Tiny Buddha

Tag: Peace

  • I Thought I Was Protecting My Peace, But I Was Just Avoiding Conflict

    I Thought I Was Protecting My Peace, But I Was Just Avoiding Conflict

    “Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky, but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable.” ~Brené Brown

    If the title of this post gets under your skin, don’t worry, it gets under mine, too. I have a fierce aversion to conflict. That doesn’t mean I won’t engage in it, but it does mean that I’m very open to any suggestion that might give me license to not engage in it.

    So, when I learned the phrase “protect your peace,” I found myself particularly drawn to it.

    The concept of protecting your peace is one of conflict avoidance. It connotes the idea that some arguments are not worth having, and some people are just not worth arguing with.

    Protecting your peace, in those cases, means choosing to disengage for the sake of your sanity. You end the conversation, block their number, and go no contact.

    And believe me when I say there are literally so many circumstances in which this is the correct and proper route to take. I refuse to waste my breath on someone who isn’t listening—particularly if they’re also committed to causing me pain. I have found protecting my peace in those cases to be a very effective tool that I wield generously.

    That said, l do sometimes wonder if the idea of protecting my peace has become an excuse to avoid any conflict—even the kind that I probably need to address head-on. It’s just so damn seductive to think of never having to tangle with other people. If someone hurts or disrespects me, I get to protect my peace!

    I can just walk away without acknowledging what they did. I can even feel good about it because I’m protecting my peace, after all.

    But what lesson am I teaching myself and others when I do that? What message does it send when I allow the idea of “protecting my peace” to turn me into a doormat for other people to step on? At what point does protecting my peace become disrespecting myself?

    Almost three years ago, my husband and I separated and were on the brink of divorce. Our marriage had been through too many hardships for one couple to bear, and the anger and resentment we’d built up toward each other was destroying the steady love we once shared. We weren’t sure if separating could save the marriage, but we decided to give it a try.

    During the six months we were separated, we both spent a lot of time in therapy confronting the ways we were both showing up negatively in the relationship. For me, it was stuffing my feelings and exploding later instead of speaking about them when they were still manageable.

    In the name of “keeping the peace” I was fostering resentment, hostility, and even fury. My refusal to communicate my needs and feelings was poisoning both me and my marriage from the inside out.

    What kept me silent was a simple yet devastating truth: I believed that speaking my needs and standing up for myself when things were difficult made me a cantankerous or difficult person. Perhaps, if I’m really honest, I didn’t think anyone would want to put up with me if I came with expectations—if I insisted on being treated the way I deserve.

    So, I gulped down the burning tonic of hurt and disappointment and called it “protecting my peace.” Doing otherwise would have meant stirring up “conflict,” and if I created conflict, then why would my husband (or anyone, really) want to put up with me? By avoiding conflict, I could carry on pretending like everything was fine while I built a wall of resentment, one brick at a time, between me and the person I loved most in the world.

    A very hard lesson I’ve only just begun learning is that sometimes standing up for myself is the route to peace. Sometimes holding people accountable for their behavior is how I teach them and myself what I’m worth. While avoiding conflict might feel good in the short term, in the long term it can have disastrous consequences for my self-esteem.

    I can attest firsthand that it already has.

    Not only that; extreme conflict avoidance can also affect my social well-being. Although conflict is never pleasant, conflict resolution can be very pleasant indeed. It’s what allows me to reclaim relationships, heal wounds, and grow together with the people I love instead of apart. If I let myself become too rigid in my conflict avoidance, I only stand to alienate ourselves from others. This is a lesson that, if I hadn’t begun learning sooner, would have cost me my marriage.

    I am learning, slowly but surely, how to articulate my difficult feelings. I’m finally summoning the courage to say the hard things, to speak up when I’m hurt or upset, and to clearly and kindly say what I need instead.

    In doing so, I am watching my relationships begin to thrive like never before. Most importantly, both through this work and the work my husband has done in his approach to our relationship, we have saved our marriage.

    It’s not always easy. In fact, sometimes speaking up creates more discomfort in the short term than stuffing things down like I used to. But for once, I am finally showing up fully and authentically.

    I have stopped swallowing poison and instead have begun giving myself the healing salve of self-expression. Despite the momentary discomfort that comes with allowing conflicts to come to the surface, the long-term joy of conflict resolution and mutual understanding always wins out.

    I guess, like most things, protecting our peace without avoiding healthy conflict and dialogue is about finding balance (which, I’m learning, is a skill we appear to be losing as a society). We have to learn when to protect our peace, when to stand our ground, and how to know the difference between the two. For now, I have a few questions I ask myself when deciding which path to take.

    This list of questions needs further thinking and perhaps some retooling, but here’s what I’ve got so far:

    1) Is this person someone I want to remain in a relationship with?

    2) Do I trust this person to listen to me if I share how they made me feel?

    3) Do I think there might be long-term damage to my self-esteem and self-image if I let this go unaddressed?

    4) Is it safe for me to engage in this conflict?

    If the answer to these questions is yes, I will summon the courage to engage in the conflict. I know that the conflict still might not be resolved, but at least I’ve done my best. If the answer to these questions is no, I am better off protecting my peace and walking away.

    Maybe I’ll schedule a phone call with a trusted friend or a session with my therapist to talk through my feelings about the situation. At least then I will get some validation and empathy, which will help me keep my self-esteem intact. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but with time, I do think having a system in place will help me find a balanced approach to handling conflict.

    I owe it to myself to try. And so do you, dear reader.

  • The Benefits of Vipassana Meditation and How to Start Your Practice

    The Benefits of Vipassana Meditation and How to Start Your Practice

    “Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there.” ~Deepak Chopra

    Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the chaos of daily life, longing for a sense of calm and clarity? That was me a year ago, trapped in a cycle of overwork and unhealthy habits. It wasn’t until I rediscovered meditation, particularly Vipassana, that I began to find true peace and transformation. Here’s my story and how Vipassana changed my life and how it could change yours too.

    My Personal Journey with Meditation

    I’ve always been drawn to self-improvement activities like meditation, exercise, and healthy eating. However, I often ignored my own advice and indulged in moderate-to-heavy drinking and overworking, embodying a “work hard, play hard” mentality. In college, I was introduced to meditation and yoga, but my practice was inconsistent, lacking the structure or commitment needed for lasting change.

    About a year ago, I became determined to transform my life. I was drinking more than I liked, eating poorly, overweight, and overstressed from my highly demanding job as an actuary. I committed to a daily practice of meditation, exercise, and healthy eating.

    After browsing for books on meditation, I discovered 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story, by Dan Harris.

    The book’s simple approach—eyes closed, focusing on the breath—resonated with me. My OCD tendencies made mantra-based meditation daunting; I worried a mantra might exacerbate my symptoms.

    The Limits of Breath-Based Meditation

    After a few months, the commitments were paying off, but I wasn’t getting the mental calm and peace I’d read so much about with meditation.

    As I started listening to podcasts about meditation and sober living, I noticed a recurring theme: Many people, including myself, found it challenging to stay committed to focusing solely on the breath because it can become monotonous. This led me to question, “Is all I get just 10% happier? Why not aim for 100%?”

    Breath-based meditation has become incredibly popular and is often seen as the beginning and end of meditation practice; however, there’s a common perception that it is the ultimate form of meditation. While it is great for beginner meditators or for those comfortable with a more casual practice, it may be insufficient for those seeking more. Vipassana offers a deeper, more transformative experience.

    Discovering Vipassana Meditation

    During my exploration, I found The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S. N. Goenka, by William Hart. Vipassana meditation is believed by some to be the actual method of meditation practice used and taught by the Buddha over 2,500 years ago. Vipassana takes meditation to the next level by addressing the deeper layers of the mind.

    According to The Art of Living, breath awareness is the foundation, but true progress comes from observing bodily sensations. It emphasizes maintaining equanimity, or mental calmness, while experiencing these sensations. Practitioners maintain a balanced mind in the face of physical and mental discomfort, heal past traumas, and foster mental resilience.

    The book is organized into ten chapters, in sync with the typical ten days of a Goenka-style meditation retreat, described more below. To put the importance of breath-focused meditation, or Anapana meditation, into perspective, seven chapters are dedicated to Anapana, while only three focus on Vipassana. Breath-based meditation’s importance is fundamental to a successful Vipassana practice.

    Vipassana in Practice

    My own experience with Vipassana has helped me tremendously. As one who has struggled with severe anxiety, panic attacks, and hypochondria, it has helped me break the cycle of interpreting daily aches and pains as life-threatening illnesses and to accept the bodily sensations with more equanimity.

    By observing sensations without reacting, I have trained myself to dissociate minor physical discomforts from anxious thoughts. As a result, the frequency and severity of my anxiety and panic attacks have been significantly reduced.

    Even on the days I do have stronger aches and pains, I focus on the pain itself and notice the physical sensations are constantly changing. They don’t feel as bad as what my brain tells me the pain should feel like.

    I continue meditating on the pain and let the physical sensations come and go. Eventually, the pain becomes more tolerable and often forgettable.

    Another benefit is that I feel more at peace with childhood traumas and that some of the experiences I’ve clung to for all these years aren’t as bad as I’ve made them out to be. When a memory of these bad experiences arises, I observe and feel my bodily sensations with equanimity. I permit the feelings to be with me until they subside.

    It isn’t always easy. Recently, there was a meditation session where I had a more profound realization that brought forth deep-rooted feelings of fear and terror.

    I began to struggle to breathe and started to hyperventilate. I was scared. Goenka teaches during these times to refocus back on the breath until the emotion and sensations subside and equanimity returns.

    I rode that wave and trusted the process, and my breath eventually calmed down. That session was one of the most profound experiences of my life and really helped me on my spiritual journey toward peace and calm.

    Mechanics and Technique of Vipassana Meditation

    For those interested, the technique of Vipassana meditation involves several steps:

    1. Preparation

    Sit comfortably with your back straight and eyes closed. Take a few moments to settle and focus.

    2. Anapana

    Start with Anapana meditation, focusing on your breath. Observe the natural flow of breath as it enters and leaves your nostrils without trying to control it. This helps calm the mind and prepares it for Vipassana.

    3. Body Scan

    After calming the mind, begin the Vipassana practice by systematically scanning your body from head to toe. Observe each part of the body in turn, noticing any sensations—tingling, heat, pressure, etc. Keep your attention moving without lingering too long on any one sensation.

    4. Equanimity

    As you observe sensations, maintain a sense of equanimity. Understand that sensations are transient and try not to react to them with craving or aversion. This helps in developing mental balance and insight.

    5. Focus

    When strong emotions and thoughts come, return the focus to the breath until they subside and equanimity can be regained, then go back to the body scan.

    6. Regular Practice

    Consistent daily practice is essential. Start with short sessions and gradually increase the duration as you become more comfortable with the technique. With repeated practice, some of the strong traumas begin to lessen and fade as you become more at peace with yourself.

    The Ten-Day Vipassana Retreat

    To deepen my practice, I hope to attend a ten-day Vipassana retreat. These retreats provide an immersive experience in Vipassana meditation with a structured schedule of meditation, instruction, and silence.

    The retreat offers a unique opportunity to disconnect from daily distractions and focus entirely on the practice. It is intense but promises profound insights and lasting benefits for those who complete it. It includes a strict schedule of meditation, instructions, and “noble silence,” providing a conducive environment for deep mental purification.

    The retreat is free of charge, funded by donations from previous participants. More information can be found on the dhamma.org website.

    My Progress to Date

    Since committing to meditation last year and strengthening my practice with Vipassana, I’ve seen significant improvements in my physical and mental health. I have weaned off all my prescription medications, lost twelve pounds, and gained a newfound energy I haven’t felt in years. I even went for a run the other day just for fun and to let off some extra energy, something I haven’t done in a long time.

    Even more dramatic, I realized my actuary job wasn’t worth the stress and long hours, and I quit. I bought an RV and have been traveling with my dog, exploring the country and having adventures. I’ve also started a blog dedicated to my passions in health and travel.

    Final Thoughts

    For me, maintaining a balanced sense of work and play where I can enjoy life’s rich pageant is what truly matters. Vipassana meditation is quickly establishing itself in my life as the doorway through which I am free to drop my past baggage at the door, step through, and live in the present moment like it was meant to be lived.

    I’m excited to see what the next year brings for me. If you’re curious about Vipassana, I encourage you to give it a try.

  • The Amazing Healing Power of Talking About Our Anxiety

    The Amazing Healing Power of Talking About Our Anxiety

    “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    I have dealt with anxiety for as long as I can remember. There are times when I don’t experience it and times when it seems unbearable. It’s sort of like a rollercoaster that just never stops. And I am the first person to admit that anxiety can take over your life if it goes unmanaged.

    The toughest part about anxiety is that it can be hard to pinpoint what is causing it. For me, there isn’t just one common recurring thing that starts it; rather, it stems from an underlying issue or insecurity that I am trying to ignore.

    What I have learned about anxiety over the years is this: The worst thing you can do is ignore it or run away from it. Anxiety is there to teach you a lesson so you can continue to evolve and grow.

    I recently had a rough encounter with anxiety that left me feeling isolated and scared. I had these recurring thoughts that wouldn’t go away. It was also confusing because I hadn’t experienced anxiety at that level for a very long time. I was feeling happy and content with life, and then it came back with a vengeance.

    This time, when my anxiety appeared, I pretty much ignored all my own advice and the years of learning I had accumulated on the subject. All I wanted to do was numb myself with distractions, wishing it would go away on its own.

    I tried to pretend that everything was fine and nothing bothered me. This made the situation so much worse; running from the anxiety caused it to become loud and persistent until I was able to learn from it.

    This recent experience reminded me that the best way to deal with stress is something most people aren’t using.

    Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a therapist and can’t support my advice with any medical studies. But I am someone who has lived with anxiety all my life and can recognize what helps me move past it and not let it completely derail me.

    When it comes to anxiety, the best and fastest way to find relief is by talking it out. Yes, it really can be that simple.

    In my experience, talking through your anxiety with a trusted friend, partner, or therapist can be instantly therapeutic.

    So why do most people not talk about their anxiety? Let’s look at the main reasons why.

    Judging the anxiety

    Have you ever thought, “My feelings are stupid, and my thoughts sound ridiculous; why are they making me anxious?” Our judgments about anxiety block us from sharing with other people because we’re afraid of what they might think. This, in turn, gives us more anxiety!

    Next time you feel anxiety creep in, remind yourself that you are not weak for having anxious thoughts. Talk them through with a trusted friend, and you will soon be reminded that you are safe, loved, and protected.

    Dismissing the anxiety

    While our judgments can make anxiety worse, dismissing it altogether can be just as detrimental.

    So many people spend their day distracted, going from work straight into numbing with TV and social media, to avoid sitting with their thoughts.

    Dismissing anxiety does not make it go away; it only makes it stronger. When we stuff down emotions, we give them way more energy than we would if we simply talked through them in the moment.

    Also, repressed emotions can lead to physical ailments and block our ability to feel happiness.

    Whenever I feel weighed down, like a dark cloud is over me, I know it’s because I am ignoring a thought or emotion. When I talk it through, it soon takes away all the energy needed to store the anxiety, allowing me to find happy feelings once again.

    Isolating yourself because of anxiety

    Anxiety can make us feel completely alone, as if no one else feels how we feel. But with eight billion people on this planet, there’s no way you have a unique thought. I promise you, if you’re dealing with it, there are thousands of other people going through it too.

    The majority of us are waiting for someone else to be vulnerable first before we feel comfortable sharing. So have the courage to share what you’re going through, and I guarantee you that there is someone who can relate to you, making you feel less alone. Vulnerability is the fastest way to find courage and dismantle what anxiety is trying to keep you stuck with.

    The truth is that anxiety wants your attention, even if it’s just to tell you to take better care of yourself or set some boundaries. Whatever the message is, it’s better to listen and talk it out rather than suppress it.

    Understanding this has been instrumental in helping me release anxiety. Here’s what happened when I talked about my anxiety with someone I trusted:

    My body physically relaxed.

    That chest tightness that grabs ahold of me when anxiety is at its worst instantly went away. It’s like I could feel my body physically melt into the present moment as the anxiety eased. All that stored tension was able to exit my body. After, whenever the anxiety came back, I remembered to focus on my breathing and remind myself that I was safe in that present moment.

    My mind stopped swirling.

    The number one way I know that my anxiety is escalating is when my mind just won’t stop with swirling thoughts. They seem to only get louder and more pronounced the more I try to ignore them. So, when I finally sat down and talked it through, the clouds lifted, and I was able to think more clearly. I took away their power by voicing my fears and worries because I wasn’t holding them in anymore. Which leads me into the greatest perk of calming my anxiety, which is:

    My creativity came back.

    Anxiety causes us to be in constant fight-or-flight mode, where the body only focuses on survival tactics. Even anxiety about a non-life-threatening situation, like an important work meeting, can cause our body to go into survival mode. And when we are in fight- or-flight, our ability to access our creativity will be diminished.

    This happened to me with my writing. I was stalling on writing and tried to work on one article for over two months. Usually when I get inspiration, I can sit down and write an article in a couple of hours. This was a major warning sign that I was not in balance, and I was letting fear take over.

    When I got real with myself and voiced my anxiety, my creativity and this article quickly came to me, and I was able to find my voice once again.

    I know that talking about anxiety can feel scary, especially if you have never done it. So here is a little grounding exercise I like to do before I talk about it or if my anxiety comes back:

    Place your hand on your heart and close your eyes. Take a deep breath in and repeat to yourself, I am safe and loved. I am not my anxiety or my fears; they are not in control of me. I have the power to feel happy and free, and sharing my fears with someone I trust reminds me that I am not alone. I have all the support I need, and I will not let this fear take over.

    Do your soul a favor and release yourself from the constraints of anxiety. This may not be a magic pill or what works for everyone, but I do know this: Talking about your anxiety will give you the relief you are seeking. Anxiety can be debilitating, but you don’t have to suffer. You have all the power to take back control and love your life again.

  • How to Deal with Worries

    How to Deal with Worries

    “A lot of what weighs you down isn’t yours to carry.” ~Unknown

    What are you worried about right now? No matter how hard we try to not worry, and even when we know that stress is terrible for our health, worry inevitably seeps into our boundaries for one reason or another. Chronic stress causes wear and tear on our bodies, potentially leading to a number of health ailments.

    This terrifies me as a person with many stress points in her life, and as a widowed only parent of three young children. I want to live a long, healthy life so I can be there for my family as long as possible and also enjoy my life. For me, the stakes are high, and I know that I need to work on how I respond to stress.

    Dealing with our worries is a journey of learning when to let go and when to hang on in the wild rollercoaster ride of being alive.

    My school district gave out almost 300 pink slips this year. These are legal notifications that your job is in danger of being eliminated. I was one of the teachers who received one, even though I had been teaching for twenty years.

    You expect to receive them as a new teacher. The last one I received was six years into my career. However, receiving a pink slip at this point was a huge shock to me and a lot of my veteran colleagues, because we had reached the peak of our career mountain when we were supposed to be staring down the final descent toward retirement, not going back out into the job market.

    Worry existed on steroids at my school. I have a leadership position, and one of the most difficult parts of the experience was watching grown adults have breakdowns, perseverating over worst-case scenarios and riddled with anxiety about the future.

    After the initial shock wore off, they cycled through feelings of anger, sadness, and fear. Many of them did not know how they would pay their bills. The toxicity of everyone’s moods hung like a dark cloud over all of us, and I found it difficult to cope with my own emotions while submerged in this environment of despair.

    I found myself turning to my Buddhist practice during this time. The first of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism is dukkha, which is suffering. Suffering is a fact of life. It exists on a spectrum ranging from minor annoyances to major tragedies, usually a matter of life or death.

    Another way of thinking about suffering is life not going as expected, or not getting what you want. Suffering, or the fear of suffering, causes worry.

    I had gotten comfortable in life and was caught off-guard about my job. It didn’t even cross my mind that this kind of suffering could exist, but of course it was always there. I worried about not finding a similar position, and I worried about putting myself out there in interviews and hustling to market myself as a professional.

    Realizing that attachment causes suffering is Noble Truth #2. Letting those attachments go to stop suffering is Noble Truth #3, and the truth of the path forward is Noble Truth #4. These are designed to help us accept reality as it is and to live in the best possible way for our individual journey.

    Once the initial shock of my pink slip wore off, I started imagining various scenarios and how I would respond. I realized there was a path forward no matter what happened, even if I couldn’t fully conceptualize what mine would look like.

    I had a colleague who said something profound during the crisis. He isn’t usually the type to stay calm during times of adversity, but he said, “I’ve lost a lot of positions in my life, and I always land somewhere better.”

    Those words stuck with me. No matter what happens, you’ll likely grow and learn from the experience and maybe end up somewhere even better than before.

    Part of learning to accept reality is to understand and embrace the concept of impermanence. Impermanence means that nothing stays the same.

    The bad news is that the good aspects of your life will not remain forever. You will not always have your favorite people in your life. The brand-new car you bought will get scratched and eventually have a lot of miles on it.

    However, the good news is that the bad things in your life also will not stay the same. Quarrels blow over. Elections come and go. Recessions eventually disappear into the rearview mirror.

    We eventually adjust to changes in our circumstances, even the ones we didn’t want.

    I know the education budget crisis will eventually pass. I know this because in 2012 I was out on the streets waving signs and advocating and wearing pink to show solidarity, and that feels like a lifetime ago. Now we’re wearing “red for ed” and back on the streets fighting for education funding in 2024.

    For the past twelve years, I haven’t had to think about the budget. I survived the recession and kept my job.

    It will get better.

    And it will get worse.

    It will also look different.

    This is all part of the journey.

    Embracing the concept of non-self is important in addressing our worries. It is necessary to separate who you are from your problems. I think we have a tendency to merge the two.

    I hear people make self-deprecating comments like “I’m a terrible speaker.” This is not a fixed character trait.

    The way to become a better speaker is to keep speaking. To practice. Trial and error.

    The only way out is through. You’ve got to do the thing. I think a lot of our worry comes from boxing ourselves into labels that are not real. This can blind us to the fact that we can change our situation at any given moment, even if it is only our perspective and attitude about it.

    I am a teacher, but that is not who I am. I teach at a particular school in a particular department, teaching particular courses, but those details are not who I am either.

    It’s easy to cling to those labels and call them an identity when those aspects of our lives feel important and familiar. However, everything will inevitably end at some point anyway, and we will still be the same person, with or without the details we clung so tightly to.

    We have to work on becoming less self-attached. Our foolish selves naturally gravitate toward thinking about me, me, me. We are inclined toward self-centeredness. We wallow in our personal circumstances and cannot see past our little bubble, and it obscures the big picture.

    Finally, working on non-attachment is a way to alleviate worry. We are attached to so many things, and this is what causes us to suffer.

    As a teacher, I see my students attached to getting into a specific college, or getting a certain grade, or winning a game, and the list goes on and on. It doesn’t get better in adulthood. Adults may be attached to projecting a specific image or having a certain amount of money. A parent may be attached to what they think their kids should play for sports or how they expect them to perform in school.

    Let these expectations go. Stop being attached to one version of life. Be open to other variations, and you might have a few less things to worry about. This requires trust in the innumerable paths life has to offer us.

    In the end, my school district rescinded all of our pink slips. Nothing happened to my job, at least not for next year.

    One may view this experience as a waste of emotions, but I see it as a wake-up call. I know I’ll come out of this experience stronger, more resilient, and better prepared for whatever is around the corner.

    Suffering is important and it can actually make us better humans. Thich Nhat Hanh said that “suffering is essential for happiness. We have to know the suffering of being too cold to enjoy and appreciate being warm.”

    One way to think about what worries us is to accept the worst-case scenarios and be willing to look for the lessons. This changes how we view suffering. It shifts it from being the boogeyman who we are scared of to a firm but impactful teacher who helps us become comfortable with the uncomfortable.

    It is important to remember that the present moment is not always going to be rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes it will be losing a job, someone breaking up with us, our loved one dying, the refrigerator breaking, getting sick, and a lot of other potential unwanted scenarios.

    Whatever is happening, we need to be able to sit with it, know that it will not last because of impermanence, and also remember that it is teaching us something that is making us better versions of who we were.

    Maybe half the battle of worry is normalizing failure—to adjust our reality. Not internalizing failure but recognizing that it is a normal part of the growing process. It is not something that defines who we are. It is not something to hold on tight to, but rather something to reflect on and let go so you can make space in your life and have the energy to try again.

    When you feel worried about something, remember that the best way out is always going to be through. Trust the process.

  • The Problem with Meditating to Become More Productive

    The Problem with Meditating to Become More Productive

    “Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there,’ or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.” ~Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

    I started learning yoga and meditation when I was eighteen years old, in the late nineties, in the car garage of one of the few yoga teachers in Puerto Rico. I took to it like a duck to water.

    By the time I was twenty-five, I had spent months on Buddhist silent retreats, living in ashrams in the USA, India, and Burma.

    Meditative practices and retreats provided me with great moments of insight and healing and allowed me to have profound realizations about the goodness of my nature, my connectedness to others, and life itself.

    They gave me access to states of wisdom, deep compassion, and loving kindness and brought me back again and again to the sacredness of the present moment. They also helped me heal from a painful eating disorder I suffered from at the time.

    I fell in love with the Buddha’s teachings. I went on a pilgrimage a couple of times through India, visiting the historical sites related to the Buddha. I also went ahead and visited Myanmar and Thailand, where I meditated in temples and met truly remarkable teachers and practitioners.

    Something about the connection between mind and body that I discovered through insight practices, the astounding beneficial effects of concentration practices in calming the mind and getting some detachment from painful and intrusive thoughts, and the healing effects of loving-kindness practices had me fascinated with the teachings.

    I then went on to get a master’s degree in Buddhist studies so that I could learn some of the ancient languages and go more in depth into the history and principles of Buddhism.

    Yet, these experiences often took place in the midst of a frenzied lifestyle. I was, at times, working as a waitress, saving money so that I could go on one more retreat, or having various jobs on the side to finance my studies and travels.

    It was often the case that as soon as I stood up from my cushion or left the retreats, I would be in the “getting things done” mode, going back into an agitated routine—as if the practices were there to make me more productive and to catapult me into a high-performance state, as if the peace was there to help me accomplish even more.

    I remember my university days when, for weeks on end, I decided I wanted to meditate for three hours a day. I would rush through my day, turn down social invitations, and maximize the use of my time so that I could get my precious 180 minutes of silence.

    I hope not so many people can relate to this, but I remember times when I would get home, drop the keys on the table, put on my meditation alarm clock, sit for sixty minutes, and hop up just in time for my next appointment. Needless to say, there were many days when those three meditation hours were not the most peaceful hours of my day.

    Granted, I was young and a bit extreme, but this was before the advent of the smartphone. Thereafter, I would sprint from meditation to check all my messages and notifications, lacking the self-discipline or awareness to give myself space and time to integrate things. This habit went on well into my adult years.

    Eventually, it started to be the other way around. The productive and achieving attitude I had outside of meditation periods started to infiltrate my spiritual practice, and I became determined and hurried to “reach the ultimate spiritual goal.” (Not quite sure what that was at the time—maybe becoming enlightened, or fully healed, or at least in a permanent state of equipoise… reaching nirvana if you would have allowed me to dream big.)

    This really did NOT work very well. It was like trying to go down the river by swimming against the current. Not only was this not effective, but it actually became harmful—grinding my being into a stressful, achieving state for hours on end, guided by a sort of FOMO on enlightenment. I would finish some meditations agitated on good days and very overwhelmed on bad ones.

    As it turns out, there are many good reasons why many spiritual teachers emphasize the importance of letting go of spiritual agendas in one’s practice and engaging with the present moment as it is without aiming for a future moment.

    It is not like I did not know this. I had undertaken graduate studies on Buddhism and had heard more spiritual talks than my brain could ever remember. But I found there are very good reasons as to why workaholism is considered a serious addiction that is rampant in industrialized modern societies, with some estimates suggesting that 25–30% of the population suffers from it to some degree.

    Talking with the spiritual buddies I practically grew up with, I realized that, in productivity-focused cultures like ours, creating a serene lifestyle where meditation can take place easefully can be even more daunting than establishing a regular meditation practice.

    Interestingly, workaholism doesn’t just refer to profitable activities relating to one’s livelihood. I have spoken to plenty of colleagues as well as clients who report a big drive to get things done.

    I have heard it called “activity addiction,” and a friend recently described her exhaustion predicament as having a “spiritual burnout.” She was meditating regularly and doing her self-growth activities, listening to inspiring podcasts, and participating in profound spiritual workshops, and she found herself exhausted and confused by all the excessive input.

    These are not just personal dilemmas. If we mix a cocktail of modern economies, digital overload, FOMO-inducing social media, and the need for positive actions to mitigate some of the major social challenges of our times, even some of the most Zen among us might end up with some degree of an overloaded nervous system that finds it difficult to slow down and let go of activity.

    A friend once said that he used to meditate in order to live a peaceful life. And after many years of practice, he now lives a peaceful life in order to meditate.

    I now know that to maintain the calmness and ease of my treasured spiritual practices, I also need to live in a way that allows space for peace  to arise. It might seem like an obvious statement, but what happens in all those hours off of the cushion (at least twenty-three of them for most of us) has a major influence on the fruits of our meditation practice.

    Even though meditation can assist us in living healthy and active lifestyles, the common emphasis on increased productivity as a benefit might lead some of us to believe that meditation is an activity that we need to check off our to-do list in order to get more done.

    And even if we have the right attitude and understanding of meditation, when the hectic habit of constant activity predominates in our days, letting go of it and allowing for presence and insight might be a challenging process.

    My sense is that the direction of presence and stillness is where our being naturally seeks to go, as if it were our neurological mandate to turn to them. Or perhaps it is the other way around—presence and stillness organically seek to go in our direction, as if it were their mandate to manifest themselves in us.

    In that sense, meditation is not something that only happens when we focus our attention in formal meditation. That balance of the fine art of doing and not-doing, of effort and effortlessness, of striving and letting go, and of meditating in stillness and living a serene, genuine life has now become a more refined compass for my meditation practice.

    I still meditate daily (mostly), but I now make sure that I include a good bit of puttering around and slowing down into the rhythms of life.

    And, if I am honest, I would have to confess to missing my evening meditations once in a while for a good Netflix indulgence. I am not quite sure whether this will lead to a delay in me getting fully liberated, but it sure helps me to eventually close my eyes with more joy when I approach more formal practices.

  • How to Free Yourself from Your Constant Desires

    How to Free Yourself from Your Constant Desires

    “Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.” ~Epictetus

    I surely can’t be the only one tired of constantly wanting things. By things, I mean a new job, a nice car, new clothes, a new home, perhaps even a partner, more friends, more money, or better holidays in more luxurious locations.

    It feels like we are forever stuck in a cycle of seeking the next bigger or better thing. Once we have achieved one goal, yup, you guessed it, here comes another, even bigger goal that will probably be harder to reach than the last one.

    It seems that we always want more; nothing is ever enough.

    At one point I felt like I had truly gotten lost in trying to keep up with expectations from society, my peers, my colleagues, and even strangers!

    I was fed up with not getting what I wanted when I felt I needed it, and with getting what I wanted but only enjoying it for a short time before I wanted the next big thing!

    When does it end? When do we pass over to the other side? When do we reach enlightenment?

    I was tired of constantly chasing things. It was exhausting, and I didn’t have the energy for it.

    I wanted to afford to live on my own instead of having to house-share or live with family. I wanted a partner who would be true to me. I wanted my side hustle to earn me enough to do it full time. I wanted holidays multiple times a year.

    I was eventually offered a flat viewing for an affordable housing scheme. These were few and far between, so I was lucky to be offered one. I thought that this would be my chance to meet my goal of living alone.

    If I got the flat, I could tick it off my list! I would be halfway there to the ‘perfect’ life I had envisioned for myself.

    Sadly, I wasn’t offered the flat for reasons unbeknown to me, but being rejected for it certainly put things into perspective for me.

    To my surprise, I was not in the slightest bit angry, upset, or disappointed!

    I sat and asked myself what it would have changed if I had gotten it. I would have been happy in the flat for a short period, but it wouldn’t have been long before I was itching to live in a house, somewhere bigger or in a better area.

    I concluded that it wasn’t life handing me the shit stick; it was me. I was the problem! I always wanted more, I didn’t appreciate what I already had, and I was always looking to the future when things would be “better.”

    I sat and wondered what it would feel like to just be, to not want anything, to take everything as it comes without judgment or fear of where I’d end up if I didn’t meet my goals.

    Call it a spiritual awakening or an epiphany that there had to be more to life than constantly chasing things I desire.

    Annoyed and frustrated with myself, I turned to a search engine for answers. “Is it possible to live without desire?” I typed into Google.

    I was met with many articles that provided helpful information.

    I have discovered, through books, meditation, online information, and reflection on my own experiences, that desire isn’t necessarily bad.

    Issues arise when we chase desires because we feel they are necessary for our well-being and happiness, and we rely on them for fulfilment. The problem is that when we do not get the things we want, it leads to disappointment and misery.

    That was certainly my issue. I had become fixated on looking for things outside of myself to bring me peace, joy, happiness, and fulfilment, and they never did, or at least not for a significant period of time.

    We Desire More Because We’re Chasing Happiness

    We chase external things because we are ultimately chasing happiness; we think these things will make us feel good. When we acquire them, they usually do, but the feeling of happiness never lasts. Usually, it’s not long before we want something else.

    I discovered that as long as you believe there is something outside of yourself that can bring you happiness, you will never truly be happy because it starts within.

    Our Desire is Linked to a Feeling of Lack

    We want things because we think we lack something, even when all our needs are met, but if we constantly feel there is never enough, we will wind up creating more of that feeling.

    This is the basis of the law of attraction—like attracts like. What you focus your energy on, you receive more of.

    I realized that I needed to make changes in my life, slow down, refocus, and tame my constant need to obtain things. To do this, I had to look within to connect with who I really was—a spiritual being to whom materialism and what I have (and do not have) do not matter!

    In order to tame my constant striving for more and find happiness within, I implemented the following.

    Temper your expectations.

    We have to understand that the world doesn’t owe us a thing, but that doesn’t mean that we should stop pursuing the things we want. We should just refrain from expecting everything to turn out the way we hope they will.

    If we get what we want, that’s great; if we don’t, we didn’t have our hopes pinned on it anyway, so it’s also okay!

    When you have fewer expectations, less can disappoint you, and if you do feel disappointed about something, you will recover and be able to bounce back quickly.

    Accept where you are in life.

    Acceptance will free you from the victim mentality that keeps you focused on what you lack. Once again, this doesn’t mean you can’t strive to improve your situation. It just means you’ll get out of the judging mind that fixates on how unfair life is, enabling you to enjoy the things you do have and more effectively work to change the things that aren’t working for you.

    Surrender to life.

    Loosen your grip on your life and stop trying to swim against the tide.

    Often, we get so caught up trying to control everything and make everything work in our favor that we cause more harm than good, usually to ourselves.

    Trust that things could work out even better than you knew to imagine if you let go a little, and when you face adversity, remember it will pass, because nothing lasts forever.

    When you do have goals you want to achieve, try to enjoy the process of getting where you want to be instead of focusing on the end result. Things usually fall into place when we relax and let go of outcomes.

    Practice being more present.

    By constantly chasing our desires, we can end up living in the future and not here in the present moment, which means we can’t appreciate what’s right in front of us.

    The only matter that truly matters is that of now because yesterday is dead and tomorrow has not happened yet.

    I found that being present reduced my anxiety and worries about the future, because I made a conscious effort to only focus on the now.

    Practice gratitude.

    When we appreciate everything we have, we tend to focus less on what we do not have.

    Gratitude is linked to greater well-being and overall happiness, and it’s also effective in reducing stress and anxiety.

    What helps me is to take a little time at night to find something from the day I appreciated. It doesn’t have to be something big; it can be a colleague helping me with a task at work or a stranger holding the door open for me.

    —

    Upon reflection, I personally think that it is okay to live with desire. We are human, and living from a desire-less state would be extremely difficult—even wanting to live without desires is a desire itself!

    It’s natural to want to eat tasty dinners, to look nice when we go out, and to be able to treat ourselves for our hard work. While these wants may be minor, they are still desires.

    Some would even argue that if we did not have any desires, our lives would have no meaning or purpose, and we wouldn’t be motivated to do anything.

    But constantly chasing external things and relying on them for happiness and fulfilment is an unhealthy way to live, leading to stress, worry, fear, and even depression.

    The alternative is to appreciate all the goodness we have in our lives and understand that happiness cannot be measured by the things that we have, or found by constantly looking outside of ourselves; if they could, then those that could afford to have everything they ever wanted would be the happiest people in the world, and this just isn’t the case!

  • 8 Ways Life Improves When You Value and Prioritize Yourself

    8 Ways Life Improves When You Value and Prioritize Yourself

    “Every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, ‘This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!’ And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart, and say, ‘No. This is what’s important.’” ~Iain Thomas

    As someone who believes in the healing power of self-care, I absolutely love this quote. But I didn’t always believe it was true. And it didn’t feel good to do it.

    My heart was too tender to be touched for long. And for years, it seemed to be empty. I didn’t feel pleasure. I didn’t feel passion. I didn’t feel love or hope or joy. I just felt numb from years of pain followed by years of suppressing my emotions with alcohol, food, and other anesthetics. And my feelings and needs didn’t feel important to me because I didn’t believe I was important.

    I suspect a lot of people are living some variation of this story, even if they’re not consciously aware of it. Because none of us get through our childhoods unscathed. And many of us go into adulthood with mounds of unresolved trauma, resultant low self-worth, and an arsenal of unhealthy coping mechanisms to keep the pain at bay.

    We don’t prioritize the things that we need to thrive because we’re too busy surviving.

    It would be easy to blame the world for dragging us by the hand, because it does—oh, how it does. There are bills to be paid, and requests to be honored, and all the million little things we feel we need to do and figure out before we can finally take a break and breathe.

    But we also drag ourselves all around, trying to do it all and be everything to everyone, because it’s easier than facing ourselves. It’s easier than facing our deepest pains.

    And it’s easier than acknowledging the truth—which would set us free if we could only admit and address it: We simply don’t value ourselves enough to prioritize ourselves.

    Maybe because we blame ourselves for pain from the past. Or because we don’t think we’ve accomplished enough to earn kindness and care. Or maybe because we’ve learned that good people put everyone else first, and we desperately want to be good people—loveable people. All were true for me.

    But I think that’s the point of the quote. That our most important work is to heal the wounds that cause us to devalue ourselves so we can then prioritize ourselves enough to figure out what we need to do to feel and be our best.

    For years I tried to make my life better, starting by making myself better, but nothing changed until I believed I deserved better.

    When you believe you deserve better, you commit to creating it, and you keep going when it’s hard because you know you’re worth it. And oh, how life expands when you do.

    When you start valuing and prioritizing yourself…

    1. You’ll start feeling calmer, more energized, and more fulfilled because you’ll be meeting more of your needs.

    The hardest thing about being the kind of person who puts everyone else first is that you never feel like you’re doing enough, even when you’re giving all you have. So you not only try to do everything you can for everyone else, but you also try to make them all comfortable and happy—which is impossible, so you generally feel neither.

    When you make yourself a top priority, you’ll figure out what you need to feel comfortable and happy first. And you’ll give yourself permission to do those things without carrying the weight of everyone else’s feelings and problems, as if it’s your responsibility to fix them.

    Then, instead of trying to fill your tank with quick-burning fuel of approval, you’ll fill it with the kind of things that truly nourish you, which, for me, includes movement, creativity, and time in nature.

    2. You’ll experience the joy of growing and exploring new possibilities as you invest in yourself and your potential instead of spending money on distractions that leave you feeling empty.

    When you decide that your top priority is to take care of yourself and your needs, you’ll feel more confident about investing in yourself—whether that means undergoing training for a more rewarding career or going to therapy to start healing from your trauma.

    Instead of spending your money on Band-Aids that barely cover your pain and overall life dissatisfaction, you’ll devote your time, energy, and resources to addressing those things so that you no longer feel the need to numb yourself.

    3. You’ll prioritize healing and feel more at peace with yourself, your past, and others as a result.

    As you work on healing from pains from the past, you’ll find it easier to forgive the people who hurt you. And because you value and want to honor yourself, you’ll recognize this doesn’t have to mean allowing them back into your life. It can simply mean releasing your anger and resentment toward them—which is a lot easier to do when they no longer have access to continually hurt you.

    Healing will also allow you to see your past through an entirely different lens, with a deeper understanding of who and what shaped you and more empathy toward the little version of you who always did their best and has always been deserving of love and respect.

    4. You’ll feel proud of yourself instead of ashamed because, through healing, you’ll be able to forgive yourself for things you could have done better and focus on doing better now.

    As you build that empathy for your younger self, you’ll also grow your empathy for your present self, and your relationship with yourself will transform. You’ll start to focus more on what you’re doing right than what you think you’re doing wrong, giving you more and more reasons to feel good about yourself.

    You’ll simultaneously find it easier to forgive yourself when you struggle, and you’ll start seeing your missteps as opportunities to learn instead of beating yourself up and stewing in regret. This means you’ll bounce back more quickly, with confidence in what you can do differently going forward, which will make it a lot easier to actually make those changes.

    5. You’ll feel more connected to yourself and start to trust yourself more as you make time and space to hear your intuition.

    When you start allowing yourself time to just be—releasing the pressure to constantly do and achieve—you’ll find it easier to hear the voice of your intuition. Which means you’ll get clearer insight into what might be good for you, in all areas of your life.

    As you act on this insight and see (at least some) positive results, you’ll develop a deeper sense of trust in yourself. Trust that enables you to make big decisions you might otherwise avoid in fear of making the “wrong” choice.

    You’ll also spend less time worrying about what other people think because it will feel far less relevant when you’re guided by what you know.

    6. Your relationships will become more of a source of pleasure than pain because you’ll set boundaries with people who hurt you and let them go if they refuse to stop.

    When you put your own peace, happiness, and well-being at the top of your priority list, you’ll start setting clearer boundaries about what’s acceptable in your relationships.

    You’ll also find the courage to speak up when someone crosses your boundaries because you’ll know that protecting your heart and your energy is worth the discomfort of confrontation.

    That’s not to say your relationships will always be effortless and fun. People will still stress and disappoint you, just as you’ll sometimes stress and disappoint them, because we’re all only human.

    But you won’t say, “No worries” when someone’s behavior fills you with fear or “It’s okay” when you know in your gut it’s not. And when someone disrespects or mistreats you for the umpteenth time, you’ll find the strength to say, “No more”—which means you’ll spend a lot less time justifying and recovering from their behavior and more time enjoying people who treat you well.

    7. Your days will feel more enjoyable and exciting because you’ll be using more of your time on things that matter to you.

    The more time and space you allot for yourself, the more energy you’ll be able to devote to the things that matter to you. The things that make you feel excited to be alive. Your passions and interests and new possibilities—or the pursuit of discovering what brings you joy if you have no idea what that might be.

    Because other people also matter to you, you’ll still devote time and energy to them, but you’ll know it’s okay if it’s notjust about them. That you can suggest things to do or places to go or ask for their support at times.

    This isn’t just about filling time you previously didn’t have available to you. It’s also about enjoying more of your time because you’ll no longer feel guilty about doing less for everyone else, or at least you’ll feel less anxious about it because you’ll know you’re honoring one of your top priorities—yourself.

    8. You’ll feel physically stronger, mentally clearer, and more emotionally balanced.

    When you address your needs, invest in your happiness and healing, and make choices to honor and support yourself, you’ll notice improvements in every aspect of your health—physical, mental, and emotional.

    Because instead of merely surviving as you deal with the varied consequences of neglecting and devaluing yourself, you’ll be thriving through the process of taking care good care of yourself.

    And it will become a self-perpetuating cycle—because you feel better, you’ll continually do better, and then feel even better as a result. Unlike the opposite cycle that might be more familiar—when you feel bad, continually do things you feel bad about, and then feel worse as a result.

    This doesn’t mean you’ll always feel great and will never struggle again. You’ll still be human, after all. But you’ll feel a lot more confident in your capacity to get through your difficult times and make the best of every hardship you face because you’ll be acting from a stable foundation of inner strength forged through self-support and care.

    —

    Maybe you’ve already experienced some of these things. And maybe, like me, you feel like the path to valuing and prioritizing yourself has often been a journey of two steps forward and one step back—or one step forward and two steps back.

    Maybe some days you set boundaries and other days you suppress your needs in fear. Maybe some days you make time for exercise and meditation, and other times have one too many glasses of wine because it’s easier than feeling your feelings, or acknowledging what you really need to do or change to feel better.

    Healing isn’t a linear process. We grow, we stumble, we disappoint ourselves, then hopefully forgive ourselves so we can get back up and try again, one small step at a time.

    The important thing is that we keep taking those steps, even if we get knocked down for a while.

    That we try to face our pains instead of numbing them. Honor our needs instead of ignoring them. Acknowledge the things that aren’t working instead of settling on them. And most importantly, continually challenge the voice within that tells us we need to do or be more to be worthy of love and care.

    Once upon a time I thought my heart was numb because of everything that had happened to me. Then I realized that was the past, and I was the one numbing it in the present by treating myself worse than anyone else ever had.

    I only came alive when I stopped telling myself I didn’t matter and started working on believing I did—which started with treating myself like I did. One loving act of self-care at a time.

  • 3 Popular Myths Around Having and Healing Anxiety

    3 Popular Myths Around Having and Healing Anxiety

    “Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.” ~Ruth E. Renkel

    Before I started healing my anxiety, I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. Every panic attack, every morning filled with dread, every social event that I would mentally prepare myself for made me feel like I had some inner deficiency that no one else had.

    I used to work as a cashier at a grocery store and would avoid hanging out with people twenty-four hours before my shift. Yep. That means if I worked on Saturday morning, I wouldn’t hang out with anyone from Friday afternoon to the evening.

    Why? Because I had to “prepare” myself for my entry-level position at the grocery store. I had to “make sure I felt okay,” as if the whole world was watching to see if I didn’t smile for an hour.

    I was extremely critical of myself and felt that if I wasn’t drenched in positivity, I was useless to the world. And that if I wasn’t exuding confidence every moment of my life, people would think I wasn’t good enough.

    When I started on my journey to healing my anxiety, I uncovered a few life events that had had a major effect on my inner world. One of them occurred during a dance competition that I was a part of at a young age. I was maybe ten years old when I was a part of a Bhangra group, which is a style of folk dance that originated in Punjab, India.

    Bhangra is a highly energized style of dance, and when you watch a performance, you’ll see that the dancers are smiling really wide and having the time of their lives. This is an important part of the performance, as you’re meant to bring this high energy to the stage so that the audience has a good time.

    At one of my dance competitions, my group had just finished performing, and the judges were ready to say their piece. All of the judges had great things to say, except for one that decided to point out a flaw in my personal part of the performance. He said, “Everyone did such an amazing job and were smiling so big and having fun, but you” (points to me, younger Raman) “didn’t seem to be smiling so wide. Why was that?”

    As a ten-year-old, my heart dropped as every eyeball in that auditorium looked straight at me. I can’t quite remember what I responded with, but if I’m being honest, I don’t think I said much. I tried to keep it “chill.” I’m pretty sure I just shrugged and said, “I don’t know” while my soul exited my body out of embarrassment, and then eventually walked off the stage with my dance group.

    We were young, and we were just having fun with this dance competition. We weren’t trying to win a national championship, and we weren’t even trying that hard to impress the judges. Even though we did end up winning a prize, the critique from that one judge ended up dampening my spirits.

    Being singled out from the rest of the group really had an impact on me. Though our mind doesn’t understand why we might experience certain anxieties and fears as we get older, the child that experienced that pain still lives within us.

    And the judge from a dance competition becomes an inner judge that critiques us before a work shift as a cashier. “Smile bigger!!!” he says.

    It’s both the small moments and big moments of pain that stick around with us. And as much as our adult mind can dismiss the experience by thinking, “Oh, it was just one thing someone said, that’s not a big deal,” to that little kid, it is. It’s a really big deal!

    And that leads me to the first myth we have about anxiety: that there’s something wrong with us.

    If you have experienced any form of anxiety, there’s nothing wrong with you. Actually, your internal system is working exactly as it was designed! To avoid a possible future “threat” (in this case, the embarrassment from the judge in my story), we create an inner judge to “fix” what was wrong (in this case, not smiling big enough at the dance performance), which will hopefully avoid having someone critique us from the outside (at work).

    It’s a weird way that our inner world works, but it’s doing its job. Because the truth is, yes, if you spend twenty-four hours before a work shift to mentally prepare yourself for smiling big at work, then you’ll most likely smile big at work and no one will critique you for being a downer.

    Now, when it starts to get really difficult is when you stop having the energy to perform for the world. It becomes extra challenging when your inner critic makes you feel like you’re not enough. It’s usually around this time that people start looking for some help, because even though their inner world is doing its job, it becomes exhausting to keep up with it.

    Which leads me to the second myth around having anxiety: that if you have anxiety, you’ll have it forever.

    A lot of people believe that if someone gives you a label, that label has to last forever. Not me, though. For example, when my doctor told me I had moderate generalized anxiety disorder, I decided that it wasn’t going to be like that for the rest of my life and that I would do what I needed to do to heal the anxiety.

    Anxiety isn’t something you need to “cope” with. I recently suggested a tool to a client, a young woman, and she said, “Oh, yay another coping mechanism!” As excited as she was to try something new, I had to be authentic and let her know that her anxiety wasn’t something she merely had to cope with; it was something that could be transformed.

    The first step to transforming your anxiety is getting aware of what your dominant thoughts are. Oftentimes, it’s the hypercritical thoughts that are causing the anxiety. When we can become aware of these thoughts, we can then ask where they originated from.

    Just like how I have an origin story for my anxiety, you do too! Oftentimes, there’s more than one origin story—a culmination of origin stories—but it helps to start with one.

    The more open you are to healing through your story, and the more willing you are to transform, the more you’ll shift. Your anxiety doesn’t have to be in the driver’s seat of your life forever. It’s even allowed to be a passenger.

    And that leads us to the third and final myth around anxiety: that to heal, you must be completely anxiety-free and completely at peace at all times.

    The truth is, in my six years of healing, anxiety has popped its head up from time to time. The first time I offered workshops, I was a nervous wreck for weeks.

    I’ll still feel anxious if I’m trying something new, but the way I respond is different.

    When we start to heal, it creates a strength within us that allows us to show up differently in our life. Even though I felt really nervous to put myself out there in my career, I had the inner strength to go for it! That’s because anxiety was no longer steering the vehicle of my life.

    It became a welcome passenger.

    The truth is, if anxiety comes from that inner kid and her experiences, then I don’t want to kick her out of the car. That little girl deserves a safe space in my life.

    When anxiety pops her head up, I say hello. I journal from her voice, I talk to her, and I let her know it’s going to be okay.

    I remind her that I’m the opposite of that judge from that day, and that I will be the one to uplift and empower her. That she is welcome on my journey to show up whenever she wants to. And that I’d love to have her join me for the ride.

    I’m here to show her all of the magic that’s inside of her. And I’m here to remind her of her gifts and talents—the ones that no one can take away from her. She is a welcome passenger, and I will be driving the car to our greatest good.

    My experience with anxiety and the healing that came along with it has taught me to be kinder to myself, to see the human behind their mask, and to be a walking example of inner peace.

    Perhaps the more difficult moments of our life are also the ones that shape us into more of who we’re meant to become.

  • The World Would Be a Happier, More Peaceful Place

    The World Would Be a Happier, More Peaceful Place

  • How to Tend to the Garden Within and Help Create a More Peaceful World

    How to Tend to the Garden Within and Help Create a More Peaceful World

    “Until we transform ourselves, we are like mobs of angry people screaming for peace. In order to move the world, we must be able to stand still in it.” ~Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

    It only happens about every ten years or so. The primal scream. It gets unleashed when things feel like too much.

    But it happened recently, to the dismay of my husband who was enjoying a rare moment of quiet in the house. I had just dropped our son off to basketball practice. The soup I’d picked up for dinner spilled in the car, and the lid to the boiling emotional pot that I had been diligently managing for months burst off.

    It had been a hell of a semester with unrelenting stress from a job that required more than I was willing to give. I exploded from the strain of responding lovingly to the confusion of a moody teenager managing peer pressures and media overload. And from the pain of caring deeply for our hurting, warring, grieving, angry, divisive, stubborn world.

    The impotence I felt was crushing. The complicated layers wound me into knots. Until I came undone.

    I sat for a while with the echoes of the scream in my ears, relieved to finally acknowledge that not all was well. And in the days to follow, as I meditated and re-centered and cared myself back into balance, I recognized that not all was lost either.

    My mindfulness practice has held me steady over the years, allowing me regular contact with my heart. I have learned to look inward, getting to know the pain, the uncertainty, the non-answers. I have become comfortable with letting the breath unknot the blockages of unprocessed emotions.

    I never know when they will break free or come out sideways. But as I have returned to the breath an infinite number of times, I have learned to trust that I can let whatever needs to arise speak.

    Sometimes it’s sadness. Sometimes it’s hopefulness. But other times, I have to let despair and grief step into the light.

    They say that what we resist persists. Our emotions have wisdom. Denying them now feels unkind.

    I’ve noticed over time that even while the pain inside can be confusing and disorienting, something continues to grow stronger, steadier within me. Something grows lighter. If I let it.

    I don’t limit my practice to one thing. Mindfulness meditation is my root teacher, my guide in this inward journey. But these times call for reinforcements, spirit allies, friends, prayers, and kindness.

    I lean on the wisdom of shamans, mystics, and sages who instruct us to dream the world into being. I know well that the power of our minds can both create the world we want to live in and destroy it. I recently added courageous dreaming to my list of reinforcements.

    The implications for my choices are not small as I watch my son navigate the shaky world he lives in. Checking the news. Asking hard questions.

    I tell him with confidence that there is beauty and good and joy. Even on dark days. In our world. And I believe that deeply because I see it. In my heart and in the heart of so many others. The ones who have learned how to sit still in the midst of it all.

    I navigate these times by tending to my inner garden. I know that when I nurture my inner world, I can be of wiser service to the world around me. I try to model this to my son who is too much in the throes of growing up to understand much of this directly, but I trust that the seeds are being planted.

    I am dreaming the world into being in my small but mighty sphere of influence. And I am accompanied by countless others—friends, teachers, fellow wisdom seekers—who are similarly invested in caring for the garden within so that they can be the caregivers, healers, and magic makers that our world needs. This, I believe, is the way of change.

    The pathway is simple but not easy. Mindfulness takes diligence and practice. But it can be the foundation for the steadiness, calm, and compassion required of us in these times.

    This is how we can get started.

    Develop a foundation for steadiness.

    To begin, allocate ten minutes a day where you won’t be interrupted. Start with an awareness of breath practice. Sit comfortably and notice the in and out breath without trying to make anything happen.

    When your mind wanders (which it will) bring it back to the breath, again and again. Be gentle with yourself and don’t expect radical change. Stick with the practice, gradually lengthening the time that you sit to develop concentration, trust, and stability.

    Strengthen your heart connection.

    Building on your awareness of breath practice, you can place your attention on your heart space. Breathe in and out of your heart noticing what arises when you pay attention. Is there aching, longing, tension, or joy?

    You may put your hand on your heart as you listen, staying open without judging. Whatever you notice, consider sending kindness to your heart. Continue breathing through your heart space, thanking your heart for protecting you and supporting you.

    Get curious about your emotions.

    It feels counterintuitive to lean into what makes us uncomfortable. Yet leaning into our emotions can be our gateway to freedom. This practice is called tending and befriending.

    Sitting quietly in meditation, you can notice what arises with kind curiosity. The emotion might arise from within the body; the belly, chest, and heart are the most common places where emotions are felt. Or you might just sense something in the background—anxiety, fear, anticipation.

    Give the emotion a neutral name, see if you can let it expand or contract as it needs to, and send it loving-kindness. We don’t need to sit long with the emotion. Just long enough to get to know it, open up space for it, and send it compassion.

    Instill gratitude.  

    My son noticed a butterfly the other day. We were taking a walk and he just stopped in his tracks. He wanted to capture its beauty in a picture.

    We talked about the transformation that butterflies go through in their lifetimes, and it reminded me of the profound and often overlooked beauty of nature. When we pay attention, these simple moments can be intensely healing. The more we touch into gratitude, the more we find ease.

    Gratitude is an antidote to anxiety, worry, and negativity. We can formally instill gratitude by committing to a daily practice of remembering or writing down three good things from the day. Then we soak those things into our body, savoring them, and holding them with loving intention.

    Envision the world you want to live in. 

    When we are deliberate about connecting with our breath, body, emotions, and heart, and receiving gratitude, we can more easily sense being part of a loving, compassionate world. We don’t only envision this world, but we live out all that we hope it entails. As Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh said: “If we want peace, we have to be peace. Peace is a practice and not a hope.”

    We are at an inflection point in our world. A time of great change. We can decide first how we want to be. The rest will follow.

    May you practice with an open mind, heart, and spirit.

  • We Cannot Conquer Hate with More Hate (Only with Love)

    We Cannot Conquer Hate with More Hate (Only with Love)

    “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

    I suspect that most people are victims of hate. Wars happen because of hate. Your mental, emotional, and even physical balance is lost because of hate. Hate destroys joy and happiness.

    Think about the last time you felt intense emotions of hate—for another person, for a group of people, or even for yourself. Just thinking about it will make you feel not so nice. Now, as you think about those feelings of hate, simply observe yourself.

    Observe your mind, your thoughts, your body, your breath; observe how you feel in your gut. You will notice how they all go out of balance.

    If someone were to do an experiment with you while you were feeling these emotions of hate, and plug up various monitors to you, they would observe how your blood pressure, your heart rate, your physical body, and your neurons were all going out of balance.

    But we don’t need to do any of that because we can feel it. We don’t need scientific experiments to prove that hate affects every part of us.

    And anything that affects us individually affects the whole world. Because the world is made of many more people like us. You and I aren’t different at all; we are both the same.

    And whatever you see in the external world is a manifestation of our collective inner state. Whenever wars happen, they reflect the inner hate and anger within people. But can hate be destroyed with more hate?

    Imagine a can of fuel has spilled and caught fire, and this fire threatens to burn an entire forest. Can you put this fire out by pouring more of the same fuel?

    If you pour more of the same fuel, what will happen? The fire will keep becoming bigger and bigger until it consumes everything in its path.

    What you need to do is find some other material. In the forest you can take some soil and use it to put out the fire. If there is a group of friends and they all take the soil and pour it over the fire, the fire will be put out faster.

    The same applies to hate. Hate can’t be destroyed with more hate.

    The only way to end wars or make peace with people who’ve hurt us or who hold opposing worldviews is to recognize that we are fundamentally all the same, and we need to work together for mutual growth and progress. The only way to resolve conflict is to become aware of our higher nature.

    I’ll share an example from my own life.

    My grandparents were very wealthy. They came from a region called Sindh, and for thousands of years my ancestors have been traders and travelers.

    Maybe you’ve heard of the Indus Valley civilization.

    They used to travel in caravans across the world to trade spices, dry fruits, gems, carpets, and handicrafts.

    They had huge mansions, horses, gold, precious gems, and lots of material wealth. But one fine day, India was partitioned by the British into two countries—India and Pakistan.

    Sindh, where they were living, became a part of Pakistan, and they were forced to leave everything and come to this side of India. They had to make a decision between continuing to practice their faith or holding onto their material wealth. They decided to continue practicing their faith.

    When they came to India, with nothing, they were labeled as refugees. They had to live in camps where over 200 people shared a single toilet.

    But even then, they understood the power of words and petitioned the government not to call them refugees but “displaced people.”

    They were not looking for a handout or ‘refuge.’ They did not want people to feel sorry for them or treat them as victims.

    Growing up, they made sure they didn’t teach us to hate anyone. They didn’t ask us to hate the British nor did they ask us to hate the people of Pakistan. Instead, they taught us to focus on learning and growing ourselves.

    They taught us to be loving, to be compassionate, and to move ahead. This changed our perspective on so many things.

    In fact, they taught us that the whole world was ours. We are not restricted by geography. They taught us to laugh and live life with gratitude every moment.

    Today when I look back, I feel blessed and lucky that they didn’t teach me to hate. If they had, I would be stuck in a cycle of hate instead of moving ahead.

    We all have energy; what matters is where we focus and use it.

    Right now, set the intention to replace your hate with love, whether it’s hatred for someone else or for yourself.

    Empathy, understanding, and forgiveness have immense power. The moment you try to understand or forgive you are no longer caught in the clutches of hate. Maybe someone wronged you, maybe you felt hurt at that moment, but that moment is gone. And there’s a good chance they didn’t mean to hurt you; they were just hurting inside and didn’t realize what they were doing.

    The same is true for you. Instead of blaming or berating yourself for your mistakes and shortcomings, recognize that you’ve always done the best you could given your background, conditioning, and coping skills.

    Self-hatred won’t change the things you’ve done in the past; it will just make you more likely to do things you’ll feel bad about. And hatred toward other people won’t change how they are; if anything, hateful words and actions will just inflame them more—but with understanding and kindness, we actually have a chance of learning and growing together.

    Hate is like a chain; it binds you. The moment you forgive, you are cutting those chains to the past. You are free.

    The moment you forgive, you create a chance for love to grow. Send love to everyone. Because love has the power to win any battle, even the one within.

    And if this is hard for you, be kind to yourself. Allow yourself time to heal. Sometimes allowing yourself to be where you are is the most loving thing you can do for yourself. And that love for yourself can eventually expand to include love for the people who’ve hurt you (which doesn’t have to mean condoning their actions or allowing them to hurt you again).

    One beautiful exercise is to consider everyone a part of yourself. Will you hate your left hand just because you love your right hand more? They are both part of you. Yes, sometimes your left hand might get hurt, but you won’t hate it.

    You will, in fact, take better care of it. You will be more loving and attentive.

    Similarly, if you look at everyone as a part of this single existence, it will be easier to look at them with love.

    Everyone has an inner light, though sometimes you have to look a little harder to find it. It all starts with love.

    Before I go, I want you to think of the most loving experience you have ever had. When did you feel immense love? This beautiful feeling of love that transcends all boundaries. Love that transcends all barriers.

    Close your eyes and feel this love.

    Then, when you feel it, observe yourself and notice how everything feels balanced and in a state of bliss.

    Mentally, you will feel creative. Physically, you will feel this beautiful energy. And emotionally, you will feel nourished. That’s what love does to you.

    The best glimpse into your own inner spirituality is through love.

    The world needs a lot more love, and each one of us has the potential to create a more loving world by starting with ourselves.

    That’s how we truly end hate—within ourselves and in the world: with love.

  • How to Find Peace When Your Mind Is Restless

    How to Find Peace When Your Mind Is Restless

    “Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse

    When I work with people who are suffering from anxiety, fear, grief, or other challenging issues, I like to take them through a simple exercise I call “The Noticing Exercise.”

    It’s my first port of call when helping people break free from mind-created suffering.

    It’s amazing how quickly, and effortlessly, people can move from suffering to peace, simply through shifting their focus to being aware of the present moment—noticing the sensation of the body touching the chair, the ribs expanding on the in breath, or the sounds in the room.

    Even deeply troubled individuals can experience peace the very first time they try this simple meditation.

    How is this possible?

    It is because peace is already there inside all of us. It’s an integral part of who we are. When the mind’s activity subsides, even for a moment, peace is what remains.

    The ocean provides a good analogy.

    At the surface, the water is constantly in motion. It never stops, even for a moment. But when you drop down into the depths, there is stillness and peace.

    It’s exactly the same with the mind.

    On the surface level, the mind is always active but, in the depths of our being, there is a natural peace and stillness that is unchanging… always present, always available. Being part of our essential nature, it can never leave us.

    Although this inherent peace is always there, it goes unnoticed in most people through the deep-seated habit of giving our exclusive attention to the surface movements of the mind.

    We are so pre-occupied with what’s going on at the surface that we simply fail to notice what’s happening in the depths of our experience.

    And, of course, there is nothing ‘wrong’ with any of this.

    Spending our days lost in thinking is the human condition. It’s what we all do.

    Being swept away by the restless waters of the mind is perfectly normal, particularly when we are faced with intense patterns such as anxiety, trauma, or grief. And yet, the fact remains that, despite appearances, there is a peace inside every one of us that is untouched by what’s going on at the surface, however intense it may be.

    Withdraw your attention from the mind, even for a moment, and it’s there.

    You don’t have to create it; just recognize what has always been there.

    Peace doesn’t leave you. You leave peace.

    Stress, anxiety, and unhappiness exist primarily in the form of thoughts.

    If you are able to become fully present in the moment, thoughts subside, and stress and anxiety are replaced by peace and stillness.

    Of course, most people will pick up their painful stories again as soon as the meditation comes to an end, but the fact they were able to be free of their suffering, even temporarily, provides us with clues for finding a more permanent solution.

    With practice, anyone can learn to withdraw their attention from the mind for longer periods of time and thereby extend the periods of peace.

    Have You Been Barking Up the Wrong Tree?

    Most people are looking for peace where it can never be found—not lasting peace anyway.

    It’s a bit like losing your keys in the house and looking for them in the garden.

    You’re never going to find them… because they are not there.

    Most people I help have been searching for peace through the path of self-improvement, often for years.

    And it makes total sense.

    If my mind is causing me trouble, then the obvious solution is to try to fix it—to ‘work on myself’ and try to convert all my anxious and unhappy thoughts and feelings into pleasant, happy ones. Try to create a new, improved version of myself.

    But, if you’ve been down this path for any length of time, as I have, you’ll know that fundamentally changing the mind is not so easy.

    The problem with this approach is encapsulated in the following quote from the Indian spiritual teacher, Nisargadatta:

    “There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance; restlessness itself is mind.”

    Like the surface of the ocean, the mind is constantly in motion. It is restless by nature.

    And, although there may well be fleeting moments of peace here and there, they will inevitably be followed by moments of agitation and disturbance.

    Restlessness is the nature of the mind. Trying to make it calm and peaceful is like trying to iron the surface of the ocean. It’s simply never going to happen.

    Making Peace with The Mind Just as It Is

    To find a solution that actually works, we must first understand the true cause of suffering. It’s not what most folks think.

    People believe, as I did for years, that the anxious, stressful, or fearful thoughts themselves are the primary cause of suffering.

    They believe that:

    • the mind is broken and needs to be fixed.
    • anxiety, fear, confusion, etc. are inherently bad or wrong.
    • there’s something wrong with them for having these thoughts.
    • they can’t experience peace or happiness until they are gone.

    These beliefs are the main reason people suffer.

    As the Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello said:

    “There’s only one cause of unhappiness; the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so common, so widespread, that it never occurs to you to question them.”

    What if, instead of spending years trying to fix the content of the mind, we focused instead on making peace with the mind, just as it is?

    What if, rather than fighting and resisting fear, sadness, envy, or confusion, you were able to accept them as natural expressions of the human condition?

    What would happen to your anxiety if you didn’t see anything ‘wrong’ with it?

    Or your sadness if you didn’t mind it being there?

    They may still feel unpleasant but, in the absence of resistance, they’d lose their power to affect your peace.

    We can wrap our non-peace in the peace of acceptance.

    You Don’t Need to Have a Peaceful Mind to Experience Peace 

    On the path of self-improvement, the goal is to find peace of mind.

    But this approach is unlikely to succeed simply because the mind is restless by nature.

    Here’s the truth:

    You can’t stop bothersome thoughts from arising, but you can stop bothering about them.

    One of my teachers used to say, “You suffer because you are open for business.”

    You entertain your thoughts and invite them in for tea—engage with them, ruminate over them, wallow in them, play them over and over in your head—and create suffering for yourself as a result.

    You don’t need to have a peaceful mind to experience peace.

    You need to stop giving your thoughts so much attention and importance.

    If you are able to accept whatever appears in your head, whether pleasant or unpleasant, with an attitude of non-judgmental acceptance, you will always be at peace.

    Acceptance is like kryptonite to the mind. It loses its power to disturb your peace.

    The Two Types of Peace

    There are two types of peace.

    There is the feeling of peace, which is a temporary respite from feeling restless or agitated. Like all feelings, it comes and goes, like clouds passing across the sky.

    Then there is the peace that exists in the depths of your being; the backdrop of peace that is unchanging, ever-present, and has nothing to do with what is going on in your head.

    Even in the midst of the most turbulent storm at sea, in the depths, the ocean remains calm and unmoving.

    There is a peace inside every one of us that remains untouched by the movements on the surface, no matter how intense.

    And it’s not difficult to find. How could it be if it’s already who you are?

    You don’t need to fix or change anything about yourself to experience what is ever-present inside you.

    You just need to dive below the surface and discover what is always there.

    The peace you are looking for is with you always. But you’ll never find it on the level of the mind.

  • How I Healed My Anxiety with Simple Mindfulness Practices

    How I Healed My Anxiety with Simple Mindfulness Practices

    “Every step taken in mindfulness brings us one step closer to healing ourselves and the planet.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    When I returned from an extended stay in India at the beginning of this year, I was full of worries and uncertainty. Since I was coming back to a very different life, I had no idea what was next.

    I was without a job but determined to build my coaching business full-time. However, I felt lost as to where I was going to be within the next few months and how I was going to figure things out.

    Eventually, I settled down and started to think. I desperately wanted to go back, but I knew I had to take care of my responsibilities in the states before I could leave again.

    I started to work on my business and was lucky to get a few yoga classes to teach. However, the uncertainty of finances was weighing on me.

    I was always a person who planned my life and took only the safest steps. Suddenly, I was living day by day, not knowing what was going to happen or how I was going to take care of myself. It felt incredibly liberating and scary at the same time.

    After a few months, I got a severe infection in my tooth. Since, at that time, I was without insurance, I did anything I could to avoid visiting a dentist. One night it got so bad, I almost ran to an emergency room.

    At the same time, I developed tremors in my body while becoming increasingly fatigued and lethargic. This got me worried. At first, I thought it was due to the infection in my tooth. However, once the tooth was out, lethargy, fatigue, and shaking persisted.

    A couple of weeks later, my entire chest and face developed some allergic reaction that had no logical explanation.

    Due to all these unexpected and unexplainable health events, I felt desperate and powerless. One day, after another episode of intense tremors and lethargy, I drove to my friend to measure my blood pressure. After she told me my pressure was in perfect condition, I broke down crying. I had no idea what was going on.

    Although I knew that googling my symptoms was the last thing I should do, I did it anyway. No matter what I put in a search, anxiety seemed to be on the top of the list. I reflected on the past couple of months and realized I had been under tremendous pressure. I became increasingly pessimistic and afraid, always turning to a worst-case scenario.

    It was no surprise that this took a toll on my body.

    Since I had some knowledge and understanding of neuroscience and how negative thoughts affect the body, I realized something. If I can make myself sick and anxious by thoughts alone, I can make myself healthy, can’t I?

    Here is what I decided to do.

    1. I began a daily mindfulness practice.

    I knew that to heal my anxiety, I had to be super conscious of what was going on in my head. One thing I understood was that anxiety is worrying about the future, which hasn’t happened yet.

    To sharpen my awareness, I set an alarm for every hour of the day to check in with myself. Once the alarm went off, I asked myself, “How am I feeling? What am I thinking?”

    This allowed me to become more aware of subtle thoughts of worries and negativity.

    Through this daily exercise, I realized how negative I could be. The moment things didn’t go as I wanted them to, it threw me off course and created internal panic.

    I also incorporated mindfulness meditation and pranayama into my daily yoga and meditation practice. First, I would do different breathing exercises I learned in India to activate my parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation. Then, I would sit in silence while focusing on my breath and observing my thoughts.

    Every time a thought of worry entered my mind, I reminded myself that this was only a thought, and it wouldn’t have a meaning unless I gave it one.

    2. I focused on possibilities instead of obstacles.

    Although I was less than thrilled about my fear and anxiety, I understood that these emotions were here to tell me something. If it wasn’t for them, I would never have begun paying such close attention to the way I think.

    After recognizing how I was bringing myself down, I decided to create a more uplifting and positive environment around me.

    I have a big chalkboard above my worktable that I use to write positive affirmations, simple reminders, or quotes that feel empowering. I took a sock from my drawer and wiped everything on it clean.

    Then I grabbed my white chalk marker and wrote in giant letters, “What is the BEST thing that could happen?”

    This question was a reminder for me every day that where my focus goes, energy flows. If I wanted to heal my anxiety, I had to learn to better self-regulate.

    I also understood that instead of pushing my ‘negative’ thoughts away, I could attune to them, listen to them, and understand where they were coming from. They weren’t barriers but healing opportunities.

    For example, I had lots of negative thoughts regarding finances. I felt like a victim because my parents weren’t able to support me through difficult times. Once I ended my pity party, I realized I was holding many limiting beliefs about money and that I didn’t believe I was worthy of having more. So I started learning about investing and the mindset needed for financial health, and it’s changed the way I view and handle money ever since.

    3. I welcomed solitude.

    After realizing that anxiety has been a big part of my life for years, I decided to spend more time in solitude.

    The interesting thing about this was that it felt natural. I didn’t feel as if I was missing out on something. As a matter of fact, it gave me space to reflect on my past. I realized there were so many wounds I’d never healed and pains I’d never acknowledged.

    I also understood that living in a state of anxiety was my normal way of being. My mind and body were accustomed to feeling the emotions of stress and worry, and I didn’t even know it.

    My time in solitude allowed me to see when my anxiety spiked and what kept it alive. Aside from understanding the link between anxiety and my thoughts, I noticed other situations that brought stress. For example, I worried about what people thought of me, placed my worth on reaching my goals, was inauthentic to be liked, or wanted to control things outside of myself.

    When I uncovered these blind spots, I fell in love with solitude. It also gave me more space and time to practice mindfulness and become much better at recognizing when anxiety was creeping in.

    4. I incorporated mindfulness into my regular tasks.

    One of my habits was scrolling through recipes on social media while eating. Although I live alone and there isn’t anyone to distract me with conversations, I realized that I wasn’t mindful of eating at all.

    I decided to put my phone down and observe the taste of the food, the texture, how many times I chewed it, and how I enjoyed it.

    When I went for my evening walk, instead of listening to music or an audiobook, I simply walked. I observed my breath, heartbeat, and the world around me—houses I passed by or palm trees, which were everywhere.

    This intentional mindfulness practice helped me grasp the present moment while realizing that now is all that’s here. As my guru often says, we can’t change this moment; we can only accept it. However, the next moment contains a million possibilities, and if we are present and aware, we can choose how to proceed.

    —

    After about a month of following these steps, something amazing happened.

    I realized that my anxiety was almost gone and my skin rash had completely disappeared, and I was full of energy and optimism. Although my outside situation hadn’t changed much, the way I perceived life and how much I trusted myself had.

    Since then, I sometimes sense anxiety wanting to come in. I immediately feel a slight vibration in my limbs, and my heartbeat rises.

    The moment I observe it, I know it’s time to pause and turn inward because that’s where my healing always takes place.

  • How to Free Yourself from Pain from the Past

    How to Free Yourself from Pain from the Past

    “There are two levels to your pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    When I read this quote, it stopped me in my tracks. So much of our pain and suffering in the present is caused by us repeating cycles and dwelling on pain from the past. We want so badly to resolve our suffering. But our search for resolution often involves repeating the painful cycles we have already been through, in the hope that someone or something will change.

    How many of us have gone through a divorce and realized in the process that the whole relationship was a repeat of a painful relationship from our childhood? How many of us are realizing that we continue to attract the same kinds of people into our lives? People who take advantage of us, want to use us, or have some form of agenda that creates more pain and suffering.

    We live in our minds trying to think of all the ways we can protect ourselves and avoid more pain and suffering. The irony is that this inevitably creates more of what we are trying to avoid. This is because what we focus on, we create. The law of attraction is always at play.

    For years, I lived highly dependent on my mind. I thought that if I got all the psychology degrees, considered all possible future outcomes, and created a well-thought-out plan of action, I would be able to fix my pain and suffering and free myself for a life of meaning and purpose.

    It was devastating to realize after years of chasing a meaningful life that I could not create safety, joy, and purpose through the actions of my mind.

    Subconsciously, I stayed trapped in cycles of pain while trying to resolve my past by hoping the people around me would change. I kept my life small so I could stay in control. I never wanted to be around crowds of people. I never wanted to share and be vulnerable, and I never wanted to let anyone see my feelings. I stayed hidden away behind my mind, where I felt in control and safe.

    But I also felt miserable. Empty and purposeless. For a while, I was suicidal.

    Thankfully, I left those feelings behind years ago, but the emptiness of going through the motions of life without a true connection to what I was doing or why I was here remained, and it was maddening.

    I have found that more people feel this emptiness than anyone would ever think. Many of us keep it hidden in the silence of shame because we desperately want it to be fixed and go away. It’s embarrassing to admit that we feel broken and sad behind all the layers of achievement and pretty social media posts.

    We attempt to fill this emptiness with eating, drinking, scrolling, having sex, shopping, collecting things, and so on. So many of us are terrified at the thought of spending a whole day, much less a whole lifetime, being alone with ourselves. Being with ourselves with no distractions.

    The thoughts in our mind haunt us. We torture ourselves with memories from the past and worries for the future. We torture ourselves with thoughts of how disappointed we are in how our lives have turned out. We recreate pain from the past over and over again by dwelling on the twisted and tormented thoughts in our minds and feel that life is unfair.

    Many people will tell you the answer is praying, reading the bible, going to a therapist, reading self-help books, or doing something with your mind. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but no amount of staying in your mind will fix or heal the pain of your past that you continue to repeat in the present.

    Unresolved emotions of the past are stored in our bodies, and they’re in the driver’s seat of our lives, causing chaos, disappointment, and frustration everywhere we go.

    I used to think I was really bad at making friends. I usually would wait until someone approached me before striking up a friendship. I isolated a lot because it just felt safer and easier. Over time, I got frustrated because I realized that I kept ending up in these friendships with people who never really saw me.

    My pain and fear of rejection was in the driver’s seat, so I protected myself by keeping the real me hidden away. If I caught anyone’s attention, I would play the role I thought I needed to play to be friends.

    The biggest problem here is that this attracted other people who also played roles instead of being their authentic selves. The role they played was “take care of me,” while I was playing the role of “I’ll take care of you.” This match worked well initially, but always left me in the same broken pattern of not being truly seen. That empty crater in my soul just kept getting bigger and bigger.

    The only way to stop the cycle of pain is to become fully present with yourself here and now. To connect to your body and the spirit within you that is ever present.

    When you drop into your body and feel your emotions, you are then free to just be. So many of us are terrified of the silence of being with ourselves because the pain of the past combined with our present actions to distract ourselves haunt us. The secrets we hold inside are killing us.

    You aren’t a bad person for the things you do to find some form of pain relief. Life isn’t about being a good or bad person. It is about being authentic, real, and connected, or disconnected and fragmented because of the cycles of pain on repeat.

    Are you tired of the constant disappointment? Are you tired of hating yourself and your life? Are you tired of feeling like you are always behind, not quite enough, and devastatingly empty inside? It is so painful, isn’t it? It is so painful to feel the destruction and pain of the disconnection to our true selves. It is painful to face the things we do to distract ourselves from the reality of our emptiness.

    Healing happens in the body. Pain is released from your body. Get out of your mind and into your body and you will be set free. You will experience peace and joy. You will stop the cycles of pain and be at peace with the present moment just as it is. 

    I know it feels impossibly hard. There is so much chaos swirling around in your body that it feels dangerous to actually feel your feelings. A great quote from my mentor, Colin Ross, helped set me free. “Feeling your feelings won’t kill you; it’s your attempt to not feel them that will.”

    It is uncomfortable, it is painful, it can be overwhelming at times, but feeling your feelings will set you free.

    Here is a place to start: Play some music that brings you comfort and close your eyes. Pretend you are getting in a glass elevator in your mind and ride it down into your body. Once the elevator has arrived in your body, identify the emotions you find. Write them down.

    Lower the elevator a little more and see if different emotions are in a different part of your body. Explore your whole body and write down everything you discover.

    For the days to come, spend some time with each of those emotions and ask them what they have to say. Give each emotion a name if it’s easier. Once you feel more comfortable with an emotion, you will feel safer to actually feel it. 

    For example, when I ride my elevator down into my chest, I can see anger. I named my anger Carrie. In my journaling time I ask Carrie, what do you have to say? She tells me all the reasons why she is angry and feels that life is unfair.

    She tells me about my former marriage and how much I was taken advantage of. She reminds me of all the times he silenced me when I tried to share my needs and shamed me when I tried to speak up for myself.

    She tells me about how enraged she feels that I never had a voice growing up. I was sexually abused and emotionally neglected, and if I expressed any emotion other than happiness, I was shamed and rejected by my family and culture. She is so angry for the “good girl” roles I had to play while never really being seen or valued.

    As I get to know her and hear all of these things she has to say, I feel compassion for her and also start to feel anger along with her myself. Each time I connect with her, I validate why she is angry. The intensity of her emotion gets smaller and smaller the more I connect with her and feel her.

    You can do this exercise with all emotions, and it can help you get to know yourself and not be so scared of what is contained inside. 

    When neither your past nor your emotions haunt you, you are free to love your life in the present moment just as it is. Flawed, imperfect, messy, and unpredictable.

    Now that I’m not scared of feeling my emotions, I am at peace. Sometimes I still need to grieve the truth of what has happened to me. I will never be okay with the abuse and neglect I experienced. However, I can feel those emotions when they come up, and they don’t overwhelm me. I feel them for that moment, and then I can move on to enjoy the life I have created now. A life that has people who really see me and care about me in it.

    Perhaps the biggest change for me is that I don’t feel I have to prove my worth to anyone. I am just me, and I feel at peace with that. This shift has allowed me to get out of my head and just be.

    We don’t need to dwell on the past or control how our life looks or what will happen next. We can just be here in the present, full of gratitude, hope, love, joy, and all the messiness from the past lives we have lived.

  • I Wish You Peace

    I Wish You Peace

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    Don’t Sabotage Your Peace

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    How to Bring a Little Peace to Your Mind

  • Dysfunctional Family Survivors: 7 Myths that Hold Your Healing Hostage

    Dysfunctional Family Survivors: 7 Myths that Hold Your Healing Hostage

    “I have never known a patient to portray their parents more negatively than they actually experienced them in childhood but always more positively–because idealization of their parents was essential for their survival.” Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child

    If we’re born into dysfunctional families and, by some miracle, manage to recognize there’s something really wrong there, we can end up devoting a huge portion of our time on Earth (if not all of it) to piecemealing a life not defined by the despair and pain we felt as children.

    This is as challenging a feat as it gets.

    The institution of family is universally recognized as sacrosanct. But when this unquestioned bubble becomes a breeding ground for trauma, neglect, or abuse—be it covert or explicit, emotional or physical, subtle or extreme—then naming a breach, taking a stand, protecting ourselves, or even deciding to proactively heal can be seen as a betrayal.

    After a lifetime of some version of this, I want to share with you seven family myths that, for years, held my healing hostage. 

    It was through gradually unwinding these myths one by one that I mustered the strength and resolve to go no-contact with my mother and set necessary boundaries with other members of my family, which cleared the way for a difficult but true healing process.

    It hasn’t been an easy road; in fact, it’s been an almost entirely off-road journey involving enormous patience, grief, truth, and courage. But I can tell you, cross my heart, I owe it my life.

    Admittedly, this is a confronting topic. We’re unpacking an aspect of being human that’s rife with open wounds, loyalty, heartbreak, and primal bonds. 

    My intention here isn’t to rebuff the natural ties of family but to validate your longing to feel safe, whole, and seen as you are and to shed light on the enormous potential for healing that can happen within the family structure when these myths are dismantled.

    Let’s begin.

    MYTH 1: Blood bonds are a free pass for bad behavior.

    The pervasive refusal to address our trauma and do the work to actively heal it plays out in the family like nowhere else.

    Because this is an institution that we take for granted as just and loving, it’s one in which our worst behavior can run rampant, completely exempt from checks and balances.

    In these cases, the measure for love seems to be how much we’re willing to endure and how much they’re willing to endure from us. This is not okay. Family members treating each other in ways we’d be ashamed to treat virtual strangers is only the norm for one of two reasons. We’ve either taken it for granted as the only way (it isn’t), or we’re invested in not taking responsibility for healing our trauma and would rather keep open the channels to unconsciously play it out.

    If the only thing binding us together is our fear of going against this institution, if the only thing that keeps us in each other’s lives is fear, guilt, shame, or the hope for a change that never materializes, and if we don’t bring these conditions to the light and question them, we sign our lives over to more of the same and enable the problem.

    Refusing to play by the rule of ignoring and enduring dysfunction is the only way to end the pain chain. Repeat after me: Blood bonds are no excuse for bad behavior. Not our own, not anyone else’s.

    MYTH 2: This dysfunction is what’s real and primary; well-being and sanity are fantasy and secondary.

    One of the most painful parts of my experience growing up and throughout my twenties was that, despite investing more time, money, effort, and faith in my healing than I did on anything else, at the end of the day it was the energy, dynamics, and unspoken rules of the dysfunction that defined the baseline of my life.

    How I wanted to live, the boundaries I was setting, and the way I was able to conduct my life were dismissed as fantasy or denial. My needs weren’t real, the relational code was. Reality was fighting, bending the truth, manipulating, worrying, speaking behind each other’s backs, enabling, blowing up, and pretending it was all okay. I was wrong and in dreamland to suggest that this wasn’t okay and that something else was possible.

    Here’s what I want you to know:

    You are real. And if you’re able to live without abusing others, if you’re able to take responsibility for your healing, if you’re able to create peace and harmony in your life, if you’re able to take any window of personal freedom to grow and thrive, it’s absolutely real. It can be done and it’s 100% legitimate, not to mention preferable as a way of living.

    Just because your predecessors haven’t made the same choice, that doesn’t make it make-believe or a fantasy.

    You make your healing and a whole new set of rules to live by true by living them out. If you’re doing it, it’s not make-believe, it’s reality.

    MYTH 3: If they don’t recognize my wounds or my right to heal, I don’t get to heal.

    I’ve been working on myself forever. And for a long time, while I was working on myself, I was also furiously trying to find ways to be understood and help or change my family. 

    I needed them to be the bridge that facilitated my healing. Only once I got them sorted or got them to understand me would I get my permission slip to live the way I was here to live. That permission slip didn’t come.

    Eventually, I did the unthinkable: I gave that permission to myself.

    I figured out exactly what it was that was costing my sanity, expressed it every way I could, and when it became clear that ignoring my non-negotiable needs was an implicit expectation, I said, “No more.” And in the case of my mother, I even decided to go no-contact for good. It wasn’t easy, but that began the process of healing a lifetime of parentification, erasure, and trauma.

    Giving up the need to have my right to heal legitimized by family (and even friends) was the single most pivotal, empowering, and positive turning point in my life.

    This shift allowed me to validate myself in the way I’d always needed. For the first time in my life, I stopped negotiating the reality of my lived experience, and in hindsight I can say without that shift, healing would not have begun.

    Asserting my right to choose and protect my safety and sanity, no matter what, created the inner trust required for the magnitude of my grief and wounding to come to the forefront so I could work with what I was packing. 

    Healing our real wounds is a vulnerable process that requires the safety to come undone and the assurance that we won’t knowingly put ourselves back in harm’s way as we build ourselves up to wholeness.

    MYTH 4: If it’s in the name of love, it’s as good as love.

    When, in the name of love, we hurt, belittle, or abuse each other and demand that the flow of toxicity remains intact, we’re ultimately saying that real love doesn’t exist, or that love and truth cannot coexist.

    Real love is coherent, straightforward, and present. Real love sees and honors the other as a whole, separate being with a will and truth of their own. Real love doesn’t picket someone’s right to peace, safety, and healing.

    Abuse or denial in the name of love wounds, creates vortexes of remorse and resentment, and compromises our ability to recognize healthy love in ourselves and from others.

    We must begin to take notice of sanctioned behaviors that are actively un-loving in the name of a love that never or rarely manifests or registers as true in the here and now.

    We can all do better, and I believe, with every fiber of my being, that deep down it’s what we most long for.

     MYTH 5: Whatever healing you muster is owed to the dysfunctional dynamic.

    This was another big piece for me. After an abusive or painful event, the expectation was that I’d take a little break to recoup and then come back for more, rinse and repeat. This held my healing in a vice because I could never heal further than the fear of being torn to shreds again. 

    I knew there was a ceiling I had to break through to become the woman I knew in my heart I was, but I’d always end up at square one when I circled back to the toxic dynamics.

    It wasn’t until I decided my healing was final, until I was sure I wasn’t available to siphon it back into the scheme, that my healing ceiling began to shatter and I started feeling what’s on the other side.

    Repeat after me: “I’m not healing so I can be hurt again. I’m healing so I can move forward whole.”

    MYTH 6: Your job is to change your NO to a YES.

    This is another big one.

    The truth is that most of us that have incurred substantial wounding in the family bubble have also learned to de-legitimize what’s true for us.

    Because being chronically wounded (by those who gave us life, no less!) is so deeply invalidating, we come out on the other end with a wall-to-wall feeling of not being real. To them, our feelings and inner truth are getting in the way of the real us—the one they want, can do what they want with, and get what they want from without boundaries, protest, or consequence.

    As a coach I see this all the time. Incredible humans with big hearts and a commitment to courageously heal that simultaneously use spirituality and self-help as a means to deny their lived experience. This allows them to avoid rocking the boat, setting boundaries, or making a real stand for their needs and truth.

    “Taking the high road” seems to mean enduring breaches and abuse without hurting, feeling sated in withholding relationships, placing everybody’s needs ahead of their own, or even better, not having needs (let alone desires) at all.

    I believe this is a manifestation of the same wounds of invalidation they incurred in childhood (now operating from within on the DL), combined with the unconscious belief there is no version of life that’s not subject to the rules and dynamics of their families.

    Whenever I see someone bust through this myth, my heart leaps with joy because I know that’s when they’re cooking with gas.

    In my personal journey, another huge turning point was when I threw in the towel of self-denial and began to notice that my NO was telling me something, and that it was up to me to listen. I could turn that NO into a YES by standing firmly in it so my life force could move toward what’s true for me.

    I can guarantee that’s how it works. 

    How do you move into an authentic YES if someone’s trying to shove a spoonful of poison in your mouth? By saying no, trusting that no, and moving away from it.

    Each and every one of us is alive and feeling regardless of the agendas and expectations of others. Your NO is not a problem; it’s a pointer to the real-deal solution for you.

    Regardless of how unreal core wounding makes us feel, our reality is overruling and speaking volumes at every moment. Listening to and aligning with that is a non-negotiable step in restoring ourselves to wholeness.

    MYTH 7: You’re forever bound to the role you played in your family drama.

    We’re closing with a bang here, so listen up. 

    The coping mechanisms we employed to survive childhood often end up becoming who we believe we are.

    If we had to be boundary-less, “or else…,” needless, “or else…,” believe we were nothing, “or else…,” this is how we learn to operate and how we try to survive and get our needs met in adulthood.

    When we take a real stand for our healing and begin to assert and protect our safety, the parts of our persona that came about as coping mechanisms begin to unravel. 

    Each and every inch of safety and inhabiting of personal truth we take back systematically renders these parts obsolete and allows the full essence of our being to emerge, in self-responsible ways.

     This means the limitations these parts imposed on us—compromising our ability to love, create, work, relate, speak up, rest, earn, enjoy, connect the way we’ve longed for, in alignment with love and truth—little by little begin to fall away, and life opens up in ways we hardly thought possible.

     Listen, there’s always a reason why people are abusive or hurtful, and it’s usually trauma of their own. But while that’s a valid reason and a tragic one, it’s not an excuse or a free pass to rob anyone of their will, peace, truth, and the life they were born to live. Family is not an exception to this rule.

    But here is a rule I’ve created for myself that I’m learning to live by: To love, set boundaries, treat others, accept treatment, and express my needs the same way in all close relationships, be they family or not. If a behavior or dynamic needs the shield of this or any other institution to be okay, it’s not okay. 

  • Coming out of Survival Mode: How I Healed and Found Peace

    Coming out of Survival Mode: How I Healed and Found Peace

    “I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” ~Audre Lorde

    I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that I no longer needed to fight for my survival, but I do know that it came after several years of prayer, healing, and intensive work. It wasn’t an event, but rather the feeling of peace and calm that comes after a storm.

    For me, the storm dissipated slowly. It was the kind of storm that kept swirling and re-emerging until I finally realized that it would take concentrated effort and work on my part to eliminate the threat.

    By threat, I mean anything in my inner and outer world that was wreaking havoc on my nervous system. This included things on the inside (such as trauma, subconscious beliefs, childhood wounds, and energetic and nervous system damage) as well as things on the outside (people and things in my environment that were having a negative impact).

    When your mind, body, and spirit are under attack for a prolonged period of time, there’s no one solution that will bring you out of the dark. Rather, you must practice a variety of healing methods and make the conscious choice to free yourself from the chains that bind you.

    For me, the freedom did not just come from leaving my unhealthy, toxic, and codependent marriage of nineteen years. It didn’t come solely from the fact that my oldest son finally stabilized and was no longer in danger of losing his life. Nor did it come solely from separating myself from the people, places, and situations that held my nervous system in a constant state of turmoil.

    It was a combination of many things.

    The reprieve came gradually over time, as I learned to listen to my body, understand my nervous system and its relationship to my emotions, and what people and situations threatened my inner peace.

    Each time I would notice that I did not feel safe in my body, that someone’s words or actions were causing harm, or that a relationship or situation was adding stress or creating an imbalance in my life, I would make adjustments as needed.

    This meant setting firm boundaries around who and what I was allowing into my headspace and heart space. This meant releasing people, places, and situations that were no longer healthy for me or serving me in a positive way. This meant working in therapy to heal childhood traumas that were still living in my body.

    For starters, I left a long-term relationship that, on the surface, seemed to provide stability but, in reality, kept me in a constant state of anxiety, resentment, and emotional chaos.

    The relationship was a textbook example of two unhealed people recreating their childhood wounds with one another, with no awareness of what they were doing. The impact trickled down to our children, who unfortunately suffered the negative consequences of their parents’ wounding.

    It wasn’t until months after our divorce, when my oldest son was diagnosed with PTSD, that I realized the environment I had been living in was not only toxic but also abusive. Sadly, the relationship with my former partner so closely resembled the patterns and behaviors I had witnessed as a child that I had somehow normalized them. I hadn’t put the puzzle pieces together soon enough.

    In fact, the moment that I read my son’s psych evaluation results, I was hit with the reality that I had lived in that kind of environment (chaotic, unhealthy, toxic) for most of my life. In my childhood and then later in my adult life.

    I was shocked.

    Why hadn’t I connected the dots before? The reason I felt anxious, the reason I was crawling in my skin, feeling on edge and unable to relax or find stillness, was because my nervous system had been under attack by the very people who were supposed to make me feel safe.

    I had been existing in survival mode for as long as I could remember.

    From that point forward, I made a pact with myself to never go back to people, situations, or environments that created chaos inside. I promised myself I would do whatever it took to protect myself from further harm, regain my stability, and break the cycles of toxicity and abuse that had been passed down through my lineage.

    These are the methods I used to free myself:

    • Subconscious reprogramming
    • EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
    • EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Tapping
    • Brainspotting
    • Meditation
    • Somatic healing
    • Energy healing
    • Boundaries
    • Cutting Relationship Cords

    To some, my methods seemed extreme, selfish even. And in some ways, they were. But not in the typical way one would think.

    The fight to find my peace was only selfish in that I cared about myself and my well-being so much that I was not willing to stay stuck in cycles of suffering any longer. Nor was I willing to pass my wounding along to my children.

    I had a choice, and I chose myself. I chose my peace.

    And I would do it again if the time ever came.

    To anyone who is struggling with the suffocating feeling of living in survival mode, please let this be your reminder: you must choose yourself. You must do something, because doing nothing will only keep you in the eye of the storm.

    Even if it means letting go of close relationships, or removing yourself from certain environments, the hard decisions you make will eventually create the peace and freedom you seek in your life.

    Of course, leaving people and places behind is going to hurt. It’s going to cause some discomfort. But remember, you cannot heal in the same environment that is harming you.

    You have to be willing to get radically uncomfortable for a period of time until your nervous system stabilizes and you are able to invite healthier, more supportive relationships into your life. Once you are able to look in the rearview mirror at your distant past and see that you have left behind all the things that were harming you, you will realize it was all worth it.

    You will be proud of yourself for having the courage to take these brave steps. You will be proud of yourself for taking your happiness into your own hands. You will be proud of yourself for choosing YOU.

    Make peace your priority. Your nervous system will thank you. Your children will thank you.

    Sending you love.

  • How I Calm My Anxiety Octopus at Home with My Aquaponics Zen Zone

    How I Calm My Anxiety Octopus at Home with My Aquaponics Zen Zone

    “Stay in the moment. The practice of staying present will heal you. Obsessing about how the future will turn out creates anxiety. Replaying broken scenarios from the past causes anger and sadness. Stay here, in this moment.” ~Sylvester McNutt

    Like many people, I have an anxiety disorder that twists my thoughts and feelings. I call it my “anxiety octopus,” as it feels like there are tentacles in my brain triggering fear-based reactions for no reason. In everything, even things that I am confident in, I suddenly feel insecure and unsure.

    It takes time to realize that the “anxiety octopus” has woken and is stretching, almost testing my powers of resilience that day.

    Today was one of those days where my resilience was low, and it took time to notice that the octopus had woken.

    There was nothing that triggered it, nothing special about today. Just a cold morning with the sun popping its head out, a morning that I normally love the briskness of, yet today, it was hard to get started. My feline alarm clocks kept meowing, even when I gave a morning pat.

    They wanted me up. The “anxiety octopus” didn’t.

    Sometimes when your heart races so hard, you fear that you are going to have a heart attack. That’s how it was this morning. Heart racing, inability to think, sweating profusely, your breathing becomes shallow, and you feel this intense fear, for no reason.

    This is the point where my doctors say, “Take medication.” This is where I think to myself, “Connect with my Zen.”

    You’ve probably heard of the power of garden therapy, which is incredible. But I’m an Aries woman, a fire sign that loves to flare; the Earth doesn’t actually calm me down or help with my anxiety. It does for many, but not for me. I need water to balance me out.

    My Zen Zone is my aquaponics systems. Yes, I have more than one. Truth be told, I have five and two more planned. Aquaponics is a form of gardening that you can do in any space; however, unlike soil gardening, it is growing food with water constantly cycling through it in a sustainable way. 

    Not to be confused with hydroponics, which also grows food with water and synthetic nutrients in an artificial system, aquaponics in a man-made (or woman-made, in my case) ecosystem. We have freshwater fish (mine are friends, not food) that provide fertilizer for the veggies, and the veggies filter the water for the fish. They both have their own space within an aquaponics system, and being closed-looped, the water is fully recycled.

    With constant fertilizer from the fish and water continuously flowing through the system, the veggies are in plant heaven. They grow faster in this system that is replicating nature. This is not a new fad; in fact, it’s a concept dating back 4000 years BC.

    Other than being a food growing system, which is totally awesome and in a changing world, necessary, it is also my Zen Zone.

    It helps to balance my fire energy and calm me down. Sitting outside by my little courtyard aquaponics system, powered by goldfish, this morning, I sat watching the fish swim and the veggies that are thriving, and I could finally breathe again.

    It’s as if hearing that water flowing gently through the aquaponics system was a signal for the “anxiety octopus” to go back to sleep. As if it connected with the water and found its peace.

    Obviously, there is no octopus in my mind, and this is how I manage my anxiety with these thoughts, but it is what works for me.

    I find peace in hearing the water, seeing the fish swimming, and smelling the herbs that are right there. I have a lot growing in this small system; you can get so much produce in a small space because the water filled with fertilizer passes through it all, whereas soil gardens are more limited.

    It makes me smile, as I know I have food security in my small space, no matter what happens.

    I think the best part is this little system costs me $10 per year to run based on the watts of the water pump. That is the cost to help control the “anxiety octopus” in my mind.

    It’s always fascinating to watch people’s reaction when they come to my home. I’m very private, and at times people visit for various reasons. Not one to be normal, my home is not just filled with animals (both living and artwork), but my unique aquatic family.

    As people move down the hallway, talking about what is going on in their life, I watch as they enter the dining room, where I have four very special aquariums. My first aquatic family. I see the excitement in their eyes, and I realize that my aquatic family are being better hosts than I am. I have a passion for the Murray-Darling Basin, so all my fish are native to the region. My Murray Cod, Eel-tailed catfish, Bass, and even my turtles are natives and mostly extroverts.

    However, the excitement changes as I take them out back to my main aquaponics system and courtyard aquaponics system. I watch them take a deep breath and, in that moment, I see something they are often unaware of.

    As they breathe deeply watching the fish and veggies moving slowly in the breeze, I see their “anxiety octopus” go to sleep too. Everything about them changes. It’s like they come home to a place within themselves that they had forgotten.

    In that moment, I feel I have done something I have been put here on this Earth to do. To help another person breathe again. Just by showing them my aquaponics systems and how they work. I reconnect them with nature too, as well as help them to find their flow.

    Sometimes no words are needed; just listening to the water and seeing something else being in balance, which is what aquaponics is all about, helps them to balance themselves out too.

    It’s not your conventional form of garden therapy. In fact, this only takes me ten minutes a day to maintain, so I have a lot of time to spend relaxing by the flowing water.

    There is something incredibly special about aquaponics, something that is often known but forgotten: Everything is interconnected, just as all things in life are.

    The fish cannot live without being in an ecosystem where the bacteria convert their waste into useable fertilizer, and the plants need to filter the water using the fertilizer. In that system, everything is interconnected.

    The lesson here is that when my “anxiety octopus” awakens, this interconnectedness ceases to happen. At this point, I need to trigger my awareness of this, and reconnect with everything. For me, as I sit by my aquaponics systems, feeling myself breathe a bit deeper, feeling my heart rate slow a little, I start to reconnect to the interconnectedness of myself—how my body works, how my mind works, and how I am an amazing soul put on this earth for a reason.

    You need to find what works for you to be able to do this. But no matter what you find to bring peace and balance into your life, remember this: We are all here for a reason. It doesn’t feel like it sometimes, and as life hits us in the gut it can feel like we can never get up. Feel like “What’s the point?” I’ve been there.

    For me, it was seeing aquaponics in a different way that got me up. Seeing that I didn’t have to hold onto others’ beliefs, that I could let go of everyone’s crap that I was conditioned to believe. That I could reconnect to the deepest part of myself and my purpose—to share the beauty and power of my Zen Zone and inspire people like yourself to find their own zen and purpose.