My doctoral dissertation examined the question: How do people come through trauma as resilient rather than destroyed? My findings may hold answers for you in this time of tumultuous, often brutal, change. The bottom line is: Embrace what this is and get moving. You'll be better for it.
The people I studied had experienced the Holocaust, disability, head trauma, violence, loss. They told me that what got them through was:
1. Supportive others. If your world is quaking, find people who understand; connection helps. If the trauma is business-related, start or join a mastermind group, get a coach, go to therapy, be with friends who care.
2. Taking care of the self. Realize that getting through this is up to you. Don't be a misguided martyr. Look out for your interests. Guard your physical and mental health.
3. Faith. They ALL said that reliance on God made their trauma more survivable. You may find your higher power in a church or a support group. Get someone stronger on your side.
4. Taking on challenges. They did what was difficult. It gave them a better sense of self to struggle than to be a pitiable victim.
5. Moving on with their lives. Their trauma did not define them. They didn't reside in trauma's cave nor sing its plaintive theme song. They used what it was to build better existences.
Your experiences now are changing you. You can choose despair, bitterness, giving up; or you can choose to cope well with courage and determination. If you do, here's the reward, if you're like my study subjects. You will:
1. Be more empathic. You have suffered. Your heart will reach out to struggling others.
2. Get better at coping, and appreciate your abilities when the next inevitable trauma occurs.
3. Develop new capabilities, such as patience, self-reliance, determination, persistence. You will realize this will pass.
4. Take better care of yourself. You will also reach other to help others.
5. Develop a more positive outlook. You will triumphantly know, "I can handle this. Did it already."
So, how will you get through the day? How DO you cope? Take a page from Twelve-Step Programs.
1. Focus on getting through today. You can't manage this Big Awful Thing. But "a day at a time" proves to be a useful long term strategy.
2. Ask your higher power to show you "the next right thing" to do. Out of confusion often comes a helpful suggestion.
You will not be the same after this. Trauma leaves a footprint on your soul. It can make you better, however, help you discover a stronger place in you. Resilience is the outcome of your determined, hope-focused coping.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Stick a Fork in Me. . .
. . .I'm done. An exhausted hostess can say this at the end of a huge dinner party; or an actor at the end of a multi-city tour. The company dishes are put away; we've cashed the last road check. This is now a PAST experience.
It's far more complex to know whether we're done with a job or career. Are we going through a patch of bad days or creepy supervision or funky balance sheets that halt advancement? Do our down feelings merely reflect our circumstance, or do they point to a deeper DONE meaning for us? Do I weather this? Do I go?
Here are a few signs you may be ready to go:
1. You've moved out. Figuratively, that is. Your body is at work, but your spirit is not; and your behaviors show it. You don't have lunch with your colleagues. You spend too much time in the bathroom or on the phone or the Internet. You don't go out for drinks with work friends anymore, or you show up at holiday parties for the barest minute. In other words, you're physically removing yourself from the social aspects of this place. Big sign that you're done.
2. You've quit. Another biggie. You're practically R.I.P. (retired in place). Your performance has slipped. You do your job, but you're phoning it in; you barely make your goals. You volunteer for nothing. You're mute at meetings. You watch the clock. (Retireee wannabes count the days till they're OUTTA HERE!) Be mindful. Bosses look sharply these days for performance slippage.
Notice this is about your heart and mind. Both are gone. If you see this in yourself, get moving on something else. But change like this is scary, irrespective of the economy's health. Our non-fulfilling job is the devil we know. Who knows, at our age. . .? Nobody's hiring new college grads. I have a family. It's easier to stay.
How to test whether you're ready to go:
1. Tell somebody. Your coach, spouse, friend (not your boss!) How was it to put it out there? Did you pull back into NOT CHANGING or did NEXT appeal to you? Tell some more bodies. See how your thinking changes as you talk about leaving.
2. Reach for NEXT. William Bridges writes about how to manage change, and how we cling to the familiar, even when change is thrust upon us. We have to let go of where we are and what we've been and reach for NEXT, to choose something new. We hate this place of transition. We're uncertain, afraid, and NEXT isn't obvious to us. Just choose something that seems possible for you.
3. Do one thing. Get a college catalog. Review your resume. Make a list of "Musts" and "Wants" for your next iteration. Go see a career coach. Your action will do more to rocket you into NEXT than extended rumination.
At any point, you can leap back into what you already have. You're not ready. It's too dangerous. This will take time. Just be sure to re-choose your NOW. Be in it. Embrace it. Do it like you mean it. If you don't, you'll continue to slip away - heart and mind - and someone may notice and help you go.
Recommended reading: Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, William Bridges
It's far more complex to know whether we're done with a job or career. Are we going through a patch of bad days or creepy supervision or funky balance sheets that halt advancement? Do our down feelings merely reflect our circumstance, or do they point to a deeper DONE meaning for us? Do I weather this? Do I go?
Here are a few signs you may be ready to go:
1. You've moved out. Figuratively, that is. Your body is at work, but your spirit is not; and your behaviors show it. You don't have lunch with your colleagues. You spend too much time in the bathroom or on the phone or the Internet. You don't go out for drinks with work friends anymore, or you show up at holiday parties for the barest minute. In other words, you're physically removing yourself from the social aspects of this place. Big sign that you're done.
2. You've quit. Another biggie. You're practically R.I.P. (retired in place). Your performance has slipped. You do your job, but you're phoning it in; you barely make your goals. You volunteer for nothing. You're mute at meetings. You watch the clock. (Retireee wannabes count the days till they're OUTTA HERE!) Be mindful. Bosses look sharply these days for performance slippage.
Notice this is about your heart and mind. Both are gone. If you see this in yourself, get moving on something else. But change like this is scary, irrespective of the economy's health. Our non-fulfilling job is the devil we know. Who knows, at our age. . .? Nobody's hiring new college grads. I have a family. It's easier to stay.
How to test whether you're ready to go:
1. Tell somebody. Your coach, spouse, friend (not your boss!) How was it to put it out there? Did you pull back into NOT CHANGING or did NEXT appeal to you? Tell some more bodies. See how your thinking changes as you talk about leaving.
2. Reach for NEXT. William Bridges writes about how to manage change, and how we cling to the familiar, even when change is thrust upon us. We have to let go of where we are and what we've been and reach for NEXT, to choose something new. We hate this place of transition. We're uncertain, afraid, and NEXT isn't obvious to us. Just choose something that seems possible for you.
3. Do one thing. Get a college catalog. Review your resume. Make a list of "Musts" and "Wants" for your next iteration. Go see a career coach. Your action will do more to rocket you into NEXT than extended rumination.
At any point, you can leap back into what you already have. You're not ready. It's too dangerous. This will take time. Just be sure to re-choose your NOW. Be in it. Embrace it. Do it like you mean it. If you don't, you'll continue to slip away - heart and mind - and someone may notice and help you go.
Recommended reading: Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, William Bridges
Monday, April 5, 2010
Serve, but Use Your Oxygen Mask
You know what you have learned about selflessness: It's better to give than to receive; do for others. We all know of someone's sainted mother who scrubbed floors and took in sewing so her baby could go to college, and she without a nice dress to wear.
After a lifetime of observing people's behavior and becoming more convinced of the value of service to others, I believe we mostly get it wrong in our efforts to live up to that ideal. Who makes it past the first day in Lent when the promise is to give up candy for 40 days? What New Year's resolution gets the high-five of accomplishment at year's end? What evening reverie about helping the poor makes it past our morning coffee?
We take the road to selflessness and service in the wrong way. How do I know? The airlines teach me so. On any flight, the attendant makes the same announcement: If we lose cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will drop down. Place it over your nose and mouth and breathe deeply. If you're traveling with small children, place the mask over your face first, then the child's. In other words, help yourself first because if you don't, you could quickly lose consciousness, thereby hurting both you and the child.
To put it another way: Be of service to others, but help yourself first. By that I mean you must decide what's in it for you before you'll be willing to be selfless. If you ask do-gooders why they do it, they will almost always tell you they get a powerful personal return. The man who gives up beer for Lent, or the family who fasts during the month of Ramadan — they want a sense of mastery over their bodies. Mother Teresa doing her thankless tasks for the dying poor in Calcutta — she felt Jesus had commanded her. The Holocaust doctor puzzled by the honors she's receiving for saving lives in a World War II concentration camp — her motivation was to save her own life.
This isn't the prettiest side of selflessness because it has such a selfish twist. But I promise you, you'll be able to serve more, and with a gladder heart if you grab your oxygen mask first and know what's in it for you to be good.
After a lifetime of observing people's behavior and becoming more convinced of the value of service to others, I believe we mostly get it wrong in our efforts to live up to that ideal. Who makes it past the first day in Lent when the promise is to give up candy for 40 days? What New Year's resolution gets the high-five of accomplishment at year's end? What evening reverie about helping the poor makes it past our morning coffee?
We take the road to selflessness and service in the wrong way. How do I know? The airlines teach me so. On any flight, the attendant makes the same announcement: If we lose cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will drop down. Place it over your nose and mouth and breathe deeply. If you're traveling with small children, place the mask over your face first, then the child's. In other words, help yourself first because if you don't, you could quickly lose consciousness, thereby hurting both you and the child.
To put it another way: Be of service to others, but help yourself first. By that I mean you must decide what's in it for you before you'll be willing to be selfless. If you ask do-gooders why they do it, they will almost always tell you they get a powerful personal return. The man who gives up beer for Lent, or the family who fasts during the month of Ramadan — they want a sense of mastery over their bodies. Mother Teresa doing her thankless tasks for the dying poor in Calcutta — she felt Jesus had commanded her. The Holocaust doctor puzzled by the honors she's receiving for saving lives in a World War II concentration camp — her motivation was to save her own life.
This isn't the prettiest side of selflessness because it has such a selfish twist. But I promise you, you'll be able to serve more, and with a gladder heart if you grab your oxygen mask first and know what's in it for you to be good.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Y R U Afraid?
Are you fearful as you approach big projects or major presentations, a dinner with company bigwigs, networking? A colleague the other day expressed surprise when I told him how fearful I used to be at leading groups because I am certainly confident NOW. I wasn't when I was in the same beginning place as he. Today I may be nervous or tensely focused; but generally not afraid.
My TV appearances as The Job Doctor, speaking and facilitating groups helped me learn the following about managing fear:
1. Know your material. To your bones. And have every word of the first two minutes down COLD. If you walk in with only HEAD knowing, with lack of solid rehearsal, without understanding exactly where everything is going, you will be fearful, scattered. If you know it in your gut, you can handle surprises that inevitably happen. With television, people roam the studio, crises crash around you, and you have to stay focused, smiling, PERFORMING. TV tip for learning those two minutes: Look at an unmoving object while you recite your first words. If your eyes stray, you're searching your brain for what to say. Recite it and stare till you don't need to look away.
2. Get as much "performing" experience as you can. Speeches, presentations, facilitations, teaching, leading meetings. All fear-producing experiences. The more you do, the less afraid you'll be. I was on television every week for 12 years. For the first five, I was so frightened when I sat on the news set I thought I'd have a heart attack. Then it went away. I used to throw up before I went on stage; after awhile, I didn't. But you have to step into fearful experiences again and again, whether it's making cold calls or conducting training or talking to your company president, to finally know you're competent - maybe an expert - at this.
3. Respect the extended learning process. You can't bring spring a day sooner. You can't evade this numbers game. The more you do it, the better you'll get. Do it a lot and the fear will fade.
4. Embrace the fear. You need its edge. Stage fright is a great performance booster. I'm worried when I DON'T have it. It's an energy your audience needs to see in you. It's your invitation to them to join you in an exciting, pumped place.
5. It's about you first, but it's really about them. If you are shivering-fearful, then you are totally self absorbed and you'd better get out of it. This is necessary YOU: Material. Beginning. Where we're going. Lookin' your best. Once you take care of that, then pay attention to what they're paying you for: the participants, the audience, the executives, the results.
This is your focus on THEM: How can I be of service? What's my job here? What are they here to achieve? How can I add value? What got my head out of my behind was The Tao of Leadership. Standing in fear before performing, I would open it to a random page, and this book of little wisdoms always made the perfect point to laser my attention on the other, not me. You need ego. You also must put it away. Both are required for doing this work.
6. Have something that anchors you. You can tell how afraid I am by how much jewelry I'm wearing. Pearls make me feel better. If you see bracelets, earrings, rings, a rope of 10 mm. oyster spit around my neck and a hot line to the Macy's pearls counter scribbled on my hand, you know I'm shakin' in my boots. In a difficult class I taught, I put a little toy bee on the podium, to remind me I had a B-HAG, a big, hairy goal with these students. Take with you something that makes you laugh or reminds you you're solid, prepared, eager to contribute.
7. This time tomorrow, it'll all be over. This mantra helps you realize the transience of even this challenging task. You may be fabulous. They may be fractious. You may take them to a higher plain. But it will be O-V-E-R. Comfort yourself with that final fear-busting thought.
My TV appearances as The Job Doctor, speaking and facilitating groups helped me learn the following about managing fear:
1. Know your material. To your bones. And have every word of the first two minutes down COLD. If you walk in with only HEAD knowing, with lack of solid rehearsal, without understanding exactly where everything is going, you will be fearful, scattered. If you know it in your gut, you can handle surprises that inevitably happen. With television, people roam the studio, crises crash around you, and you have to stay focused, smiling, PERFORMING. TV tip for learning those two minutes: Look at an unmoving object while you recite your first words. If your eyes stray, you're searching your brain for what to say. Recite it and stare till you don't need to look away.
2. Get as much "performing" experience as you can. Speeches, presentations, facilitations, teaching, leading meetings. All fear-producing experiences. The more you do, the less afraid you'll be. I was on television every week for 12 years. For the first five, I was so frightened when I sat on the news set I thought I'd have a heart attack. Then it went away. I used to throw up before I went on stage; after awhile, I didn't. But you have to step into fearful experiences again and again, whether it's making cold calls or conducting training or talking to your company president, to finally know you're competent - maybe an expert - at this.
3. Respect the extended learning process. You can't bring spring a day sooner. You can't evade this numbers game. The more you do it, the better you'll get. Do it a lot and the fear will fade.
4. Embrace the fear. You need its edge. Stage fright is a great performance booster. I'm worried when I DON'T have it. It's an energy your audience needs to see in you. It's your invitation to them to join you in an exciting, pumped place.
5. It's about you first, but it's really about them. If you are shivering-fearful, then you are totally self absorbed and you'd better get out of it. This is necessary YOU: Material. Beginning. Where we're going. Lookin' your best. Once you take care of that, then pay attention to what they're paying you for: the participants, the audience, the executives, the results.
This is your focus on THEM: How can I be of service? What's my job here? What are they here to achieve? How can I add value? What got my head out of my behind was The Tao of Leadership. Standing in fear before performing, I would open it to a random page, and this book of little wisdoms always made the perfect point to laser my attention on the other, not me. You need ego. You also must put it away. Both are required for doing this work.
6. Have something that anchors you. You can tell how afraid I am by how much jewelry I'm wearing. Pearls make me feel better. If you see bracelets, earrings, rings, a rope of 10 mm. oyster spit around my neck and a hot line to the Macy's pearls counter scribbled on my hand, you know I'm shakin' in my boots. In a difficult class I taught, I put a little toy bee on the podium, to remind me I had a B-HAG, a big, hairy goal with these students. Take with you something that makes you laugh or reminds you you're solid, prepared, eager to contribute.
7. This time tomorrow, it'll all be over. This mantra helps you realize the transience of even this challenging task. You may be fabulous. They may be fractious. You may take them to a higher plain. But it will be O-V-E-R. Comfort yourself with that final fear-busting thought.
Friday, March 12, 2010
How Is This for My Good?
Jack Canfield (who got it from bezillionaire W. Clement Stone) has a tip for when bad things happen to you: Become a “reverse paranoid.” Instead of being lost in the badness aspect of it, ask, “How is this happening for my good?” How might the universe be setting you up for something better?
Clients hate being in the liminal state they sometimes find themselves (liminal: strung between two worlds) in their careers. They live in anxiety and despair. Because I see it every day, I KNOW that good frequently arises from where they are now. A laid-off executive’s mother becomes suddenly and terminally ill, and he’s able to help her through her last days (and sees it as a gift). A young graduate doesn’t get a job in another city with a financial services firm, which folds several months later. A student leaves his graduate program and gets a fabulous dot.com marketing job. A professor can’t get a job teaching but through a side-rail job at an agency is pushed closer to her dream of working in a corporation. An exhausted, bitter attorney gets plugged into independent selling of cosmetics and becomes a happy, wildly successful director.
I get excited when I see clients struggling to make a better world from the one that just collapsed around them. If they can tolerate the discomfort of the transition from what they knew to what’s POSSIBLE, and they don’t give up, they WILL find a better way. The only time I despair is when clients start moving heavy furniture into their dark cave of misery with a clear intention to stay there. They’re gonna be there a long, long time. . .and angry, to boot.
I’m sorry if you’re having challenging experiences right now. But see what occurs to you if you look at it in a different way, and ask: “How is this happening for my good?” You’ll be amazed at what’s possible for you.
Clients hate being in the liminal state they sometimes find themselves (liminal: strung between two worlds) in their careers. They live in anxiety and despair. Because I see it every day, I KNOW that good frequently arises from where they are now. A laid-off executive’s mother becomes suddenly and terminally ill, and he’s able to help her through her last days (and sees it as a gift). A young graduate doesn’t get a job in another city with a financial services firm, which folds several months later. A student leaves his graduate program and gets a fabulous dot.com marketing job. A professor can’t get a job teaching but through a side-rail job at an agency is pushed closer to her dream of working in a corporation. An exhausted, bitter attorney gets plugged into independent selling of cosmetics and becomes a happy, wildly successful director.
I get excited when I see clients struggling to make a better world from the one that just collapsed around them. If they can tolerate the discomfort of the transition from what they knew to what’s POSSIBLE, and they don’t give up, they WILL find a better way. The only time I despair is when clients start moving heavy furniture into their dark cave of misery with a clear intention to stay there. They’re gonna be there a long, long time. . .and angry, to boot.
I’m sorry if you’re having challenging experiences right now. But see what occurs to you if you look at it in a different way, and ask: “How is this happening for my good?” You’ll be amazed at what’s possible for you.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
When Movie Stars Work for Less
On Oscar night, red carpets and gold backdrops and a shouting, clicking press adoringly cocoon the arriving stars. The day after on Hollywood Boulevard, it’s just another show that’s left town. Billboards come down at the Kodak Theatre, litter skitters along the bedraggled street which is generally a stage for truck-stop-quality souvenir shops, has-been museums and stars-homes barkers. The chain link fence that kept the sidewalk honky-tonk at bay will soon roll up and drag away, leaving the seediness to reshape itself.
It’s an apt metaphor for the bad economy that has struck Movieland. The real we see today does not resemble the real we believed in yesterday. The game is changing. Few actors command high salaries these days. Angelina Jolie may still get $20 million for a film. Many more are getting contracts that pay a paltry million or two up front, but require the movie to break even or make a profit before additional money kicks in. The actors in “Precious” got about the Screen Actor’s Guild minimum of $65,000. Ed Asner got a small fee (think $50,000) for his voice-over of the old man in Best Film nominee, “Up. “I was paid for sessions,” he told New York Times reporter Michael Cieply, but negotiated more for the film’s success. “If it does well, you do well.”
Sam Worthington, who starred in “Avatar,” had the best message for you who are job seekers: “Every actor fears unemployment,” he told the Herald Sun (Australia). Working “beats sitting there waiting for the phone to ring thinking, ‘Give me some work, I’ve got bills to pay.’”
His drive to work as much as he can “raises my game because it means I will always be trying to improve on myself.
“I live an ordinary life. I go home, drink beer, do my washing. . .Doing normal things, that’s how I recharge. . .I love working. It beats being unemployed.”
I want you to dream big and reach for the stars and to get what you’re worth in the marketplace. I also want you to be a hard-eyed realist and understand that marketplace. It won’t do if you’re an aging star wafting the mean streets in her blue chiffon scarf believing a producer will give her an ingénue role. You may have to take the job you’ve thought was beneath you, to make less, to work more than one job. While we’ve never walked this harsh a reality before, WE HAVE ALL BEEN WHERE YOU ARE, AND WE ALL FOUGHT LIKE HELL TO GET OUT OF THERE.
You may be tempted to wait for your agent to call or to meet some director at a glamorous party, but – hey – you’re not in Hollywood, and even Hollywood’s not looking great these days. Go get some work.
It’s an apt metaphor for the bad economy that has struck Movieland. The real we see today does not resemble the real we believed in yesterday. The game is changing. Few actors command high salaries these days. Angelina Jolie may still get $20 million for a film. Many more are getting contracts that pay a paltry million or two up front, but require the movie to break even or make a profit before additional money kicks in. The actors in “Precious” got about the Screen Actor’s Guild minimum of $65,000. Ed Asner got a small fee (think $50,000) for his voice-over of the old man in Best Film nominee, “Up. “I was paid for sessions,” he told New York Times reporter Michael Cieply, but negotiated more for the film’s success. “If it does well, you do well.”
Sam Worthington, who starred in “Avatar,” had the best message for you who are job seekers: “Every actor fears unemployment,” he told the Herald Sun (Australia). Working “beats sitting there waiting for the phone to ring thinking, ‘Give me some work, I’ve got bills to pay.’”
His drive to work as much as he can “raises my game because it means I will always be trying to improve on myself.
“I live an ordinary life. I go home, drink beer, do my washing. . .Doing normal things, that’s how I recharge. . .I love working. It beats being unemployed.”
I want you to dream big and reach for the stars and to get what you’re worth in the marketplace. I also want you to be a hard-eyed realist and understand that marketplace. It won’t do if you’re an aging star wafting the mean streets in her blue chiffon scarf believing a producer will give her an ingénue role. You may have to take the job you’ve thought was beneath you, to make less, to work more than one job. While we’ve never walked this harsh a reality before, WE HAVE ALL BEEN WHERE YOU ARE, AND WE ALL FOUGHT LIKE HELL TO GET OUT OF THERE.
You may be tempted to wait for your agent to call or to meet some director at a glamorous party, but – hey – you’re not in Hollywood, and even Hollywood’s not looking great these days. Go get some work.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Live in Your Car
Ryan Bingham, whose song “The Weary Kind,” (from the film “Crazy Heart”) won Song of the Year at the Oscars, said in a post-award interview that, four years ago, “Me and my band was living out of our Suburban.” It doesn’t get much lower than that.
You could, in your work life, be in an equivalent dilemma. You got down-sized, laid off, fired. You’re burning through your resources and the horizon’s looking grim and smoky. What WILL you do?
This is a familiar land to me. I work with down-sized, laid off, fired folks. I know exactly what this terrain looks like, and how people in this situation want to throw their hands over their heads and sink into the pool of depression pulling on them. I also know that miracles live here; that when you look around for one, you’ll find it. Talk to somebody, many somebodies. Join a job seeker’s group. Make sure you stay OUT instead of job-searching on your computer. Say “What the hell!” and try out your idea. The way out is never easy, but this disaster is a gold-plated invitation from the universe to you to create a better way.
In the case of Bingham, “Crazy Heart” director Scott Cooper gave him a copy of the script and said, “If you’re inspired to write anything, let me know.” And, Bingham said after the awards ceremony, “Here we are.”
You don’t go immediately from car-living to red carpet. You take nothing jobs, maybe TWO nothing jobs. You make missteps, like taking something that proves wrong for you. You max out credit cards or borrow money from family members. You forego vacations, maybe even hit the food pantry. You have to fight from desperation to hope every day in learning how to survive, then thrive.
But you can do it. I swear you can. Get out of your Suburban and pick up your guitar, or whatever your Bingham-like get-on-it strategy is. I’m beggin’ you.
You could, in your work life, be in an equivalent dilemma. You got down-sized, laid off, fired. You’re burning through your resources and the horizon’s looking grim and smoky. What WILL you do?
This is a familiar land to me. I work with down-sized, laid off, fired folks. I know exactly what this terrain looks like, and how people in this situation want to throw their hands over their heads and sink into the pool of depression pulling on them. I also know that miracles live here; that when you look around for one, you’ll find it. Talk to somebody, many somebodies. Join a job seeker’s group. Make sure you stay OUT instead of job-searching on your computer. Say “What the hell!” and try out your idea. The way out is never easy, but this disaster is a gold-plated invitation from the universe to you to create a better way.
In the case of Bingham, “Crazy Heart” director Scott Cooper gave him a copy of the script and said, “If you’re inspired to write anything, let me know.” And, Bingham said after the awards ceremony, “Here we are.”
You don’t go immediately from car-living to red carpet. You take nothing jobs, maybe TWO nothing jobs. You make missteps, like taking something that proves wrong for you. You max out credit cards or borrow money from family members. You forego vacations, maybe even hit the food pantry. You have to fight from desperation to hope every day in learning how to survive, then thrive.
But you can do it. I swear you can. Get out of your Suburban and pick up your guitar, or whatever your Bingham-like get-on-it strategy is. I’m beggin’ you.
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