If you’re stuck in a dead-end job or relationship, or you hate the way your body looks, or you want to write that novel, or make the movie you've been brooding about for years, and  instead of doing it, you rationalize things to yourself saying, ”Well, I’m going to just waste and see what happens…”  I’ll tell you what will happen: nothing. Nada. Fast-forward ten years and you’ll be in exactly the same situation you are now...but worse. Because you'll  be that much more discouraged, more irritated with yourself and your life and nothing will have changed. If, for example, you’re dating losers, you might be married to a loser. Or, you gained more weight…or stayed at that horrible job which got worse…or never wrote the book.  Things don’t just happen. You make them happen. You believe in them and you bring that belief to life.

I speak from personal experience. From the experience, following law school, of feeling like sh*t, of being horribly depressed, yet being stubborn enough to believe that my life could, and should be better than the way it was going at the time. And I believed that the business idea I had carried in the back of my mind for 10+ years could become a reality…if I could just do it. "Just do it." Despite, of course, the crippling law school debt, my age, my fears, the fact that I knew less than nothing about business. But maybe all of those factors were great for an egomaniac like myself since I felt like I had nothing to lose. Well, except for everything. Except for my life.

I wish I could tell you how many, MANY, people told me I was crazy, unrealistic, deluded, stupid, irritating retarded. Or, how many people told me I’d fail, that I knew nothing about business, that I was wasting my time etc.  Oh so many helpful people.

And that’s the biggest issue: when you’re trying to create something new in your life, you must believe in it to build it. You cannot wait till after you’ve created it to believe it, because it won’t happen. You have to believe in your fantasy. And not just believe, you have to be obsessed by it. Because society will tell you that the odds are against you, that you’ll fail horribly, that you’re crazy, or a loser, or wasting your time. Society will tell you to give up. Your friends will tell you, in so many words, to give up. Your partners, your parents, many people will tell you to just give up.

You can't give up.  If you give up on what’s important to you, you give up on yourself. Once that happens, it’s over. You can tell yourself, "Well, whatever, I’ll write the book/lose the weight/meet a good man etc. later." How exactly is that going to happen? Right. It won't.

 If you don’t believe you can do it now, and if you’re not creating the patterns which allow you to do it, you'll get sucked into these patterns of failure, fear, self-doubt and resignation. And it will never happen. But... if you stick with it…your confidence will start to grow. Your belief in yourself will start to grow. You’ll have small successes, and yes many failures along the way... but the failures won’t matter that much anymore, and the successes will get larger. I promise you this is true for whatever change you want to make. I promise you.

But you must be honest with yourself, you must understand your role in where your life has taken you. Why are you stuck in a crap job? Why do you date men who treat you like shit? Why are you overweight? You have to be honest with yourself to understand your behavior so you can change it. And you must be willing to believe in yourself even when no one else will or can or should. Some people might say it's lonely...I think it's liberating.

You have to see it to build it. And you can do this. 

Want some help? Email me @carlotazee@gmail.com.

"Hell, there are no rules here, we're trying to accomplish something!"-Edison

I'm going to do my best to ignore the fact that today is September 1st (*shifty eyes*) and that Monday is Labor Day (*extremely shifty eyes*), and that the summer is over (*rage rising*) and stay on some kind of message. To wit: yesterday, sports fans, I wrote about the need to follow your dream, no matter how insane the haters may say it is, if your dream makes you happy. I mean, yes, you need to temper your dream with some reality, but: life is hard. Maybe you've heard that before? It is true; the cats and I can verify. Life is very hard, not only in Queens, and if  this is your dream, whether it's of writing the great Jewyorican novel or meeting a fun man who is sexy, smart and will win the approval of the cats (If the Kitten was awake, that would make him chortle.)...you have to fight for it. That's not a suggestion, son. It's far too early for me to be kidding.

Because if you don't, if you let people frighten you otherwise, you don't just lose that dream...you lose your confidence and that is a very serious loss. Because, let's face it: in life, in art, in business, there are no rules: no one knows what the hell they're doing. You think other people know what they're doing, when they do crazy things that lead to great things? Ha. Don't believe the hype. Later on, if they're honest, these people will sort of chuckle bitterly and admit they were just sort of messing about and praying that it worked before they got evicted, and now, if you don't mind, they're going to do infomercials and reap the intellectual rewards (translation: "date" their yoga instructors and be as naked as possible).

Business, like art, like love, is about whatever works at the time. Think about how many things, throughout history, were, at the time, expected to fail miserably. And then, for whatever reason, that "mistake" caught on and suddenly, the inventors went from zero to hero. (It's 5:30am, so the best my brain can come up with right now is the film Alien. A film which would eventually spawn a franchise, and make obscene amounts of money around the world but which, at the time, the studio was convinced would be a horrendous bomb: weird sets, weird music, and a female lead?? Mwah hah hah.)

So, I need you to take whatever frightened gibberish people have chanted to you about rules, or being nice, or fitting in, or listening to your elders...and hit the (mental) delete key. I need you to block that sh*t. I need you to think: "F**k that noise," as a former boytoy of mine used to say, in his great nasal, Chicagoan accent. Because the people who harp on the rules...they're the people who never got it. Whatever the "it" is/was. Remember: they. Never. Got. It! They're the ones anxiously trying to research why some people succeed and others fail, instead of just succeeding. They're the ones who, sadly enough, never experienced what the masterful Russian poet Osip Mandelstam spoke of, when he was truly at the height of his extraordinary powers and he described the knowledge of his powers as "feeling [his] wingspan." He was murdered by Stalin's thugs, and died in the Russian gulags, his body thrown into an unmarked mass grave...but while Stalin lies, pox-marked and blood-stained on the dust-heap of history, Mandelstam's clear voice rings on. Reading Mandelstam's poems today, one can witness his tremendous spirit and gift because... he knew he was right. 

In business, in art, in life, you're "right" when you make it happen, and you animate your vision, when you feel your wingspan...so tell me, please: what could rules ever have to do with being right?

Not-so-little Mermaids

Next time you have an idea--any idea, from a new business to a new atonal opera--and someone, anyone, tells you, in so many words that you're crazy and you should thank Allah that you have a day job, and to shut up, and sit down....consider this: Eric Ducharme creates latex mermaid tails for a living. According to Bloomberg Business Week, he makes about seven tails a month, at prices ranging from $500-$700. And since December of 2011, he has crafted tails for celebs like Lady Gaga (only one? I would assume she'd have them in various meat flavors, for f**k's sake!), and those custom tails go for $1,600 to $ 5,000. Yes. Yes, you read that right. Yes, there are carbon-based human life-forms out there spending as much as five thousand American dollars ON A LATEX TAIL so that their girlfriends can swim around topless like some sexy, frolicsome, yeast-infected mermaids. (Meanwhile: I cannot get a small business loan. No, I'm not bitter; why do you ask?) Also: how much fun can you really have with someone wearing a tail? Are there easy-access tails? Admit it: that is a million-dollar idea right there! Note to self.
Anyhoo. Normally, information such as this about people wearing mermaid tails, or that the author of the Twilight series is writing a new series about mermaids (monotone actors of the world rejoice: you shall soon act again!), or that Tobey Maguire is planning a "dark, live-action" Little Mermaid, would make me want to lie down under the covers, with a drink in each fist...but, we can't let the terrorists win. Also, I don't want my cleavage covered in cat hairs so, my grumpy sense of outrage and I shall soldier on.
But here's my point: next time you have an idea which makes you happy, and makes you feel alive and you're brooding about how best to bring this idea to life, and some dead-inside douche says, "It'll never happen, grow up!"...remember this: there is a man in Florida making a very nice living, in the sunshine and beautiful weather, building mermaid tails. Exactly.
Or, as Howard Aiken once said: "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."