Loretta LaRoche

Loretta LaRoche has been published in many magazines and newspapers, including USA Today, The Boston Globe, First, Woman’s Day, and Self. Her weekly column, “Get a Life,” is published every Monday in The Patriot Ledger’s Lifestyle section. Her latest PBS special is Life is Short—Wear Your Party Pants, which is the title of her newest book. Loretta has also appeared as a guest expert on CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS.

• Don’t get drawn into the trap of doing what everyone else does. If you spend your life trying to do what everyone else does, you’re going to be a mightily unhappy, boring person.

• I’m always reminding people that the one constant you can count on is that things happen—and usually when you’re not in the mood for them.

• Buy something silly and wear it. A Groucho Marx nose, mustache, and glasses are my favorite. When the stress seems unbearable, when you’ve really reached the limits of your endurance, go into a bathroom, look into the mirror, put on your glasses, and ask yourself, “How serious is this?”

• Most of us don’t realize what an impact we have on the world around us. A positive energy field is going to affect others in a beneficial way, even if you don’t notice it at first. Why not ask for a standing ovation once in a while? When you go in to work, say, “I came in—it wasn’t easy. I could have gone somewhere else. I’d like a standing ovation.”

Loretta LaRoche has the uncanny ability to use humor to help us relieve the stress of our everyday lives. She has done it through her books, her PBS specials, and her live performances. If you have access to one of her six award-winning PBS specials, I would recommend it as the place to start. If not, I would suggest reading or listening to Life is Not a Stress Rehearsal: Bringing Yesterday’s Sane Wisdom into Today’s Insane World.

LaRoche believes that, for most of us, life has become a pressure cooker of unrealistic expectations. Life Is Not a Stress Rehearsal takes an amusing and stress-reducing look at the gizmos, self-help regimens, and the talking heads that are designed to make our lives better but in truth frequently contribute to making us feel powerless, stressed out, overwhelmed, and inferior.

In her book, LaRoche shares her view of self-help books and her refreshing brand of humor:

There seems to be no limit to the stuff that people will write books about. Something like three thousand new self-help books get published every year. Who would have guessed that we could have so many things wrong with us? The subjects just get more and more narrow. Books for adults with depression. Books for women on running with the wolves. Books for people with borderline personality disorder. I really saw a book the other day that promised to cure people of attention deficit disorder. Excuse me, but how are you going to get someone who has attention deficit disorder to SIT STILL LONG ENOUGH TO READ A BOOK?

Loretta shows us how to step back and see the insanity for what it is, hopefully laughing our way to become calmer, saner people. Some chapters include:

• Listening to the Inner Grandmother

• A Three Dollar Bottle of Water!: On Consumerism and Common Sense

• Who Cares? You’re Gonna Die Anyway: On Status and Power

• Who Wants to Be an Idiot?: On Mass Media and Choice

Life Is Not a Stress Rehearsal is a breath of fresh air for everyone who’s suffocating in our crazy, stressed-out world. The book is also available in tape form for entertaining listening.

ADDRESS: Loretta LaRoche & Company Corporate Offices

50 Court Street

Plymouth, MA 02360

PHONE: 1-800-99-TADAH or 508-746-3998

http://www.lorettalaroche.com/