Author: Faith Helma

My daily ritual for centering & questioning

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This is my daily ritual.

It’s not set in stone. And I don’t do it every day.

But when I do, my day goes smoother, my life feels grounded and my sense of humor is quick to the draw.

And when I don’t, my frustrations snare me quicker, my doubts creep in faster and life feels overwhelming.

Funny: knowing that, you’d think that when I start to feel overwhelmed, this ritual would be the first thing I turn to.

But often if I’m overwhelmed it’s too late — I am deep in forgetful mode.

I forget that my daily ritual will help.

I forget that it’s not hard to do.

I forget that life is one thing at a time, one moment at a time.

I forget that the past is the past and the future is the future and both exist mostly in my imagination.

I forget that no matter what is going on I have the power, right now, to take a breath and listen to my body, my mind, my voice.

I forget to listen to that little voice that says, hey, when’s the last time you checked in with me? Why did you stop doing your morning ritual?

For a while, anyway. Until I slow down enough to hear it, and listen to what it’s telling me.

That’s why I try to do this every day. So I can keep from getting to that overwhelmed, stressed out, frustrated place. Because it seems so small but doing my ritual for five minutes every day is what keeps me grounded, calm and light on my feet.

I’m calling it MY RITUAL like it’s a big fancy thing but my ritual is basically just taking deep breaths, listening to my thoughts and sitting with them.

I do this different ways depending on my mood. I can sit in a quiet spot, or go for a walk and do it on my feet. I can end with 2 minutes of dancing to Cyndi Lauper. I can write down words I want to remember in sharpie and stick them on my wall. But it usually goes something like this:

  • Stop what you’re doing
  • Put your hand on your heart
  • Close your eyes
  • Take 3 deep breaths
  • Ask yourself: what is stressing you out?
  • Write down one thought that is stressing you out
  • Breathe with that thought and let some questions in. Don’t fix it, don’t solve it. Sit with it and let questions come: is it true? How do you know? Are you sure?

And honestly, if all you do is the first four steps, that is the most important part. Giving yourself a moment to take three deep breaths with your hand on your heart. Trust me: spending a moment doing this will get you so much more than two minutes of scanning the New York Times or scrolling through Facebook.

I’d love to hear what your daily rituals are! And if you don’t have one, steal mine, or make one up yourself.

 

 

How to brag without sounding like a douchebag

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I have a question for you. If I asked you to brag about yourself right now, what would you say? I imagine you would react by freezing up and mumbling and not doing a very good job. And you are not alone! Most of us find it difficult to brag. (By us I mean women, but if any of you dudes find it hard, this is for you too).

I’ve been thinking about why it’s difficult, and I think it’s this tension: on the one hand we want to feel respected and appreciated, to be seen as powerful. And on the other hand, we don’t want to sound like douchebags. We don’t want to bullshit people. It feels uncomfortable to make a claim about yourself that someone could knock down.

I have an exercise I use to get myself in a headspace to talk about my achievements without feeling that creeping horror of “they’re all gonna laugh at you” – one that helps me talk about my achievements without making it all about me. It’s a simple idea:

  1. Write down 3 of the hardest things you’ve ever done
  2. For each one, ask yourself: what was hard? What did you learn?
  3. Say it out loud: My name is [insert name], and I [did this hard thing]

That’s it! No elaboration required – you just SAY OUT LOUD THE HARD THINGS YOU’VE DONE. You aren’t lying or bullshitting. You are stating the facts, and sharing your growth, and letting whoever is listening draw their own conclusions.

I’ll show you what’s on my list. Off the top of my head, here are 3 hard things I’ve done:

  • I gave birth to my son after 44 hours of labor.
  • When I was 22, I moved to Oregon with my best friend. We had no plan, barely enough money and only knew one person out here.
  • 12 years ago, I took a show to Poland with my theatre company. We performed in many crazy situations, the craziest of which was doing the show in an open field at sunset while the set caught fire and burned down around us.

So let’s look at that last one. What was hard? It was grueling. I put myself in some dangerous situations. We could have died. It was scary. What did I learn? How to keep calm when the world (or set) is crashing down around you.  How to dodge fire. How to think on my feet. That I could handle the worst case scenario. And after that, performing onstage without fire seemed like no big deal.

From this, I can put together a pretty good brag. Like this:

I am Faith Helma, I worked for 15 years as performance artist. I made 20 shows. I performed in some crazy situations. Once I did a whole show while the set burned down around me. Two years ago, I hatched an idea to channel that creative energy into a coaching business. And instead of dismissing that idea, I took it seriously, and now I am running this business. I am failing and learning every single day. And I am being honest about my failures which scares the shit out of me but you know what? One thing you learn when you are performing a show while the set burns down around you is how to keep calm, how to think on your feet, and how to dodge fire. 

So now it’s your turn! Go through the steps, dig deep into what you’ve overcome in your life, and practice saying it out loud. And then if you’re up for an extra challenge: see if you can sneak it into conversation with another human being.

p.s. I wrote about this topic over a year ago, here: BOASTING PRACTICE . Back then I shared clips from two masters of the boast, Nicki Minaj and Muhammad Ali. Both of them start with something hard they did — making stupid mistakes when starting out, getting knocked down in fights — and spin that out into some righteous, braggadocious poetry.

 

Playtime with my inner critics (a lesson in failure)

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OK. So part of this experiment I’m running called my business is making a practice of being honest. I may not always shout it from the rooftops — sometimes I want to hide, and there’s no shame in hiding — but I’m owning my truth and living transparently.

So here is the deal. I put together a workshop called Playtime with Your Inner Critic. I showed up tonight to lead the workshop. And nobody else showed up.

That’s tough. But the bright side is, I had planned to lead a group through exercises in turning your critical energy around and playing with it — so I am well prepared for the critical thoughts that I am now having. And I’m in a beautiful room with big paper and markers and all the tools I need to work through my critical thoughts.

So I might as well share that process. A virtual workshop, in a way. A workshop of one.

First, I am going to write down what sucks about this situation.

  • I suck at promoting workshops
  • I suck at picking one thing and repeating it. I’m pretty sure if I’d picked one workshop topic a year ago and did that once a month for a year, people wouldn’t be so confused about what I’m doing and when and why.

What is the opposite of those things, that is also true?

  • I am great at hiding out. I am great at bursts of inspiration at the last minute. I am great at under-promising and over-delivering.

I mean, I really did have a great two hour workshop planned:

  • I am great at offering wildly divergent things. I am great at improvising and never doing something the same way twice.
  • Maybe I could find a way to offer that wildly divergent zone regularly. Would anyone show up for that? Maybe if people knew SOME of the why and what, and if the when and where was always the same, it would be clear enough to stick.

Let’s go deeper into my frustrations with this situation

  • I’ve been through this before
  • I knew this would happen
  • I’m tired of this pattern
  • I feel embarrassed: where are my fans, where is my momentum?

Have there been things that did not follow this pattern?

The answer is: yes. And ironically, the events that I’ve had the most success promoting in the past are my failure workshops. Two questions arise:

  • Do I want to lead a regular workshop on failure?
  • Would I have come to this workshop today, if I weren’t leading it?

I think the answer to both is: no. I love my failure practice workshops — but I don’t want to lead them every month. I want something bigger, more open — I want failure to be part of what I’m leading us through, but not the only framework.

And if I weren’t leading this workshop tonight, I am pretty sure I would have found an excuse to not come, because the idea of dealing with my inner critics when I’m tired and cranky and hungry does not appeal to me. (Oof! This is hard to admit, but it’s true).

So what IS the workshop that I would drag my lazy ass out of the house to attend every month?

As soon as I ask this, 3 ideas pop into my head. Ideas that are open enough for me to go wild but have a simple structure that speaks to a clear need (I think). I have no idea if anyone else would like these, but I know I would.

I’m getting too heady, so I take a break to draw my critic

This is Beebee Eye Roller, rolling her eyes at all this WACKINESS which she is sure everyone will think is SO STUPID.

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BeeBee Eye Roller is basically 15 year old me, frozen in time. (Wearing a weird hat and with yarn for hair). And I’m making light of this, but I also want to say: her concern comes from a real place. Her fear of humiliation is real. I can still remember the fear I felt in high school — so don’t think I’m not taking Beebee seriously. It’s just that, I’m 38 years old now, and I am wearing a unicorn shirt, and a headband, and taking selfies of myself jumping in the air, and what’s the worst that could happen?

Then I put on Cyndi Lauper and we dance it out

I dance like I am Beebee Eye Roller and no one is watching.

I dance like I am a ballerina even though I am not.

I dance with white girl abandon even though my greatest fear is dancing like a white girl.

And I am going to share the video I took with you, even though I promised Beebee we wouldn’t share it.

She thinks it is a TERRIBLE idea. Actually what she thinks is something like this: This is not how you run a business. Who would ever hire you to do anything based on this video? Oh my god you are going to embarrass yourself.

An opposite which I can also find a way to believe is: This is an inspired way to run a business, one that other inspired lunatics will respond to. I would love anyone who hired me based on this video.

So here it is:

Oh yeah, and here are the 3 ideas for future workshops:

  1. Dance with your monsters, critics and fears: a hilarious dance party with our monster selves. I bring a playlist that takes us on an hour-long journey and throw out prompts to inspire us to dance with our monster energy.
  2. Failure storytelling circle: share stories about your mistakes and messes, get practice bragging about them instead of hiding them, and get active backup and support from the group for doing hard things.
  3. Big crazy idea clinic: bring your big crazy idea and we’ll brainstorm ways you could make it happen. (You can bring in ideas you think are terrible or would never work and we’ll still give it our best shot. All ideas are taken seriously.)

I would love to know which (if any) of these you would come to.

How to turn self-criticism around

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To continue in the vein I started down earlier in the week, I thought I’d share one thing I do when I find myself in a firestorm of self-criticism (like the one I was in last Friday). It can come on you so suddenly, can’t it? That’s why it’s important to be aware of your own signals — because you are the only one who can tell when your body is slipping over from “I’m a little hungry” to “EAT NOW,” or from “I’m not feeling so great,” to “I HAVE A HORRIBLE CASE OF THE FLU,” or from “That didn’t go so well” to “I AM A MISERABLE FAILURE.” Because when you catch yourself at the first signs, it’s easier to turn it around gently.

In other words, try not to do what I did — try to catch the signs before the storm is raging around you. But you know what? That is another thing I have to remind myself of all the time — that this is not a game of self-evolution, not a thing to win or do once and be done. This is something we are working on all the time. It’s an ecosystem, with checks and balances and weather systems that fluctuate.

So. Here is how I pulled myself out of the frenzy:

STEPS TO REVERSE THE SELF CRITICISM

Step 1: Write down what your inner critics are saying

Here’s what mine were saying last week: 

  1. You’ve got too much to do
  2. You wasted your day AGAIN
  3. You can’t get this right
  4. You are a stressful person
  5. You suck at managing time
  6. You made a mess of it
  7. This always happens  (this = trying to do too many things
  8. You can’t get anything done
  9. You couldn’t even do ONE thing right today!
  10. WTF is wrong with you

Step 2: Make a list of things that are the opposite of that (and that also feel true)

Here were some opposites that felt true to me, and/or made me laugh out loud:

  1. You have just the right amount of things to do.
  2. You did good work today
  3. You can get this right
  4. You are a calming person. You want to help people.
  5. You suck at wasting time. You could be better at it.
  6. You get too focused on organizing
  7. This does not always happen
  8. You can get things done
  9. You did lots of things right today
  10. WTF is not wrong with you. Why the fuck is nothing wrong with you?

Step 3: Read that list out loud

Are you being too hard on yourself?

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I’ve been thinking today about why it’s so easy to be hard on yourself.

I hear it from women I talk to all the time, and I catch myself doing it too: getting tired, getting overwhelmed and suddenly finding myself caught in a frenzy of self-criticism.

In fact, on Friday AS I WAS COMPOSING THIS POST ABOUT BEING TOO HARD ON YOURSELF, I got sucked into a vortex of being too hard on myself.

Here’s the short version of what happened — see if you can relate: I was writing in MS word. At 2:00, after about an hour of writing, I was 99% finished, so I closed my laptop to head home, thinking I’d finish there and post it before driving to pick up my son from daycare.

But when I got home and opened my laptop — the document had disappeared.

Word hadn’t crashed, I hadn’t saved it somewhere weird — it was gone, as if I hadn’t written it. This was baffling. I started questioning my sanity — had I written it? And then my inner critics showed up in force.

They started saying things like, Oh god, this ALWAYS happens, you ran out of time again. You should have kept it simple instead of making it too big to pull off LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO. Why can’t you get one thing done like a normal person?

I used the exercise I talk about in my new workbook to identify and give a name to one of the critical voices in my mind. He’s Randolph the pencil sharpener shark and he’s constantly barking at me to be stronger, smarter, faster, better.

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Randolph was upset. And after doing some dialoguing with him over the weekend, it’s clear to me now what he is scared of: being left behind, being unprepared, being eaten by bigger sharks, being swallowed up by the world.

This morning, after looking back on the wreckage I abandoned on Friday, I started over.

And ironically, by giving up Friday afternoon and admitting things were a jumbled mess and I couldn’t fix them, and by letting myself go through the process of being hard on myself and then pulling myself out of it — I achieved what Randolph the pencil shark wants. I now am feeling more clarity about why I am too hard on myself, and when it happens, and how to get out of it (I’ll write more on that later!).

Anyway — that’s what’s going on in my world. If you are being too hard on yourself too — know that you are not alone.

With love from me, Randolph and my inner champion, Wild Coach Helma — here’s to growing and stretching and learning to go easy on ourselves.

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Who is your failure hero?

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Prince, of course, has been on my mind. It’s great to have heroes who show us what is possible – who shine like a beacon blazing a supernatural path*.

But I’ve been thinking — it’s also good to have heroes who show you what it looks like to stumble. Who blaze a trail of shit so you can say, hey, look at them – they made an ass of themselves, and I love them anyway.

So today I would like to encourage you to think about someone whose failure inspires you. Someone who has done something messy or ill advised or wrongheaded or ridiculous —  and despite all this, or maybe BECAUSE of it, they spoke to you.

For me, one of my failure heroes is Neil Young. He has many beautiful albums, but he also has some terrifically bad ones. One my favorites is Sleeps with Angels**. Half the songs on that album are transcendent and beautiful, and the other half fall flat. I don’t know why, but this is what makes it my favorite. It makes me feel like I know him. It lets me into his process. It lets me appreciate the easy magic of the beautiful songs even more.

Another hero for me is Jean Auel, the author of the Clan of the Cave Bear series. No disrespect to her, but each book is like 800 pages long, the characters repeat themselves, the moral lessons are easy to spot  and there are long, flowery, detailed sex scenes. I hope it doesn’t sound like I am criticizing her books because I LOVE them. I love that they exist in the world exactly as they are. They resonate with me and fill me with delight even as I am aware of how clunky they are.

Scene-from-the-film-version-of-Clan-of-the-Cave-Bear

(This is not the first time I’ve asked, what would Ayla do?)

Is there someone or something like this for you – something ridiculous or shlocky or embarrassing that you love?

Study it, and take some lessons from it. What challenges could you take on from your hero?

For me, I can think of a few:

  • I could make an album of bad songs
  • I could go to an open mic and accompany myself on the 3 chords I kind of know how to play on guitar
  • I could sing covers of only the bad Neil Young songs
  • I could map out a novel of my ideal fantasy world
  • I could create a character who is a stand in for my ideals
  • I could let myself write a blog post that goes on way too long and says the same thing over and over
  • I could add a terrible sex scene to that post
  • Or I could come up with a series and every post in that series is a variation on the same thing. Like I could make this a series – the Failure Hero series – and just keep writing the same post over and over

What ideas do your failure heroes inspire for you? I would love to hear! (And if you want someone to help you embrace failure like the glorious hero that YOU are, contact me to set up a navigation session. It’s my offer of support and encouragement as you set out on your journey.)

footnotes:

* of course, it’s also good to remember that Prince did not feel like everything he did was a success. Apparently he thought he made an ass of himself in this incredible moment with James Brown and Michael Jackson – whereas I see someone effortlessly taking command of the stage and transforming it with ridiculous, sexy confidence. You never know how people are responding to what you think is a huge failure.

** this is weird: I am writing this in a coffee shop, and as I paused to gaze off into space and decide which album of Neil Young’s was my favorite, Razor Love came on.

Historical Alter Ego

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I’ve got a new video up, as part of my Quick Ideas for Creative Action series.

This one is all about how to step into a historical alter ego, by picking someone in history who you’ve got a girl crush on (like Margaret Mead, in my case) and copying what you love about them.

Here’s the video:

If you want the shorthand version, are the steps to creating an alter ego based on a historical figure you love:

  1. Pick a historical figure you love
  2. Jot down the traits you admire
  3. Draw their picture (or cheat and find one via google)
  4. Imitate the picture: move, act, dress and talk like them
  5. Adopt one of their habits for a week

Fantastic! Let me know how it goes! (And as always, if you want to take it further, sign up for a navigation session to explore coaching with me)

I suck, I’m great

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New exercise in my Quick Ideas for Creative Action series, called: I SUCK, I’M GREAT.

This is a great one for flipping your own expectations around about what you’re supposed to be good at, and what you’re supposed to hide.

Simple idea: make a list of things you suck at, switch each one to its opposite, then say out loud, I AM GREAT AT [opposite thing].

Because think about it — if I suck at being on time, I must be great at being late.

I walk you through it here, and I’d like to draw your attention to my fabulous skills in rambling and repeating myself and abrupt video editing:

Announce a mistake in advance

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I made a video as part of a new series I’m doing, Quick Tricks for Creative Living (note: I can’t decide if the name for this series sucks, so I might change it in the future*) (I’m already demonstrating the power of this exercise by announcing a potential mistake in advance!) 

These are short, easy exercises you can try as you’re going about your day, to help you diffuse obstacles, reframe expectations and engage creatively and proactively with the challenges life is throwing at you.

Today’s trick: ANNOUNCE A MISTAKE IN ADVANCE

I don’t know about you, but I hate making mistakes. I’m a recovering perfectionist and an oldest child so I get stuck in “if I’m not doing everything right I’m LETTING THE TEAM DOWN” narratives.

That’s why I was so delighted when someone in one of my workshops had this idea (as a way to deal with stress at work), to pre-emptively neutralize criticism by announcing what you might do wrong before you do it.

So say you’re stacking a bunch of onions in a display case. You would announce to everyone around you, “I am about to arrange these onions precariously so it’s impossible to take one out without sending them all rolling.”

When this idea first came up, we all cackled at the idea, and then had a blast thinking up examples.

I am about to awkwardly introduce myself to that woman over there.

Hold on, I need to try and parallel park and end up 3 feet away from the curb.

I am heading out to a meeting, and will take the most roundabout, least straightforward way and hopefully get stuck in traffic on the way.

The more examples we came up with, the more I started to think it might actually be a brilliant idea. So I’ve been trying it out since then, and without fail, it lightens the energy, relaxes the (self-imposed) pressure and more often than not, helps me to NOT make the mistake!

I’ll walk you through it here — give it a shot and let me know how it goes!

 

*UPDATE: I have indeed changed the name, it’s now Quick Ideas for Creative Action!

SXSW recap: stories and tacos and dirty dancing, oh my!

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Whoooooo boy. I got back to Portland a week ago, after almost a week in glorious Austin, Texas for the huge, sprawling cascade of ideas that is SXSW Interactive.

I’m still trying to figure out what the hell happened, and I thought it would be a good idea to do this publicly.

First of all, this happened:

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I led my crazy workshop, Creative Living in an Alternate World! It happened! People attended! We created alter egos and dream projects, we bragged about what we suck at, and we danced badly!

I can’t tell you how nervous I felt 30 minutes before. But here is the power of an alter ego: I put on that electric blue jumpsuit and headband and stepped into the room totally confident in my ridiculous abilities.

Confidence, as I’ve written before, is a moving target — but that doesn’t mean you can’t get better at channeling it when you need to.

So I feel pretty great about the workshop. It was not perfect, and there are things I’d do better next time — I’d do less exercises and take more time with them, and I would go ahead and embrace power point instead of dragging my easel and laminated Stevie Wonder poster around with me.

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But all in all, I prepared as much as I could, and the things I learned, I could only learn by jumping in and doing it.

And when I talk about embracing failure, that’s what I mean. I don’t mean that you don’t prepare or that you toss off something you care about. I mean, you train as best you can, but when it’s game time, you step in and play the game, ready or not. Because you love it, and you’d rather play and lose than not play.

Is this metaphor working? Maybe this one is better: you run every day, and on the day of the race, you run the marathon. And you come in last. The next day, you get up and keep running.

I like sports metaphors because they have a built in high drama structure. Life isn’t always so clear cut — you can’t always tell when you’re winning and losing or where the finish line is.

And in this case, to be honest with you, I’m not sure if doing my workshop at SXSW Interactive was the best fit. The workshop itself went great, but navigating the rest of the festival was exhausting. Kind of an introvert’s nightmare, and my attempts to live it up and party (in the McDonalds Lounge) proved fruitless.

There were amazing moments of insight though, like Brene Brown’s talk about vulnerability and applying the Shitty First Draft concept to our thoughts (which helped me reign in my social anxiety and question it lovingly and turn it around.)

Kate Hayward and Natalie Currie led a fantastic session on reframing networking as storytelling and listening, complete with this visual note-taker:

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And I went to a beautiful workshop led by filmmaker Amy Hardie around the themes in her documentary, Seven Songs for a Long Life (which I didn’t get to see, but hopefully will soon!) She had us pair up and ask each other four questions:

  1. What counts as a good day?
  2. What qualities would you like to be remembered for?
  3. What actions do you take that express those qualities?
  4. If you were given a life-limiting diagnosis today, would you change those actions?

Simple questions but INTENSE, man! Maybe it’s because I was on day 5 away from my family, but I ended up crying with the person I partnered up with (who it turned out was the music director for the film), then cried again when we all sang a song from the film together.

I was also surprised to realize that my answer to question #4 was: I wouldn’t change much. I have made some big changes in my life over the last two years, and for the most part (give or take some money anxiety here and some sleep frustration there) I am doing exactly what I want to be doing on a daily basis.

Speaking of which, my big fear — that leaving my son with my husband for SIX DAYS would be a nightmare and they’d be traumatized upon my return — proved to be entirely unfounded. They did fine. I did fine. My fears, as they so often are, were entirely in my imagination.

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that’s me and my boy

And you know what? For all my questions and mixed feelings, here is what I know: when I submitted my proposal to SXSW Interactive nine months ago, the failure I thought I was risking was how to make a big proposal and get rejected. Then when they accepted my proposal, I thought the failure would be having no one show up, or having it totally bomb.

But it turns out, none of those things happened. By risking failure, I stepped up my game and did something I did not think I was ready for: I flew by myself to a huge conference and got a roomful of strangers to put down their phones and dance wildly to Dueling Banjos.

Someone else wrote about their experience of my workshop over on The Verge:

We were told to envision the perfect world for our alter ego to exist in, and to imagine being very happy there. Then we were told to “breathe that vision out into the world; drop it; don’t make it happen.” We came up with projects we would never do, character flaws we would never try to correct, and people we didn’t feel like apologizing to.

And:

My favorite thing about Faith was that she yelled “DOES ANYONE WANT TO DO THE DIRTY DANCING LIFT WITH ME?”

Even though no one did the lift with me, something about this makes me proud of myself for standing confidently in the power of my weird ideas.