Tiny Buddha

Tag: Happiness

  • How to Cultivate Hope When the World Feels Dark and Scary

    How to Cultivate Hope When the World Feels Dark and Scary

    “Everything you can imagine is real.” ~Pablo Picasso

    The world is so broken. We are broken. We all need healing.

    Recent events worldwide are terrifying and sad. This cold and dark time of year is a challenge for many.

    Some of us feel every little thing. We feel everyone’s pain. We are empaths who care for every person, every animal, and the whole world.

    Many of my loved ones and friends are like this. My partner’s father recalls that on a trip to a large city nearby (my partner was eight), they saw people living on the street and asking for change. The little eight-year-old wanted to give all of his tiny savings away. Obviously, it wasn’t much, and it wouldn’t make much impact on the poverty in the city.

    It can feel hopeless. We feel like we will never have enough resources and time to give. We know we can’t solve everyone’s problems. But we want to. And if we don’t, we feel the pain of our perceived failures.

    If you’re anything like me, you might struggle to balance the urge to do so much or to just give up altogether. How can we nurture our hopefulness in these uncertain days?

    Remember that people act out when they are in pain.

    It’s a common negative thinking trap to make things all-or-nothing. If someone does something that hurts us, we can tend to believe that they are all “bad.” We distance ourselves from them in our minds to prove we aren’t like that.

    It’s tough to recognize someone’s humanity in these situations, but we need to if we are going to keep our hope alive. People often lash out, spread hate, or act selfishly when they are hurt. They are feeling a deep, broken part of themselves and trying to compensate by making others feel bad too.

    I’m not saying that their behavior should be tolerated. They should absolutely be held accountable for their behavior. At the same time, they are human and are still valuable.

    Remind yourself that they are people, too, and probably feeling deep pain. This goes for the more extreme cases, but also for the other parent at your child’s school or your boss or politicians.

    I feel hope when I remember this. The world is not full of evil people but hurt people who need love. Recognizing the humanity of others is a beautiful challenge for us to work on. This is an ongoing, lifelong practice.

    Respond with love when you can.

    Everyone seems exhausted these days. The weight of the world is on all of our shoulders. Whether it’s due to collective or personal struggles, people may be a little more irritable or inpatient with you.

    Try your best to respond with kindness. It’s not about you. Someone may be acting immaturely or being a little rude, but if you can, try to let it go.

    Visualize their insults rolling off of you, like water off of a duck’s back. Or use a technique I learned from a book, Radical Acceptance: Recognize that they are trying to pass their bad mood to you, and kindly say “no, thank you.” Do not accept their gift.

    I usually feel better if I have responded to something in a caring way. Of course, we don’t always react as our best selves. You might be the one who is acting a bit rude sometimes, so try to respond to yourself with love about that too.

    Be a someone.

    My grandmother used to say, “Don’t say someone should do that. Be a someone.” Action can help combat our lack of motivation and hope. If you find yourself thinking that someone should do something, try asking yourself: What can I do?

    You can start small and very simply. One day a few months ago, I was in the midst of a personal crisis, and I sat crying on the curb of the road. A kind stranger approached me and gently asked if there was anything they could do.

    I said an honest no. They responded by standing close by with their hand on my shoulder for a few minutes, then saying a few encouraging words and continuing on.

    This small gesture made me feel much less alone in that moment. There are many small things we can do, depending on our ability. If you feel up to it, don’t just walk by; be the someone who stops.

    Repeat after me: Magic is real.

    I keep a quote by Picasso on my desk that reads, “Everything you can imagine is real.” When I am losing my hope, this reminds me that the world I want to live in, the one I can imagine, is real. It can be real because we create our world.

    It’s empowering to recognize the magic we have within us that no one can take away. There is something inside you that no one can take away and you will always have. Remind yourself of your inherent value and hold on to your magic.

    Everything you can imagine is real and possible. There are so many people working to build a kinder and more loving world. I recognize their magic and I affirm that magic in myself.

    Hope image via Shutterstock

  • 8 Simple Ways to Brighten Someone’s Day

    8 Simple Ways to Brighten Someone’s Day

    Sunshine

    “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a tent with a mosquito.” ~African Proverb

    I have a love-hate relationship with airports.

    On the one hand, it’s the perfect place to people-watch. I mean, how can you not tear up when you see a kid running to give a returning parent a giant hug? Or two lovers reuniting and smiling from ear to ear when they lay eyes on each other? You are witness to perfect snippets of pure, genuine emotional connection.

    On the other hand, airports can be a drag. Long line-ups, having to chug my water bottle because I usually forget to empty it beforehand, taking my shoes off and stepping on my tiptoes to avoid my bare feet touching the cold airport floor.

    But on my latest visit to the airport, my negative attitude vanished all because of one airport security employee.

    As I was standing in line doing a mental inventory of all the liquids I would need to empty out of my purse, she was directing people through the line up in the best possible way. She was yelling positive messages like, “Life is good!” and “It’s a great day!”

    What a rare and beautiful thing to do.

    It put a smile on my face and truly impacted my flight and rest of the day. Her joie de vivre was contagious.

    I never would have expected this from an airport security employee.

    Which got me thinking, how can I brighten someone’s day within my normal realm of work?

    Here are eight ideas I’ve come up with. I’d love to know your ideas in the comments.

    1. Leave inspirational notes in random places.

    Books in the library, on people’s car window, under your lover’s pillow, wherever.

    How awesome would it walk into a public restroom and find a sticky-note on the mirror that says something like, “Make it a great day”? I predict it will also be just as awesome and exhilarating to be the one to leave the note.

    2. Thank someone.

    Who in your life has positively impacted you? A teacher, your mom, your brother, an old neighbor, a coach? Send them an email and share a memory and your gratitude for the positive influence they’ve had in your life.

    3. Be curious about someone.

    Make eye contact and smile. Acknowledge their existence, and engage them in conversation. Learn something about them. A two-minute conversation can brighten the day for both of you.

    4. Send a handwritten note.

    Who doesn’t love getting mail? There’s a total thrill in seeing an envelope with your name on it. Surprise someone with a handwritten note just because. I can almost guarantee they will smile ear-to-ear when they receive it.

    5. Do something for yourself.

    Now this may seem a bit backward. How does doing something for yourself impact someone else?

    Well, when you take care of your own needs, and give yourself some much-needed self-love, you fill up your own cup. And when your own cup is overflowing, that overflow is the love that flows to others. It’s a beautiful thing.

    So take that bath, go to that dance class, go for a walk, and feel the goodness.

    6. Make a playlist for someone.

    Back in the day, I used to love making mix-tapes. I’d wait by my ghetto blaster, blank tape in the tape deck, and be on high alert to press the record button when my favorite songs came on.

    These days, making music mixes are way less labor-intensive! You can make a playlist on YouTube in minutes. Make a specific playlist for someone in your life and send it to them. What an awesome surprise to both give and receive!

    7. Take it to social media.

    Instead of spending time lurking on Facebook and Twitter, choose three people to give a shout-out to! The guy you used to sit next to in science class, your cousin you haven’t seen in three years, the random person you connected with when you were traveling—post on their wall (or send a private message). Let them know you’re thinking of them.

    8. Surprise with a gift.

    Whether you send flowers to one of your friends at her workplace or buy a coffee for the person behind you in line, splurging and surprising someone else is a lot of fun.

    Do you go to a coffee shop with a loyalty card? I collect all my stamps, and then once I accumulate my free coffee, I ask the barista to give it to the next person in line. It’s a thrill for me, the barista, and the person behind me who doesn’t suspect a thing!

    —

    When you brighten someone’s day, you are simultaneously stirring up positive energy within yourself. And you’ll carry this energy with you throughout your day. It’s a great feeling.

    So I challenge you to ask yourself, how can something I do today surprise and delight another individual? Let me know in the comments.

    Be creative, use your gut, do what feels good.

    Sunshine image via Shutterstock

  • What to Do When You Love Someone Who Hurts You

    What to Do When You Love Someone Who Hurts You

    Angry Fingers

    “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chödrön

    There is a person in my life who I love with all my heart, but in this relationship I struggle to keep a full cup myself. They are family, the situation is complicated and tender. But learning to have compassion for this other person begins with having compassion for myself.

    A nasty divorce spanning most of my childhood set the stage for our current situation. My mother was deeply emotionally wounded by my father, and carried that pain into her parenting of my sister and me.

    Contact with the ex (my dad) dropped to nil—maybe a week a year, far below what the court had decided.

    Any efforts on our parts to connect with our absent parent, even recounting fond memories, were seen by our mother as attacks on her legitimacy and a discounting of her pain. And what emotional intimacy we shared was often exploited—it kept us locked into the family unit, not believing we could have our needs filled elsewhere, least of all with our absentee father.

    A few short years prior, I felt part of a happy, perfect family. Suddenly one parent was effectively gone. My relationship with the other became a labyrinth of confusion—love down this path, hurt down the other, and at my young age I couldn’t find the rhyme or reason to it.

    Childhood gifted me a number of unhealthy survival mechanisms, which still follow me around today: a deep fear of conflict (because conflict often meant someone would leave), constant apologies and guilt for things I’m not truly responsible for, and a voice in the back of my mind telling me no matter what I do, who I am, who I become, it will never be enough.

    Growing up, I realize that those mindsets that helped me survive as a child, in the trenches of grief, inadequacy, and parental loss, no longer served me. Becoming a healthier person showed me how unhealthy this particular relationship really was.

    Healing with my mom—communication about the past, forgiveness, and moving on together—has not taken place. Attempts to bring up my own hurt and pain are minimized and shut down. My words, invariably, have been met with responses like “I can’t do this right now, it’s a bad time,” “I can’t believe you’d do this to me,” or “It all came from a place of love.”

    So, in interactions with my mother, I keep my guard up. I know she still hurts, and seems timelessly stuck in her own grief, but it would take a great degree of emotional wholeness on my part to absorb each new wound with simple forgiveness and empathy. I see where my path might point toward such healing in the future, but we’re not there yet.

    Many of us have experienced relationships like this: someone we love acts toward us in ways that continually damage.

    It’s one thing to forgive and move on from a wound we received in the past, and another animal entirely when we get hurt again and again, in the same place, a scab not quite healed over before it’s ripped off again.

    We all have histories, wounds, scars. Most people carry deep tender spots that have never truly healed, and some use all their actions to self-protect. The fear of vulnerability leads them to cover those places, distract from those places.

    Attempts to wear the heaviest of armor results in getting “bitter” rather than “better,” and those who are too thick-skinned start to lose their delicate abilities to empathize. They project their fear of getting hurt into decisions that may themselves, unintentionally or intentionally, cause others to suffer.

    Here lies the difficulty: in a relationship with someone who continues to act in hurtful ways, how do we toe the line between loving them and interacting with compassion, and protecting our own heart?

    We can save no one but ourselves.

    Real shifts in our psyche, our inner being, do not come from outside pushes. Change will never stick unless the changer is ready. Our worldly circumstances will nudge us here and there, and we ultimately respond by either softening or embittering our vision, our paradigms.

    If we’ve allowed experience to push us toward a scared, closed off, hardened heart, things can only be different when we are ready to make our own intentional choice to be different.

    We cannot throw another person over our back, or carry them in our arms through the fire. That cannot be our job. Be there for them, be support, hold space in time of need, even be a guide when asked. But always, the true work will be theirs alone.

    Being love does not mean being a doormat.

    Compassion for others begins with compassion for ourselves. Loving someone should not mean getting hurt time and again. There will always be need for forgiveness, but not at the cost of healthy boundaries. Here, love might mean taking a step back.

    I’ve realized that sometimes, forgiveness is not about absolving someone of their actions—it means we have given ourselves permission to move on with our lives, deciding “what you did no longer holds power over me.” It’s okay, necessary even, to set up firebreaks, to say, “Enough.”

    We can’t resolve hurts from unstable ground.

    If someone has hurt you, chances are they’re suffering themselves. When both parties feel pain that they believe the other caused, they will already be on the defensive. I believe the only place from which we can work through those old woundings is one of stability, of love and trust.

    Yet closure in the sense of reconciliation, communication, and healing together may never happen. If someone doesn’t believe they have wronged you, arguing your point will only drive the relationship rift further apart.

    If we can find common ground in our love and words, it’s possible to move forward together into resolution of hurts. But if one party isn’t ready to look at themselves truthfully and engage in painfully open communication, resolution must come a different way.

    Putting things to rest can be one-sided.

    Here’s the tough truth: closure won’t come from someone else. It happens when we are ready to let things go.

    In her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes uses the concept of descansos, death-markers, the white crosses seen on the side of roads in the West and Southwest, as a metaphor for marking, blessing, and moving on from trauma, grief, little “deaths” in our lives.

    By tenderly identifying our own descansos—things in our lives which haven’t gone as planned, dreams we’ve had to leave behind, expectations we’ve put aside in exchange for the truth—we give ourselves a unique means for closure.

    “Be gentle with yourself and make the descansos, the resting places for the aspects of yourself that were on their way to somewhere, but never arrived…  

    Descansos mark the death sites, the dark times, but they are also love notes to your suffering. They are transformative. There is a lot to be said for pinning things to the earth so they don’t follow us around. There is a lot to be said for laying them to rest.” – Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

    Surround yourself with people who love you.

    This one is easily said but sometimes complicated to walk out. Family doesn’t always go hand in hand with blood: people we are related to may never truly be good for us, while the friends we’ve chosen might be more dear and positively impactful than any relatives.

    A great relationship inspires and brings out the best in us, and the love shared there has few strings attached.

    Great friendships should be sounding boards for the good and the bad in our lives. We need people to see our inner truths, hold our hands in the dark times, exhort us in times of abundance—and we must recognize those people as gifts.

    —

    These are hard lessons for me. It is sad to let go of a fairy-tale ideal, what I expected this relationship to look like.

    But after a process of grieving, it can be so much healthier and more fulfilling to live with reality, to send out love without expectation of what we “should” get in return, to have compassion for someone without a constant eye for what they “should” do for us.

    We take back our power, creating graceful resolution for the future where it wasn’t available in the past.

    May we all learn to love without contingency; in the meantime, may we learn to walk our path in self-compassion. Loving ourselves is our dawn into the light of truly loving others.

    Fighting fingers image via Shutterstock

  • Why Silence Is Often the Best Response to a Verbal Attack

    Why Silence Is Often the Best Response to a Verbal Attack

    “Have the maturity to sometimes know that silence is more powerful than having the last word.” ~Thema Davis

    It all started with the forks.

    “You need to return my forks,” my roommate demanded one morning as I sat in the kitchen attempting to get some work done.

    “I have already said that I don’t have them. We told you that the other roommate has been hiding them,” I replied.

    She began raising her voice at me, “I can’t believe you would accuse her. You’re just a mean, nasty person!”

    I slowly turned around and said calmly, “Today is my birthday, actually. So I don’t really want to have this conversation right now.”

    She retorted, “I don’t care,” and then began to attack my character with a spiel of all the various other things I’ve ever done to upset her.

    Perhaps she felt some kind of underlying hurt, but she would not share this with me. She was not telling me these problems so that we could work on them together to fix the hurt. Instead, she was insulting and attacking my very existence as a human so that I could feel hurt with her.

    I could already foresee that nothing I could say was going to calm her down, so I chose to respond with silence. I suppose my silence pushed her over the edge, because she ended the conversation with “good luck with your miserable life treating people this way!” and stormed out of the room.

    Well, that escalated quickly. All because of some missing forks. I continued on with my birthday as happily as I could.

    Over the next few weeks, I waited for my roommate to come to me in a calm manner to resolve her issues with me, but she never did. Any chance she had, she continued to speak to me in a hateful manner, even though I didn’t engage her.

    For some reason, my respectful silence made her angrier with me. I had held my tongue and kept my negative thoughts to myself, yet she still found a reason to hold on to her anger. This made it seem to me that she did not respect me or wish to resolve our issues.

    One day she shoved me while coming in the front door at the same time as me. She went so far as to spread rumors that I was planning to break up with my boyfriend so that he would break up with me first. I remained silent and still as a tree.

    Looking at things from her point of view, it seems that she was trapped in pain. A pain so severe she wanted someone else to feel it with her. She did not know another way to express her pain to me, so I will never know the true cause of it.

    Luckily for me, she moved out shortly afterward. Though our relationship ended and our issues remained unsolved because of her lack of cooperation, I do not regret my silence for several reasons.

    Silence shows that external factors cannot affect your self-esteem. 

    If you have hurt them, it is okay to acknowledge this and apologize. You are a human who makes mistakes. If they are unfoundedly attacking you, remember that they are speaking from a place of hurt that clouds their judgment.

    In either situation, remind yourself that their negative view of you does not change your self-esteem and value as a person.

    Oftentimes, flinging an insult is a reflection of their hidden insecurities and fears. True maturity comes from letting the hurtful words roll off your back without feeling the need to defend yourself, knowing that they are not a reflection of you.

    Silence is not weakness.

    Silence is harnessing your calm in a heated moment. Silence is a moment of Zen in which you can see the positive and negative coexisting together. Silence is the power to mindfully choose to stay out of the negative space, and not to say hurtful words back.

    It takes true strength to hold your tongue and not succumb to negative energy. With time and practice, it will become easier and easier to ignore negative comments and continue on happily with your day.

    Silence is not ignoring the problem.

    Silence is the way to avoid saying things during a moment’s anger that you may later regret. Of course if the person has cooled off later on and wishes to speak to you calmly and respectfully regarding the matter, you should have a dialogue with them. Rational conversations are the only way to effective conflict resolution.

    Silence is always in your toolbox. 

    When someone has an interpersonal problem that they genuinely wish to fix, they approach the other person from a place within their heart, a place of actual caring and love. If someone immediately attacks your integrity and character, they are not speaking out of love but out of hate. Hatred cannot solve problems, only love can.

    When the other person is being intentionally hurtful, without regard for your feelings, you always have the choice to stay silent and walk away from the conversation. There is a point where no words will calm them down, and they simply want you to join in their anger. Reciprocating their anger and adding fuel to their fire will just make things worse.

    Silence is always there for a moment of clarity.

  • How to Make Peace with the Past and Stop Being a Victim

    How to Make Peace with the Past and Stop Being a Victim

    “Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” ~Harvey Fienstein

    Do you usually feel as if everything bad that can happen will happen, and it will happen to you?

    You must be the unluckiest person on the face of the planet. Opportunities never work out. Doors that should open close in your face. Friends let you down. Bosses don’t see your value. There seems to be a universal conspiracy to keep you stuck right where you are now.

    You feel like your life is always going to be like this.

    You feel like a failure as a person.

    You worry that you’re never going to be happy.

    You stress that you have no control to change any of it.

    And it’s all so unfair, right? Why does this bad stuff always happen to you? How come other people get all the breaks, and you never do?

    If this sounds familiar, you’re probably still affected by past events that left you feeling helpless, scared, or inadequate—and you’re going to keep re-experiencing these feelings until you do something to change them.

    My Experience with Self-Sabotage

    Why do I get how this works? It’s no big mystery. I’ve been there myself. In fact, at one time, I was the queen of self-sabotage.

    I went from being a straight-A student to dropping out of school a year before my finals. From being a loved and spoiled child to losing touch with my family. From being confident and self-assured to needy and codependent.

    What happened? I stopped thinking of myself in a positive way in response to events outside of my control. I’d always taken pride in myself, and I felt someone had taken that pride away from me.

    All of these dramatic changes came from something very small—a change in my home circumstances that stopped me feeling like part of the family. Because someone in my life constantly criticized me, I lost confidence in my ability. Because I lost my security, I became chronically insecure.

    Instead of feeling that I was a person of worth, with good prospects, I started thinking of myself as rejected, unwanted, and somehow less-than.

    As a teenager, I was in no way equipped to deal with that. So I rebelled. And from there, my life went very rapidly downhill.

    I sabotaged my jobs; I couldn’t stick anything beyond a few months. I sabotaged my first degree by dropping out. And as for relationships, I attracted every narcissistic guy around, all with the agenda of keeping myself a victim.

    So What Changed—and How Do You Change It?

    I hit rock bottom. My last bad relationship had come to a nasty end, I’d dropped out of University, and I had absolutely nothing in my life to keep me going.

    When you hit rock bottom, you have two choices: You give up, or you say, “enough is enough.” And you start changing the way you’re thinking about things and do something to radically improve your life.

    I took the second option, and my life turned around. From nothing, I went to a happy marriage, motherhood, a lovely home, and a fantastic career. And I promise you, if I can do it, from where I was at that time, so can you.

    The following are some of the things that helped me overcome my negative programming and self-confidence issues. If you feel you were born to be a victim, and to live a life filled with anger and frustration, these steps could work for you too.

    Why “Just Let Go” Is Not the Best Advice

    I hear this advice all the time. People come to me saying they’ve been told to put the past behind them and start over, but they have real problems doing that. If only everything in life were that simple.

    This stuff happened, and it happened to you. You’d need to be some sort of superhuman, or a machine, to think that it’s had no effect on who you are. And letting go, like it never happened, is denying its influence.

    People who try to deny the effect of past experiences use a strategy called repressive coping, and these things have a nasty habit of coming back to bite you when you least expect it.

    Accept what happened, understand how it’s affected you, but make sure you place it where it belongs—in the past. The fact that it’s there doesn’t mean you have to keep playing the same situations over in your life. You can make different choices, think in different ways, and keep moving forward.

    Being Peaceful or Being Strong?

    Of course we’d all like to be peaceful and calm, but sometimes that’s just not possible, especially when you’ve been through traumatic events. Lacking a magic wand, we can’t just make it all vanish. So following on from acknowledging it, we then move to what it gave us—and although it may be hard to see sometimes, it gave us strength.

    There are people in the world who’ve never had to deal with the stuff that you’ve been through. You’ve dealt with things they can’t even imagine. That gives you reason to be proud of yourself, and a whole different perspective on what “tough” really is.

    Losing my family and my identity may have been the cause of my initial problems, but it also provided me with the strength to overcome challenges I encountered in my life, and played a great part in giving me the confidence and ability to achieve my management career goals.

    Accept Who You Are—But Who Are You?

    So following on from the point above, who are you now and how do you see yourself?

    You may have been a victim in the past, but you’re still here, in spite of everything that the world’s thrown at you. In my opinion, that makes you a survivor. You may not feel it, but you’re strong.

    You can take the strength and be proud of the person who survived the challenges. You can choose how you see yourself. Do you want to see yourself as a helpless victim of circumstance, or as someone who is still standing, still fighting, still growing, still on a journey to make your life better and not give in?

    Sure, the insecure stepdaughter is still somewhere inside me. And she’s now also the person who has achieved a really good life and has the security and success she always wanted.

    As We Forgive Those…

    Another piece of common advice that people are given: forgive what was done to you. Unfortunately, some things are harder to forgive than others, so the brain will fight that.

    If someone has maliciously caused you harm and you have to live with the consequences, forgiving what’s unacceptable may seem to keep you in victim mode—as if, once again, you’ve just had to take it.

    Of course, the truth is, by staying angry and bitter, you’re still hurting yourself. It’s irrelevant that they may deserve your bitterness. They aren’t suffering from it; you are.

    So, I don’t advise you to force forgiveness. Instead, accept what happened, acknowledge how you feel about it, then put it behind you. You can’t change the past, but you can change the future, and dwelling and brooding on these feelings will not help you move forward.

    Count Your (Amended) Blessings

    However positively you can spin the past, your life has still been negatively affected. You may have a worse life than you would have done if this thing had never happened, and it’s hard to feel gratitude for something awful! So how can you be grateful for what you do have now?

    Be glad for the person who has come through this—the survivor, even though you may not feel like one.

    Be glad for what you’ve managed to achieve, in spite of everything that’s been done to stop you. You may feel like you haven’t achieved much, but as a person who is reading this and trying to change your life, you’ve achieved the power to make decisions and refuse to give up, which some people never do.

    Be glad for the extra lessons you learned: the ones that made you tough, make new problems minimal compared to past challenges, and put you in a position to be able to help others who’ve been through the same things.

    —

    These are the things that are going to empower you to go out and change your world.

    Playing with the cards stacked against you is just plain unfair. It’s time for you to even the odds.

    Your past is always going to be something that happened to you, but that doesn’t mean it needs to define you, restrict you, and dictate your future life.

    How would your life change if you were only taking what was positive from the past? If you could see yourself as someone who overcame it, who chose to reject the negative self-concepts that were forced on you, who was a survivor, and not a victim?

    You can do this. You, and only you, have the power. And that’s why you’re not a victim. The only person who can control this is you.

    Work through all of the points above. Find out where your blocks are. Deal with them. Move on. You’ve been through enough already. It’s time for things to get better.

    You’ve got this.

  • How to Get the Excitement of a Fresh Start Every Day

    How to Get the Excitement of a Fresh Start Every Day

    Woman at Window

    “Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.” ~Nikos Kazantzakis

    One minute I was a young warrior in a guild of travelers, the next, a middle-aged aristocrat in a strange Victorian world.

    A pretty standard day. Oh, did I forget to mention where I was?

    I was at a role-playing convention. That was over twenty years ago. Here’s how the fun worked.

    Every three to four hours, I would play a different session. That means I would become a new character and go on new adventures in another world, with different people. It was a complete shift of personality and environment three times a day.

    Only, the whole adventure would go on in my brain. It was all the fruit of the imagination of players around the table.

    Since I was a child, I’ve always been a dreamer. Even today, I can spend hours lost in thoughts, in my mind.

    I role-played for most of my younger years. From that period of my life, I’ve retained a fascination for the mind, imagination, and creativity.

    The power of the brain as a simulator of fiction captivates me. After all, our perception of the world is the product of a simulation run inside our head by our brain.

    Now, imagine you could get a role-playing convention experience in real life. If I told you that you could get the excitement of a fresh start every day, would you be interested in learning about it?

    Exploring new lives and scenarios has been one of my ongoing quests, so I put together a five-step process you can follow to get the excitement of a fresh start every single day.

    1. Adopt a child mindset.

    Do you remember when you were five years old, how you looked at everything with big eyes? You were always curious, exploring and testing the world. You would invent stories, secret places, fairies, and monsters.

    Jean Piaget, an important figure in developmental psychology, calls three-to five-year-old children “little scientists exploring and reflecting on these explorations to increase competence.” Children learn through experience, making mistakes, and solving problems.

    If I ask my three-year-old daughter whether she wants to go and have a look at a tree, she will always say yes. In fact, whatever I ask her, she’s always up for it. There’s no limit to her curiosity, and she’s got no fear.

    We, as parents, need to channel her energy and curiosity so she doesn’t hurt herself. As adults, we know when to stop so that we don’t hurt ourselves. Or do we?

    Often, our fear will stop us from doing something that would be beneficial to us. Conversely, we might also sometimes go too far and hurt ourselves, when doing sports for example.

    This challenges whether we’re good judges of what’s best for us. I argue that we often aren’t.

    That’s why the first step is to suspend your judgment and open your mind to new possibilities. As T.S. Eliot said, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

    So, mentally go back to your childhood for a moment. Picture the world around you.

    You’re there? Good. Now, you need to reawaken your child mindset and cultivate it.

    Be curious about everything. Ask questions. Challenge your assumptions about the world.

    This is your starting point. Spend time every day cultivating this mindset. Make it a habit.

    2. Develop a beginner’s mind.

    The second step is to act on your child mindset.

    Make it your mission to discover or learn something new every day. When you wake up every morning, ask yourself, “What am I going to learn today?”

    On Reddit, there’s a subreddit called “Today I learned.” Make this a motto for your life.

    To inspire you, think about Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo. Upon his death, Jigoro asked to be buried in his white belt instead of his advanced black belt. He wanted to stay open to learning and spend eternity with a beginner’s mind, symbolized by the white belt of the beginner.

    Also, think about monks, who meditate and work toward attaining a state of a completely empty and open mind. They call it a “beginner’s mind”—fully open to embrace the new.

    Embrace the beginner’s mind and learn something new every day.

    3. Seek adventure.

    To learn every day and get the excitement of new adventures, you need to go out and explore.

    This might lead you to scary places. You will get ideas that might seem crazy to you some days. Don’t let your critical mind stop you.

    Follow your instincts. Explore these ideas.

    If the ideas scare you, it’s a good sign. That means you’re up for an adventure. And we like adventures, don’t we?

    An adventure will give you excitement and new perspectives. And because of the unknown, you’ll be failing, like a child.

    But then, failure will teach you important lessons to increase your learning. You will build new neural pathways in your brain instead of just re-enforcing your existing ones.

    Recently, I was interviewed on a podcast. It was daunting at first. At the same time, I felt the thrill of an adventure.

    Afterward, as I listened to the podcast, it gave me insights into myself. In short, it was an adventure that gave me both excitement and new perspectives.

    What’s your next adventure going to be? Playing a new instrument, or maybe starting a martial art, like judo? A dance class, or a trip to Nepal?

    4. One change a day keeps the boredom away.

    Making small changes every day benefits you in two ways—it keeps things fresh and exciting, and it also changes your brain in a way that broadens your perception and brings more novelty into your life.

    When you do the same things every day, and don’t expose yourself to new knowledge and experiences, your brain makes fewer connections between neurons. When you mix things up, however, you literally change your brain through the process of neuroplasticity.

    As a result, you start to see the same things in different ways. For example, you could look at a quote you read some time ago and it could unlock a completely new meaning for you.

    Your daily change doesn’t have to be big. Here are typical examples of changes I’m making in my life:

    • Start reading a new book (and it’s even better when the book is on a topic I’m not familiar with)
    • Listen to a new podcast
    • Change my exercise routine
    • Change my writing style
    • Connect with new people
    • Change my morning routine
    • Cook a new recipe or change one I cook regularly
    • Have tea instead of coffee and try various teas
    • Start a new Coursera course

    Constant change will keep you excited every morning—and keep your brain flexible.

    5. Be a jack of all trades, master of some.

    Be hungry for knowledge.

    When you invest yourself in a new topic and explore it further, you become more and more excited about learning and growing your expertise.

    So, as you read books, explore new topics, and take new courses, seek new subjects that captivate you. Once you’ve found one, immerse yourself and learn as much as you can, and follow your curiosity wherever it takes you. For example, learning about minimalism may introduce you to tiny houses, which then piques your interest in sustainable design.

    In essence, you’ll always have a few topics that you’re focused on and many others that you’ll try out to fuel constant change.

    It gets better: As your expertise grows in different areas, you’ll broaden your overall culture. That means you’ll never run out of topics of conversation, and you’ll be able to relate to lots of different people.

    Bottom line: Invest yourself in new topics and you’ll live an exciting life.

    Never Settle

    You’re in control of your life. You can change it overnight if you decide to do so.

    It’s a matter of mindset. How you decide to see the world and react to it dictates your day.

    You can embrace each day as a new start, a new adventure. Whatever excites you, you can go out and explore it.

    It’s up to you now. Are you prepared for a fresh start every day? Are you willing to build an exciting life for yourself?

    Woman at window image via Shutterstock

  • Why We Don’t Need to Try So Hard to Be Better

    Why We Don’t Need to Try So Hard to Be Better

    Relax

    “To heal a wound, you need to stop touching it.” ~Unknown

    I’ve always been an overachiever. In sixth grade, I spent weeks memorizing over five pages of the poem “Horatius at the Bridge” for extra credit, even though I already had an A in the class.

    When I started therapy in my mid-twenties to deal with depression and panic attacks, I turned my overachieving tactics to self-improvement. I spent hours journaling, going to meetings, talking to mentors, reading books, and beating myself up when I fell into old habits.

    I always worried: Was I doing it right? Was I making enough progress? Would I feel better, find enlightenment, or be a better person in the end?

    That’s when I began to notice a pattern that surprised me.

    I found that when I first had an insight, discovered a tool, or began a new practice, I got very excited. It worked wonders for me and I could feel a sense of growth and expansion.

    I’d begin to try harder to generate more insights and discover more tools. But as I redoubled my efforts and worked harder at healing, I’d begin to feel anxious, self-critical, and depleted. The harder I tried, the less enlightened I felt.

    At some point I’d give up. I’d let go of trying to become the next Buddha and accept the fact that I was just going to be neurotic and flawed the rest of my life.

    And that’s when the insights and growth would start again. That’s when I would suddenly experience the most healing and notice the biggest changes in my life.

    Why was this? I wondered.

    And then one day it hit me: When we get injured, our body knows what to do and mends itself automatically—we don’t have to try. We’re designed to self-heal physiologically. It occurred to me then that perhaps we’re designed to self-heal mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well.

    Why We Don’t Need to Try So Hard

    Once I recognized our capacity to self-heal, I began to see evidence of it everywhere. Here are three common ways I’ve seen it work:

    1. The insight, answers, and wisdom we need are always within us and emerge in their own time.

    One of the things I’ve learned through years of struggling with depression is that no matter how miserable, confused, and hopeless I feel, clarity always returns at some point and I know exactly what to do.

    For instance, a few months ago I was feeling depressed for a few days and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.

    Then suddenly one night I woke up and it was clear: I was trying to do too much. I was overcommitted. I was doing too much to please other people.

    What I really needed was space for rest and relaxation. I cut back on a couple of commitments and took some time to rejuvenate. The depression lifted and things started to go a lot better for me.

    I get off-track a lot, but the wisdom is in there, and it always comes out when I allow space for it to emerge.

    2. When we miss a lesson, we’ll get new opportunities to learn it until we get it.

    Growing up, I struggled with my sister because when we fought, she would judge or blame me. I didn’t know how not to internalize that criticism and feel unworthy because of it.

    Then, years later, I fell in love with a man who did the same thing. He helped me realize that when he got angry and blamed me, he was actually feeling vulnerable or hurt himself. I learned how to use his judgment to help me connect to compassion and love—for him and myself—rather than guilt and shame.

    I didn’t consciously seek someone out who reminded me of my sister, but something within me drew me toward him, allowing me to work out a new way of dealing with blame.

    3. Our pain won’t let us stay off course for long.

    I was shocked when I learned that a runny nose and fever are more than mere byproducts of having a cold; they’re actually the body’s way of healing itself by flushing or burning out those mischievous germs.

    Similarly, our pain and neuroses are often our spirit’s way of getting our attention and guiding us so we can heal.

    Case in point: several years ago I began to have trouble sleeping. Falling asleep became more difficult and before long I was sleeping only three to six hours a night, if at all. I was exhausted, cranky, and miserable much of the time.

    It took a long time, but eventually I noticed patterns in what kept me from sleeping. Some nights I would lie in bed wide awake until I finally allowed myself to feel an emotional response (i.e.: fear, anger, disappointment, etc.) that I was pushing away or avoiding. Once I felt the feeling, sleep came quite easily.

    Other times I couldn’t sleep because I was being particularly hard on myself that day. I struggle with a very active inner critic and high expectations for myself, and on these nights sleep wouldn’t come until I dropped my critic’s attack and directed some compassion and love towards myself.

    I had tried ignoring the problem, powering through, or finding quick fixes, but they didn’t work. The insomnia forced me to address what was at the heart of the issue. Far from being an unlucky curse, the pain of not sleeping actually helped me to take the next step on my path to healing and wholeness.

    The Key to Allowing Self-Healing to Happen

    The reason so many of us spend so much time in pain and misery (myself included) lies in the difference between our egos and our true selves.

    Our true selves—who we are beneath the fears, the defense mechanisms, and the limiting beliefs—are wise, whole, and deeply connected to the larger world.

    Our egos, on the other hand, feel separate and alone and rigidly hold onto a particular set of habits and identities in an effort to feel okay in the world. We all have access to both.

    When I’m trying to grow and develop, I’m often caught in ego. I want something—peace, enlightenment, the respect of my peers, or an image of myself as an evolved person. I feel like I need to change something about myself in order to be worthy or good enough.

    When I’m coming from ego, I obsess. I strive. I effort. I compare myself to others and become convinced that I’m the least enlightened creature on the planet.

    All this striving and comparing is the mud that gums up the works of my self-healing process. That’s why it sometimes takes so long to work: I get in the way.

    To allow my self-healing process to unfold with its full power, all I need to do is relax.

    When I stop trying so hard, I reconnect with my true self. I have access to the fundamental wisdom and strength we all share. When I trust my inner workings to do their thing and simply observe what’s happening without trying to change it, my ego relaxes and healing happens naturally.

    To that end, I’ve found a few questions that help me heal and grow with less interference:

    Where am I striving with the intention of fixing myself or becoming more perfect? What would I do if I were to fully accept that I’m good enough as I am and that I’m exactly where I should be?

    What would nourish and nurture me right now? What would help me relax and feel safe enough to let go of old patterns?

    What is my inner wisdom trying to tell me right now? And if I’m not sure, how could I create enough space in my head and my life to hear what it has to say?

    We don’t always receive satisfying answers right away. That’s okay—in my experience, if we keep asking the question long enough, eventually we’ll get more clarity. It just may take a little longer than we expected.

    The process of relaxing into the process of change isn’t an easy one; knowing that I’m self-healing doesn’t mean my ego never gets stirred up or I don’t fall back into striving and obsessing. In fact, I believe that getting in our own way is an inevitable and enlightening part of the process, and I like to think that my inner wisdom is strong enough that it can handle whatever my inner foolishness throws at it.

    At some point I always become aware that I’m efforting again, and that’s when I can chuckle, pat my ego on the head, and remind it that it doesn’t need to try so hard. I can return to the questions, listen for answers, and then pray for the willingness to let go once again.

    Relax image via Shutterstock

  • Increase Your Self-Love: 8 Ways to Be Good to Yourself

    Increase Your Self-Love: 8 Ways to Be Good to Yourself

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

    Someone asked me a couple of years ago out of ten, how much did I love myself? I said four. I had to give my immediate, intuitive answer, as this was the honest truth.

    Four! That came as a shock to me. It’s low. I thought I was pretty good with myself. I’m smart, multitalented, not bad looking, generally happy, I have lots of friends and enjoy life.

    But now the truth began to shine. With introspection I could see why the answer was four. My thoughts, feelings, words, and actions showed how I really felt. What I thought was self-love was largely a superficial gloss on the surface of my life.

    What’s more, this lack of self-love was playing out in my life and keeping me from experiencing real joy and freedom.

    My strict Indian upbringing had me believe that my job was to conform to other people’s rules, from how I dressed and socialized down to whom I would marry. My true self had no place here; it was to be hidden away. But it never goes away; it’s always there waiting to be loved and accepted by us.

    Below are some of the areas I was lacking in self-love, which perhaps you can relate to. Taking conscious action to increase our self-love in these areas can make life much more magical. And we deserve magic!

    1. Set boundaries.

    A good sign of how much you love yourself is how you let other people treat you.

    Do they walk all over you?

    Do you go to the ends of the earth to please them, at the detriment of yourself?

    Do they speak or act unkindly to you, put you down, and trample on your dreams?

    Do they put you at the bottom of their list?

    Although I’ve experienced all of these things, people-pleasing was my big one. I always said yes to people for fear of upsetting them. As a result, I spent my precious time and energy in situations that I didn’t even want to be in.

    Setting boundaries is often as simple as knowing when to say no. We worry that people will stop liking us if we do this. But I find that if you do it confidently and lovingly, those who care will respect you for it and even change their behavior with you. And those who do walk away, do you really want them there anyway?

    2. Watch your self-talk.

    I once read, “If you spoke to your friends the way you speak to yourself, would they still be your friends?” In my case they certainly wouldn’t, because I’d be saying things like:

    You’re thirty-two and you still get pimples, your teeth are wonky, and you’re getting out of shape.

    You’re not going to achieve your goals.

    You don’t have a right to ask for what you want or speak your mind—keep quiet.

    Other people are more important than you; their wishes should come first.

    Imagine saying that to your friends! You’d never say it to them, so don’t say it to yourself.

    With self-awareness and practice we can notice these thoughts in our minds and make a conscious decision to stop them or reverse them into positives.

    3. Take time to “do you.”

    There’s always someone who wants a piece of you—your boss, spouse, kids, friends, parents, siblings, the bank manager. Do you know who else wants and needs a piece of you? You!

    When we truly love someone, we take time to nurture their well-being. How often do you do this for yourself?

    I know life is busy, but I always make time to do things that make me feel looked after—exercise, time alone, a little pampering. Giving yourself permission to nurture yourself creates the beliefs that you are worthy and loved.

    4. Be honest with yourself and others.

    If someone’s dishonest with you, you don’t like it. Same goes for when you are dishonest with yourself—it hurts! Being honest in my eyes means that our words and actions reflect the truth of our heart and soul—in front of anyone and everyone.

    For years I was dishonest with my family about who I really was.

    I liked to party, drank alcohol, had relationships, and had no interest in getting an arranged marriage. This may seem normal to most, but these things were all frowned upon by my family. So although I did them, I also hid them.

    This dishonesty seemed harmless until I realized that I was sending an unloving message to myself that who I really was, was wrong and shameful.

    Being honest about my feelings is my biggest challenge, as it makes me feel vulnerable. But in vulnerability lies great power, so I try and speak my truth as often as possible.

    The more you do it, the easier it becomes, and as long as you are not hurting anyone, expression from a place of honesty opens up so much space inside you. You feel free. You feel worthy. You feel loved.

    5. Allow yourself to feel painful emotions, and nurture yourself through them.

    For some reason we have learned to shun feelings of hurt, sadness, fear, depression, hopelessness, and so on, as if they are somehow wrong. When I was sad and hurt after a breakup, pride took the part of me that was sad and tried to shut it away.

    I had little compassion or acceptance for my own feelings of rejection, hurt, and unworthiness. I tried to quickly move on from heartbreak, dealing with everything in my head rather than my heart. So this pain remained inside me, unloved and unhealed.

    What if a small child were sad? We’d comfort them because we love them and want them to feel supported. They are fragile. But so are you. We are all fragile when in pain, so we must support ourselves, comfort ourselves, and love ourselves when we need it most.

    6. Let yourself off the hook.

    There’s no such thing as perfection, though you could say that you are perfect in your imperfection. Everyone makes mistakes or struggles at some things, it’s natural. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to get everything right.

    So isn’t it funny that we berate ourselves—the opposite of love—for not meeting a standard that’s impossible to reach in the first place? There’s no winning there! The only way to win is to let yourself off the hook.

    7. Watch who you spend time with.

    They say you turn out like the five people you spend most time with.

    Many years ago I remember being surrounded by people who had quite a negative outlook on life. We all go through dark times, but none of us want to get trapped in them.

    I realized the most loving thing we can do to help ourselves out of a negative state is surround ourselves with positive energy. The goal isn’t to find people who are always positive—none of us are. It’s to spend time around people who are making a conscious effort to release negativity.

    Your life is too precious. Love yourself enough to distance yourself from people who dim your light and find those who help you shine brighter.

    8. Know who you really are.

    Because when you find out who you really are, you won’t be able to help but love yourself.

    Did you know that almost every element on Earth was formed at the heart of a star? So your body is made of stardust! Your soul is a pure and powerful energy. Your life, as you know it, is a unique expression in consciousness that will never exist again. You are a miracle. Who doesn’t love a miracle?

    —

    So if you were to ask me now, how much do I love myself? I’d say six or seven. I’ve still got work to do, and decades of conditioning to be dissolved. But life is a journey. Few things come to us instantly, especially this sort of transformation.

    Learning to love ourselves may be our life’s work. And true joy comes from the realization that not only do you deserve love, you are love.

  • Why Advice Doesn’t Help When We’re Hurting (and What Does)

    Why Advice Doesn’t Help When We’re Hurting (and What Does)

    Couple Hugging

    “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we’re listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” ~Karl A. Menninger

    I remember my first call like it was yesterday.

    I answered the phone, heart beating out of my chest, hand firm on a sheet of local emergency phone numbers.

    The voice on the other end was full of… meek embarrassment.

    Not exactly what I was expecting.

    “Uhh, I’m really sorry… I’m not, uhh… I’m not suicidal…. I just… I just had a huge fight with my girlfriend…. I just… I really need to talk to someone…. Is that okay?”

    If you’re like I was before I became a volunteer in 2011, when you think about a suicide hotline you imagine circumstances so traumatic and unbearable that they bring people to consider ending life.

    But, I soon discovered that everything I expected to be true—everything from what the callers would be like, all the way up to how I would handle them—was completely wrong.

    And what I learned forever changed the way I think about pain.

    My First Big Surprise About Pain

    I became a volunteer because I wanted to help people who were hurting.

    But looking back, I realize that I had a big misconception about what those people would look like.

    I imagined two discreet groups: “normal” people living with minor ups and downs in one bucket; and “broken” people struggling with trauma and unrelenting emotional upheaval in the other.

    (I had imagined I was in the “broken” category, but that is a story for another day.)

    I was sure callers to the hotline would fall into the latter bucket, too.

    Which is why I was very surprised when I found myself speaking with “normal” people over and over again, people who I might easily have met behind my local coffee shop counter or in the grocery store aisle.

    I began to see that we are all vulnerable to pain so big that we might reach out to an anonymous ear in order to pour out our hearts.

    I realized that some of us may struggle with mental illness, but none of us are “broken.” Feeling extreme pain is simply part of the human condition.

    But that was just the very beginning of what I was to learn.

    What We All Need More Than Anything Is to Be Seen

    I thought my work at the hotline was going to be about giving advice. Indeed, I looked forward to it.

    I imagined helping callers develop coping techniques.

    I pictured using my keen insights to help identify root problems.

    I fantasized about offering guidance toward self-transformation.

    But, although I didn’t understand at first, all of these things were actually forbidden at the hotline. My role was to be an attentive listener.

    That’s it.

    This only began to make a little bit of sense when I realized that there was just one thread running through each of the hundreds of stories shared with me by callers: a lack of a trusted confidante.

    What each and every caller had in common was a deep craving to share themselves with a caring listener. Our job as volunteers was to offer this.

    Okay, that made sense to me. In a world filled with busy, stressed out people, it’s too easy to feel like we don’t really matter to anyone beyond fulfilling our obligations, if at all.

    Maybe it was this feeling—the feeling of being invisible—that was bringing so many callers to the brink of despair and onto our phone-lines.

    “Mmm, it sounds like you feel…”

    This simple string of words was taught to volunteers in order to make callers feel deeply seen and acknowledged.

    But are you wondering (as I did) how simple parroting is supposed to do anything substantial?

    Didn’t the callers also need help?

    Yet I found that callers were indeed substantially moved when they received undivided and caring attention.

    Someone might begin a call in a frantic tone of desperation only to end it with a sense of peace and hope, all because a volunteer fully acknowledge their complete being.

    Eventually, I even began to see that well-meaning “help” (like advice or personal anecdotes) could actually be damaging.

    Telling someone in pain about ideas based on our experiences crowds out what a distressed person really needs—a reflection, pure acknowledgement, to be seen.

    We Are All Profoundly Resourceful

    Despite callers’ uplifted moods, for a time I was still skeptical about the usefulness of empathetic listening.

    But if I am being honest with myself, my problem was that it made me feel unimportant.

    If all I was doing was holding up a mirror for callers, how was I supposed to get satisfaction out of my work? Didn’t some of them need my hard-won wisdom?

    But I soon noticed something interesting.

    Since most callers lacked a sounding board for their deepest feelings—buried anger, forgotten hopes, disappointments—many of them started to lose touch with those feelings until they bubbled over into a catastrophe.

    Callers often didn’t even know they were calling the hotline to talk about their uncomfortable feelings.

    They called the hotline to talk about tangible problems—major relationship conflicts, getting fired, losing a friend.

    I started to notice that it was only after having the chance to speak without interruption for several minutes, receiving only empathetic sounds of understanding and reflection in reply, that they would even begin to unpack the twisted mass of pain in their hearts.

    And that’s when I caught a glimpse of the magic beginning to happen.

    Once the mirror I offered allowed callers to glimpse hidden corners of their inner worlds, they were empowered to keep exploring.

    Soon, they were clearing away cobwebs and dusting off all kinds of rusty tools and insights, all as I sat, phone propped on my shoulder and mouth gaping at the miraculous turnarounds that had virtually nothing to do with me.

    The truth was that callers didn’t need to hear about how I fixed my own kinda-similar problem.

    They didn’t need to hear about what my friend did in the same situation.

    Indeed, hearing my own musings would have interrupted the magic process.

    My ego was disappointed at first, but watching someone else regain their footing is immensely more satisfying than patting yourself on the back.

    Instead of my wisdom, I begin to take pride in my ability to convey empathy and ask questions, encouraging callers to dig deeper.

    I was truly happy to be doing my small part in helping callers tap into their immense personal resources.

    Having Our Feelings Validated Is Transcendent

    I was thrilled to be witnessing this new power—the power of skilled and empathetic listening. I saw that it was emotionally replenishing for callers and empowered them to calmly analyze their hearts and their worlds.

    But there was something else going on, too. Something that seemed almost spiritual.

    I felt it, too. When I got off of a call, I sometimes felt a little dizzy, a little euphoric.

    But why was I feeling so uplifted by conversations that started because someone had been feeling hopeless and alone?

    What I came to realize is that empathetic listening offers a lot more than soothing companionship.

    Empathetic listening and acknowledgement also means giving someone the chance to feel like they fit into the order of the world.

    It means allowing someone to feel like a puzzle piece slotting perfectly and seamlessly into something bigger than themselves, like they belong. It is truly transcendent.

    And since the act of empathizing deeply with another person means becoming one with them for a short time, as a volunteer I was experiencing the transcendence, too.

    With every call I felt a part of a bigger whole. I felt connected.

    And by the way the callers often thanked us volunteers, sometimes even through tears of relief, I knew they felt connected, too.

    Connection is the Ultimate Emotional Pain Pill

    Volunteering at the suicide hotline convinced me that listening and connection are so powerful that they can relieve even the deepest pain.

    I might not have found my chance to shine as a skilled sage, but discovering that even the most troubled among us can begin to regain footing was infinitely more satisfying.

    “Yes, absolutely, it’s okay.” I said to my first caller. “It sounds like you feel really, really upset. Tell me more about that.”

    Couple hugging image via Shutterstock

  • Coping with Loss and Heartbreak: How to Get Through the Pain

    Coping with Loss and Heartbreak: How to Get Through the Pain

    Broken Heart

    “The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.” ~Djuna Barnes

    November, 2014. A story you’ve heard a million times. The person I believed with all my heart to be “the one” ceased to feel the same way about me.

    My heart and soul shattered, I had no desire to live, the whole works.

    Having your heart broken, especially by someone you truly loved is, from my perspective, the worst kind of pain there is. It makes you lose all sense of self, reality, purpose, and faith. To me, it felt like my soul was being severed into teeny tiny pieces.

    When we’re in that much pain, it seems like it’s going to be a forever deal. We forget that it’s all temporary.

    To make matters worse, we feel we’re all alone in it—we are rushed to “just move on already” when we can barely find enough energy to open our eyes.

    So keep in mind that there is no shame about the situation that is most painful to you and how long you’re taking to process it.

    You could be facing your darkest hour brought by the death of your pet fish. Or by the fact you didn’t get that dream job.

    Whatever the situation is, do not compare or believe your pain is less legitimate than others: your journey here is your own, and it is just as sacred as that of someone you perceive to have “more legitimate“ reasons to be in pain.

    Also, take your time getting through it. It’s your story. Your shoes. Your life.

    I’d like to remind everyone out there going through a hard time that pain is in fact the greatest catalyst for growth.

    You can’t see that when you’re smack in the middle of it; in fact, you might even say, as I did, “No growth is worth this much pain.” But when you come out on the other side, my friends, it’s like you’re seeing in color for the first time in your life.

    So keep going! You’ll be happier than you ever were once you’ve transcended it, I promise you.

    Here are five of the many lessons I learned throughout this year that I believe can help anyone, at any point, with any struggle, to reach out into all the happiness and bliss that life can offer.

    1. Gratitude

    While I was in that place of suffering, gratitude seemed like a dark humor joke from the skies. How can you possibly find something to be grateful for when you feel you’ve been stripped of every shred of happiness or love and there’s nothing left but pain?

    That feeling kept me in limbo for a while. I kept reading and reading about recovering from a severe heartbreak and every single one of the texts I read were emphatic about gratitude. So at one point I thought “there has to be a reason for this.”

    Finally, I picked up a pen and piece of paper and told myself to write ten things I was grateful for.

    It was hard at first. Only a few things came to mind, like family and a roof over my head. But I kept on trying, day after day.

    By the end of the first week, ten things were too little.

    You begin to see everything as a blessing.

    Now, with a year’s worth of practice, at the end of each day, looking back at things to be grateful for on that one day feels actually overwhelming at times—there’s just so much to be thankful for.

    I feel important to share that what made me click was the realization that gratitude isn’t about exercizing it as a virtue because you should. It’s about the wonderful state of being you put yourself in deliberately. Ultimately, gratitude is about being happy.

    2. Beliefs, beliefs, beliefs

    Next, I was smacked in head with the premise that you create your own reality. Accepting responsibility for your pain is awful, to say the least—until you realize how empowering it actually is.

    What it comes down to is that what you truly believe about yourself and the world is, in fact, what you’re going to experience in your life.

    If you believe that the universe conspires against you, surely enough, that’s what you’re going to get. Every time something goes wrong in your life, you’re going to read it as if you’re powerless and the universe is after your bottom in particular.

    The silver lining is: beliefs are changeable. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you chose instead to believe that the universe conspires in your favor?

    A great technique I picked up from Tiny Buddha itself is: find a belief that you’re holding on to that you feel is doing more harm than good, and work on it.

    Let’s say, for instance, you feel unlovable. Take a piece of paper and write down the opposite of this, e.g. “I am lovable.” Then actively look for evidence that this is true, day by day.

    Every time you felt loved during the day, write it down. If someone was kind to you, if you received a compliment or a warm touch, or were praised in any way, write it down.

    Little by little, you’re going to convince yourself of this, and then proceed to see it more and more in your experience.

    3. You are complete.

    We tend to attach certain situations, people, and experiences to certain feelings. This makes us think that in order to feel complete we need to reach out for these people, situations, and experiences, which obviously causes us more harm than good.

    Take me, for instance. I attached the love that I felt for my ex partner to that person in particular. One meant the other. And it was the most beautiful feeling. So when they were no longer there, I felt I was left with a huge hole in my soul.

    But I came to realize that love I felt had been inside me the whole time. What they did was bring it to surface.

    Which is to say: you can’t feel anything that isn’t within you already—you are a complete being. No one, and no circumstance, puts feelings inside of you.

    It’s easier to let go once you realize that, much like a piano, all of your feelings are already within you in potential. What your reality does is play the notes that bring them into your awareness.

    The beauty is: you can play that piano yourself.

    Find your music.

    It’s the best you’ll ever hear.

    4. Disidentification

    I can’t stress enough how important it is to disidentify with your pain or struggle. We feel it’s so entrenched in us that it’s like an arm or a leg. So I want to be very clear: you are not your pain.

    In my experience, heartbreak felt like it would be forever a part of me. That there was nothing I could do about it because it was so profound and painful that standing for even a minute looking at it made my heart go physically nuts (which was quite scary).

    The moment I learned, and I mean actually understood, that pain serves you immensely by pointing straight at parts of yourself you need to heal, and is not part of your now-being, everything changed.

    So, imagine your pain as a separate entity from you. Imagine seeing your pain in front of you, talking to it, hugging it. Dress it festively according to the occasion, hang out with it, draw it, make a Play-Doh version of it. Be creative and let loose.

    It’s going to become a second nature to you to actually love your pain.

    5. Integration, integration, integration

    This came as a consequence of the latter lesson. By loving your pain, you integrate it. You don’t reject it or try to run from pain; you accept it.

    What happens next is that you expand. And that is the best thing ever. Trust me.

    Everything becomes that much full of life, of passion, of color.

    It’s so important to understand this. Every time you integrate an aspect of your pain, you’re going to feel more joyful, more awake, more excited.

    So don’t run from your shadows. Instead, invite them over for a cup of tea and have a nice, honest, accepting chat.

    —

    These five lessons helped me form a new understanding of life—I went from dreading each and every day to feeling excited and passionate for every new morning. I hope they can help you find your way there as well.

    Be gentle with yourself and hang in there—it’s worth it!

    Broken heart image via Shutterstock

  • How to Let Go of the Stuff That Keeps You Emotionally Stuck

    How to Let Go of the Stuff That Keeps You Emotionally Stuck

    “The totality of my possessions reflects the totality of my being. I am what I have … What is mine is myself.” ~Jean Paul Sartre

    What kind of relationship do you have with your stuff?

    Embracing who we are naturally requires a letting go of who we aren’t, but perhaps want to be. That ties directly to our physical belongings, which can renew and inspire us in the direction we’re headed—or hold us back.

    Over the years, I’ve found that the objects with the most powerful grip on us are not necessarily those we use frequently and with ease, but the “aspirational” items that we wished we used more.

    The sleek high heels that never come out of the closet, because they’re too impractical to actually wear. The exercise bike that grows rusty in the basement. Or in my case, the high-end digital camera I just sold on eBay.

    The Lightness of Letting Go

    The camera is three or four years old at this point, but it takes amazing pictures. My partner at the time suggested I buy it before a big vacation to Istanbul, though I didn’t need much convincing.

    The idea of capturing the world through a lens and expressing myself creatively excited me. I liked the vision I saw for myself—someone with an eye for detail, with original, hand-crafted art on her walls to boot. This person sounded very clever and interesting.

    But what I quickly came to realize is that the actual process of taking photos, let alone editing them, held less appeal.

    My traveling companion used the camera on that trip far more than I did—he at least knew what to do with all those dials and buttons, whereas I had skipped reading the manual. It turned out my iPhone and a few Instagram filters were really all I needed to be satisfied. (So basic, I know.)

    Still, I held on to the camera for several more years, dutifully lugging it with me on trips and adventures, though it rarely came out of my bag. Even when I did snap pictures, they almost never came off the memory card.

    These unused items can take up a lot of space, but it’s the emotional burden, not the physical one, that really weighs us down.

    Every time I looked at my camera, I was struck by a pang of guilt. For wasted money, wasted potential.

    I’m rational, even ruthlessly unemotional, when it comes to most of my possessions, but this camera had a hold over me. I put off getting rid of it in the hopes that inspiration—or at least some motivation— would strike.

    Finally, this winter, I accepted what had already been true for quite a while: I’m not a photographer. And that’s okay.

    I sold the camera online and instantly felt better. The guilt was gone, my shelf was empty, and my wallet full. This time around, I plan to spend the money on something closer to my heart—an investment in my writing, some yoga classes or even a meal out with friends.

    Taking Stock for Yourself

    Here are a few things I considered when I accepted that my dreams of being a photographer, even a decent amateur one, were just that.

    Listen to your own stories.

    What stories run through your head when you look at an object that you don’t use but can’t seem to part with? How do you plan to use it and is that realistic?

    These stories are illuminating because they help us identify our true motivations.

    I rarely thought about planning my shots or the subsequent hours required in front of the computer to review my work—the nuts and bolts of photography. And when I did consider these tasks, it was not with much fondness.

    Watch out for the dreaded “shoulds.”

    As I’ve learned, it can be far too easy to conflate what we should want to do with what genuinely calls to us. Do the objects you cling to support the person you are and the activities you enjoy, or do they speak to some idealized identity in your mind’s eye?

    Author Gretchen Rubin writes frequently about what she considers the most important of her “personal commandments”—her commitment to just “Be Gretchen.” This has meant admitting she’ll never have a glamorous wardrobe or enjoy late-night jazz clubs, even if she likes the idea of these things in theory and sees why other people cherish them.

    “If something was really fun for me, it would pass this test: I looked forward to it; I found it energizing, not draining; and I didn’t feel guilty about it later,” she suggests in The Happiness Project.

    Let your possessions be physical reminders of what’s really fun for you.

    Consider substitutes.

    It’s possible your desire to hang onto something is telling you more than you think.

    I had a similar experience with a bicycle I bought the better part of a decade ago. It was a beautiful Italian road bike from the eighties, and I snatched it up on Craigslist, putting aside the fact that it wasn’t quite the right fit and that I didn’t feel comfortable riding it.

    I held onto the bike through several moves across states despite rarely using it, thanks to that familiar tug of guilt and desire.

    It was only in the past year that I finally invested in a new bike, one with upright handlebars, fatter tires, and easy-to-change gears. It fits me and I ride it everywhere. This one also has less emotional power over me. It’s functional, a tool I use for getting around—not a symbol for the kind of person I wish to be.

    Can you tweak what’s not working?

    Think about who else might gain.

    When I did finally sell my camera, it helped to convince myself that I was giving someone else the chance to enjoy it at a reduced cost. I hope the buyer finds the joy I’d been seeking, but never actually found.

    Could others use the items you’re clutching so hard? Consider letting go a gift to the world—one that will also free you to embrace your true self more fully.

  • You Don’t Have to Adjust Who You Are to Please Others

    You Don’t Have to Adjust Who You Are to Please Others

    Six Faces

    “If you are busy pleasing everyone, you are not being true to yourself.” ~Jocelyn Murray

    Do you say yes to things only to keep people happy?

    Do you fear saying and doing what you actually want?

    I know how that feels.

    From a young age, I was the polite, good girl. I rarely rebelled. I wanted to keep everyone happy. I thought that if I was honest I’d be rejected. That those closest to me wouldn’t love me. I thought I’d end up alone.

    At friends’ houses, asked what I’d like to drink or eat, I would always respond with “Whatever’s easiest.” I never wanted to be a burden.

    At twenty-one I met my boyfriend’s parents. Dinner was fresh sardines complete with tiny bones. I was vegetarian and hated fish, yet I said nothing and ate away.

    I fought the urge to be sick. I followed each revolting bite with a gulp of water. I should have spoken up, but I feared disapproval.

    After college, the desire to keep everyone happy led me into jobs I thought people would approve of. By my mid-twenties I had a job in management. I was successful. But inside I was miserable.

    Living my life according to the word “should” was gruelling. When I finally stopped, I felt empty and unsure of who I was.

    One day it became too much. I didn’t want to get out of bed. Everything was an effort and I spent hours sobbing.

    I looked in the mirror. I was disgusted by my reflection. I’d roll my hand into a fist and hit myself around the head. I thought I deserved to suffer.

    I knew I needed help, so I reached out to a doctor. He put me on antidepressants and I started to talk to a counselor.

    After I started to understand my motivations and explored my values, I started to believe I was enough. I didn’t need to hide who I was to gain people’s approval. I started to feel less depressed.

    I still have my days when I worry what others think, but I don’t feel the urge to adjust who I am, or to follow paths that aren’t right for me.

    This process didn’t happen instantly, but looking back I see the steps I followed.

    1. Start with the root.

    It’s tempting to ignore people pleasing. You feel in control. You feel comfortable .

    But until you start to examine the root of your behavior, it’s likely that you’ll continue to constantly want to please others. This comes at a cost to your own happiness.

    Instead, take some time to explore the motivations behind your people pleasing.

    How does it benefit you? What belief does it show that you hold about yourself?

    I believed that by not speaking up, people would love and accept me. This all stemmed from the root belief that to be accepted and loved I needed to be someone else.

    As a small child, there was a lot going on in my parents’ lives. They were loving and caring but they were young, new parents with a lot of financial pressure on their shoulders. Life was busy.

    I didn’t want to be another thing that they needed to worry about. If I was polite and kept everyone happy I thought this would create less stress for them.

    So that’s what I did. Over the years, it became an ingrained habit that showed up in all areas of my life. I associated being loved with people pleasing and the truth as rejection.

    2. Ask yourself these two questions.

    Letting go of the belief that lies at the root of your people pleasing can seem impossible. It’s scary to step away from something you have held onto for so long.

    One way to make it easier is so examine your belief further.

    I find these two simple questions help:

    Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

    In Katie Byron’s The Work, she suggests we use this question to investigate our beliefs. When I first read this question, I struggled with it.

    My people pleasing was so ingrained that the belief that I needed to be someone else to be loved felt so real. Of course it was true.

    What helped me was to consider the word “absolutely.” It implied there was no room for doubt. So I searched my brain for examples that would 100% prove this belief.

    There weren’t any concrete examples. I realized I had created the belief myself. There was no way I could know that it was absolutely true.

    Is it helpful?

    We often pursue harmful behaviors and beliefs because we believe they offer us something. In reality, they drain us of time and energy.

    So ask yourself is my root belief helpful? Does it help me move further toward my life goals?

    When I asked myself these two questions, I realized that my belief was neither absolutely true nor helpful. This made it easier to let go and to move onto something new.

    3. Get to know yourself.

    When your life has been full of people pleasing, it’s hard to know what to replace it with. It can be tempting to let the habit creep back in. To fill the space it left.

    I felt this way. At first, it was painful to confront the fear that perhaps I didn’t know who I was. It felt like I was moving closer to a trap door about to take a peek inside. What if there was only darkness?

    I fought the urge to run the other way. Instead, I slowly started to take note of my reactions to things. I let my intuition guide me.

    As I did I started to rediscover things about myself, things I had known but had remained hidden beneath the trap door.

    I remembered my love of helping and supporting people. My curiosity for different cultures. The draw toward acting and improvisation.

    I realized I would never be happy in my job, stuck behind my desk working with data rather than people.

    4. Sow new seeds.

    Giving up people pleasing is challenging. It can seem overwhelming. Instead of thinking of it as planting acres of maize, think of it as sowing a seed. One small seed. That’s all.

    What’s one tiny thing you could do to take yourself away from people pleasing and closer to authenticity?

    Could you express your true opinion about something?

    Could you be honest that you don’t want to go to that social event?

    As you start to sew a new seed and nourish it with action, new shoots and roots will appear. Yes, you may feel guilty for being honest at first, but it will get easier.

    As you practice, the old root and belief will naturally start to wither. You’ll feel more assured and confident.

    —

    Constantly trying to please others is exhausting, particularly when it leads you to live a life based on what you think you should do rather than what you want to do. But taking small steps to understand this part of you can have dramatic effects on your life.

    Imagine not having to constantly adjust who you are to please others.

    Imagine feeling more confident in expressing who you are.

    Start with step one. It doesn’t mean you have to give up doing things for others. It does mean giving up a toxic habit.

    Adjust less to others. Listen more to yourself.

    Six faces image via Shutterstock

  • Are You Being Too Supportive? (Yes, There is Such a Thing)

    Are You Being Too Supportive? (Yes, There is Such a Thing)

    “We cripple people who are capable of walking because we choose to carry them.” ~Christie Williams

    Years ago, I had a dear friend who needed a lot of support for various reasons. She was working hard to find her way out of a dark period. She had suffered traumas and tragedies—things I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

    Her life really did resemble a roller coaster ride. It was heartbreaking to watch her struggle, exciting when things would be on the upswing, and upsetting again when things would spiral downhill.

    Because I had known her almost my whole life and because I loved her dearly, I tried my best to always be there when she needed me. I am someone who knows and appreciates how important it is to have supportive people around you, offering love and kindness, especially during times of struggle.

    Sometimes being there for her simply meant picking up her call in the middle of the night and talking with her.

    Sometimes it meant dropping what I was doing and driving to meet her to make sure she was okay.

    There were talks, tears, and through that, hard truths were often revealed.

    Of course, it wasn’t all dark and dreary. There were bright moments and memories too. There were movie marathons and game nights. There was laughter to the point of tears. Many a meal was shared and many a bowl of ice cream was devoured.

    What I got in return wasn’t the same type of support. She was not the person I would turn to in a crisis, however minor or major. She just couldn’t handle it. But in turn, this friend showed me gratitude and genuine love.

    I never thought much about the dynamics of our relationship until another crisis erupted in her life, shaking things up once again.

    The downward cycle began and with it came hysterical phone calls, late night drives, drama after drama. And through it all I did what I always did which was listen, help, care, and show love.

    But one day my boyfriend at the time looked at me and said, “You need to stop doing this.”

    I was confused. The idea had never even crossed my mind. Stop? Why?

    He explained more and his perspective was eye opening. He saw her as less of a victim to outside circumstances and more of an adrenaline junkie—addicted to drama and things going wrong. As proof, he listed off several disastrous choices that were just that: her choices.

    He asked how I could help someone who didn’t really want help at all.

    But mostly he felt this friendship was interfering with my own life, well-being, and happiness.

    I had never thought about it like that before. And while a part of me was mad at him—he just didn’t understand, I thought—there was a tiny part of me that agreed with him.

    What was I doing?

    The truth was these late night calls and drives were interfering with my early morning job.

    The truth was the time spent trying to support and help her was taking away from things in my personal life that also needed my attention.

    The truth was I cared so much that I carried her stresses with me much more than I should have. I felt sad and worried, more than I needed to.

    The truth was her out of control life was making me feel out of control in mine.

    Because the thing was this: in being so busy with always checking in on her, I forgot to check in with myself.

    It was the first time I really understood that in order to support others we must remember to support ourselves first.

    After this realization hit me, I spent a great deal of time thinking about our friendship and I started to see things in a different light.

    Yes, this friend had a lot on her plate, but maybe the way she was reacting and handling these situations could be better. Maybe she needed help beyond what I could give her. Maybe she needed to start by wanting to change and help herself.

    I started to see that no matter what I had done for her all those years, how many phone calls I answered or help I offered, nothing had really changed in her life.

    She was having the same type of emergencies and she rated them all at least a nine on her personal-crisis-Richter-scale.

    Once this truth was apparent, I knew a shift needed to take place.

    I started to do only what I felt comfortable doing. I wasn’t there every single time she needed me, but I was still there a great deal.

    This wasn’t enough. Naturally, my friend was upset and hurt. She couldn’t understand why I was withdrawing, even though I did my best to explain. The more I explained, the more hostile she became. The more hostile she became, the more I withdrew.

    Eventually the crack between us turned into a massive fault line, one that couldn’t be repaired.

    Do we have an obligation to do our best by the people we love? Well, yes—to an extent.

    But we have to remember we have an obligation to ourselves first—for our happiness, our health, and our spiritual well-being. If we are not respecting our time, feelings, and energy, no one else will either.

    I hope that friend of mine has figured that out. I hope she’s living life with more highs than lows, more laughter than tears, and more joy than she ever thought possible.

    And I hope she feels it when I send her a blast of love from my little corner in the Universe to hers.

    I hope she understands that’s the best I can do now… the best for both of us.

  • Why Strong, Brave People Aren’t Afraid to Quit

    Why Strong, Brave People Aren’t Afraid to Quit

    “Some people think it’s holding on that makes one strong—sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

    Throughout my life I’ve quit many things.

    I quit a reasonably ‘sexy’ job title and steady paycheck.

    I quit a six-year relationship with an essentially giving and loving person.

    I quit being a yoga teacher after investing heavily in getting qualified.

    I’ve quit many courses halfway through like calligraphy (of all things), ‘life design map’ courses, and online courses for all sorts of random things.

    I quit therapy once, before they told me we were ‘done.’

    I’ve quit several crappy part-time jobs when I first started building my business.

    Yep, I’m a quitter. Or at least, that’s the label I gave myself.

    You see, for many years I was the queen of being mean to myself. She can still pipe up on some days, but I used to be so continually nasty to myself, it was exhausting.

    “You never finish anything.”

    “You just don’t have what it takes to go the distance.”

    “You’re so pathetic, Nat.”

    “Why can’t you just see things through? What the hell is wrong with you?”

    The other day a client told me she had these same questions (which are really just nasty taunting statements) going around in her head, as she felt guilty for giving up on something that she’d known for a long time she didn’t want to continue.

    “I feel like a quitter, Nat. Won’t walking away mean that I’m just quitting?”

    And so we began to talk about the meaning of quitting.

    What does it actually mean anyway?

    To me, to quit means to leave, usually permanently, or to be rid of something, right? I mean, that’s what the dictionary definition tells us.

    But what if all the times we labeled ourselves as quitters were actually times when we were following our very finely tuned but so often ignored gut instinct?

    What if quitting was just a term we’ve become used to hearing from the people around us, from our parents, from anyone else that might have reminded us where we “should have stuck things out,” but holds absolutely no truth in relevance to the situation we supposedly decided to quit?

    I mean, let’s take the end of my six-year relationship for instance, which some, including my ex, might view as me having ‘quit.’ Do the years prior to that, where I struggled with myself over what was working and what wasn’t, and where I held on and tried to keep things together for both of us, not count as me working hard to keep going?

    If I casually had just walked out without a reason, that would have been quitting, but I didn’t; I stayed and fought for as long as I could, and I made a decision that I felt at the time was right for both of our long-term happiness.

    And then maybe you could also say I quit being a yoga teacher, or at least my mum might have been worrying about that at the time. “But what about all that money you spent traveling over there and taking the course?”

    And I could understand her worry, but I reached a point when I had to be honest with myself.

    I had been putting pressure on myself to be a perfect and shiny and accomplished yoga teacher even though the entire reason I had gone on the training was to heal myself and my spine, tap into who I really was, figure out what I really wanted from life, and deepen my practice. It was never to be a teacher.

    So yes, maybe I quit yoga teaching, but again, what I was actually doing was being true to myself.

    And I want to encourage you to do the same.

    Drop the struggle you might currently be experiencing with the quitter label. It’s never going to serve you, and you know it’s not who you really are.

    If you know deep down that something doesn’t feel right—if you know you’re not meant to be with the person you’re with, in the job you’re in, or doing the work you’re doing—then walking away from it does not make you a quitter, my beautiful friend.

    It makes you empowered.

    It means you have guts.

    It means you are strong enough and tuned-in enough to listen to yourself.

    It means you’re following your intuition.

    It means you know your time and energy are best spent doing something else.

    It means you know you’re on the wrong path and you’re brave enough to take action to change direction.

    It means you’re brave.

    It means you’re strong.

    And it means you’re taking responsibility of your happiness.

    Does it mean you will quit everything in your life?

    No, it most certainly does not. When you find what’s right, you’ll know, believe me.

    But turning over several stones to find the one that shines instead of settling for the safety of the first thing you find is a journey few are prepared to walk.

    So with that in mind, you’re pretty amazing for having chosen to be true to who you really are.

    Finding what lights you up doesn’t come overnight; maybe for some it does, but for most, it requires a few more stones to be unturned.

    So don’t be afraid to keep moving, don’t be afraid to throw in the towel, don’t be afraid to ‘quit.’ It means you’re taking decisive action around what you will and won’t stand for, what feels good and what doesn’t, and most importantly, what feels true for you and what just quite simply doesn’t.

    We can’t live our most expressive, fulfilled, and empowered life trying to labor away at something that doesn’t light us up from the inside out, so stop wasting time trying to, and don’t be scared to do something different.

  • When You’ve Lost Your Job: How to Start Moving Forward

    When You’ve Lost Your Job: How to Start Moving Forward

    “If you can’t fly then run. If you can’t run then walk. If you can’t walk then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.

    For five years, I worked for an incredible little company that makes creative products for creative people.

    I first joined the company as the marketing director and over time, moved into a top executive role. It was a wonderful adventure with passionate people and incredible learnings, challenges, and joys. And then it wasn’t. I was laid off.

    Suddenly I, among other top executives, managers, and team members, found myself out of work. The reason? Budget cuts. But that didn’t really matter.

    What mattered was that my “second home,” the place where I had made close friendships, where I had mentored and worked side by side to build teams, where I had laughed, cried, and come to work after too many sleepless nights of worry and planning, had let me go.

    I had lost my daily connection with my tribe.

    My mind flooded with thoughts, questions and emotions. I was pissed, and heartbroken and frightened, all at the same time. How could this have happened? What was I going to do? It was paralyzing.

    And then I paused and took a deep breath.

    I reminded myself of a phrase a friend had told me long ago, “Eat your elephant one bite at a time.” It had helped me through other seemingly impossible projects and life changes, so why not now?

    I asked myself what one thing I could do that day to move me forward. I knew that even one small step would be better than nothing.

    The pause brought me a moment of clarity. In that moment, I knew there was only one thing I needed to do.

    I took a deep breath and cried.

    I mourned not only a job that I loved, but also the loss of my friends and co-workers whom I’d grown to love. There would be no more daily hummus sharing, or yoga mat brainstorming meetings, or late night planning sessions, or morning burrito walks.

    I needed to allow myself to mourn this loss and to experience these painful emotions. Until I owned these feelings, I knew I wouldn’t be able to move on.

    The next day, I found myself staring at my outdated resume. I had trouble remembering anything of importance that I had done in my career the past five years. What were the highlights? What are my strengths and how did I use them to the company’s benefit? I was at a loss.

    Again, I paused and asked myself what one thing I could do that day to move me forward. I reminded myself that even a small step would mean progress.

    The best thing I could think to do was to find a mirror. How did other people see me? What value did they think I brought to the teams I worked on and to the company overall? I asked several colleagues to write recommendations for me on LinkedIn and was overwhelmed with the responses that I received.

    It was a great way for me to see common themes of how and where I really add value. Many of them also wrote specific examples of successful projects or goals and noted how I had been integral to the success. Having these recommendations helped me to start thinking about who I am when I’m at my best.

    Like many people, when I’m at my best, I’m motivated, happy, and highly functioning. As I became clear about this, it was easier for me to see what kind of work I wanted to do moving forward, which in turn helped me create a resume that really spoke to my strengths and passions.

    I won’t lie; it was difficult at times. Finding a support system of friends and colleagues was so important. Being a support system for someone else was also very rewarding and helped to put my situation into perspective.

    In the difficult times, I reminded myself of my strong connection with my family, my loving circle of friends, and my supportive partner. Life wasn’t so bad.

    In the end, I found myself working with a lovely group of women at a local consulting company. I’ve been blessed to once again be working with an incredible group of motivating, intelligent, and supportive people, all while doing work where I can use my gifts and talents in a way that I’m proud of.

    If you have been laid off and are facing similar challenges, here are some things that helped me move forward:

    Pause.

    You don’t have to have it all figured out right now, so take a moment to breathe and clear your mind. If you’re overwhelmed, this can be a great way to help get you unstuck. Just think about one thing you can do to move you forward (which leads to the second item on my list).

    Keep moving forward.

    Try not to stress if things seem slow going, or worry about things not working out. Sometimes it seems like things aren’t coming together, but every small effort pushes you a little closer to your goal. As long as you’re moving forward, even just one little teeny tiny step, you’re making progress!

    Allow yourself to feel your emotions, but don’t let them overwhelm you.

    It’s natural to be scared, worried, and anxious, but you don’t have to let these feelings control you. You can create peace and foster patience by taking care of your mental and emotional well-being with deep breathing, yoga, meditation, exercise, and other self-care practices.

    You might think you should spend all your time job searching, but making time for self-care will make you far more present, peaceful, and effective.

    Find a mirror.

    Ask colleagues to write recommendations for you, or ask a trusted relative or friend to tell you what they see as your strengths, or maybe what sort of work they could picture you doing. Understanding your worth through other people’s eyes is truly inspiring, and it can help give you direction.

    Be good to yourself and find a support.

    Don’t be too proud to reach out to friends or relatives, or even search for an online career resource. (There are a ton of these kinds of companies now and they are great about offering all kinds of helpful content and community in addition to regular job postings.)

    One thing I’ve learned in this process is that we’ve all got things in our life that make us feel “less than.” Once I started sharing my story with people, I actually felt powerful!

    —

    You can’t always control what happens to you, but you can work on how you respond. It’s been profoundly helpful to claim the control I do have—inside of myself as well as in the external world.

    Treat yourself like you matter… because you do.

  • How Technology Makes It Easy to Flake Out (And How to Stop It)

    How Technology Makes It Easy to Flake Out (And How to Stop It)

    Texting

    “If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.” ~Unknown

    How many times have you made plans with friends, only to receive the dreaded, “Sorry, need to reschedule” text just minutes before you were meant to meet?

    Is it any wonder that you get tired of trying, that you struggle to feel secure in relationships?

    But before we get carried away castigating others, let’s take a look at ourselves. We hate it when other people bail at the last minute, but do we do it too?

    As humans, we have an astonishing capacity for denial. People I love and respect tell me how much they despise it when other people text and drive. Then five minutes later, what are they doing? Texting and driving.

    Many of us use our phones and social media accounts to flake out on our people, and it’s messing with our heads.

    That’s why every major world religion emphasizes a version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When left to our own devices (pun intended), we are really bad at it.

    Much as I dislike when other people flake out, I’ve done it. I did it to my friend Jozzy a few weeks ago. I’d verbally expressed interest in attending a book group he led, speaking as though I’d be there. In fact, I even put it on my calendar. But when the day arrived, I was feeling exhausted.

    So I messaged Jozzy and told him the truth: I didn’t have the energy. He was gracious and forgiving. It would have been easy to forget about the incident, but I took a closer look. What had happened?

    First, I didn’t take a pause before committing. Instead of realistically assessing my week, I let my enthusiasm take the reigns. You might say, “You couldn’t have known that you’d be exhausted!” But a cursory glance at my calendar told me otherwise.

    Next, I took my own words too lightly. Before messaging Jozzy, I’d spent a few minutes pretending that I hadn’t ‘really promised’ anything. This made it easier for me to go back on my word.

    You could argue, “You just made a casual agreement; it’s no big deal!”

    I understand the lure of this reasoning, but I don’t bite. If we can’t rely on one another to mean what we say, then we don’t have much of a relationship.

    Technology also gets us into trouble by making it easier to renege on our commitments. And if we don’t resist that tendency, it can erode the fabric of our friendships.

    Years ago, if you wanted to cancel an engagement you’d need to speak to the person you were letting down. Now, you can tap a text or change your status with the swipe of a finger.

    As psychologist and author Andrea Bonoir writes in There’s A Modern Affliction Ruining Our Friendships – And We’re All Guilty Of It, “Technology makes it so much easier to flake out … It’s infinitely easier and less awkward than having to talk to someone by phone or, worse, tell them in person.”

    Yes, technology makes it more convenient to flake out and lie. But that doesn’t make it right. So the first and most important thing for us to do is walk the walk.

    As Alex Cornell jokes in Cellphones Are Making People Flaky as #%@*, most people fall into three categories: latecomers, no-shows, and optimizers (that is, people who won’t commit to your plan until they’ve scoped out every other possibility first).

    Cornell says, “… There is potential for a fourth category—those that show up on time, but … this is unlikely.” In other words, people who do what they say they will are rare.

    Be that unlikely person. People will respect you for it.

    But what do you do when you’re on the receiving end of repeated flake-outs? Martha Beck’s paraphrase of the Golden Rule is helpful here: “Never let others do to you what you would never do to others.”

    The next time a friend bails on you yet again, don’t swallow your anger and pretend that it didn’t affect you. Your time and trust matter; when they’re trampled upon, it hurts.

    Emergencies happen, and everyone makes mistakes. I’m not talking about such isolated instances here, but rather a pattern of getting left in the lurch. If that’s what you’re dealing with, say something.

    People only get away with flake-outs because we are too scared to call them out and set the necessary boundaries:

    I care about our friendship, and it’s not okay that you are consistently late. If it happens again, I will leave after [X] minutes. I need to respect my own time.  

    I love you, and I find it so frustrating when you cancel our plans at the last minute. Please either show up when you say you will, or don’t make plans with me at all.

    You are allowed to value your own time. And when you begin to respect this most precious currency, you’ll teach others to do the same.

    Texting image via Shutterstock

  • How I Used My Phone as a Crutch and What I Know Now

    How I Used My Phone as a Crutch and What I Know Now

    “People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” ~Joseph F Newton

    Can you imagine your life without a cell phone?

    It’s hard, right?

    For most of us, we use our phones every day, whether it’s for talking with others, looking up information, or entertaining ourselves during those lulls in the day.

    A short while back, my phone contract expired and I was left without a cell phone. It felt strange at first, since my phone was something that was beside me almost every second of the day.

    But a thought came up: What would my life be like without relying on a cell phone all the time?

    I decided to run an experiment to see how it impacted me. And what I learned surprised me.

    When my eyes weren’t glued to my phone, I was able to look up and notice different things around me. I became more aware of how people used their phones, especially when there weren’t any other electronic devices around to engage them.

    One day, I went to a restaurant for a meal and noticed a family of four sitting beside me. Two adults and two preteen children were seated in a cozy corner, gazing at their menus.

    It looked like they were out having an enjoyable meal as a family. Wasn’t it the perfect time for them to reconnect with one another and share what was happening in their lives?

    But as soon as the orders were given and menus were taken, the dad whipped out his cell phone and began browsing away. The mom followed suit and pulled out her phone as well.

    The little chatter that happened over the table died out, and the two children each pulled out their phones to play with the apps on their phones.

    A while later, the meals arrived.

    Everyone put down their phones to admire their dishes. A few comments were made before digging in. A sip here, a bite there, and soon they went back to staring at their phones again during the meal.

    As the meal progressed the table was silent, save the occasional clink of utensils against plates.

    Ironic, isn’t it? A device that was made to ease communications can end up being a hindrance to talking with others in real life.

    After I left the restaurant, I thought about what happened and couldn’t help but cringe. Not for them, but for its reminder of how I used my phone in the past.

    I would use my phone on the subway, at work, during meals, and almost every other spot in between.

    My phone usage was especially obvious at social gatherings. When the conversation died down and the silence became uncomfortable, it was easy to flip through my phone as a distraction. It was my way of trying to say: “It’s not that I can’t stand the silence—it’s just that I need to check my phone right now.”

    Which, of course, wasn’t true. But it took not having my phone on hand to realize the way I had been using my phone as a crutch. It protected me from uncomfortable situations, from looking bored, and from being unproductive.

    Or so I thought.

    When I didn’t rely on my phone, I shared conversations more easily, became more conscious of my surroundings, and found more meaning in my actions. There are four big realizations I’ve come to about phones—and by extension, a lot of the technology that we rely on today.

    1. You don’t need to be available every second of the day.

    The vast majority of us are in positions that allow us to turn off our phones from time to time. Unless you’re in a job that requires being on call, you can step away and give yourself time off from electronic devices.

    I used to worry that if I didn’t reply to someone’s instant message or email right away, the person would become impatient or I would miss out on an opportunity. I felt myself getting stressed when I forced myself to constantly check for updates.

    But now I know that if I wait to get back to someone, it isn’t the end of the world. It can actually help me develop clarity in how to respond and also gives me peace of mind.

    I’ve learned to appreciate the present moment more now.

    2. Phones are made for communicating with people, not avoiding them.

    Have you ever tried speaking with someone, only for the person to mumble a response while staring at a phone or laptop? Or, maybe you found yourself so preoccupied with your phone that you didn’t notice anyone around you?

    It’s interesting how the urge to fiddle with our phones strikes us when we’re put in a strange situation. Like being in a room with new people. Or running into someone we haven’t seen for a while.

    If you find an urge to use your phone during these situations, stop for a second. Ask yourself, why do you feel more comfortable using your phone at certain moments? Does it have to do with something urgent popping up on your phone, or an effort to avoid feelings of discomfort?

    Not all discomfort is bad. Discomfort can be a sign of growth. It’s an opportunity for you to connect with others and learn something new.

    3. A phone is not a substitute for companionship.

    I have a friend who enjoys spending his time messaging acquaintances and friends that he hasn’t seen for at least several months. When I asked why he didn’t see them even though they lived nearby, he said, “Why should I? I already message them all the time.”

    I admit, I laughed at the response. I believe (and I think you’ll agree) that nothing beats meeting someone in person. Even if we spend months, or years, communicating with someone online or through a phone, we don’t feel like we truly know the person until we’ve met.

    I like to keep a mindful balance between the time I’m using an electronic device and the time that I spend with people. If you’ve been staring at something for most of the day, it’s probably time to put everything down and take a break.

    4. Phones are useful, but use them wisely.

    If you’re thinking about what to do with your phone right now, don’t worry. There’s no need to chuck it in the garbage!

    Phones are great for many things, I can attest to that. They’ve helped me reschedule meetings, get access to information instantly, and choose a wonderful restaurant from time to time.

    Keep in mind, though: phones, laptops, tablets, and other electronics are made to help your life, not consume it. If we set boundaries between technology and our lives, we can use these gadgets to get even more out of our experiences in everyday activities.

    So whatever you choose to do, remember that phones cannot replace the joy of laughing with a loved one, of discovering new places, or the sense of content you feel after making a positive contribution to the world. But if used properly, they can help you get one step closer to achieving those things.

  • You Are Worthy Regardless of What You Achieve

    You Are Worthy Regardless of What You Achieve

    Woman Looking Up to the Sky

    “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” ~Albert Einstein

    I am pathetic. I am a walking, talking cliché (well, maybe not walking—I use an electric wheelchair).

    I am one of those people who is so desperate to overcome their own sense of lack that they create some giant obstacle to overcome, or some massive achievement to attain, in order to feel that they might just be worth something.

    I am an over-compensator, so desperate to feel okay about the fact that I am, in some ways, not as capable as other people that I seek to achieve the impossible—purely to show the whole world, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am enough.

    The great irony, of course,  when you do this is that the only one you’re really trying to please is yourself. You’re just afraid that you aren’t worthy, so you seek to prove that you are, through your achievements. It doesn’t work. Everybody can see what you’re trying to do.

    Your desire to achieve is fine, but it’s silly and fruitless to pin your self-worth on it.

    You might wonder why I’m being so down on myself. And the truth is, I’m just being honest. This is how I operated until recently. It’s part of personal growth, something we have to go through before we begin to realize the deeper truths about life.

    No grand achievement will fill any emotional hole in me. It just won’t. The more I hope it will, the less likely I am to achieve it. It makes a man (or woman) weak and pathetic to be reliant on achievement for his sense of self because ultimately, he’s giving over his power to things he can’t control.

    Rather than move me toward my goals, all the hoping, struggling, wishing, and trying to improve myself only seemed to make the hamster wheel spin faster.

    In actuality, it was just teaching me how to have control over myself. I learned that in order to try and get the things I was so desperate to have, I had to do things that were against my nature and control my emotional state.

    I had to fight to turn lethargy into energy, anger into desire, or boredom into enthusiasm instead of embracing my feelings and allowing myself space to explore them. It works, but it’s exhausting. Not quite as exhausting, however, as actually trying to do things.

    Forcing yourself to get up for the alarm, to work toward the goal that you desperately ‘need’ to feel worthy or complete, and yet makes you incredibly anxious and miserable, is one of the hardest and most trialling things you’ll ever do. And I’ve experienced a lot of trials. The better you get at it, the more stupid it seems, because you just get more miserable.

    You become a slave to your goals and desires. A robot. A cog in a machine of your own making. At least if I was just going to work for somebody else I’d be paid to work in a machine I wasn’t responsible for. Being a slave to the machine of your own dreams and ambitions is like being the owner, repairman, operator, and cog all in one. It’s impossible.

    Eventually you start to wonder: “Hang on, I thought this was supposed to make me free. And happy. Not a slave.” You’re right. That’s what it was meant to do. But it never could. You’re asking for the impossible.

    Dreams and ambitions are wonderful. They bring fire to your belly, light to the distant future, and meaning to your miserable failings. That’s all it does, though. It doesn’t change your present moment. It doesn’t change the reality. Right. Now.

    On my journey in life so far, I’ve experienced three distinct phases, each of which has taught me an important lesson.

    The Leaf in the Wind Phase

    I am just one little leaf being blown around in the giant storm of life, and my only real power is to observe and absorb the world around me. I have to accept the good with the bad as well as my place in the world. However, this left me feeling like a passive observer.

    Self-Improvement

    I discovered the power of self-direction, that I could change my beliefs, habits, and desires through effort. I could teach myself things, and direct my life toward that which caught my eye.

    I gained an incredible, if misguided, sense of control over my future and started to believe I could literally control my destiny. Even when this led to success, I became more and more like an automaton—a slave to the habits and beliefs necessary to achieve the goals that I believed would make me worthy.

    Waking Up

    I realized using my self-improvement as a measure of my self-worth was a bit obnoxious, not to mention futile. Even if I got what I wanted, there would always be something bigger and better to measure myself by; I’d never be enough.

    Waking up involves discovering that you don’t need to change who you are; you are enough, just as you are. That doesn’t mean you can’t pursue change. You just do the things you have to do, step by step, without any attachment to a particular outcome. That’s it. You simply act.

    You start to like yourself, primarily because you get to know yourself. And you find that actually, you were pretty cool all along.

    The irony is, the outcomes we become attached to prevent us from ever getting what we really seek. Nobody wants to be rich or famous; they want to be significant and connected to other people. Those things come as a result of your process, the actions you take every day, not the outcomes we tie our self-worth to.

    The biggest part of ‘waking up’ for me was realizing that my obsession with audacious goals was my way of avoiding the real changes I needed to make, which were broadly around learning to like myself.

    Now that I’ve made some of those changes, my goals are less important to me and simultaneously more likely to come to fruition. All because I want to achieve my goals, I don’t need them to feel worthy or complete.

    I no longer feel that I have to change who I am to get what I want, which means I no longer repress my feelings. If I’m feeling moody, sad, or lazy, I embrace that and give myself a break instead of telling myself I’m wrong to feel how I feel.

    I’ve learned that we don’t need to control everything around us. We couldn’t even if we wanted to. There is only now. This very second is all we have, and will ever have.

    You can have goals, that’s fine, you can work toward them, that’s also fine, but to tie yourself up in a tight knot of stress and mental chatter is just a recipe for misery.

    Waking up begins when you realize that you don’t need to achieve anything specific to be worthy, happy, or at peace.

    Woman looking up to the sky image via Shutterstock

  • Freedom Is Knowing We Don’t Need to Be the Best

    Freedom Is Knowing We Don’t Need to Be the Best

    Happy Woman

    “Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego.’” ~Frierich Nietzsche

    At a young age, the bar for the rest of my life was set very high. I was a natural at anything I tried to do, and I was lucky enough to have my friends and family support me in just about every venture, so I became incredibly confident in my abilities and hopeful that life would always be easy and painless.

    Eventually, I solidified the expectation for myself to always be number one because that is what my identity was based upon.

    To give you a couple examples of my pre-adolescent stretch of glory: I was an all star swimmer (better than even the boys on my swim team); no one dared challenge me in verbal warfare due to my incredibly intellectual argumentative skills; I was “popular” for a pre-teen and had close friends; and I was very good at school.

    Then I was humbled by reality.

    I transferred from my safe 100-student private school to a public school of over 400 students in sixth grade, and my world was literally flipped upside down.

    I lost my identity in a sea of kids who went toe to toe with my vivacious personality, and my ego took a big hit.

    I was not the best at anything anymore, so who I was and my contribution to the world, in my young mind, was compromised, because those things that I attached my value to as a human being were challenged.

    This identity (ego) I refused to let go of ate me up inside, as I internalized it to mean that I was somehow not valuable as a person. My intrinsic value was somehow diminished because I was not the best at everything anymore.

    And that is where my mind failed me, because that pattern of thinking is not true. Problems arise when we believe our value comes from our accomplishments and achievements.

    The world makes it very hard to avoid attaching our value to our success because success is defined, measured, and standardized in many cultures by what we do, who we do it for, what we have (materialistic things and money), and how far we get.

    What I came to realize was that these things can’t even begin to explain the person you are on the inside. What matters is your intention, the worth and depth of your relationships, and your values. These qualities make you who you are.

    Let me back up a bit. Before I came to this conclusion, I was hurting badly for a number of years. Not only did my life get considerably harder after entering the sixth grade, but I also stopped asking for help and maintaining the close relationships I had made when I was at my “peak,” because I felt unworthy.

    To protect my precious ego, I started blaming and judging everyone to keep them at a distance so they wouldn’t see my self-perceived faults. And that, my friends, is the ugly nature of the ego. Call it competitive, stubborn, or hardheaded—it is an insatiable monster that will eat you up inside if you let it.

    I would like to say that I grew up and had an awakening of sorts, but to tell you the truth, I am still very much in the process of accepting and loving the true me. Here are some tips on how I manage the monster that you may want to try:

    Identify any beliefs regarding achievement and access that cause you to suffer.

    Can you let these go? Why or why not? Oftentimes, we hold on to beliefs for our survival and comfort even when they make us unhappy. We also hold onto beliefs because we are afraid to discover our true selves, which would mean big changes for everything around us.

    Ask yourself what you genuinely value in others that has nothing to do with success, appearance, or other “worldly” objects.

    Can you see these qualities in yourself? What would it feel like to acknowledge, grow, and love these values/qualities in yourself? Think of qualities in others that make you feel safe, respected, and cared for. Usually the good qualities we see in others are direct reflections of what we do not see in ourselves but possess deep down.

    Honestly ask yourself what you need, and seek help.

    Oftentimes, people like me try to prove they have it all together but end up overwhelmed because they wind up juggling too many balls, saying, “No, it’s okay, I got it.”

    I realized I stopped asking for help because I needed to maintain the illusion (primarily for myself) that I knew everything so I wouldn’t feel incompetent.

    Being vulnerable enough to admit you can’t do everything and need help actually brings people closer to you because it opens the door for the most basic of human needs—empathy, validation, and most importantly, the need to feel like you are not alone in your experiences.

    Be gentle and patient with yourself. Allow yourself some room for error and be humble enough to seek other perspectives to issues that arise. It can be extremely freeing to learn that you do not, in fact, have all the answers.

    It is a process to let go of the unrelenting demands created by past experiences and accomplishments. Life has a funny way of showing what you need to relinquish in order to be at peace and congruent with your inner values.

    Be aware of what causes you to suffer on a regular basis and try to make a habit of acknowledging your core inner qualities that give your life meaning and value. When you start living in congruence with the values and truths you discover inside yourself, everything else naturally falls into place.

    “Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.” ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

    Happy woman image via Shutterstock

  • Silly Little Things

    Silly Little Things

    Silly Little Things

    Source: Power of Positivity