Tiny Buddha

Tag: Happiness

  • Escape Isn’t Self-Care: What We Really Need to Feel at Peace

    Escape Isn’t Self-Care: What We Really Need to Feel at Peace

    “A pause gives you breathing space so listen to the whispers of the real you waiting to happen.” ~Tara Estacaan

    You and I, we’re much too busy. We’re doing too much. We’re stressed. We’re overscheduled and overwhelmed. And we’re not doing enough self-care.

    The good thing is there’s help. There are headlines, hacks, and half-baked gurus who promise to bring us to the less-stressed light. And there’s a vast supply of products to help too. Bath salts, wine, essential oils, yoga classes, massages, chocolate cake, books, life coach packages, etc. But sometimes I wonder, are all the articles and products about becoming less busy actually helpful? Does the practice of self-care actually take care of yourself?

    For the last few weeks I’ve been dosing myself regularly with the things prescribed as self-care. Bath soaks. Chocolate cupcakes. Mantras. Spa music. I’m doing it and I feel like if I fake it till I make it, maybe I’ll soon feel like my life is better managed. I’ll feel less stressed. I’ll run to social media and post a bunch of cloying hashtags: #blessed #metime #nofilter.

    I’m somewhat inclined to think that most of the snake oil being peddled as self-care is feel good fluff. It’s not bad. Baths are lovely. Chocolate cupcakes are really lovely. But, it’s not self-care in and of itself. It’s escapism that that has often been packaged and sold to us.

    Escape is a completely necessary and wonderful practice. One I enjoy with some frequency. Escape practices allow for quiet, space, pampering, indulgence. Do it. Enjoy your escape.

    But the reality is all these practices aren’t bringing me even a slice of peace. I am sitting in the bathtub with billions of thoughts swarming my head. I don’t know how to turn off. My life moves faster than I can. My daily existence exceeds my ability to process it all. Things have to change.

    This here is the crux of actual self-care. Self-care is parenting yourself. It’s cleaning your room by the time your family returns home. Not having candy for dinner. Getting lessons in how to make a solid pasta with bolognese. Kissing booboos. It’s going to your room and thinking about what you’ve done and continue to do; not as a practice of shaming or punishment, but as a practice of self-awareness and understanding the consequences of your actions.

    Self-care means pausing and paying attention. It’s asking yourself a lot of questions: How am I? What’s working? What’s not working? Why am I stressed, sad, mad, overwhelmed, feeling ashamed, etc.? What can I change? If I can’t change it, how can I cope? If I can change it, what do I do first? Self-care can…suck.

    Sometimes I pause, check in with myself, and realize the thing I need right now to relieve some pressure from my life is a hot bath and a glass of wine. Perfect. Escape can be self-care. But sometimes I pause, check in with myself, and when I really pay attention I am forced to recognize that the way I am living right now isn’t cutting it.

    My habits, jobs, or relationships have become cycles that bring frustration, stress, sadness, or other crappy feelings. I can throw all the yoga classes and massages at those feelings, but I won’t actually feel better until I change something.

    When you come to the point where you need to take care of yourself, it means your current way of being isn’t working and you need to guide yourself back to a good course.

    It’s saying no to something. Sometimes it’s saying no to something deeply ingrained in you or in our culture. It will feel like parts of yourself go missing. It will feel like you are doing it all wrong. You will have to keep reminding yourself our materialistic and accomplishment-obsessed culture got it wrong, and you have a right to sanity.

    Here are some of things I have done out of self-care that have sucked: reduced my eating out budget, quit a job, put a goal on hold, taken a six-month break from drinking, disappointed my daughter, disappointed my wife, let myself feel pain rather than seeking distraction from it, and opened my heart knowing it will break over and over again.

    Self-care can be gritty, treacherous stuff. It’s like a scramble up a steep incline. Rocks are loose under your feet. It’s hard to find stable footholds and grips. But, eventually, you get to the summit and take in a windy, clear view.

    About a year ago I made a list of things that make me feel most human. At the time of making the list I didn’t realize it, but looking back I realize this was a list of things I do to pause. The practices that work for me to connect to myself and check in. A walk in the woods. Time alone. A soak in a hot bath. Yoga.

    None of these things are necessarily self-care in and of themselves, though they can be. But, they are practices that allow me to listen to myself. They make room for self-awareness.

    Your self-care will be varied, inconsistent, and dependent on your current circumstances. But, the practices you use to pause, pay attention, ask yourself a bunch of questions, and listen to the answers can be consistent, regular practices. Schedule them into your life. Make yourself accountable. Ensure you are pausing. Give yourself the opportunity to listen.

    Self-care is what enables me to go to a lovely massage and return to a life I like. I’m not just waiting for the next time I can get away. The neverending chase for bliss and ease doesn’t provide me substance or solidity. So instead I work to craft a good daily life. A life with rhythms and cycles that I can sustain while maintaining a feeling of wholeness.

    This simplicity is exactly what has brought me the most happiness. This life that is wholly boring, introspective, questioned, and arranged with intention.

  • How Gratitude Journaling Can Boost Your Mood and Change Your Life

    How Gratitude Journaling Can Boost Your Mood and Change Your Life

    “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” ~Melody Beattie

    A few years ago I had an ulcer and I would get dizzy after almost every meal. There was a point when I was afraid to eat. I lost twenty pounds when I didn’t need to lose weight.

    I wasn’t sleeping well.

    I was a complete wreck inside.

    It took me two and half years to get my stomach back on track. I tried one thing at a time until I found what worked well for me. I can no longer drink coffee or eat tomatoes or other acidic foods. And man, did I did love a good cup of coffee to help get my morning going.

    Still, I’m actually grateful for my ulcer. It was one of the best illnesses to ever happen to me because it helped me become a healthier person.

    I was only able to overcome it because of my gratitude journal. Each day, I thanked the foods that didn’t cause me to feel dizzy. As I journaled more and more about these foods, I began to see patterns, which helped me ascertain which foods to eliminate.

    I put my energy into appreciating the foods that helped me feel good instead of complaining about the foods that made me feel sick to my stomach. And that helped me both heal and keep a positive attitude.

    This is why I suggest everyone keeps a gratitude journal. It helps you see things that you missed before. It encourages you to focus your attention on things that are making your life better.

    The best part is gratitude not only helps you live longer because it helps reduce stress, it also helps you build stronger relationships because you are more likely to share your appreciation with others. And when you regularly practice gratitude, you’re generally more empathetic and less prone to envy—great for your mental health and your relationships.

    The Power of Gratitude Journaling

    It took me some time to turn gratitude journaling into a daily habit. When I first started, I would miss days at a time. It took almost a year to get a consistent habit going. Once I made gratitude a regular practice, it helped keep me sane since I was focusing on the things I had in life instead of wanting a situation to be different. This was a huge mindset shift for me.

    As I got busier I started getting away from my journal again. Then, as my father was passing, I leaned back into it, but I wanted to go a little deeper. I started writing stories in my gratitude journal, which helped me uncover details I hadn’t really processed before.

    I noticed him getting grumpier as he got older. My journal helped me see that I didn’t want myself to fall into the same bad habits. And I didn’t have to. I had a path to build a better attitude.

    I quickly noticed my new attitude changed how people responded to me. For example, coworkers started gravitating toward me because I was letting them know that I appreciated them. Who knew that a little appreciation would help you build friendships?

    I also noticed that the migraines that used to start at the base of my neck weren’t as intense. Gratitude was not only improving my attitude and my relationships, but also my health.

    I felt like I’d stumbled upon a magic formula for life. I know that people have been talking about gratitude for thousands of years, but it felt so refreshing to me.

    I did some research on gratitude and found some amazing studies.

    In one book, Why We Do What We Do, researcher Edward Deci explains that when someone has six positive interactions to one negative, they are 31% more productive.

    When you have positive thoughts and interactions, it’s easier to focus on what matters. That may be spending time with your family, traveling, or writing. Positive interactions free you up to have the energy to do what matters to you.

    Start Small

    The intense focus of finding some small bit of gratitude in every situation really changed me.

    When I was stuck in traffic, I thought about how I could appreciate the situation and write about it. When I was stuck in another meeting, I thought about how lucky I was to be in the situation and asked myself, “What is one important lesson that I can take away from this meeting?”

    Sometimes the lesson was to breathe into my belly more. Other times it was learning from a really smart coworker who handled the meeting very well, kept us all on track, and helped us get a lot accomplished.

    Because I started small, I planted seeds to be able to go deeper into gratitude.

    If you too would like to create more positive feelings and interactions, I highly recommend starting a gratitude journal. And it can actually be really simple.

    Each day this upcoming month, just write a few things you are grateful for and why, for example:

    • I’m grateful for my coworker because she is always willing to listen and help.
    • I’m grateful for my ability to dance in my car seat when I’m stuck at a traffic light, because it allows me to release my stress.
    • I’m grateful for my pets because they make me feel loved and needed.

    The key component here is your why. This is important because it helps you actually feel grateful, as opposed to just listing things you think you should appreciate. Soon you’ll likely start to feel a lot better about your work, your relationships, and even yourself. And before you know it, you’ll probably notice an improvement in your attitude—and major changes in your life.

  • How to Tackle Fear and Anxiety Cognitively, Behaviorally, and Spiritually

    How to Tackle Fear and Anxiety Cognitively, Behaviorally, and Spiritually

    “The beautiful thing about fear is that when you run to it, it runs away.” ~Robin Sharma

    During my first-grade choir concert, my classmate, Meg, fainted from the top row of the bleachers, and in a subconscious gesture of empathy, I went down right after her, breaking my glasses and flailing on the gymnasium floor.

    It’s possible that this triggered some kind of coping mechanism in my brain, because I started fainting again and again.

    One time I fainted at the dentist’s office—immediately after the dentist injected me with my first round of Novocain—then months later in a hospital parking lot after a small medical procedure.

    I also fainted a few days after getting my ears pierced. I was showing my grandmother my new gold studs, and I happened to look toward the TV just as Nellie Olsen fainted during a Little House on the Prairie rerun, and that was enough, over I went.

    What affected me the most during those early years of growing up was not the tangible act of fainting, but my anxiety anticipating when and where I would faint next. Whenever I wasn’t moving, whenever I tried to be still, my thoughts traveled to the fear of fainting. And because of that, I tried to keep my mind constantly active.

    I had several tests, and the doctors found nothing medically wrong with me. I literally scared myself to the point of fainting. Though I never let fear prevent me from doing things, inner struggles and cautious dread were always present. It made living in the moment very difficult.

    Going to church became a major source of stress for me. I had time to think, worry, and become anxious. These were ideal fainting conditions for me.

    I’d have panic attacks during Sunday mass without anyone knowing. Moments of pulling my hair, pinching my skin, feeling my heart pounding out of my chest were common, all while trying to will myself from fainting.

    This continued for years.

    I seemed to outgrow my anxiety attacks after high school, and I continued through college and beyond, without thinking much about my prior angst. I got married and had three children. Then, during my late thirties, my anxiety returned with a vengeance, escalating to a fear of driving on the highway.

    Things got worse in my early forties when I developed major health concerns. Again, there was nothing physically wrong with me; I was purely manifesting physical symptoms from worrying about a certain disease or medical condition. It was quite a skill—one that I was not proud of, but one that certainly awakened me to the power of my mind.

    My fear ran deep and was so powerful that it physically controlled me.

    The more I tried to ignore my anxiety, the more it escalated until it gradually controlled the person I was becoming. I didn’t like “me” anymore.

    I was afraid of everything. I talked to my doctor, read every Louise Hay book, went to biofeedback, performed EFT, and saw a few therapists. I would do anything to remember who I was before the fear of living got in my way.

    The funny thing was, no one else noticed because this overwhelming anxiety never stopped me from doing anything. It just sucked the spirit out of me. No one knew that, to me, life felt really scary.

    I wanted to crawl up in a ball with my kids. I wanted to control every waking move I made and make sure we were all safe.

    I remember a profound moment one fall day after finishing a run. Out of breath and standing there with my hands on my knees, I looked up at the trees and saw a leaf floating from a tree. I stood and prayed that I’d learn how to let go and release my inner struggles and be as light and free as that leaf.

    That was when I decided I would not consume my every waking moment with this fear. I would be the person who chose to live life fully.

    So this is what I know now.

    To let go of something, you need to lean in.

    This is counterintuitive. We all have a built-in “fight, flight or freeze” response to stress, which is a physiological reaction that occurs in the presence of fear and is exhibited by the urge to flee, run, or freeze and do nothing.

    In many ways, anxiety can protect us from harmful situations. In other ways, when the threat is not harmful, it can prevent us from functioning at our fullest capacity and experiencing all that life has to offer.

    I spent many years of my life trying to push fear away and running as fast as I could from it. But what I needed to do was to allow myself to lean into fear, to work through it, to face it head on. I needed to show my anxiety and fear that I wasn’t afraid anymore.

    This was a frightening act. But the alternative was to continue to run—and this was even more terrifying.

    So I began to allow, to surrender, to trust. I stopped fighting and made a conscious choice to choose love over fear—again and again. Battling and rejecting a part of myself had only caused feelings of isolation and anguish.

    I searched to understand the power of my subconscious and began to process fainting as my defense mechanism. I realized that if I was going to move through this fear, I’d have to love and accept myself, including the anxiety within me.

    I stood firmly anchored in the ground of acceptance. Of all of me. And the result was a newer, more powerful version of myself—one that no longer was afraid to live.

    If you’re struggling with anxiety and/or fear, here are eight ways to move forward. In more severe instances, you may need the help of a medical professional.

    Cognitively

    Acknowledge your fear.

    This is a major first step. We often ignore our fears and anxiety for so long that they progress into a part of us.

    Compartmentalize your fear, separating it from yourself. Then peel back the layers and find out what it is that you fear. Is it disappointing others? Rejection? Failing? Something else? Recognize that it’s holding you back from becoming your true self.

    Fear is sneaky. It can be quite obvious, presenting as physiological symptoms, or it can be much more obscure. Procrastination, perfectionism, and overwhelm can all be forms of fear.

    Explore if any of these are showing up for you and consider how they may be contributing to your lack of progress.  When you pinpoint the underlying fear and how it is presenting itself, you diminish the power it has over you.

    Initially, I believed I was afraid of fainting. After much reflection with my coach and therapist, and as my thoughts evolved, I was able to identify my underlying fear—the fear of dying. Every time I fainted, my blood pressure would drop and I’d lose consciousness, essentially looking death in the eyes over and over again.

    Once I recognized this, even though it was still scary, the awareness allowed me to use coping skills to move forward.

    Lean into your fear.

    When you feel like running or fleeing, it’s time to face your fear with courage. Although our automatic response is often to run away, numb our feelings, or somehow distract ourselves, escaping only temporarily relieves anxiety. Fear will return, possibly in a different form, until you choose to confront it with kindness.

    Bring yourself into the present moment by noticing the sensations in your body. Where Is fear showing up as discomfort for you? In your chest? Your stomach? Your throat? Fully experience it.

    Befriend your fear.

    Let fear know that you’re not afraid of it. Ask it: What are you trying to tell me? What do you want me to know?

    What I learned from asking these questions was that fear was trying to keep me safe from harm. A part of my past needed to be acknowledged and fear was whispering, “You can’t move on and become your most powerful self until you work through this, my friend.”

    Then thank it for trying to protect you in the only way it knew how.

    Behaviorally

    Exercise.

    For me, running has always been a huge stress reliever. Whether it’s running or yoga or something in between, movement calms you down by releasing chemicals called endorphins.

    Make healthy choices.

    When I feel stressed, I limit my sugar and caffeine intake, since sugar crashes can cause irritability and tension, and stimulants like caffeine can worsen anxiety and even trigger panic attacks. A well-balanced diet full of healthy, whole foods will help also alleviate anxiety. Be sure to eat breakfast to keep your blood sugar steady, and stay hydrated to help your mind and body perform at their best.

    Breathe.

    Since I have made yoga and meditation a part of my daily routine, I’ve noticed a difference in how I react to stressful situations. Slotting this time into my morning ensures I get it done before the day gets busy. When you’re in the middle of a panic attack, it’s harder to move into meditation and deep breathing, so it’s helpful to make this an everyday practice.

    Spiritually

    Trust.

    Fear and anxiety can stem from self-doubt and insecurities. If you regularly work on accessing your inner wisdom, and acting on what you learn, you’ll develop more trust in your ability to do what’s best for you and handle whatever comes at you. You can begin to strengthen your relationship to your inner wisdom by journaling, meditating, and sitting in silence. This is an ongoing process that requires exploration.

    One of the most effective ways to build self-trust is to take small steps forward. Know that it can (and most likely will) be scary, but once you step out of your comfort zone, you’ll see that much of what you were afraid of was in your imagination. To make this easier, I often recall a time when I trusted myself, despite my self-doubt, and things turned out positively.

    Surrender

    When you have done all you can, let go. Discern what is outside of your control and find the courage to release all expectations of it. You may just find a sense of relief in allowing life to unfold naturally.

    —

    I still have moments when I get anxious and overly worried. In these moments, I think about the influence my mind has over my body. Perhaps it’s not about resisting my mind’s ability to control me, but rather redirecting its incredible power to work in my favor.

    And with that, I can move mountains.

  • Lessons from a Life Lost Too Soon: Don’t Let Your Inner Critic Destroy You

    Lessons from a Life Lost Too Soon: Don’t Let Your Inner Critic Destroy You

    “What you tell yourself every day will lift you up or tear you down. Choose wisely.” ~Unknown

    It was a story I just couldn’t get out of my head. A young teen had died in a town not far from where I live, a town where I used to live. I knew people who had kids who knew this girl.

    I heard she was a swimmer, bright and popular. At first the talk was about how she’d died. I heard someone surmise that she was killed. Someone else said it was a horrible accident, and of course, there were murmurings that maybe she had done it herself. And then, I heard nothing.

    Months passed and I eventually put the whole incident out of my mind, until I came across an article in our major metro newspaper. The girl’s parents had come forward to share the terrible truth about their beautiful teenage daughter who threw herself off an overpass.

    What could make a girl who seemingly had it all make that terrible choice? Her grades were good, she had friends, she was an athlete, and she had mad robotics skills. No one knew the depth of her suffering, and that’s just how she wanted it.

    At one point, the girl vaguely confessed to a teacher that she was stressed, and the teacher immediately shared this information with her parents. They in turn brought her to therapy, but the therapist never learned the truth or depth of this girl’s suffering. No one did, until it was too late. Not surprisingly, the girl’s parents were completely blindsided when they learned what their daughter had done.

    So how did her parents come to understand what led to this terrible tragedy? And what did they hope to achieve by sharing their daughter’s painful story with the reporter? The answer was in the girl’s journal, excerpts of which were featured in the article.

    The parents had not even been aware that their daughter had kept a journal until after her passing. What they learned upon finding her journal was that for one year prior to her suicide she had written a daily diatribe of the worst, most hateful insults directed at herself. This is something she allowed no one to see—not her closest friends, not her parents, not her therapist, no one.

    As I read through the excerpts, one word kept coming to my mind over and over again. The word was “indoctrination.”

    This girl had utterly been indoctrinating herself as if she had joined a cult, hell bent on getting her to feel nothing but utter contempt for herself.

    The reporter even pointed out that one of the many cruel, self-demeaning excerpts was written on a day when the girl and her robotics team had experienced a triumph at a competition, yet not one utterance of this victory was reflected in her writing. She had convinced herself that she was worthless, and she was not going to allow any evidence to the contrary to challenge that perception.

    Why am I telling you this story? First, let me ask you a question. Do you have a voice inside your head that tells you that you are unworthy, undeserving, ugly, stupid, or any number of other similarly hateful messages? I do. It’s harsh and it’s painful and it’s shameful. It’s the voice of self-abuse, and it can prevent us from enjoying life by shaming us for even our most minor imperfections.

    Those of us who live with this voice, tolerate it. While we know it’s not pleasant, we don’t typically see it as deleterious to our health. We don’t challenge it; we endure it. We sometimes try to drown it out with food or sex or alcohol.

    This girl however, took it to another level. She gave that voice power, she wrote down the toxic words in her head every day and drank them in even as they slowly poisoned her mind into believing that she didn’t deserve to live. That thought, that realization, hit me like a sledge hammer.

    It was at that moment that I asked myself a question. If the words she wrote down, reinforcing every ill-conceived, misguided, self-negating thought she had about herself, had the power to kill her, what would the opposite have done?

    What if every day she’d come home and filled her journal with thoughts of self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and unconditional love and respect? Could the power of those words have saved her life? Could they have defeated her cancerous self-hate such that she’d be alive today to share her amazing journey back from hell with the world? I believe the answer to that question is, yes!

    I can’t bear the thought of this precious girl dying in vain, so in a way, I write this article on her behalf even though I never had the pleasure of meeting her. I feel I owe her a debt of gratitude. She helped me understand the immense power we have to either convince ourselves that we are worthy or that we are worthless.

    We can choose to let self-hatred breed and grow in silence, or we can notice it and challenge it. The funny thing is, I agree with her initial action. I believe that writing down or at least saying our self-deprecating thoughts out loud is a necessary first step for exposing the lies we mistake as truths. We can’t stop there though; we then need to move to self-compassion and take on the difficult task of writing a different narrative.

    Let me just say up front that this will not be easy. In fact, this may seem like a Herculean task. It’s essentially forcing a runaway train to change direction. Reflecting on my own experience of trying to turn the train around, I find that I often fall back into old habits, drifting toward the familiar path of self-hate, but I now understand it is imperative that I stay the course and continue my efforts to change. If I don’t, I will ultimately be consumed by my self-destructive inner dialogue.

    Most of us who grapple with our inner critic never choose to end our life physically, but make no mistake when we allow that voice to take over, we are killing ourselves. What this girl’s story did for me, and what I hope it will do for you, is stop the complacency around self-denigrating self-talk.

    While I still hear my negative thoughts, I don’t feed them. Instead, I spend time every day intentionally focusing on the positive, and when life is hard and I don’t do as well as I’d hoped I would, I do my best to meet myself with love and compassion.

    So, what would happen if you committed to indoctrinating yourself daily with nothing but self-love, self-praise, self-compassion, and gratitude? How might your experience, your outlook, your world change? Your words are powerful. Your choices are powerful. Choose self-kindness. After all, you deserve it.

  • Creating Calm in the Chaos: How I Found My Peace in NYC

    Creating Calm in the Chaos: How I Found My Peace in NYC

    “In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” ~Deepak Chopra

    I found my peace in New York City, where I spent a year as a consultant on a temporary work assignment.

    It may seem counter-intuitive that living in a city targeted by terrorists, clogged with traffic, and punctuated by sirens and honking horns could instill a kind of tranquility unattainable in Minnesota, where I currently live. After all, Minnesota is home to over 10,000 lakes, comforting casseroles of tater tots and cheese, and generations of Scandinavians who make Minnesota “nice.”

    So, what is it about the chaos and madness of New York City, as experienced in my year of living and working there, that helped me slow down, tame my neuroses, and rediscover a quiet place not present in my Minnesota life?

    It turns out New York City is a pretty good teacher. It pushed me to my limits (and no, not just how long I’ll stay in a subway car with a puddle of piss) and taught me three big lessons along the way.

    Lesson #1: Let go.

    It seems simple, right? Who hasn’t received this advice at some point in her life? For me, letting go speaks to short-circuiting the wiring in my brain that causes me to spend far too much energy worrying about things that objectively don’t matter.

    Back in Minnesota, I get hung up on things like people taking the parking spots in front of my house or the peeling paint on my neighbor’s windows or the landscaping crew that fires up when I step outside for my morning coffee.

    I’m one of those people who adjusts the angling of picture frames and positioning of salt shakers and wipes the fingerprints off my phone screen with a persistent regularity. If I had lived in Victorian times, I certainly would have been treated for my “delicate sensibilities” and spent my days on a fainting couch or taking in the air on the Continent.

    But living in my pre-war rented apartment on 23rd street in a building with over 900 apartments, I somehow managed to not care about a lot of things that likely would have triggered me back in Minnesota. For New York makes palpable the sense that I am part of something much larger than myself and my petty preoccupations. It puts my sense of my own importance into perspective.

    My particular concern at a given moment is not more important than anyone else’s.

    You don’t like sirens at 3am? Too bad—someone’s probably fallen down a flight of stairs or needs his stomach pumped.

    You find it rude and annoying that the woman down the hall parks her cruiser bike in the hallway in a blatant disregard of apartment policy? Deal with it. It’s not worth the risk of months of awkward elevator encounters if you say something.

    In those moments, instead of giving in to my frustration, I chose to let go of my urge to control and settle into a space of acceptance, knowing that New York City will not bow to my will and neither will most New Yorkers.

    Lesson #2: Be present.

    I know, this is another lesson that is boorishly common and desperately close to being trite. And it’s a lesson I’ve been trying to ace for a long time with fleeting success.

    My mind lures me into the future, pulling me along on a subtle but sustained undertow of discontent that prompts wonder about how things might be different if I found a new job or started doing yoga again or any number of “what if?” scenarios.

    It’s not uncommon for me to read or watch something or sit in a meeting and realize that I haven’t really absorbed anything—my mind was too busy thinking of other things. Sometimes it is serious stuff, like whether I’m saving enough for retirement, but more often than not, it’s random thoughts that could certainly wait, like what if dogs could whistle?

    The city demands a certain degree of presence to avoid being hit by a cab or taken down by a commuter on a Citibike.

    For me, the splendor of being in one of the world’s greatest cities inspired me to take in all the sights and sounds (but definitely not the smells) and feel truly alive.

    I remember sitting precariously on the ledge of my 16th floor window on a warm October night with only the faintest whisper of winter in the air. I watched dogs come home from their nightly walks, saw the specks of other humans in windows across the way, listened to the hum of the bus as it let people on and off. Above us all and our millions of anonymous lives, a harvest moon shone bright, lending an intimacy to a night alone balancing on the edge.

    In those moments I became more of an observer, experiencing the world as it was in that moment, divorced from any of my misplaced notions about how I think things should be.

    New York City rewards those who pay attention, whether it is those beautiful moments of feeling connected to humanity and grateful to be alive or the ridiculously absurd things you can overhear walking down the street that will have you laughing for days.

    Lesson #3: Simplify.

    This lesson gets to my inclination toward accumulation and the sense of satisfaction I get from filling my house with beautiful things. Being married to a general contractor who likes projects, I live in a big turn-of-the-century house built for a family with servants, yet currently home to only my husband, dog, and me.

    Despite acknowledging when we bought the house that it was far more space than we needed, I found myself becoming more and more attached to my house and cultivating an unconscious belief that I need a big house and lots of pretty things to be happy and feel successful.

    Living in my little rented apartment in New York City, with its sliver of a kitchen, I learned that not only can I be happy with much less, but the weight of those possessions and responsibilities creates a not insignificant amount of stress and anxiety.

    While NYC real estate certainly brings its own burdens, I discovered the value of scaling down and living a simpler life that is focused on how I live, not where I live and what I have.

    —

    As my project comes to an end and it is time to return to Minnesota, I’m challenging myself to bring these lessons home and maintain my New York state of mind. In my own version of “What Would Jesus Do?” I need to ask myself: “’Would NY-me care?” If the answer is no, then I’m just going to breathe and let it go.

  • Stop Waiting for Happiness

    Stop Waiting for Happiness

  • Life Is Far Less Painful When We Drop the Story in Our Head

    Life Is Far Less Painful When We Drop the Story in Our Head

    “You will never be free until you free yourself from the prison of your own false thoughts.” ~Philip Arnold

    Every meditator knows the dilemma of trying to find that perfectly quiet place to meditate, where silence is the golden rule and voices hush to a whisper.

    Oh how perfect our meditation would be if only everyone would be quiet.

    As wonderful as it sounds, we know it just doesn’t always work out that way.

    And that’s what made this particular meditation experience so insightful. It gave me an opportunity to see how my judgmental thoughts can make life far more painful.

    The setting was a camping trip in Northern California. Even though I was in this beautiful place and it’s generally quite peaceful, not everyone was there to commune with nature.

    On the day in question, I was heading back to my campsite after taking a leisurely stroll with my dog. I was relaxed and content as I started preparing for my afternoon meditation.

    Before any sitting I start with some stretching. I don’t know if it’s old age or just tight hips, but I cannot sit without some movement first.

    So as I was preparing my body to sit, my neighbors were preparing for a party.

    I could hear the preparations going on but didn’t give it much thought—that is, until I heard the music.

    Led Zeppelin at full throttle!

    I am a fan under most circumstances, but not at full volume and definitely not when I’m about to meditate.

    So in came the thoughts…

    How can I meditate with such loud music?

    What kind of horrible person would do this?

    The whole park should be quiet right now—I need to meditate!!!

    My initial thought was to forget about my afternoon sitting, as there was no way I was going to be able to meditate through this.

    So, instead of meditating, I just sat there, becoming more irritated and frustrated over the loudness of the music, my anger toward my neighbors increasing.

    At this point I was painting them as serial killers who should be arrested for being so inconsiderate. I imagined all the things I would say to them and how I would get the park ranger to shut this clearly unlawful gathering down.

    Because doesn’t everyone know this is the hour we meditate? Everyone should be quiet!

    The noise that was coming from the music was nothing in comparison to the noise in my head.

    By this time I was furious.

    After mentally torturing myself for about thirty minutes, having my neighbors arrested and convicted multiple times, I finally had a flash of mindfulness and asked myself, what’s really bothering me?

    Is it the music?

    Is it my neighbors?

    Or is it the story I’m telling myself about why they shouldn’t be playing the music?

    The music, in fact, was not painful; as I said, I like Led Zeppelin.

    And my neighbors, whom I had met earlier in the day, did seem like very nice people—highly unlikely there were any dead bodies lying in their trunk.

    What was upsetting me was the story of why they shouldn’t be playing the music and how this made me a victim.

    So I decided at that moment I would meditate, but I would also be on guard for what the real disturbance was. Not the music, not my neighbors, but the story of why they shouldn’t be playing the music.

    Because I was so prepared for the disturbing thoughts, the moment they started to arise, the moment those first few words would creep out: “But they shouldn’t…” “How inconsiderate…” “Why does it…” I dropped them like a hot potato.

    The link between the thoughts and the pain was crystal clear; their seductive power crippled. And as long as I didn’t give the story any fuel it couldn’t sustain itself, so there was nothing to bother me.

    As I sat my concentration got deeper, even as the music blared on.

    When the meditation was over I could hardly believe what had happened.

    I finally understood this teaching I had heard thousands of times: It’s not the situation but what I’m telling myself that’s causing me to be unhappy.

    But why did it have to take so long?

    Our thoughts have enormous power over us, and we tend to underestimate just how much control they really have. How sneaky and insidious they are, how they sweep in and take over before we even know what’s happened.

    At that point it’s too late; we’re so justified in our anger, our rightness, our pain that we can’t let the thoughts go.

    As I reflected on the music, the meditation, and what I could learn from it, I realized what made it so much easier was that I was on the lookout for the thoughts.

    I was expecting them.

    So I started making a list of other recurring thoughts that disturbed me. The same thoughts I had been rehashing my whole life, allowing them to sneak in and steal my happiness over and over again.

    That’s when I came up with my Top 10 Playlist.

    My Top 10 most recurring thoughts that just drove me nuts and had no benefit.

    After writing them out and staring at them in black and white I recognized my theme immediately. It was aversion.

    We all have two main modes of thinking (everything else is a subtext of these two modes). They are wanting/chasing/desire and aversion/not wanting/resisting. We all spend time in both modes, but often we have a preference for one over the other.

    For me, it looked like this:

    I wish I hadn’t said that.

    I don’t want to be disturbed.

    I don’t want to go to this event.

    How many times had I walked away from a conversation and immediately replayed it in my head, to find that one thing I shouldn’t have said? Nothing mean or unkind—just that I would agonize over that one stupid sentence, imagining the other person thinking about me disparagingly because of one measly sentence! Meanwhile, the other person was probably agonizing over the one silly thing they said!

    Or maybe I’d want to be alone and then spend hours disturbing myself (while I was alone) with the thought of not wanting to be disturbed.

    Or I’d dread some upcoming event, spending hours torturing myself ahead of time, only to say afterward, “That really wasn’t so bad.”

    Now that these were added to my Top 10 Playlist, I was on the lookout.

    Just like in the meditation, every time I started to see the familiar thought wanting to arise—“I wish I hadn’t said that,” “What if someone disturbs me,” “I really don’t want to go”—I would say to myself, “Oh that’s a Top 10,” and drop it right away.

    To be clear, I wasn’t suppressing any thoughts; that’s a bad and ineffective strategy.

    I dropped them because I had done the work already. I looked at these thoughts on paper in the light of day, and I couldn’t deny the pattern.

    I knew how long I had been dragging them around with me—my whole life. But what I also knew was that the thoughts were making me unhappy—not the other person, not the situation, not the upcoming event. ME! I was the one causing the pain by always being ready to fuel the story.

    When I’m asked, “How do you let go of negative thoughts,” my answer is always the same: it’s easy to drop them when you see the pain those thoughts are causing you.

    And that’s the problem: We don’t see the pain, or at least we don’t see that we are the ones causing the pain.

    Once we are caught up in a thought-stream, once we’ve created the story where we are once again the victim in this tragedy of our life, it’s too late. So we stay with the thoughts and the pain until we exhaust ourselves and then repeat.

    Keep in mind I’m referring to situations where we haven’t actually been victimized—when life may seem annoying or even unfair, but no one has literally violated us.

    That’s why creating my Top 10 Playlist was such a game changer. It helped immensely to see them all written down and reflect on how many times I’d been caught in these stories, how many endless hours I’d tortured myself, and nothing ever changed.

    But something did change. I brought them to the surface, I wrote them down, and there is enormous power in that exercise.

    For the first few weeks I would look at my list daily, typically before I would meditate and right after. This was when my mind was the most clear, and allowed a great deal of separation between me and the thoughts, because there was no emotion tied to the thought.

    As each day went by I felt more and more space and peace in my mind. Nothing changed, except that I wasn’t thinking these thoughts anymore. These thoughts that had tormented me for as long as I can remember.

    If I was alone and someone did interrupt me, it really did only last a few minutes because there was no story around it.

    As soon as my mind wanted to start replaying a conversation I just had, I’d drop it. I knew the pattern; I knew where the thought would take me.

    For every recurring thought on my Top 10 Playlist, I was prepared. They didn’t have the same emotional trapdoor they had before because I was expecting them.

    Are We Really Free?

    A prisoner isn’t free to choose even the simplest of things—to go outside, to look at the sky, the trees, the birds, the flowers, to feel the warmth of the sun or the breeze of the wind.

    But how free are we when we go about our days not seeing the world around us? Not appreciating even the simplest of things, not because they are not there but because we are always lost in our thoughts: worrying, fretting, constantly rehashing, and replanning our lives.

    We stay in this prison because we think we don’t have the keys.

    But we do.

    Do this exercise for one reason and one reason only—to free yourself. Step outside and see for yourself how much more beautiful life is when we experience it without a story.

  • How Body-Obsession Made Me Sick and How I Got Better

    How Body-Obsession Made Me Sick and How I Got Better

    “You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won’t discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself.” ~Geneen Roth

    I’ve spent so much time on the dieting hamster wheel that I am almost too ashamed to admit it. Throughout my teen years I went from one crash diet to the next. When this proved more than unfruitful and disappointing, I changed strategies.

    The next twelve years I spent searching for the “right lifestyle” for me, which would allow me to shrink to an acceptable size, be happy and healthy, and make peace with my body.

    You can probably guess that I never found such a lifestyle. And I’m sure that it doesn’t exist for me. I’m still making peace with my body, but now I know this is internal work. No diet or size can bring me to this place.

    How This All Began

    I first became aware that I was fat when I was four. We had this kindergarten recital, and regrettably, my costume didn’t fit, so I was the only one with a different dress. It was horrible. It didn’t help that my mother was very disappointed in me.

    Years later, I started dieting at the ripe age of ten.

    In my teenage years my focus was mainly on losing as much weight as possible, as quickly as possible. It was exhilarating to get praise from my mother and grandmothers. They were so happy that I was taking charge of my weight and that I could show such restraint and will power.

    I sometimes went months on almost nothing eaten. Eventually, I’d start to get dizzy and nauseous, and I’d get severe stomach aches. I was hospitalized multiple times for gastritis. But no one made the connection between my eating and these conditions.

    When the pains were severe, I knew I needed to get back to eating more regularly, and then the weight would return. You wouldn’t believe the disappointment this elicited in the ones closest to me. If only I could eat like a normal person, but not be fat.

    I was told hundreds upon hundreds of times that if I didn’t find a way to lose the weight, I’d be lonely, no one would like me, I’d have trouble finding a boyfriend, and I’d have almost no chance of getting married. This was so heartbreaking. And I believed every word of it.

    It became a major focus of my life to get my body in order, so I could be a ‘real’ girl.

    When I turned twenty, I learned that my weight was all my fault. That I wasn’t doing enough. That I just wanted results, without doing the work. And that “there’s no permanent result without permanent effort.” So, I decided to find the sustainable lifestyle change that would lead me to my thin and better self. This was just another wild goose chase.

    No matter what I did, the pattern was the same: I would lose ten to thirty-five pounds in about six months. And then—even if I doubled my efforts in terms of eating less and training more—I would start gaining weight and return to close to where I started.

    Even though it was soul crushing, I didn’t give up. Not even for a day.

    I was convinced that I just didn’t know enough, or hadn’t found the right diet for me, the right exercise, or the right combination. Or that maybe I was just doing things wrong, for some reason.

    I hired trainers, dieticians, the whole shebang. It didn’t help.

    This lasted more than ten years and took a lot of money that could have been spent better.

    I was convinced that I was missing something. Obviously, the professionals knew what they were doing, and there was something wrong with me.

    How Things Got Even Worse

    When I got married, even though my husband and I were planning to wait a couple of years before having children, the pressure to prepare for pregnancy was on.

    I went into crazy researcher mode and read every book on the best diet for pregnancy and ensuring healthy offspring.

    It was 2016 and keto was in (as it still is now). I was convinced that keto was the way to go.

    This was a turning point for me. First, because I was so determined to succeed at this point, and second, because keto is one of the most restrictive diets in existence.

    I became super obsessed, and for two years. I couldn’t see that things were going wrong. Very wrong.

    There were both physical and psychological signs. I just didn’t have the mental capacity to notice them. And regrettably, there wasn’t anyone around to point out that something was amiss. My environment was, and still is to some extent, more conducive to disordered eating behavior than to recovery.

    On the physical side:

    • My nails were brittle.
    • My hair was falling out.
    • My heart rate was slow.
    • I lost the ability to sweat, despite the vigorous exercise I did.
    • I was often tired.
    • I was getting dizzy a lot.
    • I was shivering cold all the time.

    On the psychological side:

    • I was irritable.
    • I felt I needed to deserve my food, so I exercised compulsively, at least two hours and up to five hours a day.
    • I had forgotten how hunger feels. I was eating on a schedule, and that was that. Not feeling hunger was even reassuring.
    • But despite the latter, when I got to the bakery or the supermarket, I felt intense cravings. My stomach was tight, but I would start salivating strongly. And I would think about food for the rest of the day, weighing the pros and cons of ice cream and my rights to a little pleasure and indulgence in life. My solution was to order just the ‘right’ food online and go out as little as possible.
    • I started avoiding my friends and family and any outings with food. I couldn’t risk eating anything if it wasn’t prepared by me.
    • On the other hand, I was keeping some sense of normalcy, while cooking normal food and desserts for my husband. I don’t know why, but the pleasure of cooking was somehow enough, and I didn’t get cravings from this.
    • I was also obsessed with food and thinking about what to cook for myself and my husband, and what great things we had eaten, but I could never have again.

    It was a torturous time. And even though my focus was on being my healthiest self, I had never been sicker in my life. I was suffering deeply.

    How I Got Better

    I can’t tell you I had a sudden realization about the errors of my ways. As I said, my whole environment supports the dieting mentality, and I had much more support in my dieting efforts than I do now in recovery. But still, I am managing.

    I started seeing a therapist because I was lashing out at my husband, and I wanted to control my emotions better. By digging deeper into the issues underlying my anger I found a deep sense of inadequacy and not being enough. In the process of unravelling, I was able to make the connection that my problems with food stem from the same place, and I started working on them.

    There are a few things that helped me most.

    The first is meditation. Meditating has made a huge difference in my life because it’s enabled me to distance myself from my thoughts, and stop believing everything I think. This was huge.

    It was important for me to observe this nasty, critical voice and to realize that it’s not mine. It sounded more like my mother. To distance myself from the voice and the emotionally charged image of my mother, I started seeing it like a mean, old witch. By associating a funny image with this chatter in my head, I was able to acknowledge it was there but go about my life, without engaging too much with it.

    This has helped me treat myself much more kindly. And by being kinder to myself I started to accept myself more. I am human and not perfect. In some situations, I still start berating myself. But I catch myself quickly and don’t fall into the rabbit hole.

    Second, I reached out for support from some trusted friends and started to go out more and observe other people. To my surprise, most people were not on the brink of death just because they ate pizza a couple times a month or because they enjoyed a drink or two.

    Also, I started reading more books written by fat activists, and they have been of great help. They are full of humor, compassion, love, and understanding. They have helped me feel less alone, and I’ve benefitted immensely from their recommendation to normalize your view of your body by looking at images of other fat people.

    For me, seeing other women of my size and finding them gorgeous and beautiful helped me accept myself more. Taking more pictures of myself, and getting used to how I look, was also huge for me. Because it’s very different from looking in the mirror. In the mirror you can look at just certain parts of your body and not pay attention to others. In a photo, you don’t have much choice.

    This can be really hard at first. But it gets so much better.

    Also, I found new ways to move my body and enjoy myself, and rekindled my passions for types of exercise I used to enjoy. This has made it so much easier for me to appreciate my wonderful body. I feel grateful for all I am able to do, every single day.

    Choosing what to eat is still a battle sometimes. The disordered voices in my head are not abolished, as I said. But now, I can choose not to pay attention to them or believe them.

    So now, when I am debating between pizza and fish with salad, I do a couple of things differently than before.

    First, I ask myself what do I really want, and why. If I see that I am leaning toward the fish, but only because it’s “better for me,” I remember the sad person I was before. I remember how bad I felt when my life was ruled by rules. And then I clear the rules from my head and imagine what will taste better for me in this moment. And choose that option.

    Of course, I don’t always eat pizza. I strive for balance and make healthy choices on the whole. The point is I don’t constantly deprive myself.

    What helps me not fall into my old patterns is remembering the way I feel now. I know that despite being heavier, I haven’t felt happier and freer in my life. Not having that constant anxiety is my motivation.

    It’s very hard, but I couldn’t be happier that I am going through this journey. I am connecting to myself, my body, and my wishes in a way I was never able to before. And I feel this is the most valuable experience.

    I hope that if you’re battling with the same demons, you’ll win. I am rooting for you. And yes, it is possible.

  • Why I’m Choosing to Be Happy Now, Not When I Feel Like a Success

    Why I’m Choosing to Be Happy Now, Not When I Feel Like a Success

    “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” ~Alan Watts

    I love how instant modern life has become.

    When I’m hungry, without really moving, I can instantly get food delivered to me. Pizza, of course. When I’m hungry for knowledge, at the touch of a button on my mobile, I can discover answers to the questions I’m pondering. No need to head to the library to search for and flick through books.

    Some would argue that this instantaneousness is making us lazy. Regardless, I find it astonishing the speed we can get what we want.

    Why, then, have I found myself delaying the one thing I want most—happiness?

    Like many of us, I’m driven. I love to challenge myself, set goals, and do my best to achieve them.

    There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious. It’s only a problem when I tell myself “I won’t be happy until… happens” or “I won’t be happy until I have…”

    When I set goals for myself, they’re naturally future-based, and when I tie my happiness to those goals, it too becomes a thing of the future.

    But is there another way? I’ve been pondering this question for a while, and I’ve decided to choose happiness before success. Here are three reasons why.

    1. There will always be more to achieve.

    In the past, once I achieved a goal, I’ve barely celebrated before setting a ‘’bigger, better’’ goal and moving on to the next thing.

    This focus on the next thing looks suspiciously like the journey we find ourselves caught up in as children. Little school. Big school. First job. Better job. Buy a house. Promotions. Buy a bigger house. Work. Working harder. Harder still.

    Alan Watts said this about getting to the end of our lives after chasing the illusive next thing: “But we missed the whole point all along, it was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance whilst the music was being played.”

    There will always be more. More success (whatever that looks like for us individually). More money, bigger houses, faster cars. We have to decide, at what point we are ‘’there’’? What if we were there now? What if we already have everything we need to be content and simply enjoy our lives, even if there’s more we’d like in the future?

    2. My happiness now will attract success in the future.

    With this journey we’re on, the assumption is that once we’re “there,” once we’ve “made it,” we’ll be happy. In other words, once we have success we’ll be happy. What if it was the other way around? What if once we’re happy, we will have success? Maybe not society’s definition of success, but success we’ve defined on our own terms.

    I’ve made a conscious effort over the last few months to make my happiness a priority. I’ve started to live my life my way. Prioritizing the habits that are most important to me, like meditation. Doing business in a way that lights me up, rather than what the gurus tell me. Exercising in a way I want to—daily walks in the forest—rather than listening to the experts who insist on joining a gym to get fit.

    As a result, I’m attracting the types of opportunities, experiences, and people I want to into my life. By doing things that feel right for me, I’m naturally aligning with the right people and situations.

    I’m also reinforcing to myself that I have everything I need. I’m already complete, I’m already enough, and I can feel good right now regardless of what kind of success I achieve in the future. I’m dancing to the music now, rather than delaying. And that, to me, is its own kind of success.

    3. It’s not really success we’re after.

    I’ve discovered that the only reason I want to achieve any goal is because I believe it is going to make me feel a certain way. When I set goals now, I ask myself, “Why do I want this?” I’ll continue to ask myself this until I get to a feeling.

    We don’t want more money for the sake of more money; we may want the feeling of security we believe it will give us, or perhaps a feeling of significance.

    We don’t want fast cars for the sake of fast cars; we want the feeling of fun we experience when driving at speed or maybe the sense of freedom the car gives us.

    It’s always the feelings we want. I’ve found that I can cultivate those feelings now.

    My walks in the forest give me a sense of freedom. Appreciating my health—which I often take for granted—can give me a sense of security. There are a million and one ways I can have fun today, without waiting for a fast car to be in my driveway; people-watching over coffee, calling an old friend, reading or watching a movie—the list of simple pleasures is endless!

    I’m not saying I’ve given up on having the success I want. There is nothing wrong with wanting and receiving the objects of our desires. I’ve just given up on the illusion that I’ll be happier once I’m “successful.”

    I’ve given up delaying how I wish to feel in the future and started creating those feelings now.

    I choose happiness now.

  • Grief Isn’t Something You Live Through, It’s Something You Live With

    Grief Isn’t Something You Live Through, It’s Something You Live With

    “Obstacles do not block the path, they are the path.” ~Zen proverb

    I thought the concept of a “cold sweat” was unreal and paradoxical until the evening of August 27, 2014. That was my first cold sweat. My first of a lot of things.

    My heart jack-hammered in my chest.

    I heard my pulse in my ears.

    I gasped for air on my dorm room floor in New York, while my mom tried to calm me down on the other end of the phone in Los Angeles.

    “It’s just a panic attack, sweetie. Just breathe deep.”

    No, no, no, I thought. Panic couldn’t possibly evoke this kind of physiological response. My arm hurt, my chest hurt. Was it possible to have a heart attack at age nineteen?

    I didn’t sleep for days after that. I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up again.

    Every night, I would set my laptop on my nightstand. A close family friend with insomnia agreed to stay on Skype with me all night long while I slept so that I wouldn’t feel so alone. She stayed up with me three nights in a row.

    I stopped attending classes, social functions, and missed almost the entire first week of my sophomore year of college.

    Finally, on the night of August 31, I decided to take a walk with some friends. Those same feelings as that night in my dorm room came over me. They took me to the emergency room. An EKG, blood pressure test, and Xanax later, the doctor came in.

    “Tell me a little bit about what’s going on with you.”

    “Well, I keep feeling like I can’t breathe, sometimes my heart starts to—”

    “No,” he interrupted. “Tell me what’s going on with you. Not your body.”

    I looked at him perplexed for about ten seconds, and began. I told him that my father died suddenly in a hit-and-run crash in December. I told him I had to come right back to school afterward because my scholarship was riding on my attendance. I told him how heartbroken, lost, and alone I felt living on the opposite side of the country—away from my family—during the worst period of my life.

    He told me what I had been vying to hear for months.

    “You need to go home.”

    Without argument, I nodded, went back to my dorm room, and told my mom to book my flight. I knew I had to go home, but hearing that vocal validation was what I truly needed. Within minutes, months of torment and post-traumatic stress melted into relief.

    Unfortunately, while the doctor told me what I had been longing to hear, he also diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder. Even upon returning to LA, starting a new school, a new job, and a new life, waves of panic continued to ravage my mind and body. And they always hit unexpectedly.

    Although I came home to properly cope with my grief, that task was still put by the wayside. Now, I had to deal with my anxiety and panic first. I had to find the right pills, the right dose. No matter what pills or what dose, I felt emotionally hollowed.

    In attempts to keep my anxiety levels down, the pills were making me tired all the time. I didn’t experience any more anxiety or depression, but I didn’t experience happiness or joy either. I had to try something else.

    In the boredom of a frigid December night, three years into my turbulent grief journey, I opened up the app store on my iPhone. Truth be told, I was looking for a crossword game, but instead I stumbled upon a free meditation app.

    I selected their grief meditation, settled into the plush carpet of my bedroom floor, popped my earbuds in, and began. Breathe in, breathe out. The sound of ambient ocean waves that underscored the guided meditation was like the waves of my grief—coming and going, never knowing when the next one would strike, sometimes dramatic and thunderous, sometimes muted and repressed.

    It wasn’t until the meditation ended and I opened my eyes that I realized there were tears in them. This is what my anxiety pills hadn’t been able to achieve. An actual outpouring of emotion. What I needed was to experience my grief, not silence it.

    But, I also needed to experience it in a place where I felt safe—and that place soon became that very spot on my bedroom floor. So vastly different from the spot on my dorm room floor across the country that was tainted with sadness and anxiety.

    For the longest time, I thought meditation was the silencing of your thoughts and emotions. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Soon I realized that meditation was the observation of these thoughts and emotions, without the heartache and turmoil of getting wrapped up in them.

    Every day, I gave myself ten minutes to meditate, to grieve. A year later, I weaned off my anti-anxiety pills, and never looked back. Two years later, and nearly five years since my father’s passing, I continue to meditate daily. Only now, it is as much a way to celebrate my contentment as it is to cope with my grief and panic.

    My grief and my panic disorder will always be a part of who I am, but I no longer see them as afflictions. Rather, they are facets of my overarching journey.

    Meditation took the place of my medication. But, that’s not to say that there is a right or wrong choice between the two. Without the help of my anti-anxiety pills, I would’ve never been able to see clearly enough to know that meditation is an option.

    There is no shame in needing the help of a pill, much like there is no shame in needing the help of a mindfulness practice. A practice that has taught me acceptance is the most critical part of our journey.

    So I began to accept. Accepting that pain, panic, and pills were part of my journey to peace. Accepting that grief is not something you live through, but something you live with.

    Accepting that all of these things were the path all along, not the roadblocks I thought they were.

  • How Mindfulness Is Saving My Relationship

    How Mindfulness Is Saving My Relationship

    “Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

    I started meditating and practicing mindfulness more seriously several years ago incorporating it in to my daily routine, initially to help with my anxiety. My practice certainly helped me by leaps and bounds in overcoming my anxiety, but an unexpected side effect has been the impact it’s having on my marriage.

    We’ve not been married long, and as many couples before us have experienced, getting accustomed to this new dynamic can be at times… difficult.

    Learning to communicate and compromise isn’t always a smooth ride. He cares about being on time (or early), I care about not being rushed. I like the kitchen cleaned after dinner, he couldn’t care less. He gets stressed when he doesn’t know the schedule in advance, I feel stressed when I feel boxed into a plan.

    So we argued. And got mad at each other. And created these expectations for each other that we definitely didn’t always meet.

    But slowly I started to notice a change. It began with a change in me, my stress level, my tendency to blame, my expectations of him. I found myself more understanding, better able to let go of things that didn’t go my way, and better at communicating when an argument bubbled up between us.

    Then my husband started to change too. He’d noticed the changes in me and saw how much better I felt and how much easier communication was with me, and he started mimicking what he saw me do.

    He wasn’t letting things bother him as much. In a situation where we would have had an ugly argument, he was now starting the conversation from a place of curiosity instead of finger pointing. But the biggest thing that I noticed from him was how he was willing and able to reflect on how he was feeling and dig into why he felt the way he did whereas in the past he would have become angry at me for making him feel that way.

    What is Mindfulness?

    Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment on purpose and without judgment. This can be done in day-to-day activities like driving, eating, and in conversation. It can also be practiced as formal meditation.

    This simple practice can transform our relationship with our thoughts, give us new perspectives on life and even our own behaviors, and free us from the hold that our emotions can have on us when we identify with them.

    Here are changes I’ve seen in myself from practicing mindfulness that have led to improving my marriage.

    I’m happier.

    Stress is a salty mistress with eight in ten adults suffering daily. And anxiety is pervasive in our society, affecting roughly forty million Americans (including me for thirty-ish years). Practicing mindfulness is a time-tested and scientifically proven method of dealing with and overcoming the hold of stress and anxiety.

    When we’re stressed, feeling down or angry, we’re on the lookout for anything to prove that life is stressful or crappy, or that we’re right and others are wrong. We notice the things that bother us like dishes left on the counter, a car driving too slowly in traffic, or the way your spouse asks what’s for dinner.

    And when we’re happy, we do the same—look for things to prove why life is great. You notice the nice things, the birds chirping, that your spouse gets up without complaint on Tuesday mornings to take out the trash. It’s also easier to be more compassionate and forgiving from a happy place.

    The less-stressed and no longer anxiety-ridden me is a much better wife and partner. From a happier place, I’m not only much more pleasant to be around, but things don’t tend to bother me as much.

    I’m a better listener.

    As a person with ADD, I’ve always found listening intently in conversations to be a difficult task. The mind wanders to other topics making it difficult to be fully present, take in what the other person is saying, and retain the information for later.

    My mindfulness practice has drastically improved my ability to pay attention. It’s like brain training, building the ‘muscle’ that helps direct our attention at will.

    I’m better able to fully listen to my husband when he’s sharing with me without always thinking of what I’m going to say next or what I need to do later. He feels heard, and we feel more connected to each other as a result.  

    I’m much more aware of how I’m feeling.

    Not to say that I’m happy 24/7—I don’t think that’s possible, nor would I want that. We have a rainbow of emotions, and there are good reasons to feel them even for a brief moment.

    The act of paying attention on purpose trains the brain to notice what we’re feeling. We’re so used to just feeling our feelings, and if they’re not pleasant we either try to run from them, numb them, or lash out.

    It’s more productive and much less stressful to look at our emotions with curiosity. Label them. Then ask questions. “Ah, I’m feeling irritated. What’s that about? What’s another way of looking at this? How can I change this situation or cope with it?”

    I’m also better able to catch myself before emotions spike high. Once emotions hit their peak in an argument, the horse had already left the stable. It’s tough, if not damn near impossible to reel it back in once you’ve reached the crest of pissed off-ness.

    At this point, your brain and body are in fight-or-flight mode where it’s impossible to access critical thinking skills and takes about twenty minutes to calm enough to think clearly to make sound, logical decisions.

    Granted, those high negative emotions are drastically fewer and further between for me now with years of mindfulness practice under my belt. However, I’m only human and once in a great while I can feel those emotions rising.

    Being more aware of how I feel has helped me resolve difficult or frustrating feelings internally and avoid arguments with my husband.

    I’m much more aware of how my husband is feeling.

    Mindfulness practice increases your ability to be present, and thus not be distracted by thoughts. As a result, you become more insightful, a better listener, and more observant.

    This results in higher levels of emotional intelligence because you are able to see things from another person’s point of view to facilitate better communication. It becomes a powerful tool that makes you more effective in understanding other people, as well as contexts and situations.

    When my husband seems upset, I’m better now at putting his behavior into context and empathizing with his emotions. For example, an angry outburst from him directed at me because we should have left five minutes ago, I can see is actually his frustration stemming from a lack of control over something he values—which is punctuality.

    I don’t get upset in return anymore. Instead, I empathize with him because I better understand what is causing his emotions and don’t take them personally.

    I’m able to forgive more quickly.

    Pobody’s nerfect. Mindfulness teaches us to forgive ourselves and others as we are paying attention to the present moment non-judgmentally.

    Using mindfulness techniques, a person is able to let go of or forget about the past and not dwell on what the future can be.

    Mindfulness can be highly beneficial because we are able to let go of unrealistic or materialistic thoughts and just exist in the moment.

    It can be used to accept the feelings of sadness, anger, irritation, or betrayal that you have and to move on from them. Your path to a freer you, begins with knowing what is hurting you the most.

    Cultivating a greater capacity for forgiveness has brought me to a place in my relationships where I don’t hold grudges or dig up the past in arguments.

    I’m aware of the stories I’m telling myself.

    When something doesn’t go our way, it’s so easy to identify with the story we’re telling ourselves and label it as the whole truth.

    Mindfulness has shown me the difference between me and my thoughts. They are not one in the same. Thoughts are ideas passing through our minds like clouds in the sky. They are fleeting. They change with context.

    Because of mindfulness, when I’m upset I can more easily identify the story I’m telling myself that is making me upset.

    For example, I was hurt after my husband didn’t get up and greet me enthusiastically when I came home from a week-long business trip. He stayed sitting on the couch absorbed with what he was doing.

    I was upset and went upstairs to fume. Then I realized I was telling myself a story that my husband doesn’t care about me or love me enough. I know that isn’t true. There are a number of reasons why he didn’t get up.

    When I came back downstairs he could tell I was still a bit upset, so he asked me about it. I said, “The story I’m telling myself is that you didn’t miss me because you didn’t get up when I came home. I know it’s not true, but I’m still feeling a little upset because I would have liked it if you gave me a big hug.”

    He apologized and said he’d wanted to wait until I was settled to love on me. He was much more receptive to “the story I’m telling myself” than he would have been had I started in on him about what he’d done wrong. And I felt better when I stopped jumping to the wrong conclusion and allowed him to share his side while avoiding confrontation.

    A few weeks later he calmly told me he was upset about something and started the conversation with “the story I’m telling myself is…”

    That’s when I knew our relationship was improving because of mindfulness.

    Being able to objectively look at my thoughts and feelings allows me to reframe any situation and gives me the space to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively.

    —

    If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this experience it’s that self-love and striving for self-improvement can have a ripple effect through your life affecting those around you for the better. The better me I can become—less stressed, more compassionate, healthier, happier—the better wife, friend, daughter, and coach I can be.

  • Why Remembering You’re Going to Die Is the Best Motivator

    Why Remembering You’re Going to Die Is the Best Motivator

    “Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever; you just have to live.” ~Natalie Babitt

    Once a month, I visit the local cemetery and walk around. I’m not there to visit anyone in particular. I’m there to remind myself of my own mortality.

    And it always wakes me up.

    I soak in the energy: I read the simple legacies on the tombstones, from young children to those who made it to 100 years old. I’m not morose. I’m not negative. I’ve simply found the greatest motivational tool in the world, and I assure you it’s not quotes on Instagram or Pinterest. It’s not the latest YouTube clip.

    It’s one thing and one thing only: remembering we are all going to die soon.

    How Many Summers Do You Have Left?

    Seneca was a roman philosopher who lived 2000 years ago and a leader of the stoic movement. One of his essays, entitled On the Shortness of Life provides a reminder to all of us: our time here is nearly over.

    And yet what Seneca argues, and does so brilliantly, is that life isn’t really short. The problem is how we waste so much of our lives on things that don’t matter: wondering what others think, getting caught up in gossip, wasting our lives on social media and the non-essential.

    When this happens, it’s no wonder we lack clarity and meaning in our lives. It’s no wonder we feel overwhelmed, overworked, and overstimulated on a daily basis. When we’re in this place, we don’t have the time or energy to think about death.

    And yet, our time is running out. I like to think of it this way:

    How many more summers do we have left? How many early June mornings with the sun barely making its presence known as we sip coffee do we have left? How many moments with our kids, family, and those who we love do we have left? How many times do we get to do what we love for yet another day?

    We don’t know the answer to this, but I do know one thing: it’s much closer than we think, and every day is a gift. Let’s examine why remembering our own mortality is the best way to start living and how you can use it as leverage to live boldly today.

    Ask the Tough Questions

    Reminding ourselves of our mortality invites us to ask the tough questions from our lives. These are the questions we often avoid, yet are always running in the background:

    Who am I?

    Why am I here?

    Is this life for me?

    Am I on my own path, or someone else’s?

    Because they’re uncomfortable, they become easy to avoid through busyness, noise, and the endless demands of a 24/7 digital culture. Usually we don’t take any time to face these questions unless someone close to us experiences a crisis (or we do, too).

    But within these questions lie powerful answers. They allow us to get honest with ourselves instead of giving in to the usual mental chatter we so often believe. By asking the tough questions, we start to achieve clarity around what matters… and we start discarding what doesn’t.

    Release What Doesn’t Serve

    When I moved from New York City to Phoenix, I experienced a wow moment. No, it wasn’t the awe-inspiring sunsets, although I love those. It was the moment I realized my walk-in closet was bigger than my old space in Manhattan.

    And yet, I realized as time passed, with all this space, I started to accumulate a lot of stuff. One day, as I was preparing for a meditation (yes, my closet doubled as a brilliant meditation room), I realized: I had no space left. I looked around and noticed I barely used anything that was taking up so much space. I was overwhelmed.

    Much like our lives, I had filled my space with the non-essential. Remembering our mortality allows for clarity around releasing what doesn’t serve us. These may be habits, mindsets, environments and yes, even people.

    Even just doing this step often releases a heavy burden we feel in our lives: there’s too much going on, and it never ends. Once we have space, we feel lighter, clearer and more empowered to start figuring out what we really want. 

    Clarity Around Our Dreams 

    “But Tommy…I don’t know, I really don’t know.”

    I sat there in a conversation with one of my clients and wasn’t buying it. She was here for a reason, and I wasn’t going to let her off the hook. Of course, I’ve said this before too, and deep down, I was afraid.

    My belief is that, deep down, we all know what we want; it’s a matter of the layers we’ve stacked over the years clouding our honesty. This is where using our mortality as leverage truly shines: we get to be honest, unapologetic and share our truth.

    Often, we’re afraid to declare what we want for fear of embarrassment, failure, or standing out too much. When faced with our mortality, none of that matters. There’s a dream deep within you waiting to be explored and declared.

    The question, then, becomes: Will you have the courage to discover and declare it?

    The Power of Urgency

    Have you ever had a project due in three months, yet put it off until the last minute and somehow got it all done? We all have. This is the power of urgency, deadlines, and accountability: We get clear, focused, and set boundaries to ensure we finish.

    But how often do we do the same with our own lives? Most people don’t operate with any sense of urgency in life; there’s always tomorrow, next week, or next year.

    Until there’s not. The beauty of reminding ourselves our time is limited means we’re operating with high levels of urgency, knowing every day truly matters.

    When this happens, we say no to the things we should. We tell people how we really feel. And we overcome the resistance on our dreams, the self-doubt, and uncertainty. We feel those yet move forward anyway.

    Because the pain of regret hurts more than putting ourselves out there. When this happens, we start to trust ourselves and recognize our dreams are worth it. Best of all: we’re worth bringing them to life.

    Integrating This into Your Life 

    Steve Jobs, in his riveting Stanford commencement speech, said it better than I ever could:

    “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

    So, how do we use our mortality to make bold decisions and start to live our dreams today? You don’t have to be as extreme as I am with visiting your local cemetery, although I’d recommend it.

    Here are some of my favorite ways:

    Journal about your legacy.

    Take yourself twenty, thirty, or forty years down the line. How do you want to be remembered? Write it all down.

    Write a letter to your current self.

    Again, fast forward to a time in the future when you’re on your last days. Write a letter to your current self, letting them know whatever you wish.

    Do a guided meditation.

    There are various meditations around visualizing one’s own death (and return back to Earth). These are beautiful ways to face reality and get in touch with what truly matters.

    Spend time with older people.

    Strike up conversations with people and even your own family who have been on this planet for a while. Often, you’ll find gems of wisdom within them.

    Remind yourself of death once a day.

    Every day take a moment and anchor yourself in the beautiful gift we all have. With this energy, ask yourself: What is one bold step I can take today?

    It’s your time now.

    Embrace your mortality, make the decision you’ve been putting off, and never look back.

  • How I Healed from an Eating Disorder and Stopped Hating Myself and My Body

    How I Healed from an Eating Disorder and Stopped Hating Myself and My Body

    “Quiet the voice telling you to do more and be more, and trust that in this moment, who you are, where you are at, and what you are doing is enough. You will get to where you need to be in your own time. Until then, breathe. Breathe and be patient with yourself and your process. You are doing the best you can to cope and survive amid your struggles, and that’s all you can ask of yourself. It’s enough. You are enough.” ~Daniell Koepke

    I remember looking at the nutrition information on the bag of jujubes I had just eaten and feeling utterly and completely disgusted with myself.

    That was my first binge. Little did I know how much worse it would get.

    It was four days in to the first official diet that I had somehow managed to stay on for more than one day.

    I had dieted on and off most of my life, but any time I tried a diet that told me what I was and wasn’t allowed to eat (Atkins was the first of many), I never managed to last longer than a day or two before I’d “blow it” and give up.

    Prior to the day of my first binge, I had actually lost a lot of weight on my own, simply by counting calories, but I hired a trainer because, while I reached my goal weight on my own, I still hated my body and wasn’t happy.

    So, I did the only thing I knew to do at the time—pay someone else to tell me what to eat so I could have a perfect body and finally be happy.

    Ha.

    I white knuckled my way through four whole days before I found myself at the grocery store feeling much like I’d imagine a junkie feels as their high begins to wear off. I needed a fix and was jonesing bad.

    The next day, I barely ate anything and ran for about two hours to punish myself for being such a pig the day prior.

    Within a few months, I was sitting in a therapist’s office hearing him call me bulimic while I bawled hysterically and begged him to tell me how to stop feeling so completely out of control with food.

    The harder I tried to control my intake, the more out of control I became.

    The more out of control I felt, the worse I felt about myself and treated my body.

    Depression, panic attacks, bingeing, and restricting/over exercising (those were my compensatory behaviors) took over my world.

    What was wrong with me? I wanted a perfect body so desperately; why couldn’t I just eat what I was supposed to eat?!

    I spent a lot of time with my therapist, and he never really gave me answer for what was wrong with me (beyond the eating disorder) or how to fix it.

    It just kept getting worse.

    My body would shake and I’d be so desperate to get into whatever food I had as fast as humanly possible that I’d usually end up eating an entire large bag of candy on the drive home before continuing to eat until I was sick once I got home.

    After awhile I started noticing that it literally felt like a hole in the center of my being that I was frantically trying to fill—unsuccessfully. No matter how much I stuffed in there, it just never ever felt full.

    What started with one small bag of candy turned into a monster inside me that I could not control. It morphed from a bag of candy to eating myself sick and ultimately feeling like I was killing myself with food. At my worst, there were nights when I had eaten so much I was legitimately scared I was going to have a heart attack in my sleep and wondered if I should go to ER.

    So I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I was desperate—desperate to not eat myself to death, but also desperate to find a way to stop so I could just have that perfect body and finally be happy.

    But as I read, I came to realize that my bingeing wasn’t about the food. The over exercising and starving myself to compensate for the bingeing, none of it was about the food or exercise.

    And my desperate need to have a perfect body, in order to be happy, wasn’t even about my body.

    It all had everything to do with how I felt about myself and my worth as a person.

    I hated myself and felt worthless.

    I didn’t think I was good enough for anything.

    And in that one moment of awakening, everything that was wrong in my life made complete sense.

    I finally knew why I was angry all the time—I was in pain.

    The starving, restricting, bingeing, and over exercising made sense—I was punishing myself.

    The obsessive ways I dove into everything, including food and exercise, were attempts to keep myself numb and not address the pain.

    I knew that if I ever had any hope of changing anything, I had to stop chasing the perfect body and start learning to love and value myself, which meant figuring out where the self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy were coming from.

    The first thing I had to do in my process of healing, recovery, and growth was to start learning to be forgiving of myself and treat myself with compassion. I had been living with excruciating emotional pain my entire life that I never allowed myself to even acknowledge, never mind deal with.

    My constant anger didn’t make me a b*tch or a horrible person; it was a symptom of someone who was hurting deeply.

    The initial weight problem that morphed into dieting/disordered eating and ultimately bulimia didn’t make me disgusting or weak; it was a symptom of someone who hated herself so badly she was punishing herself every day.

    Those realizations allowed me to start extending myself compassion for those things in me that I wasn’t proud of. They allowed me the space to start healing. Because you cannot change while you believe you deserve to be punished.

    I gave myself permission to eat whatever I wanted.

    I even gave myself permission to binge, and the weirdest thing happened—I began to do it less and less. Now I cannot remember the last time I binged. It’s been years.

    It sounds crazy, like the opposite of what we should do. Permission to binge?!

    But when I realized the purpose it was serving and stopped judging myself for it so I could work on actually healing the need it was filling, it all changed.

    You see, as long as we’re judging and hating ourselves, we’ll always feel like we’re bad and deserve to be punished. And as long as we believe we’re bad and deserve to be punished, we’ll never stop punishing ourselves.

    It came down to five basic mindset switches for me: permission, acceptance, compassion, kindness, and curiosity.

    Permission: It’s okay because I’m doing the best I can with what I know right now. When I learn how to better handle these feelings, I’ll make more loving choices for myself.

    Acceptance: It sucks pretty bad, but it’s my journey. For whatever reason, whatever I’m supposed to learn from this, this is the journey I’m supposed to be on.

    Compassion: How would I speak to a friend or client going through this? That’s how I started trying to speak to myself.

    Kindness: The worse I felt, the kinder I was to myself.

    Curiosity: I couldn’t just blindly give myself permission to binge forever without actively getting curious about why I was doing it. So, every time it would happen, I’d spend a lot of time asking myself why. How was I feeling? What feelings was I trying to keep myself from feeling? Was there a better way I could manage those feelings?

    Alongside making those changes I also worked on learning to love and value myself and change the stories I had been telling myself about who I was and what I was worth my whole life.

    So, dieting may have made me bulimic, but my obsession with finding happiness and self-acceptance by building a perfect body led me down a path of learning to love myself and create happiness from within.

    I am enough.

    And so are you. So give yourself permission, acceptance, compassion, and kindness, and get curious about why you do the things you do. Perhaps, like me, you’ll find this is the key to your healing.

  • Happily Single: Why Marriage Wasn’t a Good Fit for Me

    Happily Single: Why Marriage Wasn’t a Good Fit for Me


    “I’m not sad about any of my life. It’s so unconventional. It doesn’t look anything like I thought it would.” ~Edie Falco

    I knew what was coming. My co-worker Rose was midway through her second chocolate martini and feeling loose enough at our after-work get-together to stop talking about her marriage and instead, start talking about my non-marriage.

    “I don’t get it. Why haven’t you ever been married?” she asked, in a disbelieving tone.

    I sighed. “You know, this is the third time you’ve asked me that. Remember? We had that whole conversation about it at the office Christmas party last year.”

    Looking deeply perplexed, she sipped at her drink, not ready to drop the subject. “I just mean…you’re so attractive and you have such a great personality. How is it that you’ve never been married?”

    That’s what she said. What she meant was: What’s wrong with you? Are you some kind of a freak? Couldn’t you get a man? Are you man hater? Or a lesbian? (Not that there would be anything wrong with that—and actually, it’s no longer a valid excuse to be single, now that same-sex marriage is legal).

    It’s possible that I was imagining more subtext than Rose intended, and to be fair, she was not the first person who’d put me on the spot about my single status.

    On a regular basis, people I meet express astonishment at my never having tied the knot, taken the plunge, walked down the aisle to what is widely assumed to be a happily ever after existence. I am expected to explain myself—to defend my life choices—often to people I’ve just met.

    Well-mannered folk who would almost never consider prying into the private lives of a brand new acquaintance have no reluctance in doing so when they find out that she’s an old maid. (Yeah, I’m owning that term.)

    I’ve experienced this with bosses, co-workers, a man at a class reunion whom I hadn’t seen in thirty years, dental hygienists, a stranger sitting next to me on an airplane, manicurists, and various random strangers at parties.

    A polite conversation can suddenly turn awkward if I let slip that I am an old maid. (I did recently have a different experience with a hair stylist who is divorced and struggling to raise two kids with no financial help from her ex. When she found out that I’d never been married, she said, “How’d you get so lucky?” But that reaction is the exception.)

    People want an explanation. A story. Something that makes you make sense to them. After all, isn’t everybody supposed to grow up and get married?

    For years, I’d stammer out some cliché intended to put people at ease, like, “I never met the right guy,” or “I moved around a lot for my career.” While that may have satisfied their curiosity, it invariably made me feel worse. Why did I have to apologize for who I was? Assure others that I was normal (in most respects)?

    As I grew older, people became even more inquisitive and judgmental. After all, the bloom was off the rose. Even if I came to my senses and made a determined effort to find a spouse, I had aged out of my peak mate-attracting years.

    Eventually the questions took a toll on my self-esteem, causing me to question myself and my choices.

    Had I made a horrible mistake by not prioritizing getting married? Did everyone else know something I didn’t know? Would I someday deeply regret not having “Mrs.” in front of my name?

    Seeing one friend after another get married multiplied my doubts and made me wonder: “Is there something wrong with me?”

    I’d wake up abruptly in the middle of the night, overwhelmed by a sick feeling of dread, thinking: “I FORGOT TO GET MARRIED!”

    When I was young, I did assume that someday I’d get hitched and have a family. I didn’t have a clear picture of what that would look like, although I was definite about not wanting to do a lot of housework, like my mother did. (I still don’t; I pay someone to clean my house). I had no interest in cooking—another of her daily chores—and as for motherhood urges, I preferred Barbies to baby dolls.

    Marriage is a wonderful institution, for many people. I have lots of friends who enjoy sharing their lives with loving spouses—and I’m happy for them—but marriage is not a good fit for everyone. Those who do not, for whatever reason, get married should not be subjected to “single shaming.”

    For my part, it took the hindsight reached after decades as a singleton to realize that I’d been deeply ambivalent about matrimony all along. I saw marriage as a choice that would affect all other choices, a partnership with many benefits but one that would tie me down and limit—at least to some extent—my ability to follow my own dreams.

    What I really wanted was adventure. My parents’ traditional marriage worked for them, but it didn’t appeal to me, a child of the sixties and seventies who saw new doors swinging open for women, offering us opportunities that had not been available to my mother when she was coming of age.

    I wanted an interesting career—preferably something outside of the mainstream—and I knew that marriage would restrict my options. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a spy. That didn’t happen, which is just as well for America, since I can’t keep a secret. Perhaps predictably, I went in a direction that allowed a lot of communication and became a radio personality.

    Had I been married, I would not have been able to advance my career by moving all around the country, bringing comedy and commentary to listeners in various states. I got to broadcast from the back of an elephant in a circus, a hot air balloon high in the sky, and a pace car making the rounds at a racetrack. I introduced bands like REO Speedwagon and The Judds at concert venues and made guest appearances on local TV shows.

    Early in my career, when I’d worked my way up from teeny tiny markets to a merely small market, I got a job offer from a radio station in San Francisco. San Francisco! In one move, I could more than double my salary, which at that time kept me just above the poverty level.

    Of greater importance to me was the opportunity to work with major market personalities and reach many more listeners than I ever could in Champaign, Illinois. Additionally, I could go from the Midwest to an exciting city in California.

    I thought about it for a hot second, and then said, “Yes!”

    I didn’t have to ask a husband if he wanted to move. If he would be able to transfer or find a new job in the Bay Area. If he would be willing to leave behind friends and family, forego the recreational softball team for which he’d played third base for so many summers, abandon the garden he’d lovingly hewed out of the wilds of the backyard.

    I was able to make a major decision based solely on what I wanted to do, and it was exhilarating. With the exception of the job interview I’d flown in for, I’d never even been to San Francisco, but I was thrilled as I packed up and hit the road for a new position in an unfamiliar city.

    Ironically, that job turned sour pretty quickly, for reasons that had nothing to do with its location. After a year, I left for greener pastures (okay, Chicago) just as easily as I’d headed for San Francisco. And that wasn’t my last move, by the way.

    Imagine if I’d uprooted a husband, convinced him to go to the Bay Area to start a whole new life there, and then turned around in a year’s time and told him that I’d changed my mind. If he had objected to moving yet again—which would have been completely reasonable on his part – I might have been stuck indefinitely in a job I hated. I would likely have brought that bitterness home from work every day, where it would have affected my marriage.

    Being single enabled me to make the career decision I needed to make at that time. Not all of my decisions have been brilliant; I haven’t always had a lot of money, but what I do have is mine to do with as I wish, as is my time. Whatever actions I take or choices I make are done without having to consult with, negotiate with or ask permission from anybody, and I enjoy the hell out of that.

    I go where I want to go on vacations, sleep in late when I feel like it and commit to time-consuming projects that appeal to me. I act in plays and sing in a band. I’ve run half marathons, traveled through Europe, and worked as a personal assistant to a movie star. My annual Halloween costume party is legendary.

    I’m constantly learning new things; my current efforts include speaking Italian, playing the bass guitar, and sewing.

    The point is: I spend my free time doing what I love to do, without having to accommodate someone else’s wants, needs, or schedule.

    Married women, of course, get a lot done as well, but their accomplishments are not shadowed by the big “but,” as in, “She climbed Mt. Everest and discovered a new solar system, but she never found the right guy. How sad.” An old maid could find a cure for cancer, figure out a way to reverse climate change in a week, and invent high heels that felt like cushy slippers but at her funeral, people would still whisper, “She never married,” as if that canceled everything else out.

    What’s interesting about this is that as a society, our ideas about marriage and family have undergone profound changes in recent decades.

    Biracial couples who might have raised eyebrows some time ago are commonplace now and are regularly featured in TV commercials. Same-sex marriages are being accepted—or at least tolerated—to a greater extent now. It may have taken Aunt Vivian awhile to accept the fact that her niece Carolyn will be exchanging vows with someone named Diane, but Viv wouldn’t think of missing the wedding.

    But what about people who don’t get married to anyone? Now that’s radical.

    Why would someone want to go through life uncoupled? After all, being single past a certain age means being lonely and miserable, right? In a society that relentlessly promotes coupledom as the normal and only desirable way for adults to live, that negative perception about single women (in particular) persists.

    That negativity eventually got to me. I became convinced that I was the last unmarried woman over forty (ok, over fifty) on the planet, and that I had made a big mistake in taking the road less traveled. I couldn’t reconcile the happy, busy, friend-filled life I had with the perceptions of other people. That they were people who didn’t know me well didn’t seem to matter.

    My friends loved and accepted me for who and how I am. Why wasn’t that enough?

    Like everyone who feels alienated, I found myself looking for my tribe.

    I discovered that there are plenty of “old maids” out there who are living their lives fully and enthusiastically, despite the annoying questions and side eye glances that come their way. Many are still open to the idea of marriage but they are not waiting for it, not keeping their dreams on hold until the perfect partner comes along. They are complete, just as they are.

    Many of them (okay, many of us) thoroughly enjoy the freedom and autonomy that go along with being single.

    It’s a tribe that’s growing in size. The percentage of single people in the U.S. is greater than ever before, with single men and women making up 47.6% of households in 2016, according to U.S. census data. More singletons were women: 53.2% compared with 46.8% who were men.

    It took me awhile, but I reached the point where I no longer summon up clichés to explain myself to people who can’t think beyond the conventional. I’ve realized that it’s not my responsibility to reassure them that I’m normal. I am normal. I’m just not married.

  • How I Escaped the Negative Thought Loop That Kept Me Down and Stuck

    How I Escaped the Negative Thought Loop That Kept Me Down and Stuck

    “You will never be free until you free yourself from the prison of your own false thoughts.” ~Philip Arnold

    Do you ever doubt yourself? As if no matter how hard you try, it’s never enough.

    Do you always tell yourself that you could do more? Or that somebody else is doing more, so why aren’t you on their level?

    I’m not good enough.

    Do you keep your thoughts to yourself because you feel as though your opinion doesn’t matter?

    I’m not smart enough.

    Or how about when you’re casually scrolling through social media? You see beautiful people taking such awesome photos and they look so happy.

    I’m not attractive enough.

    These rapid-fire negative thoughts incessantly remind us of our faults and flaws. These negative thought loops are like water to fish. We’re swimming through them. Every day. All the time.

    This year I was practically drowning in negative thought loops. My grandmother died. Shortly after, I navigated my parents through a draining divorce process. Post-divorce, my fiancé and I moved back in with my mom to support her. Money was scarce.

    I downward-spiraled into negative thought loops, constantly blaming myself for being a disappointing grandson, son, and partner, and an overall disappointment.

    I didn’t like myself, and you needed more than a powerful microscope to find an inkling of self-esteem within me.

    Negative thoughts that loop on replay are dangerous because when you say something over and over again, you believe it.

    And, if you’re like me, these beliefs can be paralyzing.

    The Comparison Trap

    In today’s age of technology and social media, scrolling is second nature to us.

    Is it really surprising?

    After all, you get to see all the awesome things that other people are doing. Incredible photos and videos taken by beautiful people doing amazing things.

    I wish that were me.

    That awe instantly transforms into envy, and suddenly you feel like your life is lacking.

    But we keep doing it. Every day, we scroll, seeking out our next hit of dopamine and envy—which social media offers in abundance.

    I did this every single day, multiple times a day, and mostly as an escape.

    I immersed myself in somebody else’s carefully curated life to distract myself from mourning my grandmother or quenching the fires of my parents’ divorce.

    From waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, I would scroll endlessly, comparing my life to the lives of others.

    I had fallen into the comparison trap. Like a moth to a flame, I was hopelessly addicted and in awe of the lives that other people lead.

    Why can’t I be happy like that person?

    It’s a terrible thought loop to replay in your mind. To believe that your life is lacking simply because your life is different from somebody else’s life—it’s an awful way to live.

    Struggling to See the Positive

    What’s difficult about negative thought loops is that sometimes you don’t feel like you’re deserving of your victories.

    This year I graduated college, but I didn’t attend my walking ceremony because I didn’t feel proud of myself.

    I don’t deserve this.

    Also, I started working for a law firm, the first of many steps in building my career, but I never celebrated when I got the job because I didn’t feel worthy of it.

    I’m not good enough.

    It’s just so sad that I was unable to celebrate my blessings simply because my mind was flooded with sorrow and disillusionment from tending to my family.

    Instead, I sunk into a miserable slump.

    I think the best way to describe this feeling is like walking through life in haze. Everywhere you look is foggy and distorted. I was unable to realize my victories or be grateful for my blessings because a veil of negativity was draped over my eyes.

    It wasn’t until a conversation with an old friend that the haze cleared and I could see life with clarity.

    Learned Helplessness

    We met for lunch and she shared with me something she’d learned in class.

    Psychologist Carol Dweck performed an experiment in which a fifth-grade classroom was split into two groups to solve a given problem.

    The twist was that one group of students were given a set of unsolvable problems. No matter how hard these students tried, they were unable to succeed at the task.

    In the next round, when they were given a set of easy problems, many students either took longer than the average or gave up entirely.

    What happened?

    The earlier round with unsolvable problems caused the students to equate trying with failing. Helplessness became a learned behavior.

    I think a lot of times we do this to ourselves with our thoughts.

    I would tell myself repeatedly I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. And when it was my turn to bat, I’d run away and quit because I knew that I’d strike out anyway.

    I was entrapped in a fixed mindset.

    I convinced myself that no matter what I did, I would always be destined for failure. That my life would never amount to anything meaningful and I would never be happy.

    It wasn’t long before my frustrations with myself transformed into anger over the unfairness of it all.

    My job performance declined. My relationships suffered. I was at a loss. My moods swung back and forth between flatlined indifference and anxiety-wracked mania.

    I needed to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset—to understand that the past doesn’t have to repeat itself, and that I have a say in what happens if I choose to learn and grow. But I didn’t know that then.

    At this point I realized it was time to seek therapy. This was one of the best choices I made this year because it opened a gateway to the wonders of mindfulness and gratitude.

    Finding Gratitude

    Who knew something as small as practicing gratitude could transform my thought process entirely?

    Too often we allow our negative thought loops to overwhelm and consume us. And it’s because we convince us we are our thoughts.

    However, we are not our thoughts. They’re just ideas floating through our heads that’s we don’t have to believe.

    Practicing gratitude helps you escape the negative thought loop because it encourages you to seek out what is good and right and beautiful in your life.

    With each day I counted my blessings, I was slowly releasing myself from the negativity that had shackled me for several months.

    Life will always be riddled with hardships. It’s inevitable. But to still summon the resilience to tell yourself that everything is okay, things will get better, you have people who love you, you know that you are strong; and most importantly, to truly believe that you have the courage and ability to create a positive shift in your life because you can still practice gratitude despite your struggles… it’s beyond empowering.

    Surround Yourself with People Who Uplift You

    “You cannot change the people around you, but you can change the people you choose to be around.” ~Unknown

    I recently discovered this quote while listening to a podcast, and it resonated with me.

    You really can’t change the people around you. If you try, you’ll end up disappointed. How other people behave, how they feel, what they think—these things are all beyond your control.

    But you can control who you surround yourself with.

    It’s been said that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

    If you’re mostly around people who complain a lot then, chances are, that you will complain a lot.

    I was exactly this type of person. And these were the type of people I surrounded myself with.

    I would always be moody. I was a true pessimist. I would combat every silver lining with criticism and some statement about how unfair life is.

    And to tell you the truth, being negative sucks. It’s exhausting.

    After hearing this quote, I tried something outside my comfort zone: I met new people.

    Being highly introverted and shy, this was difficult for me. But I did it. I joined clubs at school. I met positive and ambitious people with dreams and goals.

    I am convinced that positivity is contagious. The warm aura gained by practicing gratitude and welcoming abundance in your life touches the people around you. And this gratitude and abundance mindset slowly replaces those negative thought loops.

    I didn’t want to be in a slump anymore. I wanted to be driven, motivated, and well… happy. I learned that the key to achieving this is to seek out other people who want the same things you do.

    A Better Headspace

    It’s reaching the end of the year, and I’m faring far better than I did at the beginning. If I had to name one thing I think you and everybody should do more of, it’s this:

    Be kind to yourself.

    There’s a lot of truth to whoever said that we are our own worst critics. That is why I advocate that we also be our own best fans.

    Every time you criticize yourself, praise yourself for something else.

    Also, practice gratitude and remember your countless blessings instead of comparing your life to others’ lives.

    And realize the past doesn’t have to repeat itself. You can learn, you can grow, and you can do more than you think.

    Reflecting on this year, I now see that I am beyond blessed. I have a college degree. I’m soon to be married to the love of my life. I’m steadily working on my career.

    There are so many things in my life that are going so beautifully right, and so much that is possible.

    The same is likely true for you. You just need to shift your focus.

  • Your Story Shapes Your Life—and You Can Change It At Any Time

    Your Story Shapes Your Life—and You Can Change It At Any Time

    “Every moment of your life is a second chance.” ~Rick Price

    We are constantly telling ourselves stories about who we are and what we are capable of achieving.

    These stories are sometimes the nostalgia of once-upon-a-time that whispers longingly to us. The stories can be the remnants of hardened pain that want us to trace over the lines of old scars. They can also be the tales we invent about imagined futures—what we think will happen.

    All of the narratives that we repeat to ourselves—both of the fiction and nonfiction varieties—are what we internalize and use to create self-identity.

    Wait a minute. We use fiction to shape our self-identity?! That sounds crazy.

    Yep. We do, and probably more than any one of us would like to admit.

    The stories we tell ourselves about our shortcomings and failures fuel the negative self-talk that leads us to accept the myth of a single narrative—a belief in only one version of what our life can look like. We cast ourselves as a character locked in an inescapable maze, saddled with baggage we can not remove, riddled with flaws and insurmountable challenges.

    It’s our interpretation of the past and how we project the future that determines the roads we take to all of our tomorrows.

    These stories can either lift us up or lock us down. They inspire us to reach for more or they make us stuck. The narratives inevitably shape who we become.

    Our storytelling begins at a young age.

    There’s the narrative of your childhood dreams, the one where a kid like me thought she’d become a singer or an Olympic ice skater, own a house in Malibu, and have a Barbie doll body and an endless supply of money and youth.

    Of course I neglected to consider the fact that I couldn’t sing or ice skate, had no desire to learn, and that Barbie’s body is make-believe. None of that would have deterred six-year-old me though. I felt truly unstoppable during my childhood.

    But it passed in the blink of an eye.

    Childhood narratives faded and gave way to the hormonally-charged teenage years. The boundless optimism of my imagination receded as my body changed and life shifted from the slow-moving days of childhood to the volatile ups and downs of being a teen.

    This is when my narratives became toxic. My social life determined the tempo of my weeks, and my identity started to become intertwined with how I felt about my desirability to boys.

    I was a walking powder keg of emotions who somehow managed to earn good grades and visibly hold it together. But on the inside, I was beating myself up to the tune of the dangerous stories I told myself: not good enough, not good enough, not good enough.

    I decided early on that I would never be as cool as the popular girls. I would never be skinny enough or pretty enough, and I wouldn’t even be smart enough to compete with the nerds. I would perpetually feel like I was falling short in all categories of my life.

    Those negative affirmations increased as an adult. My future projections about what my life would look like were often rooted in fear, anxiety, and stress about the present.

    A soundtrack of negative self-talk played non-stop in my head, reminding me about everything I was not, and everything I couldn’t do.

    I’m a failure.

    I’m too ugly.

    I don’t deserve it.

    Not smart enough.

    I’m unlucky.

    I make bad choices.

    I am a bad wife and a bad mother.

    It’s not my turn yet.

    I can never do that.

    I will never have that.

    Yadda, yadda, yadda.

    Whenever something went wrong, I blamed myself. We have this urge to blame someone for our problems, and like many people, I turned myself into my personal scapegoat. I would throw myself under the bus.

    We perpetuate a narrative of hopelessness that makes us believe we are victims with problems that are unique to us. Scarcity mentality tricks us into believing that we can never have what we want. We think we are abnormal and defective and forget that we are merely human.

    The terrible stories win. Those are the ones we become attached to and believe.

    They are us.

    We are them.

    It is difficult to separate who we are apart from those narratives because we spend so much time repeating those stories over and over again.

    I was thirty-four-years-old when I woke up one morning in April 2016 and had my story unexpectedly and irreparably changed.

    I found my husband unconscious on the living room floor. My six-year-old, three-year-old, and one-year-old were asleep in the nearby bedrooms while the firemen tried to resuscitate my husband before they whisked him away to the nearest hospital.

    By the time I followed the ambulance, a doctor met me at the entrance of the ER and greeted me with, “Nothing we could do.”

    My husband was dead.

    I would later find out that he had an aortic aneurysm and went quickly. There was nothing we could have done.

    And just like that, the life that I had on autopilot was over.

    I always experienced negative self-talk, but now I was living the real life horror story of being a young widow and single mother.

    There was nothing more shredding to my identity than getting forced into a story that for once wasn’t the terrible fiction I usually concocted about myself. This was my terrible reality.

    I couldn’t see any hope for the future. It felt too daunting and terrifying to even contemplate. Happiness felt like a cruel joke.

    I defaulted to blaming myself. I spun narratives to explain why I was in that situation, and why I deserved to be miserable and unhappy.

    I needed something to help me understand why I did everything I was supposed to do in my life and still got this crappy hand from the universe. There had to be a reason why I was alone while everyone else got to go home to their significant others.

    My answer to those burning questions was to throw myself under the bus again.

    I must have deserved this.

    I was probably destined to live a miserable life.

    I would feel shame and get judged by society, and I deserved all of it. Single motherhood would be hard and it would make me a societal outcast amongst my social circles. I would become just another sad, overburdened single parent.

    My children would suffer and be damaged by not having a father. I would single-handedly ruin their happy childhoods by not being able to live up to the staggering amount of responsibility required to raise a large family on my own.

    I would never accomplish the things I wanted to do in my life. I’d have to trade in those dreams for survival and my soul would wither. I would deserve it.

    I would never find another person to love me. I was now damaged goods with too much baggage. I would die lonely.

    I would always be mired in struggle. And I would drown in my fears. The pain would throb forever. It could kill me. I would never feel better. I didn’t even want to live. I would never be happy again.

    The nasty voice whispered to my subconscious, wanting me to believe this version of my life. It begged me to accept an exile to the wasteland of a life I did not choose. In the midst of my despair, it seemed easier to give in to that story.

    Later I would realize that I had to get it out of my system. Acknowledge the pain. Recognize the thoughts and emotions.

    Feel all of it.

    And then, let them all go.

    What if we just flat out said no to a narrative that we didn’t want to believe? What if we rejected terrible narratives about ourselves?

    I didn’t want to die a sad widow forced to accept an eternity of unhappiness. I didn’t want to give up my dreams and goals. I didn’t want to be alone forever.

    There was only one thing to do: rewrite the future and reclaim my life.

    Instead of capitulating to our darker thoughts, we can become a gatekeeper who chooses what to let in and what has to pass through.

    Negative thoughts are normal, but instead of holding on to them and becoming attached to those narratives, a healthier alternative is to let those thoughts float in and out. Hold on to the ones that make you optimistic about life—let those be the ones that grow and take root in your subconscious.

    Tell those stories every day.

    Instead of believing the narratives that tell us what we can’t do, we can choose to focus on what is in our control. When we don’t like a narrative, we can write new ones.

    Narrative two. Or a narrative three or four or five or whatever it takes to get to the version of your life story where you are going to be okay, you are important and worthy, and you can live a happy life no matter what happens. Living a life of your own design. One that is true to your authentic self.

    The life you wanted. Not a life that you got stuck in.

    At any given moment, we can make the next choice to move us closer to our personal goals. It doesn’t have to be a monumental choice—just a tiny baby step in the direction of where your goal sits brightly on the horizon.

    That is all you need. Moving toward a new narrative, even at the slowest of speeds, is all you have to worry about.

    It doesn’t mean that life will necessarily go as planned. It doesn’t mean that we won’t ever experience bad things.

    We will.

    Over and over and over again.

    Choosing an alternate narrative is a way to make the best out of what we have to work with in our lives.

    It took a good year after my husband died for me to feel open to creating a new narrative. I had to choose to leave behind the story about myself where I was given a death sentence of misery and obstacles.

    To be able to leave that narrative behind, I had to trust that there were many more narratives in my future, even when I couldn’t always see the details or know what direction they would take me in. I had to embrace the idea that there were still many more chapters in the story of my life.

    When I was ready to turn off the depressing noise in my head about who I thought I was as a pathetic single mother and widow, I began to brainstorm the positive things I had going on in my life. This was the prelude to my Narrative two.

    -I was thankful that I got to share almost ten years of my life with my husband. I learned so much from him, and I feel like a better person for having known him and experiencing the loss of him. This was part of my story, not the end of it.

    -I was thankful for the three children we had together. I wanted to become a mother ever since I was a little girl. I thank my late husband for these gifts, and I will be intentional about how I enjoy my time raising the children and enjoying their childhoods. I will savor motherhood, even when times are tough and stressful. I will focus more on my joy with them rather than the tediousness of single parenthood.

    -I never thought I would get married to begin with, but I did. I will trust that when I meet someone worth losing my single status to, it will happen. Just like it happened the first time. Until then, I will enjoy living my life on my terms, as a whole person regardless of my relationship status.

    -There are pros and cons to everything in life. I might as well take advantage of the benefits of being single and seek a life that I wouldn’t have had while I was married to my husband. I can explore new interests and take the time to reflect about who I am and what I want. I can pursue goals. This isn’t the life I chose, but I can still enjoy the unexpected benefits of being alone. In the end, this time will make me a better person.

    This past summer I was on vacation in Australia. My children and I spent an evening watching the penguin parade on Phillip Island, near Melbourne. Every night when the sun set, thousands of the world’s smallest penguins swim back to the shore and waddle across the sand to find a place to sleep for the night.

    We got to sit literally a foot away from where the penguins passed by. We listened to their noises as they called out to each other in the darkness. The Antarctic winds whipped across our faces.

    It suddenly struck me. This is Narrative two.

    I’m living it. Right now. Here.

    It isn’t what I originally planned for my life. I wouldn’t have chosen it on my own—I would have rather had my husband here with us instead. But this is good too. This was me doing what I wanted to do, seeing the world, raising my children, experiencing beautiful things. Narrative two was not an exile.

    It was an opportunity to rewrite my story. A story worth living, even after the tragedy that threatened to destroy me.

    If you can believe in multiple paths, you can change your narrative.

    If you can believe that whatever you don’t know, you can learn, it will happen.

    If you have a willingness to try new things, you can change your narrative.

    If you can take the time to figure out your preferences, it can happen. What do you like to do? What feels like enchantment in your life?

    If you can believe in yourself, you can write any narrative you want.

    And when something changes and the story isn’t what you want anymore, you can keep writing new ones. You don’t have to be a hostage to any narrative. Give yourself permission.

    Tell yourself the stories about those times when you were courageous. Tell stories about your strength, perseverance, and resilience. Tell stories about how strong you are.

    Tell the stories of your survival. The ones where you got through the hardest of times and experienced joy again. The stories where you knew in your bones that life was worth living.

    You have those stories. Those are the ones to repeat.

    Tell them over and over again so you never forget who you really are.

  • How to Keep Going When Doubts and Fears are Holding You Back

    How to Keep Going When Doubts and Fears are Holding You Back

    “If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” ~Vincent Van Gogh

    I don’t think there is anything more liberating.

    At least nothing I’ve experienced at this point in my life.

    I’m sure it’s happened to some of you. Probably more times than you can count.

    The freedom I’m alluding to here is the moment when you do something that a part of your mind didn’t believe was possible.

    Interestingly, the word ecstasy comes from the Greek ekastis, meaning “to step outside of oneself.”

    And when you are able to rise above your doubts and fears, it can be absolutely ecstatic.

    But the process of getting there is not without mixed feelings. You may have a kind of Stockholm syndrome with the parts of your mind that are holding you captive. These doubts and fears are yours; they have been whispering in your ear, dictating your actions; and they’re hard to let go of.

    Last year I went through a period of being heavily influenced by my own doubts and fears. I was juggling some health issues and had recently started a Masters degree, all the while working full-time.

    I was soon exhausted and began to fear that I had taken on too much. This was compounded by a number of setbacks I had at work. The launch of a product that I had been working on for six months fell flat when sales were drastically less than I expected.

    Maybe it would be fair to say that they weren’t just setbacks. Actually, I’m going to call them failures. Because although when I take a step back, I can be diplomatic enough to call them setbacks, at the time, when I was completely involved in the outcome, they felt like nothing less than absolute defeats.

    But I didn’t quit on the project. I kept going forward, whether by my own hard-fought persistence, faith in something greater than myself, or even just a conditioned habit. Probably a bit of a mix of all three.

    And now, this year, things are starting to pay off. But the fruits of my labor are somewhat bitter-sweet, as I realize just how indoctrinated I was by my own doubts and fears.

    So I’ve done some reflecting, and I’ve identified the mental shifts that have helped me keep going and step outside of myself in times of need.

    Here are four ways to keep going when your doubts and fears are holding you back.

    Recognize that everyone has doubts and fears.

    When we are gripped by doubt and fears, they can feel strong, overwhelming, and completely unique to us. We feel we have to believe them because we don’t realize everyone feels these things—even incredibly successful people—and we can actually choose not to give in to them.

    For example, I recently told a friend that I often feel tired when things in my business don’t work out the way I expect. I was momentarily humbled when he replied, “You know that happens to everyone, right?”

    The human brain is wired to invest energy in things that are novel. When we recognize that our fears and doubts are common, we learn to give them less attention when they arise, which slowly drains their magnetic pull. And over time we get better and better at feeling the fear and doing it anyway, whatever it may be.

    What stands in the way, becomes the way.

    This phrase comes from the Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius. It’s a powerful reminder to that we can always work with what’s in front of us, and even use it to our advantage.

    Our brains have the tendency to see the world in terms of objects. We roughly sort these objects into “tools” and “obstacles.” If you look at obstacles as part of the path going forward, they transform into tools. However, if you only see potential tools as obstacles, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed by everything in your life that may stand in your way.

    Over the last few years, I’ve dealt with a chronic back injury, which has meant that I have to take frequent breaks from sitting down in order to manage the pain.

    Initially, I was frustrated that I couldn’t simply work for eight hours straight, without interruption. Fortunately, I’ve come to see the way I work as, well, just that—the way I work. It may be unconventional, but it’s still a tool that gets me to where I need to go, and not an obstacle that stands in my way. In fact, the breaks allow me a mental rest and help me to be just as productive as if I was able to work all day, maybe even more so.

    Come back from the future.

    Perspective is everything. We often feel doubt and fear when we’re fixated on our current situation. The longer we focus on our concerns, the more intense they appear.

    Our thoughts and feelings often change over time, and we can use that to our advantage. One way to do that is by realizing things have often turned out better than we once feared they would. We can take this a step further by coming back from an imaginary future and looking at the present moment through the same lens.

    I do this in my own life by visualising my future self looking back at any worrying situation. Sometimes I like to write down the question “What would the ninety-year-old me think about this situation?”

    For example, three months ago I decided to invest in a course to improve my marketing skills. The price didn’t break the bank, but it did create some anxiety about when money would come in and pay it off. When I asked the question of my future self, I immediately felt relieved, because I realized the anxiety was caused by a story about one month of income, and a lifetime of potential earnings was quick to put the concern into perspective.

    Collect wins somewhere else.

    Whether or not they recognize it or admit it, everybody has thousands of small successes and failures in their life. However, our minds can hone in on the failures and cause fear and doubts to run rampant. If you’ve begun to neglect the part of yourself that is successful, it’s incredibly useful to remind yourself that this part still exists.

    You can do this by intentionally doing something you know you’re good at and know will elicit positive feedback. For example, if you’re a talented artist, but you’re not feeling so confident at work, create something that you know will make you feel proud.

    This works because winning causes a dopamine spike in the brain, which leads to an increase in motivation and risk-taking behavior. The positive feedback loop can start from something as trivial as a board game, and creates the perfect antidote to fear and doubts: momentum and confidence.

    When the product I created fell flat, I spent a couple of weeks meditating for longer periods of time and pushing myself in the gym. This helped remind me that even though something I had invested time and energy in had failed—and I was very disappointed—I was still psychologically and physically strong, and my strength was the only tool I needed to try and try again.

    —

    These four ideas are relatively simple, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t incredibly effective. If you can put them into practice whenever you’re feeling held back by doubts or fears, you’ll begin to have more insights into what you are truly capable of—and you’ll begin to actually reach your potential.

    Doing something you previously didn’t believe possible is truly liberating, and the more you embrace these shifts in perspective, the better you’ll be able to tackle these worries in the future!

  • 50 People Share What They’re Grateful to Do Every Day

    50 People Share What They’re Grateful to Do Every Day

    At night, when you think about how you spent your day, how often do you focus on all the things you had to do?

    I worked. I ran errands. I went to the gym. I made dinner.

    And when you tell someone about this kind of day, how often do you do it with a less-than-enthused tone?

    I suspect this is the norm for many of us, at least during the workweek.

    Commitments, to work and family, can engulf our lives and seem like chores, not choices and chances.

    I distinctly remember one day, years ago, when my day felt particularly packed, stopping to remind myself that I had chosen the schedule I was keeping.

    I had chosen to get up early to write, to accept the job that supported me, to go to yoga in the evening, and to do laundry and other household tasks after that.

    And I was fortunate to have had these choices to make.

    These weren’t all things I had to do; these were things I got to do.

    I got to devote time to my passion in the hours before my paid work, creating possibilities for my future.

    I got to work a job that provided both pay and benefits, enabling me to take care of my needs, even if it wasn’t my dream career.

    I got to stretch my healthy body and create mental stillness.

    And I got to live in a comfortable apartment, filled with furniture and clothes I got to buy with money I got to earn.

    And in between all these things I had consented to do were lots of other beautiful little things I got to do.

    I got to wake up to sunlight coming through my window. I got to walk by interesting people, trees, and buildings on my way to work. I got to eat delicious food from various restaurants at lunch. And I got to use my hands when typing on my computer—hands I could have been born without, or could have lost to some type of injury or tragedy, but hadn’t.

    I get to do a lot of things worth appreciating every day. We all do.

    We all get to do things that challenge us, fulfill us, excite us, and energize us. We get to live, love, laugh, and explore in far too many ways too count.

    Since I’ve long been inspired by this idea of focusing on what we get to do, I decided to include this as one of the prompts in my newly released gratitude journal.

    I shared this prompt on Facebook this past Sunday to see how other people would respond. Over 1,500 people chimed in, creating a monumental list of blessings, many of which we all share but could easily take for granted.

    Since I was inspired and touched by the list, I decided to share a selection of those responses here.

    I Appreciate That Every Day I Get To…

    Health

    1. Shelley White: Breathe. I received donor lungs nine years ago after my own lungs failed. I have Cystic Fibrosis. Just being able to wake every day knowing I can spend another day with my family is what makes me grateful to be alive. I appreciate life.

    2. Kristi VanTassel McHugh: Wake up. I had open-heart surgery nearly two years ago, to replace a faulty aortic valve and repair an aortic aneurysm. When I was first diagnosed, I was told, “If it’s not fixed soon (the aneurysm) it will burst and you will die.” That was two days before Christmas, and I waited just over six months for my surgery. I am thankful to still be here, every day.

    3. GusandMaggie Nosce: Be alive. I was born a congenital heart patient (blue baby) and was advised I would need a heart transplant by the time I was four years old. By the grace of God, I have never needed one, even though the open-heart surgery I received when I was days old is no longer in practice and is no longer advised to perform.

    4.Manal Khatib: I appreciate that I can walk after a serious car accident eight months ago. Every day I had to relearn how to walk. This journey has made me appreciate my body and treat it with kindness.

    5. Laina Amarantinis: Walk and stand. After three spine surgeries I am finally able to walk and stand more and more as the healing progresses. I am very thankful.

    6. Mary Beth Hudson: Spend time with my family. I beat my battle with cancer; others in my family were not so lucky.

    7. Linda Otto: Move my body. I can walk, run, lift, bend, etc., all with ease. This is not possible for many people. It can be taken away in an instant or gradually as we age. Your health, eyesight, hearing are never appreciated enough.

    Friends and Family

     8. Anna Hunt: Spend time with my daughter. Soon she will be off to college and I won’t have her close. Hearing her laughter, knowing she’s in the next room, fills my heart with warmth. I appreciate that every day I get to see her.

    9. Amy Albinger: Be with my family. Be with my parents, my husband, my sister, and niece. They are the reason I live today. They are my reason to get through each struggle. They are my definition of love.

    10. Riddhi Solanki: I appreciate that I get calls from my parents and friends, as my current job isn’t in my hometown. They call me and talk to me so I don’t feel more alone.

    11. Niquita LeValdo: I wake up to my child. He was born with a heart condition and needed surgery at two months old. The thought that he may not have been alive today gives me a new perspective and helps me appreciate every moment. Love your children, praise them, cherish them.

    12. Lillivette Colón:‪ Keep my baby in my tummy one more day. Every day is victory.

    ‪13. Tezra Blake:‪ I appreciate every day I get to see and hear both my sons growing into awesome men, and that they aren’t ashamed to say I love you mom and check on me and ask how I am doing. Despite their age they still want my opinion on things.

    ‪14. Laurel Hausafus:‪ Have the memories of my sweetheart and husband in Heaven .

    15. Cheryle Midgett: Spend another day with my ninety-four-year-old mom.

    16. Anika Bruce:‪ Every day I get to hug my family. I love hugs, they’re life changing.

    17. Nicole Werner-Sayre:‪ Stay at home to raise the tiny little human I created and help her grow up into a person I’ll be proud to add to the world.

    18. Laurie Clemons: Give a hug and say I love you. We all need to hear it more.

    19. Dawn Creason: I get to read and cuddle with the most precious little girl that I never thought I would have. I get to hear her giggle and I get to play with her.

    20. Fiona James: Wake up happy and healthy with my wonderful family. Too many people don’t have that luxury.

    Needs and Comforts

    21. Elizabeth Sherriff: Have a roof over my head, fresh water, food, and a family around me.

    22. Kathy Kellermann: Have a warm shower and a bed to climb into (especially in the middle of winter).

    ‪23. Jessica Grandelli‪: Eat food that nourishes and sustains my life. It is a privilege to live in a place with bountiful food.

    24. Jacinta Harrington: Enjoy a cup of coffee while reading the newspaper.

    25. Caroline Driver: Eat whatever I want and drink water straight out of the tap.

    26. Marsha Frakes Waggoner: Walk outdoors in the grass with my dog and see trees.

    27. Heather Demick: Drink in the world through my eyes.

    28. Yvonne Hernandez: Have a place I call home.

    29. Alice Louise Pocock: Listen with my ears, see with my eyes, and love with all my heart.

    ‪30. Xuandai Hoang‪: Sit in front of my candle and relax.

    31. Enchari Rivadeneira: Dishes. It means I have food, a kitchen, a family to share with, and I did it. I made through another day, whatever happened. It’s a beautiful thing, dishes.

    32. Chloe Cunningham Sarno: Finish all the housework all in the same day. Ah, clean house!!

    33. Tammy Pillsbury: Lay my head down knowing I have a roof over my head, food to eat, a job that rewards me, a husband that loves me, friends and family whom I love, nature outside my door.

    34. Michael Bell: Read. There is no aspect of life that I have derived more benefit and pleasure from, and I couldn’t imagine my life without it.

    35. Danielle Yingling-Lowrey: Be with my babies, take care of my flowers, cook, drink coffee, be a friend, be a neighbor, be mama, be a daughter, be a wife, drive my car, take care of my house, giggle, laugh, read, smile at others…. so many things!

    36. Nicola Wood: Wake up and just be me and appreciate how blessed I truly am!

    37. Steve Kenney: Not feel the pain of starving, the pain of extreme thirst. Having a roof over my head, and AC. Having a few people who really care about me for me, not what I can do or give them. Not suffering from bad health. That’s it. Everything else is inconsequential.

    Possibilities

    38. Gena Pegg: I appreciate that every day I get another chance to do the right thing.

    39. Bani San: I appreciate that every day I get to wake up in freedom and pursue whatever life I dream of.

    40. Jayne Duncan Stites: I appreciate that every day I get to begin again anew!

    41. Jim Zei: Have another opportunity to make things right—whatever right is.

    42.Lechenda Crichton: Have one more chance to be better than I was yesterday.

    43. Sherelle Myers: Use my body and working limbs for whatever I choose!

    44. Angela Charlwood-Derbyshire:‪ Practice making better choices.

    45. Linda May Knowles: To learn from the mistakes I made the day before.

    46. Wizz Tomo: I appreciate that every day I get to learn new things.

    47. Ashley Glenn: To be alive and experience whatever the new day presents.

    48. Amy Brock: Breathe and do normal activities of daily living. There was a time that I couldn’t do such a great job of either.

    ‪49. Herb Daum‪: I appreciate that every day I get to make the world a kinder place.

    50. Melissa Milligan: Be here. Not everyone made it through the night. Be grateful you’re still here.

    I appreciate that every day I get to…

    How would you finish this sentence?

    *This post was originally published in 2017. I decided to republish it again today for those who missed it because it’s fitting for the season!

  • How Getting Dumped Before My Wedding Made Me a Better Person

    How Getting Dumped Before My Wedding Made Me a Better Person

    “The root of suffering is attachment.” ~The Buddha

    Getting dumped a few weeks before my wedding was the most painful experience of my life to date, but how I came through it is the single proudest moment of my life.

    When I met with his mother four years after the breakup, she said she’d felt so guilty over these past few years. “I loved you like a daughter, and he’s my son—I never want any of my children to feel that pain.”

    I told her I was glad it happened, not for the fact that the breakup needed to happen (was inevitable even), but to have experienced the pain and loss, to confront my then-unconscious fear of failure straight on, and to not only survive, but thrive as a result.

    I told her I look forward to failing now. More accurately, I appreciate the lessons learned and the growth I’ll only be able to experience by getting back up, dusting myself off, humbly reflecting on where I went wrong, and pushing forward with a more finely tuned compass.

    But that perspective didn’t come easily. It took crawling Andy Dufresne-style through 500 metaphorical yards of sh*t-filled sewage pipes first.

    We were together for eight years through our twenties and into our early thirties. Four years in, we got engaged.

    One month before the wedding I went from bliss to being sucker punched in the lower intestines (emotionally speaking).

    It was a Tuesday. This was two days after coming home from one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I’d just finished yoga teacher training at an eight-day intensive on Long Island, Maine.

    It was a perfect week. I came home still buzzing with blissful vibes and gratitude. When he said we needed to talk, my stomach dropped so hard and so fast I thought it would fall out of me.

    He said he didn’t want to get married anymore.

    The contrast and transition from high to low was dizzying. In one week I felt both the best and worst I’d ever felt in my life.

    The following months were comprised of uncontrollable crying, deep sorrow, and some of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned.

    Reading the stories of others who have loved and lost were so helpful to me when I was in pain, as were the bite-sized inspirational quotes from great and kind minds that I could carry with me through the day, so I’ve included those that helped me the most. It made me feel connected and not alone; it gave me hope knowing there is light at the end of the tunnel.

    That’s why I’m writing this. To share what I learned through this whole ordeal, how it set me off on a path of self-discovery and development, and how I’m a smarter, stronger, and more compassionate person because of it. The same is possible for you.

    I learned to feel my feelings.

    “The best way out is always through.” ~Robert Frost

    Sounds simple enough, but it’s not something we consciously do on purpose with negative emotions.

    We still lived together for three months after the wedding was broken off. It was especially hard coming home from work knowing he’d be there.

    Toward the end I’d gotten pretty good at avoiding, numbing, and running from experiencing the full intensity of the pain. The day he moved out, I decided it was time to feel it, all of it.

    I closed my eyes and let go of every resistance to the pain. I let the full force of it wash over me and through me. I accepted the pain without judgement, like I was both experiencing the pain and watching myself experience the pain.

    I did this through dancing in my kitchen. It seemed to help move the emotions through me. And it left me in a literal and figurative puddle of tears on the cold tile floor. It was incredibly cathartic.

    We avoid the full intensity of afflictive emotions because it seems like the crushing wave of feeling will not only knock us over but drag us down and drown us in sorrow and anguish. It feels like the pain might kill us or drive us insane, so we hide from it at all costs.

    It makes sense—we’re built to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Of course we want to run away from it.

    But when it comes down to it, emotions are energy and energy needs to flow. If it’s blocked, it gets stuck; it doesn’t leave.

    Emotions are sensational representations of our thoughts. Breathe. Witness. Let the emotions flow and instead of judging them as bad or hating the process. View it through a lens of curiosity.

    You really can’t rush the process of healing. It takes time. But avoiding the feelings or numbing them with wine, pot, pills, TV, food, sex (or all of the above like I did for months) only drags the grieving process out longer.

    Not to say those aversion techniques should be completely avoided through the whole process—you do you. Just be aware that you’ll eventually need to face the emotions head on.

    I fully believe that had I not had the courage that day to feel the pain with all its intensity my healing would have taken much longer.

    Resisting the emotions is like trying to pull your fingers out of a Chinese finger trap. You only get stuck more. You need to lean into it to set yourself free.

    And now when I’m faced with challenges that stir up difficult emotions, I’m much braver and allow myself to feel it and experience it, then I’m in a much better place to question and reframe my beliefs around the situation.

    I learned how to reframe a difficult situation.

    “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” ~Winnie the Pooh

    Reframing is a powerful tool. When we’re in the thick of an emotion we identify with it so strongly that it’s hard to step back and take an objective look from all sides.

    One day at work, probably a month after the canceled nuptials, I was rather unsuccessfully fighting back tears in the bathroom when a woman I work with came in and asked me what was up. I told her the situation and she put things into perspective for me.

    She’d met the man of her dreams in her forties and got married later than most. He was a talented doctor. Shortly after getting married he started showing signs of Alzheimer’s. A few years later she had to place him in a full-time facility near home.

    In the bathroom she said to me, “At least you don’t have to watch him suffer.” She was right, and that was exactly what I needed to hear. My situation could have been so much worse. How lucky am I?

    Now when dealing with a situation that makes me feel angry, sad, irritated, guilty or ashamed, I step back and try to reframe the situation. I’ll ask myself questions like:

    • Is it true?
    • What is the story I’m telling myself here? What do I think this means about me?
    • If the universe gave me this situation on purpose, what lesson am I supposed to be learning?
    • What’s the worst that could happen?
    • If the worst does happen, how can I cope?
    • Can I know for sure that this “shouldn’t” have happened?

    I learned to know my values and to live in tune with them.

    “Open your arms to change but don’t let go of your values.” ~Dalai Lama

    He’d said we shouldn’t get married because he didn’t want to have children, and I did. So I said, “Maybe I don’t want to have kids. I don’t have to have kids.” I didn’t truly believe this; I was grasping at straws, trying to keep hope alive.

    We lived together still, and since he hadn’t technically broken up with me yet (he only said he didn’t want to get married) we agreed to try to work it out.

    Then I snooped. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I took his phone when he was out of the room and looked through his personal, private messages on a hunch. The punishment for this breach of privacy was yet another figurative sucker punch to the gut.

    I saw the text exchanges with another woman on his phone. And the pictures.

    It was dishonest to invade his privacy, and karma was quick to level the playing field. I learned my lesson immediately because what I saw hurt—a lot. Needless to say, I’m off of snooping for good.

    When I said I didn’t have to have children, it wasn’t true and deep down I knew that. And I felt so dirty and wrong for looking at his phone when I knew outright it was an invasion of privacy, regardless of the fact that I found questionable material.

    These are what we call values conflicts. Through making these mistakes I learned to identify what my values are, and to recognize when there is a conflict either caused by my own thoughts and actions, or by others.

    Knowing your values is like having a brighter flashlight to get you through the woods at night. Sure, you might make it out without a light, but you’ll likely trip or wander off path. Knowing your core values in life is a guiding light to making tough decisions with confidence and clarity.

    And I value honesty, kindness, integrity and authenticity. Four things I did not live up to in those moments.

    I learned the power and freedom of forgiveness.

    “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” ~Buddha (paraphrased)

    On paper I had reasons to be angry. To this day I could hold a grudge still, and many would say it was justifiable.

    To be frank, that sounds exhausting to me. I certainly was angry for months. It’s only natural; it was part of my grieving process.

    But I came to realize that the anger felt terrible inside me. My ego was holding onto the idea that I am right and he is wrong. I asked myself “So what?” “Where is the benefit of holding onto this?” I had no answer.

    This was a person who was very important to me for a long time. I wished him well then, why should I stop now that we aren’t together?

    Everyone makes mistakes. I had to make my own mistakes (so, so many of them) to finally understand what my mother had always said: “Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have.”

    And I believe that to be true. When I looked at his phone, though it was wrong, I was still doing the best I could with what I had. I had pain and a strong desire to find the “real” reason for it. I had opportunity when he was out of the room. I had strong curiosity. I had a lack of restraint.

    I needed to forgive myself. I made mistakes, admitted them, and learned from them. At that point they’d run their course and it was time to forgive.

    Plus, since I know kindness is a core value of mine, I need to live according to my values. Holding onto anger is not being kind to myself.

    And I can full heartedly say I forgive every wrongdoing by him. He’s human and makes mistakes just like me.

    I learned how to rethink “failure.”

    “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    In retrospect, I realized I wanted the breakup. I’d sometimes imagine him leaving me or—on my more dramatic and theatrical days—that he died and I had to start again.

    I came to learn that I was afraid of ending the relationship because it would have meant that I failed. I’d accepted an engagement proposal. I’d spent eight years living with this person making a life together. I’d planned a wedding. I’d made deposits.

    To then say it was a mistake, that I’d changed my mind, would mean that I failed. I didn’t realize at the time, but I had a huge fear of disappointing my parents and was afraid to call them and let them know about this transgression.

    I never stopped to define failure and what it means to me. At the time I would have said it meant to make a mistake, to not reach your goal, to fall short, to not be good enough.

    With further introspection, I’ve since redefined what failure means to me. Because I learned so much from this failure of a relationship, I now have a new perspective.

    Failure to me now means giving up on something I want because it seems hard or uncomfortable. It means not trying because of fear.

    I go back to my reframing tool and ask the following:

    • What’s the worst that could happen?
    • How likely is that outcome?
    • If the worst happens, how will I cope?
    • What’s the best that could happen?
    • How likely is that to happen?
    • What probably will happen?

    We fear the unknown, the ambiguous. Define what you’re afraid of. It’s much less scary on paper. And now you have the opportunity to plan, problem-solve, and prepare.

    I’ve never been more accepting of my emotions and tolerant of pain since this experience. This journey and everything I’ve learned has led me to be my happiest me.

    Not to say I’ve reached the end of my journey. The best part is there is always room for more growth, learning, compassion, love, and happiness. And I feel blessed that I have the opportunity to pursue it every day.

    Once I got a taste of self-improvement, I was hooked. I started to see that happiness—true happiness—and freedom from the control of emotions, of feeling not good enough, from constant worry, were all attainable.

    This experience was a blessing. A painful, messy, crash course in learning to navigate life’s difficulties with grace and resilience.

  • 13 Insights About Relationships That Could Save You A Lot of Pain

    13 Insights About Relationships That Could Save You A Lot of Pain

    “It’s amazing how quickly someone can become a stranger; it’s even more amazing how quickly someone can become a treasured friend.” ~Unknown

    The past six months have been unbelievably difficult for me.

    My “normal” life turned upside down and inside out, as my beautiful daughter continues to fight a complex pain condition, which took us all by surprise one bright and sunny Monday afternoon. And literally, in a single heartbeat, just like that, instead of a regular routine day of school, work and afternoon activities, our time was consumed with juggling doctors, hospitals, tests, and specialists—all of us fully devoted with how to help her heal.

    Oprah so aptly says that in life, lots of people want to ride with you when you’re in the limo, but what you really want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down. Well, my friends, my limo didn’t just break down. It completely crashed, along with my world as I knew it.

    And when days and nights are both sleepless and endless, and you’re not cruising luxuriously through life in your limo but rather doing your very best at any given moment to barely crawl from point A to B without breaking down yourself, you start to realize even more so the complex, beautiful, fragile, and priceless value of real, genuine, consistent friendship.

    Sadly, a few people who I thought would walk me home sort of disappeared.

    They may have jumped off at their desired station—and I’ve come to understand that it’s alright; I truly only wish them well. Perhaps the fear that this could happen to them was all too much to bear, I get that. Or perhaps they are giving me space, I don’t know. All I know, is they aren’t here.

    Others not only ran to my bus, but jumped straight on, and continue to walk me home every single day. These people take the time to check in on me, hold my hand, let me cry, bring me food, make me laugh, and ensure I have enough coffee and love to keep on going through the day.

    I love these friends with all my heart and am so deeply thankful to have them on my journey.

    Here are some insights about people, relationships, and friendships from my bumpy bus ride that might be useful and comforting for you in your own interactions…

    1. Two people can look at the exact same situation and see it completely differently.

    I have always believed this, and I’m even more sure of this after hearing my friends repeatedly tell me how in awe they are of my unwavering strength and optimism while I have never felt more fragile, insecure, helpless, or scared. Perception is everything.

    2. We always see life as we are, not as it is.

    There actually isn’t an objective reality when it comes to people. Facts may be facts, but our viewpoint and our vantage point impact our ability to process the facts as they are neutrally.

    We look at life through our own personal filters, our own past experiences, beliefs, and paradigms. We see everything and everyone through our unique subjective lens that has been forming since we were younger.

    As Marcel Proust wrote, sometimes, the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes. If we are courageous enough to remove the lens through which we currently view a situation, we may discover something worth looking at, that we didn’t see before. This is true for opinions and advice. Think about a current dilemma in your life. What aren’t you considering? What are you possibly overlooking because you are still seeing the situation through the same lens?

    3. People change.

    I sometimes secretly wish we would stay exactly as we are, but I know that we are designed to grow. We are allowed to. I am learning to give myself permission to grow and change. Let yourself. Let others. Everyone deserves that.

    4. People come into our life for a day, a week, a month, a season, perhaps a year or longer, always to teach us something.

    Thank them, always. Even if they cause you pain. Some lessons hurt, a lot. In fact, during these challenging months, the voice of my workout instructor reminds me “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you”—true for fitness, true for relationships, true for life. Each person we meet has been brought to us as a gift. Our job is to unwrap it, whatever it may be.

    5. You are allowed to close doors to protect yourself, you may even say goodbye, but never wish someone harm.

    This is the hardest for me personally. My heart is very big and maybe too hospitable and welcoming at times. To look after yourself and preserve what you value most, you sometimes have to be selective about who you let in.

    If someone steals your joy, keep them out. It’s a basic premise of safety and security. Give someone the benefit of the doubt—until they give you reason not to. Then don’t.

    There is a critical difference between being a volunteer and being a victim. The first time someone hurts you, you may or may not see it coming. Like me, I always try see the best in people. And when it hurts and you face a blow to the heart, you come crashing down because you never expected that or foresaw it coming your way.

    If the same person hurts you again, it’s now up to you to see them coming. It’s up to you to set new boundaries to protect yourself. You can be kind to everyone, but not everyone belongs in your inner circle.

    6. You may be willing to do more for others than they do for you.

    Don’t change who you are. Keep doing your thing. People may surprise us. Sometimes they really let us down. Others may step up in ways we never imagined. If you keep a checklist, you’ll often be disappointed.

    Never do things for others just because they would do things for you. You get to decide what kind of person you want to be. And if you choose to give 300%, then go for it, regardless of what others give you in return.

    If you do something for someone just because they did it for you or you want something back, you are doing business, not kindness. Just be yourself, without calculating what you’re receiving in return. When we live this way, we come from a place of generosity and abundance. It’s so much nicer to live this way.

    7. Choose your inner circle wisely.

    We have limited energy. Choose to surround yourself with people who make the time and effort to lift you up, who genuinely care about you, encourage you, and want to see you win. Our time here is limited, precious, and fragile. Choose your sacred relationships, friendships, and partnerships wisely.

    8. Actions speak louder than words.

    We can have the best intentions in the world, but our lives are measured by our actions. If you mean well but don’t do well, no one can read your mind. At the end of the day, what counts is what we do.

    I am all for giving people the benefit of the doubt—often only seeing the goodness in others myself—but when you are in a tight space, what you really need at the end of the day is someone to help you breathe and get you out, not just someone who thinks about you but doesn’t show up and hold out their hand for you to grab.

    That being said, sometimes people can’t show up for us because…

    9. People are always fighting battles we can’t see, or may know nothing about.

    Remembering this will help us be patient, kinder, more empathetic, and far less critical and judgmental. Life is hard and some days we dress up and show up using every ounce of energy and willpower we can possibly muster. We can’t be in top form all the time. No one can. We are human beings, not human doings, so let’s try to notice what’s going on with the people around us.

    10. Minimize the drama.

    We have limited energy, especially when going through a hard time, as I’ve been lately. Let’s preserve our energy for our goals, passions, purpose, and doing more good. We do not have to attend every drama we’re invited to. Decline the invitation and keep moving.

    If you feel you’re getting sucked in to drama—gossip, or creating conflict where there doesn’t need to be any, for example—take a step back and pull away. Keep yourself focused on your needs, your passions, and your purpose. Drama isn’t good for anyone.

    11. It’s okay to gently drift away from people.

    There are seasons when gardens bloom and other seasons where branches lay bare. Let it go, let nature do its thing. We can’t force a flower to grow. Energy is real. If your intuition or gut says someone isn’t right for you anymore, listen carefully.

    12. Not everyone is going to love you or your choices.

    Your job is to love you and your choices. Your tribe will find you. If you live your life according to your values, and you make choices in alignment with them, the right people will be attracted to you and you will gradually ensure you are surrounded by people who are your best fit. Keep doing your thing. I have seen this so beautifully over the years. and when I look at my closest friendships and relationships today, it is testimony to this.

    13. Relationships, friendships, partnerships—they don’t work unless we do.

    Don’t assume that just because someone has been in your life for years, they are going to want to stay there. These are precious, treasured, cherished interactions that require thoughtful investment, attention, love, and care.

    If you want someone in your life, show them. Spend real time with them, genuinely check in on them, do your best in your own unique and special way to help them wherever you can, have fun with them, cry with them, celebrate with them, and please catch the bus with them.

    We are all just walking each other home.

    Who are you walking with?

    You have to really be in someone’s life in order to stay in someone’s life.