Comfort Queen » molly gordon

When the Facts Liberate – But Only Everytime

Jennifer — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:01:39 +0000

Oh don’t I love when this happens? The answer is yes, yes, yes!

This is yesterday, when a coaching client (super fab super smart doctor-writer-coach-farmer, what an amazing hyphenate that is!) discovered she was actually working 20-30 hours more a month than she realized.

She did that thing called keeping a time diary and it revealed such gold.

She vaguely knew she was working longer since changes at the hospital but without clear facts, she took not being able to do what she had previously been able to do personally. As in “I must be losing my edge, getting old, missing something, not working hard enough.”

What does taking it personally lead to? Only big heart bruises, no creative energy, less compassion for yourself and others, and perhaps a pint or five of your favorite frozen dessert.

This is what happens – but only every time- we forget to pay attention to what actually is. As in the facts, ma’am.

On a call today with the amazing Molly Gordon talking about getting just right clients among many other important self-employed creative thing, several people talked about the difficulty of choosing what to work on. My dear friend Camille Maurine chimed in about how she is passionate about all her projects so she doesn’t want to choose.

Passion without reality means little or no action on what we care about. Little or no income. Little or no impact.

The world needs us to get out of our way.

It’s why I wrote the Satisfaction Finder, it’s why I declare the most important thing I need to do each day the night before, it’s why I have a Brain Trust… and it’s still hard to be human and face how much time I actually have in a day.

If we are unwilling to be human, and actually admit we are living in space and time, we have very little chance of getting much done.

Or of enjoying doing it.

So keep a time diary for a week, plan your day the night before and include only what you really can do on your list (rather than what you wish you could do), let yourself grieve all the things you want to do but can’t right now, get help choosing, but for golly’s gosh sake, let yourself be human.

Love you!

Links: Molly’s call (you can still get a recording), time diary, Camille Maurine, The Satisfaction Finder.

The Business Side of Self-Care

Jennifer — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:01:21 +0000

I was raised in the religion called “Self-Employment.”

As a child, I remember many a summer evening, lounging on the floor of my uncle Walter’s house in Bedford, Indiana, listening to my dad and Walter and Uncle Pryce talk business.

No. Not talk, pontificate. Extol. Preach.

The theme was always the same: be in business for yourself. Business was god. With a small g.

But still, god. (Yes, we went to church, too.)

When I got my first job out of film school, as an assistant to a literary agent in LA, my dad said, “Why did you get a job? I thought you wanted to be a writer?“

Oh no, Dad was not a patron of the arts. He believed that I would make more money working for myself than working for the Man.

My Dad did not have in his possession the statistics that most writers earn poop.

This week I feel like I returned to my family roots by writing about being self-employed.

It may be a new direction for me, working with self-employed women (and maybe men, I like men, I live with two of them and they are very lovely) around the inner work of being self-employed.

I’m feeling such a nice tickling about this idea.

In the meantime, in case you missed them, here are some great things to know about – not just for the self-employed.

Swooning

I’ve only been reading Danielle LaPorte for a few months. Oh the grief over all the juicy good I have missed. She’s sexy, truthful and loving. Good stuff.

Swigging Tequila

I sometimes paint myself into a corner with my writing, feeling I have to be serious or comforting or… Why do I tell myself that? That’s a topic for another post.

I love reading the very naughty Naomi Dunford’s very very very popular blog.

(I wrote a guest post this week. I don’t really swig tequila. It’s a metaphor. Or a joke. Or both. )

Admitting Mistakes

I’m putting on the Big Virtual Retreat next week. I made some marketing mistakes promoting it. I feel bad about them. Here is where I talk with the uber smart and very grounded Dave Navarro about what I learned doing this project.

Do I really make these faces?

You know Molly Gordon’s brilliance, right? If not, you are missing out big time. I made a video blog post for her and you have to got to see the very odd expression the video froze on. I laughed out loud when I clicked over.

Everybody loves Christine!

Christine Kane and I met when we did an event together a few years back. I fell in love with her immediately, everybody does. But what has made me sit up and take notice is how she has gone from struggling artist to paying off her mortgage! Read my post about depletion, and learn more about the amazing Ms. Kane!

Hungry Ghosts, Part 2

Where the sexy sharp ass Jennifer Howard tells you how everything is really going to be alright. This woman has a brain and half. Plus she’s intuitive! Plus she’s really really cool.

I hope all these goodies help you remember that life is a wondrous game for playing and failure is just another label.

Choose Your Life Mondays – the Depletion Edition

Jennifer — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:01:23 +0000

Hanging out with my friends of the heart Mark Silver, Molly Gordon and Michele Lisenbury Christensen this weekend, we got to talking about what I do and how it helps women.

These wise folks said things like “You help women be effective in the world” and “Comfort is a quality of the Divine, it’s the foundation” and “If it’s killing me, then it’s killing the world.”

Wow. Okay. YES!

And then this one:

Women get into a cycle of depletion and they’re afraid to step out of it, because then they would be freed up to actually take action on what they really want. They are positive they won’t be able to create their heart’s desire. So they stay busy or scattered or overcommitted so they never have to try.”

This one landed like a slap across my face.

I do this!

I hate to admit it but I do.

See I have an ancient, crusty legacy of shame around my creative work.

I have an old stinky story of being a failure.

A public failure.

The stinky shame dates from when I did an Edith Ann impression (a Lily Tomlin character for those of you too young to remember) on stage in front of my whole school and you could see my breasts through my white shirt and I got heckled.

I think high beams were mentioned.

I was in 5th grade.

Did I mention it was in front of the whole school?

I’ve got a lot of stories like that – stories of wildly creative out-going kind-of-loud Jen launching herself at the world and things not. Always. Going. So. Well.

What creative person doesn’t have these stories, right?

I’m 47 now and I’ve done a ton of healing around this and even let my desire to murder my 7th grade English teacher go (that’s another story).

Only I didn’t see until now that

when my creative shame gets triggered, I kick off a depletion cycle to end all depletion cycles.

It’s like I want to prove I’m a untalented goof and so I exhaust myself by launching too many projects, hiring the wrong folk, miring myself in endless details that do need to get done (thank you very much) but I suck at details so that makes me feel more ashamed plus there is no time for real creative work which would restore my sanity.

But I’m afraid to stop the cycle because then I’ll have the time to replenish and do creative work but what if it sucks again? Better to stay busy!

Stunningly diabolical!

Michele said, “Women are ashamed to need comfort and support and love to be able to thrive.”

I would add, “We have to build the trust and heal the shame that tells us that if we get comfort and rest and ease, we’d better by damn prove we were worth it.”

So this week I’ll be loving watching my story that depletion is the punishment for being a failure, and must be maintained to keep future failure at bay.

What about you? Is depletion the story of your life these days? If so, maybe it’s just because life is crazy busy and soon you will get some time to rest, maybe a retreat?

Or are you caught in a washing machine of depletion and you feel like you can never get out?

If so, tell me more! Me thinks this could be juicy conversation.

At Kripalu – Join us Energetically

Jennifer — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:03:44 +0000

I’m sitting in the Cafe at Kripalu, writing a little bit before lunch and then dance and then a massage and then my best friend arrives to be my assistant and then my first beloved group gathers together tonight at 7:30 Eastern.

Oh be still my beating heart.

Won’t You Join us Energetically?

So many of you wanted to be here but could not so I thought “What if we retreated together in spirit? What if the women who are here supported the women who are not, and vice-versa?”

You send your energy, prayers, and intentions to the women who are here, this weekend and next week, and I will ask women to send the energy of the retreats to you.

And

What if you took a mini-retreat between tonight and next Friday at noon and let the energy of my Kripalu retreats hold you and inspire you?

You could use the Virtual Retreat sessions (The Retreat is available again with a Refresher Day on April 25th) as one way to structure your time, like my sessions do for the women here.

Won’t you take even a half an hour in the next week to rest in the abiding peace that is your true nature, to calm your well-meaning but often rather busy mind, and to comfort yourself in ways that bring you toward life, rather than away?

If you do retreat, please share your intention and experiences here. Let us feel the ripples of retreats around the world!

Sending you the peace of true comfort and the power of women slowing down, listening, and remembering.

Choose Your Life Mondays – #14

Jennifer — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:35:39 +0000

Choose Your Life Monday is an invitation to name what pattern you will lovingly notice this week and to do so in community. Of course, you can do it any day you want- you don’t have to start on Monday. Join in when and whenever suits you.

Last week I declared I would

lovingly be a student of my snarl.

Um, that wasn’t so fun.

As in I’m here again? Heart sinks. I’m making things harder than they need to be again?

I’m struggling with structure and support again?

And… it was truly enlightening. As in bringing light to my being.

My friend Molly Gordon calls the things we do that get in our way signature preoccupations.

Signature preoccupation = a pattern we do again and again

A blind spot

Something that trips us up and we say heart sinking, “Not you again!”

One of mine is making things more complicated than they need to be and thus not serving the people who come to me as fully as I could.

And tiring myself out in the not-serving-so-well process.

One of the gifts of being with the same group of people for years -

most recently that’s been my brain trust (Molly Gordon, Eric Klein, Mark Silver and Michael Bungay Stainer) and before that my women’s group in Santa Barbara -

is getting to see their signature preoccupations, up close and in furious action over time.

“Oh he’s doing that again! Wow. Can’t he see he’s doing that?”

The answer to that would be no.We can’t see. We need outside eyes and helpful, kind ways to see.

That’s why we need learning adventures and coaches and therapists and brain trusts and women’s groups and processes.

What’s also been a gift – although many days it feels more like a kick in the gut -

is having my signature preoccupations witnessed over time.

Now you could, and you would if you were me, might be tempted to get all victim-y right about now, to put your wrist to your forehead and swooningly moan, “But change is so hard!”

True.

It is not for the weak of heart, this inner-change paying-attention business. It is not for the rigid, the unable to laugh at themselves, or the unable to look in the mirror and smile ruefully at what they see.

And here is what I know – not believe – know:

When you are willing to pay attention to things over time, they do change.

Yes, over time may well mean your life time.

So? You’re going to live anyway. Do you want to live conscious and aware or do you want to live afraid and ignorant?

Do you want to hug yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep engaging with your patterns or do you want to swoon and be a victim?

No, don’t pick up a cudgel when you pick up your pattern.

Pick up your pattern, your “Oh my gosh, I’m doing that again?” with the same tenderness you would a baby who was wailing and needing some love.

As you would a friend who keeps doing the same thing that makes her miserable and you see what she does but she can’t, not yet.

You don’t love her any less.

Actually, you love her more.

I want to say that how you engage with your stuff is something I am very, very passionate about and is a reason I created the Comfort Cafe because how you engage can be productive and life changing or frustrating and then more frustrating. Whatever you do to see and change your patterns, do it with as much love for yourself as you can. Even a wink of self-love, a passing angel wing blessing of tenderness, a shrug instead of a face slap, helps enormously.

As you have probably already guessed, I’m sticking to my signature preoccupation:

This week I will lovingly be a student of my snarl.

My heaviness, my making things difficult-ness.

I may also be a student of my impatience, which is an intimate friend of my snarl. They may even be colluding. And even if they are, they are part of me and I will lovingly notice their antics this week.

I did notice last week how much my hormone surges and changes increase my snarled-ness.

I noticed I’m getting much better at stepping away from things and letting them settle instead of wringing my hands and making a big “this will always be this way and I am screwed” story.

And I’m super-extra-duper proud of myself for changing this month’s theme at the Comfort Cafe from Discerning What Matters to Discovering What Nurtures You and then when I explored that, chunking it down even further to Resourcing.

Resourcing is drawing on something larger than yourself. Often.

I made it more simple and understandable instead of more complex.

YES!

A good example of how lovingly paying attention to our patterns yields small miracles.