An Interview With Dr. Carla Marie Manly
Time alone leads into my next piece of advice, which is to create a mission statement for your life. No business or organization of any type can be successful if they don’t know who they are and what they want to offer to the world. In fact, the biggest mistake I see in my clients — and this is true for individuals and corporate or nonprofit clients — is a rush to just create content, write a blog post, post a thousand times on social media, sell, sell, sell, or whatever, without having first figured out their purpose and their why.
Growth is an essential part of life, both personally and professionally. Every day presents an opportunity to learn, evolve, and become better versions of ourselves. But how do we seize these opportunities? How do successful writers, leaders, and influencers ensure they are constantly growing and improving? What daily habits, practices, or mindsets contribute to their continual growth? In this interview series, we are talking to authors, leaders, influencers, and anyone who is an authority about “What We Can Do To Grow Every Day”. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Helene Kiser.
Helene Kiser, MA, MS, MFA, is an award-winning writer, editor, teacher, and writing coach. Known as the “writing sherpa,” Kiser created her signature Butterfly Blueprint framework, with which she partners with mission-driven individual and corporate clients on content strategy and brand messaging. You can find her online at www.helenekiser.com.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us your “Origin Story”? Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
My parents were older when they had me, a “bonus baby” ten years younger than my next closest sibling. I spent most of my childhood either in the company of adults or alone with a book in my room or on the low tree branches in our front yard. Apparently, I taught myself to read by age 3, by kindergarten I graduated to classic chapter books, and in second grade became obsessed with biographies and history. So on the one hand I was a bit lonely and out of place with my age peers, but on the other I possessed a rich and varied interior life and exposure to complicated ideas and perspectives that more than compensated.
At any rate, there is no “before” in my lifelong voracious reading habit. Naturally, seeing the world through words, I always wanted to be a writer. My first piece was published in our local library anthology when I was seven years old, and I “published” books on folded and stapled construction paper, which of course I also illustrated. Alas, my artistic skills remain significantly lacking in comparison to my wordsmithing. I envy people who can draw!
My mother was an English teacher who’d begun her career in a rural town’s literal one-room schoolhouse. I “helped” her grade papers, picking up grammatical rules and voice/style nuance along the way. I still think it’s fun to diagram sentences; understanding how parts of speech and syntax work is as delightful to me as is an artist’s color palette of paintbrush types (though I can only assume this to be true, since again, I have zero artistic ability myself).
After my first master’s degree, I applied to both law school and PhD programs. I was accepted to both, but ultimately decided to pursue an MFA — the terminal fine arts degree in writing — instead. To my way of thinking, PhD’s just analyze, and while I would have made an excellent attorney, I felt called to pursue my passion. We only get one life!
Can you tell us a bit about what you do professionally, and what brought you to this specific career path?
There are two distinct facets to my career. I’m a working creative writer, and in addition to my first book Topography (my second book, a memoir tentatively title One Lucky Man, is currently in manuscript), I’ve published in dozens of big-name commercial outlets and literary journals, regional magazines, trade/university publications, broadsides, anthologies, and reference publications.
Second, I work with mission-driven individuals and corporate clients as a writer, editor, and coach — aka, writing sherpa — on written communication that elevates their brands. From discovering voice to developmental manuscript editing to shaping authentic copy, I think I’ve done everything AND the kitchen sink in my more than 30 years of experience.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion about Personal Growth. To make sure that we are all on the same page, let’s begin with a simple definition. What does “Personal Growth” mean to you?
When we consider a butterfly, we look at its development stages. From egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to the brightly colored butterflies we all love fluttering around our gardens. Each phase metamorphosis is distinct. Yet, the butterfly’s purpose was always to fully become that butterfly. To become more itself every day. When I think of personal growth, I think about each of us fulfilling our destiny and purpose: becoming more ourselves. Living with intention. Mission-driven.
Why do you believe that it’s important to commit to growing every day?
Some disagreement exists on what age humans reach maturity, physically and mentally, but the oldest estimate claims full development is complete at around 25 years old. Can you imagine what it would be like if none of us ever progressed in our thinking and imagining — the true business of fully living — beyond that age?
The opposite of growth is stagnation. Like the Dead Sea, hopelessly landlocked away from a flow in or out. Maybe we’re happy with where we are in one area or another, but we always have something to learn, to experience, to appreciate and understand. Being intentional about how we spend our time and our “one wild and precious life” (thanks, Mary Oliver) ensures that we’ll never have things left unsaid or life left unlived. It’s about fullness, really.
What are the key upsides for those who mindfully engage in a journey of personal evolution?
Honestly, being strategic and intentional about our lives, not just our work, means nothing is ever lost or wasted. Of course there is much we can’t control, but we always have control over how we handle and react to what happens to us — good, bad, or indifferent. And at the very least, those of us who choose to live this way, who choose a mission-driven life, are never ever bored.
When we stop evolving in intentional ways, what do you think are the biggest downsides?
Stagnation itself is the biggest downside. If there’s nothing else to learn or to do or to simply enjoy, we may as well just lie down and call it quits. The path of least resistance is to just go through the daily motions of life. But that’s not living.
There’s a big difference in being serious about ourselves — sincere, honest, intentional — and taking ourselves too seriously. Life should be fun!
What specific practices, if any, do you have in place to ensure that you don’t become stagnant in life?
It sounds contradictory, but I a daily mind clear out of what might be called “intentional boredom.” The idea came to my mind after reading an article on, of all things, how live theater was an important historical and cultural archive. What did people used to DO in moments of forced inactivity before cell phones and social media? Waiting at doctor’s offices, sitting on the train, even just waiting to cross the street.
I began my own experiment, just sitting quietly and doing…nothing. First thing in the morning, I sit up in bed, hold a mug of coffee, lean against the headboard, and let whatever comes to me come. No reading, no scrolling, no music, no nothing.
At first, I had to fight to the death to keep my to-do list at the door. Then, I got itchy to at least pick up my journal. But eventually, after weeks and now years, it’s a practice I crave.
The consequence of this forced boredom is always an explosion of ideas. Images, answers to sticky structural problems, bits of dialogue. Though I am actively NOT writing, my mind is free to make up its own games, almost like a waking dream. Long-forgotten events and people come to me, problems are solved, new ideas are formed. It’s amazing.
Even on mornings when I know I’ll be rushed, I set my alarm early so that I can have the time I need to be “bored.” Similar to meditation yet completely different. Instead of controlling my mind, I let it play.
Is there any particular area of your life where you are most committed to growth (e.g., spiritually, professionally, socially, internally, relationally)?
I’ve been committed to all of those categories at one time or another, but my chief current focus is to finish my manuscript. This book is the one thing I can think of that leaving unfinished would be a deathbed regret. Because it’s a memoir about the pain of a literally life-changing experience, it’s a little of all of these areas!
If you could offer five tips to readers on how to stimulate and perpetuate self-growth, what would they be?
1 . Be protective of your time alone. Not just protective, but aggressively so. Schedule regular, consistent time for it just like you would any non-negotiable appointment or meeting or deadline. By time alone, I don’t just mean “time away from others,” although that’s obviously part of it! Rather, time alone is mental space to be with yourself, to get to know yourself better. No social media, no TV, no books (that’s a hard one for me!) Go on a walk — without your headphones. Sit at a café table with a mug of coffee and people watch. Take a chair to the beach at sunrise or sunset. Whatever you’re doing doesn’t matter as long as your mind is free to think its own thoughts, ramble through the forest or the meadow of your mental space however it chooses, without input from the noise of information and electronic distraction constantly forcing itself upon us. Think of it this way: we can’t stay close to our loved ones if we aren’t intentionally, fully present with and attentive to them in the here and now sometimes. How can we stay close to ourselves if we don’t regularly fill that cup?
2 . Time alone leads into my next piece of advice, which is to create a mission statement for your life. No business or organization of any type can be successful if they don’t know who they are and what they want to offer to the world. In fact, the biggest mistake I see in my clients — and this is true for individuals and corporate or nonprofit clients — is a rush to just create content, write a blog post, post a thousand times on social media, sell, sell, sell, or whatever, without having first figured out their purpose and their why. What’s your zone of genius? Your calling? What are you all about at the core? Put simply: what truly, deeply, makes you happy and fulfilled? People ask kids all the time, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” But once we reach adulthood, no one asks that question anymore. We fail to ask it of ourselves. Who and what do you want to be? Sky’s the limit! What are your guiding principles? Your hopes and dreams? Start each week by reviewing it, to remind yourself of your inner purpose. But don’t stop there! Regularly update your mission statement, say every six months to annually. Sooner and we haven’t evolved enough, longer and we might evolve so much we’ve lost the map entirely. Interrogate your statement. Is it still true? Has it shifted? Always be clear on both where you are and where you are going.
3 . Remember that you can claim the freedom to genuinely not care what others think. Not in the sense that you can just “do whatever you want” without a care for others. I’m not advocating anarchy! But in the sense that, does it matter if you don’t want to be like everyone else? I think so many of us, myself included sometimes, get stuck in the middle school mentality that different is bad or something to be mocked. That we should keep quiet about anything that makes us unusual or “weird.” The reality is that it’s just the opposite. It’s ok to not be someone’s cup of tea. Not everyone is yours. Be free to be you! Lean into it. You are the only you that ever was or ever will be. Say yes to what brings you joy and no to what unduly burdens you. I had the pleasure of interviewing the late, great, writer Charles Simic shortly after he was awarded the Pulitzer. In answer to my question of whether he had any regrets or wished he could do something differently, he said that he wished he’d ordered a second plate of fish soup at a little café he visited years ago. Our own answers should always be a similar scale, never larger.
4 . Often, we get the advice to “step out of your comfort zone,” and that can be good advice. But I say from experience it can also be paralyzing, especially when we sense, even subconsciously, that something is out of our comfort zone because it’s quite simply not who we are. Yet, never taking a chance on something is the worst kind of self-diminishment. One weekend, I attended a monster truck rally on Friday and the Met Opera on Saturday. Talk about whiplash! Both experiences were life-enriching, and neither was what I’d expected, at least not entirely. I’ve tried hobbies like cross-stitch and knitting, batik, horseback riding. None ended up being for me, but each attempt taught me to know myself even more deeply than I had before. Your mother was right: how do you know you don’t like it when you haven’t even tried it?
5 . I’m admittedly biased here, but my final piece of advice is to read — widely, and as much as possible. Have you been to a library or bookstore lately and just browsed the shelves? Recommendation and bestseller lists are fantastic as far as they go, but there’s something about perusing stacks and shelves and displays that can’t be replicated. You never know what will interest you or what you will learn. Even amidst the noise of all the rhetoric and information we’re bombarded with — or maybe because of that bombardment — reading is still the single most reliable way I know to be transported into places, cultures, perspectives, and yes, entertainment, I would never otherwise encounter. The worlds inside my head are a vast tapestry of so much collected knowledge and experience, and I have my lifelong habit of reading to thank. If you don’t like to (or aren’t able to) sit with a book or a Kindle, audio books are just as good, and sometimes better. The Associated Press recently published a study saying that fewer books than ever were being taught in schools. If true, this is a tragedy on so many levels. From time immemorial, people from all walks of life have had their minds opened from one thing: reading.
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/-UdK-n5IH2o
What advice would you give to someone who feels stuck and unsure of how to start their personal growth journey?
No one-size-fits-all solution exists, because we’re all uniquely ourselves. But I think the first step is to carve out the time and space needed to be alone with your thoughts and a notebook. Write down what you’re proud of, what you’d like to improve. What really matters to you — not what “should” matter, but your true priorities, goals, and dreams? Would you like to learn or do something, and is it possible? Imagine the best eulogy possible for yourself, i.e. your life mission, and take one small step to make that a reality.
There are NO small answers, here. Life is made up of microscopic but necessary particles. Being a better friend or neighbor is absolutely as worthy a goal as learning a new language or traveling to a bucket list location. Spending a few dollars on fresh flowers each week for no other reason than because they give you joy is an investment in you.
Are there any books, podcasts, or other resources that have significantly contributed to your personal growth?
Way too many to name. I will never outlive my books-to-be-read pile. But it’s hard to beat a good quality journal and a pen that writes smoothly. E.M. Forster’s quote speaks to me: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Writing in a physical journal, not on a computer, helps me clarify my thoughts. The physical act of writing opens the door to discovery of something new or an “aha!” moment.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I’m not suggesting that we should all hold hands and sing “Kumbayah” or whatever all the time, but I’m grieved by the lack of basic courtesy and compassion I witness. You don’t have to “like” someone to treat them with kindness or at least civility.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
The best place to start is my website, www.helenekiser.com. From there, you can check out some of my writing and services and sign up for my free weekly newsletter.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Photo credits: @Lauren Schoepfer Photography
About The Interviewer: Dr. Carla Marie Manly — clinical psychologist, author, and advocate — is based in Sonoma County, California. In addition to her clinical practice focusing on relationships and personal transformation, Dr. Manly is deeply invested in her roles as podcaster and speaker. With a refreshingly direct and honest approach — plus a dose of humor — Dr. Manly enjoys supporting others in the ever-evolving journey of life. Her novel self-development paradigm builds resilience, emotional intelligence, and self-esteem. Highlighting the importance of loving connection, her work also focuses on helping others create deeply connected and satisfying intimate and social relationships. Working from a transformative model that honors the body-mind-spirit connection, Dr. Manly offers holistic relationship and wellness seminars around the world. An award-winning author, Dr. Manly’s books, The Joy of Imperfect Love, Date Smart, Joy from Fear, and Aging Joyfully highlight her empowering approach and profound expertise. Host of the captivating podcast, Imperfect Love, Dr. Manly offers uplifting guidance on navigating the messy road of life. Her expertise is also regularly cited in media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Forbes, Oprah, Newsweek, NBC, HuffPost, Reader’s Digest, Psychology Today, Parade, GQ, Women’s Health, Architectural Digest, Men’s Health, and more.
Growing Every Day: Helene Kiser On What We Can Do To Grow Every Day was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.