Tiny Buddha

Category: letting go

  • How I Escaped the Negative Thought Loop That Kept Me Down and Stuck

    How I Escaped the Negative Thought Loop That Kept Me Down and Stuck

    “You will never be free until you free yourself from the prison of your own false thoughts.” ~Philip Arnold

    Do you ever doubt yourself? As if no matter how hard you try, it’s never enough.

    Do you always tell yourself that you could do more? Or that somebody else is doing more, so why aren’t you on their level?

    I’m not good enough.

    Do you keep your thoughts to yourself because you feel as though your opinion doesn’t matter?

    I’m not smart enough.

    Or how about when you’re casually scrolling through social media? You see beautiful people taking such awesome photos and they look so happy.

    I’m not attractive enough.

    These rapid-fire negative thoughts incessantly remind us of our faults and flaws. These negative thought loops are like water to fish. We’re swimming through them. Every day. All the time.

    This year I was practically drowning in negative thought loops. My grandmother died. Shortly after, I navigated my parents through a draining divorce process. Post-divorce, my fiancé and I moved back in with my mom to support her. Money was scarce.

    I downward-spiraled into negative thought loops, constantly blaming myself for being a disappointing grandson, son, and partner, and an overall disappointment.

    I didn’t like myself, and you needed more than a powerful microscope to find an inkling of self-esteem within me.

    Negative thoughts that loop on replay are dangerous because when you say something over and over again, you believe it.

    And, if you’re like me, these beliefs can be paralyzing.

    The Comparison Trap

    In today’s age of technology and social media, scrolling is second nature to us.

    Is it really surprising?

    After all, you get to see all the awesome things that other people are doing. Incredible photos and videos taken by beautiful people doing amazing things.

    I wish that were me.

    That awe instantly transforms into envy, and suddenly you feel like your life is lacking.

    But we keep doing it. Every day, we scroll, seeking out our next hit of dopamine and envy—which social media offers in abundance.

    I did this every single day, multiple times a day, and mostly as an escape.

    I immersed myself in somebody else’s carefully curated life to distract myself from mourning my grandmother or quenching the fires of my parents’ divorce.

    From waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, I would scroll endlessly, comparing my life to the lives of others.

    I had fallen into the comparison trap. Like a moth to a flame, I was hopelessly addicted and in awe of the lives that other people lead.

    Why can’t I be happy like that person?

    It’s a terrible thought loop to replay in your mind. To believe that your life is lacking simply because your life is different from somebody else’s life—it’s an awful way to live.

    Struggling to See the Positive

    What’s difficult about negative thought loops is that sometimes you don’t feel like you’re deserving of your victories.

    This year I graduated college, but I didn’t attend my walking ceremony because I didn’t feel proud of myself.

    I don’t deserve this.

    Also, I started working for a law firm, the first of many steps in building my career, but I never celebrated when I got the job because I didn’t feel worthy of it.

    I’m not good enough.

    It’s just so sad that I was unable to celebrate my blessings simply because my mind was flooded with sorrow and disillusionment from tending to my family.

    Instead, I sunk into a miserable slump.

    I think the best way to describe this feeling is like walking through life in haze. Everywhere you look is foggy and distorted. I was unable to realize my victories or be grateful for my blessings because a veil of negativity was draped over my eyes.

    It wasn’t until a conversation with an old friend that the haze cleared and I could see life with clarity.

    Learned Helplessness

    We met for lunch and she shared with me something she’d learned in class.

    Psychologist Carol Dweck performed an experiment in which a fifth-grade classroom was split into two groups to solve a given problem.

    The twist was that one group of students were given a set of unsolvable problems. No matter how hard these students tried, they were unable to succeed at the task.

    In the next round, when they were given a set of easy problems, many students either took longer than the average or gave up entirely.

    What happened?

    The earlier round with unsolvable problems caused the students to equate trying with failing. Helplessness became a learned behavior.

    I think a lot of times we do this to ourselves with our thoughts.

    I would tell myself repeatedly I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. And when it was my turn to bat, I’d run away and quit because I knew that I’d strike out anyway.

    I was entrapped in a fixed mindset.

    I convinced myself that no matter what I did, I would always be destined for failure. That my life would never amount to anything meaningful and I would never be happy.

    It wasn’t long before my frustrations with myself transformed into anger over the unfairness of it all.

    My job performance declined. My relationships suffered. I was at a loss. My moods swung back and forth between flatlined indifference and anxiety-wracked mania.

    I needed to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset—to understand that the past doesn’t have to repeat itself, and that I have a say in what happens if I choose to learn and grow. But I didn’t know that then.

    At this point I realized it was time to seek therapy. This was one of the best choices I made this year because it opened a gateway to the wonders of mindfulness and gratitude.

    Finding Gratitude

    Who knew something as small as practicing gratitude could transform my thought process entirely?

    Too often we allow our negative thought loops to overwhelm and consume us. And it’s because we convince us we are our thoughts.

    However, we are not our thoughts. They’re just ideas floating through our heads that’s we don’t have to believe.

    Practicing gratitude helps you escape the negative thought loop because it encourages you to seek out what is good and right and beautiful in your life.

    With each day I counted my blessings, I was slowly releasing myself from the negativity that had shackled me for several months.

    Life will always be riddled with hardships. It’s inevitable. But to still summon the resilience to tell yourself that everything is okay, things will get better, you have people who love you, you know that you are strong; and most importantly, to truly believe that you have the courage and ability to create a positive shift in your life because you can still practice gratitude despite your struggles… it’s beyond empowering.

    Surround Yourself with People Who Uplift You

    “You cannot change the people around you, but you can change the people you choose to be around.” ~Unknown

    I recently discovered this quote while listening to a podcast, and it resonated with me.

    You really can’t change the people around you. If you try, you’ll end up disappointed. How other people behave, how they feel, what they think—these things are all beyond your control.

    But you can control who you surround yourself with.

    It’s been said that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

    If you’re mostly around people who complain a lot then, chances are, that you will complain a lot.

    I was exactly this type of person. And these were the type of people I surrounded myself with.

    I would always be moody. I was a true pessimist. I would combat every silver lining with criticism and some statement about how unfair life is.

    And to tell you the truth, being negative sucks. It’s exhausting.

    After hearing this quote, I tried something outside my comfort zone: I met new people.

    Being highly introverted and shy, this was difficult for me. But I did it. I joined clubs at school. I met positive and ambitious people with dreams and goals.

    I am convinced that positivity is contagious. The warm aura gained by practicing gratitude and welcoming abundance in your life touches the people around you. And this gratitude and abundance mindset slowly replaces those negative thought loops.

    I didn’t want to be in a slump anymore. I wanted to be driven, motivated, and well… happy. I learned that the key to achieving this is to seek out other people who want the same things you do.

    A Better Headspace

    It’s reaching the end of the year, and I’m faring far better than I did at the beginning. If I had to name one thing I think you and everybody should do more of, it’s this:

    Be kind to yourself.

    There’s a lot of truth to whoever said that we are our own worst critics. That is why I advocate that we also be our own best fans.

    Every time you criticize yourself, praise yourself for something else.

    Also, practice gratitude and remember your countless blessings instead of comparing your life to others’ lives.

    And realize the past doesn’t have to repeat itself. You can learn, you can grow, and you can do more than you think.

    Reflecting on this year, I now see that I am beyond blessed. I have a college degree. I’m soon to be married to the love of my life. I’m steadily working on my career.

    There are so many things in my life that are going so beautifully right, and so much that is possible.

    The same is likely true for you. You just need to shift your focus.

  • How Observing My Emotions Helps Me Let Go of Anger and Anxiety

    How Observing My Emotions Helps Me Let Go of Anger and Anxiety

    “Even when in the midst of disturbance, the stillness of the mind can offer sanctuary.” ~Stephen Richards

    One night my four-year-old daughter woke up crying, startling both me and my husband from sleep. He rushed into her room and I came in shortly thereafter, and I immediately got annoyed with how he was handling the situation. I’ll admit this now: I can’t even remember what he did, but in that moment I knew I would have done it differently and it made me feel irritable and angry.

    I left the room and went into the bathroom. While I sat there, I remembered something I’d heard to do in order to become a calmer, more mindful person: Observe myself and describe my emotions and what was going on in my body as if I was telling a doctor about medical symptoms.

    I simply noticed what was going on inside me as if I was another person watching myself and ran through what was happening. I described how I felt agitated and how my stomach felt knotty. I described how the anger felt hot and prickly and how it was consuming my chest.

    Then the most amazing thing happened: My anger completely vanished.

    I was astonished. Usually I can talk myself out of negative or overwhelming emotions with some time and patience by coming up with new thoughts or convincing myself to simply let go. But this, this was something different. It happened so quickly and easily.

    I was really struck by this experience, and a week or two later I tried doing something similar while I was meditating before bed one evening. That night I felt stressed out and sad, and I could feel how I was carrying a frown around with me, and a feeling of heaviness.

    During my meditation, I kept pulling myself back to the present moment and noticing how and where I was carrying those feelings. I didn’t judge them or try to change them; I just observed them. Within a few moments a strong feeling overcame me. I can only describe it as a wave of knowing that told me “those feelings are not you.”

    It was so soothing. I felt how I was the observer, and although my sad and anxious feelings were certainly a real part of my human experience, I saw that I didn’t have to become engulfed by them. I didn’t have to let them rule me or my life.

    I’m a person with a lot of emotions. I tend toward anxiety and sadness, though I certainly have some anger, or at least irritation, thrown in there for good measure. Being able to separate myself from these emotions has been so freeing.

    I’m not saying that emotions aren’t valid, or that we shouldn’t have feelings about things that happen in our lives. I do believe, though, we can move forward in the most helpful and joyful way possible if we take the time to observe those feelings and get some distance from them.

    If I’d stayed mad and acted out at my husband that night, over something so inconsequential that I can’t even remember the details of it now, a month or two later, would that have been the best outcome for me? I don’t believe so; middle of the night arguments never end well.

    I think noticing and describing emotions allows for the best outcome. If you’ve been mistreated by someone, by all means, allow yourself that anger and frustration. From there, though, step back. Take a look at what you’re saying to yourself and where that frustration lives.

    Once you’ve done that and given yourself some distance, then make your next move. Making a decision from a place of stillness and reflection can only make your life better.

    This is a practice that, well, takes practice. I have to remind myself to do it, and frankly, sometimes I don’t want to. A stubborn, bratty part of myself yells something along the lines of “I want to stay mad!”

    It’s worth it though, at least to me, and I’m incorporating it into my life more and more. I’m finding myself a calmer and more centered person, and that’s something I’ve wanted for a long time. Here’s everything that’s been working for me and how it can work for you, too.

    Get comfortable with the idea that you’re an observer. The older I get, the more I realize how much of what I do is just a pattern, a repetition of the ways I’ve done things before. That has allowed me to identify less with what my mind is telling me and to give myself permission to simply observe what’s happening instead of taking it all so seriously.

    Avoid judging yourself and your emotions. Just this morning I started getting worried about the sadness my daughter was expressing about going back to preschool after a break for vacation. I started getting frustrated at myself for getting sucked into my feelings and not doing better, but in that moment I realized I needed to let go of criticizing myself and instead just observe. And, as usual, it helped.

    Give yourself the time and space to practice. This is not what we’ve been taught to do. At all. We’ve been taught to try to control our emotions, we’ve been taught to express emotions in healthier ways, we’ve been taught to give in and feel emotions. The idea of observing our emotions? I didn’t hear of that until I was thirty-seven years old.

    Try to see your emotions as separate from the real you. I believe that at our core we’re compassionate and loving beings. The stories our minds tell us—about how we’ve been wronged or how things should be different—are just that: stories.

    Let yourself observe what the mind is telling you. Let yourself observe how those stories are causing you to feel. Take the time to really describe, in vivid detail, what you’re telling yourself and what you’re feeling physically. Are your shoulders up to your ears? Is your chest tight? Are your firsts clenched? What’s your face doing? Do you feel hot? Do you feel like you’re in slow motion? Describe it all.

    When you take the time to do that, you’re taking the time to see that those feelings, those emotions are separate from you. You’re the loving being who is observing them. You’re the one with the power to let them go.

    Just try it. Taking the time to increase my awareness and observe myself has improved my life in just a short time, and I think it can make anyone’s life more peaceful.

  • How Doing Less Can Help You Have More of What Matters

    How Doing Less Can Help You Have More of What Matters

    “Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.” ~Cal Newport

    Our culture celebrates the image of being able to get it all done. Having it all. Juggling work and life, while being a massive success at both. Having the big house, the shiny new car, the wife or husband, kids, and pets waiting for us with big smiles at the end of each and every day. Always being happy. Feeling constantly fulfilled. Living a life packed full of sunshine, light, and adventure in every single moment.

    It’s a nice image. It’s pretty intoxicating. It’s also largely a myth. A myth that can lead us down a dangerous path. In response to the message that we can have it all, many of us try to do it all.

    We try to get too many things done at once. Chasing many goals at the same time. Multi-tasking, mental juggling, plate spinning, and general tail chasing soon follows. As it does, we begin to live in a state of constant distraction, getting further away from achieving anything of real value.

    Starting is so much easier than finishing, so we take on more and more, even though we are already overloaded. We exhaust ourselves. We start to feel flat. We know there must be a better way, but we’ve lost our sense of what that may look like along the way. We’ve gotten lost in busyness.

    A Different Way – Narrow Focus

    What if we tried going in a different direction? Instead of chasing more, we could choose to intentionally concentrate on less.

    We could commit to focusing on things more tightly. Shutting out the noise and discarding the distractions as best we can. We could focus on one thing at a time, get it done, then start on whatever’s next. Replace multi-tasking with single-tasking. Stop chasing the shiny and new and pursuing variety, for the sake of distraction, as we reconnect with the ability to focus deeply.

    The narrow and deep approach is becoming rarer in a world so attracted to distracted. Many of us are losing touch with our ability to sit and truly focus on one thing at a time. Instead of an inch-wide, mile-deep approach we go in the opposite direction. Spreading ourselves wide but rarely deeply.

    We face an overwhelming amount of information each and every day. Just switching on our smartphone opens up the world—quite literally. Alerts and pings tell us another incoming message is here, and we feel a mini-endorphin rush with each one. We meet friends for lunch but can’t resist the impulse to check our tiny screens every five minutes. We rush from this commitment to the next, never really feeling like we’re truly on top of things or present.

    We’re busy, no doubt, but what exactly are we getting done?

    The truth is these distractions are here to stay. If anything, they are likely to increase. We need to tap into our ability to focus deeply, in spite of the distractions. We need to take control back and appreciate the power of positive constraints.

    My Story: Hitting the Wall and Coming Back

    I appreciate the innate power of narrowing our focus because for a large chunk of my life, I lived another way.

    I worked long days. I kept a to-do list that got longer and longer. I covered the workload of ‘team’ members, either too lazy or incapable of doing their own work, and I definitely started earlier and stayed later.

    I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the next deadline. I lived in urgent mode, a constant state of reaction. Caffeine helped fuel this state. Like a 100m sprinter waiting for the gun to go, I’d anticipate and be waiting for the next bang. And then, as you may have guessed, I suffered something of a burn out!

    I was exhausted, both physically and mentally. Not just tired but spent. Externally, I projected a sense of calm and being in control, but underneath I had been paddling too hard for too long. I needed to reset. I was on a path that definitely did not feel like my path.

    I knew there must be a better way. I knew this had become my life but couldn’t be my life. I wanted something different. More than that, I needed something different to thrive. So I took action.

    What followed was a paring down period. A commitment to simplifying my life and my approach to my work.

    I cut my to-do lists into pieces. Instead of trying to get everything done at once, I focused simply and purely on one or two main tasks a day. Once I got those done, I then gave myself permission to move on. I batched repeat tasks (phone calls, meetings, email, etc.) but refused to be imprisoned by inboxes any longer. I really started to purpose my days. I focused on less but ironically got more done.

    I was so committed and determined to make this new path, and the associated changes, stick that I went all in. Normally habit changing ‘experts’ recommend making small changes over time to let new habits ingrain. While this is sound advice on the surface, I knew I needed more immediate change. I had tried the other way and it had led me here. Here (at the time) was not where I wanted to be. I didn’t want to live my life constantly burnt out and stuck in reactive mode.

    So I continued down the rabbit hole of simplifying my commitments.

    I learned and used the power of “no.” I coached, mentored, and supported team members but stopped short of doing their work and thinking for them. I learned that doing the right things (and sometimes the tough things) up front, can mean other tasks no longer need doing at all. I realized someone else’s urgent doesn’t always make it my urgent.

    I embraced the power of 80/20 thinking and realized not everything needs doing. That means I concentrated on who and what means the most to me—the 20% of my life that provides 80% of the value—and let other demands on my time go.

    I got the white space back in my days and no longer felt I needed to rush from this to that. I got time back, I got energy back, I got my life back.

    And a funny thing happened in tandem. More so than ever before, other people started to notice that I was someone who got things done. Words like “organized,” “focused” and “takes his responsibilities seriously” regularly appeared in feedback.

    I became known for meeting deadlines with minimal fuss, someone who was trusted to prioritize my own workload and the workload of others.

    I became known as someone who could navigate complex projects and environments, focusing effort on where it matters most.

    Emboldened, I began to double down on my approach. I became self-employed and started using these skills to help organizations achieve their goals. I enjoyed my work more, and my rewards for that work increased. My freedom and flexibility in my work increased. I now had much more say in how I worked, my time and labors no longer completely at the mercy of others.

    My health, mindset, and outlook all improved. I got ‘me’ back.

    That was nearly ten years ago. If I can do it, I’m sure you can do it. Your journey will be your own, of course, but if you’ve hit the point where commitments are crowding in on you, and your time no longer feels like your time, it is time to pause and reset.

    Words will not do justice to how tough this process can be, depending on your circumstances. However, I promise you something, the effort will be worth it. If you do this, you’ll never want to look back.

    Letting Go of Having It All and Chasing It All

    Narrowing our focus means we have to give attention to a select few areas of our lives, at the expense of others.

    We identify the handful of things that mean most to us in life (relationships with loved ones, our health, our work, self-improvement, contribution) and we prioritize them. We let some of the other stuff go, or set very clear boundaries.

    In our working space, we identify the areas where we can offer our best point of contribution and we try our best to focus on those areas. Maybe that means less time in our inbox and less time in meetings (if that’s an option) so we have more time to plan, strategize, or create. Maybe it means something else.

    In our lives, it means we make time for those that matter most to us. We make this quality time and turn up truly present and fully invested. We listen, we share, we love, we contribute. We also make time for our passion projects and hobbies. We invest in our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. We challenge ourselves but are also kind to ourselves.

    Choosing to Chase Less

    We can all use the power of positive constraints to chase less but focus more.

    Take on less but get more done.

    We can all take small steps to try to schedule our days for success.

    The result may be that we get more back than we ever thought possible. Personally and professionally, we may approach a point of our highest contribution. We may find that doing less, but doing it better, sets us free to be the best versions of ourselves.

  • You Know What’s Best for You, So Stop Giving Your Power Away

    You Know What’s Best for You, So Stop Giving Your Power Away

    “Insight is not a light bulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.” ~Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

    If there is just one thing I would absolutely love every person on this planet to understand, it is their own inner knowing. And if I could have two things, I would add the power that inner knowing gives to each of us.

    When it comes to what’s best for you, your own opinion is the only one that counts—and you can use it to change your life.

    It’s easy to be brainwashed in this society because right from the get-go, when we have no choice but to be dependent on others, we are taught to believe that others know better. This inadvertently teaches us to suppress our own desires, feelings, ideas, and opinions about the world.

    My parents, probably like yours, had very strong views about what was right and wrong. If I stepped outside those boundaries I was punished rather than left to experience the natural consequences of my thoughts and actions. That introduced self-doubt into the equation, and other damaging emotions like worry, anxiety, fear, guilt, and so on.

    With emotions like this in the mix, reinforced over many years, taking action based on our own insights becomes difficult. At best it’s fraught with an obstacle course of emotional bombs waiting to be set off along the way. At worst, we stagnate, freeze, and live our lives according to the opinion of others.

    As Malcolm Gladwell says, it’s too easy to snuff out the insights your inner knowing gives rise to—especially after years of suppressing them.

    When our parents enforced their boundaries and opinions, they were most often well-meaning, and they were likely just repeating the cycle of what they were taught. But it’s that generalized and pervasive trust in authority, that is perpetuated by well-meaning people, that causes the issue.

    I was not taught to trust my instincts or intuition; these weren’t words that were even a common part of my vocabulary. Yet, who else can I truly trust? If I live my life according to the opinion of others, can I ever be happy?

    We are each this unique cocktail of highly complex DNA, experiences, and feelings. Other people can inspire me, yes, they can reflect back to me what they are hearing, seeing and/or feeling from me, but I am the only one who can actually answer what is best for me. I started to really get this almost twenty years ago.

    “If it sounds ‘off’ to you, it probably is. Trust your instincts,” he said.

    This was on a phone call taking place across the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the night. A mentor of mine, in a successful network marketing business, had turned whistleblower. He gave interviews for the national press and was featured on Dateline NBC.

    I’ll never forget it. I had been part of that business for seven years. There was nothing wrong with the plan to make money; it was legitimate. There was a personal development ‘system’ that sat alongside it that also worked well; the growth I had undergone was undeniable and worth every penny.

    It was the secretive approach of those in positions of influence, the concealed gains from the ‘system’ and the part that played in their projected lifestyles of success to entice others to follow suit, that was the problem.

    At best, there was a lack of transparency. At worst, I could say there was a deliberate attempt to deceive in order to continue to line the pockets of those in positions of influence. I had suppressed the “there is something I’m not being told” feeling often. When I heard what my mentor—one of the previous elite—had to say, I felt a sense of relief; I could trust my intuition after all.

    That was in my twenties. Between then and now I have done a lot of work to try and retrieve my sense of who I am, what the inner me actually thinks and feels about things. It isn’t easy; I can never ‘undo’ the experiences I have had, but I have come to look at them in a new light.

    I have learned that all anyone has to offer is an opinion. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, who the person or body is, or how highly you hold them in your esteem; it is simply an opinion. Just look at how many ‘experts’ in any given field disagree. The only truth is one that is felt by the heart, and it differs from person to person, from moment to moment; it is as unique as that cocktail that we each are.

    Stepping authentically into the world isn’t easy. The feelings attached to those earlier opinions, boundaries, and consequences are part of the fabric of who I am, but I step anyway.

    And with each step, together with my new vantage point and the support of others who cheer me on in this quest, my confidence gathers and new habits form. Best of all, I feel happier inside, like life is for the taking now, not in some imaginary future when I’ve satisfied everyone else’s needs.

    Each time someone asks for my advice, I always remind them to take only what resonates. But it is no surprise to me that people more often than not doubt themselves and look to others for answers. Someone once left a comment on my blog with contact details for a guru they viewed as having solved their problem for them, but that just told me they had given their power away.

    It’s great when I can look to others as support, or even a facilitator, but if I see them as the person who solved my problems for me, I become reliant on them again and again. I increase their power and decrease my own, in my head.

    And that is the real issue. This is about our thoughts, the things we believe to be true.

    The only reason someone else is able to appear as if they have solved my problem for me, is because I don’t understand and can’t see my own part in solving it. The very fact that I see whatever it is as a problem creates a resistance in me to seeing the solution. It’s like when I ‘lose’ my keys. I tell myself that I “can’t see” them and this literally blinds me to them.

    Other people’s problems don’t seem as insurmountable, though; we tend to hold less doubt about others’ abilities than our own. So someone else’s belief in us to solve it, particularly someone held in high esteem or purported as a guru, lowers our resistance to the solution that has been right there for the taking all along.

    There is only one time when I don’t fully trust my intuition, and that is when I am having fears and self-doubts. I am always aware of my entry into to this world, the well-meaning opinions that shaped my early beliefs. I know how much self-doubt I still hold despite years of focusing on things to build my self-esteem.

    While I have a great gift for understanding others and their dilemmas, when turning that on myself in moments of stress, I know my ability to read between the lines can develop into more of paranoia. That is when I find it useful to look to someone else to help facilitate me seeing what is truly going on.

    But there are other pointers—the things happening around me, the way my body is feeling, the dreams I am having—all these things can tell me what is really going on beneath the surface more objectively than my mind.

    While ideally I would have liked to have been born into a world that taught me to nurture and value my inner knowing, my intuition, right from the outset, simply becoming aware of it and practicing using it often also gets great results.

    For example, moving to New Zealand, even moving within New Zealand to a new city in recent years, these have been intuitive moves. While my head could explain the rationale, overriding all of it was this sense of “it felt right.”

    Trusting what feels right for us, and having the courage to follow up on it, this is what gives us the power to create our best life.

    I sometimes get blog comments from people who really push and prod me on this point, a point that I think is absolutely critical to understand—that any one of us has the power to change our life at any point.

    It doesn’t matter if you are lonely, penniless, homeless, overweight, underweight, sick, really sick, feel useless, are an abusee, an abuser, or even a psychopath, while there is breath in your body and conscious thoughts in your head, I believe we all have the power to change, with no exceptions.

    I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s possible.

    A quick Google search will fill your cup with example after example of people who have turned their lives around. Libraries and bookstores are filled with in-depth accounts of people who have changed their lives for the better. The inspiration is there, the tips and tricks and opinions are there, you just need one thing—to believe you can.

    And, as I have said, if you can’t quite believe it of yourself consistently enough to keep going, find someone who believes in you until you begin to prove them right.

    While other people can’t live your life for you, they can help boost your confidence when you want to make changes. If you need to increase your self-confidence, find those who support the kind of changes you’d like to make and let their belief in you be the thing that nudges you forward. Today, with online communities and forums, it is easier than ever to find what you need. Though you will be surprised at how other people show up in your life when you least expect it.

    Start by creating a conscious awareness of your self-defeating thought patterns and behaviors. Becoming aware of what is going on is crucial since 90% of our thought patterns are just a recurrence of yesterdays’ and, like anything we do repeatedly, we become less aware. The easiest way to turn this around is through meditation and taking some regular time to just contemplate.

    Take the time to hear your own thoughts, to truly feel into your own feelings, to begin to trust your own intuition. This is your true opinion of anything, and it’s the only one that counts. With it, you can start to contemplate positive changes in your life, looking for examples of when things have worked out for you in the past.

    And, finally, consider a life where others you know are equally aware of their own thoughts and feelings, their own insights and intuition. A world where people are focused on their own authentic happiness rather than in pursuit of trying to be ‘good enough’ to satisfy others’ standards. To me, this feels like a happier world—less judgmental, more free; free to evolve. We can help create this world by showing the people around us what it looks like to trust ourselves.

    Consider taking this step for yourself, and your loved ones, and you will not only change your life for the better, you will have changed our world for the better.

  • How to Recover from Heartbreak and Feel Whole Again

    How to Recover from Heartbreak and Feel Whole Again

    “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” ~Iain Thomas

    A deep heaviness and uneasiness began to pulsate throughout my body. Warm, salty tears streamed down my face at all hours of the day. It felt like all the best parts of me were gone and would never return.

    Heartache can be one of the hardest things to overcome in life. I never wanted to be one of those girls who let guys determine how they feel. But when my first serious relationship ended when I was twenty-seven, I was beyond devastated.

    It took me years to overcome my breakup with Tom because he was my first real love. I’m slowly starting to view the despair I experienced as a gift because it’s shaped the person I’m becoming. More importantly, it has taught me to never fear or take advantage of love.

    If you’re struggling to overcome heartache, perhaps some of my lessons may be useful to you. Here’s what helped me on my journey to becoming whole again.

    1. Allow yourself to feel all your feelings.  

    Although it may be tempting to numb your feelings, if they aren’t addressed, chances are they will catch up to you.

    My relationship blindsided me when it ended because I didn’t see it coming. I felt like I was going through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Only, strangely enough, it felt almost worse than most deaths I grieved because in this relationship there was never a clear goodbye or any closure.

    It took me years to go through all of these stages. For a good part of it, I was stuck in denial and sadness.

    My breakup with Tom taught me that it’s okay to feel things that are uncomfortable because life isn’t always pleasant. It may be hard, but try to allow yourself to experience whatever feelings come up.

    I had to strip my emotions down to feel totally raw and vulnerable. If I felt sad and allowed myself to cry, my body felt so much better afterward because I was able to release all the stress and tension that I’d held in for so long. When I felt anger rising in the pit of my stomach, I’d go for a run to burn off that steam.

    Whatever it is that you’re feeling, allow it to come and go like waves instead of pretending it doesn’t exist or fighting it.

    2. Cut off contact with your ex so that you are able to heal. 

    One of the reasons it took me so long to get over Tom was because we were still in touch with each other via text. Even though we weren’t dating, deep down I had this romantic notion that we would get back together eventually.

    When I would date other guys, I wasn’t emotionally invested in them because part of me that held onto hope that Tom and I could still save our relationship and bring it back to what it was during the first year we dated. The truth was that over the years we both changed and grew apart instead of growing together.

    Although it was hard to end contact with Tom, I knew that in order to get over him I had to stop relying on him emotionally. This was the scariest part. Tom was part of my life for five years and knew all of me—the good, the bad, and the ugly. I was terrified to be alone and have him out of my life.

    I’m not going to lie, I may have texted him more than a few times after promising myself not to contact him. However, eventually, as time passed without contact, I was able to stay strong. I had to stand on my own and face my fears in order to get back to a healthy emotional state.

    It’s different for everybody, but I realized that no matter how much time has passed a part of me will always love my ex. And that’s okay. Because now I’m no longer in love with him, largely because I gave myself the space I needed to finish healing—which means I’ll be able to pursue a relationship with someone else in the future.

    3. Have a good tribe of people to talk to.

    No one is an island. Admitting that you are going through a hard time and finding friends and family who are willing to listen to your struggles can make a world of a difference.

    At the time of my breakup, my best friend was going through something similar. It was helpful to share our experiences with each other since it made us both feel less alone. I was lucky to have my mom to talk to as well. It really was beneficial to get her advice, as she had many years of experience to share.

    If you find yourself talking about your breakup excessively, it may be good to contact a counselor. Since my breakup happened during my last semester of graduate school,  I decided to take advantage of speaking with a counselor, as they were free to students.

    Initially, I had mixed feelings but can say that this assisted me greatly in being able to finish my last semester of school. It also felt good to talk about my feelings to someone who didn’t have a biased view and wouldn’t judge my thoughts.

    4. Don’t compare yourself to others.

    Remember my best friend I told you about who was going through a breakup? She ended up dating someone a month afterward. Eventually, they got married.

    It has taken me about two years to feel ready to date again. Everyone goes through breakups differently, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

    There are so many different factors involved in recovering from a painful breakup. Maybe your relationship was over way before it officially ended. Maybe you didn’t get any closure after your breakup, or it was your first love you lost.

    In order to allow myself to heal, I had to stop comparing myself to others. I also decided to get off of social media for a month.

    Yes, I was happy for my friends who were dating, getting married, and having kids. However, being bombarded with joyful couples and babies was just too much. I just knew that it was not the best time for me to be flooded with relationship pictures. It allowed me to spend more time with myself and hit the reset button.

    5. Give yourself the time you need before jumping into a new relationship.

    Initially, I went on a bunch of dates, sometimes two in one day. Yes, it distracted me from what I was feeling, but it wasn’t healthy. Emotionally, it became exhausting.

    It was too early in the game to date, and all I could think about was my ex. Whenever I went on a date, I would start comparing the guy to Tom, and that’s not a good way to jump back on the dating horse.

    Take the time you need to feel whole again before dating. I finally told myself that it’s alright to have high standards about what I’m looking for in a relationship. Most importantly, I learned to enjoy being single.

    6. Take good care of yourself.

    Self-care was never something I was good at. I always cared more about others and never made time for myself. I felt incredibly lost after my breakup because I no longer had Tom to care about.

    Without anyone else to focus on, I started to pay more attention to my own needs and wants. It was also an incentive to treat myself to certain services or activities I normally would not even consider such as getting monthly massages and participating in yoga classes regularly.

    I stopped saying yes to everyone else just to please them and started saying yes to myself. I travelled to Peru, Iceland, and Thailand. I took a new job and finally felt free.

    Go on that vacation you have been waiting for. Take that cooking class you have been putting off. Have a girls’ or guys’ weekend.

    Now is the time to focus on yourself. Enjoy it while you’re single because you never know when you’ll have as much time alone to discover your interests and passions.

    7. Don’t stop appreciating the beauty in all that surrounds you.

    There is joy all around us. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that, especially when you’re going through something tough like a breakup.

    I started to become engaged more in my surroundings, and it has made a big difference.

    I was able to connect to my friends and family on a deeper level and really value these relationships. I started a gratitude journal, which helped me appreciate the little gifts we are given each day. Even something as simple as smiling at others in the street can be a beautiful act and make us feel more connected to those around us.

    — 

    It took me years to pick up all of the broken pieces and rebuild myself. These seven tips helped me heal from an incredibly painful time in my life. Slowly, my heart started to mend and refill with self-love.

    I know I will always love Tom, but now I’m able to continue to go on with my life without feeling trapped or in limbo. Sometimes the past will unexpectedly come up and a flood of sadness will hit me. I allow myself to feel this and then let it go just as fast as it came.

    I’m grateful for the person I have become due to my breakup. It has allowed me to realize how rare and wonderful it is to find love. I’ve also learned to become comfortable in solitude and enjoy time alone.

    It’s been quite a process, but now my heart is open to love again. Even though you may experience a deep pain and feel broken and angry, know what there is still beauty out in this world for us to experience on a daily basis. And know that through this experience you can become a stronger version of yourself.

  • Why We Need to Stop Hiding and Share the Beauty in Our Brokenness

    Why We Need to Stop Hiding and Share the Beauty in Our Brokenness

    “Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up. The earth must be broken to bring forth life. If the seed does not die there is no plant. Bread results from the death of wheat. Life lives on lives. Our own life lives on the act of other people. If you are lifeworthy, you can take it.” ~Joseph Campbell

    Head on my pillow, tears in my eyes, a list of to-dos in my brain, I felt unable to move my body. I’d worked so hard to leave behind this person who stayed in bed avoiding life. But someone’s angry words had pierced my soul, and I once again was a prisoner to my bed, my thoughts, and my anxiety.

    It wasn’t so much the disagreement that stung, but the chuckles and snide “You can’t really believe that?” More than “mansplaining,” he was patronizing and questioning my intelligence.

    I tried to stop the personal attacks by “setting up boundaries,” as they say. No doubt I did not express myself in a calm, clear manner, as my blood was boiling. However, I tried to protect my integrity during the argument for the first time in this particular relationship.

    What now, though? Concern for the future of this relationship was what was now spiraling out of control in my head and overwhelming my thoughts.

    In retrospect, the fight hadn’t left me paralyzed with anxiety; it was the new way of dealing with belittling behavior that I had allowed myself. This was unchartered territory.

    I had dared to make a change in a relationship. Now, I was awash with the resulting questions about what came next and if I’d done the right thing.

    Without leaving my bed, I catapulted myself out of yet another comfort zone by reaching out to a group of supportive people. Phone in hand, I scrambled to type the message before I could think myself out of it.

    A few days before, a friend and I had heard author and activist Glennon Doyle speak. She encouraged the audience to speak our truths, “Blow shit up, and walk away like Wonder Woman.” So, that morning, as I licked my wounds, I told my truth to a safe audience.

    Like a dog offering up his belly in a display of vulnerability, I spoke the truth of where I was. I pulled back the curtain and said life has knocked me down. Can I get a hand up? The responding support was worth the risk.

    Not long after, I heard the song “This Is Me” from the movie The Greatest Showman for the first time. I rushed home and looked up the lyrical version on YouTube. I sat and absorbed the rising beat.

    I read the words as Kesha belted them out. Words like “Today, I won’t let the shame sink in,” and “I am bruised. I am who I’m meant to be. This is me.”

    My soul surged. I sucked in the words and rhythm like air. I marinated in the meaning, replaying it over and over.

    I wanted to announce my bruises too. I’ve battled depression my entire adult life; “this is me.” My latest psychologist diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder; “this is me.” No one knows about my battles with bulimia, but “today, I won’t let the shame sink in.”

    I headed off to the gym with my new warrior anthem playing in my head. I’m pumped. I greet everyone with a huge smile on my face. This is my happy place.

    I got to an exercise requiring balance, which I lack. My arms are flitting around being more comical than helpful. The lady next to me says, “See? You’ve worked it out!”

    Wait, what is she seeing? I’m flailing around like a fish out of water, and she sees “worked it out?” This sends me back in my head thinking about the song and my story and my struggles.

    I rushed home and wrote the truth about all the messiness that lies beneath what people see. I wrote about how I “worked it out” through my battles with mental illness, not despite them.

    I started telling my truth and in doing so, embracing it. With every scribbled word, I accepted my wounds a little more.

    I wrote about all the things that I thought I had to keep hidden in order to be presentable. My struggles had been my flaws, my “dirty little secrets.” I wanted to tidy up the pieces of my broken world before I could let anyone in.

    I had it all wrong. Our scars are the proof that we are living and growing. Our strength is that we have battled with demons and are still standing.

    Just look at the natural world. It transforms flaws and mistakes into beauty all the time.

    The pearl starts as an intruding piece of sand. Protecting itself from the intruder, an oyster creates a thing of value.

    Quartz is naturally colorless, but if iron mistakenly mixes in, it turns a beautiful purple, resulting in amethyst. The bodies of long-extinct creatures are now our fuel.

    The power of the universe is on display when it turns decay into value. There are no wasted failures in nature. They are simply transformed and renewed.

    What if beauty begins when the imaginary ideal is broken? What if the universe needs the messy, broken, and failed to demonstrate its power to make the defective whole? What if we have that same power to turn our battles into our beauty?

    I’m convinced now of the inherent beauty of the damaged parts, and that we must resist the temptation to air brush our lives as if they are cover girls. Hiding robs us of our divine power to turn our broken pieces into something wondrous.

    The broken bits don’t go back together the same way as before, though. We may have to mourn that fact. For example, life after divorce will never look the same. Mourning that loss is healthy, but shouldn’t forever immobilize.

    The caterpillar has no choice but to transform into a butterfly. We, however, can impede our transformation like I did through shame, guilt, denial, and hiding. There is so much value that can come from our damaged, defeated souls if we open them up to the light.

    To courageously tell our truth allows others to see the beauty and hope in the battlefield before them. We are so much more than what life has thrown our way. We are the warriors who are still standing no matter how many times we had to get off the ground. When we become vulnerable enough to illuminate our brokenness, we harness the power of the universe to create beauty out of failure.

  • How to Rebuild a Relationship with Someone Who’s Hurt You

    How to Rebuild a Relationship with Someone Who’s Hurt You

    “Holding a grudge doesn’t make you strong; it makes you bitter. Forgiving doesn’t make you weak; it sets you free.” ~Unknown

    My situation is probably not unlike that a lot of people reading this.

    I grew up in a single-parent home. Don’t get me wrong, I had a pretty happy childhood, and my mom did an unbelievable job raising me. She worked four jobs to make sure I always had the best of everything. But I could never shake the feeling that I always wanted a father figure in my life.

    My parents had separated when I was very young. My dad was a marine, my mom was a doctor, and she had realized that she didn’t want to be moving around her whole life. This meant that I only got to see him once or twice a year. And slowly, we became increasingly estranged.

    When I was sixteen, I found out that he was deciding where to buy a new house for a more permanent and stable job post. I started thinking that he would find something nearer to me. He now had more flexibility, and finally, I could see him more often. We could begin to build a real relationship and make up for the years of missed birthdays, graduations, and other memories.

    But then, right when I got my hopes up, he didn’t. He stayed where he was—with his new wife and her kids. Even though it seemed like they didn’t appreciate him, and even though I felt that I needed him more than they did.

    It broke my heart.

    In fact, it’s almost ten years later, and although we’re on better terms now than we’ve ever been, I’m still healing.

    I had to learn to let him go before I could learn to forgive him. And I had to learn to forgive him before I could build a relationship with him. We’re in the process of building that relationship, and we’re better off now than we’ve ever been. But I’m still accepting that I’ll never get the dad that the little girl in me always wanted.

    It’s a tough pill to swallow. Knowing that people that you have the most love for are sometimes going to hurt you. Sometimes even those who are supposed to protect you. It’s one of the most difficult lessons you’ll learn in a lifetime, but it’s a part of being human.

    I hope my experience can help to shed some light on your own relationships with partners, family members, and close friends.

    Here’s how I learned to let go and forgive.

    1. See the human being in the projection.

    A significant part of what we see in other people, particularly those with whom we have an emotional history, can often be a projection of our own unconscious attitudes toward that person, and not a reflection of how they are behaving.

    This is difficult to see in ourselves, and tends to be even more pronounced in people we’ve known for a long time, particularly our parents.

    I learned to forgive my dad by seeing the person in him and not the idea of what I thought a father should be. Doing so wasn’t an easy process, as I had to face shortcomings in both of us. On his side it was constantly making promises he couldn’t keep, out of a fear of losing love and affection from anyone around him. For me, it was the inability to give him a chance to make things right, and see him in a new light, even when it was the most appropriate thing to do for both of us.

    Fortunately, over time, as I grew as a person, I was able to build a new relationship with him, based on fresh experiences and not sour expectations.

    2. Constantly re-assess your expectations.

    When trying to start afresh with my father, I found myself constantly face to face with my old expectations. Whenever he would act in a certain way, such as making empty promises or failing to be there for me when I need him, it would trigger an old story (and old emotions) I had about how he’d always been this way or how he’d never change. But each time I did so, I was able to reassess my expectations.

    A cynical way to look at this would be to say that I lowered them. But who’s to say for whatever reason they weren’t too high to begin with? When he began to act in a way that was more congruent with what I had come to expect, we were both happier, and he even began to positively surprise me sometimes when he fulfilled promises I didn’t expect him to.

    3. Look at the world from their perspective.

    The spiritual teacher Ram Dass once said: “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek quote, and I’ve tried to apply the idea my situation. I’ve always thought that I’m an empathetic and understanding person. But can I really stand in the shoes of my family members and be completely ok with their actions, particularly those who have hurt me?

    I tried to think about my dad’s situation, his expectations and disappointments, the influences in his life like constantly being on the move because of his work. And I understood that he wasn’t there for me partly because he was afraid of losing his new family and being alone.

    At the end of the day, while I couldn’t come to justify his actions, I was able to see the rationale in them, and have empathy for him as a flawed human being, rather than someone who had intentionally done me wrong.

    4. Practice acceptance in all areas of life.

    Sometimes I couldn’t separate the man from the projection, I couldn’t change my expectations, and I couldn’t come to rationalize where I’d been done wrong. At this point, I had to try and accept things the way they are. And at first, I couldn’t. It just felt so inauthentic, I was still so angry and upset. So I decided to start small and practice acceptance as a skill.

    I accepted little things like traffic on the way to work and rudeness by people in shops. I accepted when I saw something I didn’t like on the news or friend of mine had been a little thoughtless. I even made it a habit to accept things I didn’t like about myself, and finally, I began to be able to accept my father for his mistakes.

    5. View relationships as fluid, not solid.

    This final point was one of the most interesting. I began to view relationships in my life as fluid and not solid. For me, fluid relationships meant that people could enter and leave, their roles could change, as could the way we related to each other. Unfortunately, this is a natural fact of life, and the choice we have is whether or not we resist it.

    My dad hasn’t been a huge support, nor a good role model, but right now he’s a father and a friend, and someone I love. That may change in the future, for better or worse, but I’m trying my best to be open to the journey.

    Learning to let go of people you love when they’ve hurt you is one of the most difficult challenges we will face in a lifetime. As you can see from my situation, letting go of someone may be releasing the grip you have on the idea of who they should be. Sometimes you can still maintain a relationship, just not the one you want. And sometimes, that’s exactly what you need.

    Have you ever had to rebuild a relationship with someone who’s hurt you? Leave a comment below, I would love to hear your stories!

  • How to Face Uncertainty: Why We Don’t Need to Press the Panic Button

    How to Face Uncertainty: Why We Don’t Need to Press the Panic Button

    “This time, we are holding onto the tension of not knowing, not willing to press the panic button. We are unlearning thousands of years of conditioning.” ~Sukhvinder Sircar

    This morning I awoke feeling uncertain about the direction my life was taking. Was it what I wanted in all areas? Was I right to be living where I wanted to, in London, away from family? Was I doing the “right thing” restructuring my business, and was I doing the “right thing” going away for two months next year?

    I’ve had a few days like this recently, and while I’d like to blame it on my external circumstances, I know differently. I’m simply feeling stuck in thought.

    I learned this in what I perceive as “the hard way.”

    Three years ago, I experienced trauma that left me feeling empty and abandoned. I got married. You wouldn’t think that this was a traumatic experience, but in the space of one month (and for no apparent reason whatsoever), my family told me that I was “no longer part of their family” and that I “deserved” to be abandoned by my dad when I was four, and my new mother-in-law-to-be told me that she had “never liked me but that she would try.” Also, I lost my best friend of ten years.

    It’s safe to say that my wedding day was a blur, and I felt broken. Instead of experiencing wedded bliss, I ended up questioning my relationship and traveling alone to try to “find myself.” Really, I was trying to escape my pain and run from the uncertainty I was feeling about life.

    Fast forward three years, and I now know something different. When we are feeling uncertain or doubtful, trying to predict the future or trying to work out the past—whenever we are not in the moment—it is because we are actually caught up in our thinking.

    Sure, we can blame many of our external circumstances for these feelings and choices—there are plenty of things that have occurred this week that I could say have “made me” feel uncertain. But since I’ve discovered the truth of who I really am, I now know that my uncertainty is, in fact, coming from me.

    Ultimately, our thinking influences how we experience the external world, which means we have a choice in how our circumstances impact us. That being said, it is human nature, and completely normal, to get caught up in our feelings about external events at times. The point is that we don’t need to be scared of our human experience or try to think our way out of it; we just need to accept our feelings until they pass.

    It’s an Inside-Out Reality

    As I journeyed through life after what felt like a breakdown, I came across a profound understanding about the nature of our human experience, which totally transformed the way I saw and danced with life. I now call this my “transformational truth principles.”

    These principles explain how our entire reality is thought-created, which means that everything we see in the world and everything we feel comes from our thinking.

    So, using my current experience as an example: I’ve been feeling uncertain about where I should live, whether I should travel for such a long time, and how I’m going to restructure my business and maintain my finances. I know that I am feeling anxious about these things solely because of my thoughts.

    If I weren’t worried about uncertainty (if I didn’t have an “uncertainty bothers me” lens), then it wouldn’t upset me at all. If I focused on the potential of my business growth, the excitement of the travel journey, and the beautiful feeling of living where I want to be living in London, I’d be feeling that thinking instead.

    So, external events that are happening can’t impact us unless what we believe about them bothers us. It’s the same with anything. If someone criticizes us, it can’t impact us unless we believe it ourselves.

    Say someone criticized my creative talents, for example; I would probably laugh because I see myself as creative. If, like with my wedding, they criticized my worthiness, my ability to be loved, or left me, I might sob into my pillow for days, because at times, like many of us, I doubt my self-worth and question if I’m lovable.

    Just because people thought I was unlovable, that doesn’t mean I am. The only reason it impacted me was because I believed it myself. In this way, the external only ever points us to what we think about ourselves and not to the truth.

    Our Thoughts Are Not the Truth

    We get so caught up in believing our own stories that we often forget to step back and see that what we think is just thought. Thoughts aren’t always facts. What’s more, you might notice how our thinking fluctuates. We can think differently about the same thing in each different moment. That’s because our thoughts are transient, and fresh new thinking is available to us in each moment.

    When you understand this, you might well wonder, “Well, what is the truth then?” The truth is underneath our thinking. Within all of us there is a wisdom—a clarity—that is innately accessible to us, if we just allow the space to listen to it.

    We do this by simply seeing our thoughts as “just thoughts” floating around in our heads. Noticing this allows our thoughts to drop away—without us doing anything.

    Allowing Space and Flowing

    Usually, instead, we are likely to have a whole host of thoughts around how to react when we feel anxious about uncertainty.

    For me personally, I would usually want to force and control things in order to “fix” my lack of certainty over my relationship or whatever my uncertainty might be in the moment—living where I was living, traveling, or restructuring my business.

    You might make lists of action plans, or work out worst-case scenarios, or analyze why it happened.

    This has always been a temptation of mine, and I spent months on this after my wedding, trying to work out if I should be with my husband or not, whether life would forever be difficult if I had children, why my in-laws didn’t like me, and why my dad left.

    But, again, in the same way I now understand that it is not the external that creates my feelings about uncertainty, I also understand that there is no need to force certainty, or even look for the “why.” Sometimes there isn’t one.

    Certainty is an Illusion

    It’s an illusion that there is any certainty in the first place. Life is always evolving, and, as such, there is no safety net beyond the one we imagine. We do this all the time, but the only certainty in life is that there isn’t any!

    Anything we predict is just our mind trying to “fix something,” which is futile. It can seem scary to think that we have no certainty, that we can’t fix things, but when we understand that there is actually nothing to fix—because nothing is broken—we can settle back into the flow of life.

    I’m not saying it always feels easy, but I have experienced how my feelings about my wedding traumas settled down when I began to understand this.

    We are Universally Guided and Already Whole

    We only see that there is something to “fix” because this is, again, our construction of reality. We are unlearning thousands of years of conditioning of how we view the world: ideas that certainty exists and that we need to fix ourselves if things don’t look how we think they should.

    Sydney Banks, the original inspirer of my Transformational Truth principles, said:

    “If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.”

    Because, actually, there is nothing to fear. I believe we are always exactly where we need to be—because we are part of this amazingly miraculous universe, which is guided by some sort of powerful intelligence that no one really understands. In this way, we are already whole, always connected, and always safe. There is nothing to fix because we are not broken.

    Ultimately, the “answer” we are looking for is pointless. There is no “answer,” and we don’t need one. All we need to do is see how life really works and allow ourselves to accept where we are in each moment, knowing that it is a transient, thought-created experience of life.

    We just need to flow, move with what happens, and sit in our feelings, knowing that they are thought-based, they can’t harm us, and they will soon pass.

    In her poem “She Is a Frontier Woman,” Sukhvinder Sircar explains this well in saying that all we really need to do is hold on to the tension of not knowing and not press the panic button.

    Allow the Creative Force of Life Flow

    And so, this morning, as I woke feeling uncertain, I got out my yoga mat and journal. I stretched, I moved my body, and I sat in the feelings I had, knowing that they would pass, even though they felt horrible.

    I knew that they were not part of me, but simply my thinking, trying to convince me of something I believed that was fundamentally not the truth. I let go. I flowed. I accepted what I didn’t know. I didn’t press the panic button. Instead, I wrote this.

    In the space where I could have (and would have previously) worried and attempted to solve things, the creative force of life—which is actually underneath all of our thoughts—simply flowed through me. In a much more beautiful way than it could have done had I indulged my imagined beliefs about the external.

    When we sit back, creation gifts us with exactly what we need in each moment. We simply need to understand how this works and allow it.

  • 5 Psychological Strategies to Ease the Stress of Perfectionism

    5 Psychological Strategies to Ease the Stress of Perfectionism

    “Striving for excellence motivates you, striving for perfection is demoralizing.” ~Harriet Braiker

    The last three months I’ve been trying an experiment. It’s something that I’ve never done before, and in a certain way, it’s been a huge challenge. However, in other ways, it’s been an enormous stress relief, and I would say a largely successful effort.

    What I’ve done seems to go against conventional wisdom, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a wise choice.

    So what exactly is this challenge? Well, I have actively gone out of my way to be average.

    Yep, sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? But hear me out.

    Over the past year, I’ve become more aware than ever of how much unconscious stress I put on myself to be above average. I’ve always known I have a type-A personality, but I didn’t know to what extent this was doing me harm. A large part of this realization came from journaling my dreams and discussing them with a psychotherapist, and another part came about through a mindfulness practice.

    So for six months, whenever I felt like relaxing, and the little voice in my head would pop up and tell me I could be doing more in this moment, I would ignore it. I would decide to watch that extra episode on Netflix. I would choose to sleep in the extra fifteen minutes. I would leave the little bit of extra work until tomorrow.

    What came out of this was unexpected. The more I ignored the voice, the more loud and aggressive it became.

    Coming into contact with this part of myself ultimately did three things.

    Firstly, it showed me that I had an issue with perfectionism that I wasn’t entirely aware of. Secondly, it showed me just how tricky and persuasive the little voice of perfectionism could be. And finally, and most importantly, it taught me how overcoming that perfectionist tendency could lead to less stress, more productivity, and greater well-being.

    So, the moment of truth. How do you know you’re a perfectionist?

    • You often feel weighed down by fear of your goals not succeeding
    • You’re constantly looking for the ‘right’ moment to do something
    • You have a persistent sense of dissatisfaction with what you’ve achieved
    • You obsess over small mistakes that have little impact on the big picture
    • You neglect self-care in favor of achievements

    I came up with five psychological strategies to overcome this perfectionism. This has allowed me to take steps toward accepting the average parts of myself, and it’s helped me let go of a shocking amount of hidden stress.

    I’ve decided to share these steps with you here so you can begin to accept who and where you are, and enjoy the journey a little more.

    1. Rethink what it means to be average.

    In our society, we often consider anything less than greatness to be failure. That’s not an exaggeration; it’s just the reality of our skewed notions of achievement that have failed to account for larger and more interconnected societies in which it’s increasingly difficult to stand out.

    When we hear the terms “average” or “mediocre” we consider them dirty words, although they’re supposed to denote the middle of the pack. If you are average at something, that shouldn’t have any correlation whatsoever to your self-worth. Most people are average at most things for most of their lives. Does that mean that most people should feel bad about themselves?

    Accepting the ways in which you are average doesn’t mean you can’t strive to achieve greatness in some areas of your life. All it means is that the desire to excel doesn’t need to be driven by the feeling that you are incomplete. It can be out of the love of competing with your past self, the need to serve your community, or even just the enjoyment of a challenge in the present moment.

    2. Challenge the all-or-nothing fallacy.

    Perfectionism is a direct result of the all-or-nothing fallacy, also known as black-and-white thinking. When we believe that our value is completely tied to our achievements, for example, we cannot help but obsessively strive to do everything the right way, because any mistake would undermine our entire self-worth.

    We can also see this when we look for the one perfect moment to get started on something, when we put all our efforts into one project and neglect our health, and most toxically, when we try to evaluate our life against the over-generalized boxes of success or failure.

    When you see this type of thinking emerge in your psyche, challenge it, and replace it with more nuanced explanations.

    For example, I used to believe that I was either being productive or lazy. When I was being productive I wasn’t being lazy, and when I wasn’t being productive I was being lazy. I’ve started to challenge that idea with the more nuanced explanation that breaks are sometimes lazy and sometimes productive; they serve many purposes. They can be reinvigorating, rewarding, and sometimes need no justification.

    3. Become friends with what you don’t know.

    Another key trait of perfectionism that I saw in myself is a strong desire to control outcomes. We have this tendency partly because we have a heightened fear of things not going the way we want or expect.

    In part, this is because perfectionism creates stress, and when we are stressed we start to become more susceptible to cognitive biases. For example, we may believe that if things don’t go the way we anticipate, everything will fall apart, we will lose out on opportunities, or we will be criticized by others.

    One way we can counteract this attitude is by becoming more comfortable with the unknown. You can only ever influence a certain amount of any situation you’re in, whether that’s work, money, or relationships.

    I have become more comfortable with the unknown by journaling about my fears over time. By seeking out counterexamples of when your fears haven’t been true (and they often aren’t), you can see how worries about the future are exaggerated by the brain, and you can start to gain more control over your emotions.

    It may also help to practice setting a wide range of goals, with varied levels of difficulty. Meeting the easier goals should fulfill your need to be in control and achieve, and working toward the more difficult goals will simply be a challenge to be creative, go above and beyond, and enjoy the uncertainty of things that are out of your control.

    4. Become friends with what you don’t love.

    Likewise, perfectionism is largely tied to the relationship you have with what you don’t accept about yourself.

    You probably know that acceptance is at the root of love. It’s therefore not surprising that people often advise you to love yourself when you’re dealing with internal conflict. Well, it sounds simple, but it’s never that easy, unfortunately. So I’m going to propose something more manageable: become friends with what you don’t love.

    If there are parts of yourself or your experience that you can’t accept or bring yourself to love, just befriend them. Ask what purpose the things you don’t like serve; become familiar with them the way you would a friend.

    Ease into the changing relationship you have with these harder-to-accept parts of yourself, and over time you’ll see a shift in your perspective that calms your anxiety around them.

    For example, I used to have an antagonistic relationship with my anxiety. The fact that I wasn’t always cool, calm, and collected, was something I found hard to accept, and it created internal conflict and (obviously) more anxiety. When I was able to see that anxiety was just a part of my brain was trying to help me, I was able to accept it. And over time I even started to appreciate this quirky part of myself.

    5. Reassess how you measure your success.

    If your perfectionism is driven by the belief that you’re not successful enough, then it’s not necessarily you that needs to change. It could be that the way you’re measuring success needs to be reassessed.

    For example, it’s common that we compare ourselves to others, and while we’re often told to focus on ourselves, making social comparisons in specific situations—such as workplace evaluations or in competitive sports—does have some (albeit limited) utility. If we didn’t make these comparisons, it would be difficult to see how we were improving and in what roles we could most help the group.

    When you start to generalize this idea to the rest of your life, however, that’s when it becomes a problem. If you start to tell yourself that so-and-so’s life is better than yours or that he or she is more successful than you, that’s almost always a generalization. What makes a life better? What does success mean? Are we talking about financial achievements? Free time? Deep relationships? Take a closer look at how success could be more effectively defined in your life.

    My own definition of success used to be based on how well I compared to people in my life in standardized measures (money, relationships, novel experiences etc.) Now I see success as how well I’m able to find meaning in the present moment, stay motivated for the future, and spend my time working on something that helps me, the people I love, and the rest of the world.

    All of the elements of my definition may not be relevant to anyone else, but because they are more fluid and flexible, and can grow with my personality, they prevent me from falling into the habit of perfectionism.

    To bring this all full circle, consider this: You can be average in one area and successful in another. This doesn’t mean you don’t have value, are not worthy or love or respect, and don’t deserve some down time every once in a while.

    Being average is normal, and it’s not an indicator of worth. You have inherent value just as you are. And if you should want to obsess about a project or be a little bit of a perfectionist every now and then, that’s fine. But be driven by the love of the creative process itself, not the anxiety that you can never do enough.

    What experience have you had with perfectionism? Have you used any of these strategies to find more peace of mind? Let us know in the comments—we’d love to hear from you!

  • When I Stopped Competing, I Set Myself Free

    When I Stopped Competing, I Set Myself Free

    “With nothing to compare yourself to, aren’t you perfect?” ~Byron Katie

    I have never liked competition. Every time I compete, I feel pressured and disconnected from others. I love harmony, peace, collaboration, and win-win situations, kind of like “me happy, you happy.” I don’t need to watch another person lose the game to feel good about myself. I don’t need to dominate or put someone else down in order to feel superior and worthy.

    In some cultures, competing is perceived as a sign of ambition, power, and strength. Most of us grew up hearing constant comparisons, which turned into a habit during our adult lives:

    “Do I look better than her? I want to be slimmer.”

    “How much is he earning? I want more.”

    “Where does she live? I want a house at least that size.”

    And so on…

    In my home country, Romania, like in many other places, the schooling system was a fierce competition to get the best grades and be the first in the class. As a child, I remember spending an average of ten hours a day studying and doing homework during weekdays. I hardly had any time to play and relax.

    Teachers were always making comparisons between students, parents would compare their children to their friends’ or neighbors’ kids, and no one truly encouraged individual talents.

    As a result of this conditioning, I ended up struggling with serious self-esteem issues for many years. As a young woman, I didn’t see myself as good enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, or successful enough, and I desperately tried to be perfect.

    When I wasn’t competing with other people, I was competing with myself. I was always striving to be the best friend I could be, the best daughter, or the best employee at work. Pleasing others was addictive because I felt validated whenever I heard “well done!” And then I wanted to do even better.

    I am not here to blame. I am not a victim. My parents did the best they could at the time, and society did the best it knew, so I am not blaming but instead looking for hidden and limiting beliefs that have worked against me. Here’s what I have realized I need to do:

    1. Stop competing with other people.

    “Comparing yourself to others is an act of violence against your authentic self.” ~Iyanla Vanzant

    Our society often encourages competition. There are some circumstances when we have no choice but to compete—when applying for a new position at work or attending job interviews, for example. However, there are situations when we make the rules, and the choice is entirely up to us. We can live our own lives and mind our own journey, or we can choose to compete with others over who’s more attractive, wealthier, happier, or more successful.

    During my single years, I often compared myself to other women. Most of them seemed settled; they were married and had the house, the men, the kids, and the dog. I used to feel like a failure, as if something were wrong with me. I met my husband when I was thirty-six. We were two Romanians working in Asia, for the same company. Small world, indeed. We’ve been happily married for four years now.

    So here what I’ve learned: Everyone is on their own path, and we all do what’s right for ourselves, in our own time. I believe we live in a supportive Universe where everything unfolds perfectly—at the right time, in the right place. Comparing ourselves to others is an infinite source of stress and frustration, and it doesn’t serve us well.

    2. Stop competing against myself.

    “Doing your best is more important than being the best.” ~Zig Ziglar

    Perfection is nothing but pure fiction, an illusion created by our minds. It’s also a learned practice. Most of us were raised to constantly strive to become better people—to focus on our flaws and perceived limitations—and we either take our strengths for granted or aren’t even aware of them.

    While we are all learning from our experiences and mistakes, we also need to be aware of our gifts and talents. We need to celebrate our uniqueness and detach ourselves from the toxic habit of comparing ourselves to others.

    Yet here I am, in my forties, still reading about infinite ways to become a better human. With so much focus on the need for improvement, particularly in the personal development industry, I wonder when I am ever supposed to turn into the best version of myself and find peace.

    So I’ve stopped competing with myself. I refuse to fight against myself so that I can reach the end of the tunnel, and I am no longer waiting for the magical day when I will become perfect and faultless.

    Why turn my life into a never-ending competition? True friendship is not about competing against each other. It’s about support and collaboration. Why act as my competitor when I can be my own best friend?

    As the Chinese proverb says, “Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”

    If I am to spend my precious time waiting to grow into the best of myself, there will always be something to change, add, fix, or transform so that I can finally feel whole and complete.

    Life doesn’t have to be such a daily struggle. I don’t have to fix myself because I am not broken.

    I embrace the entire repertoire of my humanity with self-love and compassion. I choose not to be a “work in progress.” My desire for growth is about taking each day as an opportunity to learn more about life and myself.

    That’s how I discover who I really am and what brings me genuine happiness and fulfillment. By releasing old patterns and limiting beliefs that don’t serve me well, I get closer to my real human essence. My life is all about experiencing things as they come. It is a journey of self-discovery, not self-improvement.

    Since I changed my perspective, I’ve stopped beating myself up. I now talk to myself kindly. I treat myself with dignity and respect. I know I am worthy of the best things life has to offer, and it is my birthright to be happy. My happiness is nothing to compete or fight for.

    I also choose to see myself as perfectly beautiful and beautifully imperfect. I celebrate my mistakes as much-needed opportunities for growth. I celebrate both success and failure because this is what makes me wiser. I treat every life experience as an opportunity to learn new things about myself and other people.

    Furthermore, I’ve learned to forgive myself for my mistakes in the same way I forgive others, knowing I am also human. As a student at the school of life, I will sometimes rise and sometimes fall, and that is okay. I no longer strive to become the best version of myself. Instead, I always do the best I can. When I know I’ve done the best I could, there’s no room for regrets. Whenever I know better, I do better.

    I am enough and worthy, so I don’t need to prove myself to anyone. Not even to myself. Newborns and babies do not compete against each other. They love and approve of themselves as they are. In our competition-oriented society, we need to remind ourselves more of our true nature, which is balanced, loving, and peaceful.

    I believe the world needs fewer fighters and competitors. The world needs more givers, peacemakers, and soul nurturers, and it also needs more compassion.

    The day I stopped competing against myself and others, I set myself free.

    Artwork by Rebecca Freeman

  • How to Release Emotions Stuck in Your Body and Let Go of the Pain

    How to Release Emotions Stuck in Your Body and Let Go of the Pain

    “The human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.” ~Daniel J. Siegel

    We are emotional creatures, and we were born to express emotions freely and openly. Somewhere along the way, however, many of us learned to repress emotions, especially those deemed “negative,” in order to fit in, earn love, and be accepted. This was my experience.

    I grew up in a home where the motto was “Children are to be seen, not heard.” There was little emotional expression allowed, let alone accepted. No one was there to validate or help us process emotions in a healthy way. Anger was met with anger, fear went unacknowledged, and there was plenty of shame to go around.

    My parents didn’t model how to deal with difficult emotions, as they struggled with that themselves. When those emotions showed up, I often felt overwhelmed and inadequate, ashamed of my failure to be a “good girl.”

    I learned to bury my pain deep inside, feeling invisible, ashamed, angry, alone, and unable to ask for what I needed. Trying to hide the pain—from others and myself—I built walls, put on masks, and soldiered on. For better or worse.

    My pain was buried so deep, I didn’t realize it was there until I had my own children. Motherhood opened up old wounds, the house of cards fell apart, and I began to unravel.

    In my thirties, faced with growing angst and creeping depression—and motivated to be the best parent I could be to my children—I began to deal with repressed memories and old emotional residue that has left me suffering from C-PTSD, chronic back pain, sciatica, headaches, and anxiety.

    As a child, I hid from the emotional pain by delving into the world of books, music, and academics. As an adult, I realized I was strong enough to face it. I wasn’t a little child anymore; I didn’t have to hide. Now I was more mature and had the resources I needed to finally face the pain that used to overwhelm my young brain—and begin to heal it.

    The truth is, we all hide our emotions occasionally. We pretend, avoid, and deny uncomfortable emotions in an effort of self-preservation, as a defense mechanism.

    We do this most often with difficult emotions like shame, fear, or anger. When we experience events that emotionally overwhelm us and we’re unable to process what is happening, accept our emotions, and express them through our body and mind, we hide them deep inside us where others can’t see them. And we end up hiding them from ourselves too. Yet, they’re still there.

    The unresolved emotions get trapped in our body, where they build and fester, draining our energy, leading to burnout, emotional imbalance, and eventually disease. When we chronically repress emotions, we create toxicity in our body, mind, and heart.

    This unprocessed emotional energy is stored in our organs, muscles, and tissues. It leads to inflammation and chronic health problems, and it undermines our overall well-being.

    3 Steps to Processing Emotional Energy Stuck in Your Body

    The opposite of repression is expression. In order to process our emotional distress and move it through and out of our body so it doesn’t get stuck there, we need to learn to express our emotions in a healthy way, in the body and mind. But first, we need to learn to recognize and accept our feelings as they come and go.

    Step 1: Recognize (self-awareness)

    The challenge is to recognize the emotion and feel it in your body. This is where mindfulness comes in. The goal is to notice what is happening within our body, accept it, and feel it fully, without judgment.

    If you’ve ever come across Tara Brach’s teachings on radical acceptance, the practice of R.A.I.N. should sound familiar. R.A.I.N. stands for recognize, allow, investigate, and nourish (with self-compassion), and it “directly de-conditions the habitual ways in which you resist your moment-to-moment experience,” according to Brach.

    Buddhist teachings tell us that human suffering is caused by aversion and resistance to what is happening. Acceptance is liberating, and the practice of R.A.I.N. teaches us to accept our moment-to-moment experience instead of running from it. It teaches us to face any difficulty head-on, with self-compassion and the understanding that it will eventually pass.

    We have to feel it to heal it—we have to fully experience the emotion in order to process and integrate it into our experience.

    But we must feel it in the body; this is the critical point. As Brach writes, “If the process of including difficult emotions in awareness stops at the level of cognitive understanding without a fully embodied experience, the genuine acceptance, insight, and inner freedom that are the essence of true healing will not be complete.”

    Practice mindfulness to get better at recognizing your feelings and observing the bodily sensations connected to those feelings as they come and go throughout the day. Offer yourself self-compassion as you go through more difficult emotions.

    PRACTICE:

    Sit still for a few minutes with your eyes closed. Listen to your body and become curious.

    What does your body feel like right now? Is there any pressure or tingling? Where? Do you feel heavy, hot, contracted, warm, or cold? What is the texture, weight, and shape of the sensations you notice in your body? What emotions are those sensations connected to? Can you breathe into the parts that call your attention? What do those parts of your body want to tell you? What do they want?

    Step 2: Respond (self-expression)

    Emotions need to be expressed to be processed. The goal is to move the energy of emotion through and out the body so we can let it go.

    This self-expression must be authentic and embodied. Remember, true healing occurs when body and mind integrate, so express the emotion on the bodily level first and foremost.

    Still sitting, ask yourself: What does this emotion you just connected with need from you? What feels right in this moment? What do you need?

    Maybe you feel the need to cry, scream into a pillow, go for a swim, walk or run, dance it out, hit a punching bag, do some gardening, tapping, yoga or TRE, paint your feelings out, or simply breathe deeply while facing the sun—whatever feels cathartic in that moment, do it.

    You will free the poisonous emotion that you carried within yourself and free yourself from its shackles.

    Follow this step with one of the best forms of emotional healing—journaling. Writing can be a very therapeutic experience of self-discovery, reconnecting with our true self, and processing our deepest feelings and emotions.

    When we write, we give our internal world a voice. We process and make sense of what is happening within us and around us. And we gain perspective; by writing about our fears and hurts, we can look at them from a distance, detach from their grip, and eventually let them go. That release can be truly healing.

    Practice journaling every day to get better at expressing and processing your feelings. Don’t censor or judge yourself; let it all out, completely unfiltered. Over time, your journal will become a safe space for you to free yourself, get unstuck, and move forward.

    We often don’t have the time and space to process emotions in the moment, so make sure you allow yourself the space to feel the emotions you’ve had through the day and journal about it at the end of each day.

    WRITING PROMPT

    What is happening in your life right now that you wish you could change? What is the biggest source of frustration? As you write, notice the sensations in your body. Tune into the parts that are numb, in pain, or frozen. What are they trying to tell you? What needs healing, attention, or change?

    Step 3: Reset (self-care)

    If we’ve habitually neglected our bodies and ignored our emotions, we have to re-dedicate ourselves to body-mind self-care and indulge in healing habits that will bring in the feeling of well-being.

    The goal is to realign back with your authentic self, reset back to a relaxed and open state, and come back into wellness and balance.

    Take time to slow down and be alone, get out into nature, make art, listen to music while you cook your favorite dinner, meditate to cleanse your mind and relax your body, or take a bubble bath or a nap to restore. Take good care of yourself to awaken to life’s joy and simple pleasures that will nourish your body, mind, and soul.

    My Own Healing Journey

    When I decided to take charge of my own healing, I had no idea where to start. A lifelong bookworm, I quickly discovered writing to be therapeutic. It became my refuge, a place where I could connect with my inner world in an authentic way. Writing became my most trusted way of processing emotions I didn’t even know I harbored inside since childhood. I discovered shame, anger, fear, grief, and eventually, self-compassion.

    With mindfulness, I learned to allow my pain to surface, if only for a brief time, then surround it with tender love and care. My pain was a part of me, and I was done running from it; it was time I faced it.

    I learned to sense into my body, little by little, as the anxiety of reconnecting with my physical sensations was very powerful. But I realized the only way out was through—through the body—so in order to move the stuck emotions that had a tight grip over me for decades, I had to allow and accept them; I had to feel the anger, the shame, the grief.

    Slowly, I learned to give my inner child the support she never received. I listened to and validated her pain—and helped her let go of it. I learned to love and accept her. And I finally learned to love and accept myself.

    Healing is a taxing process. Remember to give yourself all the care and compassion you would give to a friend doing this hard work. Offer yourself understanding, love, and care. This is hard work, and you are doing the best you can with what you’ve got.

    Trapped emotions get in our way. They sabotage our efforts to create the life we want and make us miserable along the way. Freeing this emotional energy stuck in our bodies can shift our lives in a positive way. It’s healing and liberating. And you are worth it!

  • Our Shame Does Not Have to Silence Us Unless We Let It

    Our Shame Does Not Have to Silence Us Unless We Let It

    “Empathy’s the antidote to shame. The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle: me too.” ~ Brené Brown

    There is so much power in giving yourself a voice, in choosing to use that voice for truth, in giving life to the secrets, judgment, and shame you keep hidden away. “Me too” can change someone’s life.

    I learned this firsthand almost a decade ago. It changed my life, and it’s changed countless others around me.

    I gave my shame a voice, and she was loud, strong, and bold. She brought light to a secret others would have preferred I kept. She brought comfort in my struggle. She brought wisdom in my pain. She began what would be a lifetime of courage, speaking up, and going first. She started it all.

    My Secret Shame

    Let’s go back to what started this story of shame to begin with. Rewind nine years. I was sixteen at the time, and there I was, standing in only lingerie and a pair of incredibly high and uncomfortable heels, applying makeup to make me look older…braces and all.

    Nine years ago I was a prostitute. I was legally allowed to have sex, yet I was illegally standing in a high-end brothel hours from home, trying my best to pretend I knew what I was doing—read as: I had NO idea.

    Why on earth was I there, you may ask? I made a choice. A misguided choice, but still a choice. A choice my mother supported because we’d both gotten caught up in the glamorized story her friend, also an escort, had created and manipulated us into seeing.

    “I just see men as money,” she told me, which sounded appealing given that we had little at the time. I was stronger than my mum, and we both knew it. So I chose; it would be me.

    At an age where I was supposed to be exploring what being in my body felt like for me, I was being passed around like an object so others could explore my body.

    Night after night I would go numb. I would silence the inner voice screaming to leave with Valium, alcohol (because I was nineteen, according to my forged birth certificate), and sleep deprivation. I was in all-out survival mode, and I was experiencing guilt, shame, and invasion again and again. The longer I stayed silent, the stronger it all became.

    I was a good little girl and kept my mouth shut, doing what I thought I had to do to survive. Be quiet. Say nothing. Just oblige. Don’t rock the boat.

    So I didn’t.

    I stayed a few weeks and spent many hours, sleepless days, and countless showers trying to wash away the shame I was carrying. Until I couldn’t keep it quiet anymore. I couldn’t not speak. I couldn’t not vocalize how I felt. I couldn’t not say no anymore.

    So I said no and began taking my life back.

    Many people will blame my mum. Some always will. Many can’t understand how I let the blame go. But I spent many years condemning her, and the world of victimhood sucked me in deep. In order to heal and move on, I needed to accept the decision we had both made. And I needed to accept that, like all humans, she did the best she could with what she had at the time.

    Please know there was anger there, and at times there still is. Sometimes I feel hurt, let down, and all the rest. But I choose to rise above it, and I choose a new future for myself by letting go of the need to be a victim in any of this. Because I never was, and never will be.

    Owning my past and releasing my shame is the most empowering decision I’ve ever made for myself. It all started with empathy. I had to stop believing that I was ultimately flawed because I had been a prostitute. I had to recognize that I too was doing the best I could at the time.

    I could not be living the life I am now, in the relationship I’m in with myself right now, without seeing the sixteen-year-old me with utter love and compassion, dissipating all judgment.

    I need you to know that speaking up about my shame was scary. I was outing a secret that impacted many more than just me. Yet I never hesitated in doing it. Why? Because I had a deep desire to let others know that they are never alone, and I knew there was a deeper meaning to all of this. There had to be; it’s what got me through.

    I couldn’t let my shame silence me. I never will again.

    The Gift of Voicing My Shame

    It was through experiencing shame and sharing it that I learned the power and freedom voicing our shame brings. And the understanding of what binds so many of us. How many people are walking through life silenced by shame? Unable to find their voice for fear of judgment? As a result, what kind of life are they living? In stuffing down their pain, they end up blocking themselves from joy.

    How fortunate was I to be able to experience shame and then release it? Yes, fortunate.

    I now appreciate that I was able to learn something early in life, at an age many others wouldn’t, that freed me from the chains that bound so tightly and weighed me down so deeply.

    Sharing my shame created a beautiful opportunity for me to look at my life so far through a totally new lens. I came to appreciate that my most painful experiences had gifted me the insight and heightened awareness I now have.

    What unfolded from me speaking was a declaration to myself, and to the world, that we do not need to stay silent with our shame. I publicly shared my experiences, as well as the self-harm and self-destruction that followed, and a sea of “me too’s” flooded in.

    People reached out thanking me for letting them know they aren’t alone.

    People reached out acknowledging me for being inspiring and giving them the courage to do the same.

    One woman even contacted me, saying she left the sex trade after my story went public, because… “me too.”

    All of this came from the courage to speak up.

    Lives were changed, and mine was never the same.

    Our shame does not have to silence us. Unless we let it.

    To anyone experiencing their own secret shame, this is what I want you to know.

    Whether you’ve experienced something traumatic or feel shame about not having it all together, speak up. Shame cannot exist if you have empathy, a voice, and acceptance.

    We all experience shame, for different reasons, at different times. It’s okay.

    There is no shame in being you. Please reread that again and again. You are not your worst decisions. No matter what you’ve done, you deserve love, empathy, and understanding. And you are never alone.

  • Why Introverts Feel Drained in Groups and How I Preserve My Energy

    Why Introverts Feel Drained in Groups and How I Preserve My Energy

    “In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” ~Deepak Chopra

    When I was younger, I was always referred to as “the quiet one.” I didn’t mind it; I knew I was much quieter than most people I met. Not speaking and spending time on my own was natural for me.

    Friends and workmates recognized this but would still often ask me if I wanted to join them when they were going out, even though they knew I would usually say no. They understood me as quiet, but they didn’t really understand just how much I disliked the whole socializing thing and how much it would drain me.

    I’d always loved time on my own. Even if I was somewhere amongst people, as long as I didn’t have to speak or engage with others, I was fairly content. In both situations I could retreat to my own inner world.

    My thoughts and imagination were never boring; there were always observations to make about myself, the world, and other people. There was a sense of coming home whenever I became quiet. There was a familiar comfort in my inner world.

    For the first half of my life I was a very shy introvert. While I’m not so shy anymore, I’m still introverted.

    From Quiet on the Outside to Quiet on the Inside

    In 2001 I discovered meditation at the recommendation of my brother, and one of the first things that became extremely obvious for me was just how active my mind was.

    There was a very clear realization—that just because I was “the quiet one” did not mean I had a quiet mind. This might sound obvious, but before I started meditating, I didn’t realize how busy my mind was.

    My inner world was full of noise. Thoughts triggering emotions and emotions amplifying thoughts in a vicious, neverending cycle . It was comfortable and familiar, but when I paid attention I realized it wasn’t peaceful.

    Prior to this realization, I’d very much identified with the noise in my mind. The constant stream of thoughts, emotions, and stories created a certain sense of self. The flavor of how I knew myself.

    How does a fish objectify water when it has lived in it for its entire life? Contrast. It needs to experience what it feels like outside of water.

    For me there was a similar experience happening through meditation. I started having experiences of an inner quiet. In the beginning it was only moments, but it was like being taken outside of my usual sense of self, allowing me to objectify the inner environment I usually resided in.

    It was uncomfortable because I was used to the comfort of my usual inner monologue, stories, and moods, but a part of me that realized I am not the thoughts, emotions, dramas that made up my usual sense of self.

    Although there was a comfort that came with the familiar, it was far more peaceful outside of it, since my mental environment had become polluted. Still, my active mind did not want to let go easily. It took time. I could have given up when I felt discomfort and resistance to seeing the reality of my mind; however, there were two things that helped motivate me to keep going.

    The first was the relief I was starting to feel. Just like the peace that would usually come when I had time on my own after being with people, or when I’d spend time in the quiet of nature after being in the noise of the city, this relief came from letting go of my thoughts. It was more than a craving for quiet. It was a longing for depth… inside myself.

    The second motivator, which I believe should pique the interest of any introvert, was that I was starting to feel less drained in group situations or events. I was still an introvert—I still preferred time on my own—but the negative side effects of being around people were shifting.

    Understanding the Main Difference Between Introverts and Extrovert

    I always knew I was an introvert, but I never really understood what it meant in greater detail until last year when I heard Faris Khalifeh from Quiet Leadership in Vancouver speak.

    I’d understood introversion very basically as someone who tends to be quiet and prefers time on their own. As I learned from Faris, a major distinguishing trait between introverts and extroverts is that introverts gain energy by being alone and tend to get drained in groups. Vice versa for extroverts.

    I believe one of the reasons introverts get so drained among groups of people is because they are not quiet on the inside. Much like stress is an internal reaction to a stimulus (external or internal), for an introvert there is an internal reaction to our natural sensitivity when in groups of people, creating a certain stress that drains our energy. Quietening our mind changes our reactions.

    For me, the combination of my naturally active mind and sensitivity created an internal environment that made group events draining. In group events there was so much stimulation happening around me that even if I was only connecting with one or two people I would eventually become drained.

    For clarity, there’s no more stimulation happening around an introvert than an extrovert; it’s that the introvert is usually far more sensitive to it.

    I remember a work dinner many years ago. There were about eight of us, but we’d gone to a pub, so there were a lot more people in the space. I was chatting with a work friend, but the ambient noise from all the conversations happening around me was pulling my awareness in all directions. Sensory overload. Too much information at the same time. It was very difficult to relax, and I was more distracted than present.

    It was like being immersed in a soup of chaotic ambient noise. I wished I could just leave! This outer noise added to my own inner noise, amplifying my thoughts and inner monologue:

    “That couple over there is having an argument. When will this evening be over? The man behind me is drunk; I hope they ask him to leave. There’s an awkward tension between those two workmates sitting together; they don’t like each other. I’m running out of things to talk about. Who actually enjoys this atmosphere? Maybe there’s something wrong with me?” And on and on.

    All of this created a general sense of stress and agitation in both my body and mind. Over a couple of hours, I was gradually drained.

    I often wondered if I was the only one who found social events unpleasant.

    The problem was, I had nothing solid to rest on. The constant stream of thoughts and emotions that run through our mind give us a familiar sense of self, but for me, a familiar sense of self based on my active mind was not a very stable place when I was so sensitive.

    Sensitivity was not the problem; a lack of stability was. Sensitivity is an amazing gift, but without some stability it feels like chaos.

    The Antidote

    The antidote that was emerging for me was stillness.

    Stillness created a stability and grounding. It was extremely nurturing and recharging by itself, and the more I cultivated a relationship to it the more it was there where ever I went.

    Even though I was still sensitive to the ambient noise at group events, I had a stable center, an inner quiet that created a separation between me and the noise. Without the separation, I was the noise, and it drained me. With stillness, I was stable and free, and my energy was preserved.

    Introverts tend to accept that having their energy drained in groups is an inherent trait of their personality type. While this is true in the usual introvert categorization, I believe it doesn’t have to be like this. I was not looking for a solution to being drained at group events; I’d simply accepted this is how I was. But I was wrong. The solution presented itself as a side effect of my meditation.

    I’m not suggesting you will transform into an extrovert and gain energy by being in groups. I’m still an introvert and I still love time by myself, but being at group events does not drain me like it used to.

    As introverts, at some point we have to engage with people and attend extroverted events. I share my experience with you because these situations do not have to be a point of stress or anxiety. Stillness provides a stable resting place that can change our relationship to group situations.

    Stillness is your superpower!

    Though meditation is one of the best paths to stillness, it can also help to use the exercise below, which I call “Finding stillness amidst the chaos.” I would not call it a meditation in the truest sense, but I would call it a training for your mind.

    Finding Stillness Amidst the Chaos

    1. Go to a crowded place, preferably where there is a lot of noise. A busy food court at lunchtime is a good one. Perhaps before a conference or event when everyone around you is talking. The more people, the better.

    2. Remain quiet and start listening peripherally to all the people talking. Don’t listen to individual conversations or voices. Listen to them all at once. The peripheral noise.

    3. If thoughts come into your mind, just let them go and return to the peripheral noise. Don’t judge your thoughts.

    4. As you listen peripherally to the noise for a couple of minutes, start to notice there is the chaos of the noise all around you, but you are not the noise. This is important! There is a separation between you and the noise. It’s like the noise is a tornado and you are in the eye. Notice the stillness in the center. It’s the place from where you perceive the noise.

    5. The key here is that the noise and chaos are in the periphery and stillness is in the center. Thoughts will come and go, but keep your awareness with the peripheral noise and center of stillness.

    6. Pay attention to how you feel more stable when you can do this. You can still be aware of the noise, but you are not affected by it, because you are not the noise.

    It may take some time to get the hang of this, but like anything else, with practice you will see progress. You may even find this fun. Don’t worry, you’re not becoming an extrovert—you’re just cultivating your stillness superpower!

  • Loving Yourself When You’ve Become Addicted to Self-Improvement

    Loving Yourself When You’ve Become Addicted to Self-Improvement

    “Whatever purifies you is the right path.” ~Rumi  

    I’m tired of being good. It’s time to be deliciously free.

    How I wish I could say that without rushing in to assure you that I promise I’ll still be good.

    The truth is, I worry. Less than I used to, but still, I do.

    I’ve probably had every kind of worry you could imagine. There’s the kind about things that haven’t happened yet, things that didn’t but very nearly could have, things that are highly unlikely if not impossible, things that are commonplace; I’ve worried about the things I want and the things I don’t, the purpose and the impermanence of life.

    Underneath, they all seem to stem from the same big fear that I am not good enough.

    This worry manifests itself as indecision, overthinking, holding grudges, and comparison. My expectations and criticisms originate there.

    Peek inside my head in my most afraid moments and you’re sure to find a motivational poster gone horribly wrong:

    We all have the same twenty-four hours, so what’s your excuse? Hustle! No pain, no gain! Stop playing small. Take massive action, go all-in. They’re crushing it, why aren’t you? The steps to success are quick, easy, and proven. Do whatever it takes. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. The universe loves speed. #YOLO. 

    I’ve spent a lot of time and mental energy on what I thought was self-improvement. Now, I’m seeing it for what it really was: self-medicating. The pressure to always be moving, always be achieving, faster, faster, hurry up and keep up was an addiction.

    This addiction was a symptom of losing trust in my own worth.

    I’d wear the way I treated myself like a badge of honor as if it somehow made me more worthwhile. Yet, I criticized myself about it, too. “Don’t be so rigid,” I’d command myself, followed up quickly by, “But be more disciplined.”

    I thought for a while that my worries were about control, but now I’m seeing that control was never the problem. I thought maybe it was perfection I sought. That wasn’t it, either.

    This was never really about success or approval, and certainly not improvement. What I’ve been seeking all along is freedom, and that’s what scared me the most.

    My indecision wasn’t about the decision itself, it was about doubting my ability to decide freely. Staying in relationships even though they hurt me wasn’t about the love or the loss, it was about doubting my right to choose myself, freely.

    Underneath every fear, every worry, every grudge and comparison was doubt in who I am, what I’m worth, and what right I had to take up the time and space to figure this out.  

    And now that I see things more clearly, I am clear about what I truly want. I want liberation.

    I want to free myself from the ghosts of the past and fears of the future. I long to be free from shame and the barriers I’ve built against my own peace. I want to use my voice freely and heal my steadfast heart. I want to freely and lovingly inhabit this body that’s stood by me no matter how much I’ve abused it.

    I want to rise up, thank the day, and carry on. Freely.

    Even as I’m writing these words to you, I’m learning what I need to do to stop the cycle.

    I need to practice making different choices and voicing different beliefs: Time is not money, it’s medicine. I need not be so disciplined but discerning. Not productive but perceptive.

    I’m learning the difference between moving quickly and moving honestly, and I’m replacing “should” with “I can if I so desire.”

    Oh, and I feel the resistance to this. The resistance is withdrawal, and it’s a natural part of the recovery process.

    But even with this insight, the fear of the unknown and the craving of familiarity are still there.

    Who will I become if I were truly free?  
    What value will I have?
    What if I fail?
    What if I disappoint? 

    Each time I set myself free, I will fly back to my cage until I trust the process of healing and love myself unconditionally.

    This is the painful part about finding and expressing yourself that no one really talks about. Loving yourself and trusting fully in your inherent worth is risky.

    You will surely fail at your previous rules and fall short of your old expectations as you explore new, more open ways of being. Someone is bound to be disappointed when you start existing as yourself, for yourself. The people who thought they knew you when you were only a fraction of yourself will say you’ve changed. They may not know what to do with you anymore.

    There may be judgment and misunderstanding. There may be rejection. You may feel lost. You may get less done, things may take longer, your work may be less popular or less profitable.

    And there will be the trappings of who you said you were everywhere. I still have a drawer full of makeup and hair products, perfume, and high heels that I will never use again. Maybe it’s time to let that version of me go.

    As you move closer to freedom, the ghost of who you tried to be will linger, haunting you. It will show up as a craving for likes and shares, for affirmation from someone else of your worth.

    Little by little, as you shed the security blankets put down over the years, you will move away from the conditions of your worth. Through forgiveness, setting and enforcing boundaries, more authentic yes’s and no’s, and growing more clear in what you want and where your true priorities lie, you will find new depths of freedom and space. It will be empowering and terrifying.

    What I’m discovering now is that you need to meet these challenges with grace and compassion.

    Letting go gives you space, but it needs space, too. Space brings solace and allows expansion. If you need to, stabilize. There’s no need to feel like a complete stranger in your own skin. Seek comfort and familiarity, but do it consciously. If you fall into old patterns, treat yourself with kindness, not judgment.  And then carry on, consciously.

    Have the courage to ride the cravings out. Resist the habit of proving your worth and earning your freedom. The doubts will try to convince you that they’re making you better, more worthy. Remember that it never worked that way before.

    I’m seeing now that what I do or don’t do, how far I do or don’t go, what I do or don’t achieve has never been the question. The question is, what frees me?

    I may not know what my freedom holds, and I may still face that uncertainty with some degree of fear, but I’m learning to trust that the pins and needles of waking up are the cure to what’s really ailing me.

    The greatest opportunities are not found in safety or certainty. Just as in facing any fear, the old beliefs about your worth need to be threatened in order to be changed.

    Each time we practice asking ourselves what will set us free, we’ll learn to speak the language of our intuition that much more fluently.

    Each time we practice validating our own perspective, we’ll learn to distinguish between wisdom and sound bites that much more naturally.

    One layer at a time, we will build a foundation of trust in ourselves and our inherent worth, and I have to believe that this will set us free.

  • How to Be Less Anxious About Things You Can’t Change

    How to Be Less Anxious About Things You Can’t Change

    “One of the happiest moments is when you find the courage to let go of what you can’t change.” ~Unknown

    Over the last few years, I’ve had to deal with a frustrating problem.

    It’s something that’s not uncommon, but it can be debilitating, and it has affected me every day. Some days have been incredibly tough, and they’ve tested my tolerance and my patience.

    The problem is chronic back pain.

    Every day I get up, knowing that throughout the day I’m going to have a discomfort that could oscillate between a mild annoyance and an intense burning. At some point, it’s going to distract me. Either while I work, while I eat, while I meditate, while I exercise, and sometimes while I sleep.

    You’d think by now I would’ve gotten used to it, that it would’ve become the unwelcomed friend that I’d learned to live with. Unfortunately, that’s only the case sometimes.

    But I am (slowly but surely) learning firsthand the value of something incredibly profound that the meditation teacher Shinzen Young once said:

    “Suffering = Pain x Resistance.”

    When it comes to the suffering we experience when dealing with physical pain, it’s not always easy to know exactly what is pain and what is resistance to that pain.

    In my own situation, every now and then, when the pain is very uncomfortable, I’ll start to ruminate. My mind will begin to make up stories about how severe the pain is, how much worse it’s going to get, what I could’ve done to prevent it, and anything else to resist the experience.

    But there are certain things you can’t know and certain things you can’t change. I’m doing the best I can to try and prevent the pain—I’ve seen a number of specialists, all with varying opinions.

    My focus now is, how can I reduce the resistance and alleviate the suffering?

    This is broadly related to another important existential issue and something that I want to explore with you in a little bit of detail.

    We all have to deal with situations that we have no control over; illness, death, and loss are inevitable. I’m going to share with you how I’ve faced this, in the context of my back pain, but it’s highly likely that you’re going through something comparable in your life right now. It might be something less obvious, like a part of your job that you’re not entirely comfortable with, or it may be a lot more serious, like the terminal illness of someone you love.

    Either way, we’re facing the same question: How can I be less anxious about the things I can’t change?

    Here are four things I’ve done to manage this anxiety.

    1. Keep track of the stories my mind is telling me about any situation.

    One thing that you realize by paying attention to your pain is that the mind is a master storyteller. The natural response to any uncomfortable situation is to create a mental novella equipped with a list of assumptions, a worldview, and a timeline about the past and future.

    Your job, however, is to tease out fact from fiction. If I have pain when I’m working, my mind might start to tell me the story of how I’m going to be late to the project I’m working on, or that I’ll never figure out how to overcome the pain, or any number of things that one, aren’t either true or knowable and two, aren’t the least bit relevant to the situation at hand.

    If you write down a list of the ideas you have about the thing you can’t change, you’ll start to see recurring themes and you can see the movie that’s playing in your mind without getting absorbed in it.

    2. Meditate on the pain and resistance and figure out which is which.

    Remember the Shinzen Young quote I shared earlier: “Suffering = Pain x Resistance.” Well, understanding when resistance to the situation is making up the bulk of your suffering is an incredibly useful skill to learn.

    You can do this in meditation by inquiring into your thoughts and feelings. I may ask myself “If I could accept this pain completely, just for a few moments, what would the pain feel like?”

    If the pain decreases significantly, it’s clear that the experience was dominated by resistance. If, however, there is little change, then it’s the physical pain itself that is the problem. More often than not I’ve found that resistance is worse than the pain itself!

    3. Highlight the positive aspects of the thing I can’t change.

    This is pretty much good old-fashioned re-framing. Focus your attention on what’s positive about the thing you can’t change, and very importantly, celebrate the little wins.

    For example, I try to tell myself, “My back hurts today, but at least it’s not stopping me from going to the gym.” And if I have a day where the pain is less serious than other days, I’ll make a mental note of it, and try to express it in some form, e.g.: “My day was good. I got a lot of work down and it was relatively pain-free.”

    4. Practice the art of letting go.

    This practice is something that comes hand in hand with noticing resistance. We don’t often think of letting go as a skill, but it is. In the same way we can become adept at holding onto something, we can learn how to do the opposite.

    There are two aspects of letting go that you can practice. Firstly, the depth of letting go; that is, how completely can you consciously let go of something that is bothering you.

    If I have a pain in my back and I exhale deeply, telling myself it’s okay, but five seconds later I’m thinking about how frustrated I am about the pain—well, I have a lot of practice to do.

    The second aspect is how appropriately you can do so in the moment, i.e.: how good your timing is.

    For example, if you spend all day worrying, but then you get home and right before falling asleep you let go, then your timing needs some work. If, however, you catch your mind telling you a story in the moment, and you can objectively see that it’s just a story, you’re on the right track! Meditation is one way to help you see things as they come up in real time.

    Learning to become less anxious about things you can’t change is an incredibly valuable life-long skill. It’s unfortunate that typically we have to come to learn this through real challenges and discomfort, but making the best of tough times is one of the beautiful things about being a human being!

    When have you learned to be less anxious about things you can’t control? Let us know in the comments; we’d love to hear from you!

  • What If You Were Suddenly Forgiven?

    What If You Were Suddenly Forgiven?

    “Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.” ~Marianne Williamson

    Twenty-seven years ago I made a terrible mistake that led to losing the friendship of someone important to me. I was twelve and I very vividly remember that I was at her front door, asking for her forgiveness and she was telling me she couldn’t do this.

    Friendship is one of those areas of my life that I have always felt I need to work on. I used to believe I had to do work in this area because I was uprooted every six months to three years in my childhood. I believed that my trust in friendships was shaky because my history suggested to me that eventually one of us would leave.

    And then the unimaginable happened.

    I was faced with the truth, my unforgivable moment. The girl, who is now a woman, showed up at an impromptu reunion and I sat across from the mistake I had made twenty-seven years ago.

    She and I were best friends. We spent the night at each other’s houses and shaved our legs for the first time together. She taught me all the big vocabulary words, I taught her all the swear words. We were inseparable.

    And then her mom got sick. Shortly thereafter, she died.

    I grew up in an unconventional family where my parents were married at nineteen and had kids by twenty-one. They were boundless young adults with children and stalwart opinions, lacking in education. My dad’s dad had also died when he was young, and instead of creating empathy and compassion in him, my dad was left with the notion that when you die, you’re just dead—get over it.

    My friend’s mom was the first person most of us kids actually knew to have died. I felt the tears and remember the sadness, but like any twelve-year-old, I was ready for our friendship to resume as normal seconds after her mom passed away. Naturally, that was not the case. Thus occurred the twelve-year-old “fight” over the conditions of our friendship.

    My parents told me she was just using her mom’s death as a reason to be difficult and that she just needed to get over it. I remember my mom hissing those heartless words at my best friend. And I remember echoing a similar sentiment myself, without conviction or the wisdom of experience, thus destroying our friendship forever.

    Over the years after that, I would try to regain access to her, to our friendship, with apologies and attempts at conversation. All efforts were met with a firm “No,” or “I’m not ready.” The words not only marred and destroyed our friendship but rippled through all of our mutual friends, ending many other friendships for me. I was devastated, alone, and unforgiven. I was twelve.

    Now imagine you are forgiven twenty-seven years later.

    As I was meditating this morning, I was brought to tears thinking of my daughter and how careful I have been to express and teach empathy to her, how I have given her the pieces that I was lacking.

    And as I meditated, I realized this is where my fear in friendship lives. This is where it all stemmed from. The moving and uprooting didn’t help my trust levels. But imagine you were never forgiven for a mistake you didn’t understand, for words that weren’t yours, in a time of grief you didn’t understand. Imagine you were left behind by all you had loved and trusted because you regurgitated your parents’ problematic view of grief and death to your friend.

    Never in a million years would I ever do anything to intentionally hurt anyone, let alone my best friend. And knowing what I know today, I cannot even fathom how badly she hurt from the loss of her mother. Her mom! The one person who is meant to care for us and help us with our periods, talk to us about dating, and hold us when we cry. Her mom died. And I said the unthinkable. The unforgivable.

    Last week I woke up thinking, “What if the unforgivable thing that has played a role in all of my relationships was forgiven? What if I was forgiven? How does that fit in? How does it transform itself in my life, in my body?”

    I would breathe in a room of strangers, trust a little deeper in the friendships I currently host. I would be able to unwrap and unbutton my tightly wound guard that has protected me all these years. I could stop worrying about whether or not people would like me if they knew who I really was, and instead trust that I am worthy of love and simply good enough… finally.

    We all have an un-forgiveness story buried deep inside. We don’t have to wait years for the relief of receiving someone else’s forgiveness, if it ever comes at all. We can choose to forgive ourselves now, whether they do or not, and free ourselves from the weight of our shame and self-judgment. Take these three steps to do just that:

    1. Think about the day your un-forgiveness was born. Relax and allow yourself to repeat it one last time.

    Close and eyes and remember: What was the context in which the story happened? Who was with you? What have you done? What happened after that?

    2. Now imagine if you forgave yourself, and if there is another person(s) in the party, feel their forgiveness as well.

    How would that feel in your body? How would that transform the beliefs you formed about friendships, partnerships, business, and life? What would you do differently if you knew you were forgiven and released the shame of your experience?

    3. Give yourself and the others involved forgiveness, as we all do our best with the information and understanding we have based on our upbringing and out time in the world.

    And as Maya Angelou wrote, once we know better, we can do better. We always have the opportunity to get wiser. Forgiveness is compassion and wisdom.

    Forgiveness in ourselves and others is one of life’s great lessons. We are often held hostage by our inability to forgive and therefore so is our potential to achieve our life’s purpose.

    A big powerful thank you to my friend who forgave me after twenty-seven years. I am honored and working to spread the love you showed me.

  • The Importance of Finding and Standing in Our Truth

    The Importance of Finding and Standing in Our Truth

    “What I know for sure is that you feel real joy in direct proportion to how connected you are to living your truth.” ~Oprah Winfrey

    If we cannot live in and from our truth, then we cannot be authentic. The process of self- actualization is not striving to become the person we are supposed to be. It is removing what is not true for or about us so that we can be the person that we already are.

    The hardest part of living in my truth was coming to understand and accept that it didn’t matter how anyone else experienced my childhood and my life but myself. That includes my father, mother, and three siblings. It also didn’t matter how others were affected or not. For our recovery only our truth matters

    Why is standing in our truth so important? It is impossible to build a solid life on a foundation of untruths, lies, denial, fabrications, and misinterpretations.

    Many of us have built our lives according to what we were taught and what we gleaned from a childhood spent in dysfunctional homes. We were asked to play a role that served our dysfunctional family system and not ourselves. We learned not to question the status quo, to follow unwritten rules, to live in denial and fantasy.

    Growing up I thought my family was fine; everyone else was messed up. I thought everyone’s mother drank themselves into a stupor on a daily basis and everyone’s father had become a ghost. Neither of my parents was available for support or counsel.

    I was no good, according to my father’s constant criticism, and would never amount to anything. I was a good football player and I would come off the field feeling I’d played a good game. That was until I reached my father and all he wanted to do was to talk about the block I missed or the tackle I didn’t make.

    Slowly, I stopped to try to impress my father, and eventually I stopped trying anything at all. Then I found drugs and alcohol during the summer between ninth and tenth grade. 

    I fell in love with partying and cared little for anything else. I quit football immediately and later quit school altogether. I was a sixteen-year-old boy making life decisions by himself due to his parents’ dysfunction.

    Little did I know that no one looks favorably at partying skills, and they get you nowhere in life. It took me thirteen years to figure that out, after which I went to rehab and have been clean ever since.

    I don’t think that I lost myself; it’s more like I never had myself. I was just pieces of those around me. I had tried so hard to be who everyone wanted me to be that I left myself behind.

    “…human beings universally abandon themselves for five major reasons: for someone’s love, for someone’s acceptance and approval, to keep the peace, to maintain balance, or to stay in the state of harmony. When we abandon ourselves for someone’s love, pretending to be other than who we are in order to get someone’s love, acceptance, or approval, it is a form of self-abandonment.”  Angeles Arrien Ph.D., The Four-Fold Way 

    I had spent my life being who others wanted me to be—who I had to be to get by, to be safe, to fit in, to not make waves. I no longer knew who I was, who I wanted to be, what I liked, and what I believed. I had been a chameleon for so long and had shape-shifted so many times that I didn’t know who I was.

    This never hit me as hard as when I was a new member of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic therapy group. One of the older members confronted me during our check-ins. He said, “I don’t care what your sponsor or father thinks or what anyone else thinks; I want to know what you think.”

    In working with that statement I came to realize that I didn’t have many original thoughts or beliefs. That I had let other people and events decide who I was for me.

    “What you live with you learn, what you learn you practice, what you practice you become, and what you become has consequences.” ~Earnie Larson, a pioneer in the field of recovery from addictive behaviors 

    It is devastating when you realize that you are inauthentic. That in some ways who you are and what you present to the people and the world around you is a lie. On the other hand, this awareness is also a blessing, because without awareness there can be no change.

    I realized that I would not be able to find my truth while being subjected to the influence of my family. That I had to spend time away from them to do the work needed. That doesn’t mean that I had nothing to do with them. I just kept my time with family members short and superficial.

    I also began to spend time with myself contemplating and writing in my journal. I began to question my beliefs, understandings, and positions.

    John Bradshaw talks about coming to realize that the thoughts we are thinking aren’t our own. That it is someone else’s voice in our head and we need to determine whose. For me, I came to realize that so much of the self-critical thoughts were actually criticisms my father had of me that I had chosen to own.

    In recovery, we say that “everything that we know is up for revision, especially what we know to be true.” In my own search I was so confused and uncertain of my truth that I had to start with discarding what I knew was not true—the things my father had told me, for example. The things that I was unsure of, I had to try on and drive around the block for a while.

    Today I am aware that my search for the truth is a spiritual endeavor, which includes prayer, meditation, and contemplation. My hope and prayers are that all who read this will strive to find and live in and from their truth.

  • How I’m Freeing Myself from the Trap of Stuff I Don’t Need

    How I’m Freeing Myself from the Trap of Stuff I Don’t Need

    “In the marketing society, we seek fulfillment but settle for abundance. Prisoners of plenty, we have the freedom to consume instead of the freedom to find our place in the world.” ~Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish

    I come from a time where passbook savings accounts were the norm.

    I can recall skipping along to the bank, aged eight, with one pudgy hand enveloped in my dad’s and the other clutching a little booklet.

    I’d wait my turn in line with butterflies in my belly. The teller was always so far away. But once I got to her, it was magical. She’d open a hidden drawer, extract the exact notes, and scribble the remaining balance into my passbook. Et voilà—cash in hand!

    Everything about this performance was concrete and transparent: Whenever I withdrew money, I immediately saw my bank balance decline. And without the risk of it nosediving into overdraft, it’s how I understood money was a finite entity. It’s how my parents taught me to not spend beyond my means, to only buy stuff I needed or had saved up for.

    Having a passbook savings account in my childhood and adolescence protected me from buying stuff carelessly.

    Fast-forward to 2018, now living in Australia—which equates to residing in opulence for those living in developing nations—I’m not only thirty-six years apart from my eight-year-old self, but also thirty-six worlds away. In this world my eight-year-old self would throw a tantrum if she didn’t get the Barbie doll she wanted. I blame credit cards for that.

    What also saw me come out on top all those years ago was the absence of the advertising glut that now penetrates an eight-year-old’s sphere.

    In 1982 Fiji, TV did not exist. I played outside. I read Enid Blyton. I didn’t read the newspaper. And I can’t bring to mind any specific billboards of that time, even though I’m sure there were a few in the city, where I did not live.

    Today, at forty-four years of age living in the era of affluenza and having a disposable income, advertisers know my attention is priceless. Yet, they get it on the cheap. This is despite my creating an anti-advertising bubble to cushion me: In 2014, I deleted my Facebook account. In 2017, my Twitter account. While I have Instagram, I do not use it. And I rarely watch commercial TV.

    The ads for stuff don’t just infiltrate this bubble—they gush in. Into my inbox, even when I didn’t sign up for the next celebrity’s latest self-help book because I am something to be fixed. On my phone, when I receive a text promoting a sale of 15% off TVs all day today (and today only!). On trams, trains, buses, buildings, freeways…

    The humble bus shelter does not escape from being turned into a billboard either. When I walk my dogs, I pass one that is currently telling me I can “drive away in a Polo Urban for only $16,990.” (Do I need a new car? After all my current one is nine years old, although it is running smoothly. Hmmm…) The posters on this shelter change weekly. It does not allow me the grace to become immune.

    Even if I could construct an impenetrable bubble, it’d be pointless. The Internet and its cookies would see to that.

    These cookies know—and remember with unfailing memory—what I desire (printed yoga leggings!). And they flaunt my desires by dangling carrots in front of me, whether I’m reading an online article, watching a video on YouTube, or searching on Google.

    And if the Internet tempts with its cookies, then it decidedly seduces with its availability. I can now stare at the blue light on my ever-ready smartphone and make decisions to buy yoga leggings whenever I want.

    The perfect time to do just that is before I flop into bed, after a long day’s hard work, cooking dinner, washing dishes, and watching an episode or two of my favorite show on Netflix. I should feel elated when I hit the buy button, but I find myself getting into bed not only with my husband, but also with guilt and a larger credit card debt.

    The grab for my attention and time under the guise of convenience and a better life is, however, simply the tip of the iceberg. What no one can see is that I am waging a war against myself—with the monkey-mind chatter that jumps from one justifying thought to another, convincing me that something is a need not a want. This is an example of what the Buddhists call suffering.

    About two years ago, my husband and I moved into the new house we built. It’s much bigger than one we’ve ever lived in. And as we prepared to move into it months beforehand, the justifications began:

    We need new furniture to match the modern feel of the house. (Danish style, as we had been subconsciously brainwashed by Instagram with everything that was hip in interior design.) And we need a bigger TV for the bigger living space. A new fridge because our old one won’t neatly slide into its allocated spot of the spacious kitchen. And more paintings, since we now have more walls…

    Not only did we ‘need’ all this stuff, but we also had to choose stuff that was ‘us.’ And it all had to look ‘just so’ when put together. So we researched online. Visited furniture, home, and electrical stores each weekend. Read reviews. Let the cookies take our minds into a rabbit hole of stuff we didn’t realize we needed.

    Just thinking about all the time, money, and energy we invested to get it ‘right’ sets my heart aflutter and raises a sweat. It was gruelling—the number of choices, the number of decisions (Did you know that an eight-year-old now has hundreds of different Barbie dolls to choose from?). Luckily my husband and I have similar tastes; otherwise, I’m afraid, adding a number of arguments into the mix might have broken us entirely.

    The evidence continues to pile up in favor of stuff even after the purchases have been made. After decking out our new house, I soon learned that not only did I possess things, but they also possessed me.

    I worried about scuffing the freshly painted walls, staining the white kitchen benchtop with turmeric while making a curry, and my nephews scratching the wooden dining table by racing their toy cars on it. (What’s that saying? Is it “Stuff is meant to be used and people loved”?)

    If I didn’t feel the compulsion to fill in the space, to make everything perfect, simply because the world presents me with the choices and pressures to do so, what would—what could—I do with all that extra time and energy, not to mention money? Read, write, hang out with my mum? See another part of the world? And, more importantly, who would I be? A happier, more relaxed person? The irony.

    So, with the odds stacked completely against me, how do I even stand a chance of coming out on top of all this stuff? (How does anyone?)

    I don’t believe the answer is to cut up my credit cards and get a passbook savings account, or to become a Luddite. The answer lies in cultivating awareness. By becoming aware of my thoughts and feelings, I can regain my power. Asking questions is paramount:

    Will it give my life meaning? Make my life easier, better? Why do I really want it? Is it only because I am chasing a feeling? Or because I want to squelch one? What would happen if I didn’t buy it?

    Failing this, I can always remind myself that almost everything material is optional.

  • This Weekend I Fell Apart, and That’s Okay

    This Weekend I Fell Apart, and That’s Okay

    “Look for something positive each day, even if some days you have to look a little harder.” ~Unknown

    This weekend I hurt more than I have in a very long time.

    It all started on Friday, when my boyfriend and I headed out to spend the weekend with friends—two couples, both with babies in tow.

    I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to get pregnant since the start of the year, yet I didn’t anticipate that it would be emotionally taxing for me to be around two little families. I was just excited to see our friends, who live in the Bay Area, hours away from our home near LA.

    A little backstory: I’m less than three weeks away from my thirty-ninth birthday, which means I’m now in the category of “high-risk pregnancy,” if I’m even able to get pregnant at all.

    My boyfriend and I first discussed having a baby five years ago, but we kept pushing it off because our families live on opposite coasts, and neither of us was able to agree to live on the other’s coast full-time for the long term.

    We finally decided, at the beginning of this year, that I would be the one to visit my family—as often as I feel I need to, with our kid(s), for the foreseeable future—and we’d commit to staying in LA, which makes sense since we’re working toward a career in film.

    But biology doesn’t just fall in line because you finally get over your fears and decide to make a compromise. We’re both open to the idea of adoption, but there are other personal issues—that my fiercely private boyfriend would not want disclosed—that have complicated matters.

    So there I was on Friday with our friends and their adorable babies—one actually a toddler, since he recently turned two.

    We toasted our get-together around 5:00 with our first glass of wine, and the wine continued flowing throughout dinner. After, we all moved to the deck to partake in an at-home wine tasting.

    The ladies and I discussed my road to pregnancy, and though I was discouraged, for the most part I was fine—until I wasn’t.

    Having lost track of the amount of wine I was drinking, I eventually hit that emotional place I remember from my younger years, when alcohol eventually led to histrionics and tears. It is literally a depressant, after all, and generally not great to imbibe when you’re already feeling fragile.

    I don’t remember all the details of that night, but I know I cried about my fears about not being able to have a family (which, as I mentioned, is an issue complicated by many factors).

    I woke up at 4:00 in the morning and picked a fight with my boyfriend about our relationship. Then I woke at 8:00 with two things: a hangover and a shame-over. I was absolutely mortified.

    I’d gotten drunk, turned a fun night with friends into something heavy and emotional, and had caused my boyfriend a lot of pain and embarrassment. It gave me a little comfort to realize everyone had drunk too much. But I still felt deeply ashamed of having lost control.

    Ironically, I received an email that morning that I’d been waiting on for almost a month. My film mentor had just read the second draft of my first feature screenplay, and she said she was blown away by the massive improvement from the first draft.

    I had never in my life simultaneously felt immense pride and deep shame, but I did right then.

    Fortunately, the friend I cried to was extremely kind and empathetic. And no one judged me or put me down, as good friends never do.

    But that day was pretty rough for me, physically and emotionally. And the next day, it got worse.

    That night I noticed that a few people had commented on a meme I’d shared on Friday, using clipart with a hyper-sexualized female silhouette. They mentioned that it was demeaning to women to use what essentially appeared to be Barbie to represent the female form. One person called it “offensive.”

    Though there were only a few critical comments, juxtaposed against 12,000 shares, I immediately realized I agreed with them. As someone who once struggled with an eating disorder, I’d like to represent women as more than a busty, high-ponytailed caricature.

    This didn’t fully or accurately represent my values or the message I’d like to convey. And I didn’t like the idea of young girls seeing it and concluding, as I may have as an adolescent, that this was what a woman is supposed to look like, even if some women actually look like this. So I decided to take it down.

    With a mind still foggy I decided to write something on Facebook, as I wanted the community to know I felt I’d made an error in judgment. I didn’t want to just delete it. I want to make it clear I don’t agree with a society that puts pressure on women to be femme bots and suggests that our sexuality is our most valuable contribution.

    I mentioned in my post that some people had pointed out that the image was offensive, and I agreed that it was triggering—and the backlash was swift and harsh.

    In retrospect, I don’t think I accurately communicated why I decided to remove this image, since I didn’t address the cultural issue of how women are portrayed in the media and the fact that I’d like to be part of the solution, not the problem. But I’m not sure it would have mattered if I did, since I’d used the word “offensive.”

    I forgot that people often get offended by other people getting offended.

    Over the next day, hundreds of comments came in, many attacking me on a personal level.

    People called me spineless for catering to “snowflakes.” People said they lost respect for me and questioned my aptitude for even doing the work I do, since I clearly have no sense of conviction or belief in my own decisions. Even more alarming, many people mocked the idea of being “triggered,” and essentially belittled anyone with emotional or mental health issues.

    I felt misunderstood, judged, and condescended.

    I hid or deleted many of the worst comments and resisted the urge to defend myself, deciding instead to leave one clarifying comment a couple hours in. But I’m not going to lie; this affected me deeply.

    While on the one hand, I reminded myself that my power was in my response, and publicly, I only responded in one calm, clear comment, I also obsessively monitored the feed.

    By this time my boyfriend and I were at his parents’ house in Nevada, where we planned to stay for a few days, and I wasn’t even close to present. I didn’t want to delete this new post, since I believed I’d done the right thing, but it pained me to see so much vitriol in a space that I hold sacred.

    Then came another blow: I’d noticed a while back that since the start of the year, someone had been sharing every single challenge from my book Tiny Buddha’s 365 Tiny Love Challenges on Facebook. Though this person tagged my page, none of the posts included the book’s title or a link—and some people actually assumed she was writing these posts or getting them from my Facebook page.

    I’d emailed my publisher a few weeks back to ask their thoughts on this, and they told me they could send an email asking her to stop. At the time, this seemed warranted.

    Her Facebook friends didn’t see it that way. After she posted the letter from my publisher’s legal department, tagging my page, once again, the comments turned nasty.

    F— you, Tiny Buddha.

    You suck, Tiny Buddha.

    More like “Greedy Buddha.”

    Unbelievable! She should thank you for the free marketing!

    For a while, I felt completely numb. And I knew I was doing the “wrong” things by obsessively monitoring my phone and letting these comments get to me.

    I knew it wasn’t serving me to dwell in my self-righteousness and how wrong I believed it was for this woman, who enjoyed my work enough to share it, to like comments that attacked me on a personal level. But I did it anyways.

    I was angry with the people who were angry. I was triggered by the people who were triggered.

    And then something occurred to me: This whole weekend was an opportunity. It was a chance to practice some of the lessons that are much easier to practice when everything is going well.

    This weekend was a chance to remember that:

    I need compassion most when I think I deserve it the least.

    Initially, I beat myself up over several things this weekend: drinking to excess, exploding emotionally, hurting my boyfriend, choosing clipart that I wished I hadn’t chosen, letting my publisher speak for me instead of reaching out to the woman personally, and obsessing over the various challenges I was facing instead of being present.

    I told myself I shouldn’t have made any of those mistakes. I should have been beyond this. I was a fraud.

    Then I realized something: I was being as mean to myself as the people online. And not a single blow of self-flagellation was helping me move on. In fact, each self-judgmental thought cemented me further into the hole. Because telling myself I was sucking at life made it awfully hard to find the strength to do better.

    Every time I criticized myself, I weakened myself, and a weakened person is far less equipped to reframe difficult circumstances and respond wisely.

    The only way out was to cut myself some slack. I needed to stop fighting with myself and let go, as if melting into a hug from someone who had finally forgiven me. I needed my own love and compassion.

    So I drank too much and cried. I was hurting. It’s been a long journey toward starting a family, and it’s been hard. It’s okay to hurt.

    So I made mistakes in my work—who hasn’t? I owned them and publicly admitted them. What matters isn’t the fact that I messed up but that I acknowledged it and committed to doing better.

    I don’t have to be perfect. Sometimes I will make mistakes, some public, and sometimes I’ll make many that compound. The only way to stop the cycle is to stop obsessing about having done things wrong. The only way to move into the future is to fully accept the past. Once I did this, I felt freer and better able to be present.

    The approval that matters most is my own.

    It bothered me that people believed I removed the image because I needed approval from the “complainers,” as opposed to having made a decision based on my own beliefs and values.

    But ironically, once the flood of negative comments came in, I did start feeling a need for approval. I wanted people to understand and honor my positive intentions.

    It took me a day, but I was finally able to accept that some people were simply committed to judging me, and this wasn’t something to change; it was something to accept.

    It didn’t matter if some people derided me or questioned me if I felt in my heart I’d done the right thing.

    I eventually deleted the second post because I wanted to put an end to the negativity. There’s far too much of that on Facebook already. But I’m proud I waited and resisted the urge to remove all criticism immediately. For a recovering approval addict, allowing a public character assassination requires immense strength. And I give myself a lot of credit for that.

    It’s rarely personal.

    Intellectually, I knew this when people were insulting me in both places on Facebook.

    I knew that the people who were angry with me for catering to “snowflakes” were really projecting their feelings about what they perceive to be an oversensitive culture. It wasn’t just about this one image. It was about every time someone’s ever said they were offended and their complex feelings about what that means to them.

    I also knew that the people defending the woman who’d been sharing my book online were acting from a place of allegiance to their friend. They were more pro-her than anti-me. Many didn’t even have all the information—they didn’t realize she’d been sharing from a book. So really, I couldn’t take that personally either.

    This wasn’t immediately comforting to me because the attacks were so public, but when I was able to fully absorb this, it did give me some peace.

    Not everyone will see my side, and that’s okay.

    I believe one of our deepest desires is to feel understood—to know that other people get where we’re coming from and that they may even have done the same thing if they were in our shoes.

    I didn’t feel that way when people judged me personally based on the letter from my publisher’s legal department.

    I left a few comments on that post, trying my best to respond from a place of calm, but I know there are some people who will forever think I am greedy and soulless because I didn’t want my book’s content republished online.

    I’ve decided that this is okay. Not everyone has to get me, understand me, support me, be considerate of me, or treat me kindly—so long as I do those things for myself.

    Pain can be useful if you share it to help someone else.

    I decided to share this post for two reasons:

    First, I thought it would be cathartic for me. I felt ashamed for a lot of this weekend, and I wanted to be able to reframe this experience in a way that felt empowering. As I said when I first launched this site, when we recycle our pain into something useful for others, we’re able to turn shame into pride.

    And that brings me to the second reason: I thought it might be helpful for someone else to realize that even someone who runs a site like Tiny Buddha can fall into so many self-destructive traps.

    If you’ve ever drank too much and fallen apart emotionally, know that you’re not alone.

    If you’ve ever obsessed over comments online and allowed something as trivial as a Facebook feud to get the better of you, know that you’re not alone.

    If you’ve ever failed to apply what you know and regressed to the least evolved version of yourself, know that you’re not alone.

    And know that all of these things are okay. They don’t mean anything about you as a person. They don’t define you. And they certainly don’t have to dictate the future.

    This is what I needed to hear this weekend when I was despondent and numb, so today it’s my gift to you. I hope someone benefits from something in my experience, but I suppose no matter what, someone has—me.

  • 8 Things I Learned from Watching My Mum Die

    8 Things I Learned from Watching My Mum Die

    “Pain changes your life forever. But so does healing from it.” ~Kayil York

    In 2012 my mum got diagnosed with cancer. After an operation, she was cancer-free for some time when in March 2017 it was discovered that the cancer had returned and had spread everywhere, notably to her lungs.

    She was adamant that she did not want further treatment, which would have been palliative at best anyway and would have had significant side effects. Nobody was able to make a prognosis regarding how much longer she had left. Being seventy, there was a chance that it would develop slowly.

    Nothing much seemed to happen for a little while when suddenly from one day to the next, she couldn’t use her legs anymore, and a few weeks later in July 2017, she was able to move into a hospice, having her last wish fulfilled. After a further four weeks, she passed away.

    Those four weeks were a rollercoaster. Her condition changed up and down. But mostly I could not get my head around how she could die. I simply couldn’t imagine how her body could go from functioning to shutting down.

    I lived about 500km away and went up to see her for long weekends during that time. I experienced the hospice as a very peaceful place. Nevertheless, I often sat by her bed, holding her hand and feeling utterly overwhelmed and helpless and scared.

    I was convinced that I should be doing something, saying something, but could not think of anything at all that might ease her final passage. The relationship with my mum had always been difficult, thus this also felt like the last chance to make my peace with her, with us.

    Seeing her in pain was horrific. She quickly advanced to a stage where she was no longer able to ring for the nurses. Wrinkling her forehead became the indicator for her pain. It was terrible to know that this was probably happening when nobody else was in the room and who knows how long it could take for anyone to notice.

    Once the nurse came to administer more painkillers, it took another ten to fifteen minutes until you could see them work and my mum’s face slowly relaxing. The ten longest minutes.

    After three weeks, swallowing became an issue. Even just taking a sip of water became a massive struggle and ended in coughing fits. The doctors said there was nothing they could do to make it easier. With all the medical advances, it seemed crazy that she had to endure any pain at all.

    Her last four weeks were the toughest in my life so far and the first time I experienced the death of somebody close, and from such close quarters. At the same time it also turned out to be the most rewarding time.

    One of the things that struck me was that almost everyone has or will experience the death of a loved one. It had such a monumental impact on me, and I can only assume that it does for a lot of people, too, and so I would like to share my story.

    Here are some of the lessons I learned, which arose from a very specific situation but which I feel are equally applicable to other challenging situations in life.

    1. You are alone.

    Dying is personal. Watching somebody die is personal. Your whole life is personal.

    There is simply no manual or set of guidelines to refer to. Not to how we live, not to how we die, and not to how we grieve.

    Sometimes we might confuse our personal life lessons with universal laws. A number of people were giving me advice (I didn’t ask for). Advice about having to be there for her final breath (in the end my mum decided to slip away with no one else in the room). Advice about the importance of the funeral or on the appropriate length and ways of grieving.

    Some of the forcefulness behind the messages were overwhelming at the time and had me doubting my own feelings and decisions. While I fully appreciate they meant well, I had to remind myself that only I can decide for myself what to do and how to do it. There is no right or wrong. What feels right to someone, might feel very wrong to you.

    Listen to your inner voice! Tune in, and your heart will tell you what to do. We all have an inner compass; it’s just a matter of learning to access and trust it. Equally, when the tables are turned, be conscious of how you talk to people. Offer support and share your experiences by all means but give room for the other person to go their own way.

    2. You are not alone.

    In other ways I was not alone. One of the most important lessons for me was to accept help. Yes, bloody ask for help! I tend to be a control-freak, proud of my independence, always having been able to deal with things by myself. Suddenly I felt frighteningly helpless. I felt like everyone else had it figured out and I was failing miserably.

    Everyone in the hospice was amazing, whether it was talking to me, listening to me, letting me cry, offering me a cup of tea, providing me with food, or holding my hand. It meant the world and I stopped regarding accepting help as a weakness. There is no merit in going it alone, whatever it may be. You want to help those you love—allow them to be there for you, too.

    3. The power of a good cry.

    In line with my wish to be independent, I hate crying in front of people. I worried it would upset my mum. I worried I made other people uncomfortable. I worried the tears would never stop.

    Then somebody told me that it’s physiologically impossible to cry continuously. I can’t remember the time, but it’s something like twenty minutes after which the crying will automatically cease. That thought comforted me: The worst that could happen would be to cry for twenty minutes. That seemed manageable. Besides, there didn’t seem to be much I could do to stop the tears from coming anyway.

    Once I relaxed about crying, I discovered how transformative tears could be. They offered and still offer a release of tension that would otherwise keep building up inside. They have a message that is worth listening to. They are part of life. Don’t feel ashamed. Don’t worry on other people’s behalf, because it’s not for you to figure out how they deal with your tears.

    4. Feel it all.

    I used to strive for a life made up of only happy moments. People would tell me that without the crap, we wouldn’t appreciate the good. But I’ll be honest: I was not convinced.

    When feeling ‘negative’ emotions, in addition to feeling them, I was annoyed that I felt them, adding another layer of frustration. I engaged in an internal fight against those emotions, and as you may guess this only made things worse.

    Here I was dealing with feelings that were new to me, also in an intensity that was new to me and which felt uncomfortable as hell. I quickly worked out though that I couldn’t push them away. I couldn’t distract myself. Eventually I came to accept them as part of me and part of the experience. And the thing is that everything passes—the “good” as well as the “bad.”

    Don’t judge your feelings. Allow them to flow through you. Fighting them will only make them linger longer. Feel them and seek to learn from them. Everything we feel can teach us a lesson.

    5. Some things you cannot prepare for.

    Since my mum’s initial diagnosis, I had been mentally preparing for her death. Or so I thought. Grief took on many different forms for me. I hadn’t expected any of them and had nevertheless been going through various scenarios beforehand. It turned out to have been a waste of time to even attempt preparing for any of it. And this applies to most things in life.

    It will be whatever it will be. But most importantly you will be okay!

    It sucks at times. It still comes over me at random times. The realization that she is no longer around hits me again and again, as if it’s news. I often dream of her. Things happen, and I want to tell her about it and then realize that I can’t talk to her ever again. I have no idea where else my grief will take me so I have given up spending time of trying to anticipate it but I have faith that I will manage.

    6. Carpe diem.

    We know we will die one day, yet we still generally live our lives as if we will be around forever.

    Okay, I’m not saying that I’ve seized every minute of every day since my mum passed away. I forget. But I also remember. I remember that life is short. Death puts things into perspective in many ways. Is it worth getting upset or stressed over certain things? Do I really want to hold a grudge? Is this really worth my time? Is this who I want to spend my time with? How will I feel looking back on my life when my time comes?

    I ask myself these questions more often nowadays, and it has changed my life for the better. I am overall more relaxed and I stress less. I am more precious over how I spend my time and who with. I am less willing to put up with things that don’t feel good to me (this is where your inner voice plays a crucial role, too). It is liberating to say the least.

    7. Gratitude rocks.

    Almost a decade ago, I started a daily gratitude diary. I found it tough in the beginning. After a crappy day, I just didn’t think anything good had happened. But practice changed my mindset with lasting effects.

    It’s not about forcing yourself to be happy all the time; it’s about changing your perspective and focusing on the “good” without denying the “bad.” It helps me not to take things for granted in everyday life.

    Even during my mum’s last weeks, I found many things on a daily basis that I felt grateful for: I was grateful that even on her deathbed we were able to share a laugh. I was grateful to witness through her friends and family how she had touched other people’s lives. I was grateful how it brought me back closer to some people. I was also grateful for little things like sitting on her balcony in the sun or listening to music together.

    Above all I was and am grateful for having been given the opportunity to witness her dying. Especially given our difficult relationship, I am grateful I was able to say goodbye – I am aware not everyone gets the chance.

    8. Resilience is a superpower.

    If I got through this, I will get through other stuff, too. Death is outside your control. You have no choice but to deal with it when it comes your way. You do have a choice how to deal with it though.

    You can find the lesson in whatever life serves you. You can combine all of the above and be safe in the knowledge that you will be okay. I feel more resilient and I am confident that it will help me master other situations in the future. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be pain. But you are able to handle it and bounce back.

    I sense that my list of lessons learned will continue to grow. One of the keys I believe is to be open-minded, drop the pre-judgment and expectations. I never would have imagined that all or any of this would come from my mum’s death.

    Whether it’s grief you are dealing with or other challenging circumstances, I hope you will find the cathartic power in your experience that can lead to incredible personal growth. Whatever this may look like for you.