Tiny Buddha

Tag: Mindfulness

  • Making Big Decisions: How to Discern the Whispers of Your Soul

    Making Big Decisions: How to Discern the Whispers of Your Soul

    “Intuition is the whisper of the soul.” ~Jiddu Krishnamurti

    “I can’t believe they are taking her side over mine. I gave this job so many years, and she decides to walk in and mess it all up for me,” I said to my husband.

    A few years back, when I was working full time at my corporate job, I got into a disagreement with a team member. It spiraled out of control to the point where my boss then had to have a sit-down with us. I was so humiliated and angry that he could not see my side.

    They will realize when they lose you, whispered my ego.

    That was when I decided to leave. I started to look for new jobs and got offers.

    Now here is the thing—I did have a great job, I had a great team, no long hours, and I liked what I did. But at that moment, due to that disagreement, I made a decision to leave it all from a place of anger.

    Tony Robbins often says It is in your moments of decisions that your destiny is shaped. I wish I knew this back then. I took the new job, but the moment I accepted the offer, I realized the colossal mistake I had made. I remember going to my farewell party and feeling like I might throw up. I remember trying to hide my tears.

    Your intuition often speaks to you through your body, and my body was clearly saying no. Unfortunately, the voice of my ego was stronger. It was too late to turn back. That wrong decision cost me two years of my life that I could have used toward my personal goals and business.

    Instead, I was stuck at the wrong job, working long hours, in misery, and hating every minute of it.

    There are many times when we feel the need to react, and the need to feel validated. The untrained mind often reacts the way I did, from fear and from anger. This is where the process of discernment comes in—discernment between whether you are making a decision to sate your ego or to truly evolve and expand yourself.

    The primitive, reactionary mind is not the best for making decisions because we are in a downward spiral and are tackling multiple negative thoughts in our heads. Nothing good can come out of this space—we are neither neutral nor can we listen to our intuition.

    In the grand scheme of things, when we ignore our intuition, we introduce complexities to our path. The reality is that in order to get to the next level, we must get out of victim mode and learn to take
    responsibility for our actions. There is always a choice in any decision that you make. That choice is between fear and love, between blame-shifting and personal responsibility.

    The easiest way to listen to your intuition is to ask yourself if you are making the decision out of fear or out of love. While this experience was unfortunate, it also taught me a very important life lesson. I rarely make big decisions in my life without “consulting” with my inner guidance or when I am not in the right headspace.

    The tool that I use for this is meditation. Over years, I have learned to use the art of meditation to hear the whispers of my soul. Anytime I get into a conflict or my life spirals out of control, I turn to my
    meditation pillow.

    Before I get into the meditation, I ask myself: Why is this happening to me? What is the lesson that I need to learn from this? Help me see the way. I am willing to do what it takes to feel and do better.

    And then I go into silence and complete surrender, without expectations that any insights or solutions will come through. The answer usually comes quite unexpectedly when the world around me is reduced to a silent hum. It is usually not the answer I was hoping for, but the answer I need at that moment.

    I often get asked what to do if the answer does not come. This just means that you are not detached enough and that you are still expecting an answer to come. This is fear itself.

    “Why is the answer not coming?”

    “Am I not doing this right?”

    “Maybe my intuition is broken?”

    Intuition comes when you are in a place of faith rather than fear.

    If this happens, try working out or watching or movie, anything that helps you not think about your problem. Then go back into meditation again with zero expectations, and you will be surprised at how soon the answer comes to you.

    It will be a quiet whisper, an inner knowing. It will happen in complete silence or when you are thinking about something completely different.

    It is akin to that little whisper that tells you that it may be a good idea to take the umbrella before you leave the house. But then you choose to ignore that whisper, and you later wish you hadn’t because it
    rained so much.

    One of the biggest benefits of meditation aside from intuition is that it helps you silence your mind. This helps you take bigger and bolder actions because there is no silent critic in your head judging and second-guessing your every move. Meditation helps you become more mindful and present. What others say or do does not affect your as much.

    Over time, you start experiencing the “observer effect,” where you feel as if you are directly experiencing life as a series of moments rather than evaluating and analyzing it.

    If you cannot meditate, journaling can help with this process too. Put on trance music in the background and free write. The trick to journaling is to let your pen flow without thinking.  You will notice that twenty to thirty minutes into it, your handwriting will start changing and your words will start looking different. The message will become more loving and compassionate. This is when you know that you are tapping into your intuition.

    Intuition is a powerful gift, but one that you can experience and learn how to recognize only in silence.

  • How I Find the Courage to Keep Jumping (Even Though the Net Never Catches Me)

    How I Find the Courage to Keep Jumping (Even Though the Net Never Catches Me)

    “The future never comes. Life is always now.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    “Jump, and the net will catch you.” “Leap, and the net will appear.”

    This piece of writing is to make a case for the following argument: there is NO net.

    Before I put forward my reasoning, please bear with me for a moment while my ego rattles off the times I have jumped (but the net never appeared).

    1. I quit my well-paid marketing role and traveled across the world to pursue a humanitarian dream job. I failed at the job interview and was jobless and in despair in a foreign land.
    2. I invested some of my savings into launching an online e-commerce site selling organic products but was diagnosed with blood cancer shortly after launch and had to give it up.
    3. I threw myself into the wellness industry in an attempt to heal my cancer. Nothing worked, and I ended up on the medication I was desperately trying to avoid.
    4. I poured my heart and soul into a memoir but have, so far, only received nice rejections from the publishing industry.

    Okay, I’m glad that is off my chest.

    Point number 4, my current life situation, has got me thinking about “the net.”

    The writing of my memoir felt different to points 1, 2 and 3. The writing process was one in which there was no outcome attached to it. I simply sat down to write the longings and yearnings and realizations that came from within. Four years of writing from that place flowed, quite naturally, into a book. There was no thought of a net. I just had to write.

    The net came later.

    The net came when I had finished my memoir, and people told me to publish it.

    The net came when I started researching the publishing industry and the how-tos and what-not-to-dos.

    My research began to form a perception. That perception started to develop a belief. A belief that said: to be signed by a literary agent and traditional publisher means you “have made it.” You are literary success. That belief grew stronger with every industry blog I read and podcast I listened to. The ropes of belief grew thicker and intertwined and formed what I perceived to be a net. A net in the form of a book deal from one of the top five publishers.

    My mind whirled and looped with the following thought: If I’m brave enough to share my story, if I jump, the net will catch me, I will get a book deal.

    I believed that thought. And I was brave. I put myself out there. I jumped.

    But, as I write, I have yet to be caught by any net.

    My ego looks back up at points 1 to 4 and screams, “FAILURE! The net never catches me. Stay small!”

    It is easy to get stuck in that stream of thought. That place is familiar. The is an almost comfort there. The ego blankets me with perceived safety—safety in the form of remaining small and quiet.

    But then I remember there is another aspect of myself. A place beyond the ego and beyond even thought. It is my core. My essence. The truest, most authentic part of me. When I carve out time for silence, I remember that place. I bring awareness into the present (without hanging on the past or projecting into the future) and get still. When I do that, the thought of a net dissipates.

    From this place, I see that the net was only a future concept. It was no more than a thought about something great that would happen in some distant time. The net was always only a thought about what success should look like: saving the world, a thriving business, healing from an incurable disease, and now a bestselling book.

    But freedom was found beyond the thoughts about how life should be. And every day, I come home to that place, home to myself. I get pulled into ego. I come back. I get pulled into thought. I remember.

    When my true nature aligns with the present moment, there is clarity in knowing what to do.

    Some moments my children want to play. And sometimes, I feel called to send a pitch off to a literary agent. There is a sense of surrendering to whatever is in front of me. When I’m flowing with life, there is no net. Or more, the net is no longer a result but rather a deep trust that everything will happen as it should.

    I have no idea how my book will be published. All I know is that if I keep coming back to the present moment, those seemingly minuscule steps pave the way for my soul to live out its true purpose: to bring awareness into the present and live life from that place.

    There is no net. There are only small awakened steps. Some steps are ordinary. Some ask us to be excruciatingly vulnerable. It is the latter that can feel like a leap of faith into the ether. But I no longer see those moments as a leap.

    Looking back, it was only ever one step, a simple stride on the path home to myself. Inch by vulnerable inch, moment by conscious moment, that is how I have come to feel whole. It is all perfect, even with a rejection letter to boot.

  • How I’ve Eased My Anxiety by Being More Present: 4 Practices to Try

    How I’ve Eased My Anxiety by Being More Present: 4 Practices to Try

    “Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.” ~Oprah Winfrey

    In 2012, during my community college years, I began to experience mild anxiety.

    I assume it was the stress and fear that came with maintaining a good GPA in hope of transferring to a well-known university, alongside deciding what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Or perhaps it was because of the time I knew I’d wasted slacking in high school to fit in with what I was surrounded by and to preserve my loud-mouthed drama-seeking status.

    The next few years, I thought about the past and future a lot, cried, and grasped for many breaths during anxiety attacks near the campus pond.

    In late 2016 I faced my first severe anxiety attack in the laundry room of my parents’ home while sitting against the washing machine and holding onto my legs curled up against my chest.

    For the first time ever, I felt a heavy pain in the core of my body as if there were rocks piling up all the way to my throat and closing my airway to breathe. I had never felt so disheartened, lost, empty, and hopeless.

    Soon, my anxiety attacks got to the point where I faced numbing and tingling sensations in my head, face, hands, and feet.

    It wasn’t until countless severe anxiety attacks in that I had a glimpse of awareness behind my ongoing stream of thoughts. I found that I was experiencing stress and fear about what had happened in the past or would happen in the future and realized that I’d lost the present moment.

    Many of us face day-to-day suffering through anxiety. We worry about progressing in our careers, getting an education, making a decent income, being there for our families, putting food on the table, and always working toward a means to an end.

    I realized that many of us are constantly on the run to the future trying to be certain about what’s next, and if we slip and fall along the way, we worry about why it happened, which takes us into the past—eventually emerging from an egoic-state of fears, wants, needs, and expectations. That was me.

    There’s always going to be something new that we’ll want, need, and expect while trying to stay up to par with the people and situations that surround us. We’ll spend a lot of time sulking over setbacks, failures, and loss. Ultimately, suffering from stress and anxiety will bury what we’re meant to experience, learn, and grow from in this moment, the present moment. Because we can’t fully immerse ourselves in this moment if we’re worrying about the next or regretting the one prior.

    I’ve spent the last few years exploring, reading, learning, and practicing how to heal stress and anxiety with the simple, yet profound practice of being present, conscious, and aware.

    With this practice, I’ve strengthened my ability to acknowledge and allow suffering to take its course when facing life’s inevitable difficulties and challenges.

    The following are a handful of ways I practice presence, which has not only dissolved my anxiety, but also awakened my gratitude for the great joy and peace we can experience once we become conscious and aware in this moment.

    4 Ways to Practice Presence

    1. Practice non-judgment, non-attachment, and non-resistance.

    You can lose yourself into the past and future when you’re judging, getting attached to, and resisting what is. This is because we become fixated on our wants, needs, and expectations of the moment instead of fully experiencing it. If we want to minimize our suffering, we need to be here in the present moment and allow what is to be and pass.

    I know this practice is easier said than done.

    I’ve had days where I was over the moon with immense joy during moments of achievements, when sharing laughs with family, and while celebrating milestones like my wedding. I also became attached, wanting the moments to last forever and feeling saddened that they had to come to an end.

    On the contrary, I’ve also had days where I felt gutted and devastated over the loss of my dad, and I couldn’t help but judge and resist the experience of losing him. I had expected him to be around for future milestones and heartfelt moments.

    Yet, I’ve learned that moments are undeniably and inevitably temporary. Joy doesn’t last forever, but neither does pain. Allow the painful moments to be and pass and truly savor the good ones with your presence and full attention.

    Practice being and experiencing this moment as it is without judgment, attachment, and resistance. Enjoy the good moments and learn and grow from the ones that aren’t that great.

    This will allow you to surrender to and accept the process and flow of life, which is the key to decreasing your suffering.

    2. Focus on your breath.

    Realize that you have no control over your past or future breath, only the one in this moment right now. Similarly, you have no control over what happened in the past and can never be certain of the future.

    In many experiences in life, from meditation, yoga, exercise regimes, and sports to childbirth and even suffering, we’re always reminded to just breathe. It’s the breath that guides us into the present moment where the actual being and doing is.

    Try your best to concentrate on the inhaling and exhaling momentum at a gentle and patient pace throughout your day. It’s a form of meditation that can be done anywhere and anytime to dissolve any stress and anxiety you face.

    I practice this throughout my day all the time whether I’m at work or on the couch, just to redirect my focus into the now, especially when I become aware of nonstop thoughts, which can set the stage for suffering.

    This practice brings you out of your head and into your body and allows you to immediately shift your focus away from your worries, fears, and regrets.

    3. Immerse yourself in nature.

    Have you ever felt immense peace while looking at the sunrise or sunset and a calmness when around trees, flowers, plants, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls?

    When you’re with nature, you instantly become connected to its stillness, silence, and simplicity.

    Even during the roughest storms, nature reminds us to become in sync with what is to allow the storm to take its course and pass.

    To be in nature, you don’t have to go far. Step into the backyard or take a walk around the block. Pay attention to the beauty of the flowers or the rustling wind in the trees and embrace the peace and joy that arises from it.

    You’ll find that nature truly has a way of reconnecting you to this moment.

    4. Be grateful and trust what is.

    So grateful, I whispered to myself as I stood outside in the backyard watching my puppy Oakley running back and forth on the grass, my husband playing with him and the sun setting.

    It would have been easy to lose myself to thoughts about what’s next and why I still at times feel lost and hopeless, but those thoughts never resolve how I feel and only ignite my anxiety. I decided to instead be grateful for the blessings in that moment, trust that what’s next will get here when it does, and for now, practice being present with what is.

    Be grateful for what is right now, even if you’re going through challenging times. Let your trust for the process be bigger than your fear, stress, and anxiety. When you trust the process, you tell life that you are one with its flow and allow the experience to make you stronger, teach you something new, and guide you onto a path of growth.

    Take a breath to recenter yourself into this moment and look around to see what you can appreciate. Perhaps it’s this blog, a family member, your pet, a plant, a cup of coffee, or a meal. Maybe it’s the sun or rain.

    It’s easier to let go of the past and stop trying to control the future when you’re fully immersed in the now. Whatever your life entails in this moment, be present with it, because that is the ultimate path to healing and finding your power in life.

  • How to Increase Your Sense of Control and Boost Your Resilience

    How to Increase Your Sense of Control and Boost Your Resilience

    “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” ~Maya Angelou

    When I look back, I am amazed at how differently I dealt with adversity the first few decades of my life.

    Growing up in a stressful home primed me to experience life with caution. Whether it was being afraid of physical harm, loneliness, or failure, I’ve lived my life with an exaggerated fight-flight response to everything. Adversity seemed around every corner, and no one was ever there to save me.

    I developed maladaptive mechanisms to minimize, avoid, or go around the things I was afraid of.

    I became a quiet and obedient kid to avoid my father’s anger.

    I accepted whatever sliver of love my chronically overwhelmed mother was able to give me.

    I settled for the last pick on the team. I quit afterschool theater after I was assaulted on the way home one evening.

    I gave up on art school because my father wanted me to be a teacher.

    I went to a music school as he wanted and quietly accepted my instructor’s abuse.

    On and on, hurt and disappointment became my constant companions, and I learned to just take it. No one seemed to care that I struggled. No one saw me.

    Over time, I learned to accept that the world was just cruel and indifferent to my pain. I learned that I have little control over my circumstances. I learned that I can either fight and fail or stay quiet and survive. I learned helplessness.

    I know now that my childhood wasn’t that unique, but for a kid, it was isolating and debilitating. I thought I was the only one who struggled like this. I felt different, alone, and somehow deficient. I developed low self-esteem and anxiety that soon morphed into this chronic feeling of impending doom.

    I carried that sense of dread and defeat into adulthood. Hypersensitive to stress, I avoided things that would challenge and overwhelm me. I looked to others for permission, approval, and validation. I allowed things without a fight, latched onto any good thing that came my way, and accepted crumbs from others never daring to stand up for myself and ask for more.

    They say that what doesn’t break you makes you stronger but for many—those without a healthy foundation—life’s big and small traumas build up and eventually show up as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, or PTSD. I developed most of these.

    Resilience Can Be Strengthened

    We all respond to adversity differently. Research shows that a loving, emotionally responsive, and supportive environment during childhood fosters psychological resilience throughout life. But even if we didn’t get that strong foundation growing up, we can still build resilience now.

    We can learn to overcome helplessness by increasing our sense of control.

    Finding Peace in the Present Moment

    The most significant practice that allowed me to shift out of state of helplessness and offer me some sense of control was mindfulness.

    Instead of reliving the past—the pain, resentments, and disappointments—or worrying about the future, I could find peace in this moment, right now. I couldn’t change what happened and can’t control what’s to come, but I can decide how I move now. In this very moment, I can control how I respond to life.

    A deep inhale, noticing my child’s smile, the scent of garlic as I cook dinner—I can focus on here and now, fully absorbing life through all my senses, knowing that in this moment I am okay.

    And, if I’m feeling stressed or unsettled, I become curious instead of trying to outrun it. I start paying attention to my body, tracking sensations, observing where I’m feeling tightness, consciously releasing the tension as I breathe in and out. This way, I can help regulate my nervous system and shift the patterns of reactivity. I remind myself to breathe as I ride the wave, trusting the discomfort will eventually pass.

    Learning to Move Through Negative Thoughts

    Once I allowed myself to feel what was going on in my body in times of high stress, I began noticing what I’m thinking and feeling in the midst of turmoil.

    It can be difficult to not get overwhelmed by the negative thought patterns engraved deeply in our minds, patterns we’ve been falling into for decades, without much conscious examination. Looking at those now, I realized how detrimental my mental scripts were to my well-being.

    With the help of my journal, I learned to reframe negative events, bring perspective into my experiences, and focus on what I could learn from them.

    For example, I’ve carried with me this feeling of failure as a young parent. For those first few years, I was living in a constant state of overwhelm, and there was a lot of guilt for not being good enough of a mom, feeling like a fraud and a failure. When I took a step back, I realized there was a multitude of circumstances going against me that made this part of my life extremely difficult, and I was just doing my best.

    I had three children super close together (three under three), which in itself was a Sisyphean task. I had just moved across the country and had no real friends or family to support me. My husband worked long hours, many weekends, often out of state. It was a lot to take on, and I was virtually on my own.

    Looking at this part of my life, I realized I had unrealistic expectations of what it meant to be a good parent. I also realized my perfectionist tendencies and the relentless pressure I put on myself stemmed from my fears of perpetuating generational trauma.

    This way of thinking wasn’t constructive—it was making me miserable. Slowly, I began noticing when these tendencies showed up, and instead of feeding them, I’d just watch them come and go.

    Mindfulness allowed me to move through negative thoughts and memories instead of getting stuck in them. I would observe what was going on inside my mind, breathe through the turbulence offering myself compassion for my struggles, and remind myself that I was doing the best I can. Over time I stopped being so hard on myself, and eventually shifted out of the habit of ruminating for good.

    Enjoying Something That You Do Well

    Spending time doing something that I can do well reminds me how it feels to succeed.

    I have always enjoyed gardening. It is my escape from the hustle and stress of today’s fast-paced world—my garden is my sanctuary.

    Watching my garden transform over the decade from a lot of dirt to where it is today—with all the fruit trees, veggie boxes, shrubs, grasses, and blooming annuals—brings me a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.

    Finding something that you do well, and practicing it regularly builds confidence, self-esteem, and fortifies a healthy ego. It is imperative to have hobbies that you excel at and can turn to in times of stress or unpredictability.

    Spending Time in Nature

    We live in a world of chronic stress and anxiety. We are always plugged in and on the go, constantly planning, thinking, and doing, all the while feeling disconnected from ourselves and the world around us.

    Modern-day life means living in our heads a lot. To counter that, we need a practice that will ground us and bring us back to balance. And nature is one of the most grounding elements that we have.

    Being in nature down-regulates our nervous system and brings about relaxation. Even a short walk can improve our mood and reduce anxiety. Disconnecting from our daily grind this way—all the responsibilities, worries, and electronics—rebalances our body, mind, and soul. Our problems become less significant and impending. We can exhale, if only for now.

    There are many ways we can ground ourselves in nature this way. Gardening, walking, or even taking care of houseplants can be grounding. I like watering my garden in the evening, repotting plants on Saturdays, and long walks around a lake on Sunday mornings. Find your own natural zen. Soak in nature’s energy as often as you can—it’s healing.

    Caring for and Nourishing Your Body-Mind-Soul

    We can’t be resilient if we are depleted.

    When my kids were little, I barely had time and energy for self-care. I neglected my needs—whether physical, emotional, or mental—just like I was raised to ignore them growing up. Self-neglect is a trauma response, and years went by before I realized I was just perpetuating old wounds.

    As a result, I felt chronically depleted and anxious. Every little mishap or challenge would stress me out, whether it was a kid’s tantrum or packing up for a weekend trip. I was living in a state of chronic overwhelm, emotional dysregulation, and low-grade depression.

    As kids grew older and more independent, my healing turned a corner. I could finally go beyond basic self-care like showers and eating well, and focus on truly nourishing my body, mind, and soul. I now prioritize self-care like my life depends on it because it does.

    Focusing on the basics, I prioritize sleep, movement, and practices that nourish and relax me—long baths, longer walks, healthy food, reading, gardening, music. I rely on boundaries to protect my energy and inner peace. I practice mindfulness and do things with intention. I plan ahead to avoid rushing or multitasking. I fill my own bucket.

    With so much out of our control, caring for ourselves—body, mind, and heart—is the one thing we can do.

    ——

    While challenging times are a given in life and we can’t always change our circumstances, we can have a different relationship with what’s going on outside of us. We can learn to surf the waves if we stay mindful of practices that strengthen resilience. And that is empowering.

  • The Paradox of Less is More (And How It Will Improve Your Life)

    The Paradox of Less is More (And How It Will Improve Your Life)

    “Don’t use a lot where a little will do.” ~Proverb

    One of the most common paradoxical statements we hear is “less is more.”

    I, like many others, understand what that means in the context of personal style, where it is commonly used.

    I can appreciate, for example, that when we overdress, we are often taking away from the beauty of the outfit or the look and detracting attention from each valuable detail or accessory.

    But recently I discovered that the paradox of “less is more” has many other applications.

    When I started questioning whether I could apply this simple philosophy to my life, more generally—to be more effective, to be more at peace, to have higher levels of self-esteem—I found that it became the single most effective guiding principle of my life.

    The first time I noticed the amazing power of “less is more” was when I accepted that I could not physically do the brutal corporate hours that I used to work, and neither could I compete with the hyper-alpha entrepreneurs and business owners that worked fourteen hours a day.

    I tried to do the 5am starts that seem to be the trend in the world of business but found that is not how my body works. Every time I tried to push myself beyond my natural rhythm, I was so tired during the day, I could achieve nothing of value.

    That is when I made a new rule, that I would do just one thing every day, and as long as I achieved that one thing, my most important, value-added thing, I would appreciate myself as having achieved something significant.

    I appreciate that this is not always possible when you are not in charge of your own workload, but the essence of this lesson is to concentrate your focus on what is essential and of highest priority and value, rather than becoming overwhelmed with trying to do every task.

    I found that when you apply “less is more” to your work and daily to-do list, you become the epitome of productivity and focus. And although there is a certain tribe of people that glamorize the hustle culture and the grind ethic, we also now acknowledge that our mental health and self-care are just as important. Thankfully, we have started to realize that burn-out is counterproductive to success in the long term.

    I found that by trying to do less, I actually achieved more in all the important ways. I was more creative, I was more productive, and I was able to sustain my energy throughout the week instead of constantly going through peaks and crashes.

    I have now made this my routine and my ultimate measure of productivity. By focusing on the most important task, instead of aiming to complete every task, we can all achieve more by seemingly doing less. This is one way powerful we can utilize this paradox to streamline our everyday life.

    After my success with applying this approach to my working life, I then started to consider whether “less is more” might help me in other parts of my life.

    One arena in which I have reflected on “less is more” is when I have found myself critiquing my natural tendency to not want to speak about my accomplishments in a boastful way or try to push myself to the front to be ‘seen.’

    Often, I have wondered whether my natural modesty was holding me back. Should I be pushier? Is it a failing within myself to not be more self-promoting? But then I reflected on “less is more” and realized that one of the ways we can be guided by this philosophy is in how we present ourselves to the world.

    We do not need to necessarily boast about our accomplishments or clamor desperately for attention.

    Sometimes we get greater appreciation and respect by allowing people to learn for themselves our true value. In allowing people to discover us, we are attracting only those who appreciate us without having to work so hard at being liked or selling to them in the manner of a pushy salesperson. And there is so much flow and peace in approaching life like this.

    Think of the greats in history who changed the world and never talked about themselves, instead choosing to keep the focus on their mission and the people they served. Therein lay their greatness.

    The concept of servant leadership (another seeming paradox!) speaks to the way great leaders are ones that serve, and this necessitates keeping your ego aside. This is my go-to now when I feel I should be more of a pushy salesperson or chase after people that have no interest in reciprocating my efforts. Less is more!

    “Less is more” has also changed the way I communicate. I, like many other people in our modern society, have been conditioned that we should communicate, communicate, communicate! That we should talk about everything all the time and express everything we feel and think.

    But I found, when reflecting on “less is more,” that in relationships, we sometimes over-communicate.

    We can all do with holding our tongue and learning when not to speak, what not to say, and when to listen.

    This self-control and self-restraint can often pave the way for a better quality of communication and more peace and harmony in a culture where we overemphasize the power of words spoken—words that are often unnecessary and destructive, words that cannot be taken back.

    By saying less, these days I find that my relationships are more harmonious, and greater peace and ease have found their way into my interactions. It also reminded me that there are many ways we say so much when we say nothing. When we let ourselves just hold space, just be, or spend time listening, we are communicating in powerful ways.

    In my family and the way I love and care for them, “less is more” has helped me realize that sometimes the best way to love and care is by taking a step back and doing nothing rather than helping out every time.

    It allowed me to recognize where I was not being caring but, in fact, was being overbearing and enabling. And as many of us have discovered, the tendency to overextend yourself does no one any good; not the person you are trying to help, nor yourself.

    One of the ways I used to step from caring into being overbearing was by offering ‘helpful’ but unsolicited advice to my loved ones. Now I have realized that, when it comes to offering advice, less is definitely more!

    I discovered that “less is more” is about creating space. In your relationships, this is where you are not always reaching out to connect and create intimacy and you are allowing air to circulate and bring new life and perspectives to your interactions.

    And this also applies to physical space. By decluttering and letting go of things I no longer use or need, I now have less but better quality items, which I really treasure. I am able to value them, (because I can actually see them!), and this results in a feeling of luxury and abundance from the sensual act of taking time to fully enjoy them, rather than being on to the next purchase after the initial thrill wears off.

    And when we apply this philosophy to our schedule, by creating fewer obligations that drain us, we allow space and time to spend on what is truly important, while also creating space for new activities, that are more aligned to us, to come into our lives and take their place.

    “Less is more” seems contradictory and confusing.

    But the reality is, beauty lies in simplicity, truth lives in simplicity, and greatness lies in stripping yourself and your life down to what is truly important.

    Here are a few questions you might ask yourself to start the process of applying this motto to your life.

    • In what ways can you do, be, and have less and magnify your overall happiness, peace, and success?
    • Can you find ways to reprioritize and focus on what is truly important?
    • What do you do, with relative ease and effortlessness, that is adding value to your life?
    • In what ways, and in which areas, are you trying too hard?

    We can all reflect and apply the teachings of this paradox in any and every part of our life to live a life of greater meaning, focus, simplicity, and peace.

    I encourage you to deeply reflect on how less might actually be more in your life and then take small daily actions to align to that reality. Take small daily actions to remove things, to do less, to be less, to try less, and thereby create more flow and ease and less stress.

    Take small steps to create pockets of nothingness and space in order to expand into more of what is truly important and, most importantly, to expand into a greater version of yourself.

  • How I Get Through Hard Times Using Curiosity, Compassion, and Challenge

    How I Get Through Hard Times Using Curiosity, Compassion, and Challenge

    “Sometimes the worst things that happen in our lives put us on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us.” ~Unknown

    Until I was thirty-seven, I thought I’d led a pretty charmed life: I had a supportive family and good friends, I’d done well academically, always got the jobs I’d applied for, and met and married the perfect man for me.

    In 2013, when I was thirty-five weeks pregnant with my second child, I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. My baby was induced at thirty-seven weeks, and my chemo started ten days later. In a funny way I was relieved; Okay, I thought, I’ve been seriously lucky up until now that no one has been ill in my life, so if I can survive this, then this is as bad as it gets.

    And that year was bad—moving home, caring for a toddler and a newborn, and going through aggressive cancer treatment was horrendous, but I hunkered down, tried not to think too much about it, and survived.

    In December 2014, literally as we were clinking champagne glasses to celebrate my all-clear results, my husband had a devastating call from his mum in New Zealand. She had just been diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer. Early the following year my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer, and my mother-in-law died that spring.

    It was at this point I started to feel weighed down with a heaviness. This wasn’t the deal… I’d taken the cancer hit for the team, everyone else was supposed to stay well. I started to lose my trust in the world.

    My urge to control everything and everyone around me, which I now realize I have had since childhood, went into overdrive. I became fearful of change and made list upon list to organize and reorganize my life until I had anticipated everything that might go wrong and put things in place to deal with it.

    My brave dad endured a variety of invasive and aggressive treatments, but his health continued to decline. I could not control what was happening or the sense of loss and grief that at times I felt were swamping me.

    Something had to change: I started journaling, yoga, and meditation. Slowly I felt my anxiety and my panicked grip on my life begin to lessen. I looked inward and I started to notice familiar feelings and patterns, recognized myself responding to roles and labels that I no longer felt to be true.

    There were shifts; very, very small shifts, but with two small children, a husband working long hours, and a dad with rapidly declining health, even small shifts made a difference to my capacity to cope.

    Toward the middle of 2015 my husband started to get awful headaches, nausea, and dizzy spells. He was in a very stressful job, so decided to leave work at the beginning of 2016 to get his health back and decide what he really wanted to do with his life. However, in the spring of 2016 he was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor. At that stage my children were three and five.

    The next couple of years were consumed by medical appointments for my dad and my husband, alongside the busyness that goes hand in hand with raising young children, but I continued my inner work. I examined my feelings. Was that really how I felt? Had I felt that way before? What helped then, what might help now? Is the story I’m telling myself about this true? What do I need right now?

    In spring 2018 my dad died, in spring 2019 my husband died, and in spring 2020 the UK went into its first lockdown due to Covid-19.

    Every year since 2014 I’ve said to myself, well surely the worst has happened, this year has to be better, and yet each year something else monumental and life-changing has happened. The past seven years have been relentless, and at times I have been overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for the people I love most in the world.

    People used to hear my story open mouthed and ask, “How do you cope?” I would reply in a way designed to brush them off, remove their focus of attention, and minimize my pain by saying, “Oh well, you know, you just deal with what life throws at you.” I knew that this wasn’t true, but a flippant reply was easier than the truth. After years of continual inner work however, this is my honest reply:

    To boost your resilience, to heal, and to ultimately thrive you have to be prepared to turn over the picture-perfect patchwork quilt of your outer life that you present to the world and take a good look at the messy stiches on the underside.

    You need to be prepared to look at the messiest of those stiches and painstakingly unpick them so that you can find the knots, the tangles, and the imperfections. It’s only when you connect with your authentic self that you’re able to respond to your unique needs in times of crisis and learn what you need to do to foster your own resilience.

    The way of doing this will be different for everyone, but if I could boil it down to one pithy statement it would be to always keep in awareness the 3 C’s: curiosity, compassion, and challenge.

    Here are some ways I’ve applied this in the last seven years to help me, and perhaps these ideas might help you too.

    Allow your feelings.

    Other people are allowed to feel uncomfortable about this, but that is not your responsibility. Your responsibility is to embrace your emotions so you can process them and work through them instead of repressing, denying, or numbing them with substances and distractions.

    In my life this idea of numbing or distracting has taken shape in many ways. One is the compulsion to check my phone rather than sit with feelings of restlessness, boredom, or uncertainty. Sometimes I find myself opening my fridge or cupboard, not because I’m hungry, but because I’m anxious or agitated.

    Recently, I’ve needed to work on sitting with my feelings when I say “no” to someone and worry there will be painful repercussions if I don’t keep other people happy.

    These are all hugely uncomfortable realizations, but offer an opportunity to spot patterns—do I always reach for food after a specific event, do I always reach for my phone when I feel a certain way in my body?

    Once I’ve shown a curiosity about my choices, I can have understanding and compassion for why and challenge myself to do something else. Instead of food can I do some rounds of a breathing exercise? Instead of the phone can I practice some simple yoga poses? Can I pause before saying “yes” to something I know won’t serve me and think of the times I’ve said “no” and there haven’t been negative repercussions?

    Key questions here are: What do I really need, what am I afraid of, and how can I soothe my threat system in that moment before reacting?

    Put your needs first.

    I learned that however much I was needed by other people (and with a dying dad, a dying husband, and two small children I was needed a lot), I had to start the day knowing that at some point I was going to make time to put my needs first.

    Sometimes that was getting up early to enjoy a hot chocolate in peace, often it was taking some quiet time in nature. I joined a gym with a pool because swimming is something I find hugely supportive for my mental health, and I joined an online yoga site as I no longer had the lengthy chunks of time I needed to get to a class in person.

    Embrace ritual and routine.

    Decision fatigue contributes massively to how overwhelmed I can become; routines provide a secure framework for my family to feel supported and give me more energy for the unexpected things that life inevitably throws at me.

    My routine includes:

    • Planning my week ahead on a Sunday—I have a simple document with columns for appointments, reminders, to-do list, and well-being
    • Putting out school clothes and making lunches the night before
    • Having a grocery delivery booked in for the same day and time each week
    • Menu planning and pre-preparing simple meals for the nights of the week that I know will be busy or I am working late

    Put together a well-being toolkit.

    Explore ideas and suggestions that you might find supportive, but don’t feel beholden to it. You don’t need to use all of the tools all of the time. Learning to listen to what you need in the moment (and giving yourself permission to act on it!) is really empowering.

    My well-being toolkit includes…

    • Breathing exercises
    • Journaling
    • Yoga
    • Reading
    • Running
    • Meeting friends for tea
    • Trying out new recipes
    • Sitting still—either meditating, focusing on my breath, or just letting my mind wander

    Build a supportive team around you and know their individual strengths.

    No one person can deliver everything you need. Manage your expectations about what each treasured person can bring to your life and learn who to go to for what.

    Challenge the narratives, expectations, and labels in your life (my 3 C’s).

    Do they still serve you or feel true; where do they come from; what do you need in order to let some of them go

    There were ways I perceived myself and labels others had given me that only addressed the way I presented myself outwardly. By turning over the quilt and looking at the stiches that made up these labels with curiosity and compassion I was able to challenge them.

    For example, am I really “standoffish,” or is that just my defense against crippling social anxiety? Am I really “bossy,” or am I just frightened of how unsafe the world will feel if I lose control? Am I really “capable” or just terrified of asking for help and being rejected?

    I would never suggest this is a simple process, and reaching even a modicum of self-awareness is a daily and never-ending challenge for me. There are no black-and-white answers, so it’s important to become accepting of living in the grey area.

    Ultimately, I believe that approaching each day, every response, every feeling with curiosity invites compassion and understanding, which helps us challenge and address underlying insecurities and outdated narratives that keep us down and stuck.

    Supporting ourselves to see beyond the labels, roles, and responsibilities layered on through our lives allows for the possibility of the emergence of the authentic self.

    This is a work in progress, I am a work in progress, and always will be.

    Some days I am overwhelmed with sadness, a heavy heart, and a sense of loss; some days I awaken already infused with a sense of gratitude and joy. Every day, however, I wake up prepared to be curious and interested, to approach all interactions with myself and others with compassion, and to do what I can to challenge thoughts and beliefs that I don’t want to take into my future. I just know that next year will be a better year.

  • I Thought Meditation Would Fix My Anxiety – Here’s Why It Wasn’t Enough

    I Thought Meditation Would Fix My Anxiety – Here’s Why It Wasn’t Enough

    “Your mind, emotions, and body are instruments and the way you align and tune them determines how well you play life.” ~Harbhajan Singh Yogi

    The earliest memory of my anxiety was at ten years old in fifth grade.

    I remember it so vividly because in middle school the bus came at 6:22am exactly in the morning.

    Each night I would look at my Garfield clock and think, “If I fall asleep now, I’ll get five hours of sleep…. If I fall asleep now, I’ll get four hours of sleep… If I fall asleep now, I’ll get three hours of sleep…”

    And without fail, my sister would slam my door open at 6:15 because my alarm didn’t wake me, yelling that we’re going to miss the bus, and this is the last time she’s going to wake me up.

    I didn’t know I had anxiety.

    When my doctor asked my mother, “How is she sleeping?” the answer was always “She’s never been much of a sleeper.” And that was that.

    Or when I couldn’t concentrate in school and do my homework, the “answer” was ADHD and I was given medication, which helped a little but didn’t solve the problem.

    In high school, the anxiety about going to school was worse. I couldn’t eat breakfast because I was too nauseous in the morning from stress.

    By college, my TMJ was so bad that there were months when I could barely open my mouth because my jaw was so tight. I had started scraping at my knuckles with a dull butter knife as a physical distraction from the angry swirl of anxiety in my stomach.

    More of this as the years went on.

    In my late twenties, after panic attacks that sent me to the emergency room, codependent relationships driven by the fear of rejection, and a wreck of a body with daily tension headaches, stomach issues, and a barely existent immune system… I finally figured out that this was all anxiety.

    It was starting to make sense why my pursuit of symptom relief for all my physical ailments was not working—I wasn’t getting to the root of the problem.

    In came meditation into my life.

    And it helped—a lot!

    It helped calm me. It taught me how to breathe properly. It gave me time every day to care for myself.

    And because I was also practicing yoga, eating a healthy, vegetarian diet, going to the gym, smoking pot, and taking medication, my anxiety symptoms improved. But my anxiety didn’t go away… yet.

    Without really understanding what anxiety is and why meditation helps (and what is missing from the equation), I was stuck from progressing further in my recovery.

    What is Anxiety, Really?

    We often confuse stress and anxiety.

    Stress is an important bodily system.

    Stress happens when a triggering event (like a bear or a tight deadline) activates our sympathetic nervous system to send cortisol and adrenaline through our body so that we can fight or flee our situation in order to keep ourselves safe.

    It diverts energy and resources from “non-essential” systems like digestion and reproductive and immune systems so that it can divert it to our heart, lungs, and large muscles.

    This is a reaction that lasts give or take twenty minutes (or until the immediate danger is no longer present).

    Anxiety is when our thoughts continually activate our stress response.

    While our bodies are built to recover from acute stress, they were not built for prolonged stress.

    And that’s why we end up with symptoms like:

    • Exhaustion
    • Muscle tension
    • Gastro-intestinal disorders
    • Immune suppression
    • Fertility and menstrual disorders
    • Headaches
    • (and like a hundred other things)

    How Meditation Can Help with Anxiety

    Like I said, I was definitely seeing the benefits of meditation, but I wasn’t seeing more progress with my anxiety.

    That’s when I realized I had to change how I meditated and learned how to “practice” even when I wasn’t meditating.

    Meditation is more than just focusing on your breath. It is a training exercise for your mind.

    The goal isn’t to relax (though that is often a wonderful side effect), it is to change your relationship with the thoughts that come into your head.

    That was the first lesson that made a world of difference in my practice, learning that “you are not your thoughts.” It blew my mind at first, but then it made sense. I have thoughts. I have ideas, stories, and sentences constructed by my brain to try to explain a situation. They are not me or the truth, just neurons firing off ideas.

    A focused-attention meditation, like mindfulness meditation, teaches us three main things: notice, acknowledge, and redirect.

    When we meditate, we notice when our attention has been taken away from our focal point (like our breath).

    Then we acknowledge this without judgment, maybe even label what we were thinking about like “planning” or “worrying.”

    And then we gently release our hold on that thought and redirect our attention back to where we want it—our breath.

    This process of noticing, acknowledging, and redirecting teaches us how to:

    • Be in the present moment
    • Become consciously aware of our thoughts
    • Choose curiosity over judgment
    • Practice self-compassion and patience
    • Let go of control

    These are all skills essential to learning how to relate differently to the thoughts that cause our anxiety.

    Once I started thinking of meditation as practice—like football practice—I began to realize that each two, five, or twenty-minute session of meditation was really preparing my mind to handle the real-world stressors off of my meditation cushion.

    So, when I texted a friend and she didn’t text back (an old trigger of mine), I was learning how to:

    • Notice: “Ah, I’m feeling anxious because I am thinking the reason she hasn’t replied is because she doesn’t like me as much as I like her, and I’m believing that her reply would prove that I am good enough and likable.”
    • Acknowledge: “This is an uncomfortable feeling, but I will allow it to be here until it has passed. Even though she hasn’t replied, I choose to love and accept myself.”
    • Redirect: “I open to the possibility that her lack of reply could have another explanation—she may be busy or sick or forgot to reply. I can wait or I can message her again. Even if she is angry with me, I can make amends because I am a good person.”

    Instead of swirling down the rabbit hole of “what is wrong with me?”, I was learning to recognize these thoughts as just ideas that my brain served up based on a habit I’d cultivated after years of believing I wasn’t good enough.

    While this understanding didn’t stop me from having those thoughts, it reduced them, and it taught me to change my relationship with them. Instead of believing them as truth, I was now able to see them for what they are—a defense mechanism to try and keep me safe.

    But even after I understood that meditation is really a training practice, I was still missing an important piece of how it can help with anxiety.

    Even though I had made huge strides with my anxiety, I still kept feeling some of the physical symptoms that went along with it like tightness in my chest and a constriction in my throat.

    This is when I learned that meditation engages our parasympathetic nervous system—our rest and digest mode.

    We have a sympathetic nervous system to engage our defenses, and a parasympathetic nervous system to disengage that defense system.

    That’s why we often find meditation relaxing. Anxiety keeps our fight-or-flight mode engaged, so by slowing down, focusing on the breath, and relaxing our body, we’re able to tell our nervous system that we’re safe and it’s okay to chill out.

    Our Emotions Get Stored in our Bodies

    Even though I’d made huge progress in disengaging from anxious thoughts, and I was able to stop believing the ideas that “I’m not good enough and no one likes me,” I still felt that physical anxiety tension in my body.

    That’s the piece that was missing for me for many years—the knowledge that our emotions get stored in our physical body. By that I mean we carry a muscle memory of how our body responded to our stress triggers in the past.

    Have you ever had a meeting coming up that you know you are ready for, yet still you feel nervous? Or you try to relax, and you have nothing to be stressed about, yet your body is still tense? That’s what I’m talking about.

    While meditation helped me reduce these physical symptoms, I still held that tension. I came to realize that we each need find the right tools for us—beyond meditation—to continually and regularly engage our calming systems.

    There are lots of ways to do that. Practicing yoga, walking or dancing, laughing, singing, petting a cute puppy… all of which helped me some.

    There are other embodiment practices as well that can send sensory information directly to our vagus nerve (a huge part of our parasympathetic system) that we are safe and we can relax

    I found it fascinating to learn that it is our nervous system that creates our muscle tension. For example, if you were put under anesthesia, your muscles would go limp. Once you woke up, your nervous system would remember where it was tense and tighten back up.

    This feeling of physical tension sends a signal back up to our brains that we are not completely safe, and that’s why it’s hard to shake that feeling of anxiety even when all is well.

    The practices in addition to meditation that helped me personally to release that lingering tension were things like:

    • Acupuncture (I had a huge physical release after a session once that blew my mind!)
    • Tapping (EFT)
    • Reiki
    • Kundalini breathwork
    • And a few simple vagal nerve stimulation practices that send sensory information directly to the nervous system

    One example of vagal nerve activation is to lie on the floor with your nose pointed toward the ceiling. Using just your eyes, look to the right and hold the gaze until you notice a shift in your energy, a need to swallow, a sigh, or a deep breath. Then relax back at neutral and repeat by looking off to the left.

    If you’ve practiced meditation to help with your anxiety and it didn’t work, or didn’t completely work, try the notice, acknowledge, and redirect technique I mentioned above to take power back from anxious thoughts. And if you still feel the emotions trapped in your body, perhaps trying new embodiment practices can help you release that stored tension.

  • One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

    On September 23, 2015, Loukas Angelo was walking to his after-school strength and conditioning class just a few hundred yards from Archbishop Mitty High School.

    He was approaching the outdoor basketball courts when he ran out into the street and was struck by a car traveling around thirty miles per hour. The impact sent Loukas flying down the street, and he was immediately transported to the closest hospital where he remained in critical condition.

    I remember sitting on the couch later that afternoon when my phone started blowing up. Feeling curious, I shoved aside my history homework and decided to see what was going on.

    Multiple people had sent some variation of the same text, “Yo. This is so sad. Did you hear about what happened with Loukas…?”

    Confused and a little bit scared, I turned to Twitter and started looking through my feed. I was absolutely floored by the tweets that were being sent out by my friends and our high school’s Twitter page.

    Similar to tragedies like the Boston Marathon, or 9/11, it was one of those moments in life where you’re always going to remember exactly where you were when you found out the news.

    It was almost inconceivable to think about the fact that I had walked across the same exact crosswalk where Loukas was hit just fifteen minutes prior.

    All throughout the night, support poured in from social media sites. The hashtag #PrayForLoukas was trending #1 on Twitter in my local area for several hours. I’m not a particularly religious person, but for the first time in years I said a prayer for Loukas before going to bed.

    The next day at school was one of the most eerie, heart-breaking days of my life. I arrived at Archbishop Mitty High school that day to a campus that was completely silent. Although there were plenty of people walking through the campus, no one said a word to each other

    As I walked toward my homeroom class, I remember seeing one kid carrying a ridiculously oversized backpack. It looked like he was at the airport preparing to leave for a month, and I let out a slight chuckle imagining what it was like to carry that thing around all day.

    However, my smile was wiped off my face completely when I stepped through the door of the classroom.

    Every one of my classmates was sitting there emotionless. Stone-faced. Not saying a word to each other. I sat down and did the same, as we were all preparing for an assembly in the gymnasium that was set to take place in about fifteen minutes.

    The 1400 students funneled into the gymnasium and took their seats. You could hear a pin drop.

    Our principal got up and gave a very powerful speech, which concluded with him leading the entire school in a prayer for Loukas. After a few others got up and spoke, the assembly concluded with a one-minute-long moment of silence.

    The day after the assembly, the news broke that Loukas had passed away after being in critical condition for around forty-eight hours.

    On September 25, 2015, Loukas Angelo lost his life at the age of fourteen years old

    Coming To Terms with Your Mortality

    As we go about our day-to-day lives, we are inundated with thousands of thoughts, most of them the same thoughts that ran through our head the day before.

    But very few of these thoughts, if any, are about our own mortality.

    It’s a little scary to think about the fact that you and everyone you know will perish from this world.

    No one knows when, but one day you will draw your last breath on this earth. Some people have the luxury of preparing for it, while others like Loukas have no idea that it’s coming.

    But at some point, death comes for each and every one of us.

    We all know this deep down, but it seems like so many of us live like we have unlimited time on this earth.

    We put off spending time with family even though they can be taken from us at any given moment.

    We refuse opportunities to get out of our comfort zone even though we have no idea how many of those opportunities we’re going to be given.

    In other words, most of us go through life without coming to grips with our own mortality.

    When Loukas passed, I obviously felt sorrow for his friends and family, who have to carry that burden around for the rest of their life.

    But mainly, I thought about Loukas.

    Given the nature of his death, he didn’t have any time to reflect back on his life. And given how young he was, if he did have that opportunity there wouldn’t be much to think about compared to someone on their deathbed at seventy or eighty years old.

    Yet, I couldn’t help but imagine what he would be thinking about in his final moments had he been given that opportunity. What regrets would he have? What moments would he replay in his head over and over again?

    Eventually, I started asking myself those same questions. It was a pretty cruel exercise that I was putting myself through, but it felt like a way to extract some meaning out of a terrible tragedy.

    As I imagined what it would be like to contemplate my existence at the end of my life, I didn’t feel happiness or satisfaction. I felt regret and shame.

    One common theme that permeated my consciousness was fear. I was only seventeen at the time, but I realized that essentially all of the regrets I’d have on my deathbed were a direct result of being afraid.

    Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. Fear of judgement.

    It was a brutal wake-up call. For the majority of my life, I had missed out on opportunities and experiences due to fear.

    I was here alive and breathing, but I wasn’t truly living. Merely existing, acting as if the end was never coming.

    How to Let Fear & Death Guide Your Actions

    I’m twenty-two now, and since then my approach to life has been simple.

    Twelve times per year, I do a monthly check-in with myself and ask myself one simple question:

    At this very moment, what am I avoiding in life because I’m afraid?

    The answers to this question inform me of exactly what changes that I should be making in my day-to-day life.

    Most people run from fear, but my suggestion is to lean into it. It’s actually an incredibly accurate predictor of the changes that you should be prioritizing in your life.

    It’s different for everyone.

    Some of you may be afraid of changing careers and pursuing something that you love because of the uncertainty that comes with changing professions.

    Some of you may be afraid of improving your social skills because that involves battling with the fear of rejection.

    Some of you may be afraid of moving to a different city because you’ll have to leave friends and family that you care about.

    If you have the courage to actually ask and answer the question, your fears will tell you exactly where your focus should be. It’s almost as if they’re calling out to you, saying:

    “Don’t forget about me. If you don’t take action, I’m going to torture your thoughts when you get to the end of your life.”

    Facing your fears is hard. Staying somewhere you don’t belong is even harder. But nothing compares to the pain of getting to the end of your life and knowing that you let fear stop you from doing the things you truly wanted to do.

    Just like Jim Rohn said, “We all must suffer one of two pains. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is that discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

    So I highly encourage you to ask yourself the question above each month and write down whatever comes to mind.

    Pick one of the things that you write down and make it the biggest priority in your life. You can’t fix everything about your life at once, as focusing on everything is the same thing as focusing on nothing.

    But once you’ve narrowed your focus, you can start taking small steps every day to overcome that fear.

    If you’re afraid of social interactions and have been for years, start saying hello to people as they walk by each day.

    If you’re afraid of starting a workout routine, start by walking for two minutes each day.

    These initial bursts of momentum that don’t seem like they make any difference are ultimately the foundation upon which your biggest changes take place.

    Do the things that you think you cannot do. Let the pain of not facing your fears override the pain of letting them fester for years and decades.

    Your future self will smile down at you.

    #LiveLikeLoukas

  • Living Without a Grand Purpose: Why I Find Meaning in the Little Things

    Living Without a Grand Purpose: Why I Find Meaning in the Little Things

    “Ironically enough, when you make peace with the fact that the purpose of life is not happiness, but rather experience and growth, happiness comes as a natural byproduct. When you are not seeking it as the objective, it will find its way to you.” ~Unknown

    I have always enjoyed helping others. Ever since I can remember, my empathic nature has led me to feel what others are feeling and to try and assist them to the best of my ability. Serving others has always been a point of pride for me.

    I have built my entire life around the idea that my life serves a greater purpose in the universal machine. My suffering and the life experiences I’ve had are leading me toward a grand destination, where I can look back and finally make sense of everything that’s happened and feel fulfilled. I’ve held this belief for so long and internalized this message so deeply that to think of any alternatives seems insane.

    Can I share a secret with you? I am terrified that I might be wrong about all of it. Maybe my life didn’t align to fulfill some sense of greater purpose. Maybe my experiences, good and bad, held no other significance other than to propel me forward into the unknown.

    Nothing I have ever set out to do has worked out in the way I imagined it would. And now I am in my thirties, and I have no idea what I’m doing. What do you do when you have no sense of direction or purpose? Why has the universe left me this way? I’d like to share my story with you…

    I joined the Air Force in my early twenties to get away from my small town. The military paid for my education, and I was able to start a career while I was young. I wasn’t excited about my career field in the slightest though. I was a communications officer, and I hated computers.

    I wanted to connect with people and help them. I also wanted to assist my faith group in sponsoring the first Pagan chaplain in the Department of Defense. I asked the universe for guidance, and I received what I thought was an unequivocal ‘yes.’ So, I attended seminary and trained to become an ordained minister.

    Fast forward several years, and my health changes after I give birth to my son. I can no longer serve on active duty, so I decide to change goals to become a chaplain for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. I serve two years in two separate VA hospitals as a student chaplain; supporting people in crisis, teaching groups, learning about mental health care, and serving veterans of all walks of life. I apply to many chaplain jobs within the VA, and none of them work out.

    My family and I relocate several times. I apply to chaplain jobs wherever we go, and nothing works out. It is now two years after I finished my time at the VA hospitals. I ask the universe for guidance again, completely stumped as to why my efforts to be a chaplain have not panned out despite my best efforts.

    I hear about life coaching, and research acquiring a life coaching certification. The skills are similar to what a chaplain does, and if I start my own business, I can focus on a specific population to serve. In my time at the hospitals, I have realized I connect with and love helping veterans. I create my own coaching business aimed at helping veterans with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

    A year goes by. I have attended business seminars, marketing classes, hired my own coach as a mentor, and created all of my social media accounts and a website. I put out content and throw myself into networking with non-profits and influential people. I end up with one paying client and I am burnt out emotionally and professionally after nine months of consistent effort.

    My emotional health starts to deteriorate. I feel dejected, useless, and I feel like a failure. I am so good at helping people when given the chance, but it feels like the universe is conspiring against me. In other words, I have internalized the notion that my self-worth is dependent on what I can do for others rather than my inherent worth.

    Where did this come from? Why do I feel this way? I sit down and unpack this. I realize after some reflection that my tendencies to want to help everyone else is deeply rooted in the idea that I am not worthy. Many times throughout my life I was unwanted and abandoned (I have a history of abuse), and that sets up a shame spiral within me that I have perpetuated by my need to feel loved and wanted.

    I feel if I am not serving some purpose, or giving to others in some way, then I am not fulfilling my duty in life and I am worth nothing. How many of us can relate to these feelings? And what can we do about them?

    I had a heart-to-heart with my friend about this, and she made me realize several things. How do we truly know what the purpose of our life is? How do we know we weren’t meant to be kind to one person, or to step in at the right time to say something and then our lives are complete to be enjoyed till the end of our days? Do we really know what life is about, or is it a complex web of experiences and feelings with no designated plan?

    I’ve given thought to these questions, and I find comfort in the answers I find in the little things: Coffee in the morning on my back porch. Helping my son with his homework. Cooking a nutritious meal for my family. Having a conversation with a friend when they are in need of support.

    I have to be intentional about not letting my mind wander to the “what if?” and “am I doing enough?” narratives in my head and take each day as it comes with what I can do in the now.

    I am slowly warming up to the realization that my worth is not dependent on what I do for people. My only responsibility is to live my life to the best of my ability, with experiences and personal growth being my primary focus. I don’t actually know if my life has a grand purpose, and for now that is okay. I find meaning in the little things.

  • When Life Gets Hard: 4 Lessons That Eased My Suffering

    When Life Gets Hard: 4 Lessons That Eased My Suffering

    “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” ~Viktor Frankl

    When life goes sideways, it can be hard to take one more breath, let alone find meaning.

    Trust me. I know.

    In the same year, I had breast cancer, chemo, radiation, and a divorce I didn’t want. There’s more to the story (there always is), but in essence, I lost everything—my health, my love, my home.

    During all of this, I lost sight of myself, quit trusting myself. I was sure I was to blame for everything.

    At the same time, within twenty-four hours of leaving the house I loved, six friends had given me the keys to their houses, telling me I always had a place to stay. My family showed up for me in ways that had me weeping.

    Also during this time, I had two powerful dreams and one still small voice—these three messengers told me the very things I needed to hear to go on.

    My first dream involved someone cooking something delicious in a kitchen. I couldn’t eat what she was making, because taste often goes awry with chemo, but I remember the cook saying, “Honey, there’s more sugar than salt in this recipe.”

    In other words, life’s sweetness would return. Just give it time.

    The second dream I had is that I dropped deep into the earth where every last bit of me was burned away. All that was left was a fierce and shining bone.

    This dream promised me that there was something deep inside that was indestructible, and it had everything to do with fierceness and light.

    And that still small voice? No matter what was happening, deep inside there was this wise and quiet Me who refused to let me be hurt anymore. What do I mean by that?

    I knew I needed something to help me survive, but this grounded Me knew I needed to be intentional about how I chose to survive. Because I wanted to make myself better, not worse.

    I began to write and record mini-meditations. I called them “A Hit of Hope.” A friend told me that the best place to record was in a closet, so there I sat, on top of my shoes, talking into my phone—using my voice and my words to name my pain and to convince myself that things would get better.

    Any human being will have pain and trauma. Any human being will have things happen to them that they would rather avoid. But as long as we are alive, we can know that life will go sideways. In big and small ways, we will suffer. So as much as it pains me to say this, why suffering happens is irrelevant. The only question we can answer for ourselves is how we will choose to be in the midst of pain and suffering.

    While there are still days when the bus of emotions can run me down, and while I have made more than my fair share of missteps in my recent journey, I have learned a few things along the way.

    1. When there are big, and out-of-control life events, radical self-love and emotional recovery are the first order of business.

    When you are hurting, put down the metaphorical gas can or salt or knives. Don’t make the fire any bigger or the wounds any deeper than they already are.

    What do I mean by that? Make choices that keep your head clear, choices that keep your body and spirit safe.

    For instance, a friend of mine, who was going through a divorce at the same time, was told by his best friend, “Just get roaring drunk, and stay that way for three months.” While that might help numb the pain, that kind of behavior would only create more problems in the long run. It would be far more healing to embrace journaling, yoga, or some other form of self-care.

    Also, even if you messed up, don’t beat yourself up. Can you admit to how you contributed to the situation? Absolutely, but think of yourself like a kid on the playground. More scolding and finger wagging usually does little to help the situation. Often, it’s a big ol’ hug that is needed to stop the tears. So, get centered, get settled, and heap loads of love on your hurting self.

    2. You get to feel every ounce of what you are feeling.

    Do not be ashamed of your feelings. A Buddhist concept relates to this: first and second darts. The first dart is the emotion (sadness, fear, anger), and because we are human, it is right and good to let those emotions flow through us.

    The second dart is our reaction to our emotion. Why do I always do this? If I were a better person, I’d… You know the drill. Feel your feelings, so that they can rise up and flow away, leaving you calm and clear.

    3. There is no time to lose, but there is no need to hurry.

    What in the heck does that mean? That bold statement doesn’t mean you should fly into manic or panic mode, but there is nothing like a life-threatening illness to remind a person that this now matters. In fact, this is the only now you are assured of getting. “You never know what’s coming,” a friend often says.

    The idea is to live each day fully. To make the small choices, the day-to-day decisions that bring you the most joy, the most delight. This might mean starting that novel or business, calling that friend you’ve been missing, getting on your bike or yoga mat, or climbing that mountain and yodeling until the grizzlies roar back in response.

    Simply put, there is not one day, one decision that will magically poof us to the good life for the rest of time. There are the small choices that add up—and either bring us toward more wholeness or continue to tear us to bits.

    4. Meaning is what helps us to survive.

    This last one is something Viktor Frankl, a survivor of four Nazi death camps, pointed out. In the worst of the worst, it can feel almost impossible to find meaning, but doing so is essential. It’s here that the why matters.

    When life assails, it can be easy to ask, “What’s the point?” To feel adrift. Untethered. Rocked this way and that by wind and wave, all threatening to pull you under.

    You have to find your why, your meaning, your sense of purpose or intention. What can you—you—do that makes life feel fuller, richer, more vibrant and alive?

    For me, it was helpful to think about active verbs. I wanted to move, create, heal, serve.

    What did this look like? I would work out each morning, because that helped me to feel strong in my own body. Then I would sit down and write my meditations, getting lost in the joy of doing something creative. This process not only healed my own struggling spirit, but I hoped it might do so for others. When I posted them, I did so with the intention of letting them serve others.

    If you have a hard time finding your own sense of meaning, take a look at your life. What do you do that makes you lose time, something you get lost in? That’s often a great indication of what brings you meaning. Or what is something you do that makes you feel better when you are done? How can you incorporate that into your life more?

    If you are still struggling, ask a friend to help you brainstorm. Or take a walk, and let your mind wander along with your feet. Your spirit often just needs some time, space, and quiet to speak deeply to you.

    This might sound like fluffy advice, but it’s not. As Frankl famously said, “He [or she or they] who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

    To be clear, this isn’t easy, nor does it happen in a day, a week, a month, or even a year. But create the right conditions and good things are far more likely to come.

    Last week, I happened to be sitting on my front porch. When I got up to go inside and make myself tea, I noticed my orchid in the front window.

    A friend gave it to me before I started chemo. Every morning, I look at it as I sit inside and write, but this was the first time I’d seen it from the outside. From this new perspective, I could see a gathering of buds, pressed up against the window, the direction from which the light comes.

    The soon-to-be blossoms were hidden entirely by the pot and the leaves when I sat inside in my leather chair.

    That orchid offered me a message, just like my dreams. Those flowers showed me a deep and profound truth: sometimes, the blossoming is on the other side.

  • When You’re Becoming a New You: 3 Lessons to Help You on Your Journey

    When You’re Becoming a New You: 3 Lessons to Help You on Your Journey

    “There is no place so awake and alive as the edge of becoming.” ~Sue Monk Kidd

    From a small café overlooking the boat harbor in Seward, Alaska, I looked out the window at the enormous mountain peak of Mount Alice that protruded from the earth behind rows of tour boats, sailboats, and a cruise ship large enough to carry several thousand passengers. The last few days of my summer there were coming to an end, and I reflected with gratitude on my time there.

    Located directly off the Gulf of Alaska and within Kenai Fjords National Park, Seward is a place people dream about: bald eagles cut through the sky as frequently as clouds, humpback whales breach the calm bay on a quiet morning, and wildlife roam freely within rows of pine trees that crowd the hillside and hug the small town.

    Seward was my home for the summer of 2019. I lived in a camper van next to Resurrection River with a full view of Mount Alice. At night I could hear the soft, constant mumble of the river.

    When I wasn’t working downtown at a local coffee shop, I read next to the river, practiced yoga in the black sand that blanketed the bay, flew in a new friend’s helicopter above the wild landscape, ate breakfast on a beach where the whales welcomed the day, or sat beside a crackling fire under towering trees and mountain peaks.

    It was dreamy. But I didn’t arrive there randomly nor without trials. In fact, my environment both externally and internally looked much different just a couple years before when I wrestled with questions and dilemmas that are common for many of us on the path of becoming.

    The Confusion & Inner Turmoil of My Early Twenties: A Brief Backstory

    Two years before, I was in the depths of the uncomfortable tension I felt between two opposing decisions: should I stay on my current, stable path or leave it entirely to pursue something more in line with my values?

    I was a fresh college graduate, and I had recently started a job at a nonprofit organization that paid me well and offered many advantages I felt lucky to have. I was also working my way into the political world and imagined myself one day running for office. On top of working, I was also trying to keep the wheels moving on a nonprofit organization I’d started to train women to run for public office. My mind played with ideas of buying my first house and settling into this life path.

    I was twenty-three, highly ambitious, and working toward a life that I didn’t really want. But I struggled to understand that feeling because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful or, even worse, delusional for letting go of what I had.

    Another side of me was creative, free-spirited, and very much opposed to a linear life route. In fact, I never wanted to attend college. I had dreams of being a photojournalist or a writer who gathered knowledge by exploring and experiencing the world. I valued adventure, curiosity, and creativity. Yet here I was—not only pursuing a path that didn’t fit those values, but telling myself and others I was passionate about it.

    My mind was a warzone of opposing beliefs and opinions about who I was and how I should live my life. I felt stuck and lacked direction. I was certain about nothing and questioned everything: my identity, my thoughts, and the direction I was heading.

    I was also in a relationship with a man stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage and harmful drinking habits that grew out of his feelings of worthlessness.

    I spent my days cultivating the professionalism I didn’t value and my evenings at my boyfriend’s house, smoking weed on his frameless mattress and teetering between my contrasting desires for rebellion and obedience.

    There were nights I’d fall asleep next to him and the bottle of whiskey lying in the crevice between his mattress and the wall, then wake the next morning feeling drained, lonely, and lost on a path I was unsure how to step away from.

    I’d unintentionally assumed the role of my boyfriend’s caregiver in a time when I needed my care the most. I was navigating the chaos, uncertainty, and vulnerability that often meets a person in her early twenties, all while reprimanding myself for not being where I thought I should be.

    As a teenager I often made promises to myself I would follow my heart and choose a life I desired regardless of the circumstances, but in my early twenties I realized that was far more complicated than I initially thought.

    Life has a way of guiding you in a direction that diverges from what you’d planned for yourself. Trying to navigate that divide can produce anxiety and inner turmoil–especially when you’re young, naive to the power of life’s unplanned circumstances, and still learning how to properly adjust your sails to work with its winds.

    That’s the situation I found myself in when I was twenty-three, full of ambition, and feeling stuck in circumstances I didn’t want but had somehow still manifested. Through that time, I learned three key lessons that I hope you may also carry with you as you continually adjust your sails and navigate life’s shifting tides on your path of becoming.

    Lesson 1: If you don’t know how to overcome your current challenges, look for lessons that can help move you forward instead of forcing yourself to take immediate action.

    In the midst of my inner turmoil, I wanted to exit the discomfort immediately and be in a state of ease. But my Buddhist-inspired beliefs and mindfulness studies taught me that in the center of the challenges I needed to sit with what I was experiencing and listen to what there was to learn. Rather than taking immediate action, I needed to observe. What was I feeling? What were my emotions trying to communicate? What was stirring in my soul?

    I spent many evenings journaling the raw thoughts in my mind without trying to make sense of them. I allowed emotions to arrive and stay as long as they needed. I gave myself space to not know what I wanted nor what was to come next. I asked questions without needing an answer. I considered my needs at every moment and did my best to meet them.

    By doing so I learned that staying present and accepting the current moment doesn’t mean neglecting action. It means being alert and cognizant of what lessons the moment has to offer so that one can move forward with the insight, tools, and knowledge needed when it is time to take action.

    Lesson 2: Focus on the things you can control, then take action and adjust as you go.

    In time—by being still and aware within the confusion and fear I felt—I realized I needed to leave the situations that I didn’t want. I needed to adjust my sails to steer myself in a different direction, even if I didn’t know exactly where that would lead me. I didn’t need to know the future in order to know that I wanted to (and could) change my present circumstances.

    Within about eight months my relationship naturally fizzled, I gave notice at my job, found a new job in Alaska, bought a van, gave away many excess things I owned and didn’t need, moved out of my apartment, and hit the road from Wyoming to Alaska. I shifted my sails.

    Rather than focusing on the areas of my life I couldn’t control—like the potential consequences of changing so many aspects of my life—I leveraged the choices and agency I did have in order to produce different outcomes.

    Lesson 3: Remember, sorrow or joy, this too shall pass.

    One summer morning after arriving in Alaska, I sat at the end of the boat harbor overlooking the jagged peaks in the distance. I watched and listened as the boats swayed gently in the water and the birds sang their songs in the blue sky.

    My body felt different. The anxiety had receded. There was more space in my mind, and I felt a sense of direction even in the lingering uncertainty. I still didn’t know what would come after my short summer in Alaska. But more than anything, I felt an immense amount of gratitude and contentment for my life at that moment. Where else would I rather be? I thought to myself.

    In times of joy, I often forget the challenges that led me there, and I fall prey to the belief that the joy just might last forever. But that morning on the dock I understood that the joy too was temporary, just like the moments of hardship that preceded it. Regardless, something within me had faith that I was right where I needed to be in both phases of my life.

    Life’s changing tides have taught me the same lesson: both joy and sorrow pass through our lives like eagles cutting across an Alaskan sky. We often yearn desperately for joy over sorrow and grasp for a future where–when it finally arrives–all our hard work and desperation will pay off and we’ll live the remainder of our lives in ease.

    But despite our relentless attempts to prove otherwise, the magic of life isn’t found in eternal happiness nor in the future moments that might follow the one right in front of us. It’s in feeling the depth of every experience, regardless of what it contains. It’s staying present in what’s scary and uncomfortable as much as it’s staying present in what’s exciting and fulfilling, all while knowing that whatever meets you here and now will pass in the same way as the moment before it.

    —

    It’s been two years since I spent that beautiful summer in Alaska. Within that time life’s tide has continued to rise and fall, bringing both challenges and joy. Just as I’d anticipated, the ease I felt that summer passed, then came again, and passed once more. Each wave of experience has delivered numerous lessons, like little gifts waiting to be opened, observed, and put to use.

    Staying present in the challenges leads to immense growth and strength, and being present in pleasure generates gratitude and bewilderment. We need both. A meaningful life depends on our ability to value all aspects of the spectrum. It’s all critical to the process of becoming.

    If you’re currently sitting in hardship, you may believe it’s your job to find the next joyful experience as soon as possible, but that’s not your job. And if you’re engrossed in happiness, you might feel that it’s your duty to maintain the current environment of your life so you never have to experience hardship again. But that is also not your task.

    Your job is to sit in what you’re experiencing without infusing it with judgment and forcing your emotion into shapes it doesn’t belong in. Explore it. Find gratitude for it. Ask questions. Listen. But do what you can to not wish for it to end nor wish for it to stay. Get curious about this simple invitation: Can you let this moment simply be, and if so, how deeply can you delve into it without attaching to it or its outcomes?

    Wherever you are, it’s just a moment in time. It, too, will pass. But there is a purpose to its presence despite its impermanence. It has something to teach you about who you are. So while it’s here, dive into it and expand the depths of your dynamic and vibrant human experience. How deep can you go? The lessons and experiences you find along the way will mold you into your becoming.

  • Measuring the Quality of Your Day with a To-Be List (Not Just a To-Do List)

    Measuring the Quality of Your Day with a To-Be List (Not Just a To-Do List)

    “Don’t equate your self-worth with how well you do in life.  You aren’t what you do. If you are what you do, then when you don’t…you aren’t.” ~Wayne Dyer

    As you crawl into bed, thump your pillow to make the perfect little cave for your head to rest in, pull the covers up tight under your chin, and let go of that big sigh that indicates the day is finished, how do you look back on the waking hours you just experienced? How do you measure the quality of your day?

    Measuring Your Day by What You Do

    Most of us will measure our day by what we did. We will reflect back and count the things on the to-do list we were able to check off. The more check marks, the better.

    How well we did will also come into play as we reflect back on our doing. The more praise we received for it, either the self-provided kind or that offered by others, the higher we rank our day in terms of quality.

    We may compare our daily accomplishments to those of the people who trudged through the hours with us. “Did I do more or better that Jim, John, or Mary?” No matter how much we goofed up, if Mary goofed up more, than we can sigh with relief and call it a good day as we close our eyes for the night.

    The Not So Good Days of Doing

    What happens, however, if you never got done what you wanted to get done or if what you did was simply more of the same old drudgery that fills most of your days? If you didn’t do what you had planned well or, heaven forbid, you screwed up royally and had others chastise you for it, chances are you are thumping your pillow a little harder than necessary.

    Your ability to fall asleep may also be disturbed as you ruminate regretfully over all the things you did that you wish you didn’t. Tonight you may be giving Mary something to smile about.

    So is it safe to say you had a bad day when you didn’t do enough or do it well enough? Only if that is how you choose to measure life quality, the way I did for most of my life.

    Learning the Hard Way

    I have given the Marys of this world plenty to feel good about over the years. I have spent many nights abusing my pillow and tossing and turning as I reflected back on the dids and did nots of my waking hours. I spent my days as a check mark addict, a praise dependent, and a competitive comparison seeker.

    I was compelled to set one goal after the other; to constantly add “just one more’’ thing to my mile long to-do list. I believed I had to do in order to feel like I was enough. So I did and I did and I did until I could do no more.

    I got sick. I was forced to cut back on the doing and face the reality of my situation. Now, I consider myself a pathological doer in recovery.

    Most of us still measure the quality of our daily experiences, the quality of our lives by what we do. We seldom determine the value of our life experience by how we are or on the beingness of it all.

    What would happen if we did?

    A Day Based on Being Rather Than Doing

    What if you and I ignored the urge to check out the check marks on our to-do lists before getting into our PJ’s and brushing our teeth? What if we sat quietly somewhere before bed and reflected on how we were that day; how we felt and how others seemed to feel around us rather than on what we accomplished and who we did more than? Would the quality of our day change?

    I know the quality of my life has changed since I began to measure my day differently. In fact, my life improved almost immediately when I began, at the end of the day, to reflect on the questions that really matter.

    The Important Questions to Ask At the End of the Day

    • How was your day? Really?
    • Were you feeling peaceful and calm at certain points of your day? If so, you can give yourself lots of points for that.
    • Were you loving and compassionate with Mary when she spilled coffee all over the stuff you were working on, or did you refrain from honking your horn at the slow driver in front of you that made you fifteen minutes late for your appointment? Give yourself even more points, if you said yes. Your day score is getting better.
    • Were you mindful and aware of the beauty around you? Did you appreciate it? Did you whisper a few words of prayerful gratitude? If so, better still.
    • Did you seek stillness and quiet at some point for a few minutes at least? Did you take a moment to just breathe and observe the life force within you?
    • Did you reach out a hand of support or offer a few kind words to another, not because you had it on your to-do list, but because it was something you were inclined to do from the heart?
    • Did you smile often? Did you laugh? Did you find moments of unexpected joy? Did you seek them?
    • Did you love what you were doing or most importantly did you love the people around you?

    Congratulations! All these things make for a great day.

    Is There Room for Improvement?

    Even if you have big beautiful checkmarks beside everything on your to-do list at the end of your twenty-four-hour time block, there may still be room for improvement in the being department. How would you answer the following questions?

    • How was your day? Really?
    • Were you tense, irritable, stressed out in the process of the doing?
    • Were you experiencing rage, impatience, or resentment for more than a few minutes today?
    • Did you complain or criticize a great deal?
    • Did you consciously seek to do more or better than someone else?
    • Were you unkind or unloving to anyone or anything, including yourself?
    • Did you fail to reach out to someone you knew was in need?
    • Did you forget to notice, let alone appreciate, all the beauty of life that was going on around you and in you?

    If you said yes to a few of those questions above, maybe it is time to work on improving the quality of your day and of your life.

    Take Heart: Tomorrow Will be Better

    Don’t be too hard on yourself, though, for you are not alone. Many of us will answer yes to those questions if we are being honest. Most of us spend too many moments of our day diminishing its quality by getting too wrapped up in doing. Even in my recovery, I find myself slipping from time to time back into unhealthy doing.

    Recognizing the problem is the first step to healing. The good news is, from that awareness, we can grow from the less than good days of being. We can begin to experience life the way we were meant to, with peace and joy.

    All it takes to begin the change is three simple steps.

    Steps to improve the Quality of Tomorrow

    1. The first step is to be more conscious, before you drift off to sleep, about how you are living your life regardless of the things you get done or do not get done. Use today as an example. Reflect, learn and grow from the hours you just experienced.
    2. Next, the doing. Of course you will have to do something but prioritize the living component over the doing component for the upcoming 24 hours.
    3. Finally, write a to-be list instead of a to- do list, for tomorrow. It may look something like this:

    Tomorrow I will be:

    • mindful
    • aware
    • peaceful
    • a person who seeks reasons to smile and laugh
    • loving
    • appreciative
    • forgiving
    • thoughtful
    • supportive
    • still
    • quiet
    • faithful
    • honest
    • a person who simply wants to be

    The quality of your life is determined by who you are, not by what you accomplish. We are, after all, human beings not human doings.

    Let’s base the value of our day on that small bit of wisdom and live accordingly. Just be.

    Now settle down and have a good night’s sleep. You have earned it!

    **This post was originally published in September, 2017.

  • Movement, Stillness, and Insight: My 3 Daily Non-Negotiables for a Busy World

    Movement, Stillness, and Insight: My 3 Daily Non-Negotiables for a Busy World

    “Put yourself at the top of your to-do list every single day and the rest will fall into place.” ~Unknown

    We live in a busy world. There is always something, or someone, fighting for our attention. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to lose the time we need for ourselves. The white space in our days is often the first thing to get squeezed out as demands on our time escalate.

    To combat this pull to overwhelm, I decided to create a list of daily non-negotiables.

    Having a list of non-negotiables means I get to control at least a portion of my day. I can ensure some of what is important to me keeps its space when everything else is at risk of being crowded out.

    The Daily Three

    My daily three, as I have coined it, includes time for the following.

    1. Movement
    2. Stillness
    3. Insight

    Let’s break each down.

    Movement

    This is time for either a formal movement practice (most often bodyweight strength work, some weights, or yoga), an informal mobility flow and stretching what is tight, or just a long walk. Some days will include a combination of all.

    I believe deeply in the power of a physical practice. Regular movement is good for the mind and body. It energizes and nourishes us. It can also boost our mood, reduce chronic pain, and help us sleep better at night. All good reasons to make movement a priority in our days.

    And this time doesn’t have to be something we dread, like an early morning trip to the gym (personally, I love these). We can also introduce an element of play. Discovering movement on a deeper level. Rediscovering that childlike quality of just enjoying being in our bodies and seeing what they can do, whether that means dancing, tumbling, hula hooping, playing frisbee, or running down a hill, arms flailing, like we did as kids.

    There are many ways we can settle on what works best for us but also experiment, peppering our day with mini-movement breaks.

    Stillness

    Time to reflect, to ponder. Time to absorb. Time to reset and replenish. Time to be.

    Some will use this time for a seated meditation. I prefer long walks (which, along with writing and yoga, are as close as I get to a formal meditation practice).

    This is also my time for listening to music. Music settles my mind on the busiest of days, bringing me back to myself. For others, it may have the reverse effect, but this works for me.

    Less frequently, this space will also mean time for a more indulgent self-care routine (massage, sauna, steam, etc.). Time to switch off and be pampered. We all deserve some pampering occasionally.

    Time in stillness can often mean thinking of how I can be of service to others and the world around me in some small but meaningful way. This could be a random act of kindness or something more substantial. While self-care and time inside our own heads is important, so is time spent thinking on how we can make the world a little better for those around us.

    This is also the time for a gratitude practice. Thinking of one to three things I’m grateful for today. Big or small, they all count.

    Making space for a gratitude practice is one of the most powerful changes anyone can make to their lives. It shifts the lens through which we see the world. When we feel gratitude, true appreciation, and joy for something, it’s hard to stay in a negative space. When I think about being grateful for something (or someone), my mind clears; it focuses purely and simply on the act of being grateful.

    Too often in life, our mind wants to zig and zag. Striving for the next thing and the next. Planning and plotting ahead. Dwelling on the negative, what we are missing, what we did wrong, how far we are from our goals, how we dealt with a situation in a less than optimal way. This negative bias and future-creep do not serve us well. We suffer.

    Instead, we need to be a little kinder to ourselves and detach from our expectations of what could or should be. Making time in our day for stillness acts as an anchor to bring us back to ourselves. It’s grounding.

    Insight

    Time to learn something new or dig deeper into an area of interest.

    This will usually involve reading (or re-reading) a book, listening to a podcast, or listening to someone smart.

    Sometimes it might be a passage from a favorite book I come back to or a quote that speaks to me. I collect quotes for my writing, but there are several favorites I return to over and over. They always provide me with inspiration and are a source of energy.

    This can also be a time to go deeper on a subject in a more expansive way. A course, workshop, or some time with a coach of some sort. Doubling down on a subject we are passionate about.  Investing in our knowledge.

    Why Have a List of Non-Negotiables?

    Your non-negotiables may be different than mine, depending on your needs and values. Regardless, this practice ensures we prioritize the things that serve us (or we need) amongst other priorities. Writing them down and having them in our mind’s eye keeps them present.

    This can be time for self-development and self-care. Time to grow, time to reset, time to reflect. Time to slow down.

    This is positive fuel that we can run on. A foundation to launch from.

    Why Daily?

    A daily frequency is particularly important when establishing a new habit. Once ingrained, you may wish to revert to a less frequent practice.

    A better question might be, if it’s important, why not daily?

    Why Three?

    Because it’s not too many or too few. Three is doable. You might prefer more or less if you give a similar practice a proper go. Experiment and keep what works for you. As my examples have shown, I have been liberal in what my three encompass, I encourage you to do similar.

    The Time Conundrum: Doing What You Can, When You Can

    When life gets busy, it can be tough to find any free time in your days, especially if you have young children (or babies) to see to, or elderly dependents that count on you.

    The good news is you can work your non-negotiables into the time you have available. A short five minutes here or there, between other responsibilities, adds up.

    If you have trouble making time for half an hour of seated meditation every morning, perhaps you could reduce the pressure and instead allow five to ten minutes before you go to bed (or even in bed) each night instead. Or use a meditation app on your phone for your day while walking from work to home. As I write this, in our home, we are currently experimenting with some Yoga Nidra time just before bed.

    You can even look for opportunities to combine some of these non-negotiables with your other daily activities—for example, dancing with your kids so you get the benefits of movement while bonding with your little ones.

    The important thing is that we make at least some time for things that are important to us and for us, a promise to ourselves and form of self-care. Some days we might have more time, some days less.

    There is no right way to do this. We all work from where we are and with what we have. These non-negotiable elements should add to the quality of our lives, not create an additional stressor.

    So long as we make a little time for the things that nourish and energize us, we will reap the benefits.

    Experiment, make your own list of daily non-negotiables, and feel the power of this simple habit.

  • How a Simple Morning Routine Helped Me Heal from PTSD and Grief

    How a Simple Morning Routine Helped Me Heal from PTSD and Grief

    “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” ~Frederick Douglass

    In an eighteen-month window, I had a landslide of firsts that I would not wish on my worst enemy.

    I ended my first long-term relationship with someone I deeply cared for but did not love. She had borderline personality disorder, and I was not mentally strong enough nor mature enough to be what she needed in a partner. Within five minutes of me saying our relationship was over, she slit her wrist as we sat there in bed. This was the beginning of it all.

    Drug overdoses, online personal attacks, physically beating me, calling and texting sixty-plus times a day, coming to my work, breaking into my home to steal and trash the place, and general emotional abuse followed over the next ten months.

    Day after day, week after week, month after month.

    My heart started racing, and my breathing spiked every time my phone went off, and I mean EVERY time. I woke each morning to multiple alerts that someone had tried to hack my social media and bank accounts and people I barely knew messaging me saying, “Hey, don’t know if you saw this, but your ex is…”

    In the midst of this, my parents called a family meeting, and that’s when they told us that dad’s doctor thought he might be showing the first signs of Parkinson’s disease.

    I didn’t know at the time what this news would mean long-term for him and us as a family, but I soon found out.

    Dad slowly started deteriorating mentally and physically. Within a year, he had aged twenty years and wasn’t able to be left alone. The man I had once known to be the picture of health and courage was gone.

    I, too, was changing for the worse.

    Happiness was a feeling I couldn’t relate to anymore. I was constantly in a state of duress, from twitching fingers to a tightness in my chest. The most notable change in my life was the constant breaking down as I would shower in the morning.

    After I woke, I would kneel, resting my head on my shoulders and cry, in fear for what the day ahead had in store and disbelief that my life had come to this.

    Even as I huddled there under the warm stream of water, I would feel my eyes shifting back and forth, a mile a minute, it seemed. The effects of my anxiety, depression, and PTSD were touching all areas of my body.

    I did not know what to do.

    I couldn’t believe my life had turned out like this.

    How could this be happening to me?

    But the scariest thought that came to mind, as I knelt in the shower each morning, was how do I stop this? No one had taught this in school.

    I remember staring at my ceiling one afternoon (as I often did, not having any desire to do anything that I once loved or cared about) and saying to myself, “If I don’t take action, I’ll be like this till I’m fifty.” And this was the truth; I knew it wasn’t going to go away without consistent work to better myself.

    Over the following weeks to months, I started working on my morning routine, something that had never been part of my life before this. Most mornings had me showering and getting dressed as I scrolled through the gram, looking at negative posts, adding more unhealthy thoughts to my already full mind.

    It was a slow process.

    Most days I only lasted five minutes before I gave up and went back to bed, but slowly, over time, with two steps forward then five steps back, I created a routine that felt comfortable and achievable each day.

    The routine went like this:

    • Wake up at the same time each day, no matter weekday or weekend.
    • Hop into the shower right away and finish off the last thirty seconds with a full blast of cold water.
    • Make my bed after I get changed.
    • Make a glass of hot lemon water.
    • Sit and drink the lemon water in silence as I look out the window.
    • Finish the time on the chair by saying five things that I am grateful for, no matter how small—”I am grateful for this tree outside my window.”
    • Put on a pot of coffee.
    • Write in my journal as the coffee brews, exploring how I am feeling at the moment or how I felt yesterday and why.

    Not until I had my coffee in my hand, around forty-five minutes after waking up, would I get my phone and flick it open to see what I had missed overnight.

    I had created a morning routine that put me ahead of everything else going on in life. There were no sudden jolts of unease or stress from outside sources like a text message, email, or social media post. 

    I was in control of my life for at least forty-five minutes every morning.

    I would use that confidence to extend those positive vibes further and further into my days. At first, they didn’t last very long, but over time I was able to look at the clock and see mid-day was here, and I hadn’t given up on being productive.

    My morning routine saved me. It gave me the confidence to add other tools to my mental health toolbox. I started eating healthier foods, working out more often, reading in bed instead of watching TV, and going to therapy. All of these things aided me in battling my mental health struggles.

    I’ve learned that sometimes, when our challenges feel daunting and unbeatable, we need to think big and act small, taking it one day at a time, or one morning at a time, or one breath at a time.

    Sometimes one small positive choice can have a massive ripple effect and change everything—especially when it enables us to tune out the noise of the world and reconnect with ourselves. Life will always be chaotic; if we want calm in our lives we have to consciously choose to create it.

    I write this to you three years after creating this morning routine, still doing it every damn day.

    It has evolved and adapted as I have grown as a human from these life experiences that shook me to the core.

    But I still make sure of one thing. I keep my phone out of my hands until my morning routine is done.

    This is my time.

  • How to Trust Yourself After the Trauma of Being Dismissed and Invalidated

    How to Trust Yourself After the Trauma of Being Dismissed and Invalidated

    “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” ~Steve Jobs

    I was a sensitive child growing up, and I felt everything deeply. Unfortunately, my childhood home was dominated by chronic tension, fear, and anger—not an ideal environment for anyone, let alone a perceptive and empathic child.

    My father was rather authoritative and controlling, and he disciplined us harshly. I was raised to obey without questioning and punished for mistakes or not falling in line.

    Love was only assumed but never shared, and so I grew up feeling alone, unsupported, and like I was never enough. Craving my parents’ love and attention, I became the good girl, the overachiever, the people pleaser, the caretaker—the chameleon who knew how to morph herself to fit the environment in order to feel accepted. Over the years, I lost a sense of who I was, never really feeling like I belonged.

    Instead, I felt like I had no voice. My feelings were chronically dismissed or invalidated—there was no room for what I wanted, felt, or needed.

    I grew up thinking others knew what was good for me better than I did myself. I grew up seeking their approval, attention, and affection. I grew up disconnected from my own feelings and instead hyper-attuned to what others needed from me. Disconnected from my emotions and judgments, I second-guessed myself, never quite trusting my instincts about what was healthy and what was not.

    Loyal to a fault, I tolerated toxic relationships, unable to leave people who gave me just enough attention to keep me around but not enough for me to feel fulfilled. I ended up chasing people who were unavailable, invalidating, and unsupportive; love entangled with pain was all I knew.

    I became a caretaker who forgot she has needs too. I compromised my values, kept giving chances to people who’d take me for granted, eventually erecting walls to protect myself from the world that just didn’t get me, didn’t value me—a world that didn’t care.

    Isolated, lost, and depressed, I finally realized that the hurt inside me was hurting the people I love the most—my own children. I didn’t want to pass my trauma and my parents’ trauma down to the next generation, so I made a promise to myself to heal as best I could.

    This was the first step on my journey back to myself. It took me years, but I eventually came home.

    Trauma Leaves an Imprint on the Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul

    Adverse experiences in childhood leave a mark on a developing brain, personality, and a sense of self, especially if we did not receive adequate support and nurturing through the crisis. Worse yet if the trauma was chronic.

    The reality is that trauma during childhood affects us to the core and rattles our sense of self. Not receiving the love, care, support and validation we need at our most vulnerable time leaves us feeling less than, undeserving, abandoned, and broken.

    We often grow up internalizing fear, anger, guilt, shame, helplessness and a feeling of being unsafe in the world. Overwhelmed, we push the pain away and put on masks in order to survive. This isolates us and disconnects us from ourselves and the world around us, keeping us small, scared, and unfulfilled.

    Growing up in an unstable or abusive home means we often become hypersensitive to stress, emotionally reactive, and unable to assert ourselves or go after what we want in life. We’re ridden with self-doubt, anxiety, and chronic overwhelm.

    We lose our sense of agency and safety. We stop trusting our own judgment and trusting in the flow of life.

    We become overly controlling, perfecting, pleasing, and performing. Desperately trying to mask our shame and the feeling like we don’t belong, we become a warped version of ourselves, stuck in a cycle of fight-and-flight, push and pull, constantly negotiating between states of avoiding and reacting.

    This affects us on physical, mental, emotional, and energetic levels. We get cut off from our intuition, our authenticity, and our higher self. We lose sight of who we are and what makes us happy.

    Childhood Trauma Destroys Trust

    When those who are supposed to love and protect us harm or neglect us instead, trust is broken. When our caregivers don’t reflect our worth back to us, we never learn to internalize it. We grow up believing that we don’t deserve love, care, and attention.

    If our feelings and emotions are not validated growing up, we begin to believe that they are invalid, that we shouldn’t feel them, that they are wrong. We begin to doubt ourselves and how we feel. Our sense of trust in our own experience is shaken.

    Instead of listening to our inner voice, we let the outside world dictate how to live, feel, and behave. We lose a sense of who we are, what we want, and how we feel. This disconnect from our innermost self means that we end up living a life that isn’t really ours—it’s perhaps a successful life by modern standards, but not an authentic and fulfilling life.

    This was my experience—until I learned to tune into my intuition.

    Your Intuition is Your Superpower

    Our intuition is the bridge connecting our body, mind, and soul. This is not the loud voice of our ego, but the quiet yet steady one underneath our judgments, assumptions, and interpretations.

    Just as our body communicates through our senses, our spirit speaks to us through insights, hunches, dreams, and gut feelings—our intuition. Listening to that inner wisdom and allowing it to guide us toward what is best for us in the moment—and then following that intuitive knowing—opens the doorways for higher knowledge to enter our consciousness.

    Aligning with the higher self this way doesn’t remove challenges and difficulties from our lives, but it fortifies our strength and courage and helps us find a path toward fulfillment.

    Rebuilding Self-Trust

    Trust is the foundation of any relationship, and that includes the one we have with ourselves. Without being able to trust ourselves, we’re unable to make decisions, we lack confidence, and we feel like we have no control over our own lives. Instead, we are plagued with confusion, fear, and self-doubt.

    Fortunately, self-trust can be nurtured and strengthened. Here’s what helped me learn to trust my emotions, intuition, and judgment after the trauma of being dismissed and invalidated as a kid.

    Spend time alone and reconnect with yourself.

    Carve out some time in the day to just be and enjoy yourself—without any distractions. This may mean sitting in silence in your garden, meditating, or just listening to nature. Maybe you best connect with yourself on long walks. Or maybe you best hear yourself by writing your thoughts out—journaling about what matters to you, the lessons you learned from the past, or dreams you have for the future.

    Whatever you choose, daily alone time will help you reset and renew, reconnect with who you are, and realign you with your true nature. The goal is to silence your mind and create space so that insight can come into your awareness.

    Practice mindfulness.

    Slow down and check in with yourself throughout the day. Sense into your body. How does it feel right now? What sensations are you noticing? What emotions are coming up? What wants to be heard? Fully tune into your inner experience in the moment. Consciously observe what is happening internally and take in any messages that you are receiving.

    For example, you may find that you need to put up a boundary with a friend or a loved one. Perhaps you need to say no to an expectation in order to protect your mental health. Maybe you need to speak your truth or let something go if it no longer serves you. Follow these internal cues—they are your guides to what you want and don’t want in your life.

    By tuning in and listening to your inner voice, you stay true to yourself. Instead of reacting habitually out of fear—saying yes out of a sense of obligation, staying quiet in order to keep the peace, or choosing others over yourself—you learn to respond from your inner wisdom and become more aligned with your wants and needs. You learn to have your own back.

    Process stuck energies.

    Take the time to feel any pain and trauma you’re still holding onto instead of repressing your feelings and distracting yourself with work, mindless scrolling, or substances. Gently and lovingly, acknowledge what happened and allow the hurt to come up, whether through physical sensations, feelings, or thoughts.

    Sit with the discomfort watching it ebb and flow through your body. Observe it, embrace it, and surround it with kindness. Extend compassion to yourself for going through that experience alone. Give yourself the love and nurturing you needed but never received. Finally, consciously release it as if it’s just a cloud in the sky passing through, imagining feeling lighter and lighter.

    Allowing the stuck energies to move through your physical body dissolves their power so that you’re no longer controlled by your past conditioning, painful experiences, and knee-jerk reactions. The trick is learning to surrender and allow the process to complete, one breath at a time.

    The more painful the experience, the more time it takes to heal it. Be patient with yourself. You may have to sit with your pain again and again, but each time you will get closer to releasing its grip and finding peace.

    Put yourself first.

    This isn’t selfish—it’s taking ownership. And it’s empowering. Nurture your body, mind, and heart, prioritizing your own needs before you give to anyone else.

    Create boundaries to protect your energy. Love yourself enough to keep commitments to yourself, your healing journey, and your growth—by showing up to do the work no matter how hard it gets.

    Have your own back and stand up for yourself. Encourage yourself through hard times and celebrate your successes. Practice kindness, not perfection. Become your best friend and your loudest supporter. Be authentically you!

    When I started putting myself first, my whole energy shifted. Instead of looking to others for validation and approval, I reached within. Instead of waiting for them to fulfill me, I started giving myself the love, care, and attention I craved. By focusing on meeting my own needs first, I was able to give to others from a place of love instead of obligation.

    I used to feel anxious, burnt out, resentful, and taken for granted. Now I was showing others how I wanted to be treated.

    By prioritizing myself, I was sending a message that my needs are just as important, and I deserve love and care too. The more I showed up for myself, the more I trusted that I was worth showing up for. As I drew boundaries, released the need to hold onto toxic or one-sided relationships, and started building the life I wanted to have, I found inner peace. I found my worth. I came home to myself.

    —

    Reclaiming your sense of self and the ability to trust your feelings and intuition is not only paramount to healing but also creating a fulfilling life.

    By reconnecting with myself, practicing mindfulness, processing stuck energies, and putting myself first, I’ve learned to access and trust my intuition about what I need and what’s best for me. I reclaimed my worth and rebuilt a strong sense of self. As a result, I no longer attract or accept toxic relationships or situations. I trust that I deserve better—and I know you do too.

  • Life is Fragile: Love Like Today Could Be Your Last

    Life is Fragile: Love Like Today Could Be Your Last

    “I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.” ~Steven Pinker

    He was splayed out in the middle of the road. The paramedics had yet to arrive. That was the scene on our way to meet some friends.

    Over dinner, they relayed the tragic story of their neighbor’s twenty-something son who was killed recently in a motorcycle accident.

    Two others lost their lives in an instant on a nearby suburban road.

    An acquaintance told me about the fatal hiking accident of a young man who was making his mark on the world and left it with so much more to give.

    My friend’s father is fighting for his life against COVID.

    All of this in the past week.

    I know what you are thinking. This is SOOOO depressing. I know. But it’s life. Life is fragile. It can end in an instant. I know from experience.

    My parents were taking care of our young children while my husband and I were on a company-sponsored trip on the other side of the Atlantic. We were so excited to catch an earlier flight for the last leg of our return so we could surprise our kids as they got off the school bus. 

    As we pulled up, our home was eerily quiet. No one was home. We entered and found a note on the counter saying, “Bridget we are sorry for your loss. There is food in the fridge.” 

    Panic ensued as we made frantic phone calls that went unanswered. What in the hell happened? Where are our kids!? Finally, the phone rang. “Bridget, Dad died.” 

    If you are like me you probably don‘t spend time thinking about your mortality. It’s uncomfortable. Yet, it’s one thing that is certain in this life. That, along with our choice of how we show up and navigate each day.

    As I reflect on the years since my dad died, I think of all the missed milestones that have marked my children’s lives, both big and small. From the fun, everyday moments to the can’t miss celebrations. This year in particular is bittersweet. It marks the high school graduation and college start of my youngest; another important milestone that we will celebrate without him, and it makes me sad.

    But he’s been with us all along the way in spirit. Sometimes I hear his voice. Sometimes I sense him around my house. I can still feel his warm hugs. And see the twinkle in his eye when he really saw me for me. 

    We continue to tell the stories. To remember who he was as a dad and a grandpa. We share his goofy idiosyncrasies, like his love for peanut butter, lettuce, and mayonnaise sandwiches. I know. But he loved it!

    It’s the little things that we remember about people. How they make us feel. Whether they are friends, family, or strangers. 

    Recently, before a class I taught, a student bolted in the door and stormed past me. No check-in. No hello. She kept going when I asked her to stop. She eventually made her way back to me and all was good. Yet, I could feel the frenetic energy oozing from her.

    I’ve been her. Many times. And I don’t want to be like that. I consciously choose to live with no regrets. To acknowledge the people I encounter with care and kindness. To be aware of the energy I am putting out there.

    I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. I hurt others. But I continue to try to do my best to be intentional and thoughtful in my interactions and make amends when I falter.

    When our mind is wrapped up in work, bills, responsibilities, to-do lists, kids, grandkids, and more, it’s easy to go through the motions of life. Sometimes the days become routine, and one rolls into another. We’ve got things to do and little time to get it all done.

    It can be challenging to quiet the chatter in our head, to look at the person in front of us, and to speak, listen, and interact with them like they matter. Often with strangers, and even more so, with our loved ones.

    They are the ones we take for granted. They understand our moods. They know our shortcomings. They forgive us time and time again. But is that what we want?

    If you died today, what do you want those closest to you to know? Do they know how you feel about them? How much they mean to you? Do they understand how important they are to you?

    Tell them. Leave nothing unsaid. You never know if today is your last.

  • How to Access Awakened Consciousness Through Meditation [Free eBook]

    How to Access Awakened Consciousness Through Meditation [Free eBook]

    If you’re anything like me, you’ve likely tried meditation, or even adopted a consistent habit, only to question if you’re doing something wrong. You show up and put in the time, but despite your best efforts, you’re not reaping the expected benefits, or at least not with the consistency you originally hoped to see.

    Perhaps you initially turned to meditation for stress-relief, some way to defuse the constant sense of pressure and overwhelm that’s prevalent in our achievement-focused society.

    Or maybe you first tried meditation to help you focus and be more present so that your days don’t go by in a blur while you’re busy rehashing the past and worrying about the future.

    Both were true for me.

    Before I found meditation, I lived my days shuffling through a number of damaging mental habits: dwelling on victim stories, beating myself up for all the ways I felt I’d failed, and pressuring myself to somehow achieve massive success in order to prove my worth.

    I was missing out on my life while focusing on all the life I’d already missed and all the life I might miss if I didn’t somehow do better.

    I hoped meditation would save me from myself, and in some ways it has. But I’ve also placed unrealistic expectations on my practice and found myself making, what I later learned, are common meditation “mistakes”—mistakes that prevent us from experiencing the greatest benefit of meditation: awakened consciousness.

    Spiritual luminary Craig Hamilton explores this thoroughly in Unlocking the Power of Meditation, a FREE eBook that I suspect you’ll find both eye-opening and life-changing.

    In a nutshell, awakened consciousness is a sense of connection to our true nature, beyond our mind and ego. It’s the place where we can easily access our intuition, wisdom, creativity, confidence, inner strength, and resilience.

    This is what I think we’re all after: not just reduced stress and greater focus in the moment, but access to an expansive, sacred part of ourselves that brings us an immense sense of freedom, flow, and connection to everyone and everything around us.

    If you’ve struggled with meditation, as well—if you’ve found it difficult to maintain a regular practice and feel you haven’t experienced all the mental, emotional, and physical benefits you’ve read about—I highly recommend you check out Unlocking the Power of Meditation.

    In this powerful resource based on groundbreaking research, Craig reveals the five surprising, yet pervasive mistakes most of us make that prevent us from accessing the true potential of meditation.

    He also shares one powerful shift we can make to ignite our meditation practice and access awakened consciousness.

    When you learn how to practice what Craig calls “direct awakening” you’ll discover how to:

    -Access the miracle of awakened consciousness every time you meditate and allow its powerful energy to infuse every aspect of your life.

    -Experience a deep inner freedom from the hypnotic spell of fear and desire, enabling you to meet life’s challenges with courage and grace, beyond reactivity or compulsion.

    -Access a source of wisdom that arises spontaneously in response to the needs of the moment, bringing forth laser-like clarity faster than the speed of thought.

    -Tap into a dynamic and seemingly limitless source of energy, enabling you to do whatever needs to be done in each moment without burning out or becoming drained.

    -Access an inner well of creativity that brings forth a seemingly endless flow of unexpected new ideas, visions, and integrative solutions from a place beyond the mind.

    -Become a conduit for an overflowing love and care that flows through you into the world from a place beyond your mind’s comprehension.

    It’s a short eBook with a massive impact, and it ends with an invitation to a free ninety-minute workshop that can help you take your meditation practice to the next level.

    If you’re ready to move beyond the most common mistakes meditators make and live a life filled with meaning, purpose, love, and inspiration, you can download the free eBook Unlocking the Power of Meditation here.

    I hope you find it as helpful and illuminating as I did!

  • The Simple Path to a More Fulfilling, Far Richer Life

    The Simple Path to a More Fulfilling, Far Richer Life

    “Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” ~Seneca

    Many of us say we want a simpler life, but we don’t make any changes because that would require us to make hard choices that go against the flow. We say we want to be less busy and enjoy more of our days, but it feels easier to do what everyone else is doing, even if it’s actually harder.

    The path of least resistance is a well-paved six-lane highway that barrels forward in one direction. The constant hum of traffic tricks you into thinking it’s the best way to get where you want to go. If you’re interested in a simpler life, take the next exit because I’d like to share a new route with you.

    But first, a few important questions…

    Why do we accept rules, expectations, or beliefs forced on us as adults? If this comes at a cost that consumes our soul and leaves us questioning life, why do we view this as a fair trade-off?

    Why do we subject ourselves to the torture of leading chaotic lives? Do we think our sacrifices are worthy and just because they’ll enable our kids to live better lives? Does our reality really reflect the life we want to pass on to our kids? Or are we passing the torch to a relay they don’t actually want to be a part of?

    At some point, we forgot why we work. And the forty-hour work week is something no one questions. It is what it is. How is it that every job needs the same length of time to complete its tasks in a week?

    You need to have a source of income to put a roof over your head, food in your belly, and clothes on your back. I won’t debate you on that. After we fulfill these necessities of life, we start to get lost with everything we think we need to be happy.

    We live in a consumerist culture. As a result, we’ve come to believe that our wants and needs are the same thing. This requires us to make far more money than we really need for a happy life. It traps us in jobs we don’t want. And it forces us to spend our most precious resource (our time) on things that don’t make us happier.

    I know, I’ve been there myself. In my mid-twenties, I was in a job I hated, living with someone who deserved better, in a city I didn’t want to be in. Rather than address the root of my unhappiness, I bought a brand-new shiny sports car. I was depressed and I wanted a car to fulfill an emotional need. Spoiler alert: All I got in return was more depression and a bank-draining monthly payment to remind me you can’t buy happiness.

    I don’t want to spend my life endlessly consuming in an attempt to avoid my feelings and needs. I want to be present in every moment and enjoy as much as I can, like my niece, who’s coming up to her third birthday. She’s already the world’s greatest mindfulness teacher.

    Like a penguin marching through the Antarctic, she waddles forward with purpose. She stops to let that grass tickle her toes. She laughs as the feeling of a breeze kisses her cheeks. She is present with every ounce of her being. I’m with her, but a moment before I’m whisked away by the thought of upcoming projects and emails I “need” to respond to.

    Modern society squashes the whimsical out of you like a fat June bug under a careless foot. The decades of school and meaningless work are like buckets of water drowning a campfire. Only the embers remain. The fire that burned within your soul waits for oxygen to stoke it back to life.

    To reach the simple life you have to make the hard choice to carve your own path. It’s that voice that says don’t settle and points you in the opposite direction of everyone else. It’s the words of Dr. Seuss who urges, “Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”

    Getting started with a simpler life doesn’t require anything you don’t already have. It only requires you to focus on everything worth appreciating in your life as it is right now.

    The purí tribe lived along the northern coast of South America and in Brazil. Philosopher Henry David Thoreau modeled his life after their ability to live simply, present, and fulfilled. Their way of living was in the presence they gave each moment: “For yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day.”

    While we can’t all uproot our lives and live in the woods like Thoreau, and modern life is decidedly more complicated than life in the time of the purí, their commitment to presence offers a simple solution to the chaos of an ever-connected life.

    By doing less and being more engaged in everything we do, we’re able to enjoy our lives now instead of waiting and hoping we’ll find happiness and fulfillment sometime in the future, when we’ve accomplished or earned enough.

    But this requires us to tune out the noise of the world, an ever-present buzzing that drowns out the voice of our soul as the years add up.

    As a kid, that voice whispered to us about exploration and adventure. We were driven by curiosity and refused to be idle.

    Everything was exciting.

    Everything was magical.

    Everything was a gift.

    Living this kind of life comes back to our ability to be present like the purí tribe.

    It’s in these moments of presence that we get a chance to listen and hear what our soul is saying. We know deep down that material things will not make us happier. We know deep down that all the promotions in the world will not fill the void of missing out on life. We know deep down that the rat race is a game we don’t need to be a part of.

    Being present with these uncomfortable feelings is the beginning of a new and rich life.

    Left unchecked the rat race crushes your soul like the grass beneath an elephant stampede. This way of living is toxic for the mind, body, and soul. It’s a disease that fills you with stress, destroys your family, and gives you little to hope for.

    This is the reality I was facing when I was forty pounds heavier and had hit rock bottom with my mental health. I often found myself drinking with the hope that I wouldn’t wake up.

    It wasn’t until I was present with this pain that I could see that I needed help. And it wasn’t until I faced my feelings that I was able to strip away the things that didn’t fulfill me so I could      make space to enjoy the now.

    If you’re living like I once did—distracting yourself from your discontent and missing out on your life as a result—know that things don’t have to continue this way.

    At any time, you can choose to be honest with yourself, let go of the things that drain your spirit, and allow yourself to find joy in the simplicity of the now.

    At any time, you can tune into life’s simple pleasures—the excitement of your dog’s wagging tail, the unexpected smile of a passing stranger, or the way your son’s eyes light up when he smiles—and recognize that this is happiness. And It’s available at any time if you’re not too busy or caught up in your head to appreciate it.

    The purí tribe would point overhead to the passing day as a reminder that this is the only day we have. There’s no sense looking backwards unless that’s the direction you want to go. Each and every day carries a new opportunity to be present and live a rich life.

  • The Relief of Letting Go and Living Fully Despite My Anxiety

    The Relief of Letting Go and Living Fully Despite My Anxiety

    “We only live once, Snoopy.” ~Charlie Brown

    “Wrong. We only die once. We live every day.” ~Snoopy

    I am an anxious person. I haven’t always been though. When I had my first child, fourteen years ago, it was the week after my father died. My son was born and went right to the NICU where he spent the first fourteen days of his life. In that moment, I changed. I’d already had one miscarriage. I couldn’t lose anyone else.

    Man, life is fragile. I spent the next decade making sure he played on the swings at the park, but not too high since he could fall and break his neck. We always took him to the river or the lake, but no swimming. There are amoebas in the water. (Funny and crazy, I know.)

    I now have two children who are fourteen and nine. Just a couple weeks ago, we went to the zoo. I had to talk about not leaning on the railings; you could fall in an enclosure. I am exhausted. The worry never ends.

    I am a mom, a wife, a daughter, anxious, neurotic, controlling, and scared. I never meant to be that helicopter mom. I had great ideas about how I would parent my kids. My husband and I always talked about how we would raise teenagers and what their curfews would be, but being in the middle of it, I’m terrified. I live in a constant state of panic and fear.

    I constantly worry I’m having a heart attack or a stroke. I worry my kids will die. I worry I will die.

    During the early months of the Covid-19 lockdown, we completely shut off from the world. Guess what? We all got Covid-19, except my nine-year-old. My elderly mother (who lives with us) got it too. I even sanitized groceries. We have no clue how we got it. We are all fine. Thank goodness. I know not everyone is as lucky.

    Every pain or sniffle is a worst-case scenario. Have you ever seen the movie My Girl? I am totally Veda Sultenfuss.

    It took several years, trips to the emergency room, shaky relationships, and a whole lot of self-discovery to figure it out. My lack of confidence, yet another sad part of anxiety, made me think I wasn’t enough. It caused my divorce. Thankfully, we are remarried. He sees me, he sees the moments I am fun and carefree, and he helps me work through my anxiety. Old Bob Ross reruns help too.

    So, what is the lesson here? I am not in control of a single thing. (Mind blown, I know.) Life is full of terrible things, wonderful things, heartache, tears, laughter, death of parents, even children. It’s all those moments in between that make life worth living.

    If we hide because of fear, we miss out on those moments. We miss out on a chance to save a memory we could pull out of our little brain file when we’re seventy-three and watching the snowfall on Christmas morning when all our kids are grown up.

    It’s really scary, letting go. It’s like walking on a tightrope. You see what could happen, but you just walk, because you know you’re not fully living if you sit out, and at the end of that walk, you realize how fast it went by. Either way, it will go by. It’s up to you how you spend that walk. Frank Sinatra says it best, that’s life.

  • A Life-Changing Insight: You Are Not a Problem to Be Fixed

    A Life-Changing Insight: You Are Not a Problem to Be Fixed

    “I decided that the single most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.” ~Anne Lamott

    I remember one particular clear, cold winter morning as I returned home from a walk. I suddenly realized that I had missed the whole experience.

    The blue, clear sky.

    The lake opening up before me.

    The whisper of the trees that I love so much.

    I was there in body but not embodied. I was totally, completely wrapped up in the thoughts running rampant in my mind. The worries about others, work, the future; about everything I thought I should be doing better and wanted to change about myself… it was exhausting.

    Alive, but not present to my life. Breathing, but my life force was suffocated.

    This was not new. In fact, up until that point I had mostly approached life as something to figure out, tackle, and wrestle to the ground. This included my body, my career, and the people around me. 

    My tentacles of control, far-reaching in pursuit of a better place, said loudly, “What is here now is not acceptable. You are not acceptable.”

    “You can improve. You can figure it out. You can always make it better.”

    But this time, rather than indulging in the content of this particular struggle, I observed the process I was in and realized profoundly that even though the issues of the day changed regularly, the experience of struggle never did.

    And I would continue struggling until I stopped resisting and judging everything and started accepting myself and my life.

    This wasn’t the first time I’d had thoughts like these, but this time there was no “but I still need to change this…” or “I can accept everything except for this thing.” I knew it was 100% or nothing.

    I knew then I only had two choices:

    I could continue to resist reality, which now seemed impossible and exhausting (because it was). Or I could accept myself and the moment and make the best of it.

    “What if there is actually nothing to struggle against? What if I let go of the tug-of-war that I called my life?”

    The choice was before me. The one that comes to people when they have suffered enough and are tired: to put down the arms.

    This doesn’t have to mean accepting unhealthy relationships or situations. It just means we stop living in a constant state of needing things to change in order to accept ourselves and our lives. It means we learn to let things be—and even harder, to let ourselves be.

    Whenever I have a conversation with people who are struggling, I’ve recognized that they have this innate feeling of I should be doing better than this. Or, I should not be feeling like this.

    It might seem obvious that “shoulds” keep us in a contracted position of never-being-enough.

    But I have found that letting them go is not as simple as a quick change of thought.

    It seems like denying ourselves has become the generally accepted and encouraged modus operandi of our culture.

    Denying our feelings.

    Minimizing our pain.

    Hating our body parts.

    This leads to disconnection from the life that is here, the life that is us.

    Self-loathing has become the biggest dis-ease of our time.

    When we are disconnected from who we are in this moment, there is a tension between right here and the idealized self/state.

    This disconnection or gap is a rupture in our life force that presents itself as a physical contraction, a shortness of breath, an inner critic that lashes out harshly and creates a war within. This war contributes to pain, illness, and I’d guess 80% of visits to a medical doctor.

    Even some of the best self-help books promote this gap…

    Don’t think those thoughts.

    Don’t feel those negative feelings.

    Don’t just sit there—you should be doing something to improve yourself and your life

    All of the statements above might seem like wise advice. But we’ve missed the biggest step of all—mending the gap between who we are and who we think we should be so that we don’t feel so disconnected from ourselves.

    Disconnection is the shame that tells you that you’ve got it wrong, that it is not okay to feel or think the way you do in this moment. That you have to beat yourself up so you can improve, be more than you are now, be better.

    That you are a problem to fix.  

    This is the catch-22 of self-help when taken too much like boot camp. Self-help can be helpful, but it can create an antagonistic relationship with our true selves if it doesn’t include a full acceptance of who we are in this moment.

    The belief of “not-enoughness” is at the root of so much physical and emotional pain, and I, for one, have had enough of it.

    What if we allowed ourselves to be, or do, in the knowing that we are okay, that we are doing the best we can, given what we know at this point in time?

    Do you feel the fear-gremlins coming out that tell you that you will lie down on the couch and never get up again? Or perhaps you will never amount to anything or be good enough?

    This is the biggest secret of all: It’s all a lie to keep the consumer culture alive. 

    People who are scared and in scarcity need to consume something outside of themselves to gain fulfillment. But it never really comes because there’s always something new to change or attain.

    It can be so difficult for us humans to accept not only ourselves, but that everything just might be okay in this moment.

    That this feeling is just right. Even if it hurts.

    It’s okay to be right here, right now. Pain is here, and I don’t have to fight it.

    Our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship we will ever have.

    Because we are truly sacred, no matter how we feel.

    Maybe the only question to ask today is not “What do I need to do to change?” but “How can I love myself, just as I am?”

    Maybe the act of loving ourselves is as simple as taking a breath to regulate our nervous system and come back to the present moment.

    Maybe healing involves not so much changing ourselves but allowing ourselves to be who we are.

    Which is exactly what I did that day when I realized I had missed my whole walk because I was caught up in my mind, worrying about everything I wanted to change. I shifted my focus from the thoughts I was thinking to the feelings in my body. I realized that I was enough in this step, in this breath, and that’s all there is.

    I promise the results of moving into acceptance will feel far better than the shame, disconnection, and cruelty that come from the constant pursuit of self-improvement.

    The truth is…

    You are not a problem to fix.

    You are a human to be held.

    To be held in your own arms and loved into wholeness.

    Take care of your human.