Little Bit in Love with A Book on How to Get, Grow & Stay Happy
Oct.1.10

This is the first entry in the category on the blog called “Little Bit in Love with…”  It’s just things that I find cool, helpful, interesting, inspirational, educational, funny, yummy or just plain fun.  In other words, they’re tips and recommendations and a lot of them will probably consist of books, movies, music, and websites but who knows, I could fall in love with a many a splendid thing as there are many things out there to fall in love with.

So I’m definitely a little bit in love with Gretchen Rubin and The Happiness Project. It is a great book that I picked up because I read a few reviews in my fav mags which you will realize I read and get much information and many ideas from such as Elle, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, O Magazine – several of my interviews in my book come from reading articles in these magazines, oddly enough (yes, I know what you might be thinking, but they are not all fluff and fashion.)  And then when I went to look at my book on Amazon when it first got put up there for pre-sales, I saw that it was recommended to me in that section that says, “if you like this book, you might like…” and The Happiness Project was the first one listed.  Hmmm.  Need to check this book out.  Then I was in a clothing store, (Anthropologie) and saw the book sitting there so I picked it up and read the flaps and the first sentence says, “Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus.”  Yes, that’s right – an epiphany.  I had to get it of course, and once I started it, I found I could hardly put it down!  This was quite unexpected because it seemed to be a ‘self-help’ or ‘how to’ book and I thought it would be informative but not fun reading.  WRONG!  So funny.  So real.  So inspirational because this woman gets SO much accomplished but she’s not Patty Perfect and admits the failures as well as the triumphs.  Her research is thorough and excellent and everything is incredibly useful and doable.  And hey, if she’s doing it with 2 kids, I can do it.  She did a lot of research in Positive Psychology, which I love and follow and I interviewed Barbara Fredrickson, one of the leaders in the field, for my book. Gretchen also has this amazing blog and website and you can see her in videos and she is a very faithful blogger, extremely organized and diligent, unlike, (clear my throat), yours truly.  I’m getting better though, right?  About once a week now!

Everyone I have referred this book to loves it.  And you might be thinking, you should interview Gretchen about her epiphany!  And you would be the kind of person who thinks like me.  I emailed her to ask for one and she immediately emailed me back herself saying she was too swamped right now but to definitely be in touch in the future and best of luck with my book.  Very sweet, very cool, just like she was/is in her book. Another more personal thing I gained from her is that she says for years she has collected passages from books, quotes, spent hours in the library doing these kinds of things for no reason – just because it brought her joy and she just had to.  And she realized later that this is part of being a writer.  I have never heard of anyone else doing that – I’ve always done that!   I used to think I was a bit strange and I’ve had people (well, mainly one person) make fun of me for holding onto files of just random musings and quotes and passages and notebooks of these kinds of things because they were seemingly useless and a waste of my time — but I too have just always had to do it.  But she said she discovered this is all part of being a writer … so I had a mini- epiphany of, “hey, maybe I really am a writer and have been all along.” This is my first book and it came out of a film project I was developing so I think because I’ve done so many other things that maybe I wasn’t really thinking of myself as a real writer yet.  But a lot of the people I ended up interviewing came out of magazine articles I’d torn out over the years and just put in a file.  Quotes from people led to ideas of who to interview and led me to certain questions. It’s interesting.  Because of reading about her realization about this, it made me realize that perhaps I really do belong in the tribe of writers.  Anyway, just a little personal epiphany I had in reading this book, but there are many to be had…I recommend at least checking out her website – you can even start your own Happiness Project!  She has Happiness Project Toolboxes for you to get started…Happiness Project Club, anyone?

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Weekend Reading … How an Epiphany affected a (Major) Mayor
Sep.24.10

The “first pages” are in (meaning the final edits I’m pretty much allowed to do are done) and I went to Montana for a long weekend with friends.  I had never been and almost didn’t go, I have to so much to do, but I am trying to get more balance in my life so I just turned everything in early and kept my plans that had been made in May – planning that far out for me was unheard of.  Wow, they don’t call Montana “Big Sky Country” for nothin’.  I can’t really describe why, but it truly is the biggest sky you’ve ever seen (or at least I’ve ever seen).  So as I was catching up on my reading on the plane and lounging on the trip, I ran across this great article on Cory Booker, the Mayor of Newark, NJ in the September issue of O Magazine – so quick, we have to read it because the October issue is already out on the shelves!

It was sort of serendipitous that I saw this because Cory’s interview was one of the last interviews I edited in my book so he was on my mind.  I love Cory’s interview for many reasons-one being because I have a very special place in my heart for the people who gave me interviews before I had any idea where this project would go. I had no book deal or a website when these people, like Cory, took their time to share these personal vignettes with me.

Cory is always getting national attention for various reasons – he is cute, single, dynamic, cool, smart, ambitious, funny, hip, down-to-earth, the mayor of one of the toughest cities in the country, he’s been on Conan, Oprah, etc. etc. and is probably one of the greatest orators around right now.  I’m serious.  If you get a chance to hear him speak, especially about something other than politics just so that you can experience it objectively, take it, and I’m not a person who is really that enamored with hearing people speak really.  My impression of him is that he is always paying attention to life in a way that he is always open to growing and sharing.  He also seems to have this quality of respect and awe of people and life that, in my opinion, probably keeps a dynamic person humble and always in certain state of gratitude and wonder.  We met in a Starbucks on the upper Westside in Manhattan to do our interview before an event he had to attend, and he seemed almost embarrassed that his epiphany took place at such a young age (12), as if maybe it didn’t count because of that or maybe it was silly.  But there are many people whose greatest epiphany happened in their youth.  My oldest candidate in the book is 91 and she has had many epiphanies, but the one that she focused most of her energy on in the interview happened when she was 10.  What she learned from it became one of the building blocks for the foundation of her life.  This also happened to Cory when he was 12, running for student class president in middle school.

What I love about Cory’s epiphany is that he talks about his experience at that tender age giving him the knowledge that people are loving and forgiving if they know your character to be true and you own up to your mistakes.  Okay, what politician ever owns up to his or her mistakes??  When do many of us do that really?  It seems many times we tend to defend our position instead of taking responsibility for messing up when we do. When your character is true, as Cory says, you don’t mean to mess up (hopefully), but we are all human and will let one another down and will make mistakes and people are aware of that and make allowances for it as long as we’re willing to own it and apologize.

I also like what Cory says about sharing a part of yourself with others in communication — he says that is what he is always striving to do now, and you feel that when you see him speak or when you are just having a conversation with him.  I find it fascinating how his epiphany impacted his life and now even me — his epiphany included facing his fear of public speaking.  He not only conquered it, but again, in my opinion, has become one of the best orators around and I have had the opportunity to experience that and was inspired and moved forever by it.  When I interviewed him, I asked him about his talk that night and he said he had not even prepared for that speech!

Here is his take-away quote in my book (the quote that titles each epiphany) and here is the terrific article in O again.

Character ultimately rules the day.  People will see the truth of who you are even when you make mistakes.

– Cory Booker

Happy weekend/end of September reading…

Posted in The Book - Epiphany | 1 Comment

How Acknowledgments and Gratitude Can Bring Unexpected Revelations
Sep.7.10

Today is the first day back from summer officially as it the day after Labor Day and it’s as if the weather wanted us all to be aware of this in Los Angeles.  It is overcast and chilly after days and days of sunny summer heat.

Today is also the day the “first pages” of my book are on their way to me, meaning they will arrive tomorrow in hard copy format the way it will look on the page when it is encased in its exclamation-pointed hard cover, and this is the very last time I have to look at the manuscript to make any edits.  It’s all a bit surreal that I am actually at this point and that in not even 6 months, this manuscript will actually be a book, with a bright blue cover, on shelves in stores, and hopefully in more than just my friends’ and family’s hands.

As I look back over the summer, it was primarily one of work.  June was about finishing the book – my finalized first draft was turned in July 2.  July was about resting from those weeks of no sleep as I raced to the finish line.  I am a world-class procrastinator of the absolute highest degree, which has proven to be not a great attribute at all when writing a book with a deadline – I don’t care how anyone tries to spin it.  I also began the revamping of the website (it will launch with a new look in the next couple of months to coincide with the book launch so stay tuned!), and then August was about copy-editing the book, and I had NO idea how intense that would be.  I didn’t know that we actually still copy edit in pencil on the page instead of using computers!  I thought that was fascinating.  I have discovered that I am in love the book publishing business. Sometimes it’s just still so old-school and civilized in so many ways – especially the people whom I’ve found to be extremely gentile and smart – and how the entire industry basically just shuts down the entire month of August while everyone takes their vacation…that just seems so retro to me (or European) for some reason and reminds me of how our grandparents, and maybe even our parents and us when we were little, went away for months at a time in the summer and there were no answering machines, voice mail, email, cell phones or even pagers…and somehow life seemed to move forward quite nicely…anyway, I digress…

I write all this because I realized, literally, in the final moments when I was banging out the acknowledgments at 3am the day the book was due in my editor’s inbox – that finishing this book also brought me to the finishing a chapter of my life.  This journey began with an epiphany I had 5 years ago and it ended with my hitting ‘Send’ on my computer with an attachment titled Epiphany Manuscript 7-2-10.  I hadn’t realized that until that moment.

It’s rather mind-boggling to me that a year after introducing EpiphanyChannel.com and the Epiphany Project to the public, a door in my life’s journey has closed and a new one has opened.  As I quoted Kristin Neff, a psychologist and leading authority on self-compassion and one of my interviewees, in the epigraph of the book:

The epiphany was like life opened a doorway, and my job was to walk through it. I didn’t know what I was going to find. I didn’t know what was going to happen. But in life, you don’t ever know what’s going to happen. What I do know is that as life continues to open these doors, I feel safe enough and trusting enough to walk through them.

—Kristin Neff

This pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about epiphanies and this project and life now.  I had the realization on that late night/early morning while writing my acknowledgments, thanking the people who had helped me make this project a reality, that this project has been my greatest revelation, my greatest epiphany in life.  Acknowledgment, paying attention and having and expressing gratitude will open you up and bring about the most amazing and unexpected revelations.  You’ve probably heard this a thousand times, but if you want epiphanies regularly or even sometimes, go to gratitude and expressing it and see what happens.  It helps you pay attention and be present – the first condition required I’ve found in the patterns of great epiphanies.  (I’ll discuss the 4 things I’ve discovered to be part of every life-changing epiphany that I know of in a future blog and it’s talked about in the book.)

As I look forward to the fall and we head “Back to School,” I’m not sure where this new door, this new chapter, that is beginning will lead, but I am very, very excited to go through it and want to acknowledge you here as well.  Thank you for finding your way to my blog, perhaps my site and eventually maybe even my book and for being part of this next phase of the journey with me.  I wish us all the best as we begin our “fall semester” of 2010!

(And in case you never read acknowledgments either, the paragraph I wrote when I had my “acknowledgment revelation” is below for fun.)

acknowledgment : thanks, appreciation, recognition, gratitude, obligation

“The journey is the reward.”

– Chinese Proverb

Once upon a time, I embarked on a journey called Epiphany.  Fortunately, the age-old maxim “Ignorance is bliss,” applied in this case instead of my trusty “Knowledge and understanding eliminate fear,” because had I actually known and understood what this journey would involve, I probably would have chickened out and missed out on the most extraordinary, life-affirming experience I’ve ever had.  This book represents the ending of chapter for me.  In writing it, I came realize it is my greatest epiphany and, in fact, has been an awakening, a new direction, a healing, a miracle, a coming of age and a calling.  It’s been an absolutely amazing ride, and one I know would not have completed (at least in one piece) without the support and encouragement of so many people.

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books and birthdays
May.25.10

I have not written here in way too long for good reason…I am finishing this book and wow, who knew?  But it is so incredibly gratifying.  I can honestly say I am learning and growing beyond my greatest expectations — I truly am changing, growing, healing just from working with these remarkable people’s stories…so though it is outrageously intense right now, just trying to get it all in and done, I am loving the work…

Anyway, so that’s the reason for my silence here but when I get it all wrapped up and turned in by the end of June, I plan to really be good probably about giving little hints about the book and NEWS about it!  We’re launching January 4 and the way time has been flying, that will be here before we know it.

So, today is a friend’s bday and she was a bit freaked by it…she’s in her 30’s and that just started happening to her…I sent her a piece that I wrote last year as a writing exercise for a class I was taking and we realized that I wrote it on her birthday actually.  funny.  So in honor of her and  bdays – and especially this month of the Gemini since I am in that group and my bday is once again fast approaching, I have pasted the little piece below.

Happy Bday Geminis and Happy Summer to one and all!!  May it be the sexiest, most peaceful, magical, fun-filled summer yet!  (and p.s. also funny – the book and the monk i mention at the end, when I went in to meet with Harmony Books about working with them on my book, I caught my breath when the first book I saw in the glass case at their offices was this one with his smiling face looking out at me…very good sign, I thought. )

May 25, 2009

I sit down at my desk and stare at my screen.  The desk lamp to my right and the standing lamp in the far corner, along with the flickering candle, create the perfect light combo to surround and envelop me for a night of writing in my white-themed office.  My periphery vision takes in the books filling the white bookshelf against the eastern wall and the wistful thought, “One day I’ll have a library,” shoots across my mind like a blip of a shooting star.  Water bottles, an empty mug, my cell and the landline handpiece, scribbles on scattered papers, printed emails, lists, cds, a harddrive, a thumbdrive, my notebooks, a lighter, business cards, tapes from my edit session, a coaster, post-its, stray bills, the flickering purple lovespell candle, ipod wires, pens, pens and more pens, a book that is an early birthday present, and the just-discovered song that inspires me right now playing over and over through my speakers – all accompany me on my huge white metal desk, seeming as though they have been awaiting me.  I can feel and smell my freshly washed and straightened hair – I love the new shampoo I got – and it’s weird, but I can feel my smooth just-shaven legs hitting the softness of my favorite black sweats.  I am clean, refreshed and ready for bear, whatever that means – I’ve never understood that seashell.  I take a deep breath, and we all wait to see what I will do…I don’t know what I will do in this very moment…I have no idea.  But suddenly I hit the space bar – and the screen lights up with a blank document, cursor pulsing…I poise my fingers over the keys… and I let them write…

Yeah, my birthday is coming up…you know, I never thought the day would actually get here when I didn’t want birthdays to come…I still remember when I couldn’t wait to get older and would look forward to my birthday every year…I think I’m going to pick an age and stay that one the rest of my years until I decide to be another…I pick 32.  That’s a good one.  Not too young, not too old, just right.  If only I would have known that then.  If only I would have known how great it was to be 6 actually – or 7 or 9 or 13 for that matter … if only I would have known…but growing up, I would always hit a birthday and then I would almost immediately want to be older…I wanted to be 14 to get to high school… and then I couldn’t wait to be 15 to start dating, and then 16, of course, to drive.  And then it was 18 to go to college, and then 19 to get into bars, and then they changed the legal drinking age to 21 before I got there, so then, yes, 21 was the golden age to be!  Then at 22, I would be out of school and my life officially as an adult would begin and then I kept looking forward to the next few years after that to finally bring what I was supposed to be doing with my life… But then when I hit 25, somehow, I became too old for everything I was doing…And I was still so very young.  So very young.  And then when I was 28, I was still so young, but I thought I was running out of time so I jumped, and I did it, and my deepest self knew it wasn’t right.  And then I stayed and stayed and stayed thinking, “I’m so old, I have to stay in this, I’m too old to make anything else work,” and I was so very young…and then when I finally left, yes, I was older but I thought I was ancient, used up, done.  And I was really still quite young.  And I’m still young.  I’m still young today.  I realize – I’ve never been okay with my age.  Not one single solitary year.  I was always too young or too old, too behind or too ahead.  My god, my heart breaks for that girl who has lived her life this way.  Why?  Why didn’t anyone tell me?  Why didn’t they tell me in childhood, how great it was to be a child and to enjoy being carefree and open and pure?  And why didn’t they tell me when I was a teenager, to slow down and notice the changes and the shifts, and allow myself the thrill of blooming?  And then, when I was in my 20’s, why didn’t anyone tell me how young I really was, and how great it is to be an adult, yet still so young with so much to look forward to and nothing to be afraid of, and that I didn’t have to know and experience everything by a certain age and that I should be incredibly thrilled to be that age in that moment, that very day that I was living that age, each and every day…Maybe they did tell me but I didn’t listen…I didn’t pay attention…I didn’t understand.  I have carried this pattern with me into my 30’s – every year causing more anxiety, more confusion, more sadness of the loss of youth and the discomfort of growing older and into new realms of being.  I find myself not recognizing who I am sometimes – not externally but internally – the old me seems to be disappearing and it scares me.  It really scares me……. You know what?  Enough.  That shouldn’t scare me, it should excite me.  It’s called growing up.  It’s called stepping into my womanhood.  It is called wisdom.  And wisdom comes with all these glorious years I’ve resisted.  It comes with living those years.  It comes with age.

I’m going to make a birthday commitment…I am going to be okay with the exact age I am, today, each day, every day that I am this and that age, and know that I am that young and this old and it’s the perfect age to be and I am going to enjoy it and embrace it and remember it and be grateful that I get to be at that age at all.  This next year is going to be a different story for me, I feel it, I know it, and wow, I might even be getting a little excited about it…

As this occurs to me, suddenly I’m realizing that the book on my desk that is an early birthday present is by a Buddhist monk – his precious warm face smiles at me from the cover.  I don’t know that much about it but I do know a major tenet in Buddhism is about living in the present – this strikes me as funny – a present about being present for a woman who just realized she’s never been present … my friend obviously knows me only too well…. I flip through the book a bit, but I have this bad habit of reading the last pages of books.  And since breaking this habit is not part of my birthday commitment, I go ahead and turn to the book’s last page.  It is only four lines.  I have no idea who this monk is, but I think I just fell a little bit in love with him…

May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.

May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

May all sentient beings have joy and the causes of joy.

May all sentient beings remain in great equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.

(The Joy of Living, p. 252)


Life is beautiful and it’s hard.  Yes.

You could stand on the side of the road with a bag on your head for years and destiny will find you…

Your destiny will find you…

It will find you…

don’t worry…

all  is well…

Yes.

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Talkin' Epiphanies and Change…Live Talk Show Event
Mar.22.10

Everyone is invited to join us and participate!  If you happen to be in the Los Angeles area this weekend, I’m speaking with Ariane de Bonvoisin about Change and Epiphanies and who knows what else on March 28 from 1:30-4:30p.  Click on the link below for all the juicy details…hope to see you there!!

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs011/1102946334438/archive/1103159153448.html

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