Walking Through Fear

I'm in the middle of a whirlwind of guests, speeches and travel, and too busy to keep up with my regular, weekly blogging.  Until my life calms down again, I'm going to be reprising some of my favorite posts from the past.  This one is from October 21, 2006.  In hindsight, I'm happy to report that I wasn't crazy to try my hand at fiction.  Even if my novel still isn't ready for prime time, I wrote my way to the end and had an incredible time immersing myself in the creative process.  And, yes, every day I still practice walking through fear.  

We’re all afraid.

If we’re not anxious about getting senile or going broke, we’re worried that our children will start using drugs or that we’ll end up as one-hit wonders.

It doesn’t matter how accomplished, brilliant and beautiful we are. Fear comes with the territory of being human. And the better we are at navigating through it, the more comfortable we feel in our skins and surroundings.

Facing fear also goes hand-in-hand with realizing our dreams. That’s why for the past six years, beginning the morning I got the inspiration to write my first book, I’ve been trying to do one bold thing a day. Anything that scares me, that makes my stomach go up and down or causes my breath to catch in my throat, qualifies. Cold calling a radio producer, speaking before a large audience, saying no to an unwelcome invitation—I count them all. I’ve even given myself credit for trying gorgonzola cheese. (The smell alone frightens me!)

Two Recommendations

1)  Martin Seligman's new book Flourish.

Ever since the Framers of the Constitution claimed that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right, Americans have been obsessed with feeling good.  At some universities, the study of happiness has even become an academic discipline. Seligman, the father of positive psychology, was at the helm of this movement.

Now he's done an about-face.  He argues that to flourish, we shouldn't obsess about happiness but instead focus on five separate elements of well-being, each pursued for its own sake: positive emotion, engagement (the feeling of being lost in a task), relationships, meaning and accomplishment.  

Want to learn more?  Click here to read a recent NYT article that describes each element in greater depth.

2)  Brene Brown's TED Talk (below).  In this riveting video, a professor of social work at the University of Houston speaks about the importance of vulnerability in increasing our connectedness to others.  She says that the more vulnerable and less perfect we allow ourselves to be, the better our relationships and sense of well-being.  

My Inner Wimp

This probably won’t come as a shock to you, dear reader, but I'm quite opinionated--at least on paper.  When it comes to voicing my ideas to an actual flesh-and-blood person, however, my inner wimp occasionally emerges.

Earlier this week, for example, I said to the producer of the TV show I host, “I think we should do more close-ups of our guests.”  Her response was, shall I say, tepid.

I backpedaled.  “No problem,” I replied.  “You’re the expert.”  

“Do you feel strongly about this?” she asked.

“I do,” I answered. 

“Then don’t back down,” she said crisply.  “Stand by your words.”

Haunting Words

A single bad review.  That’s all the negative feedback I received when Defying Gravity was first published.  Tons of praise and just one pan.  The reviewer said my writing was “cliché-ridden, saccharine, and uninspired….  Nothing in it cuts to the bone.” 

Ouch!

Among the myriad of glowing reviews, that one scathing judgment validated every insecurity I'd ever had about my writing and made me slightly ashamed of the book itself.  

Believe me, I knew I was crazy to focus on the negative.  I tried to ignore the reviewer's words, but they haunted me.  It didn’t matter that my aim in Defying Gravity wasn’t to publish great prose or win a Pulitzer.  It didn't matter that I'd accomplished my goal, which was to write a quick and easy read that would inspire people to not give up on their dreams as they age.  (I'm being trite again, I know.)  From that point on, I almost always prefaced my comments about the book with the words, “It’s not that well-written, but....”

Then two things happened that changed my thinking.  First, a woman I work with at the Mercy Learning Center mentioned to me this week that she's reading the book and loving it.  I could see in her eyes and hear in her voice that she was being totally sincere.  “I want to give it to all my girlfriends,” she said.  "Every middle-aged woman I know needs to read this book."

Mind you, I’ve heard this comment before.  Actually, I’ve heard it again and again.  But something about how Diane said it made me see that I’ve been getting in the way of the book’s power to transform lives.  

When I told my husband what Diane said and the epiphany I'd had as a result, he sent me a link to the video below.  Some of you might find it, well, saccharine, cliché-ridden, even offensive in terms of its religious slant.  (For being three letters, God is such a huge term, isn’t it?)  But I’d rather have Marianne Williamson's words--often erroneously attributed to Nelson Mandela--stick in my mind than the judgment of some isolated reviewer.  

A Profile in Courage

Some people are born daredevils, risking life and limb without breaking into a sweat.  Others are born chickens, plagued by so much self-doubt that even when they desperately long to to take a leap in their lives, they can't.

And then there are those who are just as afraid as the non-leapers, yet jump anyway.  George VI of Britain, nicknamed “Bertie” by his family and played to perfection by Colin Firth in The King’s Speech, was just such an individual--or so the film would have us believe.

Trying to overcome a debilitating stammer as he ascends to the throne, the future king struggles mightily, but doesn't give up.  When speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) says to him, "Bertie, you're the bravest man I know," the audience understands exactly what he means.

How can the rest of us cultivate this kind of courage?  The film provides a roadmap:

How to Stay the Course

Even the biggest names in literature struggle to put words on the page—that’s the moral of a recent Wall Street Journal story entitled "How to Write a Great Novel."

Not surprisingly, the headline is a tease.  None of the 11 top authors interviewed for the article, including Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel (pictured above, courtesy Writers Pictures), actually tells how to write a good book, let alone a great one.  They all, however, talk freely about the challenges involved and how they deal with them.

Between the lines, the article shows that writing a novel is not all that different from pursuing other passions. Among a host of hurdles, these authors struggle with procrastination, fear of failure and the ever-present lure of the Internet.

Sound familiar?

The bottom line:  To write a novel, thousands of hours of hard work are required with no guaranteed payoff other than random moments of intense exhilaration and the satisfaction of having achieved a dream. 

Which, at least to my way of thinking, is (almost) compensation enough.

I'm Back

Four years. That’s how long I’ve been working on my novel about a late bloomer. And what a revelatory process it’s been. Whether my book ends up selling dozens of copies or millions, I’ve been enriched by the process.

Is it done? No.

I’d hoped it would be finished by the time I started blogging again, but at least I’m on the downward stretch and can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. There were times I doubted I had the stamina, let alone the skill, to write a readable story, but I kept working at my craft, cranking out the pages.

Why am I telling you this? Because there’s a lesson here:

Even if you’re not sure you’ve got what it takes to do what you dream of doing, go for it. Take classes, if you think that would help. Join some kind of support group, if you’re the kind of person who needs encouragement. Find a mentor. Experiment. Perhaps even take a break for a while. (I did all of these.)

But don’t give up.


P.S. I became a first-time grandmother this summer. Here are two photos of Lydia Rose, born July 2nd in New York City--one of her with her father, my 33-year old son Gabe; the other with my 86-year old mom and me. What an incredible experience it's been watching my child nurture his child!

Penny Pearlman on the Importance of Showing Up

For the past two years, I've been watching my dear friend Penny Pearlman conceive, gestate and birth her first book: Pretty Smart: Lessons from Our Miss Americas.

After traveling all across the country interviewing 22 former Miss Americas (including Phyllis George and Gretchen Carlson of Fox & Friends), Penny has much wisdom to share about going for a dream. In a future posting, I'll tell her wonderful story in greater depth, but here's a quick taste from her own blog:

Earlier this week I gave a talk before a group called the Passion Project here in Connecticut. Each month the moderator (my dear friend and fellow author, Prill Boyle) invites a woman to share her journey and her passion.

As I thought about what I would say and listed the seminal moments in my life, I realized that the thread that ran through my various travels towards achievement, around obstacles and through my own self doubts is that I showed up. I showed up when opportunity presented itself. I showed up when I was looking for a new path. I showed up even though my knees were quaking.

Acting As If, Cont.

In response to my last posting, a woman named Liz e-mailed me yesterday to share the following story:

When I was a recent grad of Boston University’s art history department in 1982, there were hundreds of lovely young “art historians” roaming the cultured city of Boston looking for the same gallery job that I was. After 9 months of searching ( being charming was so exhausting), I landed a job in a small gallery where the director was inadequate and the owner had just met the love of her life and was about to become an absentee owner. After only one month of being the gallery assistant she asked me to become her gallery director. There were 50 visual artists in her “stable” and she had a plan to transform the focus from visual arts to high-end, artist-made metalsmithing (read: jewelry). I was simultaneously thrilled and panicked by her offer and vision of me as her gallery director.

She taught me EXACTLY what you suggested in your blog today. I consider her my mentor in many ways because she implored me to act “AS IF” I was in charge. She was a phone call away for consult and guidance and assured me that I had the instinct (if not the experience) TO BE her gallery director. While all of my clients and artists (customers and vendors) were older than I was, I quickly assumed the title and persona of the Director.

Of course, acting “AS IF” is easier when there is support around to guide us through unknown waters. But the self navigation can be even more satisfying. I benefited from both.

Exercise of the Week: Acting As If

Telling someone to fake a feeling sounds slightly disreputable. But as many a famous author, movie mogul or businesswoman will tell you, sometimes to get ahead you've got to pretend you've got more on the ball than you actually do.

When Defying Gravity was no more than a pipe dream, I walked and talked as if I were already a "real" writer. Before I ever put pen to paper, I called up prospective interviewees and said, "I'm writing a book about late bloomers and was wondering if I could take a few hours of your time to hear your story." I never told anyone I was published. That would have been an outright lie. I simply acted as if I were a serious author. Doing so helped me gain the confidence and skills to actually become one.

The "act as if" principle can be applied to all sorts of aspects of your life. In Philip Galanes' Social Q's column that appeared in yesterday's NY Times, a woman wrote in to say that her boyfriend dumped her and that her heart was broken. She wanted to know how she should act when she sees him again. Galanes, in essence, told her to act as if she's already moved on. Here's an excerpt from his reply:

Every morning, set your iPod to the song “So What!” by the pop singer-slash-philosopher known as Pink: “So, so what/I’m still a rock star/I’ve got my rock moves/And I don’t need you.”

The volume should be deafening; you should listen to it at least three times in a row; and ideally, you will sing along — at full throttle — in front of the full-length mirror in your bedroom.

Not only will you feel better, but you will also learn how to behave in front of your boyfriend: You will act "as if" you’re just fine without him, thank you very much. And you will fake this feeling — as if your life depended on it — until the real thing comes along. (P.S.: If you don’t like Pink, feel free to substitute any proud breakup anthem by Alanis Morissette or Marianne Faithfull. And until further notice, please banish all traces of Joni Mitchell from your household!)

Great advice, eh?

Keeping both these stories in mind, this week's exercise (the last until further notice) is to act as if you're already where you want to be.

Self-Doubt, cont.

Reading about a Van Gogh exhibit currently running at the Yale University Art Library (“Van Gogh’s Cypresses and The Starry Night: Visions of Saint-Rémy”) got me combing through my journal for reflections on my visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam last year. Here’s an excerpt that relates to switching careers:

What surprised me most about this collection was Van Gogh’s self-doubt, the fact that at the end of his relatively short life, this great artist still considered himself a failure.

I was also struck by the fact that Van Gogh was initially a preacher. Only after becoming disillusioned with that career path did he turn to painting. Shunning formal training, he hoped to give an original voice to the world—-painting as preaching, so to speak. And what an original voice he had!

Like Van Gogh, many of us are plagued with self-doubt. But who among us does not have an original voice?

Click "Play" to hear Don McLean's song “Vincent,” inspired by Van Gogh’s painting La Nuit Etoilee, or Starry Night, (Saint-Remy, 1889). A slide show of Van Gogh's paintings accompanies the video.

Note: The painting above, at right, is a Self-Portrait of Van Gogh, dedicated to Paul Gauguin (1888, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University).

Dealing with Doubt

Eight years ago I wrote in my journal the following entry (which I subsequently used in my book on late bloomers):

I'm struggling with doubt. The trick, I suspect, is to turn away before it grabs you by the throat. My personal demon sits on my shoulder wearing a gray business suit and a fedora and whispers in my ear that I'd better keep my day job. "You're not a writer," it taunts me. When I shared this with my mom, she remarked, "That little devil sounds just like your dad!"

I still struggle with doubt. (Who doesn't?) But these days I no longer ignore my fedora-wearing demon; I talk back to it!

Note: The photo above is of my hypercritical, yet generous-hearted father, taken when he was in his 20's.

True Grit

Below are some excerpts from a provocative article titled True Grit published in the Winter 2007 Penn Arts & Sciences Magazine.

Author Priya Ratneshwar writes:

Nature or nurture? Inspiration or perspiration? Most of us have wondered whether success is due more to the talents we’re born with or to the choices we make. [UPenn] Assistant professor of psychology Angela Duckworth...determined there was one personal characteristic shared by most prominent leaders in every field: grit.

...Defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals,” grit is differentiated from the closely related trait of self-discipline.... The latter involves the ability to resist temptation and stay focused on accomplishing tasks immediately at hand.... Grit, however, goes further than self-discipline and involves a commitment to very long-term goals that does not waver in the face of failure or adversity.

Now, here’s the part I like best:

[Duckworth’s] study also determined that older individuals tend to be higher in grit than younger ones, which suggests that the trait might increase over a person’s life.

To download the full article, click here and scroll down to True Grit.

Dealing with Mistakes

Here’s an article for all you perfectionists out there. (Believe me, it takes one to know one.) The piece, "The Many Errors in Thinking About Mistakes," appeared in the Personal Business section of The New York Times this past Saturday. It's by Alina Tugend, a freelance writer based in NYC. Click here to read.

From Late Bloomer's Revolution Author Amy Cohen

I can't say enough wonderful things about Amy Cohen's irresistible memoir THE LATE BLOOMER'S REVOLUTION (Hyperion 2007). I asked her to write a guest post for this blog, and here's what she sent me. Enjoy!

First, I want to say what a pleasure it is to speak to so many Late Bloomers. As I’ve said so many times, we need to stick together and be each other’s best cheerleaders, if only because the path to blooming late is so often paved with many, occasionally blinding, obstacles.

I think my first advice would be to look within. I needed to ask myself, first and foremost, what was standing in my way, and not surprisingly? It was me. Within a year I lost my mother, my boyfriend (who I was desperate to marry), my job (as a sitcom writer), and my face (to an eight month rash). That left me wondering who I was without all the things that I thought defined me, which left me to ask: Who am I? And what is it I really want from my life? And the even more difficult: So what’s the problem?

I will tell you honestly the look within isn’t going to be easy. It may even set you back at certain times. It’s normal to succumb to long, mopey days, months, and even years when everything feels just too big and overwhelming, but just keep going forward.

I learned this the hard way myself.

I taught myself to ride a bicycle at thirty-five. At the time, I had no idea it would be one of the defining experiences of my adult life. I was just feeling sort of bleak and depressed about my life, and I wanted something to make me feel strong, if even just physically. That summer was filled with enough embarrassing moments (yes, riding into several parked cars; falling off my bike often and very publicly) to fill a lifetime. But I kept going. I had a goal and I wouldn’t let anything (including bruises covering my entire body) get in my way.

Since that summer I’ve taken bike trips to the Canadian Rockies and New Zealand. A friend of mine said that what he loved about biking was that, “you can’t look too far ahead or too far behind or you’ll crash.” I loved that metaphor so much and have used it to guide me through many difficult times since, always telling myself to just keep looking forward.

Part of the reason, too, why it’s so essential to keep trying to nail down who you are (trust me, I’m still working on it) is that, if you are a Late Bloomer, it’s very likely you will come up against well meaning, but exhausting comments. Things like 'aren’t you a little old to be considering the Peace Corps?' Or “Well, that’s a very young business to be thinking about now.” For me it also meant considering having children older and being told by a highly recommended and very expensive doctor, “for a thirty-nine year old your options are running out.” And now I’m forty-one. He’d probably put me out to pasture. And while what he said may have been true, it was no less devastating.

I never set out to be a Late Bloomer. In fact, I agonized for years about why things hadn’t happened as I expected them to. I thought I would be the successful TV writer, with an English Sculptor husband, great loft, and cute kids. But that wasn’t my story.

Instead, my story has been filled with so many happy surprises I would never have even dreamed of for myself. Things that exceeded even my wildest dreams (and my dreams can get pretty wild.)

For example. when I was thirty-six I got offered a job as a television reporter (my first time on TV). I figured at thirty-six I had the shelf life of a gallon of milk, but I was wrong. Another wonderful surprise was my relationship with my father. We’d had a difficult time for many years, and after my mother died, we found each other in the most incredible way. Actually, we were both dating at the same time. He got offered lists of women, while I got offered bagel. But we supported each other and cheered each other on. Our relationship remains one of the great joys of my life.

Finally, I would say that you have to believe in whatever your dream is and know that it very well may not happen in the time you think and it may not even look like the dream you imagined (now I’m happily considering adoption), but that is the fantastic thing about we Late Bloomers. We’re dreamers, yes, but with the blooms to prove it.

A Crisis of Confidence

Many a dream has been thwarted by a lack of confidence.

The problem crosses cultural and gender divides. According to a University of Wisconsin study, males score only slightly higher on global measures of self-esteem than females.

But for women in Botswana, a lack of confidence in their worth and abilities doesn’t just affect the shape of their dreams. It’s a life and death matter.

An estimated one in three Botswanan citizens between the ages of 15 and 49 is infected with the HIV virus. And because Botswanan women generally don't have a say about how and when they have sex, practicing the ABCs of HIV prevention (abstinence, being faithful, and condomizing) is especially difficult.

In an article appearing in this month's Pennsylvania Gazette (the alumni magazine of the U. of Pennsylvania), Dr. Musa Dube, an associate professor of theology and religious studies at the University of Botswana, describes the emotional toll:

"When we kiss and make love, the enemy is there. It is now in our veins, in our blood, in our cells, in our fluids, in our minds. HIV/AIDS makes love drag us to death."

The bright spot among this grim reality is that cultural attitudes about sex are slowly beginning to shift in Botswana; and with that shift, women are starting to find their voices.

The group of schoolgirls pictured at left attend a community school in Good Hope, Botswana that I spoke at in February. The 15 girls pictured at the top of this posting are from the same school. They belong to the Peace Corps-sponsored GLOW Club (“Teaching Girls to Lead Our World”) that sponsored my visit.

These young women are some of the most poised and self-assured teenagers I have ever met. My hope, and surely their teachers’ hope, is that they will be as assertive in the bedroom as they are in the classroom.

Their dreams are as lofty as yours and mine. But they have to be alive for those dreams to come true.