Tiny Buddha

Tag: Happiness

  • The Problem with Forgiveness and What I Now Do Instead

    The Problem with Forgiveness and What I Now Do Instead

    “Change is the end result of all true learning.” ~Leo Buscaglia

    I cringe writing this. I have eaten so much humble pie that my pants don’t fit. This was a really hard lesson to learn.

    I had a forgiveness problem.

    When I was a kid, I learned to say sorry when I messed up and forgive other people when they did. With three sisters all two years apart, I got plenty of practice in as a kid (we all did).

    It was a pretty standard routine:

    1. Someone would mess up—say something horrible, lose something, break something, or hit someone.

    2. The other person would get upset or mad and possibly cry.

    3. We’d both take a little bit of time, and one or both of us would admit to doing something bad and apologize.

    4. We’d forgive each other.

    5. We’d get on with it.

    We got pretty good at this routine. Our fights didn’t last very long—maybe a day or two at the most. We didn’t hold grudges, and we weren’t punished for long periods of time.

    My parents made it safe to tell the truth.

    “Are you the one who backed into the garage door?” “Did you break that pot?” “Did you put your sister down the washing chute?”

    These were scary questions sometimes, but not too scary.

    It was safe to be honest. In fact, our parents made it pretty clear that lying was by far the more abhorrent option and always thanked us when we told the truth. There was punishment but also forgiveness and love. When you have the bouncy bag of forgiveness to fall back on, telling the truth is far easier.

    So I kept this with me as I grew up. When people were hurtful or insulting or inconsiderate, I didn’t take it too personally and didn’t hold grudges. I tried to see it from their perspective; I just assumed whatever they did had nothing to do with me or they had things going on in their life. Or I assumed they were trying their best at the time.

    I thought of myself as quite a forgiving person. I may even have been proud of it. It felt like a talent. I thought it made me empathetic and easy to get along with, powerful, and free.

    I bounced fairly easily and got good at saying sorry when I messed up. I also expected other people to be as good as me at forgiveness too—and if they weren’t, I would shake it off as their issue: “That poor person clearly has issues,” I would think. It made me feel bigger than the other person for being able to turn the other cheek. (Why are the alarm bells so clear in hindsight?)

    I was good at forgiving myself too. And I messed up a lot—not only with other people but also for myself. I would tell myself, “It’s okay, let’s try again. You’re doing okay. Everyone messes up.”

    This was particularly useful in not bashing myself up about food. When it came to eating, I often didn’t treat myself with the most respect.

    If you have an eating disorder, often you want to get better… tomorrow. Every time you mess up, you promise yourself (meaning it too) that next time you will do better. But also, it doesn’t matter too much when you don’t do better, because you will try again the next day. Always the next day. Never in the moments that it counted.

    I got good at moving on pretty quickly. Moving on, but not up.

    Self-righteous people are so unattractive. And I crashed and burned. The universe knocked me flat on my ass; it chewed me up and spat me out in itty-bitty pieces.

    I found myself standing in front of a judge in court and acknowledging that I had pinched an ex-boyfriend, who had taken out an apprehended violence order.

    Bad breakups are bad by definition; this one was traumatizing. But beyond that, being in court was a pretty shocking experience. It took a long time and a lot of work to sit with the reality of what was happening; it felt like being in a zombie movie. Or The Truman Show.

    It was incredibly surreal. A pinch and I was in court? I had always thought of myself as a nice, honest, upstanding person—pretty empathetic and chilled out. I had always had healthy relationships and breakups previously.

    How the hell did I end up there?

    Many reasons, but one was I had a forgiveness problem.

    I had forgiven that guy so many times for bad behavior and had compromised myself so often in doing so—always trying to demonstrate the love that he didn’t seem to see, until I felt so downtrodden and disrespected that I snapped and pinched him.

    When I was sitting there in the spew, I read something by John Demartini in The Breakthrough Experience: “Anything you feel guilty about, you repeat; and anything you forgive, you keep attracting to your life. Forgiveness is a self-righteous illusion that makes someone bad or wrong and then presumes to judge and pardon. Apology is judging yourself, and both are guaranteed to perpetuate whatever you judge.”

    I sat there and looked around at my life, at the chunks of spew. Oh, I thought.

    Forgiveness—expected and given willy-nilly—if it is too easy, that can mean you can miss the lesson.

    It can mean you don’t make the change.

    You don’t up your game, you don’t alter the gear, you don’t recognize the necessity for more effort, more time, more learning, changed behavior—either from yourself or someone else. You go back to doing the same thing over and over again, staying stuck in the same habit, the same place. You don’t grow; you stagnate. You continue unhelpful habits.

    If someone hurts you or you hurt them, and it changes nothing about either of you or your relationship, you or they are likely to be hurt again. Pain can help to figure out what went wrong, what boundary was crossed.

    Easy forgiveness can sometimes mean you put yourself back in the way of the bus that just mowed you down, making yourself vulnerable to disrespect from yourself and others—bullies, people who take advantage of you.

    It can mean you compromise yourself over and over and over again, until you are trodden all over by people who don’t really mind. Not really.

    These people might see you hurt and feel guilty and want you to make them feel better about it by letting them off the hook.

    Easy forgiveness also means you didn’t have to try anything new. Never mind that sometimes you need to go to the new or scary or hard to fulfill your potential.

    Forgiveness is sometimes the easy way out.

    I had a forgiveness problem.

    I wasn’t vigilant. I allowed—and created—crappy friendships, crappy behavior, and crappy relationships.

    And not only did I allow crappy relationships with other people, but also with myself.

    I wanted to eat better but didn’t.

    I wanted to get better at hobbies—dance, fitness, plaiting my hair—but needed to set aside space in the day to practice.

    I wanted to be respected but had to start respecting myself, do things I respected, and stop putting up with disrespect—from friends, boyfriends, and myself.

    I wanted to get better grades, but I needed to read and respond to the critical feedback and put the time or effort into figuring out what went wrong.

    I wanted to create but needed to sit down and plan, dream, and put the effort in.

    I wanted to be my best self, to do something great—write something or make something or have a great idea—but it was always off in the future, sometime when I had the inspiration, time, money, and energy. When I had the right body, the right friends, the right hair, the right income, and the right environment… THEN I would be that girl.

    My forgiveness problem left me stuck. It allowed me to stay on my ass. It made me vulnerable to my own laziness and fears, and manipulation, disrespect, and emotional abuse—from others and myself.

    It meant I allowed—perpetuated, even—poor behavior, my own and others’. I pimped out my time to hobbies and other people’s dreams and to people who didn’t inspire, appreciate, or treat me as well as I treated them. It meant I didn’t have to inspire, appreciate, or treat myself well.

    I was susceptible to a narcissistic relationship that left me half the person I had been before, tiring on my friends and family, distracted from what I wanted in life, with a fairly broken sense of trust, truth, and my own abilities, and a Section 10 on my record.

    I was caught in a puddle of spew with so much anger at the injustice, and incredulity that forgiveness was not going to cut it anyway.

    But holding onto guilt, anger, fear, betrayal, and hurt is horrible. It feels horrible. Especially the big kind—the big hurts, the big betrayals that course through your body. What do you do about those?

    What’s the alternative when someone treats you poorly? Revenge? Hatred?

    And what about when you yourself mess up? When you’re not feeling good enough? Years of self-flagellation? People who can’t let things go, who take offense at every single little thing, or who punish themselves and others over and over and over seem angry, bitter, cruel, and paranoid. It seems like an unpleasant way to go through life.

    John DeMartini suggests gratitude for the lessons learned and inspired action are better alternatives than forgiveness.

    That was really hard to swallow at first. We are supposed to be grateful to people who hurt us? Even the really, really, really, really, really, really horrible, insane, unfair, and cruel ones who really hurt us and messed with our body, mind, and life? What about women who are bashed? Sexually assaulted? What if someone kills your son? Are you supposed to be grateful for that too?

    Yes, he says. See the opportunity. Say thank you for the lessons/blessings and take inspired action to make a change or take advantage of a situation.

    So, there in my pool of spew, I tried to sit and look for the lessons, the blessings, and start taking inspired action.

    Once I did, life started getting a bit better. I learned about domestic violence and what emotional abuse looked like—the patterns of communication, the dynamic, the ego involved.

    I spent more time on schoolwork and with friends who had a value system more similar to my own. I meditated. I did yoga. I tried to sit with pain and hurt. I started listening to the pain rather than dismissing it out of hand. And I started to take a real look at myself and how I appeared in the world.

    I started spending my time focusing on working, writing, dancing, journaling, and reading. I spent more care on my hair, skin, clothes, environment, makeup, and food. I put up better boundaries. Made my time precious. I practiced spending time and effort on activities, hobbies, and work that put me on the path to my goals—goals that I perhaps hadn’t thought about well enough before. Enjoying your own company is a great antidote to feeling the compulsive need to forgive people.

    Is forgiveness still part of the answer? Maybe. Maybe I was doing it wrong; maybe what I was doing was not forgiveness at all—it was just ego in forgiveness’ clothing. It was too easy. No one had to realize their mistakes or make changes, especially not me.

    Maybe also, there’s a balance (my mother insists forgiveness is required for long-term relationships). Maybe it’s about not sweating the small stuff, but also not using forgiveness to minimize other people’s bad behavior, or your own, so that you feel like a bigger person.

    Maybe it’s just that we are looking in the wrong place when we reach for or dole out forgiveness willy-nilly as if it’s an antidote for hurt. Maybe that’s like reaching for chocolate when you’re starving.

    Maybe action, change, new behaviors, or boundaries practiced over time can be healthier options for healing.

    Maybe sometimes those are what you actually need in order to let go of bitterness, soothe pain and betrayal, let go of judgment (it’s so heavy!), and feel less like a victim. So that at some point, you turn around and realize the hurt has gone and has ceded to something wiser, stronger, clearer, lighter, and more helpful.

  • There’s More to Life Than Work: Goodbye Hamster Wheel, Hello Balance

    There’s More to Life Than Work: Goodbye Hamster Wheel, Hello Balance

    “Most of us try to do too much because we are secretly afraid we will not be able to do anything at all.” ~Rick Aster

    I’m standing in my art studio. My palette is loaded with paint. My canvas has been prepped and ready. There is a paintbrush in my hand, but I can’t move. I don’t know what color to pick or what shape to make. I start questioning my color selection, the size of my canvas… and everything else under the sun.

    A few months ago, I wrote myself a reminder to allow my art to flow through me. Making art is a refuge for my mind—a mind that struggles with anxiety, depression, and “Hamster Wheel Syndrome.” You’re not familiar with that malady? Let me explain it to you with an example of what my brain sounds like when hamster wheel syndrome kicks in:

    “Do people really like pinks and greens together? Is it too feminine? Should I make my shapes big and bold to contrast against the girlie palette? Maybe I should do a test on a smaller canvas first? Maybe I should just pick a different pallet. It’s cold in here. I’ll get a hoodie. I think I need more coffee… Man, this art table is messy. I’ll organize it first… I only have three hours until my dentist appointment… The grocery is near by the dentist. I’ll plan on going there too…” And on and on it goes.

    According to UrbanDictionary.com, hamster wheel syndrome is “when someone just keeps running in circles (and making the same mistakes) in their life instead of progressing.”

    I believe that this only really scratches the surface about what it truly means to feel my wheels spinning, with no break in sight, for days at a time.

    When I’m in my studio, brush in hand and ready to go but I can’t move forward due to my brain throwing ten different options at me every three seconds, I feel paralyzed.

    I am a highly efficient person with a creative mind. I’m an abstract painter, essay writer, and fastidious business owner. I can get more done in two hours than many get done in a day. And I’m not saying this to brag. It is a blessing and a curse.

    If you’re like me, you know how exhausting this type of hamster wheel efficiency can be. IT NEVER STOPS. If I’m not checking things off my to do list, I’m compiling them into spreadsheets, using new methods of organization that I thought of while I was trying to sleep at 3am.

    I am addicted to efficiency. It makes me feel productive and useful. But as there can be too many cooks in the kitchen, there can also be too many ideas and tasks to process at once.

    When the multitude of ideas leads to overwhelm, paralysis is the result, and for a person like me, when I’m stagnant, I get even more anxious. If I stay in that state for too long, depression kicks in. Then I’m really in trouble.

    I begin to feel guilty that I’m not getting enough done; like rest is a failure. Sometimes it’s hard for me to sit down at the end of the day, so the pace continues until bedtime, even though I know where it will lead.

    Now I’m no psych major, but I believe hamster wheel syndrome is a compulsive disorder that at first makes me feel efficient, but then yields the same negative result every time—an inability to move.

    I’m so addicted to coming up with things that will keep me busy in order to have a feeling of accomplishment and, more importantly, for others to see me as accomplished. I put a lot of pressure on myself!

    I am a wonder of time management and productivity. I get up early in order to exercise before making breakfast and getting everyone off to work and school. Then I’m in my office at 8:00am, checking off tasks from my to-do list, and yes, I’m the type that if I’ve done something not on the list, I’ll add it just so I can cross it off.

    Then, when I’m nauseated because I forgot to eat, I shove food down my throat and move to the art studio where I now have to flip into thoughtful and creative mode, and there I stay until 5:00pm.

    The problem is that when I’m not moving at that horrendously cray cray pace, I’m comatose, lying on the sofa, binge watching Law & Order and denying the fact that I will, indeed, have to get up and be productive again. And if I get to this point I’m happy, because it means that hamster wheel syndrome hasn’t reduced me into a tornado of indecision, just that it has made me too tired to function.

    I have two speeds: To-Do List Annihilator and DEAD.

    After just coming out of about a four-month depressive period due to over working myself, I realize that this pace isn’t healthy or sustainable. So, what do I do? Well, I’m way too fired up about my art and my business to slow down. I think the solution is to be rigid about both my work time and my relax time.

    I work with a business coach and recently, she has put us into three-people “accountability groups.” These groups are meant to help us stay on task. I realize that a common problem for artists is that they just can’t get themselves out of the art studio to give their art business attention. This is not my problem.

    At first, the others in my accountability group were proposing only evenings and weekends for our weekly meetings. Since diving into my own business, I’ve heard many people say that I’ll now be working twenty-four hours a day and through the weekends. That entrepreneurs have to work longer hours to yield any sort of progress. That we are supposed to eat and breathe our work all the time.

    I have one thing to say about that: SCREW THAT.

    I didn’t start my own business to hamster wheel myself into a constant, walking panic attack.

    I am passionate about my art and I want it out there, but I also love my family. I love to surf and hike. I love to watch movies and lollygag at coffee shops. What I don’t like is the exhaustion that hamster wheeling causes and the expectation that in order to be successful, I don’t have a choice in the matter. I’ll say it again: SCREW THAT.

    So, in an effort to calm the rodent, here are five ways to slow the hamster wheel down:

    1. Exercise, yoga, get outside and play

    This really is on every single list I write. It is so important for me that when I don’t get up to do something active four or five days a week, I can feel myself getting wound up internally and eventually depressed. Just moving my body releases the bound-up thoughts and allows more grace to seep into my day-to-day life.

    It’s easy to get caught up in our heads when we spend all our time staring at work or screens. Getting outside and being active transfers all that energy from our brains to our bodies so we can feel energized and balanced.

    2. Meditation

    I would think that due to my hamster wheel, seated meditation would be hard for me, but it’s not. I relish in the fifteen minutes when I sit, breathe, and be still. I’m pretty good about being consistent with it, but I’m also human, so I try not to be hard on myself when time goes by and I haven’t been active in this practice. I’ll start to notice that wound up feeling after a few weeks and start a daily meditation practice again.

    The beautiful thing about meditation is that we can do it many different ways. If not seated meditation, try walking meditation or deep breathing exercises, even painting or gardening.  Any mindfulness practice can help pull us from big picture overwhelm to a present state of calm and relaxation.

    3. Lists, lists, and more lists

    It helps me go into my day with less anxiety by simply knowing what I would like to accomplish in the next eight hours.

    I have a huge master to-do list that I update on Mondays. Each morning when I get up, I make a daily list from that list.

    Now, before you roll your eyes at me, hear me out: My daily to-do list is only time-sensitive items that need to be accomplished that day and pieces of larger projects that I’ll give some attention to knowing that it won’t be completed as a whole. The result is a slow and steady progress.

    It’s so easy for us to get overwhelmed by the litany of to do’s associated with the big picture.  By breaking it down into smaller pieces, we are able to look at projects in more manageable baby steps.

    4. Stick to a realistic work week.

    My workday is from 8:00am to 5:00pm. I put everything down at 5:00pm, with few exceptions. My weekends are my own. I shut down the computer on Friday evening and don’t turn it back on until Monday morning.

    I simply refuse to allow my business to take over my whole life. My art is my work and I’m lucky I feel so passionate about it. When I stop on the weekends, it allows excitement to build for Monday morning. Plus, playtime is an important recharge!

    Being passionate about our work is a gift, but when that passion takes over everything else, our self-care, family, and friends tend to get neglected. Playtime is important to recharge and we should all prioritize it as much as we prioritize our work.

    5. Judge progress in years, not weeks.

    For a while, I was thinking about growth in terms of what I’ve accomplished in the past month or two, and I felt a need to cram as much as possible into my days because it didn’t seem like much. As a result, I was living in a constant state of fear, overwhelm and a feeling of failure.  It wasn’t until I compared my current situation to where I was at this time last year, that I realized how far I’ve come.

    We don’t need to work ourselves to the bone to see progress. Slow and steady wins the race, and it’s much easier to see accomplishments built over long periods of time than in the seeds planted over just the past couple of weeks.

    —

    I think that the above can be applied to anyone, in any type of work.

    In the end, we all want the same things: success in our work life and a healthy, happy home life. I have absolutely no doubt that stay-at-home moms, lawyers, restaurant workers—really anyone—can fall prey to hamster wheel syndrome. We must take care of ourselves, mind, body, and soul. Otherwise, we fall out of balance and fall prey to anxiety, depression, and a host of physical ailments.

    I yearn for the day that I don’t have to give so much attention to being a balanced person. However, I also want a career, to spend time with my loved ones, to go surfing and skiing, to cook my own meals, and to be able to tend to all the errands that come with life. That’s a lot to want, and so I have to put equal attention to the activities that will feed my energy.

    I have to remember that the hamster is not in charge! The wheel doesn’t have to spin twenty-four hours a day. In fact, it isn’t reasonable to think that it can. The hinges that support that wheel will burn out quickly if they don’t get a break and some oil.

    While I like to burn bright, I must remember that fires need to be fed. And with that, I’ve just reminded myself that I’m hungry, and so I stop. To be nourished so I can nourish.

  • There’s Nothing Wrong With Being Single: Releasing the Shame and Stigma

    There’s Nothing Wrong With Being Single: Releasing the Shame and Stigma

    “Single is no longer a lack of options, but a choice. A choice to refuse to let your life be defined by your relationship status but to live every day Happily and let your Ever After work itself out.” ~Mandy Hale

    In our society, being single is still heavily stigmatized. Being single is often perceived as something out of the norm. It is more acceptable to be part of a couple (even a dysfunctional one!) than it is to be single. And it is even more acceptable to be divorced than it is to be single.

    Unfortunately, our society makes us believe that being single is wrong, and your goal should be to find someone to be in a relationship with. Then and only then are you complete, happy, and more acceptable socially.

    Many single people feel lots of shame around being single. They feel like it’s their fault. They feel like there is something wrong with them. They feel like a failure.

    This societal pressure makes single people invest themselves in the wrong relationships, just to feel accepted.

    The reality is that being single is about being in a relationship with yourself. It is the most intimate relationship you will ever experience in your life. Being in a relationship with yourself should feel like the most natural thing, but it’s often regarded as an uncomfortable one. We find it easier to be with others than to be with ourselves. How crazy is that?

    I also want to add that it’s normal and healthy to want companionship. We want to connect with others. We are social animals. We are meant to be with others. Let’s not deny it.

    The problem starts when your desire to be in a relationship is fueled by the discomfort of being with yourself. The desperation for another person to save you from being single will only create more drama in your love life.

    That’s why it is so important to break thought the conditioning and become a happy single before you start looking for love.

    Ever since I can remember, I struggled with being single. I struggled with my status because I believed this collective conditioning around being single.

    I believed that it’s more socially acceptable to be in a relationship. I believed that there must be something wrong with me if I hadn’t found my life partner by the time I reached my thirties. That I was broken, less of a human being, and not complete, all because I was single.

    For the majority of my life, I desperately wanted to change my relationship status and escape all those thoughts and beliefs.

    I was ashamed of it. I felt like I hadn’t made it in life, because I couldn’t find a partner.

    I didn’t lke being on my own. I didn’t like being alone. I didn’t like having too much time on my hands.

    I used to make sure I had plans every weekend and I didn’t spend too much time in my own company, because it felt uncomfortable.

    I had plenty of friends. I always made sure I had plenty of things to do. I always made sure my diary was full of crap, all so I didn’t have to face myself.

    I became a compulsive dater. For a decade, my only goal was to find the love of my life, because I so desperately didn’t want to be single.

    I thought I was running away from being single, but I learned that all I was doing was running away from myself. And as you know, if there is one guaranteed thing in life, it’s the fact that you will spend it all with yourself! There is no way out. There is no escape. You can’t run away from yourself.

    At some point, I needed to realise that and see the truth. And I did.

    One summer morning, I woke up after one too many dates and decided that enough was enough.

    I couldn’t stand the emotional pain of falling for the wrong guys, being ghosted on a regular basis, and failing to find true love.

    I had enough of dating. I had enough of running away from myself. I had enough of chasing love, all so I could change my relationship status and feel proud for a moment that I had managed to attract a guy!

    This was a brave moment. For the first time in my life, I was brave enough to face myself. I was brave enough to say, “Stop.” I stopped the distractions like the dating, the over-active social life, the full diary, the life without a still moment.

    And that was when I started my search for the truth.

    That was the moment I started to question all the lies and beliefs that didn’t serve me.

    I discovered that my truth was that I am enough without a relationship.

    I don’t need a relationship to justify my worth to the world. I am whole and complete without a man. It is up to me to decide how I choose to live my life as a single, and how happy I am with it.

    I liberated myself from the collective conditioning, from believing that there was something wrong with me and that I needed to be in a relationship to be happy.

    Here are a few mind-set shifts that can help you find your truth about being single:

    1. Stop identifying with your relationship status.

    You are not your relationship. Your relationship status doesn’t define you as a person. Your single status doesn’t mean anything other than the one true fact: you haven’t found the right person yet. Always remember that, whether you are single or married, you are the same magnificent being. This is constant in your life. Your relationship status will change throughout your life, but your intrinsic worth shouldn’t.

    2. Know your worth.

    Your worth doesn’t come from the outside. Your worth doesn’t come with a relationship, a partner, or a wedding ring on your finger.

    For so long, so much of my own worth was attached to my relationship status. This was the very reason I suffered as a single. For some reason, I believed I would be a better and more accomplished person if I had a boyfriend. My worthiness depended on it. So, for as long as I didn’t have a boyfriend, I felt useless about myself.

    But your true worth comes from within. Your true worth is intrinsic. You were born worthy and good enough. Nothing external can add to your true worthiness, and nothing external can take away from your worthiness. You are worthy just the way you are.

    3. There is nothing wrong with you.

    The only reason why you are single is you haven’t met the right person yet. End of the story. It’s not because you are not attractive enough, not educated enough, people don’t find you interesting, you need to lose weight, you need to get a new job, or anything else you can think of to disparage yourself.

    Don’t build a negative story that will make you feel miserable. Accept the truth and end there. The only reason you are single is the absence of the right person in your life, not because there is something wrong with you.

    4. It’s not your fault.

    Stop blaming yourself. Stop beating yourself up. It’s not your fault that you are single. If you met the right person, you would be in a relationship now, right? So why feel ashamed of something out of your control? Being single doesn’t make you right or wrong. It is just what it is. Just accept that the time hasn’t come yet, and enjoy your life until it does. Live it to the full!

    5. Rise above collective conditioning.

    The collective conditioning is so wrong, but it’s also strong and deeply ingrained. That’s why it’s difficult to see beyond it and believe the opposite. Regardless of your relationship status, you must rise above it and value yourself.

    We as a society have created this massive collective belief that being single is difficult and must be miserable, which is based on our biggest fear—the fear of being lonely. But relationships can be difficult too. It’s entirely possible to feel miserable in a relationship.

    Once you have befriended your solitude, you will see the truth of the experience. Being single can be as awesome as you make it. You are in charge of how you want to use your time as a single.

    6. Stop glorifying relationships.

    Being in a relationship is not better than being single. Being single or married is not better or worse. They both come with different challenges, lessons, and benefits. They challenge us in different ways. It’s all about embracing your current challenges and enjoying the benefits. If you learn that while you are single, you will be able to apply the same philosophy in your future relationship, especially when it becomes challenging.

    7. Stay true to yourself.

    Staying true to yourself is about self-respect. It’s about respecting your values and standards. It’s about making choices based on what you truly want rather than caving to others’ expectations. It’s better to stay single and go for what you truly deserve in love than it is to settle for less and waste time with the wrong people, and lose yourself in the process.

    Staying true to yourself will help you feel more independent, confident, and happy. But it also means that sometimes you will feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. It won’t be easy all the time. But what is worse would be doing something against yourself and betraying your values.

    —

    Being single happened to be the most transformational period of my life. It can bring a transformation to your life too if you start living it more intentionally as a single.

    Being single can be fun. Being single can be explorative. Being single can be expansive and happy.

    It’s up to you what you make of it and what you choose to believe.

    If you want to start changing how you feel about being single, start exploring the stories you tell yourself.

    Our stories are very powerful. When you repeat a story regularly, it becomes your truth and you start to believe it.

    Examine what being single means to you and what meaning you give your single status.

    Your story might be that being single means your life is empty, that people in relationships are having more fun, or that you will only be happy if you have a partner.

    Once you have identified your story, ask yourself how to create the opposite of what you believe. For example, how can being single be full of life and joy? How can I have or create more fun while I’m single? What can I do to be happier here and now?

    Let your answers guide you to take more positive actions and start living your life as a single to the best of your abilities.

    Maximize this time and regularly step out of your comfort zone. Start up new hobbies and learn new things. Cultivate the most important relationship you have–the one with yourself! Use every opportunity that comes your way to grow. Make every day the best day of your life. When you live your life as a single in this intentional way, you won’t even have time to notice that you are single!

  • How to Pick Your Best Idea (Especially If You Suffer from Idea Overload!)

    How to Pick Your Best Idea (Especially If You Suffer from Idea Overload!)

    “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” ~Scott Belsky

    In virtually every human pursuit, from personal growth to the arts to business, ideas and the execution of those ideas is what drives us forward.

    And when it comes to ideas, there are basically two kinds of people:

    • Those who struggle to come up with what feels like good ideas
    • Those gifted with a ton of ideas, but who struggle to pick the right idea to pursue

    And because struggling stinks, the good news is that no matter which of these two camps you’re from, what follows can help you.

    As for me, I come from camp #2. Ideas come to me in waves, and when the waves hit they’re like tsunamis. I’ve got the debris—dozens of notebooks and countless sticky notes, napkins, even birch bark with my barely legible notes about the idea on them—stuffed in manila envelopes to prove it.

    My problem, however, used to be that when it came time to work on a new thing—in my case a new article, video, book, or business, for example—I’d review all my ideas and feel… CONFUSED AND OVERWHELMED.

    Because there were actually many ideas scribbled in my notebooks and stuffed in my manila envelopes that were good. And how on earth do I pick just one idea? Especially if I was going to be investing significant amounts of my time and energy into it.

    Sometimes this overwhelm led to my inertia. Walking away entirely and not getting anything done for hours, days, even weeks on a few occasions because I was stifled by the choices.

    More often, this overwhelm lead to me choosing something, starting it, then abandoning it, because this other idea actually seemed better after all. Until I’d abandon that, too, for the next better idea. And so on.

    If ideas that I started but never finished were worth money, I’d be a billionaire.

    Ugh.

    I finally realized I had to step back and figure out the healthiest approach to pick the right ideas to pursue. And to make a really long story short (a story involving extensive research, lots of trial and error, journeys to wizards in far-off lands, fighting ogres, and more), here’s what I discovered.

    It’s Not Just About What You’re Good at or What You Know 

    When it comes to choosing the best ideas to pursue, some common advice is to pick what you’re good at or know about. And okay, that’s well-intentioned.

    However, I’ll bet you’re good at a lot of things.

    Just like I’m good at a lot of things.

    For example, I am good at showering, arguing with customer service agents, and carrying many bags of groceries from the car at one time (it’s an ongoing dangerous quest of mine to try to carry them all at once no matter how many there are).

    I’ll also bet that, like me, you could become knowledgeable about and good at other things, with a little to a lot of effort depending on the thing, if you really wanted to.

    The problem with this advice is that it encompasses such a wide range of possibilities that it’s usually little help at narrowing down your best ideas. And many if not most of your ideas likely fall under the umbrella of things you already know or are good at anyway.

    It’s Not Just About What’s Profitable or What Other People Want

    If you’re in business, or you’re working on something that you want other people to desire in any way, these common criteria for choosing your best ideas certainly matter.

    However, they should always be a secondary part of the choosing equation. If you just choose to pursue ideas that others’ want, but that you personally aren’t fired up about doing, the result is always mediocre at best (if you’re somehow even able to complete execution of those ideas in the first place.)

    Far more important is the most important criteria you’ll discover below.

    It’s Not Just About What You’re Passionate About

    It’s also common advice to pick the ideas you are passionate about. But while this gets closer to the most powerful factor, this advice can also be too vague to actually help you narrow down to find and pick your best ideas.

    Because again, like the advice to do what you’re good at, you are likely passionate about many things. And most if not all of the ideas you do have are all related to what you are passionate about anyway. It’s kind of like being handed a big plate of different cupcakes, all of which you love, and being told to choose the one you love. Really? Well-intentioned, but not necessarily helpful.

    It’s About What REALLY BUGS THE HELL OUT OF YOU

    This, I have discovered, is as magic as it gets for both discovering and picking the best idea to pursue.

    As you may be surprised to see, all the best ideas—those with the most inherent energy in them to drive you forward to making the ideas a reality—start with this question: What really bugs the hell out of you?

    There are, of course, many different phrasings of this question that may ring more for you, depending on who you are, such as: What would you most love to improve, within yourself or out there in the world? Or, what really effing pisses you off?

    And to help you fully understand why this is so powerful, let’s use you as an example.

    Let’s say you are very interested in your personal growth. You read blogs, magazines, books, and more on the topic.

    And you’d just love to feel less anxiety, boost your self-esteem, overcome procrastination, less lonely, make more money, and … and… and…

    BOOM!

    Those are all separate ideas you have. And while your desire to execute on all of them is admirable, it’s also a recipe for failure at all of them. Because you are human, and you cannot possibly achieve all that. You’ll likely bounce around all these ideas, sometimes for years, and not apply yourself to actually achieving any one of them.

    So instead… ask what aspect of yourself really bugs the hell out of you the most. Sure, you’d like to improve in every area of improvement there is, but what particular area most gnaws at you? What one thing would you most like to improve about you?

    Whatever you answer, that is the personal growth “idea” you need to pick and focus on.

    Asking this one big question works in every professional and personal area of life where you are trying to generate the best next idea to work on. Here are some more examples:

    “Computers are great, but what bugs the hell out of me the most is that they look so ugly and their operating systems are confusing! Here’s my attempt to change that—I think I’ll call it the Apple!”

    “It bugs the hell out of me that there’s so much negativity pouring out of mainstream media. It makes the world seem like such a dark and helpless place! So out of all these ideas I have, I’m going to choose to create a documentary film about little-known people who are working hard to reveal what is good in the world and empowering people!”

    “The whole house needs to be cleaned. But that disaster area called the garage bugs the hell out of me the most, so that’s what I’m going to work on today.”

    Or in the case of me and this very article you are reading: “It bugs the hell out of me that so many of the individuals and organizations I work with are stifled by ideas, like I was. Because that means so many great ideas that could help our world aren’t even being created. So I’m going to share with them the best way I’ve discovered to develop and pick the best ideas!”

    Whether you feel like you’ve got no ideas, or a thousand ideas to pick from, pinpointing the zig that you most want to zag is simply the most powerful way to generate and choose that best next idea to work on.

    Not only will it provide you the most motivation to keep working at it, but if your idea is to be experienced and/or purchased by others, chances are great that:

    1. Many out there are just as bothered by that thing that bugs you the most, and will embrace your solution.
    2. More than any other idea you could pursue, your energy and drive will shine through those ideas you pursue with this as your #1 criteria.

    Make a List. Check It Twice.

    Consider making lists of the things that really bug you.

    (Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be a complete list, there’s no such thing. The beauty is that it will never be a complete list, because the world and your brain will happily keep serving up new things to bug you, which is something to actually be grateful for!)

    Go ahead and categorize them by the different areas of your life.

    Make one for yourself, where you might add things like your excess body fat that drives you nuts, your guilt at cheating on a spouse, your pain at being cheated on, or your anger at a cruel parent.

    Make one for social issues, where you might add things like the polarization in politics, the boring buildings being built these days, people talking on cell phones in a theater, or even the ugly shoes most women are wearing.

    Make one for your work, your home, and any area of your life as you see fit.

    Then check it twice. Or three times.

    Check it to see which of these problems really, really bug you the most. If you have a huge stash of ideas like I do, match your “Bugs the Hell Out of Me” lists against these ideas.

    Which most excite your senses? Which ones most make you want to leap out of your chair and do something?

    In each area of your life, in whatever mediums you work in, you’ve now got a clear road map of the best ideas to pursue. (If you are in business, for example, you can now further narrow down by secondary factors such as how profitable it might be, much it will cost to develop the idea, etc.)

    So the next step is to go do it!

    Drive that frustration with so many boring buildings into planning the next Taj Mahal. Pour the pain that comes with being cheated on into a quilt. Develop a sensor that automatically silences all cell phones in theaters (please!). Choreograph a dance that shows us, directly or abstractly, what happens from so much political polarization.

    This is a very powerful way to both create and pick your best ideas and drive them to completion. Please share it with others, because we need more great ideas that become a reality. And please share your thoughts on this with me. =)

  • It’s Okay to Be Who You Are – Forget Approval and Show Your True Colors

    It’s Okay to Be Who You Are – Forget Approval and Show Your True Colors

    “Don’t trade your authenticity for approval.” ~Unknown

    How often do you find yourself doing things just because you have to and not because you want to? I’m not talking about the hard work we do to improve at our jobs or the responsibilities we have to our families. I’m referring to those things we do just to please others, to project a certain image of ourselves to the world that isn’t in line with who we really are.

    A few years ago, I was searching within myself to find out who I really was.

    I’d been so obsessed with creating a mask that people would love that I could no longer recognize myself in the mirror.

    I am an ambivert, and I don’t express my feelings much. I tend to smile rather than squeal with joy. I fall silent rather than shout with anger.

    Because of these traits, people used to call me “poker face,” and I felt as if something was wrong with me. Determined to shed this label, I forced myself to be loud and attended all social events with my friends inspite of exhaustion. But deep inside all I wanted was a quiet appointment with myself.

    Assuming that being extroverted was the only way to make friends, I pushed myself too hard, which led to an emotional breakdown. As a result, I fell prey to self-destructive habits like skipping meals, binge eating junk food, staying up late at night, and waking up at odd hours, which landed me in the hospital.

    After that, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what had caused that situation and looked inside myself to know what I really wanted.

    Since then, I’ve listened to my inner voice more than I’ve listened to others. I’ve started to be myself without worrying about anyone else’s opinion. And I’ve stopped fulfilling people’s expectations of me and started feeling comfortable in my own skin.

    Some of the lessons I learned during the journey were…

    Face your fears.

    The two words that changed my perspective on life were “What if?” What if I spent my evenings curled up with a book? What if I excused myself from a social gathering when I felt exhausted? What if I chose not to express myself loudly?

    Think about what really scares you. Think about what restrains you from unleashing your true self.

    Is it the possibility of creating conflict between you and your friends? Is it the prospect of being different? Or do you fear your own inner critic?

    Exploring your answers to all these questions will start you on a beautiful journey of self-discovery and open up different sides to your character that you may not be aware of. Spelling out loud what you actually fear is work half done to make it go away, which leads me to the next two steps on how to tackle them.

    Calm your inner critic.

    I discovered that, more than anything else, I was scared of my inner critic.

    There is something inside all of us that alerts us when we go down the wrong path—our conscience. But I’m not talking about our conscience, but rather the voice that stops you from achieving your full potential. The voice that prevents you from doing something even though you know deep inside that it is the right thing. The voice that beats you up for the slightest error.

    This voice inside me grew louder when I did something against the grain, like excusing myself from a party to enjoy a quiet evening. It accused me of being an anti-social, self-centred person. It made me think my friends would drift away if I continued this behavior. I felt controlled by this voice of mine, which turned out to be my vice.

    Remember, this voice, which you’ve trained your mind to believe, is the result of the misconceptions about friends and life in general. So suppressing this voice is not the solution; the more you suppress it, the louder it grows.

    Rather, this voice needs to be answered with reason. When I started explaining to my inner critic that it’s not always possible to be there for everyone else and that caring for myself does not amount to being anti-social, I felt the voice becoming feeble.

    Repeat positive affirmations to yourself when the critic inside you grows stronger.

    Whenever your genuine self feels threatened by others’ opinions, you need to love yourself enough to stand up for it. It’s only by fostering self-respect that you gain the confidence to face the world without a mask. Self-respect acts as a shield that protects your true self from the confusions of the external world.

    Cast away the fear of being different.

    It’s okay to have different wants and desires as long as you don’t hurt anyone. Your perspective on life does not have to be the same as all your friends’ perspectives.

    Don’t pretend to share someone else’s view just to fit in. Understand that being different is not equivalent to being weird.

    Having a different say on the matter brings with it the possibility of conflict. But conflict is not something to fear and be avoided, as it provides a chance to understand the person in front of you better and it can lead to interesting conversations, if you stay civil and open-minded.

    I opened my eyes to the fact that nodding my head in approval at whatever my friend says does not bring me closer to her. When I started sharing my ambiverted views on socializing with my extroverted friend, we started arguing initially, but slowly we came to understand each other.

    I gained insight into how extroverts have a natural tendency to express feelings loudly, and that being around people makes them happy. My friend, on the other hand, understood my need for a weekend at home to energize myself for the week ahead. She recognized that I actually enjoy spending time by myself. It proved to be a learning experience for both of us.

    Only when you convey your opinion calmly, without needing to be right, can you forge a connection with someone. Accept the fact that you are unique just like everyone else.

    Pause before saying yes.

    Before you commit yourself to attending an event or helping someone else, pause and think about why you want to do it. It’s important to ask yourself first before saying yes to others.

    The prospect of saying no often brings with it the fear of coming across as a rude person and potentially losing your friends. This rarely turns out to be true because in healthy relationships, both people understand that they need to provide space for each other.

    When I decided to take a break from social obligations, I noticed that one or two of my friends distanced themselves from me, but nothing changed in my close relationships. They accepted and respected my decision.

    Pushing yourself too hard will eventually lead to resentment. You can only be happy, and share that happiness with others, if you prioritize creating satisfaction from within.

    Find your forte.

    Everyone has a spark inside that needs the right channelling to shine. Experimenting and discovering what you really love doing is a great way to connect with your inner self.

    When you do something that you love and have a natural flair for, you connect with yourself on a deeper level. You see the talents you possess. This gives you the confidence to be yourself without worrying about others’ approval.

    Now, when someone calls me “poker face” it never bothers me because I know I am not an insensitive person with no emotions. I just choose to express them differently than others—through my writing. Writing helps me explore and express my emotions far better than speaking about them.

    Make yourself feel good by taking some time for your favourite pastime. Engage yourself fully in that activity. Enjoy the feeling of getting lost in it.

    Practice your art regularly, not for exhibiting it to the world, but to mirror the artist within you.

    Strengthen your core values.

    Core values are the principles that define us, and we should never compromise them just to please other people. Strong core values help us make choices that are right for us. They show us the path to peace in the midst of chaos. But it can be tough to hold on to our values when faced with outside influences, such as the people around us and the media.

    When I was younger I believed that my work should do most of the talking, and I was confident in what I did. I used to believe that friendships happen, not by searching for them, but by putting myself in situations where I’d meet other people and having an open mind and heart.

    When I started college, the urge to impress people made me forget these basic principles of mine. The idea of fitting in with my peers turned me into someone whom I barely recognized.

    Eventually, I reinforced my basic beliefs by working hard to achieve my study goals and allowing myself to be authentic. I also listened to people with an open mind rather than dominating conversations. These small actions helped me reconnect with myself

    Celebrate your true self.

    Every person in the world has their own strengths and weaknesses. No one is perfect, even if they seem that way. What meets the eye is just the tip of an iceberg. So never beat yourself up for mistakes, embarrassments, or for having negative thoughts. All of these contribute to the uniqueness of your character.

    The moment I started being myself, I noticed a lot of people just like me, lost and isolated in the big world. I actually made new friends who loved me as I am.

    The world wants to know your authentic self, with all your flaws, rather than a staged, perfected version. So never be afraid to show your true colors.

    —

    We must grow and improve to reach great heights, but reach out only for those goals that truly appeal to you. Life has insightful lessons to teach—learn them your way, at your own pace.

    Reveal your genuine self and expose the glorious treasures buried deep inside you to the world. Remove the shadows of self-doubt from your life and let your immaculate self soar high beyond boundaries.

  • How to Let Go When You’re Dwelling on Negative Thoughts

    How to Let Go When You’re Dwelling on Negative Thoughts

    “There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind—you are the one who hears it.” ~Michael Singer

    My husband and I recently moved into a new home. Shortly after we moved in, I left a wooden cutting board in the sink, where it was submerged in water.

    My husband told me, in a tentative voice, that he didn’t want to upset me, but I really shouldn’t leave the cutting board in the water like that, because it would get warped and destroyed.

    In case you couldn’t tell, my husband was actually nervous to tell me he wanted me to do something differently.

    Sure, in this case I didn’t take any offense to his comment—why should I, really? But the disappointing truth is that I often react by becoming sullen and moody and sometimes even defensive and argumentative.

    Luckily, shortly before this conversation I’d been listening to a podcast the subject of letting go, about how our minds are not our souls; they’re our psyches.

    In other words, I was in a pretty peaceful place, easily able to see how any thoughts about how he was wrong or he shouldn’t have said that to me or that I was a horrible person for leaving a cutting board in the sink were very, very easy to let go of.

    It felt great. I didn’t get upset, I didn’t say anything mean; I just said no problem and moved on. Not just on the outside, but on the inside, too.

    It’s still not always that way for me, though.

    In fact, a very recent interaction with my husband was a different story entirely. I’d gone to the store for a few last minute things before Thanksgiving, and when I came home my husband could see that I had purchased a tube of toothpaste—the wrong kind.

    As soon as I walked through the door he said, “Crest? Why did you get Crest? We always get Colgate!” And, at least from my perspective, he didn’t say it in all that friendly of a tone.

    I immediately got defensive and took on his tone and told him he didn’t have to use it if he didn’t want to, then I went into the kitchen and went back and forth between seething and hating myself.

    Luckily, somewhere in that process, I was able to, just for a moment, name what was going on inside my body and mind instead of being completely sucked into it.

    I said to myself, as though I was describing symptoms to a doctor, what was going on. “I feel all jumbled up in my chest, and my stomach feels nervous. I notice that I am feeling really bad about something small, and I’m really, really blowing it out of proportion.”

    To be upset about something so insignificant is probably indicative of a larger problem, of course; in this case, the fact that I was stressed about holiday prep and my upcoming birthday and, well the list could have gone on, I’m sure.

    Still, this is an absolutely perfect example of how the smallest things can unhinge us, even when we’re walking a spiritual path or doing our best to improve ourselves and our lives.

    I know I’m not alone. I see it in my husband, I see it in co-workers and friends.

    We’re so busy trying to be right, trying to keep our egos and sense of self safe, that we don’t let things go. We let thoughts take over our hearts and minds, and often ruin relationships in the process.

    I feel so frustrated at myself when I look back at all the times I’ve not been able to let things go and have reacted negatively, but that doesn’t help me move forward, either.

    How can I consistently be calm? How can I consistently let go of the things, both big and small, that cause so much internal turmoil?

    Always, always return to the stillness inside me, for one. I know it’s there, I’ve felt it. I’m just better at accessing it sometimes more than others.

    That stillness is the place from which I believe our true selves speak, and that true self is not concerned with small things, or worried about keeping our egos afloat.

    I know taking three deep breaths helps me do it. I know simply telling myself that “these thoughts are not me” helps me do it.

    Besides accessing the stillness, naming what I’m feeling, as I mentioned earlier, really helps. It puts a distance between me and the thoughts pulsing through my head, again helping me to remember that I am not my thoughts.

    Acknowledging that I’m spiraling or feeling sorry for myself helps, too. I think it’s something about knocking back that part of me that always has to be right and telling it I see it and I want it to go away.

    Another way to let go is to ask myself if this will matter in an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year. Usually it won’t matter, and that, too, allows me to give myself some space to move on.

    I know there are certain things in life that do need to be dealt with, that are bigger than a tussle over toothpaste. I still think those are best dealt with by first letting go of that negative, insistent voice, though.

    I think back to when I was in my early twenties and a job I was supposed to have was given to a guy who’d recently returned to the inn where I worked, even though he’d abruptly disappeared for another job and left the inn owner in a bind.

    I was so mad, so angry, that I stormed out, packed all of my stuff (I lived on premises), went back to the office, quit, and then drove away.

    I’m not saying quitting wasn’t the right option for me, because it probably was. The owner of the inn was new to the game and extraordinarily disorganized, and I probably would have been miserable for the whole winter.

    Still, there was a better, calmer way to handle things that would have left me feeling more balanced and sure about myself and my decisions.

    If I could go back fifteen years, I think I’d tell myself to take a few deep breaths. To be still. I wasn’t meditating yet, or even aware that I was in charge of my thoughts, but I would tell that younger woman to find her center and go from there.

    I’m genuinely tired of letting my mind run my life. I want to let go, to let decisions come from the deepest part of myself. I think by remembering to find the stillness and let the negative thoughts pass by, and to find any way possible to separate myself from them whenever possible, my life will be much closer to peaceful.

  • Longing for Quiet in a Noisy World: How I Found Myself (and Peace) in Silence

    Longing for Quiet in a Noisy World: How I Found Myself (and Peace) in Silence

    “Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.” ~Gordon Hempton

    Years ago, when I first started my emotional healing journey, I was longing to reconnect with who I truly was and free my mind of all the paralyzing thoughts and feelings that were wrecking my well-being and happiness.

    After months of finding new ways to improve my life, I finally felt happy. I was healthy and fulfilled and knew exactly what I wanted out of life.

    I decluttered my personal space from unwanted things and people, completely changed my morning routine, and finally started living in the moment. Life was good and complete.

    Until I would hit a roadblock.

    Unplanned circumstances, stressful situations, and loud noises in crowded places would trigger emotions of resentment and annoyance.

    The pressure of constant automatic speaking, my voice echoing in my head rethinking what I said and dwelling on what didn’t sound the way I wanted it to, kept me restless and agitated. I was also highly sensitive to negativity and judgment from others, and that influenced how I dealt with a particular moment.

    That’s when it hit me: Even after all the progress, when I thought that I had finally started living the way I wanted, I still felt anxious and easily irritated by my daily life. While I thought that I knew myself well, I had yet to learn where the frustration was coming from and what was causing me to feel stressed.

    Naturally, as an introvert, I longed for quiet time, away from the world, in silence.

    As a child, I would spend hours writing and reading in my secret hideouts, in complete solitude. It was in my nature, who I truly was. But as I grew up, things changed. The noise of everyday life was too loud, and I needed to find a way to create calm in my daily environment.

    Still, no matter how hard I tried to bring silence back into my life, I saw it as a defeat.

    I was fighting the urge to accept it. I was taught not to recognize the value of silence, and I believed that quiet meant wrong.

    This is true for so many of us. Instead of understanding and accepting ourselves the way we are, we go through life thinking that something is wrong with us because we don’t fit into the society’s norm of what is “socially acceptable.”

    Later on, after analyzing myself further, it became clear to me that what was causing uneasiness had nothing to do with external influences, but rather with how I filtered information and what I allowed to come through to me.

    I found myself programming my responses based on other people’s level of comfort, because I didn’t want to upset anyone. And instead of focusing on my needs, I worried about what others would think.

    I bogged my brain down with endless problems, worries, and self-sabotaging thoughts that ultimately made me feel anxious and stressed.

    In situations where I needed to stand up for myself, I would instead back down and do nothing, thinking that if I failed to comply, I would be criticized and rejected. This was especially true in a toxic relationship with a person whose influence was detrimental to my well-being.

    And though I forced myself to stop withdrawing from the world that wanted me to talk constantly, I longed for silence that would help me heal.

    That’s when I realized that the silence I craved more than anything was the silence I had already experienced as a child. So, I returned to practices that brought me back to the energizing, much needed moments of stillness.

    Writing in my journal helped quiet down my thoughts and feelings of irritation. I found meditation helpful in preparing for a busy day ahead. I learned that staying away from the noise that was exhausting, both physically and mentally, helped me hear myself better.

    Even though it took months to master the incredible power of silence, this restorative practice allowed me to always be in control of the noise around me, having the power to never let it get through to me.

    The invigorating silence became a regular part of my life. It helped me understand who I’ve always been and free my mind of meaningless thoughts, opinions, and beliefs.

    By silencing my speech, I experienced a sense of enhanced awareness and steadiness, which changed my perspective on things that had previously caused me unnecessary stress.

    During this time, I recognized that I’d often spoken out of fear, because I constantly felt the need to explain myself. And although I’ve always been protective of my time, I never knew how to guard it fully, so I would let others steal away the moments I needed just for myself. This would make me feel anxious because I found it hard to say no to the things I didn’t want to do, and I’d then inevitably feel resentment toward myself.

    Practicing silence taught me that silence isn’t uncomfortable, and that pausing for a few seconds before saying yes gives me a chance to connect with what I want and need.

    It helped me realize that people only understand from their level of perception, so I stopped justifying my actions and choices. I stopped telling people more than they needed to know and kept my privacy sacred. I realized that when I stopped talking I was able to hear what my heart was telling me.

    And it wasn’t just my voice I silenced; I also learned to silence my judgment. When I stopped judging people and situations, I surrendered my ego. I realized that no matter how much I tried to have things my way, I was bound for disappointment, so I learned to let go of the outcome.

    This profound experience helped me to develop patience and understanding for people’s reactions and situations I encountered. I learned to control the way in which I responded to challenges and negativity around me.

    At the time, I traveled often for work and remember experiencing countless delays at the airport due to bad weather conditions. I witnessed raging passengers lashing out on ground personnel in the most outrageous manner. I, too, would let unnecessary stress build up instead of accepting that this kind of situation was out of my control and recognizing that I could choose to stay calm and look for alternative responses.

    Staying silent and observant broadened my perspective and helped me monitor my thoughts in order to understand situations better. This practice has brought an immense peace to my everyday life, helping me embrace patience and stay mindful toward myself and others.

    While I understand that there will always be people I don’t agree with, I know that being judgmental is hurtful and unnecessary, and it takes away the positive energy that could be turned into something meaningful.

    It certainly doesn’t feel good to be judged, so who gives me the right to judge others?

    This realization helped me decide to stop gossiping. Each time I’d find myself in such a situation, I would tactfully change the course of conversation by bringing the person who initiated the gossip in the spotlight. People love to talk about themselves, and this has given me an opportunity to learn more about them and focus not only on the words they say but on their whole being and behavior.

    When I stopped talking about the people I disliked, I moved on to the areas of my life that needed love and attention. I started focusing on my health, happiness, and personal growth. I chose to exchange the emotions of anger and resentment for feelings of love and acceptance.

    Silencing my need to be judgmental also helped me to let go of the negative thoughts without getting emotionally attached. So, every time I’d encounter such a thought I would put it in writing. I’d let myself become aware of it, but wouldn’t let it overcome me and ruin the moment I was in. It helped me silence my emotions of fear and anger by staying observant and understanding why and when they reappeared.

    We waste so much time on nonsense we don’t need to hear. We talk when we don’t have to because we are afraid of being misunderstood.

    Let peace and quiet become your priority. Acknowledge the noise around you, but don’t try to fight it. When you accept that there will always be noise in your life, you’ll understand how easy it is to control it. Because there is always a way to turn it off.

    You can switch off the blithering noise of your car radio, put your phone on silent, and turn off the notifications. You can stop reading the news and limit the time you spend on social media. You can stop listening to what you don’t want to hear.

    And when you find it hard to escape the noise around you, start writing. When your brain is overloaded with information and longing for rest, help it by jotting down your thoughts, emotions, and ideas and unload some burdens, leaving room for it to relax and rejuvenate.

    When you find silence, you find inner peace.

    “Silence isn’t empty, it’s full of answers.” Can you hear it?

  • How to Be Whole on Your Own and How This Strengthens Your Relationships

    How to Be Whole on Your Own and How This Strengthens Your Relationships

    “Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.” ~Harriet Lerner

    Three decades ago, I married the man with whom I knew I would spend the rest of my life. We each had a rough childhood and had learned a lot about surviving, defending, and protecting ourselves. However, we did not know much about how to maintain a successful relationship.

    We took numerous classes on communication, learned to fight fair, and filled our goodwill bank accounts with lots of positive actions. However, despite our best efforts, something was still missing.

    There were times that the relationship felt smothering, and new types of problems kept arising. I got sick of saying “we” all of the time instead of “I.” Once when I was sick and slept in a different room, I was equally fascinated and worried by how much I enjoyed being by myself.

    Yes, we had learned to reconnect, to repair our troubles, and to deepen our intimacy. However, we had not yet figured out the crucial step necessary for keeping your relationship healthy.

    When it comes to love, we have two essential tasks. One, as most of us know, is to learn the skills and practices that allow relationships to thrive. The other lesson is less familiar to most people, but it is even more important. We must also learn how to love ourselves.

    By self-love, I do not refer to the type of vanity that is fed by money, power, influence, a gym-toned body, and the admiration of others. What I mean is the kind of love that leads to self-care, not only of our physical health but also of our minds and hearts.

    It’s the kind of love that creates for ourselves the time and space to develop and to use our talents. It’s the kind of love that frees us to discover and to foster our true purpose in life.

    To become truly wholehearted in our loving, we have to look at when we have acted in a “half-hearted” manner and when have we been “closed-hearted.” Also, we have to examine when it is that we have responded in a “hard-hearted” way.

    Our biggest challenge is to achieve the “whole” in wholehearted. In order to love anyone in a wholehearted way, we need to make ourselves whole first. We must integrate the two forces—the “me” and the “we.”

    Let me be clear about the three things that are not wholeness:

    • A constant state of happiness
    • An ongoing state of acceptance, love, and balance
    • A perpetual feeling of well-being

    Wholeness truly means accepting “the whole enchilada.” The hard, the sad, the mad, the scared, and the glad are all parts of you. The gratitude and the resentment together make you whole.

    Your acceptance of all the pieces of yourself makes you whole. Here are five practices that can each help us find our wholeness.

    1. Spend quality time with yourself.

    I once heard someone say that spending time with yourself is the greatest practice you can do, and I didn’t understand at the time what the speaker meant.

    While alone, I always felt like I was “by myself.” I mistook being alone for loneliness. It took me years to discover the pleasure of walking in nature, exploring an art museum, or hanging out at a farmer’s market loving my own company as much as with another person.

    2. Each day, check to make sure your self-esteem is balanced by your self-criticism.

    People sometimes mistake self-love for self-indulgence. Challenging myself when I am not living up to my own standards is important, but it must be done with compassion. Learning to love yourself despite your imperfections allows you to accept other people’s imperfections.

    3. Find a practice that centers you.

    Sitting in a lotus position and concentrating on breathing allows some people to find focus; there are also other practices like Zen meditation, walking meditation, Vipanassa meditation, and many more.

    In addition, there are methods of centering that are just as powerful for self-reflection; dance, art, writing, and prayer are just a few examples. What they all have in common is that we can use them to check in.

    4. Take an inventory of where you are right now. Explore it in your mind.

    Body: Am I satisfied with the ways I nourish my body? How can I make even better choices? Examine your nutrition, exercise for strength, flexibility, endurance, and cardiac wellness as well as all of the other kinds of self-care you can practice.

    Mind: Am I feeling fed, challenged, expanded, and interested? Am I growing?

    Spirit: Am I satisfied with the definition I have for spirit? How can I get more in touch my spirit? Is there a place within me where I can find peacefulness, wisdom, and guidance?

    Emotional: How am I coping with my current challenges? Is there a flow of different feelings, or do I find myself stuck on one emotion? Do I feel balanced?

    Social: How am I connected with the people in my life (family, friends, partner, coworkers)? What’s working, and where do I want to make changes?

    5. Develop a daily gratitude practice and begin by showing yourself appreciation.

    Ask yourself about the victories you have had during the week. Acknowledge when you did something that was brave. Thank yourself for taking the time to feel gratitude.

    As you explore these five techniques, you might discover others. You will find you already have wholeness inside; you just have to find the keys to open the door.

    When we feel good about ourselves, we’re more likely to feel generous toward others; it’s a symbiotic relationship. We feel grounded and centered enough to take risks and to reach out to others. We feel safe by acknowledging our shortcomings and forgiving ourselves, so we are able to open up to our partners wholeheartedly.

  • The Most Powerful Way to Help Someone Through Emotional Pain

    The Most Powerful Way to Help Someone Through Emotional Pain

    “When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.” ~Unknown

    I walked in for my monthly massage and immediately sensed something was off.

    A layer of desolation hung in the air like an invisible mist, ominous and untouchable, yet so thick I felt as though I could reach out and grab a handful in my fist, like wet cement, oozing out between my fingers.

    I’d been seeing the same masseuse once a month for three years, repeating the same routine each time. I wait in the hallway just outside her rented studio, a large walk-in closet size room in a building filled with hundreds of similar rooms, each rented to private individuals running their small passion businesses. Across from her, a wax studio. Down the hall, a hair salon.

    The building houses the manifested dreams of men and women who finally had enough of the daily nine-to-five grind, fired their bosses, and defiantly forged their way into their own businesses, renting space big enough for their hopes yet small enough for their start-up pockets.

    The appointment started unlike any other. When her door’s closed, it means she’s with another client, so I sit in the hallway, in one of the two wobbly wooden chairs the building provides for each tenant, and wait.

    When the door opens and the previous client leaves, we greet with hugs and smiles, expressing mutual joy in seeing each other again. As she closes the door, I take off my clothes and lie on the table face down, exchanging small talk about any happenings since we last saw one another.

    Except this time, on this fateful day, the door opened and I was greeted by an overwhelming sense of sorrow spilling out of the room with a vengeance, as if it had been trapped for decades.

    Standing in place of my masseuse friend was a lifeless, hollow shell of a person with empty zombie eyes. I hardly recognized her.

    Jen (not her real name) was clearly not her usual self.

    I’ve seen her in several bad moods throughout the years but this was beyond moods, and bad was too kind a word.

    Like me, Jen’s an introverted, sensitive soul, and neither of us have tolerance for inauthenticity or meaningless chit chat. We had long established that she didn’t have to be “on” around me, that she was allowed to take off her professional mask and I my client mask and we could simply be ourselves with each other, neither of us having to endure the torture of polite pleasantries if we didn’t feel like it.

    One of my pet peeves is society’s constant pressure and expectation to put on a happy face and pretend everything’s okay while inside things are desperately broken.

    So I said “hi” and walked in, neither expecting a return “hi” nor receiving one. She closed the door behind me and tears suddenly welled in my eyes as I undressed, as if sorrow no longer had the means to escape through the open door and found another way out by hitchhiking my tears.

    I wanted to respect the present moment, even though I didn’t understand it, so I stayed silent and lay on the table, face down, as I’d always done.

    Ten minutes in, between deep long strokes on my back, I heard a soft, almost inaudible, “I lost the girls.”

    Jen had been pregnant with twin girls. I remember the day she told me. She could barely wait for me to get through the door before blurting out, “I’m pregnant!” She and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for a while and finally, she was not only pregnant, she was pregnant with twins!

    And now, she wasn’t anymore.

    I sunk into the massage table as the enormity of what she said dropped into me. And then, I started to get up and tell her that she didn’t have to massage me. We could talk if she wanted, or she could take the extra hour to herself, I’d still pay her. She gently nudged my shoulder back down and said she needed to work; it kept her mind from self-destructing.

    She told me that her soul had been emptied along with her womb, and there was nothing left, let alone tears, inside her.

    I had enough tears for both of us so I told her I’d cry, for her, her girls, and her loss. For the next forty-five minutes, as she released my knots, I released tears, wails, and guttural sobs. It came and went in waves and I became acutely aware of the rhythm of her breathing as it converged with mine and became one.

    Between waves, there were moments of talking.

    Like with me, she had met many of her clients with the exciting news that she was pregnant, and like with me, she also had to tell them she was no longer pregnant. Client after client, spread out over weeks, she had to repeat the same story over and over until every client who knew had been caught up.

    It was a devastating loss for her, and one she had to retell to each client, all hearing it for the first time, all with similar questions and the same sympathetic side tilting heads in response.

    She said her days have been filled with well-intentioned but stale advice like “everything happens for a reason,” and “they’re in a better place now,” and “you’ll get pregnant again.”

    She told me each time she heard these statements, it felt like another jab in her weary stomach. She didn’t care about getting pregnant again, better places, or higher reasons. When a mother’s unborn babies have been ripped away from her, no reason could ever make it right.

    She wasn’t in the headspace to feel better or think of a brighter future, she simply wanted to be acknowledged for the pain she was going through now, but no one had remained with her in the pain. They had all tried to make her feel better, which only made her feel worse.

    In our own discomfort of feeling painful emotions, we try to help others not feel theirs. It’s difficult for us to see someone we love suffering, and naturally, our first impulse is to try to make it go away, whether it’s through reason, logic, distraction, faith or any other means.

    We feel helpless, so we desperately reach for what we know, what we’ve been taught, and what others have done to us in our own moments of suffering. We offer trite words that deep down we know won’t help but we hold onto the hope that they will anyway because we don’t know what else to say or do.

    The more powerful choice is to simply be with someone, accepting and embracing the painful moment as is, without trying to fix or make it better. It goes against our natural urge to want to help, but often, this present moment acceptance of the deep emotions flowing through a person is exactly what they need to help them move through it, in their own time.

    As powerful as it is to shine a light for someone who’s ready to emerge, it is equally powerful to sit with them in the darkness until they’re ready.  

    After the session, Jen told me she felt relief for the first time since it happened, as if a weight had been lifted from her. She hadn’t realized it, but with each client, friend, and loved one who tried to make her feel better, she felt a mounting sense of pressure to feel better, as if there was something even more wrong with her for not being able to.

    She hadn’t been conscious of the constant pressure until it was gone, in our session, when she was finally allowed to feel exactly as she’d been feeling and was fully accepted in her pain.

    Stepping out into the hallway and turning back for a long melting hug, I sensed the profound shift in her energy, vastly different from when I had walked in an hour ago. She was still wounded but there was an element of acceptance in her pain, a faint glow of light within the darkness.

    This sacred, healing light only comes as a result of fully embracing the darkness. It can’t be forced, manipulated, or pushed into existence.

    This is the true power of accepting our own deep pain and sitting with someone in the dark as they feel theirs.

  • 10 Ways to Let Go of the Hustle and Surrender to the Flow

    10 Ways to Let Go of the Hustle and Surrender to the Flow

    “You can’t control everything. Sometimes you just need to relax and have faith that things will work out. Let go a little and just let life happen.” ~Kody Keplinger

    I have always been an overachiever: straight As, the top of my class; whatever I endeavored, I aimed to be the best at it. I strived through high school, college, graduate school, and in the corporate world.

    My hard work came with awards, accolades, and the feeling of accomplishment. But it also came with burnout, exhaustion, and the feeling of never being good enough.

    Once I achieved a goal, I was happy for a minute. But my next thought would inevitably be, “There must be more to life than this.”

    Even though it didn’t feel good, I repeated this pattern of strive + achieve + repeat at every level in my life, until I had an epiphany.

    It happened a few years ago when I traveled to Bali for a yoga retreat. While exploring the small third-world island, I noticed the locals with modest homes tending their fields, or running their local shop. One thing stood out: They all seemed incredibly happy—or at the very least, content—with their lives.

    This struck me for a couple reasons. For one, they didn’t live lavish lifestyles or have big houses or fancy cars. They weren’t climbing any corporate ladder or angling for a big promotion.

    But this didn’t matter. They appeared to be present, at peace, and enjoying the simple things that life offered.

    What a stark contrast this sentiment and lifestyle was with the one I just traveled from. Despite their lack of first world luxuries, these people seemed to have something we Americans (and I) didn’t: happiness, peace, and a sense of “enough.”

    I started to question my own desire for striving, for perfection. I wondered if all my efforts were actually keeping me away from the peace and acceptance I desired most. It seemed like a vicious cycle.

    After I left Bali, I kept this idea of “maybe it’s okay not to strive” in my head. And instead of embracing my perfectionist tendencies, I started to consider another way.

    Throughout the years since my trip, I haven’t totally abandoned my high-achieving ways (though I’m still working on it). But I’m now able to see that there is a time to strive and a time to let go. A time to make things happen and a time to allow things to happen.

    And, perhaps even more importantly, I learned that you can’t necessarily strive your way to happiness. In fact, it’s often the path of surrendering, accepting, and being at peace with where you are that truly helps you tap into that sense of contentment and ease.

    So if you find yourself over-efforting, working hard, toiling without any respite, it may be time to explore the opposite path: surrender. When you surrender, you invite life to flow as it will and you roll with the current instead of fighting to swim upstream.

    When you surrender to the flow, you open yourself to possibilities instead of forcing opportunities that might not be right. You embrace and honor where you are, without worrying about where you need to be.

    When you notice yourself striving but feel like what you really desire is peace, these ten steps help you to let go of the hustle and embrace the flow.

    1. Trust yourself.

    Cultivating trust in yourself is by far one of the most grounding and stabilizing forces you can experience. Trusting yourself means that you know what’s best for you. In order to trust yourself, you must stop looking outside of yourself for guidance and start looking inside. Even as you seek advice or answers, always run it by your inner barometer to see if it truly resonates with you.

    2. Know that you already have the answer.

    Your answer might be blocked by fear and resistance. But when you find a way to put aside those fears, you can tap into what your intuition is telling you. Know that the answer already resides within you, even if it’s not clear at this moment.

    One way to get better acquainted with your intuition is to ask yourself what your gut is telling you. Over time, the more self-aware you become, the easier it will be to hear the voice of your intuition.

    3. Recognize that what you want to achieve is already within you.

    In order to have conceived a dream, you must already have created somewhere in your mind. When we desire something, we imagine it in great detail, and feel what it would be like to experience it. The simple fact that you’ve seen or imagined that vision for yourself means that the outcome is possible for you. Believing that you can—and will—bring this vision to life is the key to receiving it.

    4. Embrace the resistance.

    Resistance comes to us in the form of fear, self-doubt, procrastination, and other roadblocks. It shows up in our lives when we are at the precipice of doing something important and meaningful to us.

    When you recognize resistance as a sign that you’re about to do something big, you can learn to embrace it as the powerful messenger it is. Instead of letting it debilitate you, you can see resistance as a sign that illuminates where you must go.

    5. Trust the process.  

    The path to your desired destination may be a winding road and not a straight line. It might even have some cutbacks and hills involved. But you won’t get to where you want to go unless you’ve first learned the lessons from the present.

    Play the hand you’ve been dealt and trust that this is all part of your journey. There is something in your experience right now that is critical in helping you to become the person you need to be to move to the next level.

    6. Let it go.

    When we have a dream or a wish for ourselves, we can become very attached to it, and guard it preciously. You conceived your vision and believe in it. Now you can release it and be free from it.

    This doesn’t mean you don’t take any action, but it means you’re not holding so tightly to your vision that you worry about taking only the perfect action. Set your vision free into the universe and trust it will happen in its own time.

    7. Seek joy.

    Remember to play and enjoy the process. “Life is what happens when we’re making other plans,” John Lennon said. When you feel yourself waiting, overthinking, indulging feelings of doubt, take this as an opportunity to seek out what makes you feel good. Ask yourself what would make you happiest in any moment, and go do that. Seek activities that you fill you up. Wash, rinse, repeat.

    8. Take inspired action.

    Inspired action means action from a place of feeling pulled toward something, inspired by something, and from a place of “want.” This is directly opposed to taking action from a place of pushing, striving, or a place of “should.” Follow the pull, not the push. Don’t worry about what you or others think you “should” be doing. Explore what you feel called to, and let yourself be guided by your inspiration.

    9. Tap into your intuition along the way.

    If (when), along the way, you feel disheartened or discouraged, impatient or impotent, anxious or depressed, simply press the “PAUSE” button and take a big, long, deep cleansing breath. This is the perfect time to turn back inward and listen to your intuition: your built-in, always-available inner guide. What is your intuition telling you? What do you need to know right now?

    10. Let the universe support you.

    Sometimes it’s not a matter of making things happen, but a matter of letting things happen. Instead of mucking around in the road, get out of your own way. Sit down on the path and open up to receiving what is meant for you.

    When you stop striving and start surrendering, you will see the infinite possibilities and opportunities that exist in every moment. You’ll tune in to the frequency of the universe, and she’ll show you the way.

    Throughout our lives, there will be periods to achieve and periods to receive. Once you tap into your own self-awareness, you can recognize what pattern you’re currently in, and whether or not it’s serving you. If you’ve been striving for too long, it might be time to surrender to the flow.

    Remember that surrendering is not quitting. It’s honoring yourself where you are at this moment in time, and allowing what you want to catch up with you. It’s taking time out for yourself and reflecting on what’s important. So that once the time to strive comes back around (which it will!), you will be supported with the energy, the purpose, and the guidance you need to move forward.

  • What to Do When You Want to Feel Closer to Your Partner

    What to Do When You Want to Feel Closer to Your Partner

    “By letting our deep longing for love and connectedness be exposed…[we are] opening up the channel through which love can enter.” ~John Welwood

    When we feel disconnected from our romantic partner what we often want most is to genuinely feel their love again, to feel connected. And yet, it can be so difficult to simply share that longing.

    So instead of explaining or asking for what we want in a loving way, we complain about what is wrong, about how our partner isn’t showing up for us. Or we simply withdraw.

    This is especially true for sensitive souls like me, who are a bit hard up on assertiveness.

    I was the girl once painfully called a “sheep” by the boy I had a crush on because I would follow my friends into social situations where they talked and laughed with the cute boys, but I could only sit smiling and mute at their side. There was just so much at risk in speaking, and my thoughts came slower when I was feeling nervous, which was often.

    Somewhere along the line, I ended up resorting unconsciously to using the tactic of complaining in an attempt to get the affection I wanted. No wonder my first marriage fizzled!

    About two years into my current relationship, which had been going wonderfully, I started to notice that I was generating negative interactions more and more frequently.

    My voice would get a little whiny when I wanted to do something with him. Or I would accuse him of not paying enough attention to me, or of spending too much time working. Sometimes tears would be the only outward sign that I was feeling disconnected.

    This tactic of trying to get what we want through accusation or complaint is very normal for many of us. Because if we straight out say what we long for we are exposing our heart. We are showing our vulnerability. And that can be very uncomfortable.

    This is doubly true for those of us like me who tend to be very sensitive and driven by feeling. We often feel shame about what is seen as abnormal emotionality. We prefer to appear as the culture expects us to be: strong and steady, certainly not needy!

    But because of our conscientious and caring nature, we tend to value and cherish deep connection above much else. This makes revealing our tender vulnerable heart in intimate relationship especially unnerving, as it seems so much is at stake.

    We prefer to stay safely guarded behind our complaint. It is easier to focus on what our partner isn’t giving us. If we never share what we want outright, they could never reject us. Right?

    Wrong. What we often get in response is distance. Which feels to many of us remarkably like rejection.

    Ironically, it is the very act of showing our heart in this naked way that has the power to create that deep intimacy we long for. Scary as it may be.

    I will put simply what years of reading relationship books never made clear for me, but trial and error (lots of it!) have:

    If your subtle hints or outright complaints aren’t working, you need to ask for what you want. With your voice. When you frame your request positively, with no hint of complaint or disrespect, it will blow your mind how effective it is!

    Here are some easy ways to make sharing your desire to connect a positive experience for both you and your partner:

    1. Discover what you desire.

    When you are tempted to accuse, complain, or withdraw in a sense of anticipated rejection, take it as a sign to discover what you actually desire.

    This might require some deep listening—to yourself! Luckily that is a skill that sensitive people are innately good at—we are naturally attuned to what our hearts are asking of us. So use that to your advantage. Ask yourself, “What do l really want? How do I long to connect?”

    There are so many ways to feel a sense of loving connection with our partner. We may desire different types of intimacy at different moments, so the answer may be different every time. And it will be unique to you. Not everyone feels most connected when snuggling, like I do.

    Some of us feel most close when we simply share time together engaging in activity like cooking a meal, dining out, playing a card game, hiking a mountain, etc. For some of us, receiving a gift or some words of appreciating is powerfully connecting. Having long meaningful conversations is another way I feel very close to my partner.

    So take the time to discover your most pure longing for that moment. Perhaps you actually just want time to connect with yourself. But if it is a longing for intimacy with your partner, prepare to present it.

    2. Do not deny or condemn your longing to connect.

    Remind yourself that this longing is simply human. Trust that your desire to feel loved and loving is benevolent. In fact, it is essential for our mental, emotional, and physical health to have affectionate touch and loving attention.

    Did you know that having a loving and supportive long-term relationship predicts longevity more than not being a smoker or not being obese? It’s also the single biggest predictor of overall life happiness. This is especially so for those of us with the tendency toward sensitivity.

    Reassuring yourself of all this helps tremendously when you are amping up your courage.

    3. Make it easier to ask.

    If there is fear, notice it is simple energy in the form of sensations in the body. Melt it with breath by taking a few deep belly breaths. Sense your hands or feet, the softness of your lips. Wiggle them all a little. This will help ease fear’s grip. Then ask for what you want using a positive, confident as possible, non-demanding tone.

    Keep in mind that most partners feel wonderful when they can please their loved ones, especially when they are being respected. So asking in the following ways can be a gift to him, as well as yourself.

    Eliminating the word “you” and simply stating what you want often inspires in your partner a desire to rise up and please you. For example, “I would love to be held right now”.

    Yet, sometimes it can be too frightening to say those words, so make it easier for yourself and say, “I miss you. Any chance you are up for cozying up together on the couch?” Or, “I would love it if you would hold me.”

    You can use the same words if you desire to connect in other less physical ways. For example, “I miss you. Any chance you are up for eating a meal alone together by candlelight after the kids go to bed?” Or, “ I would love to go for a hike together tomorrow.”

    Last time I asked my partner in such a way he responded, “I totally want to when you say it like that.”

    Find your own most natural way to express your request, with no trace of complaint.

    Risk your partner seeing your longing. More likely than not they will find it sexy and captivating. They will be inspired to show up more fully, and effortlessly return the tenderness, and you will be deeply awash in connected intimacy.

    4. Understand and honor the Pendulum Principle.

    Know that it is totally normal for partners to have different needs for closeness and space in the relationship. Sometimes the timing is off and your bid for closeness may line up with your partner’s need for space.

    I call it the Pendulum Principle. Like a pendulum, healthy people (and especially highly sensitive people) swing back and forth between needing independence and togetherness. Go far in the direction of independence and it is time to swing back toward togetherness. This happens for all of us.

    For example, there have been times I have asked for connection and my man has been literally falling asleep as I spoke. As tempting as it is to take it personally if they cannot or do not want to connect at that particular moment, please refrain. Speaking from experience, that will only create resentment and distance.

    Remind yourself that your sweetie is simply tired, has something else weighing on their mind, or needs some space to do their own thing for a bit. Trust that your brave vulnerability is still having a beautiful affect and your loving request was heard and appreciated. When the time is right for your partner, they will be much more excited to honor it than when it came in the form of a complaint.

    5. Prep your partner for the next time the complaint monster shows up. 

    As the saying goes, old habits die hard. It is likely you will need to keep practicing this new, more positively assertive way of getting your intimacy needs met before it becomes habit.

    It can help to have a conversation about how this can be hard for you and how deeply you want to be able to voice your need for intimacy in a positive way. Tell them you’d love their support as you navigate the challenge of changing your habit. Ask them to help you out if they ever notice you closing down or beginning to complain about them not showing up for you.

    Your partner will likely be more than happy to help you grow in this way—but you’ve got to ask!

    Ever since I learned how to reveal my deep wish to feel loved in the form of a request, my partner and I have been experiencing richer intimacy that ever. I am letting him see my real exposed self. My vulnerability is magnetic. It allows him to actually feel connected with me, the true tender me, and makes honoring my request a luscious delight.

    Once he said, “It is so great when you ask because sometimes I just get caught up in other things and forget how important it is for me to connect like that. Thank you for reminding me of what really matters.”

  • The Betrayal of Expectations: Coping When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan

    The Betrayal of Expectations: Coping When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan

    “What will mess you up most in life is the picture in your head of how it is supposed to be.” ~Unknown

    I expected to get into college. I expected to have a career after a lot of hard work, and that one day I’d meet a nice man and we would get married. We would buy our first house together and start a family, picking out a crib and the baby’s “going home” outfit and organizing a drawer full of diapers. We’d have more babies and go on vacations and grow old together.

    I expected that one day I’d take care of him until he took his last breath, and then I’d join a travel group with other retired women. My adult children would come over for dinner, and we’d take a family vacation with the grandchildren every year. That’s how it all played out in my mind.

    I had a linear view of life. You go to point A, B, C, and so on. You do what you’re supposed to do and you work hard. It was very simple, life with these expectations. Follow the recipe and then eat your dessert.

    Spoiler alert: Life was only that simple until the universe pulled the rug out from beneath my feet.

    It was an ordinary school day when my life fell apart. These sort of things usually happen on ordinary days.

    My husband and I were both teachers, and we woke up before the sun rose to begin our assembly line of breakfast and lunch preparations. Afterward we’d wrangle children and get them dressed and ready for departure, which was basically like herding cats. Then, he dropped them off at their respective places. I picked everyone up after school.

    In between all of that we worked and went to meetings and ran errands and bathed children and cooked dinner and tended to all the usual moving parts of domestic life.

    Except on that ordinary day, none of it happened.

    On April 27, 2016 I woke up and found my husband dying on the living room floor. Out of left field, in an instant, the life I expected was gone.

    I never considered the possibility of becoming a thirty-four-year-old widow with a one-year-old who I was still nursing, a three-year-old barely talking in sentences, and a six-year-old only two months away from his kindergarten graduation.

    I was thrust into an alternate reality of gnarled, tangled grief, and it was in this new place that I had the painful realization that the life I knew, the one that was familiar and most comfortable to me, was over.

    My husband and I planned each of our children down to the day. We even had number four, the one who would never be, scheduled in the calendar.

    But now I was a single mother. A widow.

    It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but during this time I wasn’t only mourning the loss of my husband. Sure, I missed him so much that I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I lived my days in exile, not knowing where I belonged. The tediousness of my new life as a single mother wore me down to the bones. The loneliness that festered inside of me created a painful hollowness that felt hopeless; the unfairness of this cosmic roll of the dice made me want to give up more times than I would like to admit.

    But there was something else I was grieving: the loss of the life that I expected to live. My dashed expectations. The trajectory of my life that was forever altered, now headed in an unknown direction that felt like it would surely kill me.

    We expect our lives to materialize the way we envision them in our hopes and dreams. When life doesn’t go as planned, it can be difficult to reconcile the disappointment of our new reality. Resistance is the first defense. We don’t want to believe or accept the change.

    This wasn’t the life I chose. I deserved something better, I thought. “This” seemed so patently unfair. Surely there were worse people who were more deserving of this kind of lightning to strike them instead—so why me? I clung to those thoughts and let them bury me deeper and deeper into the abyss. The resistance might have been the catalyst to the darker parts of grief.

    It’s such a disappointing, embarrassing revelation when you realize that you never actually had complete control. It feels like you were lied to. All of those years you spent with your first-world blinders on, thinking that you could plan every detail. It was cute while it lasted. Now it just felt stupid.

    I realized what expectations really were.

    Nothing.

    My expectations were never real. They were nothing more than thoughts in my head. Assumptions. Desires. Never guarantees.

    It was always like that, but for me it had been on a micro level. Micro-disappointment, like not getting the job I thought I wanted. A relationship that ended. Losing a bid on a house. I never prepared myself for the real disappointment in life. Earth-shattering disappointment that makes your world crumble and introduces you to your new constant companion: pain.

    We usually think the bad stuff we hear about only happens to other people. We’re aware that it exists, but not in our reality. Just an abstract thing somewhere else in the world.

    Until it happens to us.

    I remember how mad my husband used to get when I’d be surfing Facebook, bemoaning that so-and-so got a new car, or how in love a couple seemed to be, and why can’t we go to Hawaii like so-and-so?

    “Everyone puts their best on Facebook,” Kenneth told me. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

    “No,” I insisted, shaking my head. “So-and-so and so-and-so are madly in love. Look at how passionate they are with each other. Why don’t we hold hands like that?”

    “We have three kids under five,” he said, rolling his eyes.

    I wish Kenneth lived long enough to know that the so-and-so’s got divorced. He would have told me “I told you so.” And for once, I would have gladly told him he was right.

    It’s memories like those that I like to lean into. Life can’t be as horrible or as wonderful as it appears in my head. There has to be middle ground.

    When I’m feeling an extreme of any emotion, I have to remind myself of this. It’s just thoughts in my head. Sandcastles built out of feelings, and sandcastles get washed away when the tide rises and brings in a new day. It’s not a matter of being a good or a bad thing. It just is.

    My expectations have been a thing that I’ve had to live with my entire life. I’ve always had high expectations for myself. Failure was not supposed to be a thing. As a widow, I found myself floundering in a new reality where I felt like I was constantly failing. Legitimately not capable of doing what I once could.

    I wasn’t the same mother to my children. This new me had less time and patience. She was more tired and overworked and in pain. I had to learn to live with the limitations of my new life. My disappointment pooled inside of me like poison. Nothing I could do was enough. I wasn’t enough. Those are all very toxic feelings to carry around when you are already drowning in grief.

    But there is only so much time you can spend falling deeper into your pit of despair. One day you realize that you are no longer falling and have in fact reached the bottom. There you are, alone with your despair, so sick of yourself that you can’t even handle your own negative thoughts anymore. You can’t take one more second of it.

    This is your moment to get up and wash yourself off and start over.

    When the despair stops roaring in your ears and you have a moment of quiet, you can begin to think objectively about your life. Your new life.

    I realized what was wrong with me. My problem, I decided, came from my expectations. They were the root cause of my despair.

    I expected a long life with my husband, even though he was always a mortal being who was never promised to be mine forever. I expected a lot of things, except for the only thing that was true about life: We are only guaranteed today. Yesterday is over. Tomorrow is unknown.

    I knew I wanted to live as best as I could. I wanted a fulfilling life that was hopeful, joyful, and meaningful. I’d have to change my expectations if I wanted all of that. It was impossible to get rid of the expectations completely. I’m only human. Besides, expectations do serve a purpose. They’ve helped me in life. They’ve also hurt me.

    The middle ground, I decided, was finding “flexible expectations.” I couldn’t be rigid in my thinking. I wanted to have standards and goals, but I needed to have wiggle room for the inevitableness of life not going as planned.

    I had to become more resilient and strategic about my setbacks. I needed to have long-term perspective and not feel like individual moments in my life were the be-all, end-all. I needed to be less attached to a prescribed way to live.

    You realize that in a world full of uncontrollable circumstances, the most powerful line of defense that you have completely in your control is how you think.

    Your attitude.

    Your perspective. Is that glass half-full or half-empty? You decide.

    How you think is your resilience. Your ability to get back up and dust yourself off. The way that you know life is worth living, not only during the moments of joy, but also during the challenges and pain and heartbreak, and this is the reason you persevere.

    Maybe my expectations never betrayed me after all. Maybe it was actually supposed to be one of my greatest teachers in life.

    Around a year after my husband died, I sat down and made a list of “good” and “bad” from the past year. It had gone by in such a blur that I felt like I needed to go back over the details. I anticipated a pity party as I recalled all of the terribleness.

    The bad: my husband died. Single.

    The good: new friendships, a loving community who showed up for us when we needed them, trips to Japan and Italy and Denmark, saw an old friend for the first time in eleven years, more productive than ever with my writing, my kids were happy and adjusted little people, we had a nice roof over our heads, I loved my job that didn’t feel like a job, we were healthy, I worked on the election (even if it meant precinct walking with the toddler on my back as a single mother—but I did it!), and so much more. I kept thinking of new things to add to the list.

    It was very telling. We tend to focus on the negative. My mind wanted to go back to the dark moments of the past year. But after re-reading the list, it was clear that the year wasn’t all bad. There were many bright spots in the hardest year of my life.

    Mooji said, “Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go.”

    I try to always remember that.

    It’s okay to feel terrible. You aren’t broken for feeling that way. You just can’t let yourself get attached to the feelings. There will be days when life feels too hard. You will feel pain and loneliness and fear that will make you suffer. None of it reflects who you are, nor are they any indication of what your future looks like. They are merely the temporary visitors.

    When the feelings visit me, I acknowledge the pain. Hunker down. Maybe clear my schedule. Lower my expectations of productivity. Give myself permission to rest while I let the thoughts pass. Then I move on. It’s not that you ever forget the pain, but moving on is a way to compartmentalize it so it does not destroy you.

    Eighteen months later, I’m a different person than who I was before my husband died. It’s not the life that I initially chose, but in many ways I am living a more intentional life with a lot more choice. There is some degree of excitement in what I call my “renaissance.” There are no rules. You just live as authentically as you can, with what you have, doing the best you can, and that’s it. No secrets.

    Everything that you need to persevere is already inside of you, and this truth is liberating.

  • The 10 Most Important Things We Can Do for the People We Love

    The 10 Most Important Things We Can Do for the People We Love

    People. Life is all about people.

    We don’t have to have a ton of relationships, but we all need people in our lives who get us. Who’ve seen our freak flag countless times and love when it comes out.

    People who tag us on memes that capture our spirit, or Tasty videos they know we’d drool over. People who text us with random pictures of bumper stickers or book covers or bath mats or beard accessories with a note that reads “Saw this and thought of you.”

    We all need these kind of close connections to feel a sense of security and belonging in the world.

    We need people who think of us, look out for us, accept us, bring out the best in us, and challenge us to be the best us we can possibly be. And we need to be that person for them.

    It could be the family you were born into, the one that you chose, or the one that chose you after plowing down the big wall you erected to keep yourself safe.

    Whoever makes up your tribe, and regardless of its size, these are the kinds of relationships that make everything else seem manageable.

    Whether you’re having a hard day or a hard month or a hard year, a call or a hug from the right person can remind you that life really is worth living. And when things are going well, it’s all the more enjoyable for having people you love to share it with.

    Most of us would agree that our relationships are the most important thing. That a layoff or lost opportunity can be tolerated so long as the people we love are healthy and safe.

    And yet it’s all too easy to lose sight of the big picture when we’re knee-deep in the struggles of our daily lives. It’s easy to deprioritize the little things that keep relationships strong when we’re worried about our debt and our deadlines.

    It’s human nature—our negativity bias: we’re more sensitive to what’s going wrong than what’s going right. It’s how we’re wired, a means to keep ourselves safe.

    But life is about more than just being safe. Or at least I want it to be. I want to focus more on what I love than what I fear. I want to be proactive, not just reactive. I want to wake up every day and be the good that happens to someone else instead of just playing defense to prevent bad from happening to me.

    So this year, instead of focusing mostly on everything I want to gain or achieve, I plan to live each day with the following intentions in mind.

    I intend to…

    1. Be present.

    I will put down my phone and focus fully on the person in front of me. My texts and emails will be there later. The person in front of me won’t.

    2. Listen deeply.

    Instead of plotting what I’m going to say next, or collecting mental buckets of sage advice I can’t wait to dole out, I will listen completely, with the primary goals of understanding and being there.

    3. Speak truthfully.

    Even when it feels awkward and uncomfortable, I will share what’s true for me. I won’t exclude the messy parts, no matter how tempting it may be to try to appear perfect. The jig is up—I’m not. Not even close! And neither are you. Let’s be beautiful messes together.

    4. Accept fully.

    I will see your quirks and edges and shortcomings and peccadillos and will accept them all as crucial parts of the complete package that is you.

    5. Interpret compassionately.

    Instead of assuming the worst, I will give you the benefit of the doubt, as I would want to receive it. I’ll assume you didn’t mean to be rude or to hurt my feelings. That it came out wrong, or you were triggered and reacting from a place of hurt, or you were simply having a bad day. And then I’ll stop assuming and ask to verify, “Is everything okay?”

    6. Forgive often.

    I will take every perceived slight or offense and put it through my mental shredder before I go to sleep each night. And if I can’t let it go, perhaps because it’s too big to simply discard, I’ll tell you how I feel and what I need so we can work through it together.

    7. Appreciate vocally.

    I will let you know that I admire how you always stick up for the little guy and love how you make everyone laugh. I will compliment you on your passions, your parenting, and how you exude peace, because you’re awesome and you should know it.

    8. Give freely.

    I will give my love, support, understanding, and well wishes; I’ll give things new and old that I think will be helpful. If there’s something you need that I no longer do, I’ll send it with a note that reads, “I thought you could put this to good use. And if not, sorry for sending you clutter!”

    9. Remain unbiased.

    I will put aside everything I think I know about you based on who you appear to be, and will be open-minded when you tell me or show me what you believe and what you stand for.

    10. Love anyway.

    Even if you’re stubborn or moody or judgmental, I will love you anyway. And when I’m stubborn, moody, and judgmental I’ll try to do the same for myself. I’ll try to rise above petty thoughts and sweeping generalizations and keep sight of who you and I really are: good people who are doing our best to navigate a sometimes-painful world.

    Because we all stress and strain and struggle sometimes. We all get fed up, ticked off, and let down, and at times we all lash out.

    In these moments when we feel lost and down on ourselves, it helps to see ourselves through the eyes of someone who believes in us. And it helps to remember we’re not alone, and that someone else really cares.

    Someone who’ll stand by us at our worst and inspire us to be our best.

    Someone who’ll sit on a roof with us and and talk about everything big or nothing important for a while. Someone who might not always know which one we need, but who’s willing to ask and find out.

    This is the kind of friend I want to have, and the kind of friend I want to be. Because life is all about people. And all people need a little love.

  • Why I No Longer Depend on Anyone Else for Happiness, Fun, or Excitement

    Why I No Longer Depend on Anyone Else for Happiness, Fun, or Excitement

    “Never put the key to your happiness in someone else’s pocket.” ~Unknown

    It was Saturday night. I sat, at my breakfast bar in my apartment, alone and in semi-darkness. Only one small lamp was turned on in the corner.

    I was fuming, confused, and most of all, sad. I sprang off the breakfast barstool and began to pace. There were so many emotions circling around in me I had to keep moving in an effort to release them.

    I spun around and looked at the clock above my kitchen—it was almost 7pm! He had said he was going to be there by 6pm.

    Why was he not there? Did he not know I was depending on him? Didn’t he know I had planned my schedule to be there in time to hang out?

    I didn’t have any other plans and felt stuck waiting in limbo. Where was he? I felt the emotions rising toward my throat as they bubbled up and threatened to explode.

    I picked up my phone and called my boyfriend, trembling with frustration as the phone rang. He picked up on the third ring.

    I had been waiting to hang out with him after work all day. I had imagined us meeting on time at 6pm and having a great evening together.

    In my head, I had imagined us going out for a bite to eat and then maybe catching a new movie at the theatre or going to a comedy club. My day had been uneventful and boring, and I was looking forward to having an exciting evening.

    I had planned and expected and prepared perfectly, and he was ruining it again! Like so many nights in the past, his job had kept him late and he was not there for me when I needed him.

    “Where are you?” I barked in his ear as soon as he picked up the phone. “I’ve been waiting. I’m here at my apartment waiting to hang out with you, and you’re not here. I’ve been looking forward to hanging out all day!”

    He seemed taken aback by my anger, and he fumbled for an answer to soothe me. He explained that work had kept him late and he was on his way back. He apologized for not updating me on his arrival time and assured me that he would be there soon. I spat out an “Okay, whatever,” and hung up angrily.

    And there it was—the usual start to our weekends together. I slumped down in a kitchen chair realizing I had done it again. What was wrong with me?

    My boyfriend worked a lot. Almost ten-hour days when you added it all up. And he worked Saturdays too. Still, I always seemed to depend on him to bring some excitement and joy to my monotonous days.

    Every Saturday would start the same: I would feel like I had been bored and waiting all week to have time together and do something fun, and he would usually arrive late or tired after work and I’d be crushed and irritated. I would then fire off some hurtful words that would give a sour taste to our weekends together right from the start.

    It was a vicious cycle. And I never understood why I was so dependent on my boyfriend and why I felt so abandoned and hurt if we were not able to hang out exactly when or how I wanted.

    It wouldn’t be until several weeks later that the cure to this vicious cycle came to me and the person to blame became clear.

    One Saturday night my boyfriend decided to go out with one of his close guy friends instead of hanging out with me. Immediately the abandonment and lonely bells started to sound off noisily in my head. I felt the anger rising in me, and I spent the next day simultaneously fuming and hurt.

    But the following day when my boyfriend and I sat down to talk about it, I started to realize something: While he could make an effort to text or call me if he was going to be late in the future, the real issue was not with my boyfriend. The problem was me.

    It took a few days of serious introspection, but I finally realized that I depended on my boyfriend for my happiness. I expected him to always be there emotionally and physically, to handle any issue I was going through.

    I unknowingly expected him to tackle any kind of emotional turmoil in my head, and to be there to take me out and show me a good time whenever was convenient for me, regardless of his schedule.

    In fact, if he didn’t do these things perfectly and at my convenience, I felt hurt and abandoned and lashed out. I saw it as a sign that he did not love me and did not care about our relationship.

    It was hard to admit, but having a boyfriend had allowed me to use another person as a crutch. I expected him to be perfect and give me all the things I was not providing for myself—emotional release, a social life, and validation.

    It became clear to me that I had put an unfair burden on him. I knew our relationship would not survive if I did not make a change.

    Here are the top three things I realized during that time (insights that can apply in romantic or platonic relationships):

    1. Expecting someone else to make me happy is objectifying them.

    In a sense, my boyfriend was a tool for my happiness. I had placed an enormous amount of pressure on him to perfectly handle all my difficulties and supply all the things that were missing in my life.

    But only I have the right toolbox that can “fix” what isn’t working. My boyfriend is not a tool. He is a whole person with his own emotions, struggles, goals, hopes, and dreams. Reducing him to a tool for my happiness is objectification, and it limits the growth and deepening of our relationship.

    It is unfair to expect someone to help you become a whole person. More importantly, we already have everything we need within us to live our best life; we do not have to look outside ourselves or to anyone else.

    This relationship has taught me many lessons, but perhaps the biggest one is that I cannot wait around for anyone else to bring happiness and excitement to my life. I have to go out there and create it! I also cannot expect one person alone to take my loneliness away.

    2. I alone am responsible for my happiness and excitement in life.

    Because I work from home and lack coworkers and social interaction, I am susceptible to feeling isolated. There were so many days when I would count on my boyfriend to come pick me up, take me out, or invite me to a fun event. If this did not happen, I would feel unhappy and angry. But really, I should never depend on someone else to bring me excitement, joy, or happiness. That is my responsibility!

    I eventually realized that instead of depending on my boyfriend to fill a void in my life, I had to start taking accountability and doing it for myself.

    From then onward, I started reconnecting with old friends and going out more. I said yes to different activities and invitations. Creative events like painting, spoken word, and concerts make me happy, so I now make a point to do these things with or without my boyfriend.

    Having my own friends outside of my romantic relationship—my own interests, my own invitations, and my own plans—keeps me feeling whole. It also reminds me that I have to take charge of my day, my emotions, and my social life.

    I started getting out of my comfort zone and outside of the overly introverted bubble that kept me so lonely all the time. Now that I have reconnected with and strengthened my relationship with my own circle of friends, I no longer put pressure on my boyfriend.

    I now know that even if he has to cancel plans or he chooses to hang with another friend, it does not make or break my day. I have my own support group and circle of friends to hang out with, and I can bring excitement to my own life.

    3. You can reclaim your power.

    If you’re like me, you are probably in the habit of placing your power in others’ hands. You may think thoughts along the lines of:

    If he doesn’t text me today, I’m going to be crushed

    If she doesn’t go to this event with me tonight, I’m going to be so disappointed and I’m just not going to go at all.

    If they don’t invite me to the party on Friday, my night will be ruined!

    I used to say these kinds of things often, and still have to fight against this kind of thinking. In all of these statements, I am letting someone else’s actions control my own mood and happiness. I am letting the actions of others affect what I choose to do.

    Oftentimes, if my boyfriend and I went the day without talking, I would let it ruin my entire day. I didn’t even try to find things that I liked to do to spice up my day, or hang out with friends, or do something exciting. I just wallowed in my pity and irritation. I allowed his actions to control me. I gave my power to him.

    I would also depend on my boyfriend to go to events with me. If he was not able to make it because of his job or an emergency, I wouldn’t go at all (even if I had been looking forward to it). Then, because I felt like I had missed out, I would be mad and disappointed with him.

    That is releasing my power into his hands. Now, even though I can be quiet and sometimes nervous about new social situations, I will make a point to still go to an event even if my friends or boyfriend cannot make it. As my mother used to say, “Don’t let one monkey stop your show.”

    Do you put your power in other people’s hands? Will someone canceling plans or doing something unexpected wreck your day, or will you empower yourself to create your own happiness?

    Even if someone changes plans or cannot go to a fun event with you, if it will bring you happiness, go anyway! Do not allow the actions of others to control your actions or emotions. Reclaim your power.

    —

    I am working to create a tighter circle of friends, and I understand clearly that I cannot depend solely on my boyfriend (or any other person for that matter) for my happiness and social life. Our relationship will not survive if I do not learn to take responsibility for my happiness and stop waiting around for one person.

    This had been a hard lesson for me, but it is one that I chose to act on every week, and I will continue to work on it because the journey to empowerment and happiness is a lifelong one.

  • Tired of Waiting? How to Thrive When Your Life Feels On Hold

    Tired of Waiting? How to Thrive When Your Life Feels On Hold

    “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” ~Johann Wolfang von Goethe

    Silence. Not a word.

    Another day is over. The news you were waiting for didn’t arrive.

    Everyone else around you keeps moving. They know where they’re going.

    You don’t. You watch the days go by and think of all the things you could have done. You feel like you’re wasting your time.

    It seems pretty pointless. You’re not where you want to be.

    Sometimes we have to wait. You left one job, but the next one is not yet here. You want to go back to the soccer field, but your injury is not yet healed. You’re stuck in a city you just want to leave behind. Or you just simply don’t know what to do next.

    In May, my husband and I moved across the world from Germany, my home for over twenty-five years, to Canada, his home country. We had already applied for permanent residence for me months before we came.

    Give it a few weeks and it will arrive, we thought. Then I could start looking for a job. Start my career. Move forward.

    Weeks became months. August came and I was still hopeful. I checked the mailbox every day. Maybe today we would hear something. But still nothing.

    The heat of summer started to fade and I became more anxious. I was expecting to hear the big news any day, but the leaves turned colorful and pumpkins popped up in the stores and I still hadn’t received my permit.

    Over the course of a summer and a fall, I was watching my friends moving forward. Applying for new jobs, preparing for interviews, getting promoted. Friends from Germany I graduated with were starting their careers. Some of them started a family.

    I was waiting. And the longer the waiting continued, the more anxious I got. As a twenty-seven-year-old graduate, I felt like I had no time to waste.

    Even more, I was ready to work. Apply what I’ve learned. Improve my skillset. Learn new things. Contribute to a cause. Be part of something. Instead, I had to wait. I felt slowed down. Left behind.

    But as fall came, something in me started to change slowly. I started to come to terms with my circumstances. My situation hadn‘t changed; I had. I realized that there were five things that, with the help of my husband and family, helped me turn this waiting period around.

    1. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

    This first point is crucial.

    Some mornings you might not even want to get out of bed. What for? Even if you do, you feel no motivation to get anything started or done. What’s the point?

    It might seem like life has hit the pause button, but life is still happening. And it is still up to you what you do with your circumstances.

    So focus on what you can do. Live. Right now. Every day. Don’t make this all about the wait. Make it about you. Then there is really no reason to feel sorry at all.

    2. Watch your mouth.

    Words are powerful, even if they aren’t said out loud. The way you think and talk about your situation will determine how you feel about it.

    In the evening, when my husband asked me what I did that day, I quite often said, “Nothing, really.” Of course I had done a lot of things every day. What I really meant was: “I did a lot of things, but they don’t count.” They didn’t count in my head because it wasn’t what I wanted to do. It’s not what I though I should be doing.

    Silly, I know. And my husband would call me on it, which eventually changed my language. And that eventually changed my perspective on things.

    Share your crappy feelings with people. Be honest with them. But make sure these are people who help you. Who challenge you. Who don’t let you sit in it.

    Guard your thoughts when you are alone. Don’t allow yourself to sit in your negative feelings. Put a visual reminder on your desk. A quote maybe. Write it on your bathroom mirror. Have a copy of it in your wallet.

    You might not be where you want to be in the long run, but that’s life. It takes time. As long as you are on the right path, every step counts. And if you don’t know where your path is going, you were just given the perfect opportunity to find out!

    3. Don’t make excuses.

    It’s easy to find reasons not to do things. Especially when you’re waiting. Because what you really want is just around the corner. The present is just a weird in-between-space.

    Wrong. Now is the time to try new things. To step out of your comfort zone. To discover new passions and gifts.

    In the past months, I taught myself more about cameras and video editing, I took a guest blogging course, I started to take on a few creative projects around the house, I connected to new people in the city, and I explored my new home.

    Some of it might help my career. Some of it was purely for enjoyment. But everything I did helped me to learn—what I enjoy, what I am good at, how I want to live my life.

    So pick one thing you want to do. A creative project. A class. Your own book. Start it. Commit to it. Don’t be scared that it’s going to take you a lot of time. Let it take you out of your comfort zone. You don’t have to know yet where it’s going to take you.

    4. Don’t compare.

    So you’ve tried all of the above. You’ve done good work. You feel great.

    But then you start comparing yourself to the people around you. Friends, family, coworkers.

    Of course, you pick the ones who aren’t in a similar situation. Those who know exactly what they want. Those who just did the big move out of the city. Those who just got a job.

    Don’t. I know it’s hard, because it feels like it’s being rubbed in your face: you’re not there yet. And the whole cycle of feeling sorry for yourself, negative words, and cheap excuses starts again.

    Be happy for these people. Remember that one day, it’s going to be you. It’s just going to take a few extra steps. That’s fine. Because until then, there are plenty of opportunities and lots of life to live.

    One thing that helps me is to stay away from certain people and groups on social media. I don’t blame people for posting about all the awesome things that happen in their lives. I just know my weak spot. I know I instantly compare myself. So I unfollowed a bunch of people to avoid it, for my own sake.

    5. Keep moving.

    You know that exercising keeps you healthy. It makes you strong and helps you stay in shape. But it also improves your mood and your sleep. It reduces stress and anxiety. It helps your brain to function better.

    You, of all people, want a functioning brain. For all the reasons listed above. That’s why you need to move your physical body in this period of waiting.

    Find the way to workout that works best for you. I used to run a lot, so I bought myself a new pair of runners. When I am overwhelmed with my situation, I put them on and run it off.

    It can be as simple or fancy as you like—just do it. Sign up for a gym class. Join a soccer team. Go for long walks. Do yoga with the help of some YouTube videos.

    Of course, this point will look differently for you if you’re waiting is caused by a physical injury. You’re doctor and physiotherapist have probably told you already what exercises and how much of it will help your body to recover.

    In any case, commit to exercising. Make time for it. Stick with it.

    You Can Do It

    Waiting sucks. Especially when there is no end in sight and you’ve done everything you can.

    But changing the way you approach this waiting period can make all the difference.

    Imagine achieving a goal taking one step every single day.

    Imagine learning a new skillset that will help you when you can finally take the next step.

    Imagine discovering a new passion that will determine the way your life is going.

    Start by trying one of the steps above tomorrow morning when you get out of bed.

    Try a different step every day. Keep those that work and lose those that don’t.

    You can make this period of waiting in your life a personal success!

  • A First Aid Kit for When Life Falls Apart

    A First Aid Kit for When Life Falls Apart

    “What if pain—like love—is just a place brave people visit?” ~Glennon Doyle

    It’s one of life’s greatest paradoxes: When life is easy, everything seems easy. When life is hard, everything seems hard.

    This one keeps coming back to me and I keep trying to figure it out. Why do we end up in these spirals of “all good” or “all bad”? How can we get out of the “all bad” faster next time we get trapped? How can we help ourselves get out of there?

    I’ve had periods in my life when all seemed lost. When I haven’t been able to fathom ever getting out of bed with ease again. When I’ve thought my current situation would go on forever or I’ve been convinced that suffering was my destiny.

    My struggles have often been linked to physical illness. With six different autoimmune diagnoses, I truly felt my life was over. Before even turning thirty years old my life prognosis was far from optimistic.

    I call this period, and others like it, the black hole. I managed to get out of there at that time via some major lifestyle changes, involving my body, mind, and spirit.

    But I’ve also realized that most of the time, it’s the internal, silent struggle that challenges us the most. And, sure, I’ve visited there again in the recent five years, and I know I probably will in the future. I think it’s part of the human experience.

    So, how do we do it? How can we translate the tools that are so obvious to us when we’re on a roll to be accessible to us also when life is on a downward spiral? This is the first aid kit I’ve created for myself. I hope it can help you too.

    1. Feel your feelings. 

    If you’re a highly sensitive person, like me, you’re likely aware of your emotions. You know you have them. They never leave your side and you’re constantly reminded of what state you’re currently in. So, how do you deal with this fact?

    Well, one solution is to embrace it. Be with your feelings. Sit down, welcome any emotion that needs to come forth, and feel it. You don’t always need to understand. You don’t need to analyze. You don’t need to fix anything, just be with it.

    2. Let people in.

    Who in the world told us that being human in this day and age is easy? Where did we get that crazy idea from? It’s not easy. Not always anyhow. Life can be hard.

    Talk to someone that you trust. Remind them in advance that all you need from them is to listen, no advice needed in this stage. Just let it out, all of it. Just having someone to listen can take you a long way.

    3. Remember you’re not alone.

    Whatever you are feeling or experiencing right now, you are not alone. You are unique and special, but your experiences and emotions are not.

    You didn’t invent the feeling you’re experiencing right now. Someone else, somewhere in the world, is experiencing exactly what you’re experiencing right at this very moment. It may be triggered by different things, but the emotion is the same. You’re not alone.

    4. Write it out.

    Our mind has this nasty habit of getting stuck on repeat. Same thought looping, over and over again. Grab a pen and paper or sit down in front of your computer and write. Let it all out. Don’t censor yourself. Take the pressure off by dumping it all out. Truly cathartic.

    5. Move outside.

    Nature has amazing healing abilities. Every time I go to it for solace, I’m reminded. Yes, this is amazing and I get to tap into something that’s beyond what my mind can comprehend. I don’t need to understand it. I just need to sit down by the water, lean on a tree, or feel the wind on my face. Trust that this is healing you. If you can move your body while tapping into this wisdom, do this too.

    6. Maybe you’re not dying?

    Our mind sometimes has a tendency to exaggerate, just a little bit. Are you really in mortal danger right now? Is your life about to end or is that just the emotion you’re experiencing?

    If you’re breathing, your heart is beating, you have two feet on the ground, you are essentially all right. You are okay. Your mind might be telling you a false drama about something that is not really playing out right now, at this very moment. Be with the present and rest there for a while.

    7. This too will change.

    This is my favorite mindfulness quote. Being alive is accepting change as the only constant.

    “Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).” ~James Baraz

    Know that whatever you are going through right now, it will change. It might not all be good and fine tomorrow, but it will be different, if ever just slightly. Things will change.

    I wrote this poem to myself a few years back, to remind myself. I think it sums it up quite perfectly.

    To me, if I ever end up there again, and to anyone else, who’s ever been there, or are right now, in the black hole:

    It will get better. There is a meaning to what you’re going through.

    You will feel like living again.

    If you can’t do anything else but breathe, do just that; you don’t have to do anything else.  

    Don’t fight it. Let it be. It is as it should be and it’s okay. Just be. Don’t judge. Let go.

    Look at what’s beautiful. Listen to what gives you peace. Eat what tastes good. Do what feels nice. Even if it feels pointless right now, it’s good for your soul.  

    Ask for help.

    Let other people help you. Let other people take care of you.

    Cry. Scream. Wail. Laugh. Sleep. Close your eyes. Do whatever you need to do. Let it out. And embrace.  

    It will get better. I promise.

    Those are not just words on a piece of paper for me. They are well-experienced truths. And maybe your life isn’t falling apart in the first place. Maybe it’s just rearranging for something better to come.

  • How to Move Through Feelings of Body Shame

    How to Move Through Feelings of Body Shame

    “Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” ~Brené Brown

    My husband’s legs are smaller than mine.

    I wish I could tell you that when I first realized this (when we were dating) I wasn’t emotionally triggered. And that I didn’t care.

    But, I can’t.

    Instead, I can tell you that I walked right up next to him, planted my thigh next to his, and awkwardly declared, “Ha! My legs are bigger than yours!”

    I can still see him looking right back at me, saying, “So? I love your legs.”

    I didn’t know what to say.

    I thought—even though it wasn’t true—he’d say my legs weren’t bigger.

    But, he didn’t. He told the truth. And that truth was that my legs were (and are) bigger.

    I said nothing to him in return, except a mumbled “thank you” and changed the conversation topic. All while my body insecurities and feelings of shame and embarrassment jumbled up inside of me.

    I had some thinking to do.

    What was that?

    This stuff was supposed to be behind me. But here it was, staring me in the face.

    So I rolled up my sleeves.

    I needed to move through these feelings of body shame.

    Below are the five steps I used and that you can use too to move through body insecurities when you’re emotionally triggered.

    Step 1: Name your shame.

    By naming your shame you’re shining light on something that feels dark. And something that you’re embarrassed about.

    For example, in this experience, I named my shame with the following: “I’m feeling shameful because my legs are bigger than a man’s, and culturally, I feel it should be the opposite. I’m used to seeing images of the woman being smaller than the man.”

    By naming my shame not only was I lifting up a rock to let light in, I was allowing myself to get really clear on what my feelings of shame actually are and where they stem from.

    When you get triggered about your body size, name your shame. Write it out in a journal or if you need more time, allow yourself the time to digest your experience and come back to it. By recognizing that you want to name your shame, it’ll come to you when you’re ready.

    Step 2: Observe (instead of judge) your experience.

    Give yourself a break and stop judging yourself (or your body). Allow yourself to get curious about the experience and observe what happened. A helpful tactic to do this is pretending that you were a fly on the wall, witnessing your experience.

    What would that fly say happened in your experience?

    This allows you to stop beating yourself up and to get out of your head.

    For example, my judgmental experience with the “leg incident” would be, “I acted like a three-year-old and got super awkward and weird and started telling my now husband how much bigger my legs are than his. I’m a loser and so over dramatic.”

    My observational, “fly on the wall” experience would be, “I was feeling insecure and got triggered when I realized my legs were bigger than my husband’s legs.”

    See the difference?

    By making your triggering experience observational, you remove yourself from the experience. You allow yourself a different perspective. And it’s in this space that you can really move through something and learn from it, instead of stay stuck in it.

    Step 3: Own your experience.

    When we can own our experiences, we step back into our power. And we realize that we have more power than we think. Because we’re creating part of the experience, especially our reaction.

    Take my incident. When I own my part in the experience, I see that I chose my reaction.

    I can choose to feel bad about my body. Or, I can choose to be grateful for what my body allows me to do and that I have a partner who is accepting of me for me.

    Whether you had a “horrible food day,” got called a mean name, or feel insecure after scrolling through social media, own those feelings. Because once you name your shame and look at your experience objectively, you’ll realize that you’re the creator of your own reality and that somewhere in here there is something more for you to learn about yourself.

    I needed to learn that in relation to a man, a bigger body size doesn’t mean you’re any less feminine. And that there was still a part of me that was living based off of what society says is normal (i.e. the man should be bigger than the woman).

    There is no such thing as normal. This is the same thinking that has us feeling that we need to shrink ourselves to worthiness. In reality, this just isn’t true. Our size does not equate our worth.

    You see, it’s not about shrinking ourselves into happiness. It’s about caring for ourselves into health and happiness.

    You can do this when you begin to own your experiences and your part in them.

    Step 4: Move through (not around) your emotions.

    When you get to this step, you’ve already done a ton of work. This step is simply a reminder that working through triggers and funky emotions, especially surrounding our bodies and insecurities is hard work. We’re not taught this stuff in school.

    And in all honesty, it’s easier to just get angry when triggers come up and then pretend they never happened. But, what generally happens here is that the thing you need to work through will present itself again and again until you work through it.

    So make time to dissect what came up. You don’t need to do it all in one swoop. But plant the seed and allow the answers to come up. They will once you allow yourself and your mind to relax. Then, you can heal the wound, move through the trigger (or the belief) holding you back, and grow. Ultimately, you’ll feel more at peace with yourself and your body.

    Step 5: Choose a story that serves you.

    This is by far the most fun step. And will allow your wound to become a scar. Plus, it’s simple.

    Choose a new story that serves you.

    For example, my old story was, “Women should always be smaller than men. Especially, the ones they’re romantically involved with.”

    My new story, “The size of my physical body doesn’t determine if or how I’m loved. Especially, by the right romantic partner who sees me for who I am on a deeper level.”

    You see, we humans love to make up stories. They’re how we connect with one another. But, they’re also how we heal.

    So in your healing process, choose a story that serves you, heals you, and honors the direction you want to go.

    It’s not always easy, but I promise it’s worth it.

  • 3 Simple Ways to Make It a Happy New Year

    3 Simple Ways to Make It a Happy New Year

    “The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it’s all that matters.” ~Audrey Hepburn

    Happiness and its pursuit fascinate me.

    Like most people, I’m curious why on some mornings I wake up and the world is a wonderful place—the sun is shining, happiness oozes out of my heart like warm honey, and the sound of bird song brings a smile to my face. I can only describe this as bliss.

    On other mornings, it feels as if all color and wonder in world has drained away. My heart feels heavy in my chest. I’m indifferent to the sound of birds singing outside my window; if anything, it irritates me.

    Why? How? What is the difference that makes the difference with happiness? I’d love to have the answers.

    All I can do I share my truth. Share how I intend to make 2018 a happy new year.

    1. Focus on what makes me feel good

    As Tony Robbins says, “Focus creates feeling.”

    It’s my choice whether I focus on the good, the bad, or the ugly. The mind, with its negativity bias, will steer me toward the ugly. The worst-case scenario for the future. The memories I wish I could forget.

    Identifying with these thoughts, focusing on them, I’ll feel a certain way (crappy).

    The great news is, if I steer my thoughts toward the best-case scenario for the future and the memories I hope I’ll never forget, I’ll feel the way I wish to feel.

    Matthieu Ricard, the French writer and Buddhist monk, suggests a great practice: for ten minutes each day, connect with thoughts and memories that make us feel good. When I practice this, I take myself to my “happy place” (I think we all have a happy place). Mine is a secluded beach in New Zealand called Ocean Beach.

    In my happy place, I imagine it’s 2012 again and I’m back standing on the hot sand, surrounded by my friends as we jump joyfully into the towering waves. I recall the taste of the salty water, the heat of the sun on my back, the sounds of laughter and the great roar of the ocean. Within seconds of reconnecting with my happy place, these warm feelings, much like the waves themselves, begin to flow.

    The feelings that were there, all along, inside of me.

    I sometimes forget this truth, so to remind myself I’ve written on my wall:

    “Will, you are only one thought away from what you wish to feel.”

    2. Make the relationship I have with myself my most important relationship

    I’ve had conversations with friends before, good people who are real givers; they genuinely care for other people. Yet they neglect themselves. They tell me they feel guilty for making time for themselves; they feel bad for putting themselves first before other people. That it’s somehow selfish to do so.

    The way I see it, putting ourselves first is the least selfish thing we can do.

    Why?

    When I take care of my own needs, I’m able to give more to others because I’m in a good mental place.

    When I treat myself with kindness and compassion, this is naturally how I treat other people.

    When I honor and look after myself, I’m giving others permission to do the same.

    When I look after myself, everyone is better off, myself and others.

    A ritual I created this year that I’ll be carrying on into 2018 and beyond is to take myself on dates.

    Yep, that’s right, once per week I’ll take myself out on a date.

    We deem our loved ones worthy and deserving of dates, why not ourselves?

    Sometimes, a self-date means treating myself to a long walk in the forest with a piece of cake in one hand and a coffee in the other. Sometimes, I’ll go for lunch at my favorite Japanese restaurant.

    The rules for my self-date are simple: I give myself an experience I enjoy, guilt-free.

    Most of us are great at meeting the needs of others, loving others, and responding with understanding, compassion, and kindness.

    My question is, what will it take for us to show up like this for ourselves?

    I know in 2018 there are going to be days where happiness eludes me. I’m going to experience failure, disappointments, loss, stress, anger, and frustration.

    All of which will be difficult, but I know this: I can rely on myself to guide myself through them, as I’m committed to prioritizing the relationship I have with myself.

    3. Find glimpses of happiness even during tough times

    Happiness for me is an inside of job, as my feelings come from inside of me; they’re internal.

    When I believe my happiness is determined by the external world, I’m at its mercy.

    I may or may not achieve my goals. I maybe will or maybe won’t have health, wealth, and success in 2018.

    There are lots of maybes, which are not necessarily in my control.

    So, while I may not feel happy all the time, I’ve decided that my overall happiness will not be a maybe.

    I’m a firm believer that even in life’s darkest moments, there are, what I call “glimpses of happiness” to be found.

    Sadly, this year, my family and I lost a very special lady, my Nana Joyce.

    On the day of my Nana’s funeral, I was due to read a poem, but when it came to standing up and reading, however, my emotions and body had other another plan: to break down.

    I’d barely read the name of the poem before tears of grief erupted. Uncontrollably.

    I stuttered in an attempt to get the words out, but it wasn’t happening.

    The realization that my Nana was gone had hit me.

    Then something beautiful happened. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see someone walking toward me.

    It was my Uncle Barry.

    ”Would you like me to read this for you, Wills?”

    I groaned something that sounded something like “yes.”

    My Uncle Barry proceeded to read the poem, slowly, with a tone of sadness in his voice.

    Rather than disappearing to my seat, I stood with him, my hand on his shoulder as I took some deep breaths to calm down.

    Despite the strong and shattering grief I experienced, standing there with my uncle, there was a small glimpse of peace, as I knew I wasn’t alone.

    Throughout the rest of the day, I noticed more glimpses.

    Glimpses of love as my family comforted one another.

    Glimpses of laughter as we recalled funny stories from my Nana’s life.

    Glimpses of happiness as I acknowledged my family were here on this day as one, supporting each other on this most difficult day.

    These glimpses of happiness are always shining, and they work by reflecting back the happiness that already exists inside of us.

    They are in the room with me now. They are surrounding you as you read these words.

    Acknowledge these glimpses as they appear and you’ll feel happy a lot more often.

    Happy New Year.

  • Growing from Ghosting: 5 Things To Consider While Dealing with Silence

    Growing from Ghosting: 5 Things To Consider While Dealing with Silence

    “The important thing to remember is that when someone ghosts you, it says nothing about you or your worthiness for love and everything about the person doing the ghosting. It shows he/she doesn’t have the courage to deal with the discomfort of their emotions or yours, and they either don’t understand the impact of their behavior or worse, don’t care.” ~Jennice Vilhauer

    Let’s get this out of the way first: Ghosting is crappy etiquette. There’s no real, concrete excuse for it, except perhaps pure, unadulterated laziness with a touch of cruelty.

    We take for granted how much technology has changed the way we interact with people. We are humans first, but it seems we may be conflict-avoiding robots second. Efficiency and avoidance reign supreme in this futuristic dating world of 2017, and because of how easy it is to disregard anything and everything, common courtesy has now become painfully underutilized.

    To be frank: it is exceptionally easy to ghost someone who has no connection to your life previous to the one encounter. If you aren’t feeling it with this new person, and you don’t want to use the mental leaps it takes to articulate a rejection to a practical stranger, then more likely than not you won’t communicate at all.

    Access to the ignore button has never been easier, and pressing “unmatch” on Tinder equates deleting the person from your headspace and your own personal universe. Here are five things to consider in the land of ghosts.

    1. What do you really want from the person who’s ghosting you?

    In the land where easy hookups are abundant, polyamory is normal, and ethical non-monogamy sounds like something you’d see at a farmers market, here we all are, trying to figure this new world of dating out. With each generation of dating (and dating apps), we are met with new terminology, new hats to try on for ourselves, and we’re re-focusing our energies on what we are really looking for.

    I am a monogamous person. That doesn’t mean that in my fifty-plus first dates, I haven’t been able to recognize some of my own awful behavior (long, dramatic paragraphs of anxiety-ridden texts to a new potential date, anyone?), so I’ve had to reexamine myself a multitude of times, take a major chill pill, and reorganize my needs and desires.

    That being said, asking myself, “What am I really looking for?” after I get painfully ghosted is seemingly the best question to ask.

    Why exactly was this painful (beyond it being inhuman and previously nonexistent before modern day dating)? Did I just want acknowledgement of my humanity? Closure so I can focus on the next person? Did I even find this person particularly interesting? What other things are going on in my life that are causing me to react so strongly?

    Yes, monogamy is important to me, but getting overly upset about a person who feels no attachment toward me is a new kind of character building experience. Ghosting is a reminder that life is unfair and often severe. Technology has made communicating with each other easier to access, and yet has created a strange isolating landscape in which we are all a part of.

    This feeling of desertion still applies to people who have been ghosted after several dates, or friendships that have suddenly and painfully disappeared; it just becomes more painful and potent.

    2. The sea of excuses don’t feel any better than being ghosted.

    I got on my old OKCupid account a couple years after being off. In a cruel twist of fate, I saw a sea of all of the men that I dated previously. We were all in this together, apparently, like some sort of sad loner club no one signed up for.

    Here we were, the men that ghosted me and the men that like to me too much, and I didn’t feel the same. Somehow, after years we were all still here, and all using the same tired profile pictures.

    After a few days, a man messaged me a lackluster apology that he ghosted me as he was going through “some stuff” at the time. And with that, he walked back into the internet, never responding my follow-up questions. Gee, thanks, I’m glad I could be a vessel in which you exonerated yourself from your strange guilt.

    Does it feel better that he weakly apologized and gave a vague excuse for his behavior three years later? Not particularly. So, expecting any explanation at a later time isn’t helpful in this ghosting journey that we are all on.

    More common than ghosting, here are some boring/obvious excuses I have heard instead of being ghosted, and they feel about the same as the disappearing act itself. In no particular order:

    “Sorry, I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.” (They say, fully aware that I was a monogamous person looking for something serious before meeting.)

    “You lied on your profile. You said you were 5’8”, but you’re taller.” (He says, as he lied about his own height, weight, blah, blah, blah. For the record, I’ve been 5’8” since I was twelve, unless I had a spontaneous growth spurt at thirty.)

    “I didn’t sense a connection.” (He says, as he talked at me the entire time, completely unaware that I actually possessed a personality that he didn’t want to take part in.)

    “You’re too good for me.” (Yes, probably so.)

    People are either desperate or not desperate enough. This ebb and flow of dating is equal parts predictable and surprising. Protect your heart, date whoever you want, but know that you will eventually get your feelings hurt. Whether it’s half-baked excuses, or radio silence forever. You know the saying though: better to buy a ticket to the lottery than never to have played, right? RIGHT?

    3. Know that you may ghost someone yourself.

    Even I, Queen of All Emotions, have accidentally ghosted someone before.

    Have you ever met someone so unremarkable you just simply forgot about them? You sat there during your date shrugging your shoulders, stirring your iced tea, wondering if this person had a pulse.

    He stared at me blankly, asked me what I did, and I felt as if I was in a weird, monotone interview for a job that I didn’t remember applying for. As careful as I am, I accidentally ghosted someone and they were sad about it. I couldn’t even bring myself to apologize in fear I would open up the strange waves of communication with this person again.

    It happens. I get it. It’s a two-way street and I’m human enough to realize my shortcomings. I’m sorry, Kevin. Or was it Brian? James? Steven?

    4. You cannot educate a ghost.

    This may be the most important realization on my journey through ghost country: You simply cannot educate a ghost. There will always be people perpetuating this stereotype of non-consideration (maybe even you!).

    These people are not in your control. Sending them a “wake up call” does not work. It’s not your job to educate them.

    This idea has been the hardest thing for me to accept. I have sent paragraphs of texts to men who have ghosted me. This only solidifies the silence. Obviously the person is not texting you back if you’re going to badger him on his shortcomings.

    Maybe they’re going through something, you’re not on their mind, they don’t care in the slightest, or their phone was eaten by an alligator. Whatever the case may be, they don’t care enough to contact you, so your novel of setting the balance right in the world will go to blind eyes. It will drive you insane if you allow it. Do not allow it.

    As long as you’re honest with yourself about your needs, somewhat earnest in whatever you’re trying to accomplish datingwise, then you can overcome this. It’s all you can do. Getting ghosted means actively becoming a stronger, wiser person, because the alternative is bitterness and never ending frustration.

    Technology is still the Wild West of communication. We know how to correctly formulate an email to our boss, a job prospect, your great aunt Mabel, but to someone who is virtually meaningless to us, it’s becomes considerably more of a gray area.

    In general, people just don’t know how to socialize properly in a digital format, so we have created a culture where we simply don’t. And because this was a casual encounter, saying something at all could put us in a situation where the other person over-compensates with their hurricane of emotions if the feelings weren’t mutual.

    I get it, you don’t want to deal with a hot mess and I don’t want to deal with your issues either, and thus perpetuates the ghosting cycle of life.

    5. In other words, relax.

    Know that you’re putting in the effort. Know that if things are supposed to work out they will work out. Find a mantra, yoga, meditation technique, eat a giant plate of pancakes, do whatever makes you feel better to get over the first few hurdles of the unavoidable ghosting epidemic.

    No one ever promised us that dating was always going to be enjoyable. The funny anecdotes in romantic comedies make it look like a barrel of laughs, but sometimes it simply isn’t. Accepting this is an unfortunate part of the trade off of putting yourself out there is like learning a tedious aspect of your job. You’re going to hate it at first, but if you still want to date, this is part of the job description.

    In other words, be brave, certainly put yourself out there, but also send only one follow-up text, otherwise you will drive yourself into certain madness.

  • Why No One Wants Unsolicited Advice (and What Actually Helps)

    Why No One Wants Unsolicited Advice (and What Actually Helps)

    “To meet complaint with unrequested council earns for the advisor a fortune of hidden contempt.” ~Greek Proverb

    When people start dumping their complaints and woeful stories on you, how do you respond?

    Do you see it as your golden opportunity to be of help to them?

    Do you make it your mission to put your wealth of knowledge and wisdom to good use by coaching them through their difficulties?

    I mean, isn’t this a great chance to share the extent of your wisdom and understanding, and also be of help to someone in their time of need?

    But the most important question of all is this:

    When you’ve encountered this situation, did they ask you for your assistance before you started advising them?

    When people dumped their complaints on me, there was a time when I took the initiative and voluntarily started counseling them on their problem, even though they never asked me for my guidance.

    I thought I was being helpful.

    But then I made an important breakthrough discovery in maintaining the connections I had with others without accidentally destroying them.

    Let me start at the beginning of my story…

    When someone used to dump their problems on me, I used to think:

    “Oh, they have this problem. I have the answers. I’ll be a good friend or family member and help them solve it, all because I care about them.”

    I remember this one time, a friend of mine was having trouble dating women and he would complain about it to me.

    Guess what I did?

    Did I listen and seek to understand him, where he was coming from, and how he felt about the situation?

    Nope.

    What did I do?

    I started right in on giving him unsolicited advice about how he could get better at dating women.

    I thought I was being helpful.

    But you know what?

    I noticed a very curious thing happening as I did this…

    I observed that his body language and voice tone started showing signs of irritation. I could tell he wasn’t welcoming and responding positively to my advice, even though I knew it was solid, and even though he was verbally agreeing with what I was saying.

    Later, I started to wonder why this was.

    Here he had a problem, I thought. Didn’t he want a solution?

    Surely, he wanted one, right?

    After all, why gripe about something if it’s not going to lead to a constructive outcome that brings about the desired results?

    This investigation led me to question how I reacted when I shared my own problems with people and they responded by giving me unsolicited advice—which, incidentally, only happened for the first time after the incident with my friend and his dating problems.

    Isn’t it funny how we sometimes don’t know that something’s annoying and maybe even condescending until we’ve been on the receiving end of the very same behavior ourselves?

    I find it interesting that we often don’t know that we’re acting in ways that are turn-offs to others until we’ve had someone behave or treat us in the exact same way.

    Isn’t it often only then that we have the epiphany?

    Well, that’s what I learned about giving people unsolicited advice, especially in response to them dumping their problems on me—it’s patronizing and condescending.

    Reacting to people who complain by telling them how they should solve their problems “forcibly” places us in the “superior” role to them. It frames us as the person with the “higher social rank” in the interaction, and lowers the complainer down into an inferior role.

    And who likes to feel inferior to others?

    But what do we think?

    Isn’t it this:

    “Oh, aren’t I being a great friend? I’m helping them out!”

    But is it possible that we’re actually sending them a completely different message from the one we think we are?

    Could it be possible that what they end up hearing is something else?

    And could it also be possible that that message is something offensive and insulting to them?

    Want to know what the recipient of unsolicited advice really hears?

    I’ll warn you…

    It’s not too flattering, and you may be ashamed of yourself to discover the true message behind your actions.

    Between the lines, they hear you saying this to them:

    “I think you’re inadequate and incompetent, and you require my superior knowledge and wisdom to make progress here. Without my help and intervention, you are a helpless victim incapable of dealing with your own problems. You should feel lucky that I’m even putting in my precious time and effort to give you some assistance. Furthermore, I don’t accept you the way you are. I’m making it my mission to change you so that you fit into my ideal of who I think you should be instead of accepting you as you are.”

    Now imagine if someone said that directly to your face.

    How would you feel?

    Probably not very good, right?

    Well, guess what?

    That’s exactly how you’re making people feel when you give them unsolicited advice in response to their complaints.

    So wouldn’t it greatly improve your ability to connect with people and win their esteem if you stopped making them feel this way?

    For what’s more important than earning the love and respect of others?

    Or, would you rather sacrifice their love and respect just so you can have your chance in the spotlight to prop yourself up as a “knowledgeable” and “wise” person?

    And all for what?

    Just to get an ego boost, at someone else’s expense?

    After all, what does it profit us to share our “superior” wisdom and guidance with someone if all it earns us is their contempt?

    And how does that really benefit us and our relationship with that person?

    It doesn’t, does it?

    Now let me ask you this:

    Have you ever asked yourself why people dump their problems on others in the first place?

    What do you think they really want by doing so?

    Do you think they do it because they want a solution to their problem?

    Do you think they do it because they want your help?

    After all, isn’t that what we tell ourselves is the truth of the matter?

    But are those the real reasons?

    After all, if they wanted a solution and some help, wouldn’t they ask us for our feedback, opinions, or advice somewhere in there?

    But do they?

    Well, guess what?

    Almost every time people complain, they’re not doing it because they actually want a solution to their problems. They’re not doing it because they want our help. They’re doing it for another reason altogether.

    And what do they want exactly?

    Simply this:

    To be understood and receive sympathy.

    That’s what they really want.

    And more specifically, what they want is for someone to understand how difficult what they’re going through is for them.

    That’s the response they really want from us.

    Not unsolicited advice.

    Trust me, that’s the last thing they want.

    I mean, are you aware that people secretly hate and resent unsolicited advice, even though they’ll probably never tell us that to our face?

    Instead, they’ll just put on a polite smile while perhaps they secretly fume about it behind their cordial mask.

    I’ve discovered an important lesson in fostering healthy relationships is to stop trying to help people with their problems when they complain about them—unless they specifically ask for it. Instead, I’ve found it much wiser to seek to understand what they’re going through and what they must be feeling.

    Then focus on that.

    What people really want when they complain is to have their feelings not only understood but at the same time validated.

    In short, people simply want affirmation on how much whatever they’re going through sucks and how hard it is.

    If what you want is to connect with people in these types of situations instead of earning their resentment, don’t treat them like they’re a useless person who can’t do anything for themselves with your unrequested guidance.

    Instead, identify the emotion they’re feeling, and then ask them about that.

    Let me give you an example…

    If someone is complaining that a person in their life isn’t giving them enough attention, instead of advising them and giving them tips on how they can get more attention from that person, try to identify what they must be feeling and then ask them about that.

    In this case, you might say:

    “So you’re feeling unloved?”

    Their eyes will probably light up as if you’ve just read their mind, as they exclaim, “Yeah! That’s exactly it!”

    Then you might follow-up with some kind of affirmation and then maybe even tell a very short story that relates to their situation.

    Perhaps you might say:

    “That really sucks, and I think I know what you’re going through. I once had a partner who would only pay me attention when they wanted something from me. I felt like I didn’t really matter to them, like they didn’t really care about me as a person.”

    Why not let people work through their own problems and issues—even if you can see the error of their ways, and even if the solution seems obvious to you.

    Why not respect them and let them figure it out on their own time, on their own terms, and in their own way unless they ask you for help?

    When people dump their complaints and problems on you, if you really care about them, why patronize them with your unsolicited advice?

    Why add fuel to the fire?

    Aren’t they probably already feeling stuck or down enough as it is to have to endure someone’s condescension on top of it?

    So why not try this approach to dealing with others’ complaints?

    I encourage you to test this out the next time you find yourself in a situation where someone is dumping their problems on you.

    Instead of “jumping to their rescue” with your saving grace and advice, seek to discover the emotion they must be feeling.

    Then ask them if that’s how they feel.

    If they confirm your suspicion, affirm how bad that must be, and maybe even share your own short story about the same or similar experience.

    Then I suggest changing the subject at the first opportunity. Maybe even use your story to lead into it—because I wouldn’t advise focusing an entire conversation around how negative something is.

    I believe in nurturing a positive outlook on life, yet at the same time being realistic, honest, and understanding that, yes, life does sometimes suck and it’s wise to accept that rather than living in an illusion where the world is filled with rainbows and lollipops.

    There are, of course, ways of truly helping people with their problems without giving them unsolicited advice, but that’s an article in itself.

    Ultimately, it all comes down to this…

    What would you rather have:

    A strong connection with the people in your life, or the certain knowledge that they harbor hidden feelings of resentment toward you due to your unwanted, condescending advice?

    The choice is yours.