Tag: problem
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A Life-Changing Insight: You Are Not a Problem to Be Fixed
“I decided that the single most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.” ~Anne Lamott
I remember one particular clear, cold winter morning as I returned home from a walk. I suddenly realized that I had missed the whole experience.
The blue, clear sky.
The lake opening up before me.
The whisper of the trees that I love so much.
I was there in body but not embodied. I was totally, completely wrapped up in the thoughts running rampant in my mind. The worries about others, work, the future; about everything I thought I should be doing better and wanted to change about myself… it was exhausting.
Alive, but not present to my life. Breathing, but my life force was suffocated.
This was not new. In fact, up until that point I had mostly approached life as something to figure out, tackle, and wrestle to the ground. This included my body, my career, and the people around me.
My tentacles of control, far-reaching in pursuit of a better place, said loudly, “What is here now is not acceptable. You are not acceptable.”
“You can improve. You can figure it out. You can always make it better.”
But this time, rather than indulging in the content of this particular struggle, I observed the process I was in and realized profoundly that even though the issues of the day changed regularly, the experience of struggle never did.
And I would continue struggling until I stopped resisting and judging everything and started accepting myself and my life.
This wasn’t the first time I’d had thoughts like these, but this time there was no “but I still need to change this…” or “I can accept everything except for this thing.” I knew it was 100% or nothing.
I knew then I only had two choices:
I could continue to resist reality, which now seemed impossible and exhausting (because it was). Or I could accept myself and the moment and make the best of it.
“What if there is actually nothing to struggle against? What if I let go of the tug-of-war that I called my life?”
The choice was before me. The one that comes to people when they have suffered enough and are tired: to put down the arms.
This doesn’t have to mean accepting unhealthy relationships or situations. It just means we stop living in a constant state of needing things to change in order to accept ourselves and our lives. It means we learn to let things be—and even harder, to let ourselves be.
Whenever I have a conversation with people who are struggling, I’ve recognized that they have this innate feeling of I should be doing better than this. Or, I should not be feeling like this.
It might seem obvious that “shoulds” keep us in a contracted position of never-being-enough.
But I have found that letting them go is not as simple as a quick change of thought.
It seems like denying ourselves has become the generally accepted and encouraged modus operandi of our culture.
Denying our feelings.
Minimizing our pain.
Hating our body parts.
This leads to disconnection from the life that is here, the life that is us.
Self-loathing has become the biggest dis-ease of our time.
When we are disconnected from who we are in this moment, there is a tension between right here and the idealized self/state.
This disconnection or gap is a rupture in our life force that presents itself as a physical contraction, a shortness of breath, an inner critic that lashes out harshly and creates a war within. This war contributes to pain, illness, and I’d guess 80% of visits to a medical doctor.
Even some of the best self-help books promote this gap…
Don’t think those thoughts.
Don’t feel those negative feelings.
Don’t just sit there—you should be doing something to improve yourself and your life
All of the statements above might seem like wise advice. But we’ve missed the biggest step of all—mending the gap between who we are and who we think we should be so that we don’t feel so disconnected from ourselves.
Disconnection is the shame that tells you that you’ve got it wrong, that it is not okay to feel or think the way you do in this moment. That you have to beat yourself up so you can improve, be more than you are now, be better.
That you are a problem to fix.
This is the catch-22 of self-help when taken too much like boot camp. Self-help can be helpful, but it can create an antagonistic relationship with our true selves if it doesn’t include a full acceptance of who we are in this moment.
The belief of “not-enoughness” is at the root of so much physical and emotional pain, and I, for one, have had enough of it.
What if we allowed ourselves to be, or do, in the knowing that we are okay, that we are doing the best we can, given what we know at this point in time?
Do you feel the fear-gremlins coming out that tell you that you will lie down on the couch and never get up again? Or perhaps you will never amount to anything or be good enough?
This is the biggest secret of all: It’s all a lie to keep the consumer culture alive.
People who are scared and in scarcity need to consume something outside of themselves to gain fulfillment. But it never really comes because there’s always something new to change or attain.
It can be so difficult for us humans to accept not only ourselves, but that everything just might be okay in this moment.
That this feeling is just right. Even if it hurts.
It’s okay to be right here, right now. Pain is here, and I don’t have to fight it.
Our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship we will ever have.
Because we are truly sacred, no matter how we feel.
Maybe the only question to ask today is not “What do I need to do to change?” but “How can I love myself, just as I am?”
Maybe the act of loving ourselves is as simple as taking a breath to regulate our nervous system and come back to the present moment.
Maybe healing involves not so much changing ourselves but allowing ourselves to be who we are.
Which is exactly what I did that day when I realized I had missed my whole walk because I was caught up in my mind, worrying about everything I wanted to change. I shifted my focus from the thoughts I was thinking to the feelings in my body. I realized that I was enough in this step, in this breath, and that’s all there is.
I promise the results of moving into acceptance will feel far better than the shame, disconnection, and cruelty that come from the constant pursuit of self-improvement.
The truth is…
You are not a problem to fix.
You are a human to be held.
To be held in your own arms and loved into wholeness.
Take care of your human.
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What to Do When You’re Panicking Because You Can’t Make a Decision
“No one saves us but ourselves. We alone must walk the path.” ~Buddha
I got a frantic message from a friend last night.
Everything was going wrong—her job, her relationship, her life—and she didn’t know what to do.
“Help me, please,” she kept saying. “I don’t know what to do.”
I tried hard to stifle a giggle. I know, completely inappropriate. But I found it really funny.
Why? Because I’m the last person anyone should be asking for advice. If I knew what to do, if I knew how to help her, I’d have:
- implemented this a long time ago in my own life to solve issues that I, myself, have been grappling with
- created a website and published a book and video tutorials with the answer
- bought my own island in the Caribbean just from the proceeds of the book sales (I’d give the money from my website ad sales and video to charity, obvs)
I’d be rich, because this is what every human being confronts at some point in their lives—what should I do?!
We all hate the unexpected. We all hate uncertainty. These situations usually mean we haven’t gotten what we want or things aren’t going as we wanted them to go. We know we need to make a decision. We know we need to do something. But making a decision is hard, especially when things are uncertain.
In moments like this, we become frantic, we flail, we panic. I know because I’ve done all three. Several times.
And then we become obsessed with our problems. We think about them.
All. The. Time.
And then we think about them some more.
Sometimes my brain actually starts to ache from all this thinking and analyzing. We get exhausted, mentally, physically, and emotionally. And when we realize we are no closer to solving our problems or making a decision, we start becoming more frantic and we flail and panic even more.
So of course, it makes sense that we turn to others for answers at times likes this. Because in this moment, we are in no state to save ourselves. My friend is not an exception. Most of us have turned to others at some point or another.
I couldn’t give my friend any answers that night. I knew she wanted a specific solution to address her issues. But I didn’t have any. And here’s the scary news: no one does.
You are the only one who can save yourself. You are the only one who can solve your problem.
Hearing that probably wants to make you hide under your duvet and never come out.
I don’t know what to do, remember? How am I supposed to save myself?? I don’t even trust myself to change a light bulb!!
I hear you. And you can stop hiding now and jump out of bed, because here are three simple things you can do in times like this.
(Note: These three ideas aren’t solutions to your problem. But they help you, they help the situation, and they allow you to get to a place where you are better able to pin down the right decision.)
I know they might not seem like much, and it’s easy to dismiss them. It might even seem like I’m not taking your problem seriously. All I can say is that I’ve gone through these situations time and time again, and doing the things below has definitely helped me.
It stopped me from being completely consumed with my problem. It helped me create much-needed space and clarity.
Also, if you are being put out of balance by one part of you life, your best hope is to bring in some balance from another end.
What’s the alternative? Thinking more about the problem at hand?
We both know how that usually works out.
1. Be frantic, flail, panic … then get it out.
Whine to your amazing friends who listen to you patiently with nothing but love and empathy, even though you’ve been putting them through this time and time again.
Then go jogging, go to the gym, go for a swim. Write in a journal. Do something to get all that anger, resentment, fear, and pity out of you.
You’re in over-active child mode right now—tire yourself out.
2. Go spend some time outdoors.
Go for a meander in the woods, walk along the ocean. Observe the birds in action, pay attention to the trees, watch the clouds in the sky. Basically spend some time in nature.
I’m not sure what it is, but there’s something calming about nature. It slows us down. It tires us out (see point 1). It gives us perspective. It shows us that there is more to life than our problems and worries. Mary Oliver’s beautiful poem, The Shore comes to mind;
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour
the waves are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall—
what should I do?
And the sea says in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.3. Do something else.
Worried about whether you should end a relationship? Go learn to play a new musical instrument.
Worried about how you are going to make your mortgage at the end of the month? Go volunteer at your local charity. Or:
- Read something uplifting every morning, afternoon and right before going to bed
- Watch YouTube clips that crack you up
- Meditate
- Write five things you are grateful for every morning
- Start a new habit (i.e.: get up an hour earlier, drink more water)
- Learn origami
- Spend some time cleaning your closet
- Offer to babysit for your friends (kids are amazing distracters!! It’s hard to focus on your problems when you are constantly trying to keep them from falling over or hurting themselves.)
As humans who lead very human lives, mud gets thrown at us at some point or another. And when you stop flailing and panicking, when you calm down, when you focus on something else, you give the mud a chance to slide off and settle down; you allow the waters to get less murky. And things get clearer.
Maybe in this clarity you’ll know what to do. Or maybe you will have made your peace with what’s happened.
More likely, you’ll probably have moved on to something else and forgotten what was winding you up in the first place. Or something else might have happened to completely transform the initial situation.
That’s the other thing about life. It’s full of surprises.
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9 Ways to Help Yourself When You’re Going Through a Hard Time
“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.” ~Eckhart Tolle
After my father had a stroke, it became too difficult to manage our family’s convenience store, so we decided to sell it. We spoke to several buyers, but a couple was most interested—the same couple who had originally sold us the store years earlier.
In December 2012, in the middle of the transaction, my father was manipulated and our store and retirement savings were snatched away.
They convinced my parents to transfer the store space’s lease over to them before selling the business. So we were illegally occupying someone else’s space.
The landlord sent legal notices and bills to clear the space. We tried to work out a deal with the couple, but it was of no avail.
I spoke to a lawyer and he said there was no case and that this was a deliberately hatched plan from the outset.
Long story short, we were faced with two choices: give the store to the couple for peanuts, or clear the store and take our belongings elsewhere without compensation.
We decided to clear the space, pack all our inventory and belongings, and dump them into our garage at our home.
My parents could barely open the garage door, and we didn’t know what to do with the stuff. Should we find another location and start our business afresh? Or should we just close this chapter completely?
I was filled with anger, bitterness, and pain, but I held it in.
Bills piled up. My brother and I struggled to pay our mortgage payments every month.
I channeled all my anguish into my work and staying afloat. When someone in my family talked about the situation, I brushed them off and avoided the topic.
One night in February 2014, I cried. The tears wouldn’t stop. Something had changed in me.
It was like my heart had to do an intervention and tell me: You have got to stop and feel your pain. You can’t keep going this way.
I want to share how I finally dealt with my inner demons and shifted to a place of inner peace and acceptance. If you’re going through a tough time, this may help.
1. Stop assuming the worst.
After my experience, I noticed that I jumped to conclusions and assumed the worst about everyone, so I made it a point to acknowledge when someone was nice to me, whether it was a loved one or waitress.
I also tried to be kind in return. This helped me open my heart again.
It’s tempting to assume the worst when you’ve been wronged, but seeing the best in others will bring out the best in yourself.
2. Challenge your beliefs.
I heard the word “struggle” many times throughout my childhood. My father and mother said it frequently. It was ingrained in their consciousness, and as a result, in mine.
After this experience, I decided to adopt a new belief: that I was meant to prosper.
As cheesy as it sounds, I hung up I am a winner posters on my bedroom walls. I read stories about normal people like me who transformed their lives.
I signed up for a life coaching and transformation program. All these things helped me create faith in myself so I could start to live a more inspiring life.
You don’t have to do the same things, but in your own way, you can start to shed your limiting beliefs and support yourself so you can prosper too.
3. Turn inward to heal inner wounds.
I wish I had done this right after we lost our family business, but I was too busy analyzing and strategizing, trying to make things work.
I felt I had to shoulder all the responsibility and hold my family together, so my emotions remained in my body energetically for some time.
One day, I wrote down what had happened from my perspective. I put all my feelings on paper and I didn’t hold back. In doing so, I helped myself embrace my emotions and begin the healing process.
Be honest about how you feel. Dive in deep and fully acknowledge what happened.
4. Stop pushing.
I remember when my father had a stroke; even then, I was busy making phone calls from my office, dealing with our employees, and managing our store. I would have intense, nervous, frantic, fearful conversations with my mother.
I would become angry and scream at her and my father. I was constantly pushing and in action mode. I couldn’t let go. That need to control and push became even stronger after we lost our business.
I clung on tightly to relationships, money, people, and things, all from a place of insecurity and fear. I was afraid I would lose them.
But when you let go, you make space for what is truly right for you. You learn to not tie your self-worth, happiness, or identity to external circumstances.
5. Practice saying yes to your desires.
I wanted to pour myself into my work. I also thought that struggling and living this way was the norm. I was used to suppressing my desires.
If I wanted to relax, I didn’t allow myself. I drove myself crazy with ways to make things better for my family. But the truth was, if I couldn’t find inner peace, there was no way I could help my family.
I learned that I had to be connected to myself in order to be more present for my loved ones. It started with embracing little things. If I wanted to have tea and read a book, I did just that. If I wanted a hot bath, I took a nice, long hot bath.
I used to think that I couldn’t do these things if my external world wasn’t great.
But surrendering to these seemingly tiny moments brought me solace when chaos ruled my external world.
Don’t wait until you have everything figured out to be good to yourself. Be good to yourself and you’ll be better able to figure things out.
6. Stop feeling guilty.
During this challenging period, we all screamed our throats off and made each other feel guilty. It was a vicious circle.
The only way I could make lasting changes and move on with my life was to stop feeling guilty.
I focused on the present moment. In doing so, I was able to forgive my family and energize myself. It rubbed off on them because slowly but surely, I noticed my family started to remove themselves from this guilty frame of mind, as well.
Even if you could have handled things better, let go of the guilt. You’re doing the best you can, and you’ll do better if you feel better.
7. Stay solution-oriented.
When things spiraled out of control, my family and I saw everything as a problem. We developed the attitude that whatever came our way would be difficult.
We became afraid of waking up in the mornings, couldn’t sleep well at night, and couldn’t enjoy time with each other. In other words, we expected the worst. But this is no way to live.
We had to shift to a solution-oriented frame of mind. So when things didn’t work out, I stopped dwelling in self-pity. I tried to look for solutions. If I couldn’t find one right away, I just let myself be.
Trust that answers will come at the right time. It’s easier to cope with hard times when you trust that the Universe has your back.
8. Turn to others for help.
During this time, I confided in my best friend about how I was feeling. Last year, I decided to enroll in a transformation program and had a therapeutic life coaching session.
These steps helped me support myself.
Don’t bottle up your emotions. Talk to your loved ones, friends, and even consider working with a life coach or therapist. You don’t have to go through it alone.
9. Foster a positive mindset.
I had lots of thoughts about revenge, but these only caused me to feel bitter.
I realized over time these thoughts weren’t going to do me any good. I had to shift out of them. They didn’t go away right away, but I accepted them without judging myself.
Then, to shift into a more uplifting state of mind, I immersed myself in things I loved like writing, meditating, journaling, eating, and spending time with friends.
Negative thoughts will come, but they will also go if you let them. Instead of judging yourself for having these thoughts, focus on what you can do to create a more positive state of mind.
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If you’re going through a challenging time in your life, keep your heart open. This won’t last forever, and you will get through it!
Depressed man image via Shutterstock
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There’s a Gift in Every Problem: Finding the Good in the Bad
“Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.” ~Richard Bach
I bought the magazine because it had pizza on the cover and the headline read: “Yes, you can eat pizza.”
At that point, the idea that I could eat pizza was as absurd to me as the thought of finding a tiny dinosaur living in my flowerbeds.
But oh, how I wanted a slice.
At thirty-two years old, I’d been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It scared the hell out of me, and I was determined to take perfect care of myself so I could be the best mom possible for my two-year-old daughter.
I had unleashed self-discipline previously foreign to me. My doctor and nutritionist praised me incessantly for my dedication.
And at first, my blood sugar improved.
But a year and a half after being diagnosed, I was still doing all the right things—eating healthy, counting carbs, exercising like a maniac—and the right things weren’t working. My blood sugar levels (which I monitored religiously) were still too high and getting higher.
I was drowning in anxiety and I felt like a failure. I would end up blind and on dialysis with no feeling in my feet. My mind ran through catastrophic scenarios by the hour.
That magazine for diabetics, with its siren’s call of pizza on the cover, saved my life because it also happened to feature an article about latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA).
It told the story of a woman in her thirties who was thin and diagnosed with type 2. (Type 2 typically strikes older adults who carry extra weight and have a sedentary lifestyle.)
Gee, I thought, this sounds familiar.
After months of trying to manage her condition, she ended up in a specialist’s office. The endocrinologist took one look at her—young, thin, with a family history of autoimmune diseases—and diagnosed her with LADA. A blood test found antibodies that confirmed the diagnosis.
LADA is essentially type 1 diabetes, with an onset in adulthood instead of the more typical childhood onset. The immune system attacks the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin.
Game over, there’s nothing you can do to reverse it. You’re insulin dependent for life. (Though people with LADA can make at least a little insulin for months or years, which is why diet and exercise can seem to work for awhile.)
Alarm bells began exploding in my head. If this is what’s going on with me, I thought, it explains everything.
After a few days, I managed to convince myself I was a hypochondriac. Who was I to think I was special enough to have an obscure form of a rare disease?
But my increasingly high blood sugar levels still needed to be addressed and that little voice in my head kept nagging me about the possibility of a more serious condition.
I called my doctor. I told him I wanted a referral to an endocrinologist because I was worried about having LADA. He said he would write the referral for me, but that it was extremely unlikely and I shouldn’t worry.
I sat and talked with the endocrinologist for about three minutes before I blurted out, “I’m a little worried about LADA.”
“I think that’s exactly what’s going on,” she said. A blood test confirmed it.
That evening I injected insulin into my belly and woke the next day to the best blood sugar reading I’d had since I started testing.
These days I wear an insulin pump, which allows for precise insulin dosing and gets rid of the need for taking multiple shots a day. It’s my favorite piece of technology ever.
And, I have to tell you, my life is so much better now than it was before I was diagnosed with any kind of diabetes.
So many gifts come to us through adversity. I challenge you right now to identify your biggest problem and then think through all the good things in your life and see if you can draw a direct line between them.
I wager that you’ll find relationships strengthened, personal empowerment, and a clearer sense of yourself, all thanks to the scariest thing you’ve even been through.
And if you don’t find it yet, just hang on, you still can.
For me, being misdiagnosed with type 2 forced me to learn about diet and exercise. I started caring for my body and tapped into my self-discipline. Yes, there can be blessings hidden in a medical mistake!
I learned the power of my intuition, which helped me get the diagnosis and medical care I needed before I ended up with a life threatening case of high blood sugar known as diabetic ketoacidosis.
Diabetes is also the perfect way to practice vigilance without its all too common companion, anxiety. The constant demands of managing the disease can lead one to a near constant state of panic unless you learn skills to overcome it.
Not many people realize this, but apart from trying to avoid long term complications, people with type 1 diabetes must constantly work to avoid acute conditions that can cause death—too much insulin can cause a low blood sugar that can kill you and too little insulin causes high blood sugar, which can also kill you.
Which leads me to the biggest gift of all: an appreciation of my own mortality.
It’s up to me to infuse every day with meaning—to truly feel the joy of laying in a hammock reading a story with my daughter or exchanging salacious texts with my husband.
Yes, we all know that in theory, we could get hit by a truck tomorrow. But now I really know.
And I use that knowledge to make decisions about where to spend my energy. For example, I always wanted to be a writer but I never did one damn serious thing about it until diabetes lit a fire under me. Now my writing is my second career.
Having type 1 diabetes isn’t easy; in fact, it can be hard as hell. If researchers have a miracle breakthrough tomorrow, I’ll camp out overnight to be first in line for the cure.
But I cling to the revelation that there are many gifts to be found in facing our biggest challenges and we’d be fools not to accept them because we hate the wrapping paper.
Photo by Cornelia Kopp
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When Things Fall Apart: Breakdowns Can Create Breakthroughs
“Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together.” ~Unknown
“I’m sorry,” the email said, “but our phone call left me feeling uncomfortable, and we’ve decided to work with someone else.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Even though I saw it coming. Even though I’d brought it on myself.
It was February 2010, and I didn’t have the money to pay my mortgage. My savings were gone, burned through in a misguided attempt to breathe life back into my ailing business by “throwing money at the problem.”
As a ketubah artist—a maker of Jewish marriage contracts and other wedding artworks—sales are always seasonal, but ever since the economy had tanked in 2008, even spring and summer “wedding season” was slower than I was used to.
After two years of lean sales, without the savings normally socked away from fatter months, I was feeling desperate.
It was that desperation that had made me try to hurry along an imminent sale to an enthusiastic bride and groom by offering a special upgrade—but “only if they bought now.”
Big mistake.
It was the worst, most humiliating mistake in my whole business life, in fact.
The couple had been in correspondence with me for weeks, and was on the verge of buying not just a ketubah, but also a Quaker wedding certificate and matching invitations. The sale was virtually guaranteed, and would bring in more than enough to pay my mortgage.
But in my fear that they’d delay making a final decision until after my mortgage due date had come and gone, I panicked. I tried to create a sense of urgency to get them to buy today, and lost the sale.
Then I lost my grip.
The Liberation of a Breakdown
When the contents of the bride’s email sunk in, I physically collapsed, my body wracked with sobs. I remember the rational part of my mind watching, as if from someplace on the ceiling, thinking, “Wow, this is what hysteria looks like!”
I was the definition of a breakdown.
It was one of the worst moments of my life.
In a way, it was also one of the best moments of my life, though it sure didn’t feel good at the time!
With hindsight, though, I can now see that this horrible crisis was exactly what I needed to break out of the miserable rut I was in and break through to something better.
The truth was I’d been burned out on my business for years. I needed a change, but like a horse with blinders on, I couldn’t see that there might possibly be a different path available to me. So I kept plodding along, while my business fizzled and my zest for life fizzled along with it.
My breakdown finally ripped the blinders off my eyes. It was as if I emerged from a dark hole into the light and saw the vast possibilities of the world suddenly before me. Maybe I could do something else, even (gasp!) get a job.
Casting about for other ways to earn money felt surprisingly liberating. I didn’t realize how chained I’d felt to my identity as a ketubah artist. It may sound funny, but it was a revelation that I didn’t have to do the same thing forever!
Pay Attention to Messages from the Universe
As I was tenderly making my first baby steps forward on a new, yet-to-be-defined path, just one week after my big breakdown, my boyfriend and life partner announced that he was moving out, taking his contribution to the living expenses with him. No thirty-days notice, no nothing.
Can you say “double whammy”?
(Thank goodness for my very supportive parents, who helped me pay my mortgage that month.)
Now both my work life and my personal life were in tatters. It was as if the universe had sent me a telegram, special delivery, with the message “Time to change your life -(STOP)-”
No, strike that: It was as if the universe had walloped me upside the head with a two-by-four!
In fact, the universe had been sending me little notes and whispering in my ear for years. Burnout doesn’t happen overnight, but I simply hadn’t been paying attention.
And when you don’t pay attention to notes from the universe, it starts to speak louder. Then it starts to poke you. Eventually, if you still don’t pay attention, out comes that two-by-four.
This time I listened. Everything had fallen apart, and clearly there was no going back. The only way out of the breakdown was through.
Change Is Painful and Scary, but Also Exhilarating
Let me tell you, that wallop from the universe hurt. It’s disheartening when everything you’ve worked hard to build tumbles down like a castle made of children’s blocks, and it’s scary to start down a new path.
Along with the fear, though, was an incredible sense of possibility. It was exhilarating! I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but the fact that I was no longer stuck in a rut brought my zest for life back.
Sometimes things have to fall apart in order to fall together.
Change is hard, so unless the pain of not changing is worse than the pain of changing, it’s all too easy to stick with the status quo. My breakdown turned out to be precisely what I needed to finally break through to the life I really wanted.
Without my humiliating client disaster, who knows how long I might have continued to cling to my ketubah business as my only option? Instead, with my castle-of-blocks leveled by crisis, I was suddenly free to build an entirely new castle.
No more settling! Within two months I’d started my blog and was on my way toward building the big, bold, creative life I longed for.
The Key Is In the Letting Go
Finding my way on this new path hasn’t happened overnight (and of course the path is continually evolving), but getting from breakdown to breakthrough—from hopeless and miserable to hopeful and excited about life again—happened rather quickly once I let go of what had been.
That’s what breakdowns are good for: They help you let go so you can try something different.
Clinging to what had worked well or made me happy in the past was only keeping me stuck in my rut. I had to let everything break down in order to build it up again. Only after my life fell apart were things able to fall together for me.
I keep hoping that I’ll get better at paying attention to those whispers from the universe, so I don’t have to feel the pain of another two-by-four to the head.
If I do get walloped again, though, hopefully I’ll remember that breakdowns can create breakthroughs, and that things fall apart so they can fall together again.
Have you had an experience of a breakdown leading to a breakthrough? How did things fall apart for you, and how did they fall together?
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Surviving and Thriving: 3 Lessons About Dealing with Hard Times
“Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers.” ~Unknown
Lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and massive machines, I seriously considered the possibility that I was having a nightmare. Everything felt so surreal.
At 22 years old, my life was full of promise and potential. I had recently graduated from college and it was a time of beginnings. I was living in Manhattan and had begun working in music publishing.
I had no idea that a late night trip to the emergency room due to a rapid heart rate would result in a weeklong hospitalization.
When extreme, unexpected, life changing, or scary things happen, how can we not only survive them but also grow from the experience?
1. Embrace the situation you’re in.
I was in the emergency room when the doctor gravely told me this was serious. My thyroid was pumping out gigantic quantities of thyroid hormone, leading to a potentially fatal thyroid storm. I was wheeled upstairs and admitted to the “step down” unit, one step down in care from ICU.
Hearing the doctor’s extreme words, I was shocked into inaction. I was so taken off guard that fighting or fleeing didn’t even cross my mind. I simply stayed where I was, lying on the bed, and prepared myself to accept this crazy situation and cope with whatever happened next. (more…)
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You Can Blame Others or Save Yourself
“You save yourself or remain unsaved.” ~Alice Sebold, Lucky
Last year was a year of great changes for me. I ended a three-and-a-half-year long toxic relationship, I started a new relationship (which fell apart six months later), I applied for a semester abroad, and started a full-time job while studying full-time, as well.
Honestly, I don’t know how I managed to survive this busy time, but I did, and in January 2012 I left for Stockholm.
It was the best six months of my life.
I met amazing people from all over the world and I found true friends among them. I was in places I always dreamed of being. I was studying at the one of the best universities in Europe. I traveled, explored, and had fun in my life again. I made my dream come true with my hard work and tenacity.
Even though everything seemed perfect, I felt that something was missing.
I struggled with my emotions and stress overload after six months of hard work to afford living abroad for the next six months. I also dealt with periods of depression.
I have been struggling with depression since I was thirteen. The worst period took place while I was in high school, when I thought about committing suicide. I got through this eventually with the help of my friends and a psychologist.
Currently my mood is stable, but I still experience heavy mood swings and depressive episodes that seem to appear “out of the blue.” That was the case with my semester abroad. One day I was happy with my life, and couple of days later I couldn’t find the strength to get up from the bed.
Maybe it was the stress, or the heavy Swedish winter with lack of daylight, or maybe it was something different. For two weeks in February I didn’t want to leave my room.
I tried to do so many things, to use my time abroad to its maximum so I would not have the feeling that I wasted my time there after I got back home. (more…)
