Posts in "deal with depression" Category — Page 4

Joy is a choice.

Every now and again, I’ll catch myself stacking work on top of TV shows on top of movies, with podcasts and Instagram to fill even my private in-the-bathroom moments. I’ll move from screen to book to device to TV to car radio and back to screen, circling through to keep entertained for every moment, faster and ever more frenetically, until I give in to whatever it is that wants to be heard in the quiet: the message of the patient, tender creatures who live just beneath the scurrying surface of everyday life.

Those patient and tender creatures of the quiet help us remember.

I’ve remembered about music. How, given half an hour, a little sheet music, and an instrument, you can make a whole world vanish and reappear, entirely new. How there’s no need to record it, save it, or capture it. How music is…and then isn’t…every day, in every part of the world, without any devices to make sure it lasts and lasts.

I’ve remembered about poetry. How I used to write, all the time and every day, because I could. Because poems were pouring out and I could either catch them on paper or try stuffing them back into my insides, awkwardly, like stilling a ferret who’s hellbent on escaping from the deep, warm pocket of my favorite sweater. (Mostly I chose to let them escape.)

I’ve remembered about talking to people. How the baristas at bookstores are inevitably kind-hearted word nerds, always hiding and yet dying to be seen. How they’ll make witty banter if you smile mischievously. How talking to strangers, without agenda and without trying to be efficient about it, is one of humanity’s loveliest gifts.

I’ve remembered about loving people. How sometimes the best way to love your partner is to buy all the manly bath products he will not allow himself to purchase, then do the (dreaded) grocery shopping so that home feels lovely, delightful, and warm when he walks in the door after too many hours away.

I’ve remembered how the best and worst thing about life is that it’s…daily.

You have to eat again today, no matter how much or how little, how well or how poorly you ate yesterday. You have to move your body again today, no matter how hard you worked yesterday, and you have to love people today, even if you gave entirely too much energy to everyone you know yesterday and last week and the week before.

Yes, it’s daily.

But in each of the daily bits, you get another chance. You get to make music and sing along to the radio and consume sweet-sweet-lovely caffeine and do your work and remember about silence, too. You get to write and have brilliant conversations with people who open your heart and mostly, you get to smile softly to yourself when no one is looking.

You get to remember that at the end of life, there will be a vast horizon of days to look back upon, and this day will be only a warm, kind blip.

Here’s to another warm, kind blip, my friend.

…THE NEXT DAY. (Because the best/worst thing about life is how it’s daily, remember? And perfection porn says I should show you only the happy and dammit, I won’t do that to you.)

I started off crying and vulnerable and scared, because in addition to all those lovely things I wrote about yesterday, I’m remembering about the heart-wrenching consequences of loving so much you can hardly breathe: you’re afraid that the love you’re feeling and creating and experiencing together will go away.

You’re afraid he’ll die while texting on his commute.
You’re afraid he’ll stop breathing, or the apocalypse will happen while you’re not together, or your plane will crash on your business trip.
You’re afraid the cancer or the disease or the life-altering symptoms will come back.

Even with friends, with those people who fill in the gaps of your everyday life with humor and good graces, you’re afraid they’ll move away.
You’re afraid the two of you will grow apart.
You’re afraid your best days are behind you.
You’re afraid you’ll never be who you believed you could be way back when, and the pain of that disappointment will dampen you both.

There are 1,000 reasons to fear losing the people you love most, and the white-hot blinding and searing fears overtake you, sometimes.

That’s when it’s good to remember about the people who help you remember.

Morgan helps me remember about breathing and about staying connected to my body when my mind wants to run monkey-on-crack-cocaine-frantic laps around my life screaming, “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY” at everything within a 22-mile radius.

Anne helps me remember about writing every day, even when I don’t want to and frankly, don’t give a shit, and am entirely convinced that this thing I’m writing will be terrible. (It’s terrible, isn’t it. Ah well. I’m writing.)

Meg helps me remember about my body and the physical world — the things I avoid when I go deep into Depression Land or Stressed-Out Land or all the other Very Not Fun Lands. (I’m surviving the holiday season with her this year.)

Brene helps me remember about fearing the loss of everyone you love — we all have it — and that we can’t selectively numb emotion. It’s the work of a lifetime to remain vulnerable and to trust joy. Watch this with fresh eyes and it can change absolutely everything about the way you live.

Facebook, ever so ironically, helps me remember that a few years ago today, I was giving a speech called Joy is a Choice. Which details my struggles with depression and not wanting to live anymore and how my experiments in having more fun in my life panned out and how, over and over again, I chose joy. And choose it still.

(That speech and the confetti battle afterward remain one of the best moments of my whole life. Because when you pack sixteenish pounds of confetti in carry-on, play with it among 250ish people, and pass the hat to handle the $500 clean-up fee aboard the historic Queen Mary, well…it’s all joy.)

People still remind me of that day, and how they got a glimpse of all the light on the other side of suffering, and how those moments of flinging confetti into the air helped them remember about love, and being a kid, and being happy for no reason. Also they remember about finding confetti on your pillow and in your bra and down your pants, which is the most lovely side effect of attending a speech that I can imagine.

Finally, Jenny helps me remember about being Furiously Happy, which is about choosing joy whenever possible, on every single day that the depression or the [insert mental illness here] doesn’t drag you under.

May you remember about the people who help you remember.

May you love fully and deeply without fear of loss or zombies or cancer or accidents or all the horrific tumbleweeds your mind has been playing on loop to keep you from being fully alive.

…and may you, my friend, find confetti on your pillow or down your pants for no particular reason.

P.S. Please join the Fuck Yah club if you want me to help you remember about confetti and joy and being you in the world, despite everything fighting to keep you from it.

deal with depression, listen to the podcast

On taking care of yourself. (Or not.)

“I’m not very good at taking care of myself.”

My client confessed it as if she was telling me she’d killed a puppy or strangled her next door neighbor for playing music too loudly.

Instead, I laughed.

You’re not good at taking care of yourself?

Oh hi, welcome to the club.

We all have cycles that govern our lives, and we all pretend they can be ignored in the name of getting more shit done for our businesses, our families, our work, our pets, our kids, our colleagues, our…everything-but-our-selves.

In this episode of That’s What She Said, we talk about all the cycles.

Sleep cycles.
Hunger cycles.
Sugar-craving cycles.
Procrastination cycles.
Work cycles.
Menstrual cycles.

All of it.

You’re not stupid or terrible or awful person. You just need to take an honest look at your cycles.

You’ll also hear my favorite counter-intuitive business advice and I’ll love on the podcast I’m adoring right this minute.

Listen below, or subscribe in iTunes to get your cycle on.

P.S. How many lights on your dashboard are blinking?

deal with depression, read a poem

The Eleventh Hour.

This is the part where you weep, and it isn’t pretty.
Admit to all that isn’t working.
Everything that can’t be fixed.
The deadlines you’ve missed.
The ways you’ve let yourself down.
All the reasons he or she or they would have done it better.

This is the part where you let it break.
It’s not going according to plan.
You’re tired.
You don’t know how you’ll finish.
You can’t quite see the way.
You haven’t been able to see the way for entirely too long.

This is the part where you hold your heart up,
barely beating, and ask why anyone would want it anyway.
This is the not the dramatic victory. Nor is it the defeat.
This is the eleventh hour.
This is when you invite bright faith to join you,
together listening for the steady pulse beneath it all:

This matters,
this matters,
this matters.

You matter,
you matter,
you matter.

This is the part where you don’t believe a word of it.
This matters, you matter:
fuck no, it doesn’t, and you don’t.

This is the part where you scoff and cry
and rage against everything you know
for as long as it takes.

This is the part where you pick up your tools,
dry your tears, and do your work.

This matters, this matters, this matters.
You matter, you matter, you matter.

Like it or not, it’s true.
You feel it now.

This is the part where you are blessed
by the eleventh hour
one more time.

P.S. 69 more poems here.

deal with depression

You should probably give up.

You’re going to fail. Hard.

You’re going to fall flat on your face, like the 13-month-old kid who’s learning to walk and then WHAM! catches a lip on the coffee table and screams for the next 40 minutes.

You’re going to wish you had never, ever started a business.

You’re going to compare yourself to others’ highlight reels. The victorious tales. The entrepreneur who started with a peanut, a paper clip and thirty cents and then sold the company for $1.2 billion. The woman who made cookie treats in her basement and then started the world’s largest cookie franchise. Tale after tale, like stark-raving success porn, lavished upon you via the interwebs and in all the business magazines available at your local bookstore.

Only sometimes, the tales aren’t victorious. Sometimes you biff really hard, like that time you were trying to do a wheelie on your bike to impress your friends but instead you ran into the ditch and you still have the scars.

Last year, I held a real-life summer camp for entrepreneurs called Brand Camp. I anticipated sold-out crowds of peeps swarming the place. I hired the best speakers money can buy. I lined up treats and delights galore.

I went all in.

I got the ice cream truck and the Ferris wheel and the yoga teacher I love best. I put my whole heart into the event, every last bit of what I had to give. My best friend quit her six-figure corporate job to help me pull it all off. (She was all in, too.)

Some attendees called it the best days of their lives — people who are married, who have kids, who have hit those milestones that you’re supposed to give the “best days” titles.

The event was pure magic. From a monetary standpoint, though, things didn’t go exactly as planned. I sold less than 25 percent of the seats available.

I could buy a house in my hometown with what I owe. (Not even exaggerating, friend.)

Following camp, I crumpled. I cried in bed, on the couch, driving around, at the grocery store and right in the middle of Target. Then I started eating my feelings and gained ten pounds. Oh, pizza and beers. Why do you taste so good!?

It took me a month to leave the five miles surrounding my house. I ordered in, I freaked out about money, I sat on the couch and couldn’t face any numbers. The number of attendees, the debts, the invoices. The FAILURE of it all.

It took me a few more weeks to love even my most trusted business clients. I spent much of a retreat I led in Costa Rica waiting for my lovely peeps to turn on me or tell me how disappointed they were in me or demand their investment in my services back because WHATDIDIKNOWANYWAYI’DJUSTLOSTABUNCHOFMONEY.

It took me a few months to start showering regularly (Because depression). I had separated from my husband a few weeks before the event, and untangling my heartstrings from my purse strings was nearly impossible. I made my very best effort to sink into the couch cushions and disappear.

It took me ten months to be able to look at the photos from camp without crying because a few people didn’t have the best days of their lives. In fact, they wanted refunds and were vocal about it, and I never did quite figure out how to make them happy. The thought of even ONE UNHAPPY CUSTOMER still looms over me.

Nearly one year later, I’m coming up with ways to dip my toes in the waters of risk.

How can I give you everything I’ve got without holding some back, because 10 percent of income goes to paying the venue, 5 percent to speakers, 8 percent to debts accrued during planning?

How can I try again, this time in ways that guarantee success? (HA! Guaranteed success!)

It’s murky water at best.

I should probably give up, right? I should be ashamed of myself, hang up my hat and never set foot into the world as an entrepreneur again.

Only, if you shame me for losing money, you would have to argue that I shouldn’t take the big risks in life — and by extension, you shouldn’t, either.

I gave some people their best days on this planet — and in the process, I got some bruised knees and a banged-up lip, metaphorically speaking.

That’s what happens when you go all in: you risk losing pretty much everything.

Your money, your reputation, your confidence. Your sense of well being and purpose.

You put who you are and what you stand for on the line when you introduce something new to the world through your business.

You’ll naturally want to back down, to halve the costs, to double the odds of succeeding by watering down your work to appeal to the most people possible.

People will say you should give up.

You should play it safe.

You should round your edges, soften your corners or refuse to put the f-word three inches high in your website’s header.

Don’t, don’t, and … well, I did, but you probably shouldn’t.

Even if it’s strategic or makes the most sense or is guaranteed to take your business to the next level.

They’ll tell you to hightail it out of there, to minimize your risks, to open up channels of revenue that don’t feel quite right. They’ll paralyze you with stories of credit card debt, invoices owed, and all the times it didn’t work for them, or their brother-in-law, or that one kid from your graduating class who lost everything and now lives in a box under the bridge.

Only they’re not you, bringing your distinctive blend of gifts and weirdo talents and loves and hates and knowledge and products and services to the world. They can’t know which lessons life has in store on the other side of that dance you’re doing with your purpose this lifetime.

Go all in.

Maybe you’ll be sorely disappointed.

Maybe it will end up better than you ever imagined.

Maybe you’ll be able to buy a small house in your hometown, or maybe you’ll just owe that much money.

Maybe you’ll give people some of the best moments of their lives.

Maybe you’ll do all these things and more, all at once, in a life-jumble that you can’t clearly define as good or bad.

Who knows what will happen? I can’t tell you how it will go.

I can only tell you to follow the bits that make you more alive, that make you feel like you’re somewhere between on fire and holding onto an electric fence. Even with knowing how it went, and how it played out and how swiftly it struck me down, I’ve never felt more in tune with my sense of why I’m on this planet than I did during those days.

You should probably give up the questions, forgo the advice…

and go all in.

That’s the art of it, when the numbers are put away, the debts are paid, the e-mails are answered, and the event is long gone.

The art of going all in is the art of getting more alive.

Success, failure, BIG LOOMING TERRIBLE THOUGHTS and magical minutes all lead to being more alive as a business owner, as a human, as a citizen of the planet.

Now go, get more alive.

P.S. For when it all falls apart.

Photo // Jon Canlas

deal with depression, listen to the podcast

Depression & running a business: practical help.

We all have things we’d rather not share.

There’s the usual: photos of the messy house/child/pet/car/desk/area. Shamrock Shakes as dinner. That stack of stuff behind the bedroom door. The mismatched outfit you wore out of the house before you realized it was sort of tragic. (Two tie-dyes NEVER match, dammit.)

There’s the unusual: your cheeseboard fetish. Your video game collection. Your curated-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives bookshelves. (Your meows. Coming out of the spiritual closet.)

And then there’s the truly messy stuff of life. Your doubts, your failures, your depression. When I first talked about my depression in this article, I had no idea how it would strike a nerve with peeps — and lately, they’re asking for more. Yes, you HAVE depression, but how do you HANDLE it?

That, my friends, is the topic of the this That’s What She Said podcast.

In this episode, you’ll get short, practical, and simple steps for managing both depression and your business without retreating into a hole and hiding until a few months have passed.

Download it, love it, and listen to it.

Subscribe here. If you heart it, please review it on iTunes, as that helps it reach more peeps who are struggling in the same way.

P.S. Part one of this conversation is right here. Listen to part three right here, or check out the depression chronicles for a rundown of every time I’ve talked about the D-word.