FALL 2015 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 1
SAY “I LOVE YOU” BE OF SERVICE TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS BE PERSISTENT FINANCIAL FREEDOM
WRITE FOR YOURSELF THRIVE REAL STORIES BY REAL PEOPLE LIVE WITH A CHRONIC ILLNESS
TRAVEL THE WORLD ASSERTIVE UNDERSTANDING YOUR FREINDSHIPS LIFE’S GREAT ADVENTURE
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION | FALL 2015 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 1
CO NTENTS
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Letter from the Editor
Rise Above the Bully
By Priya Rana Kapoor
Sometimes we do things we should not,
CAREER & FNANCE GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION to:
just to be accepted. How rising above it all and owning your actions is the way to live
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a true and strong life. By Matt Bunke
Interview by the Publisher Army medic and single mother, Major Terri Gurrola, discusses how she is able to balance two very important jobs.
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Say “I Love You”
Be Persistent
What happens when you have been trained
What happens when you combine vision
to help people and all you can do is stand
and persistence, with a dash of maverick
by and watch them jump to their death?
tendencies? A very successful business,
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
You learn a lesson from the experience.
with a whole lot of adventure.
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION to:
By Heera Kapoor
By Geoffrey Kent
By James Darnborough
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Financial Freedom What is most people’s biggest worry? Money! How good planning, wise
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Understand your Friendships
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Be Assertive
investing and strategic spending can help us be financially free. By Trish Dolasinski, Ed.D.
Being assertive is about finding your own
Not all friends are created the same.
voice and speaking up, but how do we
How to navigate and honor each
go about it when we have been submissive
friendship for what it is.
for many years?
By Shemaiah Gonzalez
By Mary Note Law
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Be an Artist When you have no choice but to follow your calling — no matter what your
ON OUR COVER
parents think or say.
People who have made a difference
By Robyn Geddes
in very big ways and very small ways. We all make a difference to our world. From top left: fireman, Walt Disney, grandparents, woman, Amelia
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Leave an Abusive Relationship
Glenn, mother and daughter, Eleanor
How do you summon up the courage
Veteran PR executive and speechwriter
Roosevelt, President John F. Kennedy,
to leave an unhealthy relationship?
finds a way to honor her creative spirit and
Buddhist monks, Indian girl, Louis
It takes faith in oneself and the ability
starts writing fiction stories for her own
Armstrong, combat army soldier
to ask for help. By Dawn Anderson
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Earhart, turbaned man, skydiver, John
Share Your Stories
fulfillment. By Lynn Lipinski
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION | FALL 2015 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 1
LIFESTYLE & TRAVEL GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION to:
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Travel the World A pointed question by a college professor and a random free airline ticket
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Open Your Heart to Service
To Thrive
After nearly dying and loosing both her
The shock of having a sick child can
parents and a partner, this brave woman
change everything you have ever hoped
changes her life and decides to start
and dreamed for — but it does not always
working with the animals in far off lands.
have to be for the worse.
By Arlene Dreste
By Darcy M. Burke, M.B.A.
HEALTH & WELLNESS
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opens up a whole new world for this inquisitive woman. By Wendy Profit
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION to:
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The Sunflower A Poem
Trust Your Instincts
By Leslie Thompson
Do we know ourselves better than anyone else? One man’s tale of trusting himself
GSYP Crossword
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Who Knew?
enough to challenge the status quo. By Marcus Stone
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Live Life’s Great Adventure your plans shaken by a massive earthquake on the world’s highest mountain. By Deri Llewellyn-Davis
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Photo: D’Arcy Benincosa
Living your life without regrets only to have
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Vision Boarding By Priya Kapoor
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The Golden Voice of Salif Keita
Live Well with a Chronic Illness
How being different from most everyone
When a chronic illness can save you from
else can have immeasurable advantages.
running your life into the ground.
By Lynn Lipinski
By Fabiana Couto
www.GYSPermission.com 5
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION | FALL 2015 | LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
S
ummer is over and the kids are back at school. We now have
who have been touched by these stories will want to submit their
all the festivities of Autumn to look forward to. I went into
own to us. By doing so, they will be branching out and sharing their
a shop in August and they already had Halloween decorations for
experiences with others. One massive ripple effect! By buying and
sale! Yippee… This is my favourite time of year: football, family
reading these pages you are making this vision possible — Thank
celebrations, crisp, cooler weather and turning leaves.
you, thank you, thank you. We are all in this together and I look forward to connecting with many of you as time goes on!
Fall reflects a time of change, a time to wind down and start to
ponder on how we have lived the year so far, and what changes
Give YourSelf Permission to take your time in reading these stories,
we want to make as we look forward. This is what the stories in this
each is different and I suspect at least a few, if not more, will speak
magazine embody, a place of understanding of what happened in
to you in some way — big or small. None should take you more than
the past, and ways of making change for the future.
10 minutes to read and some as little as 6 minutes. It’s a magazine,
we hope, you will keep coming back to and each time getting
As the creators of this magazine, we have been blessed with
something different for yourself. We also hope that you will share
incredibly beautiful and poignant true stories of challenge, adversity
it with your friends and family. Sometimes we see that others are in
and triumph. These are real stories by real people, in their own
pain and we want to help, but don’t know how. So maybe we give
words. The stories are humbling, jubilant and more often than not
them our copy (or buy them one of their own!), and allow them to
recognizable to many of us. Few of the authors are professional
get the just right message at the right time for themselves.
writers or teachers, but they have all shared their experiences in
eloquent and authentic ways. They have shown their vulnerabilities
Thank you all for being on this journey with us! We love the
and pleasures.
company.
These are stories of how the authors have given themselves
With masses of love and admiration,
permission to do something that they would never have normally allowed themselves to do. Many describe the moment when they decided to make change, and all recount their experiences without preaching to the reader. It is all about ‘Share, Teach, Learn – with a dash of Inspiration.’ And, after all, everyone has a story… and these
Priya Rana Kapoor, MMFT
are some pretty good ones, I might add!
‘Give YourSelf Permission’ Magazine, editor-in-chief
It has been a long road in launching this magazine and the publisher, James Darnborough, and I would like to thank everyone involved for their hard work, and the many friends and family members for their support. We have also been lucky enough to have total strangers lend a helping hand, because they believed in what we were trying to do with this magazine. The vision is to give as many people a platform to share their voice and experiences so that others might find solace in their words, and
PS: To find out more about how to submit your article, subscribe to
subsequently, have space to heal and grown. One of the best salves
the magazine and learn more about the Give YourSelf PermissionTM
in the world is knowing you’re not alone. Hopefully in time, those
Programs, please visit w w w. G Y S P e r m i s s i o n . c o m
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AD
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION | FALL 2015 | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION | FALL 2015 | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
LEAVE AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP By Dawn Lauren Anderson
As I lay next to my passed-out husband at the end of the day, my mind went through the checklist of things I would need. Knowing I would leave the next morning before dawn soothed me and I easily went to sleep. As usual, I woke without an alarm — only this time it was much earlier than usual: 2:18 am. I silently crept out of bed; so afraid I would wake him. In the dark, I felt my way around the familiar territory of our bathroom, gathering all those necessities of
life — hairbrush, hair dryer, deodorant, and make-up. There were no thoughts in my mind — I just needed to leave. I crept by our open bedroom door to my office. It was more than just an office … it was MY space. Routinely I kept all my clothes there so I
wouldn’t disturb my husband when I got up at 4:00 am to get ready for work. I changed out of my nightgown into comfortable sweats. Using the grocery bags I’d placed in the room the previous day, I stuffed my toiletries in one and filled two more with 31
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION | FALL 2015 | CAREER & FINANCE
C A R
& A
N I F
E E C N R
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION | FALL 2015 | CAREER & FINANCE
TO BE
M
y success in business stems from the permission I gave myself to be persistent. Above all I followed my dreams wholeheartedly and believed in my vision. Growing up on the family farm in Kenya’s Aberdare Highlands was an idyllic childhood for a boy. I spent my days riding, shooting, camping in the bush and exploring untamed Africa. I was a born entrepreneur, with the ubiquitous dose of maverick tendencies. I started my first business at age 15 selling elephant hair bracelets in Nairobi. It proved to be very lucrative, enough so that I was soon able to purchase my first motorcycle.
By Geoffrey J.W. Kent
The only problem was that my school didn’t allow them, one of the many rules that interfered with my notion of ‘living life in the fast lane’. A year later, I was asked to leave school even though I had excelled academically. The bike was the reason they gave for my expulsion. I returned home to live on the family farm. My father was not pleased, and our domestic life hummed along with deep tension. He wanted me
to do something ‘serious’ with my life, something in contrast to what he had done by immigrating to Africa in the ‘30s. But I wanted something different. I wanted adventure. A huge argument with my father sent me packing to explore Africa on a new motorcycle. At just 16-years-old, I told my parents I was leaving. I bought a tarpaulin and a sleeping bag from the Salvation Army in Nairobi, and built a frame for my twostroke motorbike to hold petrol on one side and water on the other. I ventured bravely — perhaps naively —out on my own. Carrying dried meat or biltong in my helmet (we never wore helmets in those days) and 35
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION | FALL 2015 | CAREER & FINANCE
SHARE YOUR STORIES
By Lynn Lipinski
I
had been writing other people’s words for so long that I lost confidence in my
own voice. News releases, brochures, video scripts and speeches flowed from my fingers to my keyboard like water, while my fiction writing only trickled out like molasses. My
writing
for
corporations
and
organizations paid the bills, and I know I’m lucky to make a living doing any kind of writing. But my dream, one that goes back to my earliest memories, was to tell my own stories. Later, this dream morphed into a desire to write a Very Successful Novel. I set the bar so high for this first novel that what I really did was set myself up to fail. Looking back, it is no surprise that this unrealistic goal sapped my confidence, and ultimately my motivation. I worked on writing and polishing that first novel for so long that I think my friends doubted I would ever finish. I took classes, read books, participated in critique groups and hired editors. As the years passed and the storyline and characters evolved, I managed to get it out to a few agents and publishers despite lacking confidence in it. What I really wanted was one of these industry professionals to exclaim how amazing it was and agree to publish it on the spot. Then they could tell the world it was good and sell a million copies. That was the only scenario I considered to be a success. 44
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION | FALL 2015 | CAREER & FINANCE
“
Since I started publishing my flash fiction, I’m happier and more creative than ever before. Ideas and stories flow out of me like water instead of molasses. Someone else had to tell me it was great, because I didn’t believe in myself enough. But no third-party endorser stepped up. Though some of the agents and editors had nice things to say about my writing, no one wanted to represent me or buy it. Little by little, I allowed their criticisms to be part of my mental baggage; while I completely discounted their positive comments. This agent said my novel wasn’t commercial enough so I must rewrite it. This other one said she didn’t fall in love with my protagonist, so I should change how he acts. I gave them all too much control over how I felt about my own writing. I realized this attitude had to change. First, I reflected on my values, a useful exercise I learned from the book ‘Give YourSelf Permission to Live Your Life.’ I realized that I was giving too much weight to other people’s opinions about my writing. I didn’t value my own opinion of my work as much as I valued these strangers’ reactions to it. That meant that I was basing my happiness, well-being and very existence on other people’s behavior. And that was a losing proposition. Writing fiction to please others and garner commercial success had me floundering and frustrated. I needed to flush the goal of publishing success and get back to the basics. What I really valued was creativity. Focusing on that, I mentally divorced the concept of
creativity from publishing success. The two didn’t have to be tied together in my mind. I could go back to the joy I’d felt as a little girl, writing stories and plays about leprechauns and faeries. I could write for the sheer pleasure of the art form. I started out small by entering a flash fiction contest for stories just four paragraphs long. I didn’t win, but that was okay, because I learned that I liked writing these little niblets of stories. I wrote another flash fiction piece, and published it to my blog. Then I wrote another, and another. The fact that it was flash fiction made it seem bite-sized and manageable, not like the ponderous task of writing a 300-page novel. And I started to have fun writing again. There are so many gatekeepers to fulfillment in the world. In publishing, gatekeepers are at every level of the game, and in general, they find it much easier to say no than yes. That’s fine. That is their job and I cannot change that. But I didn’t need to do their job for them by being a gatekeeper to my own fulfillment. That was something I could change. I had to believe that it was okay for me to put my writing out there — without the third-party endorsements I had been craving — for the simple reason that I wanted to. The Internet has made us all publishers if we want to be. I could publish my stories in my way on my own blog, for my own enjoyment and maybe that of a few readers.
”
Since I started publishing my flash fiction, I’m happier and more creative than ever before. Ideas and stories flow out of me like water instead of molasses. A second novel emerged from the corners of my brain and found its way to completion. My renewed zest for storytelling even helped me be more creative and prolific in my non-fiction and corporate writing. I think my desire to write fiction was suffocated by the idea of having to produce a novel of some commercial or literary merit. When I gave myself permission to channel that desire into the pleasures of just telling stories to entertain people, I took a big step closer to my own personal fulfillment.
Lynn Lipinski is a writer and editor who pens nonfiction for a living and mystery fiction for fun. Through her firm Majestic Content Los Angeles, she creates print and online content for C-Suite executives, consumers and everyone in between. Originally from Tulsa, OK, she now lives in North Hollywood, CA. 45