Most of us spend a lot of time trying to fix what’s wrong with us—to round off our rough edges, so to speak.  (New Year’s resolutions, anyone?)  Dave Rendall says that’s exactly the wrong tack to take.  In his manifesto "The Freak Factor: Discovering Uniqueness By Flaunting Weakness,"  he says that our supposed flaws are actually the key to our greatness.  The trick is to see how your ‘worst’ traits might serve you.  Arrogant?  Be a leader.  Unfocused?  Brainstorm brilliantly.  Shy?  Be subversive.  Living in Japan among dainty waifs, I once felt hulking and enormous.  But then I realized that height is a sign of power, strength, and leadership; so now I wear heels and literally stand as tall as I can.   If you filed down all your spiky bits, you’d just be mediocre.  When you embrace your inner freak, you have the raw fuel to be outstanding. 

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

Let’s imagine, just hypothetically, that you have shopper’s remorse, extra Christmas pounds, and a bitch of a New Year’s hangover.  So you vow to crank yourself up out of those bad habits by sheer force of will.  Ready, set, go!…CRASH.  If willpower were all it took, you’d already be doing those things.  Until the payoff of the new behavior becomes its own reward, try bribery.  Something clicks in our brains when we do something for four days in a row (see The Four-Day Win by Martha Beck).  So the goal is to trick yourself by easing into the new behavior so slowly and pleasurably that it never feels painful.  Example: four days in a row, get out your yoga mat.  Then, stop for the day and give yourself a treat.  (Tea, nap, magazine, whatever.) On day five, add a stretch and another treat.  Rinse, repeat, treat—voila!

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

You’ve heard it before: perfection will permit no mistakes, while excellence learns from its mistakes.  This means that if you’re doing it right, you will actually make—I’m sorry to break it to you—mistakes.  And not theoretical mistakes; no, you’ll actually fall down hard a few times.  On your rear.  In public.  You’ll be embarrassed, you’ll lose money, the business will fail or your proposal will be rejected or you’ll torpedo a project.  Congratulations!  Welcome to the road to greatness!  Failure is part of the deal!  You’ll cry.  It’ll suck.  And you can survive that.  It feels awful, but it’s not fatal.  In fact, it’s incredibly useful.  Because you get a choice: to quit, or to incorporate what you’ve learned in order to become excellent.  And when you claim your failure and USE it to get better, then you become not just great, but downright unstoppable. 

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

Note: this first appeared in the magazine Being A Broad, where I write a monthly tip.  It was written with a Tokyo audience in mind, but hey...here it is anyway. 

Sometimes living in Japan can be so surreal that it literally feels like a dream.  Like that time you shared a beer with Little Bo Peep and ate octopus balls, and a guy on the street asked if he could have a strand of your hair, and also were your breasts real?  Because that was no dream.  This time in Japan may be a hiatus, or an adventure, or just be outside your comfort zone, but it isn’t time OUT of your real life—it IS your real life!  And not to kill your buzz, but it’s the only one you get.  So dive deep, kick up your heels, and suck the juice and marrow out of it.  And if you ever get a chance to hang out with Little Bo Peep, definitely go for it. 

But not quite yet. 
Instead, I'll post a poem I wrote for a friend of mine.


for Pam, who is deathly pregnant

I picture you stepping out of your fevered skin.
Slipping into the cool robe of a long afternoon,
the gentle hands of the wind, the quiet of water.
I would pray ease for you.
But you in your dark goddess days
told me with flashing eyes and words of blood
that you had been to the darkness
and deep inside were rubies so brilliant
that they could blind the accidental traveler.

This journey is deliberate.
You are the hero, the wise crone,
the beast to be kissed and the sleeping self to rescue.
You are the child long awaited
and the mother giving birth forever. 

This is the tale of a love
that won’t stay nailed down or rolled up,
that curls and unfurls. 
This is the story that you have been telling me all along. 
So I will dive into my own darkness, as you dive into yours,
and down there I will sing a song to you
that you have sung to me before.
The song says that

after this, comes joy.