Always Do The Thing

But never trust a guy with multiple Mantras

Once, long long ago, I found myself on a date with a guy who started a sentence with “One of my mantras is…”

This man is now married with twins to a Rockefeller…I guess me dumping him was the best thing for him?

It became a red flag after that brief and bizarre relationship to avoid men who proclaim to have a mantra, let alone multiple.

But a woman with a mantra… that’s a different story.

I got my first mantra in college*. On the way to parties, my friends and I would repeat to each other “You are beautiful and interesting” to combat the intimidation of older girls and the boys they guarded.

*Hi Brown I love you and I made you this postcard

This year, knowing without a doubt that we are beautiful and interesting, we finally introduced some new and vital parlance into the rotation.

you are though

It didn’t stop there. I picked up expressions in my travels, in things I listened to, in therapy, or in memories and deployed them as needed to power me through my odyssey of a year. Remember I have main character syndrome and I guess today I am Odysseus?

In Paris, my eternally chic mentor told me her mantra for getting through life’s ups and downs, in her mellifluous Japanese/French accent:

I cultivated an abundance mindset from Deepak Chopra while walking around Europe getting ready to shift my entire life upon return:

My therapist had an all-too-oft repeated phrase for shooing away my self doubt, which I then passed onto my friends:

the answer is none

And omnipresent underneath it all was mine and Alex’s favorite expression:

It sounds very millennial, “all the feels”-coded, but it WORKS. Whenever I do something I almost didn’t do, I reap some kind of unexpected benefit.

Just this weekend I was in a funk (it was the news) but promised to go to a friend’s holiday party. Instead of going home, I flirted with a cute boy who is moving to Portugal for 3 months. That’s not the thing. We texted the next day and he sent me the Charlie Kaufman speech about being an artist which moved me to tears and validated everything I’ve done this entire year.

Do you. It isn’t easy but it’s essential. It’s not easy because there’s a lot in the way. In many cases a major obstacle is your deeply seated belief that you are not interesting. And since convincing yourself that you are interesting is probably not going to happen, take it off the table. Think, ‘Perhaps I’m not interesting but I am the only thing I have to offer, and I want to offer something. And by offering myself in a true way I am doing a great service to the world, because it is rare and it will help.’

If I hadn’t gone to the party, I wouldn’t have a new mantra for next year or someone to maybe flirt with in March!

this was a fun exercise and only a little bit twee but we got over that fear months ago

Am I hopelessly merch-pilled or would these make cute tees? Like this post if you think I should go into production…

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For December, my mantra comes from Renaissance Tarot, a Youtube channel Sara McGrath turned me onto that I find to be both entertaining and on point. I’m not taking any more Half-and-Half from boys bc I’m a pure black coffee Aries and that’s on periodt if people are still saying that!

That’s it for this week. Holiday card reveal coming soon….as soon as I get around to sending them…

Please share if you know people who might need these mantras for next year! They’re yours now :)

Thanks for reading as always! Xo,

Emily