We dislike our appearance for any reason

She decided to turn this around by creating a new sequence of controlled falls in which the dancer would melt into the ground and reascend, ever so slowly. This required building up a whole new series of muscles. She took this concept further, using the ground itself as a space upon which the dancer could move like a coiled snake. In her new system, suddenly the knee became a different instrument of expression--a hinge upon which the dancer could balance and move, giving the effect of weightlessness. Slowly, as the work progressed, she could see coming to life the new form of dance that she had visualized. To add to the effect of newness, Graham decided to design and sew her own costumes. These costumes, often made out of stretch materials, would turn the dancers into almost abstract shapes, accentuating their sharp movements. Unlike the usual fairy-tale decor that was used for ballets, her sets would be minimal and stark. And on a strictly individual level, your thoughts are so powerful that they actually have an impact on and ultimately define your experience of life. Life is what it is. What you tell yourself, however, influences whether you experience, for instance, the struggles you encounter as challenges to overcome in the adventure story of your life, as impassible barriers, or maybe even as psychological jailers that imprison you and stop you from moving forward. Your thoughts shape the larger picture of meaning (or lack thereof) that you create or discover in your life, as well as the context and actuality of your everyday interactions. To be mindful of the way your thoughts drive your experiences is the key to being able to change or embrace them. Again, as the Buddha taught, As you think, so you become. If you're not mindful of the way your thoughts influence your experience, you can be bounced from one state of mind to the next like a steel ball in a pinball machine. In article 7 I discussed how extreme language creates extreme emotions. Now, let's take a look at how mindfulness can be applied to steer away from that. The following extreme-language-based thoughts--the kinds of statements our cartoon-world perspective comes up with--can radically and unnecessarily increase your anger. It means that if you're not ready to have sex by the third date, by the tenth date, by the fifteenth, then you don't. And you don't worry about his expectations, you don't make up excuses about why he can't come over, you don't sound overly apologetic about the fact that you just don't want to, yet.

He'll deal. I can't stress this enough: You are the only person who gets to decide when you have sex and when you don't. Your opinion is the only one that matters. Being in control of your own sex life means that you are responsible for your health. You have condoms. You go to the doctor. You get checkups. You get tested. The dancers would wear little makeup. Everything would be designed to set them off from the stage and make their movements explode. The response to her first series of performances was electrifying. The public had never seen anything remotely like it before. Many were disgusted and repulsed. Others found the work strangely emotional, giving dance an expressive quality they had never suspected it could possess. The work elicited extremes of reaction, a sign of its power. Over the years, what had seemed initially so harsh and ugly began to be accepted, as Martha Graham had indeed single-handedly created a new genre--modern dance as we know it today. To avoid this dance turning into yet another convention, she would constantly struggle to upset people's expectations, never going over old ground, and constantly changing the subject matter of the dances, from Greek myths to Americana and depictions from literature. For close to sixty years after the formation of her troupe, she continued to drive herself to create that feeling of newness and immediacy she had always wanted. If you're not mindful that extreme language--including the language of your self-talk--produces extreme emotions, then you might allow yourself to be batted around by whatever occurs in the outside world, forever giving your control away to anyone or anything that doesn't fall in line with your cartoon-world view. By making the simple shift to being mindful of what you think and of the impact those thoughts have on your reality, you empower yourself to control your perception of anything you experience, and you can balance the wording accurately when you state your thoughts to others.

Although the shift is simple to understand (that is, your thoughts affect your experience), it takes practice to master. The first step in changing your thoughts is to be mindful which thoughts you have. The more mindful you are of your thoughts, the more authentic you can be to your core, and the more you practice being aware of your thoughts, the better you will get at telling yourself the types of things that can help you handle life in the most effective way possible. When it comes to experiencing anger or handling conflict, the thoughts you choose to use to describe what is happening will directly affect how severe that experience will be. It might not feel like you're relying on extreme language to describe your inner experience of something, but one way to gain insight on whether you are is to observe the strength and/or intensity of your reactions. Obviously, the stronger the reaction you're having, the more intense the self-talk you're engaging in. Of course, some situations are life-threatening and genuinely warrant extreme reactions. Gaining awareness of your self-talk doesn't negate your ability to respond intensely when you actually need to. You don't take risks. Being in control of your own sex life means that you get to use your body the way you want to. If you wax or shave, it's because that's your aesthetic preference, and not because you feel pressure to adhere to a standard of beauty. If you're only doing it because you're worried a guy will be disappointed or unattracted to you if you don't, then save yourself the money and the discomfort. Being in control of your own sex life means you're as loud or as quiet or as nasty or as prudish in bed as you want to be. You don't settle for bad sex. You ask for what you want. If you're unhappy with your sex life, you take steps to make it better. But perhaps most important, being in control of your sex life means being perfectly attuned to your emotions surrounding sex. Because they can fluctuate. Perhaps the greatest impediment to human creativity is the natural decay that sets in over time in any kind of medium or profession. In the sciences or in business, a certain way of thinking or acting that once had success quickly becomes a paradigm, an established procedure.

As the years go by, people forget the initial reason for this paradigm and simply follow a lifeless set of techniques. In the arts, someone establishes a style that is new and vibrant, speaking to the particular spirit of the times. It has an edge because it is so different. Soon imitators pop up everywhere. It becomes a fashion, something to conform to, even if the conformity appears to be rebellious and edgy. This can drag on for ten, twenty years; Nothing in culture escapes this deadening dynamic. We may not be aware of it, but we suffer from the dead forms and conventions that clutter our culture. It does, however, help you not to react unnecessarily strongly. Balance begins with the words you use to describe your experiences to yourself and others. For instance, consider the nine examples I gave above of common cartoon-world thoughts. Here are some ways we might restate them in accurate language. Your physiological feelings come from more places than just your thoughts. It is possible, after all, to have completely peaceful thoughts but still feel physiologically agitated or irritable. We know that how you feel can be influenced by your thoughts, but your thoughts do not determine how you feel altogether. The reality is that multiple factors have an impact on your feelings. However your feelings arise, though, the fact is that they influence the way you communicate, so it's wise to be mindful of them. It doesn't take deep self-reflection to recall times when you've snapped at others or responded more intensely than the situation warranted. It's not like we, as women, adopt an attitude toward sex that stays the same from year to year, and guy to guy. There are slutty periods, there are prudish periods, there are times when it's safe for us to have sex with reckless abandon and times when it isn't.

Listen to yourself, check in with yourself, and learn to trust yourself to make the right decisions. It's time for women to put themselves firmly and irrevocably in the driver's seat of their own sex lives. And then we can really enjoy it, completely on our own terms. Because if we're being really super-honest here, isn't sex, or at least the possibility of sex, one of the most exciting parts about dating? Yes, it is. According to an ABC News poll, about 29% of Americans say it's okay to have sex on the first date. If you meet someone, want to have sex with him right away, and feel like it's safe both physically and emotionally for you to do so, go forth and prosper. This problem, however, sets up a tremendous opportunity for creative types, one epitomized by the example of Martha Graham. The process goes as follows: You begin by looking inward. You have something you want to express that is unique to yourself and related to your inclinations. You must be sure it is not something that is sparked by some trend or fashion, but that it comes from you and is real. Perhaps it is a sound you are not hearing in music, a type of story not being told, a type of article that does not fit into the usual tidy categories. Perhaps it is even a new way of doing business. Let the idea, the sound, the image take root in you. Sensing the possibility of a new language or way of doing things, you must make the conscious decision to play against the very conventions that you find dead and want to get rid of. Martha Graham did not create her work out of a vacuum; She took their conventions and turned them upside down. You are human, after all, and it's perfectly natural to misread interactions or respond more emotionally than necessary. When you feel agitated or irritable, your emotional center is activated, and it can be challenging for you to exude patience.