Tiny Buddha

Category: Blog

  • We Deserve Love Even When We Do Things We Regret

    We Deserve Love Even When We Do Things We Regret

    Sad Woman

    “You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” ~Brené Brown

    Do you have parts of yourself that you’d like to change? Maybe even parts of your personality you’re a little embarrassed by?

    I do.

    And if I started to list them I probably wouldn’t know where to stop.

    I can be a complainer and whiner. Even worse, I sometimes turn into a martyr and feel sorry for myself. Other times I’m overly impulsive and have been known to have a really erratic temper.

    But the thing is, we’re not our behavior. Often we know when we’re not acting our best and if you’re like me, you’re exceptionally hard on yourself.

    In the past when these less than noble parts of myself raised their whiny heads, I cringed and felt ashamed. It seemed proof that I had not traveled far at all on the road of self-discovery.

    For instance, I often write about mindful living.

    Yet in the past year I alienated an editor and lost a writing gig by not thinking before I fired off a rather rude email.

    I hurt a friend when I wasn’t sensitive to the things happening in her life.

    I’m an advocate of eating healthy, organic food yet twice in the past month I bought a bag of Fritos and devoured it.

    Who the f*&% am I to be writing about mindfulness and healthy living?

    Oh, yeah, and I swear too much.

    If I indulged myself, I would start to think why even bother trying to be my best? Nothing is going to work out anyway. I’ll be the same sorry loser I always was. But that kind of thinking gets us nowhere. And when we’re feeling bad, our lesser selves often rise to the surface.

    When we sink into these places of despair it can be so hard to crawl back out.

    But we have to. We need to recognize when despair first begins to wrap its slimy arms around our necks and threatens to pull us into that dark hole of depression.

    We need to develop tools and learn to call on them in times of crisis. We may need to see a doctor and get medication. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

    We can change how we act. It’s not easy. It takes a lot of work but it can be done.

    And something happens when we change our behavior. We begin to change inside as well.

    Who are your ignoble selves? We all have them.

    • Do you judge others?
    • Do you feel like you could tell everyone a thing or two about religion, politics or life?
    • Do you make fun of people for doing or saying things you find unintelligent?

    Our judgment usually comes for a sense of inadequacy in our own lives. We all do this from time to time, so you don’t need to judge yourself for doing it. But you can leverage this awareness to change your thoughts and behavior. The key is to work toward change from a place of self-compassion instead of motivating yourself with shame. How do we do that?

    Practice acceptance.

    If I could choose one word that has helped me to live with my ignoble selves it would be acceptance.

    It’s a simple concept, yet hard to practice. But acceptance has been far more helpful to me than either love or forgiveness.

    The truth is, there are people in my life I have a hard time forgiving or loving, but I’ve been able to create positive change in my life by accepting what they’ve done.

    I really can’t forgive my grandfather who molested me as a young child. And I certainly feel no love for him.

    I’m not sure I’ve forgiven my sweet, scared, and skittish mother for not seeing the deep, acute pain I was in and doing something about it, but I will always love her just the same.

    Acceptance has led me along the path of love and forgiveness, but I couldn’t get there without first accepting the reality of life as it is: imperfect and painful as well as fulfilling and full of joy. Both realities are accurate.

    Acceptance ultimately comes back to accepting ourselves as we are with all our beautiful imperfections. Once we truly accept who we are for what we are, we open the way to change.

    Forgive yourself.

    We often forgive others much more easily than we forgive ourselves, but after acceptance, forgiving yourself may be the next most important step.

    Forgive yourself for your imperfections.

    Forgive yourself for your less than noble behavior.

    Forgive yourself for not being the person you think your lover or friends or family want you to be.

    Forgive yourself if you’re still not living the life you think you should live.

    Life is not easy on any of us.

    We’ve all had traumas and losses. We all have personality traits that are less than stellar.

    But if we begin with acceptance and move onto forgiveness, we will inevitably come to the ultimate goal: love.

    And when we truly love ourselves, we’ll find our ignoble selves become less and less dominant. They’ll still show up from time to time. That’s just the nature of things, but with love we can kindly refuse to indulge them.

    Love brings laughter back into our lives and helps us turn our ignoble selves into one perfectly flawed being alive with joy and love.

    Sad woman image via Shutterstock

  • 4 Tips for Managing Stress from a Combat Veteran

    4 Tips for Managing Stress from a Combat Veteran

    Meditating

    “Buddha was asked, ‘What have you gained from meditation?’ He replied, ‘Nothing.’ ‘However,’ Buddha said, ‘let me tell you what I lost: anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity, fear of old age, and death.’”

    “I never get stressed.”

    I used to say and think this all the time when I saw someone freaking out about an upcoming test, a bad grade, relationship problems, or a boss or coworker.

    I had a false sense of being “carefree” because I wouldn’t get stressed over the trivial things that most people did.

    I was a “battle hardened” soldier recently back from a deployment in Afghanistan. When I saw people worry about those inconsequential things, I would think to myself, “Please, you have no idea what it means to be stressed.”

    As it turns out, my understanding of stress was wrong. It’s also wrong for a lot of people who believe they aren’t stressed.

    It wasn’t until I started meditating three years after my deployment that I started to realize that I was stressed—just in a different way and from different things than most people.

    After meditating every day for a couple months, my “ah-ha” moment finally hit me.

    I was sitting in traffic, late for an appointment (I hate being late), watching all the people around me freaking out. For once, I was calm and collected sitting in that traffic, thinking, “Why freak out about something I can’t change?”

    That was when I really started to see the benefits and began reflecting on my past.

    I realized that since returning from my deployment, I had become very irritable, not a great people person, and had very little patience.

    The reaction time between something happening and my response was almost immediate.

    If my girlfriend confronted me about a problem, I would immediately either get defensive and blame her or just shut down and ignore her.

    Literally all of this started to change, just from consistently meditating for eight minutes a day!

    My life has been drastically different since then. I am much more calm and collected. I don’t get upset over little things, especially if they’re out of my control.

    My response time to a stimulus has greatly increased so I can choose the type of reaction I have and think about what to say.

    My relationship with my wife (the same girlfriend from before) is incredible, and we know how to communicate like mature adults by allowing time to see the reality of a situation and choose how we respond to it.

    I’ve brought about an awareness that allows me to continually grow as a person and manage the hidden stressors that often go by unnoticed.

    This is just part of a long list of benefits from meditation, and I could go on and on… like how nice it is to be able to travel in third world countries without constantly keeping an eye out for ambushes or looking for my next piece of cover (a habit I had from deployment).

    Although it’s great to talk about meditation and its benefits, what I really want people to understand is that there may be a lot more stress in your life than you realize, and when you meditate you become aware of that stress and are able to shift how you respond to it.

    When it comes to this type of stress, the older you are, the worse it gets.

    If you have ten, twenty, thirty-plus years of having negative experiences without intentionally prioritizing positive ones, you are much more likely to easily become stressed and have a negative view of the world.

    The more hidden stress you experience, the more efficient your body gets at activating your physiological stress response, commonly known as “fight or flight” mode.

    Ask yourself this: Were you, or someone you know, once “carefree” but are now afraid of heights, flying, and think natural disasters and shootings are about to happen whenever you leave home?

    Well, you can thank your body’s efficient adaptability for that. The more stressful situations you have (and yes, watching all the negative things on the news is stressful), the more your body thinks it needs to switch into the fight or flight response to keep you safe.

    That means your brain becomes more efficient at recognizing even the smallest of stressors, and less efficient at calming down or noticing positive things.

    For me, it was a condensed time period that required a lot of worst-case scenario thinking. When you are constantly exposed to driving on roads with IEDs (improvised explosive devices), that stress response will condition your physiology to tell you that roads are a very dangerous place.

    The same thing happens if you only watch the news; you’ll have a very misconstrued perception of the world, and you’ll be constantly feeding the bias your brain has for negative experiences.

    Evolutionarily, your brain has needed to remember negative experiences to protect you much more than it needed to remember positive experiences. It takes time to undo this wiring of neural pathways that your brain has put in place. But it can be done, and meditation is a great way to build new “positive pathways” in your brain.

    There’s an enormous amount of ways to meditate so I’ll share what I’ve personally done and am still doing, in the hopes that it will help you as well.

    1. Basic mindfulness meditation

    I started my practice with a book called 8 Minute Meditation. It takes you through a series of different styles, most of which I liked. But from this I continued to do a simple meditation every morning of focusing on my breath. Just doing this lead me to the “ah-ha moment” I mentioned earlier.

    2. Meditation apps

    I also use a couple different apps now that I like to use mid-day or at night. In particular, I like the “loving kindness” options, also known as “focus on positive”. This is perfect for trying to counteract the negativity bias and rebuild positive neural pathways. There are a lot of options out there, including Calm, which is free.

    3. Reading

    This may not be thought of as meditation, but if meditation can be doing one task effortlessly with focused concentration on that one particular task, then reading is a type of meditation for me.

    I easily enter what’s called “flow state” when I read. Not only that, I’m reading positive things which helps shape the way I think. The other end of this could also be “not watching the news”, just like I don’t like putting junk in my body by eating it, I don’t like putting junk in my body by watching/hearing it.

    If reading isn’t quite your thing, then try listening to podcasts. Preferably podcasts that lift you up and feed your brain with positivity and learning. These can be easily listened to on your way to work, at the gym, cooking, walking, or you can just sit down and listen.

    4. Walking

    Walking is such an undervalued way to de-stress. I love walking for a lot of reasons, pretty much any major life decision my wife and I have made in the past few years has been made while walking.

    In terms of meditation, walking meditation is an awesome practice. It’s a great way to bring about your awareness while getting the benefits of moving your body. Odds are, you walk at some point in your day. So if you’re strapped for time, use walking from the car to work as time to practice mindfulness.

    After hating being late to the point of stressing out, I now tell myself, “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. In the here, in the now.” This has helped me drastically. Check out Thich Naht Hahn’s How to Walk for more.

    There are a number of other ways to help you de-stress and become a more relaxed, positive person. These are just some ways to get started and feel less anxious, worried, and negative.

    Start to use some of these strategies and it’ll feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders that you didn’t even know was there.

    Meditation vector image via Shutterstock

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

    How to Stop Being a Victim of Your Own High Expectations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Change One: How You Treat Yourself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Change Two: What You Say That Limits You

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

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

    It was true. I judged, and I labeled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Change Three: What You Say That Belittles You

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Small Changes Have Large Impacts

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • 28 Ways We Sabotage Our Happiness (And How to Stop)

    28 Ways We Sabotage Our Happiness (And How to Stop)

    Happy People

    “The simplest things in life are the most extraordinary.” ~Paul Coelho

    Life can be frustrating. Things don’t always go according to plan.

    People let you down, your loved ones seem insufficiently appreciative, the future seems uncertain, demands pile up, and stress invades your life.

    You start to beat yourself up over mistakes. You might even start to question if you are worthy of love. Life loses its shine.

    You’re not alone. Hundreds of millions of people feel this way. But pause for a little while to consider this story.

    A personable young man approached me at a gathering and introduced himself. I had known his father professionally. Some weeks later, to my surprise, I was invited to participate in a benefit concert for this same young man.

    He had been in a sports accident only weeks after we met. In an instant, he was paralyzed from the neck down. He was flown to a leading center for such severe injuries.

    I was doubly horrified, as a parent, because our own children were not much younger than he was. Such an accident might crush anyone’s spirit, I thought.

    I recalled my own childhood. Sometimes my parents would speak words of appreciation, but more often they would criticize me. For years, I remained eager to win their approval and feel worthy.

    After years of driving myself hard to win accolades, I eventually adopted a more self-assured way of living. This brought me more fulfilment, joy, and peace of mind. But this youngster’s wings were cruelly clipped just as he was on the verge of adulthood.

    I then lost track of him for a few years. One day I opened a glossy magazine and found him smiling out at me, sitting in a wheelchair and looking radiant in his tuxedo. He’s now happily married and a champion of better opportunities for people with disabilities.

    A culture that worships status and wealth can tend to disrespect or patronize people with disabilities. But if abilities, achievements, and wealth are what make us worthy of respect and love, then our own worth remains precarious. That’s why this young man, with his invincible spirit, is such an inspiration.

    His attitudes gave him wings to transcend his predicament, even though he was permanently paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. My past attitudes had been like a ball and chain to me, weighing me down inwardly despite my outward success. It made me reflect on the importance of our inner attitude.

    Here are twenty-eight unhelpful beliefs and behaviors that hinder happiness. Don’t let them be a ball and chain in your life.

    1. Stop thinking that you have to be just like someone else, or to match their apparent success.

    Instead, recognize that you are unique. Form your own personalized criteria of success.

    2. Stop thinking that wealth, looks, intelligence, talent, and status equate to fulfillment.

    Instead, make room for criteria such as peace of mind, joy, family happiness, love, and self-actualization.

    3. Stop thinking that you need to be perfect in order to be lovable.

    Instead, accept your faults and mistakes but believe they cannot rob you of your intrinsic dignity. Think of a mother pouring all her love into her little baby. That love is not dependent on the baby being perfect. It is a profound, unshakable love based on the baby simply existing.

    Each of us is like that baby, a child of the Universe, fashioned by love and inherently worthy of love. Affirm that to yourself regularly and you will start to rejoice in your humanity, warts and all.

    4. Stop judging yourself harshly.

    Instead, recognize that all human beings stumble. Become a more forgiving and sympathetic friend to yourself; learn from your mistakes but move on.

    5. Stop being hungry for approval.

    Instead, recognize your own power, as a human being, to appreciate, encourage, and build up others.

    Once you accept that you are inherently and unshakably lovable, your hunger for approval will be tamed. This confidence will allow you to look beyond yourself. You will become a dispenser of approval more than a seeker of it.

    6. Stop thinking that your happiness depends on how others feel about you.

    Instead, cultivate your own stable inner source of peace and joy. Take up some absorbing creative activity that fits your talents, pray or meditate, find something that reliably engages you and recharges you.

    7. Stop thinking that achievements are a measure of your worth.

    Don’t chase too many “rabbits” at one time (the many little things that bring more worry than fulfillment). As the proverb says, “Anyone who chases too many rabbits won’t catch any.”

    Instead, focus on the few “elephants” that will contribute most to your personalized criteria of success (the few goals that fit in best with what you value).

    8. Stop rehashing past mistakes or fearing future failures.

    Instead, be more fully present in each moment.

    Don’t burden yourself with trying to work it all out from moment to moment. Set apart planning time regularly, where you can solve problems and translate your cherished values into simple steps. If, for example, peace of mind is important to you, then a simple step might be to practice prayer or meditation for a few minutes each day.

    Throw yourself into your simple next steps, without rumination over the past or worry over the future. That’s how you can build a fulfilling, enjoyable life.

    9. Stop obsessing over outcomes.

    Instead, do whatever needs to be done, with all your heart. You’ll live more calmly, courageously, and vigorously, with outcomes that surprise you.

    Immerse yourself in the process and trust that you’ll be okay whatever happens.

    10. Stop thinking that every small risk will lead to disaster.

    Instead, reach courageously for more fulfillment. Don’t imprison yourself or curb your potential.

    11. Stop thinking that failure in an endeavor means that you’re a failure as a person.

    Instead, congratulate yourself for stretching beyond your comfort zone. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose; that’s okay.

    12. Stop ruminating about what can’t be changed.

    Whenever discouraged, try to remember people who suffer sudden, permanent paralysis—and still find ways to create a fulfilling life.

    13. Stop pretending that you’re just a machine.

    Instead, make some time regularly to be still, and experience the joy of spirituality. This will enhance your capacity to respect, befriend, and love others.

    14. Stop thinking that being alone means being unhappy.

    Instead, cultivate a richer inner life that can sustain you whether or not you happen to be alone.

    Your leisure time is a good place to start. Devote some of it to developing the life of the mind and soul: read some classics, challenge yourself to learn something new, absorb lessons from great teachers through the ages, open your eyes to the beauty of nature, your ears to the beauty of great music. Find sources of joy and drink deeply.

    15. Stop pretending that other people own your time.

    Instead, live more intentionally—in your work, play, voluntary service, socialization, and relaxation. Allocate your time instead of drifting.

    16. Stop thinking that you have to say “yes” to every request.

    Instead, establish your own policies and be more confidently picky. Just say “I don’t do that,” or simply “No,” whenever required.

    17. Stop acting as if your romantic partner is completely fused with you.

    Instead, nurture your self-respect and individuality. It will help keep the electricity of romance alive.

    18. Stop clinging to resentment.

    It will eat you up inside. Instead, be more eager to understand and forgive.

    Whenever it seems difficult to forgive, remember that our actions and omissions have deep roots. They spring partly from our genes, our upbringing, our opportunities or lack thereof, our successes and failures, our past wounds, and so much more. If we were to exchange places with the offender, who can be sure that we would behave any better?

    19. Stop thinking you can lash out when angry and still get what you want.

    Instead, take time out and speak once you’re calmer. You’ll get more of what you really value.

    20. Stop pretending that you have no self-control.

    Instead, take up regular exercise, work at a skill, or take up some other disciplined yet intrinsically rewarding activity. This will help build your self-control in all areas of life.

    21. Stop thinking it’s a sign of weakness to reach out for help.

    Instead, recognize that vulnerability often elicits compassion, friendship, and support.

    22. Stop mistaking disagreement by others as a sign of them disliking you.

    Instead, cultivate mutual respect and cultivate confidence in your own worth. This can withstand differences of opinion.

    23. Stop acting as if the world will end if you miss a deadline.

    Instead, decline or ignore unrealistic demands. Keep progressing toward important goals, but without sacrificing your well-being.

    24. Stop thinking that you have to navigate office politics on your own.

    If you’re pursuing career goals, try to identify and cultivate a powerful mentor. They can help steer you through minefields.

    25. Stop pretending your current job is your only option.

    Instead, keep an eye open for more fulfilling opportunities. That will help you to avoid being swamped by work.

    26. Stop thinking you’re incapable of creativity.

    When you create anything (an essay, a drawing, a crafted object, music, etc.), you affirm that you can rise above the chaos of life. Instead of being a piece of driftwood in the water, you become, for a while, the surfer who rides the breakers.

    27. Stop pretending you have no time to enjoy healthy meals.

    Make mealtimes pleasant and nourishing so that you can more easily avoid unhealthy snacks. Be good to your brain and body, and they will be good to you.

    28. Stop thinking your education has ended, no matter how old you are.

    Those who keep learning, informally or formally, boost their sense of purpose in life.

    —

    You don’t have to tackle all these things at once. Make a start with whatever speaks the most to you. Life will soon become less frustrating and more fulfilling.

    Remember you are worthy of respect, love, and joy, whatever your shortcomings and mistakes. Choose your thoughts and actions wisely and feel the difference.

    Happy people silhouette via Shutterstock

  • A Science-Backed Habit That Can Change Your Life for the Better

    A Science-Backed Habit That Can Change Your Life for the Better

    Happy Man Jumping

    “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” ~Epictetus

    When I lost my aunt to cancer three years ago, her death sat over me for months and acceptance didn’t begin until I had dinner with Kathy, one of my best friends.

    Over noodles, I shared with Kathy all the things I wouldn’t be able to do with my aunt: the conversations we would never get to have, the places we wouldn’t get to go, the food we wouldn’t be able to eat, and the grand-nephews and nieces she wouldn’t get to hold.

    Kathy asked me, “what about all the things you did get to do with your aunt?”

    I shared with Kathy how every time I experienced a breakup my aunt would make me a bowl of pho and make time to reassure me that everything would be okay, how every time I thought I was working too hard and not having fun she would invite me to play cards with her, and how when I told my family I didn’t want to be a doctor and my family disapproved she supported me.

    Tears sweep over my face with each story I was telling Kathy, but so did the biggest smile I had in a long time.

    “You’re so lucky to have the known your aunt. Think about all the people who don’t have someone like that in their life,” Kathy said.

    After that dinner, every time I thought about my aunt it would be about the memories I was grateful to have shared with her instead of the ones we wouldn’t get to have.

    Kathy helped me understand that the difference between feeling happy and feeling unhappy was the difference between viewing the world in terms of what you do/did have instead of what I don’t/didn’t have.

    This single lesson not only helped me come to terms with my aunt’s death but also taught me to frame potential negatives in my life into positives.

    Each time my flight is delayed (and it seems to happen a lot), instead of viewing it as missing four hours of my vacation, I think about lucky I am to even have an opportunity to travel.

    Each time, I forget my subway card and choose to walk back to my house to get it, I think how lucky I am to even have a subway near my house.

    Years later, I found that Kathy’s lesson wasn’t just coincident but had been scientifically proven.

    The Science and Data Support Kathy’s Lesson

    Psychologists at the University of Northampton studied how people adapt to grief after exceptional experiences such as death of a loved one.

    While this study had a small sample size and found no single factor can help overcome grief, they found having a lens of appreciating what you have/had instead of what you don’t helped one subject, “gratitude in feeling blessed to have had the time [subject] did with [loved one] as well as the overall change in his perspective, which was found to be transformative.”

    The above finding about gratitude and happiness isn’t limited to just overcoming a personal loss, but can also increase our overall happiness when dealing with every day troubles.

    In one study conducted at the University of California at Davis and the University of Miami, participants were randomly assigned into one of three groups and asked to keep a weekly journal.

    The first group (the gratitude group) was asked to list five things they were grateful for that had occurred in the past week; the second group (the irked group) recorded five experiences that irked them from the previous week; and the third group (the control) was asked to list five events that affected them the previous week with no focus on the positive or on the negative.

    When the study concluded ten weeks later, participants in the gratitude group reported feeling 25% happier and just better in general than the irked group.

    How to Let This Habit Change Your Life

    Though I have shared with you a practice that has changed my life and the science behind it, this habit will only change your life if you actively let it. And this is easy.

    In your everyday life, you will encounter inconveniences and hassles—forgetting your keys at home, being stuck in traffic, or spilling wine on yourself. Each time this happens, simply pause and instead of focusing on the negative outcome, remind yourself of the more positive larger picture—you have a home to come back to, you have time to reflect on your day, and you have access to dry-cleaning.

    Over time by focusing on the positives of an event, you will maximize your outward happiness and minimize inner suffering.

    Happy man jumping image via Shutterstock

  • 6 Signs You Have a Strong Friendship That Will Stand the Test of Time

    6 Signs You Have a Strong Friendship That Will Stand the Test of Time

    Best Friends

    “Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” ~Muhammad Ali

    Doesn’t it hurt?

    You develop a friendship with someone who appeared to be decent but turned out to be a huge problem in your life.

    I’m not talking about those occasional slip-ups like keeping you waiting at the coffee shop until 4:10 when the rendezvous was scheduled for 4:00.

    I mean those things that completely slash the fabric of your friendship—stuff that truly hurts, like harsh words that prey on your weaknesses and sensitivities, or complete betrayal of your trust and abuse of your goodwill.

    We’re all vulnerable to being hurt by those closest to us, and I’m no exception.

    Over the years, I’ve made friends with several people who turned out to be destructive to my well-being.

    Some had spoken words to me that cut like blades. Others had coldly accused me of things I wouldn’t even dream of doing, just to save their own hide.

    But despite the pain and anguish those experiences put me through, they were telling moments in my life because they forced me to rethink my understanding of the true meaning of friendship.

    We often befriend someone because we see commonalities in them. They have shared interests, a common background, or a similar sense of humor. But while all those things are important, they’re not enough to build a deep-rooted, long-lasting friendship on, at least not by themselves.

    I had lots in common with my friends, and they always cracked me up, so why did they end up hurting me? Something was obviously missing, and after some deep reflection, I found out what it was.

    For a true friendship to form, it has to be mutually built on the essentials—strong pillars that burrow deep beyond the superficial stuff.

    Here are the six signs you have a strong friendship that will stand the test of time.

     1. You stick with each other through the highs and lows.

    You don’t desert each other when things get tough or suspiciously start spending less time together after a promotion at work.

    Your relationship doesn’t fluctuate based on each other’s bank balance, the kind of people you hang out with, or any other trivial variables.

    Your connection to one another stems from one creed—you are friends because you want to be.

    2. You keep each other in the loop.

    You have trust and confidence in each other, and you’ll come to each other directly if any problems arise between you instead of talking behind each other’s backs about it.

    You try your best to avoid getting a third party involved if you do have problems because you cherish how your friendship is like a coin—it’s two-sided and in no need of a third to be complete.

    You’re close enough to confide your problems in each other and come to a sensible solution between yourselves.

    By doing this, you both show that you are actively eradicating any potential threats to your friendship’s survival and that you genuinely care about preserving it.

    3. You view each other through a positive lens.

    You both realize that you’re human and make mistakes, so you give each other the benefit of the doubt.

    You forgive and pardon the petty stuff and don’t reignite the flames of bad memories.

    One day, my friend came over with a gift to encourage me in my studies.

    Now, I’m kind of quirky. I only do well in my studies if I stay focused through my own motivations, and I see outside encouragement as a distraction.

    I know my friend meant well, but at that moment, I rejected his gift with some snappy comment without explaining my position. I regretted it almost instantly.

    Thankfully, he gave me the benefit of the doubt and hasn’t mentioned that little blooper to this day. (Let’s hope he doesn’t mention it anytime in the near future!) Now that’s a true friend.

    4. You respect each other’s boundaries.

    You both acknowledge that you come from different backgrounds and have different upbringings, so you understand that differences of opinion are inevitable.

    You also handle those differences of opinion and other sensitivities tastefully and respectfully.

    You don’t impose your mindsets on each other, take a swipe at each other’s opinions, or become irritated if you differ on something because you both know that respecting and being respected are critical factors in maintaining a good friendship.

    You also value and treat each other as people with freedom of choice and don’t expect each other to bend out of character to entertain quirks and caprices.

    5. You share each other’s shortcomings as a gift.

    You don’t always have a hey-it’s-all-good attitude. You won’t hesitate to advise each other about a particular shortcoming because you deeply care for one another and don’t want to see each other hurt.

    Oscar Wilde once said, ”True friends stab you in the front,” and how true that was for me a few years back when I was developing a strong friendship with someone from a different culture.

    We were watching a bunch of boisterous kids wrestling, and I jokingly said, “They’re like animals!”

    I didn’t think much of it, but he immediately brought to my attention that saying something like that in his culture is very offensive and that it’s like belittling the children and their parents to a sub-human level.

    I really appreciated his sincere concern for me because if he hadn’t corrected my mistake there and then, I probably would have hurt someone with my goofy jokes!

    6. You want for each other what you want for yourself.

    You are both perfectly aware that envy is a massive threat to your friendship and that it can wreak unpredictable havoc because it’s like a festering pot itching to erupt and spew out its nasty contents.

    So you are genuinely happy for each other’s success and aren’t consumed by jealousy when one surpasses the other in any way, like with career, money, or popularity.

    When one of you comes to know of the other’s success, you react positively with hand-on-heart sincerity instead of continuously repeating the phrase, “It should have been me.”

    You are like one mind, and you see each other’s success as your success.

    Build Your Pillars of Deep-Rooted Friendship

    Friendship is truly an invaluable treasure, but only if it’s built on the right pillars. Otherwise, you risk your friends disappointing you when you most need them.

    If you’re looking to deepen and cement your friendship with someone, use these six pillars as your guidelines. Make sure they’re concretely intact, both on your side and theirs, and you’ll begin to relish the sweet fruits of true friendship.

    Or perhaps past friends have put you through painful experiences, and, like me, you don’t want to repeat that mistake.

    So put on your discernment hat and use these six pillars as your screening device. If you see someone constantly doing the opposite of these pillars, they’ll probably hurt you sooner or later.

    You deserve to be in good company, and you don’t deserve to be hurt by the people closest to you.

    So spare yourself the headache of being betrayed by someone you held close, and enjoy the value of true friendship instead.

    Best friends image via Shutterstock

  • 5 Ways to Create Amazing Friendships

    5 Ways to Create Amazing Friendships

    Friends

    “To have a friend and be a friend is what makes life worthwhile.” ~Unknown

    Studies show that perhaps the most important component of psychological well-being is not family, material possessions, or career successes, but rather our friendships.

    For someone like me, that is terrifying news.

    I have few friends. There are several reasons for that: I’ve moved often throughout my life, I’m an introvert, and I was always deeply afraid of rejection. But the root cause was that I never learned how to be a friend.

    Books and movies became my source of information about friendship and, as a result, I had wildly unrealistic expectations. People constantly disappointed me; I was hurt by and fought with every significant friend in my life.

    My inability to create and maintain authentic relationships brought me great pain. I wrote myself off as a loser, inherently flawed, and doomed to be friendless. Luckily, I realized I could teach myself to be a better friend and build meaningful connections.

    Now, I actively seek out new friendships, evaluate my current ones, and fully invest in continuing those that have all the elements of an amazing friendship. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.

    It is never too late to learn to be an amazing friend.

    Here’s how:

    1. Make conscious choices.

    I never actively chose my friends; they were based on proximity and convenience. Most of those friendships didn’t last because I hadn’t chosen wisely, or at all.

    Now, I’m selective about who I choose to be friends with. This doesn’t mean that I think I’m better than others. It simply means that I understand how much energy and effort it takes to be an amazing friend.

    It’s possible to choose anyone, no matter their religious, political, or social beliefs. I’ve learned that what matters is to choose people who lovingly challenge and provoke you, who consistently comfort and cheer you, and who wholeheartedly embrace your gift of friendship—as you do theirs.

    It also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t maintain the friendships you already have, even if they began by accident.

    I met my best friend in seventh-grade PE class. We are radically different people. While I didn’t consciously choose to be her friend, I do choose to continue investing in our friendship because we are mutually committed to having an amazing friendship and actively practice the other elements on this list.

    2. Learn to listen.

    What is the value of a friend? For most of us it is to have someone with whom we can share our feelings, hopes, pains, and fears—without judgment or ridicule. Even though our desire is to be heard, we never learn how to truly listen to the intimate expressions of one another.

    I always loved when people would tell me their stories, and I always responded by giving advice. People often said I should be a therapist, which only intensified my tendency to listen by offering opinions and solutions. I now understand that I wasn’t really listening to people in a way that facilitates amazing friendships.

    An important coach taught me that a true friend understands that each one of us has the answers within us. If I am listening to you in order to come up with an answer to your problem, I’m focused on my need to fix and save and not yours to explore and share.

    This doesn’t mean we can’t share our insights or give feedback, but it does mean that we need to learn to listen to and for the other—not to validate our own opinions, but to encourage our cherished friend to explore their own truths.

    I struggle to be this kind of listener, and I often worry that the other person will think I don’t care if I don’t respond immediately. I’ve decided to be honest with my friends about how I’m trying to learn to listen and ask that they be patient with my learning process, which requires the next item on the list.

    3. Be vulnerable.

    Do you tell your friends how much they mean to you, and why? Do you share your struggles and fears? Do you apologize if you hurt someone’s feelings, even if that wasn’t your intention?

    All of the above statements are necessary for amazing friendships, and they’re only possible if you allow yourself to be vulnerable.

    I’ve found that by choosing wisely and really listening and being listened to, I have more courage to be vulnerable.

    I have a former coworker whom I really like. Close while we worked together, we’ve since grown apart. I’m not sure why, but I think it is because I didn’t know how to be a consistently good friend.

    At first, I got defensive. I was reaching out, and she wasn’t responding. Then I got sad, and eventually I decided to be vulnerable.

    I wrote her a letter and apologized for not being an amazing friend and told her how much I value her in my life. I followed up with a visit and emails. It wasn’t a cure for our friendship, but it was worth it. She deserved the acknowledgement, and I could let go with love.

    The friendships I haven’t been able to maintain make me all the more grateful for the ones that I have. And all the more committed to being an amazing friend in the present by letting the friends in my life know how much I care about them.

    4. Be accountable.

    What is your first reaction when your friend hurts or disappoints you—to blame them or to look at yourself? I’ve learned that to be an amazing friend, I have to look inward before I point outward.

    I have one friend from high school. One. It became the most important friendship of my twenties. No matter how bad I felt about myself as a friend, I consoled myself with the fact that I had maintained her friendship.

    That said, I often didn’t feel recognized or valued. We didn’t have the standards of listening I stated above, and I wasn’t willing to be vulnerable with my hurt.

    Eventually, I lashed out, and she ended the friendship. When going through a personal crisis years later, she sought me out. I was so relieved to be forgiven that we never addressed what had happened, and after a few years I began to experience the same patterns of resentment.

    I began to tell myself that she was selfish and didn’t care about me. The more righteous I felt, the more I wanted to end the friendship. But thankfully, in the years that we hadn’t been in contact, I had learned a lot.

    Being an amazing friend requires looking inward, so that is what I did. I never felt valued in my friendship with her because I never valued myself as a friend. My need to be recognized is about me, not her.

    That’s not to say that the problems in our friendship are my fault, or her fault. It’s not a question of fault. It simply means that I have needs and triggers that are about me, not her.

    If the friendship doesn’t continue, it won’t be because I labeled her a bad friend and blamed her. It’ll be because we don’t have the other elements of an amazing friendship. Because if we did, I’d never give up.

    5. Don’t give up.

    If you’ve chosen your friend wisely and you both put in the effort to listen without fixing, have been vulnerable, and have also been accountable, then you assuredly have an awesome friendship. Yet, this doesn’t mean there aren’t fights or disappointments.

    One of the most important friends in my life is a woman I met when I first moved to Brazil. She is loving and funny and equally critical and sarcastic. I’ve felt hurt by her at times, but we always talk it out, no matter how awkward—because we have an amazing friendship with all the elements on this list.

    If there is a moment that you feel betrayed, hurt, or disconnected—don’t give up. Feel your pain, share it, and work through the discomfort. It is easier to walk away in the short term, but the creation and maintenance of amazing friendships has invaluable benefit for the rest of your life.

    —

    Friendships are one of the greatest investments we can make for our long-term happiness and are often totally overlooked.

    If, like me, you have felt despondent about your ability to be a friend or questioned if it even matters, I have good news. I’m proof that anyone can learn to be an amazing friend and that they really are worthwhile.

    Friends image via Shutterstock

  • How to Reclaim Your Energy So You Can Follow Your Dreams

    How to Reclaim Your Energy So You Can Follow Your Dreams

    “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” ~Dan Millman

    I don’t care who you are or where you live, we all have one thing in common: We like to dream—to close our eyes and imagine that we’re living the life we were meant to lead. It’s a desire that’s imbedded in our DNA. To want more. Achieve more. Become more.

    It’s why we start new businesses, write novels, learn to play the guitar, get our MBA, change careers, learn to cook, sew, or speak Swahili.

    We’re all chasing a dream, everyday life dreams as well. Like simple happiness, good health, or financial independence; finding a place to call home, someone to love, or a path to inner peace. Perhaps it’s just a life with less pain, heartache, or loneliness.

    Dreams are not only what make the world a better place, but you and I better human beings. We need to chase our dreams every chance we get. Fortunately, most of us do, and with all our hearts.

    Unfortunately, many of us give up on those dreams almost before we even start, stuffing them in the back of our sock drawer until we forget they were ever there.

    It’s easy to make excuses for our failed dreams, too. We don’t know where to begin, or we have no time, money, skills, or commitment. But the real enemy is deeper and more insidious.

    We’re plain worn out. We have no energy to chase our dreams.

    There’s always somewhere to go and something to do. Late meetings at work, carpool to drive, lunches to be made, trash to be taken out, homework to finish.

    We catch a cold. Lose our job. Start a relationship. End a relationship. Birthdays. Holidays. Trips to the dentist. The list is endless and exhausting. It’s no wonder we have nothing left in the tank for a better life. It’s all we can do to maintain the life we have.

    Money is not the great currency of our time. Energy is. Physical energy to get out of bed and positive energy to do something better with our lives. All the noblest dreams in the world mean nothing if we don’t have the energy to pursue them.

    Several years ago I was diagnosed with Meniere’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear. Two months later, I was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma in the other ear, a benign tumor.

    While neither is fatal, and there are certainly people with far worse conditions than I have, I found myself in the unusual position of being tired all the time.

    I could live with the symptoms. Dizziness. Vertigo. Ringing in the ears. Hearing loss. But being worn out, tired, and deprived of my energy, well, that was the real enemy. I had no desire to chase the things that were once important to me.

    At the same time, I was going through a career change that drained even more energy, coupled with poor eating habits that drained me even more.

    That’s the thing about energy; it can drain out of us in so many different ways. Sure, bad health will do it, but so will a toxic relationship, or not being able to pay your mortgage, or finding out your son is being bullied in school. Worry. Fear. Regret. Anger. They’re all “pin in the balloon” energy busters.

    Fortunately, there’s hope. Lots of hope. We just need to learn how to get our energy back. In fact, the fight to reclaim our energy is one of the most important battles we’ll ever fight. Triumph here and we gain the strength to fight an even greater battle—the fight for our dreams and the life we imagined.

    Of course, reclaiming our energy doesn’t happen by accident, and it’s not always easy. But every day there are golden opportunities for us to get back our energy. Here are some random tips to get started.

    Just point your finger at one and go for it. It doesn’t matter which one. Any one will do. Then try another. And another. Before you know it, you will find yourself with enough energy to reclaim the life you desire.

    Energy Building Tips To Live The Life You Desire

    Stay in the moment.

    Want to see your energy soar? Catch yourself living in the past or the future as often as you can.

    Notice regret as it pops up, or guilt, or longing. Recognize when you start thinking about what might or might not happen tomorrow. Catch all these “past and future” moments, and then bring yourself back to the moment you’re living in. The present moment is the only place where we will find both peace and power.

    Engage in activities that keep you in the moment.

    Deep breathing exercises work, as will meditation, yoga, gardening, reading, swimming, running; a walk in the woods, a bike ride at the beach. Nature helps, so does humor, volunteering, gratitude, compassion, and doing virtually anything that brings you joy.

    Avoid the 24/7 always on lifestyle.

    Turn off lights, music, news, equipment, and most importantly, the mind. And while you’re at it, stay away from conversations with people who only want to talk about how screwed up the world is. The more you obsess about something, the faster you’ll bring more of it into your life. And every time we do, we just suck away our energy.

    Seek friends who uplift and support, make you smile and laugh.

    Avoid friends who infringe on your space, covet your time, suck your energy, and give nothing in return. We all know who they are.

    Avoid excessive food, drink, or anything that consumes more time and energy than it gives back.

    In short, avoid anything that brings you imbalance, fatigue, and illness, no matter how pleasurable or intoxicating it may seem. This means poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, excessive alcohol, caffeine, and sugar.

    Treat your body like a $200,000 Ferrari.

    It’s not enough to just avoid putting negative influences into our body. We need to put the best gasoline into our bodies we can.

    We can start by drinking more water and eating nutrient rich foods that give energy. That means colorful greens, fruits, good proteins, and fats. Experiment with a gluten-free or sugar free diet, or just try eating less packaged and processed food. Keep a journal and take note of how your energy levels rise and fall based on what you put into your body.

    Live your own life.

    Avoid saying, doing, and becoming something only because it’s what others want to see and hear. It takes too much energy to live your life for someone else.

    Live an authentic and conscious life.

    Avoid doing work you don’t want to do, places you don’t want to live, or situations that no longer serve your needs. Being conscious of what you do on a daily basis puts you on a path to finding your purpose in life, which will energize every other part of your life.

    Treat yourself well.

    That could mean anything. Chocolate. Massage. Mornings off. Exercise. Eight hours sleep. Flowers in the house. A glass of wine. A cup of tea. It also means letting go of self-judgment. When talking about yourself (or to yourself), use only positive, energizing, and life-affirming words.

    —

    At the end of the day, all this adds up to a simple two-prong strategy. Avoid the things in life that take our energy away and then find the magic that brings our energy back.

    But it takes conscious effort and a seeker mentality. We have to be vigilant, constantly looking within and without at all times, searching for those bits of insight and habit that will recharge our spirit.

    It’s the only way we’ll ever be strong enough to chase our dreams and live the lives we were meant to live.

    Go ahead and dream, but make your first dream the gift of energy.

    Your future self will thank you for it.

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

    How Your Expectations Can Hold You Back and Keep You Unhappy

    Sad Face

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Sad face image via Shutterstock

  • How to Cultivate Hope When the World Feels Dark and Scary

    How to Cultivate Hope When the World Feels Dark and Scary

    “Everything you can imagine is real.” ~Pablo Picasso

    The world is so broken. We are broken. We all need healing.

    Recent events worldwide are terrifying and sad. This cold and dark time of year is a challenge for many.

    Some of us feel every little thing. We feel everyone’s pain. We are empaths who care for every person, every animal, and the whole world.

    Many of my loved ones and friends are like this. My partner’s father recalls that on a trip to a large city nearby (my partner was eight), they saw people living on the street and asking for change. The little eight-year-old wanted to give all of his tiny savings away. Obviously, it wasn’t much, and it wouldn’t make much impact on the poverty in the city.

    It can feel hopeless. We feel like we will never have enough resources and time to give. We know we can’t solve everyone’s problems. But we want to. And if we don’t, we feel the pain of our perceived failures.

    If you’re anything like me, you might struggle to balance the urge to do so much or to just give up altogether. How can we nurture our hopefulness in these uncertain days?

    Remember that people act out when they are in pain.

    It’s a common negative thinking trap to make things all-or-nothing. If someone does something that hurts us, we can tend to believe that they are all “bad.” We distance ourselves from them in our minds to prove we aren’t like that.

    It’s tough to recognize someone’s humanity in these situations, but we need to if we are going to keep our hope alive. People often lash out, spread hate, or act selfishly when they are hurt. They are feeling a deep, broken part of themselves and trying to compensate by making others feel bad too.

    I’m not saying that their behavior should be tolerated. They should absolutely be held accountable for their behavior. At the same time, they are human and are still valuable.

    Remind yourself that they are people, too, and probably feeling deep pain. This goes for the more extreme cases, but also for the other parent at your child’s school or your boss or politicians.

    I feel hope when I remember this. The world is not full of evil people but hurt people who need love. Recognizing the humanity of others is a beautiful challenge for us to work on. This is an ongoing, lifelong practice.

    Respond with love when you can.

    Everyone seems exhausted these days. The weight of the world is on all of our shoulders. Whether it’s due to collective or personal struggles, people may be a little more irritable or inpatient with you.

    Try your best to respond with kindness. It’s not about you. Someone may be acting immaturely or being a little rude, but if you can, try to let it go.

    Visualize their insults rolling off of you, like water off of a duck’s back. Or use a technique I learned from a book, Radical Acceptance: Recognize that they are trying to pass their bad mood to you, and kindly say “no, thank you.” Do not accept their gift.

    I usually feel better if I have responded to something in a caring way. Of course, we don’t always react as our best selves. You might be the one who is acting a bit rude sometimes, so try to respond to yourself with love about that too.

    Be a someone.

    My grandmother used to say, “Don’t say someone should do that. Be a someone.” Action can help combat our lack of motivation and hope. If you find yourself thinking that someone should do something, try asking yourself: What can I do?

    You can start small and very simply. One day a few months ago, I was in the midst of a personal crisis, and I sat crying on the curb of the road. A kind stranger approached me and gently asked if there was anything they could do.

    I said an honest no. They responded by standing close by with their hand on my shoulder for a few minutes, then saying a few encouraging words and continuing on.

    This small gesture made me feel much less alone in that moment. There are many small things we can do, depending on our ability. If you feel up to it, don’t just walk by; be the someone who stops.

    Repeat after me: Magic is real.

    I keep a quote by Picasso on my desk that reads, “Everything you can imagine is real.” When I am losing my hope, this reminds me that the world I want to live in, the one I can imagine, is real. It can be real because we create our world.

    It’s empowering to recognize the magic we have within us that no one can take away. There is something inside you that no one can take away and you will always have. Remind yourself of your inherent value and hold on to your magic.

    Everything you can imagine is real and possible. There are so many people working to build a kinder and more loving world. I recognize their magic and I affirm that magic in myself.

    Hope image via Shutterstock

  • 8 Simple Ways to Brighten Someone’s Day

    8 Simple Ways to Brighten Someone’s Day

    Sunshine

    “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a tent with a mosquito.” ~African Proverb

    I have a love-hate relationship with airports.

    On the one hand, it’s the perfect place to people-watch. I mean, how can you not tear up when you see a kid running to give a returning parent a giant hug? Or two lovers reuniting and smiling from ear to ear when they lay eyes on each other? You are witness to perfect snippets of pure, genuine emotional connection.

    On the other hand, airports can be a drag. Long line-ups, having to chug my water bottle because I usually forget to empty it beforehand, taking my shoes off and stepping on my tiptoes to avoid my bare feet touching the cold airport floor.

    But on my latest visit to the airport, my negative attitude vanished all because of one airport security employee.

    As I was standing in line doing a mental inventory of all the liquids I would need to empty out of my purse, she was directing people through the line up in the best possible way. She was yelling positive messages like, “Life is good!” and “It’s a great day!”

    What a rare and beautiful thing to do.

    It put a smile on my face and truly impacted my flight and rest of the day. Her joie de vivre was contagious.

    I never would have expected this from an airport security employee.

    Which got me thinking, how can I brighten someone’s day within my normal realm of work?

    Here are eight ideas I’ve come up with. I’d love to know your ideas in the comments.

    1. Leave inspirational notes in random places.

    Books in the library, on people’s car window, under your lover’s pillow, wherever.

    How awesome would it walk into a public restroom and find a sticky-note on the mirror that says something like, “Make it a great day”? I predict it will also be just as awesome and exhilarating to be the one to leave the note.

    2. Thank someone.

    Who in your life has positively impacted you? A teacher, your mom, your brother, an old neighbor, a coach? Send them an email and share a memory and your gratitude for the positive influence they’ve had in your life.

    3. Be curious about someone.

    Make eye contact and smile. Acknowledge their existence, and engage them in conversation. Learn something about them. A two-minute conversation can brighten the day for both of you.

    4. Send a handwritten note.

    Who doesn’t love getting mail? There’s a total thrill in seeing an envelope with your name on it. Surprise someone with a handwritten note just because. I can almost guarantee they will smile ear-to-ear when they receive it.

    5. Do something for yourself.

    Now this may seem a bit backward. How does doing something for yourself impact someone else?

    Well, when you take care of your own needs, and give yourself some much-needed self-love, you fill up your own cup. And when your own cup is overflowing, that overflow is the love that flows to others. It’s a beautiful thing.

    So take that bath, go to that dance class, go for a walk, and feel the goodness.

    6. Make a playlist for someone.

    Back in the day, I used to love making mix-tapes. I’d wait by my ghetto blaster, blank tape in the tape deck, and be on high alert to press the record button when my favorite songs came on.

    These days, making music mixes are way less labor-intensive! You can make a playlist on YouTube in minutes. Make a specific playlist for someone in your life and send it to them. What an awesome surprise to both give and receive!

    7. Take it to social media.

    Instead of spending time lurking on Facebook and Twitter, choose three people to give a shout-out to! The guy you used to sit next to in science class, your cousin you haven’t seen in three years, the random person you connected with when you were traveling—post on their wall (or send a private message). Let them know you’re thinking of them.

    8. Surprise with a gift.

    Whether you send flowers to one of your friends at her workplace or buy a coffee for the person behind you in line, splurging and surprising someone else is a lot of fun.

    Do you go to a coffee shop with a loyalty card? I collect all my stamps, and then once I accumulate my free coffee, I ask the barista to give it to the next person in line. It’s a thrill for me, the barista, and the person behind me who doesn’t suspect a thing!

    —

    When you brighten someone’s day, you are simultaneously stirring up positive energy within yourself. And you’ll carry this energy with you throughout your day. It’s a great feeling.

    So I challenge you to ask yourself, how can something I do today surprise and delight another individual? Let me know in the comments.

    Be creative, use your gut, do what feels good.

    Sunshine image via Shutterstock

  • What to Do When You Love Someone Who Hurts You

    What to Do When You Love Someone Who Hurts You

    Angry Fingers

    “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chödrön

    There is a person in my life who I love with all my heart, but in this relationship I struggle to keep a full cup myself. They are family, the situation is complicated and tender. But learning to have compassion for this other person begins with having compassion for myself.

    A nasty divorce spanning most of my childhood set the stage for our current situation. My mother was deeply emotionally wounded by my father, and carried that pain into her parenting of my sister and me.

    Contact with the ex (my dad) dropped to nil—maybe a week a year, far below what the court had decided.

    Any efforts on our parts to connect with our absent parent, even recounting fond memories, were seen by our mother as attacks on her legitimacy and a discounting of her pain. And what emotional intimacy we shared was often exploited—it kept us locked into the family unit, not believing we could have our needs filled elsewhere, least of all with our absentee father.

    A few short years prior, I felt part of a happy, perfect family. Suddenly one parent was effectively gone. My relationship with the other became a labyrinth of confusion—love down this path, hurt down the other, and at my young age I couldn’t find the rhyme or reason to it.

    Childhood gifted me a number of unhealthy survival mechanisms, which still follow me around today: a deep fear of conflict (because conflict often meant someone would leave), constant apologies and guilt for things I’m not truly responsible for, and a voice in the back of my mind telling me no matter what I do, who I am, who I become, it will never be enough.

    Growing up, I realize that those mindsets that helped me survive as a child, in the trenches of grief, inadequacy, and parental loss, no longer served me. Becoming a healthier person showed me how unhealthy this particular relationship really was.

    Healing with my mom—communication about the past, forgiveness, and moving on together—has not taken place. Attempts to bring up my own hurt and pain are minimized and shut down. My words, invariably, have been met with responses like “I can’t do this right now, it’s a bad time,” “I can’t believe you’d do this to me,” or “It all came from a place of love.”

    So, in interactions with my mother, I keep my guard up. I know she still hurts, and seems timelessly stuck in her own grief, but it would take a great degree of emotional wholeness on my part to absorb each new wound with simple forgiveness and empathy. I see where my path might point toward such healing in the future, but we’re not there yet.

    Many of us have experienced relationships like this: someone we love acts toward us in ways that continually damage.

    It’s one thing to forgive and move on from a wound we received in the past, and another animal entirely when we get hurt again and again, in the same place, a scab not quite healed over before it’s ripped off again.

    We all have histories, wounds, scars. Most people carry deep tender spots that have never truly healed, and some use all their actions to self-protect. The fear of vulnerability leads them to cover those places, distract from those places.

    Attempts to wear the heaviest of armor results in getting “bitter” rather than “better,” and those who are too thick-skinned start to lose their delicate abilities to empathize. They project their fear of getting hurt into decisions that may themselves, unintentionally or intentionally, cause others to suffer.

    Here lies the difficulty: in a relationship with someone who continues to act in hurtful ways, how do we toe the line between loving them and interacting with compassion, and protecting our own heart?

    We can save no one but ourselves.

    Real shifts in our psyche, our inner being, do not come from outside pushes. Change will never stick unless the changer is ready. Our worldly circumstances will nudge us here and there, and we ultimately respond by either softening or embittering our vision, our paradigms.

    If we’ve allowed experience to push us toward a scared, closed off, hardened heart, things can only be different when we are ready to make our own intentional choice to be different.

    We cannot throw another person over our back, or carry them in our arms through the fire. That cannot be our job. Be there for them, be support, hold space in time of need, even be a guide when asked. But always, the true work will be theirs alone.

    Being love does not mean being a doormat.

    Compassion for others begins with compassion for ourselves. Loving someone should not mean getting hurt time and again. There will always be need for forgiveness, but not at the cost of healthy boundaries. Here, love might mean taking a step back.

    I’ve realized that sometimes, forgiveness is not about absolving someone of their actions—it means we have given ourselves permission to move on with our lives, deciding “what you did no longer holds power over me.” It’s okay, necessary even, to set up firebreaks, to say, “Enough.”

    We can’t resolve hurts from unstable ground.

    If someone has hurt you, chances are they’re suffering themselves. When both parties feel pain that they believe the other caused, they will already be on the defensive. I believe the only place from which we can work through those old woundings is one of stability, of love and trust.

    Yet closure in the sense of reconciliation, communication, and healing together may never happen. If someone doesn’t believe they have wronged you, arguing your point will only drive the relationship rift further apart.

    If we can find common ground in our love and words, it’s possible to move forward together into resolution of hurts. But if one party isn’t ready to look at themselves truthfully and engage in painfully open communication, resolution must come a different way.

    Putting things to rest can be one-sided.

    Here’s the tough truth: closure won’t come from someone else. It happens when we are ready to let things go.

    In her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes uses the concept of descansos, death-markers, the white crosses seen on the side of roads in the West and Southwest, as a metaphor for marking, blessing, and moving on from trauma, grief, little “deaths” in our lives.

    By tenderly identifying our own descansos—things in our lives which haven’t gone as planned, dreams we’ve had to leave behind, expectations we’ve put aside in exchange for the truth—we give ourselves a unique means for closure.

    “Be gentle with yourself and make the descansos, the resting places for the aspects of yourself that were on their way to somewhere, but never arrived…  

    Descansos mark the death sites, the dark times, but they are also love notes to your suffering. They are transformative. There is a lot to be said for pinning things to the earth so they don’t follow us around. There is a lot to be said for laying them to rest.” – Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

    Surround yourself with people who love you.

    This one is easily said but sometimes complicated to walk out. Family doesn’t always go hand in hand with blood: people we are related to may never truly be good for us, while the friends we’ve chosen might be more dear and positively impactful than any relatives.

    A great relationship inspires and brings out the best in us, and the love shared there has few strings attached.

    Great friendships should be sounding boards for the good and the bad in our lives. We need people to see our inner truths, hold our hands in the dark times, exhort us in times of abundance—and we must recognize those people as gifts.

    —

    These are hard lessons for me. It is sad to let go of a fairy-tale ideal, what I expected this relationship to look like.

    But after a process of grieving, it can be so much healthier and more fulfilling to live with reality, to send out love without expectation of what we “should” get in return, to have compassion for someone without a constant eye for what they “should” do for us.

    We take back our power, creating graceful resolution for the future where it wasn’t available in the past.

    May we all learn to love without contingency; in the meantime, may we learn to walk our path in self-compassion. Loving ourselves is our dawn into the light of truly loving others.

    Fighting fingers image via Shutterstock

  • Why Silence Is Often the Best Response to a Verbal Attack

    Why Silence Is Often the Best Response to a Verbal Attack

    “Have the maturity to sometimes know that silence is more powerful than having the last word.” ~Thema Davis

    It all started with the forks.

    “You need to return my forks,” my roommate demanded one morning as I sat in the kitchen attempting to get some work done.

    “I have already said that I don’t have them. We told you that the other roommate has been hiding them,” I replied.

    She began raising her voice at me, “I can’t believe you would accuse her. You’re just a mean, nasty person!”

    I slowly turned around and said calmly, “Today is my birthday, actually. So I don’t really want to have this conversation right now.”

    She retorted, “I don’t care,” and then began to attack my character with a spiel of all the various other things I’ve ever done to upset her.

    Perhaps she felt some kind of underlying hurt, but she would not share this with me. She was not telling me these problems so that we could work on them together to fix the hurt. Instead, she was insulting and attacking my very existence as a human so that I could feel hurt with her.

    I could already foresee that nothing I could say was going to calm her down, so I chose to respond with silence. I suppose my silence pushed her over the edge, because she ended the conversation with “good luck with your miserable life treating people this way!” and stormed out of the room.

    Well, that escalated quickly. All because of some missing forks. I continued on with my birthday as happily as I could.

    Over the next few weeks, I waited for my roommate to come to me in a calm manner to resolve her issues with me, but she never did. Any chance she had, she continued to speak to me in a hateful manner, even though I didn’t engage her.

    For some reason, my respectful silence made her angrier with me. I had held my tongue and kept my negative thoughts to myself, yet she still found a reason to hold on to her anger. This made it seem to me that she did not respect me or wish to resolve our issues.

    One day she shoved me while coming in the front door at the same time as me. She went so far as to spread rumors that I was planning to break up with my boyfriend so that he would break up with me first. I remained silent and still as a tree.

    Looking at things from her point of view, it seems that she was trapped in pain. A pain so severe she wanted someone else to feel it with her. She did not know another way to express her pain to me, so I will never know the true cause of it.

    Luckily for me, she moved out shortly afterward. Though our relationship ended and our issues remained unsolved because of her lack of cooperation, I do not regret my silence for several reasons.

    Silence shows that external factors cannot affect your self-esteem. 

    If you have hurt them, it is okay to acknowledge this and apologize. You are a human who makes mistakes. If they are unfoundedly attacking you, remember that they are speaking from a place of hurt that clouds their judgment.

    In either situation, remind yourself that their negative view of you does not change your self-esteem and value as a person.

    Oftentimes, flinging an insult is a reflection of their hidden insecurities and fears. True maturity comes from letting the hurtful words roll off your back without feeling the need to defend yourself, knowing that they are not a reflection of you.

    Silence is not weakness.

    Silence is harnessing your calm in a heated moment. Silence is a moment of Zen in which you can see the positive and negative coexisting together. Silence is the power to mindfully choose to stay out of the negative space, and not to say hurtful words back.

    It takes true strength to hold your tongue and not succumb to negative energy. With time and practice, it will become easier and easier to ignore negative comments and continue on happily with your day.

    Silence is not ignoring the problem.

    Silence is the way to avoid saying things during a moment’s anger that you may later regret. Of course if the person has cooled off later on and wishes to speak to you calmly and respectfully regarding the matter, you should have a dialogue with them. Rational conversations are the only way to effective conflict resolution.

    Silence is always in your toolbox. 

    When someone has an interpersonal problem that they genuinely wish to fix, they approach the other person from a place within their heart, a place of actual caring and love. If someone immediately attacks your integrity and character, they are not speaking out of love but out of hate. Hatred cannot solve problems, only love can.

    When the other person is being intentionally hurtful, without regard for your feelings, you always have the choice to stay silent and walk away from the conversation. There is a point where no words will calm them down, and they simply want you to join in their anger. Reciprocating their anger and adding fuel to their fire will just make things worse.

    Silence is always there for a moment of clarity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    You feel like a failure as a person.

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

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

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

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

    My Experience with Self-Sabotage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    So What Changed—and How Do You Change It?

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

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

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

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

    Why “Just Let Go” Is Not the Best Advice

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

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

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

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

    Being Peaceful or Being Strong?

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

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

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

    Accept Who You Are—But Who Are You?

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

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

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

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

    As We Forgive Those…

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

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

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

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

    Count Your (Amended) Blessings

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

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

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

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

    —

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

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

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

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

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

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

    You’ve got this.

  • How to Get the Excitement of a Fresh Start Every Day

    How to Get the Excitement of a Fresh Start Every Day

    Woman at Window

    “Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.” ~Nikos Kazantzakis

    One minute I was a young warrior in a guild of travelers, the next, a middle-aged aristocrat in a strange Victorian world.

    A pretty standard day. Oh, did I forget to mention where I was?

    I was at a role-playing convention. That was over twenty years ago. Here’s how the fun worked.

    Every three to four hours, I would play a different session. That means I would become a new character and go on new adventures in another world, with different people. It was a complete shift of personality and environment three times a day.

    Only, the whole adventure would go on in my brain. It was all the fruit of the imagination of players around the table.

    Since I was a child, I’ve always been a dreamer. Even today, I can spend hours lost in thoughts, in my mind.

    I role-played for most of my younger years. From that period of my life, I’ve retained a fascination for the mind, imagination, and creativity.

    The power of the brain as a simulator of fiction captivates me. After all, our perception of the world is the product of a simulation run inside our head by our brain.

    Now, imagine you could get a role-playing convention experience in real life. If I told you that you could get the excitement of a fresh start every day, would you be interested in learning about it?

    Exploring new lives and scenarios has been one of my ongoing quests, so I put together a five-step process you can follow to get the excitement of a fresh start every single day.

    1. Adopt a child mindset.

    Do you remember when you were five years old, how you looked at everything with big eyes? You were always curious, exploring and testing the world. You would invent stories, secret places, fairies, and monsters.

    Jean Piaget, an important figure in developmental psychology, calls three-to five-year-old children “little scientists exploring and reflecting on these explorations to increase competence.” Children learn through experience, making mistakes, and solving problems.

    If I ask my three-year-old daughter whether she wants to go and have a look at a tree, she will always say yes. In fact, whatever I ask her, she’s always up for it. There’s no limit to her curiosity, and she’s got no fear.

    We, as parents, need to channel her energy and curiosity so she doesn’t hurt herself. As adults, we know when to stop so that we don’t hurt ourselves. Or do we?

    Often, our fear will stop us from doing something that would be beneficial to us. Conversely, we might also sometimes go too far and hurt ourselves, when doing sports for example.

    This challenges whether we’re good judges of what’s best for us. I argue that we often aren’t.

    That’s why the first step is to suspend your judgment and open your mind to new possibilities. As T.S. Eliot said, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

    So, mentally go back to your childhood for a moment. Picture the world around you.

    You’re there? Good. Now, you need to reawaken your child mindset and cultivate it.

    Be curious about everything. Ask questions. Challenge your assumptions about the world.

    This is your starting point. Spend time every day cultivating this mindset. Make it a habit.

    2. Develop a beginner’s mind.

    The second step is to act on your child mindset.

    Make it your mission to discover or learn something new every day. When you wake up every morning, ask yourself, “What am I going to learn today?”

    On Reddit, there’s a subreddit called “Today I learned.” Make this a motto for your life.

    To inspire you, think about Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo. Upon his death, Jigoro asked to be buried in his white belt instead of his advanced black belt. He wanted to stay open to learning and spend eternity with a beginner’s mind, symbolized by the white belt of the beginner.

    Also, think about monks, who meditate and work toward attaining a state of a completely empty and open mind. They call it a “beginner’s mind”—fully open to embrace the new.

    Embrace the beginner’s mind and learn something new every day.

    3. Seek adventure.

    To learn every day and get the excitement of new adventures, you need to go out and explore.

    This might lead you to scary places. You will get ideas that might seem crazy to you some days. Don’t let your critical mind stop you.

    Follow your instincts. Explore these ideas.

    If the ideas scare you, it’s a good sign. That means you’re up for an adventure. And we like adventures, don’t we?

    An adventure will give you excitement and new perspectives. And because of the unknown, you’ll be failing, like a child.

    But then, failure will teach you important lessons to increase your learning. You will build new neural pathways in your brain instead of just re-enforcing your existing ones.

    Recently, I was interviewed on a podcast. It was daunting at first. At the same time, I felt the thrill of an adventure.

    Afterward, as I listened to the podcast, it gave me insights into myself. In short, it was an adventure that gave me both excitement and new perspectives.

    What’s your next adventure going to be? Playing a new instrument, or maybe starting a martial art, like judo? A dance class, or a trip to Nepal?

    4. One change a day keeps the boredom away.

    Making small changes every day benefits you in two ways—it keeps things fresh and exciting, and it also changes your brain in a way that broadens your perception and brings more novelty into your life.

    When you do the same things every day, and don’t expose yourself to new knowledge and experiences, your brain makes fewer connections between neurons. When you mix things up, however, you literally change your brain through the process of neuroplasticity.

    As a result, you start to see the same things in different ways. For example, you could look at a quote you read some time ago and it could unlock a completely new meaning for you.

    Your daily change doesn’t have to be big. Here are typical examples of changes I’m making in my life:

    • Start reading a new book (and it’s even better when the book is on a topic I’m not familiar with)
    • Listen to a new podcast
    • Change my exercise routine
    • Change my writing style
    • Connect with new people
    • Change my morning routine
    • Cook a new recipe or change one I cook regularly
    • Have tea instead of coffee and try various teas
    • Start a new Coursera course

    Constant change will keep you excited every morning—and keep your brain flexible.

    5. Be a jack of all trades, master of some.

    Be hungry for knowledge.

    When you invest yourself in a new topic and explore it further, you become more and more excited about learning and growing your expertise.

    So, as you read books, explore new topics, and take new courses, seek new subjects that captivate you. Once you’ve found one, immerse yourself and learn as much as you can, and follow your curiosity wherever it takes you. For example, learning about minimalism may introduce you to tiny houses, which then piques your interest in sustainable design.

    In essence, you’ll always have a few topics that you’re focused on and many others that you’ll try out to fuel constant change.

    It gets better: As your expertise grows in different areas, you’ll broaden your overall culture. That means you’ll never run out of topics of conversation, and you’ll be able to relate to lots of different people.

    Bottom line: Invest yourself in new topics and you’ll live an exciting life.

    Never Settle

    You’re in control of your life. You can change it overnight if you decide to do so.

    It’s a matter of mindset. How you decide to see the world and react to it dictates your day.

    You can embrace each day as a new start, a new adventure. Whatever excites you, you can go out and explore it.

    It’s up to you now. Are you prepared for a fresh start every day? Are you willing to build an exciting life for yourself?

    Woman at window image via Shutterstock

  • Why We Don’t Need to Try So Hard to Be Better

    Why We Don’t Need to Try So Hard to Be Better

    Relax

    “To heal a wound, you need to stop touching it.” ~Unknown

    I’ve always been an overachiever. In sixth grade, I spent weeks memorizing over five pages of the poem “Horatius at the Bridge” for extra credit, even though I already had an A in the class.

    When I started therapy in my mid-twenties to deal with depression and panic attacks, I turned my overachieving tactics to self-improvement. I spent hours journaling, going to meetings, talking to mentors, reading books, and beating myself up when I fell into old habits.

    I always worried: Was I doing it right? Was I making enough progress? Would I feel better, find enlightenment, or be a better person in the end?

    That’s when I began to notice a pattern that surprised me.

    I found that when I first had an insight, discovered a tool, or began a new practice, I got very excited. It worked wonders for me and I could feel a sense of growth and expansion.

    I’d begin to try harder to generate more insights and discover more tools. But as I redoubled my efforts and worked harder at healing, I’d begin to feel anxious, self-critical, and depleted. The harder I tried, the less enlightened I felt.

    At some point I’d give up. I’d let go of trying to become the next Buddha and accept the fact that I was just going to be neurotic and flawed the rest of my life.

    And that’s when the insights and growth would start again. That’s when I would suddenly experience the most healing and notice the biggest changes in my life.

    Why was this? I wondered.

    And then one day it hit me: When we get injured, our body knows what to do and mends itself automatically—we don’t have to try. We’re designed to self-heal physiologically. It occurred to me then that perhaps we’re designed to self-heal mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well.

    Why We Don’t Need to Try So Hard

    Once I recognized our capacity to self-heal, I began to see evidence of it everywhere. Here are three common ways I’ve seen it work:

    1. The insight, answers, and wisdom we need are always within us and emerge in their own time.

    One of the things I’ve learned through years of struggling with depression is that no matter how miserable, confused, and hopeless I feel, clarity always returns at some point and I know exactly what to do.

    For instance, a few months ago I was feeling depressed for a few days and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.

    Then suddenly one night I woke up and it was clear: I was trying to do too much. I was overcommitted. I was doing too much to please other people.

    What I really needed was space for rest and relaxation. I cut back on a couple of commitments and took some time to rejuvenate. The depression lifted and things started to go a lot better for me.

    I get off-track a lot, but the wisdom is in there, and it always comes out when I allow space for it to emerge.

    2. When we miss a lesson, we’ll get new opportunities to learn it until we get it.

    Growing up, I struggled with my sister because when we fought, she would judge or blame me. I didn’t know how not to internalize that criticism and feel unworthy because of it.

    Then, years later, I fell in love with a man who did the same thing. He helped me realize that when he got angry and blamed me, he was actually feeling vulnerable or hurt himself. I learned how to use his judgment to help me connect to compassion and love—for him and myself—rather than guilt and shame.

    I didn’t consciously seek someone out who reminded me of my sister, but something within me drew me toward him, allowing me to work out a new way of dealing with blame.

    3. Our pain won’t let us stay off course for long.

    I was shocked when I learned that a runny nose and fever are more than mere byproducts of having a cold; they’re actually the body’s way of healing itself by flushing or burning out those mischievous germs.

    Similarly, our pain and neuroses are often our spirit’s way of getting our attention and guiding us so we can heal.

    Case in point: several years ago I began to have trouble sleeping. Falling asleep became more difficult and before long I was sleeping only three to six hours a night, if at all. I was exhausted, cranky, and miserable much of the time.

    It took a long time, but eventually I noticed patterns in what kept me from sleeping. Some nights I would lie in bed wide awake until I finally allowed myself to feel an emotional response (i.e.: fear, anger, disappointment, etc.) that I was pushing away or avoiding. Once I felt the feeling, sleep came quite easily.

    Other times I couldn’t sleep because I was being particularly hard on myself that day. I struggle with a very active inner critic and high expectations for myself, and on these nights sleep wouldn’t come until I dropped my critic’s attack and directed some compassion and love towards myself.

    I had tried ignoring the problem, powering through, or finding quick fixes, but they didn’t work. The insomnia forced me to address what was at the heart of the issue. Far from being an unlucky curse, the pain of not sleeping actually helped me to take the next step on my path to healing and wholeness.

    The Key to Allowing Self-Healing to Happen

    The reason so many of us spend so much time in pain and misery (myself included) lies in the difference between our egos and our true selves.

    Our true selves—who we are beneath the fears, the defense mechanisms, and the limiting beliefs—are wise, whole, and deeply connected to the larger world.

    Our egos, on the other hand, feel separate and alone and rigidly hold onto a particular set of habits and identities in an effort to feel okay in the world. We all have access to both.

    When I’m trying to grow and develop, I’m often caught in ego. I want something—peace, enlightenment, the respect of my peers, or an image of myself as an evolved person. I feel like I need to change something about myself in order to be worthy or good enough.

    When I’m coming from ego, I obsess. I strive. I effort. I compare myself to others and become convinced that I’m the least enlightened creature on the planet.

    All this striving and comparing is the mud that gums up the works of my self-healing process. That’s why it sometimes takes so long to work: I get in the way.

    To allow my self-healing process to unfold with its full power, all I need to do is relax.

    When I stop trying so hard, I reconnect with my true self. I have access to the fundamental wisdom and strength we all share. When I trust my inner workings to do their thing and simply observe what’s happening without trying to change it, my ego relaxes and healing happens naturally.

    To that end, I’ve found a few questions that help me heal and grow with less interference:

    Where am I striving with the intention of fixing myself or becoming more perfect? What would I do if I were to fully accept that I’m good enough as I am and that I’m exactly where I should be?

    What would nourish and nurture me right now? What would help me relax and feel safe enough to let go of old patterns?

    What is my inner wisdom trying to tell me right now? And if I’m not sure, how could I create enough space in my head and my life to hear what it has to say?

    We don’t always receive satisfying answers right away. That’s okay—in my experience, if we keep asking the question long enough, eventually we’ll get more clarity. It just may take a little longer than we expected.

    The process of relaxing into the process of change isn’t an easy one; knowing that I’m self-healing doesn’t mean my ego never gets stirred up or I don’t fall back into striving and obsessing. In fact, I believe that getting in our own way is an inevitable and enlightening part of the process, and I like to think that my inner wisdom is strong enough that it can handle whatever my inner foolishness throws at it.

    At some point I always become aware that I’m efforting again, and that’s when I can chuckle, pat my ego on the head, and remind it that it doesn’t need to try so hard. I can return to the questions, listen for answers, and then pray for the willingness to let go once again.

    Relax image via Shutterstock

  • Increase Your Self-Love: 8 Ways to Be Good to Yourself

    Increase Your Self-Love: 8 Ways to Be Good to Yourself

    “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love & affection.” ~Buddha

    Someone asked me a couple of years ago out of ten, how much did I love myself? I said four. I had to give my immediate, intuitive answer, as this was the honest truth.

    Four! That came as a shock to me. It’s low. I thought I was pretty good with myself. I’m smart, multitalented, not bad looking, generally happy, I have lots of friends and enjoy life.

    But now the truth began to shine. With introspection I could see why the answer was four. My thoughts, feelings, words, and actions showed how I really felt. What I thought was self-love was largely a superficial gloss on the surface of my life.

    What’s more, this lack of self-love was playing out in my life and keeping me from experiencing real joy and freedom.

    My strict Indian upbringing had me believe that my job was to conform to other people’s rules, from how I dressed and socialized down to whom I would marry. My true self had no place here; it was to be hidden away. But it never goes away; it’s always there waiting to be loved and accepted by us.

    Below are some of the areas I was lacking in self-love, which perhaps you can relate to. Taking conscious action to increase our self-love in these areas can make life much more magical. And we deserve magic!

    1. Set boundaries.

    A good sign of how much you love yourself is how you let other people treat you.

    Do they walk all over you?

    Do you go to the ends of the earth to please them, at the detriment of yourself?

    Do they speak or act unkindly to you, put you down, and trample on your dreams?

    Do they put you at the bottom of their list?

    Although I’ve experienced all of these things, people-pleasing was my big one. I always said yes to people for fear of upsetting them. As a result, I spent my precious time and energy in situations that I didn’t even want to be in.

    Setting boundaries is often as simple as knowing when to say no. We worry that people will stop liking us if we do this. But I find that if you do it confidently and lovingly, those who care will respect you for it and even change their behavior with you. And those who do walk away, do you really want them there anyway?

    2. Watch your self-talk.

    I once read, “If you spoke to your friends the way you speak to yourself, would they still be your friends?” In my case they certainly wouldn’t, because I’d be saying things like:

    You’re thirty-two and you still get pimples, your teeth are wonky, and you’re getting out of shape.

    You’re not going to achieve your goals.

    You don’t have a right to ask for what you want or speak your mind—keep quiet.

    Other people are more important than you; their wishes should come first.

    Imagine saying that to your friends! You’d never say it to them, so don’t say it to yourself.

    With self-awareness and practice we can notice these thoughts in our minds and make a conscious decision to stop them or reverse them into positives.

    3. Take time to “do you.”

    There’s always someone who wants a piece of you—your boss, spouse, kids, friends, parents, siblings, the bank manager. Do you know who else wants and needs a piece of you? You!

    When we truly love someone, we take time to nurture their well-being. How often do you do this for yourself?

    I know life is busy, but I always make time to do things that make me feel looked after—exercise, time alone, a little pampering. Giving yourself permission to nurture yourself creates the beliefs that you are worthy and loved.

    4. Be honest with yourself and others.

    If someone’s dishonest with you, you don’t like it. Same goes for when you are dishonest with yourself—it hurts! Being honest in my eyes means that our words and actions reflect the truth of our heart and soul—in front of anyone and everyone.

    For years I was dishonest with my family about who I really was.

    I liked to party, drank alcohol, had relationships, and had no interest in getting an arranged marriage. This may seem normal to most, but these things were all frowned upon by my family. So although I did them, I also hid them.

    This dishonesty seemed harmless until I realized that I was sending an unloving message to myself that who I really was, was wrong and shameful.

    Being honest about my feelings is my biggest challenge, as it makes me feel vulnerable. But in vulnerability lies great power, so I try and speak my truth as often as possible.

    The more you do it, the easier it becomes, and as long as you are not hurting anyone, expression from a place of honesty opens up so much space inside you. You feel free. You feel worthy. You feel loved.

    5. Allow yourself to feel painful emotions, and nurture yourself through them.

    For some reason we have learned to shun feelings of hurt, sadness, fear, depression, hopelessness, and so on, as if they are somehow wrong. When I was sad and hurt after a breakup, pride took the part of me that was sad and tried to shut it away.

    I had little compassion or acceptance for my own feelings of rejection, hurt, and unworthiness. I tried to quickly move on from heartbreak, dealing with everything in my head rather than my heart. So this pain remained inside me, unloved and unhealed.

    What if a small child were sad? We’d comfort them because we love them and want them to feel supported. They are fragile. But so are you. We are all fragile when in pain, so we must support ourselves, comfort ourselves, and love ourselves when we need it most.

    6. Let yourself off the hook.

    There’s no such thing as perfection, though you could say that you are perfect in your imperfection. Everyone makes mistakes or struggles at some things, it’s natural. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to get everything right.

    So isn’t it funny that we berate ourselves—the opposite of love—for not meeting a standard that’s impossible to reach in the first place? There’s no winning there! The only way to win is to let yourself off the hook.

    7. Watch who you spend time with.

    They say you turn out like the five people you spend most time with.

    Many years ago I remember being surrounded by people who had quite a negative outlook on life. We all go through dark times, but none of us want to get trapped in them.

    I realized the most loving thing we can do to help ourselves out of a negative state is surround ourselves with positive energy. The goal isn’t to find people who are always positive—none of us are. It’s to spend time around people who are making a conscious effort to release negativity.

    Your life is too precious. Love yourself enough to distance yourself from people who dim your light and find those who help you shine brighter.

    8. Know who you really are.

    Because when you find out who you really are, you won’t be able to help but love yourself.

    Did you know that almost every element on Earth was formed at the heart of a star? So your body is made of stardust! Your soul is a pure and powerful energy. Your life, as you know it, is a unique expression in consciousness that will never exist again. You are a miracle. Who doesn’t love a miracle?

    —

    So if you were to ask me now, how much do I love myself? I’d say six or seven. I’ve still got work to do, and decades of conditioning to be dissolved. But life is a journey. Few things come to us instantly, especially this sort of transformation.

    Learning to love ourselves may be our life’s work. And true joy comes from the realization that not only do you deserve love, you are love.

  • Why Advice Doesn’t Help When We’re Hurting (and What Does)

    Why Advice Doesn’t Help When We’re Hurting (and What Does)

    Couple Hugging

    “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we’re listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” ~Karl A. Menninger

    I remember my first call like it was yesterday.

    I answered the phone, heart beating out of my chest, hand firm on a sheet of local emergency phone numbers.

    The voice on the other end was full of… meek embarrassment.

    Not exactly what I was expecting.

    “Uhh, I’m really sorry… I’m not, uhh… I’m not suicidal…. I just… I just had a huge fight with my girlfriend…. I just… I really need to talk to someone…. Is that okay?”

    If you’re like I was before I became a volunteer in 2011, when you think about a suicide hotline you imagine circumstances so traumatic and unbearable that they bring people to consider ending life.

    But, I soon discovered that everything I expected to be true—everything from what the callers would be like, all the way up to how I would handle them—was completely wrong.

    And what I learned forever changed the way I think about pain.

    My First Big Surprise About Pain

    I became a volunteer because I wanted to help people who were hurting.

    But looking back, I realize that I had a big misconception about what those people would look like.

    I imagined two discreet groups: “normal” people living with minor ups and downs in one bucket; and “broken” people struggling with trauma and unrelenting emotional upheaval in the other.

    (I had imagined I was in the “broken” category, but that is a story for another day.)

    I was sure callers to the hotline would fall into the latter bucket, too.

    Which is why I was very surprised when I found myself speaking with “normal” people over and over again, people who I might easily have met behind my local coffee shop counter or in the grocery store aisle.

    I began to see that we are all vulnerable to pain so big that we might reach out to an anonymous ear in order to pour out our hearts.

    I realized that some of us may struggle with mental illness, but none of us are “broken.” Feeling extreme pain is simply part of the human condition.

    But that was just the very beginning of what I was to learn.

    What We All Need More Than Anything Is to Be Seen

    I thought my work at the hotline was going to be about giving advice. Indeed, I looked forward to it.

    I imagined helping callers develop coping techniques.

    I pictured using my keen insights to help identify root problems.

    I fantasized about offering guidance toward self-transformation.

    But, although I didn’t understand at first, all of these things were actually forbidden at the hotline. My role was to be an attentive listener.

    That’s it.

    This only began to make a little bit of sense when I realized that there was just one thread running through each of the hundreds of stories shared with me by callers: a lack of a trusted confidante.

    What each and every caller had in common was a deep craving to share themselves with a caring listener. Our job as volunteers was to offer this.

    Okay, that made sense to me. In a world filled with busy, stressed out people, it’s too easy to feel like we don’t really matter to anyone beyond fulfilling our obligations, if at all.

    Maybe it was this feeling—the feeling of being invisible—that was bringing so many callers to the brink of despair and onto our phone-lines.

    “Mmm, it sounds like you feel…”

    This simple string of words was taught to volunteers in order to make callers feel deeply seen and acknowledged.

    But are you wondering (as I did) how simple parroting is supposed to do anything substantial?

    Didn’t the callers also need help?

    Yet I found that callers were indeed substantially moved when they received undivided and caring attention.

    Someone might begin a call in a frantic tone of desperation only to end it with a sense of peace and hope, all because a volunteer fully acknowledge their complete being.

    Eventually, I even began to see that well-meaning “help” (like advice or personal anecdotes) could actually be damaging.

    Telling someone in pain about ideas based on our experiences crowds out what a distressed person really needs—a reflection, pure acknowledgement, to be seen.

    We Are All Profoundly Resourceful

    Despite callers’ uplifted moods, for a time I was still skeptical about the usefulness of empathetic listening.

    But if I am being honest with myself, my problem was that it made me feel unimportant.

    If all I was doing was holding up a mirror for callers, how was I supposed to get satisfaction out of my work? Didn’t some of them need my hard-won wisdom?

    But I soon noticed something interesting.

    Since most callers lacked a sounding board for their deepest feelings—buried anger, forgotten hopes, disappointments—many of them started to lose touch with those feelings until they bubbled over into a catastrophe.

    Callers often didn’t even know they were calling the hotline to talk about their uncomfortable feelings.

    They called the hotline to talk about tangible problems—major relationship conflicts, getting fired, losing a friend.

    I started to notice that it was only after having the chance to speak without interruption for several minutes, receiving only empathetic sounds of understanding and reflection in reply, that they would even begin to unpack the twisted mass of pain in their hearts.

    And that’s when I caught a glimpse of the magic beginning to happen.

    Once the mirror I offered allowed callers to glimpse hidden corners of their inner worlds, they were empowered to keep exploring.

    Soon, they were clearing away cobwebs and dusting off all kinds of rusty tools and insights, all as I sat, phone propped on my shoulder and mouth gaping at the miraculous turnarounds that had virtually nothing to do with me.

    The truth was that callers didn’t need to hear about how I fixed my own kinda-similar problem.

    They didn’t need to hear about what my friend did in the same situation.

    Indeed, hearing my own musings would have interrupted the magic process.

    My ego was disappointed at first, but watching someone else regain their footing is immensely more satisfying than patting yourself on the back.

    Instead of my wisdom, I begin to take pride in my ability to convey empathy and ask questions, encouraging callers to dig deeper.

    I was truly happy to be doing my small part in helping callers tap into their immense personal resources.

    Having Our Feelings Validated Is Transcendent

    I was thrilled to be witnessing this new power—the power of skilled and empathetic listening. I saw that it was emotionally replenishing for callers and empowered them to calmly analyze their hearts and their worlds.

    But there was something else going on, too. Something that seemed almost spiritual.

    I felt it, too. When I got off of a call, I sometimes felt a little dizzy, a little euphoric.

    But why was I feeling so uplifted by conversations that started because someone had been feeling hopeless and alone?

    What I came to realize is that empathetic listening offers a lot more than soothing companionship.

    Empathetic listening and acknowledgement also means giving someone the chance to feel like they fit into the order of the world.

    It means allowing someone to feel like a puzzle piece slotting perfectly and seamlessly into something bigger than themselves, like they belong. It is truly transcendent.

    And since the act of empathizing deeply with another person means becoming one with them for a short time, as a volunteer I was experiencing the transcendence, too.

    With every call I felt a part of a bigger whole. I felt connected.

    And by the way the callers often thanked us volunteers, sometimes even through tears of relief, I knew they felt connected, too.

    Connection is the Ultimate Emotional Pain Pill

    Volunteering at the suicide hotline convinced me that listening and connection are so powerful that they can relieve even the deepest pain.

    I might not have found my chance to shine as a skilled sage, but discovering that even the most troubled among us can begin to regain footing was infinitely more satisfying.

    “Yes, absolutely, it’s okay.” I said to my first caller. “It sounds like you feel really, really upset. Tell me more about that.”

    Couple hugging image via Shutterstock

  • Coping with Loss and Heartbreak: How to Get Through the Pain

    Coping with Loss and Heartbreak: How to Get Through the Pain

    Broken Heart

    “The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.” ~Djuna Barnes

    November, 2014. A story you’ve heard a million times. The person I believed with all my heart to be “the one” ceased to feel the same way about me.

    My heart and soul shattered, I had no desire to live, the whole works.

    Having your heart broken, especially by someone you truly loved is, from my perspective, the worst kind of pain there is. It makes you lose all sense of self, reality, purpose, and faith. To me, it felt like my soul was being severed into teeny tiny pieces.

    When we’re in that much pain, it seems like it’s going to be a forever deal. We forget that it’s all temporary.

    To make matters worse, we feel we’re all alone in it—we are rushed to “just move on already” when we can barely find enough energy to open our eyes.

    So keep in mind that there is no shame about the situation that is most painful to you and how long you’re taking to process it.

    You could be facing your darkest hour brought by the death of your pet fish. Or by the fact you didn’t get that dream job.

    Whatever the situation is, do not compare or believe your pain is less legitimate than others: your journey here is your own, and it is just as sacred as that of someone you perceive to have “more legitimate“ reasons to be in pain.

    Also, take your time getting through it. It’s your story. Your shoes. Your life.

    I’d like to remind everyone out there going through a hard time that pain is in fact the greatest catalyst for growth.

    You can’t see that when you’re smack in the middle of it; in fact, you might even say, as I did, “No growth is worth this much pain.” But when you come out on the other side, my friends, it’s like you’re seeing in color for the first time in your life.

    So keep going! You’ll be happier than you ever were once you’ve transcended it, I promise you.

    Here are five of the many lessons I learned throughout this year that I believe can help anyone, at any point, with any struggle, to reach out into all the happiness and bliss that life can offer.

    1. Gratitude

    While I was in that place of suffering, gratitude seemed like a dark humor joke from the skies. How can you possibly find something to be grateful for when you feel you’ve been stripped of every shred of happiness or love and there’s nothing left but pain?

    That feeling kept me in limbo for a while. I kept reading and reading about recovering from a severe heartbreak and every single one of the texts I read were emphatic about gratitude. So at one point I thought “there has to be a reason for this.”

    Finally, I picked up a pen and piece of paper and told myself to write ten things I was grateful for.

    It was hard at first. Only a few things came to mind, like family and a roof over my head. But I kept on trying, day after day.

    By the end of the first week, ten things were too little.

    You begin to see everything as a blessing.

    Now, with a year’s worth of practice, at the end of each day, looking back at things to be grateful for on that one day feels actually overwhelming at times—there’s just so much to be thankful for.

    I feel important to share that what made me click was the realization that gratitude isn’t about exercizing it as a virtue because you should. It’s about the wonderful state of being you put yourself in deliberately. Ultimately, gratitude is about being happy.

    2. Beliefs, beliefs, beliefs

    Next, I was smacked in head with the premise that you create your own reality. Accepting responsibility for your pain is awful, to say the least—until you realize how empowering it actually is.

    What it comes down to is that what you truly believe about yourself and the world is, in fact, what you’re going to experience in your life.

    If you believe that the universe conspires against you, surely enough, that’s what you’re going to get. Every time something goes wrong in your life, you’re going to read it as if you’re powerless and the universe is after your bottom in particular.

    The silver lining is: beliefs are changeable. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you chose instead to believe that the universe conspires in your favor?

    A great technique I picked up from Tiny Buddha itself is: find a belief that you’re holding on to that you feel is doing more harm than good, and work on it.

    Let’s say, for instance, you feel unlovable. Take a piece of paper and write down the opposite of this, e.g. “I am lovable.” Then actively look for evidence that this is true, day by day.

    Every time you felt loved during the day, write it down. If someone was kind to you, if you received a compliment or a warm touch, or were praised in any way, write it down.

    Little by little, you’re going to convince yourself of this, and then proceed to see it more and more in your experience.

    3. You are complete.

    We tend to attach certain situations, people, and experiences to certain feelings. This makes us think that in order to feel complete we need to reach out for these people, situations, and experiences, which obviously causes us more harm than good.

    Take me, for instance. I attached the love that I felt for my ex partner to that person in particular. One meant the other. And it was the most beautiful feeling. So when they were no longer there, I felt I was left with a huge hole in my soul.

    But I came to realize that love I felt had been inside me the whole time. What they did was bring it to surface.

    Which is to say: you can’t feel anything that isn’t within you already—you are a complete being. No one, and no circumstance, puts feelings inside of you.

    It’s easier to let go once you realize that, much like a piano, all of your feelings are already within you in potential. What your reality does is play the notes that bring them into your awareness.

    The beauty is: you can play that piano yourself.

    Find your music.

    It’s the best you’ll ever hear.

    4. Disidentification

    I can’t stress enough how important it is to disidentify with your pain or struggle. We feel it’s so entrenched in us that it’s like an arm or a leg. So I want to be very clear: you are not your pain.

    In my experience, heartbreak felt like it would be forever a part of me. That there was nothing I could do about it because it was so profound and painful that standing for even a minute looking at it made my heart go physically nuts (which was quite scary).

    The moment I learned, and I mean actually understood, that pain serves you immensely by pointing straight at parts of yourself you need to heal, and is not part of your now-being, everything changed.

    So, imagine your pain as a separate entity from you. Imagine seeing your pain in front of you, talking to it, hugging it. Dress it festively according to the occasion, hang out with it, draw it, make a Play-Doh version of it. Be creative and let loose.

    It’s going to become a second nature to you to actually love your pain.

    5. Integration, integration, integration

    This came as a consequence of the latter lesson. By loving your pain, you integrate it. You don’t reject it or try to run from pain; you accept it.

    What happens next is that you expand. And that is the best thing ever. Trust me.

    Everything becomes that much full of life, of passion, of color.

    It’s so important to understand this. Every time you integrate an aspect of your pain, you’re going to feel more joyful, more awake, more excited.

    So don’t run from your shadows. Instead, invite them over for a cup of tea and have a nice, honest, accepting chat.

    —

    These five lessons helped me form a new understanding of life—I went from dreading each and every day to feeling excited and passionate for every new morning. I hope they can help you find your way there as well.

    Be gentle with yourself and hang in there—it’s worth it!

    Broken heart image via Shutterstock

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

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

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

    What kind of relationship do you have with your stuff?

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

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

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

    The Lightness of Letting Go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Taking Stock for Yourself

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

    Listen to your own stories.

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

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

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

    Watch out for the dreaded “shoulds.”

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

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

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

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

    Consider substitutes.

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

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

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

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

    Can you tweak what’s not working?

    Think about who else might gain.

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

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