Tiny Buddha

Tag: process

  • My New Approach to Setting Goals and Why It Works Better for Me

    My New Approach to Setting Goals and Why It Works Better for Me

    “The journey is long, but the goal is in each step.” ~Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

    I have a daughter, she is nine.

    A few months ago, I started to feel like we weren’t as close as we used to. I felt like we weren’t spending enough time together, and honestly, when we were I almost didn’t know what to do with her. It felt like our emotional connection was falling apart, like we didn’t have enough topics to discuss or enough games to play.

    Moreover, I was getting stressed and annoyed with her easily, and it definitely wasn’t helping. I could raise my voice and then would immediately feel terrible, and of course she would get frustrated too.

    I knew it was my fault. I’d been too focused on my work, and I just hadn’t been leaving enough time and energy to our interaction. I hadn’t been prioritizing it.

    I realized that I needed to fix it.

    And as I am very much into goal setting, I sat down and started writing down a goal to improve my relationship with my daughter.

    There are many different techniques people use while creating their goals. One of the famous and commonly used ones is called SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based. I used to apply this technique a lot in the past. So I thought I’d use it again.

    But as soon as I started, I immediately got in trouble.

    I was saying to myself, “Okay, it’s definitely relevant to me. And I guess it’s also time-based (ummm, really?). But how am I supposed to measure it? And how do I make something like ‘relationship’ specific enough?”

    And here is the biggest problem. The whole purpose of my goal was not just to get to some specific point in the future when my relationship with my daughter would be perfect. The purpose was to have continuous (this word really matters here), daily improvement in our relationship so that we could enjoy our time together today, tomorrow. and every day!

    And suddenly the following realization hit me like a strike of lightning:

    “My goal is not a result of some process—my goal is the process!”

    The issue with SMART goals is that they make us focus purely on the end result rather than pay attention to the process!

    Please get me right, there is nothing wrong with focusing on the end result. But I do believe that it is wrong to not focus on the journey that gets us there.

    As I was thinking about it further, I discovered more limitations of the SMART technique:

    We miss out on the important goals that don’t fit into the framework.

    The goal about my relationship with my daughter is the perfect example of this limitation. It’s obviously very important to me, but it can hardly be measured or timeboxed.

    Missing the deadline means failure.

    Whenever we deal with deadlines, we automatically tend to believe that missing this deadline is a failure. And our goals are no exception. But the truth is, there are many factors outside of our control that can affect our ability to meet the deadline.

    So instead of focusing too much on the deadline, I prefer to measure success by how consistently I make progress, regardless of how fast it goes.

    Missing the start date means failure.

    We already talked about the deadlines, but as soon as timelines are involved, we also happen to have a start date. And we start to face the same problem here—if we don’t start on the date that we defined for ourselves as a “start date,” we feel like losers.

    I actually think that this is one of the biggest reasons why we give up on our New Year’s resolutions so often. We just seem to believe that if we didn’t start working on our goal on January 1, then it automatically means that we failed. But that’s just not true—it’s never too late to start working on your goals!

    We often roll back to where we started.

    When we focus on the end result too much, it’s too easy to stop paying attention and therefore roll back to the previous state once we achieve that result.

    Raise your hand if you ever worked on the goal to “lose ten/twenty/fifty (choose your variant) pounds before the summer.” Okay, and how soon did those pounds come back?

    I myself struggled with losing weight for many years. I was always a little bit overweight. Not enough to make me do something about it, but definitely enough to make me feel uncomfortable. I tried to lose weight multiple times, I was even able to make progress for a few months in a row, but then I would stop. And again, and again.

    About three years ago I got to my highest weight ever, and it is when I finally said to myself, “Okay, now you really gotta do something about it.” But I approached it differently this time—I decided to make it part of my lifestyle.

    I started working out regularly with a personal trainer (hello accountability!). I started paying attention to what I was eating and drinking. But the most important mental shift that I had to make was that I wasn’t doing it as a temporary thing anymore, or wasn’t trying to achieve a particular “result.” My goal was to learn to appreciate the journey!

    Now, three years later, I am forty pounds lighter than when I started. I am stronger, happier, and more confident than ever before. I still exercise at least four times a week, and I enjoy it! I truly do! I even workout when I travel, and I would’ve never expected that from myself.

    —

    I feel like I am at the point in my personal growth journey when I don’t need the boundaries of specific frameworks anymore.

    So, from now on, whenever I create a new goal, I make sure it’s all about the continuous, consistent, sustainable improvement in one particular area of my life.

    I make sure it’s all about the process, because I strongly believe that the process is where the true success and happiness reside.

    And if you are curious whether I was able to improve my relationship with my daughter… Well, I am still working on it. There is always room for improvement, but I have been able to almost completely stop raising my voice at her, we are definitely spending more time together these days, and I am appreciating this time so much more. Which I am extremely grateful for!

  • How Lowering Our Expectations Helps Us Do What We Really Want to Do

    How Lowering Our Expectations Helps Us Do What We Really Want to Do

    “Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” ~William James

    Despite being the sort of person who’s constantly generating self-improvement to-do lists, I’ve never been big into making New Year’s resolutions. If I make any at all, they usually occur as an afterthought, frequently after the fact, and without much in the way of any real resolution.

    However, this January I suddenly decided my resolution for 2019 should be to lower my expectations.

    My whole life I’ve been an overachieving, Type A perfectionist. The sort of person who obsessively stresses about getting work in on time, yet also compulsively turns in assignments a week ahead of their due date.

    While my discipline and work ethic are certainly qualities I’ve come to appreciate, they haven’t always served me well. My relentless drive toward perfectionism and often mile-high expectations have actually held me back from doing many of the things I’ve wanted to do.

    Having moved around a lot during 2018, I found myself in the new year without a yoga studio or routine practice for the first time in over a decade. After regularly getting on my mat for nearly half my life (in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer) I was shocked and dismayed, and a little scared, by how easily I had fallen off the wagon. Even worse was how hard I was finding it to get back into the swing of things.

    I decided to sign up for a one-week free trial of a popular yoga app hoping the accessibility of classes and convenience of being able to practice whenever and wherever I wanted would inspire me to get back into it. However, the trial came and went and I still hadn’t logged onto the app or gotten on my yoga mat.

    Now officially a paying member, wracked with guilt and headlong into a shame spiral, I decided the least I could do was open the app. If only to keep from feeling any worse than I already did. As I scrolled through the classes I noticed most of them were only twenty or thirty minutes long; I certainly had twenty minutes to spare, might as well…

    Twenty minutes later, after having completed my first yoga class in months, I had an ah-ha moment.

    During the video, the instructor focused on letting go of needing to be in a certain place mentally and/or physically in order to begin to practice.

    Seated on my mat, I thought about why I had stopped practicing in the first place.

    I was used to practicing yoga in a specific way—taking a seventy-five or ninety-minute class in a traditional studio setting—and I kept waiting to have the time or energy or desire to find a studio and go take class. But none of those things ever seemed to align.

    After falling out of my routine I felt so badly about myself that I didn’t even want to think about yoga because every time I did it reminded me of how I should be practicing. And that’s what kept me from starting up again.

    The expectation that when I did yoga, it should be in a certain place and for a certain length of time kept me from seeing other options and ways of continuing to do something that was good for me and I felt good doing.

    In the spirit of taking action, and the belief that practicing for twenty minutes was obviously better than not practicing at all, I decided to try lowering my expectations. I had to figure out what felt doable to me. I still wanted to try and fit yoga into my week at least three times, but a practice of twenty to thirty minutes each felt like a more realistic goal, and one I knew was well within my reach.

    Lower expectations initially ran counter to everything I believed to be true about self-improvement (if you’re not crying or bleeding you’re obviously not trying hard enough!). According to science, however, low expectations might be the secret to success when it comes to creating positive change and building healthy habits.

    Because of what’s called the self-enhancement bias, people prefer to see themselves in a positive light. Though, this preference often and unfortunately gets in the way of real self-improvement when we overestimate things like how quickly and easily we can enact change, or how much change we’re capable of.

    When we set our expectations high and then can’t quite reach them, it feels like we’ve failed, discouragement sets in, and we tend to give up.

    Recent studies show that if we expect less, it’s more likely an outcome will exceed our expectations and have a positive impact on happiness. This is important because the happiness we feel when we exceed our expectations creates an intrinsic reward, which is a major component in building healthy habits that stick.

    Interestingly, after I got over the initial hump of doing less, it didn’t feel like I was lowering my expectations at all. I felt like I was simply breaking things up into bite-sized pieces and also being more realistic about how much I could accomplish given the amount of time, energy, and willpower I had. I found, in general, I got overwhelmed a lot less and ended up feeling better about myself overall.

    Another takeaway was the awareness that almost anything can become doable if you break it down into a process.

    I used to look at all of the big things I wanted to do in life and immediately become overwhelmed. Now when I look at those same things, take each individual goal, and format it as a step-by-step process, I realize I can achieve pretty much anything. It’s simply a matter of being reasonable about how long something is going to take, as well as getting real about how much I actually want to do a given thing.

    Lowering my expectations has equally helped me learn to prioritize my goals and itemize my time and energy, looking at what matters to me a lot, what matters to me a little, and what I really don’t care about at all.

    If you’re feeling frustrated about all the things you’re not doing—especially big, time-consuming activities—ask yourself if you really want to do this or just think you should. If it is something you want, try lowering your expectations of yourself and doing only what feels manageable, and see if that helps you get going. Like me, you may find that taking the pressure off makes it a lot easier to get and stay motivated.

  • We Keep Going, One Tiny Step at a Time, and We Should Be Proud

    We Keep Going, One Tiny Step at a Time, and We Should Be Proud

    “Don’t wait until you reach your goal to be proud of yourself. Be proud of every step you take.” ~Karen Salmansohn

    One of the greatest ironies of being human is that we’re often hardest on ourselves right when we should be most proud.

    Let’s say you finally find the courage to start a dream project you’ve fantasized about for as long as you can remember. You push through years of built-up fears, overcome massive internal resistance, and take the leap despite feeling like you’re jumping through a ring of fire, above a pit filled with burning acid.

    It’s one of the most terrifying things you’ve ever done. It dredges up all your deepest insecurities, triggers feelings you’d rather stuff down and ignore, and brings you face to face with the most fragile, vulnerable parts of yourself.

    The fact that you’re even willing to take this risk is huge. Monumental, really. Just getting on this long, winding path is an accomplishment worth acknowledging and celebrating. Most people avoid it. They do what they’ve always done and remain stuck in discontent, wishing they could know a life less limited.

    But you? You’re trying. You’re taking a chance at being who you could be, knowing full well there are no guarantees. You’re a f*cking rockstar. A total badass for giving this a go. But you likely don’t see it that way.

    You likely think you’re not doing enough, or doing it fast enough, or doing it well enough for it to count. You might get down on yourself for not learning more quickly, or having a perfectly honed vision and plan from the start.

    Instead of giving yourself credit for every inch you move forward, you might beat yourself up for not leaping a mile.

    Or maybe you’re not pursuing a dream for the future. Maybe you’re facing a pain from the past.

    Let’s say you’re finally leaning into your anxiety or depression instead of numbing your feelings with booze, food, or any other distraction. Perhaps you’re in therapy, even, trying to get to the root of your complex feelings and heal wounds that have festered, untended, for years.

    It’s intense, draining work that few can understand because there’s no visible representation of just how deep your pain goes. No way to fully explain how tough it is to face it. No way to show how hard you’re trying, every day, to fight a darkness that seems determined to consume you. So on top of being emotionally exhausted, you quite frequently feel alone.

    Just acknowledging the pain beneath the mental and emotional symptoms is an act of immense bravery. And allowing yourself to face it, however and whenever you can—well let’s just say they should give out medals for this kind of thing. You’re a f*cking hero. A total badass for doing the work to save yourself. But you probably don’t see it that way.

    You might think you aren’t making progress fast enough. Or you’re weak for having these struggles to begin with. Or you suck at life because sometimes you fall back into old patterns, even though on many other occasions, you don’t.

    Instead of giving yourself credit for every small win, you might beat yourself up for being a failure. As if nothing you do is good enough, and you’ll never be good enough, because you’re not perfect right now.

    Because if it’s not all happening right now—the healing, the growth, the progress—it’s easy to fear it never will. And it will be all your fault.

    If it seems like I’m speaking from personal experience, that’s because I am.

    I followed a decade of depression and bulimia with years of self-flagellation for not healing overnight and magically morphing into someone less fragile.

    I responded to childhood trauma by abusing myself for acting insecure and emotionally unstable, even when I was actively trying to learn better ways to live and cope.

    And I crucified myself for every cigarette and shot when I was trying to quit smoking and binge drinking, even though I quite frequently went long stretches of time without doing anything self-destructive.

    Through all this internal whip cracking, I consistently reinforced to myself that I was weak for not changing overnight when really I should have acknowledged I was strong for making any progress at all.

    It was like I was watching myself treading water, with broken limbs, while screaming at myself to hurry up and get stronger instead of throwing myself the rope of my own self-encouragement.

    In retrospect, this makes sense. This is how most of us learn growing up—not through validation but punishment. We far more often hear about what we’re doing wrong than what we’re doing right. So instead of supporting ourselves through our deepest struggles, we berate ourselves for even having them.

    Though I’ve made tremendous progress with this over the years, and I’m no longer in crisis, I still find myself expecting instant perfection at times.

    I’m currently pushing myself far beyond the edge of my comfort zone—so far I can’t even see it from where I’m precariously floating.

    I’m writing more here on the site after years of working through an identity crisis I’ve never publicly discussed.

    I’m trying to get funding for a feature film I wrote, with themes that are deeply personal to me, knowing the “low budget” is still no easy amount to raise, and I might fail spectacularly.

    I’m working on multiple new projects with third party companies—something I’ve avoided in the past because I’m a control freak who doesn’t easily trust others to take the reins.

    And I’m doing it all while pregnant—six and a half months to be exact—at almost forty years old. So on top of all the usual fears that accompany big risks and changes, I’m juggling your garden-variety new parent concerns, with a few geriatric-pregnancy-related worries for good measure. (Yes, geriatric. My uterus could be a grandmother!)

    I’m pushing myself into a new league, far outside my little work-from-home introvert bubble, while frequently feeling both physically and emotionally exhausted. And I’m finally giving myself the leeway to evolve after years of saying I wanted to grow but refusing to let go of my comfort to enable it. Really, I should be proud.

    Every time I take a meeting when I’d rather do only what I can accomplish myself, every time I send an email for a new opportunity when it would be easier to passively wait for whatever comes to me, every time I push myself to be the brave, fulfilled person I want to be for both myself and my son, I should throw myself an internal parade. A festival complete with a float in my own image and endless flutes of the best champagne. (I know, I’m pregnant, but it’s internal, remember? Keep the bubbly flowing!)

    But do I do this? To be fair, yes. Sometimes I do. And I’m proud of myself for that. I’ve come a long way from the self-abusive girl who only knew to motivate with intimidation and fear.

    But other times I can be pretty hard on myself. It’s like I have this vision of how this all should work, and when, and I blame myself if I can’t meet my rigid expectations on my ideal timeline.

    I don’t always step back and see the big picture: That there are many external factors I can’t control, and I need to be adaptable to deal with them. That it’s hard to learn new things, and no amount of willpower or dedication can make the process instant. That some things simply take time, and this isn’t a reflection of my worth or my effort.

    I get impatient. I get frustrated. I get anxious and resistant.

    And really it all comes down to attachment. I resist this slow, uncertain process, and bully myself into making things happen more quickly, because I want these things so bad I can taste them, and I fear they may never happen at all.

    I want the freedom these new opportunities could provide. I want the fulfillment of bringing my creative vision to life. I want the things I tell myself I should have made happen years ago, and I want them now so I can focus on the joy of attainment instead of beating myself up for having “wasted time.”

    But none of this internal drama is useful or productive, and it certainly does nothing for my motivation or focus. It’s nearly impossible to create from your heart when it’s totally eclipsed by anxiety and fear.

    The only way to do anything effectively is to accept where you are, let go of the outcome, and throw yourself into the process.

    So going forward, when my mind tries to bully me into doing more than I reasonably can or shame me for my pace or my progress, I’m going to remind myself I’m doing better than I think. We all are. And we all deserve more credit than we likely give ourselves.

    We all deserve credit for facing our demons, chasing our dreams, and showing up every day when it would be easier to hide.

    We all deserve acknowledgment for every tiny step forward, no matter how slow or timid, because creating change is hard.

    We all deserve recognition for the many internal hurdles we overcome, even though they’re not visibly apparent to anyone else, because often they’re harder to tackle than even the most challenging external obstacles.

    And we all deserve the peace of knowing that who we are right now is enough. Even if we have room to grow, even if there are things we’d like to achieve, we are good enough just as we are. And it’s okay to be right where we are.

    It’s okay to be messy, inconsistent, and not always at our best. It’s okay to feel insecure, unsure, lost, confused, and scared. It’s okay to make massive advances on some days and just get by on others.

    Would it be nice if we could instantly transport ourselves to the idealized future we see in our heads? Sure. But that’s not really what it means to “live our best life”—despite what our YOLO-promoting culture would have us believe.

    Living our best life is embracing what is, while working to create what can be. It’s doing the best we can with what’s in front of us, and accepting that nothing else is guaranteed. Because this is the only moment we know for sure we have.

    I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get to the end of my life and realize I missed most of it because I always felt it needed to be more—and that I needed to be more—to fully appreciate and enjoy what I had while I had it.

    So today, I’ve decided to be proud. Of my strength, my efforts, my progress, and the fact that I keep going. Whether I’m wounded, weary, or worried, I keep getting back up. I keep moving forward. I keep evolving. I am doing the best I can. So are you. And that’s something worth celebrating.

  • How Getting What You Want Can Sabotage You

    How Getting What You Want Can Sabotage You

    Winning the Race

    “You can’t win enough. You can’t have enough money. You can’t succeed enough. The only thing that can satiate that existential thirst is love. I just remember that day I made that shift from wanting to be a winner to wanting to have the most powerful, deep, and beautiful relationships I could possibly have.” ~Will Smith

    About a year ago, I made the decision to start seriously working out with weights for the first time in my life. I’ve always been an athlete and in decent shape, but I wanted to test my body and see how much of its physical potential I could realize.

    Besides, I was approaching thirty and wasn’t exactly looking like the same pillar of youth I used to look like.

    Well, needless to say, it worked. Within six months, I got into the best shape of my life I had ever been in. I went from a very unhealthy 170 pounds down to a very healthy, lean, and toned 160 pounds. I felt so incredible, both physically and mentally.

    But then something strange happened.

    I started to slack off, until eventually, I just up and stopped. I lost the desire and motivation to keep going and keep exercising. As a consequence, within a few months, I fell back into the same shape I was in before I started.

    I got exactly what I wanted. I started lifting weights to get into the best shape of my life, which I did. I wanted to get really healthy and fit, which I did.

    So then why did I stop? Why did I slow down? What happened to my desire and motivation to keep going?

    I just couldn’t understand what happened.

    I wanted to find the answer to these questions, so I started doing some exploring, both internally and externally.

    The fact is I was duped. Actually, we’ve all been duped.

    In the modern era, we’ve become an overwhelmingly results-based society. It’s all about the destination. It’s all about goals. It’s all about the achievements, the rewards, the prizes, the medals, the trophies, the paycheck, and the big shiny things we can acquire and stuff into the big shiny house.

    The only problem is this: Nobody ever told us what would happen once we actually got those things.

    If a person sets out to lift weights and exercise for the sole purpose of reaching a weight goal, then where is the desire and motivation to continue lifting weights and exercising going to come from once that goal is reached?

    Some might say, “Well, then you have to set a new weight goal and go after that one!”

    So I’m supposed to just constantly be held hostage by results? I’m supposed to just keep chasing one goal after another, like a cat chasing a string? I’m supposed to become permanently attached at the hip to hitting targets?

    That sounded really monotonous, tedious, and lifeless. No thanks!

    The answer to my questions came to me when I was watching an interview with a man named Elliot Hulse, a gym owner and passionate fitness coach:

    “When we go to the gym with a goal in mind and we just go through the motions robotically, it robs us of the experience of the actual workout. Think about going to the gym just for the workout and not for the goal; not just so that you can put a check mark next to the reps and the sets that you did, but so that you can really become engaged with what your body wants to express.” 

    Like most people, I decided to start lifting weights and exercising to get into great shape. I did it for the sole purpose of achieving an outcome; of getting an end result. The problem with that is, since that was my main source of desire and motivation to work out, I lost that source of desire and motivation once I reached my goal.

    Getting into great shape and becoming fit was an awful source of desire and motivation. My reasons for starting to work out in the first place were bad ones.

    Lifting weights and exercising was nothing more than a means to an end for me. I didn’t do it because I actually wanted to do it. I didn’t do it because I loved the activity itself. I did it for superficial reasons.

    As a consequence, once I got what I wanted, I didn’t care to do it anymore. I no longer had the desire or motivation to keep working out.

    Instead of lifting weights and exercising for the sole purpose of getting into great shape, I should have started lifting weights and exercising for the sole purpose of loving the activity itself; of loving the physical challenge it presented to me as a way to test myself.

    Boom! That was it. That was the answer I was looking for. That was the answer to my questions, and was exactly what I was looking for.

    So, I started over. This time, however, my reasons for working out and exercising changed.

    With my newfound outlook, I completely stopped setting goals. No targets, no projections, and no objectives. I simply told myself this, and reminded myself of it every single day:

    “Love working out. Love lifting weights. Love the challenge of pushing myself to my physical maximum. Love the process. Enjoy it!”

    Not only did I get back into great shape, I felt much better along the way. I didn’t feel any pressure to achieve any arbitrary goals or targets. Working out didn’t become this monotonous task that I felt like I had to do in order to justify an expectation.

    I actually loved working out. I became engaged with it. It became really fun. I became much better at it, and even performed better.

    And the best part? My desire and motivation to work out has never been greater. It’s never faded off. Not even in the slightest bit. It will never run out. Why? Because my desire and motivation for working out comes from an infinite source: The love of the activity and the process itself.

    I transferred this outlook over to my work life as well. I have zero goals in my career. I don’t have a single objective or target set. Instead, I tell myself this, every single day:

    “Love your work. Enjoy working. Be the absolute best you can at what you do. Provide as much value to every single person you work with as possible.”

    To this day, I’ve never been more successful, happy, and fulfilled in my career. I’ve progressed much further than I ever did before since adopting this new outlook. I feel liberated and unshackled, like I’ve lifted a huge mental weight off my shoulders.

    Results are always the biggest imposter. Goals are always the biggest distraction. They’re a trap. If you do things for the sole purpose of achieving results and goals, then you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to really become fully enthralled, intimate, and engaged with the process and journey itself.

    You’ll sabotage yourself.

    You don’t have to set goals to get results. Results are simply a natural consequence of enjoying something and doing it well. Results are things that come to you. They’re not things you can get.

    By prioritizing the process itself as opposed to what you can get from it, you create an endless source of desire and motivation. You liberate and unshackle yourself from the traps of results-oriented thinking. You’re able to do what you love with less pressure, less tension, and less stress.

    Not to mention, you’ll still get the results you want. Often times, you’ll get even better results than before.

    You might be thinking, “What if I don’t enjoy the process I’m doing?” Well, perhaps it’s time to move on. Quit. If something doesn’t make you happy, or makes you miserable, is it worth it to continue that process in the long run?

    Or, you can simply change things up a bit. If lifting weights is a process you don’t enjoy, try bodyweight exercises. Try resistance training, like kayaking or swimming. Keep changing things up until you do find something you can truly love and enjoy taking part in.

    Besides, if you find yourself truly unhappy doing something, there’s a good chance that whatever goals you aim to achieve won’t actually satisfy you anyways, or make it feel like the price you paid was worth doing something that made you feel miserable the entire time.

    The process is the most important thing. It’s the journey itself that yields the greatest rewards; that makes you feel awake, present, engaged, and alive.

    “Happiness is in the doing, not getting what you want.” ~Jesse Wallace

    Winning the race image via Shutterstock

  • Why It’s Okay to Be Right Where You Are in Life

    Why It’s Okay to Be Right Where You Are in Life

    “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” ~Arthur Ashe

    Whenever I go see my Rolfer Jennie, I look forward to the wisdom she shares with me. As a Rolfer and Bodyworker of twenty-five years and an expert in the mind-body connection, she has it by the bucket-load.

    Recently, upon visiting her, I fell into my old familiar trap of wanting to be ‘fixed’ or perhaps wanting her to have a simple answer for me with regards to some tension in my inner leg that had been progressing (even though I’m fully aware things are never simple with the structural scoliosis in my body).

    So as we began working, and she pinpointed several things that were going on, I said with a sigh, “I’m just going to have to continually bring my attention to different areas, aren’t I? My spine is never going to just be pain-free or without other problems cropping up that are connected to it?”

    And she replied with the crystal-clear clarity that Jennie always does.

    “Darling, you start with where you are. You always start with where you are and work from there no matter what stage you’re at or how much work you’ve already done.”

    And this really couldn’t be truer, not only for our health, fitness, and what’s going on in our bodies, but for everything else in our lives as well.

    You see, for many years now I’ve been doing a lot of work on my body, on myself, and on building businesses, and although a fascinating journey, at times it’s not easy.

    There’s always a temptation to want to be further along the road than we already are, to have it all figured out, be stronger, more balanced, ‘fixed,’ and have everything feeling amazing.

    And we can sometimes tell ourselves that when we reach a goal we’ve set, or we finally get something we’ve wanted for a while, that we’ll be ‘sorted’ or happy or things will perhaps seem easier.

    But we’re forgetting that every time we shift, every time we unwind, and every time we strengthen and then let go of something, there is always something new that will require our attention, because we’re never ‘done.’

    There is always a new area that needs our energy and nourishment. And there is always a new layer to educate ourselves on underneath every layer of ourselves that we have already shed.

    And this is what Jennie and I discovered in my body. We’d realized that some work we’d done together to open my spine and neck had been hugely transformative. But as my body had adjusted to the new pattern (which is pretty awesome on its own), because I’m not naturally perfectly straight and balanced, a new imbalance had occurred in my leg, and my body had found a new way to compensate in the only way it knew how.

    I could have viewed that as an annoyance (don’t get me wrong, at times I do get angry with my body and the way I was born, and at first I did). But then I realized that instead, I could decide to view it as a new challenge and a new interesting layer to work with and unwind, and get curious about what I could learn from it.

    The point here is that we can’t rush change.

    Meaningful, lasting change to our development, to our patterns, to our beliefs, our bodies, and to our lives cannot be rushed. 

    Because no good thing, no amazing thing worth doing, was ever created in some slap dash kind of a way.

    When we try to rush life and try to get to the ‘finish line,’ when we try and force ourselves to do something new in a way that doesn’t feel fully aligned for us (much less forgetting to celebrate how far we’ve already come), what usually happens is that it simply doesn’t stick.

    It’s like when we throw ourselves into a new exercise routine that requires us to suddenly get up two hours earlier every day. The results are usually injury, exhaustion, or resentment because we’re doing it as a result of feeling we have to, in a way that doesn’t sit right with who we are, and we’re pushing ourselves too hard, too fast.

    We’ve got to work gradually on our deeper, more profound change.

    We’ve got to open ourselves up to working on things carefully, layer by layer.

    We’ve got to exercise more patience with ourselves.

    We’ve got to allow our truth and our message to evolve as we evolve and figure out what we need to serve us.

    And we’ve definitely got to acknowledge and celebrate how far we’ve come more frequently so that we can practice being kinder to ourselves along the way. 

    So can you let yourself off the hook here and just be okay with starting where you are at right now?

    Having got to somewhere you wanted to be doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be more new challenges ahead, but neither does it mean you have to start all over again; you’re just starting from a new place.

    We’re never ‘done,’ we’re never finished, and for the things we really love and are passionate about, why would we want to be?

    So how about getting excited about that instead of frustrated?

    How about welcoming it in with fondness and anticipation instead of impatience?

    And what would it feel like to just be okay with being where you are right now while knowing that you’re doing your best, you’re moving forward, and you’re more than equipped and ready for what’s next?

  • Taking Small Steps to Do the Thing That Scares You

    Taking Small Steps to Do the Thing That Scares You

    “Take that first step. Bravely overcoming one small fear gives you the courage to take on the next.” ~Daisaku Ikeda

    When I was younger I loved to climb trees, but I was always too scared to get myself down. Somehow, when standing at the base of a massive Oak, I’d forget how terrified I’d feel at the top.

    So I’d climb away, trying to prove to the neighborhood boys that I was fearless, and then stay up there, clutching the bark and crying, until someone helped me get safely to the ground.

    I knew who I wanted to be—a daredevil Tomboy who was adventurous and tough—but I was deathly afraid of feeling out of control and getting hurt.

    You can probably imagine how terrified I felt when I went skydiving several years ago. I would have sooner put hot pokers into my ocular cavities then let go and free fall from 10,000 feet in the sky.

    It was a lot higher than the tree branches—making the rise to the top a lot more terrifying.

    Still, I wanted to do it. I had a whole list of reasons:

    • I wanted to prove I could.
    • I wanted to feel alive.
    • I wanted to face a fear.
    • I wanted to impress and inspire myself.
    • I wanted to impress my boyfriend, who’d invited me for our second date.

    It would have been easy to psych myself out of going. It was the scariest thing I’d ever done. I was overwhelmed with emotion, and even slightly paralyzed. It didn’t help matters that someone tweeted me a link to skydiving fatalities an hour before my boyfriend showed up.

    In that moment, it seemed far more reasonable to back out. I knew it was unlikely I’d plummet to my death, but even the slightest risk seemed too big to take.

    As I read through the various stories of things that had gone wrong for others, wrestling with my fear of facing a similar fate, I reminded myself that the part of me that wanted to do it was greater than the part of me that was afraid.

    I realized the only way I’d follow through was to stop thinking and focus on doing. I had to start moving toward it, one inch at a time. (more…)

  • Create Solutions, Not Resolutions

    Create Solutions, Not Resolutions

    New Day

    “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    With the New Year approaching, resolutions are on everyone’s mind.

    I’ve never liked the word “resolution.” As defined in the dictionary, resolution means “a firm decision to do or not do something,” and anyone who’s ever done, well, anything knows that life rarely works like that.

    I prefer to think of my January decisions as New Year’s solutions. Defined in the dictionary as “a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation,” solutions are useful and practical. Thinking about them now helps us find peace in whatever may happen in the year ahead.

    The best solution I can think of, and one that is especially helpful after the excess of the holiday season, is letting go.

    I often hear stories from people who decide at the beginning of a year that this will be the one when they’ll be able to fix their bodies.

    They want to “fix” themselves; they want to look like their high school pictures or their super fit best friends or whoever’s on the cover of Vogue.

    My feedback for all who are constricted by a negative diet mentality: let go.

    This seems counterintuitive, ironic, cruel, and maybe even ridiculous. You’ve just connected with a powerful desire about what you want your life to be like, and now I’m going to tell you that you have to move forward completely unattached to the outcome of whether you’ll get the life you want and will now be working toward.

    The crux of this philosophy is that in order to get that which we want, we must let go of our need and desire for it.

    This may sound impossible, unattainable, and completely contradictory; however, this is where freedom lies.

    I know firsthand that letting go is the path to freedom and joy. My struggle with weight started when I was a toddler. When I got older, I thought that if I could only lose the extra weight, I would be happy.

    I did lose the weight—a hundred pounds—between my twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth birthdays. I had finally achieved what I thought was my goal; I was thin, so I should be happy, right?

    I was more miserable than ever. I was so worried about gaining the weight back, so scared that I might relapse, that I couldn’t enjoy my newfound health.

    I was stuck living in fear that the future would not be what I wanted, that I would lose control, that my hard work would be for naught.

    It was only when I figured out how to live in the present, how to be focus on the now and not concern myself with worrying about things that had not even yet happened, that I was able to be happy.

    After learning to do that, not only was I content for the first time in my life, but I also was able to keep the weight off without worrying about it. I have kept that a hundred pounds off for twenty-four years.

    We achieve the life we desire when we begin living for the moment, in the moment, and because of the moment. Finding happiness in this New Year will not be an outcome or a result. It is doing; it is being.

    How can your foster this way of being in your life? It begins with looking at those things we desire most and finding the bliss in working toward them in the present—not in achieving them in the future.

    Achievement is still the goal, but ironically, you only get there by letting go of the need for it. (more…)