It was just after 4am. Hubby and I turned on the football to hear what sounds like the biggest, angriest bee hive in the universe.

Hubby had his Italian head on, wherein he reverts to his Neapolitan genetic heritage like a true Mamma’s boy and starts shouting “Viva, Italia!” and “My son, he will play football!” Sweet.

As we settled in with hot coffee and the promise of a great game, it was time for the national anthems. The cameraman stood poised at the top of the Italian lineup as they jiggled and jumped in their boots, all tattoos and tanned swarthiness.

The Italian anthem with all its brass flag-waving jauntiness kicks in…

And we were stunned to see the boys singing at the tops of their voices.

No mumbling, shifty attempts to lip-synch their way around having to look patriotic. No silent, steely-eyed gaze that said I’m Too Focused On Winning To Sing (but really I don’t know the words and I’m also worried the camera will pick up how crap my voice is.) No half-arsed squeeking here!

Never before had we witnessed such vocal abandon! Lustily they plowed on, hairy eyebrows raised sky-high on the high notes. Big, puffed out chests, clear diction and even a brave stab at staying perfectly in time with the backing track.

God knows how nervous they were. Defending champions. Pressure to be glamorous and flamboyant and technically awesome. Millions of people tuning in to watch their performance.

Could there be any more eyes on you than this?

What better way to channel all of that adreneline than to sing?

You don’t have to be a tightly-wound football player on the world stage to experience a little stage fright of your own. That feeling of psychotic-butterflies on caffeine overload having a debauched rave in the pit of your stomach? It’s normal when we are faced with something our lizard brain is trying to get us to run the hell away from.

That crazy sick oh-shit feeling you have is adrenaline that has got to go somewhere. You are now a can of Coke that has been violently shaken by the Bad Ass Fear Fairy and that level of frothy scare needs to be let out. It’s a huge amount of raw energy that needs something to do.

Singing is perfect because it channels your fear.

When you’re nervous and terrified and you start to sing, it’s impossible to stay nervous and terrified. You might start like a mouse, with a whisper and a blushing croak. But once you hit your stride, try staying scared now.

There’s nothing to be scared of. Deep down you know that life’s just a game.

The whole of it. This football match. That stressful deadline. The oh-shit-I-must-do-something-meaningful-with-my-talents drama.

If the nerves and the stage-fright are kicking in and you feel yourself bobbing up and down in your shoes desperate to start running in the opposite direction, why not take a tip from the Italian boys and start singing? Something, anything? Put on a song and sing your heart out. Or play the tune in your head and karaoke wildly along with it.

Let the fear go with a song!

Comments – Sing It Back To Me

Can you choose something that becomes your Anthem For Fear-Busting? Is there a fizzy build-up of fear that you could dissipate with a little random, unabashed karaoke?

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Have you ever caught yourself projecting? I mean, when you notice that you’re actively judging someone for something that you should really be working on yourself?

Like criticising your parents for hoarding and never being able to just let go of things. Despite the fact that every drawer of your desk is filled with clippings and paper that you, too, can’t bear to part with.

Or railing against your selfish friend who thinks she’s so much better than you, when you inwardly fear that you are indeed a failure.

I’ve never really given much thought to the idea of projecting until I began devouring a book called The Shadow Effect: Illuminating the Hidden Power of Your True Self this past week. It’s written by Debbie Ford, Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson, although the Shadow phenomenon is very much Debbie Ford’s Jungian passion.

Your shadow is described as the parts of ourselves we deny but that still have power over us. Your shadow depends on a belief system that began to be constructed when you were small.

That time you raised your voice too loudly,  and were told to be quiet. When your friends laughed at you, and you felt ashamed of being stared at. When you were told to stay still and stop wriggling.

Over time we create a version of ourselves that is fashioned from the criticism or approval we receive. An ego-driven version that may be suffocating the full expression of ourselves. Who we think we “should” be as opposed to who we “could” be. It steals away our choices.

For me, it was when my parents divorced when I was five, and my dad simply disappeared. I didn’t see him again for years. Cue major abandonment issues and huge sticky fear of being unwanted. Add to the mix a severe teenage weight problem, a step-father who couldn’t stay away from laying it all on the gee-gees and a mother who couldn’t resist laying it all on the Johnny Walker.

Needless to say, I have one hell of a Shadow.

And you know what’s almost hysterically funny? That I’m even writing about this here at all.

You see, I’ve accepted that my personal journey is to allow myself to be who I am, without fear of being rejected. To embrace the whole messy history and say proudly, this is what made me. And to be grateful for the whittling away, the firing in the potter’s furnace.

But to put it out here? The whole me? Are you crazy?

Because I gave up therapy long ago as it felt soooo indulgent. Sitting and talking over and over about my dreadful problems seemed to me to be a complete waste of time. What is past, is past, so what. Just stop complaining and get on with it.

As I grew wiser (oh grasshopper), my coaching and love for all things self-realization taught me that perhaps this isn’t a technique that works for everybody. And certainly this book challenges us to stop ignoring our demons and hope they’ll go away. Because that only makes them stronger.

Instead, we are called to go straight to our most vulnerable negative beliefs and embrace them. And by recognising them we can then use their power over us in positive ways. To allow us more choice about how we want to live our lives. And in my book, anything that gives us more choice is GOOD.

When we see the gifts nestled in our shadows, we begin to “extract the gold in the dark”:

…we bring radical honesty to the places where we’ve been in denial; forgiveness and compassion to the parts we’ve been ashamed of; love and acceptance to the difficult experiences from our past; and courage to the areas of our life where we’ve been afraid to admit our vulnerabilities. It’s not a process of smoothing over, or covering up, or pretending that the things we do to sabotage our success are not that big a deal. In fact only by admitting the cost of some of our behaviours will we unlock the energy to defy the gravitational pull of our past and step into the infinite possibilities of our true self.

And funnily enough, when we are kind to ourselves in this way, it means we are more ready to show the same generosity to others who are in the arms of the same shadows.

If you feel your life is sometimes like a soap opera with the same storyline playing out over and over, chances are that a beasty of a belief is lurking in your shadow, too. Here are some strategies that I found most useful from this book:

1. Start with being non-judgemental. Give yourself a break from the incessant criticism – of not being kind enough or generous enough or hard-working enough. Meet yourself where you are now and go from there.
2. Notice the yuk feelings then let them go. When you feel affected in a negative way by someone else’s actions or words, chances are you’re projecting. This is a sure sign that there’s a kink in the road at your end that could do with some attention. Go there, acknowledge how it feels and then look for a quality in that kink that would serve you. If it’s selfishness, ask yourself “How can selfishness be a good thing?” Sometimes selfish is what gets books written, for example.
3. Rebuild your emotional body. Deepak writes, “If you had a rock in your shoe, you wouldn’t hesitate to remove it. Yet how long have you endured emotional rocks in your shoe?” If it feels horrible, that’s a sign to find something that feels better. So start practising better feelings at every opportunity. I’m a huge believer in the power of this as personally it has changed my life completely.

So much of my brain this week has been devoted to thinking about how I can be as authentic with myself – and with you – as I can possibly be. So I’ve really appreciated the message of this book.  I trust that it will help me to forgive the shadows in my past a little more willingly. And to be as open as I can be to the expression of every tiny bit of craziness that makes me who I am.

(If you’re interested in learning more, you may like to view the trailer for the book too.)

I am on a mission to help you find other brilliant, inspiring and provoking books and articles to help you be the change you want to see. This is the first in what will be a regular series of reviews here on the site – every week I look forward to sharing my thoughts on a resource that may end up being The Book That Changed Your Life. If you go on to buy using my links then you’ll be helping me to keep this site blissfully ad free. And I want you to recommend your favourites too! More soon…

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How Well Do You REALLY Know Yourself?

As some of you may have noticed, stuck is the word of the year so far.

Look, there’s Stuck on the red carpet! And on the cover of Help! magazine. Here’s a a really dodgy picture of a topless Stuck smooching with someone on a beach. (In fact, there’s probably someone feeling Stuck right now.)

Yes, indeed. Stuck is at the podium, every day, giving another tedious acceptance speech for the honour of ruining another person’s fabulousness.

So why are we honouring Stuck with so much damn attention?

The more I see stuff about Stuck everywhere, the more Stuck seems to show up, flaunting its latest frock in front of my face and daring me to look away.

I want to stop talking about Stuck for a moment.

*A single tumbleweed drifts by.*

That’s better. I want to talk about Trust instead.

Trust is like the Indie alternative to Stuck.

Trust is kooky. Quirky. Unique only to you.

When you’re with Trust you can go anywhere you like. But it’s always downstream, easy, no bumps against the rocks at the bottom.

Trust floats. Trust is bouyant.

Trust is cool with that. Trust is yeah, whatever turns you on. Trust makes you feel like the most gorgeous person in the room.

So why not talk more about Trust? About how much you trust yourself? Why not look at your situation and say, “I can trust that it will work. I can trust that the process is for a point.”

Why not allow Stuck to just do its thing somewhere else, while you hang out with Trust on bikes in the forest somewhere in your head, where it’s sunny and there’s a cool breeze, and you have a picnic in your pannier bags and an eye for the perfect sprawling tree to sit beneath?

Because even if you get a puncture and the weather turns, so what? Movie moments are made for kissing under sheets of thunder, soaked to the skin.

Much more fun.

Comments – Sing It Back To Me

Why are we STILL talking about Stuck? Isn’t there a better word we can use? One that goes along with us for the ride instead of gluing us to the spot? Thoughts please!

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“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.” ~ Robert Fritz.
“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – J.K. Rowling

I read a tweet first thing today that went something like this:

“Great day. Awesome yoga class this morning, now sitting in airport lounge at JFK enjoying a drink. Nice!”

Such a seemingly innocuous, harmless little tweet.

But at 5am in the morning, in the dark, it was like a red rag to a bull for me.

When was the last time I sat quietly enjoying a drink in anticipation of a flight somewhere? Or actually made it to a yoga class? Why can’t I just decide to jet off and have the points or credit card to do the whole lounge thing?

Ooh, I was suddenly really, really MAD. Mad with frustration and envy. Mad because I had things holding me down. Mad because I know I have a violent unlived life bubbling away under the crust of my day to day.

I was mad at my kids.

If I didn’t have kids I would be SO much richer. I would be having sex all the time. I could leave nice things that were breakable on shelves below eye level. I could lie on the sofa and read a book during the day on a weekend without feeling guilty about my husband having to clothe/bath/feed/entertain/perform damage limitation/counsel/bandage up/prise apart…whatever.

I could actually have one of those movie mornings where I wake up in a fresh white linen bed, passionately kiss my man, romp, eat breakfast and drink hot, fresh coffee while poring over the papers, romp some more, then emerge for a walk somewhere bracing and picturesque.

Ha!

I was mad…suddenly all I could see were seemingly childless women everywhere on Twitter. Doing retreats. Slipping off to yoga and then curling up with a book at night. Leaping off to conferences and tweeting madly from Vegas over too much champagne.

In my moment of Mad, it didn’t matter that these women might be miserable. Or that they might trade everything to have a gurgling bundle of chubbly baby in their arms. All I felt was twisting, angry jealousy that I was squeezing every inch of writing I could into the dark, cold hours of morning before my day became a muddy fingerpainting of food and nappies and cleaning up toys and putting away the HUGE baskets of laundry that three children somehow manifest.

A full two coffees later, and The Mad had gratefully eased off a little. I realised that I was mad at a much bigger, messier picture.

What was I really envying? The travel? Yes. The connections and me-times and networking? Absolutely.

But these things are not about my children.

They are about giving myself permission.

I could go on a retreat. I just don’t allow myself because it wouldn’t be fair to leave the children with my husband on his weekend off.

I could fly somewhere, anywhere. I just don’t because there are few places I would ever want to go without my family to come along and enjoy the ride, and buying five plane tickets is crazy expensive.

And that movie morning thing? I could so totally make that happen if I wanted to. (And if the movie morning thing turned into pile of kids on the bed, sitting on the papers and spilling scrambled egg all over the duvet, then that could still be fun.)

Because the truth behind The Mad is this:

You don’t have to have kids to have a handbrake holding you back from what you give yourself permission to do. It’s just that kids make the challenge to negotiate through the chaos greater.

Kids are massive, volcanic calls to action. They summon you out of your slumber (literally and metaphorically!) and shake your arse in the air, screaming “Do something now! Make it important! Leave me a legacy! If you want it, JUST MAKE the time!”

Because with kids you have no choice. You have to want it so bad that you stay up, like Gary Vee, until 3am to make it happen. You have to properly decide it’s worth doing and then give yourself permission to do it, without guilt.

So for all you women out there living a relatively hand-brake free life, I say this – you have so much freedom. Don’t forget to give yourself the permission to do what your freedom so blissfully allows you to do.

And I’ll keep working on giving myself the permission to do even more.

Comments – Sing It Back To Me

What parts of your unlived life are begging to be let loose? What thing do you most want to do that only needs you to say “yes”? Can you give yourself – today – the permission to do one secretly haboured, magnificent thing?

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of having a lazy lunch with the rather awesometastic Catherine Caine! Today is her birthday and she is celebrating by releasing her new product, aptly named “Awesome Fear Wrangling – Tame Your Website Fears, Grow An Awesome Website”.

When I started my blog, I had all sorts of fear and scarey going on in my head. But for me, one of the most powerful ways to deal with these kinds of monsters is to talk to people who have been there, slayed the dragon and bought the t-shirt.

And this is why Awesome Fear Wrangling works – when you listen in on her fear-busting interviews with inspiring and smart bloggers, marketers, coaches and entrepreneurs like Sonia Simone, Dave Navarro, Jade Craven, Fabeku Fatunmise, Johnny B. Truant, Charlie Gilkey, Wendy Maynard, Kelly Diels, Sparky Firepants, Ash Amberge, LaVonne Ellis, Mel Brennan, Sinclair – And yes, me! – you will come away with excellent strategies for understanding your own particular brand of scarey – plus proper actionable material that will support you on the journey.

You can find Awesome Fear Wrangling here (aff. link) but please make sure you enter your special discount code -  tinysoprano to get a special rate just for you!

Watch Our Backyard Chat!

If you’d like to watch me interview Catherine check out the video below – we hung out on the grass in her backyard and just talked – I was the one holding the camera and you’ll see in the vid that while I rock at being an opera deev, I suck at flipcam cinematography. (Scroll down for the bonus vid where you get a proper peek at Catherine’s actual face. )

Extra Bonus Sequal! Where my camera pointing suckiness miraculously disappears! Yippee!

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We’ve all had them. A big, chewy, hole-in-the-stomach failure. The kind of screw-up that you can only successfully make in front of everyone.

When you have just so completely gotten it wrong that when the thought of it creeps into your head (usually just before you go to sleep) it’s like an evil snowball. It just rolls over and over, gathering more and more evidence, collecting as much proof as it can of your ability to spectacularly flop – and then thwack! You’re covered in chilly, icy flakes of horribleness.

So you start again, with all eyes watching you. You venture bravely out into the chilly wind of the next uncharted adventure. You’re knee-deep in the cold, but dammit at least you’re doing it, right? Until it all goes tits up and it’s another snowball smack in the face.

Thwack!

You stand up. Brush yourself off and try again. And it all goes wrong. Again.

Thwack! Bam!

Argh, cold! And bruised! And numb!

Once you’ve been hit enough times, it’s pretty tempting to just go home. To rug up somewhere cosy and warm and foetal and never venture out again.

But I promise you, the success is in the snowballs.

With every thwack you get, you can choose to learn. You can adapt. You can regroup and reassess. You can learn to dodge faster. To duck. And soon, you may even start to have some fun.

Because your journey is not about outcome. It’s not about showing the world that you can get it right first time. (And even if you do, you’ll only end up demonstrating how to screw it up even better further on down the line, that much is guaranteed.)

Your genius is not in the light bulb. It’s in the thousand ways it took to glowingly arrive.

Read any story of greatness and you’ll see that for every public success there are thousands of epic, now-forgotten failures.

Start paying attention to the journey that it takes to get to the top. This is where the flow hides, in the nooks and crannies of the long, snowy line between inspiration and “ta-da!”

So – why be ashamed of revealing your tracks? Why not celebrate your failures as a focusing mechanism? As proof that you are alive and thinking and striving for a glimmer of greatness that only comes when you leave the snug safety of your bed and go forth into the blizzard?

Know that there will always be people in this world who practise really hard at throwing snowballs. Whose raison d’etre is pointing out the fail.

You know what? Thank them. Embrace it. Retweet their criticism to the world. Highlight your mistakes with a firm stroke of yellow and shout “I am doing! I am making tracks in the snow! I’m going somewhere! Exploring!  Growing and taking action and testing and trying! It’s why I am here. ”

And in retrospect, when you look back over the tracks you have carved for yourself, you will have proof that the process was worthwhile. That the success and the victory that is yours was born in those tracks.

Say thank you every time you fail. For in each and every freezing thwack is the beginning of a truly fantastic snowman.

Comments – sing it back to me.

Think about the brilliant successes you’ve had in your life – what numbing failures did you endure that made those winning moments possible?

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Why You Need To Start Getting It Wrong

Have you ever used one of those draught excluders that look like long snakes? They lie across the floor along the bottom of gappy doors to stop the cold air sneaking inside.

When I lived in the UK, these snakes were really important, especially in those deep winter nights when the tip of my nose would start to ice over.

I could snuggle up in bed, safe in the knowledge that the nasty frigid air could never penetrate the defences of my trusty door snake.

That was until the one night I needed to get up in the night to use the loo. I grumbled about in the chilly darkness feeling for the bedroom door, and tugged it open, forgetting that my snake was lying in front of it.

Thus – with a squelch, my door snake was jammed tight beneath the door and the floor, leaving a gap barely wide enough to pass my arm through.

What to do?

I tried pushing the door closed again to dislodge the snake, but it was so firmly wedged beneath the door that no amount of tugging and yanking would work. It simply rolled underneath it.

I was trapped. Couldn’t go out, and no-one could get in. It was dark. It was cold. And I was standing there desperate to pee.

All kinds of uncomfortable. Frustrating. Feeling stuck, jittery and helpless and desperate.

Now imagine for a moment that you too have a trusty door snake, but it’s inside your head.

It holds all of your reasons for doing what you have always done. Stuffed with reassuring familiarity. With habits. With fear and with insecurity and vulnerability. With regrets. Outright lies, even.

Stuffed tight.

And you arrange your Trusty Door Snake of Reasons along the bottom of the drafty door of your world, as it valiantly works to beat away the cold and the fear and keep your confidence from icing over.

Until one night you have a dream of something big!

And in this dream there is such an urgency! Your big idea – your need to do your thing – shakes you from your sleep.

You almost throw yourself at the door, desperate to fly away like a bird against a window.

You grasp in the dark for the door handle and pull.

But no! Your trusty snake locks you in! It hisses as you try to drag the door over its back. “Don’t go out! Sssssssstay here where it’s warm and safe!”

Your snake is guarding you from failure. But it stops you from escaping your comfort zone only because you have put it there. So when the time comes to leave your room – when you are inspired and zapped with energy and you absolutely MUST get out NOW – it just gets in the way, lodging itself beneath your feet and snaking protectively around your ankles.

Don’t be left standing desperate at a half-open door unable to get out – invigorated – into the world!

How To Shift The Trusty Door Snake Who Is Now In Your Way

1. Acknowledge that your snake is only trying to protect you. Our barriers are formed slowly and carefully over time in order to prevent those achey stones-in-the-stomach called failure and shame. This is normal. It’s important to realise that your snake has only your best interests at heart – it’s just going about it the wrong way.
2. Show the snake some gratitude. It has done an excellent job of keeping the draughts away from your toes while you were lying down. Now that you’re up and ready for action, it’s time to say thank you. Thank you my trusty door snake, for preserving the toastiness that has allowed me to incubate my fizzy sleep-shaking muse. You have done good. Indeed, you have done awesome. But now it’s time to let me and my idea out.
3. Move your snake before you try to escape. If you don’t take the time to move your snake out of the way before you go charging at the door, you risk being tripped up, or worse, unable to get out at all. When we’re inspired to take action, our limiting beliefs and fears can surprise us by suddenly wedging themselves in the gap between where we are and where we eagerly want to go. Instead, it will help you to see your snake, say thanks, and then gently put it to the side. This doesn’t mean you have to remove it entirely. Just nudge it away enough to give you the space to move forward.
4. If your snake gets stuck in the door, massive action is required. Jiggling and tentative tugging won’t work. You need an enormous push to roll over the snake. You need momentum.  Ask for help at this point if you need it. Summon every sinew in prising open the door wide enough for your action to pass.

The best part about a snake like Trusty is that you know he’s there for you should be overtaken by the need to hibernate under the duvet. We all have moments like this, where the cold becomes unbearable and the only comfort is a snuggly bed and the reassuring, safe warmth of the familiar. We don’t have to go charging into the cold and dark with a bold idea every night. But when we feel the need to launch into the unknown, it’s good to know that we don’t have to be trapped by the very thing we put in place to keep us cosy.

Comments – Sing It Back To Me

Tell me the name of your Trusty Door Snake! (And does it have more than one?) And I want you to share your brilliant awake-in-the-night Idea that is begging to be set free too – then we can all talk nicely to each other’s Snakes and send them away to slither joyously together somewhere else. Hooray!

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Two years ago today, I almost died.

But then I’ve actually almost died, like, three times. (And those are just the times I know about. I have no idea how many other potential brushes with death I have had. Probably loads. Who knows?)

The first was when I got stuck into my parent’s cask white wine in the middle of the night and ended up in a coma for three days. Which would sound almost normal if I had been 16 at the time. Alas, I was 5. My dad discovered me unconscious on the living room floor.

When I finally woke from my coma, the first thing I said was I was hungry. (Like hangover food, people!) I believe the doctors were not so much blown away by the fact that I’d drunk some alcohol, more that they discovered so much in my system that I must have gone back to refill my cup.

So that probably explains a lot.

The second time I nearly died was when I got mowed over by a car at the age of 15 trying to cross the road to buy a foot stand for my classical guitar lessons. My whole family were parked across the road watching it all in slow motion, as I basically did cartwheels on my head.

I was hit by a Mercedes, so at least I almost died in style. Luckily I got away with a broken leg, a fight-club looking set of knuckles  and a handful of stitches in my head. Fun.

Then I make it to my third and most recent brush with the black-robe-wearing-scythe dude. But really, this wasn’t in the least bit fun. At all.

Basically, without going into any really gory details, I experienced what they call a post-partum haemorrhage. (You know what’s bloody awesome? – if you pardon the unfortunate pun – I can now spell haemorrhage without even looking it up.) This is where you get to have a baby, everything is really fine for about an hour or so, and then everyone realises that you are basically bleeding to death.

To give you some context, the human body contains approximately 5-6 litres of blood. Being of tiny size and of the female variety, my blood volume was on lower end of the scale. I managed to lose just over 2 litres, which as you can imagine wasn’t the most sensible thing for me to do.

I remember lying on my bed (it was a home birth, which didn’t help, obviously) and I was weakly massaging my abdomen to try and get my body to contract to stop the bleeding, while my husband was on the phone to the emergency services. Baby had arrived just before 6am, and by this time the sun was streaming through the window and as I lay there I could see the sky gleaming and blue. It looked like the perfect day. Except for the whole life ebbing away feeling.

This isn’t supposed to be happening.

How can I have attracted this? Baby was beautiful and supremely healthy, the birth had gone like a dream, and all I wanted to do was cuddle her and eat the toast and coffee that was going cold by the side of my bed.

Yet there I was, red all over and glistening. Everything sounded very, very far away.

I spent the rest of the day being pumped with bags of blood, heated beneath a large inflatable quilt and sobbing. I knew I was in shock. I could see the nurses and doctors talking and I had no idea whether I was going to be ok, or whether they were just keeping some dreadful secret from me about my impending demise.

Later that evening, I was relatively stable, but I looked like a pin cushion, full of canulas and catheters and drips. I sat up in bed nibbling on dark chocolate to up my iron levels (like I needed an excuse for chocolate at this point.) The two ambulance medics that drove me to the hospital came back at the end of their shift to visit me, and make sure I was ok. This only made me sob some more, as I was so touched that they would visit me instead of go home and have a beer. Or sleep. Miraculous people.

The days following my arrival home from hospital were a blend of relief, baby hypnosis, gratitude and anger.

Why did this happen to me? How had I attracted this depleting, emotional near-tragedy into my life? What was a doing wrong?

I was seriously pissed off at Abraham.

It took months to feel even remotely normal again. But with enough steaks and iron tablets eventually I stopped looking like Edward Cullen’s older sister and now, well I feel great. I even went and had another baby just to prove that I could do it again without being an attention-seeking drama queen.

Now I know you could come up with dozens of personal examples of woo woo not going your way. Where shit happens and the silver lining just gets stuck in your throat. The ditches appear, the plans get screwed and you feel like you are just having one long bitter screaming match with the universe.

But you do know where this is going, don’t you?

When The Law Of Attraction Sucks, It’s Really An Opportunity In Disguise

Do you think I was happy when I carefully padded my way to the car after leaving the hospital? Would you believe I was more grateful than ever to be alive? Can you imagine how tightly I hugged my kids when I got home?

I couldn’t plan fast enough. Dream grand enough. My future at this point was now an avalanche of ideas, schemes, passions unfurling.

I booked our flights to Australia. The seeds of this blog were sown. I started singing again. That screenplay I had always wanted to write? Done.

Fought the baby weight (fat! vanquished!) and got jogging again. Yoga? Tick. Meditating? Yep.

My sharp jabby but important point is this – do you need to have a brush with death to have the fuel to start doing the things you have always wanted to do? Does the Law of Attraction need to be about shiny lovely happy things?

Or can the perfectly crap stuff that shows up really be about giving you choices? Whether you like it or not?

I don’t pretend to know for sure why things happen the way they do.

But I do believe this – Bad Shit Happens. But then – you get to choose.

You can let yourself be defeated by the weight and enormity and the effort of grieving over the shit that life throws your way.

Or you can be the alchemist. You can be the magician. You can transform whatever it is you are enduring. Because as long you can breathe and have a heart that beats and blood that pumps through your fingers – you have the might to turn it around.

What can you learn from it? What does it make you grateful for? What can you do differently? What must you change?

Ask yourself the tough questions. And use the moments of suck and stuck and luck-gone-wrong to your advantage. Use the momentum of the Awful to defeat it, Aikido-style.

Today, I’m rocking the gratitude of still being here. And my little one’s birthday. Life is brilliant my friends. Don’t wait until it’s on its way out the door to tell it how much you love it.

Comments – Sing It Back To Me

What can you choose to do today that you have been putting off? What concrete step can you take to make a buried dream a reality? What can you tell yourself to turn around something that the world is beating you down with?

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OK. You heard it here first, baby.

I can offically announce that opera is now the new rock and roll.

I’m sure it all started when I had a tweet from the lovely Reese (web designer extraordinare) in January, who confessed that she had almost gone into singing (I hope she won’t mind me sharing):

reese  January 22, 2010

@thetinysoprano hey natalie…I nearly went into being a voice major or minor. I envy your career choice

Then Emma Alvarez-Gibson shared her passion for Les Misérables (which I know isn’t technically opera in its purest form, but I shall embrace it for the sake of this post and also because it’s got Frenchy literary overtones so it must be highbrow) with a very entertaining YouTube clip of Doogie Howser MD and Jason Segel singing the Confrontation Scene on the Megan Mullally show. Hilarious. (More chat shows like this, please.)

When Megan M and I started riffing on how being an opera singer had given me super duper creative ninja mojo powers and that she wanted to unleash my secret weapon for the good of the blogsphere, I had a strong feeling that opera’s time was nigh…

And then Chris Guillebeau goes and bases a whole post on Pavarotti. (Talk about stealing my thunder, Chris. )

So evidently, opera is sexy, ergo so am I. Yay for logic!

However, I should confess I have a rather complicated relationship with opera. It’s like a “can’t live with, can’t live without” kind of thing. We were on a break. I started seeing other ways of living, opera just kind of pottered on without me. Now we’re kind of back together and seeing how things go. 

But you know what was really interesting about my time spent apart from the stage?

Occasionally during a conversation I would let slip that I “used to be an opera singer.” And the reaction to this was always laughably predictable.

First would be an incredulous stare. Then the question “Why did you stop?” with a tone of pity blended with surprise. Finally, “Oh, don’t you miss it?”

I would get this reaction from people who had never even been to the opera before, often because they imagined it was somehow more glamorous, more creative, more rewarding than whatever it was I was now doing (you know, that terribly uncreative job called motherhood.) They just imagined that it would be painful to let it go and that somehow I was left artistically and creatively bereft by the break up.

Ha!

I’m here to tell you, with totally certainty – that this idea of a creative, inherently artistic profession is a MYTH.

Just because opera has singing and dancing and costumes and makeup and the occasional violent death doesn’t make it any more creative than any other line of work. This just buys into the craptastic idea that creative equals performing, or music, or writing. Or paint, even.

But wasn’t Einstein creative? Edison?

Maradona? Gandhi?

How many people have described their accountant as creative? (Hands up all over the place.)

Creativity is not a profession. It’s a rebellious, muscular way of thinking that just gets beefier the more you use it. It gets fat on possibilities and tightly hugs the alternative perspective. It’s gentle too, diplomatically shining light on the darker corners you almost missed.

No matter how mundane you perceive a task to be (because nothing is inherently mundane either, but thinking makes it so) – if you inject it with super duper creative ninjarific divatastic mojo – it becomes mind-blowing, heart-expandingly brilliant.

When you create a fantastic meal from a few meagre ingredients in your cupboard. When you pretend you are sick to stay home from work. When you invent a reality that protects the innocence of your child. You are creating, creative, compiling a magical something out of a seeming nothing.

This is where your job becomes your work, and your work becomes your art.

So I insist you stop saying to yourself “I wish I could do something that was more creative!”  right now, and get sparky over here.

(Diva-disclosure: I am one of the stars of the Creative Spark Plug Lecture Series, so that is indeed an affiliate link. However, you can call me crazy, but just being in this program is awesome enough for me – and I basically love everything that Megan pulls together. ‘Nuff said. )

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(Warning: there are a few swear words in this post. Eek, I know! But I couldn’t help it. Apologies if you are easily offended.)

You may remember that I’m currently dealing with a slippery fear monster who is actually stalking me.

I hear it tapping the windows of my bedroom at night. I’ll be in the middle of something, and BAM! I swear I can see it next to me but when I turn around there’s nothing there. Sometimes, I can actually feel its breath on the back of my neck.

I’m sick of this creepiness.

Because it feels like my fear is out to get me. And over the past few days, and I’ve been feeling really ill. And low. And weepy.

I even used the word “breakdown” this morning.

*Deep Breath*

You see, when I started The Tiny Soprano 6 months ago, my orginal impetus was to create a platform for a global Twestival-style charity event for opera lovers. As a way of showing how tiny things (I.E. me) could make a big difference (I.E. get singers to stop drinking in the pub and start doing something awesome like help build a well.)

But very quickly I discovered that I could write about life and I could write about music pretty much the same way. Which completely blew my mind. So the blog grew to become a place to explore life and change and fear and growth – but with really beautiful music playing in the background.

A month or so passed, and then I discovered Twitter. Which destroyed any dreams of ever lolling around doing bugger all in whatever spare time I had left. *Ah…pointless sofa lolling…sigh*

However, the real craziness started when I began having ideas. For collaborations. For interview series, and books and just blissed out conversations with the people I was “meeting” online who just got me. (No blank stares and glassed eye boredom here! Not like my own FAMILY who haven’t even visited my blog let alone have anything to say about it.)

I got talking to Megan on Triiibes where we’d both been hanging out, completely unaware that we shared a singing thang (and a WELSH singing thing at that). Next thing you know we’re working on all sorts of goodies to combine our magical-music-idea-whizzy-powers. Like our Pigeonhole Evacuation Kit*. (Isn’t that a cool name?) Yay for collaboration!

Then I put it out to the world that I wanted to make a recording – and do you know what happened? I was contacted two weeks ago by a boutique label about exploring doing a recording with a legendary conductor. The kind of conductor who has a “SIR” in front of his name. Who I’m singing for – in two weeks.

Again, those who have been with me for a while will know I took a break from singing to have my tiny flock of mini-mes, and that it’s been a few years since I stood center stage as a proper diva. And I’m now stuck with a neglected post-baby diaphragm, no less. But it’s meant I’ve been kicked into warming up my voice every day, and singing arias that I haven’t touched in ages. And the more I practise the better it sounds, until I’m even imagining my dream of singing at the Met in New York may actually come true.

So here’s me, spinning plates – my blog, my baby, my kids, the dishes, the voice, the thing with Megan, the flying to Melbourne to sing for legendary conductor thing, the phone bill (which I’m loathe to deal with – oh how I despise thee, TELSTRA) and that’s before I’ve even finished unpacking from my move. Or washing my hair, even.

All these chunks of terrifying that keep landing on my head.

And then I find this.

*slaps forehead*

And this, too.

Go ahead and read them now. Don’t worry, I’ll wait….

*stares out of window waiting for you to come back*

So you see? Now it’s all ok!

Because I chose this. And it’s truly up to me to choose how I perceive the craziness.

I can choose to be stressed about it – because somewhere along the line I decided – unconsciously – that the truth of my situation was stressful.

Or…

I can examine what the facts are and then rewrite what my truth really is.

Breakdown averted. Hoorah!

Because the truth is I am being inundated with gorgeousness.

The universe is responding to me with such immediacy and brilliance that I should welcome the craziness with open arms, ask it to get comfy and make it some tea and cake.

That I can accept the stuff I have to do is not necessarily the stuff I need to do.

That I can get off whenever I want.

That I am perfectly capable of dealing with said craziness like the powerful little diva that I am.

And that I am already streets ahead. I started my blog. I reached out and made connections. I unpacked my opera scores and sheet music just in case.

I even had a baby in the middle of all of this. I mean, I built a whole new person, dammit!

So fuck it. I can do anything.

And so can you.

Comments – Sing It Back To Me

Has “deciding to choose” empowered you or made you feel even more pressured? Do you have a situation where you need to create your own truth? And how do you deal with stress so you feel capable rather than terrified?

* P.S For the more beady-eyed among you, this is just to say our Pigeonhole Evacuation Kit (or PEK…how onomatopoeic is that?) will be launched in the first week of April. Which is really soon. Argh!)

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