U Is For… Unbelievable!

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Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, used to say, when someone asks you how you are, you look ’em in the eye and you say, “Great!”

The idea being, that when you had that energy, it attracts people to you. It presents the image that you are cheerful, motivated, and have things going on.

I was at a training with a Mary Kay Director whom I’m embarrassed to say I’ve forgotten her name. But what she said stuck with me.

“Sometimes, we cannot honestly say, ‘great,’ because of things going on in our lives. So when that happens, I want you to look them in the eye, and say, ‘Unbelievable!'”

I thought, well, that’s kind of silly.

About a week later, I was at the office and I was having, well, an “unbelievable” day. You know the kind, where nothing goes right, everyone is cranky, and your boss is being a so-and-so. (Boss, if you’re reading this, I’m not talking about you.) And it happened. A client asked me, “How are you?”

I took a beat and said, “Unbelievable!” and looked ’em right in the eye.

Pause.

We both burst out laughing at the same moment.

And you know what? I felt better. They felt better. And damned if it didn’t make my DAY better.

Huh.

Unbelievable!

T Is For… Try!

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I know, I know. Yoda (not Grogu, pictured above), said “Do, or do not. There is no try.”

With all respect to the Jedi Master, I call bullshit.

Sometimes, all we can DO is TRY.

Sometimes, trying is as brave as doing.

And sometimes, trying IS doing.

If there’s a thing you want to do, and your mind is stuck and your emotions are high, and your inner monologue is like Cruella D’Ville only meaner, I suggest that instead of “doing,” we try.

TRY writing for 5 minutes.

TRY sketching something.

TRY getting out of the chair and walking around the house.

TRY giving it a shot.

TRY calling back the prospect.

TRY.

Our culture, and late-stage capitalism, are obsessed with the doing. “Just do it.” Yes, I know I’ve quoted that slogan before, and yes, I know that it works. Sometimes.

I’m not talking about sometimes.

I’m talking about those times when we don’t even have the sometimes in our brain, and we’ve forgotten the sometimes we’ve succeeded, we’ve forgotten how to do, we’ve forgotten who we are and that we have skills and experience.

I’m talking about the times when we feel small, and stuck, and blank, but yearn with desire to feel those times when we have been motivated, and competent, and productive.

It’s in the interstices of those times that I propose “try” belongs.

Sometimes, try can get you from that in between place into the doing place.

Still don’t believe me?

This blog series, right here, the A to Z for 2023 on Writer Zen Garden, is exactly that: we tried it, and we did it.

Try.

Please.

Just try.

S Is For… Surprises!

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Contributed by Laura E. Rios.

As surely as winter follows fall, spring arrives at the end of winter. This repeating cycle comes every year. Most of us happily anticipate the changes that spring brings along, like nature’s beauty, longer days, and warmer weather. There are undesirable situations that we know are coming too, such as the annual tornado season, the IRS income tax deadline, and so on.

Obviously, something as inevitable as spring can also bring surprises. Some surprises are pleasant ones. One year we had a volunteer giant sunflower sprout in the back yard. An errant sunflower seed from the bird feeder brought us the most amazing six-foot-tall beauty, totally free! It was so fun to watch it grow. I felt like Mother Nature had presented me with a wonderful and unexpected gift.

Another spring, I bought a new hanging plant and brought it home and hung it on the front porch. Then, a pair of mourning doves surprised me by building their nest in it. So, I sacrificed the impatiens plant and instead, I spent the spring watching a pair of doves raise their family. That was an unpleasant surprise that ended up being a happy one.

This spring we’ve been surprised by hailstorms, increasing gas prices, and a dental emergency, and it’s only April. But, if not for those things, it would most certainly be something else, because as Gilda Radners’s Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say, “It’s always something”.

Daily life really does fling something new at us all the time, like bird droppings on your freshly cleaned windshield. Charles R. Swindoll said “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you deal with it.” He would have been good friends with Roseanne Rosannadanna. They shared a similar attitude about dealing with surprises.

Ultimately, it’s healthiest to embrace the surprises that come our way, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant. We might as well expect good things as well as bad, since they’re both part of life. They can come any time of the year, so we can always be on the lookout for them. Keeping a positive mental attitude and remaining flexible are good strategies for dealing with whatever this spring throws at you. Surprise!

 

The Image accompanying this item is royalty-free from Pixabay.

R is for… Romantic Comedies!

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Contributed by Laura F.

Who doesn’t love a good romantic comedy?  Nobody with whom I would care to associate, certainly.  :>).  Hating good romantic comedies, from my perspective, would be like hating kittens or boy bands: the sign of a tragically soured outlook on life.

Of course, the key word is “good.”  Any team of idiots with multi-million dollar funding by a major studio can toss a film together, call it a romantic comedy, and unleash it on an unsuspecting public.  I have learned from bitter experience that although so-called romantic comedies abound, very few of them are either romantic or comic.

The reason for this sorry state of things, I believe, is the current terror of being connected with anything that anyone anywhere might label “s-e-n-t-i-m-e-n-t-a-l,” a word so feared and despised nowadays that I feel compelled to spell it rather than say it out loud.  Unfortunately, separating romantic love (supposedly the basis of romantic comedies) from anything that might strike anyone as “s-e-n-t-i-m-e-n-t-a-l” puts filmmakers in a bit of a quandary.  We all know that the couple who are destined to be together have to wait until the end of the film to actually get together.  If they were joined at the hip from the beginning, where would be the suspense?

With typical Hollywood genius, filmmakers are prone to solve this problem by having the destined couple HATE each other right up until that kiss (or equivalent) at the end.  Do you think I exaggerate?  I invite you to consider Ticket to Paradise, a movie I forced my poor family to watch last Christmas.  It had George Clooney!  It had Julia Roberts!  They played a divorced couple who unite in order to prevent what they believe will be a disastrous marriage for their daughter.  All this and the background of a tropical – well, paradise!  What could go wrong?

What could, and did, go wrong is that the script was far too convincing in showing the Clooney and Roberts characters as genuinely estranged from each other, genuinely angry at, and contemptuous of, each other.  Their sniping and sarcasm and quarrels were truly nasty.  Sorry, Hollywood, after witnessing scene after scene of two people who show every sign of deeply disliking each other, even the most rosily optimistic audience member will not believe in the completely last-minute freeze frame that is supposed to signal their reconciliation.

So much for the romance.  So, also, for the comedy.  Again, accept my apologies, Hollywood, but the current popularity of so-called “insult comedy” does not mean that every insult is automatically comic, let alone clever, let alone witty.  It is possible for a put-down to be funny, but it is a huge mistake to assume that every put-down is funny just because it is a put-down.

Does this mean that the art of the romantic comedy is completely dead?  No.  One charming example of the genre is Love Hard, a film whose title comes from the fact that the heroine’s favorite Christmas movie is Die Hard while the hero’s favorite Christmas movie is Love, Actually.  I won’t pretend that the film is perfect; its plot relies heavily on the heroine’s obtuseness in pursuing an outdoorsy hunk instead of recognizing what the audience sees instantly: that she and the bespectacled hero are made for each other.  If you watch this movie (and I hope you will), you will roll your eyes over her slowness.  The point remains, however, that the two of them are made for each other; their respect and affection for each other shine through their every scene together.  As a result, when the two finally come together, I felt like cheering.

Romantic?  Comic?  Yes, Love Hard proves a film can be both those things.  So, Hollywood, can we have more true romantic comedies, please?

Q Is For… Quit!

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Contributed by Tina Holland.

QUIT – I know that doesn’t sound like a very positive word in month full of posts about Inspiration and Renewal.   But it is an important step.

I’ve been reading a lot of books about time management and watching blogs on authors who are Resetting and Quitting.  Well, not the writing part, but everything else.  Two of my favorites are Sarra Cannon and Becca Syme.

Sarra Cannon is doing a whole Reset on her YouTube Heart Breathings Channel and she speaks frankly about letting things go so she can focus on writing this year.

Becca Syme has a book out called Dear Writer, You Need to Quit.  I haven’t read Becca Syme’s book but I do follow her Quitcast on YouTube.

Both of these women talk about letting stuff go to focus on writing and letting stuff go.  It sounds easier said than done and it is.  It can be difficult to get rid of toxic people, unused things and useless tasks.

Though it is hard, at times it is absolutely necessary for our own sanity and safety.  I will say for me it has always been easier to get rid of Unused things and Toxic People, but tasks – that thing I can validate with a checkmark or give myself a sticker.  I find those the most difficult, because you know, I’m getting stuff done.  But is it adding value?  Is it taking up more time than it should?  Do I love it?  I’ve started to evaluate these things more and more as I age.

Each person must decide for themselves what they should Quit.  But I encourage you to Quit those things that don’t meet the criteria for your well-being and don’t move you towards your goals.

We can’t move forward if we don’t Quit the things that block our path.

P is for… Patience!

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Contributed by Adele Fasick.

The old proverb “Patience is a virtue…” is quoted most often by parents trying to calm the urgent requests of children. The version I used to hear was “Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can. Seldom in a woman, and never in a man.” This sentiment has been around at least since the fifteenth century probably because people still find patience a difficult virtue to practice.

One place where we almost never find patience is in government. Voters usually want results quickly and politicians try to respond. But a few figures in American history have been willing to work patiently for years to achieve their goals. Frances Perkins was one government figure who did just that.

Frances Perkins was born in Boston in 1887 into a prosperous family, but she spent most of her life in New York and Washington D.C. Like many women of her time, she was given a good education but was not expected to use her education in a job or career. Her destiny, as her family saw it, was to marry a prosperous husband and raise children to follow the same path as her mother and aunts. But Frances saw life differently.

After Perkins graduated from college, she became a social worker in Philadelphia and New York, but a dramatic fire in 1911 changed the course of her life. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which caused the death of 146 workers, occurred in her New York City neighborhood. The workers died because bosses had locked access to the elevators in the building. This terrible accident opened Perkins’s eyes to the overwhelming unfairness of the problems faced by workers. She realized she could do more through political action than she could through providing care to individuals as a social worker and so she became an activist. She started to work with government agencies in New York City.

Frances was a young woman, just turning 30, when she decided to work in government. She soon discovered that most of the men she worked with were uncomfortable confronting a young, well-dress woman and didn’t know how to behave with her. Should they flirt with her or treat her like one of the boys? What would their wives think? Frances took an unusual approach to help them. She deliberately tried to appear older than she was. She began to wear somewhat dowdy clothes, and to project a motherly image. This was her way of not frightening off her male colleagues and she became famous for looking like someone’s middle-aged wife rather than a politician.

Patience worked for Perkins. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, he asked her to serve as the Secretary of Labor. Choosing a woman for that post raised an uproar. Labor leaders opposed her because she had never been a union member. She was supported by the League of Women Voters and other women’s groups. Her appointment marked the first time a woman had served as member of the president’s cabinet.

Frances Perkins became a major partner in Roosevelt’s introduction of the New Deal. She was responsible for some of its major achievements—including the minimum wage law, unemployment insurance, and Social Security. She even tried to introduce healthcare as a benefit for all workers, but the American Medical Association killed that provision. Nonetheless, Perkins’s patience led to some of the policies that have made life better for millions of Americans over the years. Perhaps that demonstrates that patience is indeed a virtue.

You can read more about Perkins and other memorable women in my blog Teacups and Tyrants.

O Is For… Creating “Opportunities”!

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Contributed by Alexandra Sissulak.

A space, a moment in time, where both mistakes and miracles alike can flourish, frolic, and play together is where opportunities are created. This is where the best things happen. Opportunities for love, success, and happiness, to name a few.

Depending upon whatever mindset is applied, the abundance and availability of opportunities are potentially limitless.

If only we knew where they are??

Maybe we’re stuck because we believe no one will give us a chance.  Being given a chance isn’t the same as having an opportunity. While quite similar, there are a few subtle, yet key differences that separate the two: action, or involvement, engagement, and intention are required for an opportunity; chance will happen whether it is experienced or not. Also, an opportunity doesn’t always appear in the form of a gift, or chance, you might say. Largely opportunity is associated with positive outcomes, with some nuance and a small thing called “perspective” that certainly comes into play. Another element is time, which generally presents the greatest obstacle to overcome for most, if not all of us. Because time, while often coming up short, is the greatest equalizer of all. Opportunities can only be taken as they present themselves, not yesterday or tomorrow.

Lastly, in order for an opportunity to occur, you need to be present.  Staying preset and aware of your surroundings and maintaining a balanced awareness of yourself during any given moment is where opportunity can be found. If you aren’t present when opportunity becomes available, it was never yours to begin with.  To find opportunities with outcomes leading in the direction of your choosing, you need to know where to look.

Where the heck do I do look!?!

Inside yourself.

You look at your values and what matters most to you and who matters most to you; the “when” and “how” will follow.

You need only to direct the ship, point the finger, flip the page, scribble that last thought, and dream your biggest dream.

Now you’re cooking with gas!!

Light that flame, get the engines burning hot and ready to engage. And then point your whole self into whatever direction you love most.

Open the doors to opportunities yourself, in a way that resonates with you and your values.

Ask yourself, “What’s on the other side of opportunity’s door?”, or “If I could create any opportunity, what would it be?”

This is the most important step: Answer the question.

Then, turn the handle, walk in, and repeat.

N Is For… New!

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Contributed by Rachel Wilder

I, like many others, adore my rut. It’s comfortable and has great carpeting. I really don’t like trying new things and have no desire to send an application to be on Amazing Race or anything remotely like that. Humans tend to be creatures of habit, as the saying goes, and I think that’s very accurate.

But life can become stagnant, lead to depression or cause you to look back and wonder what you did with your life. So even though it can be hard I urge everyone to try something new.

A new look.

I decided to become a redhead.

A new hobby.

Perhaps, coloring- meet my happy yak, Harvey.

Or try a new trail on your next walk.

Boardwalk Path at Wetlands Park in Las Vegas

Because staying in your rut or comfort zone might lead to regrets. You have the possibility of discovering something new to love…or not. You don’t have to do it again, after all. Because the ideas are endless. If you have trouble finding one, ask a friend. They are probably excited about sharing something that they love and enjoy with you.

Just try.

Put in the comments what you’re considering.

I’d love to know,

Rachel

M Is For… Muse!

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Contributed by Tina Holland.

It seems strange to look for a muse in the modern age.   I have an elderly dog that wants to hang out with me when I write.   His name is Kaiser and he’s a chocolate lab.   When my husband comes in, he will often say,  “I see Kaiser is musing” (yep he made it a verb).  This usually means Kaiser is napping in a nearby corner or at my feet.

Another phrase common in creative circles is, “Feed your Muse”.  This generally refers to doing something to fill your creative well – You’re not doing the “thing” but you are doing a thing related closely to it, like reading (for a writer) or something you love (I like scrapbooking).  Occasionally, in these moments you will find inspiration for your current work or maybe a spark of something new.

The modern muse can be an illusive entity.  In our modern world we have so much pulling us in different directions, it can be hard to find time for ourselves, let alone inspiration.  How do we change that?

What I’ve done when I’ve been blocked or overwhelmed is to make a conscious effort to carve out time for myself.  For me that means no distractions – No TV, no phone, no tech at all and I settle in with a book or a craft project for a couple hours.  I don’t even think about writing, because honestly when I’m blocked, I’m too fragile.  And looking at a blank screen when words won’t come makes me feel like a failure.

I’ve added more time to this creative block over the years and it does help me find inspiration and my muse and Kaiser usually joins me in all things so he enjoys a day without all the tech too.

L Is For… Leaving Things Out

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Contributed by Laura F.

We live in an age notable for many things, and one of those things must surely be our shared obsession with “de-cluttering,” “minimalism,” “voluntary simplicity,” whatever other name you choose to give it.  The interiors held up for our admiration are those that have been stripped down to essentials: bare, airy, uncluttered.  If “decluttering” is the activity urged upon us as virtually a moral obligation, then “uncluttered” is perhaps the ultimate word of praise.

I have certainly done my share of decluttering, some of which I heartily regret, but I have never achieved an uncluttered look in my living space, and I have no desire to try.  You see, there is a counter-balance to the gospel that an uncluttered, almost naked space leads to a healthy mind and a pure spirit.  The counter-balance is advice that I have found to be true: it is easier to pursue activities if your living space is set up to make those activities easy to jump into.  Some zealots go so far as to advocate packing your gym bag the night before or even sleeping in your gym clothes (!!!!) so that in the morning you will jump out of bed, grab your bag (or not, if you’re already dressed for the gym) and be on your way to a vigorous workout.

Please do not imagine that the “you” in the preceding sentence is being used as an all-inclusive pronoun.  I have never even owned a gym bag and the thought of sleeping in gym clothes sounds as bizarre to me as the thought of showering in gym clothes.  That would save time, too, wouldn’t it?  But would it really be a good idea?

No, let’s put all thoughts of gym firmly to one side and leave them there.  I’m thinking instead of such things as what I witnessed last Christmas, when my mother agreed to let my older sister spread out her jigsaw puzzle on our “fancy” table, one we only pull out to its full extent at major holidays.  We had our ordinary meals in the kitchen, as usual, but the “fancy” table stayed out in all its glory after Christmas dinner was over so that my sister could keep working on the puzzle.  It took weeks for her to complete the fiendishly difficult puzzle, but she finally triumphed over its challenges.  Imagine what a frustrating experience it would have been if she had had to put the puzzle away at the end of each visit and re-assemble it the next time she came over!

Jigsaw puzzles, of course, are an extreme example, but almost any activity benefits from being literally easy to “pick up.”  Does any reader actually put a book neatly back in the bookcase after each reading session?  Who among us does not prefer to have a book handy on the bedside table or by the side of our chair?  After we’ve read the book entirely through, then it can go back in the bookcase.

One of the greatest of sewing luxuries is the ability to leave a sewing project out on a table.  As for those people who actually have to put not only their fabric pieces but even their sewing machine away after each use, I salute their dedication but I suspect that less dedicated people would gradually sew less and less.

I myself am a tremendous devotee of coloring books and it is a true pleasure to be able to leave a coloring book open, with a tempting array of coloring agents (pens, paints, etc.) by its side.  For me, coloring is a great way to relax.  Sometimes all I need is to color for ten minutes, or even for five, and that is enough to soothe whatever little upset ruffled my spirits.  If I had to take out my coloring book and colors each time before carefully putting them away again, my opportunities for quick “peace breaks” would be much more limited.

In short, although plenty of people will tell you that a completely uncluttered space is crucial to mental health, I’d like to propose that sometimes leaving things out has valuable mental health benefits of its own.