Shine (29 page)

S
hould you try to change?

Well, if you can think like a lawyer and you’ve won almost every “case” in your life; if you were pleased with the results of all your self-assessments; if you’re totally right with the way you look, feel, and relate to the Man upstairs; if you’re perfect (or even a shade less than perfect)—you don’t have to do another thing to change your lifestyle.

Riiiight.
Perfection happens a lot.

But if you have looked yourself clear in the eye and seen places where you might consciously change your health, relationships, emotional attitude, look, or spiritual well-being for the better, get a pencil and notebook.

Because, the next question is—specifically,
how
do you do change? Are there exercises you can employ to help yourself become stronger, physically and spiritually?

There sure are. The following are fine ways to become the best you can be and truly get ready to meet love and romance around the next corner. If you’ve gotten this far in this book, you’ve changed your life already: you now know how to
assess yourself, look deeply inward, and figure out places you can change for the best.

Here’s the route:

Make a decision to change one thing
—only one at a time—either the way you dress or shop, the way you deal with your spiritual self, your exercise regimen, the way you deal with a relationship in your life. Write down your intention (declarations seem to last better when they’re in black and white). Give yourself a time span in which to accomplish your goal. For example, you might say, “By June, I will have toned my body, lost twenty pounds, found my best makeup, found a way to speak with God, and met the man of my dreams.”

Probably not going to happen. You’ve got to make your intention realistic. By June, for example, there ain’t no way you’ll find the perfect lipstick. Chill out with the unattainable.

Keep your declaration to one or two sentences. If you need a page to state your intention, it’s too complicated to work. I’d already lost about fifty pounds when I met Al, but when we started talking about getting married, I realized one day that I still weighed more than he did. Your Star did not love that insight. About four months before our wedding, I decided I wanted to weigh less than my husband on our wedding day. That didn’t seem too much to ask.

In the past, I’d always focused on the way I felt to tell me how much weight I needed to lose, but just this once, I made a decision to change by the numbers. I wrote a note to myself saying that on the day of my wedding, I would weigh a certain amount of pounds, quite a bit less than what I’d weighed for years.

And I did.

Since the wedding, incidentally, I’ve never again focused on numbers. I’m still losing weight, but now I focus on being able to run up a flight of stairs or walk the neighborhood with Al—without getting out of breath. And I do.

Follow through with action.
Take the Nike approach—Just do it. When you’re satisfied that you’ve made a change for the better that will
probably
last, tackle another area. Keep track of your progress in the journal. Date each entry.

Bring in a second or third party, a trusted witness to your action.
Sometimes, making a life change is easier if you do it with someone else: you can monitor each other’s victories and commiserate with each other each time you
fall back. Sometimes, even just declaring your intentions to a trusted third party helps you stay steadfast to your goal.

Reevaluate yourself in three months.
Are you holding fast to your intention? Great! But if not, don’t throw in the towel. Go back to number 1, and start again. You get as many turns as you need. You’ll need them, momma. If you make just one major life change (exercise more, break a bad relationship or start a good one, learn to achieve a monied look without spending a fortune, find peace in spirituality)—even just one lifestyle change—it’s well worth the price of this book, right?

Fail-safe Ways to Rev Up Your Lifestyle

Sometimes, in addition to changing things about your body, your psyche, and your spiritual awareness, you simply want to make life more interesting, more textured. There’s no question that a person who feels secure and blessed, who has many layers to her personality will attract more like-minded people. Revving up your lifestyle makes you more ready to meet and recognize the love of your life.

None of the following requires a huge commitment, and all are guaranteed to make you feel more whole, more energetic, more appealing, more knowing. Try one, try them all: eventually, I promise you, your best self will emerge.

1. Take a Calculated Risk

I’m sure there are 200 million women out there as I write this who are kicking themselves because they missed chances—and they missed them because of fear of the unknown. We tend to think to ourselves: I’ll look like a jerk; I’m not good at this; I’m making a fool of myself. I think too many of us take too few risks because we tend to misread the word
risk.
We see handling our own investment portfolios, initiating a connection with a new guy, taking a course in improvisational acting, moving to another city, or severing a toxic friendship as a do-or-die situation—if we risk and we fail, we’re dead. Failure means it’s all
over. Failure’s kind of shameful. And so, many smart women traditionally remove themselves from the art of taking risks. It’s a pity.

Here’s what I think: failure does not mean it’s all over. Failure’s not at all shameful. There’s nothing like taking a risk to make you feel daring, excited, aware, and privy to the infinite possibilities of life—even if you fail. There’s one caveat: instead of taking plain old zany risks, we should take calculated risks. What the difference? A zany risk is a rash gamble—based just on chance—kind of Las Vegas style. A calculated risk means using available information to estimate whether you’ll succeed or fail. A zany risk is going out alone with a cute guy you met on the subway. It’s a rash gamble because he may be a cute ax murderer, for all you know. A calculated risk is asking your friend to set you up with her boyfriend’s brother. Available information: you know your friend’s boyfriend, you know how he was raised, you like his style—chances are, you’re going to like his brother. And he probably isn’t an ax murderer or you would have heard. Driving to work on a busy highway, flying in a jet plane, or investing in a new but well-researched stock are risks, but because you know the statistics of crashing or losing all your money are low, they’re calculated risks, in other words—low risk. Taking a social risk—initiating a conversation with a fascinating stranger at a party or signing up for a salsa class—is a low, calculated risk. Skydiving and playing the wheel of fortune are not calculated risks. When you take a calculated risk where the odds are more on your side than against, you have a good chance to gain joy or maybe big bucks, and you feel terrific. You’ve made your life more interesting. If you’ve lost, you haven’t lost everything, you haven’t failed; instead, you’re getting in the habit of taking reasonable chances and opening yourself up for success. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

It was a calculated risk for me to begin my journey to make myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually more ready for love. I could have failed, but chances are, I wouldn’t have. I thought I’d gone as far as I could, but in reality, I was out on a limb—and I’d stopped short right there at the end. I had to take a chance and go beyond the limb, I had to jump and find my parachutes along the way. If I hadn’t gotten all that stuff together before I stepped off that limb though, my journey to finding love would have been a dumb risk. I wasn’t complete—how could I expect to find Al? I had to prepare for the jump and then I’d
have backup, a built-in parachute: it would be a more perfect, able, and confident me.

A last thing about risk taking. Temper it with your trusted intuition. Sometimes, no matter what the evidence says, there’s a “knowing” in your gut that will tell you something different. Respect your intuition. See number 2 below.

2. Trust Your Intuition

Intuition is not hot emotion. It is not a hope or fear. It usually arrives with calmness. If you feel passionately and strongly about something, wait a few moments for your emotions to cool down; then, you can more clearly hear your intuition. What will you hear? Intuition has been defined in many ways, but I like best the sense of quiet knowing. It’s also been referred to as a strong hunch or a gut feeling. Others call it getting vibes about certain decisions you have to make or people whom you meet. Figure it this way: if your senses extended further than you’ve thought possible, if you were connected to more things than you knew existed—that’s intuition working. It works all the time without your even realizing it, and it brings vital information to your attention without your asking for it. No one quite understands how intuition comes about, but I believe it’s real and that it functions on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. Sometimes, you just know when a person you’ve recently met will be terrific for you (that’s how I felt about Al). Sometimes you just know a person will be more destructive than instructive. Whether you’re responding to old or new friends or making a decision that might jump-start a new business or lifestyle for yourself, allow intuition to play a part.

Here’s a caveat: when you feel a strong hunch or an intuitive vibe, it’s a great idea to test it with some logic and reasoning before acting on it. Ask questions of yourself: is this insane, is it impossible, or is there a good reason why I might feel this strong hunch? A fine balance of thought, logic, and intuition is what you’re reaching for.

Everyone possesses intuition, but some people are more highly developed intuitively than others. Can you strengthen your intuition? Yes. I did it. Before I started getting ready for love, my intuition in directing my own career was
flawless. My intuition with relationships with women friends and colleagues—flawless. But my relationships with the men in my life were deeply flawed. I found myself giving, giving, giving to men who were not worthy of my time and who didn’t respond in the same ways I gave. I was trying to fit square-peg men into round holes without realizing how square they were. I had to learn to trust the little voice inside that said, No square-peg men, Star—you deserve to be with someone who thinks you’re the most wonderful person on the planet. Funny thing: when you’ve become the best you can be, you
do
deserve him.

Many say that paying close attention to the way your whole body responds to people, information, and situations helps develop intuition. Do you tense up, perhaps perspire, perhaps tighten your facial muscles at certain encounters or suggestions others give you? Your intuition is saying, beware. But sometimes, does your whole body react in a joyful but tuned-in and aware posture that says, trust your gut? Then, trust it.

What if you always distrust your intuition and are skeptical it even exists? Keep an open mind, girl. Scientists have shown that we use only about a tenth of our thinking abilities, and intuition may well figure into that vast, unused capability to help you make the best decisions for yourself.

3. Practice Mindfulness

Thich Nhat Han is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who has popularized the extraordinary and freeing concept of mindfulness. In its simplest form, it means paying attention to the simplest details of life. If you have to wash the pots after dinner, and you hate washing pots, try this: as you wash, pay attention to the way the warm water looks and feels as it splashes your hands. Carefully focus in on the silver of the pot, the way the sponge makes it gleam, the sense of satisfaction you have as each food lump is scraped away. Watch the soap slide down the drain to—where?

Paying exquisite attention like this makes the mind go completely still, and gives a sense of pleasure and fulfillment instead of anger. Practice mindfulness the next time you’re caught in a traffic jam. Concentrate on the way each car slowly stops, focus in on the way the motion of the car soothes and quiets. Feel
how the sun warms your arm as it rests on the car window frame. Feel the vibration of the motor. Immerse yourself in the experience until your frustration at being in that traffic jam flies out the window.

When you eat, practice mindfulness—it’s a lifestyle change that can lead to an appreciation of the texture of the food you’re eating, the smell, the color, the juices that explode in your mouth. Be conscious of the way each bite feels in your mouth, pay attention to your mouth as you chew. Eat slowly. Focus in. You’ll find that you’re eating with far more appreciation and not gorging on food out of habit. Mindfulness. It changes your life, minute by minute.

4. Choose Your Friends: Don’t Settle for Being Chosen

My mom always used to tell me that “people know you by whom you affiliate with.” As usual, Momma was right. Why settle for a needy person saying, “You’re cool, I want to hang with you”? Instead, it’s so much more fulfilling for you to say to an interesting or very good person, “You’re cool—let’s hang for a while.”

Friendships are like all relationships. Everyone should bring something to the table. If you find you’re the only one bringing, don’t feel guilty about cutting the friendship. For me, that means I hope you will be bringing an emotional connection, a spiritual connection, or even just making me laugh to our friendship table, so at the end of our time together, I should be better off for spending it with you. Of course, that goes both ways: I also am very aware that I must bring something to that table, and I’ll work my butt off to do that—you better believe it.

There is nothing more conducive to a lifestyle change than bringing a new, loving, vital friend into your life—or on the other hand, ridding yourself of a toxic, destructive friend even though you’ve known her forever and it makes you feel guilty to cut an old-time bond. But cut it you must: a friend who is toxic will eventually hurt you.