How to actually accomplish some goals this year

I came across this video a few weeks ago, scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed while I was in the subway. The first half made me laugh out loud but also pressured to set my own goals for 2017 – then I lost signal and the video abruptly stopped playing.

Then, a few weeks later, someone else shared this video on Facebook, and I watched it for the first time to the very end. That was when everything changed.

Oh my god?! I thought to myself. IT TRICKED ME! As it turns out, the video wasn’t motivating me to set and accomplish my goals! In fact it was advocating for the complete opposite!

So I mean, we all kind of admit that if not done in a certain way, “setting goals” is a complete bullshit exercise. Remember when we were taught to set SMART goals in school? Let me just tell you, I was actually the one kid in class who paid attention, and even for me it didn’t work.

But at the same time, we can’t NOT set goals. We have to do it at work, we feel the need to do it for personal finances, and we spend more than half a year trying to work on our “summer bodies”. You can call it “goal setting” or something else, but the bottom line is, if we don’t consciously think about what we want to accomplish, then there is zero chance that we’ll just somehow miraculously get there.

Neuroscience and psychology have actually taught us a lot about goal-setting, and what makes it work. Without going into the technicalities, I’ve highlighted some major points for you to apply to your goals.

1. Your goals might not be what you think they are 

When I start any six-month coaching engagement, I spend at least 2 of the 12 sessions setting goals with my coachees, and then at the beginning of every subsequent session, check in on how they feel about their goals. Setting goals is so important – the exact goal you set has a lot to do with how success you will be at achieving it. 

There are two rules, quite simple ones, that you need to keep in mind when setting your goals:

1. It has to be sticky

I recommend your goal to be 7 words or less, and please, no more than 3 goals total. Practice saying it out loud. Are you having trouble? Then you won’t remember it, let alone act on it. Our brains are already burdened by so much stuff on a daily basis; add a long-term goal you have to keep thinking about day-in, day-out, it’s so tiresome! No wonder you set goals and then almost immediately don’t want to think about them again.

2  It has to make you feel good

Don’t use words like “Stop”, “lose”, or “avoid”. Anything you think about, your brain pays attention to, so if your goal is “Don’t eat food after 9pm at night”, it triggers your brain to immediately think about eating food at 9pm at night. If your goal is “Quit smoking by year end”, every time you think about it, it triggers your brain to think “I want a cigarette”. This creates a kind of psychological incongruence, and all this negative messaging puts your brain into threat mode – and it is hard to pursue your own goal that also puts your brain in threat mode. Instead, make goals that you aspire to, that would make you want to jump out of bed every morning full of energy and optimism. Instead of “Don’t eat food after 9pm at night”, make it “I want to feel sexy in my bikini this July.” Instead of “Quit smoking year end”, make it “I want to feel healthy like I can live to 100.” Better yet, visualize it. Think about walking down that beach in your bikini having guys hitting on you. Like, damn girl.

[A caveat to point #2: This works best if in the context of the goal, you’re “approach motivated”, meaning you’re motivated by things you can potentially gain. In certain situations, our goals may work better if we are “avoidance-motivated” – for example, I don’t want to fail the semester, I don’t want to have cavities from not flossing, I don’t want to die of lung cancer. From my personal perspective, being “approach-motivated” tends to work better in the long-run, because your actions are easier to sustain.]

2. Success is in the details 

When people don’t achieve their goals, one of five things likely happened:

1. Didn’t want it enough
2. Was not clear how to do it
3. Was unsure about the value of it – why do it?
4. Deliberately re-prioritized and chose not to
5. Simply got side-tracked

The most common reason? Not clear how to do it. 

So your goal needs to be specific. Usually we say, the goal itself must be broad, motivational, and sticky – and it aligns more with your overall purpose (the “why”). Then comes the next level down of your thinking – the “how”. How are you going to achieve it? What specific milestones will you set for yourself? How will you measure your success at each milestone? What actions would you need to do to go from one milestone to the next?

This is really where the “rubber meets the road”. Most people will just set goals, and think this is enough – shocking that it isn’t. The aspirational part is always great – you get to sit there and daydream about how amazing your life can be. Then comes the hard work, and if you don’t consciously plan for what actions you’ll need to take, you’re stuck at the daydreaming part. Sorry.

There is a tool that can get you over the hurdle of inaction. It’s called “implementation intention” – alternatively called the “If/then plan“. Multiple studies have cited that those who use implementation intention in a controlled setting typically DOUBLE their success rate of goal-achievement. To apply it, think of most likely scenarios that would prevent or distract you from taking action towards your goal. For each scenario, write down, “IF [xyz situation occurs], then I will do [abc].”

For example,

• Goal: Be fit like a Victoria’s Secret model
• Implementation Intention: If I feel the urge to snack on unhealthy food at night, then I eat an apple instead.

3. Automate 

Neuroscience tells us that neurons that fire together wire together (Hebbian theory). What this means is, while it’s hard to stop existing habits, it’s much, much easier to create new ones (and then the old ones that you don’t use anymore just die naturally). For any one of us, learning a new behavior (think on when you first learned to drive or ride a bike) is uncomfortable at first and requires conscious effort. But over time, you would have mastered it when you notice it coming naturally to you (requires no awareness, feels effortless).

To achieve a goal, habits must have formed in the process (i.e. automatic behaviors). This is necessarily going to be uncomfortable at first, painful even. But you need to trust the process, and trust your brain that over time, your unwanted habit will be pruned out, and you will be left with a new way of doing things that works better for you.

In the short-run, the biggest thing you can do for yourself to keep trying, is to dish out little rewards every time you’ve successfully fought the urge to ditch your new habit. These rewards can be material (e.g. a piece of candy), or social (e.g. let a few of your friends know your goal is to get more fit, and when you’ve worked out three times this week, get together with them for brunch to celebrate).

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So there you go! 3 big ideas for starting on the right foot for 2017. What will your goals be? How will you achieve them? What will you do once you’ve achieved them? How will you reward yourself?

XOXO,

V

How to NOT feel like a failure: an exercise in perspectives

Texture shots of ice cream things. #perspective

So we are all like, really hard on ourselves. But honestly, if anyone else told us that, we’d probably be like, “Uh, no, it really is that bad.” That’s because we’re really hard on ourselves.

Comparing. Benchmarking. Scrolling through Facebook. Whatever you call it, it is pretty self-defeating. Sometimes the rest of the world seems to be doing better than you – poor you, whose job sucks, whose rent is too high, who’s still single (goddamnit, dating in 2016 is hard), who can’t afford groceries.

I’m convinced- and only because I’ve lived this since I was like, four, when my mom began comparing my relative lack of genius to actual geniuses in my Chinese calligraphy class, math Olympics class, piano class, dance class, and so on- that though the world is large and filled with tales of human spirit overcoming adversity, we don’t tend to internalize those tales easily. Instead, we get tunnel vision. We look solely to those select few who seem to demonstrate competence in areas that are often voids within ourselves, and somehow believe they are a fair representation of the rest of the world and thus a fair comparison. A fragile ego is a part of the human condition.

So next time you get jealous of someone, ask yourself why. Like, what the heck, how did Jenny get into Harvard Law School? Is it possibly because it reminds you of your own law school rejections, so it hit a sore spot internally? Does it make you feel like you were a slacker? That you didn’t do A, B, and C but you should have, and ohhh, that regret? Or perhaps it makes you feel like you’re much less privileged and will never be like Jenny? Never forget: we are too hard on ourselves.

The world is so big. Get out of your own head sometimes, and talk to people. Hear their stories. You often think you know someone, but you really don’t, at least not until you’ve heard stories of their epic struggles. It may be hard to believe, but we all have them. 

Below is my nonexhaustive list of conclusions from such conversations.

An exercise in perspectives

1. People who didn’t go to prestigious schools often think the school factor will affect their opportunities in life. People who did go to prestigious schools often feel they’re not good enough compared to their peers. Some people who never graduated from college at all end up kicking ass.
2. People who don’t think they have prestigious jobs tend to think people who do are “set for life”. People who have these so-called prestigious jobs are constantly thinking of ways to get out of them without losing much dignity. People who have had prestigious jobs and then quit and subsequently suffered some form of loss can probably tell you the whole thing is meh and you should probably go raise a family or something.
3. People who are single often wish they’re in relationships so they’d have someone to do stuff with. People who are in relationships frequently wonder if the relationships are worth all the struggle and effort. People who train themselves to believe the relationships are worth most of the struggle and effort get married and sometimes have this burning desire to just do stuff by themselves. Everyone who is raising a family will tell you to enjoy the single life and travel while you still can, because honestly do you want to be cashing out $40K a year for private school per kid over a period of 4+ years just to see them end up studying Egyptian history?
4. Women who are model-thin often lament about not having enough boob or butt. Women who have either boob or butt still want a small waist. Women with the boob, the butt, and the tiny waist probably want to get rid of some of those face wrinkles. It never ends. Everyone wants Michelle Obama arms but once you do you probably won’t get a gentleman to help you carry stuff.
5. Every woman wants a man who has the looks, the personality, and the success/wealth. This is called a Unicorn. A woman can spend all her life trying to find a Unicorn only to be betrayed by the Unicorn because Unicorns are too special to really care much for anyone’s existence. If the Unicorn is still around, she’d probably not sleep much because she might need to constantly keep an eye on him. I mean, let’s face it, Unicorns are always wondering if they can get with other Unicorns, too.

Uhh, yeah. That’s really pretty much it.Check out that ice cream though.

 

XOXO,

V.

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*Photo credit: http://zsazsabellagio.tumblr.com/post/77876209050

How to know what love is

For some reason, it has been a bad month for many of my friends.  A lot of people who have been in serious relationships (some engaged) for the past year or more have broken up and gone their separate ways. Maybe the weather has gotten cooler and passion dies when signs of life quiet down. Maybe days are getting shorter and that makes us feel more angst. Maybe as Thanksgiving and Christmas draw nearer and nearer, it’s soon going to be prime meeting-the-family-time and if you don’t break up now you’ll prob have to wait till after Valentine’s Day. For someone whose heart is set like cold jello, that’s helluva long time.

On one hand, it is heart wrenching to watch them suffer, but on the other hand, I always say, sooner rather than later, you know?

Love is one of those beasts we can try to tame but then as soon as we do it dies. Like faith, defining it means reducing it to merely an aspect of the whole. And as soon as we do, it becomes almost necessary to worship it like a religion, thus we often find ourselves bound and blind to possibilities outside of our normal range of imagination. As an ideal, love conjures a hypnotic concoction of loss of self, of wild dreams, of grandiosity – the society we’re raised in makes us believe that these affiliated notions of “love” constitute it entirely. We proactively look for these notions- for the fluttering of the heart, for serendipity, for stories, for The Look, for grand gestures. And when there are signs of it missing from our relationships or our pursuit of these relationships, we write off whatever is in front of us as “not meant to be”.

This is not what love is. If you are still looking for this and you believe this is love, you’ll either end up very hurt or end up hurting a lot of people. 

Typically, in my posts I offer a list of pointers  – 1, 2, 3, bold, underlined, indented. But for this particular post, there really is only one message:

Love is not really about you. 

I have been reading this book by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh recently. It is this palm-sized little thing called “How to Love“. In it, he says:

“To love is not to possess the other person or to consume all their attention and love. To love is to offer the other person joy and a balm for their suffering. This capacity is what we have to learn and cultivate.”

When we make love to be about ourselves, several things start to happen:

• We begin to have endless criteria on our list, requirements for the person that we think we can love, without so much considering what makes us so special that they should love us back
• We begin to expect more from our relationships, and this makes us erroneously believe that the stake for being in the relationship is now higher. We have more negative reactions to the other person, sweat the small stuff, and poison the kindness we once shared with the other person.
• We begin to think we deserve more, and start to lose appreciation and compassion for the other person that is so key in continuously cultivating love.
• We begin to fear losing the other person. We try to control them, “fix” them so they can be “better”, or, we might realize that they’re wrong for us but still refuse to let them go.

None of these behaviors are indications of love. You may think it is because you tell yourself you care (a lot!!), but what you really care about is you, not the other person who is on the receiving end of any love you have to give.

I know, you’re probably sitting there going, “This is stupid. Fuck you.” I don’t blame you. It is hard. Human beings are inherently selfish. I only ask that you think about this a bit more. Take some time, ponder it over. Given what happened in Paris, Beirut, and everywhere else in the world recently, love is so heavily needed in the world we live in, now more than ever.

Give, be a balm for someone else’s suffering. Be a source of light, not darkness. 

XOXO,

V.

The “Your Job Sucks” Series Post #1 – How to Regain Control

You think you can’t.

I know you do because I’ve been there – because I still AM there from time to time.

It’s hard to ask for things – things like a raise, a promotion, a less-shitty “work-life balance” (note the quotation marks – I deeply believe that whoever invented this term was NOT American). You wait and watch for the opportune time, you build your strengths up in your head, and you sometimes make the leap and get shot down. It’s like that time when you were five and you reached for the candy jar and someone slapped your hand away. I mean, let’s face it, we don’t like to get slapped.

Here’s something you need to know about me – I’m an idealist-turned-somewhat-of-a-pragmatist. It has to do with growing up in an immigrant household, competing in a public university where urban legends of people stealing your notes in libraries was probably half true, then living in New York and trying to “make it”. I’m not the type to blatantly ask you to jump into a body of water if you don’t know how to swim or don’t know what’s in the water. ‘Cause you’re probably gonna die.

So sometimes optimism is not enough. While hardly anything alone might be enough to fully advance your situation to greener pastures, there is one thing I’ve found to be most useful – and that, my friend, is to make yourself feel like you have a sense of control over something. 

In a sense it is purely psychological. Think about why we tend to fear uncertainty – it’s because we can’t control the unknown. Think about the last time you were stressed out about something – it’s because you felt there were aspects of the situation you couldn’t fix, aspects of the desired results that were out of your immediate realm of influence. In these situations, you feel powerless, and that is pretty shitty, you know?

The solution? Gain that control back.

Do something, anything, immediately. Start setting and achieving goals. 

They don’t have to be big goals, like “I must find my career path (again)”, or “I must pursue my life’s passion even though I have zero fucking idea what it is.”  Do something small to get the ball rolling. Check something off your everyday-task kind of mental list, then feel how great that is, build that confidence in yourself that YOU CAN, and repeat with something bigger, take a leap here and there.

Do something like:

1. Start a sports hobby where you can set incremental goals 

One of my friends was a junior associate at a top management consulting firm. If you know something about consulting, it’s that once you start as either an analyst or associate, it’s BAD BAD BAD to quit before your two-year mark. On your resume it looks terrible, probably some kind of an implied “failure” stamp the industry has created to weed out those whose primary objective is not to constantly “be a winner” (very important in life). She hated her job, cried maybe once every other night in a dismal hotel in Kentucky while working the night shift doing her Excel magic, but she couldn’t just quit. She had to “pay her dues”.

So she began to train for marathons. This is actually killing multiple birds with one stone, because you are not only doing physical exercise, which boosts the level of endorphin (a happiness hormone) in your body and lowers the level of cortisol (a stress hormone), you’re getting fit, hence gaining more confidence. But perhaps most importantly, in this situation, she was setting incremental small goals for herself – she could feel herself running more and running better. Basically, channeling DAFT PUNK: “harder, better, faster, stronger”. That in turn set a number of things in motion. Her attitude towards her job changed, she created stronger visions for a future she wanted, and perhaps indirectly as a result of all this, when her Year One was up, she was actually promoted (the rest is history in the making).

2. Join a fun class 

If your job isn’t one that chains you to your Blackberry 24/7, try joining a class. Something fun, that pushes you a bit outside of your comfort zone, but also puts you in a different head space, if only temporarily. All work no play is no fun for anyone, I get it, but do you really want your biggest outlet to be drinking and partying until 3am every weekend, eating a lot of cake, and shopping till you drop (I’ve done maybe some of the above)?

Join a class – like improv, writing, painting (with wine), dance, yoga…the choices are endless. You’re a grown-ass woman now, you can afford this (but anyway, I’ve added some links for affordable options above).

My dad always told me, nothing you ever do is lost on you. Maybe the benefit of these activities won’t be immediately apparent, but at some point in the near future, I guarantee you’ll have these “aha” moments when you would feel grateful for the experiences.

This option is especially important if you feel like your life is devoid of passion (read: if you’re bored). I mean, come on, are you really just sitting around waiting for the day when your body will be too old for you to do anything crazy with it? I don’t think our lives were intended to be lived that way.

3. Up your professional ante 

Start talking to people. Never underestimate the power of your network (blah blah blah) but more importantly, opening up more conversations with semi-strangers at least gives you the illusion of opportunity. It’ll make you feel like, “Hey, there could be something to look forward to here!” Instead of going round and round in your head feeding to your dark vortex of despair.

A lot of my friends often tell me, “Gawd I hate networking, so impersonal, so fake.” Well, the trick is, it is fake only if you want it to be. If you approach someone you’ve never met before with the expectation of this person eventually helping you to land a job (i.e. “When can I send him my resume?”) that is a nischt nischt my love. Go in with an open mind, be genuine, have no expectations, and just learn about the other person (kind of like a date). Ask what exactly it is that they do – what do they like about it? What do they not like? What inspires them to get up each morning? If you hate your job, the worst thing you can do is to rush into another option that you end up hating equally or even more. So take your time, do your research, explore. Oh, and don’t forget to buy them coffee.

Finally, in terms of networking for women, I want to put a placeholder here for a future post called: “Is it a date, or is it networking?” I think this question speaks for itself.

Oh, and TGIF! Happy Friday the 13th everyone. Walk under all the ladders.

Love,

V.

Your job sucks. Welcome to the series.

Recently, I was in LaGuardia waiting to board my flight for a project in Toronto, when I caught sight of a self-help book on the shelf in Hudson News called “You Are a Badass – How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life.”

At first I rolled my eyes at this: “Oh god, not another self-help book.”

And then I read the back cover of the book and I thought to myself, “Waaaait, it’s true. I COULD be a badass. I DO think I can be doing a whole lot more. And I DO doubt myself a lot. I DO self-sabotage a lot of the times.”

So I got it and have been reading it non-stop for the past few days (and have been getting all kinds of stares on subways). The material in the book wasn’t anything alarmingly new, but it packages key ideas about personal success and self-fulfillment in a way that comforts and reassures you, which is what these things are intended to do – to make you feel like you can.

You and me – we probably have heard most of these things before, a phenomenon I call “inspiration fatigue” – i.e. too many sources preaching about a few key pieces of life wisdom in different forms.  It’s like, thanks for that, you rich and successful person with your high horse and your self-actualization, easy for you to say.

As for the rest of us:

• You’ve worked very hard throughout high school and college and kind of missed out on most of the crazy parties
• You were conditioned by the society to believe that success is most importantly a prestigious-sounding job- and then everything else will follow, that it’s easier to try to be happy with a good amount of money than it is to be happy with no money at all
• Maybe you went to grad school, because you were under the impression that upon graduating with a Bachelor’s degree, you had to know what to do with your life, so you did my best the way you knew how
• You worked even harder after graduation to check off everything on your Preconditioned Success List – job, apartment, relationship, lifestyle.
• Congrats, you’ve found that  job you’re proud to name-drop (consultants, bankers, lawyers, raise your hands), but after a few years at a stressful, 12+hour/day job where you’re constantly yelled at for just being your good ol’ self,  you’ve started to wonder what your next move should be – and you’ve been drawing a blank. The truth is maybe you’ve sacrificed a lot, put aside what you thought was your passion and your dream, to get to where you are today. But is it worth it? Is this all that life is? On some days you wonder when – if ever- would be the time for you to actually do these things you’ve always wanted to do.

If you are reading this and you say, “No, no, I’m one of those twentysomethings who actually LIKES my life the way it is”, see if any of the descriptions below jives with you:

1. You have a job you’re proud of, you work extremely hard but some days you just feel like you’re burning out very fast. Some days it is a spiraling vortex of darkness, but then suddenly something small happens, something positive, and you cling onto it with all you’ve got and tell yourself this is what fulfillment and progress feels like.
2. You’ve tried to leave your job, many times (ohhh many times). Interviewing for you has been like one torrid cheatin’ love affair after another (sometimes they overlap and you find yourself drinking a lot more), but somehow nothing seems good enough for you to want to make a change (or miraculously, they don’t want you. Like, what?)
3. You’re afraid of your future career being 9-to-5 and boring-as-shit. You’re worried that if you let go of what you have now, a part of your youth will go with it. And what will you be left with? Marriage, screaming kids, and a minivan – and working at a mediocre organization with enough bureaucracy to not get anyone fired, ever.
4. You’re afraid of your future career mildly resembling that of someone senior at your firm – you’ll be very senior, you’ll have influence, you’ll make cash, but that stereotypical sense of nuclear family will be foreign to you. You’ll be home maybe two days a week, your family will hardly care if you’re around, and god-forbid, maybe you won’t even have a family. Maybe you’ll be a 50-year old bachelor taking 20-something young girls to places with tasting menus, or a cat lady with a lot of Louboutins (which is not too bad depending on where you’re coming from).

So, here we are. Youth, as some may call it, slipping away like sand in an hourglass.

Over  the next few posts, I’ve decided to share some of my strategies on this with you – ways to manage the psychological stress of it, to start taking action, to balance risk and reward. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve spent a lot energy to figure this out myself. A lot of the material I’ll be sharing will come from my own experience, my research, my conversations with peers, and observing people who have been through it all. The bottom line is, it’s still not too late, but it’s time to get moving.

Xoxo,

V.

Things I’d want my daughter to know

In time for Father’s Day, I’m dedicating this post to my wonderful father, who’s always shown me the way.

Growing up, I was raised in a household that was anything but “traditional”. My family moved often, and as a result, my parents both experienced vastly different cultures–and different realities–frequently, so that I was never raised to be a “tiger cub” – via those intense, almost absurd and mechanical parenting methods to raise a child out of “tough love”, such that he or she will become a Cut-Throat Winner in this jungle of a society.

Sometimes after a long catch-up conversation with my mom, I’d sit there and reflect on the way I’d turned out. Obviously there is no denying this: I am simply not a Cut-Throat Winner, at least not in the stereotypical Asian view of success. I have a track record of NOTs: not being number one, not winning big scholarships, not getting to Grade 12 in piano, not becoming a math genius…the list goes on. By now you’re probably drastically unimpressed, but frankly that’s not the point.

But I am happy, I realized, and I’m at peace, the rare way that I see many people around me are not. As we advance into our late-twenties and beyond, we’ve all developed certain ways to hide our insecurities, but if you look closely enough, for a lot of people these insecurities never really went away.

I’ve been compiling this list in my head for some time, and it’s time I made a note about it here on this blog, because it is pertinent – the things I would want my daughter to know, if I ever have a daughter. Times are changing and being a female in today’s society implies a whole new world of opportunities and challenges. The Economist recently published a cover article titled “The Weaker Sex”, where the magazine summarizes as “Blue-collar men in rich countries are in trouble. They have not adapted well to trade, technology, or feminism.”

In my head I had thought to myself, “Feminism is a thing that requires adaptation now?” How alarming.

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1. You may not conform to today’s standard of beauty, but that doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful. 

Honestly? The things that are the most attractive about a woman (because I’ve paid attention, oh yes) – 1. that you’re fit, 2. that you conduct yourself gracefully and smile brightly, 3. that you have good posture.

The standards of beauty will always change. You’ll kill yourself trying to stay current. So just don’t bother – there’s no win in that for you.

2. Breathing will always slow down your heart rate and make you less nervous.

Got a scary presentation? Deep breath through your belly. Got a big date? Deep breath through your belly. Feeling upset or about to punch someone in their fucking face? Deep breath through your belly.

3. Your body is like a car that you’re stuck with for the rest of your life; don’t abuse it.

I did not come up with this one; Warren Buffett did. He said: “If you’re getting a car and it has to last as long as you live, how are you going to treat that car? You’re probably going to read the owner’s manual four times before you drive it; you’re going to keep it in the garage, protect it at all times, change the oil twice as often as necessary. If there’s the least bit of rust, you’re going to get that fixed immediately, so it doesn’t spread – because you know it has to last you as long as you live. Here’s the thing, that’s exactly the position you are in concerning your mind and body.” 

Take it from Warren Buffett. He knows stuff.

4. Sentimentality is only helpful if you’re a really, really good poet. 

Why are you looking backwards? Did you make a decision out of fear that you now regret? If so, don’t do it next time. If not, realize that the world has already moved on (like, literally), and even what you think you had is not going to be the same if you ever get it back again.

5. Happiness is not something you can show other people. 

When you’re happy, you know it. When you’re the opposite of happy, you also know it. Share your happiness generously with those who can share their happiness with you, and don’t worry about the rest of them. Don’t try to show other people that you’re happy when you’re not really happy – nobody benefits in this scenario.

6. Strength is innate. 

Don’t try to show off how tough you are or coerce others into doing things you want, or being the way you want them to be. Don’t buy into others showing off their strengths and awesomeness. True strength doesn’t need the validation from public display and is never explicit.

7. Wear fun clothes. 

Because there will be times when you’d want to wear fun clothes and some asshole (like the society) will try to stop you from wearing fun clothes, deeming it “inappropriate”. So whatever opportunity allows, wear fun clothes. There will always be time for pencil skirts and WASPY cardigans.

8. Sometimes you have to be alone.

It is only when you know how to be alone, that you know how to truly, fully embrace yourself, and love yourself and sometimes your complicated thoughts. It is only when you can love yourself and your complicated thoughts that you can truly, fully embrace another human being and love him for himself and his complicated thoughts.

9. A bit of extra effort takes you a long way.

Most people stop at a point they deem to be 100% of their effort, when it is really only something like 60% of their effort – in a normal distribution they fall +/- 1 standard deviation from the mean (the majority). This is because people are inherently lazy and irrational. To stand out, just put in a bit more effort.

10. Be brave pragmatically. 

Go boldly in the direction of your dreams, etc etc. But please for the love of God be a bit pragmatic. You don’t exist in a vacuum so all of your actions do in fact have short-term and long-term consequences. Be prepared to sacrifice some things for other things you want to pursue, understand why you’re pursuing them and the opportunity cost for doing so, then do it and for the love of God don’t look back.

That’s all.

Love,

V.

V’s Definitive Guide to Eating Out Alone

When you are Single and Ready to Mingle (okay maybe not so much the latter), you will inevitably have to spend a lot of time with yourself.

And that, my friends, often entails eating out alone.

Many of my friends (male AND female) have at some point expressed this fear of being “caught” eating out alone. This is something I find rather tragic, because eating out alone can easily become one of the greatest pleasures a twentysomething can have in life.

Imagine trying to decide on where eat with someone else. This is how the conversation would go:

Person: I’m starving, let’s grab some food.

You: What do you feel like having?

Person: I dunno, whatever you want.

You: Okay how about Italian? Pasta works for me.

Person: Ugh, I had Italian food yesterday.

You: Okay, um…Thai?

Person: No absolutely no Thai. I hate Thai food.

You: Okay so you pick.

Person: How about something spicy? Sichuan food?

You: (thinking about your skin and your need to get in shape for the summer) Hmm I’d rather not have spicy food.

Person: Man… okay. Mediterranean food?

Person: Okay sure. What’s a good place? Let’s not go to that place we went last weekend.

[After half an hour of browsing through Yelp] 

Person: Okayyy, so…do you want to just do Chipotle?

When you eat out alone, you wouldn’t have to put up with any of this. Think of dining and drinking whatever you want, at your own pace, not ever having to worry about all the consequences of going/not going Dutch, and ordering as much (or as little food) as you want, whatever you want, and not have to chew and talk at the same time. When done correctly, this can be a total #treatyoself experience. But, like many activities one does alone, half of the fun is in the planning and anticipation. This is how you do it.

1. Have a place in mind ahead of time. 

Do your research. Walking around town and see a cute restaurant? Star it on Google Map. See a cute spot your friends raved about on Facebook? Bookmark it on Yelp. Keep a growing list of “Restaurants to Experience” so there is always something you can look forward to. You probably already do this anyway, but keep a list in the back of your mind solely for eating out alone. The best places to eat out alone in are often quieter, not so packed, and not a “great date night spot”.

The second key thing is regarding timing. It’s probably not the best idea to go eat out alone on a Friday or Saturday night, or Sunday morning for brunch, regardless of your level of self-confidence and ambition. Let’s not even talk about the couples on first dates – just the mere volume of conversation will annoy you to the point of involuntary eavesdropping. While this could totally lend itself to some fiction you’re aspiring to write (or like, a snarky Tweet), you don’t want to eat good food while feeling like a bystander. In New York, where tables are often very close to each other, I’ve had to deal with this all too many times so you don’t have to.

The third key thing is to manage your expectations. Mentally prepare yourself. I’ve found that eating out alone works best on two polar ends of a spectrum – you either go cheap and fast, or you go all the way and get fancy. Cheap and fast makes me feel happy because there is a sense of efficiency tied to accomplishment, while fancy makes me feel like I took care of myself and makes me feel warm and fuzzy. No matter what don’t try to go for something in the middle because you risk being suddenly overwhelmed by self-pity.

2. Eat 

Sometimes when people eat out alone, they have their “eating out alone” gears with them spread all over the table, most often work-related, to make it seem like it wasn’t their choice to eat out alone. Don’t be like that. Embrace the silence, both in physicality and in your head, and actually taste the food, enjoy it for what it is. Too often we move too fast in this day and age–always on the run, always glued to our technology–to even recognize the value of these moments, let alone to enjoy them.

I love eating out alone because it gives me solid time to reflect on things. For once I can be still and be entirely focused on the present, without worrying about doing this or missing out on that – those things can come after I finish my meal.

3. Wrapping things up 

Literally wrap things up to go. Don’t try to finish it because often portions are way too heavy at restaurants. The benefit of this is two-fold: you feel like you indulged your taste buds without so much of the guilt, and you also now have your next meal ready. I can’t speak for all foods but generally I’ve found restaurant food to actually taste better when reheated. Maybe this is psychological. (this is also why getting sushi is not recommended)

Don’t forget to tip well. 

Roasted bone marrow, Parmesan-caper crust, watercress salad, toasted brioche. Celery gimlet cocktail, at Saxon + Parole NYC. @TheValoress

~~~~~

Now that I’ve offered my cherished tips, if you’ve eaten out alone at a good restaurant in New York, please share the name below so I can add it to my list. Thanks!

Love,

V.

Letting go of what does not stop for you

I am a big fan of Jenny Holzer, and a long time ago I discovered a list of her Truisms inscribed onto a marble bench in the Whitney Museum. There was one that struck me as particularly memorable, and it went:

“You must know where you stop and the world begins.”

As an only child, a writer/blogger, and an INFJ, I spend much of my time inside my head, living in my own vast world of shifting metaphors, colors, possibilities and imaginations. It has always been particularly hard for me to deeply connect with people, not because I’m not interested in connecting with them, but because I find it hard to find others who speak that same metaphorical language as I do. As a result I always ran the danger of becoming, as people sometimes say, “too aloof”.

So this quote. It hit me hard and became something I always keep in the back of my mind. It is unfeasible — and foolish– for me and anyone else to believe that we are each omnipotent, as we are often raised to believe. The extreme opposite of thinking we have no agency to affect change, whether it is in ourselves or in the world, is to think somehow that we can control anything and everything. Things like accidents, moments of struggle and unhappiness, Shit Hit the Fan (SHTF) days, broken hearts, disappointments especially when they don’t stop.

Yesterday I was briefly outside of the Plaza Hotel and was suddenly taken back by a voraciously functioning Pulitzer Fountain, which has always been so dormant in the winter as if it’s falling into disrepair. The scene was so glorifying yet so calm that I paused to take a picture:

Pulitzer Fountain, NYC, spring 2015

Then not being able to catch myself in time, all the fond memories I once had at this exact place and all subsequent heartbreaks that followed came flooding back to me. It hit me like a tsunami, slow, creeping, overwhelming, pulling me under. And for a moment there I thought I was reliving those emotional treacheries all over again and would never resurface.

And then I thought to myself, this is where I stop and the world begins. The Pulitzer Fountain exists for no one, just like New York City — the subject of so many love letters, Joan Didion’s farewells and E.B. White’s essays— exists for no one. Life will always go on, and life does not wait for you. The beauty of sentimentality is precisely what makes it also irrational. Best to just always do what we can, love in the way we know how, and let go of the rest and let it rest in peace.

Love,

V.