This month I made an error.  An oops, a lapse, a mistake, an accident.  I missed the renewal date on my Japanese driver’s license.  There’s a long story with lots of extenuating circumstances and bad information and whining but it doesn’t really matter.  It was my responsibility, and I screwed it up.  I felt like a total loser about this.  I don’t like making mistakes.

So I went out to the far, far suburbs, where the driving gods and demigods live and roar and gnash their teeth, to see what they would say.  I was prepared to have to take the (impossible) paper test and go through the (ridiculous) driving test all over again.  But I was hoping that maybe that wouldn’t be necessary.  You never know.  
   
Dealing with government offices and paperwork can send me right off the deep end, so I decided to use this trip as an experiment.  I already knew that I might not get my license renewed that day; my whole goal was to let go of the outcome and try to stay in my core of peace no matter what happened.
   
I lasted about ten minutes.  On the train there, I found myself spiraling into dark, gloomy, imaginary scenarios.  For instance: I might go, spend hours explaining what happened, pay my $60, and then somehow still not get my license.  Or maybe I wouldn’t get my license at all, ever, and then one day I would be called upon to drive an injured child!  who is bleeding!  to an emergency room!  And then in spite of my heroics I would get pulled over for the first time in my life and I would get arrested!  And they would take away my visa!  And throw me in chains!  And I would never see my daughter again!  
   
Oh, my mind.  My mind, it is so sick.  
   
So I stepped out of my mind and into the core of peace, that place in me that is just fine with or without license.  It is the part of me that cannot be corrupted or destroyed or devastated.  Call it the soul, call it wordlessness, call it whatever you want.  I happen to like Martha Beck’s phrase ‘the core of peace.’  
   
Anyway, so I patted the mind monkeys on the head, reminded myself that I already knew I probably wouldn’t get a license that day, and focused on staying peaceful.  
   
But before I knew it I was having imaginary conversations with people in my head.  My father, for instance.  He likes me very much, and so he might be upset that I had let my license expire after going to so much trouble to get it in the first place.  Or a friend might say something clever and disparaging about me being an adult and not even being able to drive.  Then I moaned in quiet mortification, seeing the irony of a life coach (who gives courses on getting organized!) missing her own license renewal.  I concluded that I was a total fraud.  Then I brooded for a while on an email from a friend who had asked rather primly how I could be upset when it was my own fault.  In short, I was back in my mind—what Anne Lamott calls that bad neighborhood where she tries not to go to alone, that sketchy, scary stretch of graffiti and gunshots and broken pavement.
   
I brought myself back.  It had only been ten minutes, and I had already exhausted myself.  I tried to think about how I might treat myself if I were my own client, or even my own daughter.  I invite you to try this on yourself some time when you are feeling extra loathsome, plus despicable with a side of pathetic.  Probably you’ll feel a rush of affection and laughter for this person, this person who tries so hard and yet makes so many mistakes; who feels so such drunken self-loathing and blazing self-righteousness at the same time; this person who, in spite of the setbacks and mortifications and her terrible flaws, keeps on chugging along trying to get it right.  Honestly, how can you feel anything but total love for this person?  Don’t you want to kiss her on the mouth?  
   
So I sat there on the train alternating between Thich Nhat Hanh and Lindsay Lohan on a bad day.  Every time I remembered to come back to peace, I found that below the peace there was this low, liquid, contagious giggle.  The peace seemed to find the whole thing just hilarious.
   
At the licensing office, I found myself in a special waiting area.  I was sitting with the physical manifestations of all my worst fears and failings: we of the broken teeth and bleary, confused eyes; we the foreign, different, other; we in too much makeup and wobbly high heels; we with our ludicrous tall tales of woe and tragedy; we who carried our official papers in a plastic grocery bag.  This motley crew was so beautiful to me.  I was even beautiful to myself.  We were a perfect picture of human frailty.  There we were: the misfits, the sad and lost, the frazzled, the desperate liars—all of us there to make it right if we could.  I wanted to hold their hands and sing Kumbaya.  
   
I restrained myself.  
   
And I heard another narrative start up in my mind.  This one had Aretha Franklin singing RESPECT playing as its soundtrack, and it went something like this: You know, I work so darn hard.  I did 17,492 things this year, and I got most of them right.  And this one, number 17,493, well—I royally fucked it up.  And what is so WRONG with that?  Can’t I mess up occasionally?  Who am I to think that I’m not allowed to do that?  Welcome to the human race, baby.  Leave your self-loathing and flagellation and groveling apologies behind.  You can be you and make mistakes.  
   
And then I remembered!  OH YEAH.  In my tribe, we make mistakes.  We make LOTS of mistakes because we do brave, difficult, renegade things.  We shoot high and so we fall on our asses sometimes.  If you’d like to join, your initiation will be relatively painless.  One simple round of kumbaya, and you’re in.  
   
Oh, and not that it’s the point, but they eventually?  They gave me my license.  But that’s another story.  

I want you to do a little spying.  Just start eavesdropping on your own mind.  Susan Hyatt calls this being a scientist of your own life; Martha Beck calls it being ‘the watcher.’  Imagine that you can see all your thinky verbal thoughts running across your brain like the ticker tape at the bottom of a news program.  Do you hear calm, considered, optimistic strategy?  Probably not.  It probably goes more like, “Ack! Crap. Oh no oh no….”  Many of us find that fear has hijacked all our major media channels and is broadcasting terror all day long.  That’s because our minds don’t like change, so when they find a rut that feels safe, they stick to it.  Only problem: worry won’t keep you safe.  Just anxious.  Your best weapon here is humor.  Start asking yourself this simple question: Is that even true?  Then, prepare for a benevolent overthrow. 


This was first published in Being A Broad magazine, where I write a monthly column called Advice For Renegades.  Reproduced with permission. 

I have a lot of ideas.  My brain is jumping with them, and they’re all so delicious and exciting.  They come to me effortlessly.  I can even do pretty well at sketching out a big-picture strategy.  It’s the details of actually making them happen (what Martha Beck calls Square Three) where I have trouble.  In addition to all these (oh my god, seriously, they are so good they will make you drool) new schemes, I have a business to run, clients to coach, a family that requires regular watering and care, and a household to keep ticking.  And, oh yeah, there’s that book I’m writing.

I was getting coached by this amazing woman.  I was telling her about how much I long to be writing, but there’s just too much to do, and so I’m only getting in little dibs and dabs.  And then I started listing off all the new projects I want to put in motion, and she stopped me. 

She said, speaking quite slowly and gently, “Anna, you are like a woman in labor.  You are full term with this baby, and instead of giving in to the birth, you’re running around still trying to pretend that life is going along at its normal pace.”  She stopped me right in my tracks.  She was telling me a truth so potent, so undeniable, that it resonated to my very core.  Then I may have wept a little.  (Okay, a lot.) 

I have been wanting to write this book for years.  It has felt at times like a weight, a noose, an irritation.  But it’s always there, nudging me to write it.  And now is the time.  So I’m going to head off to the birthing pool now, to give myself over to contractions and intensity and probably even pain. 

Which is why I don’t have a zippy, useful essay this month.  Instead, I’m going to ask you a question.  What is ready to be born in you? 

Okay, I’m off to labor now.  

“I knew it in my gut,” we say.  “I just had a bad feeling.”  Gavin de Becker writes in Protecting The Gift that this little frisson of fear is one of the most powerful intuitive gifts we have.  We override our animal instinct at our peril, and we should nurture it in our children.  But sometimes fear keeps us trapped in safe but narrow lives, far from our dreams.  How can you tell which kind of fear you’re feeling?  Martha Beck explains the difference with this metaphor: Imagine standing on a high dive.  It’s very, very high.  Now look down.  Are you about to dive into cold, clear water--or into toxic waste?  One will feel terrifying but clean.  The other will feel sickening, nauseating.  That icky feeling is a clear warning--a No--from every instinctual part of you.  Honor that wisdom.  And if the situation twinkling far below feels scary but thrilling, take the plunge!

This was first published in Being A Broad magazine, where I write a monthly column called Advice For Renegades.  Reproduced with permission.

    I have been thinking a lot about getting organized.  I even gave a telecourse on it.  Hellllo, humility!  There’s nothing like teaching something to throw a harsh light on how imperfectly I’m implementing it myself.   Life is moving fast these days, and there’s more clanging and flashing lights and ding-ding-dings than before.  
    I love riding the wave of this joyful hubbub.  
    And some days I can barely keep up.  
    Before class I looked guiltily into the inbox that had way more than three things in it; I cast a glance at the stack of receipts that needed to be processed; I tried to ignore the buzzing urgency of emails waiting to be answered.  I was secretly glad that no one could see the actual office I was conducting the telecourse from.  
    But stop.  Wait.  I’m not a total fraud.  This mild overlay of clutter was just a few days’ worth of buildup, easily handled.  These days, when I have stacks of paper waiting to be processed, it’s because I’ve decided that they’re not urgent—not because I’ve just forgotten about them.  I hardly ever feel the panic I used to feel all the time, when I never knew when some overlooked item might blow up in my face, requiring sudden onslaughts of unscheduled work and deadline rearranging.  In short, the way my life operates now is a whole different ballgame than it used to be.  
    Which is why I gave the class in first place.  Not because I’m perfectly organized, but because I am so inherently non-organized.  In my desperation to keep my life from degenerating into total chaos after I had a baby, I’d gotten really motivated.  Since none of this keeping-track-of-stuff comes naturally to me, I had to learn it—and I knew that along the way I’d learned things that could help others like me, those of us whose minds are wonderful at parsing problems and dreaming up new ideas, but are terrible at remembering things, things like numbers and appointments and, uh, what was I saying again?  Look at the pretty sparkles on my window!
    But there I was again the day of the telecourse, facing up to the fact that my life once again required a concentrated input of time and energy from me if it was going to run smoothly.  I don’t like that part, so I tend to ignore it until it reaches critical mass.  Critical mass today requires thirty minutes of brisk, painless sorting; critical mass in the old days meant days and days of shoveling and lots of weeping.  So things are infinitely better.  But staying on top of the momentum and details of my life is never going to be effortless for me.  Instead of getting discouraged that I don’t run things like Margaret in The West Wing, I’m going to choose to marvel at how much better I’m doing than ever before.  This path I’m on isn’t a rut.  Nope, this here is a spiral.  We keep coming back to the same issues, but each time we’re looking at them at a slightly more sophisticated level.  
    I find this most heartening.  
    Except that this is also just another way of saying that we’re never finished, either.  
    Damn flip side.  
    I keep trying to get “caught up,” when the truth is, there is no up.  I keep getting more organized because I have more to organize.  I keep getting faster because I have more interesting and demanding things to do.  As my favorite productivity guru David Allen warns, when you get really efficient, what happens?  You get given more to do.  
    Martha Beck talks about how she overcame her fear of public speaking.  She was so terrified that she actually passed out cold the first time she got behind a podium.  She pushed through the fear, and what do you think that meant?  That she never had to be afraid again?  No indeedy.  Now she speaks to ever-larger audiences and does live TV, and if you don’t find live TV terrifying, you’re not paying enough attention.  As her ability got bigger, so did the opportunities—and the challenges.  
    We spend so much time pining for whatever big break we’re yearning for, certain that it will give us what we want.  We want the book contract, we want to be our own boss, we want to have a baby, we want the big gig.  The heavens align, miracles happen, our ship comes in, and boom!  We get what we wanted.  Most of us do a victory dance for a few hours or a few days, but then—almost inevitably—panic sets in.  Suddenly the bar has been raised.  Did you score a weekly column?  Now you have to actually crank it out week after week in front of everyone you know.  Did you finally get your house organized?  Now people will want to start hosting events there.  Did you finally start your own business?  Now you have to—try not to pee yourself—run an actual small business.
    What I’m figuring out in all this is that I’m never going to get caught up.  I’m never going to have the moment where I think, “There!  I’ve crossed everything off.  Now I can just take the next year off and relax.”  I just don’t work like that.  As soon as I get one thing mastered, I’m using it as a stepping stone to the next thing.  I do this because it is FUN.  But also I do it because humans grow, that’s what we do, it’s the definition of being alive.  
    I’d better not wait to sit back and relax when it’s all over because it’ll never be all over.  So I’m going to give myself permission to just go ahead and rest.  Go ahead and celebrate.  Go ahead and play.  I don’t mean this theoretically.  I will stop in the middle of the day and take a nap or a walk.  I’ll celebrate the small victories, like clearing my email inbox, with an impromptu dance party.  I’ll finish the laundry and then stop and read a magazine, even though there is a never-ending chain of chores still clamoring for my attention.  Sometimes I get confused and start to think that I need to cross everything off my list so that I can get to my real life.  No.  It’s all my real life.  Every single glorious, sticky, messy, shining moment.  

 
I get squirmy this time of year.  I love my mother, and I adore being a mother to my daughter.  But all the Mother’s Day stuff is so sugary and sentimental it makes my teeth hurt.  Yes, it’s worth noting that mothers can be self-sacrificing and loving and put their children first.  (Otherwise, the human race might disappear.)  But that’s just one half of mothering.  I keep looking for the card that says, Dear Mom, I admire your fierceness, your fire, your ire, your righteous indignation and the way you ARE the change that you wanted to see in the world. I love the mama-bear spitfire doggedly determined part of you as much as your gentleness.  Hallmark doesn’t make that card, so I decided to write my own this year, and here it is.  Tenderness and fierceness are both part of mother love.  The world needs both. 

This was first published in Being A Broad magazine, where I write a monthly column called Advice For Renegades.  Reproduced with permission.

    Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you should do it.  I, for example, was once a truly excellent administrative assistant.  Shockingly, nobody seemed to care that I found this job so boring that I wanted to eat the paper clips.  The people around me would have been happy to see me function successfully for years in that position I was ‘just so good at.’  I kept waiting for someone to see how overqualified I was, how I could do so much more.  Guess what?  That didn’t happen. 

    I’m sure you’re not nearly as naïve as I was, and yet many women find themselves slogging along in a career that excites them about as much as turtle food.  They’re waiting:  for their work to be acknowledged, for their potential to be discovered, for their loyalty to be rewarded, or for someone to pick them out of the crowd and say, “You in the purple skirt!  This is your moment!”   

    There is a juicy archetypal story that goes like this: the lovely girl is just going along her way, minding her own business, sitting in an airport or milking the cows or writing term papers when—boom!—someone spots her true worth.  Sometimes it’s a prince, or a boss, or a light shining down from the heavens.  Sometimes it’s a professor, or a talent scout, or Oprah.  In every case, the girl is called out of obscurity through no ambition or initiative of her own.  We love this story; it’s such a convenient one, because then the humble woman can blush and step reluctantly into the limelight.  Oh gosh, she didn’t intend to attract all this attention, but gee, I guess since she’s here she’ll smile bravely and step up to the challenge!  Historically, enterprising women have employed this little fiction to avoid being accused of arrogance, scheming, or unladylike ambition.  Dr. Debra Condren points out in her book Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word that even today, ambitious men are called go-getters with initiative, while ambitious women are known as greedy bitches.  (If this seems terribly dated, think about the media’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton or Martha Stewart.)  So this tale, of the hapless woman being plucked out of the masses, still functions as a good talisman against public scorn.  It’s a harmless story, really—as long as you don’t believe it. 

    Some of my favorite fantasies have lost their sparkle as I learn more about my heroes. The actress who was ‘discovered’ in an airport?  She’d been auditioning for three years before that.  The writer whose book ‘just flowed’?  She then rewrote it nine times.  The teacher who was asked to step up as headmaster in spite of her youth?  She adored teaching and put more time, money, and effort into her own growth as an educator than did any of her colleagues. 

    In his book The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle argues that talent isn’t born, it’s grown.  He believes that there’s no such thing as ‘natural talent.’  He examined people at the top of their fields and found that what they share is not inherent ability, but something he calls ‘deep practice.’  We’ve all heard that practice makes perfect, but according to Coyle, practice simply makes permanent.  What produces mastery is the willingness to do your best, fail, then examine what you did wrong and fix it the next time.  Sustained deep practice causes a substance called myelin to form around the neural pathways associated with that task, increasing speed and accuracy.  (Apparently Einstein’s brain contained a perfectly ordinary number of synapses, to researchers’ great disappointment.  What it did contain was large amounts of this mysterious fatty tissue called myelin.)  Myelin is not inherited, like bone structure; the way you use your brain causes it to multiply or shrink.   

    It’s not enough to slug away dutifully at something you feel ambivalent about.  Coyle pinpoints passion, almost a primal longing, as another key ingredient for mastery.  In other words, he’s saying that the only way to be truly excellent at something is to really want it, and then work really consciously at it. 

    This is pretty much the opposite of conventional career wisdom, which says that you should stick with a marketable version of something that comes easily to you.  (Oh, but you’re so good with numbers—you should be an accountant, because you can!  Not everyone can be a lawyer, you know—you shouldn’t waste that.  You’re so good with kids—you have a natural gift for it!)  This well-meaning advice is based on fear.  Fear says that it’s better to stick with something safe so that you don’t risk failure, embarrassment, or disappointment. 

    But Dr. Martha Beck says that if something is worth doing well, it’s worth doing badly.  In other words, deep practice your heart out!  It won’t be comfortable, and you might in fact fail, be embarrassed, and feel disappointment.  Pardon me, but so what?  Everyone experiences those unpleasant sensations at some point, so you might as well use them in the service of something that sounds really delicious to you.
 
    So how do you find the thing worth shooting for?  Listen to your secret self, your heart’s deepest longings.  Find the thing that calls to you, that makes your heart sing, and then go out and do it really badly about a million times.  You’ll get a little bit better each time until suddenly people will look at you and say, “Oh look at that.  She must be a born leader.”  Or, “she must have always known she was meant to be a water-skiing purple-haired real-estate lawyer, some people are just lucky like that.”  And then you can smile knowingly and tell your own ‘big break’ story—how you pulled yourself out of the crowd and said, “You.  You, my dear, are going to be great.” 

This was originally published in the Career Strategies Guide published by FEW (For Empowering Women) Japan.
Reproduced with permission. 

Ah, spring.  They say that the bravest thing in the world is a flower, because it lives “balls out.” (Literally.)  This month, take note: What is sending up new tendrils in your life?  What secret longings are nudging you? What ridiculous dreams are ready to see the light? 

Now quick, without thinking about it, write down ten imaginary careers that sound fun.  Then list ten hobbies that sound fun.  (Not impressive or useful; FUN.) 

Pick just one thing that makes you drum your fingers and smile.  Then bring a tiny bit of it into your life.  Notice: I did not say quit your job and join the circus.  Just take experimental tastes (one swing on a trapeze, if you will) and see what you like. 

Then—this part is hard—when you find something fun, play at it.  Follow the tickle of delight.  It will take you to full bloom.

This was first published in Being A Broad magazine, where I write a monthly column called Advice For Renegades.  Reproduced with permission.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about criticism.  Well, not so much thinking about it as smarting from it.  In March I had an epiphany on a crowded Tokyo train.   I clearly saw, through my streaky goggles, that I was carrying around some old beliefs about being a foreigner in Japan that were as useful and lovely as a pile of birdshit.  So I wrote—earnestly, so earnestly!—an essay about the process of letting them go.  When that article was reposted to a news site, I got some of the most bile-filled, meanest, and dumbest comments and emails I’ve ever received.  Naturally, since the writers were obviously thoughtless cretins who couldn’t spell let alone think, their comments didn’t bother me, right?  Right?  RIGHT???  Pardon me while I cackle hysterically for a few minutes.  No, I am sorry to say that I slurped up all that hatefulness like it was poisoned kool-aid.  Not surprisingly, afterward I felt sick. 

I sought wise counsel.  They pointed out that the criticism was only bothering me when it hit certain points.  Specifically, it only hurt when they said things that I actually believed, or was afraid of.  To wit: the comments that smarted the most were the ones that called me self-indulgent, whining, or precious.  The barbs that ridiculed my taste in music, my understanding of Japanese culture, or my general stupidity – those just slid off my back with no lingering residue.  In other words, I am pretty secure in my music choices, my Japan savvy, and my overall genius.  But I have an old story still twisted in my mind about being a princess—a spoiled self-dramatizing baby—that resonated painfully. 

This was hugely enlightening to me.  I thought I was sensitive to criticism in general, but that’s not the case.  The criticism only really stung when it resonated with a story that I was already telling myself.  It’s like I had musical strings in me that vibrated only to particular notes.  So I did some investigation. 

I took myself through several “thought work” processes that I use in my coaching.  I used The Work, a powerful investigative process taught by Byron Katie.  I also used Self-Coaching 101, created by Brooke Castillo.  I could see how my thoughts were driving my actions and my actions naturally shaped the result I got.  Every time, the result proved true my thought.  In this case, when I believed that I was self-indulgent or precious or overdramatic, I spiraled into lots of sad and ashamed thinking, worrying about my own flaws, gazing at my navel in despair.  Helllllo!  The more I believed these harsh judgmental thoughts about myself, the more I turned into the whiny princess I was so afraid of becoming!!  I had proved my original thought (that I was a drama queen) and it totally stunk.  I was ready to change the thought so that I would get a different result.  Both the Self-Coaching 101 method and Byron Katie’s The Work are available free online, but there is also a simpler way.  I asked myself three questions.  Is this thought true?  Is it kind?  Is it useful?  In each case, the beliefs that I was self-indulgent, a whiner, and a drama queen were none of the above. 

I’m not enlightened enough to magically dispel crappy thoughts like that; I need to replace them with something that feels better and is totally believable to me.  (I don’t believe it makes sense to recite ‘affirmations’ that you don’t believe.  But just in case I'm wrong: I own a horse, I own a horse, I own a horse.)  So I replaced my thoughts with the following: Life feels rich and dramatic to me, and that’s a good thing.  Talking and writing about my process, rather than pretending to be perfect, is useful to me and maybe even to others.  Also, I will wear a tiara if I damn well feel like it.  These might sound kind of silly, but because they were true, kind, and useful, they were powerful motivators for me.  And before I knew it, the poison of those hateful comments was gone. 

Only then did I remember something that Julia Cameron says about criticism.  I think she’s right on the money.  She writes: “Ah-hah! is often the accompanying inner sound when a well-placed, accurate critical arrow makes its mark.  The [person] thinks, “Yes!  I can see that!  That’s right! I can change that!”  The criticism that damages [a person] is the criticism—well intentioned or ill—that contains no saving kernel of truth yet has a certain damning plausibility or an unassailable blanket judgment that cannot be rationally refuted.” 

When I worked with my favorite writing teacher, even her most difficult criticisms left me feeling a kind of relief.  I would think, “Ohhhh, that’s why that section isn’t working.  Yes, I see how to fix it now.”  That’s very different than a sniggering condemnation that ridicules someone for having even tried in the first place.  That kind of criticism comes from misdirected pain or fear and is not useful at all.  Except maybe to fertilize my flowers.

So next time I post an essay online, I’m going to carry Julia Cameron’s quote with me.  And I’m also going to know better than to read the damn comments.  But in the meantime, I’m going to keep delving into the process because it’s delicious.  I’ll wear my tiara, from Claire’s, with the purple plastic jewels in it.  I'll keep talking about it.  And if a horse shows up, I’ll let you know.  

Here is a big secret: you really don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.  You are totally free.  You’re even free to make terrible choices!  You could kiss your boss, abandon your kids,  cheat on your taxes.  You could lie, be destructive, break a promise.  (I’m glad you don’t want to.  But what’s it feel like, just knowing that you could?)  Imagine the potency of removing ‘can’t’ and ‘have-to’ from your mental vocabulary.  Believing “I can’t have fun anymore because of my kids/job/dog” is passive and disempowering.  Thinking “I choose to go home/work/walk because I am someone who honors my own values” is a way to claim authority and sovereignty over your life.  It’s a slight shift in perspective, but it’s enough to change the millstones around your neck into your treasures.  When you acknowledge ownership of your choices, you are free.  And that’s priceless.

This was first published in Being A Broad magazine, where I write a monthly column called Advice For Renegades.  Reproduced with permission.