Tiny Buddha

Tag: gift

  • Why Accepting Your Imperfections Is a Gift to the World

    Why Accepting Your Imperfections Is a Gift to the World

    Holding the Earth

    “The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” ~Anna Quindlen

    Being yourself seems like it would be an easy thing, right? Just be! But when you’re someone who has lived their life seeking the approval of others constantly, it’s not such an easy thing.

    You have to attempt to move past years of trying to appear this way, wondering if people will judge you if do that, or doing your best not to cause waves and avoid conflict.

    When you don’t fully understand who your “self” is, it’s pretty much impossible to actually be that person. 

    I didn’t realize just how deep my desire to please others went until very recently, after a couple of very deep soul searching years.

    I saw how automatic it had become for me to try to be what everyone else wanted me to be. Even when I “liked” a page on Facebook, I thought twice about it and wondered if people would judge me for it.

    I wanted to appear a certain way to people. I wanted to appear like I had it all together, that I was “perfect.” Most importantly, though, I didn’t want to appear disabled.

    If I liked all of the “right” things, if I was cool, if I was funny, if I was pretty, and wore the most stylish clothes or had my makeup done just right, then maybe people would notice all of that instead of my muscular dystrophy and the limp that came with it.

    Maybe they wouldn’t notice the difficulty I had going up stairs. If I fell, maybe they wouldn’t judge me because they would see I was awesome in so many other ways.

    Trying to be everything to everyone is one of the most exhausting things. It feels like that toy that a lot of us used to play with when you try to fit the shaped blocks into the correct corresponding hole.

    I was the triangle constantly trying to fit in the square hole. 

    I honestly don’t know how I even functioned sometimes in my twenty-plus years on earth with the weight of that on my shoulders. Worrying so much about what people thought or hoping they liked me and having no real sense of my own self.

    From friends to coworkers, to dates or boyfriends, I was always trying to please everyone else but never thought to try please myself first or embrace who I really was.

    It never even occurred to me that it was okay if some people didn’t like me, or if I didn’t have all the right clothes or that I wasn’t physically able to do all the same things that my peers could.

    I didn’t realize that it didn’t make me any less worthy or valuable of a person if someone didn’t like me or if I wasn’t “perfect.”

    That if a guy wasn’t interested or someone didn’t want to be my friend, that it didn’t mean I was ugly or worthless or needed to fix something about myself.

    I didn’t realize that trying to fit myself into everyone else’s perceptions and society’s perception of “normal” was denying everyone and the world of all my gifts and who I really was. That my disability made me special and gave me a platform to try and help others all over the world with disabilities too.

    That it gave me such a deep capacity for love and empathy that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

    I couldn’t see that people don’t love each other because they’re perfect. They love each other for everything, including the flaws. 

    In fact, I think we love each other in large part because of our flaws. Because we are all human. Because we make mistakes. 

    Our imperfections and our differences are what set us apart and make us unique. When have you ever heard someone say, “I really like that Jackie. She’s just so perfect!”?

    Not caring what other people think and just being is something we all struggle with in one way or another.

    Something I’ve found to be very helpful for connecting with myself and just being is a kind of a brief meditation. Whether I’m driving, at work, on vacation, or just sitting at home, I try to take a few moments each day where I just sit, stop what I’m doing, take a deep breath in, and silence my mind.

    I focus on the blood flowing through my veins or the way my breath feels when I exhale. I just let myself sit there in silence for a few minutes and just enjoy being in my skin, my body, and my spirit. As small as it may seem, it really helps to calm me and get me refocused on myself.

    Learning to embrace yourself and shut out the need to people please or be what everyone else might want us to be is hard and it’s not something that can be an overnight change.

    But learning to accept all of the parts of yourself, including the ones you may not like, is not only the greatest gift you can give to yourself, it’s the greatest gift you can give to the world around you too.

    When you stop caring so much about what everyone else thinks of you and start becoming you, it’s then that you can truly offer the world the most.

    You offer it you in all of your wonderful and unique glory!

    Photo by Jason Rogers

  • 3 Often Overlooked Causes of Anxiety (And What to Do About Them)

    3 Often Overlooked Causes of Anxiety (And What to Do About Them)

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

    An anxious mind is a hard burden to bear. In fact, if you suffer from an anxious mind it can truly feel like a curse.

    The racing thoughts. The daily tirade of “what ifs.” The relentless voice of your inner critic constantly nagging you and deriding your every move.

    And the worst part is that the mental chatter feels uncontrollable. Truly, there were times when I struggled in vain to quiet my mind.

    It was like there was some hub or center in my brain that had gone haywire, flipped into overdrive, and couldn’t be switched off.

    I used to despair a lot over my unquiet mind. Even the great spiritual masters struggled to achieve mastery over their minds, so how could I?

    I read a lot about mindfulness and tried some mental mastery techniques like the Sedona Method and Emotional Freedom Technique. I meditated. These techniques helped, but the results would only last for a short time; the underlying issues driving my anxiety persisted and whatever peace I got would be short-lived.

    I eventually realized that if I was to quiet my chatterbox mind I would have to stop trying to control my mind and focus instead on letting my anxiety teach me what it wanted to teach me.

    I started keeping a dream journal (I had many of the typical anxiety dreams). I also started to get real with myself, sitting still with my anxious thoughts whenever they occurred and letting myself be receptive to what they were trying to show me.

    I went from trying to control and resist my anxious thoughts to the deeper place of understanding their underlying message and inherent wisdom. Here’s what I discovered.

    An anxious mind can be caused by:

    1. Unresolved relationship issues

    It turns out an anxious mind can be caused by unresolved issues in our interpersonal relationships. The anger, jealousy, regret, or unspoken feelings (positive or negative) that we harbor toward people lives on in our subconscious minds, undermining our inner peace. This is true even when we are not around those people or consciously focusing on them.

    For me, I had spent many years silently harboring anger toward my mother and father for perceived failures as parents. I was also holding on to an infatuation with a former flame that I hadn’t seen in years, and was still mentally “tuned into” negative relationship dynamics from as far back as my high school years.

    As I began to face up to these unresolved relational issues, releasing people from my heart’s tribunal, my anxiety decreased to a surprising extent. I literally felt like I could breathe easier.

    2. Unexpressed gifts or desires

    Anxious thoughts can be the result of unexpressed gifts, especially if the thoughts center around your career or how you spend your free time. In this way, anxiety is a manifestation of inner guidance.

    There is some gift or higher aspect of who you are that wants and needs to be expressed, but that has been denied expression because of fear.

    Psychologists have figured out that human beings have an inherent drive for self-actualization—to fulfill our individual potential. When there are obstructions to self-actualization, anxiety takes root.

    In ancient times, prophets often spoke of the urge to prophesy as being like a “fire shut up in their bones.”

    Anxiety is like this―a bottled-up feeling of having something inside of you that you long to express. The gift, desire, or calling within that longs for expression is bigger than you; it is tied up with your purpose for existing, which is why it feels so painful when it is suppressed.

    For me, my anxiety was telling me that I had a gift for using words and expressing myself through writing that I wasn’t cultivating enough. I also had leadership abilities and a yearning for spiritual development that I was ignoring.

    It could be latent artistic gifts, the secret desire to adopt a child, or a pull toward motivational speaking. Whatever it is, learning to express it will work wonders for your anxiety.

    3. Guilt

    Guilt is the emotional and cognitive state we experience when we feel we have done something wrong. We may have violated our own moral code or expectations, or those of others, or we may simply think that we have done something wrong even when we haven’t.

    Whatever the case, we feel judged (or we judge ourselves harshly and unforgivingly) for our actions, thoughts, or simply for being who we are.

    And because it’s so hard to express guilt (it’s not like anger where you can punch some pillows), guilt is often an internalized emotion, commonly referred to as a “bothered conscience.” Guilt sinks deep into our subconscious and manifests as anxious thoughts―it’s like our inner critic on heroin.

    At one time I harbored a lot of guilt over old friendships I had broken off. I had broken off those friendships because they were limiting my growth yet I still felt like I had violated my own standards of what it meant to be a good friend, hence the guilt.

    I walked around for years with a lot of anxiety because my guilt-tripped inner critic was always telling me that I hadn’t been a good friend in the past and never would be.

    I would feel guilty if I was anything less than the perfect, always-available, always-upbeat friend, and the fear that I wasn’t a good friend made me anxious about forming new friendships. I was always worried that I was doomed to mess up my friendships.

    It was only by examining my guilt more closely that I came to understand that my standards of being a good friend were irrational; after all, people change, it’s okay to move on, and you don’t have to be a perfect person to be a good friend.

    So our guilt is often irrational or out of proportion with what’s really at stake. And even if you feel your guilt is justified, remember everyone makes mistakes.

    You deserve self-compassion. So embrace it and put your anxious mind at ease!

  • The Art of Receiving

    The Art of Receiving

    “Appreciation is an excellent thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us, as well.” ~Voltaire

    Halloween is the coming attractions preview of the holidays. Those little witches, ghosts, and goblins will soon morph into angels, wise men, and reindeer, and the candy you gave in October will give way to more expensive gift-giving in December.

    While the old proverb tells us it is better to give than receive, countless people bemoan the absence of grateful receivers. Thank you letters seem to be a relic of the past and expressions of gratitude are often drowned out in a sea of complaints about what is wrong with the world.

    When you get back nothing or little in response to what you give, it’s natural to feel mystified or even resentful. Interestingly, our culture spends a lot of time on the value of giving, while little attention is paid to receiving. Yet, for every giver there is a receiver. And when something is not received well—whether it is candy, a gift, or a compliment—we notice!

    With a little time left before the holiday season arrives, it’s not too late to strengthen your ability to receive and help your children brush up on their receiving skills. Here are three simple steps that will help you receive as well as you give: (more…)

  • 50 Ways to Show You Care Without Spending a Dime

    50 Ways to Show You Care Without Spending a Dime

    “Friendship isn’t a big thing. It’s a million little things.” ~Unknown

    This hasn’t been an extravagant holiday season for me. Like everyone and their mother, I lost a lot of income last year and I just don’t have the means to give expensive presents.

    Yet I feel I’ve received a lot of gifts this year. Most notably, I’ve realized how many of the people in my life mean more to me than any of the things I’m trying to accomplish.

    The friends and family members whose love and support far eclipse the achievement of any goals I set. The people who are my home, whether I can afford a pricey apartment or not.

    I’ve come up with fifty ways to show them how much I care within my current means.

    If you’re looking for a few meaningful gifts that don’t require a debit card, you may find these creative ideas helpful this season: (more…)