Blast O' Joy

Stretch Your Own Personal Wingspan

This week, as ice begins to form on Lake Champlain, I have been watching a pair of bald eagles from my office window. They are big and spectacular, and they truly do soar in ways that seagulls cannot. Seagulls are a dime a dozen on the lake. Their cries are woven into my consciousness so that I can scarcely even hear them anymore. They are everyday birds, the way that I have felt like an everyday person at times in my life.

When I feel like an everyday person it seems my world is small and circumscribed. It seems impossible that I could create more money, or more opportunity, or more love, or more of anything I truly want. The view from this second gear kind of existence is stilted, though, for what I always forget at such times is that I can actually make my world as large and grand as I want.

I can enter the realm of eagles. I can spread out to a seven foot wingspan if I so desire. I can flap slowly and powerfully along the fishing grounds, and pull out a five pound salmon whenever I want one. I don't have to eat the frozen remains of last summer's hot dog bun that's looking so good to the seagulls on the beach. Indeed, if I'm truly flying like an eagle, I wouldn't think of touching it.

Everyday it becomes more apparent that I am the one who determines how big a player I will be. And it becomes clearer that the limitations I've been seeing as large and obstinate walls are only illusions, believable but ultimately untrue.

I woke up the other day realizing that if I don't stretch my vision, I am not serving the work I've been given to do. In other words, I'd be operating with seagull vision instead of eagle vision. For it's not ultimately about stretching our limits to stroke our egos, fill our pockets, or make for cool cocktail party conversations. It's about serving the work, and so serving God and others.

May you stretch your own personal wingspans in the coming weeks, and decades, to think as big and glorious as you possibly can.

A Force In Nature

When I think about being a force in nature, I always think of Alma Colbert, my baby-sitter when I was a child. You never, ever messed with Alma. While my siblings and I could talk rings around our sensitive artist parents, and get them to agree to almost anything, Alma was not to be moved. God forbid you didn't clean up your room before Alma showed up. Then she wouldn't be harsh, or even angry. Worse, she'd be disappointed. "Oh.. chee-chee... "she'd cluck, her head shaking at the mere site of your room. You'd know you'd found disfavor, and the thought made you feel awful. Alma seemed to go through life with a higher set of standards.

Unlike our second-hand station wagon that was filled with candy wrappers, decapitated Barbies, and other assorted junk, her Thunderbird was impeccable. She even had vinyl slipcovers on the seats, and a tiny trash can! Bedtime to my parents meant a loose ramble in a bed-like direction, with plenty of stops in between. To Alma, bedtime meant you brushed your teeth and went to bed. Alma knew what she was about, and expected you to know, too.

Alma was my first role model of a person who was 'so big they don't suck.' Being too big to suck means that you know that you're presence is important in the world -- that you can't get swept away by the giant vacuum cleaner of life as it moves over you. Now this does not mean you have a swelled head, or you're a dictator, or that you're a control freak. It simply means you have a clear sense of what's important in life, and you do what you must do to make that happen. And, not coincidentally, it means that your work becomes better and finer all the time -- it becomes that which does not suck.

Like Alma, may you hold fast in the whirlwind of the holiday blitzkrieg as it roars on past. May you remember the thoughts, feelings and ideas which makes you great, and honor them accordingly.

May you, too, be ''so big you don't suck."

Bon Courage!

Many years ago, I used to see a life coach in Manhattan who routinely asked me to make lists of what I would 'create' in the coming weeks and months. He didn't mean what books I was going to write, or what business ideas I might launch. Rather, he meant something more mystical: what, exactly, would I cause to show up in my life.... like a great relationship, or a million dollars, or an amazing apartment. Stuff was what he was talking about -- tangible, physical manifestations of my dreams that he was convinced I could create ... just like that. I always left his apartment determined to make something happen.

I'd go home and gamely sit in front of my makeshift alter and meditate, or I'd rub crystals as I envisioned myself having the big career, or walking down the aisle in a wedding dress. I'd pour myself into these visualize-a-thons, reciting mantras and making list after list. But at the same time, a significant chunk of myself would always start to doubt. As my pen worked its way down my list of deep desires, it would inevitably stop when I got to the part about getting a multi-book deal with a major publisher. No possible way, breathed my mind -- who are you kidding, anyway? Still, I'd sally forth and write it down anyway, determined not to doubt.

But there it was, nonetheless -- good old Doubt.

For the longest time, part of me simply didn't believe that I could ever have such a thing, and so for years it never showed up. During this time, I wrote three entire books and found no such deals.

Then a wonderful thing happened. I forgot about my goals. The coach and I parted ways over time, my lists dried up and blew away, and I was carried along by the flow of life. How Much Joy Can You Stand? was picked up by a small press after 22 major publishers rejected it, and found its way into the One Spirit catalog where it was a Dual Main Selection last July. By now I was no longer doubting, or even worrying about my goals. I was pretty damn delighted with most aspects of my career... so wouldn't you know this was when I finally got around to manifesting the multi-book deal I'd always dreamed of.

So what did I learn about manifesting?

It's all about desire, baby.

I finally allowed myself to love what I had and know even more was possible ... really and truly. I finally stopped trying to 'fix' my broken career, and just started enjoying it. I finally decided I really was a big-publisher, multi-book kind of writer. And boom... there it was.

The interview that follows is with a woman whose some kind of national champion at manifesting. May it inspire you to believe in those dreams that just seem too good to be real.

Bon Courage!

Interview with Dr. Mary D. Bell

Dr Mary D Bell, 46, is a life mission coach in Sedona, Arizona, who is, to use her terminology, a very hot manifester. The proof is in the transition she made three years ago from a stifling, 9-to-5 job in academia in Pennsylvania to creating a life of freedom and passion in one of the most extraordinary places on earth. Like many people who come to Sedona (which, in case you didn't know is the "vortex" capital of the world), Mary was brought here by a dream she had one night.

I interviewed Mary while in Sedona on my speaking tour. And yes, while I was there I felt the energy. I was even wowed by the extraordinary splendor of the place. But left me most impressed was the simple lesson Mary has to teach in creating what you want.

So how did you come to Sedona?

Several years ago I got a doctorate in education leadership at Penn State University, after which I got a job there. My intention was to be in academia, which I did for nine years. Then I got a job that everyone wanted -- Assistant Director of Career Services at the main campus and that was a real coup... But about this time, I also had a period of major health problems. I'd just finished my dissertation, I left my husband, I moved back in with my parents. Everything was in turmoil. I started dreaming at night, seeing these red rocks in my dreams. I knew nothing about these rocks, but I sensed they were in the west and I had always been attracted to the west. Still, I had never lived more than five or ten minutes from my parents, nor did I plan to. My father was a larger-than-life influence in my life and I was very close to both of my parents, so it was very difficult to go 2200 miles away.

Still, after 25 years of spiritual and metaphysical interests, and lots of time spent listening to meditation tapes, I paid attention to these dreams. My best friend was a travel agent so I asked her if she knew where they were. I'd just recovered from lung surgery but I knew I had to find out where these were. It was like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I had an obsessive feeling about the rocks. And I recognized that I was being called in some sort of way. My friend and I narrowed the possibilities down to Camelback around Scottsdale AZ, or Sedona. I went to both places.

When I drove up from Phoenix and started seeing the red rocks of Sedona in the distance, tears started pouring down my face. Because I knew this place. It was just this powerful thing. I knew I had been here and I had lived in this place. So I found ways in the next year-and-a-half to come back five more times, just to be sure. It was such a stretch but I knew that I had to move out here and really be here. I made my apartment in Pennsylvania into this mini Sedona. I had Bell Rock and Cathedral Rock pictures in my room, and Sedona music and Indian imagery -- I created a virtual environment because I was savvy about how to manifest this new life I wanted.

What else did you do to manifest your new life?

Once it hit me that I was supposed to be here, I created these virtual vision maps and I feel they had a lot to do with it. [Virtual vision maps, also called treasure maps, are collages or pictures you can put make that visually describe the thing you want to manifest.] I had an image of a house with the red rocks in the background, and the zip code I wanted to live at. I did meditations where I'd see the Arizona license plate on my car. And I took the actions, too. I'm a strong introvert but I started calling people and doing things I don't ordinarily do because the energy was there.

Then I had an amazing thing happen. I came out to a workshop out here on one of my short trips, and I was alone near Cathedral Rock, meditating, and I got this sudden impulse to go to the Golden Word Bookstore in town. I'd just been there and I thought this was silly, but the feeling was that there was someone there I needed to meet. I went into the store and looked around and there were two people there. The first one was a man and I looked into his eyes and decided it wasn't him. It was real clear. The second one I thought was a bookstore clerk, who approached me so we talked for a couple of minutes. He turned out to be James Redfield, the author of Celestine Prophecy, which I had just read and loved.

We struck up an acquaintance that made a huge impact in my life. We both exchanged information that the other needed. It was like something out of the movies! He was also holding a book he was about to buy, The Spiritual Awakening of the Great Smoky Mountains -- and I was just about to go spend a week with my friend, the author! Meeting James was a sign to me that I was doing something right because magic was happening -- after all, he was only visiting Sedona like me. So then I started incorporating images of him into my manifesting, a symbol of the magic.

Was it hard to finally leave home?

Yes. Part of it was that I knew I had to create a traditional job in Sedona, so my father wouldn't worry. I found a job that wasn't advertised, and that was amazing, too. What happened was that I put an ad in the Sedona newspaper for pet-sitting -- I kept finding ways to come back that were inexpensive and one of them was to pet-sit for people. This woman called me who didn't even have a pet-sitting job. She actually wanted to rent out a room. But then she read me announcement for an academic job she'd just gotten in the mail. It was a job listing I never would have seen, because it was only sent to certain people on a list. So I contacted them and got the job.

Ultimately, I didn't stay at this job more than five months because I realized I needed to be on my own as a life mission coach. I wanted to talk about spirituality and I couldn't do that in my role as Manager of Student Services. Now I coach people by telephone all over the U.S., helping people to discover their life's passion.

How about the house with the red rocks in the background?

When I found the house, it wasn't for sale. All sorts of people were renting it. It even had a gardener living in a trailer in the driveway. I rented a room and used the same techniques of visualizing, affirmations, treasure maps, etc.. Then, within three months of living here, I owned the house. Initially, the owners weren't even interested in selling, but then they changed their mind. I didn't even have the money for a down payment but I used affirmations, and created receiving income from an unexpected source.

To be truly effective, a visualization's got to have the three ingredients: belief that you can have it, doing the visualizing itself, and intense emotion around wanting to create it. Most people need to get the idea that this is possible -- but only if they REALLY own the idea. The emotion is the thing that really carries it.

Then you manifested a relationship... how?

I got clear on what kind of life partner I wanted. I made a list of all the qualities -- everything from kind and spiritual, to a good business partner, to someone who would like my birds (I have 8 exotic birds) So I put a personal ad on a website and my partner found me. He was living an hour from where I had been living in Pennsylvania, and he moved out here to be with me. Before we met, a psychic told him he needed to come out to Sedona to meet somebody... so he did. We've been together for over a year, working and coaching.

Life Can Be Excellent

"The things that just happen to us are just the best things, like buying houses... we'll find all the advantages once we move in."

-- Roxana Gundry-Brookes

A mere few years ago, I was working as a freelance copywriter in the Promotion Department of The New York Times. It was a job I'd backed into. Somebody offered it and I took it, figuring at the least it would provide some reliable income. At the time, I was desperately trying to sell How Much Joy Can You Stand? (23 publishers had rejected it) and stay focused on finishing a novel I'd already quit writing twice. The last thing I needed, I thought, was another copywriting job -- I'd stomped away from advertising at least twice before. I really needed to be writing, I kept chiding myself. So why WAS I doing this?

Because, to put it bluntly, I needed the money.

The Times and I got along tolerably well, and I ended up staying there for two and a half years, increasing my hours to 25 per week. And was I writing? Kind of, sort of, maybe. My writing would come in fits and spurts, and then peter out all together on my precious days off. I would have tremendous bursts of productivity, then weeks when nothing would happen.

But all the while, I kept my freelance job. I wasn't particularly fulfilled by this work, but I kept thinking there was value in it, even if it was nothing more than providing household income which helped but wasn't totally necessary. I had a gut feeling that the relationships I formed there, and the milieu, and even the constant readings and re-readings of old and new issues of the main paper and The New York Times Magazine (part of my job) were important somehow.

Now, a few years after the fact, I think I understand. After I left the Times, I scrapped much of the novel I'd been chipping away at, and radically re-wrote it to be a simpler story inspired by some of the people I'd met there. An agent told me the protagonist needed a sexier career, so I made her a Times journalist and delighted in describing the place. In my speaking, I often draw on a pivotal experience I had at the Times one day when I felt "I just can take it anymore!" News items I ran across in my work there have been worked into How Much Joy Can You Stand?. The Times job even inspired my next Joy book, which will be about what it takes to work your passion into the rest of your life.

By managing to stay loose and go with the flow of this job, even though I didn't particular want it at the time, I gave myself enormous riches. I now know exactly how lucky I was to have that opportunity -- and to let that job and all it brought into my life "just happen."

But, life can be excellent when things happen, and you get to discover all the hidden joys within.

We're Here For A Reason

I don't know about you, but I've spent a large chunk of my working life waiting for "it" to happen -- that divine moment when the thing I've always wanted to do rears up and slugs me in the face, announcing that its time has finally come. I can't tell you how many hours I spent sitting at my desk, going through my appointed tasks but all the while daydreaming about some bigger, finer, more 'me' sort of work.

In those daydreams, I started out as a kind of WASP Barbara Streisand, playing "Funny Girl" to sold out crowds as I belted my way to Broadway stardom. Then, after I discovered writing, my daydreams had me churning out novels and collecting big checks a la Jackie Susann, darting from my limo in dark glasses to meet my adoring fan, and pounding out pages on my pink typewriter.

Never, ever, did I dream of what I was actually doing at the time. That would have been way too easy. Instead, I had to suffer ... just enough.

The problem was that I didn't get that what I was doing at that moment was intrinsically linked to what I'd be doing in the future. I didn't get the importance of the process, and where I was in it. And I definitely didn't get the spiritual interconnectedness of the whole darn mess.

God places us where She does for a reason: we're meant to learn and grow and reach and strengthen in all of these varied tasks because they will help us down the road. So yes, we probably are meant to work that desk job until the time it becomes no longer tenable and another, better opportunity opens up. And then we're meant to wander on as we do until we've finally grown enough that the dream can finally, fully embrace our lives. All these stops are planned... by us AND by God.

Dreams Are Not Always As Easy As They Appear In Our Fantasies

Every so often, I have an urge to write a TV sit-com. It's sort of like my urges to make an angel food cake, something I'm pretty sure I'm not even close to doing in this lifetime.

I know what I'd write about, of course, and who the characters are, and just how they'd romp through the first 90-minute pilot. But there the dream ends. I also know I haven't got the hard belly that TV writing, like any good dream, demands.

The fact is, these dreams we have are not always as easy and seamless as they appear in our fantasies. We think we'll just knock something off, toss it in an envelope, send it out to a friend of a friend, and two weeks later get The Phone Call That Will Change Our Life.

Not so. Almost inevitably, there is pain, and growth, and fear, and courage, and most of all, frustration followed again and again by persistence. Just like a tricky engine, you often have to keep re-starting your dream.

I once had an interview with someone who headed west to become that sit-com writer in

L.A.

, and has learned the hard way what it takes to achieve what he calls "fragile success."

The good news is that he is happy, and so we can take a lesson: In spite of all the bumps in the road, you really can be fulfilled -- if you just have enough faith to stick with it, and put your time in.    

If you are someone who is currently putting your time in, and chipping away at the dream, know that you are doing the right thing. Sooner or later, it will lead you exactly where you want to go.

Meanwhile, keep on chipping. It will only make you better, and stronger, and ultimately, more content.

Happy For No Reason?

So what’s a gal who’s all about living your joy have to say about a book that calls itself ‘Happy For No Reason?” Good things, that’s what!

As a professional Joy pusher, I was happy to find Marci Shimoff’s book. In it is an interesting point about how we all have a preset ‘happiness set point’ … that place where we intuitively stop when things get ‘too’ happy. Sound familiar? The book proposes a very organic 7 step process to moving you out of that stuck place and into a deeper experience of your own authentic happiness. I was really struck by some of the ideas here … I think you’d probably love ths book. I did.

And right now, not surprisingly, it’s at the top of Amazon’s best seller list – awesome! Jump in and join the wave … and get happy!

A Place For Kindness

I was always one of those people who thought creating something meant trying to prove yourself while a thousand pound weight of imperfection dangled over your head. Maybe it was the pressure of having very successful artist parents, or maybe it was just my own impossibly high standards. All I know is that great big overhead anvil made it damn hard to create much of anything.

So it was a great relief when I discovered the true secret to any of this creative business: that what you're really creating is a gift for other people.

Let's think about this for a minute.

Yes, it's true that we create things to free our spirit and soothe our soul and get our ya-yas out. But at the same time, don't we also create simply out of our love for others? Because we want to experience that greater link that puts us cheek and jowl with the rest of the homo sapiens wandering the planet? Because we want to feel the buzz of communication and actually share ourselves a little? We want to do something nice for our fellow man ... even if we're not consciously aware of it.

My previous interview with my cousin Jeff surprised and delighted me, because I'd never realized my cousin Jeff leads his tours to

New York

simply because of the joy they bring to others. I'd always assumed the tours had something to do with free theater tickets, or getting to visit the city more often. In fact, Jeff started leading

New York

theater tours so he could share the rush of that very first opening curtain in a Broadway house. He did it, he said, to feel the empathy of that excitement.

It doesn't matter if you're Si Re Pak, eyeballing the final approach of a putt that could win you the biggest title of your career, or a middle-aged bookkeeper, sitting down to begin the pot boiler you've been wanting to write for the last fifteen years. In the end, what it's all about is love -- your love for yourself, in doing this work in the first place, and ultimately, your love for others, in sharing what you can do.

I say there's still a place for kindness in this cold, strange, frustrated world in which we live. What we have to ask ourselves is this: how much of ourselves are we willing to share?

Let Your Work Do You

If there's anything I'm lousy at, it's letting things happen. I've always taken the view that if you want something badly enough, you should go out, stalk it down and strangle it into submission. What I'm learning is that this isn't always effective.

Previously, I had the good fortune to interview Roger the Jester, whose unique performances are the essence of improvisation. And what I discovered is that letting things happen naturally is a critical part of the creative process. And it is, indeed a process -- one that demands time as much as it demands action.

I think much of our tendency in pursuing these dreams is to feel that first of all, we're really all alone out there. Yet, we're not. We have divine guidance in much, if not all, of what we do. Furthermore, there's 'them' out there, too, which in Roger the Jester's case is his audience. All he has to do is tune into their responses, and they guide him to create the perfect performance. So it is with all of us -- help is at hand, if we just remember to look out there and see who's guiding us.

I also think we hold the pursuit of our dreams as this thing we're about to fail at miserably all the time. And so we clutch at straws, trying to force a result. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Fact is we are about to succeed at any given moment simply because we're doing the work in the first place. Roger the Jester says doing his work repeatedly has finally drummed it into his head that he knows what to do. I say confidence can also be achieved by simply giving yourself a break and trusting your instincts implicitly.

Trust is at the essence of letting it happen: trust in yourself, of course, and trust in the fact that you're supposed to be doing this work to begin with. By allowing ourselves to let things happen, we acknowledge the huge magnitude of who we are and what we can create. And we honor the magical, unknowable path we're on, and so wait patiently for all of its twists and turns to guide us, quite perfectly, where we need to go.

The bottom line is this: if we are to learn anything at all in this process we are in, we have to allow ourselves to relax into it -- and so to reap its benefits. There is nothing you have to do here, beyond the work itself. Much like Roger the Jester says, you simply have to let your work do you.

Surrender

These days I think a lot about surrender. It's easy to urge someone else to abandon everything, give it all up, and leap with both feet into the work of your dreams.

            It's another thing to actually do it.

            The act of surrendering to your dream is so incredibly blind that you just keep looking for the brakes. It's a basic human reflex. Yet, there are none. There is only the reassurance that you are doing that thing you were always meant to do. There is only the comfort of knowing you are guided.

            This is a good thing to keep in mind when you are making a leap that requires huge uprooting: moving to another place, quitting a job, draining the life savings to invest in your business, leaving hubby and the kids behind for six weeks of trying to sell books to roomfuls of total strangers (or, worse, to three strangers in an empty bookstore.)

            You were given that dream for a purpose and will consequently be drawn to just the places you need to go. And you will draw to you all the help you need to accomplish it, whether you even know to ask for help or not. Personally, I hate it when New Agers deliver such pious news, but the damnable thing about it is that it's true! We really are magnets for making things happen. All we have to do is turn on the old steely will, and boom... there they are -- indicators and support of all sorts, pointing the way.

            These are words I have to keep reminding myself of, even after writing the book on it, so to speak. (That's the thing about being human ... the basic design is just always going to be permanently flawed.)

            Before embarking on these huge, terrifying leaps, I always think I'm not asking the right questions, or I doubt my ability to clearly hear the guidance in front of me. I keep thinking it should all be more comfortable, or that I should know something I don't. The answer to this is a big, fat NO. Risk is inherently not cozy. It's risky. And as for knowing things, you do know more than you can even imagine.

            What it all boils down to is surrender, and the supreme luxury of trust. I like what Matisse said, after he left his none-too-supportive father and set off to be an artist. (Dad was reportedly left standing in the driveway, screaming "You'll starve to death, you idiot!" )

            Matisse said: "It was as if I had been called. Henceforth, I did not lead my life. It led me."

            Amen.