Most of us remember Rocky III and the brutal beating Rocky took at the hands of Clubber Lang (the ever-rockin’ Mr. T).

Rocky let success go to his head, took the easy way out, and spent his time reveling in glory and accepting the status quo rather than training fiercely and passionately. He bought what people said about his greatness. And while Rocky was posing with celebrities and kissing babies, Clubber—hungry, lean and mean—was training hard with the aim of knocking Rocky off his pedestal.

Just as with Rocky, it’s easy for us to become complacent, let adoration go to our heads and lose our passion. It’s simpler to settle for being good rather than being great.

But in this land where being adequate is enough, don’t lose your eye of the tiger. Be the best that you can be. Stick to your guns (and gut.) Don’t compromise. Challenge yourself. As I tell students in my Spinning classes, “There’s always someone younger, stronger, better-looking and faster coming up right behind us. Let’s do the best we can to stay ahead of them and kick some butt. Add a gear.”

Eye of the tiger, baby.

~Onward

It seems like only yesterday, but it was, in fact, 28 years ago.
On March 8, 1984, I ran away from home at the tender age of 17(.9). I didn’t just run a little bit away—I ran across continents, from Norway to Dallas, with  $1,000 in my pocket. I like to do things on a  grand scale.

Exactly one year later, I published my first Op Ed piece in the college newspaper (see below). By then I was working full-time in downtown Los Angeles, and commuting by bus to East Los Angeles College at night. Somehow, by taking Journalism 100, I was able to get onto the school newspaper. And somehow, they let me speak my mind.

Reading this again now makes me giggle. How far I have come and yet—how much the same I am. I was 18 then. I will be 46 this month. Boy, time sure flies.

I was a pretty good writer for someone who left the United States at age nine and spoke Norwegian almost exclusively until the age of 17(.9). Where my  English skills came from I have no clue, but writing was truly my passion. Words have always been music to me and I hear their ebb and flow like the ocean.

Writing was my way of communicating, since no one listened to me growing up. Putting words to paper (or keyboard) gave me a voice, and I was finally able to be heard. My shock at American gender roles and stereotypes is obvious in this piece (having grown up in a country where women are truly equal) and I pulled no punches.

Now, 28 years later, I’ve settle down a bit. But I kind of miss my feistiness…

~Onward.

(Click on image below for a larger view.)

…and a pirate is exactly what Steve Jobs was.

Starting Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak at the age of 21 out of his family’s garage, Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus for the money to get his dream off the ground. Following their hearts, souls and DNA, Jobs and Wozniak revolutionized the stodgy computer industry single-handedly in a bold move where failure was never an option.

Thinking outside the box and going off the beaten path sometimes results in nothing great—but on occasion results in something simply amazing.

Where would the world be today without Apple products? Where would we be without a dream started out of a garage? If Jobs and Wozniak had just accepted life as it was handed to them and not tried something different?

March to your own drummer. Listen to your heart. Try your hardest. Work hard. Succeed or fail in business and in life, you must at least give it a shot. Be a pirate, matey.

Onward.

If I had a penny for every time I have resisted starting a project I would truly be a rich woman. No joke.

Every single time I sit down in front my super-cool Mac to write or design I can feel the resistive pressure building up inside of me as if it were a real, physical thing. It’s like a wall gets slammed up, and I can feel the cement being coated over the rebar, separating me from my creativity and sending me scurrying over to Facebook.

I know I have work to do and I know I eventually have to sit down and do it. I just don’t want to right at this moment.

I have finally figured out that it’s not the work I object to—it’s the starting of the work that’s my challenge. I am apparently a very bad Aries, because I don’t start projects well  but I always finish them.

Sitting and staring at a blank page, whether I am designing or writing, is about as exciting as watching blades of grass grow (in fact, I’d probably rather watch the grass). I have no inspiration, no thoughts, no ideas, and no desire to create. Just a few moments ago, when I was getting ready to sit down to write a business profile, I dilly dallied instead of getting to work. I washed the floor. I emptied the trash. I rolled my thighs with a foam roller (ouch!). I made iced tea. I did everything in my power not to sit in front of  my computer and write. But I finally had no more excuses and had to buckle down. It’s afternoon already, after all, and I have lost five hours of work time.

Looking over my research I was feeling overwhelmed. “Where do I start? What do I write? Can I really pull this off?” I was totally unmotivated. Then I wrote a brief intro. Felt a little spark. Erased it and wrote another intro. Felt a greater spark. And then—magic happened. The words started flowing out of my fingers and I suddenly saw the light: the direction and the tone of the piece. It was as if all my resistance just fell away, and the path was now laid open to me (insert sound of angels singing here).

Internal resistance is fascinating, and we all have it in one form or another. I see it in my children, my clients and my friends. Not all of us can overcome our own resistance (which is why so many of us have not lost weight or pursued any of our dreams). Sometimes we let resistance get the better of us.

Getting over that wall—forcing yourself over that wall—is the key to moving forward, resistance or not. As Nike says, “Just do it!”

But how do we do that? How do we force ourselves over that wall of resistance? It’s just as uncomfortable for those who succeed in scaling their resistance wall as for those who don’t. So why do some people manage that discomfort while others don’t?

The best way to overcome resistance to (change, work, challenges) is to first figure out why we feel the way we do. Why are we resisting the project? Would we rather play? Do we feel unqualified for the job? What is that inner voice telling us? Then we need to figure out our work styles. I procrastinate (despite being a very hard worker). I perform best under pressure (though I hate it) and won’t buckle down until absolutely necessary. I’d rather work on my blog (ahem) than do “real work.” So I’ve learned to deal with my work style. I can plan until the cows come home, but only the pressure of time will ignite my creativity… and then I perform like crazy.

Finishing projects makes us feel so good afterward, and they are rarely as difficult as we make them out to be in our heads. And as many will admit, once we are done with a project we sometimes wonder why we waited so long to begin in the first place.

If we want to be successful, resistance needs to be futile. Find your reason (and move past it). Find your style (and learn to work with it). Find what motivates you to create.

Onward.

This is what a neighbor once told me when I asked her a question she didn’t remember the answer to. Huh?

She went on  to explain that her brain was much like an iceberg. It could only hold so much information—or so many penguins. When a new “penguin” wanted to jump on, an old “penguin” (older information) had to jump off to make room on the iceberg.

I found that to be an absolutely brilliant analogy.

Last week that figure of speech popped into my head in a slightly different form. I was chatting about people with troublesome (and often self-induced) issues always depending on me to fix everything and know everything. I am a softie, a doo-gooder and a pushover—once aptly nick-named “Helpy Helperton” by a friend—and am always sucked in to other people’s problems.

It seemed to me when I finally got rid of one crazy penguin, another one came along. Or, as I pondered, “As soon as one crazy penguin jumps off, another crazy penguin jumps on!”

I sometimes find myself surrounded by these big birds that, while interesting, cannot fly.

As I am getting older I am finding myself getting less tolerant, though. Maybe I am tired of the penguins’ make-believe problems, their self-absorption or their inability to see anything other than today or outside of themselves. Maybe I am tired of being mommy to the universe. I want the penguins to see there is a big, wonderful world out there full of exciting icebergs if they would just try to swim, try to explore, try to help themselves… but they don’t.

So—trying to cure myself of the ability to attract crazy penguins, I no longer jump in when someone needs minor rescuing. (The first step to changing any behavior is becoming aware of that you have a problem.) I no longer listen to tales of questionable behavior if those same penguins are going to cry on my shoulder about it later.  I no longer worry when the penguins repeatedly do dumb things. I now let the snowflakes fall where they may, and only now jump in in a true emergency (or for those who really want to help themselves).

Is it hard? Yes! But I need to focus on my family and my business(es) and keep my own iceberg afloat. Those crazy penguins? They’ll just have to find another iceberg to rest their laurels on. This one is full.

We are all surrounded by crazy penguins. It’s up to us if we allow them to jump on or not.

~Onward

Someday I will write my memoirs…and they will curl your hair.

I have been through, shall we say, a lot in my life. In the past, I always felt like a victim. “Poor me, with a terrible childhood, a bad marriage, alone and struggling. Wah wah wah.” I no longer “wah.”

Now, I look at my past and appreciate the fact that everything I have been through has truly made me who I am: a fighter.

• Every “glove that laid me down” has made me stronger.
• Every obstacle I’ve come across has made me work a little bit harder.
• Every bad experience and challenge has made me wiser.

So thanks life…for making me a fighter! Onward.

“I’ll never make it as a writer. It’s too hard to find an agent and get published. Plus I’m just a medium-good writer.” Those are words a mother never wants to hear…but I heard them tonight from my son.

My 15-year-old and I were driving home and talking about the future. I explained to him that some day very soon, all this glorious adult world of paying rent, car insurance, electricity, food, gas, and internet will be his. And, some day very soon, he has to start thinking about what he wants to do with his life.

We talked about graphic design (he is vyer, very talented) and I explained about outsourcing. We talked about social media, content creation, video and audio editing, which are all still growing fields. Secretly he wants to be a writer, so naturally I encourage him. Anything is possible, as I have myself have fairly recently discovered.

But when I heard those words tonight from my own flesh and blood I was sad.

Maybe he just isn’t into working hard, maybe he doesn’t believe in himself, or maybe this generation is simply a bit lazy. But to not pursue something because it’s too hard to succeed? To not even try?

Really? You’re not even going to give it a shot?

As someone who struggled my entire life (I was pretty much on my own from the age of 10) and taught myself every single skill I currently possess, I just can’t understand not even trying…especially someone who is young, smart and talented, with a loving mother who will support him. Once more I have to ask, “Really?”

So this got me wondering….
….why so many people never get ahead.

I know the answer: Because they don’t try and are afraid to fail. I’ve been there, done that, worn the t-shirt.

I spent my entire life living someone else’s life, never pursuing my own dreams. I did every job in the book (and did them pretty darn well), but never truly pursued the one thing that made me happy: Writing.

Why? The same reason why others don’t. I was afraid to fail at it, so I didn’t even try. In my heart I was always a writer, and wanted to be since I was a little girl. I wrote for the school paper in college, dabbled in business writing throughout my various careers. I never wrote actively, though, until the same life-changing experience that helped me lose over 80 pounds happened: The death of my father.

Suddenly, I was free from fear of failure.

I decided to go for every job opportunity that came my way, and did so with gusto. Sometimes I failed, sure, but I just tried harder the next time. I conquered obstacle after obstacle, falling on my face a few times along the way.

But do you know what? I survived all those falls on my face – and kept on going, asking myself “what’s the worst that can happen?”

What I discovered is that not doing anything is far worse than pursuing something and failing at it. Not pursuing your dreams at all kills you from the inside.

So when my son wanted to give up before he even began,  it lit me up like fireworks on the 4th of July. I wanted to pull over and shake some sense into him, but all I did was say, sarcastically, “You are more than a medium-good writer. But you’re right. It’s hard. So how come a high school dropout like me with no photography training ended up in a photo pit shooting photos of KISS, 30 Seconds to Mars, and Linkin Park? Because it’s too hard? Sniff.”

And then I made a snorting noise (inside).

Have you overcome a fear of failure? And if so, what made you change?

Onward.

(P.S. This post was written with the full permission of my son. Love ya’, son.)

Photo: ©Flickr: dualities

These past five years, I have done things I never thought I would do. I took chances, tried radical new things, defied the people around me who said I couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t.

This last year alone, I have done things I never dreamed I would do – things that I can’t even share with you. If you would have told me less than a year ago I would be doing some of these things, I would have cringed and laughed in your face. Not me. Nope. I’m a sissy girl.

But guess what? No matter how far out of my comfort zone I have gone (and trust me – I left the comfort zone miles ago), I can unequivocally say that I am still alive. I have survived. All the things that used to scare me that I have now done have…not…killed…me.

Imagine that.

Maybe our fears are only designed to hold us back?

Unless it’s illegal or dangerous…what do you really have to lose?  Take a chance very now and then…Be creative – gutsy – bold.

In 20 years, don’t look back at your life in disappointment. Look back at your life with a giggle. And  blush.

Onward.

It’s Christmas Eve morning and I am waiting for the kids to wake up and open their presents.

Things are a bit backwards this year, but that’s what happens after a divorce. We are on an “every second Holiday” rotation. Last year my was turn on Christmas Day, this year it’s my ex’s. So this year – the kids and I are having Christmas on Christmas Eve.

I got a sub for my Spinning class this morning, stuffed the stockings late last night, and am just waiting for that magical moment when the kids come down the stairs. It’s not quite as fun as when they were little (they are 12 and 15 now), but hey – Santa’s still Santa and (s)he brought me chocolate, too.

When you put a thought into your mind, when you make yourself truly believe something, reality doesn’t really matter. For us, today is Christmas. No fighting, no tears, no drama, no stress. When the kids and I have “Christmas” (no matter what day it is), it’s filled with peace, happiness and love.

As long as we’re together, it doesn’t matter if it’s the 24th of the 25th. It’s whatever day we choose to believe it is.

We’ve made the best of our situation and now – five years post-divorce – we are getting used to things. We keep some older traditions and create new ones along the way…new traditions that are ours and ours alone (like our Jack Skellington-themed Christmas tree. Black, purple and orange all the way!). The kids are learning that life is fluid, changes like the tide, and constantly brings us new opportunities. And yet – through it all – our love and little family is the rock that anchors us.

Peace out. Gotta go check out my stocking.

~Helen

This song always makes me choke up.

Although the 1984 song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was aimed at reminding us about world hunger, there are people right under our noses who have no food for the Holidays and no gifts to open on Christmas Day. We read story after story in the newspaper about families unemployed, single moms struggling, people unable to work because of serious illness – all facing a dismal Holiday season.

There is no “ho” in many Holidays this year.

But there is a silver lining. There are people out there who care and bend over backwards to help others. Radio stations give away Christmas money to deserving families, cancer organizations bring joy to people affected by illness, domestic violence organization makes sure their clients’ children have gifts to open, and community organizations pack and bring Holiday food baskets to those without.

These people put some “ho” back into holidays.

So to these unsung heroes I say “thank you!” Few things are harder on children than being poor…and not having anything for Christmas makes you feel poorer than poor. I was once a mom-in-need, and a local organization held a Christmas party for all of us  single moms. They fed us, gave us gifts, and made our children feel important. The amazement and gratitude I saw in my childrens’ eyes over the kindness of strangers is something I will never forget.

That’s what makes these individuals so special. They selflessly give of themselves, their time and their money to spread a little Christmas joy unto others…making sure no child goes without at least a little something.

That, after all, is what the season is about. Helping others – and giving from the heart.

So if you have a moment, find a way to help.

Bring a little gift.
Help someone pick up their tree.
Grab a few groceries.
Buy someone a coffee.

People out there need you….and when you help – even just a little – they’ll know it’s Christmas.

~Helen

Remember this?

Do They Know It’s Christmas
Video – 1984

Photo: ©Flickr: jayneandd