Zen Bender. Stephanie Krikorian
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a vision board was based. Stare at a picture of a Ferrari, and soon enough, it will materialize. Its concept—that I could will something to happen with positive thinking—seemed interesting. Initially, I was mostly fascinated by the book’s principle that, if you don’t worry that a burger and fries will make you fat, then it won’t, but scientific and exhaustive personal study had proven otherwise.
But this big idea: Letting go and allowing myself to be swept away by the power of an unseen force—that felt like something I could actually get behind. Jump, and the net will form.
People were anxious to cede control in order to get control of whatever was spiraling in their own lives. It was an interesting contradiction, but The Secret was, in a way, an adult magic wand.
And it, and all the self-help and spiritual books that followed, gave us all something to do.
I wasn’t alone in pondering all that The Secret was offering up. The book became a pop culture phenomenon. It brought self-help and spirituality to the masses, perhaps thanks to Oprah, perhaps based on our need to believe. Years later, Goop picked up where Oprah and early adopters of the Universe and alternative fixes left off, blowing the lid right off the wellness market, making putting jade eggs in one’s vagina basically conventional practice.
The Secret was a moment in time, a defining one indeed, that put what I called hocus-pocus into the mainstream.
All that I learned from that book initially got tucked away in that part of the brain that is filled with seemingly useless information that occasionally comes in handy at random times. I went on my merry, non-spiritual way and on to absorbing whatever else Oprah was talking about.
Any Self-Help Port in a Storm
It started out innocently enough. Right around the time things sort of got tough. That’s often when and why we seek out self-help, because in a way, it’s comfort food for our spirit. It’s a life preserver when nothing else seems to help. Looking back, that’s why I was drawn in.
At 10:30 a.m. on October 31, 2008, my career fell victim to the Great Recession. I was a news producer and journalist and had been working as such for almost eighteen years. After graduation from college, I wrote for a small newspaper, and then, after a year off for graduate school, dove straight into TV news. Until that fateful day when the show I worked on was abruptly canceled.
A year after I lost my job, I found another—albeit less exciting—one, but the damage had been done. “Frayed” would probably best describe my state of existence then. Initially, solace came in an interesting form: that vision board made popular by The Secret a couple of years earlier.
Desperate to find my way back to wherever it was that I was supposed to be, on the back of the steel door in my Harlem apartment, I made a very ad hoc, not-exactly-perfect-in-execution, first-timer’s vision board. I didn’t put a lot of back into it, to be honest—just slapped a few pictures up there, hoping for the best.
On that board, in full view, I used magnets to hang a cutout magazine picture of two Adirondack chairs with pretty pink pillows on them, facing out at a body of water (a.k.a. my future beach house that I would own because renting one wasn’t enough), and a sleek city co-op that was, in my head and on my board, one hundred blocks downtown from the marble-countered, Kohler-fauceted two-bedroom I had just bought uptown. A tear sheet of a handsome male eyeballed me from the back of that door. He was my future husband. And a fit and thin woman working out was never going to be me, but a girl can be delusional, and staring at a skinny person would most definitely make me one, too. Right? Obviously, there was picture of a stack of cash, which I figured I needed to make all of the above materialize.
My vision. My perfect life, as told through magazine cutouts.
It was my starter vision board, the first time I had made one. (I’d later go on to make more.) At the time, I didn’t know it, but I had a stronger vision-board game in me; this vision board was just a surface-scratcher.
Still, I believed that staring at those pictures every day as I left the apartment would surely make them a reality and therefore improve my life dramatically. It was easy to believe.
Believing in unseen forces, of course, meant ignoring that nagging and logical voice in my head that had always served me well. But then, if I could suddenly blame the Universe for a poor life decision when things got tough, I most certainly didn’t have to blame myself.
AFOG (Another Fucking Opportunity for Growth)
There was, of course, more to my frayed self than just the end of my career. That same year, I was also about to turn forty. Plus, I was still single. My middle section had gotten a little thicker than it had been in the past. Like rosé in the Hamptons in August, self-doubt was pouring non-stop into my head.
As my career came to a screeching halt and forty was looming, it increasingly felt like I was walking through waist-deep mud, slowly, unable to get anywhere. Stuck. As I struggled to gain my footing on all fronts, I wondered why everything almost but never quite seemed to happen for me. I worked hard not to compare my life to others’, but I started to feel like I was on the local train and everybody else was on the express.
The problem was that, while I desperately craved a map to somewhere, I didn’t know where exactly that was.
Eventually, my New Age and self-help efforts went next-level. It wasn’t difficult. All I had to do was open my eyes, read a magazine, or listen to a talk show. Suddenly, everywhere I looked there was another fucking opportunity for growth. AFOG.
The Secret had ratcheted things up a few notches. This stuff was fully and readily available. Plus, we were in an economic downturn, and people were feeling desperate. Where does one turn when feeling desperate? Self-help. If you couldn’t find a job, you could always self-improve. That was, after all, my first instinct.
It was not the job market, or the dating pool, or my weight—it was me. There was something wrong with me. There had to be. Which meant self-help books were suddenly the macaroni and cheese of comfort. The world had made a few things in my life feel out of control, so rather than sitting still, I chased a fix.
Like flashing neon signs on the Vegas Strip, the vision board had actually highlighted my shortcomings until, eventually, all I could see were the holes. Apparently, the Universe wasn’t just offering up beach houses. It was offering up a full roster of experts, happy to sell you the way to a better life. Suddenly, self-help began screaming my name, which meant that, despite already having a great life by most measures, I wasn’t maxing out my greatness.
Oprah created a mantra: “Live your best life.” Which surely meant I wasn’t living mine. None of us were, presumably. Just a big world full of humans not living up to our potential. All I saw was everything about myself that couldn’t possibly have been as good as it needed to be. And so—just like a bag of chips—I assumed that, if all those fixes were sitting right there in front of me, then I should most definitely be consuming them. Not doing so seemed downright irresponsible. Or, at least, insulting to Oprah.
Eventually, I decided that if I kept reading more and hiring more coaches and trying new diets I’d 100 percent find not only the map, but also the destination.
And so, for nearly a decade, I went on a high-speed chase with balance, enlightenment, growth, and betterment—over-guruing myself with near desperation in an effort to be the absolute best I could be. I hit the healer circuit hard, like it was my job. It was a noisy ten years that resulted in a couple of major, off-the-rails Zen Benders, but not for one second did I declare a cease-fire between me and the urge to fix me.
Until I finally did. And certainly not in the way, or for the reason, that I would have expected.
A Far-from-Exhaustive List of What I Was Told and Sold on the New Age and Self-Help Circuit
From the Dating Coach: Always wear high heels on a date, and keep the first date to one hour.
From the seminar on Why I’m Single: Keep hair long and shiny to show you’re fertile. Then someone will want to marry you.
From the Life Coach: Make a vision board,