Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Two Kinds of Friends

Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other's gold.
--Old summer camp song from Jennie Arnold Edwards YWCO Camp

I've been humming that tune since I got back from my annual girls' weekend with sorority sisters from my college days. I firmly believe every southern girl should cultivate two kinds of friends:

1. The ones who knew her way back when
2. The ones who know her now

Friends from back when allow us to be that silly, giggly girl from our teens or twenties. The one who told that bad Santa Claus joke any time she had the floor. The one who sunbathed on the roof in February so she would be ready for spring break in March. The one who pretended to like champagne and who re-enacted the When Harry Met Sally cafe scene, in public places, whenever she got the whim. They're the friends with whom we shared a wardrobe and our wild side.

Way back when friends forgive us for ditching them for a date with a boy. They recall all the gory details of Pledge Formal and don't mind if we've chosen to forget them. These friends remind us of when we weren't mamas and wives and responsible working adults. We are bound to them by history and they love us.

The friends who know us now are just as important. They accept the sophisticated, polite, lady-like woman we've grown into without ever comparing us to our past. They keep us from lingering too long in yesteryear when the present isn't all we thought it would be. They support us. They civilize us.

Friends who know us now chat with us about the mundane details of daily life and never grow bored with the conversation. They love our children like we do. They loan us a bottle of wine on a Sunday night or a pair of shoes on a Saturday. They feed our dog and pick up our mail when we go on vacation. They carpool our kids, bring casseroles when we're sick, and attend every Girls' Night Out, no excuses. We can count on them.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: We take our friends for granted, expecting them to be there when we have time for them. Today, be intentional about your friendships. Contact at least one old friend with whom you have fallen out of touch. Plan a get-together - a movie, dinner, a tour of homes, whatever - with a current friend. Gold and silver are too precious to let them slip away.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Balance

How do YOU define balance?

That's the question the Inspirista wanted me to answer if I had any chance of being a guest on her Blog Talk Radio show. Specifically, her media inquiry read: Looking to interview fun, energetic females who have a message to share with a female audience. In your response, answer this question, How do YOU define balance? Put your name in the subject line.

Ughh, I thought, she'll never have me on her Girls Night Out radio show. I mean, for sure, I'm mostly, usually fun and I think other people would describe me as energetic, although I try not to strain my delicate self. But I doubt very seriously that MY definition of balance will pass muster:

Balance in life occurs at that moment when I suck in hard as the teeter-totter teeters back in the other direction and for that split second before pounding the ground of the other extreme is exactly, perfectly level; also defined as the ahhh moment before chaos is released like a pack of snarling foxhounds after a coyote, determined to rip it to shreds in a frenzy of barking and mayhem.

To me, the question is not how to define balance - we all know it when we see it - the question is how to achieve it on a more regular basis. How do we get our body to sit just right so that the teeter of the teeter-totter is delayed for more than a second? How do we keep the foxhounds penned and give the coyote more time to meander through fields of daisies.

Okay, coyotes in fields of daisies is a bit melodramatic, but you southern girls get my meaning.

Today's Assignment: 1) In your Book of Lists, define balance, using as many metaphors and similes for it as you can think up. 2) List your personal strategies for achieving it more often.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 31

Expect good things to happen.

It's an emotional risk to always expect the best. I risk being let down. I risk other people calling me naive. I risk getting less than what I'd hoped for. I risk having to cope with disappointment.

It's an even greater gamble, however, to expect the worst. When I expect the worst, then I look for the worst. Naturally, I seek to confirm my expectations. And more than likely, the worst, in some form or another, will occur. If I expect my children to misbehave, then I begin to look for all the things they are doing wrong instead of appreciating what they are doing right.

Likewise, when I expect the best, I'm primed to notice good things in a situation. If I expect my husband to come home from work in a good mood, I'll notice how he didn't slam the door, or how he greeted the kids, or how he tossed his keys into the basket. If I expect a party to be fun, I'll mingle more, I'll engage in lively conversations, I'll compliment the hostess. In essence, I will ensure that I attribute my husband's behaviors to a good mood. I'll go to the party intending to have a good time.

Will there be times when I expect good things to happen and they don't? Of course. But living fearlessly means that I am willing to take that risk and to accept (which is very, very different from expect) that bad things will happen, too. And when they do, I deal with them without ever giving up on the expectation of better things to come.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: In your BOOK OF LISTS write down three good things that you expect to happen in the coming week. Fearlessly believe that they will. At the end of the week examine whether or not they happened, how they happened, and how your expectations influenced those good things.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 29

So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
--Matthew 25:28-29

On Day 6 of Southern Girls Living Fearlessly, did you find your passion? Did you discover your talent? Are you still struggling to admit to it or find it? Are you fearful, like the servant who received one talent, of taking a risk with it so you've buried it in the ground, held it back, resisted developing it? Or have you multiplied it like the servants in the parable who received 2 and 10 talents from their master?


Who has the more complete life? Who is fully engaged? Who is living each day, week, month, year to its very limits? - The woman who finds her passion, capitalizes on her talents, and fails? Or the woman who plays it safe and never uses her gifts, justifying her reluctance by saying that the world is a cruel, unwelcoming, and unpredictable place and that she will not put herself at its mercy?

Our gifts, talent, passions, whatever you choose to name them, are freely given to us, and we are free to do with them as we please. The master chose to give his servants talents and left them with the responsibility of wisely investing them. Like the servants in the parable, we too have a responsibility to invest our gifts in this world. The greater our investment, the greater our returns, the more abundance we will experience.


As a school child, Thomas Edison was told he was stupid. Yet, as an adult, he discovered he had a passion for inventing. He took a risk. In fact, he took approximately 10,000 risks and failed approximately 10,000 times in his effort to invent the electric light bulb. Had Edison believed his teachers, had Edison not accepted his talents, had he not been willing to invest in his passion, he would never have brought light to the world.

We can bring light to the world as well. In fact we have a responsibility to overcome our fear of failure and earn returns on the talents we've been given.

Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, said success lies on the other side of failure.


If we have not used our talents, we have not failed. If we have not failed, we have not lived fearlessly. If we have not lived fearlessly, we have not lived. If we have not lived, we have not succeeded.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: Read the entire parable of the servants and the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). Then read Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 6 again. Find your passion. Next, in your Book of Lists, write down your talents and ways that you can use them. Finally, act.

Know that you too have been given talents according to your ability. Multiply your talents and gain abundance. Ignore your talents and lose what you have.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 28

Set the world on fire without burning it up.

My older brother and I performed many, many experiments throughout our childhood. We spent long hours hovered over a microscope lens trying to identify the pond water bacteria swimming on our slide. We verified, as many of you already know, that cats, when dropped, almost always land on their feet. And we set a few fires in the name of scientific discovery.

Since he is two years my senior, and I blamed him for most everything else, I will just go ahead and say that most of our devious laboratory plots were his idea. I went along as his impressionable, and intensely eager to be persuaded, Igor. And this next tidbit I share from our history is only but one example of many:

Where my brother came up with this idea, I'll never know. I doubt he even remembers. But he sent his Igor out to gather supplies: a large piece of Styrofoam from a recently delivered appliance box, rubbing alcohol from the medicine cabinet, and matches from the kitchen drawer. Naturally, he sent me because who, after all, would suspect a blond, curly-headed girl of any hidden agenda?

When I returned to him with the loot, he swore me to secrecy or death by noogies. I chose secrecy and have confessed to no one, until now. But the story has relevance to living fearlessly and must be told. Anyway, he carefully poured the alcohol on the surface of the Styrofoam and stepped well away from it. Then he told me to prepare to be amazed and struck a match. I was prepared to run for help, but he interpreted my wide-eyed stare as one of awe and respect. Which prompted him to flick the match at the Styrofoam.

Whoolfsh! A blaze shot up and burned hot, traveling the path of the alcohol. It was absolutely brilliant. I couldn't believe we were about to burn down our house in this most impressive way. Our parents were going to kill us for sure this time. We whooped and hollered to get as much out of the moment as we possibly could before meeting our end.

Just as my brother suspected, but I did not, the blaze burned itself out, leaving the Styrofoam slightly melted, but no other damage. "Let's do it again," he conspiratorially whispered.

The point of my story is not that we were wickedly sneaky children. Nor is my point that we had no remorse, because for the next week I rode under the radar, sure that my mother knew what we had done and was waiting for the perfect moment to inflict enough guilt on my young shoulders to hunch me over like a real Igor. The point is that we, you and I, can set the world on fire without taking other people down in our ascent to the top.

It is the person afraid of failing who steps on the backs of others to get where she is going. It is the person afraid that she can't make it by her own talent, who betrays those who trust her. It is the person afraid of how she compares to others that gossips and backstabs and sneaks in back doors. This kind of woman, the one who is afraid, still sets the world on fire, but she leaves a blackened, burned path behind her.

But the fearless woman believes in herself and she values the people around her. The fearless woman knows how to set the world ablaze without burning her bridges. The fearless woman never gossips to get ahead, never compromises her integrity, never offers false friendship, never portrays her motives as something other than what they are. She is not afraid of not getting to where she wants to go.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: Try the experiment (using the proper precautions that we didn't). Prove to yourself that it can be done on a small scale. Then apply the lesson to your life.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 23

Start with a clean slate.

Some days I think to myself, If I could just start all this over again, I would do the whole thing differently. I've often thought about how, if I could go back in time and get a re-do on my college years, I would break up with my high school boyfriend before getting there, I would major in journalism or math, I would study harder my freshman year, I would get to know some of my professors better. If only, if only.

But, I'll never get a do-over on anything. Not really. Nevertheless, today I got as close to a do-over as anyone gets and it wasn't initially as blissful as I thought such a chance might be. At work on Monday, our computer network contracted a permanent flaw and lost all the data everyone in my division ever saved on the netshare. Today we were informed that it is irretrievable.

I lost years of work. Plus, I lost all my documents, spreadsheets, and power points generated from intense research over the last several weeks. There is no record of my accomplishments, other than a few printouts. The data I am supposed to analyze has vaporized.

It tweaked me today, when I found out that I now have to re-create all the spokes on my wheel that will keep rolling forward whether I'm prepared or not.

At home tonight, however, when that little knot in my chest started to unravel and I had a moment of clarity, I realized what a rare opportunity I have - a chance to start fresh. I can redefine my job and how I execute it. I can take risks with it that I never did before. With no comparisons of old to new in existence, no point of reference, I can conduct a total re-do.

Oh, sweet euphoria. I've got a clean slate and the possibilities are exciting and endless. And it leaves me asking, Why wait until fate gives me a second chance? Why not give myself the gift of a do-over here and there? And while I'm at it, why not give permission to my friends to start over, too?

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: Today all you have to do is accept my permission to start over tomorrow, regardless of what you did today. You are relieved of your obligation to any path you've chosen that no longer suits you. Today is the day that you quit the volunteer committee that has become a burden to you. Today is the day you tell your spouse you want to make a career change. Today is the day you take the first step on your course to fulfilling a dream. Today you are throwing off all the burden of trying to live up to the expectations of everyone else and you're starting anew as the authentic YOU. It's the do-over of a lifetime. All you have to do is accept my gift.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 22

Just as long as I'm in this world, I will be a light of this world.
- Joan Osborne, on the CD Little Wild One


It's a terrible habit we women develop of criticizing people. We can see flaws from miles away.


In a confidential whisper, during a recent funeral service, a woman sitting next to me on the pew leaned over and confidentially whispered, discreetly pointing toward a female down the row, "Can you believe she wore flip-flops to church? I guess at least they are black," she chuckled.


To my ears, nothing sounds worse than a scathing remark about another person spoken in a conspiratorial accent. Whether we're framing our negative comments with "bless his heart" or "bless her heart" or not, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we're not being very nice. Didn't our sweet southern mamas always tell us that if we didn't have anything nice to say, we shouldn't say anything at all? Didn't our sweet southern mamas teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves?


Sticks and stones might break bones, but words can rip the soul.


Living fearlessly means changing the world. We can change the world. Our words, spoken in that lilting southern drawl, can be a light in this world.


Why did that lady next to me at the funeral feel the need to speak out loud her assessment of our fellow mourner? Was she trying to add humor to a tense situation? Was she attempting to establish herself in my opinion as someone who knows her etiquette? Did she have a brain tumor that caused her to randomly rattle off every thought that came into her head? Had her mama never told her not to talk in church?


Whatever the reason, she didn't intend for her comments to make the world a better place, even if she didn't consciously seek to make it worse. But had the victim of the comments overheard, she would have been hurt and embarrassed, not built up.


TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: As long as you're in this world, be a light to this world. Fearlessly use your words.

1. Give an honest compliment to a total stranger.


2. Give an honest compliment to a person you love.


3. Give an honest compliment to yourself.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 17

What's on you list today?

My list says:
1) Oil Changed
2) Seamstress
3) Blog
4) Copies of papers
5) Mail Package
6) Dry cleaners
7) Sears
8) Start Column
9) Prescription Renewed
10) Make Orthodontist Appt.
11) Grocery List
12) Grocery Store
13) Price Software
14) Organize Bathroom Cabinets
15) Wash Clothes

And believe it or not, I'm still adding things as I sit here. Your list is probably as long as mine and is similar in tasks of the daily grind. And like me, even though you likely know you cannot accomplish all these duties, after chastising yourself this evening for not getting enough done you will transfer unfinished items to tomorrow's to-do list.

Lists like these emphasize how routine our lives are; how we move forward putting one foot in front of the other, doing the same menial obligations again and again. Granted, these objectives must be met. I can't very well let my kids grow up with crooked teeth and dirty clothes just because orthodontists and washing machines don't rev my motor. And I expect I will find a gold mine of Ivory Soap in the back of my linen closet when I straighten it up.

BUT, what if I threw in
16) Paint the kitchen sunshine yellow
OR
5) Schedule an October fall leave tour of North Georgia
OR
1) Send in my resume for that dream job advertised in the paper

What is the worst that could happen? - I feel blinded at breakfast, I accidentally schedule a get-away on a UGA home game weekend, and my resume gets laughed at and thrown in the trash.

What's the best that could happen? - My kitchen refreshes me each morning, my husband gets a twinkle in his eye, and I land that over the top position I've always wanted.

We categorize our lives down to lists because we fear losing control of our day-to-day. Lists keep us focused and progressing. Crossing things off of our lists is a way to prove we have accomplished something in our 12 hours of daylight. When our husbands walk through the door and ask, "What have you done all day?" we can produce the list. Lists give us an illusion of safety from the uncertainties of life.

I would never suggest abandoning THE LIST. It has its place. Besides, we can use THE LIST to our advantage. We can use it to overcome our fears.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: First, buy a beautiful journal to replace those random scraps of paper or that spiral notebook you've been using to write your lists. THIS is your new BOOK OF LISTS.

Next, write today's list in it. Yes, write down the list that says to get your brakes checked, make the kids' dentist appointments, and clean out the silverware drawer. From here on out, write every day's list of tasks in your BOOK OF LISTS. ***Somewhere in each day's list write something unexpected to do, such as kiss the dog, call your mother-in-law just to chat, or roll down the hill in your backyard. AND make sure you check it off by the end of the day.

Finally, keep all of your other lists in the BOOK OF LISTS as well. Write down all of your creative ideas for home improvement, all the professions you would like to do when you "grow up," every type of dog you think you might ever want to own, restaurants you want to eat at, vacations you want to take, and, of course, 100 things to do before you die. Then get started crossing things off these lists. Time is shorter than you think, and when you get to heaven and God asks, "What have you done all these years?" you want to be able to show Him your list.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 9

Be strong. Summon your tunnel vision.

I may as well break it to you now, before you find out on your own. There is a downside to living fearlessly. And since you're coming off a sushi, Saki, Sex and the City Girls' Night Out, you're in the right frame of mind to hear it.


So let me lay it on you: There are people you know who do not want you to live fearlessly. They do not like the changes they see in you. They feel threatened by your new-found confidence. That attractive glow you have of late has taken them off guard. As you gain control over yourself, your life, who you are, and who you're meant to be, they are losing their grip on you.

Of course, now, being of gentle southern breeding and knowing their manners, these folks won't overtly express their displeasure. They will disguise it in statements like, "What's going on with wives these day? Embracing their girlfriends instead of their husbands. Scandalous, if you ask me." Or people might say, "That's an interesting shade of red," when you arrive at the Watermelon Fest wearing a fresh fearless pedicure.


Don't get discouraged. Think like Bonnie Raitt, who sings, Let's give 'em something to talk about. And if all you've given them is a girls' night and some perky polish, then you're doing this living fearlessly thing right. (If they have more than that to discuss, then please refer back to Day 5, living fearlessly v. living foolishly.)


TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: Summon your tunnel vision. Hold your course. Focus on living fearlessly and block out the nay sayers. Repeat the promise you made to yourself on Day 2. Say it OUT LOUD, LOUDLY:

Today and every day, I will live fearlessly. There is no excuse. This is my life. This is all the time I get on this earth. I will not live forever. Today is my day! I will do it now.