NOVEMBER * 2014

EXQUISITESA

NS

LIM

ITES

LIVING LIFE TO THE FULLHELL YEAH!“You can be the most beautiful person in the world and every-body sees light and rainbows when they look at you, but if you yourself don’t know it, all of that doesn’t even matter. Every sec-ond that you spend on doubting your worth, every moment that you use to criticize yourself; is a second of your life wasted, is a moment of your life thrown away. It’s not like you have forever, so don’t waste any of your seconds, don’t throw even one of your moments away.”

― C. JoyBell C.

Failure Can Help You SucceedOUR DEEPEST FEAR IS NOT THAT WE ARE INADEQUATE.OUR DEEPEST FEAR IS THAT WE ARE POWERFUL BEYOND MEASURE.— MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

WHEN MY SON WAS 3, HE ABSOLUTELY WANTED TO GO ON A SMALL ROLLER COASTER. WE TRIED TO DISSUADE HIM BUT IN THE END I GAVE IN AND TOOK HIM. I COULD SEE HE WAS SCARED DURING THE STEEP DOWNHILLS.WHEN I ASKED HIM AFTERWARDS HOW IT FELT HE SAID: “I WAS SCARED. BUT IT WAS GOOD SCARED.” AND HE WANTED TO GO AGAIN. AT THREE HE HAD NAILED THE WHOLE NOTION OF FEAR!HOW”S THAT YOU ASK?

Waiting:Are you just waiting for people to “get you” before taking any action?Are you waiting for someone to tell you to do it?Are you waiting for criticism or judgment?Are you victim of the When/Then Syndrome? (When this or that happens, Then I will be able to move on?) Sitting in the waiting room drains your energy. Literally. You’re not doing anything. You’re not in control of your life. You’re putting your life on hold and in the hands of someone to make a decision for you or for something to happen to you.

Explaining:Are you constantly explaining to people why you’re doing something or not doing something?Are you justifying your choices, even to yourself? By explaining everything you do, you’re playing small. You’re reacting instead of creating your life.

Doubting:Are you having doubts (the unrealistic ones) that keep you from starting anything?Are you saying things like “well, maybe” when an oppor-tunity comes up? Doubts are actions of protection. But when confront-ed with unrealistic doubts, the protection becomes an excuse. The “well, maybe” language you use is victim speak: it lets fear in through the back door instead of the front.

Comfort and routine:Are you happy with the way things are?Are you frustrated if your routine is upset by something?Are you refusing actions and projects that could unsettle your comfortable situation? By staying in your comfort zone, you’ll have a tendency to fall asleep and let life pass you by.

Sometimes it’s even so well disguised that we call it something else. For instance, have you ever used these crutches?

Fear can manifest in many different ways.

As you can see, fear has a powerful negative influence on your life when you are waiting, explaining, doubting or just feeling too comfortable in your routine.If you let fear have this influence, it can easily turn into a phobia. A phobia is an extreme, irrational fear. This type of fear can put a roadblock in your drive to success.Fear of failure (atychiphobia) is one of the most common and most paralyzing phobias.It’s a vicious circle: we are so worried about failing that we don’t try something. This can subconsciously undermine our efforts so we don’t try anymore. It then becomes fear of success. And doesn’t that sound ridiculous?

Why failure is necessary and helps you succeed Let’s say you had a baby about a year ago and it’s starting to make its first attempts at walking. One day, it finally takes its first step. And whoops, falls to the floor. Do you as parents say: ”Oh well, guess this one wasn’t made for walking?” and put him in a chair forever? Of course not, you let him try again and again and eventual-ly, out of nowhere he walks across the room.Failure in this case is baby’s best teacher. It’s not a confirmation that he’s useless. It teaches him to change something so next time, or the time after, it may work.There is an excellent commercial where Michael Jordan says he has missed more than 9000 shots, lost more than 300 games and missed 26 game-winning shots. He says he has failed over and over again in his life and that is why he succeeds.

And that’s what life is all about: progression, not perfection.Progression is not selling yourself short, underachieving or letting yourself down. Progression is a journey that leads to accomplishment, to moving on, to developing a better you, a better life. It’s here to teach you your flaws and how they can be beautiful.Or as Leonardo Da Vinci put it: “An arch is two weak-nesses which together make a strength.”So next time you’re afraid of failure, or something else, trust my son: it is “good scared”! Don’t be afraid to be powerful beyond measure. Go find another weakness, combine the two and build arches! Do it scared!

DETERMINATION AGAINST

ALL ODDS§

You can have unbelievable intelligence, you can have connections, you can have

opportunities fall out of the sky. But in the end, hard work is the true,

enduring characteristic of successful people.

R ita Levi-Montalcini was a scientist in Italy at a time when few women were scientists. She was born into a

rich Jewish family in Turin and studied medicine against her father’s wishes, building a lab in her bedroom where she grew nerve fibres using chicken embryos. Then war broke out, and being a woman scientist and Jewish—both of which were banned by the Fascists—she was under threat of persecution. But instead of halting her research, she moved her lab into the cellar and continued her work. This determination to carry on against all the odds impressed me very strong-ly. She put research above everything else, and pursued it with a passion that was never diluted by age. Even well into her 90s, she would go into the lab every day, always immaculately dressed in old-fashioned clothes with lots of ribbons.After the war she moved to Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. And it was there, working with Stanley Cohen, that she proved the existence of nerve-growth factor, a substance produced in the limb buds that stimulates nerve growth.

I was just starting my PhD in 1986 when she won her Nobel. Suddenly—boom!—she was known to every-one in Italy. I started to be interested in her life; that she was a woman and Italian was a huge inspiration. She represented what I wanted to do: research, the pursuit of knowledge, exploring new territories and going beyond what is known. Later on, as I got older and more mature, her life provided an example of how a scientist should behave—with humility and modesty. Newton said: “What we know is a droplet; what we don’t know is an ocean.” It is still true today—we know so little about our universe.Rita kept a low profile and lived modestly. She had decided in childhood not to get married or to have children, and she never regretted that deci-sion. In 2001, she was made a senator for life by the Italian government, and she continued to work for science past her 100th year, her intellectual curiosity undimmed to the end.

In the Beginning there was Eve

Spiritual, Intellectual and Emotional Fulfillment

Good is towing the line, being behaved, being quiet, being passive, fitting in, being liked; and great is being messy, having a belly, speaking your mind, standing up for what you believe in, fighting for another paradigm, not letting people

talk you out of what you know to be true.— Eve Ensler

According to the bible, ve was the orig-inal “bad girl.„ Eve’s original sin was to stop

“being good„ and, instead follow the desire to act on her spiritual and intellectual hunger. She ate the apple with curiosity and the recognition that she wanted more than what “Eden” provid-ed. For millennia women have been labeled as “good” if we follow the rules, don’t ask too many questions, and stifle our passions. Fortunately we now live in an exciting time when our hun-ger for spiritual, intellectual and emotional fulfill-ment is supported and encouraged. And much of this support and encouragement comes from us talking to each other and sharing our visions!The desire to be that “good” girl is still deeply ingrained in all of us. As Eve Ensler talks about in her play, this self-hatred we carry requires choices. Choices such as giving ourselves the healing we need, and then redirecting and transforming this self-hatred toward changing the world. First, imagine all the energy we use to make ourselves sexier, more adorable, skinnier, and more successful. Then, imag-ine instead using all that energy to make a difference in our world! Now imagine all the money we would save if we directed our finances toward what we believe in rather than making ourselves over.What stops us from exploring our pas-sions? What is the negative self-talk we continually hear? Maybe we have final-ly decided to accept our curly hair, our big brown eyes, or full lips? For those of us growing wiser, maybe we finally have come to peace with our flabby, ag-ing bodies? Maybe we aren’t so afraid to stick our necks out and stand up for what we believe in? And still it is so easy to fall short of our sense of “perfection.” Whenever we criticize ourselves merci-lessly for not doing enough in our day, we are bleeding away our spiritual life force. The ways we pinch ourselves and make ourselves smaller is endless, ex-hausting, and fruitless.What can we do to enhance a new para-

digm, heal ourselves, and inspire others to follow their own enthusiasm?

We can unearth our stories, create them in whatever form they take, and liberally share them with all those we love. Every one of us has creative bones. The phrase, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body” is a lie perpetuated to keep women being “good.” Our creativity takes so many different forms, from writing our stories, to read-ing books to our children, to making din-ner for our family, to singing our songs. Our creativity shines when we take care of our 4-legged friends, nurture our gar-dens and plants, or smile at everyone we meet. Our creativity is as unlimited as we choose to believe, and as vast as the night sky. We are all stars and meant to shine with our uniqueness and beauty.

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good that she is a woman. A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories…Imagine yourself as this woman.

—Patricia Lynn Reilly

This month’s exercise is to plan how you are going to enhance your creativity. The first step in this exercise is to write down your top five passions. What do you most long to explore, learn about, or further study? Perhaps your passion is to grow orchids? Perhaps your great-est passion is to support your friends in their ar-tistic endeavors? Perhaps you have been telling stories since you were a child? The next step in enhancing your creativity is to outline 3 concrete steps you can do over the next month to develop these passions. Will you research how to take care of orchids, and where to buy them? Will you talk to your friends about their creative passions, and determine how you can best support them? Will you get a notebook and start writing down the stories you have been telling? There is pow-er in decision, power in action, and power in al-lowing ourselves to explore our passions. That power is yours to mold and shape in whatever way you choose.

E

A BREATHTAKING NEW BOOK CHARTS THE LIFE OF STYLE GODDESS MARELLA AGNELLI

Russell Page, Paolo Pejrone, and Madison Cox, meanwhile, have collaborated through the years on a multitude of bewitching landscapes—each of which abundantly proves Agnelli’s philosophy that “gardens breathe and are alive, just as we are.”

There is good taste—and then, in a strato-sphere all its own, there is Agnelli taste, as

Marella Agnelli: The Last Swan (out now from Rizzoli) proves so abundantly. This breath-

taking tome, written by Agnelli and her niece Marella Caracciolo Chia, charts the life of the

goddess of style through photographs (some previously unpublished) of the legendary inte-

riors, houses, and gardens she created since her 1953 marriage to the late Giovanni Agnelli,

the charismatic scion of the Fiat empire and a man generally considered the unofficial king of

Italy.The former Donna Marella Caracciolo di Cast-

agneto—born to a stylish mother from Peoria, Illinois, and an aristocratic Florentine father—

has brought out the best work of the greatest architects, interior designers, and landscape

architects of the age on projects sited every-where from Park Avenue to Marrakech, from

Saint Moritz to Corsica, as well as in Turin, Milan, and Rome. Renzo Mongiardino created

appropriately Proustian settings for her, while Amadeo Albertini conceived a Miesian mod-

ernist pavilion and Stéphane Boudin fashioned interiors of faultless classical elegance. Gae

Aulenti and Ward Bennett in turn conceived apartments of thoroughly up-to-the-minute chic

to showcase the Agnellis’ savvy adventaures in contemporary-art collecting in the sixties and

seventies.

Happy Birthday, Catherine Deneuve:

Her 7 Most Unforgettable

Beauty Moments

Once the face of Chanel No. 5 perfume, Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking tuxedo, Louis Vuit-ton luggage, and the country of France (her

likeness was used for Marianne, the national emblem of freedom), Catherine Deneuve and her arresting brand of sangfroid blonde beauty were catapulted into icon status after she burst onto the scene, bow in hair, in the 1964 Jacques Demy musical film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Today, the French actress and eternal muse turns 71. And, although she was once quoted as saying, “People expect a lot more from someone they think looks interesting,” we would venture to say that in her 50-plus years in the spot-light, Deneuve has not disappointed.

Her alluring physiognomy allowed her to shape-shift from a chillingly distant manicurist turned murderess with side-swept bangs and thin liquid eyeliner in Re-pulsion to the carefree picture of youth in The Young Girls of Rochefort with a voluminous late-sixties blow-out and blue eye shadow. In Belle de Jour, she transi-tions from a loyal wife in a debutante bun to part-time prostitute in what is quite possibly the most iconic mo-ment in bedhead history. Off-screen, Deneuve’s radi-ance and cool composure won the hearts of creative powerhouses including David Bailey, Roger Vadim, and Marcello Mastroianni.

In honor of her unforgettable Gallic charm and good looks, a look back at Deneuve’s most mem-orable beauty moments.

Jenny Slate on the Origins of Marcel the Shell and Why She Isn’t Afraid to Say She’s a

Feminist

J enny Slate, the voice behind the viral hit Marcel The Shell, is one of our very favorite comediennes. Today, she stopped by our

offices to talk about her hit summer film Obvious Child, the origin story of Marcel, and why femi-nism is not a scary word in her vocabulary.Suddenly you’re everywhere. On TV, you ap-pear on the Kroll Show, House of Lies, Parks and Recreation, Married, and Bob’s Burgers, and all over the Internet with Marcel the Shell.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?It’s good! This third Marcel the Shell video was trending all over Twitter yesterday and went viral within minutes.I know! It has a million views now I think. In one day! It’s so weird because I’m not computer-y at all.

How did this happen? Where did you get the idea of this shell with the little

pair of shoes?

Well the voice came first. We were at a wedding, me and

Dean [Fleischer-Camp]—my husband—my best friend

Gabe and my friend Mike and his husband, and somebody

else—we were all in one motel room because we were broke. I was squished in there with all those boys and I was stressed out and about to be fired from SNL—which is neither here nor there—but at the time I

was just waiting to get slapped in the face and feeling a bit constricted because of all of

these things in my life. And then I started to talk in this little voice and my hus-band was like “What is that

voice?!”

Why did you decide to make a Marcel The Shell book?

I always wanted to be a children’s author and I have a really big library of children’s

books. All the ones from when I was little, they are just so beautiful. I read kids’ books

and they calm me down.

What are some of your favorite children’s books?

I love all the Lyle the Crocodile books. I like Robert McClo-skey’s books—One Morning in Maine, Blueberries for Sal, Make Way for Ducklings. I like Sylvester and the Magic Peb-ble, all the Barbara Cooney books, like Miss Rumphius and The Ox-Cart Man are

really good. And I like Chris Van Allsburg, those books like Just a Dream and The Polar Express. I like the classics.

They’re classics for a reason.

You’re one of a few actress-es who isn’t afraid of calling yourself a feminist. Why do you think it’s an issue for

others to come out and say it?

I think that there have been a lot of fear-based as-

sertions that feminism is about aggression and that is incor-rect and untrue. Feminism is about equality, that’s what it’s about. When I was in my early twenties, I definitely thought that it was about bra-burning or something and that is just

completely incorrect. You don’t realize it until you go out and take a look, but there are so many ways in which sexism is just allowed in our culture, not just in the entertainment

industry, it’s just allowed to be there and that’s not acceptable anymore. And I think it’s really

important to be very vocal.