Is Earnestness “CRINGE”?
(IMAGE ABOVE- MY SISTER, COMEDIAN MARIA BAMFORD, WITH ME AT AMAZING ALONZO BOOKS IN DULUTH, MN WITH OUR MEMOIRS!)
1. Is earnestness CRINGE? People have told me that I am “earnest” for a long time….I always get the sense that it’s “sweet”, but not necessarily cool– or something to look up to? Is earnestness or “trying” a bad thing?
Ocean Vuong, one of my favorite new poet discoveries (and author of the wonderful novel Emperior of Gladness made a post about this very topic as he is seeing that his students aremore and more afraid to even try.
Why are we so worried about trying and falling short? LIsten to the 2 minute clip here.
I’d love to see us all embrace being CRINGE. Not cool. Let’s feed our souls and make sincere effort towards our dreams, creative and otherwise.
Let’s create a culture and set the tone where earnestness is WELCOME. Let’s liberate ourselves.
2. My sister is coming to visit soon and here are all the ideas I have! I find it helpful to keep lists of things I want to do and movies I want to see on my phone…so I don’t experience that panicked feeling of having to “figure out what we can do” in the moment!:)
Maria
Trampoline workout together
Watch family DVDs
Cat cafe + used books at Amazing Alonzo!
Swim in the big lake!
Cabin day + make our own mini “artist residency”
Dream cloud roasters coffee
Sketching + coffee at folk school
Dads Ashes! Put them somewhere!
Do you keep lists like this?
3. 99% Of What You See of An Artist’s Life is UNSEEN. This is true for any creative human being. So, remember this when you think that things are so effortless for others or that they are just lucky or they simply “have what it takes”…
They are doing a lot of stuff you don’t see. Social media promotes this idea that things are natural or EASY for others! I am aiming to make more confessional videos about just this.
I am always thinking about what it means to be successful and (HINT!) it is NOT about selling a million books or painting. It’s not about being on TV or getting awards.
The artist life!
1.trying to get my 8000 steps
2. Writing emails to shops, galleries + more
3. Adding to my many sketchbooks
4. Uploading art to share at many different outlets
5. Studying the work of other artists through documentaries, and ART books.
6. Buying art supplies
7. Cleaning the studio
8. Reading positive statements to combat self doubt!
9. Supporting fellow artists.
10. Going on spiritual journeys to visit ALICE (and the painting!) to ask what the painting wants to be!
And so much more!
Heres a short REEL of me talking about this!
4. The World Is In Turmoil and My Empathic Heart Wants Action. I want it all to be fixed. But, history tells us that “a final solution” is a very bad idea. The fix takes time and requires all of us.
While I don’t news 24/7, I also am not turning away from it. I feel like I need to bear witness and stay present. I am involved at the local level, but every day I feel wholly inadequate as I see people being raciallly profiled, and brought to concentration camps, starved to death and so many other terrible things. Children. Moms. Grandpas.
I have tried to remind myself that the wise mystics say that this world is not the “real” one and that the spirit world is more real. This usually doesn’t help soothe me.
But this idea (below) does help and I return again and again to it….in different forms. Liz Gilbert says it in a fresh way.
“Dear Love, what do we do when it feels like the world is crumbling?
Little lover: build a new world. Immediately. In the next five seconds.
Don’t resist us, please, as we explain. And please keep your mind as wide as the widest horizon as we try to show you what is true.
You make up the world with your mind. This isn’t a corny little woo-woo notion, sweetheart. It is the actual truth. Out of a stew of molecular and energetic material, the human imagination builds worlds — inventing time and space, naming things and individuating them, building whole lifetimes, whole nations out of opinions and fantasies, holograms that your brain creates in order to make sense out of what is, in fact, nothing. Or perhaps what is, in fact, everything.
It is all a dream, my love.
You are even dreaming yourself; that’s how deep the dream goes.
The mystics and the poets you have loved forever always knew this — long before the physicists recently started confirming it. It is a fact: you are dreaming. That is what’s going on. They are dreaming, too — all the people that you see, hear, touch, sense, read about, think about, have opinions about. They are dreaming within the dream that you are dreaming of them. It’s dreams all the way down, honey. Dreams reflected on dreams, stacked upon dreams, ten dreams thick.
Remember when you were alone with Byron Katie once and you asked her, in a holy whisper, almost afraid to disturb her imperturbable calm — you leaned in, and you gestured at the world around you, and you said, “Katie, is any of this REAL?”
And she smiled at you that simple, knowing smile of hers and said, “I’ve never seen any evidence to support that it’s real, sweetheart.” (This from a woman who once accidentally put her hand in a moving blender. And who was fine with it!)
You asked, “Am I dreaming you, Katie?”
“Yes dear,” she said.
“And are you dreaming me?” you asked.
“Yes, sweetheart,” she said. “And I am so happy we are meeting in this dream.”
You said, “What do you see when you look at me?”
Her eyes filled with tears as she tried to explain. She said, “All I see when I look at you, Lizzy, are these radiant beams of light pouring out of you. I can only call you God.”
And you could see she meant it. She could see the God light in you, reflected in the mirror of her eyes.
Which was very nice, and even flattering, but then you pointed to the ketchup bottle on the table and asked (not really wanting to), “Do you also see radiant beams of God light when you look at the ketchup bottle on the table?”
“Yes, dear,” she said. “That’s all it is.”
I know this makes you want to sit down in a corner and take a handful of psychedelic mushrooms and put a blanket over your head in order to really be able to understand this — but we have told you, Lizzy, we have told you, my love, you don’t need to do that. You don’t need an altered mind to understand the nature of reality. You only need an open mind. And you have one. And an open heart.
But, yes, you asked us a question. You said, What do we do when it feels like the world is crumbling?
And we told you. Build a new world.
By which we mean this: dream a better dream. Make it BETTER, not by going to war, but by becoming an even more lucid dreamer.
Change the dream that you’re in (CONT. reading HERE.)
Making art helps. Walking with a friend helps. Supporting the many causes (ACLU and more!) helps. SUpporting the resistance in a way that feels good to you helps!
5. Quote that is hitting this week:
“Friends, don’t be confused by the information noise bombarding us via the media and social platforms.
Be awake to strategies of transmissional delusion.
Keep a clear mind.
Stay aligned with values of integrity and care.
Let your wisdom & courage be your guide, not the manipulations of ill-meaning players.
Be a light to others.
Don’t be ruled by fear or futility. The future rests on what we do now.”
-Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax
“I am sending love to each of you. These times call for radical self-care 
and radical 
kindness. Check on your friends who’ve gone quiet. 
Spend time in wild places. 
Steep yourself in 
beauty so that you can create the world you want to live in. “
Much love,
Sarah
P.S. Is NOW the time to deepen your connection to the sacred? OR maybe you are revisiting something that hurst and could use healing? Book a session here.
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952-476-7631
Plan a visit soon to stroll this quaint + lovely downtown and get all the goodness- flower essences, wonderful books, crystals, and SO MUCH MORE! I’ll be teaching a workshop there July 13-you can contact them to see if spots remain! See a short video tour of my visit here.
I just me the leader of this amazing event- check it out! Are you a physician or health care provider who is also a coach or coaching obsessed? Please share with anybody who could use it!
The Physician Coaching Summit is a truly heart centered gathering for physicians who coach. Whether you are a newer coach or an experienced one, a coach within an organization or an entrepreneur, certified, or not, you belong here. PCS happens at the optimal intersection of retreat and conference, where collaborative learning is abundant but so is rest and renewal with nourishing food and connection. Some highlights of this year’s Physician Coaching Summit include a full moon Yoga Nidra led by Dr. Rashmi Schramm, a private sound bath, and a very special photographer documenting the event and offering headshot mini sessions for at least the first twenty registered attendees. Details on website. We would love to welcome you.
November 6-8, 2025
Civana Wellness Resort & Spa, Carefree AZ
Link: www.thephysiciancoachingsummit.com
