My grandparents survived the Great Depression. They lived and worked on a farm. They knew how to make do. Which in my mind translates to what Susan Jeffers calls in her classic book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, the ability to smackdown fear by knowing you can handle whatever comes your way. In the current turbulent economic times, when financial fear is in the news 24/7, it’s time to bolster ourselves against the negative current washing through our culture.
Try this: Make a list of all the jobs you could do if you had to because you lost your current job and couldn’t find another in your chosen field. What would you do to make do? Then make a list of all the jobs you’ve always wanted to try but never have because your parents told you not to, they didn’t make enough money, or they weren’t grown-up enough.
Our smackdowns are all about positive thinking, aren’t they? Aren’t we trying to smack down our negative voices?
Yes, but we’re not trying to kill them off. I stand by my Inner Critic; resisting it has been the single best Education in Everything that I’ve ever received. If I’d never had the Inner Critic, who would I be? What would I know?
My sneaky suspicion is that without an Inner Critic I’d be a steamroller from hell, very much the same kind of personality that came up with those “financial instruments” and ran with them until the ball dropped…
I’m not encouraging naive, blind optimism. I’m encouraging well-schooled and hard-won optimism, eyes wide open. So take a second to thank your Inner Critic for existing; you’ll probably shock it into silence and give yourself a little vacation from it.
This September 11th was the first one that felt almost like a normal day to me, when instead of mourning, I noticed that I didn’t need to mourn anymore.
Less than a week later, the American economy collapsed. Wall Street is blamed for the mess, even though most of the companies responsible de-centralized a long time ago, putting their corporate headquarters in New Jersey or in other countries.
Still, the first place that’s seeing big job losses is New York City. It’s Ground Zero all over again. The New York Times, which has not been the most reliable newspaper in the last eight years, at least ran an article today by Louise Story (great name!) showing the faces and stories of some of the people who have been laid off – not the corporate execs, but the “less skilled” workers who made the execs’ lives possible. These people are deeply afraid, as anyone is who gets laid off, and yet they find a way to smack down their fears. A quote from the article follows:
“Religion did help Andy Neff, a 20-year Bear worker. Mr. Neff, a former technology industry analyst, said he often thought about taking a year off to study the Talmud and other Jewish texts. But at the end of good years, he would not want to miss the next good year. And at the end of bad years, he felt too nervous about his finances.
“And so Mr. Neff, now 51 and father of four, says he views what has happened as a blessing. He has become a bit of a folk hero to financial workers since June when he delivered a speech about his experience at the Yeshiva Gedolah of Teaneck, N.J. His talk was posted on several sites and forwarded among Bear workers.
“‘Is this comfortable? No, it’s really not comfortable, it’s disorienting,’ Mr. Neff said in an interview. ‘But I find it unfortunate that people tend to focus on how much they lost. Coming out of every situation, you need to focus on what you have, not on what you lost.’”
If you’re having trouble changing your focus, do it in writing. Write down everything you have, and include your newfound freedom on the list.
We’ve had a death in the family. The death of a woman too young to go. She left behind a husband and two young children. And even though we knew it was coming since the cancer just wouldn’t go away, it still came as a shock. We had plans to visit next week. She wasn’t supposed to die yesterday.
Here is the mother of all smackdowns: We are on this planet for such a small time. Why not do the things your heart whispers? Why not take the leap and try the career you’ve always dreamed about? Why not ask that guy out? Why not paint even if you never went to art school? Why not write a novel even if you’re not a real writer? Why hang up your dance shoes just because you have more gray hair than you used to? Why not ask for that promotion? Why not buy that house? Why not take a year off to travel the world? Why not have a baby? Why not figure out a way to make amends with someone you’ve had a falling out with? Why not do the thing that scares you? Why not stand up to the bullies in your life? Why not plan something to look forward to that makes you feel excited to be alive? Why not learn how to believe that you’re worth it?
For the last few weeks The Heavyweight has beaten me to a pulp. Here are a few things it has had to say:
“You’re a slacker. You procrastinate forever. You’ll never amount to anything. You’ll never finish anything. Other people are way more motivated than you. Can’t you work any harder than this? People your age are running companies! You’ll never achieve your dreams. Who do you think you are anyway?”
Today, when I began work on a project I had taken a hiatus on, I had to apologize to myself for listening to The Heavyweight. I remembered that I couldn’t work on the project until I had finished the research I needed to do. And I just finished the research. I have been working on the project, just in another way but I wasn’t giving myself credit for it. And so this is a retroactive smackdown for the weeks I tortured myself.
Dear Self: I am truly sorry for allowing The Heavyweight to get so heavy handed. I knew you’d finish the project once you had all the information you needed to finish it. This has happened before. So next time the voice of The Heavyweight gets really loud I’ll remember that I am just getting ready to begin when the time is right and I have everything I need. I vow to read this email the next time I need to smackdown the voice of the Inner Critic. I’m not in the dreaded land of Waiting…Waiting…Waiting… I am doing what I need to do in the time it takes to do it. So back off Heavyweight!!!
Sometimes things need time to grow in the dark places in your mind before they are ready to come out. Is there something you feel you’re procrastinating about that just isn’t ready yet?
Being sick is prime time for the Inner Critic. A fever brings depression, which for me turns into the conviction that nothing in my life will ever change for the better. And because I’m sick, I don’t have enough energy to counter that conviction with positive thoughts. I don’t even have the energy to just stay neutral; it’s all downhill.
I guess the one thing you can always trust no matter what your fevered brain is telling you, is that nature is cyclical. That’s science. That’s a fact. So when you’re down there’s only one direction to go from there. (After wallowing in a dirty T-shirt and orange juice and bad movies on TV, of course.
Danielle Stein wrote a profile, Queen Anne, in W Magazine about the actress Anne Hathaway. That girl has performed some major smackdowns lately and I say Brava! Check it out:
Hathaway is the first to admit that her intensity can be paralyzing. “Emily Blunt kind of changed my approach to acting,” she says of her Prada costar, who has become a close friend. “She just f—ing got on with it. She’d just jump off the diving board. I’d stop, look at the water and then jump. And suddenly I just thought, Why, her way looks so much more fun.”
She was able to shed her inhibitions on Rachel, which features an unwieldy cast of musicians, poets and performance artists portraying Rachel’s wedding guests. “Filming was kind of like going to artistic master-class summer camp,” says Hathaway. “It was not the usual movie set with big trailers and having to ask to go to the bathroom. I was always really into theater, and I’d always hoped I’d find a community of artists to nestle my way into. On this movie I felt like I had a tribe. And everyone had their own process, so you couldn’t look odd, which was lovely. I felt free of my rather overwhelming self-consciousness. I was in an environment where failure was okay.”
Love it! When she talks about the group of artists who made her feel free of her self-consciousness and allowed her to fail it reminds me of two life-changing moments. One was participating in Andre Debus III’s writing class while I was in graduate school at Emerson College in Boston. That was the first time I really felt like I could fail and learn from my mistakes and still persue my dreams. I’ll never forget the day he said, “I know I’ll see your books on the shelves somday.” And now he can! Check out Andre and his new book:
The second time I found an environment like the one Hathaway describes was at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. When I moved to Minnesota I knew I needed to find other people who were going for similar dreams. One of the biggest smackdowns my Inner Critic has ever received was after a reading I did at a board meeting at the Loft. After I finished, no one laughed me out of the room. Established writers whom I hold in awe asked me when the book would be published as though it was inevitable that I would publish my work. They treated me as a peer and that moment helped me begin to think of myself as a published author. My Inner Critic was seriously smacked down that day.
Anne Hathaway’s friend and colleague Emily Blunt was also quoted in that article:
Blunt believes that the combination of her recent personal trials and the filming of Rachel Getting Married have initiated a sort of rebirth for Hathaway. “She puts pressure on herself, but I think she’s at a point where she can breathe and discover her whole bag of tricks,” says the British actress. “She has this newfound sense of confidence, and as her friend, that’s very exciting to see.”
To battle The Heavyweight, that crazy loud Inner Critic we absolutely need friends like this. Friends who are excited to see us grow. Friends who are not intimidated by confidence, shedding of old skins, our successes or our failures.
Make a list of all the people who make you feel safe to fail. Spend at least an hour with one of those people each week.
I have lately had to vigorously smackdown my Inner Ugly who has been telling me–quite loudly–that the baby weight will never come off, my old clothes will never fit again, and I will continue to pack on weight during the second half of my life until I have to get a motorized scooter because I am too weak to support my own weight.
Since I have accomplished the feat of losing 100 pounds in the past, a mere 20 seems like no big deal, and yet circumstances now are so different that those 20 pounds seem just as insurmountable as the 100 did back in my early twenties. Let me explain. Yesterday, I put off getting on the treadmill until later in the day, but at 4 p.m. I put on my workout clothes and headed to the basement. I put the baby on her activity gym on the floor where she could play and see me. Eighteen minutes later, just when I was in the groove, sweating and feeling a shot of endorphins flooding my system, whaaaaaaaaaaa! I had to break for Eva. She refused to settle down and so I thought, okay. I’ll do my balance ball workout and do some resistance training. These abs need help. A few minutes into that workout…whaaaaaaa! Finally, I was able to get her to take a nap and I finished the upper body, lower body, and ab sections of the workout.
I must congratulate myself for returning to exercise again and again. I suppose that I could see these interruptions as the perfect way to do interval training. But those interruptions are easy places for the Inner Ugly to have its way with me. “You don’t want to get back on that treadmill, you’re tired, you didn’t sleep well last night since Eva was up twice, you’ll never get in shape like this anyway.”
Because I am a new mom, I’ll just have to figure out how to make this work. And so I will smackdown the Inner Ugly eighteen minutes at a time. Today, instead of working out to my techno mix perhaps if I turn on the Raffi CD and sing “Willoughby Wallaby Woo” she’ll let me stay on the treadmill a bit longer.
If you’re having trouble getting into the workout groove, what can you do to change up your plan so it works for a few more days? Switch CDs. Try a different time of day. Find a workout buddy. Buy a new piece for your workout wardrobe. Make a collage of inspiring images to put in your workout area. Ask your spouse to take you out to a movie if you get to the club three times each week for a month.
I wonder of Mr. Sendak has ever had a daydream about visiting the island where the wild things live only to find out that they’ve all read his books. Not only read them but loved them. Not only loved them but believed they were the foundations for their world view. Hm. Everyone I know has read at least three Sendak books. Everyone I know still has them on their bookshelves whether they have children or not.
Mr. Sendak has certainly learned the art of smacking down inertia, procrastination, and the fine art of house maintenance in lou of doing his work. I say bravo! to him and everything he has achieved. I only wish he could accept his influence on today’s readers instead of constantly wishing he were some other kind of writer/illustrator/artist. I wish that for us all. That we can find a way to see our work as worthy even if it’s slightly askew from what we thought it would be.
Have a problem you want a smackdown for? Send us an email at clareandjacque (at) gmail (dot) com and we'll create a smackdown that's just for you. Then we'll post it on our blog because the personal is the universal.
