The Girl Effect

You’re Fine Just the Way You Are or… Don’t believe the hype

We tend to measure ourselves based on outside standards.  The Media constantly reminds us that we aren’t good enough.  We need that new whatsamahoozie that is going to change our lives and make us happy and fulfilled for the rest of our lives. 

Add to that the fact our own little poisonous thoughts and we are goners.

·      What will the neighbors think?

·      What will Everyone say?

The truth is, we are our own severest critics.  Three-quarters of our thoughts are negative and we believe them every day over and over again.  We create our own hell right here on earth, all by ourselves.

And we are good at it……

·      You’re too fat.

·      You’re too thin.

·      Your clothes aren’t stylish enough.

·      Your lipstick isn’t this seasons “it” color.

·      Your house is too small.

·      Your lawn isn’t pristine.

·      Your child is not as advanced at the swingset as your neighbor’s.

·      Your car doesn’t plug in.

·      Your dog doesn’t fit in a Louis Vuitton shoulder bag.

·      You don’t make enough money.

·      You should be wearing the 5 inch stilettos.  So what if you can’t walk in them.

Do this, not that.  Be this, not that.

What about just being ourselves, just the way we are in all of our own personal wonderfulness.

15 Minutes of Fame

I have done it!
Made it into the Darien Times' Business section with an article titled, Local Performs Life Coaching".
I believe my 15 minutes of fame clock has advanced slightly.

Russell Baker's Famous Wog Essay

Russell Baker's Sunday column in the New York Times Magazine had mythic popularity in our household when I was growing up.  Last week I had lunch with some of my favorite 80 year olds, one of whom had a wog during lunch.  Being wonderful people, they demanded an explanation.  At their request, I found the original essay.  Here it is for your reading pleasure.

Sunday Observer

By Russell Baker

Egg on the Face

While lunching with an extremely vital man some years ago, I was dismayed during the fish course to notice that he had a wog on his chin.  For people who have never been in this predicament, I should explain that a wog is a tiny piece of food that has somehow escaped the eater’s mouth and lodged itself on his face.

The chin and the cheeks are where wogs usually settle.  The difficulty with them is that the person with a wog on his face can’t see it, but everybody else can.  As a result any train of thought that has been running across the table gets derailed as soon as the wog appears.

This is what happened during that lunch.  The extremely vital man was talking profound talk – “We live in an age when implications are profound” or something like that – and I was trying to look grave and deep when I noticed the wog on his chin.

Oblivious to the wog, he went on talking deep.  It became harder and harder to look him in the eye.  My glance kept dropping to his chin.  It became terribly important to know what kind of wog it was.  If it was a bread wog it might drop away, ending the crisis without a fuss.  Bread wogs often do that.  So do cake wogs.

This, however, was a fish wog, one of the worst kind.  Like egg wogs and oily lettuce-leaf wogs, a fish wog seems to get glued on and nothing removes it but a swipe of the napkin.  Now, my question is to the well-mannered public is:  What do you do in this situation?

Do you reach across the table and swipe his chin with a napkin?  If so, you have to be prepared to say, “Sorry about that, but sometimes my reflexes go haywire.”  In which case, he puts you down as an eccentric and never has you to lunch again.

On the other hand you can hardly butt in while he is warning you about the profundity of the implications and say, “Pardon me, but you’ve got a fish wog on your chin.” Or so it seemed to me that day.  “Why do you keep staring at my chin?” he asked.

Quick as a whip, I said, “I have never seen a chin with such profound implications.

He was flattered by that and the meal dragged on .  Leaving the restaurant he paused at the washroom and came out white with humiliation.  “How could you let me sit through an entire meal with a fish wog on my chin?” he whimpered.

The answer is that he was so vital that he awed me.  There are some people you can interrupt with “Brush the wog off your chin” without being at all self-conscious, but these are only the dearest of relatives.  When social disparity is greater, a wog presents one of society’s gravest problems.

Suppose, for example, that you and a couple of friends – say Kermit and Katz—are invited to eat with the President and the President is talking about the thread to civilization, and suddenly all three of you notice a wog on his cheek.

You and Kermit and Katz – are not going to get much out of the President’s conversation from that moment on, are you?  All three of you are going to be too busy thinking, “My God, the President’s got a wog on his cheek?  Why doesn’t somebody do something about it?”

Of course, now that I have had long experience with the wog problem, I know you have to deal with each one according to your reading of the victim’s personality.  With President Reagan it would probably be easy to say, “Speaking of the threat to civilization, Mr. President, you’ve got a little wog there on your left cheek.”

Ronald Reagan gives you the feeling he would just chuckled and tell you an anecdote about a time when all the Warner brothers attended an Academy Awards show with blintz wogs on their cheeks.

It is more serious if the President is someone like Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson.  Presidents of their disposition, so uneasy about their personal appearances, might become so irritated they would order the Pentagon to give the wog a whiff of the grape.

In such cases, I’ve had good results from relying on the science of sympathetic body language or, in plainer terms, the monkey-see, monkey-do principle.  If the wog victim is someone easily irritated – like Secretary of State Haig, for example -- I do not call verbal attention to the wog. Instead, after noting its location, I look the victim hard in the eye without blinking, then with great deliberation bring my hand to my chin or cheek, matching it to the wog’s location on the victim’s face, and rub it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

The great man, wishing to woo you with body language as well as his verbal charms, will in nine case out of 10 raise his own hand subconsciously to the identical spot on his dynamic face and rub the wog away.  In most cases he will not even notice it.

If he does, the trick is to begin rubbing other parts – your ear lobes, throat, forehead – parts, which on the victim are wog free.  Gingerly, he will test his ear lobes, throat and forehead for more wogs and, finding none, assume that you were not signaling him about his embarrassing wog, but merely suffer from a disgusting compulsion to rub yourself at the table.  This will probably improve his day by making him feel superior.

The Crunchy Mobile

My real live Mom car has been sick and as a result I have been driving the "crunchy mobile".  Her crunchiness has almost 160,000 miles on it, is dented on all sides and is a dark blue Subaru wagon, the official car of all things Vermont.  Son #2, PJ, has made this car as his own, in his own special way.   It smells funny which may be exacerbated by the fact that we can't open the back tailgate and clear out the detritus from PJ's last move.  From what we can see, there are musical accessories, old papers, shoes and some clothing.  There may even be food, but no one wants to venture back there to really figure it out.

The dashboard is adorned with a chubby, maroon smiling Buddha who grins happily at me through red lights, traffic jams and waits at the train station.  Naturally, it brings to mind the famous Imus jingle of my youth.

I don't care if it rains or freezes,
'long as I got my plastic Jesus
hanging on the dashboard of my car.
I can go five hundred miles an hour,
'long as I got the Almighty Power,
hanging on the dashboard of my car.

Does that work for Buddha as well?

I don't understand the rather obscure bumper stickers, but I revel in their uniqueness.  No one else has a discrete Sonic Youth sticker carefully centered on their rear bumper.  Their Suburbans are covered with dune permits from Nantucket, barely decipherable oval badges from places like OBX, MTK, and ANP and banners announcing their children's sports and college preferences.  I have spent hours reading the backs of these cars, trying to figure out how many kids they really have while solving the clue to their vacation destinations.  I guarantee, there aren't too many who know Sonic Youth or the famous local politician, Elsie Flemmings, from parts unknown.

Blazoned across the back window of the Subaru is the proud sign, "College of the Atlantic".  PJ went to this lovely College on the shores of Bar Harbor, ME for one and a half years.  He claimed that there were two kinds of students, Tree Huggers and Mountain People.  Not surprisingly the Huggers tended toward crunchiness, a wegan lifestyle and love of all things natural.  The Mountain People wore flannels, heavy beards and bright orange vests for their weekend hunting expeditions.  I like driving the dichotomy.

A certain level of zen is needed to run this car.  Not having the classic automatic beep, beep button to unlock all the car doors simultaneously, the driver is required to insert the key into the lock and unlock the door, the old fashioned way.  Naturally this isn't so easy with the Subaru.  If you purposefully carry your bulging CVS bags to the car, jam in the key and make an abrupt counter-clockwise turn, the lock won't budge.  You get nothing, nadda.  At first when this happened, I would race around to the front passenger door, swear,  and abruptly open that door with a deft flick of the key and a stressed grunt at the inconvenience.

The wisdom of my son, Charlie, taught me another way to handle the situation.  If you approach the driver's side door with a sense of calm and zen, insert the key slowly and gently turn the key counterclockwise, the lock will disengage and the door will open.  You must be in a place of peace, to enter the Subaru.

Conversely, if the stick shift is not perfectly centered over the parking "P", the car doesn't start, resulting in panicky moments which can only be resolved by a deep breath and a jab to the shift which miraculously rights the wrong and starts the car.

The Subaru has been a new identity for me.  I like the quirkiness, the individuality and the crunchiness.  The car has character and staying power.

Spring.

My Day

I just had one of those days that really wasn't mine.  I did errands.  I volunteered.  I took care of other people's priorities and left my own in the dust.  By the end of the day I find myself collapsed on the back deck, finally enjoying the beauty of the day and the fact that my wireless service actually hits my lounge chair.

Finally I have a chance to check in with myself.

Finally I have a chance to connect with myself.

Finally I have a chance to make my own priorities, however lazy they may seem so that I may recharge and re-energize myself.

As a wise coach has said ...

"Being busy is a great way not to have intimacy with yourself."

Take time.