…So What’s with Pink Martini?

I dropped this question in an earlier post to bring up the subject of Why Not Stories, the brain-spin that keeps us from living our dreams and being truly happy. So I’m back to say that with all the advice being given about how to be happy, having to “work for it” may be one of the overlooked elements. Lest you want to jump off right now, let me say that even if happiness takes work, it doesn’t have to look like WORK, whatever big-baddie that word brings up for you.

It doesn’t have to feel like a slog or pushing that darn rock up a hill everyday. But you do need to figure it out and make it happen. Okay, so take my simmering obsession with Pink Martini and the Hollywood Bowl. With the realization that I had much “more living to do,” attending their upcoming engagement at the Bowl jumped to the top of the list as a reachable star. The fabulous “little orchestra” whose music was joy and diversity and love for me was playing at the venue synonymous with the fulfillment of Hollywood dreams.

Choosing this Happiness seemed a no-brainer, and a quick visit to http://www.HollywoodBowl.com revealed that plenty of tickets were available. But here’s where that doggone brain keeps interfering and turning the No-Brainers into what Rita Harrison refers to as the “never-ending story of why not.”

  1. New to L.A +Texted all the folks I know + “Sorry, gotta do this.” Sorry, committed to doing that.” “Thanks, maybe next time.” = No one to go with 😦
  2. No one to go with + No once else to call = No one loves me!
  3. Water (tears) + stuck energy in my heart chakra = “My life is the shxx!”

How then did I get to “happy as a pig in shxx” instead?

One of the firsts is to call this inspirational quote what it is …crap. I don’t get it, don’t buy it. It seems like one of those deep ones that may happen if you learn to “just be,” but hey, that subject is for another blog.

Happiness ain’t free. As someone who’s been bargain-basement shopping for a long time, I suspect that if it did come free or cheap, it might not be worth anything. And if you didn’t have to do anything for it, you might not appreciate it …at all.

So that’s the thing about inspirational quotes. They only tell you how you should feel, not what you have to do to get there, and I had to graduate to asking the right questions. Not statements or directives. Not even Yes/No or Why questions. Good ones that free you from the Why Not stories.

Happiness and the Pursuit of Work

“I’m just looking for what’ll make me happy Dad,” she said with impatience. Dad had paid for his almost thirty-year-old daughter’s last year of grad school (unfinished), watched her leave one job, then another (finished, finished), until a holding pattern seemed to be setting in, without work or school.

“You don’t get to do that yet,” he blurted. Daughter was similarly built to Dad – that apple not falling far from the tree thing – and he had also not finished college before moving from one job to the next with some regularity. One stint did turn into a 25-year career and growing experience until he noticed one day he had the financial security to say goodbye to the working world.

Well, he thought he was retiring from Work, but the reality is we need to do it our whole lives. Defined as the “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result,” is it work if done in the pursuit of happiness?

I’ve learned the answer is uncategorically Yes, we need to work for and even fight for our happiness …and even though it may look different for each of us, it’s achievement somehow involves making peace with Money, Health and Love. Think about whether that balancing act is a life-long assignment or not!

A combination of:

  1. lucky breaks
  2. good choices, and
  3. putting in the time

seemed responsible for this dad’s ability to retire early, but I suspect now that all three of those things were just different kinds of work. And then the task of finding happiness in the other areas of his life began in earnest. With two divorces behind him, what does success in love look like? The effort to understand what makes the people in his life tick – and then respect it – continues. Good health had even been a bit out of reach. Being given the genes of an 80-year-old dad will do that. So, coming into his 60’s, life was good because he could sleep as much as he needed and loved, whatever time of the day. Simple pleasures are such happiness …but he worked for it.

…so what do you think of the two Happiness quotes I found? If finding happiness in your life looks different, I invite you to comment, follow my blog, and listen to the Ask Rita podcasts for new perspectives on age-old questions.

Pink Martini and the Messy Living Out of Dreams

Living out your dreams isn’t so dreamy; it’s messy. When you reach for the stars, you encounter bad traffic, arguments, and moments when you just “can’t do this anymore.” Then again, isn’t that what Not Living the Life of Your Dreams also looks like? So how do you tell that you’re actually moving towards it or just holding it way out there? Every once in awhile, you either stop and notice, or the universe smacks you in the head and you sputter, “Uh wow, didn’t see that coming.”

Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl, August 2

This past Saturday, my friend Paul had a major meltdown – tired, feeling sick, and yes, “I can’t… I just can’t” came out of his mouth more than several times. And this from a guy who had a stroke at age 29, died for about 9 minutes trying to live out, “There’s no such thing as can’t”…and freaking survived!

And yes, that miraculous thing then happened after mucking around in the shxx. He noticed that he had actually moved the Dream closer in, and the Show he had visualized for years was on the cusp of going live.

“Wake-up Call,” is coming into view. It’s about people who reach out for answers and solutions even if our current state of affairs is shitty beyond belief. So if you’d like to be a guest or audience member of Rita Harrison‘s upcoming show, give us a shout. Join her to explore what it can be for you. Click through to my contact page, write WAKE-UP CALL in the Subject line, and GUEST, AUDIENCE (and how many) or BOTH in the message.

So what’s up with Pink Martini? Well, that fabulous big-little group was how I resolved my own mini-mega crisis. I’ve loved them since I first heard Sympathique, and they were playing the Hollywood Bowl! The little girl in me needed to go…and bad, but then all the road blocks popped up: no one to go with, narcoleptic me trying to figure out how to make the trek to and from Long Beach, and as always…money. Yes, all the stories – not reality – was keeping their concert out of my reach. The big boogeyman – feeling alone and unloved – was the storyteller. So if you want to join us the taping of the pilot for Wake-up Call, where the Why Not stories are transformed, email me at http://www.valjoycom/contact.

Fulfilled Inside, Strong Together

Willow Inspirational Retreat November 1-4, Sedona AZ

Did you know that you actually need and deserve time for yourself, especially with all the anxiety and fear-mongering around? So join us for a 4-day retreat in the heart and soul of Sedona, with beautiful accommodations, wonderfully prepared food and ahhh-tivities. You will be away from all the stress, with time for the things that are really important, like feeling fulfilled, strong and loved.

Needless to say, there’s lots more information at the webpage. So here’s our special for you:
Book at the webpage now and pay a $500 deposit, and we will hold the Early Bird pricing until the end of September when the balance is due. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

p.s. Below are the details of the Early Bird pricing:

  • Single $1701 (instead of $1890) 
  • Two-in-a-room package $2862 (instead of $3180)
  • Three-in-a-room package $3753 (instead of $4170) 
  • Four-in-a-room package $4644 (instead of $5160)
  • Without accommodations $981 (instead of $1090)
  • This offer is good until Friday, August 30. Extended through the holiday weekend until Monday, September 2, Midnight!

By the way, if you pay in full by September 1, you’ll get an additional $100 off!

One Fxxking Thing Every Day

I’ve missed a week – oh shxx, more – of blogging, and if I’m now a self-described blogger (as a bio I’ve just sent out says), I’d better be doing this every freaking day. So that’s been the the life-long challenge. I stare at Hemingway’s “Write drunk; edit sober.” poster every fxxking day and respond by blah-blah quoting it and turning the freaking brilliant guidance into inspirational bullshit. I write stone-cold sober every day, because as someone recently noted about himself, “I’ve been under-drinking for years.”

I usually sit here like earnest Marian the librarian (most of you millenials don’t know who the fxxk she is), trying to turn out a fully-thought-out thought, processed, edited, and laid out on a freaking platter for you to admire. Go to www.valjoy.com. It’s so fxxking joyous and inspirational, it can’t be all that is me. So fxxk that.

It’s time to let the dogs out or the cat out of the bag…whatever. Cliches and cuss words (how quaint that I call them that). That’s all you’re fxxking getting today. If I persist in the not-writing-drunk bollocks (my new favorite word), I have no fxxking thing to edit, sober or not. Then I feel like shxx. At least if I drank, I might get drunk enough to fxxking write a damn post every day.

So this is me writing drunk. A great big Piss Off is stuck in my fxxking liver meridian (where we store anger by the way), and I’m running with it. Forget about trying to find the right fxxking words from all that I know or don’t. Never mind if there’s a fxxking point here. Use fxxking and freaking as many times in this post as I fxxking feel like, and hit the fxxking Publish button whether this is ready for prime time or not.

Add this to my fxxking gratitude journal

Let Freedom Ring and other personal musings

“Truck?”

“Did I have a dizzy spell?”

“No… Earthquake…” We all stood, sat – wherever we were – transfixed and unsure of where the safe zones were and whether we should even try going there. By the time the heavy wrought-iron chandelier stopped swaying, we had already exhaled and continued whatever had been our do-ing. Yes, despite all the musings about Freedom and expectations around Celebration, this was going to be a different kind of Independence Day.

It’s taken me well over a week to be able to finish this blog. I felt a malaise about the holiday, but not just because of the prevailing yuck over politics and the state of American affairs. It was actually the desire to be thoughtful and non-judgmental and zen about the day that made it show up how it did – without a barbeque, fireworks, or any other traditional pastime.

By chance, we ended up having dinner with a German friend going home after 13 years here in the U.S. Even though she still holds a fondness for her adopted country, the high rents and stress-filled jobs have made living a good life too unsustainable in Southern California. I’ve heard the refrain often: You Americans work too hard. You’ve forgotten how to live your lives. Then she touched briefly on the subject of patriotism and how frowned upon expressions and displays of it were when she was growing up in Germany. It was after the war of course, and everyone – even those not responsible – continued to live the shame. Thus my careful avoidance of the red, white and blue outfit, I realized. Despite all the Instagram posts designed to cheer – babies and foods dressed up red, white and blue – I just couldn’t find a single one I felt compelled to Like.

Even the intention to write about my personal journey of independence and freedom made no sense, since the past weeks have been about whether that story is fiction or not. According to shaman and friend, “You moved because of your heart…it was a ‘geographical solution’. You are running away but still bringing and suffering your problems…”

So I realize this July 16th that this past Independence Day was not about Us. It was about You and Me – each of us – and what our relationship is with fear (earthquake!), patriotism, independence, and freedom. Maybe it’s time for the quiet reflection without being bombarded by negativity or how things should be, thinking instead to next year – maybe even tomorrow – and how we do It as part of the collective.

Removing Money Blockages

It is a never-ending story, isn’t it? All the issues we wrestle with around $$$$. Note that I’ve used four dollar signs, because why go through all the work to bring in a $ (one-dollar-sign-) abundant life?

But how about if I dispense with going into the stories? I don’t imagine that you’d like to stick around to hear the ‘Woe is Me’, and even if you are a ‘Misery-Loves-Company’ reader, I’m not going to indulge you. Besides, recounting or reading them again is the quickest way to get pitched into and stuck in that old money pit again.

Three reasons:

It doesn’t take much for our energy to drop, way less to fall down stars as opposed to huffing and puffing up them. This highlights, by the way, that ‘easy’ doesn’t always equal ‘better’.

Two, if we focus on the problem, that’s all we’ll see – the problem – while somewhere else, waiting to be noticed, are the solutions, with arms flailing, “Pick me! Pick me!”

Three, hmmm, we would be approaching the whole subject as if it were a mind game, talking about it, dissecting it, planning a way forward…blah, blah, blah. Even if we focused on positive instead of negative thoughts, it’s all in our head, and what if the secret to outsmarting the money demons is to smoke them out body, mind and soul?

These tips are included in a free online class which I had the privilege of assisting with last week. I’ve taken many of Rita Harrison’s seminars before, but it was a reminder, pick-me-up, and a jump-start to a new (and too money-focused if I let it) chapter in my life.

It shifted me out of the I Can’t Afford and prompted me to get in the car, drive to Santa Monica, and explore with an absolutely certainty this was the place I couldn’t afford not to be.

Fearless – You are not your Fears

What does this title of Rita Harrison’s upcoming community college course bring to your mind? Perhaps that it’s an unexpected offering from an institution more generally focused on Accounting 101 and Food Service Management Sanitation and Safety. I imagine, however, that you wouldn’t even find the topic in the course catalog of your average ivory tower university where you might find instead The Art of Walking and The Physics of Star Trek, and other such esoteric and “look at how hip we are” classes. How often have you heard the complaint that formal education seems so detached from real life and the basic skills we really need to travel through life?

You may be like many people who are looking to redefine success for themselves and live life less stressfully, looking instead for enlightenment around concepts such as Balance, Love, and Confidence. How much do Fear and Success do a dance in your life in both obvious and subtle, teensy weensy and enormous ways, crowding out the others? The first Meetup I attended after landing in L.A. was about just that topic, where attendees revealed fears ranging from stepping on dirty floors and riding in elevators to pursuing a vocation and of course, Financial Insecurity.

And now I notice how fear is behind even little things that I didn’t think were fears. It has dogged me and can manifest every day in one crazy form or another: “Are they mad at me?” “Gotta stop buying that bargain produce,” and “Will the time return when I’m greeted at home with the biggest bear hug?” Is this blog good enough to publish yet?

So before I fall into the Fear of Joy which is the artist and writer’s greatest, I’ll close this blog right now with an invitation to attend the class. Notice that the subject is not Fear but Fear-lessness, because you won’t be rehashing fears but putting into place what you’d like instead. There won’t be bungee-jumping, walking over hot coals, or screaming into the cosmos (unless that’s what you want). You’ll connect with your fears in an easy way …because it will be your way. And that’s the secret: when You are in the equation and not just following someone else’s steps, you will master fearlessness with an ease and grace that will surprise you.

Now don’t think too much! Just register here. Then watch Rita’s short video, and start to notice what little things – whatever you want to call them – are just stories … and by the time the class rolls around, you’ll step into what you want instead.

If you’re reading this after the class has been given, don’t despair. Visit http://www.willow4u.com to book a Power Pack.

Change Please

Now to the Change part, which is the Life part, because yeah, yeah, “Change is the only constant in life.” Yeesh, we know this and do it every day as best we can. There are the days when everything goes ‘well’ – whatever that means – and it’s easy to talk about smelling the roses, savoring the journey, and just ‘Be – ing’. You may try to replicate that for the next day and the next, but this is when you realize you really can’t and shouldn’t so precisely. “Have a nice day…or not,” a friend and I have begun to say, to turn on its head that programming that Nice and Good and Fine look a certain way and are what we strive for.

Dad was right about life being a bit Russian Roulette and that we can’t know the good days without having the shxx ones. So I guess I subscribe to the, “It’s all good.” Or not. I’m really loving this “or not” thing to take the edge and Shoulds off of life, because there are other days that are just not fun.

Like yesterday, when an innocent comment like, “I wouldn’t do that” lands with a thud and I have to take a breath to get out of the “Can’t you do anything right!?” file. When you get an invitation to a “bring your swimsuit” bbq and in that off-handed “Hey, bring your friend (whose name I can’t remember)” way. When a conversation that starts as “What do you think about…” turns into wrangling and then to “I feel like a punching bag and can’t talk to you anymore” and finishes out the day with “Guaranteed we’re not going to talk tomorrow.” When the high point of your day is returning a toilet seat to Target. When your sister says the words “family trip” and “Bali” all in the same sentence.

Physical exertion, there wasn’t much, but I would certainly call it a ‘heavy-lifting’ or according to my British sparring partner, a “fxxx-all” day. Essentially it was one of those days when buttons get inadvertently pushed over and over, and memory files are yelling and reacting to each other, and it would have been easy to let the broken record play “Life’s a Bitch, and Then You Die.” The hard feelings could have really set in with each of us making assumptions and decisions about the other.

This is then where the freaking hard work (or not) comes in, all the hours and practice that the magician puts in behind the scenes, deep down, in plain view, wherever it needs to happen to make the Show …. well … magical. Stay tuned.

Agent

“Uhhh, I think I’m your agent,” I said, grasping for some definition of the tasks that were falling to me. And then everything made perfect sense for each of us. The “Why L.A.?” became “of course, L.A.” because where else would a holistic healer have an agent? Then the relationship suddenly had all the right words to define it: Collaboration, Autonomy, Expertise.

As Rita Harrison’s client and student, I knew the Willow System in such a way that I could represent it authentically and passionately. And because Rita and her methodologies aim to and do deliver “optimally,” I had the confidence, competence, and clarity (yes, more about the Power of 3 later) to move into my soul purpose. Ok, let’s say that again. Needless to say, it’s been an interesting road to finding that happiness thing, especially when I’ve sought it from others most of my life.

So I reclaimed the business experience (leaving behind the stuff that had put old ventures into indebtedness), corporate and institutional familiarity (without the non-constructive contempt), and a mother’s multi-tasking and juggling skills (that had lost their sense of purpose with kids grown and off on their own paths). What transformed all of that turned out to be remarkably simple (which doesn’t mean ‘easy’ by any means).

It happened that a reading by Connie Viveros crystalized it beautifully with images so lush I couldn’t speak as I received them. Don’t forget, I now say to myself: Toss a joy for living – tears and all – into the magician’s hat and one by one, all I need to create my new life will be provided one white dove at a time.