The Loop of Negative Self Talk - The Muzak in Your Head

Most of us, no matter how positive and upbeat we are, will have some negative self-talk.  This is like Muzak– you know that easy listening music that plays just below the surface of your consciousness, at the grocery store, the doctors office, in elevators and any place where people gather where nice background music makes shopping or waiting a more pleasant experience.  Well, our self-talk is just like that, it plays beneath the surface of our conscious minds and only when something happens to make us become conscious of it do we notice what we are telling ourselves, on a minute-by-minute basis.  This also becomes our naturally occurring comments about our lives that we share with others in a kind of non- conscious way.  This happens mostly in social situations where gossip and sharing is done in a small talk way.  In other words, someone brings up a subject and each person gives their party line on that subject.  This happens in situations where there is no major consequence to you for your opinion on the subject, at least not from the people you are sharing your opinion with, but there is a major consequence to you, yourself, if this party line is negative and keeps you stuck in a negative loop. 

Muzak Tune # I Married a Jerk and I Can Prove It!

Let me give you an example.  Let’s say you are divorced.  If this is fresh, that is, it just happened less than two years ago, then the chances of you making negative comments about your ex are pretty common.  This is understandable, as most people will need to rid themselves of these negative feelings as they go through the natural grief process of morning this major loss in their life.  Depending on how long you were married, this grief stage could last from two to three years, but once you have established a new life for yourself as a single person you need to begin to let go of the negative thoughts and comments about your marriage, divorce and ex spouse.  If you don’t and these thoughts continue to be part and parcel of your mind’s “Muzak” then you are stuck in a loop and that loop is keeping you from enjoying your new life.  This negative self-talk and the small talk it engenders with friends and family, becomes insidious and will keep you forever going around in this loop.  It also has the affect of attracting other negative thinkers and talkers and this creates pity party alliances. 

Muzak Tune #2 - My Boss and My Work Don't Appreciate Me

Another example is a work situation that turned out bad for you.  Maybe you got fired or downsized or reassigned to a position you did not choose or you went for a promotion and someone else got it and now two or more years later you are still running the Muzak from that situation in your head every single day.  Then when you are not at work and are with family and friends these negative thoughts and opinions tend to fall out of your mouth like pearls of wisdom but which are in truth, bitter pills of discontent which you keep spitting out and they seem to be always there ready to do this spilling out. 

Muzak Tune #3 Nobody Loves Me, I think I'll Go Eat Worms

Another area of self talk is simply the tendency to be pessimistic and to beat up on yourself and the world with all the possible bad things that could happen, but have not yet happened or if they have, in most cases, the result was not as bad as you may have predicted.  If you tend to see every possible thing that could happen as potentially negative and or dangerous - then you too need to look at your self talk. 

In addition, if your self esteem is not what it should be then take a look at the Muzak in your head and see what tune is being played.  If your self esteem needs shoring up then do some things to make you feel better about yourself and stop lamenting your mistakes - everyone makes mistakes and self forgiveness is the key to moving past a negative situations.  The big thing with mistakes is either you learn from them or you keep making them.  So first forgive yourself for whatever you have done that didn't serve you, and then put in motion the ways and means of making sure you don't make that mistake again.  

Muzak Tune #4 - Venting Where Safe and Negative Body Language 

Playing the negative self talk about what has happened to you in your head and then venting where it’s safe with friends and family is not going to be of service to you in maintaining your job, your career or your self esteem in the long run.  So like the divorced person, the first thing to do is take responsibility for your part in what happened.  The second thing to do is forgive yourself for what you did or didn't do or what you thought and ended up revealing through your non-verbal behavior.  Remember, most thoughts come out whether they are said or not, via our body language.  If you think your boss is a jerk and an idiot but you never voice this to anyone at your work, make no bones about it, they know – it all comes out through your non-verbal communication.

If these examples remind you of yourself then it’s time to take a stand and get yourself out of this loop.  Now some of you may say, yes, but he/she was a jerk to me or he/she did do this and that bad thing and this may very well be true.  You could have married a narcissist, a dishonest person who lied to you or who cheated on you. Okay, you divorced them because of this and now you need to rid yourself of their impact on your life – in these cases divorce was only a first step in this process.  Now you need to heal your wounds and get on with your life. 

It's Time to Play a New Tune 

In order to heal and get on with a life of passion, purpose and possibilities you will need to rid yourself of as much negative self-talk as possible.  Negative self talk is addictive and habit forming - it becomes over time like a mantra - you simply say it to yourself and any one who will listen any time the topic of your marriage, your job or your self worth is triggered.  It’s a neural pathway that has been set down in your brain and until you make a concentrated effort to change it, it will always be there.  Time for a new tune. 

New Tune # 1 I forgive Myself and Give Myself a Break 

The first wound you need to heal is your own complicity in the marriage.  In other words, you married this person, you stayed with them and you had your reasons for doing this.  Forgive yourself – you were young and naive, you were broke and desperate, scared and insecure, you were in need of a rescue or there was some other reason you let yourself choose or be chosen by this person.  Forgive yourself.  That’s the first step.  If you feel you were wronged and you don’t see your own complicity in the marriage then you need to get real with yourself.  Getting real means to stop being a victim and take responsibility for your part in things.  

Maybe you were flattered.  Maybe he or she was a prize or appeared to be and winning the hand of this person made you feel like you too were a prize.  Maybe you were just going along with the culture’s ideas about marriage, but once married you realized you were not interested in a traditional marriage but your tribe believed in this and so the only way to get out of it was to make your spouse the bad guy so the tribe would okay your decision to divorce.  Maybe the person offered you things you felt you could not get on your own – an upscale lifestyle – joining a social group you did not have access to without them and so on. 

There are a million reasons people marry who they marry and another million for why they do not work out the way the partners thought it would.  The only way to deal with and heal from a broken relationship is to take your part in it and own up to it and then forgive yourself.  Being a victim is a monster you have to feed on a daily basis – stop feeding that monster. The same is true if your negative event is work related.  If you got fired, downsized, reassigned or whatever the event was, blaming it on the company, the economy or President Obama and not taking responsibility for your part in it, is a vitality killer.  You were there, you took the job, you chose to stay and whatever happened, in most cases, was not a surprise to you and if it was, then it was because you were not paying attention.

New Tune #2 I Play By The Work Rules or I Find a New Game

Unlike a marriage, where it’s a partnership and is a legal contract, working for someone else is not.  Going into a work place and having the mindset that they will take care of you and treat you with respect and so on is naive and foolish.  It’s also naive and foolish to think that if you work really hard this will protect you from any negative events.  In many, many cases this is not what keeps people employed. Working hard is a given by the company, they expect it but being a team player is what gets noticed.  

What keeps people employed is that they recognize that the real job is joining the culture of the company and buying into the ideas and programs of those in the position to fire them.  Being a company man or woman and knowing how to play politics, this is the real key to being promoted and staying employed.  The other one is rolling with the flow – the changes that naturally occur in any business.  We live in a very volatile world where work is concerned and those who adapt to the new are the ones who stay employed and happy in their jobs.  Those who resist change and resist joining the corporate culture are destined to have negative events happen to them. 

New Tune #3 I Learn from My Mistakes 

Maybe you married the wrong person, for you, or you took a job that in the end didn't fit you, or you started out in the world with little self esteem because your primary care givers didn't recognize your genius or you simply have a temperament that tends to second guess yourself, regardless of why your self esteem is not up to par, the day has come for you to start shoring it up by playing a  new tune.  

New Tune #4 - I celebrate and Value Myself 

I once saw a poster in an agency I was thinking of going to work for which said in big bold letters, "God Don't Make No Junk"  Well, I agree - play the tune that celebrates you and stop letting the Muzak of negative thinking bring you down.  Another way to eliminate the negative loop of self talk and playing that negative Muzak in your head all day is to use the ABCDE Disputing Technique.  I will post this next week, so stay tuned.

Blessing, Lorraine

Just the Way You Are

So I got flack from some of my readers yesterday about how long my post was – so here goes a short and sweet one. Billy Joel wrote a song back in the 80’s, Just the Way You Are – It’s one of my favorite songs. In it he says, “Don’t go changing to try and please me, I love you just the way you are."  Well, we gotta love ourselves just the way we are as well. So here are five things you can do to start letting the true you shine through:

1. Go shopping and buy yourself something your ten-year old self would have loved to have and put it somewhere you can see it every day.

2. Post an affirmation that says “You Rock, Just the Way You Are!”

3. Do something this weekend that you have been longing to do regardless of how silly or unrelated it is to your regular life.

4. Give yourself permission to loaf – let your imagination take you to a new place,

5. Get a massage, make love, go swimming, hold a baby, go out into the moonlight and lie on the grass and look at the stars - do something sensual and savor it.

Okay, that’s it for now…next time, well, I’ll surprise you, don’t you just love surprises, I know I do.

Blessings, Lorraine  PS - That's my granddaughter Ellie - Isn't she a doll?

Pentimento - Letting The Real You Shine Through

The word pentimento comes from the art world where painters, particularly some of the old world masters would often paint over an image and then later the painting would fade and the old image would begin to show through. I think this happens with people, as well. In our first act we develop a persona, an image, if you will, of ourselves that is designed, more or less to show to and be approved by the outside world. In fact, I would say that this image building is more or less the major activity of the first act of life. Who are we? What are we good at? Who will we associate with and what will we do with our time and talents? This begins at puberty and goes on for another twenty, thirty, maybe even forty years. In many cases, we become what we set out to become, or we become what our parents, teachers, spouses and bosses want us to become. Most of us want to be successful in the world and we look for others to mentor and guide us in this process.. By our mid forties, this image, this persona is pretty well set but is it the true you or simply a painted over version of an earlier image that begins to show through whether you want it to or not?

But where does this earlier image come from? It comes from deep within your soul and is there in childhood. Most people, if they look back on when they were say eight or ten years old they will see their true nature. But this nature, particularly if it does not fit the norm for your family and community will be “painted over” by years of social conditioning and peer pressure. Children are rewarded for being good little boys and girls not for showing their true colors. I was both a tomboy and a budding artist/writer when I was ten years old, but this was not looked on in my southern family as appropriate or useful behavior for a girl. What my mother and my father wanted from me was that I become a “little lady” and help my mother around the house by being a kind of second mother to my siblings. Going out into the woods and creating stories about the people I made up out of my imagination and then building “houses” for them out of the sticks and stones and whatever else I could find, was not what they had in mind for me.

Spending hours on my bed reading left my mother cold too – “Get in here, Lorraine and help me with this laundry, I can’t do this all by myself.” She would say. Then later when as a married woman I decided to go back to school for a degree she asked me why I did this and when I said I wanted to go to work and have a career she said, “ I thought your husband had a good job, doesn’t he provide for you and the kids?” When I told her that wasn’t it, she told me that a decent woman stayed home and took care of her children unless her husband was unable to do it and then she might go to work, but only then. So I got no approval from my family for my true self which was from early on a dreamer, a thinker and a creative person.

Then after I graduated from college I got that job – that career - and I listened then to all the voices of the women’s movement, which told me that the juice of life was in the corporate world of business. I dressed for success and I went out there and tried to have sisterhood with all the other feminist but what I found was I didn’t like that world. I found no sisterhood, all I found were women, and men, trying to best each other so they could get a heads up on you in the drive for promotion and ultimately, success. It wasn’t creative, it wasn’t interesting and it sure the heck didn’t fit any dreams I’d had back in the woods when I was building those dream houses out of sticks and stones. I was disillusioned.

So I quit the corporate world and became a therapist. I put a little more paint on my image and tried to make it stick, but this too turned out to be a non creative, often depressing world where I felt like I was going into a dark wet cave everyday trying to help the people in this cave get out of it and back into the sunshine. I was able, Thank God, to get some of them out, but most didn’t budge.

Then about five years ago I began to see this other image in the mirror when I looked really close. The pentimento of my true self was starting to shine through all that family and societal conditioning. I began to unburden myself of other people’s opinions of me, and what I should or should not do or be. I joined a writing group and found my true niche with the other writers.  I started taking only the clients I felt were capable of living in the sunshine and I eventually closed my practice and became a full time writer – what I had always wanted to do and be all along.

But, what about you? What is trying to show through your public image? What image is under there wanting to be freed from the layers and layers and layers of social conditioning and pressure from others to be something you truly are not? If you could strip off the paint of years of pretending and going along with the program, what do you think would show through for you? Who are you underneath all that slapped on paint and gunk from the outside world? Don’t you think it’s time for you to take a peek and see what shows up? Think about it, and then start divesting yourself of the image you present to the world that is not you but only a pentimento of your true self.

Do this illuminating exercise - Think back on what you were like at ten years old and write up a profile of yourself or tell it like a fairy tale - describe your likes, dislikes, favorite stories, favorite heroes, favorite activities and who your friends were and what you did.  What made you laugh and what made you cry?  See if the true you shows up and how you might begin to let him or her show through now and get yourself out there into the sunshine before it's too late. 


Blessings, Lorraine

Becoming a Rainmaker

In my book Second Act Soul Calls – Your Guide for the Reinvention of Your Life at Midlife and Beyond with Passion, Purpose and Possibilities, I talk about taking a new path at midlife and beyond which moves away from the idea of cultivating direct power to one where you listen to the call of your soul and become your true self. If you do this right, that is, if you do this in a way that you are living a soulful life then you will become a rainmaker and your power in the world will go from direct power to influential power. Rainmakers don’t make it rain, they provide the atmosphere that encourages the rain. As Carol Pearson says in her book, Awakening The Heroes Within, “Rainmakers do not do anything to make the rain happen...they do not make the rain come; they allow it or more exactly, their inner atmosphere of allowing and affirming what is, creates a climate in which what needs to be, happens.”   I think we can all do that but first we must do our homework and become our best selves in the world.  Below are nine ways to bring the idea of being a rainmaker into your life. 

Nine Attributes of a True Rainmaker 

They Become Conscious – Anyone with true power, and true power is influential power, has developed this by becoming conscious of who they are and what they are capable of doing and being and then doing that in an ethical and conscious way. They take time to reflect on themselves and their actions on a daily basis and they make course corrections when they see they are off course. They learn from their mistakes but don’t beat up on themselves when they do mess up.  At the same time, they are not arrogant or narcissistic either.

They Have Considered Opinions – They check things out and do their research. They do not shoot from the hip and have opinions unsubstantiated by evidence. They take in other people’s opinions and ideas as well and are open to reexamining their own.

They Walk Their Talk - They don’t say one thing and do another. If they say they are honest and trustworthy then you can bet on them to be so. If they tell you or their children not to lie, cheat and steal, then they don’t lie, cheat or steal when no one is looking.  They are also honest with themselves and are not blind to their own charater traits and potential flaws. 

They Don’t Try to Have Their Cake and Eat it Too – They know that there is a cost to most things in life and they don’t try to get away with not paying that price by justification and manipulation. If they are married or in a relationship, they do not cheat on their partner or talk about them behind their back in a negative and dismissive way. If it’s not working, they confront the problem and deal with it and if they can’t make it work, then the do the right thing and move on. They do not stay in relationships or jobs for the benefits while bad mouthing and or cheating on the partner.

They Like and Value Themselves – They know that if they like and value themselves then others will as well. They set good boundaries and know where the line is and they enforce the line, they don’t expect others to do this for them. If they have self-esteem issues they work on developing themselves so that this is no longer a problem – if necessary, they seek professional help and do the work to develop the undeveloped parts of themselves.

They are Calm, Cool and Collected From the Inside Out – Although from time to time they may get stressed – we live a world of stress inducing situations - but they handle them with as much calm as possible and feel that no matter what, they are doing their best. If they occasionally feel they have lost this calm, they go back to the first idea of being conscious and look at what might be disturbing this calm and then they address this and make another course correction.

They are Grateful – People who are rainmakers and have influential power know that they are not doing it alone. They thank God or the Universe or whatever is their idea of a higher power, for the good in their lives and they count their blessings daily. 

They are Generous – Rainmakers are incredibly generous with their time and energy. They love to contribute to the greater good and feel that this really is their reason for being, but they are not martyrs or people who care take others at the expense of their own being. They know that in order to serve and be of service they have to come from a place of well-being, they therefore take care of their own body, mind and soul first and move out from there with a generous and grateful heart.

They are Positive and Optimistic – Rainmakers love the world and the people in it and they bring joy wherever they go. If they find themselves in a place that doesn’t accept or value their way, they then go some place else – a place where they bear the most fruit.

So think about these nine attributes and see which ones you may need to work on - I think we can all be rainmakers - it's never too late to let your soul call you home.  I hope you begin to today to think and ponder these ideas - I think you will find it a most satisfying way to live - a soulful way.

Blessings, Lorraine

Have You Thought About Self Actualization Lately?

When I was a kid in the backwoods of Georgia - no that is not a picture of me but a good likeness - I wanted to be a singer, a dancer, an artist, a writer, a movie star - my imagination took me to all kinds of wonderful places and even though I had never heard of the idea of self actualization, I knew in my soul what it was all about.  It might not have looked like a great life to some, but as I said in my last post, it was beautiful to me.  All my basic needs were met and so I could use my imagination to dream and dream big - so I did.  

Then when I was in college back in the late seventies I learned about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which says that we have basic needs that must be met before we can go on to higher levels of functioning, but that if these basic needs are not met we won't be reading Maslow, much less Kant, or Jung or wondering about making some high minded contribution to the greater good.  In fact, what we will be doing is simply trying to survive.  But that once we meet our basic survival needs we will move on to love and belonging and then to esteem needs which usually means some kind of place in the world of work or career or for women, remember he was writing back in the forties - creating and raising a family.

In American culture, most of these things are usually accomplished somewhere in midlife and that’s where things tend to get bogged down.  Maslow’s last stage of development is what he calls self- actualization and he said, this was back in the mid 1940’s, that only about 17% of the population ever gets to this stage.  According to Maslow, most people get to the esteem stage and hang out there for the rest of their lives. 

Fast forward 70 years; I began to wonder if this number had increased and what I found, by and large is that the majority of Americans are still, as a society, stuck at the esteem stage of human growth and development - just as they were back in 1943 - which translates in practice to a focus on status, money, property and security – what Boldt calls the Little King way of life.  We can all live in our little kingdom being masters of our lives.  But then what?  According to Maslow, once we have reached a certain level, a kind of discontent rolls in and we feel  - well, discontented.  Now what?  Most of the time this discontent shows up once you have met all the challenges of middle adulthood and are more or less on autopilot.  You’re doing your thing and doing it pretty well, now what? - again, that question.  Add to that the increased life expectancy of another twenty to thirty years longer than our parents and grandparents lived and I find many people seeking happiness and fulfillment through the hedonic treadmill, that is, pleasuring themselves  to death.  In other words, you’ll use your money, your accomplishments, your status, your sense of having earned these rewards as tools to increase your pleasure and fun in life.  Sounds good, right?  Well, not so fast, as a way of life, pleasure turns out to be not nearly as satisfying or gratifying as using your gifts and talents in a way that serves more than your own personal pleasure and comfort.  After awhile, the little king begins to feel sickly and bored with all that fun and pleasure.  It turns out that Maslow was on to something, in order to feel really satisfied with your life you need to keep growing, learning and contributing to the greater good in an ever- increasing trajectory by challenging yourself to be the best person you can be, given your gifts and talents and then to use them in service to something greater than your own personal pleasure and comfort. 

Midlife and beyond is the time when this becomes clear – it is the time when many of your earlier challenges have been met and you are now at a place where you need to take on some new challenges, some new growth, some new ways of being in the world.  Resting on your laurels may feel good for a while, but eventually you will begin to feel that restlessness that Maslow talked about.  

Midlife and beyond is the perfect time to stop and listen to your heart, your soul and see if a message about who you are and what you are here to do is being sent.  I call this your soul’s call and everyone of us, if we listen, will hear that still small voice telling us what we need to do next and it doesn’t require an all expense paid trip around the world to eat, pray and love in order to hear that voice.  You can hear it right in the comfort of your own home, or maybe I should say, discomfort of your own home, as that is what usually happens, you begin to feel discomfort and discontent with where you are and what you are doing, but calling up a travel agency and booking a flight to Italy, is not, in most cases, what that voice is telling you to do. 

Self-actualization then is about becoming the best person you can be with the gifts and talents you have been given and midlife and beyond is the perfect time to do this.  In most cases you have the time and the money to do it.  You have the self-esteem to do it as well and you have the discontent of a repetitive life of pleasuring yourself as a message that life is more than another golf game, another night out with the girls or the latest handbag from that upscale designer you just read about In Style Magazine. 

This is the time of sitting quietly with yourself and listening for the call of your soul.  Self actualization also means using those gifts and talents for more than simply self indulgence of your every whim and desire, it is to use yourself in service to something with more purpose and mission than your own little king life.  I believe we all have something to contribute, whether this is small or grand. 

I took a course in Authentic Happiness Coaching from Martin Seligman who wrote the book Authentic Happiness and in the course he said there were three kinds of  “happy” lives.  

First the Pleasant Life, consisting in having as many pleasures as possible and having the skills to amplify the pleasures. This is, of course, the only true kind of happiness on the Hollywood view. Second, the Good Life, which consists in knowing what your signature strengths are, and then re-crafting your work, love, friendship, leisure and parenting to use those strengths to have more flow in life. Third, the Meaningful Life, which consists of using your signature strengths in the service of something that you believe is larger than you are.

If you want to be a self actualizing person and I hope all who read my blog fall into that category, then the only life to aspire to is the meaningful one. The meaningful life is a self actualizing life and by the way, I say self actualizing as no one is fully self actualized until they move out of this temporal life and into the truly spiritual one beyond this one and even then, who knows, maybe you come back and again and do some more work, as the reincarnation folks believe.   But while you are here, I suggest the idea of challenging yourself to be your best self, is the only way to go. 

Blessings, Lorraine

Living The Beauty Way

Beauty draws the eye and the spirit towards itself, whether it’s a flower, a mountain stream, the smile of a baby or the joy of watching an outfielder catch a fly ball in mid air or a gymnast sticking her dismount – we are all drawn to beauty. It even occurs to me that beauty is the ultimate draw of life – we all love the feel of seeing beauty. It’s both visual and visceral. This is why writers who use metaphor, simile and vivid details to describe things move us more than those who simply tell us something is beautiful. I could say that I had a beautiful childhood growing up in the country in Georgia back in the 1950’s but that’s pretty bland statement and doesn’t really do much to convey the real joy I felt.

When I tell people we lived in a weather beaten old house which some said used to be a sharecroppers cabin in the backwoods of Georgia, most people don’t conger up a beautiful setting, but I do. I was surrounded by beauty everywhere I looked. From Mama’s back door flower porch with it’s pots and pots of variegated cuttings of coleus, white petaled black eyed daisies and the velvet reds and purples of the petunias she planted out in the yard each year.  I also found beauty on the side of the black top road I had to walk everyday to school.  In spring it was the fragrance and beauty of honeysuckle and the charm of Queen Anne’s lace lining the side of the road.   In winter, I saw beauty when I looked out at what the ice storm had brought and marveled at the way the trees looked like they were growing long sparkly ice crystals. Then in the fall I loved to collect the red, yellow and bright Orange leaves to make my own brand of "flower" arrangements with them. I even loved the kudzu, that tenacious, snake like vine that climbed and wrapped itself around anything and everything that stood still long enough - I thought it was lovely as well.

But it wasn't just nature that brought beauty to my eyes - I longed for what we called back then, a hundred yard slip - a fantastic garment made of yards and yards of frothy net, well, one hundred yards, if you believe the advertising, and I sure did.  I wanted one of them so badly that I could taste it.  I wanted to wear it under my favorite blue dress so I would look like a ballerina.  Then one day Mama came home from work and pulled this cotton candy pink confection out of a brown shopping bag and gave it to me, just because, she said. I loved that thing and wore it to school ever day until  it wilted and we had to wash it.  Then I used a used a sugar, starch and water concoction  to pump it back up to its full wonder and wore it till I outgrew it.  It was a bit scratchy on my skinny little legs but it made my dress stick out about five inches from the waist and when I whirled around and around in it, showing it off to my girlfriends, I thought I was some kind of princess. I also found beauty in the little red silk neckerchief of my Mama's that I begged her to let me wear around my neck, turned to the side in a sassy way, for my 5th grade school pictures. Talk about beauty, I felt like some kind of movie star in that thing.

I remember catching June bugs and tying a string around their legs and flying them around the yard on a warm summer night. I also remember catching fireflies and putting them in mason jars and setting them all along the front porch as luminaries – a word I didn’t know then. But I knew it would make that drab old porch glow and bring a smile to Daddy’s face when I went in and told him to come out and see what I'd done. I remember the red clay yard and how we would build ourselves what we called rivers and lakes with the rushing water after one of the gully washers - as Uncle John called a summer thunder storm – came and made a lake out of our yard. In Georgia, like everywhere else on earth rain is very beautiful – it washes away the dirt, dust and grime that sits on everything after a long hot spell. In the back woods of Georgia, the  rain often came in buckets and torrents and could turn our yard into a swamp. We would then build bridges, create tunnels and let the water flow like a river into a big lake in the middle of the yard. We’d then build ourselves these little boats and barges out of tree bark and shavings from the woodpile and have races down to that big lake. The next day the sun would come out and by suppertime, the yard would look like an archaeological dig – another word I didn’t know then – and Mama would tell us to get out there and clean up the mess we’d made. But before we did we'd have ourselves a good old time lobbing dirt clods at each other and getting ourselves completely filthy. When Mama would look out the window and see us she would yell. “Y’all better get in here and get cleaned up for supper – you look like a bunch wild Indians about to go on the warpath.”

To Mama we looked like savages with all that red dust clinging to our faces and arms. We needed a bath, she would say, so she could figure out who was Jimmy and who was Lorraine or who was Ronnie and who was Sherry – we were the main players in the Dirt Clod Derby – the other two – there were seven of us then - later another baby would come along – were too young for the the rough and tumble of our yard play.

Eventually it would be time to take that bath. But, we didn’t have running water so Daddy would draw some water from the well and he would take it into the kitchen where Mama would heat up a bunch of it on the stove and then they would set up two wash tubs – those big silver galvanize ones people in the country used to do the laundry back then. One would be filled with warm soapy water and the other would be the rinse water and would be cool and refreshing to our hot little bodies. Of course this led to lots of splashing and giggling and whispering about seeing each other’s willies and wallies – that’s what we’d decided to name our private parts and it stuck. After that Mama would wrap us up in these big towels and we would get in our jimmies and eat a little supper – we were pretty bushed by then. Either she or Daddy would then tell us a bedtime story and it was tell us a story, not read us one – we were too poor for books - plus with all those kids, no book would have lasted long in our house without one of the younger kids coloring all the pages and then ripping all the pages out just for fun. But both Mama and Daddy were great story tellers. Their stories were often about living on a farm or going to the Grand Ole Oprey or camping out in the big woods back in South Carolina where Mama was from. Or the stories might be tales of warning about some bad girl or boy they knew from a long time ago who got into big trouble. Sometimes it was about some kid who did nothing but good things and sounded like a saint to us, but we knew better, kids being kids - we just laughed off these warnings.

Life was good, life was beautiful - back then, as now. For me the the beauty way is the only way to really enjoy life and get its full meaning and purpose. Now this is not to say that there are not some tough times, of course there are – we had some bad times back there in that sharecropper’s cabin, but I choose to let those memories go.  If I focus on the bad then that ruins my present and puts a pall over my past. So I choose to look for the good and I implore you to do the same.  If you look for and surrounds yourself with beauty then the hard times are a lot easier to take and deal with AND they end up having more meaning. Because even the tough times have a kind of beauty in them or beauty can come from them in certain ways and in certain situations. Now I don’t mean pure evil or devastation or pointless pain and sorrow – I am not saying that we should try and find beauty in something like the Holocaust or the devastation of hurricane Katrina or what happened at Columbine High School – a place not fifteen miles from where I live - but to deny beauty in the futile hope that focusing on tragedy and pain will somehow change these things or somehow eliminate them or to become a victim of life, I don’t think that is how things work.

So today, I’m asking you to think about the beauty in your life and to look at the pain you have suffered, or are suffering at this very moment, as having some beauty to it. I remember when my father-in-law Art died, and I wrote to his wife (his second wife, my husband’s mother had died earlier) all the wonderful and delightful things I remembered about him that made him special and how if I thought about those things, I did not feel sad, I felt glad for having known him. She wrote back to me and said that of all the sympathy cards she had receive mine was the only one that made her feel good and that she had framed it and put it on her mantle to remind her of the joy, the beauty, Art had brought to her life.

As you look around you at your life, at the people in it, the place you live, the times you live in and so on, what do you see that fills you with joy? What makes you smile? What do you feel privileged to have in your life? What beautiful lessons have you learned and now use to make you a better person? If you have pain in your life be it physical or emotional, what message is it sending you about your life? Is there something you need to wake up and see? How can you use your pain to make your life more beautiful? How can you make someone else’s life more beautiful? Giving and sharing what you have to give and share is in itself a beautiful thing – so go out today and give someone something or share the load or lend a hand – beauty comes in all kinds of ways and actions.

Today and everyday, I wish you beauty…Blessings, Lorraine

10 Attributes of People Who Reinvent Themselves at Midlife and Beyond

On Sunday night I tuned into my local PBS station and right there on television was a program called Reinventing Yourself and was about people who took the steps at midlife and beyond to find their purpose, expand their lives and in the process reinvent themselves. This is, of course, the subject of my book and one that I have been writing on for some time now - I was pretty excited to see this program. In case you missed it, it will be on again. Reinventing Yourself - Thursday, April 5 at 9:00 pm on PBS - Channel 12.1 Tune in, I think you'll like it. The film focuses on five individuals who have decided to start life all over again in mid-life by re-shaping their work, their sense of purpose, their relationships, even their personality. While watching the program I started thinking about what made these people different from their contemporaries - what attributes did they have that made them first of all, hear the call for a more expanded version of themselves, and second the courage to act on this call. I identified ten attributes that most of these people displayed. How many of these ten do you possess?

1. The idea of retiring and simply doing pleasurable activities didn't float their boat - they wanted to do something meaningful and with purpose for the rest of their lives.





2. They had taken care of themselves both physically, mentally and emotionally and were ready for a new challenge.





3. They knew that what they thought of themselves was much more important than what others thought of them - they were self reliant and kept their own counsel.





4. They were willing to seek help and guidance when they felt they needed it and they read books, took classes and used professional help in areas where they felt they needed to improve.





5. They took action and made commitments and didn't sit around blaming the economy or anything else for the state of their lives - they were proactive.





6. They were willing to take risks and had the courage to act on their dreams, even when it was difficult and scary.





7. They didn't make a 180 degree change but used the skills, talents and knowledge they already possessed in new and meaningful ways.





8. They saw this time of life as offering them the opportunity to make a difference and to live a life of purpose and meaning and they looked for a need in their community or in the world at large and got busy making a difference.





9. They didn't deny their age but neither did they let it define them - old to them was a state of mind and their state of mind was vital and spirited.





10. They saw this time of life as filled with possibilities and not filled with limitations - they were pioneers, not settlers put out to pasture by a cultural mindset that no longer served them or society.

These people, and the people I work with as well, also find much joy and self worth in what they are doing. If you would like to explore how you can become a pioneer at midlife and beyond then just give me a call and let's get started reinventing your life.

Blessings, Lorraine