Thanks so much for taking the time to write.
Yours,
Sam
So here is my question for you:
Are you ready to be part of the 20 percent? Are you hungry to see real results? Because the techniques, mind-set shifts, and strategies I lay out here and at www.StartRightWhereYouAre.com have changed my life and the lives of thousands of my clients, and I know they can change yours, too.
Here’s a toast to you and your wonderful self.
By the way, you look really great today.
I WAS TOTALLY MISERABLE. In the vise grip of depression, broke, exhausted, and completely fed up with myself. It was 1998, but it could have been any year of my adult life. Two of my friends — a couple — came over with a copy of a popular self-help book to cheer me up. I remember lying on the couch (I was too sad to even sit up straight) and seeing them, beaming at me. I kind of wanted to punch them.
After all, I was no stranger to self-help. I had been an actor all my life, first in my hometown of Chicago and then in Los Angeles, and I felt my career in the arts had already earned me a PhD in woo-woo. But I didn’t have a better idea. So I thanked them, took the book, and started working with it.
I remember reading a part where the author described her day. She talked about waking up without an alarm, doing her prayer/meditation, having some tea, working with a client or two, lunch, a nap, some writing. . . . It sounded completely implausible to me. A nap? I couldn’t even imagine — or, rather, I could just barely imagine — living like that.
My life was a chronically overscheduled mess of part-time jobs, gigs, classes, auditions, projects, and shows. I usually made just barely enough money, but not quite. I remember bursting into tears in the middle of Target because I couldn’t afford the sixteen bucks for a new pair of yoga pants (yoga pants being the official uniform of the artsy Angeleno). I was working hard all the time, and yet I kept feeling like I was falling further and further behind. I was desperately unhappy, and I was using “busy” as a narcotic. “Maybe,” I thought, “if I’m busy enough, the only feeling I’ll have is ‘tired,’ and I won’t have to deal with the sneaking feeling that my life is an utter failure.”
And guess what my life is like now? Let me put it this way — in the past eleven days I have:
• started writing a new book because I got a great idea in the middle of the night that will not leave me alone.
• bought a new car because it was time to retire my wonderful 2000 Honda Accord with 184,000 miles on it.
• spent two mind-melting-in-a-good-way days at a Byron Katie workshop in Ojai, California.
• screwed up my courage to introduce myself to Stephen Mitchell (Katie’s husband), who is one of my literary heroes — I felt really shy, but I had to tell him how much his work has meant to me over the years, and I knew I couldn’t keep encouraging you all to push past your perceived limitations if I wasn’t willing to do the same.
• had a long, wonderful talk over an excellent bottle of wine with one of my oldest friends, who also happens to be a big TV star (and I got all the good Hollywood gossip).
• started a new paint-by-numbers picture, which is one of my favorite hobbies.
• paid a giant tax bill — which was great because it means business is good and getting better all the time, and plus I had salted the money away over the course of the year, so I could pay in full. My tax dude is very proud of me.
• taught seven classes — six online, one in person — to a total of over 1,500 brilliant, creative people from all over the world.
• drove into LA to drop in on my favorite improv class, because I don’t want to let my acting skills get rusty just because I moved to the beach, right?
• had two fun date nights with Luke, my sweetheart, plus our daily beach walks.
• made a lovely potato-leek soup from scratch from my battered old Julia Child cookbook — yum.
• attended a training webinar so I can stay up on all the latest email marketing technology.
• had a crown replaced (ugh), got my iPhone fixed (also ugh), had two short, effective team meetings with my fabulous crew, and finished reading two novels.
And I’ve got to say — it’s not like this past eleven days is all that different from the rest of my calendar.
Now, before you decide that I might need to be punched, my life is not all sunshine and stardust — I work hard in and on my business, the Organized Artist Company, and I have just as many frustrations and heartbreaks as everyone else. But I don’t have a boss. And I don’t have a schedule, except for the one I create. And I get to spend all day doing work that I love, with people I love, in a place that I love. Life is sweet.
Over the past nineteen years, I must have written out Louise Hay’s sentence “In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole, and complete,” five grillion times. Finally, one day, I noticed I could really feel it was true. And now I know it’s true with my whole heart. No matter what is happening, there is an infinity of life, and it is perfect, whole, and complete. My body and mind are perfect, whole, and complete. Even at the moment of my death (and I like to imagine especially at the moment of my death), all will be perfect, whole, and complete.
All of this is to say that this self-help stuff actually works. You, too, can be calmer, more creative, more loving, and more compassionate with yourself and others. You can feel more confident in yourself, and you can be more prosperous. You cannot escape the pain of life — no one can. Everyone gets the same amount of pain. (We’ll talk more about that in chapter 33.) But you can increase your joy.
So that’s what this book is for: to help you make the little changes that will lead to big joy. And big joy can make a big difference. It could even change the world.
Since the changes I suggest are so small, you might want to try each of them at least once, and then you can keep doing the ones you like and jettison the rest.
As a preview, here are a few of my favorite “little changes” that we’ll be exploring in this book:
1. Get your cell phone out of the bedroom. Permanently. Give yourself back the gift of a morning stretch, a dozy cuddle, and the lovely liminal thoughts that come on waking. This is a good practice for everyone, and especially for those of you in the “frustrated overachiever” category.
2. Feel the Net. You are an inextricable and essential part of an Infinite Net of energy. You are one intersecting element in the larger picture of the whole universe. You are both much less significant and much more powerful than you may have been led to believe. If you fall into the “overwhelmed procrastinator” category, and you often catch yourself thinking that there’s “not enough time,” you might find this image of the Infinite Net quite calming.
3. Schedule some Happy Grown-Up Naked Time. Whether you are in a relationship or not, start making time to just be nude and play. Spending a goal-free half-hour rediscovering what makes you giggle, tingle, and thrill is a terrific way to reconnect with the wisdom of your body and also have a little fun. If you have ever applied your “perfectionist” self to your body image or sexuality, you might find this practice particularly freeing.
4. Acknowledge that feeling overwhelmed is a choice. Overwhelmed is an overused word that can mean a lot of different things. We’ll work on identifying the actual source of your overwhelm in chapters 8, 11,