Lisa Lampanelli jokes in her new EPIX standup special that she’s spent so much time on her personal self-improvement she thinks it would be fun to be a spiritual guru.
With that in mind, I asked the comic to answer some questions as if she were a life coach.
“I’m great at this, by the way,” she said. “Get ready to have your world rocked, bitch.”
Here goes. Read my full Lisa Lampanelli interview here.
What’s your go-to for banishing self-doubt and defeatist thoughts?
I have advised people, and this is really a great tool, you take a notebook and you write on the left-hand side of the page the thought you’re having and what’s leading to it.
[Let’s say] your self-defeating thought is: I can’t get a better job.
A self-defeating thought always comes in when you are feeling bad about yourself or something has just happened—somebody said something to you, you’ve had a bad memory, a bad dream. Write down what led up to it.
Then on the right-hand side of the page you write a different story based on what the non-self-defeating part of you would say.
So basically: I’ll never get the job I want. The other story would be, I will do my best to get the job I want. I’ll take all the action it takes to get it. And the universe will give me the job that I’m supposed to have.
That’s a way of saying you’re going to work hard for it but you’re going to detach from the outcome. So it will really happen as the universe wants it to happen.
Sometimes the thing you think is best for you isn’t best for you, which we’ve all seen when we think we want a certain job or boyfriend or something and it ends up to be wrong for us. So I think that’s a good exercise just to get started in rewriting your story.
We now have gay marriage but we also have divorce. Any advice since you’ve experienced both marriage and divorce?
I would say always get a divorce before somebody does something that will make the divorce miserable.
First of all, only get married to someone who you think would be great during a divorce. I was lucky enough when I got my divorce from Jimmy. I already knew he was a good guy so we wouldn’t have a problem having a decent, amicable divorce.
So always pick somebody who’s going to be good during a divorce even though you don’t ultimately want one. And then I would say always get out before somebody does something stupid like cheat, lie or steal. Just recognize that it’s not working, recognize adding someone new into the picture is not going to solve it and it’s going to only make matters worse and muddy the waters.
Just get out, have a conversation and don’t just do a dick move like cutting all your hair off and hoping that he brings it up.
By what age should you know what you want to do with your life?
It doesn’t matter. There’s no rule. I think what happens is I only know what I want to do with the rest of my life this year.
It kind of dawned on me last year around this time what I want to do moving forward. I would have never thought of it 10 years ago, five years ago, one year ago.
People change careers now, I think the statistics are four times in their life. It used to be people would be lifers at a company. In our generation it’s OK to have different careers.
I’ve been a journalist, I’ve been a teacher, I’ve been a DJ and I’ve been a comedian. And I’m eventually probably going to phase it into some kind of funny motivational speaking, some kind of humorous motivational speaking. Who knows? Playwriting.You shouldn’t force anything; just go with whatever in your gut gives you a good feeling of productivity, purpose and joy.
My partner sleeps in the raw. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it, but what do you think?
I think it depends on their age. If you’re over 40, shower in a robe; you’re disgusting. Always keep your clothes on. Do not torment your partner by making him look at your hairy ball sack. It’s awful. It’s disgusting. Your ass doesn’t look as good as it did at 20. I don’t care how good you think you look, you’re heinous. So keep the clothes on and stop it and stop forcing us to close our eyes 24 hours a day.
What is your advice for women over 40?
If you’re single, do not despair. The right one will come along if you work on yourself. Job wise, don’t worry about it. Stop trying to take over the world. Do whatever makes you happy. If it’s sitting around all day God bless you. If it’s a hobby, God bless you.
And stop micromanaging your kids. They’ll be fine. Don’t worry. There’s not a lot of chance your kid is going to get date raped, because Bill Cosby is nowhere near them.
Advice for women under 40?
Stay away from the men over 50 because we need them.
What’s the best diet?
Any one you’ll stick to. They say that about exercise too. Anything you’ll stick to is the one you should do.
I would always torment myself because I hated exercise. … And I’m still struggling with that because I hate to move. I’m sitting right now. I’m skinny and there’s a dent in my seat. Do you understand how much I sit on a couch to dent the seat at this weight? I love to sit. So just if you can find something you like to do, get your ass out and do it.
I’m treading water in my life. What are the best steps to make things happen?
There’s this tool that they teach us at Kripalu, which is a yoga center. They teach how to do yoga off the mat, meaning yoga in your life. You can act yoga in your every day life, not just when you’re doing yoga.
So there’s this thing called NRR, which is Notice, Relax and Realize. If you’re doing yoga, if you notice your posture is wrong, you relax and breathe then you realign, which is your realign your position.
So in your life you have to do the same thing. Say you’re noticing that you’ve been treading water and you want to get unstuck, so you would notice what you don’t like about your life and I would write a list about all the things that you notice that do not bring you the feeling you want, which for me is that I want a feeling of peace.
I would notice the things that aren’t bringing me the peaceful feeling I want and notice what’s not working, relax through it—meaning don’t beat yourself up. Regroup means really not insulting yourself, and then realign. Take the things that you think you can work on in whatever order that you want to change and what will bring you that feeling.
If it’s like a relationship you hate, you notice it, you relax through it and you realign, asking yourself questions. Do I need to let this relationship go? Do I need to make a sound argument with my partner and see if we’re both on the same page anymore? Maybe time has run out on it.
So I would use that NRR trick to really get down to what you need to change in your life and sort of in the order that you need to. Because all isn’t lost. We always think, “Well, one thing is off and everything sucks.” But it’s usually just a couple things and once we tweak them and work with them, your life could be just like turned around.
Advice for giving blow jobs.
I don’t know, ask a gay guy. I’m terrible.