Tiny Buddha

Tag: Happiness

  • The Beauty of Doing Nothing: Why I’ve Embraced Being Unproductive

    The Beauty of Doing Nothing: Why I’ve Embraced Being Unproductive

    “Every good cause is worth some inefficiency.” ~Paul Samuelson

    I made a mess yesterday. The mess is still there. Who knows when the mess will disappear.

    The mess provided me with one of those sense-pleasing plates of food that lingers in the mind long after the last bite. The kind that makes you wonder if there is a rhyme and reason to our world after all. A plate of food so delectable it provided a raison for my être. (If only for a little while.)

    But this story is not about the art of nourishing oneself. It is about dirty dishes and unfolded laundry. And also a little about unfulfilled potential and the beauty of living in the maybe.

    You see, I have been living rather inefficiently lately. To-do lists have been decorating the inside of my recycling bin. I’ve been measuring my progress by the amount of naps taken, and I have forgone the opportunity to expand my productivity. Because productivity requires focused effort. And lately, effort has been spilling left and right, wasted a little here and a little there.

    I’ve consciously decided to use my time frivolously, dipping in and out of idleness like a bag of crispy treats.

    This newfound way of organizing my days still feels very fresh and raw to me. It comes after years of optimizing every aspect of my life. Formerly, I neatly arranged my life into one-hour timeslots in an attempt to mold a perfect career, body, and even perfect relationships. I tracked my success with a meticulous timesheet. And success I had (or so I thought).

    I was ticking off one accomplishment after the other and always strived to be, do, and have more. Although strenuous, the method worked. Until one day, it didn’t.

    About two years ago I woke up and nothing worked anymore. My body had decided to no longer cooperate with my frantic behavior. It had simply been worked too hard for too long, and it had nothing left to give.

    Stubborn as I was, I treated my worn-out body like a new project. I took every vitamin in the book, quit sugar, quit gluten—basically quite everything tasty—did #yogaeverydamnday, went on social media detoxes, and hopped from one alternative healer to the next.

    Nothing helped, and I became increasingly desperate. I had developed stubborn back pains, anxiety-inducing tinnitus, and crippling insomnia. My concoction of remedies did pretty much nothing for me. My will to live plummeted with each misshapen step to health.

    And then a little (and at the same time big) miracle happened.

    I decided to simply let go. I surrendered to the sleepy eyes and the fuzzy brain and the profound, yet inexplicable sadness inside of me. I let go of trying to make it go away.

    I tossed my strict diet and exercise regimes in the bin. I didn’t meditate anymore at times when I would rather sleep, or spend money on health practitioners at times when I would rather spend money on a movie ticket.

    I simply let go and accepted my current reality. I gave in to the impermanence of life and accepted that I could no longer do what I was once able to do. In return, I have received a gloriously inefficient approach to life and a deep sense of the present moment.

    Let me illustrate what this means with a typical Saturday in my current life:

    6.30 AM – I wake up in accordance with my natural body clock. I vow to no longer wake up so early on weekends.

    9.00 AM – I am still in bed.

    9.15 AM – I get up and make myself a simple porridge. I proceed to eat this for the next hour and a half. The porridge gets cold halfway through. I vow to eat a little quicker next time.

    11.45 AM – I proceed to alternate between reading my book and dosing off for short periods of time.

    2.00 PM – I have a short lunch and contrast this with a long stroll in the park afterward.

    4:00 PM – I make an attempt to write, but mainly just stare at a blank piece of paper. I vow to stare at a blank piece of paper more often.

    5 PM – I start preparing a meal. I don’t use a recipe, but the dish is surprisingly tasty. I vow to use fewer recipes going forward.

    7.00 PM – I pick up my book but decide to do a mindful stretch instead.

    9.00 PM – I wanted to do a meditation before bed, but the stretching has lulled me into a sleep-like state. After a day of doing nothing much at all—especially not the dishes—I go to bed early.

    I vow to do the dishes tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after tomorrow. (I have no intention of keeping any of my vows.)

    I know there are still so many runs to be ran, works to be worked on, and loves to be loved.

    But lately all the runs and the works and the loves have had to wait. Wait in order to make room for all the nothings I have been neglecting for too long. The nothings that have been patiently accumulating in my mind and are now pouring out with urgency.

    Nothing has been more important than those nothings and the inefficiencies that come along with them. There are, of course, still occasional runs and works and loves. But mainly a lot of naps.

    When life doesn’t move forward it moves backward, they say. But was life really that backward, back in the day? What I mean to say is that it seems silly to me. To run around and produce all of the greatness. Greatness that allows us to be seen, and heard, and held, and kept. By our friends and our lovers, our colleagues and our neighbors. Yet is it good to be great? Or is it greater to just be? Like a two-year-old child. Like back in the day.

    The neighbors’ grass might be greener, but I wonder if they have time to lie on it.

    To look at the clouds passing by. To feel the breeze on their cheeks and hear the birds in their ears. To dream about the life they’ve lived so far. The life to come. And the life better left for another round. The neighbors might have cleaned their dishes, but I doubt their naps are as glorious as mine.

    Perhaps tomorrow I will be productive again. After all, balance is key. But not today.

    Because today, I risk wasting my time for a chance at feeling alive.

  • We Keep Going, One Tiny Step at a Time, and We Should Be Proud

    We Keep Going, One Tiny Step at a Time, and We Should Be Proud

    “Don’t wait until you reach your goal to be proud of yourself. Be proud of every step you take.” ~Karen Salmansohn

    One of the greatest ironies of being human is that we’re often hardest on ourselves right when we should be most proud.

    Let’s say you finally find the courage to start a dream project you’ve fantasized about for as long as you can remember. You push through years of built-up fears, overcome massive internal resistance, and take the leap despite feeling like you’re jumping through a ring of fire, above a pit filled with burning acid.

    It’s one of the most terrifying things you’ve ever done. It dredges up all your deepest insecurities, triggers feelings you’d rather stuff down and ignore, and brings you face to face with the most fragile, vulnerable parts of yourself.

    The fact that you’re even willing to take this risk is huge. Monumental, really. Just getting on this long, winding path is an accomplishment worth acknowledging and celebrating. Most people avoid it. They do what they’ve always done and remain stuck in discontent, wishing they could know a life less limited.

    But you? You’re trying. You’re taking a chance at being who you could be, knowing full well there are no guarantees. You’re a f*cking rockstar. A total badass for giving this a go. But you likely don’t see it that way.

    You likely think you’re not doing enough, or doing it fast enough, or doing it well enough for it to count. You might get down on yourself for not learning more quickly, or having a perfectly honed vision and plan from the start.

    Instead of giving yourself credit for every inch you move forward, you might beat yourself up for not leaping a mile.

    Or maybe you’re not pursuing a dream for the future. Maybe you’re facing a pain from the past.

    Let’s say you’re finally leaning into your anxiety or depression instead of numbing your feelings with booze, food, or any other distraction. Perhaps you’re in therapy, even, trying to get to the root of your complex feelings and heal wounds that have festered, untended, for years.

    It’s intense, draining work that few can understand because there’s no visible representation of just how deep your pain goes. No way to fully explain how tough it is to face it. No way to show how hard you’re trying, every day, to fight a darkness that seems determined to consume you. So on top of being emotionally exhausted, you quite frequently feel alone.

    Just acknowledging the pain beneath the mental and emotional symptoms is an act of immense bravery. And allowing yourself to face it, however and whenever you can—well let’s just say they should give out medals for this kind of thing. You’re a f*cking hero. A total badass for doing the work to save yourself. But you probably don’t see it that way.

    You might think you aren’t making progress fast enough. Or you’re weak for having these struggles to begin with. Or you suck at life because sometimes you fall back into old patterns, even though on many other occasions, you don’t.

    Instead of giving yourself credit for every small win, you might beat yourself up for being a failure. As if nothing you do is good enough, and you’ll never be good enough, because you’re not perfect right now.

    Because if it’s not all happening right now—the healing, the growth, the progress—it’s easy to fear it never will. And it will be all your fault.

    If it seems like I’m speaking from personal experience, that’s because I am.

    I followed a decade of depression and bulimia with years of self-flagellation for not healing overnight and magically morphing into someone less fragile.

    I responded to childhood trauma by abusing myself for acting insecure and emotionally unstable, even when I was actively trying to learn better ways to live and cope.

    And I crucified myself for every cigarette and shot when I was trying to quit smoking and binge drinking, even though I quite frequently went long stretches of time without doing anything self-destructive.

    Through all this internal whip cracking, I consistently reinforced to myself that I was weak for not changing overnight when really I should have acknowledged I was strong for making any progress at all.

    It was like I was watching myself treading water, with broken limbs, while screaming at myself to hurry up and get stronger instead of throwing myself the rope of my own self-encouragement.

    In retrospect, this makes sense. This is how most of us learn growing up—not through validation but punishment. We far more often hear about what we’re doing wrong than what we’re doing right. So instead of supporting ourselves through our deepest struggles, we berate ourselves for even having them.

    Though I’ve made tremendous progress with this over the years, and I’m no longer in crisis, I still find myself expecting instant perfection at times.

    I’m currently pushing myself far beyond the edge of my comfort zone—so far I can’t even see it from where I’m precariously floating.

    I’m writing more here on the site after years of working through an identity crisis I’ve never publicly discussed.

    I’m trying to get funding for a feature film I wrote, with themes that are deeply personal to me, knowing the “low budget” is still no easy amount to raise, and I might fail spectacularly.

    I’m working on multiple new projects with third party companies—something I’ve avoided in the past because I’m a control freak who doesn’t easily trust others to take the reins.

    And I’m doing it all while pregnant—six and a half months to be exact—at almost forty years old. So on top of all the usual fears that accompany big risks and changes, I’m juggling your garden-variety new parent concerns, with a few geriatric-pregnancy-related worries for good measure. (Yes, geriatric. My uterus could be a grandmother!)

    I’m pushing myself into a new league, far outside my little work-from-home introvert bubble, while frequently feeling both physically and emotionally exhausted. And I’m finally giving myself the leeway to evolve after years of saying I wanted to grow but refusing to let go of my comfort to enable it. Really, I should be proud.

    Every time I take a meeting when I’d rather do only what I can accomplish myself, every time I send an email for a new opportunity when it would be easier to passively wait for whatever comes to me, every time I push myself to be the brave, fulfilled person I want to be for both myself and my son, I should throw myself an internal parade. A festival complete with a float in my own image and endless flutes of the best champagne. (I know, I’m pregnant, but it’s internal, remember? Keep the bubbly flowing!)

    But do I do this? To be fair, yes. Sometimes I do. And I’m proud of myself for that. I’ve come a long way from the self-abusive girl who only knew to motivate with intimidation and fear.

    But other times I can be pretty hard on myself. It’s like I have this vision of how this all should work, and when, and I blame myself if I can’t meet my rigid expectations on my ideal timeline.

    I don’t always step back and see the big picture: That there are many external factors I can’t control, and I need to be adaptable to deal with them. That it’s hard to learn new things, and no amount of willpower or dedication can make the process instant. That some things simply take time, and this isn’t a reflection of my worth or my effort.

    I get impatient. I get frustrated. I get anxious and resistant.

    And really it all comes down to attachment. I resist this slow, uncertain process, and bully myself into making things happen more quickly, because I want these things so bad I can taste them, and I fear they may never happen at all.

    I want the freedom these new opportunities could provide. I want the fulfillment of bringing my creative vision to life. I want the things I tell myself I should have made happen years ago, and I want them now so I can focus on the joy of attainment instead of beating myself up for having “wasted time.”

    But none of this internal drama is useful or productive, and it certainly does nothing for my motivation or focus. It’s nearly impossible to create from your heart when it’s totally eclipsed by anxiety and fear.

    The only way to do anything effectively is to accept where you are, let go of the outcome, and throw yourself into the process.

    So going forward, when my mind tries to bully me into doing more than I reasonably can or shame me for my pace or my progress, I’m going to remind myself I’m doing better than I think. We all are. And we all deserve more credit than we likely give ourselves.

    We all deserve credit for facing our demons, chasing our dreams, and showing up every day when it would be easier to hide.

    We all deserve acknowledgment for every tiny step forward, no matter how slow or timid, because creating change is hard.

    We all deserve recognition for the many internal hurdles we overcome, even though they’re not visibly apparent to anyone else, because often they’re harder to tackle than even the most challenging external obstacles.

    And we all deserve the peace of knowing that who we are right now is enough. Even if we have room to grow, even if there are things we’d like to achieve, we are good enough just as we are. And it’s okay to be right where we are.

    It’s okay to be messy, inconsistent, and not always at our best. It’s okay to feel insecure, unsure, lost, confused, and scared. It’s okay to make massive advances on some days and just get by on others.

    Would it be nice if we could instantly transport ourselves to the idealized future we see in our heads? Sure. But that’s not really what it means to “live our best life”—despite what our YOLO-promoting culture would have us believe.

    Living our best life is embracing what is, while working to create what can be. It’s doing the best we can with what’s in front of us, and accepting that nothing else is guaranteed. Because this is the only moment we know for sure we have.

    I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get to the end of my life and realize I missed most of it because I always felt it needed to be more—and that I needed to be more—to fully appreciate and enjoy what I had while I had it.

    So today, I’ve decided to be proud. Of my strength, my efforts, my progress, and the fact that I keep going. Whether I’m wounded, weary, or worried, I keep getting back up. I keep moving forward. I keep evolving. I am doing the best I can. So are you. And that’s something worth celebrating.

  • What to Ask Yourself When You Feel Lost, Unsure, or Confused

    What to Ask Yourself When You Feel Lost, Unsure, or Confused

    “The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself.” ~Tony Robbins

    I am naturally inclined to do—to go, to move, to take action. Slowing down takes a lot of patience for me. But I often find that moving too quickly actually causes me more confusion.

    One day, my head felt overwhelmed with questions. What had started with a simple idea of little ole me living in a tiny house on wheels (one of those under 200 square feet homes built on a trailer) had turned into a big undertaking of building a tiny house community.

    I had just driven across the country towing a twenty-nine-foot Airstream trailer. It was my first ever purchase on eBay. I had another tiny house in the process of being built and yet another I was about to pick up.

    Things were moving. But I felt like inside I was battling with a doubt that wanted me to come to a screeching halt.

    The predominant question that kept pounding in my mind was: Is this going to work?

    Then I just gave in, sat down, and started to write.

    I wrote down this question and all of the related and unrelated questions that were circulating in the cloud of doubt in my mind.

    In that moment, I discovered a personal practice that I’ve used many times since when I feel lost, doubtful, or unsure of which way to go. It helps me take intentional action toward my goals, and it’s really quite simple:

    I evaluate the questions I’m asking about my work and life and change them to questions that empower me instead of stressing me out.

    We all want something in common, and that is clarity. We want to move forward with integrity and purpose.

    No matter if your life feels like a roller coaster or it’s running as smoothly as ever, there is one thing that never changes: You will always ask yourself questions.

    I personally believe that when you are stretching yourself to grow and pursue a dream, you will have more than one question floating around your mind. They may even bombard you most of the day.

    Questions aren’t inherently bad; they can help us go deeper to understand what we need to do to move forward—if, that is, we ask ourselves the right questions.

    A lot of times, we ask ourselves questions that undermine our confidence in our ability to do the things we know we need to do.

    Some undermining questions include:

    • Is this going to work?
    • Why can’t I figure this out?
    • What’s wrong with me?
    • Why does it seem easier for everyone else?
    • How do I get this person/these people to think/do xyz?

    The problem with the above questions is that they place you in a victim or scarcity mindset instead of giving you a sense of control and empowering you to take responsibility.

    You know a question is undermining if it meets the following criteria:

    1. It makes you feel bad.

    Although empowering questions can be challenging, they won’t make you feel like crap about yourself. An undermining question makes you find fault with yourself, others, or your situation. An empowering question prompts you to focus on patterns that are causing or contributing to your challenges, and it also helps you find a solution.

    One way to convert an undermining question is to flip it to the opposite.

    For example, change “What is wrong with me?” to “What is right with me?” or “What behavior can I improve?” This helps you focus on your strengths, what’s working, and how you can learn and grow.

    2. You can answer it simply “yes” or “no.”

    This might seem counterintuitive, because we ask ourselves questions to find clarity, and what can be clearer than “yes” or “no”? But the reason you are asking the question in the first place is because there’s more to it than that.

    Often we just want a quick answer because it feels uncomfortable being in uncertainty. But there’s something more to explore, and there is greater power in a deeper answer.

    Another way you can convert an undermining question to an empowering one is to change it to something that requires a thoughtful answer.

    For example, like the undermining question I was asking myself about my tiny house community, change “Is this going to work?” to “How is this going to work?” By changing the question, you are presupposing that it will work—you simply need to figure out how.

    3. It defers the power to someone else rather than yourself.

    We all fall into potholes where we defer power, blame, and control to someone else, even those of us far down the path of personal development. When we ask questions to figure out what other people will think about us or how to get someone or a group of people to do something, we are placing our problem-solving energy outside of ourselves, where we have little leverage.

    A way to convert this kind of undermining question to an empowering one is to change the focus to yourself.

    For example, change “How do I get this group of people to do what I want them to do?” to “What actions do I need to take to achieve what I want to accomplish?” This allows you to lead by example, putting all of the power back in your court.

    Changing your undermining questions to empowering ones can help create a lot more peace, expansion, and clarity. And when you answer those empowering questions for yourself, you may feel like you just unloaded a bag of bricks from your head.

    Try this Exercise…

    Here is a simple process for unloading, examining, and finding answers to your own questions:

    Step 1: Unload

    Grab your journal and write down every question you are asking yourself about your business, work, relationships, and life right now. Write until you cannot think of any more questions and you start repeating yourself.

    Step 2: Examine

    Look through your questions. Are any of them undermining? If so, convert them to empowering questions, using the tools above.

    Step 3: Answer

    For the questions you have remaining, take time to journal your own answer to each one. Don’t think, just write and see what comes out.

    You can do this process as often as you like. I find when I do it, I feel clear for a substantial amount of time, and confident, because I know I have a process I can use whenever I feel lost.

  • Overcoming Intergenerational Trauma: We Can Break the Cycle of Abuse

    Overcoming Intergenerational Trauma: We Can Break the Cycle of Abuse

    “Our ancestors knew that healing comes in cycles and circles. One generation carries the pain so that the next can live and heal. One cannot live without the other, each is the other’s hope, meaning and strength.” ~Gemma B. Benton

    I thought I had no value, my opinion meaningless. My sense of self was decimated. Finally, I got angry and attacked.

    “You can’t imagine the pain you’ve put me through!” I yelled. “You don’t even know who I am. You can’t see it. You’re refusing to take responsibility for the way you raised me! Not thinking is not an excuse! You don’t even care to try to understand what you’ve done to me!”

    This was me to my retirement-age parents about a year ago. Those yelling sessions happened several times. They called the police on me once.

    None of it did an ounce of good. They can’t see it.

    The more I have experienced with depression, anxiety, and recovery, the more I am convinced that the events and circumstances of my past—and my parents’ past—have shaped me much more than my brain chemistry.

    I’m pretty confident that the problems I’ve suffered from are derived from generations of unhealthy behavior. I believe the effects of intergenerational trauma shape us much more than we might realize.

    I’m not a researcher, so I only have my own experiences to base this on; it very well could be different for someone else. But from what I’ve seen from my grandparents through my kids, this succession of trauma is difficult to break. It takes different forms, but it always rears its ugly head. In my grandparents, it was alcoholism; in my parents, physical abuse; me, emotional abuse.

    I don’t consider any of us to be bad people, but we have each passed horrible things on to our children.

    My mom’s dad was an alcoholic and very strict. Her mom didn’t actively do anything wrong, but she turned a blind eye to what her husband was doing. Mom won’t talk directly about it, but reading between the lines, I believe her brother abused her as well.

    My dad’s dad was killed in a car accident when my dad was five. That left my dad as the man of the house, with no father figure. His mom never remarried and worked full time to support the family, meaning my dad was mostly on his own.

    So then, this is how it all added up for me: Because of the abuse she suffered, my mom became a narcissist with no empathy. My dad became an absentee father who always blindly agreed with my mom. I was raised so that every good thing I did reflected well on my mother, and every mistake I made was my own fault.

    It took me forty-four years to unravel all this. I’m still trying to figure out who I really am. I know I crave attention and approval from women. I’m insecure and selfish. At times, sometimes for long stretches, I distance myself from my wife and kids. But I’m working on it.

    I’m also working on forgiving my parents. It’s not easy, but I know it’s necessary for me to keep progressing. They’re just flawed people, like me, after all. I’m mainly having trouble with my mom, a selfish, self-centered, and ignorant woman.

    If I forgive my parents, it will be for my own peace of mind. I will know then that I did everything in my power to make peace with them. That doesn’t mean, though, I want to keep them or my extended family in my life.

    Some people aren’t going to change, and we each have the right to decide whether we want that kind of person around us. I feel that most of my family is dysfunctional. It’s a really tough decision.

    My mom’s favorite excuses for her behavior, which she refuses to acknowledge, are “That’s the way I was raised” and “I never thought about it.” Must’ve been glorious to live a life and raise a child without responsibility.

    I know I need to do better. I need to take responsibility for creating change and break free from the intergenerational beliefs and behaviors I see as unhealthy. My family sees this as a rebuke.

    To find my hope, meaning, and strength, I may have to leave my entire family behind. That’s a heavy decision, but it’s one I will probably need to make.

    It will mean that I’ve learned the lessons of my parents and used them to bring power and strength to myself and my children. I can only hope that happiness and peace come along for the ride. That would be the greatest gift I could give to my kids.

    I can’t sit around waiting for the negativity and condescension to go away, or for them to make an effort to understand my problems. In order for me to get better and start living my own life, I need to be the one making the rules. I need to be positive and I need to take care of myself.

    In being raised as children and in raising our own children, we receive many messages. Some are helpful, some are hurtful. We need to be aware of those messages as adults, discarding the harmful ones and emphasizing the healthy ones. We need to be honest with ourselves and others, and willing to admit when we’re wrong. We need to constantly question everything.

    Some of the messages I received growing up were “You’re not as good as you should be,” “Conformity is good, being different is bad,” and “You don’t matter enough,” sprinkled in with healthy doses of guilt.

    My wife and I have tried to instill the opposite in our kids. Everyone matters. Your opinions and feelings are valid and important. Be yourself and follow your dreams.

    None of this is easy. It takes awareness, courage, and the determination to live a better life.

    Some will have bigger hills to climb. Some will look around and find the support they need has been around them all along. Others will be alone and will have to dig deep inside themselves to find the strength to live better.

    No matter our situation, we all deserve the happiness that comes with living our best lives. And the secret isn’t money or success; it’s filling our lives with love. This requires us to heal any childhood wounds that prevent us from giving and receiving love.

    Your present may be built on your past, but it doesn’t have to be controlled by it. In order to break the chains of intergenerational trauma, you will most certainly face some serious challenges. Here are some recommendations from my experiences that may help you.

    Have courage.

    If you look at your past with clear eyes, you’re likely to see a fair bit of unpleasantness. Pain, abuse, manipulation, deceit could all be there. And they could be coming from people you love.

    Facing all of that will take courage and energy. It’s difficult and emotionally exhausting to look at your life objectively. You have to keep reminding yourself to see what’s really there rather than what you’ve always thought or what you want to see.

    Going against the tide of several generations of family is a daunting prospect. You might alienate or offend people you love, but you are worthy of living your life your way.

    Things don’t have to be the way they’ve always been. You don’t need to suffer just because your family chose to suffer in the past. But, understand this is difficult work.

    Have confidence that doing this healthy work for yourself is worthwhile. Stay focused on self-care and keep your eyes on the bigger picture.

    Have a support group.

    A support group can be built of any mixture of people. Friends, relatives, co-workers, or even strangers. It can be formal or informal. The best support groups possess various experiences, perspectives, and personalities.

    What you are doing is huge, and it’s going to be a significant help to have at least one or two people you can lean on while you do this. If you have more, great. But don’t try to do this alone; find yourself a support system before you start.

    My support group is patched together from people who have read my articles and responded to them, people I know from online interest groups, and a few people from real life, too.

    My group has layers, an inner circle I hear from often, a group that checks in every couple of weeks, and a group that is just more encouraging when they hear what I’m up to.

    I’ve had the gift of actually growing my support group while I’m going through this. I’ve opened up to some people and found that we’ve been through similar circumstances. This can give you new ideas and solutions to your problems.

    And don’t forget, a doctor, clergy member, or a therapist can be part of this group for you. You can also consider trying organized local support groups if that appeals to you.

    The more love and support you can gather around yourself, the more strength and conviction you will find you have. This love and support feeds off itself. The more you give, the more you get back.

    Have motivation.

    Remember why you’re doing this. You’re setting out to build a better life for you and your children. The thought of overcoming this pain can be a liberating and positive force.

    Being aware of what put us where we are today will not only give us the motivation but also the direction we need to create positive change for ourselves and our children.

    Not all the changes we make will be successful, but if we keep going and correct our mistakes, we can still help ourselves and our kids learn healthier behaviors. We can stop perpetuating a lineage of abuse, domination, neglect, hurt, and unhealthy coping mechanisms.

    There’s no finish line in overcoming intergenerational trauma. Keep being aware. Keep moving forward, and be the force that is constantly pushing toward healthy change in your family.

  • Why Having Your Sh*t Together Is Overrated (and Misunderstood)

    Why Having Your Sh*t Together Is Overrated (and Misunderstood)

    “It’s not about time, it’s about choices. How are you spending your choices?” ~Beverly Adamo

    Hi, my name’s Tash. I’m twenty-six years old and soon I’ll be living in a van.

    My sister is twenty-three. She owns her own flat, which she shares with her long-term boyfriend and their pet tortoise. She has a well-paid job that she enjoys, and she even has a company car. For some people, this might look like she’s really got her sh*t together—she’s ticking all the right boxes!

    And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she isn’t! I’m very happy for her and everything she has achieved, and she really is doing a great job. But personally, this isn’t my idea of having my sh*t together, and it certainly isn’t a life I see for myself.

    Yet the other day she said to me, “If you don’t get a house soon you’ll probably never have one.” My reply? “That’s okay, I don’t want a house any way.”

    You see the thing is, everyone has these preconceptions of what it means to “do well” and “get your life together.” Do you have a house? A good job? Are you earning a good salary? Do you have a partner to share it all with? Will you be getting married? Are you planning to have children?

    These are all things we are led to believe we should be working toward, because achieving these things will make us happy and complete.

    Well, I call BS!

    I don’t own (or even rent) my own house. Okay, I am married, but that certainly doesn’t prove I’m adulting well. I’m giving up a great job in order to pursue my career as a freelance writer, so as of March I’ll officially be unemployed. Oh yeah, and in April my husband and I will be packing up our entire lives and living in a van.

    But do you know what? I couldn’t be happier or more proud of our decisions.

    What Brought All This On?

    Let me rewind. A colleague of mine recently turned twenty-six as well. As I stopped by her desk one day she said, “I thought I’d have my life together by the age of twenty-six.”

    This got me thinking, what was her definition of having her life together? I told her, “If by the age of twenty-six you wanted to be happy, in a job you enjoy, and looking forward to your future, then you’ve got your life together, right?”

    We all want different things from this life, but there’s so much pressure to follow suit and do what has always been seen as the normal or correct way of doing things.

    I was that way once. When I was at university, if you’d asked me where I wanted to be by this age I’d have probably seen myself in a fancy PR job, living in London, navigating busy city life, all with a smile on my face and a decent amount of money in my savings.

    PAH!

    Right now that sounds like my worst nightmare (and a far off dream as far as a good savings account is concerned!).

    But What if That’s My Dream?

    Please don’t for one second think I’m belittling or making fun of those who want to live the city life or settle down with a spouse and kids by a certain age. We are all different.

    And this is exactly the point I’m trying to make. My husband and I agree that we don’t want to be tied down to one place, certainly not for a long time any way! Together we’ll be traveling the UK and Europe in our campervan. Then, when we’re finished with that, we’ll probably downsize our lives even further by living out of a backpack and going further afield.

    Because for us, having our sh*t together means exploring new cultures. Being able to pick up and move on when we want to. Evening walks along the beach. Backpacking around the world. Waking up every day feeling excited and happy. Living our best life and being the best versions of ourselves because of our choices.

    But again, I’m aware of plenty of people who would never want or choose to live out of a backpack.

    The point I’m trying to make here is that having your sh*t together doesn’t mean conforming to what others perceive as normal or aspirational.

    It’s about chasing your own dreams and finding what makes you happy. It’s about creating a life that you can’t wait to wake up to every day.

    It’s about wholeheartedly embracing this short life and what it is you really want, whether that’s getting married, having kids, throwing yourself into your career, or in our case, exploring the world in a camper van.

    There’s no right or wrong. There’s only what feels right for you.

    Hi, my name’s Tash, and though I’m choosing an unconventional path, I have my sh*t together! How about you?

  • How 5 Simple Habits Made Me Love My Life More

    How 5 Simple Habits Made Me Love My Life More

    “Good habits are worth being fanatical about.” ~John Irving

    Your habits are directly related to the quality of your life. Good habits lead to joy and fulfillment in your life, while not-so-good habits leave you yearning for your life to be different.

    I think I always knew that, I just wished I took it to heart sooner. Better late than never, right?

    Gretchen Rubin, author of Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits, says that “Habits are the invisible architecture of our daily life. We repeat about 40% of our behavior almost daily, so our habits shape our existence, and our future. If we change our habits, we change our lives.”

    I’ve spent far too much time in my life languishing in worries and regrets, wondering why life had to be so hard. I looked for outside sources to come in and save me. No rescuer ever came, at least not one that made a permanent difference.

    I’d always wind up on the same boat: wondering why others seemed so content with the lives they were leading while I continued to have a burning desire for something different—something I really couldn’t even name, though I tried in vain to do so.

    I set big goals and made big plans that I was certain would make all the difference for me. Usually, my big goals and big plans wouldn’t live beyond the next new moon. Even when they did, though, the things that I thought would make me happy didn’t. The things that I thought would bring me peace only annoyed me for their utter lack of peace-creating properties.

    By profession, I’m a strategist. I look at all the many things that contribute to situations being a certain way and explore ways to move the situation toward where I want it to be. Turns out, sometimes you don’t have to overhaul anything; sometimes, small, simple tweaks can make a big difference.

    As the saying goes, it takes large sails to move a large ship, but the captain need only make a small adjustment to the rudder to change the direction. The other part of the saying is there’s no point in adjusting the rudder if the ship is not moving; you won’t go anywhere.

    Your daily habits are the small rudders that can help you move your life in the direction you wish. Choosing good habits day after day is the movement required to experience the positive life changes you’re seeking.

    I like to think of myself as an intelligent person, but what I neglected to see in my own life is that the smallest tweaks done day in and day out have the power to move the mountains I want moved. When my eyes opened to the power of small changes practiced daily, miracles began to unfold in my life.

    Below are some of the simple daily habits I’ve worked to incorporate into my life that are making such a huge difference for me.

    1. Meditation

    Yeah, yeah, I know. Everyone says meditate, but did you ever consider that maybe all those meditation-lovers are offering an you an insider’s tip (pun intended) that in fact is actually priceless?

    I have an overactive mind, as many people do. It loves to tell me about all its worries and warn me of threats that in reality aren’t all that threatening—nothing more than a mouse posing as a monster most of the time.

    My mind loves to relive situations and conversations over and over and over; it’s so tiring! I’ve found that the antidote to my endless chattering mind is daily meditation.

    I don’t do anything complicated. I just sit in a relaxing position, tune into serene instrumental music on Spotify, and focus on my breath. Anytime I notice that my mind is wandering (as it always does), I return my focus to my breath. In times of silence answers seem to arrive to incredibly insightful questions I didn’t even know I should ask.

    2. Kind, loving self-talk

    In the past, my inner dialogue wasn’t all that friendly. In fact, I was my own worst enemy, a relentless bully whose malicious words would leave me disheartened and unable to face the world with any sense of self-worth or confidence.

    I didn’t come by this demeaning self-talk accidentally. Its roots go back to my childhood.

    I grew up in a Roman Catholic home with seven children (another sibling died before I was born) and two overworked, exhausted parents who were flat broke all the time.

    My father struggled with alcohol addiction and mental illness. This, along with my mother’s enabling patterns plus her own low self-esteem and depression issues, defined how the house was run.

    The focus of the entire household was on managing life around dad’s issues.

    Growing up, it seemed to me that nothing I ever did was good enough for my dad, though I tried so very hard to please him. I craved his love and positive attention. He either ignored me or criticized me, and when he criticized me he often did so in the most brutal tone.

    I took to adopting that brutal tone in my inner dialogue and kept up the cruel inner monologues for years and years. I rationalized that I was just keeping my standards high, because who wouldn’t want to have high standards, right? A father would only criticize his daughter to help her improve, right?

    So I kept criticizing myself; it never occurred to me that dad lashed out at me because his whole life seemed like a mess, so by God, the one thing he would have control over was his children.

    There I was as an adult, using unrelenting, vicious self-criticism as a way to be perfect so I could get the love and attention I sorely wanted from the people in my life. It was a strategy that was never going to work; it had to go.

    After examining my bitter, demeaning inner voice, I realized that I would never treat another human being this way, so why was I permitting this type of untenable talk go on inside me? I deserve better—we all do!

    Now when those critical thoughts come up I’m patient with myself without buying into the scolding voice that’s offering up the hypercritical self-assessments.

    I look at the scared girl behind those ugly comments and extend my deepest love to her. You see, while I refuse to allow my inner critic to talk to me in vile ways anymore, I also recognize the only reason I ever talked to myself that way was out of a deep need for belonging and protection. There was a call for love behind those ugly words, and now I simply acknowledge that deep desire for self-love without chastising the hurting girl who was trying to get my attention in the only way she knew how.

    3. Follow the five-second rule

    I love Mel Robbins, and the day I learned about her five-second rule was a very important day in my life. (And I’m not talking whether it’s still safe to eat food that’s only had five seconds of contact on the floor—that’s a whole different discussion!)

    In a nutshell, here is Mel Robbins’ five-second rule, in Mel’s words: “The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal you must count five-four-three-two-one and physically move or your brain will stop you.”

    So, you’re not a “morning person” but you have a goal of getting up earlier in the morning? Then the moment your alarm clock goes off, count five-four-three-two-one and jump out of bed. No more hitting the snooze alarm.

    Yes, in the moment of those early morning hours, of course you’d rather stay in that warm comfy bed—who wouldn’t? But staying in bed doesn’t align with your bigger goals, and getting up does. If you move within five seconds, you’ll move toward your bigger goals. If you don’t move and allow your clever mind to talk you into staying in bed for “just a bit more,” you’re sunk.

    If you want to change your life by getting up earlier so you can write that blog you want to write (a-hem, what I’m doing now) or do that exercise you know your body needs, then make those goals your priority over an extra thirty minutes of sleep and use the five-second rule to help you get your body out of bed.

    Adopting the five-second rule is one of the best habits I’ve ever taken up. For the sake of full transparency, I admit I’m not always successful at sticking to the rule, but the more I try, the more I succeed.

    “If your habits don’t line up with your dream, then you need to either change your habits or change your dream.” ~John Maxwell

    4. Feed my mind

    I’ve always considered myself to be a learner, though in actuality I get lazy about learning. It’s hard to improve your life if you’re never giving your brain any new information. Feeding my mind on a regular basis has become a top priority for me.

    My “feeding my mind” goal looks something like this: one retreat a year, one book a month (that I can either read or listen via audio), one podcast a week, and one smart article on something I want to learn about each and every day. I’ve found that starting the process builds momentum; I often crush my minimum goals!

    Feeding my mind in healthy ways also means giving up some unhealthy habits. I’m extremely careful about how much news I watch nowadays. While I don’t want to keep my head in the sand, I find it’s important to limit the number of negative messages I allow into my mind, and news channels are notorious for going over the same disturbing stories again and again. I make time in my days for my extra reading and personal growth activities by getting up earlier and limiting my Netflix and HBO time.

    I’ve also modified my budget so I can afford the audiobooks and retreats I want to buy. My clothing and dining out budget is about half of what it used to be, and it’s a trade-off I’m happy to make.

    The habit of feeding my mind is opening up whole new worlds for me. I can’t tell you how often I’ve read about something and the perfect opportunity comes up for using what I’ve learned in both my professional and personal life. Louis Pasteur said, “Fortune favors the prepared mind,” and I couldn’t agree more!

    5. Do something outside my comfort zone at least once a week

    If I were a more ambitious soul, I might put a “once a day” rule on this habit, but for now once a week works nicely for me. The habit of doing the same things the same way every day is life draining, while the habit of stretching outside your comfort zone regularly is life expanding. I’d rather see my life expand rather than to contract and shrivel, thank you very much.

    Today, I regularly practice being brave—allowing myself to be seen, allowing myself to be vulnerable and unskilled at new things. I don’t tiptoe outside my comfort zone anymore; I’m even willing to take huge leaps.

    I quit a job that I’d been in for twenty-two years without having the next job lined up. I moved 2000 miles from family and friends to live in a beautiful part of the world where I’ve always dreamed of living.

    I now work in freelance, consulting, and coaching roles, which means my income fluctuates a lot. I’m not always certain how much money I’ll earn each month; I could have never tolerated that degree of uncertainty before.

    It’s surprising how much your life can transform in miraculous ways once you’re willing to not be perfect in your own little world but instead actively choose to be imperfect in a world that might judge you. When you take risks that might leave you flat on your back, they also might enable you to soar.

    I’ve found that bravery is rewarded, maybe not always in the moment, but always in time. I encourage you to be brave; it’ll change your life!

  • 25 Things Introverts Want You to Understand About Them

    25 Things Introverts Want You to Understand About Them

    “Solitude matters, and for some people, it’s the air they breathe.” ~Susan Cain

    We live in a culture that celebrates extroversion and sees introversion as a weakness or something to overcome.

    If you’re an introvert, you may have grown up believing there was something wrong with you. You may not even have realized there’s a word for your personality type, that 26 to 50% of the population falls under that umbrella, and that our brains are actually wired differently than extroverts’ brains.

    According to Scott Barry Kaufman, the Scientific Director of the Imagination Institute (which sounds like the coolest place in the world to work), it all boils to down to the neurotransmitter dopamine.

    When our brains release dopamine, we feel more motivated to strive for external goals and rewards, like a raise or an ever-widening social circle. Though we all have the same amount of dopamine in our brains, the reward center is more active in extroverts. That’s why an extrovert might feel energized and excited anticipating a social event, while introverts might feel over-stimulated.

    We introverts rely on a different neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, which makes us feel good whenever we turn inward—something we’re much better able to do in calm environments, with minimal external stimulation.

    Yes, I said “we.” I’m a proud deep thinking, quiet-time needing preferrer of profound conversations over small talk. I’d rather dissect the meaning of life on a rooftop below a starry night, with one close friend by my side, than scream over loud music amid a rowdy crowd at a party or in a bar.

    For years, I felt like a loser because I have fewer friendships than most and spend more time alone. But it’s not that I’m less likable than other people (or at least, I hope that’s not true). It’s just that I detest forced socialization, superficial relationships, and feeling the pressure to ‘perform’ for a group.

    While I’m beyond relieved to finally recognize my personality type isn’t a character flaw, I appreciate when the people around me understand and value my nature as well. And I know I’m not alone.

    I recently asked the introverts within Tiny Buddha Facebook community what they wish people understood about them, and their responses all sounded like pieces of my own internal monologue. Below, I’ve shared a small selection of the 1,000+ comments that came in.

    If you’re an introvert, this list might put into words what you’ve thought many times—from all different angles, while enjoying various solo activities. If you’re an extrovert, this will hopefully give you a little more insight into how your introverted friends feel, what they want and need, and why they do the things they do.

    25 Things Introverts Wish People Understood About Them

    1. I’m never lonely. I love, love, love the time I spend alone (or just with my immediate family). It feeds my soul. ~Kim Kay

    2. I would rather have a deep conversation with one or two people than small chit chat with twenty-five. I value quality over quantity. ~Lyle Hatch

    3. I’m not grumpy or unsociable, I just don’t know how to do small talk. Also, I’m not boring or uninteresting; you just never initiate deep conversations with me. ~Natashia Lee

    4. I do not enjoy forced conversation and situations. They only make me want to retreat back to my own space. Just let me sit back to observe, and I will decide if I should join in. ~Michelle Bush West

    5. I do not think I am better than you. ~Kimmie Nielsen

    6. I mean what I say and only speak when I have to say something. ~Roland Laufer

    7. Not wanting to hang out is not personal. I need way more down time and rest than other people may, and that doesn’t mean I’m lazy. ~Dani Hughes

    8. We’re not all social butterflies; we’re more like social caterpillars. We take a while to open up. When we do, we can either be like a butterfly around you, but if things go south we’ll want to stay in the ‘wrapped up’ phase forever! ~Carole Ann Rickerd

    9. Canceling plans with people less than twenty-four hours beforehand has nothing to do with them and everything to do with my self-care. ~Sahej Anand Kaur Khalsa

    10. Just because I’m not all smiley and enthusiastic doesn’t mean I’m not happy. ~Brandon Logan

    11. When you mention how quiet I am because I don’t talk much in large gatherings or make a big deal when I do speak, it just makes me feel self-conscious and retreat more into myself. ~Angela Eaves

    12. I cannot be “on” when you want me to. There are times when I can join the conversation or party, and times when I simply cannot. ~Sabree Johnson

    13. Just because I’m an introvert doesn’t mean I’m anti-social or stuck up. It just takes me longer to recover from events and big groups of people. ~Angela Stewart

    14. I deeply care and empathize with so many people in my life, even those that I don’t know personally. I can’t ‘turn it off.’ Going home is my way of avoiding overworking my emotions. It’s so I can rest up and be a good friend, colleague, employee, and citizen tomorrow. ~Jayme Taylor

    15. My silence in group conversations isn’t aloofness, indifference, or lack of personality. I’d just rather get to know you one-on-one before I start revealing my thoughts and opinions. ~Amanda Perrett

    16. Just because I’m not loud and don’t share my feelings with everyone in sight, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have them. Quite the opposite. I feel things very deeply. ~Liz Szentendrei

    17. I’m not a flamboyant personality, but I have as much substance as the next person. ~Terrie Lynch

    18. Sometimes I just want to walk in silence, but I am neither sad nor lonely. ~Debra Temple

    19. Just because we keep to ourselves, or we are not talkative, does not mean we do not have an opinion or are less intelligent than others. ~Tony Solis

    20. Just because I’m quiet doesn’t mean I’m upset or mad, so there’s no need to keep asking me “Are you okay?” That gets very tiring. ~Linda Burton

    21. I’m not talking because I don’t have anything worthwhile to say and I’m fine with the silence. ~Amber Lockey

    22. Sometimes I may act extroverted, but it’s kind of a survival skill I’ve adopted in an extroverted-centered world. Still leaves me feeling mentally exhausted and drained. And feels unnatural. ~Dalas McCown

    23. If you ask a question and we don’t respond right away we are thinking through every possible response, how you might react to each response, if it is actually the truth, and then we might get distracted and eventually ponder the meaning of life … even if you just asked how we are doing. ~Michelle Cobley

    24. I don’t hate people. I just save my energy for genuine interactions. ~Sharon Stewart

    25. I want to be invited! I may not always go or have the ability to stay long, but it doesn’t mean I want to be entirely left out. ~Diana Rouge

    —

    Extroverts, is any of this news to you? And introverts, is there anything you’d add to the list?

  • How I Learned to Like and Trust Myself When It Was Hard

    How I Learned to Like and Trust Myself When It Was Hard

    “Loving yourself starts with liking yourself, which starts with respecting yourself, which starts with thinking of yourself in positive ways.” ~Jerry Corsten

    Useless. Hopeless. Broken.

    This was how I saw myself.

    I didn’t completely loathe myself, but I didn’t like myself either. At best, I tolerated myself.

    I felt I had good reasons to.

    I’d gotten myself into, as we say in England, a right old pickle.

    If you’re not familiar with this charming expression, I had gotten myself into a big mess.

    In my early twenties, over a painful period of about eighteen months, I’d gradually buried myself in personal debt with several pay-day loan companies.

    The ever-growing pressure to pay off this debt played havoc on my mental health. I often found myself running into the work toilet to secretly have panic attacks, throwing water on my face like a madman, and reassuring myself that I wasn’t losing my sanity. I was suffering, and misguidedly, I’d convinced myself I would have to suffer alone.

    To make myself feel better, each week I partied from Thursday through to Sunday, chain smoking and knocking back pint after pint of Guinness. Or anything else that was available. I wasn’t fussy.

    I’d wake up on a Sunday, often still drunk, with a dizzy head and a heavy heart.

    Do I dare to check my bank balance? How long can I go on living like this? What’s wrong with me?

    Sunday evenings were the worst. I dreaded Monday morning. I disliked my job but needed to stay there to keep my head above water. It was a vicious cycle.

    I’m pleased to say those days are behind me. I’m still far from being perfect, but I’ve come a long way.

    I’ve learned to like and even love myself. Which I’m proud of, because I honestly believe the most important relationship we will ever have in our lives is the one we have with ourselves.

    The quality of the relationship we have with ourselves determines the quality of all other relationships. Plus, I came into this world alone and I’ll leave alone. Other people will come and go, but I will always have myself. I best make sure I like the man I see in the mirror.

    Here are three ways I learned to like and trust myself again.

    1. Recognizing I’ve always done my best, given my level of awareness at the time

    I often shock people when I tell them I believe there is no such thing as self-sabotaging behaviors. They ask, “Well, what about procrastination? Drinking? Drugs? Surely, they are self-sabotaging?”

    Yes and no. Yes, they are destructive, but I wouldn’t call them self-sabotaging.

    A more revealing question than what those behaviors are, is why do they exist?

    I believe it’s not self-sabotage but misguided self-love.

    Let’s take my binge drinking and smoking, for example—behavior that, in the eyes of many, would seem self-destructive. On top of the harmful physical and mental affects, these habits put me further into debt. But why did I indulge in those behaviors in the first place? Because my life situation was painful, and temporarily, they helped.

    For a few short hours, those behaviors made me feel better. I became less anxious and happier. As far as my mind was concerned, this was helping.

    The issue, as I’ve come to learn, is that the subconscious mind (the part of the mind responsible for habits and behaviors) focuses on the present moment.

    What is also important to understand is that the mind’s #1 role is to maintain our survival. If you’ve ever almost stepped into the path of a speeding vehicle, you’ve seen this truth. Without even consciously thinking , your incredible mind jolted you back onto the path and off the road.

    Given that the mind’s #1 role is our survival, the idea that it would allow self-sabotaging behaviors is nonsensical.

    Furthermore, believing I had a sneaky self-saboteur living inside me, hell-bent on destroying my life, made me feel utterly powerless. If I couldn’t even help myself, how could anyone else?

    Now I view those destructive behaviors differently, for what I believe they are: short-sighted self-love. “Helpful” in the short-term but costly in the long-term.

    I wasn’t sabotaging myself on purpose. My mind allowed those behaviors because they were moving me away from perceived pain, or toward perceived pleasure.

    With more awareness, I was able to stop beating myself up, stop the behaviors that were holding me back, and start making better choices. Which included asking for help and setting some goals for myself.

    2. Setting small and achievable goals

    Once I realized I’d always done my best in the past, given my level of awareness, it was time for me to think of positive steps I could take toward the future. Starting by gaining direction through goal-setting.

    In the past, I’d set myself up for failure by trying to change everything overnight. After a few days, however, I’d become overwhelmed by trying to maintain so much change and fall back into old, familiar patterns.

    This time, instead of attempting to change everything I wanted to change at once, I created small and achievable goals for myself.

    I started by addressing my personal debt, which was the biggest stressor in my life at the time, and a huge contributor toward my anxiety. Once I made some progress with my goal of getting debt-free, I created small and achievable goals in other areas. For example, I set a goal of meditating once per day. It wasn’t long before I was seeing improvements in my mental state.

    Over time, my confidence in myself began to grow, as I could look back and see tangible results. I was beginning to like and trust myself again.

    3. Self-praise

    A huge contributing factor in forming a better relationship with myself was praising myself along the way.

    As I child, I was fortunate in that I was often praised by the adults around me.

    Sadly, as we transition into adulthood, outside praise tends to become less frequent, doesn’t it? It did for me at least.

    As I grew older, instead of hearing words of praise, I heard more words of criticism from mean teachers and bosses who used shame and fear to motivate me to do better.

    No wonder, then, that my inner dialogue became more negative and I learned to beat myself up.

    Although I may no longer be a child, I’m not ashamed to admit, I still love to be praised!

    So, to encourage myself when making positive changes, I use self-praise each evening before bed. When brushing my teeth, I look myself in the eyes, reflect on the day that has passed, and think of three things I can praise myself for.

    Big or small, I find three things I did well and wish to acknowledge.

    Even on those days when I feel like I’ve achieved next to nothing, when I ask myself “What can I praise myself for today?” my mind searches for answers and will always find some. Even if it’s something small, like resisting the urge to overdo it when drinking with my friends or not oversleeping on the weekend.

    As Tony Robbins said, “Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”

    I used to go to bed and ask myself “Why am I so useless?” I’d fall asleep with a feeling of dread in my heart, resentful toward myself.

    By asking myself “What can I praise myself for?” I fall asleep feeling positive about myself, as someone who likes and trusts themselves.

    —

    If you’re having a hard time liking yourself, let alone loving yourself, start by recognizing you’ve always done the best you could. Even when you made choices you later regretted, you were trying to help yourself; you just didn’t have the awareness or resources to do better.

    Then focus on taking small steps to create change you can be proud of. Don’t try to make major changes overnight; you’ll likely get overwhelmed, feel even worse about yourself, and give up. Just do one tiny thing every day to help you move you in a better direction.

    And give yourself a little credit. Ask yourself questions about what you’re doing right, not what you’re doing wrong. You’ll likely feel a lot better about yourself and your life. And when we feel better, we do better—which means you’ll keep giving yourself reasons to be proud.

  • How Recovering People-Pleasers Can Discover What They Really Want

    How Recovering People-Pleasers Can Discover What They Really Want

    “When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you’re not saying ‘no’ to yourself.” ~Paulo Coelho

    People-pleasers regularly subvert their own needs for the needs of others. We spend years saying “yes” when we mean “no,” signing up for commitments we’d rather avoid, and occupying our minds with others’ desires.

    When we finally clear out the clutter to put ourselves first, we look around at the empty space, bewildered, with endless questions. What do we want? What does true happiness look like for us? What would a life lived on our own terms be like?

    For me, these questions once provoked anxiety. I’d spent a lifetime catering to my parents, friends, colleagues, and lovers—anyone but myself. By asking what I really wanted, I was looking my fear straight in the eye: my fear of being responsible for my own happiness. My fear of not getting what I wish for.

    These fears are both potent and entirely surmountable—if we’re brave enough to connect with our innermost desires.

    When we’re strongly connected to our dreams and desires, we begin to set boundaries with other people so we can reach them, and we slowly start finding the confidence to speak our truth. Our dreams and desires remind us how communicating authentically will change our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, for the better.

    For this reason, we recovering people-pleasers need to reclaim our familiarity with our inner voice and innermost needs. We cannot communicate authentically with others if we can’t communicate authentically with our inner selves.

    In my journey to overcome people pleasing, I’ve learned a few helpful tricks to connect with my innermost self and uncover what I really want in all areas of my life. Perhaps one (or more) of these methods may help you do the same.

    1. Label your feelings.

    As I mention in my post on setting boundaries, many of us have become so attuned to the feelings of others that our own feelings are elusive strangers, entirely unrecognizable to us.

    Our feelings are critical guideposts as we learn to prioritize our own needs—if we’re able to identify and own them. We can rebuild our connection to our feelings by noticing their presence in our bodies and hearts.

    First, we must learn to give ourselves permission to be excited, inspired, and desirous. I often notice these feelings when they appear as fluttering in my chest or tingling down my spine. These feelings signal that I’m moving toward something that excites me.

    If, like me, you’ve spent a lifetime motivated by guilt and anxiety, your positive emotions can starkly illuminate the activities and relationships that bring you pure joy.

    We can also learn from feelings that are challenging or unpleasant, once we’re able to identify them. Instead of glossing over anxiety, overwhelm, and anger, we can notice these feelings as pits in our stomachs, pressure in our chests, and tightness in our throats. Those feelings might be signals that something isn’t right for us, or that we need to set boundaries with others.

    2. Leave the system.

    Sometimes our deepest desires are buried under layers of fear, particularly the fear of seeming selfish or the fear of disappointing others. One way to dig beneath the fear is to mentally remove ourselves from the systems of which we’re a part.

    Begin by considering one of your social systems: your romantic relationship, your workplace, your church, your family. Then, ask yourself: “What would I do differently if I weren’t a part of this system?”

    Previously unacknowledged desires emerge when you extricate yourself from the pressures and influences of your system.

    Years ago, when I first did this exercise, I wrote in my journal, “What would I do differently if I weren’t in a relationship with my partner?” I was amazed as my hand flew across the page, scribbling: “Sign up for a dance class! Go out with friends more! Sleep in on Sundays!”

    My answers helped me realize that I was suffocating my own desires out of fear of my partner’s reactions. What I really wanted was right there on the page. Having this list enabled me to consider how I might carve out more space for my own desires within my relationship.

    3. Make a wish.

    The first time I saw a life coach, she began our session with the simplest of questions: “If you were granted three wishes, what would you wish for?”

    At first I thought her question was contrived, but when I answered, two of my responses were illuminating: I wished for a healthier relationship with my family, and I wished to become fully self-employed in the career of my dreams.

    Then she looked me in the eye: “You want these two things very much?”

    I nodded.

    “More than anything else in the world?”

    I nodded again.

    She grinned. “Then what have you been waiting for?”

    I was speechless. I’d never given myself permission to suspend reality, if only for a moment, to dream big. Making a wish allowed me to dive into my dreams without stopping myself with “What if?”s  “How?”s and “I could never do that.” Once I spoke my desires aloud, I could no longer ignore their truth. I begin strategizing how to get there.

    Practice suspending reality to discover what you crave. Imagine that you could make a wish that would be instantly granted, or imagine that you could walk through a door and your ideal life waited on the other side. What do you notice about these dreams? What desires do they demonstrate?

    4. Weave a web of impact.

    One of people-pleasers’ greatest challenges is the fear of being perceived as selfish or uncaring. I know this was true for me. Many of us believe that our worth comes from meeting others’ needs. Sometimes we forget that speaking our truth positively impacts other people.

    Take a moment to ask yourself the question: “If I spoke my truth and set firm boundaries, who else would benefit, and how?” Consider your partner, your friends, your colleagues, your children, passersby on the street. Consider who you might serve as a role model. Who might benefit from witnessing your strength and independence?

    You will quickly realize that speaking your truth has far-reaching benefits. Keep your list visible to remind yourself of the web of impact your new habits will have.

    5. Start small.

    If you’ve been in a habit of people-pleasing for a long time, it may be challenging to immediately identify your own big dreams. You may feel that you truly don’t know what you want right now, and that is totally normal. Living your truth and communicating authentically are muscles; when you exercise them regularly, they become stronger over time.

    Give yourself permission to start small. For example, you might not yet know what you want out of your career, but you do know you love strolling around the lake in the morning and winding down your nights with chamomile tea. You may not yet know which city you want to relocate to, but you do know you’d like to take a mid-afternoon power nap and buy thermal socks.

    These wants are sacred whispers from your innermost self. Give your innermost self time to surface. By pursuing these small desires, you learn to trust yourself. You begin to realize that you are fully capable of being your own advocate and building the life you want.

    Pay special attention to how it feels to meet your needs. Be patient. With the passage of time, bigger dreams make themselves known in your heart.

    Authentic communication is a two-way street; we must speak truthfully to ourselves before we can speak truthfully to others. Once we become familiar with what we really want, we can imagine a world where we replace old habits, like people-pleasing, with new visions for a brighter future.

  • How to Get Past Doubt and Do What You Really Want to Do

    How to Get Past Doubt and Do What You Really Want to Do

    “Doubt everything. Find your own light.” ~The Buddha

    As far back as I can remember, I’ve allowed my life to be shaped by external forces.

    On the outside, it appeared like I was just another carefree soul, living in the moment and going through life like a leaf on the wind. But on closer inspection, I was actually running away from having to make any real commitments and avoiding getting into a position where I had to make difficult or important decisions.

    It wasn’t until recently, when I realized it was four years to the date since I’d fallen into the job that I’d despised for what seemed like forever, that I even stopped to realize this.

    But on this day, as I stood looking around and contemplating where I’d ended up, I suddenly—and surprisingly—decided that was all going to change.

    Before I knew it, I was acting on something that, until then, had been just a vague, albeit persistent idea floating around in the back of my mind.

    I was applying to go back to university.

    There was little doubt about the decision; it was something I’d be thinking about for a while but had been putting off for as long as possible.

    But sure enough, the doubt soon crept in. I loathed formal education the first time around, and this time I was going to study something that was sure to stop any conversation dead with 99% of people I knew and make me the best friend of my one quirky aunt who’s deep into crystals and horoscopes:

    Mindfulness.

    I knew it was what I wanted. And I was pleased that for once I’d actually stood on my own two feet and made a decision. Not to mention, I was secretly relieved that I wouldn’t have to make another big one for at least a few years.

    But little did I know that was far from how it was going to be.

    In making such a big life choice, I’d made a complete about-turn from my familiar and reliable strategy of avoidance and chosen to stare life directly in the face.

    And I’d forgotten just how scary-looking life can be.

    My instinct to run was immediately triggered. Maybe this isn’t what I really want. Maybe I’ve changed my mind; people change their minds all the time, don’t they? Life would be simple if I just stayed where I am and found another job. It’s not too late to drop out…

    Instead of fleeing like usual, this time I froze. You could say I’d made progress, but it felt like I’d gone backward—despite being unable to move backward, forward, or in any direction whatsoever.

    I was well and truly paralyzed by doubt.

    And I was going to study mindfulness.

    Just perfect.

    My paralysis came from a long-held belief that I needed to be free from all trace of doubt before I could make any major decisions and move forward in life. But as I quickly came to see, if this was the case, then no one would ever do anything they really wanted to do.

    It’s in the nature of the mind to doubt. And whereas I thought the problem was that I’d rushed the decision or hadn’t considered the other options thoroughly enough, it was that I was, in fact, stirring up the murky waters of doubt with my constant questioning, making it all but impossible to see things clearly.

    Nearly six months into once again being a fresher, I’ve made more decisions than during the rest of my life combined. I rarely experience doubt anymore, but when it does appear, I know why it’s there, and rather than indulge it or push it away, I can simply let the water settle before getting on with what I want to do.

    Below is what I learned about doubt broken down into three steps or rules. If you doubt they’ll stop you from putting off big decisions and second-guessing yourself, put that aside for a moment while you read on and discover for yourself.

    1. There will always be a reason not to do something.

    If you try hard enough, you can always find a persuasive enough reason not to do anything.

    You can’t go to the party because you haven’t gotten as much work done as you planned to.

    You can’t start a family because you need to make at least ten grand a year more first.

    You can’t run your own business because you’re already tired and it’s only going to become more demanding.

    When we’re faced with making a choice, our mind often fishes for reasons not to take action, automatically accepting the ones that seem to fit into our fear-driven stories and justify how we feel.

    In this way, we come to relate to our experience according to the ongoing internal narrative about what’s going on, rather than what is actually happening in the new and ever changing here and now.

    It’s easy enough to understand this when you’re reading it in an article. The tricky thing is that when it happens to you, the stories can appear so real that debunking them feels like an impossible task.

    This is even more true with doubt as all the while it will be telling you things like: There’s no point even trying, there’s a reason you can’t but you just haven’t found it yet, and, you’ll always be this way, so you might as well just succumb to your fate.

    But no matter how sophisticated and convincing the story, if it’s going against what you really want or know deep down to be true, then you can be sure it is the doubting mind.

    As a function of the mind’s problem-solving mode, doubt is an incredibly useful tool that can alert us to impending danger, help us think more critically, and enable us to make better decisions. As we spend most our time in this problem-solving mode, though, this vulnerability-seeking mechanism can become chronically switched on and quickly become debilitating.

    Either way, the doubting mind is not you. But how do you know the difference between you and this part of your brain? Well, you don’t—at least not when you’re stuck in this mode, as by definition that’s what the doubting mind will tell you.

    It will tell you that certainty is possible. It will tell you there will always be a better time. It will tell you that you’ll be able to see the future and know how things will turn out if only you consider things a bit longer…

    First things first, then, to break free from doubt, we need to recognize that when we go fishing, we are going to catch some fish. In other words, when you believe that thoughts will give you an answer and will relieve you of uncertainty, you’re only going to create more and more doubt.

    It’s only by letting the water clear that we can start seeing what it reflects more clearly. And to do this, we don’t suppress the doubt—that only stir things up more. But nor do we passively accept it.

    2. Instead of accepting, learn to doubt the doubt.

    In Buddhist theory, overcoming doubt is not a matter of letting it be and having blind faith in something greater, it’s about exploring it through a process of active investigation.

    And what are we most likely to find when we inquire into this kind of doubt?

    Fear.

    For a long time, I believed that in order to be truly ready for something, I’d need to be without fear. That was, after all, what it meant to be fearless, to be a man, a Buddha, a superhero, or whatever other ideal I was guiding my life by.

    Without knowing it, I had thus long been avoiding fear, shielding myself from it, and denying that I was or could ever be scared of anything.

    In this way, I lost the resilience to be able to do anything that was even the slightest bit meaningful to me, and built a life that was safe, limited, and void of the things I really cared about.

    But fearlessness does not mean being free from all fear. It’s the opposite: it’s learning to be so intimate with fear that it no longer controls you. It’s making such a close friend of it that you can use it to propel you forward instead of treating fear as the enemy and allowing it to hold you back.

    You can uncover fear with the sneaky and perspective-shifting act of doubting the doubt. This is essentially the role of meditation and learning to notice thoughts as phenomena that are separate from yourself.

    Through practice, meditation gives us a welcome alternative to pushing away, passively accepting, or being completely swept away by thoughts, allowing us to relate to our own fear in an entirely new and previously unseen way.

    3. If there’s fear, you’re on the right track.

    Because I failed to recognize fear and denied its existence, my doubting mind stepped in to try to solve the problem.

    As opposed to filling me with angst and making my hands pour with sweat, the doubt appeared as a friend trying to protect me. And that makes sense—our doubts and fears are always trying to keep us safe. But a true friend doesn’t hold us back; instead, he or she propels us forward. And fear can do that for us if we let it. As Ram Dass explains, when “you no longer allow fear to step blatantly before you and shout of cataclysm, it will creep behind you and whisper something reasonable in your ear.”

    If we acknowledge fear as a sensation, before the conditioned responses and makeshift interpretations, we see that it is a bubbling energy of potential that isn’t shouting or whispering to us about what we can’t and shouldn’t do, but signaling to us what we can and could do.

    By trying to push it away and remove it from my experience, then, I was mixing up my own recipe for a life of limited potential and of achieving only what happened to fall into my lap. If I learned to be aware of it and recognize it for what it is, however, I could take the same ingredients and use them to cook up a life of unlimited potential and growth.

    You can’t have change, innovation, creativity, and originality—in other words, life—without insecurity, uncertainty, and fear. And so by embracing these fundamental states and changing how you see fear, you can begin to use them to your advantage and live a full life.

    This isn’t about, say, giving in to the fact that leaving your job is terrifying and so getting it over with as quickly as possible. That would mean still categorizing fear as an unwanted foe and trying to conquer it through blind action.

    This is about welcoming fear as a valuable and even desirable part of your experience. It’s about noticing that when you feel terrified about leaving your job, the feeling is saying wow, you must be doing something really challenging and/or meaningful. It’s learning to see fear as a guide that’s there to help you. It might also suggest that you want to prepare yourself, and wait until after your next paycheck, but if deep down, you want to do something different, the fear is telling you “keep going in this direction, you’re on the right track.”

    It’s only by bringing fear, with all its demons, into the light that we can begin to unravel the excuses we have piled upon them—many of which we don’t know are even there until we look. We can then see fear without any pretense, without any doubt, and only then embrace it as the true ally and source of life it really is.

    And if you immediately think you can’t do it, are overcome by your poor track record, or just immediately zone out or want to run and hide, notice this as the doubting mind. Beat it at its own game and doubt it. And then ask yourself, what sort of life do you choose to lead: one of comfort, dissatisfaction, and surety, or one of adventure, fulfillment, and the thrill of diving into the unknown?

  • One of Those Days? How to Deal When Everything Irritates You

    One of Those Days? How to Deal When Everything Irritates You

    “Be proactive not reactive, for an apparently insignificant issue ignored today can spawn tomorrow’s catastrophe.” ~Ken Poirot 

    Do you ever have one of those mornings where the battle against annoying minutiae begins before you’re even truly awake?

    One of those days where you feel the illusion of control fully slipping away. You try to grasp and pull it back, but you really have no control over this day or its outcome, at all.

    We dread these types of days, don’t we? The control freak in me gets uncomfortable thinking about it. Even the Meet The Parents movies make me unsettled, because as more and more things go wrong, I just want to cry out, “Stop it already! Stop making bad choices!”

    I can’t guarantee that I can help you stop making bad choices, but I can give you tips for handling those days when everything minor breaks, stalls, or gets in your way.

    I had a day like this when I was pregnant with my youngest. I never regained my energy back like they say you will in the second trimester. I was tired, achy, and feeling uncomfortably large one morning last spring. Still, being pregnant, with all its discomforts, was the highlight of my day.

    It started with an alarm that didn’t go off—well, we didn’t set alarms anymore. My daughter always wakes early, so no need. That day, she took the morning off. No wakeup call from the toddler.

    We woke up running late in a panic. Then, as our cats had been doing lately, just for fun, they threw up their breakfast on the kitchen floor.

    I looked at the stream of cat vomit and told my husband, “Your turn, I cleaned it up last time.”

    He gaped at the floor, and then looked as if he was considering adding his own vomit to the pile. “No. Can’t do it.”

    “UHHH!!” I fumed, and thus began a morning squabble, the bane of my existence. I hate fighting in the morning more than cleaning up cat vomit, but I was rattled from waking up quickly, so I just went for it and dove headfirst into a fight.

    Fight over, we went our separate ways—he went to work and I stayed at home with our kid.

    Later, my first new phone in four years showed up in the mail. Now, if you have ever tried to set up anything with a toddler in tow, you know it’s like trying to build Ikea furniture in a tornado. But I was excited and needed to reset the vibe of the day, so I called to set it up.

    A new phone shouldn’t have problems from the start, right? Seems reasonable, but I had to keep explaining to the representative that I was setting up a new phone.

    We lost phone connection three times. My toddler needed helping five times. Suddenly both my old phone (that I was talking to the rep on) and my new one wouldn’t work. Confused, I was interrupted by a loud hissing.

    I was making split pea soup in the cooker, which I had forgotten. The neglected pot was spewing hot soup goo all over. Meanwhile my sink, countertop, and the stove were full of dishes.

    Old-fashioned pressure cookers are unpopular because if you move them quickly, you get burning steam shooting out at you. Most people don’t use old-fashioned pressure cookers because of this—smart people.

    There was nowhere to move the pot.

    So I had to move the pressure cooker pot in slow motion. I watched in horror as more and more hot goo spilled over the stove, counter, and flowed like a green boiling waterfall onto the floor.

    I huffed with frustration and started cleaning up—phone temporarily a backseat issue—while trying to keep my kid away from the literal hot mess.

    But I was also proud of myself. I hadn’t taken my frustrations out on anyone. I had carried myself with calm, even though I was boiling over, like the soup pot.

    Smiling, I went to place the cleanup towels in the hamper. There, one entire corner of the floor was covered with broken picture frames and glass. I was shocked. And now broken glass? I hadn’t heard anything fall?? What?!

    Suddenly, it was all too much. I felt anger and frustration rising inside of me. I had enough! I walked into the room away from my daughter and dad, and gave a little scream—not loud enough to scare anyone, but it was enough to release my steam valve.

    I’m guessing you’ve had a day like this before. When one irritating thing after another happened, building major annoyance and frustration, making it hard to keep your cool.

    How can we stop getting riled up by everything that goes wrong in a day?

    Most of us in the Western world have become very busy and, by default, very reactive. This does not set us up well to handle unexpected annoyances. But there are a few things we can do to prepare for these days in advance, and a number of ways we can cope better so we don’t get epically annoyed with all the irritations happening around us.

    A Preventative Plan for Managing Murphy’s-Law-Kinda Days

    1. Be mindful of the influences around you.

    The people we surround ourselves with and the information we consume affect our overall mood. If you’re constantly bombarded with criticism, judgment, or negativity, you’ll likely be primed to snap at little things.

    Are your interactions with others positive and supportive? Is your partner or best friend kind to you? Do you have people around you who have your best interests at heart? Or is getting through every day like walking through a minefield of aggressive, explosive people?

    I don’t have expertise in the area of extricating yourself from abusive or trying relationships, but there are plenty of people who do, so if you find yourself being mistreated and traumatized, take action to help yourself today.

    If you aren’t surrounded by intentionally harmful people, yet you listen to news that drags you down and spend a lot of time with complainers and energy drainers, you are not protecting your sweet soul from the tarnishing effects of others.

    I’m not suggesting that you insulate yourself from every negative thing, but can you minimize that which is optional?

    Can you make an effort to consciously choose to surround yourself with people and media who lift you up and make you a better version of yourself?

    2. Take good care of yourself so you’re balanced going in.

    To thrive even with adversity, you need to take care of the animal that is your human body. This body needs fresh air, water, exercise, rest, and quality food. If you are depriving your body of any of these on a regular basis, it is simply a matter of time until you’re an angry, reactive mess.

    Keeping up your good habits of exercising and eating well is essential. The food you put into your body affects your mood. Sugar can give us an energy high, but after it wears off then there’s an energy low, which can leave you feeling worse than before.

    An unhealthy diet high in sugar and processed food can contribute to depression. And living a sedentary life is a risk factor is well. Exercise releases endorphins, the feel-good hormone, which can help you keep calm when things go wrong.

    If you don’t currently eat well and exercise regularly, a reactive, frustrating day can be a wake up call to start supporting a good foundation of health. Then you can weather these storms better.

    3. Find some time during the day to be quiet, meditate, and get calm.

    Meditation is like training for your mind. It literally rewires your brain to be calmer and less reactive, and it can significantly reduce stress and anxiety. By taking time on a regular basis to be quiet and contemplate, you can sometimes identify nagging small concerns before they become large concerns.

    Spending time in nature can have a similar relaxing effect. Being in nature helps you center yourself and recharge—and there’s even some research to show that a certain bacteria in soil can act as a natural antidepressant.

    If you can get out to nature, please do so as soon as possible. It always helps me immensely to get outside.

    How to Handle Trying Days When They Happen

     1. Ask yourself: Is it the day that is a problem, or is it me?

    This is a tough love type of question, but I think it’s essential to pause and ask yourself what’s really going on. When you have a day in which everything and anything annoys you, take time to reflect. Ask yourself if it’s just a rough day, or if your reaction is a sign that something in your life is out of whack.

    It might just be a fluke of a day where things are going funky right and left. Or maybe you’ve been letting little things build up, and things are boiling over because there’s something big you need to address that you’re ignoring—dissatisfaction with your work, or a compatibility issue in your relationship, for example.

    If there is something big that you’re avoiding, can you face it? Can you find someone who will help you find the courage to address what you need to do—to face what you are afraid of?

     2. Release your pent up emotions.

    Modern living and working close with others means there are lots of times where we have to filter our words and our reactions to act like a responsible adult. All too often we stuff our feelings down until we’re ready to explode—and often on some innocent bystander who doesn’t deserve our rage.

    A healthier approach is to feel and work through our feelings as they arise, and sometimes the best approach is to physically release them from our bodies.

    The relief that a good primal scream or pillow punching episode can provide is so incredible (though these things are best done in solitude, so we don’t offload our emotions onto the people around us).

    Elevated stress levels can be stored in the body and create muscle tension, and cause many other physical/emotional strain. But if we release the stress, we can fluidly move forward. Exercise can also help with this, since it gets our muscles moving, and our heart pumping—another good reason to get active!

    3. Take the pressure off.

    On some of my worst bad days, I give myself permission to check out and chill out. I take time to watch funny videos on YouTube or do a calming visualization meditation. It can feel tempting to plow through our to-do list, especially since we often tie our worth to our busyness and productivity. But sometimes you just need a break to regroup.

    For example, can you find a few moments when you can sit or lie down? Then you can either relax or fill yourself with something silly and lighthearted. Animal videos, anyone?

    4. Lastly, remember that it is okay to have a low day.

    Life will ebb and flow. It’s all right for us to feel low, defeated, or sad some days. If you can cultivate a sense of non-attachment and tell yourself, “Well, that was one bad day. Tomorrow will be different,” you can release your feelings about what happened. You can acknowledge that one low day might just be a dip in a life that is largely good overall.

    If it’s just one annoying day that is bothering you, you’ve likely got a lot still that you can be grateful for. When you can see that you are doing okay, that you have so many things going for you, even in the midst of challenging situations, then you know things are actually going quite well in your life!

    Here’s to rolling with the tricky days and relishing in the good ones.

  • I Hope You Live Louder

    I Hope You Live Louder

  • The Key to Acceptance: Understand That Everything Changes With Time

    The Key to Acceptance: Understand That Everything Changes With Time

    “If you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.” ~Byron Katie

    I love this quote. Ironic, really, because when I first read it, I was furious—furious with my reality and anyone who encouraged me to accept it. In my mind, to accept chronic illness was to accept defeat.

    I had just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, an incredibly painful condition that had me bedridden most days and unable to care for my then two-year-old daughter, never mind myself. My home became filled with carers and aides and adaptations.

    Rather than starting a new career as a newly qualified occupational therapist, I was struggling with the fear of lifelong pain, the shame of unemployment, and the guilt of not being the active mother I desperately wanted to be. I was in no mood to accept such circumstances in life.

    So how did I move from a position of resistance to one of restoration? How can we find some wiggle room in situations that may feel utterly immobilizing? Well, chocolate and cake help, but what really started creating space for growth was the Buddhist notion of impermanence and the insight, acceptance, and mindfulness that flowed from that.

    Impermanence is a universal law; every single thing is in flux. Take the British weather, for example. We know it’s unpredictable and always changing, so when we go on holiday here, we often take boots and raincoats as well as sunscreen and hats!

    We see this same principle mirrored in ourselves as we change with age. I remember a time when I was washing dishes and, in looking down at my hands, was taken aback at how much they resembled my mother’s. Soft lines and delicate wrinkles that had found a home on my skin stared back at me.

    The profound realization that not a single person or thing is fixed and all is ultimately impermanent can cause some sadness and anxiety, but within this there is a freedom and hope.

    The Glass Is Already Broken

    Someone once asked a well-known meditation master, Ajahn Chah, in a world where everything changes, how can there be happiness?

    The teacher held up a drinking glass and, with much compassion, explained, “You see this goblet? For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it. I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over, or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

    When I read this and really let it sink into my bones, slowly, gently, something shifted. I realized then all human life is fragile—sickness doesn’t discriminate.

    Though my ill health had initially caused so much loss and sadness, I was able then to move from a place of “Why me?” to a “Why not me?” It cooled my rage, and the first shoots of acceptance began to show.

    We will all experience pain at some point in our lives. It is part of the package of being human. Accepting this can help ease the suffering enmeshed in pain and encourage us to truly embrace and appreciate life’s pain-free moments, the pockets of joy.

    Saying Hello to the Here of Our Circumstances

    There is a wonderful story in Pádraig Ó Tuama’s book, In the Shelter, about a photojournalist who was returning to a tribe in Papua New Guinea where she had lived as a child. Within this tribe, there was no word for hello. Instead, upon seeing someone, you simply said, “You are here,” and the response, being equally clear, was “Yes, I am.”

    Isn’t that wonderful? No judgment—just acknowledgement of what’s here. When we say hello to the here of our circumstances, no matter how dire or unfair they seem, we’re better able to accept them.

    Acceptance is not defeat. It is an acknowledgment of the truth. Once we accept where we are, we can move forward with greater clarity, courage, and strength. It’s an opportunity to become unstuck, to experience well-being in the midst of our symptoms and beyond our symptoms.

    The Power of Mindfulness

    One thing that helped me get unstuck was mindfulness, which means conscious awareness of our moment-to-moment experience, without judgment.

    When I began to tentatively practice mindfulness each day, I soon realized that my experience of pain was never static. It changed in its intensity and location, and ultimately had many flavors. Sometimes it was a stabbing or burning sensation, at other times a dull ache. I could observe how it felt in different parts of my body and how, like waves, it had a tendency to rise and fall. I was shown how my experience of chronic pain was, like the weather, ever-changing.

    This helped me shift my focus from one of resistance to flexibility. It removed the sting of emotional suffering from my pain, creating a much less devastating and more manageable illness experience.

    I was finally able to whisper a faint hello to the pain and the emotions around it, and the practice of listening became a sort of self-hospitality. I could welcome what is just as I would welcome a friend.

    Within this I also saw the flip side of impermanence, the gift that nothing is set in stone. I was told I would always be in constant pain, but I knew my pain experience was fluid. I had occasional respite from it, even if it was just one hour a day, and with new pain knowledge and Buddhist principles, I was learning to emotionally disengage from it.

    Seven years after my devastating diagnosis, I actually recovered from the pain of fibromyalgia. That was over three years ago, and I have never had to take pain medication for it since, but that’s another story.

    As it stands I’m currently learning to navigate life with another painful chronic illness—hello, broken glass—but I’m much better able to manage it now that I understand the universal truth of impermanence and have nurtured the willingness to say hello to the here (albeit at times begrudgingly).

    If a black mood does settle on me, I try to take myself out for a mindful meander in nature.

    When I can be still and behold a whirling turn of birds, twisting and twirling like leaves caught in a breeze, it cuts through the chatter and noise, my frets and fears. It’s a sweet balm for life’s concerns.

    Mindful moments like these, when there is peace in every breath and joy in every view, are sacred to me. They remind me that there is so much beauty in the world to balance the pain. In nature I feel truly hushed, seen, found, and grounded, enabling me to appreciate the present moment and helping to create the chance of a promising future.

    Happiness is, after all, an inside job. It’s not about having perfect circumstances; it’s about making peace with what is and making the best of the hand we were dealt.

    Practicing mindfulness, appreciating nature, and understanding impermanence are some of the things that have helped me—and could help you too. When we embrace what is, enjoy what we can, and accept that all things inevitably change, peace becomes possible.

  • What Your “Negative” Emotions Are Trying to Tell You

    What Your “Negative” Emotions Are Trying to Tell You

    “Life will only change when you become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.” ~Billy Cox

    It might sound like a senseless paradox to say that the “bad” or “dark” things about you are actually your “light” or “positive” qualities. However, this isn’t just a feel-good platitude; it’s literally true. The things we struggle with the most are our greatest sources of empowerment.

    Because this process is not exactly front and center of modern mental health and wellness movements, committing to your own healing can seem daunting and hopeless. Few people have truly learned how to welcome their painful, suppressed emotions, listen to what they have to say, and come out the other side stronger.

    But in today’s world, it’s become increasingly difficult to avoid, suppress, and force ourselves into fake states of positivity. Clearly, our “negative” emotions are bubbling to the surface where they cannot be ignored any longer.

    We see anger and pain overflowing into the social and political sphere, in schools where violence occurs, and all over the news. According to ScienceDaily, “121 million people worldwide are impacted by depression, and 850,000 commit suicide every year.”

    It’s no wonder so many of us get stuck in apathy, pessimism, and distractions. Life is challenging us right now, and the first necessary step is to actually acknowledge that we are in pain. This sounds incredibly simple, yet so many people choose to fight their symptoms rather than committing to understanding them.

    On social media I see a lot of hashtags exemplifying our resistance to pain, like #depressionwarrior and #fightanxiety. And while it’s totally understandable to want to conquer the pain you’ve felt for so long, mental illness is not something to be battled and conquered. It doesn’t need to be fought, but rather, listened to and respected.

    Just as the physical body has innate intelligence, so does the emotional system. We don’t want to wage war against the very emotions that are trying to alert us of a problem and walk us through the solution. From a basic state of resistance, no healing can occur.

    In 2018, I gave up on a painful relationship, moved to a new apartment, started a new job, and finished writing my first real book. I grew up in so many ways, and processed more trauma and healed more aspects of myself than I ever thought possible. For the first time, my growth and progress were unmistakable—I didn’t need to squint to see that I had become wiser, stronger, and more capable in the real world.

    But my radical transformation was not exciting or easy. It wasn’t a fight, and it sure wasn’t the kind of glamorous story of triumph that goes viral nowadays. My life circumstances pushed me into a sort of hibernation—a state where I spent most of my time reading, meditating, resting, crying, and just doing whatever I had to do.

    This is the thing: True healing doesn’t look cool. It’s not a fighting and a conquering, but a softer, more intuitive process. This is why society resists it so much.

    True healing requires us to be counter-cultural. It requires us to be awkward, to stay in on Friday nights, to take strange trips or buy strange things that we can’t quite explain to other people.

    Healing requires vulnerability and radical allegiance to yourself.

    This is why much of my healing took so long. Prior to 2018, I wasn’t ready to commit to myself no matter what. I was too impressionable and willing to change for other people.

    The biggest lesson I learned is that my mental “illness” was not really illness or dysfunction at all. In truth, my emotions were messengers I had been ignoring, judging harshly, and trying to get rid of. My negative emotions were on my side, not against me.

    Negative emotions are not something you need to fight or fix any more than you’d need to fight or fix your immune system as it tries to ward off an infection. This is the great misunderstanding of our time.

    Many people never heal from mental illness because they mistake the symptoms for the problem. The symptoms are your obvious negative emotions, but the root problems are hidden. For example, you may be depressed because you don’t express yourself freely. On top of this, you may have a deep-seated fear that if you express yourself, you’ll be scolded.

    There are often several layers of negative beliefs and fears in our subconscious (or “shadow”), but all we ever see are the symptoms (e.g. depression, anxiety, etc.). I lived much of my life trying to solve my emotions until I learned a much more effective approach: listening to my emotions.

    So how do we actually heal?

    1. Listen to your mental “illness.”

    This is the simplest first step you can take. Every time you feel unpleasant symptoms arise, no matter what they are, make time that day to stop and listen. You can do this through a simple meditation in which you quiet your mind and let the emotions have space to express themselves.

    If it suits you better, you can also write all your current negative emotions on a page. There’s no need to worry about any emotion besides what is activated in the moment. What are you currently struggling with? Oftentimes, it will be connected to your other issues any way. Let that particular emotion speak.

    2. Ask your mental “illness” questions.

    Another thing I learned is how surprisingly easy it is to get answers from your subconscious mind. As soon as these emotions are given time, space, attention, and unconditional love, they waste no time revealing what you need to know.

    Maybe the message is simply that you need more time in your day to rest, or that you need to leave a serious relationship. Whether big or small, the guidance you receive will help you shift your life in a way that soothes your symptoms. This is the beginning of true healing.

    3. Practice gratitude for your symptoms.

    This is probably the most challenging thing on the list. Your symptoms really are guiding you and alerting you to what is out of alignment in your life. However, we’ve spent so much time suppressing and denying them that they’ve caused us significant pain.

    Our symptoms are like children throwing tantrums. If we don’t listen, they get louder and angrier. This is why we need to “make up” with our symptoms just as we would with a friend with whom we had a fight.

    Once you literally start to notice how your symptoms are subtly guiding you toward solutions, it becomes much easier to feel grateful for them (and trust them!). This step took me a bit of practice, but over time I found that I could have gratitude for my symptoms without any effort or forcing.

    4. Commit to the long haul.

    At first this may seem discouraging. But when I look back, I see that most of my wasted time was spent desperately trying to rush to the “perfect” life. I wanted to magically arrive at a place where I had no emotional or physical issues, and everything looked pristine on the surface. It was during these periods that I felt the most dissatisfaction and pain.

    Committing to the long haul means you have decided that no matter what, you will not abandon yourself. You will not try to skip out on true progress and growth for a quick and easy “fix.” You will not try to appear perfect from the outside.

    Once you make this commitment, your healing can occur faster and with more joy and ease throughout the process.

    So if you are at your wits end, pause. Stop resisting your circumstances and try a new approach. What if your emotions weren’t out to get you? What if they honestly wanted to help move you forward?

  • How I Went From the Pain of People-Pleasing to the Freedom of Being Me

    How I Went From the Pain of People-Pleasing to the Freedom of Being Me

    “How hurtful it can be to deny one’s own true self and live a life of lies just to appease others.” ~June Ahern

    Growing up I felt lost, separate, and different from everyone else in my family. After all, everyone else was a fit; they pursued the same hobbies, had the same aspirations, and even thought in the same way (everything was very black and white with hardly any grey areas). I was interested, it seemed, in everything they were not interested in.

    I had a different way of looking at the world. Any task I was asked to do I did my way, which, of course, was wrong and not fast enough. No matter how hard I tried to please, to get attention, to be listened to, I failed.

    When my parents weren’t judging, criticizing, and shouting at me, I felt invisible to them. Because I believed everything they said to me and about me, and sensed that I was a disappointment to them, a part of me slowly started to give up. When my grandparents supported and encouraged me, especially when they realized I had an interest and talent for athletics, I felt great.

    As far as my dad was concerned, it didn’t matter whether I succeeded or failed. He managed to find something wrong with everything I did.

    Because I put so much importance and belief in what he said, instead of feeling proud of what I had achieved, I felt empty, not good enough, and like there was something wrong with me. To say I had low self-esteem would be an understatement.

    In my early twenties, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so, still trying desperately to fit in and please them, I ended up working in a bank. They thought this was a respectable job, but I hated it.

    Over time I realized I didn’t know myself or what I wanted anymore. I’d lost contact with how I truly felt. I tried to be someone that they would accept, until I realized that person didn’t exist and couldn’t be found.

    I sought fulfillment in external things, buying clothes I didn’t need and drinking too much at parties.

    I often became disappointed with friends, because I relied too heavily on their judgments and opinions to feel okay in the world. I put huge expectations on others to give me the love and acceptance I didn’t have for myself. My self-worth and confidence depended solely on what other people felt and said.

    I put too much pressure on myself to reach a perfection that didn’t exist. I often felt anxious, had panic attacks, or just felt a sort of paralysis when I tried to do things that I really wanted to do, and wanted to do well, because I feared I couldn’t get it right. In fact, I felt like this whenever the real me would try to sneak through and show up.

    But not taking action and always checking and worrying whether I had offended anyone or said or done the wrong thing just left me feeling sad. Somewhere deep inside of me I knew I could do something worthwhile, if only I could break this cycle.

    It took a long time, but eventually I realized that I couldn’t find what I needed from anyone or anything else until I found it within myself first.

    I realized that only I could fill the void and emptiness inside. Being a people pleaser in order to be liked just made me feel resentful. I had to stop blaming other people for things that happened and the way I felt, which, I admit, was not easy to do.

    Slowly, over time, I faced the fact that I am responsible for my own decisions—no one else can make me do anything I don’t want to do—and I don’t have to put so much weight on other people’s opinions or believe my own criticisms, judgments, and negative thoughts.

    I realized that thoughts are not facts but simply words we use to try to make sense of the world. And our choice of words can determine how we feel about a situation. I could choose my words, my thoughts, and thus my feelings.

    I knew I had to find ways to listen to myself, not everyone else, and deal with my anxiety. After all, at best, others’ opinions are just that—opinions, which are based on their thoughts, perceptions, and judgments rather than facts. Here’s what helped me do just that.

    Learning To Listen To Myself And Tapping Into My Inner Wisdom

    Whenever I felt anxiety about what other people think, instead of resisting it I allowed it to be present. I used my breath to ride the wave of emotion, by breathing deeply and slowly into my belly. I welcomed the emotion by really feeling it, noticing where it was in my body, and being curious.

    At the same time I started to become aware of any thoughts and judgments that came up. As I listened I brought my attention back to my breathing, so as to not indulge and engage with various thoughts. This prevented me from getting lost in specific thoughts and feelings.

    I found that, with practice, the feelings would subside and I’d feel calmer and better able to observe and be aware of how unsupportive most of these thoughts were. I practiced various forms of meditation, in particular a kundalini Yoga meditation called Kirtan Kriya – Sa Ta Na Ma Mirabai Ceiba. I found doing this meditation everyday for at least forty days very helpful.

    This meditation helped me feel balanced and neutral, neither very happy nor sad, nor any other emotion.

    From this neutral position I could observe and be a witness to what I was automatically thinking, formerly without conscious awareness. I quickly realized how crazy some of my thoughts were, and in the realizing I could let go of their hold on me.

    Being able to observe and be the witness to what was going on inside my mind, not engaging with unsupportive thoughts, and allowing the feelings to come and go, enabled me to feel calm and centered and to see things from different angles.

    This practice also started to give me the time and space to decide how I wanted to respond, rather than react instantly without awareness.

    Over time I learned a lot about myself. Most importantly I learned to like, love, respect, accept, and forgive myself. I was able to stop beating myself up, cease being my harshest judge and critic, and start allowing myself to take action.

    This helped me discover what I loved and didn’t love doing. I allowed myself to make mistakes and concentrate on what really interested me, by allowing myself to do more of what I wanted to do. As I got in touch with who I really am, I found I had more unconditional love and tolerance for others.

    I felt happier, clearer, more emotionally and mentally resilient, and more connected to myself and others. And I was less thrown by life’s challenges. I was able to trust myself and my intuition, which made making decisions easier. I can handle my family now, no matter how they choose to show up.

    Most of the time I am able to respond in the way I choose to, authentically, assertively, and with compassion, my self-respect and self-worth in tact. I am me, and that feels freeing.

    If you also give too much weight to other people’s opinions, worry about getting their approval, and beat yourself up in your head, perhaps meditation can help you too. Learning to sit with your feelings and observe your thoughts, instead of believing and acting on everything that pops through your head, is the key to making peace with yourself. And making peace with yourself it the key to living the life you want to live, regardless of what other people think.

  • Create More, Consume Less: How to Feel More Excited About Life

    Create More, Consume Less: How to Feel More Excited About Life

    “Creating means living.” ~Dejan Stojanovic

    We live in a consumer culture. We love to eat, drink, and be merry—while binge watching whatever’s trending on Netflix and getting a dopamine hit for every item added to our cart on Amazon Prime.

    We love to take it all in—information, entertainment, status updates, news reports, substances, and an endless array of stuff. There’s never a shortage of things we can consume, often to keep our minds distracted and our feelings silenced.

    Now don’t get me wrong. I love a good meal, a Jim Beam or two, and an afternoon spent zoned out on my couch, Penn Badgley haunting me hour by hour as his stalking escalates from creepy to criminal.

    And I’m all for staying educated and updated, on issues both important and inane. I’ve spent hours obsessively researching all things health-related, and I’m embarrassed to admit that my search history reveals more than a healthy number of celebrity websites, if such a number exists.

    I also understand the instinct to shut down for a while. Our minds can get intolerably loud, and sometimes, external demands can be overwhelming. A little disengagement can be a good thing in a world that often requires us to be on.

    But there needs to be some kind of balance. If we spend our whole lives ingesting information and scarfing down an assortment of stuff meant to soothe us, we’ll never have the time or space to connect with ourselves and create the things we want to create.

    I’m not talking just about artistic expression, though I personally feel more alive when I’m bringing some type of creative vision to life. I’m talking about filling the void inside with our own curiosity, passion, and awe instead of constantly stuffing it with external pleasures.

    It may not seem like it in the moment when our shows, social media, or shopping carts beckon, but often the greatest pleasure stems from actively working toward a life that excites us.

    What are some things we can create?

    1. A mission statement

    Many of us go through our days without a sense of purpose. We have no idea what we value or what we stand for. We have no idea what we’re really doing with our lives, or why.

    Nothing feels exciting when nothing is fueled by passion or intention.

    In order to feel alive, we need to be connected to what matters to us most individually. I’m not talking about a specific career direction, though that could be a part of it. I’m talking about creating a blueprint for how you want to show up in the world so you can be the person you want to be and make decisions that feel right for you.

    For example, my current mission statement is:

    To live with wonder, courage, compassion, and integrity, prioritizing family, freedom, adventure, and creative expression.

    Knowing what I value, I’m better able to decide which opportunities to pursue and accept and which ones to politely decline.

    This doesn’t have to be set in stone. Mission statements change over time as we grow and evolve. So write, revisit, and revise, as often you deem necessary.

    2. Art

    This is the low-hanging fruit for this list. Yes, art is something you can create! Big shocker! But it clearly has a place here nonetheless.

    Especially if you’re tempted to consume to avoid your feelings, why not channel them into a creative project instead? Creativity is not only calming and healing, it’s a journey back to the simplistic joy of childhood—when you had countless Lego castles, doodle-filled pages, and chalk street art masterpieces to show for your time. And the possibilities are endless.

    You could color, sketch, paint, sculpt, sew, crochet, knit, make jewelry, build something, or write a poem, short story, or song. You could art journal, scrapbook, create a magazine collage, try origami, or make something with unconventional materials (duct tape, wine corks, doll parts from your childhood).

    If you tune into your feelings and curiosity, you’ll find endless inspiration, and if you look around, you’ll find endless materials to use and recycle.

    It’s worth noting that quite frequently, consumption fuels creation. I can’t tell you how many scripts I read and films I watched when preparing to write my first screenplay. Every movie helped me learn and sparked ideas for my own story and its execution.

    Though it’s also wonderful to enjoy art for the sake of it, there’s something thrilling about consuming with a purpose. Not just to be entertained but also to be inspired—so you can create something personally meaningful to you that will hopefully move and inspire other people to live and a love a little louder.

    Little feels more exciting than chiseling a piece of your heart into something beautiful that will endure, while simultaneously motivating other people wake up and live more fully.

    3. A medium for self-expression

    We live in an exciting time for self-expression. No longer do gatekeepers get to decide whose words deserve a platform. Anyone can start a blog, vlog, or podcast to share their thoughts and views with the world.

    The beautiful thing is, it’s not too hard to get started. You don’t need a fancy site or special equipment to get going—though those things are nice to have, and they’re things you could always acquire in time, if you like the medium you choose and decide to see how far you can take it.

    With a little googling you can easily find a way to get set up today, for free, so you can move out from the shadows and share what’s in your heart and on your mind.

    Not only will you give yourself an opportunity to express your feelings and feel truly seen, you’ll likely also help other people through your honesty and vulnerability. Yes, you.

    If you think your voice doesn’t matter, consider this: a blog can reach only one person, and yet be the one thing that saves or changes that person’s life. You never know who you’ll help or inspire by finding the courage to speak up.

    4. Memories

    At the end of it all, when we look back on our lives, we won’t take a mental inventory of the dollars we earned, followers we gained, or items we checked off our to-do list. What we’ll see is a mélange of moments—times when we loved, connected, got outside our comfort zone, and engaged with the world with wonder and enthusiasm.

    These moments generally don’t just fall into our laps. We have to actively create them. And sometimes that means stepping outside the realm of our routine and actually doing the type of things we daydream about.

    There’s a scene in the movie Stepmom (spoiler alert!) where Susan Sarandon’s character, Jackie, knows her cancer is getting worse and her time with her family is limited. So she does something out of character and beautifully touching: She wakes her daughter Anna in the middle of the night and takes her horseback riding, in the snow.

    Anna says she’ll never forget this moment, and how could she? She’s nestled close to her dying mother, on a horse, in nature—when the night’s at its most peaceful and she’s usually asleep and unable to see it. Together they feel completely present and alive in this magical moment of connection and awe.

    We can all create these kinds of moments. We can create magic for ourselves, someone else, or both, if we’re willing to prioritize it and put in the effort.

    5. Possibilities

    I suspect a lot of us feel pretty discontent with our lives. Perhaps Thoreau conveyed it best when he wrote “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

    Most of us merely survive and think of thriving as a luxury unavailable to the majority. I’m not going to lie; it’s easier for some to thrive than others. Some of us are born into more ideal circumstances, and some get more advantages.

    But perhaps the problem isn’t just that not everyone gets the same chances, but also that not everyone takes the same chances.

    If we settle into a pit of discontentment and do the same things every day, nothing will ever change.

    The only way to make our lives any better is to find and seize opportunities instead of waiting for them to come to us.

    Make the call. Send the email. Sign up for the course. If you can’t afford it, research scholarships or free or cheap alternatives. Do something to create a new possibility for your life, whether it pertains to your work, your hobbies, or your relationships.

    Then the next purchase you make might be something you need for this exciting new path, not something you want because you’re miserably unhappy with the status quo of your unfulfilling life.

    6. New connections

    We live in an increasingly disconnected world. We spend more time holding devices than hands and look into more screens than eyes, as the Dulce Ruby quote suggests. This is such a lonely way to live. But it doesn’t have to be like this. Not if we prioritize forming and maintaining relationships.

    Of course this isn’t easy. It can be challenging to pull ourselves away from our usual indulgences, get outside our little bubble of comfort, and get present in the world beyond our own door. But it’s oh so worth it.

    One day last year I was a feeling a little down about my limited social circle where I live near LA. I’ve moved a lot, I travel a lot, and I work from home; and I haven’t done a great job prioritizing relationships where I live.

    As I was scrolling through my Facebook feed on this afternoon, trying to distract myself from the sadness in my heart, I decided to do something different; so I navigated to a group for Highly Sensitive People, that contributor Bryn Bamber had actually recommended in a post about sensitivity, and introduced myself, asking if anyone lived near LA.

    Several people responded, including one who’s become a great friend—someone I can relate to on a deep personal level. Someone who gets me, who I get back. And not only did I make a new soul connection, I also opened myself up to new possibilities: because of her, I began volunteering at a nearby community theater, where I hope to volunteer again in the future.

    It can feel awkward to initiate conversation with someone new. Or at least it feels that way for me. But as Frank told Don in The Green Book, “The world is full of lonely people afraid to make the first move.” Make the first move. You just might change two lives.

    —

    In the words of Ferris Bueller, life goes by pretty quickly. Friendships evolve or fade, jobs run their course, kids grow up—and before you know it, we’re looking back at our years, either feeling proud of everything we created or wondering how and why we squandered our time.

    I don’t know about you, but I want to prioritize the things that truly matter to me and fill my hours with purposeful actions that fill my heart with peace, passion, and excitement.

    I want to make beautiful things, share empowering ideas, and collect more moments of awe than there are grains of sand on the beach.

    I also want balance.

    I want abundant movie marathons, occasional retail therapy sessions, and Sunday morning mimosas.

    I want trashy magazines in the tub, an endless rotation of used true crime books, and a full Netflix queue that seems to scream, “I know what you like, Lori. I get you.”

    But I want to consume those things intentionally. Not to avoid or escape anything, but just because they’re fun.

    I think that’s a reasonable goal for all of us. To be a little more intentional, a lot more engaged, and in the end, far more excited about the lives we’re living.

  • Say Yes to What Excites You and Make This the Year You Really Live

    Say Yes to What Excites You and Make This the Year You Really Live

    “I imagine that Yes is the only living thing.” ~e.e. cummings

    During the fall of 2017 I began openly dating, four years after my separation and divorce of a twenty-plus year relationship. It was scary. And I was clear—I didn’t want a commitment, I just wanted the experience and some fun.

    My third round of online dating, I finally went out with some younger men who I assumed lined up with my non-commitment goal. It was different and fun, but also not quite what I wanted.

    In December of that year, my friend, who was interested in getting to know me more and had been asking me to lunch for months, called me out on my non-commitment. I always had the perfect excuse as to why I couldn’t go. But none of them were as valid as the truth: I was scared.

    What if I enjoyed my time with him? What if he liked me and I had to let him down because I wanted nothing to do with a real relationship? My biggest fear is hurting other people, so I didn’t want to even consider that option. Until he said, “Why don’t you stop avoiding and commit to lunch.”

    I really dislike being called out, especially when it’s right. So I went.

    And you know what happened? What I feared. I enjoyed myself—for four hours. It was filled with great conversation and great company. We closed down the restaurant with our lengthy stay. For someone who listens to people all day long as a professional counselor, I thoroughly enjoyed being listened to and heard. It was wonderful.

    And from that moment, my goal for 2018 was born. The Year of Yes.

    For the entire year I would commit to saying yes to opportunities that scared me. Ones that made me squirmy and uncomfortable and that promised to teach me something every step of the way.

    In 2018, I created podcasts, which I had been avoiding. It scared me to put my work out there and expose myself. As I created them I discovered I loved them. They inspired me to continue doing the work I’m passionate about and still do.

    I also opened myself up to doing a number of interviews that completely took me out of my comfort zone. If someone contacted me or an opportunity arose that made my heart beat fast, I said yes without thinking.

    When my voice of inspiration popped up and guided me to write and post, I did. When I felt the pull to take financial risks that made me question my stability, I took them. If it felt scary but exciting, I said yes. And didn’t look back.

    When the days were sunny and I had a ton of work to do, but a fun option presented itself, I chose the fun. Not an ounce of regret.

    I said yes to adventure. I traveled more readily and confidently in 2018 than any other year of my life. I’m an anxious flyer and I jumped on a tiny plane up the coast and large planes across the country. I explored. I stayed open. I was scared, but I did it anyway, and loved it.

    I also said yes to a new relationship—sloooowly. Very, very slowly.

    In that relationship I noticed things in myself I could not have seen on my own. How quickly I want to bail if I’m uncomfortable. How hard it is for me to receive kindness and love and allow it to be a comfortable part of my life. How much I clam up when I want to run and how easy it is for me to shut down, all while teaching others how to do the complete opposite. Which meant I too, had to practice what I preached.

    I learned to communicate like a champ. I shared my feelings when I would normally close them off. I let myself get close to people when I’d rather stay much, much further away.

    I chose to say yes. I said yes to myself. I said yes to my life.

    And I lived.

    I lived in a way I’d been wanting to. I let the yeses guide me to the next step and the next place to grow and enjoy myself. I proved to myself over and over again that the rewards far outweighed the risks of what I thought it would take to be enjoying—truly enjoying—my life.

    I reaffirmed what I believed to be true: When I follow my heart, my intuition, my knowing, life has a way of working itself out. Not without some level of discomfort. Not without experiences of pain. Not without changing some tough habits to shake. But all with a value that lasts and creates experiences I’ve desired all along.

    I learned that my fear was also my thrill. My shaking and restlessness were also my courage. My pause was my inhale before the exhale to true joy.

    We are trained to fear, to hold back and question all the things that can go wrong. We are masterful at saying no to living, to taking chances and being uncomfortable.

    We want proof we will be okay. I know I do. And luckily, it already exists.

    We have years of being afraid of worst-case scenarios that never played out.

    We have memories of taking risks and things turning out even better than we expected.

    There may also have been times when things didn’t work out better than expected, or even close. But when we didn’t get what we wanted, we usually got what we needed—we learned, we grew, and we opened ourselves up to new connections and possibilities.

    From all our assorted adventures, there were pains that helped us grow stronger and triumphs that helped us feel braver.

    We have proof that when we follow what feels right, we’re always on the right path for us.

    We have a life that lovingly and courageously wants to be lived.

    What would happen if you started saying yes? What would your life look like if you let yourself live? If you pushed through your fears and excuses and let your curiosity and excitement lead the way?

    You have all the reasons you can’t. But you also have the reasons you can.

    What will you choose?

  • Sometimes We Are the Ones Who Need to Change

    Sometimes We Are the Ones Who Need to Change

    “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means.” ~Albert Einstein

    When I was younger, I had a lot of opinions about what other people needed to change.

    “Why can’t people conserve more?” “Why can’t people stop throwing cigarette butts on the ground?” “Why can’t so-and-so stop being so annoying?”

    Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

    I’ve recently realized that as I focused on all of the things that others needed to do, I was avoiding taking a look at my own very real flaws and failures.

    I used single-use plastic containers for smoothies and coffee. I had a car and drove a lot, often when I could have walked, biked, or taken public transit. I used air travel, frequently. I didn’t ever shop at thrift stores or make an effort to reuse things. And I also, um, was very critical of others, and myself.

    In short, I had plenty of issues of my own.

    There is a quote by Jacob M. Braude that reads, “Think about how hard it is to change yourself. Then maybe you will understand why it is impossible to change other people.”

    Not only was it impossible for me to force another person to change, I was also avoiding the impact I could have made by changing myself. 

    This is true in so many areas of life.

    Consider the person who always dates “horrible” or “crazy” people. We always blame the other person and think, “Why do I have such bad luck with men/women?” It’s rare that a person ever looks at themselves and considers that maybe there is something about them that is attracting this type of person—that maybe, in fact, we even subconsciously choose to get involved with screwed-up people so we can point the finger at them instead of confronting our own intimacy issues and asking ourselves why we are avoiding real relationships (or friendships).

    So many people also complain about how “society” needs to change. Yet all of us doing the complaining make up society.

    If we want change, we are the ones that need to change, every one of us.

    This isn’t necessarily pleasant to hear. Because, of course, as long as we complain about what other people need to do, we avoid the discomfort and effort of looking at ourselves and making changes in our own lives. 

    We complain that people are always on their phones. Yet all of us are on our phones, constantly. We complain that the political process is corrupt, yet how many of us run for office, vote regularly, or even dedicate time to really understanding the issues? We complain that we never talk to our friends, but how many of us make the effort to reach out and really listen to what is going on in someone else’s life?

    I’ve realized that for a very long time, I’ve blamed other people for my circumstances; and maybe circumstances did have an impact in some ways. That job that didn’t work out, those traumas that happened in the past. Yes, they are part of who I am.

    But the truth is that as I look back at my past, almost all of the instances in which I’ve had a conflict or something “bad” done to me by someone else, could have been avoided if I had taken responsibility for myself and not given my power away to someone else.

    For example, I’ve recently taken two international backpacking trips. After the first one, I stayed with relatives temporarily to get re-established in the US, and it ended with conflict and hurt feelings because boundaries and expectations were not clearly defined.

    And while my first reaction was to feel sorry for myself and tell myself how “mean” they were, the truth is that I should have been more proactive about either having a discussion to determine a clear agreement or budgeting better and supporting myself.

    I’ve realized that expecting others to care for me or take responsibility for my life can only end in disappointment and disempowerment for me.

    I think in the past, because I was living according to others’ expectations of me and because I was afraid of intimacy and really diving into life, I subconsciously was not taking full responsibility for myself and on a certain level was expecting other people to care for me and support me.

    It’s scary to take full responsibility for ourselves and our lives. In a way, it’s easier not to try, because what if we fail, or what if people don’t like the real “us,” the one we keep hidden? Because hey, if they don’t like us, at least it isn’t the real “us” they’re rejecting, and we can pretend that we “didn’t really care” anyway.

    So many of us live with our dreams and selves tucked away and just float by with what life gives us, and criticize others or the state of the world instead of working on ourselves or taking steps to fix those things we can change.

    The best realization I have had recently, which has helped me avoid despair in the midst of much dark environmental and political news and trying personal times, is that I can restore my own sense of personal power and commit myself to things that I can change.

    That might mean pledging to never use a plastic bag at the grocery store again, bringing a Mason jar instead of using a disposable cup for beverages, or trying to use more kindness and less judgment toward others in my personal life. I can walk through the fire and take ownership of myself and my life.

    Now, I’m not saying that it’s not worthwhile to fight for causes one believes in or speak out against injustice. But it’s important to look at ourselves first and examine what flaws we may be harboring in our own hearts. As spirituality author Marianne Williamson once humorously wrote, “It amuses me how angry I used to get when people wouldn’t sign my peace petitions.”

    Williamson herself is an example of this principle. One assumes she did not find a great deal of success in angrily yelling at people to sign her peace petitions. Yet once she decided to look inward and change herself, and examine her own human failings and weaknesses, she gained spiritual knowledge that has impacted millions and helped them find peace within their own hearts.

    Ultimately, we can try to communicate and share with others, but we can’t change them.

    On the other hand, we always have the option to look inward, claim our power, and take the step of changing ourselves. We can make ourselves into the type of person we keep wishing others would be and do the things we keep wishing others would do. And while it may be scary, it should also be an encouraging thought.

    Because the truth is that the power for change, either for ourselves or the world, is not anywhere “out there”—it has always been inside of us.

  • Be Kind, Retrain Your Mind: 3 Tips to Overcome Negative Self-Talk

    Be Kind, Retrain Your Mind: 3 Tips to Overcome Negative Self-Talk

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

    In 1990, in an early encounter between the Dalai Lama, the foremost Tibetan teacher of Buddhism, and Western students, the Dalai Lama was asked a question about how to deal with self-hatred. He was confused and didn’t understand the question. The translator translated the question again, and still the Dalai Lama was confused.

    Finally, the Dalai Lama understood that the question was about how to manage negative feelings about the self. This was a new concept to him: he knew that people had negative feelings about others, but he had not encountered the challenge of self-hatred.

    I wish I could say that I had never encountered the problem of self-hatred, but I’d be lying. Like so many people, even if I didn’t necessarily recognize my self-talk as such, I was inundated with internal negative self-talk.

    My process of coming first to recognize what that voice was up to, then to listen to it with more compassion, and finally, once and for all, to ask it to grow up and step out of the room has been a journey of self-acceptance, growth, and ultimately, freedom.

    Here are three steps to deal with your own inner negative self-talk:

    The first step is to become aware of the negativity of your internal voice. 

    For the first twenty-eight years of my life, I was so familiar with my negative voice that I didn’t even recognize it.

    I’ve been told that people with tinnitus, a constant ringing sound in the ears, grow used to it and learn to live with it so successfully that they’re no longer really even aware the ringing’s there. That was the case with my negative voice: it was a kind of background hum.

    If I did pay attention to it, I was tricked into thinking that its particular message mattered.

    At sixteen, it might have been the enormous, overly sweet corn muffin I’d eaten on the way home from school that was a sign of my failure.

    At twenty-six, it might have been that an essay I wrote hadn’t been accepted for publication; this was a sign, I was sure, that nothing I’d ever write would ever be fully understood.

    It wasn’t until I’d been in therapy for a while and had a real mindfulness practice that I even began to notice the daily hum of background voices and to notice that the particulars of the negative voice I did hear were less important, actually, than the larger pattern it was a part of.

    Any mindfulness practice can help you become more aware of the negative self-talk in your head. You can try guided meditations, deep breathing exercises, or mindful walking, or simply spend time tuning into your senses. When you become conscious of the present moment, it’s easier to recognize what’s going on internally.

    The second step is to listen a little more deeply.

    What was important was not so much what the voice was saying as what was under the voice. Often the negativity was there to distract me from something else.

    Was the corn muffin or the publication rejection really the problem?

    I learned not to take what I said to myself at face value.

    After all, I was often shocked at what was going on inside my own head. I said what to myself? I would never say that to anyone else!

    Though I had a PhD in literature and was a published creative writer, skilled at using language in all kinds of sophisticated ways, often the voice inside my head was stuck only at a toddler level.

    When I was frustrated or upset, rather than slowing down and parsing out what I was really feeling, I’d lash out with simple and ultimately inaccurate phrases, phrases like “I hate myself.”

    The negative statements were largely self-protective, a big blanket over deeper layers of hurt or pain. Often what those negative words were really expressing (even if they didn’t have the appropriate words to do so) was not I’ve done something wrong, but I’m worried, I feel alone, I feel uncertain, I feel lost or scared or hurt. 

    I learned to react to the feelings under that negativity with compassion.

    I came to understand better what situations triggered me and why, in fact, some situations threw me back to being a three-year-old inside again.

    Therapy, mindfulness, writing, and meditation all helped me heal and embrace those wounded parts of myself that were speaking in such negative terms. I learned to listen more carefully to what I was really feeling and to re-parent my inner child.

    I learned to send myself loving-kindness and compassion.

    My inner voice became less likely to be critical, less likely to lash out at myself. I was more able to express more uncomfortable things internally, like I’m feeling really insecure right now.

    Take some time to dig beneath the surface of your negative self-talk. Peel back the layers to find the feelings and fears so you can offer compassion to these fragile parts of yourself.

    When I first started doing this, I felt happier. I had more energy. I was able to communicate better not only to myself but also to others.

    I’d made lots of progress. But to my own regret, sometimes that inner negativity was still more powerful than me.

    I’d lash out at myself with negative self-talk in ways that I couldn’t fully control.

    What was the next step in healing? I meditated more. I listened with more compassion.

    And yet, I still had that negative inner voice that could say some really mean things. If I woke in the middle of the night, the negativity was particularly strong.

    Until one day, I decided I’d had enough.

    The third step is to realize that the inner negative voice really isn’t helpful and to actively disrupt it.

    I want to be clear here: don’t jump over step two. Most of us have not been fully listened to. We need to learn to listen to what is beneath our negative self-talk and not simply silence ourselves.

    But after a while, we understand that our negativity is usually an expression of our hurt. We understand that we can listen to ourselves. And we want to be freed from this negativity; it’s not serving us.

    I also understood that my healthy self no longer believed what the negativity was saying. It just didn’t make sense to talk to myself in ways I would never talk to anyone else.

    And if I had compassion for other people, it didn’t make sense for me not to extend it to myself.

    I came to see my inner dialogue as lagging behind my own development as a person: I was stuck in old habits that I had largely moved beyond.

    So what to do?

    I disrupted the habit.

    Because I had done step one, I could notice the voices when they came up. And because I had done step two, I didn’t feel that I was in denial or perpetuating old patterns of not being listened to.

    So when the negative voice came up, I immediately interrupted it.

    I used and still use an Emotional Freedom Tapping code that takes roughly thirty seconds. EFT is a system in which you tap on particular pressure points on the body. Every time that voice starts in with its negativity, I do that code, either mentally or manually.

    The code activates my mind and memory, and also my body awareness and physical memory.

    You can disrupt your negative voice with a mantra or even by reciting a poem, but bringing the body into the practice helps establish new patterns more quickly.

    The important thing is that when the negative voice comes up, you do/say something else instead of getting caught up in it.

    I realized that I didn’t need to put up with the toddler-style tantrums anymore. I could also establish some boundaries in my own inner life. I could disrupt the tantrum, take the child out of the room, and give her something else to occupy her.

    This system works wonders! I no longer wake up plagued by those negative voices. I have so much more mental and emotional space.

    The Dalai Lama had never heard of self-hatred. For many of us, this may seem surprising; we may even come to feel that we must accept our negative thoughts about ourselves and accept our negative self-talk as something that we just need to learn to embrace with compassion.

    But we can retrain our habits.

    I’d trained as a writer to be skillful about the words I put on the page, and I could also train myself to be more skillful with and not be at the mercy of the words I use internally.

    I learned to use my inner language mindfully and to retrain myself to speak an inner language of love. It’s possible, and it’s deeply rewarding.

    Because when we no longer allow those negative voices to take up our inner space, we can experience more freedom and not only more self-love but also more love for others.

  • Why I Focus on the Now Instead of What I Want for the Future

    Why I Focus on the Now Instead of What I Want for the Future

    “The next message you need is always right where you are.” ~Ram Dass

    I want you to go back to New Year’s Day 2009 with me for a second. I’d recently left a job and was embarking upon a new career, one in which I was self-employed.

    I pulled out all the stops and created a vision board that contained all of the things: how much money I wanted to earn, how I wanted to dress, where I wanted to vacation, how I wanted to eat, and everything else I could think of. I thought if I created this vision board, if I planned out exactly how things would go, somehow I’d find satisfaction and peace.

    I remember later that same year visiting my then-boyfriend (now husband) when he was working out of state. The area where he was working was gorgeous, and I kept writing down the future I wanted, what it would be like to live in a place like this, how it would feel if only we could afford a place here, near the ocean.

    I also remember being obsessive and miserable.

    None of the stuff I was clinging to so tightly worked out. Life unfolded, all was well, but all that planning wasn’t making my life better; it was making it more stressful.

    Every year, I’d come up with new goals, new dreams. Almost always they’d have something to do with controlling the way I ate, or how much money I made, or how to figure out the “right” career for me.

    Even last year I bought a big old notebook, divided it into sections for each month, and wrote down goals. Big goals for the year, smaller goals for each month, all things designed to bring me the happiness I was seeking.

    But this past year has changed me. I no longer try to plan far into a future I can’t predict, and I no longer expect outside circumstances to bring me internal pleasure.

    I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I know pushing myself to visualize the life I wanted, over and over again, and obsessing about writing down my goals finally got to me. I finally got to a point where the last thing I wanted to do was think about those things.

    I wanted something new. I wanted to meet each moment where it was and ask myself: What’s next? What should I do now?

    Recently I was letting my mind spin into high anxiety mode. I was freaking out about money and career and every other thing you can think of. Instead of my usual planning and searching and trying to come up with something to work toward, I sat down.

    I got out my notebook. I opened it, and I asked myself, “What can I do right now to feel better?” I don’t remember what the answer was, but I’m certain it was something along the lines of “take a deep breath” or “lie down” or “relax.”

    In fact, that’s often the answer I get when I stop and ask what to do in the moment. It may seem weird—I mean, shouldn’t we be planning for our retirement? Maybe sometimes, but more often than not I believe stopping and realizing this is it, this is the moment to stop and breathe, this is the moment to chill out, is a better way to live, at least for me.

    I feel happier and more settled this year, and I don’t have a resolution or goal in sight. Here’s how I’m approaching life nowadays: with the intention to stay in the moment and simply do the next right thing.

    I didn’t come up with any resolutions for this year. Okay, I guess I have one, but it’s an intention, not a resolution: to remind myself to check in with the present moment rather than letting my mind go in circles trying to figure out what the future holds. Because that makes me feel worse, not better.

    I committed to letting go of obsession. I’m still human—I still have things I hope to achieve, and I still have dreams for where my career might go, I still have lots of places in the world I want to visit. I’m not giving up; I’m just doing things differently.

    As soon as I feel my anxiety start to rise, as soon as I start to think the same thoughts (or worry the same worries) over and over again about what the future may bring, even if it’s something positive, I stop. I stop thinking, I stop planning, and I breathe into the moment.

    I remind myself every single day to ask myself what’s next right now. Not what I should do next year, not what my five year plan should be—what I should do in a minute or two from now.

    The way I do this is pretty simple: I either pause for a moment and see which thing seems like the most delightful thing to do next, or, if I’m in a stressed out place, I pause and write to myself.

    It’s journaling, really, but a type where I’m having an internal dialogue with what I think of as my heart. I’m looking inward, intending to hear what the deepest part of me would like to do next rather than letting my mind run away with the show and tell me all of the things I should be worried about.

    I sit still, breathe deeply, think about something that makes me feel calm and content (that usually involves imagining or petting one of my cats), and then write down a question. I ask what to do now. I ask what I can do to calm down. Then I just listen.

    Like I said, the answers I usually get have to do with lying down, or resting, or relaxing, or letting myself have fun. It’s all stuff that sounds really great, truly. It makes me feel better, not worse.

    I can hear the arguments now, though: You have to have a plan. You can’t always have fun!

    I’m not suggesting you empty your 401k or sleep all day, not at all. I’m suggesting that, at least for me, checking in with myself and listening for what to do next—not worrying and obsessing about how to achieve, achieve, achieve—is the key to a calmer, happier life.

    Yes, I have dreams and a vision for the trajectory of my career. Yes, I think about my health. Yes, I have plans to travel this summer. But I think about those things when it’s time to think about them, like in the exact moment I’m at my computer and can look at rentals on Airbnb. I don’t need to worry about it, stress about it, and think about it at other times when I can’t do anything to change it.

    The same goes for everything else in my life: I can’t become an overnight success; what I can do is find out, in each moment, what would serve me in moving toward the ideas I have for my career. Sometimes I truly think I’m being told to rest because that is what will serve me best—because I need a break.

    It’s simple though not always easy: Slow down and check in with yourself. See what the next right move is, the thing you should be doing in the next few minutes. I know it makes me feel calmer and more centered, and, so far, has never led me to feel anxious or worried.

    If you set a bunch of resolutions at the start of the year and are finding it hard to stick with them, maybe this is the perfect time to shift your focus from what you want in the future to what you need right now.