Amy Swift Crosby

Big decisions are being made today. After you vote, you may be wondering what to do with yourself. Let’s skip to tomorrow for a minute.

I don’t know about you, but this election has allowed me to put a name on people who I feel are out of line, ignorant, entitled or dangerous. Last weekend my kids and I watched an ominous black truck with tinted windows fly down our quaint neighborhood street at freeway speeds, giving the finger to us as we gestured to slow down. Then the police officer we reported it to, took a fairly indifferent view about it — standing in front of us with a crew cut and Blackberry device, talking about personal rights and the precariousness of interpreting speed limits as a “bystander.” It occurred to me, with sickening unease, standing there as a concerned mother, my girls flanking either side of me in soccer cleats, hanging on every word (police interactions are pretty exciting) — ohhhhhh, he’s not one of us. He’s one of them.

It’s like in the movies when you want to report a fanged, bloody-toothed alien to some authority who will save you, and realize that everyone in charge is secretly…also a fanged, bloody toothed alien. But I gotta break this cycle.

In my mind, I have efficiently and confidently put these people who feel so different from me and mine, into a category. That category has a figurehead who has made it easy to wrap people we disapprove of into one “uneducated” burrito.

I have to unwind myself from the judgment I have gotten pretty righteous about casting, not because it’s natural — but because it’s become easy. Having a name for anyone I consider “other” has put me on a slippery slope of habitual divisiveness.

Tomorrow is a new day. Whatever happens, we are humans first. “They” — people whose problems we may not understand, whose families we don’t know – were given a voice, an identity, and it hasn’t brought out the best in many of us. But with a little impulse control, I’d like to return to my better self sooner than later.

We can turn against each other, or toward one another. But it starts in small, daily doses.

Here’s to tomorrow.

In a previous post, I talked about how these days, there isn’t one of us who doesn’t wear multiple hats. Having a side hustle is the norm. You may be in real estate, but you also dabble in raw food. If you’re a business owner, you may also lead a meditation group or be a professional sax player. My guess is that this speaks to our innate need to build a portfolio of interests to keep our lives full and interesting. Still, there’s another conversation I’m noticing at play lately, one that challenges a related paradigm. It’s this:

For many of us, the parts of our companies that make the most money aren’t always the parts that give us the most joy. And the parts that give us the most joy often don’t generate the commensurate revenue — and these are the ones that require more of our time than they justify on a P&L. I’ll use myself as an example: this blog doesn’t sell anything, promote anything, defend anything or ask for anything. It’s a mode of self-expression that often leads to productive conversations, but in and of itself — isn’t much of a ‘business,’ which is okay with me. And the reason it’s okay with me is that it allows me to say what I need to say, without being beholden to a client’s needs, or to a customer profile or to a creative brief. It gives me the freedom to work out ideas to an audience of smart, like-minded people, and figure out what I think about stuff. It nourishes me and gives me a creative outlet. It forces me to synthesize ideas. To take risks. To publish.

It also rounds out my client work. I don’t look to those projects for personal expression or fulfillment because I am able get these from other sources (although I’m no less attached to their success.) I show up to those teams/people/missions — whole.

I come across many successful people who are embarrassed (and even apologetic) at how much time their podcast / craft / favorite outside activity takes because it doesn’t deliver a big check. But my argument is that without it (and this may go against the conventional wisdom) — how good would you be at getting the big check at all? How happy would you be? How upset would you get if you couldn’t do that joyful thing?

The way I see it, the thing you love to do is your IV. It gives you the medicine you need to do everything else. And, the cost of not doing it is bigger than you might think.

Don’t make yourself wrong for how it performs. It has a different purpose, and puts money in a different kind of bank.

Fifteen years ago, ten years ago, five years ago…you couldn’t say this word much less print it on the cover of a respected publisher’s book cover. It was (and still is) verboten. It makes people uncomfortable, particularly women. But spend any time with Regena’s work, and all preconceptions about what it means or doesn’t mean will fall away.

But first, let’s talk pre-Pussy.

When Regena published her first book 15 years ago, I remember she went all over the morning shows, including The Today Show, and somehow (quite creatively) got around verbalizing her “hero product.” Can you imagine having to avoid the very word that anchors your professional message? The work you’ve studied and lectured on and delivered to thousands upon thousands of people across the world? Your science and teachings – censored? Asked to tip-toe around? It would be easy to blame everyone in the world for not moving your message forward.

Whether she was asked not to say it (by a producer) or chose not to say it (she wisely wanted to be invited back) —it wasn’t welcome. Alarms would have gone off. Cameramen would have fainted and executive producers would have spilled hot coffee on expensive suits. And she got that. But she didn’t get mad at that.

Regena, instead, took the long road. This is the art of restraint, of waiting, for just the right moment, of wrapping her hand around the control levers but patiently, lovingly, joyously pulling them within the environments and ecosystems where they could be digested, accepted and celebrated. When I think of Regena, through all these years, delivering hundreds of workshops, classes, talks, other books — it’s like watching her hair fly in the wind of slow, needed change, all the while quietly (and privately quite riotously) driving an entire culture forward. And despite the resistance, the shame, the push-back, and the fear — she never resorted to finger wagging or angry schoolings on why anyone/everyone was “wrong.”  This flavor of feminine doesn’t make anyone wrong.

Here, I give you, a woman who is going to blow your mind.

She will show you how to have it your way.
In your relationships.
Your sensuality.
Your business.
Your truth.

If you’re ready for that.
And it’s okay if you’re not.

But this is a party that for me started in New York City in 1999 — and isn’t stopping anytime soon. Grab the book now and get all kinds of generous bennies here.

It’s time to reclaim a few things.