Tag: Happiness
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How to Prevent Blame and Criticism from Destroying Your Relationship
“Who is it that’s unhappy? The one who finds fault.” ~Anonymous
If you are anything like me, you yearn to know in your bones that you are showing up in your primary relationship as your best self. You want to be loving, kind, and supportive (and to reap the gifts those qualities sow in your love life). But certain habits of interaction get in the way, making you feel inept and ashamed.
Like many of us, I grew up in a family that was steeped in criticism and blame. Though I rebelled against this behavior intellectually, it found its way deep into me.
When the first blush of love-bliss wore off in my more serious relationships, blame and criticism would rear their ugly heads, leaving me guilt ridden and very disappointed in myself. It always created distance in my relationships.
This habit is the top reason relationships fall apart. Not only does it feel terrible to the one being criticized, it also destroys the perpetrator’s own sense of confidence in their worthiness and integrity, further shutting down the free flow of love.
Looking back at my first marriage, I see that this ingrained and destructive habit was at the root of our love’s erosion. Because I tended to use a subtle form of blame and criticism that were harder to label as such (I mostly thought I was asking for things, when actually I was belittling and condemning), it became pervasive. Over time, like weeds left to grow rampant, it overtook our joy entirely.
Criticism and blame can be blatant or subtle. The obvious expressions are often in the actual words we choose. But, as I learned the hard way, it’s the subtler forms of blame and criticism that can do the most damage because they are harder to spot.
Since much of our communication is non-verbal (up to 93%!), it makes sense to take a good look at if and how we are imparting blame and criticism without words.
Some of these subtle ways include:
~Tone of voice (“Can you please stop…” said with a tone that drips blame or implies stupidity.)
~Sounds (“Ugh!” meaning, “There you go again.”)
~Body language (rolling your eyes, giving them cold looks… I once stuck out my tongue at my partner in a heated moment.)
~Asking someone to “do better” can be an insidious form of criticism, if not done well. This was my main way of using it.
In my current partnership I vowed to do things very differently. I let him be him, no complaints. We enjoyed years of authentic, kind, tolerant, and loving ways of relating to each other. I felt proud and happy to have seemingly overcome that bad habit.
And then we hit a rough patch. Over the course of one stressful year we had a baby, with all the lack of sleep and physical and emotional adjustments that brings, as well as built a house (a huge and challenging job…as the saying goes: “build a house, lose a spouse”), while also raising my older boys and maintaining the rest of our lives.
The strain of this time put a lot of pressure on me, and I found my old bad habit of blaming and criticizing really hard to suppress, as if it had a life of its own.
I started subtly putting him down, sometimes saying things like, “You never listen!” or once, “You are such a teenager!” because he stayed out later than he said he would. But mostly it showed up in my tone of voice, judgmental and intolerant. This would set him off and send us downhill fast.
This went on for a few months. I felt terrible about it, yet didn’t know how to stop. The effect was that he became more on guard, not as open and warm as usual. And I started berating myself for my behavior, which cut me off from being able to feel and express my warmth and love.
It also made me afraid I might destroy this incredibly good thing we had—one of the most cherished things in my life.
It was time to regroup. So I rested up and rebalanced a bit. It was from this more centered place that I had the capacity to take a really hard look at where I was going wrong.
The powerful insights I discovered have all but completely eliminated that harmful way of relating. Here they are for you, with tips on how to live them so that you can keep, revive, and grow that beautiful thing that is the love in your life.
1. Build an inner eco-system of self-compassion.
Don’t make the mistake of re-directing any blame back at yourself. Instead, try kindness and curiosity.
Start by understanding that blame and criticism are misguided attempts at protecting yourself and, ironically, at creating a better relationship. At the heart of it is a longing to feel good. Although the goal is virtuous, the method is not. Just understanding this invokes a sense of self-compassion.
Then, consciously cultivate an attitude of kindness toward yourself.
The next time you are experiencing the fallout emotions of having blamed or criticized your partner, simply feel what you feel. Be there with yourself the way you would with a child who is having a temper tantrum—compassionately.
Put your hand on your own heart (or cheek or arm) and say to yourself “be safe, be well, be at ease, my dear.” I like to call myself “my love, or my sweet” when I do this.
Experiment and see what feels most resonant for you. As feel-good hormones are released through this simple action, you start to feel more safe and at ease inside yourself. This raises your ability to be your authentically loving self in your relationship.
2. Own it.
Taking responsibility for your unskillful ways is essential for wholeheartedly ending them.
Whether in the heat of the moment or later, you must be able to say: “Oops, my bad—again!” Admitting your blunder to yourself (compassionately) and to your significant other is part of taking responsibility for your actions.
Doing so will help soften your partner’s barbed defenses and start to ease any tension. An authentic “I’m sorry” can work wonders, as a starting point.
Own that when you are complaining or blaming you usually want something but are simply sharing that ineffectively. Instead, figure out what you want. Then be brave enough to ask for it—when you are ready to use a calm kind tone.
3. Notice that fear is the underbelly of blame and criticism.
Below every angry expression of blame or criticism is fear. Fear of discomfort, pain, or otherwise feeling bad. Fear hijacks our brain and makes even our allies look like enemies, leaving behind the rational, kind, and loving parts of our nature.
A small example would be if I were whining to my man about how he never sticks to his agreements about our division of house chores. Underneath that blaming expression is the fear of feeling stressed out and exhausted by having to squeeze more chores into my already full schedule.
The key here is being deeply and bravely honest with yourself. When you find yourself about to criticize or blame someone, or having just done so, ask yourself, “What am I afraid of here?”
Then ask, “What’s underneath that?” You might find that sadness lives there. Or even shame. Either way, this will help shift you out of anger and into curiosity, compassion, and a sense of integrity as you draw closer to your genuine truth. If you can uncover that truth just once, it will unravel the grip of the habit and make it easier to stop the next time it tries to grab you.
4. Enlist your body.
When the mood of blame and criticism hovers close, smothering you from the inside out, move your body. Shift your position, go for a walk or, my favorite, dance.
Instead of closing in on yourself, as fear and anger cause us to do, allow movement to physically open your posture, shake out the irritation, express the frustration, and soften your muscles.
Or maybe your need is to rest, shifting the body into a softer easeful state. This will melt your fear brain, connect you to your essence and get you back to acting from your natural kind goodness.
5. Redirect to appreciation.
Ask yourself a really good positivity-boosting question to direct your attention toward appreciation. As a self-protective measure, our brains are wired to look for the negative. To counteract this bias in our relationships, we must consciously look for what is positive.
So ask yourself, “What is wonderful to me about him/her?” If at first answers come slowly, stick with it and the floodgates will open.
When I do this I start to see many things that I adore about my man, and it fills me with love, replacing anger or fear. Nothing is too little: his cheekbones, the way he plays with our sons, the unique sound of his breathing as he shifts into sleep…
Sharing these appreciations with your partner through words or gestures encourages a flourishing of warmth and affection.
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Now that I am through those few months of stress when I was once again ensnared by the temptation to criticize and blame, I am grateful for that time because it motivated me to dig out the roots of that harmful habit.
I am now deeply confident in my ability to show up as my best, most loving self in my partnership (which helps my man do the same).
These days, if my love life were a garden, it would be the most lush, colorful, and medicinal place, with an occasional root leftover from that giant old criticism tree that I pulled up not so long ago.
When those roots occasionally grow a shoot, I notice it and gently but firmly pull it up using the techniques I discovered. Then I turn back to adoring my magical garden, allowing it to nourish my whole life. And you can do this too.
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3 Ways to Decide Whose Opinion of You Matters
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” ~Coco Chanel
“You know, Joui, I really like how you look tonight. I always thought your style before was… just a little wacky,” smiled Harry, a man I’d met during a forced networking meeting. He then smirked knowingly, like he was doing me a great favor.
Inside I screamed.
As a stylist one of the biggest fears my clients mention when we discuss any big change is feedback, judgment, and shame from their peers. And they are right to be fearful.
People will have commentary, trust me. But while everyone has an opinion, not everyone has a clue.
So we must be extremely careful who we let give us feedback.
I have made this mistake many times in the past. I let another person’s opinion cloud my own vision without first asking myself whether I even respect that opinion.
Like Harry, somehow just because they are a person with eyes I allow their remark to dig deep into my psyche and contort my energetic field. It feels like watching too many moving images at once.
Yes, I am sensitive. One unchecked opinion can cause me to feel ungrounded and unable to think clearly for myself.
But ultimately, this is my life. I’m the only one living behind my eyes, so I am the only one who can and should take ownership of my decisions.
So in cleansing my life recently I decided to create a set of requisites to better decide whose opinions I will let in.
I first came upon the idea in Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly. She says that the work that scares us makes us most alive. But the more public and vocal you get, the more vulnerable you can become to outside input.
And so she created criteria for her own feedback “force field,” so to speak. Brown says “If you are not in the arena and also getting your arse kicked, I am not interested in your feedback.”
Let’s get back to Harry, for example. He made this comment during the annual BNI (Business Networking International) holiday party.
I was dropping by the BNI holiday party about a year after I ended my membership, mainly for old times sake. It was during a period of my style where I was intentionally letting go of originality and flamboyance to explore different ways of expressing my identity.
The night of the party I was in full-blown “mainstream sexy,” a pair of fitted black leggings, a classic pair of black heels, a white sweater, simple earrings. It was part identity experiment and part research project to understand women who enjoy looking this way so I could better support a broader range of style choices.
Now it was Harry’s turn to tell me how the flat-ironed, mainstream version of me was so much better than the wacky side he’d seen a year before. And let me just say, from one angle he was right.
I looked great. But sometimes looking “great” isn’t the point.
In a world of endless options, it’s more important to look like me.
This is why getting your criteria straight for whose input you let in is vital. Otherwise, it is very easy to find yourself waking up one day and not recognizing yourself because you fell into other people’s ideas of who you are instead of your own.
If you are going to allow someone to be a competent mirror for you, here are a few factors I suggest considering.
1. Is this person someone whose life’s work you admire? Is this someone with a promising, positive vision of themselves in the world? Essentially, do you love what they are up to?
2. Do you love the way this individual sees you and who you aspire to be? Are they someone who supports you and inspires you to rise to every opportunity for personal growth?
3. If this person is commenting on style, image, or branding do they have good taste? Do they have taste you admire? Have they mastered aesthetics? According to Brené Brown, are they “in the arena”?
Most importantly, trust most those people that hold you in a warm, accepting light, and have your best interests at heart.
So let’s take a moment to reflect on Harry and his opinion of my look.
1. Was Harry the epitome of style? Answer: No.
2. Was Harry the type of person I respected in work, career, life? Answer: No.
3. Was Harry the kind of person I wanted more of in my world? Answer: Once again no.
So how did I interpret Harry’s comment? Well, it did influence me in so far as I had been looking for a moment to stop experimenting in this style. His response to “Mainstream Joui” reminded me I was off.
I needed more flair. I needed to bring back a little Wacky Joui, and fast. I guess this is an example of a reverse influence.
You must carefully and consciously select the people who you actively allow to influence you, and whose judgments you take to heart.
And remember, if you are a creative, empath, artist, or any type of deeply sensitive being, be on high alert. You may be extremely vulnerable to molding yourself to those around you and what they need.
Choosing who you hang around with has the power to make or break you. You are the company you keep.
You are the opinion of those closest to you.
Chose wisely.
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3 Empowering Ways to Reframe Anxiety: Work With It, Not Against It
“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life—and only then will I be free to become myself.” ~Martin Heidegger
If you are a lifelong anxiety warrior like me, you’ve been on a journey of ups and downs.
Anxiety fills our whole bodies. Tension. Heart pounding. Sometimes I feel like my heart must be visibly pulsating so much so that if there are others around, they can see it.
There are varying levels and types of anxiety, including clinical disorders. But the thing that we have in common is that at times we feel intense despair—like the world is caving in on us. We can feel literally stuck and life may even feel meaningless.
But what if anxiety isn’t always negative? What if we could begin to see it differently?
I’m going to share with you three archetypes that I use to cognitively reframe anxiety. Seeing anxiety in these ways has helped me feel more empowered in my journey.
First, I’d like to share a short story about my journey with anxiety.
I began to experience anxiety in early childhood. My parents divorced when I was three—about the same time I developed asthma.
The back and forth visits between my parents were hard on me. Just as I’d get comfortable in one place with one set of rules, it was time to change. I felt an internal struggle to be one Melissa in two different households.
I was sick a lot as a child and was routinely hospitalized each year for my asthma. I also pretended to be sick at times to stay home because the transition back to school felt so overwhelming. Missing school only created more anxiety as I tried to catch up.
To complicate matters, I grew up with a mom who could be very nurturing, but wildly unstable at times. Many of my fears and anxieties arose throughout my youth when my mom would spend months, sometimes years, in bed with some ambiguous illness no doctor could diagnose.
I believe the peacemaker and people pleasing roles I often served in my family played a part in developing my highly sensitive and empathetic nature.
Anxiety continued to visit me frequently throughout my youth and into adulthood as I contemplated my place in the world while healing past trauma.
When I was in graduate school, I talked to my therapist about medication. I was grieving the sudden death of my mom and was in constant struggle with anxiety. While there are cases that necessitate medication, I chose to explore other routes.
Today I still encounter feelings of self-doubt, abandonment, thoughts about death, my purpose, not fitting into the societal mold, and so forth. Some of these issues tie into what we might call existential anxiety, the anxiety that arises when we contemplate our life’s existence.
What has helped me to understand anxiety’s true nature is to work with anxiety rather than against it. By working with anxiety, we can start to see the light in anxiety rather than a dark monster. These are the archetypes I have assigned to anxiety to reflect that light.
1. Anxiety as Motivator.
A few years ago I attended a workshop in Mexico City on existential psychotherapy. One of the key concepts in existentialism is that anxiety is a core human experience that moves us toward growth and development. Because we know our time is limited and we all grapple with big, unanswerable questions, we feel anxiety about existence itself, and about making our lives matter. This anxiety calls us to be ourselves and live with purpose as we examine our lives.
Becoming a yoga instructor was one of the most terrifying times of my life. Despite years of public speaking and outreach as a social worker, finding my teaching voice was different. It was scary, as I doubted my capacity to bring a tradition I revered so much to others in a meaningful way.
Now when I face anxiety before teaching, I ask it to help me tap into the human anguish that my students face in other ways to best support them. It fuels my purpose of sharing my own vulnerability from the heart.
Some amount of anxiety is healthy and compels us to ask ourselves who we are, why we’re here, and where we’re going. Anxiety typically relates to these questions under the surface. The exception would be if we are talking about a specific fear, like spiders.
There is a difference between existential anxiety (which calls us to live with meaning) and pathological forms of anxiety (which deeply impair our ability to function). When anxiety becomes a problem, it becomes a disorder; yet, the treatment (cognitive behavioral therapy, talk therapy, etc.) is typically the same.
How does anxiety show up in your life as a motivator? Does it move you toward action?
2. Anxiety as Teacher
When I encounter pain, particularly as it relates to anxiety, grief, and family conflict, I try to remember to ask myself, “What is there to learn here?” By asking this question, I take myself out of the role of victim and into the role of an empowered learner.
Because we see anxiety as a mental health problem, we forget that anxiety is not just living in the brain. It fills us with sensations and emotions in our bodies as our beliefs and old stories play out. Something is happening within us that is requesting our presence. Anxiety can help us to become more aware of what needs greater attention and love.
As an empath, I am prone to absorbing the emotions of others. There are moments when I experience anguish because of a painful time someone else is having. My body tightens up and feels suffocated when this happens.
When this occurs, I become more aware of what is happening and that I need to change something. It’s a cue to me that I need to do something with the suffering I’m feeling. It’s time to get on my yoga mat or go for a walk or maybe it’s a cue that I need to set boundaries in a relationship.
How does anxiety show up in your life as a teacher? What do you learn from anguish?
3. Anxiety as Liberator.
Wait, what? That was my reaction when I wrote the word. Allow me to explain.
As a society, we pathologize despair are taught anxiety is a sickness, which leads to us feeling bad about feeling bad. But since anxiety is a natural part of being human, it’s inevitable that it will surface. Even though I feel alone with anxiety sometimes, I try to remember I’m part of a collective experience of confusion, doubt, and suffering.
Sometimes anxiety arrives in my life and I’m able to take a moment to realize its origin. I notice that behind that anxiety is often very deep compassion, very deep fear, very deep desire to be a better person, and so forth. I then can see anxiety as a very deep capacity to experience the spectrum of human emotions and allow them to coexist.
Anxiety can either be avoided by living on the surface, as existential psychotherapist Emmy Van Deurzen puts it, or it can be deeply embraced as an inherent part of our being. If we choose to avoid it, it will smack us in the face later in life.
When we can start to observe anxiety in this way, we start to see it for what it is. We see that joy and anguish can exist together. We can lean into it discomfort rather than avoid. And through this process, we can begin to feel a sense of freedom.
What if anxiety is not something wrong with you but just part of the path?
The ideas I outlined might take a little time to resonate. I encourage you to sit with them and feel into each archetype before reaching any conclusion.
**I am not suggesting that reframing anxiety in this way can cure severe clinical disorders. My intention is provide a thought-provoking piece to explore as a complement to any professional treatment you may receive now or in the future.
Color splash image by Signe7542
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7 Reasons to Abandon Your Comfort Zone and Why You’ll Never Regret It
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” ~Jack Canfield
Imagine with me for a second. You wake up, roll over, and blindly reach to hit your alarm to start the routine of the day. Make the same thing for breakfast. Maybe go to a new coffee place…nah. Same place. Go to work on the same route to the same job you’ve been at for years.
After a long day of struggling through your daily responsibilities, you come home tired and slink back into the comfort of your TV and couch. Watch the same shows. Pass out. Repeat. At long last, the respite of the weekend finally comes. You go to the same bars, and hang out with the same friends, and before you know it, it’s Sunday night. Time to repeat the whole process over again.
Somehow down the road, you begin to feel like everything turned into too much of a routine. Nothing new happens anymore, and you can’t even remember the last time you really grew or progressed at something new—the last time you felt that burning sensation in your heart, that incomparable feeling of venturing into something new and scary.
That was me.
When I was a kid, I remember having this recurring nightmare. I was in prison, and my prison job was making license plates. That was my job for the rest of my life.
I had to find every combination of letters and numbers, and if I ever made a mistake, I would have to start over. There was no goal. There was no challenge. Just repetition and routine. (There were a lot more intricate details, but I’ll probably just give myself anxiety trying to recall them).
Anyway, I would wake up in a pool of sweat every night, wake my mom up, and tell her I was having the license plate dream again. She would just look at me like I was crazy; I don’t think I was very good at explaining why it freaked me out so much.
I don’t think I knew why it freaked me out so much.
Fast-forward a couple decades. I fell into a rut after a long period of falling into the same routines, day after day. Same jobs, long commute, long days, same weekends. It wasn’t even that I disliked my jobs—I worked in the music events and festivals industry. But my life had turned into such a routine, without challenges, without fear—just the same jobs, the same bars, the same everything, day after day.
I woke up one day with a thought that scared the hello out of me—when did it all end? I didn’t even know what goal I was working toward. The license plate nightmare had manifested itself into real life.
Dear God.
That day, I quit both of my jobs and bought a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia. On this trip, I went through just as many cliché life realizations as the next traveler, but one stuck out far more than any other.
The safety of my comfort zone was what was holding my growth and happiness back.
I realized how crazy comfort—one of the biggest roadblocks to our growth—is something our bodies crave the most. However uncomfortable and unnatural it may feel to jump out of our safe zone, the benefits outweigh the initial discomfort drastically. It’s just hard to see the other side sometimes.
Although the individual acts of leaving that safe space might vary from person to person—whether it’s quitting your dead-end job, traveling to a foreign place, finally talking to that person you’ve been too shy to engage, or simply diversifying your daily routine—I’m going to tell you some concrete reasons why leaving your comfort zone is so important for every person, and why you won’t regret it once you do.
1. All development comes from outside your comfort zone, especially from failure.
“We are all failures – at least the best of us are.” ~J.M. Barrie
Let’s start with the basics. People tend to forget that struggle and discomfort are where all growth happens. Remember when you were a kid, and every single day was a challenge at something new? Your parents forced you to try scary new things you didn’t want to do, and either you succeeded or failed—and either way you were growing the entire time.
Somewhere along the line, your parents stopped forcing you to do things, and your responsibilities added another layer of chaos into your life, forcing you to retreat into a comfortable routine to achieve a form of stability. In that process, many people start daring less to take a step outside of their comfort zone.
Subconsciously, we attribute “learning” as a phase that only happens when we’re kids. That’s ridiculous. The learning process never ends, and there is always opportunity to grow, no matter what age you are or situation you’re in.
We don’t like to try new things because we fear failure, but we need to understand that failure isn’t the end of the road, it’s the beginning. We learn and gain more from failure than we do from succeeding—and way more than if we never took the chance in the first place.
Whether you succeed or fail at whatever you’re doing, it’ll be a hundred times more valuable to your growth than if you never took the chance in the first place.
Whether it’s the soreness of your muscles after a long workout, the exhaustion of staying up all night chasing a goal, the fear of venturing into the unknown, or the feeling of failure, one old cliché always remains true: no pain no gain.
Either you succeed and you grow or you fail and you grow, but trying anything is better than doing nothing.
2. You’ll discover passions you never knew existed before.
People often look for new hobbies that’ll fill their life with passion, but many are not only afraid to try new things, they don’t know where to look. They trudge through their daily routine, hoping something new will pop out of nowhere and save them from the repetition.
Hey, sorry to break it to you, but it’s not going to happen. Nothing’s going to fall in your lap. You have to go find it.
Not only will leaving your comfort zone help you take a crack at the things you’ve always wanted to do, but you’ll discover other things you never even knew you might’ve liked before.
When I decided to quit my jobs and go on this trip to Southeast Asia, at one of my darker and lonelier moments (don’t ask), I found myself needing to write something, just to get some emotions off my chest. Little did I know I had just discovered my passion for writing.
I started writing article after article, and decided to design a website to share them on. I started taking more and more pictures to combine with these articles, which even led to editing travel videos together.
That’s four things, if you didn’t count. Four things I had never knew I had interest in before. All these newfound hobbies were borne from one thing that I discovered just moments after I left the comfort of my home.
No matter how much you want to believe it, waiting around for something won’t get you anywhere, but the second you leave your comfort zone, you’d be surprised at how things just start falling into place.
3. You’ll become more open-minded and understanding, making you appear wiser and more intelligent.
Life is full of completely different and unique people, but when we get stuck in the same routine, we tend to gravitate toward people that are similar to us. When this is the only interaction in our lives, it leads us to become close-minded and cuts us off from the reality of the differences that exist between people.
When you’re surrounded by the same people, who share the same opinions about everything, you gain a confirmation bias, and you start to think that a certain way of thinking is how all people think, or how all people should think. (Need an example? Go look at any political party ever.)
Leaving the comfort of being surrounded by the people you are accustomed to will introduce you to different ways of thinking, which will not only lead to a better understanding of our differences, but an appreciation for them.
This can be a whole different kind of uncomfortable, but the next time someone that has an opinion you disagree with, instead of immediately trying to convince them your side of the argument, try to understand why they came about that thinking in the first place.
We all gather our opinions from a rich web of experiences and thousands of variables, yet sometimes we tend to think of other people’s opinions in black and white. Everyone has a reason for why they think the way they do, many of which are a lot deeper under the surface than you might be able to initially see.
Opening your mind to other people’s cultural views and understanding what their ideologies are based out of (as opposed to just trying to confirm your already established beliefs) is the first step to gaining wisdom that applies to all people, rather than just the social group you’ve become accustomed to.
4. You’ll gain clarity once you ditch mindless comfort-zone distractions.
When we continue our routines and watch the same shows, go to the same places, or look at the same apps, we tend to turn our brains off and just follow muscle memory without even noticing. These routines make us feel comfortable and often put our minds to sleep.
You’d be surprised at how much clearer your mind works once you simply turn your phone and TV off and go explore something new. Your brain will actually start going to work without you even trying.
Something easy you can do today: Turn your phone off.
Something harder you can aim for in the future: Turn your phone off for longer.
5. You’ll become a more confident and sociable person.
Talking to strangers is often an anxiety-provoking activity for people. We’re constantly fearing we’ll get judged or that we’ll say the wrong thing to the wrong person. First off, let me tell you, everyone feels the same way. That thought alone helped me become a more sociable person without worrying about the consequences of a “failed conversation” (sounds stupid when I put it like that, huh?).
Interacting in situations with people you usually wouldn’t interact with is a great way to get out of your comfort zone. Go compliment someone you don’t know. What’s the worst that can happen?
In a more non-direct approach, forget about other people for a second. When you spend your time trying new activities and experiencing things you haven’t done before, through the power of leaving your comfort zone, confidence eventually comes whether you were looking for it or not.
The very act of being bold enough to try something you haven’t done before will raise your confidence on its own, and that in turn naturally minimizes the fear of interacting with people you don’t know.
Confidence and social skills will be a byproduct of your breaking of the ordinary. Which leads to the next point…
6. You’ll become a better storyteller without even trying.
“No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.” !Chris Hardwick
Just as confidence and social skills come naturally when outside of your comfort zone, so will the stories. When you make a conscious attempt to leave your comfort zone, you’ll be surprised at how weird, crazy, and awesome things tend to happen more to you more.
You’ll start amassing an inventory of interesting stories without even trying. All of your failures and successes somehow start to become more of a narrative, rather than a repetitive list of chores.
Make your life a story that people would want to watch a movie about.
7. You’ll discover entire worlds you never knew existed before and the communities that go along with them.
Lastly, you’ll discover tons of different groups and cultures that will amaze you.
Think about one thing you like to do. For instance, we’ll say you enjoy golf. Think about all the tiny intricacies, tactics, and elements of golf that make you love it so much, whether it’s the careful studying of equipment, the complexity of your body motion, the perfecting of a craft, or just the peace of enjoying a beautiful day. On top of that, think of the entire golfing community that you connect with because of a shared love of an activity.
Now think about the fact that these passions and communities exist for an infinite amount of activities out there. Foodies for every kind of food. Music lovers of every genre. Fans of every sport. Professionals of every craft. Thousands of different cultures and communities that you have never experienced exist out there—all filled with people that possess as much love and passion for their craft as you do.
Discovering and sharing new passions with people is one of the greatest joys in this world.
The possibilities are endless. Go find some new worlds today.
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Feeling like there is no end in sight can be one of the most suffocating feelings in the world. I know from experience that deep, sinking feeling you get in your chest when you realize your life has become too predictable—when nothing new happens, when you feel like you’ve stopped growing as a person.
The good news is it’s completely in your power to take control of your life and experience what’s out there, and turn that suffocation into freedom, curiosity, and excitement.
“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.” ~Chauncey Depew
Taking the first step is always the hardest, but I can guarantee you that once you do it, the only thought you’ll have in your head is “Why didn’t I do this earlier?” Every second you spend in this world is precious, and you shouldn’t waste a single second of it wondering if you should have done something. Life is waiting for you to take the reigns.
Imagine with me again. You wake up five minutes before your alarm, with a head buzzing full of ideas, ready to conquer the day. You go to work with a clear mind, with new goals formulating in your head at what seems like every minute of the day.
Before you know it, the workday has gone by in a snap, and you race home to start progressing to your next goal, or to write your next idea down, or to plan your next big getaway. Life has become exciting and full of wonder once again.
No more license plates.
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How to Keep Going When You Want To Give Up on Life
TRIGGER WARNING: This post references suicidal thoughts and may be triggering to some people.
Since my first post on Tiny Buddha entitled “Why I Didn’t Kill Myself and Why You Shouldn’t Either,” I’ve been doing amazingly well. I thought I had this suicide stuff in the bag. I thought it lived in the past. I thought it was no longer a part of me.
I thought I had found my way forward and that I would never feel that way again. I thought my suicidal ideation was a historical part of my existence.
I was wrong.
Tonight, I sat in the bath watching the water trickle down from the faucet and all I could think was how easy it would be to watch the blood trickle down my arms into the water instead.
I thought of how easy it would be to drift away into nothingness. I thought of how easy it would be to not have to get up every morning to face another day of emptiness. I thought of the peace I would have if I were no longer afraid all the time and how wonderful it would be to be free from the prison of my mind.
Sometimes, I long for this.
Sometimes, I long for death.
I do not long for death itself, being cold and distant and immovable.
But I sometimes long for something other than what I am. I long for a feeling of safety and security. I long to feel loved and cherished, not used and abused.
I long to feel anything that is something more than the nothing I feel right now.
What Do You Want?
I know what you want. I want it too. You want someone to love you, someone to care, someone to tell you everything will be okay.
You want someone to tell you that even if you aren’t perfect, you’re enough just as you are.
You want your parents to put your needs ahead of their own, because that’s what loving parents do. You want those adults who abused you to think twice before they steal your innocence and your ability to feel.
What you want is for the past to never have existed, and what you want is impossible.
I know what you want.
You want someone to care, and it seems as if there is no amount of caring that will fill the empty hole in your heart, and no matter how hard you try to fill it up yourself it only goes halfway and then starts slipping back to empty.
Every day is a struggle to survive. Every day you wake up and wonder, “How much longer can I go on?”
The emptiness that fills your heart and your soul begins to take over your rationality.
At some point the things that kept you going have become meaningless. The life you have lived for so many years was just a struggle to survive.
Today you are at a point where nothing means anything. You aren’t even in pain. You feel nothing. You want to give up. You want to no longer exist. You want to stop being.
The endless negative thoughts swirl around in your brain compelling you to end everything. The hope for the future subsides to a dulling ache keeping you going every day.
You stare at the television knowing you are wasting your life, but are incapable to get off the couch and get outside.
Yet, you keep going. Why is this?
Why You Shouldn’t Give Up
I don’t know why I don’t give up sometimes. Most days I want to give up. But the human spirit is powerful. The desire to live is a strongly held need that keeps you in this world.
There is only one reason I don’t give up.
There is only one reason I don’t spend all my money, write out my will, and deliberately plan my death.
There is only one belief that sits in the back of my mind that keeps me going day after day.
What is that belief you ask?
Hope.
There is always something that I hope for. I hope for change. I hope for strength. I hope for love. I hope for caring. I hope that things won’t always be as they have been.
Hope, my friends, is the only thing keeping me, and probably you, alive.
What does hope mean? To me hope means not giving up. It means constantly seeking a new way. It means looking deep inside to find what exactly it is that seems lacking.
What About Now?
I can’t promise you things will change tomorrow.
I can’t promise you that your self-serving parents will suddenly see the light and give you what you need.
I can’t promise you that you will stop choosing the wrong partner or that magically things will be better.
There are so many days when I believe that all is lost and want to give up, and I don’t know why I feel this way. I feel stupid for not being happy for what I have.
I want to be enough.
I want to feel enough.
I want to thrive, not just survive.
So, for now I make it through the day. For now, I do the best I can do. I wake up every day and realize I need to change something and I realize that at some point it will change.
That, my friend, is enough. Believing that something will change is sometimes enough.
Because, “This too shall pass.”
Because There Is Always Tomorrow
How do I know “this too shall pass”? I know because feelings and circumstances always change. Change is the nature of life.
The day after I wrote this and while I was going through the editing process I called my doctor to see if maybe it’s time to get back on some medication. I was feeling despondent and knew something needed to change. Of course, they couldn’t get me in for another month.
So, where could I go? What else could I do? My answer to myself: search Google, of course. I started looking up a bunch of topics that I needed to work on that were related to relationships, love, and happiness.
I came across a relationship coach who seemed to get exactly what it was that I needed at the moment. I watched a series of videos. Although I had heard all the things he spoke of before, for some reason everything resonated more deeply than usual.
I needed someone who would not just tell me that I am enough (intellectually I know this) but would give me the tools to help me believe that I am enough and keep me from falling back into the abyss of negative thinking that I tend to fall into.
When we are ready to hear, the message comes.
I booked a session with him and when we spoke everything became clear. I finally grasped the complex nature of how one can go through life without loving and accepting one’s self and how your fears can limit your existence.
You may not realize it, but you may actually fear being happy and you may keep thinking negative thoughts as a means to protect yourself. I realized that I had to stop my negative thinking and that no one can make me feel whole and loved and valued if I don’t truly love and value myself.
I realized I am still looking for someone to save me or for someone to validate me so I can feel whole, and guess what? It stops today.
I just decided. I decided that it was time to show up for myself fully and completely and stop delegating away my needs for others to fill like an empty vessel.
If you don’t give up hope and keep looking for help and reaching out to others, you will eventually find the people, tools, and resources that you need to heal.
I do it over and over and I’ll do it again. If I can do it, so can you.
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How Feeling Shame Freed Me from Suffering
“Be gentle first with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others.” ~Lama Yeshe
It was October, 2012. The U.S. Presidential Election was around the corner. I was paying an unaccustomed amount of attention to political news on TV and to political discussion sites online. At one site in particular, I was eager to become part of the community, to make a good impression, to build a reputation.
To put it mildly, that didn’t work out well.
One evening I was watching an interview with a politician whose name I recognized, but I didn’t know much about him. I thought he was making some cogent points about the topic at hand. I went to the online discussion site to see whether anyone had mentioned this interview yet, and when I found no one had, I hastily composed a post praising the politician and suggesting that others should watch the interview.
The reaction was fast and fierce. How could I have anything nice to say about this nincompoop, who was renowned far and wide as a hypocrite? Where was my sense? Where were my ideals? Where was my head? What did I think I was doing there in the first place?
I was mortified. I, who had always prided myself on intellectual acumen, had totally failed to do my homework. I hadn’t done even the most cursory research to learn anything about the politician’s history.
I felt I’d made an ass of myself. I was so ashamed that I didn’t even visit the site for weeks. I was genuinely in pain.
Now I’m going to have to briefly flash back in time so the next part of the story will make sense.
At that time, in 2012, it had been almost ten years since a beloved spiritual teacher had died. I had shut down my spiritual life to a great extent after his death. You might say it was a long freeze. Or maybe “fallow period” would be a better description. Later events would make that seem like a good way to look at it.
While I was ashamed and hurting in the aftermath of my online blunder, I recalled something I’d heard my teacher say more than once, something like this: “When you see a tack on your chair, sit on it.”
That may sound enigmatic, but I think the metaphor is straightforward. What it meant to me, anyway, was that we should not flee from fully allowing an experience that might impart an important point. We should sit on the point, not avoid it.
I made a vow then. I promised myself I wouldn’t avoid my intense sense of shame. I wouldn’t brush it under the rug. I wouldn’t cover it or deflect it with distractions, entertainments, excuses, or rationalizations. I would experience it fully, let it do its work, and see what happened.
I’m not pretending that I had any specific practice beyond that. I’ve since learned some that I’ll mention a little later. But at the time, I simply stuck to my vow. Whenever the feeling of shame came to visit, I didn’t shoo it away or distract myself. I allowed myself to experience it.
It’s not even that I was inclined to turn toward TV or eating or any other concrete distraction. What I mean by “distract myself” is subtler. It’s a small mental move of avoidance, of turning the attention away from something uncomfortable. Its opposite is mindful awareness, facing experience head-on come what may.
Everything began to change within a few weeks. There was no one moment when the painful sense of shame evaporated, leaving nothing but clarity and peace. No, it happened gradually over a period of weeks. Each time I welcomed shame as a visitor, it lost some of its sting.
What finally became of it? All I can say is it was transmuted. It dissolved, and in its place arose a sense of peace and a new, calm engagement with the truth of being.
I recognized that whatever arises in experience is always already present by the time we can react. Whether it’s comfort or discomfort, joy or distress, calm or chaos, it can be witnessed with equanimity.
I began to notice old friends posting on Facebook about spiritual teachers and teachings they liked. I looked into some of them and found I liked them too. The long freeze had given way to a thaw. The fallow period was coming to an end. I felt a sense of regeneration, of reawakening.
How does this work? If it seems counterintuitive to you that diving into pain is a good idea, that amplifying discomfort can be helpful, consider this simple question: What are we doing when we feel that we’re suffering? In other words, what mental activity are we engaging?
It seems to me that above all else, the answer is we’re actively refusing ourselves compassion. When faced with discomfort or pain, we try to resist it or deny it. We’re judging ourselves, chastising ourselves for the feelings that arise spontaneously. Most of us wouldn’t do it to another, certainly not to a loved one, yet we do it to ourselves. That’s the suffering right there.
In this instance, the active mechanism was a kind of a thought loop. It went something like this:
- That was really stupid, what I did.
- How could I be so dumb? I’m smart, not dumb!
- I humiliated myself in public.
- I can never show my face there again.
- (Repeat forever.)
Each of those thoughts reinforces a sense of emotional pain, of suffering. They whirl around and seem to amplify each other. It feels as if there’s no way out. I kept beating myself up.
That’s exactly what it was. I was beating myself up. I was pummeling myself with those ideas. I was treating myself entirely without compassion and empathy, as if I hated myself, and I didn’t seem to know how to stop.
Notice that by this point the nature of the original mistake didn’t matter. It could have been as trivial as cursing out loud or as serious as committing a felony. The thought loop of suffering was running obsessively on its own momentum. It was no longer about the original offense. It was self-sustaining.
It reminds me of an experience years ago. When I was a teenager, I was admitted to the hospital for an appendectomy. In the recovery room, as I slowly emerged from the anesthetic fog, the room seemed filled with loud screams. I barely had time to wonder what they were about when I noticed that I was the one who was screaming! I stopped immediately. There was pain, yes, but no need to make it worse by screaming.
It’s an imperfect analogy, but I see a significant parallel: I had to notice the self-defeating action before I could stop it. In the instance of my shame it happened that by keeping my promise, by sitting on the tack, by diving into the pain, somehow I created a space where I had an opportunity to notice what I was doing and to stop it, gradually. I began to see an opportunity to embrace myself with kindness and compassion, and I took it.
Practices
As I mentioned, I’ve learned some specific practices to take advantage of the opportunity, to enhance and deepen the process.
Metta (lovingkindess) meditation
I find that this traditional meditation opens the heart and helps to cultivate compassion towards oneself and others. My version begins with visualizing the warmth and love I feel when seeing or meeting a loved one. It could be a spouse, child, parent, dear friend, or even a beloved pet. Then I say to myself:
- May they be safe from harm.
- May they be truly happy.
- May they be free from suffering.
- May they be loved.
Then I picture myself at my most open and vulnerable, when I’m hurting and in need of that same love and compassion. And I say to myself:
- May I be safe from harm.
- May I be truly happy.
- May I be free from suffering.
- May I be loved.
I can then extend that to my circle of friends, to the planet, and to all sentient beings everywhere. Practicing this regularly deeply affects the feeling nature.
Ho’oponopono
Based on a traditional Hawaiian practice for community healing, the modernized version I use resembles a variation I heard from Scott Kiloby. Here’s how I engage it:
- When I notice a feeling that seems distressful, first I simply sit quietly with it, acknowledging it and allowing myself to feel it.
- I ask for the stories surrounding the feeling to reveal themselves, and I allow hearing the stories to intensify the feeling. The thought loop I mentioned is a perfect example of those stories.
- I dive into the feeling with naive curiosity, looking to sense all its aspects. I’m not trying to soften it or push it away, but at this stage it may begin to soften.
- I say to the feeling: “I love you. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.” The important thing is that I have to mean it. I have to be prepared to live with it indefinitely, to welcome it indefinitely. After all, it’s part of me. It is me.
In retrospect, what I did by sitting on the tack of shame was closest to practicing Ho’oponopono.
For me, the whole experience emphasizes how important it is to include the heart in our practice, in our lives. When we find ourselves relying on mental analysis, it’s often judgmental and hurtful, especially to ourselves.
Both aspects can be useful, but the heart never judges, never condemns, never excludes. It knows how to heal us and make us whole.
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How We Can Break the Cycle of Pain
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~Gandhi
Pain is and isn’t just like energy. According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed but is merely converted from one form to another.
For example, the light energy from the sun can be harnessed by plants, which, through photosynthesis, convert it to chemical energy. Plants use this energy to grow fruit, which we eat. We store this energy for when we need to exert ourselves, when we convert it to kinetic energy. The energy never disappears but is instead just displaced.
Pain is in a sense the same, creating a parallel to the first law of thermodynamics, which I call the cycle of pain.
The manager is belittled by his boss because the boss was frustrated with the latest quarterly results, which disappointed because the customers were unhappy with the product. Upset, the manager comes home and mouths off to his wife, who is carrying her own tribulations from work.
The wife and mother then loses her temper with her son, who is hurt by his mother’s outburst. In pain and having witnessed a bad example from his mother about what to do with frustration, the son then goes to school the next day and causes a fight in the classroom during the teacher’s lesson.
His plans in tatters with the class disrupted, the teacher then exacts collective punishment on the whole class, who then each go and act out the negativity in their own separate ways.
The form of the pain changes, but it doesn’t go away—it’s spread out and perpetrated on new victims in a seemingly endless cycle of pain.
Except it can go away. After all, pain differs from energy in some important ways.
First of all, pain can be created, added to, and multiplied or increased exponentially.
Above, the frustration that the teacher caused can turn into sadness, hurt, or anger among his thirty pupils, who then have a negative emotional-energetic push to transfer and potentially increase the pain.
More and more people are born and live longer each day, meaning there are more egos to feel and create pain. The internet and other mass communication technologies only expand each single person’s ability to transfer and create more and more pain in more and more people. Weapons of mass destruction have the same function. This is a depressing picture.
The story, however, isn’t all bad, and as conscious human beings, we can actively work to stop the flow and creation of pain.
When the husband comes home to vent at his wife, the wife can always ask what the matter is, listen compassionately, and react with love and a desire to help ease the pain.
When the child acts out in school, the teacher can always take a deep breath, draw upon her compassion for whatever is driving an innocent child to be aggressive, pull the child aside, and try and find out what’s wrong.
We can all recognize that another person’s negativity is his or her pain, not ours.
This is very simple to comprehend but extremely difficult to achieve. It takes a lot of effort.
Put yourself right in the moment of a very tense or stressful situation. Your boss has had a stressful week and is screaming at you, blaming you for the entire team’s failure or something that had nothing to do with you. Your mother always favored your older brother and is interrogating you, asking why you didn’t get married and have the perfect job like he did. Pick a real example from your own life.
How did you react—with total serenity and compassion? Did you lovingly embrace this as a spiritual challenge and opportunity for growth? In all likelihood, far from it!
You probably shouted back, clamped down, cried, or otherwise reacted to negativity with negativity, and this in turn negatively affected someone else. Why? Because this is hard—really hard. And yet, it’s the struggle we, as human beings, face every day.
However, when we sit around and think about being our best, about trying to make a difference in the world, we think about legendary figures placed in the fulcrum of historic events. We think about Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. or Mother Teresa. Saving the rain forest, ending poverty, or finding a cure for some horrible disease come to mind.
In fact, very few people will ever even have the chance to be in the right place at the right time to make such a difference. Even if we had the skills and desire, we might not have the resources or connections, or even be born in the right era, to effect such a change.
By definition, not everyone can accomplish extraordinary things. The rain forest needs saving, poverty needs ending, and diseases need curing, but why not start with what you can influence right now—the world’s little daily hurts that, through the cycle of pain, create big problems?
But this is our bias, made dramatically worse in recent years by social media: to overlook or even look down upon the ordinary. And yet, it is the ordinary, everyday flow of life that is so difficult to navigate in a way that does no harm to ourselves or others. Indeed, daily life presents our most obvious opportunity to change the world around us—to end the cycle of pain.
Imagine a world where parents didn’t smack or shout at their children out of anger, where spouses didn’t take their work frustrations home and get passive aggressive with each other, where strangers didn’t project their pent-up feelings onto each other.
Imagine all of the infinite little tragedies that could be avoided. Imagine the child who, in a moment of despair, sees a helping hand instead of a fist. Think of what a different place the world would be if one million or one billion people had this same thought all at once.
I, too, once had a head full of grandiosity, all the while overlooking the difference I could make each and every day.
Growing up in an affluent suburb of New York, I was raised like most of the other kids in my peer group—to be hyper-competitive and keep up with the Joneses. I wanted to be a famous academic, a CEO, or the president. I thought about ending wars, saving the environment, and changing the economy.
I was also short on patience. I punched back. I showed off. I overlooked people. It was only after I was brought so low by pain, when I saw no way forward, that I dropped my illusions and really thought about how to move forward in the world. When I felt there was no hope, I stopped contemplating the horizon and instead looked right in front of me.
For maybe the first time, I really saw the people who came into my life and got to know so well who had wronged me, betrayed me. Rather than cursing them or begrudging them, I thought about how they got the way they were—their being bullied or even molested as children or abandoned as adults (true stories!).
I thought about myself, put upon by my siblings and ignored by my parents. And I realized what a difference it would have made if even some minor character in any of these stories would have taken the initiative to break that cycle of pain.
Everything that happens in life is the result of an unknowable series of chance events that happened over centuries. You are here right now because some peasant in the fields a thousand years ago smiled at one of his fellow laborers or some seamstress took the risk of getting on a ship bound for America or someone crossing the street didn’t get hit by a car.
Likewise, the gang member might not be in jail if that teacher had taken a chance on him. The cheerleader might not be bulimic if someone had taken the time to notice her eating habits or cared enough to say anything.
Even when we aren’t causing it, so many of us shut our eyes and turn our heads to other people’s pain because we’ve been hurt ourselves and don’t want to face more pain if we can avoid it.
To come to and maintain the level of consciousness necessary to actively counter the cycle of pain requires a spiritual vigilance that is profound and yet so simple. To break and not perpetuate the cycle of pain, to purify and not pollute our emotional environment, is so mundane but can be so impactful. To me, this is what it means to be the change I wish to see in the world.
Once I recovered from the deep, crushing, suicidal depression that I suffered, I left my high-flying job. I moved countries. I extricated myself from destructive relationships. Coming from a life in which I interacted with senior politicians and CEOs, I instead dabbled in coaching and tutoring and other endeavors I saw as making a small difference. I slowed down and, instead of chasing grand visions, became much more conscious of what I was doing each moment.
This was a difficult transition to make, and it is a challenge each day to remember the cycle of pain and my role in it and, more importantly, not to perpetuate it. Nevertheless, I find life so much more rewarding now. Though my path is littered with mistakes and small failings, most days I am able to see the incremental positive differences that I make.
I don’t know what all of this will amount to, but what I do know is that I feel so much more rewarded and empowered.
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How Expectations Can Drive People Away and How to Let Go of Control
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” ~Friedrich Salomon Perls
About five years ago, I had a falling out with a close friend. I was irritated because she didn’t do the things I thought she should and she didn’t give as much as I did. I felt I had been very generous with her, and I expected her to do the same. I felt she owed me.
My anger became unmanageable and started seeping into pretty much every interaction we had. She began cancelling dinner plans and camping trips. She wouldn’t call me back after days of me leaving a message. It happened out of nowhere, and of course everything was her fault.
Except that it didn’t. And it wasn’t.
Not too long ago, I was a bit of a control freak. I didn’t know it, of course, and I would have described myself as open-minded and easy going. In reality, I was tormented by my own expectations.
Since I was a child, I had an image in my head about who I was supposed to be. What my family was supposed to look like. What house I was supposed to live in. What career success was supposed to mean. That’s a lot of supposing! I had always assumed these expectations were my future.
I am an artist by trade, and in my art studio, I have many tools. Paintbrushes, sanders, stencil cutters, and paper punches fill shelves up to the ceiling. However, I tell people that the most important tools I use are flexibility of mind and a practice of not having expectations as to the outcome. This allows new and amazing techniques to be discovered and yields paintings that continuously surprise and delight me. I find these tools are useful outside of the art studio as well.
As time went on and distance grew between me and my friend, I began to feel enraged by her apparent apathy toward me and everything that I “had done for her.”
I thought to myself, “I would never treat anyone that way. How dare she do that to me?” and “After all I’ve given her, she should want to give back!” Every thought I had praised me for all the good deeds I had done and blamed her for ruining our friendship. I was the victim and she was the wrong doer.
One day, I sat down to enlighten her about how she had negatively impacted our relationship. Her reaction was horrifying to me. She said she was going to take a step back from our friendship.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, I was telling her how she could singlehandedly improve things. What was wrong with her that she didn’t understand that? We stopped speaking and I didn’t see her for a long time.
Then something life changing happened—sobriety. In the first year after I quit drinking, I learned a lot about myself and my need to control just about everything in order to meet my expectations.
I learned how my expectations of others (unexpressed, by the way, because “I shouldn’t have to say it!”) and the anger that followed when people didn’t act the way I thought they should, actually drove people away.
The entire time our friendship was breaking down, I thought that if she would just do the things I wanted her to do, not only would our friendship be fixed, but everyone involved would be better off. I knew better than she did. My way of living was better than hers. She, of course, ran away from me like I was on fire.
My need to control others was unfounded, unrealistic, and unattainable. It was a hard thing to admit that my way wasn’t better than her way and, in fact, people weren’t abandoning me. I was driving them to leave. I saw that other relationships in my life were also going down this path. I had to change.
One day after surfing, I went to sit on a bench overlooking the water. One of the “old guys” we surfed with, who lived across the street, came and talked with me as the sun was setting over the ocean and I was lamenting about the stresses in my life. He said one of the most important things anyone has ever said to me: “I don’t do stress. Stress is optional.”
WTF? How on earth does one not get stressed? Teach me, Oh Wise One. I thought deeply about this and about my issues with expectations and control. I needed control in order to meet my own expectations. When those expectations were not met, anxiety, anger and depression followed. Where does stress fit in?
The stress comes from trying to control actions that I think can bring my expectations to fruition. Have you ever seen the YouTube video of the zoo keeper trying to take a photo of all the baby pandas together? He expected a cute shot. All he got is a video of him trying to put baby pandas in a line, as one by one they continuously wandered off.
I know that’s kind of a cut and dry example, and life isn’t always cut and dry. However, the primary reason that I would get so pissed when my expectations were not met is rather simple: “My way is superior to everyone else’s way. How can people be so stupid and disrespectful?”
I don’t want to be an angry person. I don’t want to be unhappy with the people in my life. At some point, I realized that all of the control I was attempting to put on others was really me trying to make others meet my own expectations. That doesn’t work. Like ever. And it creates a huge amount of stress and frustration akin to trying keep baby pandas in line.
The real questions are: Who do I think I am? Why do I think I can control anything? What does it really matter if people are late, or my flight is cancelled, or my hat got lost when it flew off the top of the car.
Do these things affect my life? Sure, they can. Is it worth having an explosive hissy fit and making myself and everyone around me miserable? Uh, that would be a no. (Embarrassingly, the loss of that damn hat came close to ruining our evening.)
Advice from an Artist—Three Ways to Let Go:
1. Have zero expectations about how anything is going to turn out in the end.
It’s easier said than done, but if I went into the art studio expecting a certain painting to be created, I would be disappointed all the time. It’s so much easier to have an open mind and go with the flow.
This is also true when it comes to other people. By accepting the fact that people are not predictable, I am not attached to outcomes about how they “should” be.
2. Stop trying to control everything.
My passion is creating, but I can’t always get in the studio to paint. And guess what? I don’t pitch a fit. I simply do what needs to be done to continue on.
For whatever reason, this is easy for me to apply to my business, and harder to apply to situations that involve people. I have to peel my fingers from the white-knuckle grip they have on how people should be and be okay with the possibility of “my way” not being an option. Perhaps somebody else has an awesome way I’ve never even thought of.
3. Be flexible and don’t be attached to outcomes.
I choose to open my mind to all the possibilities. In the studio, experimentation and the ability to adjust comes very easily. In life, not so much. Last minute changes in dinner plans aren’t going to kill me. When someone is “inconveniencing” me by wanting to meet at 8:00 instead of 6:30 I don’t get pissed anymore. I go for a hike because now I have time to.
Does that sound too simple? I don’t think it is.
My old friend and I have begun to repair our friendship. She moved away and I miss her dearly. We have talked about the past, but not in great detail. I try to show her that my thinking has changed and I don’t want anything from her but her friendship. It’s a hard thing to repair when you live far away but it’s mending little by little.
I no longer expect her or anyone to think like me. When I start feeling superior, I have to remember that I’m no better and no worse than any other person on the planet. I hope she forgives her wayward friend. At the time, I really thought that I was doing her a favor by showing her a better way to live. It was hard to realize that my ego was running the show.
When I’m working on a painting and I make a mark that I didn’t intend to, I don’t look at it as a “mistake.” I look at it as an opportunity to go down a road I may not have seen had it not been for that out of place mark. This is how I strive to live my life now. When a monkey wrench is thrown in, I put it in my back pocket figuring that a wrench may come in handy at some point.
And if it doesn’t, that’s okay. Just as with my art, I choose to live open-minded to all experiences. Also, just like my paintings, life isn’t only made up of straight lines. There are twists, turns, and interruptions. The question I must ask myself is, do I want to put up a fight whenever something unexpected happens, or go with the flow and gracefully see where this new road leads?
We can’t control other people and situations. But we can choose to set expectations aside and not put so much emphasis on how things are going to end up. After all, it truly is about the journey. And the destination? Well, sometimes the most beautiful views are the ones that we stumble upon unexpectedly, while on the way to where we’re “supposed” to be.
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License to Hurt: What We Really Need When We’re in Pain
“We’ll light the candle together when she’s ready. For now I’ll trust the darkness for us both.” ~Terri St. Cloud
Over breakfast one morning recently, Jeff and I started reminiscing about past years, and something was said that brought back a painful memory for me. My boss at the time had been unimaginably small-minded. He had hung me out to dry. “I still can’t understand why he did that,” I said.
Jeff looked at me levelly. “You need to get over it, Jan,” he said. “It was years ago.”
Wise advice, without question. The only problem was that I didn’t want it just then.
Why is it that we are so seldom allowed a few moments just to hurt? After a serious heartbreak like the death of a loved one, sure, we’re given all the leeway we need. But the run-of-the-mill slights and small, persistent sorrows are treated as something we should quickly move past, even when they’re deeply painful.
Jeff, poor guy, was just trying to help. I couldn’t fault him. I knew I was being a bit ridiculous. But what I longed for was someone to acknowledge my outrage, let me sit with it, live into it for a few moments—and then gently remind me that it’s time to get over it.
A few hours later, after I’d licked my wounds and was feeling better, I began to wonder: Might I also be failing to honor the sorrows of others?
Everything I’ve learned in the past eight years, since the death of our son, has pointed me to the same lesson: The most important thing we can give each other in times of pain is compassion, a simple, “Oh, I bet that’s really hard.” We should offer that before—or instead of—advice on how to cope.
Even worse are the times when we immediately turn the conversation to ourselves: “I know just what you mean. I’m going through something like that too.”
I catch myself doing this way too often. My intent is to signal to the person that we’re partners in pain and can support each other. But the comment shifts the focus away from my companion’s heartache to mine.
Or we may inadvertently belittle our friend’s sorrow with stories of how we’ve overcome the same challenge.
Recently I overheard a conversation between two elderly women. One was talking about how emotionally wrenching she was finding it to give up her home and move to a retirement facility.
“Oh, you won’t miss it a bit once you get settled,” the other woman said.
She had already been through the experience and knew without question what lay ahead. I wanted to break in and hug the first woman. When we are in pain, the last thing we need is someone who knows without question what lies ahead.
Many of us find it deeply uncomfortable to be in the presence of suffering. And no wonder. We live in a culture where we’re taught from childhood to hide our hurts, to buck up and get over them. We don’t want to display them, and we don’t want to see them in others. Yet unspoken pain is all around us.
I’m talking here about a way of caring for each other that hews a fine line, because I in no way want to encourage my friends and loved ones to wallow in their sorrow. I want to honor it for what it is but never give it the power to rule my life.
It’s true that others may be able to benefit from what I’ve learned—but not immediately after suffering the same kind of hurt. And it’s entirely up to them whether or not they want to learn from me.
To show love for another in sorrow asks more of us than empathetic gestures. It asks us to try and understand exactly what the other is feeling, and even to risk getting a taste of that pain.
At a retreat in Maui in 2001, Ram Dass drew a clear distinction between empathy and compassion.
“Compassion for somebody else is that you are one with them and you hurt with them. That compassion comes out of the oneness of your heart, the oneness with all beings . . . ” He continued, “It’s not just empathy. It’s not one person feels empathy for another person. It’s got to be one person.”
How will I ever reach the point where I can feel as one with someone who’s hurting? In this I’m like a child learning to walk; I can only stumble and try again.
I’ve lived most of my life cultivating the image of myself as a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need anyone’s help. Reid’s death showed me how wrong I was. My task now, I think, is to be present for others who are hurting, because I know what suffering means. This knowledge is a bittersweet gift that’s been given to me by life. I’m trying as hard as I can to use it.
I do not always succeed.
This is what I know for certain: I can’t tell others how to heal. All I can do is sit with them—and when they’re ready, help them light a candle to find their way out of the dark. Doing this kindly, without giving voice to how I think they should move forward, is a practice I will struggle to follow the rest of my life.
One last thing: A few weeks ago, when I had another setback with work, my dear Jeff came to me and enveloped me in a hug. He held me close, hurting with me. And only then, after several minutes, did he remind me that it wasn’t all that important—that in fact I had plenty of reasons to let it go.
I responded by giving him the biggest, longest kiss I’ve given him in years.
Photo by mhx
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Why I Forgave My Father and How It Set Me Free
“There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.” ~Bryant H. McGill
The day I chose to forgive was the day I became free
It happened on an ordinary weekday. It was just another ride on a crowded train. It’s been years since it happened, yet I can still recall the faintest details of that moment.
There they were, sitting directly across from me. She pulled out a small mirror and began to apply her lipstick. He playfully nudged her, causing her to mess up. She got mad. He laughed. She couldn’t help but smile despite her aggravation. She said, “Daaad, don’t do that.”
Before I knew what hit me, I felt warm streams of tears rolling down my face. I couldn’t stop them, couldn’t control them, and there was no way to hide them. It’s as if years of suppressed pain came swarming up my spine and took over all my senses.
This was the day I realized I really missed a father figure in my life. The funny thing is, I did just fine for seventeen years of my childhood until this very moment. This moment was the straw on camel’s back to my bottled up emotions.
A dark part of me wishes I could tell you a tragic story of how my father passed away at a young age and how I never got to know him. That didn’t happen though. And I think it’s one of the very reasons it hurts so much.
My father was alive and well. Still is. He simply had different priorities and was not the kid loving type. You see, he was “there,” but he was never there for me.
I got to see him on weekends from time to time, but most of our “quality time” was spent with him taking care of his personal errands and me waiting in the car.
Many times he canceled plans at the last minute, and sometimes didn’t show up at all. On birthdays he made a quick appearance to drop off a gift and quickly took off to take care of other more important things.
Sometimes he’d call and ask for my older sister, and they would chat for a while as I patiently waited for my turn to talk to daddy. Most times my turn didn’t come. I watched in hopeless silence as my sister said “goodbye” and hung up the phone.
It stung a little extra the day I overheard my mother reminding him that he has another daughter and that he should ask to talk to me too. To me, he was a mystery. A tall, manly figure with gold chains and strong cologne.
I remember looking up at him from the corner of the room, hanging on every word that came out of his mouth. I’m not sure if it was fascination or intimidation that drove this curiosity. Probably a little bit of both.
He was the life of the party. He drove an Audi in a town where most people walked, me and my family included. I was a shy little girl who wanted nothing more than to be loved by her big and strong daddy. I didn’t understand why he didn’t seem to care.
So there I was, a seventeen-year-old girl on a morning train trying to wipe the tears without smearing my mascara. It was too late, mascara was everywhere. After this day, over the course of many years, I experienced a kaleidoscope of emotions. Mostly anger.
I hated him. I blamed him for not being there for me when I needed him most. Over the next few years I acknowledged a series of behaviors that were direct outcomes of my ”daddy issues.”
I was extremely insecure, which caused an enormous amount of jealousy that led to endless fights with my lovers. I sought out friendships with men, mostly because I needed their attention. I continuously victimized myself, and it was all his fault. I blamed that selfish, arrogant jerk who was too cool to hang with his little girl.
Years passed this way. I dwelled. The anger and sadness resonated inside me. Tears came to the surface at every darn daddy scene in the movies. I pretended Father’s Day didn’t exist. I felt bad for myself every chance I had. It was exhausting. I avoided his rare calls and slight attempts to “build” a relationship. “It’s too late,” I told myself.
This went on for years. So much of my time was wasted on accusation, pain suppression, and avoidance. “This is just the way things are,” I told myself. I didn’t think there was another way.
Some say time heals all wounds; others believe it’s up to us to heal them. In my case it was a little bit of both. On my long journey to recovery, I did a whole lot of soul searching and self-realization. I began to slowly and cautiously unravel the layers of hurt and blame.
I consciously and diligently started working on improving my confidence, and with the help of a steady and healthy relationship with a wonderful man, I started to learn that not all men were bad. More over, I began to understand that men, just like women, can be wonderful, caring, loving, and supporting beings that make this world a beautiful place.
As I dove deeper into studying the human psyche I learned that all of our behaviors are taught, and if there is no positive influence to teach us right from wrong, there is a big chance we can go astray from what is right. My father was no exception to this rule.
His father wasn’t nurturing or loving or any of the other things I wanted my father to be. He never learned those fatherly tendencies that I so desperately needed from him. While he certainly had an opportunity to change this pattern, as we all do, he didn’t, and for that I empathize with him.
I’m sorry he didn’t get to feel the love and admiration I felt for him. I’m sorry he wasn’t there to rejoice in my accomplishments. I’m sorry he wasn’t the one to show me how amazing a father’s love can be. I’m sorry he missed out on a life long connection with a caring and loving soul he himself created. I’m sorry he missed out on so much love.
Today, as I watch my incredible husband play with my son, my heart smiles. I cry happy tears that he will never feel the void that haunted me throughout my younger years. He won’t have to wonder why his daddy isn’t there, why he didn’t call, or when he’ll see him again.
The presence of his parents’ love will teach him that life is full of loving and caring people who come together to grow and foster unity in the safety of their loving home. He will know love the way he’ll know his name.
This part of my life taught me that while hardships are inevitable, the way we respond to them is up to us. For many years I chose to feel hurt instead of learning to forgive and looking for the light.
I chose to blame instead of seeking understanding. I felt anger instead of compassion. I chose to be a victim instead of becoming the victor. I sought happiness in others, not realizing that it has always been within me; I simply didn’t know where to look.
Today I wish my father well. I hope he lives out the rest of his days surrounded by peace, love, and kindness. The day I chose to forgive him was the day I set myself free.
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Failing Doesn’t Make You a Failure (and You Can Still Succeed)
“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” ~Zig Ziglar
Take a second and imagine little you. running around like the little ragamuffin you were. Imagine as far back as you can—back when you were first able to comprehend feedback from parents, teachers, or whatever other authorities were around.
When considering the cause of low self-esteem, the most obvious answers fall under the umbrella of past abuses or failures: a parent who demanded straight A’s, an abusive spouse, etc. These are common forms of mistreatment that cause some people’s self-esteem to tank.
But for those who’ve lived fairly easy lives, while surrounded by reasonably supportive people, low self-esteem has no obvious root (I talked about my own experience with this here.) What’s worse is that having an issue we don’t understand can make us feel weak or defective because the problem seemingly has no cause.
So if you’ve suffered with low self-esteem, even if just occasionally or in certain situations, research is now pointing us in an interesting direction. There’s a surprising link that can help us out, and it has everything to do with effort.
How Low Self-Esteem Takes Shape
Are you one of those people who think Sigmund Freud is an absolute dunce? I don’t blame you. But he was right about something, and it’s that what happens to us during childhood shapes us—big time.
Researchers in the Netherlands discovered that parents who praise their children for innate qualities may actually do more harm than good. According to the study, parents should instead praise children for their hard work and effort.
So what’s the difference? It’s hardly possible to distinguish between a mom exclaiming, “Oh, you’re such a good reader!” and another who says, “Oh, you worked so hard on your reading assignment!” But this difference is significant.
Children who were praised for “being” something felt a strange pressure that children who were praised for their work didn’t feel: When they fail, they associate the failure with an innate quality instead of associating it with the amount or quality of work they did.
As you can imagine, associating your failures with innate flaws instead of just the quality of effort you put in can be damaging to a child’s impressionable self-image. And it can continue to wreak havoc on your adult self.
Suddenly “I didn’t study enough” becomes “I’m stupid,” or “I need more practice with painting” becomes “I’m a bad artist,” etc. The low value falls on the self, not on the action taken.
To put it another way, this kind of praise conditions us to think we are supposed to already be something without practice or trial and error. After falling short of this irrational standard a few times, self-esteem can drop quickly.
The researchers also found that parents were more likely to praise children with low self-esteem for their innate qualities, thinking it would help give them a needed boost. Whoops.
If you think this sounds like a bunch of BS, I can vouch for it personally.
For much of my life, I wouldn’t try anything that I felt I wasn’t “innately” good at. I was big on beginner’s luck and anything I knew how to do intuitively, without much effort. Everything else (especially when hand-eye coordination was involved) could suck it as far as I was concerned.
My parents were not major enforcers of hard work, so their praises were usually directed at innate qualities.
As I grew up, this subtle distinction wreaked havoc in many areas of my life. I would quit things at the first sign of trouble, becoming extremely discouraged, and sometimes even feeling ashamed at the slightest mistake.
Basically, how I behaved and my upbringing exemplified the above theory: I had no understanding of commitment and how it was the key to being talented in any area. Instead, I fearfully avoided anything that required practice and stuck to things I felt I had a “knack” for. I believed that what I did was who I was—for better or worse.
Separating Yourself From Your Effort
So ask yourself this: What is your relationship with hard work and effort? How about innate talent? How do you see yourself when moving toward a goal?
If you’ve had self-esteem issues in your life, you may be familiar with quitting or shying away from effort. Maybe you felt bad when you weren’t immediately good at a new task, thinking you just “didn’t have it in you.”
So you need to begin catching yourself in these thought patterns. A failure of any kind does not reflect that you are a failure. It is simply that your action failed to have the impact you wanted.
So begin to:
1. Consciously separate these two things in your mind. Each time you recognize this pattern, remind yourself that a failed attempt at something does not equate to a failed person.
2. Suspend negative self-talk and replace it with a more neutral belief. For example, if you intensely feel that you’ve failed at something, remind yourself that it is probably a common mistake and getting good at any task requires patience.
3. Truly begin to understand that failure is necessary for success in anything. View failures (as best you can) as learning opportunities that will propel you to the next stage.
The book The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How does a great job of debunking the “innate talent” myth. The author explains where talent and skill actually come from. (Spoiler alert: it’s practice)
“Every expert in every field is the result of around ten thousand hours of committed practice.” ~The Talent Code
Extraordinary innate talent is sort of a myth, perpetuated by meaningless phrases like “you either have it or you don’t!” Of course, it’s safe to say that we all have propensities for certain things, but that does not bar those who don’t from practicing and developing that skill too.
So the next time you hold yourself to unrealistic expectations, remember: You are not your effort.
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How to Identify Your Emotional Triggers and What to Do About Them
“Awareness is the birthplace of possibility. Everything you want to do, everything you want to be, starts here.” ~Deepak Chopra
Ever wonder why some people respond in the same destructive way over and over even though they keep getting the same bad results?
Many of us can relate to having unhealthy coping mechanisms and responses to things like stress, fear, or other agitating emotional states. Often, we are unaware of the subconscious processes going on and we may, for example, instinctively reach for an alcoholic beverage at the end of a long, hard day, never realizing we are setting ourselves for an addictive pattern that may one day claim our health, or possibly our life.
I know this was certainly my situation. But, I was unable or unconscious of how to get out of this pattern of behavior—until I learned to identify my emotional triggers and re-route my unhealthy habitual responses.
Addiction or other self-destructive behaviors or habits are learned responses to environmental and emotional triggers. You can un-learn these responses and create new ones, thus building a healthier way of engaging with the world, your emotional landscape, and your family and friends.
An example of one of my triggers is when someone downplays something I’ve achieved. One day I was talking to my husband about an accomplishment at work. His response? “Anyone could’ve done that.”
I felt dismissed and belittled, as if what I had accomplished didn’t mean anything and had no value. Any time I felt dismissed in this way, I used to lash out in angry ways. Or worse, I’d get myself a large glass of wine and then another, and another.
Was this a healthy or productive response? No. Did it resolve anything in a useful way? No. Was I in a position of power acting this way? No. In fact, I was allowing other forces and factors to control my behavior.
It wasn’t until I realized where this emotional trigger came from that I began to recognize my actions for what they were: a reaction rather than a calm and poised response.
I realized that I grew up with a perfectionist mother who would often criticize me if she didn’t feel like I was living up to her high standards. This often left me feeling devalued as a person, or “less than.” So, whenever I felt devalued, I lashed out in anger.
I suppose this is a natural defense mechanism. But it was harmful to me in many ways because I never really acknowledged my pain, nor did I ever address it in a healthy way. Instead, I would often turn this anger inward upon myself and, in order to numb the pain, drink it down.
This was an ongoing cycle for years and how I dealt with any kind of emotional pain: anger or sadness turned into inward hatred, and I drank to dull the pain.
When we don’t recognize our triggers and our unhealthy reactions to them, it can lead us down a long, tortuous path.
Part of my recovering from a debilitating substance abuse problem involved understanding how triggers work and also learning healthier ways of responding to them. This is why now when I feel dismissed or rejected, I give voice to those emotions. I open my mouth and say, “You know, that hurt my feelings because…”
I have found that by giving my pain a voice, I no longer have to turn it inward upon myself and suppress it with alcohol. This helps keep me sober to this day.
Let’s go over a few other emotional trigger examples:
- A person who felt ignored and dismissed growing up might start yelling whenever they feel they aren’t being heard.
- A person who had emotionally unavailable parents (or partners) may get insecure whenever someone isn’t there for them.
- A person who felt controlled in the past might get angry when they think they’re being told what to do.
- A person who felt helpless for years might panic when they’re in a situation over which they have no control.
Do any of these emotional triggers resonate with you? Ask yourself, “How do I handle it when this occurs?” Many of us turn to food, alcohol, or other substances to dull our pain when faced with unresolved anger or other emotions.
A trigger is simply a stimulus that evokes upsetting feelings, which may lead to problematic behaviors. We all have triggers, and we all have unhealthy ways in which we deal with them. But, we have the power to stop our automatic responses and re-route. The challenge is learning to identify our triggers and then recognizing them when they are happening.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Viktor E. Frankl
Often, our triggers are experiences, situations, or stressors that unconsciously remind us of past traumas or emotional upsets. They “re-trigger” traumas in the form of overwhelming feelings of sadness, anxiety, or panic.
The brain forms an association between the trigger and your response to it, so that every time that thing happens again, you do the same behavioral response to it. This is because what fires together, wires together.
This means when neurons fire in the brain, they wire together the situation, emotions, and responses that caused that firing of the neurons in the first place. Sensory memory can also be extremely powerful, and sensory experiences associated with a traumatic event may be linked in the memory, causing an emotional reaction even before a person realizes why he or she is upset.
Habit formation also plays a strong role in triggering. People tend to do the same things in the same way. For example, a person who smokes might always smoke while he or she is driving; therefore, driving could trigger an urge to smoke, often without the smoker’s conscious thought.
Because our responses to triggers usually occur at the subconscious level, and we are completely unaware of the firing and wiring we have created, we are doomed to repeat self-destructive behaviors until we identify our triggers.
Once we know our triggers and begin to recognize them when they happen, we can see them for what they are—over-reactions to a perceived threat. Then, we can learn to respond in ways that are more life affirming, useful, and healthy for us.
There are two different types of reactions to triggers:
Emotional
We get stuck in negative emotions such as anger, sadness, or anxiety and react in extremely emotional ways—getting violent, yelling and screaming, withdrawing completely, etc.
Physical
We crave certain substances (food, sugar, alcohol, drugs, etc.) This happens because the emotional pain triggers our habitual way of indulging in some kind of physical activity that we are using to suppress the emotion or dull the pain.
When it comes to physical reactions, it helps me to create space by doing something else, for example, taking a walk.
For emotional reactions, it helps me to clearly communicate my feelings. Mostly I had to learn to understand my emotions, acknowledge them, and then give them a voice.
Instead of unconsciously reacting to a trigger/stimulus, you can learn to consciously respond to them by doing what I call The Trigger and Response Exercise.
Start by taking a sheet a paper and creating three columns. Title them: Trigger, Current Reaction, and New Response.
In the Trigger column, write each one of your triggers. You can think of these as things that “push your buttons.”
In the Current Reaction column, list how you normally react when this button is pushed.
In the New Response column, write what you could do as a conscious response instead of your normal knee-jerk reaction.
Below are a few examples:
Example 1
Trigger: When I feel that my spouse dismisses my comments or feelings about something
Current Reaction: I get angry and yell at him.
New Response: I’ll tell him my feelings were hurt.
Example 2
Trigger: When I feel insecure about my body
Current Reaction: I eat a bag of cookies.
New Response: I’ll go for a walk around the block.
Example 3
Trigger: When I get overwhelmed and stressed
Current Reaction: I binge drink.
New Response: I’ll practice deep breathing.
Now that you’ve written your list of triggers and changed how you’ll respond, you’ve got to learn to make these responses your habitual way of being.
Keep this list handy and use it as a guide. You can add new ways to manage your triggers as they come to you.
Don’t get discouraged if you falter, as it takes time to learn new ways of being. Just keep practicing them, until over time, they become your new habits. In this way, you are powerful in that you consciously own and choose how you respond to people, situations, and circumstances. You aren’t blindly reacting anymore.
Life is full of triggers, know this. But, also know you have the choice and the power to respond to those triggers in ways that are healthy and achieve better outcomes. In this way, you transform your life for good.
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Why I’m No Longer Hiding Behind My Privilege and My Spirituality
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~Anne Frank
We’re all just spiritual beings, bumbling along in human bodies, trying to make our way.
Trying to find the delicate balance between living in a physical world and embracing our higher selves.
In my quest for spiritual enlightenment, I learned how to narrow my focus. I learned to tune out the noisy Facebook newsfeed, I don’t watch the news, and I avoid saying things just for the sake of controversy.
For a while, this worked. As my vibe rose, I started living a life more fulfilled and happy. Whenever people around me got hung up on the latest news story, I was content to basically plug my ears and say “nanananana not listening” and go back to my abundance-minded podcasts and books.
I meant well, I really did; my feeling was that if I were to just focus on the problem, then I was only adding to the noise and not helping the world find a solution.
I didn’t want to just shout at what I’m against, so I didn’t shout at all.
But then, Charlottesville happened.
Full disclosure, I’m a white, English-speaking, thirty-something woman living in Canada. I was tempted to do what I’d been doing when it came to the news—avoid googling it and getting the full story. I didn’t want to “add to the bad vibes.”
But for some reason, I felt a pull to understand this one and I could barely stop myself from typing “what happened in Charlottesville” into Google.
I was horrified at what I saw, needless to say.
Let me back up a bit.
As a white woman, I’ve been somewhat self-conscious in spreading an abundance-mindset message. For a long time, I thought, “Who am I to even talk about this, when life has clearly been much easier for me than for some others?”
I was very aware of my white privilege, and it made me self-conscious. I was scared of the backlash I might (rightfully?) receive if I were to spout things like, “You can create your own reality!” on social media.
“What do you know about real life, middle-class white girl?” I was afraid they’d say. “Must be easy for you to say!”
Because, although I’ve certainly had hardships, my life has been pretty charmed compared to others who grew up homeless, or in abusive situations.
So back to Charlottesville. I felt an uncontrollable pull to understand more thoroughly what happened here. Why, all of a sudden, a group of white supremacists felt it was okay to gather and spread their hate. The KKK marched with no masks—just let that sink in for a second.
The things I was feeling went against everything I’d been practicing in my effort to achieve a higher state of enlightenment.
I was angry. I was ashamed. I hurt for my fellow humans, particularly Heather Heyer and her family.
This time, I couldn’t just “not have an opinion on it.” I couldn’t just bury my head and act like ignorance is bliss. I couldn’t choose not to participate in the human experience.
I realized that I could use my white privilege one of two ways: to contribute to the problem, or to the solution.
To say nothing and ignore it would be to invoke my white privilege in favor of the problem.
Because let’s face it, I am privileged in that I could just bury my head in the sand, and it probably wouldn’t affect my daily life. Nobody would shout hurtful racial slurs at me, simply because they feel empowered to. I don’t ever worry that I got turned away for a job because of my ethnicity.
Spirituality is a beautiful thing, but not when it causes us to turn a blind eye to the experience of our fellow humans, under the guise that they somehow “attracted” it.
Because even if that’s true, does that make them any less deserving of our support and compassion? Of course not.
The problem is, fighting against something just makes it bigger and gives it more power. So how can we affect real change?
I don’t have all the answers, but here’s the beauty I see coming from all this:
The victims of these hate crimes died for a reason bigger than themselves, and not in vain.
The world is at a crucial boiling point that would never have been reached if these people didn’t feel empowered to show their true colors.
All the hatred is coming out, and while it would be better if it didn’t exist at all, this is actually a good thing, because you can’t have real equality when the problem is swept under the rug.
It’s caused me (and countless others in privileged positions) to check themselves and question their beliefs and behavior.
More people than ever are using their voices to make the world a safer, and more compassionate place.
You don’t have to sit and stew in the problem with those affected in order to show your support. I’m not saying you have to put all your energy into fighting against the problem. You don’t have to feel guilty for being white (if you are too), and nobody’s accusing you of being a racist.
But we can have each other’s backs.
Simple things make a difference. Like actually listening and believing someone when they talk about their experiences, instead of shrugging them off because they’re “being dramatic” or “too sensitive.” Telling your family or friends when they make an insensitive (and so not funny) joke. Catching yourself when you make snap judgments about someone based on their ethnicity and shifting your behavior as needed.
We’re all doing the best with what we have, and compassion goes a long way.
Real equality (and not just on paper, while minorities continue to be treated like underlings) is on the way. Let’s continue to be the change.
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How I Healed My FOMO and Started Saying No
“When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying ‘no’ to yourself.” ~Paulo Coelho
My sister-in-law returned to Montreal after spending three months in Portugal. She told me that the biggest adjustment to being back was spending twenty minutes in the pharmacy aisle deciding which shampoo brand to get because the options were endless. She missed life in Portugal, where she only had one brand to choose from.
Ah, the paradox of choice.
I am a recovering indecisive person. I used to stand in line at restaurant counters, telling people to go ahead of me with their orders because I couldn’t make up my mind.
What if I got the poached eggs on cod cakes but the French toast with apple butter was really the way to go? At least with brunch menus you can order both and split it with a friend, but it gets a little trickier when you’re talking about plans where you can’t be in two places at once, but you still try to be.
When I was invited to four different Halloween Parties in my twenties, I attempted to go to all of them! I didn’t want to have FOMO (fear of missing out), so I spread myself thin trying to do it all by making an appearance at each party—always with one foot out the door.
The downside to saying yes to each of my friends was that I wasn’t able to be fully present for just one person. I felt scattered and rushed to get on to the next party, and I left each of my friends feeling like they weren’t important enough to commit to.
The other thing indecisive people like me used to say is, “I’ll try and make it.”
Really? You’re going to try? We both know that probably means you’re a no show. Why don’t you just say yes or no? To quote Yoda from Star Wars, “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”
I used to rush to say “YES!” to every offer that sounded good at the time. “Yes, I’ll be part of the book club,” “Yes, I’ll help you write that grant,” “Yes, I’ll launch a rooftop garden project,” “Yes, I’ll help you move,” “Yes, I’ll do a full day workshop for free and not get to talk about my business.”
I said yes so many times I felt like I was spinning plates. Running around like a crazy person trying to please everyone, I wondered, “How did I get stuck with so many commitments?” (Ahem…well, Myrite, you did say yes to all those commitments).
It was as if I didn’t know any other option but saying yes. That was until one day I met with a fellow coach to see if she was interested in co-creating a program with me. I ran the idea by her expecting her to say yes right away (as I would have!). But when we finished the meeting she said, “Do you mind if I sit with this and see if it’s a yes?”
What? Say that again? These were new words to my ears. I had never heard of that option! I didn’t know that you could say that! It opened up worlds of possibilities.
First of all, I respected her more for saying she’d have to think about it than if she rushed to please me with a yes. And it also taught me that I could give myself the time and space to sit with a choice to see if it was a genuine heartfelt yes or if I was saying yes out of guilt or obligation. Just so you know, saying yes out of guilt is a definite no-no.
I also used to be so afraid of what would happen if I said no. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone, but what I realized is that when you say yes to other people at the expense of yourself, the hardest person to disappoint is really you!
If you’re so concerned with what other people might think if you say no, then ask yourself whether you’re making other people’s needs more important than your own. Just like kids who throw a tantrum when they don’t get what they want, you can expect that when you start to bravely and gracefully stand your ground and say what you want instead of what others might expect of you, you’ll get some pushback. But that is part of living a brave life. .
So here are some suggestions from my recovering people pleaser heart to yours, whether you’re indecisive, have FOMO, or rush to say yes.
1. Learn how to be okay with disappointing some people.
As Oprah so eloquently taught me, “In order to live a brave life you have to be okay with disappointing some people.”
When you say no to someone else, you are saying yes to yourself. Instead of worrying about other people’s needs, take care of your own. As Brené Brown shares, one minute of discomfort while telling someone no is better than a few years of resentment after saying yes to something you didn’t want to do but feel obligated to.
2. Create space before responding.
When someone makes you an offer, before you say yes, try slowing it down. Take the time to check in with yourself and say “let me get back to you.” Or, “Sounds good! Let me sit with it and ill let you know by…” Or “Let me check my calendar/check in with my partner and get back to you.” Then make a choice: yes or no. Don’t sit in the in between or try and do both. On that note…
3. You are not a magician.
(Unless your name is Merlin, in which case I apologize). But if you can be in two places at once, that is a miracle. If you can be fully present in both places, that is a double rainbow miracle.
The thing is, when you try and be in two places at once, you are setting yourself up for feeling split, torn and neither here nor there.
Stop splitting and start choosing. Choose to be pulled by the loving choice that makes you feel like your best possible future self—the choice that makes you feel lighter, more expanded, more of the you that you want to show up as if you were living your brave life full out.
4. Trade your “I will try” to “I will.”
What are you really saying when you say “I’ll try?” Is it a way to get yourself off the hook, so you don’t have to be responsible for committing to anything? Trying only works when there is conviction behind it. When you mean it with commitment and effort. But when you use “I’ll try” as a scapegoat for “I wasn’t planning on showing up,” that’s when you get into trouble. You’re trying to use the easy button and replace “try” for the scarier “no.”
So here’s my advice: Don’t say try when you really mean no. Start by practicing saying “no thank you.” And if it is a yes, then commit by saying “I will.”
5. Realize there is no wrong choice.
I have to keep telling myself this over and over when I’m torn between topics for which programs to launch next. Every time I am torn between choices. I am learning to just choose one. Start with that.
Whether it’s a brunch order or Saturday night plans or a job offer. Choose one and stick to it. If you really don’t like it, you can leave, quit, or try something else, but at least start by choosing somewhere to focus your energy for now.
Give yourself permission to choose and know that there is no wrong choice. What If whichever experience you will have is exactly the one you are meant to be having in that moment?
Some choices will lead to positive outcomes; others will lead to more painful lessons. But not choosing will mean living in regret. Let not choosing no longer be the acceptable default choice, my dear, and see what kind of magic you create.
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We Can’t Run from Ourselves and 6 Other Lessons from Living Abroad
“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you… so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” ~Unknown
From the outside looking in, my life was picture-perfect. I had a corporate job that paid more than just the bills, a charming little apartment in a boho neighborhood of Denver, a gorgeous SUV that took me on adventures in the mountains on the weekends, a vibrant dating life where I met some pretty amazing guys, and a group of incredible girlfriends that most people only dreamt of having.
But deep down in my heart and soul, I knew it wasn’t right. I knew I was meant to be doing something totally different. I felt an intense calling, a longing for something unknown, and every day as it grew stronger, I became more restless. I was trying to live someone else’s ideal life, desperately hoping it would be right for me as well. It wasn’t.
I was turning twenty-seven and knew if I didn’t make a change right then, I never would. My life would stay the same because I felt like I was getting to the point where (approaching thirty) I would want to think about settling down and starting a family.
After months of being in denial, hoping the feeling would just go away so I could continue living my easy little life, I finally decided I wasn’t going to let fear hold me back any longer. I didn’t want to miss my calling or have regrets about any of the choices I made. My heart was telling me to go, and I knew it was taking me down the path I was destined to take—it always does.
So, I quit my job, sold my car, donated my furniture, said my good-byes, stored a few boxes of personal items in my grandma’s basement, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney, Australia, with nothing but a backpack and a box.
People were calling it a “quarter life crisis,” which I kind of went along with, but the truth is, I had never felt settled and always knew something big was about to happen. My plan was to stay in Australia for a couple of years (if homesickness didn’t get the best of me first), but I ended up living abroad and traveling the world for six years.
Let me tell you, if you ever want to bring up all of your issues, spend some time living in another country or traveling through places where your language isn’t spoken. It’s so powerful, so intense, so challenging on so many levels, yet so healing all at the same time.
I knew it was going to majorly kick my arse, but I knew for my soul’s evolution, it was something I had to do.
During those years away, I learned more about myself than I could have ever imagined, and I would not be who I am, or where I am today, without every moment spent overseas.
Here are the life lessons I learned from six years abroad:
1. We can’t run from ourselves.
The same issues we have at home, we have abroad. I honestly thought I could leave it all behind and start afresh, be whoever I wanted to be. I assumed that since I was following my heart, the restlessness would subside, my life purpose would be magically unveiled, and the freedom I finally had, which I’d craved for so long, would create instant happiness.
Sure, I felt on top of the world for a while, but I quickly learned that we can’t expect a new adventure, a new career, or a new guy in our life to fix all of our issues and suddenly bring us happiness.
In the most beautiful places in the world, I still felt restless. I still worried that I would never figure out what my purpose was here on earth. The deep sense of unhappiness was still inside my heart, and the loneliness was even stronger than ever (no matter how many beautiful people were in my life).
If we aren’t happy within our own hearts—if we aren’t our own best friend, our own source of love— we aren’t going to feel happiness no matter what we bring into our life or where we are (even in an incredible city like Sydney or on safari in Kenya).
We will always be on the go, searching, and will never feel content. We will reach for food, alcohol, or something stronger—anything to give us just a moment of peace. We must turn our focus within. Feel compassion for ourselves. Genuinely love ourselves. Your life will change in so many ways when you realize the answers that you’re seeking are always within.
2. We have no idea how much we are capable of.
We are capable of doing whatever we put our minds to and can achieve absolutely anything we want in our lives. One of the biggest determining factors of whether or not our dreams come true is whether we take action on them.
Our egos are biologically programmed to keep us safe by trying to get us to play small. We all have an inner voice that tells us “there’s no way I can do that” or “I don’t deserve to have this,” so we must work to overcome those kinds of thoughts and to think a different way.
We were made for greatness; we were made to feel joy and love. We were made to live our dreams. People tell me all the time how lucky I’ve been to live such an adventurous life. I always say it has nothing to do with luck, and everything to do with choosing to work through my fear and follow my heart.
3. Our career does not define who we are.
For some reason, growing up, I thought in order to be “successful” in life I had to be earning over $100k in a corporate career. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do after college and spent my early twenties traveling, bouncing around in and out of jobs and relationships, feeling like a bit of a failure. I landed in a corporate job and spent five years trying to be a square peg in a round hole, but I didn’t know who I would be without my career.
We spend so much time in our lives working, of course our career is a big part of who we are, but it doesn’t define who we are.
I realized on a year-long backpacking trip that I am a soul, a spirit, a being of light. I am how I serve others, how I treat others, how I make others feel, and how I show up in my life and in the world. I am not just what I do for work. When I finally let go of the limiting belief that a career makes me who I am, the sense of freedom and relief I felt was astronomical.
4. Loneliness can be one of our best teachers.
When you move countries, or when you’re traveling by yourself, you’re really alone. For over two years my phone did not ring once.
I went on a year-long backpacking trip without a phone, and when I returned to Australia, my husband and I (boyfriend at the time who I met on my travels) decided to move to his hometown where I hardly knew anyone. He already had a life established, and I was starting from scratch. He always had places to go, people to see, and something to do, and I desperately craved the same.
However, in that loneliness I really got to know my heart. I read so many enlightening books, went through an intense period of spiritual awakening, got my Master’s degree, and really focused on becoming who I was meant to become.
Sometimes we must lose ourselves to find ourselves, and when we hit rock bottom, that’s when we grow. We’re forced to strip away what’s no longer working for us and build from the ground up.
Looking back, I know that time in my life was meant to be lonely. It took all the focus off other people and pushed me to turn inwards. Now I embrace loneliness and know I can always find comfort in my own heart.
5. The Earth is designed perfectly to support us on our life journey.
Because I was so alone for those two years, I spent a lot of time exploring and connecting with the Earth. It truly is an incredibly beautiful and magical place for us to live. There is beauty all around—just look at what a tree looks like blowing in the wind, or think about how the moon controls the tides of the ocean. It’s blissful, pure magic.
When I’m feeling off, disconnected, or my mind is in a negative place, the first thing I do is get outside and spend time in nature. I go on a hike, I walk on the beach, or if I’m not near either of those, I sit under a tree blowing in the wind, watch the sunset, sit beneath the moon, or just get lost in the stars.
It puts things into perspective and helps me remember I am part of something so much bigger than just my tiny little life. Our Earth is here for us, and I’ve developed a deep connection to our beautiful planet, which helps guide me through the difficult times in my life.
6. People close to us aren’t always going to support with what we’re doing—do it anyway.
I was fortunate that I grew up with parents who told me I could do or be anything I wanted. I truly believed that, and I think that’s a big reason why I’ve had the courage to work through my fear and live out so many of my dreams. There will always be people in our lives who don’t support what we’re doing. Whether it’s a friend, a boss, our parents, or our spouse.
The thing is, this is not their life to live. They have their own life. I’ve had to disappoint people along the way, and I’ve even lost a few friends, which was all extremely hard for me. But at the end of the day, we only get one life, and it’s up to us to make the most of it. I knew I would never be truly happy if I made decisions based on other people’s thoughts or feelings.
I learned the only way I’ll be happy in my life is to live out who I am, follow my heart, and embrace the beautiful, unique, challenging, scary, amazing, incredible, and awesome life I’m meant to live, regardless of what other people think.
7. We find happiness by following our hearts.
We are all made up of our own individual interests, gifts, desires, and talents. There’s a reason we’re not all the same, so why do we spend so much of our lives trying to be like everyone else?
Throughout high school and college, I desperately wanted to fit in. I wanted to look like the girls in the magazines, live in a big house, and drive a fancy car. Of course, none of those things would ever keep me happy, but I had always been a people pleaser and a perfectionist, and I truly felt I should live my life according to what everyone else was doing, what the media was telling me, and what society was pushing me to do.
We can never find true happiness if we’re living our lives trying to be someone we’re not. We find happiness by letting go of everything we think we should be, tuning out all of society’s noise, and turning our focus within. In the quiet and stillness of our own heart, that’s where our truth lies. That’s how we connect with our soul. That’s where we find who we are.
**This post has been slightly edited for clarity.
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Why People-Pleasers Don’t Get the Love and Respect They Desire
“Niceness is the psychological armor of the people-pleaser.” ~Harriet B. Braiker
I used to think that being kind, gentle, and agreeable was guaranteed to win me love and acceptance from others. I’d tiptoe around destructive people’s behaviors, no matter how uncomfortable I felt about it, believing to my core that if only I could be nice enough to them, they would one day lead a better life.
I lived my life constantly avoiding anything that might make me look like a bad, imperfect, antagonistic, or unlikeable person. Because as every people-pleaser knows, being disliked or disapproved of feels worse than ignoring your own feelings—at least at first.
Some people were easy to please; a kind gesture or smile was all it would take. Getting their approval so effortlessly made me happier than a kid at Disney World. But with other people, it seemed the more I tried to please them, the more likely they were to treat me like an old dish rag; and the more this happened, the less I liked myself.
Eventually, my efforts to please others left me feeling disrespected, violated, and disconnected—from life, from other people, and from myself.
For many years, I silently endured the ongoing, relentless invalidation of who I was based on how others treated me. When someone close to me was feeling unsatisfied, negative, or in search of someone to blame, there I was, ready to take it.
But no matter how unhappy I was, I still wanted to make them feel better. I wanted to see them happy, even at my own expense.
At the core of these one-sided relationships I maintained with some of the perpetually dissatisfied people in my life was an enduring belief that if only I could solve their problems and make them happy, I’d finally receive the love and acceptance I desired all my life.
I never stopped to think, “But what about me? What will become of me if I keep trying to satisfy people with an unquenchable thirst?” I couldn’t see that no matter what I did, it would never be enough. In fact, it wasn’t about me at all. I didn’t realize that no matter how good I am at solving problems, or how perfectly I can handle things, if someone wants to find fault with me, they will.
Instead of seeing other people’s dissatisfaction as an issue for them to resolve on their own, I internalized it and interpreted it to mean I wasn’t good enough.
But one day, I finally started asking myself some important questions: “What will become of me and my self-worth if I keep basing it on unhappy people’s perceptions? Who will love and respect me if I’m not even taking a stand for myself?”
My conception of who I needed to be in order to gain love and acceptance was slapping me in the face over and over again like a flat tire driving on uneven pavement. But still, I wondered why my formula wasn’t working. I truly believed that living selflessly was a surefire way to get love, appreciation, respect, and lots of hugs in return.
It took me a while to realize that living this way was actually having the opposite effect. My constant selfless giving and kindness didn’t automatically earn me a pass on the eternal acceptance subway. It actually seemed to be an invitation for people to take advantage of my generosity, allowing them to feel less anxious about their own lives.
I set myself up to be other people’s emotional dumpster, personal life fixer, and convenient source of blame for their misfortunes.
What I came to learn the hard way is that pleasing others isn’t the way to win their love and respect. I finally realized that if I kept taking on other people’s anxiety as my own, they would never change. And why would they, after all? They got lots of relief from me stepping in and resolving things. But at what cost?
All this pleasing had left me feeling inadequate and stressed out as I watched the recipients of my pleasing play out the same problems and drama, over and over again.
Love At All Costs
One night I had a dream that I was standing in a field with nothing but the clothes on my back. I felt weak and tired, like I needed someone to come lift me up and ask me how I was doing.
Slowly, my family and friends started to join me in the field. But they weren’t there to rescue me; they were there to bring me their troubles.
One by one, they started pulling me in different directions. They wanted me to solve their lives for them, even though I was alone, tired, defeated, and left with nothing.
The dream was showing me the truth about how I was living. When my life and health started to collapse around me like a burning building, I had to take a hard look at my perspective and decisions. I started to question my beliefs about what it meant to be a truly good person, and what it took to receive the love and respect I so desired.
That dream helped me understand that my people-pleasing behaviors weren’t getting me what I desired; they were getting me the very experiences I spent my life trying to avoid.
Back then, it would have been easier for me to blame others for their ungratefulness and neediness; but deep down, I knew that blaming would have been another way to avoid taking a look at myself.
I was sick of exhausting myself trying to help and change other people, only to find that it didn’t work. I knew I had to change myself and, as cheesy as it may sound, give myself the love and respect I so desired. Because the truth is, no one can give you what you should be giving yourself from within—especially not those people who need the pleasing you so easily offer.
After much reflection, I came to see that my pleasing behaviors were a way for me to get the validation from others that I wasn’t giving myself. Of course my efforts backfired, because I alone was responsible for my happiness; other people’s happiness wasn’t my responsibility, and just because I was overly nice to someone didn’t mean they had to treat me the same way.
I was trying to please other people so I could feel worthy of love. In reality, my kindness wasn’t coming from a place of vulnerability, honesty, or acceptance; it was rooted in anxiety and fear.
In my attempts to make everyone else happy, I lost control of my own identity, and they lost their ability to solve their own problems. By changing myself to become who everyone wanted me to be, I made myself less desirable and implicitly invited people to take me for granted.
Pleasing Yourself
Do you find yourself people-pleasing and wonder how you can get the love and respect you desire? Well, the answer is pretty simple, but the actions it takes aren’t quite as simple. The first step involves changing your perceptions. Once that’s done, changing your behaviors will follow naturally. Here are some things to remember:
1. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when you regularly do things for others that they’re avoiding doing for themselves.
2. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when people violate your boundaries, and you don’t speak up about it.
3. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when you say yes to something but really want to say no.
4. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when you internalize others’ dissatisfaction and take it on as your own problem.
5. You aren’t treating yourself with love and respect when you hurt yourself in order to make others happy.
Over time, I came to understand that my efforts to make other people happy were like deposits made in a piggy bank with a giant hole at the bottom.
If you’re stuck in a people-pleasing cycle, chances are you’re subconsciously attaching to people who need you to soothe their discomfort, because they can’t do it for themselves. Since they don’t know how to manage their own emotions, they’ll continue to reach out to you whenever they’re in crisis—and, on the occasions when your pleasing behaviors aren’t sufficient for them, they’ll blame you for their discomfort.
If you want to make changes in your life, it’s time for you to see this pattern clearly and stop basing your sense of worthiness on other people’s approval of you.
Change your perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors. Make contributions to a bank that pays interest. Receive the love and respect you so desire by celebrating your freedom from the longing to be accepted by others.
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Editor’s note: Ilene has generously offered to give away two free copies of her latest book, When It’s Never About You: The People-Pleaser’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Health, Happiness and Personal Freedom. To enter to win one of two free copies, leave a comment below. You don’t have to write anything specific—”Count me in” is sufficient! You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, November 5th.
UPDATE: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. They are Emma Andmark Shishkin and Mari Toni.
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Why We Need to Stop Chasing Success and Start Enjoying the Little Things in Life
The philosopher Alan Watts always said that life is like a song, and the sole purpose of the song is to dance.
He said that when we listen to a song, we don’t dance with the goal of getting to the end of the music. We dance to enjoy it.
This isn’t always how we live our lives. Instead, we rush through our moments, thinking there’s always something better, there’s always some goal we need to achieve. This is my journey through a song without the dance and the lessons I’ve learned, from Alan Watts, along the way.
“Existence is meant to be fun. It doesn’t go anywhere; it just is.”
I sat in my car, fixated on my hands. Hot tears welled in my eyes and slowly streamed down my cheeks. I lost focus of the very thing that held the answer to my problem.
I remember thinking about how my nails grow on their own, how my hair grows and my heart beats, and the tears fall. All without effort or pain, these things happen. They’re effortless. Why was life so difficult?
At twenty-two, my goal was to be successful. I wanted to be someone—to have more and be more than I thought I was. I needed to justify something to the world, but I didn’t know what I was trying to prove.
I was a mother at eighteen years old; it was a setback but never a regret. Even so, I felt judged. At twenty-three I had my second daughter. I was a wife with two kids and a low-paying job.
I had a loving husband and two beautiful kids, but I wasn’t happy. I wanted more. In the quest for more, I traded my time for a particular brand of success. The kind of success that you can only achieve through money and status. Something precious for something I felt would give me vindication from society.
“The whole point of dancing is the dance.”
When I was twenty-eight, I had done all the things society tells us to do. I went to college, I got a high-paying job, and I was climbing my way to the top. I was lucky, but it didn’t feel that way. The goal was to have everything and make it look effortless. Except it wasn’t effortless, and nothing came easy. I had missed the point; I’d played the song, but I didn’t dance.
“You live life by analogy, a journey with a pilgrimage to get to the end success, heaven, whatever. You missed the point; you were supposed to dance.”
I became a government contractor, far from a dream, but it brought success. Maybe you became an insurance salesman or a real estate agent. Like me, you work hard every day. You get up and go through the routine that you know will make you successful. You work harder and longer hours because you know that if you just keep working, success will come.
Then you turn forty. You’re exhausted. Life has taken its toll, but you’ve made it. You’re successful. This existence is what you worked for; it’s everything your ego wanted, and you did it. You traded the precious moments for eighty-hour workweeks, but you did it. Now you can dance. Now life can start.
You look around at your beautiful home and your expensive cars. There comes the point when you realize that the cars and the house don’t feel the way you imagined they would. These are symbols of your success. Your ego needed them, but your heart needed something far more valuable.
“I must survive means you are not playing.”
Perhaps your story isn’t like mine, and at forty you’re still working a dead-end job, working to pay the bills. Wishing you had more time with the ones you love. I know it’s not easy. To compare my story to yours would be missing the point of the message.
The point is, no matter how far you get or how hard you work, you will always want to get to the next level. Sure, material things bring comfort, but they don’t bring happiness. You will always be where you are in your heart until you realize that life isn’t about material possessions.
Our lives are not about things and status. Even though we’ve made ourselves miserable with wanting, we already have everything we need. Life is meant to be lived. If you can’t quit your job tomorrow, enjoy where you are. Focus on the best parts of every day. Believe that everything you do has a purpose and a place in the world.
Happiness comes from gratitude. You’re alive, you have people to miss when you go to work, and you get to see them smile every day. We all have to do things we don’t want to do; we have to survive. When you find yourself working for things that don’t matter, like a big house or a fancy car, when you could be living, you’ve missed the point. You’re playing the song, but you’re not dancing.
“A song isn’t just the ending. It’s not just the goal of finishing the song. The song is an experience.”
I remember going to school at night when I could have been home with my daughters. My little girls cried at the door as I left them. I tried to reason with myself. I was doing all of this for them.
I wanted my daughters to be proud of their mother. I was setting a good example. Their mother was going to be someone for them. As I turned my back on them, I cried too. I hated that I had to leave.
In truth, I made a choice to leave them. Everything we do in life is a choice that we’ve made. Telling ourselves that we don’t have a choice is the biggest lie of them all.
I made excuses and created a hero version of myself that was doing it all for my family. My daughters didn’t need status. I needed that. All they needed was me. Some days the tears were flowing so much I couldn’t drive, so I sat in my car and I fixated on my hands. I wondered why my nails had it so easy.
I was so close to understanding that growth is all we have to do. There’s no effort in growing or dying. These things are inevitable. We make it difficult because we choose to.
My hair grew, and my heart beat without effort or understanding. These seemingly simple things understood a lot more about life than I did as a whole person.
All I had to do was be, exist, experience, love, and have gratitude, but I didn’t. My struggle went on for years. It was far from the picturesque life I was trying to achieve. I chose to do it anyway.
“Try to sleep, and you can’t sleep. You’ve got to let go. If you don’t, you’ll constantly try and keep yourself wound up.”
I think about my struggle for success, working during the day and going to school at night. Missing my husband and my kids, I thought someday this would all get easier. When I think back on that time in my life, I never wish I had worked harder.
I wish I had more memories with my family.
Now I have everything I wanted back then, but it doesn’t feel like you’d think it would feel. What was I expecting? I didn’t feel any different than I always felt, except that I had a corner office, a fancier house, and nicer clothes.
An ideally located office—this is what it all came down to in the end? It’s very anticlimactic when the new car smell wears off, and all you have is a large payment and more hours at work.
We all think that when we’re at the top, everything should be amazing, but it’s not. Your children have grown older, and you don’t remember the little things.
“…tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live.”
You feel cheated of your time, cheated by time. Now you have to make up for it. You have to live, make the most of what you have left. So you set another goal.
This time you’ll build memories and see places and do things you never got the chance to do. The list grows, and you wonder how you’ll get it all done and still make your large mortgage payment. You work more hours so you can do all this stuff “someday.” You’ve overwhelmed yourself again.
You’re missing the point.
Stop wanting more; be grateful for today. Live in the moment. Cherish your life and the time you have in this world. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, then it wasn’t meant to; let it go.
“We think if we don’t interfere, it won’t happen.”
There’s always an expectation, always something that has to get done. You pushed aside living so that you could live up to an expectation that doesn’t exist to anyone but you. The expectation is always there because you gave it power. To live, you’ve got to let it go.
You save all your money so that you can retire. You live to retire. Then you get old, and you’re too tired to live up to the expectation you had of retirement; you never realize your dreams.
At forty you felt cheated; at eighty you are cheated. You cheated yourself the whole way through to the end.
“Your purpose was to dance until the end, but you were so focused on the end that you forgot to dance.”
I quit my job at forty, I worked too much, and I never got the chance to live. I don’t have a powerful position. I have a job with less stress. I’m not holding the weight of the company on my shoulders. I also make a lot less money.
I can work fewer hours and live with less stuff, but I’ll never get back what I’ve lost. Money, fancy cars, and a big house will never give back my time. The moments, the little things, live in the past; they’re gone.
“Life should be easy and fun, effortless, but we rarely let it be what it is.”
We’re always striving for more, never satisfied with where we are. More is always better. Happiness and fulfillment are always just out of reach. When we’re growing up, we strive to finish song school. Then the goal is college, then grad school. We have a family, and we live through the challenges of life, but we never stop to realize the grace in each moment. We never dance.
Gratitude for life itself is still ahead of me. The song is still playing, and it’s never too late to live in the present and enjoy the dance.
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Facing the Fear of Change: Big Risks Can Bring Big Rewards
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” ~Barack Obama
If someone said to you, “Hey, you know how you are feeling the need for change and you’re not sure what to do? Well, I can’t tell you what to do, but I can guarantee that if you follow where your heart leads you, you’ll create the possibility of more joy than you’ve ever felt before. All you have to do is walk through the doors that will keep opening up for you and trust, completely, that you are on the right track. You may question it at times, but keep going. You’ll be fine no matter what.”
What would you do? Would you follow the guarantee or would you keep doing what you’re doing?
What if the caveat was added, “Oh, you should probably know that if you do this, you run the risk of losing much of what you’ve known and who you think you are now will look completely different the next time you look in the mirror.”
Ummmm… hold up. Let me think about that.
That’s basically what happens when you know it’s time to change up your life and you’re innately scared to do so.
So, what do you do?
I spend a lot of time in deep reflection and introspection. And it’s not because I want to; it’s because I am constantly trying to understand myself, to figure out where I’m headed and what’s potentially holding me back from getting there.
Most of the time, I feel completely in the dark. And while my grandmother always told me that there is nothing in the dark that can hurt you, I’m human; I question this theory. And yet I continue to trust that she’s right. She lived over eighty years and was the most inspirational woman I’ve known; she must’ve learned something pretty valuable to be expressing these bold opinions.
So I had the nudge to change myself and I went with it. No, that’s not accurate—I had the internal and external shove and I went for it.
In the matter of a few short years, I got divorced, bought a house, lived alone with my kids, completely supported myself financially and then left my job, started a business, and changed the majority of my friends. I chose to start completely over in many ways.
On paper, I looked a bit off balanced.
Yet, I felt in my heart, in my soul, that I was supposed to make these changes. They were leading me somewhere I knew deep down I wanted to be.
During that time of immense change, I took some huge hits. I lost my marriage, most of my friends, my sense of belonging, my financial stability, an understanding of who I thought I was, any semblance of security, consistent support from loved ones, and a ton of sleep.
That was never part of my plan. I didn’t expect to lose so much, but it happened. I had to learn how to let go, regroup, and re-evaluate what I was doing. I had to learn to trust my decisions and that the discomfort was temporary and going to be worth its price.
It was challenging. No, it was painful. And scary. And dark. Very, very dark.
These changes, that proposed I’d grow into a better version of myself, came with a hidden tax. In order to get to where I was headed, I would need to dig deep and re-discover my strength, my passion, and my drive to keep moving forward no matter what.
I would have to look at my fears dead on and question their weight. I would have to re-assess my standards and feel the guilt of changing not just for myself, but also for my kids.
I questioned myself over and over again, interrogating my need to keep going—why I couldn’t quit. And what would I do if I just gave up? I had to evaluate my worth and see if I really had what it took to be this person, whoever she was.
I met an amazing friend who seemed to be on the same path as me. She vocalized the same fears, as well as the same need to hope. We spent the first year of our leap of faith supporting each other through the ups and downs. She was my sense of relief. And then, with no warning, she died in her sleep. What I relied on was gone. My questioning began all over again.
I cried often. I regularly found myself in the fetal position protecting myself from letting anyone in. More times than not, I felt completely alone.
And yet, with every dark day came one full of light. Every tear I shed was followed up by a laugh with a new friend. Every moment of doubt was rewarded with some notion of peace and promise that the pain would dissipate and the joy would return.
And it did. For every three friends lost, I found one that reminded me I was cherished, trusted, and not alone. For every time I questioned if I did right by my children, they showered me with love and gratitude to remind me that I was exactly what they needed. For the financial security I lost, came the abundant flow that surpassed what I had previously known, doing exactly what I loved.
With the guilt came the opportunity to forgive myself. With the fear came the opportunity to trust myself. With the self-deprecation came the opportunity to love myself.
This person I was becoming—who I am—was far braver than I ever knew. The fears continued to flood me, but I didn’t let them change my course. The more I let myself be vulnerable, the more I was able to see the next steps. I also saw myself in a light I had never seen—radiant, confident, full of flaws, but the kind I could work with.
I was no longer a good mom; I was a great mom. I was no longer poor; I was rich with experience. As I let my heart open, I experienced more moments awe and gratitude than I had ever before in my life.
I still cried a lot when I was alone. I prayed often and looked for signs of hope every single day. I still do. I will never stop. I need them.
But this promise of change to be in a place my heart has longed for, where I am comfortable in my own skin—I have arrived.
The fear doesn’t just go away. It asks to be seen and acknowledged. Yet the more I’ve learned to work with it, the less it has worked against me.
I ask it questions. I examine the root of its discomfort. I look for alternatives to the boundaries it won’t budge on. I compromise decisions and reframe all the answers it gives me back. I hear the negatives and I search for the positives. I find the hope and spoon feed it to the fears who just want reassurance.
My fears and I, we talk a lot. Like a child who just wants to feel safe, I speak to them in a way that doesn’t diminish their value, but reminds them they are not always right.
Would I have taken this road if I knew what to expect? I don’t honestly know. But I do know I have no regrets, and this person I am, I like her. And I’m happy to have her as a friend. She inspires me.
Maybe that’s what the change was all about.
Truly living and growing requires risk. And not all risks pan out the way we hope or imagine. Sometimes those risks temporarily take us to places that are darker than the life we were living before. They may even require us to let go of what we think we need or what once brought us joy in order for us to grow.
Yet with each risk comes the opportunity to discover something about ourselves—a hidden talent, a new passion, personal insight, or simply deep courage and internal strength that’s been waiting to be felt so we know it exists.
There may not be a guarantee that we will experience more joy than before, but the only way to discover what’s possible is to take a chance, make a change, and find out.
