Tiny Buddha

Tag: Happiness

  • Daylight: Fun Music Video To Start the Morning with a Smile

    Daylight: Fun Music Video To Start the Morning with a Smile

    I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched this video. It’s impossible to watch this and not smile!

  • 5 Tiny Steps to Move Away from Unnecessary Busyness

    5 Tiny Steps to Move Away from Unnecessary Busyness

     

    “It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” ~Henry David Thoreau 

    I’m sitting on my porch watching the line of ants trail up the wall until the black line above me starts to fade into the roof. I wonder what they think about.

    Do they question the busyness of their tiny lives? Are they determined to get somewhere, or do they just focus on each tiny step forward? Do they fear the long road ahead?

    I remembered learning from my mother—when my sister and I were homeschooled in third grade—about ants’ inability to see with their eyes. I remember my mother telling me that ants see through their sense of smell.

    In order to better learn how they saw, my mother placed small pieces of homemade brownies around the house and covered our eyes with blindfolds. Hungry and determined, my sister and I scrambled around the house on all fours, sniffing for our hidden treasure.

    While I am still grateful for this lesson my mother taught me about ants, I am starting to recognize a more important lesson that has taken a bit longer to learn.

    In high school I spent countless hours with my head down studying and using my hands for various volunteer organizations. In college I worked tirelessly from class to work to home.

    Little did I know I was just like the ants marching toward some destination, but I was blind as to where I was going and why.

    It wasn’t until I reached complete burnout in my young professional career that I really started taking a look at the time I spent staying busy and getting things done. I had to take a step back and look at what I was doing with my time.

    In my younger years I could push through mild illnesses to finish term papers and tests, so I thought this would be the case with my career.

    But long hours of keeping busy at work and extracurricular activities turned into days, weeks, months, and years until my body forced me to stop.

    I suffered a neck injury that kept me from my job. In search of the answer as to how I injured my neck, I went from doctor to doctor and they told me the injury was merely overwork, not enough rest, and too much stress. The doctors simply directed me to stop being so busy, something that is much easier said than done.

    Since the injury kept me from work, chores, exercise, and most of my demanding activities, I faced the startling realization that I had to slow down. I had to start questioning why I was keeping myself so busy.

    I discovered that if I stayed busy I could ignore the pain I felt of not being good enough. I recognized that if I continued to do things, I thought I would like myself more. I recognized that I didn’t love myself for just being me.

    That injury saved my life. It made me question why I was busy.

    I still have to come back to Thoreau’s question: What am I busy about? What are we all busy about?

    First, ask: What am I doing in the day that does not serve me? Do I need to spend three hours every weekend cleaning the house or can my family divide, conquer, and clean in only one hour?

    Do I need to spend two hours each day updating my social media status or can I update my profile once a week? What am I willing to sacrifice for internal sanity and calm?

    Second, ask: Why do I do all that I do? You might be shocked to see that you cling to a number of superfluous tasks for money, pride, power, or recognition.

    Third, ask: What would happen if I stopped doing this? Clearly, if you abruptly quit your job you might face immense challenges. Maybe start by identifying something small to erase from your over-packed day.

    Be as specific as writing down each hour in your day to see where you spend most of your time and what you can remove from your day. You might surprise yourself when you see how much television you watch or how much time you spend driving around to do errands.

    Tiny Steps to Move away from Unnecessary Busyness

    1. Challenge yourself to take a few minutes to stretch your legs or to close your eyes and concentrate on slowing down your breathing.

    Clearing your head and slowing down your heart rate will allow for clearer thinking, planning, and decision-making.

    2. Take a step back and look at your life from another perspective, as if you were a friend or a colleague looking at it.

    It can help you let go of emotional attachments and see why you are hanging onto pointless tasks and activities that once appeared significant.

    3. Pay attention to your dreams.

    Besides my strong advice to take a nap everyday (something we should continue to do no matter how old we are) our dreams can be indicators of many things in our lives if we slow down to recognize what they are telling us.

    4. Unplug.

    Limiting use of computers and cell phones can open up many more hours of free time, creativity, and relaxation.

    5. Allow yourself to feel and be mindful.

    Do you feel tension in your shoulders? Are you clenching your jaw?

    When we are busy, we forget to feel what’s going on with our own bodies. Let us not be the ants, blind to our own lives, oblivious to what’s in front of us.

    Let us continue to question why we “do.” There are some things that are important to “do” in life, but there are also times when it’s important to just “be.”

    It is up to us to take more breaks in our busy days and really ask, why am I doing this? Does it matter?

    Tonight I decided to stop working a bit early. I did not respond to all the emails in my inbox. Instead, I asked myself what I want to do tonight and why.

    I spent my evening reliving my childhood and made a fresh batch of brownies. I savored each bite knowing there is really nothing left for me to do but sit back and watch the trail of ants.

  • A 6-Step Daily Ritual to Create the Future and Enjoy the Present

    A 6-Step Daily Ritual to Create the Future and Enjoy the Present

    Happy

    “What you do today is important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.” ~Unknown

    I have always loved to-do lists. It gives me joy to plan my day in advance. Lists give me an overview, focus, and I simply love crossing things off.

    Things changed when I became self-employed. My to-do list behavior turned from a supportive tool into an instrument of self-imposed pressure.

    I felt that being self-employed meant that I had to work very hard to make things happen. The lists became longer and longer, at least fifteen big items per day.

    As a result, it became nearly impossible to finish all the tasks on my list in one day. And as a result of that, I was not happy with my daily progress.

    Even doing half the things on my list was not good enough. All I could think of were the things I had not managed to do.

    My focus shifted from the positive to the negative, from where I was to where I desperately wanted to be. I was not in the now. I was always one impossible to-do list away from being happy with where I was.

    I felt grumpy, did not want to speak frankly of how things were really going, and was constantly putting myself under pressure. I felt that I had to prove myself. Prove to the world that I could be successful.

    So I tried a bunch of different things.

    Among them, I tried living without to-do lists altogether and just going with the flow. I know people who are able to do that and I really admire them.

    This did not work out for me. Instead, I shifted the to-do lists from paper into my head, which is a much messier place. So rather than just coping with an impossible list, I was also trying to memorize all the items. Not a good idea.

    Then I tried working with weekly to-do lists because this would allow me to spread things out and give me more freedom to allocate tasks, according to how my day was going and how I felt.

    Doing this eased things up a bit, but the lists just became even longer so I was still feeling that sense of pressure. I hardly granted myself time off, and all my focus was in the future.

    I never got out of bed motivated to do the things on my list, because the sheer bulk brought me down. I was actually stressed before the day had even started.

    I did not realize that the one who had to believe in myself was me, not everybody else. My to-do list was full of things that I felt I had to have in order to be successful: A running blog, a great website, a list of followers, paying clients.

    This was a reflection of my forward focus, the notion that “things will be great in the mysterious land of tomorrow.” It all came from a sense of not being good enough now.

    I was dedicating my focus to a place I was not even ready for yet. I was confusing growth and improvement with what it looks like when you are successful, and I was not doing the work that mattered: the internal work.

    Once I started doing the internal work I realized that the best way to get forward is to be happy in the now.

    So, I developed my own little ritual. I now do this consistently and make it a point not to check my phone or turn on my computer before doing this morning ritual.

    It has changed the way I perceive work. I am more excited and in tune with myself, moving at a comfortable pace.

    Here it is. Maybe it serves you too:

    1. Be grateful.

    I start my day by giving thanks to where I am now, for all the wonderful things that have happened that transported me to this beautiful time and place called the present.

    2. Take your time.

    I make myself a big pot of tea, sit down in my favorite spot, and snuggle up with my dog. I just give myself time to greet the day, to breathe, and to feel.

    3. Connect with your vision.

    Before, thinking about the future meant thinking about all the things I do not yet have or do. Connecting with my vision is different.

    It means envisioning a world much bigger than myself. My vision guides what I do today. If today is a step, my vision is the direction in which I take that step.

    4. Choose a theme.

    Each day, I choose a theme that feels right. It reflects how I want to feel and what I want to accomplish. It can be anything, long or short, specific or general. “Today is all about…”

    5. Find your three priorities.

    Research shows that you can only do three to five meaningful things per day. I feel comfortable picking three and leaving enough space for magic to happen.

    6. Assign celebrations.

    Since I tend to gloss over my accomplishments after five happy minutes and move on to the next thing to do, I now assign a celebration to each of my three priorities. A celebration can be anything you love, big or small. It can be a walk in nature, a drink with a friend, a manicure, or reading a chapter in an inspiring book.

    I hope this ritual inspires you. If you try it out and like it, I’d love to hear how it goes!

    Photo by IchSapphire

  • Stay Motivated To Make Lasting Changes With These 5 Simple Steps

    Stay Motivated To Make Lasting Changes With These 5 Simple Steps

    I see the light

    “The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” ~Ralph Blum

    We all face obstacles. Maybe you’re unhappy in your career, but don’t know what else you’d like to do with your life. Maybe you’re unfulfilled in your relationship, but don’t know how to communicate this to your partner. Or maybe you’re struggling to make ends meet financially, and don’t know how to get out of debt.

    A few years ago, my life was in complete shambles. My marriage had fallen apart, I was unfulfilled at work, I felt disconnected and misunderstood by family and friends, and I was in an all out battle with my physical body as I suffered through the aftermath of a decade’s worth of dysfunctional eating habits.

    My entire life felt like one big obstacle, and unfortunately, when we feel like this it’s easy to lose track of who we really are and what we really want in life.

    Whether it’s family, friends, career, finances, or a combination of all the above, if left ignored these obstacles can quickly grow to feel insurmountable.

    We begin to feel overwhelmed, stuck, and anxious, which manifests itself as lack of motivation, procrastination, and a slew of behaviors and symptoms that represent our avoidance of facing these obstacles head on.

    Well, with every day that passed, more and more pieces of my life began crumbling around me. I knew something needed to change, but what? Where would I start? What did I want?

    I knew I couldn’t fight the entire war at once, so I spent many hours asking myself these questions and trying to figure out which battlefield to walk onto first, if any. Eventually, I decided to tackle the obstacle I’d been battling the longest: I decided to focus on building a better relationship with my physical body.

    We all have that one hurdle that rears its ugly head over and over again, and for me, that hurdle was my diet.

    At the time, if you’d asked me “Why do you want to build a better relationship with your physical body?” I would have responded with something like this:

    “Because I’m in physical pain.”

    While this was a good enough reason to choose this as the first obstacle to tackle, it didn’t hold weight for very long. Pretty soon, I found myself losing motivation, and asking myself the question, “But why?”

    “But why is it important to overcome this physical pain?”

    Since all the dysfunctional behaviors surrounding my eating issues were familiar, and I’d been dealing with the physical pain for so long, I actually found comfort in it.

    So I knew this lack of clarity was a recipe for disaster, and a surefire way to quickly lose motivation. I needed to go deeper to uncover the real reason why I desired to change this area of my life.

    Eventually, I came up with this:

    “Because my eating habits are affecting all aspects of my life: My career, my physical health, my relationships and social life.”

    This answer was definitely more honest, but once again, it still wasn’t good enough to warrant the hard work and dedication I knew it would take to overcome this obstacle. The people in my external environment had grown to expect these strange behaviors from me, and even aspects of my career had been based around some of my dysfunction.

    So once again, I found myself asking the question: “But why?”

    “But why does it matter that your eating issues are affecting your career, your physical health, your relationships, and social life?”

    And that’s when it hit me; that’s when the real motivation behind my desire to change rose to the surface: “I’m lonely, unfulfilled, scared, and I have no clue who I am anymore.”

    Bingo. Just like that, I uncovered the real source of pain surrounding this obstacle in my life. All of a sudden, there was a new fire fueling my motivation and desire to change.

    With this new clarity, I was able to craft a clear picture of what I actually wanted in my life: I wanted to feel connected to the people and situations around me. I wanted to feel connected to myself. And I wanted to stop living in fear.

    Once I uncovered the real motivation behind my desire to change, I slowly started to realize that each and every obstacle I was facing in my life stemmed from the exact same pain! I somehow knew that by attacking this pain at its roots, I’d be able to overcome all these obstacles at once.

    And this new clarity about what I didn’t want was the motivation I needed to help me finally develop a clear and honest vision of what I actually did want in my life.

    So now it’s your turn. Here are 5 steps to gain more clarity about why you want to change, and what you want in life:

    Step 1:

    Pull out a piece of paper and a pen.

    Step 2: 

    Ask yourself the question, “What’s one area of my life that I’d like to change?” Write this answer on the top of the page.

    Step 3:

    Look at your answer. Now ask yourself, “But why is this important?” Write this new answer below your previous answer.

    Step 4: 

    Repeat step 3 until you uncover the real reasons motivating you to change. Keep going deeper. You’ll know when you’ve gotten to the root cause of your pain.

    Step 5:

    Based on what you uncover, develop a clear vision of what you want in your life. Use this new awareness and motivation to help you remain committed to this new path.

    Remember: Saying “I’m unhappy at work” or “I feel unfulfilled in my relationship” isn’t deep enough. Keep going!

    We all face obstacles in our lives, but if we’re willing to do the tough work of asking ourselves “why?” these obstacles can truly become the gateways that lead to greater clarity and new beginnings. We can use this clarity to gain a deeper understanding of what we really want in life, and to motivate us to make lasting changes.

    Photo by Lel4nd

  • Recovering from the Pain of Bullying and Finding Confidence as an Adult

    Recovering from the Pain of Bullying and Finding Confidence as an Adult

    Waiting

    “If your number one goal is to make sure that everyone likes and approves of you, then you risk sacrificing your uniqueness, and therefore, your excellence.” ~Unknown

    I envied the clusters of kids at recess, playing games from which I was always excluded, not just because I couldn’t play them, but also because I was the class outcast. I envied them, the ease with which they moved; their grace, speed, and precision as they ran, kicked, danced, dove. Things I could hardly hope to do.

    But it wasn’t just my Cerebral Palsy. It was something that wasn’t really about my looks or behavior or the fact that my day-to-day life was so utterly different from theirs.

    It was everything: the thick, black boys’ shoes that I wore because they could fit the orthotics strapped to my legs, and the long white knee socks that I wore with them, their cuffs folded over the Velcro straps to prevent chafing.

    It wasn’t anything you could put your finger on, something that could be explained or proven; it was in the tone of their voices, in the endless, hated laughter.

    I couldn’t honestly complain to a teacher or a principal that they were making fun of me because of the silly lunch bag I carried, couldn’t make a scene because I was the only one out of thirty kids who didn’t receive an invitation to a classmate’s birthday party or a dopey paper heart on my desk at Valentine’s Day.

    In twelve years of public school there were maybe three incidents that involved actual contact abuse: a shove, a chair pulled out from under me when I went to sit down. One time, while working on a group project, I chimed in with a comment, and one of the girls twisted my arm and told me if I spoke again, they would kill me.

    The rest of the time, it was subterfuge, gaslight incidents, “pranks” that were anything but comical.

    They would rifle my coat pockets, not to steal anything valuable, but for ammunition: every tiny detail of my life was mocking-fodder, something to be laughed about behind palms, whispered through textbook pages; nasty comments and caricatures doodled on notebook paper and passed when the teacher wasn’t looking.

    Those girls were suspicious of something they didn’t understand, and jealous of what they thought of as special treatment. When they paid attention to me at all, it was pointedly catty. The rest of the time, they were cold.

    They would rearrange things in my desk when I was out of the room, hide things or simply mess them up. I was too damnably, painfully shy to confront them; the few pathetic times I managed to bring it up they feigned utter innocence and acted like I was crazy.

    It became almost a relief to be ignored, even though it was incredibly lonely. When you are abused every day, to be passed over feels like a gift. I didn’t know how to articulate my loneliness. 

    Like when I sat alone at lunch because the other girls wouldn’t “let” me sit at their table. When I sat alone with a book at recess, the yard monitor told me, “Stop reading and talk to somebody; how do you expect to make friends if you don’t hang out with the other girls?”

    She didn’t get it. None of them did, those harried, overworked authority figures. They had too much to do to pay attention to one friendless kid, and one so quiet, so polite; they had other students to deal with, the troublemakers, the ones constantly sentenced with detention, the ones from troubled families who were cutting class and already smoking at age eleven, who mouthed off and were on the verge of flunking.

    So they forgot about me.

    My parents tried to solve my problems. There were years when there were meetings with principals, guidance counselors, and the school psychologist several times a month. The bureaucrats of the school system just wanted the situation to go away.

    The school board tried to make it seem like it was my fault: I was just an awkward, oversensitive kid who needed to get along better with her peers. The guidance counselor, a Pollyanna optimist who had smiley faces all over her office and gave equally vapid advice, told me to try harder, she was sure that the girls wanted to be my friends. She was useless.

    My parents said that I would find my niche in college, that kids would mature and see how special I really was. They tried to help me. But no matter how carefully I dressed like the cool girls, or tried to talk like them, watched the “right” TV shows and read the popular books and bought pop CDs and the cute accessories that they all wore, it never worked.

    I even tried to bribe those kids to be my friends, a memory which still, after all this time, leaves me feeling a mixture of anger and shame. Anger at them for their pointless cruelty, for making me cry at night in bed, shame at myself and my behavior. I was like a woman throwing herself at a man who has absolutely no interest in her even though she is in love with him.

    They rejected me, and I tagged along after them. I found out when their birthdays were and left little gift bags on their desk. My pitiful attempts at friendship only led to more rejection, more laughter.

    Later on, when the anger surpassed the shame I felt, I longed to scream at them. Some brilliant, caustic kiss-off, an aggressive statement that would leave them shocked and gaping. I wanted to hurt them the way they had hurt me so many times.

    So often I was embarrassed by the specter of my Cerebral Palsy, the spasms, the startled jerks and twitches, my ugly leg braces, and the way everything had to be done for me, like I was an infant.

    When I dropped a heavy textbook in the utterly silent classroom, it hit the ugly industrial linoleum with a thud that seemed to echo, and my body burned with shame. The teacher gave me a dirty look for daring to disrupt the class, and the students tittered, no doubt whispering about what a spaz, what a weird, clumsy thing I was.

    I hated myself for my blind devotion to the clique, and my desperate overtures of friendship.

    I hated myself for being a skinny, ugly little freak with big glasses and unruly curls and braces on both my teeth and my legs. I hated those girls for their careless, stinging words and their easy perfection.

    Whenever I have a bad day, when I feel fragile and insecure, when my manuscript has been rejected or I am having an “ugly” day where my skin is broken out and my hair won’t behave, it all comes back to me, and the memories make me cringe.

    I spend more time than I want to admit thinking about those years when I was the class geek, eternally uncool, a scapegoat for adolescent insecurity. I spent years trying to be someone else, and when the futility of that finally sunk in, I spent years trying to figure out who I was.

    I am no longer a victim. I have a certain measure of confidence in my choices and my work, and I have scraped a veneer of self-assurance from self-help books and years of therapy.

    I recently purchased a bumper sticker that says, “There Is No Alternative To Being Yourself.”

    When I consider my life, I do not regret my own hard-won authenticity. I regret the times I tried so hard to be what I’m not. 

    I think I simply got sick of struggling to fit into some mold that was entirely the wrong shape for me. It was so much less painful to do what felt right for me, to dress how I wanted, to say exactly what I felt even when nobody else agreed, and not worry about whether they did or not. It is incredibly liberating not to care.

    There is no magical, fast-acting cure-all for alleviating loneliness and developing confidence. And the truth is, I don’t really know how it happened. I read self-help books, I saw therapists, and I had an incredible support team of family and friends who loved me and helped me believe in myself.

    I know how painful it is, and the only thing I have to offer is my honesty, my truth. I hope that my story provides some comfort and solidarity to those who need it.

    Photo by Jenna-Carver

  • Why You Aren’t Living Your Dreams and What to Do About It

    Why You Aren’t Living Your Dreams and What to Do About It

    “Your belief determines your action and your action determines your results, but first you have to believe.” ~Mark Victor Hansen

    Screech!

    The car engine’s loud revving got quiet. The tires came to a screeching halt.

    This towering, slender, intimidating man, with a beard like the skin of a shaved porcupine, shut the driver side door behind him and approached me with thunder.

    “Is this what you’re doing?!” he demanded. “On the corner—with a girl?”

    It wasn’t her fault, but his expression almost made me turn around and look at her with utter disgust.

    Instead, I was too busy quieting the butterflies in my stomach, looking up everywhere into his chiseled face except his eyes. His head blocked the sun like a solar eclipse on that urban street while his eyes burned a hole in my forehead.

    “You’re going to throw away the championship for this.”

    Never explicitly saying out loud what I did wrong, as he put me to shame, it made the unspoken truth stab my heart like a dagger, over and over, especially because I had deep admiration for this man.

    As he walked away from the sidewalk concrete and drove off, I caught a glimpse of his long hairy calves in my peripheral vision and stared into the black pavement in deep contemplation.

    Yanking my arm away from the hot girl next to me, like an annoyed child from an overprotective parent, I walked up the block and took the bus home.

    I was sixteen when my tennis coach, this amazing man, taught me my first lesson in what it really meant to walk away from a grand vision you have in life, and the price you pay on your personal growth when doing so.

    My sin: I had stopped showing up for tennis practice with two weeks left to a championship game that depended on my performance.

    But why did I do that? And why do so many of us fail to do the things we want to do, resort to our old ways, and ignore our glorious vision in life?

    Luck

    A study by Janssen and Carton demonstrated how what scientists call the “locus of control” affects how timely we do things.

    No, locus of control isn’t that awesome pose at yoga class! It’s our perspective on what’s really  responsible for the outcome of things.

    Do we take personal responsibility for things that happen in our lives and have an inner locus of control? Or, do we blame it all on luck and circumstance, otherwise known as having an external locus of control?

    They gave forty-two students a homework assignment and found that students who had an inner locus of control started and returned assignments sooner, while those with an external locus of control started and returned assignments later.

    We procrastinate more when we blame luck and circumstance for the results we get and avoid taking personal responsibility for what we want to achieve.

    That’s what I did.

    I hung out with my new girlfriend instead of going to practice so that I could retrospectively blame her in the event that I lost the championship. I have a girlfriend now, and she’s taking up my time. That’s why I’ll lose. It’s not because I didn’t take full personal responsibility. It’s her fault.

    My tennis coach was trying to teach me the locus of control at the time, when the locus of other “things” controlled me more.

    Fear and Limiting Beliefs

    Research suggests a variety of reasons on why we fail to do things we want to do, but two stand out.

    1. Fear of the unknown.

    We can’t predict the outcome and the consequences it will have on our self-esteem. We do what we usually do to prevent our self-esteem from getting damaged.

    2. The belief that we’ll perform better at a later date when we’re “more prepared,” which will likely never come.

    This causes us to engage in indecision—on purpose, to validate our stalling.

    In my case, I dated a new girl and stopped practicing to avoid feeling bad in the event that I lost the championship. I knew that I would win the girl, but wasn’t sure about the game, so I focused on the easy win.

    Our human tendency to want to be right, certain, and safe can overshadow doing the hard work, breaking bad habits, and getting something we desperately want.

    Old Conditioning

    On Psychology Today, Ray Williams suggests that the brain is protective over its current habitual patterns. Achieving something new will require new behavior, and the brain will try to resist new patterns to protect its old conditioning.

    The brain is also wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain and fear.

    “When fear of failure creeps into the mind… it commences a de-motivator with a desire to return to known, comfortable behavior and thought patterns,” he writes.

    Before you set out on a journey to achieve something, you must pay attention to the triggers that will happen in your mind, because your mind could derail you.

    The most important factor in overcoming your mind’s tendency to keep you in your comfort zone is awareness.

    The more aware you are of how your brain is conditioned and the lifestyle it’s trying to protect, the better equipped you’ll be to take action.

    When my brain tries to make me curl back to comfort, I whisper to it, “Stop it! We must do this! Think about what we could gain in the long run.”

    Awareness

    While many “gurus” might tell people to wake up earlier, set priorities, and plan better in order to work toward their dreams, these tactics alone do not always help.

    Why? Because it’s our mental conditioning that’s holding us back, and that’s what we need to change. It’s our fear of the future, and often, our lack of personal responsibility that keeps us from taking action, not the failure to create to-do lists and wake up at a specified time.

    Keep a vigilant watch at how your mind will try to take you back to your old ways. This is the only way to change your conditioning.

    Changing your mind and spirit first, letting go of fear of outcomes, and challenging your old conditioning may revolutionize the way you live so that you own up to what you want to do—and then do it.

  • 4 Crucial Steps to Make Your Dream Come True

    4 Crucial Steps to Make Your Dream Come True

    Lori Deschene at the Colosseum

    “Don’t be pushed by your problems; be led by your dreams.” ~Unknown

    A little over forty-eight hours from now, I’ll be on a plane to Europe where I plan to spend three months traveling (and working) with my boyfriend.

    Saturday is the first day of a dream I’ve held for well over a decade.

    It was my second year in college when I did my semester abroad, staying in a castle my school owns in The Netherlands.

    I was one of less than seventy students there, part of an intimate group that traveled together on three weekend trips to Paris, Amsterdam, and Koln.

    Aside from those group excursions, we all had three-day weekends and two full weeks off to travel.

    I visited Italy and Spain during my weeks off, but spent most weekends on site, largely due to financial constraints. Still, a weekend doing nothing at a castle in Europe is, in itself, an adventure.

    After returning home, I spent the next year working 40+ hour weeks as a hostess at an upscale Boston restaurant (while also studying full-time) to pay off my charged travel expenses.

    My schedule was tight and my job, not all that exciting, but the experience felt worth every uncomfortable moment in that itchy polyester blazer.

    I had started seeing the world. I had gotten a chance to experience dorm life—something I didn’t know much about, being a commuter—and I did it in a castle with a moat, a tower, and historical significance.

    It wasn’t the most emotionally stable time in my life, so I brought a healthy dose of drama overseas, but now, fourteen years later, what I remember most are the excitement of possibility and the pride I felt in working to provide that for myself.

    And it’s those same two things that most energize me now. I’ve dreamed of this. I’ve planned for it. I’ve worked for it. And now it’s happening.

    If you have a dream, something that excites you, inspires you, and maybe even keeps you up at night, I have some advice for you:

    1. Believe that it’s possible.

    So often we think of dreams as things most people don’t get to do—luxuries reserved for people who are privileged, wealthy, or well connected.

    It’s true that some people have more advantages than others. What takes one person five years of planning and saving may require another to do little more than sell a stock and make a call.

    It’s also true that the second person may have worked incredibly hard for said stock. The point is: We’re all starting from different places, for different reasons, with different levels of work required to get from A to B.

    If your dream is something you’re physically incapable of doing, it may be improbable (but not impossible—we’ve come a long way with technology!) And there’s no denying that certain dreams are more difficult to achieve than others.

    But most of the things we dream about are things we could do if we were willing to work toward it, align our choices to support it, and stay flexible in terms of fulfilling it.

    You don’t need to believe it will be easy, or it will happen quickly, or it will look exactly like you visualized it. You just need to believe in the possibility, which really means you need to believe in yourself.

    2. Take tiny steps to work toward it.

    Working toward it entails aligning with the right people, disregarding discouragement from people who don’t support your growth, and taking tiny steps each day to move toward your vision.

    “The right people” are those who help you, support you, encourage you, believe in you, and guide you on your way to this dream. It may include people who’ve done what you want to do, people who also want to do it, and even people who just plain find it cool.

    Share your enthusiasm and progress with them. They’ll keep you excited and help you stick to your plan.

    As for those people who don’t support your growth, there will be many of them, and they most likely won’t be malicious. They’ll be well-meaning people who aren’t able to do step one for themselves, and, therefore, think they’re doing you a favor by discouraging you. Politely decline that favor.

    Their words may seem to keep you down, but it’s how you internalize them that holds you back.

    And as for taking consistent steps, they really can be tiny. It may not seem like much to make a call, bookmark a site, or send an email, but the little things add up over time—and because they’re easily doable, each one may inspire you to do more.

    3. Make choices that support it.

    Much of our experience stems from our choices. Not all of it; there are some things that we can’t control.

    This isn’t a suggestion that if we make all the “right” choices, everything will line up and magically work out. It’s just that we have more power than we often realize—and our power lies in our choices.

    Whatever your dream, the first choice is to prioritize it. As you’re able, dedicate time to it, money to it, attention to it, love to it. Give what you can, as you can, and back that giving with belief, passion, and enthusiasm.

    The other side of this coin is realizing which choices don’t support your dream—when you’re doing too much or pursuing other dreams that conflict, for example.

    For me, that’s meant pushing off some other equally exciting milestones with my boyfriend, like buying a house.

    4. Stay flexible about how you’ll fulfill it.

    It’s tempting to be rigid about a dream—when it needs to happen, how it needs to happen, and who it needs to include. But sometimes when we’re too busy clinging to a specific vision, we miss an opportunity to experience it in different shades.

    This isn’t meant to discourage you from reaching for the stars. It’s just a reminder that there are a lot more of them than you may realize, some far closer than others.

    Being a singer may include a jazz club, not a fan-packed stadium. Writing a book may entail self-publishing, not a six-figure advance. And traveling may include teaching abroad or a string of budget bed-and-breakfasts—I know because this time around, I’ve booked several!

    They may not be the ultimate dream, but they are, in fact, reflections of it.

    And in that moment when you’re doing something inspired, passionate, and in line with your deepest intentions, you’ll feel two things that you may not have realized weren’t exclusive to one specific vision:

    You’ll feel alive. And proud.

    And now, two final thoughts on making dreams come true: know that no dream is better than any other, and stay open to the possibility that your dream may change.

    Regarding the first part, your dream may not seem big or romantic. It doesn’t need to be. It’s an extension of your unique values and priorities, and all that matters is that it matters to you.

    As for the second part, sometimes we attach to dreams simply because we’ve held them for so long. It’s the sunk-cost principle: After you’ve invested a lot of time, energy, or money, it’s hard to consider walking away.

    But if your priorities have changed, you may no longer want it. Accepting this isn’t a sign of weakness or defeat. It’s growth, and the wisdom to enable it.

    Of course, there’s also the possibility that your dream may have changed in a smaller way.

    This weekend when I leave for Rome, my parents, my siblings, and my boyfriend’s parents will also be en route for a short family trip.

    My dream wasn’t just to go back. It was to go with the people I love. And after much conceptualizing, convincing, and coordinating, it’s now coming true.

    What’s your dream, do you believe you can fulfill it, and what tiny step can you take today to start (or continue) working toward it?

    *Update: That’s a picture of me at the Colosseum. I would have shared a picture of me with my family, but they’re all very private people!

  • Embracing Pain: Life’s Gifts Often Come Wrapped in Sandpaper

    Embracing Pain: Life’s Gifts Often Come Wrapped in Sandpaper

    “The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.” ~Unknown

    “How did you get so wise?” My friend’s voice on the other end of the telephone line was genuinely curious.

    I took a moment to think, wanting to be just as sincere in my response as she was in her inquiry. I felt the words climb up from the depths of my heart and ride a breath of truth as they passed through my lips.

    “I cry a lot,” I finally responded.

    Believe me, I wish there was another way. On my personal journey—and there are surely others who walk a similar path—life at times sweeps me up in a wave of utter brokenness, and washes me onto new shores of beautiful transformation, grounded wisdom, and unconditional love.

    There is a longstanding slogan in Alcoholics Anonymous that pain is the touch point of all spiritual progress.

    Somehow our moments of deep despair and gut-wrenching desperation serve as evolutionary portals to a higher level of grace and resolve. The breakdown itself is the gateway to the breakthrough.

    Don’t get me wrong. I do not go chasing after anguish like an adrenaline junkie with a death wish. Just because turmoil shows up as an unexpected guest at my front door that doesn’t mean I graciously invite it in for tea and cookies.

    I avoid pain—internal and external—whenever possible. I’ve given birth to two beautiful children and both times I asked for the labor-numbing drugs. If I so much as stub my toe on the bedside table or get into an spat with my husband, I reach for my favorite quilt and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s for comfort.

    I have heard there are two types of pain in the world—welcomed and unwelcomed.

    Suffering is defined as unwelcomed pain. I am beginning to understand that, like enduring labor, the more I am able to stop resisting pain’s vice-like grip and breathe through the ark—noticing its build, peak, and subsiding—the less of a hold it has on me.

    Just like birthing my babies, on the other side of the pain is the promise. Some of life’s greatest gifts come wrapped in sandpaper.

    Here are a few of the treasured insights I have received on the other side life’s tribulations. I hope they renew your strength, affirm that you are not alone, and shed a hopeful light on your dark moments.

    Pain strengthens you. 

    In order to build a muscle we lift the weight. But first there is a breaking and bleeding of the capillaries. The healing of the wound is what develops the muscle; injury precedes strength.

    Pain refines you.

    It takes pressure to make a diamond and fire to purify gold. Nothing cleanses the soul like a good cry. Tears wash away the impurities of fear and attachment and clear the channels for love to freely flow.

    Pain lightens the load.

    Growing up my mother would often say, “When you are down to nothing, life is up to something.”

    Navigating painful moments can feel like squeezing yourself through a tight corridor. There is no room for excess baggage. At the peak of agony I have learned to let go of the “stuff” in my hands—my stories, my fears, my judgments—in order to hold on for dear life.

    Pain qualifies you. 

    Nothing qualifies a person to step up to a big vision for their life like pain. When I count the cost of the rejection and disappointments endured on the journey to living my dreams, it creates a worthiness and grounded resolve that my toughest critics cannot chip away.

    Pain connects you.

    One tragedy unites people in a far deeper way than a thousand moments of laughter. Falling apart independently and collectively healing has launched powerful, life-changing movements like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (M.A.D.D.). Pain becomes purpose when it is shared.

    Like the peaks and falls on a heart monitor, the valley low moments are just as much a confirmation of life as the mountain highs. Lean into pain’s sting. Allow yourself to be placed on its potter’s wheel and transformed into all you can ever hope to be and more.

    Remember, life is never happening to you, it is always happening for you. Always.

    Photo by sue jan

  • 3 Ways to Feel Good When Things Seem Bad

    3 Ways to Feel Good When Things Seem Bad

    “It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.” ~Pema Chodron

    Have you ever had something happen in your life that completely changed everything?

    Wham. Suddenly you haven’t left your bedroom in days, you can’t remember what it feels like to shower, and it’s clear the only friend you can really count on is your cat. 

    And whether it’s a major life-suck event or a minor one, the question is: How can I feel contented and calm when things don’t go to plan?

    That is what this post is about. Because a while back I had a M. A. J. O. R. Major event. It went like this:

    I’d just graduated from college. I had a Masters Degree. In science. Human nutrition science, in case you’re wondering. I was excited about life!

    Sure, I had a ridiculous door-to-door research job and my roommate was annoying, but I had plans—I’ll move in with my boyfriend, get a better job, travel, start a family, hang out with all my amazing friends, and live an awesome life.

    But then I got sick. The kind of sick where raising your arms above your head makes you want to take a nap. And instead of starting the amazing life I’d planned, I moved home with my parents.

    It was a shock, to say the least. Before that, I was tough. I hiked. My friends liked me. I stayed up late. I wasn’t a sick person.

    And while my parents are sweet and kind, living in their basement in small town New Zealand, watching daytime re-runs of Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, and hanging out with a fluffy cat called Whisky was not the plan.

    It wasn’t so bad at first. But months went by, then years, and it seemed no matter what I did, I was still sick.

    I thought, why did this happen to me?

    I cried. A lot. For seemingly no reason. And if someone asked why I was crying, I’d say, “I’m just so tired.” I cried so much some days that I’d go home and laugh with my sister on the phone over who I’d cried in front of that day. It was comical.

    That was a few years ago now. And, of course, the whole experience turned out to be a huge gift. They often are, in my experience, anyway, but that’s getting ahead of things.

    Here are three insights that helped during those “you’ve got to be freaking kidding me” times:

    1. There’s a healing side to pain.

    When a challenging event happens—a breakup, a sickness, or having your leopard pink car seat covers stolen—the human mind, being what it is, thinks this is why you feel badly.

    You hear it all the time: “Oh, you poor thing for losing your car seat covers.” Or, “She’s such a rat to do this to you.”

    The truth is, it’s your perception of the situation that makes you feel bad. This means that no matter how crumpled-in and dysfunctional you feel, you’re not. It’s just your thoughts that are a bit wonky. And actually, your thoughts on this were always wonky; the situation just exposed them.

    Take my situation. Everything I’d based my self-esteem on was gone: work, grades, friends, boyfriend, the ability to sit up straight for more than half an hour.

    I thought I was upset because I was sick, when the truth was, my situation had triggered every negative belief I had about myself. Things like:

    “I’m only lovable if people like me.” “I’m only worthwhile if I’m busy doing things.”

    I so strongly identified with all the things I did that when you took them away, I felt miserable. I’d been given the opportunity to see what I really thought about myself.

    Someone could have told me “you’re worthy and lovable,” and I might have intellectually known this, but I didn’t feel it.

    What I began to realize was that behind the pain, over time, my faulty beliefs were shifting. My sense of self-worth was beginning to heal by itself.

    The pain is the faulty belief system being ripped out by its roots. You feel like you’re losing something dear. The trick is to understand that it’s just a faulty belief going away. And beneath it lays a pocket of self-love that you haven’t previously been able to access.

    As poet Kahlil Gibran says, “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.”

    2. Pain fades when we let go of expectations.

    Most of us live in an intellectual way. We make plans for our life and then we try and follow them through. We think we know the best way for our life to proceed.

    The truth is, a large part of our pain is caused by an attachment to our expectations.

    For example, one of the reasons I felt so bone achingly sorry for myself was because I had a plan for how to have a good life—and it didn’t include Dr. Quinn.

    I thought success came from going to college, getting a good job, and having a family. No one said anything about spending all this time in bed. But actually, it was the best thing for me.

    To illustrate you how powerful your expectations are, try this exercise:

    First, imagine you’re me.

    Now, imagine you’d grown up thinking the best way to have an awesome life was to spend five years in bed cross-stitching cushions. That it was something everyone did.

    “Oh yeah,” you’d say to your friend, “I’m just off to do my five-years-in-bed years.”

    And they’d be like, “Oh cool. I hear you learn such amazing things, like how to feel self-assured, and you get clarity on your life direction, and you start to feel that inner calm we’re always reading about.”

    Seriously.

    Now think about your current situation and imagine that for your whole life, you believed that what is happening to you was going to happen. And not only that, but it’s the absolute best thing to happen.

    So much of the pain we feel is because we can’t let go of how we think life should look. Your mind thinks it knows the best way for your life to work out—but simply put, it doesn’t; the plan it had was flawed in the first place.

    Your mind can only see your life as it’s showing up right now. There is a bigger picture.

    3. You’re doing fine.

    Learning about personal awareness and healing can be such a helpful thing, but remember, there’s no right or wrong way to feel.

    Feeling grateful and “being positive” and so on is perfectly fine, and sure, it can be helpful, but if you don’t feel like it all the time, don’t worry about it.

    Instead of attaching a judgment to how you’re feeling or what you’re thinking, try just noticing it.

    I believe the act of simply noticing and accepting how things are, right now—no matter how messy and dysfunctional they seem—is the most powerful, healing thing you can do.

    Photo by Dahl-Face Photography

  • Motivate Yourself Without Pushing Yourself: Tips for Self-Compassion

    Motivate Yourself Without Pushing Yourself: Tips for Self-Compassion

    Happy

    “Our sorrows and wounds are only healed when we touch them with compassion.” ~Buddha

    I have always struggled with self-compassion. In fact, I’m not even sure I have been aware of it all that much throughout my life.

    I’ve always thought the only way to truly grow was to push myself, both physically and mentally, so without even realizing it, I set myself up for that.

    I would not study for my university exams until the night before. I would take it easy and not make enough money until it got to the stage that I had to almost create a miracle to pay my next credit card bill. I would push my partner until our relationship was at a breaking point so I could then save it.

    It was almost like I wanted to prove to myself that I was a hero in someway. As I reflect back now, it was so strange what I was doing, but the truth was I was not even aware I was doing it.

    Over the past few years I could see my patterns more and more. It shocked me that I would be that unconscious of my motivations.

    But as I dived into it, I could see that I actually had a fear that I’d somehow be less if I took that pressure off myself. It was the pressure that was keeping me motivated and more importantly keeping me growing.

    I wondered if I had to continue like that. What would happen if I let it go? Would I stop being as great as I could be?

    Then I became aware of self-compassion. It was a foreign concept to me, and one I remember fighting against for some time. My ego did not want to just give in that easy!

    At first I felt that I would become more self centered, and that was big no-no—after all, aren’t we all here to serve others, not ourselves?

    But then I started see what my lack of self-compassion was really doing to me. It was, in fact, the very thing that was isolating me from the world and making me self-centered.

    I was so caught up in my own struggles and issues that I had begun to feel that I was the only one on the planet going through what I was.

    I had forgotten that all my friends were feeling the same way as me; they too were struggling in life, and I had not seen it. My issues were not greater than everyone else’s, after all.

    As I saw this more clearly I felt myself soften to compassion for myself, and those around me. I started to “feel” compassion for the first time.

    I recall pondering one day, how I would feel in a relationship if I treated my partner or child in the same way I had been treating myself? Would I really be that motivated to keep going each day?

    The never-ending berating and judgments, constantly trying to fix, change, or improve myself, never being enough. How motivated can you stay under such conditions?

    I would have never expected anyone to respond positively to this, but yet I expected myself to. Something was very wrong with my perception of myself.

    It was at that moment that my belief structure started to collapse on itself, and I realized that I did not have to be that hard on myself for motivation. I could actually be kind and it would have an even greater effect.

    Bit by bit, I felt self-acceptance, and a love came over me like waves, like it had been wanting to come through for so many years, but I had blocked it.

    All I had been looking for was sweeping over me in one giant gush. It felt amazing and it felt true. I knew that I’m okay the way I am.

    I suddenly felt a common bond with humanity again. Like we are all perfect in our imperfect way, and that is actually what it’s meant to be like.

    I realized that I do not have to get everything right everytime. I do not have to be changed or improved; I just need to accept who I am right now.

    The pain and sorrow I had been feeling my whole life rose up, and I could clearly see what I had done to myself for decades. I was sorry for this, so very sorry.

    I broke down and cried and cried. I had been so mean to myself. The pain and struggles of the last few decades came pouring out of me like the dam gates had been opened.

    I felt relief for the first time. I could not do this any longer; there was simply no need. I had done nothing wrong by just being me.

    This was one of the most significant moments in my life—the acceptance of myself through self-compassion.

    My tips to create more self-compassion include:

    1. Be aware if you are being hard on yourself and recognize where this shows up for you.

    It can be subtle. Look at all life areas, including your health, finances, and relationships, at work and in your family.

    2. Challenge your beliefs and fears. 

    Do you have a belief that if you are gentle with yourself you will somehow not be motivated enough or not all you can be? Recognize that this doesn’t have to be true. Also, notice if you feel that being compassionate toward yourself will lead you to feel self-indulgent or selfish.

    3. Treat yourself kindly, without judgment.

    Picture your best friend and how you treat them. Now apply this same love and kindness to yourself. You should be your own best friend after all!

    4. Be mindful of when you slip out of compassion and start to treat yourself harshly again.

    Forgive yourself and understand that you are human and this is part of the human game.

    5. Feel the pain of others around you.

    Listen to their stories and feel what it must be like to be them. This will make you automatically feel compassion and be softer on yourself as you connect with their common humanity.

    We all have issues and problems that cause us pain, but suffering through them is optional. Self-compassion provides another option.

    Photo by JFXie

  • Start Believing in Yourself: How To Adopt A Language of Love

    Start Believing in Yourself: How To Adopt A Language of Love

    “Once you have learned to love, you will have learned to live.” ~Unknown

    We are powerful, vivacious, brilliant creatures. Our thoughts and ideas create the very world around us. We constantly, and often unconsciously, exude and radiate palpable energy that permeates through every crack and crevasse of our lives.

    Our words hold especially powerful energy and the ability to uplift and inspire others and ourselves, or send us spiraling down the ladder to Bummersville. Learning to recognize our inner Negative Nancy allows us to pump up the volume on our love lingo to bring us back to a place of clarity, peace, and happiness.

    As a young woman in my early twenties, I am no stranger to the pitfalls of self-criticism. As a child of divorced parents, I grew up with the belief that I was somehow imperfect. Inadequate. Just shy of being good enough. 

    My teenage years proved to be of little consolation, as I was suddenly introduced to the world of comparisons. The desire to be as thin as, rich as, and cool as whoever was entirely consuming. I validated this belief of not being good enough with constant self-judgment.

    I clouded every move I made with the veil of criticism. No goal or achievement was ever really celebrated, just held up in comparison to someone else’s triumphs.

    Finally, after being introduced to the idea of self-love, I did an experiment in which I tried to mentally note each time I said something negative about myself in one day. Holy eye-opener. Before I even finished breakfast I had already torn myself apart with self-criticism and harsh judgment.

    I would never think to speak to someone I dislike in the way that I was thought-bashing myself.

    It’s no wonder I didn’t feel enthusiastic or passionate about anything. All of that garbage mind chatter was blocking my ability to see the reality: I am outrageously perfect. I have purpose. My life has meaning. I am an integral part of the whole.

    I still struggle from time to time to tune out my inner critic and embrace my inner cheerleader; beliefs that we hold onto for a long time as truths are never easy to let go of. But I have found that there is a distinct correlation with the words I use as a part of my regular vocabulary and the way that I feel.

    Adopting a language of love is essential in keeping me aligned with my highest self. 

    Here are my no-no’s and big YES!’s when it comes to speaking the language de amor:

    • Stop saying, “I can’t.” You can; you just haven’t done it yet or you haven’t tried.
    • Stop saying, “Always.” Actually, just stop generalizing. Nothing is black and white.
    • Stop saying, “They did, he did, she did…” It’s a subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) form of blame. Observe your current situation and ask, “What can I do now? How can I make this better?”
    • Stop saying, “I wish this or that.” Instead say, “I want this and these are the steps I am going to take to get me there.”
    • Really stop saying “I am not good enough. I am fat. I am ugly. I’ve made too many poor choices. I’ve tried before and it didn’t work out.”

    I like to imagine that I am made up of a team. I’ve got inspiration, truth, gratitude, enthusiasm, ambition, worry, deprecation, blame, and sadness. The game’s all tied up, this is the crucial moment that decides whether my team moves forward or is left behind.

    Who am I gonna put in the game? Who’s gonna be on the bench? This isn’t practice…this is life! Keep worry, deprecation, blame, and sadness off the court. They’re gonna lose the game.

    Adopting a language of love is not about positive affirmations. It’s not about trying to convince yourself that you feel something else other than what you feel, or that a situation is something other than what it is.

    It’s about consciously choosing thoughts and words with uplifting energy. It’s about embracing what is intrinsically true and inherent: You got this. 

    Whatever your situation, whatever your roadblock or mental block or financial block, you’ll figure it out. How do I know? Because we all contain inside of us the capacity to manifest our deepest desires and stay the course all the way to the end.

    Let’s adjust our thinking and speaking to reflect that, shall we?

    May love become our new modus operandi.

    Photo by aussiegal

  • Taking Back Our Dreams: Releasing the Drive for Wealth and Status

    Taking Back Our Dreams: Releasing the Drive for Wealth and Status

    Jumping

    “The poor man is not he who is without a cent, but he who is without a dream.” ~Harry Kemp

    We’ve all been there. You’re having a great time playing a game with your friends, and then all of a sudden, things start to get tense.

    What started out as fun turns into a fierce competition, as everyone is desperately trying to collect gold coins, red flags, or whatever happens to be the game’s currency.

    To an outsider, it would be clear that we are all playing a game. Just like the kid with the tallest stack of red coins, the adult with the largest home and fanciest car receives the admiration of his or her peers.

    Originally invented to simplify the trading process, money has long surpassed its intended purpose. Of course, we all need money to survive, but it doesn’t end there.

    Money has long been a status symbol. It is precisely for this reason its appeal is so difficult to resist.

    Our social status and income level are closely intertwined. We’ve even coined the term “socio-economic status.” In this society, you simply cannot have high status without the money to back it up.

    Okay, so what’s the problem? Why do I say all this as if it’s a bad thing?

    Because it comes at a price. A very high price.

    As we strive to win this game that society wants us to play, we give up on something that matters a lot more than money and prestige. We give up on our dreams.

    MISSING THE MIDDLE GROUND

    The chain that locks us down to jobs we hate has two ends. On one end stands wealth and status. At the other end is fear of poverty.

    Of course, we all need food to eat and a roof over our heads. Now here’s the catch: If you dare to dream even an inch outside the status quo, society is quick to assume that you will be an utter failure, left with nothing to pay the bills.

    For example, say you always dreamed of being an actor. When people think of actors, they think of Angelina Jolie, Nicolas Cage, or other stars. “Actors make a killing, but hardly anyone makes it!” they may tell you. Indeed, hardly anyone becomes a star.

    You see, without even realizing it, they are back to wealth and prestige. But what they forget are the many working actors who are not world famous, who nevertheless make enough to support themselves while doing what they love.

    Another common misconception is that in order to pursue your passion, you must quit your job immediately. Doing so could indeed be a recipe for disaster. You see, pursuing your passion is a process. Many quit their jobs only after their passion can support them.

    Society tells us that wealth and status will make us happy, while simultaneously scaring us that pursuing our dreams will leave us penny-less. Both of these are fallacies. There is a middle ground: Your passion can support you, if you’re willing to give it a chance.

    MY STORY

    I was born with the heart of an artist. I dreamed of being on stage as a singer or an actress. I wanted to express myself through music, dance, and writing.

    Despite these dreams, at the age of 18 I had an entirely different plan. I was set on becoming a manager at a software company.

    I worked hard to get into a prestigious computer science program, and for my first internship, I landed a position at well-known firm. I was overjoyed. It looked as if my plan was working out.

    But a couple of months into the internship, something completely unexpected happened: I found myself hating my life. I don’t mean just my job. My entire life felt empty, meaningless, and downright painful.

    I would wake up early to go to a job that bored me. Then, I had to spend most of my waking hours effectively tied down to a chair, staring at a computer screen. I was a slave in the free world.

    By the time that this dreadful internship was finally over, I was so broken down that I swore never to do this to myself again.

    It wasn’t easy to figure out what to do next. It took the next ten years to go through layer upon layer of fears and insecurities. I started out with such a rigid perception of what is “normal” and “acceptable” that I had a very long road to travel.

    Three years ago, I finally took my first singing class and started to write. I couldn’t begin to tell you what a difference this has made in my life. Every morning I jump out of bed, eager to start the day. My work excites me, energizes me, and brings me a deep sense of personal fulfillment.

    For the first time in my life, I no longer feel a divide between myself and my job. All that I do is an extension of who I am.

    But then, I go out into the world and interact with other people. People who wish that they didn’t have to work. People who sacrifice their lives for a handsome paycheck. People who have forgotten their dreams.

    WHY WE LOSE TRACK OF OUR DREAMS

    How did this happen? When and where did we lose track of our dreams?

    If I were to come up to a person with a passion for pursuing their dream, and ask them, “How much money would it take to get you to forget about pursuing your dreams?” they would surely send me away. Nobody would knowingly sell their dreams.

    But there is something else, something more powerful than money that can make us give up on our dreams—that is, our sense of self-worth. Without realizing it, we end up giving up our dreams in an effort to feel good about ourselves.

    Society teaches us that you are what you do. We are bombarded with this message from childhood. We are constantly asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

    Combine this with the clear connection between status and money, and the formula is complete. We work at jobs we hate in order to attain high social standing, so that we can feel good about who we are.  

    The trouble is that our dreams rarely line up with what society happens to consider prestigious. And so, in an effort to reconcile our ambitions with our need for approval, we replace our dreams with what society wants us to do.

    And if, during a moment of clarity, we decide we no longer care about wealth and prestige, then they get us with the fear of poverty. “Do what we tell you, and you will be rich. Disobey, and you will have nothing.”

    That’s when most of us give up and forget about our dreams altogether.

    But I don’t believe that it is possible to completely lose our dreams. Like a precious jewel that accumulated years of dust, our dreams are waiting to be uncovered from beneath layers of fears and insecurities.

    Taking back our dreams is the first step to building the life that we want—a life that is true to who we really are. It may seem intimidating at first, but if you find the courage to reclaim your dreams, they will light the way to a meaningful, fulfilling life.

    Photo by sidonath

  • 4 Conscious Choices to Stay Balanced and Happy When You’re Busy

    4 Conscious Choices to Stay Balanced and Happy When You’re Busy

    “Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton

    I’m not someone who enjoys busyness or sees it as a sign of importance. In fact, I’ve often sacrificed money and opportunities to have more time to watch movies, roam around my neighborhood, and generally live life at a slow pace.

    This is the way I most enjoy experiencing my days—by creating space to just be. And I find this supports my passion as a writer, since it allows me abundant opportunities to play, explore, and expand my understanding of the world and my place within it.

    But I’ve also noticed that I formerly limited myself in response to underlying fears and limiting beliefs, and then justified it with my fondness for free time.

    Whenever I received an opportunity to do something that would stretch my comfort zone, I reminded myself how hectic my schedule would be if I said yes.

    Whenever I considered doing something new that I feared might fail (or might succeed, giving me more responsibility), I reminded myself that I was already meeting my needs, so it would probably be best to just keep doing what I was doing.

    Essentially, I allowed myself to believe I had only one healthy motivation for not growing in new directions; and while this did support my priorities and preferences, it also created a sense of stagnation.

    So this year I decided to challenge those limiting beliefs and fears. I started redefining myself beyond the safe roles of writer and free spirit, and recognized that I could actually be happier for trying new things and taking more risks.

    While I know the choice was ultimately positive for me, I’ve struggled a little in the execution.

    I’ve overwhelmed my schedule with projects—including the recent redesign/forum launch, a new book on self-love, and my first ever eCourse.

    I’ve tried to do more on my own than I feasibly can—from reading and editing an ever-growing number of monthly blog submissions, to mentoring new writers, to handling all aspects of the site’s daily operations, to maintaining a freelance job writing for ‘tween girls.

    And in the process, I’ve sacrificed some of my needs and priorities, including exercise and relaxation.

    I’ve swung the pendulum from calm to chaos, and I’ve left myself little time and space to discover the middle ground between holding myself back and pushing myself.

    I’m now in the process of adjusting to this decision to do new things, and I’ve realized it requires four conscious choices:

    • Recognizing my non-negotiable needs and prioritizing them
    • Setting realistic expectations about what I can do and what I can’t
    • Regularly checking in with myself to ensure my choices support my intentions
    • Learning from my emotions instead of reacting to them

    If you’re also adjusting to a busier lifestyle—whether you’re working toward a dream or taking on new responsibilities at work or at home—these tips may help:

    1. Recognize your non-negotiable needs.

    Write down the top two or three things you need to do daily for your emotional well-being, your physical health, and your sense of balance. Include the bare minimum you could do to meet these, and ideal times. For me, that includes:

    Emotional well-being

    • Daily meditation and/or deep breathing (five minutes after waking up)
    • Journaling (five minutes before going to sleep)

    Physical health

    • Daily exercise, even if just a walk outside (ten minutes around lunch time)
    • Consistent sleep (eight hours—doable if I’m more efficient instead of wasting time online)

    Sense of balance

    • Time to relax and unwind (a half-hour bath at night)
    • Time to play (a half-hour of something fun at night, preferably with someone else)

    You’ve now established the bare minimum for your needs and created a plan to meet them. Even meeting the minimum might be hard. It might require you to ask for help or say no to certain requests. Think of it as saying yes to your happiness.

    2. Set realistic expectations about what you can and can’t do.

    I have a habit of making a schedule based on what I want to accomplish and then feeling disappointed in myself if I don’t meet that.

    My schedule doesn’t often leave room for the unexpected, which could encompass tasks taking longer than I anticipated they would, or new opportunities coming up, personally or professionally.

    If you’re striving to meet your boss’s expectations, you may have less leeway in being flexible. But when it comes to the arbitrary deadlines we set for ourselves, we have the power to release the pressure.

    I often worry that deviations from my plan mean I’m losing control and decreasing the odds of doing what I set out to do. This actually sets me up for failure.

    When I worry about what I’m not doing, I’m not focused on what I am. And that’s what’s enabled me to do things well in the past: not perfect adherence to a schedule, but focus and immersion in the process.

    A better approach is to set a plan, do what we can, and then adjust as we go. Whatever we can’t comfortably fit in a day will just have to wait.

    3. Regularly check in with yourself to ensure your choices are supporting your intentions.

    I’ve found some contradictions in my recent mode of operating, including:

    • I try to do everything myself because this site means so much to me, and I fear delegating responsibility to someone who may not care quite as much. The consequence: I’m sometimes stretched too thin to give everything the care it deserves.
    • I’m taking on new projects because I know I’ll be happier for stretching myself, but I’ve deprioritized a lot of the other things that make me happy.

    In recognizing these contradictions, I’m able to adjust accordingly.

    I can challenge the belief that tells me I need to do everything myself, and seek help (which I’ve recently done). I can create a better balance between working toward future joy and creating joy in the process.

    Take the time to check in what you really want—not just some day down the road, but in your everyday experience in the world. If you recognize you’re not enabling that, make tiny adjustments where you can.

    4. Learn from your emotions instead of reacting to them.

    When we’re doing something new, our emotions run the full gamut, from excitement to fear, eagerness to anxiety, and countless shades in between.

    Some of these feelings are natural consequences of stretching our comfort zone, but other times they’re indicators about what’s not working and what we need to change.

    I’ve learned to stop whenever I’m feeling something overwhelming and ask myself these four questions:

    • What led up to this?
    • Is this feeling a response to ignoring a need, pushing myself too hard, expecting too much of myself, or somehow treating myself without kindness and compassion?
    • Is this a feeling I could release by coming back to the present moment (like worry about the future) or is it something with a lesson for me (like feeling overwhelmed because I need help, or anxious because I need a break)?
    • If there’s a lesson, what can I do or change to apply it?

    When we learn from our emotions, they become less overpowering and we become more present, more balanced, and more effective.

    —

    A while back, I wondered if the days of leisurely strolls were over, now that I’ve chosen to do a lot more. Then I realized that’s up to me. There is a grey area between underachieving and overachieving where growth and presence are both possible.

    Finding that space is about making conscious choices. I know what those are for me. What are the choices that help you?

  • Reconnect with Your Authentic Self Instead of Denying Your Feelings

    Reconnect with Your Authentic Self Instead of Denying Your Feelings

    “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.” ~Lao Tzu

    I recently took seven weeks off of work and rented a place in Laguna Beach.

    The trip was meant to be a relaxing vacation and possibly a change of residence; it turned out to be a wakeup call.

    I started the trip out by going on my first date since 2010. The pollen count was high, and my sinuses were none too happy. I’m still not sure if it was being on a date or the medication that triggered so much anxiety; maybe it was a combination of both.

    Later that evening, as I replayed the day in my mind, old insecurities came to the surface. That feeling of not being good enough engulfed my being.

    I just smiled, shook my head, and thought to myself, “Really? Does this still ring true for you?”

    The answer was no. But it still came up, so I had to explore it further. So I spent the next two and a half weeks in a battle with the Southern California Pollen Count and my inner self-worth issues.

    Most of my life had been controlled by an underlying sense of anxiety.

    In my teen years and throughout most of my twenties, I numbed it with drugs and alcohol. In 2005, after I celebrated my first year of sobriety, I started to really explore this feeling. I signed up for hundreds of newsletters, spent many hours in the Dana Point Library, and purchased over 100 books that year alone.

    I read, listened, and put into practice anything that came across my path.

    The movie “The Secret” spoke to part of me, and books from Deepak Chopra, Ester and Jerry Hicks, and countless others made me temporarily feel as if it were going to be okay.

    I wanted so badly to just be happy, to be able to really look into the mirror and like what I saw.

    By April 2009, I thought I had it all figured out. My goal-setting exercises were bringing my desires to fruition, my body was as healthy as it has ever been, and my love life was what I had always dreamed it would be.

    A few months later it all fell apart. I found myself again back to square one. It didn’t make sense and all I wanted was to know was: What part of this equation was missing?

    My mission to figure it out was renewed, and the way my life has unfolded since has been a long, strange trip indeed.

    Looking back at my self-education is partially humorous and equally frustrating.

    I now find it humorous that I worked so hard to “fix” something that wasn’t actually broken.

    I find it a bit frustrating to have consumed so much information that perpetuated this seemingly endless cycle of self-help stupidity.

    Two very popular self-help ideals come to my mind.

    1. “You just have to be positive.”

    This may be worst thing you can say to someone who is depressed and sees no way out of it.

    You read books on “how to attract everything you ever want in life.” You understand that positive thinking leads to positive results. Just when you start making progress, something happens and you feel frustrated or angry.

    You find yourself upset at yourself for being upset. You think, “Why can’t I just be happy? What’s wrong with me?” The depression deepens.

    Listen, you don’t have to be positive all the time.

    It’s okay if you get upset or don’t feel happy every waking moment.

    Before you can cultivate a positive mindset, you must first honor where you are and the journey that brought you here. Our general outlook on life is a mixture of genetics and experience. Some reactions are very deeply engrained and will take a concentrated effort over time to change.

    You’re not broken if you can’t see the silver lining, which is why this next bit of wisdom needs another look.

    2. “Just fake it until you make it.”

    It’s a catchy saying, but horrible advice.

    The feelings you have present in your life are valid. The act of faking it is an act of denial, which can have some really negative effects on your psyche.

    You can’t fake your way out of sadness and depression.

    You can put on a happy face, and to some degree it will change your mood. But, during those times when you take away distractions and you have to sit alone with yourself, the act of faking it will make you feel like you’re crawling out of your own skin.

    I didn’t realize that faking it perpetuated anxiety.

    Being really comfortable with myself didn’t actually happen until I began to just sit still on a regular basis.

    At first it was overwhelming; anxiety turned to frustration, to anger and rage, and finally to shame. I felt cracked wide open, exposed and raw.

    The feeling really sucked and it lasted for almost six months.

    But I sat with it. I owned it, and in that space of raw vulnerability I stopped faking it. For the first time in my life it felt okay to be me.

    There is a real power in authenticity.

    It is an act of love to honor where you are right now.

    From my experience with sitting in my own stuff came my life as a writer. My first book followed and my newsletter audience grew.

    Yet, with all that I’ve studied and think I know I still found myself experiencing that old worn out feeling of “you’re just not ever going to be enough.”

    So, how did I find myself in Laguna Beach overwhelmed and feeling less than worthy of love and affection?

    Well, that was actually pretty easy for me to discover. You see, I’m an avid note taker and list maker. It only took a few hours to sort through my 2012 notes to see that I had only half been walking my talk.

    My practice of meditation had taken a backseat to my “trying to achieve things.”

    My practice of mindfulness had eroded; evening meals were consumed along with DVDs and Facebook noise-feeds.

    Three months of sunsets went unseen.

    My reverence for the present moment had once again been lost while my mind searched for fulfillment in the future; the result of which was the rise of my existential anxiety.

    A Simple Plan to Reconnect with Your Authentic Self

    • Still your body and mind. Commit to just five minutes of meditation and build your practice from there.
    • Maintain focused attention on your breathing and honor the task at hand.
    • Witness your reactions to get to the core reasons behind your emotional response.
    • Take time each evening to write down little moments of gratitude, love, and awe that happened throughout your day.
    • Remind yourself that you have nowhere else to be other than where you are right now.

    From my experience thus far the first part of the plan is the most powerful; science backs up that claim. That’s why I am building my daily sitting meditation.

    My dream is to see more authenticity in this world.

    My belief is that this will lead to more compassion, which in turn will lead to more change.

    How about you? Want to change the world too?

    Then please join me by spending just a little bit of time doing absolutely nothing, every day for the rest of your life.

    Who’s in!? Tell me you’re with me!

    Photo by sierragoddess

  • 5 Ways Meditation Can Improve Your Life and Make You Happier

    5 Ways Meditation Can Improve Your Life and Make You Happier

    Meditation

    “If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.” ~Lao Tzu

    For most of my life I had the overwhelming feeling that I was lacking something. I felt like I was not good enough, smart enough, or pretty enough.

    I was nothing but an unattractive, chubby girl of little worth. In my late twenties I formed a huge crush that changed my life, for the worse, or so I thought. Against my will, I developed an unbelievable attraction to women. I was horrified!

    Being gay was the cherry on top of my pile of shortcomings. This new realization confirmed the belief that my life would be nothing but disappointment, and it totally crushed the little self-esteem that I had.

    In spite of my overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, I took the scary steps of falling in love and coming out to family and friends, with positive results.

    Even though my fears of judgment and rejection were proven to be fabrications, I was still unable to shake the negative loop that repeated: “You are not good enough. You will fail. You are a disappointment.”

    I convinced myself that any happiness that I experienced was momentary and would be gone in a flash. So when my relationship ended in heartbreak, I was able to bask in the glory of being right.

    My negativity was justified. My feelings of worthlessness were correct. I gave myself permission to be miserable, to struggle in the dark caves of depression, to continue to live in fear.

    But then one day a miracle happened, even with my negative mantra playing loudly in my head: “Loser. Failure. Disappointment.” Even over the deafening chants of pessimism, I heard a whisper: “You can change this.”

    I knew that my life needed changing, but I had no idea how to achieve this. I wanted to find the happiness that I felt belonged to everyone else. I yearned for the elusive joy that kept slipping through my fingers. I was determined to find it and claim it.

    I tried superficial ways of being happy; you know, the methods that my favorite TV characters used to deal with heartache: I shopped, I redecorated, I adopted a kitten, thinking surely these things would bring me joy. And they did, but it was fleeting.

    Next, I tried psychic readings, life coaching, and finally therapy. It was through therapy that I started a meditation class and my life really began to open up. The veil of depression lifted; I felt lighter and optimistic.

    Finally, through the regular practice of meditation, I learned that happiness can’t be brought, predicted, or achieved from outside sources. Happiness comes from the inside out.

    With this realization, meditation has changed my life in five significant ways.

    1. Meditation gives you a great start to your day.

    I am not a morning person. I am not one of those people who spring out of bed before the alarm chimes. I would hit the snooze button, pull the covers over my head, and pretend it was Saturday.

    Once the cruel hand of reality finally slapped me awake, the morning panic would start. Up in a flash, I’d be rushing to get dressed then out the door. I’d skip breakfast and I’d arrive to work late, creeping past the boss’s office.

    But now I wake up at 5:45am in order to meditate. Though I still have to forcibly drag myself from my warm cozy bed, once I sit on my meditation cushion I’m able to relax, breathe, and set my intention for the day.

    Meditation allows you to center yourself and reflect on the day ahead. By setting your intentions, you are able to shape your experiences and your reactions to events around you. It’s a daily reminder that you are in control of your life. You can choose the kind of day you will have.

    2. Meditation increases positivity.

    I practice Loving Kindness (Metta) Meditation. This type of meditation generates and projects loving and positive feelings/energy into the universe. That means sending love, understanding, and compassion to yourself, family, friends, and even strangers.

    I’ve found that spending an hour being positive has made me—wait for it—more positive. Hard to believe, I know, but it’s true.

    Our energy and actions are like boomerangs. If you put out negative energy, if that is what you focus on, that is what will continuously show up in your life, and that is all that you will be capable of seeing. But when you create positive feelings, everything you see seems to change.

    3. Meditation increases self-confidence.

    I have no empirical evidence, but I can say with confidence that as a result of meditation I now have some. Seeing the world in a positive light has resulted in me seeing myself in a positive way.

    I love myself for just being me. I don’t feel the need to pretend to be what I think others want me to be. I have learned that I am not required to chip away at my square-shaped self to fit into a round hole.

    Taking the time to see the world and yourself in a positive light increases self-confidence and confirms that there is a place where you fit, just as you are. There is no need to try to be something that you are not. Meditation is an opportunity to sit with the realization that you are enough.

    4. Meditation reduces anxiety.

    Meditation is about turning off the negative chatter that creates anxiety. It’s about breathing and letting go. By focusing on positive energy and thoughts, you are able to reduce the anxiety that you might be holding onto.

    Through meditation you can relax knowing that any time anxiety rears its ugly head, you have the tools to deal with it. Deep breaths and a quiet moment may be all that’s needed to calm anxious nerves.

    5. Meditation affords you a deeper connection with yourself.

    When I first started meditation, one of the most difficult things to do was to sit quietly with my own thoughts. I knew myself from the outside in, from the labels I wore like fashionable accessories, trying to be what I thought others expected of me.

    There was a disconnection between who I was and who I thought I should be. However, when you sit in silence without external distractions, your inner dialogue is difficult to ignore. The inner voice that tells the truth of who you are gets louder.

    Meditation has a way of making you more mindful of your thoughts, feelings, and sense of who you are. It’s easier to create a life of happiness if you are able to connect with your authentic self. It’s a way for you to get to know yourself, from the inside out.

    —

    You can easily incorporate meditation into your life. All you need is a quiet place to sit and a couple of uninterrupted minutes, and you can even use a guided meditation (there are tons of free ones online).

    The important thing is just to sit quietly without set expectations, free of self-judgment. There is no right or wrong way to do it.

    Don’t get me wrong; I’m not skipping around with my head in the clouds. There are days when I revert to my old thought patterns, allowing the negative mantra to cry out. But the difference is that now I am mindful of this and have the tools to deal with negativity more effectively.

    Five minutes of meditation can have a significant and lasting impact on your physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. It certainly has on mine.

  • Letting Go of Your Past Suffering to Feel Peaceful and Free

    Letting Go of Your Past Suffering to Feel Peaceful and Free

    “Letting go give us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    I stood alone in what had been my childhood bedroom, staring at the dresser with a familiar discomfort. My fingers clutched at the handle of the second drawer from the top and pulled hard, straining from the weight of its contents.

    I reached in with both hands, the drawer with its quarter inch plywood base teetering dangerously on the edge of the frame, and lifted them out, one by one.

    Unicorns, fairies, rainbows, mystical maidens, all disappeared as I placed the journals into the cardboard box I’d asked my mother to bring to me.

    She watched wordlessly as I carried it through the house and to the front door, then said simply, “I have to say, I’m not sorry to see those go.”

    In that moment, my mother was keenly aware of something that had eluded me for most of my life. And now, at the age of 28, I was ready to let go of something I had always been attached to, something that had caused me so much pain throughout all of the years I had been writing in those journals: my former self.

    Writing has always come naturally to me. As an only child and a classic introvert, I found it far less intimidating to share my thoughts with a blank sheet of paper than with another human being. 

    I began to journal actively at the age of twelve, filling page after page each night with my tales of prepubescent woe.

    I continued this practice until I was halfway through college, dedicating over a dozen spiral-bound volumes to a verbose body of work seeking to prove my hypothesis that my existence was pointless and that nobody loved me.

    My writing habit was far more destructive than therapeutic. It was much easier to validate my own negative emotions than it was to challenge my perceptions, ask others for help, or work to make meaningful changes in my life.

    The more I wrote about my problems, the more I allowed them to consume me. My suffering became my identity, and I didn’t know who I was anymore without it. 

    During high school, I sunk into depression and surrounded myself with other deeply unhappy people. For four years, we alternated between bonding over how miserable we all were and turning against each other in predictable cycles of emotional manipulation and abuse.

    Every night, I sat alone in my room committing all of the day’s events to paper. I chose to not only relive these painful experiences, but to continually remind myself of them.

    Mercifully, high school is designed to end. When it finally did, I cut off connections to my high school friends, but the shame that had allowed me to form those friendships followed me to college.

    It graduated with me, accompanied me to work every morning, and multiplied exponentially after the end of my first long-term relationship at the age of 25.

    It would take three years of therapy and endless support from the loving souls I now choose to surround myself with for me to realize just how much of my own suffering I have caused.

    For the better part of my life, I have chosen to view the world through a negative lens. I have resigned myself to feeling like a victim of my circumstances, instead of applying that energy to changing my perception of them.

    That night, I carried the box of journals home with me, ripped the pages from their bindings, and fed them to my shredder in small digestible stacks. I forced myself to avoid the temptation of rereading what I had written, and returning to the past.

    Watching the brightly colored words slowly disappear between the blades, I felt no remorse, only a deep sense of freedom. Ten years of writing filled four garbage bags, and their last measurable impact on me was the trip I had to take to the dumpster.

    It took me 28 years to release the attachment I felt to my journals, but I’d like to share what I learned from the process:

    Release the judgment you feel toward who you were in the past. 

    I no longer judge the young girl who worked so hard to define herself on the pages of those journals. I wish I could write to her now and tell her that she is loved, and that she does not have to wait for things to get better—that she already has everything she needs to be happy.

    I wish I could show her all that she has to be grateful for, and tell her that I am proud of who she is, and who she will become.

    Know that you are not betraying yourself by moving on.

    I have often been afraid to stop talking or thinking about the past experiences that caused me suffering because I mistakenly believed that they were a part of me. I have to keep reminding myself now that my desire is to live in the present, not the past.

    While those experiences—along with the ones I remember more fondly—have helped to shape who I am today, they are not my identity.

    It is unnecessary for me to feel any more guilt releasing them than I do giving away a shirt that no longer fits me. Remember that you are more than the sum of your thoughts and experiences, and that while you do not need to judge them, these are things that often tie you down from being in the present moment.

    Share the experiences that cause you shame with people you love and trust.

    I have not always found it easy to trust other people, and in the past, when I was not burying my emotions in my journals, I was putting my trust in people who did not treat it with much care or compassion.

    However, I am grateful for those experiences because they allow me to recognize that I am truly fortunate for the loving and compassionate relationships I have today. I have become friends with people who encourage me to share myself with them, who do not judge me for the things I think and feel, and who support me through the process of release.

    In a world where it is all too easy to form superficial connections, I encourage you to take the time to cultivate your real-life relationships. Focus on sharing raw, human emotions with a friend or partner, and on listening to them with all the passion you desire when you are sharing.

    In addition to helping to build trust between you, the courage you show in being open and vulnerable may allow your friend or partner to release one of their own burdens. There are very few things that are more rewarding and life affirming than being present in that way for someone you love.

    Photo by @Rayabi

  • The Zen of Anger: 5 Tips to Overcome Negative Reactions

    The Zen of Anger: 5 Tips to Overcome Negative Reactions

    “When you blame others, you give up your power to change.” ~Anthony Robins

    I used to be an angry person. And I was happy about that. In fact, I prided myself on that identity during high school.

    So devoted to the young and vapid demographic, I would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and practice the eighties version of the mad dog stare. In the eleventh grade, I decided smiling wasn’t hip, so I stopped.

    I wore surly like the Goth kids take to all-black attire. My friends thought I was cool because I said what I felt and did what I wanted. “You’re so awesome, Linda—it’s like you don’t care what other people think of you.”

    Except that I did. I cared so much, in fact, that I buried the vulnerability and the emotional pain from feeling that I wasn’t in control of my life.

    The truth is that many teens don’t feel like they fit in during the tumultuous high school years.

    Most people mature and evolve as they get older. Except those who don’t. Those of us who carry the smirk and the swagger past the twelfth grade are in for an adulthood of pain and emotional suffering.

    True rebels without a cause.

    Luckily, in my twenties I had an epiphany, which led me to change my negative, brooding, fly-off-the-handle ways.

    One day during a phone conversation, my friend Rachel made a comment that has stuck with me to this day. I was blabbing on about how the car mechanic was overcharging me for a transmission repair.

    All of a sudden Rachel interrupted me and said, “Did you ever notice that you get into a lot of fights with people?”

    My stomach dropped and my cheeks were hot as I fought back tears.

    I’d like to say I heeded this message immediately. Unfortunately, it was a couple of years before I finally turned my back on angry outbursts.

    The irony is that I’ve made a career out of counseling adolescents. Many are referred to therapy because of anger management issues.

    “Anger is a completely normal, usually healthy, human emotion. But when it gets out of control and turns destructive, it can lead to problems—problems at work, in your personal relationships, and in the overall quality of your life. And it can make you feel as though you’re at the mercy of an unpredictable and powerful emotion.”

    The good news is that, regardless of where your anger originated (DNA, angry parents or family members, childhood experiences, or lifestyle), there are practical tools available to manage your anger so it does not manage you.

    I’d be remiss if I said that you’ll wake up tomorrow and feel like Calm Callie or Stress-free Steve.

    Because anger has built up over many years, you’re probably good at projecting it (“throwing” it onto others as a defense against feeling it for yourself)—and it will take time to change.

    You’ve got to own your anger. Nobody made you into an angry person. Sure Mom and Dad, childhood events, past romantic relationships, and other situations may have contributed, but the past is gone forever.

    The beautiful thing is that you have today, and today you can feel calm, collected, and in control of your emotions.

    The following five tips, when practiced regularly, will replace negative reactions and lead to a more Zen-like you.

    1. Pay attention to your morning routine.

    How we start our day affects how the rest of our activities unfold. Set your alarm for fifteen minutes earlier (don’t worry—I’ll make it up on the backend in tip #5).

    Before you get out of bed, take a couple of breaths and say something positive. For example, “Another day. Another chance for a fresh start.” When you find yourself rushing throughout the day, remind yourself “there is enough time.”

    2. Get in touch with your anger.

    Do the following exercise when you have at least thirty minutes of uninterrupted time.

    Find a comfortable seated position. Close your eyes and think of what your anger looks like. What color or images do you see? Where in your body do you store anger? Pay attention to body temperature, clinched fists, heart rate, muscle tension, and butterflies in your stomach.

    Practice deep breaths throughout this exercise, and take a break if the feelings become too intense.

    When you’re ready, open your eyes and take a deep breath. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Pick up a notepad and jot down all your angry thoughts.

    Don’t overthink this—keep the stream of thoughts flowing without editing your responses. Spend at least five minutes recording what, where, when, and around whom you feel most angry.

    Read the list and decide what are your three biggest anger triggers and/or situations. Make a circle around the top three.

    On another sheet of paper, write three strategies for remedying each one.

    For example: Problem #1:

    I can’t stand my job.

    Strategies:

    • Update my resume by Friday at noon.
    • Contact two people and network about possible job openings by Thursday at 5:00 pm.
    • Call my mentor today and invite her to lunch in exchange for business ideas. (Pick up the tab).

    Repeat this exercise frequently, and don’t worry if some of the same issues show up. Problem-solving takes practice and patience.

    3. Unplug.

    Technology encourages us to react quickly. The minute we get that text or feel the phone vibration, we’re racing to respond. Reacting impulsively is a trigger for angry outbursts. Set aside time each day to be free from checking email, social media sites, and text messaging.

    4. Train your mind to respond slower.

    Think, speak, drive, text, listen, cook, eat, and walk slower. When you slow down, you’ll feel more in control of your options and your inner life.

    Leave post-it reminders on the computer, your car dashboard, and your front door. Our brains are not trained to remember many things, so write it down.

    5. Sleep on it!

    Honestly, if I had to choose just one option to manage anger, it would be getting sufficient sleep. Sleep deprivation is a huge culprit in negative moods, including anxiety and depression.

    Commit to going to bed earlier during the week. It’s nearly impossible to make calm, measured, responsible choices if you can barely keep your eyes open.

    Bottom line: You have everything you need to change. With daily commitment, practice, and patience, you’ll increase problem-solving abilities so you can manage your anger, rather than have your anger manage you.

    Remember, living in the past causes depression. Living in the future causes anxiety. Living in the here-and-now enables you to make healthy choices to increase emotional well-being.

    And the future begins now.

  • Make Sure You’ll Smile When You Look Back on Your Life

    Make Sure You’ll Smile When You Look Back on Your Life

    Looking Back

    “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.” ~Carl Rogers

    I had just gotten settled into my hospital bed after two hours of preparation. I had 32 electrodes taped to my bandage-wrapped skull, plugged into a machine that monitored my brainwaves, with just enough room to go from the bed to the bathroom.

    After two ambulance rides and multiple seizures, I needed to find out what was going on with my brain.

    The full diagnosis of my disease was still unknown then. The doctors told me it could be serious and to prepare for the worst.

    The worst?

    “Yes, they said. Your time on this earth could be seriously limited.”

    Weeks? Months? A year? Years? They said “yes.” In other words, they didn’t know yet.

    When the nurse left my room, I was there by myself with nothing but my thoughts about my life and death.

    It quickly dawned on me that at some point, most people would be in hospital beds, facing their mortality and asking themselves the hardest question they will be forced to ask: Did I live a fulfilled life?

    I began to audit my life and smiled.

    If the worst news came, I knew I’d be leaving this earth walking the path of fulfillment. Granted, I wanted several more decades to walk the path, but my brain condition forced me to answer that question of all questions.

    The phrase “the path of fulfillment” was a revelation I’d had nearly 20 years ago on the plane ride home from my mother’s funeral.

    Fulfillment is a constantly moving energy. It’s a path, not a place. You’re either walking on it or away from it. That’s why you have to work at it everyday to stay on the path.

    Back then I wasn’t doing what, in my heart, I knew I always wanted. I wanted to make movies and music, to influence others, to make the world a better place. There were so many things I always wanted to do.

    But they were huge endeavors, and fear superseded these dreams.

    I had to face the fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of rejection, the fear of what people would think.

    So I acted. I wanted to make a movie. It was 1999, so the first thing I did when I landed at home in Austin, Texas was buy a computer, Final Cut pro editing software, and a digital camera.

    I had never used a camera or editing software, but that didn’t matter. I took one small step at a time, and in two years my wife and I were travelling to New York, Los Angeles, and Muskogee, Oklahoma to view my documentary at film festivals.

    Guess what the documentary was about? That’s right—fulfillment!

    As a part of the documentary, I produced two of my own songs. Those songs played all over the world. That’s when there were 25,000 Internet Radio stations begging for music, so radio play over the web was accessible as long as you had a radio-ready produced song worth the airwaves.

    Again, one small step at a time, and I had a movie and music under my belt.

    I wanted to run a marathon. I was overweight and never really ran long distance before. But, all it took was a start, commitment, and follow-through. It took three years to accomplish, but I took small steps to make the big run.

    I started by running one mile, then two, then a 10K, then a ten miler, then running a marathon in four hours and forty-seven minutes. Not a record setting pace, eh? Didn’t matter. To me, I had won the gold medal.

    Fulfillment transcended again on March 5, 2007. That’s when I held my beautiful daughter in my arms, looking at all of her beauty, as she was perfect on that day she was to born. But she was dead. And it was tragic, no doubt about it, but if reinforced that life is fragile, and we need to honor it.

    So I’m not going into the darkness that lay ahead, just the light that came from her death.

    The revelation of fulfillment had elevated to the connections in our lives. Through all of this hardship, I was glad I’d married my best friend, as I don’t know how we could have survived otherwise.

    All of our friends and family stood with us and were there for whatever we needed. I had made it a commitment and priority for my 40-something years on this planet to nurture true and deep friendships.

    Those deep relationships paid off when I needed them the most. And still do.

    I am close friends with those that I connected with in first grade, sixth grade, high school, and college—those relationships where you can peel off all of the layers and just be yourself and laugh and cry all in the same breath.

    Again, it was a commitment I made to be a true friend for all of those decades. You have to be a friend to have friends.

    You have to make time to call them, Skype them, have a drink with them. In the end when you’re in your hospital bed facing your mortality, it is those connections that will truly matter.

    To build those connections, first and foremost, you have to connect with yourself.

    You have to know who you are, what you stand for, and how you want to connect with people and the society we live in.

    When you connect with yourself, you can face your fears. You can build the confidence to act on your passions, to commit to them and follow through. And in doing this with deep connections, you can walk the path of fulfillment.

    We now have a beautiful four-year-old daughter who is the brightest connection in our lives. My brain condition is in check as long as I take my handful of pills each day.

    I make sure I cherish every moment with my daughter, my wife and best friend, my friends, and my family.

    And I make damn sure that I honor my commitments to connect with myself, my loved ones, and the world where we all live.

    Remember, one day, you will be in your hospital bed auditing your life. When you do look back on your life, you want to make sure you smile.

    Photo by SilentMind8

  • 10 Ways to Deal with Negative or Difficult People

    10 Ways to Deal with Negative or Difficult People

    “Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.” ~Shirley MacLaine

    I love her to death, but it’s draining to talk to her.

    Every time I call this friend of mine, I know what I’m in for: a half-hour rant about everything that’s difficult, miserable, or unfair.

    Sometimes she focuses on the people she feels have wronged her, and other times she explores the general hopelessness of life. She never calls to see how I’m doing, and she rarely listens to what’s going on in my life for more than a minute before shifting the focus back to herself.

    I tell myself I call because I care, but sometimes I wonder if I have ulterior motives–to pump up my ego offering good advice or even to feel better about my own reality.

    I’m no saint, and if there’s one thing I know well, it’s that we only do things repeatedly if we believe there’s something in it for us. Even if that something is just to feel needed.

    I thought about this the other day when a reader wrote to me with an interesting question: “How do you offer compassion to someone who doesn’t seem to deserve it?”

    While I believe everyone deserves compassion, I understand what she meant after reading more. She went on to describe her offensive, sexist, racist boss who emotionally exhausts everyone around him. He sounds a lot more hateful than my friend, who is, sadly, just terribly depressed.

    But these people have one thing in common: boundless negative energy that ends up affecting everyone around them.

    So today I started thinking about how we interact with negative or difficult people. People who seem chronically critical, belligerent, indignant, angry, or just plain rude.

    When someone repeatedly drains everyone around them, how do you maintain a sense of compassion without getting sucked into their doom? And how do you act in a way that doesn’t reinforce their negativity–and maybe even helps them?

    Here’s what I’ve come up with:

    1. Resist the urge to judge or assume.

    It’s hard to offer someone compassion when you assume you have them pegged. He’s a jerk. She’s a malcontent. He’s an–insert other choice noun. Even if it seems unlikely someone will wake up one day and act differently, we have to remember it is possible.

    When you think negative thoughts, it comes out in your body language. Someone prone to negativity may feel all too tempted to mirror that. Try coming at them with the positive mindset you wish they had. Expect the best in them. You never know when you might be pleasantly surprised.

    2. Dig deeper, but stay out of the hole.

    It’s always easier to offer someone compassion if you try to understand where they’re coming from. But that can’t completely justify bad behavior. If you show negative people you support their choice to behave badly, you give them no real incentive to make a change (which they may actually want deep down).

    It may help to repeat this in your head when you deal with them: “I understand your pain. But I’m most helpful if I don’t feed into it.” This might help you approach them with both kindness and firmness so they don’t bring you down with them.

    3.Maintain a positive boundary.

    Some people might tell you to visualize a bright white light around you to maintain a positive space when other people enter it with negativity. This doesn’t actually work for me because I respond better to ideas in words than visualizations. So I tell myself this, “I can only control the positive space I create around myself.”

    Then when I interact with this person, I try to do two things, in this order of importance:

    • Protect the positive space around me. When their negativity is too strong to protect it, I need to walk away.
    • Help them feel more positive, not act more positive–which is more likely to create the desired result.

    4. Disarm their negativity, even if just for now.

    This goes back to the ideas I mentioned above. I know my depressed friend will rant about life’s injustices as long as I let her. Part of me feels tempted to play amateur psychiatrist–get her talking, and then try to help her reframe situations into a more positive light.

    Then I remind myself that I can’t change her whole way of being in one phone call. She has to want that. I also can’t listen for hours on end, as I’ve done in the past. But I can listen compassionately for a short while and then help her focus on something positive right now, in this moment. I can ask about her upcoming birthday. I can remind her it’s a beautiful day for a walk.

    Don’t try to solve or fix them. Just aim to help them now.

    5. Temper your emotional response.

    Negative people often gravitate toward others who react strongly–people who easily offer compassion or get outraged or offended. I suspect this gives them a little light in the darkness of their inner world–a sense that they’re not floating alone in their own anger or sadness.

    People remember and learn from what you do more than what you say. If you feed into the situation with emotions, you’ll teach them they can depend on you for a reaction. It’s tough not to react because we’re human, but it’s worth practicing.

    Once you’ve offered a compassionate ear for as long as you can, respond as calmly as possible with a simple line of fact. If you’re dealing with a rude or angry person, you may want to change the subject to something unrelated: “Dancing with the Stars is on tonight. Planning to watch it?”

    6. Question what you’re getting out of it.

    Like I mentioned above, we often get something out of relationships with negative people. Get real honest with yourself: have you fallen into a caretaker role because it makes you feel needed? Have you maintained the relationship so you can gossip about this person in a holier-than-thou way with others? Do you have some sort of stake in keeping the things the way they are?

    Questioning yourself helps you change the way you respond–which is really all you can control. You can’t make someone think, feel, or act differently. You can be as kind as possible or as combative as possible, and still not change reality for someone else. All you can control is what you think and do–and then do your best to help them without hurting yourself.

    7. Remember the numbers.

    Research shows that people with negative attitudes have significantly higher rates of stress and disease. Someone’s mental state plays a huge role in their physical health. If someone’s making life difficult for people around them, you can be sure they’re doing worse for themselves.

    What a sad reality, that someone has so much pain inside them they have to act out just to feel some sense of relief–even if that relief comes from getting a rise out of people. When you remember how much a difficult person is suffering, it’s easier to stay focused on minimizing negativity, as opposed to defending yourself.

    8. Don’t take it personally, but know that sometimes it is personal.

    Conventional wisdom suggests that you should never take things personally when you deal with a negative person. I think it’s a little more complicated than that. You can’t write off everything someone says about you just because the person is insensitive or tactless. Even an abrasive person may have a valid point. Try to weigh their comments with a willingness to learn.

    Accept that you don’t deserve the excessive emotions in someone’s tone, but weigh their ideas with a willingness to learn. Some of the most useful lessons I’ve learned came from people I wished weren’t right.

    9. Act instead of just reacting.

    Oftentimes we wait until someone gets angry or depressed before we try to buoy their spirits. If you know someone who seems to deal with difficult thoughts or feelings often (as demonstrated in their behavior), don’t wait for a situation to help them create positive feelings.

    Give them a compliment for something they did well. Remind them of a moment when they were happy–as in “Remember when you scored that touchdown during the company picnic? That was awesome!” You’re more apt to want to boost them up when they haven’t brought you down. This may help mitigate that later and also give them a little relief from their pain.

    10. Maintain the right relationship based on reality as it is.

    With my friend, I’m always wishing she could be more positive. I consistently put myself in situations where I feel bad because I want to help, because I want her to be happy. I’ve recently realized the best I can do is accept her as she is, let her know I believe in her ability to be happy, and then give her space to make the choice.

    That means gently bringing our conversation to a close after I’ve made an effort to help. Or cutting short a night out if I’ve done all I can and it’s draining me. Hopefully she’ll want to change some day. Until then, all I can do is love her, while loving myself enough to take care of my needs. That often means putting them first.

    —

    I’ve learned you can’t always save the world, but you can make the world a better place by working on yourself–by becoming self-aware, tapping into your compassion, and protecting your positive space. You may even help negative people by fostering a sense of peace within yourself that their negativity can’t pierce.

  • Stop Running from Your Life and Start Living It

    Stop Running from Your Life and Start Living It

    Running

    “Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.” ~Buddha

    I spent most of my life running. I ran from people, commitments, physical locations, and most of all, myself. And if I wasn’t running, I was definitely thinking about it.

    I always had great excuses. I wasn’t happy, didn’t fit in, wasn’t comfortable—the excuses were never ending. I was rarely content. So in late 2010, I decided that the best solution was to sell everything, uproot, and move across country.

    The problem with always running is that eventually you grow exhausted.

    Alone in an unfamiliar city, I first thought my depression was due to the vast changes in my life. Not only had I left a relatively small city for one of the largest in Canada, I was jobless, friendless, and scared out of my mind. That’s when things started to fall apart.

    Little by little, everything began to crumble. My self-esteem, confidence, and self-assurance were evaporating, and I didn’t understand what was going on. I had never stopped long enough to take a good look at my life, so I didn’t even know myself.

    I didn’t want to know myself.

    By 2012, I lost interest in most activities that once fulfilled my life. I went through cycles of depression, hopelessness, and panic. I was certain that the world moved ahead and I had fallen behind everyone else.

    I was completely broken and, unlike the other times when I’d struggled, I didn’t think I could be repaired. 

    I attempted counseling but it didn’t help. It just seemed like the layers of my issues weren’t only psychological, but also spiritual. Sure, everything had a logical solution, but it didn’t necessarily give me any comfort.

    Talking to friends wasn’t helpful either. In fact, in some cases it seemed to make me feel worse.

    I sought books and blogs to find the help I needed. The miraculous thing is that once I started to look for solutions, one by one, I found the exact reading material I needed at that very moment. One little molecule at a time, I felt like I was being rebuilt.

    Then everything took an abrupt turn.     

    It was the first weekend in September and I was sitting outside on a beautiful day, feeling a deep sense of peace and relaxation. Maybe, I decided, things were starting to look up. Maybe everything was finally coming together.

    That night I had an intense dream where I was in a mad rush to find a specific person in order to finish a task. I finally found him and he held up a baby for me to see. The child kissed her tiny fingers, then touched my face and in an adult voice said, “I love you.”

    I awoke the next morning feeling like this was strangely a sign of hope.

    Immediately, I thought that one of my close friends back home, who was a spiritual person, would understand the intensity I felt over such a dream. We often discussed our personal struggles and successes, encouraging and helping each other in our journey. She was a big believer in synchronicity and would be elated to learn that I had this positive sign.

    Before I had a chance to contact her, I found out the terrible news: She had been killed in a car accident the previous day.

    Once I got over the shock and disbelief, I felt that the dream was a message from her. We always talked about “signs,” and since she loved children (and was actually a teacher), it made sense that she would communicate with me through a child.

    I felt a great deal of grief over her death, but the dream left me with an unexpected sense of hope.

    I thought about the kind of person she was; she was adventurous, always tried to see the good in others, and lived in the moment. I also thought about how she admired my fiery, direct, and honest attitude. That’s when I realized it was time to bring that person back.

    Although I continued to struggle for the upcoming months, I was feeling a tinge of hope that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

    In late 2012, I was shocked to learn that two more of my friends had died—both were young and had a short bout with cancer.

    It was yet another reminder that we are only given so many days, so much time, and we should use it on things and people that matter to us.

    I ended a friendship that was draining and hurtful. I also put a lot less focus on those who didn’t bring something positive to the table, instead focusing on those who made me laugh and were a joy to be around.

    But even then, I didn’t feel completely fulfilled and often found myself falling into my old, negative thought patterns, usually coinciding with the end of the week.

    Then I took a friend’s advice and picked up a book by Louise Hay. It changed my life.

    In one of her books, she outlines an exercise that requires the reader to visualize themselves as a child of five or six. You have to envision yourself looking into your own eyes as a child. I did so and the first thought that ran through my head was, “I’m sorry that I ruined your life.”

    I immediately broke down. I never cried with such intensity before. Until that moment, I had never realized that this was my central thought for so long.

    No wonder I felt so miserable and defeated. Telling anyone that they ruined your life is a pretty broad statement—and yet, I was telling this to myself everyday.

    Things didn’t become perfect after that day, but I saw some immediate changes. I felt lighter and slept better than I had before. I was calmer and centered in a way I had never experienced in my life; it was a new normal for me.

    I had spent so many years racing away from my thoughts, feelings, fears, and insecurities because the idea of dealing with them was overwhelming. But it had to happen.

    I no longer run away because I know it doesn’t bring you true happiness. I face each situation with courage, but mostly, I follow my instincts and do what feels right. It hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

    I’m not suggesting that every day is magical, wonderful, and full of pink unicorns. (I wish!) But I’ve learned that the key is to accept yourself with the same love and compassion as you would for the most important person in your life.

    Really, it should be one in the same.

    Photo by StarMama