prayer

the suck factor of life balance, + passion as a cure to stress

I no sooner want to be balanced than I want to be a “good” girl. “Balance” is not something I want to live down to.
- me

If consensus is overrated, I think balance is too. I have no interest in living
a balanced life. I want a life of adventure.
- Chris Guillebeau

In the end, the quest for balance is bogus. Love your burdens. Love them hard. And when your loves knock you down or your weak ankles trip you up, stop worrying about balancing – ‘cuz you’re not – and bounce.
- Kelly Diels

Life balance. Low fat cheese. Walking shoes. Small talk.
Life balance. The term makes me feel bloated and late for my own party.
Life balance. Stressful.

The pursuit of balance makes us juggle. It puts us behind (always behind,) makes us guilty, neglectful, imbalanced. It’s as useful a concept as original sin. You can never get it right.

If you want to do great things, striving for balance is a losing game. I don't think remarkable artists, scientists, activists, entrepreneurs, or generous souls set out on their giving journeys with the aim to be measured and harmonious. Meeting your potential is inherently full of tension (creative tension.) Trying to be balanced about it is onerous and futile.

Fuhget about it. Put balance on pause and feel into…

The out-of-whackness of your life – gigs, kids, commitments, projects. It’s a lot. Yes, indeed it is.
The passion in your cells - to eat life whole, to innovate, to score, to, as Emerson put it, “leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition.”

Feel into….
The hunger to fill the hole in your soul – doesn’t matter how it got there - if it’s there, it’s there.
The aspirations that show up as dreams or strategies.
The curves of your drive.

[HOLD FOR THE PUNCHLINE:]
If you’re alive, ambitious, or depressed; inventive, in the lead, or rapturous – you are imbalanced. The off-kiltering of your life may make you gasp – in grief or in glory. You could be on the leading edge of your consciousness - thriving. You could be a total mess. Things may need to be put in proper order. Loved ones. Goals. Your well being. Your mental clutter. Your blood pressure. Your Mastercard statement. But...

[THIS IS THE PUNCHLINE:]
Getting "balanced" is not the remedy to stress.

Passion is.

I burn a lot of omlettes. It's a regular occurrence - I'm drawing robots with my kid, I'm jotting down an idea I don't want to lose, I'm taking the call. And then the smoke alarms goes off. I "work" on holidays. Last Monday I stayed in bed and read all day. I send birthday gifts three months early or three months late - but it's just the right gift. I can eat cereal every day for a week, wearing the same clothes, never leaving the house because I want to finish a book. I like last minute trips out of town and not answering email for days. The last time I was at a monastery, I tweeted about it.

This is not a balanced life. But it works. And the more I pursue my passions, the more uncomplicated my life gets, actually. There's not much in my life that I resent. And if resentment builds, I'm swift to get it off my plate. It's not the imbalance-ness that stresses me, it's doing meaningless things that aren't taking me where I want to go.

MOTHERS + CEOs
When we talk about the whole life balance issue, working mothers are central to the conversation. How does the screw-life-balance-and-go-for-passion theory apply when you're juggling P 'n L's and macaroni 'n cheese? It's about an overall proportion in your life, not perfection. It's a work hard / play hard equation. It's about draining your reserves and filling them up again with precious moments or a stolen day. You give give give give give and give some more, and then you get. It's a wonky equation - creating works of art always is - but if you don't stress about how you "should do it", you can create the best way to do it.

When passion is a priority - passion for family, vocation, for meaning - your energy intensifies. And when your energy is more focused, more, "aimed", you begin to care less about the things that don't really matter. You avoid crappy jobs, you stop over-controlling your kids, you nag and complain much less - with everyone. You get the help you need to pull off the important things - whether you're a CEO or an aspiring freelancer, and that support takes the form of a house cleaner, a VA, or a friend or mentor to jam with.

REFUSE TO BE BALANCED
When you refuse the banality of balance and go for full on life (which includes full on productivity and full on stillness,) you'll see the inevitable mess of it all as something more beautiful and purposeful - full of peaks and valleys - an adventure. The climb can be rigorous, grueling sometimes, but the air is cleaner, and the view will blow your mind. The fruit you'll find on your own tilted path is so much sweeter - and there's so much more of it to share.

. . . . . .

POST THE POST

Coming attraction: I'm deep in my lab creating The Fire Starter Sessions vook: a multi-media program for blazing your entrepreneurial trail. Watch this space for pre-order information and sparks of inspiration. I'm so excited!

I've sent dozens of clients to web designer, Sarah Bray over the last year and a half. Happiness abounds. Sarah is doing a Gold-Digging Excursion starting April 1 to help you "dig up your website’s hidden profit-opportunities." I recommend it with all my digital love, and I bet it's going to sell out fast. Click here to visit Sarah Bray.

 

hot songs: 3 angels to groove your way

It took me a long time to ask for help and not feel weak about it. I thought I needed to behave for God to deliver. I didn't want to ask too much of my cosmic board of advisors, lest I wear out my welcome.

I'm over it. I figure I have an astral tribe of cheerleaders and there's nothing they love more than helping me plot my course to pleasuredom. Maybe some of them are are bangin' funksters, or DaVinci himself. This is what I imagine the classic angelic ones sound like... These are great songs when you're high, low, or on the outside of any door.

 

the help haiti blog challenge

A wonderful writer and friend of mine, KellyDiels of the Cleavage site, has kicked off The Help Haiti Blog Challenge.

Kelly's strategy was partly inspired by a tweet of mine this week: "I’ll donate my full Fire Starter Session fee ($300) to Haiti causes to 1st person who books in and pays today…Please RT" and Gwen Bell's uber successful Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

The concept and how it applies to bloggers:

1. Sign up for the Help Haiti Blog Challenge (on Kelley's site). Write about it on your blog and tag it “Help Haiti Blog Challenge“. Ask your people to join you and do the same.
2. Add the Help Haiti Blog Challenge badge to your blog.
3. Make your offer: I will donate ________ dollars to _________ on behalf of the next person who buys _________ from me.
4. Make your donation and tell us how much you donated.
5. Tweet about it using the hashtag #haitiblogchallenge. Update your facebook status with a request to pass on the message and the call to action. Send e-mails. Everywhere you are, online, talk about the Help Haiti Blog Challenge, tag it, and call your friends, family, colleagues – your people – to action.

So, what if you have a blog but nuthin' to "give away or sell" per se?

Well, Aidan Donnelly Rowley is giving away $2 every time some leaves a 2-word comment on her blog between now and January 18. The Pioneer Woman gave 10 cents for every comment on her blog yesterday. She got 25,850 comments that's...$2,585!

So what if you don't have a blog?
Just donate, dammit:
The Acumen Fund recommends: Partners In Health and Architecture for Humanity.

Canadian? In case you don't know already, The Canadian Government is matching Haiti donations up to $50 million. Find out more here. Because of that, my family is donating to Plan Canada (we also sponsor a child with them.)

May the blessings rain down.

With Love,
Danielle

←   read all philanthropy articles

 

burning questions with ronna detrick: faith + feminism

Ronna Detrick looks you in the eye. And she listens. And when she speaks, you can see her pulling down wisdom from St. Theresa to Simone de Beauvoir through the filter of her own lived experience, to give you gem of grace - or grit. And, she can write - like a poet on a practical mission. Like a feminist with faith.

Women! (And the fine men who adore us,) come to the Red Tent of White Hot Truth. Ronna is in the house.

1. Let's start with a big one: how do you define feminism?

I define feminism as more of a personal characteristic than a political or social statement. It's who I am, how I am, and yes, certainly what I am. It's an honoring of the strength, power, and inherent worth in women. It's a naming of the places in which those realities aren't honored. It's a way of being that says, "I will not be silenced; I will live out loud. I will not edit or censor myself; I will tell the truth. I will not be safe; I will be dangerous, provocative, risky, and bold."

2. Another whopper of a question - because you're a massive spirit, Ms. Ronna, what's FAITH got to do with FEMINISM?

Mmmm. A tough one. Much I don't know. Lots of answers I don't have. But here's what I do know: the two are not mutually exclusive. Faith, whether it be in ourselves, God, Goddess, Buddha, Mohammad, or the powers of the Universe, is a potent and beautiful thing. It enables hope. It invites desire. It softens and strengthens and sings. As a feminist I want to be able to embrace and embolden every aspect of my life and my world. (more...)

 

juicy mind, happy product: a meditation for self promotion

Click here to read Part 1, The secret to self promotion: radiance and the facts, jack - whereby I expressed little sympathy buts lot's of love for people who shy away from self-promotion.

A MEDITATION FOR SELF PROMOTION

Meditation can take many forms. You can write this out in a journal, talk it out with a friend, or do the traditional sitting meditation. You're the master. Either way you choose to tap in, settle your mind and focus: take three deep breaths. Inhale and exhale. Slowly. Fully. (This is going to be fun, BTW. Avoid dry mind. Choose juicy mind.)

PHASE 1

1. Imagine that you're in an empty room. It's your ideal room, so maybe it's plush and luxy, or austere and Zen. You love it and you're comfortable.
2. Waiting outside the door to that room is your business, product, service, artwork - whatever you call what you offer for your livelihood. How do you feel knowing that it's outside the door? What is the flavour of your anticipation? Anxious? Smiling? Dread? Blessed and blissy?
3. Now, invite your business/product/service/artwork to join you. Do it ceremoniously or simply. Notice how you extend the invitation. (Sheepish, commanding, open, playful, hesitantly.) How does your business/product/service/artwork take form? As a ray of light, blueprint plans, a mighty robot, a peacock, a quivering beggar, a pile of gold, crates of bestselling books? How does your business/product/service/artwork feel to you? Just noticing how you extend the invitation and the form that your business/product/service/artwork took will be useful cosmic data. If you want to stop there, do so. Put the mediation on pause and come back to do phase two another day.

   Or, go further...

   PHASE 2
   
4. Ask your business/product/service/artwork if it has a message or a gift to give you. Receive it. Notice how you receive it.
5. Ask your business/product/service/artwork how it would like to be shared with the world. You may hear or see specific strategies (like, "e-books in the Fall,") or you may just feel the how, like, feelings of integrity, innovation, steadiness.
6. Now, (and this is important) let your business/product/service/artwork enter into you. You can breathe it in, you can imagine opening your heart and it climbing in, you can envision jacking into it and downloading it into your cells like an electrical current. The point here: you and your business/product/service/artwork are entwined and grooving together - unison.
7. Now, just...glow. Radiate. Vibrate. Hum your sonic powah, baby. Envision your creative light making it's way into the world effortlessly and being received with great appreciation.

Allow the ease. Honour the excitement and intensity. Say thank you.

 

with every cell of my being, thank you, thank you very much

A friend once asked me if I'd write if I didn't have an audience. My answer: "nope."

That same week The World's Strongest Librarian made a comment to me to the affect of, "we write because we need to, right?" It sounded so noble compared to my admission.

This got me analyzing my potential narcissism, neuroses and persona. From where do I derive my joy? The giving or the receiving? The process or the packaging? Am I in this for the glory or have I truly got the guts of an artist? Did Elvis sing in the shower?

The conclusion: I don't actually need to write, not like Anais Nin did, or Henry Miller. I don't journal. My bookshelf is less than 20% fiction. I've never been to a writing workshop.

What I need - like I need clean water, kisses, and milk chocolate at 3pm, is to share what I've found in my search for meaning. I yearn to philosophize. My voice - written, spoken, sketched - engages me with life. Either Rumi or God or Orpheus planted a mechanism in my brain that compels me to broadcast my epiphanies in anyway I can. Even on my most interior and complex pursuits I'm thinking to myself, "Can't wait to register this a-ha in The Ever Evolving Big Mix of Cosmic A-ha's." The mix of us-ness. The mix of heartbreak and euphoria, collapses, and victories of determined love. Our mix. My art doesn't work without the Our.

So I thank you. Thank you. For listening. For hearing, cheering and even for leering. Your readership and conversation are the alchemy that makes the pixels meaningful. This ain't just a blog, or a drop in the bucket, this is a sacred feeding-post on the way to more. More to be grateful for.

2010 Blazing Blessings,
Danielle

 

hot song: one day, matisyahu

Some Sunday Monday any day Hasidic reggae gospel fer us all. xoxo

For more Matisyahu, go to Matisyahu World

 

how to make the most of being toast: embracing burnout

"AND THEN SHE CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD.
IF HE WAS FIRE,
SHE MUST BE WOOD."

- Joan of Arc, by Leonard Cohen
(the most gorgeous version
of which is sung by Jennifer Warnes)

I admit it: I'm burned out. Fried. Toasted.

But this time, there's something satisfying and tasty about being...roasted by the life I've chosen. I'm reveling in it. Rather than the usual "How'd I let this happen?, or, I'm weak, or, I should take better care of myself..." admonishments (from myself and others,) I'm curling up to my tenderized being and I'm really very pleased with the state of me.

I'm devoted to tending the fire of knowledge, to blazing my own trail. Burn out is a natural part of shining. Naturally. I welcome it now.

Because I'm such a Typically Tough Cookie, admitting to burn out is not my first inclination. My response to the creeping psyche crispies has been to put on more mascara and tighten my bra straps. But the evidence has been surfacing:

YOU KNOW YOU'RE BURNED OUT WHEN:

1. Your friend asks where you want to go for breakfast and you say, "Anywhere they serve mashed potatoes and chocolate cake."
2. You start to feel a whole new sympathy for Britney Spears' last breakdown because, "Poor thing, the pressure to be skinny, manage your millions, raise your babies, and remember your dance routine must be outfreakingrageous. Someone needs to nominate her for the Nobel."
3. When asked what famous historical figure you'd like to have dinner with, you choose Joan of Arc, "because I want to know if she was a nut-bar or truly vocationally inspired."
4. You start listening to inordinate amounts of music from high school (for me that would be The Cure) and Gregorian chants.
5. You wear a hat, sunglasses, and a scarf to the grocery store. You wish you could wear your Uggs to business meetings.
6. You generally feel like you're walking through the world minus a layer of epidermis and it's really windy outside.
7. You totally relate to this "Overnight Success" video from Chris Brogan.
8. When you hear some tragic news about brutality and violence, you want to collapse into a ball of sobbing guilt because, clearly, you're not doing enough to save the human race from it's mortal coil.
9. Your monastic fantasies are unceasing. You dream of living on an island only accessible by boat (but where, magically, FedEx and Pizza Hut still deliver.)

Yep, you done be fried.

RE-FRAMING BURN OUT INTO A BEAUTIFUL POSSIBILITY:

1. You run long and hard, you get tired. That's a fact. Marathoners don't criticize themselves after a race for being exhausted. They rest.
2. Rest and excitement don't have to be mutually exclusive terms. You can have some down time and still bubble with the anticipation of getting back into the game.
3. My wonder goddess coach, Dyana Valentine puts it this way: "Your energetic vulnerability is helping you get clear on what you need." Damn, that's goood.
4. Take stock of all you've accomplished. You've come far, baby. And you've got the road rash and the muscle definition to prove it.
5. "Life balance" is an insidious myth. Picasso, Oprah, Steve Jobs, Einstein, Maria Callas - they weren't aiming for balance, they were aiming to rock their genius, and they've all had periods of burn out.
6. Cozy comfort hiding quiet time can make for some amazing new ideas.
7. On the seventh day, even God rested.
8. As the legend goes, when the Phoenix resurrects from the flames, she is even more beautiful than before.

I will start a fresh fire and jump back into it. I'm gathering kindling in between unpacking my suitcases and naps. I've got Bigger Than Ever Plans. And maybe six months or six years from now, I will be burned out, spent, deeply satiated and in need of cocoa and solace again. I'm looking forward to it.

. . . . . . .

Send my note cards 'round the world...when you care enough to say it in black & white.

 

the desire to be useful

 

the divinity of the suck factor

"There will always be suffering. The trick is to not suffer over the suffering."
- Alan Watts, Zen master

One of my best friends and I have a sick tradition. We get excited about each others' hardship. One of us will be sniffling through an out-pour of angst about how wrenching a particular life lesson is, and isn't it crazy how when it rains it pours with shitty news, and turmoil, and big life do-overs. You know, those excruciating disappointments and Tough Spots - the kind that require a friend to help you navigate.

Sniffle. Silence.

And then the listener on the other end of the line replies, “Holy suck factor. But, you know ... I’m kinda excited for you.” And then the other one of us blows her nose and says, “Yeah, I know, it's great.” And we're not joking. But we laugh at that absurdity and our sheer effing moxy, and then the other person goes back to whingeing and processing while the listener resumes her role as the receptacle of angst out-pour.

And we believe it. We believe in the divinity of the suck factor. It's an implicit, and lived, and affirmed understanding: that the universe trades up. That as Camus and kd lang said, "In the depth of winter I found in me there was an invincible summer." Or as Nietzsche and Bruce Willis put it, What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Or at least more expanded. And that's very exciting. And excitement about getting to the other side is just what you need to get there.