Category Archives: possibility

Recommended Book : The Change Guidebook, by Elizabeth Hamilton Guarino

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Change is part of life – both in reaction to life,  and by proactively creating the change.

Elizabeth Hamilton Guarino’s  new book, The Change Guidebook,  will help you do the latter.

Yes, you can change yourself, and make a positive difference in the world too – with clear thought, helpful guidelines, and help from this successful life coach, influencer, consultant, trainer and speaker who tells it like it is and gives you the step-by-step guidelines, stories, steps, and exercises to help you do it.

Me, I tend to improv my way through life, which often works for me. But I remain open to input – and when others can help me focus and make my plan more clear and purposeful, I’m all for it.

I welcome the guidance. We’re all connected, (a concept both EHG and I talk about in our books) and designed to help each other.

I personally have reinvented myself so many times , I feel like a shape-shifter. Partial list of transitions:

  • From folksinger to NYC stage actor to lead singer in a band 
  • single Los  Angeles actress to Connecticut wife and mom.
  • Wife  to single mom /radio on-air talent to full-time voice talent and author , to…
  • professional speaker…to audiobook narrator,
  • single mom to married again.
  • …to podcast host.
  • …to  grandparent.
  • To, once again, author.

This week, I read Elizabeth’s book to put it all in perspective and clarify next steps. I actually did the exercises and enjoyed myself in the process, all the while learning about others’ journeys, and clarifying the meanings of my own choices.

Get this book – and use it! You’ll be so glad you did, to be your Best Ever You – and add more happier to the world.. I certainly am.

PS – I first met Elizabeth (still only virtually, maybe someday in person) as a guest on her Best Ever You show, and now am thrilled to be the voice that introduces her podcasts. And, I’m a fan.

 

 

 

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Embracing the Muse: What Are We Afraid of?

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When I left Morning Radio, I swore I would never wake up before the sunrise again.

I’d earned it. 3:15 AM for eight years, seriously?

Yet here I am, coffee in hand, watching the sun rise through the trees outside my kitchen window.

For the second day in a row.

My brain wakes me up – to…what? write?

To write?

Am I, like, a writer now?

My meek self answers: Um, I guess so?

Sure, I’ve written a book or two. My first one was published ten years ago. It still sells, albeit modestly (there goes that meek voice again, oops). My latest book launches in 11 days, officially, and in this waiting period (truth be told, there is a lot to do, so not technically waiting) I have way too much time to second-guess myself.

As you can see, I write blog posts too. Not sure who reads them, but I write them.

Does that make me a “writer”?

I write to get my spinning brain to spit it out, organize the thoughts, refine the message, and share it.

It’s the sharing part that sometimes eludes me. Yes, good enough for me – but other people?

Here comes the too-familiar words that lock the door: Who am I to think that I have something of value to offer to the world? I’m not really a writer. Not really.

And, yet, I’m sitting here – well, writing.

Because, for some reason, I have to. So there, doubting inner voice.

So, for today, the message has changed, from Why me? To Why not me? To Of course, me!

I have to write today. The knock on the door was too loud to ignore this morning.

I want to learn to hear it more often, and open the door to embrace the muse, collaborate, and share the light.

Why do we hold ourselves back?

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Invincible: On Audacity, Big Magic and Being a Happily Flawed Badass

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I think Elizabeth Gilbert and Jen Sincero are changing my (literal) dreams.

Take last night. I had the best dream.

(Ugh, yeah, I know Not a fan of dream stories either. #sorrynotsorry.)

Why so great, you ask? (of course you do. I’m making up both sides of this conversation)

What was great was that this dream was the opposite of the Actor’s Nightmare. We’ve all had these – could take different forms depending on what you do for a living – but the doubt is the same: you feel inadequate, unprepared, and  expected to deliver.

For actors, it takes place onstage:, when (a) no one told you you had the part til now (b) you don’t know your lines because it isn’t your fault no one gave you a script!!! or (c) you’re naked.

In this dream, though. I felt invincible. What a nice change. I did not want to wake up.

In this dream, I was not perfect, not at all. Just me. And I felt like I belonged, no matter what. And I wanted to keep that feeling, to stay this confident and invincible, during my waking hours.

(Liz Gilbert, in her book, Big Magic, refers to this as a poet’s term: “the arrogance of belonging.”)

The plot was sort of like this: I’d thought I was meant to be at a tryout for a track team. Me, with 4 hip surgeries behind me and one leg weaker than the other (from nerve damage during one surgery). I cannot run. Literally. But I went anyway. To the track team tryout.

Because, why not?

Just to see what was up.

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Are We Foolish to Hope? To Trust?

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It’s common to see optimism as foolishness. Because
not everything “works out”—at least, not the way we pictured it.

Our specific hopes and dreams may turn out to have been, well, incorrect.
Oh, no, not that!
But Trust is about more than wishing for something specific and then getting mad at a world that doesn’t deliver what you ordered.

Trust, or a clearer definition of Optimism, is about the bigger picture.

It’s also the belief that your own behavior can change some things—like putting on your seat belt to prevent serious injury should there be an accident.

It’s not the blind belief that you are immune to the actions of others (like
the other driver who ran the red light).

In fact, despite rumors to the contrary, optimists are folks who are willing to do the hard work to prove themselves right—and accept when
the outcome they visualized might have to be altered.

Yes, Positive Thinking does rely on hope to some extent—but it doesn’t omit personal responsibility.

All Will Be Well.
Somehow.

All Will Be Well does not absolve us of all responsibility to do our best,
or to learn from mistakes. It’s just meant to address the needless anxiety and doubt that comes after we’ve done all we can do, learned from it, and fixed what we can.

And then…choosing (gulp) optimism.
Yes, optimism. All Will Be Well. Just maybe not the way I expected it
to be.

  • excerpt from Happier Made Simple: Chapter Five, T is for Trust.
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Hello Again, Stranger!: Tiptoeing Back Into Small Encounters

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How I’ve missed you, person I meet by accident. We’ve been in our caves, zooming away, and hiding behind our masks for too long.

Cheers!

Yesterday my daughter Ali and I went took her three little munchkins out for ice cream at a local shop located on a family farm. Afterwards we went out to see the donkeys (gotta get fertilizer for the corn crop from somewhere!), and in the blink of an eye our 5yo made instant friends with another little girl named Emily, and (blink again) suddenly our kid troupe of three was a horde of five kids – Emily had a little brother – running around as if they’d known each other forever.

Being able to go out somewhere and accidentally meet and talk with someone random is something I hadn’t even been aware I missed so much.

Ah, people.

And, as moms of any age do, Ali and I started to chat with Emily’s mother. They don’t live in our town, so it’s unlikely we’d run into them again. Still, what a nice ten-minute conversation – we covered sleep training, school in a pandemic, sibling rivalry, and ice cream flavors.  And then we each went home to our separate lives.

But – oh, how lovely. For the past year, most “meetings” with people outside our pods have been carefully orchestrated, sanitized, and/or with a computer screen between us. Being able to go out somewhere and accidentally meet and talk with someone random is something I hadn’t even been aware I missed so much.

Ah, people.

  • Ah, little child sitting next to me on an airplane who gives me a sticker from her collection to put on my iPad case.
  • Oh, couple we chat with at the bar, talking about our families, our work, even (sometimes) politics.
  • Oh, woman behind me in the produce section who shares exactly how she can tell a melon is ripe. (thank you!)
  • And -for me – oh my audience members how I miss you. The exchange of energy, the shared laughter during the show or presentation, , the small chats afterwards.

How I’ve missed you. How I treasure you. These small encounters are little gifts from the universe that we didn’t know we needed, experiences to remind us that we don’t have all the answers, and that some of our plans need to be flexible.

Because: life.

Let’s inch out of this pandemic together, probably on tiptoe, but let’s never forget how much we can meant to each other – even in ways we took for granted, or didn’t remember to treasure, before we were isolated from them.

Stranger: welcome back. I appreciate you as never before.

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April’s Word: Complete. How Did it Go?

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Well…is anything ever really complete? (*sighs* started with a disclaimer…no-judgment zone)

As you may be aware, this year I opted out of New Year’s Resolutions (okay, opted out again) and chose instead a try-and-see approach simply by choosing a word for each month, no pressure, and seeing what might happen.

April’s Word

April’s word: complete. Well, it was going to be finish, but that sounded too much like a command and I hate being told what to do (even by me). Complete, on the other hand, is a gentler verb (as in “you complete me.” Corniness aside, it’s still kinda sweet). Complete can also be an adjective, with all sorts of warm fuzzies attached. (as in, my life is complete, a self-talk phrase I used a lot during my 16 single-parenting years.. Better than, um,  my life is finished. You get the point. Word choice matters.)

Bottom line results for April: I did complete a few things (yay), but more often I just made some progress. And, as one of the Covid-era  online webinars I took reminded me: Progress is a form of success. (Shout-out to Brandon Eastman’s Be Better Industries).

Everything I did complete felt SO. DAMN. GOOD. Completion leaves open space.

Done: (work projects with deadlines don’t really count, as we’re usually motivated for those)

  • Completed (or skimmed and donated, truth be told) some books still left piled in

    Love my Sis – Color Adds to Doodles

    my reading spot from January’s word: Open.

  • Completed three of the masterclasses I’d started (Steve Martin on Comedy, Ron Finley on Gardening; Nancy Cartwright on Voice Acting)
  • Fixed the stuff in the mending pile
  • 2nd vaccine shot received!

Progress: (projects that had been getting pushed aside more each day):

  • Voice education started in January (warm-ups and reading)
  • 2 doodling classes (March’s word: Visual Art)
  • The happiness class I’d started (online) – hey, made it to end of week 2 (am I the only one here who starts a class and lets it slide?…show of hands, please)

So – if I were to grade the power of this word for me I’d give it a B+ – allowing for just being human.  Might try that word again. Everything I did complete felt SO. DAMN. GOOD. Completion leaves open space.

Note: I noticed that I never completed blogging about my words for February or March. So there’s that.

Briefly:

February’s word was: Write.

Results:

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Unmoored: What To Do if Life Goes Adrift

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I’m not a huge interpreter of dreams, but last night’s was a doozy. My home was about to fall into a sinkhole. ( What ?!?!  )

So I had to climb onto the roof, leaving behind all I had worked so hard to create.  Carefully chosen wallpaper, brownies baking in the oven – all abandoned; I climbed up, nearer to the sky (with a friend, identity unknown) as the house drifted into the water (I guess I had scored a waterfront property in this dream, wahoo) – destination entirely unknown. No map. Just safety from disaster, and no choice but to trust that we would land somewhere. Somehow.  And eventually we did land – on an island where my family was among others waiting to share this new experience.

I know where this dream came from. Life is like that now for me – unmoored. Maybe for you too. My business has changed. More people getting into voice-overs and narration – suddenly everyone and their grandmas have created in-home audio and video studios, (and so my cool set-up isn’t the novelty it used to be).and they are lowering price points.

Live speaker gigs with actual people have disappeared for now – or morphed into virtual presentations. Even audiobook narration (my constant staple in 2020) slowed down for awhile – so I ‘ve had more unscheduled time than I had before Covid, and have been feeling (like in the dream) adrift and unmoored. Not sure what to leave behind, not sure what the Universe is trying to tell me.

One year (and counting) into this pandemic, and I can barely remember what it felt like to have a jam-packed day and then gratefully collapse back home, grateful to slow down at last. Can you?

So – we adjust. I’ve jumped (or been forced to jump) many times before, and have always landed on my feet. I bet you have as well.

But in-between the old and the new, there is that time we spend adrift. Boats unmoored, not quite knowing how to navigate.

Still – there is a lesson in everything. I firmly believe that. I have to. I’ve been unmoored before – and, looking back, it always led me to greater things.

So – we adjust. I’ve jumped (or been forced to jump) many times before, and have always landed on my feet. I bet you have as well.

My husband deserted our family when my kids were 3 and 6, leaving me to fully support and raise my son and daughter. This led to a new career as a radio broadcaster, and also a drama teacher. It also inspired me to greater heights as an actor and voice talent.

After 17 years, the radio station decided suddenly to “make a change”. I felt lost (unmoored). This feeling led to time to write my book (Ben Behind His Voices) – and to my speaking career, national and international.

Two years ago, I discovered that my biological father was actually a sperm donor – and my whole concept of “family” had to change. This led to discoveries: a new genetic half-sister; a reinforced concept of the value of “shared experience” and that family is what you embrace.

Every job loss, every relationship gone pffft!, every empty space left when you lose something is also an opportunity. Sometimes you know where to steer the boat – sometimes you don’t. In that case, some faith is required.

  • Stop flailing and complaining
  • Let Go of the past
  • Listen to what the world seemed to be telling me
  • Trust that you don’t know – or control – everything. But you do have choices.
  • Take a New Step off the boat onto that new land.

How about you? When have you been set adrift in the past, and what happened (oh, hindsight, you fantastic teacher). What did you learn? What new things did the open sea lead you do?

Unmoored. For now. Where will you travel to?

 

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Art: Creating for the Non-Artist

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Word of the month for March:

Art.

Why?

Because I’m not an artist – at least, not a visual one.

Why do it, then?

Three reasons:

  • It can be fun.
  • It reaches another part of the brain
  • Hey, ya never know. Maybe you are a visual artist of sorts.

We all have our “gifts” – you know, the interests and abilities that  come to us easily, almost as if the universe is calling us to them.

painted field

Eviana Asked me to Draw This

For some of us, we see our purpose in the gifts that seem to have been there from birth. These mysterious talents (“I don’t know, I just started playing piano at age three and my parents couldn’t keep me away from it”) define us almost from the get-go. And well they should, in many cases.

But – what if we’ve let this definition of “who we are” cage us in too much? What can we gain if we just try some other things, letting go of having to be “good at it”? What if we open the door to another room and just live there for awhile and see what happens?

My word for March is “Art” because I want to see and feel what happens in the room.

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