Me As A Verb.

Whatever this soap maker, chef, writer, fitness freak, THING I’m doing is, everything I do is self-directed. OK, so I’m broke, but I also have a great deal of freedom, and I also have a great deal of fear. Succeeding requires, along with luck, a whole bunch of self-discipline, which in unstructured situations, isn’t my strong suit.

 

I think I more than covered my trouble with procrastination, but I can overcome that natural tendency when I have a firm deadline.  It seems logical then to try and create concrete consequences for not meeting my deadlines when it comes to all this self-directed activity. Easy enough, right?

Here’s the problem: I’m an adult, and I’m stubborn. I have developed a lifetime habit of procrastinating and giving in to fear, and even if it no longer (or never) serves me or my work, it’s a bad habit my brain doesn't want to give up. Also, no one is going to yell at me if I don’t meet my deadlines, I’m not going to lose money because I have no promise of an immediate payoff if I meet my deadlines, and frankly, being a grown up, my mommy or my teachers isn’t going to be disappointed in me, or give me a big red zero on my paper because it was late.  No boss is going to write me up of fire me, no publisher is going to demand I return the money I received as an advance. I’m only going to be disappointed in myself, and I’m already used to that. It's a comfortable but unhappy place to be in.

So, for the past week I’ve been focused on sitting down and getting real clear about my goals and values. Why I’m doing what I’m doing, and also the consequences if I don’t do what I’m meant to be doing. Even as I write that, it reads like it should be easy, but we all have tricks and mind games we play on ourselves that keep us from getting what we want. At least, I haven’t met a single creative type who doesn’t. This exercise has taught me one thing: at no time are your Gremlin or Demon voices louder than when you’re trying to be crystal clear about your goals and values.  I’m talking about every nasty thing that was ever said to you by a teacher, a parent, a mentor, a friend, or a shitty ex-coworker, and every insecurity and fear you posses, on a loop.

I can’t tell you that I’ve shut them up, but I’ve pushed through and at least written this stuff down, for my own reference. By sharing it here, I am hoping it will help others who are struggling and provide myself with some kind of culpability. It isn’t enough though, to just write down a list of values. In acting you learn to move your character through a story by using active verbs. We use the sentence structure: "I (active verb)" you can't just fill in the blank with the verb "to be." Let's say my value is courage, I can't just go out and BE courageous. The question I had to ask myself when making this list is, how is that achieved?

Value: Bravery

Verb: dare

If Brenè Brown is right, and she usually is, there is no way to show up and be seen (creatively) and not get your ass kicked. It is a consequence of being brave and not avoidable.  You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort: you cannot have both.

Value: Tenacity

Verb: resolve

I know I can get back up when I’ve been knocked down. There have been times in my life when I feel like I did it every single day. But, I’ve spent too much of my life living in anger and resentment because I didn’t have the skills to set and maintain firm boundaries. Tenacity, for me is about giving up perfectionism, pleasing others, and approval seeking. Yes, part of that is just how I’m made, but it can and does become detrimental to me achieving what I need to achieve for myself. Here’s the absolute truth about some people, they will take everything you have to give and perpetually ask for more. These people won’t set or maintain boundaries, so you have to.  

Value: Vitality

Verb :  animate

This is where the fitness freak comes in. I’d like to live a long healthy life, but I can only try to create a lifestyle in which that’s possible. I cannot be guaranteed the outcome. So, for as long as I am here, I’d like to be able to do as much as I’m capable of doing. This one isn’t only physical. It’s about moving forward, and seeing what is out there. As a natural born introvert I tend towards shyness, and I don’t expect that to change, but I cannot allow discomfort to keep me from trying new things.

Value: Curiosity

Verb: learn

This one comes naturally to me, and I hope I never lose it. Adult life has a way of trying to beat curiosity out of you and supplant it with what society and industry want you to think. I struggled to find the right wording here: wisdom, knowledge, education are actually outcomes of learning, which is – or should be – born of curiosity.

Value: Creativity  

Verb: initiate

All forms of art have some kind of rumination/percolation period involved in them, but eventually you just have to show up and do it.  Inspiration is such a capricious and random thing. Your job as an artist is to hone the skills required to be ready when it strikes. This may mean you make a lot of bad art in the process, but doing so is the only way of improving the outcome.

Value: Empathy

Verb: listen

At times I can be a prickly bundle of neuroses, and insecurity, waiting for any provocation to strike.I said it before, I've wasted a lot of energy on anger and resentment. Like a lot of people I think this is because I fail to listen and ask questions before I jump to conclusions and start talking. Kindness isn’t about being a pushover either; you can be kind and firm: see also, setting and maintaining boundaries. I was on the verge of writing compassion, and kindness as separate values, when I realized both were born of empathy and are actually verbs. Love for others isn’t a value either, it’s a verb. It is possibly THE verb: the reason we’re here.

Value: Authenticity

Verb: release

This one is about accepting who I am, how I’m made, and “keeping two eyes on my own paper.” As far as anyone has been able to prove, we only get one life, and our time here is extremely short. Authenticity isn’t about being a special little snowflake; it’s about avoiding comparison and staying on your own path. It is the polar opposite perfectionism and seeking approval, but mostly it’s about letting go: of who I think I’m supposed to be, of trying to control everything, of other people’s expectations, of societal pressures that are just, “so not me.”

A note on vitality, creativity, and empathy: none of these are possible if I’m an unfocused bundle of Cortisol and Adrenalin. I spent a good majority of my life, thus far, with diagnosed ADHD, it’s just the way my brain is made: I have to move to think.  If I don’t work out, none of the three are achievable on any level.

This is not a complete list, the verbs I used may not be perfect, and at first glance it looks pretty self eccentric, but, as I sit here banging away at my keyboard, I wonder how many adults have actually made this list. I wonder, what would happen if we all got clear on exactly what our values were, not what we’ve been brought up to believe they should be, but what they actually are.

So, is gratitude a value or a verb? Or is it both? If you feel inclined share your own list below. 

Part two coming soon: those pesky little consequences.

Bear with an Image Problem

I called this blog Hale and Hearty Bear not because I had a positive attitude about my body, but because I actually wanted to acquire one.

Having and maintaining a positive body image is a hard road to walk when Society has such narrow margins for beauty, male or female. Accepting your body as it is, and wanting to be more fit, flexible, strong, and able, are not mutually exclusive concepts, but it requires that you don't expect your body to conform to some unachievable norm that either requires an entire lifestyle to maintain, or, was the construct of image manipulation software to begin with. 

See also: Megan Trainor's song lyrics "We know that shit ain't real, Come on now, make it stop."

Before I continue to talk about body image, it's important to remember that not everyone who is over-weight, or obese, perceives it as a problem, and not everyone who is naturally slim perceives it as an asset. There is so much noise about what is and is not healthy, and all of it amounts to numbers and statistics that are not, in anyway, indicative of health. This kind of thinking is part the industrial paradigm, in which, standardization and conformity are paramount. You are a human operating in a highly specialized, and individualized paradigm. 

Just look at what you're up against. We are constantly encouraged to set unattainable goals for ourselves, and our appearance is no exception. Who hasn't heard tropes like, "reach for the sky and you'll land amongst the stars, ask the impossible and you get the possible, never say never?" What perpetrators of these memes really want is for us to devote all possible resources toward financial success, appearance, and the acquisition of added value, material goods. They make their profit by facilitating your unhappiness, not the other way around. Every waking hour, of every single day, we are bombarded with images, and messages encouraging us to be dissatisfied with ourselves, our bodies, and our lives. Our consumer economy is, in fact, dependent on us working very hard to buy that car, those clothes, (in a smaller size) those shoes, a bigger house than we need, or even a vacation house, or three. We're told that a shiny rock is an expression of a man's love, and that the same bit of jewelry roughly represents a woman's "value." We know it's wrong, and yet, most of us still buy into it, on some level. Today, it isn't enough to be content, even if we are truly happy, we are constantly told we could be happier. No wonder the divorce rates are so high! Creating a general sense of dissatisfaction in the whole population has not only moved a ton of luxury goods, it keeps salons, gyms, and plastic surgeons in business. And it also sells a ton of anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication, every, single, year. 

Clearly, the outside stimuli to perfect and correct our bodies isn't going anywhere. So it's up to us to recognize it for what it is, and choose not to buy into it. We must also forgive ourselves easily when we do inevitably slip-up and drink the Kool-Aid, because our media is more pervasive, insidious, and targeted than ever before. So, is it really all that surprising that the majority of men, and an even larger proportion of women report being unhappy with their bodies and appearance?

With the information overload of contemporary life, it's hard to know what is best for you. Even nutrition text books speak consistently about maintaining a "healthy weight." The problem is, the numbers we use to represent that, BMI (body mass index) are statistically anomalous: they and don't represent actual norms within our population. The numbers were only ever intended as a primary indicator to Doctors that further metabolic testing is merited. It was never intended as a means to judge anyone's health, and yet, we routinely used it as such. In other words, your BMI isn't any kind of indicator of your health: I cannot say this enough times! We have better measures of your metabolic wellbeing but none of these measure vitality, satisfaction, or happiness. Our most basic metrics of health are off, and a litany of competing, conflicting fad diets and super foods don't help. One minute coffee will kill you, the next it's the fountain of youth, but it's also staining your teeth and eating your enamel which will make you look older and endager your over-all health: we haven't even made it through breakfast and already we're on unstable ground!

So, what to do? I'm not really sure we, collectively, will ever escape the cycle of body shaming and appearance based dysphoria that so many of us fall victim to, and, if not accept our flaws, treat them with the same loving kindness we would - ideally - treat others. The truth is, we judge each other by a selection of rudimentary visual information like size, attractiveness, age, skin color, or eye shape, and make a whole suite of assumptions based on only that information. Making quick decisions about strangers is an evolutionary imperative, lest you be killed and eaten, but it doesn't always serve us well in contemporary society. In the culture of personality, with our collective celebrity worship, and obsession with youth, our outward appearance matters like it never has before. In the culture of character that we experienced in the early parts of the last century, your appearance wasn't your primary asset, and being overly concerned about it was considered frivolous vanity. Still, we can't know each individual we encounter, there just isn't time, and we would be constantly overwhelmed if we actually tried: there are just too many of us! We can, however, be aware of and try to curb the assumptions we make about others based only on their appearance. Knowing and accepting that every other human you meet is at least 90% cohort helps, and operating under the assumption that everyone you meet is basically doing their best to get through their day, doesn't hurt either. Before I get too far off topic with this analogue, I'll say this, people will judge you harshly based solely on your weight and appearance: they will not judge you as harshly as you judge yourself.

For me, moving towards a peaceful and contented relationship with my body requires a separation between striving, and perfecting; accepting that I won't ever achieve an idealized image that only exists in my head; and learning what's great about the way that I am put together. Like, check it out: if genetics are any indicator, on my current trajectory I will probably live a relatively healthy, relatively long life, in which I will rebound from any serious illness, and look approximately 10 years younger than most of my contemporaries: not bad at all. Thank you, Mom and Dad.

It would be arrogant of me to claim I had all, or even any of the answers. This is a struggle I share with too many others, and I'm still figuring it out for myself. I do know that it's never been as easy as stop disliking yourself and love your body the way it's made. In a way, saying you should just "do it" is it's own type of shaming. YES, self acceptance and love are the goal. NO, you can't just wake up one morning and decide "today I'm going to love myself." To quote Stuart Smalley, "because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me." 

Yeah, right. 

Given everything that you are up against, self acceptance is practically an act of rebellion these days, and you know how people feel about upstarts, and rebels. That's right, they're going to put you right back in your place. You, non-conformist, you! Self acceptance and self-love are absolutely possible - I have to believe that - but don't expect it to be simple. You're going to have to fight for it!

Here is the best news: you completely, and totally deserve it!

Working Through

Last night I was back in the gym for the first time in ten days, following a previous hiatus of ten days: basically I've been twice since before Easter in the hopes that I might finally kick this nasty cold once and for all. It was easy to take the time off because I haven't been terribly motivated to go after what seems like months without seeing any significant results. So, a diet reboot is already underway, and even if last night's workout sucked, I can file it under "I went."

But the problem really wasn't just a cold, or a lack of motivation, or even lack of results. My self-esteem is at a near all time low right now, and I've been hiding myself - sometimes literally - in the basement huddled in front of my iPad for most of the past...well, five years, if I'm being completely honest. I write and don't send things out, or I write and then edit what I've written into oblivion, or I just don't write at all. I also haven't been cooking other than the minimum required to put meals on the table, nor have I been working on any soap projects, or any other projects for that matter. What can I say, it's been a rough winter, but I know how to combat the winter blues and I haven't been doing that either.

I have ADHD/ADD, which means I have to be organized and structured, and I need a distraction free environment in order to function. But when push come to shove, I refuse to do the work to keep things organized and structured, or to set the boundaries necessary to have a distraction free space. This is in part because I am feeling low and unmotivated, but also because that kind of strict organization and structure feels like a damn straight jacket. 

Trick is, I'm actually really good at setting up deadlines and schedules, I'm even pretty good at following them when there is a concrete immediate consequence, like say, dinner will be late and I might have to skip the gym. However; when the consequence is less concrete like my future unhappiness, or potential of regret, it's really hard for me to remain disciplined. And, when I don't meet my deadlines, it's too easy to blame other people - and their interruptions - for my own lack of discipline. But the hard truth is, I've engineered and participated in every decision that has led me to this tiny, invisible, fearful life: and it has to stop!

Yes, I am an introvert by nature, but what I dream of, if I'm being honest, is writing about food and cooking, and teaching others to cook. I know, that is a really big ask in a world where Food Network and Cooking Channel broadcast 24/7, and every kind of take-out is only a click away, and every B-list celebrity is suddenly a cookbook author, but I still believe it's possible. And when it comes to all that other noise, I know with every cell of my body that cooking for yourself is the only sustainable way to a longer, healthy, high quality, life, and I know that people are losing these very vital skills. And, I know that shows like Chopped Up, Cake Commandos, and Muffin Wars aren't going to get the job done. No matter what the results, I cannot do what I want to do if I'm going to hide in a basement, not writing, and not doing. 

I am an approval seeker: Hello, writer! That desire will probably always be there, but I've too often allowed wanting to please others to be detrimental to myself, my needs, and even my mental and physical health. I think I've finally come to a point where I can say, NO MORE. I care what others think, as human beings we are programmed to do so, but the possibility of disapproval can no longer be an impediment to my own progress. I often tell people that acting and performing are different than writing in one key way: if someone thinks Hamlet is a shitty play, even if you're an actor playing Hamlet, it's still Will Shakespeare's shitty play, but when your the writer, that's YOU on the page. 

But, even if I start out writing a post that seems ostensibly about working out, which turns into me working through some issues, I still have to keep writing with the knowledge that someone is going to think it's a crappy waste of their time to read it. And as far as teaching goes, I have enough acting and performance training to fake being an extrovert when needed, but when I'm engaged and passionate about a subject I know well, just try and shut me up. What I really need right now, is bravery, and a little bit of discipline. 

Veggie Ramen with Kimchi and Tofu for dinner...