By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Jan 22, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
I never would have thought, when I was single, that those 4 words could sound so sexy. “We’ve got an hour.” With a raised eyebrow it becomes a full-fledged turn-on. At least I have the hour. Usually.
As I prepare to fully enter the world of new media when my iPhone 5 arrives next week, I find myself sad to retire my Crackberry. Those little keys on the keypad are so easy and so soothing. I can get so much done. Or nothing at all. When both my husband and my son started complaining that I was so addicted to my Blackberry that I didn’t notice them, I knew I had a problem. I had just thought I was a Blackberry Girl.
So I started realizing that how I spend my time might have some impact on whether I am reaching my goals. I know I’m always busy. Emails, texts, constant communication. But maybe I’m just running a treadmill?
Ironically, they had a marathon of Ground Hog Day on TBS or something last week. (Yes, they played it over and over. Lol.) Like a sucker, I watched even though I have seen it many times before. (I watched in between emails, anyway.) I didn’t see the end but I asked my friend who is a huge Bill Murray fan: “What finally got him to the next day?” It was when he started focusing on the people in his life in a helpful and vulnerable way. He wasn’t concerned about what he was getting from them. But he still was going after what he wanted. (i.e. Andie MacDowell.)
I want to recommend to you, if you are single, to be Bill Murray. Try to be Bill Murray in the last go ‘round of Ground Hog Day, not Bill Murray in Caddyshack. (The pond is not so good for you.) Bill Murray in Lost in Translation is not bad either.
What this means— There’s a guy who was in the papers this week because he has spent $65,000 on Matchmakers and has not gotten a mate. I have not worked with him but supposedly I might be approached next. (at least that’s what the Yahoo reporter said when she quoted me)
Here’s what I would tell him: I run a matchmaking company, Matchmaker Cafe, but I don’t consider myself a matchmaker because finding love cannot be outsourced. It cannot be figured out on paper nor by an algorithm. You have to meet. Emailing and texting is only useful to the extent that you use that technology to set up a date. At Matchmaker Café we facilitate dates because you are busy and you may need a concierge. We don’t promise to find the person for you. You have to collaborate with us, to have some skin in the game. We know that you don’t need endless email noise and phone tag. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on matchmakers and your iPhone (or Blackberry!) is not going to help you that much. You need to have a date. And you need to show up for it. It’s as simple as that. But over and over. Until it works, like Bill Murray.
Read the rest of… Nancy Slotnick: We’ve Got an Hour
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jan 21, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
Happy Martin Luther King Day
A man who taught us about the importance of fighting for — in a humble, appropriate and civilly disobedient manner– the God-given freedoms bestowed on each of us.
Even if others who claim they are the actual bestowers of these freedoms, in fact, are usurping them.
“Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, I am free at last” has become the universal rallying cry for all who have ever found freedom from bondage, political or personal.
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jan 18, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
It was just another Sunday afternoon.
The Kansas City Chiefs were playing the Green Bay Packers on TV. I remember that.
And my father was playing cards with some friends, probably gin rummy. My mom was hosting and I was just kind of hanging around….I remember getting one of the men there to play basketball with me earlier in the day. We had a basketball goal in the driveway but not much room toplay. So we just shot around instead of playing HORSE or one-on-one. In the back we had a kidney shaped pool and area for grilling out. It was on the beach and I loved staying there because at nighttime you could hear the ocean waves crash rhythmically against the beach sand until I fell asleep.
But this was a Sunday afternoon and I was bored amidst all the activity. Not much for an 8 year old kid to do. Mostly adult fun. And so I walked out back and looked onto the beach. An older lady in a bathing suit wrapped in a towel seemed anxious and waved to me. She had long gray hair large sun glasses and asked if I’d seen a young child wandering on the beach. She described the child but I was only half-listening. She told me that she had fallen asleep on the beach watching her grandchild and just woke up. A man from the party, I didn’t recognize him, walked up to us and listened as she explained again what had happened. Suddenly, I had something to do. Like a game almost. My job was to find this wandering baby before anyone else did. I walked up the beach a bit and down and didn’t see any young children. The older man from my parent’s party acted like he was looking hard but really wasn’t. He stood by the grill area and craned his neck a little and used his hand to block the sun from his eyes so he could get a better view. But he saw no children either.
I felt bad for the grandmother but was also getting a little annoyed that she wanted me and not an adult to help her out. I was bored and had nothing to do but didn’t want to spend the next half hour looking for a child I didn’t even know. But I tried. Or at least pretended to, like the man from the party. I walked around to the front of the house and saw nothing. It was getting windy and a little chilly and I wondered back to where I had seen the grandmother and she wasn’t there. I figured she left. And I stepped toward the pool and walked alongside the curve where the pool was shaped like turned-in side of a kidney. My job every morning was to take a long pole and skim the pool of any debris that had collected from the day before. And I was imagining doing that as I walked toward the deep end and saw a child-like blur languishing at the pool bottom. I dashed inside and screamed to my father that a baby was in the bottom of the pool. My dad leapt out of his chair where he was playing cards, knocking it over as he ran outside and in seemingly one motion dashed outside and dove straight into the deep end and pulled out the baby. He had been a competitive swimmer growing up and got to the baby faster than anyone else there could have.
My mother called 911 and it seemed the paramedics were there instantaneously. My mother seemed calmer than she was as tears welled in her eyes and she led the paramedics to the baby. I was kept on the other side of the pool away from all the activity. I remember hearing that they turned the baby upside down and water apparently came flushing out of its tiny body. But it was too late. The baby had been underwater far too long and had drowned and could not be resuscitated.
I don’t remember much after that. It was a horrifying shock that wasn’t supposed to happen on a Sunday afternoon when parents are socializing with friends and kids are bored and it’s too chilly to be on the beach in Hallandale, Florida. And the Chiefs and Jets are playing a football game that everyone seems interested in. And a baby wanders off from a sleeping grandmother on the beach outside your house and falls into your pool and drowns…. and the whole world turns upside down and your life is changed forever. On just another Sunday afternoon.
And the waves at night never sound quite the same as they crash rhythmically against the beach sand while I try to fall asleep.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jan 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Great moments in family conversations.
Three dudes or guys (Johns, really) in a typical guy-like conversation.
The one on the right (that would be me) is enthusiastically trying to communicate something of moderate interest to himself and, he thinks and hopes of at least moderate interest to his father and perhaps some remote interest to his son.
The one in the middle (that’s my son, Johnny) knows what I am doing and knows the topic is not of any interest whatsoever to him and probably of no interest to my father either even though I think it may be —and the main goal now is to look distracted by something going on elsewhere in the room so he person can keep thinking about whatever it is he is thinking about and not be expected to respond to my comment. And eventually be able to change the subject to something of greater interest to him and his grandfather.
The one on the left (my father, Big John) is engrossed reading something of interest to him but also realizing the comment the one on the right is making is taking a very long time and some sort of response will be expected of him since it is directed his way, mostly, and he needs to hear enough of it to comment adequately without having to listen to everything I am saying, especially since the one in the middle doesn’t appear that he will help out by offering a comment of feigned interest to help out.
We have a lot of great conversations this way when we are together.
One of my Russian martial art coaches loved chess; which may be more of a national sport than Sambo.
Often he’d see me worried about the size, strength or speed of my opponents, and he’d recount an old proverb, “After the game, the king and… the pawn go into the same box.”
He had once continued, “You have anxiety because you are getting sucked down into the mere game. Look from the top. imagine you are pieces on a chessboard. Your pawn only weakens because you feel small next to his front, and so you feel anxiety about your lack of potential. But now view it from the top, see your pawn in its full strength, what it represents to your opponent, and realize it is the most important piece on the board.”
He taught me that my pawn could have the greatest courage and cause the entire opposition to rattle. If I remained brave enough to approach the opponent’s rear line, even a pawn could transform into the most powerful piece on the board: a queen. “Even the humble, unexpected pawn can change the course of a game,” he’d insist.
So what are you going to do in this game? If all you are doing is going back into the box, if you can’t take it with you, then HOW you play the game remains the only point to this all.
Your true powers exceed the movements you may feel restricted to execute. Your importance lies not in your potential powers, but by your very courage. So, how you choose to stand, how you decide you will act while you are on the board, is the entire point of our game. Even the humble, unexpected pawn can change the course of the game through bravery. None of us are getting out of here alive, so let us enjoy the game, but more importantly, let us not be deluded into collecting pieces or wins.
Let us focus our goals upon the courage to follow our values even against overwhelming odds, even with those who have become blind to the point of he game, and the inevitability that we will all go back in the box.
“Each Person’s life is like a mandala—a vast limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear, and think, forms the mandala of our life. We enter a room, and the room is our mandala. We get on the subway, and the subway car is our mandala, down to the teenager checking messages on her i-phone, and the homeless man slumped in the corner. We go for a hike in the mountains and everything as far as we can see is our mandala: the clouds, the trees, the snow on the peaks, even the rattlesnake coiled.”
~Pema Chodron, Living Life Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change
Standing in the center of our own lives is a powerful place to be. If life is in fact a vast limitless circle, it means that not only are all our experiences meaningful and brimming with potential, it also means that our loved ones have their own mandalas to create—even if that means they must make mistakes and experience painful struggle at times.
This was, is still sometimes, a tough concept for me as a mother. I want to prevent problems before they occur especially because my acute foresight spots a snag just as it begins to unravel. And why should it have to unravel if it doesn’t have to? Unraveling is bad. Bad unraveling, bad!
I have lost many nights of sleep and found many a pizza and pint of ice cream in my fretful worrying about unraveling. There are so many people in my life for who my help, if only they would follow it exactly as directed, could be spared struggle, disappointment, anguish, a sore throat, even.
But the truth is that considering the magnitude and mystery of the grand scheme of things here, there’s no way to tell if someone else’s experience is actually an unraveling. Chances are quite good in fact that one’s perception of another’s pitfall is really an incomplete view. You can only stand in the center of your own mandala, not someone else’s. What if their struggles, disappointments, anguish and re occurrent sore throat are meant to lead them to more deeply intricate aspects of personal mandala design?
This realization could unburden many a Catholic and Jewish mother.
What’s more, Pema Chodron goes on to say, “But it’s up to you whether your life is a mandala of neurosis or a mandala of sanity.”
If I habitually lose sleep and gain pizza because of someone else’s problem, I have carefully created a new problem where none existed, and, am choosing to live it as I decide to create a life of neurosis for myself.
Phew. Well, when I put it that way…
Conversely and coincidentally, as I sit down to edit this article this morning—waiting for my computer to boot up—I glance at Facebook on another device and see right there in my news feed the proof that this is all true: “My happiness depends on me, so you are off the hook.”
This realization could unburden many a spouse, parent, friend, employee, parent, grocery checker, teacher, aunt, and parent.
Dear loved ones, you are officially off the hook. And, I will officially really, really try to stop worrying about you—I know I’m off the hook. See you from the center.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jan 15, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
The magic of moms.
Recently my wife and two kids and I were flying together. As always we somehow lucked out again and got the next to last row in the airplane. We usually get the very last row, but this time we did almost as well.
The important thing, though, is that midway through the flight I looked over at my son (in aisle seat), daughter (window seat) and wife (middle seat) to my left as I worked away on my laptop on the aisle seat across from them.
They were all laughing and the kids were commenting as my wife told stories about them when they were little. Funny stories they love to hear and be reminded of as each child gets older and sees a different wrinkle of insight about themselves in the story while also being reminded of the family bonds and good feelings of an early time in our lives.
The engaged laughter and commentary made it to a low roar that seemed to last the entire flight and at one point, even though I was listening and smiling to myself, I had to gently “shush” them to keep from distracting those around us.
That didn’t go over well with them –and they got even louder.
And I was reminded that without the magical mom in the middle, the two children would have been quiet, well-behaved kids enduring a long flight reading to themselves while father worked. And no one laughed or commented on anything– except what to have for lunch when asked by the flight attendant.
Which was neither funny nor worthy of engaged commentary.
And what a different flight (life?) it would be. For all of us.
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Jan 15, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
The new buzz word in the world of tech entrepreneurs is cherry-picking. It’s used as a verb, as in “You can cherry-pick your customers based on targeted demographics.” These MBA types like to have shared lingo because it makes them sound smart. I like to learn it so that I can pretend to fit in. I never really do fit in, but it got me thinking about cherry-picking and where that expression came from.
I believe that life is a bowl of cherries. Lately I have been affirming that belief on a daily basis with the intention of creatively visualizing a brave new 2013 for me. So far it’s working. But often when I get all excited about a goal or a new year’s resolution it goes through the following cycle: Hope, Action, Reinforcement, Bold Action, Rejection, Defeat. Repeat.
I’m trying to break that cycle with my “no fear” new year’s resolution. I suspect that cherry-picking may be part of the problem. If life is a bowl of cherries, and that is the symbol of beauty in the world, then it must hold true that
Cherry-picking = Nitpicking.
Aha, there’s the rub. I picture some lesser version of myself going to Whole Foods and literally picking out cherries one by one to get the best. But they are all cherries at Whole Foods! Granted the cherries at this store could be dubbed Whole Paycheck but they’re going to be delicious and it can’t possibly be worth my time to pick them out one by one.
I tell myself- “Just buy the bag. Enjoy the cherries. Don’t be nitpicky.” It’s not even as unpredictable as Forrest Gump said about the chocolates. You do know what you’re going to get- a cherry! If it’s no good then you spit it out along with the pit and you move on. (Do those of you out there who are dating see where I am going with this?) You still have a bowl of cherries.
Read the rest of… Nancy Slotnick: A Bowl of Cherries
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Jan 8, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
“You never don’t know” is what my mother-in-law says when she means “You never know.”
It must be said in a Polish accent with the conviction that only a Holocaust survivor could pull off while using a double negative. So by the theory of transitivity, “You never don’t know” equals “You always know.” I’m going with that theory.
You always know.
If you can tap into your instincts, and distinguish them from anxiety, you always know. “Is he the One?” You know. “Should I have that opening line?” You know. “Should I write that email to reach out?” You know, but you don’t always listen to your gut. You talk yourself out of it.
Do you expect greatness to come your way or mediocrity? Or disaster? Murphy’s Law is more about Murphy than about a law of nature. I think Murphy attracted bad luck because he’s always expecting bad luck and it feeds on itself. Of course if you want to attract good luck you have to do the work. There’s plenty of good luck out there and it will come your way sooner or later. You just have to be prepared to seize your luck.
Here’s how: Let’s say you’re on a train traveling for the holidays, like I am right now. Let’s say you’re single and you secretly wish that the man of your dreams would sit next to you. You do hold out the hope for good luck. But you also dread the fat lady who talks your ear off or the crying baby that blocks the audio of Gossip Girl Season 2. Even though you’ve already seen it. You are tempted to just put your backpack up on the seat next to you, put on your headphones and go into “Do Not Disturb” mode. If you’re lucky, then the train is not sold out and you will get two seats to yourself. But is that what you really want?
If you know that you want more, you may have to put your “Cablight” on, as I call it, and try to show that the seat is available for the right guy. There is a strategy you can employ. Put the backpack up as you scope the crowd passing by. Choose your target. He may not be your Brad Pitt, but pick the best one of the lot of train travelers with your mind’s eye and start your training to attract what you want in life.
As he gets about 2 seats away from you, move the backpack and look up. Make eye contact. This will be hard. Be vulnerable for a second and make it visible to him in your eyes. Then look away and go back to Gossip Girl so he doesn’t think you’re a stalker and he knows that you aren’t going to be annoyingly forward. Let him come to you. This should work if you do it right, with confidence and humility at the same time. It probably won’t though. Law of averages.
But if it doesn’t, get up and move seats. Why? Because you still have hope that there’s a better guy in another car. Because you’re willing to give up the comfort of a window seat near the Café car for the chance of finding something better. Someone better. Like Deal or No Deal with the universe. You believe that the banker has something good in store for you in that briefcase and you’re willing to take risks.
In the Harry Potter adventures, they say that the wizard doesn’t choose the wand. The wand chooses the wizard. What it means to turn your Cablight on is that you have to be in an open mindset for the wand to find you. And even if it finds you, you’ll have no idea how to use it unless you train. Train yourself to be bold and push past your comfort zone. And take the train. The only person you will meet if you’re driving in your car is the toll-booth operator. Really?!?
I want to recommend to you, if you are single, to be Bill Murray. Try to be Bill Murray in the last go ‘round of Ground Hog Day, not Bill Murray in Caddyshack. (The pond is not so good for you.) Bill Murray in Lost in Translation is not bad either.
I felt bad for the grandmother but was also getting a little annoyed that she wanted me and not an adult to help her out. I was bored and had nothing to do but didn’t want to spend the next half hour looking for a child I didn’t even know. But I tried. Or at least pretended to, like the man from the party. I walked around to the front of the house and saw nothing. It was getting windy and a little chilly and I wondered back to where I had seen the grandmother and she wasn’t there. I figured she left. And I stepped toward the pool and walked alongside the curve where the pool was shaped like turned-in side of a kidney. My job every morning was to take a long pole and skim the pool of any debris that had collected from the day before. And I was imagining doing that as I walked toward the deep end and saw a child-like blur languishing at the pool bottom. I dashed inside and screamed to my father that a baby was in the bottom of the pool. My dad leapt out of his chair where he was playing cards, knocking it over as he ran outside and in seemingly one motion dashed outside and dove straight into the deep end and pulled out the baby. He had been a competitive swimmer growing up and got to the baby faster than anyone else there could have.
Great moments in family conversations.
Conversely and coincidentally, as I sit down to edit this article this morning—waiting for my computer to boot up—I glance at Facebook on another device and see right there in my news feed the proof that this is all true: “My happiness depends on me, so you are off the hook.”
As he gets about 2 seats away from you, move the backpack and look up. Make eye contact. This will be hard. Be vulnerable for a second and make it visible to him in your eyes. Then look away and go back to Gossip Girl so he doesn’t think you’re a stalker and he knows that you aren’t going to be annoyingly forward. Let him come to you. This should work if you do it right, with confidence and humility at the same time. It probably won’t though. Law of averages.
