Tiny Buddha

Category: Blog

  • The Paradox of Less is More (And How It Will Improve Your Life)

    The Paradox of Less is More (And How It Will Improve Your Life)

    “Don’t use a lot where a little will do.” ~Proverb

    One of the most common paradoxical statements we hear is “less is more.”

    I, like many others, understand what that means in the context of personal style, where it is commonly used.

    I can appreciate, for example, that when we overdress, we are often taking away from the beauty of the outfit or the look and detracting attention from each valuable detail or accessory.

    But recently I discovered that the paradox of “less is more” has many other applications.

    When I started questioning whether I could apply this simple philosophy to my life, more generally—to be more effective, to be more at peace, to have higher levels of self-esteem—I found that it became the single most effective guiding principle of my life.

    The first time I noticed the amazing power of “less is more” was when I accepted that I could not physically do the brutal corporate hours that I used to work, and neither could I compete with the hyper-alpha entrepreneurs and business owners that worked fourteen hours a day.

    I tried to do the 5am starts that seem to be the trend in the world of business but found that is not how my body works. Every time I tried to push myself beyond my natural rhythm, I was so tired during the day, I could achieve nothing of value.

    That is when I made a new rule, that I would do just one thing every day, and as long as I achieved that one thing, my most important, value-added thing, I would appreciate myself as having achieved something significant.

    I appreciate that this is not always possible when you are not in charge of your own workload, but the essence of this lesson is to concentrate your focus on what is essential and of highest priority and value, rather than becoming overwhelmed with trying to do every task.

    I found that when you apply “less is more” to your work and daily to-do list, you become the epitome of productivity and focus. And although there is a certain tribe of people that glamorize the hustle culture and the grind ethic, we also now acknowledge that our mental health and self-care are just as important. Thankfully, we have started to realize that burn-out is counterproductive to success in the long term.

    I found that by trying to do less, I actually achieved more in all the important ways. I was more creative, I was more productive, and I was able to sustain my energy throughout the week instead of constantly going through peaks and crashes.

    I have now made this my routine and my ultimate measure of productivity. By focusing on the most important task, instead of aiming to complete every task, we can all achieve more by seemingly doing less. This is one way powerful we can utilize this paradox to streamline our everyday life.

    After my success with applying this approach to my working life, I then started to consider whether “less is more” might help me in other parts of my life.

    One arena in which I have reflected on “less is more” is when I have found myself critiquing my natural tendency to not want to speak about my accomplishments in a boastful way or try to push myself to the front to be ‘seen.’

    Often, I have wondered whether my natural modesty was holding me back. Should I be pushier? Is it a failing within myself to not be more self-promoting? But then I reflected on “less is more” and realized that one of the ways we can be guided by this philosophy is in how we present ourselves to the world.

    We do not need to necessarily boast about our accomplishments or clamor desperately for attention.

    Sometimes we get greater appreciation and respect by allowing people to learn for themselves our true value. In allowing people to discover us, we are attracting only those who appreciate us without having to work so hard at being liked or selling to them in the manner of a pushy salesperson. And there is so much flow and peace in approaching life like this.

    Think of the greats in history who changed the world and never talked about themselves, instead choosing to keep the focus on their mission and the people they served. Therein lay their greatness.

    The concept of servant leadership (another seeming paradox!) speaks to the way great leaders are ones that serve, and this necessitates keeping your ego aside. This is my go-to now when I feel I should be more of a pushy salesperson or chase after people that have no interest in reciprocating my efforts. Less is more!

    “Less is more” has also changed the way I communicate. I, like many other people in our modern society, have been conditioned that we should communicate, communicate, communicate! That we should talk about everything all the time and express everything we feel and think.

    But I found, when reflecting on “less is more,” that in relationships, we sometimes over-communicate.

    We can all do with holding our tongue and learning when not to speak, what not to say, and when to listen.

    This self-control and self-restraint can often pave the way for a better quality of communication and more peace and harmony in a culture where we overemphasize the power of words spoken—words that are often unnecessary and destructive, words that cannot be taken back.

    By saying less, these days I find that my relationships are more harmonious, and greater peace and ease have found their way into my interactions. It also reminded me that there are many ways we say so much when we say nothing. When we let ourselves just hold space, just be, or spend time listening, we are communicating in powerful ways.

    In my family and the way I love and care for them, “less is more” has helped me realize that sometimes the best way to love and care is by taking a step back and doing nothing rather than helping out every time.

    It allowed me to recognize where I was not being caring but, in fact, was being overbearing and enabling. And as many of us have discovered, the tendency to overextend yourself does no one any good; not the person you are trying to help, nor yourself.

    One of the ways I used to step from caring into being overbearing was by offering ‘helpful’ but unsolicited advice to my loved ones. Now I have realized that, when it comes to offering advice, less is definitely more!

    I discovered that “less is more” is about creating space. In your relationships, this is where you are not always reaching out to connect and create intimacy and you are allowing air to circulate and bring new life and perspectives to your interactions.

    And this also applies to physical space. By decluttering and letting go of things I no longer use or need, I now have less but better quality items, which I really treasure. I am able to value them, (because I can actually see them!), and this results in a feeling of luxury and abundance from the sensual act of taking time to fully enjoy them, rather than being on to the next purchase after the initial thrill wears off.

    And when we apply this philosophy to our schedule, by creating fewer obligations that drain us, we allow space and time to spend on what is truly important, while also creating space for new activities, that are more aligned to us, to come into our lives and take their place.

    “Less is more” seems contradictory and confusing.

    But the reality is, beauty lies in simplicity, truth lives in simplicity, and greatness lies in stripping yourself and your life down to what is truly important.

    Here are a few questions you might ask yourself to start the process of applying this motto to your life.

    • In what ways can you do, be, and have less and magnify your overall happiness, peace, and success?
    • Can you find ways to reprioritize and focus on what is truly important?
    • What do you do, with relative ease and effortlessness, that is adding value to your life?
    • In what ways, and in which areas, are you trying too hard?

    We can all reflect and apply the teachings of this paradox in any and every part of our life to live a life of greater meaning, focus, simplicity, and peace.

    I encourage you to deeply reflect on how less might actually be more in your life and then take small daily actions to align to that reality. Take small daily actions to remove things, to do less, to be less, to try less, and thereby create more flow and ease and less stress.

    Take small steps to create pockets of nothingness and space in order to expand into more of what is truly important and, most importantly, to expand into a greater version of yourself.

  • 9 New Spirituality & Wellness Books You Won’t Want to Miss

    9 New Spirituality & Wellness Books You Won’t Want to Miss

    Hi friends! I’m sure many of you are already familiar with Sounds True. They offer books and programs to help us all live more genuine, loving, meaningful lives.

    Through the years I’ve found some fantastic resources for personal growth and healing through their site, so I was happy to oblige when they asked me to introduce you all to nine new Sounds True authors in the spirituality and wellness space.

    Justin Michael Williams, Sah D’Simone, Faith Hunter, and LaRayia Gaston bring meditation, music, dancing, and yoga to a broad audience, with a shared mission to reach underserved BIPOC and LGBTIQIA+ communities.

    Ashley River Brant, Briana Saussy, and Becca Piastrelli invite us to integrate the sacred arts, earth wisdom, and ancestral medicine into everyday life.

    Light Watkins and Sarah Blondin offer unique and engaging ways to integrate mindfulness into our spiritual practice.

    Enjoy these short excerpts from nine books that will uplift and inspire!

    —

    Always remember: even small gestures can have big impacts.

    When you see someone who looks like she’s having a bad day, you can give her a smile or a kind word. When you see someone being mistreated or bullied, you can step in and redirect the conversation. When you see someone being ignored, you can acknowledge him and help him feel seen. When you see someone who could use a little help, you can offer your hand.

    These are micro-gestures: simple, easy things that anyone can do. All you need is to be mindful of the people around you and set an intention to make a positive impact when and where you can. In many cases, you’ll see the difference you’ve made immediately. You’ll be able to tell by the look on someone’s face or the words of thanks they offer in return.

    But even when that doesn’t happen, it’s important to keep in mind that the effort is worth it. It’s worth it for other people’s sake and it’s worth it for your own. You will always be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, “At least I tried.” Besides, we don’t always know in the moment the impact we’re having on people when we choose to give a f❤ck about them.

    Excerpted from LOVE WITHOUT REASON: The Lost Art of Giving a F*ck, by LaRayia Gaston. Sounds True, March 2021. Reprinted with permission.

    —

    We practice rituals in our everyday life without even knowing that we’re doing so. Shaking a hand or hugging in greeting, sitting down for dinner with loved ones, washing our hands, taking our dogs for walks, making coffee in the morning, and even saying good night to a family member each night. But the loss of the Sacred and disconnect from our hearts has turned ritual into a mindless routine.

    Making our coffee in the morning turns into a moment to worry about all our daily to dos. Weddings—a sacred rite and celebration of loving union between two beings—become stressful events. Meals become grab-and-gos from one place to the next, or are eaten while multitasking or on our phones.

    In contrast, mindful ritual offers the structure we crave in a sacred and healing way that allows inner security, stability, and peace to flow effortlessly in grace as the world turns and life changes before our eyes with each passing season.

    It’s important to remember that our bodies are not machines designed to move throughout our lives in a linear way. We are multidimensional, organic energy here to empower ourselves to cocreate with the universe and embody the love that we all are.

    With noisy and often chaotic modern lives filled with stressors that take us away from this essence of truth, rituals can remind us of the trust and sacred agreement between ourselves, the Earth, and Spirit.

    You can think of ritual as spiritual nourishment for the soul. Ritual helps us find inner harmony and perspective, it connects us back to what is true, and it brings us to a sacred space of peace within, beyond the stresses and worries of everyday reality. It enriches our lives, fosters our own inner healer and authority, and ignites an ancient fire within: a spiritual fire that has always been there, carried forward generation after generation and lifetime after lifetime as a desire to connect to something greater—something sacred.

    Excerpted from TENDING TO THE SACRED: Rituals to Connect with Earth, Spirit, and Self, by Ashley River Brant. Sounds True, June 2021. Reprinted with permission.

    —

    Children raised in recognition of their goodness grow into good adults. I have been blessed to meet them from every conceivable walk of life, of every skin color and culture. I stand strong in the knowledge that we who recognize and foster the good in ourselves and others far outnumber the unkind, the cruel, and the heartless.

    What can we do to nurture and call out that goodness in our children? There are so many ways, but among them I see a theme, a red lifeline leading out of the labyrinth: to see our children, to really see them, not as we would have them be nor expect nor desire them to be, but as they, in and of themselves, are. To see their natures, likes, dislikes, passions, and preferences and to know that between the hair-pulling and tattle-telling and driving us to drop into bed dead with exhaustion at the end of the day, they will grow and change and reveal marvel after marvel.

    This is why I love looking to the birth chart, that one-of-a-kind heavenly star map, when I seek to understand and better relate to a child. The stars and Planets and the stories they tell are each unique. They are decidedly not my story, but the story line of the child, their path, a celebration of their particular gifts and knowings.

    Stars, Moon, Sun, Planets: they are all luminous bodies, all shining light that reveals what needs to be seen, revealing a whole child with many stories and many adventures awaiting. When we see that child clearly, then possibility opens and we have done something truly good.

    Excerpted from STAR CHILD: Joyful Parenting Through Astrology, by Briana Saussy. Sounds True, July 2021. Reprinted with permission.

    —

    In order to be heart minded, we need to bring the heart and mind into harmony and partnership with one another. For this to happen, we have to train the mind not to fear and close off from the heart, and instead, serve our heart and implement its wishes.

    In order to do this, we have to undo our mind’s association of feelings of the heart with hurt and harm. In situations that would ordinarily have us retreat or retaliate, we need to remain conscious of what’s happening and choose to soften and lean into our heart’s center.

    Each time we practice this softening, we send a new message to the mind that signals that we are safe, willing, and wanting to live in this more open, more sensitive way.

    Over time, if we are resolute in our intention to step into our heart, our mind will become less rigid in its defenses against feelings and tenderness, and gradually we will become more heart centered.

    Remember, we are not trying to pit the heart and mind against one another; we are trying to marry their aptitudes.

    Perhaps it would help to spell out how I see their differences:

    The mind attaches; the heart lets go.

    The mind operates out of fear and distrust; the heart operates on faith and ease.

    The mind is frantic in its functioning; the heart is slow, deliberate, and peaceful.

    The mind thrives on and enjoys problem seeking and solving; the heart thrives on acceptance of all things and labels nothing as “wrong” or “right.”

    Excerpted from HEART MINDED: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love, by Sarah Blondin. Sounds True, June 2020. Reprinted with permission.

    —

    We’re not built for the way things are today. While technology and modern life have evolved at a breakneck pace, from a genetic perspective, humans are largely the same creatures we were thousands of years ago.

    Our bodies are still seduced by the rhythms of the land. Our hearts quietly plea for the village to support us through life’s rites of passage. Our spirits dance at the thought of circling around the hearth fires and telling our stories. Everything within us longs to know our place in the world. And yet, most of us are getting none of that. We are deprived.

    Like our ancestors, we wither without a tangible sense of intimate connection. In this time, where we supposedly have every option for connection and growth at our fingertips, we are still seeking that intangible something that is clearly missing in our lives.

    Like our ancestors, we wither without a tangible sense of intimate connection.

    We feel unrooted and disconnected from the land that is our home.

    We feel untethered from our long line of ancestors and our deep human history.

    We lack strong, healthy communities that support us and hold us accountable. And we find ourselves grasping and searching for our deepest sense of ourselves.

    When we unsubscribe from this restless and individualist approach to life that we’ve been steeped in and instead learn to infuse our days with ancestral wisdom, we gain a truer sense of who we are and, more important, a powerful sense of belonging.

    Excerpted from ROOT AND RITUAL: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self, by Becca Piastrelli. Sounds True, November 2021. Reprinted with permission.

    —

    Before You Feel Ready

    I can’t remember doing anything in life that I’ve felt fully prepared to do before I attempted it—
    not writing books, not teaching meditation classes, not running retreats, not asking someone out on a date, nothing.

    The confidence doesn’t usually come until much later—after trying the thing a few times, and
    maybe falling down once or twice. Then you get some experience under your belt, learn from your mistakes, and eventually start to feel more prepared.

    I know I’m not the only one who’s been afraid to start. And in case you’re feeling that way now, I’ll share my little “secret” with you: the final step for getting ready is to leap into action before you feel 100% ready. In other words, stop thinking about it and just go for it.

    The most useful lessons won’t happen until after you leap and begin fumbling your way through the initial stages. And since you have no idea which mistakes you’ll make, you may as well get on with it so you can start learning from them and building your confidence in the process . . . BEFORE YOU FEEL READY

    Excerpted from KNOWING WHERE TO LOOK: 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration, by Light Watkins. Sounds True, May 2021. Reprinted with permission.

    —

    FORGIVENESS IS MY TEACHER, LOVE IS MY GURU

    After trauma, we naturally shield ourselves from future harm, and our fight-or-flight response kicks in when we’re triggered. When the wall goes up, the emotional poison seeps deep into the subconscious, and this makes it challenging to fully love yourself.

    Forgiveness doesn’t mean you will forget. It only means you have the power to release the anger, resentment, and frustration associated with a traumatic situation.

    There’s an interesting intersection between stress, psychological health, and forgiveness. When you forgive, you naturally feel less stress when you recall a difficult situation, and overall your symptoms of depression and anxiety are greatly reduced. Forgiveness is the greatest gift you can give yourself. By acknowledging what happened and letting go of shame, you open a doorway to self-compassion and kindness.

    The struggle we have with forgiveness is heavily saturated with the push-and-pull dynamics of disappointment. We hate ourselves for missteps and beat ourselves up even in moments of innocence. We are also plagued with the artificial safety of playing the victim or viewing ourselves as weak.

    Real talk: it’s extremely challenging to forgive in the middle of pain, but when you’ve transitioned past the situation, free yourself and extend the hand of empathy. To shift, we have to fully commit to forgiving the person who caused harm and forgive ourselves. Once committed to the process, you can direct your focus on cleansing the energy surrounding the trauma, take responsibility for your part in the mess, and speak honestly to your spirit.

    Excerpted from SPIRITUALLY FLY: Wisdom, Meditations, and Yoga to Elevate Your Soul, by Faith Hunter. Sounds True, August 2021. Reprinted with permission. 

    — 

    As you start to make progress and recognize your innate amazingness, the next step to uncovering more of your true essence is to let go of unintentionally running around like a thirsty animal that is never satisfied.

    Catch yourself when you start to believe your happiness is dependent on your senses constantly being fed with only pleasant experiences. “I need to hear nice things!” “I need to taste nice things!” “I need to touch nice things!” “I need to smell nice things!” “I need to see nice things!” “I need to feel nice!”

    If you are constantly craving and chasing the quick pleasure that comes from the senses you will never be satisfied. This is a classic form of suffering. When we constantly chase good feeling after good feeling, we never build a muscle for coping with the unpleasantness of life. But unpleasantness is a natural part of life—grief, pain, despair, sadness—that requires us to meet it with awareness, not by running away.

    You will experience unpleasant sensations, and that is OK, in fact it is necessary. As a spiritually sassy warrior, you become empowered by your hardships. Your genuine happiness and your amazingness shines from your awakened heart and is not dependent on external factors.

    When you catch yourself chasing sense gratification, remind yourself that genuine happiness does not come from the outside, a quick way to exercise your amazingness is by wishing that all people be free of insatiable cravings.

    Excerpted from SPIRITUALLY SASSY: 8 Radical Steps to Activate Your Innate Superpowers, by Sah D’Simone. Sounds True, September 2020. Reprinted with permission.

    —

    Many self-help gurus will tell you to get rid of your toxic thoughts by drowning them out with positive affirmations. I don’t know about you, but that sh*t never works for me. I can only repeat “I am beautiful” so many times in the mirror before I get bored.

    I believe we must turn toward our toxic thoughts instead of trying to drown them out. I know that might sound crazy, but follow me on this one. When a toxic voice comes up, you have a choice. You can let it berate you and become paralyzed in fear, or you can learn why you’ve held on to this voice in the first place. You don’t get rid of your toxic thoughts by sweeping them under the rug.

    You get rid of them by healing them at the root and then taking brave action to prove them wrong. This gives us a chance to take responsibility instead of being defined by the story our minds have invented. Your toxic thoughts are here to teach you something. They are a marker. An indicator. A flag in the ground pointing toward your growth and healing. I know it’s not easy, but you must turn toward your toxic thoughts and listen to them with fierce self-compassion. That’s the only way they will ever stop running your life from the background.

    Whenever you catch a toxic thought running wild in your mind, pause and ask this question: In what area of my life do I need additional healing, support, or growth? The answer to that question will give you a clue about where you need to invest additional time and energy to evolve beyond this toxic thought.

    Excerpted from STAY WOKE: A Meditation Guide for the Rest of Us, by Justin Michael Williams. Sounds True, February 2020. Reprinted with permission.

  • It’s Okay to Feel Scared: How to Stand Up to Fear by Standing Down

    It’s Okay to Feel Scared: How to Stand Up to Fear by Standing Down

    “It’s okay to be scared. Being scared means you’re about to do something really, really brave.” ~Mandy Hale

    When it comes to plane travel, I frequently quip: “I’m not a nervous flier, but my bladder is.”

    In a way, this is true. Aside from brief freak-out moments when there’s a patch of turbulence or when a flash from my catalog of gruesome “what-if” scenarios forces its way into my mind’s eye, I remain blissfully disconnected from my fear. Meanwhile, my bladder takes the brunt of it, with hourly pit-stops to the lavatory alongside a persistent, dull ache.

    While this is physically annoying, my strategy has its utility: it conveniently shifts the blame and shame for my irrational fear onto my bladder so that I don’t have to face up to it. (Otherwise known as somatizing my emotions, if you or my therapist want to get technical.)

    So, as you might imagine, when I recently boarded my first plane flight in two years amidst a still-very-present Covid pandemic, my bladder felt even twitchier than usual. Especially at the abrupt jolt of going from socializing at a distance to being packed like sardines into a confined space with a bunch of breathing, coughing, possibly infectious humans.

    At least, that is, until a little boy said something heart-stopping.

    A Cry for Help

    No more than six years old, the slender boy with a mop of golden-blonde hair had just clambered into the window seat of the empty row in front of me, trailing his white satin-trimmed fleece pillow and blanket.

    While the boy fiddled with his seat belt, I noticed that his mother and grandmother—each equally youngish-looking with lemony hair and tanned skin—were still lingering in the aisle, conversing in hushed tones. As I casually eavesdropped, I learned that they were debating which of them would sit with the boy versus with the rest of the family located several rows up.

    At first, I cursed my luck to be seated right behind a kid too young to be vaccinated or keep his mask up. Thanks a lot, universe, I grumbled internally.

    But as his mother began walking away to sit with her younger child (presumably expecting that her older son was in good hands with his grandmother), the boy wriggled upward in his seat, shoulders tensed, assessing the situation. Then, he called out quite loudly, without a hint of self-consciousness or shame: “Mom, I want you to sit here with me, because I’m scared and I need you.”

    Instantly, the radius of chatter around Row ten fell mute.

    Like a silent lightening strike, the boy’s words charged the atmosphere with an almost electric energy. For two long seconds, they hung there in the air above us, almost too sacred to desecrate with sound. During that time, I swear, you could practically feel our collective hearts opening. Then, a sincere chorus of “Awww”s and “Bless his heart”s rang out, cushioning the silence.

    A Permission Slip

    As I marveled at what had just transpired, I realized that, in one simple sentence, this young boy had done something remarkable: he’d given us permission to be human.

    After all, how many times had many of us felt just as fearful in life yet pretended we didn’t? How many times had we wanted to cry in the midst of overwhelm (if not wail like hell for our mommies), yet told ourselves to “buck up” or “be an adult”? And how many times had we rushed to the side of a friend in need yet readily denied ourselves this small grace?

    Perhaps the reason the little boy’s words stirred us so deeply, it struck me, was that he reminded us of what we already knew yet stubbornly denied: Of the power in vulnerability. Of the courage in asking for support. Of the importance of honoring our feelings, especially our fear—meeting it with acceptance, rather than my preferred method of hastily swatting it away like a poisonous wasp.

    Meeting Fear with Acceptance

    Fortunately, the boy’s mother was much more adept at dealing with fear than me.

    Making a beeline back to her son’s side, she enveloped him in a warm embrace, murmuring, “I’m so sorry, honey. It’s okay, I’m here for you,” (a relational repair that was powerful in itself).

    Spying through the narrow slat between our seats, I watched as the boy’s shoulders immediately unknotted. Seconds later, he began chattering to his mother about the character on his video game player—his fear a seemingly distant memory.

    It was then that I realized something even more remarkable: to the boy, the preceding moment was likely just an ordinary moment.

    Too young to be fully conditioned by our cultural garbage around fear or gender “norms,” he had no idea that he’d done anything profound, much less impacted a plane full of people much older and “wiser” than him. He was simply acknowledging his fear and taking care of himself.

    Okay, Lisa, I told myself. If that little boy can unabashedly proclaim for all to hear that he’s scared, then the least I can do is acknowledge my own fear to myself.

    Especially considering that, the very day before, a beloved teacher of mine had providentially reminded me about the power of acknowledgement. How, oftentimes, just acknowledging our feelings can considerably ease our unease. And sometimes, she claimed, it’s the only thing we need to do.

    Huh, I realized with a wink to the universe. You’re giving me an opportunity to practice this right now, aren’t you?

    And so, I did. Closing my eyes as the plane taxied down the runway, I felt into my fear and whispered: Okay, fear. I see you. I hear you. And it’s okay that you’re here. In fact, it would probably be abnormal not to feel you on my first post-pandemic plane ride after two years of semi-hermitude.

    From there, I stayed quiet and present in my body. I didn’t try to do anything with the fear, other than “stand down” so that its stifled energy could move through me.

    A minute or so later, wouldn’t you know it, the tight ball of yarn that was my bladder muscle magically slackened. Even my abdomen, I noted, no longer bloated out like I was carrying a small fetus. My entire body felt lighter too, as if I’d released a leaden weight I didn’t know I was carrying. Holy moly! I boggled, gazing down at my body in both awe and glee.

    “Alrighty, folks,” the captain’s disembodied voice announced over the PA system just then. “We’re about to head out, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.”

    Grinning to myself, I silently replied in my head: You know what? I think I will.

    *A Magical Postscript*

    Incredibly, the story doesn’t end there.

    Toward the end of the flight, I tentatively caught the attention of the boy’s grandmother, whose name I’d soon learn was Beverly.

    “Um, pardon me,” I started, “but I’m a writer, and I was so inspired by what your grandson said before the flight that I actually just wrote an article about it!”

    “Oh, really?” Beverly replied in surprise, my unanticipated admission taking a few seconds to sink in. Then, her surprise gave way to delight, as her eyes crinkled into a smile above her mask and she added, “Wow, that’s so wonderful!”

    “I’m happy to email it to you if you like,” I continued, “but I really just wanted to thank your family. For providing such a powerful moment for me—as I’m sure it was for many others.”

    “Well, let me tell you something,” Beverly responded, leaning toward me with an unanticipated admission of her own. “That moment was a bigger deal than you know. You see, my grandson has autism, and for him it was a very big deal to express his feelings like that.”

    Straightaway, goosebumps traveled up and down my arms. Of course, the writer in me couldn’t help but be tickled by the added significance to the story. But the real eye-opener for me was the extent of my own ignorance. That I assumed the moment was important to everyone but the boy. That I assumed there was only one “giver” and one “receiver” in the equation. As if the universe ever worked that way.

    When the plane touched down soon after, tears sprang to my eyes as the full-circle nature of the experience hit me.

    Thank you, universe, I humbly mouthed—this time meaning it.

  • Why I Gave Myself Permission to Suck at New Things

    Why I Gave Myself Permission to Suck at New Things

    “Never be afraid to try new things and make some mistakes. It’s all part of life and learning.” ~Unknown

    A few months ago, I was warming up for a dance class. It was a beginners’ class, but the instructor was one of those people who have been dancing all their life, so movement came easy to her. This was the ninth week of a ten-week term, and we’d been working on a choreography for a while now.

    Then, the reception girl came in with a new student. She introduced the new girl to the instructor. “Hey B. This is Nat. She is new to the studio, and I offered her a trial class. Do you think you can take care of her?”

    “Of course. Hi Nat. We have been working on this “coreo” for a while, but I’ll explain each move as we go. I promise I’ll go really slow. Besides, everyone here is a beginner.”

    A little uncertain, Nat came in and took a spot at the back of the class. You could see she wasn’t very comfortable. But everyone encouraged her to stay, so she did.

    The truth is that the cues were confusing and the moves were hard to perform. Even though we were all beginners at that particular class, many of us had taken other classes before. Besides, we have been working on this choreography for eight weeks.

    Unable to follow the class, Nat burst out of the room in tears after only ten minutes. And on her way out, she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I’m clearly not good enough.”

    Have you ever been through anything like that? Feeling out of place and inadequate?

    I know I have. You see, I’ve never been what you call an athletic kid. Mostly because I never had the opportunity to become one.

    In my school, during PE classes, only the talented kids were chosen to play. Everyone else stayed in the sidelines. Watching.

    Also, I never participated in extra-curricular sports activities because my parents couldn’t afford it. So I grew up believing that I was not good with sports. Just a scrawny girl, uncoordinated and awkward.

    And that was my belief until my late twenties. But then, something happened.

    When I was twenty-eight, I decided to give the gym another try. Because I had no previous experience, I carefully chose classes that I believed I could follow. But apparently, the universe has a sense of humor.

    Through a mistake on the timetable printout, I ended up on an Advanced Step class.  Oh my. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life. I was so bad at it that one of the ladies stopped following the class to try teaching me how to do the basic moves. I was mortified, but… I stayed until the end.

    At the end of the class, many of the ladies came to talk to me. I explained how I ended up in that class and was repeatedly apologizing for my lack of coordination. But the truth was that no one cared about my inability to perform the moves.

    I was welcomed into their group and encouraged to come again. They assured me that it would become easier with practice.

    Long story short, I was the one doing all the judging and criticizing. Nobody else. I was feeling inadequate because I believed that making mistakes would make me look bad in front of people. As if I was only allowed to do things that I could do well.

    But hey! You only learn through practice, right? And before you become good at something, chances are that you will suck at first. Or were you born knowing how to ride a bicycle?

    Anyway, that experience changed my life. Even though, it was “traumatic” in some ways (I still blush when I think of it), I learned so much from it.

    Before, I thought that I needed to be perfect at everything that I did. I had this belief that making mistakes was shameful and that people would think that I wasn’t good enough. Consequently, I shied away from trying new things, just in case I, well, “sucked.”

    The truth was that this misbelief was holding me back big time. If I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes, that meant that I was stuck with whatever I’d learned when I was a child. But I haven’t learned everything I wanted just yet, have I?

    No. I wanted to learn more, to become better, to grow. I was curious about lots of things but at the same time afraid to fail. Can you relate?

    I was at a crossroad. Be perfect but still, or imperfect but moving. So I chose growth. I chose to see mistakes as part of the process of learning. I chose to live a life of discovery and excitement rather than perfection and dullness. 

    The experience at the group class showed me that I was my worst critic, not others. And if I could be kinder to myself, I would find much easier to navigate the world.

    When I stopped taking myself too seriously, I started enjoying life more. Taking more risks and getting bigger rewards.

    Because of these learnings, I had the courage to continue my fitness path and become a personal trainer. Even though I was never an athletic kid. And despite my lack of coordination. (Which got better, by the way. With practice.)

    To remind myself what is to be a beginner, I often take classes that push me way out of my comfort zone. I call them my “vulnerability” classes. I step into these classes with no expectations to perform. In fact, I give myself full permission to “suck.” To look lost, to feel goofy, to not understand the instructor’s cues.

    It’s my way of being comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. The more I challenge myself, the stronger I get. This works not only for the body but also for the mind.

    So go ahead. Give yourself permission to “suck” and jump into that Zumba class you’ve always wanted to try. There is nothing shameful in being a beginner. No matter how old you are.

  • Breaking the Toxic Cycle: My Family Dysfunction Stops with Me

    Breaking the Toxic Cycle: My Family Dysfunction Stops with Me

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post references physical abuse and may be triggering to some people.

    “Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time. Forgive yourself for giving away your power. Forgive yourself for past behaviors. Forgive yourself for the survival patterns and traits you picked up while enduring trauma. Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be.” ~Audrey Kitching 

    I will never forget, when I was twelve years old, I went to sit on my father’s lap and he told me, “No! You’re too heavy to sit on my lap!” What does an adolescent girl do with a comment like that? She hides it away and adds it to the ammunition she has begun to store up in her arsenal of self-flagellation. Shame knows no boundaries.

    My father was never intentionally cruel to me. He had demons of his own. I knew that he had been physically abused as a boy and he used to tell us, or rather proclaim, “I vow to NEVER hit any of my kids!” He neglected to realize that words can hurt even more than a physical slap. And even more hurtful was when nothing was said at all.

    Silence is a killer that there are no words for.

    His father used a leather razor sharpening strap to beat him, and my father hung it in the kitchen of our house. I would wonder if it was a reminder of what happened to him, or was it a warning of what could happen to us? I made sure I toed the line so I would never find out. The beginning of my perfectionism.

    Growing up, the one message that was crystal clear to me was that my body was not acceptable. It was reinforced in so many ways. The times my father would suggest I attend Weight Watchers meetings with my mother. But the biggest reinforcement was once a month when the Playboy Magazine would arrive in the mail. That was what a real woman’s body was supposed to look like! And the only point of reference I had.

    I dealt with this by going within. I hid food and binged in secret. I used running and sports to try to counter the caloric intake. I became the perfect daughter on the outside, knowing it didn’t matter because I would never be acceptable. I fought a battle that there was no way to win. I just didn’t know it at the time. I was a teenager trying to find love in all the wrong places, with all the wrong people. In all the wrong ways.

    And I wasn’t the only one. I was the oldest of four children, and my siblings all had their own demons they were fighting as well. Some people would say that the family that plays together stays together. I would add that the dysfunction in a family can not only rip a family apart, but it can also pick them off one by one.

    My father was the first to fall victim. He died when I was thirty-six from pancreatic cancer after suffering a massive stroke. I am convinced that his stroke was a direct cause of his drinking and lifestyle.

    My youngest sister died when I was thirty-nine years old. She was in a physically abusive relationship for nine years. Her partner and the father to her two children beat her to death.

    The hardest loss was my mother, who died when I was fifty-two. She had suffered from dementia for years. but ultimately it was lung cancer that caused her death.

    At fifty-six, my second sister died of an accidental overdose of heroin. She was fifty-five.

    And lastly, my only brother, who is still living, is recovering from laryngeal cancer and now uses an artificial voice box.

    For the longest time, I would wonder when my time was coming. People would tell me that my family was cursed, and the temptation to fall into that camp was appealing. Just let the chips fall where they may! But the truth of the matter was that, like for us all, there are consequences for our choices. I know that sounds harsh considering that I have lost most of my family, but I cannot make it be anything it is not. And believe me, I’ve tried!

    My codependency was strong, and I tried to save them all! And in the process, I was losing myself. I was tired. I was sad, I felt defeated. But enough was enough.

    I had made the decision, when my husband and I adopted our only daughter, that the dysfunction was going to stop with me.

    I had a lot of work to do on myself. I had to uncover all the lies I had believed about myself. About my life. And then I had to choose new things to believe. I had to unearth all the ammunition I had used to build the walls I had cemented around myself. The walls that would have strangled me if I had let them.

    But that is my work to do now. And because I made the decision to do that work, my daughter is a healthy, well-adjusted young woman in her third year of college.

    I don’t say that to pat myself on the shoulder necessarily, but why not? I chose to walk a different path then my biological family. And choosing that different path also offered me different choices. And it will also my daughter different choices.

    I learned about the boundaries I needed to place around my own family unit, and I was not popular for that. Those boundaries were not popular, and I was ostracized and called out for them.

    My work was to take the box down from the closet. You know the one, where the secrets hide. And if I just keep it up there, no one needs to know. But I knew I had to open that box and take them all out. Then I could decide which were real and which were imagined. Which ones had to go and which ones I could work with.

    Life is a series of turning points. And we get to decide, at any time whether we keep moving forward or whether it’s time to turn around and begin again. We are never too old to keep moving forward. And we have never made a mistake that cannot be forgiven. A wrong that cannot be made right. I have forgiven myself for many mistakes. Many hurts I have caused. I have made amends. I keep taking the next right step.

    I am fifty-eight. I have forgiven those who have needed to be forgiven. I have grieved the family I wished I had. And I continue to grieve the loss of those who have died far too young. And the relationships that will never be.

    I no longer run from the loneliness that catches up to me from time to time. I just don’t stay wrapped in it for too long. I have shed the shawl of shame I have carried around me and work everyday to find the light and the beauty within.

    And I continue to remind myself, every single day, that it is not too late to become who I was created to be. My work is to keep doing the work and find my way home. Home is a place within. A place of wholeness. A place where self-forgiveness and self-acceptance merge. And beauty abounds.

  • Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful

    Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful

    “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~Maya Angelou

    Throughout my childhood experiences I did what every child does and rejected parts of myself. It makes sense because kids depend on adults for survival, so I was in no position to reject my parents. But as an adult I feel it is now my job to reclaim those parts of myself.

    While I had two parents that loved me and what I’d describe as a normal childhood, nonetheless I became hyper-attuned to others, over-sensitive to criticism, and a perfectionist, particularly under stress. It led to all sorts of pain within relationships and, upon becoming parent, I could see I needed to address some things. I had little sense of self and had to learn about having and holding healthy boundaries.

    I have been fortunate not to have been directly subjected to any of the more readily recognized trauma (sometimes known as big-T trauma), like addiction, violence, or sexual abuse. But my childhood was dominated by the kind of trauma that descends from the big stuff.

    The aspects of my dysfunctional persona I mention above come under the heading of developmental trauma. I think it’s important to expose these aspects of who we become in the world as they have been getting perpetuated subtly throughout families all over the world for generations and they prohibit our collective growth.

    Yet, for all the personal experiences I have shared, one I have never spoken of until recently is probably the one that shaped me more than anything else. Simply put, I had a mother who did not cope well when looking after us kids on her own. I learned to think ten steps ahead and project into the future in order to avoid any major meltdown. It drove perfectionist behavior in me, and I learned to choose my words carefully.

    Why have I never spoken about it? I suspect this is multifaceted and ranges from things like not wanting to air dirty laundry, so to speak, to knowing that both my parents (like most parents) did the best they could with what they knew and the resources they had available to them at the time. Yet these were my experiences, for better or worse they shaped me, and if I tell my story it might help someone else.

    To be more specific, mum used to often drop into this hyper tense state when she was alone with my brother and me; something I now readily recognize as a trauma state. She would say she was “up to high doh” (an old Scots expression) with our behavior, then snap at us, scream and yell, and chunter on afterward for a period of time somewhere else in the house.

    When she would yell at me or chunter afterward, I now know it was most likely a deflection of her own pain. As my bedroom was above the kitchen I could hear the aggressive slights about me “being a bitch” or a “slut” or “a selfish cow” even though I was only a child.

    When my father got home she would immediately approach him using a baby voice, another thing I could hear from my bedroom, conveying just how stressed she was (we kids usually being at fault). In the evenings Mum would then sit in front of the TV sucking her thumb, which I suspect were signs that she was likely regressing into her child self.

    Watching this cycle, at the time, made me feel disgust and anger on top of the fear I already felt in being under her watch each day. My nervous system was under constant alert not knowing what aspect of her would show up.

    Everything was our fault because we had broken the rules. With hindsight, and far more knowledge of children’s development, I now know we were just going through the normal growth and development cycles that kids go through rather than being bad kids.

    Because it was probably a dissociative state that emerged when my mother was in flight-or-fight mode, it is possible (especially since Mum never did any meditation or therapy around this) that she had no clear memory of acting like that, or the frequency with which it occurred. I expect she was too identified with the thoughts of how bad we were and how bad it made her feel.

    Dr. Gabor Maté’s words ring true: “It is often not our children’s behavior, but our inability to tolerate their negative responses that creates difficulties. The only thing the parent needs to gain control over is our own anxiety and lack of self-control.”

    My mother was not able to do that, and nor are most people to be fair. It is far easier to blame people or circumstances than take a good hard look at ourselves and have a willingness to explore the hidden depths that we are held hostage to.

    All this was unspoken with my mum. It is like it never happened, as if my brother and I somehow lived in a parallel universe.

    Likely looking after young kids on her own was overwhelming and activated the trauma stored within her, perhaps in response to her own father’s violence and/or possibly the disgust at my grandmother’s passivity about it, or her own guilt in not doing something more (even although she was incredibly young at the time and couldn’t possibly have intervened).

    However, when she was diagnosed with cancer my mum did say, “You know how I like to stick my head in the ground” when I tried to share with her the metaphysical possibilities related to the disease. Since my mother was most often too open with her opinions and usually gave us direct answers to questions we asked, sticking her head in the proverbial sand wasn’t something I immediately associated with her.

    But now in retrospect I wonder whether, on some level, she may have been acknowledging her dissociative behavior when bringing us up, and the effects it may have had on us kids. Certainly it wasn’t something she ever directly acknowledged.

    Though she did not readily share details during her life, she was simply what I would have called very dark on her father and her eldest brother. Just before she died I discovered her father was an abusive alcoholic. I also knew her eldest brother, a half sibling, abandoned the family as his father before him had abandoned him.

    My mum, like a lot of people, never saw any value in revisiting those childhood experiences; she couldn’t fathom why anyone would partake in coaching never mind counseling, perhaps because she felt herself adequate enough and externalized her feelings. She certainly did not believe she was in any way held hostage to her experiences, which is what most of us would like to believe I expect.

    As a result, I felt very alone and invalidated. My parents had each other, whereas my brother and I were left to deal with our emotions alone. Certainly it often felt our needs were not important (which was the predominant theme of the “do as I say and do not argue/we know best” approach to childrearing that had gone on for centuries).

    While, like anyone, I could express many more things in my childhood that have stuck with me, experiencing my mother’s own trauma when we were alone with her, which was for significant amounts of our early life, elicited a feeling of constantly being on edge.

    As I grew I spoke up more, unwilling to accept the emotional load being put on me, which resulted in a lot of raging arguments in my teenage years.

    No one except my brother would have much of an appreciation for this, because around others my mother was quite different. In fact, around others, especially my father, she would have felt safer and, therefore, calmer. This Jekyll and Hyde behavior obviously made it very difficult for me to bond with a mum who, for all that I knew loved me, because my internal shields were well and truly up.

    While I did not have the words for any of this back then, having caught myself descending into this chuntering state with both my partner and our own kids at times was a red flag for me. I knew I had to address my own reactions to break the cycle.

    All that said, I feel blessed with my experiences because they helped shape me and to relate to others’ struggles and other dysfunctional behavior. I feel strongly that I have come into this life to shine a light on this more insidious type of trauma, one that lives in all of us in various guises, and help break the chain of pain that is occurring in pretty much every home across the planet. So in this sense, um was the perfect mother for me.

    I also recognize that this was but one facet of my mum, one I have come to see with compassion, and she had many more that were far more positive. As a grandparent she was generous and loving, as a friend she was insightful and loyal, and as my parent she was all those things too; I always knew I was wanted and loved, it just did not always feel that way, especially when she was “up to high doh.”

    It seems to me that through shame, guilt, and pain very few of us talk about our experiences, not realizing the person next to us is living their own twisted version of the same. The systemic issues we face in society today are all fed by the ongoing cycles of trauma within us and can only be solved by bringing them into the light. 

    We don’t all have to share our stories publicly. Even just opening up to a trusted friend or therapist can help us understand what we experienced, chip away at our shame, and break the cycle of pain so we don’t unknowingly repeat the same patterns.

    So who are you protecting? What trauma shaped you? Is it time to tell your own story? Maybe sharing is the key to your healing, or helping heal someone else.

  • How I’m Healing from Codependency After Growing Up with an Alcoholic Parent

    How I’m Healing from Codependency After Growing Up with an Alcoholic Parent

    “The only person you can now or ever change is yourself. The only person that it is your business to control is yourself.” ~Melody Beattie

    In 2019, I decided to leave my marriage and start over. Although my relationship with my ex-husband brought deep pain and many months of suffering, I felt content with my decision.

    In a short time, I began to feel great. I developed a healthy routine, exercised regularly, began meditating every day, spent time in nature, maintained healthy and deep connections with people, and tried to focus on the positive.

    For a few months, it seemed to be working. Until I met a man and got emotionally involved with him. I realized then I’d really been living in denial.

    The moment I began dating or seeing someone more intimately, my life felt unmanageable. Suddenly, I would abandon my daily routine and spend days preoccupied with what this person was doing or why it would take them thirteen minutes to respond to my message. I’d become obsessed and wonder, “What’s wrong with me?”

    I was quick to throw a tantrum to create more drama and fights. In some twisted and weird way, it felt exciting. I had something to resolve and take care of. I was feeding off the extreme lows and highs with people I dated.

    As an adult child of an alcoholic, I didn’t understand what it meant to be addicted to excitement, as stated in the famous laundry list. Now I do.

    My need to control the other person, the fear of abandonment, my obsession over people’s feelings, and my desire to fix their problems while ignoring mine brought an unbearable pain I couldn’t ignore anymore.

    It all broke down this year. I met someone who once again triggered my codependency and challenged my trauma wounds. Shortly after we started talking, I began to feel crazy again. Constant anxiety, fear of loss, desire to control and manipulate situations, were coming to the surface until the relationship ended. Another failed attempt to be in a relationship.

    What followed was intolerable emotional pain. I never felt so lost in my entire life. I couldn’t function properly, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t work, and I was paralyzed by desperation, hopelessness, and loneliness.

    Meanwhile, somewhere between my pain and inability to see my worth, I broke through. 

    For the very first time, I was forced to feel my emotions. Although it felt brutal at times, I was at least feeling. The pain cracked me open in my core and didn’t allow me to numb anymore. Anger, worthlessness, guilt, shame, fear of loss, the pain of believing I am hard to love—it all came pouring out full force.

    Who would have ever thought that a broken heart, or at least what I perceived as a broken heart, would uncover my codependency and lead to emotional healing and more authenticity?

    For the next couple of months, I would come home, lie on the floor in the middle of my bedroom in a fetal position, and brace myself for the emotional outburst that was about to come. I was processing and releasing my emotions, and there was no coming back.

    I would breathe heavily and cry uncontrollably for days and weeks to come. I would cry at work, at the store while picking avocados, when I was falling asleep, or watching a TikTok video. It didn’t matter. For the first time in my life, I was feeling my feelings and didn’t push them away.

    Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. I had no logical explanation for this emotional rollercoaster until I talked to one of my good friends, Gaia. She mentioned a book she was reading, Codependent No More, and suggested I check it out.

    I never considered myself codependent. By definition, I was the opposite of it. I had my apartment, paid my bills, lived on my own, worked while building my business, and took care of myself.

    However, I decided to give it a shot and read it. What followed was epiphany after epiphany and a few A-ha moments. I began to understand why I felt crazy when entering any intimate relationship or a possibility of one. I began to see how the pain from my codependency allowed me to open up.

    As I was sitting in my studio apartment while contemplating everything I’d learned and now understood about codependency, I knew that this was about to significantly transform my life if I did the work and didn’t stop.

    Living with a person with chemical dependency shapes you into a control freak with unhealthy survival mechanisms. Codependency is one of them. The only way to change is to be willing to face the truth and commit to deep inner healing. 

    So, the question was, “What is the next best step I can take right now to heal and recover?”

    At first, I needed to take personal inventory and be honest with myself. Who am I? What are my toxic traits, and when does my codependency step in? When do I manipulate people? Am I trying to fix people’s problems to increase my value and prove my worth? How can I stop doing that and rely on myself for approval and validation?

    I remember the day when my mum called and let me know that our dog, Aida, had suddenly passed away. Shortly before her call, I’d had one of my emotional relapses and picked a fight with a person I was seeing at that time. I then used this disturbing news and my sadness as a tool to manipulate the other person. The victim façade I put on made them forget about my toxic behavior and feel sorry for me instead. What can I say? Manipulation at its best.

    Honestly, it was not easy, admitting to myself that I manipulated people, that I was emotionally dependent on them and wanted to control them. This was not the type of resume I would want to show around, but at least it was real.

    I was standing in my authenticity, and it felt incredible.

    Once I became aware of my behavior, it was time to forgive.

    The tricky part about growth and healing is that once you become aware of your shortcomings and trauma sabotaging techniques, it is easy to move from practical awareness to self-judgment. 

    So, I needed to forgive, forgive, and forgive some more. Therefore, I incorporate forgiveness into my meditation practice. I didn’t understand how utterly guilty I felt until I sat down to practice forgiveness through meditation for the first time.

    After I closed my eyes and said out loud, “I forgive myself,” I had to pause the recording. My emotions came pouring out. It felt as if I had been holding my breath and finally exhaled after many years of keeping things inside. The guilt and shame came washing over me, and I began to release them.

    I finally gave myself a break and instead of harsh judgment and criticism, I offered myself acceptance and empathy.

    One of the most common patterns of codependent people is that we constantly feel guilty and not enough, and we limit ourselves from anything good or loving since we don’t believe we deserve it. The only way through this madness is to use compassion and understanding toward what we have done or who we believe we are. It’s about empathizing with our past, becoming aware about what happened to us and the impact it had.

    No one is born to manipulate and control. It’s not who we are. It’s who we become as a survival mechanism. We adopt these toxic traits until we are brave enough to look in the mirror, admit to our mistakes, and break our patterns. And the only way is through self-forgiveness.

    I started to work the 12-step program for codependents. I also learned that recovering from codependency is a journey, not a destination. Healing codependency is about self-control, constant self-care, practicing detachment, surrendering, and developing a healthy relationship with power.

    As I learned from Melody Beattie, an author of numerous books on codependency, recovery is the only way to stop the pain.

    Growing up in a household with chemically dependent people or in a home that doesn’t provide safety and proper nurturing, you may develop an unhealthy relationship with power as a coping mechanism. You may believe that if you can control and predict everything and fix people’s problems, you’ll be fine. You’ll be in control. You’ll be loved and enough.

    But the only thing you can fully manage is yourself. Any time you try to control things or people, you’ll experience pain when they don’t meet your expectations. As you may already know, people do what they want, and many situations don’t play out the way we envision. 

    One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned this year is to find my power by looking into a mirror. Stopping the pain is about practicing detachment, letting go, working on my recovery to overcome the fear of loss and abandonment, and giving myself as much love as I possibly can.

    The need to control often results in desperation that brings suffering, while practicing detachment and caring for yourself brings peace and allows healing.

    Today, I say with confidence, “I am codependent.”

    I am aware that to live healthier, I must stay truthful to my recovery. Sometimes I win, and sometimes I fail. Over time, there will be fewer losses and more wins. It comes with practice. I am mindful of the emotional and mental relapse that comes with the process. I know that I will fall into my old patterns and then struggle to get back on track.

    However, I know I have the power to make different choices. When things seem to fall apart on the outside, it’s time to go inside, feel, process, and forgive. That’s my new way of life. Although it challenges and triggers wounds I need to heal, it gives me hope to believe those good things can happen for me too.

  • The Six Ps: What to Do and Not to Do When Dealing with Setbacks and Failure

    The Six Ps: What to Do and Not to Do When Dealing with Setbacks and Failure

    “Sometimes you get what you want. Other times, you get a lesson in patience, timing, alignment, empathy, compassion, faith, perseverance, resilience, humility, trust, meaning, awareness, resistance, purpose, clarity, grief, beauty, and life. Either way, you win.” ~Brianna Wiest

    “Good as gold,” the cab driver replied as I nervously handed him the $20 bill and asked, “Okay?” He jumped in his cab and drove off.

    I was pleasantly surprised by his politeness, as I was expecting him to argue with me for extra money because we’d gone around in circles searching for the address that I had given him at the airport. These were the pre-GPS days, of course!

    This was the start of my emotional rollercoaster upon arrival in New Zealand as a new migrant.

    The first few days were filled with excitement and happiness. Discovering a new country, meeting friendly people, learning new things—all these experiences made me a wide-eyed migrant seduced by the charms of my new surroundings.

    After a few weeks, the rollercoaster took a downward dive as I started getting frustrated with a spate of rejections. All my job applications brought forth polite rejection letters. The message I was getting was that my lack of local experience made me very unappealing to prospective employers. Nobody was willing to even interview me.

    How was I going to break out of this Catch-22 situation? I couldn’t get local experience without a job, but I couldn’t get a job without local experience!

    After months of fruitless searching, the rollercoaster finally took an upward turn. Driven to despair by the unwillingness of employers to grant me an interview, I decided to enroll in a university to acquire a local qualification in the hope that it might open a door for me. This out-of-the-box thinking got me my first job through a contact from the university. At last, a feeling of joy!

    I felt that my problems had ended, and now I was set for a long and successful career in my adopted country. How wrong I was! It was time for the emotional rollercoaster to start its downward journey again.

    Within a few months, my joy turned to confusion when my employer went from being very pleased with me to finding fault with everything I did almost overnight. I struggled to understand what had changed.

    A little while later I realized that my employer had hired me only to take advantage of a government scheme that subsidized (for a fixed term) employers who hired new migrants.

    My employer blamed me for things that had nothing to do with me and attributed other people’s mistakes to me. His cunning plan was to make my life so difficult that I would quit. That way there wouldn’t be any awkward questions from the government department about hiring me and then firing me within a few months.

    I felt an overarching sense of sadness and disappointment when I realized that my initial thoughts of everyone in my new country being friendly was just an illusion. I learned the lesson that people were people, some good and some not-so-good, no matter what part of the world they were in. I parted ways with my first employer in rather unpleasant circumstances.

    The long period of unemployment that followed created self-doubts in my mind.

    “Did I do the right thing by moving to another country?”

    “Will I ever succeed in finding decent employment?”

    Feelings of regret began to run riot in my mind.

    “Why didn’t I find out more about my employment prospects in this country before deciding to move here lock, stock, and barrel?”

    “I shouldn’t have taken such a big risk.”

    Every time I heard about someone that I knew doing well back home, I felt sorry for myself. I started feeling like I’d made a mistake by moving to New Zealand. As I had burned bridges before migrating, I felt there was no way of going back and restarting from where I had left off.

    By the time the rollercoaster took another upward turn, I had already been in the country for quite a while. It took four to five years for my career to stabilize and for me to start feeling satisfied with my decision to move. When you migrate to a new country, it’s not just the flight that is long-haul!

    I’ve shared the story of my emotional rollercoaster so I can also share my consequent learnings with you. My hope is that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you might be able to alleviate your feelings of hopelessness with the realization that you’re not alone and you can get out of any difficult situation with the right mindset.

    THE SIX Ps

    I’d like to encapsulate this journey of going from where you are to where you want to be in terms of “The Six Ps”—three Ps for what one shouldn’t do, and three Ps for what one should do.

    Let’s first take a look at the three Ps to avoid.

    1. Don’t take setbacks or adversities PERSONALLY.

    It’s important to separate your failures from your identity.

    If we take every rejection, setback, and problem personally, our self-esteem takes a beating and we can easily go down the rabbit holes of despair and depression.

    I was rejected over 200 times, without even getting an interview, before I got my first job. While I would never want to be in that situation again, or ever wish that upon anyone, I realize that I was fortunate not to allow myself to get dragged deep into the swamp of feeling worthless. In hindsight, I believe that this tough phase played a key role in building my resilience.

    2. Don’t allow a failure to become all-PERVASIVE.

    A failure or setback in one area of your life should remain contained to that area and not spill over into other areas.

    When my emotional rollercoaster was on a downward slope, it felt natural for me to start linking my failure in landing a job to every other aspect of life in the new country. Negative thoughts started doing the rounds in my mind.

    “I’m a misfit here.”

    “This place is not right for me.”

    “I am doomed.”

    The unfortunate consequence of such pervasive thinking is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy unless you stop this vicious cycle before it becomes too late. Enrolling in a course was the best step I took at that time as it gave my mind something else to focus on.

    3. Don’t think of any adversity as PERMANENT.

    Every crisis in the history of the world has ended. However difficult your challenge might seem, there will always be light at the end of the tunnel. You may not be able to see it from where you are now, but take comfort in the history of the world and assure yourself that your crisis will also have an end.

    My challenge with finding a job as a migrant went on for a long time, but eventually, it did end. If I had adopted a mindset of permanence with thoughts like “I’m never going to succeed here,” my efforts would have waned. When our efforts start to taper off, the desired results start moving further away from us.

    Now for the three Ps to adopt!

    1. Have PATIENCE.

    I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “good things take time.” Have faith in that!

    Some things take longer than we would like. That’s just life. Have the willingness to wait as you keep following the process. Dedicate yourself to the process and allow the results to happen.

    2. Develop PERSEVERANCE.

    Too often people give up just before they’re about to crack the code. The ability to continue our efforts in the face of difficulty or forge through delay in the way of their success is what separates the winners from the also-rans.

    Life is like an obstacle race. Get better at tackling the obstacles and continuing your journey toward your objectives. Take help, reach out for support—do whatever it takes to keep going.

    3. Find your PURPOSE.

    I believe that this third P underpins the other two Ps that you should do to achieve success.

    Without a strong purpose, it becomes easy to give up when the going gets tough. Purpose provides the fuel for motivation.

    Figure out why you want what you want. What is driving you? Go deep, look beneath the surface—sometimes your real WHY can be hidden under superficial WHYs.

    It can be difficult to have patience and perseverance if you don’t know the true purpose behind your goals.

    —

    Life is a journey of ups and downs. Realizing and accepting this fact puts us in a much better position to handle adversities. Most of our disappointment in life comes from having unrealistic expectations.

    If you’re ready to handle the ups and downs of this rollercoaster of life, buckle yourself in and enjoy the ride!

  • The You Matter Marathon: A Simple, FREE Way to Change Someone’s Life (No Running Required)

    The You Matter Marathon: A Simple, FREE Way to Change Someone’s Life (No Running Required)

    I care. I’m here. I’m sorry. You can.

    Two simple words can make a huge difference. They can soothe, heal, connect, and inspire.

    Perhaps the two most powerful words in the English language: You matter.

    Far too many people don’t believe this is true. Especially since the start of the pandemic, many have felt isolated, purposeless, and some even hopeless, wondering if they’ll ever feel connected and valuable again—if they ever even have.

    My new friend Cheryl Rice started this global kindness movement, the You Matter Marathon, for this very reason.

    It all began back in 2016 when a colleague handed her a business sized card with only those two powerful words on it—You matter.

    That gesture and those two words touched Cheryl deeply.

    Cheryl wanted to pay it forward, so she ordered her own You Matter cards and began sharing them with family and friends. From there, she began handing them out to people she appreciated in her community, like her dry cleaner and the man who sold her fruit at her local farmer’s market.

    Weeks later, she got confirmation that her simple mission had the capacity to completely transform someone’s day—and maybe even their life.

    She was standing behind a woman in the grocery store checkout line. The cashier asked the woman how she was doing. Instead of offering a painfully dishonest, knee-jerk “I’m fine,” she confessed that her husband had just lost his job, she was having issues with her son, and she didn’t know how she was going to get through the holidays. She then pulled out her food stamps.

    Cheryl’s heart ached for this woman, who she wished she could somehow help. She knew she couldn’t solve her problems or take away her pain, but she could give her one of the most powerful gifts anyone can receive from another human being—a moment of validation. And that’s exactly what she did when she approached the woman in the parking lot and handed her a You Matter card.

    The woman began to cry and said, “You have no idea how much this means to me.”

    Her response caught Cheryl off guard and cracked her heart open even further. She asked if she could give the woman a hug and then Cheryl went to her car and cried.

    So many people are starving for acknowledgment, walking through their days in a daze of pain, hoping someone will truly see them and care. Maybe you’re one of those people, or you were at one point in your life. I know I’ve been there before.

    We all want to believe that we matter and that our feelings matter, but we don’t always think to give this type of affirmation to the people we encounter. Maybe because we get wrapped up in our own problems or because we think it takes a lot of time or money to make a meaningful difference for someone else.

    But when we reach outside ourselves and make a heart-to-heart connection with someone who’s hurting, or who just yearns to be seen and valued as a human being, in that moment, we matter. We make a difference. And we inspire someone else to do the same, one life-affirming interaction at a time.

    That’s what the You Matter Marathon is about—creating positive connections within and between individuals and communities one card share at a time.

    To support their primary mission of sharing one million You Matter cards every November, they offer a free month’s supply of You Matter cards to anyone who signs up here.Since 2016, millions of cards have circulated through eighty-three countries, making a massive, stunningly positive impact. Join the movement and help heal the world, one day and one card at a time.

    To learn more, check out the one-minute You Matter Marathon highlight video and Cheryl’s ten-minute TEDx talk, You Matter—Changing the World with 2 Words.

  • Why the Right Choice for You Isn’t Always an Immediate “Hell Yes”

    Why the Right Choice for You Isn’t Always an Immediate “Hell Yes”

    “If our hearts and minds are so unreliable, maybe we should be questioning our own intentions and motivations more. If we’re all wrong, all the time, then isn’t self-skepticism and the rigorous challenging of our own beliefs and assumptions the only logical route to progress?” ~Mark Manson

    I often hear people encourage others with the following advice: “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.”

    Don’t get me wrong: I see where they’re coming from when they say it. Far too often we are dissuaded from listening to our gut feelings. Often, we follow the tyranny of shoulds. We compromise on our true needs and desires. We talk the inner voice away in favor of what’s expected of us.

    And yet I also see how this well-intended nugget of wisdom eliminates grey area. The more black-and-white view of the world that it inadvertently espouses may not be entirely helpful to everyone, especially those who struggle with depression or anxiety.

    Sometimes a maybe or an underwhelmed response means I don’t really want to do this. Other times it can mean I’m having complicated feelings that are worth unpacking and investigating.

    We often feel ambivalent about taking part in experiences that are outside of our comfort zones, even if those experiences may help us to grow. Our moods or current struggles can affect our commitment to activities we might ordinarily enjoy.

    Back in college when I was in the throes of a serious depression, for instance, I felt no pull to do anything—not even hobbies that I used to love. I said no to jogging and running. No to preparing nutritious meals. No to any experience that might bring me outside of my safe cocoon.

    The only activities I said hell yes to were invitations to go out and get wasted at house parties with friends—which, needless to say, made my depression even worse and perpetuated a vicious cycle.

    I wasn’t hell yes about healthy things. Drinking and escaping my pain were the only activities that elicited anything close to a passionate response from me.

    If I had misapplied the above advice, I might still be drinking in problematic ways and eschewing more mindful activities that align with my values, simply because I don’t always feel hell yes about doing them.

    Another example: a friend of mine told me there are weeks when she reads an hour before bed, and that the experience is lovely. When she becomes embroiled in a Netflix show, though, that habit dissolves. The thought of reading loses its appeal. Does this mean she doesn’t like reading? Is it a sign that she inherently prefers TV?

    I don’t think it is. What I do think it means is that activities involving passive consumption often have addictive properties.

    As David Foster Wallace wrote: “Television’s biggest minute by minute appeal is that it engages without demanding. One can rest while undergoing stimulation. Receive without giving.”

    Other examples: I’m drawn to sugar. Consuming it “feels right.” Picking up a celery stick feels more difficult. It doesn’t come as naturally.

    At certain points back in 2012 (before I moved to Uruguay), I wavered in my decision to teach abroad in South America.

    In 2019, when I considered the work and planning involved (as well as the money it would require), I even felt hesitant to take a vacation to Mexico City. Doubts and conflicting feelings dampened my “hell yes” into a “I don’t know, maybe….” shortly after my friend invited me.

    Did I still go, though? Yes! Did I have an amazing time? Also yes. Do I wish I could go back? One hundred percent.

    My point is this: don’t let ambivalence or a lack of “hell yes” convince you that you must just not really want to do something.

    It’s important to develop trust in our inner knowing; however, it’s also important to remember that our not always benevolent impulses sometimes masquerade as wise intuition.

    Even though we might pick up on a bad feeling, we never know what that bad feeling means. It could mean so many things. Instincts never come with clear instructions.

    That’s why it’s so hard to “just listen to them.” Listen to what? What action do we take in response to “this feels bad”?

    As for the hell yeses: especially for those of us with mental health struggles, immediate impulses and strong instantaneous reactions at times warrant further unpacking before being acted upon or blindly obeyed. It’s just not always true that they unequivocally have our best long-term interests in mind.

    A lack of an instant “hell yes” doesn’t necessarily signify that something isn’t right for us. It’s important that we allow room in our lives for the grey area, so as to ultimately act in alignment with our highest selves.

  • How I Get Through Hard Times Using Curiosity, Compassion, and Challenge

    How I Get Through Hard Times Using Curiosity, Compassion, and Challenge

    “Sometimes the worst things that happen in our lives put us on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us.” ~Unknown

    Until I was thirty-seven, I thought I’d led a pretty charmed life: I had a supportive family and good friends, I’d done well academically, always got the jobs I’d applied for, and met and married the perfect man for me.

    In 2013, when I was thirty-five weeks pregnant with my second child, I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. My baby was induced at thirty-seven weeks, and my chemo started ten days later. In a funny way I was relieved; Okay, I thought, I’ve been seriously lucky up until now that no one has been ill in my life, so if I can survive this, then this is as bad as it gets.

    And that year was bad—moving home, caring for a toddler and a newborn, and going through aggressive cancer treatment was horrendous, but I hunkered down, tried not to think too much about it, and survived.

    In December 2014, literally as we were clinking champagne glasses to celebrate my all-clear results, my husband had a devastating call from his mum in New Zealand. She had just been diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer. Early the following year my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer, and my mother-in-law died that spring.

    It was at this point I started to feel weighed down with a heaviness. This wasn’t the deal… I’d taken the cancer hit for the team, everyone else was supposed to stay well. I started to lose my trust in the world.

    My urge to control everything and everyone around me, which I now realize I have had since childhood, went into overdrive. I became fearful of change and made list upon list to organize and reorganize my life until I had anticipated everything that might go wrong and put things in place to deal with it.

    My brave dad endured a variety of invasive and aggressive treatments, but his health continued to decline. I could not control what was happening or the sense of loss and grief that at times I felt were swamping me.

    Something had to change: I started journaling, yoga, and meditation. Slowly I felt my anxiety and my panicked grip on my life begin to lessen. I looked inward and I started to notice familiar feelings and patterns, recognized myself responding to roles and labels that I no longer felt to be true.

    There were shifts; very, very small shifts, but with two small children, a husband working long hours, and a dad with rapidly declining health, even small shifts made a difference to my capacity to cope.

    Toward the middle of 2015 my husband started to get awful headaches, nausea, and dizzy spells. He was in a very stressful job, so decided to leave work at the beginning of 2016 to get his health back and decide what he really wanted to do with his life. However, in the spring of 2016 he was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor. At that stage my children were three and five.

    The next couple of years were consumed by medical appointments for my dad and my husband, alongside the busyness that goes hand in hand with raising young children, but I continued my inner work. I examined my feelings. Was that really how I felt? Had I felt that way before? What helped then, what might help now? Is the story I’m telling myself about this true? What do I need right now?

    In spring 2018 my dad died, in spring 2019 my husband died, and in spring 2020 the UK went into its first lockdown due to Covid-19.

    Every year since 2014 I’ve said to myself, well surely the worst has happened, this year has to be better, and yet each year something else monumental and life-changing has happened. The past seven years have been relentless, and at times I have been overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for the people I love most in the world.

    People used to hear my story open mouthed and ask, “How do you cope?” I would reply in a way designed to brush them off, remove their focus of attention, and minimize my pain by saying, “Oh well, you know, you just deal with what life throws at you.” I knew that this wasn’t true, but a flippant reply was easier than the truth. After years of continual inner work however, this is my honest reply:

    To boost your resilience, to heal, and to ultimately thrive you have to be prepared to turn over the picture-perfect patchwork quilt of your outer life that you present to the world and take a good look at the messy stiches on the underside.

    You need to be prepared to look at the messiest of those stiches and painstakingly unpick them so that you can find the knots, the tangles, and the imperfections. It’s only when you connect with your authentic self that you’re able to respond to your unique needs in times of crisis and learn what you need to do to foster your own resilience.

    The way of doing this will be different for everyone, but if I could boil it down to one pithy statement it would be to always keep in awareness the 3 C’s: curiosity, compassion, and challenge.

    Here are some ways I’ve applied this in the last seven years to help me, and perhaps these ideas might help you too.

    Allow your feelings.

    Other people are allowed to feel uncomfortable about this, but that is not your responsibility. Your responsibility is to embrace your emotions so you can process them and work through them instead of repressing, denying, or numbing them with substances and distractions.

    In my life this idea of numbing or distracting has taken shape in many ways. One is the compulsion to check my phone rather than sit with feelings of restlessness, boredom, or uncertainty. Sometimes I find myself opening my fridge or cupboard, not because I’m hungry, but because I’m anxious or agitated.

    Recently, I’ve needed to work on sitting with my feelings when I say “no” to someone and worry there will be painful repercussions if I don’t keep other people happy.

    These are all hugely uncomfortable realizations, but offer an opportunity to spot patterns—do I always reach for food after a specific event, do I always reach for my phone when I feel a certain way in my body?

    Once I’ve shown a curiosity about my choices, I can have understanding and compassion for why and challenge myself to do something else. Instead of food can I do some rounds of a breathing exercise? Instead of the phone can I practice some simple yoga poses? Can I pause before saying “yes” to something I know won’t serve me and think of the times I’ve said “no” and there haven’t been negative repercussions?

    Key questions here are: What do I really need, what am I afraid of, and how can I soothe my threat system in that moment before reacting?

    Put your needs first.

    I learned that however much I was needed by other people (and with a dying dad, a dying husband, and two small children I was needed a lot), I had to start the day knowing that at some point I was going to make time to put my needs first.

    Sometimes that was getting up early to enjoy a hot chocolate in peace, often it was taking some quiet time in nature. I joined a gym with a pool because swimming is something I find hugely supportive for my mental health, and I joined an online yoga site as I no longer had the lengthy chunks of time I needed to get to a class in person.

    Embrace ritual and routine.

    Decision fatigue contributes massively to how overwhelmed I can become; routines provide a secure framework for my family to feel supported and give me more energy for the unexpected things that life inevitably throws at me.

    My routine includes:

    • Planning my week ahead on a Sunday—I have a simple document with columns for appointments, reminders, to-do list, and well-being
    • Putting out school clothes and making lunches the night before
    • Having a grocery delivery booked in for the same day and time each week
    • Menu planning and pre-preparing simple meals for the nights of the week that I know will be busy or I am working late

    Put together a well-being toolkit.

    Explore ideas and suggestions that you might find supportive, but don’t feel beholden to it. You don’t need to use all of the tools all of the time. Learning to listen to what you need in the moment (and giving yourself permission to act on it!) is really empowering.

    My well-being toolkit includes…

    • Breathing exercises
    • Journaling
    • Yoga
    • Reading
    • Running
    • Meeting friends for tea
    • Trying out new recipes
    • Sitting still—either meditating, focusing on my breath, or just letting my mind wander

    Build a supportive team around you and know their individual strengths.

    No one person can deliver everything you need. Manage your expectations about what each treasured person can bring to your life and learn who to go to for what.

    Challenge the narratives, expectations, and labels in your life (my 3 C’s).

    Do they still serve you or feel true; where do they come from; what do you need in order to let some of them go

    There were ways I perceived myself and labels others had given me that only addressed the way I presented myself outwardly. By turning over the quilt and looking at the stiches that made up these labels with curiosity and compassion I was able to challenge them.

    For example, am I really “standoffish,” or is that just my defense against crippling social anxiety? Am I really “bossy,” or am I just frightened of how unsafe the world will feel if I lose control? Am I really “capable” or just terrified of asking for help and being rejected?

    I would never suggest this is a simple process, and reaching even a modicum of self-awareness is a daily and never-ending challenge for me. There are no black-and-white answers, so it’s important to become accepting of living in the grey area.

    Ultimately, I believe that approaching each day, every response, every feeling with curiosity invites compassion and understanding, which helps us challenge and address underlying insecurities and outdated narratives that keep us down and stuck.

    Supporting ourselves to see beyond the labels, roles, and responsibilities layered on through our lives allows for the possibility of the emergence of the authentic self.

    This is a work in progress, I am a work in progress, and always will be.

    Some days I am overwhelmed with sadness, a heavy heart, and a sense of loss; some days I awaken already infused with a sense of gratitude and joy. Every day, however, I wake up prepared to be curious and interested, to approach all interactions with myself and others with compassion, and to do what I can to challenge thoughts and beliefs that I don’t want to take into my future. I just know that next year will be a better year.

  • How to Really Live In the Moment and Appreciate Life

    How to Really Live In the Moment and Appreciate Life

    “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ~Albert Einstein 

    Just when you think you have the whole living in the moment thing down, a four-year-old comes along and shows you how it’s done.

    I’ve been working hard on this, actually, keeping a gratitude journal and everything. I was feeling pretty good about my progress yesterday when I decided to take said four-year-old on a walk rather than rushing through the to-do list burning a hole in the back of my mind.

    “I’m going to be totally present,” I reminded myself as we headed out. I took deep breath and said a silent thanks for the beautiful day.

    Like I said, I was feeling pretty proud of my progress. Then my daughter blew me away. She schooled me in everything I have been working so hard on, and she wasn’t even trying.

    Her commentary on the walk went exactly like this:

    Ohhhhhh, what an amazing house!

    What an amazing garbage can!

    Oh wow, what a wonderful tree!

    Look at the rocks!

    I hear a bird!

    I hear a wind chime!

    Mom, do you hear that dog? It’s perfect!

    I hear a truck!

    Do you feel the wind? It is so soft!

    Look at the beautiful cactus,

    Look! Two trucks. 

    She was so amazed by things that I never notice or worse, complain about. 

    Now, I wasn’t completely unaware. I was thankful for another spring day before the summer heat, and I was enjoying this rare one-on-one time with her.

    But I had no idea that the neighbors had wind chimes. I have never looked at a garbage can and called it amazing (at least not since I was four). This perfect dog is the same one that I complain about to my husband. The wind was messing up my hair.

    There were at least a thousand other concerns competing for my attention while she was content to watch ants on the sidewalk.

    Sometimes I wish I could be a little more like her.

    She didn’t care if I sent out that attachment with that email. She didn’t care about how many calories we burned on our walk. She didn’t mind that her clothes didn’t match because she picked out exactly what she likes.

    I was not going to let this fade from my memory to be overtaken by another thousand concerns.

    “Be amazed,” I thought.

    I repeated it to myself the way you do a telephone number.

    “Be amazed,” I scrawled as fast as I could on the first piece of paper I found when we got home.

    Be amazed.

    I set a reminder in my calendar. I made a post-it. I wrote it down in my journal.

    Be amazed.

    I don’t want to forget this feeling. This absolute clarity.

    My mind can be the most hardened criminal against my own happiness. It snatches the joy right out of my hands. It confuses busy with important, urgent with significant, and difficulty with meaning.   

    My mind gives the future and the past too much space. It wanders over to what the neighbors are doing. It reminds me of what I have yet to accomplish. It wants to speed up time, and it plows right through those moments to be amazed by.

    With this clarity also came sadness. My heart broke for the lost opportunities to just be and appreciate.

    I guess that’s the bittersweet part of life. You can’t wait until this one tough part is over, but then it’s gone and you can’t go back. There’s a new stage to take its place, and the cycle continues.

    Soon, you find yourself telling wide-eyed new parents and self-conscious teenagers (and basically anyone in one of those stages that you wanted to rush through when you were there) that these are the best years.

    “Enjoy this while you can. It goes so fast,” you say.

    Be amazed.

    Looking back, the times that I once wished would pass by quickly actually turned out to be the hardest to let go. I could scold myself for this, or I could remember to be amazed now.

    One way or another, time marches on. Old becomes new, new becomes old, and you get another chance to be amazed.

    Each new stage is also another chance to be nice to yourself about the whole thing. It isn’t humanly possible to love every second of life while it’s happening. Even four-year-olds aren’t amazed all the time.

    This little walk with my four-year-old reminded me that even the simple things are amazing, and the things I complain about? They’re life, and they’re doable. Sure, life now is different from life pre-kids (and pre-husband), I’m doing different things than my friends, and maybe my life doesn’t measure up to someone else’s definition of amazing.

    So what?

    I can be amazed anyway.

    Be amazed.

    Starting now, these two words will be a compass guiding me when it feels like I don’t have it all together. They will remind me what direction I want to go even when I feel completely lost.

    Be amazed. Take a step back and look at your life with gratitude every now and then.  

    Be amazed. Squeeze every last ounce of goodness out of what is around you. Savor it. Soak it up. Luxuriate in it.

    Be amazed. When you’re burned out, bone weary, and bedraggled, use amazement to fill yourself back up. Seek out those situations, people, and activities that remind you of what it means and how it feels to be amazed.

    And those painful parts? You know, the ones that really, really hurt. The ones you barely survive. Maybe there’s a little room for amazement there, too.

    Amazement when you make it to the other side.

    Amazement for how much the heart can hold.

    Amazement for your resilience, your ability to heal, and your capacity to keep loving and hoping.

    Be amazed by your spirit. Your tenacity. Be amazed by that part of you that refuses to give up.

    You only get one shot at life, and you don’t have a whole lot of control over what happens to you in it. Take advantage of the choices that you do have.

    I will choose to be amazed.

  • I Thought Meditation Would Fix My Anxiety – Here’s Why It Wasn’t Enough

    I Thought Meditation Would Fix My Anxiety – Here’s Why It Wasn’t Enough

    “Your mind, emotions, and body are instruments and the way you align and tune them determines how well you play life.” ~Harbhajan Singh Yogi

    The earliest memory of my anxiety was at ten years old in fifth grade.

    I remember it so vividly because in middle school the bus came at 6:22am exactly in the morning.

    Each night I would look at my Garfield clock and think, “If I fall asleep now, I’ll get five hours of sleep…. If I fall asleep now, I’ll get four hours of sleep… If I fall asleep now, I’ll get three hours of sleep…”

    And without fail, my sister would slam my door open at 6:15 because my alarm didn’t wake me, yelling that we’re going to miss the bus, and this is the last time she’s going to wake me up.

    I didn’t know I had anxiety.

    When my doctor asked my mother, “How is she sleeping?” the answer was always “She’s never been much of a sleeper.” And that was that.

    Or when I couldn’t concentrate in school and do my homework, the “answer” was ADHD and I was given medication, which helped a little but didn’t solve the problem.

    In high school, the anxiety about going to school was worse. I couldn’t eat breakfast because I was too nauseous in the morning from stress.

    By college, my TMJ was so bad that there were months when I could barely open my mouth because my jaw was so tight. I had started scraping at my knuckles with a dull butter knife as a physical distraction from the angry swirl of anxiety in my stomach.

    More of this as the years went on.

    In my late twenties, after panic attacks that sent me to the emergency room, codependent relationships driven by the fear of rejection, and a wreck of a body with daily tension headaches, stomach issues, and a barely existent immune system… I finally figured out that this was all anxiety.

    It was starting to make sense why my pursuit of symptom relief for all my physical ailments was not working—I wasn’t getting to the root of the problem.

    In came meditation into my life.

    And it helped—a lot!

    It helped calm me. It taught me how to breathe properly. It gave me time every day to care for myself.

    And because I was also practicing yoga, eating a healthy, vegetarian diet, going to the gym, smoking pot, and taking medication, my anxiety symptoms improved. But my anxiety didn’t go away… yet.

    Without really understanding what anxiety is and why meditation helps (and what is missing from the equation), I was stuck from progressing further in my recovery.

    What is Anxiety, Really?

    We often confuse stress and anxiety.

    Stress is an important bodily system.

    Stress happens when a triggering event (like a bear or a tight deadline) activates our sympathetic nervous system to send cortisol and adrenaline through our body so that we can fight or flee our situation in order to keep ourselves safe.

    It diverts energy and resources from “non-essential” systems like digestion and reproductive and immune systems so that it can divert it to our heart, lungs, and large muscles.

    This is a reaction that lasts give or take twenty minutes (or until the immediate danger is no longer present).

    Anxiety is when our thoughts continually activate our stress response.

    While our bodies are built to recover from acute stress, they were not built for prolonged stress.

    And that’s why we end up with symptoms like:

    • Exhaustion
    • Muscle tension
    • Gastro-intestinal disorders
    • Immune suppression
    • Fertility and menstrual disorders
    • Headaches
    • (and like a hundred other things)

    How Meditation Can Help with Anxiety

    Like I said, I was definitely seeing the benefits of meditation, but I wasn’t seeing more progress with my anxiety.

    That’s when I realized I had to change how I meditated and learned how to “practice” even when I wasn’t meditating.

    Meditation is more than just focusing on your breath. It is a training exercise for your mind.

    The goal isn’t to relax (though that is often a wonderful side effect), it is to change your relationship with the thoughts that come into your head.

    That was the first lesson that made a world of difference in my practice, learning that “you are not your thoughts.” It blew my mind at first, but then it made sense. I have thoughts. I have ideas, stories, and sentences constructed by my brain to try to explain a situation. They are not me or the truth, just neurons firing off ideas.

    A focused-attention meditation, like mindfulness meditation, teaches us three main things: notice, acknowledge, and redirect.

    When we meditate, we notice when our attention has been taken away from our focal point (like our breath).

    Then we acknowledge this without judgment, maybe even label what we were thinking about like “planning” or “worrying.”

    And then we gently release our hold on that thought and redirect our attention back to where we want it—our breath.

    This process of noticing, acknowledging, and redirecting teaches us how to:

    • Be in the present moment
    • Become consciously aware of our thoughts
    • Choose curiosity over judgment
    • Practice self-compassion and patience
    • Let go of control

    These are all skills essential to learning how to relate differently to the thoughts that cause our anxiety.

    Once I started thinking of meditation as practice—like football practice—I began to realize that each two, five, or twenty-minute session of meditation was really preparing my mind to handle the real-world stressors off of my meditation cushion.

    So, when I texted a friend and she didn’t text back (an old trigger of mine), I was learning how to:

    • Notice: “Ah, I’m feeling anxious because I am thinking the reason she hasn’t replied is because she doesn’t like me as much as I like her, and I’m believing that her reply would prove that I am good enough and likable.”
    • Acknowledge: “This is an uncomfortable feeling, but I will allow it to be here until it has passed. Even though she hasn’t replied, I choose to love and accept myself.”
    • Redirect: “I open to the possibility that her lack of reply could have another explanation—she may be busy or sick or forgot to reply. I can wait or I can message her again. Even if she is angry with me, I can make amends because I am a good person.”

    Instead of swirling down the rabbit hole of “what is wrong with me?”, I was learning to recognize these thoughts as just ideas that my brain served up based on a habit I’d cultivated after years of believing I wasn’t good enough.

    While this understanding didn’t stop me from having those thoughts, it reduced them, and it taught me to change my relationship with them. Instead of believing them as truth, I was now able to see them for what they are—a defense mechanism to try and keep me safe.

    But even after I understood that meditation is really a training practice, I was still missing an important piece of how it can help with anxiety.

    Even though I had made huge strides with my anxiety, I still kept feeling some of the physical symptoms that went along with it like tightness in my chest and a constriction in my throat.

    This is when I learned that meditation engages our parasympathetic nervous system—our rest and digest mode.

    We have a sympathetic nervous system to engage our defenses, and a parasympathetic nervous system to disengage that defense system.

    That’s why we often find meditation relaxing. Anxiety keeps our fight-or-flight mode engaged, so by slowing down, focusing on the breath, and relaxing our body, we’re able to tell our nervous system that we’re safe and it’s okay to chill out.

    Our Emotions Get Stored in our Bodies

    Even though I’d made huge progress in disengaging from anxious thoughts, and I was able to stop believing the ideas that “I’m not good enough and no one likes me,” I still felt that physical anxiety tension in my body.

    That’s the piece that was missing for me for many years—the knowledge that our emotions get stored in our physical body. By that I mean we carry a muscle memory of how our body responded to our stress triggers in the past.

    Have you ever had a meeting coming up that you know you are ready for, yet still you feel nervous? Or you try to relax, and you have nothing to be stressed about, yet your body is still tense? That’s what I’m talking about.

    While meditation helped me reduce these physical symptoms, I still held that tension. I came to realize that we each need find the right tools for us—beyond meditation—to continually and regularly engage our calming systems.

    There are lots of ways to do that. Practicing yoga, walking or dancing, laughing, singing, petting a cute puppy… all of which helped me some.

    There are other embodiment practices as well that can send sensory information directly to our vagus nerve (a huge part of our parasympathetic system) that we are safe and we can relax

    I found it fascinating to learn that it is our nervous system that creates our muscle tension. For example, if you were put under anesthesia, your muscles would go limp. Once you woke up, your nervous system would remember where it was tense and tighten back up.

    This feeling of physical tension sends a signal back up to our brains that we are not completely safe, and that’s why it’s hard to shake that feeling of anxiety even when all is well.

    The practices in addition to meditation that helped me personally to release that lingering tension were things like:

    • Acupuncture (I had a huge physical release after a session once that blew my mind!)
    • Tapping (EFT)
    • Reiki
    • Kundalini breathwork
    • And a few simple vagal nerve stimulation practices that send sensory information directly to the nervous system

    One example of vagal nerve activation is to lie on the floor with your nose pointed toward the ceiling. Using just your eyes, look to the right and hold the gaze until you notice a shift in your energy, a need to swallow, a sigh, or a deep breath. Then relax back at neutral and repeat by looking off to the left.

    If you’ve practiced meditation to help with your anxiety and it didn’t work, or didn’t completely work, try the notice, acknowledge, and redirect technique I mentioned above to take power back from anxious thoughts. And if you still feel the emotions trapped in your body, perhaps trying new embodiment practices can help you release that stored tension.

  • How I’ve Dealt with the Shame and Embarrassment of a Failed Career

    How I’ve Dealt with the Shame and Embarrassment of a Failed Career

    “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” ~Brené Brown

    The embarrassment you feel upon realizing you don’t actually have what it takes to make a success of yourself. The shame of knowing you spent years training to do one thing and then you bailed right at the finish line. The fear of what to tell people when they ask you what you’re up to.

    Of course, you don’t tell anyone how you feel, as you’re too embarrassed to admit you even have these feelings, so you just bury it all away.

    I know these feelings all too well, as I’ve been through them all. It took me years to finally face up to what I actually felt and deal with it. As a coach once told me, “Buried emotions never die.”

    I knew I always wanted to be in the arts. I loved dance and drama, and I wanted to be an actor. I could feel it so strongly that I never even considered a different career.

    I started dance classes at the young age of six, and at eleven years old I went to a performing arts school. So my training began.

    After school I went to a reputable college where I did a further three years of training. I was sixteen years old and was told to lose weight and wear heels and make-up. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this wasn’t the healthiest thing to tell a teenager.

    After three exhausting years I graduated. All the training, the hard work, the sacrifice had led up to this moment. I was going to get an agent, start working in theater, and move into TV and film.

    But that didn’t happen.

    Instead of going full steam into my career, I froze. The last term of college crushed me.

    The last term all led up to our final show. The show ran for a few weeks in different locations around the city, and it was meant to be an opportunity for us performers to show off our talent. Everyone was meant to invite agents in the hopes of getting signed.

    However, I didn’t invite anyone. I was so ashamed of my performance. I felt I had been cast in utterly the wrong role, and no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t make it work, and no one seemed to care.

    I remember wishing I would fall down the stairs of the tube station so I would break my leg and not have to perform; I was so humiliated.

    Rather than leaving college confident and excited, I left with my confidence at rock bottom.

    I never did anything with my training. All those years, all those dreams, all those aspirations, but when push came to shove, I didn’t do anything with it.

    For years I told myself that the last term was so tough that it broke me, and that is why I never continued after college. I blamed everyone else.

    It took me years to admit that it was actually my decision to quit. It took me even longer to understand why that was. I realize now I was scared.

    In fact, I was petrified that I wasn’t as talented as I thought I was. I knew if I put myself out there and tried to make a career out of it and failed, I would have proof that I wasn’t talented.

    If I blamed everyone else and quit before I got started then, in my head, I could always be amazing and could have always potentially had a career in the arts.

    Emotions are so complex, though, that it took me a long time to dig deep enough to find this truth.

    Thus, I found myself aged eighteen years old, with no formal education, and all I had ever wanted to do was perform, so what now? I was totally lost.

    I just froze. I didn’t get an agent; I didn’t go to auditions. I just quit.

    I had spent my entire life working toward this moment, and at the final hurdle I fell. It really shook me up; I felt like an utter failure and was humiliated.

    I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I stayed in contact with no one from college, except two friends.

    I remember walking down Oxford High Street and seeing two of my former classmates. I jumped into a shop to hide from them because I was afraid they would ask what I had been up to.

    All I could think was, “What would I tell them?” They were probably off in West End Shows, and what was I doing? I was a failure. Of course, this was before social media, so no one knew what I was or was not doing.

    Eventually I decided I would take some time out and go to Thailand. I ended up spending a year there. I became a diving instructor, and I met the man that would become my husband.

    Once back home, I got a job in recruitment and my career went from strength to strength. I thought I had moved on and was happy with my life.

    Yet whenever I would meet someone who asked about my education or what I did at school, I would panic. “What do I tell them? How do I explain that I trained, but never turned it into a career?” They would know my dirty secret, that I was an untalented failure.

    I would lie and make up stories as to why I decided to change careers after my education.

    I couldn’t understand why I still cared so much about this. Why did I feel I had to lie?  Although life was great, deep down I felt that something was missing. It sometimes felt like there was a dark mass in the pit of my stomach.

    I had a session with my coach about this feeling, and what came up? The arts, my love for dancing, my failed career, my shame, my embarrassment. I remember breaking down in tears. I was so angry that twenty years later I still hadn’t moved on.

    I was so angry that this was still such a big thing in my life. That it was still there with me. I just wanted it to go away. It felt pathetic that it still had such a huge hold over me; what was wrong with me? I just kept saying, “This is so ridiculous, why can’t I just let it go?”

    But remember what I said earlier? Buried emotions never die. They never leave you; they’re just festering

    I was so confused by it all, I didn’t understand why it still had such a hold on me. Why I felt so embarrassed and full of shame. My coach helped me unpack it all.

    The lies I had told myself had become so much a part of me; I had to work hard to pick it all apart to find the truth.

    After so many years, I was finally able to face up to what had happened. I was just a scared teenager. I was so scared of failure and rejection that I found a way to protect myself by making up a lie and quitting.

    I needed to make peace with this, and I needed to accept responsibility. I found this hard to do, as I didn’t like this version of me. It was much easier to blame everyone else than to see it was my fear that stopped me.

    I needed to forgive myself.

    I stopped telling myself lies and admitted that when I graduated, I was petrified of failure, so I quit before I could fail. I realized I still had a love for the arts and I needed to find an outlet in my life.

    It was hard work and took many sessions to really dig into the truth, but once I did, I was finally able to talk about the arts and my past without shame or embarrassment. I could finally move on.

    I did a lot of work re-connecting with teenage Alice. Writing letters to her, forgiving her, and showing her compassion. I also did a lot of work on acknowledging what I had achieved and who I had become.

    I know I’m not alone in what I felt and what I went through. I wish I could have started this healing process a long time ago because as much work as I have done, I know there is still more to do.

    For anyone who is experiencing what I did, know that you’re not alone and you’re not silly for feeling the way you do. Also know, you can change it.

    I learned so many things in the process.

    You can’t just ignore what you feel.

    At the time I was so confused by what I felt. Instead of trying to understand what was happening, I just buried everything.

    Eventually I had to look my shame and embarrassment in the eye and understand what they were telling me about myself. What was the message?

    There is always a message behind your feelings and emotions; you just need to be brave enough to hear them. I found journaling really helped with this.

    It takes time.

    If, like me, you have already spent years ignoring what you felt, that also means you’ve likely spent years telling yourself lies. What you are feeling is complex, and it will take time to work through it. Don’t expect an overnight change.

    Things still come up now that I have to work through. Human beings are extremely complex, and it takes time to break through all our barriers.

    Share what you’re feeling because you won’t be alone.

    I remember telling my old manager about how I felt. He had the same background as me, and he said, “Alice, I felt exactly the same way.” He told me he moved cities just to get away from people he knew.

    Just hearing that made me know I wasn’t insane. It was amazing to hear he understood.

    We hear it all the time, but sharing what you’re going through really does help. So share your story.

    Stop punishing yourself and have fun.

    For anyone reading this who can relate, you have likely boxed away something you loved. It’s time to take it out of the box and allow yourself to have fun again. You don’t need to keep punishing yourself.

    I didn’t allow myself to dance for years. It was too painful. However, my body was screaming out for it. I realized it wouldn’t be a career, but that didn’t mean I had to cut it out of my life completely. I could still enjoy it.

    —

    It’s been a long journey for me. Mainly because when I quit twenty years ago, I had a rush of feelings and emotions, and I didn’t know how to deal with them, so I pushed them away and lied to myself. It took a long time to undo all the stories I had told myself.

    You don’t need to be embarrassed or feel ashamed, but also know it’s okay if you do feel this way. Just don’t hide from these feelings. Understand them, embrace them, and make peace with them. That way you can allow yourself to move on.

  • FREE Dalai Lama Global Vision Summit: The Power of Compassion Starts on 10/14!

    FREE Dalai Lama Global Vision Summit: The Power of Compassion Starts on 10/14!

    “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

    Every last one of us experiences pain and suffering, and we all see it all around us. Trauma, tragedy, illness, loss—these are all unavoidable parts of being human. And even if we endure less hardship than most, we’ll still have to watch the people we love struggling, wishing we could somehow help.

    We can, and it’s far simpler than we may think. We don’t need to save people, fix their problems, or change their lives. We just need to care and be there, with open arms and ears and a loving, compassionate heart.

    The Dalai Lama, one of the world’s most beloved visionaries and examples of peace, teaches that compassion is the greatest antidote to suffering. If you’ve been fortunate to know someone who listens without judging and always tries to understand, then you likely know this is true.

    Since I believe that kind of love can heal the world, and raise new generations who need less healing, I’m thrilled to invite you a FREE, momentous online event—personally endorsed by the Dalai Lama himself—exploring the transformative power of compassion.

    Tens of thousands of people have already signed up to learn from an incredible panel of twenty presenters in this historic online event. And you can join them for free right now.

    Sign up to reserve your spot and tune in on your own schedule from Oct 14-18.

    Over the course of five packed days of talks and guided practices, you’ll learn powerful insights and practical methods to:

    • Accept and transform your emotions fearlessly
    • Build resilience and joy through the practice of compassion
    • Develop deeper, more meaningful relationships
    • Create real change in your life and in the world

    Don’t miss the chance to explore over thirty talks, meditations, and guided practices from friends and students of the Dalai Lama, including world-renowned meditation teachers, scientists, scholars, artists, best-selling authors, and activists.

    Sign up now for free access. And don’t forget to put October 14-18 in your calendar!

  • If It Brings You Joy, It’s Not “Wasting Time”

    If It Brings You Joy, It’s Not “Wasting Time”

    “At any moment, you have a choice that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    When I was a kid, I wanted to be an Olympic figure skater. Or an artist for Disney. Or maybe a musician.

    I wanted to be a songwriter and choreographer.

    I made up roller skating routines in the driveway to Tiffany and Paula Abdul. (It was most excellent.)

    I filled notebooks upon notebooks with illustrations.

    And if you were to ask me to describe myself, I might have said, “happy.” Or I would have chattered on about my dreams and all the interesting things I liked.

    Ask me today, and just like any other adult, my automatic response would probably be something along the lines of what I do and how hard I work, as if I’m interviewing for a job.

    I’m a psychologist. I’m a hard worker. I’m dedicated.

    (Adults aren’t always so good at this.)

    Somewhere around junior high, my identity shifted from happy and interested in everything to being studious and serious about everything.  

    Until very recently, I wouldn’t have thought to describe myself as joyful, creative, or inquisitive.

    Whereas I once thought about doing what fed my spirit, I started thinking about earning potential and prestige. Rather than doing things because they brought me joy, I did them because I was good at them. And things that I wasn’t didn’t make the cut.

    This was the time to start getting serious. Win the awards. Get scholarships. Get recognized.

    And stop wasting time.

    Things got competitive, too. Friends started talking about test scores, then it was talk about college and graduate school and publications and careers.

    It was during that time that I also discovered insecurity. I got caught up in not-good-enough thinking, and I felt like an imposter all the time.

    I don’t even think I noticed that I’d forgotten about joy. I’d laugh as I said, “I’ll be happy when…” only to find that there was always another “when” lurking around the corner.

    I’d forgotten what we all know as children, that joy is a part of us. It’s not a place you arrive at when you finally finish all of this serious business. It’s a piece of you that needs to be nurtured.  

    But I didn’t nurture the joy. I let it go because I thought I could live without it. Even the things I did in the name of self-care had lost their joy.

    Running, which once left me feeling as free as the wind, became about getting faster and going farther.

    Yoga, which was meant to be a grounding and compassionate practice for me, became about sticking that handstand a little longer.

    Setting goals isn’t the problem here. It’s just that accomplishments aren’t the same thing as thriving.

    Looking back at all of this, I see that I’d made myself so small, I forgot I was in there at all.

    Oh, my success more than spoke for itself, but joy? Interests? Excitement? I’d shut them down one by one because I wasn’t good enough or because they weren’t serious enough.  

    I stopped drawing.

    I stopped making jewelry.

    I stopped doing things just because they were enjoyable.

    And why? Because I thought I could live without them.

    I did everything you’re supposed to do, and I did everything in my power to do it just right. I got into that fancy private school on a full ride, got the Ph.D., got the license, and got the stable job. And I became so entrenched in this serious, hard-worker identity that I forgot about me.

    I’m truly grateful for the opportunities and privileges and people in my life, but as a human being, it felt like something was missing. Maybe those things I’d been living without might have been more necessary than I thought.

    Little pieces of that happy little girl popped up from time to time, but I’d push them away or turn them into something too perfect.

    And then one of those pieces shouted at me so loudly I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I was sitting on the blue mat in my son’s room reading Pete the Cat when it happened.

    You should do this. Write a children’s book.  

    I could almost see myself step outside of my body and look at me in disbelief.

    Really? You? Write a children’s book?

    I tried to brush it off, but my heart was pounding, and I could hardly breathe. I tried to go about my business, thinking this would go away on its own. But it didn’t.

    After a lot of back and forth with myself, I finally mumbled the words to my husband, “I think I want to write a children’s book.”

    I braced myself for the same look of disbelief I gave myself, but none came.

    “You should do it,” he said, apparently not at all surprised.

    As much as I’d like to say this was some kind of magical transformation, it wasn’t. I didn’t quit my job and whip out a world-famous, award-winning children’s book. But that’s not the point of this story anyway.

    The point is that I found joy again.

    It took a while. I thought about it and analyzed it, trying to make it disappear. I told myself I didn’t know what I was doing and didn’t have the time.

    The thought stuck with me, though, growing louder and louder until, under the cover of darkness in the early morning hours, I pulled a sheet of paper from the printer, sharpened a pencil, and sat down.

    Like one of those scenes from a movie when someone who’s had amnesia suddenly remembers their entire life, the memories of all the things I thought I could live without came flooding back.

    Have I really been living without this all this time?

    I filled pages upon pages with illustrations.

    I made up rhymes and stories.

    And do you know what happened? I didn’t just feel joy. I felt free.

    I could probably go on living without this, but now I see that I don’t have to.

    I didn’t need to quit my job.

    I didn’t neglect my children.

    The house didn’t crumble at my feet.

    Pursuing this didn’t need to make me a cent. I didn’t even need to be very good at it.

    Because it was always about joy, and that’s not something I want to live without anymore.

    Living with joy doesn’t hurt anything. It doesn’t diminish your drive or ambition. It doesn’t make you less intelligent. And it sure doesn’t make you any less important.

    Living with joy makes you free, and that freedom reminds you of everything that is possible. Even the serious things.

    On the outside, my life probably looks pretty much the same since that night I sat on my son’s blue mat, but on the inside, everything is different.

    Since then, I found that little girl that I didn’t even know had gone missing.

    I remembered the roller skating routines, designing t-shirts, setting up photo shoots in the living room, and sitting on the edge of my seat holding my breath watching decorating shows.

    I remembered what it feels like to be happy and excited and inquisitive.

    And now I get it. Just because you can live without something doesn’t mean you have to.  

    What piece of joy have you been telling yourself you can live without?

    What do you think would happen if you said one day, “I don’t have to live without this?”

    You can find that joy, even if that little piece of joy has been buried for a long time.

    To begin, start by saying yes to yourself a little more. Yes to that little spark of curiosity, yes to that little smile that you shrug off, and definitely yes to that burning feeling inside your chest that screams, “Listen to this. This is joy.”

    It doesn’t matter if it feels ridiculous, it doesn’t matter if it’s “wasting time,” and it sure doesn’t matter if you’re any good at it. What matters is the feeling you get when you do it. Because that feeling like you’re going to laugh and cry and sit silently and run through the halls singing all at once, that’s joy. (And you don’t need to live without it.)

    Remember to pursue more than success or accomplishment. Those are important, but so are the things that bring you meaning, connection, and engagement in your life.

    Feel the spontaneous moments of joy that seem to bubble up out of nowhere, and plan a few to look forward to. Fill those moments with activities that fill you up. Simply unplugging is not enough when you’re after joy. And above all else, do not cancel on yourself.

    As you do this, stay alert for that voice that says you can live without this. Maybe you can, but maybe you don’t have to anymore.

  • One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

    On September 23, 2015, Loukas Angelo was walking to his after-school strength and conditioning class just a few hundred yards from Archbishop Mitty High School.

    He was approaching the outdoor basketball courts when he ran out into the street and was struck by a car traveling around thirty miles per hour. The impact sent Loukas flying down the street, and he was immediately transported to the closest hospital where he remained in critical condition.

    I remember sitting on the couch later that afternoon when my phone started blowing up. Feeling curious, I shoved aside my history homework and decided to see what was going on.

    Multiple people had sent some variation of the same text, “Yo. This is so sad. Did you hear about what happened with Loukas…?”

    Confused and a little bit scared, I turned to Twitter and started looking through my feed. I was absolutely floored by the tweets that were being sent out by my friends and our high school’s Twitter page.

    Similar to tragedies like the Boston Marathon, or 9/11, it was one of those moments in life where you’re always going to remember exactly where you were when you found out the news.

    It was almost inconceivable to think about the fact that I had walked across the same exact crosswalk where Loukas was hit just fifteen minutes prior.

    All throughout the night, support poured in from social media sites. The hashtag #PrayForLoukas was trending #1 on Twitter in my local area for several hours. I’m not a particularly religious person, but for the first time in years I said a prayer for Loukas before going to bed.

    The next day at school was one of the most eerie, heart-breaking days of my life. I arrived at Archbishop Mitty High school that day to a campus that was completely silent. Although there were plenty of people walking through the campus, no one said a word to each other

    As I walked toward my homeroom class, I remember seeing one kid carrying a ridiculously oversized backpack. It looked like he was at the airport preparing to leave for a month, and I let out a slight chuckle imagining what it was like to carry that thing around all day.

    However, my smile was wiped off my face completely when I stepped through the door of the classroom.

    Every one of my classmates was sitting there emotionless. Stone-faced. Not saying a word to each other. I sat down and did the same, as we were all preparing for an assembly in the gymnasium that was set to take place in about fifteen minutes.

    The 1400 students funneled into the gymnasium and took their seats. You could hear a pin drop.

    Our principal got up and gave a very powerful speech, which concluded with him leading the entire school in a prayer for Loukas. After a few others got up and spoke, the assembly concluded with a one-minute-long moment of silence.

    The day after the assembly, the news broke that Loukas had passed away after being in critical condition for around forty-eight hours.

    On September 25, 2015, Loukas Angelo lost his life at the age of fourteen years old

    Coming To Terms with Your Mortality

    As we go about our day-to-day lives, we are inundated with thousands of thoughts, most of them the same thoughts that ran through our head the day before.

    But very few of these thoughts, if any, are about our own mortality.

    It’s a little scary to think about the fact that you and everyone you know will perish from this world.

    No one knows when, but one day you will draw your last breath on this earth. Some people have the luxury of preparing for it, while others like Loukas have no idea that it’s coming.

    But at some point, death comes for each and every one of us.

    We all know this deep down, but it seems like so many of us live like we have unlimited time on this earth.

    We put off spending time with family even though they can be taken from us at any given moment.

    We refuse opportunities to get out of our comfort zone even though we have no idea how many of those opportunities we’re going to be given.

    In other words, most of us go through life without coming to grips with our own mortality.

    When Loukas passed, I obviously felt sorrow for his friends and family, who have to carry that burden around for the rest of their life.

    But mainly, I thought about Loukas.

    Given the nature of his death, he didn’t have any time to reflect back on his life. And given how young he was, if he did have that opportunity there wouldn’t be much to think about compared to someone on their deathbed at seventy or eighty years old.

    Yet, I couldn’t help but imagine what he would be thinking about in his final moments had he been given that opportunity. What regrets would he have? What moments would he replay in his head over and over again?

    Eventually, I started asking myself those same questions. It was a pretty cruel exercise that I was putting myself through, but it felt like a way to extract some meaning out of a terrible tragedy.

    As I imagined what it would be like to contemplate my existence at the end of my life, I didn’t feel happiness or satisfaction. I felt regret and shame.

    One common theme that permeated my consciousness was fear. I was only seventeen at the time, but I realized that essentially all of the regrets I’d have on my deathbed were a direct result of being afraid.

    Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. Fear of judgement.

    It was a brutal wake-up call. For the majority of my life, I had missed out on opportunities and experiences due to fear.

    I was here alive and breathing, but I wasn’t truly living. Merely existing, acting as if the end was never coming.

    How to Let Fear & Death Guide Your Actions

    I’m twenty-two now, and since then my approach to life has been simple.

    Twelve times per year, I do a monthly check-in with myself and ask myself one simple question:

    At this very moment, what am I avoiding in life because I’m afraid?

    The answers to this question inform me of exactly what changes that I should be making in my day-to-day life.

    Most people run from fear, but my suggestion is to lean into it. It’s actually an incredibly accurate predictor of the changes that you should be prioritizing in your life.

    It’s different for everyone.

    Some of you may be afraid of changing careers and pursuing something that you love because of the uncertainty that comes with changing professions.

    Some of you may be afraid of improving your social skills because that involves battling with the fear of rejection.

    Some of you may be afraid of moving to a different city because you’ll have to leave friends and family that you care about.

    If you have the courage to actually ask and answer the question, your fears will tell you exactly where your focus should be. It’s almost as if they’re calling out to you, saying:

    “Don’t forget about me. If you don’t take action, I’m going to torture your thoughts when you get to the end of your life.”

    Facing your fears is hard. Staying somewhere you don’t belong is even harder. But nothing compares to the pain of getting to the end of your life and knowing that you let fear stop you from doing the things you truly wanted to do.

    Just like Jim Rohn said, “We all must suffer one of two pains. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is that discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

    So I highly encourage you to ask yourself the question above each month and write down whatever comes to mind.

    Pick one of the things that you write down and make it the biggest priority in your life. You can’t fix everything about your life at once, as focusing on everything is the same thing as focusing on nothing.

    But once you’ve narrowed your focus, you can start taking small steps every day to overcome that fear.

    If you’re afraid of social interactions and have been for years, start saying hello to people as they walk by each day.

    If you’re afraid of starting a workout routine, start by walking for two minutes each day.

    These initial bursts of momentum that don’t seem like they make any difference are ultimately the foundation upon which your biggest changes take place.

    Do the things that you think you cannot do. Let the pain of not facing your fears override the pain of letting them fester for years and decades.

    Your future self will smile down at you.

    #LiveLikeLoukas

  • Living Without a Grand Purpose: Why I Find Meaning in the Little Things

    Living Without a Grand Purpose: Why I Find Meaning in the Little Things

    “Ironically enough, when you make peace with the fact that the purpose of life is not happiness, but rather experience and growth, happiness comes as a natural byproduct. When you are not seeking it as the objective, it will find its way to you.” ~Unknown

    I have always enjoyed helping others. Ever since I can remember, my empathic nature has led me to feel what others are feeling and to try and assist them to the best of my ability. Serving others has always been a point of pride for me.

    I have built my entire life around the idea that my life serves a greater purpose in the universal machine. My suffering and the life experiences I’ve had are leading me toward a grand destination, where I can look back and finally make sense of everything that’s happened and feel fulfilled. I’ve held this belief for so long and internalized this message so deeply that to think of any alternatives seems insane.

    Can I share a secret with you? I am terrified that I might be wrong about all of it. Maybe my life didn’t align to fulfill some sense of greater purpose. Maybe my experiences, good and bad, held no other significance other than to propel me forward into the unknown.

    Nothing I have ever set out to do has worked out in the way I imagined it would. And now I am in my thirties, and I have no idea what I’m doing. What do you do when you have no sense of direction or purpose? Why has the universe left me this way? I’d like to share my story with you…

    I joined the Air Force in my early twenties to get away from my small town. The military paid for my education, and I was able to start a career while I was young. I wasn’t excited about my career field in the slightest though. I was a communications officer, and I hated computers.

    I wanted to connect with people and help them. I also wanted to assist my faith group in sponsoring the first Pagan chaplain in the Department of Defense. I asked the universe for guidance, and I received what I thought was an unequivocal ‘yes.’ So, I attended seminary and trained to become an ordained minister.

    Fast forward several years, and my health changes after I give birth to my son. I can no longer serve on active duty, so I decide to change goals to become a chaplain for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. I serve two years in two separate VA hospitals as a student chaplain; supporting people in crisis, teaching groups, learning about mental health care, and serving veterans of all walks of life. I apply to many chaplain jobs within the VA, and none of them work out.

    My family and I relocate several times. I apply to chaplain jobs wherever we go, and nothing works out. It is now two years after I finished my time at the VA hospitals. I ask the universe for guidance again, completely stumped as to why my efforts to be a chaplain have not panned out despite my best efforts.

    I hear about life coaching, and research acquiring a life coaching certification. The skills are similar to what a chaplain does, and if I start my own business, I can focus on a specific population to serve. In my time at the hospitals, I have realized I connect with and love helping veterans. I create my own coaching business aimed at helping veterans with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

    A year goes by. I have attended business seminars, marketing classes, hired my own coach as a mentor, and created all of my social media accounts and a website. I put out content and throw myself into networking with non-profits and influential people. I end up with one paying client and I am burnt out emotionally and professionally after nine months of consistent effort.

    My emotional health starts to deteriorate. I feel dejected, useless, and I feel like a failure. I am so good at helping people when given the chance, but it feels like the universe is conspiring against me. In other words, I have internalized the notion that my self-worth is dependent on what I can do for others rather than my inherent worth.

    Where did this come from? Why do I feel this way? I sit down and unpack this. I realize after some reflection that my tendencies to want to help everyone else is deeply rooted in the idea that I am not worthy. Many times throughout my life I was unwanted and abandoned (I have a history of abuse), and that sets up a shame spiral within me that I have perpetuated by my need to feel loved and wanted.

    I feel if I am not serving some purpose, or giving to others in some way, then I am not fulfilling my duty in life and I am worth nothing. How many of us can relate to these feelings? And what can we do about them?

    I had a heart-to-heart with my friend about this, and she made me realize several things. How do we truly know what the purpose of our life is? How do we know we weren’t meant to be kind to one person, or to step in at the right time to say something and then our lives are complete to be enjoyed till the end of our days? Do we really know what life is about, or is it a complex web of experiences and feelings with no designated plan?

    I’ve given thought to these questions, and I find comfort in the answers I find in the little things: Coffee in the morning on my back porch. Helping my son with his homework. Cooking a nutritious meal for my family. Having a conversation with a friend when they are in need of support.

    I have to be intentional about not letting my mind wander to the “what if?” and “am I doing enough?” narratives in my head and take each day as it comes with what I can do in the now.

    I am slowly warming up to the realization that my worth is not dependent on what I do for people. My only responsibility is to live my life to the best of my ability, with experiences and personal growth being my primary focus. I don’t actually know if my life has a grand purpose, and for now that is okay. I find meaning in the little things.

  • Why Your Anger Is the Key to Maintaining Your Boundaries

    Why Your Anger Is the Key to Maintaining Your Boundaries

    “Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom.” ~Henry Cloud

    Late last night, I once again found myself unable to sleep, and boy was I angry. So, in order not to disturb my other half, who is always asleep the moment his head touches the pillow, I dragged myself off to the sofa. Once there, sat seething in the dark, I listened to my emotion and asked it to speak to me, and guess what it screamed?! Boundaries!

    Now please bear in mind that I have been on this journey for a while and had also been discussing boundaries earlier in the day, so my inner knowing came out loud and clear. For you this may not be the case, and that’s okay.

    Practical Tip 1: When you feel angry, take yourself away and write down all those racing thoughts. No judgment, just get pen to scrap piece of paper and write it all down. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, take it out on the person you feel has caused this anger.

    So, where was I? Oh yes, boundaries! Those joyful and challenging rules. That is what they are after all, rules.

    If you think back to being a child, when you broke a rule, an adult got cross. Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that anger is a messenger for when you have overstepped your boundaries, or you have let someone else break a boundary you consciously or unconsciously set.

    This is probably where I should explain the difference between internal and external boundaries.

    Internal boundaries are the rules and limits that you set for yourself. They don’t have to be shared with anyone else, but they are for you to follow. They may sound like:

    • When I finish work for the day I will take ten minutes to meditate/for myself.
    • I respect my body, so today is a non-chocolate or non-alcohol day.
    • To protect my time and mental health, I will limit time scrolling through social media to one hour a day.
    • Because I value my family, I will not take on any projects that require me to work nights or weekends.
    • To help myself let go and move on, I will do something healthy for myself every time I start dwelling on my ex and our breakup.

    External boundaries are the ones you set with the outside world. These do need to be shared, unfortunately, and can be challenging in that respect. They outline how you will allow others to treat you. They may sound like:

    • I would love to help you with this project; however, I can only give you one hour a week.
    • Please give me ten minutes when I get in from work for me to settle before we start chatting or planning dinner.
    • I enjoy seeing you, but it’s important to me that you call before coming over.
    • This topic is upsetting to me, so I would rather not discuss it with you.
    • I hate to see you two fighting, but I can no longer be the middleman in your arguments.

    Practical Tip 2: Take that page of anger thoughts and identify any boundaries, internal or external, that have been messed with.

    Have you let yourself down in some way? Or did you let someone break a boundary without gently reminding them it was there?

    Strong boundaries help us protect our time, our energy, and our physical and mental health, so it makes sense we’d feel angry when they’re violated. But oftentimes our boundaries are unclear or fuzzy, or we negotiate them without conscious awareness because we’re tempted to give in to our impulses or we don’t want to make other people feel uncomfortable.

    This is why we need to practice self-awareness and recognize which boundaries we’ve allowed to be crossed and why.

    Seething on the sofa, there I was, scolding myself for breaking a boundary that I have set and reset many times over the past few years—allowing myself at least thirty minutes of quiet wind down time before bed, with no distractions, no talk of work or anything that might get my highly sensitive nature all stimulated, making it hard to sleep.

    Practical Tip 3: Once you understand the boundaries that were crossed, the first step is forgiveness. You are a human being doing the best you can right now, and it’s okay that at times you forget to uphold boundaries with others or yourself.

    Thank the anger for drawing it to your attention, forgive yourself and resolve to do a little better each time. If you are alone, I recommend doing this out loud a few times.

    This first stage is powerful and really calmed me down, enough that I could crawl back into bed with a snoring partner and finally drift off. However, that is not the end of this lesson, dear reader. In the morning light, sat at my desk, I reviewed the boundary I’d crossed and asked myself a few questions, just like the ones in the next tip.

    Practical Tip 4: Time to review your boundaries and ask yourself:

    • Is this an internal or external boundary? Did I let myself down, or did I not uphold a boundary with someone else?
    • Why did I not maintain this boundary? How did neglecting it negatively impact me?
    • Is this a boundary I want to have? Is it time to set a different boundary? Or is there something I need to change or address to better maintain this boundary?
    • If internal, what is the purpose for this boundary? Is it in alignment with who I want to be?
    • If external, have I communicated my boundaries clearly to this person? What kind things can I say to remind them of my boundaries when they start to cross the line?

    The results of my review were that I want a balance around this boundary, as I love staying up late into the night chatting with my partner or watching TV, yet sleep is crucial to my well-being. Therefore, I have resolved that Monday to Thursday I will uphold my boundary, and the weekend is the time to relax the boundary a little.

    Over dinner I will discuss this with my partner and get his buy-in and most importantly ask for his support in helping me to uphold the boundary during the week, just until it becomes a new habit!

    Remember:

    Boundaries are just rules we set ourselves.

    Boundaries are yours to uphold regardless of if they are external or internal.

    Anger is a great messenger for boundaries you have allowed to be crossed.

    Communicate why you have a boundary with others and ask for their support.

    It is all within your control.

  • When Life Gets Hard: 4 Lessons That Eased My Suffering

    When Life Gets Hard: 4 Lessons That Eased My Suffering

    “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” ~Viktor Frankl

    When life goes sideways, it can be hard to take one more breath, let alone find meaning.

    Trust me. I know.

    In the same year, I had breast cancer, chemo, radiation, and a divorce I didn’t want. There’s more to the story (there always is), but in essence, I lost everything—my health, my love, my home.

    During all of this, I lost sight of myself, quit trusting myself. I was sure I was to blame for everything.

    At the same time, within twenty-four hours of leaving the house I loved, six friends had given me the keys to their houses, telling me I always had a place to stay. My family showed up for me in ways that had me weeping.

    Also during this time, I had two powerful dreams and one still small voice—these three messengers told me the very things I needed to hear to go on.

    My first dream involved someone cooking something delicious in a kitchen. I couldn’t eat what she was making, because taste often goes awry with chemo, but I remember the cook saying, “Honey, there’s more sugar than salt in this recipe.”

    In other words, life’s sweetness would return. Just give it time.

    The second dream I had is that I dropped deep into the earth where every last bit of me was burned away. All that was left was a fierce and shining bone.

    This dream promised me that there was something deep inside that was indestructible, and it had everything to do with fierceness and light.

    And that still small voice? No matter what was happening, deep inside there was this wise and quiet Me who refused to let me be hurt anymore. What do I mean by that?

    I knew I needed something to help me survive, but this grounded Me knew I needed to be intentional about how I chose to survive. Because I wanted to make myself better, not worse.

    I began to write and record mini-meditations. I called them “A Hit of Hope.” A friend told me that the best place to record was in a closet, so there I sat, on top of my shoes, talking into my phone—using my voice and my words to name my pain and to convince myself that things would get better.

    Any human being will have pain and trauma. Any human being will have things happen to them that they would rather avoid. But as long as we are alive, we can know that life will go sideways. In big and small ways, we will suffer. So as much as it pains me to say this, why suffering happens is irrelevant. The only question we can answer for ourselves is how we will choose to be in the midst of pain and suffering.

    While there are still days when the bus of emotions can run me down, and while I have made more than my fair share of missteps in my recent journey, I have learned a few things along the way.

    1. When there are big, and out-of-control life events, radical self-love and emotional recovery are the first order of business.

    When you are hurting, put down the metaphorical gas can or salt or knives. Don’t make the fire any bigger or the wounds any deeper than they already are.

    What do I mean by that? Make choices that keep your head clear, choices that keep your body and spirit safe.

    For instance, a friend of mine, who was going through a divorce at the same time, was told by his best friend, “Just get roaring drunk, and stay that way for three months.” While that might help numb the pain, that kind of behavior would only create more problems in the long run. It would be far more healing to embrace journaling, yoga, or some other form of self-care.

    Also, even if you messed up, don’t beat yourself up. Can you admit to how you contributed to the situation? Absolutely, but think of yourself like a kid on the playground. More scolding and finger wagging usually does little to help the situation. Often, it’s a big ol’ hug that is needed to stop the tears. So, get centered, get settled, and heap loads of love on your hurting self.

    2. You get to feel every ounce of what you are feeling.

    Do not be ashamed of your feelings. A Buddhist concept relates to this: first and second darts. The first dart is the emotion (sadness, fear, anger), and because we are human, it is right and good to let those emotions flow through us.

    The second dart is our reaction to our emotion. Why do I always do this? If I were a better person, I’d… You know the drill. Feel your feelings, so that they can rise up and flow away, leaving you calm and clear.

    3. There is no time to lose, but there is no need to hurry.

    What in the heck does that mean? That bold statement doesn’t mean you should fly into manic or panic mode, but there is nothing like a life-threatening illness to remind a person that this now matters. In fact, this is the only now you are assured of getting. “You never know what’s coming,” a friend often says.

    The idea is to live each day fully. To make the small choices, the day-to-day decisions that bring you the most joy, the most delight. This might mean starting that novel or business, calling that friend you’ve been missing, getting on your bike or yoga mat, or climbing that mountain and yodeling until the grizzlies roar back in response.

    Simply put, there is not one day, one decision that will magically poof us to the good life for the rest of time. There are the small choices that add up—and either bring us toward more wholeness or continue to tear us to bits.

    4. Meaning is what helps us to survive.

    This last one is something Viktor Frankl, a survivor of four Nazi death camps, pointed out. In the worst of the worst, it can feel almost impossible to find meaning, but doing so is essential. It’s here that the why matters.

    When life assails, it can be easy to ask, “What’s the point?” To feel adrift. Untethered. Rocked this way and that by wind and wave, all threatening to pull you under.

    You have to find your why, your meaning, your sense of purpose or intention. What can you—you—do that makes life feel fuller, richer, more vibrant and alive?

    For me, it was helpful to think about active verbs. I wanted to move, create, heal, serve.

    What did this look like? I would work out each morning, because that helped me to feel strong in my own body. Then I would sit down and write my meditations, getting lost in the joy of doing something creative. This process not only healed my own struggling spirit, but I hoped it might do so for others. When I posted them, I did so with the intention of letting them serve others.

    If you have a hard time finding your own sense of meaning, take a look at your life. What do you do that makes you lose time, something you get lost in? That’s often a great indication of what brings you meaning. Or what is something you do that makes you feel better when you are done? How can you incorporate that into your life more?

    If you are still struggling, ask a friend to help you brainstorm. Or take a walk, and let your mind wander along with your feet. Your spirit often just needs some time, space, and quiet to speak deeply to you.

    This might sound like fluffy advice, but it’s not. As Frankl famously said, “He [or she or they] who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

    To be clear, this isn’t easy, nor does it happen in a day, a week, a month, or even a year. But create the right conditions and good things are far more likely to come.

    Last week, I happened to be sitting on my front porch. When I got up to go inside and make myself tea, I noticed my orchid in the front window.

    A friend gave it to me before I started chemo. Every morning, I look at it as I sit inside and write, but this was the first time I’d seen it from the outside. From this new perspective, I could see a gathering of buds, pressed up against the window, the direction from which the light comes.

    The soon-to-be blossoms were hidden entirely by the pot and the leaves when I sat inside in my leather chair.

    That orchid offered me a message, just like my dreams. Those flowers showed me a deep and profound truth: sometimes, the blossoming is on the other side.