31Ways2GetItStarted™!: January 20, 2013

Day 20: Do It For The Right Reasons

(As I'm writing this, The Kitten is curled up in a lovely, orange, sleeping, purring ball in one of my desk drawers...and I am so jealous! I'm trying to recite all the advantages of being human, but besides having a sense of humor and thumbs...hmm, still kind of feeling that our feline overlords won that round. But, I digest.)

It's Day 20 of 31Ways2GetItStarted™!, a Sunday, and I'm a little exhausted. Which is of course a good reason to remind you, and myself, that whatever change you're contemplating, or hopefully, are already engaged in...do it for the right reasons. Do it for you. Change, big or small, is--let's be honest--f**king draining. I mean, yes it's amazing, and opens up new opportunities and vistas of possibilities and unicorns and rainbow and glitter oh my but still. It's hard work. It's demanding. So if you're not doing it for your own reasons, but to make someone else, or society, or your mom, or Yahweh happy...forget it. You won't stick with it. You'll have a bad day or three and give up. 

On the other hand, even if you have the best reasons in the world, it's still going to be hard. Just accept that. It's good for you. I know, I know: I sound like Michael Landon on Little House on the Prairie but it's true. It's (somewhat) easier to slave at something when it's important to you...and almost impossible to do when you don't really care.

It's Sunday afternoon and I hope you're taking this day off to re-charge, have a couple of drinks, flirt, frolic, watch the inauguration, have some more drinks...all of the above. But it also wouldn't hurt to remember why you're involved in your own personal change...what got you started, why it's important and, hopefully, applaud yourself for having come this far. That wasn't easy. As you well know. 

Email me @carlotazee.com, or leave your praise/rants/questions in the comments...I'd love to hear from you!

'I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.  You rarely win, but sometimes you do.'
 -To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

'Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.'
-Helen Keller

In this business, I spend a lot of time coaching people to overlook their fears and get started doing the things that they desperately wish to do. That seems counter-intuitive, no? People come to me to achieve certain goals, I give them a strategy, they get excited...and then the Fear takes over, and I have to spend a lot of time coaching/supporting/nagging/kicking ass to get them to leap-frog their fears so they can achieve their potential. But Fear doesn't have to make sense, it has fear going for it. 

The problem, of course, is that fear is greedy: it wants all of you. So if you avoid doing the little things that scare you, hoping to make some kind of "deal" with fear...yeah, the only deal you've made is a deal to lose. Because once you start giving up, fear wins and fear, that self-aggrandizing bitch, likes to savor her triumphs, which she does by making everything else in your life equally fearful and hard. 

So, for example, say you've always wanted to act, but since you don't like your body, since you're (understandably) afraid of being made fun of, since you're not comfortable with yourself...well, you don't take acting classes, you don't join a glee club, you do nothing and you let fear win. The problem isn't that you simply gave up on acting...you're now more likely to give up on everything acting could have brought into your life.

You're now more likely to give up on taking care of your body, to give up on going to the gym and to give up on loving yourself. So then, if you don't like yourself, if you don't think you're talented...now it's much easier to give up on figuring out whom you really are, on what's important to you, on living your potential, right? Now you're more likely to start giving up on a lot of other (emotionally-related) opportunities regarding life, love and the pursuit of  your happiness. Does that sound far-fetched? It shouldn't. In your mind (i.e. your life), everything is connected. You have to believe it to build it, right?

We don't get to pick and choose what we're afraid of, but we do get to choose what we remain afraid of. So, let's say that you get bored hating yourself and decide that, Yahweh help us, what this world needs is more actors*so you take some acting classes, do some community theater...and you start getting that ole confidence up and thriving. And that confidence makes you go to the gym, makes you start eating better, makes you start wanting to take care of your (talented) body. This confidence becomes infectious. And you start seeing the world as full of opportunities, instead of restrictions. You've got Fear on the run, don't stop now! #gospeedracergo!

I, for example, moved to Moscow after I graduated Wellesley College, because of a Russian boy I was dating, and I was also curious to see if I could make a life in a foreign country. (Short answer: Yes...if I learned how to drink all night, while eating more picked foods than I thought humanly possible.) Now, I had already spent my junior year of college in a lovely small town up in the north of Russia....but this was different. Now I was, somehow, going to have to get a job.

Oy. I can't even tell you had many nights, before I left, were spent tossing and turning in my bed, sick to my stomach with melodramatic fears of failure, whining piteously. My poor dog started sleeping on the sofa, since my angst was keeping her awake. I have, as you may have guessed, a rather over-active imagination and so I foresaw all the many, many ways I was going to  end up staring in my own version of "Midnight Express."

Needless to say...none of that happened. I went to Russia, ended up working for NBC News' Moscow Bureau, adopted some (spoiled) cats, dumped the boy...and had some pretty fantastic years, working and living in Mother Russia.

Now. I'm not writing this to suggest you, at home, should move to Russia, or adopt several cats, or even perform dinner theater. (Well...I would never say that adopting cats is a waste of one's life. Let me be perfectly clear on that point.) But I am strongly suggesting that you do the thing(s) you're most terrified of...since more than likely, the scenario you've envisioned in your over-heated little brain is the direct opposite of what is likely to happen.
And honestly: doing what terrifies you, can only open up your life. It is, in fact, likely to bring you into contact with the people and experiences you may only have dreamed about.  And really: life is a lot more fun lived with opportunities than with restrictions, no?

'You must do the things you think you cannot.' -Eleanor Roosevelt

Want some help telling fear to piss off? Email me @carlotazee@gmail.com!



*...and seriously, since Bradley Cooper destroyed his hawt...might as well. That's a damn shame.

On Over-sharing, Both Good and Bad

I suspect that my attempt today to write a primer on the irony of over-sharing on-line will only end in me not getting zapped by a bolt of Charlton-Heston-inspired lighting thrown down by the G-d of the Old Testament due to the fact that said Yahweh is old. He’s old, He’s cranky, He’s pissed off by celebrities with their misspelled “religious” tattoos [Kabbalah is not a real religion! My Jewish ancestors in Lithuania did not suffer through endless pogroms for Madge and her vadge to become Jewish…Jews have enough issues!], and the racist sh*t trending on Twitter (you know Twitter alone pisses Him off beyond belief. Between Twitter and Mitt Romney’s incompetence, He’s got to be seriously torn as to which is better proof of the de-evolution of our species…and then you bring in the fact that Katie Lee and a sentient being named 'Hoda' are on American TV and that Old Man is all, “I can’t. I just… I can’t.”)

So, boys and girls, let me get back to this piece about why people can't discuss being unemployed on-line but feel comfortable over-sharing about their kids’ inability to be potty trained, or what they ate for the past four years, when they used to have body issues but now, now they’re totally fine and Zen goddammit and not at all racked by self-loathing because who wouldn’t choose to eat wheat bulgur or flax seeds or…shut up. Seriously. When people like this send me friend requests on Facebook, they bring my inner anorexic to the surface, and she wants to say, “Those Gluten-free faux-chicken tacos make your ass look big.” Especially when said people have nauseating quotes painted on the walls of their homes about worshipping their Earth Mother. (Yeah? Why do I suspect your horsesh*t just made our Earth Mother seriously start chain-smoking a carton of Newports, pop open a cold one, and eat a bag of pork rinds, muttering “God..dammit.”)

Anyhoo. My point being: so people can overshare everything on Facebook and social media in general, from eating their placenta (oy!) to unfortunate photos of themselves without makeup (NO!), to what they ate to what stupid things their kids said…but then these same people, when in my office, when I suggest that the main reason their job search is probably not working out, is because spending 4 hours a day on-line flirting, shopping etc., with a whopping 12 minutes spent scrolling through jobs on Monster.com, does not a realistic job search make, and maybe, just maybe they might want to alert their friends and family that they are unemployed, before they’re forced to switch over to the barter system…these same people look at me as if I had two heads. “Tell people?? Tell people…I’m unemployed? Are you crazy?” Right. Am I crazy? Because I’m the one posting unfortunate photos of me weighing myself every 3 minutes and eating sweet potato fries and bulgur burgers because I’m totally, like totally, Carlota, like so at peace with myself, la la la! You’re right. I’m the crazy one here.  (Grrrrr…)

I guess my point is: perhaps we all need to hold hands and sing Kumbaya together, since our priorities seem to be a tad f**ked up, n’est pas? Why can people talk casually about getting laid or giving birth or getting drunk or whatever…but admitting to being unemployed is a shame?  Really? What does this say about our relationships with one another? We constantly have to pretend everything’s awesome or people will run from us screaming?  We can never be honest? Listen, I have zero time anymore to pretend things are fantastic if they’re not. I need to fix sh*t so I can move forward, since I already wasted years living a life that on paper was fantastic but in reality was me being screamed at by certain TV “personalities” at 4am…par-tay!

Example: Many people who read my pieces about going to law school, and how it was a mistake 99 ways from last Wednesday,  were at first surprised I’m so honest…but then, usually—unless they’re a**holes—they say things like, “But I really appreciated that piece. It spoke to me.  Made me feel less alone.”  

If you’re unemployed, or you’re frustrated in your career, but your public social media persona is all about how cool and sexy you are…don’t blame all 500+ of your on-line friends. Don’t blame your “friends” if at 3am, you feel alone and unloved.  Most people will only see you as you present yourself. If you want help, if you truly want to connect, stop posting about what you ate (or, for Gd’s sake, eat some Key Lime Pie with a side of cocaine, so I don’t want to vomit all over your flax seeds) or what cool club you went to (also, if you’re having so much super duper fun in the club, how’d you have time to take all of those photos of you standing around? Just sayin’…), and be honest about who you are and what you need.  Then, email me @ carlotazee@gmail.com, and let’s get that career search on!

The secret is that there is no secret

So I've been awake since oh, 4:30am, my brain working feverishly, and I'm about to go running and start my awesome day...gross, I know. Some of you just want to take me on your knee and...spank me. (Ha!) People who enjoy their lives are so irritating, right? Don't worry: my to-do list just got longer as I came up with an awesome book proposal that I have to somehow churn out while dealing with clients, and getting my play produced and writing a new screenplay, dating, procrastinating and throwing straws for The Kitten™...my inner masochist is happy. God forbid I put my feet up and enjoy, right? Yahweh would never approve.
So, I'll keep this brief, except to say: I have no secret for success. All of this stuff is clicking because of constant and obsessive hard work. I have no ace in the hole--I mean, besides the play being, in my humble opinion, tha shiznit, son--excepting my preternatural ability to hustle and constantly sniff out opportunities. I mean, I was a history major, fer chrissake, with a focus on Russian Area Studies: what employable skills could I have? Is anyone going to pay me to discuss, at length, the various causes of the Russian Civil War, or, the Siege of Lenningrad?  Even Russians..no, especially Russians don't care. (Sigh.)
I'm driven to write these words because some people still don't get it. They think that success--however one defines it--is some weird freakish thing, which only happens to special people.
These are the same people who say to me, "Oh, you're so lucky that blah blah blah." Um, no that's not luck: that's the result of constantly gritting one's teeth and not giving up. (Foot-stamping, whining, drunken pity parties, simmering rage and having a growing Enemies List, a la President Nixon... oh my yes! But giving up? Oh, no. No, no, no.) Luck is if I happen to bump into Tim Tebow and something naked, disgusting and not G-rated occurs. (Then again, given his close, personal bromance with Jesus, he'd probably just try to convert me, which makes my vadge cranky. Fie.)
So, don't bring 'luck' into this. This is all about identifying goals, making a plan to achieve said goals and sticking with said plan. Day after day. Even, no especially, when you don't want to. Because that's when "the magic" happens: when you do something, day after day after f**king day...and rewards start springing up. Opportunities become visible. Things which perhaps a year ago--did I mention the day after day after dear god day part?--might have seemed a fantasy, start looking very likely. And still you continue on.
I can tell which clients will succeed...and which ones won't. The ones who will succeed are the ones who stay on message no matter what. Seriously: no matter what. The ones who don't succeed? They're the ones who keep having a reason why they haven't started yet, or why they can't do the things they promised to when we started working together, but seriously, Carlota, I'm totally going to, I'm just like super busy (but wait, let me go update my Facebook status about that TV show I watched last night, and comment on all 800 of my Facebook friends' pages, and ohh, look at those pictures of my friend's baby, zomg, how cute is he, and I have to read my friend's wedding blog, and help her decide which candy she should offer at the reception's candy bar) and you just don't know how hard things are for me now, gawd!
Hmm. You know who has it hard? Correspondents who have to report on Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign with a straight face and, crucially, without the use of profanities. Mariah Carey's unfortunately-named twin: Morocco. (He's a child, Mariah, not a pet. I had a cat named, "Flapjack." He was a cat! He was never going to be a 40 year old man trying to live his life with a modicum of self-respect.) Matthew Broderick for having to wake up next to that. Women who choose to date my exs. People who seriously 'read' Cosmo for the advice. That is a sampling of people who have it 'hard.'
You don't have it hard, you're making it hard. You have a very simple choice: pursue your goals, and all the freedom that entails...or don't.