You are a Badass (13 page)
Same exact result—you’re ditched and left to do all the work your-self—two totally different ways to react. Which means . . . . . you have a choice! One choice puts you at risk of busting an artery out of rage,
the other opens your heart.
Another option is to picture yourself hanging out in your brand new boat and an empty boat floats up and bangs into you, leaving a scratch. If there’s nobody in the boat, there’s nobody to get mad at and you deal with the situation in a much calmer, inquisitive way. If there’s some moron driving that other boat who bangs into you because they’re checking a text, however, you deal with it by going crazy and calling them a bunch of names related to genitalia. Again, same exact situation—you get a scratch on your boat—two different ways to react.
When someone does something awful to you, take that person out of the equation so you can open yourself up to have a more pleasant, and productive, reaction (and life). It’s not about them anyway, it’s about you. If you have nobody to be angry at, it’s hard to be angry. Instead, it opens the incident up for questioning. Why did this happen? How was I involved? Why did I attract this to myself? How can I grow from this? How can I find compassion for everyone involved? When you’re consumed by resentment, the lesson can’t get through all your inner, and outer, screaming and yelling. Do yourself a favor and use irritating situations and people as opportunities for growth, not pain.
3. DECIDE YOU’D RATHER BE HAPPY THAN RIGHT
Sometimes the road to freedom lies in deciding you’d rather be happy than right. Yes, your idiot friend should have paid the parking ticket she got when she borrowed your car or your brother shouldn’t have shaved your dog while he was house sitting for you, but if they don’t see it that way, instead of spinning out on it for days, wouldn’t it feel so much better to just let it go? Is it really worth lugging around all those foul feelings just so you can be right? Think to yourself, “What do I have to do
or not do, or think or not think, right now, to be happy?” And if the answer is “let the jackass think he’s right,” then so be it.
4. LOOK AT IT FROM ALL ANGLES
It’s important to remember that everyone is living in their own self-created illusion, and that you have no idea what they’re acting out or where they’re coming from, so just because you think something is totally not okay, in their illusion, it could be fine and
your
way could be totally not okay. Look at it from another perspective, loosen your stranglehold on it being
my way or the highway
, let some air in, and you may be surprised how quickly resentment flies out the window.
For example, you send your good friend a text about a dinner party you’re having and invite them to come. She sends you a text back saying she can’t make it because it’s her birthday. You text her back an apology and sad face. You hear nothing back. So you text her “happy birthday!” You still hear nothing back so you proceed to spin out. You go from feeling awful for hurting her feelings to wondering what kind of idiot adult still cares that much about her stupid birthday to thinking how much you’ll have to spend on a present to relieve your guilt. Meanwhile, she accidentally dropped her phone in the toilet bowl after her last text to you.
By being inquisitive about, instead of a slave to, your reactions to other people, you get the double whammy bonus of not only setting yourself up to forgive them much more easily (because you realize that it’s really about you, not them), but you receive the great gift of being enlightened to some of your own not-so-special traits so you can grow and learn from them (much more on all this in
Chapter 21
: Millions of Mirrors).
In her brilliant book (I mean it, go get it),
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life
, Byron Katie says, “We don’t attach to people or things, we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to be true in the moment.” For example, in the scenario above, instead of attaching to the “truth” that this person isn’t answering your texts because they’re upset, all you need to do is ask yourself, “Why am I freaking out over something that I have no proof is even true?” or “How would I feel if I didn’t just assume that my friend is mad at me?” You could literally be one question away from being happy in any otherwise upsetting situation.
5. HAVE A TOTAL SHITFIT
Go somewhere alone and far away from other people and beat the hell out of a pillow or a mattress or some other soft, inanimate object that won’t hurt your fist or punch you back. Scream and yell about what a selfish little pig this other person is and go for it 100 percent until you’re exhausted or someone calls the cops on you. Get it out of your system, totally and completely, and then let it go.
6. REMEMBER THAT YOU WON’T EVEN REMEMBER THIS
Try and think about someone who had you totally freaking out and all pissed off three years ago. Can you even come up with someone? If you can, can you get all worked up about them now? Whatever or whomever you’re needing to forgive in this moment will most likely be a mere blip not very long from now (depending on the severity of the situation, of course). So why make a huge drama out of it if you’re only going to forget all about it one day? See it as the future non-event
that it is and start forgiving and forgetting right away.
When it comes to forgiveness, what you actually have to DO is not hard. It’s like quitting smoking—you actually do less than you do when you smoke. You don’t have to go to the store to buy cigarettes, you don’t have to open the pack, light one up, find an ashtray, etc. All you have to do is stop. All the work is in letting go of your self-created attachment to cigarettes.
Same with forgiveness. All you have to do is let go of your self-created attachment to this other person or belief.
7. FUGGETABOUTIT
Once you’ve truly forgiven someone, wipe the slate clean. So often we form judgments about people and then, no matter what they do, we see them through the lens of that judgment. Which means we’re just waiting for them to piss us off again. Which means we’re still in the Forvginess-lite stage; we’re pretending we’re cool but we’re really still holding on to some resentment. Release all expectations, let everyone off the hook, treat people as a blank slate over and over again, expect only the best from them regardless of what they’ve done in the past and you may be surprised. What you focus on, you create more of, and if you keep expecting people to annoy you they will not let you down. Focus on their finer points and encourage their good behavior if you want to create more of it.
8. LOVE YOURSELF
You deserve it.
You don’t paddle against the current, you paddle with it.
And if you get good at it, you throw away the oars.
—Kris Kristofferson; singer, songwriter, actor, Rhodes scholar, still super hot for an old guy
Several years ago I went on a life-changing trip to India. In case you haven’t witnessed it yourself, India is heaving with life, a swarming blur of vibrant colors, honking cars, wandering cows, packed trains, endless slums, elaborate palaces, ancient temples, and sweet smelling incense. It’s literally full to the brim with humanity, chatting and chanting, and
sitting on top of you while you struggle for space on an overbooked train. Your only options are 1.) Go with the flow and get to know your neighbor or 2.) Grow a big, fat stress-related tumor. The thing that made perhaps the biggest impression on me there was how nearly everyone I met went for option number one.
In India, some people will spoon you on a bus if you fall asleep next to them, roll down their windows to chat with you in a traffic jam, stare unblinkingly at your non-Indian-ness, help you if you’re lost, insist you get in their family photos at historical monuments, invite you in for tea, burp, fart, and laugh in your face—it’s totally annoying. And sweet. And makes me think they clearly know something important that I’ve long forgotten (and that I suspect most of the world has forgotten, too). I didn’t have to darken the doorway of an ashram or stick a red dot on my forehead or partake in any of the other thousands of spiritual options the country is famous for offering—who needs them? As far as I’m concerned, you can learn pretty much everything you need to know about spirituality and life by taking a twelve-hour bus ride through India during wedding season.
When I bought my ticket on the Super Deluxe Express bus to Delhi from Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, I was told I was paying a wise four hundred rupees extra for the luxury of a five-hour nonstop ride, as opposed to the ten hours and countless stops of the local bus. I was so extremely exhausted from the three sleepless days I’d spent whooping it up at a camel festival in the desert that the thought of hunkering down on the Super Deluxe and sleeping all the way to Delhi sounded good to me. But what I got instead was a seat next to Mr. Friendly, a middle-aged man who spoke three words of English, and who insisted on chatting me up even though I was doing what I thought was a very convincing job of fake sleeping, and a very real job of having no freakin’ idea what he was saying.
The bus left an hour late due to massive confusion and overbooking
and took almost two hours to get out of town thanks to the fact that it was November, peak wedding season. Weddings in India traditionally involve a ceremony that lasts for days, stretches for miles, welcomes anyone caught in the crossfire and includes a parade through the streets complete with horses, marching band, explosives, a car with a loudspeaker blaring Indian music and important wedding announcements, and a bunch of guys carrying what look like table lamps on their heads. My bus ended up getting trapped in wedding festivities pretty much every ten minutes, which meant that everyone on the bus, every time we stopped, skipped off to join the party.
When we finally did get out of town, we kept pulling over to let random people on and off (in the middle of nowhere), have some tea, a smoke, a chat, maybe light a fire in the brush in a ditch or strap giant burlap sacks full of something large and bulbous to the roof. At some point this guy got on who was standing by the side of the road in the darkness. We scooped him up without coming to a full stop and he took his place at the front of the bus, standing right next to my seat, and immediately began hollering at everyone in Hindi. My bus mates responded by cheering, chanting, and sitting in silence, while I responded by seeing if I couldn’t find another seat farther away from his mouth. I got up and joined the group of people sitting on rickety benches around the bus driver who was in this “room” behind a wall of glass. The people huddling around him made room for me and suddenly I felt like I was watching an action movie on a screen the size of a giant bus windshield. We were careening through the narrow dirt streets of tiny villages, Bollywood music crackling over the radio, while people, goats, and monkeys leaped out of the way, slowing down only for the almighty, holy cow. Then all of a sudden, in some tiny nowhere village, he pulls over yet again. More chai perhaps? Maybe he’s going to go visit a friend? Has to pee? Wants to take a walk for an hour while we all sit there? The driver waves for me to follow and gets off,
as does everyone on the bus. It turns out that Mr. Yell in My Ear was some sort of holy man who was just warming up the crowd for a tour of the temples in this small, gorgeous village called Vrindavan. It is, I learned, the place where Krishna met his wife Radha and where they built hundreds of temples in their honor.
So, for the next two hours I found myself wandering through countless temples, gaily tossing flowers onto shrines, holding hands and skipping in a circle around a statue of Krishna, solemnly chanting, praying and clapping, and all I could think was how homicidal a bus of New Yorkers on the express bus from New York to DC would be in a similar situation. Meanwhile, not one person on the bus was expecting this, and not one person complained, even though when we finally got back on the bus it was well past the time we were supposed to be arriving in Delhi and we were still a good five hours away. Instead, they all thanked, and tipped, the holy man and spent the rest of the ride merrily chatting away with one another. After that we stopped at a roadside restaurant for dinner, then another pee break, then I was waking up the family I was staying with in Delhi at 3 a.m. They, of course, acted like it was the middle of the afternoon and insisted I share a cup of tea.
Here’s what India taught me about tapping into the Mother Lode:
• Talk to strangers, we’re all family on this planet.
• Expect, and enjoy, the unexpected.
• Find the humor.
• Join the party.
• Live in the moment.
• Time spent enjoying yourself is never time wasted.
• Share your space.
• Loosen your bone, Wilma.
LOVE YOURSELF
And life becomes a party.
PART 4:
HOW TO GET OVER YOUR B.S. ALREADY
IT’S SO EASY ONCE YOU FIGURE OUT IT ISN’T HARD
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
—Albert Einstein; scientist, awesomist
I was hanging out in my sunny California home one morning, reading the newspaper with the doors flung open and the stereo blasting, when all of a sudden a bird came tearing into my living room. He was flapping around like a maniac, flying into lamps and plants, spreading leaves, feathers, poop, and panic all over the place.