Tiny Buddha

Category: letting go

  • Loving Yourself When You’re Too Fat, Too Skinny, Too Tall, or Too Short

    Loving Yourself When You’re Too Fat, Too Skinny, Too Tall, or Too Short

    “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

    Living in NYC, I have seen some crazy and outrageous things. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see an ad in the subway that read, “Overcome Your Bikini Fears. Breast Augmentation Made In NY: $3,900,” or another ad from the same plastic surgery office that showed a picture of a woman looking sad, holding a pair of small tangerines in front of her breasts, and the same woman looking happy holding grapefruits, with the same caption, “Breast Augmentation Made in NY: $3,900.”

    Still, I was surprised to see that this plastic surgery office would so overtly play into the insecurities of some women, basically implying, “You’re not good enough as you are; let me make you better.”

    I understand that this office is simply trying to make a buck—a big buck, that is—but I couldn’t help but be aghast that this sort of message is allowed to be out there, to be seen on the train by many women, especially young women who might be wracked with a poor self-image already.

    The truth is, I get it. I grew up wanting plastic surgery pretty much from third grade into my early twenties.

    I was obsessed with looking in the mirror, poking around with my fingers trying to see the “better version” of my face, when it would be somehow reconstructed magically or surgically.

    My nose was too flat, my eyes were not big enough or deep-set enough, and my jaw was not defined enough. To top it off, my legs were too short and my torso too long. I was not a girl on a magazine cover.

    It broke my heart that I felt ugly and plain, and that I wanted something different from what I was. I actually felt beautiful sometimes, but when I looked at myself in the mirror, it wasn’t a vision of beauty, as I understood it.

    The vision of beauty was the girl in a Hollywood movie. The vision of beauty was the girl in a commercial. The vision of beauty had features that I didn’t possess.

    I kept wishing that my facial and body features would magically change as I grew up, or that I would one day be able to have plastic surgery. But deep down, I knew that I didn’t want to change my physical appearance in order to feel good about myself.

    Over time, through the transformational work I did in the past decade, I was able to dissolve self-hatred and the desire for plastic surgery, and give myself total acceptance for who I am.

    Now I feel good in my own skin. I’ve learned that the old adage is true: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I had appreciated it as a concept for a long time, but now I get it and know that it’s true.

    I used to wish that my face and body would change somehow, but in truth, what needed to change was the way I saw myself and how I felt about myself.

    My hope is that every person feels beautiful and good in his or her own skin.

    Beauty is not a monopoly that only belongs to Miss Universe and the like. We are all beautiful in our own unique ways.

    If you’re struggling with a poor self-image like I did, these tips may help.

    1. Stop comparing.

    My old boyfriend used to tell me that I was beautiful over and over like a broken record, though I didn’t believe him. He said this to me one time and it stayed with me: You can’t compare a rose to a lily; they’re both beautiful and they’re different.

    I was constantly comparing myself to others, and I felt inferior because I didn’t measure up to the conventional ideas of beauty.

    Since I stopped comparing, I realize that no part of my body is any less beautiful than someone else’s just because it’s shorter, longer, flatter, or bigger. When I stopped seeing with a specific set of beliefs and ideas, my “short” and “crooked” legs stopped being inferior.

    You will always be too fat, too skinny, too tall, too this and that, when you compare yourself to others. You will always be “too something” when you play the comparison game. Know that you are exactly what you’re supposed to be—one of a kind and beautiful.

    2. Ideas of beauty differ and change all the time.

    If you looked into different cultures at different times, you would see that people had (and still have) different ideas of beauty. Some like curvy, some like skinny, some like tall, and some like short.

    A lot of times (or maybe all the time), the definition of beauty as we know it is just the opinion of one person or group of people. It’s just so happened that this opinion got popularized.

    If you don’t fit their definition of beauty, does it mean you’re any less beautiful? Absolutely not. Don’t let the ever-changing opinions of others affect how you feel about yourself.

    Take Sarah Jessica Parker, for example. Some people think she’s the most gorgeous woman on the whole planet, and some quite the opposite. So, who’s right?

    The better question to ask would be: Does it really matter? It really doesn’t matter what other people say or think. What matters is how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself.

    3. Change the way you see.

    Have you had experiences where people you thought were attractive became unattractive in your eyes, and people you thought were unattractive became attractive? I have many times.

    When I was nineteen, I met a guy who I thought was “ugly” at first sight. Then I fell madly in love with him two weeks later, and he became the most handsome guy in the whole wide world to me.

    Conversely, I met another guy a few years later that I thought had the most gorgeous face. A few interactions later, his face lost all its appeal to me, as I found him to be rather obnoxious.

    I’ve had so many of these experiences over the years, and I’ve realized that beauty entails more than just “pretty” features. Whenever I find something lovely about a person, whether it’s their kindness, generosity, or thoughtfulness, their external features seem to start to sparkle with radiance. It’s not that the person changed—my perception did.

    Dr. Wayne Dyer often said, “When you change the way you look at things, things you look at change.” I know this to be true because I often experience this in my life.

    When I go on my nature walks, I try to observe things without preconceived notions or ideas. I sometimes stop and look at a fly perched on a leaf of a plant, and when I look at it without my preconceived notion (that it’s ugly or disgusting), I can see the exquisite beauty that it is.

    Now, I know that you’re not a fly, but the same principle applies. When you remove the gunk—the gunk of beliefs and ideas—from your eyes, you start to see the magnificent beauty of who you are.

    4. Change your thoughts.

    Recently, when I was video recording myself, I felt rather disturbed by my appearance. I didn’t want to feel this way, but a barrage of negative self-talk dominated my head, and I wanted to just give up on the whole project.

    I went for a walk, and when I came back—with a little more space within myself—I realized I had allowed myself to be taken over by the negative voices in my head. I had been totally immersed in them.

    Time, space, and a little bit of deep breathing helped me step back from my own drowning thoughts. Then I was able to embrace the other voices that also existed in my head, which were more affirming and kind. And I continued with my project.

    How sad it would be if I allowed those negative voices to stop me from offering what I have to give: my knowledge, ideas, voice, gifts, my love, and more. I would be withholding all of those things from people who might need and benefit from them.

    If you find yourself in a similar situation where you’re feeling bad about how you look, take a moment to notice what you’re thinking. Step back and take a few deep breaths so you can observe your thoughts instead of being immersed in them.

    And remember, you’re more than your skin. You, too, have so much to give (even if you feel like you don’t): your unique gifts, your experience, courage, ingenuity, creativity, and so much more. Don’t let the negative voices stop you from sharing what you have. The world (your neighbors, your friends, your grandma, or whatever your world may be) needs it.

    5. Give yourself total acceptance.

    I admit, even with all the realizations I’ve had, there are times when I look at myself in the mirror with dismay.

    Some of the old, familiar thoughts crop up in my head, telling me I’m plain and ugly. The difference now is that I catch myself falling into my old belief—that looking a certain way makes me undesirable and unlovable.

    For most of us, this is the core of the issue: We believe that we would not be desirable, that we would not be loved, if we didn’t look “good.”

    The truth is, there will always be someone or some people who will find me undesirable or unlovable, but the world is also full of people who will feel the opposite.

    Ultimately, the deeper truth I had to find within myself was this: If no one loves me, will I love myself?

    The answer was yes, I will love myself. I will not forsake me. I will not take my love away from me.

    That’s the truth I needed for myself, and what I truly needed in order to feel beautiful and good in my own skin.

    In those moments when I don’t like what I see in the mirror, I make a choice. I make a choice to give myself total acceptance and love for all that I am: good, ugly, bad, and all.

    And that’s how I love myself when I’m too short, too tall, too fat, and too skinny.

    Woman at beach image via Shutterstock

  • 4 Things You Need to Hear When You’re Emotionally Exhausted

    4 Things You Need to Hear When You’re Emotionally Exhausted

    “Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.” ~John De Paola

    You’re on the verge of burnout.

    You’re unmotivated to perform even the simplest of tasks. You’re physically and emotionally isolated. Slight annoyances cause you to snap.

    You may be blaming your work, other people, or circumstances. But if you dig a little deeper, you may be surprised to learn that your own choices have led to emotional exhaustion. This is good news because it means that you can alleviate your own pain without the permission or blessing of another person.

    In my junior year of college, I experienced a bout of intense mental and emotional exhaustion. I was pursuing two demanding majors and the heavy workload had finally caught up with me.

    Desperate to find a way to motivate myself to finish college, I bought Tony Robbins’ Personal Power motivational program after watching his infomercial on late night television.

    As I delved into the lessons, I fully expected Tony Robbins to motivate me back to good emotional health. Instead, I learned that I needed to take full responsibility for my emotional state. I learned that I had all the tools I needed to nurse myself back to emotional and spiritual health.

    When I was emotionally exhausted, I realized that my own body was trying to communicate its needs to me. I just needed to listen.

    If you’re on the brink of burnout, here are some things your body may be trying to tell you:

    1. You need to trust your intuition.

    I started college as a music major. Though I’d always had a passion for music, I decided to take on computer science as well in order to be practical.

    I still remember the day I made that decision. It was the second day of classes and panic had set in. I kept having the thought “I’ll never be able to support myself as a musician.” The stereotype of the struggling artist was burned into my brain.

    As I rushed to my academic advisor’s office that morning, I told myself I was making a rational choice. I did well at math and science in high school and it only made sense to build on these skills in order to secure a good paying job.

    Intuitively, I knew I was wrong. I already knew deep down that I would not enjoy studying computer science. I knew that I could trust my musical gifts to create income. But I decided to ignore my intuition and went with the rational choice instead. My emotional exhaustion was the price I paid for choosing this path.

    While I completed both degrees in the end, it is my music degree that provides my income and enjoyment.

    Are you currently pursuing something you know isn’t right for you? Are you exhausted by the emotional conflict created in choosing what’s practical versus what you love? Do you lack motivation because your life is devoid of joy, fulfillment, or meaning? Your exhaustion may be an invitation to trust your own intuition.

    2. It’s okay to ask for help.

    As an international student studying in the U.S., I often felt alone. My family and support systems were far away. I underestimated how vulnerable I would feel being in a different culture. My initial reaction to this vulnerability was to fool myself into thinking I could go it alone.

    In the Personal Power program, I learned that we need to feel connected to others in order to feel alive. By denying my vulnerability and my need for connection, I suffered mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Once I’d suffered enough, I decided to embrace my vulnerability and reach out to others. It made all the difference.

    Emotional exhaustion can leave one feeling intensely vulnerable. It can be hard to ask for help for fear of being viewed as a failure or as someone who is unable to manage their own lives. But in your exhaustion is the presence of a deep truth: It’s okay to ask for help because you were never meant to go it alone.

    3. Be patient.

    Collectively, we’ve lost our capacity for patience. Our deepest needs are constantly being eclipsed by our immediate wants. And all the while we struggle to tell the difference.

    During my college years, I was very ambitious academically. There’s nothing wrong with ambition. But when unbalanced, ambition can give way to disillusionment and emotional burnout.

    My desire for success left me feeling impatient. I took full course loads every semester. I rarely made time for leisure, play, and rest. I’d given up my need for balance in favor of assured academic success.

    But my emotional exhaustion was a wake up call that this strategy was not working. It was a sign that I needed to slow down, reorder my priorities, and think about success more holistically.

    Are you currently on the fast track to emotional exhaustion? It may be time to slow down.

    4. Surrender.

    In my quest to be in full control of my future and ensure my happiness, I nearly burned out in college.

    My emotional exhaustion was an invitation to face the reality that I don’t control everything.

    In his book The Surrender Experiment, Michael Singer poses this question:

    “Am I better off making up an alternative reality in my mind and then fighting with reality to make it be my way, or am I better off letting go of what I want and serving the same forces of reality that managed to create the entire perfection of the universe around me?”

    After years of fighting, I decided to trust in forces larger than myself. I still worked and studied hard, but I also gradually let go the expectations and pressures I’d created for myself. I created space for leisure, rest, and personal development.

    Sometimes the only thing you can do when you’re emotionally exhausted is to surrender. Befriend it and allow the process to be part of your healing.

    Are You Listening?

    Next time you’re feeling emotionally exhausted, treat it as an opportunity to listen to yourself.

    You don’t need to tough it out, double down, or assign blame.

    Just take some time out to listen, reflect, and respond.

    You won’t regret it.

    Stressed man image via Shutterstock

  • How to Feel Your Feelings and What That Will Do for Your Life (Everything!)

    How to Feel Your Feelings and What That Will Do for Your Life (Everything!)

    Colors of Mood

    “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.” ~JK Rowling

    Sometimes the last thing we want to do is feel our feelings. Because feeling can hurt.

    Feeling can make you cry in the laundromat.

    Feeling can make your face unattractively red in the frozen food aisle.

    Feeling can make you think this whole being human racket is not the best way to spend your time.

    If you’ve been stuffing your feelings back into your rib cage whenever they try to break for the light, this is especially true. I know, because this is exactly what I did with my feelings for thirty-three long years.

    Oh, those crafty feelings would make the occasional jailbreak, and then I’d vibrate with a nameless rage that ended in cell phone destruction when technology met brick wall. Or I’d start screaming and yanking at my clothes—yes, actual rending of garments—because the rush of pain was too intense to contain within my frame.

    My mom is fond of saying that, for the first few years of my life, she thought she was raising a monster. As an empath in a house where emotion was treated like a ticking bomb, I was feeling emotions for the entire family, and all those feelings were processing through my eyeballs and via my vocal cords.

    So I learned to stifle my sensitivity and emotion in a well-meaning but mistaken effort to protect those around me. Many of us do.

    We learn that emotions aren’t safe.

    We learn that crying is not appreciated.

    We learn that life runs more smoothly when we pack our emotions into our spleen and forget about them.

    It wasn’t until my father landed in the hospital thirty years later that my personal emotional apocalypse began.

    Trapped in a hospital bed, unable to move, all the feeling and empathy my father had successfully stifled for seventy years—with work, wine, and science fiction novels—rose up to claim him. He couldn’t bear to be in his body any more, so he stopped eating until he didn’t have to be.

    Pressing play on his favorite John Coltrane track or reading his favorite passages, not sure what he could hear through the morphine haze, the solidity of my emotions began to crack.

    As we waited for my father to die, I roamed the hospital halls and spilled coffee on the pristine floors, feeling like I would jump out of my skin. Since writing was the only means I had of processing emotion at the time, I began to record my experiences on Twitter. Never before had I experienced such a rush of love and support.

    The cracks began to widen.

    After his death, my tenuous yet carefully clutched emotional control completely unraveled.

    As I began to lean into the cleansing rush of feeling, rather than running determinedly in the opposite direction, life began sending me the experiences I needed to learn how to surf the wave of the emotional onslaught.

    I learned how to greet my feelings as friends rather than as a nameless beast out to destroy my life—or at least my morning.

    I learned where emotions would hide in my body, lurking between my ribs or huddled in my belly.

    I learned how to allow the literal physical feeling of my emotions to burn itself out by simply feeling the sensation instead of judging it or making it mean something.

    I learned how crucial it was to feel my way through my emotions so that I could connect with my inner wisdom.

    Devoting myself to processing my feelings, rather than letting them build up until they drained me, began to shift and transform my life.

    Depression became a distant memory. I stopped feeling the need to drink, heavily or at all. Quitting sugar became easy, unless I was in the first throes of grief.

    (Any necessary grieving process buys me a few months of sugar, low energy, and crankiness. When I’m grieving, I won’t have energy or optimism anyway, so I may as well eat red velvet cupcakes.)

    When I try to pin down exactly how I learned to shift and flow with my feelings, rather than strapping them into concrete shoes and tossing them into my stomach, this is what shows up:

    Every feeling has a message.

    Maybe that message is simply to allow yourself to feel the emotion until it dissipates. Maybe the feeling is guiding you toward some action.

    Once, when a boyfriend and I were talking about moving in together, fear and anxiety began flying through my body like cocaine-addled pinballs for no apparent reason. In other words, I started flipping out, which didn’t make any sense, given that this was something I’d been wanting.

    When I began to explore the onslaught, I realized that there were deeper issues we needed to delve into before taking that step.

    If something persists—anger, fear, anxiety—simply ask it what it wants to tell you. Sit quietly and allow the answer to appear. When you feel peaceful, you have your answer, whether or not you like what that answer says.

    Processing your feelings gives you access to your own inner wisdom and innate creativity. 

    If I sit down to write and nothing comes, I hunt down any feelings that I’ve been avoiding. Sometimes I’ll need to abandon work to roam the beach and cry. Sometimes I’ll give the feeling five minutes of attention and get back to work.

    You already have all the answers you will ever need inside of you—and your emotions are a primary vehicle for those answers. Learning the language of your feelings will give you your own personal Sherpa through life.

    All this feeling you’re carrying around may not be yours.  

    Sensitive, empathic people are the proud recipients of a double whammy. You’re not just carrying around your emotions; you’re also carrying the emotions of people you walked past in the grocery store, the homeless woman you spoke with on the corner two years ago, the friend who vented last week.

    Your own emotions may be crowded by the emotions of others that you absorbed unconsciously, sometimes by simply walking past them in the street.

    Learn how to clear the emotions of others from your field. One way to do this is to imagine roots extending from your feet into the center of the earth. Send all the emotion and energy that doesn’t belong to you down those roots and into the earth. Feel it draining out of your field and into a place where it can be transformed. Do it daily.

    Feeling your emotions brightens your life, both internally and externally.  

    You already have every answer you will ever need inside of you; you just need to learn how to access that information. Answers about your relationships, your life direction, how to take care of your health, how to move toward what you want. Translating what your feelings are trying to tell you provides a direct conduit to your own higher wisdom.

    It may take time and sustained attention to clear out what you were in the habit of stuffing down, but the more you lean into whatever is asking to be seen, the more your life will open and expand.

    Brain gremlins won’t have as much sticky emotion to latch onto and they’ll become easier to gently set aside. What once felt heavy and overwhelming will feel light.

    And everything will change.

    Colors of mood image via Shutterstock

  • Why Someone Else’s Success Isn’t a Threat to Yours

    Why Someone Else’s Success Isn’t a Threat to Yours

    Envy

    “Stop beating yourself up. You are a work in progress; which means you get there a little at a time, not all at once.” ~Unknown

    I got embarrassed at the gym.

    I sat down at the bench press, ready to hoist up 135 pounds of iron. My goal was eight reps for the first set.

    Before I started my first set, I heard someone huffing to my left. I looked over and saw a young guy benching 315 pounds!

    I counted his reps, and he went all the way up to eight. It was the same number of repetitions that I aimed for, only I was lifting 135 pounds, which is one 45-pound weight on each side (compared to his three on each side).

    How embarrassing!

    In that moment, I felt like I was wasting my time at the gym.

    This young guy beast was leagues ahead of me in terms of physical strength. For the same number of reps, he could lift 180 pounds more than me. That difference is so much that, despite the point I’m making, my pride told me to omit this story.

    Pride isn’t a good thing though, so here’s the story!

    Others’ Success Is Not a Threat to Yours

    I didn’t leave the gym early from discouragement because I realized two things.

    1. I can bench press my bodyweight now (150 pounds), which is something I had wanted to do for a long time.

    2. LA Fitness has mirrors for walls. Peering into a mirror, I noticed how much stronger I looked than ever before.

    In other words, I had a lot of progress to be happy about, and that’s not all that I noticed. Literally one minute before this happened, I saw a man downstairs; he was walking on the treadmill, and he was obese.

    I came full circle and realized that here I was feeling embarrassed for my puny bench press, when someone like the guy downstairs could possibly be jealous of my physical conditioning. It helped me understand why the overweight man, the beast, and I should all ignore each other’s progress.

    Detach Your Progress from Everyone Else

    Unless you’re having a competition with a friendly wager, your personal progress is 100% independent from the world and the people in it.

    So what if the guy next to me can bench press a small car? That doesn’t impact me unless I make it my new standard.

    So what if the guy on the treadmill is out of shape compared to many others at the gym? That doesn’t change what he’s there to do.

    Also, there is a difference between using someone else as a representation of where you want to be and letting their success threaten your sense of satisfaction in the progress you’ve made or are making.

    If you need to clarify your goal, you can then say something like, “I want the physique of Hugh Jackman.” That’s useful because it gives you a clear target (visually) of where you want to end up.

    What I did in the gym did not start with me—it was from the outside in. I saw the guy in the gym, and I interpreted his strength as a strike against the value of my progress and goals.

    I think it’s easy to mix up referencing and enviously comparing, because both involve the desire to improve. One is to clarify an idea while the other is a guilt-ridden, envious focus on who are you not.

    No Pain, Still Gain?

    I think it’s common to be envious of someone’s progress and want to use that as a motivator. But such “negative motivation” is mentally draining and relatively ineffective (guilt and discontentment are short-minded and inferior ways to move forward in life).

    There’s something really important I’ve experienced in the last couple of years: amazing progress doesn’t require emotional pain; it only requires consistent effort. From the story, did you notice what seeing the 315-pound bench presser did to me? It made me hesitate to make progress, which doesn’t make sense.

    Seeing him bench that much decreased my motivation to exercise because my efforts seemed futile in comparison. Of course, we’re human and we will always look around to see what others are doing, but when it comes to our progress, it seems we’re better off disregarding what we see.

    The Permanent Cure for Envy Is Progress

    It’s easier to let go of a disappointing comparison to others when you see and know you’re making progress. Otherwise, a sense of futility and despair can set in (and unfortunately, I know this from experience!) I don’t even expect or care to bench 315 pounds, but I know I can continue to get stronger every week, because I’ve proven it.

    I mentioned earlier that I can bench press my body weight (150 pounds). Well, a couple years ago, I had a close call in the gym: I couldn’t get the barbell back up on my fourth rep (without a spotter), and I had to duck my head out from underneath the bar as it crashed into the bench.

    How do I know it was close? The rough “grip” part of the bar actually scraped my head on the way down! And it was only 115 pounds. I’ve made a ton of progress since then. But if we’re going to make comparisons, let’s go for the extremes.

    Compare my one push-up a day to this guy’s 315-pound bench press. Head-to-head, his achievement makes mine seem less than worthless, and yet, my one push-up a day transformed my life. This is why comparisons are invalid—your progress is only relative to you, not other people.

    Since I started my one push-up a day mini habit two years ago, I’ve gained twenty pounds of mostly muscle because the more progress you make, the more you’ll be willing and able to make.

    Who or What Is Your Most Bothersome Comparison?

    Try this: Think about your version of the 315-pound bench press guy. Does someone else have the fame, power, money, or respect that you crave? Do you know someone who has your dream job?

    Whatever you came up with, admit and internalize that it is irrelevant to your journey and personal progress.

    There will always be someone who is further along the path than you are in every area. Instead of seeing that as a threat to your success, see it as irrelevant to your success, because it is! I can’t think of a single time that I changed my life because I thought I compared unfavorably to another person. Can you?

    It’s great to have other people in life for support, socializing, and new perspectives, but when it comes to your personal progress, it seems best to leave others out of it, and especially so in the early stages of your growth in an area.

    If you’re already world class in running, comparisons to other elite athletes might motivate you to get to the next level (and even in a healthy way). But in that case, you already have the solid foundation to build from. Many people don’t have such a powerful foundation, which is possibly why they want to improve, and so the comparison (to someone well ahead of them) makes them overreact.

    In my case, I might try to lift too much weight and hurt myself or else quit going to the gym because it’d seem trivial by comparison. That’d be a mistake, as what seems to be a little bit of progress in the world’s eyes can compound and completely change your life.

    The only person you have to measure up to is the person you were yesterday. If you can beat that person, trust me, you’re doing very well.

    Envy image via Shutterstock

  • Limited Run “Be Here Now” Shirt Supporting Tiny Buddha Productions & Childhelp

    Limited Run “Be Here Now” Shirt Supporting Tiny Buddha Productions & Childhelp

    TB_1

    If this seems like deja vu, it’s not just you! I am republishing this blog post because there are only a few hours left to grab a “Be here now” shirt.

    As you may remember, I shared a post a couple months back about my desire to start writing and producing inspiring short films, in partnership with my fiancé Ehren Prudhel.

    It was just after the New Year, and I knew the time was finally right to revisit both of our childhood dreams.

    Over the past couple of months we’ve been hard at work writing, connecting with crewmembers, and getting everything in order to film our first short in April (to be shared here soon after).

    I couldn’t be more thrilled that we’ll soon be casting and filming! I hope you’ll love the film, which focuses on loneliness and connection in the digital age, and I hope you’ll help us bring our dream to life by grabbing a limited edition “Be Here Now” shirt.

     

    You can choose from seven styles—including a fitted tee, racerback tank, and a hoodie—in five different colors, with sizes ranging from XS to 5XL (for some styles).

    Because we’re all about giving back, a portion of the proceeds for this campaign will support Childhelp, a non-profit that offers programs to prevent and treat child abuse.

     

    Lori Deschene Be Here Now T Shirt

     

    Thank you in advance for supporting this dream, and thank you also for being part of the Tiny Buddha community!

     

    Don’t see the button? Visit https://represent.com/tinybuddha to place your order. Have an idea or request for a future shirt? Leave a comment and let me know!

  • The Joy of Doing Less: 3 Ways to Reclaim Your Time

    The Joy of Doing Less: 3 Ways to Reclaim Your Time

    Clock and Flip Flops

    “Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all.” ~Nathan W. Morris

    I began 2015 by cleaning out my closet. I sold and donated and trashed the pieces that weren’t serving me anymore. Embarrassingly enough, I purged nearly 100 items. It felt great. Getting rid of stuff and seeing beauty behind the clutter was incredible. But this story isn’t really about my closet.

    It’s also not about my desk drawers, my linen closet, or my kitchen, which all came next. As it turns out, getting rid of clutter and extra things was just the tip of the iceberg. In the same way that buying things didn’t make me feel better, getting rid of things wasn’t really the solution, either.

    What I initially imagined as an exercise in clothing minimalism has turned into a pursuit of “better, but less” across all areas of my life. So I started thinking about what it was that I valued most, that I wanted more of most. The answer? Time.

    I wanted time to finish what I started. I wanted time with my most important people. I wanted time for pleasure and healing. And I wanted time to go slowly. After nearly a year, the result is more joy, more freedom, more space for what matters.

    So how can you declutter your schedule and create better priorities? It’s about crafting joy through not just having less, but doing less. Here are some ideas on how to make it happen:

    Honestly look at what you’re already committed to.

    None of this works if you aren’t honest about what’s already in your schedule. From major work commitments to how much time you’re choosing to be on Facebook, keep a candid journal on where your time goes. Watch this for a little while. Try not to judge yourself, but look at what you’re prioritizing, consciously or unconsciously.

    Once you see what you’re committed to and how you’re spending your time, you can start to edit. Does what’s on your schedule line up with your values and goals? Or is it time to make a shift?

    I realized that I was committed to far too many projects, and that I wasn’t able to do them all well. I also acknowledged that I needed what I call “integration time”—a buffer where I could process new lessons or emotional events.

    Since then, I’ve signed up for fewer classes and scheduled more time for myself to integrate what I’m learning.

    I’ve scaled back the number of happy hours I attend in exchange for coffee dates during the day. This leaves me quiet evenings at home for reading, crafting, and relaxing.

    I’ve also pared back the number of political causes I’m a part of, choosing to focus on one or two important projects at a time.

    Follow the “three thing” rule.

    It’s like the old saying: “If everything is a priority, then nothing is.” Choose three things that are the real priorities in your life. Start small. What are the three things you want to accomplish today? Start with those as the skeleton of your day, and build everything else around them.

    You might not do those three things first, chronologically, but arrange your day so that you’re sure they’ll happen. Or, you may find that unless you make time for reading, meditation, or exercise before work, that it won’t happen.

    I’ve noticed that this “three thing” rule is also a good boundary for understanding when I’ve done “enough.” As someone who has a hard time switching off sometimes, using the three thing rule as a guidepost can help me to know when to call it a day. If I’ve accomplished what I absolutely need to, then maybe I can afford stop work to go for a walk or make a great home-cooked meal.

    Honing in on only three things helps us to clear the noise and distractions so that we can focus on what feels most meaningful. You can start to extrapolate, too: what are the three things you want to make sure happen this week? This month? This year? Choosing only three makes sure that we are ruthlessly clear on what matters most.

    Start saying no.

    This one is pretty simple. If it’s not supporting your values, your priorities, your “three things” or your inner well-being, it has to be a no.

    I suggest that for a set period of time (two weeks tends to do the trick), everything that isn’t already on your plate is a no. This gives your brain and schedule a break from more input before you dive in again.

    Of course, there are times when it’s not reasonable to drop everything, such as if you’re caring for a child or aging parents. If this is the case, it’s even more important to pare down the nonessential, and maybe even ask for help.

    The ability to craft elegant boundaries and a good rubric for new commitments can be a process. But over time, you’ll learn to trust your intuition. In the meantime, get some practice in confidently saying no. People in your life will also learn how to hear your no, and respect it.

    If lots of noes seem awkward to you, just remember that you’re actually saying yes to what you really want.

    When I was caring for my mom when she was ill a few years ago, I needed a lot of time to recharge in between visits. Some friends were offended when I turned down plans; others actually responded with offers of support.

    Just by being honest, and a little vulnerable, with what I needed (time and space to digest), I was able to get it. What a novel concept!

    —

    I’ve spent the last year rigorously employing these tactics to free myself from overwhelm and commitments that stopped feeling good. This has meant paring back my volunteer commitments and some community classes where I’d been involved. It’s meant saying no to enticing invitations and choosing not to sign up for fascinating opportunities.

    This might have been awkward, but I find that most people are familiar with that feeling of overwhelm. They recognize it in themselves. Most people actually respect that I’m choosing to honor my well-being in this way, and that I’m interested in quality over quantity.

    The results of scaling back were really surprising to me. Doing less not only gives me more space for my own care, but it actually allows me to make a greater impact. I’m doing less, but I’m doing it with more grace and accountability. I do what I say I’m going to do. I have the time and space to follow through well on my commitments.

    By doing less, I’m able to show up more present for the people in my life and be more grounded in the present moment. By focusing on fewer projects, commitments and calendar-clutter, I’m doing less, but I’m doing everything fully—and with far more joy.

    Clock and flip flops image via Shutterstock

  • 6 Healthy Ways to Shed Layers of Emotional Pain

    6 Healthy Ways to Shed Layers of Emotional Pain

    Shedding Layers

    “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anais Nin

    Do you remember a time when you wanted to crawl under the bed and stay forever?

    Perhaps you’d been dealing with chronic pain and anxiety, had recently experienced divorce or the loss of a loved one, maybe even lost a job or two. I had experienced all of these things in just a few short years, and, judging by the loud knocking as I hid, was about to have my car repossessed, too.

    I called my dad and told him I was a bit depressed. “Don’t be,” he counseled.

    “Don’t be?” I repeated. “Oh, okay, I’m fine then.”

    “Yep, like that.”

    This way of dealing with the painful feelings, of ignoring and burying them as we force ourselves ever onward, is often expected of us.

    It’s natural—scary things happen to us in life. We fall down unexpectedly, we fight, we fail, we are betrayed, abandoned, overwhelmed by loss. The subconscious starts enfolding us in protective layers when we need them so that we can move forward with life.

    But what happens when we don’t let go once the need has passed?

    Believe it or not, emotions, especially those that needed to be dealt with long ago, can become toxic little bombs tucked secretly inside our muscles, our organs, running through our blood. According to Caroline Myss, “Our biography becomes our biology.”

    These emotional layers can build up as extra weight, angry outbursts that seem to come from nowhere, aches and pains, unhealthy habits, an itchy feeling that something isn’t right, depression, anxiety, perhaps even disease.

    At first, my layers were mostly hidden from the world. The evidence of a tumultuous childhood showed up only when I was pushed too far by something little but snapped with the resentment of a hundred years, the times when I backed down easily instead of standing my ground, the nights when I had that extra drink to ease social anxiety. Let’s call this the invisible, sneaky layer of plastic wrap.

    Then came the thicker materials: burlap, leather, drywall, the hair shirt, the ironclad ball and chain around the ankle. Leather made me look tougher as I moved to Texas to hide from my parents’ divorce. But moving did not help and neither did the armor.

    My steps through life grew heavier, depressed. My body grew heavier, too. I jokingly called it my “layer of pizza” resulting from a car accident at age twenty-three: chronic back pain and herniated discs with no relief in sight. The chocolate was a great listener; the cheesy bread totally got it.

    When my dad passed away suddenly, just hours after we’d been laughing on the phone together, my anxiety was so high, my wall built up so tall, that I could not leave the house without medication.

    I coped with Netflix marathons, hiding from the world and hoping that life would just gently go away, leave me alone, let me pretend to be a character in someone else’s story.

    To the world, I looked unscathed, but the layer of pain remained ever-present. If I had to add another layer, I felt I would never move again.

    I heard an urgent whisper, “Let go, let go, let go…”

    Desperate, I decided to try “that crazy yoga stuff.” And that’s when I learned how to acknowledge the layers, let the tears melt them away, and send them on their happy way to help those who needed them more.

    A layer or two of “pizza,” the medication, the unexplained and unidentifiable sadness, started disappearing. Lighter, I discovered a little more self, a gleam of joy, a dream or two remembered.

    I will not lie to you—the rainbows and unicorns come after the hard work. First, you must face the emotion that was so terrible, you instead let the layer of scales and fangs grow in. But when that unicorn comes galloping down the rainbow to gently peel the scales away forever, well, that’s worth it, my friend.

    There is no telling how many times we need to go through this process. Once we’ve sorted through and let go of all the “stuff,” life is still happening, constantly changing no matter how tightly we are gripping. We must always re-evaluate: What am I clinging to? What layers are holding me back?

    Practices to Shed Layers of Old Feelings

    1. Journal.

    What emotions or habits might be holding you back? Without the pressure of forcing yourself to give anything up immediately, simply allow yourself to imagine what your life could look like if you did let go of negativity. How does your ideal self look and feel while realizing your wildest goals?

    For me, journaling was really tough at first. Sometimes I would just make lists to get ideas flowing. Some of my entries started, “Today sucked. I feel bad.” Oooh, award winning. But as the words flowed, the emotions would sneak out, begging to be named: “but yesterday, my boss said…and it reminded me of dad and I miss him…” OH. There it is.

    2. Meditate.

    When I first meditated, I set a three-minute timer at my desk at work during my lunch break. Now it has grown into my favorite twenty minutes of the day. The small action of stopping to check in with yourself, even for a moment or two, can be a very powerful key into learning more and letting go.

    3. Find a healing practice for yourself.

    Whether it’s a local yoga class, massages, regular exercise like running, a Reiki treatment, a day at the spa, or even a virtual course on chakras, intuition, or any type of self-healing, setting aside time for self-care melts the layers by adding a little more love and self-respect, leaving less room for the doubt and worry. Combine a few of those in the same week and see how you feel!

    My favorite go-to practice is taking a bath with essential oils, candles, and soothing music when I need to re-charge. If I’m short on time, a simple ten-minute foot soak in the tub, with salts and some lavender, works just as well.

    4. Take a break from the media.

    I know, it’s unthinkable. What if we miss everything? As if the expectations of others weighed with our own grief weren’t enough to navigate, now social media adds a new layer of hurt, comparison, and confusion. Just when you think you’re over it, you can be “blocked” or stalked or publicly assailed. It’s even more in our face, so to speak.

    When I had a hurtful disagreement with a friend, I decided to take a month away from Facebook to heal. It really helped. I also step away when I notice I’m starting to compare my life with the glossy “this is who I want you to see me as” photos of others. And guess what? I still have friends when I return every time, in addition to a fresh perspective and better feelings about myself.

    Real friends will still be there. It can even be as simple as a time limit. You can do it.

    5. Read uplifting books.

    You can choose self-study through gorgeous spiritual books, like Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, or Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman.

    Choose books that lift your spirit and open your mind, especially those that instruct on letting go and being present. This was a game-changer for me; I could feel layers just floating away from the soothing advice of those who’ve been there, too.

    6. Laugh.

    When you laugh until you cry, no doubt a layer is disappearing. Releasing emotions doesn’t always have to be hard work. Play can offer the relief we need, too. So can dancing in your living room to Enrique Iglesias or to your guilty pleasure, flail like no one’s watching jam.

    —

    So why bother with peeling back the layers?

    Our layers have layers, born of layers that were layered over layers. This work is like unwrapping a mummy, and as you go deeper, you learn things you never could have imagined. You may even see some scary stuff you weren’t expecting. Better out than in, though, right?

    And guess what’s hiding underneath? The truest, most lovely version of yourself waiting to blossom and shine.

    Shedding layers image via Shutterstock

  • No Matter What You Tell Yourself, There Is Nothing Wrong with You

    No Matter What You Tell Yourself, There Is Nothing Wrong with You

    “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” ~Bronnie Ware from Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

    I wish I could remember the exact moment I mis-learned that being myself wasn’t going to cut it.

    It happened early. Maybe kindergarten. I didn’t do it consciously, but at some undetectable moment, I put my real self in a box and created someone else. This new me was so much better—always happy, very accommodating, super quick and witty, and an expert at everything.

    This new me was almost impossible to maintain. She required constant observations, self-sacrifices, and living in fear of being found out. But I knew she was necessary. The real me was not an option.

    Why? Because something was wrong with me. Even in elementary school, I had come to an unfortunate conclusion: Everyone is better than me. I can never let anyone see that.

    There was evidence. I had the only divorced parents in a conservative suburb. I had stringy hair that never congealed into the halo formation I desired no matter how much spray I applied. (It was the eighties!) I didn’t own any brand names. And, worst of all, my father was gay.

    My dad never told me he was gay. He just was gay one day when I was ten. The problem was, he left my mom for a man when I was three. That left seven years of deception in between.

    I went to gay parades with him because he “had some gay friends.” I slept over at the house he shared with his “roommate.” So when my mom finally sat me down to tell me the truth, I was shocked. And betrayed. They’d both been putting on a show for seven years. Why?

    My ten-year-old brain assumed they must have hidden it because it was supposed to be hidden. In a time before Ellen or even an inkling of gay marriage talk, I figured this was a secret so shameful that nobody should know about it.

    I wasn’t against my father or against homosexuality. I was against being different. Flawed. Weird. I was surely the only girl in elementary school who had seen assless chaps at a street fair. I wish I had owned it and flaunted a rainbow flag backpack, but I couldn’t then. I was too obsessed with being ‘the same.’

    I decided not to tell anyone. Not my friends. Not my teachers. No one.

    But a story has all the power when the only place it’s allowed to live is inside you.

    Keeping up a constant lie is exhausting. The anxiety alone about being found out can overtake your body. It controls the way you speak, the way you breathe, what you choose to share with friends. The latter kept all my friends at an arm’s distance. I craved so badly to feel closer to them. Connected. But connection was too scary.

    Six years after I found out about my father’s true self, he fell into one of his many deep depressions and took his own life.

    I had just gotten my driver’s license. His phone was off the hook, and I drove against my mom’s rules to see him. His apartment was a den of depression and his 6’5” body thinner than I’d ever seen. I gave him a hug, and when I drove away, I had no idea it would be our very last hug.

    At sixteen, there were few conclusions for me to make besides: See! Something is seriously wrong with me. My dad didn’t even want to stay to see me grow up.

    Outwardly, I pretended it was no big deal. I cried alone in my room, in my car, places where nobody could see. I wanted to rewind it all. I wanted to change everything. I wanted to go to sleep for years and wake up a happy adult with it all figured out.

    I jumped further into people pleasing. That guy needs a date to something? Let’s go. My teacher is handing out extra credit? I’ll do double. Smile. Smile. SMILE! I got my grade point average to 4.5 and was crowned homecoming queen. (Kids, take notes! You too can become homecoming queen if you simply accommodate every single person who is not you.)

    I went to college far away to get away from myself, but my self followed. My fear. My pretense. My anxiety followed. And as I compared my family to an even broader spectrum of strangers, it got worse.

    The only time I would talk about my personal life was when I was drunk and making jokes. Once a salesman told me to buy a present for my father. I laughed and said, “My father is in the ground!” Then I walked out of the store laughing as if it was the funniest thing I’d ever said.

    Years after college, I met a girl in a writing class. She was the tiniest person I’d ever met and had a voice to match. It happened that our leases ended at the same time, and we had a frank conversation about becoming roommates.

    “I am a loner,” I told her.

    “Me too. We can close our doors and we’ll know that it’s not a good time. Let’s do it.”

    We moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, and one month after combining our silverware, this girl washed the dishes I’d left in the sink. I didn’t get it. She wasn’t my mom. She didn’t have to. I could not grasp the concept of someone else actually wanting to do something for me without being forced or wanting something in return.

    She also insisted on driving me to the airport or paying for dinner or seeing if I needed anything from the store. She simply wanted the best for me. She was offering me the connection I’d craved, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

    We would lie on the carpet at night and stare at the popcorn ceiling. I tried to be vague when she asked me about my life. I was used to short answers, accustomed to my motto: Get done with the talking fast so the group can move on to someone better. But she wouldn’t let me off the hook.

    She reached for me. She held my hand. I’d never experienced such intimacy with a friend. I recoiled at first, but she persisted. It’s like she knew the terror inside my head—the terror to be close, to be discovered, to be guilty. She knew, and she was guiding me through.

    And so I told her my truth. I let it out. And she told me hers. And we cried and we laughed and we didn’t stop until our lives made a pile on the living room floor. She didn’t hate me. She didn’t abandon me. She didn’t tell me I was weird or different or wrong. She just held me and said it was all okay.

    At twenty-eight, she was my first real friend. At twenty-eight, I finally grieved openly for my father.

    This first friend of mine began to unravel the mask I had spent years sewing. She pulled the first thread, and then I began to write, which untied me even more. I posted an essay about my father on my blog and was met with solidarity and hugs. And love.

    Being real felt suffocating at first. I had to get used to awkward pauses when I’d say the word ‘suicide.’ I had to learn to relax and not be on constant alert during conversations in order to say the wittiest response first. I had to admit when I was wrong or didn’t know. I had to be willing to show others my imperfection.

    I’m still working on it all. Every day. But since I came clean, my world is completely different. I drink less alcohol because I don’t need to hide from my own terror-filled brain. I have a set of friends with whom I can share every tiny detail about myself. I feel fulfilled. I feel honest. I sleep well.

    And most of all, my story has lost its power. Once I began saying it out loud, I realized that every single person has felt shame at some point. No one thinks she or her family is perfect. But it takes sharing to find that out.

    I felt such a relief from letting go of my secret that it became my mission to spread the word.

    I started a show in Hollywood called Taboo Tales. I help people take their secrets and make them into emotional comedy pieces they tell on stage to a big crowd of strangers. It’s a mini version of what I’ve experienced over the last seven years. People get to tell their story, feel a relief from letting go, and then find immediate solidarity from the audience.

    Brene Brown says, “When we deny the story, it defines us. When we own the story, we can write a brave new ending.”

    It is the absolute truth. I have seen it firsthand countless times on stage. And I experience brave new endings every day. I have an entirely new life after learning to become vulnerable. To tell it all. To own what’s made me who I am. To be proud of my cool, gay, leather-wearing dad!

    Sure, I’m still working on figuring out who I am after faking it for so long. But I know for sure I’m doing my best. And I’m not following in my father’s footsteps. He let his shame simmer inside of him until it was too much. Not me. Vulnerability saved my life.

    —

    If you’d like to taste some vulnerability, you can start with a tool I use in my Taboo Tales workshops. Set a five-minute timer and write a list of all the things you would never share with anyone else. The timer makes you keep going, and you’ll be surprised at what comes up.

    Take one of those things on your list—the scariest one— and write about it. You can burn everything later, but just getting the story out from inside where it festers is a necessary step. See where that takes you. Maybe read what you wrote to one person if you can.

    If not, start with small truths. Post an honest picture on social media instead of something posed and perfect. Let someone see your messy house or car when you may have made an excuse in the past. Respond with anything other than ‘fine’ when someone asks you how you’re doing. And something I really value in my own life: tell the truth when it’s time to break plans.

    “I’m really too depressed to hang out today” is actually what a good friend would want to hear instead of “I can’t make it.” Your honesty could open that friendship up to new and more intimate conversations.

    Friends are really important in your path to vulnerability. Could you tell any of those items on your list to a friend or two? If you feel like they would all judge you, maybe you could use a new, cozier friend. They’re out there, I promise.

    And one last tip: participate less in gossip. One thing that keeps us holding ourselves back is the fear of being judged. So I challenge you to not be a part of judging on the other side either. Once you begin letting go of your own judgments against others, the idea of being judged yourself becomes less scary.

    Tips or no tips, the goal is to tell your story, whether it’s big and taboo or not. Start small and work up to letting it out in whatever ways you can. Hey, if you want to start below, let’s make this comment section a judgment-free space where everyone’s allowed to share whatever it is they can. That can happen on the Internet, right?

  • How Getting What You Want Can Sabotage You

    How Getting What You Want Can Sabotage You

    Winning the Race

    “You can’t win enough. You can’t have enough money. You can’t succeed enough. The only thing that can satiate that existential thirst is love. I just remember that day I made that shift from wanting to be a winner to wanting to have the most powerful, deep, and beautiful relationships I could possibly have.” ~Will Smith

    About a year ago, I made the decision to start seriously working out with weights for the first time in my life. I’ve always been an athlete and in decent shape, but I wanted to test my body and see how much of its physical potential I could realize.

    Besides, I was approaching thirty and wasn’t exactly looking like the same pillar of youth I used to look like.

    Well, needless to say, it worked. Within six months, I got into the best shape of my life I had ever been in. I went from a very unhealthy 170 pounds down to a very healthy, lean, and toned 160 pounds. I felt so incredible, both physically and mentally.

    But then something strange happened.

    I started to slack off, until eventually, I just up and stopped. I lost the desire and motivation to keep going and keep exercising. As a consequence, within a few months, I fell back into the same shape I was in before I started.

    I got exactly what I wanted. I started lifting weights to get into the best shape of my life, which I did. I wanted to get really healthy and fit, which I did.

    So then why did I stop? Why did I slow down? What happened to my desire and motivation to keep going?

    I just couldn’t understand what happened.

    I wanted to find the answer to these questions, so I started doing some exploring, both internally and externally.

    The fact is I was duped. Actually, we’ve all been duped.

    In the modern era, we’ve become an overwhelmingly results-based society. It’s all about the destination. It’s all about goals. It’s all about the achievements, the rewards, the prizes, the medals, the trophies, the paycheck, and the big shiny things we can acquire and stuff into the big shiny house.

    The only problem is this: Nobody ever told us what would happen once we actually got those things.

    If a person sets out to lift weights and exercise for the sole purpose of reaching a weight goal, then where is the desire and motivation to continue lifting weights and exercising going to come from once that goal is reached?

    Some might say, “Well, then you have to set a new weight goal and go after that one!”

    So I’m supposed to just constantly be held hostage by results? I’m supposed to just keep chasing one goal after another, like a cat chasing a string? I’m supposed to become permanently attached at the hip to hitting targets?

    That sounded really monotonous, tedious, and lifeless. No thanks!

    The answer to my questions came to me when I was watching an interview with a man named Elliot Hulse, a gym owner and passionate fitness coach:

    “When we go to the gym with a goal in mind and we just go through the motions robotically, it robs us of the experience of the actual workout. Think about going to the gym just for the workout and not for the goal; not just so that you can put a check mark next to the reps and the sets that you did, but so that you can really become engaged with what your body wants to express.” 

    Like most people, I decided to start lifting weights and exercising to get into great shape. I did it for the sole purpose of achieving an outcome; of getting an end result. The problem with that is, since that was my main source of desire and motivation to work out, I lost that source of desire and motivation once I reached my goal.

    Getting into great shape and becoming fit was an awful source of desire and motivation. My reasons for starting to work out in the first place were bad ones.

    Lifting weights and exercising was nothing more than a means to an end for me. I didn’t do it because I actually wanted to do it. I didn’t do it because I loved the activity itself. I did it for superficial reasons.

    As a consequence, once I got what I wanted, I didn’t care to do it anymore. I no longer had the desire or motivation to keep working out.

    Instead of lifting weights and exercising for the sole purpose of getting into great shape, I should have started lifting weights and exercising for the sole purpose of loving the activity itself; of loving the physical challenge it presented to me as a way to test myself.

    Boom! That was it. That was the answer I was looking for. That was the answer to my questions, and was exactly what I was looking for.

    So, I started over. This time, however, my reasons for working out and exercising changed.

    With my newfound outlook, I completely stopped setting goals. No targets, no projections, and no objectives. I simply told myself this, and reminded myself of it every single day:

    “Love working out. Love lifting weights. Love the challenge of pushing myself to my physical maximum. Love the process. Enjoy it!”

    Not only did I get back into great shape, I felt much better along the way. I didn’t feel any pressure to achieve any arbitrary goals or targets. Working out didn’t become this monotonous task that I felt like I had to do in order to justify an expectation.

    I actually loved working out. I became engaged with it. It became really fun. I became much better at it, and even performed better.

    And the best part? My desire and motivation to work out has never been greater. It’s never faded off. Not even in the slightest bit. It will never run out. Why? Because my desire and motivation for working out comes from an infinite source: The love of the activity and the process itself.

    I transferred this outlook over to my work life as well. I have zero goals in my career. I don’t have a single objective or target set. Instead, I tell myself this, every single day:

    “Love your work. Enjoy working. Be the absolute best you can at what you do. Provide as much value to every single person you work with as possible.”

    To this day, I’ve never been more successful, happy, and fulfilled in my career. I’ve progressed much further than I ever did before since adopting this new outlook. I feel liberated and unshackled, like I’ve lifted a huge mental weight off my shoulders.

    Results are always the biggest imposter. Goals are always the biggest distraction. They’re a trap. If you do things for the sole purpose of achieving results and goals, then you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to really become fully enthralled, intimate, and engaged with the process and journey itself.

    You’ll sabotage yourself.

    You don’t have to set goals to get results. Results are simply a natural consequence of enjoying something and doing it well. Results are things that come to you. They’re not things you can get.

    By prioritizing the process itself as opposed to what you can get from it, you create an endless source of desire and motivation. You liberate and unshackle yourself from the traps of results-oriented thinking. You’re able to do what you love with less pressure, less tension, and less stress.

    Not to mention, you’ll still get the results you want. Often times, you’ll get even better results than before.

    You might be thinking, “What if I don’t enjoy the process I’m doing?” Well, perhaps it’s time to move on. Quit. If something doesn’t make you happy, or makes you miserable, is it worth it to continue that process in the long run?

    Or, you can simply change things up a bit. If lifting weights is a process you don’t enjoy, try bodyweight exercises. Try resistance training, like kayaking or swimming. Keep changing things up until you do find something you can truly love and enjoy taking part in.

    Besides, if you find yourself truly unhappy doing something, there’s a good chance that whatever goals you aim to achieve won’t actually satisfy you anyways, or make it feel like the price you paid was worth doing something that made you feel miserable the entire time.

    The process is the most important thing. It’s the journey itself that yields the greatest rewards; that makes you feel awake, present, engaged, and alive.

    “Happiness is in the doing, not getting what you want.” ~Jesse Wallace

    Winning the race image via Shutterstock

  • What Creates Abusive People and How to Release Your Anger

    What Creates Abusive People and How to Release Your Anger

    Peaceful Man

    “The biggest problem for humanity, not only on a global level, but even for individuals, is misunderstanding.” ~Rinpoche

    Through the course of the relationship he was dishonest, emotionally manipulative, and unkind. It was subtle at first—do we really sign up for this on the dating application? But the acts wound their way through like a slow vine that eventually kills a tree. When it ended, he handled it atrociously.

    It took me many months to process it all, facing things I had suppressed in denial. When the shock wore off, I had a desire to let him know how he traumatized me—to outline all the ways in which he made me uncomfortable and how unbelievable and disgusting his behavior was.

    I wanted to punish him.

    I wanted him to understand that his actions—secrecy, meanness, disregard—were simply not the way you treat someone you supposedly love, someone that cares for and supports you.

    I knew I had my own issues to work out around why I chose to stay in this kind of dynamic, but I somehow thought a really good apology on his part would at least validate my experience and hike me back up onto the pedestal on which I deserved to stand.

    I wanted to believe that somehow my words would enlighten him—that understanding my experience would affect and change him for the better.

    And I tried! My goal honestly wasn’t to get all prison gangster on him. I just wanted my pain recognized; to feel regarded and important.

    I wrote a few letters that I thought diplomatically captured my hurt and positioned him perfectly to validate me and apologize. That apology would never come. In fact, when he did respond, it was in the form of anger, denial, projecting or minimizing. 

    When engaging him didn’t work, I turned inward. I created little pieces of art that depicted him with a huge ego and small…other parts. (I did not send those. One mature point for me there.)

    In time I accepted that the recognition and apology were clearly not going to happen.

    But the anger kept surfacing, and it was getting annoying. I had read volumes on the notion that “the behavior of others is about them, not you.” Logically I understood this, but I remained stuck in a purgatory. I couldn’t fully connect to and let go of the hugely distracting resentment.

    Then a curious thing happened. As I began to learn the deeper roots of why a person mistreats another, the anger dissipated.

    This didn’t require an individually detailed personal history to construe. They were facts that can be generally applicable to anyone that displays habitually abusive or destructive behaviors. They came through lots of therapy and research as I sought understanding I would never receive from him.

    It is this:

    When a healthy person behaves in a way that hurts others, they take responsibility for that action and make amends.

    I was dealing with an unhealthy person.

    There are people who, because of an abusive childhood (emotionally, physically, or otherwise), navigating their way with a narcissistic or extremely controlling parent, or suffering other emotional trauma, developed protective mechanisms early on to avoid dealing with the shame and violation they experienced.

    These mechanisms can start in the form of an inflated sense of self, denial, or even a secret life. They are ways to create “emotionally safe” conditions that allow them to experience freedom, “love,” or accomplishment in a way they didn’t have access to through healthy means.

    Emotional stability was the most immediate, basic human need. But they had to learn to achieve it at a time when core values—such as respect, honesty, and empathy—may have not been fully developed.

    When this person fails to deal with their pain and anger into adulthood, they never outgrow their early emotional survival skills. As these mechanisms take on an increasingly functional role, values that the person eventually came to understand (or claim to adhere to) become secondary to protecting their emotional safety.

    These methods weld to their identity: they can live without the values but not without the relief their emotional protections provide. They develop into practices such as criticism, disconnection, projection (applying their transgressions or perceived shortcomings—whatever they don’t want to own about themselves—onto their victims), lying, and addictive behaviors.

    What a healthy person considers a normal relationship negotiation or expression of personal needs, or even when life demands the basics of responsibility of regard for others, the unhealthy person perceives a threat to their vulnerable sense of self and unleashes their behaviors to maintain the emotional “safe place.”

    Their abusive techniques essentially produce short term (false) feelings of success, confidence, or acceptance that feel uplifting and comfortable, especially when the alternative is to face a reality that is filled with perceived failure. 

    In my experience, there was often no discernable threat when my ex displayed inconsiderate, bizarre, or hurtful behaviors.

    For example, if his sense of self was feeling particularly low—despite my adoration and support—that may have meant him blatantly ignoring me in a social situation to drink and flirt with other women. He often met requests to accommodate my schedule or needs with indignation. Playing with my son started to turn antagonistic to the point where I’d have to intervene.

    Mere days after we ended our relationship, he claimed he had become “emotionally connected” to a new lover. A couple of weeks later he purposely paraded her in front of me and my children, yet completely ignored us. I couldn’t fathom what I, much less innocent children, had done to deserve that.

    Even long before this absurd “new lover parade,” trying to have open, mature dialogue about the effects of his behavior, even in the most non-threatening way, resulted in projection, disconnection, or playing the victim.

    There they were: the mechanisms to cushion himself from the emotional pain associated with having to take responsibility for his behavior (that he most likely regretted or felt ashamed of already).

    The crazy-making boomerangs hurled at me made me realize the relationship would never grow into the beauty I had envisioned for myself, and if I stayed in, I would have to live with only erratically and unreliably receiving the things that were important to me: honesty, respect, commitment, kindness, empathy.

    And that’s when a giant light bulb shone on my anger. His mechanisms for achieving emotional “stability” occurred in direct conflict with some of my deepest core values.

    Anger is not a primary emotion; it is created to avoid core hurt feelings such as being disregarded, devalued, or rejected. And I felt all of those things every time my values were trampled.

    Anger isn’t a measurement of something negative in your life; it’s a signal to reaffirm your own boundaries and values. 

    With emotionally unhealthy people, we’re not talking about mild immaturity or self-centeredness—we’re talking full-scale inability and unwillingness to recognize responsibility for their actions. And almost anyone is subject to the pie-flinging.

    The slightest thing that he could translate into a question of his principles, responsibility, or regard for others resulted in anything from stonewalling to an aggressive verbal assault. I observed it wasn’t just me: it was his siblings, parents, the mother of his children—anyone he felt was “locked in” to him enough to have to swallow his behavior.

    When I could finally understand that his motivation wasn’t to devalue me—that his destructive decision-making processes existed long before I came along—the adage “Don’t take anything personally” finally, fully came to life for me.

    I was able to dissociate from the anger and focus on the more critical issue: regaining control of my life and all the wonderfulness of me. He was stuck in his own tornado, but I had a choice to live differently.

    There are still moments where a tiny part of me wonders “Why won’t he change?” Because the fact is, he could. We are all capable of extraordinary growth. He chooses the comfort of the known; though disappointed, I can now accept that the disregard, disrespect, and uncompassionate behavior I experienced weren’t a matter of my value or importance.

    I never thought it could be possible, but the love I feel now being alone with just my kids and my friends is more fulfilling and inspiring than having a partner I couldn’t trust to live by the values of basic human kindness when life gets challenging.

    Understanding allows me to hold a prayer for peace for him in my heart, while I live my own life of opportunity from a place of strength and joy.

    Peaceful man image via Shutterstock

  • The Keys to Finding Happiness After a Traumatic Childhood

    The Keys to Finding Happiness After a Traumatic Childhood

    Sad Child

    “It is never to late to have a happy childhood.” ~Tom Robbins

    A few days ago, when my older brother and I were sorting through old family photos, we found a picture of us from when we were about five and six years old. We were smiling. Just two kids full of life with no idea of what was to come.

    This was before the start of all the rage—before all the pain and an unfortunate series of events.

    My childhood was rough. I know some people may wish to return to those young innocent years of playing outside and going about our way without a worry in the world. However, if I had a choice to return to my childhood, I would hesitate at the gate.

    At the tender age of eleven, I was snatched from my home. I didn’t know why, all I knew was that my mother had done something bad and that my siblings and I had to be removed for our safety.

    When I was old enough to understand what had happened, I learned that my mother had gone to a mental institution to receive help and counseling for her anger.

    I used to think, “Well, everyone gets angry,” but this was different.

    Her words were a bit too harsh, her actions a bit too unpredictable, her impact a bit too negative. I remember sitting in the bathroom crying and wondering why I just couldn’t live a simple, happy life like the children in movies.

    Recovering from a traumatic childhood can be extremely difficult, especially when taking into consideration how valuable our childhoods are when preparing for adulthood. As of today, although my mother is generally in a more stable mindset, I can still hear the sound of her voice shouting threats I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

    When attempting to deal with a traumatic childhood, I feel the first solution that comes to mind is to forget it. However, trying to pretend that something did not happen doesn’t fix the negativity it has already enforced.

    When I first entered college, I saw it as an opportunity to get away from home and interact with others. With this in mind, I left my family home, but brought all the effects of my childhood with me.

    Throughout my high school years, I had become agoraphobic. I barely left my house and it pained me to attend school. When I entered college the same pattern persisted.

    I was scarred and I blamed my mother.

    She was the reason I was so negative, vain, and alone. I finally came to the conclusion that I no longer wanted to dwell on the past, allowing it to devour me inside out. So I eventually had to learn to let go, which proved more difficult than I first perceived.

    The first step to recovering from a childhood of physical, emotional, or mental abuse would be to attack it at the source. I mean standing head to head with what happened and not running away. We must accept that it happened and admit that it has affected us.

    When I attempted to dispose of my issue by running off to college, I forgot that it was still the reason behind my negative attitude. I would try so hard to disguise the fact that something was wrong and that I was unhappy.

    I thought it made me look weak and defeated. However, accepting that something is wrong takes even more strength than trying to pretend that everything is all right.

    It also allows you to take control of your life and put yourself on the path to healing.

    After determining that I was indeed affected by my mother’s explosive fits of rage, which led to other events throughout my childhood, I needed clarification as to why all of these things had occurred.

    I wanted to get to the bottom and dig up the roots of this issue in order to seek closure. So I sat and spoke with my mother, something I had never done. She explained to me that anger disorders had always been prominent in her family.

    She informed me of the time my grandmother killed a puppy trapped under her barn because the noise kept her up at night.

    She also told me how my grandfather went into explosive fits of rage after coming home from a night of drinking. At one point he even attempted to hit her with an axe. I then realized that my mother’s behavior did not come from her genuinely despising me, but was a direct reflection of what she’d experienced during her childhood.

    With this, I knew that I had to change because I did not want to continue to spread this lineage of anger.

    When we ask questions and gain clarification, we begin to achieve a sense of peace or relief that we finally have the answers and can learn to move on. When we choose to run away from our problems, we never get the clarification we need to move forward.

    Another important step on the journey to recovery is learning to define our happiness by ourselves. Quite often, we tend to dwell on the challenges of our childhood and blame them on one particular person, or blame them for our current unhappiness.

    Not to say that our traumatic childhoods had no effect of our adult lives, but rather the reason we are still unhappy is because we’ve chosen not to recognize these effects and properly address them so that we may move forward.

    If you choose to remain in a state of unhappiness due to the challenges faced during childhood, you will never be able to find peace.

    During my high school years, I would always blame my mother for my childhood experiences, and I concluded that my childhood experiences were the reason I could not be successful or accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish.

    I felt my childhood had made me a victim, and thought that was the reason behind my unhappiness and overall instability.

    What I came to understand was that I was still unhappy because of the fact that I viewed myself as a victim. I was still unhappy because I held on to my childhood. To me, it was a valid explanation for all the things I felt I could not do.

    I became a happier person when I began taking responsibility for my own happiness. I stopped blaming my mother for every horrible thing that had ever happened to me and I stopped blaming my childhood for my failure.

    One of the most common mistakes we make when referencing our traumatic childhoods is comparing them to others with “normal” childhood experiences. When we compare ourselves, we are taking away from the essence of who we are. Our childhoods, traumatic or not, are a part of who we are and what makes us, us.

    Take a look around and think of where you are now. You may have a beautiful family and the career you’ve always wanted. As for me, had I not had such a traumatic childhood I wouldn’t be able to write this post and help someone else by sharing my story.

    Think of all the good things that have come from your experience and you might just begin to be thankful you had it.

    One of the major lessons I’ve learned throughout my entire journey is that sometimes you just have to let go and trust that everything will turn out okay. Moving on from the past is stressful, especially when we feel as if we have an obligation to fix something that can no longer be fixed.

    We also tend to look to the past for answers to current situations. By doing this we are unintentionally taking away from present moment. Holding on to my traumatic childhood prevented me from moving forward with the rest of my life.

    It wasn’t my childhood preventing me from accomplishing things; it was my negative perception of myself. When I finally decided enough was enough, I began to look at things from a different angle.

    Maybe it wasn’t my fault or anyone’s fault for that matter—it doesn’t matter. What does matter is finding happiness once again and being content with what happened in my past without allowing it to become a burden.

    We sometimes get this clouded illusion of how life is supposed to be, but truth be told, you have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.

    Sad child image via Shutterstock

  • How to Stop Being a Victim of Your Own High Expectations

    How to Stop Being a Victim of Your Own High Expectations

    “The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.” ~Gandhi

    If someone asked you to recall the last time you were kind to yourself, would you struggle to bring up that memory?

    At one point in time, I couldn’t remember ever being kind to myself.

    I grew up with a lot of expectations from a demanding mother and other caretakers. Their expectations were all about them being in control and always being right.

    It was more than confusing; it left me with a need to prove myself constantly, and it gave me an inner critic that berated me at an early age.

    Years later, I got a job in corporate America where expectations were clear-cut and measured. Positive encouragement and regular successes made me feel good about myself.

    I became addicted to that feeling. My ego encouraged me to continually exceed other peoples’ expectations by making my own even higher. My inner critic accepted nothing less.

    Then I started my own business. I expected success to come quickly, easily, and be beyond anything I had experienced before.

    It certainly bypassed my expectations—in the worst way possible.

    This is a story of failure and how life got better when three small changes worked together to free me from being a victim of my own expectations.

    Take a look, and imagine what these changes can do for you.

    Change One: How You Treat Yourself

    Not only had my third attempt at creating a successful business failed but also the man I loved turned out to be a lying, thieving con artist who left me emotionally and financially broke.

    Life became nothing more than dealing with shame, runaway anxiety, and panic attacks that flung me out of bed at night.

    Then I tripped over a bag of books one day that I’d packed for a fundraiser. One fell out.

    Have you ever heard of the Buddhist practice called loving-kindness? I hadn’t, but Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance that fell at my feet explained it to me. Desperate for any relief I gave it a go.

    The practice begins with expressing loving-kindness first for yourself and then for others. Think you might have trouble with that? Then begin by expressing kindness to someone or something you love such as a pet. Take that feeling and transfer it to yourself.

    That’s how I had to do it. It was both heart- and eye-opening to realize how mean I had been to myself, and for how long I’d been that way.

    Though the full loving-kindness practice can take hours to complete, using this shortened version is a quick, effective way to feel better about yourself.

    This is what I’ve taken as my mantra, but feel free to use your own words: May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be held in loving-kindness. May I realize loving-kindness as my essence.

    The practice is simple and easy to do: Eyes opened, lowered, or closed, speak the words quietly or silently, and immerse yourself in the feeling of loving-kindness for as long as you can or for as long as time permits. Thirty seconds is fine, but the longer you can sustain the feeling, the quicker you’ll reap the benefits of this practice.

    Not only can you begin and end your day with loving-kindness but you can also easily practice it as you’re waiting for tea or coffee to brew, an elevator or bus to show up, or a person to come back after putting you on hold.

    Aim for a total of six or more practices each day. Not only will that help you make a habit out of treating yourself kindly but it’s also a great stress buster.

    Yes, you have to practice, but imagine how good you’ll feel when you fill yourself with all that loving-kindness.

    Change Two: What You Say That Limits You

    Though I was trying to be nicer to myself, my inner critic was entrenched in the judgmental family attitude.

    When I challenged it to stop judging me so harshly, it was quick to call me out on my own behavior of judging people.

    It was true. I judged, and I labeled.

    Attach a label to someone and that’s how you see them and think of them—even when evidence exists to the contrary.

    And what I was doing to other people was the same thing I was doing to myself.

    So I challenged myself. For every negative label I wanted to attach to someone, I had to come up with at least six different reasons that would stop me from doing so.

    For example, the person who cuts you off in traffic. Instead of labeling them as a stupid jerk, you think: Maybe they got fired or hired today. Or maybe it’s something tragic or serious that’s distracting them. Perhaps they just came from the dentist, and now they’re getting transmissions from outer space!

    It’s a practice that I made a game out of, and like any game, it has rules:

    1. You must focus on the person’s behavior and come up with six reasons that could have caused it.
    2. At least some of the answers have to be within the realm of possibility.
    3. Reject all expectations of finding the perfect answer or even coming up with six of them.

    This practice is doable anywhere and with almost anyone, including kids.

    It helps create an awareness of how labels limit your thinking and creates an awareness of the truth that what we do to other people reflects what we do to ourselves.

    Don’t forget to play it with your inner critic. Listen closely and you might hear grinding noises as it tries to switch gears from beating you up to being supportive.

    After all, if you can be less judgmental toward other people, how can it not do the same for you?

    Change Three: What You Say That Belittles You

    This one is about your self-talk habits. You know the ones when you ask yourself questions like, “How could I be so stupid? ” or, “OMG what a screw-up! Could I not make a bigger mess of things? ” or, “Why do I do this to myself? I’m such an idiot!”

    Yes, labeling is definitely going on here, but this is different. This is all about your expectations of yourself and how you talk to yourself when you fail to meet them.

    Even with the loving-kindness and labeling practices, my expectations of myself continued to run high. My inner critic loved beating up on me for every mistake, failure, or setback, real or imagined. Then one day, a little voice made itself heard, “Not being very kind to yourself, are you?”

    So leaning heavily on my loving-kindness practice, I struggled to be more tolerant of my mistakes. Asking myself questions that would produce a more positive response was a big help.

    For example: “Nothing is a total failure. There has to be something positive about this. What is it?” Or, “Is this really a mistake? Did I really screw up? Is it possible the outcome is acceptable?”

    Think about those harsh ways you talk to yourself and the questions you ask that belittle you. They may be old reruns of taunts and questions other people used on you to make you feel ashamed or to justify punishing you.

    Replace them with questions that explore the circumstances of your mistake or setback. Remember to look for anything that could be construed as positive. Doing so will help you reform your demanding expectations.

    Sometimes, positives can be hard to find. That’s when you really want to be nice to yourself. Do extra loving-kindness practices, and then ask yourself what you’ve learned from what happened.

    Experience can be a harsh teacher. Owning up to what you’ve learned may not be an easy pill to swallow. There may not be a spoonful of sugar to help it go down, but it’s certainly more desirable than beating yourself up, isn’t it?

    Small Changes Have Large Impacts

    These changes are small but powerful because they open you up to possibilities that you may not have considered previously.

    They help you stop being victimized by your own expectations by treating yourself more kindly, by helping you realize that judging other people is closely aligned with the labels and limitations you put on yourself, and by helping you see the positives in supposed failures and cut yourself some slack.

    Changing habits of thought and behaviors is challenging, but if I can do this, you certainly can!

    It all begins with a practice taking less than a minute, six times a day. It’s a small practice of showering yourself with loving-kindness.

    It’s easy to start. It’s easy to do. Just repeat after me:

    “May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be held in loving-kindness. May I realize loving-kindness as my essence.”

  • How Your Expectations Can Hold You Back and Keep You Unhappy

    How Your Expectations Can Hold You Back and Keep You Unhappy

    Sad Face

    “My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportions to my expectations.” ~Anonymous

    I used to be quite the model student. I thrived at university and seemed to be meeting all the expectations of our milestone-society.

    Having chosen a Business Masters at a well-established university in the Netherlands, I was being schooled for a corporate career in a multinational firm, which I thought was what I wanted for myself.

    I was led to believe that a shiny-bright future was waiting for me as soon as I acquired this magical piece of paper, and who doesn’t want that? I never even gave it a second thought and just pushed myself through my studies as best as I could.

    Sure, being a financially challenged student and having to pay for my own education had its struggles, but it also had its charming moments. Besides, studying came easily to me. The achievement gave me a purpose and a great sense of self-worth.

    I couldn’t wait to graduate and finally start ‘real life.’ I was eager to be able to make good money, and I imagined myself happy, together with my boyfriend, living that grown-up life with all the perks that come with it.

    Little did I know what was waiting for me. There was this something called an economic crisis and, although I’d put my resume online, my phone wasn’t ringing off the hook with companies begging me to work for them. Quite the opposite, actually.

    I was receiving rejection after rejection, unable to get a job that was suitable for my education, and I ended up working at a coffee store for minimum wage.

    I’d get up every morning at 4am to serve cappuccinos to people who were on their way to university or their grown-up jobs. I had to face those strangers covered in milk foam, feeling like I had “underachiever” written on my forehead. I felt like an absolute failure.

    When I got home from work, cranky and sleep-deprived, I searched for jobs I could apply for. I would catch myself, while I was desperately applying for the jobs I’d spent so much time studying for, feeling resentment toward those jobs at the same time.

    They all seemed either boring or extremely stressful, didn’t sit with my moral practices, and, above all, seemed so meaningless to me. I started to realize that getting into this corporate treadmill would set me up for a life that would make me downright unhappy and empty.

    So there I was, finally graduated, my income barely covering my rent, with a big fat student loan debt and absolutely no clue what I actually wanted to do in life. Shortly thereafter, I got physically sick and, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my relationship ended, leaving me on my own, devastated, clueless, and broke.

    There it was: the ever-widening gap between my expectations and reality. To say that I was dissatisfied would be a massive understatement. It is safe to say that I was having a full-blown mental breakdown.

    My entire self-worth was dependent on achievement and the love of someone else, yet now I had none of that left to cling to. I absolutely loathed myself and felt ashamed of where I was in life, convinced that there had to be something terribly wrong with me.

    So how do you even begin to deal with that? I can tell you what definitely does not help (because I tried them all):

    • Spending your days at home scrolling through Facebook and comparing yourself to everyone who seems to have his or her life together.
    • Watching Netflix while binging on chocolate and pretending that the reality doesn’t exist.
    • Indulging in alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes only to wake up feeling like absolute crap.
    • Spending hours on end dwelling on the situation, overthinking and analyzing it over and over, wondering “Why me?’
    • Being too hard on yourself for not being where you want to be, talking negatively to yourself, and feeling worthless because of it.
    • Throwing yourself in the arms of the next man (or woman) who is clearly not the right partner for you, hoping he (or she) will fix you, or at least ease the pain. This leads down the path of even more drama and very ugly break ups.

    These kinds of activities may lead you to think you are helping yourself, as it does bring momentary relief, but you only end up causing more damage.

    I got stuck in a deep, dark depression and I had no clue how to get out of it. I spent hours lying on the floor crying my eyes out, praying for this to be over.

    I decided that working on myself was the only potential course of action to get out of this mess. I started reading piles of books about personal development, I got back to my yoga practice, and I started to turn inward and practice mindfulness in my daily life.

    I followed a mindfulness course and would sit down for at least thirty minutes in silence every day to practice my mindfulness meditation. It’s what turned my whole world around.

    Not right away, but slowly and steadily, my mindset and perspective began to shift and, with that, my outside world changed too.

    By practicing mindfulness I learned to accept what is instead of resenting and fighting it. I stopped judging both my situation and myself, which helped me to stop beating myself up over not being where I wanted to be.

    It gave me the strength to let go of all my long-held expectations (many of which weren’t mine to begin with) and just be present with whatever there is now.

    Before my mindfulness journey, the idea of accepting and not judging the situation sounded like defeat to me, like being passive . In university I was programmed to compete, to analyze, to strive… everything but accept.

    Though it might seem like the easier way out, fully accepting the present can be quite a challenge. Yet it is the only way to move forward.

    That’s the paradox, which can be sometimes hard to grasp. Only by accepting A are we able to move to B, and only by practicing this day by day did I start to experience and understand that.

    That’s when you start to enjoy the journey and stop wishing you were at your end goal already. It doesn’t suddenly make the gap between what you have and what you want disappear, but it does allow you to regain your happiness.

    It also creates space in your head. Space that’s no longer absorbed by negative emotions and hostile thoughts. When you learn to let go of your expectations, a big open road suddenly unfolds right in front of you. One full of new possibilities, ready and waiting for you to create your own path.

    They say that every difficult experience holds a blessing within, which is so true when I look back at my situation now.

    I can clearly see how this dark period in my life was a necessity for me to grow into the person that I really am. To start living the life I always wanted and pursue happiness instead of social status or material wealth.

    I have now found my sweet spot and live a healthy and happy life driven by passion and love. When you trade expectations for acceptance miracles will truly happen.

    Sad face image via Shutterstock

  • How to Make Peace with the Past and Stop Being a Victim

    How to Make Peace with the Past and Stop Being a Victim

    “Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” ~Harvey Fienstein

    Do you usually feel as if everything bad that can happen will happen, and it will happen to you?

    You must be the unluckiest person on the face of the planet. Opportunities never work out. Doors that should open close in your face. Friends let you down. Bosses don’t see your value. There seems to be a universal conspiracy to keep you stuck right where you are now.

    You feel like your life is always going to be like this.

    You feel like a failure as a person.

    You worry that you’re never going to be happy.

    You stress that you have no control to change any of it.

    And it’s all so unfair, right? Why does this bad stuff always happen to you? How come other people get all the breaks, and you never do?

    If this sounds familiar, you’re probably still affected by past events that left you feeling helpless, scared, or inadequate—and you’re going to keep re-experiencing these feelings until you do something to change them.

    My Experience with Self-Sabotage

    Why do I get how this works? It’s no big mystery. I’ve been there myself. In fact, at one time, I was the queen of self-sabotage.

    I went from being a straight-A student to dropping out of school a year before my finals. From being a loved and spoiled child to losing touch with my family. From being confident and self-assured to needy and codependent.

    What happened? I stopped thinking of myself in a positive way in response to events outside of my control. I’d always taken pride in myself, and I felt someone had taken that pride away from me.

    All of these dramatic changes came from something very small—a change in my home circumstances that stopped me feeling like part of the family. Because someone in my life constantly criticized me, I lost confidence in my ability. Because I lost my security, I became chronically insecure.

    Instead of feeling that I was a person of worth, with good prospects, I started thinking of myself as rejected, unwanted, and somehow less-than.

    As a teenager, I was in no way equipped to deal with that. So I rebelled. And from there, my life went very rapidly downhill.

    I sabotaged my jobs; I couldn’t stick anything beyond a few months. I sabotaged my first degree by dropping out. And as for relationships, I attracted every narcissistic guy around, all with the agenda of keeping myself a victim.

    So What Changed—and How Do You Change It?

    I hit rock bottom. My last bad relationship had come to a nasty end, I’d dropped out of University, and I had absolutely nothing in my life to keep me going.

    When you hit rock bottom, you have two choices: You give up, or you say, “enough is enough.” And you start changing the way you’re thinking about things and do something to radically improve your life.

    I took the second option, and my life turned around. From nothing, I went to a happy marriage, motherhood, a lovely home, and a fantastic career. And I promise you, if I can do it, from where I was at that time, so can you.

    The following are some of the things that helped me overcome my negative programming and self-confidence issues. If you feel you were born to be a victim, and to live a life filled with anger and frustration, these steps could work for you too.

    Why “Just Let Go” Is Not the Best Advice

    I hear this advice all the time. People come to me saying they’ve been told to put the past behind them and start over, but they have real problems doing that. If only everything in life were that simple.

    This stuff happened, and it happened to you. You’d need to be some sort of superhuman, or a machine, to think that it’s had no effect on who you are. And letting go, like it never happened, is denying its influence.

    People who try to deny the effect of past experiences use a strategy called repressive coping, and these things have a nasty habit of coming back to bite you when you least expect it.

    Accept what happened, understand how it’s affected you, but make sure you place it where it belongs—in the past. The fact that it’s there doesn’t mean you have to keep playing the same situations over in your life. You can make different choices, think in different ways, and keep moving forward.

    Being Peaceful or Being Strong?

    Of course we’d all like to be peaceful and calm, but sometimes that’s just not possible, especially when you’ve been through traumatic events. Lacking a magic wand, we can’t just make it all vanish. So following on from acknowledging it, we then move to what it gave us—and although it may be hard to see sometimes, it gave us strength.

    There are people in the world who’ve never had to deal with the stuff that you’ve been through. You’ve dealt with things they can’t even imagine. That gives you reason to be proud of yourself, and a whole different perspective on what “tough” really is.

    Losing my family and my identity may have been the cause of my initial problems, but it also provided me with the strength to overcome challenges I encountered in my life, and played a great part in giving me the confidence and ability to achieve my management career goals.

    Accept Who You Are—But Who Are You?

    So following on from the point above, who are you now and how do you see yourself?

    You may have been a victim in the past, but you’re still here, in spite of everything that the world’s thrown at you. In my opinion, that makes you a survivor. You may not feel it, but you’re strong.

    You can take the strength and be proud of the person who survived the challenges. You can choose how you see yourself. Do you want to see yourself as a helpless victim of circumstance, or as someone who is still standing, still fighting, still growing, still on a journey to make your life better and not give in?

    Sure, the insecure stepdaughter is still somewhere inside me. And she’s now also the person who has achieved a really good life and has the security and success she always wanted.

    As We Forgive Those…

    Another piece of common advice that people are given: forgive what was done to you. Unfortunately, some things are harder to forgive than others, so the brain will fight that.

    If someone has maliciously caused you harm and you have to live with the consequences, forgiving what’s unacceptable may seem to keep you in victim mode—as if, once again, you’ve just had to take it.

    Of course, the truth is, by staying angry and bitter, you’re still hurting yourself. It’s irrelevant that they may deserve your bitterness. They aren’t suffering from it; you are.

    So, I don’t advise you to force forgiveness. Instead, accept what happened, acknowledge how you feel about it, then put it behind you. You can’t change the past, but you can change the future, and dwelling and brooding on these feelings will not help you move forward.

    Count Your (Amended) Blessings

    However positively you can spin the past, your life has still been negatively affected. You may have a worse life than you would have done if this thing had never happened, and it’s hard to feel gratitude for something awful! So how can you be grateful for what you do have now?

    Be glad for the person who has come through this—the survivor, even though you may not feel like one.

    Be glad for what you’ve managed to achieve, in spite of everything that’s been done to stop you. You may feel like you haven’t achieved much, but as a person who is reading this and trying to change your life, you’ve achieved the power to make decisions and refuse to give up, which some people never do.

    Be glad for the extra lessons you learned: the ones that made you tough, make new problems minimal compared to past challenges, and put you in a position to be able to help others who’ve been through the same things.

    —

    These are the things that are going to empower you to go out and change your world.

    Playing with the cards stacked against you is just plain unfair. It’s time for you to even the odds.

    Your past is always going to be something that happened to you, but that doesn’t mean it needs to define you, restrict you, and dictate your future life.

    How would your life change if you were only taking what was positive from the past? If you could see yourself as someone who overcame it, who chose to reject the negative self-concepts that were forced on you, who was a survivor, and not a victim?

    You can do this. You, and only you, have the power. And that’s why you’re not a victim. The only person who can control this is you.

    Work through all of the points above. Find out where your blocks are. Deal with them. Move on. You’ve been through enough already. It’s time for things to get better.

    You’ve got this.

  • How to Let Go of the Stuff That Keeps You Emotionally Stuck

    How to Let Go of the Stuff That Keeps You Emotionally Stuck

    “The totality of my possessions reflects the totality of my being. I am what I have … What is mine is myself.” ~Jean Paul Sartre

    What kind of relationship do you have with your stuff?

    Embracing who we are naturally requires a letting go of who we aren’t, but perhaps want to be. That ties directly to our physical belongings, which can renew and inspire us in the direction we’re headed—or hold us back.

    Over the years, I’ve found that the objects with the most powerful grip on us are not necessarily those we use frequently and with ease, but the “aspirational” items that we wished we used more.

    The sleek high heels that never come out of the closet, because they’re too impractical to actually wear. The exercise bike that grows rusty in the basement. Or in my case, the high-end digital camera I just sold on eBay.

    The Lightness of Letting Go

    The camera is three or four years old at this point, but it takes amazing pictures. My partner at the time suggested I buy it before a big vacation to Istanbul, though I didn’t need much convincing.

    The idea of capturing the world through a lens and expressing myself creatively excited me. I liked the vision I saw for myself—someone with an eye for detail, with original, hand-crafted art on her walls to boot. This person sounded very clever and interesting.

    But what I quickly came to realize is that the actual process of taking photos, let alone editing them, held less appeal.

    My traveling companion used the camera on that trip far more than I did—he at least knew what to do with all those dials and buttons, whereas I had skipped reading the manual. It turned out my iPhone and a few Instagram filters were really all I needed to be satisfied. (So basic, I know.)

    Still, I held on to the camera for several more years, dutifully lugging it with me on trips and adventures, though it rarely came out of my bag. Even when I did snap pictures, they almost never came off the memory card.

    These unused items can take up a lot of space, but it’s the emotional burden, not the physical one, that really weighs us down.

    Every time I looked at my camera, I was struck by a pang of guilt. For wasted money, wasted potential.

    I’m rational, even ruthlessly unemotional, when it comes to most of my possessions, but this camera had a hold over me. I put off getting rid of it in the hopes that inspiration—or at least some motivation— would strike.

    Finally, this winter, I accepted what had already been true for quite a while: I’m not a photographer. And that’s okay.

    I sold the camera online and instantly felt better. The guilt was gone, my shelf was empty, and my wallet full. This time around, I plan to spend the money on something closer to my heart—an investment in my writing, some yoga classes or even a meal out with friends.

    Taking Stock for Yourself

    Here are a few things I considered when I accepted that my dreams of being a photographer, even a decent amateur one, were just that.

    Listen to your own stories.

    What stories run through your head when you look at an object that you don’t use but can’t seem to part with? How do you plan to use it and is that realistic?

    These stories are illuminating because they help us identify our true motivations.

    I rarely thought about planning my shots or the subsequent hours required in front of the computer to review my work—the nuts and bolts of photography. And when I did consider these tasks, it was not with much fondness.

    Watch out for the dreaded “shoulds.”

    As I’ve learned, it can be far too easy to conflate what we should want to do with what genuinely calls to us. Do the objects you cling to support the person you are and the activities you enjoy, or do they speak to some idealized identity in your mind’s eye?

    Author Gretchen Rubin writes frequently about what she considers the most important of her “personal commandments”—her commitment to just “Be Gretchen.” This has meant admitting she’ll never have a glamorous wardrobe or enjoy late-night jazz clubs, even if she likes the idea of these things in theory and sees why other people cherish them.

    “If something was really fun for me, it would pass this test: I looked forward to it; I found it energizing, not draining; and I didn’t feel guilty about it later,” she suggests in The Happiness Project.

    Let your possessions be physical reminders of what’s really fun for you.

    Consider substitutes.

    It’s possible your desire to hang onto something is telling you more than you think.

    I had a similar experience with a bicycle I bought the better part of a decade ago. It was a beautiful Italian road bike from the eighties, and I snatched it up on Craigslist, putting aside the fact that it wasn’t quite the right fit and that I didn’t feel comfortable riding it.

    I held onto the bike through several moves across states despite rarely using it, thanks to that familiar tug of guilt and desire.

    It was only in the past year that I finally invested in a new bike, one with upright handlebars, fatter tires, and easy-to-change gears. It fits me and I ride it everywhere. This one also has less emotional power over me. It’s functional, a tool I use for getting around—not a symbol for the kind of person I wish to be.

    Can you tweak what’s not working?

    Think about who else might gain.

    When I did finally sell my camera, it helped to convince myself that I was giving someone else the chance to enjoy it at a reduced cost. I hope the buyer finds the joy I’d been seeking, but never actually found.

    Could others use the items you’re clutching so hard? Consider letting go a gift to the world—one that will also free you to embrace your true self more fully.

  • You Don’t Have to Adjust Who You Are to Please Others

    You Don’t Have to Adjust Who You Are to Please Others

    Six Faces

    “If you are busy pleasing everyone, you are not being true to yourself.” ~Jocelyn Murray

    Do you say yes to things only to keep people happy?

    Do you fear saying and doing what you actually want?

    I know how that feels.

    From a young age, I was the polite, good girl. I rarely rebelled. I wanted to keep everyone happy. I thought that if I was honest I’d be rejected. That those closest to me wouldn’t love me. I thought I’d end up alone.

    At friends’ houses, asked what I’d like to drink or eat, I would always respond with “Whatever’s easiest.” I never wanted to be a burden.

    At twenty-one I met my boyfriend’s parents. Dinner was fresh sardines complete with tiny bones. I was vegetarian and hated fish, yet I said nothing and ate away.

    I fought the urge to be sick. I followed each revolting bite with a gulp of water. I should have spoken up, but I feared disapproval.

    After college, the desire to keep everyone happy led me into jobs I thought people would approve of. By my mid-twenties I had a job in management. I was successful. But inside I was miserable.

    Living my life according to the word “should” was gruelling. When I finally stopped, I felt empty and unsure of who I was.

    One day it became too much. I didn’t want to get out of bed. Everything was an effort and I spent hours sobbing.

    I looked in the mirror. I was disgusted by my reflection. I’d roll my hand into a fist and hit myself around the head. I thought I deserved to suffer.

    I knew I needed help, so I reached out to a doctor. He put me on antidepressants and I started to talk to a counselor.

    After I started to understand my motivations and explored my values, I started to believe I was enough. I didn’t need to hide who I was to gain people’s approval. I started to feel less depressed.

    I still have my days when I worry what others think, but I don’t feel the urge to adjust who I am, or to follow paths that aren’t right for me.

    This process didn’t happen instantly, but looking back I see the steps I followed.

    1. Start with the root.

    It’s tempting to ignore people pleasing. You feel in control. You feel comfortable .

    But until you start to examine the root of your behavior, it’s likely that you’ll continue to constantly want to please others. This comes at a cost to your own happiness.

    Instead, take some time to explore the motivations behind your people pleasing.

    How does it benefit you? What belief does it show that you hold about yourself?

    I believed that by not speaking up, people would love and accept me. This all stemmed from the root belief that to be accepted and loved I needed to be someone else.

    As a small child, there was a lot going on in my parents’ lives. They were loving and caring but they were young, new parents with a lot of financial pressure on their shoulders. Life was busy.

    I didn’t want to be another thing that they needed to worry about. If I was polite and kept everyone happy I thought this would create less stress for them.

    So that’s what I did. Over the years, it became an ingrained habit that showed up in all areas of my life. I associated being loved with people pleasing and the truth as rejection.

    2. Ask yourself these two questions.

    Letting go of the belief that lies at the root of your people pleasing can seem impossible. It’s scary to step away from something you have held onto for so long.

    One way to make it easier is so examine your belief further.

    I find these two simple questions help:

    Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

    In Katie Byron’s The Work, she suggests we use this question to investigate our beliefs. When I first read this question, I struggled with it.

    My people pleasing was so ingrained that the belief that I needed to be someone else to be loved felt so real. Of course it was true.

    What helped me was to consider the word “absolutely.” It implied there was no room for doubt. So I searched my brain for examples that would 100% prove this belief.

    There weren’t any concrete examples. I realized I had created the belief myself. There was no way I could know that it was absolutely true.

    Is it helpful?

    We often pursue harmful behaviors and beliefs because we believe they offer us something. In reality, they drain us of time and energy.

    So ask yourself is my root belief helpful? Does it help me move further toward my life goals?

    When I asked myself these two questions, I realized that my belief was neither absolutely true nor helpful. This made it easier to let go and to move onto something new.

    3. Get to know yourself.

    When your life has been full of people pleasing, it’s hard to know what to replace it with. It can be tempting to let the habit creep back in. To fill the space it left.

    I felt this way. At first, it was painful to confront the fear that perhaps I didn’t know who I was. It felt like I was moving closer to a trap door about to take a peek inside. What if there was only darkness?

    I fought the urge to run the other way. Instead, I slowly started to take note of my reactions to things. I let my intuition guide me.

    As I did I started to rediscover things about myself, things I had known but had remained hidden beneath the trap door.

    I remembered my love of helping and supporting people. My curiosity for different cultures. The draw toward acting and improvisation.

    I realized I would never be happy in my job, stuck behind my desk working with data rather than people.

    4. Sow new seeds.

    Giving up people pleasing is challenging. It can seem overwhelming. Instead of thinking of it as planting acres of maize, think of it as sowing a seed. One small seed. That’s all.

    What’s one tiny thing you could do to take yourself away from people pleasing and closer to authenticity?

    Could you express your true opinion about something?

    Could you be honest that you don’t want to go to that social event?

    As you start to sew a new seed and nourish it with action, new shoots and roots will appear. Yes, you may feel guilty for being honest at first, but it will get easier.

    As you practice, the old root and belief will naturally start to wither. You’ll feel more assured and confident.

    —

    Constantly trying to please others is exhausting, particularly when it leads you to live a life based on what you think you should do rather than what you want to do. But taking small steps to understand this part of you can have dramatic effects on your life.

    Imagine not having to constantly adjust who you are to please others.

    Imagine feeling more confident in expressing who you are.

    Start with step one. It doesn’t mean you have to give up doing things for others. It does mean giving up a toxic habit.

    Adjust less to others. Listen more to yourself.

    Six faces image via Shutterstock

  • Why Strong, Brave People Aren’t Afraid to Quit

    Why Strong, Brave People Aren’t Afraid to Quit

    “Some people think it’s holding on that makes one strong—sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

    Throughout my life I’ve quit many things.

    I quit a reasonably ‘sexy’ job title and steady paycheck.

    I quit a six-year relationship with an essentially giving and loving person.

    I quit being a yoga teacher after investing heavily in getting qualified.

    I’ve quit many courses halfway through like calligraphy (of all things), ‘life design map’ courses, and online courses for all sorts of random things.

    I quit therapy once, before they told me we were ‘done.’

    I’ve quit several crappy part-time jobs when I first started building my business.

    Yep, I’m a quitter. Or at least, that’s the label I gave myself.

    You see, for many years I was the queen of being mean to myself. She can still pipe up on some days, but I used to be so continually nasty to myself, it was exhausting.

    “You never finish anything.”

    “You just don’t have what it takes to go the distance.”

    “You’re so pathetic, Nat.”

    “Why can’t you just see things through? What the hell is wrong with you?”

    The other day a client told me she had these same questions (which are really just nasty taunting statements) going around in her head, as she felt guilty for giving up on something that she’d known for a long time she didn’t want to continue.

    “I feel like a quitter, Nat. Won’t walking away mean that I’m just quitting?”

    And so we began to talk about the meaning of quitting.

    What does it actually mean anyway?

    To me, to quit means to leave, usually permanently, or to be rid of something, right? I mean, that’s what the dictionary definition tells us.

    But what if all the times we labeled ourselves as quitters were actually times when we were following our very finely tuned but so often ignored gut instinct?

    What if quitting was just a term we’ve become used to hearing from the people around us, from our parents, from anyone else that might have reminded us where we “should have stuck things out,” but holds absolutely no truth in relevance to the situation we supposedly decided to quit?

    I mean, let’s take the end of my six-year relationship for instance, which some, including my ex, might view as me having ‘quit.’ Do the years prior to that, where I struggled with myself over what was working and what wasn’t, and where I held on and tried to keep things together for both of us, not count as me working hard to keep going?

    If I casually had just walked out without a reason, that would have been quitting, but I didn’t; I stayed and fought for as long as I could, and I made a decision that I felt at the time was right for both of our long-term happiness.

    And then maybe you could also say I quit being a yoga teacher, or at least my mum might have been worrying about that at the time. “But what about all that money you spent traveling over there and taking the course?”

    And I could understand her worry, but I reached a point when I had to be honest with myself.

    I had been putting pressure on myself to be a perfect and shiny and accomplished yoga teacher even though the entire reason I had gone on the training was to heal myself and my spine, tap into who I really was, figure out what I really wanted from life, and deepen my practice. It was never to be a teacher.

    So yes, maybe I quit yoga teaching, but again, what I was actually doing was being true to myself.

    And I want to encourage you to do the same.

    Drop the struggle you might currently be experiencing with the quitter label. It’s never going to serve you, and you know it’s not who you really are.

    If you know deep down that something doesn’t feel right—if you know you’re not meant to be with the person you’re with, in the job you’re in, or doing the work you’re doing—then walking away from it does not make you a quitter, my beautiful friend.

    It makes you empowered.

    It means you have guts.

    It means you are strong enough and tuned-in enough to listen to yourself.

    It means you’re following your intuition.

    It means you know your time and energy are best spent doing something else.

    It means you know you’re on the wrong path and you’re brave enough to take action to change direction.

    It means you’re brave.

    It means you’re strong.

    And it means you’re taking responsibility of your happiness.

    Does it mean you will quit everything in your life?

    No, it most certainly does not. When you find what’s right, you’ll know, believe me.

    But turning over several stones to find the one that shines instead of settling for the safety of the first thing you find is a journey few are prepared to walk.

    So with that in mind, you’re pretty amazing for having chosen to be true to who you really are.

    Finding what lights you up doesn’t come overnight; maybe for some it does, but for most, it requires a few more stones to be unturned.

    So don’t be afraid to keep moving, don’t be afraid to throw in the towel, don’t be afraid to ‘quit.’ It means you’re taking decisive action around what you will and won’t stand for, what feels good and what doesn’t, and most importantly, what feels true for you and what just quite simply doesn’t.

    We can’t live our most expressive, fulfilled, and empowered life trying to labor away at something that doesn’t light us up from the inside out, so stop wasting time trying to, and don’t be scared to do something different.

  • Freedom Is Knowing We Don’t Need to Be the Best

    Freedom Is Knowing We Don’t Need to Be the Best

    Happy Woman

    “Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego.’” ~Frierich Nietzsche

    At a young age, the bar for the rest of my life was set very high. I was a natural at anything I tried to do, and I was lucky enough to have my friends and family support me in just about every venture, so I became incredibly confident in my abilities and hopeful that life would always be easy and painless.

    Eventually, I solidified the expectation for myself to always be number one because that is what my identity was based upon.

    To give you a couple examples of my pre-adolescent stretch of glory: I was an all star swimmer (better than even the boys on my swim team); no one dared challenge me in verbal warfare due to my incredibly intellectual argumentative skills; I was “popular” for a pre-teen and had close friends; and I was very good at school.

    Then I was humbled by reality.

    I transferred from my safe 100-student private school to a public school of over 400 students in sixth grade, and my world was literally flipped upside down.

    I lost my identity in a sea of kids who went toe to toe with my vivacious personality, and my ego took a big hit.

    I was not the best at anything anymore, so who I was and my contribution to the world, in my young mind, was compromised, because those things that I attached my value to as a human being were challenged.

    This identity (ego) I refused to let go of ate me up inside, as I internalized it to mean that I was somehow not valuable as a person. My intrinsic value was somehow diminished because I was not the best at everything anymore.

    And that is where my mind failed me, because that pattern of thinking is not true. Problems arise when we believe our value comes from our accomplishments and achievements.

    The world makes it very hard to avoid attaching our value to our success because success is defined, measured, and standardized in many cultures by what we do, who we do it for, what we have (materialistic things and money), and how far we get.

    What I came to realize was that these things can’t even begin to explain the person you are on the inside. What matters is your intention, the worth and depth of your relationships, and your values. These qualities make you who you are.

    Let me back up a bit. Before I came to this conclusion, I was hurting badly for a number of years. Not only did my life get considerably harder after entering the sixth grade, but I also stopped asking for help and maintaining the close relationships I had made when I was at my “peak,” because I felt unworthy.

    To protect my precious ego, I started blaming and judging everyone to keep them at a distance so they wouldn’t see my self-perceived faults. And that, my friends, is the ugly nature of the ego. Call it competitive, stubborn, or hardheaded—it is an insatiable monster that will eat you up inside if you let it.

    I would like to say that I grew up and had an awakening of sorts, but to tell you the truth, I am still very much in the process of accepting and loving the true me. Here are some tips on how I manage the monster that you may want to try:

    Identify any beliefs regarding achievement and access that cause you to suffer.

    Can you let these go? Why or why not? Oftentimes, we hold on to beliefs for our survival and comfort even when they make us unhappy. We also hold onto beliefs because we are afraid to discover our true selves, which would mean big changes for everything around us.

    Ask yourself what you genuinely value in others that has nothing to do with success, appearance, or other “worldly” objects.

    Can you see these qualities in yourself? What would it feel like to acknowledge, grow, and love these values/qualities in yourself? Think of qualities in others that make you feel safe, respected, and cared for. Usually the good qualities we see in others are direct reflections of what we do not see in ourselves but possess deep down.

    Honestly ask yourself what you need, and seek help.

    Oftentimes, people like me try to prove they have it all together but end up overwhelmed because they wind up juggling too many balls, saying, “No, it’s okay, I got it.”

    I realized I stopped asking for help because I needed to maintain the illusion (primarily for myself) that I knew everything so I wouldn’t feel incompetent.

    Being vulnerable enough to admit you can’t do everything and need help actually brings people closer to you because it opens the door for the most basic of human needs—empathy, validation, and most importantly, the need to feel like you are not alone in your experiences.

    Be gentle and patient with yourself. Allow yourself some room for error and be humble enough to seek other perspectives to issues that arise. It can be extremely freeing to learn that you do not, in fact, have all the answers.

    It is a process to let go of the unrelenting demands created by past experiences and accomplishments. Life has a funny way of showing what you need to relinquish in order to be at peace and congruent with your inner values.

    Be aware of what causes you to suffer on a regular basis and try to make a habit of acknowledging your core inner qualities that give your life meaning and value. When you start living in congruence with the values and truths you discover inside yourself, everything else naturally falls into place.

    “Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.” ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

    Happy woman image via Shutterstock

  • How to Move On: What It Really Means to Let Go

    How to Move On: What It Really Means to Let Go

    “Don’t let the darkness from your past block the light of joy in your present. What happened is done. Stop giving time to things which no longer exist, when there is so much joy to be found here and now.” ~Karen Salmansohn

    If you are lucky enough to spend time in mindful communities you will hear the phrase “letting go” used frequently. The practice of letting go is used to support our acceptance of the way things are, and I believe it’s a cornerstone of creating a happy, full life.

    But what happens when you’re being asked to let go of something that is deeply emotionally charged or something that directly relates to how you identify yourself?

    When we have a deep emotional attachment to an event or circumstance in our life and we’re being asked to let it go, it can often feel like we’re being asked to move on and forget about the past, person, or event that we’re deeply connected to. 

    In 2010 my oldest son passed away unexpectedly. At that time I had been a practicing yogi for almost ten years and had navigated what I thought were significant opportunities for practicing detachment and letting go.

    For example, during my divorce from my son’s father I let go of my long held dream of having a happy marriage, white picket fence, kids, and a dog (though I did get the kids and the dog).

    Following my divorce, when my middle son, at the young age of fourteen, had to be sent away to a drug treatment facility, I let go of the typical teenage dreams of homecomings, proms, varsity sports, and so on; after all, I wasn’t sure he would live to see those years. Not only did Daniel live through those years, he has since become a vibrant soul, who never needed all those typical experiences to thrive.

    So when my oldest son passed away while home on leave from the army I felt I had a head start in the letting go department, and therefore, I would find my way to healing more quickly. Not true.

    Some attachments are so deeply woven into the fiber of our beings they seem almost impossible to let go.

    Fortunately (but not really), we live in a culture that allows 365 days to ‘let go’ of the death of a loved one.

    After Brandon died everyone was patient, loving, kind, and willing to support me going through the first year. However, on day 366 our culture seems to think it’s time to get over it, let go, and move on.

    Even with my prior experience of letting go, it took me almost three years to really figure out what it means to let go when what you’re letting go of is an essential piece of your heart, soul, and identity.

    Below I have identified three action steps you can take to use your practice of letting go to deepen your personal growth and attract joy and happiness in your life.

    1. Future thinking—believing you can’t be happy or you’ll be happy when…

    As a bereaved parent I struggled for a long time with believing that I had ‘the right’ to be happy. I struggled with reconciling happy moments in my life (with friends or my other children) with the deep grief I felt for losing Brandon.

    Once I learned that life isn’t making a choice between the two emotions, but rather learning to balance and integrate them both into each situation, I was able to let go of my belief that I couldn’t be happy and begin to hold both feelings.

    Another way we set ourselves up for struggling with letting go is defining our happiness in terms of if-then.

    If I get the raise at work, lose ten pounds, meet my soul mate, then I’ll be happy. Those events may change certain qualities about your life, but the achievement alone doesn’t bring happiness.

    When you find yourself if-then thinking, bring your focus back to the present and appreciate what is already wonderful in your world.

    2. Past thinking—attachment to how things should be

    As we grow up we often become attached to how we think our life should be, and we create beliefs about universal truths.

    Perhaps you believed you should get a college degree, get married, have two kids, and live in the burbs. But instead you are struggling to make ends meet, don’t have a significant other, and live in your parents’ basement.

    Staying fixated on how you think your life should be focuses your attention of lack rather than abundance, and on wishful thinking instead of reality.

    Recognizing should-be thinking is a powerful way to shift our thoughts toward appreciation for what we do have, enabling us to come from a place of gratitude. Gratitude is a key element to joyful living.

    It’s harder to let go of should-be thinking when our thoughts involve universal truths. I believed, and it’s a commonly accepted truth, that children will outlive their parents. But no one ever guaranteed me that Brandon would outlive me. The universe did not break a sacred promise with me when Brandon died.

    The reality is, and I know it’s hard to hear and harder to accept, how things should be are exactly how they are right now. (I know, I don’t always like it either)

    3. Definitive thinking—believing there are some wounds you can never heal from

    Do you remember how you felt when you were twelve and your first boy/girlfriend broke your heart? It felt like a wound that would never heal! But it did, and you learned so much about love, life, and your own capacity to be resilient.

    Unfortunately, we often experience other events in our lives that feel much bigger than that and leave us with a void that feels insurmountable. Perhaps it’s abuse, or the abandonment by a parent. These types of events leave us with wounds that are carved deep into our souls and can be much more challenging to overcome than your seventh grade love.

    The human spirit has the capacity to overcome almost anything. When we let go of the thought that we can’t heal from something that has deeply wounded us, we open ourselves up to the growth potential this event holds.

    It might take a lot of time, help from professionals, and deep soulful work on our part. But healing from these types of wounds can be the most transformative and powerful things we do in our lives.

    What Letting Go Is Not

    Letting go of an ideal, thought, or experience is not some laisse-faire, woo-woo thing.

    Letting go often takes work on our part and requires us to do some introspection about what’s true and what we’re actually attached to. Neither is letting go the same as moving on without doing the work or simply forgetting about an important life-changing event or experience.

    Another important aspect to recognize about letting go is that it’s not the same as forgiving someone who has wronged you. Forgiveness is an important aspect of wholehearted living, and it’s separate from letting go of attachments that keep you from becoming the incredible individual the world needs you to be.

    Letting Go Is a Work in Progress

    Begin the practice of letting by noticing the small ways in which you let attachment create unhappiness in your life. For example, what do you do when you’re really looking forward to your morning cup of joe and realize you’re out of coffee? Or when a friend cancels a date that you’ve been looking forward to?

    Learning to let go of the things that are not serving you will free up energy and resources and you will begin to reap the benefits of a grateful, joyful life.

    Woman walking on the beach image via Shutterstock

  • How to Stop Blaming Your Parents for Messing Up Your Life

    How to Stop Blaming Your Parents for Messing Up Your Life

    Parents

    “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.” ~Pema Chodron

    I was nineteen when it happened.

    Legally an adult, but in no way equipped with what I was expected to deal with.

    As I found myself agreeing to a marriage arranged by my mum, my thoughts turned to my dad.

    We had buried him two days prior. He’d suffered a lot before he died. I wondered what he’d make of all this.

    What followed my agreement was nothing short of a whirlwind, but not the romantic whirlwind that’s often associated with marriage.

    Sure, there was the buying of clothes and jewelry, the organizing of venues, and the excited congratulations.

    But then came the serious part. The living together. The getting to know your partner. The complete indifference to each other.

    And before I’d even acknowledged that I was a married woman, I was getting divorced.

    We weren’t suited. We didn’t agree on anything. I refused to live my life with someone I couldn’t stand the sight of. And despite my own shortcomings, there was one person I blamed for everything I experienced: my mom.

    If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have been married in the first place. I agreed to it because she asked me to—and because I wanted to see her happy.

    I’d been the black sheep in my family up until that point. Agreeing to something she wanted for me could be a fresh start, especially since she’d lost her husband merely days before.

    I felt guilty for saying anything but yes.

    So the fact that I agreed to the marriage for her was justification enough to blame her for everything that went wrong.

    It started with her, and so it had to end with her.

    I lived with this feeling for years. The resentment turned to anger. The anger turned to bitterness. And the bitterness led me to blame her more.

    Over time, I grew pretty tired of feeling like that. I didn’t see what function it had in my life. I was ready to feel differently.

    But my feelings towards her didn’t change after some miraculous revelation or insightful discussion. They changed gradually, and with a lot of questions.

    What had influenced her at the time?

    How had her life experiences shaped what she’d asked me to do?

    What had she gone through that led up to that moment?

    The more I questioned her, the more I understood her. And the more I understood her, the more compassion I felt toward her.

    Compassion didn’t have any room for judgment, resentment, or bitterness.

    It did, however, have a lot of room for understanding.

    And compassion taught me three clear steps that led me to forgive her:

    Step One: Recognize that parents are human, too.

    As the children of our parents, we often forget they had a life before us.

    They had experiences and challenges; they made mistakes and felt joy and regret.

    They had parents of their own, a childhood, friends, and relationships.

    They had an entire life before we came into the picture.

    Once I started seeing my mum as another human being, the dynamics of our relationship changed.

    Each experience we had was no longer a parent-child interaction. It was an adult-adult interaction. And this made all the difference.

    Rather than seeing her as my mother, who should be the adult in the relationship, I started relating to her like any other adult in my life, and I saw her for who she was—a woman who had lost her husband sooner than she expected, and was struggling with her own demons.

    Start seeing your parents as human beings.

    Recognize that they struggle in the same way you struggle. They feel fear, and loss, vulnerability, and joy.

    Once you do this, you can then move to:

    Step Two: Question them to understand them.

    This is both the most difficult and the most rewarding of the three steps, especially if your parents have done something seemingly unimaginable.

    If you’ve had parents that have abused you in any way, questioning why they did this can be incredibly challenging.

    It means you have to take yourself back to when it happened. Replay it in your head and put yourself in their shoes.

    By asking more questions, and seeing events from their perspective, your mind begins to open.

    If your parents abused you, ask: Why would someone do this to their child?

    What did they experience in their childhood and life before you that may have influenced this behavior?

    What was their relationship like with their parents?

    This doesn’t condone what they did; it just helps you understand.

    When I started questioning my mom’s motives to arrange my marriage, it became clear to me that she had been under an entirely different kind of pressure than me.

    She’d had pressure from her relatives to do the right thing and marry her children off soon. Having been born and raised in Pakistan, she had been conditioned to believe marriage was imperative for everyone.

    She had also become a widow at a very young age. After my dad had died, she was in no emotional state to respond to that pressure in a healthy way.

    The more I questioned her, the more I understood the context of what she had been experiencing.

    And this took me to the last step.

    Step 3: Forgive them.

    The understanding that you build about your parents could lead you to feel more resentment toward them.

    But this is unlikely.

    Because questioning leads to compassion, and compassion has a tendency to lead to forgiveness.

    And forgiveness means you can start to heal.

    Forgive them because it’s a remedy to your pain.

    Forgive them because they, too, can make mistakes.

    Forgive them because they’re human.

    I found myself forgiving my mom far quicker than I thought I would. Once she told me the pressure her relatives put her under to arrange my marriage, I saw that she acted in the best way she thought at the time.

    It became impossible not to forgive her and move on.

    This article comes with one huge caveat: your parents’ cooperation in this isn’t guaranteed.

    They must be willing to open up a dialogue with you for you to have your questions answered.

    And it will be tough, especially when they are forced to face their actions, demons, challenges, and frustrations.

    This means you have to see the bigger picture and be the bigger person.

    It means you must have the courage to take the first step. And you have to accept that there is some understandable explanation for their behavior if they aren’t willing or able to share it, even if they aren’t able to take responsibility for what they’ve done.

    None of this is easy, but it’s worth it to heal the wounds from your past.

    Parents image via Shutterstock