awareness

I was discussing intuition the other day with someone I love.
I will call her: My sister. Yep, we had blabbed over salad, about the kids and my new class and we had worked our way to discussing intuition, you know, just like you all do.
I was reiterating how in my experience, intuition’s not loud, it doesn’t yell, it is never a question and it just keeps repeating itself, over and over.

She looked at me and said: How am I supposed to hear it, over that other voice in my head? The loud, snarky, judgy one, that says we shouldn’t order the cake.
Right?
Call him ego, call him the devil, call him whatever you want. He’s an asshole. Michael Singer in “The UnTethered Soul” refers to that voice as “The Room Mate” which I love. The ever present pest.

Here’s the answer. Short and sweet.
YOU ARE NOT THAT VOICE. You are the listener. Let that sink in.

Just tell that guy to: Shut the F up.
After he’s been on his endless, negative rant about my weight or my bank account or my age, I give him 10 seconds to say something positive, or he MUST shut up.
That’s a trick, because it’s impossible for him. Those words just don’t exist in his vocabulary and it renders him speechless.
Ahhhhh quiet.
THEN I can hear intuition’s voice.

I do it in the car, in meditation, in the shower and the bewitching hour…3AM.
My friend Sally and I did it on our hike.
We just demanded that that scoundrel: Shut the F up.
I’m sorry, but cursing is required here, he doesn’t respond to polite requests.
He’ll just call you a weak suck and criticize your grammar.
We then laughed through the rest of our walk.

Mind you, it takes practice and in the beginning he doesn’t stay away for very long.
He’s like a wild, untrained 8 week old puppy, peeing all over your hopes and dreams. He needs boundaries and it takes discipline. 
But we MUST, all, set these boundaries with the voices in our heads.

They are not us. We are the listener, we call the shots, we get to turn the channel.
This listener prefers the Positive Channel over the Worry Channel.
The Worry Channel has a 24 broadcast cycle with a huge audience, but it makes me sick…literally.
So now you know the secret. Cuss him on his way, and get some peace and quiet.

What’s the name of your pest? What tricks do you have to share?
Start a conversation in the comments, won’t cha?

XoxJanet

*This is a recent post by Danielle LaPorte DanielleLaPorte.com
I LOVE her. She is a rockstar, in my opinion.
I think this is so important right now.
Like, not in a minute, or tomorrow important, but right now important.
Unburden the soul, get lighter.
My list is at the bottom.

A Celebration of The Stop Doing List. 
On the path to defining your own version of success, what you stop doing is just as important as the things you start doing. Read that twice, please. Because this concept could change everything for you — if you let it.
Stop and… liberate.
What you stop doing is just as important as the things you start doing.
Everybody needs a Stop Doing List. Even a marketing genius, prolific author, vegan, philanthropist and all ’round smarty pants like Seth Godin. I asked Seth to get on the stop doing band wagon with us. He obliged:
I will stop:
Keeping score in games I don’t need to win
Keeping score in games I can’t win
Wasting time on people I can’t please
Ignoring the side effects of my personal choices
Giving into the resistance without realizing I was
Reading my Amazon reviews
Letting other people decide if I was doing a good job
Trying so hard when it came to persuading other people to change their minds
Making lists like this one. Except now
Cleaning industrial dough mixers
Walking into glass doors
Biking without a helmet
Cutting large blocks of Styrofoam while barefoot
Working for jerks
Here’s Danielle’s latest personal Stop Doing List:
I will stop:
Staying up too late when the truth is, I want to get up before sunrise and start loving the day.
Doing the laundry simply because it’s there. Write first, laundry can wait.
Acting like I love to garden and going all kale crazy. I don’t really love to garden. I just love snap peas and edible flowers. Simplify.
Picking a fight with snarly security officials at airports. They need love. And a lot of it. (I should generally go easier on people in uniforms. This will take some willpower.)
Bringing my nicest clothes to consignment stores, it’s so not worth it. And it’s much more fun to make my friends happy with a bag o’ style.
What will you stop doing? Like, right away.
Use these questions to create your new no’s:
Are you deeply passionate about it?
Do you feel you’re ‘made to do’ it?
Can you make a living at it?
If the answers come up meh, just kinda, and … no to – then you might want stop doing it. Shut ‘er down. Take it off your plate. Let it die. Cease. And exhale a sigh of relief. Now you can move with more velocity toward your dreams. That’s how this works.
Janet’s I Will Stop Doing List:
Dying my hair blonde
Saying “awesome”
Eating chocolate covered almonds and saying I had nuts as a snack.
Saying I am going to grow vegetables this summer…it’s never gonna happen
Subscribing to magazines I never get a chance to read (Hello January O Magazine, I’m talking to you)
Caring if other people think I’m doing it right.
Planning appointments at peak traffic hours, if I have the choice.
Picking up the dance and spinning class schedule at the Y, it just makes me feel bad.
Reading emails in bed.
Getting lost in Facebook at bedtime.
Eating raw chocolate chip cookie dough
Making promises I can’t keep^
Hiking without socks

*Yesterday I sent this to Liz Gilbert the author of “Eat Pray Love” , and asked her to share her list.
Her response: That’s AWESOME! (Whoops I said it!)

Unburden yourself. Send me your list in the comments.
XoxJanet

It’s my birthday today.
Yep, another year older, I’m game for that; it is better than the alternative.

Once upon a long time ago, a wise man told me that it’s very important to meditate on the day of your birth and to set an intention for the year to follow.

He also told a story that I swallowed hook, line and sinker, and it went something like: Either the night before, or the night of your birth, you go before a council, in your dreams. You then state your case as to the reasons why you should be allowed to remain on the planet for another year.

What will you add?

Will you move further toward your purpose, or stay asleep?

When he explained that to me over coffee and a huge dose of conviction –– I took it very seriously…and I still do.

I used to look around at the people who appeared to just be marking time, figuring their council session probably didn’t go so well. Until I realized, someone could be wondering that about me. Everyone’s entitled to have an off-year, right?

The older I get, the more I understand that this is not a dry run. This is the real deal.

You’ve gotta try your damnedest to find out why you’re here, and then get on with it.

What do you think you last told the council?

That you’re going to spend another year at that dead-end job, or in that abusive, loveless marriage?

That you’re not going to take that trip you’ve always dreamed about…again?

That you’re not going to take any chances…you’ll be sitting on the sidelines, playing it safe again this year?

How would that go over with them? I’m thinkin’ not so good.

We may be given some slack in our twenties, ’cause we’re newbies, but by now, we had better make a hell of a case for walking the planet for another 365 days.

I only get the privilege of being me this one time around. I’m not looking at blowing it.

Xox

Who does that? Whose got the time? Yet, those are still the directions on the bottle of shampoo. If your hair won’t come clean after one shampoo, you’ve got bigger problems baby.

Tags on a mattress: It is forbidden, under penalty of law to remove the tags. 
Who leaves them on?
I rip tags off of everything…immediately.
I once worked my way around a friend’s apartment discreetly removing the tags that were still on her futon, chair cushions, couch and pillows. I couldn’t help myself.
Was she just lazy or following directions, hoping to avoid the tag police?

What about waiting a half hour after eating, before going back into the ocean or pool. “You’ll get a cramp and drown”. That rule never made any sense to me. Maybe it did happen to Margie’s cousins, kids, nephew. Never mind that they didn’t know how to tread water, it was the bologna sandwich that did them in. So, our moms enforced that rule to-the-minute. As a kid, I could inhale my lunch in 2.5 seconds, so a half an hour was an eternity. But to my mom, that rule was law.

Some people follow directions to the letter.
For me, directions, tags, rules for games, most rules in general, are always just….a suggestion.
The ones I can’t get around, like flossing and taxes, I adhere to begrudgingly.

Maybe it’s America. So much fear of liability. You can be sued by anyone, for anything. It’s not that way in other countries.
That’s why I love the Italians. In Italy there is a kind of “live in the moment” attitude that renders laws and rules…obsolete.
To the Italians they truly are only suggestions. Which makes them my people.
I was in Rome for a couple of weeks when every day it was well over 100 degrees. They call that August. There are many, many gorgeous fountains in Rome. Each had a sign that basically said: Stay out of the fountain. But by the number of men, women, little kids, grandmas, dogs, even nuns; standing and splashing around, you would have thought the sign said: Come on in, the water’s fine! Even the politzia turned a blind eye.
Several years later I went back and the signs were down. Why waste good wall space? Godere!

My husband, who is also European, so maybe it’s in the water; has a motto that I’ve grown to love, and have adopted as my own: It is easier to ask forgiveness, than to ask permission.
Meaning, if you know the answer most likely will be no, if you know a rule is about to be broken, and no one’s getting hurt, just do it. Gasp… I know, I know. But there are so many joyful, playful, beautiful things in life that somewhere along the line became “not okay.” Some killjoy decided it was a bad idea to swim too soon after eating or rip a tag off a mattress or shampoo only once or splash in a fountain on a hot summers day, and they ruined it for everyone.

I’m not advocating hurting anyone, defiling public property, or acts of debauchery.
I’m just saying, it’s okay to color outside the lines, to find joy whenever and wherever you can.
Rules are made to be broken. Tear some tags. Laugh in a library. If there are no cars, cross the street just before the light turns green. Oh you rebel! And if you’re caught in the fountain, don’t be embarrassed, just smile and say: I’m sorry, it’ll never happen again.
Until next time.

XoxJanet
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I LOVE This!

Do you have lists, folders or a bulletin board full of things you desire?
I do. At my store I had an entire wall of cork behind the desk. It was 11 feet high. The entire surface was covered with pictures, cards, swatches, anything and everything I loved. Except for the very tippy top, because if I could reach it standing on my chair, so be it. If I had to get the ladder; it didn’t make the cut. Too lazy.

I dream big. Always have, always will.
I believe EVERYTHING is obtainable.
The extraordinary things I covet and the pictures I collect are just reminders for me.
I want it all!
Then reality lands on my head. And while he messes my hair, he whispers in my ear this loaded question:
Are you willing to do what it takes?
We all know deep down what’s required to achieve our dreams.
What changes, course corrections, sacrifices, hard work and amount of commitment will deliver them to us.
But will we only reach as high as the chair will take us or will we get off of our asses and get the ladder?

Are you willing to do what it takes?
We can ask that question of ANY situation. If we do, often the answer will be: not now, or I’m not ready, or flat-out NO.
Then we have no one to blame but ourselves when something slips through our fingers and that’s no fun.
Blame comes in handy. It deflects the shame.

Sometimes you think you know what you’re willing to do, but if you’d really known what it would take, you’d have packed your bags and moved to Siberia.

When I decided to buy a house I knew I had to put an end to my frivolous spending.
I was making good money and buying everything that wasn’t nailed down. I was a hoarder of all the finest things in life. But I could not continue to be that girl AND own a home. Not unless I learned how to turn shoes into gold.
I was sick and tired of greasing Uncle Sam’s palm with my tax money, and listening to my upstairs neighbor’s terrible music and bad headboard rhythm during sex.

I wanted a house, and I wanted it in a year.
I was 39 years old. Time was a wastin’.
But…Was I willing to do what it would take?
It had to be drastic. I needed to save $40,000 in twelve months. I formulated a plan, and jumped. Are you seeing a pattern in my life? I am.

I moved out of my 3000 square foot rented duplex, and put everything in storage. Then my two Siamese cats, their giant cat tree, and 1/3 of my clothes, moved into a 10 x 10ft. bedroom at my sisters with her husband and my two-year old nephew.
It was a toddler/cat free-for-all for this childless, terminally single girl.
Did I also mention that my 7 minute commute turned into one hour each way?
Oh yeah, now THAT’S commitment.
All the sacrifice, all fur balls and midnight cat fights paid off. I did manage to move out after exactly one year. It was a good thing too. My sister was four months pregnant with my niece by then and was going to need MY room.

As I write this I’m sitting in that very house, which I LOVE. I’m proud of myself for buckling down, behaving like grown up, and going after my dream.
Parts of it were fun, but I can’t imagine doing it again. Not in a million years.

I’ve worked two jobs, logged thousands of overtime hours, and passed on great vacation trips, as I’m sure a lot of you have, to get what I wanted.
I’ve learned how to be soft and vulnerable, while getting my heart-broken, in order to be ready for my husband.
Some jumps I’ve taken have failed.
A lot of what I’ve done, I’d never do again.
If I’d REALLY known what it would take, I may not have been so willing.
I think as time goes on you develop a kind of amnesia to the pain. It keeps you in the game.

Regardless, it couldn’t have been THAT bad.
It has all brought me here, and here, is pretty damn good.
So I say: Go for it.

XoxJanet

Ultimatums are rarely a good idea.
In life, in relationships and when dealing with the Universe.
When we are driven to taking this tactic, hands on our hips, lips pursed, loaded with attitude, wearing our bossy pants…we will lose.
And we’ve ALL done it.

Think about it, you have set your terms, made your demands and you are promising some kind of retaliation or an end to communication all together, if you don’t get the answer you desire.
First of all, that’s called emotional extortion, that’s a topic for another day.
Still, it seems like you have all the power… butcha don’t….Not really.

The final outcome lies in the hands of the receiver of the ultimatum.
It’s his call, he could end it all. Because YOU said so.

You know what the Universe says to an ultimatum?
“You’re not the boss of me”.

You know how I know that? Because it told me so.

Recently; like yesterday, I was giving the Universe my latest, in the long line of ultimatums I’ve been issuing, and that “voice” chimed in:
Me: So, here’s the deal, you’ve gotta do “this thing” or I can’t make all this other stuff happen.
Uni: Don’t give me an ultimatum, you’re not the boss of me, give me choices.
Me: What do you mean, choices?
Uni: Give me your three most preferable choices, in descending order, from best to worst. I’ll take it from there.
Me: Why would I do that?
Uni: To maintain your flexibility. It also allows us to throw you a curve ball. Something amazing, that’s completely unexpected.
Me: But I really, strongly, feel that it has to go down my way.
Uni: You are acting stubborn and misguided.
Me: Don’t sugarcoat it, tell me how you really feel…Shit…okay.

After that, I did come up with three scenarios that would work in that situation.
Funny, earlier I was convinced there was only one. So, I shot off a mental memo to the Universe, and sat back feeling relieved.
I wasn’t nervously waiting for the shoe to drop. Now I knew it could go any number of ways and that would be fine.
I DID feel more flexibility around my expectations.
I’m Gumby dammit!

Now I’ve got to go borrow a baseball mitt, gotta be ready for my curveball.
How about you?

XoxJanet 

Enough said…Happy Sunday!

I just was left a message on my phone, from my darling niece.
She is currently deep into her post-graduate studies in New York, and since I live in LA it’s been months since we’ve seen each other.
I miss her.

Now, if you had asked me if she ever gave me a moments thought, other than when I’m not sitting across from her at her mom’s dinner table, I’d have said: Hell no!
But I was wrong. And I don’t mind being wrong…in this instance.

Let me just describe this virtual hug, because it was delicious.
It was so delicious that I’m going to use all of its ingredients to craft my own and I’m going to surprise hug someone. That’s how nice it was!
You should do it too.

Timing: not too early, not too late. Those calls are fraught with anxiety and just annoying.
You always think: Uh oh, aunt Barbara died. Mid morning is good.

One large scoop of warmth: Make sure this is pure organic warmth, not that imitation stuff.

Tone of voice: Very important. not rushed. Not like you’re jumping out of a cab or racing to a hair appointment. Slow and steady.

Just a dash of well-chosen words, don’t ramble. Rambling just confuses people.
Remember, this is a virtual hug. Can’t be too short (insincere) or too long (awkward).

Mix all these ingredients gently into a phone message.
Serves—All

I think a message is preferable. Pick a time you know they can’t answer.
It wouldn’t have been AS effective if I’d picked up, but hey, a hugs a hug right?
But, the surprise of listening to it later is part of the whole virtual hug experience.

Seriously, she just said: I hope your day is going well, just sending you a big warm hug. Know that I’m thinking of you and I wished we talked more, I love you and have a beautiful Friday.

Short. Sweet. Delicious.

Let’s all do it.
I encourage you
No, I challenge you,
No, I double dog dare you.
To virtually hug somebody this weekend.

XoxJanet

There is a day, even just a moment one day, where “that” voice just says: enough.
And THIS time every fiber of your being stops and snaps to attention.

The pivot at that point is inevitable, the natural course of events.
Up until that moment you’ve been slogging through waist deep water, every step requiring maximum effort.
Suddenly, there is freedom, you are able to pirouette on the head of a pin.
Easy breezy.
Decision made.
Pivot…and….turn.

I’ve had a few pivot points. I disagree with Brian Tracy. I think everyone’s had a least one.
Mine was not at 15, I may have been slogging in the water, but I wasn’t self-aware enough to make it happen.

I did have one at 25. I didn’t want to be married anymore.
It wasn’t really him, I just didn’t want to be a married person ( I won’t say woman, because I was still a girl) anymore.
Clear, specific, unequivocal.
Get the tutu, I’m about to pirouette on the pin.

Then at 30 I gave the tutu another whirl and quit acting. 
Just like that.
Done.
I couldn’t live like that for one more day.
I was done being broke.
I was finished with constant rejection.
I wanted a “real” life.
I was ready to pivot toward success.
It actually felt more like a jig on the head of a pin, but you get the gist.

The more I think about this, the more I realize that the tutu doesn’t go into retirement for very long in my life.
I either have a low tolerance for mediocrity or I’ve come to the conclusion that once you pivot, once you do your pirouette on that pin, it becomes easier and easier.
Momentum is your friend.

Don’t get me wrong.
I have fallen off the pin, mid pirouette, legs akimbo, tutu up over my head; but that’s because I like to pivot FAST! I close my eyes so I don’t get dizzy, and I spin like a dervish.
I don’t suggest it.

As I say goodbye to my previous career and life, because once again, I’ve decided I can’t live like that for one more day.
I’m more deliberate in my pivot.
My pirouette has slowed a bit.
I’ve opened my eyes, and I’m looking around as I turn.

Such a grown up now. Ha!

Come join me up here on the pin, even if you fall… you won’t regret it.

XoxJanet