Posts in "come alive" Category — Page 5

Of course we deserve it.

Some part of us thinks we have to earn love, pay our dues for joy, atone for pleasure, and work off the french fries with a thousand sit-ups in order to deserve them. We think we have to scrimp on spending and double our work hours to ‘earn’ a vacation, or put in our dues and hate life for a period of years before we’re ‘allowed’ to enjoy our businesses.

We just don’t think we deserve the good stuff.

BUT OF COURSE WE DESERVE IT.

You would never bat joy out of kids’ hands when they discover lightning bugs or she learns that markers come in colors *AND* smells AND ISN’T BLUEBERRY THE BEST!????

You wouldn’t even consider denying your dog a big bowl of leftovers because he just hasn’t worked hard enough today.

You would never, ever tell your best friend she has to save up for at least 4 (or 5 or maybe 6 — no, 7!) more years before she ‘deserves’ a vacation.

But those kids haven’t earned those lightning bugs!

They haven’t filled out the appropriate Universal Forms For Weighing Consumption of Goods and Resources Versus the Right To Experience Lightning Bugs. They haven’t *earned* the right to watch bugs light up their butts and douse them in the wonder and joy of the universe.

They don’t *deserve* that wonder and joy any more or less than any of us do.

Which is to say, we all deserve it.

There is no one, anywhere, whose sole job it is to tell us that we have ‘earned’ whatever it is we want, so for some reason we all assume we just haven’t earned it yet.

This is especially tragic because most of us want reasonable things like morning coffee, a few quiet minutes a day, good books to read, and to remember about deep breathing when the people we love make us crazy. Plus a few trips a year because travel feeds our souls like nothing else.

What if I make it my job, today, to tell you that you deserve it — whatever it is, and however it wants to take shape in the world?

You’re worthy of your desires.

You deserve the warm embrace of joy and laughter wherever you find it.

Your whole body longs for the ocean because you deserve the ocean, and you ache to travel because you deserve to see new things and experience new places and new people and soak in the mystery of being alive.

You cannot earn a summer day.

You cannot work your way to being worthy of stillness and quiet. You will never, ever deserve to browse that bookstore in Paris in the late afternoon.

Not because you need to try harder, but because those things are already available to you — right now — and they are not matters of worthiness but of embracing your humanity.

The soft wind, the beating heart, the smell of books on the second floor. You don’t have to earn a single one.

Your commitment to your work, your family, your interiors, your depths, and/or your waistline will not pay dividends of worthiness.

You’re already worthy.

You’re invited to the party, and your invitation is the sun shining and the wind blowing and the neighborhood kids gathering their towels for another long day of swimming and hoping the ice cream truck makes a stop on the sidewalk before bedtime.

You’re worthy.

You’re worthy,

you’re worthy,

you’re worthy.

You deserve to be here. You deserve to be alive. You deserve to do the divine dance of living on this planet.

You deserve joy and wonder and delight not because you’ve put in your time or earned your points or have sheer-undiluted-slog currency to trade in for something better.

You deserve the best of life simply because you’re breathing, and you’re allowed to keep breathing by the grace of we-know-not-what for another day.

You’re allowed to take up space.

You’re allowed to want more.

You’re allowed to let life be simpler and fuller and richer than you can possibly imagine.

You’re allowed.

Period, full stop, end of story.

You’re allowed.

That means you’re allowed to sense the sparkle, hold the sale, quit the Facebook, make a marketing calendar, call to the deep, embrace your introverted nature, or reclaim your energy right this minute.

That means you don’t have to double your income or triple your business before you ‘deserve’ the workshop or the break.

That means you can write the book or give an alpaca an ice cream cone or read some poetry right this second, just because.

You’re allowed. And you deserve it.

With all my love —

P.S. Magic often feels like broken.

come alive, listen to the podcast

What to do when strangers are mean to you on the internet.

You know how you’re minding your own business, having a decent day, and then WHAM you check your e-mail or your comments and some douchecanoe has thrown a hate bomb (or worse, a compliment-laden hate bomb disguised as ‘constructive criticism’) in your direction?

Let’s talk about what to do when strangers are mean to you on the internet.

I’m not Beyonce and don’t have millions of fans, but I do get my fair share of ‘critique,’ and ‘I thought you should know that _______________[insert passive aggressive comment here]’ and just plain freaking mean e-mails because of the work that I do. I’m sharing how I handle them instead of pretending that they don’t happen or that they don’t bother me. (See also: sometimes I fantasize about deleting this whole freaking enterprise and working at Starbucks.)

In this episode of That’s What She Said, we dive into:

– how to feel what you’re feeling without glossing over it, making yourself wrong, or turning into a bitter person who retreats to live in a dark cave and hate all of humanity
– why well-meaning, unsolicited ‘advice’ is the actual worst
– why hiding IS the answer (sometimes)
– why hiding is also NOT the answer
– how to keep perspective on the hate-bombs, advice-bombs, and passive-aggressive comments that come your way
– Elizabeth Gilbert’s concept of the ‘mental cigarette’ and how to stop smoking ’em
– a Brene Brown exercise to help you remember which voices actually matter in your life

You don’t have to let the mean voices win. Nor do you have to give the trolls any airtime.

But you do have to handle these unfortunate things as they happen, because your best and brightest self doesn’t have time for holding onto hate nuggets for any length of time.

P.S. How to stop hiding. (Featuring an encyclopedia of 29 ways I’ve tried to hide, obviously.)

come alive, listen to the podcast

I quit Facebook, and then THIS happened.

Psst! This is an episode of That’s What She Said, so you can listen in below, or keep reading for the clickable, text-y version.

This morning, I walked into my bedroom and pulled back the curtains to find that the window was open while the air conditioner was running. It’s been horribly humid and I’ve been trash talking the air conditioner for a while now, but it turns out that it’s not the air conditioner’s fault. Tons and tons of energy was flying out the window instead of doing its job of making me 43% less grumpy and cooling the room.

Recently, I quit Facebook.

I had a big quitting party on Facebook Live and threw lots of confetti, then deleted every last business page and group I started before deleting my whole account. I was nervous about what would happen.

Would I suddenly be completely and totally broke, as asshole brain contended? Would I inexplicably be struck by the desire to rejoin it as quickly as I’d left? Would I feel emotionally destitute, disconnected from everyone I know and love?

Nope, nope, and nope.

**Quitting Facebook led to a massive reclaiming of energy that I didn’t even know I’d been losing.**

Turns out Facebook was my open window and tons of energy was flying away there without my conscious awareness.

There were many groups I started years ago to support peeps in my programs, then didn’t know how to close or back away from without things getting awkward. (Lesson learned: start dates and end dates for program communities. Boundaries, hooray!)

There were messages I didn’t see or didn’t want to answer, so I let them hang in the ether.

There was the steady obligation to keep a stream of inspiring things and stuff and links coming to the nine thousand-ish peeps on my fan page, as well as the subtle pressure to like, comment upon, click, or interact with my Facebook friends, many of whom I’d never actually met in real life.

When I deleted my Facebook account, all those threads of obligation were broken once and for all.

I thought nothing special would happen when I deleted my account. But HOLY SHIT I WAS WRONG.

I used that reclaimed energy to do a bunch of stuff, and I want to share it not because you need a lecture in order to quit Facebook, but because we all seem to underestimate the places where our energy is flying out the window without our consent — particularly online.

Going to that job you hate takes energy.

Participating in a group you don’t enjoy — whether it’s online or off — takes energy.

Sharing your work and others’ work and your inspiration takes energy.

Creating a group of people and then holding them in a safe, nurturing way takes energy.

Maintaining a relationship that has passed its expiration date takes energy.

Being a good steward of your energy means that sometimes you reclaim it so that it can be used in a myriad of new and interesting ways.

Related: reclaim your energy, become a quitter.

Here’s what my reclaimed energy did. (Again, not telling you to brag, but to show you how HOLY SHIT I DID NOT EXPECT THAT THIS ONE TERRIFYING CHANGE WOULD LEAD TO ALL THESE THINGS.)

Boring stuff: I cleaned the whole house and took care of some nagging real life tasks.

You know those little tasks that pile up, like deep cleaning the stove or mopping every floor in the house and then sighing with the contented sigh of a person who most definitely has all your household shit together? I did those things.

The house got cleaned, the laundry got done, the couch cushions and pillows and throws and duvets and comforters and ALL THE THINGS got washed. I diffused oils and scrubbed floors and threw away clutter and generally reclaimed my home from nature’s endless attempts to cover it in smells, fur, and dust. Physical world: check.

Work stuff: I achieved Double Inbox Zero.

Double. Inbox. Zero. It’s a unicorn floating on a cloud through a spinkle sea of rainbows and baby otters type of rare.

Fun stuff: I read two novels within 48 hours.

When you reclaim three minutes here and six minutes there and fourteen minutes over there that used to be lost to scrolling, you end up with way more time to read.

You can see exactly what I read by following me on Goodreads, or you can buy some of my books to read right here. Sample chapters of Introverts at Work and Calling to the Deep live here.

Creative stuff: I turned my yard into an art gallery.

Once Bear and I had strung the yard with pretty hipster twinkle lights and laden the edges with pinwheels, we kept going. Family motto: anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

We ordered the sort of bunting they use at car dealers and strung it up with the lights. Some flowers we planted last year magically returned. We supplemented the real flowers with wooden ones made of paint and glitter. We turned an old terrarium into a Little Free Library full of good books. It’s basically magic. But.

What to do with all that magic?

…why not turn it into an art gallery?

I make lots of paintings. Some of them suck, and some of them are for sale to benefit charity, and some of them are great, they’re just BIG and take up room in my house. Bear and I attached them to our fence and turned the yard into an art gallery. Some of his kids’ paintings were also hanging around — we’ve hung the ones we dig most on our walls — so their work joined in, too. In other words, we made our own damn plein art show for no particular reason.

In cases of creativity, you don’t need the approval of another person or professional or expert to do the thing you want to do.

To paint, to write, to sculpt, to make, to tinker, to turn a room into an art exhibit? You need no certification. You work under the authority of no one.

You have the power to make cool shit happen.

People literally gasp as they walk past the yard. It’s only eight paintings and a few nails and some $12 bunting, but it’s not something most people take the time to do. You can do that, too. You can find places where your work is piling up and make reasons to show it to people. You can hold an art party in your living room, or make a gallery from your bathroom wall, or invite people over to see what you’ve done in a one-time pop-up event of some kind.

You don’t have to give your creative power to gurus, leaders, gallery owners, teachers, event spaces, or experts to make magic happen.

Community stuff: Bear and I started holding weekly community dance parties.

Have you noticed that these go in order from normal to more and more terrifying?

Since Bear is a DJ, he suggested we have people from the neighborhood over for a weekly dance party. He could play whatever he wanted instead of the usual working-for-a-client-and-at-the-mercy-of-their-musical-tastes scenarios he’s used to handling each week. I could dance with children and puppies while doing my best to avoid small talk with adults.

We hung a giant sign on our fence announcing our Thursday plans. We didn’t invite every single person we knew because we wanted to meet new people.

OH GOD IT’S SO HARD. (That’s what she said.)

The party started at 6:30. By 6:35 p.m., no one had arrived and I deemed the whole thing a big, giant failure. LITERALLY NO ONE IS COMING TO MY PARTY THIS IS EVERY INTROVERT‘S WORST NIGHTMARE. You get brave enough to actually interact with people, and then they don’t show up. I wanted to crawl into a hole and quietly cringe to death.

Then, I stepped away for a few minutes. When I returned, there were 9 people in the yard. The little girl across the street who’d been dressed for our party since 5 p.m. (with lipstick, her mom would like to point out) came dancing over and flailed around with a small gang of kids who rode up on scooters. Hipsters from the brewery next door showed up and consumed enough beer to dance in their quiet, trying-to-be-cool way. Moms pushing strollers past the party ran home to pick up a few cans of beer and returned with their husbands in tow. Pretzel rods and chips and pizza magically appeared on the picnic table.

I introduced myself to NINETEEN strangers in the course of a few hours, and invited every single one of them back next week.

For the introverts: NINETEEN. STRANGERS.

Related to total and complete introversion: want to read the first chapter of my book, Introverts at Work? Join the Fuck Yah Club and I’ll send it right along.

Terrifying stuff: I submitted my poems to ten literary publications and contests.

I’ve only submitted my poems to one contest before, and that was fifteen years ago. Pushing myself to be brave enough to teach a workshop called Brave means that I’m sharing my poems with people who will most definitely judge them.

ACK I’ll let you know how it turns out.

All of the things I’ve listed happened within seven days of having quit Facebook.

I had no idea how much energy was bound up in groups and posts and links and clicks and likes and followers and all the things social media brings with it.

So when people say X ‘isn’t so bad’ or is a ‘necessary evil’ — where X is Facebook or the job you hate or the marriage you want to leave or some business bits you can’t stand or a few clients you want to punch in the face — don’t believe them.

Necessary evils take energy. LOTS of energy.

You can close your energetic windows so that your efforts take hold.

You can stop throwing your time and attention out the window because some expert somewhere said it was necessary.

You can give up the app, program, business practice, or relationship that drives you nuts.

Maybe not all at once, and definitely not without feeling terrified.

But you can give it up, whatever ‘it’ is.

You can free yourself from the chatter and the noise and the asshole brain whispers that you’re not good enough.

I promise. You can.

To your freedom —

P.S. How to quit Facebook in 8 easy steps. Also, listen in as Andrew Hellmich quizzes me on all things WHAT ARE YOU DOING AND HOW WILL YOUR BUSINESS SURVIVE WITHOUT FACEBOOK in this episode of the PhotoBizX podcast.

come alive, get your biz off the ground

Let out your meows.

I’m teaching at a conference and I want to try an experiment. The premise is simple: “Tell me something you believe to be unique to you in all of human experience.”

People look around awkwardly. I’m concerned that Ryan Gosling has just appeared in leprechaun form to do a tap dance on the shoes of each student, their boots are suddenly so interesting. The room is absolutely silent in the way only a classroom about to mutiny against a teacher can be. Yeeeeeeears pass.

Finally, a raised hand! “Ok, great! What’s unique to you in all of human experience?”

“Sometimes I want to die.”

Way to start off with a bang. Wow.

“Who else has had that feeling,” I ask. Hands shoot up around the room. The secrets these peeps have tucked into the hollow place inside themselves have been seen, and suddenly they’re not so scary. Suddenly, they’re not alone. Volunteers for sharing are now plentiful.

The list of unique-to-me universals goes on and on: people who hate their clients, people who can’t stand some aspect of their bodies, people who feel the unbearable heaviness of being alive. For each careful revelation, there’s a corresponding uprising of hands.

Every single I’m-sure-this-only-applies-to-me statement is met with nothing but understanding by the hundreds of people in the room.

It’s working, I think. We’re all united by the human condition! We all get to say “Me, too!” to these statements!

And then. A tall, blond gentleman stands. He’s clearly scared shitless and has the skittish look of someone who’s got a massive secret on his shoulders. I ask him to tell me what’s unique about him in all of humanity, and he says, “I talk to my wife in meows. You know, like a secret language.”

Nope, I don’t know. OH GOD MAYDAY MAYDAY. How did I ever think this was a good idea!? What will I do when no one raises their hand for this guy???????? Stupid Kristen, you didn’t even CONSIDER that someone would say something that isn’t universal aggggghhhhhhhhhh…

I have no poker face, so I’m sure the group sees my dismay. There’s no way we have two meow-talkers in the same room, right!? I throw his statement to the group anyway.

“Anyone else talk to their partner in meows?”

A single hand shoots up in the front of the room.

YES! YEEEEEEESSSSSS, WE HAVE TWO MEOW TALKERS IN THE ROOM TODAY!!!

The first meow talker goes to sit by the second, and they launch into what I can only imagine is the best and most intimate conversation of their entire lives.

What does this story have to do with you, fair reader? If that guy can be brave enough to out his meow talk to a group of complete strangers, you can be brave enough to share your whole self with clients. (Related: come to the Brave workshop.)

When you’re afraid that you can’t take the shot (or you can take the shot but are scared to show it to clients).

When you’re obsessed with perfection and are bound up in how weird or wrong you’ll get it if you even try.

When you see other people’s work in your head and try to recreate them.

When you can’t find a way to express your voice and when you dread picking up your tools.

When all originality seems to have fled your work.

When you’re scrolling through social media and despair at your utter and complete lack of talent.

Let out your meows.

Get weird. Get weird in your posts, in your updates, and in your images. Admit to your likes, your dislikes, and your quirks. Tell people what you care about, and yes that includes politics, movements, resistance, and organizing for a cause.

Get weird in your work, too. If there are children present, they’ll be weird with you. Start dancing or meowing or jumping on the couch with genuine joy, and not a child in the room will be able to resist. If there aren’t children present, don’t be afraid to make an ass of yourself, or at least to poke fun at yourself.

Joy begets joy.

Vulnerability begets vulnerability.

There’s no other way.

Back to your work: you can preface your ideas with nuggets like, “This might be weird, but…” or “I have this crazy idea, want to hear it?” if you’re feeling too vulnerable to announce the next step in your plan outright. More often than not, at least the kids in the group will say “YES.” Mothers who are dying to have a moment of happy family zen on camera will go along with you just to save themselves from the despair of a family photo ‘failure.’ Fathers who hate everyone in the tri-state area will be distracted by their kids using them as a jungle gym or their partner making out with ’em as the kids run in circles and will give in to your plan despite themselves.

Let out your meows.

Throw leaves and jump in the pile instead of taking the posing-in-front-of-foliage shots. Risk making mothers-in-law and grandmothers unhappy with the final shots. (No stiff upper lips? No perfectly posed staring at the camera? How COULD you, the angry grandmothers rage.) Delete the photos you’re not 300% proud of, even if it means you’re only showing a family 18 images. Include the quirky images you love but that you’re sure your clients will reject.

Do you like it?

Is it interesting?

Does it contain any meows?

These questions will take your work to far more interesting places than:

Is it perfect?

Will it get the most likes on Instagram?

Is it sharp as a tack and perfectly exposed?

The quirky, the weird, and the vulnerable bits that come out in your work are vital to your growth as an artist. When you stuff them, suppress them, or shut them down, your work loses its living elements.

The work of every artist you admire is deeply and completely ALIVE. I guarantee it.

Alive is vulnerable. Alive is honest, alive takes chances, and alive is growing.

If you find that your work has stagnated, ask yourself when you last listened to that weird-ass, completely vulnerable meowing impulse. How have you incorporated your vision and your joy into your work? How have you consciously shaped a story that your client will-probably-but-might-not approve? How have you taken risks in your work, and how can you continue to do so? How have you taken steps to stop hiding?

In other words: how are you growing?

Not learning from others growing, but experimenting with ideas growing. Not joining a Facebook group and copying techniques growing, but playing in your down time growing. Not following a 7-step formula growing, but finding your voice growing. Not taking no chances and keeping a lid on your life growing, but making mistakes and tossing the majority of your work growing. Not seeking the next level growing, but steady exploration growing.

That point when meow guy stood up and shared his secret? It was vulnerable, it was scary, and it was deeply alive. Your work can’t be any of those things if YOU are not any of those things. Again…

Your work cannot be vulnerable, risk-taking, and deeply alive if YOU are not being vulnerable, risk-taking, and deeply alive.

So. Let out your meows.

Let your heart be seen, even when you can’t guarantee that a corresponding heart will meet it in the front row. Risk being the one to go first, to be weird and alive, and please promise to enjoy the ways your work shape shifts and surprises you when you do.

Psst! This is an episode of That’s What She Said, my weekly podcast! You can listen to all the episodes or check out the top 10 episodes here.

P.S. This is big, vulnerable work, and if you want to dive into it further, let me send you the first chapter of Calling to the Deep!

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Photo by Love Knot Photo // that time I met a porcupine named Cuddles during Steer Your Ship (my peeps love animals, it’s one of my meows!) and cried at how soft his ears were.

come alive, rebel!

How to claim freedom from all kinds of bullshit.

We have plenty of ‘freedom to’ do things. Freedom to earn a living, freedom to market like a mofo, and the freedom to walk about our streets with relative levels of safety and security.

We’ve got seemingly endless amounts of ‘freedom to,’ but often these freedoms come with a bunch of accompanying weight that’s harder to identify.

‘Freedom to’ often leads to taking on more work, more responsibility, more productivity, and more tasks simply because we can. Those of us who are terminally competent ::waves:: just pile ‘Yup I can do that’ on top of ‘Sure that’s no problem’ on top of ‘Of course I can handle that’ until we’re buried by our own ability to get shit done.

We have to claim ‘freedom from’ in its many incarnations.

‘Freedom from’ is best reclaimed from our repetitive, seemingly inconsequential actions.

Freedom from squeezing in productivity. We don’t have to listen to podcasts (though That’s What She Said is always nice!) or educational audio books while working out, making dinner, driving, or showering. We can engage in one task at a time and even ‘waste’ a bunch of time each day.

Freedom from adding things to our to-do lists once they’ve been finished. We can just be done.

Freedom from working while everyone else is working. One of the benefits of having our own businesses means choosing the shape of our days, which means spending some of our hours walking along beaches or playing with animals or wandering in bookstores. We do not have to live out the Ford assembly line’s strict 9-5 hours.

Freedom from doling out pleasure like scoops of ice cream instead of treating pleasure as an infinite resource. There is no one giving us points for denying ourselves joy. There is no delayed gratification that will come from refusing to be grateful for the moments of brevity and lightness we’re given each day. Joy is a choice.

Freedom from limiting our favorite activities. Personally, I love reading in bed so much that I would only let myself do it for up to an hour before bedtime or at the beach. No mid-afternoon reading or morning reading or after-dinner reading for me, thank you, because REASONS (I’m not sure what I was thinking?). We’re allowed to like what we like and to fill our free time with it.

Freedom from changing your clothes to do yoga. OH GOD I JUST FIGURED THIS OUT AND I WASTED SO MUCH ENERGY NOT CHANGING INTO CLOTHES WHICH MEANT I COULDN’T POSSIBLY DO YOGA THAT DAY. Worst case scenario, we work out in the bedroom wearing underwear and move on with our lives. Best case scenario, we’re wearing stretchy pants.

Freedom from how work ‘should’ look. In a recent call with the brilliant Meg Worden, I was whining about how I didn’t think I had enough energy. I could get all my work done, but aren’t there people out there who can work for 11 hours a straight with no loss of enthusiasm? She said, “I would worry that you were manic if you could do your work — your particular work — for 11 hours a day.” Oooooh. I’m not broken. You’re not broken, either.

It’s okay to have intense focus in short stints and then go about your life collecting inspiration and energy and relationships like so many precious treasures strewn about your life.

It’s okay to find a schedule and a model and a plan that works for you and only you.

Your work doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s work. (Also we all hated group projects because we got stuck doing everything. Your business, blessedly, is all YOURS. So call the shots and cut the dead weight and make amazing shiz happen, please.)

Further.

Getting freer means means saying “no” to the have-to’s, particularly the ones that feel absolutely terrible and that I believe to be ripping the fabric of society apart in long, swift strokes. (See: that time I quit Facebook.)

You don’t have to participate in a system that sucks.
You don’t have to play the game everyone else is playing.
You don’t have to stay on a website or a platform because ‘everyone else is doing it.’

You can build a life that involves striding from one ‘yes’ to another, building a web of joy and life and vitality along the way.

Also — this article, plus Elf movie GIFS = this particular installment of my newsletter. You can get all my e-mail missives laden with GIFS by joining the Fuck Yah Club right here. Also a library of books, sample chapters, and freebies are included because I’m awesome like that. 😉

P.S. Is there a limit to how good life can be?