Leaping. It’s Not For Weenies.

September 1, 2010 in Inspiration, Uncategorized by jensincero | 3 comments

I want to pick up where I left off in last week’s post because there are 3, very important things you must do if you’re going to grow out of being who you presently are into the big, beautiful, glorious beast that you long to be.

The crazy part about these 3 things is that while they’re simple, obvious and quick, most people avoid them like the plague in favor of clinging, with determined white knuckles, to their ho-hum lives.

Ready? Behold, the holy trinity to freedom:

1. Listen
2. Believe
3. Act

Listen
Have you ever been about to do something or say something to someone that scares the living crap out of you, and have you ever noticed that if it’s something you were really meant to do, the second the thought enters your head, along with the pantwetting fear comes this massive, exhilarating rush and this teeny tiny voice inside of you that starts screaming youuuuuuu caaaaaaaaaaaan doooooooooo eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

And right before you take the leap, if you pause for even a second, that’s when the negotiations start seeping in, the doubts rear their heads and the justifications of why you can’t and how later really would be better and hey, I think I’m hungry, I wonder if there’s any pizza leftover from last night?

Meanwhile, the only thing you should be listening to is the little voice inside you that knows that this leap is the portal to the other side.

So, to get better acquainted with that voice, practice shutting up. Shut off the crazy squirrels running through your brain, push out all thoughts and just breathe deeply, focus on nothing and listen.

This is what the hippies call Meditation and I swear on my organic hemp hand-woven poncho, doing it for even 10 minutes a day can make you a mighty superhero.

Believe
Changing your belief systems can be a big, long, drawn out drama or a split second decision. Next time you’re about to follow your little, screamy inner cheerleader and doubt creeps up behind her and crams a pillow over her face, make a conscious decision to remove the pillow.

Whatever it is that you’re worried you can’t do, simply decide to believe you can. Even if you don’t believe you can, believe you can anyway. Because your only other option is believing you can’t and where’s the thrill in that?

Practice doing this. You don’t even realize how often you decide you can’t do something before you even start. Pay attention to your thoughts and when they go south simply replace them with mighty ones.

If you need help pulling yourself up, listen to music that rocks your world, talk to a friend that thinks you’re invincible, scream affirmations to yourself or tape quotes all over your house that remind you to be huge. You will look like a giant weirdo, but you’ll get the last laugh when you’re livin the life.

Act
So last week I talked about taking action regardless of what other people think of you. This week I want to talk about doing it regardless of what you think of you.

If your intuition tells you to do something, do not invite your brain into the decision making process. Your brain wants you to side with caution. Your heart wants you to leap to into the unknown.

Take the leaps regardless of the fact that you have no idea where you’re going to land. The more you practice doing this, the bigger you’ll get, the more addicted to the thrill you’ll become, and the easier it’ll get.

When it comes to every pivotal decision I’ve made in my life, there was always a moment when an idea flew into my head and was simultaneously snatched up by fear and faith. In equal parts. I get that little alien kick in the gut informing me it’s game time, and my reaction is always, oh great, now I have to go do that?!

It’s always something terrifying and revealing and waaaay uncomfy, but I know it’s what I should do. For example: I wrote an alarmingly personal book about sex. Became a bestselling author. I spent more money on a life coach than I spent on my car. Tripled my income. The list goes on and on (as I’m sure yours does) and in every case a huge part of me didn’t want to do it, but I knew I had to. And was thrilled I did.

Let’s recap, shall we? Listen to your gut, decide to believe you can, go out and do it. And if you don’t feel like you’re going to puke, you’re doing something wrong.

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This Is SO Not About You

August 27, 2010 in Inspiration, Uncategorized, Writing by jensincero | 2 comments

I recently had a friend, a brilliant writer, call me in a panic because she suddenly became frozen with fear over the subject matter of her book and could no longer bring herself to write it.

Her book is, among many other splendid things, very personal, dark, and twisted, and my friend was concerned that it was too much. That it was crossing the line.

That she was exposing herself as a giant pervert freak weirdo.

This brings up a concept that’s SO important to have a firm grasp on if you’re going to get anywhere near reaching your full potential in this life as a writer, an entrepreneur, an artist and actually, as a fully realized and evolved human being in general:

One of the greatest, most powerful ways you can spend your time is actively practicing not giving a flying crap what anybody else thinks about you.

Other people’s opinions motivate every decision we make in our teens and our twenties, and as we age, if we’re moving in the right direction, our obsession with how we look to others slowly trickles away, but most people spend their lifetimes under its pointless grasp.

Meanwhile, the only questions you ever need to really consider are:

Is this something I want to be, do or have?
Is this going to take me in direction of my goal or purpose?
Is it going to violate the rights of others?

Yes, it is part of our survival instinct to care – get booted from the tribe and you will freeze or starve to death or be eaten by bears. But because we have big brains and the ability to manifest anything we set our minds to, there is another version that’s equally as plausible: get booted from the tribe and be forced to start one of your own, and even though you suffer through struggles and failures and fears, you prove yourself and create something that’s unique and exciting and more in line with who you really are and suddenly there’s a coin with your face on it or a rest stop named after you or something equally as awesome.

We all long for the comfort and safety of fitting in, and if that’s where you’re truly happy and fully realized, then bravo, but nobody who ever accomplished anything big or new or worth raising a fist in the air and screaming “hell yeah!” about did it from the comfort zone.

They risked ridicule and failure and sometimes even death. Take the Wright Brothers for example. Can you imagine how that whole thing went down?

Beula: Did you hear about poor Susan?
Agnes: Susan Wright?
Hattie: Such a disgrace! Poor thing.
Agnes: What happened?
Beula: Well, her two boys…
Hattie: As if Susan hasn’t suffered enough. Tiny little thing birthing three boys as big as buffaloes, then croup, shingles and now this…
Beula: Seems her two sons…oh dear.
Agnes: Her two sons what?!
Hattie: I heard she has bunions too…
Agnes: Spit it out already Beula!
Beaula: Well, this is going to sound as crazy as it is but they….
Hattie: And now her sons think they can fly. Such a shame.
Beula: …they think they can fly.
Agnes: Think they can fly?
Beula: Yes, her sons think they can fly. They talk of nothing else.
Hattie: She just had the house painted too. They’ll probably have to move out of town now….

Once you step away from the herd and let yourself be seen, you put yourself in front of the opinion firing squad, which is why so many people run screaming from the lives they’d so love to live.

But here’s the thing that’s so critical to remember: It’s not about you anyway. What other people think about you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

I’ve gotten emails from people telling me everything from I can’t write to save my life to I’m an insensitive jerk to, and I quote, “your last name is interesting. Some people may see ’sincere’ but all I see is the ’sin’ part. Your life will be nothing but pain and heartache if you keep living it this way”.

I’ve also had people write in about the very same book gushing that I changed their life, that I’m their favorite writer, that they would like to get to know me in the biblical sense, etc.

So it couldn’t possibly be about the book because the book stays the same. It’s the reactions that differ.

The trick is not only not buying into the criticisms, but not buying into the hype either because neither of them are the truth. Once you do, you hand your power over to other people’s fears and insecurities and needs and stories and spend your life desperately chasing down something that isn’t even real.

All that matters is what’s true for you, and if you can tap into that and follow it without straying, you will be a mighty superhero. Everything else is just other people’s perception of reality, and that is none of your business.

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Movin’ On Up

August 19, 2010 in Inspiration, Travel, Uncategorized by jensincero | 5 comments

A hundred thousand years ago I lived in Barcelona, Spain, with a bunch of friends from college. We lived in this big old building that, with its high ceilings, fabulous molding and gigantic French doors, was clearly all the rage in its day, but had since crumbled to a not so savory state by the time we got our hands on it.

Me, Jason, friends and my platinum hairdo in the Plaza Reial, Barcelona, 1989

I lived in a sparse room with a balcony that was connected to the room next to it by a pair of grandiose sliding doors that my neighbor and dear pal, Jason, would fling open every morning in his silk kimono. He’d glide over to my bed with two mimosas on a mirrored dining tray, hand me one, take one for himself and and beseech me, “what shall we celebrate today?!”

I am reminded of him today not only because I just came off a week of hanging out with the old college crew, but because after ten years of nonstop sunny days, bike rides on the boardwalk and In N Out burgers, I’ve decided to take the plunge and move out of Los Angeles!

My motto upon arrival was “I just want to see what I can get away with,” and I do believe I have seen aplenty: 2 books, live performances up the wazoo, TV writing gigs, radio and TV appearances, an awesome coaching practice, insider access to the sex industry, a screenplay, countless speaking gigs, a herd of the most amazing friends a girl could ask for, blond hair, a house by the beach and a convertible.

I will leave the boob job to someone else.

At the moment I’m planning on returning to my beloved New Mexico, but I’m staying open – Montana? Italy? The Moon? As long as there’s water, oxygen and internet access, I really could run my business from the moon. Hence, it is under serious consideration.

What I’m most excited about at the moment, however, are the possibilities that will present themselves now that I’ve made this decision. My perception of my everyday life in L.A. will be so radically different now that I know I only have 7 more months left (April 1st is my official blast-off date).

And this is what I want to write about: What if you lived your life like you knew you were going to leave it soon? What would you take advantage of? What would you appreciate more? Who would you make an effort to hang out with more? What things would you finally do that you’ve been putting off doing?

In honor of the new urgency in my life, I’m going to make a list of all the people, places and things I need to do, set up a meeting with, explore, write about, perform, make out with, eat, swim in or get my favorite shirt back from.

So here’s an exercise that I think you should do because not only will it fill you with gratitude for what you’ve already got, but it will make your life a lot fuller and move you at lightening speed towards living that life that you can brag about at cocktail parties:

1. Make a list of people you want to hang out with but never do and make a date with each of them.
2. If you want new, excellent people in your life, write down the specific traits you’d like them to have, put yourself in places where that kind of person can be found or, if you know someone who might know this type of person, ask them for an introduction, and make a date with them
3. If there’s anyone, be it a celebrity, a business contact, a possible client, that you know would move your business forward, figure out how to contact them (we really are only about 3 degrees of separation from everyone) and do it.
4. If single, inform the next hot person you meet that you are available for a date.
5. If taken, inform your significant other that you’d like to take them out on a date.
6. Make a list of 10 places that you’ve been meaning to check out, get out your calendar, and write down the dates and times that you will check them out.
7. Make a point to notice something new about your block/house/neighborhood/city every single day.
8. Make a list of your top five favorite things about where you live and celebrate them – for example, if you love the public transportation, take the bus somewhere and relish it, if you love the weather, get out in it, if you love that you have the best neighbors in the world, bring them a cherry pie.
9. List off the things that are available to you where you live that aren’t necessarily available in other places and take advantage of them. For example, because I imagine I’ll be moving to the boonies or out of the country, before I leave L.A. I will perform as much as I can, network my butt off, set up as many meetings as I can, go to as many seminars as I can, go to as many concerts as I can, stalk as many celebrities as I can, etc.
10. Wake up every morning and ask yourself “what shall I celebrate today?”

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Life or The Big Blur.

August 11, 2010 in Inspiration, Uncategorized by jensincero | 2 comments

I turned 45 on Saturday. Hi, I’m Jen Sincero, and I’m 45. Last year I was 44 and this year I’m 45. Next year, I’ll be 46 because right now I am 45.

Nope, still not sinking in.

HOW THE HELL DID I GET TO 45 ALREADY!

Birthday. Brunch. Buddy.


Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s an awesome age. You’re still energetic and sexy, but now you have all this incredible experience, confidence and know-how. Plus you’re too old to care a whole lot about what other people think of you when you’re out there in the street, taking the trash out in your robe.

I’m just flabbergasted by how quickly it goes. I mean, my niece has breasts. Breasts! Where did those come from? How did she go from stuffing peas up her nose to breasts in a split second?

The thing about time is that you can’t slow it down, but you kind of can. Here are some tried and true tricks to make the passing of time – ye olde cold bucket of water in the face – a tad less startling.

Ahem:

Every time I go on a trip, I stop myself when I’m first starting out and think okay, let me remember this moment. This adventure has just started and I’m all excited and I want to note this beginning so I can enter into it slowly and consciously. Then I proceed to fly into it all crazy and woo hoo BUT I eventually do snap to and stop myself. And I marvel at things like holy crap, I’m in India, on an overcrowded bus, being sat on by a family of five – this is awesome!

The trick is to do this in your everyday life with everyday occurrences. Holy crap, I’m sitting on my couch in my robe, in southern California, it’s warm out, I’m typing, I’m alive and this moment will never happen again – this is awesome! Be conscious of where you are right now – how it feels, smells, tastes, looks, everything. If you notice your life moment by moment and utilize all your senses, instead of racing by lost in your head, it will last much much longer.

Another great trick is to stop screwing around. Stop wasting time! Stop doing stupid crap that you really don’t care about and use your time wisely! Make a schedule. Give yourself deadlines. This doesn’t mean you have to be productive 24/7, but it does mean that instead of screwing around on Facebook or worrying or getting caught up in minutia you should be out walking on the beach with a friend or learning something fascinating or doing something that adds meaning to your life rather than tossing your time down the drain.

It’s also an excellent idea to bring new stuff into your world everyday. Go to a different supermarket. Take a different route home. Notice something new about your neighborhood. Take a class on something new. Move to a new town. Make a new friend. And my favorite, do something that scares the hell out of you everyday. By constantly shoving the unknown into your face, you get out of your rut, jolted out of your stupor, awakened to the present and hence, you get slowed down.

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Groping For Dollars

July 19, 2010 in Inspiration by jensincero | No comments

One of my favorite things about being an entrepreneur is that I can travel pretty much whenever I feel like it, make my own hours, and run my empire from my laptop, in bed, with a cat on my neck.

Other goals of mine: being unable to breathe, fleas.

I was working with a client the other day and it became very clear that she was not very clear about where she wanted her life to be going.  Hence it was going rather ho humly – she’d already achieved the jaw droppingly monumental things she’d set out to do when we first started working together, and at our last meeting she came to me with all of these “problems” that in reality were symptoms of not knowing where to head next.

Clarity = freedom: Figure out what you want and do not stop until you get there.  (Seriously, this is pretty much the entire formula for success.  Right there, in one, unmysterious sentence.  All you need to know.)

We must constantly update our road maps and make sure we have a clear destination in sight or else we’ll be groping around in the dark, hoping to grab on to the nearest thing that feels kinda okay rather than hurtling towards awesomeness.

Are you a groper or a hurtler?

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Let’s Finish This Godamned Thing Already!

July 7, 2010 in Travel by jensincero | 1 comment

SE Asia: The Final 12 Hours.

Singapore is an island. It’s an island that is one big city. It’s also an island that is one big city that’s it’s own country. Something I imagine Manhattan longs (and pretty much pretends) to be.

A city surrounded by oil tankers

It’s pretty impressive and modern and squeaky clean, especially to someone who’s been rolling around on the unpaved streets and pooping in holes in the third world for 2 months.

Bizarre photo of lady on subway


Even more bizarre photo of guy on subway

Justin and I flew from our beloved Kota Kinabalu with its mind blowing sunsets, white sand islands and disgusting, over priced food, to Singapore where I was catching a flight back to the States the next morning and he was traveling on to Vietnam.

In 8 hours we're gonna feel like doo doo

We landed in Singapore at 7pm and my flight out was the next morning at 7am which meant, of course, all nighter!  Then, at about 3am, we remembered oh yeah, we’re in our 40’s, not our 20’s, and found ourselves facedown in some strange hotel in Little India.

Perhaps it was the shock of the blinding cleanliness that made us hightail it to the utter filth and chaos of Little India – all I know is that at around 2am we were so in love with the place that when we realized that the real live India was just around the corner, we were off to the airport like the crazy, spontaneous, fearless adventurers we were – woo hoo!

Then I realized we needed a Visa.  And that I had to go home and get to work. And that we were drunk. So we went to sleep instead.

We were in this amazing bar with only 2 other customers besides us, both men, both hammered, and I got the feeling it was sort of a strip club light. 

The place had no windows and the guys kept tucking dollar bills into the dancers’ belts.  Then they’d get up and stumble around, trying to dance along with the ladies who tolerated them like drunk uncles at a wedding.

I'll be here all night!

The music and the dancers were so UTTERLY UNBELIEVABLY GREAT that we stayed there for several hours. I demand you watch this video:

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Then we collapsed in some weirdo hotel, slept for 3 hours, and dragged our carcasses to the airport for a bleary, teary good-bye.

That’s all folks!

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Sex is Back!

July 2, 2010 in WTF? by admin | 1 comment

I shot an audition pilot called Sex and Life for Oprah’s new network in high hopes that I’d be The Chosen One to get my own show. Pretty much everyone with a face and a camera shot one too, but I don’t care. Oprah o no Oprah, I’monna get this show on the air dammit.

Cuz I realized how much I miss talking about fiddling your faddle and stuff.

My brilliant and dear pals Dan Kusner (co-thunk it up, co-wrote, edited) and Justin Hibbard (followed me around with a camera) helped.

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It’s Time to Grow a Pair

June 29, 2010 in Inspiration by admin | 5 comments

I’m in a mastermind group that meets over the phone once a week to talk business, set goals and kick each others’ butts, and this week, due to a case of unimpressive non goal-reaching, we decided to do something rather major. I’m kind of fired up about it so I wanted to share it with y’all in case you’d like to join us in our extreme majorlyness.

Have you ever had this problem – you decide you’re going to DO it already, you’re all guns ablazin’, swinging your goals around your head like a pair of rusty nunchucks, ready to tear it up and crank it out and then a day or two later you find your energy slowly seeping out of you like the air in my frikken brand new air mattress that apparently got poked by a cactus and suddenly had me waking up on the cold hard desert floor when I last took it camping?

Why oh why does the seepage happen? How do you, with all your good intentions and constant studying of the law of attraction and the power of positive thinking, find yourself constantly misplacing your goal lists beneath a pile of dopey minutia?

Why do you succumb to distraction and procrastination so easily? Why do you keep yourself from living the gigantic life that is just right there you just need to stretch a little further and you’re almost there and….ooh, well doesn’t that look comfy?! Think I’ll lie on down and have me a nap.

I will tell you why.

Because you haven’t made an absolute decision to do it to the point where you’ve burned all your boats. There is a book that I would like to now beat you over the head with called “Think and Grow Rich” by Napolean Hill.

I think it should be called “Think and Grow a Pair” instead because it will get you off yer butt to create anything in life, money included, and it is the most boiled down, easy to follow powder keg of make-it-happen-fer-feck’s-sake-already advice I’ve ever read.

It’s required reading for all my private coaching clients and I read it everyday because it is truly a superhero pill.

In this book, one of the many staggeringly obvious truths he speaks about is that in order to massively alter your life and leap up to a whole new level, you must burn all your ships.

In the book he tells the story of an army that landed on enemy territory by boat and the dude in charge burned all the boats after his men got off in order to wipe out all thoughts of anything but victory. There was literally no way out but to win now and guess what? They won.

I hiked straight up this rock wall with a 60 pound backpack on because guess what? It was either that or get eaten by birds.

If you are even the tiniest bit comfy, if you can feed yourself and house yourself and stumble lamely through life, it’s pretty common to hang around and complain rather than actually do something about it because you don’t really have to.

It’s very possible that you’ll cross the finish line to your own death having lived a small, always-worried-about-money-and-kinda-hatin’-your-job life and lazily fade out in a quiet, mediocre, barely satisfied blip.

OR

You can join me and my merry masterminds in our new ship burning, ass whipping program of One Totally Terrifying Task Per Day.

Pick a serious goal and do something every single day that’s totally outside your comfort zone that will get you closer to reaching it. Something you absolutely do not want to do because you’re scared you’ll get rejected or look stupid or turn someone off or be not-so-politely asked to leave or whatever.

Here’s the thing: Doing things that you’re used to doing is precisely what got you where you are now. So unless you want to stay where you are, you’re gonna have to shake it up a little.

I heard a great quote from someone somewhere that said something along the lines of:

The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people aren’t.

And not only that, they make a habit of it. They get used to stepping out of their comfort zones and pushing themselves all the frikken time. Unsuccessful people make a habit out of being a weenie every time it gets too intense.

So, just for this week, push yourself over the edge every single day (or a couple times a day, what the hell?) and see where you wind up. And I mean really push it, no faking it – if you don’t feel like you’re going to puke, you’re doing something wrong.

Because the only way to change your life is to change your life.

So do this, and then write and tell me all about it. Hopefully not from prison.

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Tall Is The New Famous

June 19, 2010 in Uncategorized by jensincero | 2 comments

Okay, where the hell was I?  Malaysia, heading towards our last stop on the dear old island of Borneo, a place called Kota Kinabalu, famous for its staggering sunsets:

There are a bunch of islands right of the coast of Kota Kinabalu that you can take a 20 minute boat ride to and spend your days swilling beer, snorkeling amongst yet another ridiculous display of coral and getting hideously sunburned because you forgot you’re on the equator and have been drinking beer since noon.

Sunscreen is for, hic, woosies.

They sell bread crumbs to the tourists to attract the fish, which is great because it’s literally like snorkeling in a fish tank, but sucks because if you don’t feed them, which we didn’t, they nip at you while you swim, which they did.

The Tallest Woman In Malaysia

One night we were standing outside a supermarket looking at this bizarre mechanical bowing Asian doll thingy and I, once again, was the main attraction: The Godzillan White Lady of Infinite Tallness, but this time, according to Justin, I was wearing a dress that made me look about a foot taller than I actually am, which explains why earlier that day I got followed by a gang of hysterical women through a flower market.

People stared at Justin in wide-eyed envy because apparently, marrying a woman taller than you is good luck in Malaysia, making Justin, in their eyes, The Luckiest Man in The Entire World, regardless of the fact that he had a boyfriend waiting for him back home.

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Ten Pounds of Awesomeness

June 17, 2010 in Uncategorized by jensincero | No comments

Last year while hiking in a slot canyon, Elaine slipped and broke her femur.  Her FEMUR ladies and gentlemen, the strongest and biggest bone in the human body, a bone of King Kongian proportions, snapped like a twig, shooting her straight to the moon screaming in pain.

I’d already headed back to LA that morning and couldn’t offer my services to run for help, get lost and be eaten by birds, so Pete had to hike out and leave her lying there, alone, very possibly until the next morning when he could get a rescue team in.

:-/

Luckily, seven hours later, she was being lifted out via helicopter to a hospital in St. George where they stuck 3 huge pins in her hip joint and dubiously wished her luck.

So here we are, one year later, standing in another slot canyon, staring at a giant boulder in the middle of our path, wondering if it’s possible to climb over it.

As we’re discussing this with Elaine’s hip, a guy comes up behind us and waits for us to move.  We start explaining about her surgery and how we’re usually really quite badass and if it weren’t for her hip blah blah blah and the guy smiles and says, “I only have one leg,” then he and his fake leg shimmy over the boulder and out of sight.

Doop.  Dee doo.

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Candyland!  Car accident!  Not really!

We camped at the bottom of this thing.

Then we did a 3 day backpack through Waterpocket Fold, or what would be more aptly named, God’s Vagina:

We backpacked down and through this thing.

We skipped merrily through these things.

We have an unfortunate obsession with rocks.  And Lower Muley Twist, where we did our 3 day backpack, is deadly for the likes of us.

They’re all over the place, in the most unacceptable colors imaginable, lying on the ground, winking at us as we stumble around beneath the crushing weight of our backpacks, drunk with choice, crouching down on sore knees to greedily snatch them up like drunken sailors in a whore house.

Rock Truth #1:  The more rocks you put in your backpack, the heavier it gets.

When we can’t bear it anymore, we take off our packs, empty out the rocks and have an emergency art show in high hopes that our fellow obsessives can talk us into leaving some behind.

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Lower Muley Twist, where rock lives

Lower Muley Twist

We didn’t see another person for the entire 3 days, but apparently they were there at some point because Pete stumbled upon this mask washed up against a cottonwood tree.

Please note that it says TEASE in the center of the heart.  Nearly pissed my pants I did.

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