As the weather warms in the northern hemisphere, people start to follow the examples of the animals in spring. All around me, I witness more of my fellow humans enjoying the outdoors, going to concerts, dancing, and dating. I too, have started to embrace somewhat of a winter thaw.
My hibernation of sorts began with COVID. Although I found ways to expand here and there, just as I started to get back to performing and applied for a third job, someone who found me online started harassing and then stalking me in person, and I climbed back into my shell once more. I’ve had to hide my location and keep constant vigilance and care about posting or promoting myself, even as an artist and a coach.
Despite that, I’ve continued to date, started a whole new job a year ago, and have embraced the chance to go out on my own or with crew members when visiting new cities. Still, within my own home, I’ve spent little time going out even with friends, and I haven’t gone to events by myself in ages. Until now.
Last week, I went to a new space and brought a guest, and we had an incredible time. During the evening, I met another woman who’d recently suffered a situation with a stalker. We shared experiences, commiserated, and helped each other feel sane and less alone. My guest compassionately listened and expressed his sympathy as a man that both of us had experienced such trauma. I felt heard and understood, because I took the risk of going out.
Tonight, I went out again. This time, I intentionally went alone, as I have enjoyed countless times in my adult life. My favorite activity? Spending present time with present people. Meeting strangers most often facilitates curiosity and presence, and I thrive on sharing and listening to stories.
I loved it. Not just the intimate and musical oud-accompanied Shibari performance, or the space, or the beautiful curated lighting and thought-provoking conversation prompts. Meeting like-minded people and hearing different perspectives filled my cup.
Even more than that, I challenged myself to go back out and be vulnerable in a crowd of strangers, alone at home, for the first time. I stepped back into that activity that makes me feel most alive. Unsurprisingly, I feel awake and inspired to write, just like I used to for so many years.
I don’t know what the future holds. In my mind, I carry some goals and guesses, but nothing purely certain. What I do know is that stepping back into the world of meeting people and vulnerably experiencing existence gives me a powerful taste of my best life. One day at a time.
Today, I embark on an extraordinary new journey – two in one, actually. As I swipe my fingers across my phone’s digital keyboard while flying across the country, I fulfill the first of many promises to myself to write. Promises I intend to keep.
Sometime this summer, an article caught my attention and ultimately made its way into my coaching conversations and way of life. In it, the author Jeff Haden outlined the difference between a two-way door and a one-way door in decision making. Making a two-way door decision means you can always change your mind later. Didn’t like your big move after all? Move again, or move back.
Another big point in the article caught my attention: most decisions (with major exceptions like committing murder or buying a timeshare) fall under the two-way door category. In other words, you can almost always change your mind after making a decision. Finally, most people regret not taking a chance on a big two-way door decision. At the end of their lives, they regret never having taken the risks.
At a young age, I took a lot of chances. With my rather adventurous and active sister as an example, I tried a ton of different activities and some interesting jobs that took me way outside my comfort zone. I sang, baked pizzas, taught a deaf girl how to sing, sold cameras I first had to learn how to use, counseled some overnight campers who didn’t speak English, helped run a music computing lab, waited tables, led groups of people scoring essays for standardized tests, taught young educators how to build their first websites, acted, taught music and math, and tried my hand at visual merchandising.
Before I fully immersed myself in my profession as an opera singer, I wanted to try everything. As a deeply curious woman, I’ve always longed to understand people better, and I discovered that different jobs helped me do that. I loved seeing the world through a different perspective by fully immersing myself into a new workplace and culture. It felt almost like learning a new language by moving to a new country.
Opera singing, in its own way, has also allowed me a plethora of regular changes and shifts in viewpoints. Over the past decades in my career, I’ve sung in countless opera houses and religious institutions, in different states and countries, and with so many interesting and varied people and personalities. I felt so fulfilled for so long and in many ways, I still do.
Still, all of the change I needed to face as a freelancer led me on quite the journey (and it started here with Skydiving for Pearls) of self-discovery and development, eventually inspiring me to work more directly with people to help them withstand and create meaningful change. After a year and a half of training and coaching, I earned my certification, and I have happily worked for hundreds of hours with amazing clients. I get to show up excited to help incredible people make a difference in their lives and the world, and I can’t wait to speak and write about it even more going forward.
That huge two-way door decision brought me to another one in a very surprising way. After returning to opera from the pandemic, I felt unsatisfied for his first time in ages. Despite the relief of singing in the presence of great musicians and reuniting with my friends, I dreaded feeling like a part of the set, waiting for rehearsals to end. I deeply missed working directly with people in coaching and surprisingly from my prior side job in catering, and I clearly had reached the time to consider a new direction.
Simultaneously, in walked a new person who happened to work as a flight attendant for a major airline. Hearing about his journeys, adventures, and opportunities reignited the old passion I once had to try new avenues of employment. Although as an attendant, I’d fly a bit lower than my childhood ambition to become an astronaut, I couldn’t imagine a more interesting way to shift perspectives while making a better financial future for myself.
After many months, drug and fingerprint tests, extensive background checks and mountains of paperwork, I fly through the sky to the final in-person step towards beginning a career as a flight attendant. I intend to use my likely regular commute to create a habit of writing and write the books that plead with me to bring them to an audience. I’m so nervcited about the possibility!
So many final details will work out over the next weeks and months: training, commuting, and working hard to coordinate with two important singing gigs I have this spring. When I catch myself worrying too much about my two-way door decision, I remind myself of a few important truths. I get to continue coaching. This change can help me with my writing goals. I’ll get to meet interesting people and network, and I will not give up on my drive to become a motivational speaker.
Most importantly, I can always make new decisions. Though it may transform it, this choice does not dictate the rest of my life. Unless one of these planes doesn’t land (knock wood), I get to make countless more decisions before any doors ever close for me.
What changes have you avoided because they seem too big or important, too scary or life-changing? If you are sitting on the sidelines, shying away from the life you think you might want to try, consider going through the door. What are your options, if you get to the other side and change your mind?
Most of you reading this article have options or can create them. Give your future self the gift of looking back at the end of your life with gratitude that you tried the things you wanted to do. As my plane lands, I’m about to do just that.
Update: I passed the test. My training officially starts just after two big singing gigs end late this spring, and I cannot wait to walk through that door.
As a teenager, I worked for an overnight camp. One day, my director asked if I would take two Korean campers who spoke no English at all. On that day, I learned the important lesson of agreeing to try before feeling fully ready for something. Luckily, the two girls had so much fun, they returned for a second week. I learned some fun Korean children’s games and that I could excel at far more than I realized.
In August, 2020, I completed my certification from the Co-Active Training Institute as a life coach. I remember my elation at having received that stamp of approval after a year and a half of hard work, studying, and working over a hundred hours with clients. Since then, I’ve studied, practiced, and worked as a mental fitness trainer, and I’ve compiled over half the client hours I need for the next level of certification with the International Coaching Federation.
So why haven’t I applied for the basic certification for the ICF? Why haven’t I applied to certify as a mental fitness trainer for Positive Intelligence?
Today, thanks to a fellow coach who decided recently to get his certification for ICF, I decided to cut the BS and get started on the path to claiming the certifications I’ve definitely already earned in practice. I’ve got a little work to do, some exams, and one more application to complete, but I won’t wait any longer. I just completed a practice test and scored 100%. Yeah, it’s time.
What have you avoided for fear of the unknown, lack of confidence, or the common excuse that you just don’t need something and have done fine this long without it? What’s one thing you can claim today? Ready, set, let’s go!
After years of working as a coach, my focus has grown and shifted. Where once I just wanted to help people transform, I now help emerging leaders make a significant impact for the world.
My website, however hasn’t changed. You can still learn about my training and book a session, but it says nothing about deep confidence. It says nothing about the transformative collaborations that can empower you to finally be yourself.
So, with the help of website coach and designer Michael Thomas Holmes, I’m starting fresh today. Rewriting the narrative to match my own evolution and growth, to show my clients where how too can start fresh.
Where have you outgrown your own narrative? Where do you want to let go of your old story, so you can start fresh with who you really are? Let us all know in the comments.
Despite all our perfectly presented social media posts, sometimes, life does not go as planned. Our favorite food or product gets discontinued. We wait in long lines or traffic after we’ve left a bit late for an appointment. Our health insurance denies us for a much needed procedure. Our plane trip gets cancelled. Our loved ones get sick. Someone dies. Our country gets overtaken by a hostile regime.
At the risk of going too far, most of us reading this today don’t currently face war, famine, or homelessness. Plague, yes. That said, despite our relative comfort in life compared to centuries ago, our experiences vary widely from person to person, and one person’s inconvenience might be another’s deep pain.
When we get out of bed in the morning, we expect things to go a certain way. When that doesn’t happen, what do you do?
My summer did not go as planned. I cautiously followed all Covid rules and protocols before starting a job, only to catch pink eye from someone else in the group and still have to quarantine in my room for an extended period in the middle of the gig. One of my closest friends and I spent way too much time in arguments I still don’t understand. Someone I expected to meet on vacation, who helped with a lot of our travel plans, caught Covid, and everything changed drastically.
Do I wish I had a different summer? Sometimes. In truth, I think I needed all of it. Stuck in my room for days on end, I streamed more and reached a goal of one thousand followers on Dlive. Even better, I met people on the platform I might not otherwise have known. The argument with my friend helped me more deeply understand concepts I’ll use in my book about cooperation, competition, sufficiency, and humility. Unexpectedly alone for the entire third leg of my trip, I got creative and met some fantastic humans doing work that both intrigues and inspires me.
I still have work to do, friendships to heal, and lessons from which to grow. I’m learning that suffering doesn’t stop just because I’ve reached a certain place in my development. Life isn’t always as I wish it. All things shall pass.
Today, and every day, I can choose how I handle things. As author Lynne Twist said, “We have to be willing to let go of that’s just the way it is, even if just for a moment, to consider the possibility that there isn’t a way it is or way it isn’t. There is the way we choose to act and what we choose to make of circumstances.”
So, I’ve made a little meme to remind me that when the universe takes a dump on me, I can choose to use it as fertilizer and grow. Mushrooms thrive in cow dung and apparently sometimes, so can I.
This week, hoards of singers mourn after thousands of us watched directors and medical experts who together discussed the foreseeable future of our industry. Everyone online seems divided into two camps: realism and wait and see, or idealism and wait and see. Regardless, I have spent my career thus far in an industry that now clearly wants to face the current world responsibly, for the health of ourselves and our audiences. I’m really proud to be a part of that.
Now what? Great question. Still in mourning and mostly in isolation, I’m showing up one day at a time. I love life coaching, and partnering with a client to pursue their vision for their future fuels me in ways I can’t yet express. Although I don’t exactly know how my own future takes shape, I do know coaching plays a significant role.
Today, in my certification course with Co-Active Training Institute, we discussed the difference between change and transformation. I generally love change – the rabbit holes of new experience make life new and expansive. Our leader mentioned today that one can walk away from change, or reverse it. Transformation, however, whether it happens bit by bit or all at once, signals an irreversible evolution. Think of a butterfly. Once a caterpillar enters that cocoon, there’s only one way out and if successful, what a gorgeous miracle occurs!
Perhaps tomorrow holds the key to my next metamorphosis, but right now, as I have with singing, I’ll follow the path of meaning one intentional change at a time. As I watched The Metropolitan Opera‘s rebroadcast of our production of Prince Igor, I recognized how much it meant to me for so many years to take part in meaningful works of art that moved audiences and individuals to see the world in a different light. When Prince Igor returns from captivity to a broken society, he shocks them all by beginning to rebuild right in front of them, piece by piece. We may not know our next direction, friends, but we can show up tomorrow and the next day, rebuilding and envisioning where our transformations might take us. Peace by piece.
For the past two decades, I’ve joyfully experienced the brilliant sunshine of a fulfilling and magical classical singing career. I’ve worked hard, frolicked with friends, studied, learned, listened, shouted, sang, acted, breathed, and danced. Over this past year, I enjoyed a return to some of my favorite operas at the Metropolitan Opera, booked some really fulfilling solo roles in new operas, and landed my first ensemble gig at LA Opera for this spring. As 2020 crept in, so did a beautiful sunset, a symphony of music and love and art and life that transformed into something a bit chaotic and confusing as I struggled to get to our final performances in March of A Doll’s House, frighteningly making my way through an empty Penn Station to Opera America as social distancing began.
As the sunset continued, I focused on finding ways to improve my wellbeing and that of those around me and my transformational coaching clients. Composer Pete Wyer included me in a song and a fundraising campaign, which I gratefully joined, and I sought other ways to continue living, learning, connecting, staying active, taking notice, and giving back. Two weeks ago, on a call with some colleagues, I realized the sun had set on my current singing career and that I had been unaware of the darkness. It absolutely took me by surprise. Devastatingly, the art of singing in large groups and for large audiences may take a long, long time to return. In the New York Times, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a special adviser to the director general of the World Health Organization, speculated that large gatherings like concerts will return last. “Realistically we’re talking fall 2021 at the earliest.”
While I had hoped to return to singing this summer for Bard Summerscape, to sing an opera about King Arthur in one of my absolute favorite places in the world, I now need to come to terms with the likelihood of an extended draught in my singing career. As of now, Bard has yet to cancel, opera companies with which I regularly sing haven’t yet cancelled their 2020-2021 seasons, and I’ve had a solo role in a new opera postponed until Spring of 2021, but truthfully, I may not have the opportunity to sing in the beautiful gatherings I have come to know as my livelihood – not for a long time. Someday, I hope to have the extreme joy of performing live for audiences with my beautiful and talented friends and colleagues around the world, but I can no longer expect it to happen anytime in the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, I feel called to something more and have for a while. This pandemic signals the beginning of an era of massive changes for society, beginning with climate change and the exponential changes in technological growth. Although I don’t yet know what role I have to play, I’m compelled to work to prepare people and corporations to withstand the changes we’ll face through profound inner growth and development. Once we can withstand those changes, we can then see clearly to create the change necessary to help ourselves and our society survive and thrive as we move forward together.
What does that look like? I have a few passions in progress: transformational coaching, public speaking, and writing. I’ve also recently done a lot of values mining and have begun the work to discover where I want to go and what I need to learn and develop to get there. Step one? Letting go of who I am as a classical singer to make room for what comes next. Does that mean I’ll never sing again? No. Does that mean I’ll turn down gigs offered to me or that don’t cancel? No. Don’t get me wrong, if anyone wants to hire me to sing online or make a recording, I’m here. Still, I need to understand who I am without performing – because for now, I need to move on in order to have and fulfill a purpose, and to pay my bills once the Cares Act payments stop in July.
Yesterday, on the anniversary of my grandfather’s birthday (my favorite human, who passed last year), I had a burial at sea for my classical career thus far. After coloring an image that reminded me of the chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera, I wrote all of my gratitude for my career on the back – the lifetime of singing that raised me and brought me thus far. Folding it into a boat and inserting a tea light, I sailed it into the East River and sang “Wie du warst,” from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. With the waves, it returned a few times, and perhaps the same will happen with my operatic career. I haven’t closed the door, but I have decided to make way for the sun to rise on something new. I hope the tea light across the river helps me to find my place in this evolving world as I too, make way for change.
Over a year ago, I introduced Skydiving for Pearls to my practice of Mystery Week. Since then, for one week per month, I’ve tried to avoid scheduling anything until each new day begins. Sometimes, this has worked brilliantly, and I have a full week to spend falling down rabbit holes each day, visiting with friends who don’t over-plan their lives, and finding new discoveries to enhance my life. When I have very busy months, I struggle to avoid filling the days of Mystery Week, but still approach my full days with a more open-minded curiosity. Even with only an hour or two to spare sometimes, I say yes to more, and I approach life with more of a beginner’s mind, inviting growth, newness, humility, and play. No matter how it materializes, I love Mystery Week.
Welcome to Pandemic Mystery Week. Want to join me? If so, here are some rules:
Don’t schedule anything if you can avoid it. Wake up each day with as clean a slate as possible. If you can, let each whole day be a surprise to yourself.
Get creative. Ask yourself what you really want to do, not just what would you do on autopilot.
If you live with others, invite them to join you. Mystery Week is so much fun with the input of friends, lovers, or family.
Beginner’s Mind. Get curious about the people around you, and don’t assume anything, even if you know them extremely well. This also applies to you! You can learn new things, try new things, be a new person every day. Don’t make assumptions about anything! Ask yourself what’s possible.
You’re probably stuck indoors. Look around! What’s here that you have forgotten or never fully tried? What new thing each day can you find online?
If you know that you mentally require routine for happiness, keep some. If you can mix it up a little within the routine without too much distress, try some new things. Otherwise, just add to your normal routine an hour or two for mystery each day.
For me, I have a fun mystery online hangout tonight with someone who knows me and my mystery week very well. Although I sent a couple of suggestions a few hours ago, I have no idea what we’ll actually do, and those moments give me such great joy. Creativity and spontaneity add so much to my life, and for an over-planner like myself, it’s like breathing fresh air after weeks of being stuck indoors.
Also today, I restarted planning the book I’ve wanted to write for three years. Its impact on myself and the world remains a mystery that has scared me lately. With my writing, I want to help people grow to withstand the major changes facing our society to the point that they can create meaningful innovations to help themselves and us all to thrive and survive. That time of transformation has landed, and what that means for us as we face climate change and exponential growth in technology sometimes even scares me.
Despite my discomfort and uncertainty, Mystery Week greets me with the reminder to practice what I preach and try the things that make me uncomfortable in order to evolve. So today, I faced my book’s intended audience. I realized I write for the version of me who wanted to die everyday when I first moved to New York City after suffering some major traumas. I couldn’t handle change, and I wanted to crawl into a hole, not fall down rabbit holes. This blog and my podcast, The Peace of Persistence, saved my life and made me a new, inspiring, self-exploring, fully-living me. Some moments have threatened that since – my injury in 2015 and major surgery the following year, and oh I don’t know, a pandemic – but I stand tall today, knowing that we can lean into life’s mysteries, intentionally changing ourselves and the world. Happy Mystery Week.
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.” -Albert Einstein
I love this additional sixth way of well-being, care for the planet, added by the community of Kent. Not originally included in the New Economic Foundation’s Five Ways to Well-being, this reminder keeps at the forefront the truth that we all exist only because Earth can currently support human life. Born on this beautiful rock hurdling through space, we each have a heritage that we actually take for granted from day one. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the shelters we build all come from it, and we have a birthright of stewardship, a need to take care of this home that holds us all.
At this point, either you care or you don’t. Although I can’t make you care, I can recommend two books I’ve read this year that have blown my mind and made me love the planet even more than I ever thought I could. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, by David Wallace-Wells hurt my soul but spoke the truth and compelled me to do more. On the other hand, The Overstory, which rightfully won a Pulitzer Prize for Richard Powers, delivered a fictional love song to the earth that soothed and nourished my heart and deepened my passion for the planet. If you prefer podcasts, I recommend Nori: Reversing Climate Change, for those of you who like longer conversations with brilliant people working to change our climate for the better. For more bite sized content, check out the Carbon Removal Newsroom for news and updates about carbon removal.
Right now, in the confines of our homes in the middle of a pandemic, we might easily forget Mother Earth. We might look to the drop in automobile travel and carbon emissions as a sign that we’ve given her a substantial break from the abuse. I hear joyful stories from people regularly about how “nature is reasserting itself” and how wonderful this all must be for the animals, and how big cities will never again have smog. Many of us need happy, positive stories right now, but we can’t forget the actual plight of our planet. When we all go back to work, to our cars, to our travel, to our lives of plastic and carbon, we still need solutions yesterday for climate change.
Turning off our lights, recycling, reusing grocery bags, composting, using less waste, driving less, and traveling less helps… but we need to do so much more.
Education – Find ways to learn more about what needs to change, how you can help, and who to support. Use the time now to take a class.
Investing – Divest in companies using oil and gas, and invest in startups and companies striving to make a difference to mitigate or reverse climate change.
Removing carbon – Pay other companies to remove the carbon from the air that you’ve contributed through travel and transportation. Support companies working to create solutions for carbon removal.
Keeping the conversation going – Afraid to contribute to the dialogue about global warming? Try these five tips, and sow the seeds of truth and motivation to nurture an earth in need of protectors.
If the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us anything, we now viscerally understand that tomorrow doesn’t come with a guarantee. Climate change, on the other hand, literally poses the greatest present risk to humanity and all life on the planet. As you practice self care at this moment in history to keep living and thriving, remember the big blue earth that sustains us and gives us breath. We only have this one chance to get it right, and we need everyone who can to care. To really try. What can you do now, tomorrow, and the day after that to secure all of our futures? We must start somewhere, and as soon as today.
Today, I started learning Spanish. Again. Truthfully, I have tried a few times, but the habit hasn’t stuck, much to my own dismay. When my building’s super, Mario (that’s right, I have a Super Mario), tries to talk with me about my apartment, we struggle, get frustrated, and now use Google Translate. My next door neighbors also speak Spanish. I have several close friends who speak it fluently with whom I could easily practice. Living just a short walk from a heavily Dominican neighborhood for almost thirteen years, I think the time has come for me to attempt again. Thanks to my brilliant friend Andi‘s challenge last night to join her on Duolingo, I now have accountability and no reason to say no.
What would you like to learn? I like the option of learning languages, because attempting new languages or new skills helps to rewire our brains in a way that keeps them malleable and sharp. This fourth way to well-being, keep learning, gives us fresh perspectives, a way to increase our life satisfaction, and the chance to grow and evolve. In the words of the New Economics Foundation, “Try something new. Rediscover an old interest. Sign up for that course, Take on a different responsibility at work. Fix a bike. Learn to play an instrument or how to cook your favourite food. Set a challenge you will enjoy achieving. Learning new things will make you more confident as well as being fun.”
I imagine you have recently received a barrage of offers for new things to attempt, learn, try – for free or heavily discounted for a time, while we face the pandemic. It can even feel overwhelming. Instead of just choosing the opportunities in your inbox, take a moment to take notice of your needs, your desires, your goals. What do you want to try or achieve that you don’t already have the skills to attempt? What would most fill your soul right now in your current situation? Then, do a Google search or a Facebook search. If you want to learn a new skill, Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning has many partnerships with libraries, and if you don’t know where to start, Parade has this list of over twenty-eight free online courses available at the time of this posting.
To my dear Jewish friends celebrating Passover, חַג שָׂמֵחַ, and to all of us, happy learning.
“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
Skydiving for Pearls 