This week in Sunday Life I get myself a mirror

photo by Charlotte Abramow

Louise Hay, the world’s biggest self-help publisher and author, is laughing at me. What’s your first thought when you wake up, she asks.

“Um, most days it’s, ‘Shit, I have so much to do’. Then I start composing emails and conversations in my head…” I stop and look at Louise’s face.

“OK. Correction. I used to wake up that way.”

This week Hay gave me a lesson in affirmations as she ate breakfast (scrambled eggs, three sausages and five prunes). (For more tips from my i/v with Louise click here.)

“Become aware of your self-critique and turn it into past tense,” she instructs.

This proves challenging. Yet highly entertaining for Hay. Hay’s 84 and I’m astounded by her energy and sparkle (her whole being is awesomely clear and bright) as she helps me switch my negative self-talkin’ ways.

If Hay didn’t invent positive-speak, she packaged and delivered it to the masses. Her first book, You Can Heal Your Life – which explains illness in terms of negative emotions in your body – has sold more than 50 million copies. When folk tell you your throat infection is about trapped creativity, they’ve read Hay. When they start quoting pretty much any self-help mantra they’re read one of her authors (she publishes Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and dozens more).

I was born acerbic and I’m one of those people who protects their ego by taking the piss out of themselves before someone else can. “So I’ve got a lot of resistance to affirmations,” I tell her. (Dammit! Correction. I used to.)

So Hay shares her favourite trick after forty years of healing others and curing herself of cancer. “Get a mirror.”

Frankly, I’m bored. Mostly. Not of life. But of my ways. I want to live more, I want to live life more fully, I want to engage. I cry this out from my very being sometimes. But I default often to pastimes and company that are not always full of growth. You too?

Frankly, again, I’m crying out for intimate relationships with big minds and hearts. I want true relationship. I want to relate. And be intimate.

It’s been too long. Honestly. I’m being frank here.

Now I say all this as a preamble to a concept that my meditation teacher Tim and a few others have devised, that you might be interested in. On Wednesday next week The Conscious Club launches in Sydney – a night of real chats, real thinking, real food with folk after same. In the founder’s words:

The Conscious Club was born of the ever increasing desire of many to enjoy a social outing that was fun, social, informative and uplifting in every way.

It upsets me sometimes that so many people stand back from what they really want to do because they don’t think they’re good enough, or don’t have the skills, or won’t ever be a great painter/swimmer/public speaker/writer/jewellery maker/jumper knitterer. So why bother.

But the more creative people I meet, the more I know this: rarely do you start out good at anything. You become it.

And not through anything particularly sloggish. But by just doing it.

Now. No run-up or special conditions.

And by getting messy. And being bad at it.

And while you’re getting good you fake it. You pretend you know what you’re doing, until you do.

Because it’s in the faking it – the role-playing – that you become it.

Take Michelangelo. His rivals persuaded Junius II to hire him to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. They knew Michelangelo didn’t use color and had never painted in fresco. They were sure he would turn down the commission because he’d be too scared to fail, or he’d accept and stuff it up. The former they’d use as proof of his lack of talent. The latter…well, the amateur results would show him up as a failure.

Michelangelo accepted the gig. And this is what happened.

Every now and then I answer a question that crops up a lot from you lot. This week: how do I travel so much and not fall apart at the seams?

I do travel a lot. I fly from Byron Bay to Sydney or Melbourne every week or so. Sometimes it’s a day trip. Sometimes I have to stay a few nights and I stay in air-conditioned hotels and friends spare rooms that aren’t always ventilated etc as I like. It’s really very disruptive to my health. And I DO fall apart at the seams a bit.

Don’t know about you but travel also grinds my digestive system to a halt. I don’t go to the loo. Plus, I get puffy and lethargic. And tired. Plane travel is so bad for us. Ditto air-con (which is everywhere when you travel). It’s hard to eat well on the road and we have odd timetables and sleep patterns.

And so I’ve had to learn ways to make it work for me. It’s taken some trial and error, but I have a flow now. Of sorts.

My key advice is to create routine. As much as possible.

To replicate what you do at home, on the road, as much as possible.

And lesson the toxic load at all turns.

So a list of the routines and toxic-reduction tricks that work for me:

In hotels:

* You’re going to think I’m bonkers: As soon as I arrive I go around and turn off all powerpoints in the room. All of them, including the one to the fridge. The EMF load in hotel rooms is crazy – fridges, phones, alarm clocks, internet…plus the load from surrounding rooms etc. I do what I can… (and am sure to turn them all back on when I leave…. although I do feel bad I stuff the clock radios).

* I request a room away from the lift well and away from the power room. Again to lessen the EMF load.

* I wear earplugs and an eyemask. Again, bonkers? Nah.  It’s all about minimising interruptions and stimulus wherever you can.

* I go to bed early, as much as I enjoy sitting in bed watching news channels to all hours.

Exercise:

Exercise is key. You really have to make sure you get your lymphatic system moving – to flush toxins and to help facilitate routine (bowel and otherwise).

* If there’s no gym and/or I arrive late at night: I run up and down the firestairs in the hotel. I know it seems mad. But you do what you have to do. I came across others doing the same after arriving in HongKong when we filmed MasterChef. We laughed as we passed each other. Just make sure you remember what floor you entered from and that the firedoors allow you back out.

This week in Sunday Life I do the opposite

Photo by Angela Boatwright

George Costanza is not one of life’s most inspired or bountiful contributors. But there are two things I give him full props for: the under-the-desk nap (I employed it during my newspaper days doing the 4am shift; the trick is to pull the swivel chair in after you and use it as a leg rest), and his “The Opposite” theory.

Given everything he’d done in life had been so wrong, George reasoned that if he did the exact opposite of what he normally did, he’d get it right. It works and he picks up a hot woman instantly with the line, “I’m unemployed and I live with my parents”. (Women’s attraction to raw honesty really is their Achilles heel.)

Rather than being a mere Seinfeld absurdity, this idea has much appeal and merit. When I worked in magazines, coverlines that went, “Everything You Know About [insert topic: skin whiteners, nipple covers, reversible jackets…] is Wrong” always focus-grouped well. It’s not so much that we like to be corrected.

We like opposites. They feel fresh.

This week, though, I realized opposites are also productive. Recently I read a theory by Tony Schwartz, author of Be Excellent at Anything, for dealing with compulsions and procrastination. Whatever you feel compelled to do, don’t, he advises.

I love that these two shots turned up on the same day earlier this week, one on The Beast (based in Bondi) and the other on Common Ground (based in Byron).

by Jakob de Zwart via The Beast

There’s something so still and intimate about both shots. It’s a half-life we don’t always see.