Strong Looks Better Naked

by Khloé Kardashian

  I thought that was a real dick thing to do, but I also told my girlfriend that she had no right to be pissed. She had told him she loved him only because she wanted to hear him say it back. It didn’t come from the heart, and in fact she wasn’t even sure she loved him. She was testing him because she was worried about getting too deeply involved and getting hurt. That’s no way to live your life. Taking emotional risks is scary, sure, but the thought of living without risk should scare you more.

  I know this from personal experience. I always tried to be a really tough girl. I had feelings and wouldn’t acknowledge them, and my life changed for the better when I finally allowed myself to be vulnerable. To close your heart might protect you, but it’s not really living. And trust me, if you get hurt, it’s not the end of the world.

  I know I’m different, and I embrace it. I’m a little old school, absolutely. I don’t have a problem being submissive to a man—and by submissive I mean cooking his meals, loving him up, and taking care of him emotionally. I don’t think that makes me weak. On the contrary, it shows that I’m strong enough and secure enough to be exactly who I am.

  Mostly, though, I like the fact that I’m honest with myself and with the people around me. I don’t play games anymore, and it makes me crazy when I see my girlfriends doing it. “Hello! Grow up! We’re not children anymore!”

  The Art of Romance

  I have one friend who is a hopeless romantic. She’ll meet a guy and ask me how many days she should wait before calling him. I tell her I don’t get it. If you feel like calling a guy, call him. Or a guy will text her and she’ll say, “I have to wait twenty minutes before I text him back.” And I’m shocked. “Why? Who made up that stupid rule? When I get a text, if my phone is next to me, I’ll text back right away, if not sooner. How does that reflect badly on me? How does that make me weak?”

  She doesn’t seem to understand that game playing is a sign of weakness. If you have to play games, you’re obviously not secure enough to be yourself.

  The other thing that makes me crazy is the way some women expect their husbands or boyfriends to read their minds. One of them will say, “I don’t want to tell Chad that I want to go to Santa Barbara next weekend. It’s our one-year anniversary, and he should be able to figure it out, because that’s where we spent our first weekend together.” I think that’s crazy. For one thing, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. What if he doesn’t figure it out on his own? Does that make him a bad person? Of course not! And why do you need him to be a mind reader? Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to say, “Chad, why don’t we go to Santa Barbara this weekend, to the same hotel we went to after we got together?” That would be the exact right way to do it, but some women like to complicate their lives.

  And that’s certainly not the way I do things. I think communication is critical in every relationship, and I’m big on clarity. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t be afraid to ask for a hug if you need a hug. For me, communicating is about putting your cards on the table. I want people to see my cards. And if I need something from them, I will tell them.

  And it’s funny, because I got a call from one of my girlfriends while I was working on this section of the book. She had just met a guy who is 100 percent Armenian, and she’s not even part Armenian, and she’s worried because she really likes him, but she knows that many Armenians will not date outside their culture. If she was twenty years old, she wouldn’t care, but she is thirty and is sufficiently interested in him to hope that the relationship goes to a good place, but she doesn’t know what to do.

  So I said to her, “Why not just be honest with him? Ask him if he thinks you have a future together. It’s a legitimate question, and it’s also a way of letting him know that you have feelings for him.”

  I don’t know how that’s going to turn out, and I don’t believe she has said anything to him yet, but even if the guy ends up running for the hills I believe it is the right thing to do. This is about her feelings and her life, and I don’t think she should invest the next two years into a guy who might then turn around and tell her that he can’t marry her because she’s not Armenian. If she broaches it now and it ends, she’ll be doing herself a favor. How would she feel if she invested two years in a guy who never had any intention of marrying her anyway?

  Better to deal with the pain now, today, than to have to deal with it two years from now, when it will be a hundred times worse. And I’m not saying that’s going to happen! I sure hope it doesn’t—I hope this Armenian turns out to be the man of her dreams—but I’m just saying it might. And you know what? It could happen anyway, because she can’t control his honesty, but she can certainly control her own.

  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to know where you stand in a relationship. Every relationship involves risk and uncertainty, but you can minimize it with honesty. Honesty is a good way to put your cards on the table and to look out for yourself. And if you aren’t looking out for yourself, who is?

  Brad Johnson

  Pastor

  California Community Church

  Agoura Hills, CA

  Whenever you make a bad choice in life, whenever you look back with regret, it’s important to remember that life is about second chances. From a perspective of faith, I believe the message of Christ is that anybody can have a fresh start. God specializes in second chances, which is a foundational principle of the Christian faith: Nobody is ever finished, the story is never over. I really, truly believe that.

  Unfortunately, people tend to get stuck in their former chapters. “Oh, that was a crappy part of my life.” “That was a part I’m sad about.” “That chapter’s where I got hurt.” They fundamentally cannot move forward because they keep rereading past chapters, and it keeps them from writing new chapters. And when you’re busy living in the past, the present is going to pass you by.

  Everyone has pain. Everyone struggles. We all make bad choices, we all have regrets, and we all suffer. But things change. It is inevitable. The pain will lessen in due course, often sooner than you can imagine. And while it’s both healthy and appropriate to grieve, to sit quietly with your pain or anger, it’s just as important to let go—to move forward into the future.

  Just make sure you learn from those experiences. Somebody once said, “If you make a mistake, you can only do it once, because if you do the same thing again it’s no longer a mistake; it’s a choice.”

  • • •

  I have made my share of mistakes and more. When I was a pastor, for example, I was unfaithful to my wife and I lost my marriage and my ministry. I hurt a lot of people and felt horrible, and I decided to quietly disappear. I did not want to be in the ministry again—I didn’t think I deserved it—and I didn’t want to be in the public eye again.

  For a time, I thought I was destined to spend the rest of my life wallowing in shame and guilt. I fell into a deep depression. I went from a solid middle-class life to the verge of homelessness. Then I landed a job making $8.25 at Starbucks and was thrilled by the opportunity. I brought a good attitude to the job and began to feel productive again, and that led to other part-time jobs. Slowly, one step at a time, I began to find my way back. That was the key: to be positive, to be hopeful. Not to wallow in and become destroyed by regret, but to accept with gratitude the small miracles that came my way.

  While I was in the process or rebuilding my life, I got a call from Khloé’s mother, Kris Kardashian. She told me that she felt God was leading her to open a church in her area of California, a church that was redemptive and believed in forgiveness and grace and second chances, and that—knowing my story—she felt I would be the best person to lead that church.

  I saw that phone call from Kris as a sign of God’s love. He wanted me to know that I had not been abandoned, and that there were people out there who still believed in me and were ready to lead me out of the valley and back into the light.

  I was very moved. One of the most important lessons I took from the exper
ience is that anyone who has been to a dark and difficult place has to learn to reach out to people who are struggling with their own challenges. It is our responsibility to help others find their way through the tough times. That is the foundation of compassion. The world is full of flawed people, and not all of them have your best interests at heart, but it’s important to approach everyone with love. It’s easy to be jaded and cynical, but that’s a hard way to live. It’s better to give people the benefit of the doubt, to take another chance on relationships and on love. It’ll make you a little more vulnerable, certainly, but it will open you up to a richer, fuller life.

  In every life, there is struggle. No one is immune from pain and suffering. But it won’t last. Life moves forward. The circumstances will change. This applies to both the bad feelings and the good. Nothing lasts forever. When you think about this, the only moment you really have is the present, and you have to learn to enjoy it. This is what people mean when they talk about living in the now. You take the lessons you’ve learned from the past, both good and bad, and you move forward. But don’t be in too much of a hurry. At the end of the day, all you really have is the present moment. If you can learn to live without regret about the past, and without too much anxiety about the future, you will begin to truly live.

  As I said earlier, we all encounter defeats, but we must never be defeated. Every day is a clean page; every day is another opportunity to write a new story. It’s your story. Write the story you want to live.

  Nothing Lasts Forever

  My mother went through her own version of hell, and I hope she doesn’t mind that I use her as an example. When I was too young to know what was going on, O. J. Simpson was charged with murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. It was billed as the Trial of the Century, and my mother had a very personal stake in it: Nicole had been her best friend.

  Now imagine how she felt when my father, Robert Kardashian, became a member of the dream team that defended O.J. and got him acquitted. He basically helped the man who she believed had murdered her best friend. My parents were no longer married at the time, but my mother went to court almost every day, and she sat there watching her ex-husband trying to save the life of the man who had allegedly murdered Nicole. I am sure that she thought she would never get beyond it, but she did. Less than a year after the trial ended, my parents became close again. My father would often join us for dinner at least once a week, was always there for Thanksgiving and Christmas and birthdays, and regularly played golf with Bruce. After all, they had three daughters and a son to raise, and they had to get beyond the pain and anger for the sake of the family.

  Looking back on that story reminds me of another conversation I had with Pastor Brad. People say, “Nothing lasts forever,” and it’s true. But it’s not as sad as it sounds. When good things fall apart, we’re unhappy and angry and resentful. It’s like we want to look up at the sky and shake a fist at God. But what we lose sight of is that unhappy situations don’t last either. So when you’re in the middle of a breakup or a deep depression, or you feel bad because you got passed over for a promotion, you need to remind yourself that things are going to get better. And that’s not bullshit. It’s the absolute truth. Life moves on, one way or another, and everything changes. The good things don’t last, but the bad things don’t last either.

  I’ll say it again: Nothing lasts forever. Take the Academy Awards, for example. I’ve often wondered what it’s like for those amazing actresses. You hear your name called and you get up there in front of a billion people, probably with tears in your eyes, and someone hands you your Oscar. In your heart you probably already know that this is never going to happen again (unless you’re Meryl Streep); that this is the pinnacle, that this is as good as it’s ever going to get, and that in some ways it’s all downhill from here. But that’s the way life works. Ebb and flow. Up and down. Yin and yang. And if there isn’t another Oscar in your future, there will be other things that will be joyous and exciting in their own way. Not in front of a billion people, obviously, but maybe in front of the people who really matter to you.

  To be strong of mind is to understand and to accept that. And to get to a place where you can accept that, well—just open your eyes. This is the way the world works, a law of nature: Nothing lasts forever. You cannot change that through force of will, and you certainly can’t change it through magical thinking. Accept this and you’re ahead of the game. When something good comes to an end, you won’t be crushed. And when you run into some unpleasantness, you know it’s not going to last. Life is a roller-coaster ride, sure, but if you understand this, you’ll learn to handle the ups and downs.

  Whenever I read a memoir, I am always fascinated by what people went through to succeed. Half the time you can’t believe they survived! It teaches you that the people who make it are the ones who hang on, even when the storm is at its worst.

  I’ll always remember that line from Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve: “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

  Bumpy, yes—but that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be fun.

  Looking back, and knowing that I still have a lot of work to do on myself, I can honestly say that I feel pretty good about some of the things I’ve managed to change. One thing, for example, is that I’ve always been honest, sometimes brutally so, and even though it comes from a good place I realize that I can come off as pretty harsh. Well, I’m working on that, and I’ve been more careful about my delivery and my choice of words. I’ve noticed the change in me and I hope the people closest to me have noticed it, too.

  I’m also trying to be more patient. Most of my life I’ve been one of those people who doesn’t think instant gratification is fast enough, and that’s not a great way to live. Lately, with great effort, I’d like to think I’m getting a little better at it, but I’m still pretty damn impatient and I know I have a long way to go. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working on it, though.

  I’m still working on getting stronger, too. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. But that’s sort of the point of life, right? When you’re not working on that, you’re not living.

  It’s all about awareness, even self-awareness, which brings us to the big topic du jour, mindfulness. I talked a little about this earlier, about that negative voice in your head that keeps undermining your self-confidence, but this goes a little deeper. This is about trying to be present in every moment of your life, which—not to put too fine a point on it—is probably one of the most challenging things ever.

  I’m working on it, though, and I’m going to keep working on it until I get it right. We live in the age of distraction, and many of our most precious moments pass us by. We’re either thinking about what’s next, living in the future, or obsessing about something that happened earlier in the day or week, living in the past. And the result is that the present goes by without your having been there for it. The past you can’t change; learn from it and move on. As for the future, if you’re always thinking about what’s next you’ll still be thinking about what’s next when you get to where you thought you wanted to be, and suddenly the thing you were looking forward to with such eagerness is gone, too. In short, your inability to be present is making you miss out on your own life.

  In an effort to address this, I’ve tried a few things that are beginning to prove helpful. First, I try not to multitask when I’m with family and friends. (This doesn’t count at work, where multitasking is a necessity!) If I’m having lunch, I try to focus on lunch, and I do my best to ignore my phone. My aunt Shelli has a rule about no phones at the dinner table, and I think this is definitely the way to go. When I’m driving, I’m really driving, and my only distraction is listening to music. (Researchers at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park found that among teenagers there are now more fatal accidents from texting and driving than from drinking and driving, so don’t even think about your phone.) When I’m with a friend, I try to really, truly listen, t
o be fully present, and if my monkey mind starts jumping around, I focus even harder. I call this active listening, and it really works.

  Why does living in the moment make people happier? Because most of our negative thoughts are linked to the past or the future. As Mark Twain said, “I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” What did he mean by that? That he spent altogether too much time obsessing about things that might happen, when in fact he could have let go of that simply by living in the present.

  A lot of noise in life is just that, noise, and you have to figure out which noises you should be listening to. Otherwise you will move from one thing to the next without really appreciating any of it. If you are only half present, life doesn’t register in a deep or meaningful way. And who wants to live half a life?

  Here’s the way I look at it. The past is gone, and the future is going to get here without your help. And unless you learn to be present in the moment, you’re going to miss out on the best life has to offer. Make an effort to be fully present. Your life is richer than you think.

  Part 3

  * * *

  HEART

  Chapter 5

  Be Mindful

  A couple of years ago, I was sitting at home one night, flipping through the channels for something to watch, and stumbled across a recent rerun of KUWTK. In the show, I was having a heated exchange with my mother, and I was shocked by the way I was addressing her. I remember thinking, “Ugh, if that was my kid, I’d smack her.”

  Another time we got into a fight over a radio interview she’d arranged on my behalf. I told her that I wasn’t interested in doing press with anyone who wanted to talk to me about Lamar, and she said I didn’t have to worry because she had prescreened all the questions. “It’ll be easy. Have fun.” The interview went pretty well, but toward the end I got bombarded with questions about Lamar and kept my cool. Later, however, I took it out on my mother. “Mom, what the fuck is your problem? I told you I didn’t want to talk about Lamar!” I don’t even know why I was blaming her, but it was an ugly, thoughtless thing to do. The person who interviewed me had never shown her those questions—interviewers do that all the time—and I was wrong to blame her, especially in that ugly manner. She was gracious enough to accept my apology.