Monthly Archives: June 2012

“You’re Not Special”, He Says at a High School Graduation Commencement

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A controversial high school graduation commencement speech by David McCullough Jr. went viral because his central, provocative message was, “You are not special.”

McCullough said to hundreds of hopeful, high school graduates:

“You are not special. You are not exceptional. Contrary to what your [under-nine] soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.”

Let’s define “special.” According to Webster’s Dictionary:

Spe-cial adjective

1. of a distinct or particular kind or character: a special kind of key.

2. being a particular one; particular, individual, or certain: You’d better call the special number.

3. pertaining or peculiar to a particular person, thing, instance, etc.; distinctive; unique: the special features of a plan.

4. having a specific or particular function, purpose, etc.: a special messenger.

5. distinguished or different from what is ordinary or usual: a special occasion; to fix something special.

From these definitions, you can understand why some people took offense to his message.

I, for one, believe we all possess a distinct set of characteristics that sets us a part from one another. I don’t think many will deny the fact that we’re all individuals possessing unique qualities that render us valueable. Many a teacher, preacher and daytime talk show host has told us as much.

If you go on to watch the entire speech you will come to understand that McCullough didn’t technically, literally mean “special.” What McCullough really meant was, you are not entitled. But saying “you are not entitled” to a bunch of high school seniors may only cause a snicker of collusion among the parents. Saying ”you are not SPECIAL,” will raise eyebrows and get you into Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and a defense from the Christian Science Monitor among many, many others.

I saw it at least three times in my Facebook and Twitter streams.

Let’s put his speech into context, shall we? McCullough was speaking to roughly 300 of the most privileged high school graduates on the planet. These students were graduating from what US News ranks the #260 best high school in the nation. Eighty-seven percent of the school’s population is white and only 4% qualify as economically disadvantaged.

So yeah, a few of them might benefit from being told bluntly that they “are not special.”

His message spread far and wide over the interwebs because entitlement is a hot-button political issue by way of moral belief. If I’m honest, I can’t say that I disagree with that sentiment. I believe that people shouldn’t feel entitled to things they haven’t worked to earn. I’m a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of gal.

But I also believe we are all important and uniquely valuable and I’d much rather remind people of their absolute specialness, rather than their ultimate insignificance. Everyday life does a pretty good job of that already.

McCullough goes on to reference a contemporary society that covets being famous for nothing, that measures their worth in Twitter followers and self-satisfaction. All things I mostly agree with.

In fact, I completely agree with his second to last statement:

“And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.”

But it is McCullough’s last sentence that makes me reticent to endorse his entire message. I can’t decide if he wrote it just to tie it all up with a convenient bow and circle back to the most provocative statement, or if he really meant this?

“The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special.”

Because I flatly disagree with this statement in this form. From my own experience, my sweetest joys in life did not come at the realization that I am not special, but rather from the realization that I am more special than I ever knew–that in the vast, grand scheme of things my life matters if for no other reason that I was born.

When McCullough says that being in service of others, what he terms “selflessness” is the greatest thing you can do for yourself, as I said, I whole-heartedly agree. But my last statement would have been that it is BECAUSE of this ‘service to others’ that you find the nature of your true specialness and by doing so, come to understand the absolute specialness of everyone else… and maybe (hopefully) that is what David McCullough meant.

That one of life’s sweetest joys comes from the recognition that we are all One. That because we are all connected to each other on this planet, as members of the human race, we are simultaneously all special and not special at all, unique and also, completely the same.

If that’s what he meant… well then, I couldn’t agree more.

Feminism, Motherhood and a Demanding Career

Image Credit: Getty Images

I timed the birth of my first child to coincide with the end of my company’s fiscal quarter. I did this so that I would only lose one quarter’s worth of commissions, instead of two.

I was already using rubber bands to ”button” to my work pants when I reluctantly admitted to my boss I was pregnant. It was during a business lunch and the discussion turned toward the upcoming year. He was telling me how well I was doing, and that if I could just work a little harder I was on target to win the coveted award. The look on my face betrayed me because when I said nothing, he said, “What’s wrong? Wait! Let me guess, you’re pregnant.” Then the look on his face betrayed him because I clearly detected disappointment.

While pregnant I suffered from such severe edema due to extensive air travel, I developed carpel tunnel in both wrists and had to wear compression socks every time I flew to minimize the swelling in my legs. When I was 36 weeks pregnant I attended a five-day meeting across the country without my OB/Gyn’s full consent. At that stage in my pregnancy my blood pressure was spiking so I snuck out of meetings to borrow the hotel’s blood pressure cuff to monitor myself.

My daughter ended up coming two weeks shy of quarter’s end and while holding my hours-old newborn in one arm, I used the other to close deals from my Blackberry.

On my twelve week maternity leave, that paid me a fraction of my working wage, I sent and received emails. My boss sent me one obscure message, the text was simply the dollar amount of my current quota deficit. The message was obscure, but the subtext was clear–he wanted me to make my quota. This was a week after I gave birth. In those twelve weeks of leave I attended a surgical case I couldn’t get covered and a lunch meeting that had been scheduled for months.

On my first business trip post baby, when my daughter was 4 months old, I paid to have my mother-in-law go with me. I was breastfeeding and didn’t want to leave her for that long. When my daughter was five months, I had no choice but to leave her for over a week. I pumped on the airplane–I excused myself during meetings and dinners and had the hotel’s kitchen store my milk in their freezer for the trip home. Soon after I got home I stopped breastfeeding all together because it was just too hard.

Pre-kid I ran in several social, work circles. I stayed up late telling jokes with the men. I commiserated with the ladies. But when I became a mom, there was a whole other crowd I didn’t know existed because they talked in hushed tones and you had to also be a mom to be included. All we talked about was how to manage a work-life balance in this competitive career. Sadly, no one was truly honest, including me. Everyone was too afraid to admit that they weren’t doing it very well, or at all.

One of the only woman managers in my division was pregnant with her third child at the exact same time as me. She gave birth days after I did. When I saw her at the week-long meeting when we were both five months postpartum I asked her how she was doing because her job was nearly 100% travel. She was Fed Ex-ing her breast milk home to her nanny and unemployed husband. She was also wound tighter than an eight day clock.

I need not tell you that a high-end sales job is competitive. No matter what management says to placate you, the reality is you are as valuable as your last quarter’s percent to quota and if you are only 99% committed to your job, there’s a never-ending stack of resumes beckoning to make up that extra 1%.

“You can do anything you put your mind to.” They all told me while I was growing up. The message was: You can have a career and a family and you can be happy because countless women before you sacrificed so you don’t have to. Pre-children, when my life was myopic and focused primarily on my own needs, I believed them. Then colic and ear infections and late-night ER visits blew my monocular lens to shit in less than a year and my world became a prism of shaky, fractured focus.

I do not mean that I couldn’t work and also be a mother. That is do-able and is being done quite well all over the country. What I mean is, I couldn’t have a demanding, high-minded career and move up the ladder into a leadership position and be a mother. The sacrifices to my family life were too great and were never ones I was willing to make. Ever.

I enjoyed working for the stimulation, accomplishment and rewards it afforded me. I was quite good at my job, too. But like every new mother my priorities and focus shifted. Before I filed a lawsuit for discrimination I was willing to take a step down and back to spend more time with my family, but economics and a crappy real estate market momentarily forbade it. But we already know how that story ended when the decision was made for me by a methodical and deliberate derailment of my career.

That derailment began when I recommended a colleague to a sales position in an adjacent territory to mine. I recommended her because she had an excellent reputation, intimate knowledge of the competition, and came with impeccable references from our clients. She happened to live in the territory she would cover and was wanting to transition. She was 37, had 10 years of medical sales experience and two children. Instead, my boss hired a 27-year-old man, from another state, with zero sales experience, (but hey, he played football for my boss’ favorite college!).

I obscurely questioned his motives, but my subtext was clear, and that turned out to be the first “mistake” in a long line of “mis-steps” in standing up for myself.

Despite all the ground-breaking work of Gloria Steinem et al, the choice between professional goals and family life are choices that are still required mostly of women. Largely because of these choices and requirements, women in leadership positions are dismal by comparison.

“Women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, 13 percent are women. In the corporate sector, [the share of] women at the top—C-level jobs, board seats—tops out at 15, 16 percent.”  ~Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook

I did make the ultimate choice to have children. This is true. And for that, I apparently, (unknowingly) sacrifice any high-end career goals I might have had in my chosen profession because the competitive environment is not conducive to taking a step back to raise a family.

Although the latest generation of fathers (my husband included) are much more involved in the raising of children, you still don’t see many men foregoing a family to focus on their career or vice versa. In fact, as I write this, every male supreme court justice has a family while two out of the three women on the bench, do not. The third, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, began her judicial career after her son was grown. Condoleezza Rice is the only woman to hold the position of national security advisor and is the only national security advisor not to have a family since the 1950′s.

And must I mention Oprah… again?

These things are just not acceptable to our society anymore.  Female representation among the highest ranking careers in the country, in particular, our government, is imperative. How else will our voices be heard? How else will these impossible choices stop being primarily a woman’s choice to make?

I’m not implying that having a child should involve zero sacrifices to a woman’s career. I was willing to sacrifice breastfeeding, extra assignments, vacation time, money and whole host of things for the sake of my family. I’m saying that the sacrifice of having a family should not be placed so squarely on the woman’s shoulders alone. There are burdens that companies can take on too that will alleviate the need for impossible choices like, not having children, waiting to have children, or the deliberate and painful derailment of a career in a competitive industry.

As I see it, this is mostly a systemic and societal issue–one that needs to be addressed by changing mindsets and attitudes toward the value of family versus the value of money, or achievement or getting one step ahead, faster.

I know that I am privileged. I know that I have choices many women reading this may not have. I get that. But if very few women are capable of reaching and sustaining a career at the highest levels of leadership, then how can that be good for all women?

It’s not a trick question–it can’t.

I have never considered myself a “feminist.” I have been contented to keep my head down, keep working, and roll with the punches that life hands me while not being a victim of my circumstances, including my gender. But I can’t anymore. Not after this non-feminist found herself in the middle of a sexual discrimination lawsuit against a company that specializes in women’s health. How’s that for irony?

If this can happen to me, then it can happen to anyone.

As I write this my former company’s executive management list consists of eight men and zero women–and this is a company that manufactures and sells medical products EXCLUSIVELY for women. There is something inherently wrong with that equation.

Now, I believe it’s my obligation to use my voice to stand up for all women who face impossible choices, no matter which economic or educational stratosphere they inhabit or how many kids they choose to have. Because feminism isn’t anti-men, it isn’t even about women’s liberation and rights anymore. It’s about having choices and making sure society supports those choices. By doing that, society recognizes the invaluable, irreplaceable contribution women make to our families, the board room, and our world as a whole, and that is something I can get behind.

*The statistics recited in this article, and the inspiration to write it, are from the recent, thought-provoking op-ed, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” by Anne-Marie Slaughter published in The Atlantic.

Hot Lava

BEL's 1st Week

I swipe a burp-clothe-gloved hand under each breast to wipe away the slick, soupy mess that has accumulated there. I have always had large breasts, but since my milk came in, they overwhelm me.  It’s the hottest summer on record in the Pacific Northwest and in the 25 1/2 days since my daughter was born we haven’t had a single drop of rain. Like most people here, we don’t have air conditioning because this type of weather isn’t typical.

Our thermostat has read 98 degrees in the upstairs of our home for several days. The kitchen and her nursery are up there. As much as possible, she and I have been holed up in the basement during the day with the lights out, shades drawn, fans blowing… alone. The sound of the fans help us sleep, what little we’re getting.

There is not one inch of me that is not swollen and prickly from heat, shifting fat and spiking hormones. I would go naked but I don’t like to see my stomach like this so I wear a cotton maternity nightgown and a milk-stained nursing bra. I would go bra-less but I need absorbent pads because I leak when she cries, which is a lot.

It started two weeks after we got home—the no sleeping and crying. It was just long enough for family to leave town and just short enough not to catch my breath. It’s been a struggle finding air ever since.

She is my first and she reduces me to my elements.

My hands feel more like claws, tight and harsh next to new skin and I fear breaking her little body because I think I already broke her spirit. I don’t know why she cries. I’m sure it’s something I am doing, or not doing, or worse, can’t do. I think she can sense through her raw nerves and involuntary reflexes that I’m no good at this. Maybe that’s why she cries? A desperate plea for rescue and comfort?

I think that’s why I cry.

I think I cry because I sense that I’m on the edge of something hot and deep like that time we flew over the mouth of a volcano on our honeymoon in Hawaii. Up until that moment I had never seen anything as awe-inspiring and soul-shifting as those guts of Mother Earth. Looking into her atomic glow made my cheeks burn and my eyes water. Just like now. Knowing I was relatively safe in the helicopter I was intrepid. I wanted to fly closer, as close as possible without risking anything. Unlike now.

Now I’m not intrepid; I’m terrified. I’m scared that instead of amazing and beautiful the guts of this mother are deadly. I don’t want to fly any closer. I want to go home.

Before I can even feel that feeling I snap back into the reality that I already am.

My sweaty, bloated body with its milk and its weight is lying in this darkened basement and although I might wish for it, I am not alone, nor will I ever be again. The heat of this life is inside me now, in my breasts and my bones that are shifting back into place and also, especially in this baby. She’s a piece of me broken off, tossed up and flung outward upon the world in a burst of molten lava.

She flows and rips back to the center of me with every breath, expanding my world one inhalation at a time and now I will never breathe the same again…nor do I want to.

Happy Father’s Day

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Happy Father’s Day to the funniest, most thoughtful, (impossible-to-shop-for), bestest Daddy in the whole world. We love you more than pictures or words or hugs can ever say.

Love,

Cha-Chi, The Sir and Mommy

And also to Grandpa Kent and Grandpa John. Happy Father’s Day to you, too!

Love, Brian, Shannon, The Big Bananas and Silly Gooses

Easily Forgotten, Remembered Always

Image credit- aswirly.com

Image credit- aswirly.com

It was just before midnight on that muggy August night.

My windows were down. I took the winding back roads so that I could take my time, turn the radio up, and remember the feeling of the hot wind of my hometown one last time. The back of my year-old SUV contained all the belongings from two years of a desk job. On the seat next to me, a fruit salsa I made for my own going-away party. I was warm from all the things, the air, the love, the beer.

Life was good– an all-time high in fact. The next day was my last day of work for a month. Hours after I would walk out the door one last time, I would be on plane headed toward a month-long adventure that included a mountain wedding, Tahiti, a cross-country road trip, and a new home in a new city with the man I’d been dating for a year.

Floating through those pitch-black back roads, I chose Stevie Nicks to serenade me. A contented smile was scrawled across my face from the simultaneous satisfaction of a job well done and an awesome new chapter just beginning–a rare, transcendent, perfect moment.

I was almost home. One turn into the subdivision and another into my parent’s driveway and I would be there. As I prepared to make that familiar turn an unfamiliar rabbit-shaped missile shot over the hill in front of me. It was the single most paradoxical moment in my life. Never before or since have I free-falled so fast from one state of emotion to another.

If I close my eyes I can still see it under the orange glow of the street lights; steely grey, rabid, wild-eyed. It was coming for me and I knew it. It covered a football field’s distance in less than three seconds. I would learn later that the rate of impact was 86 mph.

I had time for two things; gripping the wheel a little tighter and the realization that my life was about to change forever.

In the time it took me to blink there were shards of metal, glass, plastic, fluid and fruit salsa all around me. I heard the unworldly sound of all these things breaking at once. I was no longer facing the direction I thought I was going; home, work, an airplane. I was facing a darkened road, my car horn stuck in a permanent state of panic and Stevie still singing about Silver Springs in her signature gravel.

My lungs filled with the acrid smoke of the airbags which had slammed into my chest like a 20lb medicine ball dropped from two stories up. My seatbelt had cut deep into my collar-bone and across my lap and in a moment of sheer panic, I suffocated on all of it. My mouth was open, but no sound came.

Then I knew had to get out, but I couldn’t remember how.

Soon, adrenaline became my copilot. It brought air back to my lungs and thought into my brain and I jumped from the critically injured vehicle that was screaming at me in its own kind of pain. In those brief seconds the rabbit had made an erratic turn which slammed its driver’s side into the front of my much larger SUV’s passenger’s side. There was no longer a floor board, only twisted metal and a tan fabric seat smeared with fruit salsa next to me.

The moment my feet touched pavement I felt a sudden and unmistakable weakness in my left leg. It was only a weakness, because adrenaline was in charge and it says that the pain comes later.

I looked to the rabbit sitting there motionless, smoking. It too, was turned toward a direction it hadn’t planned on going. I started to go to it but something about the way the driver’s side was pushed all the way over to the passenger’s side stopped me.

I thought I was brave. There have been many times in my life when I have done brave things. But something distinct cowered inside of me at that sight. It wasn’t adrenaline, it was something else–instinct maybe–that told me not to go. It told me that I would never forget what I would see because forgetting is my survival instinct.

The rest of the night came to me in camera flashes.

FLASH! I am prostrate on the grass, the sky above me is ablaze with urgent lights. My mother is holding my right hand, my father is holding my left. I feel the methodical and hurried rhythm of cold scissors up my leg cutting away my pants.

FLASH! It is just me and an EMT in the back of an ambulance. I am prostrate still. I hear, “blood pressure dropping, heading to a different hospital.”

FLASH! Prostrate on the x-ray table, I am told. “Dead–too disfigured to know the approximate age.”

FLASH! “Miss, have you had anything to drink?”

FLASH! “Hold still, this will only take a second.”

FLASH! “Miss, we’re going to need to take your blood alcohol level.”

FLASH! “You’re free to go.”

Really? Was I really?

I woke the next morning to find out that the disfigured person in the other car was a 22-year-old kid named Andy. He took his father’s sports car without permission and had been wasted on more than one drug. He went to my school. People loved him.

The next day, I didn’t go to work and I didn’t leave on an airplane. But leaving on the airplane was the only thing I wanted to do so I rescheduled my flight for the very next day. I left with my crutches, pain-killers and even more baggage than I had planned on taking. The more distance I could put between myself and those skid marks–the more radically I could change my view–the quicker I could forget.

Because forgetfulness is the best of all coping mechanisms and I use it for all the tragedies in my life.

It’s not that I pretend things haven’t happened. I know they have. Every time I go back to my parent’s house I am reminded of this one by the make-shift memorial two turns from their driveway. But I have developed a calcification process for bad memories and it operates on an involuntary, instinctual level. I harden my true-to-life tragedies and then push them away, outside of myself–into orbit.

If a memory is triggered, for a split-second I will see the event as though it happened to someone else. I see it as though it was not a part of my own life and I am hearing it for the first time. Then I have that strange, surreal, surprised moment when I realize that it actually did happen to me.

This happens every time.

But like the orbital path of the moon commands the tides of the Earth, these things affect an ebb and flow inside of me, too. A silent river flows just below my awareness; an ever-present force brimming with the reality of life’s impermanence and inherent fragility. A reminder that there are no promises in well-made plans and in less than three seconds you can be facing a darker road.

This reality river, it shapes me. It constantly cuts new paths and wears out old ones. Like all rivers, from time to time it floods. Sometimes the rain comes from something in my own life, but more often than not, it is the stories of others that breach my banks; an abducted child, a terminal diagnosis, a freak accident, a tornado.

Like the diligent beaver that I am, I maintain my dams. I stack up everything I own (and some of what I don’t) to shore myself up against what I know will come anyway, inevitably, always–a sadness brought on by things I cannot control and do not understand.

When these times come, I retreat inside myself and onto my raft made of words and I float. I lie prostrate looking at all the things in my orbit, including Andy, and I remind myself that I am that, and they are me, and we are One, and only then do the calmer waters prevail.

Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapiro

Devotion

I have never written a book review, but because I loved this book by so much, I am inspired to write this.

Dani Shapiro grew up as an only child in an orthodox Jewish home in New Jersey. Her reserved, devout father died in a tragic car accident when she was 23 leaving behind more questions than there would ever be answers. Her relationship with her mother was complicated and tragic right up until her death of brain cancer when Shapiro was in her early 40′s. Early on, Dani splintered off from her Jewish upbringing, finding refuge, sanctuary and community in various places including her yoga mat and church basements attending AA meetings (although not an alcoholic).

She became a New York Times best-selling author, a wife, and like so many of us, got busy numbing herself stacking up accomplishments and material accoutrement.

Then she had a son, and also like so many of us, was changed forever. When her son, Jacob, was only months old, he was diagnosed with an extremely rare and likely debilitating condition called Infantile Spasms. Strangely, it is a rare condition of which I am partially familiar.

When Brooke was eight months old she developed a strange tick on her right side. It looked like she was bringing her right shoulder and her right ear together in a sudden, involuntary movement. Within hours of showing her pediatrician a video, I was at the hospital distracting my daughter with a dusty, leftover stash of rickety toys while they pasted a rainbow of electrodes to her baby-fine hair. Between the two appointments, I frantically Googled “Infant Seizures.” That is when I became familiar Infantile Spasms, which was the most tragic of all possible outcomes.

There is no definitive cure for IS although experimental treatments do exist. If IS is not treated immediately and effectively, it can erase your child from their own mind leaving irreversible brain-damaged. The probability of surviving Infantile Spasms without severe neurological impairment is 15%.

Our Pediatric Neurologist said he would call us as soon as he got the results, “no matter what time.” In our case, it was 7pm on a Friday night. To say I was afraid, feels wholly inadequate. I don’t think I took in, or let out a full breath that day. I busied myself. I chewed my lips and watched her and the clock like only a mother sensing trouble can.

We got the call and it was good, not IS.

But Shapiro and her husband received the opposite diagnosis. Through more than a year of intense monitoring and precise administration of an experimental medication, Jacob survived IS with a few developmental delays that he would eventually overcome.

Of all the tragedy and uncertainty Shapiro endured up until that point, it was this experience that felt like the locus of the book– the principal reason for the deliberate search for what she believes. Against such infinitesimal odds, why had this happened? Furthermore, why did Jacob survive? What would she tell her son when he was older? How could she tell him anything if she didn’t know herself?

Not one of us is immune these switchback moments of life. The moment when the horizon comes into view, but suddenly you are forced to take the path leading in the opposite direction. This disorientation leaves us looking behind us, yet forced to keep moving forward.

Ultimately, it is a reality we all face, the recognition that life is fragile, potentially tragic, and definitely out of our control. If we’re lucky, it is faith that shores us up against the storms. Belief becomes our safety net; religion our life-line, and for many, finding a community of like-minded people to help weather the worst of it. When you are a renounced orthodox Jew, a itinerate yogi and a non-alcoholic member of AA, where do go? What do you do? How do you define your beliefs?

Shapiro finds the closest thing to answers in the small spaces between all these things–in the moments of awareness brought on by daily rituals, mindfulness and setting intentions.

She is Jewish, but reads Buddha’s teachings to her son. She finds refuge in the practice of daily meditation, but also at synagogue on Friday evenings. She finds solace on her yoga mat and also in the mezuzah hanging to the right of her front door. She finds community in reading the Torah with a Rabbi, or in watching the leaves turn colors outside her window.

In the end, it is always a practice, a never-ending journey in finding peace in a world full of split second sorrows– creating meaning in a fraction of a second of breath and the seemingly inconsequential gestures of ritual and repetition, because they are reminders of the only thing that is… our intricate connection to each other in this solitary moment in time.

Life will always be switching back on us, each corner producing a new set of questions and rarely will there one answer for them all, more often than not, there are no answers. It is on this precipice of uncertainty and fear that we all must learn to find solace, refuge and community without closing our eyes to the view.

Because even when you’re afraid, especially when you’re afraid, if you keep your eyes open, it is still beautiful sight to behold.

The Law of Attraction

magnetic thought bubble

I’m a big fan of self-help. In my late teens I started going regularly to what I call, “poor man’s therapy” located in my local Barnes & Noble. Often times, I found some answers to my emotional ailment du jour between those glossy covers with catchy titles, and if I couldn’t find answers, I found solace in knowing that I wasn’t the only one looking for answers. It was kinda of like church.

It was also a main reason I chose Psychology as my major in college. Well that, and a penchant for self-destruction and a flimsy support system.

On my bookshelf you can find a historical roadmap to my psychosis. It began by wanting to understand myself. Under that category, you’ll find The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung, and Self Matters by Phil McGraw better known as Dr. Phil.

Then, I moved on to the more existential topics of meaning and purpose. In that section, you’ll find Victor Frankels Man’s Search for Meaning, Deepak Chopra’s How to Know God, and Gary Zukav’s Seat of the Soul.

After that, I got married and wore butt prints into the chair at the end cap of my local B&N Self Help section because I was in some serious trouble. Under my how-the-hell-do-I-be-married? category you’ll find, Getting the Love you Want by Harville Hendrix and, Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey, because Please Understand Me I just didn’t leave me feeling understood enough.

In addition to these categories, you will also find books on how to be a successful sales person, how to have a healthy pregnancy and how the f*ck to get your baby to sleep–the latter is an ongoing issue in my house.

As I type this there are 18 books on Amazon’s Top 100 that could be categorized as “self-help” NOT including diet books. Among them, there are several about the brain as it pertains to habits, depression, happiness and health. It seems that the biological understanding of behavior is all the rage now. I have been doing some reading into this new scientific, self-help genre, and there are a few common themes:

1.) Our thoughts can have a real, tangible power in the world based on the energy they produce. This energy, attracts like energy. 2.) Our thoughts create habits, our habits determine our actions, and our actions create our reality. 3.) If you want to change your reality, change your thoughts.

The basic premise being thoughts first, feelings second, then reality.

This new genre of self-help is another, more scientific derivative of the principles of popular theory known as The Law of Attraction, of which the main premise is, what you think about is what you attract into your life, for better or for worse.

I have believed this for a long time, even before it became a self-help genre with a trademark name. Actually, I used to think I was a little bit psychic.

I am a thinker and a dreamer by nature. If something is important to me, I spend energy thinking and day dreaming about it happening to me. Often times, it really happens the way I dreamed it would.  I get lost in these fantasies of receiving things I want–a promotion, a sought after client, a surprise–I go all the way, I fully allow myself to feel as though they are really happening. I rehearse future conversations, reactions and phone calls pertaining to the event. It used to freak me out a little when they came true right down to the minute details.

In 2004 the first of my core group of best friends was getting married. It was the first everything from bachelorette party, to wedding shower to actual wedding for anyone of the girls in my close friend group. At the time I was already living in another city, and so making every event was unlikely. Not one to miss a good party, I decided that I MUST attend the bachelorette party, but I decided that I didn’t want to just attend. My friends are very important to me, they are like my family. I wanted to contribute to the specialness of the occasion by making it even more memorable. I wanted to do something unexpected and outrageous.

I hatched this hair-brained idea that I was going to surprise everyone in some dramatic way. I planned to secretly fly into town. I thought maybe I’d pop out of the partition that separated the back of the limo from the driver’s cab while they were driving to the first bar. I thought maybe I’d write a funny poem about how I wish I was there to call shotgun one last time (which I was infamous for). I’d call them from the front seat of the limo and read it to them on speaker phone. As they laughed I’d stick my head through the partition and say, “shotgun.” They would start laughing and crying and it would an amazing way to kick off the night.

And it was, down to the last detail. Although there were a lot of variables to making that situation happen that weren’t necessarily in my control, it still happened the way I’d hoped and it was then that I started to believe.

Then there was my wedding day, my career, my awards, my children, our financial issues–all visualized, all happening very close to the way I visualized them. This belief in being the co-creator of my life is the very reason that when my life went to shit after filing a sexual harassment complaint against my boss, the first thing I did was make a vision board. I needed my visualizations made into something tangible so that I could physically look at them while going through some of the most painful months of my life. A time when I knew my optimism would wane.

It worked.

I set a date in my head when I thought would be an appropriate time to start getting paid for my writing. It was a specific week for a specific reason. Actually, it was this week. Out of the clear blue visualized sky an online publication asked me to write things for them on a part-time basis. For like, real money.

I’m telling you guys right now, if I know one thing, I know this… watch your thoughts, they are who you become.

Now, before you think I’m crazy let me say this; not EVERYTHING I have visualized has come to fruition. I have yet to win the lottery or meet Oprah and I have visualized the SHIT out of those situations. In fact, the skeptic in me wants to chalk it up to coincidence, or a trick of the mind. Part of me thinks that maybe I just revise my visualizations after the fact to match my current reality. I’m tempted to think that.

But then I come across another quote, anecdote or self-help book that supports my belief in being a co-creator of my own reality. It’s a profound wisdom that has been espoused for centuries by many people, in many ways:

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it. ~William Arthur Ward, Author

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right. ~Henry Ford

… and my second favorite:

Watch your thoughts, for they become your words.

Watch your words, for the become your actions.

Watch your actions, for they become your habits.

Watch your habits, for they become your character.

Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

~Author Unknown

In the latest self-help genre focusing on brain chemistry, they are getting closer to understanding this phenomenon on a scientific, physical, biological level. Although I strongly believe in science, I also believe in miracles, and faith. Because my ALL TIME favorite quote regarding The Law of Attraction is:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  Matthew 7:7