionate and empathetic that McCullers’ widowed brother even asked Carr to marry him. (She declined.)

One particular quote I remember from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is this:

“All we can do is go around telling the truth.”

That quote has stuck with me and I’m sharing it here. That’s all we have, our own personal truth.

Just now, I was talking to my youngest daughter about this. We agreed that we have to be honest. But how do you know when to share your truth? And how do you know whom to trust?

Libby said, “I don’t want to waste my story on just anyone.”

Our stories are our treasures. It isn’t a good idea to tell everybody everything. It’s important to wait and make sure the other person is an appropriate listener. I know that I have sometimes shared my story for the wrong reasons. To gain someone’s good graces, to gain someone else’s approval. Sometimes, I’ve shared what I thought was my truth but — if I’m going to be honest here — it was really truth about someone else. Actually, if I’m going to be really honest here, it was my side of the truth. Borderline gossip. I probably shared it because I wanted my listener to agree with my side of the story.

Part of living our best chapter means claiming our life story, our narrative. We are who we are. We are facing the world as ourselves. We suit up and show up. We don’t make excuses. We present ourselves to the world from where we are. We are starting from somewhere.

Writers write their truth, as McCullers did. She wrote about the lonely, the outcasts, the people who live on the jagged edge of life.

To be the heroes of our lives, we have to claim them. We have to go around telling our truth. More importantly, we have to go around living our truth.

Posted in Acceptance, Writing, Your Best Chapter | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tool For Tuesday: Make Sure Your Actions Match Your Words

Posted on April 24, 2012 by dianabletter

Did you ever go out with someone who promised you roses every Friday, trips to Tahiti and you got bupkis instead? (Bupkis, FYI, is Yiddish for goat droppings and means nothing, zip, absolutely nada.)

If we want people to take us seriously – and more importantly, if we want to take ourselves seriously – then our actions have to match our words.

This applies to all our relationships. Early on with my kids, I used to make threats I couldn’t possibly carry out. (Like kick an eight-year-old son out of the house for good.) I’d threaten that unless they cleaned their room, they wouldn’t be able to watch TV until the year 2067. Being smarter than me, they soon figured out those threats were things I’d never do.

I realized that my kids didn’t take me seriously because my actions didn’t match my words.

We all know people who say they’ll do something and they’re as reliable as the weather in San Francisco. (Everyone quotes Mark Twain saying, “The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer in San Francisco,” but scholars haven’t been able to find the quote. And on snopes, the writer says it’s an example of treppenwitz, the wit of the stairway, the perfect comeback line you remember after you’ve already walked down the stairs. The website linked above calls it, “blinding flashes of intellect…Just a little too late.” (Check it out for fascinating analyses.

We have to be consistent in word and deed. As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Blink, “When someone says, ‘I love you,’ we look into that person’s eyes to judge his or her sincerity.” That’s the first impression – the moment before the blink. After that, we have to judge them by their actions. If they say, “I love you,” every morning and then insult you every evening, we soon learn we can’t trust them. (And we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that we can.)

For instance, I have a friend who always says she wants to get together with me but each time we make plans, she cancels or changes the time or squeezes me in on the way to somewhere else. (That’s called over-booking which is accepted in certain circles but which drives me crazy.) So I’ve learned to listen to her words and make a plan with her but always have a back-up plan in case she’s a no-show.

Do you have something you say you’re going to do but never get around to?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Start From Somewhere. Somewhere is So Much Better Than Nowhere.

Posted on April 23, 2012 by dianabletter

 

My husband, Jonny, and I were running this morning along the Mediterranean Sea. We passed a woman huffing along, waddling slowly up the road. She was overweight and struggling.

“At least she’s trying,” Jonny said.

“You have to start from somewhere,” I agreed.

And then it hit me in a completely new way: you have to start from somewhere. I’d said those words but the truth was: I never really took them in.

I realized I often haven’t started things because I’m angry about where it is I have to start from. I get mad at myself when the starting point is farther back than where I want it to be. I want to start farther ahead than where I am.

I learned this lesson with the next book I’m publishing, The Mom Who Took Off On Her Motorcycle. It’s the first book I’ve published since 1989. All these years, I was raising a brood of kids, and writing, writing, writing. I’ve published dozens of articles and won awards but I haven’t been able to get another book published. And before I decided to self-publish this Mom Who Took Off book, I was waiting for my agent — from a very reputable, big literary agency — to sell it. She sent it out to traditional publishers, received lots of positive feedback, but the editors all said that there wasn’t enough of a market for it. So I put the book aside, waiting and wishing, wanting things to be different. And I was getting angrier and angrier about where I was – which was not where I wanted to be.

But I have to start from where I am. It might not be where I’d like but it’s where I can move from. And if we keep waiting and waiting, wishing things were different, then we’ll keep running in place. I reached a point when I realized I had two options: keep doing what I was doing (which was basically nothing) or do something different. And the moment I made a decision to yank myself past the frustration and take action, the happier I began to feel. Wow. I don’t have to wait around for anybody else. The official publication date of the book is October 5 so get out your pompoms! I’m happier now than our dog named Happy. And I’ll be sharing more of my adventures in self-printing along the way, filling you in on book cover designs, formatting the book, layout and publicity.

Start from where you are. Today. Better yet, start right now. Start doing whatever it is you want to do. If you want to write a novel, set the timer for 30 minutes and start that novel. Remember as I wrote in another post, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. You have to start from somewhere. Make it here. Make it now. Start doing what you want to do. You want to learn to bake soufflés? Play the harp? Speak Chinese? Get into shape?

Start from somewhere. Start from right here, right where you are. You have to begin before you get the buzz. You have to get going and then you’ll keep going. You have to take that first step to set out.

“The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind,” said Maya Angelou. If you feel the need for change, don’t just stop and stew. Don’t wait around in the wanting, wishing, whining stage. Be bold. Be brave. Begin. Even if it’s only one sentence on paper. Even if the soufflé is burnt, the harp sounds broken, you can’t even say Won Ton soup. Even if it’s only a walk to the end of the street. Are you getting the hint?

This is the somewhere that is your starting point. And I’ve come to understand that somewhere is so much better than nowhere.

 

Posted in How to Change Your Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Life is Not A Test: You will Not Be Graded. You Will Always Be Applauded. (If You At Least Try.)

Posted on April 20, 2012 by dianabletter

Life Is Not A Test. You Will Not Be Graded. You Will Always Be Applauded. (If You At Least Try.)

“Good writing…explodes in the reader’s face,” Joy Williams said. “Whenever the writer writes, it’s always three or four or five o’clock in the morning in his head.”

When we write, we have to stumble forward recklessly, passionately, and willy-nilly, using only our words as guides. It’s late at night and there are boulders we can’t see, only their shadows. It’s early in the morning and you don’t know, really, if the sun will ever rise. We have to push past our fears, urging our unwilling selves to go farther, not caring that what we put down on paper is good or makes sense or can even, or ever, describe and transmit all the fiery, fierce feelings in our hearts.

That’s why writing is so much like magic. It’s pulling a rabbit out of an empty black top hat. It’s scooping our insides and pouring them out. It’s being unafraid and brave and open when you’re feeling scared and lonely and unsure what to do with your life.

It’s an imperfect world, that’s for sure, which was why I asked you to write about your perfect moment. How amazingly incredible is that? Finding a perfect moment in the midst of all the suffering is no small accomplishment. It’s huge. Tremendous. A cause of celebration. Here are three of my absolute favorite perfect moments:

First, an introduction from a reader who wrote:

“I am trying this writing exercise because in March you suggested that one could actually ‘be more, by being less (you see I am paying attention).’  It seems that thought has been in the back of my mind and so after seeing your scary challenge (how I view a writing exercise)  I decided to do something I would normally never do and step out of the parameters of my tried and true self and see how I will feel.  You ask us to think about one of life’s perfect little moments – here goes, I turn on the timer and ……

A perfect little moment for me is when I wake up in the middle of the night and I feel my husband’s arm gently touching me. I listen to his steady breath and feel overwhelmed by the tenderness and love that he has for me. I revel in this moment and feel how lucky I am to have such a warm and caring anchor in my life… I am happy I tied my boat to his to go up and down on the waves of life together over the days, months and years. I feel at peace, safe and secure; I breathe deep and can fall back into peaceful, restful and rejuvenating sleep.” – Joy Berg

“It’s already past midnight and I’ve turned into a pumpkin. That’s all right I think to myself she can make a soup out of me, or carve me up and make me light up the night for a few nights a year at her house.
I didn’t expect to still be out at this hour. I especially didn’t think you’d still be out with me. We’ve spoken for hours upon hours, about nothing and about everything.
I’ll walk you home and say goodnight when you are ready. OR Now take me home since I can no longer walk. Carry me back to your place. We reach the door and I don’t say goodnight all I can say is ‘it was PERFECT’.”  – Tucker White

I’m busy in the kitchen, drinking coffee, and watching all my kids getting ready for school in the morning, cereal bowls and Cheerios and my son Drake’s yelling at Kate that she’s SO stupid and Kate is saying, you’re stupid, you’re stupid, and then Janie in her high chair starts crying, her hair’s a mess and spoons are flying and I’m smearing butter on toast and thinking about how all the other kids eat cheese and I’m wondering, why can’t my kids be normal and I turn for a moment and see those shining faces and that’s it. Perfection. – Christine Buenadicha

Thank you to all entrants!

If we can make art out of our lives, then we see that life itself is the art. We are living our best chapter when we acknowledge this stunning truth.

For next week: Set your timer for five minutes and write your first memory. Use as many senses as you can. Really go back as far as you can go. Don’t worry about punctuation, spelling, grammar and above all, do not stop yourself from writing whatever you want to write. Life is not a test. You will not be graded. You will always be applauded. (If you at least try.)

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

If It Feels Wrong, Then You’re Doing Right

Posted on April 19, 2012 by dianabletter

Yesterday, my friend Joelle (apple wedges, not slices) called me. Distraught and depressed. She told me that her sister is up to her eyeballs in a lethal swirl of prescription drugs and alcohol and Joelle has been trying to get her to go for help – but she just won’t go. To make matters worse, her sister lives in California and thinks nothing of calling Joelle on the East Coast in the middle of the night. Which makes for a very unhappy Joelle in the morning.

“Why don’t you turn off your phone?” I asked her.

“Um, er,” Joelle stammered, “I couldn’t do that… I want to help her, I feel so guilty turning my back on her …” And then Joelle’s voice fell off the cliff into that netherworld called despair.

“The thing is this,” I said. “You can’t save a drowning woman by jumping into the shark-infested sea and drowning with her. You just can’t save her. All you can do is save yourself.”

“But I can’t do that,” Joelle said. “It feels so wrong.”

“If it feels wrong, then you’re doing right,” I said.

It only feels wrong because it is new behavior. It’s something that you’ve never done before. If you have always jumped in and rescued (even at the risk of ruining yourself) – then not jumping in feels wrong. But it is precisely the right thing to do.

Joelle keeps thinking that if she tries hard enough, she’ll find the right words — like a locksmith searching for the right key to fit the tumbler — and then she’ll get through to her sister. But sometimes we have to push ourselves to admit defeat when we’re the kind of people who keep thinking that if we just try a little harder, we’ll succeed. Sometimes we have to do the opposite of what we’ve always done. Those very things are just habits, learned and automatic behaviors. (See my post about “I’m the kind of person who ____.” We have to step away from our usual selves.

Flip things upside down and inside out to start your best chapter. Stop doing what you’ve always done. Do something wrong because it just might be right.

Joelle’s sister cries for help in the sea. Joelle jumps in and they thrash around in the water for a while. Joelle feels relieved that she’s in there with her so she climbs out. She walks a few steps away from the water and just when she’s starting to feel OK, her sister calls for help again. So Joelle jumps in and they thrash some more. This will keep going on and on…and on…until Joelle gathers enough strength to stay out of the water. She has to do what feels really wrong, selfish, horrible, unsisterly and downright mean. For Joelle to be the hero of her own life, she has to stop trying to play hero in everyone else’s lives.

Do you have a story to share about how you did what felt wrong — but was really right?

Stay tuned to find out what happens…Meanwhile, you can follow me on twitter @dianabletter for more updates. I’m still welcoming entries to the writing in appreciation of our lives contest. Entries to be posted on Friday so send ’em in!

If It Feels Wrong, Then It’s Right PHOTO CREDIT: Diana Bletter

Posted in Joelle's Adventures, Other people and us, Relationships | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment