Tiny Buddha

Tag: perseverance

  • How To Make Yourself Stronger When Facing Health Challenges

    How To Make Yourself Stronger When Facing Health Challenges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I shouldn’t act so irrationally.

    I should think more positively.

    I should feel grateful it’s not worse.

    I should hold myself together for those around me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    2. Build your mental fortitude.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    3. Put one foot in front of the other.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • How I Recognized My Fear of Failure and How I’m Mindfully Overcoming It

    How I Recognized My Fear of Failure and How I’m Mindfully Overcoming It

    “The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    My daughter began taking tumbling classes a week before her eighth birthday. She had been dancing since the age of three, and those classes included instructions for cartwheels and roundoffs. The harder stuff, like the back walkover, required tumbling or gymnastics classes, and she wanted the chance to be able to show off those moves during the annual dance recital.

    My wife wasn’t interested in watching our daughter repeatedly and blindly dive backward in a bendy arch, each time hoping her hands met the ground firmly enough to slow down the momentum of her trailing head and torso. But I was interested.

    Her dancing wasn’t exciting to me at that point because the skills involved weren’t physically challenging yet. That would come later. But each back walkover was a potential catastrophe, and that made them fun to watch.

    Tumbling classes aren’t cheap, and it was apparent to me that a single class a week was a slow way to acquire a skill. So we came to an agreement that we would try to spend at least a little time each day practicing things she was learning in class. This would be like quality father-daughter coaching time except I had no background in tumbling, coaching athletics, or not being an overbearing control freak. I would be the one doing most of the learning.

    A YouTube Tumbling Coach

    Obviously, there’s no technical challenge too complex that it cannot be mastered by watching two or three related YouTube videos by experts whose credentials you have not bothered to verify and are not qualified to assess.

    That’s where my training began—with good intentions and numerous short videos of young girls in leotards plunging backward into smooth backbends while their lead legs fluttered up and over their bodies and their trailing legs followed seamlessly after in a graceful full-body hinge.

    The cheaply produced clips became a source of embarrassment when my YouTube account synched with my work laptop. I remember stammering through an explanation to my students for the video recommendations that followed a TED Talk I had shown them on a classroom projector. They collectively grimaced.

    Not being aware of any of the finer points of the movements only fueled my coaching confidence and my daughter was soon mastering bridge kickovers, then backbend kickovers, and then, a short time later, the back walkover. She would appear at her weekly class suddenly able to easily perform a skill that was out of reach the week before. I loved that.

    Within months, I had assembled a trampoline in the yard without consulting my wife or daughter first.

    The basement’s piles of assorted clutter were repositioned to make room for a large gymnastics tumbling mat. A smaller one was added later as some of the clutter was donated to area charities. A third would eventually stretch the combined mats the length of the room diagonally with the last section rising vertically against the far wall as a protective barrier against my daughter’s growing gymnastics awesomeness.

    With the basement a de facto shrine to her hobby, I was emboldened to live vicariously through my only child’s growing list of technical accomplishments. Which I’m to understand is always completely healthy and never a problem…except when it is.

    Mindful of Being Way Too Much

    Relatively early in our collaboration, I treated my daughter to the sort of pep talk that makes eight-year-olds cry and not want to learn anything from you. It would not be the last.

    She kept working with me though. Even if I occasionally barked at her about her attitude like a stereotypical high school football coach, she still wanted to practice and improve. That willingness to endure my nonsense quickly became important.

    The back handspring was not conquered as easily as the previous dozen or so skills, and that was frustrating for the both of us. We tread water for months, her arms refusing to support the weight of her backward springing body, and she seemed to enjoy our practice time less than before. That was true for me as well.

    It was great being a successful inexperienced, unqualified tumbling coach. The less successful version just felt painfully aware that he wasn’t experienced or qualified to know how to address a repetitive breakdown in form. Do I yell at her arms? Can you motivate an appendage like a drill sergeant? It was a mystery.

    I cannot recall how many YouTube clips, message board recommendations, poorly described alignment changes, and conditioning drills I subjected her to over that time. It was too many and our shared frustration made me harder to be around. But I was confronting the reality of my coaching limitations one failed experiment after the other.

    With hindsight, this was the most important period for our collaboration and my growth as her coach. Nothing was working, progress was invisible, and the only thing I could do was to behave in a way that encouraged her to continue.

    Thankfully, my mindfulness practice was helping me develop my own skills. And those mindfulness skills would help me recognize the detrimental role fear was playing in my coaching.

    Noticing the Fear of Failure Is a Win

    Our time in the basement became a laboratory for my own mindfulness practice. Barely six months after beginning our collaboration, my daughter had lost faith in herself and the process. Just bringing my full presence to her in that atmosphere was a challenging spiritual exercise—especially when I assisted her with repetition after repetition of back handsprings and every part of me wanted to shout at her bending elbows for failing us both.

    The first move for this practice was to go into the basement with the intention to practice mindfulness.

    Yes, if you are a mindfulness maximalist like me you are usually trying to practice bringing a deeper level of attention to whatever you are doing. But more challenging situations can benefit from clearer intentions.

    My next move was to deconstruct the reactions I was experiencing.

    Those reactions consisted of mental images, mental talk, and emotional body sensations. Noticing the sensations that arise when I am frustrated gives me a handhold for dealing with the reaction skillfully.

    The third move was to bring my attention to prominent sensations.

    In those practices, thinking is a sensation, and I would try to get a clear sense of my inner chatter and visuals. Fixing a reactive sensation in attention while supporting your daughter’s lower back as she leaps backward is a bad idea, so I would consciously pause between repetitions.

    The frustrated thoughts and emotions expressed by the body could be embarrassingly dramatic. I was occasionally angry at reality for not honoring my efforts. Did reality not understand how much time I had spent on YouTube?

    Importantly, I didn’t dismiss or dispute the content of my thoughts. I practiced acceptance and non-engagement. The assumption here is that resisting your emotional resistance only creates more resistance, like trying to smother a brush fire with dried leaves.

    That was my fourth move: to have equanimity with what I was feeling.

    Except when I couldn’t. Then I tried to have equanimity with my inability to have equanimity with what I was feeling. Failing that, I tried to have equanimity with my failure to have equanimity with my lack of equanimity. It was equanimity all the way down.

    My fifth and final move was to recognize insight.

    It is easy to dismiss some insights as common sense or something you should have already known about yourself. But that might lead to a missed opportunity to learn and grow, especially if you are already experiencing emotionally immature reactions in response to reality being mean to you.

    The insight that emerged from my mindfulness practice during that period of stagnation was that I was afraid of failure.

    I was afraid that I would fail as a coach and my daughter would fail as a gymnast. And there was nothing I could yell at her elbows to change that.

    I was maybe most afraid that I was teaching an eight-year-old hard work doesn’t always pay off, your best isn’t always good enough, and it isn’t always worth the time and effort to learn how to do hard things.

    Those lessons aren’t entirely wrong, they’re just beside the point. My greatest fear should have been for her to no longer enjoy doing something she wants to do…because of me.

    I knew from the season I ineptly YouTube coached her soccer team a couple years earlier that young children have an incredible ability to still enjoy the things well-meaning adults are accidentally making less fun. But this was different.

    My fears weren’t just making me less effective as a coach; they were sending the message that our time together could only be enjoyable if she was making clear progress. I didn’t believe that and didn’t want her to believe it either. I committed to change my approach.  

    By the time the back handspring became another easy skill, coaching had become a deliberate practice of being present with my daughter. I would encourage her to explore her boundaries and to celebrate her efforts even when they did not represent visible progress.

    Several years later, I still offer myself the same encouragement when my own practice of being present falls short of my expectations, as it often does. To be fully present for the other, even for a moment, we cannot habitually neglect to offer the same openness to our own difficult features. And fear can make those features particularly hard to view with compassion.

    Each time we descend the stairs to the basement, we do so as different versions of ourselves. It is wise to be generous and assume the well-meaning tumbling coaches in all of us are trying their best. There is nothing broken in us that patience, consistency, and the right YouTube video cannot fix.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    And that’s waiting for a cat costume.

    What about that book you wish would just write itself?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The net came later.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • The Six Ps: What to Do and Not to Do When Dealing with Setbacks and Failure

    The Six Ps: What to Do and Not to Do When Dealing with Setbacks and Failure

    “Sometimes you get what you want. Other times, you get a lesson in patience, timing, alignment, empathy, compassion, faith, perseverance, resilience, humility, trust, meaning, awareness, resistance, purpose, clarity, grief, beauty, and life. Either way, you win.” ~Brianna Wiest

    “Good as gold,” the cab driver replied as I nervously handed him the $20 bill and asked, “Okay?” He jumped in his cab and drove off.

    I was pleasantly surprised by his politeness, as I was expecting him to argue with me for extra money because we’d gone around in circles searching for the address that I had given him at the airport. These were the pre-GPS days, of course!

    This was the start of my emotional rollercoaster upon arrival in New Zealand as a new migrant.

    The first few days were filled with excitement and happiness. Discovering a new country, meeting friendly people, learning new things—all these experiences made me a wide-eyed migrant seduced by the charms of my new surroundings.

    After a few weeks, the rollercoaster took a downward dive as I started getting frustrated with a spate of rejections. All my job applications brought forth polite rejection letters. The message I was getting was that my lack of local experience made me very unappealing to prospective employers. Nobody was willing to even interview me.

    How was I going to break out of this Catch-22 situation? I couldn’t get local experience without a job, but I couldn’t get a job without local experience!

    After months of fruitless searching, the rollercoaster finally took an upward turn. Driven to despair by the unwillingness of employers to grant me an interview, I decided to enroll in a university to acquire a local qualification in the hope that it might open a door for me. This out-of-the-box thinking got me my first job through a contact from the university. At last, a feeling of joy!

    I felt that my problems had ended, and now I was set for a long and successful career in my adopted country. How wrong I was! It was time for the emotional rollercoaster to start its downward journey again.

    Within a few months, my joy turned to confusion when my employer went from being very pleased with me to finding fault with everything I did almost overnight. I struggled to understand what had changed.

    A little while later I realized that my employer had hired me only to take advantage of a government scheme that subsidized (for a fixed term) employers who hired new migrants.

    My employer blamed me for things that had nothing to do with me and attributed other people’s mistakes to me. His cunning plan was to make my life so difficult that I would quit. That way there wouldn’t be any awkward questions from the government department about hiring me and then firing me within a few months.

    I felt an overarching sense of sadness and disappointment when I realized that my initial thoughts of everyone in my new country being friendly was just an illusion. I learned the lesson that people were people, some good and some not-so-good, no matter what part of the world they were in. I parted ways with my first employer in rather unpleasant circumstances.

    The long period of unemployment that followed created self-doubts in my mind.

    “Did I do the right thing by moving to another country?”

    “Will I ever succeed in finding decent employment?”

    Feelings of regret began to run riot in my mind.

    “Why didn’t I find out more about my employment prospects in this country before deciding to move here lock, stock, and barrel?”

    “I shouldn’t have taken such a big risk.”

    Every time I heard about someone that I knew doing well back home, I felt sorry for myself. I started feeling like I’d made a mistake by moving to New Zealand. As I had burned bridges before migrating, I felt there was no way of going back and restarting from where I had left off.

    By the time the rollercoaster took another upward turn, I had already been in the country for quite a while. It took four to five years for my career to stabilize and for me to start feeling satisfied with my decision to move. When you migrate to a new country, it’s not just the flight that is long-haul!

    I’ve shared the story of my emotional rollercoaster so I can also share my consequent learnings with you. My hope is that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you might be able to alleviate your feelings of hopelessness with the realization that you’re not alone and you can get out of any difficult situation with the right mindset.

    THE SIX Ps

    I’d like to encapsulate this journey of going from where you are to where you want to be in terms of “The Six Ps”—three Ps for what one shouldn’t do, and three Ps for what one should do.

    Let’s first take a look at the three Ps to avoid.

    1. Don’t take setbacks or adversities PERSONALLY.

    It’s important to separate your failures from your identity.

    If we take every rejection, setback, and problem personally, our self-esteem takes a beating and we can easily go down the rabbit holes of despair and depression.

    I was rejected over 200 times, without even getting an interview, before I got my first job. While I would never want to be in that situation again, or ever wish that upon anyone, I realize that I was fortunate not to allow myself to get dragged deep into the swamp of feeling worthless. In hindsight, I believe that this tough phase played a key role in building my resilience.

    2. Don’t allow a failure to become all-PERVASIVE.

    A failure or setback in one area of your life should remain contained to that area and not spill over into other areas.

    When my emotional rollercoaster was on a downward slope, it felt natural for me to start linking my failure in landing a job to every other aspect of life in the new country. Negative thoughts started doing the rounds in my mind.

    “I’m a misfit here.”

    “This place is not right for me.”

    “I am doomed.”

    The unfortunate consequence of such pervasive thinking is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy unless you stop this vicious cycle before it becomes too late. Enrolling in a course was the best step I took at that time as it gave my mind something else to focus on.

    3. Don’t think of any adversity as PERMANENT.

    Every crisis in the history of the world has ended. However difficult your challenge might seem, there will always be light at the end of the tunnel. You may not be able to see it from where you are now, but take comfort in the history of the world and assure yourself that your crisis will also have an end.

    My challenge with finding a job as a migrant went on for a long time, but eventually, it did end. If I had adopted a mindset of permanence with thoughts like “I’m never going to succeed here,” my efforts would have waned. When our efforts start to taper off, the desired results start moving further away from us.

    Now for the three Ps to adopt!

    1. Have PATIENCE.

    I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “good things take time.” Have faith in that!

    Some things take longer than we would like. That’s just life. Have the willingness to wait as you keep following the process. Dedicate yourself to the process and allow the results to happen.

    2. Develop PERSEVERANCE.

    Too often people give up just before they’re about to crack the code. The ability to continue our efforts in the face of difficulty or forge through delay in the way of their success is what separates the winners from the also-rans.

    Life is like an obstacle race. Get better at tackling the obstacles and continuing your journey toward your objectives. Take help, reach out for support—do whatever it takes to keep going.

    3. Find your PURPOSE.

    I believe that this third P underpins the other two Ps that you should do to achieve success.

    Without a strong purpose, it becomes easy to give up when the going gets tough. Purpose provides the fuel for motivation.

    Figure out why you want what you want. What is driving you? Go deep, look beneath the surface—sometimes your real WHY can be hidden under superficial WHYs.

    It can be difficult to have patience and perseverance if you don’t know the true purpose behind your goals.

    —

    Life is a journey of ups and downs. Realizing and accepting this fact puts us in a much better position to handle adversities. Most of our disappointment in life comes from having unrealistic expectations.

    If you’re ready to handle the ups and downs of this rollercoaster of life, buckle yourself in and enjoy the ride!

  • How to Get Through Your Darkest Days: Lessons from Addiction and Loss

    How to Get Through Your Darkest Days: Lessons from Addiction and Loss

    “You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair.” ~Zadie Smith

    In the last years of my twenties, my life completely fell apart.

    I’d moved to Hollywood to become an actor, but after a few years in Tinsel Town things weren’t panning out the way I hoped. My crippling anxiety kept me from going on auditions, extreme insecurity led to binge eating nearly every night, and an inability to truly be myself translated to a flock of fair-weather friends.

    As the decade wound to a close, I stumbled upon the final deadly ingredient in my toxic lifestyle: opiates. A few small pills prescribed for pain unlocked a part of my brain I didn’t know existed: a calm, confident, and numb version of myself that seemed way more manageable than the over-thinking mind-chatter I was used to.

    At first the pills were like a casual indulgence—I’d pop a few before a nerve-wracking audition or first date, the same way other people might have a few drinks before going out on the town. But my casual relationship to opiates was short-lived: soon the pills were no longer reserved for awkward dates or nerve-wracking auditions, and instead necessary for any type of outing or interaction.

    I knew I’d crossed an invisible line when I began to feel sick without a “dose” of medication. The physical pain they’d been prescribed for had long subsided, but they’d created a need that only grew with more use. Soon I became sick if I didn’t take any pills, which is when I began going to any lengths to get more.

    I wanted so much to stop but felt trapped on a terrible ride: I’d wake hating myself for what I’d done the day before, and with deep shame I’d vow earnestly to quit—then afternoon would come and with it, withdrawal symptoms. As my stomach would turn and my head would spin, I’d lose the resolve to stop and begin searching for my next fix. With that fix would come a few hours of relief, followed by another cycle of self-loathing, a vow to quit, and more failure.

    It was a spin cycle that likely would have killed me had life not intervened in ways that at the time felt devastating; in a span of two weeks my “normal” façade collapsed and, with it, most pillars in my life. Like a house of cards toppling, I lost my job, car, relationship, and was evicted from my home.

    It felt like a cliché country song where the singer loses everything, except in those songs that person is usually likeable and innocent—but in my story, I felt like the villain.

    As I watched my entire life crumble around me, I felt no choice other than to return home and seek the shelter of the only person who had always been there for me—my mom.

    The mom who had raised me with morals like honesty, accountability, and kindness, although I hadn’t been living them for a while. The mom who had struggled raising two kids alone, gotten us off food stamps by going to nursing school, and who watched helplessly as I descended into the same cycle of addiction that had taken the life of my father.

    She told me I could stay if I was sober; I vowed to try, though I’d stopped believing my own promises long before.

    In the recovery program I found soon after, there was an oft repeated saying on every wall: “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” If taken literally, it makes you think about how dark the night sky is before dawn breaks… how heavy, looming, and consuming. Before the light returns, it can feel like the darkness will never end.

    That was how my early days sober felt.

    But as I cobbled together a few weeks and then a few months, I began to feel the faintest bit of trust in myself. Through abstinence and therapy, mindfulness and a sober community, the hopelessness that had seemed so all-consuming began to crack open and let in some light.

    I moved out into my own apartment, returned to school to complete a long-sought college degree, and had a waitressing job that I loved. Then, just after I achieved one year sober, I got a phone call from my brother that would change everything.

    “Melissa, you need to come home,” he said, his voice thick with tears. “It’s mom.”

    My stomach dropped as I gripped the phone, suddenly feeling about five years old. I’d find out later it was a heart attack.

    I felt the darkness descend again.

    —

    In the days that followed her death I felt like a dependent child that was unable to care for myself. I dragged myself through brushing my teeth, dressing, and arranging her funeral; it felt like my heart had stopped along with hers.

    The same thought kept circling the drain of my head—how can I live the rest of my life without my mother?

    I couldn’t imagine not having her at my graduation, wedding, or when I became a parent. Her disappearance from my future brought up a dread much worse than that of the previous year— but as I began to settle into my grief, I realized I had a path through this moment, if I were willing to take it.

    The tools I’d forged in sobriety would prove to be useful in the dark days that followed. I share them below as an offering for anyone who travels through a dark night of the soul: simple steps to keep in mind when you can’t see a path forward.

    Take things one day at a time.

    In sobriety, you learn that imagining your whole life without another drink or drug can be so daunting that you just give up and get loaded. So instead of borrowing future worry, you learn to stay in the week, the day, and the moment.

    I didn’t have to know what having a wedding without my mother would be like—I just needed to eat breakfast. I didn’t need to imagine my graduation—I just needed to get myself through one more class. As I pieced my future together one moment at a time, I found that I could handle the emptiness in bite size pieces. I didn’t have to figure it all out—I just had to keep going.

    Allow feelings to come and trust that they will go.

    Much of what I’d been running from as an addict was the discomfort of my feelings. I didn’t want to feel rejection, so I contorted myself to be liked; I didn’t want to feel sadness, so I busied myself with the next activity. In recovery I learned that we can run from feelings all we want, but eventually they catch up to us in some form. Instead of running I’d learned to allow; instead of busying myself I’d been taught to turn toward pain and trust that it wouldn’t last forever.

    Though this was easier said than done, some part of me knew that running from the grief of my mom’s death would only snowball into a freight train later. I’d scream in my car as I seethed with the unfairness of it all; I’d rock with sobs on my couch when the sadness became too much. It wasn’t pretty and it felt terrible, but when I let the grief shake through me. I found that there would always be an end… that at the bottom of my spiral a thread of mercy would appear, and I would be able to go on.

    Tell the truth.

    From a young age, I felt much more comfortable in a mask of smiles and jokes than sharing how I was actually doing at any given moment. Though getting sober had helped me shed layers of the mask, I still found myself trying to likeable, approved-of, and “good.” But as grief zapped my energy and ability to make myself palatable, when people asked how I was doing I started to be honest.

    Sharing the pain I felt after my mom’s death was like standing naked in the middle of the street—I wasn’t used to crying in front of people and didn’t think they’d like me when they found out I wasn’t always “fun and easy going.” But it was exactly this type of vulnerability that allowed true friends to materialize, old connections to deepen, and the support I longed for to appear.

    Allow yourself to be forever changed.

    In recovery from addiction, I began to think of my sobriety date as a second birthday—the start of an actual new life. Though the way my former life had burned to the ground was painful, I welcomed the chance for a new start.

    But when my mom died, I didn’t realize that losing her would again scatter me into a thousand unrecognizable pieces—pieces I kept trying to fit back together but weren’t ever going to be the same, because I wasn’t.

    Once I allowed my life, relationships, and priorities to be changed by my grief, I found a self that was stronger, more resilient, and somehow more tender. I never would have chosen the form of this lesson, but I came through these experiences a more authentic version of myself… an overarching goal of my life.

    *

    It’s now been seven years since my mom’s death, and I’ve been sober for eight. As my journey continues to unfold, I never lose sight of how broken I once was and how dark things seemed. I also know that the struggles of life aren’t over; they’re part of being human and living a full life.

    But something I now keep in mind is that it’s always darkest before the dawn—I know I don’t have to always see the light…

    I just have to keep going.

  • Life’s Greatest Miracles Often Come Disguised as Hardship

    Life’s Greatest Miracles Often Come Disguised as Hardship

    Colorful Umbrella in the Rain

    “Out of difficulties grow miracles.” ~Jean dela Bruyere

    The image in my mind is vivid, like an old photograph etched into my brain, where every facet is clearly discernible.

    It was a frigid, blustery December night, right before my son’s seventh birthday. The heating unit had gone on the blitz, and the house was so freezing it seemed as though ice crystals would form on the inside of our windows.

    Grabbing as many blankets as possible, I wanted to envelope my son with covers, hoping he would feel safe and warm in the cocoon. Time for bed, I reassured him that all would be fine despite the bitter cold, and to have sweet dreams of sweltering, sunny summer.

    He then uttered a sound that I’ll never forget: “Da-ye.”

    I screamed for my wife, needing a witness to convince me that the frosty air had not played tricks on my brain or ears. She ran upstairs in great haste, anticipating some dire emergency that required her immediate attention.

    I relayed what had just transpired. One minute later, my son uttered the sweet sound again, “Da-ye.”

    My wife started crying—and not because she wanted his first word to be “Mom” or some close variation.

    Tears cascaded down her face because we were told our son would never speak. And at this moment, it was difficult for me to even speak as I was overwhelmed by the unbridled joy that overflowed my heart.

    My wonderful son, Scott, had just given us a gift, a blessing and miracle that was never supposed to be. He’d just uttered his first word, and we anticipated more words to come.

    At about two and a half years old, Scott was diagnosed on the autism spectrum.

    The diagnosis was so grim that we were told that our son would never be able to be functionally independent. Worse, according to the neurodevelopmental specialist, he would not be able to perform even the most rudimentary tasks, or achieve any milestones, like the ability to speak.

    The dire prognosis was unfathomable, and devoid of the slightest compassion: “You better get him ready for an institution because that’s where he is going.”

    Hurt, bewildered, fearful, and especially defensive, I told the doctor that we’re not buying into his bleak fortuneteller’s reading.

    I explained he does not know our son’s innate abilities, the incredible amount of effort and sacrifice we were prepared to exercise to help our son maximize his potential, or what special treatments or breakthroughs are on the horizon.

    “It’s good you still believe in miracles,” the specialist responded. He had the last word … well, if you don’t count my blasphemous retort, said under my breath.

    That car ride home felt like one of the longest rides we had ever taken. We felt hopeless and aimless, uncertain what direction to take.

    But while I was unsure what protocols to begin, I knew that we had to first have a shift of mindset.

    I reminded my wife (and myself) that Scott was no different now than he was before the doctor’s visit. In addition, I told her that we would use this physician’s words to propel us toward meaningful action, and sustain our efforts even though the road ahead seemed endless.

    We would be thoroughly involved moment to moment, choose to be present-oriented, and let the future take care of itself.

    This, in and of itself, could be deemed a miracle. I had always looked at the glass half-empty, consumed with the outcome of a given endeavor, but always expecting an unfavorable result.

    Now, for my own sanity’s sake, and for Scott’s best interests, I had to transform myself into a much more positive person, believing in limitless possibilities.

    I was not going to be weighed down with what if’s and concerns about tomorrow. Each day would present another opportunity to make the proverbial difference in our son’s life.

    Miraculous observation: Life’s challenges and hardships can actually help us evolve.

    We not only have to think of creative solutions, but we have to cultivate a mindset conducive to overcome barriers. We all have the miraculous capacity to change, and obstacles almost demand a change in perspective and mindset if negativity has been the dominating influence in our lives.

    So for the next four and a half years after that life-changing doctor’s visit, I spoke incessantly to Scott as if he understood me. I remember those early years picking Scott up from school, and engaging in marathon monologues.

    Sure, there were dark days. Pessimism and hopelessness would creep in, and I lost some of these emotional battles at times, but I never stopped fighting to control my own thoughts. (As spiritual writer, Louise Hay, points out: “Change the thoughts and the feelings must go.”)

    But overall, you would not recognize me because of my new uncompromising will, determination, and perseverance. I knew my son would speak one day!

    And years later, my prognostication came true, damned the torpedoes and that neurodevelopmental specialist.

    Whatever you’re going through now, see this as an opportunity to transform your state of mind and develop greater optimism and perseverance. Your challenge can make you bitter or better—the choice is yours.

    Miraculous observation: Small changes can lead to big improvement over time.

    Yes, we were blessed that Scott finally started speaking, but even if that never occurred, we saw other miracles. A boy who had colic exponential one million, and who screamed most of the day, transformed into a very affectionate, happy-go-lucky child—even before gaining the capacity to speak.

    You may be facing trials and tribulations right now. Perhaps the outcome that you desire has not materialized yet. However, can you see any small incremental changes helping the pendulum swing in your favor? Can you envision a happy ending but still focus on the here and now?

    Try to see those tiny miracles as they manifest in your own life, and express gratitude when they surface. By appreciating the small shifts, you’ll be better able to maintain an optimistic mindset, which will help you continually move forward.

    Realize you’re a walking and talking miracle, too, and what you can accomplish can transcend anyone else’s limiting beliefs about you. But the first step to opening your eyes to life’s miracles is to free yourself of your own limiting beliefs. You can stronger than you know, and you can do more than you think.

    Miraculous observation: Challenges give us the opportunity for deep connection.

    We often concentrate our energy and attention on those who have hurt us or disappoint us. We tend to overlook those souls who have been instrumental in guiding and leading us toward our best selves.

    While we were reveling in Scott’s progression, it dawned on me that we were blessed to know people who had made tremendous sacrifices to ensure his optimal growth and development.

    We were surrounded and supported by miraculous angels: We had two devoted, creative, and nurturing therapists who worked with Scott, day in and day out, for years. A preschool director had provided a first-rate education to him, and still, years later, spends an inordinate amount of time offering her healing methodologies.

    In addition, one or two teachers at the public school have differentiated themselves from their colleagues by vesting so much energy to see Scott advance. My mom has also been unwavering in her dedication and support of our family.

    The miracle is that there are people in our lives who care deeply about us, and even make sacrifices to try to help us.

    And the miracle of synchronicity occurs: Such people often come into our lives when we need them most. Everything is timing, and our angels came to the forefront at the perfect moments—almost through divine intervention.

    If you feel alone now and can’t think of anyone who can touch your life in a positive way, please be open to widening your social circle. When you’re ready and open to it, the right people will come into your life.

    Lori Deschene, Founder of Tiny Buddha asserts, “The only way to connect with people is to be willing to remove the distance.” All my life I had distanced myself from others. But after Scott’s diagnosis, I had to form meaningful connections—with therapists, teachers, members of the autism community, etc.

    See the miracle of connection, especially when times get tough.

    Final lesson: We can all handle adversity.

    For me, I see adversity as a hard stone—but one that is penetrable. I see myself blasting right through it.

    Others may envision adversity in a different way, or approach it in a different manner. Regardless of perspective, I realize that adversity does not have to overwhelm us if we keep our wits about us. If we choose not to ruminate on how hard it is, we can instead focus on doing whatever is necessary to free ourselves of its hold.

    My son’s so-called disability has changed me immeasurably.

    I’ve learned the miracles of exceeding others’ limiting beliefs, breaking bad habits, adopting a new and improved mindset and disposition, seeing rainbows when it pours, appreciating distinct moments and the synergy of connection with others, all at the right time, and I’ve developed a never-giving-up spirit come what may.

    I owe so much to my beloved son and the miracles I’ve observed since his birth. It is my fervent hope that you see the miracles that are often camouflaged in hardship.

    Colorful umbrella image via Shutterstock

  • Practice, Persevere, and Trust That You’re Making Progress

    Practice, Persevere, and Trust That You’re Making Progress

    Progress

    “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” ~Johann Von Goethe

    I am on a journey of trust. It’s been about trusting my body, knowing that it can take care of itself without the control of my mind.

    For three and a half years, my body and mind have been enemies and I have been trying so hard, and knowingly, too hard, to get back to where I was at seventeen.

    It all began when I had an episode of hyperventilation in January 2010, when I heard that my Granny, who was terminally ill, had just suffered a heart attack.

    She survived it, but I knew she was going to go soon and I had never lost anyone before. It scared me and caused this anxious reaction. I feared the same thing would happen to me. My parents told me otherwise, and I believed them.

    My Granny died that April, and my reaction to it all was very delayed. It took me several weeks to let it all out.

    I was fine then until that August, when my parents and I stayed in a rented apartment that resembled a home of an elderly couple. It reminded me of my Granny, and that was the trigger.

    I hyperventilated again. This time, rather than breathing and relaxing, I thought the best way through was to tense up.

    I didn’t realize that this would be my automatic reaction whenever I got stressed for the next three and a half years.

    It felt like my body had an invisible belt that tightened, no matter how I tried to relax.

    Even if I didn’t feel stressed about anything in particular, this tension polluted events that I had looked forward to because I was trying so hard to enjoy myself, which made it all the more frustrating.

    Over time, it began to worry me. I would wake up, hoping it would disappear, and ask for a day where I could just breathe in a relaxed, normal way again. When I wouldn’t, I thought of the consequences of chronic tension and worry and what it would mean to my health.

    Living away from home in my second year of university, I experienced severe anxiety and mild depression.

    I had been suffering inside alone until January 2013, when I told family and friends, hoping that they would understand and give me some support. Still struggling, I went to my doctor and asked about therapy.

    For four months, starting in June, I did cognitive behavioral therapy to help improve my thought patterns so I could learn to react to stress in a more rational way. I also received modules to help me through hypochondria, which was the key problem.

    Mid-way through my therapy, I had an emergency kidney operation. While recovering in the hospital, I found that my mind trusted my body to breathe, simply as a survival instinct. I knew then that I could do it and hoped that I would be able to continue to breathe easily once I was better.

    I recovered at home for most of the summer and found that, as I got healthier, my mind got busier. Old controlling patterns returned and my anxiety was back.

    I saw improvements, though, as I continued with therapy. When the four months were up, my therapist was pleased with how well I had done, bringing my severe anxiety and mild depression down to the sub-clinical, everyday range.

    She reminded me that I had done all the work myself, and that she had only be there to listen, which I think is something to remember if you want to get counseling.

    After I was discharged I had a couple of wobbly months. I described it as being like a child who has had their training wheels taken off their bike. I wondered, though, when that period would end so I could start living the life I wanted.

    I realized that my therapy work had gone out of the window and that I had to continue practicing what I had learned in those four months for the rest of my life.

    For the last year I have been reading the articles on Tiny Buddha. I have been motivated and inspired by the stories from people who also dealt with anxiety, depression, and loss. Sometimes just reading a post would make me feel better.

    However, just reading their tips only took me so far. I needed to try them out for myself, to see if they worked for me. It’s that word, practice, that I have been struggling with, and patience and perseverance. These are my words that help me through, and now I can add trust.

    Practice, Patience, Perseverance, and Trust

    I find knitting is a great representation of all these things.

    Without practice, you won’t expect those uneven stiches to improve and or the projects to be completed. Without patience, you won’t accept your flaws and will be extremely angry with yourself. Without perseverance, you won’t be able to see your improvements being made, and without trust, you will be deprived of the belief that you can achieve great things.

    I find knitting is a great way to relax, and scientifically proven to slow the heart rate and calm the mind.

    Another thing that helps me is my stress journal. Writing is an effective way of logging of your thoughts, processes, and achievements. It is also scientifically proven that writing relaxes the mind.

    Music, such as instrumental tracks, have also been effective for me. There are plenty on YouTube such as “relaxdaily,” who creates beautiful New Age music. Other types of relaxing music come in meditation form, such as PMR (Progressive Muscle Relaxation), which loosens tense muscles all over the body.

    It can take a long time to see progress when you’re using these kinds of tools, and I often need to remind myself of that. But I now trust that I will get better at this.

    I have been making good progress and I have tense days every so often, but only the other day, when I was having a mild panic attack, did I realize that it’s about perspective.

    I had been so tight inside because I thought I had to be relaxed all the time, and I wasn’t. I felt I had to breathe slower so I wouldn’t be susceptible to high blood pressure and my mind wouldn’t take control, preventing me from just being.

    But I’ve come to realize I don’t need to try so hard. Recently I’ve started trusting my body, telling myself that I am healthy and I am living a healthy lifestyle. I’ve begun to trust that I can breathe freely if I allow myself to.

    We all experience stress, anxiety, and depression in different ways, and we all recover in our own unique ways too. However, it’s not about finding a cure. It’s about taking power back from our thoughts so we don’t allow stress and fear to control us.

    We all want to enjoy our lives, and we can: by being patient with our progress, persevering with our progress, and trusting that we are making progress.  

    Eventually, you will see that progress. Just keep practicing.

    Photo by Hartwig HKD

  • Keep Moving Toward Success, One Failure at a Time

    Keep Moving Toward Success, One Failure at a Time

    Running

    “If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.” ~Chinese Proverb

    I remember clearly the day in March 2003 when I would receive the kind of news that no aspiring musician wants to hear.

    “Sorry, but you aren’t currently at the level needed to enter our school.”

    Five years of blood, sweat, and tears for what? To be told that I sucked? I sat there, lost in my own thoughts. Was I having a bad day? Was I simply not as good as my ego led me to believe?

    There I was, face to face with my assessor in a strange city on a damp and dreary Saturday afternoon. It could at least have been sunny! A bit of warmth and energy to brighten up this horrible feeling, but alas, as with many things that day, it just wasn’t to be.

    I wandered around these unfamiliar surroundings for almost an hour before catching the train home. This was to be one of the longest journeys of my life, not because of the mileage, but because I felt utterly dejected.

    Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be the only type of rejection I would face during my twenties.

    I have genuinely lost count of the number of women who have turned me down. Every “no” was like a hammer blow to my confidence and sense of self-worth. Why doesn’t anybody like me? What am I doing wrong? Am I destined to be alone?

    Yet more questions I didn’t have the answer to.

    The hardest part to take was the fact that a lot of these women were people that I actually knew, not just random strangers in a nightclub but friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.

    I was not some drunken guy that could be easily shaken off when surrounded by a group of friends, fuelled by alcohol and peer pressure. I was a part of their everyday lives, but held at arm’s length, never to get any closer.

    Miss P was one of these women. I had chased her for two years. We had a mutual feeling of affection that was only hindered by a toxic relationship on her part.

    I waited; it was all I could do. There were the occasions when our eyes would meet as we crossed paths, the hugs that lasted a few seconds too long, and the sense of belonging that hinted at what was possible.

    But when my chance came and the universe conspired to bring us together, it was to only be a fleeting moment. Life drove a wedge between us and I felt powerless as I watched her slip away.

    Situations like these are hard to take, but you know what? It toughens you up. There are only so many beat downs that one can receive before something must change, it has to. Eventually the brain will find a solution. When faced with adversity, we can all rise up and meet the challenge head on.

    I returned to that music school a few weeks later, and I had taken on board everything that was said to me. I practiced intently. I refused to allow this person to tell me that I wasn’t good enough. I refused to walk out of there having failed again. This was my time, and it was going to happen.

    It did.

    The audition was a success. I had adapted to the situation by accepting my faults and working tirelessly to correct them, and thus began a period of huge improvement in my day-to-day life.

    I was now ready to adapt this mentality to my faltering love life.

    After being rejected by nine women in a row, it was time to change things up. I would no longer focus on the outcome; instead it was all about the process. I taught myself to just enjoy the interactions and focus on making these women smile instead of my own selfish desires.

    A funny thing happened: The less I chased, the more success I had. I worked on my personality, not so much the core of who I was but in how I expressed the real me. These people weren’t seeing a nervous, needy guy but someone who was happier being who he wanted to be.

    Once I figured out that I held the key to my happiness, nothing would stand in my way.

    I started going on more dates. I had more meaningful relationships and even though I still don’t know what the future will hold for me, I believe 100% that by opening up and sharing the true essence of who I am, the right person will somehow find a way into my world.

    Throughout life we will receive bad news and criticism that will attempt to strip our confidence to the bone, but we can never allow that to happen.

    Failure, or as I like to say, the path to success, is a necessary part of our growth as human beings.

    Some people won’t see how amazing you really are and some people may not agree with your principles, but that’s okay. We just have to figure out how best to display our true selves, regardless of the situation.

    Whether you’re going on a date, attending an audition or an interview, or simply doing something that stretches your comfort zone, it is important to trust yourself and believe that you have what it takes to succeed.

    Mistakes happen. Failure occurs. Things don’t always go to plan but that’s okay, that’s life, and it’s necessary for personal growth. As long as we keep improving and moving forward without compromising our core values and therefore, our integrity, we can achieve almost anything.

    Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Don’t allow anyone to knock you off from the goal that you see in your mind’s eye. This journey is yours and nobody has the right to change your destination.

    Learn from the feedback that you receive, both good and bad, but don’t take it to heart.

    Everything can be improved and modified to fit any situation. People’s opinions can be changed, as can yours.

    Who you currently are, who you want to be, and who you want the world to see are entirely in your hands.

    Perseverance—it’s how we can all keep moving toward success, one failure at a time.

    Photo by Drewski Mac