Prose

We Win or We Perish

A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, “You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice – we win – or we perish!”

They won.

I feel honoured to share this story with all of you. It is from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. The book actually changed the way I look at life. It inspired me so much that I got it tattooed last year (at Mom’s Tattoo Shop in Waterloo, in case you’re looking for recommendations). I hope this story resonates with you on some level as well.

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March 9th, 2011
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Book Love
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Success Tips
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That’s What She Said #4: About Creativity and Gift Giving


Lady Gaga for V magazine


It is your birthright and the necessity of your soul to express itself and to create, just like it too was created. And in the same token, your talents, those gifts with which you came into the world holding snugly in your arms, are exalted when they too are given. So share you work. Share you art. Share your words. Give hugs. Smile when other people see you. You’re on the right track when your creativity is seeing the light of day.

Om shanti shanti, and inner peace,

A.Y. Daring

That’s What She Said is a semi-regular series where I share with all you Beautiful People the things I recently wrote in my personal journal. It’s semi-regular, because I don’t always feel ready to share right after writing, and that’s ok. TWSH #4 comes from my writing on Sunday, January 24, 2011.

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January 24th, 2011
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Philosophy 101
Prose
That's What She Said
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What I’m All About

I have to put on red lipstick before I can think.

I’ve thought a lot lately, about what I’m all about. My essence. (My ness for all fellow Owen Wilson fans.)

I have this vision of future A.Y. Daring as this woman in 4 inch heels and an office on the top floor of the headquarters of a multinational, billion dollar corporation, about to publish her 4th New York Times bestseller, before going home to 3 or 4 kids and a husband or wife in a giant mansion, housing a staff  of twelve. I will still be wearing vibrant red lipstick on the daily. I don’t ask for much.

But right now, I recognize that I need to do certain things to get to where I want to be. Like, if I want to write a book, I’m going to need to just write with abandon and make Prolific my middle name. Currently, I’m writing a memoir reflecting on the age of 18, covering 18 life lessons/conclusions I’ve come to and telling the story(ies) of how I came to learn those things. I’ll probably have the first draft done by March 2011, and then comes agent hunting. So my path to becoming an internationally renowned author, chatting it up with Oprah and Jay (both Leno and Z) is well on its way.

Then there’s the other part- the fame. The tipping point where people come to you with opportunities, because you are a valuable cog in the community. It’s not so much that I want to be famous as it is that I want to have a lot of influence in a positive way. I want to have enough money to give generously to what I believe in without batting an eye. I want an ever widening wake of positive change trailing me wherever I go.

That part, it’s trickier. I read something today in the book “Making Ideas Happen” that struck me like a hot brick:

“A good self-marketing strategy should start with intrinsic interests that can become personal projects- projects that demonstrate your strengths. As your strengths become utilized, people will start to respect you for something that is real- something that is earned.”

Back in high school everybody knew my name. I was known as the go-to girl for getting ideas out there, and spreading the messages people needed to hear. What changed?

Read more…

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November 19th, 2010
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Inspiration
Networking
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A Life Lived For Yourself is a Life Poorly Lived

Staircase
Sometimes I lay awake at night, and I have trouble falling asleep because my mind gets stuck on The Nightmare. The Nightmare is a fear I’ve had since I was around 12. The Nightmare is technically not a nightmare because it never occurs when I’m sleeping. It comes to me during that space of attempted relaxation between consciousness and unconsciousness. The Nightmare is as follows.

I am 87 years old (the age I have a feeling I’ll die at if I don’t die young) and I am dying. I am slipping in and out of consciousness and I am all alone. I am in a room with nothing but a hospital bed and my frail self. I have no life partner there, holding my hand as I slip out of the world. I have no children there missing me already. I have nothing. Nothing. And the world goes black and I begin to float and all I can think of is that I am now dead forever, and I will never, ever get another chance at anything. My life has meant nothing to no one, and now I am dead. That is my biggest fear. That after all this emotional investment, I will mean nothing and have contributed meaningfully to nothing and then I will be forever lost to the winds of time, but a whisper in the ages. I will have been nothing.

I got a harsh talking to today from someone who’s opinion means a lot to me. She thinks I need to reign in my energy and focus more on realistic ideas as opposed to the impossible feats that energize me, but I rarely actually accomplish. Right now, I want to start a tech company more than anything else in the world. Why? Because high-tech is the zeitgeist. It’s where everything is. It means the most to people  now. Therefore, it means the most to me now. I feel as though if I don’t get into the industry that’s shaping our world, I will have done nothing to shape the world. And  then one day, it will be too late for me to do anything.

So, I chase the new shiny thing. New shiny is what we (my friend and I) call my impulsive ideas into which I sink a great load of emotional investment. Today, we got a tour of  this hot new high-tech incubator that’s  opening up in our city and causing a huge amount of buzz. Google’s Canadian headquarters is moving into the same building. The place  we toured today is kind of a big deal. It also has a lot of scary staircases.

I’m afraid of both heights and tight places. At one point, we were climbing up a narrow staircase that  was composed of wooden slats that let you see exactly how high away you are from the ground before you slip and fall through the gigantic gap and bash your head open on the concrete floor a million miles away. It was an ordeal for  me. On the way back down though, I began to imagine myself as the CEO of a company in the incubator. I imagined myself being a  Big Fucking Deal in the eyes of the community. Suddenly, something magical happened. I forgot that I was afraid of heights. My posture straightened out. Instead of awkward steps, I began to glide. Halfway  down the staircase, I let go of the railing completely. I no longer needed it to feel secure on my feet. Did I mention that I was wearing 4-inch heels? Just imagining myself as the kind of person I strive to be helped me cope with a serious, debilitating fear. External validation does wonders for me.

We also talked a little about credibility too, which is something I worry about a lot. I have no programming background, but I want to start a tech company. That doesn’t make me very credible in the eyes of the tech world. True. So, I’m going to take her word for it and abandon my dreams  of tech entrepreneurship, because I trust her  judgement and because I sincerely believe that she was speaking from a place of love and care, and not a love of dampening people’s enthusiasm. But I’m not yet ready to let go of my dream of having a company in the same building as Google. Because Google is a big deal, and to be around them means you’re a big deal too. Because there is a power in that dream, even though it’s  nothing but  an external validation of myself. Seeing myself as a part of the community, a meaningful part of the community, eradicated a fear that has kept me from participating in family vacations, school trips and adventures with friends. Nothing makes me feel comfortable in high places. Except the idea that one day, I’ll scale those heights as somebody who is important  to others. For now, I’ll hold on to that particular railing until I’ve got enough inside to let go.

We’ll see where I end up outside the tech world. The point is, I hope to make a serious difference wherever I got.

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November 15th, 2010
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Motivation
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Yours Truly
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The Art of Restful Acceptance

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved…for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”- Victor Hugo

I love accomplishing things, but I wish I could live with more restful acceptance.

Restful acceptance is that place where the majority of your to-do list remains to be done, and all you really have to show for the day are 3 awesome new Hello Kitty pens and a complete lack of progress on your 5 year plan and that’s OK anyway?

I have the pens now, but I'm not currently OK with the fact that shopping was all I did that day.

At any given time, I have literally hundreds of things I could be doing. I know, because I use GTD like any lifehacker worth her weight in self-help books, so everything I could possibly be doing at any given moment, at all times of the day, is very well documented. That don’t mean I gotta always be doing something tho!

Some people call restful acceptance “zen”. Others call it “mind like water”. I like to think of it as “my 5 year plan will still be there tomorrow, and the world will most likely not have ended by then so I can totally pick up where I left off in the morning”.

Or better yet, “I will most likely be happy in 5 years whether I have a 5 year plan to get me there or not, because happiness is a state of mind, not privilege given through external validation”.

Don’t get me wrong. Work ethic is a habit and mindset that needs to be deliberately cultivated within us leader-type people. For you and me, we need, more so than others, to be ballers of accomplishment. (I just coined that phrase by the way. If you don’t know what a baller is, I can’t help you there. Listen to more rap.) We need to look at a task at hand and use our magic to make it happen. But we’re just as human as the people we seek to influence. And sometimes, when you’re having a little trouble finding it in you to get to work, or you just plain don’t feel like it, it’s OK to log onto YouTube and watch kittens and puppies eat watermelon slices for an hours if that’s what you need in order to rejuvenate your passion for self-actualisation.

Say it with me now: “My to-do list will still be there tomorrow. The world will not end if I’m not constantly working. I can still dominate the world even if I have the occasional day off.” Hell, you can still dominate the world if you take weeks at a time off. So long as you recognise that whatever you don’t do today will still need to be done tomorrow.

It’s about allowing yourself to be entirely present with your emotions and be truly self-aware enough to be able to love yourself in the morning, no matter how the night turns out. My best friend, he’s an actor and a photographer, and he has this incredible perspective on life: “If you need to walk through a room, you walk through that room!” In other words, if you need to do something, be it climb a mountain, or just let yourself feel the sadness or fatigue your body is trying to feel, don’t fight it. “Be present with your emotions,” he’d say to me during our midnight couch confessionals. Be present.

I feel almost like a baby learning to walk at this point in my life. Babies see other people walk everywhere all the time. But actually putting one foot in front of the other is a whole new balancing act that requires a bit of crawling around and falling until your fully get the hang of it.

It’s the same thing when I work with my mentor and she’s got a frown of focus on her face while I’m fighting the temptation to go on Facebook. I see her in her concentration. I read her blog religiously and I ask her for advice, and I watch her closely to see how she handles things and what I can learn from her. Sometimes, I feel frustrated that I can’t work as quickly as she does, even when I’m focusing at my best and I get angry with myself for not trying harder.

But in the space between learning and doing, there is a time lag that requires the utmost patience if you are to work through it without going crazy or developing poor self-esteem. Your body takes time to process the food you eat and extract nutrients from it. When the input to output process happens too fast, well,  it’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s considered a state of illness when it happens too fast. Your heart, it too has a pace. Restful acceptance is keeping your expectations high, but your goals realistic. You will get there. You will. But it will happen one day at a time, in 24 hour increments through which there will always be another opportunity the very next day to do better. You will get there.

Yeah, to be the one at the top, you’re gonna have to climb higher than everyone else, and that includes working longer hours than everyone else and sacrificing a little more than everyone else. You have to be willing to do what other people aren’t doing to get what other people aren’t getting. But even more than just comparing yourself to others, you have to be willing to go where you’ve never gone and do what you’ve never done, to get what you’ve never had and be who you’ve never been. (The Universe told me that a few days ago.) That includes working really, really hard, even when you don’t want to. But working to the point of exhaustion, or continuing to run when your knees are telling you to stop, that’s what needs to be avoided. The work will be difficult, but be gentle with yourself. Work hard, but be gentle with yourself. You’re still learning, you always will be.

So take a break. But don’t just take a break. Enjoy your break. Eat that KitKat and fully centre yourself in the moment and let yourself be. Walk through whatever room you need to walk through, be it spending an evening in bed or going for a swim. Try this breathing exercise that I invented a little while ago for a friend who needed it:

1) Close your eyes.

2) Breathe in.

3) While doing so, visualise yourself breathing in not air, but the pure unconditional love that the universe spins around in a bottomless supply, just for you.

4) Breathe out.

5) While doing do, visualise yourself breathing out all of your fears and insecurities and releasing them to the universe to carry away and help bring you to a state of acceptance and gratitude about your life, knowing that the love you’re about to breathe in is all you need.

The world will still be here tomorrow. You’re allowed to get a full night’s sleep on occasion.

Your heard it from me,

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November 9th, 2010
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I Wrote This For You.

That amazing idea you had the other day? We’re waiting for you to believe in it enough to bring it to the marketplace so it can make our lives brighter, shinier, easier, more convenient.

That breakthrough you made in your research last night? We’re excited for when your paper is published, so the entire scientific community can be revolutionized by your findings. And if not all the brainiacs, then at least the one who will contribute to the knowledge that will one day further the field that will rock our worlds. True.

That spark of a painting you have in your eye? They’re clearing a space for it now in the Louvre.

The branch manager of the local bookstore just made space for your first best seller.

On your way to work this morning, a little girl watched you walk by, and she looked up to your success. And no matter where you are in this world, the future success of that little girl is going to multiply through her society in ways economists can’t even predict yet.

The barista you tipped a little extra for your latte this morning is going to spend the money investing in their start-up business, and it’s going to bring affordability to a necessity that a lot of people currently struggle to obtain. It might be health care. It might be self-esteem. Aren’t you excited to find out?

Your smile brightened someone’s day, and you’re never going to know who it was, but their smile in turn brightened another person’s day. You started an avalanche of joy today, just by being you.

I’m writing this now, thinking about you, and loving you for taking the time to read this, and believe in it, and care about it, and let it resonate with you.

I wrote this for you.

These are the reasons you have to be you and let others be them.

This is why you have to set the world on fire: Because everyone else is doing something similar but differentiated. They’re doing X, Y, or Z and they do it damn well. Better than you’re ever going to do it. But only you can do E, F or G. It takes a bunch of different letters to make the sentence cohesive and coherent.

That powerful waterfall you see over there? That’s nothing but a bunch of little drips working together. And if they all decided they weren’t good enough, or big enough, or important enough, or capable enough, or smart enough, or pretty enough, or worthy enough to give to the team effort, we’d have less of a powerful waterfall and more of a drought. There’d be a desert where an oasis should be. No fun! We need you, and the notes you can sing, and the flowers you can arrange, and the cakes you can bake and the hugs you can give, and the code you can write and the care you can share.

We need you to set our world on fire in your own way. We need you to set your world ablaze, because only you can be you as well as you possibly could, and what you bring to the table is so damn unique, we’re only ever going to get one of you. You’re so important and special, that there were only the resources to make one of you. Imagine!

Even you, you identical twin the the corner, struggling with competition. There’s a reason the people who know you can tell you two apart.

You’ve got your own light to shine, and it’s exactly the optic frequency that someone needs so that they can perceive bright colours in their life. So shine-o-rama away with your day.

I wrote this for you, and it’s all true. Go forth and set the world on fire.

I’m rooting for you. We’re rooting for you. Make us proud. But mostly, go about today in a way that’ll make you proud of your reflection.

Square those shoulders.

Face that world.

Pull out your heart.

Hold it up to the sun. (Like Rafiki did to Simba, which is totally what declared him the King of the Pride.)

And be proud of what you’ve got to offer.

(Good luck my dear. You’re not gonna need it though. Who needs luck when you have so much awesome on your side?)

Your Starting Toolbox:

  • This song, because The Lion King is the best parallel to your journey I can think of. Your greatness lives in you.
  • This manifesto of encouragement, because it inspired this plea bargain for your inner light over here.
  • The time of the sunrise in your local area, because you will sometimes need to literally watch the world unfold before you in order to tune into its needs and your purpose for those 24 hours.
  • The time of sunset in your local area, because you will sometimes need to literally watch the world darken around you before you realize how precious the quiet hours are to your mind.
  • This fridge magnet, because I have it in greeting card version (picture above) and it serves as a constant reminder to me of what it is I’m doing, and if it works for me, it might work for you too, because you’re out to change the world and I’m out to change the world and we just have a lot in common like that.
  • And this fridge magnet too, because it’s thoroughly inspiring, and you’re thoroughly inspiring, and that’s just a match waiting to happen.
  • This is a guide on how to write a proper letter of resignation, because you will have to quit your job should you realize it’s the kind of living that’s keeping you from making a life.
  • This is the best magazine for small-business owners, because you may have to pursue entrepreneurship and/or self-employment when realize your true worth and tune into the station playing “You Can Create Your Own Freedom” on a 24/7 loop.
  • This quote, which should be repeated weekly, daily, hourly, every second until it rings true to your ears: You are already perfect. You already have enough, you already do enough, you are already good enough.
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October 16th, 2010
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