“Given that death is certain, and given that the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?” Pema Chodron

I wasn’t trying to take the wind out of her sails. I was pointing out that there’s a difference between wanting something and thinking you “should” want something. As a coach, I see the damage that is done when we uncritically swallow the “should’s” of our culture. We take on goals and choices that aren’t truly our own. (Thankfully, one of the gifts of middle age is the willingness–the imperative–to shed what’s not ours and embrace that which is, no matter what others think.)

I’m remembering that coaching moment because, as I’m reading Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain this Saturday afternoon, I discover an excellent tool for discerning the difference between “want” and “should.”

Gawain suggests three elements that predict the success of creative visualization. In other words, these are the three ingredients for an authentic goal (not a “should” goal):

1.  Desire. Ask yourself, “Do I truly, in my heart, desire to live this outcome?”

2.  Belief. Ask yourself, “Do I believe that this goal is possible for me?”

3.  Acceptance. Ask yourself, “Am I willing to have this?”

Once you discern whether the book–or the degree, or the relationship, or the promotion–is what you really want, your energy toward it will expand. And if you realize it’s not what you really want, you are freed to follow your true bliss.

How can you change the world by following your desire?

“Thank you so much for your time yesterday to talk and for your listening, reflection, and sharing. Already I feel that I’ve gained value. I appreciate your knowledge of my work landscape and appreciate your guiding recommendations to light the path. I do want to work together. After talking with you I felt a renewed sense of possibility.”

That’s what a new client wrote to me last week, and I was reminded of the advice a friend once gave me. When I was searching for a post-divorce therapist, I asked my friend Dusty–herself a therapist–what I should look for in an initial session. How would I know if the therapist was offering me value? Dusty’s response was immediate: “You should get at least one fresh way of thinking about your situation.”

And that’s the one thing you should get from your first conversation with a coach, too. If you don’t, keep looking. Reputable coaches won’t charge you for an informational consultation.

I just came across a strategy–from Starbucks!–to handle complaints. While you may not encounter anyone unhappy with their coffee order, you likely encounter friends, family, and colleagues who are unhappy about something you’ve said or done. Here’s a fabulous formula for dealing with them. It’s called “LATTE,” of course.

1. Listen. Fully, as long as it takes, without interrupting.

2. Acknowledge. Repeat out loud what happened.

3. Thank. Be grateful for the feedback.

4. Take action. Correct what was done wrong.

5. Explain. And this is the most important thing: Don’t explain why it happened. That’s an excuse. Instead, make a promise. Explain how and why it won’t happen again.

Photo by MissTurner

Anne is co-owner (with Laura Bond Williams) of Momentum Public Relations LLC. She is a past-president of the Association for Women in Communications, founder of Get Smart Austin, Leadership Texas grad, and former Brownie troop #1744 leader. And she serves on the Ronald McDonald House marketing committee and the Wonders & Worries community advisory board.

Even more to know and love about Anne:

Favorite quote “You must do the thing you think you cannot do” — Eleanor Roosevelt

Best advice received My father still shares unsolicited advice with anyone who will listen. The best from this Cajun entrepreneur? “You can’t get there until you leave.”

Best advice given Take it from a 10-year melanoma cancer survivor: Get an annual skin check. You deserve it. Not all skin cancers look as ugly as the pictures you see in women’s magazines.

Can’t-resist indulgence 70% dark chocolate.

Most recent accomplishment Elizabeth, my 11-year old daughter, recently received a rare, but manageable, medical diagnosis. My tenacious advocacy for her health prompted me to make numerous phone calls after hours and hours of initial research. When my search led me to find the doctor we needed, I felt like I’d been given a huge diamond-encrusted trophy! Bonus: no airplane rides needed, because this doctor just moved to Texas.

All-time favorite super-heroine Wonder Woman! She is smart and resourceful with great hair and functional, fashionable jewelry and accessories. All the male super-heroes in The Justice League treated her with the much-deserved respect she earned every day on the job.

Hardest lesson learned How to be a good, thoughtful listener.

Most prized possession My husband (Ryan), children (Elizabeth and Matthew), friends, family and health.

Secret to success Find or create professional work that you like to do that also comes naturally to you. Work with people you genuinely like, enjoy, and respect. Define your own success and then live up to it daily by working smarter–not harder.

Never-fail “power tool” Lancome under-eye concealer.

Dear Annie:

You’re having a hard time because the poise that you describe (so eloquently) is a hard thing to accomplish. Most of us are much better at one side of the equation than the other, either at pushing or yielding.

Creating a life requires both skills. You can push all you want, but life happens. And yielding will only get you so far.

The temptation is to go with what you’re better at. Instead, remember that pushing and yielding are two sides of the same coin. This sounds counter-intuitive, but they will support each other rather than cancel each other out.

Let me offer you a physical image. Consider how you literally move from here to there. If you control and tense your legs so hard that you lock your knees, you ain’t going nowhere. Conversely, if you’re too loosey-goosey, you’ll fall right on your butt. We move forward with the most ease when we are both grounded and flexible: when we’re committed to our goals and we’re open to new opportunities for achieving them.

In brief:

1. Know your goals

2. Prepare yourself

3. Give yourself a generous time horizon

4. Design an interim “launching/landing pad”

5. Cultivate practices that calm your anxiety

6. Commit to what is financially enough

7. Be still and look inside

“Positive emotions help speed recovery from negative emotions,” Fredrickson told Entrepreneur magazine columnist Joe Robinson in the January issue. “When people are able to self-generate a positive emotion or perspective, that enables them to bounce back.”

So how can you counter your “negative loops” with your positive resources: joy, hope, gratitude, awe, and other buoyant emotions? According to Fredrickson, author of Positivity, these emotions have the power to literally calm our blood pressure. And we need at least three positive emotions to offset each emotion that drags us down. And they don’t have to be particularly intense. They just need to be frequent.

So how can you stockpile this antidote to the dark place? Here are four ways:

1. Gratitude. Ask yourself, what I am failing to appreciate in this situation?

2. Connection. Share something, like an interest or amusement.

3. Pause. Step back, take a break.

4. Music. My fave: Mozart.

The payoff, Fredrickson says, is real. “There’s really solid evidence that the positive emotions you feel today predict toorrow’s and next week’s and next month’s success, health and quality relationships, because they build your resources and resilience.”

In our 140-character, ADD world, it’s a challenge to plant our feet on terra firma. The world is so fragmented, organized into a tiny bytes and quick hits. We’ve been fooled into believing that multi-tasking is a productivity tool when, in fact, the research has shown that multi-tasking is just an excuse for distractions that prevent us from being either efficient or effective.

When I’ve feeling overwhelmed and unfocused, I step away from the computer. Instead, I engage in activities that require body and mind to be present and precise. Here are my top 10 tips for regaining balance:

1. Settle into a good book (preferably non-fiction, and preferably on an overstuffed couch).
2. Drive in the slow lane.
3. Weed the garden, on hands and knees.
4. Cook a meal from scratch.
5. Disable the portable devices.
6. Breathe deeply.
7. Ask yourself: Where are my feet?
8. Embrace delays as an opportunity to daydream.
9. Get to a pilates class.
10. Read the New York Times, paper edition.

Which makes the story all the more tragic, because the woman who is successfully tamed by film’s end is so outrageously fabulous. I wanna be Margo Channing!

Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is a Broadway legend, a woman who lives life large. She’s smart and witty, even acerbic, a superior sparring partner to any man in the film. She speaks her mind. Pulls no punches. And never apologizes. What style, what style.

But poor Margo has just turned–gasp–40! She’s worried about losing her lover, a man eight years her junior. And when she figures out before her pals that the apparently devoted young Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) is actually a scheming back-stabber, she is called out as a “hysterical, screaming harpy.”

If she doesn’t want to sign on to the role of hysteric, the cultural narrative offers her only one other option. To play the wife. Well before the movie ends, Margo has literally disappeared into happily-ever-after. She withdraws from her brilliant career to “work” at being a woman.

This is her “a-ha” moment:

“At best, let’s say I’ve been oversensitive to . . . well, to the fact that she’s so young – so feminine and helpless. To so many things I want to be for Bill . . . funny business, a woman’s career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder, so you can move faster. You forget you’ll need them again when you go back to being a woman. That’s one career all females have in common – whether we like it or not – being a woman. Sooner or later we’ve all got to work at it, no matter what other careers we’ve had or wanted . . . and, in the last analysis, nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed – and there he is. Without that, you’re not woman. You’re something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings – but you’re not a woman . . .”

It’s no coincidence that the woman who sets off this entire melodrama is named “Eve,” the archetypal woman. In fact, each female protagonist represents an aspect of “Eve.”

Eve is the aspiring career woman, filled with pure, pulsing desire. Alas, things don’t end well for her. She succeeds, but she ends up alone, controlled by a man and taken in by the flattery of an even younger woman with even more ambition.

Karen Richards (Celeste Holm) is the happily married woman, a gal pal somewhere in age between Eve and Margo. She’s Radcliffe-educated: all the better to serve as helpmate to her playwright husband. She dabbles in painting but claims no ambition of her own. She’s the consummate “woman-behind-the-man.” She manages to hold onto her man, but not without some maneuvering of her own. Karen, clever girl, has the best line in the film. After being accused of acquiring a “bitter cynicism” after leaving Radcliffe, she sets her husband straight: “The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!”

Just as the youngest women initiate their careers by slavishly serving their role models, so the oldest female character, a retired actress without a man of her own, settles back into that same role. “Miss” Birdie Coonan (Thelma Ritter) is Margo’s faithful womanservant. I wanna be Birdie, too! Oh to have that low, gravelly, sardonic tone. She is not working at being a woman; she’s enjoying being herself. And, do please note, she is the only one of this self-absorbed crew who doesn’t fall for the sad tale Eve tells to introduce herself: “What a story,” Birdie blurts out, as Margo is dabbing her eyes. “Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end . . .”

“All About Eve” was released 60 years ago. I wasn’t expecting feminist enlightenment. What I’m gonna do is have fun reinventing the film’s narrative. I’ll give Margo a Do-Over! Maybe she’ll start her own clothing line, or run for president. After all, stories, like lives, are meant to be reinvented.