I was chatting with a reader of my recent book (Unorthodox Success, Secret Shame) and they shared something with me. “Reading about you wrestling with your shame made me reflect on where I had shame in my own life. I realized I’ve been too ashamed to admit I’ve been in an abusive relationship. I was too ashamed to admit it to anyone, including myself. Once I realized that, I left my boyfriend.”...
I’ve realized the words I have the hardest time hearing are the ones I want to hear the most. Of the impact I made simply by showing up and being me. Every day I find ways to do that, but I’ve begun to notice if you actually remark that you were impacted the way I wanted, I have a hard time hearing it. I have a very re-enforced habit of self-validation. I don’t need anyone to tell me I’m being...
My youngest, Connor, had a pretty clear idea of how he wanted to dress for Halloween this year. An anime inspired “Cat Maid”. My wife, Robin, helped him create the costume. And then in was time to take it to school for Halloween this past Friday. Connor was happy and excited to wear it, and of course there’s the risk of what can happen at school around the other kids. Later that...
This past week I was reconnecting with a colleague and she shared her difficulty with scheduling creative time. “I find I fill it with busy work, not particularly creative”, she said. I realized in that moment I never schedule creative time. I simply allow myself enough free, unscheduled time, to seize the creative spark when it hits. For example, today, as I’m writing this, I have a single thing...
This past month I was volunteer part of a team putting on a large personal growth event. “Chris, you’re an amazing speaker. When you’ve spoken in the past, you’ve always had the biggest turnouts. You said you want to increase your impact at the event so we’ve come up with an opportunity for you to do that by coordinating the speakers for this event”, I was asked. Yes, “on paper”, it makes sense...
(Chris’ note: This article was hard for me to write and share. I’ve realized I can be vulnerable about all sorts of challenges in my life, past and present, but the one thing I get scared to do is talk about my successes. I know this is fueled partly by my complex relationship with money, how I value myself, and societal lessons that no one likes a braggart. And at the same time I...
My wife and I have been making incredible progress in our couples’ therapy. We started it not to save or repair our relationship, but to “up level” it. Both of us had a goal, of imagining 5 years from now looking back and realizing we had grown in ways that we didn’t know possible when we started. We’re a year into the weekly therapy, and things are starting to snowball. I didn’t realize how much...
I can’t believe it but this is the 200th article I’ve written for my blog (now the Frolic 100). Committing myself to writing once per week to share my wisdom with the world was the very first step I took in my recovery from my imposter syndrome crisis. My website (chrisfrolic.com) was a literal blank page for several years after I left the stage hypnosis business. I sat in the...
“You’re polarizing, but I’m really into you”, I was told this by someone in my circle recently. They didn’t mean it as an insult, and I didn’t take it that way, but it was an interesting comment to be on the receiving end of. I sat with it for a moment, and then I realized how OK I was hearing it. There is nothing I’d want to do different about how I show up these days. I find moments of feeling...
This summer my family was invited to stay for a weekend at the summer camp my oldest kid normally goes to. Because of covid they’ve been unable to operate as normal for 2 summers. As a way to do something, they invited a handful of families to enjoy their property, in a socially distant manner. I haven’t done anything or gone anywhere since covid has started, so this was a really nice offer that...
I recently shared a fear of mine that I experience every single time I host a Zoom event. There’s a moment, maybe for a few minutes, as I sit ready but before people connect, that I wonder if anyone will show up. That I’ve become aware of this voice is progress. That I speak it is progress. AND it is still present. It was present last week during my book release. Dozens of people...
This past week I was inspired to complete my next book. There’s a feeling I get sometimes, of “Fait Accompli”, and knowing that something will happen with complete confidence. I sensed it, and decided to take it on fully. I’ve had some clarity recently on who it is I want to help. In the end, it’s always a version of me. I’m the greatest expert on myself. I...
Pinball has been a hobby of mine for almost 10 years. “A world under glass” is often how each game is described. There’s something really engaging about watching all the physical interactions of the ball, as it moves around the playfield, up ramps and down again, getting rocked around by pop bumpers, the lights flashing in your face, the “clackity clack” noise of all the solenoids firing. The...
Back in 2005 I retired from being a full-time DJ and rave promoter and started a new pursuit – comedy stage hypnosis. I was driven simply from having had an experience years earlier of being one of the volunteers on stage and wondering “What the hell just happened?”. As my DJ career wound down, I knew I needed to find something else. I decided to indulge in my curiosity and take...
My wife, Robin, and I have been doing weekly couples therapy for the past year. We started just before the covid lockdowns hit in March 2019 and we still see our therapist together on Zoom every week. Our goal was after over 20 years together, we both aspired to grow our relationship to a place we don’t even know exists. It will only be knowable when looking back. I want to look back 5 years from...
At the depths of my crisis, my acute imposter syndrome, my overwhelming anxiety, it got to the point where I felt you could hold a gun to my head and order me to do the work I needed to do, and it still wouldn’t get done. You would have to kill me and I would accept my death. The fact that I was making millions of dollars during this same time period compounded everything to me. I couldn’t...
There’s a feeling I trigger often in people. Maybe you’ve experienced it yourself. When you’ve been in the audience for one of my events, one of my Zooms, read one of my articles, or watched a video of mine. I didn’t even realize I was doing it, until very recently. It was instinctive in me, I make myself feel good when I do it, without realizing it. My superpower is: I elicit awe in people. I do...
I used to carry so much shame about my failures. I never spoke them. I hid them from the world. I projected my strengths and hid my weaknesses. I only spoke about my victories. Yes, that sort of works, and it will impress some types of people, but at some point it just wasn’t working for me anymore. It fed my imposter syndrome. My list of failures I carried like the chains the character Marley...
I can’t remember when I first had the idea for my memoir, Requiem for my Rave. I realized at some point I had such a unique story and so much mayhem, it could fill a book. I think it was only as my DJ career was winding down did I realize I had an “ending” now and could start thinking about the book. In 2005 I spoke publicly about it for the first time, of my intention to write it. I started the...
Every time I get caught in a thinking trap about what I’m thinking I “should” be doing or am supposed to be doing, it’s because I’ve fallen into comparing myself with other people. I’ve never sold a company. I don’t know how to “exit”. Everything I’ve ever done in the past I ran until I was complete and I moved on and did something else. I abdicated instead of delegated and reduced my role...
At the worst of the depths of my imposter syndrome I felt like Bernie Madoff. I had fooled the world, or at least that is what I thought. It was only a few years ago, as I looked for things to do with myself, I didn’t even feel qualified to judge a high school business competition. Seeing those teenagers in their suits and ties, future MBA students, and here I was, the high school drop out...
I recently was watching the movie Kill Bill on Netflix. I saw it when it was new and was enjoying revisiting it. There was a scene that jumped out at me with new gravitas. It was a scene between “Bill” (played by David Carradine) and “The Bride” (played by Uma Thurman). This is a transcript of the monologue from that scene. Bill As you know, l’m quite keen on comic books...
I’m really practiced at gratitude. It’s with me all the time. I took an entire year to practice gratitude and that lesson has stayed with me in an automatic way. These past couple of weeks there’s been a lot of articles and discussions marking the anniversary of when everything changed from covid. My local newspaper had a headline that I found particularly striking:...
After writing for my blog for over 3 years and 170 articles, I have come to some truths about myself. I value peace and freedom in my life above everything.I’m in a privileged place where I don’t have to do anything (I recently started thinking of myself as “retired”).I live a decelerated life.I like using technology, but try to avoid being used by it. That means I don’t use any social media...
By 2012 my life was on a trajectory I hadn’t experienced before. Real financial stability. I had huge monthly dividends arriving, had moved out of my apartment, had a bank account flush with cash and for the first time in my life nothing to worry about. There was one fly in the ointment though – my brain was so conditioned to worry, to my precarious life, to living on the edge, that...