Archive for the ‘Author Interview’ Category
Helene Lerner author of In Her Power – Exclusive Interview
We recently sat down with Helene Lerner, author of In Her Power and founder of WomenWorking.com, a worldwide community of businesswomen and experts. In Her Power give women the tools needed to achieve confidence, creativity, and intimacy in every aspect of life.
How did you come to write In Her Power?
In Her Power draws on over thirty years of my experience supporting women. I have been able to have a unique impact on them as a result of the life lessons I’ve learned in overcoming my own struggles with destructive overeating and depression.
The world today is in a desperate place and I believe that the connective power of women can unify rather than destroy nations. That’s why it was so important for me to write this book now and to have more women stand in their power.
What makes your book so different than what’s been written in the past?
My company Creative Expansions, Inc. has been in existence for over a decade and through various forms of media — television specials, one of the premier websites for career women WomenWorking.com, and speaking engagements — I’ve had access to a huge network of women. The book is filled with their experiences as well as my own. Through these stories, in addition to reflections and exercises, readers are asked to go deeper and explore what has been blocking them from fully expressing their power. The book deals with nine aspects of a woman’s power and the veils or false beliefs that get in the way. It also introduces the three Spiritual Power Muscles: Connective, Creative and Courageous.
The Dalai Lama prophesized that “the world will be saved by the Western woman,” and yet despite incredible advances, the majority of women still feel they have not accessed their full potential. Why do you believe that is?
Often we’re locked into false beliefs that don’t allow us to access our full potential and keep us stuck. We’re not thinking big enough about ourselves. The way out is to know that we are bigger than that and to listen to our inner truth, our intuition. We need to break habits that are based upon false beliefs and courageously move into areas that may feel uncomfortable. For many of us, it’s stepping outside our comfort zone to experience our power and magnificence.
Women are routinely faced with the difficult task of balancing their career with their desire for family. What advice would you give women struggling to “have it all” in today’s world?
There’s no such thing as balance. It’s more about navigating between work and life every day and doing it very imperfectly, as Ellen Galinsky of Families and Work Institute has said. I think it’s particularly useful for women to share what works for them and to be open with each other about how difficult it is. The problem begins when we feel isolated, stressed, and try to tackle it alone. We simply can’t clone ourselves into 150 different people. But if we’re engaged in communicating with other women who are going through the same struggle, we pick up tips on how to make it easier for us.
Can you share with readers one of the biggest challenges you faced in your path to success? How did you overcome that challenge?
Suffering from a food addiction, I was 50 pounds heavier over 30 years ago and ready to jump out of a window of my apartment. I didn’t see any hope in things being different. In my desperation I reached out for help and got it from a group of people who had knowledge about how not to hurt themselves with food. I realized that I needed to have more spiritual grounding if I was going to stop overeating for all the wrong reasons. I discovered a higher purpose for my life — to help women realize their authentic power and claim their voice and unique abilities. I started my company, Creative Expansions, Inc. with this mission.
Helene Lerner’s new book, In Her Power, is available now.
Sarah Stillman: Exclusive Interview (Part Two)
In today’s blog, we continue our exclusive interview with Soul Searching author Sarah Stillman. Read part one here.
Knowing what you know now, what single piece of advice would you give your 16-year-old self?
Looking back, I definitely blush to realize how totally fixated I was (and often still am) on the idea of “achievement” – on setting certain kinds of goals and accomplishing them as a way of measuring self-worth. I now suspect that it’s equally important to learn how to live with discomfort; not everything can be fixed and tied up with a tidy bow, and maybe it’s ok to thrash around sometimes, have no idea what you’re doing, and lack the answers entirely. In fact, the humility that comes from messing up seems like a big part of what makes us able to connect with other people and to live more generously, I think. It’s probably harder to have empathy if you haven’t been knocked low sometimes and admitted it to yourself. There are some things I’ve done in the past decade that made me feel totally incompetent. But I’d like to think those things were – and will continue to be – useful in bringing me back down to size and encouraging me to be aware of all of the privileges I’ve had in my life thus far, and all of the other possible perspectives.
Who is/was your biggest inspiration or hero?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whistleblowers – people who stand up in environments where there’s some sort of injustice going on and decide to speak out about it, despite the obvious risk to themselves. I’ve worked on a few stories about whistleblowers lately, in a variety of contexts; many of these people never get the fame or glory associated with other social justice advocates, but their sacrifices are huge and definitely make me feel inspired.
What’s your perfect relaxation playlist?
I’m still a big Joni Mitchell fan. Right now I’m also loving Laura Marling, Patti Smith (relaxing isn’t exactly the word…), Gillian Welch, and my creative-genius friend Geo Wyeth (plus his band Jive Grave).
Flash Questions:
These questions are designed to be answered in a flash, ideally in less than 5 seconds each! Don’t overthink it. Just give us the first answer that comes to mind. This is supposed to be fun! Ready. Set. Go!
What is your favorite candle or fragrance? Lavender. Or anything that smells like dessert: vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg.
What was your favorite book growing up? I thought Pippi Longstocking was brilliant, and I still do.
Chocolate or Vanilla? Let’s go chocolate.
If we ran into you on the street, what song are we most likely to hear you humming? “How Come You Never Go There,” by Feist, has been in my head all week. And lately, for some weird reason, I wake up with Nintendo songs in my head – like the theme from Super Mario Brothers. Why, I really don’t know; maybe it’s because when I have insomnia, I sometimes try to work through old-school Super Mario levels in my head and remember the different songs associated with each scenario: the under-water song, the castle song, etc.
If you were trapped on a desert island, what book would you bring? I’d pick something by Walt Whitman, or, more likely, How to Escape if Trapped on a Desert Island.
What’s your guilty pleasure? I like infinitely clicking on various links when I’m supposed to be working on some piece of writing, and then justifying it to myself as “research”; it’s amazing how much time can be squandered this way, watching YouTube videos of cats dancing the conga, etc.
Mac or PC? Mac all the way. Although I’ve been encouraging fellow Mac users to listen to Mike Daisey’s podcasted play about his journey to a Mac factory in Shenzhen, China: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
What was your favorite childhood toy? It’s simple, but I loved my soccer ball.
If you had a super power, what would it be? Zapping people with more compassion and thoughtfulness (self included) – like a “De-Selfish-ification” machine.
Sarah Stillman: Exclusive Author interview (Part One)
Recently, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Soul Searching author Sarah Stillman. Sarah is an inspiring example of what one teen can achieve. She originally sat down to write Soul Searching at the age of 16, and recently worked to fully update the title for today’s teens. Today, Sarah is a successful journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker.
In part one of our three part interview, Sarah discusses the origins of Soul Searching and some of the outcomes she hopes the book will achieve. You can learn more by joining the Soul Searching community on Tumblr and Facebook where you can share your own Soul Searching journey
How did you first decide to write Soul Searching?
More than anything, I wrote Soul Searching out of frustration. When I first decided to start working on the book, I was frustrated that most of the reading material available for teen girls assumed that they’d only be interested in boy bands and lip-gloss. I was frustrated, too, that most of the books about female adolescence focused on the various traumas that can afflict girls during that period: eating disorders, depression, drug addiction, and more. The sort of book I wanted to read – but couldn’t seem to find on shelves – was about how girls could actually take some control over their own lives and contribute to their communities: a book that took girls seriously as change agents in their homes, schools, and world. So, that was the book I sat down to write, naïve as it sounds. Luckily, I was oblivious to the many reasons I wasn’t qualified to do so, the most obvious being my age. I just started doing research on the topics I cared about – meditation, yoga, really basic philosophy stuff on “the good life” – and talking to other girls about the things they thought were important or interesting. That’s how the project got started.
What’s changed for girls between the time you wrote the book at age 16 and today? How have the challenges facing girls evolved?
So much! One obvious difference is that I never had to worry about all of the various social networking tools teens now have at their disposal to take gossip and bullying to new creative heights. I didn’t have a Facebook wall, or a Tumblr account, or even a cell phone back then. I barely had a functioning email address. Of course, the pre-social-networking days also meant that there were fewer ways for girls to connect with each other outside of their immediate communities, and fewer ways to find resources that might be helpful to them.
The Internet, in that respect, has been both a huge blessing and a serious curse. Without it, I think a lot of girls around the world would be living much more isolated, disconnected lives. But they also wouldn’t have to stress about the 1,001 ways in which online technologies complicate an already-difficult phase of their growing up. Somehow, for instance, online harassment seems a lot scarier to me than the mean notes my classmates scribbled in the back of science textbooks when I was in middle school. And while some young women are given a lot of support when it comes to handling the challenges of a hyper-networked world, a lot of girls have to figure out how to deal with all of this stuff on their own. That’s definitely not easy. But my guess is that being a teen girl was never easy. I don’t imagine our grandmas or great-grandmas had a much simpler time of it.
What do you see is the biggest challenge facing teens today? What advice would you give to help?
I think it can be hard to stand up for yourself and the things you want or need when you’re faced with so many conflicting messages about the things you’re supposed to want or need: whether it’s a particular brand of clothes or a particular kind of crush or a different body/ethnicity/personality/family/life. I think one thing I’ve learned from other girls who’ve made it through tough times is that it means a lot to find an ally – somebody who you can trust to listen to you and have your back. You just need one: a loyal friend; a teacher who believes in your talents; a godparent or an older sibling who you can turn to for advice. Then share what you’re facing with them. It’s pretty tough to navigate this time of life on your own, whether you’re just dealing with small, day-to-day frustrations like a friend’s betrayal at school, or huge, scary challenges like dating violence or a family health crisis. If you can’t find a person you trust, find something that brings you comfort until you do – an after-school sport that you can throw yourself into, a coffee shop or a community center where you feel comfortable, a band whose songs you want to play on repeat over and over again.
What sort of reception have you had for the book? In the new introduction, you mention that you’ve corresponded with readers from around the world — how has that impacted you?
I’ve learned an awesome, unbelievable amount from the girls around the world who’ve written me about the book. For one thing, it’s confirmed the hope that led me to write Soul Searching in the first place: girls really do care about the “big things” in life, and they want their big ideas to be taken seriously. I’ve also been humbled to hear about the challenges some girls are up against – both girls here in the U.S., who’ve often reached out because they’re trying to be brave amidst a lot of stress and chaos in their families, and girls elsewhere in the world, who increasingly turn to the Internet as a resource for solving problems that they would have otherwise faced alone. It’s been cool to hear about the creative visions many of these girls have – for starting their own companies some day, for instance, or writing their own books. But it’s often been equally inspiring to hear about the really simple, day-to-day things that girls want to vent: the courage they mustered to stand up to someone in their lives who was hurting them, for instance.
What’s the top thing you hope readers take away from your book?
I hope they’ll feel empowered to try new things, regardless of their “coolness” factor, and also realize that it’s OK to feel lost. It’s normal to flounder around. Everyone – seriously, everyone, from the popular girl in your class who’s always rolling her eyes at everyone to the President of the United States – feels insecure sometimes. It just goes with the territory of being human. What the book is about is realizing that there are concrete tools that can help us all get through the tough spots, feel more comfortable within ourselves, and feel like we’re a part of something larger – something that has meaning and real rewards.
Interview with Mary Hayes Grieco, author of Unconditional Forgiveness, Part Two
Today, we continue our exclusive interview with Mary Hayes Grieco, author of Unconditional Forgiveness.
You’ve worked with such diverse clients, even war veterans. Can you share a particular transformative experience you’ve witnessed?
I guess the most transformative forgiveness work I have been witness to has been the healing of severe sexual abuse: helping a woman to forgive her minister who assaulted her when she worked for him in the church office. She lived in hell about that for seven years, and then emerged free and clear after forgiving it. Shortly afterwards, I was called upon to help a man who had been a perpetrator of sexual abuse. He too was living in hell and in severe depression until he could forgive himself. Their suffering was so profound, on both sides of the story, victim and perpetrator. I learned a lot from seeing this.
Can your techniques be used to forgive our selves as well as others?
Yes. Self-forgiveness is very important, and it relies on the ability to view yourself and your situation from the perspective of spiritual level, a higher level of consciousness, than where your conditional human personality dwells. It is a different technique then the eight steps of forgiving another, and it is very simple and very powerful.
How do you define forgiveness?
Forgiveness is the refreshing experience of releasing an unrealistic expectation that has been causing us to suffer. It is a tool we use to let go of an emotional burden, and it creates a new openness and fresh new vitality inside us.
What if someone has done something terribly wrong? Should we forgive them?
I encourage people to practice “unconditional forgiveness”—live a life in which you forgive everyone and everything, no matter the size or severity of the insult. When we make the decision to forgive someone, we are not saying that what they did is excusable or okay on any level. What we are saying is that even though they did this (bad, wrong, immoral, awful, etc.) thing to us—we choose now to release the painful impact of that wrongdoing upon us, once and for all. Any time we forgive anything, big or small, we are doing it for ourselves—so we don’t have to carry the burden of stress and resentment. So you see, it is even more important to forgive the terrible things so that we can end the big suffering inside us.
Why do your Eight Steps work to get rid of an emotional problem?
The Eight Steps reliably work to get rid of an emotional problem because they address the issue through all the parts of our personality (will, body, emotions, mind), our spiritual nature (energy, body, and soul), our relationship to the other person, and to life itself. Because we address the wound on all levels, there isn’t a need to hold onto it any more, and it completely dissolves. The relief that comes from this letting go is permanent, and all that remains is the learning that took place from this experience—we turn the wound into wisdom!
Learn more about Mary and her Eights Steps to freedom in this exclusive video. Mary’s book, Unconditional Forgiveness, is on sale now.
