My New Book

It’s here!

Yesterday was daughter #3’s 19th birthday, and somewhere in there amidst the chaos, a big box arrived for me: BODY MY HOUSE is officially here.

 

You can get a copy from me, or zip over to Amazon. (Just click on the link above — and when you’ve read the book, I’d love to see your review on Amazon!)

I’ll have copies in local bookstores, too, but as I don’t have a distributor, gotta walk ’em over.

Oh, and a book launch. Stay tuned for more information!

 

What’s Your Story?

“I’m not a real writer.”

“Who would read what I have to write?”

“If I tell the truth about my life, it will hurt my parents, my brother, my kids….”

“I don’t have time to write.”

Over the years, I have met so many people who want to write, who wish they could write, who have an amazing story (or stories!) to tell. And yet, they don’t.

If you recognize yourself in any of the comments above, I understand. I have felt this way myself, despite having called myself a writer for the past 30 years.

You feel this way because someone — perhaps many people — have discouraged you, and instead of rejecting this as their fear and confusion about writing, about living a creative life, you’ve internalized it.

If you’ve internalized their comments, then you no longer need to have your mother tell you, “You’re getting too big for your britches. Who do you think you are?”

You no longer need to have a teacher say, “You’re not very good at writing.”

You no longer need that old friend to say, “Writers don’t make any money.”

You now tell yourself those things. You have become your very own discouragement committee.

If those statements seem true, in your reality today, it’s because you’ve been living as if they are true. You’ve made choices and taken actions based on them (not writing, or throwing away writing, or never submitting your writing).

But you can make other choices. You can take other actions. 

That bar on the door to your writing is not very sturdy, not even close. You can take it down.

Doors are meant to be opened.

Think of me as one member of your encouragement committee.  Of course you can write.

 

 

Can You Picture What It Looks Like?

If you’re following this blog, there must be a part of you that wants to write, or wants to write more. 

It’s hard to go from a wish to a new reality, but it is possible.

Several years ago, I had not only a full-time teaching job, but also a houseful of kids (my twins were probably about 16 and always had friends over; my youngest would have been 10, and ditto). And, somehow, to my great dismay, I was 40 pounds overweight. I wished–fervently–that I could have back my old, lean and fit self. But I felt completely helpless to change. I was too busy to do anything differently. Wasn’t I?

In the lunchroom at the college one day, I wondered aloud if I was going to gain 5 or 10 pounds a year every year until …what? … until I could no longer move?

I am not going to bore you with all the details of how I changed that belief, and how long it took (not in this blog post, anyway), but I do want to share a crucial first step.

It started with a dream.

And I mean a real, night-time, epic dream. In this dream I wasn’t younger, not some old “ideal” self. I was my age at the time (50-something), and it was by no means a fantasy self either–no bikinis here. But in this dream I was thin, and I was packing a suitcase and preparing to go somewhere on an adventure.

When I woke up, I did not think, “Oh, that was nice. If only!” Rather, I felt as though I had been hanging out with MY REAL SELF. I knew that the woman I saw in the dream was ME. Real me; not pudgy, too-busy-to-exercise me. I shifted–I began to think of myself as a healthy person. I started to make different choices–nothing big (I still didn’t have a lot of time on my hands), but small, daily choices. What would thin/fit Bethany do?

In the more than five years since then, I have not forgotten that dream. For me this little story demonstrates something that I think we all already know–at some level–about goal-setting. It starts with a vision–an image that goes way beyond all the advertising we’re bombarded with. It’s about making a conscious choice (out of the many choices) and imagining it fully.

 Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” –Albert Einstein

Of course it doesn’t have to come to you like a vision or a night-time dream, but it’s pretty clear to me that my dream triggered for me a shift in who I pictured myself to be.

I’m reminded of my dear poetry professor, Nelson Bentley, who said over and over again to his eager little poets: “You must fully imagine!” That’s exactly what I did. I’m reminded, too, of a line we used back in my restaurant days to get ourselves pumped up:  If you can conceive it, you can achieve it.

Mary Morrissey, a motivational coach I listen to, talks about this at length: Everything is created twice. Before the chair you are sitting in came into being, someone imagined it.

If you want to change something–or to reset something (like resetting my personal image to my more energetic self)–it will help you so much if you can PICTURE what it is you want.

This is your writing assignment today.

Your job is to really really picture what success will look like for your writing. It does not have to be big; in fact, there is good reason to make it small. My go-to mantra for writing, when my kids were young, was simply, “I write every day,” which I then had to do to make true. Five minutes was enough to make it so.

In this assignment, be POSITIVE and CLEAR. In my dream, for instance, I was holding a pair of size 4 shorts, ready to put them in a suitcase. I looked at them and thought, Should I pack these? Can I really fit into them? And dream-self said, YES.

For the record, you can do this and still remain the anti-affirmation, anti-woo-woo person you are. I have no interest whatsoever in being 20 again, or looking 20 (or 40, for that matter). When I was working on my bigger WHY for getting fit, I wasn’t looking up plastic surgeons. I was thinking of someone a little like my Aunt Aronda, my mother’s older sister, who even at 94 was still a sharp wit, good with a jigsaw puzzle, still reading books (if not writing them) and if not as fit as I want to be at that age, pretty dang close.

I also thought of the poet Stanley Kunitz, who was still giving poetry readings at age 100.

Do I have control over how long I live? No, I don’t. But do I have control over what I do today–and, right now? Yeah, pretty much.

Can you come up with a solid, tangible picture of what you want? (Is it a magazine publication? A finished and printed poem you can share at your next lunch with a friend? A blog? A book? You, standing in front of an audience? You, being interviewed on PBS? Your future granddaughter reading the book that you wrote about your year in Tibet?)

What does your writing dream look like?

Write that. I’d love to hear about it!

 

Got Steps?

May is turning out to be my month for focusing on wellness (or, focusing on reporting to you on my wellness obsessions). And, yes, this really does have everything to do with your writing. (Just stick with me, and you’ll see.)

Because I keep a journal, I know that for an embarrassing number of years I have wanted to be a person who walks every day. I don’t know why exactly I wanted this, and it sounds a little lame to just state it bluntly like that. General good health was a reason. Because I’d heard that moving my body is  necessary if I want to keep my brain. Because I knew that walking would make me happy. And I didn’t mean just walking, of course. I wanted to be a person with a real super-power walking habit. I wanted bragging rights about walking.

So I tried. If I felt inspired I walked. And I had a few good habits in place: taking the stairs, always taking a walk when I rode the ferry. In Ireland, last fall, I did a ton of walking. But, for the most part, I could not credit myself with a habit of walking.

In fact, my desire to be a person who could say, “I walk every day,” had begun to weigh on me and make me ashamed. Not walking made me feel like a failure.

Shaming myself was counter-productive to walking.

Every time I thought about walking, I felt bad. And feeling crummy about it did not inspire me to walk. (And has shaming yourself about not writing led you to write?)

This year it occurred to me (finally, duh!) that maybe I could apply my “small steps” writing advice to walking. What if I set my phone timer, and walked for just five minutes a day?

This is how it’s gone for me, and how it might go for you, should you decide to finally become that person who writes every day.

Step one: Keep It Small

Every day, I set my cell phone timer for five minutes and during that five minutes, I walked. It did not have to be pretty. It did not have to be vigorous. It didn’t even have to be outside. It just had to be deliberate, non-stop walking. A few times, in early days, I walked around the grocery store for five minutes before I shopped. A couple times I walked around the house for five minutes — at, like, 11:45 p.m. (My dog thought it was interesting. Or weird. But I did it.)

But, despite its being an embarrassingly small start, after a few weeks I found that I had begun to make excuses to walk, rather than making excuses to not walk.

Step two: Increase It … as Slowly as Necessary

Once I had proven to myself that I could walk for five minutes, no problem, I began walking somewhere–out in the neighborhood, maybe — for five minutes, then resetting the timer and walking back. Presto! Ten minutes of walking! Worth noting here, the increases were gradual. Five minutes is STILL my fall back, my “can’t fail” strategy. Everything imaginable can go awry, and I can still stand up and walk for five minutes. No special shoes, clothing, or fancy trails required.

Step three: Notice (be conscious of) How It Makes You Feel

I can’t remember if walking felt so great to begin with. For one thing, it was wet and cold when I started. But it always felt great to have walked. Gradually, I began to notice other benefits. My Fitbit gave me activity minutes (which had been mostly not happening, previously) if I walked at a fair clip. And that was rewarding and made me feel good. So getting the activity minutes became a new goal.

And walking outside, in nature, made me so happy. Even in the rain. On a really hectic day, which I seem to have a lot of, taking my dog out at 10:00 at night, or later, made both of us feel good. (And late at night there are no other dogs for him to flip out at — small win there.)

Step four: Push It a Bit More

Think of your increases as an experiment. (And forgive yourself if you fall back.) I was soon walking for 15 minutes — 7.5 minutes there; 7.5 minutes back. But recently I decided there was no good reason not to do 15 there, 15 back. And I did it. So, every day for 11 days now, I’ve gotten 30 plus activity minutes.

Step five: Reward Yourself

You know how you’ve played that game on your phone 479 days in a row? You did not need to reward yourself with gold stars or lattes or anything else in order to do that. It’s the dopamine hit. You get a little tiny reward every time you complete a game.

My Fitbit rewards me with activity minutes, though it took a while for me to make the connection to my dopamine level. At some point, maybe in March, I realized that I was no longer ignoring or resisting my Fitbit. Now when it prompts me to get up from my writing and take 250 steps, I do it without thinking. If I’m driving, I pull over and find a place to walk. (I think I need a trail app.) How late will five minutes of walking make me?

Basically? My resistance to walking is gone, gone, gone. In the past I seldom ever hit 10,000 steps,  even though that was my Fitbit goal. Now, I routinely hit 10,000. If I’m at 9100 steps at bedtime, I take another walk! Whoohoo!

Step six: Report In

My way of reporting was just to take a pic of the trail or beach or wherever I was walking — with my phone — and post it to Instagram. But now I’m reporting to you, too.

Saying, “I’ve walked for at least 5 minutes every day since January 5,” may not impress anyone else, but I get this expansive, happy feeling when I say it. That is a huge change. When I think about walking now, I get the same “lit up” sensation that walking in the hills above Sligo, Ireland, gave me back in October.

I am a person who walks every day.

If you are a person who wants to write every day, but you’re not writing–you can apply these same steps. Yes, yes, I know that what works for me will not necessarily work for you. (That argument, my dear, is called resistance.) But, what will work for you? Have you given it a chance to work? Can you make a few experiments and see what happens?

So, as Nike used to say, Just do it.  Five minutes.