Posts Tagged ‘motivation’

It’s Not So Bad

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

When I called my mother to tell her I had the rare genetic eye disease she had inherited from her mother, she said, “It’s not so bad.”

These were comforting words from her, but if anyone else had tried to say this to me I would have wanted to strangle them.

My mother lost her central vision in both eyes when she was forty. I was thirty-seven when a blood vessel broke in my left eye and I knew I was in trouble.

That was twenty years ago.

Now, I am an international motivational speaker and Follow Your Bliss coach. I take fun seriously, and I believe simplicity is sexy.

People who are losing their vision are often referred to me but rarely call. I think I know why. When I was in the first stages of rewriting the rest of my life, leaving the land of being able to read and drive a car and see the leaves on the trees and the stars in the sky, I did not want to be cheered up or inspired.

During the early stages of my vision loss, I saw a picture of a little girl who had suffered burns over most of her body and was now out, I don’t know, selling beauty products or being a motivational speaker or something inspirational.

My response? I didn’t want to be inspired. I wanted to scream or curl up into the fetal position and wait for something to happen, wait for my life to go back to the way it was when things were perfect and I could see. (Things weren’t perfect when I could see, but it felt that way.)

I knew I would overcome my vision loss. That is who I am. But when I was first facing this loss, I did not want to be strong and positive and inspiring. I wanted my vision back.

So if you are in those first throes of despair, why call it anything else, I want you to know it is safe to call me. I will not try to cheer you up. I am not afraid of you, and I don’t feel sorry for you. I feel enormous compassion because I have some idea of what you are going through.

When Help Really Helps

Right after I lost the central vision in both eyes, five years after that first blood vessel burst, I went for a month of training at the Oregon Commission for the Blind. They helped me enormously because they were not afraid of me, didn’t feel sorry for me, had lots of practical help for me and served as role models.

My Braille instructor was an angel, a being of light and humor. He had lived almost completely blind for most of his life and then had surgery that restored some of his vision, although he was still blind. Let me tell you — there is a big difference between almost completely blind and being blind because you have no central vision.

His big adjustment was more sight! Go figure! He had to get used to being a blind man with sight. He said I was a sited person with blindness and that was a whole different ball game.

Here’s the deal: whatever hand we are dealt, we have to deal with it. If we look at what we’ve lost, we will not be able to stand the pain. If we look at what is left, we have a big adventure ahead of us, an adventure that will take courage but will, I promise, reveal surprises that will deepen your appreciation of being alive.

I want to end by leaving you with a song I wrote about having the courage to mourn. This song says it all, I think. I could do a whole workshop just unpacking this song. Listen and see if you agree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnsf_x9YgyQ

Blessings,

Vicki

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Fun with Laundry

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

As you may know, I believe Fun Is not a four letter word. I Know that If we are able to Inject Fun into almost every  situation, we are more  clearheaded,  lighthearted,  and full of vitality. When injecting fun into every situation is as natural to us as shaking our fists at errant drivers, we will be able to see more clearly who we are meant to be. (How is that for an introduction that connects this article with My Big Mission?)

Doing the Laundry Can Feel Overwhelming.

Injecting fun into doing the laundry is a great place to start.  Learn how to inject fun into almost anything.  Besides death and taxes, the laundry shall always be with us. If we keep up on this task, it’s not much of a problem. But if we put off doing the laundry because it’s not fun and feels like drudgery, we are setting ourselves up for unhappiness.

So if we learn how  to inject Fun into doing the laundry we will accomplish several things at once   (Multi-taskers take note!):

  • We will build our resilience.
  • We will learn to be proactive instead of procrastinate.
  • We will increase our sense of well-being and self-esteem.
  • And we’ll get the damn laundry done!

Here is how my husband Murray and I make doing laundry fun:

Murray works four days a weeks at the coast, I do much of my work from home, so the bulk of laundry duty falls to me. I am fine about that. Unlike technology, which sometimes tries to kill me, the laundry is a concrete task.  B ecause I can touch everything and move everything at will, I have Control over the laundry. And Control, as you may know, is an aphrodisiac. Therefore, doing the laundry is sexy.  If doing the laundry is sexy, then I am sexy. If I am 58 and sexy, this is a good thing. This is one reason Murray really likes it when it’s  Laundry  Day.

First I pick up clothes, put them in the washer, add the soap, turn on the water, and voilà! Wet, clean clothes.  I move the wet clothes into the dryer, turn the dial, and voilà!  — dry clothes.

So far, so good.

It’s the folding of the laundry that can back up and not be fun. Also, because I am legally blind, matching socks can be a black hole energy  and joy suck. That’s the technical term for it. I could choose to gnash my teeth, and shake my fist at Fate, for strikingly blind in my 30s, and bringing such frustration and misery upon my innocent self. I’ve done a bit of this and in some ways it’s a little bit fun, but mostly thinking and feeling this way just makes me feel icky.

The Joy of Flinging

My solution to this sock-matching dilemma: fling all of Murray’s socks and underwear onto the floor next to his dresser.  Directions: I pick up one of Murray’s socks, fling it to the floor. and shout: “Take that, socks that are difficult to match!”  I swell with power. “And take that, Murray’s underwear, too!”

I’m having fun and the laundry is getting sorted. But perhaps the most important part of this story, is how Murray interprets this underwear/sock pile on the floor. When he comes home, and walks into our bedroom, and sees the pile of socks and underwear he usually shouts with joy something like: “The Laundry Goddess has paid me a visit!”

Let me tell you, his calling me the Laundry Goddess makes it much easier for me to do his laundry for him with joy. I know he’s going to be thrilled, and I mean thrilled, when he sees the pile of clean socks and underwear on the floor. He interprets this pile, which lesser peoples might think of as proof of my sloppiness, as proof that I love him.

So here are the simple, though not always easy, steps to injecting fun into anything:

  1. Decide you are going to inject fun into everything you can.
  2. Find a way to change the story of oppression to a story of Joy. Let yourself be a little wicked and a little outrageous in this process.
  3. Marry someone with a great sense of humor who really loves you.

See? Simple.

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Fun is Not A Four Letter Word

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Recently I received this mini-lecture from a new acquaintance: “Vicki, everything can’t be fun you know.””My response was: “Oh, yeah! Watch me!”

I wisely kept my response in my head. Did I really want to get into a fight about my belief in the power of fun? Not with someone as committed to not having fun as this person turned out to be. That discussion would be fruitless and no fun.

This isn’t exactly what happened, but it is close enough to exemplify one of the biggest roadblocks to knowing who we really are and who we are meant to be:  listening well to ourselves and others.

Taking a Stand for Fun is Serious Business

person turned out to be. That discussion would be fruitless and no fun. Taking a Stand for Fun is Serious Business I’m 58, legally blind, grew up in an alcoholic home, my daughter almost died when she was twenty, blah, blah, blah. Do I really need to prove I have suffered to prove that putting Fun in the center, in the heart and center, of everything I do is not only possible, it is essential? I guess I do.

Fun is for children, right? If only children still got to have fun. We are doing a pretty good job of extricating fun even from childhood these days. Recess has been abolished in many states because all that play outdoors is not learning time and we need to get those kids to buckle down and learn how to pass all those standardized tests. Meanwhile, the dropout rate is soaring, childhood obesity is increasing, as is diabetes, stress disorders, and blah, blah, blah.

What have we got against fun, anyway?

Research shows that we learn more when we are having fun. Couples who play for five minutes together report they love each other more. And I mean they played for five minutes before they took the questionnaire. Imagine if they played together every day?

I repeat: What have we got against fun? Research clearly shows people who are grateful, cheerful, and playful live longer, have more friends, and are more productive on the job, Fun isn’t for lightweights who do not understand that this world is full of suffering and problems that need to be solved. Fun is the missing ingredient in most of our problem-solving.

Serious-minded, logical, altruistic people need to commit to fun if they want to actually solve some problems instead of killing themselves with overwork, self-doubt, and self-righteousness. Yuck!

We are having a national epidemic of seriousness! I’m serious about this.

Look at Google! They have pool tables and chess boards and free massage chairs everywhere. The only food you have to pay for is a vending machine with junk food in it. The junk food is priced at how bad the food is for you. This is funny! This gets the point across! And Google fired China for being so committed to violating human rights. Google is a multinational corporation that has integrity and understands how important fun is to the bottom line. Do you think you are smarter than Google?

If Google believes in fun, don’t you think it is worth entertaining the idea that fun might make you smarter, healthier, and more creative? Just entertain the idea for thirty-seconds that putting fun in the CENTER of your life might be the most profound decision you ever make. Try this for thirty seconds. I dare you.

I guess this is my Sgt. Vicki voice. I’m kicking a little butt for fun. And I’m having fun doing it.

So here is what I say to the woman who lectured me about how I can’t have fun all the time. I can too! I had fun getting a screening colonoscopy. I had fun when my mother died. I had fun when I was in transition giving birth to my first child. I started a sort of funny song from my daughter’s bed in the hospital when she almost died. I’ve written funny songs about being blind, traveling for twenty-four hours on a train alone in India where no one spoke English, and I even wrote two funny songs within hours after a pickpocket stole four hundred dollars and my wallet in Prague.

So suck on eggs, Crabby Woman who says I can’t have fun all the time. I may stumble and fall, but I promise you I know how to pick myself up, get back in the game, and get smiling sooner than most people I know — without being afraid to do my grieving! Ha!

Put a little fun in your life, already!

Vicki

P.S. Want to sign up for a free Play Date with me? This is a limited time offer. When I stop having fun doing these, you know what I will do. Contact me at vicki@outrageousvisions.com to set up an appointment. .


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Some Help Loving Yourself

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

 

Whatever we practice we get good at, and we are always practicing something!

I have a client who needed some help overcoming her bad habit of stressing herself out over all those little things that don’t go her way during the day. I created this for her.

If you need it or know someone who does, please pass it on!

This may help you have a happier holiday!

Tracy, It’s easy

Shower the people you love with love–and love as many people as you can!

Vicki

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