Tiny Buddha

Tag: accept

  • Why I Now Love That I’m Different After Hating It for Years

    Why I Now Love That I’m Different After Hating It for Years

    “Only recently have I realized that being different is not something you want to hide or squelch or suppress.” ~Amy Gerstler

    I grew up during the traditional times of the sixties and seventies. Dad went out to work and earned the family income, while Mom worked at home raising their children. We were a family of seven. My brother was the first-born and he was followed by four sisters. I was the middle child.

    I did not quite know where I belonged. I oscillated between my older two and younger two siblings, feeling like the third wheel no matter where I was.

    I was the one in my family that was “different.” I was uncomfortable in groups, emotionally sensitive, intolerant of loud noises, and did not find most jokes funny. Especially when the jokes were at the expense of someone else. Oftentimes that someone else was me.

    Yes, I was the proverbial black sheep. I stood on the fringes of my own family, a microcosm of the bigger world.

    Life felt hard and lonely. I felt isolated and misunderstood. Too frequently I wondered what was wrong with me and why I did not quite fit. Others appeared to be content with the status quo. I never was.  Others didn’t questions the inequities I saw in life. I did. Others did not seem to notice the suffering of others. I epitomized it.

    Being different did not exactly make me the popular one. In fact, quite the opposite. Who knew what to do with my awkwardness? I sure didn’t.

    As a result, I was depressed a good part of my life. That was not something that was identified or talked about then. Too often it still isn’t. A disconnected life and feelings of loneliness and isolation will lead to depression, among other things. 

    I hit my teens and did what too many do: I looked for ways to be comfortably numb. My choice was alcohol. It gave me an opportunity to “fit in” or at the very least, not care about the fact that I did not. I rebelled. I self-destructed. For years.

    As life will have it, I grew up, feeling my way in the dark, wondering when the lights would go on. I turned inward looking for the comfort I could not find from the world. I hid my pain and lostness. At times, I prayed that I would get cancer and die.

    A heroic exit was not to be my path.

    Do you know what I am talking about?

    Maybe you feel what I have felt. Maybe you know the pain of chronic isolation and what it means to be different in a culture that prefers sameness. Do you wonder if you will ever be okay? Do you wonder if you will ever fit?

    Well, let me tell you:

    First of all, you fit. You have always fit. You belong. You have always belonged. You are needed—more than you know. These are truisms.

    Others do not have to think you belong in order for you to know you do. Others do not have to treat you as insider in order for you to know you are.

    Knowing, intellectually, that you belong is one thing. Feeling like you belong, now that is an entirely different thing. That is an inside job. In other words, that is your work to do.

    So, I did what I had to do to bring change, in order to get the life I wanted. I stepped up to the challenges in my life, which came through my work world and my personal relationships.

    I often ran into conflict with authority figures, changing jobs frequently. I didn’t know how to let others close to me. I was afraid of being rejected, so I used anger and avoidance to distance those that mattered to me the most. I was not happy, content, or at peace. I felt that more often than not.

    So, I faced my pain and hurt instead of numbing it.

    As I got more honest with myself, I began to consider that maybe there was nothing wrong with me.  Maybe there was something wrong with the world or the system that wants to tell me there is something wrong with me.

    So, I began to view myself through different eyes. I began to make some noise. I got out of the bleachers and stepped into the ring. I chose to participate in life as I was, not as others thought I should be. I started to push up against the boundaries that others had set.

    Yes, I faced rejection. I dealt with disapproval. It was hard. Really hard. It hurt. I cried. I stomped my feet. I cried again. I gave myself permission to feel angry.

    In spite of the internal chaos, in spite of the hurt, in spite of my turmoil, I would do it all again.

    When we are trying to make changes, when we are owning our own lives, when we bump up against the expectations of others, it frequently gets messy before it gets better.

    DO IT ANYWAY! Because it does get better. For every person who rejects you, another will embrace you. But you can only meet those people if you first embrace yourself. Because you need to accept yourself to be able to put yourself out there.

    When you feel afraid to move forward, move anyway.

    When you want to quit because it feels too hard, rest. Do something nice for yourself. Then get back up and keep moving.

    There is light. Even when you can’t yet see it.

    There is hope. Even when you can’t find it.

    There is love. Even when you can’t feel it.

    Work at finding your voice by getting quiet and paying attention to your feelings and inner nudges. Learn to trust yourself by acknowledging that only you know what is true and best for you. Know your worth by recognizing your intrinsic value as a unique person with an abundance of admirable qualities.

    Start caring more about approving of yourself than waiting for others to approve of you. Own your life and take responsibility for your well-being and happiness. No one can do that for you.

    Figure out how to forgive yourself for the mistakes you will inevitably make. Learn how to love yourself more than anyone could ever love you.

    Accept yourself—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then get about changing the ugly as best you can.

    This is what I have done. This is the hard work that brings transformation.

    In the process of all of this I made a phenomenal discovery…

    ME!!

    What a discovery! I have gifts to bring to the world. Gifts that will leave this world better than I found it.

    When I was younger, I didn’t like how sensitive I was to the energies around me, how I felt things to the core of my being, and how I hurt when I saw someone else hurting.

    Those around me seemed playful and fun, though, I could see the hurt in them. Life did not feel playful and fun to me. It felt serious. People were hurting. Why didn’t anyone other than me notice?

    I was hurting. Why didn’t anyone notice?

    I gravitated to the heavier side of life, fully identified with the suffering around me.

    I wanted to be anything other than what I was.

    I now understand these qualities to be empathy and intuition. Two things the world greatly needs.

    I learned to trust those qualities. They led me down a road I could never have imagined. I now have a thriving counseling practice, helping others to heal. I get to watch them discover their gifts. Better than that, I get to watch them go from hating who they are to loving and embracing who they are.

    Then they go out and find ways to help others do the same.

    But this story is not just about me. It is also about you.

    There is nothing wrong with you. You are amazing and beautiful, just as you are. Flaws and imperfections included.

    Don’t change yourself for a world that wants to tell you who you are.

    You tell the world who you are. Let’s change this place together and allow difference to be the norm, because our beauty is in our diversity.

    I invite you to take the journey inward to self-discovery. Then bring what you’ve learned and share it.

    Bring who you are and let’s change this world, one person at a time.

  • The Joy of Not Getting What We Want

    The Joy of Not Getting What We Want

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

    Let me tell you a story. I first read it in a book on Taoism, but I’ve seen it in at least a dozen other places since then, each with its own variation. Here’s the gist:

    There’s this farmer. His favorite horse runs away. Everyone tells him that this is a terrible turn of events and that they are sorry for him. He says, “We’ll see.”

    The horse comes back a few days later, and it brings an entire herd of wild horses with it. Everyone tells him that this is a wonderful turn of events and that they’re happy for him. He says, “We’ll see.”

    The farmer’s son is trying to break one of the new horses, it throws him, and he breaks his leg. Everyone tells the farmer that this is a terrible turn of events and that they’re sorry for him. He says, “We’ll see.”

    The army comes through the village. The country is at war and they are conscripting people to go fight. They leave the farmer’s son alone because he has a broken leg. Everyone tells him that this is a wonderful turn of events and that they’re happy for him.

    The farmer says, “We’ll see.”

    Now let me tell you who I was when I first heard that story. I was twenty-three or twenty-four, trying to get off of drugs and stop drinking and turn my life around in general. I had recently rolled my car out into a field, lost my wife and most of my friends, and had moved to West Texas to start over.

    I was smart enough to know something had to change, but I wasn’t quite smart enough to know how, so I tried to do what I thought smart people did—I started going to the library.

    I initially got into a bunch of weird stuff like alternate theories about the history of the world, cryptozoology, and things like that. Not really the change I needed.

    One day I went to the library looking for a book about the Mothman, but Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time was sitting in its place. I didn’t know anything about this book or the things it talked about, but the title was cool, and libraries are free, so I checked it out.

    It’s hard to exaggerate how much this book revolutionized my view of the universe and my place in it. It was thrilling to recognize how much there was out there that I didn’t know. Atlantis and Bigfoot were replaced by quantum mechanics and string theory.

    I eventually stumbled onto The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, rearranging my worldview again. Having grown up in a pretty strict evangelical home, any sort of eastern philosophy was completely outside my frame of reference. This led me to begin studying Taoism and Buddhism, most specifically Zen Buddhism, and to the story I started this post with.

    I started to recognize that I had a mind, but I was not my mind. Meditation showed me how this mind was always grasping and wanting and reaching out for different things. It was a craving and aversion machine.

    It wasn’t long before I realized that it wanted these things solely for the sake of having them, and that none of them were all that important. I just wanted what I wanted because I wanted it.

    This changed everything.

    I had spent the previous fifteen years running from one thing to another in order to avoid anxiety, fear, anger, and depression. I did this through drugs and alcohol and taking crazy risks with my life. These things have consequences.

    These consequences came as car wrecks, jail time, hospitalizations, and a long string of destroyed relationships. I was so captivated by my wants that I was running through life with my eyes closed, blindly chasing them, with predictable results.

    Realizing that I was not my mind gave me a sense of objectivity about the things I wanted and the things I did not want. It taught me that I didn’t have to be so attached to having or avoiding things. This let me stop running.

    I learned that getting our way is overrated. Once we recognize this, we are much less susceptible to the whims of a flimsy, fragile, and fickle mind.

    Why We Have No Business Getting What We Want

    There are three primary reasons we need to be careful about being too invested in getting what we want:

    • We are emotional creatures, driven by things like hunger and a bad night’s sleep.
    • To a great extent we’re wired for short-term thinking. Immediate benefit often outweighs long-term consequences.
    • We experience time in a linear fashion, so the future is completely unknown to us.

    Let’s take a look at these.

    Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired

    I often encourage people to memorize the acronym HALTS to use when making decisions. It stands for hungry, happy, angry, lonely, tired, stressed, and sad.

    These are all common emotional states, and they are all terrible times to make a decision. We’ve all heard the advice not to go shopping while we’re hungry, and there’s a reason for that—it’s good advice. You will buy more food than you need, all based on how you feel in that moment.

    I’m not sure I’ve ever seen good decisions come from these emotional states, unless luck intervened and let the person off the hook. It all makes sense when we think about it.

    Anger shuts down the best parts of out brain. Situations go from bad to worse and from worse to unfixable when we decide to address something in a moment of anger.

    When we are sad the entire world seems bleak and it feels like it will never change. This is okay, unless we make long-term decisions based on the idea of an ominous, crushing world.

    Stress makes even the smallest things feel overwhelming. We cannot make good decisions when making our bed or going grocery shopping sound like monumental tasks.

    When we’re lonely we’re likely to let the wrong people into our lives just because we need someone. This opens us up to toxic, manipulative, and malicious people.

    Our brains are slow and sluggish when we are tired, and our decisions are, unfortunately, rarely our best.

    Even the so-called positive emotions aren’t safe. I know I have overcommitted to things on days when I was happy and feeling a little bit better than normal.

    When you take all of this together, it helps us to see that the things we want are flimsy and that they change depending on our mood. The things we want become a lot less important when we realize that we might only want them because we had a bad night’s sleep, or we skipped lunch.

    Short-Term Planning

    Our immediate responses are rarely oriented to the long term. This makes sense, since most of the things our body needs are immediate—food, sleep, protection, sex, using the bathroom, etc.

    The problem arises when we focus on meeting these needs to the exclusion of the things that are good for us long term. I wasn’t stupid—I’d always known that the drinking and drugs were a problem. The problem was that rational James was usually outvoted by crazy James.

    I had good intentions, and they held so long as I wasn’t around any of my temptations. My long-term planning was solid until short-term fun was in front of me. It was infuriating to watch my resolve and dreams go out the window over and over again.

    As I mentioned above, our wants are flimsy when we begin to explore them. Why do you want chocolate? Why do you want a beer? Why do you want to go on a walk? Why do you want to go to Disney World?

    We have all sorts of answers for these questions:

    Because I deserve it.

    Because I need to relax.

    Because it’s a nice day outside.

    Because Disney World is the happiest place on earth.

    These don’t really hold up when we examine them though.

    Why do you deserve it?

    What does it mean to relax?

    What makes it a nice day?

    What makes Disney World the happiest place on earth?

    If we keep going, we always arrive at the realization that we just want to feel good one way or another. We want to feel good for the sake of feeling good. While there’s definitely nothing wrong with this, it is ultimately baseless, and we cannot let it drive our lives.

    Not feeling good is a part of the human experience. You’re going to get sick, you’re going to have days that are not as good as other days, you’re going to have a headache sometimes. These things are unavoidable.

    The things we want right here and right now are rarely the best things for us long term. Because of this, long-term planning requires intentionality and energy. It may be inconvenient but it’s true.

    We Can’t Predict the Future

    As a kid, I remember thinking it was weird that we couldn’t remember the future. If I could remember what happened yesterday, why couldn’t my brain go the other direction?

    This is one of the primary limitations of our species, and the most important reason that we shouldn’t hold the things we want too tightly. We don’t know how anything is going to turn out, including what will happen if we get what we want.

    I used to drive through Lubbock, Texas, once or twice a year to go skiing. Lubbock is a city out in the desert, and while I have come to love it here, I don’t think anyone would describe it as beautiful.

    Lubbock has some dubious honors. We have been voted most boring city in America, worst weather in the world, and I recently read that we have the worst diet in the United States. Our poverty and violent crime rates are roughly double the national average, and we score high on things like child abuse and teen pregnancy.

    I always swore I’d never live in a place like Lubbock when I would pass through here, but moving here twenty years ago saved my life. The place that I loved, Austin, I brought me to rock bottom. it was only a matter of time before I was dead or in prison.

    On the other hand, the place that I swore I’d never live has given me a college education, a family, and a successful business—all things that I thought only existed for other people. I honestly shudder when I think what my life would have looked like had I not moved.

    There have been smaller examples along the way. I was working at a CD store and loved it, but one Sunday corporate came in and said they were shutting the place down. They gave me a two-week paycheck to help them pack the store up and move it out. It was that abrupt.

    It sucked, but this led me to working at hotels, where I was able to get paid to do all my homework and still have time to read for fun. I burned through all the Russian classics, made all A’s, and got to spend a lot of time with my son when he was little. I will always be grateful for that.

    Before opening my practice, I was working at a private university. For someone with sixty-plus jobs in their life (my wife and I made a list), working on a college campus was amazing—it was the first place I saw as a “forever” job.

    When things went bad, they went all bad and it was obvious it was time to leave, but I was comfortable. I ignored some problems I should not have been ignoring, and it caught up with me. By the time I left I was burned out and sick all the time.

    This catapulted me into opening my own business because I didn’t really see any other options. I’d never seen myself as being responsible enough to do this, and people told me I didn’t have the head for it.

    Six years later, my business has been super successful and afforded me more freedom than I could ever imagine, but even this wasn’t the end. I recently closed my office to stay home with my kids, another twist I couldn’t have seen coming.

    We are trapped in linear time, so we don’t know what’s coming right around the corner. Holding on to one thing or another as the right thing or the thing we “should’ have often causes us to miss the amazing things right in front of us.

    Accepting What We Get

    My life has been a series of hard lessons brought about by my self-absorbed, entitled, and foolish choices. They have all, in one way or another, taught me one thing: I don’t know what’s best, so a majority of the time I don’t have any business getting what I want.

    Things like someone shelving a library book in the wrong place, corporate closing the place I worked, and moving to a city I actively disliked have brought about the best things in my life. I would not have chosen any of these if I’d been given the choice.

    We are emotional, shortsighted creatures who have no access to the future. Learning to cultivate acceptance for the things outside of our control often opens up amazing paths for us. I know it has for me.

  • How to Open Your Eyes and Make the Most of Life

    How to Open Your Eyes and Make the Most of Life

    “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” ~Marcel Proust

    I was asleep for the first thirty-two years of my life. I was jolted awake when my daughter was born unable to sustain her own breath.

    I sat beside her in the NICU helplessly every day for three months, unable to hold or feed her due to her fragility. I watched as she endured two surgeries before six weeks of age.

    She was diagnosed with a rare muscular disease that required significant medical intervention and around-the-clock nursing care. In those first few months following her birth, the picture of the life I had painted with its carefully selected colors and images, began to bleed into unrecognizable shapes around me. This was my awakening.

    Awakening happens when the veil drops away and we discover we have very little, if any, control over what happens outside of ourselves.

    It’s easy to believe in the fallacy of control when things go according to our predetermined plan. It’s much harder when things do not align with the image we have painted for ourselves. When we don’t get the promotion we have worked so hard for, the lover we have pined for, or the healthy child we always dreamed of. What happens to our happiness when we attach ourselves to these external outcomes?

    Before my awakening my self-worth was tied to the success of my career, the balance of my bank account, and whether others approved of my life and my choices. I had to take a close look at myself and dive deep. What was my heart telling me? I broke open.

    I left a marriage and a job that I had let define me for over a decade. I pursued a path of practicing and teaching yoga. I learned to appreciate the many gifts and lessons my daughter offered me each day. I watched her overcome physical limitations and grow to become a beautiful, sweet, and sassy little girl, full of humor and enthusiasm for life.

    Every day she would wake up and exclaim “I’m so excited!” Whether it was school, errands or a stroll through the park, she saw the beauty of each moment.

    We can never fully realize our potential if we are too stuck in tunnel vision to see the vast expansiveness of possibilities that exist.

    What if not getting that promotion leads us to our true passion? Or that unrequited love creates space to meet our soul partner? Or the disabled child we did not plan for wakes us up to the things in life that truly matter?

    If we’re consumed by our idea of what we want our life to be, or we wallow in disappointment when things don’t go to plan, we close ourselves off from all the blessings that lie before us.

    How can we expand our own perception of reality and surrender to our path?

    1. Stop blaming.

    Every decision you have or have not made has led you exactly where you are. So often we play the blame game with accusations of “this is their fault” or “they made me feel this way.”

    Though we may have been victims in the past, and we didn’t get to choose our circumstances as kids, as adults we are responsible for our own emotions and circumstances. When we choose to no longer hold a victim mindset, we are empowered to take the reins of our own life and make choices in line with our highest path.

    2. Focus on the now.

    When we put our energy into thoughts of past regrets or future fears, we often suffer anxiety or depression. When we shift our thoughts to the present moment, we tune into the blessings that are happening right now. Yoga and meditation are great tools for practicing presence. The more we remain present with each moment as it comes, the less fear and anxiety we experience.

    3. Connect to nature.

    Nature heals. It’s that simple. Go outside. Put your bare feet on the Earth. Dig your hands in the dirt. Climb a tree. Look at the star-filled sky. Learn from the reliability and consistency of nature. The sun always rises and sets each day. The seasons change without fail. These truths remind us of the divine timing of everything, and we too are a part of this universal tapestry.

    4. Connect with a friend.

    We are social creatures. We crave connection—whether it’s FaceTime or face to face. While it is often necessary to go inward, sometimes what we need is to get out of our own head and spend time connecting with a close friend. Practice complete presence. Laugh and be silly. Cry and be vulnerable. Be real. Engage in friendships where you can show up exactly as you are, without judgment. Choose interactions and connections that leave you feeling lighter.

    5. Give to others.

    Often when we feel sorry for ourselves, the best way to get out of our “woe is me” space is to do something kind for someone else. There are so many ways we can give back to others or to the community. Get involved in charitable work. Send a care package to a loved one. Send your energy into something that creates a shift from your own perceived problems to helping those around you.

    6. Live with purpose.

    Engage in work that lights you up. You may already have a career that’s driven by passion and purpose. Or perhaps you have a side gig or hobby that fills you up. It could be drawing or playing music, teaching, or coaching others. Say yes to things that bring you joy and a sense of purpose. Say no to things that drain your spirit, unless they’re responsibilities you can’t neglect, and it will be much easier to find time, even if only small windows.

    7. Establish a daily gratitude practice.

    Gratitude is a daily choice. We can focus on what is missing or we can choose to focus on the blessings right before us. Put pen to paper. It can be something small, like a morning cup of coffee, or something more grandiose, like the ability to love and be loved. Focus your energy on what you are grateful and shift from a mindset of lack to one of abundance.

    —

    Waking up is a process that unfolds the moment we decide to relinquish control and surrender to the flow of life.

    I was asked again to surrender when my daughter passed away at the age of four. Even with deep grief and loss in my heart, her memory floods me with so much light that it is impossible to go back to sleep. Every time I feel sorry for myself or worry about things outside of my control, all I have to do is think of her. Her life illuminated my own path to self-love and surrender.

    The more we trust our own path, the more peacefully we can navigate our way through this world. In each moment we can choose gratitude over disappointment, love over hate, abundance over lack, and trust over fear. Through these daily choices our original painting will transform into a landscape more magnificent than we ever could have dreamed of.

    What are you not seeing because you are seeing what you are seeing? Are you ready to awaken to the illuminated path that is unfolding right before you? All you have to do is open your eyes.

  • What to Do If You Can’t Forgive

    What to Do If You Can’t Forgive

    “Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.” ~Rumi

    “I know I should forgive but I can’t.” I squirmed in my seat as I said this to my teacher.

    I said this immediately after I explained all that I’d experienced during our meditation exercise.  In the meditation I’d had a vivid recollection of the constant verbal and emotional abuse I’d received from my dad.

    It had been ten years since I’d lived at home, but I was still angry, still carrying all of those emotions from years ago. Instead of telling me all the virtues of why it’s important to forgive, my teacher asked me one question.

    “Are you ready to forgive?”

    “No,” I said.

    “Then don’t.”

    When he said that I burst into tears of relief.

    At that time in my life so many people had been telling me about the virtues of forgiveness, suggesting different methods. When they’d see my resistance to forgiveness, they’d just tell me the same platitudes over and over again:

     Forgiveness isn’t about excusing the other person’s behavior.

     Forgiveness is for you not the other person.

     Forgiveness frees you.

    I intellectually understood what they meant. But I still couldn’t do it. I didn’t know why I couldn’t. I had started to feel guilty and shameful that I wasn’t able to do this one thing that so many people agreed I should do.

    My teacher giving me space to not forgive gave me the permission to observe myself and my pain without judgment. This meant I could explore the subtle feelings and beliefs that I didn’t even know I had. I uncovered my resistance by asking myself:

    How was not-forgiving keeping me safe?

    At the time I was a perfectionist and was excelling in my career. I had risen quickly through the ranks of my organization because I pushed myself hard and did a great job.

    At the same time there would be moments where I would go into extreme procrastination. I had learned that I procrastinated because I felt like what I should be doing was going to harm me. I stopped and went into avoidance mode whenever I was afraid that I was going to experience burnout or if I thought I would fail and be rejected.

    I looked at my reaction to not forgiving my dad in the same way. I was avoiding forgiveness because something about the idea of it made me feel unsafe.

    I sat down and wrote about why not forgiving my dad was keeping me safe. In my journaling I was surprised to see that I felt safe with the power I had in not forgiving.

    Through a family member who had told my dad I wasn’t willing to forgive him I’d heard that he was upset that I didn’t. That knowledge, that small thing that I had control of when I hadn’t felt in control of anything regarding my dad, felt like vindication.

    I wrote deeper:

    Why was it so important for me to hold that power? 

    I realized that inside of me was still a teenaged girl living in the experience—she hadn’t graduated high school and moved out. She was still in that pain right now. In this moment. And that feeling of power was the only thing keeping her together.

    It was shocking that I could feel her so strongly in my body. Mostly in my chest and in my stomach. The feeling was heavy and like sand  I couldn’t leave that girl feeling powerless while she was still actively in the moment of pain. I had to give her something to hold onto so she could survive.

    I didn’t try to correct my perception or be more positive. I just listened to me. I finally connected with the depth of pain I had been feeling all along and how often it was there without me even noticing. I wasn’t used to connecting with my body  I wasn’t used to listening to myself without judging.

    My teacher asked me if it was okay if instead of forgiving my dad if we released the energy that I was feeling from my body. I said yes, so he led me through a guided meditation.

    In it I took several deep breaths and visualized that I was sending all of my dad’s energy and the energy of situation through the sun and back to my dad. By moving the light through the sun my dad would only receive pure light back, not any of the pain he’d projected.

    I then took back my own energy, my authentic power, whatever I felt had been taken from me or whatever power I felt I’d given away. I visualized that energy moving through the sun and being cleansed so that all I received was my own pure light.

    Then I visualized all the other people who had heard my story or actually witnessed what went on with my dad letting go of all their judgments and attachments, like streams of light rising into the sky.

    After the meditation was done my body felt good. I felt lighter. I didn’t feel a part of me was caught in the past.

    Suddenly I had a strong urge to forgive my father. And I did.

    Over time I found that I still had more forgiving to do, but it was easier. I didn’t have to be convinced to forgive, I naturally wanted to.

    What helped me the most when I couldn’t forgive was finally recognizing that forgiveness is more than making a mental choice and saying words. Forgiveness is a decision that’s made with the body and the soul. It comes naturally when it is ready. 

    If you just can’t forgive, I invite you to explore what worked for me:

    1. Accept that you aren’t ready to forgive and trust your decision.

    2. Ask yourself how not-forgiving is keeping you safe and listen to your truth without minimizing or correcting your beliefs.

    3. Be present and feel where those beliefs are still active in your body,

    4. When you are ready (and only when you’re ready) releasing the energy that does not belong to you and reclaim what does using the process I wrote above.

    When we are willing to stop forcing ourselves to do what we ‘should’ do and actually listen to our truth in the moment, we expand our capacity for healing in ways we can’t even imagine.  Including forgiving the impossible.

  • How to Keep the Love Flowing in Your Relationship

    How to Keep the Love Flowing in Your Relationship

    “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”~Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island.

    Have you ever noticed how with certain couples love and affection flow so naturally? Indeed, almost effortlessly. There is a good reason for this. These couples have learned to accept one another as they are, which leads to greater intimacy and a more vibrant love flow.

    When we don’t accept our loved one for who and how they are—quirks, idiosyncrasies, annoying habits, and all—we are communicating to them that they are not good enough. That they fall short.

    Who wants to feel that—particularly in matters of the heart?

    Simply put, when you don’t accept your loved one as they are, it dampens the love flow.

    Even porcupines know this! With thousands of quills attached to their body, they know that they must pull them in and touch paws, if they want to have a “close” relationship.

    If porcupines manage to find ways to “accept” their “loved” ones, quills and all, shouldn’t we be able to as well?

    Below are some key practices and mind-sets that will go a long way toward achieving that.

    Don’t Try to Change Your Loved One

    When you try to change another, you are not accepting them. Yet many of us constantly try to change our loved ones’ traits and habits or opine and advise what they should do differently.

    Myself included!

    I like neatness and order in our home, but it’s very difficult for my dear, loving wife to get rid of things, and clutter constantly piles up in our garage. In the early years of our marriage, I constantly tried to get her to dispose of unused items in our garage. I complained, pleaded, and even cajoled.

    She paid lip service to me for a while and removed some clutter, only to have it reappear days later. When I continued harping, I was quickly met with, “You try taking care of the kids, doing the shopping, doing the laundry… and keeping the garage neat!”

    Not exactly a recipe for a loving relationship!

    I eventually realized that I was powerless over changing her ways, and that my continually trying to do so impacted our love bond.

    As I began accepting my wife for who and how she was—clutter and all—it enhanced the love flow. Our bond is stronger than ever today.

    Moreover, my acceptance brought me an unexpected gift. It allowed me to reflect on why (and when) I was so easily disheveled by clutter. I discovered it was almost always tied to my feeling anxious and stressed, usually about work or finances, or not being productive, or some general malaise.

    Addressing these “personal truths” brought me peace of mind, and my wife’s clutter no longer bothered me.

    Simply put, it was about me, not her!

    It will help reduce your urge to control your loved one if you ask:

    Do I really have the power to change my loved one?

    In most cases, we don’t. The simple truth is that people will change when and if they choose or are able to do so, not because we want them to.

    Reduce Your Expectations of Your Loved One

    High expectations of our loved ones easily lead to disappointment, resentment, and disconnect.

    My friend Margaret shared how her high expectations constantly dampened the romantic flow:

    “Expectations have ruined countless intimate relationships I have had. I start out being fun and easygoing, but once the relationship begins to build, I start to expect a certain level of communication, contact, and time together… I almost don’t know I’m doing it. I hear the person say they feel pressure and like everything has to be scheduled, yet I continue. It is horrible and not the way I want to be. I understand I need to let go. I just don’t seem to know how to do it.”

    Margaret’s quandary is not uncommon: few expectations at the beginning when the “love stakes” are low, and steadily increasing as the relationship becomes more serious.

    One thing is clear, however: When you expect too much of your loved one, you aren’t accepting them.

    Underlying many of our expectations are core needs we look for others to fulfill. For example, we may believe if our partner would be more nurturing or spend more time with us—instead of working so much or doing other things—we would be more content and less lonely. Or if she took more interest in our endeavors and passions, they would be more satisfying.

    Consider, though, whether we are truly better off if our loved one does as we want or expect. Is our happiness and well-being that dependent on them? I suggest not.

    When our focus and reliance is too much on our loved one, we lose sight of the changes and steps we can make to improve the relationship.

    It can help reduce your expectations, if you ask yourself this question:

    Are my needs something that my loved one can realistically fulfill? 

    Most often they are something that only we can.

    Honor Your Loved One’s Choices

    All people, including our loved ones, have their own life path and are entitled to make the choices and decisions that influence and ultimately determine that path.

    We can have compassion for our loved ones and sincerely and lovingly want what’s best for them, but we cannot truly know what is best for them.

    That’s because we look at things through our own history, prisms, and filters, not theirs. Hence, we should accept their choices, unless we or others are harmed by them. When we don’t, we aren’t accepting them as they are, and risk impeding and jeopardizing their path.

    To be sure, this is not always easy. I have learned that I need to be more aware of my controlling inclinations and keep my ego in check or quiet that “I know what’s best” part of me.

    I also need to remind myself that others’ points of view and choices have validity—for them.

    Acceptance is a Choice

    In the final analysis, accepting our loved one for who, what, and how he or she is, is a choice that each of us has to make. We are essentially powerless over changing their ways and traits that we dislike, and trying to do so makes things worse.

    We are much better served by focusing on what we do have control over: our part or role in the relationship.

    That includes our motives and attitudes, our actions and reactions, and our willingness to own up to our own shortcomings and part in relationship dysfunctions.

    And remember, no one is perfect and without flaws, least of all ourselves!

    I encourage you to choose acceptance—and improve the love flow!

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

    Why This Will Be the Year I Stop Running from Pain

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

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

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

    Our Wish for Happiness

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

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

    Our Strategies to Avoid Suffering

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

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

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

    Pain is Inevitable

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

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

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

    My Reminders for Changing my Habit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Acceptance Is Not Passive; It’s the Path to Peace

    Acceptance Is Not Passive; It’s the Path to Peace

    “The price of our vitality is the sum of all of our fears.” ~David Whyte

    Acceptance by its very nature is imperfect; it’s messy and often unpleasant, while ultimately leading to a place of growth, a sense of freedom, and a life familiar with ease. I know this because I have had a lot of painful acceptance in my life, and it has been crucial to helping me move beyond the stuckness of fear and suffering.

    Years ago, being the natural striving, fun-seeking, achievement-oriented person I was, I ignored the fact that my body felt like a truck had run over it. I pushed, faked, and hid what my body was really feeling… until it all came to a screeching halt.

    Diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease, and a future of chronic pain or worse, I had to give up the impressive job, the active social life, and the self-image that had all propped me up in the world.  And then what was left?

    Instinctively, I wanted to go back to the way things were, to repatch it all back together again.  Fortunately, I inherently felt the impossibility of all of that, and so the work began.

    I started taking a meditation class and then a Buddhist practice, and one day sitting silently, feeling my body breathing, listening inwardly to what was there, the hard, guarding shell around my heart broke.  I had to accept there was no going back to normal, there was only being with what is and opening to where that might lead.

    Acceptance is not resignation. It is not passively giving up. It takes courage and strength.

    I feel it more of a falling inward, dropping into the sensations of what is, recognizing and acknowledging what’s there. A place of empowerment and choice instead of feeling like a victim to chance. It is a beautiful sense of coming home to the body in the present moment, a feeling of wholeness and strength to better face your circumstances, whatever they may be.

    That being said, there were a lot of tears and a lot of pain; in other words, it was messy. A series of small steps, it took a while.

    I had to accept that I could no longer keep up with my carefree, energetic friends as they traveled around the world and partied around the clock.

    I had to accept I would no longer create interesting buildings as an architect or participate in gallery shows as an artist.

    Most difficult of all, I had to accept that I could no longer be the fun-loving, happy person my husband needed—at least not right away.

    I had to accept my life had suddenly taken a new direction and be receptive to the possible changes that this might bring. Receptivity was the key to opening toward inner growth and inner intimacy, as well as a place of gentleness, all new territory for me!

    So what is your experience of acceptance really like? Maybe there is an image or metaphor that best viscerally says “acceptance” to you. To me, it feels like a slow-motion fall into an undercurrent that sweeps me away.

    It can feel quite beautifully poetic as a surrender into what is present, which floods me with a feeling of relief. It is more honest, more pure, less tinged with the shoulds of daily life—as in the pressure to be more productive, to be energetically outgoing, to follow through on all of my perceived responsibilities as a daughter, a wife, a friend.

    Allowing myself to actually be the way I felt, without the weight of someone else’s expectations, was the beginning of moving toward physical and emotional health.

    Rilke writes, “Gravity is like an ocean current that takes hold of even the strangest thing and pulls it toward the earth. We need to patiently trust our heaviness—even a bird must do this before it can fly.”  

    Trusting that the earth will support all of our weight, all of our heaviness, the physical pain and the mental anguish too, brings us to a place of feeling grounded, a place that’s ready to respond with wisdom and compassion, though this does take practice.

    Pulling away from our pain or ignoring a life difficulty is a kind of resistance, a fighting of gravity, and an easy habit that will not heal our difficulties.

    This tiring cycle of the push and pull of resistance makes everything difficult and takes a lot of energy, draining you of anything positive. It’s exhaustive like continuously having a really bad day.

    Resisting that all aspects of my life had changed made the changes much more emotionally painful.  Stuck in this place of denial, I was unable to connect in the ways that nurture deep friendships and that create authentic appreciation for life’s small pleasures.

    Recognizing the inner discomfort, it’s worth asking, “What am I resisting?” And even better “Do I want to be in acceptance mode or resistance drain?” And finally, “What is it that I need to accept?”

    We all hold onto some kind of emotional pain by pushing it away in an effort not to be hurt, which ultimately and ironically keeps this pain very close. But what would it take to let it go? What is it that wants to be acknowledged and ultimately accepted?

    And this pain, whether physical or emotional, leads to tight muscles and tight mental habits, a pattern of tenseness, a pattern of protectiveness that sucks the joy and spontaneity out of your life. Again, not much fun, not much pleasure. Trying harder and harder, like pulling on a necklace or shoestring that is knotted, will only make things worse.

    Embracing life, not just the edited parts of it but all of it, is a place of wisdom and grace. I can find this place sometimes in movement or in meditation, and often these are the same, because as quiet as your body/mind can get in meditation, at all times it is gently moving with every breath. This is the movement that grounds your learning into the very tissues and neurons that make you tick.

    If you can find your learning in the body, feel it in the body, you will not forget your experience or the glimpses of insight just discovered. The dancer Augusta Moore once told me “The breath is the music in the body.” I love this—the dance of life unfolding with each breath.

    So why do we try to hold on so tightly to what was, even though it creates nothing but frustration and pain?

    Once we find the means, whatever this might look like, it feels so damn good to drop the efforting, to accept, to fall apart a little, or perhaps a lot, and then move on, move forward with our new reality and all it has to offer. It can feel so good to allow this deep relaxing in the body, find that place of peace and feeling of liberation.

    And embracing life is what it is all about. We want to respond whole-heartedly, not with dullness or avoidance or anger. The danger lies in blocking too much of our self, guarding against the pain, the fears, or sense of being trapped in denial.

    Staying true to our entire experience allows us to loosen our responses, drop the guard, and be in a place of acceptance. As David Whyte writes, “The price of our vitality is the sum of all of our fears.”

    I have heard it said, and reluctantly have felt this truth, that the body cannot lie. So I invite you to find a quiet moment and listen deeply to what it is your body really wants to tell you, the inner wisdom it wants to share in healing; whether it’s an illness that has taken you down or a broken relationship that feels like it has left you stranded, your body/mind knows how to heal, and acceptance is the key to opening that door.

    With an open heart and a willing mind, really hear what your strongest ally, your body, wants you to know: that this partnership, between the mind and the body is a strong one, it is a relationship that will guide the winds of change with grace and ease. Acceptance helped me learn to listen within, and then trust what I heard, trust just what my personal world was asking me to respond to, and step peacefully forward into that vibrant flow of life.  

  • You Can Have a Tender Heart and Still Be Fierce

    You Can Have a Tender Heart and Still Be Fierce

    “Life is a balance between what we can control and what we cannot. I am learning to live between effort and surrender.” ~Danielle Orner

    For too long, I felt myself pulled between two shores of my identity. On one side was my yoga teacher, meditator, healer identity—my tender side. On the other side was my activist, change-maker role—my fierce side.

    I always felt like I was too tender for some and too fierce for others. It made me feel like I didn’t fit in anywhere.

    Definitely the soft-hearted “woo” person in my activist circles. And I was definitely the one talking about structural oppression and other activist ideas in my yoga teacher trainings. (The ahimsa lecture was always a sticky one.)

    What I now know is that both of these sides of myself are valid. Both are necessary for living in the world, whether you want to bring healing, love, and light—or whether you want to really shake things up.

    The problem is not that both of these exist (both do, in all of us). The problem is what happens when they are out of balance.

    When we favor our tender side too much, we might succumb to heartbreak and collapse. If we let our fierce side get too strong, our anger might consume us until we flame out. Either option is a recipe for burnout and exhaustion.

    This is your official permission slip to embrace both of these sides of yourself.

    When I became a mom, my perspective shifted dramatically. While I aimed to be a tender, safe container for my baby, I also had to be a warrior-advocate for him on a number of fronts.

    New motherhood was also a time when I had to admit vulnerabilities in myself like I never had before, while having less access to outlets for my fierce activism. I had to admit that I had no idea what I was doing; that I needed help; and that I needed to take a step back from certain areas of life.

    It was tender. And it was an act of fierce self-love. I learned that we needed both, not just within us, but at the same time.

    My self-care also shifted. I couldn’t procrastinate or be wishy-washy anymore. I had to clearly (sometimes fiercely communicate) my needs.

    I also had to slow way down and shift my expectations for myself. I had to invite a sense of tenderness into my days, even when it would have been much easier to push harder. I incorporate a sense of flow into my days, even when it feels challenging to allow myself that.

    That looks like taking dedicated, structured time for myself and my work when my energy is high. And it looks like easing off a little bit when my energy is lower. This requires clear communication with those around me, and a lot of grace for myself.

    It takes both the fierce side and the tender side, working together.

    Now, I’ll be honest: Society is sometimes not wild about folks being fierce and tender. It can be very gendered: men are expected to be tough and fierce; women are expected to be sweet and tender. So we’re breaking the rules.

    But trust me when I say that it’s worth it. It’s worth it to embrace your whole self. Ultimately, those around you (and the world!) will benefit from you showing up as your complete self.

    Yes, our fiery side will make some folks uncomfortable, just the way our vulnerabilities will. Everyone will survive that discomfort. Just remember that your tender heartbreak is valid—as is your fierce desire to create transformation.

    Sometimes it feels as though nuance is no longer welcome—that we’re reduced to what we can fit into an Instagram caption. But you are allowed to be complicated.

    There’s a myth that being fierce isn’t spiritual—that we’re all supposed to be perfectly calm all the time. That just isn’t true. Our fierce side—or any other reaction to oppression or the state of the world—is just a set of conditions we’re working with.

    Anger is simply another part of our experience. In fact, it offers us grist for our practice. Beyond our own individual practice, our fierce side is a lamp to illuminate injustice and show the path forward.

    On the other hand, there’s a misconception that if we’re “too” tender, then we’ll crumple when the going gets tough. It’s true that we don’t want to become victim to our emotions. It is a gift to be able to work with them skillfully.

    Our tenderness, though, is actually an asset. Tenderness allows us to perceive our interconnection more easily—to recognize ourselves in others, and vice versa. It is the foundation of a more compassionate world.

    This is why I (and we) need both. When there’s too much of one, we fall out of balance. There are gifts to embracing both, of being somewhere in the middle.

    To create more of this balance, it’s important to know your tendencies. Do you tend toward the fierce side or the tender side? With that information, you can navigate ways to create more equilibrium and communication between those two sides.

    If you tend more toward the fierce side, practice getting in touch with the feelings underneath any anger or reactivity. Remind yourself that it’s okay to feel tender and vulnerable. Place your hands over your heart and breathe, if you’re having trouble getting in touch with your tenderness.

    If your natural state is more tender, practice taking action in service of what breaks your heart. Getting into action creates a sense of empowerment. Taking action (even small actions) regularly may help you release the feelings of helplessness you might be feeling.

    Above all, remember the root of your caring. Whether it comes from a place of fierce protection or tender nurturance, these feelings are reminders that you care.

    We are all allowed to hold all of our parts, all at the same time, even if some of them don’t seem to fit at first.

  • Why I’m at Peace with My Weight Gain

    Why I’m at Peace with My Weight Gain

    “Resistance keeps you stuck. Surrender immediately opens you to the greater intelligence that is vaster than the human mind, and it can then express itself through you. So through surrender often you find circumstances changing.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    I took a deep breath, feeling the recent change in my belly. I pinched at my belly rolls. They were familiar, I’d had them before, but recently I had gone through a period of over a year where I was in a smaller body. Now I was gaining weight again.

    I refuse to step on the scale, so I don’t actually know how much weight I’ve gained. I can just feel it in the extra belly rolls and the snugness in some of my clothes. In my mind, I have two choices: to wage war on my body or to surrender to the weight gain.

    Surrender is the ability to let go of the crushing weight of societal and personal expectations. It’s waving the white flag, signifying I’m giving up all the diet culture methods I’ve tried so hard to make work. I’m acknowledging that they actually never worked in the first place. This option isn’t always so easy, though.

    For some context, I’m a body positive and fat positive activist. I advocate for acceptance and health at every size. I tell others they’re worthwhile just as they are. Though when it comes time to put them into practice within myself, it’s very challenging.

    I still have days where I suck in my stomach, hoping to appear skinnier to the world and to myself. I try to shrink to become small enough. I feel as though my worth lies in the number on the scale (even though I’m a stranger to it now).

    I lie to myself and say that I’m never going to find a partner if I keep gaining weight. I beat myself up about the food I’ve consumed and I compare myself to other people.

    My body positive journey is far from perfect; I struggle with all of these things. One big reason is internalized weight stigma or fatphobia. It infests my mind and can take over if I’m not careful.

    I mean, look at the world: We fear and despise fat. People are bullied and discriminated against because of being in larger bodies. Fatphobia is very real. It’s ingrained subconsciously; our society trains us to be this way.

    The Body is not an Apology outlines some ways in which fatphobia rears its ugly head. In jobs, fat employees tend to be paid less for the same work. In dating, they often deal with people who fetishize them rather than seeing them as humans. In fashion, there are rarely sizes available beyond a size 16. In medicine, doctors see them as weak-willed and lazy.

    This is not surrender in our society. This is bullying and prejudice. No wonder it’s hard for people to accept their changing bodies—there are so many consequences for being fat.

    The irony of fat-shaming in the name of health is that it actually causes adverse health effects. According to a survey done by Esquire magazine, two-thirds of people report they’d rather be dead than fat. Can you imagine the damage this amount of stress does to one’s system?

    No wonder we’re terrified of gaining weight. We let those messages infiltrate our minds, and they drive us to pinch at our belly rolls as if we’re the worst people ever.

    On the other hand, being thin means being accepted, flying under the radar, even being complimented. It means that life is easier because you’re not oppressed in this way. Still, fatphobia manages to creep into all of our minds.

    When you’re scared to death of what other people are going to think of you, you’re carrying your own sense of internalized fatphobia. This phenomenon even impacts those who are in smaller bodies because of the negative feelings they have about themselves and the world.

    It makes sense, then, that my first reaction to my body admittedly isn’t always unconditional love. Rather, the old messages in my mind were saying, “You’re not good enough. You’re disgusting. No one will ever love you. You’re a failure.” They were loud and unrelenting. I was familiar with these messages.

    For many years I waged war with myself. I was stuck in cycles of binging and restricting that wreaked havoc on my body. I thought I was being “healthy,” but really I was very sick.

    I was obsessing over every little thing I consumed, making sure to track seventy-two calories of butter to my MyFitnessPal app and being hysterical when I gave into a Twix bar. Weight control owned me. I was constantly thinking about food.

    Binging and restricting create terrible health risks—getting physically sick from too much or not enough food and brittle hair, not to mention the emotional consequences that occur like stress, obsession, and the absence of joy.

    I loathed my very existence, and I definitely was fighting a war against my body and myself. I thought that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. It was utterly exhausting.

    I started to think that there had to be another way to relate to my body.

    When I was twenty-two, I discovered the body positivity movement. I began with a program called Bawdy Love, which was all about being a revolution to loudly declare that every body is worthy and no body is shameful.

    I began to follow body positive influencers online like Megan Jayne Crabbe, Tess Holiday, Roz the Diva, Jes Baker, and hashtags like #allbodiesaregoodbodies. Fat women filled my feed. They were beautiful and unapologetic. They taught me that fat isn’t bad and that people in larger bodies aren’t lazy, unhealthy, or unlovable.

    Now, I must say, I’m in a smaller body. I have privileges that many people do not. My level of weight gain so far is still keeping me in a body that’s relatively accepted by society. I don’t know what it’s like to face discrimination based on my size.

    I do, however, know what it’s like to hate your body and think that you’re broken. I know what it’s like to do the opposite of surrender. When I’m living this way I do things like workout until I’m ill, take my favorite foods out of my diet, and berate my body in front of other people. This is what waging war looks like.

    Instead of doing this, I chose to surrender to weight gain. I make this choice every single day. I try to let go of my expectations and preconceived notions. I’m throwing my hands up in the air.

    This isn’t a happily-ever-after story where everything is perfect. Rather, body acceptance takes rigorous work as well simply just letting myself be.

    I’m continuing to enjoy my food free from disordered eating. This means no restricting; every single food is available at any time. You won’t hear me talking poorly about my body or about anyone else’s. I refuse to diet and I refuse to indulge others in their diets.

    To counteract the voices that tell me I’m not good enough, refute them with “You’re worthy and lovable just as you are. Weight is just a number. You’re okay.”

    Eventually, I started to believe these thoughts are true. Part of me thinks that maybe, just maybe, my existence on this planet isn’t for nothing. In letting go of the self-pity, a beautiful sense of self begins to bloom.

    Surrendering is harder than you may believe. Internalized weight bias runs deep.

    I think at times I come off as someone who’s super-confident in myself and in my relationship with my body, but it takes a whole lot of work to get to the point of surrender. The point of being free from the grips of diet culture.

    I still poke at my belly, but mostly it’s with curiosity. If I feel disgust, I quickly try to turn my thoughts around to have compassion and confidence. I notice when my thighs are pressed against a bench. I smile, feeling thankful that my legs move me around.

    I don’t step on the scale because I know that it can’t tell me anything about my worth. The numbers are irrelevant. I open my arms to weight gain, though sometimes taking a deep breath first. Accepting it means healing from a disordered relationship with my body and food.

    Weight gain is an indicator that I’m living with joy in my life. I’m enjoying meals out with friends, snacking on treats at work, and taking seconds. I’m eating when I’m hungry, what a revelation.

    I’m taking deep care of myself, and that may not look like other people’s definitions of self-care. That’s okay.

    Fatphobia may say that I’m being stupid, but I choose surrender today. For me, that means throwing out lifelong conceptions that I’m not good enough. It means no longer running in circles chasing my tail, trying to lose weight. It’s opening up to the idea that there’s another way to go about this. It’s peace and joy.

  • Blinded by Our Diet Culture? How to Stop Hating Your Body

    Blinded by Our Diet Culture? How to Stop Hating Your Body

    “Don’t change your body to get respect from society. Instead let’s change society to respect our bodies.” ~Golda Poretsky

    Age thirteen—that was when my eating disorder kicked into full gear because our diet culture had its tentacles wrapped around me tightly. All I thought about all day was how I was going to control and restrict my food, then how I was going to burn it off.

    I sought to burn off every calorie I ate. I couldn’t go to sleep at night unless I’d burned off most of what I’d consumed. I was obsessed with exercise and trying to morph my body into an unreasonable shape.

    Thinness, that’s what I was seeking. I’d scroll through “ana” or anorexia forums online and gain inspiration from others. I’d swoon over protruding collarbones and thigh gaps. I was in eighth grade.

    I have a distinct memory of tears streaming down my face, when I was fourteen, in the parking lot of the YMCA in my boyfriend’s car. Desperation and regret were washing over me like waterfalls. I couldn’t believe I had eaten something outside of my diet plan.

    I had a roll of cookie dough in hand that I had just binged on. I wrapped it up and angrily threw it on the floor. Then I vowed to burn the sweet off by sweating on the elliptical and to never do that again.

    Though inevitably I had sweets again. Or something that was high in fat. Or something that was too carb-y. There was no winning, I had myself trapped.

    I’d even berate myself when I ate two granola bars because that was too many calories. I’d hide in the bathroom while at the beach in fear of being “too big.” Diet culture dogged my every step.

    I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me, like I was broken, largely because of the messages I’d received from our culture—that I’d always have something that needed to be “fixed.” I lived my life as if that were true.

    I read in Jes Baker’s book, Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls, that 81% of ten-year-olds are afraid of being fat, and these same ten-year-olds are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of cancer, war, or losing both of their parents.

    That was me, terrified of weight gain. As a teenager headed into adulthood, I let the fear of gaining weight run my life. I developed a binge eating disorder, where I ate in private, and the shame, guilt, and remorse mounted.

    At seventeen years old I was the heaviest I’d ever been, though still small by most people’s standards. My dad was hoping to buy me a car for high school graduation, but instead, I convinced him to pay $4,000 to send me to fat camp for thirty days. There I starved and worked out until I was ill.

    They had us working out for hours a day, barely eating anything, and they restricted us from bringing in food from outside. We’d play running games, but also row on the lake that the camp resided on. Sometimes we would workout for upwards of six hours a day, so I got sick.

    Sun sickness, exhaustion, and insufficient nutrition knocked me on my butt. I went home a few days early.

    I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. The camp felt like a prison, but I also felt good about being there because I was on my way to being thin.

    I hoped that maybe this weight loss would mean that I’d finally be enough. I felt like I had to be good enough for my boyfriend, despite him thinking that I was just fine as I was. I was convinced that I needed to be skinny in order to keep him around.

    My weight continued to fluctuate: up, down, up, down. And you know what? No matter what diet, weight loss plan, or “lifestyle change” I tried, my total disdain for myself remained. When I hit my goal weight, I still hated myself.

    It was baffling. I told myself when I hit x weight I would be good enough, but even when I reached my goal, my level of misery was the same. I was still stuck with me, the same me that is the same no matter what I weigh.

    When I was talking to my AA sponsor about my dang weight plateau (even though I weighed less than my original goal), she asked me, “But, when will the weight loss ever be enough? What weight is ‘enough?’”

    It didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks that day. I had been hearing the sentiment over and over again. When is enough, enough? But I knew then I was sick of the cycle.

    What if I was enough just as I was? I began reading books like Health at Every Size and Bawdy Love. While reading these books I kept asking myself if diets and restriction were really the way to happiness. These books and others taught me, bit by bit, that I might just be an okay human without weight loss.

    I started questioning the way I thought about things and vocalized my feelings about my body. Like, what if I played hockey for enjoyment rather than to burn off food I’ve eaten? What if I stopped berating myself to others and instead chose to talk positively about my body?

    I slowly realized that I had more important things to worry about than how many calories I’d consumed and if I was thin enough for my date. Even before I was calling it body positivity, I was on a journey of self-acceptance.

    I’d been so convinced that I possessed innate badness, but I started to wonder, what if that was a lie? Can I really be all that horrible? What if there was another way?

    I had been studying Buddhism for years but got deeper into it right around the time that I was learning about body acceptance. That was when I found basic goodness, which is Shambhala’s Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s idea of discovering our inherent worth, our fundamental nature that cannot be obscured by anything like body dysmorphia or diet culture.

    It didn’t happen overnight, but I slowly began to learn about my inherent worthiness.

    I fought along the way. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a sense that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Trying to turn that around has been quite a feat. It’s taken daily kind self-talk, a body positive community, and professionals like a therapist and a Health at Every Size nutritionist.

    It’s also taken my sangha’s love and wisdom. When I’m in the space of my center, whether it’s my local one or the land center tucked away a few hours north, I feel a sense of peace with myself and the world.

    It’s not always so simple to say everything’s okay. There are many things that feel difficult to accept about me. Some days it’s my “fat” thighs (which are actually average-sized) and other times my jiggly tummy. Neither of these are bad things.

    My “flaws” are actually things to celebrate about myself. My legs are strong enough to carry me around day-to-day and sometimes even go hiking! And I have a belly that digests all the delicious food I eat.

    While it’s important to feel positive about certain aspects of myself, basic goodness runs a little bit deeper. It’s not “good” or “bad” in the sense we’re familiar with, rather it’s a naturalness that’s difficult to describe.

    It started seeping into my life, though, and became very real for me. I started to have this deep feeling in my chest that reminded me that I’m fundamentally okay no matter what mistakes I make or flaws I think I have.

    It helped that I tattooed the words “basically good” in giant letters on my forearm. I needed the reminder!

    It didn’t just affect my relationship with my body, it bled out into different parts of my life. In connecting to my nature and understanding my own worth, I interacted with people differently. For example, I was better at setting boundaries and saying “no” because I realized I deserve respect. I also had more empathy for people who made horrible mistakes.

    When I started to believe in my basic goodness I began to treat myself differently. When I heard those voices in my head telling me that I was broken, I gently dismissed them and moved on with my day. I replaced them with new thoughts like “you’re lovable just as you are.”

    I dove right into body acceptance work. I started to practice intuitive eating, subscribed to the Health at Every Size movement, and became a body positive advocate on social media.

    Experiencing intuitive eating manifested as learning to tune into my body and dropping the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” There were no longer “bad” foods in my life that I “shouldn’t eat,” and there were no longer exercises that I “should” be doing.

    Rather, I learned that my body has inherent wisdom. It sends me hunger and fullness cues. It tells me when it doesn’t like something. It’s naturally emotional, providing me the opportunity to share joy with friends through a birthday cake.

    My relationships with food and exercise go hand-in-hand. Exercise became an outlet to move my body and have fun. What a revelation! I didn’t have to punish myself in order to get moving. I could move just fine by playing hockey and taking walks.

    Health at Every Size taught me many things, one of the biggest being that diets don’t work.

    In the book Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight—and What We Can Do About It, author Harriet Brown cites statistics that show “over 45 million Americans will go on a diet at some point each year. All but 5% of them will gain the weight back in a year, and all but 3% of them will gain the weight back plus some extra in three years.

    Many of us throw ourselves into dieting, thinking that it’s going to cure our problems and we’re finally going to be thin. It’s a sinkhole. The real solution isn’t an attempt to change your body. It’s connecting with that goodness deep inside of you.

    From there, you can take better care of yourself. A meta-analysis of twenty-four studies published between 2006 and 2015 found that people were actually more motivated to exercise when the drive wasn’t from shame and guilt and instead focused on enjoyment.

    The same goes for eating and anything else we do. When shame is the drive, everything suffers. On the other hand, if we’re operating from an understanding of our basic goodness, we actually want to care for ourselves.

    One of the best tools I’ve found to care for myself and connect to my basic goodness is meditation.

    Meditation isn’t the only answer to connecting to your basic goodness, but it’s the biggest. This practice may drum up images of monks on mountaintops, but everyone can do it and everyone can benefit from it.

    It’s not about being perfect. It’s not even really about quieting your mind or becoming happy, though these are often welcomed side effects. Instead, it’s about making friends with what’s going on inside your own mind and in turn connecting with your body and realizing it’s doing a great job.

    To listen to your body, things have to be clear. Pema Chodron made the analogy of a glass of water. If you put a tablespoon of dirt in the water and start stirring, everything’s all muddied.

    This is equivalent to negative diet culture thoughts churning in your mind. Thinking about weight loss, calories burned, and steps taken are the dirt swirling. These kinds of thoughts often take you away from your intuition, or your state of calmness.

    What if you stopped stirring, though? The dirt would go to the bottom and you could see clearly again; you could connect to your body’s needs.

    Pema identifies this as our natural state, or state of basic goodness. When our relationship to our body comes from a place of love instead of punishment, many benefits can occur.

    I’ve done much healing of my relationship with my body (and mind and spirit for that matter). I still have days where the old voices and habits creep in, but I connect to my basic goodness on a daily basis.

    The best advice that I can share is to become connected to a body positive community. Connect with others who are on the same journey. Follow Instagram influencers like Megan Jayne Crabbe, Tess Holiday, and Virgie Tovar.

    Learn about the topic of basic goodness. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche writes a lot about it, but you can also find more on the matter in books by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and Pema Chodron.

    Tap into that basic goodness. Use meditation to connect and use Health at Every Size and Intuitive Eating practices to be embodied. Know that you are so good, no matter what.

    Drop that diet culture garbage; it isn’t serving you. Remind yourself that your health is about so much more than weight. Lastly, work toward accepting your body; it’s the only one you’ll get.

    For me, it’s a journey. I’ll never achieve the perfect level of accepting my basic goodness and my body. We can talk all day about the best tactics to achieve freedom, but there are going to be plenty of days when I fall short.

    I just want to make it clear that, like many things, having a healthy relationship with our bodies is a practice. Fundamental worthiness and body acceptance have changed my relationship with myself for the better, for sure. But I’ll always be learning and growing.

  • Lessons from Infertility: What’s Helped Me Cope with Disappointment

    Lessons from Infertility: What’s Helped Me Cope with Disappointment

    “When you find no solution to a problem, it’s probably not a problem to be solved, but a truth to be accepted.” ~Unknown

    For the longest time, I swore I’d never get married or have kids.

    Growing up with an alcoholic father, in a domestic violence situation, shattered my young spirit and left me putting the pieces back together for years.

    Since I didn’t see healthy coping skills growing up, it’s no wonder I grappled with my own addictive behaviors. I struggled with self-worth, focusing solely on accomplishments to fill a void inside of myself.

    Externally, people saw a well-adjusted, smart girl who excelled at sports and was a natural leader, with plenty of friends.

    All seemed well.

    It wasn’t.

    Internally, I was dying, and I’d take anything I could get my hands on to escape my reality. I used work, relationships, and substances to make myself feel better for a short while.

    However, self-loathing runs deep and it eventually won the day.

    I wasn’t enough, and there wasn’t anything sustainable that would make me feel okay about myself for any length of time. I didn’t realize it then, but what I really wanted wasn’t to merely the fill the void; I was longing for a connection to my authentic self. But I couldn’t figure out how to create it.

    My emotional suffering was crippling.

    While other people were getting married and having babies, I was surviving the day between emotional highs and lows and barely holding on to any form of functioning.

    Though I had vowed never to get married or have kids, I secretly longed for it. I’d disavowed it only because it didn’t seem possible for me.

    Plus, how would I ever bring a child into this mess of a life?

    I wouldn’t.

    When my self-destruction hit a crossroads of kill myself or live, I chose to heal and get better so that I could be a healthy person for myself right then and perhaps for a partner and child in the future.

    I wanted to be the healthiest version of myself, and thinking about what might be helped me get present to what needed to be healed.

    Part of the journey back to my true self was about learning unconditional self-love. Hearing the paradigm that I’m a spiritual being having a human experience opened up an avenue of self-loving within me that I had never experienced before.

    I focused diligently on having a healthy relationship with myself by engaging a daily self-care practice that included positive affirmations, physical exercise, self-forgiveness, and connecting to something greater than myself.

    By learning to relate to myself in a more positive way, I started to have better relationships with others. And one particular relationship came in that reflected back to me my deep self-love and spiritual growth. This relationship would turn into a life partnership and eventually a marriage.

    Though I never thought I would get married, I did the inner work to transform myself into the partner that I wanted to have in this lifetime.

    My spiritually connected and loving relationship with Richard opened me up to the possibility of having children.

    This was a huge shift from my days as a child and young adult where I vowed never to have significant relationships with anyone.

    But then something I never expected happened. We never got pregnant.

    We tried for many years and mutually decided that if we couldn’t naturally have a child, we wouldn’t have one at all.

    There was tremendous disappointment, anger, and sadness. When something isn’t a possibility for you, it can make you want it more.

    I went from obsessed to defeated.

    Richard and I finally landed on and allowed our grieving.

    It was a process. It still is.

    What’s super special about this journey is that I was able to pull from my recovery toolbox to support myself through this experience.

    I focused on these three powerful steps.

    1. Look for the learning.

    Getting my mind right has been the biggest growth opportunity in my healing process. Before learning about my infertility, I’d studied spiritual psychology at The University of Santa Monica, where I learned the twenty-two principles of spiritual psychology. One of those principles, “life is for learning,” has empowered me to look for my spiritual curriculum instead of staying in victimhood.

    Staying empowered versus going into disempowerment has kept me learning from my life experiences, and helped me avoid growing bitter. Through my infertility, I learned to let go of control. I learned true surrender to the unknown. And I learned to trust something greater than my humanness. I’ve experienced so much grief, resilience, and acceptance. Embracing it all has enriched my life instead of making this a solely painful experience.

    2. Accept what is.

    I found acceptance of what is. I’m not fighting reality, saying it should be different. I don’t know what it should look like, and I accept that this is my spiritual curriculum.

    Ego thinks it knows what the human experience should look like. My spirit knows that this is the experience I’m meant to have. Or at least that’s what I believe—that I was meant to grow through this and love myself no matter what. And I’m doing that!

    I’ve also come to realize that even when life doesn’t turn out how we think it should, it can still be enjoyable if we’re willing to shift our focus and do the best we can with the hand we were dealt. For me, that’s meant committing to being the healthiest human I can be, living a purpose-driven life, and helping other people self-actualize.

    Even if you don’t believe you receive a “spiritual curriculum” for life, or are “meant to have” certain experiences for your growth, it feels incredibly liberating to accept what is and choose to make the best of it. This is how I’ve been able to keep my peace instead of giving it away.

    3. Choose peace.

    I choose peace. It’s an affirmation that has served me well for many years through different life challenges. I can choose to be in resistance and suffer, or I can choose to be in acceptance and have my peace. I choose peace. It doesn’t mean I don’t experience some sadness from time to time, but those moments are few and far between because it’s more valuable to me to accept and have peace than it is to hold onto grievances.

    Life didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. I put expectations on life, and life had its own plans.

    My duty is to be with what is and love myself through it.

    Accepting what is has been one of the most freeing experiences of my lifetime because it’s opened me up to new possibilities I wouldn’t have been able to see had I stayed stuck in resistance. Furthermore, I’ve been able to experience motherhood through mothering myself, our four wonderful dogs (Peanut, Ziggy, Tucson, and Bootie), and those I come into contact through my life’s work.

    I can still be a mother—to myself and others. I get to define what that looks like for me.

    When life seems difficult or unfair, focus on the lessons so you can empower yourself instead of victimizing yourself, accept what is, and remind yourself that this is what it means to choose peace. These strategies have offered me continued spiritual growth, supported me in strengthening my relationship with my husband, and empowered me to carry on with co-creating an enjoyable life.

    And if you’re experiencing infertility, like me, know that it doesn’t have to be something that sidelines you. It can not only be a source of tremendous spiritual growth, it can also be the gateway to a different path that could be equally as fulfilling.

  • Accepting My Autistic Self: Why I’m Done Trying to Fit In

    Accepting My Autistic Self: Why I’m Done Trying to Fit In

    “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” ~Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

    A common misconception about autistic people is that we don’t care if we’re alone. Of course this varies with each person, but on the whole, it’s untrue. We want to feel included, it’s just not easy for us to fit in. There are other days when I feel autism has separated me so fully from other people that I am functioning on a different plane of existence, not just with a different brain structure.

    I attended a child’s birthday party recently, and it was a sensory nightmare. Children screaming, rain pouring, karaoke, a pinata, one incredibly friendly, one-ish looking, adorable baby boy who used me as a jungle gym. Before all of this was simultaneously happening, my family had arrived a few minutes early to secure a good parking spot.

    The five of us unloaded from our van and went inside. There was mostly family there, no one unknown yet, only a half dozen people, still pretty quiet and cozy. My sister-in-laws were doing rounds with the multiple sets of in-laws and close friends everyone knows.

    Recently diagnosed, I’ve been making more of an effort to put aside my discomforts and reach out in different ways to form stronger family bonds for my children. I usually retreat to my phone during children’s parties that are not my own children’s, but this time I attempted to mimic my sisters-in-law. I put my purse away and went in turns attempting to make conversation with my family.

    The same experience happened with five different people. They would say something and I would reply with something in return. After each time I spoke it was as if I’d said nothing; they would speak after my comments as if I had interrupted them, despite me answering direct questions or comments.

    I gave up on conversation when things started getting busy, and switched to attempting to give my niece the blanket I’d been crocheting for eighteen months. My niece is only almost one, so I gave it to her mom to open. She did not take it from my outstretched hand, nor did she show interest in it while I was there.

    When all our kids were settled in the car and my husband was driving home, it began. Anxiety, guilt, self-doubt. What do I do wrong? Why can I not think of things to say that spur conversation? I’ve spent a large amount of time trying to understand facial expressions I was not built to read. Did I not read them well? And how could I still be failing at talking about the weather?

    I asked my husband, what am I doing so wrong? I did all the same things that my neurotypical sisters-in-law did. Why did they not chat with me for fifteen minutes like they all did with everyone else? I showed interest in their lives, taking care to avoid my special interests.

    I stewed over it, I cried and called myself a failure because I can’t seem to connect with people and can’t pass for normal, even though I now know why, after thirty years.

    I was crushed that knowing why I was different made no impact when it came to bridging the difference. As I continued to think about this I eventually concluded that not knowing my diagnosis, or if I even had one, gave no one an excuse to treat me poorly.

    Then I realized there was nothing wrong with how I attempted to connect. The problem wasn’t me; it was the people I was trying to interact with. I asked myself, who and what was I failing? People who wouldn’t even talk to me.

    I then remembered that I get to choose how I react. I get to choose to feel bad or move on, and I needed to ask myself what I wanted to feel—and what I deserved to feel. So I decided right then I don’t want to be affected by people who simply don’t care for me.

    I will probably never connect with my sister-in-laws, not one of the four. I’ve put in a lot of effort trying and failing. The way I choose to see it now, I was born with the ability to weed out shallow relationships.

    I didn’t do anything wrong besides not be my true self. The traits I was born with should not determine other people’s treatment of me, just as my treatment of others is not dependent on them, just myself.

    I will never pass for your typical wife or mother. I didn’t for the first thirty years of my life when I didn’t know I was autistic. I doubt I will in the next thirty years with an explanation for my traits and behavior. I am learning that is not just okay, but great.

    I choose now to live like it’s not my job to sacrifice my comfort because I socialize differently. I don’t owe anyone “normalcy.” I don’t need to try to mask my autism by copying a seemingly normal routine. By attempting this I stole the joy out of my own experience. I felt anxious and frustrated and ultimately like a failure.

    I still crave company, but good company will come on its own. They won’t expect me to fake anything, mimic anyone, or wonder or ask why I seem different. They will just be with me and accept me as I am.

    Being autistic has impacted my entire life, and for most of my life I never understood what was happening. I got blessed with an extra set of challenges I had no choice over. But I do get to choose how strong those challenges make me.

    I choose to get stronger every day. I choose to be my own hero. Every day, I choose to let go of my self-doubt and hold on to my true self.

  • The Key to Acceptance: Understand That Everything Changes With Time

    The Key to Acceptance: Understand That Everything Changes With Time

    “If you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.” ~Byron Katie

    I love this quote. Ironic, really, because when I first read it, I was furious—furious with my reality and anyone who encouraged me to accept it. In my mind, to accept chronic illness was to accept defeat.

    I had just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, an incredibly painful condition that had me bedridden most days and unable to care for my then two-year-old daughter, never mind myself. My home became filled with carers and aides and adaptations.

    Rather than starting a new career as a newly qualified occupational therapist, I was struggling with the fear of lifelong pain, the shame of unemployment, and the guilt of not being the active mother I desperately wanted to be. I was in no mood to accept such circumstances in life.

    So how did I move from a position of resistance to one of restoration? How can we find some wiggle room in situations that may feel utterly immobilizing? Well, chocolate and cake help, but what really started creating space for growth was the Buddhist notion of impermanence and the insight, acceptance, and mindfulness that flowed from that.

    Impermanence is a universal law; every single thing is in flux. Take the British weather, for example. We know it’s unpredictable and always changing, so when we go on holiday here, we often take boots and raincoats as well as sunscreen and hats!

    We see this same principle mirrored in ourselves as we change with age. I remember a time when I was washing dishes and, in looking down at my hands, was taken aback at how much they resembled my mother’s. Soft lines and delicate wrinkles that had found a home on my skin stared back at me.

    The profound realization that not a single person or thing is fixed and all is ultimately impermanent can cause some sadness and anxiety, but within this there is a freedom and hope.

    The Glass Is Already Broken

    Someone once asked a well-known meditation master, Ajahn Chah, in a world where everything changes, how can there be happiness?

    The teacher held up a drinking glass and, with much compassion, explained, “You see this goblet? For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it. I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over, or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

    When I read this and really let it sink into my bones, slowly, gently, something shifted. I realized then all human life is fragile—sickness doesn’t discriminate.

    Though my ill health had initially caused so much loss and sadness, I was able then to move from a place of “Why me?” to a “Why not me?” It cooled my rage, and the first shoots of acceptance began to show.

    We will all experience pain at some point in our lives. It is part of the package of being human. Accepting this can help ease the suffering enmeshed in pain and encourage us to truly embrace and appreciate life’s pain-free moments, the pockets of joy.

    Saying Hello to the Here of Our Circumstances

    There is a wonderful story in Pádraig Ó Tuama’s book, In the Shelter, about a photojournalist who was returning to a tribe in Papua New Guinea where she had lived as a child. Within this tribe, there was no word for hello. Instead, upon seeing someone, you simply said, “You are here,” and the response, being equally clear, was “Yes, I am.”

    Isn’t that wonderful? No judgment—just acknowledgement of what’s here. When we say hello to the here of our circumstances, no matter how dire or unfair they seem, we’re better able to accept them.

    Acceptance is not defeat. It is an acknowledgment of the truth. Once we accept where we are, we can move forward with greater clarity, courage, and strength. It’s an opportunity to become unstuck, to experience well-being in the midst of our symptoms and beyond our symptoms.

    The Power of Mindfulness

    One thing that helped me get unstuck was mindfulness, which means conscious awareness of our moment-to-moment experience, without judgment.

    When I began to tentatively practice mindfulness each day, I soon realized that my experience of pain was never static. It changed in its intensity and location, and ultimately had many flavors. Sometimes it was a stabbing or burning sensation, at other times a dull ache. I could observe how it felt in different parts of my body and how, like waves, it had a tendency to rise and fall. I was shown how my experience of chronic pain was, like the weather, ever-changing.

    This helped me shift my focus from one of resistance to flexibility. It removed the sting of emotional suffering from my pain, creating a much less devastating and more manageable illness experience.

    I was finally able to whisper a faint hello to the pain and the emotions around it, and the practice of listening became a sort of self-hospitality. I could welcome what is just as I would welcome a friend.

    Within this I also saw the flip side of impermanence, the gift that nothing is set in stone. I was told I would always be in constant pain, but I knew my pain experience was fluid. I had occasional respite from it, even if it was just one hour a day, and with new pain knowledge and Buddhist principles, I was learning to emotionally disengage from it.

    Seven years after my devastating diagnosis, I actually recovered from the pain of fibromyalgia. That was over three years ago, and I have never had to take pain medication for it since, but that’s another story.

    As it stands I’m currently learning to navigate life with another painful chronic illness—hello, broken glass—but I’m much better able to manage it now that I understand the universal truth of impermanence and have nurtured the willingness to say hello to the here (albeit at times begrudgingly).

    If a black mood does settle on me, I try to take myself out for a mindful meander in nature.

    When I can be still and behold a whirling turn of birds, twisting and twirling like leaves caught in a breeze, it cuts through the chatter and noise, my frets and fears. It’s a sweet balm for life’s concerns.

    Mindful moments like these, when there is peace in every breath and joy in every view, are sacred to me. They remind me that there is so much beauty in the world to balance the pain. In nature I feel truly hushed, seen, found, and grounded, enabling me to appreciate the present moment and helping to create the chance of a promising future.

    Happiness is, after all, an inside job. It’s not about having perfect circumstances; it’s about making peace with what is and making the best of the hand we were dealt.

    Practicing mindfulness, appreciating nature, and understanding impermanence are some of the things that have helped me—and could help you too. When we embrace what is, enjoy what we can, and accept that all things inevitably change, peace becomes possible.

  • Let’s Get Real: Why I’m Done Pretending to Have It All Together

    Let’s Get Real: Why I’m Done Pretending to Have It All Together

    “If you’re not really happy, don’t fake a smile on my behalf. I’d rather you spill your guts with tears every day until your smile is real. Because I don’t care about the show, the disguise, the politically correctness. If you’re in my life, I want you to be in your own skin.” ~Stephanie Bennet-Henry

    This is the story of my inner child, the insecure part of myself that I am ready to respect and recognize.

    My thoughts and views are as follows: I’m not a superior mom, probably just an average psychologist, and am way too sensitive about everything. I have this view of myself, when challenged by others, as that insecure little girl who believed she didn’t measure up. I shrivel up and want to cry.

    As I age, I think I am less likely to accommodate to please others, but I also have been more in touch with my vulnerability. It stirs things up in me when someone challenges a decision I made or when I am faced with uncertainty.

    I want this to be known, and don’t want to pretend that I’ve got it all together, because I don’t.

    I know that there are moments when I am victorious, such as when I was able to resign from a job where I didn’t feel respected or treated as valuable after fifteen years. That decision felt good, but it also left me with feelings of uncertainty and fear that haven’t quite resolved.

    The victorious spirit, that Norma Rae moment, didn’t last. I wondered afterward if I’d made the wrong choice. Will I ever be able to make a living like I did in my previous job? What if I fail? How will those around me see me? Will I be good enough? Am I good enough right now?

    Yes, I am a psychologist. I’m an educational psychologist. I specialize in helping children feel a sense of competence and mastery over their lives and find their voice.

    Why did I want to do this? Well, I wanted to fill a role for others that I wish someone did for me when I was younger. I wanted to be a presence for a young person and let him/her know that “everything would be okay.”

    Learning how to self-soothe is an important skill, and I spent about thirty years trying to figure out how to do that. Over the years, I have learned some tools, such as having a sense of humor—usually self-deprecating—doing many years of therapy myself, learning self-compassion, and finding one or two really good friends I could trust with my stories. Yet, deep down, there is still this tug, this pull, and anxious stir that reminds me that I may not be all that.

    I have learned not to seek reassurance from others as I used to do during my teen years and early twenties, through alcohol, sex, and unstable relationships. As I got older I found a stable partner. I was married for eighteen years, and many of these years were very happy and fulfilling.

    I have an amazing son who works hard in school, is a good person, and most of all seems to be happy, confident, and self-assured. People tell me that he is a result of my parenting and I love to think that, but somehow this idea feels foreign to me. I think that he is his own creation and magically developed without my influence. This is a crazy idea considering how much I know about child development and my education and training. I discount my importance.

    So, where does this leave me? I think that I am like many people, but I just admit to the dark side maybe a little more freely.

    I get tired sometimes of being told to just focus on the positive and not to let in any negative thoughts. Sometimes I need to go through it. I need to go through it so I can get to the other side.

    I appreciate when someone shares their struggles and acknowledges that there isn’t always a resolution at the end, it’s just about continuing, experiencing, and being authentic. At least that’s how it is for me.

    I don’t want any pity or sympathy or anger. It’s funny how this can ignite anger in some people. Sometimes I think it reminds others of a part of themselves that they might deny. What do I want? I want to tell my story and I want to be fully present, aware, and I guess just accepted for where I am right now. I want to believe that is good enough.

    I suspect we’d all be a lot happier if we would just allow ourselves to be authentic. It’s painful to hide our true selves and our feelings, and it keeps us disconnected from other people.

    The only way to really connect with others on a meaningful level is to let them see who we are and to share what we’re going through and what makes us tick. Not everyone will like it, and that’s okay. We gain self-worth not by being what others want us to be, but by being true to ourselves.

    If there’s one lesson I’d like to share from my experience, it’s this: You don’t need to have it together all the time, and you don’t need to be fixed, as you are beautifully flawed. We all are. Emotions are not good or bad, and most people actually appreciate and admire when we share them. Some of the most tender moments I can remember in my life were when people told me how beautiful I was, not in spite of my feelings but because of them.

  • Why I’ve Decided to Accept Myself Instead of Trying to ‘Fix’ Myself

    Why I’ve Decided to Accept Myself Instead of Trying to ‘Fix’ Myself

    “No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance.” ~Robert Holden

    In our culture, we are constantly bombarded with the newest and best things to improve ourselves and/or our quality of life. Unfortunately, this leads to the belief that we need to obtain some sort of thing before we could accept ourselves as we are.

    When I was a child, I constantly battled with my weight. By the age of fourteen, I was 225 pounds (mind you, I am 5’2,” on a good day).

    Fortunately for me, a doctor pointed out the concern of childhood obesity. She kindly let me know that I was at the perfect time to lose weight before it began to have significant health complications. I was able to quickly learn how to eat better and engage in physical activity. I dropped about eighty pounds within a year, and the attention I received was overwhelming.

    I quickly developed a conditioned response of self-improvement, attention, and ultimately, love—meaning I began to see that altering myself would gain me recognition. But come on, who doesn’t want to be loved and accepted by others? Well, this attention introduced a whole different concept.

    I realized I was not receiving that positive attention before, as people usually chose to pick me apart for my weight. Therefore, as I grew older, I became addicted to this notion of self-improvement because it brought upon the positive attention and affirmation I had lacked. Furthermore, I had a hard time just being me without trying to change something about myself.

    For me, self-acceptance is hard to conceptualize on a good day. On a bad day, it can be in shards of glass on the floor. Through my trials and errors, I have learned that self-acceptance is a skill we can practice. It is not an innate trait that we either have or don’t. It is something that can be nourished and nurtured.

    With practice, I began feeling at peace with who I am—with all my strengths and my weaknesses. However, this didn’t just happen overnight.

    I had struggled with a lack of self-acceptance for many years. I felt like I needed to be a certain way or look a certain way to be accepted. Immediate access to media and social media fed right into this concept. I fell into the comparison trap, and I fixated on what I didn’t have by putting my attention on what everyone else seemed to have.

    I’d think, “Well, she looks a lot better than me,” “Man, their family seems perfect,” or “My career doesn’t seem to be that successful.” These thoughts would consume me, and have a negative impact on my mood and self-esteem.

    Let me be clear, I have to be mindful of this trap every single day, multiple times a day, as self-acceptance, love, and compassion issues are deeply ingrained.

    When I was a little girl, I consistently received the message that I needed to change parts of who I was to fit the mold of society. Peers would consistently comment on my weight and appearance. Teachers would constantly criticize my work. Coaches would often compare to the “better, more capable” players. I am sure some of these messages came with good intention, but they had a destructive impact on my self-worth and value.

    As I have gotten older, I have learned that having a good relationship with myself is one of the most important things I will achieve in my life. However, because I didn’t want others to see my bad stuff, I tended to project an outward image of having it together, or striving to get it together.

    I was not as open about my consistent struggle with depression, anxiety, and body image. I would deny some of those internal battles, and in doing so was never being who I truly was. More so, I struggled in knowing who I was and I developed a conditional relationship with myself.

    For a long time, I also struggled with self-forgiveness, which was a huge barrier to self-acceptance. I struggled because I was ashamed of my choices and wished I had done things differently. By twenty-six years old, I had a failed marriage, filed for bankruptcy, and was facing some legal consequences due to my irresponsible behaviors.

    I began trying to perfect myself in any way possible. I was constantly looking for a new health fad to follow. I purchased several self-help books, always looking for what was wrong with me and finding a way to fix it. Clearly, I had no concept of self-acceptance. I just believed who I was at my core was bad and I needed to change it. I was never comfortable with just being with me; I needed to be improving something.

    Soon I began to see that true self-acceptance has absolutely nothing to do with self-improvement. I was always trying to achieve things, which may have helped temporarily, but it was a poor substitute for true intimacy with myself, which is what I needed.

    When I set out to improve myself, I attempted to fix something about myself. I couldn’t possibly feel secure or good enough if my worth depended on constantly bettering myself.

    I struggled with what I like to call the “destination happiness” illness. It implies “I’ll be okay when…” or “as soon as I accomplish this one thing, I’ll be happy…” With that mindset, I was never happy because I was always looking forward to the future, missing the present. I was also just checking off the boxes in life, never fully embracing the moment.

    A turning point in my life was when a friend of mine said, “I feel you are always looking for something wrong with you. What would it take to just accept yourself for who you are?” This was a true epiphany for me. I was always finding fault in myself. So, I began to reflect on this statement and started to make some active changes toward self-acceptance.

    I began to celebrate my many strengths.

    I started to make time to honor what I brought to the table.

    I worked hard to take in praise from others without doubting their statements.

    I cultivated a positive support system. I knew I naturally become similar to the people I chose to be around. So, I built a support system that is inspiring and fulfilling, not discouraging and depleting.

    I made a commitment to stop comparing myself to others. I could acknowledge others’ strengths without disregarding or belittling my own.

    I began to understand and quiet the inner-critic. I didn’t shut this voice out completely, but I worked on it being constructive as opposed to hurtful.

    I made a conscious effort to forgive myself. I let go of the regret and began to learn from my past.

    Finally, I began to practice self-compassion and kindness. If I wouldn’t say it to someone I love, I didn’t say it to myself.

    With all of these steps, I began to understand who I am and know what I want, while being comfortable in my own skin. I value myself and have gained respect from others. I am able to face challenges in my life head-on. I embrace all parts of who I am, not just the good stuff. I recognize my limitations and weaknesses.

    I must say, though, that it is possible to accept and love ourselves and still be committed to personal growth. Accepting ourselves as we are does not mean we won’t have the motivation to change or improve. It implies that self-acceptance is not correlated with alterations of who we are at our core.

    Nathaniel Branden stated, “Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship with myself.” Many of us live our lives resisting ourselves—comparing ourselves to others, pushing ourselves to be perfect, and trying to fit a certain mold of who we think we are supposed to be. I hope that by shedding some light on the notion of acceptance, I have helped you find courage to let that all go.

    We will never know who we are unless we discard who we pretend to be. And it would be a shame not to find out, because we are beautiful and worth knowing, just as we are.

  • Accept, Let Go, Have Faith

    Accept, Let Go, Have Faith

  • Accepting People You Dislike as They Are: How It Benefits You and How to Do It

    Accepting People You Dislike as They Are: How It Benefits You and How to Do It

    “We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.” ~Aesop, The Eagle and the Arrow

    We can sometimes have difficulty accepting our friends, family, and loved ones as they are when their habits, quirks, or behavior annoy us. Our natural tendency is to try to change what we don’t like about them, which often leads to resentment. Nonetheless, given their importance and presence in our lives, we are usually willing to make an effort to accept them as they are.

    But what about people we dislike—people who cause us grief? For example, an overbearing boss, a scheming coworker, or an annoying relative. Should we also make an effort to accept them as they are?

    Before you decline to do so, consider that when we don’t accept such people as they are (and more about what that means shortly), the adverse consequences for ourselves can be even worse.

    One problem is that we will be prone to engaging them in combative, retaliatory ways, as was my modus operandi. I now realize that I suffered unnecessarily from my refusal to accept people I disliked or despised, in terms of both greater personal anguish and counterproductive responses to their actions.

    And especially so when I was betrayed by a business partner several years ago.

    I Refused to Accept My Business Partner for Who He Was

    During a particularly difficult period in my life when my first wife and I were on the brink of breaking up, a business partner was intent on squeezing me out of my most profitable real estate investment in the Midwest. He controlled the purse strings and withheld the money due to me from the investment.

    He also made disparaging remarks about my wife and me to our banker. The problem was, we shared the same banker—my partner introduced us—and my partner happened to be one of the bank’s wealthiest clients. The bank called my loans, and I didn’t have the means to repay them.

    Accepting this person for who he was and acting in my best interests under the circumstances was not even a consideration. Instead, consumed with unbridled anger and resentment, I foolishly launched a costly five-year legal battle that brought me to the brink of bankruptcy.

    My sense of urgency also caused me to miss important doctor appointments for the removal of a small lesion on my nose, which later resulted in my losing half my nose to a vicious tumor and enduring four major reconstructive surgeries.

    When an offer to settle came in shortly before trial, my attorney asked me what I wanted out of the case—meaning financially. I righteously announced to him my intention to make my partner stop taking advantage of people and change his unscrupulous business practices.

    Dumbfounded, my attorney turned to me and exclaimed, “Danny, you must be kidding! Do you really think you are going to change this man? That’s just not going to happen.”

    And it didn’t!

    What Acceptance Is—and Isn’t

    As I mentioned, accepting my partner for who he was and not trying to change him was not a consideration. At the time, I equated acceptance with surrender and excusing bad behavior—and being weak. I also believed that I had the power to change people’s ingrained ways, which I now know is myth conquering reality!

    I have since learned that true acceptance has nothing to do with surrender, backing down, condoning bad behavior, or the like. Rather, true acceptance means accepting people and things as they are without judgment or harboring negative feelings such as fear, anger, resentment, and the like (or at least minimally so).

    As such, true acceptance is the detached, even-keeled acknowledgment of the underlying or objective reality—the “how is” and “what is”—of the person or situation.

    With that mindset, you are able to accept someone you dislike as they are, and still terminate the relationship if you determine it is in your best interest to do so. You can also change the dynamics of the relationship if cutting ties is not practical or realistic.

    For example, you can accept a divisive sibling (or other family member) as they are, and still set boundaries, such as avoiding problematic topics of discussion, or choosing the type, extent, and frequency of contact you wish to have.

    Further, acceptance does not mean that you need be passive or give up principles and values that are important to you. Thus, whether in dealing with dishonest politicians or business leaders, or when you feel an injustice has been done, acceptance does not mean that you shouldn’t take corrective actions that voice your own “truths.”

    The Gifts of Accepting People You Dislike 

    When you are able to accept people you dislike (or anyone for that matter) as they are, you can then recognize the choices that will serve you best.

    Why? Acceptance induces a critical shift in focus from what you are powerless to change or do to what you can do to better serve your needs. In short, accepting what is lets you discover what might be—and no less so when dealing with people you dislike.

    I certainly had viable choices with my business partner besides pursuing the combative, self-harming course I chose. One choice was to not sue and instead devote my time and energy—and money—to improving my other properties. However, my unprocessed fear and anger obscured this much wiser path.

    A related gift of acceptance is that it brings you freedom by releasing the shackles that bind you to troublesome relationships. (This is particularly true when dealing with past parental transgressions, control freaks, and other “crazy makers.”)

    Acceptance is also a great stress and anxiety reducer. When you accept people and things as they are, you have little to stress (and lose sleep) over.

    Keys to Accepting People You Dislike

    Practicing acceptance with people you dislike is challenging. It is often a process that evolves over time and in which incremental steps are fruitful. Certain keys will facilitate the process.

    Process your fears.  

    Unprocessed fear prevents acceptance because it dominates our thoughts instead of allowing us to make the choices that serve us best. Apt acronyms for FEAR are “Future Events Already Ruined” and “False Evidence Appearing Real.”

    With my partner, for example, I was in that “already ruined” mode because of my strong fear that his actions would irreparably impact my livelihood—but they in fact wouldn’t because I had other profitable investments.

    We thus need to process and reduce our fears in order to benefit from the even-keeled type of acceptance I have described. Most fears are illusory and speculative; they diminish and even leave when they are closely examined.

    It helps considerably to examine the objective reality of the person or situation you are dealing with rather than be guided by negative speculations about what might happen and what could be. Face and lean into your fears. Their bark is much greater than their bite. When you so process your fears, their hold over you (and your thinking) will lessen considerably, and viable options and choices will be revealed to you.

    Defuse your anger.

    In much the same manner, our anger and resentment toward people we dislike obstruct acceptance. Moreover, anger can easily exacerbate situations in ways that are harmful to us, like it did for me when I dueled with my business partner.

    The late Carrie Fisher expressed it well in her book Wishful Drinking: “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” (I certainly drank a lot of poison while waiting for my former business partner to change his dishonorable ways!)

    It softens the edge of your resentment if you try to see things from the other person’s perspective. Many—perhaps even most—times, people’s behavior is based on their fears, anxieties, and self-interests and not on any intent to harm us.

    An overbearing and controlling boss, for example, is likely guided by fears and anxiety about his business rather than your job performance. A fierce competitor, whether in business or on the playing field or at school, is likely guided by her need to win rather than a desire to suppress you. And an unkind gossiper is likely guided by her low self-esteem and need to be liked rather than an intent to harm you.

    In the case of my partner, looking back I now recognize that he acted mainly out of the concern about how the break-up of my marriage would impact one of his largest investments.

    Look for the good!  

    Some—maybe most—of the time we are so engulfed in the turmoil with those we dislike, that we can’t see the “positive” influences that they have on our lives. I learned an awful lot from my partner during the years we worked together. He’s a very astute businessman. My departure totally changed my career trajectory. It lead to establishing a real estate investment company in which I have been able to apply what I learned from him in my own business dealings with great success.

    Another major gift was that he played a major role in helping me to prove to myself that I can take care of myself under severe pressures and adverse circumstances. I always had doubts about that.

    Recognizing these “good” things removed my anger and I was later able to accept my partner for the person he was, even offering a toast to his good health at a dinner gathering of friends following the settlement of the law suit.

    Acceptance Intentions

    Below are some intentions that will assist you in accepting people you dislike as they are.

    I will: 

    Process my fear and anger.

    Not take what they do personally.

    Recognize the fears and anxieties that drive them.            

    Pause, reflect, and think objectively.

    Not assume an intent to harm me.

    Set appropriate boundaries.

    Trust that I will be able to take care of myself.

    Be true to myself.

    In doing these things, you will feel less annoyed, more grounded, and more focused on taking care of your needs—and the gifts of acceptance will be yours!

  • Soften into Life and You Will be Strong

    Soften into Life and You Will be Strong

    “It’s the hard things that break; soft things don’t break…You can waste so many years of your life trying to become something hard in order not to break; but it’s the soft things that can’t break! The hard things are the ones that shatter into a million pieces!” ~C Joybell C

    Language is a powerful thing. Though often dismissed as “semantics,” the imagery our words and terminology impart often adds unintended or even misguided connotations onto what we intend to say.

    This is why it is so difficult to speak about spirituality. When we say “God” or “salvation” or even “peace,” those words can bear an unintended doctrinal, political, or social stamp on them that means something very different to the listener than it does to the speaker.

    A prime example of this is the “hardness” imagery that is woven into many words intended to be positive, such as “strong” or “tough.” We want to be “strong” and “tough,” to be able to handle all of life’s trials and tribulations without cracking.

    However, these words often morph into an image of hardness. When we are strong, we hunker down, grit our teeth, and bear it. When we are tough, we “power through” the bad times.

    The short-term result is often satisfying. The hard person bounces back quickly from a failed marriage or an illness or losing a long-term job. The trouble, however, is often found beneath the surface and in the long term. What happens when someone spends a lifetime hunkering down and powering through?

    To use a cliché, the tree that doesn’t bend, breaks. A hard tree can endure a lot, but when a strong wind blows, it cracks and falls over. Let’s look at a bunch of images to see this more clearly.

    Brené Brown talks of armor. We put on armor to avoid the hurt. That used to be a way of life for me.

    I once knew someone who had endured a lot of trauma as a child, having been abused and betrayed by people to whom he was vulnerable.

    His survival mechanism developed through these experiences was to not go too deep with people, to hold his cards close to the vest and not open up. This was easier, he explained, because when you were done with someone, you could just move on easily without feeling the hurt.

    What followed in his wake were broken relationships and broken people, who he was able to step past.

    But what does it mean when you don’t let people in and open yourself up to them? You avoid the hurt, but you also miss the intimacy, the connection, and the depth of an open, honest relationship.

    Indeed, how can you even really be in love with someone if you erect an emotional barrier in the way? You can’t.

    As Brené Brown explains, you can cut off feelings—the good and the bad—but you can’t isolate and block out specific types of feelings.

    In order to feel joy and intimacy, you need to allow yourself the vulnerability that will also inevitably lead at times to pain.

    In order to love, you have to deal with the eventual certainty of loss. Otherwise, you’re just kind of numb. You’re not really there.

    People need connection. What happens to someone who moves through life while keeping everyone at arm’s length? What happens to people who don’t show themselves for who they are? I should know—I often avoided authenticity and vulnerability in order to protect myself.

    I was an alpha male. Having grown up in a household where I was set upon by my parents, I learned not to be vulnerable. I became a go-getter—determined, accomplished, and always putting on a strong front, strutting around to ward off those who would hurt me.

    What this meant, though, is that I struggled to find that one person with whom I could be completely honest, and when I did, I put all my eggs in that basket. Hence, when my relationship ended, I was destroyed.

    The more you hurt, the more you fear. The more you fear, the thicker the armor you wear. The thicker your armor, the more it weighs you down. When my armor finally cracked and fell off, it led to a complete breakdown. It was during the recovery from that breakdown that I learned what real strength was.

    I had been determined. I fixed my sights on goals, typically those that would bring me recognition, and I achieved them.  These goals conformed with what is commonly viewed as “success”—wealth, influence, and renown. So, I doggedly stuck to the path, my eyes always forward instead of looking around me. I was tough.

    Life is a long road with many forks. My eyes on the prize, I was unwavering and kept going left. Unfortunately, life was telling me in so many ways to go right.

    I lived in a city that didn’t at all conform with what I valued. I stayed in a relationship that exhibited many warning signs. I had a high-powered, well-compensated job that drained all my time and energy. I was literally sick—in the hospital multiple times each year when I had almost never been in one before that.

    When the pain became too much, I fell apart, and at that point, I had no choice but to go right.

    In that moment, all my hardness couldn’t see me through. And that’s what suffering is: It’s the great teacher that keeps telling you where to go, and the more you try to power through, the more painful and prolonged it will be. Then you soften up and go right, and everything changes.

    Not surprisingly, nature inspired me with the most fitting, if obscure, image: a salt marsh.

    Salt marshes are a natural habitat along coastlines. During storms, salt marshes absorb the force of large waves, which travel into the marshes, lose momentum, and dissipate. If they even hit the shore, the waves retain a fraction of their former strength, and the coast is thus protected. Sand dunes serve a similar function.

    Over time, people have degraded and destroyed these fragile habitats, making storms even more dangerous and destructive.

    To protect harbors, people have built sea walls made of stone. These walls appear strong, but over time sea walls crumble with the force of being slammed by powerful waves or can even cause more destruction when waves ricocheting off of them create violent chop in the water.

    When you are a sea wall, you smack the waves away. The waves hit other people and objects and smack you back. Your resistance creates wake, which damages others and eventually, after a long time, causes you to collapse.

    Instead, be a salt marsh. Absorb the waves and let them pass through you. Accept them. You will be hit with enormous force, but you will not lend that force any more energy. If left unpolluted and unspoiled, salt marshes will survive forever.

    Underneath the hard armor that weighs you down, you’re soft. When you are a salt marsh, your softness absorbs the waves. The hard sea wall smacks them away. A flexible tree bends with the storm, while the hard one doesn’t waver—until it breaks.

    Somehow this image works for so many of spirituality’s life lessons. Let hurt soften you; don’t let it harden you. Let that time someone hurt you open your heart up to compassion for all of those who are hurting. Let it be a reminder in the moment to be more forgiving.

    When an experience is difficult, you can fight with it. But if you surrender to it, let down your walls, and be open to the experience, you will grow from the pain. Give up the hard walls and soften yourself up to what comes your way.

    When floating down the river of life, you’re totally right to swim in the direction you’d like to go. But paddle too hard against the current, and you’ll drown. Try going soft and floating, seeing where the river will take you—it’s not like you have that much of a choice anyway!

    Bravely learn to relax with life and see what happens, and you will make decisions with more wisdom and take actions with more power than if you were fighting.

    As Pema Chödrön says, “Stop protecting your soft spot… stop armoring your heart.” Likewise, “Wretchedness humbles us and softens us… Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.”

    Maybe it’s something like a rule: when you’re in a moment in which your instincts are telling you to be hard, before you act at least take a moment to consider what being soft would look like. What would the soft option be, what could result, and who might you become?

    As a hard alpha-male, I made it far in life. By age thirty, I had been in meetings in the West Wing of the White House, worked with Fortune 500 Company CEOs, been to more than fifty countries, and made lots of money. But that year, I also fell apart, and it took a few years to put myself back together again.

    Now, I’m a struggling entrepreneur. I gave up the suits and the flights and the tough talk. However, though I’ve been through a lot since the big change, I walked—not powered—through it with so much more clarity and even strength than before. I went soft.

    Contemplate softness.

  • How to Accept Anxious Feelings So You Can Let Them Pass

    How to Accept Anxious Feelings So You Can Let Them Pass

    “Don’t try and save yourself. The self that is trying to be saved is not you.” ~Mooji

    Three months ago I had a strange experience.

    It wasn’t strange in that it had never happened before. It was strange in that it was unexpected. Unexpected in the way a hiccup comes up out of nowhere to interrupt a meal. No, actually, it was more unexpected in the way a sudden illness overtakes a period of health.

    Just for a bit of context, over the last six months, I’ve generally been the calmest I’ve felt in years—maybe even my whole life. But recently this has come with a strange side effect. When negative emotions do arise, as they inevitably do, I’m sometimes even more reactive to them than I used to be.

    So three months ago when I woke up abruptly in the middle of the night with a ball of anxiety in my chest it was, well, unexpected.

    And my mind immediately kicked into overdrive.

    “Why am I anxious?”

    “Is there something I’ve forgotten?”

    “Is there something coming up that I’m nervous about?”

    “Am I sick?”

    And then the most dangerous question of all:

    “Have I really been anxious this whole time and the calm isn’t real?”

    This question is very tricky. If I was a character in a movie, I’d been standing up out of my seat and yelling at myself on the screen, “Ignore it! Ignore it! You’re fine, go back to sleep!”

    But it’s tricky because it feels like there a grain of truth to it; on some level we can all relate to that sense of doubt. Our minds tend to come up with explanations based on our feelings, so this sensation of anxiety was (unsurprisingly) causing my mind to come up with a story based on these feelings.

    The whole ordeal lasted less than five minutes. Fortunately, in this moment of tension, I was mindful enough to see how far-fetched these thoughts were. I settled on a far more pragmatic explanation; I’d become so unused to feelings of anxiety, that when they did arise, they were a shock to the system, so my mind immediately tried to rationalize them.

    And then I went back to sleep.

    Moments like this one would come again, and what I needed to do was simple. Any five-minute mindfulness book would have had the answer.

    All I needed to do to keep the calm was to not care that these thoughts and feelings were there. I just needed to be completely disinterested, to not touch anything in my mind. Following the instructions in a moment of distress, however, is much easier said than done.

    So I remembered what I’d heard a yoga teacher say once in an uncomfortable pose where the students had their hands above their heads for a long time.

    “Just tell your mind that things are going to be like this for the rest of your life. It’ll get bored of the pain and move on.”

    I took that idea and started applying it whenever worries came up. I managed to convince myself that I didn’t need to fix anything and that feelings of anxiety were just really not that interesting. It worked out pretty well, so well in fact, that I thought I’d go into a little bit more detail of how I managed to do so and share it with you.

    Here are five ways you can begin to accept anxious feelings and live a better life.

    1. Accept that you can never know why you are experiencing anxiety.

    As problem-solving creatures, when we experience discomfort we immediately try and understand why. But not everything in our lives has a straightforward answer. There are a multitude of factors that lead to anxious feelings, from genetics to work to relationships to diet, memories, and even the weather.

    Trying to pinpoint one reason so that you can have a concise narrative in our minds is a lot less effective (and a lot more tiring) than simply accepting the fact that you don’t know why. This acceptance also allows you to focus your energy toward more practical, calm-inducing strategies such as journaling, yoga, and exercise. When we have more energy, we’re more alert, and this naturally makes us more engaged in our work and home lives, safeguarding us against anxiety and rumination.

    2. Accept that anxiety is neither good nor bad.

    Seeing your anxiety in a wider perspective is best illustrated with a Taoist story (origin unknown):

    “There is an old farmer who had worked his crops from many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

    “Maybe,” the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

    “Maybe,” replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

    “Maybe,” answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe,” said the farmer.”

    To accept anxious feelings, try to treat them like the farmer in the story treated his horses. You never know what good may come from your anxiety! In fact, the calm in my life that I mentioned at the start of this article is a direct result of the meditation practice I started, and continued, because of anxiety.

    3. Accept that everyone will experience some form of anxiety.

    When we experience pain we’re hardwired to respond to it, and in that response our perspective is distorted. We become the center of the universe, because we are only feeling our pain in that moment, and not anyone else’s.

    It can be calming and reassuring to know that everyone goes through periods of worry. There are billions of people who have dealt with whatever feelings are coming up in your experience, and there will probably be billions after you. So don’t by any means underestimate your capacity to handle the situation.

    4. Let go of the idea that you shouldn’t have anxiety.

    How would you feel about anxiety if everyone in the world had it? Or if you were told that it was a necessary and useful part of life? You’d probably worry about it a lot less. The idea that you shouldn’t have any feeling stems from the need for things to be better. If you can let go of the normative belief that anxiety is wrong, then your mind will naturally become less and less interested in it.

    This goes hand in hand with the idea that anxiety holds you back in any way—you want to let that go too. Anxiety may, in fact, hold you back from an immediate action, but if we recall the Taoist story of the farmer and his horses, we can never truly know in what direction anxiety will take us.

    5. Become bored with your anxiety.

    This last one is the most difficult but the most important. Often anxiety is so painful that we become fascinated, obsessed even, with understanding and solving our worries. We want to get rid of the pain of anxiety as soon as possible.

    Sometimes this is useful, as we come up with strategies to manage our emotions, but a lot of the time it validates the power of our anxiety and adds fuel to the fire. The mind will only focus on what it values; if you can manage to become bored with your anxiety, it will loosen its grip on your life.

    —

    The steps I’ve outlined in this article are, like I explained in my own experience, much easier said than done. I hope, however, that I’ve given you a slightly different approach you can take toward dealing with any negative emotions.

  • Radical Acceptance with Tara Brach: If You’re Hard on Yourself, Read On

    Radical Acceptance with Tara Brach: If You’re Hard on Yourself, Read On

    Have you ever thought, “Something’s wrong with me”? I suspect we all have at one time or another.

    We’ve thought we’re too quiet, too loud, too eager, too lazy, too sensitive, too dramatic, or generally not good enough.

    And social media doesn’t help much. Every time we log on to Facebook or Instagram we’re bombarded with everyone else’s accomplishments, adventures, and best angles, which can easily lead us to conclude our life is somehow lacking—that we are somehow lacking.

    From there, it’s just a quick leap to self-flagellation.

    We can all be our own harshest critics. We can beat ourselves up for our mistakes, flaws, and failures, as if we’re supposed to be perfect. As if we’re supposed to have everything together and should never have bad days, negative thoughts, or painful emotions.

    But this is all part of being human. These aren’t shameful defects to hide or change. They’re realities to accept.

    If you’ve found it difficult to accept your humanity and treat yourself with kindness and compassion, you may benefit from Tara Brach’s eCourse Radical Acceptance.

    A world-renowned psychologist, author, and meditation teacher, Tara Brach has a talent for helping people embrace the present moment and overcome the blocks that prevent them from giving and receiving love.

    Her books and courses have helped millions of people heal and find peace and presence, and this particular course has received close to 600 glowing reviews.

    I’m happy to share that Udemy has offered a discount for Tiny Buddha readers, bringing the cost down to just $9.99 from now until February 19th.

    The eCourse includes four and a half hours of on-demand videos, broken down into bite-sized pieces, that you can access any time, anywhere. It’s powerful, easily digestible, and chock-full of life-changing wisdom.

    You can get instant access to Radical Acceptance by joining here, and browse through Udemy’s many other course offerings here.

    I hope the course is helpful to you!

    **Though Udemy is a Tiny Buddha sponsor, you can trust that I only recommend products and courses that speak to me personally. If you have any trouble getting the course for the discounted rate, you can contact Udemy’s customer support here.