Tiny Buddha

Category: Blog

  • You Have to Feel it to Heal It: The Only Way Out is Through

    You Have to Feel it to Heal It: The Only Way Out is Through

    “Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal.” ~Vironika Tugaleva

    I plodded up the half-mile hill that led to my house, my backpack weighing heavily on my shoulders in the insistent summer heat. The mild breeze that drifted off the Boston harbor was a cruel joke, hinting at coolness but offering no respite.

    Recently heartbroken, I felt tears streaming hotly down my cheeks for the third time that day as the pain of my ex-partner’s absence crashed swiftly on my heart.

    I reached out to a trusted friend seeking solace. “Sobbing again” I texted her, knowing she would decipher the pain behind my words. She hesitated for a moment before responding: “Duh.”

    I hiccupped mid-sob, surprised.

    She went on: “Feel it. It’s going to hurt. But every moment you’re sobbing, you’re doing the work. Every moment you’re hurting, you’re healing. The only way out is through.”

    I stared at the screen, digesting her words. That was the last thing I’d expected. I’d expected to be coddled or encouraged to look at the bright side. I’d expected to be force-fed an ice cream cone at J.P. Licks.

    This was different. For the first time in my grieving process, I wasn’t told to gloss over my feelings with a coat of rose-colored paint. Someone I trusted was encouraging me to feel my pain in its entirety. Through her eyes, my pain was valid and productive—a necessary step on my journey toward healing.

    Her direct acknowledgement of my suffering was the permission I needed to truly feel my pain instead of avoid it. Instead of worrying that I wasn’t trying hard enough to be happy—instead of worrying that I was taking “too long” to heal—I felt like I was doing everything properly.

    I could celebrate the work I was doing, even when that work was breaking into sobs, for the third time that day, on the half-mile walk home.

    My pain and grief had meaning.

    It could serve a purpose.

    It could serve me.

    Since then, I’ve developed a new way of looking at pain:

    When we allow ourselves to fully experience painful or uncomfortable feelings, we are doing work. Sitting with our feelings instead of disengaging or distracting ourselves is work.

    Once we accept that we are doing work, we can silence our internal critic that believes that feeling pain means we’re “doing something wrong.” Instead, we begin to understand that feeling our pain is important and productive.

    When we understand the true nature of our work, we can summon compassion for ourselves as we move through our uncomfortable feelings on the path to healing, peace, and wholeness.

    This framework has changed my life. I’ve applied it to my most acutely painful emotions, like heartbreak, as well as milder ones, like unease.

    Last month on a stormy Friday night, for example, a tide of anxiety rolled through me. Instead of texting my friends or sweethearts to organize an impromptu rendezvous—a surefire way to distract myself—I turned on my air conditioner, donned the biggest sweater I could find, and cuddled my pillow as I watched the rain streak down my window.

    It felt uncomfortable. I felt the familiar tightness in my chest and shortness in my breath.

    “You’re being anti-social!” nagged my inner critic. “You’re being boring. It’s Friday! You’re not trying hard enough.”

    I took a deep breath and put my hand over my heart. I am doing work, I said firmly into my heart. This is important. I kept my hand on my chest, repeating these mantras in time with the falling rain, until my inner critic’s voice was an echo of an echo.

    When I woke up the next morning to a clear blue sky and a bout of energy, I took pride in how I’d weathered the storm, so to speak. I learned that my anxiety was impermanent and, most importantly, manageable. 

    Then there are those darkest moments of sorrow, the moments when grief shakes even our sturdiest foundations. When we lose a loved one. When illness consumes us. When we experience a tragedy so emotionally excruciating that it redefines our very understanding of pain.

    In these moments, when we can’t find a single silver lining for miles, we can summon the courage to sit with our sorrow. We can find solace in the truth that there is simply nothing else to do.

    Experiencing our grief—if only for moments at a time—is work. This is the work of living on this Earth, of being human, and of surviving the universal rites of passage that mark our lives as we age.

    When I feel existentially lost, isolated, and convinced of the meaninglessness of my pain, I take a moment to witness the people around me. I watch people walking hand in hand at the park, or reading novels on the train, or sunbathing at the beach.

    Somehow, the vast majority of people around me have weathered similarly painful times. The mere fact of their existence, when I’m certain I will shatter into nothingness, is strength enough to soldier on.

    Before I learned the benefit of sitting with my feelings, doing work of this nature didn’t appeal to me. Why wallow in sorrow when you could just do something about it? I wondered. 

    When I felt uncomfortable, I would find a way to occupy my time and distract my heart. I’d burrow my nose in a screen until I was only dimly aware of the world around me; call one friend after another, repeating the same painful story, swimming concentric circles around my pain without ever diving in; grab a pen and scribble a to-do list to feel the rush of purposefulness at the expense of true catharsis.

    In retrospect, it’s easy to see that my “coping strategies” were no such thing.

    When we distract ourselves from our pain with a flurry of motion, we fool ourselves into thinking we’re being productive. We fall victim to the addictive high of the quick fix. But as any hard worker in any field will tell you, there is no substitute for good, hard work. Work that gives us a sense of our own intrinsic worth and yields desirable results. 

    Which begs the question: Given the undeniable difficulty of this brand of work, why do it at all? What is the reward for expending such mental and physical effort?

    Different folks will offer different answers. As for me, I’ve always believed that our purpose on this earth is to live our richest, most beautiful lives. Anything less seems like a terrible waste of the gift of conscious experience.

    I believe that in order to live such lives, we must live our essential truth. Living our essential truth means making the conscious effort to feel the spectrum of our pain, magnificent and minor. It means giving ourselves permission to feel emotions as they are, and rid our lives of the pressures to conform, perform, and self-delude.

    When we act in accordance with our deepest feelings, our lives become simpler. Instead of constantly choosing how to act or what to say—spurring waterfalls of anxiety and self-doubt –there is always one choice: the choice that is true for us. The choice that we feel in our hearts.

    The next time you are hurting, uncomfortable, or lonely, feel your pain. Feel as much of it as you can bear. Your pain is a necessary step on your journey towards healing. And remember:

    You are doing your best.

    You are healing at exactly the right pace.

    You are doing work.

    Your work has meaning.

    It can serve a purpose.

    It can serve you.

  • The ABCs of Personal Growth: How to Live a Meaningful, Fulfilling Life

    The ABCs of Personal Growth: How to Live a Meaningful, Fulfilling Life

    “Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” ~Karen Kaiser Clark

    Throughout my life, I’ve moved countries, studied a foreign language, changed careers, launched a business, run a half marathon, written a book, faced agonizing loss and grief, won awards, been deeply hurt, created awesome charity campaigns, lived with huge uncertainty and pain, found love and friendships to cherish, and given birth to three miraculous humans.

    Throughout these and plenty more crazy, insane, complex, and utterly beautiful life events, I have collected treasured building blocks that help me live a life of meaning, purpose, and joy every single day.

    I want to share them with you in the hope that throughout your own daily trials and triumphs, you can use these ABCs to help you create a life you love.

    Transformation is not a switch; it’s more like a gauge.

    The beauty is that you don’t have to flip a button and practice and internalize all twenty-six letters instantaneously.

    Like learning anything, start with just one at a time.

    Once you’ve mastered it, add another.

    With consistent repetition, you’ll be fluent, and these personal growth building blocks will lay a magnificent foundation for all your life’s work.

    You are the author. You hold the pen. You get to learn and read and write your own masterpiece, chapter by chapter, line by line, letter by letter.

    You are the hero of your own story.

    So let’s get back to basics: the ABCs of personal growth.

    Acknowledge:

    Knowing your strengths, talents, and abilities is the first step to unleashing your potential and power and creating meaning and lasting transformation. We are all blessed with so many wonderful gifts, but we can’t unwrap and share them with others if we fail to acknowledge what they are. Acknowledge yours today! What are you good at? What do people come to you for help with? What experiences have you gone through, and what have you learned from them?

    Blessings:

    Blessings are all around us. If we choose to look for them, we will certainly find them. What are you grateful for? What makes you smile? What positives do you notice in your life right now? Each day, look for three things to be grateful for. These blessings multiply!

    Control:

    There are so many things in life that we have very little or no control over—what happens to us, what other people say or do. We are not the general managers of the universe. However, we have incredible control over how we choose to respond to every experience we encounter. Our control lies in our attitude and our behavior—our choices. Choose wisely.

    Discipline:

    The master key to success lies in discipline. We are surrounded by enticing temptations and obstacles that deflect us from our goals all the time. Discipline is like a muscle; the more we work on building this skill, the more we develop excellent habits that bring us closer to achieving our biggest success.

    Discipline means asking yourself: What is the very best use of my time right now? And then consistently following through. Small increments every day lead to tidal waves of success—step by step, day by day with consistent discipline and dedication.

    Encouragement:

    We are all fighting battles, and a gentle word that offers hope and support can literally save a dream.

    Are you an encourager or a critic? Do you accentuate problems or encourage solutions and creative thinking? Do you lift people up? Are you inspiring, motivating, and supportive of helping others to get further and reach higher? When we lift others up, we rise. Commit to becoming the most encouraging person you know. The world needs more cheerleaders desperately!

    Focus:

    What would you be doing with your time if you knew you had only six healthy months left to live? Focus all your time, energy, and resources on the things and people that truly matter most to you.

    Vague goals produce vague results. Blurry goals yield blurry outcomes. Take the time to get clear about where you are going and what you’d like to accomplish. Write this down. Then focus. Whatever we focus on grows. Get clear and then laser focus on your most meaningful priorities. Don’t sweat the other stuff. Keep it simple and focus on what you care most about.

    Give:

    Giving to another person and knowing our contribution has had a lasting impact creates true happiness and peace of mind. Anytime you give, you grow; every time you give, you get, whether it’s a kind word, giving charity, volunteering, or connecting to a cause that speaks to you. Your giving has the power to light up the world.

    Ask yourself each morning: How can I give of myself today? How can I show up more fully? How can I be of value and service today? How can I contribute today? What difference can I make today?

    Help:

    Think about the people you look up to, those who already are where you’d most love to be. Ask them how they did it. Reach out to the experts. Spend time with them. Learn from them. Get their help. Use the love and support of family and friends to spark your bravery and courage.

    Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. Make a list of where you need a hand and a list of people who could become your greatest helpers on your journey. We’re beings of social interest. Helping is who we are. We thrive when we help.

    Give and get help wherever you can. It’s a showcase of wholehearted and vulnerable living, which makes you real. People like helping real people. We’re all just walking each other home at the end of the day. That’s what it’s all about.

    Inspiration:

    Read, learn, blog, journal, go to classes and talks and lectures that inspire you. Commit to starting and ending your day with inspiration. One minute of inspiration can ignite a passion inside of you that can alter the course of your life forever.

    Get out more, be curious, ask questions, become more open-minded. Inspiration is everywhere. Look for it. Inspiration is what charges us. When we are charged we grow. When we grow, we are happy.

    Joy:

    Choose to become joyful. Appreciate the gift of life. Each moment is precious, and fragile, and denied to many. Laugh and smile, have fun, and lighten up. If you see someone walking around without a smile, offer them one of yours.

    Not feeling like you have joy to share? What lights you up? Do you have a list that you can plug into your week?

    My joy list includes: a delicious cup of coffee, time with the people I love, a great run or workout, reading something magnificent, laughing and watching the sunset, to name but a few. I make sure to do these daily. You’d be amazed how many people love writing and sharing their joy list, but they forget to schedule and do the very things that bring them joy. Create your list and then live it—joyfully.

    Kindness:

    Imagine a world where each person is deeply and truly devoted to kindness. Let’s work on being the kindest spouse, friend, parent, manager, employee, coach, and child we can be. I truly believe that kindness is the only thing that will change and save the world. Tiny acts of kindness create ripples so far and wide, we can’t begin to comprehend just how far they can reach.

    Learn:

    I am known to be a forever student. As I complete one course, I enroll in another. My bedside table has a tower of books and I soak up learning with a desert-like thirst.

    When we learn, we open our minds and discover new possibilities. We can learn to pioneer anything! The sky is the limit. Let’s give ourselves permission to try new things, take risks, and be humble enough to learn from new leaders and teachers.

    Lessons are all around us. Failure can become our greatest teacher. Mistakes can become our greatest mentors. Make sure you spend time with people who know more than you. It’s humbling and awe-inspiring. Write a list of some of the things you’d love to learn this year. Each day, record one new thing you didn’t know before. Watch your horizons expand exponentially!

    Mindfulness Meditation:

    Slow down. Take time to breathe. Mindfulness offers incomparable value to the human spirit, psyche, and body. Dedicate a set time each day to pausing, being truly present, and listening to your soul and inner wisdom.

    The research available on the huge benefits of meditation is mind-blowing. Treat yourself and everyone you love to the gift of meditation. Even a few minutes a day has the power to awaken, elevate, transform, and enhance your life in ways you can’t begin to imagine.

    Neuroscience has evidence today that meditation literally rewires your brain and can change your thinking, habits, and negative beliefs. It’s miraculous and it’s accessible to every one of us. Try it for yourself. Start to live a mindful life of greater peace.

    Never:

    Never give up. Never do a permanent act based on a temporary feeling. Never say, “It’s impossible” when really, it’s just hard. Never listen to naysayers and non-believers. Never push aside a dream that means the world to you because of the time or effort it’s going to take to make it happen.

    If today, “Never” is all you do, it’s more than enough, it’s plenty; in fact, it’s everything.

    Optimism:

    When we are optimistic, failure is merely feedback giving us significant information; hardships are learning experiences that help us grow and build resilience for bigger things; and even the most miserable day always holds the promise that “tomorrow will be better.”

    Today, when faced with adversity, ask yourself: What would an optimist do right now? What would they try? What’s might be possible because of your optimistic outlook? What can you see that you never saw before?

    The optimist sees the sunset and knows that even the most awful days can still end beautifully. The optimist knows that a few steps backward after moving forwards is not a disaster, it’s just a cha-cha, and the optimist knows that the cup is refillable!

    Prioritize:

    Prioritize your life so that your highest value activities take preference. Enhance and refine your time management skills so that you are able to identify what tasks you need to tackle first. Say yes to your priorities and make each day count. When you live this way, there is no regret.

    Complete your highest value activity first so that it’s done. Done is better than perfect. Get the important stuff done before anything else. Always prioritize in writing. It’s not enough to merely think about what matters most to do; grab pen and paper to record and track your priorities so that you can measure and accomplish them every single day. Start today. Plan for tomorrow. Celebrate a life that’s not wasted!

    Quit:

    Originally I was going to share a long list of things to quit—like complaining, making excuses, indulging negative habits, staying in the same place when you’re itching to move, and letting fear and naysayers control your life. Then I realized it’s human nature to do some of these things from time to time. So work on these things, but quit being hard on yourself when you struggle.

    You will never be able to completely stop doing all things that are unhealthy for you, but you can always give yourself credit for trying.

    Release:

    What are you carrying right now that is too heavy? Every day, practice letting go of the things that weigh you down.

    It’s not easy to let go of regret, mistakes, anger, resentment, ego, jealousy, and comparison, but each day offers us abundant opportunity to practice. Try to catch yourself when you’re getting caught up in a story in your head so you can take a few deep breaths, center yourself, and free up your energy for the people and things that bring you peace and purpose.

    Sorry:

    We all need to learn how to apologize to those we’ve hurt, intentionally or unintentionally. And though we all deserve the same in return, we also need to learn to accept an apology we were never given. Then, we can move forward without anger. Forgiveness is a gift both to others and ourselves.

    Let’s decide today to be courageous by apologizing or offering forgiveness.

    Turning the page allows us to move on to the next chapter of the story. We can’t do this if we keep re-reading the one we’re currently stuck on.

    Thank You:

    We all want to be acknowledged for our efforts. “Thank you” is such a simple phrase, yet it means so very much.

    Recognizing what others do for us not only reminds us to be modest and humble, but it opens doors to more deeper and meaningful relationships, enhances our empathy, and improves our psychological and physical health.

    Who can you thank today? Start with one person and extend your appreciation as far and wide as you possibly can.

    Unplug:

    Unplug from technology. Switch off. Spend time with yourself, by yourself. One of the greatest discoveries of self-transformation and personal development is not only getting to know yourself, but getting to like what you find.

    Connect to all your loved ones. Look people in the eye. Listen with all of your senses. We miss out on so much when we are plugged in to devices rather than to hearts.

    Spend time in nature. How can you redesign your day so that you create time outside? Do you take regular breaks? When was your last vacation? When was the last time you admired a flower? Do yourself a favor when you have the time. Take off your shoes and go walk outside barefoot on the grass. Watch the sunset. Play with a ladybug. Stare at the clouds. Just be.

    Voice:

    Speak your truth. Wear your passion. Let people know what you care about. Let people get to know the real, beautiful, one-of-a-kind you and what you stand for.

    You have a unique voice. You have greatness within you. You have something the world needs. That’s why you are here. Use your voice to speak your goals. Use your voice to care. Use your voice to inspire. Use your voice to make positive change. Use your voice to pray. Use your voice to sing. Use your voice to laugh. Use your voice to help. Use your voice to care. Use your voice to love. Speak up.

    Work:

    Even the most brilliant, tried-and-tested life tools in the world can’t work, unless you do. There are no quick fixes or magic wand. Real transformation is a slow, gradual, and real process that requires hard work and consistent effort. With commitment and dedication to working hard, nothing can stand in your way of moving forward.

    Hard work means that we are willing to try, fall, and stand up again; we are willing to be bold; and we are willing to face ridicule and criticism. Work on your goals each day, step by step. We are designed to grow. As we work toward our dreams, with patience, comes tremendous reward. What you put in is what you get out.

    eXtra:

    Don’t be someone who just does the bare minimum required in life. Go the extra mile and do more than you did before.

    Expand your comfort zone with extra focus, extra power, extra love, and extra drive.

    The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is just that little extra. Today, where can you show up a little EXTRA?

    Yesterday:

    Leave it behind. Glance back to see how far you have come, but keep moving forward. Leave your past mistakes behind you. Yesterday just determines your starting point for today. It in no way predicts how far you can go.

    Live now, savor the present, and plan wisely for tomorrow. Don’t get stuck in what was, you don’t live there anymore. Today is a new day to set new intentions, get inspired and motivated, and start taking meaningful action toward your goals.

    Zest:

    Do you do things just because, or do you do things with fervor, zeal, passion, energy, and enthusiasm?

    Where in your life are you still fast asleep? Where are you merely snoozing or drifting aimlessly?

    Now is the time to wake up. Choose one thing to do today that makes you come alive.

    Today, you get to decide to be accountable, not helpless; you get to decide to be interested, not indifferent. You get to live your life today on fire. You get to put your whole heart into something.

    What is the first thing you’re going to do, right now, to get the momentum rolling?

    —

    Each of these building blocks can stand alone or stand together. Choosing to work on even one of these will have a powerful positive effect on your life. Whether you are the kind of person who prefers a step by step process, one letter at a time, or you love to dive in deep and work on multiple tracks, these ABCs will give you an outstanding foundation on which to build a more purposeful, happier, and fulfilling life.

  • How Yogic Breathing Helped Me Overcome Chronic Panic Attacks

    How Yogic Breathing Helped Me Overcome Chronic Panic Attacks

    “If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” ~Amit Ray

    I’ve battled chronic anxiety and PTSD my entire life and am no stranger to that tight pressure grip that dread and panic can have on the body and mind.

    On my worst days, I’d feel my chest and throat tighten as I struggled to breathe.

    Chronic panic attacks would leave me curled up in the fetal position, unable to move or stop panting.

    On my best days, I’d manage to get by, thanks to my numbing out with food and alcohol, self-medication, or mindless TV watching.

    I wasn’t just battling anxiety; I was in denial about the low-grade, high-functioning depression that, like a dark little storm cloud, hovered over me from the time my eyes opened in the morning till I finally fell asleep at night.

    I tried everything I could to shake it, to blow past the inner turmoil that never seemed to stop churning.

    But I couldn’t.

    I couldn’t make it stop, and I couldn’t make it go away.

    At least not long-term.

    Some things I tried provided brief momentary relief or comfort, though eventually, the feelings of dread, fear, defeat, and overwhelm would resurface yet again.

    I felt trapped. Powerless. Out of control. Doubtful I’d ever be able to experience anything other than this miserable existence.

    I come from a long lineage of various family members with a history of mental disorder and addiction, so I guess you can say it’s in my blood.

    As a young child I grew up witnessing my mother struggle with severe depression, bipolar disorder, and substance abuse problems, all of which eventually led her to several meltdowns and even a suicide attempt.

    So naturally, I was an anxious and fearful little girl who often felt very unsafe.

    My young mind learned early on that in order to survive I had to constantly be on guard.

    My nervous system became accustomed to the constant stress-mode of being in “fight-freeze-or-flight.”

    As my way to cope and make sense of it all, I sought out things that would help me feel in control of myself and my life, even if I accomplished this by numbing out, distracting, or shrinking and playing small.

    How I Found Peace and Courage Through Yogic Breathing

    It wasn’t until I embarked on the yogic path that things really changed for me.

    I turned to yoga in search of answers and natural anxiety relief during one of the lowest points in my life.

    I found comfort in this ancient practice, which taught me that I am not my past and I am not where I come from.

    Thanks to my yoga practice I realized that my anxiety didn’t have to define me.

    I learned that I could indeed rise above my fears, even in the midst of a full blown panic attack.

    I could learn to calm my racing mind and hyper-aroused body by learning to control my breath.

    This is one of yoga’s cornerstone teachings and it’s called pranayama or yogic breathing.

    “When the breath wanders the mind is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed, the mind too will be still.” ~Hatha Yoga Pradipika

    It wasn’t easy to employ these techniques in the middle of an attack, but with practice, time, consistency, and dedication, my panic attacks gradually shifted.

    They lessened their hold on me.

    I haven’t had a panic attack in almost three years.

    So how’d I do it?

    Each time I’d feel the onslaught of an attack, it took everything I had in me to channel my inner yogic warrior and brace myself for the internal battle about to take place.

    “I am not my fear; I am not this panic,” I’d remind myself over and over again as I struggled to breath.

    Sometimes I’d believe myself, other times I wouldn’t, but I kept reminding myself…

    “I am not my fear; I am not this panic.”

    Using The Warrior Breath for Victory

    I used various yogic breathing techniques each time I needed to calm my panicky mind and body.

    One proved particularly effective, so it became a go-to.

    It’s a science-backed technique called Ujjayi Breathing, also known as Warrior Breath and Victorious Breath.

    Uijayi Breathing has a host of mental, physical, and emotional benefits. This breathing technique is known to:

    • Increase resilience for coping with stress, anxiety, anger, and depression effectively
    • Regulate emotions
    • Balance the nervous system
    • Decrease stress response
    • Increase rest/ digest/ relaxation/ regeneration response
    • Regulate blood sugar levels
    • Lower cholesterol
    • Improve sleep cycle and quality
    • Improve digestion
    • Boost immunity
    • Improve respiratory function

    When you practice Ujjayi you create a sound like the ocean’s waves or an animal’s hiss by gently constricting the back of the throat.

    It sort of sounds like Darth Vader in Star Wars.

    Various studies have indicated that Ujjayi can be effective in working with PTSD. It’s been used with Vietnam veterans and natural disaster victims.

    When paired with deep abdominal breathing, Ujjayi can help you deactivate your body’s panic response while activating the soothing, regenerating response.

    The wave-like sounds of this breathing exercise can also provide you with some much needed soothing in the middle of the storm.

    Just a few minutes of Ujjayi breathing can offer you a welcomed sense of control as well as a wave of calm groundedness.

    5 Simple Steps to Take During Your Next Panic Attack

     1. Find solitude. 

    This is probably instinctive during a panic attack, it was for me at least. It’s important to set yourself up to win during this critical time window, so step away from the crowd and go somewhere quiet and where you feel safe. Remind yourself: “I am not my fear; I am not this panic.”

    2. Control your breath.

    In the throes of a panic attack, your body and mind can feel completely out of control. Your breath tends to be short, shallow, and frantic, so it’s important and essential to do what’s in your power to regain control by shifting your breathing. Start to slow your breath down intentionally.

    Here’s how to practice Ujjayi:

    – Place the tip of your tongue on the center of the roof of your mouth, keep it there.

    – Breathe only through your nose.

    – Take a full exhale with the mouth closed.

    – Start breathing like the ocean—constrict the back of your throat as you inhale slowly for six counts and exhale slowly for six counts.

    – As you’re inhaling, engage the lower belly by expanding it outwardly.

    – As you’re exhaling, contract the lower belly by bringing it inwardly toward your spine.

    – Keep repeating this breathing pattern of inhaling for six and exhaling for six until you feel a shift in your body and you’re no longer struggling to keep the pace (preferably a minimum of three minutes).

    3. Breathe with awareness.

    Once you’ve gotten control of your breathing rate with Ujjayi, start to bring awareness to your breathing. Bring your entire awareness to your breath as the air flows into your nostrils and out of your nostrils.

    Follow your breath with total attention. Observe your breathing. Is it long? Let it be long. Is it short? Let it be short. If the mind wanders, bring it back to your breath. Follow the breath and watch it with full presence. This is an excellent mental training that will get easier and easier the more your practice.

    4. Name it.

    Once you’ve connected to your breath and have brought awareness to it you’re ready to notice what is coming up for you and name it.

    A recent study out of UCLA found that the simple act of mindfully naming or labeling our emotions has the power to lessen their intensity. The study looked at brain scans of subjects as they named emotions and found that the part of their brain associated with fear and reactive emotional responses actually became less active. So name what you’re feeling and don’t hesitate… Name “fear,” “panic,” “dread,” “anger,” “scared,” “anxious,” “worried,” “resentful,” and so on.

    5. Keep breathing.

    With each inhale and exhale keep making the ocean’s sound and find your flow with it. Imagine the waves ebbing and flowing around you as you breathe the waves through you. Feel the waves within you. The more you flow with the waves, the more you’ll dissolve panic and activate inner calm.

  • How to Get in Shape When You Feel Lazy and Unmotivated

    How to Get in Shape When You Feel Lazy and Unmotivated

    “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” ~Jin Ryun

    Can I be brutally honest with you for a moment?

    I was the “fat kid” growing up, and I’ve struggled to find the motivation to lose weight and lead a healthy lifestyle my whole life.

    I first realized I was fat when the teacher asked for a volunteer to play Santa in the third grade Christmas play, and Aaron Valadez loudly blurted out, “Tim would be perfect for the role since he’s already got the belly!”

    I literally died right there. Mortified.

    This was the first time in memory when I turned to food to numb my pain and embarrassment. Congratulations to me, I had discovered the emotional rollercoaster known as binging! A rollercoaster which I would struggle to get off of for my entire life…

    I can pinpoint the exact moment when I told myself enough is enough.

    I was devastated after a recent breakup and was feeling lonely, lost, and depressed.

    These were very uncomfortable emotions. And what do I we when I feel uncomfortable emotions? I eat them, of course!

    Luckily I had a box of cinnamon buns ready for the occasion. I became powerless to stop myself, as the rush of the binge and my inner saboteur had taken hold. In a moment of sheer ecstasy and gluttonous pleasure I ate eight cinnamon buns in one sitting.

    And then….

    The rush was over. The sweet taste provided a fleeting moment of relief.

    Now all that remained was an empty box, an empty apartment, and an empty heart.

    Oh god, what had I done??!!

    I shouldn’t be surprised, I had spent the last three weeks repeating this cycle every night before bed.

    But today as I was cleaning up the crumbs, I decided I’d clean up my act too!

    Tomorrow will be different! I finally had found the motivation to stop the binging, stop the bad habits, and stop treating myself like I was worthless.

    Tomorrow, I thought, will be the day I start a healthy diet, start a daily exercise routine, and start treating myself right!

    But tomorrow never came.

    The next day I was back at it again with the sweets. A moment of relief from the pain of loneliness was far sweeter than anything the gym or a healthy lifestyle had to offer.

    Like a moth to a flame I was powerless to resist the sweet temptation, and I didn’t give a damn about my reputation!

    Only after the damage was done and the sweets gone did I feel motivated to clean up my act. Motivation was never there in the moments I needed it most. Where had my motivation gone and how could I get it back!?

    I’ve discovered that motivation was the last thing I needed. I never found the motivation to stop, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Motivation is trash.

    Why is Motivation Trash?

    I know we all think motivation is what drives action, but in many cases it’s the other way around—actions create motivation.

    Have you ever felt like you didn’t want to go to the gym, but then once you put on your gym shoes and walked out the door you felt super motivated and ready to go? That’s an example of motivation coming after the action.

    Motivation should never be the sole force driving your actions because it is a temporary emotion. Just like you can’t feel sad or angry all the time, you can’t feel motivated all the time.

    Motivation was not going to save me from my cycle of binging and self-sabotage. My problem was I knew exactly what I needed to do (lose weight), but I didn’t know how or why I wanted to do it.

    I needed to connect to the intention, or the why, behind my goals before I could determine how to follow through on them. It’s not what you do; it’s why you do it that will ultimately drive you to succeed.

    I also needed something that required very little willpower or motivation; what I needed was a habit. 

    The Power of Habit and Intention

    Habits are at the center of everything we do; most waking hours are spent executing one habit after another without even thinking about it.

    What do you do when you wake up? Get out of bed, make the bed, make coffee, drive to work?

    These are all examples of habits that are essential for our daily lives to run smoothly. Because they are so engrained in our brain there is very little thought or resistance that occurs when executing our daily routine.

    In my case, I knew I needed to create a habit to replace my binging and to get off the couch. I wanted to create a habit of a daily fitness routine and get back to the gym.

    Before I could create a habit that would stick, I first had to connect with the intention behind it. A powerful intention is something bigger than just yourself, and is connected to a higher purpose that will have a positive impact on the world.

    A habit infused with a powerful intention is what carries me through to get those workouts in even when I’m not feeling motivated to go.

    How Intentions Can Give or Take Away Your Power

    Intentions are so important because a poorly developed intention can actually drain your energy.

    For instance, when I was stuck in the binge cycle my intention was: I want to lose weight because I don’t want to be a disgusting loser fat slob.

    Surprise, surprise, this intention sucks! The issue is two fold:

    The first problem is that it is not connected to a higher purpose. It’s all about ME ME ME!

    Second, it’s framed in a negative way that reinforces the belief that I am a disgusting fat slob.

    A negative intention like this destroys my self-confidence and willpower and actually makes me more likely to binge again.

    How to Set a Powerful Intention  

    I knew I needed a more powerful intention to carry me through when temptation rears its ugly head!

    My new intention is simple—I want to get in shape to have a healthy life and age gracefully, and I want to inspire others to do the same.

    Notice how this intention is connected to a higher purpose, something greater than just myself—inspiring others.

    With this new intention, it became clear how laying on the couch eating cinnamon buns hurts not just me but those around me as well. This new intention gave me the energy I needed to follow through on my goals and build the right habits into my daily life when motivation was nowhere to be found.

    If you want to create a powerful intention, think about how to connect your goals to something bigger than yourself; this could be having the energy to take care of your family, to help your local community, to save the planet, or anything you want it to be.

    There can be multiple intentions behind a habit; try to find the intention you connect with most and focus on that.

    How Do You Stick to a Habit?

    I found the best way to stick to a habit is first to understand what a habit really is.

    Every habit consists of three parts: cue, routine, and reward.

    Cues are triggers for habits to begin. For instance, my alarm in the morning is the cue that triggers my morning habit, and the routine kicks in. Having a routine is the best because it takes the motivation and decision making out of the process. No longer is energy wasted on the internal debate thinking about if or when I’m going to the gym. There’s no need to make a decision; I just follow the process.

    After the alarm cue I get out of bed, put on my gym clothes, drink a huge glass of water, and then start walking to the gym. When I arrive at the gym I (usually) feel energized and ready to face the workout ahead.

    The most resistance I find to starting a new habit is in this first stage. Remember Newton’s first law of motion? Things in motion tend to stay in motion? Well this law also applies to habits!

    Once you get started, you build momentum and it becomes easier to follow through.

    The Three-Minute Rule

    To encounter the least mental resistance to starting a new habit, the goal is to have the shortest cue time possible. A cue time of three minutes or less is my golden rule. This leaves very little time for willpower to falter.

    Don’t want to exercise? Make putting on your workout clothes the cue that starts your routine. Once your clothes are on and you are in motion you’ll be well on your way to getting that workout in!

    Start Small

    The real secret to creating a new habit is to start out small in the beginning.

    When I wanted to start working out, I told myself I would go to the gym and only exercise for five minutes. After that I would leave. I didn’t plan to exercise; I only planned to show up. I wasn’t worried about the benefits of exercise; I was focused on building the habit.

    I recognized if I didn’t have the habit in place there was no point trying to stick to a routine. Build the habit first and let the rest come naturally.

    The truth is, even today when I don’t want to work out, at the very least I’ll go to the gym for five minutes. Even if all I can manage to do is breathe, that’s okay because I’m keeping my momentum going and my habit intact.

    Of course I almost always stay for more than five minutes; this is a psychological trick I use to get my ass to the gym even when I’m not motivated.

    Importance of Routine

    The second stage of a habit is the routine. This is the actual going to the gym and working out part. Once the cue is complete and the habit solidified in your daily life you can pretty much run on autopilot here.

    Just think of all the times you’ve been driving home from work and arrived in your driveway only to realize you didn’t remember driving home at all. That is an example of a routine that runs on autopilot. Similarly this idea of autopilot can also apply to your workouts once it becomes a habit.

    Reward Reinforces the Habit

    The last stage of any habit is the reward stage. In the case of exercise, the reward for me is feeling energized and focused, and getting the rush of feel good endorphins that follow a good workout.

    Brain activity spikes in the reward stage, and the link between cue and reward is reinforced. This is what makes habits so hard to break. Every time we complete a habit, it gets reinforced in the brain by the reward.

    This means every time I go to the gym it becomes easier to come back because I reinforce the link between the cue and the reward in my brain. Resistance to the workout decreases, and executing my habit of daily exercise becomes easier and easier.

    Pro Tip: Writing out a habit with pen and paper has been shown to dramatically increase follow through.

    Try writing out this sentence (with pen and paper):

    “I’m going to go to exercise on [DAY] at [Time of Day] at [Location]”

     By doing this, not only do you increase your chances of exercising, you also turn your time and space into a cue to commence your new habit. Getting started is the hardest part, so the more cues you have, the greater your chances for success.

    How Working Out Changed My Life

    After I replaced my unhealthy habit of binging with the healthy habit of working out, some rather unexpected benefits occurred in my life. I quit smoking, lost weight, and started making healthy diet choices.

    A healthy diet increased my mental energy and willpower, making it much easier to handle the stress of life. Now, instead of opening a box of cinnamon buns when I’m stressed, I’ll open up my gym bag and head out the door. I now treat myself with the respect I deserve. And it all started by stepping foot in the gym for five minutes a day.

    If you want to make fitness part of your daily life, stop relying on motivation this instant!

    Get connected to the intention behind your goals and make it about something bigger than just yourself.

    Once you have your intention, write down with pen and paper the time and place of your workout to increase your chances for success.

    Create a habit of going to the gym or hiking or practicing yoga or doing whatever exercise you enjoy—the shorter the cue time to begin your fitness routine the more likely you are to follow through.

    Start small and commit to exercising at least five minutes a day. Build the habit before worrying about the actual workouts.

    After you have a habit of exercising, experiment to find a workout plan you find fun and can follow consistently.

    And remember, things in motion stay in motion! Meaning even if you feel like being lazy and sitting on the couch, it’s very likely once you actually get started you will find the motivation for an amazing workout. Remember motivation often comes after the action and not before. Just get started already!!!

    I’m not special. I struggle with my weight and self-image every single day. I have to constantly battle debilitating neurotic thoughts telling me I’m not good and I should just give up. These are some of the tips I used to pick myself up out of a depression and get in shape when I wasn’t feeling motivated. With these tips I know you can do the same!

  • How to Love Yourself Through Cancer or Any Other Terrifying Diagnosis

    How to Love Yourself Through Cancer or Any Other Terrifying Diagnosis

    “If you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm.” ~Frank Lane

    One minute your life is just humming along, and out of nowhere you’re hit with a devastating diagnosis. Cancer.

    Believe me, I know what it’s like to get the news you have cancer and to live with the trauma that follows, because I’m not only a licensed psychotherapist, I’ve been treated for both breast cancer and leukemia.

    I know how that diagnosis changes everything. I know how the world around you can still look the same, but suddenly you feel like a stranger in your own life.

    You have trouble getting up in the morning. You have trouble getting to sleep. When you finally get to sleep you’re jolted awake by nightmares. Or maybe you sleep all the time. You can’t eat, or you can’t stop eating.

    You’re drinking too much. You’re smoking too much. You’re terrified, exhausted, and have no idea how you’re going to get through the next few hours, let alone the days, or weeks ahead.

    When I was going through chemo for breast cancer, I read all the books about surviving cancer I could get my hands on. I talked to my oncologist and to other women going through the same thing, trying to find the way to “do cancer right.”

    I worried myself sick that I would get things wrong, until a friend said, “You know, everybody does things differently. Just find what works for you, and do that.” Those words changed everything for me.

    I realized there wasn’t “a right way” to do cancer. There was just the way that worked best for me.

    I believe it’s the same for you. No matter what kind of diagnosis you’re facing, it’s up to you to find what works for you and do that.

    To get you through those tough first days, I’m offering you some thoughts and techniques that worked for me. I hope some of them will work for you, too.

    Be Gentle With Yourself

    When you’re going through a tough time, you may not have the time or energy keep up your usual self-care routine. So, why not let the big things go and start looking for little things you can do instead?

    If you can’t get to the gym, go out for a ten-minute walk at lunch. If you don’t have time to cook a nutritious dinner, add a salad or vegetable to your take-out order.

    Instead of trying to check things off your to-do list, think of ways to make life easier for yourself. If you don’t have time to do something yourself, hire someone, or ask for help.

    Focus on what’s best for you, and that means speaking up for yourself. If you don’t have the time or energy to do something, say “no,” and don’t feel guilty about it.

    Find the Joy

    Be sure to do something you love every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes: sit on a beach, gaze at the stars, read a book, go for a walk, watch a funny You Tube video or TV show. Smile when you can and laugh as often as possible, because laughter connects you with the world in a way that eases anxiety and heals the heart.

    Affirm Courage, Love, and Safety

    What you say to yourself matters. And when you’re going through a tough time, positive self-talk can make a real difference in how you think and feel.

    When I was struggling to find even one positive thought, I found it really helpful to focus on powerful affirmations instead. So, if you find yourself spiraling downward into the depths of negativity, try the following process to break that cycle.

    Healing Affirmations

    Begin by saying your name out loud. Then remind yourself that you’re safe and secure in the moment. Let that feeling soak all the way in to your belly and your bones.

    Once you feel safe, affirm:

    “I have the spirit, will, and courage to meet any challenge ahead.”

    “I can handle anything, one step at a time.”

    “I am always surrounded and protected by light and love.”

    “I speak to myself with loving kindness. I treat myself with loving kindness. I care for myself with loving kindness.”

    “I am always moving in a positive direction toward a positive future.”

    “I am safe.”

    End by promising you will always treasure yourself and honor your beautiful spirit. Affirm courage, love, and safety.

    Nourish Yourself

    Experts recommend eating well, and eliminating sugary and processed foods, alcohol, and caffeine when you’re under stress.

    But maybe you’re having trouble eating anything at all. Or maybe you’re living on chicken noodle soup, pretzels, and chocolate doughnuts.

    Please, give yourself a break. When you’re going through a traumatic experience it’s no time to be following a strict diet or to beat yourself for not eating a balanced diet. Instead, focus on making healthy food choices when you can, and letting go of judgment when you can’t.

    If you find you’re having trouble eating, choose foods you can tolerate and enjoy smaller portions more often through the day.

    If you’re over eating, try eating fruits and vegetables first. Commit to eating only when you’re sitting down. Focus on eating more slowly.

    But if you’ve tried everything you can think of and are still struggling with food, please let your health care provider know what ‘s going on. They’re there to give you support and help in all aspects of your health care.

    Rest

    A good night’s sleep is an important part of healing your body, mind, and spirit, but if you’re struggling to get enough sleep there are a number of things you can do.

    Try going to bed an hour earlier each night. The extra time in bed can give your body some needed rest.

    Once you’re in bed, do your best to keep your focus off your troubles. Relive happy memories, or imagine yourself vacationing in a place where you can relax and enjoy.

    If you haven’t fallen asleep after twenty minutes, get up and do something calming. Write in your journal, do a crossword puzzle, or sip a cup of herbal tea.

    Finally, if you aren’t able to get enough sleep at night, take a nap during the day. Make it a non-negotiable part of your daily schedule. If time is an issue, try scheduling all your activities and responsibilities before lunch, leaving your afternoon for napping or resting.

    Seek Support

    It’s important not to go through this alone. And asking for help is a sign of strength and courage, not weakness.

    When things get rough, call a friend or a family member and ask for support and help.

    If you’re completely overwhelmed and don’t know where to turn, consider getting some professional help. Talking to a mental health provider can give you new insight, hope, and bring you peace.

    Finally, you may also want to consider working with a support group. There’s great power in knowing you’re not the only one suffering this kind of challenge. There are people who are in the same boat and know exactly how you feel.  They may be able to offer comfort and advice in the days ahead.

    Give

    Giving is another powerful way to connect with the people around you. It reminds you of the gifts you still have, and that you’re not the only one going through a tough time.

    There are lots of ways to lend a hand. Offer to drive a neighbor to a medical appointment. Walk the dogs at your local animal shelter. Write a check to your favorite charity or drop a few coins in the donation can as you pass by. Send a card or text to a friend to help them through the day.

    If you’d like to make a longer term commitment, volunteer at your local library, food bank, or senior center.

    And if you think you don’t have any energy or time or left to give, give a compliment. Share a smile or a kind word. You never know how that one small gift could change a life.

    Give Yourself a Healing Hug

    Hugging is a way to give yourself comfort and peace in the middle of any storm. Acupressure is a powerful way to bring ease to both body and spirit.

    I combine both techniques in what I call a healing hug, and highly recommend it to ease fear and panic that can be a part of these tough days.

    Begin by crossing your arms over your chest. There are two important acupressure points located in the soft tissue just under your collarbones called the “letting go” points.

    Chances are that by crossing your arms, your fingertips have landed on those “letting go” points. Take a moment and feel around until you find the spots, about two inches above your armpit crease and an inch inward.

    Once you’re found the points, pull your arms close around you in a comforting, self-hug, and gently massage those “letting go” points with your fingertips. Continue to breathe, noticing on each exhale how the tension and fear flow down your spine and out of your body.

    —

    No matter how difficult or scary your diagnosis, treating yourself with love and kindness will make the journey through the those first tough days easier, and give you a head start on enjoying the sunshine waiting for you on the other side.

  • How I Learned to Trust Others by Learning to Trust Myself

    How I Learned to Trust Others by Learning to Trust Myself

    “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.” ~Frank Crane

    I’ve had trust issues for as long as I can remember, but didn’t realize it until after my divorce.

    Divorce can be a traumatic experience, and in this case, it made me begin to take stock of my life. I began to reflect on my failed romantic relationships and why this was a repeat pattern for me.

    I realized then that I never let people in for fear they will let me down, belittle or make me feel small, or otherwise diminish me in some way. I keep people at a distance, and this impacts my ability to have close, connected relationships.

    I used to think I had trust issues because I grew up in a family where things were not “psychologically safe.” But I’ve come to realize there’s more to it than that.

    Have you ever struggled with trust issues thinking they were caused by something outside yourself? That trust was a matter of what other people did, how they treated you, or how they disappointed you? Maybe it’s time to consider that perhaps your trust issues are more about you than other people.

    While I may have some wounds from not receiving the emotional nurturing I needed when growing up, I have trust issues not because I distrust others, but because I don’t trust myself. What?!

    This was a surprising revelation. But, it helped me realize what I needed to do in order to truly trust other people—that was begin by trusting myself.

    You may have trust issues as well if: 

    • You view people with suspicion about their motives
    • You don’t share your true feelings
    • You assume the worst intentions by others
    • You make every interaction all about you—how could they do this to me?!
    • You doubt your own capabilities and decisions

    What happens when we are operating on a “non-trust” level? We keep ourselves closed off from all the opportunities available to us.

    Let me tell you a story about how this has played out in my life. One day I was out walking along a beautiful beach with a girlfriend. She said, “Wow—these guys around us are really checking you out.”

    “Really?” I asked.

    “That’s your problem!” she said. “You are oblivious.”

    And she was right. I was completely disengaged from the world around me because I didn’t trust it. I wasn’t open to people’s smiles, or their overtures, or even their kindness. I was basically checked out, and I rarely noticed when others made attempts at engagement.

    There have been many occasions when a person was about to open a door for me, but I was so busy being independent that I opened ir myself without even noticing their attempted act of kindness. This left me living a life that was mostly isolating and solo.

    Humans are social creatures, and we need human connection to feel alive and complete. When we cut ourselves off from this life-giving force because we are suspicious and don’t trust others, we harm ourselves more than any act of untrustworthiness we could experience.

    Yes, people will sometimes disappoint us, and yes, people will occasionally do malicious things. But, in the end, we have to get over this. We need to move on from continuously licking our wounds so we can heal them and start living fully again.

    As children we were naturally trusting, sharing our toys, our thoughts, and our hearts with abandon. It’s not until we were trained to distrust the world and “not talk to strangers” that we began to lose our innocence and belief in the inherent goodness of humanity.

    Or, we didn’t receive strong nurturing as kids, and this caused a wound that never seemed to heal properly. While it can be good to have a healthy dose of skepticism so as not to become victims—and we need to teach our kids to stay away from strangers to keep them safe—it is not healthy to remain closed off and shut down from the world.

    We must learn to trust despite knowing we may get hurt. It is only by opening our hearts that we can have flourishing relationships, see the opportunities around us, and begin to live a more fulfilled life.

    What happens when people let you down? You accept that they are imperfect beings and move on. What happens when you let yourself down? You do the same thing. This is where I think I got hung up. I didn’t trust myself, and this actually made it impossible to trust other people.

    We often project our feelings and beliefs onto others without consciously realizing we’re doing it. If we don’t trust ourselves to do the right things, we might project that onto other people and assume they too will let us down. If we don’t believe in our own inherent goodness, we likely won’t believe in anyone else’s.

    I had a hard time trusting myself because I never accepted myself as a flawed and imperfect being. I could never get over my own disappointment when I let myself down. What are some ways I let myself down?

    • Letting myself remain in an abusive relationship
    • Lying about my drinking addiction and hiding it from my family and friends
    • Not following through on a job opportunity I was too afraid I might get rejected
    • Not having the confidence to follow my dreams
    • Acting in ways that were counter to my moral values

    We can lose trust in ourselves in many ways, but then we can also build that trust back up.

    For me, I built my trust by realizing I wasn’t living up to my greatest self. I began to make conscious choices to change that. I got help for my drinking problem. I found the courage to take baby steps toward my ambitions, and each time I did, I built on that success. I focused on developing my personal strengths and growing as a person. Most of all, I strived to do the best I could in any given situation.

    Did I fail sometimes? Did I still let myself down? Of course, I’m imperfect. And this is okay. I found that if I was doing my best I could allow the occasional stumble without beating myself up or deciding that I couldn’t trust myself at all. And I could do the same for other people. If they occasionally disappointed me, I could recognize that this is what it means to be human.

    I realized I didn’t have to see things as black and white—that people, myself included, are either trustworthy or not. Because life is all about shades of gray. Sometimes people will let us down, but that doesn’t mean they always will.

    Even if people make mistakes, and even if we occasionally need to cut ties with people who continually hurt us, we can trust that most people have good intentions. And if we set the intention to always do our best, we can trust that we generally will, even if we falter at times.

    The way to resolve trust issues is to learn to trust yourself. When you believe that you are always doing your best, you’ll be able to extend this same belief to others. This will help you go out into the world and be open to people and experiences with curiosity and a pure heart, without bitter preconceptions.

    When we live a life full of integrity and trustworthiness to our deepest self, we can better learn to accept others’ mistakes and flaws, even if they hurt us. We can also learn to trust that despite what others may do, or how they might disappoint us, we will be able to get through it, our faith in humanity in tact.

    This will help us embrace life more fully and flourish in our widest and fullest potential—to spread our wings and fly.

  • How to Recover from Heartbreak and Feel Whole Again

    How to Recover from Heartbreak and Feel Whole Again

    “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” ~Iain Thomas

    A deep heaviness and uneasiness began to pulsate throughout my body. Warm, salty tears streamed down my face at all hours of the day. It felt like all the best parts of me were gone and would never return.

    Heartache can be one of the hardest things to overcome in life. I never wanted to be one of those girls who let guys determine how they feel. But when my first serious relationship ended when I was twenty-seven, I was beyond devastated.

    It took me years to overcome my breakup with Tom because he was my first real love. I’m slowly starting to view the despair I experienced as a gift because it’s shaped the person I’m becoming. More importantly, it has taught me to never fear or take advantage of love.

    If you’re struggling to overcome heartache, perhaps some of my lessons may be useful to you. Here’s what helped me on my journey to becoming whole again.

    1. Allow yourself to feel all your feelings.  

    Although it may be tempting to numb your feelings, if they aren’t addressed, chances are they will catch up to you.

    My relationship blindsided me when it ended because I didn’t see it coming. I felt like I was going through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Only, strangely enough, it felt almost worse than most deaths I grieved because in this relationship there was never a clear goodbye or any closure.

    It took me years to go through all of these stages. For a good part of it, I was stuck in denial and sadness.

    My breakup with Tom taught me that it’s okay to feel things that are uncomfortable because life isn’t always pleasant. It may be hard, but try to allow yourself to experience whatever feelings come up.

    I had to strip my emotions down to feel totally raw and vulnerable. If I felt sad and allowed myself to cry, my body felt so much better afterward because I was able to release all the stress and tension that I’d held in for so long. When I felt anger rising in the pit of my stomach, I’d go for a run to burn off that steam.

    Whatever it is that you’re feeling, allow it to come and go like waves instead of pretending it doesn’t exist or fighting it.

    2. Cut off contact with your ex so that you are able to heal. 

    One of the reasons it took me so long to get over Tom was because we were still in touch with each other via text. Even though we weren’t dating, deep down I had this romantic notion that we would get back together eventually.

    When I would date other guys, I wasn’t emotionally invested in them because part of me that held onto hope that Tom and I could still save our relationship and bring it back to what it was during the first year we dated. The truth was that over the years we both changed and grew apart instead of growing together.

    Although it was hard to end contact with Tom, I knew that in order to get over him I had to stop relying on him emotionally. This was the scariest part. Tom was part of my life for five years and knew all of me—the good, the bad, and the ugly. I was terrified to be alone and have him out of my life.

    I’m not going to lie, I may have texted him more than a few times after promising myself not to contact him. However, eventually, as time passed without contact, I was able to stay strong. I had to stand on my own and face my fears in order to get back to a healthy emotional state.

    It’s different for everybody, but I realized that no matter how much time has passed a part of me will always love my ex. And that’s okay. Because now I’m no longer in love with him, largely because I gave myself the space I needed to finish healing—which means I’ll be able to pursue a relationship with someone else in the future.

    3. Have a good tribe of people to talk to.

    No one is an island. Admitting that you are going through a hard time and finding friends and family who are willing to listen to your struggles can make a world of a difference.

    At the time of my breakup, my best friend was going through something similar. It was helpful to share our experiences with each other since it made us both feel less alone. I was lucky to have my mom to talk to as well. It really was beneficial to get her advice, as she had many years of experience to share.

    If you find yourself talking about your breakup excessively, it may be good to contact a counselor. Since my breakup happened during my last semester of graduate school,  I decided to take advantage of speaking with a counselor, as they were free to students.

    Initially, I had mixed feelings but can say that this assisted me greatly in being able to finish my last semester of school. It also felt good to talk about my feelings to someone who didn’t have a biased view and wouldn’t judge my thoughts.

    4. Don’t compare yourself to others.

    Remember my best friend I told you about who was going through a breakup? She ended up dating someone a month afterward. Eventually, they got married.

    It has taken me about two years to feel ready to date again. Everyone goes through breakups differently, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

    There are so many different factors involved in recovering from a painful breakup. Maybe your relationship was over way before it officially ended. Maybe you didn’t get any closure after your breakup, or it was your first love you lost.

    In order to allow myself to heal, I had to stop comparing myself to others. I also decided to get off of social media for a month.

    Yes, I was happy for my friends who were dating, getting married, and having kids. However, being bombarded with joyful couples and babies was just too much. I just knew that it was not the best time for me to be flooded with relationship pictures. It allowed me to spend more time with myself and hit the reset button.

    5. Give yourself the time you need before jumping into a new relationship.

    Initially, I went on a bunch of dates, sometimes two in one day. Yes, it distracted me from what I was feeling, but it wasn’t healthy. Emotionally, it became exhausting.

    It was too early in the game to date, and all I could think about was my ex. Whenever I went on a date, I would start comparing the guy to Tom, and that’s not a good way to jump back on the dating horse.

    Take the time you need to feel whole again before dating. I finally told myself that it’s alright to have high standards about what I’m looking for in a relationship. Most importantly, I learned to enjoy being single.

    6. Take good care of yourself.

    Self-care was never something I was good at. I always cared more about others and never made time for myself. I felt incredibly lost after my breakup because I no longer had Tom to care about.

    Without anyone else to focus on, I started to pay more attention to my own needs and wants. It was also an incentive to treat myself to certain services or activities I normally would not even consider such as getting monthly massages and participating in yoga classes regularly.

    I stopped saying yes to everyone else just to please them and started saying yes to myself. I travelled to Peru, Iceland, and Thailand. I took a new job and finally felt free.

    Go on that vacation you have been waiting for. Take that cooking class you have been putting off. Have a girls’ or guys’ weekend.

    Now is the time to focus on yourself. Enjoy it while you’re single because you never know when you’ll have as much time alone to discover your interests and passions.

    7. Don’t stop appreciating the beauty in all that surrounds you.

    There is joy all around us. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that, especially when you’re going through something tough like a breakup.

    I started to become engaged more in my surroundings, and it has made a big difference.

    I was able to connect to my friends and family on a deeper level and really value these relationships. I started a gratitude journal, which helped me appreciate the little gifts we are given each day. Even something as simple as smiling at others in the street can be a beautiful act and make us feel more connected to those around us.

    — 

    It took me years to pick up all of the broken pieces and rebuild myself. These seven tips helped me heal from an incredibly painful time in my life. Slowly, my heart started to mend and refill with self-love.

    I know I will always love Tom, but now I’m able to continue to go on with my life without feeling trapped or in limbo. Sometimes the past will unexpectedly come up and a flood of sadness will hit me. I allow myself to feel this and then let it go just as fast as it came.

    I’m grateful for the person I have become due to my breakup. It has allowed me to realize how rare and wonderful it is to find love. I’ve also learned to become comfortable in solitude and enjoy time alone.

    It’s been quite a process, but now my heart is open to love again. Even though you may experience a deep pain and feel broken and angry, know what there is still beauty out in this world for us to experience on a daily basis. And know that through this experience you can become a stronger version of yourself.

  • Why We Need to Stop Hiding and Share the Beauty in Our Brokenness

    Why We Need to Stop Hiding and Share the Beauty in Our Brokenness

    “Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up. The earth must be broken to bring forth life. If the seed does not die there is no plant. Bread results from the death of wheat. Life lives on lives. Our own life lives on the act of other people. If you are lifeworthy, you can take it.” ~Joseph Campbell

    Head on my pillow, tears in my eyes, a list of to-dos in my brain, I felt unable to move my body. I’d worked so hard to leave behind this person who stayed in bed avoiding life. But someone’s angry words had pierced my soul, and I once again was a prisoner to my bed, my thoughts, and my anxiety.

    It wasn’t so much the disagreement that stung, but the chuckles and snide “You can’t really believe that?” More than “mansplaining,” he was patronizing and questioning my intelligence.

    I tried to stop the personal attacks by “setting up boundaries,” as they say. No doubt I did not express myself in a calm, clear manner, as my blood was boiling. However, I tried to protect my integrity during the argument for the first time in this particular relationship.

    What now, though? Concern for the future of this relationship was what was now spiraling out of control in my head and overwhelming my thoughts.

    In retrospect, the fight hadn’t left me paralyzed with anxiety; it was the new way of dealing with belittling behavior that I had allowed myself. This was unchartered territory.

    I had dared to make a change in a relationship. Now, I was awash with the resulting questions about what came next and if I’d done the right thing.

    Without leaving my bed, I catapulted myself out of yet another comfort zone by reaching out to a group of supportive people. Phone in hand, I scrambled to type the message before I could think myself out of it.

    A few days before, a friend and I had heard author and activist Glennon Doyle speak. She encouraged the audience to speak our truths, “Blow shit up, and walk away like Wonder Woman.” So, that morning, as I licked my wounds, I told my truth to a safe audience.

    Like a dog offering up his belly in a display of vulnerability, I spoke the truth of where I was. I pulled back the curtain and said life has knocked me down. Can I get a hand up? The responding support was worth the risk.

    Not long after, I heard the song “This Is Me” from the movie The Greatest Showman for the first time. I rushed home and looked up the lyrical version on YouTube. I sat and absorbed the rising beat.

    I read the words as Kesha belted them out. Words like “Today, I won’t let the shame sink in,” and “I am bruised. I am who I’m meant to be. This is me.”

    My soul surged. I sucked in the words and rhythm like air. I marinated in the meaning, replaying it over and over.

    I wanted to announce my bruises too. I’ve battled depression my entire adult life; “this is me.” My latest psychologist diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder; “this is me.” No one knows about my battles with bulimia, but “today, I won’t let the shame sink in.”

    I headed off to the gym with my new warrior anthem playing in my head. I’m pumped. I greet everyone with a huge smile on my face. This is my happy place.

    I got to an exercise requiring balance, which I lack. My arms are flitting around being more comical than helpful. The lady next to me says, “See? You’ve worked it out!”

    Wait, what is she seeing? I’m flailing around like a fish out of water, and she sees “worked it out?” This sends me back in my head thinking about the song and my story and my struggles.

    I rushed home and wrote the truth about all the messiness that lies beneath what people see. I wrote about how I “worked it out” through my battles with mental illness, not despite them.

    I started telling my truth and in doing so, embracing it. With every scribbled word, I accepted my wounds a little more.

    I wrote about all the things that I thought I had to keep hidden in order to be presentable. My struggles had been my flaws, my “dirty little secrets.” I wanted to tidy up the pieces of my broken world before I could let anyone in.

    I had it all wrong. Our scars are the proof that we are living and growing. Our strength is that we have battled with demons and are still standing.

    Just look at the natural world. It transforms flaws and mistakes into beauty all the time.

    The pearl starts as an intruding piece of sand. Protecting itself from the intruder, an oyster creates a thing of value.

    Quartz is naturally colorless, but if iron mistakenly mixes in, it turns a beautiful purple, resulting in amethyst. The bodies of long-extinct creatures are now our fuel.

    The power of the universe is on display when it turns decay into value. There are no wasted failures in nature. They are simply transformed and renewed.

    What if beauty begins when the imaginary ideal is broken? What if the universe needs the messy, broken, and failed to demonstrate its power to make the defective whole? What if we have that same power to turn our battles into our beauty?

    I’m convinced now of the inherent beauty of the damaged parts, and that we must resist the temptation to air brush our lives as if they are cover girls. Hiding robs us of our divine power to turn our broken pieces into something wondrous.

    The broken bits don’t go back together the same way as before, though. We may have to mourn that fact. For example, life after divorce will never look the same. Mourning that loss is healthy, but shouldn’t forever immobilize.

    The caterpillar has no choice but to transform into a butterfly. We, however, can impede our transformation like I did through shame, guilt, denial, and hiding. There is so much value that can come from our damaged, defeated souls if we open them up to the light.

    To courageously tell our truth allows others to see the beauty and hope in the battlefield before them. We are so much more than what life has thrown our way. We are the warriors who are still standing no matter how many times we had to get off the ground. When we become vulnerable enough to illuminate our brokenness, we harness the power of the universe to create beauty out of failure.

  • The Danger of Wishful Thinking: Nothing Changes If We Don’t Take Action

    The Danger of Wishful Thinking: Nothing Changes If We Don’t Take Action

    “You just have to determine to settle for nothing less than being fully alive, to show up, be who you are, and share your gifts.” ~Gabrielle Roth

    A few years ago for the winter solstice my women’s group got together, as we do every week, and held a beautiful ritual to welcome both the darkness and the light. We released what we were ready to let go of in our lives and set our intentions for the New Year. We not only spoke our intentions, we danced them for each other. It was beautiful and powerful.

    But a few days later, as I was sitting in meditation with my candle, I heard the voice of my heart tell me, “You aren’t going to make those intentions come true unless you get very specific about how they are going to come about this year. You need to set goals and outline steps and commit to bringing this about in your life. Otherwise, it’s just going to be business as usual.”

    I was shown that I needed to set goals in every area of my life and be very specific about what I desire to create in that area and what it will take to get there. Then I needed to commit to the steps and have a process for tracking them and keeping my goals in my awareness.

    Since then, I have been deeply engaged in a process of visioning my life, creating goals for the year, and dividing those goals into measurable, achievable steps, and then following through. I now do a whole several-day process at the start of every year around this, with check-ins at the start of each month and week. I’ve developed a whole process to keep me moving toward my heart’s desires in a balanced way.

    The process has been amazing and challenging, and quite a learning experience.

    Suddenly I am making things happen in my life that I have wanted for a long time and felt that I either could not make time for or had no control over.

    In the process I have had to get very real about what is important to me, what I truly desire, and to what I am willing to commit myself, my energy, time, and resources. How much do I want it? And what is in the way inside of me? What has been holding me back?

    One of the things I am realizing is that in the past I relied heavily on wishful thinking, waiting for a miracle to take me out of my current predicament and bring me my dreams. I would hope for a miracle while not committing myself to making the things I desire happen.

    I still fall into this, because it’s hard to get crystal clear and then take action. It brings us up against our fears, our false beliefs, our laziness or insecurity or doubt. It would be nice if some giant eagle, like in The Lord of the Rings would just swoop in and save the day, and I wouldn’t have to do anything scary or hard.

    But the bigger problem was I didn’t feel empowered to create the life I desire, to manifest my dreams. I felt helpless and hopeless, like the best I could do was hope and pray, and maybe these things would show up and maybe they wouldn’t. Hence I would vacillate between periods of great optimism and great despair, because I didn’t feel I had any agency in the situation.

    Now I realize this is totally wrong.

    The whole craze around The Secret, the Law of Attraction, and manifesting your life has gone overboard with the sense “I can have anything I want.” There is not enough regard for what is in right alignment for us and others and the planet, what is good for all beings. We also overlook what we might need that we don’t know about yet and might at first reject—how sometimes the difficult or unpleasant situations of our lives are exactly what we need for our highest good.

    On the other hand, the idea that it is all out of my hands, it is all up to fate and there is nothing I can do about it, is no good either. For one thing, this belief overlooks the fact we are creative beings, powerful creators of our lives, whether for good or ill. We are here to co-create, to cooperate with the flow of Life—sometimes called the Tao—around us and within us. As the artists of our lives, we are here to be active participants in dreaming and creating our lives.

    An attitude of surrendering to the flow of life can help us to remember to release the results, the outcome. After you create your vision, this is an important, in fact, crucial step, that is often missed in the whole manifesting craze. But it doesn’t mean you just sit by and do nothing, waiting for your dreams to come true.

    Our heart’s desires can bring us into right relationship with the world, to the livingness in and around us. In fact, I believe a true heart’s desire is meant to do just that. Because it summons us to our greatness, to our fullest, most alive being, to our full participation here.

    In the past I approached manifestation and the Law of Attraction in a disempowered way. I wrote affirmations and did visualizations, hoping for a miracle, for it to be done for me. Affirmations and visualization can help us bring clarity and joy to our desires. That is tremendous and very powerful. I still use them, sometimes with startlingly positive results.

    But there is more required of us. I was forgetting my part in the equation—that I too am part of bringing my dreams to fruition, a big part.

    So here are the basic steps I have discovered to co-create with life:

    1. Define.

    First, you get very clear about what it is that you desire to create in your life. You name it. You visualize it with all of your senses. You feel it in your being. In feeling it, you make sure you really want it, and it isn’t just something you think you should want.

    You get clear and real about the details. You define. If I want to publish my writing in literary magazines, I need to have a clear idea what that means: I’d like to publish in five magazines by the end of this year, for example.

    2. Commit.

    I wasn’t really doing this step before. You change the wishing and wanting to a commitment. “I commit to publishing my writing in five magazines this year.”

    I find in changing my desire to a commitment, feelings and resistance may arise. There may be fear or doubt in my ability. There may be a belief that nothing good ever happens for me, or that magazines are not publishing good work anymore.

    These doubts, fears and beliefs point to work I need to do in myself, to clear out what is in the way inside of me that keeps my desire away from me. This is my job, to feel the feelings and beliefs that hold me back, and work on them, remove the obstacles.

    3. Declare.

    You state your commitment to friends. You make it known. You seek accountability and support. This is another step we love to avoid, because declaring our commitment puts us in the hot seat.

    And you ask for help where you will need it to make this dream a reality. There might be others that can help you with the steps. Don’t try to do it alone. That’s another mistake I often make.

    4. Visit with your dreams daily.

    You re-affirm your dream and your commitment to it daily. Keep it in your consciousness. As you do, create space for silence, so you can hear where you are being led, what steps you need to take.

    As you go about your day, stay open to guidance and opportunities to help you realize your dreams. If you aren’t paying attention to the opportunities, you are going to make it a whole lot more difficult to reach your desire.

    The road to get there may go through some unusual routes that you had not planned or never conceived of. The road may take you to a completely different outcome, like: It turns out I’m not meant to be a writer, I’m meant to be a singer! How wonderful!  

    If you are too fixated on how you think you should get there or even where you should arrive, you may be missing the beautiful openings that Life is granting you.

    5. Act.

    As you visit with your dreams, remember it is up to you to take steps, to act. Miracles and synchronicities often appear on the path of dreams, but first we have to show up by taking action in a repeated, committed way.

    You take actions congruent with your desire. You make your life congruent with what you wish to create.

    If I want to publish in five magazines, I need to write and I need to submit work on a regular basis. I need to make a schedule and have commitments to make this happen, not just vaguely decide I’ll do it “sometime.”

    Otherwise, all the dreaming and wishing and hoping, all the affirmations in the world aren’t going to make this happen for me.

    And I need to take the unexpected openings that arise, as long as they feel right to me, as long as I feel that “yes” inside. So when someone suddenly says to me, “I’m starting a new magazine, and I need material to publish,” I give them something I have written, because I recognize the opportunity Life is handing me.

    6. Surrender.

    This is a very important step many people miss. You hand it over to the flow of Life, trusting that the highest and best for you will be done in this situation, even if it looks nothing like what you asked for. You let it go.

    Even though you continue to conduct your life congruent with your desire—until you receive information/feeling/sensing that it is no longer right for you—and even though you keep your dream alive in your awareness, you still release the results.

    If I keep writing and sending out my work, and it does not get published anywhere this year, I trust in the process, and most of all, I remember to enjoy the process. The process is everything, or nearly everything, because the process is my life happening now.

    So it’s not enough to engage in wishful thinking and magical practices. You have to go out and change your life, take action. Be the creative force in your life. Make your behavior congruent with your desire. Be accountable, be empowered, ask for help, and then release the results.

    No one is going to do it for you if you don’t care enough to make it happen in your life. That was the big surprise I didn’t want to realize. But it has made a world of difference.

  • How to Rebuild a Relationship with Someone Who’s Hurt You

    How to Rebuild a Relationship with Someone Who’s Hurt You

    “Holding a grudge doesn’t make you strong; it makes you bitter. Forgiving doesn’t make you weak; it sets you free.” ~Unknown

    My situation is probably not unlike that a lot of people reading this.

    I grew up in a single-parent home. Don’t get me wrong, I had a pretty happy childhood, and my mom did an unbelievable job raising me. She worked four jobs to make sure I always had the best of everything. But I could never shake the feeling that I always wanted a father figure in my life.

    My parents had separated when I was very young. My dad was a marine, my mom was a doctor, and she had realized that she didn’t want to be moving around her whole life. This meant that I only got to see him once or twice a year. And slowly, we became increasingly estranged.

    When I was sixteen, I found out that he was deciding where to buy a new house for a more permanent and stable job post. I started thinking that he would find something nearer to me. He now had more flexibility, and finally, I could see him more often. We could begin to build a real relationship and make up for the years of missed birthdays, graduations, and other memories.

    But then, right when I got my hopes up, he didn’t. He stayed where he was—with his new wife and her kids. Even though it seemed like they didn’t appreciate him, and even though I felt that I needed him more than they did.

    It broke my heart.

    In fact, it’s almost ten years later, and although we’re on better terms now than we’ve ever been, I’m still healing.

    I had to learn to let him go before I could learn to forgive him. And I had to learn to forgive him before I could build a relationship with him. We’re in the process of building that relationship, and we’re better off now than we’ve ever been. But I’m still accepting that I’ll never get the dad that the little girl in me always wanted.

    It’s a tough pill to swallow. Knowing that people that you have the most love for are sometimes going to hurt you. Sometimes even those who are supposed to protect you. It’s one of the most difficult lessons you’ll learn in a lifetime, but it’s a part of being human.

    I hope my experience can help to shed some light on your own relationships with partners, family members, and close friends.

    Here’s how I learned to let go and forgive.

    1. See the human being in the projection.

    A significant part of what we see in other people, particularly those with whom we have an emotional history, can often be a projection of our own unconscious attitudes toward that person, and not a reflection of how they are behaving.

    This is difficult to see in ourselves, and tends to be even more pronounced in people we’ve known for a long time, particularly our parents.

    I learned to forgive my dad by seeing the person in him and not the idea of what I thought a father should be. Doing so wasn’t an easy process, as I had to face shortcomings in both of us. On his side it was constantly making promises he couldn’t keep, out of a fear of losing love and affection from anyone around him. For me, it was the inability to give him a chance to make things right, and see him in a new light, even when it was the most appropriate thing to do for both of us.

    Fortunately, over time, as I grew as a person, I was able to build a new relationship with him, based on fresh experiences and not sour expectations.

    2. Constantly re-assess your expectations.

    When trying to start afresh with my father, I found myself constantly face to face with my old expectations. Whenever he would act in a certain way, such as making empty promises or failing to be there for me when I need him, it would trigger an old story (and old emotions) I had about how he’d always been this way or how he’d never change. But each time I did so, I was able to reassess my expectations.

    A cynical way to look at this would be to say that I lowered them. But who’s to say for whatever reason they weren’t too high to begin with? When he began to act in a way that was more congruent with what I had come to expect, we were both happier, and he even began to positively surprise me sometimes when he fulfilled promises I didn’t expect him to.

    3. Look at the world from their perspective.

    The spiritual teacher Ram Dass once said: “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek quote, and I’ve tried to apply the idea my situation. I’ve always thought that I’m an empathetic and understanding person. But can I really stand in the shoes of my family members and be completely ok with their actions, particularly those who have hurt me?

    I tried to think about my dad’s situation, his expectations and disappointments, the influences in his life like constantly being on the move because of his work. And I understood that he wasn’t there for me partly because he was afraid of losing his new family and being alone.

    At the end of the day, while I couldn’t come to justify his actions, I was able to see the rationale in them, and have empathy for him as a flawed human being, rather than someone who had intentionally done me wrong.

    4. Practice acceptance in all areas of life.

    Sometimes I couldn’t separate the man from the projection, I couldn’t change my expectations, and I couldn’t come to rationalize where I’d been done wrong. At this point, I had to try and accept things the way they are. And at first, I couldn’t. It just felt so inauthentic, I was still so angry and upset. So I decided to start small and practice acceptance as a skill.

    I accepted little things like traffic on the way to work and rudeness by people in shops. I accepted when I saw something I didn’t like on the news or friend of mine had been a little thoughtless. I even made it a habit to accept things I didn’t like about myself, and finally, I began to be able to accept my father for his mistakes.

    5. View relationships as fluid, not solid.

    This final point was one of the most interesting. I began to view relationships in my life as fluid and not solid. For me, fluid relationships meant that people could enter and leave, their roles could change, as could the way we related to each other. Unfortunately, this is a natural fact of life, and the choice we have is whether or not we resist it.

    My dad hasn’t been a huge support, nor a good role model, but right now he’s a father and a friend, and someone I love. That may change in the future, for better or worse, but I’m trying my best to be open to the journey.

    Learning to let go of people you love when they’ve hurt you is one of the most difficult challenges we will face in a lifetime. As you can see from my situation, letting go of someone may be releasing the grip you have on the idea of who they should be. Sometimes you can still maintain a relationship, just not the one you want. And sometimes, that’s exactly what you need.

    Have you ever had to rebuild a relationship with someone who’s hurt you? Leave a comment below, I would love to hear your stories!

  • Why I Can’t Always Be the “Strong One” and What I Do Now Instead

    Why I Can’t Always Be the “Strong One” and What I Do Now Instead

    “She was strong and weak and brave and broken… all at the same time.” ~Unknown

    My mom was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when I was seven years old. It’s a chronic condition that doctors say can be managed but not cured. The symptoms included manic high energy, depression, delusions, hearing voices, reduced need for sleep, and loss of touch with reality.

    There were many times of stability for her, when she was on the right medication, taking it routinely, and attending regular psychotherapy. But if any of these elements were missing, those moments were often short-lived.

    She was the type of woman who would speak to anyone in eyesight, make an instant connection, and fill the atmosphere with the kind of joy and laughter that would make anyone think of happy times.

    For me, as I knew her well, any extreme traits that did not resemble these were signs that her body was not responding to the medicine and she was having what doctors call an “episode.” These were the times I knew she had to be hospitalized for stabilization. Some episodes were milder than others, but all resulted in my sister and I having to make the tough decisions, for my mother’s well-being, that deep down inside hurt us to the core.

    We were like the three amigos, my mother, little sister, and me. We had a powerful bond, and my mother, being a single parent, taught us to be strong, independent, confident women. Growing up, I didn’t know that my mom having her episodes would become the norm, and taking her back and forth to the hospital would become routine.

    Years later it would never get easier, and each time felt like the first time. Each time I had to put on my armor jacket of strength, suck up my feelings of sadness, and be strong for my mother when she was not able to do that for herself. I had no idea back then that learning how to be so “strong” would eventually be my downfall.

    I remember my first time taking my mom to the hospital. My heart raced and my chest filled with so much pressure it felt as if I was about to explode. I was filled with such overwhelming sadness, anger, and helplessness that I couldn’t even express if I wanted to. It wasn’t the time.

    As we sat with my mother in the emergency room, waiting for her to get called back, everything moved in slow motion. Her rage of being taken to the hospital without her initial consent filled my ears with such vulgar slurs and hurtful words that I regularly had to remind myself it was her “condition” talking, not her.

    Life can put us in situations where we are forced to be strong even when we feel weak inside. Society will give you the impression that being strong is a good thing. We are programmed to show strength and not express our weakness. It’s almost this hidden outlook as if expressing your weakness will allow someone or a situation to break you, and once we are broken, we can’t put the pieces back together.

    We become so good at portraying strength; we fool others into believing that we have everything under control and do not need help. But, as I found over the years of being the strong one and continually putting on my armor jacket of strength, I was doing more harm to myself than good.

    Here are some lessons I’ve learned since realizing that being the “strong” one is not always the best solution:

    1. Don’t isolate yourself from others.

    There were many times when my mother’s episodes were extreme, and I didn’t want to share my feelings with anyone in my inner circle. I felt like no one would understand what I was going through, and it felt like I was in a battle all by myself. Unlike a physical disease, there are so many negative stigmas that can come with having a mental disorder. The fear of both my mother and I being judged and ridiculed was enough to keep my emotions and thoughts to myself.

    During these times being social was the last thing on my mind. I avoided social outings with friends and family like the plague because I felt like I was going through things they wouldn’t understand.

    The more I isolated myself, the more toxic my mind became. When I was by myself, I would constantly dwell on my negative thoughts. They would race through my mind all day, and it was extremely hard for me to see the positive.

    On the days when I did have a brief interaction with my friends, I was no longer the voice of reason but instead the “Debby Downer” who no one wanted to be around. The calls eventually slowed down, and my circle of friends became smaller and smaller.

    Contrary to what I believed, when I finally decided to open up it made a world of difference for me. When I told a close friend the details of what I was going through, she said she could sense something was wrong with me and extended her listening ear. Even though she wasn’t able to directly relate, she had a close friend whose sister had a similar diagnosis, so she was able to understand my concerns and offer a few stress management tips.

    This one little moment speaking with my friend felt so freeing. I was finally able to open up to someone and not feel as if I was in a battle all by myself. Moments like those helped me realize that isolating myself was not aiding my strength but actually adding unnecessary stress.

    When you isolate yourself, you tend to feel like you’re in battle alone and forget that it’s innate for people who care about you to want to be there for you. Your friends and loved ones will be able to sense when something is wrong and will naturally want to offer support. By opening a dialogue, you might be surprised by how many people can relate in some way.

    Even if someone is not able to directly relate, there are hidden messages of encouragement that you can receive when you least expect it. Allowing yourself to be around others during these times can make a shift in your energy, which can help make your days brighter.

    2. Don’t hold your feelings inside.

    I think one thing many tend to forget is that holding your feelings inside doesn’t make them go away. When you bottle your emotions inside you are allowing the pressure of the build-up to take control of your body. These feelings cause more harm than good. When worrying becomes excessive, it can lead to feelings of high anxiety and cause you to become ill. Stress, according to the American Psychological Association, is the leading cause of some of the most severe chronic diseases.

    In the early years of my mother’s diagnosis, I would allow stress to consume my life. When high levels of stress would occur, I frequently became sick. I would frequent the doctor for stomach pains and was soon told that continuing on that path could result in causing a stomach ulcer.

    Being “strong” does not mean that you need to keep things bottled up with no outlet. This is an unconscious thing we tend to do without thinking about the long-term effects. It is vital that we allow ourselves to handle the crisis by finding a positive outlet. Meditation and exercise can be great tools to use that will allow you to release the energy needed.

    3. Let yourself be vulnerable.

    In every healthy relationship, there must be a sense of vulnerability. Whether we’re talking about a romantic relationship or a friendship, vulnerability is needed for each person to be in their truth and for the connection to be genuine.

    When you are put in situations where you have to be strong at all times you tend to build a wall up, what I like to call the “wall of protection.” This is a wall that builds over time and grows as you are forced to overcome more adversity.

    The more you are forced to be strong and fight your battles, the higher the wall gets. In these moments of struggle, you are forced to take on an intensive militant mindset, figure out the problem quickly, and find the solution. You have no room for errors or mistakes. Because you are the strong one, your mind thinks if you allow a mistake everything will crumble.

    I spent years unconsciously pushing people away without knowing it. I was accustomed to handling every battle that came my way on my own. My “wall of protection” eventually turned into this hard exterior that pushed everyone away, including men I was dating. It shielded my soft, playful side and turned me into someone who was a pro at masking her emotions.

    How can you have a genuine relationship with no vulnerability? How can anyone get to know you if they only see and understand one side of you? Eventually, that relationship will drift away because it has no foundation to stand on.

    By putting on your strong masquerade, you block others from seeing the real you. Without allowing someone to get to know you, including your fears and what makes you happy and sad, they are just getting to know your representative, not your true self.

    What if you didn’t have to fight the battle alone? By allowing yourself to be vulnerable and admitting when you are going through hard times, you allow yourself to receive love. And love is by far the most prominent weapon one needs to overcome whatever obstacles come his or her way.

  • How to Face Uncertainty: Why We Don’t Need to Press the Panic Button

    How to Face Uncertainty: Why We Don’t Need to Press the Panic Button

    “This time, we are holding onto the tension of not knowing, not willing to press the panic button. We are unlearning thousands of years of conditioning.” ~Sukhvinder Sircar

    This morning I awoke feeling uncertain about the direction my life was taking. Was it what I wanted in all areas? Was I right to be living where I wanted to, in London, away from family? Was I doing the “right thing” restructuring my business, and was I doing the “right thing” going away for two months next year?

    I’ve had a few days like this recently, and while I’d like to blame it on my external circumstances, I know differently. I’m simply feeling stuck in thought.

    I learned this in what I perceive as “the hard way.”

    Three years ago, I experienced trauma that left me feeling empty and abandoned. I got married. You wouldn’t think that this was a traumatic experience, but in the space of one month (and for no apparent reason whatsoever), my family told me that I was “no longer part of their family” and that I “deserved” to be abandoned by my dad when I was four, and my new mother-in-law-to-be told me that she had “never liked me but that she would try.” Also, I lost my best friend of ten years.

    It’s safe to say that my wedding day was a blur, and I felt broken. Instead of experiencing wedded bliss, I ended up questioning my relationship and traveling alone to try to “find myself.” Really, I was trying to escape my pain and run from the uncertainty I was feeling about life.

    Fast forward three years, and I now know something different. When we are feeling uncertain or doubtful, trying to predict the future or trying to work out the past—whenever we are not in the moment—it is because we are actually caught up in our thinking.

    Sure, we can blame many of our external circumstances for these feelings and choices—there are plenty of things that have occurred this week that I could say have “made me” feel uncertain. But since I’ve discovered the truth of who I really am, I now know that my uncertainty is, in fact, coming from me.

    Ultimately, our thinking influences how we experience the external world, which means we have a choice in how our circumstances impact us. That being said, it is human nature, and completely normal, to get caught up in our feelings about external events at times. The point is that we don’t need to be scared of our human experience or try to think our way out of it; we just need to accept our feelings until they pass.

    It’s an Inside-Out Reality

    As I journeyed through life after what felt like a breakdown, I came across a profound understanding about the nature of our human experience, which totally transformed the way I saw and danced with life. I now call this my “transformational truth principles.”

    These principles explain how our entire reality is thought-created, which means that everything we see in the world and everything we feel comes from our thinking.

    So, using my current experience as an example: I’ve been feeling uncertain about where I should live, whether I should travel for such a long time, and how I’m going to restructure my business and maintain my finances. I know that I am feeling anxious about these things solely because of my thoughts.

    If I weren’t worried about uncertainty (if I didn’t have an “uncertainty bothers me” lens), then it wouldn’t upset me at all. If I focused on the potential of my business growth, the excitement of the travel journey, and the beautiful feeling of living where I want to be living in London, I’d be feeling that thinking instead.

    So, external events that are happening can’t impact us unless what we believe about them bothers us. It’s the same with anything. If someone criticizes us, it can’t impact us unless we believe it ourselves.

    Say someone criticized my creative talents, for example; I would probably laugh because I see myself as creative. If, like with my wedding, they criticized my worthiness, my ability to be loved, or left me, I might sob into my pillow for days, because at times, like many of us, I doubt my self-worth and question if I’m lovable.

    Just because people thought I was unlovable, that doesn’t mean I am. The only reason it impacted me was because I believed it myself. In this way, the external only ever points us to what we think about ourselves and not to the truth.

    Our Thoughts Are Not the Truth

    We get so caught up in believing our own stories that we often forget to step back and see that what we think is just thought. Thoughts aren’t always facts. What’s more, you might notice how our thinking fluctuates. We can think differently about the same thing in each different moment. That’s because our thoughts are transient, and fresh new thinking is available to us in each moment.

    When you understand this, you might well wonder, “Well, what is the truth then?” The truth is underneath our thinking. Within all of us there is a wisdom—a clarity—that is innately accessible to us, if we just allow the space to listen to it.

    We do this by simply seeing our thoughts as “just thoughts” floating around in our heads. Noticing this allows our thoughts to drop away—without us doing anything.

    Allowing Space and Flowing

    Usually, instead, we are likely to have a whole host of thoughts around how to react when we feel anxious about uncertainty.

    For me personally, I would usually want to force and control things in order to “fix” my lack of certainty over my relationship or whatever my uncertainty might be in the moment—living where I was living, traveling, or restructuring my business.

    You might make lists of action plans, or work out worst-case scenarios, or analyze why it happened.

    This has always been a temptation of mine, and I spent months on this after my wedding, trying to work out if I should be with my husband or not, whether life would forever be difficult if I had children, why my in-laws didn’t like me, and why my dad left.

    But, again, in the same way I now understand that it is not the external that creates my feelings about uncertainty, I also understand that there is no need to force certainty, or even look for the “why.” Sometimes there isn’t one.

    Certainty is an Illusion

    It’s an illusion that there is any certainty in the first place. Life is always evolving, and, as such, there is no safety net beyond the one we imagine. We do this all the time, but the only certainty in life is that there isn’t any!

    Anything we predict is just our mind trying to “fix something,” which is futile. It can seem scary to think that we have no certainty, that we can’t fix things, but when we understand that there is actually nothing to fix—because nothing is broken—we can settle back into the flow of life.

    I’m not saying it always feels easy, but I have experienced how my feelings about my wedding traumas settled down when I began to understand this.

    We are Universally Guided and Already Whole

    We only see that there is something to “fix” because this is, again, our construction of reality. We are unlearning thousands of years of conditioning of how we view the world: ideas that certainty exists and that we need to fix ourselves if things don’t look how we think they should.

    Sydney Banks, the original inspirer of my Transformational Truth principles, said:

    “If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.”

    Because, actually, there is nothing to fear. I believe we are always exactly where we need to be—because we are part of this amazingly miraculous universe, which is guided by some sort of powerful intelligence that no one really understands. In this way, we are already whole, always connected, and always safe. There is nothing to fix because we are not broken.

    Ultimately, the “answer” we are looking for is pointless. There is no “answer,” and we don’t need one. All we need to do is see how life really works and allow ourselves to accept where we are in each moment, knowing that it is a transient, thought-created experience of life.

    We just need to flow, move with what happens, and sit in our feelings, knowing that they are thought-based, they can’t harm us, and they will soon pass.

    In her poem “She Is a Frontier Woman,” Sukhvinder Sircar explains this well in saying that all we really need to do is hold on to the tension of not knowing and not press the panic button.

    Allow the Creative Force of Life Flow

    And so, this morning, as I woke feeling uncertain, I got out my yoga mat and journal. I stretched, I moved my body, and I sat in the feelings I had, knowing that they would pass, even though they felt horrible.

    I knew that they were not part of me, but simply my thinking, trying to convince me of something I believed that was fundamentally not the truth. I let go. I flowed. I accepted what I didn’t know. I didn’t press the panic button. Instead, I wrote this.

    In the space where I could have (and would have previously) worried and attempted to solve things, the creative force of life—which is actually underneath all of our thoughts—simply flowed through me. In a much more beautiful way than it could have done had I indulged my imagined beliefs about the external.

    When we sit back, creation gifts us with exactly what we need in each moment. We simply need to understand how this works and allow it.

  • How Social Media Is Helping Me Cope with Grief

    How Social Media Is Helping Me Cope with Grief

    “Grief, no matter where it comes from, can only be resolved by connecting to other people.” ~Thomas Horn

    We had just landed in Chicago. I had spent the last three hours on a flight from New Jersey sitting next to grown-ups who didn’t ask me fifty questions every two minutes, while my kids watched a movie with their dad, two rows behind.

    I was looking forward to spending one whole week in Chicago, despite the freezing temps. This was my first real break in eight months, and boy, I had plans! Sleeping in, long baths, reading, and no laptop!

    I switched my phone on as soon as we landed. There was a text from my sister in India that she’d sent a few hours ago. My mom had been in the hospital for two weeks now with a serious lung infection.

    That morning her doctor had given us hope that she was getting better. This was good news, and I was relieved. I tried to call my mom and then my dad, but none of them answered.

    I thought, I’ll try her again when we check in our hotel. I sent her a text, telling her the same along with a video of my two-and-a-half year old son running around the airport. These videos were her life.

    We were in the back of a Black Sedan, on our way to the hotel, when my phone rang. It was my dad. He was crying. I couldn’t even understand what he was saying, but my heart was beating out of my chest.

    The only thing I understood were these words, “She was put on a ventilator.”

    I started crying, but I managed to say, “She will be fine, Papa. Don’t cry. Be strong!” I knew whatever “putting on a ventilator” meant, she would be fine! Goddammit, that was my mom! She was always fine. In reality, I had no idea what that meant.

    The next few hours were a battle she fought alone for her life. She gave a good fight, but eventually, my sweet mama lost the battle. I didn’t just lose my mother. I also lost my best friend and my biggest cheerleader.

    The next day, I carried myself and my heavy heart 8,000 miles away to India.

    The last time I saw my mom was over two years ago. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I will never be able to see her beautiful smile again. I will never hear her sweet voice.

    The next few weeks are a blur. The only thing I remember is seeing her lifeless body.

    I remember her slightly parted lips as if she was about to call my name. Her black hair with greys peeking out, and her soft, supple skin. I kissed on her forehead and wished somehow she would wake up.

    I held her hand and said goodbye to the person who brought me into this world.

    After spending a few weeks back in India with my family, I came back home to New Jersey. With nothing but grief and tears to fill my day with, I returned to work.

    A big part of my work involves staying active on social media. I had taken a brief hiatus, but now I was ready to be back. But how could I talk about anything else other than that one thing that consumed my brain?

    I had built a small yet strong community on my social media platform. Yet, I hesitated. What if someone posted a nasty comment? What if someone told me, “Enough already, stop depressing us!”

    I spent most of my days at my home, crying. My husband was at work, and my kids were in school. I started noticing that other than a few friends who I could literally count on my fingers, others had disappeared from my life.

    My phone never rang.  My friends hardly texted me. When I ran into people, they were so awkward around me. Was it just my imagination?

    Was it just a coincidence that my good friends had just vanished into thin air at that exact moment when I needed them the most?

    It’s said that grief is like waves—sometimes it’s calm, and sometimes it’s like a tsunami. On days when it turned into tsunami, I felt like I was drowning and didn’t know if I would be able to come up for air. Ever.

    Desperate for a human connection, I turned to my small but mighty crowd on social media.

    On Instagram, I talked about my struggles and how I was coping with the loss of my mother. I wrote Facebook posts about my mom and how my kids were learning to calm me down when I broke into tears. In Facebook groups, I shared how my grief was affecting all areas of my life, including my work.

    The response was phenomenal! People sent me flowers and handwritten cards. Some shared their experience of how they dealt with the loss of a loved one.

    Some sent me long, beautiful personal messages and some just one sentence: “How can I help you?”

    These were people I hardly knew, some I had never met. Yet together, they opened their hearts and gave me a platform to grieve.

    Social media often gets a horrible rep, and I totally get it. There are some very nasty people out there. But for every one nasty person online, ten people are on social to be social.

    They are looking for a human connection. Perhaps, when they see raw vulnerability, they extend their hand across their screens. When they read about someone who is going through the same pain as they are, they give their virtual shoulder to cry on.

    Humans need emotional connection. Even more when we are grieving. And sometimes you can’t find it near you. Sometimes you aren’t comfortable talking about it to anyone you know. And sometimes, even if you have people around, you feel they just don’t get it.

    Whatever it is, if you are struggling to talk to someone, know that social media can be a great resource. Use it; don’t shun it. Give it a try.

    Join a Support Group

    There are many great support groups online. A lot of closed Facebook groups dedicated to helping people who are grieving have stringent guidelines and zero tolerance policy. If you are new to social media or wary of sharing your personal stories online, start here.

    Since all the members are going through the same pain, there is a very high level of support. I discovered people who had lost a loved one were the ones who could really understand what I was talking about. And sometimes, it’s so much easier to spill your emotions when no one is staring at you in the eye with uncomfortable silence.

    Rule of 3:1

    Give, give, give, and then make the ask. The rule of social media is the same as the rule of life. You give first, and then you ask.

    Although I was received with an open heart from my community, I believe it was because I had built a relationship with them for six months. I had been there for them. I had provided value to their life or work many times before I made my ask.

    Show Up as You Are

    Don’t try to hide your emotions or pretend to be someone you aren’t. Tell your truth. Show up exactly the state you are in.

    If you are new to social media or don’t use it for anything else other than remembering your friend’s birthday, then this will be hard. Start with a safe place first. Maybe it’s a closed online community of known people or five of your trusted online friends. You don’t need thousands, just a few people whom you build an emotional connection with.

    We are very fortunate to live in a time when information and access are available to us at our fingertips. It’s up to us how we choose to use it.

    My grief is nowhere close to being over. It shall never be. It has changed forms, and I believe it will continue to do so. But, knowing that I have a safe space where I can talk about it without being judged or ridiculed is helping me cope with my grief.

  • What To Do When the Voices in Your Head Disagree

    What To Do When the Voices in Your Head Disagree

    “Ego says, ‘Once everything falls into place, I’ll feel peace. Spirit says, ‘Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place.” ~Marianne Williamson

    Muse: I’d love to get another job one day. One where I can feel inspired and give my best gifts to the world! One where they have a casual dress code and summer Fridays. Ah, I can just feel it now!

    Critic: What are you, crazy? You’re always talking about quitting and starting over. Do you remember how hard we worked to get the job we have? (That you’ve only been at for one year, may I remind you.) What do you think, you can just throw that all away?

    Muse: I don’t care. I don’t want to live my life for my resume. One year is a good amount of time. I’m ready to try something new. I want to start feeling satisfied at work, and you know we are not happy in our current situation.

    Critic: It’s not all about “happiness,” okay? Who do you even know that is happy? (And don’t show me their Instagram feed as evidence.) There’s more to life than just what you want, you have to be responsible.

    Muse: Responsible means “able to respond,” and with that ability I’m responding to feeling dead at work with the idea to do something new. Why are you always such a downer?

    Does this style of dialogue sound familiar? What’s fascinating is that this kind of banter goes on internally ad nauseam, and we barely even recognize that it’s happening.

    According to several different therapeutic modalities, these inner “parts” of us are perfectly natural, but it can cause distress when they are engaged in conflict and we remain unaware of the inner battle we are constantly fighting.

    When I first was introduced to “parts work,” it made so much sense to me. I quickly identified a little girl part, a writer part, a dreamer part, a victim part, a wise part, and many others that were at play within my psyche—running more or less amuck having been left unattended for years.

    Once I got to know these parts (from their names, to what they like to wear, to their age, to their qualities of being), I began to develop a relationship with them where they could show me deeper fears and desires that I was struggling with.

    At the time, I was most conflicted by the battle the Muse and Critic have so nicely illustrated above. I was concerned as to whether to follow a more traditional career path, or set out on my own as an entrepreneur.

    When I would listen to either side individually, each seemed to make a compelling case. In the Muse’s case, she seemed to have my back regarding my heart’s desires and what would be both fun and fulfilling. In the Critic’s case, he seemed to be protective of my well-being and trying to ensure that I would be able to succeed and not be doing something rash or impractical.

    The beauty of working with your parts is that each of them has their own unique perspective and wisdom for you.

    Too often we hear things that imply that we should silence or even banish the inner Critic. However, from my vantage point and experience, the Inner Critic is most often attempting to offer something of value. He’s trying to be helpful in the only way he knows how (through fear and thus behaving protectively).

    When I started listening to the Inner Critic instead of avoiding him, I was able to use his strategizing, focus, and love of structure and stability to help balance out the Muse’s go-all-in approach.

    Whereas I tended to favor the Muse because she is more colorful, upbeat, and fun-loving, it was an important process to see where she was blindsided by her aspirations and sometimes ignoring realities that the Critic rightly brought to my attention.

    In fact, the relationship between the Muse and Critic highlighted why they were so diametrically opposed—by being pitted against each other, each one grew more and more extreme.

    Through working with these parts and having them relate to each other, the Critic could become an “inner architect,” and the Muse could open up to his ideas for designing the life of her dreams without throwing caution to the wind.

    It gave structure and form to the wispy and grandiose ideas of the dreamer. I was able to launch my own business, while also balancing the realities of daily life.

    Most importantly, working with my parts helped me feel more peace and alignment inside myself. From there, the external aspects of life became easier to navigate because I could connect to the clarity and direction within.

    I fell so in love with the personal transformation that parts work has to offer that I now incorporate this methodology into my work with others. It has been amazing to see how similar and yet how unique every person’s inner parts (and their relationships to each other) can be!

    By working with one’s parts over time, you can see how and why they disagree and move closer and closer to a deeper understanding and harmony among them.

    Do you also have an internal struggle currently where you feel like there’s a Ping-Pong game of back and forth going on inside your brain? Are you feeling torn between “I want to” and “I shouldn’t”? Are you feeling split between “If only…” and “Impossible!”? Then, it’s possible that two sides of your own self are waging war trying to get to a solution that actually lies in the middle ground of what they both have to offer.

    To start getting to know your own parts, you might:

    1. Sit down and list any of your roles or personas—as many aspects of yourself that you can think of.

    Some examples include: Debbie the Downer or Suzy the Spunky One; Donald the Dreamer or Percy the Protector.

    Trust your first instinct on their gender, if applicable. Some may even be an animal or have an amorphous presence, like a pervasive mist or a dark blob. *Also note that parts are not fixed or stagnant, they can continually evolve and shift, just like us!

    2. Secondly, write a few descriptive adjectives beside each of them.

    Write down what arises for you when you imagine them and when you connect with their needs, fears, and desires. For bonus points, draw a picture of them! (Even stick figures count!)

    3. Then, pick the two parts that seem the most contradictory, and begin a dialogue.

    Start with the most eager and curious one asking the other, “How are you today?”

    At first, they may start out pretty opposed, but if you write for at least a page, they may come to understand each other. However, the only goal here is to witness their perspectives as they are, and let the rest unfold organically. Don’t force the process; rather follow your intuition and be open to letting the process lead you!

    Feel free to share below how this goes for you. I hope you at least have fun exploring. You might be surprised at what unfolds!

  • Anxiety Is Not My Enemy: How I’ve Learned to Accept It And Cope

    Anxiety Is Not My Enemy: How I’ve Learned to Accept It And Cope

    “You are strong for getting out of bed in the morning when it feels like hell. You are brave for doing things even though they scare you or make you anxious. And you are amazing for trying and holding on no matter how hard life gets.” ~Unknown

    I couldn’t take it anymore. I no longer wanted to answer to the heart beating on my ribcage, my sweat on my palms, or the breath that got caught in the upper part of my lungs. I wanted the swirling thoughts in my brain to settle. I imagined them falling like leaves finding their place on the ground after a gust of wind forces them into a cyclone.

    Driving my daughter to daycare, I couldn’t calm myself. We had just moved to a new town in what was our last relocation.

    Over the past thirteen years, my husband and I had moved across the country and lived in several cities—Baltimore, Milwaukee, San Diego, Winston-Salem, NC, Oxford—and I was tired. Tired of the stress of packing and unpacking our things. Tired of finding new doctors. Tired of making new friends. Tired of setting up daycare for my toddler. Tired of finding her new therapy providers to address her gross motor delays. Tired of finding new babysitters. Tired of rebuilding our home.

    If tired had been all I had felt, I may have coped better. But, as always, anxiety was there. Like a childhood friend—or foe, or frenemy—it never leaves my side. As long as I have had memories, anxiety tagged itself in.

    So, when driving my daughter to her first day at a new daycare, my thoughts were sent into a tailspin.

    It wasn’t until this last move, during that drive down yet another College Avenue in yet another new city, that I realized my anxiety was something I needed to deal with.

    I asked myself: What if my daughter sees this? Will she learn to live in fear? Will she worry about big things and small things, just as I do? Will she learn to stress over things she cannot change or that have yet to happen? Will she see my tears on our way to her new daycare and wonder if she, too, should be crying?

    My daughter is fun-loving, silly, humorous, and independent. Life never gets her down, even though she was born eight weeks early, spent five weeks in the NICU, and continues to struggle with muscle weakness.

    She cannot run with her friends on the playground. Yet she has friends. Lots of them. All of the children in her classroom call out “Evelyn!” when she arrives in the morning. Teachers from the other side of the building know her. It may be because she uses a walker, or because she has special braces on her feet. More likely, it’s because of her outgoing personality and willingness to try anything.

    She has an empathy that cannot be taught. She pats babies’ backs when they cry. She hugs me when I look sad. At snack time, she shares her crackers. She always wants to play and is sure to include others. All this and she is only three.

    She never worries what others will think of her slow walking. She just walks. She never judges others for being different. She just plays. She never worries about hiding her disability. She just sits down with the group of children playing with the Legos.

    During that drive, with the tears streaming down my cheeks, I knew this excessive angst was something I should not pass on to her. She deserved better.

    My daughter needed a mother who worried less and enjoyed more. A mother who could show her that happiness is found from within. I wanted her to learn that she is worthy of a peaceful life.

    At this point, my suffering had spanned thirty-six years. As a child, when I had started a new grade in school, I cried the night before. When we visited relatives’ homes, they would call me “bashful” or “shy” or some equivalent when really I was none of those things. I wanted to engage more, but fear of saying the wrong thing held me back.

    When I started college, I was certain I would fail. My dream of studying abroad was almost squashed by fear of living in a new country.

    I was afraid of learning to drive, going to school dances, and being invited (or not) to birthday parties. Even attending Girl Scout meetings in grade school meant I had to interact with others whom I feared didn’t like me. I never knew if that was really how others felt. My anxiety didn’t care about truth.

    Anxiety whispers to me: You’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You’ll fail at that. No one will like you. You can’t do that.

    And then the questions start: What if you get lost? What if you have to eat in front of strangers? What if food gets stuck in your teeth? What if your car breaks down? What if….

    So, by the time we reached my daughter’s daycare, when the tears wouldn’t stop, I had had enough. I vowed to get help.

    That night I found a therapist who has taught me the importance of my anxiety.

    “The anxiety won’t completely go away,” my therapist told me. Even though I had hoped she had the secret to an anxiety-free life, I knew she was right. Anxiety is natural. It is useful. Just not at my level.

    I explored it, feeling its crevices and textures. It’s a part of my personality. It makes me me. Anxiety was not the problem. My inability to cope was. Allowing it to take over my thoughts until I became frozen was.

    Now, I’m learning to accept myself. I check in with myself. I allow myself to feel what is there, yet I can step aside enough to analyze what is really happening.

    Through our therapy sessions, I found compassion for my anxiety. It’s there to tell me something. It often points out the paths in life that are most worthwhile. My instinct to fight back, to push myself through the angst, was right. Each time I face my anxiety, I come out the other side victorious. Yet the energy drained from me each time leaves me fatigued. As I reach each threshold between relenting to anxiety or jumping into something something fearful, exhaustion fills my body. I feel as if I could go to sleep and never wake up.

    “I don’t want to have to force myself to do things every time I get anxious,” I told my therapist.

    She responded, “What if you looked at it as not forcing yourself but rather you made a choice to do something despite your fear?”

    Being proud of myself for my achievements despite my anxiety never occured to me. My anxiety didn’t have to be my enemy. It wasn’t the harrowing fight between knight and fire-breathing dragon that I thought it was. My anxiety tested me, pushed me, and ultimately made me who I am. Accepting it would not be conceding, but rather it meant I could live with more sanity.

    It’s not easy to live with anxiety, but with the aid of a few goals, my days now start with more purpose and end with more peace.

    Through my self-exploration, I found a mantra that recenters my focus from one of fear to one stillness; Feed my mind, body, soul. I found a way to leave my ego on the side—that which feeds my negative thoughts about myself—and relax into the present moment. Days on which I manage to include all three elements of focus, I feel the most calm.

    It takes work to achieve them all. One usually fights to take on more weight than the others. But when I insist on balance, I can settle my rattled brain for at least a little while. I do this work daily. The triangle image hangs in my thoughts as I try and balance each side into a perfect equilateral shape. When achieved, I go to bed feeling like my soul has evened out.

    As my therapist had suggested, reframing my self-language focuses on the mind. Just as my daughter can find compassion for the people around her, I am learning to find compassion for myself. I’m not broken. I have emotions and needs and fears. I can allow those to exist. I honor them for what they are while also finding pride for choosing the tough road time and again.

    Giving my mind a safe place to find quietness has also enhanced the this portion of my triangle. But when the battle is with anxiety, that is a difficult feat. Meditation is tougher than I thought. ‘Doing nothing’ is actually doing quite a bit. Yet, when I am able to put aside the noisy chatter in my head, the peace is exhilarating. At times, when the anxious voice is shut out—along with all of the upcoming things I should be worrying about—I feel as if I am floating off my couch cushion.

    Yoga, kickboxing, Zumba—all help drain the anxiety from my body. As the sweat glistens on my skin, the anxiety has no place to be. My heartbeat increases, my blood flows freely, and my focus is on finishing the workout. My body feels cared for.

    I feed my body foods it needs to thrive. I’ve cut back on coffee and leaned more on tea. Fruits and vegetables find their way into every meal and snack. Sugar is limited, although to ban it altogether would go against what is good for my soul.

    My soul begs for me to feed my own inner energy. I engage in activities I enjoy, even when I don’t think there are enough hours in the day. I nurture myself.

    Through writing, I find great solace. It’s meditative and brings me a joy I cannot find elsewhere. Sentences and stories flow through my head, often taking the place of the anxious ones. Just like anxiety, I was born this way. Since childhood, I’ve liked storytelling. The more time I schedule for writing, the less time anxiety can claim.

    I cook. Providing nutritious meals for my family is a privilege. When engaged in new recipes, my focus shifts to one of worry about the future to one of creating something to enjoy.

    I even find time to watch my favorite television shows. When my daughter is at school, and my husband is in the office working, I take my lunch to the couch and turn on Netflix. I often find the comedies. When something can make me laugh when I’m alone, I know it’s the distraction from the tough parts of life that I need.

    I am a work in progress. Some days, anxiety sneaks up on me. Panic can be overwhelming. Instead of criticizing myself for being weak, I allow the feelings to come. I try to slow down. I accept that in that moment, I feel overwhelmed. It will pass.

    Now, when I drive my daughter to daycare, I don’t cry. I sing. I no longer worry about what the driver next to me will think when he sees my mouth moving and hands tapping.

    My daughter and I say “hi” to the busses on the road. We pretend her stuffed Elmo is driving, and we laugh at her silly jokes. She tells me to go “this way” and points the wrong direction to which I respond, “no, this way.” That banter always makes her giggle. We talk about which friends will be at school and what she’ll play outside.

    Through it all, she smiles. And now, so do I.

  • The Difference Between Love, Lust, and Attachment: Why We Have It All Wrong

    The Difference Between Love, Lust, and Attachment: Why We Have It All Wrong

    “Try not to confuse attachment with love. Attachment is about fear and dependency and has more to do with love of self than love of another.” ~Yasmin Mogahed

    The feelings we get when meeting someone new are hard to understand at times. We have biopsychosocial and even spiritual responses and interactions with people we come into contact with.

    We’ve all met someone and felt like we just want to be around them. They make us nervous (butterflies), we can’t think straight, we’re self-conscious, we just feel an overwhelming… pull toward them.

    I have (like many before me) spent my life equating this experience with the very beginning stages of love or may even go as far as to proclaim this as “love at first sight.”

    I did this because:

    1. It didn’t happen often. In years and years of dating and searching for “the right one,” I only got that intense experience a handful of times. So I equated that emotional reaction with the quality of the connection.

    2. I felt like any and all ambivalence disappeared from my mind and emotions. I knew, in those moments, with those people, I wanted to be around them, I needed them in my life. The questioning of ” what do I really want?” seemed to fade into oblivion. Doubt seemed to disappear from my mind.

    3. I felt extremely attracted to them. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. It wasn’t purely lust, so it had to be more.

    But what if I said, this isn’t remotely real romantic love at all? What if I said this isn’t lust either? What if I said books like Romeo and Juliet, The Notebook, Twilight, and many others alike, have gotten love completely and utterly wrong all along?

    Now some of you may say, “Yeah, I knew that was all wrong.” But our culture and society were built on this deeply passionate idea of love and marriage—after all, they go together like a horse and carriage.

    Our subconscious minds have been programmed to want that kind of big love, that kind of dedication, that kind of commitment. The kind that would play out like, you know, the movies.

    I had this revelation recently after meeting someone and being overtaken by these emotions, for the first time in a while. I immediately went to the idea that maybe she is the one, maybe this is it. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t focus. I just wanted to be with her. I just wanted to be close to her.

    Then I realized something quickly, while in the throes of my serendipitous fairy tale encounter: This was out of character for me at this point in my life.

    I felt I couldn’t be myself. I felt like I was out of control. My confidence was muddied by nerves. I felt like I had no say in what was happening between us and what was happening inside of me. Something else took over. I knew it wasn’t purely lust and I knew, intuitively, it wasn’t what love should feel like. So what was it?

    After years of growth and work, I knew one thing for sure: Balance is the secret to life. So feeling incredibly unbalanced was a red flag to me. I dug deeper. I thought back to my training as a counselor, the presentations I had given on attachment theory, and the digging I had done on my own attachment schemas.

    And I realized when I quieted all of those seemingly out of control, but elated feelings, the emotion that came to the forefront was, anxiety. Pure anxiety.

    I thought back to every relationship or encounter that made me feel that way, and in an effort to get to the bottom of this, I desperately asked my higher self what they had in common—and it was clear right away.

    They all ran away at some point. But to be more accurate, they were all emotionally and psychologically ambivalent or wave-like in their attachment orientation. This meaning, in the context of ambivalence, they went back and forth between being emotionally available and unavailable. Sure of what they want, then unsure and pull away.

    Psychological ambivalence is defined as a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings toward some object.

    Attachment theory is far too in depth to dive into in this article, but in short: We all develop attachment patterns stemming from childhood relationships with our caregivers, and they are ever evolving throughout our teenage and adult years as we go head first through friendships and romantic relationships.

    Wave-like tendencies, in regards to attachment, are typically characterized by swaying back and forth from anxiety to ambivalent states.

    So here is what happened to me: Every time I met a beautiful and intriguing woman who radiated unavailability, my teenage, insecure, anxious self forced its way to the surface from the deepest caverns of my psyche.

    This strong, out-of-control feeling I associated with love was just my own wave-like attachment schema thrown full throttle into anxiety mode.

    On the surface, these relationships and connections felt right and felt amazing for me because my own tortured ambivalent nature seemed to fade away, and the intense energy taking place during this dynamic essentially acted like a high. But, on a deeper level, I felt utterly rooted and anchored in anxiety.

    It was deceiving. I knew what books and movies portrayed true love and soul mates to be, and my brain automatically associated these strong emotions and interactions with those narratives.

    From Victim of Love, to Empowered Co-Creator of Love

    I realized that real true love is a choice; it isn’t something that happens to us or triggers us. At the heart of empowerment is in fact choice. When we choose to have romantic relationships with the people that balance us, we are in control and empowered enough to choose and co-create, with that person, what that relationship will ultimately be.

    We can alchemize and create relationship dynamics such as passion, dedication, and unconditional love—all of the fairy tale cues we yearn for. All accomplished by setting the intention to have that type of relationship and backing it up with actions that align with those intentions. But it must start from a space of feeling balanced in our love interests energy and presence.

    In this moment of clarity I was able to realize literature and society had it all wrong. I had it all wrong. Big romantic love isn’t this overpowering energetic force that takes us over and sweeps us off of our feet. It is something we intentionally choose to co-create, from a balanced place—with a partner who draws feelings of peace from within us, not anxiety or fear, and a partner we can be our most authentic self with.

    So How Do You Make The Shift and Create Healthier Romantic Relationships?

    1. Understand your attachment schema and piece your own patterns together.

    There are plenty of books out there, the most helpful and well-rounded of them being Your Brain on Love, by Stan Tatkin.

    2. Remember, awareness is the first step.

    It won’t stop you from feeling those intense emotions when you are around someone who triggers your attachment schemas, but it will empower you to make healthier choices about what role those people do or don’t play in your life. We have been conditioned on multiple levels to seek overwhelming love; it isn’t a habit we can break overnight.

    3. Continue to become more aware, and heal your wounds any way you can.

    Re-write the stories you’ve told yourself about what love is and what love is not that have held you back from having the type of relationship you really want. It takes time to reprogram the narrative and build real love from a balanced place, without more self-sabotage.

    4. Balanced romantic relationships can start in a multitude of ways, but friendship seems to be the most naturally balanced place to start from.

    This doesn’t mean force friends first, in an inorganic way; it just means listen and pay attention to how you feel when you are with that person.

    5. Notice when you feel inner peace, joy, authenticity, vulnerability, and acceptance when in the presence of someone.

    Those are the sentiments and emotions felt when rooted in balance. Anxiety (butterflies), fear (please don’t leave me), an anxious need to be with someone, and feeling like you need to be something or someone you aren’t—those are the biggest indicators that you are not coming from a balanced place.

  • How Practicing Patience Can Relieve Stress and Anxiety

    How Practicing Patience Can Relieve Stress and Anxiety

    “Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.” ~Joyce Meyer

    I used to say, “Patience is a virtue I don’t have.” So, of course, that is how I lived my life. Hurried, exasperated, impatient, and stressed out.

    Not only was I a creating a world where I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off—because everything had to be done now, and anything that got in the way of that had to be removed immediately—but I was creating this world for those around me.

    My children often bore the brunt of my impatience. If they didn’t get dressed fast enough, or show up at the dinner table as soon as I called them, or get into the car when it was time to go, they met my wrath. And, I had a wicked tongue.

    I was constantly haranguing them to stop “being lazy,” “quit dawdling,” etc. Somehow, their lack of speed equated into being lazy or “less than.” Where did I pick up such a mentality?

    Do you find yourself constantly speeding to work, rushing through the grocery store, and generally snapping at people who can’t keep up? How does this make you feel inside?

    For me, it made me feel wound up like a tight ball. I felt a constant sense of anxiety. And, it didn’t make me feel good about myself—certainly my best self was not shining. Mostly, it made me feel chronically stressed out.

    Researchers have recently been able to prove through MRI scans of peoples’ brains under stress that stress causes certain areas of the brain to shut off. This means there is less activity in the brain—which leads to a depressed brain. This also leads to an angry brain because there is less neurological activity happening to process things that are going on in your day-to-day life. It’s like a traffic jam in your brain happens because you don’t have enough snowplows to clear the road.

    This frustration can lead to a trigger-happy mouth—one that blurts out frustrations and snaps angrily at people. Because, the brain is thinking so hard, it hurts!

    This used to be my life: constant impatience and its ensuing anxiety > chronically stressed brain > chronic depression > inner rage and anger.

    The thing with not having any patience is it clouds your entire life. You are so busy rushing from one thing to the next, expecting immediate gratification, that you are often not only disappointed but also emotionally and physically depleted.

    What happens when you yell at your children to hurry up? You’re met with resistance, that’s what happens. They yell back—more stress. Or, they go even slower!

    Does this resolve the issue in the end? No. It only makes matters worse. And, what was the issue in the end? I believe the issue was you had an attitude problem.

    The attitude is this: I have so much to do I can’t possibly get everything done in the day. So, I must rush about doing everything so I can make good progress on my to-do list. If someone or something impedes my progress on my to-do list, I get angry because I can’t possibly get everything done.

    Sounds like a vicious cycle, doesn’t it? The thing with being impatient is it is intimately tied to the judgmental and critical sides of ourselves. This is because whatever is happening in the moment is deemed not good enough in some way shape or form.

    In this case, it’s not happening fast enough. The moment and what’s happening in it has been judged! And it has been criticized.

    Once this occurs, suddenly you find yourself trying to control the situation and making it happen faster. When this doesn’t work—for example, if the person in front of you is driving really slowly—you get angry, which causes your cortisol stress levels to rise. And, we all know stress isn’t good for us.

    So, how do you stop this vicious cycle and where do you find patience? I was at a loss, myself. I didn’t even realize I had a patience problem, because I was telling myself the story that I didn’t have any patience to begin with. From this point of view, why bother since I didn’t have any?

    Well, we believe what we tell ourselves, and if I keep saying I don’t have any patience, well then I won’t.

    The first thing I needed to do was look at the story I was telling myself and change it. I began by saying to myself, “Patience is a virtue I practice daily.” It was a way to shift my mindset. Maybe I couldn’t jump straight to “I am the world’s most patient person” immediately. So, I found a middle group that shifted my old thinking into a different kind of habit.

    I had to write this down. And, whenever I found myself a) telling myself I am not patient or b) in a situation where I was feeling impatient and starting to get frustrated, I’d repeat the mantra “Patience is a virtue I practice daily.” Thus, I could accept the situation as a learning experience for practicing the virtue of patience.

    The other thing about patience is it allows you to slooooow down and actually experience the world. I used to be so concerned about getting to the next wherever I was going—finish a project at work, order off the menu, find a parking spot—that I never actually lived.

    I mean, I certainly wasn’t paying attention to where I was in the moment, or even being in the moment. I was too busy focusing on something else. It’s like I was not living at all. I was simply doing.

    There is a huge difference between doing and living. Many of us wind up confusing the two. This is especially true in western cultures, where output of an action, product, or thing is given so much value. It seems it is given much more value than say, actually sitting there in the parking lot waiting for the person to pull out and enjoying the moment—like noticing the birds chirping in the trees, or the sun in the sky.

    Sometimes we need to realize we have a patience problem and challenge the assumptions that got us there in the first place. Otherwise, we live a lesser life. We live a life in constant stress, we act a diminished version of ourselves, and most importantly, we don’t actually live and enjoy our lives.

    Here’s an exercise for you to try:

    What is the story you tell yourself about how patient you are? If you realize you say to yourself you’re the most patient person in the world, that’s wonderful! If you realize you often tell yourself you’re not patient at all, then consider a different statement you could be telling yourself instead.

    One of the other stories I used to tell myself that was absolutely sabotaging was “I don’t have time for this.” I would think I had to hurry to make the yellow light, because I don’t have time to wait at the red light. So, I’d rush ahead.

    I used to say “I don’t have time for this” when a slow person was entering a store, so I’d rudely rush right past them instead of even considering if there was a way I could help them.

    Or, I’d say I don’t have time to make small talk with my colleagues in a meeting and would just focus on the work at hand. Needless to say, this didn’t help me develop strong bonds with people if I didn’t have time to talk with them and learn something about their day or what’s going on in their life.

    I realized after a while that I had a patience problem. The way I realized this was because I was so stressed and anxious all the time. And, I was constantly angry. This is not an enjoyable way to live your life.

    So, one day I did a thought experience on that “I don’t have time for this” story I was always telling myself. When I was sitting at a light saying I don’t have time for this, I replied back to myself “Yes, you do have time for this.” And so it went all day. Every day.

    I challenged that story I was telling myself and I rebutted it. You know what happened? One day I found out all that time I was trying to save in a day by rushing around everywhere, maybe added up to ten whole minutes at the of the day.

    Was all that angst to get it done so quickly or all that pressure I put on other people worth a whole extra ten minutes? Who even notices an extra ten minutes in the day? Nobody. That’s who. So, what exactly was all this getting me for being so impatient and driving so fast and furious? Nothing. Well, actually it was getting me miserable, that’s what.

    Now, when I’m feeling a little impatient I realize I actually do have time for it. And, this makes me calm and relaxed instead.

    It’s okay if I didn’t make the light and have to wait at it for a minute. I have time for this. It’s okay if my kids arrive at the dinner table when they get there. I have time for this. It’s okay if I spend some time to connect with my co-workers before we begin the meeting. I have time for this. In fact, I have an embarrassment of riches of time! And so do you.

    The last thing I’ll talk about here is a little exercise that I like to do to bring myself off the ledge whenever I am having “a moment.” It’s called count backward from five.

    I know most people have heard of just count to ten if you’re upset about something and that will help. I never did find that very helpful. It was like I was just counting up on my frustration! Then, one day I learned the count backward from five technique. Just start counting: five – four – three – two – one.

    It has a strange calming effect. It is as if whatever it is that is bothering you is dissipating as you count backward. Usually, when I start counting backward from five I notice even by the time I get to three that something has lifted. I feel a shift in my agitation. By the time I get to one, I’m kind of over it. Try it. You may find it really helps you get through a moment.

    In the end, learning how to change your story and your habits when it comes to patience will help you heal from unnecessary anxiety and stress in your life. Will life still be stressful? Sure. But, at least you aren’t inflicting more of it on yourself with a patience problem.

    Surprisingly, when I learned to finally create healthy habits around patience, I began to get a lot better at compassion too. That’s because compassion requires patience.

    That crying child that you wish would stop? Having patience with that and slooowing down enough, makes you pause just enough to consider this child is in pain or frightened. You’ll realize you were once a child and when you felt pain or were frightened, you wished for comfort.

    Maybe instead of scowling at the child wishing they would shut up, you smile at them instead and say, “It will be okay.” In a way, you are also saying this to your inner child in some small fashion. It will be okay and you are okay.

  • 5 Psychological Strategies to Ease the Stress of Perfectionism

    5 Psychological Strategies to Ease the Stress of Perfectionism

    “Striving for excellence motivates you, striving for perfection is demoralizing.” ~Harriet Braiker

    The last three months I’ve been trying an experiment. It’s something that I’ve never done before, and in a certain way, it’s been a huge challenge. However, in other ways, it’s been an enormous stress relief, and I would say a largely successful effort.

    What I’ve done seems to go against conventional wisdom, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a wise choice.

    So what exactly is this challenge? Well, I have actively gone out of my way to be average.

    Yep, sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? But hear me out.

    Over the past year, I’ve become more aware than ever of how much unconscious stress I put on myself to be above average. I’ve always known I have a type-A personality, but I didn’t know to what extent this was doing me harm. A large part of this realization came from journaling my dreams and discussing them with a psychotherapist, and another part came about through a mindfulness practice.

    So for six months, whenever I felt like relaxing, and the little voice in my head would pop up and tell me I could be doing more in this moment, I would ignore it. I would decide to watch that extra episode on Netflix. I would choose to sleep in the extra fifteen minutes. I would leave the little bit of extra work until tomorrow.

    What came out of this was unexpected. The more I ignored the voice, the more loud and aggressive it became.

    Coming into contact with this part of myself ultimately did three things.

    Firstly, it showed me that I had an issue with perfectionism that I wasn’t entirely aware of. Secondly, it showed me just how tricky and persuasive the little voice of perfectionism could be. And finally, and most importantly, it taught me how overcoming that perfectionist tendency could lead to less stress, more productivity, and greater well-being.

    So, the moment of truth. How do you know you’re a perfectionist?

    • You often feel weighed down by fear of your goals not succeeding
    • You’re constantly looking for the ‘right’ moment to do something
    • You have a persistent sense of dissatisfaction with what you’ve achieved
    • You obsess over small mistakes that have little impact on the big picture
    • You neglect self-care in favor of achievements

    I came up with five psychological strategies to overcome this perfectionism. This has allowed me to take steps toward accepting the average parts of myself, and it’s helped me let go of a shocking amount of hidden stress.

    I’ve decided to share these steps with you here so you can begin to accept who and where you are, and enjoy the journey a little more.

    1. Rethink what it means to be average.

    In our society, we often consider anything less than greatness to be failure. That’s not an exaggeration; it’s just the reality of our skewed notions of achievement that have failed to account for larger and more interconnected societies in which it’s increasingly difficult to stand out.

    When we hear the terms “average” or “mediocre” we consider them dirty words, although they’re supposed to denote the middle of the pack. If you are average at something, that shouldn’t have any correlation whatsoever to your self-worth. Most people are average at most things for most of their lives. Does that mean that most people should feel bad about themselves?

    Accepting the ways in which you are average doesn’t mean you can’t strive to achieve greatness in some areas of your life. All it means is that the desire to excel doesn’t need to be driven by the feeling that you are incomplete. It can be out of the love of competing with your past self, the need to serve your community, or even just the enjoyment of a challenge in the present moment.

    2. Challenge the all-or-nothing fallacy.

    Perfectionism is a direct result of the all-or-nothing fallacy, also known as black-and-white thinking. When we believe that our value is completely tied to our achievements, for example, we cannot help but obsessively strive to do everything the right way, because any mistake would undermine our entire self-worth.

    We can also see this when we look for the one perfect moment to get started on something, when we put all our efforts into one project and neglect our health, and most toxically, when we try to evaluate our life against the over-generalized boxes of success or failure.

    When you see this type of thinking emerge in your psyche, challenge it, and replace it with more nuanced explanations.

    For example, I used to believe that I was either being productive or lazy. When I was being productive I wasn’t being lazy, and when I wasn’t being productive I was being lazy. I’ve started to challenge that idea with the more nuanced explanation that breaks are sometimes lazy and sometimes productive; they serve many purposes. They can be reinvigorating, rewarding, and sometimes need no justification.

    3. Become friends with what you don’t know.

    Another key trait of perfectionism that I saw in myself is a strong desire to control outcomes. We have this tendency partly because we have a heightened fear of things not going the way we want or expect.

    In part, this is because perfectionism creates stress, and when we are stressed we start to become more susceptible to cognitive biases. For example, we may believe that if things don’t go the way we anticipate, everything will fall apart, we will lose out on opportunities, or we will be criticized by others.

    One way we can counteract this attitude is by becoming more comfortable with the unknown. You can only ever influence a certain amount of any situation you’re in, whether that’s work, money, or relationships.

    I have become more comfortable with the unknown by journaling about my fears over time. By seeking out counterexamples of when your fears haven’t been true (and they often aren’t), you can see how worries about the future are exaggerated by the brain, and you can start to gain more control over your emotions.

    It may also help to practice setting a wide range of goals, with varied levels of difficulty. Meeting the easier goals should fulfill your need to be in control and achieve, and working toward the more difficult goals will simply be a challenge to be creative, go above and beyond, and enjoy the uncertainty of things that are out of your control.

    4. Become friends with what you don’t love.

    Likewise, perfectionism is largely tied to the relationship you have with what you don’t accept about yourself.

    You probably know that acceptance is at the root of love. It’s therefore not surprising that people often advise you to love yourself when you’re dealing with internal conflict. Well, it sounds simple, but it’s never that easy, unfortunately. So I’m going to propose something more manageable: become friends with what you don’t love.

    If there are parts of yourself or your experience that you can’t accept or bring yourself to love, just befriend them. Ask what purpose the things you don’t like serve; become familiar with them the way you would a friend.

    Ease into the changing relationship you have with these harder-to-accept parts of yourself, and over time you’ll see a shift in your perspective that calms your anxiety around them.

    For example, I used to have an antagonistic relationship with my anxiety. The fact that I wasn’t always cool, calm, and collected, was something I found hard to accept, and it created internal conflict and (obviously) more anxiety. When I was able to see that anxiety was just a part of my brain was trying to help me, I was able to accept it. And over time I even started to appreciate this quirky part of myself.

    5. Reassess how you measure your success.

    If your perfectionism is driven by the belief that you’re not successful enough, then it’s not necessarily you that needs to change. It could be that the way you’re measuring success needs to be reassessed.

    For example, it’s common that we compare ourselves to others, and while we’re often told to focus on ourselves, making social comparisons in specific situations—such as workplace evaluations or in competitive sports—does have some (albeit limited) utility. If we didn’t make these comparisons, it would be difficult to see how we were improving and in what roles we could most help the group.

    When you start to generalize this idea to the rest of your life, however, that’s when it becomes a problem. If you start to tell yourself that so-and-so’s life is better than yours or that he or she is more successful than you, that’s almost always a generalization. What makes a life better? What does success mean? Are we talking about financial achievements? Free time? Deep relationships? Take a closer look at how success could be more effectively defined in your life.

    My own definition of success used to be based on how well I compared to people in my life in standardized measures (money, relationships, novel experiences etc.) Now I see success as how well I’m able to find meaning in the present moment, stay motivated for the future, and spend my time working on something that helps me, the people I love, and the rest of the world.

    All of the elements of my definition may not be relevant to anyone else, but because they are more fluid and flexible, and can grow with my personality, they prevent me from falling into the habit of perfectionism.

    To bring this all full circle, consider this: You can be average in one area and successful in another. This doesn’t mean you don’t have value, are not worthy or love or respect, and don’t deserve some down time every once in a while.

    Being average is normal, and it’s not an indicator of worth. You have inherent value just as you are. And if you should want to obsess about a project or be a little bit of a perfectionist every now and then, that’s fine. But be driven by the love of the creative process itself, not the anxiety that you can never do enough.

    What experience have you had with perfectionism? Have you used any of these strategies to find more peace of mind? Let us know in the comments—we’d love to hear from you!

  • How I Found Happiness by Facing the Past I Worked So Hard to Escape

    How I Found Happiness by Facing the Past I Worked So Hard to Escape

    “Ten years from now, make sure you can say you chose your life, you didn’t settle for it.” ~Mandy Hale

    I spent most of my youth trying to escape. From the mother who drank too much and the violent men she dated and from the kids at school who made fun of me for wearing the same clothes every week.

    I felt shame and guilt because I believed that my circumstances defined who I was, which meant that I was unimportant, unworthy even.

    So, I created elaborate imaginary worlds where I was smart, successful, and often saved the day. Where I could pretend to be someone else and hide from my real life. By doing this, I buried all the emotions I had relating to my past.

    But these worlds faded as I grew older and needed a new escape. That’s when I decided that I’d stop pretending to be the overachieving smart girl and instead would become her. This way, I could focus on all my achievements and avoid my negative emotions .

    For a time, it worked. I dove headfirst into books, studied hard, and became the overachiever I’d set out to be. This led me to college, then to law school, and finally into the “real” world where I got a high-paying job with a prestigious law firm.

    I finally realized that my past experiences and circumstances didn’t define who I was. Yet I still didn’t quite know what did. So I redefined myself based on my achievements, since this made me feel important.

    But several years into my law practice, my achievement-based self-worth was working against me. I was running myself ragged. On paper I seemingly had “it all,” yet I felt stressed out, exhausted, and deeply unhappy. All the feelings of unworthiness had come rushing back.

    I couldn’t keep up. Lawyers are smart and successful people, and I realized that there would always be someone smarter and more successful than me—which meant I would always feel unworthy.

    Although I knew that my past didn’t define who I was, I was beginning to understand that my reaction to it did. By running away from my past and refusing to deal with the pain it had caused, I’d inadvertently allowed it to have power over me.

    I needed to process the feelings I’d been burying so that I could finally move on. But that terrified me. I was worried that facing my past and the emotions that came with it would change me and negatively affect my relationships (especially my marriage).

    So, I convinced myself that I should keep going as I was and that I didn’t have much choice. To make myself feel better, I blamed the legal profession, my law firm, and even some of my colleagues for my misery.

    Until one evening my husband, who was tired of hearing my complaints, told me to do something about it. Although I don’t remember the exact words he used, I remember clearly what I heard: it was all my fault.

    Of course, he wasn’t trying to blame me. He was trying to tell me to deal with my emotions and my situation instead of continuing to live in misery.

    After going to bed mad, I awoke the next morning with a new understanding. I finally appreciated what my husband was trying to tell me and knew that he was right. I had a choice. I needed to choose to heal my pain—no one could do it for me.

    That’s when I discovered that doing nothing is a choice, and that choosing to ignore my past and the pain that came with it was changing me into someone I didn’t like.

    I complained incessantly and was moody. My husband felt the brunt of my negativity. In fact, we were spending more time apart. If I didn’t change course, my marriage could be irreparably harmed.

    It was time to take responsibility for my own happiness and renew my self-esteem, and that meant revisiting my past.

    My history had obviously influenced my decisions, how I regarded myself, and how I viewed the world around me. The story I’d been telling myself about my past and how it had shaped me was a key piece to my current self-esteem issues and unhappiness. However, this was happening on a subconscious level. I needed to make an active choice.

    I took time to remember the events from my childhood that I’d worked so hard to bury. When doing this, I focused on how they made me feel and why I felt that way. Then I asked myself what lessons I wanted to take from these experiences.

    Processing the emotions I’d been holding in for so long was freeing. I was able to regard my life’s experiences as what they really were—things that had happened to and around me that I had no control over. I chose what I wanted to take from them and created a new story for myself based on that.

    For example, for years I didn’t understand why I felt powerless anytime I sensed myself being even slightly pinned in, weighted down, or stuck. Any time that I felt this way, I rebelled in unhealthy ways. Going through this process helped me realize that, because I’d felt like a caged bird with no escape in sight as a child, I have a deep-seated need to feel unrestricted.

    I identified what causes me to feel this way (including why I felt so caged within my career at that time) and how to make decisions—both personally and professionally—so that I don’t inadvertently again end up feeling trapped. Now I know that this helpless feeling is a sign to pause and assess what’s going on so that I can quickly change course.

    I also learned that, because I tried to “escape” so often during my youth, I often felt disconnected from those around me. Never again will I feel that way. Connecting with others is now one of my top core values, and I strive to cultivate deep connections with family, friends, and even colleagues.

    Finally, the guilt and shame I felt while watching my mother get beaten while drowning herself with alcohol made me feel weak. I now know that my experiences helped me develop mental and emotional strength and resiliency.

    Instead of feeling ashamed of my past and worried about what others might think, I’m proud of who I’ve become because of what I went through. I now consider myself an emotionally strong powerhouse who stands up and fights fiercely for herself and others. I’ve re-written my story.

    Contrary to what I originally believed, this process didn’t negatively affect my relationships or require me to leave my career. But it did make me a more positive and happier person. And, although it wasn’t easy, it empowered me to take responsibility for my own happiness and taught me some huge life lessons.

    I now understand that I had to accept my past in order to release its hold over me and heal my pain, and that acceptance isn’t the same thing as being okay with something. I also learned that I get to create my own story about who I am and what my life’s experiences have taught me.

    I also discovered what it means to be happy.

    Most people think happiness is about being cheerful, positive, or laughing a lot. But positivity can be fake, and even people who are depressed laugh. And there are calm and serious folks who are happy.

    I define happiness as being content and satisfied with who and where you are, regardless of your circumstances.

    Because I know who I am, I’m able to make better decisions for myself and am content with my life, even when it gets messy. My perspective around happiness has helped me to get through many trying and scary times in my life, including during a year-long battle with an aggressive breast cancer.

    If you take nothing else from my story, please remember the following (especially during times when you know a change is in order, but you’re scared to take the plunge):

    1. You have a choice—about who you are, how you live, and whether you’re happy. Be sure you’re actively making a choice for yourself.

    2. Choosing is often hard. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be much of a choice. But don’t delude yourself into believing that doing nothing isn’t a choice, because it is. And there are risks involved with doing nothing, just like there are risks with making a change.

    3. You are not your past. Although your past helped shape you, you can choose how it shapes you going forward. These choices create the story you tell yourself and the world, which impacts your decisions—and ultimately shapes your life.

  • When I Stopped Competing, I Set Myself Free

    When I Stopped Competing, I Set Myself Free

    “With nothing to compare yourself to, aren’t you perfect?” ~Byron Katie

    I have never liked competition. Every time I compete, I feel pressured and disconnected from others. I love harmony, peace, collaboration, and win-win situations, kind of like “me happy, you happy.” I don’t need to watch another person lose the game to feel good about myself. I don’t need to dominate or put someone else down in order to feel superior and worthy.

    In some cultures, competing is perceived as a sign of ambition, power, and strength. Most of us grew up hearing constant comparisons, which turned into a habit during our adult lives:

    “Do I look better than her? I want to be slimmer.”

    “How much is he earning? I want more.”

    “Where does she live? I want a house at least that size.”

    And so on…

    In my home country, Romania, like in many other places, the schooling system was a fierce competition to get the best grades and be the first in the class. As a child, I remember spending an average of ten hours a day studying and doing homework during weekdays. I hardly had any time to play and relax.

    Teachers were always making comparisons between students, parents would compare their children to their friends’ or neighbors’ kids, and no one truly encouraged individual talents.

    As a result of this conditioning, I ended up struggling with serious self-esteem issues for many years. As a young woman, I didn’t see myself as good enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, or successful enough, and I desperately tried to be perfect.

    When I wasn’t competing with other people, I was competing with myself. I was always striving to be the best friend I could be, the best daughter, or the best employee at work. Pleasing others was addictive because I felt validated whenever I heard “well done!” And then I wanted to do even better.

    I am not here to blame. I am not a victim. My parents did the best they could at the time, and society did the best it knew, so I am not blaming but instead looking for hidden and limiting beliefs that have worked against me. Here’s what I have realized I need to do:

    1. Stop competing with other people.

    “Comparing yourself to others is an act of violence against your authentic self.” ~Iyanla Vanzant

    Our society often encourages competition. There are some circumstances when we have no choice but to compete—when applying for a new position at work or attending job interviews, for example. However, there are situations when we make the rules, and the choice is entirely up to us. We can live our own lives and mind our own journey, or we can choose to compete with others over who’s more attractive, wealthier, happier, or more successful.

    During my single years, I often compared myself to other women. Most of them seemed settled; they were married and had the house, the men, the kids, and the dog. I used to feel like a failure, as if something were wrong with me. I met my husband when I was thirty-six. We were two Romanians working in Asia, for the same company. Small world, indeed. We’ve been happily married for four years now.

    So here what I’ve learned: Everyone is on their own path, and we all do what’s right for ourselves, in our own time. I believe we live in a supportive Universe where everything unfolds perfectly—at the right time, in the right place. Comparing ourselves to others is an infinite source of stress and frustration, and it doesn’t serve us well.

    2. Stop competing against myself.

    “Doing your best is more important than being the best.” ~Zig Ziglar

    Perfection is nothing but pure fiction, an illusion created by our minds. It’s also a learned practice. Most of us were raised to constantly strive to become better people—to focus on our flaws and perceived limitations—and we either take our strengths for granted or aren’t even aware of them.

    While we are all learning from our experiences and mistakes, we also need to be aware of our gifts and talents. We need to celebrate our uniqueness and detach ourselves from the toxic habit of comparing ourselves to others.

    Yet here I am, in my forties, still reading about infinite ways to become a better human. With so much focus on the need for improvement, particularly in the personal development industry, I wonder when I am ever supposed to turn into the best version of myself and find peace.

    So I’ve stopped competing with myself. I refuse to fight against myself so that I can reach the end of the tunnel, and I am no longer waiting for the magical day when I will become perfect and faultless.

    Why turn my life into a never-ending competition? True friendship is not about competing against each other. It’s about support and collaboration. Why act as my competitor when I can be my own best friend?

    As the Chinese proverb says, “Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”

    If I am to spend my precious time waiting to grow into the best of myself, there will always be something to change, add, fix, or transform so that I can finally feel whole and complete.

    Life doesn’t have to be such a daily struggle. I don’t have to fix myself because I am not broken.

    I embrace the entire repertoire of my humanity with self-love and compassion. I choose not to be a “work in progress.” My desire for growth is about taking each day as an opportunity to learn more about life and myself.

    That’s how I discover who I really am and what brings me genuine happiness and fulfillment. By releasing old patterns and limiting beliefs that don’t serve me well, I get closer to my real human essence. My life is all about experiencing things as they come. It is a journey of self-discovery, not self-improvement.

    Since I changed my perspective, I’ve stopped beating myself up. I now talk to myself kindly. I treat myself with dignity and respect. I know I am worthy of the best things life has to offer, and it is my birthright to be happy. My happiness is nothing to compete or fight for.

    I also choose to see myself as perfectly beautiful and beautifully imperfect. I celebrate my mistakes as much-needed opportunities for growth. I celebrate both success and failure because this is what makes me wiser. I treat every life experience as an opportunity to learn new things about myself and other people.

    Furthermore, I’ve learned to forgive myself for my mistakes in the same way I forgive others, knowing I am also human. As a student at the school of life, I will sometimes rise and sometimes fall, and that is okay. I no longer strive to become the best version of myself. Instead, I always do the best I can. When I know I’ve done the best I could, there’s no room for regrets. Whenever I know better, I do better.

    I am enough and worthy, so I don’t need to prove myself to anyone. Not even to myself. Newborns and babies do not compete against each other. They love and approve of themselves as they are. In our competition-oriented society, we need to remind ourselves more of our true nature, which is balanced, loving, and peaceful.

    I believe the world needs fewer fighters and competitors. The world needs more givers, peacemakers, and soul nurturers, and it also needs more compassion.

    The day I stopped competing against myself and others, I set myself free.

    Artwork by Rebecca Freeman