decisions

“Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.”
~Mark Twain

Bad Decision Insurance was a bright idea I had recently while:
(1) daydreaming instead of writing,
(2) eating a giant mound of whipped cream with a slab of pumpkin pie under it for breakfast,
(3) While wearing camo leggings, no bra, and a bold, Amy Winehouse level swoop of black eyeliner over each eye—in broad daylight.

And while I have to admit that these harmless bad-decision-misdemeanors would have spun my head around ten years ago, these days, I’m like, “Who am I killing?” and mostly the answer is, just your imaginary reputation as a fashion icon, so…

Don’t get me wrong, I KNOW that even though they make the best stories—if my life were a movie every bad decision would end up on the cutting room floor. I also KNOW that no matter how carefully I craft a persona to present to the world—who I really am  bleeds through.

And I would never be who I am without my horrible, awful, really bad decisions.

Nevertheless, the thought of being able to file a claim after making the shitiest calls in life, well, that gave this wicked heart of mine some rest.

Back in daydream mode, strolling around the virtual airplane-hanger-sized-warehouse where my bad decisions are stored, a couple of doozies came to mind:

I once jumped out of a second-story window, running barefoot after a lover’s car when I was old enough to know better. Any way you look at that decision—it sucked. And what I’ve come to know is true for split-second decisions like that — We only know it’s bad the minute we know it—and not one second sooner.

That being said, I would have totally filed a claim to soothe that walk of shame home. “Hello, Bad Decision Insurance Hotline? This is Janet, and oh, man, you’re never gonna believe what I did this time!”

And who can forget that time I re-signed a lease on a struggling business during the financial crisis instead of just calling it quits and closing?

                                                                                    Big mistake, HUGE.

Even the Bad Decision Insurance adjuster would have judged me on that one and everybody knows they are as neutral as Switzerland. “Are you sure?” the kind woman on the other end of the phone would have asked after a long and awkward silence. “Yep!” I would have replied with conviction (because wildly expensive bad decisions like that one come with a great legal team who argue their case for them).

They convince you up is down, day is night, and to turn left when every sign is pointing right.

What the fuck is up with that?

As I write this, two things come to mind. First, a company that insures against bad decisions would be a terrible idea. I mean, they would go broke in minutes.

And second, there would be no accountability. No consequences. Would I have learned as much if I knew I could get immediate compensation on the other side of dumb? If the blow had been softened would I have adjusted my behavior after both of those mistakes, vowing never to let them happen again?

Would you?

Just some of the things I’m wondering about these days.

Carry on,
Oh, and pass the pie.
xoxJB

Dear Janet,
This is a letter from the most neglected thing in your home at the holidays (besides your legs, which go unshaved in December as a timesaving measure)—the back of your Christmas tree.

I mean, I know I face the street, and people really can’t see anything beyond the white lights as they walk by, but this year I feel pressed to complain about the meager amount and shall I say questionable (I’m being delicate) choice of ornaments you’ve chosen to hang (a better word might be, hide) back here.

But enough with decorum.

She can’t be serious, I thought to myself, when you hung that dumbass plastic snowman who’s supposed to also be a construction worker (clever. Not really) in what I consider a prime spot of pine tree real estate. But hey, I get it. I’m the BACK of the tree. What did I expect, the sparkly gold-flecked Buddha? The peacock with real feathers, or the man in the spaceship? Noooooo. Those are your favorites so they get to hang in the FRONT!

This is an almost seven-foot tree and you’ve hung a total of five ornaments back here. FIVE!

To say it looks sparse would be like saying water is wet.

If a mullet says business in the front, party in the back, then this tree is an example of a mullet in reverse. We can hear the party happening in the front while back here it’s crickets. And I’ll tell ya why.

The ornaments you’ve relegated to this “no man’s land,” this great forgotten evergreen expanse, are either ones you’ve been gifted and don’t give a rat’s ass about—or they’re broken. Take for example the beloved ice skater from your childhood who had the misfortune of losing a leg in the Great Tragic Vacuum Cleaner Incident of 2011 (perpetrated by your blind housekeeper Maria—whose coke bottle glasses should read: Objects are closer than they appear).

Anyway, she—the skater, not Maria—let us all know in the first five seconds that she used to reign over one of the coveted front and center spots on the tree, but now things have changed. My how the mighty have fallen (literally) and so we all (the other four misfits and myself) we have to listen to her go on and on about her freaking triple Axel, the morally bankrupt Russian judges who couldn’t recognize real talent if it skated up their skirts—and how unfair her life has become!

Oh, I’m sorry. Has your privileged life as an imaginary elite athlete in a wildly expensive sport taken a turn, sweetie? Tell your troubles to Jesus! I’m dying! I was cut down in my prime so you could hang here and complain all the live-long day!

Listen, Janet, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, judgey, and bitter—but I am, so deal with it. It’s Christmastime. Shit gets real. And the backside of trees, we have feelings too.

That’s all. I guess I just needed to vent. Hey, is that Celine Dion singing Silent Night? I LOVE that song! I have to say, I’m feeling so much better!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Carry on,
Xox

Okay…so…

Since my nature is one of impulsiveness, learning discernment did not come easy for me nor did it happen overnight.  

Decades.. It took me decades to learn.

And since discernment can look like hesitancy, indecisiveness, and, on its best day a bad case of whishy-washy — well, those are words NO ONE would EVER use to describe me, and yet…

These days, when I read something, see something, hear something, or enter a room—I seldom get carried away by the “consensus” otherwise known as “the peanut gallery”.

This tends to frustrate people because people like you more when you get carried away by their enthusiasm, whether it be about a book, a person, a trend, a great idea…or perhaps a cure. But I don’t. I check in with myself. I get still, wait for the noise to subside a bit, and see how this particular thing feels to me.

If my ass does a Kegel—it’s a hell no for me—even if everyone loves it!

I’ve been speaking to lots of women these days and I adore the conversations. And maybe that’s the key-word here. Conversation. We have conversations. Not monologues. Not lectures.

I’m usually brought into these conversations by another woman with waaaayyyy more street cred than I could ever hope to accumulate in this beautiful life of mine and her generosity makes me feel honored. Humbled.

But I’m always clear about one thing: I was vetted and that got my foot in the door.
The rest is up to me.
And you.  
I’m gonna talk, with absolute candor, about the stuff I love. Magic, energy, self-empowerment, and the cheat codes I use to make my life easier. If it resonates with you, that’s great! If not, that’s great too. Seriously. Because another thing I’ve learned is—concentrate on the people who like what you’re saying not the ones who are looking at their phones.

To me, its kinda like a dinner party at a friend’s house.
I love my friends and I trust their judgment in food, wine, and the people they surround themselves with, so if I meet you there, I’m prone to love you at first sight. But, and this has happened on rare occasions—even if you’re renowned in your field, a massive celebrity or someone everyone wants to be seen with—if I find you acting like a bitch faced howler monkey or everything coming out of your mouth makes me feel like I want to stick a fork in my eye—I will, in the most polite way possible, distance myself from you.

And the next day when I talk to my friend we’ll both have a good laugh because you got your foot in the door (you were her sister’s last-minute date) but you most certainly were not a match to the delicious energy going on at that party.

One last tidbit. What’s the difference between skepticism and discernment you might ask? Good question, because I confused these two for years.

Skepticism is me walking into the party with my mind made up that I’m not going to like you.

Discernment is meeting you with an open mind and a giant helping of “benefit of the doubt” and coming to my own conclusions about how I feel about you after we’ve met.

With all of the madness, the endless Facebook and Instagram Live’s that stream constantly, we’re being bombarded with confusing and conflicting information that’s being fed to us by “experts” and people with “credibility” these days more than any I’ve witnessed in my entire life. We’re being asked to make life and death decisions for chrissakes, which is turning discernment into a fulltime job!

So, when somebody speaks I do a “butt check” which is just like a “gut check” only lower. Anyway, I invite you to do the same.

Even here. Even with me.

Stay well my friends & carry on,
xox

“The more you love your own decisions the less you need others to love them.”

Somebody said that to me recently, I just can’t remember who it was.
Obviously, it was somebody wise. Somebody who could see behind my lyin’ eyes. Beneath my confident veneer. Somebody who sought to quiet the relentless beast who makes a meal of my doubts and fears.

It was probably my shrink…if only I had one. Or more likely, it was my husband who’s been known to play that role on alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays, every weekend in December, and all 366 days of a leap year.

Just when you think you’re over seeking the approval of others, a project, relationship, or pair of shoes shows up and blows your cool to kingdom come!

No fucks given!… Right?
Ha! Who am I kidding?

The problem with me, and I’m pretty sure you can relate, is that I LOVE my decisions until I speak them out loud. Once I have to try to explain them to other rational folks, well, I can’t—so I don’t—unless I do—and then I’m fucked.

Recently, like I’d say the past few years, I keep my decisions to myself. Most of them are unexplainable anyway so why bother, and the other stuff I don’t care enough about to engage the peanut gallery. Besides, if Aunt Barbara likes my shoes—I throw them out. End of story.

Most of my projects of late would sound bat-shit crazy to you. Just like all the decisions I’ve made that carried them toward completion. But that’s okay by me.

It has to be.

In my opinion, if everybody loves everything you’re doing—you not pushing the envelope far enough. Go back to the drawing board. Take some chances.

Listen, I’ll tell you what I always tell myself: Life is only about pleasing an audience of one. Donald Trump  YOURSELF.

Carry on,
xox

“You’ve arrived
It’s easy to fall in love with the GPS version of the universe.

There, just ahead, after that curve. Drive a little further, your destination is almost here.
Done. You’ve arrived.

Of course, that’s not how it works. Not our careers, not our relationships, not our lives.

You’ve always arrived. You’ve never arrived.

Wherever you go, there you are. You’re never going to arrive because you’re already there.

There’s no division between the painful going and the joyous arriving. If we let it, the going can be the joyful part.

It turns out that arrival isn’t the point, it can’t be—because we spend all our time on the journey.”
~ Seth Godin

Oh, brother Seth, where do I begin?

Did you write this just for me? Did a little birdy whisper to you how much I suck at the journey part of life?
Or was it the screaming, hair pulling, and the skywriting that said YOU SUCK JOURNEY! GIMME THE FUCKING DESTINATION ALREADY! —that gave me away?

It’s not that I haven’t improved—I have.
And it’s not that I haven’t reached some amazing destinations in my life—I’ve done that too.

But oh, mah, gawd, does it have to be such a slog?

Listen, it’s just that as zen as I try to be, as chill and non-attached as my facade makes me out to be, there is always an epic interior battle raging. A churning. A yearning. It’s the fucking Game of Thrones inside of me. And as hard as I try to quell it (and just to be clear, trying hard doesn’t stop a raging battle, trying hard are the foot soldiers, the ground troops) it looms ever larger in my brain.

And that’s the rub I think you guys. All of that striving and “are we there yet?” is in. My. Head. Not my heart. Not my kishkes, and definitely nowhere near where my intuition hangs out. It all goes off the rails when my head grabs the map away from my intuition and starts to second-guess everything.

“Do you think you should have turned left there?”

“Make a u-turn! NOW! I don’t care of it’s legal or not!”

“Oh, what a dumb move! Fine. Let me try and recalculate the route—but I have a feeling you’re wicked screwed.”

All of the second-guessing. Don’t you guys hate the second-guessing? God! I have been known to yell out loud to that wise guy second-guesser “Oh, yeah? Easy for you to say! Where were you when I was deciding what to do?”

Can you even have buyers remorse with regard to your ex? No? Then shut up!

And I have to report that THIS was a bit of a turning point for me. I set boundaries with the all of the mean voices inside my head who were making the journey a living hell. I told them that unless they had anything helpful, encouraging, or constructive to say—I didn’t want to hear it. Currently, my interior dialogue goes something like this:

“That was dumb…”
DON”T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!

“Are you sure you want to do that…?”
STICK A SOCK IN IT!

“They don’t seem interested in your…
SHUT THE FUCK UP!

“Huh, I would have done it differently…”
STOP TALKING. NOW!

See how that works? It’s self-care Tourettes.

Maybe you’re better at this than I am. Maybe you peacefully traverse your life like a passenger—holding a glass of champagne in first-class on British Airways. But I’m guessing you’re not because you’re here—you live on Earth so… I can’t guarantee it will work 100% of the time, and I have to admit that it gets exhausting, but it does help keep the clown car quiet. And that my friends is a definite improvement!

Carry on,
xox

My tribe,
If you haven’t already read this, you must.
It resonated deeply with me and several of my friends and I know it will with you too.

I’ll let Danielle take it from here.
Carry on,
xox

All of my failures can be traced to my silence. Every. single. one.

Getting fired from the company that I co-founded happened because I had gone months without speaking up. Lots of money on the line. Better keep my mouth shut and give this a chance to work.

When I hurt a colleague’s feelings, which was completely avoidable, it was because I didn’t have the courage to speak to them directly. I overpaid for some things because I didn’t want to appear unreasonable, so I just stopped… negotiating. I didn’t want to demotivate people who worked for me/with me so I just… didn’t bring it up. Shit, I have a tattoo that I’d really rather not have because I didn’t talk back to the tattoo guy.

Failed to protect. Failed to love. Failed to lead. Failed to make art. Failed to speak up.

“Failing” and “succeeding” aren’t very poetic terms.

In-between the labels of “failure” and “success” are all of the painful things that make us so much more beautiful.
But after you lose out (like, on a BIG DREAM) because you kept your mouth shut; or you take a piece of someone’s heart with you because you took the easy (silent) way out, then speaking up starts to seem like less of a heroic act and just way more… practical. “Practical” as in… voicing your truth becomes a life practice.

Truthing isn’t necessarily easier to do, but it brings incredible ease to your life. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes. The courage, the classy delivery, the compassionate humor, it all becomes more accessible when you’re using your voice every day.

Your voice is a muscle. You need it to rise to the occasion of your life. That’s why it’s called speaking up.

Danielle LaPorte is an invited member of Oprah’s inaugural Super Soul 100, a group who, in Oprah Winfrey’s words, “is uniquely connecting the world together with a spiritual energy that matters.”

A speaker, a poet, a painter, and a former business strategist and Washington-DC think tank exec, Entrepreneur Magazine calls Danielle, “equal parts poet and entrepreneurial badass…edgy, contrarian…loving and inspired.” Her charities of choice are VDay: a global movement to end violence against women and girls, and charity: water, setting out to bring safe drinking water to everyone in the world. Her favorite person is her 12-year-old son.
You can find her @daniellelaporte and just about everywhere.

http://www.daniellelaporte.com/#

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”

I am, by nature, one of the most optimist people you will ever have the good fortune, or mis-fortune to meet, depending on your mood.

After being around this long, I’ve developed the faith that things are always working out for me. (And when I say me I mean my country, my husband, my family, those I love and my dog—just to be clear.)

But, and I can say this from years of personal experience, a deep reservoir of doubt runs just under the surface of us optimists. We have a profound and abiding respect for it and unless you cohabitate with us or secretly videotape our most private moments (sicko), you will most likely never see it overtake us. We are extremely skilled at keeping it under wraps.

For many it can be a struggle. Yet, at the end of the day their cork always bobs to the top, their glass remains half-full. Pessimistic curmudgeons never fight with themselves this way. One half of them says things suck—and the other half agrees.

Sometimes…I envy them.  

Many describe their doubt as an adversary they meet on the battlefield. I was taught by a wise so-and-so along the way, I can’t remember who, that you have to face your doubt—and play the devil’s advocate.

It helps me when I stage a doubt and faith debate.

Instead of silencing my doubt or smothering it with chocolate sauce and salted peanuts and scarfing it down at midnight by the light of the refrigerator — I let it have its say.

When Doubt takes the podium he is disgusting—puffed up with hot air, bloated with confidence. He has flow-charts. He quotes statistics. You have to hand it to him, everything he points to has a basis in fact. He produces pictures and movies to remind you of past failures. When he thinks he has you on the ropes, he brings out a panel of experts who can back him up.

Don’t you fucking hate panels of experts?

If you’re like me I can only listen to his bullshit for so long before I start to argue—and that’s when the debate begins.

He can recite from memory an article he read or a study that was done which PROVES my dreams will never succeed. “I don’t believe that!” I interrupt. Then I site the exceptions, because if there are exceptions, well, then his theory sucks. I name big names, important names. names we’d all recognize.

He drinks water. He feigns ignorance.

“Look around you”, he demands, his face turning purple, “There is SO MUCH EVIDENCE. Nobody’s happy in their job, nobody likes what they do, what you hope to accomplish is impossible! Besides that, people are miserable. And they’re fat.” He stuffs half a Reuben with extra sauerkraut into his mouth between jabs.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I step away from my podium for full effect. I have bare feet because, number one, it’s against the rules. And it throws Doubt for a loop. Doubt is most definitely a rule follower.  And number two, it grounds me.

“While I cannot argue that there are those who may feel this way, when I look beyond all the flotsam, I see hope. And possibility. There have always been people like me—like most of the people I know—who despite all of the cautionary tales still run into the arena.”

Doubt shakes his head in exasperation. There is mustard on his chin.

“It’s easier to be scared and quit. Believe me. I know. But as more and more of us poke holes in your lousy logic, it deflates… like a flaccid balloon. And everybody knows you can’t win an argument with a flaccid balloon.”

“Wrong.” he bends low and hisses air into his mic. “Wrooooong.” His eyes are squinted closed as he all but disappears behind his podium.  He knows I’m right.

Doubt had his say and the more I argued for my crazy, optimistic, why-the-hell-not way of life the more I stood flat-footed in my conviction. I started believing it.

Corks bob, glasses fill—and there’s the win.

Someone once said “Faith is to believe what you do not yet see.”
I think it was Bill Murray or some other saint who said it. It would have to be a saint because to maintain faith and optimism in this day and age, well, that would really be a miracle. But then I think about living in the middle ages with no indoor plumbing and only porridge to eat and I feel a sudden wave of gratitude.

See how that works?

Carry on,
xox

“When are you going to start a family?”
Really? The ink wasn’t even dry on the marriage license, I still had rice in my hair, for cryin’ out loud.

How the hell did I know? I was barely twenty, my husband twenty-three. WE were the babies in the room.

It’s the rare individual who is introspective enough to ask themselves at a young age: What kind of life do I see for myself? Do I want to be a parent? Will I have children?

Some people just KNOW. The rest of us? We go along with the proverbial flow.
We date, fall in love, have the wedding, the picket fence and….screech! (sound of a needle being dragged across a record) hey! Not so fast!

Your early twenties are a time of impetuous, risk-taking behavior. NOT the picket fence and most definitely not parenthood—at least not for me.

I could back it up with SCIENCE:
There have been recent studies and in fact, research from the National Institutes of Health have shown, the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain associated with inhibition of risky behavior, and decision-making, doesn’t get fully developed until age 25.
Being a late bloomer, I am certain my prefrontal cortex finally matured at around thirty-five, and sadly, it still wasn’t screaming “make a baby!”

What was wrong with me? All my friends were doing it. Even my little sister.
Hello?! Where was my maternal gene?
At the time it felt like it had been replaced by the much more irresponsible (red hair dye, wine drinking, spend every dime on shoes, travel around Europe), happy-go-lucky gene.

It wasn’t a calling for me. I know a calling. I move heaven and earth when something calls me. Motherhood? Meh, not so much. It’s not that I don’t love kids, I do. Just never enough to make any of my own.

There was also the fact that the stars just never aligned.
It didn’t occur to me to start a family when I was married, it always felt like a decision for another day; and when it finally did cross my mind I was epically, tragically, single. Not a man in sight, let alone “father material.” By the time I married my second husband, as fate would have it, my eggs were all dried up.

Sooooo, I gave single motherhood some serious thought, only to be discouraged by a very wise, older woman friend, a “crone” who asked me, “the maiden”, why I wanted to have a child?
I stammered on for a good five minutes, never coming up with anything better than
“Everyone else is doing it.”

“It is the MOST important job, being a mama. Come talk to me when you have a better reason.”

Unfortunately, this maiden could never come up with one.

“To make the decision to have a child – is momentous.
It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body”
~Elizabeth Stone

By my mid-thirties, when I answered “no” to the kid inquiry, a sad, concerned look would wash over women’s faces; until I assured them that I was biologically able—but not interested in doing so. Well…

UNLEASH THE KRAKEN! 

Many women got angry, really, really angry. Especially at baby showers. And in my thirties, there was a baby shower EVERY weekend. You know the ones where you bring your babies? THOSE were the worst.
There was even some name calling.

Selfish.
I’ve been called that many times in my life.
It’s code for: why aren’t you doing what I’m doing?
It has been hurled my way in anger, hitting me like a dagger in the back.
It has happened so many times, I have a large callous there—these days the dagger just bounces off.

Is it selfish not to have children? Probably. Can selfish be a good thing? Yes, yes it can.

Call it what you want. I just knew I wasn’t wired for that level of self-sacrifice, and my unborn children are better off because of that.

Up until then, my life had not been premeditated in any way. It had all happened like a series of accidental decisions if there’s such a thing. Eventually, I recognized that I had actually made a conscious choice. I had decided “my supreme and risky fate”.

I didn’t need to hide in a cave or skulk away ashamed with my decision. Then, and only then, did the name calling stop.
Isn’t that always the way?

Now I’m over fifty, and the question is: How many grandchildren do you have?

What I know for sure is this: I’m so incredibly grateful to be born at a time in history when we’re not put in stockades in the town square, with villagers throwing eggs at our childless faces.
We decided it wasn’t for us…and that’s okay.

Luckily, times have changed since I was young and women are so much more accepting and supportive of different life choices. These days I feel anything but ostracized, some woman actually applaud my decision.

Childless women.
As Liz Gilbert and Oprah mentioned about on Sunday, we get to be the spectacular aunties.
Mama’s need the aunties.
We play a very important supporting role, we get to teach the children selfishness—which is thankfully something most mamas know NOTHING about.

Tell me about you. I’d love to hear YOUR story. Did you decide not to have children?

much love,
xox

I’m just going to come right out and say it: my husband’s ex-wife died on Saturday of meanness exacerbated by crazy cancer.

It should have a certain amount of…what?…What emotion am I searching for? Sadness? Closure? Relief? attached to it if it weren’t for the fact that she was in prison…for murder. First-degree murder.

Good. I have your attention.

Late last year we heard through the grapevine (because a story like this is just too juicy and implausible to stay geographically contained), that his ex of nearly twenty years had shot a young man dead in her kitchen. The exact details are still pretty sketchy, and due to the fact that he was clearly a victim of bad choices, one of them being wrong place/wrong time, and the other—finding himself on the shot-gun end of her bad side—I will leave this stranger-than-fiction story of cold-blooded murder at that.

Oh, except to say that she held the sheriff’s and SWAT at bay for nine hours by shooting at them while barricaded inside of the house with the dead body.

That explains the five counts of attempted murder.

After her decision to surrender was helped along by a canister of tear-gas, she was hauled off to jail where they found out she was extremely ill (in every way imaginable. Their words, not mine), so arraignment was delayed because it looked like she wouldn’t live long enough to stand trial.

She went into remission long enough to cause trouble in prison. Seriously? Cause trouble in prison?
If I have a head cold I’m too uncomfortable to stand up for myself at the DMV, yet she’s rowdy enough to have all of her priveledges revoked. What?

Here’s why I’m telling you all of this.

When I met my husband for the first time on a blind date he said his ex-wife was crazy.
I rolled my eyes.
He said she tried to kill him.
I sighed and looked at my watch.
He explained how he had left their ranch one night with basically the clothes on his back.
Yawwwwwwwn.

If you date long enough this kind of ex-bashing plays like a broken record. I’d say ninety percent of the men I dated, by their account, had certifiable ex-wives.

I can be fairly certain that’s one of the nicest things my ex says about me!

I pegged him as a wolf-cryer, that is until a few friends corroborated his stories—and I saw Gone Girl.

So, on Monday when we heard that she had died, my husband contacted her brother. The sane one.
The one who knew that husband had been forced to cut and run and never looked back—and he totally understood why (actually she told everyone Raphael was dead. Are you creeped out yet?)

“You’re welcome to come by the ranch on Friday to see if there’s anything you want”, her brother, now the executor, offered graciously.

He was seriously considering it. Looking at his calendar to see how easy it would be to clear his schedule.

“I’m coming with you!”, I volunteered. I was curious. I wanted to see where this woman lived and the big log house my husband had built with his own two hands—and then been pushed far enough to just walk away from.

Almost the moment I said it I wanted to suck the words back in like they do in the cartoons. I got an enormous sinking feeling in my gut and not the good kind that gives you a flat stomach—the sickening kind.

What was my motivation?

To be supportive? To be helpful? To end my week with a road trip?

Sure. All of those things. But when I dug deeper I had to admit—my main motivation was morbid curiosity.

It has been my experience, learned in hindsight, that nothing good can come when the motivation is MORBID curiosity.

How does this add to my life?
How does this drive my life forward?

Those are the questions we ask ourselves now. Finally!

We are both trying to have less and less of those Shit, I shouldn’t have done that, gone there, said that, moments.

In order to do that, we have to ask ourselves those two questions over and over again, sometimes twenty times a day. (Well, I do, I’m a slow learner).

How does this add to my life?
How does this drive my life forward?

Morbid curiosity can’t stand up to cross-examination.
What was I thinking? What were WE thinking?

That ranch is not a feel-good place. In fact, it’s worse than just the bad juju his ex spread all over the place, and her lousy choice in drapes—it’s the scene of a murder.

The other feeling, the ‘I want my stuff! The stuff I left behind but I haven’t thought about it in twenty years’ feeling—that’s not great motivation either.

You have to ask yourself why you suddenly care so goddamn much.

One percent sentimentality.
One percent nostalgia.
One percent schadenfruede.
Ninety-seven percent morbid curiosity.

We not going to the ranch. Neither of us.

We both decided that a trip up there would add absolutely ZERO to our quality of life, not to mention the fact that there’s not enough sage in the world to cleanse the bad juju off anything we might bring back.

We both felt lighter. Better. Closure.

Damn this conscious living thing takes a lot of consciousness! Who knew!

Carry on,
xox

I was thinking about this the other day. Like why are there so many Chumps and so few Champions?
So I made a list-ishy thing. Do you have anything to add?

Chump or Champion?

When you know it’s not right…and you do it anyway.

Chump is a choice.

So is Champion, but for some at least—Chump is the easier path.

It’s a careless choice of words.
It’s a tone of voice.
A turn of a phrase.

Being patently insensitive

A certain indifference.
A definite intolerance.
A lack of empathy.
A need for attention.

It’s taking the low road because the low road can be crowded and they have better snacks.

Chump is a choice.

Chumpy behavior goes viral. It gets its own hashtag and reality show.

Champion’s victories are short-lived.

Chump is a choice.

Chump is loud, unscripted, unfiltered and raw. It gets yips and catcalls. It can be uncomfortably humorous—mostly at the expense of others.

Champs set the bar high for excellence. Funny? Maybe. But it’s inclusive, and it NEVER elicits a groan.

Chumps drink the Kool-aid. What am I saying? They MAKE the Kool-aid and put up a stand on the busiest corner—where they SELL OUT.

Champs quietly drink champagne out of silver awards cups…or Dixie cups.

Champ isn’t easy. It’s about beating the odds.

Chump is a choice.

Chumps a piece of cake. It’s about taking advantage of the odds. Leveraging fear and rage.

I’ve known some people who have chosen to go the way of the Chump. I watched it. It was very quick and very concise. I won’t name names because that would be Chumpy.

I’ve also known those who have chosen to be a Champion. It was quiet. It was solitary. It took time. It was a slog. Like losing that last five pounds, or turning the Titanic.

What I’ve learned is that EVERYTHING in life comes down to a choice. Which one will it be?

Carry on,
xox