Remember when the Texas cattle ranchers sued Oprah for supposedly defaming the beef industry?  Well, Oprah’s “What I Know For Sure” column this month talks about that episode in her life.  She didn’t really understand why this was happening, and even though she believes everything happens for a reason, she couldn’t quite figure out what this was supposed to teach her.

And then she went on the stand.  The prosecuting attorney tried to paint a picture of Oprah that made her out to be a manipulator as she conspired against the beef industry.  As she listened, she “got very still inside” and told herself that the words they said didn’t define her accurately.  Then she realized what she was supposed to learn:  “I realized that whether you’re on trial or you’re going through a trial–difficulty, pain, illness, heartache–the trial stands outside of you, flailing, ranting and raging, trying to tell you who you are.”

She goes on to say that nobody can tell you who you are–you alone can define yourself.  You just have to trust that who you are is OK and that no matter what happens, you’ll be just fine.

I don’t want to do the “Something to Think About” questions.  I’m tired of them.  Only four issues in, and I’m tired of the constant self-examination.  Though, now that I look at these, I suppose they aren’t too bad:

1. “Think of the person you trust the most.  How has he or she earned your confidence?”  Well, by being honest with me.  Listening to me.  Allowing me to be who I am?  Pushing me to be my best.
2. “What can you do to earn your own trust?”  Stop second-guessing myself.
3. “Jot down five significant ways you could show your best friend that you value her.  Right now, plan how you will do all five of those things for yourself by the end of the year.”  Think of something fun/different to do to take my mind off of certain problems.  Making her dinner.  Sending a card just to say hi [though doing that for myself seems kind of weird.  Oh, look!  I got mail!  From me!].  Oh, I don’t know what else–the point of this is that you should value yourself, and I do value myself.  I just am a bit insecure.  I guess I should keep telling myself to move forward, keep working.  At some point talent, luck, and hard work will combine and I’ll realize my dreams.

Yeah, I guess that wasn’t so difficult after all.

Issue 4 has a long Oprah-penned article about the Personal Growth Summits she held in the summer of 2000.  Did you go?  I didn’t, but this article summing them up a bit might help me.

Oprah says she believes, “the universe dreams a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself.” It’s up to you to figure out what your calling is and do it–and the key is that it doesn’t have to be your job.  You can be a good friend or a supportive partner, but you have to believe this is your calling.

It’s weird as an American to think of your calling not being your job.  Our society is so wrapped up in what we do for a living that it’s difficult to contemplate anything else being worthy of being a calling.  But so be it.

I myself believe I’m supposed to be a writer–communicate feelings through words, connect with and entertain people.   So OK, now what, Oprah?

Write a mission statement.  What?  Really?  According to Oprah, she thinks having a mission statement will help you on the path to who you want to be.  You don’t need to follow it to the tee, but having one will help you see “that there are behaviors you will accept and many you won’t.”  You’ll set standards for yourself that you can then use to decide how to fulfill your calling.

Part of following your calling is getting rid of “the disease to please.”  Another reminder (though I think this one needs to be beaten into my head until I finally get it)!  Pleasing others can make you feel overwhelmed, and it also allows them to define you.  To change that and be your own person, you need to examine the intention behind your actions and make sure you’re doing something (e.g.–a favor) because you want to do it?

Focus is also another key to fulfilling your life’s work.  That makes sense–focus on what you want to do, and after a while you become that type of person.  If every day I create a lot of dishes to wash, I’m going to become more of a dishwasher than a writer, so I have to make sure I keep writing, even on days like today where I’m just not feeling it (and I’m feeling more like you’re saying, “Yep, I don’t know where she gets this whole ‘writer’ idea….this stuff is pretty lame!”).  Soon something will click and I’ll get there.  I’ve got to believe that.

The last page of the article has a box of homework on it.  Great.  More fucking work to do on myself (today I’m also feeling like, “How much do I have to change?  How much is really wrong with me?”).  Here’s what we’re supposed to do:

1. “Write down the major beliefs that have shaped your life.”  There is a God.  Education is everything.  Books open up your world.  Try it–you might like it.  Explore!
2. Do you have any shadow beliefs–things that hold you back like “hidden memories” or “something you heard in childhood”–that continue to plague you to this day?  What are they?  Gosh, there has to be something…there’s a general feeling of insecurity, and I think that comes from being told what to do instead of learning how to make my own choices.  I have this general feeling of, “Am I doing this right?  Is this OK?”
3. What is your calling?  To be a writer.
4. At some point you’re going to have to give up something in order to be able to move ahead (e.g.–your temper, bad attitude, a bad relationship).  What do you need to give up?  Can you start giving it up now?  Focusing on my perception of others.  Letting what happens to others affect my focus, my calling, and my path in life.
5. “What’s important to you?”  Here you’re supposed to make a pie chart and divide it into at least five categories of how you spend your time.  Give time to each area every day and you’ll see a change.  “Whatever you focus on expands.”
6. Write down the names of three people who lift you up and one person you need to remove from your life.  “What will it take for you to do it?”  I’m going to keep this one private.  I doubt anyone would like to hear that I need them out of my life, and if I saw a friend’s list of three people who lifted them up and I wasn’t on it, well, I’d be a little bummed out.  (I know–I don’t need other people to tell me I’m nice/cool, but in my fragile, repair-myself state, I also don’t need to see if I’m not cool)
7. “Cultivating gratitude is one of the best things you can do for yourself.  Write down five things that you’re grateful for today.”  That I could quit my job to focus on my writing.  A good husband.  A roof over my head and plenty to eat.  Wonderful friends.  The ability to dance.

I’ll work on that mission statement and get back to you on it.  I’m not thrilled about doing it, but I should at least try it, seeing as how my old ways haven’t been so successful.

One of the “Live Your Best Life” articles is called “Tune in to Yourself ” by Barbara Graham. I originally hadn’t planned on writing about it because the first part is a story on how the author should’ve listened to her gut and not married this guy she divorced a year after the wedding. I figured I’d already waited for the right guy, I’d gotten fairly good at listening to my gut, so this one wouldn’t be helpful.

Well, I wasn’t exactly wrong, but it does have a few pointers that wouldn’t hurt me to remember. The author writes that when we’re babies we know what we do and don’t like, but as we grow up, we tend to start pleasing other people and looking for approval a lot more. The danger of that is doing what I did–a job that other people wanted me to get.

Graham includes a quote from Eupictetus: In trying to please other people, we lose our hold on our life’s purpose.” That happened to me. I listened to other people and lost focus of my own goals and purposes, and life wasn’t so great. Now I need to trust myself more in my work and my writing and make choices that are appropriate for me.

Florence Falk, a Manhattan psychotherapist who’s quoted extensively in the article says, “Self-trust take enormous courage. Ultimately, it means taking responsibility for your own life.” To me, that’s a pretty powerful lesson. Do I feel lame learning it at age 35? Yes. But it’s never too late to learn, and now that I’m working for me, the first priority is for me to be happy doing what I’m doing.

I’ve been asked to help out a local news site by contributing a story. This is unpaid work, but I’d get a byline. The question for me is whether or not I still want to do this. Should I only be doing work for pay? If I don’t really want to do journalistic-type writing, should I really be spending time covering a community meeting? I’m still working on the answer, which may be a hybrid of no hard news, but I’ll write a review of something for the byline. It’s kind of a tough decision to make because I really have to trust that I can make a living by doing the type of writing I want to do. I don’t want to feel like I have to please these people simply because they asked me to write something that’s not along my lines of what my goals are. That’s the tough bit–trying not to please. I’ll come up with an answer though, and I’ll try to think of myself and my goals first.

After only four issues, I’m starting to get a little bored of Dr. Phil.  There’s yet another question about spousal trust, another question about spousal respect, and another question about balancing friendships.  The spousal trust topic has been talked about in three of the first four issues.  Dr. Phil only answers three questions an issue, so trust is either a big issue with readers, or Dr. Phil can answer it easily.

Since nothing here seems new or relevant to me, I’m not going to explore Dr. Phil’s column much deeper.

I just had an a-ha moment in the shower and wanted to share it with you before I moved on to Dr. Phil.  I was thinking about what type of person I wanted to be, and I thought of a couple of different things:

• I recently went to a TV show taping, and the audience members around me talked a lot–mostly in response to what was going on on the set, but sometimes it was just talking.  If you’re talking over something you’re there to see, why bother going to the show?  Stay at home and talk.  A pro football player was also in the audience, and when he was pointed out, people bombarded him with autograph requests.  I understand people like feeling close to celebrities, but when you get one autograph for someone and then realize you need three more for the other grandchildren–and wait, maybe your nephew would like one too–then I think that gets a little imposing.  The demands started to sound a little disrespectful to me.
• I’ve been thinking about the environment a lot and trying to figure out what I can do to make it better.  As the snow in Chicago has melted, it’s uncovered an enormous amount of trash.  Why do people litter and disrespect the earth like that.  Don’t you remember Woodsy Owl and “Give a hoot, don’t pollute?”  One would think that even if you’re too young to know that catchphrase, your parents would know it and would have taught you better.

So, in thinking about these things, I realized that I want to be a respectful person.  Respect others, respect myself, respect animals, the earth, things.  This is actually kind of a hard task because I also like mocking and poking fun of, and I’m not sure how respectful that is–maybe I’ll become better at constructive mocking.  Is that possible?  Can it be?

Seriously though, it was nice to have an official a-ha moment.  It gives me something concrete to work on.

This month’s calendar has tasks to help you trust yourself a little bit more. In looking at the action items to think about, I don’t think I need to worry about them so much. Part of that has to do with my age–I’m in my mid-30s (though I believe that’s part of the target audience). Part of it has to do with the fact that I was single for a long time.

I didn’t date a lot in my early-mid 20s. There were random dates here and there, but I never was good at dating. If I felt in my gut something wrong about the guy or that it wouldn’t work out, the relationship didn’t last beyond date 2 or 3. Why bother being in a relationship you don’t feel good about? Just to be with a guy? That’s just dumb.

Oh, I was open to dating–I wasn’t waiting for the right guy to come in and sweep me off my feet–it’s just that if things didn’t click, I didn’t want to waste a lot of time and emotion about it.

This meant that I spent a lot of time by myself, and if I wanted to do something and no one was able/wanted to come with me, I didn’t stay home. I went out and did it. Going to the movies by myself? Not a big deal. Taking a month-long trip up the West Coast by myself? Fun!

Was it difficult to be alone? Of course–I would’ve loved to have had a boyfriend or husband earlier than I did. At the same time, I’m glad that I don’t have a difficult time being by myself.

What’s more difficult is having people question my decisions. Sometimes it’s out of love and said person wants to make sure I’ve fully vetted an issue, but sometimes it’s because the person doesn’t know me enough, projects their image of me on myself, and therefore comes to a conclusion that I’m wrong. Don’t you hate that? The problem is that it can be really destructive to a person and may actually cause that person not to trust themselves.

Anyway, if you’re having a problem with trusting yourself, here are some exercises to try:

• If you’re struggling with a decision and start to turn to a friend to give you the answer, first sit down and really think about what you feel.
• How do you show others that you trust them? What can you take from that to trust yourself?
• Support yourself by writing down (and believing) three great traits about you.
• Think about your relationship with your best friends? Do you depend on them to fix you? What can you do to rely on yourself instead?
• When have you felt good about going with your gut? Take time to consciously listen to it.

I think these are good things to think about, but like I said, over time I’ve learned that only a person can change themselves. That rule applies to yourself too.

Sigh.  Oprah’s kick-off to this month’s issue isn’t good news for an American who wants some instant gratification.  Change, she says, isn’t like getting a makeover.  To make a real change, you really need to decide who you want to be.  She differentiates who you are from what you do or how you look and says that when you figure out who you are, then it’ll be easier to do what you want to do.

Does that make sense?  Oprah illustrates this by saying she wants to be someone “who keeps her word.”  If she’s this type of person, she’s prone to sticking to her exercise routine.  This take is interesting because she says she used to pray for discipline so that she’d continue to exercise.  However, when she decided to be a person who keeps her word, it became easier to get the exercise in.

Who do I want to be?  Hmmmm….that’s a difficult question.  It’s taking out the “what you want to do” bit.  I kind of equate myself with being a writer.  But that’s exactly what Oprah recommends not doing.   I’ll think about it and get back to you–by the time I’m done writing about this issue.