31Ways2GetItStarted™!: Two for the price of one!
Carlota
January 28, 2013
bad advice bad cover letters Coney Island Cosmo Detroit Lions drunk at cocktail parties food stamps in nyc gifted and Jewrican Jewish grandmothers male models MBA sabotage TimeWarner cable to be young
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Seriously boys and girls: don’t even. If you knew what a weekend I’ve had with clients, dating and my elderly cats, you’d feel remorse and shame for even thinking of giving me all that attitude. (I forgive you.) Dear Jebus, this lifestyle of being young, gifted and Jewrican is wearing me down. And yet, somehow, somehow, I rise up on my broomstick to make it through another day. Or something. Speaking of which…
Day 26: Change your attitude to change your life.
I try, on principle, to not only not read the humorless sadness that is Cosmo magazine, but to not even know from it, as my Jewish grandmother in Coney Island would have said. But, a few years ago, when I was bartending, one of the waitresses I worked with, used to waste my time “discussing” that magazine’s “articles” with me. (Last I heard, she was on Facebook bragging about the boyfriend she met working at a strip-club in Texas…so clearly she didn’t waste her life. #oy) I remember there was once this unintentionally hilarious article about the necessity of changing your physical and mental habits in order to change your life. One piece of “advice” included in the article, was to sleep on a different side of the bed, than the side you usually sleep on, in order to wake up with a new point of view. Okey-dokey.
But this crappy and hilarious if somewhat sad advice aside…you do have to change your attitude to really change your life. Once, for example, I started seriously engaging upon this business, I stopped hanging out with a lot of my former TV colleagues, since their negativity was toxic. I noticed that we didn’t have much in common anymore, thank goodness, after I stopped being constantly jaded and depressed. I was excited and enthusiastic…they found my passion “childish.” Speaking personally, I’d rather be “childish” than negative any day of the week, since negative thinking tends to bring with it only more negativity and a shutting down of ideas and opportunities.
Whatever you’re trying to achieve, if you go at it with the same poor attitude you bring to a job or life you hate…well, seriously: how could you possibly expect to gather the momentum, energy and passion necessary to undertake real change? Change demands the best of you because it’ll eventually give you the best of yourself. I’m not necessarily going to say, “change your attitude to change your altitude,” but yes, I’ll be thinking it. (I told you I was tired. Shut-up.I’ve already had The Kitten giving me serious attitude for my walk of shame and dog hair. Don’t ask.)
Day 27: Acknowledge your power.
This is a big one for me. It sounds so trite…but in many ways, it’s the bedrock of getting started on anything important. Several years ago, I “dated” (…or something…sigh.) a very handsome boy. He was a former model, with great personality and looks. In the midst of our (cough cough) “relationship” he went on food-stamps. He wouldn’t get a job, but he did invest the weeks necessary to go through the bureaucracy to qualify for and receive food stamps. Fine. Let’s face it: it’s fun to eat every day, in fact, to eat several times a day. This is the same kid who didn’t pay his cable bill for 6 months at a time, but managed to convince the representative at TimeWarner to give him free cable during the 2010 football season, so as not to miss watching the Detroit Lions. Did I mention this boy had an actual MBA from an actual accredited university in these United States of America? The plot thickens.
He could talk very well, he could present, he looked great…but he was on food stamps, he was depressed and he had zero self-confidence. Whenever I would try to get him hired as a real-estate broker, or sell insurance—things he could have done oh so easily given the scope of his personality and looks—he made sure to sabotage everything. Don’t even get me started on the cocktail party he went to, set up by a former work colleague to help him get a job, at which he showed up to drunk, hungover and high on cocaine. Or the cover letter he wanted to send that started out, I swear to Yahweh,”Yo…” Who wouldn’t want to employ that? Oy.Obviously, he was frightened of being hired, of changing his life, of living up to his potential.
So, with this talented if determined-to-be-doomed boy in mind, I say: Acknowledge. Your. Power! This boy was helpless because he thought of himself as helpless. He assumed he was helpless and he became helpless. You think that’s New Age sh*t? I promise you: we become what we think we are. If this kid could have seen himself the way other people did—handsome, a good talker, sharp—he wouldn’t have accepted being on food stamps and day-drinking, while occasionally working as a waiter. Not with an MBA. He simply wouldn’t have stood for it. (…Some of you are wondering what the hell I was doing with this kid…while others have understood that he was fine. As. Hell, son! Oh my lord, was this boy smoking hot. So often I curse my vagina for her poor choices. Seriously.)
Therefore, my plea to you is: acknowledge your power, acknowledge the talents you already have and determine to do the best by yourself. Treat yourself the way you’d treat a friend you truly loved and cared for. You’d want that person to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be at their best, wouldn’t you? You’d hate to see a friend you loved working at something that degraded their abilities and didn’t make them happy…wouldn’t you? So why should that be okay for wonderful you? Spoiler alert: IT’S NOT!
…Oh, and don’t start cover letters with the word, “Yo,” because each time you do it takes years off my life and after Saturday night, I already feel like I don’t have that many left.That was your two for the price of one! Want more nagging/inspirations/cat-hair/dating horror stories/love? Email me @carlotazee@gmail.com, or leave me a comment, or visit my Facebook page,” Carlotaworldwide Creativity Yenta.” Become a fan of the page and I’ll give you a free consultation!