We live together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We also have a small business together. Our lifestyle is one of frequent change in location, people, food, and customs.

You know what this adds up to, right? Fights. Yes, we fight. We told you about our epic 12-mile marriage counseling hike in Scotland, and we have had at least one in every country we have visited on 4 continents of travel. You cannot be with another person all the time without fighting, and if you add in a business and a nomadic existence requiring dozens of negotiations and decisions a week, things are bound to get interesting.

One thing we’ve learned during our 16 months of travel and togetherness is there is no real buildup of a fight anymore. In our old lives, we had plenty of space and outside commitments to take off the pressure of a simmering resentment, and it could build for days or weeks at a time. In our current lifestyle, we’re lucky if we can hold it below a boil for 24 hours (though thankfully we don’t have to experience this very often anymore).

So even though we disagree, the arguments don’t last as long and we are actually getting pretty good at resolving things like adults. It takes a lot of practice to get to this point, and since we’ve had the benefit of it, here are  the 5 best strategies for successfully arguing with your mate (successful meaning you come to a conclusion and deepen your relationship and understanding of each other, not that you just get tired of fighting and call a truce or have sex or one of you leaves.)

How to fight fair

This article was originally inspired by the name calling, lying, fact twisting, passive aggressive moves, and just plain meanness we’ve seen in the political news coverage from the US. The election is already nasty and we still have 9 months to go. If the average couple behaved this way when trying to work out a budget, take care of a home, raise children, or even plan a vacation, our divorce rate would be 90% (the other 10% being the portion of our population not deemed suitable for the rights and privileges of marriage in the first place by the same elected officials who keep getting caught in adultery scandals – go figure).

Stay on topic

Fight about one thing at a time. Don’t drag out what happened yesterday, last month, or last year. This is the death blow to a fight because it takes it in a winding circle forever.

This is what politicians do. (Have you ever watched a televised debate?)

And this is what people do who don’t actually have a strong argument in the first place.

If it is worth fighting about, then fight about it. If you have enough energy to bring up 10 other things, then the fight isn’t about what you thought it was in the first place. Go back to your corner and rethink it before you come out swinging.

Avoid extremes of language

You ALWAYS do this. I NEVER get that.

Ha! I’ll bet you thought I was going to talk about profanity here, huh? No way. Verbal bombs work for some people, so I’m not going to diss them. But I am going to call out the “always/never/you make me” trio that will stop any progress in a fight immediately.

Always and never are not real. Always and never are lies. And when you bring up always and never it means you cannot think of a single good instance to discuss and would rather fling an inflammatory bomb to make your point. If you cannot name one instance, you do not have a point. If you can name one instance, fight about that one instance.

Politicians do this frequently, making blanket statements about the other party, groups of people, countries, and regions of the world. They say it as fact to help prove their point, but you know nothing is ALWAYS or NEVER and when someone trots out that line, they haven’t done their homework. They are counting on you to be lazy enough not to ask for details.

Fight in specifics, not generalities.

It works the same in a relationship, and when you cannot name specifics you cannot get to the root of the problem. “You NEVER take out the trash” is actually “You haven’t taken out the trash for the last week.” The first one has no response but anger at the lie because the other person has obviously taken out the trash before – it is why you are mad that he/she isn’t doing it now. The second one opens you up to a conversation of what has been keeping someone from their regular chores, which is probably the true issue of the fight.

You are crazy if you think he/she makes you crazy

The “you make/made me” tactic is another gem. No one can make you do anything. A more accurate response might be “I feel like X when you do Y,” fully taking responsibility for your actions but showing your partner what is a trigger issue for you.

Your partner is then free to point out that your reaction is totally off base (“Really, me spending time with my friends once a month makes you feel lonely? Sounds like the issue is yours, not mine.”) or see that you have a point and adjust their behavior going forward (“I never meant to worry you by not calling when I am going to be more than an hour late from work. Even if I’m really busy, I’ll take the time to text you from now on.”) Think about your complaint from your partner’s standpoint and see if you can shoot some holes in it yourself before you react and open your mouth.

Avoiding an argument altogether because you realize you are the jerk first is a huge timesaver and an effective personal growth tip.

(Is your mate the one blaming you for their negative actions toward you and treating you overall like crap? This goes way beyond regular couple fighting. Get some help.)

I love it when politicians say they aren’t going to negative with their ads “unless the other candidate does,” as if someone else’s behavior could make you change your own. If you aren’t a dick, how could someone else’s actions turn you into one? There had to be some dickishness in the genes already.

Assigning the worst motives in your mate

Why is it that this person we love to pieces one day can be the devil himself another? Instead of looking at this as a problem that needs to be solved, all of a sudden it becomes the evil plan of a demonic mastermind set on ruining your life. (Perhaps this is my Drama Queen getting a little wild.)

Give your mate the benefit of the doubt. You may not agree on the particular topic at hand, but unless you are living with a total jerk, they probably aren’t lying awake at night plotting ways to make your life miserable.

When he or she says something that is not quite right but you know what they meant, don’t jump on the fact that they used the wrong words just because you can. (Just because you are a better debater does not make you a better human being.) Don’t assign motives to their actions that are completely off base just because you are mad.

Remember that this person loves you and even if he or she did screw up, it isn’t because they are the spawn of Satan or a newly-diagnosed sociopath.

You can be mad, just don’t get crazy with it.

This brings to mind the rants about the “death panels” that were going to come to pass with President Obama’s healthcare plan. Disagree with the man’s healthcare plan if you don’t believe in a single payor system, but please don’t make up crazy stuff to strengthen your argument, because it certainly doesn’t.

Agree to the resolution

As the the fight is winding down, you can’t skip the final step just because you are starting to feel nice to each other again. It takes calmly stating the resolution – what you are going to do and what your mate it is going to do to resolve this – so you don’t have to revisit this same topic again.

We like to say “going forward…” as the end of our arguments, spelling out what each of is going to do about our behavior and how we can alert the other person when we sense one of us is veering off track so we don’t have the same fight over and over. Unlike politicians, we don’t get paid for that.

Our politicians go into a stalemate, break for recess, or kill bills. If something gets through, the other side vows to even the score (as if managing our country needed a score sheet).

When the goal is resolution and not keeping score, you’ll both come out ahead.

Fighting fair

Fighting for the sake of fighting is something politicians do. They smear mud hoping they can land more on their opponent than they do themselves.

In a relationship, a fight is a necessary part of building a life together. Even though they aren’t always pleasant, having a goal to resolve the issue and not just to win, say “I told you so,” or give an ultimatum is key to Living the Good Life.

Oh yeah, and makeup sex. Definitely makeup sex.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could have some sweet bipartisan lovin’ from our politicians about now?

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of essays about the voices in our heads. Click here to read the earlier entries, the bitchy little voice and the drama queen.

How do I start with this voice? There is no middle ground, no soft introduction. It isn’t even a voice you can categorize with a masculine or feminine personality. The Black & White voice contains no gradations, no variations, no personality. It just IS.

He wears black mostly, and his black hair hangs in his face so you can’t see his eyes. He is easily frustrated and his signature move is to turn on his heel and walk away. If there is a door to slam for emphasis, he’ll find it. If the voice were a celebrity, it would look like Marilyn Manson and act like Rush Limbaugh.

This voice is the one that encourages you to make snap judgements about a situation. It is all or nothing, completely perfect or a total failure, absolutely achievable or mission impossible, and since most things aren’t perfect, the voice usually comes down on the negative side.

The voice would rather have you stay still and do nothing than dip your toe into an imperfect situation. Trying to make it better without a perfect success record just paints you as a loser whose standards weren’t high enough to begin with.

This voice can be deadly for your work and social relationships because it paints you as an extremist. People are a little taken aback at your intense reactions to the most mundane situations, and when you are in the grips of this voice you might get the feedback that you are too wound up or need to chill out. If people don’t flee your presence first.

Examples of Black and White Thinking:

• You throw a dinner party for close friends and burn the bread you meant to use with the selection of dips for the appetizer course. You agonize over your “ruined” dinner party even though your friends are happily milling around, talking and drinking, oblivious to your catastrophe. Instead of just pulling some crackers from the cabinet and making do, you dramatically pour all your homemade dips down the drain and cast a dark cloud over the rest of the evening.
• You go to give a presentation at work, one that you have slaved over for weeks. You know it by heart, and your Power Point presentation is a work of art. As you get ready to present, there is a technical problem and the Power Point presentation will not load. Instead of going through your otherwise perfectly prepared presentation and landing all the points – it is about the information and not the method of delivery, after all – you scrap it and tell the client you’ll have to do it later when you’ve fixed the problem. Your client is confused and pissed that you wasted her time.
• You go on a trip to a sunny locale in the middle of winter. You have an itinerary, but something happens to disrupt it on day one – a late flight, an illness, lost luggage, a misplaced reservation – and you think your trip is ruined. Instead of working out a quick detour, you focus on all the ways the trip has gone wrong and how you cannot recover it. You get through it and go home, complaining to everyone about how awful a visit to a sunny locale in winter actually is. Not so surprisingly, people think you are a jackass for moaning about a “ruined” trip to Hawaii while they freeze their buns off in North Dakota.

In all three scenarios, fear springs up to tell you that if something doesn’t go exactly as planned, it is a failure. If your endeavor can’t be fool-proofed from the start, there is no reason to attempt it. 100% success is the only option, and anything less is complete failure. There is no middle ground.

Black and White is tough, and if truth be told it is mostly Black. People who rely on this voice like to think of themselves as realists, possibly even cynics who are asking all the hard questions no one else has to guts to ask, but in reality they are backsliding into childhood responses, using basic words to describe complex situations and leaning heavily on the words always, never, nothing, and everything.

Trying something always means the risk of failure, and the voice hates that chance. He views failure as a failure, not a means to an end, a path to success. He doesn’t understand that failure is part of the process, a necessary step to help us do better going forward, learn the things we cannot grasp by theory alone, and possibly even point us in a new direction we can’t find without sometimes blindly feeling our way and messing up.

His exact opposite is the Rainbow voice (not so coincidentally the voice of the gay rights movement, where acceptance of diversity is the norm.)

Perfection is the only option for this voice, which means you’ll never make it happy. Perfection is the killer of every great idea under the sun, and until you learn to silence or ignore this voice, he will keep you stuck in place, scared to make a move and unhappy every time you do.

How to silence the Black and White voice

• I just told you it sounds like Rush Limbaugh and looks like Marilyn Manson. Do you seriously need more than that? Seriously, though, eliminate the words always, never, nothing, and everything from your vocabulary and learn to accurately describe the situation.
• It’s a numbers game. If this voice is a problem for you, begin assigning percentages to every situation. Nothing is ever 100% bad or 100% good. As you train your brain to evaluate the events around you, you’ll be more realistic in judging your own events and decisions.
• Verify your opinion with the people around you. “Am I overreacting to this, or do you think the burned bread has ruined the evening?” “If you were me, would you say screw it at the messed up reservation and fly back to snowy North Dakota or take the smaller room at this hotel in Hawaii?” Sometimes just saying it out loud will alert you to the ridiculousness of your reaction.

Now if someone could just forward this post to Rush Limbaugh our work would be done.

We told you guys last year that we’d be settling down for 6 months to write and earn some cash for our continuing journey around the world (and we let you pick the location). We are now halfway through our first dedicated work stint of the journey, and the hyperconcentration on a single goal is taking its toll. It reminds me of our 2-year savings and downsizing plan to get ready for the trip, where we occasionally lost our mojo or got frustrated.

It even happened long before the trip in large and small ways, which is why I know some of you suffer from this, too:

• One year I gave up caffeine entirely, which was hard on me and worse on those who used to love me. (Have your scars healed? Please come back – I’m on the sauce again.)
• Another time I was training for a half-marathon, getting up early to run every morning in the breaking dawn in the freezing rain and cold. I turned down most evening plans to be ready for my early-morning runs, and my social life suffered as a result (though honestly, it could have been the continuing fallout from the no-caffeine thing.)
• Then there was the time that we wanted to paint our entire home interior in a medley of 3 colors – green, orange, and yellow – and we would not stop until it was done, painting every night after work and every weekend. We were so exhausted by the time we finished that we moved before we ever got the energy to paint the outside.

In the old days I thought this loss of mojo was due to the weather since it often happened in the winter. But here we are in sunny Thailand, where the winter is the most pleasant I’ve ever known, and I’m doing it again.

I’m consumed by writing this book (strippers, monsters, and ass kicking – what more could you want in your self-help?). When I’m not writing I’m thinking about what I will write, or how to promote the book, or what other great stories to add to it. When I read another book, I’m curious as to how the writer has set up the story or promoted it or solved a problem for readers. I’m not getting much in the way of exercise, but I fall into bed mentally exhausted every night.

Warren is likewise preoccupied with the promotion and selling of it, revamping our website, and completing website projects for clients so we can continue our dream of long-term travel. All of our conversations center around the work we are doing – work we want to do, for sure, but still work. We have been talking about and doing this one thing that we have almost forgotten why we’re doing it in the first place.

We lost our mojo.

I don’t believe you can live your life in perfect balance, but I do think trying to balance everything out in the long run is the goal. Our latest visa run to the Burmese border put it all into perspective and reminded us  just why we are doing this work (and when we need to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labors). It all started with leaving the laptop behind.

After doing the necessary border cross and return, we spent the remainder of our time away in the small mountain town of Chiang Rai, Thailand, renting a motorbike to see the sights and just take in the fragrant beauty of winding mountain roads. We felt the wind in our hair, talked to locals at the marketplace, and discovered beautiful architecture, delicious foods, and a stunning display of Mother Nature’s finest assets.

We went to the bus station and headed back to Chiang Mai the next day, a little bit pink from the sun and happy for our short adventure. We both remarked that we had recaptured our mojo, the real reason we were doing all this hard work to begin with. Our dream life is one of discovery and adventure, and even though we feel very passionate about the work we are doing now, it is not an end in and of itself. It is a means to an end, and we had forgotten that for a while.

Maybe you are doing the same thing right now, focusing so much on a project that you have forgotten the reason you started it:

• The home improvement project that takes you away from your family when it is supposed to eventually give you a better space to spend time together
• The work project that takes up all your free time when it is supposed to get you a raise/bonus/promotion to further fund your free pursuits
• The gung-ho exercise program that leaves you too exhausted to move when it is meant to restore your energy for other things.

Learn from our experience. It doesn’t take much to remind yourself why you are working so hard, and that little break might be just what you need to refocus and make big strides in your project.

How to recapture your mojo

1. Come up for air. Step back from what you’re doing, if only for a night or a weekend. Sleep in, watch a movie, take a walk, call a friend. I promise, the work will still be there when you return.
2. Set yourself a deadline. So many people work without an end in sight, and you have to know when you are making headway or need to admit failure and move on to something new. Avoid the slog and know where your efforts are leading you.
3. Reconnect with your long-term vision, the reason you are doing it in the first place. Spend time with friends and family or enjoy a leisure activity. Read the top 5 regrets of people who are dying from a hospice nurse if you don’t think this matters.

Get your mojo back so you can continue to do great things with your life.

Editor’s Note: As we finish writing When Fear Blinks: How to See through Your Fear, we’re interviewing people you know doing scary things. Everyone has fears, even really successful people, and learning to do things in spite of them is one element to Living the Good Life.

It’s Friday the 13th. Are you happy the weekend is almost here or nervously looking out for black cats (please don’t look to your right!)

If you think Friday the 13th is scary, try producing an international 500-person conference humbly titled the World Domination Summit on the far western edge of the US without corporate sponsorship or previous event management experience. No pressure, huh?

Chris Guillebeau is first in this series because – hello – he is the leader of something called the World Domination Summit.

Rather than picturing Dr. Evil in his underground lair stroking the hairless cat Mr. Bigglesworth, you can picture a guy who looks more like a clean-cut bike messenger. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even own a suit, and his only vice seems to be Chipotle burritos. That’s part of his charm, and also his secret weapon. He is Everyman. When he succeeds, we realize we can, too.

(Interesting side note: he does have a sidekick cat, so perhaps this is a requirement of all masterminds, no matter what their philosophical bent. Keep this in mind as you plot your takeover.)

I interviewed Chris recently on the subject of fear, half expecting him to tell me he didn’t have any. Silly girl.

The Interview

Q: The World Domination Summit turned out to be a huge success, but you probably had some doubts and fears at the beginning about putting on an event of this magnitude. What were some of your biggest concerns, and how did you learn to work through them?

A: Yes, I definitely had some doubts and fears. Probably the biggest was… how do we do this? How do we produce an event for 500 people, many of whom have never visited Portland before?

One of the things that helped was in realizing that most of the attendees were extremely motivated to be there. They were excited to come to Portland, and they were excited to meet old friends and new friends. I think our biggest success came in thinking about how we could channel that excitement (“ride the wave…”) and make the event overtly about them, instead of a bunch of strangers coming to watch a production.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this effort wasn’t mine alone. We had a core group of WDS leaders who worked on the event nine months in advance here in Portland, and we were joined by an extended group of volunteers (“ambassadors”) for the actual weekend. Finally, the speakers and workshop leaders volunteered their time as well. So it was definitely a group effort.

Q: What impact do you think having a goal bigger than yourself has on your fear? If WDS has just been the Chris G show it would have been an entirely different beast than the “ya’ll go out and do awesome shit” show, don’t you think?

A: Yes, and it would have been terrible! As mentioned above, it was never my goal to make it all about me. The funny thing is that it’s actually easier to make it about other people and deflect some of the attention. And in the long-run, it will probably be more helpful for whatever else you’re trying to build as well.

Q: How do you think people can determine whether something is scary because the compass is pointing north and you know it is right for you or scary because you shouldn’t do it?

A: Here’s an example, since we’ve been talking about WDS — when I first had the idea to invite a million people (OK, 500 the first year and 1,000 for year two), I was immediately excited, but also scared. As I thought it through, I knew I would regret it if I didn’t make the attempt. I wasn’t sure it would be successful, but that’s another story.

I often use the same question when considering various projects and ideas: will I regret it if I don’t try? Notice that you don’t usually feel this way about things that are actually harmful to you. If I applied the same logic to putting my hand on a hot burner, I’d think: “Would I regret it if I don’t try? Nope, not really.”

Q: What are your top 3 practical tips on moving through your fears to do big things?

1. Don’t pretend to be fearless. Everyone’s afraid of something, so you might as well acknowledge and work with your fear instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.
2. Don’t let fear make your decisions for you. (In fact, the things you are afraid of may very well be related to the things you need to do.)
3. Sometimes it helps to get to the root of the fear. What are you really afraid of? It’s often not the obvious thing, but rather something indirectly related.

For example, like a lot of people I’m somewhat afraid of public speaking. But when I think about it more, I realize I’m not actually afraid of the speaking itself, but rather all the feelings of trepidation that come before it. The actual speaking isn’t usually a problem, and when I learned to reframe it this way, it helped me get a lot more comfortable in preparing for talks.

I think the same principle holds true elsewhere: we’re not always afraid of what we think we are, so it helps to puzzle it out a bit.

Q: What are you working on next that people should stay tuned for?

A: I’m excited about WDS 2012, taking place July 6-8 in Portland again. But before that, my book THE $100 STARTUP (Editor’s Note: You can preorder now on Amazon) comes out in May. I’ll be doing a tour to meet readers in at least twenty cities in North America, and then at least a dozen other cities around the world. It’s been a while since I’ve been on the road for book stuff, and I’m looking forward to getting back to it.

Fear-Blinking Strategies

You already know how it turned out for Chris in 2011. But what about 2012 – can he duplicate his success? The tickets sold out 13 minutes after going on sale 9 months ahead of the event, so I’d say he was on the right track.

His strategies work, and here’s how they can work for you:

• Will I regret it if I don’t try? I love this lesson. You don’t know this, but regret is one of the main subjects we get via email. People have regrets as they get older, or they tell us about someone who recently became ill or died without accomplishing what they wanted most in life, and it is heartbreaking. Your end-of-life regrets might motivate the people around you to do great things, but they won’t do a damn thing for you. Ask yourself this question next time you get scared.
• Rally your tribe. You don’t have to go it alone, and you’ll do more and do it better when you ask for help and feedback. Tell just one person about your idea and see how much more momentum you have to get it done.
• Examine your fears. There’s a message in there, a roadmap, a self-discovery that will allow you to propel yourself further than you imagined. I like the “multiple why” approach: keep asking yourself “but why?” and answering until you hit an uncomfortable truth. Now you’re on to something.

Many thanks to Chris for being so candid with us. Check out his website to learn more about unconventional living. Who’s next in the interview process? You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Stay tuned…

Photo by Chris Guillebeau via Flickr

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of essays about the voices in our heads. Click here to read the first entry, the bitchy little voice.

If the voices in our heads have personalities, then the uniform of the Drama Queen would be a vibrant orange jewelled muumuu, large glasses with smoky blue lenses and rhinestones on the stems, mounds of hair piled on top of her head, and high-heeled maribou slippers on her feet.

The Drama Queen glides rather than walks, speaks with dramatic pauses, and her long painted fingernails are never without large cocktail rings and a menthol cigarette burning at the end of a long gold holder. She is the center of attention, a force to be reckoned with.

In fact, you could say The Drama Queen was the alter ego of Auntie Mame, still eccentric and fabulous, but with a decidedly negative slant. Or maybe The Bloggess on a really bad day when talking to a mortal enemy. You listen to this voice because the style and delivery are hard to ignore.

The opening act

Recently I went to the doctor for my annual physical. I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary, just a mileage checkup. Since we’re traveling I do not have access to my regular doctor and instead went to one highly recommended by my new expat friends here in Thailand. Let me stress again, I had no fear going into this appointment. It was just one of those self-maintenance things you have to do, like getting a pedicure when your feet start resembling those of an elephant.

I was shown into her office and her first words to me were: “Are your eyes always that big, or is this new?”

Blink.

At first I thought this might be some cultural misunderstanding, like the time the lady at the clothing store here told me I had to pay more for “jumbo sizes.” She wasn’t being insulting, just letting me know that Western-sized clothes cost more because they use more material than Thai-sized clothing. Or at least that is how Warren explained it to me as he hurried me away from the store.

The doctor went on to explain to me that this combined with some of my answers to her questions were signs of a possible medical condition we should check with a blood test. Like it was no big deal.

Drama queen, enter stage right

There’s no telling what kind of notations were going on in my chart: “Manic, bug-eyed Caucasian woman in jumbo clothes presents to the clinic for…” I tried not to act weird, but since I’m me, I couldn’t help it.

Blood tests were drawn, and I started walking back to the guesthouse.

This is when the drama queen really started her monologue

“You thought you were doing so well to lose those 30 pounds, but it looks like the credit for shrinking your ass goes to disease. Nice of you to try to steal the glory. Stupid of you to give up Diet Cokes on January 1, too, because you are going to need them when the weight starts piling back on…if they can cure the disease, that is.”

Increasingly dramatic thoughts about my potential disease flooded my thoughts. Halfway back The Drama Queen started getting really morbid:

“If you do die, what will Warren do? Will he cremate you here in Thailand and ship you back to the States, or will he carry you with him in his backpack as he continues traveling around the world? Will you have to sit there in the urn and listen to him having sex with other people? Of course you can’t really deny him pleasure and companionship for the rest of his life, can you? But seriously, there needs to a timeframe of mourning or that’s just gonna look bad for you.”

By the time I reached our street I had mentally written my obituary from the invasion of horrible disease I knew the blood test would find. I had a checklist of things to talk about with Warren regarding dying on the road if I could find a casual way to bring it up in conversation. It would probably go something like this:

Me: “So, if I die I just want you to know it’s fine for you to have sex with other people as soon as you are ready. Though I don’t expect you to enjoy it. Can you pass the hot sauce?”

Warren: (silence)

I arrived back at the guesthouse sweaty, a little light-headed from lack of food and giving blood, and with a shitstorm of panic raging behind my bulging eyes.

Drama queen, exit stage right

The next morning I woke up to find an email from my doctor.

Oh, no. This could not be good. I knew from experience that if the doctor contacts you right away it must be terrible news. I looked into the mirror that hangs over my desk at my bulging eyes and prepared for the worst.

“Dear Khun Betsy,

Please find attached.

Overall results are very good…”

Huh? What? Just like she dropped the quiet bomb of possible disease the day before, she stated my lab results like she was commenting on the weather. Everything was normal. Blue skies.

Normal.

NORMAL.

It was at this point that the voice went quiet. The Drama Queen sashayed off stage, calling for her assistant to bring her a martini while she touched up her makeup and lounged before the next performance.

I could tell you right now that my doctor led me on to think this was as bad as I made it out to be, but that would be a lie. I steamrolled over her gentle probing to create a drama where there was none. With this kind of talent I should be scripting reality television shows.

Instead of just waiting for the results before reacting, I spent valuable energy and time mentally composing my obituary (which, by the way, was heartfelt and witty, and would have had people laughing through their tears in remembrance of me). This was 10 steps beyond normal and a total cave-in to the voice of fear.

How does the voice of the drama queen work in your life?

• That little ache is probably the first sign of inoperable cancer.

• If this doesn’t succeed, you can kiss your career goodbye.

• He didn’t answer his phone so he’s obviously cheating.

How do you send the Drama Queen back to her dressing room?

Very much like we banished the Bitchy Little Voice:

• Change the messenger. Instead of a negative Auntie Mame, try to imagine Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island telling you those things. Can’t take it seriously can you?
• Tone does not equal authority, and you get a very different vibe hearing Rocket Man performed by William Shatner than you do by Elton John. Try your message in a less dramatic tone and see how differently you respond to it. (This could be the first time in history that Elton John has been out drama queen’d.)
• Evaluate your statements. Scientists call the voice of the Drama Queen “distorted thinking,” and this article shows 10 ways these fear statements play out plus strategies for countering them. Drama Queen, you’re on notice. We’ve got your number (specifically, #5).

Your Drama Queen is telling you to calm the voices in your head by liking our Facebook page. On this occasion, she’s right.

Editor’s Note: Fear has many voices, and over the coming weeks we’ll be outing all of them, examining them for what they are so you can make the decision whether to listen or ignore, learn or reject, act or retreat. We’re on a mission in 2012 to help you understand how fear works so you can use its power for good. In fact, we’re writing the book on it.

Let’s be honest here: you’re gonna have to get over yourself.

And by “yourself” I mean that bitchy little voice in your head that tells you you’re not smart, thin, attractive, witty, fit, likable, determined, lucky, rich, happy, talented, wise, young, old, or street-smart enough to do whatever it is you really want to do with your life.

Guess what? You probably aren’t. (And neither is anyone else.)

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just here to give you a dose of reality so you can shut that bitchy little voice up for a just a minute. (My god, how can you get anything done with the constant nagging and fear-mongering?)

Your fear is real, even if the reasons for it are not, and you are hard-wired to behave this way from your caveman days. You don’t have to worry about violent death from saber-toothed tigers anymore, but you do have to worry about your livelihood from a nitpicking boss or the sharp tongue of the office gossip. As they say here in Thailand, “same same, but different.”

Disqualifying yourself before you even start

Let me ask you a question. When you are looking for a job, do you only apply when you fit all the stated requirements, the degree in monkey wrangling, experience using all 12 modules of the Banana 7.0 software, or 5 years of direct experience managing poo-flinging? Or do you apply for what piques your interest, the jobs you know you could do and want to do, even if you don’t meet all the criteria on the surface?

(“Hey you, the one with the insanely high self-confidence and desire to prove it. The job is yours. Here’s your broom.”)

As someone who has hired many people in the past, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Hardly anyone meets the exact criteria for a job posting. The job description is just a “dream” list of qualifications the hiring manager thinks is useful  – or worse, it is just a rehash of the ad the last time the job was open and the hiring manager just plans to cull through resumes to find the right person. She doesn’t expect to find a candidate that crosses every T and dots every I of a job description.

This example is going long so I’ll let you know right now that this post isn’t about how to find a great job (though you can take my advice and send me a finder’s fee when you land that awesome new gig if you like.)

This post is about treating your big goals and fears around them like that dream job you aren’t qualified for on paper. Realize right now that you won’t be “enough” to do the thing you want to do until you are actually doing it. So stop wasting time right now thinking about all the ways you fall short at the start and just say, “eh, I don’t fit the job description but I’m going to apply anyway.”

• “I’m not as good-looking as Justin Timberlake, but I am funny as hell and can dance, so I’m going to ask her out.”
• “I don’t have a book deal – yet – so I’m going to self-publish my book on Kindle because I have something to say.”
• “I’m not thin enough to fit in a little black dress, so I’m going to buy a large one and go out to the party anyway.”

Fear has many voices

That bitchy little voice is part of gang of thugs called Fear. They hang around in dark alleys, calling out all the insecurities of people passing by like creepy construction workers on a lunch break.

• “You aren’t good enough!”
• “He doesn’t really love you, you know.”
• “Everyone thinks you’re going to fail.”

They are brutal, and just like stereotypes, we believe there is enough of a grain of truth in them to give them legs. We listen to these voices like they are beacons of knowledge when they are really just shots of self-doubt fired in the dark. All the voice has to do is keeping lobbing insults at you until one sticks, so the job is not difficult.

I could tell you to just stop listening to the voice, but that would be like telling a smoker to just throw away the pack or a junkie to just skip her next fix. We are hooked on the bad shit, and it is hard to walk away from the insults we tell ourselves.

Why is that?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because allowing ourselves to be insulted to the point of inaction serves our evolutionary need to be safe. Fear is making sure you don’t get hurt by venturing outside your comfort zone. It has adjusted to life without saber-toothed tigers, but it is still on high alert for anything that can harm you, including the modern-day monsters: rejection, failure, and embarrassment. If it can keep you in your cave, it has done its job.

Your fear is a compass. Learn to read it.

Your fear isn’t going away. Even if you conquer your latest fears, new ones will arrive. There is no getting around the idea of having fear in your life, so you might as well learn to deal with it. Everyone gets scared, but only the really smart ones learn to keep going anyway. And we already know you’re one of the smart ones.

By the time the fear subsides, it will be too late. By the time you’re not afraid of what you were planning to start/say/do, someone else will have already done it, it will already be said or it will be irrelevant. The reason you’re afraid is that there’s leverage here, something might happen. Which is exactly the signal you’re looking for. ~ Seth Godin

It’s that fear, the Resistance you feel when something is titillating and terrifying at the same time, that signals you are on the right track. It is your compass, your foghorn, the lighthouse to guide you forward, and if you begin treating your fear this way, it will revolutionize your life. You can reject what your fear is saying and still accept the signal it is giving you to move forward.

Little bitchy voice: You’re on notice.

We’ve got ways of dealing with the likes of you:

• Change the messenger. Think of the most annoying, negative, “sky is falling” person you know, the one that makes you want to leave the room every time he or she enters. Now imagine your bitchy little voice being replaced with that one. It makes it a LOT easier to accurately evaluate the message when you change the speaker.
• Tone does not equal authority. We often joke about Warren’s “authoritative voice.” I know when he pulls this one out during a conversation that he is full of crap. He either doesn’t know the answer and won’t admit it or he’s trying to fool someone in the group. I’ve learned not to trust him when he sounds ultra sure of himself. The lesson? Don’t be confused by the tone. James Earl Jones may sound really cool when he says stupid stuff, but it is still stupid stuff. (Imagine Gilbert Gottfried saying “Luke, I am your father.”)
• Be a friend to yourself. Most of us are thoughtful, supportive, and loving to our closest friends, encouraging them when they are down and pointing out when they are sabotaging themselves. Next time your bitchy little voice makes an appearance, defend yourself like you would a good friend who confided these thoughts to you.

Want to know more about using fear as a compass in your own life? Sign up here.

This is not the post I expected to be writing today – or ever, for that matter. This week a friend of mine from high school and longtime reader of this blog was shot and killed by her ex-husband in Colorado, who later turned the gun on himself. Her name was Donna Royer, and I wish you could have known her.

Her death was sensational and public in the way that her life was not. She had an emotionally challenging and fulfilling job providing physical therapy for cancer patients, worked off steam by competing in physical endurance races, and was planning a better life with a man who just asked her to marry him. Her two daughters were the center of her world and the subject of almost all her conversations. Her life was on the upswing after enduring a tumultuous divorce, financial turmoil, and entre into single parenthood last year.

You may not have known Donna, but I can’t bear to let her quiet life be overshadowed by the headlines of her tragic death. She was so much more than that. She worked hard to graduate from college in her late 30s and start a new life as a single mom. She exposed her daughters to a variety of people and lifestyles and taught them it was okay to be anything you wanted to be as long as you weren’t hurting anyone else. She was curious and naive in the best kind of nonjudgemental way. She loved life and had faith that most people were good.

She was a later-in-life athlete who had rock-hard abs at the time in life most of us are watching ours disappear. As Donna was coming into her own after the divorce, she competed in events like last year’s Moab Adventure Xtreme, where she biked, kayaked, ran and rappelled on a course she had to plot from a map.

She was on a journey without a defined route in life, and she loved how this race mirrored her new reality.

Donna and I connected on our shared “good-girl-but-still-an-outsider” mindset even from high school. We both knew what it was like to be in the wrong place, living a life that didn’t quite fit, and surrounded by people who didn’t understand our discontent. We each made bold moves in our 20s, enduring the scandal of divorce in a small town and leaving to start anew. We bonded over our desire to try new things, live full out, and give a hand up to people who might want to live the same way. We each made some smart moves and some dumb mistakes along the way, and we tried to learn from both.

I last saw Donna at our 20th high school reunion in 2009. We had a long talk over dinner about the twists and turns of life and how it takes longer to grow up when the status quo doesn’t quite fit. I met her beautiful daughters, who were without question the light of her life. I told Warren later that connecting with her over dinner again was the highlight of the reunion for me.

When I saw the open casting call for the movie The Avengers in Santa Fe earlier this year, I sent Donna a note to get over there fast. Who better to be a superhero than someone who had remade her life and her body? She laughed off the suggestion, but I still think she would have been great, and she is the only friend I know who could fill out a superhero costume after all her training. Trinity from The Matrix had nothing on Donna. When the movie comes out this summer, I know I’ll think of her.

She joked about being able to keep up with a younger boyfriend, but I suspect he was the one trying to keep up with her.

When another friend recently said she might be moving to Colorado for work, I immediately put her in touch with Donna because I knew she’d form a welcome committee and help her transition. Donna was such a giving soul, and she couldn’t stand to see anyone hurting or in pain, swooping in to help or protect at a moment’s notice. She was not so vigilant about taking care of herself in the past, often apologizing for her needs and working to make everyone else’s life better at the expense of her own. In recent years she had been trying to reverse that trend.

Just a week ago she commented here on the post about over-apologizing:

“Betsy, this is fantastic. (Mostly because it was like you were watching my life play out.) I love the quote, “we are shrinking ourselves to balance on a single blade of grass when an entire acre is available to us.” Could not be truer and I am going to share. I needed to hear this today, thank you so much.”

Every time I see a patch of green I’ll imagine my friend Donna laying back on the soft grass, ams and legs splayed wide to take up every available inch, soaking up the sunshine with a big grin on her face.

She just really got started on this race called life, and I can’t believe she’s already crossed the finish line.

I’ll miss you, Donna.

Are you baffled at how you’re going to make your new year resolutions stick this year?

Every year you are greeted with this gorgeous blank slate full of possibilities for your health, relationships, business, and personal goals. But you might be confused at how to go about making positive changes in your life. You know where you are now, and you know where you want to be, but you might not know how to get from A to B.

We wrote about working your dream down into a tangible goal you could reach in Dream Save Do. It is key to make the transition from the general “I want to lose weight” to the specific “I want to lose 15 pounds by June 1.” Without a specific goal and a deadline, you don’t really have much to work with. But once you do have that specific goal and deadline, how do you make it happen?

The strategies below are proven methods to go from dream to done in your new year planning, and we’ve successfully used all of them at one time or another. An added bonus is that you don’t even have to start them on January 1. Your new year can start anytime you want it to!  Just like  there is no “one size fits all” plan for life, there is no one way to plan for your new year or assigned date on which you have to start. The important thing is to state a measurable goal and find a system that works for you in achieving it.

The Renaissance Approach

In order to live a really healthy life, you have to focus on all the aspects of your life when you list your goals. If you aren’t physically healthy you may not have the stamina to reach your work goals, and if you aren’t in a good relationship you may not have the support you need to go back to school or start a business. Everything works together in goal planning, and you have to think about the advances you want to make in each area of your life: Personal, Health, Relationship/Family, Work, Giving Back.

This is our third year of doing a comprehensive retreat, and the changes in our lives during that time are proof that this kind of planning and attention works. We got our start from Chris Guillebeau, a renaissance man if there ever was one, and we think you can successfully use this method at the start of the new year or on your birthday, which is technically your New Year’s Day, right?

The Engineering Method

We love tracking metrics. We did it for 25 months as we saved for our big trip and systematically sold, trashed, or donated everything we owned. And since leaving, we’ve tracked all of our spending to stay on budget. We track our website statistics, our daily word count in writing the new book, and we each carry a small notebook to capture new ideas as they come to us. We are geeks when it comes to tracking, and we know you can make huge strides forward in your goals when you take them from lofty ideas to concrete plans you can track.

Our friend Dwayne Melancon has a somewhat geeky but very effective approach to New Year’s resolutions that involves the use of a Mind Map. Dwayne is a technology guru and autodidact, and he spends a great deal of time pursuing his genuine curiosity and overall self improvement. Dwayne always knows the latest gadget, methodology, or business idea, and he puts this all to use in his work and personal life. He’s a happy, productive guy, and it is due in no small part to his annual efforts to plan for that result.

The Celebrity Scoop

If you need the support of others, going the celebrity route might be just the thing. Proclaiming your goals via Facebook, website, video, or even just announcing it to your friends can make a huge difference in your ability to achieve those goals. When I signed up for the 2010 Seattle Rock-n-Roll Marathon, I took on a Lady Gaga attitude and made it public. I gave updates on the blog and Facebook, and all my friends knew about it. It was very hard to back down on my commitment with all of those people watching. The same thing happened to Warren with the Fremont Solstice Parade in 2010. He had been mentioning it for years that he was going to be one of the naked bicyclists, but it wasn’t until he finally put it down as a goal and said he would do it on the blog and on video that it happened.

You may or may not want to ride in the buff in front of thousands of people, but you probably do have an audience of friends and supporters who would encourage you to reach your goal. You could even go as far as Perez Hilton, who proclaimed in late 2007 that he would be posing shirtless in front of millions of viewers on the following July 4. Perez was significantly overweight at the time, and he spent the next 4 years working out and eating right, losing an overall 61 pounds. He also kept true on his commitment to pose shirtless every July 4 to keep himself motivated.

The Artist’s Way

It is easy to talk yourself out of tracking your creative pursuits. I mean, they are creative pursuits, above the status of numbers and checklists and timelines. You can’t rush art!

Well, you may not be able to rush it, but you certainly need a scope and a deadline. If your goal is something of a creative nature, it is doubly important for you to set up metrics to track your progress. Don’t get caught up in the angst and romance of creation, thinking it cannot be good if there is no suffering or breakthrough involved. I used to do that, and it wasn’t until I assigned daily word counts that I was able to actually complete a book with very little angst and zero blood loss. Creativity craves routine just as much as routine craves creativity.

“You know who gets writer’s block? Non-writers. They think it’s cool and romantic to struggle to make Art. They make sure everyone knows how torturous the process is, so when they finally squeeze something out, it won’t be judged on its merits but rather the emotional anguish involved in its creation. Writers write. Posers whine about how hard it is.” ~ screenwriter John August

If you need support in your artistic endeavors, make plans now for NaNoWriMo, the 3-Day Novel Contest, or getting some specific help through a writer’s critique group or a primer on book proposals (this is the one we just used to create our proposal). Set up your daily word or page count, or really challenge yourself by producing a painting a day for 100 days like Jolie did.

Old School Style

Psychologist Cliff Arnall, who studies happiness, states that the unhappiest day of the year is the third Monday in January while the happiest day is June 17. Starting out your biggest plans of the year when your mental health is at an all-time low could be counterproductive to your goals. He advocates starting your goals at a time other than January 1 to have a better chance of success.

Many people do this subconsciously in the spring (spring cleaning, garage sales, diets for swimsuit season) and in the fall (school starts, the end of vacations, back to “serious” work). For years, I considered September the start of my new year just because of school, and later I switched that to my birthday, which is in early December. It gave me almost a month’s headstart on my goals in comparison to everyone else.

You don’t have to make your New Year’s Resolutions begin on January 1. In fact, just about anytime is a good time to wipe the slate clean, state your goals out loud, and develop a plan to reach them. Pick a method, combine a few, or come up with your own. The important thing is to do something about your dreams, because if you don’t, no one else will.

Make the next year one for the history books.

2012 in a nutshell

How do you want your life to look at this time next year? When you start with a picture in mind, it is a lot easier to work backward to create a plan for reaching it. To do it, you must be able to see it.

• State your goal
• Find a method to make it happen
• Track your success until you reach your goal

Set the date. Be excited. Do it!

Find out more about reaching your goals here.

Remember all the times you said to yourself, “I don’t have the time right now” when thinking about something you know you really need to do?

• Getting healthy
• Starting/repairing/ending a relationship
• Finally doing that thing you’ve always wanted to do

Well, now it is actually true. Time is running out. You only have 365 days to get your shit together before the world ends or undergoes a dramatic transformation, according to the ancient Mayans.

Whether you believe it or not (the fact that the Mayans didn’t ask for your life savings like Harold Camping did gives them a bit more credibility), you can craft a one-year plan today…right now… to get what you most want before whatever happens is going to happen.

I know, I know. You’re telling me this is probably a hoax and it won’t actually happen. True, but if you do it aren’t you ahead in 365 days anyway?

We began our current adventure with a very similar question when faced with tragedy:

“What would we do if we knew we wouldn’t make it to our 40th birthdays?”

We are safely past that date now, and all the work we did before then has changed the way we will live out the remainder of our lives, no matter how much time we have left.

We want you to have the same thing. So whether or not you believe in the ancient Mayan prophesy that the world is going to end, believe in yourself, that you are worthy of the work you need to do to reach your goal, and that you are up to the task.

Imagine what you could do in just one year.

PS – If you choose to do nothing, you may want to invest in the Mystic Mayan Power Cloak to guard you from destruction, though I don’t actually want to see you wearing it.

For more on getting your act together, sign up here. 

How many times a day do you apologize? 5, 10, 20, 50? If you are apologizing more than a few times a week, you are either over-apologizing or a pretty big jerk.

Is this you?

• Apologizing for bumping into people and inanimate objects. “Whoops, sorry!” (even when they bumped into you and even though “excuse me” is more appropriate)
• Apologizing for things other people screwed up for themselves. “I’m sorry you failed your test.” (even though you know he didn’t even study for it)
• Apologizing for our bosses, coworkers and friends when we think they behave badly. “I’m so sorry – she’s not normally like this!” (yes, she is)
• Apologizing for the weather: “I’m sorry for the rain today; I was hoping for sun!” (as if you have the power to control either)
• Apologizing for not reading someone else’s mind. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you also wanted a cup of coffee. Let me go make one for you.”
• Apologizing before asking for help. “I’m sorry to bother you, but can you help me with this?” (Or the related, “I’m such a ditz with this – can you help me?”)

Over-apologizers blurt out a mea culpa for every stupid reason under the sun and for events that don’t even warrant an apology, which diminishes the power of an actual apology: “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

A recovering over-apologizer

It didn’t occur to me that I had a problem with this until we went to South America last year. In learning Spanish I kept saying “lo siento” when I bumped into someone in the market or when I was trying to get a waiter’s attention. I mistakenly thought it was equal to “excuse me.” My friend informed me that in those instances I should be saying “disculpe” instead, which means “excuse me.” In all other instances, I should keep my mouth shut.

I’m sorry ≠ Excuse me

It wasn’t until I had this pointed out that I realized just how often I said “I’m sorry” in English, too. Now, don’t get me wrong. There is a place for the apology, and I think we should own up to our mistakes and make amends. But there is no reason to apologize for the weather, for needing help, for not reading someone’s mind, and most of all, for simply taking up space.

I was reminded of this whole “I’m sorry/excuse me” revelation recently after Jezebel posted this fine piece of bloggery about not apologizing for her ladybits (read it, it’s good). It sparked an interesting conversation on my Facebook page about whether we over-apologize or over-thank, and then I steered the conversation to this other piece of recent Internet cleverness (click here if you don’t see the video below).

Why all the hubbub about over-apologizing and silly-girl-speak? Well, I think it indicates a bigger problem. When we apologize for every little thing under the sun, we are diminishing ourselves in they eyes of the people around us. Worse, it impacts the way we think – about ourselves, the world around us, and how we fit in it.

When we speak like little girls, trying to be cute when making a tough point or pouting to get our way instead of stating what we want, we are saying that we have to play tricks to get our point across, that what we have to say isn’t valuable enough on its own, unadorned.

We are shrinking ourselves to balance on a single blade of grass when an entire acre is available to us.

Over-apologizing diminishes us, in both our eyes and in the people around us. If you are apologizing for taking up space to an inanimate object, there is a problem. If you are apologizing for people and events outside your control, then you are not focusing enough on what you do control.

Stop apologizing for things you didn’t do, for taking up space, for having an opinion.

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