Tiny Buddha

Tag: Peace

  • How to Feel Your Feelings and What That Will Do for Your Life (Everything!)

    How to Feel Your Feelings and What That Will Do for Your Life (Everything!)

    Colors of Mood

    “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.” ~JK Rowling

    Sometimes the last thing we want to do is feel our feelings. Because feeling can hurt.

    Feeling can make you cry in the laundromat.

    Feeling can make your face unattractively red in the frozen food aisle.

    Feeling can make you think this whole being human racket is not the best way to spend your time.

    If you’ve been stuffing your feelings back into your rib cage whenever they try to break for the light, this is especially true. I know, because this is exactly what I did with my feelings for thirty-three long years.

    Oh, those crafty feelings would make the occasional jailbreak, and then I’d vibrate with a nameless rage that ended in cell phone destruction when technology met brick wall. Or I’d start screaming and yanking at my clothes—yes, actual rending of garments—because the rush of pain was too intense to contain within my frame.

    My mom is fond of saying that, for the first few years of my life, she thought she was raising a monster. As an empath in a house where emotion was treated like a ticking bomb, I was feeling emotions for the entire family, and all those feelings were processing through my eyeballs and via my vocal cords.

    So I learned to stifle my sensitivity and emotion in a well-meaning but mistaken effort to protect those around me. Many of us do.

    We learn that emotions aren’t safe.

    We learn that crying is not appreciated.

    We learn that life runs more smoothly when we pack our emotions into our spleen and forget about them.

    It wasn’t until my father landed in the hospital thirty years later that my personal emotional apocalypse began.

    Trapped in a hospital bed, unable to move, all the feeling and empathy my father had successfully stifled for seventy years—with work, wine, and science fiction novels—rose up to claim him. He couldn’t bear to be in his body any more, so he stopped eating until he didn’t have to be.

    Pressing play on his favorite John Coltrane track or reading his favorite passages, not sure what he could hear through the morphine haze, the solidity of my emotions began to crack.

    As we waited for my father to die, I roamed the hospital halls and spilled coffee on the pristine floors, feeling like I would jump out of my skin. Since writing was the only means I had of processing emotion at the time, I began to record my experiences on Twitter. Never before had I experienced such a rush of love and support.

    The cracks began to widen.

    After his death, my tenuous yet carefully clutched emotional control completely unraveled.

    As I began to lean into the cleansing rush of feeling, rather than running determinedly in the opposite direction, life began sending me the experiences I needed to learn how to surf the wave of the emotional onslaught.

    I learned how to greet my feelings as friends rather than as a nameless beast out to destroy my life—or at least my morning.

    I learned where emotions would hide in my body, lurking between my ribs or huddled in my belly.

    I learned how to allow the literal physical feeling of my emotions to burn itself out by simply feeling the sensation instead of judging it or making it mean something.

    I learned how crucial it was to feel my way through my emotions so that I could connect with my inner wisdom.

    Devoting myself to processing my feelings, rather than letting them build up until they drained me, began to shift and transform my life.

    Depression became a distant memory. I stopped feeling the need to drink, heavily or at all. Quitting sugar became easy, unless I was in the first throes of grief.

    (Any necessary grieving process buys me a few months of sugar, low energy, and crankiness. When I’m grieving, I won’t have energy or optimism anyway, so I may as well eat red velvet cupcakes.)

    When I try to pin down exactly how I learned to shift and flow with my feelings, rather than strapping them into concrete shoes and tossing them into my stomach, this is what shows up:

    Every feeling has a message.

    Maybe that message is simply to allow yourself to feel the emotion until it dissipates. Maybe the feeling is guiding you toward some action.

    Once, when a boyfriend and I were talking about moving in together, fear and anxiety began flying through my body like cocaine-addled pinballs for no apparent reason. In other words, I started flipping out, which didn’t make any sense, given that this was something I’d been wanting.

    When I began to explore the onslaught, I realized that there were deeper issues we needed to delve into before taking that step.

    If something persists—anger, fear, anxiety—simply ask it what it wants to tell you. Sit quietly and allow the answer to appear. When you feel peaceful, you have your answer, whether or not you like what that answer says.

    Processing your feelings gives you access to your own inner wisdom and innate creativity. 

    If I sit down to write and nothing comes, I hunt down any feelings that I’ve been avoiding. Sometimes I’ll need to abandon work to roam the beach and cry. Sometimes I’ll give the feeling five minutes of attention and get back to work.

    You already have all the answers you will ever need inside of you—and your emotions are a primary vehicle for those answers. Learning the language of your feelings will give you your own personal Sherpa through life.

    All this feeling you’re carrying around may not be yours.  

    Sensitive, empathic people are the proud recipients of a double whammy. You’re not just carrying around your emotions; you’re also carrying the emotions of people you walked past in the grocery store, the homeless woman you spoke with on the corner two years ago, the friend who vented last week.

    Your own emotions may be crowded by the emotions of others that you absorbed unconsciously, sometimes by simply walking past them in the street.

    Learn how to clear the emotions of others from your field. One way to do this is to imagine roots extending from your feet into the center of the earth. Send all the emotion and energy that doesn’t belong to you down those roots and into the earth. Feel it draining out of your field and into a place where it can be transformed. Do it daily.

    Feeling your emotions brightens your life, both internally and externally.  

    You already have every answer you will ever need inside of you; you just need to learn how to access that information. Answers about your relationships, your life direction, how to take care of your health, how to move toward what you want. Translating what your feelings are trying to tell you provides a direct conduit to your own higher wisdom.

    It may take time and sustained attention to clear out what you were in the habit of stuffing down, but the more you lean into whatever is asking to be seen, the more your life will open and expand.

    Brain gremlins won’t have as much sticky emotion to latch onto and they’ll become easier to gently set aside. What once felt heavy and overwhelming will feel light.

    And everything will change.

    Colors of mood image via Shutterstock

  • Clear Your Emotional Clutter and Open Up to Joy (Interview and Giveaway)

    Clear Your Emotional Clutter and Open Up to Joy (Interview and Giveaway)

    Woman Jumping

    UPDATE – The winners for this giveaway are:

    • C
    • Lori Pacheco

    When I was in my early twenties, I spent three months in a residential treatment center in a last-ditch effort to heal from depression and bulimia. Among many different treatment modalities, I participated in an experiential therapy that involved a ropes course and other adventure activities.

    One day, along with a dozen other frail women, I strapped a backpack full of tennis balls on my back and climbed to the top of a rock wall. It was hard enough to walk on some days; getting to the top with what felt like ten cats clinging to my back took everything I had in me.

    It was only when I completed the task, exhausted, that I understood the point of this draining exercise.

    Our therapist then instructed us, one by one, to open our backpacks and toss each ball down to the ground, naming each an emotion that had caused us pain.

    “This is my shame,” I yelled. “This is my anger. And this is my self-loathing.”

    This metaphorical emotional unloading, combined with the energetic release that often follows extreme exertion, brought me a lightness of being that I’d never before experienced.

    I had lived my life like the climb up that wall—weighed down by my emotions—and I had a glimpse of what it felt like to be free of them.

    Still, while the exercise was liberating, I didn’t know how to recreate that feeling of emotional freedom in my everyday life.

    Years later, I learned that mindfulness could provide the peace I desperately craved. I learned that I could fully embody the present moment, and see the people and things right in front of me without filtering them through my fickle emotions. I learned that I no longer had to live trapped inside a mind that constantly bombarded me with disempowering stories about my painful past.

    No one has to live that way. And the good news is, clearing that “emotional clutter” doesn’t require a daily trip up a rock wall.

    We can all overcome our toxic patterns and find freedom from the old pains and traumas that have weighed us down. Mindfulness is the key, and anyone, at any age, in any circumstances, can learn to practice it and reap the benefits.

    In his new book Clearing Emotional Clutter: Mindfulness Practices for Letting Go of What’s Blocking Your Fulfillment and Transformation, author Donald Altman combines modern neuroscience with ancient practices to show how habits and patterns can be modified with only a few minutes of attention daily.

    It’s a powerful book that can hep anyone release their emotional pain to find happiness, fulfillment, and peace.

    I wish I’d found this book, and these practices, years ago, as they truly are life-changing.

    I’m grateful that Donald took the time to answer some questions about his work and his book, and that he’s offered two free copies for Tiny Buddha readers.

    Clearing Emotional ClutterTHE GIVEAWAY

    To enter to win one of two free copies of Clearing Emotional Clutter:

    • Leave a comment below
    • For an extra entry, tweet: Enter the @tinybuddha giveaway to win a free copy of Clearing Emotional Clutter http://bit.ly/1SLXcyB

    *US winners will receive a physical book in the mail; winners outside the US will receive an eBook.

    THE INTERVIEW

     1. Tell us a little about yourself and what inspired you to write this book.

    Mindfulness has helped me immensely in my life. I got on this path when I was going through a difficult life transition and found myself repeating an old, toxic pattern. It’s that idea that wherever you go, your problems always follow you. That is, unless you do something about it!

    Around that time I met a Burmese Buddhist monk—the Venerable U. Silananda—who had been teaching mindfulness in the U.S. since the 1970s. He possessed a palpable sense of compassion and availability that made me ask the question: How does someone become like that?

    When I had the opportunity to ordain with him as the head of the monastery, I jumped at it. Although I was in the monastery for a short period of time, it was an experience that changed my life direction because I was primed and ripe for the experience of looking inward.

    I wrote my first spiritual book while at the monastery, and continued to train with one of the monks afterward. I’m very grateful for the transformative experience the monks provided for me, which helped me nurture greater compassion and connect with my purpose. Now, my writing is focused on helping others find joy and fulfillment.

    Clearing Emotional Clutter is an important book for me because it integrates cutting edge brain science and research with the ancient practice of mindfulness. It shows that you don’t have to go into a monastery to transform your life, overcome past negative clutter, and rewire your brain.

    2. How do we accumulate “emotional clutter,” and why do we need to clear it out?

    No one can control what happens in life. There are losses, aging, and challenges throughout every stage of life, not to mention the daily wear and tear of stress. What we can do is to respond skillfully by not letting the emotional clutter pull us into states of dis-ease and unhappiness.

    By clearing out clutter, we can transform even difficult moments and respond to life in a way that helps us find the inherent joy that is present.

    3. You talk about getting off the emotional elevator. What do you mean by that?

    You can think of your emotions like an elevator that takes you up and down. What moves the elevator? What old programs are running in your head that push the buttons on your elevator to that it moves you up and down? Something good happens in your life and the elevator goes up. Something bad—even a perception of something being bad—and the elevator shoots down. But what if you could control that yourself?

    This book helps you decide who and what you are going to let push your emotional elevator buttons. Letting others push our mood elevator buttons can be exhausting. We’re not in control of our own elevator. Clearing away clutter means you get free from old emotional clutter programming and ways of thinking.

    4. In Chapter Two, you introduced a tool called “Inner-Facebooking.” Can you elaborate a little on this and share an example of how it’s helped you personally?

    Facebook is a wonderful way to post and put up for others what’s happening in our lives. In the same way, we are constantly putting up mental posts in our minds—through our thoughts and beliefs—that represent a kind of second Facebook: An Inner-Facebook, which shapes how we experience the world, ourselves, and others.

    If your Inner-Facebook posts are unhappy and unflattering, no wonder you feel bad and depressed. I have a whole chapter about noticing your Inner-Facebook posts so you can be more aware. Inner-Facebooking is a skill that helps you to emotionally regulate. Then you can change your Inner-Facebook posts to be more positive and accurate.

    Personally, I’ve gotten better at noticing my own inner-Facebooking posts. For example, my luggage was lost when traveling recently. But rather than respond to the highly reactive and anxious thoughts that my mind posted in that moment, I was able to step back and make a new, more realistic and helpful post that said, “My luggage is going to be found. Besides, in the big scope of things, losing my luggage isn’t that big a deal.”

    5. In Chapter Four, you wrote, “Much of the clutter of discomfort, discontent, and conflict that we experience in life comes from our unwillingness to accept things as they are.” I think we often equate acceptance with giving up. How can we simultaneously reduce the clutter of resistance while working to make positive changes in our lives?

    Acceptance is about realistically viewing your situation. It’s about surrendering to the truth that you may not have control over the situation. You recognize that it is what it is. That does not mean you are giving up. Submission, on the other hand, is about giving up.

    Acceptance allows us to surrender to the truth of our situation. So, if you’re frustrated at being caught in a traffic jam on the freeway, for example, you can have acceptance of what you’re experiencing instead of fighting with it. This means that you can then move forward in a more realistic and effective way instead of getting all stressed out and carrying the experience with you throughout your day.

    6. You devoted an entire chapter to “family emotional clutter.” How do we accumulate this type of clutter, and how does it negatively impact our lives?

    In my workshops I always ask, “Does anyone here have a difficult person in your life?” Everyone raises their hands.

    Family emotional clutter can negatively impact our future relationships and how safe we feel around others. If you’ve had negative relationship issues that have been a pattern in your life, that’s a sign you need to work on that clutter. Repairing this will lead to more loving, healthy, fulfilling, and secure relationships.

    7. What’s one thing we can do to begin releasing “family emotional clutter” to avoid these negative consequences?

    First, we can recognize that all people have suffered, even that person in your family who may have mistreated you. In fact, your family’s suffering may go back centuries. So, rather than feeling permanently victimized, it’s important not to pass on the wave of suffering in your family, and to know that you can heal.

    I believe that we can get a new brain download by finding benefactors in our lives. We can learn how to attune and alter our brain’s social and emotional rewiring. It’s a helpful process that I describe in one of the Lifestyle Tools found in Clearing Emotional Clutter.

    8. You talk about friendships as a tool to release emotional clutter. How and why can our relationships help with this, and how can we help other people release their emotional clutter as well?

    Research shows that having friends is the key to a happier life. The three seeds that make friendship grow and mature are the seeds of trust, acceptance, and empathy.

    Trust is essential, and that takes time to develop, so you need patience and real mutuality in a relationship.

    Acceptance means not being so demanding. It means accepting that everyone has flaws. Sometimes you need to let things to as a foundation for friendship.

    Lastly is empathy. Empathy is what lets you really feel connected to a friend. Develop these and you’ll develop friendship.

    9. In the chapter devoted to listening, you shared an acronym, HEAR, that can help us keep our emotional clutter out of conversations and “enter a more spacious and less defensive awareness.” Can you tell us a little about that and how it helps?

    Talking can be clutter that sometimes blocks understanding and deeper meaning. If we are to remove clutter in the moment, we need to be present with all our senses, especially listening. This acronym is designed to help us when we’ve stopped listening—like during an argument, or when we’re feeling defensive or caught up in our own opinion. It goes as follows:

    H- Hold all assumptions. Empty your ego and get curious. Set your personal beliefs and assumptions aside for a few minutes and take a more objective perspective as you listen.

    E- Empathy to engage, not enrage. With empathy, you can enter the emotional world of the other person so you can understand them better rather than try to deny or devalue what they are feeling.

    A- Absorb and accept. Understanding, with openness. Let in the ideas of the other person. Acceptance doesn’t mean you have to agree, but that you can accept this is the other’s belief.

    R- Reflect, then respect. Take time to pause before you respond. Take a step back so that you can think about what you’ve heard. Then, respond respectfully and with kindness.

    10. In Part 3 of the book, you explore ways to prevent new emotional clutter. What’s one practical thing we can all do daily to de-clutter?

    I especially like the idea of being faithful to this moment. You can be 100% committed to whatever you are doing. Uni-task, so you are fully present with this moment. This means fidelity to the breath, to walking, to eating, to working. Whatever you are doing, you can do so fully, without your mind being one place and your body being someplace else.

    That means that when you walk, walk. When you eat, eat. When you drive your car, drive. Cut down on the distractions and do one thing fully. In this way you can appreciate and savor even the most ordinary moments and that “in-between” time that is an important part of our days and lives.

    You can read more about Clearing Emotional Clutter on Amazon here.

    FTC Disclosure: I receive complimentary books for reviews and interviews on tinybuddha.com, but I am not compensated for writing or obligated to write anything specific. I am an Amazon affiliate, meaning I earn a percentage of all books purchased through the links I provide on this site. 

    Woman jumping image via Shutterstock

  • How to End Your Stress and Live a Life of Peace and Balance

    How to End Your Stress and Live a Life of Peace and Balance

    “To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life.” ~Jill Botte Taylor

    I used to be a stress bunny. Something was always driving me to want to do better—to be more, to have more, to compete and win at everything.

    I thrived on pushing myself, thinking achievement was a great thing.

    I was also restless. I always had to be going somewhere—doing something—never sitting still. I was bored, frustrated, and trying to find happiness outside myself.

    One day after I graduated from college, I became totally paralyzed by a rare syndrome and landed in the hospital. The doctors couldn’t tell me when or if I would ever walk again.

    I soon understood why I pushed myself so hard. I was running from myself so I didn’t have to face all the inner thoughts that were fueling my stress.

    Suddenly I couldn’t even walk away. I still wanted to run, but I was forced to lie there—tortured by my own racing thoughts.

    Talk about stress! This frightening experience taught me many valuable life lessons. One of them is that stress has no redeeming value. You can live a much happier, more successful life by transforming your stressful inner thoughts.

    Tying Our Emotions to Specific Outcomes Trips Us Up

    We’re all striving for certain things in life. Security, love, happiness, purpose, success, and independence are among our top goals, however we define these for ourselves.

    We live our lives trying to find happiness. But, as John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.”

    Sometimes our disappointments can be extremely jarring, like when I landed in the hospital. Other times life is on a roll, and we become elated. But then things turn, and we’re headed for a crash landing. Life’s ups and downs can be so distressing.

    When we feel like we’re being torn apart, we learn to protect ourselves by not getting our hopes up about anything. But then we’re living a life of resignation, which isn’t fulfilling, either.

    Tying our emotions to all the ups and downs is like stepping onto a perpetual roller coaster, riding through multiple dips every day. Why live with that kind of stress when a better alternative exists?

    How to End Stress and Achieve a Life of Peace and Balance

    Wayne Dyer said, “Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.”

    If that sounds like giving up or giving in, that’s not what Dyer meant. He was referring to the flow of life. We can train ourselves to take advantage of this flow and stay in balance regardless of any temporary elation or dismay.

    1. Loosen up on expectations and attachments.

    When we expect something great to happen, we begin to set ourselves up for the roller coaster. We’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t happen, or happy if it does. Pair that with being emotionally attached to the outcome and wham—there’s an even bigger charge. You just stepped onto life’s roller coaster.

    If you realize every situation offers growth and opportunity, you can more easily live without expectations. You can feel confident being open to whatever happens, knowing that you can appreciate good events and accept the challenge of things you feel are negative.

    Some of us have a general fear that bad things might be just around the corner. Try to detach yourself from fear of what might happen and experience life as it unfolds.

    2. Remember, nothing is permanent.

    When life is great, we hope it continues forever. When we’re in a dip, we can’t wait until it ends. But nothing is permanent. That’s hard to remember when we’re stuck in a bad situation and hard to accept when life is good.

    Reminding yourself that all things must end (and new situations will replace them) is a great way to begin detaching, and maintaining balance no matter what.

    Being paralyzed and not knowing what was in store was terrifying. But I faced each day with hope that the paralysis would stop progressing. When it did, my doctor told me I had actually willed it out of myself because nothing he had given me had the power to stop it.

    3. Catch yourself when you’re judging and evaluating.

    Life just is. It’s easier to relax and meet it with a smile when you can. If you practice living and being in the moment, rather than evaluating how everything is affecting you, events will lose their grip.

    Human beings experience physical pain differently than animals do. We exaggerate pain by thinking about how bad it is and how much we don’t want it. But we can get control of our pain by focusing on the actual size of the area it covers and how it truly feels. Observing instead of judging can help us see reality.

    The same applies to events we label as bad. Next time, try to take your focus off of feeling bad long enough to assess the reality. Then shift your mind to finding a positive aspect of the experience or thinking about something good that is also happening.

    For example, when I was still adjusting to being paralyzed and in the hospital, coworkers and neighbors who I thought were just acquaintances came to see me. I was amazed that so many people I hardly knew cared about what was happening to me. Experiencing this was a great comfort.

    4. Use the signs life provides to guide you.

    Life is like a flowing river. We can do three things when we jump in: We can go with the natural flow, letting the current carry us forward; we can try to go upstream; or we can hang onto a rock to try to stay put.

    If we go with the flow, we’ll be carried along peacefully. If we try to go upstream, we’ll have a real battle on our hands. If we hang onto a rock, we’ll risk being battered against that rock.

    Why not take the easy route and go with the flow? This doesn’t mean you can’t shoot for your goals. It means be aware of signs that your chosen path is on or off target. If you’re struggling too hard, try a different approach.

    For instance, if you’re beating your head against the wall trying to convince someone to love you and it’s not happening, try finding a different wall with an open door.

    5. Find the natural flow of life.

    With more practice, you’ll begin to see solid evidence of the flow of life. Experiment to find it so you can really trust and let go.

    Maybe you have far too much on your plate for one person to handle, and you always end up completely stressed over not being able to get things done. This is so common today.

    Stress further slows your progress as you worry about whether you can ever catch up.

    Try stepping back, relaxing, and taking a bigger view. Focus on believing that everything will get done in its own time if you take one step at a time. When you do this, you’ll find that things will fall into place with less effort on your part. You’ll experience the flow of life.

    Every day, give yourself a simple list of two important things you want to work on that day. This will ensure that you get to those two important items, which likely isn’t happening if you’re reacting to all the little distractions. Doing so also allows time to handle most of those little items too.

    I’ve done this for several years, and I’m amazed at how much more I accomplish, with less stress.

    Ending your stress is in your power—what a relief!

    —

    I survived my ordeal with paralysis and healed perfectly in a few months. This experience was a wake-up call that taught me to stop stressing so much, appreciate life, and live it to the fullest. To do that, I slowed way down and learned what a gift it is to live in the moment, open to whatever life brings.

    Like any major challenge, the experience showed me how strong I can be. This helped me reduce general fears of what might happen in the future.

    It was a great reminder that even horrible situations are only temporary, and since I can learn so much from them, it’s better to look for the lessons than to focus on how bad things seem.

    Life can’t always be just the way we want it. But if we go with the flow and work with each situation as it is, we will often be surprised that things turn out better than we wanted.

    A balanced life that is far less stressful makes everything more enjoyable.

  • Stop Holding Grudges

    Stop Holding Grudges

    Stop holding grudges

  • We Can Have Peace

    We Can Have Peace

    We can have peace

  • Who Says We Have To Be Happy All the Time?

    Who Says We Have To Be Happy All the Time?

    Im Sad Be Happy

    “Develop a mind that is vast like the water, where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle, or harm. Rest in a mind like vast water.” ~Buddha

    When I think about having to be happy all of the time, I feel a certain kind of pressure. Sure, it’s different now then it was. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t cycles when I question everything.

    Sometimes I can catch myself thinking that everything would magically fall into place if I had all the success I want in my career, the happily-ever-after relationship without any issues, or anything else I seemingly need.

    Happy enough that I didn’t care, I’d walk around like a beaming light where everyone saw my radiance and adored me.

    It’s a noble wish. I can envy those who seem happy all of the time and seemingly have it all together. The problem is, it’s a dream of perfection. On a day when I don’t feel happy or like a dark cloud is passing over my head, I can feel I’ve failed at life.

    The pressure to be happy actually makes me unhappy. And when I feel sorrow or pain or depression, I can fear it’ll never go away. I worry the prize of arriving to this Big Beautiful Happy Life isn’t mine to have in the first place.

    Here are three things I’ve learned to get through the lows that have helped me change the way I view my life and myself.

    1. Moments of real connection often stem from acknowledging our struggles.

    Sometimes when I was in the dumps, I wanted to hide and isolate myself. But shared moments of loving connection didn’t always have to happen when I was my happiest self. 

    When I look at my closest friendships, I realize what helped form them into solid, supportive relationships were through moments of shared vulnerability.

    True intimacy came when I revealed what I was feeling or what I was going through, opening up to a deeper emotional honesty.

    Not feeling afraid to share truthfully what was going on for me allowed another person in more profoundly. And because of this, others felt safer to be real with me. They didn’t worry I’d judge them for how they felt on any given day and I’d have compassion.

    It’s the heart where true connection lies, not just in times of laughter and shared happiness. And forming a loving bond through times of difficulty gave us more appreciation for the shared joys that did arise.

    I learned how to do this though without being in a victim mentality. If I shared what I was feeling with a sense of neediness or wanting the other to help me, fix me, save me, it was harder to be around me.

    But if I shared with a sense of 100% responsibility for my feelings and issues, others trusted I would take care of myself without having to do anything for me.

    I could say, “I’m having a difficult time and this is what I’m learning about myself.”

    My intention for self-awareness and an interest to solve my own problems with humility gave people space to be with me without feeling burdened.

    And this in return (although not expected) allowed reciprocity.

    2. Peaceful acceptance is more important, and more sustainable, than happiness.

    I can be hard on myself.

    This idea of a perfect life—to not be messy, mixed-up, afraid, and feeling small—makes those days when I’m down much harder.

    Now, I just let those dark days be. Or more than that, I know even though those times suck royally, I’m growing.

    Now, I focus on what can make me feel peaceful rather than happy. There’s a lot more room then to get stronger and bring back the fire that seems to have left me.

    I do grounded, simple things that bring me joy—like knitting, reading a good novel, seeing a play, or taking a long walk in a different neighborhood.

    These small moments of taking the day easy and allowing with grace brings me inner-balance, which I discovered is most needed in these kinds of down-and-outs.

    Just chilling out and taking the strain off helps me feel more present, alive, and clear. And that is far more sustaining than the elated, euphoric states I can have when something great does happen for me.

    Those super-over-the-top kind of happy moments are fleeting and transitory. They pass by quickly as I return to daily life.

    Creating peace rather than striving for constant happiness gets me off the hook. Free of drama, stress, and anxiety, I take it easy even if I still feel messed up. Then, I’m even keel and that’s a lovely feeling.

    It’s really kind of refreshing. In reality, I don’t have to do anything or get anything to be happy. I just get to be me.

    3. Periods of uncertainty do pass, but it’s how we hold them in the present that matters most.

    I’ve learned I can feel down when I’m not feeling on purpose or when I’m unsure of what’s next.

    Not knowing what’s going to happen, I can fear I’ll be stuck in the muck, unsafe, unlovable, and not enough.

    That in-between space is uncomfortable and disquieting. If I don’t feel on point, motivated, or like I’m getting what I want immediately, I can think I’ve failed in life.

    As an artist, I can worry my next creative project won’t come or fear I will never fall in love again.

    This kind of future thinking is the death to my happiness—because I can think there’s something wrong with me for not having it all figured out.

    What I do in these times is . . . nothing big.

    I focus on nurturing myself and find the easiest thing I can do. I apply what’s gentle, loving, and kind. I ask my spirit what it needs rather than my ego that’s striving for happiness.

    I accept it as a time to go within rather than seek pleasure without—a gentle time to restore and regenerate, giving myself space to prepare inwardly for the new.

    Truth is, there are sometimes slow moving streams and still pools, and I can’t force a river no matter how much I want to.

    My learning is not to flee from my sense of emptiness but to loosen my grip and relax into the gap. Like a trapeze artist letting go of one bar and reaching for the next, I trust it’s in this very space that the new is discovered.

    I try to honor the passages without forcing anything. As I take tender steps toward my endeavors, I allow the beauty of the next to arise according to its own timing.

    Somehow I’m freer even if I happen to be unhappy. I know it’s not really the truth of my being. And that’s a very cool thing.

    (Kinda’ something that makes me happy . . .)

    What gives you a sense of peaceful aliveness? In what ways can you connect more with others? How might you meet transition cultivating a sense of “easy”? And how might all of this give you more permission to be?

    Be happy image via Shutterstock

  • 4 Tips for Managing Stress from a Combat Veteran

    4 Tips for Managing Stress from a Combat Veteran

    Meditating

    “Buddha was asked, ‘What have you gained from meditation?’ He replied, ‘Nothing.’ ‘However,’ Buddha said, ‘let me tell you what I lost: anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity, fear of old age, and death.’”

    “I never get stressed.”

    I used to say and think this all the time when I saw someone freaking out about an upcoming test, a bad grade, relationship problems, or a boss or coworker.

    I had a false sense of being “carefree” because I wouldn’t get stressed over the trivial things that most people did.

    I was a “battle hardened” soldier recently back from a deployment in Afghanistan. When I saw people worry about those inconsequential things, I would think to myself, “Please, you have no idea what it means to be stressed.”

    As it turns out, my understanding of stress was wrong. It’s also wrong for a lot of people who believe they aren’t stressed.

    It wasn’t until I started meditating three years after my deployment that I started to realize that I was stressed—just in a different way and from different things than most people.

    After meditating every day for a couple months, my “ah-ha” moment finally hit me.

    I was sitting in traffic, late for an appointment (I hate being late), watching all the people around me freaking out. For once, I was calm and collected sitting in that traffic, thinking, “Why freak out about something I can’t change?”

    That was when I really started to see the benefits and began reflecting on my past.

    I realized that since returning from my deployment, I had become very irritable, not a great people person, and had very little patience.

    The reaction time between something happening and my response was almost immediate.

    If my girlfriend confronted me about a problem, I would immediately either get defensive and blame her or just shut down and ignore her.

    Literally all of this started to change, just from consistently meditating for eight minutes a day!

    My life has been drastically different since then. I am much more calm and collected. I don’t get upset over little things, especially if they’re out of my control.

    My response time to a stimulus has greatly increased so I can choose the type of reaction I have and think about what to say.

    My relationship with my wife (the same girlfriend from before) is incredible, and we know how to communicate like mature adults by allowing time to see the reality of a situation and choose how we respond to it.

    I’ve brought about an awareness that allows me to continually grow as a person and manage the hidden stressors that often go by unnoticed.

    This is just part of a long list of benefits from meditation, and I could go on and on… like how nice it is to be able to travel in third world countries without constantly keeping an eye out for ambushes or looking for my next piece of cover (a habit I had from deployment).

    Although it’s great to talk about meditation and its benefits, what I really want people to understand is that there may be a lot more stress in your life than you realize, and when you meditate you become aware of that stress and are able to shift how you respond to it.

    When it comes to this type of stress, the older you are, the worse it gets.

    If you have ten, twenty, thirty-plus years of having negative experiences without intentionally prioritizing positive ones, you are much more likely to easily become stressed and have a negative view of the world.

    The more hidden stress you experience, the more efficient your body gets at activating your physiological stress response, commonly known as “fight or flight” mode.

    Ask yourself this: Were you, or someone you know, once “carefree” but are now afraid of heights, flying, and think natural disasters and shootings are about to happen whenever you leave home?

    Well, you can thank your body’s efficient adaptability for that. The more stressful situations you have (and yes, watching all the negative things on the news is stressful), the more your body thinks it needs to switch into the fight or flight response to keep you safe.

    That means your brain becomes more efficient at recognizing even the smallest of stressors, and less efficient at calming down or noticing positive things.

    For me, it was a condensed time period that required a lot of worst-case scenario thinking. When you are constantly exposed to driving on roads with IEDs (improvised explosive devices), that stress response will condition your physiology to tell you that roads are a very dangerous place.

    The same thing happens if you only watch the news; you’ll have a very misconstrued perception of the world, and you’ll be constantly feeding the bias your brain has for negative experiences.

    Evolutionarily, your brain has needed to remember negative experiences to protect you much more than it needed to remember positive experiences. It takes time to undo this wiring of neural pathways that your brain has put in place. But it can be done, and meditation is a great way to build new “positive pathways” in your brain.

    There’s an enormous amount of ways to meditate so I’ll share what I’ve personally done and am still doing, in the hopes that it will help you as well.

    1. Basic mindfulness meditation

    I started my practice with a book called 8 Minute Meditation. It takes you through a series of different styles, most of which I liked. But from this I continued to do a simple meditation every morning of focusing on my breath. Just doing this lead me to the “ah-ha moment” I mentioned earlier.

    2. Meditation apps

    I also use a couple different apps now that I like to use mid-day or at night. In particular, I like the “loving kindness” options, also known as “focus on positive”. This is perfect for trying to counteract the negativity bias and rebuild positive neural pathways. There are a lot of options out there, including Calm, which is free.

    3. Reading

    This may not be thought of as meditation, but if meditation can be doing one task effortlessly with focused concentration on that one particular task, then reading is a type of meditation for me.

    I easily enter what’s called “flow state” when I read. Not only that, I’m reading positive things which helps shape the way I think. The other end of this could also be “not watching the news”, just like I don’t like putting junk in my body by eating it, I don’t like putting junk in my body by watching/hearing it.

    If reading isn’t quite your thing, then try listening to podcasts. Preferably podcasts that lift you up and feed your brain with positivity and learning. These can be easily listened to on your way to work, at the gym, cooking, walking, or you can just sit down and listen.

    4. Walking

    Walking is such an undervalued way to de-stress. I love walking for a lot of reasons, pretty much any major life decision my wife and I have made in the past few years has been made while walking.

    In terms of meditation, walking meditation is an awesome practice. It’s a great way to bring about your awareness while getting the benefits of moving your body. Odds are, you walk at some point in your day. So if you’re strapped for time, use walking from the car to work as time to practice mindfulness.

    After hating being late to the point of stressing out, I now tell myself, “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. In the here, in the now.” This has helped me drastically. Check out Thich Naht Hahn’s How to Walk for more.

    There are a number of other ways to help you de-stress and become a more relaxed, positive person. These are just some ways to get started and feel less anxious, worried, and negative.

    Start to use some of these strategies and it’ll feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders that you didn’t even know was there.

    Meditation vector image via Shutterstock

  • When Inner Peace Begins

    When Inner Peace Begins

    Inner peace begins

    Source: Simple Reminders

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

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

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

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

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

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

    You feel like a failure as a person.

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

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

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

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

    My Experience with Self-Sabotage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    So What Changed—and How Do You Change It?

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

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

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

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

    Why “Just Let Go” Is Not the Best Advice

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

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

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

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

    Being Peaceful or Being Strong?

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

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

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

    Accept Who You Are—But Who Are You?

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

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

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

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

    As We Forgive Those…

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

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

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

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

    Count Your (Amended) Blessings

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

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

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

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

    —

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

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

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

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

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

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

    You’ve got this.

  • Ego vs. Spirit

    Ego vs. Spirit

    Ego vs. Spirit

    Source: Positive Outlooks

  • Meditation 101: 7 Steps for Beginners

    Meditation 101: 7 Steps for Beginners

    Meditation 101

    Source: Buddha Groove

  • What Anxiety Can Do to Your Body & How to Calm Your Mind

    What Anxiety Can Do to Your Body & How to Calm Your Mind

    Woman Meditating

    “Our bodies communicate to us clearly and specifically, if we are willing to listen.” ~Shakti Gawain

    I woke up screaming—not just any scream, but a blood-curdling sound that could have woken the dead.

    My throat was searing with pain, and my pajamas were stuck to me from being so damp. After a minute or two, my heartbeat slowed and I lay back down, still shaking. It wasn’t a nightmare; I couldn’t even remember what I had dreamt.

    This behavior sounds weird, but it was not an infrequent episode in our house. The week prior I’d woken up in the bathtub.

    My mum would often say, “Do you remember what you did last night?” I would have no recollection whatsoever—unnerving and also frustrating.

    I was experiencing what doctors refer to as “night terrors.” As a child it was just the norm—sleep walking and waking up screaming in the middle of the night. It’s only looking back now that I can provide a logical explanation for it.

    You see, I had a fairly average upbringing, nothing traumatic about it, except I was always a worrier.

    I felt different from other children and liked to keep myself to myself. There I would be in the playground reading a book, while others played. I was a bit of a loner and I got singled out for it. I was also quite plump as well.

    The Beginning of My Anxiety

    I went through many changes with my parents getting divorced, moving a few times, and both my mother and father remarrying again very quickly, all within a short space of time.

    I took it all in my stride and never consciously felt any real stress or tension—or so I thought.

    In hindsight, I am well aware that my brain was in constant overdrive and found a way of dealing with the anxiety that I had managed to suppress. This all came bubbling to the surface subconsciously during times of deep sleep.

    Although from time to time I still wake up screaming, the sleepwalking has stopped and the night terrors have subsided. What helped? I’ve learned how to calm my mind, and now I no longer have heart palpitations and panic attacks during the night.

    The brain is so powerful, and the one major organ in the body that cannot be fully explained. Through my own personal experiences, have discovered ways to work with my brain so I have more control over my thoughts and behavior.

    I will elaborate on this, but first I would like to tell you another story to prove just how powerful our minds are.

    The Mind/Body Connection

    Last year, one of my closest friends began to feel tingling all over her body. It would come and go in waves but was mainly focused on her hands, feet, and back.

    I’d known my friend for years, and she always struck me as confident, strong, and ‘together.’

    For months she suffered these symptoms and saw several doctors, consultants, and neurologists. She had numerous blood tests and scans, just to be told there was nothing wrong with her.

    My friend was at her wits end, constantly on Google and convinced she had a severe neurological condition such as MS. Nobody believed her and everyone (including myself) assumed she was being a hypochondriac.

    My friend did not give up. She continued in her pursuit, getting a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth opinion—as many as it would take until someone could give her an accurate diagnosis and actually help her.

    Eventually, she found a specialist and neurological consultant in London, who explained that she did have a neurological condition, but it was more of a disorder than a disease.

    My friend had an unstable childhood and always felt unloved and unwanted. Having carried around many insecurities for years, and having excessively worried about everything, she had developed a disorder whereby her nervous system was in a constant state of shock, known as the “fight or flight mode.”

    She was diagnosed with a psychosomatic illness and then referred to a counsellor.

    In laymen’s terms, there had been a severe psychiatric disturbance in my friend’s brain, which had built up over years primarily due to stress and anxiety. With no means to channel or express these feelings, her nerves had become highly sensitized, mimicking symptoms similar to those of MS and Parkinson’s disease.

    Also known as Neurological Anxiety Disorder, this disease affects many who are not even aware they have it.

    For example, you could be suffering from severe headaches. You go to work every day to do a job that you detest. Eventually, you leave this job and find another one. Simultaneously, your headaches stop. It wouldn’t occur to many individuals to connect the dots.

    There are countless of examples just like this, which affect thousands all over the world, every day—all because of built up stress.

    I’m sharing my friend’s experience and mine because I believe it is important for such conditions to be openly discussed and understood.

    Although liberal in most parts, we still live in a society that thinks a mental condition defines the individual as being mad and unhinged—it’s a taboo subject. Unfortunately, this compels victims to suffer in silence due to the fear of being judged.

    Calm Your Mind

    We all have our emotional issues to bear. During the whirlwind of daily life, it is paramount that we learn to relax more frequently. Relaxation and peace are qualities that are neither expensive nor difficult to obtain, if we prioritize and make time for them.

    The best time to relax, I find, is in the evening, a few hours before I go to sleep. I have a routine that has helped me to have more of a restful sleep, enabling me to feel refreshed when I awake in the mornings. Very straightforward, it can be applied by anyone.

    Three Tips to Relax Before Bed

    1. Unplug.

    At least two hours before sleep, stop watching TV, using your phone, or engaging with any technology. Get into the habit of winding down by reading, listening to relaxing music, or having a hot bath. Any creative hobby is good, as long as it’s relaxing.

    2. Keep a journal.

    Reflecting on your day and writing about your problems, worries, and irritants can help unload your mind so you can go to sleep with a clearer head.

    This process can also help you find solutions. Try writing all your problems in order of priority and deciding how you will tackle them, one by one. This will give you a sense of control, help you seeing what is really important, and enable you to put the smaller worries into perspective.

     3. Meditate lying in bed.

    Here’s a simple technique I use: Imagine being in your favorite place. Travel to the most idyllic location or scenario you can picture in your mind’s eye. Visualize all your worries and concerns becoming more distant, a world away from you and your blissful, special place.

    These steps are simple but extremely effective.

    So often we go to sleep emotionally charged, with our brains still buzzing. Finding time daily to unwind prevents long-term anxiety, stress, tension, and, yes, illnesses.

    A restful sleep has a big influence over our brain activity and determines how focused and energized we are physically, mentally, and emotionally the following day.

    Incorporating Serenity into Your Day

    1. Practice deep breathing.

    Our breathing and physical state have a huge influence over our mental state. During the day, when you are feeling overwhelmed, get into the habit of stopping and focusing on your breath.

    Take five minutes and do nothing—be still, try to quiet your thoughts, and focus only on your breathing; in through your nose, out through your mouth. Do this a dozen times and you will feel better and more composed.

    2. Tap your way to peace.

    Tapping several times on pressure points such as your wrists, the inside of your finger tips, neck, and chest can also help relax you. While tapping, imagine you are sending tranquil energy directly into your body. It only takes a few minutes, and you can do it anywhere and as frequently as you like.

    —

    If you believe that you suffer from an abnormal level of anxiety or have experienced symptoms like my friend’s or mine, is important that you seek help.

    We all need to de-stress and focus on becoming more balanced. If we don’t get into the habit of fostering inner peace, we could experience severe consequences that take a lot of time to rectify in the long run.

    We need to nourish our minds by providing the tranquility it needs to function efficiently and proactively.

    Meditation silhouette via Shutterstock

  • 10 Powerful Practices to Take Good Care of Yourself

    10 Powerful Practices to Take Good Care of Yourself

    Woman Meditating

    “You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.” ~Neil Gaiman

    I discovered my spiritual path early. As a teenager I would read my mother’s self-help books. I spent most of my twenties actively pursuing self-development by studying, attending workshops, and going on retreats all over the world.

    At the time, I thought I was searching for happiness and inner peace. I see now that I bought into a rigid idea of what a ‘spiritual person’ was and tried to live up to that.

    My inner world was not happy or peaceful. The way I treated myself was far from soulful. In fact, it was down right abusive.

    I thought I needed ‘fixing’ because even after all the learning and work I had done, I would still beat myself up whenever I wasn’t perfect. My internal story about myself continued to be judgmental and negative, and I remained fixated on gathering evidence to prove I wasn’t good enough.

    Over a decade later, I was married with a child and had gained many qualifications that helped solidify a life without self-abuse. It didn’t occur to me until I had my second child—nine years after my first—that I wasn’t really being nurturing or caring toward myself either.

    I knew I was doing something right, because my experience the second time around was completely different; it was a lot more joyful.

    I reflected on exactly what the difference was between my two experiences. I came to realize that the answer was me.

    I had changed so much—my thoughts, my expectations, my beliefs, the way I responded to emotions and stress, all of which had a flow-on effect that influenced everything else in my life.

    Then something so minuscule happened. I would escape the house and my newborn for thirty minutes, once a week to read an inspirational Tiny Buddha article over coffee.

    This was enough to keep me ‘topped up’ so I wasn’t completely depleting myself while caring for my family during those first few months. No big revelation really that taking time out for yourself is going to be a good thing.

    Yet, this simple act had such a huge impact on me. I really started focusing on self-care. It became an intention.

    Instead of forcing myself to exercise and lose weight, I listened to what my body needed (as a result I didn’t beat myself up if exercise wasn’t achieved).

    I stopped expecting myself to complete everything on my to-do list.

    I questioned certain beliefs (like defining what being a mother, wife, and woman meant to me).

    If any unkindness about myself crept into my thoughts, I challenged it. If there was some truth to the thought, I met that with acceptance, which invoked a compassion that wasn’t present before.

    I started paying attention to what was different from a good day to a bad day. I explored when I felt pain and suffering trying to locate why it was there (hint: usually when reality was different from what I wanted it to be). All this eventually turned into an inner practice for me.

    An inner practice doesn’t tell you what to think, or what to do. It invites you to explore how you think, and why you do something (or don’t do it).

    Here are some tips for creating your own inner practice:

    1. Connect with yourself.

    Self-awareness is being able to explore aspects of yourself with curiosity instead of judgment. Once we develop this ability we can deepen the connection we have with ourselves—not just our mental self, but emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

    2. Connect with acceptance.

    Acknowledge what’s true about yourself, today, in this moment, exactly as you are—without seeking to immediately change anything. This is acceptance.

    Ignoring, rejecting, or refusing to acknowledge any part of yourself will never bring about effective change. Acceptance brings the possibility of transformation. A caterpillar transforms into a butterfly; it doesn’t change into one or become a better caterpillar. When we practice self-care, transformation shows up in our life.

    3. Connect with self-kindness. 

    Offer yourself kindness. You are not any less special from anyone else on the planet, so why would you show others kindness and not yourself? Is abuse toward anyone (including yourself) ever acceptable?

    You have a choice whether you meet your inner world with kindness, ambivalence, or meanness. (Tip: life is easier with kindness in it).

    4. Connect with self-compassion.

    Have compassion for yourself when you aren’t able to achieve kindness. Acknowledge your flaws, faults, and failing by meeting them with compassion.

    Either being human and judgment go hand-in-hand, or you align yourself with being human and compassionate. Which would you rather? Only one can exist at a time.

    5. Connect with your needs.

    Most of us spend our lives caring for others. Sometimes we sacrifice our own needs, but is it really the grand loving gesture we convince ourselves it is? Do you over-give to others so you don’t have to listen to what might be lacking in your life?

    What do you need physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually? What do you feel deprived of?

    We have to decide that our needs are non-negotiable and put boundaries in place to ensure that we receive what is vital for our well-being.

    If you asked yourself how your life would be different if your needs were met, the answer would be a positive one. (Although it is important to note that needs and wants are completely different things).

    6. Connect with your thoughts.  

    If we have been unkind to ourselves for a long time, it can take a while to break that habit. Being aware of your thoughts gives you the opportunity to choose whether they are true or not. You should challenge a thought’s truth, kindness, and purpose.

    Sometimes we aren’t even aware of how a single thought can ruin a good mood. For example, have you ever looked at a photo of yourself from a few years ago and thought, I was much prettier /slimmer/ happier/more fun, then? Wouldn’t you think it was a bit rude if a friend said those same things to you?

    Or, do you place your future self on a pedestal like I used to. Future Belinda had achieved so much more than me; she was way more confident, wiser, more spiritual, happier, and healthier. It’s so unkind (and painful) to compare yourself to a version of you that doesn’t exist.

    7. Connect with your beliefs.

    Sometimes our feelings don’t match what our logical brain is telling us. When this happens, the answer often to that contradiction lies in our beliefs.

    We formed a lot of our beliefs about the world as children. As adults we can still unconditionally continue to believe what a child interpreted as truth.

    Self-care is exploring what beliefs you hold—giving yourself the option of whether you wish to continue to believe them or not. Start with your beliefs about self-care—do you think that it’s selfish or self-preservation?

    8. Connect with your expectations. 

    Our expectations can change the way we view everything in our life. I notice that on days I am able to completely disable my expectations, I usually have a really good day because there are no conditions placed upon it.

    What happens if you don’t achieve the expectations you place on yourself? Why is the expectation there? Self-care is ensuring that your expectations serve you—not you serving them.

    9. Connect with your wants.

    There is a gap between how things are now and how we want them to be. Sometimes we fill this gap with worry, pain, and stress.

    Explore this gap between what is and what you want. What exactly would you like to be different? What would be useful to help narrow this gap?

    10. Connect with your intention. 

    Intention is behind everything we do. For one day, one week, or one month, make your main intention self-care.

    That means that every decision you make is with the conscious intention of doing what is best for you and your health. Do you think that you would make the same choices? How would life be different?

    —

    We are all perfectly imperfect, so we are going to temporarily fail at some point. The main thing to remember when creating any practice is: begin, continue, and repeat.

    Woman meditating image via Shutterstock

  • Open-Minded People

    Open-Minded People

    Open-Minded People

    Source: The Mind Unleashed

  • Why It’s Okay to “Fail” at Meditation 90% of the Time

    Why It’s Okay to “Fail” at Meditation 90% of the Time

    Man Meditating

    “Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” ~Gena Showalter

    So you want to meditate.

    You can’t help but notice the benefits touted everywhere: a clearer mind, more focus, better sleep, and better health and happiness. What’s not to want?

    But then you try it out. And dang, it’s not easy.

    When you sit down on that cushion or chair, your previously normal human brain has turned into a crazy swirl of thoughts.

    Did you have this many thoughts before? Isn’t this meditation thing supposed to be about clearing your mind and getting focused?

    The next thought that comes to mind is usually this one: “I’m failing at meditation. I can’t do this.”

    Welcome to the club! All experienced meditators know this feeling. We’ve all had this experience. We’ve all thought at some point that we’re failing at meditation.

    When you sit still to stop doing and start being, your brain doesn’t cooperate easily. Its job is to think. Our brains will think about the breakfast, plan the day, even have imaginary conversations.

    This is the legendary “monkey mind,” and it’s totally normal. However, bump that into our expectations of clarity and bliss, and we believe we are “failing” at meditation.

    Want in on a little secret?

    Ten-plus years into this meditation thing, I still “fail” at it 90% of the time. My mind wanders somewhere between often and constantly during my daily morning practice. Planning, mostly!

    So my practice is to notice the thinking. I label it “thinking,” or “planning.” Then I bring my attention back to my breath.

    And I’m not the only one.

    Even experienced meditators’ minds wander—a lot.

    A monk from Blue Cliff Monastery joined my meditation group one evening for practice. We did twenty-five minutes of sitting meditation, ten minutes of walking meditation, and ten more minutes of sitting meditation.

    During the discussion time, he shared about his practices. He related that he had about two minutes of clarity during our session—just two minutes!

    It was incredibly freeing for me to hear. If the mind wandered for a monk who spent his whole life in an atmosphere that supported his practice, then I could accept that my mind wanders too.

    Once I accepted that, my practice became even more fruitful. And I knew I wasn’t failing after all.

    You’re still benefiting.

    After years of reading about mindfulness, I finally began to practice at home.

    I’d suffered from waves of deep lows for all of my life. They would hit me on a regular basis. Dad told me that this was just how life was. That I had “an artistic temperament.”

    My life would be going along, with its ups and downs, when the stressors became too much. I couldn’t handle it all anymore. I’d break down with tears and an inability to do anything much for a few days. My ways of coping weren’t healthy—binge eating was my dirty little secret.

    I thought that something was wrong with me. That somehow, I wasn’t strong enough to handle life the way other people seemingly did.

    I’d been reading about the benefits of mindfulness to soothe myself for years. Finally, I decided to step into the area and do it. I had built up my strength and resilience with yoga. I could do this.

    I began to practice meditation by sitting at home for ten minutes almost every day. In a few weeks, I bumped it up to fifteen minutes.

    And I had this thought:

    This is not working. I’m just sitting here basically thinking the whole time. This isn’t doing anything for me.

    But, several months into it, I looked back at my life. I realized that I had not fallen into the pit of a deep low. At all.

    It was an amazing revelation for me. Even though I thought I was doing a crap job at this meditation thing, I was receiving the benefits. It was working!

    Amazingly, I haven’t had those regular series of lows in the ten years since.

    It’s practice, not perfection.

    Mindfulness is a lovely thing to think and read about, but it’s really all about practice.

    Practice doesn’t mean perfection or performance. It’s about making friends with our wandering, imperfect minds.

    Try this now:

    Set a timer for sixty seconds. Sit tall and put your attention on your in-breath and your out-breath. Feel it at the nose, chest, or belly, whatever is most accessible to you. When your mind wanders, label it “thinking,” and come back to your breath until the timer rings.

    You did it!

    Practice diligently. Practice with persistence. Accept that your human mind wanders. It’s an essential part of the learning.

    Keep practicing and keep “failing.” You will still benefit.

    Man mediating image via Shutterstock

  • 10 to Zen

    10 to Zen

    10 to Zen

    Source: Buddha Heart

  • Why Stress Is Good for You and How to Respond to It

    Why Stress Is Good for You and How to Respond to It

    Stress

    “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Viktor Frankl

    These days we can’t seem to get away from stress. We all feel it, and we all hate it. Even my sister’s two dogs are on a special diet for their stress-induced digestive issues, and I’m pretty sure they hate stress too.

    Recently it hit me: Our relationship with stress is dysfunctional. No wonder we’re stuck in an anxiety-ridden existence!

    Stress is Love

    Stress has gotten a bad rep, but it serves an important function—it keeps us safe from danger. Closely linked to our ability to feel fear, stress enables us to be alert and respond to perceived threats in our environment.

    When we perceive a threat, the amygdala in our brain sends a distress signal to our hypothalamus, which activates our sympathetic nervous system. This switches our body into “fight or flight” mode, triggering a series of physiological responses to help us get away from whatever is threatening us.

    Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released, and our heart rate and blood pressure increase. Our blood sugar levels rise to give us more energy, and our breath quickens. This sharpens our senses and gives us a temporary boost in energy, strength, and reaction times.

    All of this happens in the name of increasing our chances of survival and keeping us alive. We wouldn’t be here as a species if we were not able to feel stress and react accordingly in dangerous situations.

    Bottom line? Stress loves us and wants to keep us safe. We owe stress a big fat thank you wrapped up in an apology for bad-mouthing it all the time.

    This realization was a tough pill to swallow. A few years ago burnout brought me down to my knees physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I blamed stress and hadn’t quite forgiven it for all the suffering it caused me.

    The truth? Stress wasn’t to blame. If I had properly acknowledged it, seen the red flags, and reacted sooner then maybe I never would have burned out in the first place.

    This was hard to accept, but it was also incredibly empowering.

    The Timing Problem

    Historically, being able to pick up on external stressors such as predators and fighting, hiding, or running away was a matter of life and death. The problem is that what stresses most of us these days is very different from what used to stress our ancestors, yet our bodies respond to these stressors similarly.

    In other words, our bodies overreact to stressors that aren’t life-threatening. This includes internal stressors like negative thoughts and external stressors like deadlines or, in my case, toddler tantrums.

    It’s a timing issue. We live in a modern time where we experience stress 24/7, but we’re armed with a primitive stress response with which to cope. This stress response is activated so frequently that our bodily functions and stress hormones rarely have a chance to return to normal levels.

    If fighting or sprinting away from deadlines, relatives, bills, responsibilities, toddlers, and traffic police was a socially acceptable way to deal with our daily stressors then we’d be all set. In most cases though, running away, hiding, or fighting makes matters worse.

    And so we get stuck—bombarded by stressors and experiencing the physiological symptoms of stress that we’re biologically programmed to experience, yet unable to cope by responding how we’ve historically responded.

    It is this prolonged stress that has a negative effect on our health and our life. Long-term effects can include disrupted sleep, a compromised immune system, poor digestive function, increased abdominal fat, blood pressure changes, brain fog, low mood, sugar cravings, inflammation, and chronic pain to name a few.

    I’ve experienced most of these and they aren’t pretty. The hardest part was clawing my way out of bed every morning because I was so wiped out and exhausted down to my core.

    No wonder I hated stress! 

    Reset Your Relationship With Stress

    When it finally hit me that stress comes from a place of love and protection, I decided once and for all to mend my dysfunctional relationship with stress.

    I’m now convinced that our relationship to stress is one relationship we can’t afford not to heal. Our health, happiness, and sanity are riding on it.

    Here are three steps you can take to reset your toxic relationship with stress and restore its rightful place as your ally.

    1. Shift your stress mindset.

    Stop badmouthing stress and blaming it for ruining in your life. It’s not an external evil force out to get you, so show it a little bit of respect. To get it on your side, you need to first believe that it is on your side and that you are in control.

    Believing that stress has my best interests in mind, I now ask myself: What is my experience of stress right now trying to tell me?

    For me, it is often a signal that I have taken on too many things at once and need to slow down. Or, that I have been prioritizing everyone else and haven’t been taking good enough care of myself.

    2. Mend your relationship to stress.

    Instead of judging stress, start making more of an effort to get to know your stress response. Like any supportive relationship that is based on trust and mutual respect, the first step is to listen. Pay attention and get curious:

    • How does your unique experience of stress feel?
    • What are your triggers?
    • Where does stress show up in your life?

    I experience stress as back, neck, and shoulder pain, coupled with a tightening sensation in my stomach that is often accompanied by digestive issues.

    Some of my triggers include work deadlines, the travel hustle (scrambling to get a million things done before a trip), sleep deprivation, the deadly combination of gluten and dairy, my email inbox, feeling rushed, and having to get my son into his car seat.

    3. Change how you engage with stress.

    Learn how to de-escalate your stress response. Most of us don’t know how because we weren’t taught. It’s as simple as learning a few new skills to put to use when you feel stress getting the best of you, and committing to actually using them.

    Mother nature wouldn’t have given us a highly sensitive stress response if we didn’t need it. She also wouldn’t have done so without equipping us with simple ways to switch it off. Breathing, laughter, meditation, and changing our internal dialogue are a few examples of this.

    We’ve become so busy in our lives that we’ve lost touch with this and turned stress into the enemy. This is disempowering because we’re actually in control of our mind and body, so we’re in control of our experience of stress.

    I use different techniques to switch off my stress response depending on the stress trigger I’m facing, how desperate I am, and where I am. Some are more conducive to being done in public than others. I recently did an eleven-minute kundalini meditation with my arms up in the air on an airplane, but many would find that awkward!

    When it’s a person causing me to get flustered—like my toddler when he is in tantrum mode—I’ve found that it’s important to stay present, connected, and “be cool.” In these instances I choose techniques that don’t involve closing my eyes or doing anything outwardly visible or obvious with my body.

    For example, I’m currently loving silently repeating the phrase “all is well” in my head when I feel my stress levels escalating, and combining this with belly breathing.

    First, I bring awareness to my breath. Breathing from my nose, I consciously start to slow down and deepen my breath, making sure that my abdomen is also expanding out (on the inhale) and contracting in (on the exhale) with every breath. Placing my hand on my belly helps.

    Then, I begin to repeat the phrase “all is well” in my head as I inhale, and repeat it again as I exhale. As I do this, I retain my awareness on my breath and on the movement of my abdomen. I keep repeating this phrase and breathing pattern for a minute, or longer if necessary.

    Slowing down my breath connects me with the present moment and automatically turns off my body’s stress response. Repeating “all is well” reshapes my thoughts and signals to my mind that I am safe, also switching my body out of “fight or flight” mode.

    Basically, I’m assuring myself that there is no predator in the room, so it’s okay to relax!

    Do you have any go-to techniques you use to regulate your stress response? I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

    Stress image via Shutterstock

  • Inner Peace

    Inner Peace

    Inner Peace Begins

    Source: Lessons Taught by Life

  • Set Yourself Free: 5 Things You Gain When You Forgive

    Set Yourself Free: 5 Things You Gain When You Forgive

    “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.” ~Catherine Ponder

    Somewhere in the middle of my freshman year of college, my best friend from high school broke up with me. Out of nowhere, she just stopped talking to me. I tried relentlessly to reconnect, but she stopped responding and never gave me an answer why.

    For years it was the most painful heartbreak I had going in my life. It’s still what I consider my worst breakup. And it haunted me until I decided to forgive her.

    Forgiveness sounded ludicrous to me at first, but eventually, the pain of carrying the grudge seemed like it might be worse than the pain of setting it down.

    I heard a number of people in my life, including one of my yoga teachers, talk about the power of forgiveness. While I didn’t get there right away, I started to marinate on the idea of forgiving my former friend.

    I became curious about what acceptance and non-attachment could look like with someone who had really hurt me. It took months after deciding that I wanted to forgive. Until one night, I was ready.

    I drafted the email, did a small amount of Internet stalking, and sent it. I apologized for my role in the breakdown of our friendship, offered my forgiveness, and wished her well. I gave her the best last gift I could: to set my grudge down.

    What surprised me was what I gained in the process.

    1. Space and quiet 

    Forgiving gives us the space and quiet to invest in new people and nourishing ideas.

    Once I let go, I stopped spinning the story in my mind over and over. My mind simply didn’t need to keep hanging on to the old narrative any more. It had space to cover new ground rather than rehashing yesterday’s news.

    2. Self-compassion 

    When I forgave my friend, I was also able to forgive myself for some past mistakes. Forgiveness requires practice, like anything else. It’s like developing a new muscle.

    If I could let go of my greatest hurt, I could surely offer that same reprieve to myself. I’m now gentler with myself when I make mistakes. I know that offering myself compassion and then moving on from the situation is not only possible but much more loving.

    3. Trust in others

    I don’t see friendship through the same lens any more. I have more faith in the people in my life and understand that while friendships end, it’s not the end of the world. I live in my relationships more presently.

    I don’t waste an opportunity to tell the people in my life what they mean to me. I trust in my friends. It took me a long time to get there, but forgiveness gave me back that capacity to trust in the people around me. By letting go of bitterness and cynicism, you too will be better able to trust in others again.

    4. Perspective 

    When I created the conditions for forgiveness and resolution, I was able to see our relationship clearly. I could also see the places where I was responsible and can now address those tendencies.

    I also could see that the hurt was a relatively small part of our relationship. Most of it was filled with laughter, and being able to see that has been very healing. Forgiveness allows us to appreciate the good, without the lens of resentment over it.

    5. Gratitude 

    I’m personally thankful for the memories and what I learned through that friendship. I’m grateful that I had this experience and for all the joy that our friendship brought me. I’ve grown a lot, and that wouldn’t have been possible without the process I’ve been through.

    Forgiveness polished the hurt off my heart, and now all that’s left is gratitude. I also appreciate the preciousness of my new friendships and make a greater effort to actively nurture them.

    We always gain something, even if it’s not immediately obvious. Forgiveness gives us the opportunity to recognize and appreciate that.

    —

    Forgiveness is a delicate thing, and very personal. I would never argue that you should forgive someone. But, if you are interested in exploring what forgiveness might mean in your circumstance, I invite you to get quiet first.

    Cultivate a little bit of compassion for yourself, foremost, and meet this undertaking with curiosity (rather than an outcome in mind). What could that forgiveness look like? What might pave the way for forgiveness to be possible?

    Before you can forgive others, you may need to forgive yourself for past hurts you’ve inflicted. Forgiveness is really a gift that you’re giving yourself; it’s not about absolution for the other person or excusing anything.

    Ultimately, forgiveness takes a lot of non-attachment: to the initial incident, to anger, and to a desired response to this forgiveness. You may not get the answer or outcome you’re looking for, and that’s okay. The process (and it can be a long process) and the act of forgiveness are what matter here.

    While I never heard back from this former friend, that felt surprisingly okay. I wasn’t attached to an outcome; I just wanted to stop carrying the load. So I did, and that was that.

    Not having to carry that grudge has been a huge gift to me. I’ve learned so much about myself that I would never have otherwise—like knowing that I have the courage to forgive and see what’s on the other side. And that I get to choose to be free. You can too.

  • How Using Your Hands Creatively Can Reduce Stress and Anxiety

    How Using Your Hands Creatively Can Reduce Stress and Anxiety

    Painting

    “Making something, even imperfectly is empowering because it’s an expression of the self.” ~Alton & Carrie Barron MD

    Do you ever suffer from stress or anxiety?

    If so, you’ve probably tried to find relief, but finding something that works for you can be quite hard. We all react differently to different remedies, and what works for one person may not be the best remedy for you.

    I used to suffer from stress and anxiety a lot. After trying lots of different remedies, I finally found relief in an activity I never considered would help.

    I was locked into a life dependent on templates for everything that wasn’t basic living. Without clear instructions, clear steps, and a clear understanding of the desired end, I couldn’t get myself to start a project, journey, or activity, no matter how big or small.

    At every seminar or webinar, I asked a million questions. I needed to know everything in excruciating detail. The thought of missing or misunderstanding something would send me into a panic.

    Just the thought of doing anything without knowing every step in advance caused me tremendous stress and anxiety. Even in something as innocuous sounding as in creating art.

    I always loved art. Art materials always made me salivate, but I never made the time for it because I didn’t know what to do with those gorgeous materials.

    Years ago when I was a kindergarten teacher, I used to love watching how the kids expressed themselves creatively in their art. It brought me so much joy that I eventually became an art teacher.

    This got me involved in reading any and every book on art and creativity I could find.

    How I First Heard of This Unlikely Cure for Anxiety and Stress

    Not until I started reading voraciously about all kinds of creative art for adults and how healing it was did I discover the connection between stress, anxiety, and using your hands to create.

    If I could bottle its effects, I would make a fortune.

    I read a wonderful book called Painting Your Way out of a Corner about the amazing meditative effects of different types of unplanned and improvisational art.

    Then I read The Creativity Cure by Alton and Carrie Barron, both doctors who talk about how healing creative hand use is, which is the act of using your hands along with your imagination to create something new.

    From those books, I learned that creative hand use that focuses on process rather than result can relieve anxiety and stress. I also learned that the creative activity couldn’t rely on following a template.

    Creative hand use is supposed to help you by expressing yourself. When you follow a template, you are not expressing yourself; you are expressing the person who designed the template.

    When we make something, even imperfectly, especially imperfectly, we are truly expressing ourselves, which is what helps us relieve our stress and anxiety. This is why art that focuses on the process as opposed to the product is so much better.

    According to the books, creative hand use, when done right, could relieve anxiety and stress in the following ways:

    You gain more self-awareness.

    Painting and doing art from imagination evokes thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that block us in normal day-to-day experience. It loosens up our thinking and leads to notice how we make decisions.

    Do we hide from our mistakes or try to cover them up? Can we let go and be responsive to the moment or do we need stay in control? Are we scared of making a mess, looking silly, not being good enough? All of these things come into play as we create without preconceived ideas and embrace the results.

    Once you have this new awareness, you can use it to make better choices and be more effective. This will help clear up your anxieties thus making you happier and less stressed.

    You become more resilient.

    As you create, you might find that sometimes you try something that doesn’t work out quite as you thought it would. You learn to accept this and simply continue with the process. You continue and try to make the best of what you’ve got. After a while, you’ll notice that when things in your life don’t go as planned or when you’ve made a mistake, you can more quickly recover and move on.

    You become more confident in your decisions.

    By valuing the process of what you are doing, you learn how you make decisions. Simple projects need many small decisions that lead to larger ones. As you make decisions and notice that you can deal with any of their outcomes, you begin to have less anxiety and more confidence in your decision-making.

    You experience peace of mind, tranquility, and sense of well-being.

    Certain types of creative work put you into a meditative state as you focus on what you are doing by being strictly in the moment. This will also give you all the benefits that meditation promises, like peace of mind, tranquility, and a sense of well-being that leads to a less stressful life.

    So Did Creative Hand Use Heal My Stress and Anxiety?

    I had to see for myself if it was true.

    I chose mixed media as my creative activity because it seemed to fit the criteria the best; you need no skill or template to do it. It uses a combination of painting, doodling, pasting, stamping, and stenciling, and there is no wrong way to do any of it.

    Creating without some guidelines can lead to chaos and anxiety, so to begin, I gathered the most exciting project ideas that I found from all of my notes, bought some materials, and then started a small class in mixed media art with some neighbors.

    As we started, I quickly realized that I needed everything to be perfect even before we got started. I needed to check my materials and my notes to see if we had everything I might need; just beginning was quite a hurdle for me to overcome.

    When I began, a refrain would run through my mind, “It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be,” over and over again as I struggled with things not being exact.

    Only as I continued with the art did my anxieties start to resolve over time.

    What a freeing, relaxing feeling.

    Over time, I also noticed I had fewer problems with my stress and anxieties in everyday life. I noticed I could start projects earlier without obsessing over every little detail. I found that I wasn’t as anxious in the face of big decisions. I discovered that, in general, I felt more calm, relaxed, and at ease.

    Get Rid of Your Stress and Anxiety Once and for All

    Just because I chose mixed media art to be my art vehicle does not mean that you cannot get the same benefits with other forms of creative hand use as well.

    Unplanned watercolor painting (as discussed in the book Painting Your Way Out of a Corner), sculpting, or clay work can give you the same benefits.

    If art is not your thing, then other types of creative hand use are available such as gardening, crocheting, knitting, woodworking, or even cooking.

    You will express yourself, and you will become more self-reliant, productive, stress-free, and happier as you get absorbed in something greater than yourself—your creative handiwork.

    The important thing is to choose one of these creative activities that you feel drawn to and then to make serious time for it.

    Once you get hooked, you won’t know how you handled your stress before you got creative.

    And a wonderful new world will open before you.

    Painting image via Shutterstock