Tiny Buddha

Tag: control

  • How To Move Forward When You Feel Paralyzed by Uncertainty

    How To Move Forward When You Feel Paralyzed by Uncertainty

    “When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    A woman in a relationship that is breaking her spirit might remain there for fear of what leaving will bring.

    She doesn’t know if she will find another to care for her, and having a warm body is better than having no one. The uncertainty about whether or not she will survive that decision, and be happier for it, keeps her there.

    I know the harsh clutches of uncertainty all too well. It wasn’t long ago that I waffled and wavered about every decision I faced, feeling afraid to make one for fear that some mistakes cannot be undone.

    I resisted relationships because loving led to marriage and then divorce. I resisted starting my business because seven out of every ten businesses fail. I refused to quit the job because it was the only way I thought I could succeed.

    I allowed myself to fall in love only when I was certain that he loved me more and would stay. To ensure that it worked, I planned every detail of the relationship and the wedding.

    Feeling doubtful that this relationship was truly the one I wanted, I was unhappy and silently praying for something to happen to help me out. But I stayed the course because at least I knew what would happen next; I had it all planned.

    My awakening came when my engagement fell apart and there was nothing that I could do about it. I broke into a million pieces. I lost twenty pounds in one week and wept until there were no more tears.

    I had placed a certain level of trust in things working out and was certain that it would. The experience left me paralyzed because “I had it all planned.” What was I supposed to do then?

    I woke up daily gasping for air, knowing I’d go to work where I’d help people and come home to a crumbled life. It was then I knew that if I didn’t move I would die.

    I fought against the emotional pain of the break-up and decided that I would have no more of it. I quit my two jobs, went home, and began packing my bags.

    Two months later I sold my belongings, counted out the little savings I had stashed away for a safety net, and moved back to Jamaica to be with my family.

    I had no fear about what would happen; I had been so fearful for so long and life happened anyway. All I knew was that I needed to have a hand in my own life, to be an intentional co-creator of my reality, to accept uncertainty as a friend.

    So how do you move forward in uncertainty?

    1. Accept that at the root of uncertainty is a fear of failure.

    We’re not afraid that we don’t really know what’s going to happen tomorrow. We’re afraid that what happens tomorrow will be so painful that we won’t survive it. We have already created a worst-case scenario in our minds, and the likelihood of it becoming reality is what really keeps us bound, not uncertainty itself.

    Action Step: Examine your uncertainty. What lies at its root? What emotion comes up when you think about doing the thing that you’re uncertain about?

    2. Understand that failure is a natural part of life, and embracing uncertainty is key to defeating failure.

    Everybody fails, and failure holds the best opportunities for growth. When we succeed without experiencing failure, our account is narrow. A person who can speak to both failure and success has a much more textured life and can help others navigate both waters.

    For every success story that you hear, there are at least ten stories of failure to supplement it.

    Action Step: Talk with someone who you view as successful and ask about the times that they have failed.

    3. Embrace the idea that nothing is completely within your control.

    We saunter into the world daily, ignoring the many risks that we encounter. When we step out the door, we take an enormous leap of faith that we will get to our destination. We trust that other motorists are as diligent as we are. We hope that no one decides to harm us. We assume that we are healthy and nothing will happen to us.

    We hedge our bets with the universe, forgetting that nothing is guaranteed. It is just as likely that you will survive your break-up as it is that you will find another partner. It is just as likely that your business will succeed as it is that it will fail. Life is about taking risks, and without uncertainty, surprises would not exist.

    Action Step: Make note of everything that requires trust in the uncertain. Some of them are automatic, such as driving. Note the times you rely on others to make decisions in your best interest. What are you really in control of?

    4. Be willing to open up to the universe.

    When we release our expectations of what should happen for us, we allow the universe to deliver in ways far beyond our wildest dreams. By dwelling in uncertainty, we limit the space in which the universe has to work.

    Approaching the unknown with openness breeds a multiplicity of experiences that strengthen our resolve and help us grow. I learned my best lessons when I relinquished control.

    I quickly came to understand that in order for me to grow, I had to let go and leap. By choosing to remain paralyzed, I was choosing to rob myself of some of the best experiences of my life, like a new relationship that supports my growth and my beautiful daughter who helps me appreciate life.

    Action Step: Take a situation that you are uncertain about and imagine what could happen if it turns out ten times better than you hope it will. What emotions would you have attached to that experience? How would releasing expectation free you?

    5. “Make the best use of what is in your power and take the rest as it happens.”

    This quote by Epictetus is an excellent piece of advice. It provides a clear path through uncertainty—taking one step at a time. Sometimes we look at the first step as insufficient, but all you need is one step.

    Once you take that step, the next step becomes easier, and so on. Having too definite a path can serve to block opportunities disguised as surprises.

    Action Step: Think back on all the experiences in which you only saw the first step. How did they turn out? Was the second step anything that you could have predicted?

    6. Take your worst-case scenario and dissect it, asking “what if?”

    “What if?” is a powerful question. It primes us for possibilities and allows us to examine the constancy of our reality. If we are fully devoted to the process, asking “what if” can challenge our perceptions of what is possible for us.

    So what if you did quit your job and had no money? Would you be forced to use talents that you have kept hidden? Would you face your fear of asking for favors?

    What if you left the relationship and didn’t find someone right away? Would you sit with yourself getting to know the you that you forgot in that relationship? Is the worst thing that could happen truly that bad?

    Action Step: Complete this activity with a trusted friend and continue until you can’t think of anything worse. Build a scenario of survival and thriving from your rock bottom.

    7. Keep moving forward.

    Nothing beats uncertainty like facing your fears. Moving forward brings you face to face with risk but also with hope.

    Your life is not the same as it was last year, nor will it be the same tomorrow. When you make an intentional choice to embrace uncertainty, you take back your power. Not only will you be at peace with what may come, you will also have released your attachment to things going exactly as planned.

    Action Step: If you are facing a paralyzing fear of the uncertain, your best bet is to take a step forward. Everyone has experienced the negative effects of uncertainty. The majority has thrived. You are not alone and you can do it.

    What steps have you taken when faced with paralyzing uncertainty? How did you move through it?

  • Why We Should Stop Trying

    Why We Should Stop Trying

    Boy Relaxing

    “If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.” ~Edith Wharton

    Several years ago a well-known Zen Master accepted me as a long distance student. In one of our first email exchanges I wrote, “Dear Teacher, I am trying to sit every day for thirty minutes and in my practice I am trying to follow my breath.”

    “Please,” he wrote back, “stop trying. You are your breath.”

    I remember reading his words and feeling perplexed, confused, almost annoyed. What in the world did he mean? Wasn’t it obvious that we had no choice but to be our breath?

    Weren’t we all breathing beings? And how did “being breath” in the end relate to my life, to my meditation, to my hope of becoming a better human being, to my daily chores of diapers and laundry?

    When my teacher’s words arrived, getting to the mat was a huge effort. My meditation was at the mercy of my three young kids and my husband, who had to agree to watch them for the half-hour I would shut myself in the basement.

    Most of the time I found myself making “deals” such as: “If you watch the kids for me, I’ll watch them for you while you go running” or “I promise I’ll do all the cooking and the dishes tonight!”

    Once I finally managed to get to the meditation mat, I would set the timer and start counting my breath: one (breathe in), two (breathe out), three (breathe in), four (breathe out), five (breathe in), six (breathe out), seven (breathe in)…

    Needless to say, my thoughts would immediately jump in and I would find myself losing track of my breath and my counting. I would have to start back from number one, only to see the distractions appear all over again. I don’t remember ever getting to number ten.

    Not only was carving out thirty minutes for meditation a huge effort, even the apparently simple task of counting the breaths revealed itself to be an exhausting endeavor.

    I knew at an intuitive level that it shouldn’t have been like that—I knew that my teacher was right—but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I was doing wrong.

    It took me eight year  and many major life crises, failures, losses, and illnesses to understand the meaning of his words.

    Now that my life has fallen apart like I never thought it would or could, I know what my Zen teacher meant: I was trying too hard.

    I can now see that in my meditation I was not actually “following” my breath. I was trying, very hard, to catch it. I was chasing it. I was trying to grasp it, trying to hold onto it, trying to make it fit into my orderly numbered, counting boxes.

    I was trying so hard to reign it in. I was trying so hard to control it.

    Once I realized that, it only took a moment of self-honesty and one quick look at myself to see how that same impulse to control my breath was operating in all aspects of my life.

    I was “trying” to be a good mom and always promptly responded to my kids’ needs, even when their needs could have probably waited just a bit longer—enough, maybe, to give me a chance to finish a chore or a much treasured cup of tea.

    I was “trying” to be a good wife and “tried” to always be available for conversation, even when all I wanted and most needed was some quiet time to myself or simply some peace to concentrate on cooking dinner.

    I was “trying” to be the do-it-all woman and took on a full-time teaching job, one hour away, while still teaching evening music classes.

    I was “trying” to keep the social life of the family rich and fun and took on social commitments during the weekend even though most of it needed to be spent cleaning the house or going to church with the family.

    Just like I did with my breathing, I was chasing my life in the attempt to reign it in, to catch it, to grasp it in the hope of gaining some control over it.

    It took seizures and a diagnosis of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (which also meant the loss of my job and the end of my career as a music teacher), a messy divorce, two moves in less then a year, financial uncertainty, and more losses of friends to finally admit that I just could not “try” anymore.

    I could no longer make my life unfold the way I wanted it to unfold or make it look the way I thought it should look.

    I could no longer “try” to make people happy; I could no longer be what I thought they wanted me to be.

    I desperately wanted healing, and yet I didn’t even have the physical strength or the mental clarity to begin to mend the broken pieces of my shattered life.

    Unlike Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love), I could not take off and go on a retreat in India in the hope to find my own lost self; my three kids and dogs needed me. Nor could I go to Italy to be with my friends and family.

    Instead, I found myself completely alone after having lost the entire social circle I shared with my husband, and after moving to a small apartment in a struggling small city where I had no connections whatsoever.

    There I had no choice but to confront my brokenness and aloneness; there I had to accept all the limitations of my new life, and as Charles Bukowski says in his poem “Alone,” there, I had to learn my walls, I had to accept them and learn to love them.

    It turned out that, for me, the only way out of my darkness was not to escape it but to plunge right into it.

    Among the walls of my apartment I found myself gravitating to the mat again only to find out this time that I couldn’t even physically sit. I had so much emotional pain stuck in my abdomen and chest that I couldn’t even feel my breathing.

    Since the only way I could become aware of my breath was by lying down, I decided to meditate in a supine position, shavasana style.

    Once I gave myself the permission to do that, something great happened: I experienced gravity, and gravity held and healed me. My abdomen relaxed. I could finally feel my belly muscles rising and falling; I could finally feel my breath.

    With gravity’s healing support, I could then observe the breath; I could notice it, witness it.

    In my brokenness I had to finally let go of control, surrendered to whatever my life was and had become, trusting that the breath of life would take me where I needed to be, every day, every moment.

    That was only few months ago and now I am finally able to sit on my meditation pillow.

    Following the breath is also quite a different experience. When I sit, I am able to be a viewer, an observer. I watch my breath, I watch what it’s doing, I observe its rhythm, its ups and downs, its ins and outs, and I just let it be. I accept it with all its irregularities. I just let it do its thing.

    I am not sure yet how all of this is getting played out in my life. One thing I have learned, however, is that letting go of how we think our life should be and letting ourselves fall, maybe even backward, into radical self-acceptance and radical self-love are gifts to be treasured—even if those gifts come through harsh life lessons and losses.

    Some of us were lucky enough to come into the world with those gifts built into our system. Some of us have to consciously make an effort and work hard at cultivating them—sometimes at creating them, sculpting them from the raw matter of our mistakes and failures, inventing them out of nothingness because nothing or too little was given to us.

    But that, in my opinion, is where it’s worth trying. That is an effort worth making—one that will not assure us of a smooth ride but that might bring us to a place of inner peace, joy, appreciation, and gratitude, where a lasting transformation might actually happen.

    And then, after we stop trying so hard to chase “happiness,” to control life and make it look the way it ought to look, then we can probably begin to have a pretty good time.

    Boy relaxing image via Shutterstock

  • 10 Things to Stop Doing If You Want to Be Happy

    10 Things to Stop Doing If You Want to Be Happy

    “It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.” ~Dale Carnegie

    There was a time when I didn’t think I could ever be happy.

    I felt alone. I felt confused. And I felt overwhelmed.

    Luckily, that all began to change when I started looking inside. I discovered how I was the cause of my unhappiness.

    And I discovered what stood between me and enjoying life.

    Here are ten of the things I discovered:

    1. Neglecting yourself and your needs

    One of the biggest things was that I was ignoring what was right for me. I looked outside for the answers.

    I looked to friends and society to tell me how to live my life. It was too painful to discover what I needed, so I gave away my power and hoped that would solve everything.

    It didn’t.

    Eventually, I realized that no one really knows how to live a happy life. Some seem confident, but they don’t really know.

    Even the happiest of people go through dark times. When I began noticing what I felt drawn to do and what felt right for me, things began to change.

    It happened slowly. I wasn’t confident at first, but I began to listen to my inner GPS.

    2. Ignoring your inner GPS

    As I began listening to myself, I saw that I had an inner guidance system within me.

    I didn’t call it that then. It communicated with me through feeling. When something was right for me, I felt peace, joy, and curiosity inside.

    When something wasn’t right, it felt lifeless, dead.

    I began to see that trying to figure life out logically didn’t work, because my mind couldn’t foresee the future.

    The heart is what I would call my inner GPS. It nudges me through life, one moment at a time. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I’m on the right track when I listen to my heart.

    3. Resisting darkness

    Life contains both dark and light.

    It sounds counterintuitive, but when you embrace the darkness, you open the door to the light.

    I’ve gone through some dark, depressive periods in my life. I used to resist them, a lot. Today I do it less.

    I know that it is through these dark times that I learn the most. I dive inside. I breathe it all in, and I notice what it is that’s making me quiver with fear.

    I investigate my internal reality and stay in the present moment.

    This is hard to do when I’m feeling down. I want to run away to food, movies, games, books, and anything but the darkness.

    But when I dive in, I see that the darkness is nothing but a virtual reality created by me. I look at the fear of not having enough, and I see that what I’m afraid of is a thought I choose to entertain.

    4. Saying ”no” to the now

    The more I try to escape the present moment, the more miserable I am.

    When I stay right here, right now, even the most ordinary tasks become extraordinary. Washing the dishes feels alive.

    But if I try to exchange the now for a future paradise, I live in a present hell.

    Being in the now, for me, is simply about noticing what’s here, right now. As I write this, I hear my fingers tap-tap-tapping away on the keyboard.

    I notice the hum of the electronics on my desktop, and I feel my body on the chair.

    And above all, I feel my feelings fully. I’m feeling a bit anxious as I write this. And that’s okay. It’s normal to feel anxious.

    5. Being afraid of making mistakes

    If I am afraid of making mistakes, I assume that I have something to lose.

    I also assume that there is a perfect way of doing something.

    Yet, I cannot know any of this. I don’t know if making a mistake helps me grow (which it often does). And I don’t know if making a mistake is the perfect path for me.

    You see, we live in our heads. We manufacture a reality that we then believe is real when it’s not.

    A hundred years from now, my mistakes won’t matter. What will matter (for me) is how much I loved and how much I enjoyed life.

    I’m human. You’re human. We make mistakes. That’s okay, as long as we’re honest with ourselves.

    6. Aiming for perfection

    I try to be perfect because I think it’ll bring approval from others, from you.

    And that approval will make me feel loved and feel good about myself.

    Yet, the act of trying to be perfect means dismissing myself. It means not loving who I am right now. It means not doing what I can with what I have.

    I have an image of what perfect is, and it always seems to be out of my reach.

    I’m striving to feel better, but the only thing I manage to do is to feel worse in this moment. When I notice the scam of perfection, I return to the present moment.

    I breathe. I do my best. And I follow my heart.

    This applies for staying in the present moment as well. I’m not in the now all the time. I try to accept whatever comes.

    7. Chasing happiness

    I often fall into the habit of chasing happiness.

    But to me, it’s more like I’m avoiding my feelings. I feel bad, so I want to be happy. I create an image of a future where I’m happy, and I long for it.

    I want it now.

    I think to myself, ”If only I had that, I could be happy.”

    Yet, that thought is the one keeping me stuck. The wanting happiness snatches me out of the present moment.

    When I let go of wanting to be somewhere else, I notice what’s right here. Sometimes it isn’t what I want, but even what I think I want is another thought.

    Each thought that says I need something else is an opportunity for me to stay in the present moment.

    8. Trying to control life

    I don’t control life.

    I control my reactions and actions but not much else.

    When I try to manipulate life, people, and places, I end up exhausted. It’s not my domain. It’s not up to me to control outcomes.

    All I can do is follow my heart, my inner GPS, and see what happens. I am a passenger in this body, on this blue planet of ours.

    I am here to experience both the good and the bad. I am here to learn and to grow. To cry and to laugh.

    9. Putting off your dreams

    Dreams are scary.

    It took me two to three years to muster up the courage to write about the things I truly wanted to write about.

    I was afraid of what you would think, what you would do. I was afraid of failing, of succeeding, of everything.

    Eventually, I realized that I could give in to my assumptions or I could take the next step and see what would happen.

    Luckily, I took the next step. And you know what? Nothing bad happened.

    I wrote. I told people about my work. My audience grew. And years later, here I am. Here you are, reading my words.

    My dreams began with one step, and so will yours.

    Stop waiting for a grand opportunity and notice the doors that are open now. It might only mean starting a blog that has ten readers or writing in your journal. But start somewhere.

    And start before you feel ready.

    10. Trying to fix others

    I used to think it was my responsibility to fix others, even if it meant forcing them to see things my way, and it compromised my happiness and theirs.

    I now let people travel their own path.

    You have mistakes you need to make. You have experiences to collect. I am not going to stand in the way of that.

    If you come to me for help, I will help, but I will not force my truth on you.

    I cannot control life, and I cannot control you. When I see that life will take care of itself, I have no need to control you.

    This has been especially hard with my loved ones, but I’m learning. I’m improving every day.

    There is no fixing, because I do not know what perfection is. If we are here to experience life, then perfection is experience.

    There are no mistakes, no blunders, and no pitfalls.

    There is only this moment.

    —

    There are many things I’ve learned during my life, but one of the main things is that we tend to take our thoughts too seriously.

    We tend to take life too seriously.

    I think that if I make a mistake, my dreams are ruined. But when I see the assumptions behind that sentence, and when I see that my dreams are a figment of my imagination, I am liberated.

    I remember that all I have to do, all I can do, is follow my inner GPS.

    I can only do what excites me, and life will take care of the rest.

  • How to Let Go of Expectations: Lessons from My Dog

    How to Let Go of Expectations: Lessons from My Dog

    “Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.” ~Tom Robbins

    Have you ever finally gotten something you longed for only to find that things didn’t work out as expected?

    I know I have.

    I firmly believed that having a dog was the answer to some of my desires, such as having more meaning in my life and receiving love on demand from another life.

    I bought into irrefutable sayings like, “Dogs love unconditionally,” and, “Dogs are man’s best friend,” and, “Dogs are loyal.”

    As it turns out, the reality can be very different. And yes, those statements are true, but the results of expectations don’t manifest out of thin air. It takes patience, understanding, and a willingness to give more love than you take.

    A Day That Changed Our Lives

    My partner and I talked about having a dog for a while. He set his heart on West Highland Terriers because of their friendly, playful, and gentle nature. We couldn’t decide on the finer details, like shall we get a pup or “rescue” one that really needs a new home?

    Not having children, we thought a dog would be an ideal way to introduce some fun, responsibility, and meaning into our lives, and of course to get an abundance of joy and love. We fought our own demons around the same time; my partner had the blues, and I was still searching for myself.

    Then, by a series of “coincidences,” we found Mowgli. We spent hours scanning the classifieds and had gone to see a couple of Westies already, but none of them felt right.

    One cold February day, we visited a local shelter and set our eyes on an interesting-looking yellow terrier, one that would do.

    As we took him out to the playpen, we admitted to the keeper how we gave up on finding a Westie because the right one was hard to come by. Our jaws dropped when he said, “One’s actually coming in tomorrow. He’s five years old, and his name is Mowgli. Would you like to see him?”

    We could barely contain our excitement!

    My partner turned up the next day, and his first words will always ring true in my ear: “He’s perfect.” He walked him tirelessly for two hours every day until we could take him home a couple of weeks later.

    What Have We Done?

    But things weren’t as smooth as I had pictured. It took me a while to fully accept this little creature into my heart and life.

    We knew he had some behavioral issues that weren’t apparent until we brought him home.

    The first time I realized this was when my partner left the house and Mowgli repeatedly displayed his disapproval by messing in the wrong places. And my empathetic reaction to this? “I see now why they wanted to get rid of him!” However, the situation was more complex.

    After some research, I discovered he suffered from separation anxiety—common among some rescue dogs. Knowing this made it easier to understand what he was going through, and we started to take corrective action.

    Ironically, I was also dealing with my own anxiety problems, and this little dog helped me in some ways to change. I unreasonably chastised him when I was no better. As time went on—using ingenuity and creativity to calm him—small improvements became noticeable.

    Then came the jealousy; he formed a strong bond with my partner, and I felt left out. He didn’t love me as much. Every time I took him out, he didn’t want to go—he kept pulling me back home. I lost sight of the bigger picture and started to resent this poor animal.

    A Sobering Wake-Up Call

    The wake-up call came when he was attacked by another dog in a field and got injured. We all limped home shocked and bemused. My partner and I were irresponsible to let him off lead since we barely even knew him. We could’ve lost him right there.

    I took time off work to look after him, and we began to get closer. I nursed him and took him on walks, carefully introducing him to other dogs. While I got to know local dog owners, I faced my own fear of people too.

    A year on, we have a much better relationship. He still prefers my partner, but I no longer have bad feelings about him. I now understand his needs and emotions better, and I fully accept him and the way he behaves.

    On reflection, he was also teaching me some important lessons—I needed rescuing from my own expectations and rigid beliefs.

    He’s a content little dog most of the time, and we love having him around!

    A Dog’s Wisdom on People and Life

    Take a good look in the mirror.

    The dog’s behavior was a catalyst for me to recognize I needed to change some of my attitudes.

    He was afraid of being apart from my partner, and I was afraid of interacting with people. But he required daily walks, and inevitably we’d meet humans and canines along the way. Slowly, he got used to spending more time with me, and I was getting better at small talk.

    Sometimes you get so caught up with everyday life that it takes a big change to jolt you into reflection on how things really are. Use difficult events in your life as reminders to take a good look in the mirror and ask, “How can this help me?”

    Cultivate patience and let events unfold.

    Clearly, you cannot hurry bonding with a dog. Same goes for human interactions—deep and meaningful relationships will take time to form.

    Chatting in the park regularly can make friends out of acquaintances. I now know a number of people from town who I would have never met if it weren’t for catering to my dog’s needs. If something goes awry, try and try again.

    Befriend acceptance.

    Be willing to receive wholeheartedly what you are faced with instead of judging and wanting to change it. I learned that it was better to acknowledge how things were rather than fighting them and wishing to be different without doing the work.

    Be more present.

    You can immerse yourself in the right now instead of focusing on how things should be. Whatever you experience in the moment, embrace it. And some of it won’t be pretty. But each of them contributes to your understanding and reaction to events.

    Release the need to control.

    One reason you become paralyzed by expectations is because you want to feel in control of every situation coming your way—to be able to deal with everything efficiently and to have a handle on them. But, it’s okay to be out of your depth and admit you don’t have all the answers and may need to learn something.

    Find your role.

    You’ll get more satisfaction out of a seemingly lost situation if you can recognize your part in it.

    I didn’t get instant or unconditional love from this dog, but I had another role to play in supporting both him and my partner while we were figuring him out. I found the answers for his behavior, which enabled me to see my value, making me a whole lot happier.

    Adopt a flexible outlook.

    Consider letting go of rigid beliefs and give yourself permission to change your mind. We all hold onto some values and ideals that we think define us. Sometimes we don’t see the woods for the trees because of recurring patterns we are trapped in.

    Look for opportunities.

    Go beyond the initial projections you had about a situation, and be willing to see what else may be possible. It could be the ideal time for gaining better understanding about yourself and expanding your horizons, thereby allowing for growth that was not apparent before.

    Remind yourself of the bigger picture.

    When all else fails, think of the big reasons for why you’re doing something. Why did we want to take the dog in the first place? A living, breathing soul in need of a forever home and a loving family to take care of him. In this light, all my prior expectations dissipated.

    Turning Around Unhelpful Expectations

    Expectations are like first dates. You put them on a pedestal to which they rarely match up. They confine and limit your vision, clouding anything else that may be out there.

    But they don’t have to paralyze you. Have an open mind. Have the courage to be wrong. Find the usefulness in seemingly lost causes.

    Like a wise old sage, you’ll become skilled at finding valuable lessons even when things don’t go as planned.

    And what you thought was the worst thing that’s ever happened to you might just turn out to be one of the best.

    Western Highland Terrier image via Shutterstock

  • Learning to Let Go and Trusting That We Will Be Okay

    Learning to Let Go and Trusting That We Will Be Okay

    Man Jumping

    “You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” ~Steve Maraboli

    While going through some major life changes, I am finally learning to let go. I am learning to relinquish control. And I am learning that everything will be okay in the end.

    I am in the middle of my first pregnancy. I thought I could control my body. I thought I could control my outcome.

    Something I regularly preach to anyone who will listen is that we can’t control the outcome of any situation. We can only control our actions.

    That means we can aim for a particular outcome, and do everything in our power to achieve it, but we cannot control what actually happens.

    We can’t control other people, the weather, bureaucracy, or anything else that is outside of ourselves. Obstacles will always get in our way, and we have no power over them.

    I have always considered myself a fairly fit and active person. I’ve competed in many ultramarathons and powerlifting competitions. I like to go hiking in technically challenging and precarious locations. But pregnancy took this all away from me.

    Working in the fitness industry, I am bombarded with what perfect fitness professionals look like and do. I see fabulously fit pregnant females lifting weights, running marathons, and doing all the things I enjoy doing. But my body just doesn’t want to cooperate.

    I only recently realized that I need to let go.

    I thought I could climb one more mountain before my body had enough, so I chose what I thought would be a relatively short and easy mountain to climb.

    Unfortunately, I completely forgot that my heart rate is now much higher, so I was getting puffed much earlier and had to walk much slower than usual.

    The mountain was very steep toward the top, and I was crawling up on feet and hands, with my awkward belly getting in the way. There were huge fallen trees strewn across my path, and I did my best to climb around, over, or through them.

    But 500 meters from the top of the mountain I got stuck. I was too short to climb over one fallen tree, and too big to climb through the gap where it had split.

    In ordinary circumstances, I would have climbed through and kept pushing until I reached the top. But this time I sat down and realized that the further up I went, the more difficult and uncomfortable sliding down I’d have to do on the return journey.

    My body was no longer the right shape for this sort of activity.

    I sat down and realized I no longer have complete control over my body. My body has control over me. I had to let something go.

    I let go of control over my body. I let go my ability to cover tough terrain. I let go of challenging adventures in the near future.

    I simply let go.

    And I realized that letting go is not so bad. Everything would be okay in the end.

    Later, I would be able to try these things again. I would try to teach my child about the great outdoors. One way or another, everything would be okay. I would be okay.

    I am also in the middle of renovating our house and looking for a new one. Again, I thought I could control the situation and the outcome.

    I thought that we would have a new house and have sold our current one by now. I even thought we would have a nursery set up by now.

    I have searched for houses, I have helped pack up and de-clutter our house, and my husband has done a lot of renovations. But I did not count on finding multiple faults in our house that need repairing. And I did not count on our dream house not showing up yet.

    I have controlled my own actions, and I did my best to control the outcome, but I discovered that I could not.

    So I sat down and I realized that it doesn’t matter where we live or when we move. The baby will come when it is ready, whether we are ready or not.

    Again, I had to let go. And I was set free. Free of control. Free of being perfect. And free of the future. All I can do is live in the present.

    There are so many things in life that we strive to control. We strive to control our future, our finances, our career, our relationships, and our lifestyle.

    We get stressed when obstacles prevent our complete control and things don’t work out as planned.

    Stress causes unhappiness, and no one wants to be unhappy.

    We can only control our actions and be happy and satisfied that our actions have taken us closer to our dream outcome. But in the end, the exact outcome may be slightly different, or not come to us as soon as we’d like.

    If we relinquish complete control over everything and everyone, then we can set ourselves free.

    We gain the ability to live in the present. And when we live in the present, we are able to think clearly. We can realize that we will be okay no matter what happens.

    If we don’t get our desired outcome, we can learn from the experience. We can try something different, and still aim toward a brighter future. There is always hope for us.

    I know that I can no longer physically challenge my body as much as I used to. But in a few months, or maybe even a few years, I can try again.

    I have also learned that although we have not found our next house yet, we can make do where we are now until we are able to move. It’s not our ideal situation, but we will continue to do what we can to move toward that.

    We keep learning, we keep growing, and we can be happy knowing that everything is okay, no matter how our journey pans out. It is quite liberating now knowing that we do not have to stress about losing control of the situation.

    We can only control our own actions, and by doing that, we can rest easy, knowing that in the end, we will be just fine. In the end, we will be better off for our experiences. In the end, everything will be okay.

    Man jumping image via Shutterstock

  • Things You Can’t Control

    Things You Can’t Control

    Things You Cant Control

    Source: Love This Pic

  • Creating Lasting Happiness and Filling the Void Within

    Creating Lasting Happiness and Filling the Void Within

    Happy Day

    “Happiness is not a goal. It’s a by-product of a life well lived.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

    I don’t care what you do or what you become as long as you’re happy. Just be happy.

    This has been my mother’s well-intentioned maxim throughout my life. As much as it is an example of her unconditional love, it is also a pretty massive request if you think about it, and something I could not seem to be. Ultimately, I failed because I wasn’t happy.

    If she’d wanted me to be a brain surgeon, I could have given it a shot. I’d have known I had to study in particular subjects, gain qualifications, and be okay with looking at the insides of people’s heads. 

    There is no such clear-cut path to happiness. For me, “just being happy” was like trying to find a destination without a map or any idea of how long it was going to take. I was in a state of anxiety for years.

    I stumbled around, desperately chasing something that would make me happy. I wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to feel like. All I knew was that I felt pretty good when I took drugs, and I found passion in lots of boys.

    But nothing lasted, and I needed more and more to fill me up, forever chasing a high.

    I found complete oblivion in 2006, when I developed drug-induced psychosis. You know all those clichés about mad people who think they are Jesus reborn or that they can read your mind? Well, that was me. My mum said when they eventually found me, I smelled like cat food.

    So, after the episode subsided and the yearlong depression that followed lifted, I started researching what had happened to my brain and discovering what happiness means to me.

    For me, it’s not a buzz of excitement. That feeling is just getting what you think you want, and it never lasts. That’s not to say I now shy away from exciting experiences; I just appreciate that they are fleeting moments. And I’ve given up the obsessive chase. 

    Happiness as a By-product

    I am pretty sure happiness is a by-product of other things. Being kind, developing coping skills, persevering with the struggles of life, being grateful for what you have, being still, letting go of things out of your control, doing the next right thing.

    But the biggest discovery is that, for me, finding union with others is when I feel most spiritually awake, because we’re all alone in our heads. Emotionally identifying with another human being is when I feel happiest.

    Instead of chasing happiness in things and achievements, identify what choices make you feel good and good about yourself—and then commit to making those choices regularly.

    You Don’t Have to Renounce Material Things

    For a while I misunderstood the Buddhist idea of renunciation. I thought that in order to be free from suffering, I had to give up the superficial causes of suffering: spending money, sex, alcohol, and looking at myself in the mirror for too long.

    But the thing is, I am a sensory creature in a world full of beautiful things; why not enjoy it? These things in themselves are not bad; it’s the ideas we place on them and the attachments we have that cause the problems.

    If you expect that getting your dream job is going to fill the emptiness inside you, you’re going to run into problems sooner or later.

    Enjoy the material things, but remember that enduring happiness comes from those choices you identified before.

    Letting Go

    A lot of my discontent was due to my inability to let things go, whether that was feelings of rejection in my past or worrying about rejection happening in the future. I used to hate the phrase “let it go.” Okay, so how do you do that then? What do you do to let something go?

    What I’ve learned over the last few years is that letting go, more often than not, means doing nothing. And doing nothing is as much a choice as screaming and shouting.

    Doing nothing gives you space between how you feel and your next positive action. Living in that space means that I am no longer a slave to my emotions, or more accurately, I’m no longer scared to feel them.

    I can notice the feeling, label it, and see it for what it is—a dent to my pride, a knock to my self-esteem. And rather than immediately trying to get rid of it by blaming someone else, self-flagellating, seeking revenge, or anesthetizing with drugs, I have faith that it will go.

    No matter what we’re feeling, it always passes if we let it. So, enjoy happiness while it’s here, and know that if it’s not, so long as you’re making positive choices, it will be back again.

    Happy day image via Shutterstock

  • Surrendering to Things We Can’t Control or Change

    Surrendering to Things We Can’t Control or Change

    Surrender

    “Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

    I’ve always sped through life. I’ve always been ready to take on the next moment, that new place, make a new memory.

    I’m an obsessive planner. I love control. Seriously, I love the feeling of researching and executing a plan flawlessly. It makes me feel like it’s all worth something, or it gives my life meaning. Nothing satisfies me more than being able to check that next “life goal” off the multiple checklists I create.

    This idea of getting to the next place and achieving as much success as possible in minimal amounts of time has taken over my life.

    I can’t tell you when it began. But I can tell you that this idea of getting to the next moment has consumed my life for at least the better half of ten years.

    I have never truly experienced a lasting sense of peace. I have the minimal moments of pure, carefree relief, sometimes while showering, swimming, or working out But these moments fade and I’m back to feeling anxious about what to do next.

    Even deciding what to make for breakfast sends my mind into a whirlwind of ifs and buts. What if I make this egg sandwich and then decided I wanted cereal instead? What if I drink too much water and where I’m headed for the day doesn’t have a lot of bathrooms?

    Seriously, these are concerns I wake up with every day. I feel ridiculous just writing them down, and trust me, only a few people are truly aware of how bad my anxiety really is.

    No, I’m not medicated. Maybe half of you think I should be after reading how outrageous my anxiety and obsessive need for control is.

    But if you met me, you would never know these thoughts race through my mind almost every second of everyday.

    People can appear happy go lucky, carefree, and spontaneous. But you never know what demons they are facing inside the confinement of their own thoughts and mind.

    It’s easier said than done, but in order to truly defeat anxiety and this obsessive need for control, we need to surrender. Just let it be. Don’t give up. Don’t sit in your house sending out messages to the universe that you want more money, a better job, or a bigger house.

    You need to wake up each day, do your best, and then accept that after you have done all you can, it’s up to the universe and not you to take on the rest.

    If you take the time to be present, the universe will reward you.

    1. Be fully involved in whatever you do.

    Put all your thought into whatever minimal task you are doing this very moment. It will help to center yourself and keep negative and outrageous thoughts and scenarios from coming into your mind.

    2. Stop trying to control everything.

    It makes me cringe to say these words. But you are not in control. Honestly, we are not. We create this false sense of control, but it’s not reality. We can only be responsible for our own thoughts and actions, so why not make them good ones?

    3. Look at the bigger picture.

    Is any of this going to matter? Okay, so sometimes that deadline and that big test do matter, but when you’re running five minutes late, is it really life or death? Stop beating yourself up. There is so much more to life.

    4. Be kind.

    And I’m not just saying to other people; be kind to yourself. If I treated any of my friends the way I treated and talked to myself, they would be running for the hills. (To be honest, my closest friends have been trying to run for years and haven’t succeeded—and that, my friends, is true love. Just kidding.)

    You can be your biggest critic or your biggest cheerleader. Always choose the cheerleader

    5. Accept.

    Accept yourself, accept others, and accept that the only way we truly leave a footprint on this world is when we impact and change others’ lives for the better.

    It’s easy to write these things down, and a heck of a lot harder to actually do any of them, but if we take the steps toward finding ourselves and surrendering to what we can’t change or control, I promise life will get a whole lot better.

    Surrender image via Shutterstock

  • The Path to Freedom: Stop Controlling and Defining Yourself

    The Path to Freedom: Stop Controlling and Defining Yourself

    The Path to Freedom

    “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” ~Albert Einstein

    I had drawn a line so deep in the sand about who I was.

    I was certain I was on my way to becoming a better version of me.

    And then.

    Water rushed in, softening that line, revealing that I was part of something much bigger than I saw myself to be.

    Something much bigger than I could control myself into.

    So many children grow up with circumstances far out of their control. Awful circumstances, such as divorce, alcoholism, drugs, and abuse. My home was full of tremendous amounts of love, laughter, and care; yet, I too had my own share of less than ideal circumstances that I longed to make better.

    I never could.

    By the time I was a teenager, I had a fair share of obsessive tendencies, mostly revolving around keeping things perfectly neat and organized.

    Things got profoundly worse when a high school friend began to love me in a way I couldn’t return.

    This situation amped up my need to control greatly.

    I took the organizing, cleaning madness to a neurotic level. This, of no surprise, was also one of the ways how women in my family before me demonstrated how to gain control where we had none.

    Fast forwarding just a short bit, I was in love, married, and making the decision to have our first child.

    Love, adulthood, and motherhood gave me the ability and strength to began to dissolve some of these lingering controls.

    Nonetheless, motherhood also gave me new reasons to gain control.

    I now had a little being to care for, and my lioness self was driven to do it beautifully; perfectly.

    New control took hold.

    I started eating all the right foods, simplifying our life to the basics, and bubble wrapping ourselves in a safety net of health. 

    I began doing all the “right” things and looking down on anything not all natural.

    Fast forward again.

    I miscarried with my third pregnancy.

    This came as a ridiculous surprise, as I believed I was doing it all “right,” and took much pride in my first two conceptions, pregnancies, and births.

    After I went on to have a third child, I began to look around and realize how many labels I had given myself: stay-at-home attachment mother, homebirthing, homeschooling, breastfeeding, vegetarian, yogi, all natural, simple living.

    I began to look around my beautiful, crunchy, progressive town we were now calling home and taking a look at how many labels others had given themselves.

    How we were defining ourselves by what we did, not who we really were.

    These labels help(ed) to the extent that they give us an identity that informs our choices and invites our surroundings.

    Yet, I couldn’t help but notice that they also gave us limits and set us firmly in the center of a vortex, where we were in and others were out.

    With these realizations, I began to unravel and dissolve this need to control myself to perfection. I began to realize that I was being held hostage. By myself.

    I began to peel away the hardened layers that I had built and began to allow the light that lived beneath to come out, intuiting my way back to the sacredness and simpleness of who I am.

    I traded eating perfectly for eating good enough. I traded practicing yoga for enlightenment for practicing yoga for movement and connection with my body. (Lately I don’t practice yoga at all.)

    I quit the relentless worry that nearly everything had a horrible consequence, including chlorinated pools, birthday parties without organic homemade cakes, sugar, reusable diapers, and cell phones.

    I quit judging myself for falling short, and started understanding that joy, memories, and a damn good time fills you with something that the “right/healthy” choice can kill in you.

    Because, you see, when you decide to no longer be a person defined by all the conscious and mindful choices you make, you gain something remarkable.

    You gain access back to your intuition that can only get lost when you are always trying to lead the way.

    You gain access to the ability to stand with the shadow parts of yourself instead of running away from them.

    You gain access back to presence and the ability to be in the moment, in the joy of experiencing the moments in front of you, without worrying if you are somehow failing yourself.

    You gain an understanding that these things that you are labeled by are choices, not definitions.

    And you gain access to the freedom to live this life fully, undefined.

    Traveler walking image via Shutterstock

  • 3 Ways to Let Go Of Control and Relax Into The Flow

    3 Ways to Let Go Of Control and Relax Into The Flow

    “You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” ~Steve Maraboli

    Sometimes I try really hard to control things.

    I run two businesses so, in many ways, control gives me a sense of peace of mind.

    When my team is doing what they are supposed to be doing, I can relax. When business is booming, I can relax. When I am getting what I want, I can relax.

    This control freak-ness doesn’t just apply for me in just business. I used to be this way about my body, and I notice these tendencies even pop up in my relationships too.

    When I feel like I am in control, I feel free. When I feel like I’m not in control, I feel frustrated, scared, and angry. It rocks my sense of security straight to my core.

    It’s tough to admit, but it’s the truth.

    I’m getting a lot better at relaxing without needing to be in control, and I’m realizing that the greatest control is in letting go of the need for it.

    When I try to control, I get attached to how I think it should play out; I think I know the best way for things to happen. But many examples in my life have shown me that when I trust and let go of thinking I know best, the outcome is better than anything I could have imagined.

    Letting go doesn’t mean giving up the desire, it means letting go of the struggle.

    It’s exhausting needing to be in control all the time, isn’t it? And the truth really is that any sense of control that we think that we have is false anyway.

    Our greatest power is in learning how to trust. When we focus on our desires with a sense of non-attachment to exactly how they unfold, it releases the blocks and opens us up to greater opportunity.

    Here are three ways I’ve learned to trust and let go of trying so hard to control.

    1. Step away.

    Richard Branson has been one of my greatest mentors from afar. He amazes me with his ability to balance business, family, and fun in the perfect way for him. He doesn’t even own a desk, and never has!

    I love watching the videos that Virgin posts on their blog about his life, because they remind me that creativity and great ideas come from stepping away from work and letting your mind open up. Richard says he gets some of his best ideas while in the bath, and he kite surfs every day, even if it’s just for fifteen minutes.

    While we don’t all have the luxury of our own private island to jet away to (yet), we do have the ability to take a long walk outside in nature, start our morning with even just five minutes of meditation or yoga, or turn the computer off an hour earlier each night.

    Taking time to enjoy life will only inspire and rejuvenate your energy for your work.

    2. Stop looking around so much.

    Compare and despair. Have you ever gone on Facebook to see what your friends are up to, and then twenty minutes later you are down in the dumps because somehow you ended up on a thread or a site comparing yourself to that person and where you think you should be?

    The second we get caught up in comparison, it sucks the creativity and energy right out of us. One of the best things I’ve done for myself is cut back on looking around at what everyone else is doing.

    I finally got to the point where I realized that, not only am I never going to measure up to them, I never want to!

    I want what I want, not what they have. So now I just try to stay in my own little bubble, working on the creative projects that excite me.

    Every now and then I do look around to see what others are up to, but I am super conscious to continuously check in with myself and ask, “Is this what I want to create for myself?” versus immediately judging how I measure up to their level of success.

    I also remind myself that I am on the right path, because I am on my path.

    3. Listen to your body.

    The human body is an amazing machine, one that most of us take for granted. We get signals from our body all day long, signals I call inner wisdom or intuition. Oftentimes, we ignore those signals and choose to follow what everybody else is telling us to do instead.

    Our body really has a vast amount of information that can help us with making decisions. When I am trying to control, I am totally ignoring my intuition. The more I relax into the flow, the more I rely on my intuition to guide me.

    Sometimes my body tells me I need a fifteen-minute nap. Sometimes it tells me that it’s not time to write the blog post right now and instead I should focus on something else. Whatever it is, I really try to listen and override the ego part of me that tells me I must push or force things to happen in order to succeed.

    It’s the difference between being solution-oriented versus problem-oriented, or in other words, inspiration-driven versus fear-driven.

    As a society, I feel like we need to remind each other often that an unhappy journey does not lead to a happy ending. It’s like we believe that if an achievement doesn’t involve stress or hardship, we don’t deserve it.

    We do deserve it, and we deserve a life built around a lot of ease and fun.

    What’s one thing you do to let go and release stress?

  • A Simple Way to Avoid Hurting Other People

    A Simple Way to Avoid Hurting Other People

    “Don’t let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” ~Dalai Lama

    The most straightforward advice I can suggest to make real concrete changes in your life is to practice causing no harm to anyone—yourself or others.

    Try it for a day. Or two. How about a week? You will probably find that it’s harder than you think. Before you know it, someone has triggered you, and either directly or indirectly, you’ve caused harm.

    I am a successful psychotherapist and conscious woman, and I’m also committed to transparency. No more hiding behind the therapist’s veil for me. The one that projects enlightenment and hides the truths of being human.

    With that said, I happen to be a bit controlling. Take a moment and imagine yourself at a Twelve Step meeting. “Hello. My name is Carrie Dinow, and I am addicted to control.”

    It’s really helpful to get to know the ways you cause harm, much like you would a lover in the early stages of a romance when every part of you wants to know the other. You definitely want to get to know your own inner ‘others,’ the pained shadow parts of yourself that can live buried below the surface.

    The ways we cause harm can show up like fifty shades of grey, so the more intimate you can be with your own particular expression, the greater chance you have to let go. Like being overly invested in how many men join my husband’s camping weekend.

    The most obvious expressions, of course, appear as control, blame, withdrawal, and lashing out. With a little gossip and lying on the side.

    What is your harm of no choice?

    You’ve heard the fairy tale about the toads. It involves a princess who, when angered, would start to say mean words, and toads would actually come out of her mouth.

    How many times I have said to myself, “Do not say a word. Keep your mouth shut. It will only cause harm.” Despite our good and sincere intentions, most of us wrestle with our own toads. I know I have.

    I find that I am just like the Buddha—as long as I’m alone. It’s a lot easier to keep my mouth shut when it’s just me, myself, and I. Add a husband (even one of the best ones on the planet) and highly persistent daughter (the love of my loves), and all bets are off.

    The other night my daughter was extremely persistent, keen on getting her way. My husband, who is a revered psychotherapist—adolescents being his specialty—wrestles with his own blaming toads. In the past, his toads would trigger my toads. And faster than you can say Jackie Robinson, we are consumed by a plague of harm.

    So what are the ways for holding our seat, and for making sure the toads of control and blame don’t fly out of our mouths? The one I have found most impactful of all is to just shut up. No matter what, don’t scratch the itch. That’s all! Mmmm….

    That’s one reason I meditate. To court my inner toads and free me from my learned drug of no choice—control. It’s profoundly humbling to sit with my own thoughts, and to sit with an itch and not scratch it, without an escape clause.

    The practice of returning over and over to my breath allows me the choice of whether or not I stay attached to this addiction. When conflict arises or tones don’t meet my approval rating, I have more of a choice of how I want to react.

    Letting go of this lifelong relationship to control allows me to tolerate others’ behavior. No longer a feather in the wind at the mercy of someone else’s emotional breath, my need to escape the scene when things don’t go my way seems to be calming, mostly.

    After many years, meditation has become my new drug of choice. It offers me a chance to pause so I can actively engage in letting go of my control which, in my household, reduces the harm. The benefits are a lot like cooking with Teflon; things don’t seem to stick as much.

    What does it take to change the habitual response and to keep your mouth from spewing poisonous toads? To begin a different practice with yourself? One that honors letting the moment pass without responding to it?

    Most of us could use some basic tips on on how to loosen the grip on our well-ingrained habits of striking out and blaming.
 Each time we lash out with aggressive words and actions, we are strengthening the toad pool. And, the internal scoreboard can start to look like Anger 10, Patience 2.

    In the game of life, we can become easily irritated by the reactions of others. However, each time someone provokes us, we have a chance to do something different, to tend to our own reactions. Either we can strengthen old habits or we can take a moment to pause.
 That’s what it takes, a big fat pause.

    Did you know that patience is the antidote to anger? Learning to pause can help us develop our patience. When we begin to pause instead of retaliating, even if it’s only briefly, we are starting to loosen the pattern of causing harm.

    Have you ever noticed that much of the suffering comes from the escalation from that one moment when someone comes at you with a tone or says something that hurts your feelings, or has an opinion you absolutely don’t agree with? It’s what we do with that one moment to the next that can imprison or free us.

    Each time the toads escape us, we escalate our aggression and solidify our harm habit, which makes it a bit more difficult to calm the waters. If we learn to sit still with the restlessness and the sensations of anger, we can begin to tame and strengthen our mind.

    If only we could pause. Give it a try. No harm done.

  • Releasing Negative Beliefs: How Letting Go Sets Us Free

    Releasing Negative Beliefs: How Letting Go Sets Us Free

    Free

    “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~Andre Gide

    I have walked on water.

    The frozen wasteland known as Chicago had kept me inside, wary of the intense cold that was breaking records that particularly frigid winter. But after interminable snow days, I began to feel like a caged animal that needed to break free.

    I woke early one morning, overcome with the urgent need to connect to something living, something wild. I wrapped myself in countless layers like the kid in The Christmas Story and ventured out into the urban tundra. I felt compelled to walk to the beach that was a few miles from my house.

    An eerie, otherworldly feeling washed over me as I walked, achingly aware of the stark, endless whiteness all around me. The world itself felt as it was hung in frozen suspension and apprehension. Everything seemed to be hushed in reverence.

    When I reached the shore, I was hyper aware of the need to maintain a safe distance from the water, but I felt compelled to get as close as possible.

    As I moved forward across the frozen sand, I tried to gauge exactly where the land ended by using various items as points of reference—a fence, a wooden bench, a recycling bin. I inched my way toward the lake until there were no more reference points, and then became as still as the land beneath me. Or what I thought was land.

    I looked down at my feet and realized I was standing on a frozen wave, not a snow covered sand dune as I originally thought. I had walked out too far. I could both hear and feel the movement of the wave beneath my feet.

    I felt a juxtaposition of fear, exhilaration, and an overwhelming sense of weightlessness. My first instinct was to run, but I wasn’t sure of my footing. I was terrified that if I shifted my weight too quickly, I might fall through. I had no idea how deep the water was where I stood.

    At that moment I zeroed in on my true purpose for coming to the water. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a little bag filled with small strips of paper like confetti. On each one I had written something I wished to release from my life.

    • The fear that I will never find the type of love I want and need.
    • The commitment to being alone.

    I opened the bag to the wind, letting the belief-covered papers flutter out over the frozen lake. I did this quickly because I sensed the danger to my body on that unstable surface, and the danger to my heart if I held onto those stories a moment longer.

    With my task completed, I gingerly walked back to solid land. I let out a deep breath and knew so much had been released with those papers still floating on the wind.

    That moment on a frozen lake taught me a few very important things about surrender.

    • Surrender is about vulnerability and receptivity.
    • The opposite of surrender is resistance and control.
    • And it all comes down to fear and trust.

    I realized that my heart had become like that lake. A living thing that is supposed to flow, constricted by a lack of warmth and space into a frozen and dangerous place.

    One of the ways we keep our hearts frozen is by holding on to negative beliefs. These beliefs may be seem like they are about others or life in general. Usually, however, they are based on our perceptions. Negative beliefs are born from our wounds and stories.

    Eventually, every life experience becomes colored by these beliefs. Everything we see, say, do, and even feel is filtered through these limitations, judgment, patterns, conditionings, and doubt. The sad and scary part is that these beliefs tend to hide themselves in our subconscious, making us think that we are acting from free will.

    We may not even be conscious that we are holding on to negative beliefs.

    Unconsciously, we begin to nurture our negative beliefs without even being aware that we are doing so. We feed them and help them grow by giving them energy. We affirm them by attracting experiences that validate their existence. This becomes a vicious cycle. Holding on to negative beliefs justifies our need to be right.

    Many of us hold on to our grievances and emotional scars with fierce protection. They become like badges of honor.

    We think that without our constant vigilance, the memory of our wounds or broken hearts will be forgotten. We believe that we are some how “honoring our personal story” by holding on. If we do not act as the constant “keeper of our wounds,” our suffering will have been in vain.

    But spring must come if life is to flourish again.

    We must allow our hearts to thaw. We need to frequently evaluate our belief structures and release the stories that no longer serve us.

    Releasing our attachment to our personal histories doesn’t invalidate the emotional pain we suffered. It doesn’t mean that the defenses and barriers we erected to protect ourselves weren’t based on a real need for self-preservation at those times. Instead, it means that we assimilate the lessons we have gained from the experience while loosening its ability to control our lives.

    Just like the coldness and bareness of winter allows the Earth to rejuvenate, and ultimately makes everything stronger, so too do our personal winters allow us to access our depths. Every wound makes us stronger as we heal it, and gives us greater access to our power.

    Letting go of beliefs puts a great responsibility on us. If we connect with our personal power we must give up the illusion that we are victims. We can longer view ourselves as passively vulnerable to the whims of others. We now must take responsibility for how our life unfolds.

    This realization is a lot scarier than standing on a frozen lake.

    To truly open our hearts, to truly wield our power, we must be willing to participate in life.

    This requires both owning our part in situations and allowing experiences to unfold as they will. Accepting others’ actions and emotions without making them fit into some box as a hero or demon. And especially releasing our mental constructs about how life should be, what we should or should not be doing, and how other people should interact with us.

    Releasing expectations and resistance is one of the most empowering acts of life. Resisting what is can be emotionally, spiritually, and physically exhausting. We get stuck in patterns that begin to define how we interact with the world. And even though they are painful, because they are familiar and usually hidden, we can stay stuck for years.

    I had developed many of my beliefs to protect myself after a series of breakups and broken hearts.

    I convinced myself that believing I wasn’t worthy of love was safer than opening myself up to the possibility of love. If I never opened my heart to anyone, I would never be disappointed or have to experience the excruciating pain of heartache.

    I was keeping myself lonely and cut off from life. Trying to protect myself from pain, I was actually constantly hurting myself more.

    When I finally relaxed enough to let go of my old beliefs, my life began to flow with greater ease and grace.

    I walked out onto that frozen water because I needed to have a close encounter with life. I needed to let the primal elements cleanse me of my outmoded ways of being.

    I went beyond the fear and conditioning because, finally, being alive mattered more than being comfortable. Now I recognize that I must trust that life will always provide the situations and experiences required for my evolution. And that surrender is the only way to be free.

    Photo by Andi_Graf

  • How to Strengthen Relationships by Releasing Fear and Control

    How to Strengthen Relationships by Releasing Fear and Control

    “To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is: a dissatisfaction with self.” ~Joan Didion

    When I was a young man I had an issue with relationships. Looking back now, it is easy to see that I had low self-esteem, though I could not see it at the time. Because of my low self-image and my neediness, many relationships that could have had a decent chance went by the way side.

    I developed a low-level anxiety about how much any girlfriend cared for me, which, in turn, became outright jealousy and resulted in controlling behavior.

    I would worry that my girlfriend was going to leave me for another man, and would then become aggressive, starting arguments. I would act out when she wanted to go out with her friends. If we went out together, I would fly into a rage when we got home if she had so much as glanced at other men.

    Of course, all of this behavior was about demanding, without explicitly saying it, that she demonstrated how much she loved me. This was because, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I believed she did not.

    Ironically, the more she showed me she loved me, the less I believed her.

    So I became more controlling. I decided I was the victim and became moody, sulky, withdrawn, and passive-aggressive, yet again manipulating my environment to get the attention I craved.

    Negative attention was better than nothing. Yet if I lost all attention because of my behavior, I was okay with that. I would have preferred be alone and know I was right than be in a relationship and live with the fear that I was not good enough. But once I was alone again, I wanted a relationship to prove that I was lovable.

    My Fear

    I tried to control the fear that I was unlovable by controlling the person I loved. I even took to confronting men who I saw as a threat to us as couple.

    By threatening and controlling other men, I could control my girlfriend and thus control my own fear. It seemed logical at the time.

    As you may have guessed, it had the opposite effect. My attempts to control the women I dated ended up driving them away. Either they would end the relationship, or I would before they did. (It felt better to end it before they had the chance, proving the very thing I was trying to disprove.)

    Sometimes my behavior drove them toward other men. I made them feel so unsafe that the only safe way to leave me was to have some protection in the form of another man. Thus was fulfilled the ultimate in self-fulfilling prophecies.

    Then one day, after a lengthy period of learning and reflecting on the repetitive patterns in my relationships, I decided to grow up.

    I realized that I could not control my girlfriends and that trying to control them had the opposite effect. I also realized:

    • We have no control over others. In fact, control is often an illusion.
    • We can’t make someone love us by fearing that they won’t.
    • Fearing that someone may be unfaithful will not ensure that they won’t be.

    I realized that letting go of control was the safest option, for me and for everyone else. I also recognized that my fear was often greater than the things I worried about, and that I needed to deal with it.

    Lastly, I realized that I needed to learn to love myself and stop expecting others to do something I wasn’t doing for myself.

    As a result of some intense personal development work, I started to love myself. I started to acknowledge and appreciate my strengths and validate myself in the way I’d hoped others would; in turn, my fear subsided and has all but left.

    Now I choose to trust my girlfriend. I have no more control over her than if I chose to be suspicious, needy, and fearful. In essence, I am choosing to be happy. By choosing to trust her I remove the fear, let go of control, and start to enjoy the relationship for what it is.

    We can choose to live in fear or not—that’s something we can control. And we can also control if we choose to be miserable or happy. I chose happy.

    Photo by Emiliano Horcada

  • How to Tackle the Top 6 Fears That Keep Us Stuck

    How to Tackle the Top 6 Fears That Keep Us Stuck

    “Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.” ~Isabel Allende

    When you think of a fearless person, you might imagine a real-life James Bond who performs death-defying stunts knowing he could die at any second.

    But for most of us living “normal” lives, fear operates at a subconscious level and prevents us from being the best we can be.

    For a long time, I struggled with these fears. I could not get myself to speak in front of people without experiencing extreme nervousness. When it came to talking to girls I liked, I could list 100 reasons why I would get rejected.

    As I got older, I learned that these fears affected me not because I wasn’t talented or likable, but because I was limiting myself with my thinking.

    By training our minds, we can control our fears instead of letting them control us. Below are some tips that have helped me fear less and live more (which I hope will help you too).

    1. Be more vulnerable. (Tackle the fear of rejection and intimacy.)

    None of us want to have our hearts broken, but when we’ve experienced this before, we may be afraid of entering new relationships for fear of getting hurt.

    Being vulnerable means accepting yourself for who you are and accepting your imperfections. Revealing your authentic self is a powerful way to combat the fear of rejection because you don’t try to be an ideal person; instead, you learn to be confident in yourself, regardless of who accepts or rejects you.

    2. Work hard and expect nothing. (Tackle the fear of failure.)

    As harsh as it sounds, expectations set us up for failure. A lot of the things we plan and expect to happen never happen. The potential for failure hurts our egos and keeps us from trying new things.

    Your task is to discover what your heart wants and work really hard at it. Whether things actually work out how you planned is not under your control. Trust that life will take care of that, and that you can be happy regardless of what happens.

    This mindset helps you do your best; and even if you fail, you’ll still feel good about doing what you love.

    3. Know that you are capable of achievement. (Tackle the fear of success.)

    It’s not always fear of failure that stops us. Sometimes it’s the fear of success. As ridiculous as it may sound, sometimes even if we’ve worked hard at something, we are afraid of putting ourselves out there because we feel we don’t deserve it.

    As I mentioned before, I used to be afraid of public speaking and thought it was because of the fear of failing. But really, I was saying to myself, “You are not good enough; just leave it to the experts.” Then I changed my inner voice to, “Why not me? I deserve this and am fully capable of doing this.” This helped me get rid of my fear of public speaking.

    4. Let go. (Tackle the fear of losing control.)

    We like to be in control of everything in our lives. It’s easy to think of someone like Sherlock Holmes who plans everything out in detail; and even when things don’t seem to be going according to plan, he really had that planned all along too.

    But real life just doesn’t work this way. For example, one of the things I liked to control was time. I would try to plan my entire day on Outlook, and when things didn’t go that way, I’d be disappointed. When I stopped doing this, I felt less stressed, and many of the things I feared would happen if I didn’t plan things out never happened.

    I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences trying to control things. It is important to realize that you don’t need to control life to be happy; and if you try to control life, you definitely won’t be.

    5. Focus on the present. (Tackle the fear of the past repeating itself.)

    Sometimes, we let our past experiences prevent us from succeeding. Because you failed so many times before, you start to expect failure this time too.

    You hear people telling you to let go of the past all the time. But how exactly do you do it? By being fully absorbed in the present. Focus on your breathing right now. See what you are seeing right now and feel what you are feeling right now.

    For those who practice meditation, this may sound familiar. This is how you let go of attachment to the past and the fear of it repeating itself.

    6. Realize you can handle whatever happens. (Tackle the fearing of worst-case scenarios.)

    We humans like to picture the worst scenario that could arise out of a situation. In our minds, we may fear going bankrupt or something bad happening to our loved ones.

    I’m not saying we should be naïve and not expect bad things to happen at all. But to live in fear of these scenarios is a waste of time and energy, because many times the things we fear never end up happening, and when they do happen, it’s not quite as bad as we imagined it would be.

    We can’t control whether the worst will happen to us or not. But if it does happen, the only thing we can do is take action, knowing we can handle whatever comes at us, as we’ve handled every obstacle we’ve faced up until now.

     

  • 16 Things to Let Go to Live a Truly Happy Life

    16 Things to Let Go to Live a Truly Happy Life

    “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” ~Jim Rohn

    Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent the better part of my life chasing after happiness. It always seemed like happiness stayed just a tad bit out of my grasp—somewhere in the future that I could always see, but not quite touch.

    For instance, when I was a kid, I believed I’d be happy if I got an admission into a good college. In college, I believed that I’d be happy if I got a good job. When I got a job, I believed that I’d be happy if I got a promotion and a raise. And on and on it went.

    Every time I reached a goal, it seemed like the next goal was where true happiness lay.

    Sadly, this affected my personal life as well. I thought, “When I find a great guy, I’ll be happy. Wait, to be truly happy, we need to first get married. Being married is great, but we need to have kids to find real joy. Gosh, our baby needs to grow up a little so we can really enjoy being with her…” And so on.

    For more than thirty-five years, I chased happiness on this path, not realizing what a futile chase it was.

    And then, about two years back, I was abruptly jolted out of it.

    One evening, on a day that had started out like any other, I found myself at the hospital with my three-year-old daughter in tow, waiting outside the emergency room that my husband lay in.

    After a week at the hospital, my husband came out okay. However, it fundamentally changed the way I look at life.

    For the first time I saw the futility of our chase. I still believe that goals are important and we should strive to achieve them. But now, I see them more as mile markers in life’s journey, not having much to do with happiness.

    Happiness, it turns out, is not something we go after. It’s something already within us. We just need to clear up some clutter to find it.

    The two years that followed have been an amazing journey of slowly letting go of some of that clutter in the quest to find the true happiness within. It’s still a work-in-progress, but here are the things I’ve been striving to let go.

    1. Let go of trying to control everything.

    The only thing that we can truly control is our own attitude and reactions. Once we accept that, we can find happiness right where we are, irrespective of how things turn out. This was perhaps the hardest but the most necessary part of the transformation for me.

    2. Let go of trying to please everyone.

    Every time we pretend to be someone, it takes us away from our true selves, and from our place of happiness. It was hard at first to stop trying to please others. Eventually I realized how liberating it was to dare to be myself!

    3. Let go of the sense of entitlement.

    I often found myself asking “Why me?” It was hard to replace that with “Why not?” After all, everyone gets their share of joys and sorrows; why should I somehow be above it and deserve only the joys?

    4. Let go of resentment.

    Unless we walk in the shoes of the other, we really don’t know the reason for their behavior. Carrying resentment only hurts us and delays any repair. I cannot tell you how amazing it’s been to let go of some of the resentment I didn’t even know I’d been carrying for years!

    5. Let go of guilt.

    On the flip side, if we are the ones who made a mistake, it is time to forgive ourselves and make amends. “I’m sorry. How can I fix it?” can go a long way in starting the healing process.

    6. Let go of pride.

    Neither apology nor forgiveness is possible without letting go of pride. Nor is there room for authentic connection where pride resides. Let it go.

    7. Let go of perfectionism.

    If I had a dime for every opportunity I squandered in the quest for perfection, I’d be rich! But no one can be perfect all the time. That’s what makes us humans. We are quirky. We have flaws. We are beautiful just the way we are.

    8. Let go of negativity.

    In any given situation we have a choice—look at what’s good and be grateful, or look at what’s wrong and complain. Deliberately adopting the attitude of gratitude literally changed the course of my life.

    9. Let go of draining, unhealthy relationships.

    We are the average of the people we hang out with, and if they are frequently negative, it becomes hard for us to maintain an attitude of gratitude. It’s been a tough call to distance myself from people in my life who were bringing me down, but it was necessary to move on.

    10. Let go of the busyness.

    Somewhere along the way, many of us have bought into the notion that the busier we are and the more we achieve, the happier we will be. After thirty-five years, I’ve come to realize that busyness does not equal happiness.

    11. Let go of the attachment to money.

    Money is definitely good to have, but once our basic needs and savings goals are met, it’s time to evaluate the tradeoff of earning more and more. Letting go of the need for money just for the sake of it has been a very hard but fulfilling experience for me.

    12. Let go of the fear of failure.

    Everybody who tries anything worthwhile fails at some point or the other. Failure does not mean we are broken. It simply means we are courageous to dare! Easier said than done, but I’m trying.

    13. Let go of the fear of abandonment.

    Fundamentally, we all crave for connection. But when fear of abandonment starts to rule our lives we make very irrational choices. I try to trust that what is meant to be will happen. And no matter how things turn out, we’ll come out of it okay.

    14. Let go of comparison.

    We usually only get to see the highlights reel of other’s lives. Comparing my behind-the-scenes to that has only made me unhappy in the past. It’s time for change.

    15. Let go of expectations.

    In the end, the core of all my issues was that I expected things to be a certain way. I expected what a good spouse or a friend ought to act like. I expected my daughter to behave a certain way. I expected how situations should turn out. Heck, I even had fixed expectations of what happiness was! Letting go of expectations has helped everything else start to fall in place.

    16. Let go of yesterday and tomorrow.

    And finally, how can we find true happiness if we are saddled down by the baggage of the past or fear of the future? Once I learned to let go of some of the above, I started to focus deliberately on today and now. Suddenly, music and beauty emerged from what was previously mundane. Is there a better way to find true happiness?

    Letting go of something that is ingrained in our minds for years is hard. In my experience, even when I do manage to let go of something some of the time, at other times, it comes right back. In the end, it’s the journey that matters, right?

    So, what will you let go of today?

  • What You Can Control

    What You Can Control

    What You Can Control

    Source: NotSalmon.com

  • How to Get Out of Your Own Way and Let Your Life Shine

    How to Get Out of Your Own Way and Let Your Life Shine

    Shining Heart

    “I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.” ~Hafiz of Shiraz

    I have been on a quest to be happy for as long as I can remember.

    I thought I had looked everywhere. I tried relationships, work, adventure travels, and a life filled with friends and activity, but still I felt anxious. I was disenchanted with life. Years of therapy attempting to work out my problems didn’t give me the sense of peace I somehow thought was possible.

    I knew there had to be more, and I am delighted to tell you that I found it when I learned to get out of the way.

    The Power of Habits

    Without my realizing it, I had been caught up in habitual ways of thinking and feeling that dominated my everyday life. My mind went on endlessly with judgments, expectations, worries, resentments, and stories about what should and shouldn’t happen.

    And I had overlooked the feelings of fear and uneasiness that were running beneath the surface almost nonstop.

    Life was happening, but with a constant inner commentary about how things weren’t quite right. No wonder I wasn’t happy.

    Fast forward to now, and things are very different. No more useless worrying, regret, or getting caught in mental stories about other people or myself. Even my body has relaxed without that lurking agitation. Everything is so open, so fresh!

    And here’s what I discovered.

    Finding Freedom

    Getting out of the way means becoming very familiar with your inner world. You discover what you do that makes you suffer so you can choose peace instead.

    Amazingly, you realize that you can press pause in any moment and step back from the momentum of old, recycled habits.

    When you do, you see what is actually happening: the pain of being stuck in an old resentment that has been dragging you down, the constricting effect of believing your thoughts, and the chaos that comes from letting your feelings rule.

    With your eyes wide open, you are primed to live in ways that are intelligent, affirming, and aligned with your deepest desires. Finally, clarity arrives.

    Getting out of the way looks like this:

    Ask yourself, “In this moment, what do I really want to feel?”

    The answer connects you with your true intention to be happy, peaceful, and clear. Already, you are halfway to being free.

    Notice the thoughts and feelings that grab your attention.

    See how you get in the way of happiness. Do you live in a belief that you are inadequate? Do you tell yourself you are a victim of your past? Do you define yourself by sadness or fear? This is why you suffer.

    Befriend your experience by noting what is present, but know that it doesn’t have to control you.

    Just for now, don’t hold onto your stressful stories. Let your feelings be without acting on them. This is the most loving way you can be with yourself.

    Experience the space that remains when you are no longer hooked by thoughts and feelings.

    Even if only for a moment, you’ve discovered what it’s like to get out of the way. Here you are—whole and relaxed, ripe to enjoy yourself, to make wise decisions that come from love, not fear and limitation. You see that life can be so beautifully simple. You touch into the living possibility of happiness for you.

    There is no need to change your thoughts or get rid of any emotions to get out of the way. Just become aware of your inner experience. Realize how defining yourself by it constrains you.

    Notice that you can make the choice to live fully now, beyond any self-imposed boundaries, with a clear mind and open heart.

    It is the effortless, practical way to happiness available in each moment.

    How to Do It: An Example

    Let’s take worry as an example. I used to worry about everything; I was full of “what if’s”—what if my plans didn’t pan out, what if I made the wrong decision, what if I didn’t fit in, what if I couldn’t cope. It was endless.

    I remember worrying years ago about whether or not I should attend a work-related social function. By that time, I knew that I could actually get out of the way, so I stopped and felt a moment of gratitude—this was my golden opportunity for freedom. I tapped into what I really wanted, which was to be peaceful, present, and clear.

    Rather than being consumed by worry, I chose to be curious instead.

    I noticed that my attention was completely taken up by negative projections about what might happen in the future. What if I don’t know anyone? What if I feel uneasy there? What if it’s a waste of time?

    My mind was flooded with these anxious thoughts. And when I stepped back to observe them, I saw that they squashed my enthusiasm, closed me down to opportunities, and inhibited me from going outside my comfort zone (which wasn’t so comfortable, anyway).

    Bringing attention to my feelings, I realized I was locked up in fear, with tension everywhere in my body. It was a light bulb moment when I saw how powerful these feelings were, even though they hadn’t been conscious to me before.

    As I noticed these anxious thoughts and feelings, I took a breath. I shifted my attention away from them and returned to simply being present and aware. There was an immediate sense of relief.

    No longer feeding worrying thoughts, the tension subsided, and I found the clarity to make a sane, calm decision about whether or not to go. I saw that the unfolding of life right now was just fine. It was amazing to realize that worry was optional.

    It took some time, but as I became more aware whenever worry started to grip, I began to see the opening of possibility. Instead of needing to figure everything out, I could relax and trust. Instead of being limited by fear, there was space for wonder, creativity, appreciation, and ease of living.

    I was shocked to realize how profoundly this pattern of worry had infiltrated my life.

    At first, only a tiny crack in the tsunami of worry appeared, but eventually, the whole thing collapsed. It just didn’t make sense anymore.

    Things didn’t change overnight, but with care and diligence to worrying—and every other confused habit—it became obvious that they were not serving happiness. Suffering was the tap on the shoulder that brought me back to peace.

    When I saw that the habits were in my way, my interest in them waned until it disappeared entirely. Why? I am happy without them.

    Finally Fully Living

    When you get out of the way, you stop resisting life. The focus shifts from what you don’t have to what is here and available. No longer doubting everything, you receive what life offers you.

    And rather than living in the mind-created past or future, you are available to the simplicity of this now moment.

    Unclouded by mental noise, you become crystal clear about what to do next. You tell the truth about what is and isn’t working. And you take practical steps to begin truly living.

    As I became aware of habits that were hijacking my happiness, I discovered why my relationships weren’t lasting and began making different choices. I realized how fear had been keeping me from living fully. I began seeing everything through the eyes of love.

    Really, it’s true. When you get out of the way, your life will shine…endlessly.

    Photo here

  • When You Feel Down or Stuck: How to Effectively Be What You’re Not

    When You Feel Down or Stuck: How to Effectively Be What You’re Not

    Sad Man

    “Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not eliminating our weaknesses.” ~Marilyn vos Savant

    I often hear the words “be yourself.” I love those words, and I truly believe that everyone should strive to be the truest version of who they are. There’s nothing more attractive than a person who is just so utterly themselves, even when society tries to push them the other way.

    Strong willed people are some of my favorite types. They can be righteous. They can be overly moral. However, they know what they want, they know who they are, and they know that nobody else determines their definitions of themselves.

    They stand up for what they believe in. And most importantly, they stand up for others when it matters.

    As somebody who is quite strong willed myself, I appreciate the beauty in the statement “be yourself.” However, I have also come to appreciate the softer side of letting go.

    This includes being wrong sometimes and even admitting it. This also includes opening my mind to the possibility of all possibilities; seeing the positive in the negative, understanding the behavior of those who may seem morally corrupt (to me), taking benefit from the other side of a passionate debate, and learning information when I want to reject it.

    As somebody who preaches the importance of being yourself, I admit I have a trick up my sleeve that has something to do with pretending to be who you’re not. Yup! I feel deliciously devious even just saying that.

    This trick is well known in the world of Positive Psychology, a term coined by Martin Seligman, Ph.D. in psychology.

    So what is this trick? Well, when you find yourself feeling down and depressed, it can help tremendously to ask yourself:

    “What would the happy version of me do at this moment?”

    Not only does this get you into a goal-oriented state, but it also takes a load off the negativity that you might be feeling. It takes your mind state from “oh woe is me” to imagining what will actually make you happier. It’s proactive.

    When you can imagine yourself being something greater than what you feel at the moment, you actually flip on a little switch in your brain that will attempt to propel you toward that image.

    This can work not only when feeling down, but with any goal you may have in mind.

    “What would the healthy version of me do?”

    “What would the brave version of me do?”

    “What would the successful version of me do?”

    You’re not shaming yourself in any way; you’re only gently shifting your mind set into one that is proactive and ready to take charge of your life.

    When I was struggling with feeling low, oftentimes I’d lie in my bed in the morning and not want to get out of it. It felt like there was no point.

    I was given a beautiful child at the age of twenty-three, and even though she has been the light of my life, at the time my identity felt as though it had been ripped from my very soul.

    The relationship I was in at the time was manipulative and emotionally abusive, probably on both sides. I didn’t feel like myself and I felt very restricted. My carefree spirit turned into a negative, depressed, shriveled up little hole inside my heart.

    Now, this might sound odd to some, but I have always been impressed with warrior-type women. I believe that I possess some warrior qualities within myself (we all do), and when I think of them, I feel strong, like I could take on anything!

    One day it just clicked. As I was lying in bed, not wanting to get out of it, I thought to myself, “What would the warrior in me do?”

    Out of bed I jumped! I continued to use that saying in many different ways and for many months. Now it has become a part of me.

    I am that warrior woman.

    I am strong enough. I am not a victim of life’s circumstances. I create my life and everything in it. I don’t react to life. I make life what I want it to be.

    To me, a warrior is not a victim. A warrior makes her life what it is; she creates it herself.

    When I shift my mind into this realm, I realize that other people do not control me; I control myself. Nobody is in charge of how I get to feel.

    In my relationship, I had been putting that control into somebody else’s hands, and when I decided to take back control over my life is when I finally realized the relationship was not going to work either way. Unfortunately, we had to part ways, but lessons were learned and I was finally able sit back and breathe.

    Try this tool out for yourself, and see how it changes your perspective the next time you’re feeling stuck.

    Who knew that pretending to be who you’re not (in a positive way) could strengthen the qualities that you never knew were inside of you?

    Photo by Ohfooy

  • Getting Unstuck: Work Through Fear and Change Your Life

    Getting Unstuck: Work Through Fear and Change Your Life

    Im Free

    “When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    We’ve all been there. Feeling stuck is very distressing, and it can often make a situation feel even more difficult than it already appears to be.

    Many of us may have felt trapped in a job, a relationship, a place; any unfavourable situation, really, that we see little way out of can leave us feeling deeply discouraged.

    The uncertainty of it all becomes overwhelming and, over time, paralyzing.

    I have felt the frustration, the sadness, and the hopelessness that accompany this predicament many times.

    In fact, I’ve lived most of my life feeling stuck in one thing or another—a volatile family situation, unhealthy relationships, various jobs. For a long time, I rarely made proactive decisions about anything.

    I had a number of distractions I used to try to avoid thinking about it. I drank heavily, took drugs, took trips, took on other people’s problems, overworked, over-exercised, over-sexed, under-slept, worried constantly, and generally avoided thinking about the specifics of what I needed out of life, a job, or a relationship.

    Opportunities and endings did flow through my life, as they inevitably will, but they were seldom based on what I wanted.

    After a while, negativity and worry used up much of my energy. I was diagnosed with cancer at twenty-six, and started to have other major physical ailments, not to mention regular nightmares. I knew I had to make changes.

    I started with my diet, something that I felt was within my control. I gained a lot of knowledge about food, health, and lifestyle very quickly and just soaked it all up.

    I also learned a lot more about our inner emotional lives and about taking responsibility for my feelings, my actions, and my words.

    I started practicing meditation and continued to deepen my yoga practice with a new awareness of my mental and emotional environment. I’m now able to observe my thoughts and am quick to see how my thought patterns change when I feel stuck.

    Those negative, self-defeating, fearful thoughts come creeping back into my mind, whispering to me that I don’t have any other choice.

    The depressed feelings and anxiousness come quickly too, and I often start to wonder, if I’d done something differently in the past, would I be here now? I tell myself that only if a certain event happens in the future will I be able to make a change.

    Dwelling on the past and obsessing about the future is a surefire way to stay stuck.

    I now know that I need to be careful not to qualify decisions based on imagined future events happening or not happening, and not to make decisions out of fear. Sometimes doing what is best for you means facing those fears head on.

    When I was diagnosed with cancer, I told myself I’d only take time off work if I started to feel really physically ill. I was afraid I’d face financial difficulties if I took a leave. I didn’t give myself nearly enough space to process the emotional effects, and I didn’t give my physical body the time to rest that it was clearly telling me it needed.

    I got very ill with a string of severe infections in the two years following my recovery because I never proactively made a decision to take care of myself.

    When I start bargaining with myself, I know I’ve given away my power. I’m no longer listening to my intuition or connecting with what’s really best for my well-being.

    I’ve realized that the only way to get unstuck is to detach from the outcome of our decisions and the fears about things not working out, and instead focus solely on what exactly we want and need. In this way, the uncertainty can lead to opportunity.

    There are a few things I did make proactive decisions about over the last ten years—like pursuing a degree in Environmental Studies, moving to Australia, and committing to building a more healthy lifestyle—that have turned out better than I could’ve imagined.

    It has become more and more clear that the decisions I make from now on need to be based on my true desires, not my fears.

    I now recognize that I’ve kept myself in unhealthy situations mainly because I didn’t have the tools to help myself.

    When I’m having trouble getting unstuck, I use some of these small actions that can be helpful in creating space to move through and out of the undesirable situation:

    Take time.

    One of the most difficult things about feeling stuck is that you want to fix it right away. This urge to control the situation really doesn’t help solve the problem.

    If you’re having trouble moving out of a bad situation naturally, you’ll need time to process all the feelings that will come up as you move toward a new phase of your life. Let it happen and enjoy it as much as you can. The best approach you can take in this situation is to trust that things will improve over time.

    Don’t wait for this-or-that to happen.

    This is a big one. If you’re always waiting for something else to happen before you act, you won’t make proactive decisions in a way that’s in line with what you want. 

    Stop thinking about it.

    I like to practice meditation and yoga, read a good book, or take a nap. The trick is to not think about the issue actively, but just take some time to enjoy where you are now.

    Obsessive thinking can do far more harm than good and never actually causes any change. Once you start feeling more present, you’ll take less joy in feeding the mental drama around the situation and naturally be less willing to put up with negativity it brings.

    Get some perspective.

    Taking a short (or longer) time away can break emotional ties in a big way and allow you to see things in a different way. You may also be motivated to make change as you recognize how much better you feel when you’re out of the environment where you feel stuck.

    Get healthy.

    Focus on yourself. Make your physical, mental, and emotional health your biggest priority. Once I started letting go of all the stress I’d been holding onto for so long, I was truly shocked by how great I could feel. I knew I wanted to pursue that amazing feeling.

    The key here is really to figure out what works for you to help you get unstuck. That may be chatting with one of your friends, taking a weekend out of town, or walking by the water. Then do it as much as you need to until you feel better.

    Don’t lose sight of what’s important to you. And if you’re not sure what’s important to you, make finding out a priority.

    I am still stuck, as I write this, in an unsatisfactory situation. I’m far from being able to completely avoid feeling trapped by certain situations I’ve gotten myself into, but I am committed to the personal values I’ve uncovered within myself, and I’m working hard to build the life I want. I also don’t let depressive and self-defeating thoughts take over at these times.

    Over time, you will learn to move past jobs, people, and places that don’t work for you more quickly and with ease.

    In the meantime, it always helps to remind yourself that you’re doing the best you can, as fast as you can. When you’re finally able to let go of your fears and be proactive about your decisions, you will find that life is yours again, to be shaped and lived in any way you like.

    Photo by Rob Lee

  • 6 Ways Your Mind Tries to Control Your Life

    6 Ways Your Mind Tries to Control Your Life

    Hand on Head

    “I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    Our mind is a funny thing. On the one hand, it’s awesome. But on the other, it can pulverize us more quickly and ruthlessly than anything else.

    Our mind is inherently scared. That’s its job, to be cautious—to keep us alive, to have us cross roads safely and not get eaten by a lion. But left unchecked, it can become paralyzed with fear and meaner than a cornered crocodile.

    And it’s incredibly bossy.

    The mind’s tendency to want to control is so strong and so habitual that we often don’t realize when it tries to push our inner wisdom and natural sense of ease and love aside.

    The bad news is there is no book or course that will change the nature of our mind. The good news? We don’t have to change it. The problem isn’t our mind but how we use it.

    We feel anxious, fearful, sad, or resentful when we give our mind too much power, when we follow its dopey ideas against our better judgment.

    Here’s how to spot when your mind is trying to take over.

    1. When you ignore your natural inclination.

    Your mind is smart. Not wise smart but computer smart.

    Your mind isn’t into all that woolly intuition jazz. It wants facts. It likes making calculations. Running the odds.

    Say you want to call a friend you haven’t thought of in years. But then your mind says, “Don’t be silly. He’s probably not home. He won’t remember me.”

    So you don’t call.

    But have you ever followed one of those inclinations and then looked back and seen, wow, look at everything that happened after?

    And what about decisions like what to do with your life? The logical way is listen to experts or copy what works for other people. Your mind loves this.

    This is why we ignore the little voice that says, “You should be a writer,” and choose instead to study statistics, because there are plenty of jobs for statisticians. Or we train to be a dancer because we’re “good at that.”

    Except you aren’t “other people.” And experts aren’t as expert about you as you are. And just because you’re “good at something” doesn’t mean it’s what you want to do.

    2. When you want to say no but you end up saying yes.

    Do you have trouble saying no?

    I used to. I didn’t even see it as a serious option until I was age twenty-three and so strung out from months of overdoing that I went for five nights without sleep in the middle of finals.

    It was messy.

    I thought there were rules more important than my deep desire not to do something. Rules like be a good friend, be a good student, go to lots of parties.

    It took me months to recover.

    This is, of course, a total mind thing. Your mind wants to be liked and it thinks everything is important.

    Your mind doesn’t realize that saying “no” isn’t a big deal, or even a medium deal. Or that your intuition is where wisdom lies.

    Not only is it your right to do as you genuinely desire, it benefits everyone when you do.

    I was watching An Angel at My Table recently, based on the autobiography of Janet Frame, one of New Zealand’s favorite authors. Janet spent eight years in a psychiatric hospital, had two hundred electroshock treatments, and narrowly escaped a lobotomy only to learn years later that she wasn’t unwell; she just didn’t like being very social, and if she did what she felt like doing, she was fine.

    3. When you constantly text or check your phone, email, or Facebook status.

    I love the Internet and email and reading comments on my blog. Just love it. What an awesome world we live in.

    But often I feel off balance because of it. Or rather, because of how I use it.

    And it’s not like I don’t know why I get so hooked on it. I do. I’m looking for approval.

    The need for approval goes deep. Not only is it a natural trait of the mind, it’s entrenched by our schooling system.

    But it’s dangerous. It keeps you distracted from the present moment and trains you to worry when people disapprove. Which they will.

    The modern hyper-connected world is addictive. To the mind it’s like candy.

    So what’s the answer? Give it all up?

    Personally, heck no. But setting limits and removing temptation keeps things in check.

    4. When you think, “It’s all very well for them.”

    Have you ever heard an inspirational story and thought, “It’s all very well for him, he came from a rowing family. It’s easy for him to row the Northwest Passage.”

    You see it all the time and it’s a classic case of your mind resisting change, worried you’ll want to make some leap of your own.

    Take Elizabeth Gilbert and her book, Eat, Pray, Love.

    It wasn’t a story about traveling around the world. Not really. It was about survival and courage and how one woman used the resources she had to save herself.

    Thinking, as a few did, that it’s all very well for her she could afford to travel around the world is missing the point.

    We all have the ability to get up off our metaphorical bathroom floor. And we all have our own unique set of resources to help us. When your mind is quickly dismissive and judgmental, it’s trying to stop you from seeing this.

    5. When you try and control someone else.

    Have you ever thought you knew better than someone else and tried to get them to do things your way?

    Just like dozens of times a day, right?

    Your mind is certain you have to intervene. You don’t. Your mind thinks it knows best. It doesn’t.

    Trying to control other people, in small and big matters, is not only annoying and disrespectful, it stops the flow of life. You miss out.

    I don’t know how many times I’ve experienced a profound and unexpected pleasure after I’ve ignored the urge to butt in.

    6. When you feel inadequate for being “too negative.”

    We’re inundated with messages telling us we should be grateful and positive and the like. They’re well meaning, but ultimately unhelpful.

    Because here’s the catch.

    Your mind regards these ideas as rules and is critical when you fail, as you invariably will. Because seriously, who’s positive or grateful all the time?

    A few years ago a friend told me I was a negative person.

    My response: “Okay, so how do I change that?”

    “You don’t,” he said. “You probably won’t always be this way. It’s just how you are right now.”

    Whenever you feel inadequate, this is your mind pushing you to “follow the rules.” It’s well intentioned, but misguided.

    Accepting how you are, no matter how you are, is the most loving and genuinely positive thing you can do.

    And yes, this applies to when you’re being controlling.

    It’s your mind’s nature to seek control. It’s neither a good or bad thing, it just is. Sometimes you’ll succumb, other times you won’t. And it’s all perfectly okay.

    Photo by threephin