The Dating Game

August 31st, 2011 by Regina Brett

What is the best way to find the love of your life?

 

Try blind dates. Speed dating. Craigslist. Plenty of Fish. Flirt with everyone. Get the new phone app SceneTap to locate the hottest bars. Hire a dating coach.

 

Those are all fine options.

 

My advice?

 

Stop looking.

 

Yes, I'm serious.

 

Build a life that is so good being alone, if you attract someone, great, if you don't, it's still a great life. When you focus on building a better you simply for you, you will attract more of the same. 

 

That's how I found my husband. I stopped looking.

 

I had spent years searching for Mr. Right and settling for Mr. Right Now. It took five years of counseling to park and unpack the U-Haul of the past that was dragging me down and detouring my life. If you keep dating the same person (but with different names) take a look at how he or she matches up to your mom and dad. It'll scare you right into therapy. That's a good place to unpack the U-haul.

 

Once I did that, I could date without all that extra baggage weighing us both down. I could trust that life would bring to me the perfect match for me alone. There was no more desperation. No more settling for less than I deserved and wanted. No competition with all other single people looking.

 

I started believing that there was someone for me alone, who would love me as is. Not just tolerate my flaws, but celebrate the mystery of me, flaws and all.

 

We've been together for 18 years. He still calls me his forever girlfriend. His love hasn't waivered, not even when I got cancer and lost my hair and my breasts and walked around bald for six months. "We're in this for the long haul," he always says.

 

Here are my best tips for finding your forever boyfriend or girlfriend:

 

Availability: He or she has to be available or there is no starting point. That means they aren't married, gay if you're straight, in a religious order that requires celibacy, actively feeding a drug or alcohol addiction or living across the world.

 

A light traveler: Carry-on baggage only. If he or she hasn't dealt with mom and dad and all the exes left in Texas, make a U-turn as soon as you see that U-Haul of the past. You need two whole people if you want a whole relationship.

 

Clean house: Get your own house in order before you set up house with anyone. Do you have all those qualities that you demand in a mate? Remember, you might attract what you are.

 

Listen: Pay attention to what is said and unsaid, but mostly to what is done: There's an old saying, Believe everything a man does, not what he says. The same holds true for women. Mostly though, listen to that small still voice inside of you, that inner compass, to find out what feels most right.

 

Practice: Every date is just practice. Relax before every first date and tell yourself, This is just a practice date. The bigger it bombs, the better story you have to tell one day.

 

Love yourself: If you love yourself, you don't show up starving in the relationship. You're already filled and have something to offer. A relationship isn't 50/50. You don't give 50 percent. In the best ones, you each give 100 percent.

 

Believe: B'shert is a Jewish concept that roughly translates to "meant to be." Before you were born, you received a match. You don't need to turn yourself inside out to find it. Be you and you will attract that person you are destined to be with.

 

Keep your heart open, relax and trust that more love is on its way. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Live your own life

August 26th, 2011 by Regina Brett

The announcement that Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO of Apple made me cry.

He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 7 years ago and was given 6 months to live.

 

He beat all the odds. He cheated cancer for the longest time. Unfortunately, his time is now running out. 

 

What an incredible life he has lived. This is a guy born to an unwed mother, given up for adoption. A guy who dropped out of college to take only the courses he found most interesting. He started Apple in his adoptive parents' garage when he was 20. He got fired from the company at 30. He calls that the best thing that happened to him.

 

Failure can free you up to leap into life. You can risk everything because you literally have nothing to lose.

 

He does something every morning that I want to start doing. He asks himself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I'm about to do today?"

What would your answer be? Most days, mine would be yes. But that's because I got cancer 13 years ago. The scars on my chest remind me that I have an expiration date. I hope it's decades from now,  but no one knows. 

 

If you haven't seen it, you've got to watch his commencement address at Stanford University from 2005. He ends it by telling the graduates, "Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else’s life."

 

Whose life are you living?

 

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Go Find Your Life

August 14th, 2011 by Regina Brett

I saw the movie "The Help" this weekend in a packed theater of both white and black movie goers. This was one of those rare movies that attract both a white and black audience.

 

 People applauded during it and burst into spontaneous refrains, cheering on the help at various parts in the movie, especially when Minnie serves up her special pie.

 

 The movie and the book really make you see world through different skin. The novel by Kathryn Stockett tells about black women in the 60s who cleaned, cooked and cared for the babies of white women in Jackson, Mississippi.

 

                 Aibileen teaches little Mae to love her self by constantly telling her, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”

 

                 I love when Skeeter's momma tells her, "Sometimes courage skips a generation." You hope you're part of the generation it landed in.

 

                The tagline to the movie is, "Change begins with a whisper." This movie is about speaking truth to power, finding your voice and living the power of you.

 

               Skeeter's mom has great advice for us all: Go find your life.

 

 

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Write, write, write

August 10th, 2011 by Regina Brett

Every week someone asks me, "What is the key to getting published?"

 

My advice is always the same: write, write, write.

 

Long before I wrote a book, I wrote columns and news stories. Before that, I wrote in endless journals and diaries. There are stacks of them, some 200 of them, in my office at home.

 

If you could capture scales on a piano or voice warm up excercises on paper, that's what you'd find in these journals.  Practice writing. What needed to be said before the world would actually hear my voice.

 

Write what you need to write first. Get it all out. Then find out if the world needs to hear it. Is there an audience who needs your voice? Your story? Your insights?

 

Flannery O'Connor once said: "Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

 

She also said, "I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best."

 

If writing is the thing you do best, keep moving the pen, keep pounding away on the keyboard, keep playing your scales and strengthening your voice.

 

You'll know when the day is ready for the world to hear you sing. A door will swing wide open and the wind will call your name.

 

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Family Reunions

August 1st, 2011 by Regina Brett

Family reunions are highly underrated. If your family has one, go. If you don’t have one, create one.

 

We had our annual reunion in July. I have 42 first cousins on my Dad’s side, so we always get a crowd.

 

Even without half of the family present, we filled the shelter with 45 of us. My Aunt Barbara, who turned 80 this year, was the oldest there and the youngest at heart. She even won a prize in the bubble gum blowing contest.

 

My grandson, Asher, who turned 2 this year, wore his shades, the ones he wears on his forehead during dinner in his highchair when he tells his parents, “Park it in the shade.” He was a hit.

 

We split up the duties and all brought enough food to feed a Marine Corps battalion. We made my cousin Caitlin our official CEO of Fun. She brought a cooler of water balloons for a toss that, of course, turned into a water balloon fight. We also had a three-legged race.

 

This was our first reunion without our Aunt Kate, who died this year. She was the last of my dad’s original family of 10 siblings. We saw her Irish eyes smiling in her children and grandchildren.

 

At the end of the day, we left fat, tired and happy. We knew that glow in the sky wasn’t from the sun. It was from our aunts and uncles smiling down on us, grateful to us all for carrying on this great tradition.

 

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