Tiny Buddha

Category: mindfulness & peace

  • Understanding the Cycle of Pain: How to Transmute Anger into Empathy

    Understanding the Cycle of Pain: How to Transmute Anger into Empathy

    “When we get angry, we suffer. If you really understand that, you also will be able to understand that when the other person is angry, it means that she is suffering. When someone insults you or behaves violently towards you, you have to be intelligent enough to see that the person suffers from his own violence and anger. But we tend to forget … When we see that our suffering and anger are no different from their suffering and anger, we will behave more compassionately.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    There is so much to be angry about every day because life is unfair.

    My own situation right now is infuriating. I left my job and my home country in large part to return back to the US and help my mom care for my father. During that time, my mother’s frustration with her role as caregiver, along with the emotional stresses and practical limitations it placed on her, often boiled over into rage directed at me. This situation persisted for ten months.

    Immediately after that, she herself became terminally ill, and now my role is caregiver. My whole life plan has had to change as a result, so my hopes of going back to my old life now need to take a backseat to my mother’s illness, which was brought about by her own behavior (smoking). For so many years I had asked her to quit, to which she reacted—you guessed it—angrily.

    When it was clear she wasn’t doing well, I encouraged her to see a doctor. She got angry with me.

    While in the hospital, she was frustrated at being confined to a bed. She took her anger and frustration out on me for that too.

    Now, faced with difficult treatments and limitations on her lifestyle, she lashes out at me every day or two. Me—the only one at home with her, and the only one of her four children who has the will and/or ability to care for her in this way.

    I’m not going to lie—it’s difficult to refrain from reacting in kind, and sometimes I do just that.

    In my cancer caregiver support group, I found this is a common thread—people are angry, and they have difficulty directing and dealing with that anger.

    One woman has a husband whose blasé attitude toward his cancer puts him in a lot of dangerous situations. This completely stresses her out because she is in a constant state of worry about his health and safety. But, rather than expressing these sentiments, she has internalized them, allowing anger to slowly fester.

    It was a significant and therapeutic step for her to actually admit that she was angry. Her way of coping thereafter was to withdraw from her husband in order to preserve her own emotional well-being.

    Another woman was angry because her husband, sick on-and-off with cancer for nearly twenty years, was also depressed through his illness, leaving her as the sole caregiver and breadwinner. Needless to say, her marriage was far from the storybook version she’d originally had in mind. Her way of dealing with her anger was to be productive—to be the best mother and caretaker she could be—and occasionally vent or break down to some trusted friends or our group.

    There is nothing wrong or shameful about either of these two approaches. Both women have shown incredible fortitude in the face of difficult situations. Furthermore, their reactions were certainly much more constructive and peace-promoting than simply popping off and reacting temperamentally.

    However, I have found it helps take me to an even more peaceful state to remind myself of the cycle of pain.

    In this cycle, as succinctly described by Thich Nhat Hanh above, people act out in negative ways (e.g. aggressive, uncaring, etc.) as a result of inner pain. Even if that pain is difficult for us as outsiders to understand, it is there as a matter of fact.

    Though it may help to intellectually understand the specific causes and dynamics of the individual’s pain, in most cases that isn’t possible because you cannot get inside someone else’s head. But we can still accept that the other person is in pain. Once we accept this, we can relate it to our own and therefore feel empathy.

    This is very difficult to do in the moment. What helps me when I feel the flush of temper is to take a deep breath and close my eyes. When I take in that breath, I imagine myself “breathing in” the other person’s pain, which appears to me internally as smoke or pollution.

    I then imagine in my head what they are going through. That is why it helps to understand what the pain is. In my mother’s case, it’s the fear of her disease as well as the discomfort with suddenly having to deal with the restrictions it places on her time and activities.

    I imagine them dealing with that pain, and as the breath comes in I feel a sensation permeate my body. I then let out the breath, which I imagine to be a vapor of peace. I feel lighter and calmer.

    I call this alchemy for the soul—transmuting anger into empathy.

    When I expressed this in the group, I was met with crickets, except for the woman who was angry about her husband’s careless attitude about his condition. She had two comebacks.

    First, she said although that was a “nice” sentiment, she needed to take care of herself at this point and not worry about her husband’s emotions. After all, as the cancer sufferer, he was receiving all kinds of sympathy from every corner. Fair enough.

    Secondly, she said that it takes a lot of energy and effort to “suppress” your feelings when you’re already feeling exhausted from being the caregiver. I understand that too.

    At that point, I dropped the matter, firstly, because I sensed her slight agitation and secondly, because I thought it might strain the dynamics of our safe place if I came across as a preachy teacher in a group of equals.

    What I wanted to say was that this is not about her husband’s feelings. In fact, quite the opposite—doing this would be all about her emotions.

    To hold onto anger and need to direct it somewhere, to me, is draining. I need to carry it around and find where to put it. I need to put effort into not blowing up at someone. To me, this exercise of alchemy for the soul feels like the opposite of “suppression,” whose Latin origin literally means to “press down.”

    When I perform my little alchemy ritual, the feeling is much more of a lightening up or dissolving kind of sensation. Rather than doing someone else a favor, I feel like I am treating myself well, which allows me to treat others well too (and not begrudge them for it!).

    Even when someone else is clearly the “cause” of your anger, it helps to remember that it isn’t really him or her—it’s his or her suffering that is at the root of the hurtful actions. Yes, they are responsible for what they do, but it helps to remember that it’s human to sometimes act out when you’re hurting.

    If you feel that this thinking lets the person off the hook too easily, remember that however hurtful someone’s actions are, no one can “make” you feel a certain way. Ultimately, how you react internally to someone’s actions, what you choose to focus on and how you think about it, is your own responsibility. To blame another person for how you feel is to give him or her power over you.

    To be clear, I’m not making excuses for bad behavior. If someone does something cruel or thoughtless or aggressive to you, it is his or her failing for doing so. But however hurt you may feel in the moment, that person does not have the power to make you carry that hurt with you in the form of anger.

    Once again, this has nothing to do with you being a saint and deigning to give that person compassion or forgiveness; it’s about you taking care of yourself by stopping the angry chain reaction that can lead to all kinds of hurt and unfortunate behaviors.

    Why not just allow yourself to just be angry and make up a sad story about what was done to you in which you are cast as the victim? In a sense, you’re totally justified in doing so, but where does that lead? How does that help you? The truth is, you very well might have been a victim of someone’s aggression in that moment, but only you can make yourself remain a victim by carrying around the negativity.

    When you help yourself by letting go of your anger, you help everyone else around you too.

    This is a practice that has very much helped me, but it’s not the only way to deal with anger. I’m always in search of new strategies myself, so please feel free to tell me what’s helped you cope.

  • Life Is in the Little Things: Finding the Extra in the Ordinary

    Life Is in the Little Things: Finding the Extra in the Ordinary

    “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.“ ~Jimmy Johnson

    “Write about what we did today,” my daughter said. She knows I often write once she is asleep.

    Dully I thought, “What we did today wasn’t that exciting.” Yet, for her, it obviously was.

    She gets lost in her experiences, deeply entrenched in the realms of her imagination that continue to weave each experience she is having.

    From my perspective, I took the kids and their friends to a nature reserve so they could get muddy and play. I needed them outside, away from the house where cabin fever sets in quickly and the mess builds up even more quickly along with my stress levels.

    Instead, we had a nice walk, first to see a waterfall, then for them to play in a stream and slide in the mud. After that, we had a picnic and I watched them all get lost in game after game led by their imaginations.

    When we got home my daughter set about making a Lego creation; there is a national competition going on and she wants to enter. She created a platform with a throne for the queen to sit upon after she climbs the magical rainbow-colored staircase. She had been reflecting upon that staircase the night before long after she should have been asleep.

    To the side of the queen was her courtier, and they overlooked a courtyard where many of her subjects had gathered so they could have a conversation. The courtyard was filled with beautiful flowers and another large plant that stands in the corner.

    The nuances of this creation I am sure to have missed, but I glimpsed beyond the plastic bricks that my mind wanted to adjust here and there, resisting the urge to ‘fix’ them. It was a thing of beauty.

    As is her habit every day, she also drew several pictures, each with its own story, ever evolving with lots of princesses and fairies. Then there was the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory audio book that she finished listening to, and the story of the Unicorn Riders we read at bedtime, each with their own stories and life lessons to untangle and reflect on.

    Not to speak, of course, of the majestic bun she has insisted upon having in her hair these holidays, with four braids that I carefully reproduce every few weeks (after a trip to Fiji last year). My hair dressing skills seem to have unwittingly evolved in all these requests.

    For me, I was just getting through another day of the school holidays. For her, though, she was a princess dreamily going about her day.

    After the kids were asleep, I pulled out the journal I keep to record all the things to be grateful for, or that were uplifting. Here is the sad effort I wrote:

    “The sun shining through the leaves at the reserve warmed my soul.” That was it, other than noting with thanks that my partner had gone to work all day long to provide us with money.

    Yet when I’ve sat down to fill my cup with a little writing, another voice speaks from within. One that sees much more in the day than I obviously had at first glance; it sees the ‘extra’ in the ordinary.

    When my daughter said to me a few days ago “It seems like I’ll have more fun when I’m young than when I’m old, Mum,” I understood why she thought that, but it also made me a bit sad.

    I lamely told her adults experience fun in a different way, then I realized I was just kidding myself. While that in itself is true, I knew there was no kidding the kids; they know when you are having fun or not.

    It’s time for an attitude shift. Sure, when I took the kids to the pools the other day, I did it to get it over with, since they have been nagging me for months to go. It’s an indoor pool, noisy, busy, and it stinks of chlorine. When I was a kid, I would have loved it too. Even as an adult, if I had peace to swim in the large pool it could be enjoyable.

    But being responsible for the lives of two little kids who are not yet able to swim properly yet go hurtling into the depths when the wave machine comes on, and in separate directions, it’s not so relaxing.

    Today, however, was more relaxing. No chlorine smell, only the smell of freshly cut grass. No loud echoing background noise, just the sound of kids laughing and playing.

    Come to think of it, we passed a really tall tree with fruits scattered all over the ground underneath; they looked like lemons. Except this tree was about twenty meters tall, so it was a bit of a mystery to me, and it was quite nice just to notice it and wonder what it was.

    It was also quite lovely to see the various dogs going past with their owners, clearly loving being out running around just as much as the kids were.

    After our picnic I even joined in the fun by doing a pretend tap dance while all the kids sat on a bench watching and giggling.

    When we got back to the house, the kids had all enjoyed their time in the fresh air and sat quietly drawing while I was able to hose down the clothes caked in mud. I have to admit to some satisfaction in seeing the colors of those clothes emerge again from the mud-brown-grey they had turned.

    I enjoyed listening to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as much as the kids did, and it was interesting to connect the dots on a recurring dream I used to have, any time my life got a bit out of control, about the lift that went sideward and upside down.

    And when I came to read them their bedtime story, the Unicorn Riders pulled me in to their mythical world and left me on a cliffhanger as it was time to turn out the lights.

    Now, here I am, sitting contentedly tapping away on the keyboard. My cat is curled up next to me purring away. I am now reflecting on what a joy it is to have these kids that I waited for so long to come.

    Even though they drive me nuts at times, and life can be pretty intense, it is worth it to glimpse life through their lenses.

    I’ve also just realized that my long awaited new pillow arrived today, contoured to cater for exactly the way I sleep; this is not just great news, it is sheer bliss. How could I have left this and all these other snippets out my journal?

    All these years spent longing for things, recording my dreams, and yet once they are here somewhere in my psyche they turn to hum drum, stressful even. “This is what it is to be human,” I remind myself. “To always want something more.”

    It’s the age-old paradox of noticing what about my experiences I would like to change, while still appreciating in the moment the things that I do have. Instead, I seem to have slunk down into just taking for granted what I am experiencing and getting frustrated that what I want isn’t here yet.

    This is dumb, I know. It would be healthier to celebrate the sheer miracle that this life I am leading has been entirely of my own making. There is so much power in that. I remember a few years back, when my partner complained to his godparent about how hard it was to look after the kids, she reminded him that this was his dream.

    It’s true, it was our dream to have a family, and we spent years trying to make that happen. My partner even wanted two girls; he had names for them and everything. After we realized we needed to stop trying so hard, our wish came true.

    But it’s not just about kids; it’s about the place we live, the life we lead, the people around us—it’s all of our own making. And it’s actually pretty spectacular.

    I’m reminded of a little exercise of Marisa Peer’s I did one day, where I had to imagine seven-year-old me turning up at the front door of our house in my mind’s eye. I had to invite young me in and show her around. It was quite an emotional exercise. Looking at my life today through young me’s lenses was pretty gratifying.

    Thanks to my daughter, the dull response to her initial thought that I should write about today has turned to a sparkle. It wasn’t so unspectacular after all, I realize. In fact it was quite extraordinary and really quite fun.

    So often we focus on what’s lacking, or what didn’t meet our expectations, but we’re a lot happier when we appreciate the little things and recognize the beauty in the ordinary.

  • In Search of the Sacred: Escaping Facebook’s Sticky Web

    In Search of the Sacred: Escaping Facebook’s Sticky Web

    “You leave the present moment every time you check your phone.” ~Deirdre Jayko

    Facebook was driving me to distraction! One late-winter evening, I prepped for a mood-saving hike in the snow. Magic happened on the trails in the moonlight. I decided to check Facebook for a friend’s answer to a message.

    Who knows what caught my attention, but I ended up skipping from post to post. Once I emerged from my Facebook haze, I realized it was too late to walk safely. What had I accomplished in place of my hike? What did I even read about?

    As I put away my warm clothes and went to bed, I promised myself I was going to change my Facebook usage. It was eating away at my life. I was driving myself to distraction.

    Social media usage bothers people for a variety of reasons. Drilling down on those reasons reveals a larger theme of loss of control. In spite of ourselves, we spend way too much time scrolling through mindless content. Seemingly against our best intentions (sometimes, against our will), we waste countless hours on the site.

    My frustration level only escalated once I made the decision to torch my Facebook profile. Getting off the site seemed impossibly complex! What about people I only had contact with through Facebook? What about seeing photos of relatives and friends? What about the writings and photos I loved to share? Each time I planned on hitting “delete,” I would give up and decide it was too complicated.

    Every morning, I would roll out of bed and check Facebook. The silly thing was: I didn’t want to check Facebook. It was a subconscious habit. I didn’t even realize I was doing it.

    A red notification of some type would fuel my addictive response. Someone liked my post. Someone commented on a post. A close friend posted something new or had messaged me! That little red symbol is addicting, especially if your life is stressful. It gives your monkey mind an unsatisfying play date with the inane.

    One of my passions has always been escaping to the woods for a solo hike. One cold, crisp February morning, I chucked my smart phone into the trunk and set off down the trail into the woods. I was the only human on the prowl, and it felt great.

    Clambering along, I took a hard look at my Facebook addiction. I was bothered by the unhealthy anxiety reliever and the gambling-like satisfaction of the red-symbol jackpot. Yet, it seemed something deeper was bothering me about my Facebook use. I wanted to explore this feeling in more detail.

    I sat watching squirrels scampering through the tree heights. I reflected on that slightly sick feeling accompanying social media usage. We become caricatures of ourselves on Facebook. The nature of the beast is such that experiences are condensed into soundbites for public broadcast—an exaggerated and polished version of a moment. My real-time sharing with family and friends was much different than this public sharing.  Online interactions lacked substance and depth. On some level, they are not authentic.

    Thesaurus.com shares some synonyms for caricature: cartoon, parody. distortion… mockery? And (ouch): travesty and sham. Maybe too harsh in some situations, but, honestly, these words reflect my feelings about posting.

    Instead of chilling with my squirrel friends, I would scroll mindlessly as time slipped away, as my life slipped away. I made a pact with myself to delete my Facebook account. I created a statement of intent in my journal, signed and dated it.

    I still didn’t get off of Facebook.

    A few weeks later, I cruised to work, jamming to my favorite Gordon Lightfoot songs. The open road and dreamy music made me feel young, wild, and free. Suddenly, texts from my kids began interrupting the music. I had notifications coming in on Messenger.

    As a result of some of those messages, I began fighting the urge to check my work email before I arrived. I cursed silently that I had not taken the time to learn how to disconnect the damn phone, so I could just hear my music. Constant bombardment of stimuli. Not only irritating but also unsafe.

    I turned my phone off and threw it in the back seat. SILENCE. As I watched the trees and fields skimming by, I thought about my life before all this technology. I was beyond revolted with perpetual connectivity. I drifted back to my resolve to delete Facebook.

    I practice my spirituality in the woods. My nature time is sacred time, my interface with the Great Mystery. As I added gadgets, my secret, unique, sacred relationship with the earth had seemed harder to access. Would I ever feel that connection again? A hypothesis began shaping in my mind. Would I feel more spiritual and be able to access a deeper level of awareness if I got off of Facebook?

    I thought about the sticky web that is Facebook. Not only did I have over 200 “friends” of varying levels of intimacy, I had hundreds of photos and memories all neatly time-lined for my reminiscence. I felt the stress of giving up a potential audience for my creative works.

    I was stuck in an uncomfortable spot for several weeks. I wanted to get off Facebook to test my hypothesis, but I inexplicably felt trapped on the social media. I began to realize how I was being manipulated in an unhealthy way.

    I couldn’t torch my Facebook despite my great desire to plunge deeply into my spirituality. I was hooked. I hate being hooked or controlled by anything. So, I redoubled my efforts.  I developed a plan to get off Facebook in steps.

    In the first step, I deleted people I really didn’t know. I quickly deleted about thirty people. It felt good to finally start on my goal. I focused on being more in tune, being more aware, being more spiritual.

    As I whittled down my friends, the people became more intimate. People that mattered in my “real” life. I started getting confused about who to delete next and how to delete them. Should I send them a note? Would that be strange? Should I make a public post?

    I stalled for another couple of weeks. I was acutely aware that social media traps people and creates a labyrinth of complexities, a maze of prisons. I didn’t like how that made me feel.

    A few weeks later, I opened my journal to write. My signed pact stared back at me, forcing me to address this disturbing phenomenon of being trapped on Facebook.

    That evening, I curled up on the couch with a cup of coffee. My sole intent was to reduce my social media presence. I sent a private message to select people, explaining I was leaving Facebook and providing my contact information.

    A few wrote back, asking, “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” My ego raised up a bit. Wow, they think something has gone wrong in my life. I should stay on Facebook to prove nothing is wrong. I slayed that ego dragon and pressed on with my quest.

    As I mass deleted my friends, Facebook acted like a real creature, bombarding me with more “people I may know” than ever before. It made me wonder if the site is programmed to recognize when someone starts deleting friends. Maybe not…but the new potential friends were very intriguing.

    How did they manage to target my profile with these people? I was tempted to click on some of the new profiles but moved on towards the goal. At times, the process of deleting friends felt great, but mostly I felt a sense of loneliness.

    Eventually, I had no friends. I experienced a mix of relief, sadness, and anxiety.

    Even the shell without friends proved a sticky trap. I belonged to groups that only posted on Facebook. I also had “liked” very entertaining pages. Could I give up Randy Rainbow videos, and adorable pictures of cows and elephants from the Gentle Barn and the Elephant Sanctuary? Yes, I can access their websites when I need a fix. I ‘unliked’ all my awesome pages.

    The hardest sacrifice was abandoning all my kids’ pictures and my life experiences neatly time-ordered. I pressed on because I wanted a deeper, more authentic life.

    I was ready for the final step—deletion! I couldn’t find the deletion button. Deactivation is not the same as deletion. All your info is stored and ready to be resurrected. I didn’t like this privacy issue, and I didn’t want the option to reactivate! I found it easier to google “delete Facebook account” and follow a link from a separate website, than try to find the instructions on Facebook.

    Finally, I found the delete account button and smelled freedom. Like a creepy, ex-partner who decides he isn’t going to be rejected, Facebook notified me deletion would take two weeks, and I could hop back on anytime in that two weeks.

    Thinking back on all the sticky traps of Facebook and the recent media attention on privacy breaches, I thought, “Why do we allow this? Why are we okay with this?” It is not authentic or satisfying to live this way.

    The first afternoon free of Facebook felt super!  A few days later, I felt similar to when I left home for a new job in a new city. Kinda lonely and lost, but ready for a new adventure. I definitely missed my friends back in Facebookland. I wondered if I would ever talk to some of them again.

    I jokingly asked my kids, “Do I still exist?” Sometimes, I caught myself clicking through news sites more often, simply out of habit. I realized some of my clicking provided a method of anxiety relief. The other sites just didn’t have the addictive quality of Facebook, and I eventually quit the mindless clicking.

    As the days move on, I notice subtle differences in my thinking. I feel a soft, calm sensation as I drive to work or create projects. I notice light patterns as the day shifts to dusk. I am more present in my own life. I feel a novel sense of boredom from time to time. Surprisingly, I really like feeling bored. It has stimulated my creativity and my humor. You have to work a little harder when there is nothing to do.

    One morning, I was goofing around with my dogs on the couch, playing with their paws, scratching their ears. I had not really connected with them in that manner in a long time. A kind of bored goofiness came over me that had been destroyed by the constant clicking. I felt like a little kid, lazing on Saturday afternoon. Boredom is not a bad thing.

    I also became really aware when my loved ones were ‘hooked up.’ It seemed weird that they would be so intent on staring at screens. It should seem weird, shouldn’t it? We’ve been deconditioned to this insanity.

    Occasionally I have moments of discomfort about my exodus. What about when my son graduates? Or, I have an article published? Or I travel to an exotic location? What if I take a killer photograph or observe a rare animal in the woods? Who will know?

    I guess I’ll share these experiences, successes, and photographs during lunch with my close friends and around the table with my family. At this point in my life, that feels so right to me. My smoother, more relaxed, unplugged mind is savoring the days I have left.

    I went to the woods today. I walked quietly and softly on the earth. I left my iPhone at home. The perfect scene for a photo and an unexpected animal sighting went uncaptured. With no phone to grab, these snapshots won’t be shared with the masses. How refreshingly beautiful.

    A little squirrel scampered on a tree, chattering to me. It was so quiet, so calm in the woods. I became lost in the moment. I felt that deep, sacred connection with nature that is so precious to me. I transcended into that other world, the world that remains hidden from a noisy mind. A place void of anxiety, of ego, of caricature. A place rich with connectedness, with earthiness, with authenticity.

  • Meditation Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal

    Meditation Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal

    Hi friends! As I mentioned last week when I shared the music coloring page from Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal, I’m planning to share some of the other pages, twice weekly, until the journal launches on June 26th.

    Each page depicts one simple thing we can do to help ease our worries.

    Today’s tip: Make time for meditation.

    Of all the healthy habits I’ve adopted, meditation has been, by far, the most transformative.

    It’s enabled me to observe my negative, obsessive thoughts instead of getting caught up in them, and it’s helped me create space between my thoughts and my response, so I’m less apt to do and say things I’ll later regret.

    The beautiful thing about meditation is that there are many ways to do it, to suit your schedule and needs.

    You can use guided meditations (I’ve included four in the pre-order bonus package!); you can learn any number of different techniques for seated meditation; you can practice deep breathing; you can try a movement-based practice, such as yoga, qigong, and meditative walking; or you can simply practice mindfulness in your daily life—while eating or doing the dishes for example.

    And even if you only have five minutes, you’ll experience the benefits.

    Research has shown that anxiety can change the structure of your brain, increasing the size of the amygdala (the part responsible for your fear response), causing you to become even more anxious.

    A regular meditation practice can reverse this. It can literally change how your brain works and, consequently, how you respond to the events in your life.

    My preferred forms of meditation include:

    -Yoga (Vinyasa, hot yoga, and yin yoga—which a teacher recently described as “basically a nap with light stretching”)

    -Guided meditations (I’ve found tons of free options on YouTube)

    -Deep breathing (alternative nostril breathing being my favorite)

    If I have the time, I’ll go to an hour-long yoga class at a studio down the street (which also allows me to clear my mind a little on the walk) or find a thirty-minute guided meditation online.

    If I have less time available, I’ll do five to ten minutes of poses, a five-minute guided meditation, or a few minutes of deep breathing. No matter what I choose, I always feel calmer and more centered after.

    Do you have a regular meditation practice? If so, what’s your practice of choice, and how has it changed your life for the better? Your experience could help other readers find peace, calm, and healing, so please share the good!

    From now until June 26th, you’ll get three bonus gifts, including a guided meditation series on letting go, when you pre-order Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal. All you need to do is order a copy here and forward your purchase confirmation email to worryjournal@tinybuddha.com

  • Music Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal

    Music Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal

    Hi friends! Since Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal officially launches a month from tomorrow, I decided to start sharing some of the coloring pages on the blog, twice a week, until then.

    I was thrilled to once again work with the talented Rose Hwang, the illustrator for Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal, and her work this time is just as beautiful.

    Each page depicts one simple thing we can do to help ease anxiety.

    Today’s tip: listen to calming music.

    Music can be so transformative. The right song can instantly transport you to a different time, remind you of someone or somewhere you love, or communicate everything you’re feeling but can’t put into words.

    It can simultaneously calm your mind, heal your heart, and lift your spirits.

    And it’s the ultimate tool for mindfulness. It’s hard to dwell on the past or worry about the future when you’re lost in a melody, eyes closed, the beat reverberating deep in your chest, the lyrics drowning out the repetitive thoughts in your head.

    There have even been studies to show how healing music can be—it can boost brain activity and the mood enhancing chemical serotonin, lower blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol, and slow our heart rate, creating an overall calming effect.

    I know I always feel more centered and at ease when I take even just a few minutes to listen to my “peace playlist,” which includes:

    -A selection of movie theme songs (far too many to list!)

    -Musical soundtracks, some of the newest of which include The Greatest Showman and La La Land (specifically: A Million Dreams and Here’s to the Ones Who Dream)

    -Songs from Bob Marley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, Coldplay, The Lumineers, The Fray, Augustana, David Gray, Ben Folds, Gary Jules, Josh Ritter, and Ray LaMontagne, to name some of my favorites

    What are some of the songs that calm your mind? Which songs help you relax and unwind after a long, stressful day? Feel free to share an album name, a song title, or a link. You never know whose day you could brighten by sharing your playlist for peace.

    —

    From now until June 26th, you’ll get three bonus gifts, including a guided meditation series on letting go, when you pre-order Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal. All you need to do is order a copy here and forward your purchase confirmation email to worryjournal@tinybuddha.com

  • How I’ve Learned to Free Myself from Depression When It Hits

    How I’ve Learned to Free Myself from Depression When It Hits

    “No feeling is final.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

    I’ve battled depression for most of my life. In my younger years, it gripped me pretty frequently. I was first hit with suicidal thoughts at the age of fifteen, and it scared the bejesus out of me. I was young and dumb and had no idea what was happening.

    When I was twenty-five it hit again. This time, however, I understood the cause. I was getting divorced, and my entire life was in turmoil.

    It was at this time that I decided that I was going to do something about it. So, I dove into the world of personal development. I read every book I could get my hands on.

    The following are some realizations I’ve had about depression and what’s helped me break free from it. This may not work for everyone, but perhaps there’s something here that can help you.

    Depression is like a Chinese finger trap: the more you try to get free, the more trapped you become.

    When I was younger, I would try to fight my feelings. I believed in facing my challenges head on. As any young man would do, I would see myself as the hero of my own story and depression as the villain.

    The last time it hit me, however, I wasn’t nearly as brazen. I laid in my bed and the feeling washed over me like a flood. One minute I was okay, and the next I was going haywire.

    All I could think about was killing myself. And the crazy part of that is that I had a great life, and that I didn’t want to actually do it. I just wanted the intensity to end. I wanted to be free from the feelings that penetrated everything I did.

    Depression is like a Chinese finger trap. The more you fight it, the more it gets you in its grasp. And the only way to get out is to do the very thing that you intuitively feel is wrong.

    You only get free from depression when you lean into it.

    I know that goes against every piece of self-help advice that exists. But depression is a different animal. You can’t positive-think your way out of depression because this kind of mental battle is a big part of what causes depression in the first place. Obsessing over your thoughts keeps you stuck in your head.

    It’s a trap of the most frustrating form because your attempts at defeating depression often serve to keep it firmly in place. In other words, your resistance to depression causes it to strengthen its grip on you.

    There is a concept in psychology and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) called “exposure therapy.” The idea is that the more you expose yourself to the thing you fear, the less intimidating and fearful that thing becomes.

    I was able to get over my fear of snakes in this manner. One summer I made the goal to hike a certain trail near my house. However, the trail constantly had snakes on it, and I was deathly afraid of them.

    I didn’t want to give up on my hiking goals, so I forced myself to walk past the snakes. Eventually I realized that they are relatively harmless and won’t bother you unless you bother them.

    Do you fear your depression? I know I did, especially when it became so bad that suicidal thoughts would creep in. I would spend many a night in bed just lying like a brick, afraid to move because I was scared that I would do something to hurt myself.

    When you lean into your feelings, they dissipate.

    And thus is the wisdom of the Chinese finger trap. The only way out is to lean in. To stop fearing what you feel and start facing what you feel.

    When I started thinking about the things that may have been causing my depression instead of the things I thought could cure it, I got a better understanding of what my depression was.

    I saw that things like negative core beliefs and unhappiness with my career and finances were contributing to my depression, and that I needed to deal with those things. Depression, then, was more of a symptom of the real problem rather than the source.

    You don’t beat this enemy by fighting him. You beat him by standing in front of him and telling him that you are not afraid. And then you deal with the things that make him strong.

    I liken depression to a storm. It will hit you all at once, but it won’t stay around forever. If you wait long enough, the feelings will pass. And what is left after the feelings pass is in your hands.

    You can choose to let the storm of depression keep you in a depressed state even when the actual feelings aren’t there. Or you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward.

    Leaning into your feelings releases their power over you, but you still need to wiggle yourself free after you release your feelings.

    This is probably the most important part of dealing with depression.

    It’s not enough to just face your feelings and lean into them. If you’ve ever played with a Chinese finger trap, you eventually realized that to release its grip on your fingers, you had to push them further into the trap. However, to truly get your fingers free, you had to wiggle them back out slowly.

    This is exactly what depression is like. You may not have control over when depression strikes. You may even need medication to deal with it. But you can control what you do when you’re depressed, and you can break free. I am proof of that. I’ve battled this feeling, this inexplicable feeling, for most of my life. But I now know what true joy and true happiness is.

    You can know joy too. You can get past depression when it hits. You don’t have to let it define you any longer.

    How do you wiggle free? I use a process of deep introspection, mindfulness, and work toward a powerful purpose in my life.

    At the root of my depression were the most insecure and sensitive things I thought about myself. This is true for many of us. These beliefs run under the surface of our psyche like a motor. Pay attention to the things that make you emotional and look for the beliefs you have about yourself that are behind them.

    For example, I used to feel shame whenever someone would single me out in front of others. While this is a common feeling for people, I looked for the belief that may have been fueling that. I discovered that underneath it all was an old belief from childhood: “I am bad.”

    Now, when I recognize that this belief is surfacing, I remind myself that it’s human to make mistakes sometimes, and that doesn’t make me a bad person. This prevents me from spiraling into a shame cycle, which can easily lead to a depressed state.

    You have negative beliefs about yourself as well, and, while it’s an extremely emotional process facing them, it’s also cathartic. Find someone you trust and talk to them about these thoughts and feelings. Or journal about them to understand why you formed them and how you can let them go.

    Another powerful tactic for wiggling free from depression is mindfulness. I like to solve puzzles or do something creative to take my mind away from the thoughts that depression causes me to have.

    Note that this isn’t meant as a way to avoid your problems. Depressed thoughts are like a tape that plays automatically in the back of your mind. When you immerse yourself in an activity, you interrupt that tape and break the negative cycle so that you’re no longer fixated on negative thoughts (which is akin to pushing your finger deeper into the trap).

    It’s also helped me to fix my finances. They say that money can’t buy happiness, but that’s not the entire truth. According to this study, our income can actually increase our happiness up to a certain amount, since it’s easier to be happy when we’re not struggling to survive.

    To fix my finances, I stopped wasting money on things that weren’t bringing me joy (such as a cable subscription) and focused on ways to increase my income. I learned pretty quickly that, although being rich doesn’t make you happy, I feel a lot more at ease when I’m not living paycheck to paycheck.

    Lastly, I’ve focused on finding meaningful work. One of the biggest culprits of depression is a feeling of hopelessness and despair. So, finding meaningful work or a deeply personal life purpose will do wonders. For more information on finding meaning, check out Viktor Frankl’s book A Man’s Search for Meaning.

    In my case, I found that the career I was in was making me more depressed. I was an engineer, but the long days sitting in a cubicle were driving me mad. I wanted a career where I felt like I was doing something that mattered.

    So, I went back to school and became certified to teach. I ramped up my writing career and started freelance writing. I did more of the work that I loved to do. When you do more of the work that you love to do, you become more of the person you want to be, which makes you a lot happier with yourself and your life.

    And that leads me to the final point…

    You are not your depression. You are the person who is feeling depressed.

    Until I realized this, I was seeing myself as a depressed person, and I was allowing it to define me.

    You are not your feelings. Stand in front of a mirror and shout that to yourself. Scream it to the world. You are more than that.

    You are whatever you choose to be. See the possibilities of who you can be and move toward those things. Don’t let depression beat you up and keep you trapped. The door is open. All you have to do is walk through it.

    *Disclaimer: Depression can have many different causes, and different people may need to take different approaches to healing. Don’t be afraid to seek professional help if nothing else has worked for you. There’s no shame in needing or accepting support!

  • 5 Journal Prompts to Help You Let Go of Anxiety and Find Peace

    5 Journal Prompts to Help You Let Go of Anxiety and Find Peace

    “You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” ~Dan Millman

    There was a time when my mind was completely consumed by worries, and I lived in a perpetual state of panic.

    I worried about things I’d said and whether people were judging me, things I should be doing and whether I was using my time well, the state of my life, the state of the world, and just about anything else one could worry about.

    Life always felt scary and uncertain, so I always felt unsafe, and worrying gave me the illusion of gaining some semblance of control.

    Well-intentioned people advised me to just be positive—then I’d feel a lot better about life. But I’ve always found the concept of positive thinking somewhat frustrating.

    First, it made me feel guilty, since no matter how hard I tried to avoid negative thoughts, they’d inevitably pop into my head. Secondly, it was exhausting. To constantly monitor your mind takes monumental effort, and it seemed contrary to my goal—to be less burdened by my brain.

    Still, there’s no denying that our thoughts influence our feelings. When we sit around dwelling on everything that could go wrong, or everything we think we did wrong, we end up feeling drained and depressed.

    So what’s the solution then? How can we allow ourselves to be human and simultaneously ensure we don’t drown in our fearful thoughts?

    For me, journaling has been key.

    Journaling has helped me find solutions to my problems, identify and let go of things I can’t control, and change my perspective on the things I want to change but can’t.

    It’s also helped me recognize my own strength so that I can worry less about what’s coming and trust more in my ability to handle it, whatever it may be.

    If you’re looking for a little mental relief this week, I recommend starting each weekday with one of these five journal prompts from Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal: A Creative Way to Let Go of Anxiety and Find Peace. 

    The beauty of these particular prompts is that they help us focus on the moment, be kind to ourselves, and have faith in ourselves and our journey, wherever it may lead.

    5 Journal Prompts to Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind

    1. Today, I choose to let go of the things I can’t control, including…

    2. I recognize that I don’t need to have all the answers right now. Today, I give myself permission not to know…

    3. Dear inner critic: You always focus on everything I’m doing wrong, but I know I’m doing a lot right, including…

    4. I know I’m strong enough to handle whatever comes at me, because I’ve survived a lot, including…

    5. Instead of worrying about making the “wrong” choices, I trust that no matter what I choose…

    —

    You don’t need to write anything specific or lengthy, though you can take all the time you have and need. The important thing is that you get in the habit of thinking about yourself and your problems in a new way.

    It’s not about suppressing thoughts or replacing them with positive ones. It’s about directing your mind to useful thoughts so you can spend less of your life feeling worried and overwhelmed.

    Just like gratitude journaling can help us feel happier and more optimistic, keeping a worry journal can help us feel calmer and more at peace.

    If you’re interested in pre-ordering a copy of Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal, which officially launches on June 26th, you can reserve a copy here.

    Once you receive your purchase confirmation email, forward it to worryjournal@tinybuddha.com and you’ll receive access to the following free bonus items:

    • Four guided meditations on letting go (of control, the need for approval, stresses/pressure, and self-judgment)
    • Three colorful desktop wallpapers with cute Buddhas and calming quotes
    • An exclusive interview with me and Ehren Prudhel, founder of the soon-to-be-launched podcast Next Creator Up, in which I discuss how I’ve overcome worries related to writing my first feature film

    I hope these prompts (and the other activities in the journal) help you as much as they’ve helped me!

  • 3 Ways to Stop Worrying and Feel Less Anxious

    3 Ways to Stop Worrying and Feel Less Anxious

    “There isn’t enough room in your mind for both worry and faith. You must decide which one will live there.” ~Sir Robertson

    Do you consider yourself a worrier?

    Maybe even a perfectionist or Type A personality?

    When I’m not at my best, I can be all of those things combined. (Not cute, I know.)

    Because of this, I know exactly what it feels like to be stuck in my head, with tightness in my chest and emotional wrenches in my gut.

    If you also struggle with worry and anxiety, then I feel you. I rode the worry struggle bus for a long time—until I finally addressed my psychology.

    Why Your Psychology Matters Most

    My aunt once told me (after I called her in the middle of a freak out), “You’re worried because you’re trying to control the future Kari, and that’s impossible.”

    Woah. Paradigm shift. That’s when it all ‘clicked’ and I realized that my issues with worry and anxiety were all self-created.

    Then it got me wondering… If I created this worry and anxiety with my thoughts, maybe I can create relaxation with my thoughts too.

    After researching the psychology of worry, I learned some practices that helped transition me from an uptight chronic worrier into a pretty relaxed person. I still have my moments, but it’s nothing like before.

    Today, I’d like to share three of my best practices with you. I hope they can help you reduce your worry and anxiety too.

    Let’s start with the most practical piece of advice.

    1. Practice using coping imagery.

    This involves visualizing yourself handling worst-case scenarios with confidence.

    And just to be clear: You’re visualizing the worst-case scenario, not the best case. It’s like defensive pessimism, which can actually help with anxiety more than positive thinking.

    So instead of worrying about being crushed by the worst-case scenario, try visualizing yourself handling it with confidence.

    Here’s an example (that I cringe to share with you because it seems so silly in hindsight):

    I recently started dating a guy who I developed some serious feelings for. I had the most successful first date of my life with him, and it’s been amazing ever since.

    But instead of getting excited about the potential, I started worrying about all the things that could go wrong. (Like I said, being a worrier is self-created misery!)

    Specifically, I was worried that in the future we wouldn’t be able to see each other for weeks because he was crazy busy. I grew anxious over feeling devastated in the future by the potential lack of quality time I crave.

    Although it wasn’t even a problem yet, I started worrying about making plans to the point where I started sabotaging the romance by “trying too hard.”

    I let my anxiety consume me, and I became the chaser instead of allowing something beautiful to naturally unfold. I hated that I started to sabotage something beautiful, but in that moment, (it felt like) I couldn’t help myself.

    And this is where the switch happens.

    Instead of worrying about how devastated I would feel if we couldn’t spend time together, I started visualizing myself feeling okay if I didn’t get to see him. (I chose “okay” instead of “happy” because it needs to be realistic.)

    Instead of thinking about the void, I thought about all the other wonderful things I could do with my time, like surf or entertain my hobbies.

    This seriously helped put my mind and body at ease! Here are more details for the process:

    How to Do It

    To practice using coping imagery, start by imagining the situation that brings you anxiety. How do you feel? What are you thinking?

    Then, start to imagine a warm glow of confidence radiating from you. Imagine being in that situation feeling totally confident and capable. How does it feel? What are you thinking?

    Then, imagine something going wrong—something that you’re worried about—and imagine yourself handling that situation with confidence and ease too. What thoughts and feelings helped you handle it

    Get comfortable with these thoughts and feelings and keep mentally practicing them.

    This “mental rehearsal” helps activate neuroplasticity, your brain’s ability to rewire itself and form new neural connections, like new thought loops.

    The more you practice using coping imagery, the more you strengthen the new thought loops for positive thinking (or defensive pessimism) and weaken the thought loops for worrying.

    In time, you’ll naturally become less of a worrier because your brain has been trained to think confident thoughts instead of worrisome thoughts.

    2. Be willing to feel uncomfortable.

    Worry and anxiety often come from trying to protect yourself from pain. And I don’t blame you. Our primal brain is wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain; and anxiety is often caused by worrying about the potential pain that we might feel in the future.

    Sometimes we’re so afraid of emotional pain and loss that we forget that they can’t physically harm us.

    And this is where the saying “make peace with discomfort” will serve you very well, because your ability to be uncomfortable is directly related to your ability to be a relaxed person.

    Sometimes we assume that we need to be comfortable in order to be relaxed. But sometimes being relaxed simply means feeling uncomfortable and being okay with that.

    The more discomfort you’re able to tolerate, the less you’ll worry about preventing it from happening.

    For me, I had to develop the skill of tolerating uncertainty (which is an uncomfortable feeling for me) in my dating life. Although uncertainty feels uncomfortable, I learned to make space for it instead of worrying about making it go away.

    If you want to develop the skill of tolerating discomfort too, here’s how you can do it:

    How to Do It

    A great way to train yourself to tolerate discomfort is to take cold showers. Yup! Even just a five-minute cold shower a day can train your brain to tolerate discomfort.

    Not into cold showers? Another great practice is setting aside fifteen minutes every day as your “uncomfortable practice periods.” These practice periods will help you develop the skill of tolerating discomfort.

    So whenever you start to feel uncomfortable in your daily life, use it as practice. Hold space for the discomfort and make peace with it as best you can.

    For example, if you really hate public speaking, then use your weekly company meeting as a place to practice being uncomfortable by speaking up at least once.

    The more you practice feeling uncomfortable, the better you will get at being uncomfortable. And the more uncomfortable you’re willing to be, the less worry and anxiety you will feel.

    You’ll learn to let life unfold naturally without worry.

    3. Plan what you can and let the rest unfold.

    During the months preceding graduation from college I experienced the biggest bout of anxiety and worry that ever consumed me.

    What if I don’t get any interviews? What if I totally flunk the interview I get? What if I get the job and hate it? What if, what if, what if?

    Fueled by tons of stress, I worked really hard to apply to dozens of jobs before I graduated. In constant panic mode, I refused to leave my desk to play because I was convinced that every ounce of my energy needed to be dedicated to solving this problem.

    In the end, I ended up getting a job through a friend who happened to mention the opportunity through random conversation.

    I couldn’t have planned for that.

    All my preparation paid off, but there was one lesson that I took away from all the unnecessary worry and anxiety:

    If I had done everything the same, but did it all in a relaxed fashion, I would have created the same result.

    “Let go of the idea that gentle, relaxed people can’t be superachievers… One of the major reasons so many of us remain hurried, frightened, and competitive, and continue to live life as if it were one giant emergency, is our fear that if we were to become more peaceful and loving, we would suddenly stop achieving our goals.” ~Richard Carlson

    Sometimes we get tripped up thinking that stress is somehow essential for getting things done. And while some stress is beneficial, extreme stress and anxiety are not necessary for success.

    You can be a totally relaxed person and still get everything done—without worry.

    How to Do It

    Sit down and write down all the things you’re worried/stressed about. Then pretend like you’re coaching someone else with those problems.

    What advice would you give them? What steps would you have them take?

    Then, follow those steps and stop there. Don’t worry about whether or not you did enough. You followed your own advice, and you can relax about the rest.

    Plan what you can, and then breathe. Don’t let your mind continue to race about all the things that could go wrong (unless you’re using Coping Imagery).

    Just have faith that what’s meant to be will be, and let the universe carry you for a while.

    You’ve Got This

    Together, these three steps helped me seriously reduce my anxiety and worry. Will you join me and try them too?

    Start by making coping imagery and “uncomfortable practice periods” daily habits. This will help you develop the skill of tolerating discomfort, and your worry and anxiety will lessen.

    In time, you will get better at letting life unfold the way it was always meant to be.

    Some days you might still find yourself on the worry struggle bus. But maybe this time you’ll feel like you’re in the driver’s seat.

  • The Lost Art of Silence: Get Quiet and You’ll Know What You Need to Do

    The Lost Art of Silence: Get Quiet and You’ll Know What You Need to Do

    “Silence isn’t empty. It’s full of answers.” ~Unknown

    Last week I was visiting the Scandinave, a Scandinavian-style bath spa, with my mom when it struck me how rare true silence has become. By true silence, I mean silence in the form of not speaking, but also silence in the form of reflection, pause, a capacity to become still, a capacity to just be and not do.

    The art of silence was lost. Even at these baths, where the goal was to disconnect and enjoy the stillness of nature, there was constant chatter among groups with voices audible across the pool. It didn’t matter that signs were posted around the area, encouraging silence:

    Honor Silence.
    Speak Quietly.
    Absolute Silence.

    As a society, we have forgotten how to become quiet, how to become still. We are always on the move, always busy, always doing. We’ve forgotten how to just be.

    This lack of silence pervades our lives. It’s in the moments filled with meaningless small talk about the weather to avoid simply sitting in silence. It’s in the moments on the subway, filling our ears with music, busying our minds with our phones, to avoid simply sitting in silence.

    As a yoga teacher and practitioner, I have seen it showing up in the form of teachers filling classes with an endless stream of cueing. I have seen it showing up during savasana, the final resting pose, which gets cut short to avoid the anxiety of watching students fidget in the uncomfortable silence.

    To me, this is a tragedy.

    Silence creates space in our lives. It allows us to pause between moments, to process and reflect, to see beyond the surface into the depths of our lives. When we cut out silence, we cheat ourselves out of the fullness that life has to offer. Only in the silence can we truly hear the whispers coming from within us, urging us towards our highest potential.

    Silence breeds deep connection, not only to ourselves but to the world around us. The energy of a silent room filled with people is almost palpable. In silence, we are all powerfully connected to our higher selves, to the universe, and to each other.

    For one moment at the spa, I felt this. Sitting in absolute silence in the sauna, silence brought a group of strangers together. We were all present, sharing the same moment, connecting with the world and not with our phones. It gave us space to turn inward, to take stock of our internal landscape, to let go of what no longer served us, and to renegotiate who and how we wanted to be in the world.

    Without silence, we keep moving forward, not really knowing where we are or where we want to go.

    I came away from that day of silence and quietude with a new awareness of what was happening in my life. In those moments of silence, I could hear my inner voice growing louder. Where it was once only a whisper, easy enough to ignore, it suddenly became deafening.

    After a day of silence, I had no other option but to face it. I went home that day and had a hard conversation. Potentially one of the hardest I’ve ever had.

    I realized that I hadn’t been honoring myself in my relationship because I had been afraid of losing something that I loved. My partner and I weren’t on the same page with what the relationship meant to us and what we wanted from it. Unintentionally, I lost pieces of myself to the relationship—by being the one to compromise, by being the one to follow, by being the one to give in. In this way, I put my relationship with myself last.

    I stopped cultivating things I loved that were separate from him in order for us to spend time together. I didn’t go out of my way to make my own plans on the weekend.

    In the silence, I heard my inner voice becoming louder and clearer. I couldn’t go on feeling this way or being this way. The silence gave me the space to hear what my heart was saying and the strength to listen. Something had to change.

    I had to stop sacrificing my own needs and desires just to please someone else. I had to start standing up for myself and making it clear that what I wanted mattered too. I had to start making my own plans and doing things just for myself, and not always waiting to see if he had other plans in mind. I needed to be me, wholeheartedly me, first.

    It was scary to have that conversation, to feel like I might lose it all, by voicing what was in my heart. I was scared of what would happen if I stopped going along with it, if I started putting myself first. But I couldn’t avoid the conversation anymore. The silence roared.

    Perhaps that is why we avoid silence—because once you hear the voice in your heart calling out, you can’t ignore it. You can’t go on denying what’s in your heart once you create the space to hear it out. And that can be scary.

    Usually the voice within wants you to do the hard thing. The voice doesn’t want you to settle. It doesn’t want you to give up. It wants you to live to your highest potential. It wants you to climb mountains. It wants you to dream big and live big. And living that way isn’t always the easy thing. It’s not always the comfortable thing.

    Leaning into silence might seem scary. It might even be painful at first because your mind and body will fight it. But I urge you not to run from the silence any longer. Embrace it. Allow it to create space in your life, because it will transform your life. Ultimately, the silence pushed me farther into the life I dream of, into a life of passion, of meaning, of giving myself my best shot.

    Here are some ways you can rediscover the lost art of silence:

    1. Start small.

    The more time you spend in silence, the more powerfully it will impact your life, but diving straight into a ten-day silent retreat might not be the best approach. In fact, it might have the opposite effect.

    Instead, slowly introduce small pockets of silence into your day-to-day life. If you drive on your daily commute, try turning off the radio. If you take public transit, take out the headphones and put away the phone. Feel this silence and notice what’s happening around you and within you.

    2. Set aside time for meditation.

    Block out a specific time in your day or week for a meditation practice. Perhaps it is first thing in the morning, or before you go to bed at night. Set a timer for five or ten minutes, sit or lie down with your eyes closed, and simply breathe. Watch your breath move in and out of your body.

    3. Use mantras.

    While at the baths, I used mantras to move into the silence. My mantra of the day was “Life flows through me with ease.”

    In the silence, I heard myself fighting against the ebbs and flows of life—holding on to expectations, worrying about how things might turn out, resisting where things were going.

    Sometimes our minds see silence as an opportunity to berate us with thoughts, thoughts about not being good enough, about missing out, about being in a hurry, about not having enough time. Our minds will be particularly active if we aren’t used to the silence. Your mind will fight the silence. A mantra can help you to quiet the mind and settle into the silence.

    4. Use movement, such as yoga.

    If our minds are particularly active and we have a hard time just sitting in silence, we can start with gentle, mindful movement to ease ourselves into it.

    If we aren’t used to sitting in silence, our bodies can get very antsy. Silence can make us anxious. By using movement, we can soothe our nervous system and our minds, making it easier to ease into a state of being.

    When I first got to the baths, I used a few neck and shoulder stretches to relax my body for stillness. This focus on the body in turn helped ease my mind into the silence.

    Embrace the lost art of silence. Your highest self will thank you.

  • Why I Stopped Being Busy and Took a Pressure-Free Pause

    Why I Stopped Being Busy and Took a Pressure-Free Pause

    “When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another—and ourselves.” ~Jack Kornfield

    It was a Monday a few weeks ago, 6:00am, and I was taking a morning walk. The only light in sight was the neon yellow glare of the street lamps.

    My heart was heavy. It was as if someone had cut my chest open while I was asleep and slipped a cannonball inside.

    My alarm had awoken me at 5:00am, as it had every morning since the start of the year.

    My shoes crunch-crunched in the snow as I trudged along, ignoring this dull ache in my chest, telling myself, “It’s just resistance to being up so early. Keep pushing through; gotta get those 12,000 steps today, Will.”

    I got to the end of the road, a mere eighty or so meters from my house, and WHOOSH, a wild wave of emotions washed over me, forcing me—jolting me—to stop walking and stand still and silent in the snow.

    I stood and stood as if I’d fallen asleep upright and frozen to death.

    This whooshing wave felt like a panic attack. Except it wasn’t.

    It was this feeling coming from my chest, the one I had tried to ignore. If its first attempt to get my attention was a whisper, this was a shout.

    And it was shouting in desperation, ”LISTEN TO ME, WILL.”

    Without consciously making the decision, I turned and walked home.

    I’d barely walked for two minutes, not quite the forty-five-minute morning walk I had planned, but something inside of me, I can’t explain what, told me this was long enough for today.

    Arriving home, I sat down at my desk to give this feeling some attention.

    My eyes closed. I did my best to give a name to what I was feeling…

    Was it sadness? Nope. Dissatisfaction? Closer, but not quite. Pressure? Yes, pressure! I was feeling pressured!

    The next logical question for me was, why? Why was I feeling pressured?

    The answer was right under my nose, and no, that’s not a metaphor; the answer was literally right under my nose, sitting there on my desk, staring up at me.

    You see, lying there in the center of my desk, scribbled on a piece of paper, was my list of jobs for the day, and it was a long, long list.

    I’d listed all the action steps I felt I needed to take, I felt I should take, I felt I must take on this day.

    An intimidating list detailing emails to be sent, words to be written, opportunities to be created. More. More. More. This list was going to keep me occupied almost every waking minute of the day, having me run around like a headless chicken, stuck in doing mode.

    Sure, there were self-care rituals—meditation, Qi Gong, walks dotted throughout the day—but even these seemed like chores within my strict schedule, just something else to tick off.

    Supporting myself through this, next, I pondered the question:

    How can I take this pressure off of myself?

    At first, no ideas came to mind, nothing, nada.

    Because wasn’t my list full of non-negotiables?

    Then an insight arose, which brought with it an air of refreshment followed by fear.

    “TAKE TIME OFF, WILL.”

    My heart was speaking to me again, the same voice that had spoken to me earlier on my walk, now providing me with an insight to take time off.

    Which was fascinating because the voice of my mind had been telling me to do the exact opposite previously, telling me to write out a big long list of to-dos.

    It was my mind that had told me to wake up at 5:00am so I could do more during each day.

    It was my mind dishing out the restricting need, must, and should statements.

    The thought of taking time off was refreshing, but the fear was: What would happen if I stopped living in doing-mode for some time?

    Fear suggested that taking time out would be a bad thing; I’d lose out on an opportunity of some kind or end up getting lazy. My heart trusted that taking time out, or rather, slowing down was the right path to take to relieve the pressure.

    After a little more reflection, my heart gave me a complete ‘prescription’ to take the pressure off of myself. It involved three stages.

    1. Distinguish between non-negotiable commitments and desires so that I could be more flexible.

    So much of what I thought were non-negotiables were not. They were nothing more than rules I had created. For example, I had told myself I must finish my studies by March. In truth, I don’t have to; this is just a desire.

    I still had a list of commitments I couldn’t stop entirely, but it was a much shorter and more manageable list!

    2. Pause my desires to relieve the pressure.

    Once I’d identified my actual commitments (work, family, household duties), I looked at my list of desires and gave myself permission to pause these.

    This was when fear crept in again…

    Am I allowed to pause my commitments?

    Am I allowed to say no to people?

    The answer is yes.

    I decided on a three-week pause period where I would concentrate only on actual commitments and, of course, concentrate on taking care of myself.

    I decided to pause my studies, any reading for learning (as opposed to enjoyment), any business-related activities, being active on social media—anything I felt I could pause temporarily without jeopardizing myself.

    3. Create a refreshment plan.

    Within my three-week pause period, I set some gentle intentions for how I would spend my time. After all, I had created a lot of time by simply pausing the desires that were causing the pressure.

    So I asked myself a different question.

    Rather than “What must I do?” I asked myself, “What would I love to do?”

    Some of my answers included:

    – Resting. Sleeping longer and napping during the day. My long days were making me feel exhausted.

    – Spending more time outside in nature. I was spending too much time in the online world, staring at computer screens all day. I’ve found myself on my walks, just pausing, closing my eyes, and enjoying the warmth of the sun on my face.

    – Spending more time with my girlfriend, Yvonne, and my family and friends. I know the quality of our personal relationships is a huge determining factor in our levels of happiness. I’d been a little neglectful of this.

    – Reading more fiction. I normally read to learn, which I love, but it’s tough going. I wanted to escape to some far-off fictional land!

    – Practicing the act of appreciation. Tony Robbins says, “Trade your expectations for appreciation, and your whole world changes in an instant.” Having dropped my personal expectations of myself and switched to appreciating, this has certainly been true for me. Each night I’ve been listing ten things I appreciate.

    I’m two weeks into my pause period, and I’m pleased to say I’m feeling refreshed. My personal relationships have improved, the weight has been lifted from my shoulders and chest, and I feel somehow I’ve gotten out of my own way.

    Perhaps I was being busy in an illusionary attempt to feel in control of the areas of my life I wished to move forward.

    This may be true.

    I also feel we often stay stuck in ‘doing mode,’ moving toward our goals, because we feel on the other side of those actions and goals is what we really want. 

    And what do we really want? I can only speak for myself, of course. When all is said and done, what I really want most is the freedom to enjoy my life and to feel good.

    By taking a step back, I’ve realized an important truth.

    I have this freedom right now.

    It’s a funny world we live in where we work so long and hard to essentially buy back our freedom at a later date.

    It’s far easier to appreciate the level of freedom we have right now, before pursuing more. This has been my biggest lesson.

    There is absolutely a time for actions, progress, a time for being down on our knees planting seeds.

    However, we need to be mindful of when it’s time to pause and take a step back and enjoy the warmth of the sun on our faces.

  • How I Learned to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions

    How I Learned to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions

    “Sometimes I think I need a spare heart to feel all the things I feel.” ~Sanober Khan

    I felt her agony and loneliness as if it were my own. Even as I write that sentence, my eyes well up and heaviness fills my heart. Then, I’m reminded to apply the advice I give others.

    My mom was a special person, a sensitive soul just like me. Actually, I’m so much like she was, yet so different. One of the differences between us is that I had an opportunity to observe her life’s challenges. I saw her challenges reflected within myself and made a conscious choice to find healthy ways to cope.

    You see, my mom was a deep feeler and felt the emotions of people near and far. I imagine it was her strong empathy and personal challenges that led her to want to help others, as a wounded healer in a sense.

    But as a helper and healer, she struggled with her mental and emotional health over the years. Witnessing her life moved me to learn how to regulate my own sensitive emotions and set healthy boundaries.

    Sometimes I wonder if not knowing how to manage her empathy is what made her sick.

    There are many ways to understand the challenges my mom battled before her death in 2007. From her perspective, she had a rare, unknown physical illness. Some who knew her may have thought she was manipulative and attention-seeking. Some would see an addiction to pain medication. Psychologists would diagnose her with psychosomatic disorder, borderline personality disorder, and bipolar disorder.

    Maybe all and none of those explanations are true. But perhaps she didn’t have any “disorder” at all. I’m not really asserting that to be true, but merely posing a curious question. What if she was just a sensitive, empathic person who lacked the skills to manage the pain around and within her? What if one unhelpful coping mechanism led a to slew of other ailments?

    I believe my mom felt real physical and emotional pain. I struggled to fully understand her over the years. But after many years of reflection, I now trust her experience because of what I know about my own sensitive nature.

    As sensitive people, we may present with high emotion and feel easily overwhelmed by our senses. We’re often told by the world that there’s something wrong with us. And when we think there’s something inherently wrong with us, we tend to tuck these traits away into our “shadow” or unconscious mind.

    Well, now we’ve not only tucked away our core nature, but possibly the empathic depth that goes along with being a sensitive person as well. There may be a part of us that knows that we’re emotional sponges. Yet, we may choose to ignore our nature without really learning how to manage our empathy in such a way that prevents “dis-ease” and fosters well-being.

    This was me for a long time.

    Not only am I prone to feeling depleted and drained in situations with certain people, but emotional pain of others tends to show up in my physical body. When I over-feel, my throat feels like it’s closing and as my chest constricts, my chronic back pain flares up.

    My boyfriend was complaining of one of those small, painful pimples inside his nose recently. I got one as well. We joked about sympathy pains, but I do wonder sometimes.

    I’ve felt the emotional pain of my family, friends, clients, and strangers. It’s not a simple, “Oh, I feel bad for him.” It’s feeling the despair and rejection of that teenager whose parents didn’t pick him up when he was released from the behavioral hospital where I worked. It’s the deep anguish of being that relative who feels no one believes her and she’s all alone.

    I feel challenged to find the right language to express it all because the deep heartache and heavy burden is a feeling not a word.

    The thing is that no matter how painful it is to feel the weight of the world in my body, I wouldn’t trade my depth and ability to feel for anything. The empathy that comes with high sensitivity is a true gift if we know how to use it.

    We need more kind, compassionate souls if we want to heal the world. Sensitive people have a natural capacity to show kindness because of our profound empathy.

    Deep empathy gives us a special strength in relating and connecting to others. When we genuinely care, we’re more apt to be able to understand another person in a way not that all people can. Our sincerity can help us to develop meaningful, fulfilling relationships.

    Relationships offer us a chance to not only grow a deep sense of connection with another human being, but also an opportunity to learn about ourselves. Both of these are integral to the human experience.

    And as sensitive people, we not only feel the intensity of pain, but also the intensity of joy.

    Yet, regulating our empathy is key to stopping the flood of emotion from overwhelming our ability to cope and care for our well-being.

    If we want to stop absorbing emotional baggage from others, it all starts with taking care of our physical, social, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs. I know it sounds like the whole world is harping on the idea of self-care, but there’s a reason for this.

    When our own immune system or energy is depleted, we become a perfect sponge for sopping up emotions. We must take care of ourselves to avoid absorption in the first place.

    1. When you notice heavy emotion, start by labeling what you’re feeling.

    Labeling helps to bring us into a state of pause, which can help us to gain a little distance from the emotional experience for a moment.

    2. Ask yourself whether what you’re feeling is yours, someone else’s, or a mix of the two.

    It can be difficult to discern the difference sometimes. One approach I like to take is if I think I might be feeling a particular person’s “stuff,” I’ll imagine the person as completely whole, content, and full of light. Then I’ll revisit my own experience and see if I still feel the same way.

    This played out in a recent loss in my life. While I was experiencing my own grief, when my relative who was closest to this person seemed to start to heal, I realized that much of my sadness released as well.

    3. The moment you catch yourself feeling emotions that aren’t yours, raise your awareness of what’s happening within you.

    It can help to say the word “compassion” to yourself as a way of intentionally focusing on what you can do to be supportive rather than allowing yourself to be overpowered by emotion.

    4. Take a deep breath and notice where in your body you feel the most calm, grounded, or neutral.

    It might be as simple as your toe or finger. Bring your attention to that place in your body and allow it to be a centering force to keep you grounded while you process and release any feelings you may have absorbed. Sometimes just having one calm place in our body can serve as a resource when the rest of you is feeling overwhelmed.

    5. Return the other person’s emotions to them.

    It is not your responsibility to carry other people’s emotional distress, and equally important, it helps absolutely no one. Try saying to yourself, “I’m letting this emotional pain that is not mine go now.” Remember that other people have to go through their own processes in order to grow.

    6. Use visualization to fully release the emotions.

    I find that it helps me to visualize a waterfall flowing through my body as a final release of any residual emotional gunk I might be carrying.

    —

    At the center of all of the above steps is building the awareness to know when we’re allowing ourselves to absorb and and adopting tools to reduce this propensity. As a sensitive person, your empathy is a gift that the world needs. It’s up to each of us to channel our empathy into greater compassion so that we can remain strong and well.

  • Pre-Order Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal and Receive 3 Free Bonus Gifts

    Pre-Order Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal and Receive 3 Free Bonus Gifts

    There was a time when worrying was like breathing to me. It’s estimated that we think between 50,000 and 70,000 thoughts per day and we breathe 23,040 breaths. It would likely be accurate for me to say I once panicked as often as I inhaled.

    I worried about what people thought of me. I worried that people weren’t thinking of me at all. I worried about what could go wrong. I worried I might have done something wrong. And I worried about being wrong—just by being me.

    All this worry was crippling. It’s hard to enjoy anything when you’re there but not because the deepest part of you is tied up in knots, held hostage by your perpetually panicked brain.

    I eventually learned that my body and mind were primed for anxiety in my younger years—meaning I lived in a constant state of fight-or-flight mode, always on edge and on the lookout for threats—and that I’d reinforced this sense of dread through persistently negative, irrational thoughts.

    I suspect many of us live like this: with a fearful, racing mind and a sense that at any time, the other shoe could drop—and it might be freakishly large enough to crush us. But we don’t have to stay under this weight.

    Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about relaxing my body, calming my mind, and proactively managing anxiety.

    I’ve learned to recognize the thoughts that don’t serve me and to actively shift my perspective before I get swept up in a vortex of fear.

    I’ve learned to embrace uncertainty and to trust that I can handle whatever comes at me.

    And I’ve learned to accept that I will sometimes experience anxiety, no matter how much I heal or grow, so I don’t fight myself so much when it inevitably happens.

    This is what compelled me to create Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal, with the help of my talented friend, illustrator Rose Hwang.

    Filled with quotes, prompts, and questions, along with coloring and doodling pages, Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal provides a number of different activities to help you reframe your worries and minimize anxiety in your daily life. 

    If you have a hard time detaching from worrisome thoughts, this could be just what you need to learn to let go and ease your troubled mind. It takes a little time and practice, but with just a few mindful minutes each day, and the right tools, anyone can become less anxious.

    If you pre-order before the June 26th launch date, you’ll receive three free bonus gifts, including:

    A series of four meditations on letting go (led by yours truly), each with an EFT tapping session led by Naomi Jansen and an introductory chat with Naomi and her One Mind Live co-founder Stephen Fearnley

    An exclusive audio interview with me and Ehren Prudhel, host of the soon-to-be-launched podcast Next Creator Up, focusing on worries related to pursuing a new dream (more specifically, my first feature screenplay)

    A series of three vibrant desktop wallpapers featuring adorable Buddhas and calming quotes

    All you need to do to claim your bonuses is pre-order your copy from any online vendor and then forward your purchase confirmation email to worryjournal@tinybuddha.com.

    Worry is a part of life, but it doesn’t have to control us. It’s possible to breathe a lot easier. These days, I do. I hope this journal helps you do the same.

    **Though Amazon hasn’t yet discounted the price, it will likely go down soon, as it always does. As part of Amazon’s pre-order price guarantee, you’ll be charged the lowest price offered before the launch date.

  • Why I No Longer Believe There’s Something Wrong with Me

    Why I No Longer Believe There’s Something Wrong with Me

    “Our thoughts create our beliefs, meaning if you think about yourself a certain way for a long enough period of time you will ultimately believe it.” ~Anonymous

    You’re ugly. You’re stupid. You’re a loser.

    Imagine thinking this way about yourself every day. No exaggeration. That was me.

    When a girl didn’t want to go on a second date with me, I told myself I was ugly. When I didn’t know what someone was talking about, I told myself I was stupid. When my Instagram post only received two likes, I told myself I was loser.

    I spoon-fed myself toxic thoughts like these on a daily basis for years. And what’s worse is I believed them.

    But why? Where do these toxic thoughts and beliefs even come from? Well, for most of us they come from our childhoods, and they are largely based on experiences with our caregivers.

    My belief system (which fuels those not-so-nice thoughts listed above) was formed by the tragic death of my mother when I was three-and-a-half years old and by my rageaholic cocaine-addict father. I internalized Mom’s death and Dad’s crazy behavior (trust me, it was bad) the only way I knew how to: I thought I was the problem.

    You see, my dad never sat me down and apologized for bursting into my room in the middle of the night high on cocaine and torturing me. He never apologized for not allowing me to celebrate my birthdays. He never apologized for making me get in front of my soccer team and tell them that I was a bad boy and couldn’t play in that week’s game.

    Since he never apologized to me, my growing little mind took it personally and figured I must be the problem. I thought I deserved to be punished and as such, a negative thought pattern was born.

    Like a kid at school writing on a chalkboard because he did something wrong, my thoughts wrote in my mind over and over again: I did something wrong. I did something wrong.

    This consistent negative self-talk eventually turned into a core belief: I am wrong. I am wrong.  

    Imagine growing up believing that your very existence is wrong. That was me. I was hard-wired by my parents to believe this. It was like being sentenced for a crime that I didn’t commit.

    As an adult I actively looked for validation in other people as a result of this belief. I became a people-pleaser, a yes man, a guy that would do anything for you to like me. Please like me, please tell me I’m okay.

    If you liked me, I felt less broken, but one person liking me was never enough. If I was in a room with 100 people and all of them but one liked me I would worry and fret, wondering what I had done to upset that one person.

    I also thought I had to be perfect in every area of my life. My hair had to be perfect. My clothes had to be perfect.

    I had to say the right things. Do the right things. Be the right thing.

    I also used each failed attempt for your validation as proof that I was broken. See!

    I would go to bed at night saying I was done with that kind of behavior, yet I would wake up in the morning and start it all over again. It was like the movie Groundhog Day. I was living the same day over and over again, and I couldn’t stop.

    I hit what I’ll call my rock bottom eight years ago when I was thirty-seven-years old. I hated myself and the life I had created and desperately wanted change.

    But how? How do we let go of deeply rooted false beliefs that no longer serve us? The same way we formed them.

    You begin by detaching from the individual thoughts that reinforce the negative belief, then you let go of the belief all together. I’ve heard them called illusions, false beliefs, and even lies. It took time for me to believe these lies and it took time for me to undo them.

    Henry David Thoreau said, “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

    In order to let go of false beliefs, we have to practice observing our thoughts and recognize when we are acting on old stories about our worth. By repeatedly choosing not to get caught up in the old stories, we can begin to experience the world in a new way.

    You don’t go to the gym once and suddenly you’re in the best shape of your life. No, you go five to six times a week, eat healthy, and get plenty of rest. And you do this over and over again.

    The same goes for our minds. The more we work toward mindfulness and self-kindness, the quicker we will default to it. When you catch yourself having a negative thought, recognize that you don’t have to get attached to it and choose to let it pass. If you’re having trouble letting it go, tell yourself a new, more empowering story.

    And above all else, just remember, it had nothing to do with you. You did nothing wrong. You are not flawed.

    I didn’t commit a crime. I just absorbed the information given to me the only way my eight-year-old mind knew how to.

    So where do we start? It’s different for all of us, but if you’re reading this and relating to any of it then that in and of itself is a start. That’s the beginning of self-awareness.

    For me it was all about becoming self-aware. That was my first step toward personal change.

    I knew I couldn’t do things on my own (been there, tried that), so I started with a twelve-step program. Liberation would never be possible if I kept reaching for validation from other people, so I took a deep breath and courageously stepped into my first meeting and admitted that I had a problem.

    It was there that I opened up and allowed myself to be seen for who I was: a wounded man who sometimes still felt like a scared little boy. Eventually, little by little, I shared my childhood secrets and I was loved for doing so. It was an eye opening experience, which immediately changed my thought process to: I did nothing wrong.

    For the last eight years I’ve been letting go of false thoughts and beliefs, which in turn has created new possibilities for how I think and feel in relationships. I hope you can do the same.

  • Why Creativity Is the Path to Mindfulness, Happiness, and Peace

    Why Creativity Is the Path to Mindfulness, Happiness, and Peace

    “Mindful and creative, a child who has neither a past, nor examples to follow, nor value judgments, simply lives, speaks and plays in freedom.” ~Arnaud Desjardins

    No human being lives without experiencing the duality of life.

    Good and bad. Love and hate. Life and death. Acceptance and rejection. Success and failure. Joy and jealousy. Compassion and judgment.

    So why do we spend so much time trying to pretend that it’s bad to experience all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly?

    Even our weather men and women tell us it’s a going to be a bad day because it’s raining or snowing. I mean, come on! The earth rejoices when it rains; snow is a natural part of our eco-system.

    Why do we try so hard to suppress the difficult feelings and experiences in our lives? Because our brains are wired that way? Because we were traumatized? Because our parents, teachers, and God knows who else told us to?

    Does it really matter, as we heal, who, where, and why?

    I remember the first time I heard the quote “Thoughts are things.”

    I knew instantly that if that was true, I was in trouble because I had a lot of thoughts I wasn’t proud of and never voiced out loud. I was taught at a very young age not to “rock the boat” or be “too dramatic” and the worst, “Your mom is unhappy because of you kids.” Yikes!

    So, when things got bad at home or at school or at church, they got stuffed. In me. In my heart. In my gut and in my head.

    On the outside I looked fine. Cute, bubbly, artistic, smart. But on the inside I was scared, confused, and anxious, and did not have a clue how to interact comfortably with people.

    I tried really hard (unsuccessfully) to fit in.

    Luckily, I had the outlet of art. I drew, I painted, I sewed, I made batiks—whatever I could get my hands on in the art department at the Catholic High school I went to, or whatever my mom would let me touch at home. She was an amazing seamstress, but, with eight kids, had neither the time nor patience to teach me. Luckily I’m old enough that we had “Home Ed” in high school, so I learned to sew well enough that my mom would let me use her sewing machine.

    Being creative got me through high school and into college with no major consequences. I wasn’t insecure, lonely, or in need of an outlet. I didn’t drink too much, I wasn’t promiscuous, and I didn’t do drugs.

    Fast forward a couple decades and I can tell you that eventually, I did experience the consequences of trying to drink my thoughts and feelings away. 

    I stayed pretty creative as long as I could, but, as life goes, I grew up, got married, had kids, and started to work.

    The turning point was when I lost my family of origin after some dramatic, painful events that I’ve chosen not to discuss publicly. (I learned the hard way that going over and over painful past events is not helpful to my healing.)

    I could not deal with what was going on inside of me.

    I started to drink more and more to squash what I was feeling.

    Within a few years, the addictive gene in me eventually cried out “GOT YA!” and I was lost.

    And this is what led me to the finding peace through being creative again. My crisis. My breakdown.

    An intervention with beautiful, sober women who didn’t know me but wanted to see me find myself again led me to being creative again.

    These women had been learning how to draw and paint from a friend who eventually became my sponsor.

    When I saw what these women had painted, with no artistic experience, it triggered something good inside me—the memory of being creative. (Yes, people, we can have good triggers!)

    “Whatever this is, I’m in!” I said, and I was on my way home. Home to my true self.

    They introduced me to an art form I had never heard of before, mandalas. I had no idea what a “mandala” was. Never heard of it and didn’t care. The mandala teacher had a studio full of every art supply you can imagine and space for many women to create. I was in heaven!

    As I drew and painted my first mandala, my creative mind took over and the crazy thoughts in my head stopped.

    I didn’t realize it then, but being creative again forced me to be what we all strive for when we think of being mindful: calm, serene, awake, and aware. 

    My goal was to have fun and be creative again, but what I got was far more than that.

    I reactivated the divine creative energy we are all born with.

    When I’m engaged in any creative activity, my “monkey mind” settles down. My inner critic has little to say. I’m not regretting the past or fearing the future. I’m in the here and now. I’m centered, relaxed, and rejuvenated.

    I got really curious—what’s was going on?

    Why had engaging in creative endeavors become so significant in my life? Why did it feel like that had been the single most important thing in my healing (after being sober, that is)?

    The Interconnectedness of Creativity and Mindfulness

    So began my research into creativity and mindfulness.

    I discovered that Carl Jung used art therapy with his patients. He encouraged the spontaneous drawing of mandalas. He believed that by just letting his patients draw with no interference, they would heal things in their psyche without even knowing it.

    “Most mandalas have an intuitive, irrational character and, through their symbolical content, exert a retroactive influence on the unconscious. They therefore possess a ‘magical’ significance, like icons, whose possible efficacy was never consciously felt by the patient.” ~Carl Yung

    I stumbled upon a new book about the power of doodling called The Doodle Revolution, by Sunni Brown. In her book, Sunni cites a lot of very famous people who used doodling to help them think better and retain information. She challenges all the parents, teachers, and bosses who say, “Stop doodling! Get serious! Grow up!”

    “There is NO SUCH THING as a mindless doodle,” according to Sunni.

    CNN reports creative activities impact the body in a way similar to meditation. It’s like yoga for your brain.

    This was also about the time that “adult coloring” became a billion-dollar industry. Why are millions of adults coloring, I wondered?

    The more research I did, the more obvious it became.

    Our society is craving sanity. Coloring reminds us all of the days of childhood when it was okay to pick up crayons and zone out for a bit. Having “adult” coloring books has given millions permission to stop, color, and find peace.

    What I personally experienced while being creative was mindfulness; my brain was quiet yet active while painting, collaging, sewing, drawing, coloring, baking, and crafting.

    Being creative somehow taught me the skill, if you will, of paying attention to me, of being mindful.

    As it turns out, when you are being creative, you are using both your creative self and your analytical self, your left and right brain hemispheres at the same time. This not only quiets your mind, it engages it.

    You are creating without angst. It kind of just happens.

    My creative self was reawakened. I was allowing myself to be me, to feel me.

    Having something creative “in the wings” became important, something to look forward to. Downtime became fun instead of something I dreaded.

    This is not say that being mindful instantly became an easy process for all the other times when I was not doing something creative.

    Having gone through some pretty traumatic years, it was “normal” for thoughts of dread, unworthiness, sadness, and shame to rumble through my mind, like the undercurrent of a river, when I was engaged in mundane activities.

    Being alone cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, doing bills, and working was still wrought with angst and despair.

    I began to yearn for that calm, serene mindfulness I felt while being creative at all times in my life. So I engaged in more creative activities and hung out with people who were on the same path of healing. I began to create a new “family” of people who supported and loved me. 

    I found and became active in a spiritual home. I started to naturally attract friends on the same path of becoming more creative, more mindful, more spiritual, more compassionate and successful in all areas of life.

    I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and learned how important it is to notice it all—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

    “Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    Wow, it’s okay to have “bad” thoughts. It’s actually normal. It’s hard. And I learned that it’s my responsibility alone how to handle it.

    I’ve subscribed to helpful blogs like TinyBuddha.com and mindful.org.

    I started doing Bikram (hot) yoga.

    Ninety minutes in a hot room doing yoga brought up a lot of difficult memories. But I stayed with it. I stayed in the room even though I was terrible and even though I would sometimes cry during the thirty-second rest periods between poses as I processed memories of hating my body and feeling ashamed and remembered being teased for being fat.

    I began meditating.

    At first I could only meditate with music or a guided meditations for five to ten minutes. I meditated like this sporadically for years.

    Just recently I started meditating in the morning and before bed at the suggestion of my life coach. She suggested two to five minutes, silently, in the lotus position. I said, “I can do at least ten I’m sure.” Much to my surprise, ten minutes was easy so I progressed to fifteen, then twenty, then thirty.

    I am now meditating for thirty minutes, alone, no music, sitting in the lotus position (as best I can) twice a day. This I consider a miracle. Meditating like this has also allowed more memories to gently come up and dissipate. Wow.

    Being mindful is not always an easy road, but it’s a much better path than trying to stuff painful memories, feelings, and thoughts down. 

    It’s much easier than trying to drink them away.

    I know this to be true.

    Being mindful has helped me be comfortable with my thoughts. Okay, that’s not always true—I still sometimes get angry and want them to go away, but I don’t dwell as much, I don’t lash out as much, and I am most definitely a happier, more peaceful person.

    The Process of Being Creative Triggers Memories—Good Ones

    If you activate your divine creative energy, you are activating the positive, shiny aspects of yourself. You remember happier times. You feel accomplished. You’re happy with yourself. You smile more (and people smile back)!

    As you then become more mindful, perhaps through yoga and meditation, the difficult thoughts and feelings are balanced with the positive, creative, and happy aspects of you.

    You take responsibility for your life. It’s fun to be with you.

    You realize that you are the person you’ve been waiting for.

  • How I Transformed My Anxiety and What to Do If You Feel Emotionally Stuck

    How I Transformed My Anxiety and What to Do If You Feel Emotionally Stuck

    “There is still vitality under the snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.” ~Agnes Sligh Turnbull

    For as long as I can recall, I have always been a fretful and anxious person. Mine was a low-key anxiety that’s always colored the background of my life, a constant companion of ambiguous dread and imminent doom (just around the corner!)

    The annoying part was that I never quite knew why the anxiety hung around. There weren’t any real situations in my life that evoked this constant, nagging fear.

    I have tried various techniques to manage my anxiety. I tried deep breathing. I tried to balance out the fearful thoughts that sometimes follow the feeling of fear with logical investigation of the facts.

    I tried self-hypnosis—imagining a safe place in the depths of my psyche protected by multiple layers of force fields. I tried going toward the fear instead of running from it by putting myself in fear-inducing situations, so I could learn to tolerate it better. I tried self-psycho-analysis.

    All these produced various small results, but always, always there was something missing. I somehow felt like I did not go all the way to the bottom of my anxiety. 

    Then I picked up mindfulness, in those days before it became so well known. I learned on my own and in various courses, to make space for my anxiety.

    Above all, I discovered that my anxiety wasn’t me. That was an important piece of the puzzle. And yet, there was still a lot of the puzzle missing. My gut feeling was telling me, there’s got to be more.

    And then I came upon a book on Focusing. This is a method discovered by the late psychologist-philosopher Eugene Gendlin. He discovered that people who engaged in a specific kind of internal exploration of their experiences often came away feeling that their emotional struggles have transformed, quite literally.

    They no longer felt the same way before they started the internal exploration process. Even though the situation that had caused them to feel that way remained unchanged, how they understood it and felt about it had become radically different.

    I was entranced, so I read everything I could about this method. I tried it out on myself…

    And fell flat on my face. It didn’t work and I was still anxious. Only now, I was even more anxious because it was tinged with a near panicky sense that what I needed was just within my reach but I could not grasp it! I pictured my anxiety flashing the victory sign in my mind.

    Then thankfully, I took a course with a Focusing teacher in the United Kingdom and I got it.

    My anxiety started to shift.

    How I Understand It: Vital Emotions and Blocks

    We are all born with naturally flowing emotions that guide us and give us information about our lives, our worlds, and our needs. I call these “vital emotions.” No matter what form they take (joy, anger, grief, gratitude, and so forth), the experience of them moving within and through us unfettered makes us feel alive.

    Just look at babies. They are always experiencing naturally flowing emotions and they are little bundles of vitality. When they are angry, they scream without concern. When happy, their mirth is disinhibited.

    However, as we grow up, we learn to cut off these emotions. For instance, some people become overly rational at the expense of feeling emotions, like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Alternatively, some of us fall into stuck emotional patterns that repeat over and over again without getting us anywhere but into trouble (my anxiety is one example).

    I call cutting off emotions or stuck emotions “blocks.” We tend to pick them up as we bump along in life. Focusing is a method to help us free up our blocks and get in touch with our vital emotions.

    What I Learned About My Emotions

    I learned in Focusing to take on a curious and self-compassionate approach to my emotions. I also learned to drop my awareness down into body to experience the sensations of my emotions in real time, and use these sensations to guide my discovery of the layers of information contained within my emotions.

    From there, I learned to decode what my emotions are telling me that I needed at that point in time. When I accessed this new understanding, I started to feel my anxiety transform.

    When I focused on my anxiety block in an open-minded and compassionate manner, I discovered that it felt like a kind of jittery electricity coursing through my body, and occasionally thickening into a lump in my chest.

    Fascinatingly, I also found that I had a tendency to hold back in my actions, my breathing, and even my voice (I had trouble projecting my voice). It was like I had put the brakes on inside myself.

    Through gentle and persistent questioning around these bodily responses, I discovered that I picked up my anxiety block because the adults in my life had subtly and not so subtly put me down when I tried to express my vital emotions.

    I remembered being shamed for showing my vital emotions like anger or even dizzy joy. Then I was told I was too sensitive when I was feeling vulnerable and upset. My anxiety was telling me that I could not let my guard down. I could not afford to be myself fully.

    At this point, my anxiety had started to shift physically and it was replaced by another emotion—sadness. Sadness that I wasn’t allowed to be myself.

    As I paid the same gentle attention to how my body held this sadness, it shifted once more and transformed into anger. I was angry that people could do this to me, no matter how well meaning their intentions. How dare they! How could they?

    With that line of thought, I knew that I wasn’t going to let people discount my emotions again! I felt physically stronger with this new determination. I had moved pass my anxious block and touched the procession of my vital emotions hiding by it. And then, I realized that my anxiety was trying to protect me from the devastating forces of shame and ridicule. I needed to feel safe in an unsafe environment.

    They only way I knew how was to block off my vital emotions least showing them got me into trouble. This realization gave rise to a warm feeling of self-compassion—I was doing the best I could to protect myself and my anxiety was my warning system.

    A Realistic Transformative Method

    Needless to say, I fell in love with focusing and undertook more training in it. I have found my method of transforming my life-long anxiety. Do I still struggle with it? Of course, but now it feels different. It no longer is a pervasive unknown fear. It has shrunk and only occasionally pops up. And when it does, I know how to engage with it to transform it.

    Try This Out

    The next time you feel emotionally stuck or have an inexplicable emotional reaction, take a moment to pause and focus on how it feels in your body as a sensation. Notice where in your body you feel it the strongest.

    A good place to start noticing is the space within your throat, chest, and belly. Simply spend a minute or two trying to describe the raw sensation of the emotional reaction, in real time—“Right now, how does it feel?” You might notice that the sensation changing. If it does, simple stay on top of it by describing the new sensation.

    Simply tuning in this way helps you create a unique and open-minded relationship to your emotions. It is also one of the crucial steps in focusing. See if you could make this into a daily habit. Remember, emotions transform when we try to understand them in an open-minded way.

  • Think You Should Be Happy? It’s Okay to Feel Bad

    Think You Should Be Happy? It’s Okay to Feel Bad

    “We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb.” ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

    From an early age, most of us get the message that we should be happy—from well-meaning parents, teachers, and even perfect strangers. “Smile!” we are told. “Why the long face?” we are asked. It’s no wonder we grow up with the idea that feeling anything less than sunny 24/7 is somehow wrong.

    We’re ashamed to admit, even to ourselves, that sometimes we feel down. It seems that somehow we’ve failed, or that life is cheating us of our due. Facebook and Instagram certainly don’t provide a more balanced view: Everyone else is seemingly on the constant high that has become our society’s norm.

    The trouble is, life’s not really like that, and when we expect it to be we only end up feeling worse. There’s almost a sense of panic when a less-than-euphoric period lasts too long (and I’m not talking about clinical depression here, just a garden-variety restlessness or boredom). We just don’t tolerate the lows very well anymore, craving a continuous fix of what the ego calls “happiness.”

    I’ve personally bought in to the continuous happiness myth many times, and still have to remind myself that it is just that—a myth.

    From true valley experiences like sickness or divorce, to the days when life feels just plain old “blah,” my first reaction is usually to try to “fix it.” Something must be wrong, right? I shouldn’t feel this way—I should be happy!

    Something that has helped me a great deal is to substitute another word for “happiness,” a term that’s broad enough to encompass a more normal range of emotion: well-being. 

    You can continue to have a sense of well-being even in the midst of a low period. Well-being simply recognizes that life is a series of peaks and valleys, both in the macro view and on a daily basis. It is artificial (and impossible) to insist on a constantly in-flowing tide.

    So how do we cultivate a sense of well-being? It starts with self-talk. Most of our emotional reactions to life come from the way we label our experience. The ego will jump to conclusions on very little evidence and then hit the panic button: “Oh, no! Depression alert! Not feeling good—this is a problem!!”

    Try this instead: “Hmmm. I’m feeling a little down lately. I wonder what’s up with that?” And then simply sit with the feeling, and allow it to run its course. The panicky ego wants you to do something to fix what it sees as a problem. It is not comfortable simply experiencing what it considers a “bad” feeling, and will urge you to either suppress it or run away from it.

    There are lots of ways to do this (and I’ve tried them all): shopping, having a glass or two of wine, watching TV, surfing the web, and so on. None of these activities is “wrong,” unless you use it to avoid or deny your true feelings. Our emotions, besides simply being a valid part of the human experience, hold important messages for us—messages that we can’t receive when we’re running away.

    So let’s say you are allowing yourself to have the experience of feeling a bit down. It might even last for a season, but you tell yourself: “It’s okay. I know that this will pass too. I can let myself have this feeling and still be perfectly fine.” That’s well-being.

    With well-being, you can continue to enjoy all that is good in your life and treat yourself tenderly while simply letting your experience evolve naturally. And it will evolve. The beauty of allowing yourself to feel your feelings rather than stuffing them is that they then can deliver their messages and pass on through.

    Maybe the message is: You need to slow down a bit. Maybe it’s: The work you’re doing doesn’t feel meaningful anymore. Or maybe you never “figure it out.” Your body or spirit might just need a little healing or integration time. With a sense of well-being, you can trust that life is giving you just what you need, even if it doesn’t make sense or make your ego happy.

    Well-being is very similar to the Buddhist concept of equanimity, which means serenity or imperturbability. Buddhism teaches that you don’t grasp at the “good” or flee from the “bad,” but accept each as it comes.

    The Western mind often mistakes this for passivity, but it is not the same. With both equanimity and well-being, appropriate action is taken—naturally and calmly. As a bonus, action removed from the drama of the ego is often much more effective!

    And there’s another benefit to accepting the so-called “negative” experiences of life: They actually allow you to experience and appreciate the good times far more.

    When we try to go from one peak to another, we keep raising the ante: What was once satisfying is now boring; what was once a huge win doesn’t seem so impressive anymore. There’s a kind of “happiness inflation” going on that devalues what you have and makes you constantly reach for bigger and better.

    It’s counter-intuitive, but the more you experience emotions like sadness or disappointment, the more you can truly feel joy and gratitude when it comes. The poet Kahlil Gibran wrote: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

    Hard times also temper us, making us stronger, more resilient, and more compassionate. Usually we see this only in retrospect, but we can also use self-talk to remind ourselves of it in the thick of those trying times: “This isn’t much fun, but I know I’m learning and growing from it.”

    Feeling “bad,” far from being something to flee, offers so much to those who are willing to embrace the experience. You’ll have to buck the messages of the ego and of society, but you will gain much more in richness of life when you welcome both phases of the tide, the ebb as well as the flow.

  • Life Is Fragile: Make Time for What Matters and Let Go of What Doesn’t

    Life Is Fragile: Make Time for What Matters and Let Go of What Doesn’t

    “Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just be.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    I lost one of my very best friends when we were both just twenty-nine years old. In the time since, I’ve thought about him on most days.

    Thinking about him sometimes makes me well up and feel sad. Sometimes it makes me think about the hole him not being here has left. Selfishly, perhaps, I think about how much I miss him.

    Sometimes I laugh aloud at the thought of a funny moment we shared, or a personal trait he had. I often draw inspiration from the zest for life he had, his drive to succeed.

    Although he died at a relatively early age we had been firm friends since we were twelve when, realizing he lived on my street, I walked up to him in class and introduced myself and we started to walk to and from school together.

    That was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. As kids, we spent the evenings hitting tennis balls until it got dark or listening to music and talking about girls. As we grew, we shared lots of firsts together—first holidays away without parents, first serious girlfriends, first homes, first relationship heartbreaks. In his case, him becoming a father.

    We celebrated, we laughed, we cried, we got into mischief, we supported each other. We did all the things really close friends do for each other over the course of many years.

    Brad had a zest for life. Always the first up on the dance floor at a party. Always ready with a funny anecdote or story. He had a genuineness that most people warmed to. I was, and am, lucky to call him my friend.

    Sometimes I think how unfair it is that was cut short so early, even though I am aware that cancer is no respecter of age or what type of person you are.

    Most often, though, thinking about him now brings a clarity and peace to my thoughts. Problems I had been focused on melt away. I gain a fresh perspective because I become acutely aware of how precious this life is.

    The Fragility of Life

    We all lose people we’re close to if we stick around long enough ourselves. This is an inconvenient truth of life. There is a fragility to it.

    There are no guarantees. No order or set amount of time our loved ones will be there for us. No promise that how we feel, and what we can do today, will be how we feel and what we can do tomorrow. No promise that the health and relative wealth we enjoy today will be with us in the morning.

    Facing up to the fragility of life can be scary. It can also be empowering. It can help us hold onto a perspective that supports us living a life rich with positive experiences. It can leave us with a conviction to make the most of our days.

    Applying Focus to Our Days

    One of the great ironies of our lives is that so many of us choose to stay busy, but then we complain that we don’t have time for our passion projects and goals. We put things off until tomorrow, as if we have unlimited time to make our dreams happen.

    The book we promised to write.

    The new skill we put off another year to learn.

    The dream trip we promised ourselves and our family for the last five years.

    We all do it, too much of the time.

    When we view life through the lens of having a finite amount of time, we are more likely to make better use of that time.

    Gratitude for the Way Things Are

    While striving for new goals is to be admired, we also need to learn to enjoy the present moment. To make time to enjoy our successes, small and big, and celebrate the way things are.

    Traveling has become a passion for me, mostly because I married someone that has the travel bug who has opened up the world to me, literally. I get to travel more than most—it’s a priority in our lives. Dream trips have become a reality for me. However, I don’t take this for granted.

    Every time I travel and visit somewhere new for the very first time, I’ll take a moment to pause and reflect on how lucky I am to experience this new adventure. I pause to think about the friend I lost, and others that are not so lucky. I try to embrace this feeling of gratitude fully. It helps me experience this new place on a deeper level.

    I try to hold onto this feeling and let it spill over into other areas of my life. When I gain some perspective, I realize that many of my problems are fairly minor.

    My train is running late, and when it turns up it’s packed.

    The coffee machine has broken, and I can’t get my regular latte from my favorite café on the commute into work.

    What do all of the above ‘problems’ have in common? They are, of course, first world problems. There are so many people in the world worse off than I am—people that endure unimaginable hardships on a daily basis, just trying to live their lives.

    I try to remember this so I don’t overlook the precious gifts I already have in my life, and so I don’t complain about “how tough I have it,” when really, I’m only dealing with minor annoyances and inconveniences.

    I’m not always successful of course. I still get in my own way more often than I should, as we all do from time to time. I’m a work in progress, but practicing gratitude has helped me keep perspective.

    Learning to Let Things Go

    Anger, hate, regret, envy, disappointment. All can become toxic emotions that eat us up.

    None of these emotions are really useful, or get us very far, yet we hold onto them, as if they are fuel.

    In my own case, I can, and do, take inspiration from others, but I am aware that if I start to compare too much, envy can follow. I have to watch this.

    If I even come close to feeling envy for someone else that I perceive to have more success than me, or be somewhere I want to be, I try to remind myself that I don’t know how these people actually feel.

    I don’t know what their story is or how much they have had to sacrifice. I don’t know if they are truly happy, or they’re just masking deep insecurity or self-doubt with lies and a smile. This helps me let go of the desire to compare and simply commit to my own journey.

    The same is true of regret. It’s an emotion I have done my best to distance myself from. I’m human and I make mistakes, mistakes I don’t want to repeat. I’ve hurt people close to me that I never want to hurt again with foolish acts or careless words at times. But beating myself up again and again for those mistakes is futile. It’s a waste of the precious life I am lucky to live.

    I’m someone that believes in living life. I have lessons to learn, and can use those to fuel me trying to be a better version of me.

    Maybe this outlook and approach to life is all part of the aging and maturing process. Or maybe it’s because I’ve gained a rounder perspective of who I am and how lucky I am, and learned to let go of these emotions. Seeing them for what they are, a waste of my focus.

    And to be totally transparent, I am very much still a work in progress. I’m far from Zen-like calm all of the time. I still get frustrated at things I shouldn’t. I can still overreact to situations at times. I can still carry a grudge more than I would like to. I still feel the bitter feeling of disappointment in others at times, even though I know this is more about my own expectations than them. I’m getting better at letting things go but I still have a way to go.

    When we truly embrace the fact that our lives are precious, we can choose to leave the negativity behind. We can choose to let go of the things that don’t matter so much, on closer inspection.

    Making Time for Those That Matter Most

    A finite amount of time in this world means we have to prioritize. We have to say no to some things so we can say yes to those things that matter most to us.

    This means ensuring there is quality space in our days for our families, our friends, and ourselves. I’m not talking about five minutes snatched here and there while staring at a screen; I’m talking about quality time where we are fully present with those around us and our surroundings.

    In the case of time for ourselves, quality time checking in with ourselves can involve a long walk, some meditation, any other act of self-care.

    Fleeting Moments in Time

    Facing up to the fact that we all have a temporary place in this world should be reason enough to apply a degree of clarity and purpose to our days.

    We need to make time for the people that matter most to us.

    We need to make time for ourselves.

    We need to make time to dream out loud.

    It’s wonderful and admirable to work hard, but we need to ensure we’re making ample time to celebrate our successes and enjoy our journeys.

    These are fleeting and precious moments in time. Let’s make the most of them.

    Note: This article is dedicated to Brad, always the first one up on the dance floor, consistently the greatest ally you could wish to have. I miss you, my friend.

  • Move Your Body, Calm Your Mind: 5 Practices That Help Ease Anxiety

    Move Your Body, Calm Your Mind: 5 Practices That Help Ease Anxiety

    “Get out of your head and get into your body. Think less and feel more.” ~Osho

    Do you want to meditate but the idea of sitting with your thoughts for twenty minutes gives you anxiety? Or maybe meditation seems like one more task you have to add to your ever growing to-do list, so you take a pass?

    As a working mother of three, I’m no stranger to daily stress and routine overwhelm. Life in the twenty-first century can be pretty hectic, especially for busy moms, and so many of us search for practical ways to minimize the stress and anxiety that are so common in our society.

    Meditation seems like a perfect solution. It’s “easy,” accessible, and it’s good for our health, both mental and physical. It reduces stress and improves emotional regulation, concentration, and sleep. It helps us develop more kindness and compassion, for others and ourselves.

    Sounds like a perfect cure. Except it’s hard. It can feel like a chore or a time thief. And it often triggers our fears and anxieties, especially if we have a history of trauma we’re still healing. 

    So why not adjust the traditional meditation practice to reflect our modern lifestyle and constrictions? Why not mimic the practice of mindfulness while moving your body? Instead of sitting still, why not focus on gentle, repetitive movements that are enjoyable, all while reaping the benefits of mindfulness?

    Believe me, you can have it both ways.

    I am a Type A person. I am driven, full of energy and ambition. I’m competitive, over-scheduled, and always on the go. And I don’t have much patience, or time to kill. Sitting still for twenty minutes is often the last thing I want to do.

    Another hurdle for me was anxiety, which often peaked when I opened up to my internal world of thoughts and feelings, as one does while sitting in meditation. I do better now, but in the first year of practice I often felt triggered and overwhelmed—precisely the opposite of what I was going for.

    This is common for people with trauma or chronic pain. We tend to numb, distract, or ignore distressing sensations in order to make it through the day. Mindfulness requires the opposite of such disassociation.

    When sitting in meditation, I was to focus on and “befriend” my body, along with the residue of trauma still lodged in it. Despite my best intentions I would become fidgety and agitated instead. Noticing my pain, both physical and emotional, seemed to increase it. I’d find myself trying to resist it, run from it, beat myself up for not being able to just “observe” my experience, and then criticize myself for beating myself up. It was a vicious cycle.

    I understood that the goal was to learn to be with my experience, and it did get easier over time, but often it was too much to handle.

    Needless to say, I’ve searched for alternative ways to meditate, ones that didn’t involve sitting still but were movement-based instead. And I found plenty.

    The Meditative Benefits of Rhythmic Movement

    Many of us have experienced some type of trauma or significant stress in the past. It’s part of a human experience. Even if we were lucky enough to avoid trauma, we live in a world of chronic stress and overwhelm. We often operate in “survival mode” and experience chronic muscle tension and fatigue. We feel anxious and maxed out too often.

    Anxiety is often a symptom of a freeze response in fight-flight-freeze—the feeling of helplessness, our inability to change or escape a difficult situation, such as the daily stress that comes with our modern lifestyle. Movement is a great antidote to that freeze state. It gets us unstuck.

    Stress gets stuck in our bodies. We carry this tension around with us and it affects us on a body-mind level. Movement is a great way to release that tension and get back to a relaxed state. Repetitive movement can also bring us into the state of mindfulness, giving our body a chance to press the reset button and kick in our natural healing and renewal processes.

    Rhythmic movement, just like meditation, can be very therapeutic and healing. It helps integrate our body and mind, reset the nervous system, and rewire the brain for healing and wholeness. It’s not only good for your physical body but your mental health too.

    Meditative movement activities are grounding as well. Feeling grounded is the exact opposite to perpetual worry.

    Anxiety is about getting stuck in our internal world of thoughts and feelings. The repetitive movement, however, helps us get out of our head and reconnect with our body, grounding and centering us, connecting us back to the earth and to ourselves.

    Grounding reduces inflammation and emotional stress, elevates our mood, and improves our immune responses. It brings us back to feeling centered and secure. And it’s exactly what we need in times of struggle and overwhelm.

    5 Movement-Based Meditative Practices Perfect for Anxious People

    There are a number of activities that have a meditative effect that don’t require you to sit still for twenty minutes. In fact, any movement that’s relaxing and repetitive can give you similar effect as meditation. The trick is to go slow and bring mindfulness to the practice. And if you enjoy doing it, you will find it easier to add to your daily routine, so it won’t feel like a chore.

    Here are my favorites:

    1. Walking

    Walking is one of the easiest anxiety-reducing movement-based techniques. It can invoke mindfulness, clear your head, and release stress from the body. And if done in nature, you will feel more wakeful and alert and, at the same time, open, relaxed, and spacious.

    2. Hatha yoga

    The most rewarding for me personally, Hatha yoga is a gentle practice of body-mind integration. Yoga combines awareness of breathing with asana practice, enabling you to achieve the state of mindfulness and wholeness. It’s easy and accessible to everyone—you don’t have to join a studio, simply search YouTube for inspiration and lesson videos.

    3. Gardening

    Nothing connects me more to my surroundings than gardening. Great for anxiety and taming the monkey mind, gardening is a perfect activity to help you become mindful and engage with the world around you with all your senses. The calm of gardening can bring about the state of flow, as you become fully absorbed in the activity. Gardening is grounding; my garden is my personal Zen.

    4. Swimming

    Swimming is a gentle exercise that allows you to focus on deep breathing and the rhythm of your stroke, both lulling you into a state of deep relaxation. It comes with minimal distractions and is a great tension reliever. All you need is a body of water.

    5. Dancing

    Focused on expression on a bodily level, dancing allows you tap into your body’s own healing resources. It’s therapeutic. You connect with your body in elemental ways and allow it to express feelings often hard to convey in words—something especially beneficial for trauma victims and people suffering from anxiety or depression.

    By being mindful while dancing, you also learn about yourself and your body and embrace your creativity and the comforting flow of pleasant physical sensations, fully re-engaging with the present moment. And that’s healing.

    —

    Whatever practice you choose, use the movement and sensations of your body to bring your awareness to the present moment. Draw your attention to your hands and feet, the sensations of touching the ground, and your arms swinging or shifting in motion.

    Follow your breath as you inhale and exhale deeply and air travels in and out of your lungs. Let the rhythmic flow of your movements relax your mind.

    Listen, notice, smell, and feel into your surrounding, using your senses to anchor yourself in the present moment.

    Observe your experience, including your thoughts and feelings, without judgment. Notice when you get lost in thoughts, and bring yourself back to the movement, back to the now.

    Try to add mindful movement to your daily routine, if possible. It’s a great way to reset your mind and remove stress out of your body, in a gentle and supportive way. Weave your favorite meditative activity into your daily life, without the distraction of technology. Make it your self-care habit.

    And don’t forget to tap into mindful movement in times of struggle and overwhelm, to gently shift your body and mind out of stress and into relaxation. It’s a great alternative to sitting meditation when anxious energy is stuck in your body, ready to be released in an active way.

    Mindfulness Takes Practice But You Are Worth It

    I used to ruminate a lot on my walks. With practice, I’ve learned to let go of my onslaught of thoughts and bring myself back to the present moment. I now focus on the smell of freshly cut grass and the feel the breeze on my neck and sun on my face, and pay attention to each step and how it resonates through my body. As I walk, I realize the beauty around me and fill my heart with joy and gratitude. That uplifting energy fuels the rest of my day.

    I do practice sitting meditation, and I have found it to be very useful. But my temperament begs me to move and be in nature, which is why I love walking and gardening.

    Think of what is healing, relaxing, and brings you pleasure. Then bring awareness to your body as you develop a practice of bringing that joy into your every day, whether through movement, a creative pursuit, or play.

    You are worth it!

  • Soften into Life and You Will be Strong

    Soften into Life and You Will be Strong

    “It’s the hard things that break; soft things don’t break…You can waste so many years of your life trying to become something hard in order not to break; but it’s the soft things that can’t break! The hard things are the ones that shatter into a million pieces!” ~C Joybell C

    Language is a powerful thing. Though often dismissed as “semantics,” the imagery our words and terminology impart often adds unintended or even misguided connotations onto what we intend to say.

    This is why it is so difficult to speak about spirituality. When we say “God” or “salvation” or even “peace,” those words can bear an unintended doctrinal, political, or social stamp on them that means something very different to the listener than it does to the speaker.

    A prime example of this is the “hardness” imagery that is woven into many words intended to be positive, such as “strong” or “tough.” We want to be “strong” and “tough,” to be able to handle all of life’s trials and tribulations without cracking.

    However, these words often morph into an image of hardness. When we are strong, we hunker down, grit our teeth, and bear it. When we are tough, we “power through” the bad times.

    The short-term result is often satisfying. The hard person bounces back quickly from a failed marriage or an illness or losing a long-term job. The trouble, however, is often found beneath the surface and in the long term. What happens when someone spends a lifetime hunkering down and powering through?

    To use a cliché, the tree that doesn’t bend, breaks. A hard tree can endure a lot, but when a strong wind blows, it cracks and falls over. Let’s look at a bunch of images to see this more clearly.

    Brené Brown talks of armor. We put on armor to avoid the hurt. That used to be a way of life for me.

    I once knew someone who had endured a lot of trauma as a child, having been abused and betrayed by people to whom he was vulnerable.

    His survival mechanism developed through these experiences was to not go too deep with people, to hold his cards close to the vest and not open up. This was easier, he explained, because when you were done with someone, you could just move on easily without feeling the hurt.

    What followed in his wake were broken relationships and broken people, who he was able to step past.

    But what does it mean when you don’t let people in and open yourself up to them? You avoid the hurt, but you also miss the intimacy, the connection, and the depth of an open, honest relationship.

    Indeed, how can you even really be in love with someone if you erect an emotional barrier in the way? You can’t.

    As Brené Brown explains, you can cut off feelings—the good and the bad—but you can’t isolate and block out specific types of feelings.

    In order to feel joy and intimacy, you need to allow yourself the vulnerability that will also inevitably lead at times to pain.

    In order to love, you have to deal with the eventual certainty of loss. Otherwise, you’re just kind of numb. You’re not really there.

    People need connection. What happens to someone who moves through life while keeping everyone at arm’s length? What happens to people who don’t show themselves for who they are? I should know—I often avoided authenticity and vulnerability in order to protect myself.

    I was an alpha male. Having grown up in a household where I was set upon by my parents, I learned not to be vulnerable. I became a go-getter—determined, accomplished, and always putting on a strong front, strutting around to ward off those who would hurt me.

    What this meant, though, is that I struggled to find that one person with whom I could be completely honest, and when I did, I put all my eggs in that basket. Hence, when my relationship ended, I was destroyed.

    The more you hurt, the more you fear. The more you fear, the thicker the armor you wear. The thicker your armor, the more it weighs you down. When my armor finally cracked and fell off, it led to a complete breakdown. It was during the recovery from that breakdown that I learned what real strength was.

    I had been determined. I fixed my sights on goals, typically those that would bring me recognition, and I achieved them.  These goals conformed with what is commonly viewed as “success”—wealth, influence, and renown. So, I doggedly stuck to the path, my eyes always forward instead of looking around me. I was tough.

    Life is a long road with many forks. My eyes on the prize, I was unwavering and kept going left. Unfortunately, life was telling me in so many ways to go right.

    I lived in a city that didn’t at all conform with what I valued. I stayed in a relationship that exhibited many warning signs. I had a high-powered, well-compensated job that drained all my time and energy. I was literally sick—in the hospital multiple times each year when I had almost never been in one before that.

    When the pain became too much, I fell apart, and at that point, I had no choice but to go right.

    In that moment, all my hardness couldn’t see me through. And that’s what suffering is: It’s the great teacher that keeps telling you where to go, and the more you try to power through, the more painful and prolonged it will be. Then you soften up and go right, and everything changes.

    Not surprisingly, nature inspired me with the most fitting, if obscure, image: a salt marsh.

    Salt marshes are a natural habitat along coastlines. During storms, salt marshes absorb the force of large waves, which travel into the marshes, lose momentum, and dissipate. If they even hit the shore, the waves retain a fraction of their former strength, and the coast is thus protected. Sand dunes serve a similar function.

    Over time, people have degraded and destroyed these fragile habitats, making storms even more dangerous and destructive.

    To protect harbors, people have built sea walls made of stone. These walls appear strong, but over time sea walls crumble with the force of being slammed by powerful waves or can even cause more destruction when waves ricocheting off of them create violent chop in the water.

    When you are a sea wall, you smack the waves away. The waves hit other people and objects and smack you back. Your resistance creates wake, which damages others and eventually, after a long time, causes you to collapse.

    Instead, be a salt marsh. Absorb the waves and let them pass through you. Accept them. You will be hit with enormous force, but you will not lend that force any more energy. If left unpolluted and unspoiled, salt marshes will survive forever.

    Underneath the hard armor that weighs you down, you’re soft. When you are a salt marsh, your softness absorbs the waves. The hard sea wall smacks them away. A flexible tree bends with the storm, while the hard one doesn’t waver—until it breaks.

    Somehow this image works for so many of spirituality’s life lessons. Let hurt soften you; don’t let it harden you. Let that time someone hurt you open your heart up to compassion for all of those who are hurting. Let it be a reminder in the moment to be more forgiving.

    When an experience is difficult, you can fight with it. But if you surrender to it, let down your walls, and be open to the experience, you will grow from the pain. Give up the hard walls and soften yourself up to what comes your way.

    When floating down the river of life, you’re totally right to swim in the direction you’d like to go. But paddle too hard against the current, and you’ll drown. Try going soft and floating, seeing where the river will take you—it’s not like you have that much of a choice anyway!

    Bravely learn to relax with life and see what happens, and you will make decisions with more wisdom and take actions with more power than if you were fighting.

    As Pema Chödrön says, “Stop protecting your soft spot… stop armoring your heart.” Likewise, “Wretchedness humbles us and softens us… Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.”

    Maybe it’s something like a rule: when you’re in a moment in which your instincts are telling you to be hard, before you act at least take a moment to consider what being soft would look like. What would the soft option be, what could result, and who might you become?

    As a hard alpha-male, I made it far in life. By age thirty, I had been in meetings in the West Wing of the White House, worked with Fortune 500 Company CEOs, been to more than fifty countries, and made lots of money. But that year, I also fell apart, and it took a few years to put myself back together again.

    Now, I’m a struggling entrepreneur. I gave up the suits and the flights and the tough talk. However, though I’ve been through a lot since the big change, I walked—not powered—through it with so much more clarity and even strength than before. I went soft.

    Contemplate softness.

  • How to Accept Anxious Feelings So You Can Let Them Pass

    How to Accept Anxious Feelings So You Can Let Them Pass

    “Don’t try and save yourself. The self that is trying to be saved is not you.” ~Mooji

    Three months ago I had a strange experience.

    It wasn’t strange in that it had never happened before. It was strange in that it was unexpected. Unexpected in the way a hiccup comes up out of nowhere to interrupt a meal. No, actually, it was more unexpected in the way a sudden illness overtakes a period of health.

    Just for a bit of context, over the last six months, I’ve generally been the calmest I’ve felt in years—maybe even my whole life. But recently this has come with a strange side effect. When negative emotions do arise, as they inevitably do, I’m sometimes even more reactive to them than I used to be.

    So three months ago when I woke up abruptly in the middle of the night with a ball of anxiety in my chest it was, well, unexpected.

    And my mind immediately kicked into overdrive.

    “Why am I anxious?”

    “Is there something I’ve forgotten?”

    “Is there something coming up that I’m nervous about?”

    “Am I sick?”

    And then the most dangerous question of all:

    “Have I really been anxious this whole time and the calm isn’t real?”

    This question is very tricky. If I was a character in a movie, I’d been standing up out of my seat and yelling at myself on the screen, “Ignore it! Ignore it! You’re fine, go back to sleep!”

    But it’s tricky because it feels like there a grain of truth to it; on some level we can all relate to that sense of doubt. Our minds tend to come up with explanations based on our feelings, so this sensation of anxiety was (unsurprisingly) causing my mind to come up with a story based on these feelings.

    The whole ordeal lasted less than five minutes. Fortunately, in this moment of tension, I was mindful enough to see how far-fetched these thoughts were. I settled on a far more pragmatic explanation; I’d become so unused to feelings of anxiety, that when they did arise, they were a shock to the system, so my mind immediately tried to rationalize them.

    And then I went back to sleep.

    Moments like this one would come again, and what I needed to do was simple. Any five-minute mindfulness book would have had the answer.

    All I needed to do to keep the calm was to not care that these thoughts and feelings were there. I just needed to be completely disinterested, to not touch anything in my mind. Following the instructions in a moment of distress, however, is much easier said than done.

    So I remembered what I’d heard a yoga teacher say once in an uncomfortable pose where the students had their hands above their heads for a long time.

    “Just tell your mind that things are going to be like this for the rest of your life. It’ll get bored of the pain and move on.”

    I took that idea and started applying it whenever worries came up. I managed to convince myself that I didn’t need to fix anything and that feelings of anxiety were just really not that interesting. It worked out pretty well, so well in fact, that I thought I’d go into a little bit more detail of how I managed to do so and share it with you.

    Here are five ways you can begin to accept anxious feelings and live a better life.

    1. Accept that you can never know why you are experiencing anxiety.

    As problem-solving creatures, when we experience discomfort we immediately try and understand why. But not everything in our lives has a straightforward answer. There are a multitude of factors that lead to anxious feelings, from genetics to work to relationships to diet, memories, and even the weather.

    Trying to pinpoint one reason so that you can have a concise narrative in our minds is a lot less effective (and a lot more tiring) than simply accepting the fact that you don’t know why. This acceptance also allows you to focus your energy toward more practical, calm-inducing strategies such as journaling, yoga, and exercise. When we have more energy, we’re more alert, and this naturally makes us more engaged in our work and home lives, safeguarding us against anxiety and rumination.

    2. Accept that anxiety is neither good nor bad.

    Seeing your anxiety in a wider perspective is best illustrated with a Taoist story (origin unknown):

    “There is an old farmer who had worked his crops from many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

    “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

    “Maybe,” replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

    “Maybe,” answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe,” said the farmer.”

    To accept anxious feelings, try to treat them like the farmer in the story treated his horses. You never know what good may come from your anxiety! In fact, the calm in my life that I mentioned at the start of this article is a direct result of the meditation practice I started, and continued, because of anxiety.

    3. Accept that everyone will experience some form of anxiety.

    When we experience pain we’re hardwired to respond to it, and in that response our perspective is distorted. We become the center of the universe, because we are only feeling our pain in that moment, and not anyone else’s.

    It can be calming and reassuring to know that everyone goes through periods of worry. There are billions of people who have dealt with whatever feelings are coming up in your experience, and there will probably be billions after you. So don’t by any means underestimate your capacity to handle the situation.

    4. Let go of the idea that you shouldn’t have anxiety.

    How would you feel about anxiety if everyone in the world had it? Or if you were told that it was a necessary and useful part of life? You’d probably worry about it a lot less. The idea that you shouldn’t have any feeling stems from the need for things to be better. If you can let go of the normative belief that anxiety is wrong, then your mind will naturally become less and less interested in it.

    This goes hand in hand with the idea that anxiety holds you back in any way—you want to let that go too. Anxiety may, in fact, hold you back from an immediate action, but if we recall the Taoist story of the farmer and his horses, we can never truly know in what direction anxiety will take us.

    5. Become bored with your anxiety.

    This last one is the most difficult but the most important. Often anxiety is so painful that we become fascinated, obsessed even, with understanding and solving our worries. We want to get rid of the pain of anxiety as soon as possible.

    Sometimes this is useful, as we come up with strategies to manage our emotions, but a lot of the time it validates the power of our anxiety and adds fuel to the fire. The mind will only focus on what it values; if you can manage to become bored with your anxiety, it will loosen its grip on your life.

    —

    The steps I’ve outlined in this article are, like I explained in my own experience, much easier said than done. I hope, however, that I’ve given you a slightly different approach you can take toward dealing with any negative emotions.