It’s been a long, long time…hasn’t it?*

*huge props to anyone who can identify the lyrical reference–leave a comment below if you can and you’ll be enthusiastically celebrated.

I haven’t posted in quite a while, because I’ve been thinking Deep Thoughts about where I want this blog to go. You should be seeing me post with some regularity again.

In the meantime, I’ve started off the new year differently than I have in the past, thanks to Cairene MacDonald, who recently hosted a teleclass with her own coach Laura Burkey on choosing a theme for the year, rather than goals or resolutions. Because you know how the latter usually works—you set yourself up for failure, with the best of intentions. If you’re lucky, maybe you even last a whole month. (Me? Not even that long.) Then you spend the rest of the year berating yourself for not keeping your resolutions or not working more diligently toward your goals, slipping further and further into resignation and self-criticism.

Fun fact! I just went to my favorite online anagram creator (be warned—it’s highly addictive), plugged in the word “resolutions,” and one of the anagrams it came up with was “onerous list.” How fitting is that?

I’m tired of that whole resolve-and-fail pattern…but I have some definite directions I want to take this year. So a theme seems like a great idea. According to Laura, a theme gives you a point of focus, but it doesn’t have any specific “action steps,” and you cannot ever be failing at your theme. To a recovering perfectionist like me, that’s important.

Here are the four main concepts to consider when creating your theme for the year. I feel okay sharing this with you because Laura offered them to us for free on the call. I’ve also rephrased some of them a bit, so it’s a mix of her words and mine.

• Your theme should reflect the emergence of your true self. It’s not about changing yourself—it’s about adding to or improving on who you already are and always have been. Some aids to thinking about this are phrases like “What I have always…” and “As a kid, I always…”.
• Your theme must be timely and relevant to you right now. Whatever words you use to express it will speak volumes to you, and resonate with your heart, mind, and even your physical body.
• Your theme should require a daily, healthy stretch. Not to stress you out, but more as a call to yourself from yourself to extend yourself in new ways that you want. Not because of internalized “shoulds,” but because you have chosen this direction for yourself.
• Your theme must “stick.” Its words should really pack a punch and be catchy and memorable to you. Personal.

I’ve chosen a theme for the year. Wanna hear it?

::whistles::

Oh, you do? Okay, then.

My personal theme for 2010 is “Nourish my life, claim my power.”

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Nourishing my life is partly about physical nourishment. Because I have some serious and deep-seated issues with food. I don’t eat well, I never really learned how to cook or enjoy healthy food, and I’m starting to suffer from this. The irony is that I’m probably severely malnourished at the same time that I’m significantly overweight.

This year I want to focus on nourishing myself with food and movement, rather than restricting myself to foods that I don’t enjoy and forcing myself to exercise. I’m not going to say “I can’t have that” or “I must do this.” Instead, I’m going to experiment with “What do I want that would nourish me?” and “What ways of moving would give my body pleasure?” So nothing is out, but I’m looking for more of what I want in.

But the concept of nourishment goes deeper than that. I’ve spent my entire life being a people-pleaser, and now that I’ve decided I want to live life on my own terms at last, I’m having trouble figuring out what those terms are. It seems that somewhere along the way, I forgot how to have fun in ways that don’t require winning the lottery to finance. When someone recently asked me the question “What would you do if you had today entirely at your disposal?” I had to honestly answer, “I don’t know.” That’s heartbreaking and more than a little frightening.

So as a first step, I’ve created a list entitled “Ways to Nourish Myself” and stuck it in my planner so I always have it at hand. It has some incredibly simple things on it like “breathe deeply” and “stretch,” which I can do anywhere, plus things that are more location-based (“cuddle with my cats”) and some that are mini-projects (“try a new recipe”) or longer-term ones (“grow plants”). I’ll add to it as I think of more things, but already this list gives me something to turn to if I’m at a loose end and want to do something to steady myself and experience some pleasure.

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Claiming my power is about stepping into a place of more confidence. For instance, I want to launch a business this year. (Stay tuned!) For the past year or so, I’ve been in learning mode, taking in books and recordings and advice from others so that now I can picture myself as a “solopreneur.” (Which just means being in business for myself, without having employees. Gotta love clever terminology.) But when I look back on last year, I realize I took on the role of the apprentice in my own mind.

I’ll never stop learning, growing, and asking for help and advice, but I need to stop seeing myself as an apprentice now. I need to trust that I have legitimate skills and wisdom to offer, and move out of information-gathering mode into implementation mode. Every entrepreneur I know says they didn’t know what they were doing when they launched their businesses—they just jumped in, started doing things, and noticed what worked and what didn’t. It’s time for me to stop reading about how to swim and dive in already, trusting that I’ll figure it out as I go along and that I have people on my team who will support me in all kinds of ways.

I also want to claim my power in the realm of personal relationships. I’ve gotten much better at stating my wants and needs clearly, and understanding that they’re as valid as anyone else’s—but I’d like to develop that even further. I want to be able to communicate openly and directly, but without anger or violence, in a way that affirms what I want but also seeks to understand what the other person (or people) want. I want to get better at finding win-win situations, and at making conscious choices to walk away from situations that become too toxic for me.

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So…it should be a very interesting year for me. I’ll keep you posted on my progress from time to time.

What about you? Have you made any promises to yourself this year, and if so, how are you doing so far? (And how are you doing it? If you’ve found a way to keep your resolutions, inquiring minds want to know!)

How does the idea of an annual theme sound to you? If you’re exploring it and want to comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Again, happy 2010! I hope it’s a great one for all of us.

Nope, I’m not getting all judgmental on you. Especially since I just paused to ask myself the same question and thought of several. 

It’s easy to have an explanation for everything, isn’t it? You bought the dress because you’re going to need a nice one for Maria’s wedding anyway. I had to deviate from my food plan because the seminar was in a hotel with only one restaurant, and my choices were limited. What? Oh, sure, I could have ordered a salad, but the lettuce didn’t look fresh. 

The difference between what we say we value and what we actually do sets up something called cognitive dissonance. We feel uncomfortable because we know we’re not walking our talk. Our minds naturally search for ways to close that gap so we can feel good about ourselves again. Excuses, explanations and rationalizations make convenient mortar for filling in the chinks and shoring up the walls of our self-esteem.

The problem is, all that mortaring takes energy, and the wider the gaps, the harder the job. This can easily kick off a long downward spiral of frustration, depression, and shame. You want to live in certain ways and do certain things, but you seem to have less and less energy to do them. Your talk and your walk drift further and further apart. And your walls need even more repair. 

So how can you lay down the trowel and quit mortaring? Here’s one idea: 

Figure out what you value. 

This is tough to do because of all the socialization we undergo. Our parents and families are our first teachers, and we absorb their viewpoints and priorities automatically. Teachers, religious leaders and other authority figures dip their oars in as well. The mass media start pounding away at us as soon as we’re able to begin comprehending their messages.

And we’re not even aware that most of this is happening. Which means we’ve pretty much inherited an entire value system unconsciously.

To start repairing the gaps between your values and your actions, it helps to get some clarity on what those values are. Which ones are truly your own, and which came bundled with the software? 

Are you up for a quick exercise? Grab a sheet of paper and quickly write out a list of the things you think are most important in life—the core ideals which form the bedrock of your personal value system. Aim for about 10-15 items, or whatever emerges in about three or four minutes of writing. Go ahead, do it now—I’ll wait.

(whistling some cheery on-hold music)

Okay, take a look at your list. I’ll bet it contains many items such as (in no particular order):

• Love
• Happiness
• Family
• Religion/Spirituality
• Honesty
• Hard Work
• Excellence
• Security
• Courage
• Compassion
• Friendship
• Gratitude
• Determination
• Generosity
  . . . and the list goes on.

These are the types of “old standards” most of us inherit, and they seem so obvious that we rarely question them or think about them deeply. (Love? Of course! Who wouldn’t want love in their lives?) Plus—and this is key—we know at some level that it’s safe to espouse these beliefs. They’re socially acceptable because they are dictated to us by society. 

Let me be clear. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these values. In fact, most of us would agree they’re very important. They’re just . . . a little vague, don’t you think?

Let’s say you wrote down “courage,” for example. Sounds great—but what exactly does it mean to you? Not backing down in a physical confrontation? Getting over your fear of public speaking? Standing up for yourself and drawing healthy boundaries in a relationship? Going (oh, no!!!) to the dentist?

There is no judgment attached to any answers here. (Well, as long as you don’t value torturing living creatures or engaging in destructive hurtfulness, there’s not.) You just need to figure out what the stuff you’ve probably been parroting all your life really means to you, if anything.

Check your list. Is there anything you wrote down because you felt you should? Be honest. Maybe you don’t actually value hard work, or family. That’s okay! It doesn’t mean you’ll never work hard or spend quality time with your family—just that these are not going to be primary motivators for you. Maybe you feel you should go to church or spend time in meditation, but deep down it’s just not fulfilling to you. Again, no judgment. You’re only admitting this to yourself anyway, and I promise the world won’t end based on what you think and feel.

Speaking of feelings, the relief you feel when you accept what is true for you is immensely liberating. Maybe for the first time ever, you’re in a clear and conscious space with this stuff. And it feels wonderful. 

Now add the values that you’d really like to have on your list, but were afraid wouldn’t look good. Rest and relaxation, anyone? Fun? Freedom? Travel? A different religious or spiritual perspective than you were raised with? Go ahead—this is your list, and no one else ever has to see it. 

Congratulations! You’ve just taken a major step toward congruency between the things you say are important to you  and the things you do. Because it’s a whole lot easier to walk your talk when you honestly believe in the things you’re saying.

(HINT: Even if you didn’t actually make a written list, I encourage you to mull this over for the next few days. Your unconscious mind can do some amazing things when you’re not looking, and you may be treated to an epiphany or two! If not, you’ll have dug a little deeper into your own motivations. That’s always a good thing.)

And a hearty hail-and-well-met to anyone who has found my blog via that post. Welcome to you! )

The post has received many positive comments so far, indicating that it has struck a nerve. That’s very gratifying to me. Several people have even written things like, “Wow, I feel vindicated. Now I’m going to go write something horrible!”

Well, I’d like to invite you to go ahead and do so. And then if you’d like, you can post the results here.

You can either link to what you’ve written via a comment below, or even write something directly in the comments if it’s not so long that it will make scrolling difficult.

The only rules?

1. Nothing profane, deliberately insulting, or in general bad taste, please.
2. No judgment. Let’s all acknowledge that posting is scary, and cheer on anyone who takes a chance and shares what she or he has written publicly.

So . . . no praise or harsh words about any of the content, please. Just support for the act of writing and publishing itself.

Wahey! Let’s do this thing!!!

Check out the artist statement. Then go back up and look at Sam’s earnest little face.

When I was a child, I used to wonder about the dandelions, too. I was afraid of the spiky-looking leaves–I refused to step on them, and I remember one day making my father carry me over a stretch of grass in a park because there was nowhere to step without walking on dandelions–but I always thought the flowers were pretty.

I still do. Cheerful miniature suns smiling up from lawns and fields, they always cheer me up. And how cool is it when the blossoms go to seed? How many other flowers can you have fun blowing apart into the wind when they reach maturity and are ready to reproduce?

Who decided that dandelions are weeds? That roses, for example, are the epitome of flowery “perfection”?

Who gets to decide that people like Sam are less than perfect? That they are, in fact, disposable? (“‘Are you going to keep him?’ a nurse asked.” Were you as horror-struck as I was when I read that she actually said this, let alone thought it?)

So many of us pursue the ideal of perfection in our lives, at least in part because we’re conditioned to do so. From earliest childhood, we’re bombarded by unending messages from our parents, families, teachers, authority figures, and friends telling us what we should do, be, own, look like, and act like–messages which we all receive from the mass media and pass back and forth among ourselves as if they are gospel truth.

If perfection means keeping up with these perpetual, completely unreasonable, and sometimes conflicting demands, then perfection is impossible. But that doesn’t t stop us from wanting to achieve it, so we live in denial of the real truth and keep pushing, pushing, pushing. This usually leads to low self-esteem because we feel like we never measure up to all the standards that we “should”–and, all too often, to burnout, frustration, anger, and bitterness.

Personally, I prefer the definition of perfection that I found in the first entry on this page. First entry, from the Random House dictionary, meaning 3:

perfection – a perfect embodiment or example of something.

Doesn’t that take the pressure off? I don’t have to look like the model on the cover of that magazine in the checkout line (forget the fact that she doesn’t even really look like that, either) to be perfectly me. You don’t have to be as saintly as Mother Teresa to be perfectly worthy of love. Sam doesn’t have to have the mental acuity of his peers to be a perfect embodiment of Samness.

I can live with that definition of perfection.

Think what would happen if everyone did.

In my case, it was writing a novel.

Hardly unique–someone once told me that every other person you know dreams of writing a book, and I’d be surprised if it’s that few. But it’ll do to illustrate what I’m talking about. Since, you know, I’ve never tried to climb Mount Everest or anything.

I somehow learned to read at a very young age, and progressed rapidly from Clifford the Big Red Dog to Brave New World. Which I read when I was about 11 years old because I thought it had a cool cover, completely unaware that I was picking up a classic.

Science fiction and fantasy have always been my genres of choice, and even as a teenager I would sometimes think, “Hey, I could write this stuff!” But in my cocky self-assurance I never actually tried, except for a few false starts which never went beyond three pages. That was okay, because I “knew” that I could do it, and would when I was ready.

I’ve been ready for almost 20 years now. And I’ve tried to write a novel enough times to recognize my youthful hubris for what it was. Writing is damn hard, and writing something so lengthy is damn hard multiplied by 1,000.

When I finally conceded the level of difficulty involved, I was well and truly humbled, and I inwardly prostrated myself at the feet of all novel-writers past and present in abject apology. (Well, at the feet of the good novel-writers, at least. A woman has her pride.) The fire of my writing desire was banked, though not fully extinguished.

Then I discovered NaNoWriMo.

NaNo-huh??? Allow me to explain by way of a very short story.

The difficulty I’ve always had is with constructing a plot. Intriguing characters with rich backstories I can create by the dozen. I can do world-building pretty well, too, thinking through all the what-ifs of a culture I’ve created in my imagination. But to come up with an interesting narrative trajectory for my characters to travel? Nuh-uh. Never could do it in a way that kept me interested, let alone a potential posse of readers.

So one day about four years ago I was trawling the web for books on plot construction and I found one called No Plot? No Problem!Intrigued, I ordered it, only to discover that it wasn’t about plot construction per se. Rather, it described, in author Chris Baty’s hysterically funny prose, this odd-sounding event called National Novel Writing Month. Or NaNoWriMo for short.

This worldwide event happens every November, and you can join and participate through the Internet as well as organize and/or attend local write-ins if you live near other WriMos.

I joined, and wrote my first novel that November.

On day #1 I blocked so hard on the fantasy novel I tried to write that I simply could not move forward. I wasn’t ready to be quite thatimperfect yet. But I still reaaaaally wanted to do NaNo (as we affectionately call it), so on day #2 I switched gears and started a story about, amazingly enough, a woman about my age living in San Francisco, not liking her job, and looking for a career change. I guess it’s true we write what we know.

No matter—I finished the novel. All 50,000+ words of it. (50K is the goal at which you can officially finish and declare yourself a winner.)

If you want to write a book but your inner perfectionist has been keeping you from doing it like mine did for so long, I can’t recommend NaNoWriMo highly enough. You can do it on your own at any time, of course, but the support you get by doing it with everyone else in November makes the wait worthwhile.

What makes the program so effective? It allows you to barrel right past your critical mind. You have to write so much so fast that quality concerns fly out the window—you just don’t have time for them. “I can edit later” becomes your mantra. And the amazing thing is that once you push past your initial resistance, get into the flow, and establish a daily writing routine, you realize it’s completely feasible to write 50,000 words or more in a month if you just keep writing and don’t overthink it.

It’s fun, it’s intense, and it’s probably the best training program for recovering perfectionists I’ve ever found.

Maybe I’ll see you on www.nanowrimo.org this November.