More Life Lessons with Pharrell

"Should your heart point you in this direction, let me be your guide." P.W.

Pharrell! You beautiful bottlenose dolphin spirit guide, you keep bringing it! Even Angie, hands clutched over her chest, blurted out, "I feel like he just reached inside me and pulled something out." 

Fuck, you are SMOOTH. Do you know what he told two of his contestants this week? 

"One of you is fire, the other ice. If you do this right, we're going to have steam." 

!!!! GOOD GRIEF. I can't get enough. I want to be a big, overly sensitive sponge soaking in everything that comes out of that man's mouth. My new life dream, other than see Celine Dion in concert, is to be able to sit down and have a heart to heart with Pharrell. Except it would probably be so intense I'd have to stand up and act out everything I was feeling. And then we could go hat shopping or something. 

I love that this man is willing to say the things that scare the shit out of just about all of us. It's the real deal. It's heartfelt and full of big emotion, and we're not used to talking like that! I think for a lot of us, when you get right down to it, we aren't used to feeling. We aren't used to feeling. We're used to our default settings, to a certain level of ambivalence. It's so much easier not to care too much! The stakes are so much lower if we don't go all in! But when we're confronted or challenged or come up against opposition, don't we already know what it looks like when we go down the path of fear? Don't over-think it, over-feel it.

Should your heart point you in this direction, let these Pharrell-isms be your guide:

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How does someone move you? Seek out the people and things that stir something inside you. Be relentless of finding the truth, be moved, be willing to take a chance and change things up- that's the only path to progressing forward.

Where are you holding back? You're afraid to engage, but you're chasing your opportunity away. Has that ever worked for you? You've been afraid, and it's not resulted in any kind of positivity, so why bring it to the moment right here? This is your moment; step into it. Let us see who you are.

Take a risk. Go inside yourself and pull out all the things you're afraid to say, and externalize them through words, movement, art, song, whatever works. Make it raw and gritty and full of truth. Because the truth is what matters, and that's what moves other people and makes them feel something. That's how you connect. The most vulnerable part of yourself is the most convincing part of yourself, because that's when people see you letting go, that's when they see you. 

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Care too much. How could you ever be faulted for moving with conviction? How could you ever regret it? Go deeper, move inward, and then shine out. Be the sun. Don't worry about getting burned, you've already got a big hat.