For a few years now, I've talked around the idea of Undeniable Gifts: the idea that every single one of us has something unique, special, and just for us to share in this world. But I've never given it a post unto itself.
Until now.
You've heard it before: "the world needs that special gift that only you have" is a phrase with which Marie Forleo ends nearly every one of her MarieTV webisodes. It's the je ne sais pas that makes you who you are and me who I am. It's the USP of any personal brand.
And yet, so many of us grapple with the idea that we could possibly have anything uniquely ours to share with the world.
After all, everything's already been done before, right?
Perhaps. But I doubt it. It might be accurate to say the concept of nearly everything has been thought of at some point, but even that is a stretch in my mind.
100 years ago none of today's high tech gadgetry even existed. Who's to say what the next 100 years will hold?
I've heard it a lot - in my travels and with my clients:
"I'm a coach. There are lots of coaches in the world. I'm nothing special."
"I'm a direct seller. There are 1.5 million other people in this company selling exactly the same thing. How can I figure out what makes me special?"
"I've heard you say I've got something special about me, but what? I make great cookies, but that doesn't connect to my work!"
"I write books. There are thousands of books published every day. EVERY. DAY."
I get it. I'm not on the cutting edge of tech. I'm not likely to get major funding from an angel investor. Sure, I built one of the first-ever e-commerce sites back in the 1990's, but compared to the speed-of-light cloud computing of today, it was a veritable dinosaur. That wasn't my genius zone anyway. I learned a LOT of stuff in my journey (still do) that adds to my arsenal of awesomeness, but it doesn't really get at the thing I'm most gifted at. In fact, if anything, it just might get in the way of my genius work, because I've gotten so good at so many things.
My gift - the thing I think I do better than anyone else - is believe in the possibilities of people. It's both a blessing and a curse. It's great when a coaching client comes to me, willing to see what I see, and eager to work toward their dream while I hold space for them to step into that awesomeness. It's heartbreaking when I see the possibility of my own kid and he can't. And it's not just my kid. One of the biggest lessons of my life has been that I can't want "it" more for someone than they want it for themselves.
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Brace yourself. You're getting a couple of "firsts" this week.
I've been working on a musical mash-up for several weeks featuring Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love" and "A Whole New World" from Disney's "Aladdin" - but it was missing something. It wasn't as easy to tie the tunes together as I had hoped.
Turns out, all I needed was a little Richard Marx. His tune "Right Here Waiting" gave me a nice piece to thread through the lyrics of the other two tunes.
This is the first musical mashup I've done with 3 songs. It's also the first musical mashup I've done with another artist. Des is fast becoming a staple in my studio, and I'm so happy to have him tickling the plastic ivories for me.
It's also the first "sight reading" clip I've shared. I've posted clips from early rehearsals before, but this clip is actually the very first time Des saw my notes for the song layout - he's the only person other than me to ever see them - and you can watch him take my notes and turn it into a real song - on the first pass. I've been plunking the piano for weeks, and he gets it this good in just one try. Granted, it's a rehearsal, and it's not perfect - there's a whole extra passage he added before we roll into the Richard Marx tune (watch him cringe!), but he's so good, even his mistakes sound decent! 🙂
This is why I beat my chest so fervently about focusing on your genius work. I could spend another 6 weeks working on this piece, and it still wouldn't sound as good as it did when Des just sat down and started playing. I get to sing and see my vision come to pass, and he gets to take the heavy lifting off my shoulders - or fingers as the case my be.
I edited the video a little differently, so you could see the whole run through - no cutting away - so you could be sure it was all played in a single pass.
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I've been wanting to write a post for a very long time about a concept I dubbed "the two I's". Inasmuch as we have two eyes through which we see the world, there are two "I's" through which we see the world: our divine self and our human self.
You can try to dodge them, but no matter how hard you try, you will experience the agony and ecstasy of both "selves" in your lifetime. I've talked about our Shadow self before. How the Coward and the Pretender protect ourselves from the world, and the world from us. How they are all part and parcel to our being. But I thought an incredibly personal example from my own upbringing might drive the point a little deeper.
It's probably a good thing my family doesn't read my writing much. Especially this week. I've written about my Dad before, but I don't usually talk about my Mom. That's because ours wasn't the greatest of relationships. While my Dad and I weren't exactly buddies, he wasn't around much as a kid, so he and I didn't develop the strong animosities that Mom and I did.
Dad was a Vet from WWII. He fought in the Asia Pacific Campaign on the island of Hawaii. I never knew much about what he did or who he was, since that was 30+ years before I was even born.
This past week, his replacement Army medals arrived. He earned a bronze star for his campaign medal, and I'm still not entirely sure what that means. In addition to the victory medal, also earned a Good Conduct Medal and a marksman badge for rifle (which explains the gun he kept in the closet when I was growing up). He also earned an honorable service pin. To look at all that regalia, you'd think Dad was some kind of war hero deserving of a halo and a front row seat in Heaven.
Perhaps.
This was the same man who, in his 60's no less, took my mom to abandoned houses to pull out and strip the copper wiring to sell at the junkyard for cash. Granted, that cash was used to feed his family and keep a roof over our heads, but breaking the law is breaking the law, no matter what the intention.
Lest you think Mom was some kind of victim in all this, she is the prostitute in the subheading above. Did you ever wonder what happens to prostitutes after they clean up their act and get off the street? I did, until I learned about Mom's "torrid past".
Back in the early 1970's, Dad was a cab driver. He was in his early 50's, married to a drug addict with two kids - one whom he'd sired and she another she brought to the marriage. To hear Dad tell it, he loved her, but she couldn't kick her habit, so he was looking for another "option". That's when he met my mom. She was this 20-something vixen - one of the few white chicks that hung out at an all-black bar in town where he liked to go between calls.
I never knew mom or dad to be much in the way of drinkers, so that story took me by surprise.
He knew she was earning money the "old fashioned" way, and decided he wanted to get her off the streets and clean her up. So he moved her into his house - with his wife and kids - under the guise of being a live-in nanny and part-time cabbie.
My mom, the undercover live-in lover of my dad, a married man with kids. The wife was too high to care, I presume. Then one day Dad was in the kitchen making wifey a sandwich. She OD'd right in front of the kids and died.
There was nothing to stop them from getting married, so they did. Mom & Dad eventually adopted both boys and went on to have both me and my sister - all before the end of Gerald Ford's presidency.
By the 1980's we were one big family - the kind that put the "fun" in dysfunctional (this picture is from one of the few family camping trips we all took together). My oldest brother (on the right) started stealing from the family. My heroic war vet dad would bind his hands and hang him from the wrists in the garage and whip him with a belt to get him to 'fess up. That put fear into the rest of us to not steal.
My other brother (on the left) decided that it was okay to force himself upon his much younger sister (me) instead. I didn't understand then why my Mother defended him. For years it was easy for me to see the darkness of Mom and the light in my Dad. Dad, the Angel, had left my mom because, well, she was the Devil. Nothing was ever good enough for her demanding ways. It was stressful, painful, and downright horrible.
After Dad and mom split up the first time, Mom took to the belt like a natural. It was an abusive, yet loving home - something you'd only expect to hear from a child of an abusive home. I'm pretty sure my extended family was somewhat aware, but nothing was ever done to my knowledge; no visits from child protective services as far as I know.
Then, in an effort to "make it work for the kids' sake" they got back together. That didn't last long. It was a painful mess of a relationship that colored so much of what my view on men, marriage, and family became for many many years.
It wasn't until I was an adult, with a child of my own, that I could really own that they were both a tangled web of shadows and light - like we all are.
As I approach my fortieth birthday, I look back and do my best to temper both the light and dark in my family. Fitting, since I'm biracial, right?
Amid all that darkness, I remember how my Dad would sit with me every week when my oldest son was still a toddler, and instruct and encourage me to be a better parent. How Mom attended and supported my sister's softball team in high school. The vacations and road trips we took to various parts of Michigan and the Eastern U.S. How they were both compassionate grandparents for as long as they were alive.
Those were good, glorious times: when Mom and Dad were letting their Divine selves shine through.
No one is perfect, in the zone, or "on" all the time. We see it played out when celebrities get caught doing something stupid, or a politician admits to some "corrupt" act. When I yell at my kids, swear at the driver that cut me off, or give credence to the "not enough" voices in my head.
On the other hand, our Divine nature calls us to live beyond our humanity. Wallowing in the "bad" things we do and resigning ourselves to our imperfection is a cop out. Saying "I told you I was trouble. You know that I'm no good." - with apologies to Amy Winehouse - is a cop out. We owe it to ourselves - to our highest good and to the people who need us to share our divine gifts - to keep showing up, warts and all.
When I meet someone for the first time that's previously watched my videos or read my blog, invariably, they say something about how inspiring I am because I have the courage to just show up as I am. That me "being vulnerable" is some kind of salve for them that gives them hope and courage to show up for themselves, too.
I used to think it was a back-handed way of saying "you could at least put on some makeup in those videos!" See how I couldn't even receive the compliment that was being handed to me? I was stealing from myself and robbing them of the gift of true gratitude.
Recently, though, I've noticed more and more people saying the same thing - as if my vulnerability is a gift I get to shine into the world for those who need it.
I'll be the first person to tell you I'm not perfect (my kids would probably be the second). It's part of why I don't show up with flashy videos and perfectly coiffed hair. My dishes are regularly undone, my house it quite often in disarray, and don't even think about looking at my desk right now - I'm not sure you could find it.
I've lied. I cheated. I've been "the other woman" - on more than one occasion. I've been mean, cruel, and just a downright "bad" person. And, as my favorite poet likes to remind us, still I rise.
Why?
Because my Divinity refuses to let my Humanity own me. Each day is another chance to stand up to the shadows of all my yesterdays, shine a light and say "screw you yesterday, I'm going to show up and keep trying to do better."
Not "do perfect." Do better.
My Humanity also refuses to let my Divinity own me. Because each day is another day for me to experience joy, emotion, respect, fear, lightness, darkness, faith, courage, happiness, anger, rage, and all the other emotions that are part of the human experience.
It's difficult to see the world through one eye. You're constantly craning your neck to see what you're missing. If you have two eyes, it seems senseless to cover one of them and pretend it doesn't exist. Why not put it to good use and see the rest of the world around you?
Why indeed. It's much harder to live life pretending you're perfect (or evil). You're constantly shift around to keep people from seeing the side you wish to ignore. If you have two sides, it seems senseless to cover one of them up and pretend it doesn't exist. Why not put it to good use and let us (and yourself) experience you showing up fully in the world around you?
"Sometimes, friends are as family." - an inscription from The Secret Watch
A couple of weeks ago, I took a trip to Great Barrington, MA, to reconnect with myself and some friends from an online group through which we all met. On the way, I stopped in Lewiston, NY to visit my friend and long-time accountability partner, Winnie Anderson (I'm working with her on a re-launch of my book). She was kind enough to let me crash in her guest room on the way out and then she and her charming husband took me to lunch on my way home.
I'm pretty blessed to have such amazing and supportive friends. I didn't see myself as someone with many friends a few years back, and that made my life's journey pretty rocky most of the time. As outgoing as I am, it takes a LOT for me to connect to and maintain friendships. For years, I'd wished it wasn't so difficult, and it's something I've spent time focused on improving. You'd think it would be easy for me to make friends.
Life happens. People get busy. I get busy. For years, I took that busy-ness personally - and assumed they did, too. What I've learned over the years is that the stories in my head often keep me from enjoying what life has to offer.
It's been something I've made a point to work on and work through - thus the trip to Great Barrington. This wasn't an easy trip for me. Driving 12 hours cross country to connect with people I've only met once before - and some of whom I'd never met before - has been a "scary story" in my head since I left home as a teenager. It's not the drive that's the problem, I actually enjoy that part. It's the meeting "strangers" part that gets me wonky. But that's another story for another day.
I'm counting my blessings and recognizing more often just how many friends I'm truly blessed to have - and now, I'm seeing them pop up all over the country. All because I'm willing to drop my judgments about myself and just show up and be me as best as I know how.
Guess what? People have a chance to like the real you when you take off the mask and stop trying to be someone you're not. That's scary at first, but really rewarding in the long-run.
When I hear this song, I think about how Billy Joel left LA - a place where he never really fit in - and went back to his roots in New York - on the Hudson River Greyhound line, no less. He was ready to stop pretending and start living life on his own terms. That's part of why this song speaks to me and is one of my all-time favorite Billy Joel tunes.
This week's video features photos from my trip - and all the wonderful friends that made it so valuable for me. Many thanks to Melanie, Nicole, Lou, Deb, and Trisha for all their photo taking, and their permission for me to share these wonderful pictures from our time together.
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"Dreams without goals are just dreams that ultimately fuel disappointment." - Denzel Washington
You know what SMART goals are, right? It's a helpful little acronym that breaks your goals into something that's:
So many people use SMART goals - and for a lot of people that works. But not me. Not for a lot of big dreamers I know. It's too hard to wrap a big dream into the SMART package.
Sometimes, it's a challenge to get clear on the specifics of a goal. Take, for example, my desire to win a Grammy. It's a real dream of mine. But right now, my music doesn't easily fall into a category. It's not really pop music. It's not blues or jazz per se - although if the category still exists in a few years, it could be construed as contemporary pop. And someone recently reminded me that I'm also a speaker, so it's possible that my Grammy might come in the spoken word category - or even the comedy category, since I can be a bit humorous from time to time.
So while I have the desire to win a Grammy, it's not easy to get more specific than that.
Sometimes, big dreams are difficult to measure. In the case of a Grammy, it's not so hard: when I have it, I have it. Until then, I don't. But in the case of wanting to leave a positive impact in the world (or a dent in the universe as Steve Jobs put it). Setting a goal to sell a hundred, a thousand, or even a million copies of my book is measurable and specific, but will that really change lives? I won't know until someone reaches out and tells me that my book made a difference to them.
Then there's that whole "is this really attainable?" thing. Who really knows what's attainable? Some of our greatest inventions came by accident and curiosity. Sir Richard Branson cracked an April Fool's joke about a product that would one day become reality. Now, millions of people own MP3 players of some sort. Nobody believed it was attainable. Now, it's commonplace.
I think of Columbus and the debate over whether the world was flat or round. Sometimes, you don't know if it's attainable until you try. Sometimes you fail, but the attainability of a goal, in my mind, shouldn't be a qualifier on whether or not you give it a try. There are lots of failed attempts that ultimately led to success. Light bulbs, anyone? The original inventor couldn't figure out how to get his filament to burn more than a few seconds. FAILURE!
But Edison and his crew stepped in and worked over and over and over until they found a way to make it work. Voila! Electric light - and ultimately electricity in every home gives me the ability to send this message to you anywhere in the world.
Which ties into the whole realistic thing. Who really thought it was realistic 100 years ago to have little video screens in every home? You can watch moving pictures from the comfort of your living room couch! Back in 1914, We were embroiled in survival struggles. Wars. That kind of thing. It wasn't until 1926 that the first broadcast of moving pictures even happened - and they were crappy compared to today's standards. Heck, we were still watching silent movies until 1927! It wasn't until 1939 that the first experimental broadcast network was set up in the US - and color TV didn't come on the scene until the 50's - but most homes didn't see it until the 60's.
So until about 50 years ago, it was pretty unrealistic to think that you'd be able to watch "talkies" in your living room... with a push of a button.. or downloaded off this thing called the Internet.
So much for "realistic" eh?
Who really knows how long it will take for a big dream to materialize? It took Christopher Plummer most of his life to win an Oscar. The Oscar is one of the highest honors an actor can receive. While I'm sure he wasn't acting for the sake of earning an Oscar (a sure-fire way to NOT win one, I'm told), the look on his face when he held that statuette and said "Where have you been all my life?" only illustrated further that a time-bound goal can be a little limiting. So what if it takes your whole life to achieve a goal? I guess, in that respect, it is time-bound. But would you turn it away, too little too late, if you didn't achieve it until after you died? Remember some of our greatest artists didn't know success in their lifetime, yet their legacy impacts the lives of countless people hundreds of years after their death.
Does "eternity" count as time-bound? 🙂
So when it comes to big dreams, SMART goals leave me cold. There are those that would say that you could still use SMART goals on the smaller sub-set of steps you need to take in order to achieve those big goals, and I agree. It also makes it a lot easier to lose sight of the goal itself and get lost in the minutiae of the every day steps that may or may not ultimately lead you to your goal.
Take the Grammy for example. There are some things I need to do: join the Academy, for example. Those are more tasks then goals, though. I need to have a project -an album, a song, a something that could be submitted for consideration by the Academy. But what? An album of songs? A single song? Design a package for a project (they give Grammys for design, too). Or maybe a video? Hmmm... see how easy it is to get lost in the minutiae?
Lately, I've been working on "DUMB" goals - even a few of my clients and colleagues admit that the DUMB approach is actually very helpful.
Here's how it works. DUMB goals are:
D - Doable
U - Understandable
M - Meaningful
B - Believable
Is this something that, with the existing resources and technologies available or known to you, can be done? Television was an extension of ideas that had been developed back in the 1800's. So it was most likely do-able, they just needed access to the resources. Radio waves were already transmitting across the country, so broadcast technology existed, they just needed to figure out how to tweak those waves to send images as well as sound.
Everything they needed was available, just not all in one place. It required some testing, experimenting and putting those pieces together - like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to make the pieces fit together.
So while it seemed unrealistic, it was, in fact, very doable.
"1000 songs in your pocket." Nothing could have been easier to understand when Steve Jobs uttered those words about a device that no one had believed was even possible. Funny enough, MP3 players existed before the Ipod. They were clunky, unsexy, and relegated to the realm of nerds and technophiles. MP3s had been around for quite a while, so it really wasn't a stretch to create a disc drive that would hold them and play them. The technology existed, so it was doable, but how to you explain what these little boxes do in a way that gets you move a million units?
1000 songs in your pocket is a very understandable goal.
There are a lot of folks that think I'm nuts, wanting to go for a Grammy. But it is meaningful to me. There's an aura of prestige around those little gramophone statuettes (Prestige is one of my triggers), it's also a symbol of recognition and acceptance from a field of my peers. Those things are meaningful to me. Maybe not to you, but because they are to me, I'm willing to do the work to achieve the goal.
If you set goals that aren't meaningful to you, why are you setting them at all? (Click to tweet)
To those that say I'm deluding myself into thinking I can win a Grammy, I say you don't have to believe it's possible. Only I do.
Owning dreams that are believable is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make. "I want to make a million dollars" someone will say to me, but when I take them through the threshold of belief exercise, they don't even believe it's possible for them to do so.
So many people believed the world was flat. They fought about it. But someone believed - and a few were willing enough to believe that they loaned some boats and supplies so this Columbus kid could go cavorting to the "edge of the world". Worst case scenario, they wouldn't get the boats back and there'd be one less weirdo on the planet.
Turns out that willingness is a big piece to allowing space for believability. If you're not sure you can believe in the possibility of your dream, are you at least willing to try to believe it? Are you willing to hold space that someone else might believe in it (and you)? Because I believe in you. If you're reading this right now, I'm cheering for you. I know you've got something special, and if you want it to happen, I want it for you.
So that's how I handle goal setting now. Forget SMART goals, I'm all about DUMB goals. Goals that are do-able, understandable, meaningful and believable to me. Forget what the rest of the world thinks! DUMB goals are a great idea.
There are those that would say it's a negative approach, but I've found it actually plays into a sort of "reverse psychology" - when people criticize your goals, call them dumb or whatever, you can say "Yep. They're DUMB alright. And I'm going to GO for it!"
My clients get it, and since it doesn't force them to reprogram their thoughts, it becomes a more effortless way to own your dreams.
So what say you? This is the first time I've really been transparent about my goal setting process. You may already be familiar with how I prioritize things (using The PEACE System), but this is the first time I've ever shared publicly my DUMB goal setting technique. I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas about it.
About 18 months ago, I met this kid, Des. He's got an amazing gift for playing piano. Watching him perform is like watching God sit at the piano... It's almost like Des isn't even there... just music direct from the Divine.
I was looking for an arranger. For this song, in particular. For a few years - ever since I'd heard Michael Buble's version of "Feelin' Good" - I'd wanted to take "Dream On" and do it in a similar style. The song is so timeless. It speaks generation after generation, and has always been a powerful song - one of Aerosmith's classics.
But not everyone likes the screaming guitars of rock music, so there are a lot of people that have never heard the depth of these lyrics. To me, that's one of the powerful pieces of popular music - the story of the lyrics. This was actually the first song that got me thinking about a style of music that is no seeing a larger audience and a broader range of artists - like Buble', Postmodern Jukebox, and more.
We worked back and forth for several months before we got an arrangement that worked. It's been about a year since we finished it, and it remained unperformed. Written for a full instrumental ensemble, we simply didn't have an ensemble to perform it.
I couldn't stand not letting the world hear it. So I asked Des back into the studio, and he condensed the entire song to a single sticky note, and played the entire piece in two takes.
Yes. Two. He's that good.
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This past week, I was fortunate to be able to travel to the Berkshires and visit with great friends. Actually, they're more like sisters. As one of the inscriptions reads in my book, sometimes friends are as family, and these ladies are it. We met during Amy Oscar's Soul Caller retreat last year, and we've kept in touch since then. We spent a few days re-connecting, learning, laughing, crying, and generally showing support for one another - which is what good friends and family do in my mind.
At one point, we made a trek to a nearby waterfall - the Umpachene Falls, to be exact.
Here's a photo one of my companions (Nicole Navratil) took while we were trekking. The beauty of the photo pales compared to the beauty of the experience at the falls. Imagine coming into a quiet little town park, green grass, lots of trees, and a small cache of playground equipment. Then imagine coming around a bend and seeing massive grey rocks with cool, clear water cascading in and around them.
Stunning doesn't begin to describe it.
As I climbed, I reached a point where the only way to go higher was to either move away from the water and go inland, or cross the water to get to the other side. I considered my options and, because I was more afraid of what I couldn't see in the trees (and because my companions were all waterside), I figured my best bet was to cross the water. At least if I fell, my friends would be there to collect me.
The higher I went, the more exhilarated I was. When I turned back, I could see everyone down below. I could even see the handful of brave souls that decided to climb higher. Then, as I turned forward to see what lay ahead, I saw something that couldn't be natural. Something I really wanted to look at more closely.
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Des looks at a piece of sheet music for about 20 minutes and says "Okay, I'm good." Then he hands me the sheet music and creates his own equally compelling arrangement. Listen to the solo section for a glimpse into this kid's creative improvisational genius. Just amazing.
Oh, and this is song #75 in the 300 Songs project... I'm a quarter of the way home!
This is the second song written by Mike Reid I've had the joy of singing for this project. He's such a great songwriter. I wish more people would sing his music. Soulful, meaningful, and deep. Yummy!
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When Des came to visit, I was lucky enough to get two tracks for the new album done.
Yes you heard that - the new album is finally becoming a reality! YAY!
One of the things I've always wanted to tackle was Tobymac's "Made To Love". I've heard it covered and mixed in a couple of different ways, but none of them spoke to me quite like doing a jazzy love song version. After all, there is no greater love, right? Here's our last take:
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About a year ago, my husband and I bought a Porsche. We call it "The Time Machine" because it's really a blast from the past.
When we bought it, we got the expected commentary from friends and family:
"A Porsche? Really? How can you afford that?"
"What are you going to do with a Porsche? It's way too small for your family."
"Mom, can I have it when I graduate from high school?"
... and on and on.
When they found out it was a Porsche 924 - a classic from 1977 - and we only paid about $1500 for it, the comments took a different turn:
"What are you going to do with an old beat up car?"
"Forget it! I don't want my friends seeing me in an OLD car!"
"That's $1500 more than I would have paid."
"Does it have seatbelts?"
"Regular or unleaded gas?"
... and my favorite: "Can you even fit in that thing?"
One guy I used to know - who owns a limited edition Porsche Panamera (valued around $75k) - liked to poke fun and ask me when we were going to get a real Porsche. He'd say to me "Don't you want to see yourself someday in a new Porsche?"
I wonder if he'd say that to his wife - who is about 20 years his junior. 🙂
Last summer was a rough one for us. After two years of trying to keep a failing business venture afloat, and some personal financial issues around the health of our kids, we made a tough decision (more…)