Tiny Buddha

Author: Elena Sonnino

  • Yes, I Do Matter

    Yes, I Do Matter

    “Love yourself like your life depends on it. Because it does.” ~Danielle LaPorte

    Thank you website impersonator. I appreciate you. In fact, you may be one of my best teachers.

    Whoa. What?

    Most people wouldn’t normally think of extending gratitude for someone who steals your words, impersonates your personal story, and uses your images online. Neither did I when I realized that an anonymous source had lifted not just my blog posts, but images of my daughter and specific characteristics of my life on their website.

    Truth be told, I was outraged. This took intent. This took more than just a simple action of copying and pasting a few blog posts.

    I’d only discovered this copycat website by chance. After a month of ignoring what I assumed were marketing emails from my website hosting company, I stopped long enough to pay attention.

    Hadn’t I shut down this website a year ago? Indeed. I had allowed an old blog to go dark without ever realizing that the day after my site went offline, another was born—with not just the same URL, but an author who presented herself with my first name, my past career, and my medical history. The resemblance was remarkable.

    Once the outrage simmered to a low boil, I went into action mode. Google and Facebook became my teachers for cease and desist language and the protocol for a digital takedown. But the more effort I put into wanting to “fight,” I also felt resistance.

    Does it really matter? The pirated site was about to expire anyway—was this really what I wanted to put my energy into? Wouldn’t it take away from my real work? My soul’s purpose? I wondered if maybe this was an invitation to practice acceptance and compassion. Could I just let this go and release the grip on my story?

    The more I struggled with how to feel and what to think, the more detached I became. The more others around me took up the fight, with rage-y anger and thoughts of legal action, the more I retreated into a chorus of “I don’t have the energy for this.”

    It felt too overwhelming. Too daunting. Just too much.

    I didn’t know much that day, but I knew I needed to get myself to a yin yoga class.

    And then it hit me. Or rather, the importance of this lesson found me.

    There I was, supporting myself with elbows pressing into my mat in sphinx pose. Our teacher invited us to allow our bellies to soften toward the earth. At once, it was as if all of the emotions that I’d been trying to resist were leaking out of me. I couldn’t have stopped the tears from flowing if I tried. Drip after drip, the feelings started to spill out. And as they did, I heard a voice from within.

    It does matter. It is important. It is worth your energy. You do matter. You are important. You are worth your energy.

    It wasn’t just about the website that used my first name and life story anymore. I started to feel the flashes of the past move through me.

    The moment that I told myself that my (ex) fiancé cheating on me and leaving me right before my bone marrow transplant was okay because we’d been handed circumstances that we could never have envisioned at a young age.

    The time that I divorced my first husband and made peace with meditation and his wishes because it would just be better for my young daughter if I made things easy.

    Decades of never correcting people when they mispronounced my first name, because really….”I answer to anything.”

    It was as if I was looking at the lifetime of “it doesn’t matter” moments in a mirror, each one, burying my own self-worth even deeper into the ground.

    I matter.

    These two simple words, layered with so much emotion, burst out of my heart through the tears.

    Of all the moments in my life, it took a website impersonator to help me decide that I matter. That I am worth it.

    Perhaps I hadn’t been ready before to find this sense of devotion to my worth. Perhaps the challenges and obstacles of my past were all part of the training that I needed to tend to my wholeness.

    How many times had I relied on the theory that I should pick my battles? Not standing up for what was important because, in the big scheme of things, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

    I’m a mom of a teenager, so picking my battles is par for the course. And I believe that there are, indeed, something things that are better released than forced. But at what point does each decision actually chip away at our own self-worth? How can we be compassionate and empathetic beings while still honoring our worthiness and value?

    At what point do we decide that our hearts are sacred altars that need tending?

    The good news is that a simple and not very legal sounding email did the trick to entice the anonymous website owner to take down images and stories that were mine. And I’m thankful for that. But I’m even more grateful for this gut-punching nudge because the days of self-deprecating not-a-big-deal moments are over. They have to be.

    So many of us wrangle with the beast of mattering and worthiness. I’d even believed that I’d tamed it in the past, but in fact, the thread of stories of making things easier for others or feeling like it would be better to blend into the background was sturdier than I thought.

    It is in these moments of challenge or contrast that we have a choice. To stand up for our self-worth. For our voices. For our stories. To make the decision to finally stand tall in the belief that we matter.

    While picking and choosing our battles might be a powerful parenting tool, we have every right to speak up when someone disrespects us, disregards our needs, or minimizes our feelings. It does matter. And it’s not being oversensitive, rude, or dramatic.

    Every time we speak up and recognize that we are honoring our inner value, we reinforce to ourselves that our feelings and needs are important—that we are important, just as important as anyone else.

    When we believe this, we act like it. We take better care of ourselves. We set healthy boundaries. We listen to the little voice inside that tells us when something isn’t right for us. And we allow ourselves the space to pursue our dreams and reach our potential, which enables us to make a positive difference in the world. The flip side is true as well. The more we act like we matter, the more we believe it.

    It all starts with saying, “Yes, I do matter.” Now, I know I do. Do you?

  • The Simplest Way to Make More Time for What Matters

    The Simplest Way to Make More Time for What Matters

    “We’ve all heard the saying, stop and smell the roses. But it would be far better to be the gardener who grows the roses and lives with them constantly.” ~Deepak Chopra

    What would it take to befriend time? To see time as an ally, a friend even—an opportunity?

    Most of us have a much different relationship with time. One that is based on scarcity. The chorus of “I don’t have enough time” reverberates through conversations, social media channels, and personal mutterings.

    Redefining our relationship with time isn’t like flipping a light switch. But it is a bit like pumping gas in your car.

    I am one of those people that forget to make time to stop at the gas station as the fuel gauge in my car starts to veer towards the red E. I’ve never run out of gas, but the fuel light comes on more than I’d like to admit.

    Why exactly would I ignore this gauge? Because of time. I see that the meter traverses from ½ a tank to ¼ of a tank, and I find myself thinking, “I don’t have time to stop and get gas right now. I’ll stop tomorrow.”

    But tomorrow becomes the next day, and then the day after that. And by that point, the taunting orange light has been activated. Even then sometimes I ignore it, believing that I’m in a rush.

    Except that something funny happens when eventually I pull into the gas station and stop long enough to fill up. The process of putting gas in my car doesn’t take very much time. Though I haven’t timed it, my guess is that from inserting my credit card to activate the machine to replacing the nozzle when I’m done, less than five minutes have passed.

    Five minutes is forever. Minds can be changed in five minutes. Heartbeats can be elevated (or slowed) in five minutes. Smiles can be shared, laughter can fill a belly, and bodies can be hydrated in five minutes.

    In fact, it seems to me that filling up my car with gas offers the perfect reminder of why we need to make time an ally. Cars need gas to function. We, like cars, have our own fuel needs to not just survive, but thrive.

    Beyond food and water, we need play, we need sleep, we need connection, we need love. But too often, we tell ourselves we don’t have time.

    We rush and scramble through the day, moving from one thing to the next, trying to check things off our lists as if productivity is the ultimate indicator of joy. And, more importantly, we tell ourselves that the things we crave will take too much time—time that we do not have.

    What if we did have time? What if the things we crave could fill us up, just like gas fills a car, in just a few minutes? What if we could give ourselves permission to savor the unexpected moments instead of just the big, fancy, planned out ones?

    Maybe instead of needing an hour long nap or workout, we could find fulfillment in a shorter power nap? Or instead of a trip to the gym for a workout, we could feel strong from mini-bursts of movements throughout the day?

    What if we saw time as an opportunity for fulfillment like a friend that invites us to be present rather than using the hours on the clock as mile markers for productivity?

    When I think back to the most heart-filling, nourishing moments of the last few months—or even the last few days—they are the ones that I had to allow myself to receive outside the boundaries and constraints of a schedule. The moments where I allowed myself to move slowly, so slowly in fact, that I had the opportunity to notice the dance of life around me.

    Like when my heart smiled from pausing before I left my home office to hear my daughter singing out loud in the shower. Or when I made time for a thirty-minute yoga practice one evening and remembered that sometimes all it takes is a simple twist to let go of whatever I was holding on to. Or the evening that instead of making a run for it, trying to avoid the rain, my daughter and skipped and jumped in puddles on our way home.

    None of these moments took any great length of time. And yet, had I been rushing, or listening to my thoughts run amok with reminders of how much I had on my to-do list, I would have missed them completely.

    In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks offers the question: “Am I willing to increase the amount of time every day that I feel good inside?”

    So many of us use clocks as measures of progress. How long can I meditate? Can I beat my 5k pace? How many clients can I fit into one day? But these measures ignore all the smaller indicators. The goosebumps on your skin from noticing a sign that reminds you of something you love. Or the peaceful scene that you witnessed that reminded you to take a breath.

    Instead of worrying about a spillover of gas when we pump those few last gallons in our car, how might the day be different if saw time as a way to top ourselves off with fulfillment?

    The Easiest Way to Make Time a Friend Is to Create Space

    Think of it like de-cluttering. What can you release to create more moments to see time as an opportunity? Maybe you need to release expectations or assumptions. Or perhaps you could let go of judgments around what it means to be successful or productive.

    Amplify Abundance

    Just like de-cluttering and release creates space, a focus on what needs to be amplified cultivates abundance. If you are releasing expectations, can you amplify being guided by intuition? Could you amplify stillness by allowing yourself to stop throughout the day to take three breaths? Or six? What might it feel like to amplify nourishment for the mind, body, and soul?

    I’ve heard all of it before. Parents who feel like time isn’t on their sides with schedules and carpools. Or individuals who feel like they are at their best when they are trying to beat the clock. I’ve been there. In my early adult years, I often felt like I was most focused when my schedule was packed and had little time for distraction. But now I wonder.

    Time and fulfillment seem inextricably connected. And I don’t know about you, but life feels much more delicious when you practice time management with your heart and clarity of purpose instead of a to-do list.

  • Why Self-Compassion Is the Key to Living the Life You Want

    Why Self-Compassion Is the Key to Living the Life You Want

    “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” ~Carl Rogers

    When was the last time you stopped trying to improve something about yourself or your life?

    I’ve spent a lot of my life chasing goals. I guess it goes with the territory as a cancer survivor who always felt like she had something to prove, even twenty years later.

    For everything the doctors told me I could not do because of my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (or as a result of the chemotherapy that healed me), I gave my all to accomplish and strive until I’d shown them they were wrong.

    Can’t run a marathon because you’ve incurred lung damage? “You can do anything you set your mind to” was my mantra to run not just one, but five marathons.

    Except that guess what? I was not just a goal setter. I was a perpetually unsatisfied goal setter. No matter what I did, or how much I told myself I was engaging in “healthy striving” as Brené Brown writes, it was never enough.

    I thought that I’d put my goal-setting ways behind me when I found my yoga practice and tried learning to surf.

    These adventures propelled me into a level of inquiry and a journey to find clarity and purpose with determination instead of expectation. It was about the big and little moments, I told myself. The learning, the feedback, the process—dropping attachments to live with more intention.

    In many ways it made sense. I spent eighteen months trying to rid myself of cancer. I was so supremely focused on the final destination of going into remission and then being cured that it seemed superfluous to notice anything that happened along the way. It finally occurred to me that I’d lived most of my life in denial instead of in acceptance—always trying to forge ahead instead of face the present moment.

    But guess what? As much as I tried to walk the walk, there was still a subtle, underlying thread of needing to improve that ran through my veins.

    Even my yoga—the practice that I equate to the ultimate masterclass in acceptance—was driven by subliminal expectations.

    Take, for instance, my heart-centered intention to strengthen my (non-existent) inversion practice. I told myself that flying upside down symbolized me being able to support myself. I’d labeled it as an intention, but the more I worked on it, the more I realized my focus that was cloaked by a belief that my core was too weak to magically levitate into a headstand or a “simple” arm balance. One goal (hidden in an intention costume), had veered stealthily into a scarcity mindset.

    And once that mindset takes hold, it spreads quickly and without discrimination into a constant echo of pervasive thoughts.

    I’d tried (many times) to use the mantra “I am exactly where I need to be in this moment.” On my yoga mat, in my work, and in my relationships. But nothing worked to help me flip the switch away from the gaps in my success and towards the celebration of the present moment and progress.

    And then summer happened.

    I had time in my schedule and I started to wonder, maybe I am supposed to use this season of my life to practice acceptance. Maybe all of my free-time isn’t a judgment or an indicator of lack of progress but is an opportunity to nourish and nourish myself.

    What if instead of wanting to be something that I wasn’t, I actually needed to nurture my practice (and life) with more tenderness? Could I be grateful and give myself permission to find nourishment instead of judgment?

    A friend encapsulated my thinking. She remarked simply: It sounds as if you are noticing self-compassion instead of self-improvement.

    Wow. Yes. That was it!

    What if acceptance, transformation, and progress have nothing to do with self-improvement?

    What if true acceptance of the present moment and long-term transformation were actually powered by the process of nurturing myself with the nourishment of love and kindness?

    “Build inner strength instead of outer dependencies.” ~Danielle LaPorte

    Suddenly these words and ideas started to appear everywhere. Each of these messages or examples reminded me of what happens when you nurture the parts of you that matter most and nourish my your spirit with what feels delicious. The universe was sending me nudge after nudge—it was up to me to notice and pay attention.

    Yes, I meditated daily. Yes, I was writing my morning pages each day. Yes, I was starting each work day thinking about how I wanted to feel when I went to sleep at night. But was I actively and intentionally nurturing the deeper layers of me with nourishment that was aligned to my values and dharma?

    So often we think about compassion as something we need to have for others, but what about ourselves? I’m good at taking care of everyone else, but somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten that my heart and soul needed the same gift of understanding and compassion—and that I was the only one that could supply the unique medicine it needed.

    What if the magic to creating the change you want in your life is less about self-improvement and more about self-compassion?

    Now, don’t get me wrong. We all have desires. Those are not going away (nor should they).

    But desire should not be our compass for daily life. Our values and life’s purpose are vastly more powerful navigational tools.

    So if not desire or self-improvement, then what?

    Imagine for a moment what it would feel like to go to bed tonight believing that you’d nourished and nurtured your mind, body, and spirit with the simple acknowledgment that you are exactly where you need to be in this moment.

    How would your day be different if you gave yourself permission to be as you are, replacing judgment or labels with awareness and presence?

    A funny thing happened when I started to make nurturing and nourishment my focus.

    I made food choices with intention and then noticed how I felt afterward.

    I chose tender yoga practices instead of heat-building ones.

    I trusted that I was actively planting seeds each day to cultivate connection and relationships rather than waiting for opportunities to present themselves.

    I considered the open times in my schedule as opportunities to play with my daughter and puppy instead of criticizing myself.

    I chose to read instead of watch television. My to-do lists became less cluttered and more aligned with my values.

    Ideas started to flow more freely. My stillness practice felt deeper. I noticed sounds, colors, and scents with more boldness.

    And most importantly? I felt hope inside of me and remembered that everything I’ve ever thought I “needed” was already inside me, just waiting to be revealed.

    4 Steps to Practice Nurturing and Nourishing Yourself with Self-Compassion

    1. Tune into your awareness. 

    No, I’m not going to add to the number of articles that you’ve read that says you need to meditate. But deepening your connection to yourself means becoming aware of the physical sensations and emotions that you feel each day instead of letting the millions of thoughts that travel through your mind each day take over.

    It can be as simple as pausing at the end of a task or activity. Notice how your body feels without rushing to label what you are sensing as good or bad. This might take practice, and it might be subtle at first. Invite your body to be a benevolent messenger of information even for sensations that feel less than delicious.

    2. Ask yourself: What is going right in this moment? 

    This gratitude practice helps you move from noticing the gaps toward the celebration of wins big and small.

    When I went surfing recently, our instructor encouraged us to make a big first pump after every wave we “caught” regardless of how long we rode the wave of energy or whether we stayed on our belly or popped up. Noticing the victories—no matter the size or magnitude—sends a message that the journey is more important than the final destination.

    3. Check in with your truth: Is your day full of “have to’s” or “want to’s”?

    This is a big one. Making a list of priorities and things to do can be a great tool to stay focused, except when everything on that list is out of alignment with your values.

    Sure, there are some things in life that just have to get done. Maybe you can ask for help with tasks that bring up intuitive flags, or maybe you can find some aspect of the task to get excited about and change the perspective. Or maybe, you can simply let that task go.

    Recently, a friend asked me if I’d be at one of our favorite power vinyasa classes. As much as I wanted to see my friend, I noticed a gentle tug in my heart and I took a moment to get quiet and check in with my truth.

    That class felt like a should, based on a belief that I needed to keep up with the practice that I’d depended on to build physical and mental strength. But what I was really craving was something quieter. Something that would nourish that which was hidden. A yin practice. So I said no and cherished a nurturing and nourishing home practice, knowing that I could make plans to see my friend another time.

    4. Make a list of what feels delicious to your heart, mind, and body and then let yourself PLAY. 

    Do you love coffee? Find a lovely new cafe for a midday treat.

    Does paddleboarding light you up? Rent one or take a class.

    Play—even quiet activities like going for an evening walk, taking a bath, or spending an evening reading—nourishes the heart and mind. In fact, play helps inspire creativity and often makes us more productive, even when we’ve taken time off to engage in the activity.

    —

    Can it really be that easy? Four steps to cultivate self-compassion as the ultimate tool for living the life you really crave?

    Well, no. These practices are never easy. It is a practice for a reason, mainly that it takes daily effort. But believing that you have everything you need already inside you offers a transformational opportunity to nurture, nourish, and accept the reflection that you see in the mirror as this moment’s best version of you.