Grin and Bear It: How to Be Happy No Matter What Reality Throws Your Way (12 page)

And then … there was
Huggles.

Huggles and I went on thirteen dates that always ended in a hug. It wasn’t like I wanted to jump his bones, but seriously, hugs? It made it hard to tell if he was into me or not. I had planned to break up at dinner on that thirteenth date, but Huggles started talking first. He blurted out that he had cancer and was finally through his treatments.

When I told Jeff, he said, “How can you break up with him now?”

Jeff had a point, so I went on seven more dates that ended in seven more hugs. It wasn’t working for me, cancer or no cancer. There would be no more giving snuggles for Huggles.

After Huggles, I had a hot encounter with an actor.

Okay, wait.

Not
that
kind of hot encounter.

It was more of a
heated
exchange. We were working in a gyro booth at a church fund-raiser. The guy and I started talking and after a bit I said, “What do you do?”

He said, “I’m an actor.”

(We were in L.A. Of course he was.)

Then he actually pulled out his cell phone that had his demo reel all cued up and said “Here’s my work. That’s me on
Drew Carey, General Hospital, Jimmy Kimmel
—I’m a huge celebrity in Cyprus and I’m even bigger in Romania.”

“Oh, great, I’ll be right back.” I wanted to get away as fast as I could. Been there, done that, and have divorce papers to prove it.

Just then someone came up to me and said, “You’re Jenni from
Flipping Out
! I love your show. Can we get a picture?”

“Sure,” I said.

Afterward, the guy turned to me and said, “Oh, it looks like someone else is a big celebrity, too.”

Yuck! I almost contemplated changing professions … well … for about sixty seconds. That’s how that exchange made me feel.

Why?

Because I used to be just like that guy, trying to prove to anyone who would listen that I was a bigger deal or more successful then I actually was. I took it as a wonderful sign that this happened at a church festival. God, I prayed, someday I might be at a church with a man I loved who wanted to share his life with me and not just his résumé.

7

Navigating Around Negativity

I was standing in
line at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in West Hollywood one morning when a very well-dressed man came over to me and said, “Excuse me … I have met all of the greats, from Lucille Ball to Sylvester Stallone, and I wanted to say hello because you are one of the few people in this town I have always wanted to meet.”

“Really? You know I’m not Elaine from
Seinfeld
, right?” I said, in a tone filled with utter shock and disbelief.

The man whipped out his phone to call his wife. When she answered, he handed me the phone.

“My husband and I just love you. We admire how you handle Jeff and everything with so much patience.…”

Anyone who knows me will tell you that patience has never been my strong suit. So for a girl bent on improvement, this chance meeting made me feel like I must be finally doing something right. Leaving the Coffee Bean floating on air, I made my way across town to meet a potential agent at one of the biggest talent agencies in Hollywood. I felt like this would be my lucky day.

I checked in with the receptionist and was asked to take a seat in the lobby. Just as I sat down, a beautiful young starlet walked in who wasn’t currently working on anything that I was aware of. She got shuttled right through the lobby with several agents all over her. It was hard not to notice the difference in our reception.

I waited.

Thirty minutes passed.

Forty-five minutes.

Fifty minutes later they called me in.

I won’t lie.

I was pissed.

I was in the agent’s office for a couple of minutes before he looked up and said, “You are talented but you have a very long way to go. Good luck with your show.”

That’s it?

That’s all he had to say?

Let me get this straight. A nonworking actress walks in minutes after I do, is fawned over, and me, the one with the hit show on Bravo gets the brush-off?

Okay, to be fair, in retrospect, what he said wasn’t wrong. In fact, he was right on the money—I just wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say. His delivery stung and the information was devastating. He certainly didn’t need to call me into his office to break
that
news to me. A phone call would have sufficed. By this point however, I had gotten used to this message, which wasn’t helping matters. When someone in a position of authority or power spoke, I listened. It didn’t matter if it was my mom, my acting teachers, casting agents, or even my employers. If they said I was no good, I embraced that notion. If they thought I was in over my head, I began to doubt myself. I remember once being told by someone on my soon to be dissolved business team that I should wear a fat suit to auditions to get parts. They thought I wasn’t attractive enough to be the “hottie,” so the job that was next in line was typically the bulky best buddy.

And if people underestimated my abilities, I lived down to their expectations instead of up to my own. Worse, I created excuse after excuse to support their influence over my own self-belief. Before I knew it, their opinions had a much higher value than mine. I adjusted my behavior to achieve those disappointing outcomes.

For most of us, there was once a time where we believed that anything was possible. As kids, our vision for the future was limitless—we could be whatever we dreamed. We could become a princess, a star basketball player, a veterinarian, or anything else our imaginations allowed us to see. Sadly, somewhere along the way, that fearlessness to dare and willingness to change the world can be taken over by other people telling us what is or isn’t in our best interest.

At different points in our lives, we encounter the naysayer, skeptic, critic, the person who is full of negativity and somehow manages to suck out all of the fresh hope and energy from our dreams. Some people do tell us things we need to hear for our own good, yet others say things because it makes them feel better about themselves or their miserable, unsatisfying lives. Still others try to hold you back because they fear you might actually fulfill your dream and in the process, make them question their own choices in life. Finally, there are those people in the world that no matter how good things are, they have a special talent at only seeing the negative side of life. They are negative minded by nature—and will likely never change.

Like it or not, there are people in this world who prefer to see you messed up rather than happy. Take it from me—these are the people who thrive on your misery and will do anything they can to perpetuate that negative environment as a way of staying in control and not facing their own life lessons. They’ll say things like, “You used to be crazy and funny. What happened?,” or “I liked you much better when you weren’t so calm. Are you okay?”

Although it might be hard not to take negative comments personally, you have to remember that most of the time, their criticism isn’t about you—it’s about them. Perhaps they’ve been making excuses about why they aren’t succeeding at the things they want to do and are turning those statements into advice for you. “You’re too old, everyone will make fun of you, what will your mother think?” are all statements designed to make you doubt and fear that whatever it is you’re trying to do simply won’t work.

I’m not saying that everyone is a critic. There are some people who will genuinely be interested in what you want to do and will help you try to figure out the best way to achieve that goal. If you have that kind of support in your life, that’s awesome. The likelihood, however, is that within the circle of people in your life there may be naysayers secretly disguised as friends and loved ones who may be out to prove why you’ll fail, before you even get started. They want,
they need
, you to stay exactly where you are—your place in life is comfortable and nonthreatening to
them
 … they don’t want to lose that! It’s like the husband who watches his wife lose a bunch of weight and then brings home pie, cake, and ice cream all the time. Seeing his wife get into shape forces him to realize how out of shape he’s become. It makes him uncomfortable to see his bride take control of her health and well-being.

There are a lot of people out there in the world who fall back on being a total downer without knowing they’re doing it. It’s an automatic response that they’re not even conscious of. When in doubt, learn to ignore the naysayers, critics, and skeptics and carry on! Navigating around and through the negativity you can encounter requires clarity, discipline, and practice. You can learn to do it.

In our office, there is sometimes a disconnect between what Jeff finds appropriate in the workplace and what everyone else expects. In addition, it has been hard for us to set boundaries between Jeff’s personal space and the workspace. This is a challenge for anyone who chooses to operate a business out of their home. I think Jeff operates this way partly for convenience and also to keep things exactly the way he wants them. And that extends, as fans of the show know, to his lunch.

I would say that Jeff has major OCD, and has a need to be in control, even of the tiniest details. He even has instilled a strict set of rules for everyone to follow that includes no number two in his bathrooms. If you really have to go, you can count on being terrorized for many months. Bring out the lie detector, I haven’t gone number two in Jeff’s office in twelve years. There is also a limit of sixty seconds during bathroom breaks. If you exceed that limit, Jeff will scream, “What are you doing in there? You better not be going number two!” When you don’t use the full sixty seconds, you actually get rollover minutes. (I have acquired a plethora of rollover minutes over the years.)

As a reward for my respectful bathroom behavior, I am trusted by Jeff to tell employees and contractors the following: “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie.”

These types of exchanges happen all of the time in our office. The key to surviving at Jeff Lewis Design is to abide by his set of rules.

When you sense disapproval from your boss at work, it’s extremely important to distinguish between constructive and destructive criticism. It’s not any easier to be the boss than it is to be the employee. It would be ideal if everyone understood there are different sets of responsibilities that make each position unique and necessary. For example, there is a lot of micromanaging in the construction and renovation world. We are constantly making phone calls to ensure that the workers show up and meet deadlines. Delays will not only cause your budget to skyrocket but also add tremendous pressure to an already stressful situation. You have to be incredibly aggressive and demanding to complete a project on time and on budget.

It is easy to see someone with this mind-set as being difficult and uncompromising, but it is necessary to get the job done.

I better understood what it’s like to be the boss when Jeff was out sick for the day with food poisoning. It certainly was an eye-opening experience because I hadn’t ever put myself in his shoes before. For the first time, I had an assistant who wasn’t moving fast enough and anticipating what I needed. I found myself getting barky and short-tempered. I also realized there were other people in the office looking at me, judging how I was acting. In a single day, I’d become a total bosshole.

Oh.

Right.

This must be what Jeff feels like when I am not on my “A” game.

There have been many times I witnessed Jeff get angry with me or someone else for not doing their job. It’s a simple enough request, and after spending a day being Jeff, I had a much clearer understanding of why he gets so upset. Since Jeff can’t let mistakes slide by without some type of response, we have made a game out of errors in our office. Let’s say you make a mistake like accidentally taking home Jeff’s credit card or his keys. As punishment, you have to wear an XXL white one-piece painter’s jumpsuit, which makes everyone look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man! Of course, my way to cope with having to wear the “suit of shame” is to accessorize, accessorize, accessorize. (A girl can never go wrong with a beaded necklace and a set of bangles!)

On one occasion, after committing an office crime, Jeff made me wear the suit to a meeting with a group of executives from Dunn-Edwards, the company Jeff has a paint line with. Instead of causing me great embarrassment, it made them smile, which meant I took a potentially combative situation and turned it into something exciting and fun. Wearing this outfit was meant to be a punishment and ended up supporting the company. By the end of our meeting, I told Jeff that we should make fashionable smocks and painter’s suits as a side business. Now
that’s
what I call going toward the hit!

I sometimes think of Jeff’s OCD as Occasionally Causing Disturbances. To see the smile on Jeff’s face when he has scared someone to the point of heart failure, you know this man has the heart of a child. This may be something that has linked us together all of these years.

Are there times at work that we have fun and mess around?

You bet!

At times, we’re unprofessional.

And to be certain, there are lots of circumstances where we butt heads. It’s important to remember that work relationships are relationships that involve human beings, with emotions, frailties, and quirks. As a professional assistant, I realize that sometimes my job is to be a sounding board. It comes with the territory. But, it doesn’t mean you have to let your boss break you down and take your identity or sense of self-worth. Don’t be so desperate for their approval in the first place. Just do your job, and do it well. It makes it harder to get reprimanded if you’re doing what you’re supposed to do in the first place.