Tiny Buddha

Tag: criticism

  • 4 Fears That Create People-Pleasers and How to Ease Them

    4 Fears That Create People-Pleasers and How to Ease Them

    “It feels good to be accepted, loved, and approved of by others, but often the membership fee to belong to that club is far too high of a price to pay.” ~Dennis Merritt Jones

    Like a lot of people, I grew up putting others’ needs and wants first. I learned early that doing things for other people and accommodating their wishes gained me attention and approval. It was only in those moments that I felt good enough and deserving of love.

    As a child, I liked nothing more than feeling indispensable and being told I was a good and nice girl. This praise was incredibly important to me, as was making others happy. My own happiness did not come into the equation; I was happy because they were happy. I felt loved, safe, and appreciated, in the short term at least.

    As I got older, my people-pleasing went into overdrive. I continually tried to gain people’s approval, make them happy, and help them whenever needed.

    I hated to see loved ones hurt or upset and felt it was my responsibility to come to their rescue and ease their problems and pain. Before long, I became so hyper-aware of others’ feelings that I lost sight of where I ended and where other people began.

    For many years, I didn’t question why I felt I didn’t have the right to say no to people’s demands. I just assumed this was how my relationships were meant to be. By the time I was in my late teens, however, I often felt lost, drained, and empty.

    After a terrifying anxiety attack, I realized I’d been unhappy for years. Trying to please everyone had made me miserable and ill, and my relationships felt draining and one-sided.

    I took a long, hard look at myself and realized I’d become a people-pleaser not simply because I wanted to be a nice person or help others, but due to a specific emotion, an emotion I’d felt since early childhood: fear.

    I realized I’d given control over my life to other people out of fear. I’d let an emotion steal my life and well-being.

    When I examined my past behavior, it was obvious I’d been compelled to people-please due to a fear of certain situations stemming from my childhood. I believe these specific fears are the reason why many of us become people-pleasers.

    Fear of Rejection and Abandonment

    Inside every people-pleaser is a little child who never felt worthy of love and was afraid of being rejected and abandoned by his or her loved ones. Being good and nice and striving for approval is a way to try to suppress the fear.

    Children know instinctively that their survival depends on other people. As a child, I felt I had to be good all the time—one misdemeanor would be enough to make my loved ones reject me.

    That’s not to say my family didn’t love me; they absolutely did. But they were often emotionally distant, worried, stressed out, and very busy with other things. My strategy was to do my best to please them so I wouldn’t feel even more rejected than I already did.

    Many of us take this fear into our adult relationships too. People-pleasers usually believe they cannot disagree, not do as their loved ones want, or displease them in some way because their family or partner will stop loving them and leave. They don’t feel emotionally secure in their relationships.

    Yet how realistic is this belief? Would our loved ones really reject and abandon us if we displeased them? Is our position in their lives so uncertain and fragile that they would do this?

    People-pleasers tend to overestimate other people’s imagined negative reactions to what they do or say. They work hard to gain and keep love and friendship, but assume those ties are easily broken.

    Realistically, it’s highly unlikely your loved ones will reject you if you don’t do what they want. They might be disappointed or upset, but ultimately they’ll be able to cope with their expectations not being met. Regardless of their response, you aren’t responsible for their emotions or actions.

    When we know this, we can feel more secure about saying no to others. And that in turn helps them to respect our boundaries.

    Fear of Conflict and Anger

    People-pleasers try to avoid conflict and others’ anger at all costs and will do anything to defuse a confrontation or argument. This usually means backing down or not disagreeing, even if the other person is in the wrong. It means saying yes when we really want to say no.

    When you fear upsetting someone and causing an argument, you don’t speak up about what’s bothering or hurting you, and you don’t reveal your true feelings. You do all you can to keep the peace, believing mistakenly that conflict of any kind is bad for relationships.

    The truth is, our peacekeeping behavior builds a barrier to intimacy. It stops our relationships from growing and maturing. As a child I feared doing something wrong and being told off and punished, and as I got older I often felt lonely in many of my relationships. I also found trying to keep the peace exhausting.

    The harmony I worked so hard to maintain was nothing more than a false harmony; there was often an undercurrent of anxiety and frustration.

    Healthy relationships aren’t without disagreements because conflict and problems are inevitable in life. But the difference is that good, balanced relationships are able to handle conflict and problems constructively and use them as a way to deepen learning and understanding.

    As a people-pleaser, I wanted to find instant solutions to problems in order to minimize any potential conflict, regain harmony, and soothe any negative feelings. I rarely took my time to find an effective solution, and as a result, the problems were never fully resolved.

    I was also afraid of my own anger and repressed it or directed it at myself, and this no doubt contributed to my anxiety disorder. I mistakenly believed nice people didn’t get angry, not realizing that we cannot change our behavior for the better or improve our well-being unless we feel and recognize all our emotions.

    Fear of Criticism and Being Disliked

    No one likes to be criticized or disliked, especially a people-pleaser. We hold in high regard other people’s good opinions of us. We crave approval and think that accommodating everyone else will somehow protect us, but that’s rarely the case.

    I used to feel a sense of betrayal whenever someone criticized me. Didn’t they know how hard I tried to please them? How hard I tried to be good and nice all the time? Their criticism was like an arrow in the heart.

    When we fear others’ lack of approval and acceptance, we rarely show them who we really are and often live a life that does not feel authentic. We hide ourselves behind a mask of niceness and find it near impossible to separate our self-worth from our actions.

    Fearing others’ bad opinions of you makes you feel you cannot show you are fallible and flawed—basically, a normal human being.

    People-pleasers judge themselves very harshly and often set themselves unrealistic expectations. They feel they need to be perfect in order to be accepted or loved. They feel they cannot make mistakes or risk upsetting or disappointing people.

    If you don’t voice your opinions or needs, people will assume you’re happy to go along with what they want. They’ll also assume you’ll accept disrespectful behavior. Like many people-pleasers, I became an easy target for others’ dissatisfaction and nastiness.

    When we hand so much control over to other people, their criticism can be devastating, but this is only because we vastly overestimate the importance of what they think.

    In time, I realized that someone’s opinion of me is none of my business, and it’s impossible to control their thoughts about me, no matter what I do. It seemed crazy to let their opinions dictate how I lived my life because the only person I needed to seek approval from was myself.

    Fear of Losing Control and Not Being Needed

    People-pleasers need to be needed. It’s their automatic response to help others and try to make others happy, and they very often take other people’s actions, behavior, and emotions personally, believing they’re responsible for making others feel better.

    I grew up in an environment that was often anxious. Many of my loved ones did not handle their anxiety very well, due to their own upbringing. I became a confidante at a young age, before I had the maturity to handle certain problems or others’ anxiety. It was simply too burdensome for my young shoulders, but it didn’t stop me from trying to make things better.

    Because my sense of self was closely tied to how other people felt, I couldn’t bear to see loved ones hurting, and so I tried my hardest to ease any upset. Each time I succeeded, I felt needed and in control, but when I failed, I felt like I had let everyone down.

    I would become anxious if I couldn’t soothe or help someone else. I readily soaked up their negative emotions because I’d become so attuned to how they felt, placing their emotional well-being before my own. Because people-pleasers believe it’s their job to make others happy, they feel they need to control others’ anxiety and pain.

    But it’s not our role to make others happy or their lives problem-free; that’s their job. The sky won’t fall in if you cannot help someone. You can still be there for the people you love and empathize with them, but you don’t need to rush in and rescue them or lose yourself in their business. You don’t have to make their problems your own; you can instead trust them to solve their own issues.

    When I stopped hyper-focusing on other people, I saw that the only thing I needed to control was my half of my relationships. There’s no need to try to control others’ reactions because I’m not responsible for their thoughts or emotions.

    Many of our interactions with people don’t need to have the sort of emotional judgments people-pleasers attach to them. It’s okay to say no and not feel guilty. You aren’t betraying someone if you don’t do what they want or disagree with them. Just because someone doesn’t like you doesn’t mean you’re unlikeable. Just because you sometimes want to focus on yourself, it doesn’t mean you’re selfish.

    You gain this self-empowerment by easing the fear that’s caused your people-pleasing. While much of the fear comes from your childhood, as an adult you now have control over changing aspects of your behavior that don’t serve you.

    This doesn’t involve any self-blame, nor is it about blaming our loved ones. We’re all the products of our upbringing, and we all have scars. Most people try to do the best they can with what they have and know. By changing our behavior, we can often encourage positive change in others too.

    People-pleasing is always linked to self-worth. When you create a strong sense of self, you realize that you aren’t your past, your thoughts, or your emotions. You know your self-worth isn’t linked to another person.

    How to Ease the Fear

    Instead of looking for validation from other people and the outside world, we need to search inward. In order to ease our fear, it’s important to face it, no matter how painful it feels. Understanding our fear helps us to move forward.

    Because our people-pleasing and our fears usually stem from childhood, we need to revisit our child selves. Try this exercise:

    Find somewhere quiet to sit and relax. Close your eyes and take slow, deep, even breaths, and imagine in your mind a time when you felt rejected as a child. Replay the events as you remember them and feel the feelings you experienced at that time.

    Then imagine your present self holding your child self’s hand as they go through that moment of feeling rejected. Tell your child self how much you love them and care for them, and that there’s nothing to fear. Each time your younger self feels afraid or rejected, soothe them and let them know they’re in a safe place.

    Think about what you’d like to say to your child self and what advice you’d like to give them, knowing what you know now. You are now able to protect, support, and encourage your child self. Think about how you want to feel and be treated rather than focus on any negativity.

    When I did this exercise, I told my child self that she was worthy, valuable, and precious. I advised her that what she wanted and needed was valid and important, and she had the right to speak up and say no.

    I told her she would never be rejected because she had my unconditional love and support, and she didn’t need to strive for love from anyone because she was already lovable. I encouraged her to think about her dreams and goals and not stifle them because of others’ opinions. Most of all, I kept repeating that I loved her.

    When you feel ready to end the exercise, bring yourself back to the present moment and think about what the exercise has taught you. Do you understand your child self more and your reasons for people-pleasing? Do you think about those past events in a different way?

    You can do the exercise as many times as you wish. It gives you the time to focus on how you feel about past experiences, and as a result, it also helps you come to terms with what happened and to heal.

    When I stopped basing my identity on my relationships and the past, I stopped hiding myself behind people-pleasing behavior. I started to set boundaries, and as my self-love, self-acceptance, and self-respect grew, my relationships improved too. People soon adapted to my new behavior because I showed them how I wanted to be treated—with respect and consideration.

    Self-love is essential. It isn’t selfish to think about what you want and need. It isn’t selfish to make decisions about your life based on what you want and need rather than to merely please others.

    You owe it to yourself to put your people-pleasing ways behind you. You owe it to yourself to take care of yourself first, because that is the only real way you can truly help other people.

  • 3 Important Things to Remember When People Are Mean

    3 Important Things to Remember When People Are Mean

    “Be kind. Be thoughtful. Be genuine. But most of all, be thankful.” ~Unknown

    Nobody is spared from being on the receiving end of a mean comment at some point or another. And it’s been said time and time again that allowing a mean person to get under your skin only serves to let them control you. The wiser thing to do is recognize that their comment about you is uninformed and get on with your day.

    Still, it’s far easier to know that wisdom than it is to truly feel and live it.

    I remember one instance in particular: A coworker (who I had never been fond of) had recently returned from an extended leave and was seeing me for the first time in several months. Upon encountering me in the hallway, she looked me up and down and said, “You’ve… been eating well.”

    I was so stung that I couldn’t respond. I wanted to respond defensively. Later, I wished I had responded rudely. Every time I thought about it, a new wave of sassy retorts I should have made populated my brain, and I found my jaw tensing and my fists clenching. I even wondered if it was too late to complain to HR. How dare she say something so rude and unprofessional to me?

    I was fully aware that weight is an emotionally fraught subject in my world, as it is for many people. My weight often fluctuated dramatically based on the other circumstances of my life, and I had been through the gamut of not-so-healthy dieting and short-lived attempts at fitness that many of us know all too well.

    Therefore, I was also fully aware that her comment only stung so hard because of my personal journey with weight; that she didn’t know about that journey; that she may belong to a culture or community in which “eating well” is not necessarily offensive; and that if she had judged me on some other aspect, I very possibly could have rolled my eyes and banked this as additional confirmation that yes, she is someone I don’t like.

    I was aware of all this, and yet my blood still boiled at the very thought of her.

    I decided that because this wasn’t the first time a mean comment had had this great of an effect on me, and it wouldn’t be the last, maybe I could compile some mental pointers to help me through these moments, if only for my own sanity. Here is what I came up with:

    1. Never do anything when your blood is boiling.

    Though I was speechless at first, the urge to make a mean comment back at her (if even a few days later) was all-consuming and felt perfectly justified. After all, I’m only human. Yet I’m ultimately glad I kept my cool.

    First off, being mean can majorly backfire—what if she had complained to our supervisor or decided to make my work environment unbearable in retaliation? And secondly, if I decided to reverse our roles, I would appear no better than her—the very person whose actions I scorned.

    But more importantly, I know that while emotions are important and deserve to be honored to their fullest extent, in the heat of the moment, they don’t represent our true nature and are not reliable signals. Instead, they are best expressed when paired with wisdom, which can often only be gleaned with some distance and pause.

    When I gave myself that pause and thought about it, I realized I don’t really want to be the kind of person who combats meanness by going even lower—I know I don’t believe in that. And I also don’t believe in digging deeper holes by starting an unprofessional feud.

    What I do believe is that my outer actions should align with my inner values. This means honoring my emotions with fairness and self-compassion while still maintaining external grace.

    This is really hard—it requires a lot of practice and patience.

    To start, I could process my experience of being hurt through a framework of self-love rather than a framework of spite. This could mean discussing my hurt feelings with a friend or mentor, writing about them, releasing the tension through physical activity or breathwork, or even reminding myself of all my positive qualities and assets that have the power to render one unimportant criticism negligible.

    2. Being civil doesn’t mean I have to like everyone.

    I didn’t want my silence to indicate that I was okay with, or passive to, being treated rudely. But in the professional space, where my focus is supposed to be on getting work done, civility enabled me to meet my goals and contribute to a well-functioning team. There was no reason why my relationship with this coworker had to take on any further form.

    Being civil did not translate to spending more time with her than required, engaging in conversation unrelated to work, inquiring about her life and sharing details about mine, talking to her at staff events, out of the office, or even in the parking lot; those are things I have the freedom to do with people I like. I appreciate the people in my life who bring me personal satisfaction and make me feel valuable, and I recognize that it’s a gift to find and spend time with these people.

    On the flip side, it is totally normal and possible to coexist with people who don’t make us feel fantastic and who we don’t choose to engage with, while still maintaining polite conduct for the sake of the task, event, or other item du jour.

    If a coworker’s behavior crossed into bullying or harassment, I know of formal steps I could take to advocate for myself. However, there is significant gray territory that is often inhabited by the people we simply don’t like—people whose actions we don’t appreciate, who we wouldn’t willingly group ourselves with.

    I gained a lot of relief when I understood that I have the skill and self-control to work on a professional task with someone in this category, but at the same time, I am under no obligation to welcome their presence and energy into other parts of my life.

    It was liberating and empowering to realize that treating everyone with basic civility is the wiser choice, only up until a certain point, and after that point, I have control over who I bring into closer orbit and how.

    3. You learn as much from the people you don’t want to be like as you do from the people you do want to be like.

    It’s joyful to look back and remember an inspirational teacher, friend, coach, or even a kind stranger who touched us with their positive qualities and thus impacted our personal trajectory. On the contrary, it’s painful to look back and remember people who were mean, inconsiderate, cruel, or any one of the innumerable undesirable qualities we inevitably come across. However, those people inevitably impacted our personal trajectory in much the same way.

    A great teacher of mine once said that gratitude does not mean that you are okay with everything; rather, it means that you are grateful for everything you’ve been taught. In other words, we can be grateful for each seemingly negative experience because it helped us confirm that we want something different.

    I see the potential for gratitude toward everybody who brings me into awareness of how I want to live and how I want to treat others, and that list includes coworkers making unprofessional digs.

    Nobody is perfect; just like nobody is spared from receiving a mean comment, at other times, nobody is spared from accidentally (or intentionally) making one.

    So, the next time it entered my mind to make a not-so-kind or not-so-necessary comment, I could remember what I learned from this experience and reconsider my actions.

    This reconsideration and ability to take a different course would be a tiny step toward cultivating the kinder, more considerate world that I want. And for that ability, I owe gratitude to my coworker and to everyone else who made me feel hurt or stung. They have brought me to the awareness that I desire a different action.

    Our interactions with others are unpredictable, and we never know when somebody is going to catch us off guard with a comment or action that stings or angers us. As a result, developing the ability to recognize, ingrain, and respond with some of the ideas I outlined, rather than with our initial experience of shock and raw emotion, is an arduous and, at times, unsatisfying process.

    But this dissatisfaction is often limited to the short term and fades when we do the hard work toward processing emotions. In the long term, doing the harder thing usually aligns with the more satisfying course of action and also aligns with our deeper values and beliefs on how life should be lived.

  • 5 Ways to Heal from a Highly Critical, Controlling Parent

    5 Ways to Heal from a Highly Critical, Controlling Parent

    “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise Hay

    When I was growing up, it felt like nothing was good enough for my dad. And all I longed for was his acceptance and love.

    He had this temper that would blow up, and he’d blame me for how he felt. He would outright tell me his behavior was my fault. That if I’d behaved better, he wouldn’t have had an outburst.

    When he told me I wasn’t enough or worthy, I believed him. I was constantly walking on eggshells around him, trying to not annoy him, as his angry words would really hurt.

    The confusing thing about my dad was that he wasn’t like this all the time. Sometimes he was loving, affectionate, and warm, and then in a moment he would switch to cold, controlling, and cruel.

    As a child, I believed to my core that I was the problem. The only way I thought I could keep myself safe was to try and please him and be the perfect daughter.

    I became obsessed with achievement. It started first with my grades and school, and then it was getting the job he wanted me to have. Because sometimes an achievement would get me a crumb of love from him. I would push myself as a child, forsaking rest and hydration at times, so he would see how hard I’d worked.

    But it was never enough for him. He would lose his temper on the one day that I was taking a break, telling me that I would never amount to anything.

    He would even tell other people how awful his family was when he was drunk. It was beyond humiliating.

    Now, at forty-one, these memories with my dad are in the past, but they still haunt me. He has since passed—he took his life fifteen years ago. Turns out my dad wasn’t okay and was struggling with the impact of his own childhood trauma.

    But rather than seeking help, he took it out on his family and himself through addiction and, ultimately, his suicide.

    His controlling, critical voice still lives in my subconscious mind. It’s his voice that tells me to work harder or that I am not good enough, or questions, “Who do you think you are?”

    Even though I consciously know now, as a trauma transformation coach, that his behavior was due to his pain and his words were not the truth, the younger parts of me still believe him. Because those younger parts still feel blamed, shamed, and not enough.

    After his passing, I found myself in relationships where others would criticize, control, and deny my reality, and found myself powerless again, just as I’d felt as a little girl.

    But by investing in various safe spaces, like support groups, therapy, and coaching, I have been able to step away from these relationships or maintain boundaries so that my younger self is no longer triggered by the pain of the past. This has created space for kinder, more loving relationships to come in.

    However, more recently I noticed that even though I’d stepped away from toxic relationships, I had become him to myself. I would speak to myself critically and put myself down. Nothing was good enough, and I would push myself to achieve at any cost, going through cycles of overworking and burnout.

    I would push myself to have the ‘perfect body’ with extreme exercise and diet. But then my inner rebel would push back and sabotage the diet and my health through emotional eating.

    Constantly pushing myself to be better, I realized, unconsciously, I was still chasing his love. His acceptance even though he wasn’t here.

    I had become the controlling critical parent to myself. It was time for me to become the parent I’d longed for and not the parent I’d had.

    Here are the five practices that are helping me to heal from my controlling, critical parent—practices that could help you too.

    1. I ask myself: Am I being kind to myself?

    I have created a pattern interrupter by asking myself, at least three times a day, if I am being kind to myself and, if not, how I can be. I notice my behaviors and inner dialogue and explore how I can shift into kindness.

    For example, if I don’t sleep well, is it kind to push myself with a cardio workout and long day of work, or would it be better to go for a walk in nature and take a slower pace?

    Or, if I am speaking to myself without self-compassion, is there a more loving way to communicate with myself rather than being nasty?

    Each day I make a conscious choice to step into that kind energy. I treat myself how I wish he had treated me.

    2. I celebrate myself weekly.

    Each Sunday, I reflect on what I am proud of and celebrate myself, even if I’ve done something small, like being consistently kind to myself. I become the cheerleading parent I longed for, and this builds self-esteem.

    3. I use affirmations.

    I affirm throughout the day that I am safe and enough. That I don’t have to prove my worth or people-please. I can just be me. This helps soothe the critical voice that goes into past fear stories.

    I use affirmations to say I love and care for myself. That I am my biggest priority.

    4. I listen to my body and choose to take care of it.

    Instead of pushing myself physically, I ask myself: How should I nourish myself? Or how should I move my body? What shouldn’t I put into it out of love? I check in with myself if I need rest or if a certain relationship or situation is causing me physical and mental stress. I speak kindly about my body rather than shaming it for not being enough.

    5. I reparent the parts of me that are in pain from the past.

    My dad will always be part of my story. I can’t change the past, but I can take care of the different parts of me that were hurt. I can show those parts kindness and love through reparenting and inner-child work.

    My favorite practice is going back in time to visit my younger self. I give her a hug, ask her how she feels, and then do whatever I can to fulfill her needs. I soothe the hurting parts of her rather than getting her to perform and achieve.

    Some days my old behaviors come out, but I use the question “Am I being kind to myself?” to get myself back on track. I also practice self-compassion and forgiveness, as I would never say the things I have said to myself to others.

    —

    If you can relate to what I wrote because you had a similar parent, step into being the parent you wished for yourself. Because a happy, loved, affirmed child is better able to live a happy, healthy life than a bullied child that hates herself. Give yourself the gift of love and kindness and watch your story transform.

  • If You’re Feeling Judged: One Thing You Need to Understand

    If You’re Feeling Judged: One Thing You Need to Understand

    “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” ~Albert Einstein

    Most of us feel judged at times. We might feel judged for the way we look, the things we do (or don’t do), the things we say (and the way we say them), or for the things we believe.

    We might respond to feeling judged by retreating inside ourselves, hiding, and silencing our voice, or we might react in defense or retaliation as if we’re being attacked.

    It doesn’t feel good to feel judged. It can hurt, make us feel like we’re not good enough, and drain our energy.

    But if we want to be free of the heavy burden of feeling judged, there’s something very important we need to understand.

    Feeling judged and being judged are not the same thing!

    This is such an important distinction. And understanding it can make the difference between feeling insecure or stable.

    It’s the difference between hiding and shining.

    Feeling Judged vs. Being Judged

    When we feel judged, it’s something we experience inside ourselves.

    It’s a feeling, not necessarily a fact.

    It’s important to understand that how we feel and react to others is up to us. It’s a result of our conditioning, traumas, fears, emotions, insecurities, attitudes, and the things we believe (whether they’re actually true or not), but it’s ours.

    It may be triggered by what someone says, but the feeling is still ours.

    Being judged is something else. It’s something people outside of us do. Whether someone passes judgment on us through their words, actions, a certain look, or a sneering sound under their breath, it’s an external thing… and we can react to it, or not.

    I’m not suggesting it’s easy to not react or take it personally, but understanding the distinction is important.

    Taking Things Personally

    If someone questions something we’ve said or done or why we believe something, we might take it personally and feel like that person is judging us.

    Have you ever felt judged because someone asked you a question?

    Be honest!

    We might act defensively or angrily when someone questions something we believe, but that person may genuinely want to understand us better.

    If we’re insecure about who we are, or if our sense of self is deeply attached to our beliefs, then any question can feel like an attack or judgment.

    But that doesn’t mean it was a judgment.

    I’m a very curious person. I’ve always been curious to understand myself, my mind and emotions. I know this comes through self-inquiry—meaning to question myself and my beliefs—and sometimes that is uncomfortable.

    But it’s more than just understanding myself, it’s a curiosity to understand the human experience. This also means understanding others. This curiosity to understand is also the desire to connect on a deep, authentic level.

    As Thich Nhat Hanh said: “Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.”

    Because of who I am and what I do, I often ask people questions about who they are and why they believe what they believe.

    Most of the time I’ve found people are quite open with me; however, occasionally people take my questions personally. Now, I know I had no sense of judgment in my questions, only my curiosity to understand and connect, yet there are times when the people I’m talking to become defensive.

    Even though I understand, when this happens, I can sometimes still feel a sense of being judged. Judged for something I didn’t do. But this is my reaction. I perceive their reaction as a judgment for my perceived judgment.

    I know, it sounds a little complicated, but that’s what happens sometimes. If I catch myself and feel what’s happening inside, I’m able to move through it and let it go.

    But it starts with recognizing and being mindful of my reaction.

    We Have a Choice

    In times when we feel judged, we can react, defend, and justify our emotions by trying to blame someone else, or we can use it as an opportunity to be curious about ourselves—to understand so we can learn and grow.

    Choosing to grow does not mean we don’t feel our emotions. We do. We feel them, and it can be uncomfortable at times. But choosing to grow means we feel our emotions consciously and recognize our reactions so we can take responsibility for them. Because we understand our emotions and reactions are ours.

    As long as we try to blame others for how we feel, we will always be the victim, because it will feel like we don’t have a choice.

    By learning to own our emotions by being present with them, we have the power to transform our relationship to them. We can then learn to navigate the landscapes of our mind.

    Let Go by Being Curious

    If you’re feeling judged—assuming someone is thinking badly of you and feeling bad about yourself in response—engage your curiosity.

    Follow your emotions mindfully. Just feel them. Be present with them (to the degree that you are able). Let them take you deeper into yourself.

    Ask yourself:

    Why do I feel judged?

    What beliefs am I holding onto?

    What do I not want to see about myself?

    What do I not want to admit?

    Am I judging myself? If so, for what?

    Why does it matter what someone else thinks?

    Don’t underestimate the power of our curiosity. It’s a superpower!

    It really can shift us from a closed and reactive state of mind into an open and receptive state of mind. Open and receptive is the place where we can break our self-imposed limits, connect to our heart, and grow.

    It’s also the place where understanding becomes love. Both within ourselves and within our relationships and interactions. It’s the place where we can heal our collective separation and bring back a sense of unity.

    Curiosity is the magic that can facilitate it.

    Journaling is a great assistant to curiosity. It helps us connect more deeply to what’s happening inside us. Any time you feel judged, take some time to sit quietly and reflect on your emotions, thoughts, and feelings. Writing them down can help to make it more tangible.

    Do this enough and you’ll start to see familiar patterns emerging.

    Find Your Strength

    It’s likely that people will judge you at some point. But remember, that doesn’t mean you have to take it personally or feel bad about yourself.

    Whenever you’re feeling judged, whether someone else is judging you or not, remember, it’s just a feeling. Use these times as opportunities to deconstruct your limits and insecurities.

    By doing this you connect with your true self and allow the strength of your heart to emerge.

    And the world needs your heart to shine!

  • Don’t Take Unfair Criticism to Heart

    Don’t Take Unfair Criticism to Heart

  • 10 Highly Sensitive People Share What Helps Them Take the Sting Out of Criticism

    10 Highly Sensitive People Share What Helps Them Take the Sting Out of Criticism

    Criticism can be especially hard for highly sensitive people because we try so hard and we care so much. It’s really fascinating how much it can affect HSPs in particular.

    I want to share that because it normalizes our experience, to know we’re not alone in how we experience things. I certainly have developed some tools to help with criticism but can still be impacted at times.

    On an anonymous survey I posted, someone wrote that they find my voice so shrill that they could not stand listening to me. I felt the sting.

    But it’s important to realize criticisms are opinions that vary from person to person, and therefore, we have to be careful about what we take in and what we believe. To provide an example of that, many others have shared my voice is soothing, calm, and nurturing. Notice how opposite those opinions are?

    So the next time you receive criticism, I want you to remember this example and know that criticism has nothing to do with us personally and usually comes from a painful place inside another. People are going to have many different types of opinions. What’s important is that we don’t soak them in.

    It’s helped a lot to do my own personal growth work and build my self-esteem. When my self-esteem was low, criticisms knocked me down hard, and for a long time. When I had no personal value, I believed the criticism.

    It took time to build up my sense of self, and it will take time to build yours if that’s an issue for you too.

    When you feel the sting, acknowledge it and give yourself some compassion. Remind yourself of your value and your intentions. Also, focus on some positives about you so that negativity bias of the brain doesn’t take over. Remember, it takes eight positives to neutralize one negative.

    Not everyone is going to like us, and that’s okay. What’s important is that we learn to love and support our sensitive hearts and know our intentions come from good places.

    I don’t think anyone is completely immune to the impacts of criticism. Case in point, here’s what some HSPs in my Sensitive Empowerment Community commented after reading some of my thoughts on criticism:

    1. The power of self-compassion

    “I remember when I would be hurt when I was a kid my mom would tell me to ‘get over it.’ I remember that being invalidating, unhelpful, and actually hurt me more. I think it would be powerful to teach our sensitive children the art of self-compassion. Can you imagine a whole generation of sensitive children raised with self-compassion? I have found that skill to be one of the best things that I’ve developed. It helps me with everything now. I think that it’s probably a tool that we can constantly sharpen.”

    2. The importance of self-care

    “Criticism is still extremely hard on me to the point where it will put me out of commission for a minute (or days even). I’m working on not letting others’ criticism flatten me. I just know, when my rest and my health are in order, it’s much easier to shake it off. When I feel criticized, I’m starting to immediately make a list of people who support me and think differently than people who criticize me and speak unkindly.”

    3. It’s more about them than us

    “I find criticism extremely difficult. For me, there is a family wound around criticism, so I can have a deep, painful reaction. Self-compassion has really helped me work through those reactions. I heard something once that often comes to my mind these days—what someone says about us tells us more about them and how they see the world than it is information about us. I find this really helpful because I used to take every single thing someone said about me as truth, but seeing that people are seeing us through the lens of all their wounds and experiences takes the sting away a bit.”

    4. Perfectionism vs. our innate drive for excellence

    “What you said resonated so much with me (and a big yes to the knife in the heart analogy!)— especially that the desire to avoid criticism is what has caused or contributed to your perfectionism. I feel exactly the same way. Now I work really hard on trying to figure out when something is just my innate drive for excellence or when it’s more a perfectionism driven by fear/avoidance.”

    5. How it helps to build our self-esteem

    “I used to hold onto criticism much more when I was younger, and it hurt terribly. Working on myself and building up my self-esteem was integral to healing. I used to work with a boss who was critical of everything I did, and I dreaded going to work every day. One day I decided to begin therapy, and soon I built up enough energies to apply to graduate school. Once I got in, I put n my two-weeks notice. Going back to school was an investment in myself.”

    6. Other people’s opinions are none of our business

    “This is still something I’m working on for myself, although I’ve had huge growth in this area. I once read somewhere or heard someone say that ‘what other people think of you is none of your business,’ and I try to remember that if I get that sting.”

    7. People who criticize often lack courage

    “Criticism can indeed be hurtful. It can be good to remember that people who criticize are often either unaware of how much work you put into doing that which they are criticizing, or they are taking out their own frustration on you. For many people, it’s more ‘comfortable’ to criticize others who have the courage to do something than to actually do something themselves.”

    8. Criticism isn’t always true

    “I’ve come a long way working with the deep sting of criticism and feeling the knife in my heart. There are moments I still feel the deep sting, but it doesn’t ‘take me out’ in the way it used to. Often, I ask myself ‘is this really true what they said?’ That helps me to come back to myself, along with breathing. I am soothed when I see the criticism is simply not about me! A work in progress going forward.”

    9. Hurt people hurt people

    “Criticism is so hard, especially because everybody wants to be accepted and respected for who they are, and the judgments of others can be hard to bear. Depending on our mindset and self-acceptance/self-confidence, it can make us see ourselves as less than if we do not have the right tools in place. I always try to remember the simple truth that ‘hurt people hurt people.’”

    10. When criticism gets to you, it’s because you care

    “I found it quite emotional reading all the posts and having my intense and long-lasting reaction to criticism normalized. I have struggled with this for a long time. I had a similar thing to you, Julie, with a comment in a survey. It was a really mean, unthoughtful commentf about a presentation I gave, and coming from someone well respected in my field of work, it was hard to take and still gets to me years later. It is helping so much to reframe it as an issue they have rather than a failing of mine! It’s a very empowering feeling. I am also trying to celebrate the fact I find criticism hard knowing that it’s because I care so deeply about doing things well and with care.”

    What about you? What helps you take the sting off criticism?

    **Some of the community comments have been edited for clarity and grammar.

  • I Cheated on Him with My Higher Self (and We’re Still Going Strong)

    I Cheated on Him with My Higher Self (and We’re Still Going Strong)

    “It’s okay to let go of those who couldn’t love you. Those who didn’t know how to. Those who failed to even try. It’s okay to outgrow them, because that means you filled the empty space in you with self-love instead. You’re outgrowing them because you’re growing into you. And that’s more than okay, that’s something to celebrate.” ~Angelica Moone

    “How could you do this to me? It’s obvious you’re with someone else.”

    That was the third and final message I received from my partner of nearly three years, several weeks after we had finally decided to break up. I say “we” because initially it seemed that the decision was mutual, although it would later be revealed that it was me who wanted out.

    He was right, by the way. I had left him for someone else.

    No, not the lover that he had conjured up for me in his own mind. In fact, what had pulled me away was much more powerful and seductive than that. I had cheated on him with my higher self. And she had been trying to win me over for quite some time.

    My higher self: AKA my intuition, AKA my inner badass that will never be ignored. Yep, she’s the one I had left him for.

    Much like when I was nearing the end of my marriage, she had started off with a gentle nudge, a tap on the shoulder every now and again. I’ve noticed throughout my life that if I don’t stop what I’m doing, these attempts to get my attention will become more consistent, until what was once a whisper finally becomes a roar.

    Such was the case three years ago when she decided that I should shave my head. At that point, I had invested a lot of money turning my naturally dark brown hair into a platinum blond mane. This was before the pandemic, when I couldn’t imagine anything coming between me and my monthly visits to the salon.

    As with most suggestions that come from my higher self, my ego was not impressed.

    If the two of them had been sitting across from one another, the conversation would have gone something like . .

    “You want to do whaaaat??”

    “Shave it.”

    “Excuse me?”

    “Take it all off.”

    “All of it?”

    “All. Of. It.”

    So I attempted a compromise by shaving a bit off the side. I knew I was kidding myself when I thought that would be the end, but at least it was a start. Over the course of the next twelve months, I felt equal parts admiration and jealousy whenever I caught a glimpse of someone with a shaved head. This peculiar mix was familiar to me, and it signaled what was destined to happen next.

    When I had finally made the decision, it was a random Tuesday morning, and it made absolutely no sense to my logical mind. Unlike the ego that thrives on being booked and busy, the higher self loves white space. When we give ourselves the opportunity to tune out and tune in, our deepest desires have a funny way of being revealed.

    That fateful day I had decided to take an extra long walk with my dog through one of the parks here in Barcelona. There’s nothing like nature, movement, and a bit of solitude to help you cut through the noise and get to the heart of what you really want. Instead of returning to my apartment, we headed to the salon.

    As I took a seat at my hairdresser’s station and looked at myself in the mirror, my ego had a full-blown tantrum while my higher self popped open the proverbial champagne.

    In those moments of feeling the clippers pass over my scalp, watching my shoulder-length hair fall to the floor, I finally felt free. Whether it’s our hair, our jobs, or a relationship we’ve long outgrown, the higher self seeks our liberation, no matter what the cost.

    That day when I told my then partner what I had done, the conversation didn’t go as I had hoped but exactly like I had imagined.

    “You’re bald.”

    While this was indeed a fact, the tone made it feel like a personal attack. He asked me why someone so beautiful would intentionally make herself so ugly. For once in my life, being “pretty” hadn’t been the deciding factor. I wasn’t so concerned with how I wanted to look but rather how I wanted to feel. As I’ve come to learn since, life really changes when this perspective starts to shift.

    If his thoughts and feelings were any indication, I was no longer much to look at when it came to the male gaze. Ironically, all he could see was “a weirdo” while the person I saw with my own eyes was a queen. 

    While my ex couldn’t get past my shaved head, I couldn’t get over the luminosity and the brilliance that could fully shine through. As he continued to fixate on what I had lost, I knew the truth of what I had gained: freedom, courage, and beauty on my own terms.

    Perhaps I always knew that he would leave me over a haircut. No one likes to think that the future of their relationship comes down to the length of their hair, but he had told me from the beginning that shaving my head was the one thing I should never do. Funny the rules we’ll follow in an attempt to belong to other people while we strategically abandon ourselves.

    I had spent nearly four decades of my life searching for safety in the fulfillment of everyone’s expectations. I used to be an expert at figuring out what they wanted and becoming exactly that. Until one cold, cloudy morning in February 2021, when I decided I was done. Done with the pretending. Done with the pleasing. Done with the denial of what I knew to be true.

    I was finally ready for a different kind of love. And this time it was all my own.

    You could say that I cheated on my ex with my higher self, or maybe she was the one I was meant for all along. Either way, I’ve chosen to be faithful to my inner wisdom. And from what I can tell, we’re still going strong.

  • Freedom Is the Space Between Each Judgmental or Righteous Thought

    Freedom Is the Space Between Each Judgmental or Righteous Thought

    “It is inner stillness that will save and transform the world.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    Life is hard. Impenetrable at times. How can we use our spirituality to navigate through the density of life?

    That question inspired this piece of writing. And my navigation tool is almost effortless; I feel compelled to share it.

    When my mind is churning and burning with thoughts and fears and worries, I take myself off to a quiet place, get still, and watch my mind. I wait for the tiny gap between each thought. Bingo.

    That space, that little gap, is freedom in its truest, purest form. It is the birthplace of peace. And every time I enter that space, I am no longer at war with anything. Despite what madness may surround me, that place always remains untouched. It is like an infinite reservoir of strength and love—one that feels like, well, freedom.

    How I came to find that reservoir is a long and nuanced story (that’s why I wrote a whole book about it), but I’ll try and give you the nutshell version.

    Essentially, to even find it, I had to first get to the point where I was so disillusioned—with my cancer, with people, with the system, with the greed, with the house chores, with the destruction of the planet, with war, and with life full stop.

    Little did I know it then, but that disillusionment was freedom’s gateway.

    For so long, I looked to ‘the other’ as the source of my disillusionment.

    Sometimes ‘the other’ was a person, sometimes it was a situation—my cancer, the pandemic, the person who I believed had wronged me, the political party; anything or anyone that caused a disturbance to my happiness fell into this bucket.

    Of course, it felt good to blame cancer, that person, or the pandemic for my woes, at least on the surface. Yet the blaming was also the root of my suffering. The biggest wars I’ve had in my own life were when I was trying to get ‘the other’ to yield / change / admit they have it wrong so I could live in peace.

    But the true source of my disillusionment was never with them. When I stopped waiting for the situation to change and shifted my attention to my mind, I observed something that floored me at first: my own righteousness.

    Staring back in the mirror were my tendencies to be correct, envy, judge, complain, and win. That mirror revealed one simple truth: I was adding to the war I desperately wanted to end. I had arrived at the place where I was simply fed up—no longer fed up with life but rather fed up with the suffering caused by my very own mind.

    The challenges and hindrances of life may have taken you to a similar point—the point where you’ve had enough. Before freedom is even possible, this stage is necessary, essential even.

    The world is unsatisfying. So, now what? This is freedom’s front door. It is the opening to the very core of your being. When we have had enough of looking outside for contentment, only then do we look inward. This is where the rubber meets the road.

    But we have to go deeper—beyond the mind, beyond our thoughts about what is right vs. wrong, left vs. right—to our essential oneness.

    And, as a collective, I think we get there by asking ourselves one simple question: Do I want peace or war?

    If it is peace, we must start with the peace in our minds. In all the frenzy, it is possible to simply stop and enter into the space between every thought. Rest there for a few scared moments. Feel the ease wash over every cell of our being. Come home to that again and again. Life doesn’t need to be any different to enter that space.

    That space is freedom. And true freedom is not bound in any person or situation. Freedom is what sits underneath the war. It is found in the tiny gap between every righteous and non-righteous thought; it occurs through stillness.

    From this stillness, I’ve learned (yes, the hard way) that we can speak our truth, but now we speak it without the need to control any outcome.

    For example, rather than trying to force my husband to read a spiritual book instead of opting for Netflix—as if I know what’s right and best for him—I can respect him for where he is at in his inner journey. I still act. I still suggest books. But my happiness is not dependent on his choice.

    Instead of being angry at a friend who hurt me, I can step out of my righteousness and cultivate empathy for where she is at in her life. I still reach out. I still attempt resolution. But my peace is not dependent on her response.

    I throw my seeds of truth, dug up from the depths of my heart, out into my family and the world. Sometimes they land in the fertile soil of ‘the other,’ and sometimes they don’t. So be it. It is action without criticism, judgment, blame or control—without the war. I had found a place within where I could look at ‘the other’ and feel compassion and even love instead of anger and annoyance.

    Eckhart Tolle says, “It is inner stillness that will save and transform the world.”

    I couldn’t agree more. Because from that place, from the silent stillness within, war is not escalated but instead averted.

    So, to anyone feeling disenchanted, I want to honor you and say one thing: The freedom your soul is aching for is within arm’s reach. It is as close as your breath, as close as the space between each of your thoughts.

  • My Deepest, Darkest Secret: Why I Never Felt Good Enough

    My Deepest, Darkest Secret: Why I Never Felt Good Enough

    “Loving ourselves through the process of owning our story is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” ~Brené Brown

    Lunge, turn, reverse, jump, land and rebound, push, pull, cut, run, double turn, fling, pause…

    Not good enough! Smooth the transitions, make it cleaner, find more ease!

    Heart pounds, ragged breath, muscles burn…

    You need more weight on the lunge and point your damn feet when you jump. Do it again.

    Repeat. Lunge, turn, reverse, jump, land and rebound, push, pull, cut, run, double turn, fling, pause…

    What is your problem? Why is it so sloppy? Clean it up! Do it again.

    Not good enough, do it again carved a deep groove into my brain, branding it like a wild bull by a hot iron. Not good enough. My mind, not my teacher, was brutalizing me, taunting me, teaching me “discipline” to improve my dancing.

    I improved—enough to become a professional dancer—but I couldn’t internalize or recognize any of my accomplishments. 

    Even after being asked to join a dance company before I graduated college, I continued to struggle with “not being good enough.” Despite the many compliments I received for my performance and choreography, I brushed them away thinking that they were lying to me, just placating me with false praise.

    I faltered in my performance, felt paralyzed by fear that would not always fade away once the performance began, distrusted my ability to remember the choreography, always fought the anxiety of being in front of an audience, and cried oceans of tears because I could never reach the bar I had set for myself. My confidence and faith in my ability to perform to the level that I wanted to plummeted.

    I loved dancing so much. I loved moving my body through space, the creative process, and working with a group of talented dancers to create shows. I loved rehearsals because I felt relaxed and at ease, like I could perform with the freedom that I couldn’t feel onstage. I loved refining and smoothing transitions and was described as a “liquid” dancer. I loved expressing my style through my movement.

    But the tension between my passion and my insecurity created an internal trip cord. I didn’t trust myself. In rehearsal I was militant about practicing the steps over and over, even when everyone was exhausted, because I still didn’t trust that I knew the choreography.

    I had made mistakes before, blanked out onstage, and felt deep humiliation and shame for not performing someone else’s choreography as well as I should have or meeting a paying audience’s expectations. I was proud that I had so much stamina to rehearse twice as hard as I needed to. If I rehearsed extra. then maybe it would finally quiet the critical voice in my head.

    It didn’t quiet the critic and the cycle continued.

    The shame of being a mediocre dancer led to working harder, but fear of making mistakes or not reaching the goal led to fear of being seen as mediocre, which led, once again, to shame. Shame is dark, subtle, slippery. Over and over, I went through this cycle, the shame cave becoming deeper and darker, until I was lost in it, burned out from so much effort and so little reward.  

    After ten years of pushing myself to learn, pushing against my fears, pushing myself to excel, and beating myself up along the way, I couldn’t push through any longer. I had nothing left to give. The trickling current of anxiety and depression became a flood and swallowed me up into a profound depression. Everything felt arduous, even the simplest daily tasks.

    I looked at people in the streets around me and thought, “How is everybody not depressed? How is anybody smiling?” But they were—smiling, laughing, moving through their days effortlessly, accomplishing wonderful things—and I was not. I was depleted of all vitality.

    I quit performing and turned to my yoga practice to help heal from the burnout. I learned therapeutic yogic principles about balancing effort and ease, surrender, non-grasping, contentment, non-violence (even toward oneself).

    It seemed only natural to become certified as a yoga teacher and, as I began to teach, I encountered the same insecurities. The same thoughts arose—I need to be an excellent yoga teacher, need to create excellent sequences, have excellent pacing, use excellent language to help guide students into an excellent experience. I felt the same performance anxiety—debilitating self-consciousness. 

    What are they thinking about me? Am I giving them what they need? There are so many different people in my class. They are different ages with different bodies and different life experiences. What do I know to teach other people?  I have only ever been a dancer so how do I know what other people need for their bodies?  

    I didn’t want to harm anyone because I didn’t know enough or have enough information and, once again, I quit after a couple of years.

    My deepest darkest secret, feeling inherently flawed and chronically inadequate, took up space in my heart and my throat. Rent-free. In fact, I was paying for its unwelcome residence. 

    My next strategy was simply to take the pressure off myself. I chose low-pressure jobs that didn’t require a big performance from me. I was lucky and these were jobs that I liked that suited me well as I slowly healed from years of chronic self-abuse.

    In my early forties I came across a term that I identified with—imposter syndrome.

    High achievers’ fear of being exposed as a fraud or imposter. Unable to accept accolades or compliments or awards for one’s talent, skill, or experience.

    Imposters suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence.

    I thought, “That sounds like something I can relate to,” but I wasn’t ready to face it head on. I was finally feeling contented in a job that I liked, without the pressures of performing in ways that touched that deep insecurity, and I wanted to soak that contentment in.

    And then Covid-19 happened, and I lost that job.

    Midway through the pandemic, in an effort to be proactive about the next phase of my life, I turned my attention to developing a yoga therapy practice. Create a mission and vision. Come up with content and language. Identify my audience. Create a website and so on. And again, I came up against the deepest darkest secret that had been so blissfully dormant for several years. I was surprised at its potency, but I decided I was ready to face it head on.

    I remembered imposter syndrome and started researching again. Again, I checked all the boxes—except one. In so many articles that I read, examples were given of well-known people who struggled with imposter syndrome. These are people who have achieved extraordinary things, are in the public eye, and have either overcome or pushed through their demons to go on to incredible accomplishments.

    Naturally, I thought, “Well, I’m no celebrity, have no major awards or accomplishments to speak of, and I haven’t achieved that much in my career, so this probably doesn’t actually apply to me.”  

    Such is imposter syndrome.

    Comparison to others (who we deem higher achieving than we are) will trigger a cascade of shame and doubt. 

    Few people actually talk about imposter syndrome—either they don’t know about it or don’t want to discuss it because of the deep feelings of shame or insecurity that accompany it.

    I want you who silently struggle with imposter syndrome or dysmorphia or profound shame and insecurity to know that I, too, have struggled, but it’s getting better.

    Drop by drop, my cup fills as I take every opportunity to be kind to myself where in the past I would have criticized.

    Having studied positive neuroplasticity, I now understand our brains’ negativity bias and the protective role of the inner critic. I have a newfound appreciation for our natural protective mechanisms and gratitude for the ability of the brain to learn and grow new skills.

    I’m starting small, taking small steps to create an inner garden of welcome. A beautiful nurturing place where I invite one or two for tea and laugh and share experiences and stories.

    And after some time, I hope the garden will expand and the walls begin to crumble a little and I can have a small group for tea, stories, and dancing. And then gradually over time, the garden will expand further so that I can host more people in for tea, stories, dancing, and games.

    I can imagine that remnants of the walls will remain as a reminder of where I’ve been, and I can look at them with gratitude for keeping me safe for a while as I softened and settled and tended to the garden within.

  • We Are Allowed to Age: Why I Don’t Care That I Look Old

    We Are Allowed to Age: Why I Don’t Care That I Look Old

    “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” ~African Proverb

    It is just past ten in the morning on a Tuesday.

    My wet boardshorts and blue tank top are drying at lightning speed in the sweltering South Indian sun.

    I am feeling alive and exhilarated after my surf session in the surreal blue, bathtub-warm Arabian Sea.

    Surfing waves consistently has been my goal for the past two years, and I’m doing it. Which is pretty awesome considering that I never thought I would surf again.

    The trauma and fear from a surfing accident ten years ago, that nearly knocked my teeth out, was still lodged in my body for years, and my life’s focus had shifted from sports to yoga.

    When I landed in Kerala, India, my intention was to do an intensive period of study with my Ashtanga yoga teacher for ten weeks and then return to Rishikesh in Northern India, where I had been basing myself.

    A chance invitation brought me to the coastal town I have been living in for the past two-plus years because of the pandemic.

    And it just so happens there is good surf here.

    My reentry into surfing has been slow and steady.

    For my fiftieth birthday present I gave myself ten surf lessons.

    I decided I needed to start off as a beginner and took basic lessons to ease myself back into things and get comfortable back on a surfboard.

    An Indian man in his mid-thirties who was in my surf class asked, “How old are you?”

    “Fifty,” I replied.

    “I hope I am still surfing at your age,” he said back.

    I think he maybe meant this as a compliment, but I took it self-consciously and wondered why it mattered what my age was.

    It is now two years later.

    I have slowly gone from a beginner to an intermediate surfer.

    As I sipped a hot chai out of a dixie cup on the side of a busy fishing village road, after my morning surf, an older Indian gentleman with grey hair asked me, “What is your age?”

    “Fifty-two,” I replied.

    His jaw dropped and he said, “I thought you were seventy. You have really bad skin.”

    Yes, this really happened.

    And it has happened more than once.

    Every time it’s happened, I have allowed it to knock the wind out of my sails.

    Wow, I think, how is it even possible that I look seventy years old when I feel better than when I was twenty-one?

    In all honesty, good skin genetics are not in my favor. Coupled with my love of the sun and spending most of my life outside, it has left me with the skin of an alligator.

    I lied about my age up until my mid-forties.

    On my forty-sixth birthday, I told a woman who asked about my age that I was forty. She laughed and asked if I was sixty.

    But this chai-guy encounter sparked me to lie in the other direction.

    What if I start telling these men I am eighty-five? I thought to myself as I drove my Mahindra scooter away from the chai shop. This idea made me smile, and I immediately felt more empowered.

    Instead of feeling ashamed of my skin, I decided to hand it right back to them.

    I no longer care what they or you think about how I look, and I put zero energy into my appearance.

    It doesn’t matter to me because inside I feel amazing.

    I practice the whole of Ashtanga yoga’s challenging intermediate series six days a week, which is something I never in my wildest dreams thought would be possible in my forties, and I surf every day.

    The young twenty-something Indian surf guys are now giving me fist pumps and saying, “You are really surfing and catching some big waves now!”

    And they have stopped asking about my age.

    I felt called to share this story because it made me wonder: Why are we not allowed to age?

    Why is it an embarrassment to have old-looking skin?

    Why can’t I have wrinkles and grey hair and own it?

    This is what the body does.

    It ages.

    So then why are we not meant to look our age? Or in my case even older!

    I have decided to take a stand and turn the tides.

    I am claiming my age and my place in the surf line and voicing my truth.

    We are allowed to age.

  • Dear Everyone Who Tells Me I Should Reconcile with My Parents

    Dear Everyone Who Tells Me I Should Reconcile with My Parents

    “You are allowed to terminate your relationship with toxic family members. You are allowed to walk away from people who hurt you. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for taking care of yourself.” ~Unknown

    You might think I’m a monster because I don’t have a relationship with my parents. I don’t spend holidays with them; I don’t call them and reminisce; they don’t know pertinent details about my life, my friends, my family, my work, or even the person I have become. Do these facts shock you?

    It is possible that you have only known loving, supportive parents. Parents who were open to discussing and negotiating your relationship, respecting your boundaries, and truly being a part of your life. That’s probably why you can’t understand how I don’t feel the same way about my parents.

    When you learn that I don’t have a relationship with my parents your instinct is to deny my reality. You try to tell me that my parents love me unconditionally, that my mother still cares about me, and that my parents acted out of love for me. You assert that I should try and reconcile with my family, and tell me over and over that I will regret it if I don’t.

    I don’t agree that they love me unconditionally, that they still care about me, that their actions are based on good intentions, or that they abused me in order to make me a better person. I am sorry if this upsets you or challenges your understanding of what a family looks like.

    You become aggressive telling me that I should try harder, that I should adapt and be accommodating and compassionate toward my parents. You tell me that I should forgive them for the things I claim they have done to me and tell me over and over that forgiveness will lead to peace and healing.

    But you don’t get it; I have already healed by not having them in my life, by accepting my painful reality.

    You think that I should call my parents and have a reasonable conversation that would magically lead to a Hollywood ending filled with apologies, validation, love, and reconciliation. You believe that if I do this, I will have the family I have always wanted, and our relationship will be stronger, healthier, and more supportive.

    I need to stop you and be firm. Your lack of understanding about my situation is re-traumatizing me. I cannot contact my parents and reconcile with them. Do you think I didn’t try to have the conversations that you’re suggesting? Don’t you realize that I tried so hard to adapt, to do what they wanted, to apologize and accommodate my parents, yet nothing ever changed? I was never enough!

    Each interaction affirmed how much they despised me, how little they thought of me, and how reluctant they were to listen to me, get to know me more, or even to take the time to understand where I am coming from. Over and over, I tried harder and harder, my heart breaking each time. The picture of the perfect family shattering off the wall and the reality of my family becoming clearer and clearer.

    These were not parents who loved me unconditionally the way parents should love their child. These were parents that might love me if I was better at school, did more for them around the house, and accomplished something they could brag about to elevate their own social position.

    These were not parents who could be bothered to get to know the person I had become, because they believed they knew the flawed, evil monster they had conjured up in their minds. Yet I was not the evil monster; I was an adult child desperate to have a healthy relationship with my parents. I was a teenager who made a few mistakes, and finally I was an adult who saw and understood the family dynamics clearly and accurately.

    Cutting contact with my parents was one of the hardest choices I have ever had to make in my life. Contrary to what you may think, I did not wake up one morning and decide that I did not want to have a family anymore. Rather, I woke up one morning and realized that if I didn’t end the relationship, I would continue to get hurt by my parents for the rest of my life.

    Cutting contact with my parents, formally known as estrangement, allowed me to accept the reality of my situation and build a life that led to self-validation and healing.

    This path has been painful, and there are times when I question whether I did the right thing. However, there are also times when I realize how much better my life is without my parents’ lack of compassion, respect for my boundaries, or willingness to work with me to have a healthy relationship.

    Each time you cling to the Hollywood notion of reconciliation, you traumatize me. I know that I can’t have a relationship with my parents because this relationship will never be healthy. Yet each time you suggest I reconcile you cause me to question myself.

    Questioning myself is something I have grown good at over the years because society does not affirm my choice as socially acceptable, nor does it condone the reasons I chose to cut contact in the first place.

    Questioning myself and my own self-worth is something my parents helped me to become very good at over the years. You see, I couldn’t be doing what was best for me because to them, I was wrong, I was a bad person, and I never remembered situations and events accurately.

    Maybe you don’t mean to cause me to question myself, but each time you bring up reconciliation and the notion that the relationship with my family could be fixed it takes me back into that space. I’m forced to remind myself of all the reasons why I had to cut contact. I’m forced to relive the painful conversations and the intense, overwhelming longing for apologies, validation, and love I know I will never get from my parents.

    Before you tell me I need to see things differently and that most relationships can be fixed, I’m going to stop you. I’m going to remind you that it is hard for people to change. It is much easier for people to say that they have changed in order to save face or absolve themselves of any feelings of guilt and anguish.

    People don’t change for others; they change for themselves because they realize that there are benefits to adjusting their behavior. An uncaring, disconnected parent is not likely to change for a child they never really could love.

    I know that my choices make you feel uncomfortable. I took your family picture and I broke it into a million pieces, pieces that can never be put back together. I challenged your notions of the loving, supportive, forgiving family because that is not my reality, although for your sake, I am glad if that is yours.

    Don’t tell me that time can heal all wounds or that time fixes relationships. Time has taught me that I made the right choice.

    Incredible longing still washes over me when I see some of you interacting with your parents. You have support, love, and mentorship from your family that I will never know. Instead, I will look through the window at the seemingly perfect family, at your family, longing to know what it feels like to be loved and supported the way that you are.

    I will always feel the pain of not having that picture as my own. Part of me will always question why I was not worthy enough to have it in the first place. A piece of my heart will ache with pangs of longing, longing I have learned and accepted is a natural part of life when you don’t have parents who are loving and supportive.

    Don’t downplay my pain or deny my lived experiences. Don’t tell me that how I feel now will not be the same way I feel six months or six years from now. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you have not lived my life or walked in my shoes, and I am relieved for you.

    Don’t remind me that my siblings have a great relationship with my parents, so therefore, I might be able to improve my relationship with them.

    Let me remind you that in families like mine, not all children are treated the same way

    Some children are the golden children, showered with love and support, while others are the neglected children who are barely noticed yet continue to maintain contact in the hopes that one day the relationship will improve. Other children within the toxic family system are scapegoats. Scapegoats are not really loved, and are blamed for things beyond their control.

    In adulthood, some children in these families choose to deny the reality of the dysfunction because society teaches us that everyone needs a family. They choose to hang on and stay in touch with uncaring parents because the alternative choice is so stigmatizing and painful.

    Stop! Don’t remind me of the way my mother acted when you were over at my house growing up. Don’t tell me that she treated you well over the years and was very interested/invested in your life. Please don’t tell me she asks about me every time she sees you or that she has no idea why I cut contact with her.

    I don’t want to hear about how kind my father was. I don’t want to relive backyard barbecues where my parents acted kind and hospitable. You see, they acted.

    Toxic parents can often be kind, compassionate, and caring to everyone else except for their own children. Behind closed doors, when you and the rest of the world were not watching, they were very different people.

    You may have seen them treating me with kindness or pretending that they cared. This was all an act. I don’t want to show you who they really were behind closed doors because I doubt that you will believe me. I know this makes it harder to understand my perspective, but I don’t want to live in the pain of the past. I want to dwell in the present and look to the future with an open heart and an optimistic mind.

    Let me reiterate this: the choice not to have family is both stigmatizing and painful. The pain and stigma flow from not being understood. From assumptions that there must be something wrong with me for cutting contact, that I must be inherently bad or have done something catastrophic to deserve to be cast out of the family.

    Let me shatter that picture again. The only thing I did wrong is challenge your understanding of a loving supportive family.

    Let me ask you something: If your friend criticized and judged everything you did and did not accept you as a person, would you stay friends with that person?

    What if I told you that after interactions with that friend you were anxious, your entire body hurt, you felt like you did something wrong, you couldn’t sleep, and you questioned your judgment? You replayed the interaction over and over in your head each time, remembering more of the abusive comments, the judgmental actions, and the dismissive words you had endured during your visit.

    Could you really stay friends with that person? No, you couldn’t. So why are you encouraging me to reconcile and stay in contact with my parents given that this is how they make me feel? Is it so hard for you to grasp that an unhealthy relationship can occur between family members?

    Hold on tight to your family picture, but don’t ask me to repair mine. Instead, understand and accept my shattered picture.

    Don’t ask me to cut myself with the shards of glass through forgiveness, reconciliation, and false hopes of unconditional love and acceptance. I’m sorry if what I’ve said makes you feel uncomfortable. Society makes me feel uncomfortable each time I am asked to deny my reality, pick up a piece of glass, and expose my family wound that you could easily help me heal by accepting it.

  • The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Our Worth and How I’ve Let Them Go

    The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Our Worth and How I’ve Let Them Go

    “You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside and hustle for your worthiness.” Brene Brown

    I was shaking and sweating with fear as I stood in front of my graduate professor for the final test of the semester. I was twenty-two years old at the time and felt like a fish out of water in my graduate program. I dreamed of being a professor, studying, and writing, but deep down I thought, “I’m not smart enough. I don’t fit in here.  No one likes me.”

    When my religion professor announced that the final wasn’t a sit-down, bubble-in quiz, but a one-on-one translation, and I’d need to answer questions aloud, I knew I’d fail it epically, and I did. To add oil to the fire, I ran out of the room in tears.

    I failed it before I even started because my fear was so great. My hands were shaking, and soon my teacher would know the truth: I didn’t belong there.

    My professor was incredibly intelligent, and I was intimidated from our first meeting. The way I thought he spoke down to others, probably because his tone, diction, and vocabulary were academic (whether intentional or not), triggered a deep wound.

    Since childhood I had developed a limiting belief: “I am not intelligent.” This followed me wherever I went.

    In school, at work, and in relationships, I constantly trusted others to make decisions and discounted my own opinion. I looked to others for the answers and then compared myself to them. This left me feeling insecure and dependent on others. Not at all the leader I envisioned for myself.

    It was the root of the shame I felt, and I allowed it to mean that I was stupid, I wasn’t worthy, and I would never succeed. My inner critic was loud and eager to prove to me why I was less-than.

    There are a few memories I have from childhood that I can recognize as the start of this limiting belief.

    I remember my first-grade teacher passing back a math worksheet. I received a zero at the top in red letters. I still remember that red marker, the questions, and feeling unworthy. I didn’t understand the questions or why my classmates got ten out of ten, and I was too shy to ask or listen to the answer.

    This happened throughout my schooling. It took me more time than my classmates to understand concepts. I wanted to ask questions but was afraid I would look stupid or that I still wouldn’t understand, so I just avoided traditional learning all together.

    I always looked around and thought, “If they understand it, so should I.” In other words, there is something wrong with me.

    Growing up in the nineties, I was teased for being blonde and ditzy. I was friendly, silly, and loved to laugh, so I was labeled as a stereotype blonde airhead. It hurt my feelings more than I ever let on.

    Even when the teasing was lighthearted and done by friends who loved me, it reinforced my belief that I wasn’t smart or good enough. This belief made me feel small and kept me locked in a cage because no matter what I achieved and how much love I received, I still felt like a failure.

    This limiting belief even made its way into my friendships because I held this insecurity about myself and felt that I could not be my truest self in front of others. I wanted to please my friends by listening, supporting, and championing their dreams rather than risk showing my leadership abilities and the intellectual pursuits I yearned for deep within me.

    Looking back now, I see that I was capable of excelling at school and in relationships, but due to my misconceptions about my worth, it felt safer not to stand out. Drawing attention to myself was too dangerous for my nervous system, which was always in survival mode.

    I preferred to fly under the radar and pass classes without anyone noticing me. I preferred to focus on my friends’ problems and dreams because it felt safer than vulnerably sharing my own.

    I never attended my graduate school graduation, nor did I complete all my finals. I still passed, but I didn’t celebrate my accomplishment.

    In fact, I wanted to write a thesis, but my guidance counselor (a different professor) discouraged me. She told me how much work it would be and that it wasn’t necessary to pass instead of motivating me to challenge myself. Since writing was always important to me, I actually wanted to do it but never spoke up or believed in myself enough to tell her.

    I have heard from many people like me and know that I am one of many sensitive souls that have been discouraged by a teacher. I mistakenly thought my differences made me less capable than others, but I am happy to say that none of these experiences stopped me from moving forward.

    With time and building awareness I took steps to heal these wounds and to change my limiting beliefs about myself.

    Learning about shame is the biggest step you can take to change this for yourself. Whether the shame you carry is from childhood, a traumatic event, struggles with addiction, coming out with your sexuality, or anything else, there is healing to be done here, and you are not alone.

    At the present moment, I don’t allow this feeling of shame to run my life. I am aware of it when it arises and no longer value its protection. I have done the inner work to heal.

    The first step I took was talking to someone about it. Letting it out. Shining a light down upon it. If we want to heal or change anything in our lives, we have to be honest about what we want and what we’re afraid of.

    Once I did that I realized many other people had the same fear and that it wasn’t true.

    It wasn’t true that I wasn’t smart enough. I had evidence that proved this. I’d been accepted to programs; I’d passed classes; I understood challenging ideas. I liked research and writing and was open to feedback in order to improve. I even had a graduate degree.

    I was able to learn new skills in environments that felt safe and supportive to me and my sensitive nervous system. I realized I did better in small groups and with one-on-one support.

    Knowing that didn’t mean the wound was no longer triggered, but it meant that I had the awareness to soothe myself when it was.

    It meant that it hurt, but I didn’t allow it to stop me from moving forward. Instead, I let myself feel the pain while supporting myself and reminding myself of the truth: that I am unlimited and worthy of love, acceptance, and approval.

    Whenever we believe a lie about ourselves it creates major internal pain for us. That pain is an invitation to dig deeper, expose the lie, challenge it, and adopt a new belief that makes us feel proud instead of ashamed.

    The person that I most longed for approval from was myself. I had to be the one that finally accepted my differences without labeling myself as unworthy. I had to love myself even if I felt unsafe or unsure. Once I did that, it was reflected back to me tenfold.

    We all have fears and limiting beliefs and carry the burden of shame within us. These are human qualities, meaning this is a natural challenge shared by all healthy people.

    Instead of hiding them, numbing them, and burying them deep within, share them in a safe space, shine a light on them so the truth can emerge, and take your power back by feeling the emotions while knowing the truth: No matter what lies you’ve told yourself, you are good enough and worthy of love.

  • Why Other People’s Comments Hurt Us and How to Let Them Go

    Why Other People’s Comments Hurt Us and How to Let Them Go

    “It’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean.” ~Tony Robbins

    Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

    Wow. That one takes me waaay back. All the way to the elementary school playground. A place where I attempted to use it as a shield. As juvenile as this saying is, I would search for comfort in its words for years to come.

    In the end, it doesn’t matter how old we get. It’s good to feel a part of something, to be understood, and to be accepted, and it hurts when we feel we’re not good enough to belong.

    Whether it’s due to the words of a schoolyard bully (with a flat-chested joke), a passing remark from a stranger (“your arms are hairy”), or an observation by a loved one (“you’re too shy), we begin to transform into a guarded version of ourselves.

    Daily interactions with others thicken our skin a bit, allowing some words to roll off our backs. But the ones that stick around change our inner landscape.

    For many of us, the physical pain we suffer come from accidents, adventures, or clumsiness. They are unpredictable events that originate from nowhere in particular. They don’t feel personal.

    Words, on the other hand, always stem from people. And they almost always feel personal. For a species that thrives on connection, acceptance, and love, words are a primary source of information about where we stand within our tribe.

    With words, we define ourselves, find our people, and take a stand. Words reinforce who we are. Words inspire. Words make us giants. With words, we feel pain, loneliness, or betrayal. Words cut us down. Words keep us small. Words plant seeds of doubt. Words deflate.

    Words are powerful. Choose them wisely.

    When it comes to delivering a message, how we say things matters.

    Words can be positive, negative, or neutral. Imagine how using the very same word creates different outcomes.

    “Quiet!”

    Spoken at a surprise birthday party, this gets everyone excited. The guest of honor is coming!

    Spoken to a questioning child, this makes her feel small, unimportant, hurt.

    Even an adult can suffer at this word. Imagine a man watching a football game. His wife runs in to share an exciting piece of news. He shouts “quiet,” and just like that she feels diminished and robbed of joy.

    Words are powerful. But is all the power reserved for the speaker?

    When it comes to receiving a message, we can feel powerless. Just as a spider’s web catches much more than dinner, our minds become cluttered with a lot of word debris. I have spent years unpacking my pain and my past, and the ickier parts are born from comments, passing phrases, and direct attacks.

    So, here’s my question: Why do some things go in one ear and out the other, while others have a way of following us around? Why do some words so profoundly affect us that we give up our joy and opt not to dance, sing, or speak?

    Here’s my revelation. Those who know me have heard me say it before: What we believe matters.

    It seems that words can become seeds planted in my brain. The ones that stick around begin to grow into something messy that tangle with my very being.

    After a lot (and I mean a lot) of soul searching, I have found my common denominator—two actually. My hurt is born from the truth or from my fear of what might be the truth. The pain is my feelings of lack that get amplified.

    Whew. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. None of us want to believe that we think we’re not smart, beautiful, fun, cool, lovable, or funny. But I’ll say it again. Almost all the remarks that have hurt me are ones I thought were true. Or ones I feared might be true. That’s it.

    When our truth is revealed or challenged it is painful. Our truth is often a part of us that we cannot or feel we cannot change. Whether it’s our laugh, our bodies, or our dreams, we are exposed.

    What do we do with this? The only thing we can—accept ourselves. Just. The. Way. We. Are.

    This doesn’t mean we cannot continue to grow and evolve as humans. It means that we are always being and becoming.

    Most of us go out into the world as ourselves and slowly withdraw into our shells as we feel less and less safe to be who we are. We become a watered-down version of our colorful selves to avoid vulnerability.

    But I’m here to challenge the idea that vulnerability has to be painful. Uncomfortable, yes, but maybe not painful. Our best defense is knowing and embracing who we really are so that when someone questions our character or motive it is either true or not true—and if it is true, being okay with that.

    If I find myself ruminating on a comment, it’s an opportunity, a chance for me to know myself better.

    Now, when a word stings, I approach the discomfort differently. I ask myself: Why am I hurt? Is this true? Is this something I can change? Do I want it to be true? If it is me, can I do more than accept it—can I love this part of me?

    I used to think my problem was that I wasn’t enough ‘this’ or needed to be more of ‘that.’ I used to think that if I could just take the best parts of other people and become those things, I would feel secure, confident, and untouchable.

    But it was exhausting, and I would inevitably fall short of my goal. My life was like a house of cards, ready to crash at any moment. Living in fear is draining. I also began to feel like I couldn’t make any forward progress. It was like treading water when I could be swimming.

    It wasn’t until I took a break and developed faith in myself that I found my full energy, optimism, and confidence return. Because in the end, we can never be great at being anything but ourselves. There is no trying anymore, only being. And the knowing that I don’t need to be all things. Just myself. Regardless of what other people have to say about that.

    And you know what? The strangest things have begun to happen. I have found new strengths, new joys, and new opportunities. When I let go of mimicking others’ successes, I have found more of my own. The kind that I’m not afraid to lose. The kind that doesn’t make me feel like a fraud.

    Sharing my voice has gone from scary and nerve-wracking to a way to create connection and joy. The transition feels like nothing short of miraculous. If you would’ve told me all this several years ago, I would never have believed that I could achieve this kind of peace and confidence. But I have come to believe in believing. And I highly recommend it.

  • Why Judging People Hurt Me and 5 Things That Helped Me Stop

    Why Judging People Hurt Me and 5 Things That Helped Me Stop

    “It’s very easy to judge. It’s much more difficult to understand. Understanding requires compassion, patience and a willingness to believe that good hearts sometimes choose poor methods.” ~Doe Zantamata

    In the past, judgments kept me safe. They reassured me that I had worth. That I was right. That I was good. I believed I knew the “right” way to live.

    I felt I could clearly see the truth of matters. I didn’t understand why others weren’t always able to grasp the truth that I saw. However, the real truth was that my inner world was full of turmoil.

    Since adolescence, I went about my day with a certain level of tension in my chest. It was almost imperceptible, but always there. I felt I was constantly fighting the world, the universe. I tried to control it, to mold it to the way I saw things. I judged anyone who didn’t follow my vision of right and wrong.

    I spent a lot of time arguing and judging. Politics, religion, even school board meetings—they all elicited strong judgments from me. Judging others felt OH SO GOOD for a minute. That’s the kicker. Inevitably, though, the negative energy of the judgments left me feeling irritated or angry.

    Why was I judging so much? Because I believed that missteps should be punished. My judgments were just that. I thought punishments were critical to learning. To growing.

    The reality was that the person I was judging was mostly unaware of my judgy thoughts. My judgments weren’t resulting in positive change. When I sat down and actually thought about what punishments accomplish, I realized that no one needs to be punished in order to change. I saw that I was operating from a false “truth.”

    What I hadn’t understood was that the only person I was punishing when I judged was myself. I was poisoning my body, my mind, even my soul, with anger.

    What is clear to me now is that when I judge, I create division. When I judge someone, I am saying “I’m here and you’re over there.” I’m thinking, “I’m right and you’re wrong.” The problem is—they are thinking the same thing!

    I experienced the wisdom of the introductory quote in what turned out to be a pivotal moment in my spiritual journey.

    I was a witness to an unpleasant argument about vaccines between two friends. I started to feel the tension in my chest increase. I began to judge and felt the need to jump in and share my “right view” with them.

    Then I centered. I became still. And I saw two moms who were scared. Two moms who loved their children. Two moms who were just trying to do their best. The tension fell away. I stopped judging and felt compassion for my two friends instead.

    My inner world changed. The tension was replaced with expansion. I felt peaceful. I felt love.

    There is a concept in Buddhism called “the right view.” The “right view” is often described as the perspective that doesn’t cause suffering. I’ve also heard it described as “all views, or none at all.”

    I’ve learned that we filter all external information through our own personal experiences, knowledge, and traumas before coming to a conclusion. Our inner world and patterns determine our reactions. This is why we can all receive the same information and still come to different conclusions. None are right, and none are wrong. They are just different paths.

    In the past, I would have tried to convince you that my path was right. I wouldn’t allow you to be who you were. I wanted you to be who I wished you to be. I would have judged you.

    I don’t know about you, but when someone judges or shames me, I don’t change. I dig my feet in. It’s not a very effective communication technique.

    Instead of judging, if we try to understand each other and allow each other to be who we are, we foster acceptance rather than division. We have compassion rather than judgment and our inner world changes. We feel an inner peace within.

    It’s important to note that not judging someone doesn’t mean you condone what they’re doing. It also doesn’t change the consequences of their actions. It just allows you to keep your inner world peaceful.

    So, how did I get here?

    First, I learned to meditate and find that place of stillness within me.

    Second, I learned how to find that place of stillness with my eyes open. These first two steps allowed me to create a space between an event and my emotions. This moment (or space) allowed me to respond rather than react. In this moment, the truth will often become clear.

    Third, I practiced catching myself judging. I would take a moment and hold the person in compassion instead. I would try to understand them. I would allow them to be who they are rather than who I wished.

    Fourth, I saw that punishments don’t work. Judging others or ourselves doesn’t facilitate growth. It creates tension and division.

    Finally, I discovered that judging ties you to the past. To past patterns, reactions, and impressions. I’m judging based on my personal past experiences. I learned to let go and to forgive things in my past. I knew if I didn’t, nothing would change.

    The result was inner peace. My chest doesn’t feel tight anymore. In fact, it feels like there is an open, shiny jewel in place of the tension. Love flows through me daily. I see the bliss of the present moment. I spend less and less time in the past.

    When someone says something hurtful to me now, I try to pause and center. I bless them. I know when people are suffering that suffering often spills out onto others. I hold them in compassion. I understand that they are doing the best they can.

    I’m also not perfect. I do still catch myself judging. I am also doing the best that I can.

    I challenge you to try leading with compassion. First, compassion for yourself. We are all learning and growing. Then compassion for each other. See what happens to your inner world.

    It is easy to judge; it’s much harder to try and understand.

  • Why Belonging Is So Difficult for Survivors of Domestic Abuse

    Why Belonging Is So Difficult for Survivors of Domestic Abuse

    “Our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” ~Brené Brown

    Sitting there watching The Greatest Showman, with tears pouring down my face, I asked myself why does this song, in fact this whole film, make me cry so much? Why does it evoke so much emotion in me?

    “I am brave,

    I am bruised,

    I am who I’m meant to be.

    This is ME.”

    “Look out cos here I come,

    And I’m marching on to the beat I drum,

    I’m not scared to be seen,

    I make no apologies.

    This is ME.”

    I am brave, I am bruised, and I know, after many years of working on myself, that I am who I am meant to be. But if I am honest, I am still not marching to the beat of my drum, I am still scared to be seen, and I am still apologizing.

    The reason why this film makes me so emotional is because it brings up emotional scars that have still not fully healed. It highlights a part of me that still needs work. I watch these people who have lived their lives as outcasts and have never before found somewhere they belong, and I empathize.

    I have never been cast out of anywhere. I grew up in a stable, loving family, but I am familiar with the feeling of not belonging because for many years I have been scared to show the real me.

    This fear or inability to be me started the minute my ex pushed me over for voicing my opinion and trying to argue my point. It grew with every punch, kick, threat, humiliation, criticism, and brush off. It grew as the secrets I was keeping mounted up, as the lies I was telling became bigger and bigger.

    From the moment my relationship became abusive I did not belong anywhere because I was no longer free to be me.

    I hid what was going on, and when it was obvious something was happening because of the bruises, I made light of it and played it down.

    I withdrew from myself, becoming just a shell of a person. When I was at home with my partner, I was who he expected me to be; when I was with my family, I tried to be just like them. When I was at work, I was who I thought they wanted me to be.

    I found some sense of belonging when I gave birth to my first son. As I lay there in hospital with him in my arms this new feeling came over me—nothing else mattered apart from this wonderful little person. However, I quickly learned to be the mum my partner wanted me to be rather than the mum I wanted to be, and that broke my heart.

    Friends disappeared, work colleagues were unsure how to treat me, and on the one occasion I reached out for help (to one of my son’s teachers), I was brushed off. It was a private school, and domestic abuse was not something that was part of their agenda. I did not belong there.

    When I finally left for good, I turned up to a women’s refuge, with my seven-year-old son, in a place that I did not know, miles away from my family and friends. I thought that was it, that all my pain was going to stop. While the physical pain obviously stopped, the pain on the inside has taken much longer to heal.

    Over fifteen years later, after years of inner work and a happy marriage, I still do not feel that I belong in many places. This is because I am still holding myself back from being me.

    My self-preservation tendencies, which were once so vital for my survival, are now holding me back. The fear that kept me on high alert, that helped me to evaluate my words and actions before speaking or acting, to keep me safe, was so strong that even after all these years, it is still there.

    What if I do something to upset my husband, will he leave me?

    If I voice an opinion that is different to someone else’s, will they brush me off and think I am stupid or stop liking me?

    What if I say something and open myself up and no one cares or listens? That will just make me feel worthless and unimportant again.

    If I do what I really want to do and get it wrong or fail, others will think I am useless.

    Why would anyone want to listen to what I say?

    Making decisions that everyone agrees with means I am doing the right thing, even if I am not sure that is what I want.

    This fear has prevented me from finding places I belong.

    Yes, I fit in wherever I go because I speak and act in a way that suits the situation, that ties in with everyone else. I sit on the fence and do my best to understand and accept everyone’s point of view without voicing my own because then everyone will like me, and I will not get hurt.

    But just fitting in is not good for your self-esteem. It just cements the belief that you need to hide the real you.

    Being a good communicator involves adapting to suit the environment and situation that you are in, but it should not be at the expense of your own values and opinions, which are just as important as everyone else’s. Pleasing everyone else at the expense of yourself means that you are not giving them the best of you, because that can only come from being wholly and truly YOU.

    As a result of domestic abuse, I suffer from low self-esteem. It has got a lot better over the years, but it still pops up now and again.

    I go through times when my self-love and self-worth are purely based on what others think of me. One unkind word, one difference of opinion, one moment of feeling ignored has me plummeting into the depths of self-hatred and self-doubt.

    It normally happens when I meet someone new or join a new group. I am overly concerned with what they think of me, so I mold myself into someone I think they want me to be, ensuring that they like me. I still hold back now and again with my husband, preventing a disagreement that could potentially result in him deciding he doesn’t love me anymore.

    The truth is, everyone who meets you genuinely wants to meet the real you. The best you is the authentic, bruised, brave, perfectly imperfect you.

    There are times when I genuinely feel that I belong, when I feel comfortable being my funny, hyper, jokey self, when I can speak up and voice my opinion, when I have the confidence to make a mistake and to listen to and act on my intuition.

    At these times I feel content, my head is not working on overdrive trying to figure out what I should say and do, my heart is open, and I feel safe to be me. And I know that during these times I am able to give the best of me. These are the times when I feel I am just as important as everyone else. When I feel that I am an equal.

    I want to feel like this all of the time! I don’t want to just fit in. I want to belong wherever I go. I want to march to the beat of my own drum. I want to fulfill my potential and be all I can be.

    I know, however, that there is only one place I truly need to belong and feel safe to be me, and that is within.

    I need to know who I am, what I want, what I like, and what I don’t like. I need to be clear on what my values are and what my dreams and aspirations are. I need to be honest with myself about how I am feeling. I need to work on that overpowering self-preservation mode that is still on autopilot by recognizing that I am safe, that I will not get hurt if I open up and let my true self out.

    I need to give myself a break from the ridiculously high expectations I have of myself and treat myself with compassion and respect. I need to love and accept myself for who I am, not just when I have achieved something.

    Only then will I truly belong, will I be able to unapologetically be me and shout from the rooftops “THIS IS ME!”

  • The Messiness of Being Human and Why We Shouldn’t Judge Each Other

    The Messiness of Being Human and Why We Shouldn’t Judge Each Other

    “Those who understand will never judge, and those who judge will never understand.” ~Wilson Kanadi

    I’m waiting for my mother’s nurse to pick up. The hospital recording has been on a loop for twenty minutes: “Our hospital is committed to integrity, to the destitute, the sick. Our physicians and nurses have trained at some of the most prestigious colleges in the country. Our patients’ health and comfort is our #1 priority.”

    The woman on the recording sounds so clear and passionate. I can picture her in the recording studio. Maybe she had to audition for the part. Maybe she got paid a lot of money to say these things. Finally, a nurse picks up. She sounds exhausted. Would never have gotten the part.

    “Has anyone been in to see my mother? She’s hysterical and can’t breathe.”

    “Your mother is getting a new nurse.”

    “But the nurse I spoke with earlier said she was on her way with meds!”

    “Someone will be there within the hour.”

    “She’s got to suffer for an hour?”

    “Someone will be there as soon as they can.”

    “That’s not what your hospital recording says!”

    The nurse takes a deep breath. “Oh god,” she mutters. Then I hear the phone land on a hard surface.

    I know from experience what happens when the recording ends. When the recording ends, individuals take over.

    Recordings are usually neat and tidy. Real individuals are not. There may still be a commitment to life, to kindness, but unscripted commitments are harder to decipher. I think because behind the slogans and edited promises, everyone has to deal with their own relationship between the way we are told things are going to be and the way things are.

    My mother, for example, has a slogan that goes something like: I am a strong as sh*t individual with impeccable judgment. And she often is. But behind the scenes, in the moments of reality when whatever pain sets in and there’s no one around to slogan to, she cannot handle her anxiety and has a tendency to drink herself nearly to death and wind up in the hospital on life support.

    Me, for example, when I’m writing this, I’m pretty grounded in my ideas for about ten minutes at a time. But in between those moments, when the vastness of everything collides with the tininess of who I think I am, when my insane restlessness causes unbearable pain, I clench and then go to places like Amazon to look for things to better organize my pantry.

    I think of the nurse, obviously in no mood to hear about slogans. Perhaps she hasn’t slept in days and has been taking care of so many sick and destitute people that she has not been able to take care of herself. Maybe I caught her at one of those moments when she didn’t have enough energy to pretend to be a spokesperson for anything. Who knows what people have to deal with behind their job descriptions?

    There’s the slogan, and then the fractaling inward to a more intimate reality, to those minutes in secrecy behind all closed doors, where there are individuals dealing with themselves and other individuals.

    My mother’s neighbor has visited my mother every day in the hospital. He cares about my mother. And yet, he’s the one who gives her the vodka. He says he figures if she doesn’t get it from him, she’ll get it from someone else. He doesn’t think of himself as being a bad person; he’s just doing what he does based on the equipment and experiences he has.

    Just like the woman who called from the Special Olympics on the other line who got upset with me because I didn’t have time to listen to her slogan. “Thanks a lot,” she told me. “Now I won’t meet my quota.”

    I laughed to myself, thinking I must be attracting every fed-up person in the country. And I couldn’t wait to dismiss her as horrible, to throw her in that bin in my mind where ridiculously horrible people go. But if I dismissed everyone for being horrible, who would be left? Not even me. And I wouldn’t be able to call anyone to commiserate with, because they’d all be in my trash can.

    I think my expectations for people were learned from television. I grew up on television. Life on television always had a beginning, middle, and end, then applause and credits. People on television were always who they said they were, and if they weren’t, everyone would band together and help get them back.

    I remember when the television shows would end, resenting the real people around me for not being recognizable from one day to the next. What I didn’t realize was that the people on television were dependent on a budget, on someone to write their lines, on rehearsals. I didn’t understand that in real life people were dealing with their own thoughts and doing their best to express them in some manner that didn’t get them made fun of, divorced, in jail, or all alone.

    In reality, things are messy. In reality, the judgments we make of each other are judgments based on each other’s slogans and worldly circumstances. 

    I think of this wealthy relative of mine who says things like, “I feel so badly for your mother. It’s so sad.” And then I think of my mother, who says about this same person, “That poor sap. I am so grateful not to be her. She’s never had to survive any sort of malignancy. She’s just so blasé. So benign.”

    Sometimes I don’t think we really know each other. At best, I think we know our experiences of each other. Or maybe, just our experiences of ourselves experiencing each other. Perhaps the only way to really and truly be neat and tidy is to admit that we’re not. When we are honest about our shortcomings, maybe then we become real. And when we are real, maybe then we can be there for each other in ways that don’t disappoint as much.

  • 5 Simple Ways to Overcome Your Mind’s Constant Judgments

    5 Simple Ways to Overcome Your Mind’s Constant Judgments

    “It’s easy to judge. It’s more difficult to understand. Understanding requires compassion, patience, and a willingness to believe that good hearts sometimes choose poor methods. Through judging, we separate. Through understanding, we grow.” ~Doe Zantamata

    If you don’t live in a cave, you have probably noticed two things. First, there are a lot of annoying, incompetent, stupid, and very difficult folks living in this world. Second, assuming you agree with my previous sentence, you have a very judgmental mind.

    For better or worse, you’re not alone. A hundred thousand years ago, the ability to judge people quickly helped our species survive. If we saw an unknown caveman and thought they “looked friendly,” we could die if they actually ended up being a killer. Thus, our minds learned to judge people quickly, and if in doubt, with great suspicion. After all, judging and being afraid of strangers could save your life.

    Yet nowadays, the tendency of our minds to judge most everyone as annoying, different than us, or just plain difficult simply leads to stress and unhappiness.

    Fortunately, there are five simple phrases you can use to overcome your mind’s constant judgments, and instead feel open hearted, compassionate, and at ease with others’ behavior.

    Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find the simple phrase or phrases that work best for you. Once you find a phrase that works for you, you can maintain a peaceful and loving attitude toward people—even when they’re committed to being super annoying.

    It Must Be Hard Being Them

    The first phrase I’ve used to quickly let go of judgment is, “It must be hard being them.” This sentence is meant to evoke compassion, not superiority. If you think this phrase and feel superior to whoever you’re judging, you’re not using it the way it’s intended. However, if you think this phrase from your heart, and feel compassion for a person for being burdened by their difficult behavior, then you’re using it well.

    Recently, I talked to a very rude airline reservation clerk over the phone. She was curt, unhelpful, and incompetent (in my judgmental opinion).

    Anyway, she was either a very wounded and angry person, or she was having a particularly bad day. Yet, when I thought in my mind, “It must be hard being her,” I immediately felt more compassion for her. After all, someone as angry and unhelpful as she must create a lot of havoc in her life.

    She probably feels very lonely, frustrated with her job, and angry that she gets a lot of resistance to her difficult personality.

    Strangely, as soon as I felt more compassion for her, her behavior became less troubling. It often goes that way.

    How is That Like Me?

    I used to live in a spiritual community. I liked some of the members of this community, while others I found particularly irritating. When annoyed, in this community we were encouraged to use a phrase that helped us to immediately let go of our self-righteousness and annoyance. The phrase was, “How’s that like me?”

    So, if Joe was complaining about how it was too hot to work outside when it was eighty degrees, I’d ask myself, “How’s that like me? Do I ever complain like Joe is doing?” The answer was an inevitable “yes.” In fact, I’d try to pinpoint exactly how I sometimes behaved like Joe’s current annoying behavior. For example, I might remember that my complaining about being out of potato chips was similar to Joe being upset about working in less than perfect weather.

    When I would see how I sometimes acted in ways that were similar to whatever I found annoying or difficult in another, two things would happen. First, I would let go of my self-righteousness and feel humbled. Second, I would feel more compassionate toward whoever I had been judging.

    After all, we all do annoying and even stupid things at times. We’re human. The phrase, “How’s that like me?” has helped remind me of our shared humanity and assisted me in seeing that I, too, am not perfect.

    Don’t Know Mind

    A third approach to overcoming our mind’s judgmental tendencies is to think a phrase such as, “I don’t really know the whole story.” In the Zen tradition, they call this “don’t know mind.”

    Our mind always wants to attach a story to whatever is happening in our lives. Even when we have almost no information, we create a story in our head as to what things mean and what’s really going on. Most of these stories that we create make us look pretty good and make others look pretty bad. Yet, if and when we get a fuller picture of reality, we see that there’s no such thing as one person being “all good,” and another being “all bad.”

    People are complex, and they often have very good reasons for their behavior—even if we can’t see it at the time or know what it is.

    As a psychotherapist, I get to see “behind the curtain” of why people behave the way they do.  Several years back, I had a client who was required by a court to see me due to his having repeatedly hit his wife and kids.

    I had never seen such a person in my office, and my initial reaction to him was one of judgement and disgust. However, I soon learned that his father had not only beaten him, but sexually abused him as a child. As I learned about his life, I understood why he had turned out the way he did. I felt deep compassion for this wounded man, and as therapy progressed, I let go of my judgments and he let go of his violent tendencies.

    Had I held on to my initial judgment that he was a bad person, neither of us would have been healed. Not believing your mind’s initial judgments can be a path to greater freedom for both you and others.

     They Are a Perfect Them

    In most spiritual traditions, there is the idea that behind our personality and behaviors, we all share a common awareness, soul, or divine nature. This divine nature may be hidden under many layers of ego and problematic behavior, but it’s there somewhere.

    If you can quiet your mind and open your heart, you can sometimes tune into this soul or divine aspect in others—even if they’re being annoying.

    A phrase I’ve used to help me along this path is, “They are a perfect them.”  When I say this sentence from my heart, it reminds me that everyone is simply doing the best they can, and that a perfect soul is hidden underneath all their wounding.

    In movies, there’s always a “bad guy” or gal who we root against. Even if that character’s behavior is abhorrent, we may still marvel at the acting abilities of the person portraying the antagonist.

    In a similar way, when I see someone doing something I find offensive, I can still admire how well they’re playing their role. They might be a world class jerk, but at least they are playing that role perfectly. And behind the role they are playing, they are a wounded, vulnerable human being—just like me.

    In short, they are a “perfect them,” and as I allow them to be who they are, it gives me the chance to let go of my judgment and feel compassion and peace.

    A fifth and final way to conquer your (and my) judging mind is to use a phrase that Jesus used: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

    People don’t consciously do stupid or self-destructive things. After all, people never put their hand on a hot stove if they know it’s hot. If we see someone acting in an upsetting or self-destructive manner, it inevitably means they’re too unaware—or too compelled—to do anything else.

    Because we assume babies are not very aware and have little or no free will, we tend to not judge them when they do things we don’t like—such as cry. In a similar manner, we can see that many adults also are so unaware or so compelled by their past conditioning that they’re really like a little baby. From our understanding that they “know not what they do,” it’s easier to let go of our judging and being annoyed at them.

    Ultimately, we all want to love and be loved. Unfortunately, our Neanderthal-like judgmental minds get in the way of what we truly crave deep down inside. By trying out the four phrases I’ve discussed, you may find a quick way to sidestep how your mind creates separation and annoyance. Once you find a simple way to elude judging others, you can instantly enjoy more peace, compassion, and love.

  • Why I Despised My Skin Color & 5 Strategies That Improved My Self-Image

    Why I Despised My Skin Color & 5 Strategies That Improved My Self-Image

    “Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself.” ~Coco Chanel

    I believed I was ugly and blamed it on my dark skin. I hated my skin color. Looking back, I realized it’s because I didn’t fit in with the white kids, nor did I fit in with the black kids.

    I am mixed race. I have a black father and a white mother. Until I started school, I never considered myself different. My family and I were close, and I felt love and acceptance.

    When I started second grade, I developed a crush on a boy, who never noticed me and fawned over the pretty blonde girl in class. She was beautiful, with springy blonde curls and a soft, feminine voice. She wore colorful dresses that enhanced her beauty. I felt drab and plain next to her. Thus, began my dislike of my dark, frizzy afro.

    As I grew older, the name calling occurred. I was called zebra, Oreo, and n*gger. I spent a lot of my youth in tears.

    I wish I could say that it got easier as I grew older. I grew envious of the blonde girls, who caught the boys’ attention. I even envied my two sisters. One had no trouble getting boys to like her, and the other had beautiful hair that fell naturally down her neck in wavy curls.

    However, entering the seventh grade solidified my hatred of my skin color and frizzy hair.

    I sat in the back of my math class working on my assignment, while passing notes to my friends. Exhibiting a form of bravery, I tossed a note to my secret crush named Mike. He wrote back which pleased me.

    In one particular note, I asked him why he didn’t like me. As I handed it to him, I hoped with all my might that he’d tell me I was wrong. When he gave me the note back, he smiled, and I grew hopeful. I opened it and tears formed in my eyes. My heart plummeted to my stomach and bile rose to my throat. His words seared my brain as if he said them aloud.

    “Because you’re ugly.”

    Devastation enveloped me. I crumbled up the note, but the words couldn’t be as easily destroyed like the piece of paper. It sat in the back of my mind as an explanation to me why boys didn’t like me.

    In ninth grade, I was called a dog and had spitballs spat at the back of my head. I left them there, too embarrassed to even rummage through my thick frizzy mass to find them.

    “Why did you let them throw spitballs at you?” the substitute teacher asked me after class, as she removed the wet globs from my hair.

    I shrugged and left the room thinking, “Why didn’t you stop them?”

    By the time I graduated from high school, I pretty much gave up on finding somebody to love me for me. I did go on dates, but I had to do the asking. Even as I went out with them, I could tell that they’d have preferred to be anywhere else but with me.

    I struggled with my self-esteem but hid it all behind a smile. I decided to just be myself, be friendly, be kind, and smile. In private, I would cry as I wrote my feelings in stories and journals.

    Then one day at the college computer room, I met Rick. He spoke to me and showed an interest in me. When he asked me out, I accepted. Unfortunately, my life never went like I had hoped. I got pregnant. He left me.

    Deciding to keep my baby, I raised him with the help of my parents and went back to college to get my degree. I decided then to focus on myself and my little boy. Naturally, obstacles surfaced, but I chose to be myself and incorporated five strategies that slowly helped me start liking myself.

    1. I practiced self-care.

    Although self-love needs to come from within, I knew I’d feel better about myself if I put more effort into my appearance, so I bought new clothes and changed my hairstyle. This reinforced that I was worth the effort. Wearing flattering clothes and makeup enhanced my skin tone and body shape.

    I also took care of myself mentally by reading books that centered on personal growth and following steps to keep my thoughts positive, such as reciting positive affirmations and being more aware of my negative thoughts so I can reframe my thinking patterns.

    Taking care of my mind and body really helped me see myself differently. When I felt more comfortable in my skin and more at ease in my own mind, my self-confidence grew.

    2. I stopped worrying about what people thought.

    I had always been shy and introverted, and I was afraid of being judged. Being in college helped me break out of that shell. I spoke up in class and asked questions. I stopped worrying what people would think about me because I knew this was holding me back. My entire focus centered on what I wanted to learn and get from the classes I took.

    My best friend at the time told me that I should walk with my head up and back straight. She taught me that with my shoulders back and my head held high, I’d appear confident, and when I felt confident, no one’s opinions could hurt me. I adopted that form, and believe me, it felt great to walk with extremely good posture and feel the confidence exude from within me.

    3. I focused on the positive.

    Being positive had always been hard. I would wallow in self-pity and then wonder why I didn’t have many friends or couldn’t get a date. I changed my mindset and focused on the good things in my life and positive changes I wanted to make.

    I spent a lot of time with my son and worked on my writing skills, because being a writer was very important to me, and still is! I learned everything I could about business management and continuously developed my skills. I also started hanging out with positive people with healthy self-esteem and emulated their free spirit and vivacious personalities. Spending time around people who see the world through a positive, empowering lens has helped switch my mindset and feel better about myself and life.

    4. I started smiling more.

    By smiling more, I felt positive and happy more often. I wanted people to view me as someone approachable and friendly, so I smiled and showed my courtesy to those around me. It’s amazing what a smile can do for yourself as well for others. Smiling at someone in passing could touch that person and ease whatever pain they’re enduring. It could brighten their day and, and in turn help you feel good about yourself.

    When I was on my way to work one day, after picking up a hot chocolate at a nearby food court, I walked down a few steps toward the exit. An unkempt man entered and held the door open for me. I flashed him a smile and thanked him. He did a doubletake and then smiled hesitantly at me. It was then that I realized the power of a smile. It made me feel good to acknowledge this man because of a courteous gesture on his part.

    By being kind and grateful, I shared a moment with a complete stranger and it felt good.

    5. I found the courage to be myself.

    After practicing the steps above, I was no longer afraid to be myself. I broke out of my comfort zone and even spoke in public at church and seminars I took. Being myself freed me from living in a shell, where the walls I had built at a young age came crashing down.

    Today, my skin color no longer bothers me. I still hate my hair, but that’s beside the point. The fact is I realized that it wasn’t my skin color that was stopping me from making friends and finding love. It was me all along. I need to love and take care of myself first before anyone else could love me.

    I now have a wonderful, gorgeous husband who treats me the way I’ve always wanted to be treated by a man. He values me and loves everything about me—flaws and all!

    Exercising these five strategies created a life for me that I’m quite proud of. In retrospect, I wish I could tell my teenage self that life will get better, just be patient, and enjoy your naturally built-in tan.

    I’m proud to be half black and white. It is a blend of both my parents, who I love very much. Without them, I wouldn’t be the woman I am today.

  • 5 Tips to Stop Comparing Yourself to Other People

    5 Tips to Stop Comparing Yourself to Other People

    “No matter what you do, someone won’t be pleased. Someone will think your choices are wrong. And someone will tell you what you should do instead. No matter which path you take, someone will seem to be doing better. Someone will have more than you. And someone else’s life may look more impressive on paper. If you’re being true to yourself, none of that will matter because you’ll have something more satisfying than approval and the illusion of “success”: a life that feels right for you, based on your own wants, needs, values, and priorities.” ~Lori Deschene

    Have you ever walked past a grand-looking house, or driven through an upmarket neighborhood and thought, “I wish I lived here” or “The people living here are so lucky”?

    If you have, then we’ve been part of the same club! I used to do this a lot.

    While walking my dog, I’d look at a house and assume that the people living in that house must have been very happy with life. My assumptions were based on nothing more than the look of the front yard and the frontage of the house.

    When I think about it now as I write this post, I wonder, “How could I have been that naive?” Despite being aware of the expression “never judge a book by its cover,” that’s exactly what I used to do. How can one ever guess what lies behind the grand entrance of a home? Who knows what stories the plush homes of exclusive neighborhoods hold inside them?

    My regular bouts of comparisonitis got jolted by a sobering dose of reality through a shocking and tragic news story some years ago.

    One of the homes that I used to admire became the location of a horrific murder-suicide that wiped out an entire family! I could not believe my ears and eyes as I read the news and watched the coverage on television.

    My mind was thinking, in all its naivety, “How is that possible? What could have gone wrong for residents of that beautiful home? They had everything anyone could ever want, didn’t they?”

    Do I Know You?

    Have you heard the expression “human beings are like onions”? We have so many layers that hide our core self. As you peel away one layer, another appears!

    It is extremely difficult to know another person deep down to their core. How often have you found yourself wondering about the unexpected or puzzling behavior of someone you thought you knew well?

    The reality is that each one of us is unique, and it can often take a whole lifetime for us to understand our own selves. So, is it any wonder that we never manage to truly understand another person?

    Yet, we compare! We do it day in and day out, without even being aware of how easily and how often we slip into comparison mode.

    Humans are naturally prone to comparisons because this phenomenon begins quite early in our lives.

    As young kids, we might have experienced the feeling of being compared to other children—by parents, teachers, relatives, friends, peers, etc. As we grow into adults, we start comparing ourselves to other adults. Sometimes the comparisons might be in a favorable light, and at other times, the comparisons could be unfavorable. Either way, it leads to feelings that are unhealthy—a sense of superiority or inferiority.

    Feelings of arrogance or bitterness are never healthy, are they?

    Whether your comparison results in thoughts of “Oh, I’m so much better than this guy!” or “How does she do it? I’ll never be as good as her!”, there’s little doubt that “the thief of joy,” as coined perfectly by Roosevelt, has taken residence in your head and is busy ransacking your mind of all joy, happiness, and contentment.

    Why is it so difficult to avoid falling victim to the tendency of constant comparison?

    Social Comparison Theory

    Psychologist Leon Festinger proposed in his social comparison theory that the human species engages in comparison as a way of evaluating ourselves, like a benchmarking process. We get to know more about our own abilities, attitudes, or skills by comparing ourselves to our peers.

    Festinger’s theory contends that human beings can only define themselves in relation to other people. I wonder if that’s why the age-old existential question “Who am I?” seems so difficult to answer, as we seem to be incapable of defining ourselves independent of others.

    As mentioned earlier, social comparison can work in two ways.

    1. Upward social comparison

    This is when we compare ourselves to those who we believe are better than us. This type of comparison can lead to two kinds of thoughts, emotions, or outcomes.

    The first kind is where we might want to improve ourselves to reach the level of the person that we are comparing ourselves to, or even go past them. This is one possible benefit of comparison if we’re prepared to learn, as it could lead to personal growth.

    If comparison can be seen in this positive light, then “the thief of joy” might be entitled to a change of title and live inside us as “the giver of motivation.”

    The second and more common outcome of upward social comparison is envy, jealousy, and bitterness—obviously an undesirable outcome that can only lead to disappointment and frustration.

    2. Downward social comparison

    This happens when we compare ourselves to people who we believe are worse off than us. This is like an “artificial boost to self-esteem” exercise. The “at least I’m not as bad as him/her” attitude might help us feel better about our talents, achievements, or life situation, even if only temporarily.

    Social comparison begins early in life (for instance, a child in a kindergarten wanting the same toy that another kid has in his hands), gains momentum through school (new fads, fashions, and gadgets that kids want to follow or possess), and becomes deep-rooted in adulthood through comparisons in career, family, wealth, status, and lifestyle.

    This tendency to compare completes a full circle when the phenomenon moves on to adults comparing their children on how well they’re doing in academics, sports, or any other activity.

    Escaping the Comparison Trap

    To feel mentally and emotionally healthy, it is essential to free ourselves from the comparison trap. I’m sure none of us wants to experience the feeling of unworthiness from upward social comparison, or superiority from downward social comparison. So what can we do?

    Here are five simple ideas to get better at saying NO to the disease of comparisonitis:

    1. Define what success means to you.

    If we nailed down our own definition of success, the number of times that we indulged in comparisons would be significantly reduced. For instance, if our success definition were about raising healthy, happy kids, we wouldn’t really be bothered about someone else’s thriving business, would we?

    2. Discover your own strengths.

    Becoming aware of our strengths will help in minimizing the tendency of comparing our weaknesses with other people’s strengths. The great physicist Albert Einstein failed his French exams. Fortunately, he didn’t let that failure define him, as he was aware that his strengths lay elsewhere!

    3. Think of the big picture.

    Whenever you find yourself slipping into comparison mode (which will inevitably happen… we are human after all!), just remind yourself that there’s always more to a person’s life than what you’re seeing or hearing.

    Don’t let a peek through a small window into someone’s life lead to disillusionment or disappointment with your entire life. In other words, don’t compare your whole movie with another person’s highlights reel!

    4. Always be a student.

    Develop the “continuous learning” philosophy. If you always think of yourself as a student with lots more to learn in life, it becomes easier to think in terms of collaboration, not competition, with peers. If you think of yourself as an artist who is still painting his/her masterpiece, you might not be tempted to feel inferior when you view other people’s paintings because your job’s not done yet!

    5. Focus on small successes.

    When comparisonitis strikes, take up a small project that you can complete in a relatively short time, and do well. It could be something that you might’ve been putting off for a while.

    For example, let’s say you’ve started a new online business and you start to feel unsatisfied about the lack of progress. Maybe you’re looking at peers in your industry who are at a similar stage of the business cycle but seem to be gaining a lot more traction.

    Instead of letting this get you down, how about you focus on something small—like writing a blog or doing a podcast? Doing that specific task well could help lift your spirits.

    Unique Journeys

    Have you seen pieces of driftwood floating in a river? They come together at some point due to the action of the waves, might stay together for a little distance, and at some point down the river, the force of the waves separates them and they go their own ways.

    Our lives are like that.

    People come into our lives and go out of our lives at different stages of our life’s journey.

    We all begin our journeys at different points, end them at different points, and often our paths take different routes. Why then should we compare ourselves to others? After all, we are not running the same race.

    Try this exercise…

    Take a little trip down memory lane by rewinding your life some fifteen to twenty years. Think of someone that you always compared yourself with back then. It has to be someone that you’ve lost all contact with for many years. You also haven’t heard about them from anyone.

    Do you have any idea what they’re doing now? In fact, let’s go one step further—do you know if they’re still alive? Chances are your answer is “I don’t know.”

    So, my friend, in the long run, do comparisons really matter?

  • Afraid of What People Think? Free Yourself by Realizing How Unimportant You Are

    Afraid of What People Think? Free Yourself by Realizing How Unimportant You Are

    “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

    It’s natural to think that we’re always in the spotlight.

    We think that people care about the way we dress, but they don’t.

    We think that people notice our nervous habits, when in reality, they’re worried about whether people are noticing their own.

    We tend to go through life as if our every move is being watched, judged, and evaluated on a moment-to-moment basis by the people around us. Here’s a reality check—you’re not that important.

    I don’t mean that in a brash way. This shouldn’t make you feel small or inferior, it should liberate you. And if it doesn’t, I have a feeling that what I’m about to talk about will.

    The Truth About Funerals

    As you guys know, a funeral procession is broken up into two parts: the funeral and the burial.

    During the funeral, spiritual leaders read various snippets from religious texts about the meaning of death, and close family members are allowed to get up and say a few words about the deceased.

    The burial takes place directly after the funeral, although some religions operate on a different procedure. During the burial, the body is transported outside, and the deceased is put to rest in the grave site.

    Now, you’re probably wondering why I’m spending so much time talking about funeral procedures. I’d probably be asking myself the same question reading this article, so here’s the bottom line.

    The burial takes place outside on grass.

    Do you want to know the number one factor that determines how many people attend the burial after the funeral procession is over?

    The weather.

    If it happens to be raining outside, 50% of people who attended the funeral will decide not to attend the burial and head home.

    That doesn’t mean those people don’t care, just that they’re first and foremost focused on themselves and their own lives and needs, as most of us are. Which means they’re focused on what they’re doing than what you’re doing.

    So why would you worry about what others think of your life choices? Why would you care about what other people say about you if you haven’t done anything to harm them?

    Why would you live life being bogged down by the opinions of others if half of the people attending your funeral will skip the burial because of bad weather?

    Coming across this information struck me like a lightning bolt. And no, I’m not going to sit here and lie to you by saying that reading this factoid about funerals led to some life-changing epiphany and now everything is sunshine and rainbows.

    What I will say is that it had an impact on my mindset. It forced me to really look at my day-to-day life and analyze where my actions were being driven by the opinions of others.

    Realizing just how little people cared about the decisions I made was one of many factors that influenced me to start shutting down the inner critic—that voice that tells you that everything you do is being judged by others.

    The Confessions of a Chronic People-Pleaser

    For most of my life, I let the opinions of other people stop me from living a rich, fulfilling life.

    In social situations, it was more comfortable for me to agree with what was said than express my own beliefs.

    It was more comfortable for me to sit back and watch instead of calling one of my friends out for something that he shouldn’t be doing.

    It was more comfortable for me to avoid the situations I was afraid of instead of diving into them head-first and stretching my limits. The fear of failing publicly in front of other people was absolutely terrifying to me.

    One particular instance from my high school years illustrates this perfectly.

    It was my freshman year, and our first dance of the year had arrived. I showed up in all-white, trying to keep consistent with the “white-out” theme that had been planned for the dance.

    As the dance started and music started playing, students began rushing to the middle of the gymnasium and dancing their hearts out.

    That’s when the fear hit me. My insides felt like they were twisting around each other.

    My breathing matched my heartbeat. It wasn’t calm and collected, it was frantic.

    My mind went into full “stop him from taking action” mode by conjuring up a bunch of scenarios in which I look like a total idiot on the dance floor.

    For the rest of the night, I was glued to that wall. Only thirty feet away, there was a bunch of care-free teenagers having the time of their lives.

    I went to the bathroom about seven or eight times just to make the time go faster. I talked to other people who weren’t really dancing, and we were all playing it off like we were too cool to express ourselves in public.

    The truth is that we were all just terrified of being ourselves in front of other people.

    That moment set the trajectory for the rest of my high school experience. I wish I could go back in time to my fifteen-year-old self and tell him to wake up. I wish I could tell that shy, insecure person that rejection, public failure, and the opinions of other people don’t matter.

    I wish I could tell him that at the end of someone’s life, the biggest factor in determining whether or not people attend their burial comes down to whether or not the sky cries more than the congregation does.

    But I can’t do that. I can only look forward to what’s in store for me now that I’ve finally realized how unimportant my actions are. It’s not a shameful thing to admit that you’re unimportant, it’s liberating. It gives you the freedom to take risks and challenge yourself.

    Life becomes a lot more fun when you realize that everyone around you is so absorbed with their own thoughts and feelings that they couldn’t care less what you do.

    So next time you see someone that you want to talk to, don’t let the fear of rejection stop you, go introduce yourself. I promise you that if you embarrass yourself and the conversation goes nowhere, the person won’t even remember your name tomorrow.

    The next time you feel the urge to call a friend that you haven’t spoken to in a while, but feel like it might come across as “weird,” I promise you there’s a 99% chance that the person will be extremely grateful for the call.

    And if the person isn’t grateful and gives you the cold shoulder? Well, let’s just say that you’re not the one with the problem if you’re trying to be friendly and warm and are flat out dismissed.

    I encourage you to write down the things in your life that you’re scared to do because you’re afraid of what other people will think. And then each day, cross one of those things off your list.

    Constantly remind yourself that everyone is busy thinking about one thing—themselves.

    Going through life with this mindset will make you much more likely to face down the demons that are stopping you from living the life you want.