Tiny Buddha

Tag: Fear

  • 4 Things I Needed to Accept When I Was in Transition and Felt Insecure

    4 Things I Needed to Accept When I Was in Transition and Felt Insecure

    “Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free.”-  Robert Tew

    I want you to picture this. You are standing on a mountain, and in front of you is a taller mountain with a prettier view. Between the mountains is 100,000 foot plunge to the bottom, filled with jagged rocks. You know that you need to make it to that other mountain and that the only way for you to do so is to jump—but for some reason, you cannot move.

    This is what transition feels like, especially when you have to make huge leaps into new and unexplored territories.

    Recently, I found myself in this very position, paralyzed with fear. All I could think about was how I was going to go from being a graduate student to being a real adult, working and living in the real world.

    To be completely honest, I wasn’t even thinking—I was worrying and putting mounds of pressure on myself to make a move, to act. What’s worse is that in times of transition it seems as though you are being truly tested. 

    Personally, the comfort cocoon I created for myself over my college years unraveled. My friends graduated and left to start their lives. All of a sudden, what used to be continuous social outings changed into monthly check-ins.

    I was confused as to how I got here. I would look around, hoping that someone would show up and be a source of entertainment. That never happened and I found myself alone.

    At first, I didn’t take this as a gift but as a punishment. I wanted to be distracted because if I was, then I wouldn’t have to think about what was coming next. I wouldn’t have to face my greatest fear of being by myself. Luckily, the universe had other plans.

    When I first started being alone, my insecurities and doubts came rushing in to keep me company. I was constantly telling myself that I was not worthy, that I was not enough, and that I was not strong enough to make this transition. I doubted my capabilities and everything I’d earned up until that point.

    When I would interview for jobs, I’d be interviewing out of fear. I thought the people on the other side of the phone were better than me because they achieved what, at the time, I thought I could not.

    I compared myself to others who seemed further along on their life path. I became jealous and angry that I wasn’t as far along as them. I resented myself because I believed I had no life experience. 

    Transition scrambles your life up, both externally and internally. I thought I’d resolved my issue of being alone, yet here I was, mistaking aloneness for loneliness. I thought I was confident and sure about myself, yet here I was, questioning the very foundation I’d built. I slammed into my own mental brick wall and then became idle in moving toward the life I desired.

    One day, as I was sitting by my space heater drinking hot chocolate, I thought about what was holding me back—what I didn’t want to admit myself. After doing some self-reflection, I realized there were several things I needed to accept. They are as follows:

    1. I was scared.

    I wasn’t sure and I am still not sure if what I am jumping to is safe or promising. It’s the unknown, but in admitting to myself that I was terrified, I immediately felt lighter because I was no longer wasting time convincing myself that I was not fearful.

    2. I don’t have everything figured out, and that’s okay.

    I had to tell myself that transitions don’t happen overnight; they happen over days, months, even years. I have plenty of time to discover, to explore, to create, and to decide what my transition will be and how I will get there.

    3. I was in the in-between.

    In the in-between, you are neither here nor there. You are just in the middle. Think of it as though you are hovering in the space between those two mountains. I used to hate this space, because I wasn’t in control. Yet, in all honestly, you are never really in control. In this space, you have to trust—trust yourself, trust the universe.

    The beautiful part about the in-between is that it gives you time to make a plan and to execute it. Taking small steps every day proved to me that I was actively moving toward my desired mountain. I designed a plan that was manageable so I wouldn’t become immobilized again. It made the tasks ahead less daunting.

    4. My thoughts could be my prison or my wings.

    I struggle with this daily and I “fail” at it a lot. It’s hard to erase negative thinking habits and replace them with positive ones. Then, if you add the weight of your insecurities and doubts, it seems like an impossible feat.

    What has helped me the most is taking each moment as it comes. In one moment, I can be completely fine. In the next moment, I can be upset about why I am not this or that, what I look like, what I feel like, why I am wrong or right, etc. In those difficult moments, I remind myself to breathe.

    I breathe through my loud judgmental voice, and I acknowledge her presence in my head. I then tell myself that no matter what the circumstances, I am loved, I am protected, and I am safe. Sometimes this works and other times it doesn’t. The point is that I don’t have a clear-cut solution to this issue; I take it day by day.

    When it comes to appreciating my aloneness, I have gotten into the habit of not inviting anyone over when I am feeling antsy or I feel like I need company to be okay with myself. I sit with that discomfort, and make myself do an activity I can absorb myself in, like coloring, playing Solitaire, or reading. In doing this, I actually spend time with myself, by myself, for myself.

    Everyone’s transition isn’t going to look the same, and it isn’t going to bring about the same issues or ideas. Regardless of what yours looks like, remember that change is the only constant and that transition is a part of change. We must embrace our transition even if it is difficult.

    In doing so we face ourselves and we acknowledge the areas we need to grow in, the areas where we are strong in, and the areas we didn’t even know existed. We help heal ourselves into wholeness so when we do finally decide to make that jump, we are not scared about whether we are going to reach the other side.

  • 3 Questions That Help Me Stop Worrying About Things I’ve Said and Done

    3 Questions That Help Me Stop Worrying About Things I’ve Said and Done

    “If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.” ~Dalai Lama

    Another sleepless night had passed, with me worrying about whether I’d said the wrong thing to my colleague yesterday or if the tone of my email I’d sent was too critical.

    They were not the only things that kept me awake.

    I would go out to dinner with friends and say some ‘bad’ jokes—bad because nobody laughed. Was I wrong? Do people not like me? They looked unhappy.

    I prided myself on being the funny guy. The entertainer.

    The list of worries and fears continued. It used to be endless.

    I had a cure for overcoming my fears. I would talk to anybody I could find who was willing to hear about my problems. I was desperately seeking to hear “Poor you, Kieran” from someone. Anybody. 

    Then everything would be okay. The problem would go away.

    Strangely enough, the problem would go away. It was never as bad as I had feared. Yet the behavior—how I dealt with my fears and anxieties as they arose—continued.

    I continued to feel anxious, fearful, and nervous in a wide variety of situations.

    Then one day, it all came to a head.

    A few years ago, I was working in a stressful corporate environment. I had a one-on-one meeting with my manager. In this meeting, he informed me that I was depressed.

    It was a strange thing to say. Bizarre. I thought he was joking and rejected the comment.

    I couldn’t shake this comment out of my head. I continued to think about that meeting over the next few days.

    I began to realize that I had spent a lot of energy protecting myself, fearful that others might perceive any negative perceptions I had about myself and then would judge me.

    As soon as somebody confronted me directly and pierced through the protective bubble I had placed around myself, I felt a sudden need to make changes.

    Looking back, I suspect that I knew deep down that I was able to influence how I perceived these situations. Feeling fearful had become part of my identity, though. Like a drug, I was addicted to feeling this way and refused to believe that it was possible to change my perceptions.

    I started reading countless self-help books. Some of the advice in these books I have either plainly ignored or considered too hard to implement.

    However, what I noticed in all or most of these books is the need to explore and question why you feel the way you do and challenge this on a regular basis.

    So I did. And after a while, I began to form my own questions to attempt to deal with all challenges and anxieties that arose in my life.

    Now, whenever a fear arises, I sit down in a quiet space and write the answers to the following three questions:

    What do I actually fear about this?

    In other words, what is the worst thing that can happen? Maybe they won’t talk to me again if they were offended by something I said. They might end the relationship I have with them. I might lose my job. Perhaps all of this is okay. Perhaps all of this is a great learning experience. Whatever it is, I write it down.

    Do I have the ability to change this?

    Next, I look at what I fear. Can I change this situation?

    If the answer is yes, I write down how I can and what steps I need to take.

    If the answer is no, I tell myself to let it go. This is hard, but it gets easier with time.

    If this happened to somebody I love, what would I tell him or her?

    It is important to reflect on this. Most of us are great at giving other people advice but terrible at following it ourselves. I find that by asking this question, not only does my self-respect and self-love increase, I feel more understanding and compassionate toward others who hold similar fears and anxieties.

    I have answered these questions many times.

    One situation that immediately comes to mind was when, at the end of a workday, I sent an email to a client, including some confidential information about his manager. This was clearly an accident, but it was sloppy on my part.

    I felt sick. What made this worse was that this day happened to be my birthday.

    I took a deep breath. I got a pen and some paper and started answering the three questions.

    What was my fear?

    I thought the person would think I was stupid for sending this to them. I was worried that my boss might think I was ineffective, incompetent

    As I began writing the answers to this question, I started to question whether I even valued my abilities and worth as a human being.

    I put this down. It was hard. I realized that I’d had a negative impression of myself. It was difficult to ponder this, but it was such an invaluable experience that I used it to springboard into improving other areas of my life.

    Did I have the ability to change this?

    No. The email was sent. The workday had finished. I was celebrating my birthday that evening. Yet the fear kept coming up.

    I couldn’t change what had happened, but the fear remained. How could I change that? I wrote down a solution when I returned home, one that would benefit me and hopefully the other person.

    I acknowledged it was a mistake. I told myself that I would take care and be diligent before pressing the send button in future. I turned the negative into a positive.

    Lesson learned. The fear subsided.

    And onto the last question: If this happened to somebody I love, what would I tell him or her?

    This is the easy bit, as it is no longer about me. I would tell them, “These things happen. We all make mistakes. Everything will be okay. This is one event that will likely seem insignificant when weighed against the many things that will happen to you over the course of your life.”

    I went to bed that night feeling much better and got some sleep.

    So, what happened?

    The next day, the moment I sat down at my desk, I rang the person to whom I sent the email and explained the situation. I asked him to delete the email, and he said he would.

    That was the end of the saga. No further communication came my way. From anyone.

    Did he look at the information in the email? I don’t know. Does it matter? No. Because I could not revoke what happened in the past.

    Answering the three questions helped me feel better about myself. It still does.

    Since I have implemented this into my life, most of these troubling events have started to disappear. Well, maybe they didn’t disappear, but my perception of them as being problems, which causes anxiety, has disappeared.

    In the past, I had conditioned myself to feel bad all the time. It was who I was. Today, referring back to this list whenever I have a problem or anxiety is immensely therapeutic.

    It does take time to make this a habit, and it is certainly not a quick fix to eliminating all anxieties and fears. It is also confronting, initially, to spend time exploring how your fears manifest.

    However, the rewards, in my case, have been very satisfying. I have developed a sense of love toward myself, which had never existed before, and more importantly, I feel more love toward others.

    What do I fear most now? That I might revert back to the “old Kieran” and start worrying about every little thing. Oh, great, now I’ve identified this fear, I need to ask myself the three questions again!

  • How Surfing Helped Me Turn Fear and Anxiety into Confidence

    How Surfing Helped Me Turn Fear and Anxiety into Confidence

    “If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” ~Dale Carnegie

    Not too long ago I went through an extremely chaotic and emotional two-week period. Anything that could go wrong or be difficult did and was. I thought it would never end.

    When it began, the little hiccups were easy to let roll off my shoulders. After about a week, I was feeling pretty worn down and was in tears daily. At the end, I felt numb, and when things kept going wrong I would say to myself “Sure… Okay …what’s next?”

    These two weeks were filled with miscommunications, the realities of parenting a teenager, negative art critiques, the end of a three-year business relationship, technical difficulties with my social media accounts, a shoulder injury, and an art block, and none of my efforts seemed to put any of the proverbial fires out.

    Not to mention that we were surrounded by literal fires here in Southern Oregon, which brought oppressive smoke and stress.

    I was tired, scared, tired, hurt, tired, irritable, and physically taxed. And did I say tired? Usually getting into the art studio and painting is the best way to bring me back around, but that wasn’t working either. I would stare at my painting and just not know what to do, so I would do nothing.

    About a week in, I drove myself to the coast to surf for the day, thinking that getting out of the smoke and into the ocean would wash away the negativity. But the conditions were not in my favor, and the day was frustrating as I paddled my way from one side of the beach to the other searching for waves. I drove back into the smoke feeling defeated, complacency of the crapolicious period of time setting in.

    The next week, I decided that there was nothing left to do but treat myself with some kindness and compassion. I rested, ate a carton of ice cream, and watched schlocky movies. I thought that maybe by just not fighting it anymore, the procession of poop would lift. But no, the hits just kept coming.

    I felt the depression creeping in as it has a tendency to do after anxiety has beat me into submission.

    For me, anxiety and depression have a way of cultivating more anxiety and depression. As the challenges arose in continuum, seeing the positive became harder and harder. The negativity took the lead and thus started a downward spiral of adversity and uncertainly. It is a horribly stagnant and uncomfortable place to live.

    So, I decided to participate in a surfing competition. Wait… wha?

    I had actually planned to compete months before. It was not something that I had ever done prior, and it is generally an activity that I would consider completely out of my comfort zone.

    I’ve never been interested in competitive sports; I’m nervous when put on the spot and I am not comfortable being the center of attention. A friend who competes annually told me it would be casual fun, but it didn’t necessarily sound like a good time to me. It sounded nerve racking.

    Nevertheless, I had registered to compete. The timing couldn’t have been worse. I already felt like I had been hit by an emotional mac truck, and the physical ailments were tagging along like uninvited hitchhikers.

    I decided that I would go, but if I wasn’t feeling it, I would back out and just be there to enjoy the beach and support my husband and our friends. And so, we prepared for a long weekend at the coast.

    The day before our departure my husband got a cold and I could feel one coming on. The morning we left I woke with a migraine.

    “Oh, this is starting out fantastic,” I thought to myself, but I kept my snarky remarks to myself, climbed into the van, and off we went. Hubbie sniffing and sneezing and me unable to keep my eyes open for very long.

    I have to admit that I was glad to get out of my art studio. Staring at my painting that I was stuck on had been a source of irritation that I was relieved to take a vacation from.

    We arrived at the beach to find almost non-existent waves, which would make a surf competition pretty difficult. Then, I received a not such fantastic report from a friend whose father is in poor health and I realized that my parents had missed my daughter’s volleyball game because I had told them the wrong time. And my shoulder was killing me. Would it ever end?

    The more it came, the more indifferent I felt. The apathy was only interrupted by sporadic bursts of tears followed by the need to collapse and sleep.

    I swear the sole reason that I didn’t back out of the competition was simply because I just couldn’t walk back up the beach one more time to get to the registration table again. Plus, I started to question if I would be disappointed in myself and regret it if I surrendered.

    So, I went on. My heat was at 11:40 the next morning. I would have twenty minutes to catch as many waves as I could, only two of which would count toward my score. The waves were ankle height. How on earth was this going to work? I ate some chocolate and went to bed.

    The morning of the competition, I woke with small butterfly flutters in my stomach that in the hours leading up to 11:40am turned into a swarm. I was nauseous, shaky, and terrified. At least I had seemed to have beaten the sickness and my migraine was gone. Focus on the positive, right?

    I paddled out in to the water with my six competitors and sat for what seemed to be an eternity. Then the horn blew and my twenty minutes began. I caught as many waves as I could and it was actually going okay.

    The horn blew again ending my heat and I came out the water with the biggest smile on my face. I had done it. I was happy with how I had surfed but mostly, I was just psyched that I had gotten out there. All of the crap from the previous two weeks melted away and all of a sudden, my problems didn’t seem like such a big deal.

    “Look what I just did!” I exclaimed. I felt proud and accomplished, the sky seemed bluer, and the world brighter. I felt ready to tackle anything. I found out that I came in dead last in my heat but it didn’t matter. I had gone through with it.

    I brought that feeling home and immediately was able to resolve the painting I had been stuck on. The technical problems I was having got fixed, and harmony seemed to be on its way to restoration. I, once again, felt I could take on the world.

    I am a highly sensitive person who struggles with anxiety. When things are going well, it feels like the good will never end. When life is not working in my favor, I feel as though I’ve been sucker punched and then repeatedly kicked when down. Like all of the warranties have just expired. Like I’m making all the wrong choices and doing all the wrong things.

    It can be hard to stand back up again when I’m questioning every option. The fear is overwhelming and paralyzing. But I now realize one way to effectively shake off these negative cycles, which are inevitable: I can turn fear on itself by doing something that intimidates me.

    I can fight fear with action.

    During this particularly bad negative cycle, I became scared of everything and it was hard for me to move forward, as I was petrified by all of the possible outcomes. It destroyed my confidence.

    My everyday coping methods of dealing with anxiety were not working. But by doing something that scared the crap out of me, something completely out of my comfort zone, I showed myself that I am strong.

    Also, I am aware that surfing, skiing, hiking, and mountain biking are all activities that force me to engage with the present. I can’t think about what’s happening in other areas of my life when I’m dropping into a wave or flying down the side of a mountain. It’s like jet-fueled mindfulness. I am reminded that there are things that I cannot control, and I become aware of the smallness of my problems.

    In this particular instance, I was so lost in doubt and confusion that merely going to the coast for a surf didn’t boost me. However, by surfing in a competition, something that was completely foreign to me, I was able to not only get outside myself for a minute through the physical act of surfing, but I was also able to prove to myself that I can accomplish things that I interpret as out of my reach.

    Sure, I may not have ended up on the winners’ podium, but in non-existent surf and with every eye on the beach watching, I competed. And when I walked out the water, I was cheered.

    Want proof of how doing something terrifying changed my outlook? Take a look at the photo to the right. That’s me coming out of the water after my heat. That smile is genuine. I felt like a winner.

    For me, there is nothing more debilitating than being fear-driven. It is a barrier to progress and I, for one, feel I have come too far to let anxiety sit at my table for long.

    Don’t get me wrong. There is such a thing as healthy fear. If I would have shown up to the competition and the waves were fourteen feet high, I don’t think I would have surfed. But if I would have backed out because things had been going poorly and so, “this will probably be a disaster too,” well, I just plain refuse to adhere to that mind set, even if that’s where my brain wants to go.

    We all go through periods of time when the world just seems to be working against us. Cycles when we feel we are swimming against the current. Sometimes the best way to break the cycle is to show ourselves that worry and doubt have not taken total control.

    We can take the power away from fear and stock it back into our arsenal by taking action.

    We set ourselves free by proving that we can do the very things that scare the bejesus out of us and that life will still go on, possibly with a renewed confidence, even greater than it was before. So, go out and do something that scares you. I double dog dare ya’!

    Photo credit for Marigny’s surfing picture: Chris Goodyear

  • Train Your Mind: Overcoming Negative Thoughts Is Half the Battle

    Train Your Mind: Overcoming Negative Thoughts Is Half the Battle

    “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

    I could not find the bottom of the pool.

    The task seemed simple enough: Wearing no more than twenty pounds worth of gear, swim to the bottom of an eight-foot pool, remove your gear, and swim back up.

    My feet combed for something—anything—solid beneath me, to no avail. A shock of fear struck through my veins, clouding my head. Panic. I reached a point of sheer, utter, uncontrollable panic.

    Panic is an interesting beast. It is designed to trigger the flight-or-fight mechanism in the human body; it is for survival at all costs. Yet, it tends to override any form of rationality. So, with twenty pounds dragging me down into the depths, I attempted desperately to swim back up to the surface.

    In swimming, there are three places you can be, and only one of which is dangerous. The first is above water, where you can breathe. The second is on the bottom, where you can use momentum to push yourself up. The dangerous one is in between. In purgatory. This is where I found myself.

    I had not struggled with any aspect of training while at the U.S. Military Academy. I was not the smartest of the bunch, but I was a hard worker, and I was willing to sacrifice sleep; this earned me decent grades. I was not the strongest, but I was willing to put in work every day at the gym; this earned me good physical stamina.

    I had always heard about how everyone experiences a crucible event at the academy, during which they were stopped dead in their tracks and given two choices: give in, or do everything you can to claw and scratch your way to success. I, however, was complacent.

    Time slowed down as I fought tooth and nail to reach the surface. When people are drowning and in a state of panic, they do what is called “shelfing.” It is a fruitless attempt to push the water below them with their arms to get their head to air.

    I felt a moment of cold as my hand punched above the surface one last time, clawing for air, before my lungs began burning so badly that my body went limp. I watched the world around me begin to close to black. Pictures of my family and my life flipped across my thoughts like a film reel.

    Just as I began to lose consciousness, a shepherd’s hook was thrust in my direction, pulling me to the surface, where I quickly clutched the side of the pool, panting, my heart pounding in my throat. I looked up at my combat survival swimming instructor, my eyes swirling with fear.

    “Go in and do it again,” he said.

    From that point on, this course became the bane of my existence. I writhed with anxiety before each session. I continued not to pass the swim tests. The dark cloud of failure lingered over my head. This was a mandatory class. If I failed, it put my graduation in jeopardy.

    Here I stood, in the second semester of my junior year at West Point, with an enormous, unexpected mountain in front of me. This was my crucible. This was where I would rise or fall, and it would change the course of my existence.

    It is important to mention that at this point, I had failed every single “survival gate.” I started going to every extra help session I could, continuously attempting to retest. It all seemed futile because the moment I began to sink in any capacity, my mind went into overdrive, and the panic would set in. Once the panic set in, I was finished.

    Buddha once said, “Rule your mind or it will rule you.” I was in good physical shape. I knew how to swim. This was not a question of capability; it was a question of mindset. And I had to fix it.

    Up until this time in my life, I always used a brute force approach to challenges or adversities. I did not consider the mind as a muscle requiring growth and exercise, like the body. My mind had never acted against what my body and heart wanted to do. For the first time, I experienced uncontrolled thoughts that were influencing my actions.

    Every time I attempted to swim, as soon as my hips would begin to drop under or my head plunged beneath unexpectedly, my inner voice wailed, “It’s over. You are drowning.” Like clockwork, I would let my body become vertical, and I would sink beneath the surface, splashing desperately for the center ropes or the edge.

    Something had to change. The water absorbed brute force like it was nothing, and it was more than willing to swallow me into its depths, no matter how much I flailed. I had to find a different way to stop myself from panicking.

    I started small. I looked in the mirror before class and told myself, “You can do this. You are strong.” I played motivational songs before class. I made a deliberate attempt to get myself excited, while inside, my stomach was squirming with dread.

    Then one morning, while I was wearing my full kit and attempting to breaststroke across a twenty-five-meter lane, I felt my hips begin to sink. The flush of fear stung my cheeks, and my breathing became staggered.

    “You are drowning! You cannot do it!” the voice of panic screamed in my head. I felt my shoulders go under. Then I could no longer breathe.

    My eyes squeezed shut as my arms began to wave wildly. But, at that moment, my mind training seemed to kick in. “You are alright.” The small, timid words of reason attempted to push away the panic. “You can save yourself.”

    I stopped flailing. I brought my arms to my sides and allowed myself to sink all the way to the bottom of the pool.

    “You are okay.” I felt the bottom of the pool with my boots and pushed as hard as I could against it, sending myself shooting upwards. With a gasp of relief, my head burst out of the water, and I swam to the end. I met the lifeguard’s eye; he had been waiting by the edge of the pool, ready to act.

    “Hey, good job!” he told me with a smile. “You saved yourself!”

    This was the beginning of a change. I could learn to challenge the negative thoughts.

    From then on, when I swam with my gear, I repeated the mantra, “You are okay. You are okay.” When I jumped off the 6-meter diving board and plunged into the depths of the pool, I told myself, “You will make it.” When I slid down into the wave pool, headfirst, in my gear, clutching my rubber rifle to my chest, I said, “You will finish.”

    The swell of panic that consistently grew in me could be quelled by this quiet, steady focus that simply refused to give up. In the end, I retested every single survival gate multiple times and finally scored the minimum requirements to pass the class—on the very last day.

    This experience changed my outlook on life and myself. The mind is an incredible tool that you can train to accomplish amazing feats. It can be your worst enemy, or, with practice and understanding, your best weapon.

    It is vital to realize that everyone—you included—will go through a crucible in life. It will be a defining moment during which you teeter on the bridge between triumph and defeat, and you will have the choice. That choice and the choices you make every time you are faced with a hurdle will build the habits that ultimately will come to define how you will live your entire life.

    You cannot fully prepare for a crucible in life, no matter how much you try. It will sneak up on you, and it will grab you by the neck and pull you under if you let it.

    The key lies in your way of thinking. Every single time I got in the water, I was filled with a sensation of impending doom. My internal monologue told me of certain failure. However, you can change your inner voice. Make a deliberate effort to tell yourself a different story than the one that has been drowning you. Change the way you speak to yourself. When your mind is right, your actions can follow.

    This is not a story of becoming the most successful swimmer ever. I scraped by with a single mark above failing.

    This is a story of training your mind, and making the deliberate decision to fight the negative monologue that has overpowered you. Whether it be a crucible of health, school, physical activity, sports, or money, the first step toward overcoming is to convince yourself it is not only possible, but you will.

    The negative thoughts are next to impossible to fully stop. Instead, you must train your mind to answer them with stronger, more positive thoughts. Learn to trust yourself through positive self-talk. This is not a skill to learn in a single day, but you can train yourself before your crucible strikes.

    The best step you can possibly take for yourself at this very moment is to practice the subtle art of training your mind and thoughts. Meditate on it. When you hear yourself complaining, counter your negative thought with an empowering one. Smile more often, even when you do not feel like it. Feel your fears and doubts, but go for it anyways. Compliment yourself daily. Practice gratitude and mindfulness.

    Ask yourself the question, “Who do you want to be?” and use the answer to thwart any thoughts that keep you from becoming that person.

    You do not have to let yourself drown to find your mental strength.

  • Facing the Fear of Change: Big Risks Can Bring Big Rewards

    Facing the Fear of Change: Big Risks Can Bring Big Rewards

    “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” ~Barack Obama

    If someone said to you, “Hey, you know how you are feeling the need for change and you’re not sure what to do? Well, I can’t tell you what to do, but I can guarantee that if you follow where your heart leads you, you’ll create the possibility of more joy than you’ve ever felt before. All you have to do is walk through the doors that will keep opening up for you and trust, completely, that you are on the right track. You may question it at times, but keep going. You’ll be fine no matter what.”

    What would you do? Would you follow the guarantee or would you keep doing what you’re doing?

    What if the caveat was added, “Oh, you should probably know that if you do this, you run the risk of losing much of what you’ve known and who you think you are now will look completely different the next time you look in the mirror.”

    Ummmm… hold up. Let me think about that.

    That’s basically what happens when you know it’s time to change up your life and you’re innately scared to do so.

    So, what do you do?

    I spend a lot of time in deep reflection and introspection. And it’s not because I want to; it’s because I am constantly trying to understand myself, to figure out where I’m headed and what’s potentially holding me back from getting there.

    Most of the time, I feel completely in the dark. And while my grandmother always told me that there is nothing in the dark that can hurt you, I’m human; I question this theory. And yet I continue to trust that she’s right. She lived over eighty years and was the most inspirational woman I’ve known; she must’ve learned something pretty valuable to be expressing these bold opinions.

    So I had the nudge to change myself and I went with it. No, that’s not accurate—I had the internal and external shove and I went for it.

    In the matter of a few short years, I got divorced, bought a house, lived alone with my kids, completely supported myself financially and then left my job, started a business, and changed the majority of my friends. I chose to start completely over in many ways.

    On paper, I looked a bit off balanced.

    Yet, I felt in my heart, in my soul, that I was supposed to make these changes. They were leading me somewhere I knew deep down I wanted to be.

    During that time of immense change, I took some huge hits. I lost my marriage, most of my friends, my sense of belonging, my financial stability, an understanding of who I thought I was, any semblance of security, consistent support from loved ones, and a ton of sleep.

    That was never part of my plan. I didn’t expect to lose so much, but it happened. I had to learn how to let go, regroup, and re-evaluate what I was doing. I had to learn to trust my decisions and that the discomfort was temporary and going to be worth its price.

    It was challenging. No, it was painful. And scary. And dark. Very, very dark.

    These changes, that proposed I’d grow into a better version of myself, came with a hidden tax. In order to get to where I was headed, I would need to dig deep and re-discover my strength, my passion, and my drive to keep moving forward no matter what.

    I would have to look at my fears dead on and question their weight. I would have to re-assess my standards and feel the guilt of changing not just for myself, but also for my kids.

    I questioned myself over and over again, interrogating my need to keep going—why I couldn’t quit. And what would I do if I just gave up? I had to evaluate my worth and see if I really had what it took to be this person, whoever she was.

    I met an amazing friend who seemed to be on the same path as me. She vocalized the same fears, as well as the same need to hope. We spent the first year of our leap of faith supporting each other through the ups and downs. She was my sense of relief. And then, with no warning, she died in her sleep. What I relied on was gone. My questioning began all over again.

    I cried often. I regularly found myself in the fetal position protecting myself from letting anyone in. More times than not, I felt completely alone.

    And yet, with every dark day came one full of light. Every tear I shed was followed up by a laugh with a new friend. Every moment of doubt was rewarded with some notion of peace and promise that the pain would dissipate and the joy would return.

    And it did. For every three friends lost, I found one that reminded me I was cherished, trusted, and not alone. For every time I questioned if I did right by my children, they showered me with love and gratitude to remind me that I was exactly what they needed. For the financial security I lost, came the abundant flow that surpassed what I had previously known, doing exactly what I loved.

    With the guilt came the opportunity to forgive myself. With the fear came the opportunity to trust myself. With the self-deprecation came the opportunity to love myself.

    This person I was becoming—who I am—was far braver than I ever knew. The fears continued to flood me, but I didn’t let them change my course. The more I let myself be vulnerable, the more I was able to see the next steps. I also saw myself in a light I had never seen—radiant, confident, full of flaws, but the kind I could work with.

    I was no longer a good mom; I was a great mom. I was no longer poor; I was rich with experience. As I let my heart open, I experienced more moments awe and gratitude than I had ever before in my life.

    I still cried a lot when I was alone. I prayed often and looked for signs of hope every single day. I still do. I will never stop. I need them.

    But this promise of change to be in a place my heart has longed for, where I am comfortable in my own skin—I have arrived.

    The fear doesn’t just go away. It asks to be seen and acknowledged. Yet the more I’ve learned to work with it, the less it has worked against me.

    I ask it questions. I examine the root of its discomfort. I look for alternatives to the boundaries it won’t budge on. I compromise decisions and reframe all the answers it gives me back. I hear the negatives and I search for the positives. I find the hope and spoon feed it to the fears who just want reassurance.

    My fears and I, we talk a lot. Like a child who just wants to feel safe, I speak to them in a way that doesn’t diminish their value, but reminds them they are not always right.

    Would I have taken this road if I knew what to expect? I don’t honestly know. But I do know I have no regrets, and this person I am, I like her. And I’m happy to have her as a friend. She inspires me.

    Maybe that’s what the change was all about.

    Truly living and growing requires risk. And not all risks pan out the way we hope or imagine. Sometimes those risks temporarily take us to places that are darker than the life we were living before. They may even require us to let go of what we think we need or what once brought us joy in order for us to grow.

    Yet with each risk comes the opportunity to discover something about ourselves—a hidden talent, a new passion, personal insight, or simply deep courage and internal strength that’s been waiting to be felt so we know it exists.

    There may not be a guarantee that we will experience more joy than before, but the only way to discover what’s possible is to take a chance, make a change, and find out.

  • How I Turned Fear and Anxiety into Joy and Fulfillment

    How I Turned Fear and Anxiety into Joy and Fulfillment

    “The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.” ~Alain de Botton

    I know fear and anxiety. We’re old friends. When I was fifteen, and school was over, I’d have to force one foot in front of the other. It was time to go home. I always kept going, and with every step I’d psych myself up.

    You see, once I’d gotten home, fixed my dinner, and finished my homework, my mother would come home. It was then that we would begin the nightly ritual of me talking her out of killing herself. I succeeded, but every day was a struggle.

    As I got older I became terrified of leaving my room and fixated on studying so I could go to college and leave her dramatic mood swings behind.

    I did get out. I went on to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a highly ranked school, studied abroad in England, and even went on to get a Masters Degree in International Studies from the University of Sydney in Australia. I worked hard and climbed in my career as a humanitarian worker.

    But the problem was that the fear and anxiety followed me. The chaotic energy of my childhood was still in every cell of my body. And as a result, I attracted people very similar to my mother and I was attracted to dangerous situations, such as visiting former war zones for work.

    After seventeen years of carrying this weight around, I buckled. My work suffered and I fell apart emotionally. I felt like a pilot trying to land an out of control jumbo jet with both engines on fire.

    I just couldn’t carry the weight anymore, so I began to unload toxic relationships left and right—quite to the shock and dismay of my family and friends.

    As I felt better and cracks of clarity began to seep through, the people around me pushed back. That’s when I made probably the biggest most dramatic decision I’ve ever made.

    I sold my house in Washington, DC, worked out a part-time telecommuting position with my boss, and moved to Asheville, North Carolina. I knew that I needed space to figure out who I was and to spend some quality time dealing with my past.

    Four and a half years later, I feel like a completely different person. I believe in myself, like really believe in myself. I meditate. I have clear boundaries that I stick to, and at a cellular level, I feel at peace.

    Now, I still have work to do, but I don’t dread it. Instead, I look forward to my continued work and getting to the next level of fulfillment, and I see life as full possibilities and joy.

    During this journey people have continually asked me how I did it. They’re amazed that every time they see me, I somehow have jumped to a more fulfilled level. Well, let me tell you.

    1. I made personal development my number one priority.

    Every time I made a leap, my relationship with myself improved, my relationships with others improved, new opportunities appeared in my life, and my business became less stressful, more streamlined, and more purposeful.

    2. I embraced my emotions.

    It was messy at first. I’m not going to lie. I cried every day for two years and I still cry fairly often, but it’s over quickly and I feel much better afterward. I understand now that I had to grieve for the childhood that I never had.

    The two tools that kept me sane and helped me push through were a) a regimented and strenuous workout routine that allowed me to get my anger out in a physical way and b) Iyanla Vanzant’s online Forgiveness Workshop, which guided me through why I was angry, allowed me to get to the heart of my anger (and more importantly, my hurt), and allowed me to let go.

    3. I stopped identifying myself as a victim.

    I’ll be honest, this one still comes up for me in surprising ways. I realized that I had been taking pride in being a victim. It had become part of my identity, and it was holding me back from believing in myself.

    4. I embraced that it’s how I feel that is the most important thing in my life, not the amount of money in my bank account, the status of the people around me, or the car that I drive.

    Danielle LaPorte’s book The Desire Map was instrumental in this mind shift. After reading it, I finally understood that when I coveted material things or relationships, I wasn’t coveting them; I was coveting how I thought they would make me feel. My whole life changed when I realized that I could have positive feelings now without these things.

    I began to incorporate experiencing belonging, feeling loved, and feeling safe into my morning meditation.

    There was a lot of reaching at the beginning. These weren’t emotions that I had ever experienced in a holistic and healthy way. But I kept meditating on them, and slowly, things, programs, podcasts, and people showed up in my life that showed me what those healthy emotions did feel like. And my meditations on them became more and more real. And now I know with certainty that my life will be filled with belonging, love, and feelings of being safe for the rest of my life.

    5. I embraced affirmations and mantras.

    I began to write down affirmations and post them throughout my house. When things were at their worst, I printed out on a piece of paper in huge font the words “I love you” and taped it to my bathroom mirror.

    I still cry thinking about how lonely and unloved I felt when I looked at that piece of paper every morning. But I kept it up there and I even started to say “I love you” to myself in the mirror.

    At first I could barely look myself in the eye, but after over five years, I look myself clearly in the eye and smile every time I say it, because I mean it.

    I also started to identify how I wanted to feel so I could create mantras. I still do this. At the moment I’ve borrowed one of Gabrielle Bernstein’s favorites and adapted it. Every time I am at rest I repeat to myself “I am supported in my life and business” and everyday I feel more supported.

    6. I got a dog.

    It may sound simple to some, but getting a dog has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The obvious perks are the unconditional love, the constant shoulder to cry on, and someone who is always ecstatic to play with me.

    But the actual reason goes much deeper. Dogs’ behavior reflects the energy we put off into the world, so they’re like an instant karma meter. If we’re feeling chaotic and unsure of ourselves, they might protect us by attacking other dogs or misbehave.

    People always assume it’s the dog’s fault if he misbehaves, but the fault is almost always the human’s energy. Once I figured this out, I felt an even greater responsibility for the energy that I was putting out in the world. I now had to be calm, direct, and assertive so that my dog could have a happy life. During this process, he has helped me identify countless things to clear.

    7. I set firm boundaries.

    This one was and still is paramount to my happiness. I grew up in a family with essentially no boundaries. My parents would tell me about their love lives, their problems, and didn’t really allow me to have any material possessions that really felt like mine.

    So as an adult I had very poor boundaries. I’d let people take advantage of me and then get mad behind their backs. I’d ask inappropriate questions. The list goes on and on.

    One day my therapist mentioned boundaries in passing, so I looked on Amazon and found another life changing book, Where you End and I Begin by Anne Katherine. It rocked my world.

    I honestly had never even realized that I was allowed to set boundaries. I started setting them right away and my whole world started to shift.

    I now tell people when I don’t want to talk about a subject. I leave a party if I no longer want to be there and I only do things I want to do. As a result I am so much happier and grounded, and more importantly, I am now free to explore what it is that I really want.

    8. I understand that what people say often reflects what they think about themselves.

    This was a hard one. I grew up thinking that everyone’s emotional state and actions were my fault.

    As a result, I had a chronic need to please—and if I didn’t, I felt horribly guilty about it afterward. As I worked through my own emotional chaos, I began to understand how the energy that I brought to a situation could completely shift its outcome.

    I realized that I was creating a revolving mirror of chaos by projecting my own insecurities onto other people’s words and actions. Once I had reined in my inner chaos and could see the world with some clarity, I realized that most people do the same thing I was doing.

    In some cases I realized it didn’t even matter if I was in the room; their insecurities were the only thing that mattered in their world. Whatever I had to say wasn’t going to change anything.

    This realization was downright magical. I finally felt free. I look back and realize that so many situations that had made me feel bad had absolutely nothing to do with me. This has not only allowed me to forgive more people, but it has allowed me to more easily spot secure people who genuinely listen and gravitate toward them.

    9. I expelled negative messages from my life.

    I realized that the television shows I watched, the music that I listened to, and the furniture and objects I put in my house all impacted my subconscious.

    As a result, I stopped watching television where the main character was on the verge of dying or the world was going to end in every episode. This doesn’t mean I switched to shows with unicorns and bunnies. I’m an intelligent person who likes complex plots. But what I did was make sure that the shows I watched reflected how I wanted to feel.

    I started curating my music more carefully. If I loved the beat, but the song had negative messages about women, it got tossed. If the lyrics were about self-sabotage or unhealthy self-doubt, it got tossed. Or if I just didn’t like the beat, it also got tossed.

    What is now left is positive, affirming music that actually feels like me. I’ve even had people comment that the music I listen to feels like my artwork.

    I gave away or threw out all furniture or objects that I didn’t like or that reminded me of someone that I didn’t like. If an object made me feel guilty, it got tossed. If something was broken, it got tossed.

    I even threw away my dining room table! Every time I would drive to the Restore or Goodwill with a full car I was filled with guilt, but then when I drove away empty-handed I always felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

    I realized that I was so busy cluttering my house up with obligations and broken things that I wasn’t showcasing the things I loved and that brought me joy.

    10. I believe in myself.

    When I was trying to study abroad in England and get my Masters in Australia, I felt so sure of the outcome—in my mind there was no other outcome—and I felt so focused and purposeful. I realized this year that I had lost that drive.

    Going through my past in painstaking detail in order to heal had really taken its toll. In some ways it had dragged me into a holding pattern and I couldn’t see a life beyond it.

    Then I started to listen to the Tim Ferriss’ podcast. It’s a complex show hosted by a complex man, so you could take away any number of things. What I’ve taken away lately is that I need to start asking myself more absurd questions.

    Essentially I need to start thinking bigger. So when Tim mentioned an old 1959 book called The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz, I devoured it. It is lifting me up in ways that I never expected (and making me chuckle at its totally 1950s take on life).

    As a result of this book, I finally understand what Tony Robbins has been banging on about—successful people and businesses are successful because they truly believe they will be successful, and they’re willing to do any amount of personal growth work to get to their goal.

    They are so sure of the outcome that nothing, not even their most horrifying ghost will stop them. They’re not going to push against the ghost, they’re going to embrace the ghost, feel its pain, and move through it.

    I believe that I can. And I believe that you can too.

  • What My Self-Judgment Was Trying to Tell Me

    What My Self-Judgment Was Trying to Tell Me

    “Regret is a fair but tough teacher.” ~Brene Brown

    A few weeks back, I found myself in the midst of a shame hangover and, like most people, when I’m in that unique internal cavern, self-judgments swoop into my consciousness like a colony of rabid bats in a four-foot tent.

    I’ll paint the picture…

    There are about two or three boys that have started visiting the houses on my block recently. They hold a rag and a windex bottle, come into every yard, knock on the door, and ask to wash the front doors (most of which are glass). Seems pretty harmless, huh? And, full, vulnerable disclosure here, they were also another ethnicity than I (and I consider myself a woke liberal).

    The first time I saw them approaching the houses, I felt mildly perturbed. I didn’t have cash on me. I didn’t want to deal with them. I just wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want to have to tell them “no.” I had just washed that door.

    They were around twelve years old, maybe younger, and I could tell they were working up the confidence to come into the yard and ask. It wasn’t easy for them. It was a little painful to watch.

    I struggled with being irritated and simultaneously feeling empathy for them. Both uncomfortable. As they made their way into my yard, I told them I had just washed the door, but I noticed the edge in my voice. Something in me felt triggered and I wasn’t quite sure why. I felt a hot beat of shame flush in my cheeks. 

    A few days later they returned, and as I answered the door, a boy with big brown eyes tried to get the words out but before he could even finish his sentence, I could feel anger rising in my body.

    I was watching it happen, confused. Maybe it was all the years living in a big city and feeling bombarded constantly by people asking for money, asking for help, asking for compassion. Some self-protective part of me was kicking in for absolutely no reason.

    I told them no, that I didn’t have cash, and I could hear my voice getting sharper and sharper. I wondered what they saw in that moment—a woman with a sign in her yard professing #lovewins, with a sharp tongue and narrowed eyes, skeptical and cold. I could feel myself tearing inside.

    To make up for it, I said, “Maybe next time. Come back later?”

    Three days later, they came back. I could see them making their way from down the street and the stories started spinning in my head. Do their parents know they’re doing this? Just making their way down the block multiple times a week? This is ridiculous. How much are they even charging for this? What a rip off! They are trying to scam us.

    My body responded in kind, seamlessly. I could feel my cortisol levels rising. I wondered if this was a clue that I actually might be racist on some level. I’m realizing now, yes, of course I am.

    “Excuse me ma’am,” one of them asked again.

    Before he could finish, I noticed I was yelling across the yard and transforming into someone I hated. In a second, I was shrill, nasty, and reactive.

    “If you want to get business, you probably shouldn’t come back every day,” I heard myself hiss as I jumped up and stomped over to the fence. “Do your parents even know where you are?”

    It felt like an out-of-body experience. One self was feeling for these boys watching this lumbering, angry white woman approaching them. One was observing, was sad for what they were seeing, and one part was jumping head first into blame. I have never seen love and fear so clearly demonstrated in my dual personalities I felt so much separation of self.

    “Well, you said to come back,” he replied honestly, “at another time.”

    Oh crap. He was right, I had told them to come back (to get them to go away), to be left alone. They took me literally.

    I realized how much I was shaping in that moment. I was teaching these boys how the world worked, how skeptical people are of other’s motivations (particularly people of their ethnicity), how nasty people can become for no apparent reason.

    I was professing love on my yard signs and teaching them about fear. They saw me in my yard, lovingly interacting in my toddler and then treating them like their hearts were disposable.

    I watched them walk away, wondering what they were muttering, as the shame cloak washed over me. For the next hour, I sat with my toddler son watching Horton Hears a Who. I was feeling so down I couldn’t even be present except to the message.

    “A person is a person no matter how small.”

    The self-judgments were getting darker and darker.  

    You are a fraud.

    You fool. You are a racist.

    You are deep down a rotting mess.

    You are a nasty b*tch. That is who you are really are.

    And with each word, I sunk lower and lower in the cavern.

    Until I took a moment to remember something important about self-judgments.

    They can actually be a good thing, as long as you don’t take them literally. They are a sign of regret.

    “Regret is a fair but tough teacher.” ~Brene Brown

    I regretted that situation because my fear-based actions were so out of alignment with what my deeper self desired. I wanted to take care of those boys. I wanted them to feel seen and valued, but fear stepped in and I created the opposite effect.

    Self-judgments can tell us where we are out of alignment with deeper self and our intuitive responses.

    I think of all the times love has told me what to do, has urged me toward compassionate action, toward mercy, toward lifting others up, and how often my fear steps in and death chokes it to the ground by reasoning it away. Each time, self-judgment promptly followed. Each of those instances is teaching me more and more how to listen to that intuitive voice before listening to the screams of fear.

    Our deeper self whispers, and our fear screams, so it makes sense that it wins a lot of the time. If we continue to ignore those whispers, however, our deeper self will try to get our attention through the channels of self-judgment.

    Yes, I have parts of me that are certainly nasty and rotten, and I am realizing, also racist. I also know these do not define who I am capable of becoming. They are expressions of fear and, just like every other human, I am capable of using them to defend myself when I am triggered. The more I recognize that impulse, the more choice I have to act in love.

    The deeper self will scream (and use your own past wounds against you) if that is the only way to get you to pay attention. The mistake I initially made was that I was taking the self-judgments literally, and as truth, instead of decoding their messages.

    “If the self-judgments aren’t literal, what might my deeper self be trying to say?” I asked myself.

    When I looked underneath all of the judgments, I could see that I was afraid if I kept acting that way toward people that I would be a part of everything I hated about the world right now.

    Underneath that fear was a request from my deeper self to start to choose loving and compassionate responses as much as I could, to be brave, to take responsibility for what is happening in this world right now, to get better.

    I am sick and tired of betraying myself all the time. I am so sick of letting fear run the game of my life, keeping me separated from other people. I am committed to love winning inside of me more and more.

    I can’t promise perfection. I can’t promise I won’t be triggered by a whole bunch of past conditioning and crap, but I can promise to try to get better each time, and to create a plan for what I am going to do get better, to create the world I want to live in.

    For now, I’m keeping cash in my drawer, hoping those boys come back. If they do, I’m inviting them into the yard, introducing them to my son, asking their names, and thanking them for their help. I’m going to show them that people can love them without knowing them yet.

  • Learning How to Confront Someone When You’re a People-Pleaser

    Learning How to Confront Someone When You’re a People-Pleaser

    “The more room you give yourself to express your true thoughts and feelings, the more room there is for your wisdom to emerge.” ~Marianne Williamson

    I have always been a people-pleaser, a trait that on the surface seems positive. Like many of us, I want people to like me, and I do my best to make them feel loved. But when someone is angry with me or feels I’ve hurt them in some way, no matter how insignificant or fleeting that anger or pain is, it crushes me.

    Over the years, I learned to value other people’s happiness and expectations over my own. To be honest, I didn’t know how to speak up for myself, I’d been trying to be “likable” for so long. This was especially true at work. If my boss criticized me, I felt I was letting her down, and worked diligently to earn praise.

    I became dependent on accolades to feel worthy, but this meant I also plummeted into despair when I didn’t measure up to expectations.

    A couple of years ago, I was working at a non-profit with a group of people I truly respected and admired. It was my dream job—I was a publicist for a company that was doing good things in the world, not just trying to make money. I loved this job, and worked hard.

    Eventually, I was offered a promotion—a management position, overseeing staff and developing strategy. I was thrilled! This was a tangible acknowledgement of how hard I’d worked, how valuable I’d become.

    There were strings attached. The department heads wanted me to continue doing my old job since they didn’t have the budget to hire another person.

    I was flattered that my bosses wanted to give me more responsibilities (proving my worth). But I also knew the organization was taking advantage of me by not hiring someone to help, and this was difficult for me to accept and address directly. If they really liked and respected me, how could they think this was a fair offer? I was asked to do two jobs for the price of one.

    It gutted me. After all my hard work, I knew I deserved more.

    But these are good people, I reminded myself. Surely there’s something I’m overlooking. Am I unworthy of more?

    I felt my self-esteem plummet.

    It took a few days for me to realize I had to stand up for myself. Nobody else was going to do it. My bosses, who I’d come to see as friends, were taking advantage of me and my people-pleasing approach.

    To make things worse, this job was my livelihood. I didn’t know how quickly I could get another job, so it was frightening to think about confronting them. How would it end? Would they fire me if I turned them down? How could I support myself?

    I was terrified, but I knew I had to say something. Even if I struggled to find another job, I knew this was a test of my self-esteem. I couldn’t live with myself if I’d just gone along with their plans, pretending it was okay. I had to rise to the occasion no matter how uncomfortable I felt.

    I was trembling as I met with my supervisors, the four of us sitting around a table in a sterile conference room. I thought these familiar faces were my advocates, but now I saw that I had to advocate for myself.

    I talked about my responsibilities, how hard I’d worked, how much I loved the organization and the people. I asked that they hire another person and offer me a decent raise, or I wouldn’t accept the new position.

    “I suggest you reconsider,” one of them said. “It’s a great opportunity for you.”

    I was shocked. An opportunity?

    “I need more help if you want me to stay,” I insisted.

    “We’re offering you a great career move. Are you saying you don’t want a promotion?”

    I felt numb. They were trying to wear me down, to make me feel like this was a positive. But I knew better. I didn’t want to work two jobs when the hours were long enough, and they refused to negotiate.

    When I realized I’d have to accept their terms or quit, the fear kicked into high gear. Would I be able to get another job in this economy? How would I support myself? It was my ego shouting, trying to take control and remind me that I needed this job, and this paycheck. But my gut knew better. I didn’t “need” to stay, and a paycheck wasn’t worth my sense of self. I knew that it might take a while, but I could find another job.

    When our meeting ended, I walked back to my desk and typed up my resignation. Nobody stopped me or tried to convince me to stay when I announced my departure.

    Strangely, I was relieved. By deciding to confront the situation and my supervisors directly, I’d let go of my burning desire to live up to their unreasonable expectations. Instead, I saw myself and the situation more clearly.

    If they weren’t willing to see my value, I had to honor it myself, even if it meant confronting people I liked and admired. I learned that confrontation, though still difficult for me to do, was just as healthy as being kind.

    Soon after I quit, I was able to find work. In fact, leaving that job opened up opportunities I wasn’t aware of, because I hadn’t been looking. I now have a steady stream of freelance assignments, as well as more time to dedicate to other passions of mine, like traveling, hiking, and writing a novel.

    Here’s what I’ve learned about dealing with conflict:

    Asserting myself is a healthy practice.

    We all deserve an equal playing field. When I speak up for myself, it means I’m honoring my needs, too. When I’m going to extremes trying to please others, I get resentful, whether I realize it in the moment or not. Over time, this resentment interferes with my relationships. When I create healthy boundaries with someone in my life, I’m doing both of us a favor.

    It might be uncomfortable in the moment.

    Confronting someone is never easy, especially a friend, family member, or someone in a position of power over you (like a boss). It might make me squirm and feel terrible in the moment, but in the long run, I have felt such relief. I’ve taken the silent burden off of me, so I can feel more peaceful. The positives outweigh the negatives.

    I must look past my fear.

    When we face big risks in life like potential unemployment or the end of a relationship, fear kicks into high gear. When fear overwhelms me, I like to step back and look at the situation from an outsider’s perspective.

    If a good friend told me she was going through the same experience, what would I say? No doubt I’d support her in advocating for herself, so I should take my own advice. No matter the result, it’s worth the risk to honor ourselves.

    It is impossible to please everyone anyway.

    This is a hard lesson for me. I have a deep desire for people to understand who I am; that what I do and say comes from a good place. However, this isn’t realistic. There are always going to be people who don’t like me, who misunderstand me. It is not my job to make them feel differently about me; that is completely up to them. What I can do is treat people with respect and kindness and let go of the outcome.

    Confrontation isn’t about hurting someone else; it’s about standing in my power.

    The ability to confront ultimately comes down to an issue of self-esteem. Because I was trying to gain acceptance and love, I was at the mercy of external circumstances to feel worthy. Now I see that I have to accept my own worthiness no matter what.

    We are all worthy. We are all lovable. And we are all responsible for creating boundaries to honor our worth. This I know is true.

  • Why We Procrastinate and How to Finally Do What You’ve Been Putting Off

    Why We Procrastinate and How to Finally Do What You’ve Been Putting Off

    “Low key change helps the human mind circumnavigate the fear that blocks success and creativity.” ~Robert Maurer

    I’m currently working on my doctoral dissertation. It’s something I’ve been working on for many years. It’s something that I deeply believe in and want to complete, but I’m also the mom of two small kids and I run my own business.

    Making time for to work on my thesis is low down on my priorities.

    And for years I’ve been able to justify it to myself that I don’t work on it as much as I should because I don’t have the time.

    That may well have been partly true while my children were younger.

    But now as they’re getting a bit older, I realize that my procrastination is also about something else.

    It’s about all the stories in my head that make working on this project unpleasant.

    It’s about the fear, the self-doubt, the worry about not being good enough, the doubt about whether I’ll ever be able to finish, and the expectation that it’s going to be a really hard and frustrating process.

    Because I do have time.

    I have time to read and work on other projects that interest me. In fact, I make sure I create the time because I enjoy working on them.

    This is something that I’ve only recently realized. Recognizing it has been so empowering.

    Because I do want to finish it. I’ve dedicated so much time and energy to it, it would feel really good to complete.

    Since recognizing this and recommitting to the project, I’ve been experimenting with an idea that so far has been really helpful, and I’m excited about its potential.

    Sneaking Past Fear the Kaizen Way

    The idea comes from the Japanese art of Kaizen. In his great book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, Robert Maurer describes it as a gentle and elegant strategy to maintain excellence and realize dreams.

    He explains how when we try to do big things and make big changes, it triggers our stress response and makes us avoid. So the solution is to make tiny, incremental changes, so imperceptibly small that you don’t activate your stress response.

    All kaizen asks is that you take small steps for continual improvement.

    As I was reading this I could immediately see where I was going wrong.

    Each time I sat down to work on a paper I’m writing I was thinking about how I could make this a brilliant paper that would make the biggest impact and so do justice to the participants of my research.

    Wow, the weight of the pressure. No wonder that felt like a big ask and made me avoid it.

    The two strategies I have been working with involve asking small questions and thinking small thoughts.

    1. Ask small questions to dispel fear and inspire creativity.

    Big questions, such as “How can I quit my job and find my purpose?” tend to overwhelm us. Small questions help us get around our fear and start making progress, especially when we ask them regularly.

    Maurer illustrates this point by asking you to imagine coming to work and having a colleague ask you to remember the color of the car parked next to you. You probably wouldn’t remember. If they asked you the same question the next day you probably also wouldn’t remember. But by the third day, as you arrived at work, you would probably pay attention to the car parked next to you.

    Asking yourself tiny questions consistently helps you teach your mind what to pay attention to.

    He recommends asking yourself your question a few time throughout the day for a number of days in a row.

    I’ve been using this by combining two questions: “If I was guaranteed to succeed, what would I be doing differently?” and “What small step can I take today to move me forward?”

    One idea that came to me today was to reach out to a colleague who I know was also working on her PhD while working fulltime. I shared my experience with her and her response: “Ali, I feel like you’re completely describing my experience. Let’s speak more and find out how we can support each other.”

    We’re now going to support each other as accountability partners which I can already feel will make a significant difference.

    Some other questions you could consider asking yourself daily:

    How could I make working toward my goal more fun?

    Who can I ask for help today?

    What’s the simplest thing I can do with the time I have available?

    2. Think small thoughts to develop new skills and habits.

    The second strategy involves a kind of mental rehearsal called mind sculpting, which helps you develop new social, mental, and even physical skills just by imagining yourself performing them. Here you identify the task you want to achieve from your questioning process and then begin to imagine yourself doing it.

    But instead of seeing yourself on a moving screen, as is the traditional visualization technique, you are advised to feel yourself doing the task and incorporate all your senses.

    So I see myself sitting down, feeling my fingers on my keyboard, hearing the sounds of the birds outside, and seeing the screen in front of me.

    And the important part—seeing yourself enjoying the process. Because we avoid what we imagine will be unpleasant and painful.

    What I’m doing with that is giving myself the next two weeks while my children are on school holidays to spend a few minutes a day imagining myself working on it and enjoying it.

    The idea here is that by doing this for a period of time, you start to rewire your association to the task, which makes it easier to then take small actions.

    So choose a task that you’re afraid to do or something that makes you uncomfortable and decide how long you’ll practice for each day. Make the time commitment so little that you’re going to do it consistently, as repetition is important. Maurer recommends starting with a few seconds a day!

    So what have you been putting off that you would love to accomplish? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

  • How to Cope with the Fear of Aging

    How to Cope with the Fear of Aging

    “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” ~Mark Twain

    Time is the most precious asset we’ve got. It means life, and it’s never coming back.

    In a world where everyone seems to be in a rush, it feels like time is flying. Not sure about you, but when I was a child, I felt like I had all the time in the world. Much later, as a grown-up woman, always busy to do more and achieve more, I had to sign up for time management courses so that I could cope with stress and learn how to manage my hours.

    In April this year, I turned thirty-nine, and I was happy to witness a major transformation in myself: no more panic knowing that soon I’m going to be forty. No more sadness or fear of getting older.

    This year, the only thing I wanted for myself was to celebrate a new year and feel grateful for everything I’ve learned so far at the school of life. To look at the future as an excellent opportunity to learn more and grow from my experiences.

    Beautiful…but it wasn’t always like that. Like many other people I know, both women and men, I was terrified of the idea of growing older. I could feel this fear in my bones years ago, when I “changed the prefix” and turned thirty.

    At the time, I didn’t express that out loud and pretended everything was okay, but, deep inside, I was terrified. To me, such a change was a powerful mental, psychological transition that came with high pressure on my chest, followed by painful beats of my heart. I wasn’t ready, and I can recall that I wanted all my youngest years back.

    So I’ve been asking myself this question: Where does this fear come from? What makes so many people scared of aging?

    One explanation I’ve found comes from societal norms and culturally inherited limiting beliefs that influence our way of thinking and don’t serve us well.

    If you grow up preparing yourself for the aging process as if it will be a burden, that’s exactly how it will feel. It’s all about self-perception and the story we tell ourselves about whom we are becoming with passing time.

    Take my example:

    I grew up in Eastern Europe. In my home country, Romania, I often heard things like “Of course I’m sick. I’m sixty-eight now. I’m not young any longer, so that should be expected.” Or “My time has gone now; I’m seventy-five!”

    Of course, not everyone thinks like this, but it’s common. Growing old is supposed to bring suffering and pain. With no savings, many people feel unprepared, both mentally and financially, for retirement, and it’s quite common for retired people to get support from their children to pay their utilities and buy medicine or food.

    I am grateful for the four years I spent living in Sweden—a time that shifted my perception around aging. I still remember the beautiful yearly concerts I gave with my choir. Performing made my heart sing. And many members of that choir were over sixty!

    You see, that was a different culture, mentality, and system of belief—and a much richer country. When we are financially stable and secured, it is much easier to be happy, right? But it’s not always about money; small moments of happiness don’t have to cost much, and often come for free.

    In Sweden, I got to meet grandmothers who were learning new languages and discovering new hobbies for themselves. Some started to paint; others were enhancing their computer skills. They were thrilled to finally have all the time in the world for themselves, their wants, and their needs after they’d dedicated a high amount of time and energy to their families or employers.

    I found that inspiring. That’s exactly how I want to experience my life once I grow older: as a new opportunity to learn, when every morning is a fresh start, despite the number of my years.

    If you’re afraid of aging and everything that will entail, I can empathize, as I’ve been there. Here’s what helped me heal this fear, move on, and enjoy my everyday life in the only reality there is—the present moment:

    1. Shifting perspective.

    What would open up for you if you knew your age was nothing but a number? Once I decided to look at the process of growing older with compassion and see it as a gift not everyone receives in life, everything changed.

    We create our own reality through the way we think and the story we tell ourselves about each and every experience.

    I know there will be lots of good things for me to enjoy once I grow old. Firstly, I will have all the time in the world for myself and I will make sure to fill it up beautifully, doing things I enjoy, traveling more, spending more quality time with friends, learning new things, and practicing new hobbies.

    Most people complain about spending too many hours at work and not having enough time for themselves. But once they retire, they get the time they’ve always wanted and don’t know what to do with it. Interesting.

    “We need to revise how we think of aging. The old paradigm was: You’re born, you peak at midlife, and then you decline into decrepitude. Looking at aging as ascending a staircase, you gain well-being, spirit, soul, wisdom, the ability to be truly intimate and a life with intention.” ~Jane Fonda

    2. Knowing that I am not what I do.

    The truth is, societies generally value the younger generations, seen as a much-needed force in the working field.

    Aging means wisdom and experience, but often much suffering as well. Many people hold the belief that, the older they get, the worse their quality of life will be, as if their worthiness in the world will vanish or fade. I’ve heard of people who got severely depressed when they retired because they felt their lives had no meaning apart from working.

    One of the most common questions people ask when they make new acquaintances is “What do you do for a living?” In a world that evaluates human worth through status and how well we do things in life, they lost their identity when left with no job.

    Work is where we spend most of our time, so if we’re not happy at work, we’re ultimately not happy with most of our lives. Most of us need a job, and money is a much-needed instrument for us to survive. But is life supposed to be all about our jobs? Is there no other way to be happy?

    What if the ultimate purpose of us being here were just to be happy?

    I can think of so many different kinds of activities that can bring us tremendous joy and fulfillment once we retire! Spending quality time with our dear ones, enjoying the small pleasures of life, traveling, practicing our hobbies, learning new skills, being involved in charity projects, making a difference in the world, and so on.

    “You are a human being, not a human doing.” ~Wayne Dyer

    3. Loving myself: mind, body, and soul.

     In the same way that I am not what I do, I am not my body. My spirit refuses to be put in a box or labeled. If I identify my human value through my physical appearance, the process of aging turns into a burden.

    In today’s society, the concept of beauty often gets associated with youth, with having no wrinkles. Social media, women magazines, Photoshop, beauty contests—all these put tremendous pressure on people (and women especially) to fit particular requirements and parameters that sometimes are not even real. For many industries, that’s an excellent source of income. That is why anti-aging cosmetics sell well, and plastic surgery is booming. It’s all based on fear.

    No matter our age, our bodies are the vehicles of our spirit—the temple of our souls and the only ones we’ve got. I have started to take care of my body: I exercise more and give it nutritious food and plenty of water. I make sure I find the time for those necessary doctor appointments and yearly health checks. When we invest in our physical health, we make a long-lasting investment in our future.

    According to research, the people who live longest are located in Okinawa, Japan. I visited that place recently and wanted to learn more about their lifestyle.

    People there eat healthily and exercise. They don’t stress much and have a social life, despite their age. That’s what I also got to see during the years I lived in China and South Korea: older people exercising, doing tai-chi or chi-gong, dancing or singing in the parks of Seoul or the big squares of Shanghai. They were keeping themselves active and spending quality time with like-minded people in their communities.

    Descartes defined human as “social animals.” No matter our personality, extroverted or introverted, we all need a tribe, a sense of belonging to a group or community. That is a basic human need.

    Happiness is a mental and emotional state of being; it comes as a result of the choices we make. It’s all about attitude, perspective, and what we make age mean to us. We all are what we believe.

    So next year I’m turning forty—nothing but a new beautiful number, a time for brand new opportunities and a gift from life. Getting older is a reality, and I have decided to embrace myself with love, despite my age. I know I’m going to end up with more wrinkles and I’ll love them, too. True self-love is valid at any age; there’s no expiration date to that.

    Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Goddesses Never Age, expressed it so beautifully: “Growing older is inevitable; aging is optional.”

    And now, I would like to hear from you. Have you ever felt scared of the idea of getting older?

  • 7 Common Fears That Don’t Have to Control Us

    7 Common Fears That Don’t Have to Control Us

    “Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” ~Marianne Williamson

    As babies, we know nothing about the world. In the universe of an infant, there are no norms to follow, no rigid rules and regulations; no room for labeling or judging ourselves and others. We don’t yet know to disapprove of ourselves, and we’re curious to play, learn, and grow.

    We are all born free spirits. Then our environment—our families, schools, religions, and political systems—shape the way we think and behave.

    Fear is a learned practice. Children generally are not afraid of trying, failing, and getting up on their feet again. That’s how we learned to walk. When we made our first step, we didn’t call ourselves names or punish ourselves if we fell. We just got up and gave it another try.

    As kids, we weren’t afraid to step outside of our comfort zone and try new experiences.

    So why did we get so fearful as adults? What are we really afraid of?

    1. The fear of imperfection

    I often hear people talking about their need for perfection as a sign of virtue. In a society that generally evaluates human worth through how well we do things in life, some people even feel a sense of pride when they describe themselves as “perfectionists” or “workaholics.”

    To me, perfectionism is a sign of fear. When I know I do everything perfectly, I’m untouchable. There is no room for others to correct me.

    As a child, there were times when I was afraid of punishment after getting bad grades in school. Years later, as an adult, I developed an extreme need for perfection, especially at work. All my assignments had to be executed perfectly so none of my managers would have a reason to criticize my performance. At the time, that fear of authority was still present in my life.

    People who struggle with perfectionism also tend to get overwhelmed because they avoid asking for help. They would rather look invincible and strong than vulnerable and “weak.”

    Showing up in our vulnerability in front of others is a sign of authenticity. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s a beautiful human attribute, and it takes lots of courage to show what most of us have been taught for years how to hide.

    “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.“ ~Brené Brown

    2. The fear of failure

    I once read an article about successful people who were intentionally planning for failure. I found that fascinating and strange. Planning to fail? Who likes to fail?

    No one enjoys messing up, but those people were using mistakes as much needed instruments to learn and grow.

    Today I know that each time I am afraid to step outside of my comfort zone and try something new, that’s the fear of failure making decisions for me.

    Each time I find myself stuck and afraid to take risks because I might fail, I ask myself: What’s the worst thing that can happen? Could I cope if it did?

    These questions help me realize that my life would surely go on, and that most mistakes wouldn’t literally kill me.

    “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard

    3. The fear of success

    Sometimes, success is scarier than failure. When dreams look too good to be true, we get scared by our own greatness. Deep inside, we don’t see ourselves as enough, and worthy of love and success.

    Whenever I make myself small or put myself down, I am acting on my fear, taking myself for granted, and forgetting to appreciate myself for my achievements. I’m thinking, “Anyone else could have made it” or attributing my accomplishments to faith, luck, or other people who gave me opportunities to shine. I’m focusing on my weaknesses or limitations, without honoring my strengths, gifts, and talents.

    That’s how I operated in the past, for too many years. But here’s what I know to be true today: It wasn’t luck; it was me.

    Sometimes in life, we need to acknowledge there’s been a lot of hard work and efforts behind our “luck.” And if we’re not yet where we’d like to be, we need to believe that we truly are worthy of what we visualize.

    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.” ~Marianne Williamson

    4. The fear of being rejected

    Being liked and included and feeling a sense of belonging to a community are basic human needs. We fear being left out and seek approval as a means to ensure this doesn’t happen.

    I can recall many situations in my life when I did things I didn’t really want to do to please others, like going to a movie with someone on a Sunday when my body wanted to stay home and take a good nap.

    I was a master of people pleasing and, to be honest, it wasn’t always because I wanted to make everyone happy. The truth is that I wanted people to like and approve of me. I expected them to give me the things I wasn’t giving myself: love, care, and attention.

    Again, being loved is a human need. However, being needy is something different. I came to understand that people who are taking good care of themselves are less dependent on the approval of others.

    Taking care of our own wants and needs is a necessity. When we make sure to keep our tank full and we treat ourselves kindly, we inspire others to do the same for themselves.

    “I used to be a people-pleaser. Now I love them instead.” ~Cheryl Richardson

    5. The fear of what other people think

    Did you know that the fear of public speaking comes first among all kinds of fears? Even the fear of death comes second! Most people don’t feel brave enough to show up in their vulnerability in front of others because they’re focusing more on what people might think about them than on their performance.

    I can recall quite a few situations in my life when I didn’t dare to ask questions, especially when there was something I didn’t know. I didn’t want to look less intelligent or even stupid.

    Especially at work, I didn’t feel comfortable enough to openly admit that I didn’t hold all the answers and I still had a lot to learn. I wanted people to perceive me as an expert, super smart, invincible, and strong. I now know that every day brings new lessons in the school of life, and it’s more important to stay open to them than it is to be perceived as all-knowing.

    Let’s be honest with this one: I’ve never met anyone who would love to hear they were ugly or stupid. We all need to feel validated. But in the end, all that really matters is that we fully approve of ourselves.

    “When I seek your approval, I don’t approve of the me that’s seeking the approval.” ~Byron Katie

     6. The fear of losing control

    If there were Oscars for control-freaking, I would have surely gotten one! Looking back on my past, I recognize that I always wanted to have full control over everything and everyone. This comes back to the fear of imperfection.

    During my former leadership position with a multinational company, the most difficult things for me to handle were decision-making and delegation—not only with people who were new in their roles and lacked experience, but also with co-workers who were very skilled and competent in their jobs.

    Why did I struggle with delegation? Because I knew I was responsible for my team’s results, and I wasn’t mentally strong enough to bear any sort of failure on my shoulders.

    Making mistakes would have scared me to death; that’s why I always needed a long time to brainstorm all possible scenarios that could go wrong when making important decisions.

    The need to always control situations or other people is a major source of stress. It is tiring, frustrating, energy consuming—and pointless, since we can never control what other people do. Letting go of control is true freedom and a form of self-care.

    “Be willing to stop punishing yourself for your mistakes. Love yourself for your willingness to learn and grow.” ~Louise Hay

     7. The fear of what might happen in the future

    If I spend my precious time overthinking and allowing my mind to create different scenarios about the future, I risk missing out on my life and the only reality that is: the present moment.

    Most of the things we worry about never happen. They are nothing but the illusionary product of our mind.

    It’s true, ‘bad’ things do happen at times, but they’re often blessings in disguise that make us stronger and wiser or show us the right path for us.

    Looking back on my past, I recognize that I had to suffer in love so that I could understand what I wanted from a romantic partner. I had to become unemployed for a while in order to realize what I truly wanted from a profession and what would bring me joy and fulfillment.

    Knowing that my painful experiences were actually gifts, and that I survived them, I’m better able to accept that what will be, will be—and no matter what, I can handle it.

    “The best use of imagination is creativity. The worst use of imagination is worry. “ ~Deepak Chopra

    I have stopped feeling guilty and ashamed of my fears. I’ve learned how to embrace them with self-compassion, as part of the package of being human. I know the primary intention of fear is to protect me from things that could hurt me. But I also know I don’t have to let my fears control me.

    I am aware that I can always get mindful and pay attention to my thoughts and emotions. I make sure that I nourish my mind, knowing that I am the one creating my own world through my feelings, thoughts, and, actions.

    “A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love.“ ~Marianne Williamson

    And now, I would like to hear from you. What scares you the most? How do you manage your own fears?

  • How To Overcome Insecurity and Change Your Negative Relationship Patterns

    How To Overcome Insecurity and Change Your Negative Relationship Patterns

    “Sometimes our thoughts are backed by so much insecurity that they create lies we believe.” ~Unknown

    After nearly a year of being single and after going through my fifth breakup, I found myself involved with someone new.

    It was the typical guy-meets-girl story you read about all over the Internet. We met for dinner and drinks and there was an immediate attraction. We laughed and talked and overall had a great night. By the second date, he stayed the night at my house and didn’t leave for four days.

    This time I felt I was more prepared. I had studied relationships. I had learned about communicating. I was sure I was going to get my needs met and everything would be perfect.

    I thought I was changed and that meant everything would be different this time. Surprise! Life doesn’t work that way.

    I’m not sure I noticed it at the time, but I was still feeling a little insecure and unsure and wasn’t ready to let go of my fears. I made sure to continually tell him what I wanted and needed in a relationship. Little by little, I was pushing my agenda on him.

    Naturally, he started to back away. I don’t think he even knew why and I certainly didn’t know either. I only knew I was feeling out of control and was perpetually pissed at him for being a jerk.

    Slowly, we stopped spending all weekend together. He wasn’t coming over after work as often. His texts were more sporadic. Then, one Friday went by with not a word. Then a Saturday and then Sunday went by. It had been three whole days with no text, no call, no plans, no nothing.

    Who did this guy think I was? Didn’t I deserve some sort of contact? What was I to do? Certainly this behavior was not acceptable!

    The Breakup

    So I cried and blamed him and told myself I had chosen wrong again, and that I wouldn’t be put in a position of feeling “less than.” Then I texted him out of the blue with the words, “Don’t ever call me again.”

    I thought this was the totally mature way to handle things and that I was only “protecting myself.” I was, right? Wrong.

    I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had done. I felt awful. I knew what I had written wasn’t what I wanted to say or what I felt. I realized that yet again I was acting out of fear, and if I wanted to change my patterns, I had to change myself.

    I wanted him to be wrong, but I realized he wasn’t and that he was just reacting to me.

    I also realized that I was the only one who could change my world, so I did. I thought long and hard about what I wanted and read some more. I realized that my style of communication was still failing, and that if I wanted things to change with him, they had to change with me.

    So after about two weeks I called him and apologized for the way I ended things. I told him I’d reacted out of fear and that I was confused and scared and didn’t know what else to do. I knew that in addition to apologizing I had to change my patterns of interacting with him.

    This time, instead of making everything about me and my wants and needs and fears, I began to take an interest in him and his life. I completely put myself aside (for the moment) because I knew that if I wanted a different result, I had to try a different path.

    Go Slowly

    First off, I went slowly. I let him contact me at his own pace. He had to feel comfortable with talking to me again and realize I wasn’t going to freak out or push some needy agenda on him.

    I had to learn to calm myself, which is something I thought I had already done, but apparently I had more work to do.

    Oftentimes we reach out to others in the expectation that if they respond correctly, we’ll be reassured of our worthiness. Don’t let someone else dictate how you feel about yourself. If someone calls or doesn’t call or texts or doesn’t text, you need to be okay with it and realize the world won’t end.

    Have some patience (which is hard for many of us), and try and sit back and enjoy every moment of the conversations or time together you do have. Stop living in the past or the future. Be present and go slowly. Life is not a race to the end, but a journey with laughter and love and joy and pain all along the way, and you can’t escape any of it, so stop trying.

    Listen

    Secondly, I listened. I listened to what was going on in his life and asked questions. I took an interest in the struggles he was having and was sincerely concerned and understanding.

    If you want to know someone and want them in your life, listen to them. They don’t need to know your entire story right off the bat, (It’s been four months and he doesn’t know mine).

    People are generally egoistic, and showing your potential partner that you want to know about them, what moves them, what motivates them, and what type of person they are will go a long way.

    I’m not saying you should listen with a goal in mind. Don’t think to yourself, “Aha, if I listen to him or her, he/she will want to be with me.” Listen because you care. Listen because the world doesn’t revolve around you and your needs all the time.

    Human beings are amazing creatures, and every single one of us has different fears, needs, and desires. The more time you invest in understanding your potential or current partner, the more you will get in return.

    Stop Assuming You Know

    Thirdly, I learned how to stop assuming and start asking. Never assume how someone feels. Never assume what they want or what they need.

    Some days we would be in the middle of texting and he would suddenly *poof* disappear. I was left confused and irritated.

    The next time it happened, instead of assuming he didn’t want to talk to me or he didn’t care (which is what I would normally do), I asked him about it and he told me why it happens. And of course it had nothing to do with me. Victory!

    Instead of saying nothing, I said, “I’m trying to understand you, and sometimes when we’re in the middle of talking and you suddenly disappear. Why is that?”

    I asked because I truly wanted to understand. I didn’t blame him. It took a lot of courage to ask, as I normally just make up answers in my head and put up walls, so I was really proud of myself for doing it.

    Most of us tend to jump to conclusions about how others feel because we view the world through our tinted lenses. This is fairly normal, but it can lead to confusion, misunderstandings, and anger if you do it all the time. Try to step outside yourself and see how others may perceive you or perceive the world.

    When you ask someone a question, come from a place of love and wanting to understand, not from a place of blame or frustration. Be straightforward and say, “I’m trying to understand you better. When xxxx happens I am often confused, and I’m wondering if you could explain it to me.”

    When you want to share your feelings or communicate what is going on with you try not to say, “You make me feel x, y, z when you do x, y z.”

    People don’t make you feel anything to you. Their actions may trigger certain feelings, based on how you interpret them, but it’s also possible you are already feeling depressed or anxious or lonely or scared, and only think the other person is making you feel that way.

    We all choose what we believe and how we interpret the things other people do, and those beliefs and interpretations create our feelings. The other person can’t possibly know what’s going on in your head unless you explain to them that you have these insecurities and that it isn’t their fault, but you want them to know.

    When you come from a place of insecurity, you will often project blame onto the other person when it’s possible that what they did or said had no negative connotation whatsoever.

    Sometimes people are clueless, sometimes thoughtless, sometimes self-absorbed, but most of the time their intention isn’t to hurt your feelings. Try to remember this before you speak.

    Learn to Communicate From Love

    Love and intimacy are scary. There are days when I still struggle with whether he cares, and I suddenly go quiet and retreat into my world.

    My natural reaction when I’m falling in love is to want to run, and run fast. I want to put up walls and let the other person try to climb over them, as I’m sure many of you do as well. I’m sure you also know this isn’t remotely healthy and is only a protective mechanism.

    Communicating from love means letting down your walls, even if just a little, and accepting the possibility of being hurt.

    One day I was talking to him about my blog and how it means a lot to me when people are thankful for what I write or appreciative of my stories. Because he was playing on his computer and didn’t seem to be listening, I felt unimportant.

    I became quiet. My plan was to say nothing. I assumed he just didn’t care to listen. My old patterns were creeping back in. However, this time I realized that if I want to keep moving forward and keep changing, I had to share my feelings instead of running inside myself.

    I know that most of my fears of not feeling important stem from my childhood and my issues, and it isn’t fair to push them on him. I told him, “Sometimes I don’t feel important to you.” Just saying it was a relief.

    I could tell he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. He said, “Of course you’re important and I care about what you have to say.” I realized in that moment the fears I had were my own and weren’t rooted in any truth.

    It can feel monumentally scary and overwhelming to share even little fears, but if you do it in a way that shows your vulnerability and if you are with someone who has any capacity to love, then you will be amazed at the results you get.

    In the End

    By doing all those things I mentioned above, I changed my relationship. When I gave to him he gave back. The more I put out the more I got in return. I stopped making the entire relationship about me. Everything has changed, and it’s all because I chose to change it.

    Remember that in the end you have no control over anyone but yourself. If you want or need something, stop looking to the other person to give it to you and start looking to yourself.

    You can change your life and your relationship patterns. It may not happen overnight and it may not be as fast as you want, but have some faith and keep moving forward. Love will happen.

  • 3 Stages of a New Relationship and How to Handle the Changes

    3 Stages of a New Relationship and How to Handle the Changes

    “Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyways.” ~Glennon Doyle Melton

    When I was younger, I assumed that when I found the ideal person for me and was in my ideal relationship, it was going to be easy, and I was going to feel comfortable and safe all the time.

    I would be floating on clouds, feeling blissful and light, and I’d love everything that person did all the time. That’s what being with ‘The One’ would feel like. I have come to learn, through countless emotional outbursts, anxious moments, doubt-filled thoughts, hard conversations, and extreme emotional discomfort, that my belief of the ideal relationship was pretty misguided.

    When I met my boyfriend, I knew he was what I had been searching for. He was open, loving, honest, kind, caring, and funny, and his spirit just sparkled through his eyes. However, I was nervous.

    I knew from all I had learned about relationships that they bring up emotional stuff, enabling us to heal wounds we may not have identified if someone else hadn’t triggered them. I knew I was going to learn a lot from this beautiful soul, but I didn’t expect the anxiety that came up within me once things began to get serious.

    At times I felt extremely co-dependent and didn’t want him to spend too much time out of the house, or working, or pursuing his passions, even though I knew it was healthy and normal for him to do that.

    I would keep track of how many hours he was away and would share how hard it was for me to trust him. We would talk openly about my feelings and issues because I never blamed him or asked him to change his actions. I just knew that I had to communicate what was going on for me in order to sort out my feelings and for us to be able to work together on healing.

    Before we met I’d wanted this open communication and healing in a partnership, and I knew this is what real relationships were all about, but that didn’t make bringing my wall down any easier. Our conversations and my fears would bring things up for him, as well—emotions and fears from his past and how he felt controlled and supressed by me now.

    I now believe that the ideal relationship doesn’t always feel comfortable, but you always feel comfortable and safe sharing with your partner, no matter how long you’ve been together.

    I have grown to realize that all relationships have stages. When we meet someone new and begin spending time with them, these stages can seem scary and can inflict doubt. I hope to shed some light on these stages and help you feel more comfortable with experiencing them for yourself.

    First Stage: New Relationship Bliss

    The first stage in most new relationships is bliss! We are perfect, the other person is perfect, and the relationship just flows. You make time for one another however you can, you communicate with each other constantly, and it just feels easy.

    There are no triggers or things the other person does to upset you, the attraction is unreal, and you think, “This is it! I found them! My person. Finally. I can rest.”

    Even with my anxiety and fear, I managed to feel this with my boyfriend. We talked every day. I’d get my “good morning beautiful” text when I was at work, the “how is your day going?” message at lunch, and then we’d talk or see each other on most nights.

    We each put forth equal effort to get to know one another, and I was open and loving toward any part of his behavior. I had patience, understanding, and joy in getting to know his quirks, thoughts, and patterns, and he had seemingly limitless energy to listen to me, talk to me, and sympathize with my emotions.

    This first stage sets a foundation for the relationship and builds connection, but there’s just one small problem: It never seems to last! Does this mean we aren’t meant to stay with that person? Nope. Not at all.

    Though it can feel very much like this, it only means that your relationship is changing, and that’s okay. It’s completely natural, and this process of change is what takes us into an even deeper connection if both partners are open to going there.

    Second Stage: The Inevitable Turn (When One Person’s Fear Shows Up)

    So what exactly is happening when the dreaded, inevitable “shift” happens? You know the one. We feel like the other person is either pulling away or becoming more controlling, our “good morning, have a good day” messages have become less frequent or stopped, and we feel like we are becoming distant from each other.

    There’s a big shift when our comfort level eventually builds in a relationship and we let our guard down a bit. This seems to be the perfect time for our fear to kick in. This is what happed in my relationship.

    One day, my “good morning beautiful” message didn’t show up, the next week my boyfriend had plans besides spending hours with me on Friday night, and our conversations dwindled a bit. My emotional triggers went crazy, and all of a sudden my past fears of emotional and physical abandonment kicked in.

    I no longer felt emotionally stable, relaxed, or happy. I was upset all the time, I felt anxious and taken advantage of, and my mind came up with a million reasons as to why this treatment wasn’t fair.

    I felt like I was the “crazy, needy girl” who wasn’t okay with her partner doing normal things. And I wondered all the time why things had changed. Was it something I did wrong? Did I expect too much? Was I being completely unreasonable, or did I just have too much baggage?

    Most of the time we aren’t aware of what’s really going on; we just notice we feel differently. We might think it’s because our partner’s behavior has changed, but what’s really going on is that our past has crept into this new relationship.

    Our past fears, hurts, and childhood wounds have surfaced for more healing, and if we aren’t aware of this, our new, wonderful, blissful relationship begins to feel just like the rest of them: disappointing, suffocating, abandoning, unsupportive, untrustworthy, and unloving.

    The appearance of this fear is a natural, necessary step in any relationship, though, and we need to embrace it rather than run away from it. This is when a lot of relationships end, but they don’t have to if both partners want to stay and build on this stage.

    Third Stage: Communicating the Fear

    After years of discomfort, spiritual work, counseling, healing, and reading I’ve learned that we must communicate our fear, whether we are the one who experiences it first or the one who sees the change and doesn’t know why.

    You can start the conversations by saying something like “I’ve felt a shift in the energy of our relationship, and I’m feeling anxious about this change. I’m even nervous to talk to you about it because I don’t want to put pressure on you, but I need to communicate what’s going on for me. Can we talk about this a bit?”

    This can be challenging if we aren’t aware of what is really going on, but let that shift, that change, that first feeling of doubt be your signal that fear has entered the relationship. And know that it’s okay for it to be there!

    Every time I felt upset I had to force myself to bring up my fear of our relationship ending, fear of being abandoned, and fear that we would never connect on a deep level. There is no shame in having these fears, and it’s not a sign that the relationship is doomed.

    The fear is there as a message. It’s asking to be listened to and it is a gift necessary for our own growth. When we share our fear, and own that part of us, we’re not blaming the other person. We don’t share our fears to have the other person change, or to have them fix us, but merely to allow our hearts to open up.

    By owning our stuff, we are taking care of our own healing, and this is what keeps our past from damaging the relationship in the future. It’s how we clear our past patterns and allow ourselves to move forward in a new and healthy way with someone else.

    The best part is that we get to see how our partners handle this as well. Our relationships need this stage and this shift from the easy, wonderful bliss, because without it, our bonds would never grow.

    If things are easy all the time, where is the room for true, deep intimacy? How do we learn to truly support our significant others, and ourselves, if we never experience pain, anxiety, anger, or annoyance?

    We don’t, and that’s why after years of being with someone, we can feel like we don’t know them. If we’ve remained closed off and worked our hardest to keep things going smoothly, we only know that level. And the truth is there are deeper, richer, more intimate layers to us as humans and to our relationships.

    Once you have opened your heart and begun communication around your fear, a small amount of vulnerability has been introduced into the relationship, and there is room for your partner to do the same. There is room for you to grow together.

    It’s never too early to begin communicating our fears. If we wait for the problem to just go away, we essentially keep the cycle of anxiety, doubt, and tension going, because our actions, words, and energy reflect our uneasiness in the relationship.

    I opened up to my partner two weeks into dating about my anxiety, fears, and panicked thoughts about seeming needy and wanting too much. I told him I was scared I was going to push him away.

    When I opened up and took responsibility for my feelings, it brought us closer together. Acknowledging my anxiety without expecting him to change anything diffused the tension within our relationship, and I believe this is why we are still together today.

    I don’t demand anything of him; I share my feelings, no matter how strong they are, and then he has space to make decisions based on that knowledge and to communicate his own feelings.

    Stay connected to yourself and speak your truth—the whole, messy, amazing truth. Let your partner see the whole you, quirks and all, and enjoy taking your walls down together, brick by brick.

  • The Power of Staying Put When You Feel Like Running Away

    The Power of Staying Put When You Feel Like Running Away

    “You cannot keep running away from your fears. At some point in life you will have to build up the courage to face and overcome them.” ~Unknown

    Last year my family and I relocated overseas from Australia to Singapore, which meant new jobs, new schools, new relationships—an entirely new way of living.

    My husband was busy with his work, and I had two wide-eyed children looking up at mummy for direction. A part of me was excited for the challenge, but another part of me, of equal measure, was feeling overwhelmed by the prospect and struggling to let my feelings go. I also knew that the only way out of this emotional prison was through.

    This chapter in my own zigzag journey has reconfirmed to me that we never have everything figured out. You think you’ve got it (eureka!), then life throws a curve ball and you take a temporary step backward. And that’s okay.

    I would say I’m more of an introvert; give me a good book and I’m happy. Reflecting, writing, and analyzing come naturally to me, whereas extroverting is more of an acquired skill. So the hardest part of our new life, for me, was the social aspect.

    Singapore has a large and diverse expat community, and we were welcomed with open arms—lunches, school events, BBQs. Yet being an introvert all of these well-intentioned invitations sent my ego into overdrive. For me, this was social overload, and it felt hard.

    Being the new kid in town, I felt pressure to go to everything and be my best, shiny self (whoever that is). Yet, a few weeks into this I hit the pause button and jumped off the social escalator. I needed to recalibrate and find some healthy ways to support myself and my family through the change and adjustment.

    To keep with the theme of new challenges, I took up Ashtanga yoga. I’d heard it was a powerful practice that helps us learn to be present with difficulty, and it sounded like exactly what I needed.

    I picked up my yoga mat and took myself down to a local studio to thrash it out, Claire vs. ego.

    The first morning I entered the studio, the teacher was supporting someone in a back bend while saying “trust yourself, let go.” The Mysore style of yoga is teacher supported as opposed to led, so you take yourself through the postures at your own pace.

    He pointed to an empty space to roll out my mat, and his first words to me were “no one’s going to rescue you, so lets get to it.” (I’ll add here, for the record, that this yoga teacher is a former US National Gymnastics coach, so he doesn’t do light and easy!) My ego was well and truly confronted. This studio was not going to be a place to hide.

    Yoga has a reputation for being about super hard, impressive postures and showing off your best active wear. Yoga is also about soul work. What I have found is a practice that challenges, confronts, and supports me.

    The yoga mat became my metaphor for life and for my insecurities. I took my struggles to the studio; they spilled out on the mat, I worked with them, and then repeated the practice the next day. And as my body strengthened and my posture straightened, I felt stronger and straighter inside.

    Some days were easier than others. On my better days, the dopamine was pumping and I took to my mat with a relaxed determination; on the not so good days, I sweated and strained and my mind was off planning what to cook for dinner that night. Such is life. We still show up and do what we can with what we have in that moment.

    There were times (frequent times!) when I wanted to give up. My mind would say, “Claire, this is so hard and painful. Why are you putting yourself through this? Can you honestly be bothered? Just roll up your mat and let’s hot foot it home for a cup of tea. That’d make life so much easier.”

    Similarly off the mat, at times it was tempting to hide away from new people for fear.

    The community in Singapore is diverse, and the diversity and newness scared me. What if I couldn’t find anything in common with my new community that consisted of people from all over the world—India, Burma, Denmark, Norway, Germany and so on? What would we talk about? Would they like me? Would I like them?

    A large part of me was crying out for the familiarity and security that my old life and friendships contained. I wanted to go to that BBQ with a garden full of familiar faces and be able to pick up a conversation (or sit in comfortable silence) with all the ease and intimacy that is earned over time.

    In life, how often do we allow ourselves to side step new experiences because of our pain, discomfort, and fear? Fear of rejection, of failure, of success? But embracing life’s inevitable pain is the only way to grow and to live fully.

    As my yoga teacher shared, “Claire, don’t mistake an opening for an injury, because they’re different. When you face your pain, be it a tight hip or an emotional wound, it’s going to hurt, but go through it, release the energy tied up there, and push through to the other side. This is where your freedom lies.”

    My new tool, yoga, has helped me to release old tied up energy and better utilize my present day energy too.

    Yoga has taught me to navigate the world with the language of feeling my body sensations, rather than solely thinking about them.

    I can feel if my body is getting unnecessarily tense and tied up or if I’m losing energy ruminating or stressing about something, and that gives me a choice—I can stay in that state, even feed that state, which doesn’t feel too good; or I can chose to let the tension go, get my energy flow back on track, and handle my present day moment differently.

    Familiarizing with my body in this way has brought a new level of awareness, or friendship toward myself, and helped me make better choices.

    At one of the early community events I went to I put so much pressure on myself to be pleasing to everyone that I became somebody else—a nodding, smiling, frozen person. Who I was being felt unnatural and uncomfortable, so it wasn’t long before my little friend anxiety appeared.

    With my new body awareness it clicked a lot sooner that I wasn’t being real and that I didn’t feel at home in myself. This new information gave me back my power and I was able to breathe and relax my way gradually back into myself.

    These little emotional detours have been more frequent in Singapore, but I also know that they don’t have to mean anything. We don’t need to think about them, ascribe some complex theory to them, worry about them, and generally just fuel the fire.

    These days I feel more able to normalize these uncomfortable body sensations and feelings with understanding. “I’m human, and this is a human experience. I’m okay.” Cue self-compassion.

    So I guess I have let go of perfectionism.

    What if life is about showing up, regardless of what happens, and having the courage to be seen? What if I allow myself to fail and to make mistakes? What if I accept and embrace that there is never going to be a perfect?

    It really hasn’t all been as bad as my ego tried to claim it would be, either! In my yoga practice I’d had a strong aversion to doing a headstand. My teacher knew this, and every session he would make a beeline for me at headstand time and teach me to fall—over and over again, week after week. And I got good at falling.

    Paradoxically, I also got better at my headstand. I found both the fall and the headstand actually weren’t as hard or as punishing as I had created them to be in my mind.

    Similarly, over time and with practice, building new relationships with such a diverse range of people has become less daunting and actually incredibly fascinating.

    Last week, I met with some other class parents for coffee and listening to the sharing of experiences from people from all over the globe was pretty amazing.

    I’m pleased I’ve pushed through fear; otherwise, I wouldn’t have reaped the benefits or gained the life experience that I have from being part of this diverse community. And I’m pleased to say I’ve met some incredible people who have started to become firm friends.

    Essentially, the pain and the fears (of falling from a head stand or making faux pas with potential new friends), while challenging, haven’t been as bad when I have actually faced them.

    A move overseas aside, everyday life contains pain and discomfort. Fact. Being human we experience a continuous ebb and flow of pleasure and pain, joy and sadness, praise and blame, gain and loss, and so on.

    Experiencing pain does not mean that there’s something wrong with you. Another fact. If we can keep learning to accept life, warts and all, and to “stay put on our mats” whatever we’re dealt, we gain more and more emotional freedom.

    Pain, when faced, offers us the chance to grow and emerge some more—so for all it’s challenges, it’s actually a good thing. With the learning it provides comes the opportunity to make better choices for ourselves and to show up more fully for our lives.

    Many of us, as children, never learned how to handle the inevitable pain of life, and there’s no shame in that. But it’s never too late to get curious and start working with our pain (wherever you are on the path) using supportive tools, people, and techniques. As we learn to let it go, we create the space where the magic happens.

  • Overcoming Self-Sabotage: How to Stop Attracting Pain

    Overcoming Self-Sabotage: How to Stop Attracting Pain

    “Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.” ~Milton Erickson

    Sometimes, there comes a point in our lives when we need to let go of something painful, whether its guilt or a toxic relationship, but it’s equally difficult to let go and hard to live without. So we get uncomfortably stuck in the middle of two realities: where we are and where we want to be.

    But do we really want to let go of the pain? Or is letting go so scary and unfamiliar that we’d rather hold onto it?

    I’ve always been inclined to obsess about things, fixating on what I couldn’t have, even though this has hurt me, and I’ve also put myself in many self-destructive situations. For a long time, letting go of bad things that happened and toxic relationships was difficult for me, for a few reasons:

    1. I had allowed myself to become used to pain, after dealing with my fair share of hurtful situations, and I was scared of change.

    2. People with a similar proclivity for darkness appealed to me because I connected with them. And although our connection felt like I was filling a huge void in the beginning, the same thing that connected us ultimately drove us part. Unfortunately, because I wasn’t practicing self-compassion at the time, my compassion for others going through darkness was also limited.

    3. Because of my comfort with pain, I considered crumbs of happiness to be “enough.” I was intimidated by people who asked for “more” in their lives.

    As an adult, I take full responsibility over my choices, but I know a lot of these things go back to my childhood. Although my parents did their best, they often shamed, invalidated, and criticized me whenever I experienced negative emotions.

    This isn’t entirely uncommon, as many parents unintentionally repeat the same hurtful behavior their parents inflicted onto them.

    Over time, like many others in this situation, I began to internalize this shame.

    I began to believe something was wrong with me, simply because I was intense and my family didn’t have the capacity or interest to teach me how to navigate my strong feelings. So I began to distrust my emotions and to hate myself to the core.

    This carried into my adulthood, where I found it difficult to believe that I was enough and that I deserved more than pain out of life.

    Recently, for the first time in my life, I found myself forced to deal with my self-defeating tendencies head-on in a situation that really challenged my letting go skills.

    I was in a relationship where I was deeply, head-over-heels in love with a man who I thought was my soul mate. He was everything a person would want—intelligent, deeply sensitive, compassionate, and handsome.

    The problem was, he was sinking further and further into drug addiction the longer we stayed together. I guess he didn’t feel he deserved love either, and the warmer we were with each other, the more he had to punish himself for it.

    Eventually I had to choose: Do I save him or save myself? In an ideal world, both would have happened and we would have gone riding off into the sunset together. But this was the real world, and the effects of his addictions and refusal to help himself were making me severely anxious, depressed, and physically sick to my stomach.

    When we feel like we’re caught in the cycle of endless pain that we attract and we don’t know how to get out, we are faced with a spiritual emergency. We can fall into a deep depression, or we can choose be gentle with ourselves and try to heal from it.

    If you’ve struggled with this as well, here are some things you can do to break your pattern.

    1. Reconsider your relationships with people who frequently self-sabotage.

    Challenge yourself to examine who you surround yourself with. Would you say most of your friends self-sabotage, as well? And more importantly, do they do it in a way that triggers your behavior? For instance, if you go out with a friend who tends to drink themselves into oblivion, are you then put in compromising situations where you are also likely to make questionable decisions?

    If so, the solution wouldn’t necessarily be to cut these people off, for they are obviously hurting and still capable of growth themselves. Sometimes you need to move on, but if you think the relationship is worth saving, you can practice compassion while also setting boundaries so you don’t enable them or set yourself up for failure.

    In my personal life, I’ve had to set boundaries with my godmother. She and I were always very close when I was growing up, as I spent almost every weekend with her exploring museums, restaurants, and antique shops in Los Angeles.

    She was always a bit self-deprecating, but it was more of a quirk than a real problem. A decade later, when she was in her mid-fifties, she fell into a really deep depression and stopped going to work.

    She clearly needed help, and so my mother and I did everything in our power to help her. Despite our efforts, a year went by and my godmother was still in self-destruct mode; she refused to leave her house, work, take her medication, or go to therapy.

    Because I was spending so much time investing her recovery and she still wasn’t getting better, I began to feel extremely guilty and depressed, which then triggered me to get hospitalized.

    So despite the fact that I love her dearly and was very sad that she had given up on life, I can only visit her every couple weeks now and instead of every day. I’ve communicated to her that although I love her, I need to focus on healing myself before saving anyone else.

    2. Re-examine your worldview.

    If you find yourself perpetually self-sabotaging, this is a great opportunity to examine your belief system. You may have values or thoughts that fuel your hurtful habits.

    For instance, some of us may hold the belief that life is meaningless. Some of us believe we deserve pain. Whatever the reason for these beliefs, it’s important we recognize them and take small steps to challenge them.

    In 2012, I went to spend the summer at a yoga retreat in Hawaii. The program promoted wellness and self-care through daily yoga classes, sharing meals together, practicing transparency, and more. I felt a strong sense of resistance to all of this because I perceived that living a life dedicated to inner peace and self-exploration was too self-indulgent.

    I obviously didn’t use the opportunity to connect with the people there that were trying to heal. Although at the time the experience wasn’t particularly impactful to me, it did challenge my thinking and over time I came to see self-love as necessary and not just self-indulgent.

    3. Pinpoint the habits that lead to your behavior.

    Self-destructive behavior manifests itself in the smallest of ways, such as dismissing compliments or turning down opportunities you don’t think you deserve. The sooner you become aware of how you are slowly eroding any chance of happiness in your life, the sooner you can reverse it.

    Habits that I had to learn to let go included choosing emotionally unavailable partners, indulging my eating disorders, cutting, moving around from job to job, and putting off pursuing my passions.

    When trying to change a habit, the best approach may be trying to make small steps toward change so you don’t become discouraged. Change can be difficult for all of us, and that includes changing deeply rooted old habits.

    4. Choose to accept more love in your life.

    This may be the hardest thing to do, especially if you feel you’re unworthy. But remember that by continuously choosing destructive situations, you’ll never have the opportunity to expand your worth. And so you’ll have to risk a bit of a new experience so you don’t get stuck in this cycle of self-loathing and self-destruction.

    Since you can’t control the love you receive from the other people, the best place to start is with self-love. Things like saving money, working out, and indulging in your hobbies are all acts of self-love.

    You will eventually begin to experience more happiness because of the positive opportunities you’ve allowed yourself to experience, and then it will feel a bit more natural to open yourself up to more to others.

    5. Find an outlet for the uncomfortable feelings that may come up for you.

    It was around college that I began to suspect that I was extremely self-destructive. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I perpetually put myself in situations that were harmful to my well-being, while others around me seemed to be content making better choices for themselves.

    I knew a part of me wanted happiness, love, and success, so why was my behavior the complete opposite?

    I would skip class, hang out with people who did drugs, pursue men who didn’t respect me, judge people that were nice as “boring,” and seek chaos. I was desperately unhappy, but my fear made it difficult to really commit to changing.

    What helped me personally was converting my inner turmoil into art. This allowed me to validate what I was feeling and also provided a creative medium to communicate my inner experience with others, thus freeing me from my loneliness.

    It was only after completing a few writing projects that I was proud of that I began to build more self-worth. (I actually wrote a poem about self-harm, if you’re interested in checking it out.)

    —

    Although self-destructive behavior may always be an inclination for you, there are always things you can do to challenge yourself so that you have a shot at creating more positive experiences in your life. What works for you when it comes to overcoming behavior that sabotages your happiness?

  • How to Stop Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop and Start Living Fully

    How to Stop Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop and Start Living Fully

    “Use your precious moments to live life fully every single second of every single day.” ~Marcia Wieder

    I recently came back from an amazing vacation overseas with my family. All of our travel went smoothly, everyone stayed healthy, and there wasn’t any drama or conflict among family members. Other than one flight being delayed, it was perfect.

    On the way home from the trip my heart and soul were soaring from the fun we had enjoyed, savoring the memories in my mind and feeling grateful. I noticed, though, that when I returned home my mind slowly started to shift. Not because of the usual dread of coming back from vacation, but rather because things actually continued to go well at home.

    My adjustment to my jet lag was fine, and the first day back at work was actually nice. By all measures I should have continued to feel pretty happy! Instead, I began to anticipate that something bad would happen.

    I could hear the voice in my head reminding me that I had just enjoyed ten days of vacation, so surely it was time for something negative to take place—a cold, stress at work, something.

    It was almost as if I was inviting something bad into my life to temper the positivity I was feeling in the moment.

    Some people describe this is as “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” and in my family we called it “Catholic guilt.”

    As I’ve grown older, I’ve done this a little too often, in several different areas of life.

    If my kids have been healthy for a good stretch, I start to have sneaky thoughts about how they’re “due soon” for a bout of some type of illness.

    If my finances are under control, I’ll wonder if we’ll have an unexpected repair that will take us off course.

    It’s not a concern if those thoughts float in and out, but I seem to have problems when they linger and begin to detract from what I am doing in the present.

    The truth is that life does change constantly, and there are ebbs and flows between happiness and pain.

    In one instant our situations can shift so drastically that we will be left reeling, so expecting that every day will be wonderful is obviously both unrealistic and unhelpful. Yet I’ve found that anxiously awaiting some sort of tragedy or pain often diminishes my current happiness.

    Waiting for the other shoe to drop is this tricky way that we rob ourselves of a good feeling in the now because we are nervously anticipating something negative in the future.

    A balance between fear about the future and a naive optimism is possible; we could call this space living fully.

    Living fully is where we acknowledge that life will bring suffering and beauty, pain and happiness, challenge and comfort, and it will all come at different times. If we live fully, we do our best to float gracefully between these times, aiming not to get “stuck” in a space of overwhelming tension.

    This is not an easy task, but below are some suggestions for those who want to decide not to wait in constant fear of that other shoe dropping.

    Tips for Living Fully

    1. Find time to be present.

    The beauty of being present is that, by definition, it doesn’t allow you to be anywhere else. When you find time to be in the moment, anticipatory thoughts about bad things happening may enter your mind, but you will gently and swiftly guide them to the side.

    Each of us has our unique ways of being present, whether it be a yoga class or exercise, quiet observation of nature, or meditation. Even a few minutes of quiet can be helpful in getting centered and focused.

    2. Try savoring.

    Just like you might enjoy a good glass of wine or a bite of cheesecake, you can also savor positive emotions or events.

    For example, I could recall the vacation I took overseas, reliving a particularly fun outing or adventure. I could talk about the trip with my family and coworkers, and look at pictures. As I do that I would begin to bring back those memories, and those positive emotions associated with these memories would also come back.

    3. Introduce some logic to your thoughts.

    Sometimes our thoughts can run away from us, going down a path that we know isn’t logical or helpful.

    In the case of anticipating something negative, I’ve found that I can best stop the thoughts with this simple reasoning: “Yes, it is inevitable that something bad will happen at some point, but I don’t know when or where. So, I might as well enjoy what I’m feeling now so later I won’t regret not having enjoyed that time when things were going well.”

    4. Practice gratitude.

    Being aware of what we have in our lives orients us to the present. We can always find something or someone to appreciate, and in showing this appreciation we gain an increased awareness of its beauty.

    Expressing gratitude can be private (e.g., keeping a gratitude journal or list) or public (e.g., writing a letter of thanks to someone), but I’m preferential to personal reminders of gratitude.

    For example, when I am feeling the joy of doing something I love or spending time with friends and family, I try to remember to say to myself: “this moment is good.” Just saying that brings me to the present and acknowledges my gratitude in the moment.

    5. Spend time with people who also like to live fully.

    It’s no mystery that emotions can be contagious. Friends or loved ones who are perpetually negative can influence our mindset, particularly if we find ourselves feeling anxious or dreading something negative happening.

    While we shouldn’t avoid or shun friends who are struggling, we can be purposeful about finding time to spend with those who give us a burst of positive energy through their ability to live fully.

    —

    Our lives are in flux, and change is inevitable. By not constantly waiting for the bad stuff to happen, and instead focusing on the now, we can flow more easily, joyfully, and fully through our days.

  • Finding a New Path When You’re Attached to the Old and Scared of Failing

    Finding a New Path When You’re Attached to the Old and Scared of Failing

    “All endings are just beginnings. We just don’t know it yet.” ~Mitch Albom

    The difficulty of finding, let alone staying on a path was brought to mind recently when I got lost in a maze at a children’s amusement park. Seriously lost.

    In the end I scrambled under the maze to get out. I didn’t like the feeling of hitting up against walls, turning and trying, and then finding another wall blocking my path. Mazes are designed to confuse, and together with the summer heat, I’d had enough.

    As I came out from under the fence, someone jokingly called out “Cheater!” and they were correct. In that moment I wasn’t sticking at it.

    It made me think, isn’t this sometimes the label we give ourselves when we’re on a path that isn’t right or isn’t working, and we’re considering quitting? Or we want to take a shortcut, grasp an unexpected opportunity, or take a different path from our predecessors?

    It can be helpful to have a sense of direction. Not having a plan for what we want in life can result in low motivation and a sense of purposelessness. For many people it can be very stressful due to the societal pressure to have a plan for your life.

    Sometimes I’m surprised at how early this pressure arises. Some young people I work with in my clinic feel pressure to decide what path to take at ages thirteen and fourteen. They share their concerns about every single grade they receive and their fear that if they’re not good enough they’ll have no future and a bad job.

    Some might think that these young people are showing signs of being driven or highly motivated. From my perspective, it can make life quite narrow to live with so much anxiety and pressure about getting things right. Living in constant fear of a misstep is no way to live. After all, life is full of missteps.

    Other people feel overwhelmed about which path to choose. They ask, “What if I choose the wrong path? What if I make a mistake? What if when I actually choose something, I don’t like it? What if I’m no good at it?” 

    Some others will say, “I know what I don’t want to do, I just don’t know what I want to do.” Sometimes this leads to an almost paralyzed “I don’t know what I want to do” position.

    In times gone by, people often finished school, got a job, and stayed in that career or job for life. However, modern life is not like this.

    Changing economic and market conditions mean people are required to be more flexible and change employment type over the course of their life. So, in some ways, it seems futile for people to feel pigeonholed into making one choice, as it’s likely there will be many choices down the road.

    When I talk with people who are struggling to choose or find a path, I often share my own story about how I became a clinical psychologist. My story is a classic example of how making a choice that’s not a good fit for you isn’t the end of the world. Often, like in my story, it can lead to an even better outcome.

    During my high school years I fell in love with singing and drama, so I hatched a plan to take up musical theatre as a career.

    The first sign that this probably wasn’t going to work out was when I didn’t get a place in my first choice of study. However, I chose to ignore this sign and, remaining hopeful, took up a position in a classical music program, even though I didn’t want to be an opera singer.

    As the year wore on it became clear to me that this was not for me. Studying music at school had been fun, but studying music full time and mixing only with other music students was stifling and even boring.

    A meeting with the dean mid-year, regarding my failure to progress at the level the program required, made the future clear. I saw the year out, but I knew I would only ever be an average music student. After spending a year around people who were more suited to it, I knew I had neither the talent nor the high levels of extraversion needed to succeed in a performance career.

    It was kind of embarrassing. It was my first experience of failure. It was also an opportunity.

    That part of me that was itching to learn more about the world, about people, about life outside of the narrow world of classical music, was set free. But what to choose? I’d spent years honing my musical ability and not considering doing anything else.

    Fortunately for me, doing what didn’t fit had helped me to define what might. So I chose something that would expand my knowledge and ideas and that would help me serve others.

    One of the things that had bothered me about classical music study is that it didn’t seem to contribute or benefit others much. I chose a general psychology degree based on the fact that I wanted to know more about people, and away I went.

    Instantly the fit was better. I felt engaged, stimulated, motivated to attend, and alive. These were good signs that I was on the right path.

    I share this story with people who are having difficulty making a choice because it incorporates two core areas that keep people stuck when finding or changing their path—fear of failure and letting go of past ideals.

    Dealing with the Fear of Failure

    Underpinning the struggle that many of us have with finding or changing a path is the fear of failure. If you don’t choose, you can’t fail. Conversely, if you don’t choose you cannot succeed either. How do we move past the fear of failure?

    1. Acknowledge that it’s normal to feel anxious about making a choice.

    Having some anxiety about your choice does not make it wrong. There is little certainty in any path, so there is unlikely to be a time where you will feel completely at ease with your decision.

    2. Practice managing your anxiety with breathing, mindfulness, and helpful self-talk.

    Deep breathing is key to managing physical anxiety symptoms, as it calms the nervous system.

    Mindfulness teaches us that we only have this moment and that it’s futile to try to control the future.

    Helpful self-talk helps ease anxiety by reducing the impact of negative predictions. For example: “If you failed this, you’ll fail everything” could be changed to “Many successful people have changed their path or experienced failures, so it doesn’t mean I will fail.”

    3. Look for stories of successful people who had missteps or changed their path.

    Reading about people who made a career change can lessen the hold of negative predictive thoughts and old beliefs about failure.

    Letting Go of Past Ideals

    The difficulty with changing your path can also be associated with investment in your old one.

    You may have put a lot of effort into achieving the goal at the end of that path. You may have told a lot of people about it. You may even be a little or a lot in love with the idea of reaching that goal.

    When you need to or have to change your path, it can involve a sense of loss. Your mind may tell you it’s all been a waste of time. To handle these difficulties:

    1. Let go of the goal by acknowledging your sense of loss and practicing acceptance.

    It’s normal to feel sad about letting go of a past. Acknowledge those feelings without sinking in them and getting stuck. Notice the feelings and let them pass.

    2. Address and challenge self-critical thoughts.

    If you experience self-critical thoughts about trying for your goal such as “Who are you to even think you could have that?” you may benefit from changing it to something more helpful, such as “I did my best but it wasn’t for me. I will find something for me” or the simple “I could never know if I didn’t try.”

    3. Focus on the positive of the current path.

    As much as you can, be in the present moment. Cultivate that skill through mindfulness practice.

    4. Address concerns about futility.

    Know that the time spent on your old path wasn’t pointless. You most likely gained skills and insights from your journey so far that will help you either now or in the future.

    For example, my knowledge of the performing arts has helped me more times than I count as a clinical psychologist. It helps me relate to clients who are musicians or that work or study in that area, and it helps me relate to performance anxiety.

    Life can be more rewarding when you’re on a path. In fact, many people say that the journey can be more satisfying than the final outcome. With these strategies, you can avoid becoming paralyzed by the common blocks that prevent people moving forward and experiencing life fully. Allow yourself to live life to the full by taking a path knowing that you can change it if you need to.

  • Overcoming the Fear That Stands Between You and Your Dreams

    Overcoming the Fear That Stands Between You and Your Dreams

    “A few rare individuals refuse to have limited lives. They drive through tremendous amounts of pain—from rejections and failures to shorter moments of embarrassment and anxiety. Because they avoid nothing, they can pursue their highest aspirations. They seem more alive than the rest of us.” ~Phil Stutz and Barry Michels

    If you were to see me in a social situation, you’d think that I’m confident.

    And in most informal social settings, I am. Now.

    I love people, love hearing their stories, so most of the time I trust my ability to relate and connect.

    But this wasn’t always the case.

    These were skills I had to re-learn.

    During adolescence, probably as a result of my parents’ divorce and going to a new school where I felt completely out of my depth, I lost my natural childhood confidence.

    Approaching new people felt very hard.

    I would often spend break times at school pretending to be busy doing work, to avoid the shame of having to go up to a group and ask whether I could sit with them and face the potential humiliation of being told no.

    It was a very lonely time.

    For most of my high school career I avoided reaching out unless I was pretty certain of a favorable response.

    Then I left school and took a gap year and needed to make money, so I started a job waiting tables.

    I was perfectly capable of upgrading to waiting tables after the mandatory month of training (when I was responsible for clearing plates and setting tables but didn’t have to engage much with customers). But I was so afraid of the having to approach people and the deal with the uncertainty of how they would respond to me that I declined and continued to train for another two months.

    Eventually it got ridiculous and I had to take the risk.

    I can still remember my first few months waitressing.

    I was terrified to approach new people and initially would try to avoid it by giving tables away.

    But then something interesting happened. By now I wanted to buy a car, and the pain of being dependent on others for transport was greater than the pain of the potential rejection, so I started to force myself out of my comfort zone—and I started to enjoy it.

    I started to enjoy the uncertainty and the challenge. I realized I loved meeting people from different places and hearing about their lives.

    This increasing confidence and enjoyment of connecting with people has been key in helping me accomplish a number of my dreams, especially in relation to my work.

    I’ve gotten several jobs through being able to connect with people, who then recommended me when an opening opened up (though this was not my initial intention when connecting with them).

    My challenge now is to develop the same confidence I have in informal social situations and apply it to performance situations. This is still an area where I struggle with performance anxiety and feel self-conscious.

    So I will continue to use the ideas below myself!

    1. Our minds play tricks on us.

    As Alison Ledgerwood, Ph.D, says in her TED talk entitled Getting Stuck in the Negatives (and How to Get Unstuck), our minds are built to look for negative information and hold onto it. Failures stick in our minds longer than successes do.

    What that meant for me is that in most cases, I was massively overestimating the potential for shame and rejection from each new interaction. But I was also underestimating my capacity to cope, should my worst fears ever come true. (In hindsight, I don’t think that even the most challenging experiences came close to the horror stories my mind was telling me were possible.)

    My mind kept reminding me of all the pain of failures I had previously experienced, rather than the times it had all worked out fine.

    Alison Ledgerwood advises: “Our minds may be built to look for negative information and to hold onto it. But we can also retrain our minds if we put some effort into it and start to see that the glass may be a little more full than we initially thought.”

    Love that!

    2. Just as our minds play tricks on us, we can trick our minds.

    It turns out that how we interpret the feelings of fear is the key to determining whether we’re able to engage or whether we avoid.

    While most of us tell ourselves to calm down and stop worrying when we feel afraid, research out of Harvard shows that this standard response to stress may be well meant, but it’s also wrong. Instead of trying to calm ourselves down, we should aim to get excited, suggests Alison Wood Brooks, Ph. D of Harvard Business School.

    Huh?

    I was definitely not excited at the thought of approaching tables with the possibility of being shamed and humiliated.

    But trust me, this works.

    Why is that?

    “When people feel anxious and try to calm down, they are thinking about all the things that could go badly. When they are excited, they are thinking about how things could go well,” Wood Brooks explains.

    Even if you don’t believe it at first, when you say it repeatedly, authentic feelings of excitement increase.

    Fake it until you become it!

    The fact that you’re reading this post is testament that this works. For years I’ve been wanting to write, but my own anxiety and self-doubt held me back. Now when I sit down to write and feel myself becoming anxious I repeat “I’m excited, I love sharing ideas with people” over and over again.

    After a few minutes I can feel myself actually start to believe it, and I feel more able to write.

    3. On the other side of fear is your limitless potential.

    This is an idea from therapists Phil Stutz and Barry Michels from their book The Tools. They describe how we all tend to avoid emotional pain, but that this dramatically limits our potential.

    We need to know that our infinite potential exists on the other side of our comfort zones, and if we want to actualize our potential we need to break through it.

    They advise that we need to condition ourselves to get excited about the challenges in our lives, and instead of avoiding fear and pain we need to run straight at them screaming “BRING IT ON!!”

    I know this to be true.

    When I’ve had the presence of mind to remember this idea and keep going, rather than avoid, I find myself in a strange and unfamiliar place. It’s a feeling of absolute freedom—of not being limited by what you fear.

    And as a recovering worrier, that feels very good.

    Here’s how I’m using it to help me develop my confidence in performance situations. Mostly when I think of something that I want to do that makes me feel anxious, my tendency is to procrastinate and avoid it.

    But now, when I notice that fear (and the intense discomfort it can bring), instead of avoiding, I tell myself something along the lines of: “Great, an opportunity to expand my comfort zone and my capability. Bring it on!”

    This allows me to move from avoidance into engagement.

    The more I repeat this cycle, the easier it becomes to do the things I fear (mostly because I see that the thing I’m terrified of happening doesn’t actually happen).

    While I can’t go back in time and change the course of my younger self’s life, every day I’m faced with choices that determine whether I move toward becoming what, deep down, I have a feeling I’m capable of becoming, or step back into my comfort zone to avoid risking humiliation.

    What I now know is that the feeling of letting yourself down—the disappointment and unravelling confidence with each retreat—is far more painful than what is out there beyond the safety of what’s familiar.

  • How Your Ego Thrives on Fear and Keeps You Panicked

    How Your Ego Thrives on Fear and Keeps You Panicked

    “The ego is the false self—born out of fear and defensiveness.” ~John O’Donohue

    “The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy.” ~Parker Palmer

    Does it sometimes seem like the world is just a little too much for you? Do you feel that you need to protect yourself from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? (Thank you, Hamlet.) Are you a fragile flower being buffeted by life’s storms?

    Then I think you’ve been listening to your ego too much. I understand all of those feelings very well, but I’ve recently discovered something life-changing: It’s only the ego, or small self, that’s fragile.

    The soul—your authentic self—is a honey badger.

    You know those honey badger videos on YouTube, where the little guy gets bitten by a cobra or stung by a whole swarm of African killer bees, but just keeps on going? That’s what your soul’s like. “Honey badger don’t care…”

    We always have access to these two different perspectives, but most of the time we’re so identified with the small self that we forget about our honey badger souls.

    The ego is a prickly little thing, with a hair trigger reaction, ready to go off at a moment’s notice. The soul is incredibly calm and resilient—not touchy and reactive, and yet capable of taking effective action when needed with a minimum of fuss.

    The ego’s self-appointed function is to help you get what you think you need from the world and prevent you from losing what you have. It’s fueled by fear, and sees threats everywhere. This fear leads inevitably to feelings of separation, lack, competition, judgment, grasping, and deep loneliness—in other words, suffering.

    The soul, in contrast, is rooted in love and a deep-seated well-being. Things that put the small self in a tizzy often bounce right off it.

    Recently, I had two experiences within days that gave me a brilliant chance to practice switching focus from ego to soul and seeing what a difference that could make. Neither one was really a “big deal,” and yet both had my poor little ego off and running. What a drama queen the ego is!

    In both cases, a person I loved and trusted hurt my feelings, probably unintentionally. Misunderstandings happen; we’re all human. The real issue was my ego’s reaction, which was to immediately shut down in an effort to protect myself from being hurt again.

    It went something like this: “Well, I’m certainly going to have to stop being around those people, because I never want that to happen again, and they obviously can’t be trusted anymore.”

    The problem is, both of these people are part of a wellness community that I love. This community is all about personal growth—about learning to overcome the illusion of ego and live from the authentic self, or soul.

    Pondering my instinctive response to protect myself, I had to ask: Just exactly what needs protecting here? The only answer I could come up with was my ego.

    My ego felt hurt and vulnerable when these two people seemed to not understand or value me. My ego didn’t think it could handle that happening again, but when I checked in with my soul, it was like: “Honey badger don’t care…”

    I had to laugh when I realized how unperturbed my soul was by what my ego saw as a huge affront and threat. Stonewall Jackson once said, “Never take counsel of your fears,” and yet that is exactly what we do when we put the touchy ego in charge of our reactions.

    Ego is like the boy in the fable who raises the alarm at every passing shadow. Ironically, though, crying wolf like this only makes it harder to perceive a true threat when it comes along. The soul doesn’t waste time on false alarms, but when there’s a real need for action, it will roll on that just as fearlessly.

    Here’s what my fragile ego thought it needed in order to be okay in the situations I mentioned: first and foremost, an apology to salve my hurt pride (ego is always big on pride); assurances that I really am loved and valued (more pride, with a touch of emotional neediness); and finally, an ironclad guarantee that something like this would never happen again (is that even possible, given that we are all human?).

    Now, all of those things would be lovely to have, I’m not kidding. But do I actually need them? Not really. When I drop down to soul level, I find a sense of well-being and security that far transcends my ego’s desperate grasping for reassurance and amends.

    Soul knows that I already have everything I need to be okay. Not that it’s a pushover by any means, but things like wounded pride, which are all-important to ego, don’t really faze the honey badger much. He’s got a much tougher hide and a bigger heart by far. Honey badgers do care, but not about the things ego finds important.

    So this is how my soul dealt with these situations: First, because I felt genuinely hurt, I let myself feel that pain with compassion. I didn’t dismiss the hurt. Next, I looked carefully at my own part in what happened, to find out if there was anything I needed to clarify or apologize for. Then I reached out and expressed my feelings as kindly and truthfully as possible. And then I stopped.

    This part is the trickiest of all. The ego hates uncertainty with a passion (at least, mine does). My ego wanted things resolved, pronto, and it was screaming at me to take action.

    Maybe I should try to garner support and sympathy for myself by telling other people about what happened? That always feels good. Or else I could apologize profusely—for what, I’m not sure—and get everything patched up and smoothed over as quickly as possible. Or….

    So once again I consulted my honey badger soul, who said: Sit tight. Everything is just fine. No worries at all, mate. As long as I was clear about my own role in the disagreements, my soul was content with that. No need to escalate, but also no need to overly justify or explain or “make nice.”

    Unlike the ego, my soul knows that it’s only responsible for its own reactions, not everyone else’s. Gotta love that.

    And so I waited. In one case, things have already ended up sorting themselves out very well—I’m sure far better than they would have had I listened to my ego. In the other, I’m still waiting (and that’s okay).

    I’ve decided that, even in the face of this uncertainty, I don’t need to take extraordinary measures to “protect” myself, at least not yet. There might come a time for that, and I trust my soul to recognize it if it does.

    When something like this happens to you—when your small self feels threatened and is telling you to attack or pull up the drawbridge—stop for a moment first and check in with your soul. Take some deep breaths and sink down under that surface panic.

    What do you really need to do, if anything? Is there truly a threat, or is it just your fragile ego crying wolf again? Chances are slim that you’ll find your honey badger soul in a panic. Whether there’s action to be taken or you just need to sit tight for a while, the calm, resilient, and loving energy of your soul is always there to draw on.

  • 5 Life-Changing Realizations About Fear and Anxiety

    5 Life-Changing Realizations About Fear and Anxiety

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

    I was lying on the sofa in my tiny flat in Vienna.

    My feet were elevated on a cushion and the room was spinning in a brisk waltz around me. My stomach was cramping and cold sweat was trickling down my spine. I gasped for air whenever choking fear forced my racing heart to skip a couple of beats.

    The situation was all too familiar.

    Back then I suffered from generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety. I was also plagued by severe toilet anxiety, which is a fear of needing the toilet when none is available. As a consequence, I had panic attacks several times a week.

    So, I knew exactly how to stop the agony. I fumbled for the phone and dialled my friend Eva’s number.

    “I am sorry,” I said. “I must have caught some kind of bug; I’m quite unwell. I will have to cancel for this evening…I know! It is a shame. I was so looking forward to seeing you again and meeting your friends…Yes, next week would be lovely! I’ll be in touch!”

    As I hung up, a welcome wave of relief washed through my body as the panic slowly subsided.

    I would have loved to see the conclusion of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on the big screen.

    But what if no aisle seat would have been available? What if I would have had to sit in the middle of a row and needed the bathroom? What would the other people have thought if I squeezed past them, profoundly apologizing, while ruining their movie experience?

    Furthermore, I had never visited that particular cinema before. I would have to take the underground at night. What if I was mugged? And I had never met the two friends Eva planned to bring along. What if they thought I was a bore or a jerk for needing the loo every ten minutes?

    I was convinced I had made the right decision. I would just stay on my sofa, watch comforting repeats of Friends and be safe.

    No fear, no anxiety, no panic. All was well again.

    Until it hit me.

    I was a hostage of my fear! It dictated what I could and couldn’t do. It confined me to my comfort zone and denied me dreams and aspirations.

    I was never free to pursue fun adventures or meet new people. I was handcuffed to my sofa, my familiar daily routine and the nearest toilet facility.

    And when I attempted to escape, I was hit with a merciless panic attack that left me stunned and shivering back where I was safe. On my sofa, in my little flat. Right where I sat in the dark on a December evening in 2003 and wept.

    For being a victim, for being a prisoner, for being weak and scared. For not having a life.

    And it was right there on that little sofa that I decided I had enough. I would take control over my life, I would claim the right to choose. I would finally live.

    It was a long journey. A lot has changed since then.

    And I want to share what I have learned in the past thirteen years.

    Because for me, overcoming or defeating my fear was impossible. It always fought back with a vengeance. I had to find a different solution.

    Realization #1: Fear is not the enemy.

    After that life-changing December evening, I started to research. I read countless books, took courses, and attended seminars. I needed to know what caused the constant fear and how to stop it.

    I had always perceived fear as a menacing, painful, and crippling hostile force. A life-sucking alien parasite. An uncontrollable beast.

    But I soon discovered that fear can be both healthy and pathological.

    Healthy fear is a vital physiological reaction that has guaranteed survival of animal species for aeons.

    When confronted with a dangerous situation, adrenaline and other hormones accelerate breathing and heart rates. Blood pressure increases, muscles tense up, and blood is redirected to the arms, legs, and brain. The body prepares for fight or flight, to either combat the threat or flee from it.

    A healthy fear response lasts as long as the dangerous situation that provoked it persists. It then subsides until the next trigger restarts it.

    However, when fear is triggered by generally harmless events like a trip to the theater, meeting new people, or a car journey, it becomes pathological. The fear designed to save your life is now destroying it.

    But why was I terrified of so many innocent situations that other people wouldn’t waste a thought on? What had gone wrong?

    Realization #2: My pathological fear was linked to low self-worth.

    I soon realized that my anxiety and panic attacks were a direct result of my lack of self-worth.

    You see, when you suffer from low self-worth, the world becomes a menacing place.

    Subconsciously, you believe that you don’t deserve happiness, so you constantly expect a catastrophe. You are terrified of the future because devastating tragedies happened to you in the past and you were too powerless to prevent them.

    You feel under constant pressure to outperform, impress, and achieve perfection because you don’t feel worthy of other people’s love and respect. Yet, you mistrust your abilities and always feel that you are lagging behind or winging it. And you are horrified people might uncover your darkest secret, that you are a fraud.

    Hence, you incessantly agonize about making mistakes and worry that other people might disapprove of you and your actions. You don’t believe in yourself and your ability to cope with life. So, you doubt your decisions and fear the potential consequences. And you are paralyzed by the thought of any change.

    You feel overwhelmed, stressed, cornered. You perceive your whole life as a threat. Fear and anxiety have become permanent features.

    Because you believe that you aren’t good enough in other people’s eyes. Because you don’t know that you actually are worth personified. Inherently, infinitely, and unconditionally so.

    You are worth, even if you aren’t a fun socialite who makes friends easily. You are worth, even if life overwhelms you sometimes. And you are still worth even if you pee yourself in public, because as embarrassing as it may seem, it doesn’t change anything about your true worth!

    I must have repeated the affirmation “I am worth” several hundred times a day for months. I now knew that, if I wanted to beat my fear of life, I first had to believe in myself. Only then would I feel confident enough to deal with everything that came my way.

    Realization #3: I feared fear itself.

    Once I started healing my low self-worth and gaining trust in myself and my abilities, it became clear that I wasn’t actually terrified of the movies, strangers, or my overactive bladder alone. I was also horrified of fear itself and all its unpleasant consequences.

    Have you ever had a panic attack? It sucks!

    And it is terrifying in its own right. The heart palpitations, the shortness of breath, the tight chest. You feel like your death is imminent and you are powerless to prevent it.

    So, you avoid the panic triggers. The problem is that when your main trigger is life itself, you cease to live.

    You minimize social interactions, you stop making bold plans for the future, you stick to your daily routine that keeps you safe. Your thoughts revolve around your fears and how to keep them subdued. You cohabitate with a fearsome beast, tiptoeing around it so it doesn’t awaken and swallow you whole.

    This was my life, constantly and unrelentingly. Until one day I decided to slay the beast.

    Realization #4: Fighting the fear made it worse.

    Every time I felt fear arising, I cursed it, screamed at it, and commanded it to leave now and never come back. But my beast didn’t take these insults lightly. It defended itself and the panic attacks escalated in frequency and intensity.

    I felt like a pathetic failure. I wrecked my mind for new ways to overcome the fear. I tried what felt like hundreds of techniques and tactics to battle the fear. But they never worked and the fear increased at an alarming rate.

    I know now that the fear multiplied because I focused on it. My attention was zoomed into my fear and how to defeat it, and so, subconsciously, I produced more and more of it.

    The beast grew and I was about to surrender myself to be its prisoner for the rest of my life.

    Until my mum rescued me.

    Realization #5: Making friends with fear disarms it.

    “Why don’t you name it?” she said.

    I was stunned.

    “You have tried to fight it,” she continued. “Maybe it’s time to befriend it. Talk to it. Tell it that everything will be okay. Let it know you are there for it. And listen to its concerns.”

    I thought the idea was ridiculous. But I was willing to try anything. I was desperate.

    So, I named my pathological fear Klaus. It was the first name that popped into my head.

    For a while I just observed what he had to say. He was a deeply troubled individual. So insecure, so worried, utterly paranoid.

    Then, one day, I started to reason with him.

    If he said, “I don’t think we should try a new restaurant. We might hate the food. And it is change. Change is bad for us,” I replied. “Change is good, it makes life fun. And if we don’t like the food, we just order something else next time.”

    Of course I felt bonkers for talking to my fear like it was a small child. After all, I was talking to myself (not out loud, mind you)!

    But it worked! Klaus understood. He was open to the suggestion that life as a whole wasn’t dangerous and began to embrace the new paradigm.

    All he had ever wanted was to help me and keep me safe. He was a true friend. Even if he had been slightly misguided in his efforts to help, I found he was open to change.

    Almost ten years later, while I studied Eckhart Tolle’s teachings, I understood that by naming my fear I had stopped identifying with it. I felt the emotion, but I no longer was the fear. The fear didn’t define me and I could finally start to free myself from it.

    A Life Without (Pathological) Fear

    Klaus and I spent several years together. He would warn me, raise doubts, and advise caution whenever I stepped out of my comfort zone.

    But I was determined. I kept reminding myself that I was worth, that I was able to cope, that I was strong.

    I started to do one scary thing a day. Small things at first. A different route to work, going for a walk without immediate toilet access, or asking a complete stranger for the time.

    Klaus wasn’t happy. But I continued to explain that we were okay. That change was a positive part of life, that the world was a safe place and that we deserved to be happy.

    After a while, his objections became less frequent and he remained quiet for longer periods of time.

    And finally, in June 2008, as I boarded a plane to Barcelona to present at an international conference in front of hundreds of strangers, I realized he was gone. Without notice, he had left and I wasn’t scared of life’s experiences any longer. The pathological fear of life itself had dissolved.

    I still sometimes fondly remember my friend Klaus. But I never heard from him again. I hope he is well.

    As for me, I moved to the UK by myself and met new friends (who didn’t think I was a jerk). I am married and have a lovely little daughter. I travel, work with clients, and lecture students without worrying or overthinking.

    The cold sweats, anxiety, and racing heart of a panic attack are now a distant memory. And I can enjoy a family day out without obsessing over the location of the nearest toilet.

    I finally live, liberated, on my terms. I am free.

    And I sincerely hope that my story will help you claim your own life. Because you deserve happiness too.

    Stop beating yourself up, befriend your fear, and believe in yourself! I know you can do it!

    You are worth!