Tiny Buddha

Tag: Happiness

  • Taking the Shame and Fear Out of Mistakes

    Taking the Shame and Fear Out of Mistakes

    Ashamed

    “The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard

    There have been times in my life when I knew I was stuck, but instead of dealing with it I chose to backpedal to the “safest bet” for me at the time, whether it was the steady paycheck from a soul-crushing job or an abusive relationship.

    Then, one day, I suddenly realized that I had spent precious years just going through the motions.

    One reason I had gotten so stuck was because I had been trained from early childhood to avoid making any sort of mistake at all.

    In the first grade, I cut my ankle playing on a swing set. It quickly became so infected that I had to be hospitalized for many weeks.

    I have blocked most of this from my memory, but my family tells me that I became very sick with osteomyelitis, which is an infection that reaches the bone. The doctors weren’t sure if my leg would need to be amputated or not.

    My parents admit to me now that they had been very afraid that I was going to die.

    Luckily, I recovered after an operation designed to help remove the infection instead of an amputation. Even so, they continued to operate from a place of fear and vigilantly protected me from the possibility of getting hurt.

    My five-year-old self misinterpreted their wishes to keep me safe to mean that I was supposed to be perfect.

    So, instead of moving forward, learning, and possibly harmlessly tripping up somewhere along the way, I learned to look for the sure thing, the safe harbor. The perfect choice became inaction.

    We often won’t change until the situation becomes intolerable.

    It’s like the urban legend of the frog in a pan of water under a Bunsen burner in a laboratory somewhere. The temperature of the water is gradually increased until the frog slowly boils to death, unconsciously, or at least until the frog suddenly becomes conscious enough to realize that it is too late to jump.

    The frog legend illustrates that if something were immediately intolerable, we would effortlessly change.

    But when the change happens so very gradually, we often aren’t aware that the situation has morphed into something completely intolerable.

    I was never allowed to skip and fall when I was a child. Although my parents loved me, after my hospital stay they were filled with fear that something would harm me again.

    If something went wrong, then one of them would have to rescue me. Worse than that, I was lectured so much about the dangers of failing at something that I often didn’t even try to begin. It was so much easier that way.

    Since I never learned how to handle mistakes and failing, I kept doing the things I considered safe, easy, and predictable.

    By protecting myself from falling, failing, or feeling uncomfortable, I became stuck in the place of not trying. I inadvertently had set up my life so there were no surprises and no chances of making a mistake.

    By doing that, I was limiting my learning and my evolution. Life became predictable and stagnant. I had essentially become my own boiling frog. Only recently have I jumped.

    I’ve learned that I need to make mistakes and face failure if I’m going to make any changes in my life. Here is what I have learned about failure and mistakes:

    1. View mistakes as learning experiences and stepping-stones to get where you want to go.

    “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ~Thomas Edison

    We all make mistakes when we are learning. It’s the forward motion that’s important, no matter how small.

    2. Stop comparing yourself to others.

    “Comparison is the thief of joy.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

    We often have unrealistic expectations of ourselves and compare ourselves to those with much greater expertise when we are just beginning. Even the experts made mistakes when they were learning.

    3. Mistakes are seldom fatal.

    “Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.” ~Al Franken

    You will live. It’s important to learn to admit that we are human, we make mistakes, and we learn from them. Mistakes are about learning, not about shame.

    4. It takes guts to get up wherever you may fall, brush yourself off, and to try again.

    “The willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.” ~Brené Brown

    If the direction you are going is true to your heart, you simply need to keep honing your skills.

    5. If you are truly not learning and you keep making the same mistakes, it may be the truth coming out.

    “The most confused you will get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.” ~Shannon L. Adler

    Almost always, it doesn’t work because it isn’t beneficial for you. Move on in a completely different direction. At the time, we may consider what happened to be a failure, but it is almost always a blessing in disguise.

    The only way we can become unstuck is through movement. And, when we move in any direction, we will invariably make mistakes and experience failure along the way. But is it really a “mistake” or a “failure” if we learn something and move forward?

    Ashamed man image via Shutterstock

  • When You’re Hurting and Healing: Give Yourself a Break

    When You’re Hurting and Healing: Give Yourself a Break

    Give Yourself a Break

    “Stop beating yourself up. You are a work in progress, which means you get there a little at a time, not all at once.” ~Unknown

    Often these days, I would like nothing more than to move forward. If I could only figure out which way was forward, I would definitely start heading in that direction. If you couldn’t already tell, I’m going through a break-up, the most major break-up of my life so far.

    Again, I’m often disappointed that if I were to check a box to describe my “relationship status” it would most likely be “It’s complicated.”

    Truthfully, it’s not as complicated as I make it; however, at times it has me spun around to the point that I don’t know my direction. Pain and confusion are part of daily life.

    Recently, after a tearful conversation with my ever-supportive sister, I was looking forward to sitting down on my cushion and experiencing the sadness and pain I was feeling.

    I had spent a day intently focused at work, and, when my mind wandered, holding back tears. I was looking forward to letting those tears flow. I was ready to let these emotions live and to acknowledge and accept them, to live with them.

    I thanked my sister for everything, hung up the phone, walked to my cushion, and sat. I set the timer. I pulled my head up high. I collapsed, crying. I pulled myself up again. I collapsed again, bawling.

    Merely the thought of pulling my chest up again was exhausting. All day I had looked forward to a moment when I could let these emotions be, and now I felt too weak to experience them in the manner I thought I should.

    Experiencing the discomfort, however, did not seem to be my current problem.

    These emotions had something to teach me, and I wanted to learn. If I could just sit in meditation with the pain I was experiencing, I could begin to understand the lessons—or so I thought. I thought the lessons would tell me what to do and how to move forward.

    I wanted to be strong and stable. I wanted to sit with my head high and feel the pain. I wanted to not be a pile of howling self-pity on my bedroom floor. Sitting on the cushion, I realized I might not have an option.

    It was undeniable. At this moment I might just be a weeping mass on my bedroom floor. A word came to mind: overwhelm. I was overwhelmed.

    So I reset my timer. Five minutes. For five minutes I could cry my heart out. Then, I decided, I’ll get up, cook dinner, eat dinner, drink a cup of coffee, and read a novel, and then I’ll come back to the cushion.

    The new plan went much better. Only, I wept for about thirty seconds, and then I lay there breathing deeply. The timer went off and I got up.

    I remembered Pema Chodron’s advice about lightening up, which is exactly what I needed to do. She said, splash water on your face, go jogging, do anything different. I put on Donna Summers instead of the cathartic break-up music I’ve been playing recently.

    I danced while I cooked dinner. I had my dinner, my coffee, my reading. I sat on my cushion. I experienced the feelings that had now transitioned into numbness.

    The gratitude I have for that experience, for being able to recognize my needs and provide them for myself, to simply give myself a positive, healthy break, is immense.

    I gave myself the space I needed. I had hoped to sit on the cushion and get that space, but I found it shaking to “Bad Girls” instead.

    It’s not uncommon to want ourselves or our situation to be different. It is the desire to be a better person that pushes us to grow, change, and actually become better people. However, personal growth is often a slow and painful process.

    The expectation to be something we are not, whether temporarily or permanently, is a form of aggression toward our selves.

    The best thing we can do is nurture ourselves and our circumstances just as they are. Listen to yourself and do not try to force yourself or your situation to be something it is not.

    When you give yourself a break, you create space. Allowing things to be, just as they are, without judgment or expectation, gives you room to breathe. And that is good for clarity. You may find things start to get better, if you let them.

    My situation remains “complicated,” and I still experience confusion. However, the confusion has slowly begun to dissipate. I am more willing to rest in that confusion, to accept complicated.

    The truth is, I am moving forward, day by day, no matter what my choices. There is nothing disappointing about complication; it’s a sign of growth and transition. It’s hard to see sometimes, but the joy of living is in the unknown.

    Letting myself be weak gave me strength. Letting myself be confused gave me clarity. Letting my life be complicated simplified it. Letting myself off the hook gave me a really pleasant evening when I needed it most.

    Girl meditating image via Shutterstock

  • When You Fear Emotional Abandonment: Do You Know Your Worth?

    When You Fear Emotional Abandonment: Do You Know Your Worth?

    Alone in the Woods

    “Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” ~Unknown

    Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…says Lady Liberty. She was speaking to immigrants wanting to start a new promised life in America, but those words could be my tagline for the men I have had my most intimate relationships with.

    If you were broken, emotionally unavailable, complicated, and confused, I was your girl.

    I would love you more than you loved yourself, or could love me. 

    I would put all my energy into trying to make it work, trying to help you heal, but I would abandon my own needs or truth in the process, because the desire to recognize or honor my own worth was not as strong as it was for me to show you yours.

    Was I aware of this pattern? Perhaps on a superficial level, but it didn’t truly emerge until I ended my most recent long-term relationship last summer.

    One day the light bulb turned on as I went from six years with a man I was engaged to marry (and before that in an eleven-year relationship that sucked my soul dry) to an emotional affair that had left me more raw and exposed than before.

    I was the common denominator in this series of events, but what was I contributing that left my soul and heart so ravaged?

    I devoted the summer of 2013 to unraveling this mystery. I was done with repeating the same outcome just with a different man.

    My search took me back to my childhood, as it would inevitably for all of us adults struggling with conditioning or behavior that we just can’t seem to let go, even though it does nothing to serve our higher purpose.

    My relationship with my mother could be described as a fractured one, at best. She too was broken from her childhood experiences, which shaped her choices, mostly the not-so-good ones as she aged. The difference is, she chose to stay in that place of unhealing and unawareness, whereas I knew better.

    Through my teens and early adulthood, I struggled with trying to understand her choices, her inability to love me and support me the way that I needed.

    I was not brought up to understand my intrinsic worth, to know what a healthy and nurturing relationship looks like and, most importantly, that I deserved to be in one.

    I turned to the metaphysical, spirituality, and yoga to shed light on what I just couldn’t see.

    With each year, I was able to piece together a little more of my toolkit for understanding, but the toolkit my mother gave me for tolerating emotional unavailability and abandonment in my closest relationships seemed to win out.

    I could support, tell all those around me in their darkest days how beautiful, how amazing they were, but when it came to myself, those words were like bitter-tasting medicine that I just couldn’t swallow.

    Subconsciously, I ached for my partner to help heal me—to echo the sentiment I would bestow to them—but it never came in the quantity or consistency that I required. And it never would if I kept looking outside myself. It was a vicious cycle that had to end.

    Then one day it became clear. Through my search, which I was fiercely committed to, I came upon a psychological term coined by Freud: repetition compulsion. The trumpets sounded, the lights turned on, and in that moment it all made sense.

    Repetition compulsion is an “inherent, primordial tendency in the unconscious that impels the individual to repeat certain actions, in particular, the most painful or destructive ones.”

    Usually, it stems from an unhealed relationship with a parent. So in adult life, we’ll attempt to heal the traumatic event that took place as a child through intimate adult relationships, but the outcome will end up the same.

    It never occurred to me that my relationship with my mother, and all the hurt it brought, would ever affect my adult relationships with men.

    My father and I were very close; he was a friend, a rock in my life. But even so, I kept finding the same man drawn to me or I drawn to them. In essence, they were emotional replicas of my mother.

    I was not brought up with clear emotional boundaries or the ability to validate my own worth—not on the level I required to be a strong, confident woman. I flailed. I would have bursts of drive and chutzpah at times, but I spent most of my energy feeling not good enough, not lovable enough, not worthy enough.

    I talked myself out of many opportunities or shied away from experiences because of my inner demons. In a nutshell, I sold myself really short.

    Armed with this new knowledge, I consulted with a counselor to understand further. In a few sessions and with more reading as the summer wore on, I came to that place of healing.

    I saw, objectively, what had happened and what I wanted to and needed to do differently to end the cycle. This education was put to the test this past winter when I ventured into a new relationship that had great promise.

    All my old fears came up, fears of being emotionally abandoned. And when it looked like the same thing was happening again, I did something that I didn’t know I could do. I said no. No to repeating the same mistake. I set my boundaries, I stated my worth, and I was prepared to walk away.

    I spoke my truth and came from an authentic place when communicating with this newest partner. It mattered not if he understood or heard me; it only mattered that I said what I did and took responsibility for my own outcome instead of placing the power in the hands of another.

    In the end, he did understand, and I was heard. Although we did part ways, I was left with more clarity than I ever had before.

    I don’t regret the path taken or the experiences had, including the heartaches. For each one brought me to this point. The point of seeing my intrinsic worth, something we all are born with.

    We must nurture it firstly within before it will be mirrored to us fully. It’s not about being defined by ego or conceit, but knowing, from an inner wisdom, that others cannot define the value we all possess; only we can do that.

    That being said, I’m still human, and sometimes I catch myself falling into that old, familiar pattern. But before I fall too deep, I bring myself up again. I cannot undo the past, but I certainly can lay the groundwork for my present and my future, cultivating fertile soil where my needs are nurtured and my worth is evident.

    I do not have to fear being emotionally abandoned by another, because I won’t abandon myself anymore. So now the tagline reads, I can help show you your worth, not because yours is more important, but because I firstly see and honor my own.

    Alone in the woods image via Shutterstock

  • Stop Holding Yourself Back and Start Proving What You Can Do

    Stop Holding Yourself Back and Start Proving What You Can Do

    Woman with suitcase

    “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~Sylvia Plath

    Singing professionally has always been something I have wanted to do. Always. The home I grew up in wasn’t a particularly musical household, unless you count playing the radio as playing an instrument.

    To my benefit, there was a lot of music in our home ranging from gospel to the Beach Boys; but really nothing beyond the sixties was allowed unless it was a spiritual song of some kind. So, I sang in the church choir and later I helped lead the music for Sunday morning services. Anything to sing.

    As a kid, I loved to make up songs. It wasn’t songwriting in my mind; it was playing with words. For example, changing the lyrics to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” for a friend moving away or playing with a melody because I loved it.

    The problem was there was no one around to tell me it was any good or anyone who knew enough about music to encourage a budding talent. As a kid, I thought this meant I wasn’t good enough.

    The logic that reigned was if I had something worth praising, someone would tell me. When no one did, I took my talents, dreams, and hopes underground.

    Hiding became my normal because I loved music, and since I assumed I wasn’t any good, why put it out there for anyone to criticize? I was too sensitive for such judgment.

    When given the opportunity in the fifth grade, I began to play in the orchestra. I played the violin, or was it the viola? I can’t recall. All I can remember is the hideous screeches of “Hot Cross Buns.”

    As soon as band was an option, I switched to the flute and fell in love with music in a whole new way. Still, I believed I was no good. The question that seemed to always ring out was, “Do I have what it takes?” When no one responded, I assumed the answer was, “No!”

    It’s silly looking back because I never really asked the question, attributing people’s lack of interest or encouragement as rejection and an affirmation of my inability.

    Everything was confirmation of my lack of talent.

    Like my mother’s warning about the reality of the music industry. Her explanation that it was a tough business meant in my head “You aren’t very good.”

    The high school talent coordinator telling me I was better on the flute and should be doing that instead of singing equaled “You aren’t a great singer.”

    The flat out discouragement of a church music director saying I was “pitchy” (which I now know was only a matter of bad technique) made me think “I guess I will sing back up forever.”

    When I auditioned for American Idol and heard, “You’re good but not what we are looking for,” that was the nail in the coffin.

    Why even try? Everyone had told me I wasn’t good enough. Inside I was asking the question “Can I?” and the response was “No!” It took me a long time to realize it wasn’t the world, my music teacher, or even my mother’s job to answer the question “Can I?” It was my job.

    One day I decided I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. This thing called music screamed inside to be let out. Finally, I decided songwriting and singing had been gifted to me for a purpose, and I was going to see what that purpose was. Insecurity would no longer be my prison.

    It hasn’t been an easy road but the question has changed. Now I ask myself “Why wouldn’t I?” Could it be fear? That is a terrible reason to quit anything. Rejection? I will face that no matter what I do. Failure? I guarantee failure by not trying.

    Just changing the question made a world of difference. Not relying on others to answer a question only I was responsible for made me feel empowered.

    I still battle insecurity and I still ask myself the wrong questions but more and more I ask myself the right one. Why wouldn’t I? Try it and see what happens in your life.

    I surprised myself. You might surprise yourself too. Surround yourself with people who believe in you and will be your cheerleaders. Don’t take no for an answer, even if the person saying “No!” is you.

    Woman with suitcase image via Shutterstock

  • Why You Don’t Need to Eliminate Self-Doubt and Fear

    Why You Don’t Need to Eliminate Self-Doubt and Fear

    Man at sunset

    “The more you hide your feelings, the more they show. The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow.” ~Unknown

    Self-doubt has been a companion that has followed me around like a trained dog follows his master. Every step I’ve made outside of my comfort zone, it’s been there, right beside me.

    Moving from Germany to England to attend high school, I was full of high hopes and aspirations. But despite my intensive English course and hard work, I could hardly understand anyone in the first few weeks.

    Feeling left high and dry by my so-called “English skills,” I started feeling shy and nervous. My German accent made me sound different, and doubtful thoughts like “Can I ever cope here?” and “Do I belong?” entered my head.

    Whatever it is that you want to accomplish, should that be starting a new chapter in your life like I did, doing creative work, or changing your career, self-doubt and fear can creep up.

    The problems start when fear and self-doubt take over, when they stop you from doing what you once loved to do or from taking the actions you know you need to take to move ahead. This kept me wondering: What’s the right way to deal with self-doubt and fear?

    Entering the War

    I was taken over by society’s notion that self-doubt and fear were bad things that I urgently needed to eliminate.

    At the beginning of high school, I avoided interacting in class and kept away from meeting new people to calm down my fear.

    Today, I see I was simply running away from these difficult feelings and thoughts. I did everything to avoid being in the horrible situation of having to repeat myself because the person I talked with didn’t understand what I was saying.

    But trying to avoid difficult feelings and thoughts can become a trap, if we start constructing our life in a way that allows us to avoid them instead of constructing our life around our desires and dreams.

    What’s known as “experiential avoidance” can take over our lives.

    For me, avoiding uncomfortable feelings meant avoiding fun opportunities such as being part of certain sport teams or going out with friends. By avoiding situations that could bring discomfort, I enormously reduced the amounts of joy and fun that I could have had.

    But who says we need to eliminate or run away from our feelings and thoughts?

    Eckhart Tolle wrote, “Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”

    So, what if we could stop striving for elimination and learn to accept self-doubt and fear as our companions? If we let the dog be where it wants to be?

    Diving deeper into the philosophy of ACT (acceptance & commitment therapy), I discovered that there was an alternative way to deal with self-doubt and fear: the path of acceptance.

    The 3-Step Process to Deal with Self-Doubt and Fear

    Self-doubt and fear are normal human reactions that we all experience, no matter how “far ahead” or successful we already are. So, why we are still surprised when they show up? Here are three steps that I wish I knew back in high school.

    1. Witness.

    Become aware of what’s going on inside of you; witness the voice inside your head when it speaks from a place of fear and doubt. What is that voice saying?

    The majority of your daily thoughts are repetitive. Sometimes your mind just tells you different versions of the same old story.

    Observe your thoughts and feelings. Witness when you’re playing your “self-doubt story.” Like an internal observer, simply watch and notice in a loving and self-caring manner, without harshly criticizing yourself for anything that shows up.

    2. Accept.

    Accepting means allowing your fear and doubt to be within you, to give them room, and not try to escape them. Whatever thoughts and feelings come up inside of you, start to be okay with them.

    Stop resisting what you feel and think, and soon you’ll develop the capacity to hold your difficult feelings and thoughts inside you.

    As Russ Harris, author of the bestselling book The Happiness Trap wrote: “Your capacity to accept pain directly related to your long-term happiness level.” Because anything that matters to us comes with a whole range of difficult thoughts and emotions. Avoidance is not the answer.

    Despite them being painful, they are not the problem; your reaction to them is. Problems arise when you try to get rid of or control your self-doubt and fear.

    Today, I’m still sometimes in the situation where people don’t understand my English or I don’t understand what they are going on about. But I accept that’s just the price I pay for talking in a language that’s not my native one.

    When you start accepting how you feel and think in any given moment, you start noticing that feelings and thoughts are just like clouds in the sky—they are merely passing by.

    Also, become aware of the urges that may come up to escape or eliminate this fear or doubt. Simply notice the urge, hold it inside you, and realize you don’t need to act on it.

    Whenever I feel the urge to not talk to someone or not take part in something, I try and catch myself and act on what I truly desire: making meaningful connections and enjoying life to the fullest.

    3. Shift your attention.

    Your mind isa past-future based machine designed to keep you alive and alert of dangers. Your doubt and fear are there to keep you within your comfort zone and, therefore, safe.

    So, whenever unhelpful thoughts enter your head, thank your mind for doing its job. It is just trying to keep you safe! Next, shift your attention back to the activity in hand.

    I had to learn to shift my focus away from worrying and hoping that I did not have to repeat myself to focusing on the actual interaction and on what I wanted to say.

    Venerable Wuling, author of Path to Peace, wrote,  “In a task, we can control the effort but not the outcome.”

    So, let go of the need to control it, because you can’t. I can’t control if my counterpart understands what I am saying. But I can control how well I articulate myself.

    When you cling onto the idea of how something should turn out or should come across, you create stress and fear. Have an intention of what you want to do and achieve, but stay open to the actual and maybe even different outcome.

    Today, I believe acceptance is the best way to deal with fears and doubts—to witness and not resist what’s showing up inside and instead shift focus back to the task at hand.

    What’s your experience with doubt and fear?

    Man at sunset image via Shutterstock

  • I’m Not Broken, and Neither Are You

    I’m Not Broken, and Neither Are You

    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” ~Marianne Williamson

    I used to have this secret habit of flipping through the DSM—The Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders—and diagnosing myself with every disorder in the book.

    Reading over the criteria for borderline personality disorder, cigarette in hand and eyes wide open, I scanned the diagnosis criteria.

    Frantic efforts to avoid abandonment? Check. Unstable and intense interpersonal relationships? Check. Unstable self-image? Check. Impulsivity that’s self-damaging? Check. Suicidal behaviour? Check. Unstable moods? Check. Chronic feelings of emptiness? Check. Inappropriate and intense anger? Check. Paranoia? Check.

    Oh my god.

    I thought that was an uncanny description of me, until I found antisocial personality disorder.

    Failure to conform to social norms? Yup. Doing things that are grounds for arrest? Regularly. Deceitfulness? Impulsivity? Failure to plan ahead? Oh yes. Irritability? Aggression? Reckless disregard for safety? Lack of remorse?

    Oh my god.

    That seemed spot-on, but nothing, and I mean nothing, compared to when I first read about post-traumatic stress disorder.

    Exposure to traumatic event? Yes. Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive memories? Oh god, yes. Traumatic nightmares? All the time. Flashbacks? Yes. Avoidance of trauma-related stimuli? Yes! Feeling alienated from others? Persistent negative beliefs about self? Persistent negative emotions? Distorted memory and feelings of blame?

    Oh my god.

    After a few years, I added body dysmorphic disorder, substance use disorder, occasional episodes of manic disorder, and constant rotations between bulimia and EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise classified).

    Admittedly, some of those diagnoses should really have cancelled each other out, but I was more interested in collecting diagnoses like some would collect stamps than achieving medical accuracy.

    All of my self-imposed labels gave me a strange kind of soothing feeling. They affirmed something I already believed, deeply, within me: I was broken. I was in a state of disorder. There was something wrong with me.

    In my scourings, I avoided certain disorders like the plague. Anxiety, for example, and depression. Anxiety didn’t seem like a very “cool” thing to have and depression just didn’t seem plausible because I was so violently self-destructive, never stopping to rest for a moment unless I got infected with mono or West Nile meningitis (both of which actually happened).

    To an onlooker, these things might have seemed like ploys for attention or misguided attempts at impersonating Hollywood. But, truly, these self-diagnoses stayed more private than many of my tortured war stories. They were something personal. They were just for me.

    Looking back, I realize that the fuel behind my self-diagnosing was an obsessive, perpetual drive to find the answer to a question I couldn’t avoid for more than a few hours at a time: “What’s wrong with me?”

    What was wrong with me, I liked to think, was childhood-trauma-induced permanent damage that, in mixing with my apparently high IQ, had created a sort of “Dr. House” complex within me, making me irreparably and irrevocably screwed up.

    That was a nice story, but it didn’t satisfy the question. A question like “What’s wrong with me?” isn’t just some domestic house cat in the mind. It won’t sit quietly and patiently for most of the day, becoming vocal only if it isn’t fed for too long.

    No, a question like that is a wild, ferocious, insatiable beast that rips into anything and everything in its path, killing simply for the sake of the kill, feeding constantly and ceaselessly on anything that smells like nourishment.

    What was wrong with me?

    By the time I made it to age twenty-three, there were so many answers.

    What was wrong with me?

    The stretch marks all over my body. The pimples on my skin, my back. The little hair growing an inch above my nipple. The moles on my upper back. The fat all over my body.

    What was wrong with me?

    The way I blushed at the drop of a hat. The way I wouldn’t be able to stop laughing when other people did. The way I made jokes that weren’t funny to anyone but me. The way my upper lip twitched when I was nervous.

    What was wrong with me?

    How I had absolutely zero ability to be sexy or act sexy without alcohol, feeling frozen and ugly if anyone ever saw me naked. How I had flashbacks, nightmares, and hallucinations I told close to no one about. How I drank alone.

    How I just couldn’t seem to sustain happiness and, even when I tasted joy for a second, soon enough the drugs would wear off and I’d be right back where I started, wishing for a freedom I wasn’t sure was real.

    All of my happiness, for about ten years, was induced by chemicals and co-dependence. I thought what was wrong with me was that I couldn’t feel happy without buying it or begging for it. I thought I was just that kind of person. I thought it would always be that way.

    I’d love to tell you that I was afraid of being broken and damaged, afraid that past emotional trauma had rendered me dysfunctional, afraid that I was different from other people. Of course, that’s what I used to say and that’s a nice story, but I know now that it was all a big lie.

    You know what I was really terrified of?

    Deep inside of me, there was the awareness that, even if I fit every symptom in the book, I had no excuse to live half a life. Somewhere in there I knew I wasn’t really broken. I was terrified of what my responsibilities would be if I allowed myself to be, truly, whole.

    When I was an addict, a victim, a diagnosis, I had no responsibility to anyone. If your neck is severed and bleeding, you can hardly be expected to open doors for people and make the world a better place.

    Like this, I dodged the responsibility to discover my skills and talents, to serve people, to do something meaningful in the world—all by playing broken.

    Of course, it wasn’t all a giant act. I had been abused. I had been raped. I had been an addict. I had horrible body image issues. I heard voices. I hated myself. Yes, those things were “wrong,” but so is a paper cut. And your body will do its best to heal the paper cut with no further intervention from you, if you let it.

    Yes, I’d been broken, but I didn’t have to keep being broken. For fear of my own greatness, I put bandages on my wounds, letting them grow necrotic for lack of oxygen. I never wanted to get better; I just wanted to get pity, because I was too scared to ask for love. I kept myself sick for fear of my own health.

    I’ll tell you right now that my fear wasn’t unjustified. Now that I’m not playing small anymore, I have more responsibilities than I ever have. I’m trusted with people’s most painful memories, with their deepest secrets, with the chance to support them when they’re on the brink of hurting themselves or others.

    Yes, the responsibility is there, but it’s not the horror show I imagined it would be. I think the only reason I ran from it was because I was so weak from keeping myself broken that I couldn’t imagine how much energy I’d have to help people when I allowed myself to be whole.

    I couldn’t have imagined how fulfilling it is to spread love, give love, be love instead of scrounging for tiny little pieces of approval and acceptance like a thief in the night.

    From what I’ve seen of myself and of people, I believe, without condition, that no one is irreparably broken. In fact, no one is broken. Is having a paper cut broken? Of course not. From the moment you get a cut, you’re already healing.

    And that’s what I believe. I believe we’re all already healing, no matter how great our pain or how serious the offenses against us. We’re built to heal, we’re already healing, and we can all experience this amazing life process—if only we’d get out of the way.

  • 5 Choices to Help You Overcome Your Demons and Be Happy

    5 Choices to Help You Overcome Your Demons and Be Happy

    Man and Sky

    “If you believe it will work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you believe it won’t, you will see obstacles.” ~Wayne Dyer

    I sat, exhausted and alone after a long night, on the stairs outside the train station.

    It was 3:00AM, and it was raining. I’d been drinking all night and I wanted nothing more than the warmth of my bed.

    But my journey home hadn’t even begun. The gates weren’t due to open for another two hours, the wait for the train would be yet another hour, and the ride itself another hour on top of that.

    My misery was compounded by the knowledge that things were only going to get worse when I woke up hungover and alone.

    Why had I done this to myself again?

    I told myself in sobriety that I was just a young dude who liked to party. I told myself that I went out every single weekend and drank more Jägermeister than Charlie Sheen would advise because I was free, and that’s how free people lived. I told myself lots of things.

    But they were all lies. Nobody drinks themselves sick every weekend and winds up sleeping on a staircase because they’re happy. Nobody who has any kind of self-control drinks their cab money away for another few shots, especially when they’ve clearly had their fill already.

    It’s amazing how good we are at rationalizing—telling ourselves stories built of lies to hide the ugly truth from ourselves. It’s also extremely worrying. The amount of harm we can cause ourselves when we live in denial is staggering.

    There’s a reason that the first step of any good rehabilitation program is acceptance.

    I was in denial about everything. I’d just moved to Melbourne, a city with a population 160 times greater than the humble town of Alice Springs I’d moved from. I’d left behind my job, my car, and my girlfriend of three years. I’d moved out of home and now I lived alone.

    I didn’t want to admit how afraid and lonely I was. How disturbingly quiet my life had become. I’d prided myself on being the confident and funny guy who had everything under control, and my ego wasn’t ready to release that illusion.

    The truth is, I missed the familiar life I’d left behind. I missed the easy job. I missed the warmth of my girlfriend’s bed and her loving embrace after every long day at work.

    Getting plastered was a wonderful way to pretend that I was happy. In my mind, the world saw me as a crazy dude who could out-drink everyone and partied like a maniac. In reality, the world saw me as a nuisance and a loser.

    It’s been a wild four years since then. Looking back now I can’t even remember what that life was like. These days, I drink maybe six times a year on special occasions, my diet is flawless, and I meditate every day.

    My band is doing amazingly well, I’ve been working thirty hours a week toward building an illustrious writing career—something I’ve always wanted—and I have a tight group of friends, each one I trust with my life.

    I never went to rehab, I never asked for advice, and I never relied on any particular resource to help me get my life together. I’m sure that those things would have sped up my transformation, but the simple fact is that it was as solitary a venture, as my self-destruction was.

    Today, I’d like to share with you what I’ve now learned about during those four life-changing years: the five choices that helped me get over alcohol addiction, paralyzing fear, and inebriating loneliness.

    These five choices gave me the freedom to build a new life—a life that gives me unprecedented happiness, and that I can look at with a glowing sense of pride.

    1. Develop self-awareness.

    When we do the wrong things, our mind’s default response is to rationalize why it’s okay.

    You know that cheeseburger is bad for you, but when your mind tells you that, since there was broccoli on your pizza two days ago, you should feel free to scarf it down, the easy thing to do is believe it.

    Let’s say that point A is the action you want to take right now (eat the cheeseburger) and point B is the action you know will be more beneficial in the long run (have a salad instead). The bigger the gap between the two, the more your mind will throw rationalizations at you.

    Before you can learn to ignore your rationalizations and do the right thing, you have to be aware of them.

    2. Foster self-acceptance.

    Once you’re aware of your rationalizations, and how weak you’ve been in the past for believing them, it’s crucial that you don’t judge yourself for that.

    It’s not your fault that you rationalize; we all do it. Harsh self-criticism doesn’t make you a “realist” or a proprietor of “tough self-love.” It just gets in the way of true change. Accept your flaws as an essential part of who you are. Wear them with the same pride that you wear your strengths with.

    3. Study emotional intelligence.

    Now that you’re ready to start making changes, you need to learn to know yourself.

    Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence (a book you should read), wrote “In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels.” How else could we have such intense internal debates?

    If you know how to swim, you seldom panic in a pool. You understand the water, how it works, and how to rise to the surface when you need to.

    Our emotions are similar. Managing them isn’t as easy as coming up for air, but the better your understanding of them, the less they can overcome you.

    If you don’t want to spend money on a book or your “to-read” list is too long already, check out Psychology Today‘s section on the subject.

    4. Embrace generosity.

    You can’t expect to receive before you’ve given.

    I’m not saying that the universe can read your mind, or cares about you. I’m talking about self-evident fact here. If you cultivate a habit of giving, people will see you in a different way. They’ll attach positive associations to your name when they think of you, and as a result, the joy in your life will increase.

    As the saying goes: “Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

    The more you give, the more you inspire others to return the favor, and the more fulfilled you feel.

    If you’re self-aware, self-accepting, and you’ve cultivated the habit of studying what emotions are and how to handle them, embracing generosity is the fastest and most potent way to now start injecting positivity and love into your life, especially if you’ve never known either before.

    5. Practice letting go.

    Time for the home stretch! The finale! The purge!

    Every seven years, the molecules of our body are entirely replaced. In our lifetime, we ingest and expel far more than we ever weigh. The past only exists as tiny fragments of our experiences we’ve chosen to remember, and the future only exists as speculation.

    So, what’s left? What are we if not a moment-to-moment happening? Are we beings, or are we stories?

    Whatever you believe, the cold hard fact of life is that people come and go. We move from place to place. We go from job to job.

    We only exist in the now. Any resistance to it is futile, unhealthy, and irrational.

    If you’ve mastered the first four laws, the only thing keeping you from total happiness are the things that you refuse to let go of. The discrepancies you create between what is and what you believe should be.

    Thus, the cycle begins anew. Start with law one again. Become aware of these connections, accept yourself for having them, learn about them, and conquer them.

    Man and sky image via Shutterstock

  • 3 Tips to Embrace Imperfections and Bounce Back from Mistakes

    3 Tips to Embrace Imperfections and Bounce Back from Mistakes

    Happy Woman

    “There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.” ~Conrad Hall

    Back when I was a teenager, I was kind of a perfectionist. Or, well, I wasn’t really a perfectionist—I was actually a “fake” perfectionist.

    Allow me to explain: I put on the perfectionist persona. I acted and behaved in a certain way so that everyone (including both my fellow classmates and teachers) thought and believed that I was the perfect student when I wasn’t.

    Everybody thought I was the student who got straight A’s, was a bookworm, was involved in every extracurricular activity that ever existed, never got in trouble in school for anything ever, and was an overall stellar student.

    Though some of those things were kind of true—I mean, I was involved in a lot of activities and I never did get a detention ever—I was very far from a stellar student.

    I didn’t get A’s in middle and high school; I mostly got C’s. I certainly wasn’t a bookworm; I hated reading all this fiction stuff I was told to write book reports on.

    The truth of it all was that I was really stellar at one thing: faking my own perfection. I had mastered the skill of being seen as the perfect, most stellar student in order to hide my own shortcomings.  

    I was trying to hide that I wasn’t so great at studying and getting good grades. I was trying to hide that I did, in fact, get in trouble every so often.

    I was trying to hide my own imperfections. I was terrified that the world would see that I had weaknesses and inner wounds. I feared that others would know that there were tasks that I was not good at or just flat-out could not do.

    To this day, the fear of others seeing my imperfections is still an issue to some extent. Like the fear of judgment that comes up whenever I make a typo in an article or whenever I give a presentation and accidentally mispronounce a word.

    My inner critic still likes to creep in and try to debilitate me from moving forward.

    Whether we are a child trying to avoid bad grades or an adult who is trying to write the perfect book, we are all struggling with accepting our own imperfections.

    We are all on the journey of hindering the voice of our inner critic and allowing our true selves (imperfections and all) to be seen.

    Here are three ways that can help you create a habit of accepting your own imperfections:

    1. Focus on utilizing your strengths, not your weaknesses.

    Many of us grew up societies where we were told we have to really focus on strengthening our weaknesses. If we weren’t great at math, then we got the idea that we needed to spend more of our time and energy strengthening our abilities in math.

    Though there are benefits to strengthening our weaknesses, it can really cause a blow to our self-esteem and motivation to focus on them. We can develop the idea that just because we are not good at this one thing, then we are a failure.

    So ask yourself: What things am I really good at? Is it music? Languages? Writing? Speaking? Physics? Identify what things come natural to you and make it a goal to really enhance your gifts so you can be the best that you can be.

    2. When you mess up, say to yourself, “I am beautiful!” Then write down all the ways that you are beautiful.

    Let’s get real here: Whether you are doing something that is your strength or your weakness, at some point or another you are going to mess up.

    The problem, however, is that when we do mess up, many of us shut down. We stop trying, and our inner critic starts telling us how we are not good enough.

    Next time you mess up when you’re doing something, say out loud, “I am beautiful!” Then get out a sheet of paper and write down ways that you are beautiful. What are the good things that you do for others? What are the amazingly beautiful qualities that you have?

    To enhance this even more, make it a habit to do this same thing when someone else messes up.  See someone trip over their words during a speech? Remind yourself that they are beautiful, and why. See someone make a typo? Remind yourself that they are beautiful, and then write down a quality that they possess that makes them so beautiful.

    We are all connected, so by sending other people love when they expose their own imperfections, we will give ourselves space to heal as well.

    3. When you mess up, just keep going.

    For many of us, the problem is that when we mess up, we just stop working. We get so caught up in the belief of “I am not good enough” that we stop ourselves from moving forward.

    I struggled with this constantly when I took my very first watercolor painting class two years ago while I was living in Korea. Over and over again I found myself making a small error, getting all worked up about it, shutting down, and basically just wanting my art teacher to do it for me.

    Over time I gradually learned to just let it go and keep going. I ultimately developed and strengthened my skills by setting the intention to keep going regardless of any errors I made along the way.

    So, whenever you do mess up, whether that be using the wrong brush for that one stroke, saying the wrong thing, losing something important, or tripping over your own two feet, just brush it off and keep on going.

    Breaking down, stopping, and worrying about it doesn’t allow us heal and transform. Accepting the mistake and continuing to act does!

    Happy woman image via Shutterstock

  • Releasing Painful Memories to Live More Fully in the Present

    Releasing Painful Memories to Live More Fully in the Present

    Zen Man

    “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    For thirteen years I’ve lived a high-risk lifestyle that focuses very much on the here and now, because I’m an entrepreneur, and that means making lots of fast decisions that affect the future.

    It took a while for me to develop confidence in myself, as we tend to doubt ourselves much more than other people might doubt us. Our thoughts form our doubts, so I knew I had to do something to move forward from the thoughts that weren’t serving me.

    I identified that many of these thoughts weren’t even my own. They were instilled into me through society, parenting, environment, and the media.

    In fact, until I left my last job, my life was one big predetermined path of ideas, set up by everyone else but myself.

    Becoming aware of a problem is always the first step toward healing. Now that I entered into the realm of self-awareness, I realized that new thoughts were rapidly reconfiguring my past experiences to teach me new lessons.

    As I dove into the rabbit hole and asked myself some tough questions, rather than getting clarity on my thoughts, I got more confused. There was just so much information around me, largely due to the Internet, that I had no way of getting to the important life lessons I knew were within me.

    All this extra information became chaotic and useless until I could make sense and organize it in my mind. So, I took to journaling to begin this process of managing my thoughts, and in this process I learned some valuable ideas that have helped me to form the basis of the three tips below.

    A major moment of clarity happened through writing when I learned that our thoughts and memories are never the truth; they are just our interpretation of them. Our own interpretations of reality are open to debate because, ultimately, our perceptions are not the truth.

    Mind Blown

    That single idea that my truth was open to debate led me to question everything, and when I questioned all the painful memories from the past that were there haunting me, I knew I was onto something.

    Those past memories act like a rubber band pulling tighter on unresolved thoughts as time goes by. By letting go of all those memories, the tension on that band is released, and that means you can be more present.

    Living in the present has allowed me to love my family more, to pick and choose the right friends to have in my life, and to look forward into the future.

    I’d like to share three things I learned that have helped me let go of painful memories and become more present.

    Change the meaning you’ve given to painful memories.

    I’ve mentioned that thoughts are never really purged from your mind; they are just suppressed or pushed down into the unconscious mind.

    The trouble is that, although you might not be actively thinking about them, the meaning you have ascribed to them will linger in your unconscious mind and serve to move you in a particular direction. (The movie Inception handles this concept beautifully.)

    As a child, my parents used to “teach me a lesson” a lot. I wasn’t particularly naughty but my parents, coming from a strict Chinese upbringing, brought that style of parenting with them to the UK when they immigrated.

    A lot of the painful memories I had as a kid taught me to hate them because I did not understand why they would be so mean to me. Different cultures teach in different ways, just as differently educated people teach in different ways.

    Here I was, being brought up in a very conservative country with British ideals fighting with Eastern culture on thoughts about how to teach values to children. I spent a lot of years not understanding why they were the way they were, until I discovered psychology and NLP in my later years.

    I took many courses to understand human communication and subsequently learned about changing past memories. That’s when I looked back and slowly began to unravel the reasons why they behaved in such a way. I changed my perception of these painful memories.

    You see, they were doing the best they could with the physical and mental resources they had available to them. They did a good job really, but it took revaluating those thoughts to realize this. Inevitably, my respect for them only grew, as more understanding meant more compassion.

    You have to deal with these painful past memories and ascribe new meaning to them in order to move on. Talk to someone about it or spend some time contemplating it for yourself, but never leave it alone to gestate, as this will not serve you.

    Documenting your thoughts provides clarity.

    However you choose to document your thoughts and ideas, make sure you don’t just meditate on them. Although I am a fan of meditation, I do think that getting the thought out of your head and onto paper/audio/video (whatever you works for you) allows you to detach from that painful memory and look at it more constructively.

    Our emotions often cloud our judgment in the heat of the moment, so you’re likely to record past experiences that were charged full of negative emotion with a strong untruthful bias in your mind.

    The documentation process helps to separate the facts from the emotion and allows you to reflect on that past thought more accurately.

    I also learned that all our senses help make up our memories, and when we write in a diary we are only making use of two of those senses. But with a video diary I was making use of four of those senses. It just accelerated the whole learning process.

    There is always a positive lesson to learn from every memory.

    No matter how terrible one’s past experiences might have been, there is always something positive we can learn from those memories. In the worst cases, our emotions get in the way of the lesson, but often if we can detach from the experience and look again, we can find it.

    My sister was a right little spy when we were growing up. She would always be telling mother about the bad things I did, and I hated her for it.

    I felt like she was betraying me, possibly just to get more attention from our parents, and this was the beginning of a difficult relationship that would grow between us. We hardly talk now, and she would never offer up information about her life willingly.

    Only recently did I learn that perhaps I was responsible for this. I realize that I wasn’t a sharer as a child, and maybe this was her way of trying to get me to share. Learning this, I decided to change the way we communicate. I now share a lot of information about my life with her when we do chat, and I’ve noticed slowly that she is also doing the same.

    This relationship might take a while to repair, but that positive lesson from the past has meant that we can begin to take small steps forward now in developing a new sibling relationship.

    By being a fly on the wall of your past experiences, you can look objectively at the situation and figure out what you can gain from it.

    An Ongoing Promise

    The thing about living in the present is that it quickly becomes the past. As evolving human beings we learn new things and experience new thoughts all the time, and that means there’s always an opportunity for painful memories to occur.

    It’s not possible to live sheltered from pain, which is why we need to commit to reflection and learning so we won’t be held back by our negative experiences.

    It’s a promise we must all make for ourselves: to learn, reflect, and be present.

    Meditating man image via Shutterstock

  • Nothing Is Permanent: Letting Go of Attachment to People

    Nothing Is Permanent: Letting Go of Attachment to People

    “Impermanence is not something to be afraid of. It’s the evolution, a never-ending horizon.” ~Deepak Chopra

    I have been reading a lot lately on attachment and impermanence. It’s a big topic, one that is often hard to wrap your head and heart around. How can I live a life without attachment? Doesn’t that mean that I am not being a loving or caring person? I mean really, no attachment—it just seems cold.

    This all started for me when the love of my life told me, “I love you, I am just not in love with you.” Ouch.

    To say I was hurt would be a gross understatement. How could someone who I felt such strong love for not reciprocate the same feelings? This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. We were together, attached forever, remember? Wrong.

    While I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to, I had to accept what I’d heard. Sure, I fought it for a while, told myself little fairy tales that she would change her mind and come back. The call never came, my love letter did not arrive in the mail, the “here I am on your doorstep” never occurred.

    It was over, and it was time for me to move forward, but how?

    I would like to say that I held my head high and just moved forward with dignity and grace.

    I would like to say I had a secret potion to “get over” the love of my life. I wish I could tell you of a magic book I read or twelve steps to follow to heal a broken heart. Those things I cannot offer, but I can offer you hope.

    Days after we parted ways I had an overwhelming urge to walk in nature. All I wanted to do was walk by myself, and that’s exactly what I quietly did. Day after day, rain or shine, I took my little heartache out for a walk in the forest until it was exhausted.

    A funny thing started to happen after a few weeks of walking. I started to notice the trees, how beautiful they were, tall, strong, and magnificent.

    I started to hear the sound of the birds, the leaves blowing, the babbling of the creek, and the crackle of the earth under my feet. I started to step outside of my head and heartache, and I started to notice the things around me. It was beautiful, fresh, and amazing.

    As my heart started to take in the grace of my surroundings each day on my walks, I felt little pieces of my broken heart start to heal. My self-talk of “why me” drifted away with each step.

    I began to stop thinking about my loss of love and started to think about how lucky I was to have experienced love. I opened myself to gratitude rather than attachment and loss.

    I had attachment to a person, an ideal, a hope. In many ways I had attached my personal happiness to this person.

    In my mind the love of my life was attached and permanent, to me and for me. As I have now learned nothing in life is permanent. If we can appreciate this reality, we can open ourselves to cherish “now” moments.

    Love is not about attachment or permanence. Love is about spending time with another person, sharing moments, experiences, and each other.

    The moment we make it about “keeping” another for our own gain, our own need, it becomes about our ego, fears, and insecurities. A mindful, compassionate, kind being only wishes happiness and love for others. Sometimes happiness and love for others is moving on and letting go.

    Months have gone by and I still walk in the forest. My heart does not ache as I walk, though.

    I think of the many wonderful memories. I feel full of gratitude thinking of the magnitude of wonderful times, the laughter, and the love. I cherish those memories and I think I am pretty lucky that I was able to share those wonderful experiences of love with another person.

    The trees, the forest, they remind me of the simplicity of our beautiful life. While each day is different and ever changing, I still see the splendor and magnificence. Each tree holds its own life; it is an individual amongst many others, just as we are as humans.

    When I walk in the forest today I am reminded that I can appreciate the beauty of each tree, just as I can appreciate the beauty of love I share with each person.

    With a deep breath and a full heart, I know just as my relationship is to the trees, so is my relationship with others. Free of the idea of attachment and permanence, we are able to see the simple beauty of this moment, now.

  • 5 Lessons from a Breakdown: How to Make Hard Times Easier

    5 Lessons from a Breakdown: How to Make Hard Times Easier

    Depressed Man

    “Never apologize for showing feelings. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.” ~Benjamin Disraeli

    Three years ago, at twenty-five, I had a breakdown that stole over two years of my life and almost killed me.

    People often think of breakdowns like car accidents—one almighty crash that results in the dissolution of that person’s being. But for most of us, breakdowns are a slow descent into madness. They creep up on you. They change you one small step at a time until you no longer recognize yourself.

    You get exhausted walking around the supermarket for your weekly shopping. You have a panic attack because you’re supposed to go out with friends but can’t face them. You’re reduced to tears because even getting dressed feels overwhelming.

    I went from someone who was strong into someone I didn’t know; I existed, but I wasn’t there.

    I couldn’t leave my bed, didn’t eat, and could barely even talk at times. Though I had suffered with depression since I was thirteen, I had never known pain like this. I wanted so desperately to end my life but had no energy to do so, which only added to my misery.

    I felt lost, stuck, and hopeless, and believe I would never find myself again.

    Though I’m still left with remnants of my breakdown, including post-traumatic stress disorder, I can appreciate the lessons it taught me, however difficult they were to learn at the time. If you’re going through hard times yourself, you may find these lessons helpful.

    1. Let your friends be there for you.

    The saying goes that when you are at your lowest point in life, you will discover your true friends, and I am blessed to have discovered mine. The ones who would allow me to Skype from my bed so that we could enjoy breakfast together. The ones who understood when I couldn’t face them for dinner like we had enjoyed so many times before. The ones who would say nothing, but lie on my bed and hug me when I couldn’t talk.

    Friends often don’t know how to help you when you’re struggling, so you have to ask for what you need. Allowing them to be there for you in this way can really strengthen your relationship. It shows that you can count on each other when times get tough.

    2. Learn to say “no.”

    Instead of accepting things that were no good for me, be it other people’s negative behavior or situations that upset me, I began to say “no” and walk away.

    If friendships were bringing me down instead of lifting me up, I ended them, and instead of feeling obliged to attend gatherings, I cancelled because I recognized I needed time to look after myself.

    We are conditioned by society to believe that saying “no” to invitations or commitments is selfish, but when you are struggling so intensely, you need to get selfish. Learn to look after yourself in the smallest of ways and evaluate what works and doesn’t work so you can eliminate the latter.

    3. Stop worrying about what others think.

    Mental health (or lack of it) can be a difficult concept for others who’ve never struggled with it to understand.

    If you have cancer or physical symptoms, such as a broken leg, you can explain a lot of your mood away, but when your pain is neatly wrapped up in your head and you have nothing to show for your illness, you find yourself having to justify not being able to get out of bed. So I stopped worrying about what others thought.

    As long as you know your truth, nothing (and no one) else matters. While we often seek acceptance from others, if you can accept that you are not “crazy” and that you are sick, needing help, it can often take away the guilt and embarrassment you may feel.

    4. Become grateful and proud for the small things.

    As a healthy person, we really do take the most routine and mundane things for granted; it’s not until we can’t do them that we realize just how treasured they are.

    Simple things, such as reading a book, become impossible because you can’t finish a sentence without forgetting the beginning of it. You have no energy to leave the house even when it’s sunny. You can’t bring yourself to go out to dinner with friends you’ve known for years.

    When you are able to read a whole page of the book, walk to the shop for some milk, or spend an hour with a friend, be proud of yourself!

    Don’t beat yourself up because you couldn’t leave the house; be proud that you managed to get out of bed, even if it was to sit on the couch. Every little thing becomes a big achievement, and one you should be proud of.

    5. Listen to yourself and look after your needs first.

    Being depressed made me incredibly introspective and therefore, very in tune with my body and what I craved on a daily basis. Sometimes I needed company, so a friend would visit to offer their love and comfort. On other days I needed to be alone and cry until my head hurt.

    Your needs will change daily, and that’s okay. Some days you might want to go for a walk in the sun with a friend, but other days you might just want to snuggle up at home with your phone off and a good movie. You should remember that both are different ways of looking after yourself.

    As Winston Churchill once said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” And I did. Every day I woke up (despite not always wanting to) and I survived.

    My breakdown changed me in ways I couldn’t hope to put into words. Though I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through the despair that I did, I’m thankful for the painful, yet necessary, lessons it taught me, and the person it has made me become.

    Depressed man image via Shutterstock

  • 3 Surefire Ways to Embrace Being Different

    3 Surefire Ways to Embrace Being Different

    Different

    “To be nobody but yourself in a world doing its best to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human can ever fight and never stop fighting.” ~e.e. cummings

    I’m gay. I’m married to a woman and we have a beautiful daughter together. I also have an ex–boyfriend that I was with for quite a significant time. Most of my friends are straight, and I thought I was too until about five years ago when I fell in love with my now-wife.

    It was a crazy time, and I suddenly had to deal with being different than most of my friends.

    I was extremely lucky because I had a huge support network of people who loved me no matter the gender of the person I loved. There were many that didn’t get it and treated me differently or completely cut off contact.

    That was hard, and it took me a little while to deal with it. I would get upset easily and then seriously wonder what the hell I was doing. I almost considered walking away from it all.

    Thank goodness I came to my senses and realized that love is love, and I was going to spend the rest of my life with this person no matter what. I learned to deal with the negative people and discovered three sure-fire ways to make sure I didn’t let them get to me.

    I worked at it, and at times it was difficult. I found that by remembering these three things I was able to get through it to where I am now perfectly fine and happy being different than most people I know.

    1. Stay hell bent in your belief of yourself.

    I knew that no matter what happened I was a good person in love with an amazing woman. We weren’t hurting anyone, and I came to realize that if she can put up with me all the time, then I’m going to keep her around!

    I knew that we were seriously in love and no one was going to keep me from being happy. As long as we had each other, we were okay. I really believed in the love we have, and still have to this day.

    Believe in yourself and who you are deep down. Know that you are a great person with so much to give to this world. If you have self-belief, then no one can ever bring you down unless you let them. Own it.

    2. See it as an opportunity to teach others.

    Like I mentioned, many of my friends are straight, and they were under the impression that I was too until I surprised them one day. So along come the awkward questions: “Did you always know you were into women?” and “Does this mean that you don’t like guys anymore?”

    Instead of getting frustrated, I decided to use this opportunity to teach others about being in a same-sex relationship. This was vital once our daughter came along too, and we are so open with anyone that asks about her conception and any other questions they might have about her existence.

    We use it as an opportunity to teach that families come in all shapes and sizes, and that a child can thrive with two mums or two dads as much as they would having both a mum and a dad.

    Use whatever is different (or, as I like to call it, rocking) about you to teach others.

    Sometimes people just don’t realize, or are ignorant to things they don’t know much about. Once people know, they tend to change their tune. They become supportive because they have more of an understanding. People are just scared of what they don’t know, so inform them.

    3. Surround yourself with your cheer squad.

    You know those people, the ones that always have your back no matter what situation you get yourself into. Those people are always going to support you and give you sound advice.

    Use them to your advantage whenever you need. Call them, hang out with them, and make sure they are around you to keep that resolve that you have burning strong. You need them. Guaranteed they don’t think that there is anything different about you anyway.

    On the flip side, don’t give your time to negative people. You don’t need to be around them. Let them slowly drift from your life. In their space bring in the positive people. They will lift you up.

    Not everyone has access to this cheer squad. Sometimes you’re out there on your own, and that’s perfectly okay. You have a few options here to maintain your strength and self-belief.

    One is to write affirmations to yourself and put them in places that you will see often. They should include the traits that are awesome about you. When you read these you’ll remember that you absolutely rock. They’ll help pick you up if you ever get down.

    Another thing along the same lines is to put alarms in your phone throughout the day saying the same positive affirmations.

    At noon, I get a message from my phone that reads “You are a gem. You are caring and thoughtful and beautiful just as you are. Stay true to you.” Thank you phone, you are so lovely!

    If you need a bit more connection than you would get from your phone, head online. There are so many forums, support networks, and websites that you can access to talk to people going through the same thing as you.

    These people will become your tribe and your online cheer squad. The beauty of the Internet is that you can use an alias and not your real name. You can remain anonymous and still get access to beautiful people in a similar situation to you.

    We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the unbelievable supportive people that we have in our lives. We don’t feel different, and although our situation isn’t normal, all the people in our cheer squad make us feel like it’s a non-issue.

    It doesn’t define us as people. It is what it is and all our people are totally cool with it. They make it so much easier for us. We are very lucky.

    —

    These three things helped me deal with the shame and embarrassment I felt initially when I told people about what was going on. I didn’t really “come out,” as they say. I just told everyone that I was seeing someone and she was a woman. That was it—although at the time it was one of the scariest things I have ever done.

    In the end I had no reason to feel ashamed or embarrassed. It was crazy to think that everyone would have an issue with it, and although it wasn’t smooth sailing all the time, it was easier than I expected. It can be for you too. I promise.

    Give people the benefit of the doubt. You’re not doing anything wrong, and these days the majority of people are more open about sexuality than in previous generations. This is the same no matter what’s rocking about you. There is a lot more understanding in our world about uniqueness and differences.

    Embrace your differences. That’s what makes this world of ours so magical and interesting. Don’t change to be like anyone else. You are unique and beautiful just the way you are.

    Different image via Shutterstock

  • We Are More Than What We Do for Work

    We Are More Than What We Do for Work

    Workaholic

    “I’ve learned that making a living is not the same things as making a life.” ~Maya Angelou

    My friend Nick and I were talking one day about our plans for after graduation. We talked about marriage and whether our religious beliefs would factor into our weddings when the time came, or whether our mothers would just run the whole show. Then the question came that grounded me.

    “Do you think that you’ll be a workaholic?” Nick asked.

    I chuckled and said I could practically guarantee it, as workaholism has always been part of my identity—and a proud part, at that. Nick then followed my response by saying, “You know, it’s worse than alcoholism.”

    After laughing off the comment, he continued to make his point. He expressed how he had seen it destroy families and lives. He finished with how it can even be spirit crushing, as the individual loses their sense of passion and uses work to fuel their addiction.

    Although I firmly believe that Nick was misguided in the brevity of his statement, he did have a point.

    Being a workaholic is a problem. It can destroy relationships with those you care about, as well as your body through health issues that accompany stress and overuse, and even your spirit through soul crushing tasks and long hours.

    What seemed like an offhand comment really struck me, and at a good time too, as I was graduating from college and about to start my first adult job.

    I took a little time after Nick left that evening to reflect on my relationship with work and how it had almost become synonymous with my identity over the years.

    In the culture of the United States, it almost seems like what we do is actually who we are. After all, there are many jobs that you can’t turn off, such as being a doctor or a mother—jobs where you’re always on-call.

    And tied with that, so many people have a burning desire to be successful and good at what they do, which seems to involve throwing yourself into your occupation full force.

    When people strive for success in what they do and do not strive for balance, workaholics are created.

    My number one goal has always been to be successful, which I defined as having a steady, challenging, well-paying career. Although my family and friends are important to me, I often put them on the backburner, putting my career and goals ahead of them.

    Reflecting back on Nick’s comment, I have begun to realize how much work has hindered my close relationships. And it has slowly but surely crushed the spirit of those close to me that have workaholic traits. Sometimes they seem so worn down that they appear to have lost their identity and passion.

    I now know that I don’t want to be a shell of a person. I know that there are more important things and that I want to live a full and balanced life, with varied interests and strong relationships. This epiphany-inspired reflection could not have come at a better time in my life.

    As I get ready to start my first real job in the upcoming weeks, I will remember these four things, which I believe anyone can do to have a more fulfilling and balanced life.

    1. Know yourself and your limitations.

    I know myself and I know that work will be a large part of my life because it is a core part of who I am. However, I will remember that, although I want to be successful, I need to maintain balance my life. This means that I will go in and stay for my shift and work hard, but I will not burn myself out.

    I will understand that my health and wellness are an important part of who I am and that, without proper health and wellness, I cannot act as the best employee that I can be.

    2. Focus on overall healthy decisions, mentally and physically.

    In the upcoming weeks as I start my new position, I will focus on health and wellness outside of work. I’ll make overall healthy decisions, not solely working out, but taking the time to relax and re-energize at the end of a long day.

    I will also focus on my mental and relational health by making time for my family and friends and by sharing fun activities with them that help balance me out.

    3. Foster high priority relationships.

    As I get older and progress further in my career, I, like many others, will become constrained by time and resources. In order to maintain the delicate work-life balance that I am striving for, I will take time to foster relationships that matter to build a support system.

    When the time comes and you need a helping hand, your support network will be strong enough to get you through the tough times.

    4. Remember that who you are, not what you do, makes you special.

    Just being me makes me special, and a valuable asset to both my family and friends. Who I am also plays into my career, as it designates my goals and achievements, but I am a multidimensional person with thoughts, beliefs, and interests outside of my employment status, and so are you.

    —

    The key to making all of these four thoughts and reflections a reality is balance. I now know that I need to make time to not only work, but to play as well. I need to know myself, and how I handle relationships, and make them a priority.

    These tips will help guide my life and decisions, as I hope they will guide yours, as well.

    Workaholic image via Shutterstock

  • Finding Happiness on the Other Side of Fear

    Finding Happiness on the Other Side of Fear

    Jumping Man

    “Most of us have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us.” ~Steven Pressfield

    We are so scared of the unknown. Anything that we haven’t yet experienced can lead to fear.

    I will forever remember my first time skydiving. I was absolutely terrified. Are you sure this parachute is going to open up? “No ma’am, it’s not for sure. But it’s highly likely.” Great.

    During pregnancy, I was scared nearly every day for nine months as I wondered, “How in the world is that going to come out of there?” Well, one thing was for sure—it was going to happen one way or another. I drove myself crazy wondering what in the world that was going to feel like.

    At the moment, I’m scared of mountain biking. This guy I’ve been hanging out with has been asking me to go with him for the last couple of weeks. He’s really good at it. He has been on a bike probably more than he’s been on foot, on average, throughout his entire lifetime.

    Let’s face it; I’m scared I’m going to fail. I’m scared I might not be able to make it up the bunny hill while he’s up ahead charging Mount Everest.

    Did you notice how I so safely called him this-guy-I’ve-been-hanging-out-with? I’m scared to call him my boyfriend because I haven’t had one for over four years.

    I don’t know what would happen if I did call him “boyfriend.” People might see me differently. He might not be ready for it. Maybe I wouldn’t be a challenge anymore and he would change his mind about me. Maybe I would change my mind about him.

    What if I suddenly had no more precious alone time?! I would surely die of exhaustion. We haven’t even been hanging out that long. Isn’t there some kind of time chart that I could reference for this? Yeah, clearly I shouldn’t call him boyfriend yet. Scary.

    I was severely depressed for the good majority of my life. I didn’t really know what contentment felt like. I didn’t realize that it came from within; I thought it came from the outside. 

    How could I be happy in the crap-hole town I lived in? How could I be happy with a slightly pronounced nose on my face? (I even got plastic surgery at age twenty because I was so unhappy with it.)

    How could I be happy with my peers around me always judging me? How could I be happy with these people picking on me? Oh, alcohol? Yes please, thanks. How could I be happy when I’m always hungover?

    How could I be happy when I lived in a low-end middle class family that never took me on vacations or took me on big back-to-school shopping trips that would fill my wardrobe with impressive fashion styles to show everyone else how cool I was?

    Oh, that popular chick is having a garage sale down the street? Score. My problems were probably small but they felt larger than life.

    I look back on my life at the point when I started to turn around my depression (because eventually I did, 100%). I was scared. Happiness was an unknown to me at the time.

    Happy was something that I was not, and I identified with who I was very well. Even though I was unhappy, I knew what that felt like. It oddly felt like home. It was familiar and safe.

    I knew what my day would look like and feel like and taste like and smell like. I knew that when somebody hurt my feelings I could retreat to my corner and cry it out and ask myself “Why me, oh unfair Universe, why me?!”

    You know what I was even more scared of? What if I succeeded? What if I became happy and lost my identity? Forgot who I was?

    What if my friends started calling me names and saying things like “Hey, here comes Andrea, that Happy Idiot. Man, she’s so annoying. Here she comes and she’s going to spew that happiness sunshine all over us again.”

    Would I even know how to deal with every situation that came my way when I became happy? What if I became happy and then went back to being unhappy again?

    Oh man, that would be even worse. To taste it and then somehow involuntarily spit it back out, as if somebody was giving me the Heimlich maneuver as I was attempting to swallow a delicious bite of the most heavenly chocolate cake on the planet. Yeah, no thanks. I love cake.

    Seriously, though, I did grow up with a mother who struggled to find her happiness for as long as I could remember. I wanted nothing in the world more than for her to be happy from day one.

    One of my greatest fears was that I would become happy and I would leave her behind. I didn’t want to rub it in her face. I wanted her to come with me. What if I succeeded… and she resented me? Why do I always feel so selfish?

    I went through with skydiving. It was one of the most thrilling, freeing, incredible, indescribable moments of my life. The parachute did actually open. If I didn’t ever jump out of that plane I would have no idea what it really felt like. It can’t be put into words.

    I did eventually have my baby following pregnancy (whew). She was born via planned C-section because she was breech. It was probably the most memorable moment of my life so far.

    I can remember the smell of the operating room, I can remember every word exchanged between the doctor and nurses. I can remember how the doctor remarked “1:11 PM” as my girl wailed her first cries of out-of-womb existence.

    Sometimes I’m a bit sad that I don’t actually know what labor feels like (yeah, crazy, I know). I still don’t know if I could successfully make that come out of there. But it was amazing all the same. My girl is the light of my life.

    I’m going mountain bike riding tomorrow. I’ll get back to you on it (if I survive). The guy-I’ve-been-hanging-out-with thing is going one day at a time, as it should, so I’ll get back to you on that too.

    I became happy. In fact I decided I wanted it so bad that I would do everything in my power to make it happen. I researched, I went to nutrition school, I read self-help books, I changed habits and perceptions.

    My mom is doing great. In fact, she seems happier now too. I still have my friends and they don’t call me Happy Idiot (to my face). I eat heavenly chocolate cake at least once a month, and I even swallow it entirely.

    My point is that happiness is often on the other side of fear. You know when you’re going to have one of the best moments of your life? It’s when you’re terrified and you somehow push through anyway.

    It’s when you stop procrastinating and you just do it because that’s where the magic is. We procrastinate when we’re afraid. It’s so much easier to avoid something than it is to face it. But we’re not here to take the easy way, oh no, we’re here to have incredible experiences.

    It’s time. Right now. Not tomorrow but today.

    Are you scared? Good, be excited instead. You’re about to have a soul-changing experience.

    Man jumping image via Shutterstock

  • Doing What’s Good for Us: What We Need Beyond Discipline

    Doing What’s Good for Us: What We Need Beyond Discipline

    Meditation

    “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” ~Annie Dillard

    When I first engaged spiritual practice, I tried to meditate while counting breaths. “I can’t do this!” I lamented, “It’s too hard.” The green satiny cushion filled with buckwheat chaff felt hard and unforgiving.

    My legs ached. I kept checking my watch. My mind ached.

    Tick. Tick. Tick.

    The watch taunted me, and I did not feel the least bit edified by the experience.

    But every few moon phases, I’d try again: half an hour of hellacious discomfort, of shifting in my chair or—if I had gotten really ambitious—on the cushion.

    It was horrible. Didn’t feel life affirming at all.

    In fact, it was nothing but an occasion for self-criticism. I didn’t know how to watch my feelings and thoughts arise and release, as I had been told I was supposed to do. I only knew I had to sit there for half an hour, no matter what.

    But wasn’t it what you’re supposed to do? Wasn’t it good for me? Wouldn’t it change my life?

    As you might imagine, it didn’t take very long for me to abandon a sitting practice. I berated myself for having no discipline, and tried to move on.

    The word “discipline” only conjured suffering: Exercise I hated, housework I loathed, and foods I ate only because they were “good for me.” Besides a very limited concept of “good,” the whole idea of discipline was clearly associated with punishment and pain.

    Eventually, I did learn that “discipline”—like “disciple”—comes from the root, “to follow.” It was not derived, say, from “spare the rod and spoil the child.” Still, I struggled.

    The maxim, “Discipline is remembering what you really want” felt strange, alien. It did not comfort me.

    Sadly, “practice” was even tainted with discipline-ism. Practice makes perfect, after all, and perfection was what I thought I wanted and could never get my arms around.

    I came to dread even life-giving activities I loved because I associated them with “having to” do them because they were “good for me.” Down was up. Good was awful.

    Eventually, though, those two earlier understandings began to sink in: “Discipline is remembering what you really want,” and “discipline’s” root is “to follow.”

    How did this shift happen? How did things turn and move and change?

    In me, it happened because I learned that discipline is nothing without gentleness. Without kindness. Without understanding my own suffering.

    It was gentleness that allowed me to explore forms of spiritual practice that I had not previously considered. Gentleness allowed me to be creative and find what worked for me.

    Singing at my altar. Freewriting. Breathing over my coffee in the morning.

    And it is gentleness that allows yogis just to “get on the mat” and see what happens from there with no expectation or plan.

    It is gentleness that allows us to sit for only a few minutes today instead of the forty-five we’d like to attain or sustain.

    It is gentleness that acknowledges that practice changes us over time, not in a sprint or in a flash of heavy lifting.

    In my experience, gentleness doesn’t keep us from being disciplined. In point of fact, because gentleness helps us respond to our current circumstances, it is indeed a practice of mindfulness.

    Gentleness is a way of being kind. It both doesn’t sprint in this moment and yet it encourages us to get on the mat, to settle into the cushion, to sing for a while, to write a page or two.

    Gentleness is supple. Gentleness does not say that it’s okay to throw in the towel of practice. Gentleness makes practice possible when it feels so difficult.

    Furthermore, gentleness has rescued discipline. Discipline is the getting on the mat that gentleness encourages. Discipline is remembering that a small dose of dailiness is worth more than a single three-hundred-pound lift. Discipline with gentleness allows for dailiness.

    And dailiness is what changes us—what changes me.

    It has taken me close to twenty years to get to a sustainable, nearly daily practice. If I had pushed on with my limited understanding of discipline, my practice would not have grown, deepened, and borne the fruit it has.

    Discipline is necessary. Discipline allows us to follow where the practice leads us. Discipline is in the insistence that I do something for my practice today.

    Gentleness tells me that I needn’t judge the goodness, rightness, or spiritual muscle of my practice. Discipline reminds me that dailiness will change my life. Gentleness allows that dailiness to happen by leaving more than one door open for my practice.

    So I began again, after years of trying long chunks of seated practice.

    I began by creating beauty. I began by setting up altars with candles and objects sacred to me and by spending time with them each day.

    And then I began to write at my altar, and then to sing. I could sing for longer than I could sit, but singing led to sitting and sitting led to yoga and yoga led to swimming.

    I can engage my practice with discipline—make sure to write and sing each day, at least—because gentleness has given me permission to be shaped over time from whatever tiny efforts I could bring to begin with.

    I encourage us all—experienced practitioners and those for whom practice feels a faraway dream—to allow both discipline and gentleness to shape us. To attend to when we need one more than the other, but to keep them close together always.

    How do you keep them separate or together? Which do you need more in your life today, and how can you cultivate it?

    Blessings on your practice and your hopes for compassion, integrity, and wisdom.

    Meditating image via Shutterstock

  • When Self-Help Doesn’t Help: Doing What’s Best for You

    When Self-Help Doesn’t Help: Doing What’s Best for You

    Man Reading

    “Your inner knowing is your only true compass.” ~Joy Page

    Are you someone who devours self-help books, blogs, and articles?

    Do you take pleasure in checking out the latest advice from this “expert” or that “guru”?

    Are you someone who puts into play the advice proposed but are still left feeling somewhat unfulfilled afterward?

    The Trouble with Self-Help

    The trouble with self-help advice is that sometimes it leads us down the path of us not helping ourselves at all. Sometimes we get so caught up in someone else’s vision that we lose sight of our own.

    Truth be told, what I consider to be a great life may leave you wanting for more (or perhaps less). What you consider to be extremely ethical I may consider less so. And that’s as it should be.

    Our value system, beliefs, ideas, and ideals should be our own—informed by the outside, without a doubt, but we need to process and own them for ourselves.

    Part of the problem with self-help type advice is that we can start to lose sight of what we really see as success or a successful outcome. We get so caught up in what we’re reading that we can start viewing it as the Holy Grail.

    If I lose weight, then I should feel like this.

    If I simplify my life, then I should be immediately happier.

    If I run a marathon, I should feel the greatest sense of achievement I ever have.

    Sometimes these areas do live up to expectation and leave us with a deep sense of accomplishment. However, sometimes they don’t and can lead us all the way back to square one, or actually make us feel worse than we did originally.

    Falling into the Trap

    I personally have fallen into the trap of overdosing on self-help and self-development books, blogs, and writers over the years—reading book after book but then not implementing the changes suggested, or implementing them but feeling underwhelmed by how I felt afterward. This often led me in circles.

    I take my self-development seriously and I love to read about simplicity and lifestyle redesign, in particular. In fact, left unchecked, I could quite happily bury myself in books and blogs that fall under these categories all day.

    However, in my quest for perfection, I have taken paths that were anything but perfect for me.

    One example would be trying to be more minimalist than I am happy being. Reading about others living as minimalists, giving away most of what they own, or living with only fifty items, I had envisioned myself leading a similar life.

    That vision helped me to a certain point on my own version of simpler living, but then I tried contorting myself a little bit too much.

    I liked some of the stuff, even it was just stuff. I like the convenience of a car. I love going away on exotic travels as often as I can afford. I realized a little minimalist suited me, but not too much. Sounds contradictory, perhaps, but hey, that’s me!

    Another example would be working on being more mindful. I read the work of people who sound like they live in a permanent state of calm. I liked this as an ideal.

    I consider myself a pretty calm and patient person most of the time and see those as personal strengths, but I also have my limits, and I’m not above losing my cool at times.

    Rather than accepting this as part of me, I tried to “fix” it. It didn’t work.

    We’re human, not robots, and sometimes we lose our cool. I’m perfectly fine with that now but wasn’t for a time, as I saw it as a weakness. My expectations were unrealistic, and the advice, as well meaning as it might have been, didn’t completely fit me.

    Although these experiences left me a little dejected at the time, they led me to a better place overall. I came to realize that I am the best master of my own destiny with regard to my goals. I learn and take from external sources, of course, but I own the goals.

    I make the output suit me and know that no one person has all the answers. The result is a happier me, and something that I can implement into my own life, making any changes I make more likely to remain lifestyle changes rather than a five-minute fix that then gets discarded.

    Through the above process I started to realize the problem wasn’t the books or authors themselves, but me and my own expectations. Sometimes I was guilty of falling into the author’s view of what a good outcome would be rather than being focused on my own needs and wants. I worked on that.

    These days, I can still regularly be found leafing through books that fall neatly into the self-development area. And my bookshelves are full of such books. I still love the genre and indeed write in that genre myself.

    However, now I am very clear about what it is I want to get from each read. I’m more selective about who and what I read. I’m clearer on the version of my life I’m trying to get to. If someone else’s experience can help me get there quicker, all the better.

    What Does Success Look Like for You?

    To answer this question, we first need to know:

    • What it is and who it is we value most
    • Who it is we want to be in life
    • What kind of life we want for ourselves
    • How we want to feel when we see ourselves staring back in a mirror

    Only we can truly know what that version of ourselves and our lives looks like.

    Self-help should help. Make it your own and it just might do that.

    Make sure you’re building and supporting your own unique vision of what a great life is and are doing your best to make that your reality. Use what helps along the way, but don’t get caught up in comparisons or in someone else’s vision of what your life should look like.

    Set your own compass and live a life very much in line with your own terms.

    Man reading image via Shutterstock

  • Managing Chronic Pain: 5 Lessons from Being Hit by a Truck

    Managing Chronic Pain: 5 Lessons from Being Hit by a Truck

    Woman in Pain

    “Pain can change you, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a bad change. Take that pain and turn it into wisdom.” ~Unknown

    You know how people say, “It was like being hit by a truck”?

    I know what they mean.

    But the impact took over ten years.

    It was a cold, snowy January, and I was in my car, singing along to the radio.

    I was doing a steady, careful sixty miles per hour, in the middle lane of a busy British highway. I was on my way to deliver my first solo course for the company I’d joined a few months before. It was a good day.

    Suddenly, my world shook. I saw a flash of yellow in the passenger side window, and two big bangs jerked me to a stop.

    I went from cheerily singing to a terrified shaking in the front seat, car stopped dead at a lopsided angle in the fast lane.

    My body, infused with adrenaline, struggled for air, and I felt paralyzed, knowing I needed to do something, move the car, get out, anything, but it was as if my brain was frozen. What the hell had just happened?

    I’d been hit by a truck.

    A foreign lorry (the driver on the opposite side of the cab to UK cars) had pulled into the middle lane without seeing it was already occupied. By me.

    The side of his yellow truck hit the side of my car at sixty miles per hour, pushing it out of the way like a child knocking over toy soldiers.

    I was shunted at speed into the fast lane, where I hit the back of another car. Instead of spinning out into the middle of the highway, I came to a stop after this second hit.

    And then I wept as the adrenaline hit me and I realized what had just happened. And what could have happened. And was just grateful it was over.

    I wonder what my reaction would have been if I could have seen the longer-term impact of that accident—the impact that would stretch ten years and more ahead of me.

    Immediate Impact

    At the time, I suffered mild whiplash, my car needed extensive work, and unsurprisingly, I didn’t deliver the course.

    But after that, apart from some slight twinges in my shoulder and neck, I felt okay. Maybe a little quieter and more anxious than usual for a while, but okay.

    There was some pain, but I saw an osteopath for a few sessions, and my body seemed to settle.

    But after another couple of months, the pain returned. I saw the osteopath again, and after a few sessions it subsided.

    Rinse and repeat.

    This pattern happened again and again, and I started to expand my treatment options. Physio, acupuncture, Bowen, deep tissue massage—you name it, I probably tried it.

    And although the treatment often did help, the intervals without pain became smaller and smaller until eventually, the pain was constant. I was diagnosed with chronic pain, something you need to manage, rather than acute pain, something you can cure.

    Sometimes You Have to Learn Lessons the Hard Way

    Fast forward another five years, and I’m no longer in London, working in a stressful job with long hours and high demands.

    I spend most of my time in Thailand. Yoga is a big part of my life, as is writing, blogging, and sharing both my expertise as a psychologist and my experiences as someone who’s lived through great personal change and development myself.

    So what lessons did I learn from all this that helped me to change my life so dramatically?

    1. Think of your body as an integrated system and not unconnected parts.

    When I started to see consultants, I would see “the shoulder consultant” or “the back consultant.” But our bodies don’t work like that. I had more than one issue, but struggled to get the back consultant to think about my neck, or the shoulder consultant to take into consideration my arm.

    Since the accident, I’ve learned a huge amount about my own body. I understand more about the “flavor” of different kinds of sensation and pain. But most importantly, I know that my body is a complex system of many different parts working together, not a set of connected-but-separate pieces.

    Doctors aren’t trained to think that way. But that doesn’t mean you can’t. Keep track of your symptoms, read up, and be open to seeing different practitioners who might be able to help you view your body as a whole.

    2. Your body is both strong and fragile.

    I used to have an arrogance around my body, my spirit, my independence. I used to say that I never wanted to be dependent on anything—food, coffee, pills, a person.

    Now, I take a number of different medications every day. I’m no longer independent.

    I wasn’t particularly fit, but I thought my strength of will was enough. I was wrong.

    I learned that our bodies and minds have both infinite strength, but also fragility and vulnerability. And I’m slowly learning to embrace the vulnerability as well as the strength.

    Where are you strong? Where are you vulnerable? Work on identifying and more importantly, accepting, both.

    3. Be open to what can help you.

    I was also very skeptical of any kind of alternative therapy. But when you’re in constant pain, you’ll try anything. I’ve seen many different practitioners now, and have tried to be as open as possible to each.

    Unless I really feel uncomfortable or negative about them, I will give a practitioner three goes. And I’ll monitor the impact of their treatment.

    Given that you can also end up spending quite a lot of time and money, if the impact isn’t enough—the cost-benefit isn’t high—then I won’t continue. Some treatments have surprised me in how much they helped; others have disappointed me.

    I’m well aware of the placebo effect, but I’m okay with it. But I’m also cautious when the practitioner says something like “the effects are subtle.” Too subtle, and maybe I should be spending my time and money elsewhere.

    What have you closed your mind to without further exploration? What could you experiment with if only you could put pride aside?

    4. Manage your own “stuff” with boundaries and kindness.

    Chronic pain is a challenging condition in many ways, as it’s invisible; it’s not like a broken arm, where your cast clearly shows others something’s wrong so they don’t bump into you.

    To other people, I look no more or less healthy than them. When I have a bad pain day, it’s hard for others to know, and they are much more likely to “bump into me.”

    We all have “stuff” like this—and it doesn’t have to be a health condition. Invisible stuff—a stressful day, a bad day, grief, loss, pain, rejection—the list goes on.

    My relationship with my body has also changed over time. Before the accident, my connection with my body was functional; it did what I needed it to. After the accident, I was angry, and disconnected my mind and body. I even talked about it as another entity: “My body and I have a difficult relationship.”

    It took me a long time—and work with mindfulness, yoga, and meditation—to learn to accept my body and just “be” with it.

    And rebuilding the shattered relationship between body and mind has also meant learning how to be in my mind (remembering that the two aren’t distinct). Understanding what I need when I have a bad day. Being kind to myself. And also creating self-care boundaries; I don’t have endless energy, and so need to curate it carefully.

    Do you know when you’re having a bad day? What do you do to protect yourself? Where are your boundaries? How are you kind to yourself?

    5. Good things can come from bad.

    I don’t believe that I had to be hit by a truck to change my life—that “everything happens for a reason.”

    I try and flip it round—what good can I find in this tough situation? How can I, as the quote says, turn this pain into wisdom? It’s not easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. I’m a work-in-progress, just like everyone else. I get knocked down; I get up again.

    Chronic pain was a critical factor in my decision to completely change my life, going from a workaholic management consultant in London to running my own business online, basing myself mainly in Thailand.

    It’s helped me to learn (and re-learn!) the lesson of acceptance of “what is,” rather than constantly wishing the world was somehow different.

    Because once you accept the now, you can build on that foundation and apply all the other lessons to the next stage of your life, or even just the next day.

    Because every moment is a new moment. An opportunity for change. Another start.

    Woman in pain image via Shutterstock

  • Walk Toward Your Dreams: If Not Now, When?

    Walk Toward Your Dreams: If Not Now, When?

    Walking

    “Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.” ~Alan Cohen

    Last year I was suddenly made redundant along with half of my colleagues, as our company was being taken over. It was swift and severe. It was also a blessing.

    I didn’t want to work for the new company whose values conflicted with my own. And I had been wavering on making a decision about my career.

    Now I was being forced to decide but I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. At least, that’s what I told myself. Fear makes us do that sometimes, to keep us where we are, safe within our comfort zone.

    A friend reminded me to return to my dreams. On the basis of de-cluttering, Practical Me, that part of me that likes to keep me safe, put my vision board on the top shelf of my wardrobe, where it was safely out of sight and out of mind. I took it back down and spread it out on my bed.

    In the top left corner were pictures of the ocean and scuba diving. I had just spent a week diving around the island of Komodo in Indonesia.

    Beneath it were pictures of walking trails and Italy representing my dream to walk the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route of 2,053 kilometres, from Canterbury in southern England through France, Switzerland, and Italy, ending in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome.

    After walking a small section through Tuscany a couple of years earlier, I dreamed of walking the whole way one day, sometime in the future. I hadn’t planned on walking it now but then I hadn’t planned on being made redundant either.

    I sat on my bed looking at my vision board with this dream staring back up at me. With no job and needing to move house in the next couple of months, and a small redundancy payment in the bank, now was the perfect time for this dream to be lived.

    That’s when the whispers started. You know them. The ones that give you every possible reason why you can’t do something, to stop you moving forward, to keep you “safe” exactly where you are right now:

    You didn’t plan on doing it this year.

    You haven’t saved for it. The redundancy payment won’t cover it all. You will have to spend your savings. You will end up broke. 

    It will be long and hard. You don’t even know anything about long distance walking or hiking. Maybe you won’t make it. What a waste of money.

    And the loudest…

    Why on earth would you want to walk 2,000 kilometres? What’s the point?

    Logically, there was no reason to walk that far, especially these days when I could fly or take a train or bus or drive. Except as much as I was scared, the idea excited me.

    Then I heard the words of my good friend and yoga teacher, Joey. Whenever I hesitated to go into a posture or resisted going a little deeper, Joey always looked at me and said matter-of-factly, “If not now, when?”

    If not now, when?

    Yes, but I didn’t plan on doing it this year.

    If not now, when?

    I don’t know—maybe in a few years when I’ve accrued some long service leave or I have retired, or maybe never because it’s just a dream to be dreamed and not lived.

    As I was having this argument with myself, my mind jumped many years into the future.

    I was as an old woman with short silver hair, lying on my deathbed and looking back at my life, specifically looking back at all the things I didn’t dare to do. As soon as the words, “I wish I had” left my mouth, I knew this would be one of them.

    I don’t want to die regretting the things I wanted to do but was too scared to try. And I knew that if I didn’t attempt to walk it now, I might never have the perfect opportunity.

    I may not have the freedom and time to undertake such a long adventure until who knows when, maybe decades away when I’m older and my body less able, maybe never.

    I decided to walk. Scared and excited, I prepared myself as best I could. Ten weeks later I had packed up my life in Melbourne and was in Canterbury taking my first steps to Rome.

    For seventy-five days I walked entirely on my own. Then ten days away from Rome I met Peter and Paulius (yes true story their names really were Peter and Paul just like the Apostles). Eighty-five days after I left Canterbury, I walked into Saint Peter’s Square with Peter and Paul.

    Some of those fearful whispers were right. I didn’t know what I was doing and I was an inexperienced hiker, but I learned what I could before I left and the rest I learned as I walked.

    I depleted my savings; however, I didn’t end up broke.

    There was a risk I might not make it all the way, especially within the ninety day Schengen visa restriction, but I decided it was a risk worth taking. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I made it.

    It was long and hard, one of the most challenging things I have ever done in my life physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I discovered the extent of my own determination and resilience and found the answer to the question I had long been seeking—the purpose of my life.

    In realizing this dream, I have been able to take steps toward living another dream: to write and publish a book. I have written about my journey and am in the process of getting it published.

    Stepping toward our dreams and into the unknown can be scary. It’s just that part of ourselves that wants to keep us safe and free of shame, where there is a risk of failure. It’s okay to feel scared and it’s normal, but we don’t have to let it have the last word and control us.

    Take a deep breath into your belly, feel into your heart, and ask yourself, if not now, when? What answer do you feel in your body? Is your fear nervous or excited? Is your desire greater than your fear?

    Is now the right time for you to take that step? Maybe the answer is no, not right now. That’s okay. We don’t need to force things; everything can unfold in its own time.

    How will you feel at the end of your life if you don’t give your dream a go? Will you be regretful, sad, or disappointed in yourself? If your answer is yes, then use those feelings to propel you through your fear and take that first step towards living your dream—starting now.

    Walking image via Shutterstock

  • A Mindful Way to Find Relief from the Pain of Envy

    A Mindful Way to Find Relief from the Pain of Envy

    “The more you hide your feelings, the more they show. The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow.” ~Unknown

    Envy is such an overpowering and overwhelming feeling, often something hidden, or masked by a smiley face, or fuelled into rage and resentment. I’ve experienced all of these emotions in my life, and as I neared my fortieth birthday, I felt that I could not go on. I was crippled by the “envy story” stuck on repeat mode inside my mind.

    As I watched friends and family swoop by me in terms of outer achievements and success, the envy door took me to places within that I’d not expected.

    Envy began to feel like this creepy character, always waiting to erode my self-esteem and to crush those around me through criticism and put-downs.

    What I discovered was that life will give us more and more reasons to be envious until it teaches us the power of deep surrender to what is. It can show us that sometimes what appears rosy on the outside is not always the case.

    My envy had begun in primary school when my best girlfriends made new friends and I was left on the sidelines.

    I lacked social confidence; I was quiet and quite shy, and my envy grew as most of my friends signed up for the school show, got boyfriends and I didn’t.

    Envy continued into my adult life because I had tried to avoid it and managed to stuff it down with food and distractions, but it found new reasons for me to be envious. This time it was not friendships, but appearance and achievements.

    It brought me to a crucial stage in my life where almost everyone I knew was getting every single thing I had ever wanted.

    My bucket list was empty while everyone else’s was overflowing, with nice houses, greater financial prosperity, lots of vacations overseas, and so on.

    At one point it felt like life was having one big cosmic joke on me as I looked into my purse and saw nothing there, while people on social networks were complaining they could not afford a new smartphone.

    And so it continued until it amplified.

    This experience gave me no choice but to do the one thing I had been avoiding all along—surrender to what is.

    In 2013 I began a practice of mindfulness, after what felt like a long time of failing to positive-think my way into a better life.

    Through mindfulness I saw how great this envious feeling was within me. I could no longer avoid it, ignore it, or smother it with over-working or over-eating. I knew this emotion had a great gift for me and now was the time for me to find out what it was.

    As life showed me other people’s higher levels of outer achievements, I realized that I could no longer keep re-playing my failure story. It wasn’t possible that I was here to fail forever.

    I noticed that I couldn’t fight envy by amassing greater riches than my neighbors. Envy wouldn’t go away if I got my teeth straightened, lost weight, met someone new, or became top in my chosen career.

    There would always be more that my ego wanted. There would always be somebody who had straighter teeth, who was slimmer, who was higher up the professional ladder than me.

    If an envy story is playing, it will always seep into our way of viewing the world until we meet it at the front door and welcome it in.

    Recently, I attended my younger sister’s wedding. She’s twenty-five, in her ideal job, now married to the love of her life, and they are about to buy their first home.

    Together, they are financially abundant and she is socially confident. Because of this, my comparison junkie reared its ugly head, with loud flashing lights and alarm bells. My sister, through no fault of her own, was a red flag to my envy bull.

    As a single woman, in my late thirties, renting my tiny flat and currently living on a tight budget, the wedding threw up so much envy.

    It was pelting me like tomatoes and rotten eggs at a criminal in the medieval stocks, but this time I knew how to handle what was coming up in me. I welcomed it all in.

    Being more of a social introvert, I watched as more gregarious characters interacted at the wedding, as extroverts mingled easily and took to the dance floor during the evening, and I felt this whoosh of envy plough through me, starting at my solar plexus and rushing up through my heart and becoming lodged in my throat.

    The envy wanted to scream, “Give me a break!” I breathed slowly, and gently said inwardly “Welcome envy, welcome.”

    This did not take the envy away. It’s not a fast-food approach to personal growth; it’s a mindful acceptance of what is and an act of self-kindness to the hurt, sad child within who remembers times before when she didn’t feel good enough.

    And by welcoming envy, I left the wedding soothed—not upbeat, not calm, not even happy, but a bit more at peace, and I was okay with this. This was a new experience for me, and I was grateful that envy had something to teach me.

    Envy can pervade our identity, close our hearts to loved ones, and prevent us from experiencing meaningful relationships.

    It can also be a gift, but not until we are willing to unwrap this gift can we see it for what it really is—a journey inward to the place where a more compassionate understanding can be revealed.

    To bring relief from the pain of envy, you need to accept it, not resist or suppress it. It may feel scary to embrace this feeling, but it can help tremendously to acknowledge it and tell yourself, “I’m feeling envious at the moment, and that’s okay.”

    You can then use your envy as a driving force toward achieving your goals or passions in life, but make sure they are your goals.

    Sometimes in the heat of envy we can get lost in the achievements and outer reality of others and believe that we need to be like them to be popular, confident, likeable, and so much more.

    Make sure you do a check-in with your own values. Are your goals based on your true inner passions, wants, and needs? Or are you pursuing something because you have compared your life with another’s and are feeling inferior?

  • From Loathing to Love: What Makes Us Feel Worthwhile

    From Loathing to Love: What Makes Us Feel Worthwhile

    Woman with arms open

    “Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.” ~Unknown 

    My healing journey can be described through what I call the “self formula”:

    Self-Doubt > Self-Loathing > Self-Destruction > Self-Awareness > Self-Love

    Mine is the oldest story in the book. Adolescent angst. Mental deception. Physical revulsion. I feel fat. No, scratch that. I am fat. This girl in the mirror is ruining my life. Woe is me.

    Groundbreaking drama, right? How original of me to “feel fat.” Surely, you’ve never heard that complaint before.

    Except it wasn’t just a complaint. I believed every syllable of that negative mantra, blaring like a stadium sound system, from the darkest corners of my subconscious. I felt worse than fat. I felt worthless.

    If the adage is true that “we are our own harshest critics,” then I could’ve written a Doctoral thesis on Criticism of the Self: How Personal Insecurities Trigger Harmful Instabilities. Hey, that’s not half-bad for a title. Maybe I should have channeled my inner angst into writing.

    Or, at any rate, done something productive.

    But there was nothing productive about my response to those painful emotions. I suppressed them, denied them, allowed them to fester behind a tenuous smile and cool exterior. On the outside, I was this tough, unflappable spitfire. On the inside, I was wasting away.

    Quite literally, in fact. You see, I’d developed anorexia.

    A misguided soul, groping aimlessly—hopelessly—through this maze of self-perpetuated lies, I began to measure my own value based on physical appearance. It seemed easier to stifle the voices, ticking off my endless inadequacies, if I could just shed another pound. Or two. Or ten.

    But the more I pined for acceptance and validation in a superficial number on the scale, the deeper I sank into despair.

    My relationships suffered. My social life dangled by a thread. My self-esteem was nonexistent. And here’s the irony: in the midst of feeling utterly out of control, I still believed the solution was losing weight. A perfect body would heal the pain.

    It had to.

    There could be no alternative.

    So, I went to work. Sculpting muscle. Chiseling fat. Denying hunger. Training for the type of physique I hoped would bring me fulfillment. Ultimately though, I still came up short.

    You may be wondering: Did I achieve my objective? Did that sought-after moment of staring back at a slender reflection ever arise? Well, the answer is yes. It did. But it came without fanfare.

    Rather than basking in the glory of sleek thighs and toned abs, I gaped, horrorstruck, at the reality of this barely human shell trembling before me.

    Those hollow eye sockets, sunken cheeks, angular clavicles, sinewy arms, fragile wrists, protruding hips and ribcage, knobby knees—where did they come from? Who did they belong to? Surely not…me? But it was me. This waiflike frame I no longer recognized. She had my wounded gaze and plastered-on smile.

    My heart broke for her.

    My brain scrambled for answers. How could a person shift from vibrant to vacant seemingly overnight? Why was I just now noticing such a drastic transformation?

    And then I realized something. The missing link, which had eluded me for years, clicked into place.

    I could alter my exterior, but no “thigh gap” would compensate for the emptiness suffocating my interior. Therein lay the real problem. I couldn’t be satisfied because I wouldn’t allow myself to be satisfied.

    No wonder that image in the mirror felt bereft. Incomplete.

    My sense of “self” was incomplete.

    For the first time, I wondered: Who am I? I truly didn’t know. A lifetime of placing sole emphasis on outer beauty had conditioned me to discount inner beauty. Suddenly, the truth became glaringly obvious—I needed a fresh start, and a fresh set of priorities.

    Integrity of character trumps physical attractiveness. In theory, this concept is simple. So simple, in fact, that I utterly overlooked its implications. Had I not relied on fleeting “good looks” to bolster my confidence, I might have unearthed some actual substancebeneath the surface.

    Better late than never, though. Once I began digging, the discoveries revolutionized my entire perspective. Those misleading voices and nagging insecurities seemed meaningless. No more cowering behind a detached façade. The curve of my lips finally felt genuine.

    I became intimately acquainted with my unique qualities, talents, and quirks. Even imperfections. For instance, I’m OCD. I can’t sing. I trip over flat surfaces. I cringe at the sight of math equations. I laugh too loud and lack conversational filters. I use humor and sarcasm interchangeably.

    But I’m also witty. Intuitive. Compassionate. Artistic. A wordsmith. These traits are mine. They ignite a spark that makes me…well, ME.

    Once I acknowledged both my flaws and fortes, the burden of loathing lifted. A free spirit was born. Individuality embraced. Identity found.

    This healing process has introduced me to myself, which is, quite possibly, the most rewarding gift anyone can receive. As spiritual beings, created to desire purpose, direction, and significance for our lives, we need personal affirmation.

    We need to believe in our ability to thrive and survive this turbulent ride.

    Because, face it: when you feel powerless over any given situation, the innate human reaction is to focus the blame inward.

    Rather than admitting some circumstances are simply uncontrollable, you punish yourself for not being strong enough or smart enough or skilled enough to overcome whatever hardship has reared its ugly head.

    At which point, you cease being an active participant in your own life.

    Throughout the loneliest periods of my illness, I had no assurance of belonging anywhere. Like a gypsy, drifting from ghost town to ghost town, I was alienated from my daily realities. All because I lacked self-acceptance.

    If you don’t accept yourself, who will accept you? If you don’t belong with yourself, who do you belong with?

    The answer, of course, is “nobody.”

    And those are questions worth pondering whenever doubt pays an unwelcome visit. Consider this: when was the last time you eagerly sought the company of someone who radiated discomfort in their own skin? Not recently, I’d imagine. It’s like a “pity party” without an expiration date.

    Which is the exact unpleasantness you inflict upon your sub-conscious with every disapproving head-to-toe scrutiny.

    Until you embrace each facial contour, fold of skin, and mental idiosyncrasy that sets you apart from the crowd, you’ll never find contentment.

    ­

    But when you do, something incredible happens. That piercing “I’m worthless” mantra fades into a softer, gentler phrase…

    I am worthwhile.

    Woman with arms open image via Shutterstock