~ Bonnie Garmus ~

Last month it was time for the annual writers’ festival, which I attended with my writing group. I have reported on my experiences at the festival for the past few years, sharing the rich literary fare. However, it’s more fun going to the festival with the Fabulatores because we’re book lovers and it’s a joy to share these things with like-minded friends. My trusty notebook was brought out of the archives again, and I’m pleased to say there are at least six pages left, so it will live to see another year.
The cultural gem that is the writer’s festival started in 1999 and with each year has grown in popularity. The festival has become such a highlight that if you wait a couple of weeks to ponder the array of opportunities on offer, you severely limit your ability to partake in any of them. When we went to book the events and master classes we wanted to see this year we were out of luck, half the sessions had already sold out. We plan to act like lightning next year, especially for the master classes, which only take a maximum of thirty students and sell out long before everything else.

This year, we booked two paid events and managed to squeeze in a freebie in between.
Of the paid events, the first was Bonnie Garmus: Lessons in Chemistry. Bonnie was a delight with a wicked sense of humour. The interviewer, comedienne Michelle A’Court, made the perfect match for her crackling wit, and the pair had us laughing often.
Having come from a professional background as a copywriter and creative director working in the fields of medicine, technology, and education, Bonnie made her “debut” as an author at the age of 64. A “global phenomenon,” her novel Lessons in Chemistry has sold 7 million copies. During the conversation, we learned that this was not her first attempt at writing a book, however, as is common with most “debut” novels, it was preceded by many failed attempts. We laughed when Bonnie told us she had written one behemoth, which she had sent to a prospective agent who told her she could never represent someone who would write a 700,000-word novel. A’Court joked that that agent was probably eating her words right now.

Lessons in Chemistry is about a female scientist-turned-TV-cook struggling against the oppression of sexism in the 1960s. It was born out of the frustration Bonnie experienced as ‘the only female in the room’ at copywriter meetings. One day, she presented ideas for a major campaign to a reaction of silence until a male colleague stole her ideas and claimed the kudos, which stoked Bonnie’s indignation. “Instead of doing my work (that afternoon) I wrote the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry. I wrote my role model – Elizabeth could say all the things I couldn’t say.”
Halfway through writing the book, Bonnie realized she had set it in the era when her mother would have been a mom. It occurred to her that her mother had not been happy. When her mom found out she was pregnant, she gave up her beloved career as a nurse, not returning to work until after her children were fully grown. “What a waste of talent of that generation. That was one of the most depressing eras for women. My mother’s friends said we needed an Elizabeth Zott to talk to us. Men love the humour in the book, but women have lived through a lot of these things, and it’s not as funny.”
Why was the book about chemistry? “Chemistry is the science of balance. Men and women need balance. This book is about the balance between the good days and the bad days.”

I found it fascinating that Bonnie’s background as a copywriter set her up perfectly for her second life as an author. “We write tightly,” she explained. It also instilled a stubborn belief in her writing ability. “I think structure is king and dialogue is queen. As a copywriter, you’re a listener. I like to listen. I write dialogue to sound the way people talk.”
Bonnie’s writing hits a nerve globally. She told us that everywhere she had travelled while promoting the book, people thought she was writing about them. “The Koreans asked if all the characters were Korean, and then the same thing happened in Turkey when they thought all the characters were Turkish. I love that because although we seem different, it means we are 99% the same.” Lessons in Chemistry is a book that crosses cultures and generations equally well will stand the test of time. It was a standout session, to be sure.

Talk to you later.
Keep creating!
Yvette Carol

“Sexism is unscientific.” ~ Bonnie Garmus

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~ IWSG: Just Between You and I ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post on the first Wednesday of every month. Every month, the organizers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and the hashtag is #IWSG.

June 5 question – In this constantly evolving industry, what kind of offering/service do you think the IWSG should consider offering to members?
Instead of this question, I’ll recycle a question posed to us by the IWSG in the June 2020 Newsletter…
June 3 question – Writers have secrets! What are one or two of yours, something readers would never know from your work?

Okay. One thing readers might find surprising about me is that I danced Salsa and was a partner for my husband in teaching Salsa and Rueda classes for ten years. Another person from another life. Many eras ago. My older sister started it. About thirty years ago, she started taking Ceroc classes after work, then moved on to Salsa lessons in the city. She looked to be having the time of her life! One night, my sister invited my niece (who was boarding at my house) and me to try her dance classes. This was the lull in between children, (there’s a twenty-year age difference between my eldest and middle son), hence I was as carefree as my 23-year-old niece. We started attending dance classes every Friday night, joining my sister and her friends in Salsa classes and dancing the light fantastic afterward.

I remember it so well. The venue was one of those towering Victorian buildings with many floors. We reached the studio by climbing a narrow staircase up eight levels, to an old-style mirrored dance studio with worn wooden floors. After class, a large crowd of us would thunder down the stairs, descending on the clubs that played Latin music and dancing into the wee hours. It was such a happy time. As we learned Salsa, we also picked up the basic rudiments of Ceroc, Cha-Cha, Bachata, Lambada, Tango, and Rumba. Once our teacher started teaching a Rueda class – the group style of dancing – we attended that class, too, and, afterward danced at Latin nightclubs in large circles of twelve or more. It was terrific fun.
I met my second husband through the classes. A friend of my older sister, he was the relief dance teacher and a member of our teacher’s elite demonstration team. I helped him teach Salsa and Rueda night classes for the following decade.

Social dancing is the best way to hone your steps at the beginner stage. An active social life is a must for a dance teacher – you need to encourage your students to go out and practice the steps, by regularly dancing in public. Just as with our teacher when we were learning, when we started teaching our classes, we had to go out in the evenings and dance with our students at the Latin venues to help them learn. Marriage and children however signalled the end of that lifestyle for me. I stopped teaching Latin dance when my third son was born. That was 2005. I also quit the nights out social dancing because I was too tired to go. I have never returned to the dance floor. Now, as then, I prioritize a good night’s sleep, although I wouldn’t say no to a spin on the old boards given half a chance.
What about you? What secret would no one ever guess about you?

Talk to you later.
Keep Writing!
Yvette Carol
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Hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon. ~ EDWARD LEAR

~ IWSG: The Impact of Distraction ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post on the first Wednesday of every month. Every month, the organizers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and the hashtag is #IWSG.

May 1 question – How do you deal with distractions when you are writing? Do they derail you?
It’s changed a lot over the years. If you’d asked me forty years ago, I would have said yes distractions derail me big-time, and I lose my rag at friends and family because everyone/thing is barking for my attention when all I want to do is write. When I was young, I had a low threshold of patience for disruptions. Story writing was something I was “trying” to do, to learn, to understand, and it required a great deal of concentration. There was a deep longing for solitude and quiet – if only I could get things quiet enough, I might have been able to hear the muse, and I might have been able to produce a work of near genius. But I couldn’t go away far enough or attain enough peace of mind to get fully underway with my writing.

So what did I crave? More distance, more peace. It’s like that old yearning for the quiet mountaintop or being able to retreat into the wilderness for perfect serenity that can never be filled. You can take holidays, stay in the country for years, and escape from everyday life for periods that never seem long enough. You eventually find your still center, and the words flow. But, it can never last. Sooner or later, you have to go back to your life.
Looking back on that early period, I realize now that I was still young, a person undergoing construction, with elements of my personality and belief system that had yet to coalesce into any kind of sense. To write fiction, I had to travel out of town and stay by the seaside for extended periods of solitude and find myself before I could work. Just having a person enter the room when I was writing was enough to break my flow. My link with the craft was flimsy. Tenuous.

But as I say, it’s changed a lot over the years. If you ask me that question today, I would say I’m no longer as easily distracted.
The older I get, the less I need my environment to be a certain way, and the less I need to leave town or ‘retreat’ to produce the copy. My workstation is at the kitchen table. I live here with my two grown-up sons in a small house. The boys have friends over, and there is constant music and chatter. Sometimes, I’ll be sitting at my computer working with a crowd of teenagers two steps away from me playing Mario Kart on the Nintendo in the living room, and my middle son sitting six steps away from me watching WWE (wrestling) at top volume on his tablet. It’s a constant barrage of babbling, boisterous, bombast, and coming at me in surround sound. I have learned how to zoom in with more focus on my story and close the mayhem out of my mind. I ignore them. A cone of silence drops.

The result, the work gets done. And I don’t have to spend a fortune and hightail into the countryside. There are so many blessings about getting older. I am happy to say that in my old age, I’m discovering the truth, that there is nowhere to rush to, nothing to change. I can write wherever I am, no matter what else is going on. My old age has taught me I’m not in charge. The stories come from the muse, the ether, ‘the inspired whatevers’ as my dear friend Meg used to say and percolate through my mind, my life, my gathered knowledge and experiences and understanding, and all I have to do – as Julian Fellowes once famously put it – (is) “let the words trickle out.”
Sit at my desk. That’s what I’ve learned after 40+ years of writing. Show up.
Then you can write – even with noisome boys near and in your ear.
How do you cope with all the distractions of modern life?

Talk to you later.
Keep Writing!
Yvette Carol
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“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which YOU can retreat at any time and find peace.” – Hesse

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I know I’ve mentioned this story from my past before, but it bears repeating here. That of a run-in I had with one of my first writing tutors, Maria Stuttard, where she asked me at one point, “How old are you?”
I responded, “Seventeen.”
Maria said, “My advice to you is to put down your pen.”
I was aghast. What?
She went on. “Go out, live your life, pack into it everything you possibly can, and then come back to your desk and write.”
There was no way I could stop writing stories – it was my form of stress release. But, I did ‘go out into the world and live my life.’ My storywriting continued in the background of my adult life and has been my ongoing hobby for more than forty years.
What I see now is that Maria was right. To write well for the erudition of others, an author has to have lived. At our Fabulatores writing group today, the girls and I were saying that we use tidbits from our whole lives in every story, snippets of conversation, turns of phrase, personality quirks, funny and or distressing situations, stories we have heard, things we have witnessed – that we draw on this rich reservoir when we write fiction. Maria was right. I regret doubting her, as the older I get the more I feel I have to offer my writing.

~ Picturing Future History ~

Some things you don’t talk about. And, practicing visualization was one of those things we didn’t talk about 35 years ago. It is a technique my sister and I first read about in a book by Shakti Gawain called Creative Visualization. Back in those days such ideas as the mind-body connection were considered airy-fairy. Even so, this “little” book went on to sell more than six million copies. Essentially, it is about the practice of making mental images and confirming statements toward attaining a goal. Luckily, there’s a lot of research proving that mental practices like visualization are incredibly powerful aids to achieving life goals, especially those to do with health, business, the creative arts, and sports. For many years, elite athletes like professional athletes and Olympians have used visualization to enhance sports performance.

In Dr Gemma Newman’s new book, Get Well, Stay Well, Gemma talks about using this technique. She mentions research that was done using a group of volunteers. One group had to sit and visualize themselves doing bicep curls with a dumbbell for 15 minutes five days a week. One group did the same but they saw themselves doing the exercise in the distance. The control group did no visualization and no exercise. In the end, the group who saw themselves doing bicep exercises up close, in real time, in their mind’s eye had increased their bicep size and strength – purely by imagining themselves doing the workout.
Therefore, in everyday life, if there is some hurdle coming up, I could use this technique to see myself doing whatever it is, in real-time, up close, feeling the good feelings associated with things going well, telling myself positive statements, and that would help me to achieve that positive goal. Gemma advocates using visualization regularly to be more effective and affirmative.

When she was interviewed on Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast, Feel Better, Live More, Gemma told us a story about Mohammed Ali. Apparently, Ali used visualization as part of his preparation for a fight. He would see every move he was going to make, every punch, right down to the knock-out punch. In fact, he started telling people in press conferences exactly when he’d deliver the knockout blow. He was requested by management to stop doing so, as it was adversely affecting the betting!
Ali instead wrote on a piece of paper when he’d deliver the knock-out blow, and slip the paper inside his glove. After the fight, he’d strip off the glove and throw it into the audience then ask whoever caught it to take out the piece of paper and read it out – revealing that he’d written out beforehand when he would deliver the knockout blow – and how did he know? Because he practiced visualization beforehand. But he didn’t call it that, he called it Future History – which I love. It demonstrates that it is possible to craft our own future or at least influence it. For my purposes, I have re-coined it, “Picturing Future History”. It’s simple, free, and you don’t have to move from the spot.

Since being reminded of the technique, I have been using it daily. What do I visualize? Myself getting younger stronger and healthier every decade. Why not? At the moment my sister is sick and some days stays in bed. I reminded her of our old days of practicing Creative Visualization and suggested that on her bad days, she imagine herself walking and doing a workout. My sister also has to undergo painful medical procedures. I suggested she imagine herself painless and tell herself she is pain-free.

The new studies are showing that visualization reduces the perception of pain – therefore, the experience of pain. Scientists are doing research into this at the moment to help relieve chronic pain sufferers. I’ll be watching the developments with interest. Techniques like this can support us in so many ways. It’s an exciting new technology of another kind. Picturing Future History is simple, free, and organic (LOL), you don’t have to move a muscle, and all it costs is a few moments of your time.
For all the world’s faults, I sometimes think this is an exciting time to be alive.
What new research and scientific studies have lit you up lately?

Talk to you later.
Keep reading!
Yvette Carol
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Our bodies communicate to us clearly and specifically, if we are willing to listen. ~ Shakti Gawain

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~ IWSG: NaNoWriMo, Yes or No? ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post on the first Wednesday of every month. Every month, the organizers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and the hashtag is #IWSG.

November 1 question: November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?
When I pondered this question in last year’s November post, IWSG: NaNoWriMo, I had a set of answers that were true for me then and are still valid for me now. However, this year, I would also add some stuff to that answer because recently I have opened up to the idea of doing less. Have you heard of the reverse bucket list? It is based on the idea that less is more. Ergo, “happierness” as Oprah Winfrey coined it, comes not from wanting and having more but from asking for/anticipating less. When we have 100 things on our vision board that we want to achieve and 50 things on our bucket list, the stress of ticking items off the lists can be counterproductive. By letting go of some of our goals and aspirations, we can expect less, stop striving as hard – let go of the pushing – and relax a little more.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve not got around to compiling a bucket list yet. It gives me the rebel in me staunch satisfaction to think about starting with a reverse bucket list. The American teacher, Arthur Brooks, author of From Strength to Strength, says that every year on his birthday, he goes through his belongings and gets rid of things, clothes, etc, and he looks at his goals and aspirations and releases things from the lists. He says that wanting less is incredibly freeing and satisfying.
This harks back to the first point I made in last year’s blog post on this subject, NaNoWriMo, that I don’t need the stress. Frankly, I resist the idea of inviting more pressure into my life than I have already.

Prolonged raised cortisol levels in the system are known to cause inflammation and lead to all kinds of health issues. Brooks gave the audience a reality check when he asked his interviewer if he knew the names of his grandparents five generations back. No. Four generations? No. Three? No. Two? No. The interviewer could only name his grandparents and some of his great-grandparents. Brooks said, realize that if your great-grandchildren won’t remember you, neither will anyone else.
Reality check. Boom. Whew, I really got that. There is no point in striving for fame, riches, or recognition and suffering all the slings and arrows that go with those things. Far better to relax. Fully embrace our utter insignificance and let that freed energy boost us into more and more happierness. This idea struck a chord. I gravitated toward it instantly.

I look forward to writing my reverse bucket list this November, and while I’m at it, I’ll write a reverse wish list on my birthday in December and a reverse resolutions list for New Year’s. Whoopee! The only thing I don’t think I could ever strike off the lists would be writing stories.
What are your thoughts?

Talk to you later.
Keep Writing!
Yvette Carol
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‘Naboclish! (‘Never mind!’) ~Trish Nicholson

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~ THE SUPER HUMAN PROTOCOL ~

I’ll be first to admit that it is with mild consternation I regard turning 59 at the end of this year. They always say the “nine years” are difficult, as we peer nervously into the next decade of our lives. I am staring down the prospect of entering my 60s next year. Sobering stuff. At the same time, I am grateful that I am alive for hopefully another decade of my life. There are many loved ones who have passed on from this world who don’t get to say the same. The subject of longevity suddenly becomes more interesting. But it’s not just life span that interests me it’s health span. I don’t want to live to be 100 and be in a wheelchair I want to live to be 100 and be strong, fit, and vital!
I’ve stayed active most of my adult life and I do my best to eat well. However, in the last few years, I have sometimes felt discomfort in my elbows. I lie on my back when I’m asleep, and sometimes the pain of my elbows against the bed wakes me in the middle of the night. This year, I have been doing research into wellness. I’ve been making lifestyle, diet, and exercise changes and doing challenging things, like resistance training and cold showers. My fitness and muscle mass have increased, and my sleep has improved. However, of all the changes I’ve had, by far the most impactful have been since I started the “Super Human Protocol.”

The SHP is the brainchild of Gary Brecka, an American biologist who worked for twenty years for big insurance companies, predicting when people would die. Gary said he got to a point in his career where he was looking at people’s charts thinking, if they only did this and this, they could increase their life expectancy and lead fuller lives. He became more interested in using his expertise to help people improve their health. So Gary quit his position and started his company 10XHealth.
Since then, he has gained a reputation in wellness circles because he has radically improved the lives of some very famous people. He worked with Dana White, the head of the UFC. Dana was struggling with ill health, taking seven medications, and suffering severe sleep apnoea which forced him to wear a mask to bed at night. Gary looked at his test results and calculated Dana had less than ten years to live.
Naturally, Gary advised Dana on the basics of better nutrition and getting started on an exercise regime. At the same time, he began Dana on his prescription, the Super Human Protocol. It’s a combination he says can help people live into more of their health potential simply by getting adequate levels of oxygen, light, and magnetism. Within months, Dana White was off all his medications, had lost the extra weight, could sleep without the face mask, and felt better than he had in years. His life expectancy had increased by thirty years.

Dana had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on gadgets like a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, red lights, and all the equipment. But Gary said it was also possible to follow the protocol for free. We can radically increase the oxygen levels in your blood just by doing daily breathing exercises. Gary recommends three rounds of 30 breaths every morning. On the inhalation, feel the tummy being pulled to the opposite wall, filling the tummy and then the chest. On the 30th breath, let it out and hold it as long as possible. Then inhale, and hold before letting it out slowly. As for light, we humans tend to be chronically deficient in Vitamin D. We can step outside your house when the sun first comes up (which is called “first light”), and there are no harmful side effects. Gary recommends we get sunlight every day for ten to twenty minutes.

The last part of the formula is magnetism (sometimes called grounding or earthing). We gather electrical charge continuously, creating unwanted inflammation in the body – the root cause of disease and all ailments. We can discharge this electrical build-up by going barefoot. Gary recommends either walking or sitting with bare feet on the ground for 30 – 60 minutes a day. We discharge our electrical build up and we take up electrons – we become synched with the earth, which has a healing effect.

I started the SHP as soon as I heard about it. I always gravitate to the simple solutions. For the last few months, I have begun each day doing breathing exercises, getting twenty minutes of “first light” (when it is available), and doing thirty minutes of grounding. What amazed me was that I felt the benefits after the very first day. I woke up without any feeling of discomfort in my elbows. Whaddayaknow? I have more energy. I feel fantastic. I sleep like a baby. My optimism about my prospects for a long health span has gone through the roof. I have to agree with Thomas Carlyle, who said, “He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.”
60? Bring it on, I say!
Have you ever tried anything like the Super Human Protocol?

Talk to you later.
Keep creating!
Yvette Carol

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“You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.” – Maya Angelou

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~ Our Health is Everything ~

Ever since Cyclone Gabrielle knocked out our TV, and we were without a TV for a couple of months, I have been watching podcasts on YouTube. I was an instant fan. The live interview format with some of the most intelligent, cutting-edge people in the world for “long-form conversations” is endlessly fascinating. My friends are probably sick of me by now talking about them, but the truth is, I love podcasts. I am learning things every day, and some are changing my life.

Before February, I considered myself relatively health-conscious and aware of which foods to eat, which supplements to take, and what I needed to do for general fitness. But, I’ve realized in the last few months that all my knowledge was outdated. Science is constantly evolving. The research done by scientists, nutritionists, biologists, neurologists, psychologists, and doctors these days is taking our modern health knowledge to new levels. They predict that within the next ten years, we’ll all have wearable monitors and be monitoring and adjusting our health on a day-to-day basis, and we will reverse, if not halt, aging and disease.

Before February, I considered myself relatively healthy. But since I’ve started listening to and watching daily podcasts, usually up to two or three a day, I have changed my diet, supplementation, and fitness routine, and I feel amazing. I feel stronger, more alert, more energetic, and more generally well than I have done in years.

I realized after listening to Dr. Amen, of AmenClinics, that my brain is the “persistent type.” There are five types of brain: Balanced, Spontaneous, Persistent, Sensitive, and Cautious. Whereas my youngest son is the spontaneous type and needs lots of protein and fewer carbohydrates, I am the persistent type which needs less protein and more carbs. I had been doggedly trying to increase my protein intake for years, and I could never seem to get enough and wasn’t sure what to do about it. In the last month or so, I have stopped doing that. I eat a small amount of chicken, fish, or red meat and a lot more vegetables, plus whole grains – the result is an instant feeling of increased well-being.

Also, inspired by Dr. Amen, I have named my mind “Becky.” This technique helps us gain psychological distance from our thoughts. When thoughts are circling that feel negative or cause me stress I say, “Becky, I don’t want to think those thoughts. Don’t bring them to me again.” And, my mind stops recycling those thoughts. It works! Who knew?

In the past, I used to do the same exercise every day: a 40-minute walk, followed by yoga and a few exercises with the lightest dumbbells. I took the same supplements every day, including selenium and vitamin C. After listening to the longevity expert Dr. David Sinclair, I now “pulse” my exercise and supplements, in other words, I take supplements every other day, and I walk one day, then every other day I run fast for 10 minutes. I no longer take selenium or vitamin C as my liver is learning to produce these things itself (a natural result of fast running and getting breathless). I do the exercises with weights first when I get home using heavier dumbbells and do the yoga as stretching warm-down exercises at the end.

I fast, and I also follow the Glucose Goddess and all her “health hacks” for keeping the body’s glucose steady instead of fluctuating all over the place. I’ve watched numerous podcasts about sleep, and my sleep has improved. Today, I watched a fascinating podcast about “earthing” with Clint Ober, and from now on, I intend to start practicing walking barefoot as often as possible to ground myself. Incredibly, going barefoot reduces inflammation in the body! Check out more info on earthing. com. If you’re curious about which podcasts I watch, they are The Diary of a CEO, Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair, Jay Shetty, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, Dhru Purohit, Lewis Howes, and Andrew Huberman. Check them out and start your health revolution. You won’t regret it. I feel better on every level and it has renewed my belief that, truly, our health is everything!

What about you? Have you listened to any great podcasts or made any health changes lately?

Talk to you later.
Keep reading!
Yvette Carol
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“Believe in your heart that you’re meant to live a life full of passion, purpose, magic and miracles” – R.T. Bennett

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~ SPREADING THE LOVE ~

In Toastmasters last week, during the spontaneous speaking segment of the meeting called Table Topics, I was asked this question, “How has your life changed in the last two years?” I replied, “There has been a lot more stress. Even after doing meditation and yoga each day, there is still stress. But, the greatest change has been the divisions that have taken place between my family and friends.” Apart from the impacts of illness, death, and chaos around us, the pandemic has also divided communities and families. People have become polarised over powerful feelings one way or the other. There is a lot of rhetoric on both sides. My own family has broken into two camps. Some people aren’t talking to others and are not seeing those on the other side of the fence. My friend group has suffered the same fate. As the classic middle child peacekeeper, I navigate my way down the middle, passing messages between the camps. It appears that stress has altered the normal levels of tolerance friends and family would extend to one another. Instead, people are quick to attack and denounce others as wrong. It’s sad.

Whenever I’m in doubt, I retreat to one of the most important lessons I’ve learned so far in 57 years of life on this planet. I’ve shared this message before, and anyone who has known me the last nine years I’ve been active on social media will have heard it already. Be prepared. I will share it again in the future. It is too valuable to keep to myself.
Let me tell you the story.
About thirty years ago, I was a recruit to Amway. I didn’t last long in the business, but, in the beginning, I was new and shiny-eyed, ever curious to learn more. If you are unfamiliar with Amway, it works on a tier system. As you gain more people in your business (or “down lines”), you earn more money, and by the time you reach “Diamond” level, you earn decent returns and have many down lines all looking up to you as their leader.

Our Diamond leaders were an intelligent, good-looking, older couple. They were articulate and kind. For the sake of anonymity, we’ll call them Bob and Sue. I would assume a lot of the teaching and lectures in Amway would take place online these days, but in those days, the meetings happened in person. So we would rock along to school auditoriums and church halls one night a week to hear the various Diamonds and above give talks about building the business.
On Tuesday night, I attended a meeting where my Diamond leaders were speaking. Sue, especially, was glamorous and impeccably dressed, one of those people who has star quality oozing out of her pores. She never goes unnoticed, heads turn. She and I had never spoken in person. I was a mere underling, a newbie so far down the line I had not even signed up a single business prospect. I was starstruck to be in the same room.
The meeting was inspirational, as always. When it finished, I filed out along with everyone else, and somehow, I ended up walking alongside Sue. To my amazement, she started talking to me.

We established I was one of her downlines. We wandered slowly out to the car park. Sue was in full swing, talking about the benefits of the business and the usual speel. Then we faced one another to say our goodbyes. Sue grabbed my hand, and she said, “You know what, honey, if you forget everything else I have told you tonight, it’s fine. There is only one thing I want you to take away. There is one rule I try to follow every day. It’s more important than everything else, even the business.”
I nodded. My focus was on her 100%.
“Whether in your business or in your life, there is only one thing you need to do every day, and that is to SPREAD THE LOVE.”

Even then, I could feel the tingle, the reverberation of those words. The moment and the message were profound. They engraved into my memory. I took the message away with me that night, and it completely changed my outlook. I’ve never forgotten it, and I have endeavoured to apply the wisdom in the years since. Whenever in doubt about any situation, big or small, I remember Sue’s advice. Spread the love.
Within the current climate of disintegration, I remember that life lesson again. Have hurtful things been said to me by family and friends? Yes. Have hurtful things been done to me? Yes. Has misunderstanding run rife? Yes. But do I respond in kind? No. Do I stand in my corner pointing fingers, telling others what they should think or how they should behave? No. Do I belittle and demean others for their choices? No. I come back again and again to that shining woman in that dimly-lit car park, throwing the business narrative out the window to impart the most valuable truth in her life.

I think, how can I SPREAD THE LOVE?

Talk to you later.
Keep creating!
Yvette Carol
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“Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” ~ Albert Einstein

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~ Thinking the Right Thoughts ~

Long before positive thinking or affirmations became a thing, my grandmother led by example. She had a way of framing things and people in the best light. I’ll never forget what Gran said one day after my eldest son was scolded by my father for doing something naughty. The family, exasperated with him, had decided my son had Attention Deficit Disorder. Gran said, “He’s not naughty. He doesn’t have ADD or anything like that. What he has is spirit. Mark my words, he will go far in life.” (Turned out she was right, but that’s another story). With those words, my beloved grandmother turned a bad situation around to good and changed my outlook for the better.
Gran called it ‘thinking the right thoughts.’

We love that phrase in our family. Whenever any of us had something important happening that we were hoping would go well, Gran would always say, “I’ll think the right thoughts.” Which meant she would only envisage and only speak about the best possible outcome. That was how she lived. She walked her talk. These days I use the technique constantly. In keeping with the theme of resilience in various posts lately, I thought it would be the ideal time to share some of my grandmother’s outlook on life.

You’re welcome.

Whenever Gran had an event or outing coming up, she would say, “I’m looking forward to it with a confident sense of anticipation.” It was so simple. She demonstrated positive thinking as a way of life. That little gem has become a family saying, a special something we say to one another on occasion with fond knowingness.
I used to visit my grandmother on Thursdays. She lived around the corner from our house. I’d walk into her neat, elegant little unit at the start of the day and leave again around five in the evening. Thursdays were our day to hang out together. We always started our soiree with morning tea, which Gran would have set out on a tray. There would be tea in fine china cups with saucers, served with an array of sweet treats. Gran was a legendary baker and baked every day. She’d serve a plate of fresh scones, or sponge cake, or muffins, whatever treats she had made that morning. After eating, we’d sit in the lazy-boy chairs in the living room and talk. Then I would help her put out and bring in the laundry. We sometimes looked at photos or her embroidery. Sometimes we baked together. Then Gran would serve a big lunch with meat, vegetables, and homemade dessert like her apple pie or blackberry crumble. We would talk until it was time to say goodbye.

Every time I reached her door to leave, Gran would give one parting shot to take with me. It was usually one or two favourite sayings, “Remember my dear,” she would say, “Set your sights upon a star, and you will go far,” or “Every cloud has a silver lining, if you look for the silver lining you will find it.“
They were the same sayings, time and again, yet I would walk along the street thinking about what she had said and repeating it to myself.
My grandmother inspired me with her natural optimism and right thinking. It shaped how I look at everything. I am a big believer in daily affirmations, in speaking positively to myself and others. I have a whiteboard with life-affirming statements on it, which I read a few times a day.
If we want to keep our spirits up, we need to bear witness to the words coming out of our mouths. People these days tend to be one-track-minded and fatalistic. Conversations have never been more boring.

Chats with friends and neighbours can often be depressing, and I don’t think these people realize the effect they’re having on others. Why not converse with loved ones about the book you’re reading, the movie you’ve seen, or the creative project you’re working on. We don’t always have to talk about Covid, people!
I prefer following my grandmother’s example. The glass-half-full approach means looking at the things that are working in our lives. I use a daily gratitude journal to note what I’m grateful for and make it a practice to say thank you for all the blessings. If you ask how I’m doing, I’ll be thinking the right thoughts and looking forward to what the future brings with a confident sense of anticipation!

I hope you gained a gem or two from this post for yourself.
Do you have grandparents with their little sayings? Have you ever tried keeping a gratitude journal?

Talk to you later.
Keep creating!
Yvette Carol
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“Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively.” – Maxwell Maltz.

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~ Te Po ~

Recently I went to see the award-winning play Te Po with my friends, and to say I felt blown away would be a giant understatement. I consider myself a total Luddite compared to my friends. Right from the start, when I met my girlfriends in high school, they invited me to do such cultured things as take grapes to the park and read poetry. They fascinated, enlightened, and challenged me in many ways. As adults, they have coerced me into going to art galleries, shows, and performances I would never attend on my own. I have been to one other play in my life, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. I was twelve. I felt a twinge of resistance when my friends suggested we attend a play together. But that is why these ladies are so good for me because they force me out of my low-brow comfort zone.

We met early in the evening for minestrone and then made our way to our local events center. Te Po, they told me, was part of the centenary celebration of New Zealand playwright Bruce Mason’s birth. The performers would appear in a theatre named after the playwright, and it was only on for two nights. Like a pop-up store, it was a pop-up theatre. Blink, and you would miss it. Luckily, I let my friends twist my arm, and we attended this lightning in a jar. Te Po, written by Carl Bland, is a comedy, as told by a policeman, a blind man, and a priest, about missing playwright Bruce Mason. And it is laugh-out-loud funny. Though sometimes, we wept.
Te Po is Maori for The Great Darkness, a destination for the dead. It is a place where the dead can revisit their potential and attain knowledge. The elderly Maori character anchors the piece, sings the songs, speaking melodic Maori and English, as the wise man who knows all. He bridges the gap between the worlds and brings spiritual depth.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Te Po. Live theatre is an enlivening experience. Who knew? The combination of a great story, plus fascinating human beings in 3-D, with lights, music, and special effects, was immersive, transformative, and captivating. I felt drawn further and further into the world they created. The mystery deepened in the first acts, and strange things happened, like, the furniture shifted unaided across the stage, giving us a visceral sense of being unsettled. At times, they closed the curtains, plunging us into darkness and playing the sounds of a wild crashing storm. The stage was incredible, with a writer’s office with windows that opened and bookshelves and chairs that moved across the stage. Towards the story apex, the colors deepened to sepia tones, and the whole set began to slide backwards, making the scene appear to dwindle. The effects were well done. Special mention must go to the puppeteer, who created a believable seagull and a captivating giraffe head that took our breath away.

It was interesting to compare how the script for a play follows similar conventions to writing fiction. The writer asked a question then withheld the answer. There was foreshadowing going on and red herrings that became important later. There were expectations set up then dashed. Though somewhat truncated, the characters each had an arc. And the rules changed most refreshingly as the story went along until we finally caught up to speed with the surreal nature of the piece. By then, we had abandoned ourselves to the ride anyway and didn’t care anymore. In the end, when the priest finally gives his last sermon, as promised, it provoked belly laughter from start to finish. We laughed till we cried. It was glorious.
I walked out energized, excited, and with a slightly altered view of the world (the whole intention of art). Now I understand why people around these parts have raved about this play. I am a convert to the wonders of live theatre. It is like a whole new world. Woohoo!

What about you, have you been to a live show lately?

Talk to you later.
Keep creating!
Yvette Carol
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Be at peace with where you’ve been and where you are. That’s how you win the battlefield of the mind. ~ Andrena Sawyer

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