Tiny Buddha

Category: Blog

  • 7 Common Fears That Don’t Have to Control Us

    7 Common Fears That Don’t Have to Control Us

    “Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” ~Marianne Williamson

    As babies, we know nothing about the world. In the universe of an infant, there are no norms to follow, no rigid rules and regulations; no room for labeling or judging ourselves and others. We don’t yet know to disapprove of ourselves, and we’re curious to play, learn, and grow.

    We are all born free spirits. Then our environment—our families, schools, religions, and political systems—shape the way we think and behave.

    Fear is a learned practice. Children generally are not afraid of trying, failing, and getting up on their feet again. That’s how we learned to walk. When we made our first step, we didn’t call ourselves names or punish ourselves if we fell. We just got up and gave it another try.

    As kids, we weren’t afraid to step outside of our comfort zone and try new experiences.

    So why did we get so fearful as adults? What are we really afraid of?

    1. The fear of imperfection

    I often hear people talking about their need for perfection as a sign of virtue. In a society that generally evaluates human worth through how well we do things in life, some people even feel a sense of pride when they describe themselves as “perfectionists” or “workaholics.”

    To me, perfectionism is a sign of fear. When I know I do everything perfectly, I’m untouchable. There is no room for others to correct me.

    As a child, there were times when I was afraid of punishment after getting bad grades in school. Years later, as an adult, I developed an extreme need for perfection, especially at work. All my assignments had to be executed perfectly so none of my managers would have a reason to criticize my performance. At the time, that fear of authority was still present in my life.

    People who struggle with perfectionism also tend to get overwhelmed because they avoid asking for help. They would rather look invincible and strong than vulnerable and “weak.”

    Showing up in our vulnerability in front of others is a sign of authenticity. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s a beautiful human attribute, and it takes lots of courage to show what most of us have been taught for years how to hide.

    “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.“ ~Brené Brown

    2. The fear of failure

    I once read an article about successful people who were intentionally planning for failure. I found that fascinating and strange. Planning to fail? Who likes to fail?

    No one enjoys messing up, but those people were using mistakes as much needed instruments to learn and grow.

    Today I know that each time I am afraid to step outside of my comfort zone and try something new, that’s the fear of failure making decisions for me.

    Each time I find myself stuck and afraid to take risks because I might fail, I ask myself: What’s the worst thing that can happen? Could I cope if it did?

    These questions help me realize that my life would surely go on, and that most mistakes wouldn’t literally kill me.

    “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard

    3. The fear of success

    Sometimes, success is scarier than failure. When dreams look too good to be true, we get scared by our own greatness. Deep inside, we don’t see ourselves as enough, and worthy of love and success.

    Whenever I make myself small or put myself down, I am acting on my fear, taking myself for granted, and forgetting to appreciate myself for my achievements. I’m thinking, “Anyone else could have made it” or attributing my accomplishments to faith, luck, or other people who gave me opportunities to shine. I’m focusing on my weaknesses or limitations, without honoring my strengths, gifts, and talents.

    That’s how I operated in the past, for too many years. But here’s what I know to be true today: It wasn’t luck; it was me.

    Sometimes in life, we need to acknowledge there’s been a lot of hard work and efforts behind our “luck.” And if we’re not yet where we’d like to be, we need to believe that we truly are worthy of what we visualize.

    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.” ~Marianne Williamson

    4. The fear of being rejected

    Being liked and included and feeling a sense of belonging to a community are basic human needs. We fear being left out and seek approval as a means to ensure this doesn’t happen.

    I can recall many situations in my life when I did things I didn’t really want to do to please others, like going to a movie with someone on a Sunday when my body wanted to stay home and take a good nap.

    I was a master of people pleasing and, to be honest, it wasn’t always because I wanted to make everyone happy. The truth is that I wanted people to like and approve of me. I expected them to give me the things I wasn’t giving myself: love, care, and attention.

    Again, being loved is a human need. However, being needy is something different. I came to understand that people who are taking good care of themselves are less dependent on the approval of others.

    Taking care of our own wants and needs is a necessity. When we make sure to keep our tank full and we treat ourselves kindly, we inspire others to do the same for themselves.

    “I used to be a people-pleaser. Now I love them instead.” ~Cheryl Richardson

    5. The fear of what other people think

    Did you know that the fear of public speaking comes first among all kinds of fears? Even the fear of death comes second! Most people don’t feel brave enough to show up in their vulnerability in front of others because they’re focusing more on what people might think about them than on their performance.

    I can recall quite a few situations in my life when I didn’t dare to ask questions, especially when there was something I didn’t know. I didn’t want to look less intelligent or even stupid.

    Especially at work, I didn’t feel comfortable enough to openly admit that I didn’t hold all the answers and I still had a lot to learn. I wanted people to perceive me as an expert, super smart, invincible, and strong. I now know that every day brings new lessons in the school of life, and it’s more important to stay open to them than it is to be perceived as all-knowing.

    Let’s be honest with this one: I’ve never met anyone who would love to hear they were ugly or stupid. We all need to feel validated. But in the end, all that really matters is that we fully approve of ourselves.

    “When I seek your approval, I don’t approve of the me that’s seeking the approval.” ~Byron Katie

     6. The fear of losing control

    If there were Oscars for control-freaking, I would have surely gotten one! Looking back on my past, I recognize that I always wanted to have full control over everything and everyone. This comes back to the fear of imperfection.

    During my former leadership position with a multinational company, the most difficult things for me to handle were decision-making and delegation—not only with people who were new in their roles and lacked experience, but also with co-workers who were very skilled and competent in their jobs.

    Why did I struggle with delegation? Because I knew I was responsible for my team’s results, and I wasn’t mentally strong enough to bear any sort of failure on my shoulders.

    Making mistakes would have scared me to death; that’s why I always needed a long time to brainstorm all possible scenarios that could go wrong when making important decisions.

    The need to always control situations or other people is a major source of stress. It is tiring, frustrating, energy consuming—and pointless, since we can never control what other people do. Letting go of control is true freedom and a form of self-care.

    “Be willing to stop punishing yourself for your mistakes. Love yourself for your willingness to learn and grow.” ~Louise Hay

     7. The fear of what might happen in the future

    If I spend my precious time overthinking and allowing my mind to create different scenarios about the future, I risk missing out on my life and the only reality that is: the present moment.

    Most of the things we worry about never happen. They are nothing but the illusionary product of our mind.

    It’s true, ‘bad’ things do happen at times, but they’re often blessings in disguise that make us stronger and wiser or show us the right path for us.

    Looking back on my past, I recognize that I had to suffer in love so that I could understand what I wanted from a romantic partner. I had to become unemployed for a while in order to realize what I truly wanted from a profession and what would bring me joy and fulfillment.

    Knowing that my painful experiences were actually gifts, and that I survived them, I’m better able to accept that what will be, will be—and no matter what, I can handle it.

    “The best use of imagination is creativity. The worst use of imagination is worry. “ ~Deepak Chopra

    I have stopped feeling guilty and ashamed of my fears. I’ve learned how to embrace them with self-compassion, as part of the package of being human. I know the primary intention of fear is to protect me from things that could hurt me. But I also know I don’t have to let my fears control me.

    I am aware that I can always get mindful and pay attention to my thoughts and emotions. I make sure that I nourish my mind, knowing that I am the one creating my own world through my feelings, thoughts, and, actions.

    “A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love.“ ~Marianne Williamson

    And now, I would like to hear from you. What scares you the most? How do you manage your own fears?

  • How to Get Out of a Mental Rut by Trying Something New

    How to Get Out of a Mental Rut by Trying Something New

    “Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.” – Brian Tracy

    Have you ever come to a crossroad in your life?

    You know something needs to change, but you have more than one option—and it feels like there’s a lot of pressure on you to make the right choice.

    That was me a few months ago.

    I was stressed, overworked, and in what you would probably call a rut. Fatigued and struggling to get things done, I initially thought that all I needed was a break. But I soon realized that that wasn’t the case.

    What had happened was that being tired had driven me to get stuck in a messy cycle of negative thoughts, and every time I tried to untangle little problems, things seemed to get worse.

    Everyone around me was telling me to take a rest. But intuitively, I didn’t think a rest was what I needed. I’m generally a confident guy, but if you spend enough time in your own head, doubt will always begin to plant its seeds.

    What I needed wasn’t a break—it was a confidence boost.

    So what was my cure for the escalating stress?

    What was my grand plan to beat this anxiety?

    I thought I’d try stand-up comedy.

    Yep. I thought I would do one of the most stressful things most people can imagine. I would get up in front of a crowd and try to make them laugh. So I did.

    In the lead up to the night of my set, all the anxiety that I had been feeling was amplified.

    As I sat behind the curtain waiting to go on stage, my palms sweaty, leg tapping furiously, I tried to breathe slowly to calm myself down, but my thoughts raced so quickly I couldn’t even make them out. Why was I doing this? Should I just get up and leave right now? Who would knowingly put themselves through something like this?

    It was too late. My name was called, I stood up, opened the curtain, and….

    It actually went really well.

    Don’t get me wrong. It was every bit as scary as I expected, but as I predicted, it shook my brain up enough to break free of the mental rut I was in.

    And while it didn’t solve everything overnight, it did set off a chain reaction of renewed attitudes and choices, which left me with more energy, vitality, and positivity than I had had for months.

    So without further ado, here are five ways pushing your comfort zone can pull you out of a mental rut.

    1. It gives you a reference experience for future challenges.

    When it’s been a long time since you really pushed yourself, a new challenge can seem incredibly daunting. Your first response is usually “How on earth am I going to do that?”

    If, on the other hand, you’ve done something difficult relatively recently, your brain will immediately look to that reference experience as an example.

    Since the night of the comedy, I’ve been fortunate to achieve quite a lot in a short amount of time. That’s because every time I face a difficult task, I try to think, “Well, could be hard, but if I could do stand-up comedy, I can definitely do this.”

    2. It makes you feel alive again.

    A mental rut will depress your emotions and that means you will feel less of the good stuff. The longer this goes on, the easier it is for your body to forget what vitality feels like.

    By having a huge rush of neurochemicals like adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin, you immediately remember just how great it can feel to be alive.

    3. It can redefine your self-image.

    After having spent some time in a mental rut, I started to lose confidence. When I thought about who I was and what I was capable of, I started to constantly reflect on what I hadn’t been able to achieve.

    However, when I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, I started to again think of myself as the person who could do difficult things.

    Our self-image is such a vague and always changing idea in our minds, but it is one that unavoidably has a big impact on our lives. By doing things that allow you to have a positive self-image, you gather the momentum to pull yourself out of tough times.

    4. It will inspire others.

    Inspiring other people around you, by pushing your comfort zone, has a number of benefits.

    For one, it will change how they perceive you and how they act toward you, and in doing so alter the perception that you have of yourself.

    But maybe even more importantly, inspiring people around you can encourage them to push their own comfort zones, and their actions will in turn inspire you. When you spend more and more time around people who are helping each other grow, you’ll all benefit from each other’s positivity, and the boundaries of what you believe is possible will expand.

    5. It reminds you that emotions will come and go.

    For the last few years, I’ve made a big effort to try and embrace one of the fundamental truths in both eastern spirituality and western psychology: that emotions will come and go; they are just experiences and do not define you.

    But I’m only human. So like everyone else I’m constantly forgetting and re-remembering of this truth. Sometimes it’s as simple as noticing the differences in your mood change between morning and evening, and sometimes it’s more profound, such as doing something you never thought possible.

    So what does this mean about you?

    If you’re going through a mental rut or even a period of depression, and you don’t think it’s simply a matter of needing a rest, try doing something that takes you out of your comfort zone.

    I’ve heard of countless experiences of someone doing something new, whether it be surfing, jumping out of a plane, or even traveling to a new place, and it’s completely changed their situation. If you decide to do so, at the very least you’ll have a wonderful new experience to refer to.

    Remember that if you’re in a mental rut, you’re not alone. Everyone goes through it at one stage or another, and reaching out to others is important.

    How have you pushed yourself out of your comfort zone, and how did it help you?

  • Are You a Multipotentialite? What to Do When You Have Many Interests

    Are You a Multipotentialite? What to Do When You Have Many Interests

    “I think a singular identity isn’t very interesting, and I’m a little bit more multifaceted as a person than that.” ~Catherine Opie

    Are you a person who gets inspiring ideas every day? Do you wake up, galvanized with such thoughts, only to end up feeling sore as the day ends because you failed to act on these bright morning ideas? Perhaps you also end up blaming yourself and feeling guilty for not having taken any action.

    Then welcome to the world of multipotentialite, a word I first encountered when I heard a TEDX talk by Emilie Wapnick. In her talk, Emilie talks about the challenges multipotentialites face and how to embrace them.

    Multipotentialite Defined

    So who is a multipotentialite? The urban dictionary defines it as “somebody who has potential in multiple fields.” Sounds cool, right? It seems that such a person would lead a meaningful life. They’d never get bored, as there would always be something to catch their fancy.

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually work out that way. How do I know? I happen to be one.

    I am a software engineer turned writer, counselor, web designer, and trek guide. I haven’t stuck to any particular field, so I cannot say I am an expert or a specialist—words the world loves.

    I detest family gatherings. Do you know why? People around me talk about promotions and their success while I talk about beginnings. I don’t mind; I’m a learner. But it’s difficult to explain to your family, who wishes to see you settled in your career, that you have multiple interests.

    Without a supportive environment, several things can go wrong. Here are some of them.

    Great ideas but no follow through

    You get plenty of ideas, so much so that it becomes overwhelming. There are countless things you’d like to do right away. Sometimes it’s difficult to choose, for fear that you’ll leave it mid-way. Or you have a desire to do a multitude of things, all at once. Or the dissatisfaction of the earlier half-finished projects may bog you down, so you don’t start at all.

    You’re labeled “irresponsible” or “afraid to commit”

    You begin to feel that you’re not a responsible person because you don’t stick to anything. After all, hasn’t it been drilled into you that success depends on your level of commitment? And a lack of commitment could mean anything from not being serious to being irresponsible and careless.

    The blame game

    You start blaming yourself. The pressure to perform and stick to one particular career or task intensifies. It may be a self-created vortex, or others around you will contribute to the pressure by saying things like, “get serious” or “discipline is just what you need.”

    Not fitting in

    Finally ,you realize you don’t fit in. You start feeling something’s wrong with you, that you’re not like other “normal” people around you who commit to doing things. You believe you’re different and feel you don’t belong anywhere. This can also lead to loneliness or a sense of being alone in the world.

    Disappointments greet you

    When you’re unable to come up with a goal for yourself, it can hurt. You know you’re ready to put in the hard work, but goals keep changing, as nothing interests you for long. The hurt and disappointment can erode your self-confidence, as well.

    The matrix

    Yet you try. You keep searching for that single purpose that will make you feel whole again. Maybe you feel there’s something out there that is “you”—something that’s meant especially for you. You only have to find it and then you’ll be okay. Beware: This path is full of lies.

    The feeling of being abnormal

    You begin searching for mental disorders on the web. Maybe this is a symptom of a condition, or maybe it signifies a psychiatric illness. The web is extremely helpful here, as it displays twenty or more different disorders that you could box yourself into.

    You suppress

    You start sticking to a goal even if it kills you. You wake up day after day reassuring yourself that things will work out in the end. The suppression does not get you anywhere. Instead, you feel a disconnect, an overwhelming feeling that something is missing.

    So this, in a nutshell, is the world of multipotentialites.

    In spite of their vulnerabilities, multipotentialites can get a lot done. They’re generally quick learners who are able to grasp varied things, a strength that they could capitalize on. In a team they can come up with innovative ideas; the jack-of-all-trades does not lack solutions. Belief in yourself is the only thing that’s missing. Well, that and a couple of other things.

    Trust that the dots connect.

    Nothing ever goes to waste. The skills you learn along the way will help you in the future.

    For a brief period I got a job as a travel writer when a magazine editor realized that I had explored quite a number of places within my city.

    A web design course helped me juggle multiple roles at a start-up that was always short on staff.

    The counseling degree gave me a better understanding of people around me. It also helped when my friend needed a student counselor for her tuition center.

    So my skills were put to good use and I sometimes got paid too, without any conscious effort on my part.

    Take small steps.

    A quote by Katie Kacvinsky sums this aptly. She says, “You need to be content with small steps. That’s all life is. Small steps that you take every day so when you look back down the road it all adds up and you know you covered some distance.”

    Especially when you have hundreds of things that you would like to do, it helps to make a list. Write down your desires and start with one of them. That’s it. Don’t expect anything except the desire to learn.

    When you feel saturated, stop and proceed to do the next thing on your list.

    The list will grow and so will you. Drop the expectations that you need to finish the project. It’s the learning that counts for you.

    Looks for creative ways to contribute.

    Maybe you could utilize your skills to earn more, by writing in your particular field, coaching, or even speaking. The important thing is not to give up on your interests; instead, look at them closely and see how you can proactively pursue them to better your situation. This removes the pressure on you and you start feeling less anxious.

    Connect with people who can relate.

    Joining a like-minded community helps put things in perspective. Forums and websites like Puttylike, started by Emilie, can help you restore your faith in yourself and move ahead in your life.

    In the end it’s all about perspective. A quote by George Carlin sums it rather well.

    “Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty. I see a glass that’s twice as big as it needs to be.”

    So choose to focus on your strengths. Success will surely follow.

  • Vacation Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal

    Vacation Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal

    Last week I shared the nature coloring page from Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal, which launches in June and is now available for pre-order. I’m having a blast coloring my way through the book, and I’m excited to share a second page with you now!

    How would you answer the question in the middle? (If you’re reading this in your inbox, click here to comment on the site.)

    My favorite vacation happened four years ago, when I went to Italy with my boyfriend and our families. Though it may be hard to believe given my fair skin and light hair, I’m actually 50% Italian, so it’s always been a dream of mine to see Rome with my family.

    It was the first time we’d ever traveled overseas together, and my siblings’ first time leaving the country, so that made it even more magical.

    But that wasn’t what I most appreciated about this trip. I come from one of those families that spends a lot of time close to home, crammed together in a kitchen too small to fit us, endlessly entertained by each other’s company. And yet I have an insatiable explorer inside me, who never tires of discovering new places, people, and ways of being.

    Dining al fresco on a cobblestone street with my siblings and parents to my left, my boyfriend and his parents across from me, and the Coliseum mere miles away, I felt whole. For that brief week, family and adventure overlapped, and I’ve never felt more happy or complete.

    Stay tuned for another page next Wednesday. Getting my markers out now!

    If you haven’t already, pre-order your copy of Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal here, and you’ll instantly receive three free bonus gifts.

  • How to Breathe Your Way to Inner Calm

    How to Breathe Your Way to Inner Calm

    “Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” ~Etty Hillesum

    Today I’d like to discuss something that I’ve found to be very important: our breathing.

    “What do you mean our breathing? Don’t we do that all the time? Why do I need to read a blog post about it?”

    Yes, we do this involuntarily, but did you know that there are different ways we breathe? Improper breathing can affect how we feel, mentally and physically, and, in reverse, how we feel can lead to improper breathing (if, for example, we’re stressed).

    Imagine what’s going on in the following scenarios:

    You’re being chased by a grizzly bear.

    Chances are, you’re breathing rapidly, taking shallow breaths (drawing in minimal air to the lungs), expelling a lot of effort, and heavily expanding your chest. This is known as thoracic breathing, or chest breathing.

    Thoracic breathing switches on our sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for that fight-or-flight response we get when we sense any kind of danger, stress, or threat.

    Chest breathing doesn’t optimally use our lungs (via our diaphragm) and can even lead to hyperventilation.

    This type of breathing isn’t necessarily bad, since it gives us the ability to run from that grizzly bear and can help during vigorous exercise. But we often do this unnecessarily, and it makes us feel more anxious and stressed.

    You just did something relaxing and feel very calm.

    Chances are, you’re breathing slowly (drawing in optimal air to the lungs via the diaphragm), expelling minimal effort, and expanding your abdomen/belly as you take in air. This is known as diaphragmatic breathing.

    This type of breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which has the opposite effect of the fight-or-flight response, inducing a feeling of calm and relaxation.

    Diaphragmatic breathing, or deep/belly breathing, is beneficial to both of our minds and bodies. In fact, it has scientifically been shown to help those suffering with PTSD, pain, depression, anxiety, and other debilitating conditions.

    There’s a reason why it has been featured on the websites of NPR, Harvard, TIME, New York Times, the National Institutes of Health, and The Wall Street Journal.

    As someone who tends to exhibit the fight-or-flight response at unnecessary and non-threatening times (a work in progress!), I can personally attest to how deep breathing reduces the adverse effects of tension, stress, and anxiety.

    Back before I learned about deep belly breathing, I often went into fight-or-flight mode when I felt uncertain and worried about my relationships, finances, school, meeting deadlines, or my health, and it only made things worse.

    I didn’t want to continually work my body and mind into an unnecessary frenzy over situations that didn’t warrant it.

    Everything changed when I began my journey into the world of yoga.

    To help us improve our breathing, my teacher would often tell us to lie down on the ground and place one hand on our belly and the other on our heart. She’d then instruct us to visualize the breath expanding in our belly as we inhale, through contraction of our diaphragm, and notice our belly slowly deflating as we exhale.

    We would switch between inhaling through the nose and exhaling out through the mouth, as well as sighing out through our mouth as we exhaled. (Side note: I highly recommend sighing out through your mouth to release tension—it feels great! Make some noise with it too!)

    By the end of the class, we would work up to pranayama, which is the ancient practice of controlling the breath, and I would find myself feeling a sense of calm. If you’re interested, you can read more about pranayama here, and this TIME article provides some pranayama exercises as well.

    I’ve taken the breathing exercises I learned in my yoga classes and have started practicing them in my daily life. If I feel overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, or restless, I take a few minutes to perform some belly breathing, and I instantly feel more at ease.

    It’s important to note that deep breathing isn’t a cure-all and won’t get rid of the underlying problems that are causing you stress. But it can at least provide you with a temporary sense of calm, which will help you find clarity and think rationally in difficult situations.

    If you’d like to give deep breathing a try, you may want to start with one of these exercises.

    General Deep Breathing

    This is a simple technique you can use anywhere. Find a place to sit or lie down and take a moment to breathe as you normally would.

    When you’re ready, breathe in slowly through your nose and feel your abdomen expand fully. I personally like to close my eyes, but you can leave them open if you prefer.

    Now breathe out slowly through your mouth or nose (whichever feels better) and feel your abdomen slowly deflate. If you’d like, you can place your hands on your belly so you can physically feel what it’s doing.

    I recommend trying this breathing technique for at least eight rounds of inhaling and exhaling. Play around with doing it for shorter or longer periods of time and breathing in/out through your mouth/nose, and make sure to do what works best for you.

    Four-Seven-Eight Technique

    This practice makes use of counting while you inhale and exhale to maximize belly breathing. In this technique, you inhale through the nose and count to four, hold your breath for a count of seven, and then exhale for a count of eight. You can find a guided video here.

    Visual Breathing Guide

    This is a fantastic video that provides a visual reference to sync your breaths to. It could be an invaluable resource to help you slow down, calm down, and take deep breaths.

    *Note: If you ever find yourself feeling worse or hyperventilating after doing any breathing exercises, please stop practicing them. We are all unique, and what may work for one person may not work for another, so please be compassionate with yourself.*

    —

    There you have it: why and how we can use our breathing to our advantage, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Breathing isn’t just a biological survival mechanism; we can also use it as a tool to help induce relaxation and reduce the effects of stress, anxiety, and tension.

    Who knew how much power our bellies hold? Go forth and give your belly (and your overall self) some much-needed, deep love!

  • How To Overcome Insecurity and Change Your Negative Relationship Patterns

    How To Overcome Insecurity and Change Your Negative Relationship Patterns

    “Sometimes our thoughts are backed by so much insecurity that they create lies we believe.” ~Unknown

    After nearly a year of being single and after going through my fifth breakup, I found myself involved with someone new.

    It was the typical guy-meets-girl story you read about all over the Internet. We met for dinner and drinks and there was an immediate attraction. We laughed and talked and overall had a great night. By the second date, he stayed the night at my house and didn’t leave for four days.

    This time I felt I was more prepared. I had studied relationships. I had learned about communicating. I was sure I was going to get my needs met and everything would be perfect.

    I thought I was changed and that meant everything would be different this time. Surprise! Life doesn’t work that way.

    I’m not sure I noticed it at the time, but I was still feeling a little insecure and unsure and wasn’t ready to let go of my fears. I made sure to continually tell him what I wanted and needed in a relationship. Little by little, I was pushing my agenda on him.

    Naturally, he started to back away. I don’t think he even knew why and I certainly didn’t know either. I only knew I was feeling out of control and was perpetually pissed at him for being a jerk.

    Slowly, we stopped spending all weekend together. He wasn’t coming over after work as often. His texts were more sporadic. Then, one Friday went by with not a word. Then a Saturday and then Sunday went by. It had been three whole days with no text, no call, no plans, no nothing.

    Who did this guy think I was? Didn’t I deserve some sort of contact? What was I to do? Certainly this behavior was not acceptable!

    The Breakup

    So I cried and blamed him and told myself I had chosen wrong again, and that I wouldn’t be put in a position of feeling “less than.” Then I texted him out of the blue with the words, “Don’t ever call me again.”

    I thought this was the totally mature way to handle things and that I was only “protecting myself.” I was, right? Wrong.

    I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had done. I felt awful. I knew what I had written wasn’t what I wanted to say or what I felt. I realized that yet again I was acting out of fear, and if I wanted to change my patterns, I had to change myself.

    I wanted him to be wrong, but I realized he wasn’t and that he was just reacting to me.

    I also realized that I was the only one who could change my world, so I did. I thought long and hard about what I wanted and read some more. I realized that my style of communication was still failing, and that if I wanted things to change with him, they had to change with me.

    So after about two weeks I called him and apologized for the way I ended things. I told him I’d reacted out of fear and that I was confused and scared and didn’t know what else to do. I knew that in addition to apologizing I had to change my patterns of interacting with him.

    This time, instead of making everything about me and my wants and needs and fears, I began to take an interest in him and his life. I completely put myself aside (for the moment) because I knew that if I wanted a different result, I had to try a different path.

    Go Slowly

    First off, I went slowly. I let him contact me at his own pace. He had to feel comfortable with talking to me again and realize I wasn’t going to freak out or push some needy agenda on him.

    I had to learn to calm myself, which is something I thought I had already done, but apparently I had more work to do.

    Oftentimes we reach out to others in the expectation that if they respond correctly, we’ll be reassured of our worthiness. Don’t let someone else dictate how you feel about yourself. If someone calls or doesn’t call or texts or doesn’t text, you need to be okay with it and realize the world won’t end.

    Have some patience (which is hard for many of us), and try and sit back and enjoy every moment of the conversations or time together you do have. Stop living in the past or the future. Be present and go slowly. Life is not a race to the end, but a journey with laughter and love and joy and pain all along the way, and you can’t escape any of it, so stop trying.

    Listen

    Secondly, I listened. I listened to what was going on in his life and asked questions. I took an interest in the struggles he was having and was sincerely concerned and understanding.

    If you want to know someone and want them in your life, listen to them. They don’t need to know your entire story right off the bat, (It’s been four months and he doesn’t know mine).

    People are generally egoistic, and showing your potential partner that you want to know about them, what moves them, what motivates them, and what type of person they are will go a long way.

    I’m not saying you should listen with a goal in mind. Don’t think to yourself, “Aha, if I listen to him or her, he/she will want to be with me.” Listen because you care. Listen because the world doesn’t revolve around you and your needs all the time.

    Human beings are amazing creatures, and every single one of us has different fears, needs, and desires. The more time you invest in understanding your potential or current partner, the more you will get in return.

    Stop Assuming You Know

    Thirdly, I learned how to stop assuming and start asking. Never assume how someone feels. Never assume what they want or what they need.

    Some days we would be in the middle of texting and he would suddenly *poof* disappear. I was left confused and irritated.

    The next time it happened, instead of assuming he didn’t want to talk to me or he didn’t care (which is what I would normally do), I asked him about it and he told me why it happens. And of course it had nothing to do with me. Victory!

    Instead of saying nothing, I said, “I’m trying to understand you, and sometimes when we’re in the middle of talking and you suddenly disappear. Why is that?”

    I asked because I truly wanted to understand. I didn’t blame him. It took a lot of courage to ask, as I normally just make up answers in my head and put up walls, so I was really proud of myself for doing it.

    Most of us tend to jump to conclusions about how others feel because we view the world through our tinted lenses. This is fairly normal, but it can lead to confusion, misunderstandings, and anger if you do it all the time. Try to step outside yourself and see how others may perceive you or perceive the world.

    When you ask someone a question, come from a place of love and wanting to understand, not from a place of blame or frustration. Be straightforward and say, “I’m trying to understand you better. When xxxx happens I am often confused, and I’m wondering if you could explain it to me.”

    When you want to share your feelings or communicate what is going on with you try not to say, “You make me feel x, y, z when you do x, y z.”

    People don’t make you feel anything to you. Their actions may trigger certain feelings, based on how you interpret them, but it’s also possible you are already feeling depressed or anxious or lonely or scared, and only think the other person is making you feel that way.

    We all choose what we believe and how we interpret the things other people do, and those beliefs and interpretations create our feelings. The other person can’t possibly know what’s going on in your head unless you explain to them that you have these insecurities and that it isn’t their fault, but you want them to know.

    When you come from a place of insecurity, you will often project blame onto the other person when it’s possible that what they did or said had no negative connotation whatsoever.

    Sometimes people are clueless, sometimes thoughtless, sometimes self-absorbed, but most of the time their intention isn’t to hurt your feelings. Try to remember this before you speak.

    Learn to Communicate From Love

    Love and intimacy are scary. There are days when I still struggle with whether he cares, and I suddenly go quiet and retreat into my world.

    My natural reaction when I’m falling in love is to want to run, and run fast. I want to put up walls and let the other person try to climb over them, as I’m sure many of you do as well. I’m sure you also know this isn’t remotely healthy and is only a protective mechanism.

    Communicating from love means letting down your walls, even if just a little, and accepting the possibility of being hurt.

    One day I was talking to him about my blog and how it means a lot to me when people are thankful for what I write or appreciative of my stories. Because he was playing on his computer and didn’t seem to be listening, I felt unimportant.

    I became quiet. My plan was to say nothing. I assumed he just didn’t care to listen. My old patterns were creeping back in. However, this time I realized that if I want to keep moving forward and keep changing, I had to share my feelings instead of running inside myself.

    I know that most of my fears of not feeling important stem from my childhood and my issues, and it isn’t fair to push them on him. I told him, “Sometimes I don’t feel important to you.” Just saying it was a relief.

    I could tell he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. He said, “Of course you’re important and I care about what you have to say.” I realized in that moment the fears I had were my own and weren’t rooted in any truth.

    It can feel monumentally scary and overwhelming to share even little fears, but if you do it in a way that shows your vulnerability and if you are with someone who has any capacity to love, then you will be amazed at the results you get.

    In the End

    By doing all those things I mentioned above, I changed my relationship. When I gave to him he gave back. The more I put out the more I got in return. I stopped making the entire relationship about me. Everything has changed, and it’s all because I chose to change it.

    Remember that in the end you have no control over anyone but yourself. If you want or need something, stop looking to the other person to give it to you and start looking to yourself.

    You can change your life and your relationship patterns. It may not happen overnight and it may not be as fast as you want, but have some faith and keep moving forward. Love will happen.

  • Why I Stopped Apologizing for Being Me

    Why I Stopped Apologizing for Being Me

    “Never apologize for showing your feelings. Never regret being who you truly are.” ~Unknown

    Ever felt like a square peg in a round hole? A fish out of water? A knife in a fork drawer?

    That was me growing up.

    On an emotional scale of one to ten (where one is cold and ten is super-sensitive), I hovered between seven and nine on any given day. The rest of my family resided around four.

    As a result, I spent a large part of my youth feeling disconnected. An outsider. Alone.

    As the youngest sibling, I was always the last in line, which meant getting the dregs of the pudding. The hand-me-down clothing. Cold bathwater.

    But that’s how it rolls in families. Age carries authority. I accepted this as just how it was.

    I grew up and started finding my voice, embracing my emotions, and having opinions.

    It wasn’t really a shock when no one listened or took notice. They wrote me off as oversensitive and dramatic, which I’d come to believe was true. And that’s when I started apologizing—for my opinions, for my moods, for just being me.

    After all, I was young and desperately wanted to fit in and be accepted.

    I was the anomaly. Surely that meant that I had to change? To be like them? Then I’d be normal. Then they’d all accept me, wouldn’t they?

    Thus began a long period of inner conflict. When I felt emotions bubbling up, I would inwardly chastise myself and try to suppress them, much like shaking a bottle of champagne and trying to hold the cork in. Yup, it’s almost impossible. And potentially messy.

    I really believed that I needed to be someone other than my authentic self in order to be loved.

    It didn’t end there. The same hodge-podge of confused inner perceptions bubbled over into my romantic relationships too.

    I believe that we attract people who mirror our inner beliefs about ourselves. This meant that over the years, my “significant others” were just as confused about their own identities.

    I desperately reached to each of them for acceptance, for a sense of worthiness, for security.

    But how could someone as conflicted and disconnected as I was offer anything other than more conflict and amplified feelings of unworthiness?

    It was a vicious cycle—endless, futile, and disastrous.

    The turning point wasn’t instantaneous. There was no “A-ha” moment. It was a gradual awakening. A yearning to understand. The rising dawn after the dark.

    Over time I read many books, attended a multitude of courses and lectures, and meditated, always thirsting for more.

    And slowly I re-connected with me. The real me.

    I learned about self-compassion and self-love. And I patiently peeled away each layer of defensive protection until I finally embraced the fullness of being unapologetically me.

    These are a few of the principles I’ve embraced.

    I am unique.

    There is only one version of me, and it’s special and amazing. Nobody else in the entire world is like me.

    I have scars on my knees from tripping on trail runs.

    I have an insatiable love of dark humor.

    I prefer white wine over red.

    And I’m never late.

    Each preference and choice, like or dislike, is mine and mine alone. And that’s perfect!

    I’m comfortable with other people’s discomfort.

    I totally accept that I am not responsible for anyone else’s beliefs or perspectives. Those are entirely their own choice. If anyone dislikes or disapproves of me or anything I say or do, it’s their judgment, from their perspective. Not mine.

    If they feel bad, I don’t have to fix it.

    And I’m okay with it if they do.

    I chose to spend last Christmas away, something that didn’t please my father. In his world, the festive season is for family. No Exceptions. Until now I’ve humored him and played along to keep the peace—to please—and resented every minute.

    But last year I didn’t. I put my own needs first.

    He tried self-pity and anger, but I stood my ground, respectfully.

    I let him behave as he chose to, without it affecting me or my choices.

    His reaction was his choice, and it led to unhappiness and distress.

    His discomfort was his own. Completely.

    He subsequently spent the holidays with friends, and had a really good time too.

    So we both got to enjoy new experiences and grow a little. I’d say the discomfort was worth it.

    My opinions are valid, and so are yours.

    We’re all different, with different ideas and thoughts, and the way we see things is unique to each and every person.

    It’s good that we differ. That’s how we expand our awareness.

    And we don’t have to all agree. Ever.

    We can share our thoughts and opinions, and we can listen to each other with curiosity. Just because it’s interesting, not because anyone has to be right.

    That means that every opinion is valid and worthy of being heard, including mine.

    I recently met a friend of a friend. She’s a first grade teacher and incredibly passionate about her work.

    Somehow the conversation shifted to religion. Always a dangerous path, especially when it became apparent that we represented two opposite ends of this particular spectrum. I believe in a “higher being” and she doesn’t.

    She asked me intently about every aspect of my beliefs, yet at no point did she try to counter or persuade me otherwise, nor I her.

    There was just mutual curiosity and respect for the other’s right to choose. We agreed to disagree.

    No egos. No need to be right.

    It was a truly unique conversation. She definitely left an impression.

    I love my emotions.

    My emotions are my inner guidance system at work, which means I embrace each and every one of them. Especially the uncomfortable feelings.

    They tell me I’m on the wrong path. They indicate (loudly) when it’s time to see things differently, when it’s time to find the good in whatever I’m focused on.

    As a young adult, I was a “pleaser.” It felt good when I made others happy, even if was at my own expense.

    I would tolerate other people’s bad behavior, to keep the peace.

    Around that time I was dating a guy. A really awesome guy, or so I thought.

    He had a recreational drug habit, which I ignored. And it made him really moody, which I stoically tolerated.

    It also meant he could be verbally abusive, and he would often not arrive for dates, unapologetically.

    If I confronted him he’d ignore me for days, sometimes weeks. Classic passive-aggressive, but I knew no better.

    Over time, I began to feel bad and resentful.

    Wasn’t I being the perfect partner? Didn’t I deserve better?

    But the unhappy feelings continued, unabated.

    Something had to change.

    We “pleasers” generally lack boundaries, of any type. In this case I needed some, desperately.

    So I got clear on what I deemed as acceptable behavior and then I set some rules for myself, which I then implemented ruthlessly, without negotiation.

    Not surprisingly, the relationship ended. But here’s the thing: I felt good and powerful!

    My uncomfortable feelings had guided me to better ones.

    It’s the perfect system (when we allow it to be).

    —

    It’s not complicated.

    We are who we are.

    And we owe it to ourselves to love and embrace who we really are.

    Every little last quirk.

    No apologies.

    Ever.

  • Dealing with Bullies: How to Cope When People Are Cruel

    Dealing with Bullies: How to Cope When People Are Cruel

    “How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” ~Dr. Wayne Dyer

    I was the quintessential late bloomer, not hitting my growth spurt until my junior year of high school. I’m six feet tall now, but for all of middle school and the first half of high school, I was one of the shortest kids in the entire school.

    Additionally, some thought I had a slight lisp. I was extremely self-conscious about it after a few people unkindly pointed it out to me. During my senior year I wore Invisalign braces, which corrected my teeth and improved my speech mannerisms, but for many years I was embarrassed about my pronunciation of certain words.

    I was frequently bullied for how short I was and the way I spoke. Since I had low self-esteem already, I felt like I was fundamentally flawed and unworthy as a person. It’s safe to say high school was an extremely difficult time.

    When I went to a small liberal arts school called McDaniel College down in Westminster, Maryland, I was ready to start over. I was especially looking forward to meeting new people and leaving the days of being bullied behind. That’s when I met Tom (name changed to protect his privacy).

    The Worst Bully I Ever Had to Face

    Tom was on my college baseball team. He was the meanest, nastiest, cruelest bully I’ve ever had to face in my life.

    Tom hated my guts, and to this day I don’t know why. I’m an analytical and observant person, so here’s my educated guess: One of my values is kindness, so when I meet people, I’m friendly. Perhaps Tom didn’t think I was one of the cool kids because I was “too nice.”

    Tom hung around fellow bullies, people who enjoyed making fun of people. There’s nothing Tom enjoyed more than disrespecting others and making them feel unworthy, it seemed, perhaps because it made him feel better about himself.

    Tom didn’t bully me for my height or for the way I spoke; he bullied me because of my general lack of confidence. I was afraid of him, and he knew it.

    At one party, he told me to go hide in the closet. At another party, he made me feel so unwelcome and embarrassed that I left the party. At the gym once, he purposely bumped into me in an aggressive way and then walked away.

    Why did I do nothing while he treated me like this?

    Two main reasons: One, no one ever taught me how to properly stand up for myself. I did not have the skills, tools, or know-how to assert myself. Two, during my senior year of high school, I came incredibly close to committing suicide. There was still a part of me wondering if I belonged on this planet.

    I had acne that wouldn’t go away, and because I didn’t like myself, I subconsciously thought maybe I deserved to be treated like garbage. Ridiculous, I know, but my self-esteem was low at that point in my life. Bullies like Tom prey on people with low self-esteem, and I was his prime target.

    I stopped going to any baseball parties or social functions. I sat in my room by myself on Friday and Saturday nights. While my teammates were partying, I was letting my social anxiety get the best of me.

    My anxiety ran sky-high when the thought of Tom crossed my mind. I was letting this one person dominate my life. I became depressed because I never would have expected bullying to continue into college. I wondered if things would ever get better.

    The Silver Lining

    After some dark and isolated nights—made easier thanks to phone calls with my awesome younger sister, Annemarie—I realized I had to stop letting Tom ruin my college experience. I started to introduce myself to other people on the campus. I joined other groups and made all sorts of new friends.

    I only saw Tom and the rest of my baseball teammates during a practice, game, or mandatory team function. Many of the other players on the team looked up to Tom as the leader of the pack, the tough guy they admired, so they weren’t people I felt comfortable being around.

    While I chose McDaniel College to continue my baseball career, I decided to stop spending time with people who didn’t think highly of me whenever I could. I made many great friends at my college, and very few of them were on the baseball team.

    I ended up having a great college experience because of this. If not for my experience with Tom, I may not have extended my social circle that far.

    So I have two words for Tom: thank you. Thank you for redirecting me toward kinder, more loving people. Thank you for giving me the motivation to introduce myself to new people instead of limiting myself to some silly clique.

    Eventually, some of the other players on the team noticed how many people I knew at the school. A few of them even said I was popular. I realized something profound then: When you are rejected by a person or group of people, life has given you an opportunity to expand your horizons, meet new people, and make new friends.

    My senior year of college, with my confidence finally starting to rise, I had the guts to go tailgate with my baseball teammates during a school football game. Tom punched me square in the face and then immediately left before I had a chance to say or do anything.

    A week later, I saw him at the library. Rather than retaliate or seek revenge, I asked to have a discussion with him, and he agreed.

    He told me he’d punched me because I was drinking his friend’s beer—the beer that was supposedly for all the players on the baseball team, except for me, that is. I was the only one on the team harassed for this.

    Tom went on to say that during freshman year he didn’t think I was one of the cool kids. He explained that he didn’t hate me as a person, but he didn’t agree with a lot of the things I did.

    “Everyone has their own opinions,” he said. I had no idea what he meant, as in my freshman year of college I was always kind and respectful to others, but rather than inquire further into his inner world, I kept the discussion brief. More than anything else, I was glad the feud was likely coming to an end.

    I don’t know what made Tom become kinder than usual in this final conversation of ours, but as we made eye contact, he could see the big black eye he gave me. He didn’t outright apologize to me, but he clearly felt sorry for what he did. His words and actions were conciliatory.

    Perhaps he respected that I had just spent two semesters abroad, studying at McDaniel’s satellite campus in Budapest, Hungary, as he did mention my travels in our discussion. He probably realized I’d made the most of my opportunities and had an enriching college experience, despite his continual and incessant disrespect.

    To my surprise, he ended the conversation by shaking my hand. We then peacefully went our separate ways. By that point he had quit the baseball team, and I no longer had to see him every day. He never bothered me again.

    How to Move Beyond Bullying

    Dealing with bullying is never easy or pleasant, but it comes with the territory of being human. Bullying happens not only on sports teams and in schools but also in the workplace and other organizations. I hope these tips will help you deal with the cruel people in your life and come out on top.

    Have Compassion

    It can be difficult to have compassion for your bullies, but it helps to remember that hurt people hurt people.

    Bullies want to make you think there is something wrong with you. The truth is there is nothing wrong with you, and they’re the ones with the problem. Deep down inside they feel scared and unworthy, and they believe the only way to build themselves up is to tear someone else down.

    Truly, feel bad for people like this. As I recently learned from my friend Evan Carmichael during a YouTube live discussion with him, this does not mean you must say out loud that you have compassion for them. It’s something you can do within your mind, heart, and soul. Practicing compassion makes it easier to not take things personally and to not react emotionally.

    Don’t Let Their Opinion Define Your Reality

    Tom thought I wasn’t worth hanging out with, but the truth is I have a lot to offer people. Despite Tom’s opinion of me, I ended up making plenty of friends.

    In what parts of your life are you letting cruel naysayers limit you? You are not defined by what other people think; you are defined by your actions and what you think of yourself.

    Don’t let a bully change the way you view yourself. The next time a bully says something to you that isn’t true, pause. Then calmly say, Oh, really? Shrug your shoulders and move on with your day. The bully will most likely be neutralized.

    They are looking to get a reaction out of you and feed off your defensiveness. When you show them that their opinion means little to you, they tend to leave you alone.

    Meet New People

    A bully is one person. There are lots of great people out there in the world for you to meet. Don’t let one bad egg, or a few bad eggs, spoil the bunch.

    If you are in school, join other groups that interest you. If you are in the workplace, attend networking events and other kinds of social outings outside of work each month. The person who will change your life in a positive way is one step beyond your biggest doubt. Don’t be afraid to get outside your comfort zone because it will show you that the world is filled with awesome people.

    Talk to a Close Friend or Family Member

    When I was all alone on a Saturday night in my dorm room, isolated from my teammates, and before I met new people at my college, talking to my sister on the phone helped to remind me of all that was good about me and my life.

    You are only alone if you choose to be alone. Reach out to a trusted friend or family member you feel comfortable with and vent your innermost thoughts and feelings to them. It feels good to have a listening ear, someone who reminds us of our value. Sometimes, we get so caught up in our problems that we forget about the wonderful person we are.

    Don’t Cross the Line Just Because They Do

    My sophomore year of college, while I was drunk, without thinking I went to Tom’s dorm room with a friend, knocked on the door, and went in. It was confrontational, but more than anything else it was an insecure “let’s be friends” kind of thing.

    My incoherence, coupled with the fact that he really didn’t like me, made this a really bad and immature idea. By doing this, I opened up old wounds. His inexcusable actions were definitely on him, but it was not the right time, and I was not in the right state to talk to him. We didn’t get into a fight that night, and he was actually pretty calm in the moment, but it gave him more incentive to bully me in the future, since I’d invaded his private space.

    Remember that just because someone else crosses the line, that doesn’t mean you have to cross it as well. You’re not responsible for what someone else does to you, but you are responsible for how you respond to it.

    Assert Yourself Without Overreacting

    When dealing with a bully who won’t leave you alone, sometimes you need to assert yourself without overreacting. To respond in an even-keeled way, focus on asserting how you feel. Use “I” statements rather than “you” statements as much as you can.

    When you accuse the bully, it will egg them on to keep going. But when you focus on how you feel, it will point out to the bully that they’ve crossed the line. Here are some examples. Try to do this during one-on-one conversations, but say it in the moment if necessary:

    • I don’t like the disrespect. Please stop.
    • I feel frustrated that I’m not getting my space. I’m not getting any respect.
    • I don’t like how our conversations are always one-sided. I need to share my thoughts too.
    • I don’t deserve this. I deserve better.
    • I’m not happy with this. The negativity is pointless. Stop it, or we’re done.

    These tactics did not work with Tom for many years, but they might work with a less extreme bully.

    Send Them Love and Forgiveness

    The late, great Susan Jeffers created an exercise I absolutely love. When you are alone, imagine the bully you are dealing with as a child. Surround them with light and love, and repeat in your mind, I send them love, I send them love, I send them love.

    I was so afraid of Tom that he became a monster in my mind, dictating my actions around my college campus for a while. The truth is, he is a person like the rest of us, and something went seriously wrong in his upbringing. You don’t know what the bully has been through; they’ve become this way because they are hurting on the inside. Send them love and forgiveness.

    Go to the Authorities When Needed

    Be the bigger person, but only do so up to your limits. After Tom physically attacked me with a strong punch that left me with a bruised eye, I was at my limit. In one last attempt to end it, I peacefully confronted him face-to-face, and it worked.

    I don’t believe in retaliation or violence, so I stuck to my values even after he physically hurt me. With that said, if he attacked or threatened me even one more time, I would have gone to my coach and the campus authorities.

    When a bully turns into a criminal, please do not ever be afraid to take action. The bully wants you to live in a prison of fear, but when they see you will not tolerate their actions, they will stop. The last resort before turning it over to the authorities is to tell them directly, “If this doesn’t stop, I’m going to [person in position of authority].”

    They may try to make you feel like less of a person for doing this, but remember that their opinion doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you do what you need to do to find a solution.

    Putting It All Together

    Bullying is an international epidemic, and it needs to stop. But before the world comes to its senses, we’re going to have to learn how to deal with nasty, difficult people.

    The truth is we can’t control how other people act, but we can control how we respond to those other people. By sending our bullies compassion, asserting ourselves, and choosing not to be defined by their opinions, we can create a happy ending for ourselves.

    The experience itself may be a nightmare, but you can peacefully move on with your life knowing you are a person of integrity and values.

    You can move beyond the bullying you are experiencing, or have already experienced. You can find the silver lining and come out on top.

  • Nature Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal

    Nature Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal

    Hi friends! I’ve decided to share the fifteen coloring pages from Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal (colored by yours truly), one every week for the next fifteen. I’m a huge fan of coloring because it’s fun and relaxing, and also serves as an excellent practice for mindfulness and stress relief.

    How would you answer the question in the middle? (If you’re reading this in your inbox, click here to comment on the site.)

    What I most appreciate is how calm and grounded I feel whenever I’m in nature, particularly when I’m on the beach. Something about the rhythmic sound of the waves crashing softens the voice in my head and brings me fully into the present moment.

    If you haven’t already, pre-order your copy of Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal here, and you’ll instantly receive three free bonus gifts!

  • 3 Stages of a New Relationship and How to Handle the Changes

    3 Stages of a New Relationship and How to Handle the Changes

    “Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyways.” ~Glennon Doyle Melton

    When I was younger, I assumed that when I found the ideal person for me and was in my ideal relationship, it was going to be easy, and I was going to feel comfortable and safe all the time.

    I would be floating on clouds, feeling blissful and light, and I’d love everything that person did all the time. That’s what being with ‘The One’ would feel like. I have come to learn, through countless emotional outbursts, anxious moments, doubt-filled thoughts, hard conversations, and extreme emotional discomfort, that my belief of the ideal relationship was pretty misguided.

    When I met my boyfriend, I knew he was what I had been searching for. He was open, loving, honest, kind, caring, and funny, and his spirit just sparkled through his eyes. However, I was nervous.

    I knew from all I had learned about relationships that they bring up emotional stuff, enabling us to heal wounds we may not have identified if someone else hadn’t triggered them. I knew I was going to learn a lot from this beautiful soul, but I didn’t expect the anxiety that came up within me once things began to get serious.

    At times I felt extremely co-dependent and didn’t want him to spend too much time out of the house, or working, or pursuing his passions, even though I knew it was healthy and normal for him to do that.

    I would keep track of how many hours he was away and would share how hard it was for me to trust him. We would talk openly about my feelings and issues because I never blamed him or asked him to change his actions. I just knew that I had to communicate what was going on for me in order to sort out my feelings and for us to be able to work together on healing.

    Before we met I’d wanted this open communication and healing in a partnership, and I knew this is what real relationships were all about, but that didn’t make bringing my wall down any easier. Our conversations and my fears would bring things up for him, as well—emotions and fears from his past and how he felt controlled and supressed by me now.

    I now believe that the ideal relationship doesn’t always feel comfortable, but you always feel comfortable and safe sharing with your partner, no matter how long you’ve been together.

    I have grown to realize that all relationships have stages. When we meet someone new and begin spending time with them, these stages can seem scary and can inflict doubt. I hope to shed some light on these stages and help you feel more comfortable with experiencing them for yourself.

    First Stage: New Relationship Bliss

    The first stage in most new relationships is bliss! We are perfect, the other person is perfect, and the relationship just flows. You make time for one another however you can, you communicate with each other constantly, and it just feels easy.

    There are no triggers or things the other person does to upset you, the attraction is unreal, and you think, “This is it! I found them! My person. Finally. I can rest.”

    Even with my anxiety and fear, I managed to feel this with my boyfriend. We talked every day. I’d get my “good morning beautiful” text when I was at work, the “how is your day going?” message at lunch, and then we’d talk or see each other on most nights.

    We each put forth equal effort to get to know one another, and I was open and loving toward any part of his behavior. I had patience, understanding, and joy in getting to know his quirks, thoughts, and patterns, and he had seemingly limitless energy to listen to me, talk to me, and sympathize with my emotions.

    This first stage sets a foundation for the relationship and builds connection, but there’s just one small problem: It never seems to last! Does this mean we aren’t meant to stay with that person? Nope. Not at all.

    Though it can feel very much like this, it only means that your relationship is changing, and that’s okay. It’s completely natural, and this process of change is what takes us into an even deeper connection if both partners are open to going there.

    Second Stage: The Inevitable Turn (When One Person’s Fear Shows Up)

    So what exactly is happening when the dreaded, inevitable “shift” happens? You know the one. We feel like the other person is either pulling away or becoming more controlling, our “good morning, have a good day” messages have become less frequent or stopped, and we feel like we are becoming distant from each other.

    There’s a big shift when our comfort level eventually builds in a relationship and we let our guard down a bit. This seems to be the perfect time for our fear to kick in. This is what happed in my relationship.

    One day, my “good morning beautiful” message didn’t show up, the next week my boyfriend had plans besides spending hours with me on Friday night, and our conversations dwindled a bit. My emotional triggers went crazy, and all of a sudden my past fears of emotional and physical abandonment kicked in.

    I no longer felt emotionally stable, relaxed, or happy. I was upset all the time, I felt anxious and taken advantage of, and my mind came up with a million reasons as to why this treatment wasn’t fair.

    I felt like I was the “crazy, needy girl” who wasn’t okay with her partner doing normal things. And I wondered all the time why things had changed. Was it something I did wrong? Did I expect too much? Was I being completely unreasonable, or did I just have too much baggage?

    Most of the time we aren’t aware of what’s really going on; we just notice we feel differently. We might think it’s because our partner’s behavior has changed, but what’s really going on is that our past has crept into this new relationship.

    Our past fears, hurts, and childhood wounds have surfaced for more healing, and if we aren’t aware of this, our new, wonderful, blissful relationship begins to feel just like the rest of them: disappointing, suffocating, abandoning, unsupportive, untrustworthy, and unloving.

    The appearance of this fear is a natural, necessary step in any relationship, though, and we need to embrace it rather than run away from it. This is when a lot of relationships end, but they don’t have to if both partners want to stay and build on this stage.

    Third Stage: Communicating the Fear

    After years of discomfort, spiritual work, counseling, healing, and reading I’ve learned that we must communicate our fear, whether we are the one who experiences it first or the one who sees the change and doesn’t know why.

    You can start the conversations by saying something like “I’ve felt a shift in the energy of our relationship, and I’m feeling anxious about this change. I’m even nervous to talk to you about it because I don’t want to put pressure on you, but I need to communicate what’s going on for me. Can we talk about this a bit?”

    This can be challenging if we aren’t aware of what is really going on, but let that shift, that change, that first feeling of doubt be your signal that fear has entered the relationship. And know that it’s okay for it to be there!

    Every time I felt upset I had to force myself to bring up my fear of our relationship ending, fear of being abandoned, and fear that we would never connect on a deep level. There is no shame in having these fears, and it’s not a sign that the relationship is doomed.

    The fear is there as a message. It’s asking to be listened to and it is a gift necessary for our own growth. When we share our fear, and own that part of us, we’re not blaming the other person. We don’t share our fears to have the other person change, or to have them fix us, but merely to allow our hearts to open up.

    By owning our stuff, we are taking care of our own healing, and this is what keeps our past from damaging the relationship in the future. It’s how we clear our past patterns and allow ourselves to move forward in a new and healthy way with someone else.

    The best part is that we get to see how our partners handle this as well. Our relationships need this stage and this shift from the easy, wonderful bliss, because without it, our bonds would never grow.

    If things are easy all the time, where is the room for true, deep intimacy? How do we learn to truly support our significant others, and ourselves, if we never experience pain, anxiety, anger, or annoyance?

    We don’t, and that’s why after years of being with someone, we can feel like we don’t know them. If we’ve remained closed off and worked our hardest to keep things going smoothly, we only know that level. And the truth is there are deeper, richer, more intimate layers to us as humans and to our relationships.

    Once you have opened your heart and begun communication around your fear, a small amount of vulnerability has been introduced into the relationship, and there is room for your partner to do the same. There is room for you to grow together.

    It’s never too early to begin communicating our fears. If we wait for the problem to just go away, we essentially keep the cycle of anxiety, doubt, and tension going, because our actions, words, and energy reflect our uneasiness in the relationship.

    I opened up to my partner two weeks into dating about my anxiety, fears, and panicked thoughts about seeming needy and wanting too much. I told him I was scared I was going to push him away.

    When I opened up and took responsibility for my feelings, it brought us closer together. Acknowledging my anxiety without expecting him to change anything diffused the tension within our relationship, and I believe this is why we are still together today.

    I don’t demand anything of him; I share my feelings, no matter how strong they are, and then he has space to make decisions based on that knowledge and to communicate his own feelings.

    Stay connected to yourself and speak your truth—the whole, messy, amazing truth. Let your partner see the whole you, quirks and all, and enjoy taking your walls down together, brick by brick.

  • Slow Down, Simplify, Clear Your Mind, and You’ll Get Better Results

    Slow Down, Simplify, Clear Your Mind, and You’ll Get Better Results

    “The real you, the inner you, is pure, very pure. It understands. It has patience. It will wait forever while your ego trots all over everywhere trying to figure life out.” ~Stuart Wilde

    There’s a common myth I think we all fall prey to: If something is important, it has to be complicated.

    Surely, if what we want is easy—be it a business venture or a happier life—then everyone would be going for it, wouldn’t they?

    Well, yes, in a way. But I’ve found that while the road to success and happiness isn’t always smooth sailing, it’s usually us who overcomplicate matters.

    When we learn to get out of our own way, we might actually get the results we want a whole lot faster.

    Slowing Down to Speed Up

    You see, I’ve been aware of this idea of creating space, slowing down, and simplifying for a long time, but it’s only recently that I’ve fully grasped what it’s all about from a deeper level of understanding.

    Growing up I was quite a creative soul, and as I moved into my teenage years, I began to write songs. It was then that I was first introduced to this idea of simplicity of both form and message.

    A teacher once told me that it wasn’t the notes you played that made the music special; it was the space between the notes. The beauty was in what you didn’t play.

    At the time I kind of understood what he meant, but more on an intellectual level than insightfully.

    I always felt I had to learn more, to put more notes and more ideas into the music I made. So I’d layer more guitars, buy new keyboards, put in whatever I could find to make it feel bigger, more accomplished.

    What I now know, of course, is that all I was doing was muddying the waters. This perhaps was why my musical career never took off in the way I wanted. Similarly, a few years after, I turned to another passion of mine and started acting. Again, I did okay by and large. I got myself an agent, did some short films, a few plays, a tour.

    But again, faced with fear, uncertainty, and doubt, I wobbled. I wrongly thought I needed more techniques—that, if I had more theory at my disposal, I’d never have to deal with the insecurity that came from exposing the real me.

    I steadily found myself overcomplicating my craft. One more course, one more book on acting, and I’d become the actor I could be.

    I trained and I read and I watched master classes until my head swam with so many different ideas that I eventually forgot the only real important part: to be present and connected with the other actor in front of me.

    Releasing Control Doesn’t Mean You Don’t Try

    In both these cases I found myself overcomplicating everything so much that it stopped being fun. I was trying to control something that never was meant to be controlled.

    The worst part of all this was that, intellectually speaking at least, I knew this. I knew that simplicity was the key to creating anything good in the world.

    When something is stripped down, pure and totally authentic, it cannot help but be rich with energy, spirit, and truth.

    I knew this, but I think back then I only knew it in my head, not in my heart. I wasn’t confident enough to trust in it. In a way, complicating things felt safer because it tricked me into thinking I was being productive while taking the focus off my own insecurities and vulnerability,

    And I think this is where a lot of us can struggle.

    We overcomplicate things because doing so takes the attention away from the root of who we are.

    We’re scared of sitting quietly with ourselves, so we do everything we can to keep the lights on and the dance floor full.

    We worry that if we let go of our habitual, insecure thinking, we might not like what we find in those quiet moments.

    Yet these quiet moments are actually the times when we can allow real progress to be made.

    When our minds are clear and we’re connected with who we are—before all the thinking and stories and beliefs we’ve piled on top of ourselves since birth—we are more resourceful and resilient than we might ever give ourselves credit for.

    We don’t ever need to think ourselves into getting better results; we just need to trust that our innate wisdom is always there if we slow down and connect with it.

    As Lao Tzu wrote, we turn clay to make a vessel, but it is in the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

    I think this is apparent more and more in this modern world, where we all willingly plug ourselves into the matrix.

    If we never slow down and get off the hamster wheel, we can avoid the emptiness we expect is waiting for us.

    Yet, this is an unfounded fear.

    Sure, it might seem that simplifying our lives and our experiences will leave us devoid of fun.

    It might appear that surrendering to the present moment will take us further away from the life we want.

    We might believe that unless we keep latched on to our thinking, we can’t possibly get to where we’re going.

    Yet, in reality, the space we allow to open up when we slow down and simplify actually fills up pretty quickly.

    And, instead of that cold, unforgiving abyss, what actually comes flooding in is love and resilience. And with it, a clarity of mind that promotes insight and high performance.

    In allowing ourselves this space, we access infinitely better results than if we stayed stuck in our heads, overcomplicating our lives with stressful thinking.

    I’m not suggesting we all just tune out of life and bury our heads in the sand. I’m suggesting that when we ground ourselves in the realization that insecure thinking never gets us what we want, we can then move forward with a much stronger footing.

    Overcomplicating matters never works well for us, whether writing music, acting, or figuring out what to do next in life.

    When we drop out of our thinking and connect to ourselves and the present moment, the answer often shows itself to us. Why? Because we’ve given it the space to appear.

    Without that space, all we have is the same old thoughts and ideas cluttering up our heads.

    These ideas haven’t served us well in the past, so why do we think we’ll find the answers there now?

    As Einstein wrote, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

    I used to believe that if I wanted to achieve something, or if I had a problem I had to solve, the only way I’d get there was to go up in my head and think my way to a solution.

    But this too was just a symptom of overcomplicating matters—a fear of surrendering to what is.

    As I’ve traveled further on my journey of self-awareness, I’ve come to understand the true inside-out nature of how life works. I recognize more and more how the old way of being never helped me, and that when we give ourselves space and clarity of thought, we allow new ideas to form.

    Whether we’re stressed, anxious, or trying to work out how best to achieve what we want, the less we have on our mind, the better life gets.

    So if we are learning to move away from thinking our way to solutions, what do we do instead?

    We slow down. We take away.

    The beauty of these concepts is that we don’t have to learn lots of new techniques to get the results we want. It’s not about adding things but simply stripping away all the stuff that inhibits us.

    Trust that going up into your head and doing loads of that really, really good thinking only really takes you out of the present moment.

    Usually in these moments you’ll be imagining a past that you think is warning you of something or a future event that scares you from moving forward. But the operative word here is “imagining.” These experiences aren’t real. Yes, it’s very easy to think your feelings about them are telling you something. They never are. You are only ever feeling your thinking in the present moment.

    When you become fully aware of this, you quickly reconnect with yourself and fall back into reality, where insights can happen and you can take action.

    To better help with this understanding and create a space for insight to happen, I find it helps to get away from distractions strategically throughout the day. Go for a walk in nature, book some quiet time with yourself for reflection, and actively disconnect from your emails and phone for an hour or so.

    Little acts like this create exponential results when you allow yourself the space and clarity to fully connect with yourself and the world.

    When we’re calmer and more relaxed, everything comes a lot more easily. By creating a peaceful, quiet space around us, we allow our innate wisdom and well-being to come to the surface.

    This is who you are before the world put all the thoughts and worries and stories on you.

    This is you, uncomplicated, unencumbered.

    Pure, elegant, resourceful.

    Think about it; did you ever really get any great ideas or solve any major problems when you were stressed, stuck in your head, and anxious? Don’t you usually get your best ideas when you’re calm, clear-headed, and relaxed? Perhaps in the shower or when out walking?

    Life was never meant to be a struggle.

    If I’d known this earlier, maybe I’d have been a more successful songwriter or a better actor. Yet, I wouldn’t change anything about my journey, and with these new insights I have no desire to be anywhere else than where I am: here. In the moment. Connected.

    The bottom line is simple: learn to trust that when your head is clear of thoughts, this isn’t you not trying; this is exactly the right condition to allow new insights and ideas to appear.

    With this new understanding, you free yourself up to fully connect with who you really are.

    You are free to play music, act, or do whatever you see fit, from a place of simplified ease. You surrender any ego-driven desire and enjoy your present reality.

    Letting yourself go and really trusting in that stillness will take courage, but when you do, I think you’ll find that life suddenly feels a whole lot richer and less complicated in the best possible way.

  • 5 Ways Failure Can Be a Blessing in Disguise

    5 Ways Failure Can Be a Blessing in Disguise

    “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” ~ Dalai Lama

    Recently I received some “bad” news: After years of studying and a nerve-wracking exams procedure, I didn’t make it to the list of the lucky few selected for the upper level public administration job posts.

    Having always tried to keep up with a job that made good use of my law degree, while at the same time pursuing my career as a writer, there were times when I questioned whether a law-related job was actually my true calling.

    At the time, trying for the public administration exams had seemed like a “best of both worlds” scenario. So, having finally made the difficult decision to take a leap of faith and change my career path, the outcome was certainly not what I had hoped for.

    Thus, I was faced with two options: either shrivel up in a corner by the heater, bawling my eyes out for one more shattered dream, or finally establish these new neural pathways I’ve been striving to build this past year of awakening and see the situation for what it really was.

    The expected, rather self-pitying reaction was looking at me with tearful puppy eyes, begging me to indulge in it. But this time I chose the new way.

    After the initial disappointment, I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the truth of things—that I had done my best for this job opening, and the outcome I was about to fret over was out of my control. I recognized then that I could not change what had happened and I had to accept it. Not surrender, but accept.

    As I’ve navigated my recent setback, I’ve pinpointed five ways failure can actually be beneficial.

    1. You come to terms with what you can control and what you cannot.

    In short, you get to have a first-class, one-on-one encounter with your ego. Because it is your ego, not your true self, that demands to control every single outcome of every single plan and effort you make.

    According to Jungian psychology, the ego is made of our own beliefs and ideas about ourselves, whether true or false. That’s why the ego’s very existence depends upon keeping these beliefs intact; it cannot allow them to come crumbling down.

    For example, you might think of yourself as the best at your job; so when you end up fretting for days over a mistake you might have made at work, this is your ego trying to control something that is out of its power.

    In my recent exams’ case, I too could have barricaded myself behind my belief that I normally perform well at academics, and allowed my ego to keep nagging me about my not attaining my goal—but this time I chose perspective, not ego.

    Preparing for a job interview or exam? You can minimize your potential errors by studying thoroughly and keeping yourself in good shape, both physically and mentally. This is what lies within your control: your own choices and attitude.

    Beyond that, there’s only the realm of unforeseen, uncontrollable external variables. Things may not turn out as you hoped they would, and there’s nothing you can do to guarantee they do. You can save yourself a lot of heartache by acting but not expecting.

    By being aware of what lies within your power and what does not and accepting that certain things are out of your control, you also end the self-pitying, self-victimizing cycles. You stop blaming others, the Universe, external variables, and yourself. Which brings us to my next point.

    2. You boost your self-knowledge.

    Take a relationship gone bad, for example. Mourning a bit is, of course, part of the equation, but after a while you’ll find it far more rewarding to focus on what you learned about yourself, thanks to this experience.

    What are your real needs, your true nature even? What can you stand and what can you not? Once you get clear on the lesson, you’ll be able to make wiser decisions going forward.

    When reflecting on my recent professional setback, the major thing I learned about myself was how easily un-grounded and un-mindful I could get whenever the going got tough.

    Trying to discover why this was so, I recognized my second lesson: I had to work on my need to control the outcome of my efforts, in all areas of my life.

    By choosing to focus on the bigger picture when coping with my “failure,” I was able to move on from it more quickly. I even found myself working on my next novel sooner than I would have, had I remained stuck there, crying over spilled milk that might have even proved not to be my cup of tea.

    The greater the impact of a failure, the greater the opportunity to learn about yourself—if you get past the disappointment and, instead of wallowing, spend your time more productively, confronting your weaknesses.

    By that I mean taking responsibility for any choices that contributed to your failure and identifying why you might get so worked up each time things don’t go according to your plans. Is it low self-esteem? That fragile ego again, that has learned to exist and breathe only depending on external milestones of success? If yes, then give it a nice goodbye pat on the back and reclaim your true self.

    3. You have an opportunity to practice living in the moment.

    When you fail at something, you’re reminded that there are no guarantees in the future, and that all that really matters is what you choose to do in the present.

    In this way, failure reinforces the importance of mindfulness, the act of being completely present in whatever you’re experiencing here and now.

    My career choice “gone bad” also taught me that it can make a plan’s failure sting even more if you put all your energy and hopes on it, at the expense of other plans or areas of your life.

    Putting socializing with friends or family on hold, for example, for the sake of devoting yourself to a certain career goal actually deprives you of a very important part of your present. Life happens simultaneously, in all these areas, and we miss out when we focus too intensely on any one specific goal.

    Mindfulness isn’t just about appreciating what is; it also enables us to better accept what will be. When we make the conscious choice to take life moment by moment, we become more grounded, and that helps us better adapt when things don’t go according to plan.

    4. Failure reminds you to focus on the journey.

    I might have sacrificed infinite hours studying Macroeconomics and other subjects entirely outside my area of expertise, in pursuit of the career change I ultimately didn’t manage to achieve; but this arduous procedure has left me with precious and detailed knowledge on subject matters I would have otherwise never acquired. My newly obtained knowledge on economics even helped me with the novel I’m currently writing!

    Also, on this difficult journey I met many co-travelers who shared the same goal and the same struggles, and whom I now regard as my best of friends.

    Do you really regret meeting all the people you met, learning the things you learned, and growing through your journey, even though it didn’t get you where you wanted? Nothing is a waste of time and energy if you gain through the experience.

    5. You open yourself up to something even better down the road.

    Some years ago, I had the unfortunate experience of growing close to someone suffering from covert narcissistic personality disorder. Before then, I knew nothing about this condition and only began learning about it after I’d been gaslighted by this person’s inconsistent behavior long enough.

    The thing is, until that moment of revelation, I’d been beating myself over why I couldn’t make this relationship work, and had considered the whole thing my failure. After that, I realized how this “failure” had protected me from getting deeper involved in something that wasn’t healthy for me, and how it opened me up to a better relationship in the future.

    From this experience, I learned that we shouldn’t spend so much time getting depressed in front of a closed door that we miss the window that has opened for us a few blocks down the road.

    Have you ever spent nights crying over unfulfilled dreams, only to recognize later that, if they had been granted to you when you wanted them, you wouldn’t have set out on the amazing journeys you ended up taking because those dreams didn’t come true?

    Yes, I know you have. And if you’re going through the aftermath of one more “failure” right now, know that amazing journeys are ahead for you now too.

    The good old adage “everything happens for a reason” is good and old for a reason.

  • How to Boost Your Self-Worth: 7 Tips to Feel Better About Yourself

    How to Boost Your Self-Worth: 7 Tips to Feel Better About Yourself

    “The more we see ourselves as a vibrant, successful, inspiring person who boldly declares and manifests her vision, the more we become just that.” ~Kristi Bowman

    I was kind of a chunky kid growing up.

    In my own little world of trolls and playwriting, I didn’t notice the chunk. I genuinely liked me. But when I entered the “real world” of opinions, people, and comparison, I began to realize or rather feel that perhaps my body wasn’t good enough.

    This thought was like a seed that was then planted in my brain. And every time I thought about it, I watered it. Soon enough, that seed sprouted and feelings of not being enough were just a part of who I was.

    I was really good at disguising those thoughts, though. Most in my circle had no idea of how I really felt.

    To be brutally honest, I didn’t even know how I really felt until an event that happened (years later) shined so much light on my deep-rooted feelings of not being enough that I could no longer not acknowledge my feelings. At this point, I fully acknowledged that I had some serious work to do.

    The beginning of the event (you’ll see why I say beginning shortly) was with a boy. I was in my twenties. We were newly dating. We had just come back to his place after a nice dinner. We kissed. We decided to change and put on some comfy clothes to watch a movie.

    While I was changing, a funny, unpleased look washed over his face, and he told me that he was surprised my stomach wasn’t really that flat. That I had somewhat of a “muffin top.”

    I stood there, pulling my shirt over my head, stunned. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

    After the movie, I left, covered in shame. I felt confused, embarrassed, and alone. Despite all of that, I continued to still see him until he inevitably dumped me a few weeks later.

    The real event was my reflection after this relationship ended, when I realized I felt so poorly about myself that I continued to stay with someone who made me feel deep shame. More importantly, I realized that he was just echoing and reflecting back my own feelings of not being good enough.

    It was in this moment that I decided I was, in fact, enough, and that things were going to change.

    Here’s what I did to begin to boost my self-worth and how you can begin to recognize your own worth too.

    1. Pretend you are your own best friend.

    Simply start to notice what you’re saying to yourself. You may be taken aback by how often you’re saying unkind things to yourself (I know I was), but know that it’s totally normal and part of the process. Allow yourself to observe the thoughts that come up and not judge yourself for having them.

    When you notice that you’re in this unkind space, ask yourself, “If this were a friend coming to me with these thoughts, my thoughts, what would I say to them?”

    This question would always wake me up and radically change my self-talk. I could see how mean I was being to myself. I wouldn’t speak to any other human being like I spoke to myself, let alone a friend. You may find this is the same for you.

    If this is difficult for you, it may be because you don’t think you deserve this level of kindness. First of all, you do. Second of all, you can combat this by choosing to focus on one thing you appreciate about yourself that day. Perhaps you appreciate that you decided to go on a walk even though you didn’t want to, or you were kind to your coworker, even though she was being unkind.

    Reflecting and recalling things you appreciate about yourself isn’t always easy, but the more you practice it, the easier it becomes. And it’s in this space you’ll begin to see you deserve to be spoken to kindly, just like you would speak to a friend.

    2. Surround yourself with people who bring you up.

    I was notorious for saying yes when I really wanted to say no. Again, it all boiled down to not valuing my wants, my needs, or myself. The first time I said no (with grace), I was petrified. I was worried the other person would hate me.

    Funny thing is, they didn’t hate me. They began to respect me more. And the more and more I declined outings, events, dates, work, and time with people who brought me down, the more I made room for the things in my life that made me shine, feel happy, and feel whole.

    By feeling this way, I began to really fall in love with myself and appreciate the power I had to make myself feel grounded. I began to feel enough.

    And it was during this time that I joined a local yoga studio, signed up for meditation classes, and started regularly hiking. Through these activities, not only did I find self-worth, and myself, but I also began to grow a beautiful support network of likeminded individuals who would eventually become friends.

    You can do this too. Find and/or make time for activities that bring you joy, and know that a simple hello and a smile can go a long way.

    3. Ask close friends or family members what they appreciate about you.

    Sometimes (or a lot of the time) a kind word from someone we love and trust can go a long way. Their perspective can also help shed some light on qualities about ourselves we previously dismissed.

    And when you have these words in writing, you can pull then out and reread them whenever you feel down.

    The email I sent, and that you can send too, went something like this: “As one of the key people in my soul circle, would you mind telling me what you appreciate about me? I’d be so appreciative!”

    Try it. Save their words. And reread them when you need them.

    4. Get curious about why you’re triggered.

    We get emotionally triggered for all sorts of things—words, actions, decisions, comments, and the list could go on.

    When I got serious about feeling my worth, instead of getting angry with others, situations, or myself when I became emotionally triggered, I got curious and began asking myself what still needed to be healed. By doing this, I was able to really heal my wounds and understand myself better, so the next decision, action, person, or words I chose would lend to better, more loving choices.

    For example, comments about how much or how little I would eat triggered me because I thought someone was judging my body.

    This observation made me realize I had more healing to do around accepting my body and being grateful for it. So I began to write what I appreciated about my body every day in a journal. Slowly, over time, I came to fully love my body—cellulite, “muffin top,” and all.

    You can do this too. The first step is simply becoming aware of when you’re emotionally triggered, leaning into the “why” behind it all, and seeing what still needs to be healed.

    5. Focus on kindness and helping others.

    Choosing to switch my focus from “What’s wrong with me?” to “How can I give back?” was immensely powerful.

    What made me see and feel my worth was helping others—giving a compliment, holding open a door, calling my grandma, starting a random conversation with the woman bagging my groceries, helping an elderly gentleman who had fallen get back up, extending an ear, a hug, and a tissue for a girlfriend after her long hard day.

    By giving back, even in tiny ways, I saw how much of an impact I had. I saw I mattered. I saw I had the power to create happier moments for others and literally turn frowns upside down. And when you see that you’re capable of this, you can’t not see that you are worthy and deserving of love, including your own.

    You can try this too with as much as a simple genuine compliment.

    6. Practice gratitude for who you are as a human being.

    In today’s world, we’re so used to looking at things from the outside in. I didn’t (and still don’t) want to feel my worth based on my looks. Our looks fade. Our soul never does.

    I knew this but didn’t know how to really feel it until I began making notes of why I appreciated and liked myself, on a soul-level. Not on the superficial level. For example, I began writing down things like, “I appreciate that I have such a deep capacity to feel.” This was such a simple, yet transforming exercise.

    You can begin to create this practice too. Every morning or evening (whatever feels best to you), in a journal, bullet-point a few things that you appreciate about your soul self that are unique to your last twenty-four hours.

    For example, if you encountered a rough situation at work and you were kind regardless, you could write “I appreciate I acted with grace and gentleness at the office today in an uncomfortable situation.” Or, you could write, “I appreciate my grace and gentleness.”

    The point is that your gratitude focus here is inward. You’re appreciating the qualities that make you uniquely and beautifully you. And you’re showing up daily to shine some light on them. And yes, know this may feel odd at first, but over time, it becomes easier, and naturally this appreciation of who you are positively changes your self-worth.

    7. Realize everyone has their own struggles.

    I had always known everyone had their own struggles, but I hadn’t fully internalized it. When I began creating a new tribe of souls who appreciated me, lifted me up, and who made me feel safe, I was able to talk about some of my struggles with loving myself and feeling worthy.

    When I did this, others began to open up about their own struggles with self-worth. This made me feel less alone, and ironically, made my self-worth soar through the roof because by simply being open, I was able to help others move through their own self-worth struggles.

    Here, I saw that I wasn’t alone and that I had more power than I thought. You do too.

  • There’s No Such Thing as Normal (and Other Lessons from Living Abroad)

    There’s No Such Thing as Normal (and Other Lessons from Living Abroad)

    “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” ~Mother Theresa

    By passport and birth, I am Romanian. By soul, I am a citizen of the world.

    I’ve always been fascinated by cultures, traditions, mentalities, and different ways of doing things and perceiving the world. So when I got my first working contract in Sweden seven years ago, I embraced it with tremendous joy.

    Four years later I took one of the biggest steps in my life and moved to Shanghai. I was an Eastern-European woman leading a Chinese team, in an entirely new environment, so different from anything I had experienced before.

    Today, I am sharing these insights from my current home in South Korea, knowing that I will start a new, very exciting chapter of my life in Mexico in a few months.

    Looking back on my life, I’ve come to realize I was very judgmental of others. I expected others to behave in certain predefined ways, and I stereotyped people based on their country of origin. For example, I assumed that all Italians would speak a lot and loudly. All Swedish would be blond and shy. All Greeks would be cheese lovers, and all Chinese were supposed to eat dog meat.

    The truth is, I was putting labels on people and seeing the world in black and white. As if I was the only one holding the absolute truth and the “right” way of perceiving the world, and anything else was either strange or abnormal.

    Cognitive distortions like labeling or stereotyping separate us and shut us down. When I was meeting the world with a “my way or no way” approach, I was stuck on my ego. My mind was too busy judging, so it had no time to listen or understand other points of view, and everything outside my comfort zone scared me.

    The real shift happened the day I decided to meet new people with the eyes of a child, with curiosity and a genuine interest to know them and connect with them, from the heart.

    I started to ask questions, like: “What makes you say this?” “What makes you do that?” or “I’m not sure I understand. Can you tell me more about that?”

    New insights and new perspectives came to life that I’d like to share with you today.

    1. We judge what we don’t understand.

    During my first year in China, I was outraged to see people spitting in public spaces. I saw this behavior in the middle of the day, right on the streets, and at work, in the ladies room. I found it extremely rude and disgusting.

    Later, my colleagues explained that this is how people clean their throats from extreme pollution. I didn’t have to like it, but understanding the reason helped me become less judgmental.

    All behaviors are attempts to meet needs. We might not condone the action, but we can usually relate to the need a person is trying to meet, whether it’s self-protection or something else.

    When you find yourself in a blaming or judging mode, act as an observer. Get curious and ask questions. Look at the situation from this perspective: “I don’t have to agree with this, but I know where this comes from. I understand.” See the difference and how much lighter you feel.

    2. Normalcy is an illusion.

    As babies, we know nothing about the world. We’re all shaped by the societies we grow up in (family, religion, and schooling system), and everything we know to be true comes from the environment that raised us.

    In reality, things are as they are. Not good or bad, normal or strange, ugly or beautiful, stupid or smart. “Normal” is relative to each individual because we all filter the world through our own lenses and system of belief.

    To me, knowing this was such a relief! I’ve stopped trying to impose my views and convictions on others. I’ve also stopped judging silly little things that seemed odd to me—like how the Chinese eat tomatoes with sugar because, to them, the cherry tomato is not a vegetable, but a fruit.

    3. Beauty is subjective.

    They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I believe this is true. Knowing this helped me stop judging the Chinese, South Korean, or Japanese for hiding themselves under big umbrellas during summer.

    As an Eastern-European woman, I was raised to believe “summer beauty” was all about getting a nice, sexy chocolate-like complexion. However, during my stay in Asia, I was always complimented on my “gorgeous white skin” because here beautiful often means “white.” So if you visit this part of the world, don’t get surprised to see lots of whitening products in beauty shops.

    Each time you think you’re not beautiful enough, your nose is too long, or your hips are too big, remember that beauty is a norm, shaped by societies and cultures. Spend your precious time by finding your own kind of beauty. You are what you believe. Decide you are gorgeous and see what happens.

    4. Feedback is just an opinion.

    If you are concerned with what other people think about you, know this and set yourself free: If they find you intelligent, stupid, ugly, or average, that has nothing to do with you. It’s all about them and what they see in you after they evaluate you through their personal standards and expectations.

    Take my example: a Swedish colleague once told me I was “scary”—“too emotional, too talkative, and too intense.” I wanted to know more about myself, so I asked colleagues from Romania what they thought about that feedback. They found it funny: “What? You, scary? You, intense? Who told you that? You must be kidding!”

    To them, I was normal. Showing vulnerability and expressing emotions at work was not common in Sweden, but it was normal to me.

    That’s where the differences came from. It wasn’t right or wrong; it was just different. Every time people tell you that you are “too little of this” or “too much of that,” know that it has nothing to do with you. It’s about how they’re reacting to you, so don’t take it personally.

    5. We’re all influenced by our culture’s values.

    Every culture holds a set of primary values that influence the way we act and think. In Sweden, for example, I learned the word “lagom” (meaning “not too much”), which is an expression of humbleness.

    In other words, one should not stick out and be too much out of anything, or believe they are “some kind of special.” On the opposite side, if you were raised in a country that puts a high focus on acknowledging and praising your individuality, acting and thinking “lagom” about yourself might be hard.

    Countries such as China or South Korea value harmony: let us all agree and collaborate, so it’s a win-win for everybody and no one has to lose. Kind of “me happy, you happy.” So don’t get surprised if people tell you they agree with you when, in fact, they don’t. It’s all about avoiding conflict and “keeping face,” for the sake of the collective harmony.

    Knowing the cultural values in a given country is another way to understand why people behave differently.

    We all have our own historical, social background, but diversity doesn’t have to be scary. Imagine how boring life would be if everyone thought the same: no learning from each other, no brainstorming of new ideas, no evolution and growth.

    It’s essential that we embrace our differences with compassion and accept diversity as a reality of the world we all live in. Souls don’t hold a passport. In spirit, there’s no separation, no nationality or religion. Those have been assigned to each of us at birth. Hurting you is hurting myself. Loving you is loving myself. We are all one.

  • The Power of Staying Put When You Feel Like Running Away

    The Power of Staying Put When You Feel Like Running Away

    “You cannot keep running away from your fears. At some point in life you will have to build up the courage to face and overcome them.” ~Unknown

    Last year my family and I relocated overseas from Australia to Singapore, which meant new jobs, new schools, new relationships—an entirely new way of living.

    My husband was busy with his work, and I had two wide-eyed children looking up at mummy for direction. A part of me was excited for the challenge, but another part of me, of equal measure, was feeling overwhelmed by the prospect and struggling to let my feelings go. I also knew that the only way out of this emotional prison was through.

    This chapter in my own zigzag journey has reconfirmed to me that we never have everything figured out. You think you’ve got it (eureka!), then life throws a curve ball and you take a temporary step backward. And that’s okay.

    I would say I’m more of an introvert; give me a good book and I’m happy. Reflecting, writing, and analyzing come naturally to me, whereas extroverting is more of an acquired skill. So the hardest part of our new life, for me, was the social aspect.

    Singapore has a large and diverse expat community, and we were welcomed with open arms—lunches, school events, BBQs. Yet being an introvert all of these well-intentioned invitations sent my ego into overdrive. For me, this was social overload, and it felt hard.

    Being the new kid in town, I felt pressure to go to everything and be my best, shiny self (whoever that is). Yet, a few weeks into this I hit the pause button and jumped off the social escalator. I needed to recalibrate and find some healthy ways to support myself and my family through the change and adjustment.

    To keep with the theme of new challenges, I took up Ashtanga yoga. I’d heard it was a powerful practice that helps us learn to be present with difficulty, and it sounded like exactly what I needed.

    I picked up my yoga mat and took myself down to a local studio to thrash it out, Claire vs. ego.

    The first morning I entered the studio, the teacher was supporting someone in a back bend while saying “trust yourself, let go.” The Mysore style of yoga is teacher supported as opposed to led, so you take yourself through the postures at your own pace.

    He pointed to an empty space to roll out my mat, and his first words to me were “no one’s going to rescue you, so lets get to it.” (I’ll add here, for the record, that this yoga teacher is a former US National Gymnastics coach, so he doesn’t do light and easy!) My ego was well and truly confronted. This studio was not going to be a place to hide.

    Yoga has a reputation for being about super hard, impressive postures and showing off your best active wear. Yoga is also about soul work. What I have found is a practice that challenges, confronts, and supports me.

    The yoga mat became my metaphor for life and for my insecurities. I took my struggles to the studio; they spilled out on the mat, I worked with them, and then repeated the practice the next day. And as my body strengthened and my posture straightened, I felt stronger and straighter inside.

    Some days were easier than others. On my better days, the dopamine was pumping and I took to my mat with a relaxed determination; on the not so good days, I sweated and strained and my mind was off planning what to cook for dinner that night. Such is life. We still show up and do what we can with what we have in that moment.

    There were times (frequent times!) when I wanted to give up. My mind would say, “Claire, this is so hard and painful. Why are you putting yourself through this? Can you honestly be bothered? Just roll up your mat and let’s hot foot it home for a cup of tea. That’d make life so much easier.”

    Similarly off the mat, at times it was tempting to hide away from new people for fear.

    The community in Singapore is diverse, and the diversity and newness scared me. What if I couldn’t find anything in common with my new community that consisted of people from all over the world—India, Burma, Denmark, Norway, Germany and so on? What would we talk about? Would they like me? Would I like them?

    A large part of me was crying out for the familiarity and security that my old life and friendships contained. I wanted to go to that BBQ with a garden full of familiar faces and be able to pick up a conversation (or sit in comfortable silence) with all the ease and intimacy that is earned over time.

    In life, how often do we allow ourselves to side step new experiences because of our pain, discomfort, and fear? Fear of rejection, of failure, of success? But embracing life’s inevitable pain is the only way to grow and to live fully.

    As my yoga teacher shared, “Claire, don’t mistake an opening for an injury, because they’re different. When you face your pain, be it a tight hip or an emotional wound, it’s going to hurt, but go through it, release the energy tied up there, and push through to the other side. This is where your freedom lies.”

    My new tool, yoga, has helped me to release old tied up energy and better utilize my present day energy too.

    Yoga has taught me to navigate the world with the language of feeling my body sensations, rather than solely thinking about them.

    I can feel if my body is getting unnecessarily tense and tied up or if I’m losing energy ruminating or stressing about something, and that gives me a choice—I can stay in that state, even feed that state, which doesn’t feel too good; or I can chose to let the tension go, get my energy flow back on track, and handle my present day moment differently.

    Familiarizing with my body in this way has brought a new level of awareness, or friendship toward myself, and helped me make better choices.

    At one of the early community events I went to I put so much pressure on myself to be pleasing to everyone that I became somebody else—a nodding, smiling, frozen person. Who I was being felt unnatural and uncomfortable, so it wasn’t long before my little friend anxiety appeared.

    With my new body awareness it clicked a lot sooner that I wasn’t being real and that I didn’t feel at home in myself. This new information gave me back my power and I was able to breathe and relax my way gradually back into myself.

    These little emotional detours have been more frequent in Singapore, but I also know that they don’t have to mean anything. We don’t need to think about them, ascribe some complex theory to them, worry about them, and generally just fuel the fire.

    These days I feel more able to normalize these uncomfortable body sensations and feelings with understanding. “I’m human, and this is a human experience. I’m okay.” Cue self-compassion.

    So I guess I have let go of perfectionism.

    What if life is about showing up, regardless of what happens, and having the courage to be seen? What if I allow myself to fail and to make mistakes? What if I accept and embrace that there is never going to be a perfect?

    It really hasn’t all been as bad as my ego tried to claim it would be, either! In my yoga practice I’d had a strong aversion to doing a headstand. My teacher knew this, and every session he would make a beeline for me at headstand time and teach me to fall—over and over again, week after week. And I got good at falling.

    Paradoxically, I also got better at my headstand. I found both the fall and the headstand actually weren’t as hard or as punishing as I had created them to be in my mind.

    Similarly, over time and with practice, building new relationships with such a diverse range of people has become less daunting and actually incredibly fascinating.

    Last week, I met with some other class parents for coffee and listening to the sharing of experiences from people from all over the globe was pretty amazing.

    I’m pleased I’ve pushed through fear; otherwise, I wouldn’t have reaped the benefits or gained the life experience that I have from being part of this diverse community. And I’m pleased to say I’ve met some incredible people who have started to become firm friends.

    Essentially, the pain and the fears (of falling from a head stand or making faux pas with potential new friends), while challenging, haven’t been as bad when I have actually faced them.

    A move overseas aside, everyday life contains pain and discomfort. Fact. Being human we experience a continuous ebb and flow of pleasure and pain, joy and sadness, praise and blame, gain and loss, and so on.

    Experiencing pain does not mean that there’s something wrong with you. Another fact. If we can keep learning to accept life, warts and all, and to “stay put on our mats” whatever we’re dealt, we gain more and more emotional freedom.

    Pain, when faced, offers us the chance to grow and emerge some more—so for all it’s challenges, it’s actually a good thing. With the learning it provides comes the opportunity to make better choices for ourselves and to show up more fully for our lives.

    Many of us, as children, never learned how to handle the inevitable pain of life, and there’s no shame in that. But it’s never too late to get curious and start working with our pain (wherever you are on the path) using supportive tools, people, and techniques. As we learn to let it go, we create the space where the magic happens.

  • Our Power Lies In How We Choose to Respond to Our Pain

    Our Power Lies In How We Choose to Respond to Our Pain

    “The strongest hearts have the most scars.” ~Unknown 

    Maybe it’s true, that the strongest hearts have the most scars.

    And maybe the pain and the discomfort we experience in life can serve as a great teacher, if we choose to see it that way.

    Everyone has bumps, bruises, and pains in life, right?

    Things happen that are outside our control, and it’s up to each one of us to decide how these experiences shape us.

    There are those who endure incredible trauma and pain and choose to use those experiences to see life differently. They learn from it, grow, and move on.

    And there are also those that go through horrible pain and don’t have strong hearts. They have broken hearts that just stay broken.

    What’s the key difference between those who are able to find meaning from their hardships and move on and those who don’t?

    This difference is the very key that took my life from one big red-hot-mess to what I would define as true success—a life of freedom, happiness, and meaning, soulfully driven and led by spirit.

    But it didn’t start that way.

    I didn’t choose to be adopted.

    I didn’t choose to have a table fall on my head when I was five, causing a severe head injury and coma, which would require a decade full of EEG’s and anti-seizure meds.

    I didn’t plan an ugly divorce. I didn’t plan on meeting the love of my life at a wacky spiritual retreat in Brazil and then, in saying yes to that love, losing friends, family, and my home in the process.

    I didn’t choose a lot of the bumps, bruises, and scars that visibly covered my body and secretly covered my heart.

    The first, most significant scar probably started when I was adopted.

    I was the product of a teen pregnancy—loveless and unplanned. My birth mother was sent away from her small hometown to give birth to me in a strange city, alone and, I am sure, quite freaked out. I don’t imagine it was the idyllic birth experience most of us moms would want to have.

    Having two incredible daughters that are pretty much pieces of my heart walking around on this earth, I know well what it means to be a mother. I know what it means to carry, grow, nurture, and raise a human in this world. I know what it means to be willing to do anything for your children.

    I also know what it means to not feel connected to a mother.

    I know what it’s like to feel like an outsider—unwanted, unseen, and unheard.

    And regardless of how amazing my adoptive parents were (and still are), I still felt like the oddball, and not a real part of the family.

    I felt like a mistake.

    I grew up feeling like there must have been something wrong with me since my own mother gave me up for adoption.

    I must have been broken. I must have been a freak, so I had to do everything humanly possible to not let them see the truth—that I was not worthy of love because I was not worthy of being kept.

    So I carried that scar with me, ready to sabotage relationships due to a fear of abandonment.

    Ready to sabotage success due to a fear of not being good enough, for anything.

    I didn’t realize, at that moment, that I was choosing a pattern of thinking and feeling that was keeping me stuck.  

    No one was forcing me to feel unworthy and to think negative thoughts about myself. I was choosing my pain. I was perpetuating the story rather than seeing my pain as a teacher, learning from it, and finding meaning in it.

    It wasn’t until I made a conscious choice to address my pain, get help, and learn to see my struggles in a different light that things shifted dramatically for me.

    And this didn’t happen overnight.

    It was a gradual process of awakening that began with seeing a qualified therapist in my late teens.

    Because I had a deep desire to understand more about human behavior and motivation, I majored in psychology and sociology. After that, I became a voracious student of personal growth and spiritual work, digesting all I could in the form of books, courses, and retreats.

    I started noticing that I was relating to my past experiences differently.

    I was telling a new story that embodied what I had learned from these various modalities.

    It wasn’t my fault that I was given up for adoption, nor did it mean I was unworthy. And I wasn’t a horrible, ugly person because of some of the choices I had made—I was human.

    Those painful experiences didn’t define my life in a negative sense any longer. The old story of hurt, blame, and resentment was replaced with a new story of healing, awareness, and inner strength.

    In my opinion, this is one of the key reasons people either learn, grow, and move on or they stay stuck in victim mode and keep hurting. They choose to stay stuck in the painful place by holding on to the disempowering story that causes them to suffer. They keep playing the tape of the hurt rather than the tape of the healing.

    To move on, transcend, and grow from any painful experience requires courage, willingness, and the belief that you can choose to see your past differently—that you can feel differently about it and free yourself from the chains of pain.

    But it can’t change without that belief. You need to believe it’s possible in order to choose a different way of reacting.

    That is ground zero.

    Some will argue that it isn’t that simple—that there would be less misery and more joy on our planet if it were that easy to move on from our emotional pains.

    And I would respond by saying that while it may be a simple idea, that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.

    It’s simple to understand that you can choose to see and think differently about something, which will then change how you feel about it.

    The hard part comes in choosing to think and react in new ways, and choosing to get help if you need it. This requires work, strength, support, compassion, and sometimes just time.

    It’s not a quick fix and it’s not always a straight line to get from hurt to healed.

    But it’s the very thing that turned my life from mess to miracles, and the very thing I have seen create massive shifts in others lives as well—the power of choice.

    We have to choose to feel and acknowledge our pain so that we can heal from it; to commit to therapy or support groups so that we can understand our pain; and to know that it’s possible to turn any pain, and challenge, into our greatest teacher.

    When we are able to turn our messes into miracles, our pain into purpose, we win.

    And I get it; when we are in the middle of our suffering, we aren’t able to see the gift in it because pain can consume us. In the moment, no one is going to see the positive side of being hurt, abused, or abandoned. At that point, it’s more about survival.

    But what we do after we experience pain is our choice and our point of power.

    While we may not be able to choose all the things that happen to us in life, we do get to choose how to react to those things. We get to choose what they mean to us.  

    I think about the Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist Victor Frankl, who survived the holocaust and was able to find meaning in that terrible experience.

    His story, like so many others who have survived terrible tragedy, always leaves me in awe of the strength of the human spirit and heart.

    He was able to see, even in his unimaginable situation, that he could still choose hope and love. Even though his wife had been killed, he chose to remember her love and let that be his guiding light and strength.

    Although they had taken everything else from him, they couldn’t take the most profound and precious of all human freedoms—the ability to choose his own way. The ability to choose love over hate and hope over despair.

    I stop and remember this when I think my life is hard or when I feel strongly challenged by something. If Victor Frankl could choose meaning over misery in a situation as dire as the holocaust, then anything is possible. Any hurt is possible to heal.

    As Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

    When you look at your hardships and challenges as just another personal test and know that what’s on the others side of that is a more expansive way to see life, it’s a win. But when you see life’s bumps as one giant bummer and nothing but that, it’s a loss.

    It doesn’t matter if you’ve experienced pain like Victor Frankl or pain from a broken heart, health diagnosis, job loss, or whatever. Pain is pain, and it’s all subjective. One person’s pain isn’t greater than another’s. We all feel, we all hurt, and ultimately, we all have a choice in how we deal with it.

    We move through our pain because we must. We do it because the alternative is a slow death sentence.

    We have a choice. Our true power lies in our ability to choose how to react to what happens to us. And then to keep choosing an attitude like Victor Frankl’s, until it becomes a habit of empowerment and what pained you no longer does.

    Choose to see light in the darkness, beauty in the ugliness, and love no matter what. That is the path that will you lead you to happiness and healing, and the path to a strong, resilient heart.

  • 5 Beliefs About Anxiety That Can Make You Even More Anxious

    5 Beliefs About Anxiety That Can Make You Even More Anxious

    “It’s okay to not be okay all the time.” ~Unknown

    I never thought of myself as an anxious person.

    But here I was again, staring at a computer screen in my office, so stressed I could barely type. I’d been throwing myself into work and I had crashed—hard.

    And this wasn’t the first time.

    Unfortunately, our mental image of who we think we are and who we actually are don’t always match up. But part of being human is that we learn to live with that, we embrace the struggle, and we grow.

    Over the last five years I’ve had a number periods of high anxiety, often triggered by work-related stress. In that time I’ve realized that my beliefs about anxiety were unhelpful, and they often worsened the experience.

    When I was able to let go of the firm grip I had on these ideas, I found that when anxiety came to visit, it didn’t stay around as long as it used to.

    Here are five beliefs about anxiety that can make you even more anxious. If you recognize them in yourself, I hope you can let them go when they arise.

    1. It’s not normal (or okay) to have anxiety. 

    When you first start to notice your anxiety, you might think it’s not normal. The feelings in your body will be so intense that when you look around at other people, who on the surface look so calm, you won’t be able to believe that what’s happening to you might happening to them.

    But I want you to know something. You are not alone.

    Though everyone’s experience will be different, there are dozens of people you’ll come into contact with daily who have probably had similar feelings.

    That guy who gave you your coffee this morning, he had a panic attack before work. The girl next to you at the bus stop, she’s trying to calm herself down right now. The boss who yelled at your coworker an hour ago, he’s anxious that his own boss is breathing down his neck.

    Anxiety is common.

    Holding onto the (false) belief that what’re you’re experiencing isn’t normal only intensifies the problem by making you feel separate from everyone else around you. It keeps you in your head where the question “Why is this happening to me?” may circle round and round without ever finding a good enough answer.

    2. I need to get over my anxiety in X weeks, months, years.

    Putting strict deadlines on when you want to completely rid yourself of anxiety is never useful. But I used to do this all the time.

    The role that anxiety is going to play in your life isn’t predictable—you just can’t know. Telling yourself that you must overcome it in a certain amount of time is just going to feed it. Once you can truly learn to accept that you don’t know when or for how long it will come to visit, you’ll notice it does so a lot less often!

    3. I can use my anxiety as a motivational tool.

    One common way we often justify our anxiety is through the cliché “I work best under pressure,” but what we’re usually doing is placing an unnecessary amount of stress on our bodies and brains.

    In the long term, this can leave us drained of the necessary energy to prevent and ward off anxious thoughts. When you experience stress, don’t focus on doing more. Just ride it out, let it pass, and try to be productive from a place of relative calm.

    4. The magic bullet cure for my anxiety is out there somewhere.

    Overcoming anxiety is a process, and holding onto the idea that you’re just one more book, course, or technique away from the ultimate cure will inevitably lead to disappointment, and typically more anxiety.

    Take it day by day and relish in the small victories, and over time you’ll make progressive but sustainable changes in the way you handle your nerves.

    5. Anxiety is all in my head.

    This is completely false, and an unhelpful way to look at anxiety. It’s an issue with your nervous system, so it’s just as much in your body as it is in your head.

    Trying to think or rationalize your way out of panic can often be a losing battle. By seeing the mind and body as connected, and both as home to your anxiety, you can develop more skillful control over your thoughts and feelings and not get caught up in a maze of worry.

    If you don’t already have a movement related practice, something like yoga, Qigong or Tai Chi can be really useful for improving your ability to calm your body.

    I’m not yet completely anxiety free, but every year I cope with it better and better.

    Make small steps every day, congratulate yourself on the little wins, and remember that you are not alone!

  • Life Is Not a Race: Why We’ll Never Find Happiness in the Future

    Life Is Not a Race: Why We’ll Never Find Happiness in the Future

    “Life is not a race but a pace we need to maintain with reality.” ~Amit Abraham

    Almost all of my adult life I’ve competed in the extreme sport of white-water kayaking.

    My life revolved around adrenalin and competition.

    Recently, I had a dream I will never forget:

    I was running in a race and I was out in front, winning.

    I got to a point in the course where there were no signposts showing the next turn. So I asked the race officials, “Where is the course?”

    They replied, “We don’t know.”

    The race officials couldn’t tell me where the course went from there because there was no course.

    All of a sudden I stopped running and thought to myself, “There is no race if the officials don’t even know the course.”

    The feelings that followed were first confusion and then a deep sense of relief.

    I thought, “I don’t have to try so hard. I don’t have to win anything. There is no competition. Just stop. You are enough exactly as you are.”

    And then I woke up.

    This dream has stuck with me for weeks, as it feels like the exact message I need.

    Just stop. You are enough. There is no race.

    What if you already had everything you were asking for? What if this was it, and everything you thought you wanted was just an illusion?

    Two weeks ago I got invited to go scuba diving.

    I did my scuba diving certification course fifteen years ago and thought it was kind of boring. There wasn’t enough adrenalin and no competition involved, so I never went again.

    Upon receiving this recent scuba invitation, I took it as sign and said yes.

    Being a beginner at something is humbling. Not knowing what you’re doing. Not being good. Feeling awkward with the equipment.

    It gives the ego a big check to say, “I don’t know. I’m a beginner. Please show me. Please help me.”

    Listening intently as my instructor reviewed all the details I learned fifteen years ago but had forgotten, I felt vulnerable.

    Most of my life I’ve been at the top of my game as an international white-water kayak competitor, and have been the guide for others.

    What’s it like putting the shoe on the other foot?

    Somehow it was great!

    The realization came that I am an absolute beginner not only in scuba diving but in life.

    This new way of living I’ve embraced requires stopping, being authentic, and learning vulnerability.

    How does this feel?

    Actually, liberating!

    I did my scuba review and absolutely loved it. I was buzzing. The thrill of a new experience and the learning curve of being a beginner was exponential.

    After two real dives in the ocean I was hooked.

    This is what my there is no race dream was showing me!

    The point of scuba diving is to go slowly, see as much as possible, remain calm, breathe, and relax. There is no winner except who has the best time in his or her own experience.

    Under water, it feels like a meditation, no chatting or ego involved. Taking in the beautiful colors, swimming with amazing fish, and experiencing a whole new world was intoxicating.

    Two weeks later I got invited to go again. We did four amazing dives in a world-class dive site in Bali. It was so unbelievably amazing. I asked myself, “How did I get here?”

    I got there by letting everything else go. Embracing an entirely new way of interacting with the world, and with myself. Questioning everything I ever viewed as worthy.

    Three years ago I packed up my life in New Zealand and sold or gave away everything, even my kayaks.

    I decided to say yes to the unknown, landing me in a whole new life in Bali.

    No extreme sports, no adrenalin, no competition; my new life here is about saying yes to everything I never thought I was.

    Going slowly, practicing mindfulness through yoga, meditation, and dance, learning how to speak Indonesian, and now scuba diving, my life looks like something I never in a million years would have guessed it would be.

    I am finding joy in the little things, learning how to be in the moment, and realizing all that I thought was important isn’t.

    There is no race.

    The Western collective consciousness teaches us that when we get to the end of something, then we will be happy, whole, complete, and successful.

    When we graduate from high school or college, when we get married, when we have kids, when we get the dream job, then life will really be rolling.

    We’re constantly chasing a carrot on a stick that’s always just out of reach.

    When we reach the milestone that we thought was our golden key to happiness, the feeling of satisfaction is fleeting.

    So we think, “Okay, well I did that, and it didn’t quite bring me the happiness I was thinking it would, so maybe it was just a stepping stone. Maybe when xyz happens, that will make me happy. That will be the real win.”

    This elusive state of contentment is always around the next corner. We’re racing toward something that will never give us what we’re hoping for.

    The only way to truly win this race of life is to realize there is no race.

    Winning is stopping. Going within. Finding happiness within yourself.

    True satisfaction can only be found inside.

    When we can be alone with ourselves, be at peace, and feel a deeper connection, this is what we have really been racing to find.

    Running toward the next accomplishment will never be able to provide this.

    It will only take us further away from what we’re hoping to feel.

    So what happens when we stop?

    It involves going deeper within, which can be a scary prospect for many.

    Choosing to constantly be on the go is easier. It dulls the pain.

    It means not having to really take a look at yourself. A superficial sense of satisfaction comes from feeling you have accomplished a lot.

    Adrenaline can be a drug, providing a temporary rush.

    Why do you have to accomplish things to be worthy? Are you reliant on completing tasks so that your life can feel some sense of purpose? What if by just being present and showing up consciously you were living your purpose?

    What if instead of feeling constant pressure and anxiety, you could just be with what you were doing in the moment you were doing it?

    Our thoughts are rarely focused on where we are.

    They’re in the past, wishing we could change it, or in the future, creating false outcomes that will never usually come to fruition.

    Both of these thought patterns are actually a form of insanity, and not based in reality.

    The past is over. There is nothing we can do to change it.

    The future will never come. Reality is always the moment we are in right now.

    We can only truly live by stopping the race of the mind to the imagined future—by living in presence. By waking up from the dream that there is something out there that will bring satisfaction, turning inward, and taking responsibility for our lives.

    Realizing there is no race means finding contentment right here and now.

    Quit running and find that what you have been searching for has been right here all along.

    Start by creating small gaps in your schedule. Start small at first. Get places a few minutes early.

    Before getting out of the car or leaving the house, consciously pause.

    Try fitting fewer things into your day. Less is more!

    Do one thing at a time.

    When you eat, be present with your food. Enjoy it, really taste it, see it, smell it, savor it.

    Turn off the TV.

    Take a meditation course.

    Notice and be grateful for the small things.

    Instead of focusing on what you don’t have, focus on the many things you do have.

    Life’s finish line will come one day for us all. Learning how to truly live means we will get to that finish line with a smile in our heart and contentment in our being.

    This is the ultimate win. It requires nothing from outside and everything from inside. There is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve, nothing to prove, and nothing to do.

    All it requires is stopping and refocusing priorities; cultivating awareness by slowing down the race of the mind.

    Creating space to be, and valuing ourselves as enough right here and now, requires an inner commitment and unplugging.

    Contentment is currently available in abundance; we just need to stop long enough to feel it.

  • Mindful in May: Get More Present and Help Fight Global Poverty

    Mindful in May: Get More Present and Help Fight Global Poverty

    It’s that time of year again! I’m excited to share that Mindful in May, the world’s largest online mindfulness fundraising campaign, has launched.

    Join thousands of people across the globe and learn from the world’s leading teachers and well-being experts in this comprehensive one-month program.

    For a limited time you can get a free taste of the program by accessing an exclusive video interview with Joseph Goldstein, one of the world’s leading mindfulness teachers, and also download two free guided meditations.

    Get free access to this teaching and learn more about Mindful in May here.

    The Mindful in May program includes:

    • Access to a world-class online mindfulness program delivered to your inbox, starting on May 1st
    • Downloadable guided meditations
    • Exclusive video interviews with world leaders in the field including Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Daniel Goleman, Tara Brach, James Doty, Mark Nepo, Sara Lazar, and many more
    • Daily emails to support you in making meditation a habit
    • Access to a private online community to keep you accountable and support your daily practice
    • An opportunity to help make a positive difference in the world by transforming the lives of those in need of clean water

    Whether you’re new to meditation or looking to reboot your practice, Mindful in May will help you create greater ease, calm, and well-being in your life—and through your involvement, you’ll help transform the lives of those in need of clean, safe drinking water.

    One in ten people on the planet struggle to survive without access to clean water, with one child dying every ninety seconds from a water-related illness.

    When you register to Mindful in May, you’ll be invited to make an optional donation or get sponsored and dedicate your month of meditation to transforming the lives of those in need.

    Register for Mindful in May today ($39 for early enrollment) and meditate to make a difference.

  • Attached to Your Smartphone? How to Break the Addiction

    Attached to Your Smartphone? How to Break the Addiction

    “It is not what technology does to us, it is what we do to technology. Used skillfully, it can improve and enhance our lives beyond our wildest imagination. Used unskillfully, it can leave us feeling lonely, isolated, agitated, and overwhelmed. Get smart with technology, choose wisely, and use it in a way that benefits both you and those around you.” ~Andy Puddicombe

    I love to receive a notification or two. Receiving those tiny pellets from the mobile universe gives me a nice little rush—especially when they’re arriving from a particular person. And browsing through certain apps is always enticing.

    But I’ve realized that my smartphone can be a huge distraction.

    I’ve had days when I haven’t been able to stop myself from staying glued to my screen’s glow. I’ve had other days when I’ve compulsively unlocked my phone more times than I can count. On many days, I’ve done both.

    I’ve even felt the experience of having a phantom phone in my head, attached to the “could-be” notifications, bells, and whistles that could come from my physical phone. Perhaps I’d be walking down the street, but actually, I’d be in two places at the same time instead of embracing the world around me.

    Why Are We So Attached to Our Phones?

    We all know what it’s like to check our phones for no reason other than boredom, loneliness, or anxiety. According to studies, the average person unlocks their phone an incredible eighty to a hundred times per day.

    It’s becoming clear that we don’t all use our smartphones with intention. Instead, we look to them for comfort when we feel unfulfilled.

    We ponder the musings and exchanges we’ve had or have yet to have on our smartphones. Perhaps we yearn for small escapes in our daily routine. But those escapes fritter our attention, which is our most precious commodity.

    By giving our attention away so carelessly, day after day, we aren’t able to live as meaningfully.

    Before overcoming my smartphone addiction, I remember typing in “f” for Facebook in my mobile browser more times than I can count. There were days where I used to check my Gmail inbox more than twenty times. Even after uninstalling the respective apps, I couldn’t help but go on the mobile sites.

    I was addicted, trying to scratch an itch, looking for that notification that would give me a sense of connection. Maybe you know the feeling. I was unequivocally attached to the “little checks.” Part of me wanted to see something new pop into my life.

    I realize that this behavior is slowly becoming the norm rather than the exception, but it’s far from sane. And we can only get what we want to experience within ourselves and in the real life world around us.

    The Mental Price of Constantly Checking Your Phone

    Does checking my smartphone improve the way I feel? Perhaps a little. But after a certain point, it only gives me the illusion of feeling good. In reality, it ends up making me feel unfocused and unfulfilled.

    Checking my phone so many times in a given day frazzles my brain. It disconnects me from myself while giving me the hope that something outside myself, on a four to five-inch screen, can give me a sense of greater well-being.

    I was able to realize this on a profound level once I turned off my phone for a couple of days.

    Part of me felt like I was missing out on something. Instead of giving in to the urge, I sat with it and then came to realize that it was merely an illusion, one that was keeping me away from being the conscious director of my day.

    As the hours passed and I slowly untethered from the beehive and noise, I began to feel more and more of a disconnection. After a day, I felt far more connected to myself and those around me.

    We have this underlying assumption that our smartphones can whisk us away to somewhere more stimulating and exciting. Our phones have become the equivalent of cigarettes for our eyes and sugar for our cravings, and we just can’t get enough.

    But the more often we check our phones, the more we fracture our peace of mind and disconnect from ourselves.

    Why Getting Rid of Your Smartphone Isn’t the Answer

    I realized I needed to find a way to break my addiction, so I decided to take the shortcut. I went back to using a standard phone with no apps.

    After several months, despite the wonderful benefits, I began to miss being able to use Google Maps, getting an Uber, taking a photo, or interacting with friends from around the world via Messenger. I missed listening to songs, audiobooks, and podcasts.

    I’m not knocking anyone who’s let go of their smartphone permanently. But in this digital age, it’s not a sustainable option for most of us to let go of our devices. Doing so also inhibits us from enriching our lives meaningfully, with the myriad benefits of technology.

    Smartphones aren’t the enemy; what needs to change is how we use them.

    7 Ways to Break Your Smartphone Addiction

    A smartphone, in the glove of your pocket or a couple of meters away from your view, doesn’t just lie between you and your peace of mind, focus, and awareness. It also lies between you and which direction you go.

    Because more time spent in front of your phone’s screen means less time doing what you truly want to do in life. By implementing the steps below, I was able to cut the amount of time I spend in front of my smartphone by half and radically improve my peace of mind and productivity.

    1. Don’t use your phone as an alarm clock.

    Many of us habitually use our phone first thing in the morning. Doing so means we start our day with other people’s agendas instead of our own.

    2. Put your phone on flight mode every night, ideally at the same time.

    You’ll avoid getting your sleep interrupted, and you’ll be less tempted to go on the Internet first thing in the morning if it’s already in flight mode. That means better rest and a calmer morning.

    3. Turn off your phone for a full day once per week.

    Taking a weekly day off from my phone has been a blessing for me. It’s made me realize that my smartphone is just a tool, and not something that I need to hold on to 24/7. It’s helped give me that distance between myself and my phone.

    4. Use a time tracking app to see how much time you spend looking at your smartphone every week.

    On Android, consider TimeUsed on the Play Store. On iPhone, consider Moment. Once you see how your smartphone easily eats up your time, you’ll realize that all those little checks take up a good part of your day.

    5. Disable the apps you don’t use.

    Only keep the social media apps you truly enjoy and get rid of the rest. For instance, I don’t have Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook installed on my phone, but I have WhatsApp and Snapchat. Figure out what works for you.

    6. Disable email on your phone.

    And if you’re seriously addicted, consider disabling the Internet browser as well. Taking email off my phone has been so relieving for me. You can use PackageDisabler Pro on Android to disable the stock browser. Otherwise, uninstalling your favorite browser might just work.

    7. Remember that when you use your smartphone with a purpose in mind before you unlock it, then you’re using it for the right reason.

    Try to be conscious of whether you reach your phone out a need to feel comforted, or because you have an intention. This will radically change how often you check your phone.

    —

    Imagine a movie where the main character constantly checks his smartphone. A distracted character wouldn’t make much of a hero.

    What’s to say you’re not the main character of your life?

    Break the habit, and start using your smartphone to your life’s advantage.