Read the Blog

​​Last Week’s Tools:

• Mute the negative input that comes via all your screens
• Get into motivational content
• Ask, "What is the badass move here?
• Call out when you go off the rails

​How did you do with last week's assigment? It made a huge difference for me to cut off the negative input. I feel more spacious and have more energy. As to motivating videos, so far I like Luvvie Ajayi, Zain Asher, and Ami Morin (there is also a link to a massively badass composer and musician (a 14 year of girl!) at the bottom of the blog). Asking “what is the badass move?” slowed down a bit this week. I think I overdid it before and have now found balance. It’s not good to use anything to excess. Before you know it, it becomes a way to oppress yourself, such as: “you must always be badass” and “not being a badass is a fail,” instead of calling upon it like a celebrated super power--only as needed.  

I’m blown away by how much shame I'm discovering I have. In this badass training, everything is foaming up to the surface. Yay and Yikes!
It seems, if you want to be a badass and if shame is located in the space where courage tries to be, shame’s going to show up like an invisible ink signature held over a candle flame.
Earlier, while I was working on a song, I felt shame over the quality of my signing voice because it wasn’t yet warmed up. Shame at not playing guitar like guitar god, Mimi Fox. Shame that I gave my chance at stardom away when I moved to the States. Shame makes that mean “I could have been somebody.” As if I’m not now. As if fame made you into “somebody.”
 
Everybody matters equally. And yet, I have so much shame, I ache with it. I feel shame for loving you, dear reader. For loving you for no other reason than that you’re in the world. Shame says I should have a better, more specific reason and because I don’t, I’m odd. And that apparently is something to be ashamed of.
I feel shame at feeling shame. I feel ashamed to say that I have talks with God. I feel shame that you must be thinking I’m a noo-noo head.
 
But I’m not too ashamed to say these things. All the shame in the world can’t stop them from coming out. Because holding in one’s truth is worse than feeling shame. The badass training makes is easier to look at this feeling. Easier to name it. And now that I have, I feel I can let go of the armor I’ve put around it.
 
Ahhh. That’s lighter. Suddenly, there’s more bandwidth to be thinking about you instead about my shame. How are you? What’s happening in your world right now? Where are you—in your heart, in your head? In someone’s arms? Protected and cared for and happy? Or are you alone, filled with secret sorrows? Or being self-critical? We all are, aren’t we? But we’re also lovely. You are lovely. Lovely—isn’t it odd that the term is reserved only for AFAB people, for people assigned female at birth. Why? Everyone has some kind of loveliness about them. It’s not a matter of gender. There’s a whole other can of worms right there! All that shame around not being “normal” and fitting into the two, all too restrictive, gender buckets. I know for a fact, because I have seen it with my own eyes that, that however you identify, you are lovely and you are beautiful.
 
The great 19th Century French writer, Stendhal (pron.: stoñdull), described beauty as “la promesse de bonheur,” the promise of happiness.
 
I believe that seeing beauty is part of happiness because it is a result of reverence. Of holding something or someone as sacred. Beauty, Thomas Moore showed in his book, The Soul of Sex, is the province of the soul. I know it as one of the gateways that open a connection with the divine, such as when I see a beautiful tree or the majestic Olymics across the water. For me to come right out and say it like that is a seriously badass thing to do because concern that speaking about my spiritual beliefs would be alienating to you wants to hold me back. You feeling alienated by me would make me feel ashamed. And so the list goes on. I may never stop feeling shame, but badass training says, That’s OK. Maybe there’s nothing to do with shame, per se. Being badass doesn’t seem to do away with it, but I think it allows you to move forward even in its presence.
 
As promised the link to the most badass musician I’ve ever come across. She is the composer as well as the pianistr. Nothing short of amazing: 14 year old Alma Deutscher.

Read the blog

​Hey You!

Thanks for joining me for episode 14 in the 2019 badass challenge.
Last’s week’s homework was trying the Nice Fast.

How’d it go?
​
I was surprised to find that I never did slip back into my old nicey-nice and so took the week off. OK, that’s not true.
I stayed in badass training by doing two entirely new things and one not-so-new thing that I haven’t yet made an official part of the tool set but will today.

First, I’ve stopped reading and listening to the “news.” Cold turkey.  
 
I’ve unplugged for this one reason: Because all the bad news has a way of making you feel a combination of helplessness, hopelessness and rage and that interferes with your badass training.

The solution has been to subscribe to a number of motivational YouTube channels. There’s a list of my Top 3 at the bottom (There’s a list of my Top 10 on the blog version of today’s podcast.)  

These videos are kind of like an alcohol spritz for the mold of negativity that wants to form around the edges of my mind like the pink slime that grows in the crevices of your filtered water jug . Rows and rows of little spores, holding each other’s little spore hands, sway and whine, “This is so hard.” “What if nobody will hire my services?” “What if they move my emails straight to the trash folder?” “What if I can’t get past the gate keepers and my calls won’t be returned.” It’s a chorus of persistent voices.
I find that the motivational videos are great at drowning them out! And I need that because I wake up in the morning and everything is already too much. Where to even start?! Now I know where! I grab my phone, open my YouTube app, type in “motivation” and start scrolling. One video that talks about strength of mind I like especially. It suggests that all the little moments of negativity will add up real quick and slime me. Just like the pink spores. You can’t see them, can’t see them, can’t see them and then, having reached critical mass, all of a sudden, there they are! Individually, these tiny little spore bodies don’t have any impact; they’re unimportant. But when enough have accumulated, they’re disgusting and you know you’ll have to get out the scrubby right then and there and follow up with the alcohol spritz from good measure! Which is going to be part of this week’s tools as follows:

This week’s badass challenge is to take your devices and scrub them of apps and notifications, podcasts, newsletters, and what not, that tell you in smart prose why and how the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Replace them with some of the thousands of motivational, educational, uplifting and inspiring contents, such as videos, podcasts, newsletters, etc., that can fill your heart with hope and encouragement, ideas, suggestions, stories and data that fire your imagination and build your confidence. Interestingly, I bet you’ll find that they’ll equipped you so you can go out into the world and more easily do things that help make it better than it is now.
​
Now to the tool I’m officially adding to the tools set: It’s a habit that just came about by itself. In certain situations (you’ll know them when you’re in them) ask, “What is the badass move here?” Additionally, make it a habit to identify and call out when something isn’t. For example, “It’s already Friday afternoon. I’ll put this call off till Monday,” is not badass and I would call that out as such. Then I’ll ask, “What is the badass move?” If it’s going on 5 o’clock and it’s actually too late to get that call in, I would set an alarm for Monday, and include the number to dial to remove even the smallest obstacle. Identifying and removing the obstacles you can do something about it always badass! And I know you can do it because I know we were all born as badasses. We had the world by the tail (before they snipped it off). Now, we just have to build our own tails and plug straight into the juice of life!