Shift your perspective from "I'm gonna die!" to "End of life" insight Probably the last thing on your mind while writing your college essay is your end-of-life perspective. Now, it's also true that, while working on your college applications, you might catch yourself saying things like: "I am gonna DIE from this stress!" or "I will DIE if I don't get into XYZ school!" But actually: you won't die. You are being figurative. (And here's some comic relief for you. Go laugh.) However, at the very moment you swear, "This workload is killing me" (no, no it isn't), many people actually are dying. And the dying frequently say painfully honest, instructive things. We're going to mix it up a bit. Take a break from the pressure and anxiety of the application process. Consider instead the refreshing and challenging vantage dying people can offer-- all of us. End-of-life influence on your essay Your college essay, if it's to be anything other than a hurdle and obligation, is an opportunity to get honest in that same way. This 650-word spotlight on you gives you unique opportunity to look closely at your life, let go of what isn't working (on the page and off), and to say something fresh. Something that at your end-of-life self might give a high-five. Kerry Egan, essayists and end-of-life chaplain, culls some brilliant advice from the dying here. It's advice in the form of their wistfulness, of their regret. Most wish they could have listened to their inner impulses and just loved themselves, their bodies. For whatever those bodies were, for all that those bodies did. Read their words, and soak in them. A love like that Can your personal essay be an act of rebellious love? Why not? What if you adopt this end-of-life perspective, and love yourself, truly? Your one and only body, the service it does for you and others? Can you even include in that love whatever is wrong with you, or whatever other people say is wrong with you, and Continue Reading …
Solutions
Use your imagination to give up
Tony Morrison's "Give Up!" I have a crush on where your imagination can get you. I also have a crush on Toni Morrison, largely for her refined art of the simple sentences that slap you. This kind of writing startles you into productive awareness (ahem: aim for that in your college essay!). Take this quote: "Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down." (Song of Solomon) Oh, right. Continue Reading …
Your college essay and more in 10 minutes
Is this yet another "improve my life in 10-minutes" BS pitch? No. We don't play with your minutes here. But we want you to get the most out of your time. So-- do you have 10 minutes to spare? (If you're reading this, you probably have 10 minutes. Admit it. Stop checking your Facebook Feed.) (Everyone has 10 minutes.) But the problem is: what's the most important thing to do-- right now? How should you spend those precious minutes? Here's our recommendations. Determine what you need, first. Need to open up and calm down? Check out this guided meditation from Tara Brach. (It's 10 minutes-ish. Thanks for your generous meditations, Tara Brach!) Need to work out on the sly? Check out this "Quiet Workout." (It's 10 minutes-ish. Modify as needed. Thanks for these original quickies, pop sugar!) Need to say something about something? We recommend-- assess your energy level, consider options 1 and 2 above, hydrate, and then... Freewrite Get your writing instrument/implement of choice: Sit your butt down or stand your butt up. (Don't have a standing desk? DIY with a crate placed on top of a table, or by working on a kitchen counter). Set a timer for 10 minutes. (See? We're precise!) And write about what makes you mad. Without stopping. (Thank you, writing guru Don Murray). Or try this writing prompt, from Ted Ed: A genie grants you three tiny wishes. What are they? (Thank you, TED. You are so full of useful randomness. Want more prompts?) Help, I really don't have 10-minutes! The multi-taskers version. Even though multi-tasking has been proven as neurological BS (You're uni-tasking, in quick succession, and with crappy outcomes), sometimes we need to layer up. Especially if we really only have 10 minutes. In that case we suggest: Do the Tara Brach meditation while you are on the toilet or taking a shower. Do the workout while returning a phone call to someone who will understand if you are out of Continue Reading …
Sometimes No is Yes: The Rejection
Give It Up for Rejection Raise your hand if you love rejection, y'all! How about a letter, formally letting you know you've been rejected? How about rejection from that one college you really thought was a safety, or that other one that held all your elaborate dreams in its gated grip? Seth Godin to the Rescue This week, I went on a Seth Godin blog binge. I recommend it: he takes unlikely, creative positions on the most common topics, and I needed some unlikely thinking, because changing baby diapers gets predictable. Luckily, I found Seth's very very smart, tart and brief post on how there is no sense in reading between the lines of a rejection letter because there is nothing there. Usually when we get rejected, our inner critic goes on a criticism carnival. Tears apart the language for truth. Or we snuff out its snide remarks with a vice of choice. Or we assume, dungeon door clanging shut, that the rest of our lives will have all the worth of soiled diapers. A Tale of No and Yes Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a girl-- no, not me, but related to me. She was told by her (prestigious, infamous independent) high school's headmaster, who was an Intellectual Giant and known well by adcoms, that she could piss on a piece of paper and get into her then dream school, XX College. Well, she didn't take him literally (she had common sense), but she did apply with the goal in mind that if piss alone could get her in, surely prose and a nice academic track record would more than guarantee her spot. Wrong. The rejection letter hurt worse than bladder surgery, to push the metaphor. Not only did she not get admitted to XX PISS-ME-THERE College, but she didn't get into any of the other schools on her list either-- reach or safety, realistic or aspirational. Except one. We'll call it: School WTF? A school she'd added as after-thought. A school in which she had no interest; a school which, had she had any choice, would Continue Reading …
Face Your Inner Teenager
What's your Inner Teenager telling you? Even the most docile teenager, which I'd say I was (though my mom might put it otherwise), has a reactive streak, the impulse to reject or explode or "take things personally" that seems to come from nowhere. It's the reactivity of the teen that seems to get under the skin of their grown-ups. And the grown-up's inner teenager jumps into the ring. Especially when there is an important, high-stakes task to be completed (college essay, anyone?) for which the full-grown adult feels ultimately responsible and maybe overly-invested. Add to that the teen's fluctuation between grandiose self-importance (feeling the center of the universe-- because individuation sometimes requires laser focus) and tough plummets in self-esteem (feeling like the outcast of the universe--when someone's comment sent you headlong into self-loathing) and you have a cocktail for colossal arguments. The crux of the problem is with our own blind spots Turns out the crux of the problems might lie not with the teen, but in getting their full-grown adults (guardians, parents, care-givers) to embrace their inner teenager-- or rather, the inner truths that having a teenager around can force us to face. Some of the interpersonal conflict teens are blamed for might actually come from adults needing to be more introspective and honest about our feelings about our lives. In other words, you teens are smart, and onto something we full-grown adults just might need some of. Our discoveries could and should happen in tandem. Cutting-edge Neuroscience Says So! Luckily, smart neuroscientists and psychologists like Dr. Dan Siegel are doing some radical investigation of the teen brain. And what we're learning not only redeems (yup!) some of these behaviors, but let's us know that the reason for the adults getting so triggered lies as much with their own sense of self as with the teen's ___________ (fill in the blank-- insolence, mood swings, brashness, Continue Reading …
Crappy Moods, Comedians, and the Writer’s Cure
Crappy moods: they happen. (Reader, are you straight-jacket-ed by a particularly crappy mood currently? Cut right to this Louis CK cure. Road-test the comedians' corrective. And come back to read the rest of this later.) Crappy moods are like reverse rainbows, showing up when weather conditions are darkly unfavorable in inner or outer environment or both. At their best, crappy moods facilitate discharge of the nastier emotions. and move on. You know the drill: kick your drawer shut, and break your own toe in the process. Slam household items around. Be snappy at those you love. Mope and mull. It's not usually a pretty picture. But Crappy Moods sometimes settle in like shower mildew, and can put a serious cramp in your creativity. Comedians: they help. Your Crappy Mood is an orchard ripe for picking for comedians, who can find the humor in anything-- the less seemingly funny it is, the better. Your irrational or irritable behavior is already slightly ridiculous to anyone who's not you. A comedian laughs not just with you, but at you. And you'll want them to. Because then you'll have to laugh at yourself, and this is the healthiest way to return to creativity, sanity, and general equilibrium. Let Joan Rivers explain Joan Rivers told Larry King, "I purposely go into areas that people are still very sensitive about and smarting about, because if you can laugh at it, you can deal with it. That's how I've lived my whole life. I swear to you - and I'm Jewish - that if I were in Auschwitz, I would have been doing jokes just to make it OK for us." But to deal with it, you have to know that it's there in the first place. Crap Under the Radar Crappy moods happen more frequently and more fiercely when something is bugging us just under the radar of our awareness. Some unaddressed stressor, or maybe a small mountain of them. Some factor out of our control, like whether or not-- emphasis on not-- our writing is universally loved. Or, more to the point Continue Reading …