Katy on Wellbeing

Juicy Fun 2010

Not that I have anything against "I'm going to get in shape / lose 20 lbs / be more productive" type of new year's resolutions.  Goodness knows, I always have a bunch myself.  But it's cold, damp and January.  What I really need is inspiration! 

What I really want to know is what people are doing to ensure that 2010 is more FUN than 2009. So I sent the following question out to some of my friends: "What do you plan to do (or what have you already starting doing) to make this year more FUN, RICH, INTERESTING, VIBRANT, JUICY and JOYFUL than last year?"  And here are their responses:

Being Creative

• Emphasize the creative.  For me it's sewing, knitting, needlepoint -- all with unique, one of a kind products in mind.  I give them to my local charity, hoping that someone shares my pleasure in the product, for a balance of form and function.
• I'm going to try new things!  Not just go to the movies every 10 minutes.  I'm going to check out the theater and explore the city.  Get out of my usual habits and comfort zone.
• I'm opening the pathway to joy!  I'm in the midst of a MAJOR paper purge with all of the things I pulled from storage from my 3-1/2 years in NYC as a writer.  My intention is to let go of the past so I can take hold of my future by living in the present.  Simplifying to enjoy my life.  Clearing space for all my good to flow in.

Getting Out and About

• A long time ago, my wife and I decided we'd take our elder daughter to Paris when she turned 10.  I won't be the last man in love with her to take her to Paris, but I will be the first.  Now it has turned into a family trip.  So .... fun: plane trip .... rich: the Mona Lisa .... vibrant: strolling along the Champs d'Elysees .... juicy: picnic of baguette and cheese in the gardens of Versailles .... joyful: seeing the faces of all my girls as they look over Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
  
• I am excited to reconnect with the magic that is the Pacific Ocean.  Exploring tide pools, birdwatching, seeing otters and porpoises play and whales migrate.  I find the ocean soothing and it's constantly changing, so you never have the same experience twice.  Amazing!
• I plan to travel to Belize and snorkel with my kids and hubbie, ride my bike from Perth to Kingston with a group of powerful women, and spend quality time with family and friends.
  
• I'm attending new events, charities, and meetings for both social and business reasons.  I was asked to be on the board of a start-up company by someone I met at Duke in November.  The board includes people from leading companies such as Google, as well as leading e-commerce technology firms.
  
• I have a list of the best restaurants in what will be my new city.  Every month, I will go to one of those restaurants, and also to a cultural event.  I will also find a reading group and a writing group (both things I already do).  And I hope to dip my toes in the Caribbean .... we're thinking in March ....
• I'm going to make a list of all the adventures I want to have, and when I might do them, and start going down the list.  In 2010 I want to sky-dive!  Every time I see someone jumping out of a plane, I want to do it myself.  I also want to get back to the sports I do for fun, like ju-jitsu.

Cherishing Friends and Family

• We are going to do a family triathalon, maybe several -- train together, tri together, share the moment and the fun
• Finding a really unique gift for our baby brother's 40th birthday -- something that really says 1970 (not bell-bottoms!)
  
• Spending time with my family, enjoying my new job, good meals with friends, and some camping will probably do it for me this year!
  
• Cherishing relationships with our Sister Goddess Group and family, as well as those who are supportive of my goals in building my business.

Flirting, and More

• Tonight at dinner with a girlfriend, I decided to censor myself less with men.  Like our waiter, who I thought was really handsome.  When he asked us what we wanted for dessert, what I wanted to say was, "I'll have a slice of YOU.  With a little chocolate sauce, please."  Of course, I didn't.  But I did get a little flirtier with him, and I'm pretty sure I got "the look" a few times.  Hmmm.  Yep.  I'm gonna start living dangerously and saying whatever comes to mind when I'm around attractive men. Propriety be damned.
• I'm going to resume flirting with my husband, and keeping him juicy.  It's amazing to me that I always need to take the lead and maintain the positive tone at home, but it's worth it, since whenever I stop things get very stale.
• As a single woman now 38 years old, I have always subjected myself to this invisible pressure about what love and my life "should" look like and how that would unfold.  I've decided to give up that pressure for 2010 (and beyond).  So I plan to say YES to love where I find it, or where it finds me!  What I mean is welcoming ALL kinds of love into my life, making more time for friends, family, myself, and not pushing that all out of the way to hold space for something I don't even know what it looks like yet!  I've decided to experiment with the idea that as romantic love comes to me, all that other love is the soil it needs to grow into the kind of relationship I really desire.

Taking Special Care of Themselves

• My long-time modus operandi has been to reach for food or drink as a means of temporary relief or escape, but I am so tired of the way it makes me feel!  This year I am committed to exploring options that make me feel good instead of choosing the comfort and numbing and safety of what I know so well.  E.g. taking time out to exercise during the day then coming back refreshed, taking a break from caffeine and sugar.  I am so excited to see how these new choices create expansion in all areas of my life as I become more present, positive and have more energy.
• I need to pay attention to staying juicy.  I'm going to schedule a pleasure event weekly, which is a radical move for me.  The event might be a massage, or spending some time shopping for clothes, since I like to wear interesting, flattering things, but I never have time to look around for them.
• This year I am committed to equilibrium in all things.  Balance brings more pleasure in all areas, and requires a commitment to SELF which is something that I've been unwilling or too lazy to achieve.  I trust that as I become more comfortable with this process, I won't feel hesitant to say that my choice is for SELF and not simply for balance!
  
• One thing I plan to do is buy a new wardrobe.  I've started shopping, and buying new things to wear to the gym, and reorganizing my closet and drawers.  I saw some great things at St. John and Saks.  I visited Alice's Hair on thursday and had my hair cut and colored.  She did a great job.  I'm indulging in my gym membership 4-7x/week and eating healthy.
• I am using all those terrific Estee Lauder products on my face, taking care of my skin.  I think I see a difference already!
  

Thank you very much to everyone who responded so thoughtfully and generously to my question!!  If you're reading this, I want to hear from you too.  Let's create a great big list of inspiring ideas for a fun, juicy, ALIVE year!  A list we can refer back to when things get dull.  This post is turning into a book, so I'll stop here.  In the next post, I'll say what I'm planning to do!

(Hey, I want to give credit where due.  I created the collage in the pic, but that marvelous photo of the little girl with all the hula hoops is by Dennis Mosner.)

Digesting our Experience

Yesterday was my first day back to "normal life" after an extended holiday period.  Though I was full of good ideas for how to make 2010 even more fabulous than the year before, the best I could do was go to the gym then spend the afternoon lying on my couch reading The Economist.  This morning, I sat poised to write my first blog post in months, but nothing would come.  I felt blocked.  Like a river clogged with branches and leaves.  The image was a perfect one, because it showed the solution as well as the problem.  I needed to begin dismantling the debris that was blocking the flow.  I needed to digest the backlog of recent experiences, to make room for new ones to come in.

Just as we digest our food, we must digest our life experience in order for it to move harmoniously through us, nourishing us then making way for more.  Otherwise it stagnates, taking up permanent, dulling residence in our bodies, closets, thought patterns and habits.  So how do we "digest" our experiences?  Through ACKNOWLEDGMENT.  Pleasure revolutionary Regena Thomashauer (aka Mama Gena) explains it like this:

"Acknowledgment works in a similar way to chewing and swallowing.  If you are eating dinner, you have to chew and swallow your mouthful before you can have another.  When you acknowledge, you consume, or chew and swallow, the wonderful bite you just received, and you are ready for the next one.  No chewing and swallowing, and there will be no next bite -- your mouth is only so big."

Though rarely described in these terms, practices for acknowledgment or digestion are found in many creative and spiritual traditions.  Here are a few that are simple, but deeply powerful:

1. Morning Pages.  This was the tool I used this morning.  Popularized by Julia Cameron in her Artists Way and subsequent books, this involves three 8-1/2 x 11" pages of long-hand writing each day, just spitting out whatever stuff comes to mind.  Yes, long-hand.  Yes, every morning.  And what comes to mind?  Scraps of your life: what you did yesterday; how you feel about something; a worry; a hope; an idea.  For lots more on morning pages, follow this link, then click on Download The Basic Tools PDF.

2. Bragging and Gratitude.  I learned these from Mama Gena.  Both provide a systematic way of reviewing and releasing your experience with appreciation.  Bragging is the practice of listing and sharing things that are going well for you, or that you have done that you are proud of.  E.g., I brag that after I crashed my car last week (yes, I did), I jumped on the train instead and visited my friends anyway.  I brag I signed up for some workshops that look interesting in Florida in February.  I brag I'm blogging again.  Gratitude is listing and sharing the things you are grateful for.  E.g., I am grateful I walked away unharmed from the crash, and they can fix my car.  I am grateful for all the friends I saw last week.  I am grateful for my family / friends / chiropractor, etc.  It's wonderful if you can share these practices daily with friends or family, or a like-minded community.  Or why not post regularly on GratitudeLog.com?

3. Vipassana Meditation.  In this practice, the meditator sits quietly and observes anything that arises -- bodily sensations, thoughts, emotions, etc. -- but does not engage with them.  She does not begin thinking about them, but instead simply notes and releases them, allowing them to float away.  And so on with the next thing that arises, and the next.  This type of meditation is meant to provide insight into the activities of our minds, and teach the experience of impermanence.  But the byproduct is that, when practiced over time, it uses the lightest of acknowledgments to clear our life experiences and give us glimpses of the great still realm beyond.

One thing that years of yoga has taught me is that our bodies quite literally hold emotions and experiences.  In any big, week-long yoga workshop, you will always see someone crying.  I've found myself in tears folded over in a forward bend, and hanging backwards in wheel.  What happens is that during the deep, systematic stretching of yoga, parts of our bodies that were holding experience open up and release them, with the accompanying surge of emotion.  Though it does not acknowledge experience intellectually like the practices above, yoga is very good at helping us digest and release it from our physical bodies.  Prolonged, steady exercise like walking, running, and swimming can have a similar effect.  The combination of movement, deep breathing, and a relaxed mind allow us to start letting go of the branches and leaves, the memories and emotions and logistics.  And this letting go, this digestion, opens us up once again to the fresh and the new.

How do you digest?

The Magic of New Beginnings

It’s a paradox of life in the northern hemisphere that fall, the time of harvest, when nature begins to draw her year’s labors to a close, is also when students go back to school, and therefore a time most of us continue to associate with new beginnings.  For me, “back to school” always connotes a new spark of energy and interest, social possibilities, a desire to learn.  I’m that person who cannot walk past a back to school display in a store, because what if I need colored pencils or a geometry set.  And can we talk about course catalogues?!  I devour them.  Suddenly, I want to learn about art history, archeology, architecture, accounting …... well, maybe not accounting so much ……

Beginnings are infused with the pure magic of creation and possibility.  We are creative beings, and new beginnings provide essential nourishment to our souls.  I often refer to a Jeanette Winterson quote, a gift from my friend Chantell:

“Tell me a story, Pew.
What story, child?
One that begins again.
That’s the story of life.
But is it the story of my life?
Only if you tell it.”

Beginnings raise and focus our energy, which can become flaccid and diffuse with the aimless pleasure of summer, or the comfort of long-held routine.  They challenge us – scare us a little – as we venture into the unknown.  They offer a chance at redemption.  And any time we begin something new, that action opens us to fresh ways of seeing and being in the world. 

But behind the champagne effervescence of a new beginning lurks something denser and heavier.  Whether we are starting a course, a job, a project, or a relationship, it comes with an implied commitment, not just to begin, but to see the thing through, to achieve some desired result.  And that’s the question, the challenge.  Will we be capable?  Successful?  Will we have the stamina required to keep showing up and making the effort?  Will we have the flexibility and courage to follow wherever it may lead?  I imagine that many people have been reflecting on perseverance this week, with the death of Edward Kennedy.  Senator Kennedy stands as an icon for the virtue and value of showing up, prepared, day after day, year after year, and giving it his best shot.  It is this prospect of sustained effort and commitment that lends some weight and shading to new beginnings.

But for now, let's just enjoy the effervescence.  The new coolness in the air.  The freshly scrubbed children setting off for school.  The current of excitement as we rinse off the residue of sand and sunscreen, and greet our colleagues with a renewed sense of purpose and camaraderie.  For me, one new beginning will actually return me to a university campus after many years away.  I will be an Executive in Residence at the Richard Ivey School of Business, helping mentor student teams on their consulting projects.  I feel sure it will require a new geometry set ......

* * * * * * * * * *

p.s.  In a fascinating counterpoint to my love of new beginnings, I just read an interview with Harvard University professor Harvey Mansfield, author of a book called Manliness. 

"I define manliness as confidence in the face of risk.  And this quality has its basis in a animal characteristic that Plato calls thumos.  Thumos means bristling at something that is strange or inimical to you.  Think of a dog bristling and barking; that's a very thumotic response to a situation. .... The opposite of thumos would be eros -- love, yearning, opening.  Eros is opening yourself up to the strange; thumos is closing it off.  And manliness seems very much to be a kind of thumos.  You feel the need to defend yourself, not the need to improve yourself.  

"Of course, in every human interaction, there's a mixture of eros and thumos, but manliness is by far mostly thumos.  It's being satisfied with yourself and knowing yourself to be superior, or at least satisfactory, as you are. ....  An occasional woman can have that kind of manliness -- my great example is Margaret Thatcher -- but more men than women have it.  I also think it's really a minority of men who are truly manly, and that minority often looks down on the rest of men for not being manly."  - in What is Enlightenment, Issue 41, Aug-Oct 2008

So there you have it, from the controversial Professor Mansfield.  Openness to change is erotic.  Not everybody likes beginnings as much as I do.  And it might be related to testosterone.  Vive la difference!

What are you beginning now, and how does it make you feel?

Julie, Julia and an Enthusiastic, Sensual Life

Last night a friend and I saw Julie & Julia, based on Julie Powell's blog about working her way through Mastering The Art of French Cooking, and Julia Child's autobiography My Life in France.  Great little film.  Interesting contrast between the lost-but-plucky Julie (Amy Adams) making her tentative way in post-9/11 Queens, and the larger-than-life Julia Child (Meryl Streep) vigorously embracing her new life in Paris.

Streep was a delight as Child.  The sight of her descending upon unsuspecting little Parisians, whooping "BONJOUR!", was priceless.  As were the scenes of her and her sister (played by Jane Lynch) hamming it up as big, loud, exuberant American gals in a sea of small, neat, contained, elegant people.  I'm 5'9", so the sister's great line, "you're too big to fit in .... so you don't!" went straight to my heart.  She didn't just mean physical size, although that was part of it.  She was talking about enthusiasm, appetite, the willingness to be herself on a grand scale and take up space.

Watching Child / Streep, I was struck by how sensuality and enthusiasm go hand in hand, and how together they create a powerful point of attraction.  We're so used to the over-processed, pre-packaged offerings that Madison Avenue and Hollywood have told us are sensual.  Young, thin, beautiful, vacant-eyed, still, cookie cutter creatures with puffy lips and chiseled abs.  It's easy to forget, until we see Streep cutting loose as Child, launching herself at everything from a plucked duck to her beloved husband Paul, that real sensuality comes from enthusiastically enjoying all that the senses have to offer.  The word "enthusiasm" comes from the Greek words en(within) and theos(God).  It means literally within God, running that big life-force energy.  This sensuality is about life, passion, movement, and is available to everyone regardless of age or physical appearance.  It's entirely an inside job.

In parallel, the film was a reminder that we are also in danger of mistaking over-processed, pre-packaged "food products" for actual food.  Yet they lack the same qualities as the images mentioned above: life force energy, sensuality, the ability to truly nourish us body and soul.  The truth is I'm not a big cook.  I do it quite well, but not often.  However, I do delight in eating well, and am drawn to people who love to cook and appreciate the pleasures of the table.  In their company and kitchens, I feel grounded.  Inspired.  Cared for.  My favorite blog these days belongs to my friend Dana Joy Altman.  She's a "real food activist" and a regular Huff Post contributor.  Her blog is a continuous celebration of great food -- it's tastes, scents and visual beauty, as well as the memories and emotions it evokes.

In closing, I have three things to say:

1. Enjoy the film
   
2. Live large
3. BON APPETIT!