Joan lunden

Let’s face it; life is tougher than we thought! The fantasies we may have had about wedded bliss, career opportunities and all our dreams coming true, aren’t happening the way we thought.  It’s high time we take the slice of life we’ve been given and work with what we’ve got! This is exactly what Joan Lunden did. Yes, it’s easy to look at someone who makes millions of dollars, dresses well and has a great public persona and think they’ve got it all, but there is much more than meets the eye.

Underneath the polished surface of her life, there are many cracks, probably as many as in our own. So what do we do when reality and the actuality don’t mesh?  We take action.  And that’s what Joan Lunden does.  She steeps herself in self-help and motivational material, practices conscious breathing and extraordinary self-care.  She also takes responsibility for her actions and has become aware that attitudes are contagious.

She never really let on that her strength comes from her inner work, but she certainly used a diligent practice of mindfulness and awareness to strengthen her resolve. Here’s her story:

Joan grew up in Sacramento California and after a few brief stints in an x-ray lab, a stock brokerage firm and a department store; she applied for a job at a local TV station that was under pressure to hire women. From weather girl to consumer reporter to news anchor, Joan ultimately received a call from New York that stimulated her long involvement with ABC Entertainment. She worked on the streets for a year as a reporter going from crisis to the crazies and learning the ropes. Having applied for the position of co-host of Good Morning America, shedidn’t get it the first go round. It went to Sandy Hill.  Sandy’s tenure was short lived and Joanapplied again.  Imagine sending your resume to ABC for a prime time network position! That, in and of itself, takes guts, determination and a sense of fearlessness.  You know the old saying “No guts, no glory.”   And on the day the network called to formally offer her the position, her gynecologist called with the good news that she was pregnant with her first child. She was about to make history.

Good Morning America became an intimate setting in which millions of American arose each morning to witness the developments in our lives and to watch as the woman of prime time grew into her role as anchor, woman and mother.  Joan blossomed throughout this time.  She shared some stories with me. “ Barbara Walters came onto the set one day after the show. I was breast-feeding Jamie, my eldest daughter, and Barbara just looked at me and said, “If I would have proposed to NBC that I bring my child to work, they would have thought I was out to Mars. Times really do change but some things don’t, Barbara continued to tell me. “ And Joan went on sharing the story with me.  “Barbara then offered me a piece of advice that I never forgot and always used.  She told me that the big boys would get the heavy weights.  The best stories wouldgo to the guys and that’s the way it is. Barbara suggested I accept this scenario, take what I could get and turn each piece into a gem.  That’s exactly what I did and it worked. As I accepted my position and gave it my all, eventually all came to me.  I had to choose my attitude and I chose acceptance, with a smile.  Ultimately, when Charlie Gibson joined the team, we made a pact.  Charlie and I agreed to work together and never against each other.  This allowed us to develop mutual respect and a relationship that invited the viewers into our lives.  When you work with your partner, everyone knows it.  When you work against each other, everyone knows that too. During my seventeen years as co-host of “Good Morning America,” I went through difficult times,” she toldme.  “Not only the grueling 3:30 am wakeup calls and eighty pages of script each morning involving six to eight interviews, I went through a divorce in front  of the entire nation.  I found my self as a single mother of three children and no sense of financial security. I had let go of dependency, and was on my own.  The avalanche of hurtful, harmful and intrusive public coverage of my sorrow saddened me and at that time, I became disillusioned by my fellowman.  But it forced me to be stronger and out of adversity we find our strength.”

Joan’s honesty and simplicity is apparent.  She is full of wisdom and it has all been captured in her books, A Bend in the Road Is Not the End Of The Road and Wake Up Calls, Making the most out of everyday (regardless of what life throws you.) Her personal philosophy has developed over time and she believes that we teach what we most need to learn. She acknowledges that her newest book, Wake Up Calls was her wakeup call to distill the myriad of information that she learned over the years making her own life shift from manageable to magnificent.  In her forward, she comments that her children are her ”Buddha Masters.”  This was a clue to her eclectic approach to life. Her mentors are Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins and Brian Luke Seward author of Stand Like A Mountain, Flow Like Water.” “In his book,” she told me, “he teaches us to have strong convictions and beliefs in ourselves, like a mountain, and to have the flexibility of water to go around any obstacle thatappears in our path.”  She went on to talk about persistence reminding me that, “it is a good trait but more importantly acceptance of an unmovable object and the ability to go around itcan take us confidently along the path of our own lives.  Obstacles must not thwart us, rather we should always take the high road and travel with grace and dignity.”  Her wisdom is deep and she expounds on many subjects. “When someone asks me to do something,” she told me, “my theory is to say yes, and then to figure out how to do it. Believing you can pull it off is half the fun. Doing it is where the exhilaration comes from and the adventure of life will unfold.”

In our discussion, Joan touched upon author Dr. DavidFiscott’s book, Emotional Resilience. She quoted him in anattempt to remind us that,” Our purpose in this world is to find our gift,perfect it, and give it to others.” She persuades us to ask ourselves, what dowe want to do with our lives and to begin reinventing ourselves.  “Dream your dreams,” she encourages, ” thenwork backward to uncover what it will take to get what you want.”  In her book, Wake Up Calls, sheincludes hundreds of quotations from ancient sages to modern teachers.  Her quote from Carl Jung guides uswell.  He says,” Your vision will becomeclear only when you can look into your own heart.  Who looks outside, dreams: Who looks inside, awakens.”  And Joan looks inside all the time.  Her commitment to know herself from theinside out is what gives her the inspiration to persist and peruse.  She uses visualization as a “dress rehearsal,”checking in to see if her attitude is one of exuberance and joyfulness.  Joan shared other approaches to developinginner strength.  “John Kabat-Zinn’sbook, Wherever You Go, There You Are, reminded me that life is not aboutwhat happens to me, but instead, is merely my interpretation of what’shappening.  He also introduced me tomindfulness and breathing.  I thought,”she almost whispered, ”How is someone going to teach me how to breathe?  I do it everyday, all the time.  But there is a way to breathe deeply,” Shecontinues,” That allows us to step back from circumstances and see them more clearly.”  In one of the chapters in her book, “Try Slowing Down,” she quotes Mahatma Gandhi who said, “ There must bemore to life than increasing its speed.” She also references Sydney J. Harris who reminds us that,” The time torelax is when we don’t have time for it.”

All in all Joan Lunden knows how to make the most out of every day.  Yes, she has that looking good feeling good approach to life but she does not have exclusive rights to it.  To the contrary, we can all access the inner passion that drives us to feel whole and complete.  The obstacles are opportunities and the action we take in our lives is the promise that we are to become the hero of our own stories.  So go within and bring forth all your passion to live on purpose and make your difference in the world!


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