Disappointment is, literally, failing to keep an appointment. Which is why I think it hurts a little more than the other bumps and bruises of life.
When you feel disappointed, you are feeling deprived of something you thought was already in motion. If you’re feeling like you have an “appointment” with a promotion or a successful presentation or a new love, having that thing not work out is especially crushing because it was kind of a done deal inside your mind.
And that old saw about “don’t get your hopes up, and that way you won’t get disappointed,” is the biggest bunch of hooey I’ve ever heard.
First of all, it’s a bad strategy because it plain doesn’t.
If something you want doesn’t work out, you’re going to be bummed whether or not you had anticipated the failure.
And missing an opportunity to have delightfully high hopes seems. . . churlish.
I understand the impulse to say, “I just don’t want to get hurt again.” But guess what? You’re here to get hurt.
We’re here to try again. and again. and again. We’re here to gain resiliency.
So I say go ahead — get your hopes up. Dream big, lush, vivid dreams. Imagine your ideal of success with the full knowledge that reality may never measure up.
Then when things do work out, you haven’t wasted one moment tamping down your enthusiasm. And if they don’t work out, well, then, you are free to feel the full force of your disappointment. Which may or may not be as bad as you had imagined it might be.
I bet that if you stacked up all your disappointments you would you would find that very few of them make you think, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t even tried that.” I bet you would mostly think, “Well, I sure learned a lot.”
And that’s the other thing we’re here for: our soul’s education.
Nevertheless, disappointments can leave deep scars. And some disappointments take longer to heal than we’d like, even when we know we “should be over it by now.”
(Over it by now? Says who? What is this mysterious global time frame on getting over things? Honestly.)
Disappointment is a wise and valuable teacher. It acquaints you with grief. Grief, said the Greeks, is the daughter of anger and sadness. These two powerful emotions need to be felt, explored, and lived through.
Otherwise we are only a living shadow of our true selves: pretending we don’t care about the things we care about most.
So there’s a time to cry and a time to stop crying.
The symptoms of Getting-Ready-to-Get-Ready syndrome include feeling like you can’t possibly move forward until you lose ten pounds, get a degree, receive permission, know the right people, have enough money, get more experience, pay your dues, or obtain the right equipment.
The trick to defeating Getting-Ready-to-Get-Ready syndrome is doing fifteen minutes of research. (And yes, this can be one of your fifteen-minute daily tasks.)
If you assume that you need to do something before you can do the thing you really want to do, please check that assumption — especially if the source of your information is your own mind. Google it, ask around, and, most important, ask someone who’s already done the thing you really want to do.
Chances are good that you’re over-complicating things.
There was the photographer who was convinced she couldn’t market herself until she had digitally optimized all her photos for her website, which would have meant weeks if not months of painstaking work. I asked her if she had one photo that she thought of as iconic, and when she said yes, I urged her to place just that one on her site. She was up and running twenty minutes later.
Lara was a highly intuitive performer who was feeling a pull toward embarking on a second career as a life coach, but she was feeling discouraged by the two years and several thousand dollars that certification would take.
Now, I admire and respect the people who’ve gone through coach certification, but it is not a prerequisite to being of great service to people.
When I pointed out that she already knew enough to at least get started with a few clients, she brightened right up.
Last I heard, she was running high-end retreats once a month in Beverly Hills — further proof that if you can deliver outstanding results, nobody really cares about your credentials.
And finally, there are the countless men and women who’ve told me that they can’t possibly get started on X, Y, or Z until they lose weight.
Honey, your destiny doesn’t care how much you weigh.
You can find a lover, sell your art, star in your show, and earn your fortune with the body you have right now. And it’s entirely possible that you will become so busy and happy working on your project that your body will self-adjust and become closer to your version of perfect.
After all, there’s nothing like joy to create health.
1. Write down all the activities that you typically do in a day, such as:
drive in the car pool
do laundry
pay bills
make phone calls
write
work out
get the mail
read
work with clients
play with the kids
plan upcoming travel
coordinate volunteers for charity event
go to the grocery store
cook supper
watch TV
2. Now put an asterisk next to the tasks that only you can do.
So the asterisked items might be:
write
work out
read
work with clients
play with the kids
3. Find a way to get the un-starred items off your plate.
You may need to hire someone, or you may need to simply ask some of the other grown-ups in your life for help.
Teach the kids to do the laundry, and get a co-chair to work with the volunteers.
Yes, you will have to get over some of your perfectionism — nobody else is going to do as good a job cooking dinner or sorting the laundry as you do.
But guess what? You have bigger fish to fry.
Your creative life is never going to take precedence over your everyday life unless you make it happen.
Asking yourself the question “Where will I think to look for this?” might be the single greatest organizational step you can take.
Asking yourself this question puts you in a state of awareness about your organizational style and creates an automatic mnemonic so you are even more likely to remember later on.
If I can imagine that the last time I put away a bottle of vanilla extract I thought, “Well, I’ll probably think to look for this with the rest of the baking stuff or maybe with the spices,” and then I put it with the rest of the baking stuff, well, I’ve got a better than fifty fifty chance of finding it right away the next time I need vanilla.
Certainly much higher than if I just jam it on a shelf somewhere where it eventually gets shoved to the back (because it’s a seldom-used item) and where I’ll never find it because I’m not even sure I have any to begin with because I don’t remember the last time I put it away.
This leads to buying more vanilla extract, which, if you use the pure extract (and you really should; the imitation stuff is terrible) is pretty darn expensive.
So why buy two when one, well placed, will do?
Again, the question is not, “Where should this go?” The question is, “Where, given my actual life, would I think something like this might end up?”
This is also a great question to ask yourself in parking garages, although there it sounds more like, “How will I remember which spot this is when I return?”
A good system is practical, realistic, easy, and even fun.
A bad system is impractical, unrealistic, hard, and a bummer.
You, your stuff, your space, and your art all deserve great systems.
Your good humor is as graceful as a baby giraffe,
Even if that joke you were trying to make to the hotel clerk fell flat
And your toast at the wedding came out sounding a little….funny.
But you have gifts that no one knows about.
You have the strength to bend in the wind
You have the joyful spirit that loves a good belly laugh,
You have the wisdom to understand that everything will all come out all right in the end and
You have the faith to light a candle rather than curse the darkness.
That is, if you could find the book of matches from that romantic restaurant that you went to for your anniversary but since you didn’t have a reservation they made you wait at the bar for half an hour during which you had two appletinis and the rest of the night is a bit of a blur.
So much for the overpriced lingerie.
You are beautiful.
You are beautiful.
Frazzled and overworked and underpaid
You are the one who forgot your wallet
And forgot your receipt for the dry cleaners
And forgot your keys which you just set down five seconds ago, so where could they possibly have gone?
But you never forget to say, “I love you”
And you never forget to give a big smile to that nice parking guy
And you never fail to show endless patience when the
Too-tightly wrapped and overly-conscientious start to offer their Oh-so-helpful suggestions about how you might feel better if you would just learn to alphabetize your spice rack.
You are beautiful.
So, wear the lingerie on Monday for no reason.
And why not just refuse to participate in the bake sale this year?
And give yourself a compliment for something you did well today.
Because you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.
Every creative person I know says things like, “Well, I’m a writer. But I also sing in a choir and play bass guitar and drums and embroider and do needlepoint, but I don’t do counted cross-stitch anymore, and of course everyone in my family loves to cook, and did I mention that I also clog dance?”
Like I said, you’re good at a lot of things.
And then there’s the artistry that you bring to your everyday life.
Take a look at the list of creative activities below. This list was created and then added to over the years by hundreds of students and clients. As you’ll see, some of the activities on the list are a bit outside-the-box.
Maybe you, too, have some skills that you never thought of as creative, or dare I say… artistic?
The A-B-C’s of Creative Endeavors
Acro-Yoga, Acting, Acupuncture ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) Agenda Planning, All Things Mac, Alphabetizing, Animal Husbandry Animation, Assembling Things, Awesome Salad Making
Dancing: Ballet, Dancing: Boogie-Oogie-Oogie, Dancing: Modern
Decoupage, Detail Designing (the devil is in the details), Doll Making, Doodling
Dream-Board Making.Driving in Los Angeles, Drumming
Editing, Emoting. Empathizing, Encouraging Entrepreneurship, Event Planning, Expressing Myself Honestly without Being Cruel
Facebook, Fashionistaing, Faux Painting, Film Critiquing
Filmmaking, Finding Order in Chaos, Fixing Things
Flute Playing, Foley Working, Footwear Design, Furniture Making
Gardening, Gift Wrapping, Going to the Mat, Grant Writing Graphic Design, Guitar Playing: Electric, Guitar Playing: Folk/Acoustic Gunsmithing
Handmade Card Making, for Prisoners, Home Cooking, Home Decorating
Honesty about Self (with Wit, Sometimes), Horseback Riding
Idea Formation, Improvising, Information Sharing Interior Design, Internet Marketing, Invoking
Jewelry Making, Joke Writing, Juggling
Kissing, Kite Making
Life Coaching, Lighting Design, Listening and Giving Advice
Logistics, Long Car Trips, Lovemaking, Lucid Dreaming
Makeup application, Making Others Comfortable with Themselves, Making Fairy Houses Marketing, Massage, Mediating, Mind-Body-Soul Coaching Motivational Speaking, Music Producing:Stage and Studio
Painting by Number, Party Throwing, Personal Training, Philosophy, Photography, Piano: Rudimentary, Playwriting,
Poetry: Limericks, Poetry of the Obscene,Poetry: Romantic Poetry: Memorizing
Poster making, Producing, Public Speaking
Pulling Business Concepts out of My Butt (a.k.a.Entrepreneurship?)
Quad Riding
Raw Food Juicing, Reading, Reading Aloud, Reading to Oneself, Reciting
Recorder Playing, Recovery (12-Stepping), Rollerblading, Roller-Skating
Sales, Saying No, Scabbard Making, Scenic Design, Scrapbooking, Screenwriting, Script Coverage, Sculpey-Clay Bead-Making, Set Designing,Sewing, Shopping, Show Producing: Multiple Genres, Shrinky-Dink Making, Silk Screening, Singing, Singing: Classical Music, Singing: Gospel, Snowboarding, Soap Making, Social Media, Software Design, Spiritual Leadership, Stand-Up Comedy, Staying in Touch, Studying/Being a Student, Stunt Fighting/Stage Combat Stunts
Take a sheet of paper and divide it into two columns.
In the first column, write down any of the skills or talents from the list above that you possess. Add to the list any additional skills you have mastered that you might think of as an art.
Gift giving? Coffee brewing? Comforting people when they’re upset? Daydreaming?
In the second column, make a note about how that talent might help you to solve a current issue in your life in a unique way.
For example, remembering how good you are at throwing parties might inspire you to make your next boring meeting more festive.
Calling to mind your puzzle-solving genius might suggest a fun, new way to approach your blog.
It drives me crazy when I hear an artist say, “Oh, I could never get a real job because I’m only good at one thing.”
Nonsense.
Spending a lifetime in the arts helps you develop all kinds of valuable skill sets: listening, reading body language, using your keen intuition; a love of history; good rhythm; the ability to present in front of a group; a sense of shape, color, and design; the ability to accept criticism; a knack for collaboration and teamwork (we usually call it “ensemble”); and most of all, the ability to think of a new idea and work hard until it’s done.
I’m not saying that you have to get a real job if you don’t want one.
I just want you to notice how many skills and art forms you bring into every room you grace.
Vocals
Water Skiing
Web Design
Whitewater River Guiding
Woodcut-Print Making
Woodworking
Wrapping Presents
Writing
Writing Love Notes
Writing Meditations
Yoga
YouTube
Once you are done noticing your own unusual art forms, you might want to take a moment to notice someone else’s.
People feel very seen and cared about when you take the time to praise the way they walk in the world.
A heartfelt compliment such as “I notice that you are always very considerate in your remarks when we have
these meetings — thank you for that” can do a lot for a strained work environment.
And I will tell you from experience that writing a kindly, observant thank-you note can win you a friend for life.
Select three of your special talents, and make a note about how these gifts might be useful to you in moving your project forward.
Would love to know what you came up with, leave a comment below if you feel like sharing.
