Tiny Buddha

Tag: Hope

  • My Dying Friend’s Woke Wake and Why We Need to Talk About Death

    My Dying Friend’s Woke Wake and Why We Need to Talk About Death

    “Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.” ~Marcus Aurelius

    Recently, on a beautiful blue-sky Saturday, I attended my first “woke wake.”

    My dear friend has welcomed in the love and care of hospice, and she and her family wanted to host a celebration.

    The meaning of “woke” signals an awareness of social action, with a focus on racism and bias in our culture. She also wanted to be “awoke” to the experience of her wake. More importantly, her party was an honest expression that she will die soon. Her acknowledgement was courageous.

    We share so openly about birth, and yes, there is deep sorrow with death, but doesn’t it deserve as much open acknowledgement? Silence only makes the journey that much more difficult. 

    In her rose-rimmed glasses, moving about the party with such grace, she held her truth with pride. Her heart is full yet has become so weak.

    There were plates of delicacies with brie decorating beets, fall fruit bowls adorned with persimmons and pomegranate, plates of pumpkin brownies and breads, chips finding dips, laughter finding tears.

    She preferred we didn’t clink cups and share stories. Instead, it was both a “Bon Voyage” and “Welcome Home” celebration. The voyage is universal for all of us. Home becomes the outstretched arms of loving community and, as Ram Dass wrote, “We are all just walking each other home.”

    The morning my father passed away just shy of ninety-five, I spoke with him by phone as he lay in his hospital bed. The last thing he said in his forever strong but raspy voice, before hanging up the phone, was “Well, gotta go honey.”

    We all “gotta go,” but the privilege some of us have to plan for how we go is a gift. Many do not have that luxury due to economic, social, and possible cultural differences.

    But for many, there are concrete plans we can make as we compose our wills, designating our medical power of attorney, our financial executor, DNR, and life support decisions. We can designate who will inherit our wares and heirlooms. We can decide specifics in regard to a traditional burial, cremation, or even body composting, which is a process that transforms the body into soil to be then returned to the earth.

    Getting our affairs in order in concrete ways seems easier than having a conversation about our own death or that of our friends, family, and aging parents.

    Melanie Klein, a well-known British psychologist, believes the fear of death is the crux of anxiety. Whether one believes in this premise or not isn’t that important. But the truth is that often our feelings about death are kept deep inside. Yet discussion can ease our anxiety as we face the existential concerns about our mortality.

    I’m in an intimate group with six other women where we discuss aging, living, and dying. Sometimes we discuss the book we are reading, but more often than not, we share our hopes, dreams, and fears about the future. As our skin softens with age, our “thin skin” makes us more sensitive to issues around death.

    Often, there are concerns about being dependent and a wish to not burden those who care for us. And who will care for us? Will we be okay financially? How will our bodies and minds hold up in the years to come? We also discuss worry about those we’ll leave behind. How will children cope?

    These are difficult topics. But being in community while voicing our feelings and asking these questions can make us feel less alone. If possible, opening up the discussion with loved ones is important. And the hope is that when our time comes, we will all be better prepared and have had some of our questions answered.

    Those who die before us often become our teachers. As we attend memorials and wakes, we face that we will continue to say farewell to loved ones and inevitably ourselves. How those before us handle the farewell often educates us as to how we would like to end our journey in both similar and dissimilar ways. But this takes conversation, something too often avoided.

    My friend has taught me so much and especially about her devotion to and her honesty with her grown children. I will want my children to know they are going to be just fine in the world no matter the twists and turns in their life. And that I promise I will never be far away.

    It is said that accepting the inevitability of death helps us accept we are all just visiting for a short while. That recognition reminds us to appreciate life and make it a good visit.

    I hugged my friend goodbye and thanked her for hosting a lovely celebration. It was a good visit with a table of bounty. Maybe that is what we can all hope for as the party ends and the lights go out.

  • New Year’s Resolutions Simplified: It’s as Easy as 1, 2, 3

    New Year’s Resolutions Simplified: It’s as Easy as 1, 2, 3

    You and I will probably come across a hundred articles about New Year’s resolutions in 2023 … again. And, if you and I are like the majority—the well-intentioned, regular people who genuinely want change—we will aspire to big things and later get frustrated and give up on the list we made … again.

    But what if we kept it really simple this time? What if we didn’t have to make an endless list and be reminded, by looking at it, of all the things we may fail at again?

    What if we made it as easy as one, two, three?

    Let us do that instead, shall we?!

    1. Make “one” your magic number. Count to one each day, starting now, not from January 1st—NOW! What is the one thing you want and will do today?

    One email or paragraph you will write, or one chapter you will read, or one person you’ll reach out to. Who is the one lucky person you will text or call to tell them how you miss or appreciate them? Or how encouraged you feel by knowing them or how you want to ask forgiveness from them? Who is the one person you can write to or call to laugh about that one fun memory that you only share with them?

    I personally made a commitment to write or call or pray for a person whenever they cross my mind, that same day; I do not wait. There is a reason, I believe, we are reminded of people, and life is so fragile. I don’t want to miss an opportunity and regret not uplifting someone who could have been encouraged, or speaking kindness to someone who could have benefited from it.

    What’s one thing you will do today to move toward a healthier and happier you?

    Maybe it’s just one set of squats while you are washing the dishes; one jump rope you will order and one minute of jumping you’ll do when it arrives; one glass of beer or coke or a sweet drink you’ll replace with water or tea or decaf coffee just once today. Which one item will you change in your menu today for something that is better for your body?

    What is the one happy song you will listen to in the car or on a quick walk that you will take today? What is the one shop you will drive to, parking really far away, so you can get extra steps walking back and forth?

    2. Remember that there are two significant ways that your brilliant mind registers and remembers everything: through words and images.

    Paint clear, vivid, beautiful pictures for your mind of what it is that you want. Think backward; create an image of what your completed accomplishment looks like to you and make it as detailed and as exciting as you possibly can.

    See yourself having arrived at the healthy weight you want, you fitting into an outfit of your desires, hearing your friends and strangers complimenting you on how radiant and healthy and great you look, thinking about how you love taking care of your body inside and out.

    See yourself having completed your degree, project, letter, book, task, whatever. See yourself walking across the stage, people wanting to buy your product, welcoming your project, asking you to give your presentation again, asking you about and enjoying the summary of what you read or learned.

    Imagine yourself buying that house you have painted in your mind and furnishing it and having friends over and laughing and resting in your comfortable space every day!

    See yourself in a relationship you just repaired or found and are enjoying. See how good it is for you and the other person; see and hear the uplifting conversations you are having and the fun activities you are enjoying together. Dream in pictures!

    When talking to yourself, use words that are kind, uplifting, life-giving, generous—not the opposite. Speak in the same way you would to someone you love and care about; someone whose success would make you as happy as your own; someone you want to see happy, encouraged, loved. Talk to yourself in your mind and out loud like that each day and see what happens.

    3. Imagine yourself as a triangle.

    One side is your mind, connected to the second, your heart, connected to the third, your amazing body, with the entire space inside filled with who you really and most profoundly are—your spirit.

    All of you needs to be cared for, attended to, and nurtured. Pay attention to what each part needs and requires. How is it lacking? What is it missing? What one thing can you do today to nurture each part?

    I nourish my spirit through prayer and silence daily, which fills me with focus, strength, and insight, and I always pray for at least one person outside of my family as well. Walking is what helps care for my body during this season of life.

    —

    So there you have it: one, two, three.

    When you get to the end of your day today, be sure to congratulate yourself on that one thing you did, that step you took, and look forward to doing it again tomorrow. Be your cheerleader and encourager and then, over time, you’ll see that change you’ve been looking for.

  • How I’ve Redefined Success Since ‘Failing’ by Traditional Standards

    How I’ve Redefined Success Since ‘Failing’ by Traditional Standards

    “Once you choose hope, anything is possible.” ~Christopher Reeve

    When I was a child, I wanted to save the world. My mom found me crying in my bedroom one day. She asked what was wrong, and I said, “I haven’t done anything yet!” I couldn’t wait to grow up so I could try to make a difference.

    At fourteen, I joined a youth group that supported adults with disabilities. We hosted dances and ran a buddy program. I helped with projects at state institutions and left saddened by the conditions for the residents. I planned to work at a state institution.

    As a senior in high school, I was voted most likely to succeed. It was unexpected, like so many things in my life. I hoped to find meaningful work that helped others.

    My first year at Ohio State, I fell head over heels in love and married the boy next door. A month after my wedding, newly nineteen, I started my first full-time job as manager of a group home for men with developmental disabilities. I never finished college.

    At twenty-three, I was officially diagnosed with depression after my first baby, but the doctor didn’t tell me. I read the diagnosis in my medical record a few years later. I grew up in the sixties with negative stereotypes of mental illness. I didn’t understand it, and I thought depression meant being weak and ungrateful. I loved being a new mom, and I wanted the doctor to be wrong.

    I was a stay-at-home mom with three young children at the time of my ten-year high school reunion. The event booklet included bios. For mine, I wrote something a bit defensive about the value of being a mom since I didn’t feel successful in any traditional way.

    At thirty, I experienced daily headaches for the first time. I tried natural cures and refused all medication, even over-the-counter ones, while the headaches progressed to a constant mild level. I kept up with three busy kids, taught literacy to residents with multiple disabilities at a state institution, and barreled on. I thought I understood challenges.

    At forty, I went to a pain clinic at Ohio State and received another depression diagnosis. This time it made sense. The diagnosis still made me feel vaguely ashamed, weak. Still, I rationalized it away.

    Which came first, the depression or the headache? Maybe it was the headache’s fault. Anti-depressants were diagnosed for the first time, which managed my depression. Until…

    When I was forty-two, I fell asleep at the wheel with my youngest daughter Beth in the passenger seat. She sustained a spinal cord injury that left her paralyzed from the chest down. I quit my job at the institution to be her round-the-clock caregiver.

    Beth was only fourteen when she was injured. However, she carried me forward, since between the two of us, she was the emotionally stable one. She focused on regaining her independence, despite her quadriplegia. I let her make the decisions about her care and her future. Sometimes we need someone strong to lead the way.

    Every day, every hour, every minute of our new life felt impossibly uncertain. New guilt and anxiety merged with my old issues of chronic pain and depression. Increased doses of my anti-depressants did not prevent me from spiraling down. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. No hope of light.

    I put a tight lid on my feelings, which was a challenge by itself. I didn’t want to give the people I loved more to worry about. I also felt that if I gave in to my emotions, I wouldn’t be able to function. And I desperately needed to help Beth. That’s what mattered the most.

    I started counseling several months after the car accident. At the first session, I thought I would find a little peace, with more ahead. It wasn’t that simple. I felt like a failure, and thought I failed at counseling, too, since I didn’t improve for some time. I should have reached out for help right after Beth’s injury.

    Weekly counseling helped me, along with my husband always being there for me. However, Beth was the one who showed me how to choose hope. I watched her succeed after failing again and again, over and over, on her quest to be independent.

    Beth and I shared unexpected adventures, from our small town in Ohio to Harvard and around the world. She has had the most exciting life of anyone I know. She’s also the happiest person I know because she finds joy in ordinary life, and that’s the best kind of success.

    Since I was voted most likely to succeed in 1976, I learned that success encompasses so much more than I originally thought. Things like being married for forty-five years to my best friend. Raising three great kids. Working meaningful jobs and helping others. Volunteering and mentoring. And learning meditation to better cope with chronic pain.

    Today, my depression is mostly managed with prescriptions, which also feels like a kind of success. I’m no longer ashamed of my depression. It’s part of who I am, and I know for a fact that I’m not weak or ungrateful. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, a bright light.

    Hope is an incredibly powerful thing. And if you never give up? Hope wins.

  • How I Kept Going When I Wanted to End My Life

    How I Kept Going When I Wanted to End My Life

    “When you’ve reached rock bottom, there’s only one way to go, and that’s up!” ~Buster Moon, from the movie Sing

    When I first heard this saying, as I was watching the movie Sing on my way to another continent, a small light bulb lit up inside me. As I sat with this sentence, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t agree more.

    After hitting my own rock bottom a couple of years ago, I know that once you get there, there is no place you can go that is lower. It’s the final breaking point.

    And if there is anything I have learned about the final breaking point, it’s that you have two choices: either give up or start over.

    This theory can apply to many aspects of life, like when you’re in a job or career that is no longer working, so you hit rock bottom in a health crisis or a mental breakdown. You have a choice: Be insane and keep going, when you know deep in your heart and gut that this decision isn’t right, or “give up” and finally pursue the career or job that you have always wanted.

    Sometimes, rock bottom gives us a good reflection point on what is no longer working in our life, as well as the opportunity to change. But what happens when your rock bottom is wanting to end your life?

    I remember it clear as day. It was summer 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, and I was working remotely from home, like many others. Nothing was unique about my situation, except the fact that I had ended a very toxic, karmic relationship just three weeks into a global pandemic.

    The things that most people do in order to get over a breakup—like see friends and go out and have fun—were all things the whole world had to put on pause. Oh, and top of that, I was worried about dying from Covid.

    I never realized the effects lockdown could have on my mental health. While I am naturally introverted, there is a significant difference between being forced to stay in and choosing to do so.

    I realized that I had hit rock bottom during a beautiful summer day. I was outside, staring into my backyard, when I realized that I felt nothing. I no longer wanted to live, and I could no longer see the beauty and miracles of everyday life.

    I was disappointed that I woke up every single morning, because that meant another day that I had to muscle through. Another day that I had to survive. While I’ve had bouts of depression my entire life, I never came as low as I did then.

    By the end of the summer, I knew I had two options: I was either going to save my life or end it. But I also came to a humbling moment when I knew I couldn’t do it myself. I needed therapy. No one else could help me through this except a professional that could help me dissect my feelings, trauma, and emotions, as well as myself.

    Starting therapy was a blow to my ego, as I imagine it is for many. It’s sitting there, across from your therapist, when they ask you, “Why are you here?” knowing damn well that you are there so that you don’t die. That you don’t want to suffer anymore. That you are wondering, “Why am I even suffering? Am I just being overdramatic?”

    There are so many hard truths that you learn about yourself through therapy. But also, so many enlightening things, like the fact that it wasn’t your fault you endured abuse, gaslighting, and manipulation in past relationships. Even though you thought it was.

    Or that trauma literally shuts off the frontal cortex of your brain, especially when you are in “fight or flight” mode, because your body is just trying to survive. This is why there are so many memories that, to this day, I cannot remember. They are little black holes in my brain history.

    When you’re in therapy, you don’t notice the gradual changes at first. It’s not until months down the line that you start to notice that little things are bringing you joy once again.

    How the sun, in the cold harsh winter, after days of cloudiness, brought a small smile to your face. Or how you realize that you no longer partake in OCD behaviors that you thought you could never break before starting therapy. Or how your irrational fears are no longer at the forefront of your mind anymore.

    While not everyone will notice these changes, you will. And you will then start to think about how and why you didn’t start therapy sooner. How and why you didn’t choose yourself sooner. Do not berate yourself; this was all part of your journey.

    If there is anything that I have learned by wanting to die, it was that inadvertently, I also wanted to live. I just no longer wanted to live my life through the same suffering and stories. The body, mind, and soul can only sustain pain for so long before it can no longer do it anymore.

    One of the most pivotal things about my life, hands down, was my rock bottom because, as the saying goes, I could only go up from there.

    Up doesn’t mean that you change your life drastically in one day, or even a couple of months.

    Sometimes up is showering after a week of not having the energy to do it. Sometimes up is allowing yourself to feel a slight feeling of joy again, after months and months of darkness. Sometimes up is remembering to eat again, because you never had the appetite to eat when you were at your lowest.

    If you’re struggling right now and can’t get out bed, I’m not telling you that you are wasting your life. You are not. Even in the depths of suffering, this is all a part of your journey.

    But I can tell you this: Living—not merely existing—is a choice made of lots of little choices. Like the choice to get help. The choice to believe things can get better. The choice to do the little things that help you feel better. And the choice to recognize the small wins along the way.

    Other people can support you, but no one can make these choices for you but you.

  • When You’re Ready for Change: You Need to Believe in Your Future Self

    When You’re Ready for Change: You Need to Believe in Your Future Self

    “Growth is uncomfortable because you’ve never been here before. You’ve never seen this version of you. So give yourself a little grace and breathe through it.” ~Kristin Lohr

    I was kinda sorta showing up.

    To the outside world, it looked like I was doing all of the things. I was smiling. I was talking about exercise and eating well. I was posting happy, positive vibe quotes, but I wasn’t really showing up for myself.

    I had experienced a miscarriage at thirteen weeks. This was supposed to be the safe zone. I had told family and friends. My husband and I even had names ready to go. This was baby number four, so I thought I was a pro.

    I was in a toxic work environment, but I kept going. Even after my miscarriage, I felt I had to be back there quickly so others didn’t need to deal with my responsibilities.

    After experiencing this loss, I spent quite a long time kinda sorta being serious about my well-being. But let’s be honest, I pretended for years. I was hearing “Take care of YOU!” on repeat. It was well intentioned, but I had absolutely no clue how to do that. Nobody told me how to take care of myself.

    I knew all of the shoulds and suppose-tos. But I was overwhelmed by those concepts as I added them all to my to-do list. I knew I should eat healthy and move my body, but what was I going to do about these negative thoughts of not being good enough floating through my brain every single day? The guilt was overflowing, but I just smiled.

    I took on more responsibility and wore so many different hats that it looked like I was able to do it all. In reality, I was so stressed that it was coming out physically through an annoying eye tick.

    I made an excuse of being tired when people noticed it. I defended that excuse because I needed to believe it. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was eating junk in between the occasional healthy meals kick. I was moving, but not on a regular basis. I continued to smile, make excuses, and pretend all was good.

    One morning, I realized that I couldn’t keep doing this. I opened my eyes and accepted that I was only kinda sorta showing up for myself and that I couldn’t keep sustaining this lifestyle without causing irreversible damage to those I loved and to myself. So I said the scariest words: “No, sorry. I can’t.”

    Admittedly, I only whispered these words to myself at first. Then something powerful happened: I started to say them out loud to other people.

    First, it was only to my inner circle, and then it started spilling out everywhere. I was talking about taking my power back. I was talking about an exit strategy from my toxic work environment. I was talking about how my miscarriage did, in fact, hit me hard. It rocked me to my core.

    I was open about my feelings. I was letting myself experience all of my emotions. I was shifting. I was becoming a new woman—a similar version to the happy and healthy woman I once was. I was emotional. It was scary. It was worth it. It took a lot of work and guidance. It’s still evolving. In many ways, I expect to always be growing and shifting.

    I told myself: Believe in your future self. That sounds like it should be easy to do, but it’s tough for most people. Chances are you are afraid of change. We all are. And it might be hard on your ego to admit you need to do something different.

    As humans, we want to be right. We don’t want to admit a choice we made was the wrong one. We may have second thoughts and see lots of red flags going up all over the place, but we still hate to admit we made the wrong decision. So we stick with what we’re doing even if it feels wrong.

    I have a little secret to tell you: The most successful people are the ones who push through the fear of change and do it anyway—even if it’s hard on their pride. It can be done. It will be messy in the middle, but you’ll get through it. When self-doubt creeps in, you need to follow two steps to make a change.

    1. A mindset shift

    You absolutely must believe that you can and will be successful to become successful. No matter what the goal is, you must believe in yourself and see the success as a real possibility.

    For example, if you want to move your muscles more through exercise, start your morning off with the mantra of “I am making my health a priority. I will move my muscles today.” Start acting like someone who exercises. Make decisions like a person who moves on a regular basis. Schedule it in. Talk about it.

    If you want to be happier and healthier, use these I am statements to help get you there: “I am enough.” “I am worthy of happiness every day!” Many people say they want to feel happier but don’t believe they deserve it, so they end up sabotaging themselves. Say those statements out loud. Write them down. Get to the root of any traumas or past conditioning that prevent you from believing them.

    Once you shift your mindset, your choices and path will align with the new you. You will reach your goals, or at least make progress toward them. You may experience imposter syndrome along the way. Keep going. That is a part of the mindset shift process. Talk back. If you believe you can do the things you want to do, you will.

    2. A strategy

    The second part of your success journey is the roadmap to move you forward. You cannot just wish and hope for things to happen. You must do the work.

    If you’ve shifted your mindset, now you need to travel the miles to get where you want to go. How do you do this? Set realistic goals. Make a plan. Follow the plan and stay consistent. You’ll need guidance along the way. Surround yourself with people who are doing what you’d like to do. Listen to the advice of those who have traveled this road before you. Ask for help to stay accountable.

    Do not assume that this will be an easy path to travel. Most things worth having require a good bit of work. Expect roadblocks and push past them.

    Know that not everyone in your current circle will be ready for you to shift. Change is scary on a personal level. When others change around you, it’s frightening if you aren’t shifting alongside them. In some cases, your change will create positive ripple effects for those closest to you, but it will happen for them once the timing is correct.

    Your future self is waiting to meet you—you just need to get moving. The path will not be all sunshine and rainbows, but you can travel it. You can make a change, even a great big one.

    Once you are on the other side, you’ll wonder why it took you so long to get there. You’ll be happier. You’ll be healthier. Other people will ask you how you did it! Take that first step and keep going. I promise you it’s better on the other side.

  • Dealing with a Big Disappointment: How to Soften the Blow and Move On

    Dealing with a Big Disappointment: How to Soften the Blow and Move On

    “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” ~Lao Tzu

    In the middle of a storm, it is difficult to see any way out. But on the other side, we usually can recognize a silver lining—something we gained from the experience that enhanced our lives in some way.

    When my husband unexpectedly died and left me a single mother to three young children, I could not conceptualize anything good coming out of it.

    Yet, years later, I am here to tell you that the gutting, heart-wrenching experience taught me invaluable lessons that have helped me to not just survive but actually thrive, finding more happiness when I never thought I would again. Although I wish that experience never happened, I also would never trade the person I am today. Life is funny in that way.

    There have been many setbacks and impending feelings of disappointment. Losing loved ones, the end of relationships, professional rejections and mishaps, parenting flops, general life blunders. All of it.

    Each time I survive a setback, I learn something new and I get better. I become wiser when I seek to understand the lesson and reflect on the experience. I realize that these moments of disappointment have a lot to offer me in personal growth.

    However, in order to get to this place, you must take care of your disappointment. It helps to study human nature and the common responses during these emotions, so you can recognize the pitfalls and be proactive about responding to your disappointment in a nurturing, positive way.

    Most recently, when a relationship ended, I knew immediately that I had to make sure my disappointment didn’t turn into something bigger and darker. I learned from previous experiences what not to do.

    Disappointment—what happens when your expectations are not aligned with reality—can be emotionally and physically painful. But when it turns into devastation, it becomes destructive and crushing, potentially putting you in danger.

    Disappointment is a little hole you can jump over or fill in with some effort. Devastation is a deep trench that is difficult to escape and will require monumental effort. The trick is to take care of it before it becomes insurmountable.

    After my husband passed away, it felt like my wings had been clipped. In a second, I lost my best friend, partner, colleague, and source of unfaltering support. I suddenly found myself having to stand on my own two feet with nobody to root me on, and I felt unconfident and unworthy.

    It took me a while to consider dating. When I did meet someone, I had high hopes for that first relationship. I wanted so badly to experience the security of a stable relationship with a committed partner, the kind I had with my husband. I overlooked the fact that not everyone shared those expectations.

    Unfortunately, this person wasn’t the right one. It was disappointing to feel like I’d wasted my time on someone with whom the stars did not align. I was not prepared to deal with the letdown.

    I felt wronged by the universe for being in a predicament that I thought shouldn’t have happened in the first place. If only my husband hadn’t passed away, I wouldn’t be in this ridiculous, embarrassing situation of trying to re-enter the dating field as a single mother in the early years of her middle age.

    I spiraled into self-pity, wondering why me and why not other people. It was triggering to see others in relationships and wonder why they didn’t have to suffer the way I felt our family had. It can feel isolating and lonely when nobody in your social circles is in the same boat.

    That’s the thing about disappointment. We take it so personally. In reality, everyone has their own share of it; we just aren’t privy to seeing all of the ways it manifests in other people’s lives. We have tunnel vision with the realities we spin in our minds.

    That relationship riddled me with self-doubt, which felt embarrassing because I knew I had already experienced more serious loss than that. Still, I wanted to dissect all of the details and ruminate over what happened, what could have happened, and what might have happened.

    I let it linger too long instead of severing ties when I should have. I let the experience reinforce negative thoughts, like the ones where I told myself that I would never find anyone, that I wasn’t good enough, or that I didn’t deserve another chapter.

    This was a classic case of me not taking care of my disappointment. I let my expectations go wild and I took the disappointment as a crushing blow to my ego. I internalized the pain and let it grow, feeding it irrational thoughts and reactions to perpetuate the negative emotions.

    There is a better approach.

    Disappointment is inevitable and natural, but there are ways we can soften the blow to help ourselves heal and move through the feelings instead of getting stuck in them. When we learn to not hold on so tight and let go, seek joy, and imagine the road ahead, we help ourselves dilute the disappointment until it no longer hurts us.

    Letting Go

    First and foremost, learn to accept what you can control and what you can not. This is paramount to taking care of your disappointment. Holding on to a reality that does not exist only makes your wounds fester.

    I keep a journal, and it serves as an outlet for me to dump my thoughts into. I can go back to previous entries, and it is usually then that I make connections and realize that the grass was not always greener. I did this recently with a breakup, and I read, in my own words, about the red flags that I didn’t heed, which helped give me perspective as I processed what happened.

    When we feel disappointed, our levels of neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine) go down. We experience emotional and sometimes physical pain as a result. The first night after my most recent breakup, my chest felt heavy, making it difficult to breathe as I struggled to fall asleep that night.

    Even though I knew on an intellectual level that it was absolutely for the best, I couldn’t get over the feeling that I had done something wrong and, even worse, that I had wasted my time again. I find myself defaulting to toxic habits: lashing out, looking for ways to hold on, giving the situation too much benefit of the doubt, and trying to rescue something that was not there anymore. In a disappointed state, we tend to fall into irrational thinking and unsavory reactions in an effort to make the pain stop.

    We have to learn to wrap our minds around the impermanence of disappointment—it won’t hurt this bad forever—and let it go, instead of desperately digging in our heels. At this stage, there’s nothing more important than acknowledging how you feel, but then moving on and adjusting your expectations.

    Find Varied Sources of Joy

    The old adage “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket” applies here. The person that got away, the job you lost, or whatever happened to cause your disappointment was not the only source of your joy. Or at least it shouldn’t have been. You are a person with many interests, and you are going to find your dopamine and serotonin elsewhere.

    If you don’t have any hobbies, now is the time to explore and perhaps learn something new. This will help redirect your attention away from the disappointment and also make you feel good. It’s always a good idea to fill your happiness bucket, and now is the perfect time.

    Some questions to consider:

    • What did you used to do in the past that made you happy?
    • What have you always wanted to do?
    • What can you do now that you couldn’t do before?

    For me, I decided I wanted to finish some projects I had kept on the backburner when I was busy in a relationship, and I decided to learn pickleball to meet new people and go back to pilates, which I had stopped pre-pandemic and never resumed.

    Conceptualize the Road Ahead

    Disappointment is not the end of your road. You are not stuck in a dead end. You simply encountered a bump in the road and there is a way out.

    First, figure out what you want in your life in terms of priorities and values. I spend a lot of time doing this, but when I encounter disappointment, I still find myself swerving off the path and bombarding myself with negative thoughts. I have to consciously separate the disappointment from my identity, and keep reminding myself that I am not what I lost.

    I remind myself of the goals I have, ones that still exist even in the face of loss. Sometimes we need to adjust these goals and find other plans or even go in new directions, but you are still a person with aspirations, hopes, and dreams that belong to you. Disappointment doesn’t get to take that away from you.

    It helps me to create lists of the small action steps I need to take to achieve these goals. I call them “bite-size” actions. Teeny, tiny steps.

    For example, I made a “glow” list after my most recent breakup, with all of the things I wanted to do to enhance and better my life. It included tasks as small as getting my nails done and as big as setting up an investment account. Check items off your list and build your grit and perseverance as you prove to yourself how strong you are.

    Also, embrace an abundance mindset. There are more fish in the ocean. There will be job opportunities you can’t even conceptualize right now. Trust they are out there and be open to these possibilities. Seek them out.

    When I get a writing rejection, I try to reframe it as a learning opportunity, trusting that there will be more opportunities to submit my work and I will get better with practice. You don’t get one shot and you’re done. There are an infinite amount of opportunities still waiting for you to explore.

    Bottom line: Disappointment is an opportunity to grow your emotional resilience. It’s a chance to get stronger and intentional about your life, evolving into a better version of who you were yesterday.

    One way to approach your disappointment is to remember seven-year-old you. How would you talk to that child? What advice would you tell seven-year-old you?

    Treating yourself with compassion and patience, while firmly steering yourself back into a positive direction, will help you overcome the many forms of disappointment you will inevitably encounter.

    I’m human, so disappointment still stings even with all of the work I have done. But utilizing these tools have helped me navigate through negative feelings, enabling me to heal more quickly and move on toward new sources of joy.

    I like this quote by Peter Marshall. He said, “When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.”

    Never forget that you are a diamond, nothing less.

  • The Power of Reframing: 3 Ways to Feel Better About Life

    The Power of Reframing: 3 Ways to Feel Better About Life

    “Some people could be given an entire field of roses and only see the thorns in it. Others could be given a single weed and only see the wildflower in it. Perception is a key component to gratitude. And gratitude a key component to joy.” ~Amy Weatherly

    I grew up in a deeply negative environment. My parents separated acrimoniously when I was seven, and they were a grim example of how not to do divorce.

    They brought out the worst in each other, and sadly, over time, they also brought out the worst in me. I was depressed as a teen, and had been conditioned to believe that my problems were an unfortunate family trait—one that I had simply to accept and live with.

    And I did, for many years. But of course, I was not happy. And yet I didn’t know enough about the world to understand that my environment and upbringing were very largely to blame.

    I now know that while genetics can account for up to around 40% of the happiness we experience, the rest is within our control.

    I’m aware of this because studies have shown it to be the case. But I know it because I’ve also lived it.

    Deciding to Change My Life

    Over the last ten years, I’ve dramatically changed my life, and I’m the most at peace I’ve ever been.

    When my eldest daughter was a baby, I finally had an important enough reason to want better. I was determined that she would grow up in a fun and positive home. And if I was going to make that a reality, I had to put in the work to make it happen.

    Plus, it had become especially vital at that time since my daughter’s difficult delivery had been traumatic and left me with extreme postnatal anxiety. I was in a very bad place, and I needed to get out of it; I needed, in fact, to get out of my own head. And I didn’t want to rely on medication for that.

    While my husband had already saved me in many ways, the rest was my responsibility—my state of mind, my outlook.

    Desperate but determined, I began an activity that, over time, changed my life.

    While I appreciate that sounds like an exaggeration, it’s really not. Because my life truly has changed. Although it also hasn’t. Allow me to explain…

    The Power of Reframing

    I inadvertently learned how to reframe, and it’s possibly the most profound skill there is for increasing happiness.

    It’s so incredibly powerful because it can change your experience of life—without changing your actual circumstances.

    Here are a few examples of how reframing helped me to feel more positive about my own life…

    A few weeks ago my dad moved, and I planned to visit with my girls during half term to take him a plant.

    We live in the UK, and while the weather is changeable, it’s usually fairly mild. But on the day it so happened to be spectacularly windy. I told my dad we’d make our way and I’d let him know if we couldn’t get there.

    We made it! And after dropping off my dad’s plant, we drove a short way to a restaurant.

    Before we’d even ordered drinks, the winds brought down a pylon and there was a power cut. The kitchen closed, and my young daughters ate crisps for lunch, and I still had to get us safely home.

    But, instead of being mad that the entire day turned into a farce (we encountered fallen trees on the way home!), I was glad I’d made the effort. Most importantly, we were safe, but also it reinforced to my dad that we cared enough to get there despite the challenges.

    Another example is that since Christmas we’ve had one illness after another in our home. First was COVID, and since then we’ve had viruses and two bouts of chicken pox.

    When my eldest succumbed to COVID, I was worried about her, but also on a practical level how I’d get my youngest daughter to school (until my husband also tested positive, at which point I was able to leave the house). The fear that had been silently there for two years had finally caught up with us, and it had the potential to be an enormous source of stress.

    But during the COVID episode—and later with chicken pox too—school mums stepped up without me even asking. I’d never really felt like I’d integrated with the school mum crowd, but as it turned out, I was wrong:

    They totally had my back.

    I felt and continue to feel so incredibly grateful not only for them, but also knowing that I have a support network I did not even realize was there.

    These are just a couple of recent examples which spring to mind, of situations that previously I probably would have experienced negatively and complained about—but I’m now able to reframe to find the silver living.

    So you see, my life is different in terms of how I experience the world, and yet it’s really the very same as it always was. But I feel vastly different.

    I feel at peace.

    And now I want to share my process so others can also learn how to do this for themselves, because it’s basically free therapy, available to everyone, that we can implement alone, and without guidance.

    But how did I do it, without professional help—and without medication?

    How to Tap Into the Benefits of Reframing

    For me, there were really three steps to my journey, which happen to work together in perfect harmony.

    1. Practicing gratitude

    First, I began writing gratitude lists.

    With no comprehension of their value—but with a deep desire to start appreciating the good things in my life, and a desperate hope it was a good starting point. Good enough to help me do better for my daughter.

    I started writing a list of the positive things that had happened each week. Not realizing that this is actually an effective therapeutic exercise, I wasn’t expecting very much to happen.

    But I knew that the fundamental change I wanted to see in my life was more positivity. So I figured the “fake it till you make it” approach might just be beneficial.

    Incredibly, it didn’t just help—it was the turning point of my life to such a degree that it now feels like before and after.

    Writing gratitude lists isn’t difficult. It can be as simple as jotting down three, or five, or ten things you’re thankful for. This can be done when you wake up, to start the day on a positive note, or at the end of each day if you prefer.

    If you have a hectic schedule and can’t find time to do this daily, just be sure to do it regularly.

    And if writing it down seems like too much effort at the end of the day, you could try saying your list of things for the day quietly and privately in your own mind.

    It doesn’t need to a formal practice; it just needs to something you do practice. Because over time, something magical happens…

    2. Positivity

    As time goes by and you continue to acknowledge the good in your life, your default mindset will begin to switch over to a more positive one.

    For me, it was like a spiritual awakening, and I like to use an analogy to describe my experience.

    The idea of rose-tinted glasses is a familiar one for most people. But sometimes they’re actually a blessing. After spending several months practicing gratitude regularly, I felt like I’d removed the only pair of glasses I’d ever known, and the world suddenly looked brighter.

    I also began to appreciate that positivity is often a self-fulfilling prophecy: the harder you look for it, the more you will find.

    And your mood tends to be reflected back to you by others, too. Just as negativity is draining, positive people energize those around them!

    I was recently waxing lyrical to somebody about the positive impacts of gratitude and reframing, but they insisted that offloading onto friends or family is necessary sometimes. I didn’t completely disagree, but I had something important to add:

    By default, increased positivity leads to a decrease in negative experiences, which in turn leads to less often feeling a need to offload. And that’s the magic of this whole concept.

    There’s one final step in my toolkit…

    3. Journaling

    Unfortunately, when you’ve grown up in a negative environment, it can be all too easy to slide back into ingrained behaviors—old habits die hard.

    For that reason, even though I feel very mentally robust these days, I know that if I stop practicing these new skills, it’s almost inevitable that I’ll return to the mindset I developed as a child. (I’ve learned this the hard way.)

    Journaling is my favorite way to stay on track and accountable, because it can easily incorporate each of the above ideas, plus so many more.

    Depending on my mood, I love journaling for its mindfulness, or state of flow, or as a creative outlet. Or all of the above!

    Essentially, these skills each feed into and reinforce one another. And together, they really are life-changing.

     

     

  • My Mother’s Abuse and the Two Things That Have Helped Me Heal

    My Mother’s Abuse and the Two Things That Have Helped Me Heal

    “I love when people that have been through hell walk out of the flames carrying buckets of water for those still consumed by the fire.” ~Stephanie Sparkles

    I have a tattoo on my back of Charles Bukowski’s quote “What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” It spoke to me as I had been walking, often crawling, through a fire for much of my life.

    At times, I took different paths, skipping through fields of flowers, but eventually I would find my way back to what I knew, which gave me a strange sense of comfort—the fire whose roots had begun in childhood, with my abusive mother.

    I used to be consumed by this fire. I have another tattoo on my foot that reads “Breathe.” For years I lived with a very dysregulated nervous system, constantly alerting me to the threats of the flames forming around me, and breath was something that eluded me.

    How could I breathe when at any moment she could walk up the stairs and find something to lash out at me over?

    How could I breathe when no one wanted to hear how I felt, and my emotions were something I did not understand, nor know how to handle?

    How could I breathe when everything was so frightening?

    How could I breathe when no one ever showed me how?

    Those entrusted to my care were in their own fires that they had never learned to come out of. So of course, as I grew, I felt unsafe and uneasy. And I learned to ignore my breath, ignore that others were able to feel it move through their body, and learned to see only flames everywhere. 

    I grew up in a traditional home as a child of immigrants who had come to the USA for work and to give their children a better life. I went to Catholic school, where I threw myself into academics as a way to be seen, and excelled. My parents were excellent cooks and displayed their love for us through the kitchen table. I had all of my physical and academic needs met.

    I spent my early childhood playing with my brother, who I latched onto as a support system. My mother’s inability to soothe us as babies and toddlers created very sensitive, shy children, deeply afraid of the world around us and deeply connected to each other.

    Unfortunately, my brother and I began to distance during our preteen years. We had created different survival strategies to navigate my parents, and he began to view me as the problem, as my mother was teaching him. I then began to view myself through the same lens.

    I was ridiculed, abandoned emotionally, shamed, and made to believe the dysfunction of the family lay entirely on me. There was a period of physical abuse as well, but during these situations, I at least felt seen.

    I was gaslit to question everything I believed to be true and found myself in imposed isolation in my childhood and teen years, later self-imposed. The world felt too frightening to face. As I grew older, I rebelled against the isolation by looking to others to help soothe me, especially romantic relationships.

    If they didn’t soothe me as I wanted, I grew angry and hurt, isolating myself more and more, or lashing out internally or externally.

    I looked to ease the suffering inside with external gratifications, shopping, traveling, and sex. Unfortunately, nothing could soothe the pain I was feeling.

    In my early twenties I went to a therapist and could do nothing but cry. After a few months of not being able to communicate, she insisted I take benzodiazepines or we would be unable to continue working together.

    My symptoms worsened both emotionally and physically, and I now needed “saving” from both. The helplessness I learned early on continued, as did my need to have others make me feel safe. Both my body and brain became impossible to withstand, and proved to me that I was a victim of life and no one cared about me.

    I found relationships to validate this idea, with addicts, narcissists, and codependents who all eventually grew tired of my need to be loved and soothed out of my pain.

    I was attracting the familiar in these people, who could not show me the love and safety I needed. In other words, I was attaching myself to others to regulate, but they too were stuck in a cycle of dysregulation.

    I found various ways to hurt myself, overspending, starving myself, overexercising, and on more than one occasion taking too many medications to calm myself down, and finding myself in an emergency room. The familiar was living in my nervous system and demanded to be entertained.

    After decades of chronic health issues due to emotional and physical trauma, they finally hit a peak when I was forty-seven and no longer able to work, the one area of my life I’d had some control of. I had to learn to breathe or be completely extinguished by the flames. During this time, I began to learn how to put out the fires.

    I worked hard on retraining my nervous system out of the fight-or-flight state it had entered when I was not soothed as a baby, and rewiring thoughts and behavior patterns created as an extension of that state. In this process, I found the authentic part of myself, the inner child, which brought a deep peace, the peace of integration.

    An integral part of my healing came from practices of forgiveness and compassion. As I rewired old patterns living in my nervous system, I learned about how the brain works, how trauma is stored there, and how our realities are shaped by early experiences.

    Each day in my practices I discovered new associations, when new thoughts and behaviors had started, and had to look at these strategies and their results with self-compassion and forgiveness.

    At first, this was difficult, as it was new to my brain, but as I practiced it became easier, and I started feeling self-compassion and self-love for the first time.

    As I worked with my own toxic personality in these practices, I experienced deep grief for the past and what I was not able to enjoy as a result. Anger was holding on, and I knew it was time to let go. So, I began a practice of curious empathy for the woman who had started my fires, my mother. Awareness of my own dysfunction, self-compassion, and now self-forgiveness allowed me to do the same for others, including her.

    In this case, curious empathy meant becoming aware of her patterns and where they came from by connecting to my own experiences and empathy.

    I had observed her throughout my life to learn about what I was experiencing and how to navigate her, as well as others in the world. I also read tons of self-help books about personality disorders and toxic people, but cognitive knowledge wasn’t enough to understand my mother.

    I watched, listened, and heard stories from my father about my mother’s childhood. I drew upon my own strategies and where they originated. I opened myself up to curiously knowing her, at first from a distance (during this time of healing), and then I incrementally exposed my healing nervous system to her with empathy.

    When I felt balanced and regulated enough, I rejoined our relationship, but with strict boundaries—for both of us. And I found a somewhat different human in front of me, one who had softened in her old age but still retained old behaviors when “triggered.”

    I began to identify her triggers and remained strong when she reacted. I now knew no other way; my nervous system and heart had been retrained into compassion.

    I came to understand that she had created toxic survival strategies because of an inability to communicate and soothe emotions and needs in an effective way. She had been stuck in a fight-or-flight state that prevented her from seeing the world as it was, and seeing the motivations of others clearly.

    And I had learned (and now unlearned) similar methods of interacting with the world.

    I often pictured her as a child or a teen and connected with this version of her through my own inner child. In the moment, I was able to change the hurt and anger I felt to compassion for the way she was trying to get what she needed. This was followed by an inner forgiveness and releasing of the negative emotions.

    I made it clearly known what I would accept, and often joked with her about the way she was acting. She responded with smiling or laughter.

    It became clear that she reacted when she felt vulnerable, and I understood that throughout her childhood, vulnerability was not acceptable, and she was shamed in it. 

    In identifying her methods of showing love, I felt loved and seen, and it was easier to react to her with forgiveness and compassion. It became natural to me to speak as the “parent” (adult) when her old armor of defense came up.

    In daily forgiveness and compassion practices, I find enormous love for the woman still stuck in a fight-or-flight state created in her childhood. There are times I pull away to reinforce that her behavior is unacceptable, but these times are not as prevalent as before.

    As I changed my behavior toward her, she began to change hers toward me. As I regulated my nervous system into safety, it seemed to soothe hers, and she inched closer to the idea of vulnerability with me.  As I let go and replaced the anger with compassion, she felt safe. It is with this safety that she is able to chip away a tiny piece of her armor in our interactions.

    I cannot ever change her, and she will pass with the trauma state she is in as her identity. But, for my own well-being, I chose forgiveness and compassion, to bring her a small drop of water each time I see her. Remaining in the fire with her, by being angry, was not an option any longer. 

    I found my way out of a fire that had nearly taken my life and hope to continue sharing my experience of healing. These days I find myself skipping through fields of flowers on a regular basis, and feel it is a blessing to share it with those who have not yet gotten there—and those who may never.

    **I am not suggesting that anyone should keep people in their lives that they feel are “toxic.” We all need to do what we feel is best for us based on our own unique experience.

  • Searching for Purpose? 5 Ways to Embrace Not Knowing What You Want

    Searching for Purpose? 5 Ways to Embrace Not Knowing What You Want

    “Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it.” ~Alan Watts

    We sometimes hear of remarkable people who just knew what they wanted to become from a young age. I, however, was not one of them.

    When I was about eight years old, I told my cousin that I wanted to become a scientist. Looking back, I find that pronouncement baffling since I wasn’t particularly interested in science at the time. What I did love doing, though, was making art.

    My interest in art eventually led me to study graphic design. I thought that design would be a perfect fit since I’m creative and logical. But at a certain point, I realized that while design made some sense logically, it didn’t feel right to me.

    I wondered, how could I have put so much time and effort into something I didn’t enjoy doing? It was only much later that I recognized my error: I believed that I had to have everything figured out completely.

    Embracing Not-Knowing

    What do you do when you realize what you worked so hard to attain isn’t what you want anymore? In this situation, many feelings may come up. I felt despair, fear, anger, resentment, sadness, hopelessness, and desperation.

    These powerful emotions can overwhelm us and bring us into a state of paralysis. I remember wanting to pivot, but seeing numerous obstacles before me. If I make a drastic change now, I will have to start from zero, I thought.

    I believe those thoughts and emotions stem from putting too much emphasis on the need to know. In the book The Overweight Brain, Lois Holzman, Ph.D., describes how our obsession with knowing “constrains creativity and risk-taking, keeps us and our dreams and ideas small, and stops us from continuing to grow and learn new things.”

    As Holzman explains, infants don’t know much of anything. However, they grow tremendously in a relatively short period. They can develop this way by “not-knowing growing,” which one does through play.

    Learning to Play Again

    Let’s think for a moment. When you play a game, do you want to know what will happen next? If you did, then the game wouldn’t be any fun—there would be no point in playing it.

    After working for seven years in my full-time job, I ended up quitting with nothing lined up and no idea of what to do next. Leaving your day job like this isn’t something I would suggest to everyone. But for me, it felt like the best thing to do at the time.

    Taking a risk like that was exhilarating. I felt like a newborn child, free to explore the world and its possibilities again.

    Before I made that decision, I used to sit in my office thinking, once I figure out what I want to do, I’ll be able to take some action. But I didn’t need to figure anything out. I just needed to begin by exploring.

    As I tried many new things, I gained insight into who I was becoming. By interacting with the world with openness and curiosity, I found the clarity I needed to create my life with purpose.

    Five Ways to Embrace Not-Knowing

    So, how do you start embracing not-knowing to realize your true potential? Here are five ways for you to consider.

    1. Question your situation.

    Notice the assumptions you’re making about what is and isn’t possible. Like a child, be curious about what opportunities are already available at this moment. Instead of thinking, “Things can’t change because (some reason),” ask yourself: “I wonder what would happen if I said this… looked that way… went over there… tried this and that…?”

    2. Take tiny risks.

    You don’t have to quit your job to find a sense of purpose. Once you’ve identified the possibilities by questioning your situation, see what would happen if you did something different.

    For example, if you’re passionate about diversity, inclusion, and belonging, how can you contribute to supporting that in your current role, or even outside your job? Perhaps you can spark a conversation about it with a few people. Because the risk is low, you may feel a rush of excitement from breaking your regular pattern.

    3. Alchemize the experiences you’ve gained.

    If you lose interest in something you worked hard for, realize that it wasn’t all for naught. Think instead, “Okay, so this is how I feel about it right now. How can I transmute this thing by combining it with other elements to produce something new and life-affirming?”

    For example, I already had design and writing skills. I also had an interest in anthropology, psychology, learning, and human development. So, I tried to combine my existing skills with my interest in learning and human development to become an instructional designer. That pivot eventually led me to join a team in designing an online course that teaches intercultural skills to internationally trained professionals.

    4. Give an improv performance.

    If you’re a person who feels the need to plan everything, see if you can give an improv performance of a different version of yourself. For example, you can perform the version of yourself that finds the unknown exciting. Go out and walk like that version of you, speak like that version of you, listen like that version of you, eat like that version of you.

    If it helps, imagine that you are an actor in a movie scene.

    5. Do something unexpected.

    Do you have a routine that you follow? What if you broke out of that routine for one day? Choose a day when you have no plans and do something that would surprise people who know you well. Maybe you will end up having a conversation with a total stranger and make a new friend.

    Final Thoughts

    From my journey, I’ve learned that not knowing what we want isn’t a sign that something’s wrong. It’s an invitation to walk the path of self-discovery. The journey is not a straight line—there are twists and turns, and sometimes we find ourselves at crossroads.

    Remember that we are constantly in a state of becoming. We can shape each instance of our life by choosing to stay open, be curious, and explore the world with a sense of child-like wonder, which releases us from the confines of the mind.

    Living this way, we give ourselves the space to grow into our true potential.

  • How I Overcame My Psychic Addiction and Stopped Giving My Power Away

    How I Overcame My Psychic Addiction and Stopped Giving My Power Away

    “If you’re looking for a sign from the universe, and you don’t see one, consider it a sign that what you really need is to look inside yourself.” ~Lori Deschene

    I used to have no idea what I should do. About anything. I would go from friend to friend running polls:

    Should I be a solo singer or in a group?

    Is this guy the one?

    Should I do this job or that job?

    Should I stay in LA or move to Vancouver?

    Should I get bangs?

    On and on it went. It wasn’t that I wanted validation. It was that I had no clue what I should do. Or, if I did know, I would quickly override it with endless doubt. I’d loop:

    “Maybe that isn’t the right decision. What if you’re wrong. Maybe it’s better if you do this.”

    It didn’t stop, and I couldn’t get it right. If only someone would just help a girl out. Surely, they’d know what’s best for me.

    There was a period of time (okay, years) when I had a serious psychic addiction. I would go from tarot reader to intuitive to tea reader to whatever else held the key to my life and purpose. Numerology, astrology, palm reader, random aliens, or angels—you name it, I doled out cash for it. It was my favorite hobby.

    Years back, I went through a breakup, and I had very important questions like, “When is he coming back?”

    I made some serious rounds through the LA tarot circuit. I found one reader that I bonded with at the now-closed Bodhi Tree (still grieving the loss…way longer than that ex). I liked her a lot, and because her readings gave me the kernel of hope I needed, she was the one, and I was hooked. It was like her cards magically tapped into my ex! In the first reading. She said, “Looks like you will be seeing him very soon.”

    Then I saw him on Melrose.

    What?

    Ding, ding, ding. She was the direct line, and I needed more. She just did it so well, tuning into my future.

    Every time I saw her, I knew I would get exactly what I needed. A hit, a bump—I could relax, knowing all was well with my existence. My future was all figured out. The love would return, fame was destined, and money would soon pour in. So I started going more and more. She only worked a few times a week, but I often made sure my name was on that appointment list.

    Then one day, it happened. It was the wake-up call that I needed but hadn’t prepared for.

    I got to the Bodhi Tree before her shift (I knew her schedule, of course), and since they weren’t yet open, I hung out on the sidewalk waiting. I needed to get to her first.

    My heart sped up with excitement when I saw her gliding down the sidewalk. The Tarot Queen, the one who held my future in her hands, walked toward me, obviously flanked with fairies and magic dust.

    Though we were the only two people on the sidewalk, she took a few moments to see me. I smiled, waved with enthusiasm, and walked toward her.

    Her gaze met mine, and we locked eyes. And for just a quick moment, she held my gaze. And then it happened. Her face kind of contorted, and she jumped back a bit. She was surprised or worse, scared when she saw me.

    She was scared to see me.

    Not the “OMG, I didn’t see you, and you startled me” kind but an “Oh no, this person is stalking me” look. She had panicked eyes. She was one thousand percent making a judgment call, and it was that I had gone way too far with the readings, and she was worried, perhaps for herself.

    She had become my drug, and I had come for my fix—she was doling out oracles for a reality that did not currently exist. The future. She played it off that day (oh yes, I got my reading), but it was a sight I couldn’t unsee.

    You know when someone you’re paying rejects you that something is off. It’s like those stories about drug dealers cutting their clients off in the hopes they go to rehab. You almost can’t believe it and assume it’s a myth until you get a first-hand account of one of these unicorn scenarios.

    Of course, an addiction to the need to know isn’t going to land me a DUI, but it wasn’t leading me to self-confidence and rock-solid intuition. Besides, wake-up calls come in all different “hello, notice me” alerts.

    Sometimes you just need a giant slap in the face with a deck of goddess cards to get you back on track.

    Now just to be fully transparent, that was not the end of my psychic run. It was the end of my time with her because I hate to look bad, but it didn’t stop me from getting advice from wherever I could. However, it did make an impression.

    And just to further drive the transparency home, when I was over that guy, there was another. And another that I sought advice for “out there,” whether it was with a Love Tarot deck or a friend that I thought somehow knew something I didn’t. Here’s what I didn’t know…

    No one outside of yourself knows what your answers are.

    No one.

    Not a one.

    Things just take the time they need to take, and we need to learn what we’re meant to learn. It’s the healing and completion that matter, not the time required.

    My overthinking, obsessive mind and love of all things spiritual led me to an amazing teacher that helped me shift to my inner knowing instead of needing constant outside approval.

    She was strongly opposed to psychics. She had spent many years as one but quit when she had the realization that people stopped living when they were told something about their potential future.

    If someone hears “Your soulmate is a blond man with an accent,” they then cease giving anyone else the time of day and might miss an amazing dark-haired guy in the process. That blond could be coming, but he may not. Psychics are sometimes accurate, but they are not perfect. No one is.

    Aren’t we all just swinging in the dark?

    And things change. A clairvoyant might have seen a glimmer of something that you might quickly grow out of or change course from. Nothing is permanent, and we can change our current path in a moment.

    My spiritual teacher used the term “corner store drug dealers” when describing psychics. They provide an easy-to-find, quick fix of the most addictive and popular drug (the who, what, where, when, and why) that comes in the form of your juicy future. One hit at a time.

    After many busy years in that business, she didn’t want to co-sign it anymore. So she walked away because it removed people from their present moment. She wanted to encourage people to tap into their own intuition—something she believed only came from life experience in the “now.” She rarely ever told me something I couldn’t feel for myself, and she did her best to guide me toward my true instinct.

    It was a gift I could never repay. Something I could never have gotten from a reading.

    Does this mean I’m psychic-free? No, I’m not, but I get them for entertainment now. I like to get a reading on my birthday most years. I got one in New Orleans (isn’t that rite of passage?), and I’ll never turn down a tarot party. I’ll get one, but I don’t shift my life to fit the prediction.

    Readings are also helpful when used as a real-life pendulum. Like, “Did I like what she just said? Do I want it to be true”? Great, then move in that direction regardless of any outcome. It’s just a clue to what feels right and good.

    However, despite all this “look at how I’ve changed” wisdom, I recently fell prey to my old ways. This past August I went to a sought-after channeler to celebrate my birthday. As much as I wanted to just toss her expensive words into the fun psychic basket with the rest, I found myself in that all too familiar feeling of my past.

    Maybe it was because it was hard to score an appointment, or because she has a high accuracy rate, or perhaps because I was feeling directionless in general. Regardless of why, when she told me that Nashville was where I’d be by Christmas, I just couldn’t shake her prediction.

    Here’s the catch, my husband didn’t want to go, and he wasn’t budging. But, but, but…I needed to get there. After months of Zillow shopping and spinning out of any intuition I had left, I came up with a genius idea.

    Go back for another reading. Say nothing and see if she still sees Nashville. She was, after all, in a trance, so she would never remember. When a spot opened on her waiting list, I jumped at the chance.

    Drumroll. This session did not include Nashville in the near future.

    I was so relieved. Not because I will or will not eventually live in Nashville. Or Milan or London or anywhere else in the world. But because the choice was mine again. It always was, but I had given my power away to someone else. She’s a lovely person too, by the way—this was all on me. We create our own destiny. We create our futures. No one else.

    Only we truly know our own answers. And we can change our minds whenever we want.

    Even my psychic relapse bestowed a gift. I am even clearer about what feels right for me now. I just needed a reminder that I am the only one making decisions for my life. So any future readings will be a fun check-point for my intuition. And believe me, I’d be thrilled if something came true, but no prediction ever has…

    Well, I did see that ex on Melrose that one time. But other than that, nothing. Not a thing.

  • How To Make Yourself Stronger When Facing Health Challenges

    How To Make Yourself Stronger When Facing Health Challenges

    “The beautiful thing about setbacks is they introduce us to our strengths.” ~Robin S. Sharma

    This has been the worst year of my life. Financial stress. Relationship problems. Being separated from my family because of the pandemic. Mentally I’m a mess. I thought I had hit rock bottom. But the worst was yet to come.

    I had been ignoring health issues for years and finally dragged myself in for an ultrasound. I already knew I had a fibroid and had booked the ultrasound to check on it. However, as the sonographer explained, I now had innumerable fibroids. They had taken over my uterus and ultimately my life.

    I remember starting to feel numb as she talked me through my scan. I knew there was no other option. I needed a hysterectomy, and I was terrified. I was scared about what this meant for my body and my future, but I also have extremely high anxiety about doctors and hospitals. You can imagine how I felt about surgery.

    One of my favorite motivational speakers, Eric Thomas, talks about how pressure creates diamonds. Just when you think you’ve had enough pressure and all you can bear, life turns up the heat. I felt like I was burning.

    I knew surgery was inevitable and I needed to get my mindset right. As much as positivity eluded me the past year, I had to be mentally and physically strong going into the surgery because I wanted to come out a diamond.

    The Japanese call this kensho, which means growth through pain or finding positivity in life’s challenges. If you want to become a diamond or a stronger version of yourself from whatever you are facing, here are some strategies that will help.

    1. Allow yourself to feel everything. It’s normal.

    When coping with health challenges, you’ll probably filter your feelings with shoulds:

    I shouldn’t feel anxious (angry, sad).

    I shouldn’t act so irrationally.

    I should think more positively.

    I should feel grateful it’s not worse.

    I should hold myself together for those around me.

    Truth is, though, you are going to feel all the emotions. You’re also going to feel your body’s symptoms. It’s easy to get stuck in the pain because, until it stops, it’s hard to see the good in life.

    Give yourself permission to feel everything. If life is continually knocking you down, of course you’ll feel angry. In fact, some anger is probably going to help. It’s the fuel you need to rise up and change things.

    When I started to cry in theatre before surgery, I felt guilty and embarrassed. The nurses kept telling me it’s perfectly normal. And, you know what? It is perfectly normal to feel scared before surgery. It would be weird if you weren’t.

    Allow yourself to feel every miserable thing without the guilt. It’s part of grieving and healing. You may need some time to grieve the loss of something physical or a way of life you imagined that now has to change. You may need to set aside some quiet time to check in with yourself and feel whatever you feel. Grieve what you need to let go.

    But the way you make sure it doesn’t consume you is by allowing yourself to feel the good too. And it’s the good that you want to blow up and make bigger in your mind.

    I bet there are so many little things you can appreciate about your life. You can take a moment to savor a healthy meal or feel the sun on your skin. I find a lot of happiness in my cat’s funny antics and cuddles, so I always make sure I am fully present around him.

    Small goods won’t fix your big problems. Believe me, I know how hard it is to find the positives when anxiety takes over. No amount of mindfulness is ever going to fix the misery of a health problem that confines you to bed or the house. Nor will it take away the physical pain that you have to endure daily.

    But the good can soften the bad and give you strength to keep going.

    2. Build your mental fortitude.

    You have a choice as to how you are going to face this health problem. You can let it take you down or you can use it as an opportunity to become a stronger version of yourself.

    Surgery was inevitable. Anxiety was inevitable. Pain was inevitable. Despite all this, I made a promise to myself that I would face it with strength and hope for a better future.

    Unfortunately, after a really difficult year, I knew I wasn’t in the right headspace for it. I had to start “training my brain” in the same way you might train your body for a big mountain climb or fitness event.

    You can train your brain in a variety of ways. You can get support from positive people in your life. You can get counseling. But you also need something you can do daily on your own.

    One of the best ways to train your brain is through selective use of social media and Google.

    If you Google your health problem, you’ll find positive stories, but you’ll also find a lot of negative and scary information. In my case surgery was inevitable and I knew the risks. Why needlessly worry about outcomes I couldn’t control?

    Instead, I ignored my inclination to over research everything, and in preparation for surgery I decided to read or watch one positive hysterectomy story each day. That’s all I allowed myself to look at. This was one of the best things I did for my mental health.

    I also trained my mind by going for a walk everyday and listening to a motivating video or podcast. This was a way to calm and connect with myself and to keep building my mental strength for surgery and recovery. I really felt the benefits of this practice the day of surgery.

    You have to find videos and speakers that speak to your soul, and everyone will be different. I prefer a tough love approach, and as I mentioned before, one of my favorite speakers is Eric Thomas.

    On the day of surgery, whenever I would feel a wave of anxiety, I would say to myself “pressure creates diamonds.” This idea gave me strength and reminded me that this surgery was a gift I was giving myself so I could have a better future.

    3. Put one foot in front of the other.

    There will be days it seems impossible to get out of bed. You will start to feel better and then you’ll feel worse. You will get overwhelmed and discouraged. No one is perfect, but you can be better day by day even with setbacks.

    In the gym you build strength through progressive overload. This means doing a bit more each time you train. When I coach my clients, I teach them that little steps lead to big results. It’s all about consistency and patience.

    When I was recovering from surgery, I had to apply the same principles. First, I had to learn to sit up. Then I was able to walk around my hospital room. A few days later I was walking around my yard and eventually I started walking down the road. Each day I literally walked a few more steps. I set my sights on being able to walk to a bridge down the road and two weeks post surgery I got there.

    Before surgery I was hitting personal bests in the gym with big deadlifts, squats, and presses. I know it will be a long time before I have that strength again, but I will get there. Step by step I will build myself up to be even stronger than before.

    Along the way I will be patient and kind with myself and give my body what it needs. Some days I have to give in and just sit in the sun with my cat because that’s all I can manage.

    I know how hard it can be to deal with health challenges. Sometimes you have to let yourself cry and feel angry—or whatever else you feel. In the face of setbacks always remember this is your opportunity to get stronger and healthier than ever before. Pressure creates diamonds, and you are on your way to becoming the most beautiful gem.

  • Are You Sick of Waiting, Wanting, and Wishing for a Better Life?

    Are You Sick of Waiting, Wanting, and Wishing for a Better Life?

    “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” ~Walter Elliott

    I often find myself impatient with the pace of my progress. Waiting for my life to move forward can sometimes feel like I’m watching paint dry.

    There are so many moments when we feel like our life is at a standstill. This is generally where I double down with my intensity. I hit it with everything I can. The crash comes soon after from the inevitable violent collision of my mind, body, and spirit as they’re pushed beyond their limits.

    The idea of having to wait for anything is a first-world problem. The thought that your cat’s costume might not arrive in time for Halloween is enough to bring some people to tears. Just thinking of Mr. Whiskers having to go out as a plain ol’ cat is a bloody crime.

    And that’s waiting for a cat costume.

    What about that book you wish would just write itself?

    What about that scale that still shows you being forty pounds heavier than you want to be?

    What about that bank account that still isn’t bigger than your credit card bill?

    These are not things we want to wait for. We want the juice without the squeeze.

    We’ve grown so impatient with the idea of waiting for results that we act like moving slowly is a poison to progress. We default to believing the antidote is a shot of intensity straight to the veins. But all that gives us is further frustration, anger, guilt that we’re not doing enough, and the feeling that we need to push harder.

    It’s such a horrible way to approach life. Especially since the only finish line comes when you take your final breath. And I don’t know about you, but I’m in no rush to get there early.

    It’s exhausting even thinking about that period of my life when I wanted to write a book, lose forty pounds, and stop feeling broke. Not a day would pass when I wouldn’t be consumed by feelings of doubt and hopelessness. I should have been pushing out diamonds with the amount of pressure I was putting on myself.

    That struggle led to a life-changing aha moment for me. I realized that there are two ways to approach making progress. You can hit it hard with intensity. Or you can set a long-term aim with consistency.

    Which of these do you think is sustainable for making progress?

    Think back to the children’s story of the tortoise versus the hare. These are lessons worth revisiting for their simple and profound principles on approaching life.

    We all overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year with steady momentum.

    How do you write a book? By establishing a daily writing habit.

    How do you lose forty pounds? By moving your body every day and eating less than you burn.

    How do you get out of debt? By making a daily choice to spend less than you earn (and invest the difference).

    You’re not going to write a book in a day, but there’s a damn good chance you’ll have one in a year.

    You’re not going to lose forty pounds in a day, but you could in a year.

    You won’t get out of debt in a day, but you’ll set a trajectory for wealth creation that lasts the rest of your life.

    How different could your life be a year from now if you committed to something that’s important to you?

    Sit with that idea for a moment. Soak it in.

    What would it feel like to hold that book in your hands?

    What would it feel like to look at that scale and see the number you want to see?

    What would it feel like to be debt-free and investing in your future?

    I’m serious. Feel it. Wait till you get goosebumps.

    That is peace of mind, relief, and a sense of fulfillment tied up in a bow on Christmas morning. That is the realization that you can have almost anything you want in your life if you stay disciplined with your priorities. That is the power of consistent daily habits.

    There’s a saying about hope not being a strategy for change. I do believe hope is a beautiful emotion. But I’ve seen myself get stuck for years waiting, wanting, and wishing for a better life. Hope didn’t give me a way out because it left me at the mercy of my current circumstances.

    Writer Lu Xun said, “Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”

    This is the power of action and putting one foot in front of the other.

    Every action you take is a vote toward the person you want to be. The more we align the things we do on a daily basis with the person we want to become, the more fulfillment we feel in the little things that get us there.

    What do you wish you could change if only it didn’t feel so hard? And what could it mean for your life if every day you prioritized this change and did one small thing to work toward it?

    Make the decision to commit to a simple daily habit that reflects the person you want to be and the life you want to live. When you do this, you’re deciding to take back control of your life. You’re deciding to give yourself a better future. You’re deciding that you matter.

  • FREE Online Summit, Activating Hope, Starts on Thursday!

    FREE Online Summit, Activating Hope, Starts on Thursday!

    “Hope is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity.” ~Jane Goodall

    Hi friends! As you may know, I’m always on the lookout for free events that can help us be our best selves and create a better world. With this in mind, I’m excited to invite you to a FREE online summit, starting this week—Activating Hope: Together We Can, Together We Will.

    Considering the division and chaos in the world today, it’s not easy to hold onto a sense of optimism, and it may seem pointless to do so. Hope alone won’t solve the problems we face as a collective—the impacts of climate change, the uncertainty of the pandemic, the challenge of racial injustice.

    But hope isn’t naivete or magical thinking. Hope can be a powerful force for positive change, igniting our inner strength and propelling us into action. That’s what inspired Jane Goodall—a beacon of hope and kindness in the world for decades—to lead this transformative event.

    This FREE four-day online summit starts this Thursday, November 4th. You’ll hear from a once-in-a-generation gathering of celebrated speakers and luminaries, including:

    • Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, with an opening keynote and closing remarks
    • Craig Foster and Ross Frylinck of Academy Award–winning documentary My Octopus Teacher
    • Zolani Mahola, actress, storyteller, and lead singer of internationally acclaimed South African music group Freshlyground
    • Silvia Vasquez-Lavado, the first openly gay woman to complete the Seven Summits
    • Edith Eger, PhD, Holocaust survivor, bestselling author, and specialist in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder
    • Jack Kornfield, PhD, author, Buddhist practitioner, and Spirit Rock Meditation Center founding teacher
    • Tara Brach, PhD, psychologist, author, and teacher of meditation, emotional healing, and spiritual awakening
    • Bonnie Wan, partner and head of brand strategy at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
    • Corrina Gould, chair and spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan

    Through inspiring stories and teachings, hands-on workshops, and illuminating conversations, you’ll learn how to hold onto hope when all seems hopeless, cultivate hope in your children, and face the challenges of your everyday life with strength and optimism.

    Register here for free to reserve your spot and receive the full daily schedule. I hope you enjoy the lineup!

  • What I Really Mean When I Say I’m Fine (Spoiler: I’m Not)

    What I Really Mean When I Say I’m Fine (Spoiler: I’m Not)

    “Tears are words that need to be written.” ~Paulo Coelho

    It was lovely to see you today. I haven’t seen you in such a long time. So much has happened since the last time we saw each other.

    You asked me how I was. I politely replied, “I’m fine” and forced a smile that I hoped would be believable. It must have worked. You smiled back and said, “I’m so glad to hear that. You look great.”

    But I’m not really fine. I haven’t been fine for a very long time, and I wonder if I will ever know what “fine” actually feels like again.

    Some days are good, some not so good. I’m doing my best to stay optimistic and to keep faith that tomorrow will be better. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s worse. I’m never prepared for either outcome.

    I’m doing my best to pretend I’m fine.

    The mask I wear hides my pain very well. I’ve been wearing it for so long now that no one can see through it anymore. It’s my new face, and it smiles on demand.

    Some days I wish I didn’t have to pretend to smile. I long for the day when it will come naturally, sincerely, and genuinely.

    When I say I’m fine this is what I really mean…

    I’m sad. I’m really having a hard time right now. I wish I could tell you. I’d like to think that you might even care. And maybe you do truly care. But I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want to bother or burden anyone with my troubles.

    My troubles are big and ugly. I can’t burden you with them. You are facing demons of your own. You don’t need to be exposed to mine. That would be so selfish of me. To think that your demons are not as important or debilitating as mine.

    So I just tell you I’m fine. I’m protecting you when I say I’m fine. Because I’m afraid my pain is just more toxicity.

    I want to tell you my troubles. I want you to take them away. I wish someone could fix everything that hurts, though I no one else can do that for me. Still, I wonder, does anyone have all the answers to these questions that are pounding in my head and causing me grief and anxiety?

    Anyone?

    There’s a tightness in my chest that won’t go away. There’s a darkness in the pit of my stomach that makes me nauseous. My shoulders feel weighted and my arms long for human touch. A body to wrap around tightly to comfort me and ensure me that everything will be okay.

    My troubles have completely consumed my life.

    Inside, I’m crying all the time. My soul is crushed, and my heart is full of holes that I’m desperately trying to patch up as best I can.

    I’m full of anxiety inside, and no matter how hard I try to find peace, it eludes me. I feel there are a million demons inside of me, and I don’t know which one needs my attention the most.

    So I ignore them all. It’s too much for me to bear most days.

    When I say I’m fine I really wish you could hear my inner voice screaming, “I’m not fine, and I need help. Please stay and talk to me, comfort me, help make this overwhelming pain stop.” I want to say this to you. But I open my mouth, and “I’m fine” comes out instead.

    I’m not really fine. I’m not sure how to handle today, and I fear what tomorrow may bring. It’s constant anxiety. I wish it would go away if only for a day.

    I want to be fine, honest I do.

    One day I would love to sincerely tell you how fine I am. That all my anxieties, worries, and fears are gone, or at least less overpowering. That I walk with a skip in my step and a song in my heart. I want to feel that. I may have felt this once before a long time ago, but I don’t really remember it.

    Every day I’m doing my best to smile and make the day better. I’m thinking positively, I’m taking big deep breaths when I need to. I’m reading inspirational blogs and quotes. I’m even listening to guided meditations.

    Today I went shopping and bought myself something nice. I know, a temporary fix. But it worked.

    It all works. For the moment. And then the moment is gone, and it all comes flooding back. All the turmoil, the anguish, the anxiety, the pain. I breathe deeply again. And I’m okay for a few more minutes.

    But for now, I’m doing my best. I know that everything in life is temporary. The good, the bad. Even life. It’s all temporary. If I can just get through today, I’ll be fine.

    I’m doing my best to see the bright side. I can see it some days. But it doesn’t take away the turmoil brewing inside of me. It only masks it with a Band-Aid. A temporary fix.

    Everything is just a temporary fix until I finally become brave enough to get to the bottom of my demons. I need to face them one at a time. I need to bring them to the surface, dust them off, address them, heal from them, and then let them go.

    This I know. But it’s such a daunting task. Just thinking about doing that is overwhelming and causes me a great deal of anxiety. I know it’s up to me to be able to say, “I’m fine” and really mean it.

    One day I will. When I feel strong enough to do so. Until then, I may say I’m fine when I’m really not. But I will try to find the courage to say, “Actually, I’m sad,” even though I know you don’t have a magic wand to take all my troubles away.

    Maybe just opening up and letting you support me will help. Maybe if I stop painting a smile on my face and telling you “I’m fine, really I am,” one day soon I will be.

  • Where My Depression Really Came From and What Helped Me Heal

    Where My Depression Really Came From and What Helped Me Heal

    “How you do one thing is how you do everything.” ~Unknown

    One afternoon, during a particularly low slump, I was getting out of the shower. Quickly reaching for something on the sink, I knocked an old glass off the counter, shattering it onto the floor.

    In most cases, one might experience stress, frustration, or sadness upon accidentally breaking an object that belongs to them. They might feel agitation on top of their already poor mood. But in the moment the glass shattered, I felt instant relief.

    It was an old item I’d gotten at a thrift store, and the image on the glass was all but worn off. In the back of my mind, I’d wanted to get rid of the whole glass set, and the shattering of one of its pieces served as a firm confirmation it was time to let go.

    In that unexpected moment of relief, I realized I was holding on to the glasses out of some strange obligation and a fear that I wouldn’t have the money to replace things if I gave them away.

    I marveled at this interesting aspect of my consciousness I had not noticed before, wondering, “What else am I doing this with? How many things in my life are subtle burdens that I tolerate out of some vague sense of obligation? Does it really make me a “good person” to tolerate so much, to hold on to so much unwanted baggage from the past?

    Suddenly, I remembered something I had recently learned from one of my mentors about depression: We must stop clinging to people, places, and things that no longer deliver the joy they once did. Even more importantly, release things that never delivered joy, even when we thought they would.

    This sacred practice is all too underrated. We must cut the dead weight in our lives, even if it is unnerving. Whether it is a negative relationship, a job in which you are disrespected, a habit that is draining your health, or even some unwanted items in your home that are taking up too much space.

    It is our stubborn unwillingness, our fear of letting go, that keeps us in low spirits, day after day. In these instances, we are waiting for the impossible. We are waiting for things to miraculously improve without us having to do anything different.

    Even though I was in a bad mood, I thanked the glass and the sudden shattering for its lesson. The humbling realization was that I was a clinger—someone who stuck with people, places, and things long after they’d proven they were not right for me.

    As the saying goes, “How you do one thing is how you do everything.” The glasses that I didn’t really want any more were a small symbol of how I was an energetic hoarder. I kept things until life forcefully yanked them out of my hands.

    Often, I clung to subpar situations out of fear. I was afraid of being left alone, with nothing, so I’d gotten myself into the habit of anxiously settling. And as we all know, settling is no way to live a satisfying, dignified life.

    When we settle, the parts of us that aspire to grow are denied respect. We subconsciously tell ourselves it is not worth it—we are not worth it.

    My habit of settling had gotten me into more binds than I could count—low-paying jobs, incompatible relationships, boring days, and restless nights wondering what I was supposed to be doing. Why weren’t things better?

    The simple answer was, I didn’t choose anything better. I didn’t know how.

    When we don’t know ourselves, we don’t know what we want and need. And when we doubt our worth or our ability to make things happen, we hold ourselves back from what would make us happy. This is where depression breeds, along with burnout, stress, and apathy.

    So how can this painful spiral be prevented? And if you already find yourself in this predicament, how can you climb out of the hole?

    1. Assess everything in your life.

    What just isn’t working, no matter how hard you try, in work, your relationships, your habits? These are the areas where you need to make a decision. Either let something go or make a change that is significant enough to transform how you feel about the situation.

    2. Find the hope.

    Hopelessness is a huge aspect of lingering depression. The problem is, people often try to talk themselves into being hopeful about something that actually isn’t going to work (e.g.: a relationship that was meant to end). Instead of clinging, let go and seek out new things that feel truly hopeful instead.

    It’s not always easy to let go, especially when it pertains to relationships, and particularly when you’re not hopeful there’s anything better out there for you. Start by asking yourself, “Why do I believe this is the best I can do, or what I deserve?” And then, “What would I need to believe in order to let go of this thing that isn’t good for me and open myself up to something better?”

    3. Change anything.

    When we are stuck in a rut, it usually means things have been the same way for too long. Routine and consistency can be a poison or a cure, depending on the situation. If you’re feeling stuck, look for how doing the same thing every day isn’t working. Sometimes, making any random change is enough to shake you out of that rut.

    This could mean taking a new route to work or doing something creative when you usually binge watch Netflix. Sometimes little changes can give us a surprising level of new insight and self-understanding.

    4. Lastly, admit to what you really want.

    If you won’t risk being hopeful and taking action toward what you really want, you will default to a life of tragic safety. You will shy away from the truth, clinging to all the things that don’t really resonate with you. Ironically, you have to be willing to risk loss to in order to acquire valuable things in life.

    So start by being brave enough to admit what you really want in all aspects of your life, and perhaps more importantly, what you need. What would make you feel fulfilled and excited about life again?

    —

    We often think of depression as a vengeful disease that robs us of our joy and vitality. But when we begin to look at our lives with more honesty, we can see depression for what it really is: a messenger.

    I like to think of depression as the first phase of enlightenment—a reckoning we must endure to come out the other side with clarity. When we stop pushing negative feelings away, we can discover why they exist and what steps will resolve them.

    For me, this meant letting go of how I thought my life should be and embracing how it was. Rather than lamenting about the past or obsessing about the future, I started taking practical steps to improve the present. This included cleaning up my diet, giving up a job that no longer worked for me, and digging into attachment styles to learn how to improve my relationships. The more action I took, the more hopeful and empowered I felt.

    The road to happiness isn’t nearly as direct as we would like it to be, but this gives us the opportunity to access what we truly wanted all along: self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-empowerment. Depression isn’t a problem, but a road-sign. The question is, will we ignore it, or let ourselves be guided?

  • One Question for Anyone Who’s Stuck in a Rut: What Do You Believe?

    One Question for Anyone Who’s Stuck in a Rut: What Do You Believe?

    “You become what you believe, not what you think or what you want.” ~Oprah Winfrey

    What do you believe? During the forced stillness of the pandemic environment we’re all living in, this is a question I’ve been faced with more intensely than ever. In particular, I’ve come to question what I believe about myself, and how that impacts every element of my life.

    Coming out of years of self-help for social and general anxiety, a long-standing eating disorder, and several dissatisfying personal relationships, I had to come to question what these external realities reflected back to me. For what you believe about not only your life, but more importantly, yourself, will show up again and again, and yes, again, until you’ve finally addressed the root of the problem.

    In my case, my lack of self-value resulted in many dysfunctions and setbacks in my personal and professional world.

    My deteriorating self-image led to my eating obsessions, a lack of confidence exacerbated anxieties, and the low value I placed on myself was most likely written all over me, judging by the way others showed disrespect toward me in personal relationships.

    Not only was I devaluing who I was, but I also operated from a place of being closed off to others, afraid that if I showed my true self I wouldn’t measure up to their expectations.

    This all came to a head when COVID-19 emerged and led to a global lockdown. Going off of numerous negative relationship experiences, I visited a doctor to discover I had a pelvic floor condition called vaginismus, which results in involuntary vaginal muscle tightening that makes sex and physical exams like pap smears either impossible or extremely painful.

    I spent the next four months going through physical therapy to heal my body from this condition, breaking off a new relationship to focus completely on my own journey. It amazed me how the mind and body go hand-in-hand; my muscle tightening felt like a total embodiment of years of being closed off to others and remaining safely isolated from sharing my true self.

    As I mentioned previously, prior to being diagnosed with vaginismus I’d spent years healing my mental health problems and gaining strength in my career experience.

    After high school, I was lost in my career path for a solid period of time, making lukewarm attempts at artistic endeavors such as acting and modeling, never fully prepared to take a leap and fully immerse myself in any one field.

    Again, this would require a bearing of my true self that would frighten me just to think about. Not only that, it would mean that I had the nerve to believe I was worthy of attempting a profession that’s reserved for an elite group of “special” people, a group I never considered myself to be a part of.

    I did muster up enough courage to move to Los Angeles, however, where I felt I could start a new identity. My Northern California roots felt outdated, and along with some family I sought to better myself with a fresh start.

    One of my first steps toward positive changes was a hostessing gig at a bowling alley, which forced me to get out of my shell and be more social for a change. I still felt very self-conscious, but the more I worked on interacting with customers and coworkers, the more I learned how much I loved people.

    This further developed when, following a chance Intro to Journalism course I took at Pasadena City College in Southern California, I found a new joy that I wasn’t expecting.

    I began to love writing, and not only that, my favorite element of this new career path was interviewing—something I never thought I’d be able to conquer with the severity of my social anxiety, which prevented me from going into grocery stores at its peak

    Deep down, I started to believe that something different could be possible for me. Maybe I could break out of my old mindset and turn into the person I’d always felt I was inside: someone who loved people, longed for and accomplished successful interpersonal relationships, and stood in her power, unapologetically.

    By January of 2020, I had gained a local job news writing in my home base of Burbank and felt optimistic about the future. After the pandemic hit, however, I went through a time of feeling down during isolation. This paired with the vaginismus diagnosis made me become initially quite frustrated.

    “Why is this happening to me?” I wondered. I had done a lot to overcome other personal issues, but now having to do months of diligent, and sometimes extremely painful, physical therapy felt like a punishment that I didn’t deserve.

    After a short bit of contemplation, however, I had a real and sudden shift in perspective. I simply thought, “I’ve been through more than this in the past. I’ll get through it.” I believed I could, and from that moment on dedicated myself to healing not only physically, but emotionally as well.

    Within four months I made enough progress to end in-person physical therapy appointments, I started blog writing and continued with news writing in Burbank, earned a journalism scholarship over the summer, which I contributed toward my studies, and now have just started my own independent journalism writing website.

    The more I believed that I could accomplish my goals, and the more I felt I was worthy of such things, the more I saw everything in the universe work for me, and not against me.

    Today I continue to improve my self-image, and I have a long way to go. But overall, I feel healed from where I once was.

    I’m pursuing my passions, now unashamed to show and share who I truly am.

    I demonstrate a great deal of self-respect in personal relationships, no longer tolerating poor treatment from others who don’t consider my worth.

    My diet and exercise habits are healthier, my vaginismus treatment is complete, and, although I still have to maintain physical therapy exercises, I feel grateful for where I’m at in that regard and in every aspect of my life.

    If you had asked me five years ago, prior to all of this self-improvement, what I believed about myself and my life, I probably would have said I had a promising future ahead, although my actions and interactions continuously showed otherwise.

    This is why I feel I’m at a much more positive place in life at this moment.

    Not only do I propose that I believe positive things about myself, but I now show it through my actions.

    I no longer want respect, I demand it.

    I no longer want to pursue my goals wholeheartedly, I now do it as much as I can every day.

    And not only do I dream of expressing the truth of who I am, I embody it.

    So, if you too feel like you’re stuck in a rut in your life, if you feel that the world isn’t treating you fairly, and if you don’t like what the universe is showing you, then I urge you to ask yourself:

    What do you believe? About yourself? Your worth? Your life? Your potential?

    What do you believe about what you deserve, in relationships and in your career, and what you can accomplish if you try?

    How do those beliefs affect how you show up in the world—the decisions you make, the chances you take, the things you tolerate, and the habits you follow each day?

    What would you do differently if you challenged your beliefs and recognized they’re not facts?

    And what can you do differently today to create a different outcome for tomorrow?

    These are the questions that shape our lives because our beliefs drive our choices, which ultimately determine who we become.

  • Congruent Depression: What It Is and How to Overcome It

    Congruent Depression: What It Is and How to Overcome It

    “Not all of the depression that people experience is an illness… Unlike clinical depression, congruent depression is actually appropriate to your situation.” ~Dr. K

    ​Every day is the same. Every day I’m stiff. Every day I’m tired. These are the two main things that people with fibromyalgia deal with. It’s been like that for a couple of years now. Six to be exact.

    I’ve faced so much hardship all at one time: no job, no income, no friends, dealing with an emotionally immature/narcissistic mother, and not living where I want to live. All of this is making me sleep poorly.

    It’s all been chaotic and stressful and hasn’t helped my fibro or been helpful since discovering my highly sensitive personality trait a year and a half ago.

    I read that when you have fibro, you’re often depressed. However, anyone would feel mentally down in the dumps if they experienced these painful sensations all the time. Then for a little while, I started to believe that maybe I ​was​ truly depressed. I met all the criteria, after all.

    So I hopped onto the free listener service, 7 Cups. I’ve been using it for almost two months, and it’s helped me somewhat. It‘s good to have somewhere safe to vent, to feel heard and validated. It’s also nice to know someone is actively listening to what you’re saying. Still, despite this intervention I’ve had days where I’ve felt down.

    However, today, the clouds parted.

    I watched a video on YouTube by Dr. K on congruent depression.

    It’s a type of affective depression that occurs​:

    -When you’re in circumstances that you can’t control or have little control over

    -When you have no fulfilling purpose

    -When something is lacking from your life

    This type of depression is actually normal. You’re experiencing a very human reaction to a slew of negative situations that you feel you have no power over. It is your body telling you that something needs to change.

    It can also happen if you feel you have no direction, or the paths you’ve taken have always led to bad outcomes.

    ​Congruent depression can be remedied if one does the following​:

    1. Find purpose of some kind.

    Life purpose is complex nowadays, and our brains haven’t caught up. There’s very little physical labor needed to survive. Most of us don’t have to chop wood, work in fields, or trudge back and forth to a well, and I’m pretty sure no one rides horses on dirt roads. It’s harder to find true purpose when you don’t really need to do anything because everything is done by a machine.

    But we can still find purpose by working on something that matters to us personally, fighting for causes that we believe in, finding ways to help other people, and pursuing our interests and passions.

    2. Connect with people (to deflect loneliness).

    As humans, we are wired to be social/connect, but our modern digital world doesn’t help with this. We’re the most connected we could have ever possibly imagined, yet we are very disconnected. I believe this, aside from social media, is also another factor in the increasing rates of suicide.

    We need to connect with friends and family—face to face. And we need to really be present with them, honest with them, and open to their honest feelings so we can connect on a deeper level. When we can’t connect face to face, virtual connecting works just fine, so long as physical distance doesn’t turn into emotional distance. This is why I’m trying to post more to social media—so I can genuinely connect with people and feel less alienated.

    3. Find some way to deal with mind-numbing boredom (that doesn’t involve gaming, binge watching, social media, etc.).

    Our leisure activities in the hyper-digital age are all about consumption, not creation. There’s less painting, playing instruments, working with our hands—the kind of things that bring pleasure and joy to the person and society at large.

    Find a hobby that you can immerse yourself in, something physically engaging and maybe even creative—something that will get you out of your head and into a state of flow.

    4. Address the issues that contribute to your feeling of helplessness.

    Re-locate, find another job, or break off toxic relationships, if these things are contributing to your depression. None of these things are easy, but just taking steps to create positive change can help you feel empowered and more in control of your life.

    I’m actually considering moving at some point, pending COVID updates and my health, because I know this would go a long way toward improving my state of mind.

    5. Focus on self-discovery/self-help.

    Uncover your past traumas and commit yourself to healing. Work on identifying and overcoming limiting beliefs. Discover how you’re sabotaging yourself or holding yourself back so you can get past the blocks that keep you stuck.

    It’s only by learning about oneself, without the input of others prejudices or judgments, that one can find peace and happiness.

    *Self-help resources are free and plentiful nowadays. There are eBooks, podcasts, YouTube channels, blogs, websites, and Facebook groups to help with your personal development. You can also use astrology, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the enneagram to get a better look at yourself on an individual level. I personally have been using astrology and tarot to understand myself and have found both very helpful, and I’m loving the book Becoming Bulletproof by Evy Poumpouras.

    You can take all the prescriptions you want, do all the therapy there is out there, but for many, these are costly, time-consuming Band-Aids. They are not fixing what’s actually wrong—the drudgery of working a dead-end job you hate, the pain of staying with an abusive spouse, etc.

    That’s not to say taking medication or doing therapy is wrong. However, if you’re doing therapy and taking medication and nothing seems to improve, then you need to do more. You have to make actual changes in relationships, jobs, and lifestyles, to really feel different.

    Medication and therapies are simply aids to help you regain a better footing in the physiological and psychological sense. The rest is truly up to you.

  • The Joy of Not Getting What We Want

    The Joy of Not Getting What We Want

    “Remember that not getting what you want Is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” ~Dalai Lama

    Let me tell you a story. I first read it in a book on Taoism, but I’ve seen it in at least a dozen other places since then, each with its own variation. Here’s the gist:

    There’s this farmer. His favorite horse runs away. Everyone tells him that this is a terrible turn of events and that they are sorry for him. He says, “We’ll see.”

    The horse comes back a few days later, and it brings an entire herd of wild horses with it. Everyone tells him that this is a wonderful turn of events and that they’re happy for him. He says, “We’ll see.”

    The farmer’s son is trying to break one of the new horses, it throws him, and he breaks his leg. Everyone tells the farmer that this is a terrible turn of events and that they’re sorry for him. He says, “We’ll see.”

    The army comes through the village. The country is at war and they are conscripting people to go fight. They leave the farmer’s son alone because he has a broken leg. Everyone tells him that this is a wonderful turn of events and that they’re happy for him.

    The farmer says, “We’ll see.”

    Now let me tell you who I was when I first heard that story. I was twenty-three or twenty-four, trying to get off of drugs and stop drinking and turn my life around in general. I had recently rolled my car out into a field, lost my wife and most of my friends, and had moved to West Texas to start over.

    I was smart enough to know something had to change, but I wasn’t quite smart enough to know how, so I tried to do what I thought smart people did—I started going to the library.

    I initially got into a bunch of weird stuff like alternate theories about the history of the world, cryptozoology, and things like that. Not really the change I needed.

    One day I went to the library looking for a book about the Mothman, but Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time was sitting in its place. I didn’t know anything about this book or the things it talked about, but the title was cool, and libraries are free, so I checked it out.

    It’s hard to exaggerate how much this book revolutionized my view of the universe and my place in it. It was thrilling to recognize how much there was out there that I didn’t know. Atlantis and Bigfoot were replaced by quantum mechanics and string theory.

    I eventually stumbled onto The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, rearranging my worldview again. Having grown up in a pretty strict evangelical home, any sort of eastern philosophy was completely outside my frame of reference. This led me to begin studying Taoism and Buddhism, most specifically Zen Buddhism, and to the story I started this post with.

    I started to recognize that I had a mind, but I was not my mind. Meditation showed me how this mind was always grasping and wanting and reaching out for different things. It was a craving and aversion machine.

    It wasn’t long before I realized that it wanted these things solely for the sake of having them, and that none of them were all that important. I just wanted what I wanted because I wanted it.

    This changed everything.

    I had spent the previous fifteen years running from one thing to another in order to avoid anxiety, fear, anger, and depression. I did this through drugs and alcohol and taking crazy risks with my life. These things have consequences.

    These consequences came as car wrecks, jail time, hospitalizations, and a long string of destroyed relationships. I was so captivated by my wants that I was running through life with my eyes closed, blindly chasing them, with predictable results.

    Realizing that I was not my mind gave me a sense of objectivity about the things I wanted and the things I did not want. It taught me that I didn’t have to be so attached to having or avoiding things. This let me stop running.

    I learned that getting our way is overrated. Once we recognize this, we are much less susceptible to the whims of a flimsy, fragile, and fickle mind.

    Why We Have No Business Getting What We Want

    There are three primary reasons we need to be careful about being too invested in getting what we want:

    • We are emotional creatures, driven by things like hunger and a bad night’s sleep.
    • To a great extent we’re wired for short-term thinking. Immediate benefit often outweighs long-term consequences.
    • We experience time in a linear fashion, so the future is completely unknown to us.

    Let’s take a look at these.

    Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired

    I often encourage people to memorize the acronym HALTS to use when making decisions. It stands for hungry, happy, angry, lonely, tired, stressed, and sad.

    These are all common emotional states, and they are all terrible times to make a decision. We’ve all heard the advice not to go shopping while we’re hungry, and there’s a reason for that—it’s good advice. You will buy more food than you need, all based on how you feel in that moment.

    I’m not sure I’ve ever seen good decisions come from these emotional states, unless luck intervened and let the person off the hook. It all makes sense when we think about it.

    Anger shuts down the best parts of out brain. Situations go from bad to worse and from worse to unfixable when we decide to address something in a moment of anger.

    When we are sad the entire world seems bleak and it feels like it will never change. This is okay, unless we make long-term decisions based on the idea of an ominous, crushing world.

    Stress makes even the smallest things feel overwhelming. We cannot make good decisions when making our bed or going grocery shopping sound like monumental tasks.

    When we’re lonely we’re likely to let the wrong people into our lives just because we need someone. This opens us up to toxic, manipulative, and malicious people.

    Our brains are slow and sluggish when we are tired, and our decisions are, unfortunately, rarely our best.

    Even the so-called positive emotions aren’t safe. I know I have overcommitted to things on days when I was happy and feeling a little bit better than normal.

    When you take all of this together, it helps us to see that the things we want are flimsy and that they change depending on our mood. The things we want become a lot less important when we realize that we might only want them because we had a bad night’s sleep, or we skipped lunch.

    Short-Term Planning

    Our immediate responses are rarely oriented to the long term. This makes sense, since most of the things our body needs are immediate—food, sleep, protection, sex, using the bathroom, etc.

    The problem arises when we focus on meeting these needs to the exclusion of the things that are good for us long term. I wasn’t stupid—I’d always known that the drinking and drugs were a problem. The problem was that rational James was usually outvoted by crazy James.

    I had good intentions, and they held so long as I wasn’t around any of my temptations. My long-term planning was solid until short-term fun was in front of me. It was infuriating to watch my resolve and dreams go out the window over and over again.

    As I mentioned above, our wants are flimsy when we begin to explore them. Why do you want chocolate? Why do you want a beer? Why do you want to go on a walk? Why do you want to go to Disney World?

    We have all sorts of answers for these questions:

    Because I deserve it.

    Because I need to relax.

    Because it’s a nice day outside.

    Because Disney World is the happiest place on earth.

    These don’t really hold up when we examine them though.

    Why do you deserve it?

    What does it mean to relax?

    What makes it a nice day?

    What makes Disney World the happiest place on earth?

    If we keep going, we always arrive at the realization that we just want to feel good one way or another. We want to feel good for the sake of feeling good. While there’s definitely nothing wrong with this, it is ultimately baseless, and we cannot let it drive our lives.

    Not feeling good is a part of the human experience. You’re going to get sick, you’re going to have days that are not as good as other days, you’re going to have a headache sometimes. These things are unavoidable.

    The things we want right here and right now are rarely the best things for us long term. Because of this, long-term planning requires intentionality and energy. It may be inconvenient but it’s true.

    We Can’t Predict the Future

    As a kid, I remember thinking it was weird that we couldn’t remember the future. If I could remember what happened yesterday, why couldn’t my brain go the other direction?

    This is one of the primary limitations of our species, and the most important reason that we shouldn’t hold the things we want too tightly. We don’t know how anything is going to turn out, including what will happen if we get what we want.

    I used to drive through Lubbock, Texas, once or twice a year to go skiing. Lubbock is a city out in the desert, and while I have come to love it here, I don’t think anyone would describe it as beautiful.

    Lubbock has some dubious honors. We have been voted most boring city in America, worst weather in the world, and I recently read that we have the worst diet in the United States. Our poverty and violent crime rates are roughly double the national average, and we score high on things like child abuse and teen pregnancy.

    I always swore I’d never live in a place like Lubbock when I would pass through here, but moving here twenty years ago saved my life. The place that I loved, Austin, I brought me to rock bottom. it was only a matter of time before I was dead or in prison.

    On the other hand, the place that I swore I’d never live has given me a college education, a family, and a successful business—all things that I thought only existed for other people. I honestly shudder when I think what my life would have looked like had I not moved.

    There have been smaller examples along the way. I was working at a CD store and loved it, but one Sunday corporate came in and said they were shutting the place down. They gave me a two-week paycheck to help them pack the store up and move it out. It was that abrupt.

    It sucked, but this led me to working at hotels, where I was able to get paid to do all my homework and still have time to read for fun. I burned through all the Russian classics, made all A’s, and got to spend a lot of time with my son when he was little. I will always be grateful for that.

    Before opening my practice, I was working at a private university. For someone with sixty-plus jobs in their life (my wife and I made a list), working on a college campus was amazing—it was the first place I saw as a “forever” job.

    When things went bad, they went all bad and it was obvious it was time to leave, but I was comfortable. I ignored some problems I should not have been ignoring, and it caught up with me. By the time I left I was burned out and sick all the time.

    This catapulted me into opening my own business because I didn’t really see any other options. I’d never seen myself as being responsible enough to do this, and people told me I didn’t have the head for it.

    Six years later, my business has been super successful and afforded me more freedom than I could ever imagine, but even this wasn’t the end. I recently closed my office to stay home with my kids, another twist I couldn’t have seen coming.

    We are trapped in linear time, so we don’t know what’s coming right around the corner. Holding on to one thing or another as the right thing or the thing we “should’ have often causes us to miss the amazing things right in front of us.

    Accepting What We Get

    My life has been a series of hard lessons brought about by my self-absorbed, entitled, and foolish choices. They have all, in one way or another, taught me one thing: I don’t know what’s best, so a majority of the time I don’t have any business getting what I want.

    Things like someone shelving a library book in the wrong place, corporate closing the place I worked, and moving to a city I actively disliked have brought about the best things in my life. I would not have chosen any of these if I’d been given the choice.

    We are emotional, shortsighted creatures who have no access to the future. Learning to cultivate acceptance for the things outside of our control often opens up amazing paths for us. I know it has for me.

  • What If There’s Beauty on the Other Side of Your Pain?

    What If There’s Beauty on the Other Side of Your Pain?

    “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ~Albert Einstein

    “I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want to be here. I can’t do this. It hurts too much. It’s too hard.”

    I’m curious how many times I’ve heard these words over my lifetime. From different people, ages, genders, ethnicities, and walks of life. The words the same, the heaviness no different from one to the next. Hopelessness has a specific tone attached to it. Flat, low, and empty.

    Being the child of a parent who committed suicide, there is a familiar inner fear that washes over me when I hear these words. A hyper alertness and tuning in, knowing it’s time to roll up my sleeves.

    As a psychotherapist, there is a checklist that goes through my head to make sure I ask all of the right questions as I assess the level of pain they are experiencing.

    As a human, a warm wave of compassion takes over as I feel around for what this particular soul needs.

    After asking the typical safety questions and determining this person is not at significant risk of ending their life, I ask, “So what is the end goal here? What do you think happens after you die? Where will you go? How will you feel? What will feel different when you’re dead versus how you feel right now?”

    The answers vary from “It will be dark and nothingness, no feeling, no existence” to “I’ll be in heaven and done with this,” but more often than not they say, “I don’t know.”

    I sometimes question, “Well, if you don’t know how can you guarantee it will be better than this? What if it’s worse? What if you have to relive it all again? What if you are stuck in a dark abyss and can’t get out?”

    More times than not they have not thought this through. They are not thinking about what is next, mostly because what they are really saying is “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

    I get that. We all have those moments.

    Then I dig in further:

    “How do you know your miracle is not around the corner? How do you know relief will not come tomorrow if you allow the opportunity for one more day? What would it be like to be curious about what’s next instead of assuming it will all be just as miserable?

    Since you have not always felt like this, is it possible you may one day again feel joy and freedom?

    If you look at your past, you’ll see you have had many fears and low moments. Did they stay the same or did they change? Most of your fears did not come to be, and if they did, you survived them—you made it through. You may have even learned something or strengthened your ability to be brave.

    If you turn around, you can see there is a lifetime of proof that your world is always changing and shifting. You’ll see many moments when it may have felt like things were not going the direction you wanted, but you’ll likely see an equal number of moments that led you to exactly what you needed. Use those as evidence that your surprise joy may be just around the corner.

    During these conversations, my own curiosity resurfaces. I often ponder if my mother held out a little longer what her life would have looked like. I wonder if another medication would have helped her. Or if the words of an inspiring book may have offered her the hope to keep holding on. Or if the feeling of the sun on her face would have kissed her long enough for her to want a little bit more.

    What if she held on to the curiosity of what was to come instead of deciding there were no surprises or joy left? Would she have felt the bittersweet moment of watching me graduate from high school? Would she have been there to cheer me on when I earned my master’s degree hoping to help people just like her? Would she have held my daughter, her first grandchild, and wept tears of joy knowing she made it?

    Who knows what her life would have been like if she held on for one more day? I will never know, but I am curious.

    I have sat with countless children and adults while they are deep in their pain. I ache for them, cry for them, and also feel hope for them. I wonder out loud what will happen next that we cannot see.

    I’ve seen pregnancies come when hope had left, new relationships be birthed when the people involved were sure they would never feel loved again, new jobs appear out of nowhere at just the “right” time. I’ve seen illnesses dissipate once people started paying attention to themselves, and moments of joy build in the hearts of those who were certain there was no light left.

    The truth is, we don’t know what will happen next, but we know we have made it this far. How do we know tomorrow won’t be exactly what we’ve been waiting for?

    I believe our baseline feeling as humans is peace. The loving calm that fills us when we are in the presence of those we adore. The kind of whole that we feel when we’ve done something we feel proud of and we reconnect to the love we are made of. The way we feel when we are giving love to others and the way we feel when that love is returned.

    I also believe that the human experience is filled with struggle and hardship and challenge. I don’t think we are getting out of it. I believe we are equipped with the power to lean into our pain to let it move through us. To use our experiences as our strength and our knowledge for the next wave of frustration.

    I don’t believe we are supposed to suffer, but rather learn to thrive in the face of hardship and use hope as the steering wheel to guide us through… knowing even though the light may not be right in front of us, it’s just around the corner.

    And the more we employ this faith and our practices that support us, the quicker we are able to return to the peace that lies underneath.

    In the moments of hardship, what would it be like to allow for curiosity? To not only acknowledge the feeling in front of us—and feel it—but to also allow for the possibility of what is to come.

    All of our experiences come with the free will to choose how we will respond to them. With openness and wonder or dismissal and resistance. It’s also okay to feel it all at once. The feelings will pass. They always do.

    The next time you feel stuck in a feeling, or what feels like a never-ending experience, consider thinking: I wonder what will come of this. I wonder what I will gain. I wonder what strengths I will develop and how I will support myself. I wonder what beauty lies on the other side of this pain. Don’t push through it but surrender into it.

    Then allow for curiosity. Be open. You never know what surprises the day may bring. Maybe today is the day it all changes. Or maybe tomorrow. You may not know the day, but you can be ready and open for it when it arrives.

  • Hate Your Life? 4 Ways to Boost Your Happiness

    Hate Your Life? 4 Ways to Boost Your Happiness

    “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” ~Desmond Tutu

    I hate my life. Does this statement ring true to you at all? Do you feel like you’re at rock bottom? The good news is, it might not be as bad as you fear.

    I spent a lot of time feeling afraid of everything.

    I had an emotional collapse, and it made life suddenly seem terrifying. What had happened? Had the town I was living in changed? Had my country suddenly become different?

    No, I had changed the filter through which I saw the world, from one of hope and joy to one of fear and hopelessness.

    My biggest problem wasn’t that I was feeling terrible, but that I had unconsciously bought into the idea that the problem was ‘out there,’ or that perhaps I had lost my mind. It frightened me to experience that level of darkness, where everything looked gloomy and hopeless.

    When We Believe Our Self-Talk and Perceptions of Our Terrible Life

    What had really happened was that, after a series of bad experiences, I got very sad and then a whole lot sadder. I didn’t realize that, after the initial painful problems, I was continuing to create a lot of my upset with my thinking processes.

    I was seeing—through my perception filter—only the darker parts of life. Everything felt greyer somehow. It got gradually worse and I became more and more entrenched in the grip of it.

    Had the bad situations caused it? Perhaps, but the real problem was that they had caused me to change my filter to grey, and I was stuck there. The more I saw the world this way, the more I expected it. The more I unconsciously expected it, the more evidence my senses found for me to confirm my fears.

    Therapists and books, in trying to help me get past my sense of pain and suffering, took me back to the time when the collapse happened, and even back to my childhood.

    I established what the original problem was and ‘worked through it.’ I agree with the necessity to work through old wounds and baggage to a degree, and it is sometimes crucial for mental wellness. However, for me, it was re-traumatizing and mostly just dug up old things I’d already accepted. I found myself back at square one over and over again. Far from recovering, I was in a circle of regression.

    What kept me going back over it was simple: The bad situations I had experienced were long over, and I had done the forgiveness and grieving, but I was still feeling bad. The only reason I could find was that I needed to do more healing work on the past. However, now that I look back, it seems what was really keeping it alive was my own belief that the problem was still there.

    The Wake-Up Call

    Here was a major truth bomb for me: While I’d certainly had experiences that were traumatizing when they happened, I was the one who was now perpetuating my pain. I had a habit of hating my life.

    Did that mean it was my fault? No, I was just doing what we all do. I had practiced feeling terrible every day, and after a month or so it had become habit. I was a professional fearful person.

    Yes, maybe the original upset or difficulties in my life were bad, but they were no longer happening. I kept them alive two ways: 1. Through learned habitual behavior and 2. By constantly picking over them to find out why I still felt bad.

    Don’t Put a Happy Face Sticker Over It

    There’s a lot of talk now of toxic positivity and concerns about putting a happy face sticker over problems. I do get that people sometimes do this. It is irresponsible to run away from a real-life problem, but I do not believe that most people who talk about toxic positivity are really warning about that.

    I believe that many people who talk about toxic positivity are actually stuck with their filter on grey, and they are arguing for their own limitations.

    There is an increased stigma around the idea of “love and light.” It’s become an almost contemptible topic. I agree that it’s ridiculous to think that “love and light” is the answer to everything. But if you feel stuck in old stuff and find that you feel less than happy about your life, I challenge you to give it a try before disregarding it as naïve or evasive.

    Please remember that even some apparently very wise spiritual and transformational helpers or gurus are still themselves very much stuck in their egos. They still want to be the hero battling their pain and discussing their survival. Just because someone is well-known and well-loved does not make them any less human. Just because they claim to know better, does not mean that they do.

    Positivity gets a bad rap in certain places on the internet, but please remember this idea that we don’t have to dwell in the difficulties is age old and has been supported by mystics and gurus since the beginning of time.

    As the old Buddhist saying states, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” I get that there is a time and a place for facing pain—dealing with circumstances and processing grief is incredibly important. But we do not need to suffer beyond the original pain.

    How to feel the Pain Without Getting Caught in Suffering

    Yes, you’ll encounter difficulties, and sometimes they will be terrible, awful, and shocking. However, once you’ve done the initial processing and the grieving process is well under way, there is a lot to be said for introducing a happy face sticker! Not to go over the wound, but to go alongside it. We don’t need to dwell in toxic positivity or negativity.

    What do I mean by initial processing of difficulties in life? It will be different for everyone and it depends on the circumstances, but what I really mean is this: Allow yourself a reasonable time to feel the feelings and then make efforts to move forward with your life!

    No one would expect you to be happy the day after you witnessed some horrible crime or after the death of a loved one. This is ridiculous and what is really meant by toxic positivity—the notion that you should be happy all of the time regardless of your circumstances.

    But there comes a time when we have to choose to shift our perspective and find reasons to smile, because it only happens if we make it happen.

    Put a Happy Face Sticker Next to it and Start Hanging Out There

    If you really hate your life, you may have gotten to the stage where you have started to believe it will never get better. Take it from someone who knows, this isn’t true. You are awake and breathing now, so there is still hope to turn everything around. I did. I am no more special than you, I have no special skills. If I can, so can you.

    If you are clinically ill, get help, that is a given. If you are unsure, reach out to a medical professional and get assistance and their opinion. This is a must!

    Once you are sure that you do not need medical intervention, be a risk taker and try the much maligned “positive thinking and action” methodology below.

    What I suggest below is what I did, and it worked for me. It has worked for clients. Does this mean it will work for you? No, not necessarily, and perhaps you will do it slightly differently. But hopefully you will be able to understand the essence of what I’m suggesting and give it a try.

    You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

    4 Ways to be Happier (The Not-So-Magic Formula)

    Firstly, suspend the idea of not wanting to buy into “toxic positivity” and try this twenty-minute morning routine for a couple of weeks. I have never had anyone report that it made them feel worse.

    Exercise as soon as you get out of bed.

    Okay, go to the bathroom first! After that, take two to ten minutes to do some stretches, weights, or aerobic exercises. Put on some music and then get started.

    I do fifteen minutes every morning with two little weights and a resistance band. I do five minutes on my legs with the resistance band, five minutes on my core on the floor or with the weights, and five minutes with the weights on my arms. My body looks better, and it gets my good-feeling chemicals pumping.

    Make a few sheets of goals, quotes, or a vision board.

    Put them up in the area where you will be doing your exercises, and read or look at them as you move to get into an empowered mindset. You can include pictures, quotes, or ideas.

    I have thirteen sheets and a load of sticky notes. I don’t read everything perfectly every day, but I read most of it every day as I work on my arms. I have mainly quotes from my favorite transformational authors, as I’m not a massive fan of setting specific goals, but whatever you choose is up to you.

    Gratitude journal.

    Take one minute and list three things you are grateful for. This is a minimum requirement. If you have time, consider writing intentions for the day or listing the ways in which you feel the universe has helped you lately.

    Even if you feel that there are twenty things that you could complain about, if there is one good thing, write about that.

    A great addition to these exercises is to look back over previous days and notice how much you have to be grateful for or how many of your intentions you have met. If you think you haven’t met any of your intentions, remember that isn’t true! If you are writing your gratitude journal on more than one day, you are showing up for you and keeping it up somewhat. A huge number of people will not even get so far.

    Be compassionate with yourself and grateful that you have shown some dedication to yourself, however small that effort may seem at first.

    Listen to something motivational and upbeat every morning.

    I do this while I am getting dressed or doing my to-do list. I watch something that talks about empowerment, what we can achieve, what is right with me and the world rather than what is wrong.

    Is it to stick my head in the sand or deny that there’s anything wrong in the world? No, it’s so that I am pumped and empowered to actually take on the task of living life.

    There is so much free content out there on social media that you can access. Do a social media search and start finding material that uplifts you and gets you thinking positively and with purpose every day.

    No one gets excited about facing pain or the destruction stretched out in front of them. So, even when there are difficult things to face, it’s crucial that we can somewhat reframe it so that we can see it as a positive challenge rather than solely a painful experience.

    When we do this, it is not to be irresponsible or to avoid the reality, but rather to give ourselves the best chance of being able to embrace what we need to do with enthusiasm and a good energy. This way we are more use to ourselves, the people around us, and the world

    Takeaway: Summary of the Plan to Shift Out of the Pain

    You don’t like your life… Okay, no need to panic.

    Take a moment to check if you might need medical assistance. If you’re not sure, reach out to a health professional. Once you’ve done this and are sure you don’t have a clinical reason for feeling so bad about life, ask yourself if you are expecting yourself to feel better before you’ve had a reasonable time to grieve or recover from a recent event.

    If something bad has happened, you will need time to feel it and process it. The world does seem to encourage us to always feel great, and this isn’t realistic. Our minds naturally want a simple solution and to get away from processing a painful experience, but it only prolongs it in the long run. Make sure you are not rushing a sensible grieving process.

    Equally, if you hate your life today, check in with yourself and ask yourself if you are perhaps just having a bad couple of days. No one feels happy all of the time, and it is unhealthy to expect yourself to do so.

    Once you’ve checked for a medical reason and that you don’t have a temporary and reasonable explanation for why you feel so bad, consider trying the ideas above and seeing what a positive start to your day might do for you.

    Do it for a month and see what changes.

    Perhaps starting your day with movement, motivation, and gratitude will not work, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t! Will it solve all of your problems? No, of course not. But hopefully, it will give you a boost of positivity and a sense of hope and show you that you can make changes that can help you to feel better about your life.

    Once you see that small changes can make a big difference, you will get excited about all the other things you can change and improve in your life. It takes you out of reverse gear and into first. It may seem small, but it’s a start, and a very positive one at that!