“What doesn’t bend breaks” Ani Difranco American singer , song writer and guitarist 1970

Scottish proverb:  better to bend than break

I have loved reading for my book reviews this summer.   In terms of goal setting skill it was tremendous to have a Monday deadline to finish the book of the week and have something legible up for you to read.  Especially when I received notes from people who actually read the reviews.

Knowing that you are out there reading and knowing that I didn’t write a new review this past Monday, I come to you today, bending so I don’t break.  My life in the last month has flowered so powerfully in opportunities and work that I have to say I feel like if I’m any more creative I will explode.  As a creative person reading this blog you know that creativity goes in waves.   Sensing the ebb and flow of the creative tide I prepared to fill my summer with a self created reading and writing project.

Little did I know that I was about to ride the crest of a wave that is in danger of becoming a tsunami and wiping me out.

If you read last week, you will know I’m currently in Vancouver finishing up my second week at CBC radio 2 where I have been guest hosting for a vacationing Bill Richardson.   I have been writing at a feverish pace.  The scripts for the opera are intense and summarizing an opera in 7 minutes turned out to be much more tricky than I realized!  I’m grateful that I could write my rough draft an a producer would come and clean up and mold my clay into a presentable radio product.  (Thanks Denise, Matt and Matthew and Rosemary)

On Monday past I got a call from The Belfry theatre in Victoria where I had auditioned earlier in May for their musical that debuts in November.  It is called The Life Inside.  It is a new musical drama and I was offered the workshop for next week and the show that starts rehearsals in October.  I am already learning a script (no kidding, I ,an opera singer, am learning a script)  for another new musical that debuts at the Victoria Fringe Festival and at a theatre festival on Gabriola Island during the last two weeks of August.  That one is called Smalltown: A Pick-Up Musical.

(On a side note-I will later write about the voice of fear that I had to slay before I managed to go and do my first audition with a monologue in my entire professional career. )

I have to bend or I will break.  I have to take a brief hiatus from the weekly book review posting.  The good news is I’m not abandoning the list because I am really enjoying the reading and writing.  The bad news is that it will take into September to finish now.  Sort of my way of extending the summer!

I hope you can forgive me for this, but as a life coach I know that life must be lived in suppleness.  And as I encourage you to keep questioning the choices in how you live your daily life, I too, must to it.

In the meantime I will be posting about my summer of creative fire!  It has been full of lessons and learnings that I want to share.

Thanks for reading and please let me know if you like or hate what you read here.  What do you need some tools for?  Let me know and I’ll incorporate into the blog.

The producers taught me many things this week about radio and how to create really good radio.

It’s all about the story.  Everything.  Not just the opera, which has a story obviously.  The interviews are all about story.  The other features that I scripted are also about story.  What’s your story?

Yeah.  You.  Reading this.  What’s your story?  Don’t get all wound up in your head analyzing, just tell me a story.  All the meaning will unfold from a good story.  Don’t believe me?  Try it out.  The next person you meet get them to tell you a story and see what happens.

Here is a story.  You will know me better at the end of it.

I was living in New York City and developing my singing career.  Or so I thought.  But at the very least, I was living in New York.  I had a passion for Wagner and the Metropolitan was offering Die Meistersinger.  I had never seen it and I didn’t really know the plot, but off I went and sat way up, about as high as you can go, at the back of the Metropolitan Opera.

I read the synopsis in the program and physically blanched.  The premise that the opera starts with is that someone in this opera is going to be a master singer by writing the prize-winning song.  The best song ever.  Talk about a set up for disappointment.   I remember thinking “That Wagner!  I mean, what is he thinking?  He is going to write the best song ever?  I can’t believe it”

First of all, the act two finale with Beckmesser serenading in the street with his out of tune lute and the noise in the street over top ruining the serenade and then the whole chorus in a street fight was one of the most amazing moments I have ever experienced.  It struck me as if I had a present in my hands and as I unwrapped it there was another fabulous layer, and then another and then another.  The Act 2 finale in Meistersinger was like the best Christmas present one could ever get. The musical finale was so cleverly conceived and executed that I was actually somewhat stunned at intermission and overwhelmed with the magic of it.  Then the prize winning song comes.  It was Ben Heppner I heard sing it in the early nineties and I have to say that I couldn’t believe how the song got more and more beautiful as it progressed.  It was hypnotic.  I knew at that moment I had never heard anything so beautiful in my whole life and I would never hear anything that beautiful again.  By this point when they are competing for the prize as master singer even the realistic grass in the field on stage is filling me with wonder.

Ah, wonder.  There isn’t enough of it in life.  Moments when we feel small and insignificant.  But only because the world has such incredible gifts in it.  And that performance of that piece was one of them to me.

Confession:  We left Toronto and moved to Victoria BC because we felt that we would live closer to our ideal life there.  The outside of Victoria mirrored our interior so that might explain why a good friend gave me this book a while back.

Who is the Writer?

I was absolutely drawn to the fact that the writer has spent a decade as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio.  NPR.  The American CBC.  I listen to NPR and I felt sure that I would like a book by any one who worked for NPR.  Not even to mention that he has been a reporter for The New York Times.  The New York Times!  I’m starting to fawn.  The writer is a real live journalist who has immense amounts of experience and he brought journalists sensibilities to this journey around the world (well, he did visit a lot of places) in search of the happiest place on earth.  (Oddly enough, he did not go to Disney Land)

Why did he write the book?

Eric Weiner has always loved to travel, as witnessed by his career as a foreign correspondent, but I thought it touching that this book was inspired by a belief that his journalistic life had been spent roaming “..the world telling the stories of gloomy, unhappy people… (they) make for good stories. They tug at heartstrings and inspire pathos.  They can also be a real bummer.”     And so our somewhat world weary, and I thought grumpy, reporter sets of on a year traveling the globe looking not for troubled spots, but for happy places.   He himself calls it a “harebrained experiment” but nonetheless he takes on the task of discovering if happiness is in us, or out there.  Out where we live.  Does where we are matter as much or more than who we are?

To do this he travels to the Netherlands, Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar, Iceland Moldova, Thailand, Great Britain, and India and back to his home country, the USA.  All in ten entertaining chapters.

Who is this book for?

This book is for enjoyment.  The most like a beach read that I have come across yet of all my reading.  Written to encourage thoughts about happiness, it is also a travelogue, a crusty mans journey into his preconceived notions, and an often funny and personal story.  A pleasure read that happens to be very well researched with references to not just national studies about happiness around the world and the sayings of great thinkers.  With equal weight, he shares the thoughts and learning’s of friends and people he meets in his travels.

What I’m taking from this book and putting into my tool kit

Some of the things I want to remember from this book, in no particular order are:

-Clean Toilets are a sign of civilization and can increase a societies overall happiness rating

-Bhutan has a policy regarding Gross National Happiness and every decision the government makes is run through the prism “Will this action we’re about to take increase or decrease the overall happiness of the people?”  When was the last time Stephen Harper asked this question I wonder?

-Moldova proves that if you have no culture and no community then you will become hopeless ala Martin Seligman’s’ theories.  The result is great sadness as all artists know.

I loved this part

Studies show that 15,000 dollars a year buys happiness.  Per person.  All inclusive.  Americans are an average of three times wealthier than a half a century ago, yet are no happier.  Reminds me that money can facilitate happiness, but never truly buy it.

What bugged me?

Eric was the journalist throughout and so he brings a very different perspective to his writing.  I don’t think it bugged me, but it was a real change in a book about happiness to find a writer who was not trying to teach me how to be happy, but rather was seeing places and people and things and reporting back to me.  He gives his readers a lens that they can use to consider how different elements in these different places might affect each one of us.  So it didn’t make me want to travel, but it did inspire me to scrutinize the habits born of my geography more thoroughly.

Words of caution

This book will not teach you how to be happy.  It will not encourage you to make vision boards, or even necessarily to travel.   Don’t read it to solve your problems or get the answer to the meaning of life.  Even at the end he dodges a committed conclusion and offers general observances and I think leaves it up to the reader to decide.  Which is as it should be, because one of the things he learns is we all need and want different things to be happy.  I heartily agree.

Wrap up

I enjoyed reading this book.  It was combinations of personal essay, travel journal, and scotch soaked bar talk.  I have to say though, for whatever reason, the “bliss’ is in the title but the book is all about “happiness”.  Perhaps Eric had an aversion to the ‘h’ word?

Rating : 4/5

More more information check out www.EricWeinerBooks.com

Who is the Writer?

With twenty years clinical research behind him, and as a past president of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Seligman is a leading motivational expert and an authority on what he calls “learned helplessness”and was the leader of the movement to Positive Psychology.  He has been an active researcher and writier and currently is professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.  His is the first book I am reviewing by a man of science.   First published in 1990, this book is now in its’ second edition.

Why did he Write the book?

In his introduction to the second edition Dr. Seligman writes “I have spent my entire professional life working on helplessness and ways to enlarge personal control.”  He tells a very personal story of being a boy of 13 when his father suffered a stroke.   It was some time before he was allowed to visit his dad and when he did he tells us that as his mother tried to comfort his father in his condition with talk of God and the hereafter his Dad responded with “I don’t believe in God.  I don’t believe in anything after this.  All I believe in is you and the children and I don’t want to die” Martin Seligman identifies this moment as his introduction to “the suffering that helplessness engenders.  Seeing my father in this state, as I did again and again until his death years later, set the direction of my quest.  His desperation fueled my vigor.”

Inspired to work on the issue of helplessness and its’ connection to depression it was an epiphany for him when he realized that he wasn’t working on pessimism, but optimism.  As a clinical psychologist his training and work had always focused on what was wrong with individuals.  This work took him in an entirely new direction-what was already right and how to make it even better.  Thus he focuses all his efforts on creating optimism and a positive life view in people of all ages, genders and jobs in his book.

Who is this Book For?

This isn’t for the beach unless you are a student of psychology or someone with more than a passing interest in depression.  The good doctor doesn’t write too thickly in his style, but it has very clinical leanings with numerous case studies and proofs. A very scientific method shows up in the layout of the information.

Is this book for you?  Answer this question-Are you someone who is likely to be incapacitated when something bad happens?  Do you think “It was meant to be?” There is nothing to be done”.

Or do you respond to trials with the Scarlett O’Hara refrain of “Tomorrow is another day”?

If you chose the former, than this book has some very powerful information and applicable science in it for you.  Just don’t get bogged down in the clinical material.

The Premise he offers

Dr. Seligman begins by researching and proving that helplessness is learned and conditioned in us.  The revelation in his early work is that helplessness could be taught but also untaught.   From here he went on to address the inborn piece of optimism.  Why are some of us more resilient?  Why do some of us always the cup half full while some of us see it as half empty?  Much time is devoted in this book in diagnosing who is optimistic and who is pessimistic.  Not content to diagnose he goes on to explore the merits of both positions and also gives the reader tools to ‘learn optimism’.

What I’m Taking from this Book and Putting into my Tool Kit

My toolkit will now include a scientifically proven method for assisting myself and others in reframing life’s’ kicks to the gut.   There is a quicker and more effective bounce back to engaged living.  Dr. Seligman has also provided me with new markers in what pessimistic talk looks like.  He outlines what to listen for when identifying a pessimistic reaction that can lead to depression. There is also quite a bit of information on dealing with children and assisting them with pessimism in reframing what they experience and the importance of the language we are using with them.

Let me give you a taste.  In his quiz to diagnose pessimism in kids he offers this question:

You have been trying to get into a club and you don’t get in.

A) I don’t get along well with other people

B)I don’t get along well with the people in the club

If you chose A, that is a pessimistic answer because it is pervasive.  It is a blanket statement that isn’t dependant on situation and it places all the responsibility on your shoulders.  If you chose B, that is an optimistic answer. It is a one time rejection, with the possibility that you would get into another club, and some blame falling on the outside of you (the people in the club are also responsible for this)

I loved this Part

I loved having grown in my understanding of the power of how we think.  Investigating our thinking, ala Byron Katie (Is it true?); so that when a bad thing happens it doesn’t become a predictor for everything.  Just because I yelled at my kids this morning doesn’t make me a bad mother.  That is the pessimistic label.  The optimistic thought would be-I yelled at my kids this morning but I am tired and stressed.  They were pushing my buttons.  I will do better next time.

I can, in fact we can, stop the automatic tape that leads us to a depression and more poor functioning and “reframe” the setbacks in life so we can deal with them.

Words of Caution

Seligman is a terrific scientist and he covers it all.  He even addresses the idea that not all pessimism is bad.  He tells us that  studies show that depressed people actually see reality correctly while nondepressed people distort reality in a self serving way.  So why choose optimism if it is merely a way to delude yourself? He fully explores whether or not his push to optimism is misguided.  I appreciated his balanced approach.

What Bugged Me

The only thing that ‘bugged’ me was the tiresome (for me) clinical proofs which were exhaustive and by page 157 I began to leaf ahead to more interesting things.  He applies his theories on the power of optimism to how Met Life hires its’ salesman (sales being the job requiring the most optimism if you want to be successful because of the amount of rejection you face), to children, to schooling scenarios, National Baseball, Basketball, our health and even Presidential elections.

Wrap Up

I liked this book so much that although I had taken this out from the library, I bought a copy.  It has optimism tests and depression tests in it and chapters on practical applications to become more optimistic and I will be using it in my life, my family’s life and in my work with my clients.  Not a casual read, but if this subject has resonance for you I believe there is a lot of valuable information in here.

Rating:  4/5

More information can be found at http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx

Who is the writer?

Crazy but true-Gretchen Rubin was a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and left that job to become a writer.  She lives in the ultra cool and sexy city of NYC with her two kids (two young girls who fuel a lot of the happiness struggle stories) and her husband Jamie.  Previously she wrote political history with a book about JFK and Winston Churchill.

Why did she Write this Book?

Gretchen had her epiphany on a bus.  She was “in danger of wasting” her life she realized.  For any of us who have had that thought we won’t be surprised that she had it on a bus.  Something about gazing at others lives as you casually drive by really makes me think about how I perceive their life and why or why not I would or would never live that way.   It also draws attention to the curtains you always wished you had bought I find.   And if you have ever thought about your wasted life, you probably have thought, as Gretchen did – “What do I want from life, anyway?” and “I want to be happy. But I had never thought about what made me happy or how I might be happier”.  You won’t be suprised to learn that Gretchen is a woman of ” a certain age” as they say.  She reviews her happy married life and her kids and career and wondered why she still got irritated by the cable guy or still experienced bouts of melancholy and insecurity.  She decides to take on the task to jump into her Happiness Project.

After she gets us started with her premise she lays out her chapters by the month and each month has a different happiness focus.  They have themes like Boost Energy and then the to do list to accomplish this:

• Go to sleep earlier
• exercise better
• toss, restore, and organize

To facilitate all this she has created her own 12 Commandments for living and written up her Secrets of Adulthood as well.  Mixing the writings of others and her own thoughts an reflecting on her own commandments, secrets of adulthood and experiences  each month create the narrative.

Who is this book for?

For all of us actually.   How can it not be for all of us?  Who, when asked if they wanted to be happy, who would say “No thanks, no more happiness for me, I’ve got enough”.

Like other books of this popular genre (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, and Living Oprah, My one Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk) a normal person casts themselves into a world with a set of rules for living and the writer reports back to the rest of us what can be transformative about this.  Like the ultimate personal shopper, these writers live lifestyles for us and then tell us if any of it is useful for us or if we can just continue on in our own rut fairly happy with it.

Gretchen writes in a very transparent and fearlessly honest style about her inner journey, marriage, friends and experiences.  She generously shares her foibles and character flaws and unfailingly continues to attack her Happiness Project with great devotion and commitment for each monthly chapter.  We travel with her on her journey which is fleshed out with quite a lot of serious research of thinkers like Benjamin Franklin, Aristotle and Saint Therese of Lisieux (makes sense considering the historical/political books she wrote before) a very healthy dash of clever quotes (Samuel Johnson is a favorite of hers) and starting in March when she launches her blog, the comments and stories of readers following her Happiness Project.  This style really allows us to feel like we are either a friend having coffee with her or like her mother who found her diary and can’t help reading it.

What I’m Taking from this Book and putting into my Toolkit

I found a great book in her book, which she referenced and it is on the reading list this summer, Martin Seligman’s’ Learned Optimism.  I just started it and I love it.

I also talk in workshops and with clients about knowing what matters to you as the way to make choices that give you peace and happiness in life.  Calling them 12 Commandments and Secrets of Adulthood is really appealing.  I’m always looking for new ways to name these things so it can help as many people as possible and I like both of these titles.  They have a real sense of fun in them.

The other thing I really appreciate is the sharing of a journey, which reminds all of us that no journey is perfect and we are more alike than different.  We share doubts, fears, joys and perspectives with so many others, which is the bonus of the blog responses.  It is not unlike the book club after a bottle of wine sitting around and chatting.

I love this Part

I can’t say love, but I will say ‘like’.  I like that she came up with the power of being yourself.  Somehow packaging them as rules helped her become herself.  Permission to ‘be Gretchen’, the first of the twelve commandments, is a very valuable piece of learning.  Some of her other realizations are powerful to remember.  Amongst them:

Do the thing that is in front of you

Being made uncomfortable is a secret to growth and happiness

Repeat and acknowledge what others say to you.  It makes for very effective communication.

Words of Caution

At times I felt Gretchen used her own process as a way to whip herself.  The list of ideals sometimes lapsed into a list of ’shoulds’ and therefore left her feeling a failure in meeting her ideals some months.  Motivational lists or goals can really help you get your head together about what is important, but my word of caution is to be sure that what is on the list is intrinsically important to you.  Otherwise our lists can be just tools to beat ourselves up.  Watch out for the inner critic who always sees you falling short.

What Bugged Me

Her wrap up of her learning at the end explained what had been bugging me for about 8 chapters.

“The feeling of control is an essential element of happiness-a better predictor of happiness than, say, income.”

As a performer this is a dangerous drug she is offering.  Control.  How unhappy and miserable the illusion of ‘control’ has made me on numerous occasions.  As a young singer I absolutely tried to run my career on the goal list.  If I am in the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble, and I do Merola, if I have an American agent, a really good one than how can my Met debut be far away?  Well, I had all those things and I still haven’t had my Met debut.  Several of my serious emotional crashed came from the expectation of what I should be getting because I did all the right things, and then my expectation not being met.    So for me, that statement about ‘control’ is a hot button.

I began to feel that her Happiness Project was a hamster wheel that she couldn’t get off of.  It had pass and fail and gold stars on the chart at stake.    The ‘how’ overtook the ‘what’ sometimes and I always find that doesn’t help people get where they want to be, whether it is to be happy, peaceful or get a new career started.

Wrap Up

I don’t know if her reflections on happiness help me, but she does have some good ideas in the book and offers points of discussion.  Funny, but her failures interested me much more than her successes.  I guess this is one of my Rules of Adulthood-

We don’t grow from our successes, but from our failures.   When I look back, I see the gifts in the struggles of  my  past.

A fast, easy beach read that can perhaps start you thinking about your own happiness, but I think Gretchen Rubin would agree, remember to take your own path to get there.

Rating: 2.8/5

More information:

www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com

www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/happinessproject

Who is the Writer?

In 1986 Byron Katie (or Katie as she is most often called)  was 43, living in a half way house, and sleeping on a floor because she didn’t feel worthy of the bed.  She was in a half way house for women with eating disorders and had been sent to the attic because the other women in the house were frightened of her and didn’t want to be around her. She had spent 10 years in a downward spiral of rage, paranoia and despair.  When she awoke on this one particular morning in February she felt she had no concept of whom or what she was -There was no me” she said.  From that day onward, Byron Katie saw the world differently.  She saw it without the filter of “I” of ego.  And because of that she lost all story about who she was in the world.  She became a sort of wise woman to all who knew her and she was sought after for her guidance.  When asked if she was “enlightened” she responded “I’m just someone who knows the difference between what hurts and what doesn’t”.

Why did she write this Book?

Katie wrote this book because she found her life became richer “without a story”.  Living now in a world without fear, sadness or anger and with a wide open heart she can now eagerly look forward to what life will bring her way.  In writing this book, Byron Katie believes that, just as she found peace and release, you the reader can do the same if you do what she calls “The Work”.  This book is her attempt to explain The Work through scripts from workshops and personal reflections.

Who is this Book for?

I think this is a great way to begin to let some cracks of light in where your life has sealed itself shut.  The Work, as she calls it, really is a scalpel like tool to getting past all the justifications and “ya buts” we have in maintaining our story about the people around us and the world we live in.  For people who continually feel that their problems lie outside them with others and the unfairness of life, this particular tool can rock their worlds.

The four questions she uses for each process are ruthless in their commitment to reality, rather than the story you are invested in.  Byron Katie puts forth to us in her book that any thought we have that argues with reality creates stressful feelings which we then act from.  The thought that “Paul should take out the garbage” is a stressful thought because he doesn’t take out the garbage.  So having the thought “Paul should take out the garbage” only leads to reactive statements like “It makes me feel like I have to do everything” and “if he loved me he would take out the garbage”, which leads  to, you got it, stress.  Using her four questions she guides her participants into the reality of the story and illuminates through the process of The Work, how to see this situation differently and diffuse your reactivity to it, thereby eliminating stress in your life.

What is the Message here?

If you follow Katie on these dialogues (which she provides as full script from her workshops with participants of The Work) she will have you write out (no skipping out on writing it down she says!)  answers to a series of questions about how you feel about someone.  Someone who is causing you stress.  Then you take these 6 statements and you apply the four questions of The Work  to each statement, ending with a turnaround statement, which will turnaround how you think about it.

The Four Questions you use to investigate your thinking are:

1. 1. Is it true?
2. 2. Can I absolutely know that it’s true?
3. 3. How do I react when I think that thought?
4. 4. Who would I be without that thought?

Then she moves to the turn around. The turn around is the trickiest part if you are self applying this technique I found.  You take your statements and rewrite them, taking out the name of “Paul”, and inserting “I”.  So “If Paul loved me he’d take out the garbage” becomes “I would love me if I took out the garbage” and “ If I loved Paul I’d take out the garbage”. Your job is to find the truth in these statements.  To see if the turn arounds  are as true or truer than the original statement.  Is the sign of Paul’s undying love  taking out the garbage?   When you see how you can treat yourself better, love yourself through your own inner dialogue, and when you can find forgiveness for those you accuse, then there can be peace.  She ends this work with the phrase “I look forward to..” or “I’m willing to…”  You would close with “ I look forward to feeling unloved when Paul doesn’t take the garbage out”.  Kaite feels that this is where you embrace life and all it holds, knowing that the painful parts are great reminders of the work you still need to do to be truly free.

What I’m taking from this book and putting into my toolkit

(The Truth Up Front: When I just was reading this book I struggled to see how it could work for me, but when I was about 4 chapters in received an invitation to go to a class on The Work for a few hours and that made all the difference.  This review is surely colored by having had a three hour class with a leader)

The four questions are useful on a day to day basis for me I find and even the turn around work I’m using sometimes

Here is a quick example of how I’ve used The Work of Byron Katie:

My son shouldn’t talk back to me.

Is it true?  Well, no, because he does.  He does talk back to me.

What happens when you think that thought?

When I think that thought I get angry because he is and he shouldn’t.

Who would I be without that thought?

Without that thought the argument between us wouldn’t escalate and I wouldn’t get mad and yell.  Without that thought we could probably move on and have a nice day.

What is the turn around?

My son should talk back to me

The turnaround reminds me that I want him to be strong and talking back is him standing tall, and he talks like that to me because I model it as a parent sometimes in the way I talk to him.

I should talk back to me.

I’m part of the problem in the “talking back”.  I should remind myself to model talking to him in the way I want to be spoken to.

This work reminds me that my story isn’t absolute.  I can step back an realize my active role in choosing the story and creating a God like story line of what people should and shouldn’t be doing.  (This “Are you God?” question is a Katie favorite)

The Four Questions remind me that there are stories that I subject myself to that create non productive anger, bitterness and frustration.  I can wake up and say “Wow-I’m making myself miserable right now”.  From here I can act can act from choice which I believe is what living powerfully and peacefully originates from.

I Love this part

Katie gives you lots of transcripts from her workshops and that really helps the reader understand what she is up to.  She begins with the simple “judge your neighbor rant” and ends with being afraid of bombs falling in war and the topic of incest.  She continues to give examples of how to deepen the uses of these questions with further inquiries and turn arounds you will need to go to these places.

Words of Caution

I think if you want to gain awareness and crack open that seal on your story this book can be helpful, but I wouldn’t try to ‘self’ coach in deep waters.  Our minds aren’t good at stepping outside and being self aware and the commitment to the truth we believe is hard to see.  You really need an outside, non invested guide.  Maybe you and a friend could aid each other?  But I wouldn’t do too much alone.

What I hated

I didn’t ‘hate’ anything in this book, but I’m uncomfortable with Katie Byron as a mystic seer and  she does allow herself to be cast this way.    These four questions can start a road but they aren’t going to provide enough gas for the whole trip in my opinion.

Rating 4 /5

You can get further information from www.thework.com or call 1 800 98 Katie or email customercare@thework.com

You can look at her worksheets online at www.thework.com

In this blogs history I have enjoyed the Summer of Being ( a summer spent trying to self improve and develop existentially) and last summer I FINALLY completed The Artists’ Way with Julia Cameron.

This summer I am embarking on a reading extravaganza!  This is a real challenge for me as I have a life long history of starting and not finishing hundreds of books.    My shelves are lined with books with book marks somewhere in the first ten chapters.  In my work as a life coach and as a girl with a strange passions for psychology and philosophy I  have a great passion to read.   The latest and greatest self help books always excite me and of course, many books are recommended to me over the year by clients, not to mention the ones I hear about on CBC, NPR or that I just come across in my own research.  With that as a starting point I have gathered together in my office a pile of  books I will read and blog about this summer.  Some are the ones I ordered from Amazon in the last 12 months that were regularly dusted but never quite got read , plus a few from workshops that I took.   I also did some research online about the top ten self help books of all time and I chose a few from there and one on the list was a gift from a dear friend.  Rounding out the top ten for this summer is a book that I bought for me and have longed to begin.  This one  will be an ongoing action read.  More on that later.

I love a project.  I just do.  I love the excitement of starting that new road.  The path that is unexplored and just waiting for me to get out my machete and to start hacking my way through it.  Just like you, getting started isn’t often the problem, following through, is!  You, dear reader, are my accountability.  I often advise clients to tell someone about their goal as it is a sure way to be motivated.  There is nothing like someone checking up on you to keep you on the beam.   Think about weight watchers a classic example of accountability.  As a coach I am often the accountability holder for my client with great success. So you are my accountability.   People ask how I learn an operatic role and I answer “Public humiliation is a tremendous motivator”.  Cruel, but true. Therefore  I’m making my reading list public.   I’m putting it out there and now I must finish or be forever diminished in the eyes of you, the reader.  (At least, that is what my inner arm chair critic is telling me right now.)

I’d love company on this summer journey so if you want to read along with me this summer or discuss any of these books here in the blog, or on my Face Book  page for The Resonant Life please chip in your two cents worth.  Heck, even a toonies’ worth!

MY SUMMER READING LIST (in order of reading)

1. Loving What Is-Four Questions that can Change your Life- by Byron Katie
2. The Happiness Project-Or, Why I spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun-by Gretchen Rubin
3. Learned Optimism:  How to Change your Mind and your Life-by Martin E.P. Seligman
4. The Geography of Bliss-One Grump’s Search for The Happiest Places in the World-by Eric Weiner
5. Take Charge Living-How to Recast Your Role In Life One Scene at a Time – by Marion Kramer Jacobs
6. I Could Do Anything-If I Only Knew What it Was- by Barbara Sher
7. The Passion Test-The Effortless Path to Discovering your Life Purpose- by Janet Bray Attwood and Chris Attwood
8. Man’s Search for Meaning- by Viktor E. Frankl
9. Organizing From the Inside Out; The Foolproof System for Organizing your Home, your office, and your Life by Julia Morgenstern
10. BONUS SUMMER PROJECT READ:

How to Be An Explorer of the World – Portable Art Life Museum by Keri Smith

Every Monday, starting July 5^th, you can look forward to the book review.  I’m going to be focusing on who this book is for as well as what coaching insights I gathered in it that might be of assistance for you on your journey.  Before you plunk down your $20.00 or more ( unless like me you frequent ABE.COM where second hand books are cheeeaaap!)  why not let me read the book and find out if this book will make a difference for you?

More about How to be an explorer of the World by Keri Smith

Julia Cameron and The Artists’ Way taught me that being a creative person isn’t something that happens like breathing.  It is something I need to be consciously aware of and feeding all the time.  This book, which I found at Theatre Books in Toronto, is brilliant for creating found objects into art.  The premise is to retrain your brain so that you are thinking as an artist all the time.  The opening quote says:

We shall not cease from exploration

And at the End of all our exploring

Well be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time

By T.S Elliot, “The Four Quartets”

Not bad advice for living I think.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

We  can’t seem to stop  from writing the story of our lives.  We are prolific in our creation of our realities,both future versions and packaging of the past.  We daily practice crafting air tight plots that don’t allow for disagreement.  But what if the plot you are writing daily is causing you stress?  These versions of your story you write are boxing you in, depressing you and creating self judgments that would shock any ordinary courtroom.  To illustrate this I’m reposting a piece I wrote about a year ago.  The story is an ordinary one about my mom coming home from hip replacement surgery.  The inner dialogue she writes though is a reminder to me and, I hope, to you, about choosing daily how we will talk to ourselves and what we will actively choose to believe about ourselves.  This is a moment by moment practice so now is an excellent time to start writing a new story.

May 2009

I’ve been spending the last few days helping my mom get settled back at home after hip replacement surgery.  She has been doing really well in terms of recovery, taking only Tylenol for pain rarely and getting up and down slowly but ably.

Being with my Mom these past days has offered me a clear life lesson t in the struggle we all have in being with what is.

Scientific studies show that our minds spin thoughts of the future and replay thoughts of the past in a “woulda, coulda, shoulda” show and are almost never here in the present.  So, it should have been a small surprise those five days after her surgery, my mom sat in her chair in the kitchen and looked quite put out.

“I just don’t understand why I don’t feel well”

She was genuinely concerned about this, and my dad and I could only look at her with perplexed faces.

You don’t understand? This is thought and not said. But  (insert sarcastic tone here)  “Could it be that you had a bone cut out and a piece of mettle inserted in a six inch incision five days ago?  Could it be that you are having to spend your days prone when you are used to walking and gardening?  Could it be that you have trouble sleeping and haven’t had more than 4 uninterrupted hours of sleep since that operation?   Could it be one of the 7 different drips/medications you have had piped into your body?”

I think you see where I’m going with this.  My mom isn’t really being with what is happening right now.  My mom is with her self of last week.  The women who is Linda who does x,y and z.  Not the women who is Linda who had surgery this week, who is still Linda, even though she can’t do x,y and z.

I saw with such clarity that peace is available if we can be with what is.  Not a false rosy glass view filled with positive thinking, and not the clouded over storm clouds are coming view.  Just what is.  If we cannot be with what truly is, then we cause ourselves worry, we get frustrated, angry, we push against it and we are often unkind to ourselves.  Our dialogue becomes, as my mothers did:

“Hey what is the matter with me; I can’t understand why I can’t do this today.  Am I sick?  Am I just getting lazy?”

Compassion for your self is available if you allow what is to be.  You aren’t good or bad.  You are where you are.  It is what it is.  Act from that knowledge and give yourself the gift of peace.

(or Mini Me, You Complete Me)

Here you stand with a new vocal/show goal, project or role or show or wish in your life.  You are so excited you have to phone someone and share this inspiration or good news.  It is like a whole new door is opening in your life and you want to share this energy with someone and get that energy returned in validation and encouragement and maybe even some cheering.

How many times have you been in this place and picked up the phone and called that someone you thought would be most supportive only to have them shoot you down cold.  You thought they would get it.  But they don’t.  And they question your judgment and talk about what you risks you are taking.  You begin to think you are wrong to want this.   It is so clear you your friend that this is folly.   Have you been a fool?  Is this a terrible a mistake?  Moments ago it was the best thing ever.  But now…you can’t be sure.  Now what?

I’m remembering when I went to university and I lived my first year in residence.  It seemed every girl on my floor was majoring in business for lack of anything better coming along and I was the only vocal major there.  They wanted to party and drink and date.  I wanted to be coherent in the sight reading class I had three days a week at 8:30 in the morning and in good voice for Master class and lessons every week.   What I wanted to work for made no sense to them and the way they talked to me left me wondering why I was such a bore.   Something was definitely weird about me.

One of the most common requests I receive from young singers is to talk about how to deal with other singers.   Sad, but often true, we singers can be a self cannibalizing group of people.  There was a time in my past when I consciously stopped hanging out with other singers socially because I always left feeling so crummy about my career and myself.   Why do we often miss the opportunity to support and celebrate each other?  Why do we instead see others success as our failure?

We lead with a good offense as our personal defense to maintain our own feelings of validity as people.

The scenario- Right after hello comes the question “So what are you doing?  What is coming up for you?”  Out comes the resume next as each singer name drops the last conductor/director or significant audition, colleague or company they sang for as well as all the offers for next season.   I truly believe that this behavior is spawned by fear. We are so harsh on ourselves and afraid of not measuring up that we end up ‘resume’ing’ a colleague.   Low self esteem comes out to play and spoils all the fun.

How do you deal with this?  You need a mini me or several if you can.   Let’s think more along the lines of an Aida sized chorus, with supers too!   If you are trying to create something in your life that is new or scary or a stretch or risky in any way, get rid of the people who make you feel bad or who will kill the project.  Does this sound harsh?  I’m okay with that.  What is harsher still is when your very worthy dreams and plans get squashed, belittled and have sand kicked in their face.  No one has the right to do that to you. And when you are embarking towards a new life or a new you or anything that is a stretch, it is imperative that you clean your social network house.   You get yourself a posse.  You have your team that loves and supports you, that metaphorically sings along in beautiful harmony to your solo.  If you have sung with orchestra and chorus you know how much easier it is as those voices and instruments act like a support that your voice is carried on top of.  Those playing in support of you make your work as a soloist much easier than it ever was with just you and the piano in the studio.

Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way:

“We must learn to keep our counsel, to move silently among doubters, to voice our plans only among our allies, and to name our allies accurately. “

“…criticism that asks a question like “how could you?” can make an artist feel like a shamed child.  A well meaning friend who constructively criticizes a beginning writer may very well end that writer…from that shaming we learn that we are wrong to create…the shame lives on, waiting to attach itself to our new efforts.  The very act of attempting to make art creates shame”

Twyla Tharp concurs in her fabulous book for creative types called “The Creative Habit-Learn it and use it for Life”

Rule #32-Build your own Validation Squad

“We all seek approval and validation or our efforts.  In the beginning we desperately seek the approval of others-of anybody- to assure us that we’re on the right path, that we aren’t wasting our time, that we haven’t made a monumental error.”

The homework I’m offering here is a mash up of these two ladies and me.

Homework

Make two lists.  One of friends who are possible candidates for the Validation Squad.  Start with those who you admire because they have shown good judgment in their own lives, who are the people in life who see the best in you and admire you back and who aren’t competing with you, so you know they have no agenda of their own.  Wrap yourself in up the friends who Julia Cameron calls “Fluffy heated Towels”.

Now make a list of the other friends, whom she calls “Wet Blankets”.  The ones who are the opposite of the list above, and the ones who you have noticed leave you feeling poorly about yourself and your life whenever you spend time with them.  They don’t increase your faith in you or the universe.  They suck it out of you.

Next, spend more time with the Validation Squad, and start eliminating or limiting contact with the Wet Blankets and see what becomes possible.

And finally remember this

“We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people’s models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open”

Shakti Gawain

Tracy Addresses the Big Questions First!

Chocolate-white, milk or dark? Definitely DARK

Sushi yes or no? No

Sports alliances? Football fan (Winnipeg Blue Bombers) and learning about Soccer daily, avid soccer mom.

Surprise Talent: Can whistle with four fingers…very loudly!

No, really, this time we get down to the important stuff.

I asked Tracy to talk about road life.  A reality of our work is the commitment to a portion of time away from home and on the road.  Like Tracy I have had a changing relationship to the road as I have went on in this career.  Knowing the length and breadth of her career I was really curious about what her experience was with this.

Can you say a bit about road life?

I think life on the road has changed significantly since I began.  I was less conscious about money in the beginning and very social with the whole cast.  I took countless pictures on the road and made copies and sent them to everyone.   My dad was always fair with his family, so I took that into work and I would be fair and take pictures of everyone and send them all copies.  It was like I was creating a big family album.

I hear you on that one.  I think there is a piece here about creating a family when you are away, your “road family”.  Apart from the obvious theatre needs to create an energy and a level of comfort for the work to go ahead there is a dynamic I almost always see of people making a cohesive whole out of the splintered parts of singers from all different places.  We all need support and community in life. I think it is also really interesting how we take those important ‘values’ we have and live them where ever we are, your dad’s fairness for example.   Road life isn’t a different me than home me, so I love that you took that value of fairness and transferred it into how you interacted with a cast, right down to pictures!

What are the pros and cons of road life?

One of the pros — and there are many — of being on the road has been making new friends, being with colleagues, many of whom are now close friends.

But among the cons, it is difficult to keep up those friendships.  But somehow, in this odd world in which we operate, we can pick up where we left off.  Working with like-minded people can be extremely invigorating or enervating.  I love the conversations.

I have had the same experience.  When I was young I was crushed the first few shows when I felt I had made this amazing bond with people and we were going to be best friends forever ( and that was the days of snail mail only)  And I was so disappointed when I realized that the show was over and they weren’t going to respond.  But as you say, when you meet them again in another show, sometimes several years later, you pick up with the same heart you had before.

Warning! Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear!

What do you think it is important for younger singers to know that isn’t in a book?

I tell my students to be careful of the ‘opera romance’; when one is in a production or young artist program one can easily fall in love with their leading man or woman.  What starts as respect and awe can easily be turned into passion.

Yes, I’ve seen it happen too.  What else?

When I was a young singer I asked the male lead in Norma out to dinner, so I could ask him about the business, and he accepted but suggested “I shouldn’t do that again”.  Why? He explained that to some men this invitation could be misinterpreted as personal and not professional interest.  I have come to believe that that is because there aren’t a lot of people in the business who are accountable.  You have to be careful.  It isn’t exactly an amoral zone, but people are just not accountable.  Being on the road, singers can find both fame and anonymity. If they are not accountable, be that with their spouse or to God, they can and will take advantage of that airline ticket that, in the end, takes them away.

There is no doubt there are predators for young singers of either sex.  Leads in shows have power in the cast and that can be very dangerous and seductive to those in smaller roles or chorus.  Sometimes people get taken advantage of, and sometimes they get flattered by the attention and think it will lead to career advancements.

Speaking of not being accountable, what about professional promises that those in power make to singers?

We all know that directors, conductors, intendants imply promises with what they say.  Someone is talking and saying “You are brilliant” and “We are going to have you back.  Tell us what you would like to sing!” and then they don’t come through. Just as we can be what I call polite-ical (a combination of polite and being politically correct)  the management will do the same thing and in the end lead you to believe things will happen. Honestly, being an artist is like being in a mass therapy session.  We are exposed. It happens to us all.

So true.  It can be a real roller coaster.  Especially when someone seems ‘hot’ about your talent and you get swept up in it and start to expect a real pay off, which, as you say, often doesn’t materialize.  That is a real learning curve.  You have to move the focus inside, so that you invest less in the outer praise.  You can end up bitter and disappointed.  What sort of expectations have you held about your career?

I expected that I could come to a place in my career and pick and choose what I did.  I didn’t expect that a voice type has a limited shelf life. Real or imposed, it is there.  I thought that, because of this attitude in the opera world, I had to get a more aggressive, proactive manager. Also, I did expect it to be difficult to have children and be on the road, but I didn’t expect there to be as much dissension over my having children.

How do you deal with the criticisms and setbacks of this work?

If I feel assailed, whether by my own demons or the situation, I go to the cross.  I’ve got some place to go where I’m wholly loved.  My success on the stage doesn’t affect my place with God.  I’ve got scriptures that I quote if I’m feeling poorly, to arm myself.

Having said that, I’m harder on myself than most papers are.  Even working with conductors who might be difficult, that doesn’t usually faze me.  It is when I let myself down that is the hardest thing to let go.

It is interesting to me that the same inner voice that drives us to work hard and towards our goals of ‘perfection’ as singers,  can also be the voice that drives us into the ground and can incapacitate us to be fully the performer we are.  I call those voices gremlins or inner critics now.  I think most singers have an abundance of inner critics and could use a few more cheerleaders of kindness and compassion in their corner.  We are, almost all of us, terribly hard on ourselves.

I have only once burned about what someone wrote about me.  That is rare.  What I find most frustrating about criticism is the people around me that want to discuss it; chorus, backstage members, managers etc.  I don’t want to discuss it.  It is frustrating when they won’t respect that choice. If the reviewer has given me reason to doubt their judgment then how can there be integrity in their praise or in their criticism?

It really comes down to giving away your sense of self again, doesn’t it?  It is like you give away all the power for your evaluation of a ‘job well done’ to someone you don’t know, and possibly don’t respect.  It is so important for a performer to know in themselves how they have done and what they need to work at.  Giving that power away to outside sources is damaging usually.

I don’t even like quoting reviews in my program bios although this seems to be the new trend.  I think it is cheap.  I shouldn’t have to tell people I have “ringing high notes”… When I know that reviewer isn’t one I respected, then there is no integrity in it.

How did you come to be in this career?

I didn’t choose this life.  It was an accident.  It wasn’t planned.  It fell into my lap.  Because of that I had to play catch up like crazy.  I was doing musical theatre, but hadn’t thought about the classical end.  I began taking lessons in grade 7 from a teacher who taught classical voice and Gilbert and Sullivan, but nothing lighter. When I got into opera I was already performing in musical theatre and doing straight plays. Manitoba Opera decided to do an Opera in the Schools program and sent out letters requesting teachers send their singers. I auditioned and was cast as Gretel and given the role of Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro for Manitoba Opera’s main stage production.  Rehearsals of Nozze went on simultaneously with Side by Side by Sondheim at the Manitoba Theatre Warehouse.   I was belting “There won’t be Trumpets” at night and rehearsing the opera during the day.  In terms of opera I only knew Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas.  My High School year book said “Broadway Bound!”  I was close… just a few blocks shy!

So many different roads aren’t there?  I was a country and western singer with a guitar, when a local man who had a HUGE collection of Joan Sutherland albums brought  a few by to the house and told my mother he was sure I had the voice to be an opera singer.  I remember thinking it was high and loud.  But it sure wasn’t an epiphany, like “Oh, I have to sing like that!”

What do you hate about your job?

The question “Where are you singing next?”  I hate the brag time that can happen around singers.  It is tiresome.

I always think this question  is a fear mongerer.  You end up feeling like a loser if you don’t have the great season lined up, but a braggart if you do.  And no one wants their colleagues to feel uncomfortable (do they?)  But that question comes inevitably at dinner after the first rehearsal and at every patron event.  I don’t think I have perfected the best answer that dodges it and deflects it.

However to be fair, I am sure for some of my colleagues who don’t have children they get tired of the stories of my children, so it is all where our ‘pride lies’.  God says not to store our treasure on the earth and to keep our eyes up.

What about the family part of your life?  When did that piece get put into your puzzle?

At the beginning there was a young man who I was close to and he could not deal with my success.  He was an aspiring musician as well. That was disappointing on many levels.

Funny thing isn’t it?  I have known several marriages and friendships that broke up over professional jealousy, even when they weren’t of the same voice type fighting for the same job.  There is this ego piece that gets in the way, and we can’t feel good about ourselves when our loved one or friend is rocketing past us.  I wrote about that in my blog.  I called it the Amneris Complex.  At least Amneris figured out that killing off her lover and rival didn’t leave her feeling better.

So, what about the big question every female singer out there has for you-how do you balance family and an international career?

Marriage has been a wonderful thing for me.  We had a sweet courtship.  We had to deal with the issues of being separate and then together– beginning a family etc.  It never occurred to me not to marry till a specific time.  The timing was out of my hands.  I probably never thought it would happen.

I remember feeling that way too.  The road life is not conducive to dating I found!

AND I met him in Winnipeg!

So you meet a great man in Winnipeg and you dealt with the issue of your absences.  Did you always want to bring children into the mix?

I had always wanted to be a mother.  I am sure I was picking names for my “children” to go with each crush I had along the way as a teenager.  It was always part of my dreams. I am the youngest of four daughters.  My eldest sister passed away in 1975 but my other sisters are married with children.  I love my nieces and nephews.  I think being a primary babysitter for my first-born niece really drove home that I too wanted that bond with children. We were older when we married so we wanted to start our family more or less right away. We always talked about how we would manage with children and being on the road.  It had never occurred to either of us that it might be difficult to conceive.   We had to have the intervention of doctors and it was a real commitment.  I am so happy we struggled through.  To be corny but truthful; they complete me.
> Being truthful is never corny.  Having kids is such a big emotional place.  It is as if words can’t really hold all those things it means.  Same reason we have opera right?  Words aren’t enough, they sound ‘corny’, but music completes the emotion.

What effect has having children had on your life?
> I am a more grounded person since they came into my world. This world can throw us into an “all about me” mentality.  It simply cannot be so with children.  They support me in unconditional love — okay maybe an ice cream or a movie thrown in there for good measure.
Ha ha ha!  When I think back to what you said about people being untrustworthy in this business  and not good as their word, I really see that you have created your support, your place of trust and security  in your marriage and your children.  I don’t think for everyone they find that in family necessarily, but I do believe we all need a way to define ourselves and see ourselves reflected outside of our life as singers.  It is a dangerous thing to give over your sense of self entirely to your career.  Gutting in fact.  I remember when I got married and we talked about having kids, ( I was older too)  I said ‘absolutely, I don’t want the rest of my life to just be about me anymore’.  I didn’t think at all about if it was the right time to have kids.  It seemed like, you meet someone, you are in love, and you know you want kids, you have kids.  Life keeps unfolding.  What about you?
>

> When I was adjudicating for the Met competition I recall a woman telling me about how it was important to discourage young singers from marrying or having children before their careers were started. I said I didn’t think I would suggest that to a singer, trying to be “polite-cal”.   I feel that if you have found your soul mate, if you are blessed with a pregnancy, these are gifts too — just like the one lodged in your vocal chords , just like your intellect  – and should not be pushed aside. The career is so unpredictable and entirely in someone else’s hands.  If you have found that perfect person to complete you, then make a choice that is in your hands: marry.  Your spouse maybe the one thing you need to support you to your dream.  If children come, thank God!
> There is truth in the words this female Met adjudicator spoke, especially if we are talking about children. It is HARD work. I could not in good conscience tell anyone to walk away from love for the unpredictable future of an opera singer. If anyone tells you it is easy to be a parent and a singer I will tell you they are lying.  At the beginning of having my family I had companies say, “If we had known she had children, we wouldn’t have hired her”.  I have lost work.  I have lost accumulated years with my children from the months added up from being on the road. The balancing act of being a mother and singer is constantly shifting.  Think of the ages of the children as being the variable and how that affects any family dynamic.  When the children were very little, in grade 1 and under, they came with me when I traveled.  I had to employ a nanny, get housing for all of us and then there were the airfares!  Then Raymond would fly out every two weeks and sometimes more.   Now when I’m gone for five weeks they come out for at least one weekend.  If not, then I try to get home for a day or two at the beginning, and then they come for the opening.  We have MSN and a webcamera so we can see each other and talk.  My work calendar is never full but at times it is close to it.  We just keep talking and get as much face time as possible.
> So the question I have to ask is what keeps you singing when the family attraction feels so great?

Good question. Sometimes I wonder myself about the cost to my family.  What keeps me going is that I know that they, my children, are well cared for by my husband.  They have a unique relationship not all children get to define with their fathers. This may be a justification but I can leave knowing that they are well looked after and well loved.  They are nearly at an age of independence from babysitters and our world will shift again. Why keep singing?  It is what I do best.  My work so fully engages me. I love the interaction between colleagues, the conversations about psychological agendas, why the characters do what they do. I sincerely love the process of rehearsing. I love the musical genius of the people I have encountered and marvel over the genius of the music and texts I get to sing.  I like the rehearsal process the most.  The performance second

So true.  So many times after opening night I am ready to go home because the really fun and interesting part is over.  When I teach now I often encourage singers to be ‘musical detectives’ and the piece is like a mystery for the singer to unravel so they can interpret it for the audience.  The work on the score and in rehearsal is so satisfying.  Speaking of satisfying moments, what has been your most memorable?

Lucia in San Francisco on opening night.  I was subbing for Ruth Ann Swenson and was already booked to come in for the second cast.  I had flown in the day before and got the call the next morning to come and sing that night.  I hadn’t sung it in five years.  Jaden (my son) was a baby at that point.  It was a whirlwind.  I walked it that day with no other preparation.  It was so exciting.  Jaden took his first step the opening night just before I left for the theatre and I thought “If you can learn how to walk, then I can go and sing this Lucia.”

What an amazingly freeing perspective you gave yourself that night.  Instead of setting an impossibly high bar of what everyone expected of you, or of what you expected of yourself, or creating some seminal moment in your career out of this, you saw it through the eyes of a child’s first step.  That really gives permission to be brave, try something out and to explore.  I love that.

I really connected with the man who sang my brother on stage that night.  The energy between us was very honest.  He was working off me, and I was doing the same. I loved it! When I killed myself in the mad scene he came and picked me up, which wasn’t even the blocking!  The ride that night was amazing.  Joan Sutherland was there too.  I knew I was singing in front of the century’s most famous Lucia.

You were so in the moment in that performance it sounds like.  Nothing existed outside of the drama you were creating and with that you made such freedom available to yourself and your cast members.  I have such admiration for you that you were able to be so fully present that way.  When I think about the situation, it feels like you were able to put on blinders to all the outside pressure and noise and just be there and sing.  The audiences’ experience feels so secondary.  Sometimes I think as singers we get so caught up in “how is it going out there?  What are they thinking about me?” that we no longer are in the creative act, and that never serves us, or the audience.  I see that so clearly illustrated in the experience you had.  I love that story.  With such a wealth of experience in life and theatre I have to ask,  if time and money were no object, what do you long to do?

I just really want everyone I love to be in one place, and to go on trips that are vacations and NOT work.   Paris, Egypt, Greece and the like.

Sounds like in many ways, singing has been the perfect career for you as it has allowed you to travel so much already, and has helped you make friends all over the world.

Thank you so much Tracy for being so generous to talk with me about all these areas of your life, both personal and professional.  It seems that you have a very clear sense of what roots and grounds you and from that rooted place you are able to take on criticism, conductors, career ups and downs, absences from loved ones,  whatever life has to throw at  you.  You have found a center in family and God and you know why you sing.  You are an amazingly generous performer and colleague which I am lucky to have experienced, but also a terrific soccer mom and wife.   I look forward to the coming chapters in your career and life in its’ continual unfolding.  Thanks again for sharing with the up and coming crowd your wise woman insights.

Tracy and I in Nixon in China in Vancouver-I as the glamorous Third Secretary and Tracy rocking those glasses as Madame Mao.

I start but I can’t finish! I want to practice my singing.  I want to make a new audition package for opera work.  I want to contact orchestra conductors too and develop my concert career.  I even have a conductor to contact and I have his card in my hand.  Day after day, I do nothing with it.   Procrastination.  I’d complain more about it but I’m procrastinating writing this blog too.  I felt better when I realized it wasn’t just me.  Somehow I feel better facing a world wide evil instead of my own personal junk.

Check out this article from the April 12^th Life section of the Globe and Mail.  It seems to be about a man’s failed attempt to garden each year.  Read carefully between the lines (with your special between the lines glasses that come free in Life Coaching Cereal) and see that the problem has to do with combating that universal evil-procrastination. It is the typical tale of wanting to do something.  Starting it with good intentions.  Losing track of it, getting distracted, and making excuses and Voila.  It is dead.  In the case of the garden, literally and figuratively.

I know, you are too busy to click that link to read it, so trust me and read this excerpt from the article Mr. Miser writes:

“The few times I’ve ever tried to garden it has followed a clear pattern.  I pot whatever I hope to grow, I water that pot once or twice at the most, and then ignore it until whatever is in that pot shrivels and turns brown.”

The writer is very clear about why he wants to garden.   He speaks about the romantic notion of having a garden that you would labor in and, what is more, the financial payback he knows he would reap if he grew his own vegetables.

“A garden that is 20 feet by 30 feet requires an initial investment of $70…and produces more than $600 worth of vegetables over the course of a season”

Good argument and one I have thought of too.   Most every year plant some form of garden, and every year I have abandoned it which leaves me to yield only wilted and crusted plants by August.  The dreams of saving hundreds of dollars and the vision of cultivating living things turned to dust by the August sun.  I don’t just do this with gardens, but this story actually reminds me of a chair I once successfully bid on at a Canadian Opera Women’s Committee charity auction.  I concocted a whole vision about this chair and how it would be moved into our bedroom and I would create this reading area around it. This chair was the key to embracing this meaningful reading habit I longed for.  I could see it now, my husband gently slumbering, I with practical and elegant IKEA lamp perched over my shoulder illuminating the Proust I have been savoring nightly.  What I particularly loved about this chair was that it was big enough to sit cross legged in.  I could see myself so clearly enjoying this nightly bit of civilization I would wedge into the mire of my toddler raising years.  I was mightily motivated but reality crept in and then procrastination leapt in behind.  Remember, I have a singer’s brain and it doesn’t have a great sense of meters and centimeters.  At the time I successfully bid on the chair we lived in an old semi in Toronto and after making the space for it in the bedroom and shopping for bookcases, I discovered the chair didn’t FIT down the hallway to the bedroom.   The important thing in all this anyway was the reading, which the chair was merely an excuse for.  But bedroom or living room, even that chair wasn’t powerful enough to fight the procrastination voice saying “don’t you have dishes to do?” or “Did you return Mrs. Petrishan phone call yet?”  Sitting and reading is still a struggle for me.

The Secret promised that if I with my reading and this sad gardener link with his dreams of the horn of plenty envisioned clearly enough we could make it a reality.  Nope. My favorite example of this kind of wishful thinking was an audition video a Life Coach made for TLC to compete for a host’s job, who shrieked at the end of her video “I wrote it down in pen that you will hire me.  IN PEN!  And we all know what that means.  It HAS TO COME TRUE!”  If all I needed was a pen let me show you where I would be living today:

Forget the pen and forget wishful thinking.  Think about this:  How do we see this?  Is it a chore?  Is it fun?  What about it is fun?  What do I love about it?  Why is it more important than answering emails, calling back Mrs. Fensterschmerz, or reading today’s paper? Too often we label things, even things we purport to want to do or have in our life, as work.    In the gardening article I’ve been writing about Doug Green, Author of the Guide to Canadian Vegetable Gardening, says:

“The reality – and this is a tough reality when people learn it- is that it’s work”.

The Free Online Dictionary offers this definition of work:

To exert oneself physically or mentally in order to do, make, or accomplish something.

Work is such a loaded word.  Ask the kids to come and do some work and hear the groans rise up.  Ask them to play and you get a different response.  It just depends on how they see it and how I frame it.

When I look at things on my To Do list I can write them down as chores and work as the frame, or I could write what they mean to me.   Here they are in the language of procrastination:

Frame of Chore/Work

File receipts

Practice the Dvorak

Write this blog

Contact conductor

Frame of “I do this because….”

I want to treat my hard earned money with respect.   I hate pulling the all nighters at tax time.  It is easier to file a bit now for an easier time at tax time.

I Sing and play with musical interpretation which is fun and I enjoy the vibrations I make

Expressing all the noise in my head in a legible fashion lets me share this journey with others and when I do that I know I’m not really all alone, like it often feels.  It allows me to remind myself that I can help and I make a difference.

I want to sing in a way that continues to help support my family financially and I want to make music with this conductor.  I know it could be rewarding.

In life coaching lingo we call it Perspective.  Today, I called it a frame.  Take a snapshot of your “I wanna” and get rid of the procrastination frame you have on it now.  Choose a new one.  You can choose any one you want for anything in your life.  You have the power to make it feel different.  You aren’t lying to yourself, or putting on rose colored glasses or doing that ‘positive’ thinking thing.  You call things out for what they mean to you.  Watch and see how your new frame of “I do this because…” shuts up the procrastination voice.  Sometimes it will still feel like work and that voice will mutter at you, but at least you’ll know why you do it and you will do it.

Practice seems so natural and so good.  My daughter is practicing the flute for school band.  My son practices football and hockey several times a week.  My husband is a football coach and he holds practices.  We practice to get better.  We practice at things we hope to improve at.  Things that matter to us.  We all have experienced practicing something with a goal in mind. When I am learning music, I work it like a drill often.  Those few bars of music, over and over again.  I’m hoping it gets easier or faster or more accurate.  Whether a talent like singing or dancing, or a sport that you do solo or with a team or going to mixers practicing social interaction we are all practicing at something.  It is what we do to get better at something that is important to us.

So, why do we practice things that we don’t want to get better at?  Why do we continually repeat what we have already said we don’t want?  Or at the very least, we don’t want more of in our lives?  Why would we make that easier or attain?  Or make ourselves faster to get there?

What habits are you unwittingly practicing in your life?  Self doubt?  Negative inner dialogue?  Angry responses?  Lack of patience with your friends and family?  Personal neglect?  Gossiping?  Critical nature?  And by practicing these things, what habits are you strengthening?

After all, that is what practice gives you.  It makes one habit stronger over another.  If I want to run faster, then I will make a habit of practicing exercises to increase my speed.  It would be surprising if I didn’t get faster then.  So, how can we be surprised to find our lives filled with fear, sorrow or anger when that is the habit we have been strengthening?  If our first reaction is anger then we can’t be shocked at how it comes up so easily as our first thought.  We have been practicing anger.  Not patience.  Not peace.  Not calmness.

When I practice singing, I am working on strengthening good habits, whether in my style of breathing or the purity of the vowels I use.  I wouldn’t practice shallow breathing or bashing at consonants and corrupt vowels,  so why do I habituate poor behaviors?  The ones that cause me pain?  That reduces and cut down my self image or chips away at the confidence of those around me?

I do it, and you do it, because those weakening and poor behaviors have a seductive side to them that we can’t let go of.  For example, anger can make us feel powerful or righteous.  Self pity can make us attractive to help and we can be rewarded by our victim status by friends and family who swoop in to make us feel better.  We have made ourselves the center of the world. That is awfully seductive.  Our losses can be the most deliciously bittersweet pillows to rest on.   We may feel the world so intensely that we feel drunk on the emotions and we relish that.

We don’t intentionally choose pain in the beginning.  We just like the familiar and sometimes the familiar isn’t the best choice.  And once those poor habits are strengthened and the groove well worn we find ourselves well down the paths of anger or self pity in an instant.

If these choices aren’t working for you, the question becomes: How do you change these habitual patterns?  Here are the three steps you need to apply for change.

• Awareness-  Notice the slide into the habit.  From the first twinge or tug, you have to notice the habit in its beginning.  Then you can look at the stimulus and start to see the patterns in your life.

For example:I’m having a great day.   My mom calls.  Before I know it I’m angry and spend the whole day irritated with  everyone.

• Name it-I am on the path of anger.  And if I keep going I will strengthen this response.

• Inhibit- At the point you normally twinge and then go off on the magical misery ride you stop.  Reflect on the spot: If I strengthen this habit, will it bring suffering or relief?” Then you can make a choice.  Do I want to do this, or will I just let it go this time?  This step reminds me of the Alexander technique used for physical therapy in relieving body tensions.  Alexander says to break a habitual physical action that causes muscle tension, one must inhibit at the point of the tense act.  The same is true in your work in breaking a habitual behavior. 

Our emotions are powerful stuff and they can cause not just mental damage but physical ill in us.  Feeling guilt or shame does not help us.  Nor weaken these damaging thoughts.  Struggling against them is also not productive.  The only way to disempower them is to give them our complete awareness.  When we are completely aware of our thoughts we can see them for what they truly are.  Insubstantial illusions that we have created as truth.  From our awareness we can move towards a new behavior to strengthen by inhibiting the usual response and choosing a new one.

The philosopher Shantideva wrote twelve centuries ago in The Way of the Bodhisattva-

No other enemy indeed

Has lived so long as my defiled emotions-

O my enemy, afflictive passion

Endless and beginningless companion!

I have great affection for a bumper sticker I once read that said

“You are not what you think you are”

It had a great surreal ring to it.

And yet, my experiences in life tell me that people are EXACTLY what they think they are.

Think you are “dumb” and watch your behavior support that.  Think you are socially inept?  Guess what, that is how you are behaving in every interaction.  The people around us are pretty busy maintaining their own life stories and will take the story you are schilling without looking deeper.  Believe you are weak, easily led, bossy and ta da! You are.

As I spent a lazy morning I watched Kelly and Regis over coffee and happened to see the latest Idol runner up interviewed. Kelly praised Adam and talked about how he seemed to be just what people were looking for at this time and his performances every week were ground breaking.   I was bowled over to hear Adam Lambert reply:

“I think the key is that some people go into looking at it like it is a competition….if you go into it with the perspective that this is a platform, this is an opportunity and I’m going to use this to my advantage and you go in focusing on performing your best and competing with yourself and not with the other competitors it can really be a great experience.”

If you are an idol follower- as I am-you marveled this season at Adams brash artistic flair and unbelievable vocals.  But I also was struck by how even keel he was. The pressure, the expectations and the criticisms and the praise never seemed to affect him.   Even in defeat, I didn’t see him flinch, despite the fact the popular feel was that he was a shoe in for winner, from the press to the judges.   When he said he ‘focused on performing’ his best and saw American Idol as a ‘platform’, I realized he couldn’t be upset about not winning because he didn’t sing every week to win.  He sang as an expression of himself on an international stage platform.  He saw it as an opportunity each time.  Not an either or, win or lose perspective.  That is one powerful perspective.

Adam shows us the true power of perspectives.

You choose the one you want to stand in.  Several perspectives are true or hold some truth for us.  True-It was a competition.  He could have chosen to see it as such.  But that didn’t help him do what he wanted to do each week.  He could have stood in the perspective of “This is a party for me”which also has truth in it, or “I hope my mom and dad are proud of me” or ”What does everyone else think of me?”.  All of these are could be perspectives and have truth in them.  Try out this experiment:  Place yourself in those different perspectives and notice how it changes your body language, your instincts about what to do and say next and how you feel about yourself and others.

If you went into your rehearsal, audition or next public performance with an intentional perspective of:

“ I’m focusing on giving my best and not what result comes my way, or whether anyone else likes it ”

what would you be free to give?

What feels easy about this perspective?

What seems really hard?

What is possible moving forward if you believed this was true?

Tell me about your most powerful singing experience and what was in your head at the time.  I’d love to hear from you.

How would you answer this email-“Someone’s knocking at your door in a seven feet tall bear suit..death bear will visit your Brooklyn apartment to remove painful reminders of your past and give you the chance to start fresh in 2010.”

In an earlier post (that got lost when this site got unspammed) I wrote about rituals to assist in closing up some of the boxes you are carrying around in this life.  The ones that are heavy, difficult and seem to spill out their contents at inopportune times.  In that blog I wrote about my own personal experience in creating a virtual funeral for the Dream of the Twenty Year Old.  When I was a young artist I thought success would look  a certain way  and when I became a woman of forty that dream wasn’t an inspiration any more.  Rather it was the disappointed teacher or parent in ones life  who clucks ‘tsk, tsk’ while shaking their head at your latest shortcoming.  It wasn’t helping me.  It was hurting me.  So it was with great interest that I read Death Bear Will See You Now in the Sunday March 7^th edition of the New York Times.  Something to think about if you have an obstacle to get over.  This man in bear head comes to your house and takes away the ugly reminders of the obstacle in a black duffle bag.  It made me think again about what it takes to move beyond something.   Maybe you need some help other then friend to eat the ice cream with while you cry.  As  Loren Berlin writes in her piece “Maybe we all have moments when we need such a stranger (Death Bear), someone whose anonymity allows us to let down our guard and show our raw and battered hearts, to reveal the mess we know ourselves to be.  Maybe Death Bear provides a public service by wiping the slate clean when we are too exhausted to pick up the rag and do it ourselves.  And then yet again, by disappearing, so that we can resume our normal lives.”

Would you find this service helpful?  Have you ever buried, burnt or otherwise dealt with an emotional box in your life?

Did you recognize yourself in one of these themes?  Or do you derive happiness from something I haven’t even mentioned?  I can’t believe no one mentioned that rehearsals never start until 10 a.m. at the earliest.  As a mom of two school aged children I love not setting the alarm.  Ah, Happiness they name is slumber uninterrupted.

What gives you Happiness on the road?

There are many perspectives one can take into the out of town gig.  As I’m on the road right now singing in Nixon in China in Vancouver I wanted to take some time here on the blog to celebrate and share what makes me and colleagues happy when we are working away from home.  “Happiness” from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown is such a great starting point.  Forget world domination (apologies to Ellen DeGeneres)  The song reminds us that Happiness is finding a pencil (talk about low standards), two kinds of ice cream (now we are talking) five different crayons (you lost me again).   I’m going to start with food today.  Today, what makes my colleague Thomas Hammons happy, and me, is STEAK.

There is something wonderful, even if you do it alone, and I have, about going to a heavy oak doored, dark paneled restaurant that a local has recommended for steak.  The sort of place where you can get a steak cooked the way you like it and that has a good wine list.  It is luxury taking the time to choose a plump glass of red to go along with your choice cut of dead red (if you are a singer who risks that between rehearsals)  Saying “yes” to the baked potato and the sour cream with the chives and bacon feels naughty and indulgent too.  You take in the moment to watch other patrons while you wait for your meal.  Couples on romantic dinners to your left, gruff business meeting types who bark “I’ll tell you what” and the like to your right.  Here is the time to watch the world amble by.

How happy it is to splurge on a steak for yourself, by yourself, in a foreign city.  The message it sends is:

“I am worth a fine meal.  My life is here and now, even though I miss my spouse, my kids or my cat. I am giving time and money to a fine meal.”

Tonight, by the light of the candle at my table, and while stroking a fine linen napkin as I await my sirloin and inhale the cherry notes of that shiraz,  I am very happy.  As the last line of the song says “Happiness is anything that is loved by you”.  Today, that means steak.

Faith Goble

Here you stand with a new goal, project or role or show or wish in your life. You are so excited you have to phone someone and share this inspiration or good news. It is like a whole new door is opening in your life and you want to share this energy with someone and get that energy returned in validation and encouragement and maybe even some cheering.
How many times have you been in this place and picked up the phone and called that someone you thought would be most supportive only to have them shoot you down cold. You thought they would get it, but they don’t. And they question your judgment and talk about what you risks you are taking. You begin to think you are wrong to want this. It is so clear you your friend that this is folly. Have you been a fool? Is this a terrible a mistake? Moments ago it was the best thing ever. But now…you can’t be sure. Now what?

I’m remembering when I went to university and I lived my first year in residence. It seemed every girl on my floor was majoring in business for lack of anything better coming along and I was the only Vocal major there. They wanted to party and drink and date. I wanted to be coherent in the sight reading class I had three days a week at 8:30 in the morning and in good voice for Master class and lessons every week. What I wanted to work for made no sense to them and the way they talked to me left me wondering why I was such a bore. Something was definitely weird about me.

One of the most common requests I receive from young singers is to talk about how to deal with other singers. Sad, but often true, we singers can be a self cannibalizing group of people. There was a time in my past when I consciously stopped hanging out with other singers socially because I always left feeling so crummy about my career and myself. Why do we often miss the opportunity to support and celebrate each other? Why do we instead see others success as our failure?
We lead with a good offense as our personal defense to maintain our own feelings of validity as people.

The scenario- Right after hello comes the question “So what are you doing? What is coming up for you?” Out comes the resume next as each singer name drops the last conductor/director or significant audition, colleague or company they sang for as well as all the offers for next season. I truly believe that this behavior is spawned by fear. We are so harsh on ourselves and afraid of not measuring up that we end up ‘resume’ing’ a colleague. This isn’t restricted to singers, but can be found between friends and relatives and in all other walks of life. Singers don’t own the territory of low self esteem.

How do you deal with this? You need a mini me or several if you can. If you are trying to create something in your life that is new or scary or a stretch or risky in any way, get rid of the people who make you feel bad and who will kill the project. Does this sound harsh? I’m okay with that. What is harsher still is when your very worthy dreams and plans get squashed, belittled and have sand kicked in their face. No one has the right to do that to you. And when you are embarking towards a new life or a new you or anything that is a stretch, it is imperative that you clean your social network house.
Think of it this way: You are the prime minister of your life. You want to put a new program in place that you believe in, that benefits many and is close to your heart. As Prime Minister you make sure all your party members come to the vote and you create a task force of trusted colleagues to help you make it a reality. You do not invite the opposition to rewrite the project, or to vote it down. You get your party around you. In real life, you get yourself a posse. You have your team that loves and supports you.

Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way:

“We must learn to keep our counsel, to move silently among doubters, to voice our plans only among our allies, and to name our allies accurately. “

“…criticism that asks a question like “how could you?” can make an artist feel like a shamed child. A well meaning friend who constructively criticizes a beginning writer may very well end that writer…from that shaming we learn that we are wrong to create…the shame lives on, waiting to attach itself to our new efforts. The very act of attempting to make art creates shame”

Twyla Tharp concurs in her fabulous book for creative types called “The Creative Habit-Learn it and use it for Life”

Rule #32-Build your own Validation Squad
“We all seek approval and validation or our efforts. In the beginning we desperately seek the approval of others-of anybody- to assure us that we’re on the right path, that we aren’t wasting our time, that we haven’t made a monumental error.”

The homework I’m offering here is a mash up of these two ladies and me.

Homework

Make two lists. One of friends who are possible candidates for the Validation Squad. Start with those who you admire because they have shown good judgment in their own lives, who are the people in life who see the best in you and admire you back and who aren’t competing with you, so you know they have no agenda of their own. Wrap yourself in up the friends who Julia Cameron calls “Fluffy heated Towels”.
Now make a list of the other friends, whom she calls “Wet Blankets”. The ones who are the opposite of the list above, and the ones who you have noticed leave you feeling poorly about yourself and your life whenever you spend time with them. They don’t increase your faith in you or the universe. They suck it out of you.

Next, spend more time with the Validation Squad, and start eliminating or limiting contact with the Wet Blankets and see what becomes possible.

And finally remember this

“We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people’s models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open”
Shakti Gawain

I think there are two kinds of people:  Those who make New Years Resolutions and those who don’t.  Well, there probably is a third, but they don’t care at all and so aren’t reading this so let’s not talk about them behind their backs.  It’s rude.  If you are one of the first two kinds of people then pick the column that applies to you and Happy New Year.

New Years Resolutions?  YES!

If you are like me you love the notion of fresh starts.  New beginnings.  Clean sheets on the bed.  The new car smell.  All that stuff.  So if, like me, you love the idea of a totally new and better you and or life in the next 12 months, here is how to get started.

List five important values you hold; the things that make life worth living, or create the feeling of a life well lived and have meaning for you.  (Just a reminder, these ‘values’ aren’t moral rights and wrongs.  Just to be clear, money is not a value, but money can facilitate you living something you value.)

Three of my Values for 2010

Fiscal responsibility

Gratitude

My family

From this list, I create the list of what these values mean in practical terms.  I’m defining them a bit more.   Notice that there is some ‘doing’ here, but also some things I’m committing to ‘be’.  I.e. I will be someone who connects, or someone who is grateful for example.

My Values for 2010 more defined

Fiscal responsibility means I will be noticing whether or not I’m living within my means

Living in gratitude means I will be noticing and expressing my thanks.

Family means connecting to my husband and children more.

Get even more practical-What will I DO to live that value in 2010

Fiscal Responsibility

I’m making a list of my current personal debt and constructing a thermometer chart so I can see the progress in paying it off.

Gratitude

I will have cards in my desk at the ready to write thank you notes for extraordinary service, kindnesses received and thoughtful gestures I see every week.

My Family

Finally acknowledging that cleaning the house together isn’t our ‘special’ time to bond, and instituting a game night.

It is that easy.  List what matters to you.  List what it means in a more personal way.  Choose one small step to honor that value more fully in 2010.

Ta Da!  You have just changed the quality of your life.

New Years Resolutions?  BAH!  HUMBUG!

If you are like me you have a pretty good sense that New Years Resolutions are strictly for smokers and the Jenny Craig followers.  Oh yeah, and your local gym also makes out like a bandit selling year long memberships that people only use until the third week in January.  Sound familiar?  Like you, I’ve made many more resolutions than I ever kept.  They are always along the lines of being healthy and kicking a bad habit  and they are set up for failure from day one.  Why?  Because I think I should want to change these things, but the truth is, I really don’t want to change them at all.

So what do we Resolution nay sayers do at this goody two shoes time of year that makes us cringe apart from add another shot of baileys to our coffee?

We stand up and say proudly-Change what?  I have a GREAT LIFE!

That’s right.  You made this life and you love it.  So New Years is a great time to sing the praises of what totally rocks in your life.  Why focus on that half empty glass of egg nogg on the mantle?  Look at what is overflowing in your cup!

Take time this New Year to truly toast, celebrate and give a shout out to your personal highlight reel.

How to do it

Open up your calendar-electronic or otherwise and go back over the last twelve months.  Notice what was great.

Some of my Highlights of 2010

Ariadne auf Naxos with Calgary Opera.  Roomed with my bestest friend who I hadn’t seen in years.  We now talk monthly or more.

Celebrate-Old Friends who are still the Best Friends

Disneyland with the Kids.  Best holiday ever for us.  We laughed and laughed on Space Mountain.  It was a riot riding rides and screaming.  Adored it.

Celebrate-Learned we need to take another holiday this year at an amusement park.  Perfect family holiday for us.

Diner Breakfasts.  I love diner breakfasts and managed to get us all out for a few.  Even one where we read silly poetry to each other.

Celebrate-bacon, sausage and whipped cream on Belgian waffles.

I have more, but you get the idea.   If you write this list down it is a great tonic for the days in mid March when you think your life sucks.  It isn’t about winning the million, it is about the every day world we enter and share with those around us.  So Bah and Humbug to change!  I had everything I needed last year, and I have faith that I will bring many of these experiences back for a repeat performance this year.

Happy New Years to One and All!

Last Week: Changing things in my life and hoping to inspire,support and guide you in your changes. I’m starting with a new commitment to mental and physical wellness.

Last Week: Making changes in my life, starting with a new commitment to mental and physical wellness.

Day one and day Two: I am a super hero.  You can practically see my cape fluttering in the wind.  I feel like I have the answer to everything and I love it.  Making the commitment to me to make a change in my life that really matters to me in a way that excites me seems to be a powerful tincture.  I’m using hot yoga to reshape my mind and my body, and I want to go every day now.  It is like teenage infatuation.

Day Three:  I think if this change works so well then I am keen to build on it and I start to have fantastical notions about many things.  I take the Real Age Test online, and with the hot yoga in the mix I’m coming in at 5.5 years younger than my real age!  I read the January issue of Oprah magazine and get food tips and begin to imagine a complete overhaul of my cupboards.   I think about going back to skiing, and trying new things like tap dancing, belly dancing and rock climbing.  I am light headed with the incredible strength of purpose I discover in making a decision and acting on it. The world is my oyster.

Day Four: The day of the reality check. My committee (hey, you have one too) from the Department of Sensible Decisions got wind of all these big plans I had and called me on out on the carpet.

“First of all, how will you pay for this?” they barked.  “And second of all, do we have to remind you of how many times before you thought you would do this sort of thing and you FAILED?”

This was ‘put your money where your mouth is’ day in terms of how much of a commitment monetarily I was willing to make for the yoga classes.  At my yoga studio (Bikram Hot Yoga Langford) they were celebrating their fifth anniversary and were therefore promoting one and two year memberships at half price to celebrate. At my Day 4, I am 24 hours away from the last chance to get in on this deal.  I committed last week to not having this same body one year from the 14^th of December, and I knew that Bikram Yoga was my choice.  Or, at least, I thought I knew.  But as the Sensible Decisions committee pointed out, according to the files from “Oh, Not That Again” I have felt this way several times in the past and had NEVER followed through.

“Need you be reminded” they said “of the gym membership, of the Kung Fu membership or of the last time that you did Hot Yoga?  What about other ideas from a few years back like studying cello?  Taking a writing class?  Going to meditational classes?  You never follow through.”

So as international leaders struggled for an accord in Copenhagen, I was having my own summit and it was going just as well.

“And” the committee then marched on “you seem to think you could do all these other activities, which all cost money, need time, and you don’t have enough of either of these to even THINK of taking these other passions on.  You need to stop this ridiculous talk now or before you know it you’ll be responsible for ALL this and you will be so disappointed when you fail again.”

So it was, on Day Four I discovered that my new found motivation was being increasingly stained by my old fashioned fear of making mistakes and failing.

My committee, like yours, uses the logic of “Not enough” You don’t have enough time, money, commitment.  Then it backs it up with past disappointments that I need to be protected from repeating “Remember the last time you did this?  You weren’t committed enough to follow through.”  And a good idea can’t even get started after that meeting.

What I learned this week:

Don’t bite off more than you can chew

When making a change in your life it can be tempting to change a lot of things, but sometimes that just lets our monkey mind race to the future and suddenly I’m doing 20 things.  I overload myself and I end up killing the good idea that started it all.  So, don’t bite off more than you can chew.  You don’t shove the whole burger in your mouth at once, now matter how delicious it smells, you know you’ll choke yourself.  Eat it one bite at a time.  For me it is like the Bikram Yoga practice that I did four times last week (take that Sensible Decision Committee!), you do one pose at a time.  Just this one thing now, then rest, then does this one thing now.

That I can do.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater

What a classic and dramatic saying.  There is this great thing (the baby, if you weren’t sure) and it is in dirty water.  Throw away the water, not the baby.  Remember, when the committee piles up the past failure that is just muddy water to throw away.  It doesn’t mean this new idea isn’t going to be successful.

The Committee wants to protect me, but I’m telling them that I’ve learned from the past.  I have done my homework this time.  I have checked out my choice and it lines up with what I value right now.  I have made sure I have accountability in place.  I have set myself up for success with scheduling, a reward and buddy system.  This isn’t the same as last time and I won’t be shamed into thinking it is.

Ask yourself this:

What does my Sensible Decision Committee shut down in my life before I can even get it started?

What evidence do they always trot out?

What do I know to be true?

Karma Coaching:  If you would like some help with your Committee, be the first person who reads this blog to email me at rebecca@TheResonantLife.com  and receive a complimentary 30 minute coaching on this issue and get your changes on the road.

Practicing.  I’m practicing right now. So are you.  What are you practicing?   I’m practicing singing.  A skill I need as  I’m working on learning three new roles for the fall and spring opera season I’m engaged for.  My daughter is practicing the flute for school band.  My son practices football and hockey several times a week.  My husband is a football coach and he holds practices.

We practice to get better.  We practice at things we hope to improve at.  Things that matter to us.  We all have experienced practicing something with a goal in mind. When I am learning music, I work it like a drill often.  Those few bars of music, over and over again.  I’m hoping it gets easier or faster or more accurate.  Whether a talent like singing or dancing, or a sport that you do solo or with a team or going to mixers practicing social interaction we are all practicing at something.  It is what we do to get better at something that is important to us.

So, why do we practice things that we don’t want to get better at?  Why do we continually repeat what we have already said we don’t want?  Or at the very least, we don’t want more of in our lives?  Why would we make that easier or faster to attain?

What habits are you unwittingly practicing in your life?

Self doubt?  Negative inner dialogue?  Angry responses?  Lack of patience with your friends and family?  Personal neglect?  Gossiping?  Critical nature?

And by practicing these things, what habits are you strengthening?

After all, that is what practice gives you.  It makes one habit stronger over another.  If I want to run faster, then I will make a habit of practicing exercises to increase my speed.  It would be surprising if I didn’t get faster then.  So, how can we be surprised to find our lives filled with fear, sorrow or anger when that is the habit we have been strengthening?  If our first reaction is anger then we can’t be shocked at how it comes up so easily as our first thought.  We have been practicing anger.  Not patience.  Not peace.  Not calmness.

When I practice singing, I am working on strengthening good habits, whether in my style of breathing or the purity of the vowels I use.  I wouldn’t practice shallow breathing or bashing at consonants and corrupt vowels!   So why do I habituate poor behaviors?  The ones that cause me pain?  That reduces and cut down my self image or chips away at the confidence of those around me?

I do it, and you do it, because those weakening and poor behaviors have a seductive side to them that we can’t let go of.  For example, anger can make us feel powerful or righteous.  Self pity can make us attractive to help and we can be rewarded by our victim status by friends and family who swoop in to make us feel better.  We have made ourselves the center of the world. That is awfully seductive.  Our losses can be the most deliciously bittersweet pillows to rest on.   We may feel the world so intensely that we feel drunk on the emotions and we relish that.

We don’t intentionally choose pain in the beginning.  We just like the familiar and sometimes the familiar isn’t the best choice.  And once those poor habits are strengthened and the groove well worn we find ourselves well down the paths of anger or self pity in an instant.

If these choices aren’t working for you, the question becomes: How do you change these habitual patterns?  Here are the three steps you need to apply for change.

#1 Awareness.  You have to actually notice the slide into the habit.  From the first twinge or tug, you have to notice the habit in its beginning.  Then you can look at the stimulus and start to see the patterns in your life.

I.e. I’m having a great day.   My mom calls.  Before I know it I’m angry and the whole day I’m mad at everyone.

#2 Name it

I am on the path of anger.  And if I keep going I will strengthen this response.

#3 Inhibit

This next step reminds me of the Alexander technique used for physical therapy in relieving body tensions.  Alexander says to break a habitual physical action that causes muscle tension, one must inhibit at the point of the tense act.  The same is true in your work in breaking a habitual behavior.  At the point you normally twinge and then go off on the magical misery ride you stop.  Reflect on the spot: If I strengthen this habit, will it bring suffering or relief?”

Our emotions are powerful stuff and they can cause not just mental damage but physical ill in us.  Feeling guilt or shame does not help us.  Nor weaken these damaging thoughts.  Struggling against them is also not productive.  The only way to disempower them is to give them our complete awareness.  When we are completely aware of our thoughts we can see them for what they truly are.  Insubstantial illusions that we have created as truth.  From our awareness we can move towards a new behavior to strengthen by inhibiting the usual response and choosing a new one.

The shocking thing about these habitual ways of being is that we create our own misery.  What can be more dangerous than the enemy within?    No one can hurt us as deeply as we injure ourselves.  With the inside job there is not deflection or reflection.  No edit or panel to filter the thoughts.  Without attention, unchecked we bring upon our continual suffering.

The philosopher Shantideva wrote twelve centuries ago in The Way of the Bodhisattva-

No other enemy indeed

Has lived so long as my defiled emotions-

O my enemy, afflictive passion

Endless and beginningless companion!

Did you know that the day after Labor Day is the beginning of more  resolutions than New Years Day?  It’s true.  Maybe it comes from our long years of going to school and the ingraining of this one day of the year being the key to a clean slate.  A new teacher.  Sometimes a new school.  A new outfit.  Fresh blank pages and umarred binders that you laid out with such forbidden pleasure that first day.  Those who were in  your peer group in June haven’t seen you for 10 weeks and you have changed.  Grown up more, maybe you cut your hair or turned into a skater girl or became a Goth or a  lover of punk and you are now adorned with safety pins in all available orifices.  Who would you become if you were cut off from your primary mirrors for ten weeks?

I sent both of my kids off to school this morning knowing it was probably the only day this year they would both get up in a good mood when their alarms went off.  Probably the only day when they both will have showered before they go to school.  The one day that time and care was taken for my daughters’ hairstyle, when a quick ponytail wouldn’t suffice.  This is the one day that the clothes were carefully pressed before bedtime and laid out on the floor like flat people waiting to be inflated or to receive the kiss of animation.

I’m not going back to school this fall and in some ways that makes me sad.  I hate to miss the chance to grab onto the energy and possibilities surrounding it!  So I won’t.   I’m inviting you to create your own “Back to School” ritual for today with my Top 7 list below.

Here are a list of things you can do to kick off that new habit, or start that new project or put on that new filter you are going to see life through starting today, or take the first step to show the world the new person you became over the summer.

7 Ways to ‘Go Back to School’- When you Aren’t Going Back To School

1. Go buy yourself new office supplies. One of the best parts of this time of year is the feeling that you could actually change your C or B to an A or A plus.  You get to open a fresh page in the workbook of your life.  With a new pen, a sharp pencil, with a package of 24 fruity colored and sweet smelling markers.  Buy some today.  You get to start from scratch and you can be anything you want to be this term.  The last report card is dead and buried.
2. Connect with friends.  The ones you haven’t seen in 10 weeks.  Meet them for lunch or coffee or Skype chat with them.  Wear something brand new when you do it and talk about your new and rising passions.  It will make those ideas more real and someone who hasn’t seen you for months is open for you to be different!
3. Write “What I did on My Summer Vacation”.  Bitch or be grateful, but take a moment to see what you did that you loved.  Reminisce and take time to enjoy that summer read, that beach volleyball game or that crazy rained out camping trip all over again.  Post a picture from the summer  as your screen saver to remind you that you bloom when you take time off, rain or shine.
4. Find a new teacher.  Seek out one person who brings out the best in you and who you feel you can’t quite keep up with and let them inspire you to stretch to be more.  A mentor is such a gift in life and school gave us new ones every year.  That teacher who loved your writing and always gave you a great grade and passed you challenging things to read.  The band teacher who gave you the solo in the Christmas concert.  The people who saw the special light in you are still around you today.  Notice one of them and make time to have them in your life starting now!
5. Buy one new outfit that tells everyone who you are. Are you conservative?  Are you leaning to the Bohemian lifestyle?  Remember in school how obvious it was who was who?  The button up shirt crowd, the metal t -shirt crowd, the ‘in’ girls and their straight, blunt cut manes that they flipped at incessantly?  Take a look at your daily uniform.  What do you want to change to more clearly tell the world who you really are?
6. Make a contract with yourself about what is going to be different from this day forward.  What useless time wasting behaviors are you ready to jettison and what new activities and goals do you want to embrace.  Write it up now and date it and sign it.  Post it where you can see it and reread every day for a week.
7. Don’t sleep well for one night.  It’s Back to School!  Get excited about not knowing what a day would hold.  Revisit a time when not everything was predictable and knowable.  When life felt dangerous and you were groping for what friends were and what love was.  Feel something deeply.  Write a poem about it.

Hey, it’s the day after Labor Day!  Reinvent!  Clean slate yourself today.

I have always found the reaction to summer heat waves, both here in my current home in Victoria BC and also in my Toronto years now past, to be amazingly stupid.

Why?  Because we pretend it isn’t happening.

When it was record breaking hot here last month, everyone carried on as if it wasn’t.  That is no easy task.  After all, let’s be honest, when it is hot, we don’t move so fast usually.  Everything is more difficult.  It is like trying to wade through a swamp (trust me on this one) your movements are slow and labored and you wish you had stopped pretty much when you began.  You are wet, uncomfortable and your brain is fogged up by it all.  How can you go about your regular work day like that?

The nod to the heat came only in the form of the local paper that actually ran a story on whether or not it was hot enough to fry an egg on a local manhole cover and how long it took for an ice cream to melt into a puddle. But otherwise, everyone imagined their day should pace out about the same.  Everyone hurried to work, applied themselves diligently and hurried home and made supper and went to bed.

In Spain and many other warm countries they have hot weather habits.  Hot weather isn’t something you read about, you live it. Like eating late so that you can eat  dinner in the coolness of evening, or taking a post lunch siesta during the hottest part of the day.  How well I remember being in Barcelona several years ago for a singing competition.   Everything was closed between 1 and 3 pm it seemed.  And when I went for dinner at 7 pm I was turned away.  Even at 9 pm I was early and dined in an empty restaurant.  No, we North Americans do what we always do.  We keep going.  We adjust by opening our car windows all the way, we run our fans and we think about whether or not to invest in air conditioning.  We curse or lament the heat maybe, but we don’t slow down.

The way we react in a heat wave made me thing about how we often react in life.  When something is oppressively difficult, like 36 degrees Celsius heat, we try to ignore it.  Here is this thing in our lives that is causing us pain and is omnipresent, but we stick our heads in the metaphorical sand (at the beach we aren’t at) and just keep doing what we always do. Pretend it isn’t there.  We should be able to work over it, or under it.  Certainly we can work past it.  Why should we change what we do?  Why we should take that risk  How long can this go on for anyway? So we keep on keeping on.

Logic clearly dictates that when the environment changes, you should too.  When it is hot, you should step away from the regular and leave your angularities behind and embrace this new reality.  When something in your life is changing, and making you uncomfortable, then you should take notice and see what is called for in response.

What about the heat wave in your life?  You know, the one you have been ignoring because you are sure it will pass.  Is it time for you to slow down and suck on a cool glass of lemonade and maybe do something differently?  Have you noticed that what you have been doing, ignoring it and pressing on, isn’t really making you feel better?

Don’t ignore these pressing situations in your life.  Hey, it’s really hot!  Everyone else knows you are really hot.  They’re hot too.  So slow down, change what you wear, accept that you’ll be less productive.  Remember, if you push through and don’t find shade and drink extra water, you end up with heat stroke or worse.  I’m not telling you anything new when I remind you that many studies equate stress with real, measureable physical illnesses.  That situation you are refusing to acknowledge is still there, others do see it, and you are suffering for it.

So my questions today are:

What is my own personal ‘heatwave’?

What could I do to make myself more comfortable in it?

What do I need to just accept about this situation so I can release my “keeping on”?

What are three small gifts I could give myself right now to make this easier?

How will I turn my unbearable heat wave into a tropical holiday to remember?

I have done it. I have went further then I have ever went before. I never make it past week five and Here I am at week seven. Unbelievable.

Today I want to talk about journaling. The piece of the Artists’ Way that never changes week to week, the Morning Pages. Julia Cameron believes whole heartedly in them and points to many graduates of this process who never abandon the journaling piece of the work. For those uninitiated, she require three pages of writing every morning to clear your head and get straight about yourself. She calls them The Morning Pages.
To do mine, I use loose, three whole lined meant for binders. I do this for many reasons. Most importantly because I remember reading Anne Lamott in “Bird by Bird”. She reminds aspiring writers to steer clear of fancy journals as the only thing you can ever write in a fancy journal is fancy thinking. She believes that writing is practice and therefore every writer needs permission to write junk. Lots of it. Only by practicing daily, and writing freely without the perfection editor in placec an the gems arrive. So in honor of that thought, I write on cheap paper that means nothing to me. I confess thought to keeping it in a very pretty binder though.

To the writing piece now. I spoke to someone yesterday about this writing of the morning pages and I met a response that was not unfamiliar. She was attracted to journaling and had tried several times and quit several times. The story she told me I had heard from many before her. When people try to journal they find that after you write for a few days about your lifes’ current situation, you have nothing left to say. Your journalistic musing then ends up settled on the toast and coffee level of your day.

When my mother and I were cleaning out my grandfathers chest from the war after his death we came upon several tiny leather journals. He had, as many of his experience, never spoken of the war, so there was some excitement to read about what that had been like for him. What we found though when we opened them up to read, was a dry accounting of the days “toast and coffee”.
“Got haircut by Bill. Crash today at landing, two badly burned. Had fresh fruit for dinner. A treat.”
Who was Bill? What kind of cut did he give? Did you like it? A crash landing? Did you see it? How did you hear about it? Who were these men? How does it make you feel about being in this place at this time with a wife and daughter back home? Did you hear your own mortality knocking at your door? Local fruit? Sweet? Tart?
I’m not asking him to write poetry but his shopping list of events didn’t help him live his day or me appreciate the man he was 45 years later either.
Journaling isn’t for everyone. I get that. But if you do write, or if you are tempted to write stop and ask yourself the age old but still effective question:
How do I feel about this? What does this remind me of? What is stirring in me as I think about this?
And further to this, don’t quit on page two. Julia is right to ask for three pages. At the end of page two I have come to trite and polite wrap ups, but on page three I name what matters- what I hate, what is thrilling and I discover the place I want to look next.
Page one says I’m having toast and coffee, page two says I wish it was a bagel, but that’s life. But by page three I’m starting my own bagel company. See the difference a page makes?

In Short
Journaling-Good
Ask yourself “Why” or “What if” about what you write.
Go for the page you don’t feel you can write.

What fires have you walked through?  What ashes have you arisen from?

Elizabeth Lesser “Broken Open”

Sometimes in moving forward in our lives, we feel we must first deal with the past.  I keep running into people who are dogged by the question “Why”.  Why did this happen?  I love how we as humans think the world is somehow fair.  That Why has an answer that would satisfy us so we could move on.  Or that there is a master author above ( or below) who is writing our story and keeping tally of your turn and my turn for good and bad.  And when those things we feel are bad happen more than once, we all look to the tally sheet we are keeping and try to figure out why we seem to have so many ticks in the column of disappointment, or loss.  We try to steal glances at someone elses’ sheet that the author is keeping tabs on and compare ourselves.  And again with the Why, we ask, “Why me?  Why not them?   They have so much luck.  I have so much in disappointment.”

If you can turn away from Why for a moment, I want you think about What instead?

What will I do next?

What can I give myself credit for?

What needs to be released so I can move on?

What did I learn?

What can I celebrate surviving?

What happened that changed me and how am I living that change?

This brings me to the wonderful story of the phoenix.  This mythical bird is said to live a 500 to 1,000 year cycle.  When its’ life is ending it builds a nest that it ignites and the nest and the bird are consumed by flame.  From the ashes it rises.  A new, young phoenix  and lives anew.

Elizabeth Lesser writes in her wonderful book “Broken Open” about the phoenix:

“The Egyptians called the bird the Phoenix and believed that every five hundred years he renewed his quest for his true self.  Knowing that a new way could be found only with the death of his worn out habits, defenses, and beliefs, the Phoenix built a pyre of cinnamon and myrrh, sat in the flames, and burned to death.  Then he rose from the ashes as a new being-a fusion of who he had been before and who he had become.  A new bird, yet ever more himself; changed, and at the same time the eternal Phoenix.  Of the Phoenix bird, the Roman poet Ovid said, “Most beings spring from other individuals, but there is a certain kind that reproduces itself”.

Are you ready to reproduce yourself?  In your life, perhaps you have had a cleansing fire that burnt something of you to the ground.  If you are the phoenix, what has arisen from your divine ashes?

Recently in workshops with young singers the question came forward of how to deal with not getting what you want.  The phoenix offers us a powerful tale in which we can write our story of loss into one of powerful re-creation.

How happy is the pure gold

When it enters the fire,

As it may practice its artistry

And show its real value in the fire.

Rumi

Forget trying to steal looks at other peoples gains and losses and know that we all gain and lose.  In life, change is the constant.  We are never in perfect balance, but always moving closer to or farther from it.  Knowing that change is constant then we are guaranteed to all get burned in this life.  Our nests will be torched and we will be turned to ashes.  Look around you and really see the fires that others lives have been touched with.  Look to see their phoenix, or lack there of.

Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix”

Christina Baldwin

Look for your sign for rebirth and don’t ask why you have to go through the fire.  Instead, ask “What fires have I walked through?  What ashes have I arisen from?”

“I think the key is that some people go into looking at it like it is a competition….if you go into it with the perspective that this is a platform, this is an opportunity and I’m going to use this to my advantage and you go in focusing on performing your best and competing with yourself and not with the other competitors it can really be a great experience.”

I have great affection for a bumper sticker I once read that said

“you are not what you think you are”

It had a great surreal ring to it.

And yet, my experiences in life tell me that people are EXACTLY what they think they are.

Think you are “dumb” and watch your behavior support that.  Think you are socially inept?  Guess what, that is how you are behaving in every interaction.  The people around us are pretty busy maintaining their own life stories and will take the story you are schilling without looking deeper.  Believe you are weak, easily led, bossy and ta da! You are.

As I spent a lazy morning I watched Kelly and Regis over coffee and happened to see the latest Idol runner up interviewed. Kelly praised Adam and talked about how he seemed to be just what people were looking for at this time and his performances every week were ground breaking.   I was bowled over to hear Adam Lambert reply:

“I think the key is that some people go into looking at it like it is a competition….if you go into it with the perspective that this is a platform, this is an opportunity and I’m going to use this to my advantage and you go in focusing on performing your best and competing with yourself and not with the other competitors it can really be a great experience.”

If you are an idol follower- as I am-you marveled this season at Adams brash artistic flair and unbelievable vocals.  But I also was struck by how even keel he was. The pressure, the expectations and the criticisms and the praise never seemed to affect him.   Even in defeat, I didn’t see him flinch, despite the fact  the popular feel was that he was a shoe in for winner from the press to the judges  When he said he ‘focused on performing’ his best and saw American Idol as a ‘platform’, I realized he couldn’t be upset about not winning because he didn’t sing every week to win.  He sang as an expression of himself on an international stage platform.  He saw it as an opportunity each time.  Not an either or, win or lose perspective.  That is one powerful perspective.

Adam shows us the true power of perspectives.

You choose the one you want to stand in.  Several perspectives are true or hold some truth for us.  True-It was a competition.  He could have chosen to see it as such.  But that didn’t help him do what he wanted to do each week.  He could have stood in the perspective of “This is a party for me”which also has truth in it, or “I hope my mom and dad are proud of me” or ”What does everyone else think of me?”.  All of these are could be perspectives and have truth in them.  Try out this experiment:  Place yourself in those different perspectives and notice how it changes your body language, your instincts about what to do and say next and how you feel about yourself and others.

If you went into your workplace or home or current relationships with an intentional perspective of “ I’m focusing on giving my best and not what result comes my way, or whether anyone else likes it ”what would you be free to give?  What would be different?  What feels easy about this perspective?  What seems really hard?  What is possible moving forward if I believed this perspective was true?

Amneris Complex or in colloquial terms “Waiting for the other singers to die so I’m the only one left to hire”

Often as a professional singer, I hear my colleagues of a younger age discuss how competitive the field is.  And it isn’t just in the operatic field, as I teach at a college for musical theatre studies, and hear the same thing there.  When you start this conversation you can gather a crowd quickly.  Soon we are all sitting around and nodding our heads in agreement about how hard it is to be a singer and how competitive it is and gosh, a lot of singers just won’t make it (what ever make it means). Welcome to the voice of fear.  Cold, hard, gut wrenching ‘keep you up at night’ fear.  These are our scary ghost stories about the horrors of the profession.  Suddenly the word competitive means that there isn’t enough for all of us.  Someone has to go.  It seems to me rather like there are 6 people on a desert island with only two water bottles and it is hot.

I know your inner voice is getting ready to tell me  in it’s so reasonable tone that I’m inviting people to live in a fools paradise not to accept this truth about the business.  You are telling me that this is a competitive field and being realistic you have to be prepared for the fact that you might not ‘make it’.  I believe that this is the equivalent to a politician writing his concession speech and ordering only stiff drinks and coffee for vote night.  Yes kids, he’s just being realistic.

Let’s go back to the Amneris Complex.  Do you remember the plot of this opera?  Amneris wants Radames, but he doesn’t want her. He is in love with a slave girl and despite the Dad of Amneris (the king no less) getting involved and declaring their wedding a victory prize for Radames, he just doesn’t want her.  He meets with Aida (princess disguised as a slave girl-historically the toughest rival of all) to plot their escape. His fiancé wannabe sees him with the enemy.   Filled with jealousy towards Aida and feelings of revenge for Radames what better solution than to call in the guards on them both.  This does not lead to a wedding but rather just a cozy underground death by lack of oxygen for two-Aida and Radames, with our favorite hard done by mezzo, Amneris, up on top regretting the way the whole thing turned out.  The opera ends as they both run out of air. It is the mezzo soprano’s voice that finishes the opera.  I won’t lie to you.  Many times when I’ve been asked what my favorite opera is I have named Aida because the tenor and the soprano die leaving the final word to the mezzo.  The things a girl has to do to get ahead.

True Confessions of a Diva Wannabe in recovery

Like Amneris, I often focused on what ‘others’ were doing or getting, and plotted.  Not quite as dramatically, but still, I was invested in an outcome that worked for me.  The focus of who got hired here, who was being featured in the magazine there, who got the gala concert, who got the chance to audition for so and so etc.  Every time I look out there, the view from the inside I have is of me wanting.  Grasping.  Without.  Asking the eternal question of the singer and Amneris- “Why not me?”

What comes from this question is your voice of reasons chance to give you the litany of reasons of why not you. Your inner critic has been hard at work assembling this list and is only too delighted to share it with you.  Why not let your inner critic loose to play along here and choose the ones that it thinks fit you best.

You didn’t get that job because:

You are too tall/short

You are too fat/skinny

You wore black/red/heels/flats at the audition

You must have sung the wrong aria/tempo.

You didn’t practice enough/ you were over prepared and peaked early

You sang too low/too high

The day of the audition you were sick/jetlagged/slept poorly/allergic

Or they never hire blondes/brunettes/redheads that have German/Slavic/French last names

The path we have when someone else is succeeding and we’re not is a well worn torturous walk.  It carries stories from others and the ones we made up on our own.  Oh how these events cause our ego to cry and gnash its’ teeth.

Now I’ve brought ego up, let’s define our terms here.  When I say ego, I mean the self concept you carry around that defines itself by what it has and what is has done.  It is how you think others perceive and value you.  Your ego manages the publicly traded you in the worlds commodity markets.  Ego is about outside. And the competition is outside of you.  The sense of lack, of fear, of want and need are all outside.  Amneris is living on the outside.

You don’t have to wait for all the other baritones/tenors/mezzos/sopranos to die for you to be happy.  Your ego can let go of this competitive style of measurement.

The problem with the Amneris Complex is not that it is wrong to want to be the last one of your voice type standing, but that harboring these ill thoughts of jealousy and envy is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.

The only person suffering is you.  The only person who can’t sing or rehearse or who is crabby to their significant other, or who is racking up the big phone bill calling their friends world wide to whine about this, is you.   The ‘other’ outside of you who ‘stole’ your chance for happiness isn’t giving you a second thought.  They are busy with their own egos care and feeding.  And while you stand here wishing you were them, their ego has them busy wishing they were someone else too.

Back to the Amneris Complex, how do you move that perspective so you can live happier and fulfilled from the inside? What do you do to stop this hamster wheel of ego, fear, depression, and long distance phone bills?  Here are three things you can do starting today:

1. Good Wishes:  Soon as you hear the news about who got this or that, stop, take a moment and silently congratulate the other singer.  Wish them well.  Celebrate their achievement.  You many not mean it at first, but keep genuinely looking for the joy and reward this is for them.  Do this every time and see how your ego softens.  It was never you against them in a cage match anyway.  If there was no Aida, I suspect Radames still wouldn’t have chosen Amneris.
2. Abundance in an expanding universe of infinite possibilities.  If this isn’t your perspective, then now is the time to change it .Ever been in a conversation with someone who is needy, desperate, wants something from you?  (Simulate this by calling your singer friends and tell them you were just named artistic director of a local opera company and you can experience it first hand)  Being on the receiving end of these conversations doesn’t feel good.  It makes people pull back, recoil, and push away.  It is just a psychological truth.  If you stand in scarcity and plant those seeds of want and need-complaining, whining-you will grow more scarcity.  Old fashioned term, self fulfilling prophecy.  Biblical reference “reap what you so’ or the Buddhist view “I create reality with my ideas and concepts”.  In an odd way I’m saying “you are what you think you are”.  Again, you don’t have to genuinely buy in to start.  But do start making a dialogue of plenty, optimism, and opportunity your new tape and see what comes your way.

1. Be with what is.  This is last but not least if you want to step over the Amneris complex.   Being with what is means just that.  Hey, we are all born drama queens and kings to one extent or another, which is why we are stage animals.  Missing one opportunity is not a one way ticket to ignominy/the poor house/artistic no mans land/ or proves your mother was right and you should have taken a college degree in accountancy.  It is a job opportunity that you did not get.  Start challenging yourself to see things as they really are.  Not as Verdi would have set it or Von Hoffsmanthal would write the libretto.  This isn’t a garret, your not Mimi and as far as I can tell, you probably don’t have consumption.

If you think you can’t be with what truly is today, quote Scarlett O’Hara on your next breath and say “Tomorrow is another day” and start fresh tomorrow with a southern accent.  It can’t hurt.