Tiny Buddha

Category: Blog

  • When You Want to Make Progress Fast and Feel Impatient

    When You Want to Make Progress Fast and Feel Impatient

    “Tortoise was over the line. After that, Hare always reminded himself, ‘Don’t brag about your lightning pace, for Slow and Steady won the race!‘“ ~The Tortoise and the Hare (Aesop’s Fables)

    I was sitting in an introduction to calligraphy workshop when a fellow student asked the instructor, “What do I need to become a professional Calligrapher, what would it take?”

    We were all on the edge of our seats with that one. It was as if we were about to learn the secret ingredient to Grandma’s cookies.

    The answer, to our surprise, was pen and paper.

    “The materials are no different than that of a novice calligrapher,” the instructor explained.

    The distinction between a novice and professional calligrapher is not in the tools they use, but rather in the professional’s commitment to practice, their pace, and the time they took to learn and do something.

    The same goes for any professional at their craft.

    I recalled a time when I was on a cruise ship and saw all these tourists with huge camera lenses and gadgets for their cameras. I was incredibly impressed and at times intimidated with their gear as I would hold up my own iPhone to snap a quick picture.

    After a while of being on board, you get to know one another well. I realized that despite their top tier lens, basically all of their cameras were set in auto mode.

    What good is such an advanced lens when you don’t know how to use it?

    They had gone from zero to one hundred with no practice, no skills acquired, just fancier devices.

    This lesson on the professional calligrapher has always intrigued me.

    When we look up to the expert, we assume that increasing the quality of materials or having access to nicer resources is what makes them great. This assumption overlooks the time it would have taken them to learn something new and to achieve their goal.

    Instead, we want to cut corners and are looking for the shortcut. We want to make progress as soon as possible, perhaps because we feel behind in life and think we need to hurry to get ahead, or because we think we’ll be happier when we reach our goal.

    Cutting corners is not a strategy that necessarily benefits us. It’s a way for us to be more useful and readily available to others, get more things done, and exhibit productivity.

    Our concern for positive feedback and acceptance by others keeps us from taking the time to experience something thoroughly for ourselves, just because we enjoy it or are curious about it.

    Just because.

    This past year I have been working with my sister to brainstorm new career opportunities. My current goal is to become an independent filmmaker.

    Similar to the observations shared above, I found myself quickly approaching the mindset of the calligraphy student: What would it take, what would I need to make the best movies, to be a great filmmaker?

    I too, wanted the shortcut. The direct route to achieving my goal. Is there a certain camera lens I need to have, light kit, microphone, or skill that would lead me right to success?

    After deep dives into blogs about filmmakers and watching online video subscriptions about filmmaking, it occurred to me that I had all that I needed to accomplish my goal.

    There was no shortcut to filmmaking.

    It was just going to take time.

    Time for me to learn more about the tools that I already had.

    Time to pick up my camera and practice shooting interviews.

    Time to use a pen and paper to write down script ideas.

    Time to make bad videos so that the next time I could make a better video.

    Time for repeated effort, continual practice, and eventually, improvement.

    It’s easy to get caught wasting time looking for a solution instead of taking time. In the end, we lose energy and motivation looking for the right tools or answers.

    We do things with the intention of going fast rather than far. We fixate on the end result and rob ourselves of the fun we’d have and excitement we’d feel if we let ourselves enjoy the journey.

    Instead, I’ve learned that I stand with the tortoise, not the hare, “Slow and steady [wins the race].”

    Go far. Reach farther. Take the time to become your best self.

  • How I Found the Gift in My Pain and Let Go of Resentment

    How I Found the Gift in My Pain and Let Go of Resentment

    “Change is inevitable, growth is intentional.” ~Glenda Cloud

    How much time slips by when you’re living in the pain of resentment? Do you ever question if your bitterness has held you back from living your true destiny? Is blaming everyone else sabotaging your life and future?

    It’s only now that I can admit to the years I wasted pointing the finger at everyone else. It was easier for me to say it was their fault than accept responsibility for my own decisions. For me, attaining perfection was validation of my success. If it wasn’t achievable, then it was obviously someone else’s fault.

    Until one day, I took the time to watch the Tony Robbins’ documentary movie, Guru, for the second time. Amazing when you watch something again or read a book twice, you get something different out of it.

    There was a young girl struggling with the lack of love she received from her drug-addicted father. After admitting that it was her father’s love she craved the most, Tony Robbins led her to a breakthrough perspective.

    He told her if you are going to blame him for everything that went wrong, like not being Daddy’s girl, then don’t forget to blame him for making you a strong woman too. He reminded her that she was allowed to blame him for not being around but not to forget to blame him for teaching her how to cope at such a young age.

    Suddenly, I felt a shift within me. I connected to the anger deep within me, and somehow it no longer felt so heavy. What was happening? Unexpectedly, I realized the pain of my resentment was actually a gift.

    I have carried a lot of emotional weight in my heart, some of which still remains. My heaviness is rooted in childhood memories of hurt and confusion. At the blissful age of eleven, just when I thought life was pretty safe and stable, I had the rug ripped out from underneath of me.

    Infidelity and unfaithfulness had crept into our home and turned everything upside down. Everything I knew faded away as my mother threw his things around, screaming and crying. She was so emotional, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Her anger was wrapped up in sadness as she packed up all of my father’s belongings into black trash bags.

    One by one out the door, like little pieces of my heart that she was just bagging up and throwing out. She set them out on our front lawn, and I stood there grieving.

    She didn’t see the little girl in the corner crying along with her. Someone forgot the little soul who was being traumatized by these big emotions. No one stopped the chaos for a minute to realize my heart was breaking too. My memories of Christmas traditions and Saturdays at the grocery store never came back.

    Everything changed, and I hated this new life.

    From then on, everyone always seemed sad around me. I recall listening to my grandmother try to comfort my mother as she wept in her bedroom for weeks. I can still see the shame in my father’s face as he came and visited us every once in a while.

    The raw vulnerability and pure helplessness I felt during those years were probably the most painful parts. The sense of being abandoned and left with all these intense emotions to deal with was so demanding. The pressure of trying to figure things out with no sense of direction left me with an underlying sense of unhappiness all the time.

    It was then a seed of undeniable pain was planted. I would spend years nurturing this seed like it was my life’s purpose.

    Growing up, I appeared to be okay with the change, but the days of confusion were simply endless for me. My new normal was abnormal, and the finality of the chaos ended when I accepted the idea that my parents would never get back together.

    My mother was left trying to hold it all together, and it was a struggle to watch over the years. For the sake of her children and with the little strength she had left, I watched her work tirelessly to preserve the memory of a good life.

    Despite her dedication to her children, the inevitable happened: Her little children grew up. We created our own version of our childhood memories, and our seeds of hurt began to bloom.

    It’s a shame how pain, resentment, and fear have a way of spreading like wildfire within us. It shows up in the friends we hang out with, the partners we choose, and the weaknesses that destruct us.

    When things fall apart, it’s hard to think clearly, let alone follow a path of success. It’s far easier to point the finger and hand out slips of blame to anyone close to you. But after years of feeling heavy, I was tired. I was ready to let this baggage go.

    That evening, I reflected on what Tony Robbins said to the girl: “If you are going to blame people, then blame them for everything.”

    This is how I transformed my resentment into gratitude:

    If I was hardened by the things I didn’t get as a child, then I must be grateful for the life skills I now possess.

    The resourcefulness I’ve gained throughout the years is immeasurable. I don’t say that out of arrogance, but out of pride. I used to resent the lack I grew up with, but now I’m so thankful because it nurtured my resilience. The desire for more fostered an enormous amount of determination within me.

    If I blamed my parents for a tough childhood, then I must also thank them for teaching me how to be a great mother.

    The insatiable craving to feel loved, noticed, and important gave me the skills to connect with my son on the most fundamental level. I know the value of establishing and maintaining this relationship with him because that’s all I ever wanted growing up, a close connection to my parents.

    If I was saddened by the years of confusion in my life, then I must acknowledge the beautiful clarity present in my life now.

    The tears shed were not in vain. Instead, they washed away a distinct path for me to travel. I can see the gift of my writing. The dreaded confusion gave birth to my innate ability to connect to others’ pain and articulate what they feel.

    If I allowed the pain of my sadness to grow, then I must not forget to appreciate the goodness in my life.

    I know what it feels like to be sad, but this led me to experience happiness on a whole new level. I find joy in really simple things, like a good cup of coffee. I can feel bliss when I am with my husband doing absolutely nothing. Most of all, I can live with a sense of true contentment in my life.

    If I found fault in everyone for all the things I thought went wrong in my life, then I’m indebted to all these people eternally.

    The agony I perceived as targeted was destined to be part of my life. The people I couldn’t forgive, who fostered hate within me, I now love even more. It’s because of them that I now live a fulfilled life with more to come.

    You see, this is all part of life’s plan. The people we despise, the rage we harbor, and the bitterness we nurture are actually the tools we need to grow and evolve. The goal of transformation is to gain a higher level of awareness in our lives.

    There is no achievement in staying stuck when the goal is to walk through these milestones. The problem does not lie in another person; it’s the fixed perspective you are perpetually protecting. Do not prolong experiencing real joy. Time is fleeting.

    Transform your bitterness into sweetness, and your purpose will reveal itself to you. Dig deep, not to find fault in others, but to find the gifts within your soul; therein lies the gift of your pain and the beauty in all that you have suffered.

  • How Yoga Gave Me the Courage to Stop People-Pleasing

    How Yoga Gave Me the Courage to Stop People-Pleasing

    “Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”  ~The Bhagavad Gita

    Growing up, I couldn’t have been further from my ‘self.’ Early childhood experiences taught me to focus all of my energy externally. To put everyone around me first and to be insatiably attentive to their needs. This kind of thinking instills you with an incredibly low sense of self-worth, disconnects you from your own feelings and desires, and ultimately leaves your happiness pinned to other people.

    When you have low self-worth, you mostly want to contract away from the world like a turtle. Hiding in your protective shell becomes a way of life because you fear that by revealing who you truly are people will leave, reject, or mock you.

    A common response from those around me was “Don’t worry! Just be yourself!” When you have low self-worth, “being yourself” isn’t just something that worries you, it’s not something that simply makes you feel uncomfortable. It is quite literally something your brain deciphers as high risk. The act of “being myself” was unbelievably terrifying. I had my guard up all the time and a face for every occasion.

    In my early twenties, I started to analyze my unhealthy thought patterns and tried three different therapists. Each one encouraged me to give a monologue about my life while they vacantly nodded and asked questions such as “How did that make you feel?”

    It did nothing for me. What I desperately needed was to cultivate a loving relationship with myself. I needed to get to know the girl I had been and the woman I was becoming. To be there for her, to soothe her, and to cheer her on.

    That’s where yoga came in.

    There was no single defining moment. My first yoga class didn’t change my life. Neither did the second, the third, or the fourth. Yet, little by little, as I went to more classes and read ancient scripture, I began hearing one important message reiterated over and over again—the importance of looking inward for validation, love, and support.

    Years of looking outside myself for these things had left my worth precariously hinged to other people, yet once on the mat, with only myself, I was challenged to connect with it all—my own fears, my own desires, and my own needs. Without this step, I couldn’t have moved forward in my life.

    My yoga practice went deeper when I found yin and restorative; branches of yoga which emphasize gentle support, nourishment, and mindful movement as opposed to any kind of striving or precision.

    Unlike the sweaty sequences of fast-paced flow classes, yin is a soft, intuitive practice that slowly guides you toward opening up, both physically and emotionally. Poses open your heart and your hips—places where those with low self-worth are often most closed off.

    Positions such as supported twist and swan can be held for over five minutes, encouraging a deep tissue release whereby tension dissolves out of your body and onto the mat. Meanwhile torso opening poses like butterfly and camel can make you feel totally vulnerable.

    As you sprawl out across the mat, the urge to close up can be powerful and it’s not unusual to feel emotional. It left me with no choice but to surrender, despite resistance from every cell in my body.   

    Many of the poses in yin yoga are named after animals and insects we associate with peacefulness. The gentle movement of a swan emits a blissful sense of inner peace. The slow-moving ways of a camel and the flutters of a butterfly convey the kind of quiet strength you feel when you finally reach a solid sense of self-worth. When you know you are enough, the need to prove yourself gradually begins to subside, being replaced by a lightness in both the body and the mind. It is this lightness which yoga instils.

    Similar to yin, restorative yoga aims to center you through both stillness and slow movement. It took all the energy I was relentlessly giving out to the world and brought it back to me. It felt like the first time I’d fully, and completely, focused on my own experience. It felt good.

    I went to restorative classes on Thursday evenings. I remember the first class I went to vividly because it felt so unnatural. Away from the pace of everyday life, where there are so many opportunities to numb out—with work, TV, socializing—this session involved just four restful poses each held for five to seven minutes.

    Poses included reclining hero, where you relax your entire body onto a supportive cushion, and bend your knees gently back, and Supta Baddha Konasana—lying with your legs open, feet together and arms left flat to the side. Whatever the pose, the purpose of it was comfort for the body, rest for the mind, and replenishment of the spirit.

    At the beginning I found this practise excruciating. My body was tense and my muscles were contracted. After years of avoiding myself, I simply couldn’t relax and let go because I was scared.

    The teacher noticed and he often came over to lightly press my back down onto the mat. Other times, he’d swap the hard cork block I’d picked to hold up my head for the softness of a folded blanket. As with many other yoga teachers, his non-judgemental support provided the safe, gentle push I needed to finally relax into my own body.

    These simple yet nourishing acts reflect the philosophy of yoga so well, in that the practice has little to do with who can stretch the furthest, the longest, or the most elegantly. Instead, one of the key tenants of yoga is union with yourself. If a pose feels painful, you adjust. If you’ve reached your edge, you pull back.

    This mantra has been repeated throughout every class I’ve been to, and it’s the most tangible evidence I have of the effect yoga has had on my life. If something feels painfully uncomfortable, out of line with my true nature, I now ask “Why am I doing this? Is it for me, or to please other people?”

    Chronic people pleasing, in order to gain a sense of self-worth, always felt excruciating to me. It put me at the whim of just about everyone I met. But it was only when I found the teachings of yoga that I realized why it felt so bad and found the courage to change.  

    When you’ve been so far away from yourself and finally connect to your inner being, it can feel overwhelming. The discovery that, I too, existed in the world, and not only that I had needs and feelings that deserved to be heard, but that who I was really, really mattered, was profound. In this way, yoga worked to highlight how prolifically I’d been neglecting myself in a way that talk therapy never even touched upon.

    I began to engage in radical self-care, I started a soothing inner dialogue, regularly asking myself if I was okay: how did I feel? (as opposed to how others felt). Albeit daunting and uncomfortable at first, I gradually stopped doing things to please others and started revealing every part of myself—the goofy side, the quiet side, the intelligent side. Why? Because my self-worth was inherent, it was within me rather than outside of me, and therefore, I had the safety to be exactly who I was.

    If you’ve ever struggled with low self-worth, you’ll know that the path to true acceptance is long, tedious, and never linear. It is a one step forward, two steps back process. One where you must wake up every single day and commit to building yourself up rather than down. One where you must silence your inner critic and instead begin to accept every part of yourself—even those which you find unpleasant.

    By practicing yoga and learning from the principles that underpin it, that path can be made easier, and a whole lot brighter, too.

  • What You Need to Know If You Obsess About Weight Loss

    What You Need to Know If You Obsess About Weight Loss

    “By choosing healthy over skinny you are choosing self-love over self-judgment.” ~Steve Maraboli

    If we actually care about health, in 2020, we have to stop trying to lose weight.

    I know, that’s the opposite of what we’ve been taught to believe, but stay with me while I explain why I say that.

    Dieting and weight loss obsessions are actually causing weight gain and poorer overall health outcomes in our population.

    Our culture has been obsessed with weight loss for generations. We’ve been constantly bombarded with ridiculous “lose fat fast” claims by more and more supposedly miraculous diets. It’s been going on for hundreds of years.

    So, with all that obsessing, how’s it all working for us? Is our population getting smaller and healthier? Hardly. The opposite is true.

    Sure, we think dieting works because often when we jump on another new plan, initial weight loss happens fairly easily. We get excited and tell everyone who will listen about the new miracle diet we found and how great we feel.

    And when we gain the weight back? Well, that’s our fault, right?

    We only gain it back because we’re stupid and “fall off track,” right?

    That’s what the diet industry has cleverly programmed us to believe.

    We’ve been taught that any and all weight gain is bad, that not only is it a mortal failure but also a sign of sloth, gluttony, and no self-control. So we’ve also been taught to be ashamed of it.

    And weight loss? Well, that’s always the holy grail of winning at life, right? It’s an event worth celebrating!

    So we diet to “fix the problem.”

    But long-term diet studies show that dieting to lose weight makes most people gain even more weight over time.

    Our obsession with weight loss is creating weight gain.

    But we don’t even need studies to prove that—we know it already because we see it happening in real life, every single day.

    Not only that, it’s contributing to disordered eating and even killing us by creating eating disorders.

    We’re dying to be thin. Too often, literally.

    And again, I ask, how’s it working for us? How many years have you (or someone you know) been trying to lose weight?

    I routinely speak with women who started dieting in their teens (or younger), are now in their sixties and seventies, and have spent their entire lives desperately obsessed with losing weight—only to have never actually achieved lasting weight loss.

    In fact, that’s significantly more common than anyone actually losing weight, keeping it off, and living happily ever after.

    What’s really annoying is that we know this. The failure rate of weight loss attempts is so widely known that it’s become a joke. There are millions of memes and internet jokes floating around about it.

    If someone tries to lose weight, they’re expected to fail before they even get started.

    We know that weight loss efforts are not working for us, yet we soldier on… forever terrified of how much more we may gain if we ever give up the fight for weight control—without ever realizing it’s that very fight that’s causing a lot of problems.

    I like to use my friend, who we’ll call Mary, as an example because Mary was me. She’s you. She’s your sister, daughter, mother, friend, and co-worker.

    Mary loves food. Who doesn’t, am I right? But she often eats when she’s not physically hungry or keeps eating even when she’s well past full. After a while, it starts to create a little weight gain. Because she lives in a world that believes weight gain is a tragic fate she must avoid at all costs, she starts judging herself for it. Her body and her weight become problems that she must solve, at any and all costs.

    The fixation on dieting and weight loss has become an obsession for our society thanks in large part to the inescapable weight stigma that has associated weight loss, by any means necessary, with health.

    She becomes afraid of gaining more weight.

    Because her brain has learned the habit of relying on food to solve every “problem” or sooth every emotion, fear sends an autopilot “eat” signal.

    Because she starts a restrictive diet that eliminates a ton of food she’s used to eating (many of which her body actually needs to perform at its best), the survival instinct in her brain gets afraid of starvation and creates cravings and urges that cause her to “cave” on her diet. More “eat” signals.

    More fear. Fear that she’ll never stick to anything. Fear that she’s going to keep gaining. Fear of judgment from others because of her growing body.

    She feels guilt and shame for not being to get her weight or her eating habits “under control.”

    Shame makes her feel like she’s a bad person. She hates her body and struggles to love herself.

    She starts making more and more fear-based, unloving choices for her body because she’s stuck in that cycle, repeating the same self-sabotaging behaviors of “getting back on track” and “falling off track,” of dieting, losing weight, and regaining, over and over again.

    And that’s where she stays, for her whole life. In that place of obsessing over her weight without ever really changing it, except maybe to slowly just keep gaining.

    She stays stuck in that place of being “perfect” one week, meaning barely eating and cutting out a crap-ton of food only to “fall off track” and become a train wreck of self-destructive choices for weeks or months until she decides to “start again.”

    That’s the reality. For the majority of the population, that’s the outcome of our fixation on weight loss.

    It’s not making us skinnier and healthier; it’s making us heavier and destroying our mental and physical health.

    Which brings me to my point: If we actually care about health, we have to break that association and stop focusing on weight loss. It’s that very obsession and association that’s making our population heavier, and less healthy.

    If we actually care about health, we’ll stop focusing on weight loss and instead focus on how it feels to live in our bodies and how the choices we’re making that affects that.

    The choices you make today will not affect your weight today, but they will affect how it feels to live in your body today.

    When our focus is only on weight loss (as it so often is), we stay stuck in that self-destructive cycle I just spoke of and we don’t even try to make positive choices for ourselves unless we’re “on track” and trying to lose weight. The rest of the time, we ignore our health.

    When we focus on weight loss and associate weight with health, we think, I feel like crap because I’m overweight, and I won’t feel better until I lose the weight… and since I’m already fat and feel like crap, why bother doing anything good for my body?

    When the reality is, no matter what size we are, we can control the way it feels to live in our body today, and often it’s just one or two small choices away.

    If your body feels stiff and immobile, it’s less likely to be because of your weight and more likely to be because it just needs a little stretching—but as long as you’re stuck obsessing over the fact that you need to lose weight to feel better, you’re far less likely to just give it the few minutes of stretching it’s begging for with the joint stiffness.

    So, even if carrying extra body fat is unhealthy (I’m not saying it is because it’s absolutely not an automatic indicator of poor health any more than being underweight is), if we actually care about health, we’ll stop promoting weight loss.

    That obsession is not working and more importantly, it’s making us less healthy.

    Weight gain isn’t always bad. Sometimes, it’s the result of health and healing.

    Weight loss isn’t always good. Sometimes it’s the result of sickness.

    There isn’t one magic weight, or way to eat, that’s a guarantee of health for everyone, so we have to stop obsessing over those things.

    Healthy living isn’t just about the choices we make for our bodies, and it definitely isn’t about deprivation, restriction, perfection, or punishment.

    It’s not about the number on a scale or the size of our jeans. It’s not about step counters, detoxes, fat burning smoothies, or skinny Instagram models and their pretty pictures with recipes for organic, gluten-free, vegan, superfoods.

    If we stopped obsessing over what we weigh, or whether or not we’re going to “be good or bad with food today” or when the next diet starts, our brain would no longer be full of those non-stop, all-consuming thoughts and obsessions and we could start focusing on the things that really matter for our health like connection, compassion, and self-trust.

    Things like nurturing our bodies, our minds, our spirits, and our relationships (not just external but internal—our relationship with ourselves, with food, with our bodies).

    We can start accepting where we are, figuring out where we’re going, and getting comfortable with being a little uncomfortable while working to get there.

    We can start showing up for ourselves, day after day, one small choice at a time. We can focus on how we want to live, how we want to feel in our body, who we want to be, and the small daily choices required to get there.

    That’s how we actually improve our health.

  • Growth Isn’t Always Linear: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

    Growth Isn’t Always Linear: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

    “If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead.” ~Oswald Chambers

    If I were to look back at my life thus far, as I often do, I’d notice a pattern of events and feelings resembling the activity on an EKG monitor.

    For every peak, there’s been a valley. For every leap forward, there’s been a stumble backward—sometimes just an inch, and other times, what seemed like miles.

    Recognizing and embracing this has brought me a tremendous amount of peace, because I once believed that progress required a steady, consistent ascent toward perfection.

    If I struggled with something I’d struggled with before, I felt I’d somehow failed. If I experienced a personal or professional setback, I thought I’d done something wrong.

    Growing, to me, meant always doing and feeling better than I did the day before. But I’ve realized that’s not growth, and when I believed it was, growth wasn’t what I was seeking.

    I was seeking permanently better. I wanted persistent happiness—a reprieve from difficult, overwhelming feelings, and a sense that every day of my life, I was one inch closer to the ideal.

    I’d say that life’s about the journey, but in the back of my head I believed it would have no purpose if not for the destination, which made it hard to truly pull my focus from it.

    In this mindset, ever fixated on getting there, and deeply upset by any seeming break in momentum, I constantly felt angry with myself.

    But I wasn’t supposed to be feeling angry—I’d been cultivating peace for years.

    I wasn’t supposed to feel uncertain of what I wanted professionally—I’d been working on my career for years.

    I wasn’t supposed to doubt myself—I’d been building my confidence for years.

    All this emphasis on where I should be made it difficult to ever experience those elusive positive feelings I wanted to feel.  (more…)

  • If You Think Reaching Your Goal Will Make You Happy…

    If You Think Reaching Your Goal Will Make You Happy…

    The path IS the goal.

    The process is more important than the result.

    Life is a journey, not a destination.

    There are three very common, some might say cheesy and clichéd sayings you may hear when it comes to taking action to reach your goals.

    Some of you are probably rolling your eyes already, and I did when I first heard quotes like these.

    But I’ve recently realized something that has made me U-turn on a lot of my own old, outdated beliefs around goal-setting and achievement and acquisition of material things, or just generally “making it” in life.

    The path you’re traveling, the journey you’re currently on, really is the only thing that matters. All we have is the now.

    You can and should have dreams and aspirations, but I want you to think beyond them. You are capable of so much more than you think.

    Plus, the path you’re on may very well change for you, as it did for me.

    I’ll tell you about my dream.

    I knew from an early age that I wanted to be a professional musician. I wanted to tour the world as a guitarist in a metal band. Not necessarily be a rich and famous rock star, but to play shows, record music, and make a decent living doing so.

    I started out on drums originally. I used to practice at school. (No way were my mum and dad going to let me have a drum kit in the house!) I was pretty uncoordinated and flailed around like a sweaty octopus making a racket, so I ditched the sticks and picked up a second-hand electric guitar, vowing to one day “make it” in the music biz.

    Despite my family and friends all thinking that it wasn’t going to happen, and in some cases actively discouraging me from pursuing this very unorthodox career, I did in some small part succeed. I have played nationally and internationally, written and recorded music. I also have made a comfortable living teaching guitar for nearly ten years now.

    But what I am most proud of is not the fact that I proved my parents wrong or that I can stick two fingers up to anyone that doubted I would ever get this far. It’s not that at all.

    In some ways, they were kind of right. I didn’t fully make my dream come true after spending twenty-five years trying to do so.

    You see, I was just on a different path for a while to the one I’m on right now. Allowing myself to evolve naturally, let things take their course, and stop trying to control everything, has been an absolute game changer and has gotten me to a very good place.

    My original musical dreams, combined with my passion for helping people, led me down another route from that of the main stage at a festival—to teaching guitar. And I’m so proud and quite frankly amazed sometimes that I’ve been able to teach hundreds of people in my local area, and hopefully have made a positive impact. Playing a small part at least in their musical journeys.

    Where am I going with all this bragging!?

    An illusion of control is what I believe we have, but we truly don’t know what’s around the corner for us.

    And I think that the immense pressure of setting and achieving goals takes away some of the fun of that unpredictable journey.

    We set ourselves goals to achieve or acquire things that we believe will make us happy, right?

    So, you’re not after the goal per se, you’re actually after a happy feeling. You can have that happy feeling right now, even if you haven’t yet reached your goal. And you might eventually find you’re happier doing something else, if you’re willing to let go and shift gears.

    Next time you’re setting goals just remember that change is inevitable. Be flexible with your goals and have fun going after them!

    It’s fine to follow your dreams, but always follow the path that brings you the most happiness in the present.

    All we have is the journey.

  • How Holding On to Unrequited Love Keeps You Alone and Stuck

    How Holding On to Unrequited Love Keeps You Alone and Stuck

    “Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its rainbow.” ~James M. Barrie

    My first experience with unrequited love took place when I was a little kid at swimming lessons.

    I developed a huge crush on one of the instructors. I don’t remember his name, but I remember the excruciating feeling of absolutely adoring someone who didn’t even know I existed. I wish I could say that this was a one-time experience, but it wasn’t.

    Sadly, this pattern continued for many years. I seemed to have a radar device installed in my heart that would automatically fixate on the man least likely to return my affections and bam, I had to have him. Only it never worked out.

    I once spent many painful years pining away for a man I’d been crushing on, even after he’d moved across the country and married someone else. I simply could not get him out of my head.

    It should be noted that I never had a real relationship with any of these men. I never dated them, kissed them, nothing. I was friends with some of them, but that was it.

    Perhaps you can relate. You’ve finally met someone special after what seems like an eternity. It’s like finding an oasis in a desert of nothingness and you are beyond excited. It just has to work out with this person, so you immediately go into obsession mode.

    You have an agenda for this relationship. You know exactly how you want it to go and it needs to happen ASAP.

    Becoming fixated on someone can be an extremely uncomfortable experience. Insisting on one relationship working out exactly the way you want it to is like trying to put a choke hold on the universe. It simply cannot be done, and trying to do it will only result in frustration.

    If this is happening to you, see the situation for what it is, look inside for what’s really going on, and be open to the many amazing possibilities life holds for you.

    It’s tempting to think that this person holds the key to your happiness, but that simply isn’t true. He or she is a human being with imperfections, and you don’t know them very well yet.

    When you have an intense emotional reaction to someone you don’t know very well, you’re dealing with your own mind, not the other person. When you become infatuated with someone and think that life will be wonderful once you are finally a couple, you place your chances for happiness outside of yourself.

    Another person can never hold the key to your happiness, and when you believe that they do, you’re giving away your power.

    Of course, it’s possible that you’ve known the person for a while. He or she may be a colleague or a friend that you’ve developed intense feelings for.

    Do you infer much more meaning into a simple exchange than is really there out of your own wishful thinking? How much time do you spend analyzing your interactions with this person? Healthy relationships don’t need to be evaluated constantly.

    If you’re spending a considerable amount of time obsessing about your chances of being in a relationship with someone, stop and ask yourself what’s really going on. It can help to confide in a friend, therapist or coach to get some outside perspective. If you hesitate to do this, ask yourself why.

    When you become fixated on someone, it can feel confining for the other person. There’s a level of unease, a possessive desperation that can come off as needy or even creepy.

    You must address the part of you that wants to cling to this person and give it what it needs. That needy part of you has something to teach you, and it’s not about holding on to this relationship. It’s about being at peace with yourself.

    You cannot hide this by simply playing it cool or following dating rules about when to call or text. This needy energy will leak out of you and repel the other person. Don’t berate yourself about it; instead, listen to yourself with compassion and love.

    What is it that you’re not facing? Do you resist the idea that you’re responsible for your own happiness? Are you hoping that a wonderful romance will take the edge off the pain of a less-than-stellar career or boost your confidence?

    What do you hope that this person can give you that you don’t have now? Confidence? Love? The knowledge that you are special?

    What can you do to give yourself what you need? Whatever it is, you’ll never be able to get it from another person. Take care of this within yourself and you’ll feel much better.

    Trust that there is someone else out there for you and you will meet him or her when the time is right. There are so many people in this world. This is not the last eligible person you will ever encounter. If this relationship does not work out the way you’d like it to, trust that things happen for a reason and move on.

    When you’ve gotten stuck on one person, it’s the perfect opportunity to examine what’s happening inside of you. Life has dished you up a generous helping of potential self-discovery, so welcome the lesson as much as possible and learn everything you can. You’ll be so glad you did.

    If you dig in and see the situation for what it is, instead of waiting for your would-be lover to come to his or her senses, you stand a much better chance for happiness.

    All of my heart-wrenching experiences with unrequited love led me to so much growth and self-discovery. I came to see that my fantasy relationships with these men were my way of protecting my heart.

    I was alone, but I was sure that it wasn’t my fault; it was theirs for not wanting me. If only they’d see how great I was, everything would be fine. I was not opening myself to love by insisting that love could only come from one person.

    Once I was able to really see that, and to truly love myself, I never had another experience like that again.

    Every relationship and circumstance can bring you closer to the love you want if you open up and allow yourself to learn as much as possible. Love can come from so many sources. Don’t close yourself off. Be open to life, to alternatives, to possibilities.

  • Why This Will Be the Year I Stop Running from Pain

    Why This Will Be the Year I Stop Running from Pain

    “One has to accept pain as a condition of existence.” ~Morris West

    This may seem sounds counter-intuitive, but this year I want to let go of trying to avoid suffering.

    It doesn’t mean that I am a masochist and plan to spend the next year being miserable. It’s more a question of learning to accept life as it is—uncertain, full of surprises, and with its full quota of difficult circumstances.

    Our Wish for Happiness

    The thing is that we all want to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if we fear not being happy, then we have already undermined ourselves. We get so focused on chasing things that we think will make us happy that we forget the bigger picture.

    Parents tend to raise their children telling them they want them to be happy. We are surrounded by advertising images of what a happy life looks like. When we feel down and unhappy, we tend to feel that somehow, we are letting people down, that we are failing in some way. No one wants to feel like a failure, and so we double-up on our strategies to avoid suffering.

    Our Strategies to Avoid Suffering

    We keep ourselves busy so that we don’t have time to sit and reflect. There are a million ways to entertain and distract ourselves. If we get bored, we can surf social media. When we feel down, we can go shopping, watch a movie, go out for a meal—whatever our preferred escape route is.

    When suffering gets past the distraction and forces us to pay attention, then our avoidance goes deeper. We push it away. We pretend it’s not there. Suffering becomes the enemy to happiness and something to be avoided as quickly as possible.

    When avoidance doesn’t work anymore and the suffering is staring us in the face, then we go for fixing it as soon as possible. We talk about putting things behind us, of moving on. Rarely do we give ourselves the time to lean into our pain, discover what it is showing us, and try to act on that.

    Pain is Inevitable

    The very nature of life is that we don’t know what is going to happen from one moment to the next. Everything is in a state of flux, however much we try to pin things down and organize them. Our bodies can be damaged. We grow older, get sick, and eventually die. People change, relationships blossom and then fade away.

    Look into any aspect of your life and see how it is continuously moving and changing. Think back over the changes that have happened in your community just in the time you have lived there. Go back further in your mind—fifty years, a hundred years—small changes, big upheavals are happening all the time.

    In the midst of all this we get hurt. Loss, disappointment, broken hearts, worries, and anxieties are all part of the package. Although we want to be happy and we don’t want to feel pain and suffering, deep down we know it is inevitable. Suffering is part of life however much we don’t want it and what’s more, it happens to everyone.

    My Reminders for Changing my Habit

    This is the basis for changing my habit of trying to avoid suffering. I want to remember that it is simply part of how life is. It’s not a conspiracy against me; everyone has problems and worries. We are all in the same boat in that respect.

    If I spend a lot of time worrying about how something could go wrong or a situation might get worse, then I am already making myself unhappy. What I am worrying about might not even happen. In fact, I could be worrying about one thing and in the meantime another unforeseen problem creeps in.

    Like many people, I want my life to count for something. I want it to have meaning and purpose. If I am honest, much of my deepest learning has come through times when things are hard, and I am struggling.

    In trying to cope with challenges we can be motivated to look really deeply into ourselves. Our avoidance tactics don’t get us anywhere, so we kind of let go and try to understand what is going on. When we can do this, suffering and pain can be our greatest teachers.

    When we are tired and weary with it all, then we can at least try to find a place in ourselves for acceptance. Instead of crying, “Why me?” we simply accept that this is what is happening right now and all we can do is work with it.

    Personally, I find this kind of patience very hard, but I am a meditator and so I can put some distance between a situation and my reaction to it. When it works it brings such relief. It is so much more nourishing than fighting against things and trying to hide away.

    Lastly, perhaps one of the most precious aspects of facing suffering is the appreciation that we gain of how things are for other people. Just as we suffer, so do they.

    If I am struggling to come to terms with a friend who has become increasingly distant, the chances are that there arehundreds, perhaps thousands of other people going through something similar at the very same time. So, with the acceptance and patience come a strengthening of compassion, which can become part of our deeper learning.

  • 12 Habits to Adopt to Make This Your Best Year Yet

    12 Habits to Adopt to Make This Your Best Year Yet

    Many of us head into the New Year with big goals and ambitions. We think about everything that seems to be lacking in our lives and imagine ourselves far happier and more fulfilled on the other side of massive change.

    There’s no denying that certain accomplishments can amp up our life satisfaction, but I’ve found that our daily habits are the biggest contributor to our happiness.

    You can have a job that excites you, the best body of your life, and the perfect partner for you, but none of it will fully satisfy you if you don’t also prioritize the daily habits that nurture your overall well-being.

    If you want to feel good about yourself and your life, you need to regularly do the things that make you feel peaceful, joyful, and alive.

    With this in mind, I recently asked twelve Tiny Buddha contributors (all involved in our upcoming Best You, Best Life Bundle Sale) to share one habit worth adopting in the New Year. Here’s what they had to say:

     1. Start the day with positive intentions.

    “The moment I wake up, I do not move. I hold still for several minutes. I contemplate qualities I would like to offer for the day.

    Then I silently repeat the following affirmations:

    I offer this day peace.
    I offer this day joy.
    I offer this day enthusiasm.
    I offer this day kindness…
    (or whatever qualities I would like to offer on that day).

    And I keep going until I feel I am done.

    Some days are harder than others, especially if I wake up very early, still tired, with the prospect of a long day ahead.

    However, this simple, pithy practice sets the right tone. It fills me with gratitude and it firmly places me on the right track.

    From that point on, my day goes well, and everything aligns in the best and highest way possible, even if/as and when challenges arise.”

    ~Personal Growth Teacher Julie Hoyle (juliehoyle.org)

     2. Practice mindfulness.

     “For someone seeking a change in their life—to stop doing something destructive, to start doing something healthier, to become more confident, to step into the version of themselves they know they really are—the single best habit to cultivate is mindfulness.

    Mindfulness is the skill of paying attention on purpose to the present moment without judgment. This is the first step to change. It helps you recognize when you are doing the thing you want to change. It helps you understand when you are stuck. It helps you realize what you are really feeling and thinking.

    It gives you the starting point of your map. You can recognize what is really happening—’Oh look, I jumped to the worst-case scenario again. That made me feel afraid and uncomfortable. So that’s why I am looking for an excuse not to go to the party.’

    From here you are able to step outside those emotions of fear and discomfort and look at the situation objectively. From here, you can create change. You can challenge your thinking. You can reframe the situation. You can remind yourself of where you want to go. You can make a plan.

    We so easily live on autopilot. That’s not because we are lazy. It’s simply the more efficient way for our brains to operate.

    Create a habit, and you don’t have to think about what to do the next time that situation comes up. That frees up energy for your brain to do other things. But efficiency does not equal excellence. This autopilot way of living leads us to not notice what is really going on. Without mindful awareness, we get stuck in our feelings, we ruminate like a broken record, we keep making the same unhealthy choices over and over again.

    It’s a very simple skill—to be aware. But there hasn’t been a strong biological or evolutionary need to cultivate this skill in order to survive which is why most of us do not have this skill naturally. We need to work on it. We need to repeat it over and over until it becomes a habit. But it is so worthwhile.

    It’s actually a very subtle shift in your thinking, yet incredibly profound. Like standing under a waterfall, then taking one small step back out of the water and seeing the waterfall in front of you. Small step, big difference.”

    ~Stress and Anxiety Coach Sandra Wozniki (stressandanxietycoach.com)

    3. Adopt a meditation practice.

    “You know that feeling when you’ve been away from home for a while and then you finally walk in the door? It feels good, right? It’s hard to put into words, but something in your heart opens.

    Home is a place where we can open because we feel safe, warm, and held. It’s a place where we know we can always come back to, no matter how long we’ve been away. There’s a feeling of belonging.

    For me, meditation is like this. A returning home. As my mind begins to quiet, there’s an increasing sense of stillness that comes forward, and my heart responds. Stillness brings a sense of peace, clarity, stability, and a deep sense of connection and being held.

    As we move through this life, we all crave that feeling of home. A foundation. A sense of belonging somewhere.

    We often create a sense of home in the world, in a physical location, to recreate what’s fundamentally accessed through our heart.

    Returning to stillness is a returning home at its most essential level.

    In a world where we’re constantly bombarded by distractions, stimulation, dramas and conflict, it’s easy to forget what home feels like. Add to this a busy, emotionally reactive, and self-judging mind, and it’s easy to forget that a sense of home, peace, and warmth actually exists inside us.

    It does!

    Stillness is always there, in the background of our awareness, ready and waiting to support us, but our mind is usually too busy to notice it. And when there’s drama, turbulence or overwhelm in our life, stillness offers a very stable place to rest. But if we don’t train ourselves to know stillness, then when the drama and turbulence comes, stillness will be hard to find.

    Meditation helps us remember and build our relationship to stillness by getting us out of our head and into our heart. The more we visit stillness through meditation the more it permeates us, which means it’s more available for us in everyday life.

    So, when we’re in a stressful situation it’s a matter of letting stillness hold you.

    Does this mean it will work every time? Not necessarily. But with consistent practice you’ll change your relationship to the things that trigger and drain you, because you’ve chosen to cultivate a different, more important relationship. A relationship to stillness.

    And your heart is the bridge.”

    ~Meditation and Mindfulness Instructor Ben Fizell (peacekeeperproject.com)

    4. Use mantras as affirmations.

    “I’m a big fan of using mantras as affirmations. Sometimes life can feel as though it’s spinning out of control, and our minds can conjure up daunting scenarios that increase our stress levels and add to anxiety. A simple mantra can be super effective in helping to cut through the noise and bring us back to a single focal point.

    One of my favorite go-to mantras is ‘I am safe. I am loved. I am good enough.’ I say this at least three times, further affirming the words with each repetition.

    I recommend creating your own mantra using words that feel grounding for you. Keep it short—a sentence or two is plenty. Using affirming words (especially out loud) can create a healthy and empowering habit of self-awareness and self-care.”

    ~Author and Artist Skylar Liberty Rose (skylarlibertyrose.com)

    5. Play in nature.

    “How you play in nature is up to you. It might mean sitting in your yard, on a balcony, or even next to an open window and allowing yourself to revel in a tree’s stillness or a bird’s melody.

    It might mean adventuring to a new neck of the woods, or ambling down a familiar path while taking the time notice all the little things we usually miss in our hurry or preoccupation: the soft, green moss; the startling blue tail of a lizard half-hidden under a rock; or the curious expression of a wren that’s watching you from the bush next to the trail.

    Not only does playing in nature reduce stress and anxiety and improve overall health, but it can also help us find our way, both literally and figuratively.

    It’s like Rumi says: ‘Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.’

    We have so few chances in our everyday life to practice following our hearts, however, that most of us have forgotten how to do it. Wandering freely under the open sky, following our curiosity and desire, we learn how to let go of trying to arrive somewhere and discover the joy of simply taking the next step on our own unique path.

    When I began to reconnect with the natural world, I couldn’t help but rediscover my own human nature: my true self, that is; the gifts I have to give the world and where I fit into the ecosystem of life.

    Walking through the woods, I began to realize that just like every other living being on this planet, I have an important contribution to make; that when my mind finally grows quiet, I can hear a soft voice of wisdom telling me what that might be; and that if I listen to that voice, I too can—to borrow Mary Oliver’s phrase—take my place in the family of things.”

    ~Certified Integral Coach Meredith Walters (meredithwalters.com)

    6. Try habit stacking.

     “I highly recommend a self-care practice I call ‘habit stacking.’ This is taking several small habits and putting them all together in one time slot, i.e. first thing when you wake up.

    For instance, you might begin by doing a short meditation, which would lead to drinking a quart of water, followed by ten minutes of stretches, and then maybe preparing a green drink. Habits are motivated by triggers, so each activity stimulates the desire in your body for the next one.

    Do these regularly at the same time for a few weeks, and they will become engrained. Your habit stacks can work at any time, day or night, depending on when you want to create your own self-care zone.”

    ~Author and Speaker Suzanne Falter (suzannefalter.com)

    7. Connect with your body daily.

    “One habit worth adopting in the New Year is to start taking a few minutes every day to connect with your body. Pay attention to how it feels, to how you feel. Consider how you want to feel and what you can do to bridge the gap between the two if there is any.

    This is super powerful because we get so caught up in obsessive thoughts about all the things we think we’re ‘supposed’ to be doing for our bodies (and usually end up not doing) that we never stop to just connect with and listen to what it actually needs.

    This also works for mental health. If you wake up feeling down, angry, stressed, overwhelmed, (etc.), ask yourself, what does my head/heart/soul need today? Often, you’ll notice that you really just need a break. Give yourself that. Or maybe you need to find something that feeds your soul and gets you feeling passionate about something in life.

    Too often we end up going through the motions of life living in survival mode simply because we’re so busy staying busy that we don’t stop long enough to figure out what we need to feel vibrant, joyful, and fulfilled.

    If you struggle with healthy eating, take this one step farther by applying it to food. Take a second before you eat to ask yourself, how is it going to make me feel if I eat this? Do I want to feel that way? Why? This is a super powerful tool because it provides space between an auto-pilot impulse and the action that follows, to make a conscious choice based on what’s best for your body in that moment.

    The other reason it’s super powerful is because it helps you to start noticing if/when you’re purposely punishing yourself with food.

    If you go through those few quick questions and decide to purposefully eat something knowing it’s going to make you sick or to continue eating when you’re already full and know that eating more will make you sick, (and you don’t care), you’re punishing yourself with food. Beginning to recognize when that’s happening is the first step to learning how to change it.”

    ~Cognitive Behavior Coach Roni Davis (ronidavis.com)

    8. Practice breathwork.

    “One habit that I think could benefit many people is to incorporate some form of breathwork into their routine. That could be simple mindfulness meditation, box breathing, or some of the more advanced pranayama work in yoga—whatever works for you. From my experience, just a few minutes a day can have a profound impact on stress levels and your quality of life.

    Whether you’re looking to be a stronger athlete, to support your mental health, to be a more present partner or friend, or be more productive at work, I can’t really think of any areas in life that aren’t improved by adopting a regular breathwork practice.”

    ~Movement Coach Luke Jones (heromovement.net)

    9. Be selective about the news sources you tune into.

    “It’s admirable to want to stay informed about current affairs, especially in an election year, but carefully choose news sources you trust and even then, limit your exposure. There’s no value in feeling indignant for half your day, having arguments on social media that you can never win, or getting angry over events or with people you have no control over. All that achieves is that you hand over your personal power to others who are more than happy to take it.”

    ~Certified Life Coach and NLP Master Practitioner Tim Brownson (adaringadventure.com)

    10. Add gratitude to your “sorry’s.”

    “I don’t just say, ‘I’m sorry.’ I also say, ‘Thank you.’ For example, instead of only saying, ‘I’m sorry I was late,’ I also say, ‘Thank you for waiting for me.’ And instead of merely saying, ‘I’m sorry I was sort of out of it the other day,’ I also say, ‘Thank you for being there for me both during good times—and my not so good times.’

    This subtle shift helps me to feel better about my human glitches. Plus, it also winds up improving my relationships—because I’m sharing my appreciation with people, and gratitude is a good heart connector.”

    ~Bestselling Author and Award-Winning Designer Karen Salmansohn (notsalmon.com)

    11. Talk to strangers.

    “One habit worth adopting in 2020 is talking to strangers. This is a habit I started picking up in 2010, and it has been the best change I’ve ever made in my life.

    Our relationships are probably the second most important determinant of our well-being, trailing only behind our health. All relationships and interactions—including the ones with strangers—play a massive impact on how much you enjoy each moment.

    By talking to strangers, you’ll improve your social skills, get better at connecting with people, and you’ll learn how to enjoy any moment with random people. When you’re able to go to a book club, a bar, or a work conference by yourself and have a good time, your life improves drastically.”

    ~Blogger Rob Riker (thesocialwinner.com)

    12. Get more and better sleep.

    “I have come to learn that the quality of our sleep dictates almost everything in our lives! It has an effect on our mental state, our physical health, our attitudes toward things, our relationships, and ultimately our success in each area of life.

    Sleep has taken a back seat in the world of healthy living with exercise and nutrition being in the spotlight. But all the evidence points to sleep being the foundation of our overall health.

    Science has shown that if we sleep poorly, we eat poorly and exercise poorly too. If we sleep well, we make better decisions, choose better foods, can exercise more effectively, and we can ultimately live a more rewarding, impact, and successful life. It has a domino effect.”

    ~Life and Performance Coach Brendan Baker (startofhappiness.com)

    —

    Do you already practice any of these habits? And are there any habits you’d add to the list?

  • Why You Have to Share What You Really Feel and Want in Relationships

    Why You Have to Share What You Really Feel and Want in Relationships

    “Any relationship that could be ‘ruined’ by having a conversation about feelings, standards, or expectations wasn’t really firm enough anyway, so there isn’t much to ruin.” ~Unknown

    So many of us believe that not expressing ourselves is a noble thing to do. We get to feel stoic and in control. Others get emotional and overwhelmed while we can keep it together. The idea that we are strong because we don’t express our feelings is also socially reinforced, so we keep doing it because it’s the right thing to do, right?

    Not quite.

    In my previous blog post “The Negative Impact of Not Feeling Your Feelings,” I explained how feelings are not problems or evidence that we are broken but merely there to guide us toward greater well-being. They are a reflection of our state of mind, and they try to alert us when we engage in unhelpful or even harmful thinking. We then have the opportunity to realign with what’s good, healthy, and nurturing for us.

    Based on the many questions and messages I received following that article, I now want to explore what happens to our relationships when we withhold our truth and inhibit our feelings.

    So, first of all we need to look at what is required to create a healthy and loving relationship.

    Relationships thrive in an environment of emotional safety, openness, and authenticity. This means that both people involved need to feel safe with each other, be safe for each other, and be willing to express themselves openly and authentically.

    Many of us did not grow up in households where this was allowed or possible. We learned that expressing ourselves can lead to humiliation, shaming, and rejection. This kind of distress can be unbearable for a child, so we learned to inhibit ourselves.

    But what keeps us safe as children usually negatively impacts our lives as adults. Inhibition now stops us from creating healthy relationships and developing true intimacy, something most of us value more than anything else.

    We inhibit ourselves every time we do not speak up or stand up for ourselves. In relationships, we often inhibit ourselves by hiding our feelings and therefore withholding what is true for us. We go along with what the other person wants whether we really want to or not.

    This is a direct block to intimacy. When we are not open or honest with what we are feeling and what is going on for us, we deprive others of the opportunity to really get to know us.

    However, we only do this because we believe that this is the way to be in relationships. It’s part of our relationship blueprint, the model of relationship we’ve inherited and internalized. In our eyes, we do what is right and what is required to maintain a connection. It is, after all, the very thing that allowed us to maintain our attachment bond during childhood.

    We learned that in order to have a relationship, we must not express ourselves or share our feelings. We believe that our feelings are problems for others and expressing them would threaten the relationship, and that’s the thing we don’t want to lose. So, by that logic, inhibition is the way to go.

    And that is true for unhealthy, superficial, or unfulfilling relationships. It just doesn’t work if you want to have healthy, intimate, fun, and overall life-enhancing relationships.

    I learned this the hard way …

    All my life I struggled to express myself in relationships. I struggled to ask for what I wanted and express how I felt. I didn’t communicate or set boundaries but felt betrayed if they were disrespected or violated. I had lots of different expectations that I never shared but felt absolutely heartbroken if they weren’t met.

    In my eyes, I was easy to be with because I didn’t ask for anything. I didn’t complain and I wasn’t demanding. I didn’t nag. I kept my feelings to myself and avoiding confrontation and conflict. But I could only believe that because I was not aware of the consequences of my behavior, which in the end would lead to the breakdown of my relationships.

    Not expressing myself in my relationships meant that I did not consider myself. This in itself is a disastrous starting point because a relationship requires two healthy participating individuals. There simply is no relationship if one person is pretty much non-existent.

    But not considering myself also put pressure on my partner to consider me in a way that was highly unrealistic. Knowing what I know now, this was never his sole responsibility. It was always mine. It is my job in a relationship to stand in my truth and express it so that my partner and I can co-create a relationship that works for both of us.

    It is also pretty impossible to consider someone well enough when you don’t know what they want or how they feel because they simply don’t share that with you. So this was a strategy that was never going to work. However, at that time in my life, I believed that my partner should know what I wanted or how I felt without me having to express it. A fatal lie of the mind.

    In healthy relationships, we teach each other about ourselves. We teach each other as we continuously grow and change by expressing what is going on for us. We tell each other what we like and what we don’t like. We share our feelings and how we impact upon each other. We are open to each other’s feedback so we can adjust if we choose to do so.

    This is how we create an environment for ourselves and each other that is nurturing, respectful, and loving. It is a perfect environment for well-being and growth, but it is one we must create ourselves by expressing what is true for us. There simply is no other way.

    We often stop ourselves from expressing what is true for us to keep the peace and maintain the relationship, but a relationship that cannot handle your truth is not a relationship you should be in.

    As adults, we are not dependent on any one person the way we were dependent as children. Our survival is no longer dependent on a caregiver. We now depend on ourselves. Our well-being depends on us making wise choices for ourselves, and that includes the people we choose to have in our lives. Those people should be people who are safe for us and who love the full version of us.

    I used to believe that withholding my truth by inhibiting my feelings and desires meant that I was a good partner and easy to be with. I felt good about the role I was playing. I thought I did the right thing. It also allowed me to keep relationships going.

    But I kept relationships going that weren’t meant for me (and quite possibly not for my partners either). I presented a version of myself that was inauthentic. I did not contribute myself—not fully, not authentically. I withheld my truth and in doing so, I deprived my partners of truly choosing me. They got the superficial version of me. A Stepford Wife version that was a lie. It was dishonest.

    I didn’t understand that a healthy relationship requires openness, authenticity, and honest self-expression. That was something that has never been part of my relationship blueprint. It was not something that had ever been allowed or encouraged in the past.

    And so, I followed my pattern. I desperately wanted a healthy relationship, but it looked like it just wasn’t going to happen for me.

    I couldn’t have what I wanted because I didn’t ask for it, and others didn’t consider me because I didn’t provide them with anything to consider. I relied on their guesses, which were usually wrong. I put my responsibility for my own well-being onto my partners and made myself dependent on their best guesses, which was never going to work out well for anyone.

    I am now a fierce advocate for self-expression. Self-expression as a way to well-being and healthy connections. Self-expression as an expression of self-care, self-respect, and self-love. Self-expression as the gateway to real, raw, and deep intimacy.

    Maybe, like ‘old me’, you believe that censoring yourself and inhibiting your feelings is good for your partner or your relationship. Maybe you feel stronger or tougher for doing so. Maybe you’ve never given it any thought before, and that’s okay.

    But please know that you are worthy of expressing yourself. You need to take up space. Your feelings and desires matter. They can’t matter to anyone if they don’t matter to you first.

    A healthy relationship requires you to be in it. All of you. You cannot experience deep connection and intimacy if you are not there for it. You cannot make good partner choices if you’re not honest with yourself or consider yourself.

    It is time to free yourself from old patterns that stop you from getting the love you want. It’s time to finally let yourself be heard and be seen. And all of that starts with you. Say yes to self-expression! Get honest with yourself about how you feel and what you want and don’t want.

    That is how you become safe for yourself and safe to be in a healthy relationship with.

  • 4 Sensitive Superpowers That Can Change Your Life (and the World)

    4 Sensitive Superpowers That Can Change Your Life (and the World)

    “You were born to be among the advisors and thinkers, the spiritual and moral leaders for your society. There is every reason for pride.” ~Elaine N. Aron

    Stop being so sensitive. Lighten up. You’re oversensitive. Stop overthinking. You’re weird.

    If you’re anything like me, you’ve had those words slung at you like rocks from a slingshot for as long as you can remember. The underlying message is clear: You’re too much. There’s something wrong with you.

    Your heart strings have always been like finely tuned antennae, picking up on even the most subtle signals of other people’s heartache and embarrassment. Witnessing someone in intense pain can cause you inner turmoil for weeks on end. And when you feel pain, it’s always intense.

    I get it. I can still remember clearly the first time I had my heart broken. We’d moved across the country, and my best friend mailed me a letter to formally let me know that, with me having moved away, we were no longer best friends. She had a new best friend and they had special nicknames for each other.

    It’s the kind of playground politics that have been going on since time immemorial, but I didn’t know this. It probably wouldn’t have helped if I did. It was my first time being rejected, and it hurt like hell.

    When I went back to that same school a few years later, no one would play with me. My friend was right: She’d moved on. So had everyone else in my class. At recess, I sat alone, eating my tomato sandwiches.

    One of the new boys started picking on me, calling me horrible names, while my former friends simply stood by and watched.

    My teacher picked up that something was wrong. She called us in and asked what was going on. When we’d shared our stories with her, I was stunned by her reaction.

    Instead of using it as an opportunity for learning and healing, she brushed the whole thing off. In that one seemingly insignificant action, she was upholding the message society gives us from the minute we’re born: Being sensitive is wrong. Being vulnerable is even worse. Just harden up already and get on with things.

    At the end of that year, when we went off to high school, the other kids voted for me to get the ‘loyalty’ award at prize giving. I wasn’t too young to get the irony.

    By high school, I was ready. I’d learned my lesson. Like many people who’d been told all their life they were too sensitive, I’d developed impressive armor. I would go into my teenage years knowing how to keep people out.

    By my twenties I’d perfected the art of keeping people at a distance.

    Then, in my thirties, I dared to ask myself: What if sensitivity is a good thing? The mere idea felt transgressive. But then again… what if it was? What if, in fact, sensitivity was a gift?

    I decided to do an experiment. At that point, I’d been to trillions of job interviews in two years, with no luck. Every time I’d got to one, I’d dress up in the stiff, corporate way I thought told interviewers you were capable. I was putting on my armor. Not this time. If sensitivity was a good thing, how would showing people that side of me be?

    I decided to embrace who I was. I dressed in a way that felt authentic to me. Something more artistic, flowy that to me, clearly signaled: Here is a sensitive, creative person. These are the qualities you’ll get when you hire this person.

    It worked! It was the best interview ever. We had an actual, meaningful conversation instead of the stilted kind of thing that usually goes on in interviews. They hired me.

    Today I’m utterly convinced there are many, many advantages to being sensitive, and I keep finding more. Here are some of the more unexpected gems that I just adore and that make me excited about being a sensitive person. I hope you’ll be just as enthralled.

    We’re super observant.

    Sensitive people are keenly aware of what’s going on around us at all times. In fact, highly sensitive people should actually be called highly observant people, says psychologist Elaine Aron, who created the scientific model for what it is to be a person with the trait of high sensitivity.

    We’re always scanning the environment and people around us in order to understand what’s going on and to make an emotional connection, usually at a speed that would send someone else reeling.

    How to use your gift of being observant: It’s no wonder employers report being more satisfied with sensitive workers. Being aware of every single detail—the ones to expect and the ones to eliminate—is a big plus in just about any job, from surgeon to event planner to researcher. It also makes us great with people.

    Highly sensitive athletes even report it being a plus on the sports field, where they don’t even have to see everything going on around them—it’s as if they can feel where the other players are, anticipating their next moves.

    Whether it’s building a rapport with your neighbors, knowing what your clients need, or noticing the tiny detail that makes all the difference in the product you’re creating, your gift of being observant is a massive plus for your personal life and career success.

    We’re deeply joyful people.

    When you’re told all your life that you’re “too sensitive” and “too emotional,” it can feel like you’re some sort of mopey Eeyore-type character. I remember being told my personality type was “melancholic,” which even as a child I knew was an old-fashioned word for depressed. Way to make someone feel good about themselves!

    Thing is, like me, you’ve probably always suspected that’s not the whole truth.

    Like me, you’re likely to be the person who laughs loudest in the cinema. The one whose friends are able to locate them by following their laugh in a theatre. The ones who, when they return after being away for a while, overhear their friends saying, “Aaah—that laugh. I’ve missed that laugh.’

    Truth is, sensitive people feel everything deeply—that includes happiness, joy, and exhilaration. We’re the kids who check out the environment thoroughly before using the flying fox or the water slide, and also the ones who feel the most exhilarated after finally taking that plunge.

    How to use your gift of joy:     Mindfulness is a bit of a buzz word these days and for good reason—in these busy times, it’s a great way to lower stress and increase your engagement with the physical world.

    When you’re already someone who notices the tiny detail on a leaf or the vivid turquoise of the kingfisher flying over the lagoon, it’s much easier to tap into mindfulness—and joyfulness.

    While I don’t like the term “overthinking,” as it feels very negative—seeing all the possible outcomes is a plus in many ways—we can sometimes get stuck in a rumination loop, feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed when faced with making a decision.

    This is when our ability to appreciate beauty, art, and joy becomes such a wonderful gift. Take time to notice the beauty around you and to just be, and feel your mood lift. Enjoying that walk in nature often brings clarity, allowing the solution to appear as if out of nowhere.

    We make superb leaders.

    If you’ve felt beaten down for a long time, it can feel like you’re just not cut out for a leadership role. Truth is, you’re uniquely equipped for this role.

    Not only do employers report more satisfaction with their sensitive employees, but studies show we make incredible leaders.

    It makes sense really—people want to follow someone they can trust.

    “Highly sensitive people miss nothing, while falling back to let team members shine and have the innate ability to say the right thing at just the right time,” says John Hughes, who trains corporate clients on how best to support their highly sensitive employees.

    Now that sounds like someone I’d want to follow!

    How to use your gift of leadership: We don’t often associate gentleness with leadership, so seeing yourself as a born leader might be hard right now.

    In reality, anyone who inspires people by their actions to live a better life is a leader. Right now, you might be an inspiring leader to your friends or your children.

    So ask yourself: Is this my season to take on a leadership role? Maybe you want to lead your volunteer group or apply for that management position at work. Maybe you’re in that stage of life when your career is drawing to a close and you want to pass on invaluable knowledge by mentoring younger people.

    Don’t be afraid—step up to that leadership position. No one can do this better than you.

    We’re innovators.

    When you look inside a sensitive person’s brain, you’ll notice that areas for understanding subtle cues are more activated. So are the ones for depth of processing.

    Noticing and thinking deeply about things allow us to combine ideas in novel ways. We’re born innovators.

    How to use your gift of creativity: The world is absolutely crying out for creative thinkers right now. Everyone from established corporate firms to small start-ups is actively seeking out innovative minds.

    The information era is most probably the very best time for a sensitive person to be alive. So, whether you use your creativity to contribute to a supportive workplace, to create your own business, or to raise one lucky family, you have it in you.

    If you believe in yourself and work hard, always following your principles and looking after yourself, the sky’s the limit!

    You Can Change the World

    As a sensitive person, you have unique talents and insights to offer the world.

    You’ve come a long way, learning more about yourself and slowly accepting the fact that being a sensitive person is not something to be ashamed of.

    In fact, you’re starting to see it as a gift—and you’re excited about the possibilities.

    You’re a keen observer, a fantastic leader, a natural-born innovator, a deeply joyful person and someone who benefits enormously from having—and creating—a supportive environment for yourself and others.

    With gifts like these, there’s no one better equipped to change the world. All you have to do is step out.

    The world needs you right now.

  • Take the 31-Day Healthier You Challenge (Giveaway!)

    Take the 31-Day Healthier You Challenge (Giveaway!)

    It’s almost that time again—the beginning of a New Year, when many of us consider how we can become happier, healthier, more fulfilled people.

    While I personally think we can create positive change at any time of year, I’ve always appreciated the sense of possibility that January brings. And I often try to start the year with healthy mini-habits that boost my physical and mental health—because everything’s easier from there.

    Whatever you want to accomplish—whether you want to make changes in your career, expand your social circle, or open yourself up to love—you’re better positioned to do it if you’re feeling good in mind and body.

    With this in mind, I put together a collection of practices in my 31-Day Healthier You Challenge, which you can download here. After downloading your copy, you’ll be entered to win a free Best You, Best Life bundle (available for purchase on January 2nd).

    Including 20 life-changing eCourses and online tools, valued at close to $1,900, this comprehensive package can help you live your most fulfilled life and become your most authentic self.

    The eCourses and online workshops cover passion, purpose, peace, presence, love, and more, which means the package can help you create meaningful change in almost every area of your life.

    Winners will be notified by email on Thursday, January 3rd.

    I hope you enjoy the challenges, and I wish you a healthy, happy New Year!

  • When Your Heart Is Broken, Just Keep Moving

    When Your Heart Is Broken, Just Keep Moving

    “Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have is not permanent.” ~Jean Kerr

    Here’s the thing no one tells you about dating—it sucks. The uncertainty, the inconsistency, the stress. Dating has always been easy for me. Or so I thought.

    The more I think back, the more I see I accepted things I really shouldn’t have in all of my relationships. I allowed my needs to be put last, I took on blame, and I stayed when I wasn’t made a priority.  For what reason I am still not entirely sure. But I can tell you this: When you meet someone in your late twenties that you believe you will spend your life with, you think you have it all figured out.

    And then you find yourself thirty and single.

    Dating in New York is hard. Just watch any Sex and the City episode. But what’s harder is learning how to sit with yourself. Learning how to take the risk of feeling the true depths of loneliness and fear—the fear of being alone, fear that no one will want you, fear of never being enough.

    But this is not about dating. No, this is about heartbreak.

    What do you do when you find yourself single after years in a relationship? You cry. You scream. You fall apart.

    Throughout the past year, I have done a lot of sitting with myself. And you know what? It’s horrible. It is by far one of the hardest things I have ever done. Imagine sitting on the floor, unable to pick yourself up, crying so hard your insides seem like they are coming out.

    That was me. Being picked up off the floor by my parents.

    Every part of me was shattered. Daily functioning was nearly impossible, and I couldn’t go an hour without crying. The man I loved with every part of me wasn’t going to be with me anymore.

    Then came the self-blame. I had been in relationships before, but this was the first man I pictured a life with. This was my fault; I wasn’t what he needed and I needed to fix this. This played in my mind over and over again.

    Anxiety took hold, and I was on a crusade to reach him and talk to him. Every attempt drove me deeper and deeper into a black hole of sadness. Until one day I just stopped trying to reach him.

    Over the past year, we have popped in and out of each other’s lives in some way. You might think that would make this all less painful. I did. But after every time we spoke, I was back down the rabbit hole of darkness.

    I tried everything I could think of to make the pain stop. I read all the articles, I read books, I got a pet, I meditated, I continued therapy, I put my all into going out with my friends, and in the silence the emotions still flooded me.

    The irony to all of this is I am a mental health professional, yet in the deep darkness of sadness, I couldn’t pull myself out. Here’s the biggest realization: You can’t make it stop.

    Severe heartbreak changes you. I don’t remember who I was fully before him. But I know who I am after him.

    To this day whenever my anxiety rises, I pick up my phone to call him. Do something different. Write, read, call someone else. Changing the pattern is hard but worth it.

    I will always have a permanent scar on my heart. I can point to it and show you exactly where my heart broke. Today it is stitched together. There are parts that are healed and parts where the sadness still comes through.

    You have to feel it. The intense emotion, the despair, the elation. It all plays a role in healing.

    I think I may always have moments of what could have been, but here today I am opening myself up to let the light in. To allow the possibility of someone else into my life.

    Here is what I have learned on my journey of healing so far.

    1. Don’t accept less than what you think you deserve.

    2. You will never be too much.

    3. You are enough.

    4. You are worthy.

    5. Some days just kind of suck.

    When you finally have stopped crying, the wind tends to blow thirty degrees to the left and boom, you are standing in the middle of a parking lot, tears running down your face. That’s okay. Accept it, live in it, and set it free.

    I didn’t see how I could go on without him in my life. Sometimes I still have moments of this. The memories flood my mind, my eyes well up with tears, and the pain in my chest makes me feel like my heart will explode any second.

    It gets better.

    Through all of this I have met some truly wonderful people and have discovered my badass inner warrior. I have found myself again and I am nourishing her daily. That means taking a moment to meditate in the morning, going for reiki healing, realigning my chakras, reading books, writing, and just stopping to let myself feel.

    Here I am today speaking my truth. A truth of love, light, heartache, pain and everything in between.

    My advice to you—breathe in, breathe deep, feel all of it, cry it out, laugh it out, embrace every single feeling. One day it all starts to feel normal again, and one day your heart will be open. You cannot wish it away no matter how hard you try.

    Setbacks are part of the process. Allow yourself the space to feel horribly sad and then pick up and keep going. It doesn’t matter what direction you are going in, just move.

    Lean in it. Feel it. Breathe it. Be it. Let it go.

  • 20 Powerful Quotes to Help Minimize Conflict and Drama

    20 Powerful Quotes to Help Minimize Conflict and Drama

    The holidays can be a lot of fun, but let’s face it, they can sometimes be stressful, particularly if you spend them with family. Surrounded by multiple generations of people, many with different perspectives and beliefs, it’s easy to feel triggered or annoyed.

    Then there are the challenges associated with going home, whether that means visiting a physical location or returning to the (possibly unhealthy) mental space you occupied as a kid.

    And if you do fall into old landmines, it’s all the more frustrating because holidays come but once a year, and they’re supposed to be joyful, right?

    If you anticipate today might be fraught with conflict or drama, take a few minutes to reflect on the following quotes (including a couple of my own). Perhaps something here might help you create a little peace—for yourself and the people around you.

    20 Quotes for a Drama-Free Holiday

    1. “The people who trigger us to feel negative emotions are messengers. They are messengers for the unhealed parts of ourselves.” ~Teal Swan

    2. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

    3. “Be selective with your battles. Sometimes peace is better than being right.” ~Unknown

    4. “Be kind to unkind people. They need it the most.” ~Unknown

    5. ““10% conflict is due to difference in opinion and 90% is due to wrong tone of voice.” ~Frank Viscuso

    6. “Practice the pause. Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you’re about to react harshly and you’ll avoid doing and saying things you’ll later regret.” ~Lori Deschene

    7. “No response is a response. And a powerful one. Remember that.” ~Unknown

    8. “When you can’t control what’s happening, challenge yourself to control how you respond to what’s happening. That’s where your power lies.” ~Unknown

    9. “Don’t make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.” ~Don Miguel Ruiz

    10. “Give people the benefit of the doubt, over and over again, and do the same for yourself. Believe that you’re trying and that they’re trying. See the good in others, so it brings out the best in you.” ~Liz Newman

    11. “We don’t have to agree on everything to be kind to one another.” ~Unknown

    12. “Be the person who breaks the cycle. If you were judged, choose understanding. If you were rejected, choose acceptance. If you were shamed, choose compassion. Be the person you needed when you were hurting, not the person who hurt you. Vow to be better than what broke you—to heal instead of becoming bitter so you can act from your heart, not your pain.” ~Lori Deschene

    13. “Life becomes easier when you let go of the little things that bother you and focus on what makes you feel good.” ~Unknown

    14. “You don’t need anyone’s affection or approval in order to be good enough. When someone rejects or abandons or judges you, it isn’t actually about you. It’s about them and their own insecurities, limitations, and needs, and you don’t have to internalize that.” ~Daniell Koepke

    15. “Think before you speak, and don’t say everything you think.” ~Alexander Lebed

    16. “Most disagreements are caused by different perceptions that created different realities.” ~Unknown

    17. “The true mark of maturity is when someone hurts you and you try to understand their situation instead of hurting them back.” ~Unknown

    18. “Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.” ~Dream Hampton

    19. “There can be disagreement without disrespect.” ~Dean Jackson

    20. “Instead of getting defensive, just say thanks for letting me know your thoughts. I’ll consider them.” ~Henry Cloud

    —

    Which of these quotes speaks to you the most? And do you have any to add to the list?

  • The Wounded Child Who’s Scared and Running Your Life

    The Wounded Child Who’s Scared and Running Your Life

    “The cry we hear from deep in our hearts comes from the wounded child within. Healing this inner child’s pain is the key to transforming anger, sadness, and fear.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    We all have a wounded inner child. Recently, my wounded child was hurt that my sister hadn’t called or texted me for several weeks. It seems like I’m always the one who has to reach out to her, and my wounded child feels like she doesn’t really care about me.

    My wounded child was also scared the other day, because I didn’t have a lot of work in the coming week, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t have enough money. The wounded child inside me felt frightened and alone in a big, scary world.

    And then my wounded child was angry, but I really know it was about fear and hurt again. You see, my ex-husband is refusing to send the spousal support he’s supposed to give me, and he won’t answer my emails. Feeling helpless and victimized, my wounded child wants to yell and scream and get even with him!

    The wounded child is another, and more accurate, way to think about your ego.

    This wounded child isn’t “wrong” or “bad.” It’s really just a child trying to take care of its needs in the best way it can. The problem starts when we let the child run our reactions and our lives without seeing it for what it is.

    The fact that you and I have wounded children inside doesn’t necessarily mean that we were neglected or physically abused as children—there are plenty of emotional wounds that we all experience growing up. The tender little child that you once were lives on in your adult body, experiencing the world as a place of danger and fear, always ready to defend or attack in order to “survive.”

    Your wounded child probably doesn’t show itself much when life is going well and you feel in control, but when something important to you is threatened, or you feel left out or disrespected or taken advantage of, that small child inside can make itself felt in a big way!

    The surge of negative emotions you feel in these situations is your cue that the wounded child is taking over. Typically, the emotions are fear, hurt, or shame, but each of these can also masquerade as anger. In fact, you can almost always count on anger to be a cover for a deeper, scarier emotion.

    This is because the child inside feels stronger and safer putting on a show of anger than actually admitting to the fear, hurt, and shame underneath.

    To make matters worse, consider the domino effect that takes place when my wounded child’s instinctive reactions trigger your own wounded child!

    We respond to our outsized emotions of fear and hurt, often with an equally outsized reaction of anger—which leads directly to another round of fear and hurt in you, and another, probably even greater, display of anger in response. And this happens all day, every day, in homes, businesses, and even governments around the world.

    But what can we do about it? The first and most important thing is simply to become aware of your wounded child and when it has been triggered. When you feel an outsized emotion, or one that lingers inexplicably, tune in to it rather than accepting it without question. If the emotion is anger, look deeper.

    Does it feel as if someone is threatening you in some way? Do you feel unseen, overlooked, taken advantage of? Just as with real children, these are all situations that trigger the wounded child inside.

    Do you feel lonely, scared, ashamed or embarrassed? Children often feel inherently powerless and alone in a large and bewildering world.

    Remembering your own childhood, or thinking of the children in your life today, is the key to learning how to care for your own inner child. If there was a sad, frightened two-year-old in front of you right now, or even a very angry two-year-old, would you ignore or berate them? Would that help?

    The wounded child inside of you is exactly the same. He or she is trying very hard to make it in that large and bewildering world. When you take this perspective, it’s easy to see how our reactions are ruled by emotions that seem out of proportion to the events that triggered them. We aren’t reacting as the adults that we are, but as the powerless children we once were.

    When that happens, the best thing you can do to soothe your inner child is to have compassion for yourself. Recognize that you feel angry, hurt, or scared, and that your initial reactions are probably coming from your wounded child. Take a step back, take a deep breath, even put your hands over your heart.

    As with actual children, although we may not be able to solve the problem for them, compassion and recognition from an adult go a long way toward making it easier to bear.

    You can be that adult for your inner child, once you become aware of their needs. Often the emotions that felt so overwhelming in the moment will simply melt away once you understand their true cause. And, when you’ve acknowledged and cared for your inner child, you’ll be able to choose a reaction rather than letting it choose you!

    The process works in reverse as well:

    When you see that it is really a wounded child driving the actions of others, you can have compassion for them and cut off the cycle of action and reaction even before you’re triggered.

    This is (usually) what happens for me around my ex-husband now. I recognize that he’s actually feeling scared and ashamed, which leads directly to his anger and unkindness. It’s much easier to forgive him when I remember that he is also a wounded child! Nothing is served when I let my wounded child react in turn. At the very least, I suffer. At worst, the situation blows up even further.

    Any social arena you fear can also be made easier by remembering that other people, no matter how successful and confident they may appear, are harboring a wounded child who is every bit as scared and vulnerable as yours. This is especially true of people who appear aggressive and intimidating.

    Becoming aware of your own and others’ wounded children will transform your relationships and your experience of life. It is the key to self-compassion, which in turn leads to compassion for everyone else.

  • The Simple Tools That Have Saved My Mental Health

    The Simple Tools That Have Saved My Mental Health

    “Think of the world…you carry within yourself and set it above everything that you notice about you. Your inmost happening is worth your whole love, that is what you must somehow work at, and not lose too much time and too much courage in explaining your attitude to people.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

    My twenties taught me many things about navigating the outside world as an adult. Ironically, the biggest lesson was learning to pay close attention to my inner world.

    I turned thirty years young this year. Being on the cusp of a new decade feels momentous.

    Over these last ten years, I have struggled with depression, anxiety, and a crippling lack of self-confidence. On more than one occasion, I have looked down the dark abyss that awaits anyone with mental health issues. I even underwent counseling and therapy, sought recourse in medication, opened up to friends, and plunged myself unapologetically into the “self-help” universe.

    As I share my own battle, this frankness and willingness to be vulnerable may come as a surprise to some. Even in the modern world, the stigma of mental health illness remains omnipresent. We are conditioned to just “deal with it as a passing phase,” “snap out of it,” or, “toughen up.”

    Men, especially, are forced into a unidimensional version of masculinity—any outward display of emotion is a weakness.

    We are indoctrinated with the notion that illnesses of the mind are illegitimate and unworthy of public discourse.

    Despite limiting beliefs around open conversation, very few are spared from mental illness in their private lives. Once others see a possibility for dialogue, they begin to share too.

    Showing your bleeding wounds to another human being requires courage. But authenticity is infectious. We might inspire others with our determination to remain vulnerable and ask for help. Over these last few months, several friends and acquaintances have shared their personal struggles with me.

    Every time another person tells me they feel overwhelmed by their brains, my heart breaks a little. Incessant dark thoughts and emotions have taken over their daily lives.

    The problem of mental ailments, like depression and anxiety, is that unshakeable feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. You feel that there is no way out and, no matter what happens, the bad feelings will never go away. This distorted version of the truth presented by our brains convinces us that we have no agency.

    I know that numbed, broken version of one’s self that emerges as a result of these illnesses. But things can get better and, sure, it is not instantaneous; recovery may require several approaches. Today, I want to share what I have learned through my own experience.

    Wisdom is nothing but the ability to offer a piece of yourself to another human being. I wish I could reach out to every person in the world who is suffering from a mental health problem. I want to tell you that there is hope, lurking even within the shadows. To summarize the common tools that have helped me feel better, I list three. And remember, none of these take time: they actually make time—better use of your time.

    1. Meditation

    A few years ago, I started meditating daily. It has changed my life. I started out with cynicism (like many people): How can I sit so still when I feel so empty and tired? How will I quieten my constant mental chatter? Don’t I first need to feel calm to even think about meditation? Does it even work?

    The response to all of the above questions and any others that are keeping you from meditation is: just do it and keep at it. Yes! You don’t need all the answers beforehand. You don’t need to be spiritual. You don’t need to join a retreat, become a yogi, or spend hours.

    You don’t need perfection, you need practice.

    Find a quiet place, close your eyes, put on earphones, and follow a guided meditation. Or if you prefer, do one yourself. And let go of the worry about doing it right, there is no such thing! It is time you take for yourself, and what can be better than making yourself a priority?

    Meditation helps refresh my mind-space amidst the darkest spells. It has brought me closer to my inner self. It has led me to observe my thoughts, not alter, judge, or arrest them—just observe them like traveling clouds. Meditation has taught me to look inward and enjoy the stillness in my core, despite all the worries and anxiety in the foreground.

    Honestly, just try it; you’ll find it addictive once you begin to build the muscle of meditation. Remember to stick with it though—meditating is a habit, a journey and not an intrinsic skill. No one is “made” for meditation, we all learn it. So be patient with yourself.

    2. Mindfulness

    Writer Eckhart Tolle talks about the tendency of our minds to forever escape the present moment. We are too much in the past or too much in the future. In his life-altering book The Power of Now, he says all our worries, fears, and anxieties stem from this predisposition. Mindfulness is the practice of grounding of one’s self in the now, in this moment: this breath, just as it is.

    Easier said than done? I agree! Also why I believe that, like meditation, mindful awareness is a practice, a discipline.

    That said, each one of us has experienced mindfulness presence without realizing it. Every time a sunset, a panorama, a movie, a song, or a loved one takes your breath away and you are suspended in bliss—you are mindfully present. You are nowhere else but in that moment of joy. Doing this even without the positive stimulus is the challenge.

    A key element in mindfulness is acceptance or surrender: not adding to the suffering of a moment by wishing it were otherwise.

    When we resist reality, our present life-situation, we unconsciously build up resistance to what is, the “is-ness” of this moment. And resistance isn’t bad—on the contrary, resistance is what we can use to become mindful and present! However, surrender does not mean inaction; it means accepting what exists as true before deciding if action is necessary. Reaction is impulsive, mindful action is deliberate and, in my case, wiser and calmer.

    Preventatively drawing my attention to the present, at regular intervals during the day, has helped me strengthen my awareness.

    Sometimes when I am walking, I quietly try to observe my physical body, my breath and my energy. My aliveness. Mindfulness means becoming the witness: noticing that you’re noticing. Thoughts will pop like bubble-wrap but if you don’t engage with them, don’t build a story or try to use words and labels, they will slide away.

    Focus on the sensations, the feelings you’re feeling; not the noise in your mind. The witness inside is the mindful, true Me. When I glimpse that dimension, free from mind and outer body, even for a split second, I know I am free and at peace.

    3. Self-love and gratitude

    Like many, I grew up with a brittle sense of self. Growing up I was the model student. Yet, in my teens and early twenties, I began to spiral into shame and self-hate. As I navigated different cultures, countries, languages, and expectations over the last decade, I often found myself feeling stuck. I felt inferior, unworthy, inadequate, different and “foreign.” Feeling like an outsider only reinforced my innate lack of self-esteem.

    I still struggle with those feelings of not being good enough, tall enough, smart enough, successful enough, handsome enough, rich enough, white enough, and the list goes on. I have to remind myself, consciously and repeatedly, that I am enough. No matter where I live, what I do or look like, I am complete and I am okay.

    Self-love might sound selfish and egotistic. But in fact, the most important person in your life is you! You need to be okay to help and love others. Self-love means being gentle to yourself, not insulting yourself when you fall or make mistakes.

    I had to learn to take care of myself as I would a close friend or loved one. It doesn’t come easy because we are raised in a culture where putting your own sense of self last is virtuous, a thing to be proud of.

    I believe we all need to learn to love ourselves, just the way we are. I would go so far as to say, that is the whole game. It’s a tricky one to win, but we ought to keep trying. Start simply: Check your thoughts when you pity yourself or put yourself down (yes, you know that negative self-talk where your brain tells you how slow/fat/ugly/poor/lonely/unloved/silly you are!).

    When we can look at ourselves in the mirror and feel genuine love for the person we see—true deep affection for our whole selves, with all the bad and good —that’s unconditional self-love. I told you, it won’t be easy, but it is rewarding. When you can be fully you, life is simpler.

    While self-care has taught me to appreciate myself, exactly as I am, daily gratitude has helped expand that compassion to a wider range of things. Every day I give thanks for being alive, healthy, able-bodied, young, loved, taken care of, with comforts (food, water, shelter, money), luxury, and freedom.

    Gratitude radically changes my perspective—from focusing on deprivation, on what’s missing, it throws light on what I do have. It can make us connected to reality in a more balanced and harmonious way. Gratitude, for myself or life, has helped me come unstuck when everything feels wretched and uphill.

    —

    Growing up is a process, life a constant journey. Along the way, these practices are helping me understand that I can feel better and be better. Ultimately, we all wish to experience joy and be at peace with ourselves. This is a reminder for me and you—to reach out and proactively work towards our own well-being. Talk and share with others. Stay open.

    Next time things aren’t going well, try to meditate or maybe focus on the present moment. Or give thanks for all that you do have and be kind to yourself. Speak to a friend or a specialist. And if it helps, read this again.

  • Compassion Is the Key to Overcoming Hardship (and Insomnia)

    Compassion Is the Key to Overcoming Hardship (and Insomnia)

    “You can never know how many lives you’ve touched, so just know it’s far more than you think. Even the tiniest acts of love, kindness, and compassion can have a massive ripple effect. You have made the world a better place, even if it doesn’t seem like it.” ~Lori Deschene

    I never had trouble sleeping until I got divorced. I never had a nervous breakdown either. Bankruptcy, fighting for custody of my children, and losing my business and my home definitely pushed things over the edge.

    What made matters worse is that unabated, stress-related sleep deprivation can lead to difficulty functioning, depression, and incredible self-loathing.

    In other words, insomnia completely messes with your mind.

    Having a psychiatrist in the family should have been helpful; at least he was well-intended. And, while it’s not exactly best practice to prescribe for a relative, I was literally frozen in my bed, eyes wide open for way too many nights in a row, with two small children to care for.

    I was living in Las Vegas and desperate for help. He was in New York, near the rest of my family. Out of love and pity, he conceded.

    We started with Ambien for the first few nights. Nothing. We tried Lunesta which made me more wakeful. I am pretty sure the move into Restoril is what made me break. 

    According to rxlist.com, Restoril can “cause paranoid or suicidal ideation and impair memory, judgment, and coordination.  “

    Taking Restoril did not restore my sleep. It caused me to temporarily lose my mind.

    Lying in bed, my eyes were glued wide open in panic. I was convinced that my children would be taken away to be raised by their father and his girlfriend, while I would be locked up in some random psych ward, forever wearing a white hospital gown.

    I would lose everything and bring complete shame to myself and my family.

    What had gone wrong?

    I was born happy and easygoing; nothing much ever fazed me. I was an independent, self-assured child who had grown into a strong, grateful woman. I was a free-spirited artist, always known for “looking on the bright side.”

    Now, lying in sleepless wait, taking my own life frequently floated in and out of my extremely messed-up mind. Thankfully, I always concluded that I could never abandon my children or destroy my family.

    Still, I was so completely traumatized that I literally could not move unless absolutely necessary. My meditation cushion was next to my bed; I had just started this practice and did not yet have strong skills. All I knew was that after I sat, I could gather myself enough to care for my sons.

    I can’t recall if it was two or three weeks that passed in what I now refer to as my “psychotic break.”

    I do remember my relative, the doctor, saying, “Elizabeth, I’ve given you enough sedatives and tranquilizers to take down an elephant, and you’re still not sleeping. There is a chance you are bipolar. It can have a very fast onset, and it runs in our family.”

    Bipolar? Me? Little Miss Sunshine?? That was all I needed to hear.

    I had started a business designing clothes that had taken off too quickly, requiring me to spend time in Los Angeles. Since my children were with their father two weeks of the month, I had rented a tiny studio in Topanga Canyon, a beautiful, peaceful, hippie enclave between the Valley and Malibu.

    I knew my only hope for sanity was in that canyon, but my lease was up and I had no money. My mother, terrified for my sanity, gave me the last month’s rent.

    I tossed out the meds, got into my car (against better judgment), and drove the four hours from Vegas to Topanga. On the way, I stopped at Whole Foods and bought at least three different natural sleep remedies with clear instructions on how to use them.

    The first few nights I tossed, sweated, and pitched. My meditation cushion was the only place I could find relief, so I was sure to sit on and off, even just for a few minutes, whenever I could drag myself out of bed.

    During the day, I forced myself to take short walks because I knew if I did things that were “normal,” eventually I would be.

    After four days and nights detoxing, I finally slept. Not soundly and not all the way through, but the spell was clearly broken. I was taking Valerian, a remedy called “Calms,” and melatonin. 

    By the end of the week, my nightmare seemed to be over.

    Months later, I realized I’d had a nervous breakdown. My nervous system was shot, and I suffered tremendous repercussions for well over a year.

    After that, my meditation practice grew stronger by the day. And, while my sleep improved, the rest of my life was still extremely challenged. My business failed badly. My former business partner sued me and put a lien on the house I had purchased with borrowed money. My ex-husband filed bankruptcy, which fell onto me.

    With no business, no income, and no way to sell my house because of the lien, I was looking at huge debt plus a mortgage I had no way of paying. I had very little alimony or child support. The relationship with my ex had become a battleground, littered with the torn parts of our once happy life.

    I had one choice: to step up or give up.

    I remember wondering, if I was having such a hard time getting through a divorce, how did people overcome the worst things imaginable? 

    How could a mother survive losing a child?

    I made up my mind to find out that answer and share it with others.

    I knew I could write but needed help with marketing. An ad on Craigslist led me to Angela Daffron, who ran a small marketing business. She was a stalking victim who had become an advocate for other victims.

    Angela’s story was devastating, and she clearly had become empowered through helping others. But I needed to understand surviving pain on an even deeper level.

    I tracked down Candace Lightner, whose fourteen-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a drunk driver with four prior convictions. Candace had led a one-woman, grassroots, pre-Internet crusade against drunk driving and founded MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). Today, MADD has been estimated to have saved close to 600,000 lives.

    More recently, Candace had founded “We Save Lives,” another non-profit devoted to ending drugged, drunk, and distracted driving.

    I needed to know how Candace got out of bed the day after Cari was killed.

    I found her email online and reached out. Candace was incredibly generous with her time—that conversation was the first of many that evolved into a deep, lifelong friendship.

    Keeping others safe on the highway was Candace’s life’s mission, and she let nothing get in her way.  Cari’s life had to serve a purpose; through that, Candace discovered a path through her pain.

    I continued interviewing women who had been through hell and back, so I could learn. So I could share. So I could recover. A pattern emerged:

    Mary Griffith’s son Bobby was gay, and Mary could not accept him. Bobby killed himself by jumping off an overpass into ongoing traffic.

    Mary became one of the greatest LGBT advocates of her day.

    Eva Eger had been forced to dance for famed SS leader Joseph Mengele in Auschwitz. She survived the Holocaust but lost her entire family.

    Eva became a psychotherapist.

    Deanne Breedlove’s son Ben passed from heart disease at just eighteen years old. Before he died, unbeknownst to anyone, Ben made a video that shared a near death experience with all of the peace, love, beauty, and angels that he experienced.

    Ben passed on Christmas Day 2011. By the next morning, his video had gone viral around the world.

    Deanne devoted her days to volunteering at Dell Children’s Hospital, where Ben had spent so much of his life. She offers love and support to parents with sick and dying children.

    My learning continued. Writing stories about loss, rape, and homelessness with everything in-between, made it clear: Compassion was key to overcoming hardship.

    And, it wasn’t necessary to write a book, change laws, or start a non-profit. Compassion could mean showing up for anyone in some small way… even if that “anyone” was you.

    I became more compassionate. I meditated, spent more time in nature, and took better care of my body. I paid more attention to my roles as a daughter, sister, friend, and mother. I learned to pause and make sure that, if someone needed me, I was there.

    I became a much better listener, especially with my children.

    I was also fired up with the purpose of sharing what I had learned with others.

    With all of these changes, my outer world hadn’t yet caught up with my inner world. My spirit was stronger, but I was still struggling financially and emotionally. I still could not reconcile the mess I had made of my life. 

    I fell into the bad habit of continually beating myself up for my mistakes, spending sleepless nights doing the life review of all the ways I had messed up, over and over again.

    I also did not know that the unconscious mind cannot differentiate the past and the present.  Somewhere deep in my psyche I believed that difficulty sleeping meant I would go off the deep end again.

    The anxiety around sleep became worse than the insomnia itself.

    I went to a sleep specialist to ensure there was nothing physically wrong. My internist prescribed medication for when insomnia hit really hard. I found a hypnotherapist who helped re-train my subconscious. When I woke in the night, I meditated so my body could find rest.

    This time, sleep deprivation was not taking me down. 

    I was referred to a website called WIFE.org, which stands for the Women’s Institute for Financial Education. WIFE was the nation’s longest running non-profit devoted to female financial literacy. On the home page, I saw that, for $1, I could order a bumper sticker that read, “A Man is Not a Financial Plan.”

    In that moment, I understood that if I could personally help women through their divorces, I would survive.

    Two days later, I landed on co-founder Candace’s Bahr’s doorstep. She and her partner, Ginita Wall, were two of the nation’s greatest advocates in helping women become financially literate. They had also been running a workshop called “Second Saturday: What Every Women Needs to Know About Divorce” for almost twenty-five years.

    Second Saturday provided free legal, financial, and emotional advice for women in any stage of divorce, beginning with just thinking about it.

    I let Candace and Ginita know I was going to advocate, volunteer, and work for them. I told them they were “never getting rid of me.” Within one year, I raised enough money to help them roll Second Saturday out nationally.

    Three years later we had gone from two locations to over one hundred and twenty.

    Every Second Saturday, I bared my soul and told my awful tale to groups of women in the most vulnerable possible way I could. Just as I had been, they were terrified. I wanted them to know that they were not alone, and they would survive.

    I also wanted to let them know that their lives would unfold in remarkable ways.

    In sharing my darkest moments, I helped them get through theirs. From that space, my true healing began.  

    When I was helping others, I forgot my own pain. And, when I saw how my story helped others, my journey of forgiveness began, beginning with myself.

    With all of this new awareness and an amazing, supportive community, my struggles had less and less impact. I continued working with Candace and Ginita, and slowly but surely, my outer life began to shift.  I made art to soothe my soul and created a program to share artmaking with other women.

    My children were the true center of my world, and I made the most of every moment I had with them. I became more and more grateful for every part of my life, including—and especially—the struggles.

    Had I not gone through a terrible divorce, I never would have met Candace Lightner, Mary Griffith, Eva Eger, Deanne Breedlove, Candace and Ginita, and so many other remarkable people.

    I never would have helped thousands of women get through their own struggles.

    I would never have understood that we are all born with infinite gifts that we were meant to share with others.

    Insomnia had led to compassion and purpose.

    Eventually, I fell in love and married again. This time with a man who supported every part of my being, including my artist’s soul. My purpose in helping others transformed to our joint purpose: sharing the healing benefits of art.

    We founded “The Spread Your Wings Project,” a non-profit with a mission of being an uplifting response to the tragedies faced by our nation today. We are blessed to make massive pairs of angel wings in community with children.

    We are humbled and grateful to have worked with Dell Children’s Hospital, and the city of Las Vegas, in honor of lives lost on 10/1/17.

    Today, we are incredibly honored to be partnering with Dylan’s Wings of Change, a foundation borne of the Sandy Hook shooting. Ian Hockley lost his beautiful six-year-old Dylan on that tragic day. In Dylan’s honor, he founded DWC and “Wingman,” an educational curriculum that teaches children compassion, empathy, and inclusion.

    What could be more important than that?

    We are launching “Spread Your Wings with Wingman,” where we will build massive angel wings with schoolchildren across the country.

    What an incredible gift for someone who believed her life was worthless!

    Two weeks ago, I had a few rough nights. Instead of spiraling down the insanity vortex, my older, wiser self took over. I embraced my sleep struggles as a sign to practice more self-love.

    I slowed down. I listened to the trees. I created more boundaries with people and technology. I counted my blessings that everyone I love is healthy and well, at least in this moment. I sent more prayers and gratitude to the amazing people who, through their stories, helped me re-write mine.

    I dove into preparation for “Spread Your Wings with Wingman,” and remembered everything I learned, beginning with this:

    Compassion—beginning with self-compassion—is the key to a good night’s sleep.

  • When You’re Tired of Trying: Lessons in Mindfulness from a Woodpecker

    When You’re Tired of Trying: Lessons in Mindfulness from a Woodpecker

    “The antidote to exhaustion isn’t rest. It’s wholeheartedness.” ~David Whyte

    Crouched down in a cold clump of leaves in the woods, I watch a woodpecker. Persistent, unbothered, moving up and down a tree next to me. It is methodically tapping its beak bit-by-bit looking for something to eat. I watch and wonder… Aren’t you tired of this relentless pursuit? Tired of smashing your face again and again with the odds stacked against you? How fleeting disappointment must be for you.

    Not me. I take one bump and the disappointment reels through me. I desperately seek ease, my eyes always halfway gazing elsewhere looking for relief, wondering when I can stop trying so hard.

    My mother used to talk about her own persistent struggles like “smashing your head into a brick wall.”

    But you, my woodpecker friend, don’t seem to be struggling or frustrated. You simply move on moment by moment in pursuit, unbothered by the repetition of trying again and again. Not worried about what happens next, what the outcome of each tap against the tree is. This is your life, the persistent pursuit of nourishment moment by moment.

    Tap, tap, tap—look for food. Tap, tap, tap—try again. Tap, tap, tap—no time for disappointments. Tap, tap, tap—that would be silly, counterproductive to living.

    Today I sit and watch you. It’s early morning and my body is already buzzing with stress. My baby crying, children fighting, another night without sleep.

    I am six months postpartum with baby number three, and I have been struggling to adjust to my new life. All my energy has gone into trying to cope, provide for, and nourish my growing family.

    I am supposed to have it together at this point in my life, I should have made some progress by now. I wasn’t supposed to have to try this hard. I teach people how to manage their stress through art, the daily grind is my muse! But today I can’t step out of my own fog. I can’t prescribe myself time to create and breathe, I am just too tired.

    We hear the word “grind” a lot these days. A collective acknowledgement that daily living in the western world is full of bumps, abrasions, and sparks. The notion that not all stress comes from the big dramatic life moments of life and death, pain, and suffering. Much of it comes from the momentary energy we put into trying to shape and survive in our day to day lives.

    The details of my life’s challenges are specific and particular to me, but most of us can relate to this feeling of a boiling point—where we can’t take it anymore, where the stress is too much, and we are tired of trying. Each of us dances between our own tiny stories of struggle and joy in a day.

    Sometimes coffee isn’t enough.

    Sometimes more sleep can’t help.

    Sometimes it feels like all my trying is only making it worse. Like there is no influence, no mark I can make in this world, or in my life.

    Sometimes all my therapy, self-help books, and good advice are just beyond my reach.

    Sometimes I am locked in a moment where showing gratitude feels like a boulder I just can’t lift.

    It’s so hard to pick yourself back up when all you want to do is close your eyes and find some quiet.

    Usually, I am the kind of person who thinks that change is always possible, that my pain is fleeting, that improvements can always be made. That it’s my duty to try and make the world a better place.

    My husband and I joke that we are constantly tweaking things searching for a better flow in our lives. We are always informing each other that we have made a new change for something in our home, moving a pot from its old drawer to a new one, trying to make new systems for managing the chaos of laundry, children, and our lives. We just keep trying.

    We each hold a sincere belief that with each new tweak it will improve things for us. It’s easily one of our best attributes as a couple, we are both persistently interested in bettering ourselves, our lives, and our community. We know that we have agency and influence in our world, so we try to use it for good.

    But it’s also a trap. A set up for disappointment. Call it attachment, call it the grass is always greener. Whatever you call it, the outcome is the same: You become swept away looking for something better, more, or just different. All this trying and lifting and doing can be a setup just weighing us further down.

    And then before you know it, you find yourself on the verge of tears, fleeing your life, huddled in a cold clump of leaves in the woods with no resolve or ounce of resilience to be found. And this is the morning I found the woodpecker, the morning I fled my house in exhaustion. Tired of feeling like I can’t catch up.

    On this day I was tired of enduring the grind of wanting more. So, I sought refuge in the bluff behind my house. I closed the door and walked away from my family and the stress, setting the intention to find a place to just be still in the woods, hoping it would offer me some peace.

    And this is the morning where things shifted for me, where the woodpecker came to me showing me how to be in between each tap of its beak. You, my persistent woodpecker friend, have come at just the right moment…

    Tap, tap, tap, the persistent woodpecker calling to me. I watch and I listen. It’s showing me how it’s done. To keep showing up in each moment. Tap, tap, tap, a genuine presence. Tap, tap, tap, just try again. Tap, tap, tap each moment born anew.

    What if I never get it right, never quite arrive, never work it out? But what if it’s actually just about showing up again and again, finding little treasures in the moment and continuing on? No past resentments, no future longings. Just a willingness to show up each day and try, and try, again and again and again.

    I watch and listen to the woodpecker. I watch and see that it doesn’t stop and wallow in disappointment when it works so hard without reward. It moves on persistently trying because it has to, because that’s what living is. Tap, tap, tap.

    It felt like the woodpecker was here to show me how to be. Reminding me that with each moment I feel amiss, that all I need to do is show up again to the next. That this grind is temporary, that I can feel it, notice it, and come to the next moment fresh and continue to try. I don’t need to endure the grind; I can use my influence and agency in this world and keep trying to find the nourishment I need to thrive. Each moment is a new beginning, a new chance to shape my world again.

    So, I took a breath and decided to do what I know helps me be present and whole—I created. I walked for a while and then hopped off the path… and that’s when all the magic began (and just for the record this is always where it happens, in that moment when we hop off the regular route and move to the land of curiosity.)

    I found something I had been longing to find all summer and fall. Wasp paper. A bird had found an old wasp nest and torn it apart. Tattered little bits of the former hive were strewn about. It felt like a gold mine. It was a piece of magic right in my hands.

    So, I breathed. I tinkered. I made a few installations with all of the wonders around me. I tried. I showed up in this little pocket in the woods. I let my thoughts and stress fall to the foreground, and I found my breath.

    I tried again looking for stillness. I let go of the desire to brood, to wallow, to hold onto the fretting that occupied my morning. I found my breath and I just tried to be in the woods with these treasures. I spent time with them, slowed down, and played with their arrangements taking a few photos.

    As I began to create with presence, I could feel a shift happening inside me. I was shaping the world around me, and as I did, I could feel my inner landscape being shaped to. I felt relief. I felt my fog lifting. I began to feel calm, but my gaze was already tempted to move to what was to come next. The temptation to be anywhere but now, is a constant lure.

    Then I reminded myself that today I showed up, in this moment here and now, I actually did it. I remind myself that it’s the act of showing up, not the outcome that’s most important. I release myself from future progress. Today I showed up in this pocket in the woods and made something. Tap, tap, tap because that’s what living is.

  • How to Avoid Emotional Burnout This Holiday Season

    How to Avoid Emotional Burnout This Holiday Season

    Whether you celebrate or not, the holiday season can be stressful for many reasons. From experiencing difficult emotions like grief, anger, or resentment that seem to resurface out or nowhere, to the pressures of making everything perfect for everyone, there’s a lot of opportunity for emotional burnout.

    I’m no stranger to painful emotions re-emerging around this time of the year. Christmas used to trigger in me the feelings of loneliness and guilt for years, following my move across the country and away from my family and friends.

    Moving was a conscious choice my husband and I made soon after we married. We were no strangers to uprooting our lives—we left behind most of our families, friends, and even parts of ourselves moving to America a decade earlier. But it’s one thing to do that when you’re single, and another when you’re growing as a new family and don’t have your parents and siblings supporting you through the thick and thin of building a life.

    One of the unintended consequences we had not considered was not being with our families around the holidays, birthdays, and other important moments in our lives. Once we had children, it was often impossible to travel home, and as much as we tried to make the best of it, holidays had an underpinning of sadness, isolation, and depression.

    The most painful for me was that our children had no grandparents, aunts, or cousins around throughout most of the year—and this pain was magnified around the holidays.

    In the early years especially, I felt an enormous amount of guilt for taking that feeling of community and familial support away from my children. The sadness was often crippling. I tried to put on a happy face for my babies, but inside I was often lonely and depressed.

    I also had to face the mounting sense of abandonment I felt every time my family couldn’t or wouldn’t spend the holidays with us. For many years I felt unsupported, unimportant, and unloved. This only brought my childhood experiences of feeling neglected and unseen to the surface. Eventually, I realized I had to heal my past in order to shift how I experience the present.

    Over the years I learned to step back from my pain and look at it differently. My perspective slowly shifted as I learned to set healthier boundaries, have more realistic goals and expectations, resolve my past traumas, reach out for support, and take care of my own needs. Mindfulness and the willingness to do the work is what made it all possible.

    1. Practice mindfulness.

    When things get hard, we must try to accept and allow what is happening in the moment—this is the core of mindfulness. Blinders off, we can learn to observe what is happening and ride the wave of our feelings around that.

    This is difficult work, so we tend to avoid it. We run in the other direction. We bury ourselves in work, get a drink to take the edge off, or turn our TV on to distract ourselves. We pretend we’re fine and we push through, thinking we’ve outsmarted our feelings. But the pain is still there, lingering, festering, ready to explode in the least opportune moment.

    It’s important to practice mindfulness during less tumultuous times and learn to observe our thoughts and feelings when things are relatively easy. Then, once we build our mindfulness muscle, we can practice bringing it into more difficult moments to ride them out.

    Don’t be afraid to feel your feelings—the more you resist the stronger they get. If you’re tend to get overwhelmed easily, plan ahead. Schedule time to feel bad, to rage, to cry, to talk to someone, to journal. Do it in a safe space and preferably with the support of a friend or a professional.

    The goal is to feel whatever feelings you’re holding onto and release that pressure in a mindful way, so it doesn’t come out inappropriately (or misdirected) around the holiday table.

    2. Validate your feelings.

    Allowing, accepting, and validating your feelings is vital to emotional well-being. Whether it’s guilt, anger, or grief you are feeling, they have their place and are all valid. Neither good nor bad, our feelings are messengers—they inform us as we go about our lives. And we need to listen in.

    Growing up in an invalidating environment, this was my weakest link. My feelings were never accepted, and I was often threatened to stop displaying them or I’d get in trouble. It was incredibly invalidating to have no one say, “I understand.” Instead, my displays of emotions were met with disdain, anger, and punishment. I learned to bury my feelings and disconnected from my emotional self.

    As an adult, I kept looking to other to validate me. This was frustrating, and often left me feeling rejected, lonely, and insecure. Eventually, I learned to listen to my feelings and acknowledge that it was okay to feel the way I felt, that I had a right to feel this way, and that it made perfect sense I felt the way I did given what happened. I learned to allow my feelings to just be.

    Let yourself feel and listen to what the feeling is trying to tell you. Maybe you need to apologize and repair a lost connection (guilt). Maybe it’s time to draw new boundaries to restore balance or protect your mental or physical well-being (anger). Maybe you need to accept that an important relationship failed and move on (grief).

    Our feelings are there to guide us, to help us make the most informed decisions. The better we listen the faster we learn and recover.

    3. Practice self-compassion and body-mind self-care.

    We tend to revert back to our pre-programmed patterns and behaviors around our nuclear family, replaying our childhood roles and falling into habits we thought we shed long time ago. Don’t beat yourself up when this happens—it’s natural and your awareness of it is the first step to changing it. And we can start by putting ourselves first, practicing self-compassion, and taking care of our needs.

    My programming was that of the perfect daughter/wife/mother who would bend over backwards to take care of everyone’s needs, to my own detriment. I neglected my own needs, both physically and emotionally. I planned elaborate menus, invited friends out of obligation, and tried to be everything for everyone: cheerful, helpful, supportive, forever patient and giving, saying “yes” to everyone but myself. It was physically and emotionally draining.

    Through reflection, and a lot of journaling, I realized I was on a path of self-destruction. My overfunctioning was harming me both physically and emotionally, and I had to do something different. The one thing that made a huge difference was learning to put myself first and set healthy boundaries in my relationships with others.

    It’s beautiful to have a giving personality and want to be there for others, but when we do that to our own detriment everyone suffers. Neglecting yourself is not a virtue. Everyone is responsible for their own feelings and needs—you can’t do this work for others. Your job is to take care of yourself, body, mind and heart. When you fill your own tank, you then can be there for others, but not before.

    Don’t neglect yourself. Take a long, soothing bath or shower, walk your dog, eat protein-rich breakfast, spend time in solitude, bake your favorite cookies, reconnect with yourself though journaling and meditation, practice gratitude, learn to say “no,” reach out for support, take a nap. Pay attention to what you need and respond with love and nurturance.

    And when you stumble, love yourself. When you make mistakes, talk too much, get sucked into family drama, lose your way—this is when it’s really important to love yourself anyway. Love your shadows and your imperfections remembering they once helped you survive. In time, you will transform them into strength, change, and growth.

    4. Tap into your resilience.

    You will be challenged around the holidays, that’s a given. Trust that you are strong enough to ride the waves of emotions mindfully. This shift in perspective will empower you to make better choices when faced with difficulty.

    Before I built my resilience toolbox, I would get emotionally reactive to something as simple as mean comments, bickering children, or people being late, simply because I was under a lot of stress (a lot of it self-imposed).

    With mindfulness, I learned to take a pause between trigger and my reaction. I watched as my body tensed, my heart started racing, and negative thoughts came rushing in. And I breathed through it, watching it change, and eventually pass. If it didn’t pass, I’d take some action to take me out of the situation and reset, like go for a walk. Or I’d ask myself, “What do I need right now?” and gave that to myself. Then, I could come back and respond, typically from a much calmer and supportive place.

    Chose to be kind to yourself when you’re struggling. Learn few coping strategies you can employ in time of need: embrace yourself when you feel like falling apart, take five extra deep breaths to reset your nervous system, step outside to catch some fresh air, put headphones on and play your favorite resilience song really loud (mine is “Unstoppable” by Sia).

    There are many things you can do to soothe your nervous system and strengthen your resilience muscle, practices that will help you explore, sort out, and process your emotions. Yoga, journaling, long walks, sitting in silence for five minutes every day, or dancing are all beneficial.

    The point is to pay attention to your inner world, recognize when you’re struggling, and give yourself what you need to recover.

    5. Avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms.

    Temptations are always around—food, alcohol, binge-watching Netflix, scrolling social media, holiday shopping, etc. These are perfectly fine in moderation and often handy as a short-term break from the heaviness.

    But we must be mindful of when we try to distract and numb ourselves in order to escape, because that only prolongs our suffering and delays the healing process. When we numb, we avoid vulnerability—the core of meaningful human experience—and we never resolve and move past our issues. Engage in your life consciously, be open, and accept what is. No more escaping. Trust that you are strong enough to walk through the pain and come out the other side.

    —

    I used to feel like I had to survive the holidays somehow. I was perfecting and overfunctioning to counter the internal feelings of lacking, guilt and abandonment.

    It was most difficult when I was a new mom, didn’t have adequate support, and had unresolved feelings from childhood that were being triggered without my conscious awareness. These days, holidays are a mixture of joy and sadness, cherishing, and letting go, and I don’t get so easily overwhelmed by it all.

    I now focus on growth and health, on building my own family traditions, cherishing sweet memories, and enjoying the moment. I no longer wallow in self-pity and feeling like a victim of circumstances, and I no longer let negative thoughts and feelings take over my head and my heart. I stay mindful, and when I stumble, I remind myself that even though I’m imperfect, I am enough.

  • The Boundaries That Helped Me Stop Being a Doormat

    The Boundaries That Helped Me Stop Being a Doormat

    “Boundaries are a part of self-care. They are healthy, normal, and necessary.” ~Doreen Virtue

    I’m really nice. Too nice actually. I’ve even been something of a doormat in my life.

    But what can I say? I was trained that way.

    There weren’t a lot of boundaries in our home when I was growing up. Instead, my addict mom was either checked out, partying, or raising hell, so I became the adult in the room. I was at her service most of the time.

    By age six, I was regularly talking my parents through their fights. I’d moved on to career counseling Mom by age eight. The message was clear. You are here to help—and don’t forget it.

    I grew up dreaming of a burden-free life where I’d finally get to do what I wanted. Yet, there I was, years later, letting my bully boss carve out large parts of my soul as I worked through weekends, holidays, and more.

    I felt an enormous burden or responsibility all the time and became known as the onsite problem solver, no matter what the circumstances. The first time this happened was in a Manhattan ad agency, when I easily sacrificed my Saturday to take one for the team.

    It seemed critical that I do so. After all, the agency’s biggest client was involved. It didn’t even occur to me that I could say no. Instead, I told myself the following lies:

    “If I don’t do this myself, it will never get done and everything will go straight to hell.”

    “I am literally not allowed to say no here. If I do, I might get fired.”

    Or the biggest lie of all: “Just get through it. Then you never have to do this again.”

    Ironically, I told myself that last one hundreds of times as the years passed. Consequently, I became ever more degraded, worn out, and overworked. I was a hamster caught on an impossible treadmill.

    I thought I’d finally found the solution when I went freelance and started my own business. This way, theoretically at least, I could make up all the rules. Turns out I couldn’t even set boundaries with myself. The pattern of over work continued, virtually unchanged.

    In all of this time, it never once occurred to me that I could say no. Or that I had the right to create my life just as I wanted it. Even if that meant changing jobs or relationships. Because, yes, the boundary violations continued in love, as well.

    Here I was expected to follow my partners’ agendas, no matter what I actually thought or needed. Conveniently, I generally had no idea, so I went along with everything they suggested.

    And yet, the universe can only put up with delusion like this for so long. Finally, my false reality came crashing down around my ears, as everything in my world slowly began to unravel.

    First, the shining business I had built over decades suddenly fell apart. As it turned out, I really couldn’t see clients ten hours a day with no time for myself. At this point I’d had the flu for months, and I was seriously exhausted. Each day it was a struggle just to get out of bed, let alone consult with people.

    For the first time in my adult life, not working and taking a little break actually seemed like a good idea.

    Then I my relationship collapsed. At the time, I’d given up my San Francisco apartment and followed my partner out of the city, letting go of everything I’d built for myself. This happened in spite of the gnawing emptiness I felt about the relationship. And despite the fact that both of us had expressed doubts just before the move.

    Deep inside, part of me knew that following her was a huge mistake. But I went, mainly because she thought it would be a good idea.

    Yet again, I had no idea what I thought.

    One morning, two months after I moved in, she turned to me in bed and calmly told me she had no romantic feelings for me. Though, with a smile, she added that I was welcome to stay as “a roommate.”

    Finally, my fury arrived. This was, of course, not our deal. Angrily I packed up my suitcase, loaded up my car, and began to drive. As I barreled along, I began to experience feelings I hadn’t felt in years. In an instant, I saw how I’d been used again and again in this relationship—and in so many others.

    As I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on my way back into the city, I looked over at the Pacific, gleaming in the sunlight beside me. I felt the wind on my face, and for once I felt entirely, completely free. Suddenly I was massively relieved. Tears of gratitude filled my eyes as I drove, awake for once to the enormous possibility my life now presented.

    This was my golden opportunity to do things differently—the way I wanted. Finally, I was filled with hope as I realized I could, indeed, set boundaries. I could say no whenever I wanted to. And I could say yes to what I did want.

    I really could rise up and create a healthy, beautiful, abundant life for myself. I could feel in my gut this was true. That day, I made myself a promise. No longer would I tell myself to “Just get through it” when I didn’t want to do something, Instead, I was going to damn well say no, whatever the consequences may be.

    Now, some years later, I have indeed built the life I’d longed for. And what’s present is me, pure and simple. I no longer hide away in overwork. I don’t pretend things are okay when they’re not. And I don’t think I have to solve everyone else’s problems.

    Instead, I follow these rules:

    1. I notice when someone makes me uncomfortable. Instead of running from that red flag, I listen and heed.

    2. I try to own my feelings, even when they scare me. Even if I have to go be by myself for a while to process things.

    3. I kindly, firmly speak up about that which I don’t like or agree with.

    4. I make requests when I need to.

    5. I walk away when necessary.

    6. Most of all, I recognize that somebody else’s problem is not mine. They get to solve it, not me. So they get to enjoy the lessons that follow.

    By following these simple ground rules, I’ve found my way back to serenity, a happy marriage, and work that truly fulfills me. When you allow yourself to finally own your boundaries you not only serve yourself, everyone else around you becomes clear where you stand, as well.

    Not only can you set boundaries, you simply must. For this is the path to owning your power, as well as your joy.

    Your boundaries are nothing less than self-affirming gold.