Being yourself

Cheering each other on

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Gosh, I’ve suddenly become self conscious about what I text. And so might you—but maybe that’s a good thing. According to a study I just came across, the words you use in your texts and IMs to the person you like (or love) reveal gobloads about how solid your relationship is.

Right or Wrong Texting

The study, which was done by Richard Slatcher of UCLA, and published in the journal Personal Relationships eight months ago, said that women who use the word “I” more often in their instant messages actually report being more satisfied with their partners.

Specifically, says LiveScience, the women who used the word “I” a lot were 30 percent more likely to stay in their relationships.

Also, the more that women used what the researchers called “positive negations” like the term “not happy,” the (more…)

Tags: dating, instant messages, iPhone, relationship, texting
Posted in Being yourself, In the big wild world, Optimisms | Comments Off on What Your Texts Say About Your Relationship

How to Live in the Moment

Friday, August 28th, 2009

It’s so easy to talk about “living in the moment,” but not quite as easy to do. The other day, however, I forced myself to try, and it was such a rewarding experiment, I want to pass it on to you.

Me, I left my top on. ("Vacation" by Gusto)

I was with my husband, my sister and two of my friends, in a fab house in the hills of L.A. As much as I love my own home, my backyard is covered in crabgrass, so lying on a lounge chair by a pool with a cold drink at my feet and nowhere special I needed to be makes for a good day.

Yet as happy as I was in the moment, I kept losing myself to thoughts that pulled me away from it: I wonder if that email came through? What should we get for dinner? Ooh, and I have to remember to add that to my To Do list. Sure, my body was there, but my thoughts weren’t. And when I snapped to, I wondered: How much of the good stuff do we lose like this because our minds are somewhere else, because they’ve moved on to future plans, to rushing around,to texting, to tweeting? This moment was too good, and I was determined to “live in the moment” the way we all say we should. So, I went sense by sense through what I was feeling from the base of my toes to the top of my head. I ask this of you, too: Put down the camera, turn off the phone and take a picture with your mind.

Trust me, I’m not one to put down my iPhone easily; I’m addicted to the Trivial Pursuit App and I love me a good Twitterific visit. But I promise you: You will feel better sitting with silence for a few minutes and taking your life in. Here’s how:

Ask, “What do I feel?” Work your way up or down your body so you get it all. That day, for instance, I felt my heels on the soft cushion. My back touching a pillow. My eyes and chest warmed by the sun. I also felt a perfectly soft breeze. And a bit of a scratch on my left thigh, which I attended to.

Ask, “What do I hear?” Close your eyes if it helps to focus. I heard birds that day. A dog barking. The pool filter. My friend laughing from inside the kitchen.

Ask, “What do I smell?” This one’s such an underrated sense, but is so closely tied to emotion and memory. Breathe deeply through your nose and see what you get. Me, I mostly smelled my suntan lotion. (You can make me wear sunscreen, but it still has to smell like coconuts frying on the beach!)

Ask, “What do I taste?” I tasted a mimosa. And some nacho chips stuck in my teeth. This could be improved upon.

Ask, “What do I see?” Take a shot with your mind of what’s ahead of you: the colors, the movement of things. I saw a blue pool, green hedges, my wet towel balled up on the ground that I wished I’d laid out to dry (dang it). Then look around you. What’s behind you that you hadn’t seen? Who’s beside you who you could be appreciating?

I did this exercise a few years ago with my sister’s friends in the South of France, at a dinner on the sand when no one had a camera to capture the moment. Instead, we took turns talking about what we saw, heard, felt. And even now, the moonlight on the water and the lapping of those waves is more ingrained in my mind than the cute dog I snapped on my iPhone yesterday.

Still, it IS a cute dog, right?

We need to give ourselves the gifts of capturing these moments. Yes, Facebook updates and Twitpics (and, ahem, blogging) is all fun, and so is planning all the great stuff you’re inspired to do as soon as you finish reading this! But what about being present in this moment of life? Not through a lens, not through a filter, not as a stepping stone to tomorrow. Look at what your life is giving you today—this hour—to be happy about and grateful for. How can we really know what we want tomorrow if we don’t know how we feel about today? Let’s give ourselves that gift more often than we do. The next time you find the present fleeting and life sort of passing you by, tune into your senses and take in the moment. You just may realize you love your life more than you knew you did.

Big love,

Tags: being present, relaxing
Posted in Being yourself, In the big wild world, Optimisms, With a little help from your friends | Comments Off on How to Live in the Moment

If Life %*!&ing Blows One Day…

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

…well, you’re allowed to curse your a** off about about it. Encouraged, even. Why? Because science says so!

Bleeptimism at it's best

Thank Richard Stephens, a professor of psychology at Keele University in the U.K., who published a study last month in NeuroReport that found profanity eases your pain.

Here’s how it worked: The study had participants put their hands in buckets of ice-cold water, and measured how long they could keep their hand in, and how much pain they were able to endure. The catch? They told half the group to repeat a curse word frequently and as loudly as they wanted; the other half were told to utter banal, neutral words. The result? The cursers were able to keep their hands in the ice water for 40 percent longer and reported feeling less pain than those talking about, say, toast.

Cursing, Stephens found, raises the heart rate, and induces a fight-or-flight response, which, as The Week explained it, “temporarily mutes the sensation of pain, so we can respond quickly to a threat.”

Now, the pain the study talked about was physical, it made their knuckles ache. But in my opinion, the words that ease the pain in your hands may also help ease the pain in your heart or spirit on a given day. I mean, hell, I’ve been there when a man I loved told me he just wanted to be friends. I’ve been there when a guy I liked turned away from me and hooked right up with someone else. And in life, I’ve had projects fall through, payments not come, and failing technology destroy ten hours of a good day in four seconds flat. And that pain is not imagined; that’s real hurt, real anger, real heartbreak. So if cursing helps lessen the pain—even for a few seconds—and gets you that much closer to taking the weight of a bad moment off your shoulders, I say let loose! (Provided you’ve first scanned the area for superiors or small children.)

So for those of you worrying that too much “cheerfulness” is required to be optimistic about life and love, fear not…cursing like Gordon Ramsey can help you get there, too. So go ahead, you have my bleeping—I mean, my blessing.

Big love,

Posted in Being yourself, Optimisms | Comments Off on If Life %*!&ing Blows One Day…

A Dating Lesson from “Top Chef”

Friday, August 21st, 2009

As I was watching yet another episode of Top Chef (fear not, I don’t do spoilers for all you fellow DiVo users!) I got to thinking about why I loved the show so much. And I realized I was appreciating more than just watching them whip up spicy watermelon salads and sunchoke purées.

key_art_top_chef

What’s special about the show—and what other shows like Chopped! on the Food Network have caught onto—is watching wickedly talented people thrown into pressure-filled situations and asked to do somewhat ridiculous things they’ve never ever tried before. But you know what this all sounds like to me? The impossibly crazy world of dating. Think about it…

The top chefs . . . walk into a GE brand kitchen and gasp at Padma’s impossible challenge as she tells them to, say, make a gourmet meal out of junk food from the vending machine (though you can always win by braising some meat in soda.)
We . . .walk out to the big world and gasp at the impossible challenge of finding the love of one’s life from a crowd of strangers.

The top chefs . . . are ruled by the pressure of a red digital clock counting down the minutes they have left.
We . . . add our own pressures to dating, time limits we’ve all put upon ourselves because we don’t want to be single any more, counting down the years we have left.

The top chefs . . . frantically look for items in the pantry, crossing cleverly in front of the Glad family of products.
We . . . frantically look for dates online, trying to seem glad about twelve coffee meetings in four days.

And then everyone sits down to a nail biting meal as we wait to find out…is this it? Is this somebody’s happy ending?

Now here’s the important part: The person who wins often says they won because they decided to just be themselves and cook what they cook best.

So that’s my message for the weekend. It will sometimes feel impossible. It will sometimes feel frantic. And you will sometimes need to pack up food in plastic wrap from the Glad family of products. But if you relax and remember to be yourself and do what you do best, you’ll be smiling at the end, too.

Big love and beautiful weekend,

Tags: do what you do best, glad, impossible, padma, Top Chef
Posted in Being yourself, In the big wild world, It's on TV, Optimisms | Comments Off on A Dating Lesson from “Top Chef”

Time to Undo An Un-Relationship?

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

ri lay’shun ship’: A loving connection with a person who brings out your best, makes you shine, and who cares about you as much as you care about him/her.

un-ri lay’shun ship’: A connection that’s anything else.

Now, we’ve all been sucked into vortexes of people who aren’t good for us in the long run: People who don’t call when they say they will, don’t say what we wish they would, don’t relate to us the way they should, and don’t respect us the way we deserve. I’ve been there, people. But when we finally wake up to the fact that we’re not getting what we want, it’s time to Undo the Un-Relationship!

And that’s where ScarJo comes in. Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn are apparently releasing an album in September called Break Up. Their first single is called Relator (which my mind reads as the word “realtor” every single time I look at it…yup, even now). But it’s worth listening to because I think it’s one of the most positive undoing of an un-relationship songs I know!

Click here to watch/listen to Relator:

Sometimes a break up is good for your soul

Sometimes un-relating is good for your soul!

See, most songs about this are about the after-effects of discovering someone isn’t right—you know, when you’re crying into your booze and wondering if rusty razor blades between your toes might not feel better. Very often, they’re wretched, lonely, moaning ballads meant to make you cry.

Relator also faces the sad fate of loss. The chorus itself says, “You can leave whenever you want out.” But the words come out in such happy chords, it reminds me of the other important feeling that comes with going your own way: The joy and freedom you feel after admitting someone isn’t right for you. Of course putting your foot down and walking away can be disappointing and disheartening in the short-run, but in the long run? This is great news for you and your heart! Better now than next year. Better today than tomorrow. Better alone for now than lonely with someone else for any longer.

If you have someone lingering on the back burner or popping in and out of your text in-box far too inconsistently, listen to this song as a reminder of how healthy letting go can can be for your soul! You deserve to be happy. And if the person you’re committed to/dating/seeing/texting/sort-of-hooking-up-with doesn’t make you feel like the best version of yourself, let go! If you’re thinking, like the song, “You don’t relate to me,” and “you don’t respect me,” it’s time to bow out, buck up, and make room for someone who appreciates you. Or, as ScarJo and Pete say, “You can leave whenever you want out.” (Besides, undoing un-relationships are so in right now.)

Greg and Amiira Behrendt said it well when they wrote, “It’s called a breakup because it’s broken.” And maybe this happy little song can remind you that you deserve a relationship that makes your soul sing as well as this duo does together. Those are my thoughts, anyway. Yours?

Big love,