i like dis. December 21, 2009

In every moment of your life, you have the option to choose peace for yourself.

Your false self thrives on your inner anxiety because that is what it thinks it needs to stay alive. Ego promotes thoughts like these: I cannot be happy or content; I must be a sinner and an evil person; If I am feeling peaceful then I will simply vegetate; I must constantly look at how others are living and performing in order to assess my value. This constant state of comparison keeps the turmoil alive.

The ego wants you in a constant state of agitation to keep you from embracing your higher self. It convinces you that if you are not always on edge, you can’t grow. But you must keep in mind that experiencing this inner turmoil is a choice that you have made by allowing your false self to dominate your life. When you make the choice for peace, you are literally allowing God into your life. Rather than vegetate, you will discover that you can be busy, purposeful and blissful and still have peace.

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Your Sacred Self

crunchies versus butterflies November 2, 2009

Update on the building/neighbor situation: there is no update.

There haven’t been any problems since then, and I’m having similar feelings to looking at a credit card statement. I know I should, but I don’t wanna! I need to go speak to security or management or someone and just alert them to this issue. So that is on the list for this week.

However, I was walking down the street by my building, and I saw that THAT neighbor was walking towards me. Ready, set, hold head up high! And then, he crossed the street to the other side! Ha HA! The big man is afraid of me. Rar!

Well, yesterday I checked out my very first place. It was very exciting. I looked at a house. a HOUSE. in Bklyn. I loved it immediately. The housemates were great. I got the “good people” vibe immediately. I took a walk in the tree-lined streets and checked out the neighborhood. Full of cheap organic grocery stores, and a very up-and-coming-but-not-overdeveloped-by-real-estate-people-or-whoever-is-in-charge-of-that feel.

My friend Maia were talking about this term that Martha Beck uses: the essential self. In Martha’s words, (from Finding Your Own North Star):

Your essential self formed before you were born, and it will remain until you’ve shuffled off your mortal coil. It’s the personality you got from your genes: your characteristic desires, preferences, emotional reactions and involuntary physiological responses, bound together by an overall sense of identity. It would be the same whether you’d been raised in France, China, or Brazil, by beggars or millionaires. It’s the basic you, stripped of options and special features. It is “essential” in two ways: first, it is the essence of your personality, and second, you absolutely need it to find your North Star.

I think that the theme of this past year has been trying to connect with my essential self. Basically every answer is right there within you, if you can connect to that place! Shopping is easier. On Friday I was searching for my Halloween outfit. I had the green face paint and ugly teeth for the “ugly” part of my ugly monster. Now I needed the dress: I was open to being an ugly party monster, a sexy ugly monster, or a ugly housewife monster. I tried on dress after dress after dress.

I’m getting better at not going, “I don’t know… Do I like it? What do you think? Is it okay?” in most areas of my life. If you even have to ask that question, you have the answer! If you don’t know, I think the answer is no. Especially in shopping. I think you know immediately if you like an outfit. But, we all want to just find the stinkin outfit and move on with our life. Or find the stinkin job, find the stinkin apartment, find the stinkin mate! So we try and talk ourselves into liking one thing or another. But it saves money and time to just say: “Yes, there are things I like about this dress. But I do not feel awesome in it. Goodbye, dress!” “Yes, this boy is cute, but I do not feel awesome with this boy. Goodbye, boy!” So, I tried on many dresses that almost worked but did not feel awesome. (This could also apply to boys.) So I did not waste $40. Then, I passed by this store PeachFrog. They sell overstock clothing. Quality, nice things! I tried on a faux leather jacket that I loved immediately. Because I had not wasted $40 on a dress I didn’t love, I now opted to buy a $25 jacket I DID LOVE.

(Side note: Should I be shopping right now? I need a new phone and a new apartment. Well, now I have a cute jacket to wear while shopping. Stay warm, it’s flu season!)

So, l have been talking myself into staying in this apartment for a while. There are things I love about this apartment. I have an amazing bathroom. Like, I could rent it out. I absolutely love the bathroom. But, the apartment does not make me feel awesome. I feel cramped and a little crazy and usually need several walks outside during my days off. There are things I love about my neighborhood. Hell’s Kitchen is so close. Walks on the West Side Highway. Close proximity to EVERYTHING. And I think, if I moved, would I be woken up by roommates? Ha. Well, I am woken up by strangers I do not live with. So, there’s that. And to live in a NEIGHBORHOOD, with normal people? To not have to wade through tourists day in, day out? What a dream!

When I looked at this Brooklyn neighborhood, I immediately loved it. My essential self felt completely at ease walking through there, so far away from the condensed streets of Times Square. As I walked home towards my building yesterday, before I even saw the dreaded neighbor, I began to get the CRUNCHIES! (The crunchy feeling in the chest. When the essential self is saying “ME NO LIKEY!”)

Getting into a new living situation is a bigger decision that a $25 jacket. But I know this: what I have right now does not work. And there are a lot of places out there that give me the opposite of the crunchies: the butterflies in the chest!

Oh, and the dress situation: I wore a dress I already had that I’d forgotten about. It was perfect! If only I had my dream apartment stuck in my dresser somewhere.

day 24. Purple Walls. September 25, 2009

In Eat Pray Love there’s this great part where Elizabeth Gilbert is talking about the task of dating and relationships when you are an adult. All the choices are up to you, and in a way you have to be your own father as far as making sure the men you date are good enough for you. She says, “If I am to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian.”

That has been really sticking out in my mind during my month of freedom. Not so much in the dating area, but just in day-to-day life. I am struggling to find the balance between what my inner child wants to do and figuring out how to parent that child in a way that it can grow and relish in the freedom but not scribble on the wall with purple magic markers.

I really like to treat myself to things, but sometimes I feel like I am really getting roped in by that “need” for something.

Each day when I wake up, it’s like, what kind of day is this going to be? There’s an inward struggle between wanting to get some actual work done for my future, i.e., the initial purpose of this free time, and wanting to go lay down in Central Park all day. Or just take a walk around Washington Square Park and sit in the fountain. Or listen to street musicians.

Day after day, I have gone with the latter.

ha!

I was about five minutes away from signing up for a nutrition school that looked extremely exciting to me. I was speaking with admissions counselors, talking to graduates, reading the web site over and over, attending “webinars” … But in the end it felt like my attempt at a quick fix. I felt as though I was making the decision from an emotional place, from an emotional need to have a clearer direction right now.

Rather than sign up for a school, or apply to an overseas teaching job (the other looming idea), I think I may have to spend some time just doing…

nothing!

This month has been so necessary, because I have simply exhausted myself mentally over the past few years. Working working working, and then doing show show show, and then not feeling as though I can see any growth or movement happening. It makes me want to through the whole “acting career” idea out the window! And then, I get all hard on myself. “You aren’t doing enough! You should be doing more! Okay—tomorrow is a day off. I want you to spend it doing SOMETHING for your career. I have no clue what that is, but think of something, mmkay? Sit in your room all day and get shit done!”

“Bbbbuuttt, I don’t wanna! I worked all week. I’m tired! I just want to go out to eat with some friends!”

“Well, TOO BAD! Not til you book a commercial and get featured in a magazine! Get to work!”

Geeez. No wonder I feel a bit wounded.

So I am feeling like, for now, it is a good idea to let my inner child scribble on the walls with purple markers. I may just have to be a hippie parent for a little while, and let my kid eat what it wants to eat, and wear what it wants to wear and go where it wants to go.

And stop worrying so much about clean walls. Purple is my favorite color anyways.

bbbrrrringgggg September 1, 2009

Yet another job opportunity came my way! I did not knock on any doors. Nope, I received a phone call about it.

It is another job that I am putting in the category of “survival” work. Not a passion or an interest I want to pursue, but work that aids in eating, being dressed, and paying rent. All of these are very good things. But I am trying to transition into paying for things through a very different kind of work.

I’m very grateful for this particular opportunity, and it is a strong temptation to go after it! (It is not in the “offer” stage yet.) But, I am going to withhold.

It’s so interesting.

Two things seem to happen once you make a decision to pursue a goal: An overflowing amount of coincidences and synchronocities which support that goal, and test after test on how serious you are about following through with it.

It makes since that taking 30 days off of survival work would be difficult for me. In The Artist’s Way, one of the weekly activities is to take a weekly artist date. As in, go do something for fun that your inner child wants to do. Every time I do this (Like go to the beach or play in the park) I feel so incredibly happy and filled up. But I have so much trouble doing it! Or at least I used to. I am getting much better. I was very good at doing the work part of The Artist’s Way: getting up and writing for three pages. But then, planning something just for FUN? I found ways to squirm out of this each week!

I plan on getting real good at it. Because another thing I’m going to be doing for 30 days is something JUST FOR FUN, everyday, starting on Thursday. Maybe it seems odd for me to force fun? Or schedule it? Well, I like structure. So, just knowing that doing something for FUN, just to ENJOY life, everyday, is built into my schedule—that really helps my brain to say: Okay, sweet! Let’s do this!

So, I think that the fact that tests will come your way when you go for something out of your ordinary day-to-day groove is reason to really build a support network. Alcoholics need people who will tell them to put the drink down. For these thirty days, I need people to say, “Do you REALLY want to dress up as Snoopy and stand in Times Square for 8 hours? Of course you fucking don’t!”

tell ‘em, elvis. July 10, 2009

Magic Week is so far going stupendously, with the exception of the fall I just took down the stairs in the Union Square stop. Thank goodness I am a fan of frozen green peas. They are healing my shins at this very moment.

Funnily enough, that fall came right when I was having one of my “Write a love letter to New York City in my head moments.” OH New York, your sunshine, your busy city streets, your culture, how I love yo–OOUGGHCHERSSS!

My afternoon has so far included sleeping til 11:30, wandering around STRAND looking for the magic book for my magic week, having lunch outside at the Hummus Place, wandering around the East Village, and drinking latte while reading the magic book.

Which book is it? The Gift by Lewis Hyde. An underliner. Lots of stuff I like. But before I get started on this one, I gotta share what I took away from that book I was reading a while ago, Finding Your Own True North.

Martha Beck talks a lot about the change cycle: Some sort of catalytic event happens that changes everything, putting a person in the “Square One: Death and Rebirth” phase, leading to the “Square Two: Dreaming and Scheming” phase, then “Square Three: The Hero’s Saga” and “Square Four: The Promised Land.” The Promised Land is exactly what I’m (and we are all) trying to get to. It’s basically the life where you are living out your dreams. And once you get there, you just take small steps to keep it up, until inevitably some sort of new catalytic event happens, putting you right back in Square One, starting over.

I am not sure if any of this makes sense, without actually reading the book.
So, if you are still with me, I’ll continue! If not, let me know what is happening with funny videos about cats or whatever. (And could you send the links plz?)

Beck says that those who are very good at each of these phases of life are the ones who become very, very successful. Like Oprah, for instance. And most of us are very good at one of the four stages.

I am such a good dreamer and schemer! How I love to just think about my dream life, write out lists of my goals, think about the various careers that would be interesting to me.

I gotta get freaking move into “The Hero’s Saga.” This is just like it sounds: it’s all about trying one thing after another to achieve the dreams you figured out that you wanted in Square Two. A series of very big moves and many failures until you find the thing that really clicks and moves ya into “The Promised Land.” This is the part of our lives that any good novel or movie is made of: watching the protagonist try, try, and try again until he gets the girl/the job/the crown.

So, attention artists! All of us who are out there, trying and trying to achieve a career in the arts in one form or another, and hit continual road bumps, well—this is all a part of the story! (Are you writing down your story? Maybe it would help to look at this particular phase that we are in—and I say we because I know so many friends are in the same boat—as a really great story.)

Anyhoo, that brings me to the next goal I have, as I live here in this city that I love, attempting to not fall flat on my face (or at an angle on my shins): It’s time for me to shut up and get to work. A little less dreaming and self-help book reading. I know what I want. I just gotta take all those annoying baby steps to get it.

I just gotta remember what Elvis says.

exercise: whizzing on the electric fence June 21, 2009

I find myself telling lots of friends about exercises I read in books. The results are generally so interesting to me. I wonder if other people would find their results interesting or surprising…

This is from Finding Your Own North Star.

Exercise: Whizzing on the electric fence
The rules in your mind are like psychological electric fences that keep you from consciously engaging your real dreams. Instead of railing at them, I’d like you to start treating them with profound disrespect, and ultimately trampling right over them. To start, please complete the following sentences.

“If I didn’t care what people thought, I would…”
“If I were sure I’d succeed, I would…”
“If I had the nerve, I would…”
“If I could be certain it was the right choice, I would…”
“If I weren’t worried about the future, I would…”
“If I had the freedom, I would…”

Now I’d like you to choose one of your answers that is neither illegal nor physically dangerous, and do it. Right now, before you’re sure that it’s fail-safe, or acceptable, or risk-free. When you’re finished with that item, pick another one, and do that one too. Yes, I know you’ll be breaking the Rules. I don’t care. The needs for certainty and permission are the electric fences in your mind. Which would be worse: whizzing all over them or permanently forfeiting all of the things you wrote on the list above?

harry dies at the end, right? whatever. June 19, 2009

Okay, you may have gotten this idea by now, but I’m just going to say it:

I love self-help books.

My friend Anna was trying to get me to read Harry Potter. It sat on my book shelf for a year.
As did Kite Runner.
And Reading Lolita in Tehran.
And the Poisonwood Bible.

I just don’t really get into fiction. What does this say about my psyche? That escape for me is not about getting in my imagination and hanging out with wizards and elves and defying boundaries in the Middle East or living in Africa? I know that these are indeed creative things. But I am more interested in the creative process. I am more interested in reading about what J.K. Rowling went through as she created Harry Potter. How many boy wizard names did she go through first? What was her writers block like? What inspires her?

The critic in my head tells me that I need to put down these books. Or it tells me I need not share with everyone via my blog that I am slightly obsessed with self-improvement. But I think my critic has some broccoli in her teeth she needs to go pick out.

I am reading Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck. This lady is amazing. One of the basic ideas of her book is that each of us has an essential self and a social self. In her words,

Your essential self formed before you were born, and it will remain until you’ve shuffled off your mortal coil. Its the personality you got from your genes: your characteristic desires, preferences, emotional reactions, and involuntary physiological responses, bound together by an overall sense of identity. … The social self, on the other hand, is the part of you that developed in response to pressures from the people around you, including everyone from your family to your first love to the pope. As the most socially dependent of mammals, human babies are born knowing that their very survival depends on the goodwill of the grown-ups around them. Because of this, we’re literally designed to please others.

This is very interesting to me. I was wondering a few weeks ago if we get to choose what we love. Well, I think that, going with her philosophy, we really don’t. We actually were created a certain way with our particular loves and passions and interests. I am so interested in understanding what my essential self really wants out of life. I think it’s pretty exciting that we each have these essential selves that hold the secret to what would make our life the most fulfilling.

So I think that’s why I return to over and over to books about success and creativity and happiness. I know my dream life is within reach. But you can’t get it unless you really know what it is you want. My friend Randy asked me the other night if I wanted to be in movies. I just looked at him. I was like, “I don’t know.”

I’ve always felt a bit jealous of people who are extremely focused and determined in their field. Especially comedians and actors. Because I know that with that kind of determination, nothing will stop you. But I find myself often wishing there was something else out there I loved more than the performing arts. One of the things I do love is the creative process. The search for happiness. The process of shedding all the outer layers to really knowing who you are. All this junk I go over and over and read book after book about. So I think it is very positive that I continually read these kinds of books, because they excite my essential self! And I think that is a helpful guide to my “north star.”

And if you listen to what excites you, you are a little closer to understanding what you really want out of life! All you have to do is listen to that, and then do it.

So if I can’t freaking get through Harry Potter, it’s okay. I will pick up a SARK book and some crayons and do one of her activities that involves drawing a picture of my dream home and gluing pennies and household items to it. Why? Cause it makes me happy!

i like dis. June 11, 2009

You never hear about truly self-actualized people, like Buddha or Christ, telling people they’re stupid losers. It goes against the nature of enlightenment. On the contrary, people who exemplify truth are always turning up in the lives of “stupid losers” and telling them that they’re priceless and beloved, that their essential nature is literally divine and that they are destined for joy and fulfillment.

By Martha Beck, from Find Your Own True North

i’m probably a facebook genius at this point. May 29, 2009

I just started reading Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s newest book.

You know how sometimes, things just pop up over and over and it feels like some sort of sign that it’s something you should pay attention to? I’ve been hearing people talk about this book a lot recently. It seems to randomly come up in conversation. He occasionally eats at the restaurant I work at. So finally, I say, I get it, Malcolm! I will read your book.

I’m on the second chapter. Highlights thus far…

Achievement is talent plus preparation. … The closer psychologists lok at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.

and

What’s ten years? Well, it’s roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.

This made me think of something I read in Think and Grow Rich:

For the average person, the greatest capacity to create is between 40 and 60. … The years between 40 and 50 are, as a rule, the most fruitful. One should approach this age not with fear and trembling, but with hope and eager anticipation.

Alright, 20- and 30-something buddies, we have plenty of time to become great at whatever it is we want to be great at.

But for everyone older than 50, don’t let those theories stop you. Another golden one from Julia Cameron:

Question: Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I learn to play the piano?
Answer: The same age you will be if you don’t.

ladies, shall we begin the meeting? May 4, 2009

Today I treated myself to lunch at a little French cafe down in Chelsea. And some mindless fashion magazines. A perfect rainy day activity. I needed a little bit of frivolity, as I’ve spend lots of my free time over the past week reading a hefty book. I’m reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (via Dion Flynn). I’m devouring it. There’s so much good stuff in there. But, it’s not exactly easy reading. I needed an afternoon to look at pretty pictures and read articles about makeup!

I mentioned a while ago that I am working on changing some of my core thinking about myself, money, and achieving what I want in life. Napoleon Hill spent 25 years interviewing some of the most successful people of his time, like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie, in order to record what exactly the secret for success is.

I’m going to skip way ahead to one of the last chapters, where Napoleon Hill shares some really vulnerable stuff. He talks about how he created an “imaginary council meeting” with nine men that most inpsired him, whose lives and character he wanted to emulate. As he says,

Long before I had ever written a line for publication, or endeavored to deliver a speech in public, I followed the habit of reshaping my own character by trying to imitate the nine men whose lives and life works had been most impressive to me. These nine men were Emerson, Paine, Edison, Darwin, Lincoln, Burbank, Napoleon, Ford and Carnegie. Every night, over a long period of years, I held an imaginary council meeting with this group whom I called my “Invisible Counselors.”

He then placed himself as the chairman of the entire meeting, and spoke aloud to each of these men, telling them which traits he’d like for them to contribute to his own life.

He goes on to describe these meetings, and how they soon became very real to him. Each of the men developed certain characteristics. Lincoln, for instance, had a tendency to be late to the meetings. And “Burbank and Paine often indulged in witty repartee.” Then, one night, Abraham Lincoln came to him in a vision, urging him to complete his mission in life, serving the world with his philosophy (i.e., the book!). He speaks of how real this felt to him, how we woke unsure of it was a dream of not! He also goes on to say…

…During my meetings with the “invisible Counselors” I find myself most receptive to ideas, thoughts and knowledge that reach me through the sixth sense. I can truthfully say that I owe my counselors full credit for such ideas, facts or knowledge I receive through “inspiration.”

I just think it’s amazing that he shared all of this. This book was written in the 1930’s, and if all this sounds a bit kooky now, imagine it then! He layed there in bed, speaking to Napoleon Bonaparte. Crazy, right?

Well, it’s gotten me to think a little about who would be on my cabinet. Of course, I’m going to have Amy Poehler and Tina Fey on there. I mean, duh. Well, last week I had the pleasure of waiting on Miss P. three times! (She’s very kind and yes—a good tipper.) And on the third time, she said, “I should really know your name. I’m Amy.” And I got really red and giggled as I shook her hand and said, “I’m Elizabeth.” (Working in the West Village, you wait on tons of celebrities. It takes a special one to get flustered by! She’s special.) I wanted to say, “I’m an improviser!!! I admire your work! I admire how you have created your own career! Started a hugely successful theater! SNL! Movies! TV! Your husband’s really cute and I bet so is your baby!” But I didn’t. It would be a little awkward to do all that and then say, “So, what’ll ya have today?!”

As I sat there in the French cafe, I held my imaginary cabinet meeting. “Miss Poehler, I just want to tell you that I’m an improviser too! And, as a female comedian, I really look up to you and your work. But, geez, it’s so freakin tough! I’m tired!” And she said, “Don’t give up! It never stops being hard, but if you persist, it will pay off!”

Thank you, Amy. Good advice. I’m working on putting together the other members of my council. Funnily enough, as I’m having my croque monseiur and Pinot Grigio, I come across this article in Marie Claire. What a fun little gift, in between articles about summer fashion and mascara, to find an article with quotes from the most successful women in comedy. These are women who have created their own careers, and paved their way through a business that wasn’t going to do them any favors. Napoleon Hill’s cabinet was full of a bunch of dudes, who, yeah sure—changed the world and all that. But I would much prefer to hear Lily Tomlin’s opinion over that of Henry Ford.