Tiny Buddha

Tag: flaws

  • The Art of Being Flawed in a Perfectionist World

    The Art of Being Flawed in a Perfectionist World

    “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” ~Vince Lombardi

    Okay, let’s be real for a second. As I sit here trying to write this perfect essay about embracing imperfection, the irony isn’t lost on me. I’ve rewritten this opening paragraph about five times now. Old habits die hard, right?

    Picture this: It’s 2:37 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon. I’m pacing the lecture hall, watching my law students furiously scribbling away at their exam papers. Their furrowed brows and white-knuckle grips on their pens remind me of, well, me, not too long ago.

    Flashback to my own law school days. There I was, the quintessential overachiever. Nose perpetually buried in a casebook, surviving on a diet of coffee and sheer determination. Perfect grades, perfect internships, perfect career trajectory—these weren’t just goals, they were my entire identity. The pressure I put on myself was so intense, I’m surprised my hair didn’t turn gray by graduation. (Spoiler alert: It’s starting to now, but I digress.)

    Fast-forward to my transition from practicing law to teaching it. I thought I had it all figured out. Professor Kalyani Abhyankar, the flawless legal mind, here to shape the next generation of lawyers. Ha! If only I knew what I was in for.

    It was during one particularly “memorable” lecture that my perfectionist facade began to crack. I had spent hours preparing what I thought was a flawless presentation on constitutional law. I was on fire, if I do say so myself, rattling off case citations like a human legal database. And then it happened. I mixed up two landmark cases.

    The horror! The shame! In that moment, I swear I could hear the ghost of Justice Brandeis weeping. I stood there, frozen at the podium, waiting for the ground to swallow me whole.

    But then something unexpected happened. A student raised her hand and asked, “Professor Abhyankar, are you okay?”

    And just like that, the dam broke. All my insecurities came flooding out in front of my class. My fear of not being good enough, the crushing weight of always needing to be perfect, the anxiety that one mistake would unravel my entire career.

    To my utter shock, instead of judgment, I was met with… understanding? Empathy, even? One of my students actually said, “Wow, Prof. We always thought you were this untouchable legal genius. But this… this makes you human. It’s kind of inspiring, actually.”

    Inspiring? Me? The one having a meltdown in front of her class? But as I looked around the room, I saw nodding heads and relieved faces. It was as if by showing my own vulnerability, I had given them permission to be imperfect too.

    This was the beginning of my messy, often frustrating, but ultimately liberating journey toward embracing imperfection. And let me tell you, it wasn’t a smooth ride.

    At first, I tried to schedule “imperfection time” into my day. Yes, you read that right. I, Kalyani Abhyankar, recovering perfectionist, tried to perfect the art of being imperfect. The irony is not lost on me, I assure you.

    There were setbacks galore. I’d resolve to be more laid-back in class, only to find myself obsessively color-coding my lecture notes at 2 AM. I’d promise myself I wouldn’t overthink my students’ questions, then spend hours agonizing over whether my off-the-cuff answer about tort law was comprehensive enough.

    But slowly, oh so slowly, things began to shift. I started to pay attention to my classroom with new eyes. I noticed how the most engaging discussions often arose from questions I couldn’t answer right away. I saw how students learned more from working through mistakes than from memorizing perfect responses.

    Here are some of the changes I stumbled my way through:

    1. Practicing self-compassion

    Instead of berating myself for every perceived failure, I tried to treat myself with the same kindness I’d offer a struggling student. This meant acknowledging my efforts, regardless of the outcome. And yes, sometimes it meant looking in the mirror and saying, “You’re doing okay, Kalyani,” even when I felt like a total impostor.

    2. Setting realistic goals

    Rather than aiming for an impossible standard of perfection, I learned to set challenging but achievable goals. This allowed me to celebrate progress and maintain motivation. Novel concept, right?

    3. Embracing the learning process

    I started to view mistakes—both mine and my students’—not as failures but as valuable teaching moments. Each setback became an opportunity to deepen understanding and foster critical thinking. Who knew that “I don’t know, let’s figure it out together” could be such powerful words in a classroom?

    4. Cultivating a growth mindset

    Instead of seeing legal aptitude as fixed, I began to emphasize to my students (and myself) the capacity to develop skills through effort and practice. This made us all more willing to tackle challenging legal problems, even if we didn’t always get it right the first time.

    5. Letting go of comparison

    I realized that constantly measuring myself against other professors or legal scholars was about as productive as trying to teach constitutional law to my cat. Instead, I focused on my unique strengths as an educator and mentor.

    Now, don’t get me wrong. I still have days where my inner perfectionist rears its meticulously groomed head. I still occasionally find myself up at midnight, agonizing over a single word choice in my lecture notes. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and recovering perfectionists aren’t cured overnight.

    But here’s the kicker: As I’ve learned to embrace my imperfections, I’ve actually become a better professor. Free from the paralysis of perfectionism, I’m more creative in my teaching methods, more willing to tackle controversial legal topics, and more open to feedback from students and colleagues.

    My students seem to prefer this new, slightly messier version of Professor Abhyankar. They’re more engaged, more willing to take risks in their thinking, and—dare I say it—they seem to be having more fun. Who knew that constitutional law could actually be enjoyable?

    To those still caught in the grip of perfectionism, whether in law school, legal practice, or any other field, I offer this hard-won wisdom: Your worth is not determined by flawless performance. There is profound strength in vulnerability, in admitting that you’re still learning and growing.

    Embrace your imperfections. They’re not weaknesses to be hidden but unique aspects of who you are as a professional and human being. Let go of the exhausting chase for perfection and instead, chase growth and authenticity.

    In doing so, you may find that you achieve things far greater than perfection—you achieve a life that is fully and beautifully lived. And if you happen to mix up a few Supreme Court cases along the way? Well, you’re in good company.

  • The Perspective Shift That Helped Me Overcome My Perfectionism

    The Perspective Shift That Helped Me Overcome My Perfectionism

    “Perfectionism is the exhausting state of pretending to know it all and have it all together, all the time. I’d rather be a happy mess than an anxious stress case who’s always trying to hide my flaws and mistakes.” ~Lori Deschene

    When I got my start as a math teacher, it was 2012, and I had not been in a classroom in over ten years. I really wasn’t sure how teaching got done anymore.

    I came into my first class with a piece of paper and many examples to share. I got up and started writing the examples on the board for my students. When I looked at the board after my lesson, what stood out to me was that my handwriting was sloppy. It looked like a third grader wrote it.

    I also noticed that many students laughed during my lessons, so, determined to find the cause of the laughter, I started to look at other teachers to see if I could come up with any ideas to improve my lessons.

    What stood out to me is that almost every teacher in the school was using some kind of multimedia display, and I was just writing with a marker. So, at that point, I decided to make a change to create all my lessons on multimedia.

    I spent considerable time and effort typing the examples before my lessons so I would not have to display my messy handwriting for all to see. I was very proud about how clear and easily readable my multimedia presentations were.

    Three years passed, and I was at a new job. About a month went by, and I was sure that I was impressing everyone with my beautiful multimedia lessons. But one day my manager brought me in and said that there was overwhelming consensus amongst my students and their families that I should handwrite my examples.

    Upon hearing this, my heart sank. In my mind, I was “tech savvy” and in control when I taught. With this new mandate, I was going to become the low-tech teacher who wrote like a third grader and had black marker ink all over his hands.

    During this time, I could not sleep very well. I also spent time searching online to see if there were other non-teaching jobs that I was qualified for. I couldn’t get the picture out of my mind of that whiteboard from 2012. I could just see how sloppy it looked, and I could hear the laughter of those students.

    As I started to make the requested changes to my teaching, not only was I uncomfortable, but I didn’t believe my students would want to learn from someone who had such sloppy handwriting. As time went on, I began to realize that handwriting the calculations made me much more nervous than just displaying them. I very often made mistakes and then had to erase and fix them.

    After a few weeks’ time, a light bulb went off inside me. If I, the experienced and degreed teacher, got nervous and made mistakes during my teaching, then how much more likely would it be that my students would make the same mistakes?

    I decided to change the tone of my teaching to not just handwrite the examples but to also explain my thinking process. I could tell the students exactly where they were likely to make errors during their work. Since I was working through problems and making myself vulnerable in the same way my students were expected to, we all had more of a common connection.

    My overall confidence as an instructor rose. I became more authoritative as a teacher. I wasn’t just the reader of the lesson; I was the author. Students didn’t ask anymore how our books define concepts; they asked me directly how I defined them.

    Today, nearly twelve years later, I still handwrite my examples live in the room with my students. At the end of a recent lesson, I looked at the board. My handwriting is still rather sloppy, but I just don’t pay attention to that anymore. Instead, I see effort, thought, expertise, and willingness to put myself in the shoes of my students.

    At the beginning of my teaching career, I was so fixated on one of my bad qualities that I went to great efforts to try to hide it. In turn, that blinded me to a multitude of other good qualities.

    How many relationships and marriages end because the only thing we can see in our partner is their ‘sloppy handwriting’? How much depression is there in this world because when we think about ourselves, the only thing we see is some bad quality?

    In truth, if we took the time to catalog a list of our good qualities, we’d likely see they far outweigh the bad. So often we just can’t see these qualities because we tend to focus exclusively on our negative qualities and our mistakes. We think that is all that we are. We want to destroy our bad qualities in the same way I almost destroyed my teaching career by quitting it.

    I recommend taking a small piece of paper and writing down all your good qualities and the good things that you do. Carry this paper with you everywhere you go. Take time throughout the day to read this list and add to it. Any time you think of or worry about one of your negative qualities, bring the list out. You will soon find that the truth is easier to see.

    Our list of bad qualities is a short list. Our list of good qualities is a long list. With some training, we can learn to recognize when we are focusing exclusively on the short list. Then we can change our focus to the long list. When we get this true and properly balanced picture of our lives, they flow much more smoothly.

    When we don’t focus on or worry about the bad qualities on our short list, we are free to reinvent them for our own purposes.

    On one occasion, I was working with a group of students, and one student was picking on another about his bad handwriting. I ran over to stop this potential bullying. I observed his handwriting, and it was true this student had lousy handwriting. Without any forethought, I said, “Well, doctors are known for having bad handwriting, so it’s really a sign of intelligence.”

    That student really appreciated my insight. Then I looked at him and said, “See, we both have something in common. We write like doctors.”

    It’s very possible to take things from our short list of bad qualities and move them to our long list of good qualities. Sometimes we just need a different way of looking at things.

  • How Admitting Your Weaknesses Could Actually Make You Stronger

    How Admitting Your Weaknesses Could Actually Make You Stronger

    “The first step towards change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” ~Nathaniel Branden

    Do me a favor and don’t tell my wife what I’m about to share with you.

    I have an absurd number of weaknesses.

    Just kidding. My wife, of course, knows this. She is well aware of my many shortcomings. While she would be happy to add to the growing Encyclopedia of dumb shit I do, I will keep this short and sweet out of respect for your time.

    We live in a weird culture that’s afraid to admit any of us have weaknesses or struggles. We’re terrified because none of us want to look stupid or unqualified.

    We pretend to be squeaky-clean specimens of perfection, but inside, our minds are on the verge of exploding as we obsess over questions like: What will people think of me? Will they think I’m dumb? Will I be passed up for a promotion? Will others discover that I’m struggling? Am I actually a fraud?!

    What makes this even more challenging is that it’s a silly game we all willingly play.

    Think of a typical job interview.

    HR: “So, Terry, we’re really impressed with everything you shared today, but we have one final question. What would you say is your biggest weakness?”

    Terry: “This one’s really hard to admit, but it’s got to be that I work too hard. I’m always willing to go above and beyond to get the job done.”

    HR: “Wow, thank you for being so vulnerable, Terry. You sound like you’d be a great fit for mentoring our new hires as they navigate the challenges of working in a fast-paced environment.”

    Here’s the truth: We both know Terry is full of crap. Like, c’mon, Terry, is that really your biggest weakness? That you work too hard? Are you sure it’s not that you’re an emotional black hole since your divorce, which is why your kids don’t talk to you?

    I’m aware that what I’m about to share sounds contradictory, but it’s true. Admitting you have weaknesses is a sign of strength, not weakness. You must know what you can do and what you can’t, your powers and limitations, your strengths and vulnerabilities, what’s in your control and what isn’t.

    There are obvious circumstances that make admitting our weaknesses easy. In fact, not realizing you are outside the scope of what you know in these situations makes you look about as bright as a jellyfish.

    Break your leg? You go to the emergency room.

    Car alternator blows? You go to a mechanic.

    Time to do your business taxes? You go to an accountant.

    But here’s where we all start to fall apart. What about when you’re depressed, hopeless, or emotionally drained, and you don’t know how to help yourself?

    What do most of us do in the above scenario?

    Sweet eff all.

    Actually, that’s not true. We double down on negative habits like drinking, eating, shopping, or mindlessly scrolling on our phones, hoping something will change our state.

    We’re not weak, right?

    We don’t have a problem, right?

    Who cares if we’re not addressing our emotions? There’s work to be done. I already don’t have time to get everything done, so why would I waste time on crap like this?

    It’s embarrassing to admit that I believed not addressing my weaknesses was a sign of strength.

    My depression only made me weak because I kept it hidden in the shadows—not because mental health struggles are signs of inherent weakness. I endured relentless suffering, tormented by the belief that I was a worthless bag of flesh who subjected my loved ones to my endless mistakes and would be better off dead.

    What was I trying to prove?

    Why was I so afraid of looking weak?

    Would I be less of a man?

    And here’s the irony. By asking those questions, I realized that I was the one labeling these weaknesses as such. That shift empowered me to confront these challenges head-on, seeking the support of a therapist and coach, and hold myself to a higher standard.

    I’ve discovered that these “weaknesses” are sources of extraordinary growth. Therefore, acknowledging our weaknesses is the key to becoming stronger.

    I was blind to the cost of my denial until I gained a different perspective. I needed a new pair of glasses to show me that how you do anything is how you do everything.

    When I viewed these moments as gravity problems—things I couldn’t do anything about—I felt hopeless about everything in my life. But when I realized that these were challenges that I could overcome, I was given the opportunity to see that I could conquer any obstacle in my path if I was willing to embrace imperfection.

    Don’t let the subtlety of this shift in thinking race past you as you read the rest of this story. Understand first that you and I are having this conversation because I chose life.

    If you don’t address a broken leg, you’re going to hobble around like a pirate for the rest of your life.

    If you don’t fix your alternator, you have a 3,000-pound paperweight.

    If you don’t get an accountant to handle your business taxes, you will pay dearly to the tax man.

    And if you don’t address your emotional issues?

    You will forever be anchored to a tiny, scared version of yourself. Never capable of reaching your potential.

    It’s not enough to know that you have weaknesses; you must know when you’ve reached the limit of what you can figure out independently. You’re outside your boundaries if you don’t know which side of the line you’re on, or if there even is a line at all.

    I’m not here to tell you what to do, but you can bet I will leave you with a question.

    Six months from now, what will you wish you had spent time on today? What action would help you get the support you need to overcome something you’ve been struggling with?

    Calling a friend?

    Grabbing breakfast with your mom?

    Booking a therapist appointment?

    That, my friend, is what matters most.

    And nothing else on your to-do list will fulfill you if you don’t prioritize it.

    Choosing not to act now is delaying a better future. So, whatever you’re going to do, do it. Do it now. Don’t wait.

  • How I Overcame Self-Hatred and 6 Ways to Love Yourself

    How I Overcame Self-Hatred and 6 Ways to Love Yourself

    “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Sharon Salzberg

    When was the last time you looked at your reflection and extended love to yourself? Before I discovered the life-changing power of self-love, I had not extended love to myself for years. This is the story of how I transformed my self-hatred into self-love, how it changed my life, and several tips to practice in your life.

    For a long time, I believed self-love was something to be avoided at all costs. Like many, I had become habituated to the “hustle and grind” mindset. Little did I know, I used this as an excuse to continue with my same habits of self-hatred.

    I was surrounded by voices telling me I needed to work harder. There was no escaping the voice that said, “You are not good enough yet! You’re a loser! You don’t deserve success! Keep working harder, or you will remain the same!”

    Was this voice telling the truth?

    I isolated myself because I thought I did not deserve to have time with friends. The needs of myself and my loved ones were disregarded.

    Every day was a constant struggle to get through. There was nothing to look forward to. I was living the same day repeatedly, constantly engulfed with an overwhelming feeling of shame and guilt.

    Of course, this only made my circumstances worse, although I overlooked the issue. All that mattered was getting things done.

    Self-punishment became my first response if I got off track, lost focus, or made a mistake.  

    One tiny mistake would throw my whole day into chaos. I would feel like there was no point in continuing the day because “I already failed.” It felt like a sober rain cloud circled over me, raining down with all its might.

    Even more saddening was how this affected the way I treated others.

    The hatred I extended to myself snowballed into how I perceived and treated my fellow humans, including friends and family.

    I had set extremely high standards and expected others to have the same standards. I was judgmental, critical, and rude to others, all without realizing it.

    I was living in a state of unconsciousness. I had no idea what harm I was inflicting on myself and others. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I only created more struggle.

    Things had gotten to a point where I didn’t know if I could continue to move on. The feelings of guilt, shame, and anger became the only thing I was familiar with. It had been ages since I experienced joy.

    Like many, I dwelled in these familiar feelings because they had been part of my life for so long. Only briefly would I feel happy, but I would quickly return to despair and hopelessness not long after.

    I suspected life was supposed to be like this, that I was supposed to suffer. I made things so much more challenging than they needed to be without even knowing.

    The Realization 

    After becoming acutely aware of the damage my lack of self-love created, I knew something needed to change. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep up with this.

    I was not making the progress I expected to be making. Never did I pause to reflect on my purpose, values, or goals. All that mattered to me was productivity, not relationships, happiness, or health.

    My current behaviors had landed me here. Clearly, I was doing something wrong.

    This is when it hit me.

    My perfectionism and negative self-talk were the creators of my pain, hindered my personal growth, and created constant challenges and hopelessness.

    The hatred I was extending to myself not only made me less kind to others. It made me harder on myself.

    The anger I inflicted on myself took away the self-encouragement, optimism, and positivity needed to move in a new direction, so I remained stuck in the same patterns.

    After witnessing accomplished individuals change history with love, I decided to take a different approach. Few have achieved beauty in a state of lack and anger.

    Let us not forget about Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa. Every one of these transformational leaders changed the world without using violence. They experienced extreme forms of struggle but continued to move forward with peace, stillness, and determination.

    It was time to break free and take a different approach, an approach these history-changers would take.

    The Switch 

    After realizing that I had been doing things wrong for so long, I began making subtle changes in my life.

    I started to change how I viewed myself. Instead of seeing myself as some monster, undeserving of happiness or success, I began to see myself as another human being on a journey, just like everyone else.

    Embracing Imperfections 

    We are all imperfect beings on a journey. What we need is not more hatred. We need more encouragement, love, kindness, and compassion.

    My imperfections were not an obstacle or something to be angry about; they were beautiful opportunities to learn, grow, and develop. Every flaw I uncovered became a powerful motivator to keep pushing forward.

    My imperfections were not something to be upset about; they were something to celebrate and appreciate. Without my flaws, I could not enjoy the journey of personal development. Flaws inspire us to become a better version of ourselves, but only if we change our perception of them.

    Self-Love: The Portal to Transformation 

    Self-love did not just help me uncover the beauty of imperfections. It opened a magnificent portal to transformation.

    Self-love is like the key to the door of development. It frees us from our past mistakes and allows us to soar into the future with excitement, gratitude, and joy.

    I started to see just how powerful this whole self-love thing is. The more loving I was to myself, the more inspired and motivated I felt to overcome my limitations.

    At last, I could escape from the negativity loop instead of repeating the same thoughts, feeling the same feelings, and acting in the same ways.

    Transforming how we think about ourselves daily influences how we feel. How we feel affects what we do. What we do determines the results we get, and the results we get determine our future.

    I chose to embrace self-compassion and self-encouragement instead of the usual self-aggrandizement. Do not get me wrong, this was hard to do, but it helped me tremendously.

    Having embraced imperfections and recognizing the transformational power of self-love, I embarked on the journey of redefining it.

    Redefining Self-Love 

    One of the most challenging changes I had to make was how I viewed self-love. I previously viewed it as a weakness or something that would not help me. I held the belief that self-love would move me farther back.

    Many of us hold beliefs like these, but they are largely incorrect.

    Self-love is simply about doing what is best for us regardless of how we feel. It is a habit, just like self-discipline.

    I started to see self-love as a catalyst for growth, not something that would hold me back. I was already holding myself back tremendously with my current behaviors, so something had to change.

    Self-love is like a healthy, nourishing meal that energizes and motivates us to keep moving forward. The more nutritious the meals we consume, the more energy we obtain to transform our lives.

    How can we become the best version of ourselves if we neglect to nourish ourselves?

    A Catalyst for Compassion

    After discovering the unwavering power of self-love, I came to realize that the more love and compassion I gave myself, the easier it became for me to show empathy toward others. This was one of the most immediate and valuable lessons I learned from practicing self-love.

    When we cease to hold ourselves to impossible standards, we stop doing the same to others. Breaking free from my high standards was difficult but necessary to reduce my constant misery.

    We are all unique human beings with different goals, values, and visions. We each have our own standards and purpose in life. Just because I might have higher standards does not make me a better person.

    Shifting My Mindset

    Self-love even made it easier to overcome challenges. Approaching challenges with a mindset of optimism, positivity, and trust produces much better results than pessimism.

    It became easier to see opportunities and possibilities. Before, everything felt like an insurmountable obstacle. Instead of giving up like usual, I chose to persevere, trusting that things would be okay.

    I encountered a plethora of obstacles along my journey. There were times when practicing self-love became a burden, but I knew that all I needed to do was trust in the transformational power of it.

    It is time for us all to step into the portal of self-love. Doing so will change our lives in more ways than we can imagine.

    How to Practice Self-Love 

    1. Honor your intentions.

    This is one of the most essential aspects of self-love. To show how much we love ourselves, we must keep the promises we made to ourselves. Extending love to yourself is about staying committed to your goals, values, purpose, and vision.

    2. Get clear on your values and purpose.

    Knowing who you are, what matters to you, your life’s mission, and the person you want to become allows you to align your actions with these values. The more you know about yourself, the easier it will be to love yourself. Self-understanding is the key to self-love.

    3. Embrace self-appreciation and gratitude.

    Dedicate a few minutes to write characteristics or qualities you admire about yourself. These can be material or nonmaterial. You may even enjoy writing something seemingly unimportant, such as “I am proud of myself for getting out of bed this morning.” Only when we reflect on our achievements and honorable qualities do we recognize how accomplished we are.

    4. Encourage yourself.

    Instead of resorting to self-hatred or self-criticism after making a mistake, move into a state of encouragement. Encourage yourself to keep moving forward despite obstacles. Encourage yourself to try a little bit harder. Move forward in a state of love, joy, and forgiveness.

    5. Embrace your imperfections and flaws.

    The more imperfect we are, the more opportunities we gain to learn, grow, and evolve. Imperfections are a gift to be cherished, not an obstacle to be pushed aside. Without imperfections, we would not get to enjoy the journey of personal growth. Life would be monotonous and boring.

    6. Surround yourself with love.

    Spend time with people who encourage you, hold you accountable, and inspire you. The people we spend time with influence who we become. If we surround ourselves with optimistic and loving people, we will cultivate the same qualities in ourselves. Not only should we surround ourselves with loving people, but we should also alter our outer environment to support our habits. This might be hard to do at first, but making minuscule changes to our environment and friend group will program us to engage in self-love.

    Before I go, remember, “You yourself, as much as anybody in the universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Sharon Salzberg

    I look forward to hearing which self-love practice you will implement!  

  • Thinner is Not Better – Healthy, Connected, and Happy Is

    Thinner is Not Better – Healthy, Connected, and Happy Is

    “Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don’t match our own beliefs about how we should look.” ~Martha Beck

    I have so many women around me right now—friends, mothers, clients that are on a diet—constantly talking about their weight and how their bodies look, struggling with body image.

    I am profoundly sad about the frequency and theme of those discussions.

    At the same time, I deeply get it; it is hard to detach from our conditioning.

    I too struggled with body image at one point in my life, and for a very long time. I suffered from anorexia in my late teens and early twenties. I was skinny as a rail and thought I was not thin enough. I hated the way I looked. I was never perfect enough.

    I controlled my food intake as a way to regain control over my life, as a way to maybe one day be perfect enough that I might feel loved. I almost ended up in the hospital, as my weight impacted my health, physically and mentally. I had no period, no healthy bowel movement. I was so unhappy and depressed. I had no energy.

    The messed-up thing is that the skinnier I looked, the more compliments I received from a lot of people, from family to friends: “You are so slim and gorgeous.” To me, this just validated the way I treated my body—and myself—with control, self-criticism, and harshness.

    Then there were the magazines, showing skinny models, getting so much positive attention. I was obsessed. The more my body looked like those magazine pictures, the better; though I could never quite get to a point where I looked at myself in the mirror and liked what I saw. It was an endless circle of judgment, control, and unhappiness. 

    It took me many years to change the way I saw my body and debunk the standards created by “society” for women.

    For many years I bit my tongue each time I would hear other women around me comparing and judging their body size and shape, repeating the same narrative of needing to lose weight. These conversations felt like an unbearable ringing in my ears, a knot in my stomach, the story in my head of “I am not good enough.”

    I was in the process of creating a new set of standards for myself, of what it was to be a woman in this world, but the old stories were hard to escape and easier to follow because they were the gold standard. I did not have any role models of women out there, younger or older, loving their body just the way it was.

    There was a point, though, when it was just too draining. I noticed that it was not the striving to get to a perfect body that brought me love. What brought me love was being vulnerable, authentic, sharing my inner life, supporting others, having deep talks, being kind with myself and others, and doing the things I loved.

    From then on, I started to soften and release all those standards that had been gifted to me. I allowed myself to be okay with how my body looked, to enjoy food, to enjoy movement, to enjoy my body. I learned to truly love my body, and with that came a different type of respect: I learned to rest when my body was tired. I learned to eat really nourishing food. I learned to move every day in a way that was respectful to my body and that I enjoyed.

    Thinner is not better. Healthy, connected, and happy is.

    Practicing yoga helped me so much in embodying this new belief, and studying neuro-linguistic programming as well.

    The truth is we are “society”—all of us, women and men—which means we are the agents of change. So let’s pause, reflect, and choose new standards. Is this constant need to lose weight healthy or serving anyone?

    There are a few different things to separate and highlight here.

    If your weight negatively impacts your health or your life, if you feel heavy in an unhealthy way and can’t do the activities you’d like to do, that is a different story; and yes, please, take care of your body, through what you think will work best for you: exercise, nutrition, mindset, support.

    Your body is your vessel to experience life, so finding your way to a healthy body is a worthwhile investment. And daily movement and good nutrition will have such a positive impact on your vitality and health, physical and mental, so yes, go for it, with love, softness and kindness—no control, judgment, or harshness.

    But if you feel that your body is strong and healthy, but you don’t like the way it looks… I feel you. I was there. I felt the shame, the discomfort, the sadness, the feeling of not being good enough. Allow yourself to feel this pain. It is okay, and human nature, to feel concerned about your appearance. We all want to be part of the tribe, to be loved and admired.

    But then, ask yourself, is it me that does not like the way my body looks, or is it because of society’s beauty standards? Is it because of all the noise from my friends, constantly talking about weight and looks? Do I want to transmit those standards to the next generation? To my sons? To my daughters? Is it really the most important thing for us women, to look thin and good? Is this story serving us all? Is it love?

    No, it is not love, and it serves no one. Not the women suffering in silence because they believe their body is not slim enough. Not the partners of those women who can’t appreciate their true beauty and fullness. Not the daughters that will believe the same messages and suffer as well. Not the sons that will not know how to recognize beauty in its diverse shapes and forms. Not society as a whole, which will be robbed of having a happy, compassionate, loving, self-confident population.

    So let’s choose differently. Let’s celebrate our different body shapes and weights and strength. Let’s feel good and enjoy life, movement, and food without counting and restricting and denying love to our bodies and selves.

    Let’s stop talking about our weight constantly and find other ways to connect.

    Some might say that I am too slim to really speak about this subject, that I have it easy. This is not quite true. My body has changed so much throughout the years. I went from an ultra-skinny teenager and twenty-year-old with anorexia, to a healthy weight in my thirties, to ups and downs with weight throughout my two pregnancies and breastfeeding journeys. I have seen my body change quite a lot and have been judged for how I looked oh so many times. I have been judged for being skinny, or envied for being slim, and I have been judged for gaining weight.

    Today I am forty-three. My body is not as slim as it used to be. I have a bit of fat around my belly, and my breasts are not as round and firm as they once were, but I feel strong and healthy. And I am SO grateful for my body for enabling me to experience life so far, and for creating life and feeding life, that I don’t want to ever criticize or shame my body again.

    I have learned to love every scar, my stretch marks, my extra skin, because they are the witness of my life, my loves, my years.

    So thank you, body, for everything you allow me to experience.

    The alternative to loving my body—the constant internal criticism and self-doubt—is too draining.

    We, as humans, are society, so let’s change this conditioning. Let’s never transmit this idea of what a woman’s body should look like to our daughters, to our sons. Let’s invent a world where it does not matter what you weigh as long as you feel healthy and good within. Let’s change the chattering from what diet we are on to how our heart is feeling.

    Let’s celebrate bodies, in their diverse beauty and forms.

  • Stop Waiting for Perfection and Fall in Love with Your Life Now

    Stop Waiting for Perfection and Fall in Love with Your Life Now

    I know, so cliché, right? I can practically hear your eyes roll. But hear me out.

    In a society driven by results, achievements, and ideals of perfection, there is a huge pitfall that I am becoming increasingly aware of—that we can be so focused on trying to achieve our “best life” that life itself could pass us by and we would have missed it. Missed the beauty of just being here.

    We’ve all heard the sayings “Slow down and smell the roses” and “Life is a journey, not a destination.” We hear these sayings and pass them off as embroidery on a quaint pillow, but what if we didn’t? What if life really is in the details?

    I mean, how many of us will ever actually attain the “perfect life” we are being sold? Are we just trapped in never-ending, self-defeating cycles of diets, bad habits, and perpetual “self-improvement”?

    What if we just paused for a second. Took a break from social media. Blocked out all the outside noise. Just got quiet. What would your inner voice, your subconscious, tell you?

    What makes you truly happy? What feeds your soul? Makes you tick? Even reading that back I realize I sound very “new age,” but what I mean is, aren’t we done with being told what will make us happy? And why does life have to be spectacular to be fulfilling? Can’t what we have just be enough?

    Recently, I lost my dad after a very short and aggressive battle with cancer. I didn’t see it coming. I thought he would go on forever.

    I had been estranged from my dad for a few years before he got sick. We had drifted apart for lots of reasons but mainly because he was never there for me. Our relationship was very one-sided and usually consisted of me running after him, wanting him to notice me, to give me the love and approval I so badly felt I needed from him.

    He wasn’t any of the things a father should be. He wasn’t reliable or safe or protective or even present, and I resented him for abandoning me when I was little.

    But when it came down to it, when I faced losing him, when I saw him in his hospital bed and he told me he “wasn’t long for this world,” all of that melted away and I longed desperately for more time.

    I wish I had let go of my expectations, my resentment, and my pride and just accepted him and salvaged a relationship with him. I loved my dad, and I wish I had spent more time just being with him. Now, that time has passed.

    His loss taught me something. Life is precious. We don’t have forever. We have now. This moment. We can choose to love our lives now.

    Don’t wait until you’re skinner, prettier, fitter, earning more money, famous, a millionaire. (Most of us will never be those last two things.)

    If your life is particularly hard right now and your needs aren’t being met, work to change what isn’t working. But don’t get so focused on what you want that you forget what you already have.

    Let’s stop wasting the precious time we have here with the people we love, who make our life beautiful.

    Appreciate all the little things that make you happy.

    For me, it’s coffee shops and lazy mornings, walks by the river or in nature, grabbing lunch with my friends or dancing the night away, cuddles on the sofa, spending time with my kids, those few precious moments with my partner in the morning before the day begins.

    These things are what make a life. While we are striving to “live our best life,” we run the real risk of completely missing the one we are already living.

    My one wish is that we all wake up and start appreciating the life we have right now. That we reject the notion that we have to have perfect bodies, perfect faces, perfect houses, families, relationships, to have a truly happy life.

    Wake up to the fact that we are being sold this lie purely so that we buy more stuff, work more hours, keep striving for the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

    Love your life now. Fall in love with all the little things. Happiness doesn’t come from physical possessions. It comes from appreciating everything money can’t buy. You could already be living your “best life” without even trying.

  • Everything I’m So, So Sorry About (and Why I Think Apologies Are Hard)

    Everything I’m So, So Sorry About (and Why I Think Apologies Are Hard)

    “There’s the way that light shows in darkness, and it is extremely beautiful. And I think it essentializes the experience of being human, to see light in darkness.” ~Emil Ferris

    I was leading a yoga training in a small village in Greece near the Aegean Sea. One of the trainees was practicing a mindfulness workshop she designed. She led us through a guided meditation based on a beautiful Hawaiian practice for reconciliation and forgiveness called Ho’oponopono. As we sat in the yoga space, she repeated over and over:

    I love you.
    Please forgive me.
    I’m sorry.
    Thank you.

    There was something about how she slowly said, “I’m so, so sorry” that at one point I felt my heart break open, and tears flowed from its depths.

    I have a wellspring of personal and societal hurts tucked in the back of my heartspace that I am so, so sorry about.

    I’m sorry that children and animals are abused for no reason except the amusement or the sickness of adults.

    I’m sorry that women and children are molested and raped by men whose brains can’t process compassion, and that their need for power is so destructive that they can justify their actions.

    I’m sorry that people aren’t given equal access to food, education, and healthcare because of the color of their skin or biases.

    I’m sorry for the learned bias that keep us from treating everyone equally.

    I’m sorry that children don’t tell adults they have been bullied and base their self-worth on their shame about how their peers treated them.

    I’m sorry for daughters whose mothers try to keep them small.

    I’m sorry for the boys who’ve been told that they can’t cry.

    I’m sorry that saying sorry is sometimes too vulnerable.

    I’m sorry for any time I have ever said or done something that was hurtful because I was trying to make myself look good.

    I’m so, so sorry

    The Vulnerability of Being Sorry

    Saying I’m sorry is a vulnerable place. We have to admit that we were not perfect. We have to disclose that we made mistakes.

    Sometimes I’ve raced around my brain desperately looking for some way to justify my actions so that I didn’t have to apologize because it felt too vulnerable. But sometimes, even in a relationship where I wanted to be vulnerable and close to someone, I have defaulted to not apologizing—sometimes out of habit.

    During the pandemic, I came down with COVID-19 and had to call the people I’d been around and tell them. It was hard. One of my friends was very upset with me. It was during the holidays, and after spending a lot of time alone, she had plans for New Year’s Eve.

    I didn’t blame her for being mad. The isolation was driving us all crazy. I was sorry. Apologizing and listening to her anger was uncomfortable. Her friendship was more valuable than the temporary discomfort of her processing her disappointment. I was grateful that I had the courage to be present.

    If we want a relationship to grow, we—the one who erred—need to own the mistake and the apology, no matter how uncomfortable it feels. Without the apology, it’s one more brick in the barrier to growing closer in a relationship.

    We all know people that never say I’m sorry—it just feels too exposed. Alternatively, more worrisome, is that they feel beyond reproach.

    Cindy Frantz, a professor of psychology and environmental studies at Oberlin College and Conservatory, said that when we do something wrong and skirt responsibility by not admitting our wrongdoing, the interaction feels incomplete.

    I know from experience that waiting for an apology can cause a relationship to feel like it is hanging in midair, waiting to get grounded.

    She also warned, “Don’t apologize as a way to shut down the conversation and wipe the slate clean. That’s a shortcut that won’t work.”

    When It Isn’t Safe to Say I’m Sorry

    Some people will use our apology against us—so we keep ourselves safe by not apologizing. Self-preservation might be the best choice when dealing with someone with mental health and abusive issues. It can take a toll on how we feel about ourselves though.

    In the eighties, I was in a twelve-step program for my eating disorder. I wasn’t able to fully complete the fifth step by making amends to my parents for all the extra food I ate to fuel my bulimia. It just didn’t feel safe. Now that I’m in my sixties I could do it, but my parents are deceased.

    I found some comfort in apologizing “in spirit.” I’m still in the process of fully letting go of the conversation that I wish I could have had.

    Over-Apologizing

    I was in a coffee house, writing this article, when I overheard a conversation. A man asked a woman if he could reach across her to get a chess board from a shelf that was next to her. She said yes and then said, “I’m sorry.” His friend said to her, “Why are you apologizing? He’s the one inconveniencing you.”

    Like this woman, I can be very free with my apologies.

    Saying things like “I’m sorry to bother you” instead of “Do you have a minute to talk?” can be a sign of our sense of self-worth or the habits we developed when we weren’t confident.

    Findings show that women report offering more apologies than men, even though there is no evidence that women create more offenses than men.

    For women, over-apologizing can be just a matter of learned language. But when we hear ourselves apologize for taking up space when someone else bumps into us, or apologize for being late rather than thanking people for waiting for us, or apologize just for saying no when someone crosses our boundaries, this can be a sign of self-worth challenges.

    If we listen to ourselves apologize repeatedly, we literally talk ourselves into low self-worth.

    What a Sincere Apology Feels Like

    I can offer a sincere apology when I know the mistakes I make are just a part of being human. I truly don’t want to hurt others. I don’t want them to be suffering from my words or actions.

    I can offer a sincere apology when I forgive myself for not being perfect. I seek to learn from my mistakes and apply insights to my future responses and actions. I refrain from using my mistakes to bring up all my past mistakes and emotionally beat myself up.

    Psychotherapist Sara Kubric says that a genuine apology is more than a statement. It has to be sincere, vulnerable, and intentional. She offers an apology recipe that could look something like:

    1. Taking responsibility for making a mistake
    2. Acknowledging that we have hurt someone
    3. Validating their feelings
    4. Expressing remorse
    5. Being explicit about our desire to make amends

    Apology as a Test of Confidence

    When I sincerely apologize, I know that I am confident. No one is beyond making mistakes. I know that my spiritual growth depends on my ability to be vulnerable.

    I continue to learn new ways of communicating that don’t involve over-apologizing for taking up space or being a normal human being. I know that there are pain, challenges, and injustices in the world that I can’t control, and I can be sorry, sad, and discouraged when they happen. This is the way I can live consciously and compassionately in this, my community.

  • “Old” Isn’t a Bad Word: The Beauty of Aging (Gracefully or Not)

    “Old” Isn’t a Bad Word: The Beauty of Aging (Gracefully or Not)

    “Mrs. Miniver suddenly understood why she was enjoying the forties so much better than she had enjoyed the thirties: it was the difference between August and October, between the heaviness of late summer and the sparkle of early autumn, between the ending of an old phase and the beginning of a fresh one.” ~Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver

    As an adolescent, I was always keen on looking and acting older than my age.

    As the youngest amongst three, I always felt that my siblings held more power and their grown up lives seemed more glamorous to me. They would prance off to college or to high school, carrying their own bags and packing their own lunches, while I had to wait for my mother to drop me off, holding her hand as we crossed the street!

    Naturally, I looked forward to my birthday each year, waiting for a sense of “grownup”ness to take me over even as I got giddy at the thought of opening gifts. Yet, over the past few years, my birthday gifts have come wrapped in a vague fear, that of becoming invisible.

    In a society that values youth to the point of insanity, reaching that terrible “middle age” seems like a ticket to the circus of Forget-Me Land!

    As I journal and reflect my way through all this, I wonder why this is a big deal at all. In fact, in many families across nature, growing older is a good sign. It’s a symbol of status and respect.

    Take the example of the silverback gorilla: all that gray hair on their back gives them the authority to make decisions for the group! Wolf leaders, elephant mothers, and older dolphins are all instances where nature favors age.

    Why, then, are humans obsessed with youth? From creams that remove wrinkles to references like “well-maintained” (as if we were a car!), we are told repeatedly that being younger is somehow better.

    Personally, growing older has taught me a few things, and I wish I could go back in time and share them with my younger self. However, that’s not possible unless we invent a time machine, so I’ll list them here and you can take what you will.

    To begin with, don’t obsess over beauty. Or rather, what society tells you beauty is.

    All through my growing up years, I pursued being beautiful even at the cost of my true talents. I underplayed my reading habit, and I acted meek so men would perceive me as “more beautiful.” I have no idea where I received these ideas, but they were debilitating. I wanted to be beautiful so I would be chosen by men, but I never stopped to ask myself: Which man?

    It is sad that I desperately wanted to be chosen by someone even as I rejected myself, day in and out. After battling toxic relationships and severe blows to my self-esteem, I realized that the pursuit of beauty has been absolutely useless.

    What really helped me during difficult times was my sheer bullheadedness and foolish optimism. Surprisingly, being myself, with gray hair, crooked teeth, and a few extra pounds, is easy to do and has also earned me some beautiful friendships, with men and women alike.

    Secondly, age is really just a number.

    My dog doesn’t know how old she is, so she is free to act as she pleases. She jumps on beds, goes crazy over sweets, and gets jealous. She runs if she wants and as much as her body allows. It’s easy for her to do all this and more because she doesn’t have that limiting belief called “age.”

    Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist, conducted an unusual experiment where elderly subjects were asked to live like it was twenty years earlier, in a simulated environment. The men who underwent the experiment supposedly showed improvement in memory, cognition, and much more.

    Even if the experiment seems outlandish to you, there’s an important takeaway: How you perceive your age makes a huge difference in how you approach it. So why not approach it with positivity?

    A few months ago, I read a very powerful quote, and it made a huge impression on me: Do not regret growing older; it’s a privilege denied to many.

    How true! My mind immediately goes to my own father, who passed away before he fulfilled many of his dreams. I am sure he would have welcomed many more years with open arms, warts and all.

    For a patient with a terminal illness, each day growing older can only be a blessing, even when the body feels frail. We don’t have to wait for something like this to feel grateful for our age. We have that opportunity each day and in each moment.

    You don’t have to ‘maintain’ yourself.

    You don’t have to look younger.

    You can be thin, overweight, or anything in between or beyond.

    Don’t hold yourself back from things you love just because you feel older/younger.

    Don’t feel the pressure to age gracefully or anything else that society tells you to do. You have the freedom to age messily if you like. Heck, it’s your life, and it’s in chaos that order is born!

    Maybe you don’t have a head full of black hair, but so what? You probably sucked your thumb at six, but you don’t do that anymore, do you? It’s the same thing.

    Nostalgia is only helpful if it uplifts you. If it’s taking you on a downward spiral of “how I wish I was that age again!”, then it’s high time you closed that album of old photos. New sunrises and sunsets await you. Make yourself some frothy cold coffee and move on!

    There’s nothing that you need to tick off by a certain age. We all have our own trajectories and our own truths to learn. Take inspiration from plants and animals. They don’t strive; they just are and their lives pan out beautifully! Be courageous enough to own your messy self and your messy life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    And it just so happens there is good surf here.

    My reentry into surfing has been slow and steady.

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

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

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

    “Fifty,” I replied.

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

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

    It is now two years later.

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

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

    “Fifty-two,” I replied.

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

    Yes, this really happened.

    And it has happened more than once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    And they have stopped asking about my age.

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

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

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

    This is what the body does.

    It ages.

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

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

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

    We are allowed to age.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Your mother is getting a new nurse.”

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

    “Someone will be there within the hour.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Why I’d Rather Be Vulnerable with People Than Pretend I’m Perfect

    Why I’d Rather Be Vulnerable with People Than Pretend I’m Perfect

    “Give up being perfect, for being authentic. Give up the need to be perfect, for the opportunity to be authentic. Be who you are. Love who you are. Others will too.” ~Hal Elrod

    I’m not perfect. Not that this would come as any kind of surprise to anyone who knows me. But I often feel pushed in the direction of trying to represent myself as someone who has it all together. Especially because of the nature of my work as a coach and facilitator. What about you? Do you ever feel like you’re putting on a show for others?

    The more I find myself trying to represent a perfectly put-together person, the less confident I feel in who I am because I know I am being inauthentic. It’s a big part of what took me off social media a few years ago.

    I don’t like that social media has the ability to mold what you think about yourself by way of comparison and encourage posturing. It’s a slippery slope, as we’re hardwired to yearn for love and connection as part of our survival. For me, it didn’t feel like the kinda place I wanted my love and connection to come from.

    Having the ability to talk about our flaws, what’s going wrong in our lives and where we’re getting stuck, is a huge part of human evolution that we often forget about. If we don’t have an environment to talk about our vulnerabilities, the wounds never get a chance to heal.

    Before getting into therapy, my life was a bloody mess because I pretended like these wounds didn’t exist.

    I don’t remember a period in my life without depression. Even as a teen it followed me around like a shadow.

    I believed the world would be better without me. I felt worthless—like I shouldn’t even have a seat at the table with other humans. I should have been in an alley eating scraps of food with sewer rats. No matter what I did or how hard I tried, the shadow mocked me for dreaming of a better future. My unwillingness to unpack those thoughts meant the infection spread to all areas of my life.

    I grew up in the nineties, when no one was talking about mental health. You struggled in silence.

    I battled demons in high school. I only lasted till eleventh grade before dropping out. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another day being somewhere that made my life hell—but really, hell was inside me.

    The voice inside my head was (and still is at times) vicious. Every day it was like the Vikings raided and settled into my thoughts to destroy my existence. Those thoughts have left scars that would look like battle wounds of lobbed-off arms if you could see them.

    The voice inside my head was a reminder that I sure as hell would never do anything my parents would be proud of. It was easier to do nothing so that nothing was expected of me. I didn’t feel stupid if I didn’t try, so it made my reality an easier pill to swallow.

    I did graduate and made my way to university, but my life became increasingly dysfunctional. My love for being black-out drunk on Sailor Jerry rum became the perfect way to cope with a chaotic mind I didn’t understand.

    This comes back to not treating open wounds. Everything I resisted continue to persist.

    I had next to no insight into what I was going through because I wasn’t willing to share that I was struggling.

    At the time, my problems took on the weight of the world because I didn’t let people stand by my side to support me. I burned through relationships like a brushfire. I had no idea how to be in an open and communicative relationship because I barely had a relationship with myself.

    Once the wounds became visible through therapy, I could stop the infection from poisoning my ability to think and function. Vulnerability saved my life. I have no doubt that if I didn’t get that support, I would not be here today.

    We forget that our survival depends on being vulnerable. Author Brad Stulberg talks about this in his book, The Practice of Groundedness. He writes, “Our ancestors who survived weren’t those who were the strongest by traditional measures, but those who were most effectively able to share their weaknesses with one another and work together to overcome them.”

    If I didn’t share what I’ve been through, would you still be reading this? Probably not. It would be just another fluff piece on embracing your vulnerability.

    Without openness, there is no love and connection.

    Without openness, you and I wouldn’t be sharing this moment.

    Without openness, you and I can’t heal and grow together.

    The idea of being vulnerable scares the sh*t out of most of us. No one wants to be perceived as weak or admit they have flaws. We’re afraid that the lions of the world will sense our weaknesses and pick us off one by one.

    Except I’ve never actually been mauled by a wild animal when I’ve asked for help, or taken responsibility for a mistake. It’s actually had the opposite effect. Through my writing and vulnerability, I’ve connected with people on every continent of earth.

    It becomes impossible for me to pretend my vulnerabilities are mine alone if people from all over the world have said I’ve captured what they’re struggling with.

    This idea is backed up by research from The University of Mannheim, in Germany, that Stulberg references in his book.

    He writes, “They repeatedly found that the individual doing the sharing felt that their vulnerability would be perceived as weak, as a negative. But the person on the other end of the conversation, the listener, felt the exact opposite: the more vulnerable the sharer was, the more courageous they perceived him or her to be. The listener viewed vulnerability as an unambiguously positive trait.”

    And I think this is why a lot of us continue to feel stuck. We’re so damn wrapped up in worrying about what others will think of us when we open up that we miss the chance to connect.

    When we feel we need to be perfect, it becomes impossible to grow because we’re not being honest with ourselves about how we’re struggling and what would help. My life couldn’t move forward if I refused to see the reality that partying, substance abuse, and pleasure chasing was an attempt to escape depression.

    When you choose the illusion of perfection over vulnerability, you become a stunted version of who you’re capable of becoming.

    The first place you get to take the armor off is when you’re staring at the reflection you see in the mirror.

    Are you willing to be vulnerable with the person staring back at you?

    Are you willing to admit that life is not going the way you want it to?

    Are you willing to put aside judgment so you can get the help and support you need?

    We all want changes, but are we willing to make the choices that give us that change?

    These questions have the potential to shake the core of your foundation free from all the bullsh*t that accumulates over the years. It’s bloody liberating to let go of stories that no longer serve you—stories about who you need to be and what you need to do or have in order to be happy and loved.

    I didn’t need to achieve a promotion or drive a sports car to receive love from my parents. I didn’t have to do anything to show the world that I mattered. I needed to ground myself in vulnerability, rather than an image of perfection, so I could show up as my authentic self and make a difference for other people by being the real, imperfect me.

    Pretending to be somebody you’re not is exhausting work. Not to mention it does the complete opposite of what you want it to do. If vulnerability gives you the power to connect, lead, and grow, that means the inverse is also true. A lack of vulnerability means you end up feeling disconnected, a fraud, forever stuck with a fragile version of what you’re capable of because your ego is afraid of getting hurt.

    Putting a name to what you’re facing puts the power back in your hands. So recognize that you too may be pretending to be perfect to avoid admitting you’re struggling and feeling vulnerable. That single choice to embrace vulnerability could be the most important decision you ever make in your life. And it just may give you the confidence to know you can face anything and rise above it.

  • How Perfectionism and Anxiety Made Me Sick and What I Wish I Knew Sooner

    How Perfectionism and Anxiety Made Me Sick and What I Wish I Knew Sooner

    “Perfectionism is the exhausting state of pretending to know it all and have it all together, all the time. I’d rather be a happy mess than an anxious stress case who’s always trying to hide my flaws and mistakes.” ~Lori Deschene 

    “That’s not how you do it!” I slammed the door as I headed outside, making sure my husband understood what an idiot he was. He’d made the appalling mistake of roasting potatoes for Thanksgiving instead of making stuffing.

    He was cooking while I studied, trying to make sure I got a semblance of a holiday. We lived away from our families, and I had exams coming up. I was on the verge of losing it most of the time—and he was walking on eggshells. Or roasted potatoes.

    I was in my first year of law school. Every student knows that if you look to your left and then to your right that one of those people won’t be there next year—they will have dropped out or failed. I was terrified of failing.

    Every morning, I had a pounding headache that no amount of painkillers touched. My shoulders sat permanently around my ears (try it, you’ll see what I mean). I had insomnia, was highly irritable, and often felt panicked. 

    My friendly barista made me a triple vanilla latte each morning at 7:00, and by 10:00, I was out of energy. I bought Red Bull by the case to get through the rest of the day, and in the evening, I’d switch to red wine. My digestive system was distressed to say the least.

    I was hustling so hard, trying to get it all right. And then, I got a C on my Torts midterm. And sobbed for three days.

    I know this must sound ridiculous. A big part of me thought it was. I beat myself up for being such a “drama queen” and not being able to move past it.

    But at the time it was devastating. My sense of self-worth was so inherently tied to my achievements that I felt like a giant failure.

    I didn’t tell anyone. I was too embarrassed. What would they think of someone who got that upset?

    I knew that I appeared to be highly functioning externally, and that was something. I had friends, I went out to dinner, I went to the gym, I walked on the beach. Internally, though, I was in turmoil.

    My husband encouraged me to go to the doctor. He could see how hard I was on myself and how it was impacting me. As I relayed my physical symptoms, she asked whether I was under much stress. I replied, “No, not really. Just the usual.”

    I didn’t know what to tell her. Partly because I’d lived much of my life this way and didn’t know it was anxiety, partly because I felt so out of control, partly because I was ashamed, partly because I assumed she’d only be able to help with the physical.

    And … part of me knew that saying it out loud would shatter the illusion of having it all together. 

    So, I went away with a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome. It wasn’t funny, but it makes me laugh now. My bowel was definitely irritable, but that irritability was nothing compared to what was going on in my head. It was a piece of the problem, but certainly not the whole problem.

    It wasn’t so long ago that I figured out I’d struggled with anxiety for a long time before I even knew what it was. Like many of us, I learned that if a feeling wasn’t “positive,” it wasn’t acceptable. So I stuffed down all the “negative” emotions we’re not supposed to have: fear, rage, jealousy, and sadness.

    Because I’m a highly sensitive person, I have a lot of big, deep feelings. A lot to shove down, or suppress, deny or project. I was good at this, and I looked down on people who expressed their feelings.

    I thought they must be needy. The truth is, I was scared of my feelings. And I didn’t know I had needs.

    Rather than daring to let either my feelings or needs show, I used perfectionism to make it seem like I had it all together. Perfectionism made me feel like an anxious mess. But I couldn’t admit that because it would be acknowledging a problem.

    That makes it hard to ask for help. It’s also exhausting. As Lori Deschene said in her quote at the beginning, “I’d rather be a happy mess than an anxious stress case always trying to hide my flaws and mistakes.”

    Life is hard enough without stressing about how we appear to everyone else. It’s just not worth it. When I allow myself to be fully human, I can laugh at myself, talk about my struggles, and show up in my imperfections. It makes life so much easier.

    Here are five things I wish I’d known earlier:

    1. Perfection is unattainable because it can’t be quantified.

    What is perfection anyway? Do we actually know? I don’t.

    It’s something I kept setting up for myself—an arbitrary standard I thought I was supposed to meet. But once I’d achieved something, I was already looking for the next thing.

    Where does it end? It doesn’t, and that’s the problem.

    2. No one looks back on their life and wishes they’d had worse relationships.

    This seems obvious, but it’s something I think about. I don’t know if I’ll ever completely untie my self-worth from my achievements, or find an amazing balance where I feel fulfilled yet not striving. Maybe? One can hope.

    I do know that when I’m on my deathbed, that’s not what’s going to matter. My people will matter. And I don’t want my striving or perfectionist tendencies to get in the way of those important relationships.

    3. Anxiety feels very real, and it’s just a feeling.⁠

    If you’ve experienced anxiety you’ll know how awful it feels. For me, it’s a racing heart, shaking hands, flushed face, and a feeling of dread.

    It’s important to remind yourself to breathe. And to keep breathing. It will pass.

    Anxiety is fear, and fear can’t hurt you, as much as it can seem like it might.

    4. Anxiety is the stress response in action. It’s physiological and nothing to be ashamed of.

    Anxiety was my brain telling my body that it believed there was a dangerous situation. That’s it.

    While the fear of falling short is hardly a saber toothed tiger running toward you (as our cavemen ancestors had to worry about), my brain didn’t know the difference. And where’s the big stigma in that? To be clear, I believe there should be no stigma around mental health either, but I’m painfully aware that there is.

    Reminding myself there was no tiger, and thus no real danger, was useful.

    5. Imagining the worst in every situation isn’t as helpful as you’d think.

    Going straight to the worst-case scenario did seem helpful at the time. On some level, I believed if I could plan for the worst, I’d be prepared for it. But it can also create a lot of unnecessary anxiety about unlikely (even extremely unlikely) possibilities.

    For example:

    “If I get a C, I’m not going to make it through the first year. I’ll get kicked out. That would be a disaster. It also means I’m a failure. People might pity me. They will definitely think differently of me.”

    Helpful thoughts would have been:

    “If I get a C, that means … I got a C. Nothing more. Perhaps I could learn differently. Perhaps I could seek extra help. Or perhaps I could remember that I’m doing my best and that is enough.”

    Unravelling what fuels anxiety, learning to manage it differently, and being able to extend a lot of compassion to myself has been a journey. Wherever you’re at with yours, I hope something here makes a difference for you.

  • Why I Gave Myself Permission to Suck at New Things

    Why I Gave Myself Permission to Suck at New Things

    “Never be afraid to try new things and make some mistakes. It’s all part of life and learning.” ~Unknown

    A few months ago, I was warming up for a dance class. It was a beginners’ class, but the instructor was one of those people who have been dancing all their life, so movement came easy to her. This was the ninth week of a ten-week term, and we’d been working on a choreography for a while now.

    Then, the reception girl came in with a new student. She introduced the new girl to the instructor. “Hey B. This is Nat. She is new to the studio, and I offered her a trial class. Do you think you can take care of her?”

    “Of course. Hi Nat. We have been working on this “coreo” for a while, but I’ll explain each move as we go. I promise I’ll go really slow. Besides, everyone here is a beginner.”

    A little uncertain, Nat came in and took a spot at the back of the class. You could see she wasn’t very comfortable. But everyone encouraged her to stay, so she did.

    The truth is that the cues were confusing and the moves were hard to perform. Even though we were all beginners at that particular class, many of us had taken other classes before. Besides, we have been working on this choreography for eight weeks.

    Unable to follow the class, Nat burst out of the room in tears after only ten minutes. And on her way out, she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I’m clearly not good enough.”

    Have you ever been through anything like that? Feeling out of place and inadequate?

    I know I have. You see, I’ve never been what you call an athletic kid. Mostly because I never had the opportunity to become one.

    In my school, during PE classes, only the talented kids were chosen to play. Everyone else stayed in the sidelines. Watching.

    Also, I never participated in extra-curricular sports activities because my parents couldn’t afford it. So I grew up believing that I was not good with sports. Just a scrawny girl, uncoordinated and awkward.

    And that was my belief until my late twenties. But then, something happened.

    When I was twenty-eight, I decided to give the gym another try. Because I had no previous experience, I carefully chose classes that I believed I could follow. But apparently, the universe has a sense of humor.

    Through a mistake on the timetable printout, I ended up on an Advanced Step class.  Oh my. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life. I was so bad at it that one of the ladies stopped following the class to try teaching me how to do the basic moves. I was mortified, but… I stayed until the end.

    At the end of the class, many of the ladies came to talk to me. I explained how I ended up in that class and was repeatedly apologizing for my lack of coordination. But the truth was that no one cared about my inability to perform the moves.

    I was welcomed into their group and encouraged to come again. They assured me that it would become easier with practice.

    Long story short, I was the one doing all the judging and criticizing. Nobody else. I was feeling inadequate because I believed that making mistakes would make me look bad in front of people. As if I was only allowed to do things that I could do well.

    But hey! You only learn through practice, right? And before you become good at something, chances are that you will suck at first. Or were you born knowing how to ride a bicycle?

    Anyway, that experience changed my life. Even though, it was “traumatic” in some ways (I still blush when I think of it), I learned so much from it.

    Before, I thought that I needed to be perfect at everything that I did. I had this belief that making mistakes was shameful and that people would think that I wasn’t good enough. Consequently, I shied away from trying new things, just in case I, well, “sucked.”

    The truth was that this misbelief was holding me back big time. If I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes, that meant that I was stuck with whatever I’d learned when I was a child. But I haven’t learned everything I wanted just yet, have I?

    No. I wanted to learn more, to become better, to grow. I was curious about lots of things but at the same time afraid to fail. Can you relate?

    I was at a crossroad. Be perfect but still, or imperfect but moving. So I chose growth. I chose to see mistakes as part of the process of learning. I chose to live a life of discovery and excitement rather than perfection and dullness. 

    The experience at the group class showed me that I was my worst critic, not others. And if I could be kinder to myself, I would find much easier to navigate the world.

    When I stopped taking myself too seriously, I started enjoying life more. Taking more risks and getting bigger rewards.

    Because of these learnings, I had the courage to continue my fitness path and become a personal trainer. Even though I was never an athletic kid. And despite my lack of coordination. (Which got better, by the way. With practice.)

    To remind myself what is to be a beginner, I often take classes that push me way out of my comfort zone. I call them my “vulnerability” classes. I step into these classes with no expectations to perform. In fact, I give myself full permission to “suck.” To look lost, to feel goofy, to not understand the instructor’s cues.

    It’s my way of being comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. The more I challenge myself, the stronger I get. This works not only for the body but also for the mind.

    So go ahead. Give yourself permission to “suck” and jump into that Zumba class you’ve always wanted to try. There is nothing shameful in being a beginner. No matter how old you are.

  • Where Our Inner Critic Comes from and How to Tame It

    Where Our Inner Critic Comes from and How to Tame It

    “Your inner critic is simply a part of you that needs more self-love.” ~Amy Leigh Mercee

    We all have that critical and judgmental inner voice that tells us we’re not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, etc.

    It tells us we don’t do anything right. It calls us stupid. It compares us to other people and speaks harshly about ourselves and our bodies. It tells us all the things we did or said “wrong” after communicating or connecting with someone.

    Sometimes it projects criticism outward onto others so we can feel better about ourselves. Other times we try to suppress our inner critic through overachieving, being busy, and accumulating more and more things.

    Sometimes it’s a protective mechanism that’s trying to keep us focused on our self-judgments so we won’t be authentic, because, if we are, we may be rejected and not get the love and acceptance we want.

    But, by doing this, we’re creating even more pain and suffering because we’re disconnecting from and rejecting our own essence.

    Just ignoring the critical voice doesn’t always make it go away. It may initially, but soon enough it will resurface if we haven’t healed/embraced our hurts, traumas, and wounds and shifted our internal patterning, which is where it comes from. 

    Have you ever heard the expression “What we resist persists?” Have you ever told an angry person to “just calm down” or a screaming child to stop crying? Does it work? Not when our energy is in a heightened state.

    Why is someone angry? Why is a child screaming and crying? Because there’s something going on internally that’s creating how they’re behaving. There’s often an unmet need or pain that’s asking for attention.

    Thinking a more positive thought to compensate can sometimes work, but sometimes it just creates an inner debate and mistrust in ourselves because deep inside we don’t believe what we’re saying.

    As children, many of us were taught to suppress those “bad” feelings because if we expressed them, we may have been or were punished. Welcome to the beginning of the critical voice; it’s often a frightened part of us that’s wounded and asking for attention. It wants to be seen, heard, and understood.

    My dad used to get really frustrated with me and constantly told me, “Damn it, Deb, you never do anything right.” Hearing that many times left an imprint in my subconscious. I started living with that interpretation of myself, and the critical voice kept me “in check” with being this way.

    For me, the critical voice was my dad’s voice as well as the deep shame I was feeling for making mistakes and not doing things the “right way.”

    I was holding in suppressed anger, sadness, guilt, unforgiveness, resentment, traumas, and pain that I tried to keep hidden with a smile on my face, but eventually it turned into a shame-based identity.

    My inner voice criticized me whenever I fell short or wasn’t perfect according to society or my family’s expectations.

    Just like when we’re triggered by another person, our critical voice is asking for our attention and guiding us to what needs healing, resolving, forgiving, understanding, compassion, and unconditional love.

    When it comes to the surface, we’re experiencing an automatic regression; it’s a part of us that’s frozen in time. It’s a reflection of our unhealed wounds, which created ideas of not being enough or that something’s wrong with us. Basically, it’s a trance of unworthiness.

    When we’re in a trance of unworthiness, we try to soothe ourselves with addictive behaviors. It’s hard to relax because we think we need to do something to be better and prove ourselves, so not doing anything, resting, isn’t safe.

    When we’re in a trance of unworthiness, it’s hard to be intimate with others. Deep inside we think there’s something wrong with us, so we don’t get close because they may find out and leave. This keeps us from being authentic because we don’t feel okay with who we are.

    Deep down I felt unworthy, unlovable, and undeserving, and the critical voice showed me what I was feeling and believing. I didn’t feel safe in life or in my body. How could I? I was living with so much hurt, pain, and shame inside.

    The critical voice is often stronger for those of us with unhealed wounds and who are hard on ourselves, and it tries to get us with shame and guilt. We’re always looking at ourselves as the “good self” or “bad self,” and if we’re identified with a “bad self,” we’ll act in accordance with that in all areas of our life.

    If we’ve become identified with the critical voice, it’s who we think we are; it just seems normal. And when we start to be more kind and loving, it doesn’t seem right because our identity becomes threatened and our system registers that as danger.

    That happened for me. Eventually I became identified with being a “bad girl” who’s critical and hard on herself, and, even when I started being a little kinder, more compassionate, and more loving, I felt an angst in my body. It wasn’t familiar, and even deeper, it wasn’t okay for me to be this way. My survival was at stake, so I would automatically go back to self-criticizing and judging, without conscious awareness.

    The critical voice didn’t only speak to me harshly; it also told me to do self-abusive things like cutting my wrists and face, starving my body or eating lots of sweets, and exercising for hours like a mad woman to get rid of the food I ate, whether it was a carrot or sweets, because I felt guilty. 

    Even after twenty-three years of going in and out of hospitals and treatment centers, taking medication, and doing traditional therapy, nothing ever changed; the critical voice had a hold on me.

    It was a powerful force, and when I tried to stop it, it would get louder. It thought it was protecting me in a backwards sort of way; if it hurt me first, no one else would be able to do so.

    When people used to say to me, “Debra, you just need to love yourself,” I looked at them like they were crazy. I had no concept of what that even meant because I had no experience of it.

    What I’ve come to see with myself and those I assist in their healing is that the more we keep our deep hurts, traumas, anger, guilt, shame, and pain hidden, the more the critical voice chimes in.

    And, for some, like me, it seems overpowering, so we try to find relief through smoking, drinking, eating, or being busy, and/or we experience severe depression, anxiety, or self-harming.

    When we’re consumed by the critical voice, we’re disconnected from our true essence, and when we’re disconnected from our true essence, the love within, we feel a sense of separation; we don’t feel safe with ourselves or others, and we don’t feel lovable for who we are, as we are.

    This is why many people can change, be happy for a day, but then go back to their critical and/or judgmental ways. Our automatic programming, stemming from our core beliefs, kicks in. It’s just like an addiction, and in a sense it is.

    We can try meditating, deep breathing, and positive thinking, but, unless we address the underlying cause, we’re likely to keep thinking the thoughts our internal patterning dictates. They come from a part of us that doesn’t feel loved or safe.

    So, what do we do when the critical voice comes to visit?

    What do we do when it’s what we’re used to, and it just happens automatically?

    What do we do when we don’t know how to be with ourselves and how we’re feeling in a kind and compassionate way?

    What do we do when we have no concept of what it even means to experience self-love or ease in our bodies?

    First off, please don’t blame yourself for how you’re being. Awareness isn’t about judgment; it’s about kindness, compassion, and love.

    Working with and healing our traumas, where the critical voice was formed, is key in shifting our internal energy patterning. Many people call this inner child healing and/or shadow working. 

    This is a soft and gentle process of moving through the layers of trauma with compassion and love and making peace with our protector parts.

    Through inner child healing, we can shift and transform that “negative” patterning and how the energy is flowing in our body. We can help that part of us that’s frightened, hurting, and maybe feeling separate have a new and true understanding so we can feel loved and safe in our bodies.

    When we pause and take a deep breath when we first hear or sense the critical voice, it allows our nervous systems to reset and helps us come back to the present moment; this allows space for compassion, healing, and investigation.

    Why do I believe that?

    Where did I learn that?

    Is it true?

    How does my higher self see this and me?

    Does the critical voice totally go away? No, it may still chime in; it’s part of being human. But once we realize where it’s coming from and heal/shift that energy pattern, more love can flow through, and we can experience our truth. When we learn how to be our own loving parent and meet the needs our caregivers didn’t meet when we were children, the critical voice often softens.

    Remember, the critical voice is just a scared part of us who really wants attention, love, and a way to feel safe. When we no longer take it personally, when we’re no longer attached to it as our identity, we can offer ourselves compassion, understanding, love, truth, and whatever else we’re needing.

    Life can be messy, and our thoughts can be too. This isn’t about perfection; this is about experiencing a deeper connection with our loving essence.

    There’s a sweet and tender spirit that lives within you. This spirit is your deepest truth. This spirit is the essence of you. You’re naturally lovable, valuable, and worthy. You’re a gift to humanity. So please be kind, gentle, loving, and caring with yourself.

  • If You’re Trapped Under a Pile of “Should” and Tired of Feeling Unhappy

    If You’re Trapped Under a Pile of “Should” and Tired of Feeling Unhappy

    “Stop shoulding on yourself.” ~Albert Ellis

    I was buried under a pile of shoulds for the first thirty-two years of my life. Some of those shoulds were put on me by the adults in my life, some were heaped on because I am a middle child, but most were self-imposed thanks to cultural and peer influence.

    “You should get straight A’s, Jill.”

    “You shouldn’t worry so much, Jill.”

    “You should be married by now, Jill.”

    “You should get your Master’s degree.”

    I could go on forever. The pile was high, and I was slowly suffocating from the crushing weight on my soul.

    What’s so significant about age thirty-two? It’s when I decided to divorce my husband of eighteen months (after a big ole Catholic wedding) and ask my parents for money to pay the attorney’s retainer. This is a gal with a great childhood, MBA, and a darned good catch for a husband.

    From the outside, our life looked charmed and full of potential. We’d just purchased our first home, were trying to start a family (despite suffering two miscarriages) and were building our careers. What no one else saw was the debilitating mountain of consumer debt, manipulative behavior, and my intuition’s activated alarm system… sounding off in reaction to the life I’d built and was, for all intents and purposes, stuck in.

    My intuition was done with the low-level warnings. She was sick and tired of being ignored, so she sounded the big one—an alarm that demanded action instead of lip service. I still tried challenging her; what she had presented me with was asinine.

    “But I can’t divorce him. We just got married. What will everyone think? I’m so embarrassed. I should have made better choices. How did I end up here? I did everything right, right? I should suck it up and stick it out; that’s what good Catholics do. This is kind of what life is, I guess… kinda sad, but it seems to work for most everyone else. Ugh, I wanted this… now I’m, what, changing my mind?”

    The alarm was not going to shut off until I sat long enough with those notions to yield honest answers. That was some tough sh*t to sit in. And even tougher to plod through. But it was better than being buried under it.

    This was my first lesson in “There’s only one way out of this mess.” There’s no express lane, no backroad, no direct flight. This ride resembled the covered wagon kind. Bumpy, hot, dirty, and uncomfortable as hell.

    I relented, listened, and tapped into the hidden reserve of courage I didn’t know existed within me.

    The time had come to quit living according to the “should standard” everyone else around me had subscribed to. The time had come to accept this curated life was not the one that would yield happiness for me. The time had come to turn up the volume on this newfound voice and assert to myself (and everyone else) that I was cutting my losses and trusting my inner compass.  

    The time had come to stop shoulding myself.

    Shoulds were my grocery list, my roadmap for life. How was I going to do this adult thing without my instructions???

    I’d already managed to clear a huge should—hello, divorce—and after that, with every should I challenged, another paradigm crumbled. I began to notice shoulds all over the place. After that, my awareness of intention got keener, and I could sniff out the subtle shoulds like a bloodhound.

    SHOULD: When are you having kids?

    CHOICE:  I do not want to have children. (Remember I miscarried twice with my first husband. I was checking boxes on my adulting grocery list. Honesty yielded clarity.)

    SHOULD: He’s too old for you and he has four boys of his own.

    CHOICE:  He is my person. His sons deserve to see their father in a healthy, happy relationship. I can show them love in a new, different way.

    SHOULD: You’re making great money in your job. Why walk away from your amazing 401(k) and great benefits to risk starting your own business?

    CHOICE:  I want to build a life I’m not desperate to take a vacation from. I want to live, serve others, and know when I’m at the end of my life that I chose it and made the most of it.

    Deleting the word “should” is a big first leap in taking ownership of your life. By altering your vocabulary in a simple way, you naturally become mindful of the words you put in its place. Instead of “I should….” substitute with “I choose to….” Instead of “You should…” try “Have you considered…?”

    Keep track of every time you say or hear “should” in a day. Then spend time with each one and get toddler with yourself. Ask why. Ask it again.

    Who says you have to get married or have kids or work a job you hate that looks good on paper? Who says you have to look a certain way or do certain things with your free time that don’t appeal to you? Why are you restless in your life? What idea keeps popping up, begging for your attention? Are you living your truth? What’s in the way? What pile of shoulds are you buried under?

    I get it. We’ve been programmed by our culture and our family traditions to follow the path, stay on course, climb the ladder to success! It’s the only way to be happy, they say. It’s the only way we’ll be proud of you, they insinuate.

    We’ve been indoctrinated with this thought pattern and belief system, and it seems impossible that we have the power to choose otherwise. We have the opportunity, the autonomy, the choice to rewire our iOS and make it what is ideal for ourselves.

    Overwhelm is natural; the antidote is to start small. Find one piece of low-hanging fruit, take a bite, and taste how sweet it is. For example, say no to an invite if you’d rather spend your time doing something else. Allow yourself to do nothing instead of telling yourself you should be doing something productive. Or let yourself feel whatever you feel instead of telling yourself you should be positive.

    Feel how nourishing it is to choose yourself. Experience satiety in your soul. Release restlessness and replace it with intention guided by your intuition.

    Do that and you’ll never should again. Or maybe you will—who says you should be perfect? At the very least you’ll think twice before letting should control you, and you’ll be a lot happier as a result!

  • I Was a Bulimic Nutritionist, but I’m No Longer Ashamed or Hiding

    I Was a Bulimic Nutritionist, but I’m No Longer Ashamed or Hiding

    “Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.” ~ Brené Brown

    I felt like a hypocrite. I would tell my nutrition clients to eat a salad with vegetables, then I’d go home and scarf down an entire pizza. After guilt and shame set in, I would purge and throw it up.

    I think I became a nutritionist partly so I could better control my relationship with food. If I learned the secrets behind eating I could biohack my way to putting the fork down, losing weight, and finally being happy. This was back when I thought thinness equaled happiness.

    It’s taken me over ten years to recover from an eating disorder. Years filled with perfectionism, shame, and isolation as I untangled that my worth is not tied to my weight. I share my story in hopes that it sparks a deeper dive into your own relationship with food.

    Growing up I was an over-achieving, people-pleasing perfectionist. Which by itself may have been fine but, paired with a sexual trauma I experienced in early University, it was the perfect storm for developing an eating disorder.

    I used food as a coping mechanism for the trauma I’d endured. It was a way to dissociate from having to feel the shame of being assaulted. I assumed it was my fault this terrible thing happened, and while eating as much and as fast as possible, I could numb out from strong emotions.

    For a short period of time, I was worry-free.

    But then inevitably came the guilt and shame—ironic, since I was trying to numb the shame of my assault with food.

    Why did I have to eat so much? Now I’ll gain weight, and if I gain weight no one will like me. Why don’t I have the discipline to control my food? To control myself? I am truly worthless.

    Somehow my brain had built the association between looking a certain way and being accepted, worthy, and even safe. Having a sense of control over what I ate and how I looked made me feel powerful in a way. And maybe subconsciously it gave me a sense that I could also control what happened to me.

    I knew I needed help in University when after purging for the third time one day I had a sharp pain in my chest. Bent over the toilet, clutching my heart, I realized things had gotten out of control.

    Luckily, before I lost my nerve, I set up an appointment with a counselor. And there began my long and twisty road to recovery from bulimia. A word I would rarely utter in the coming years, instead referring to it as my “food issues,” downplaying the severity of my illness. Bulimia was something only celebrities developed, not something a straight-A student like me could encounter.

    Wow, was I ever wrong! Along this journey I’ve met many others like me, and I discovered we had more similarities than differences. We put immense pressure on ourselves to be perfect, had an insane need to control everything, and we all felt deep shame about our behavior. Many others I met had also experienced trauma and used food to soothe.

    In 2008, when I first sought treatment, I worked in secret on my recovery, only talking with a counselor and a doctor. I needed weekly blood tests to ensure my electrolytes were balanced. Turns out purging is very hard on the body, something my lack of tooth enamel will attest to.

    It was years until I told friends and family, and even now many will be shocked reading this article. It was easy to hide from roommates, as I would binge alone in my room and come up with creative reasons to use the bathroom when needed. Sometimes even purging into bags in my room then disposing of it later.

    In 2013, after a few weeks of some particularly painful binging sessions, a doctor told me I had lesions in my throat. I could barely swallow, having to sip smoothies through a straw. And my first thought was:

    Yay, now I’ll definitely lose weight.

    Thankfully, it was followed by a second thought.

    This is dumb. I’m putting my health at serious risk here… to be thin? That makes no sense.

    That’s when I knew I needed to kick my recovery into high gear. I started out-patient treatment in Toronto and attended support groups with others like me. I learned to sort through complicated emotions and release my need for everything to be perfect. In short, I was on a great track.

    But here’s the thing no one tells you about recovery—it’s not linear. I was settling into my career as a nutritionist, my binging episodes reduced, then someone would make an off-hand comment…

    Wow, you cleaned your plate, you must’ve been hungry!

    And boom, I would spiral out and feel compelled to rid myself of the extra calories. Secretly hunched over the toilet once again, knowing I had failed.

    I didn’t think people would trust my nutritional advice if I gained weight. I was also a yoga instructor at this point and convinced students wouldn’t return to my classes if I didn’t have a lean svelte yoga body.

    I continued the ups and downs of recovery for years. Having to choose recovery every single day was exhausting. Over time, the periods between binges got longer.

    For me, there was no silver bullet cure. It was a combination of using mindfulness to sit with difficult emotions and getting a whole lot of therapy to address the trauma. I never thought I’d get to this place, but eventually I learned to see myself as a worthy person—no matter my past, no matter my size.

    I used to think having an eating disorder was a shameful secret. Now I see that struggle as the source of my strength. It takes an incredible amount of courage to address trauma, and working tirelessly on recovery has taught me how to bounce back over and over again.

    I went through the ringer for many years, having to hide many of my behaviors, and thinking my weight was the most interesting part of me. I share my experience as part of the healing process, to take away the shame that hides in the shadows. I hope it encourages you to examine your relationship with food and your body—and how you might also be using food or another substance to avoid dealing with your own traumas.

    We tend to judge what we’re eating and think of food as something to be controlled, but eating disorders aren’t just about food. They’re a reflection of how we judge ourselves and our need to regain control when we feel we’ve had none.

    If we can come out of the shadows and face our pain and shame, we can start to heal, but it might not happen overnight. It might be two steps forward and one step back, sometimes one step forward and two steps back—and that’s okay. People who struggle with eating disorders are often perfectionists, but we need to accept that we can’t be perfect at healing. It’s a process, and as long as we stick with it, we will see progress over time.

    Now that I’ve worked through the pain of my past, I can finally see that food is something to be enjoyed and celebrated, and I too deserve celebrating, no matter my size. I don’t need to be perfect to be worthy. And neither do you.

  • A Life-Changing Insight: You Are Not a Problem to Be Fixed

    A Life-Changing Insight: You Are Not a Problem to Be Fixed

    “I decided that the single most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.” ~Anne Lamott

    I remember one particular clear, cold winter morning as I returned home from a walk. I suddenly realized that I had missed the whole experience.

    The blue, clear sky.

    The lake opening up before me.

    The whisper of the trees that I love so much.

    I was there in body but not embodied. I was totally, completely wrapped up in the thoughts running rampant in my mind. The worries about others, work, the future; about everything I thought I should be doing better and wanted to change about myself… it was exhausting.

    Alive, but not present to my life. Breathing, but my life force was suffocated.

    This was not new. In fact, up until that point I had mostly approached life as something to figure out, tackle, and wrestle to the ground. This included my body, my career, and the people around me. 

    My tentacles of control, far-reaching in pursuit of a better place, said loudly, “What is here now is not acceptable. You are not acceptable.”

    “You can improve. You can figure it out. You can always make it better.”

    But this time, rather than indulging in the content of this particular struggle, I observed the process I was in and realized profoundly that even though the issues of the day changed regularly, the experience of struggle never did.

    And I would continue struggling until I stopped resisting and judging everything and started accepting myself and my life.

    This wasn’t the first time I’d had thoughts like these, but this time there was no “but I still need to change this…” or “I can accept everything except for this thing.” I knew it was 100% or nothing.

    I knew then I only had two choices:

    I could continue to resist reality, which now seemed impossible and exhausting (because it was). Or I could accept myself and the moment and make the best of it.

    “What if there is actually nothing to struggle against? What if I let go of the tug-of-war that I called my life?”

    The choice was before me. The one that comes to people when they have suffered enough and are tired: to put down the arms.

    This doesn’t have to mean accepting unhealthy relationships or situations. It just means we stop living in a constant state of needing things to change in order to accept ourselves and our lives. It means we learn to let things be—and even harder, to let ourselves be.

    Whenever I have a conversation with people who are struggling, I’ve recognized that they have this innate feeling of I should be doing better than this. Or, I should not be feeling like this.

    It might seem obvious that “shoulds” keep us in a contracted position of never-being-enough.

    But I have found that letting them go is not as simple as a quick change of thought.

    It seems like denying ourselves has become the generally accepted and encouraged modus operandi of our culture.

    Denying our feelings.

    Minimizing our pain.

    Hating our body parts.

    This leads to disconnection from the life that is here, the life that is us.

    Self-loathing has become the biggest dis-ease of our time.

    When we are disconnected from who we are in this moment, there is a tension between right here and the idealized self/state.

    This disconnection or gap is a rupture in our life force that presents itself as a physical contraction, a shortness of breath, an inner critic that lashes out harshly and creates a war within. This war contributes to pain, illness, and I’d guess 80% of visits to a medical doctor.

    Even some of the best self-help books promote this gap…

    Don’t think those thoughts.

    Don’t feel those negative feelings.

    Don’t just sit there—you should be doing something to improve yourself and your life

    All of the statements above might seem like wise advice. But we’ve missed the biggest step of all—mending the gap between who we are and who we think we should be so that we don’t feel so disconnected from ourselves.

    Disconnection is the shame that tells you that you’ve got it wrong, that it is not okay to feel or think the way you do in this moment. That you have to beat yourself up so you can improve, be more than you are now, be better.

    That you are a problem to fix.  

    This is the catch-22 of self-help when taken too much like boot camp. Self-help can be helpful, but it can create an antagonistic relationship with our true selves if it doesn’t include a full acceptance of who we are in this moment.

    The belief of “not-enoughness” is at the root of so much physical and emotional pain, and I, for one, have had enough of it.

    What if we allowed ourselves to be, or do, in the knowing that we are okay, that we are doing the best we can, given what we know at this point in time?

    Do you feel the fear-gremlins coming out that tell you that you will lie down on the couch and never get up again? Or perhaps you will never amount to anything or be good enough?

    This is the biggest secret of all: It’s all a lie to keep the consumer culture alive. 

    People who are scared and in scarcity need to consume something outside of themselves to gain fulfillment. But it never really comes because there’s always something new to change or attain.

    It can be so difficult for us humans to accept not only ourselves, but that everything just might be okay in this moment.

    That this feeling is just right. Even if it hurts.

    It’s okay to be right here, right now. Pain is here, and I don’t have to fight it.

    Our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship we will ever have.

    Because we are truly sacred, no matter how we feel.

    Maybe the only question to ask today is not “What do I need to do to change?” but “How can I love myself, just as I am?”

    Maybe the act of loving ourselves is as simple as taking a breath to regulate our nervous system and come back to the present moment.

    Maybe healing involves not so much changing ourselves but allowing ourselves to be who we are.

    Which is exactly what I did that day when I realized I had missed my whole walk because I was caught up in my mind, worrying about everything I wanted to change. I shifted my focus from the thoughts I was thinking to the feelings in my body. I realized that I was enough in this step, in this breath, and that’s all there is.

    I promise the results of moving into acceptance will feel far better than the shame, disconnection, and cruelty that come from the constant pursuit of self-improvement.

    The truth is…

    You are not a problem to fix.

    You are a human to be held.

    To be held in your own arms and loved into wholeness.

    Take care of your human.

  • Where Our Strength Comes from and What It Means to Be Strong

    Where Our Strength Comes from and What It Means to Be Strong

    “Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you thought you couldn’t.” ~Rikki Rogers

    A friend recently asked me: Andi, where does your strength come from?

    It took me a while before I had a good enough answer for her. I sat contemplating the many roads I’ve traveled, through my own transformational journey and the inspirational journeys of all my clients who demonstrate incredible strength for me.

    I moved to a different country, alone, at eighteen years old and have changed careers, battled a complex pain diagnosis with my child, and lost loved ones. I am now living through a global pandemic, like all of us, and most recently, I am recovering from a traumatic, unexpected surgery. Life has many surprises for us, indeed.

    So where does strength really come from?

    I wish I knew the precise answer to this question so that I could share the secret sauce with you right now, and you could have full access to all the strength you’ll ever need to achieve whatever it is that you really want. (Even the deeply challenging stuff and the tremendously scary stuff. All of it.)

    I do know this:

    Strength is a personal measurement for a truly unique, subjective experience. It’s entirely up to you to decide what strong means for you.

    And I also know this…

    Strength comes from doing hard things. It comes from showing up despite the pain or fear and going through the struggle, the endurance, and then building on that, to keep going forward and upward.

    Strength comes from taking the time to notice and acknowledge what you have managed to do and accomplish until now. So much of the time we go through things without realizing what massive effort something took, and we minimize the entire experience because we only focus on the end result and not the process.

    Strength comes from paying close attention to the small but significant steps and wins and incremental gains along the way. Strength comes from tracking progress and celebrating it one tiny bit at a time.

    Strength comes from within—from moments of activating your highest faith and belief. Knowing why you do what you do, even when it’s not easy.

    Strength comes from aligning with your core values and living with integrity even when no one is watching, and you aren’t in the mood. When we connect to what truly matters to us, we are stronger. When we believe there is a bigger plan and are hopeful about an outcome, we feel stronger. Even if we don’t know why.

    Strength comes from without—by surrounding ourselves with people who lift us up and see our worth, even when we sometimes forget. It comes from choosing to envelop yourself with kindness, inspiration, motivation, and gratitude. It comes from selecting role models and learning from them. It comes from seeing ourselves through others’ eyes—especially those who see our greatness and light when all we see is our flaws, weaknesses, and shortcomings.

    Strength comes from grabbing lessons and blessings, often dressed up as awful mistakes and painful failures.

    Strength comes from collecting moments you are genuinely proud of and taking the time to truly recognize these events for what they are and what they enabled you to accomplish. Don’t overlook them. You get to use these strengths in countless ways and in other areas of your life as much as you want to.

    Strength comes from knowing yourself. As you begin to discover and unmask more of you, you get to make choices that honor more of you, and you get to live your purpose and be more of who you really are. When we know better, we do better.

    The strongest people I know have had insurmountable trials. They know what to say yes to and how to say no. They know how to be proud of themselves with humility and honesty. They know how to pick their circles wisely and accept help, compliments, and advice.

    The strongest people I know cry a lot and feel everything.

    The strongest people I know are the kindest.

    The strongest people I know have wells of inner resources that are invisible to the naked eye.

    The strongest people I know can say sorry and forgive others.

    The strongest people I know can forgive themselves.

    The strongest people I know fall down hard, and slowly, with every ounce of courage, bravery, and might, find a way to get back up again, battered, bruised, and aching.

    The strongest people I know have incredible hearts that expand wider with each hurdle.

    The strongest people I know have endured so much and yet still find their smile to light up the world for others.

    The strongest people I know teach me every single day how to try and be just a little bit stronger myself.

  • How I Overcame the Stress of Perfectionism by Learning to Play Again

    How I Overcame the Stress of Perfectionism by Learning to Play Again

    “What, then, is the right way of living? Life must be lived as play…” ~Plato

    I am a recovering perfectionist, and learning to play again saved me.

    Like many children, I remember playing a lot when I was younger and being filled with a sense of openness, curiosity, and joy toward life.

    I was fortunate to grow up in Oregon with a large extended family with a lot of cousins with whom I got to play regularly. We spent hours, playing hide-and-seek, climbing trees, drawing, and building forts.

    I also attended a wonderful public school that encouraged play. We had regular recess, and had all sorts of fun equipment like stilts, unicycles, monkey bars, and roller skates to play with. In class, our teachers did a lot of imaginative and artistic activities with us that connected academics with a sense of playfulness.

    I viewed every day as an exciting opportunity and remember thinking, “You just never know what is going to happen.” My natural state was to be present with myself, enjoying the process of play

    Unfortunately, my attitude began shifting from playfulness to perfectionism early on. Instead of being present and enjoying process, I started focusing on performance (mainly impressing people) and product (doing everything right). The more I did this, the less open, curious, and joyful I was.

    Instead, I grew anxious, critical, and discouraged.

    I first remember developing perfectionist tendencies when I was in elementary school and taking piano lessons. For some reason, I got the idea that I had to perform songs perfectly, or else I was a failure.

    Eventually I became so anxious, I would freeze up while playing in recitals. I started hating piano, which I once had loved, and eventually quit.

    My perfectionism spread into other areas of my life, too. In school, I pushed myself to get straight A’s, and if I earned anything less, I felt like a failure. I often missed out on the joy of learning because I was so worried about getting things right.

    My perfectionism also negatively impacted my relationship with myself. I believed I had to look perfect all the time. As a result, I often hated the way I looked, rather than learning to appreciate my own unique appearance and beauty. I also remembering turning play into exercise at this time of my life and using it to pursue the “perfect” body.

    Movement, which I loved when I was a child, began to feel exhausting and punishing.

    Perfectionism also hurt my relationships with other people. I felt like I had to be smooth and put together and that I always had to put everyone else’s needs above my own. Not surprisingly, I often felt unconfident, anxious, and exhausted around other people.

    At this time in my life, I believed that if I tried and worked hard enough, I could do everything right, look perfect, and make everyone happy.

    My perfectionism increased in young adulthood until eventually it became unsustainable. In my early thirties, I became the principal of a small, private middle school where I had taught for eight years. I loved the school and was devoted to it.

    In many ways, I was the ideal person to do the job. But I was also young and inexperienced, and I made some big mistakes early on. I also made some decisions that were good and reasonable decisions that, for various reasons, angered a lot of people.

    To complicate matters, the year I became middle school principal, the school underwent a massive change in our school’s overall leadership, and we suffered a tragic death in the community. I worked as hard as I could to help my school through this difficult time, but things felt apart.

    My school, which had largely been a happy and joyful place, suddenly became filled with fighting, suspicion, and stress. These events were largely beyond my control and were not the fault of any one person, but I blamed myself. For someone who had believed her whole life that if she worked hard enough, she could avoid making mistakes and could make people happy, my job stress felt devastating.

    I felt like my life was spinning out of control and that all the rules that once worked no longer applied. I crashed emotionally, and I remember telling my husband at this time, “I will never be happy again.”

    That was one of the darkest times of my life.

    It took me several years to find happiness again. One of the major things that helped me to do so was recovering a sense of playfulness.

    After my emotional crash, I decided I was done with perfectionism. I understood clearly that focusing so much on avoiding mistakes and pleasing-people was the source of much of my suffering. 

    I realized I needed a different way to approach life.

    About this time, my friend Amy and I started taking fencing lessons together. I was quite bad at it, but it didn’t matter. Because I had given up perfectionism, I didn’t care anymore about impressing people at fencing class or performing perfect fencing moves.

    Instead, I cared about being present with myself in the process and staying open and curious, and focusing on joy.

    I had a blast. I felt free and alive, and something flickered to life inside me that had felt dormant for many years. I felt playful again. And I realized that I had been missing playfulness for many years, and that it was part of what had caused me to become so perfectionistic.

    Playfulness is the attitude we take toward life when we focus on presence and process with attitudes of openness, curiosity, and joy. Perfectionism, on the other hand, makes us focus on performance and product and encourages anxiety, criticalness, and discouragement.

    Fencing helped me rediscover play and leave perfectionism behind.

    I fully embraced my newfound playful attitude. It touched every area of my life, and I hungered for new adventures. I began reconnecting with dreams I had put on hold for a while. Eventually I decided to leave my job as a middle school principal and return to graduate school to earn my PhD in philosophy, a goal I’d had since seventh grade.

    Earning a PhD in philosophy may not seem like a very playful thing to do, but it was for me. For six years, I immersed myself in the ideas of great thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Rousseau, Herbert Marcuse, and Paulo Freire.

    It felt like I was playing on a big, philosophical playground. But I also faced some significant challenges.

    I was thirty-seven when I returned to grad school and was a good ten to fifteen years older than most of my colleagues. Most of them had a B.A. and even an M.A. in philosophy, while I had only taken one philosophy course in college. I had a lot of catching up to do, and I faced some major challenges.

    One of the biggest challenges I faced early on was our program’s comprehensive exams. We had two major exams over thousands of pages of some of the hardest philosophical works ever written. The exams were so difficult that at one point, they had over a fifty percent fail rate. If students didn’t pass them by the third time, the graduate school kicked them out of the program.

    I was determined to pass these comps and spent all my Christmas and summer breaks studying for them for the first several years of graduate school. But I still failed both exams the first time I took them, and I failed my second exam twice.

    It isn’t surprising I failed them, given the high fail rate for the exams and the fact that I was still learning philosophy. But it was painful. I had worked so hard, and I was afraid of getting kicked out of the program.

    I was tempted to revert to my old perfectionist habits because they had once given me a sense of control. But I knew that would lead me down a dead-end road. So, I began applying all the lessons I had learned about playfulness to the comprehensive exams.  

    Rather than focusing on performance and the product, I focused on presence and process. I also focused on practicing habits of openness, curiosity, and joy. Mentally, I compared the comps to shooting an arrow into the bull’s eye of a target. Every test, even if I failed it, was a chance to check my progress, readjust, and get closer to the bull’s eye.

    This turned the comprehensive exams into a game, and it lessened the pain of failing them. It helped me accept failure as a normal part of the process and to congratulate myself every time I made progress, no matter how small it was. This attitude also helped me focus on proactive, constructive steps I could take to do better, like meeting with faculty members or getting tutoring in areas I found especially challenging. (Aristotle’s metaphysics, anyone?)

    I also taught myself to juggle during this time. Juggling not only relieved stress, it was also a playful bodily reminder to me that progress takes time. Nobody juggles perfectly the first time they try. Juggling takes time and patience, and the more we focus on openness, curiosity, and the joy of juggling, the more juggling practice feels like a fun game. 

    I began thinking of passing my comps like juggling, and it helped me be more patient with the process. I eventually mastered the material and passed both my comps.

    Studying for the comps taught me to bring playfulness into all my work in graduate school.

    Whenever I felt stressed out in my program, I reminded myself that perfectionism was a dead-end road, and that playfulness was a much better approach. Doing this helped me relax, be kind to myself, accept failures as part of the learning process, and to take small consistent steps to improve.

    This playful attitude kept me sane and helped me make it to the finish line.

    Playfulness was so helpful for me in graduate school that I have tried to adopt this spirit of playfulness in all areas of my life, including the college classrooms in which I teach. I have noticed that whenever I help students switch from perfectionism to playfulness, they immediately relax, are kinder to themselves, and increase their ability to ask for help.

    I am dedicated now to practicing playfulness every day of my life and to help others do the same. Playfulness isn’t something we must leave behind in childhood. It is an attitude we can bring with us our whole life. When we do so, life becomes an adventure, even during difficult times, and there is always something more to learn, explore, and savor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A heroic exit was not to be my path.

    Do you know what I am talking about?

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

    Well, let me tell you:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    When you feel afraid to move forward, move anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ME!!

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

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

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

    I was hurting. Why didn’t anyone notice?

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

    I wanted to be anything other than what I was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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