Tiny Buddha

Tag: risk

  • Most of the Things We Fear Are Highly Unlikely to Happen

    Most of the Things We Fear Are Highly Unlikely to Happen

    Fear

    “Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.” ~Dorothy Thompson

    Australia is full of biting, pecking, threatening animals.

    Swarms of mosquitos puncture our skin every summer, flies are everywhere, we’ve got spiders bigger than my hand, our magpie birds swoop and peck at our heads during spring, and don’t get me started on the sharks and crocodiles and those mighty big bites.

    I am most scared of the snakes. Australia has twenty of the top twenty-five most venomous species of snakes in the world. We have a hundred and forty species of land snakes and thirty-two species of sea snakes. That’s a lot.

    I grew up in the Australian bush. My family had a small property that was covered in trees and long grass.

    Throughout my youth my parents and others constantly reminded me that I had to be watchful and careful of animals that bit, pecked, or did other horrible things, particularly snakes.

    If we were walking anywhere outdoors, it was important to make noises to scare snakes away. I sang, whistled, and stamped a lot and saw almost every stick as a potential snake. The longer the grass, the more noise I made and the more I watched for any movement.

    It didn’t help that when I was very young my parents had a bonfire. It was dusk and I trotted over to the fire, all happy and youthful, and a black snake reared up in front of me.

    I’ve never forgotten the shiny eyes, the glisten on its scales. It was absolutely terrifying. We stared at each other for a moment and then I employed a bit of first class noise creation by screaming at the top of my lungs, and it slithered away.

    Dad also used to tell stories of growing up in country Australia in a big old house with snakes everywhere.

    One his favorite stories was of the time he walked into their outdoor toilet and got a big shock when he saw a two meter long brown snake curled up on the floor enjoying the afternoon sun.

    The toilet was a bench of wood with a hole, and because there were so many snakes, Dad was in the habit of crouching over the hole rather than sitting on it for fear of snakes biting his bottom.

    It didn’t end there. There was also a small island on the lake in front of where he lived called Snake Island, and it was apparently infested with them.

    I’ve seen Snake Island and it’s covered in long grass and bushes, the perfect holiday destination for slithering scary things. Oh yes, and the big brown snakes could swim, yes, swim. That’s how they could go on their holidays to the island.

    Can you imagine how much I loved hearing these stories, as every kid loves a scary story, but also how much these and other snake stories impacted a child with a very big imagination?

    It didn’t help that snakes were spotted on the property every now and again. As I grew up and throughout my adult years I never stopped watching for snakes in the bush. That’s a long time to be scared of the outdoors.

    The Camping Trip & the Confrontation with the Slithering Things

    Two months ago I went on a camping trip with my family. We were camping at a remote dam surrounded by beautiful arid bush, lots of gum trees, crickets buzzing, rough ground, and dare I say it, lots and lots of sticks. A gazillion sticks, actually.

    After the sun set over the lake and we’d eaten apricot chicken in front of a campfire flickering away in a rusty old bin, I took my torch and proceeded to walk the five minutes in the darkness to the toilet block to brush my teeth.

    My snake routine started again: torch flashing over ground, eyes seeing long thin objects, stamping my feet as I walked, some humming. It didn’t help that my torch was dimming and nearly out of batteries.

    There were shadows and movement everywhere and so many sticks. These sticks could bite me at anytime and inject me with deadly poison, and our campsite was far from medical help.

    And then it happened. I hadn’t camped in a while or been out in the bush in a while. I had been through a period of my life where I had suffered terribly from an illness and had faced many fears and had overcome many of them. I was in the habit of facing things head on.

    I thought, “What’s the chance of being bitten out here? Had my father who had basically lived in snake kingdom in his youth ever been bitten? Had anyone I know, any friends of friends, anyone, ever been bitten?”

    I watched myself looking over the dim ground. I watched my brain wanting to invent snakes, seeing movement when the only movement was the shadows cast by the torch and the wind in the gum leaves. I was dumbfounded. What had I been doing all these years?

    As soon as I got back to my tent, I got onto Google and looked up exactly how many people had been bitten by snakes in Australia. It turns out that out of Australia’s population of twenty-three million people only one or two people die from snakebites per year.

    Most bites are because people try to pick up the snake or kill it. If I wanted to get bitten I would have to chase the snake down and pick it up and hug it. I also found out that sharks only kill one or two people in Australia per year as well, and the average is only a little higher for crocodiles.

    I lay back on my sleeping bag and comprehended what Google was saying. That all my life from a young age I’d been programmed to be fearful of something that was extremely unlikely to happen. 

    It dawned on me that my sense of alarm and my fastidious watchfulness was misplaced. It had taken years and years of reinforced programming to get me to a place that I couldn’t walk in the bush without being fearful.

    What a silly state to be in. I remembered that a couple of years ago I’d hiked through New Zealand and one of the truly delightful days was walking through grass as high as my waist without fear. There are no snakes in New Zealand. I’ve never forgotten the ecstasy of it.

    Reminding Ourselves About the Nature of Fear

    My realization about snakes also highlighted to me how heavily programmed fear can make us completely lose our perspective. We don’t even question whether what we fear has any basis at all. We don’t test it. We don’t think about it other than to react.

    Albert Einstein said that we must not stop questioning, and this applies when we feel fear. We should question it, investigate the nature of it, and test our preprogramed and sometimes deeply subconscious hypothesis about the ways we should live our lives.

    Sometimes the result of our investigation will be that our fears are founded. For example, we probably should be fearful of walking across a canyon on a tightrope. But what if there’s no rational explanation?

    What if there’s a brilliant world out there that we are not experiencing to the fullest in this very short time on earth?

    We have some tough genetic programming to overcome. Our brains are used to looking for threats in the environment. In the past it was a tiger, now it’s whatever we deem threatening.

    I was recently doing some research on fish and found a study examining whether fish experience pain. It turns out that even fish avoid objects that have previously caused them pain.

    Our natural animal instinct is to avoid what has hurt us before or, similarly, what we perceive could hurt us in the future. Our alarm mechanisms are inbuilt.

    We also live in a complex world full of stimulation, and it’s hard for our brains to keep up with what is a true threat such as a car heading straight for us and what’s not. There’s just so much for our minds to deal with.

    The good news is that we are equipped with tools such as logic, information, and awareness to help us overcome our fears.

    I’m finding the more I confront my fears and do the opposite of what they are warning against, the more my consciousness understands that these things are a programmed mirage.

    I know we’ve all heard this wisdom, we all inherently know that most fears have no basis in reality, but my little snake adventure reminded me that I don’t often apply this knowledge to my everyday life. So this time I decided that it was about time that I did.

    So how does a woman who has treaded heavily all her life for fear of sticks learn to live again? I’ll tell you how I learned. Later that night I had to go to the bathroom and I ventured outside my tent, turned off the torch, and walked—not stomped, walked.

    I drank in the vision of the moonlight touching the gum trees, the lake, the rough dry land and it was glorious. That’s how.

    Face everything and rise image via Shutterstock

  • 3 Courageous Choices That Make Us Better, Happier People

    3 Courageous Choices That Make Us Better, Happier People

    Girl with Arms Raised

    “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” ~Mary Anne Radmacher

    My daughter is the most courageous person I know. She’s two years old and fierce.

    So often we think courage looks like a warrior, soldier, or athlete.

    But I think we have it all wrong. Courage has a soft side that we have ignored for centuries.

    Take my daughter for instance. The other day she was running full speed ahead at the playground. She was so focused on getting to her favorite slide that she didn’t see the stick on the ground in front of her. In one second, she slipped, fell, and started bawling.

    I ran to her, picked her up, and kissed her knee. One minute later, she was wiggling out of my arms, feet on the ground, and running faster than before.

    Now that’s crazy courage. She had no reason to believe she wouldn’t fall again. However, she didn’t appear afraid at all. Even though previous experience told her she could fall again. She didn’t listen. She’s led by her enthusiasm and not her fear.

    Some people would say this is naive. But I think this is something adults need more of: courage.

    Courage is the ability to move forward boldly and authentically, guided by your intuition, despite fear, pain, or uncertainty. The word courage actually comes from the Latin word “cor,” which means heart.

    Inner courageousness allows us to follow our hearts, listen to our intuition, and lead soulfully satisfying lives while having all of our needs, desires, and goals met.

    Here are three ways you can have crazy courage like a toddler.

    Hit the ground.

    Go hard. Go fast. And if you fall, get up, dust off, and go again. But this time, go harder and go faster. Don’t worry about failure. Convince yourself that you can succeed. And no matter what sticks fall by your feet, persevere and keep going.

    I’ve hit rock bottom before. And you know what? It’s not a bad place to be. You get to let go of everything and start again. Do you know how exciting it is to start all over again? Make better choices. Go in a different direction. The joy of releasing any burden, any guilt, all of the “should’s” and “suppose to’s” and doing it all from scratch.

    So many people think they can’t start from the beginning and rebuild their life. So they stay in unfulfilling jobs, relationships, and negative situations. But honestly, the beginning of happiness is better than the middle of mediocrity or misery.

    Tell the truth.

    Be honest about your feelings. Don’t call fear apathy. Don’t call worry tiredness. If you’re afraid, it’s okay to say you are. The more you express your true feelings, the more connected you’ll be to your authentic self.

    Emotions are energy in motion. They are meant to come up and be released. We were not meant to hold on to them. Unexpressed emotions create baggage that slows us down. The more you deny your emotions, the further down you push your authenticity. Let your emotions rise up and let them go.

    Allow your enthusiasm to lead you.

    Have you ever felt so much joy bubbling up inside you that you wanted to run away? I don’t think we allow the full capacity of joy to overwhelm our lives. When was the last time you laughed from your gut? When was the last time you let joy shake you, rock you, and fill you up? Lean in to your enthusiasm.

    The more you seek to control this uneasiness, the less pure joy you will experience. Have the courage to let joy unnerve you and rock your boat. It’s a lot more fun to open up and let go. Trust me. Trust yourself. Fully commit to feeling good.

    This means taking that class you’ve been meaning to take. Going to places you think are beautiful. Spending time with people who encourage you. Learning that skill you’ve been craving to learn.

    Ditch the bucket list and start a living list of all the things you want to do while you’re alive. Start working on your list now!

    Schedule “joy” into your calendar. I know you’re busy, but it’s worth it.

    I recently started learning to play the piano. Making music exhilarates me. Will I become a concert pianist? Probably not. But even with two toddlers, I make time for it because I enjoy it.

    If you start with these three things, you’ll notice your courage muscles begin to build. It may hurt in the beginning. But if you keep going, you’ll get stronger. And not the fake strength that relies on bravado or hiding our emotions. But real inner strength that grounds you in inner knowingness, confidence, and certainty.

    Cultivating real courage makes us better people. And better people create better worlds.

    Girl with arms raised image via Shutterstock

  • Making a Big Decision When You’re Not Sure Which Choice Is Right

    Making a Big Decision When You’re Not Sure Which Choice Is Right

    “When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl

    Over the last two and a half years, I have made some big changes in my life. And by big, I mean enormous.

    First, I moved with my husband and our children from a home I loved for ten years. Shortly after, my husband and I ended a twenty-year relationship and marriage. With that separation, I made the decision to buy the house we had moved to, which on paper, I shouldn’t have been able to buy.

    Apparently ending a long commitment and beginning a large financial one on my own wasn’t enough for me, though. The following year I resigned from a secure job to pursue a dream I hadn’t fully envisioned and started a business without projected goals.

    When I list out all the changes, I start to question my own sanity.

    I have never been one to make quick decisions, especially ones that I hadn’t thought through. I was raised by my father, a self-proclaimed workaholic, who spent his career as a high-powered executive for a high-risk industrial insurance company.

    I was not bred to believe in taking chances, to live on instinct alone, and to leave anything that resembled security. You just don’t do that. But something was stirring in me that kept me unsettled.

    I knew it was time to make changes, and I knew those changes were absolutely not guaranteed to work in my favor. I was scared—no, terrified—to alter the course of my life, but standing still gave me even more anxiety.

    How do you make the decision to change your entire life and know it’s truly right for you?

    I have a secret, one that I’ve used consistently in recent years when making decisions that weighed heavily on me.

    It’s a technique that simplifies the agonizing back and forths of “should I or shouldn’t I?” One I wished I learned when I was younger to ward off some major bouts of indecisiveness and internal torment. Although in retrospect, I would not have been ready to use it until I was actually ready to hear it.

    When I was agonizing over the idea of ending my marriage, I reached out to a friend who had recently undergone some of his own major life changes. I didn’t tell him what I was debating, but I told him it was big.

    He gave me the most valuable advice I had ever received. “To make the decision, take the fear out, and then you’ll know.”

    What? How on Earth do you take the fear out? I had lived in fear for the majority of my existence. How do you keep yourself safe if you don’t live in the fear? In fact, fear is safe. It kept me securely in the life I felt like I was suffocating in. I knew exactly what to expect.

    Why step outside for fresh air if there is no guarantee that that air is not poisonous? Who does that? Maybe I do. Or at least maybe I could ask.

    So I asked the question to myself out loud, and then I took the fear out. Completely out. No worries in the world, fairy tale ending out. I had to conceptualize what the fears looked like and what they actually were.

    My biggest fear was that I couldn’t manage life on my own, including running a household financially and physically. What if I tried and I failed? What would I do?

    To discard the fear, I had to “what if” the opposite. “What if I tried and succeeded? How would I feel if I managed on my own and figured out each step of the way?”

    I also worried about the lack of emotional support and wondered if I would come home from work each day crumbling and crying and not be able to parent my children effectively. I had always had a partner, someone to rely on and to pick me back up when I fell.

    I knew the feeling of being alone, and I knew how awful it felt to think that I couldn’t handle it. I felt like a failure even before I tried.

    Then I asked myself, “What if I used my resources for emotional support? What if I relied on my friends and family—and what if I relied on myself?” The reversal of the what-ifs felt powerful and motivating. And I knew it was possible they could be true.

    When we tell ourselves lies, it feels awful; when we speak the truth, it is light and freeing. Each truth I spoke felt closer to answering my own question.

    Not only did I have to identify each fearful “what if,” but I also had to remove them. This can be done by listing them on paper and crossing them out or simply calling them by name and removing them from the equation like they don’t exist.

    I saw them each, one by one, stand up to me. There were so many. And then, one by one, I asked them to leave the room. And there came my answer: it was time to let go.

    It was not an answer I particularly liked, nor was it easy. In fact, it was one of the hardest answers I’ve ever had to accept. But it was honest, and it was accurate. Our heart always knows the answer when we gain the courage to even ask.

    Since that day, I have been faced with a multitude of opportunities to use and teach this technique. It has never steered me wrong. And throughout making the changes, I had to walk through those fears with each step. They appear over and over again and need to be confronted on a regular basis.

    It is not an easy task, but it’s no more challenging than living with them. Living in fear is not far from not living at all. It is intermittently debilitating and paralyzing, yet always extraordinarily painful, even when it’s safe.

    Whenever I hit the wall of self-doubt after following through with the decisions I’ve made, I look back at who I was a few years ago and ask what she would think of me.

    The answer is consistent. I am the woman I would have envied from afar. A woman strong enough to live a life she didn’t know she wanted at first glance, but one that allowed her to be her authentic self. I chose to take the fear out and, in turn, chose to live as myself.

    Making a big decision? Go ahead, take the fear out, and then you will know exactly what it is your heart wants you to know.

  • 3 Powerful Ways to Get Moving When You Feel Stuck in Life

    3 Powerful Ways to Get Moving When You Feel Stuck in Life

    “One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown

    I realized I’m going to die soon.

    Not, you know, imminently. But soon. Even sixty is soon. Seventy, eighty, ninety, still soon. And I’ll be lucky if I get that old.

    I’m going to die.

    What’s gotten into me? Maybe it’s the Robin Williams story. That would make sense. A loss that’s shocking really resets your perspective.

    Life is fleeting, it’s brief. Even if it’s what we’d consider a long life, it’s short.

    This was a thought of mine in the shower today.

    I think it jolted me into feeling a little less uptight. A little less scared.

    The real scary thing is the big, black unknown. That vast mystery of whatever comes next. Whatever happens after life is snuffed out.

    And it will be snuffed out. In the grand scheme (even medium scheme) of history, pretty relatively quickly.

    That’s morbid, you may think. But I felt a little better today when I had this thought.

    After a good long stretch of isolating myself and digging further into a rut, I felt better about things I’ve been going through. Like cyclical insecure thoughts I’d been having. Apprehension, anger, regret, confusion. Fear. Anxiety.

    I feel good today. Because in the face of life ending too soon, and not knowing what comes next, I realize that I know what can come now. I can put together what I want. I can face things boldly.

    Compared to the uncertainty of whatever is in the afterlife, whatever my blind date thinks of me tomorrow is pretty manageable by comparison. While I’m here, I better embrace life a little.

    I imagine that future me will look back on present me very much the way present me looks back on younger me.

    I shake my head sometimes at younger me for her insecurities and hesitation and fear. I want to tell her it’s all going to go by so fast—enjoy it now.

    Enjoy it now.

    Right now is the time when future me may look back and wonder what on earth I was so worried about. I’m only thirty-one. Thirty-one! Forty-one year-old me would love to be thirty-one!

    And eighty-one-year-old me would really wish she was thirty-one.

    My god. I’m so lucky to be thirty-one.

    What am I doing wasting it on insecurity? Why do I freeze and gravitate toward inaction sometimes?

    Every moment that I’m unsure, worried, fretting, concerned about how I’m doing, or wondering if I’ve made the right choices, done the best I can, of if I should worry about what someone thinks, is a waste of precious time. It’s like fourteen-year-old me thinking she was fat. She wasn’t.

    Are you hesitant about a fork in the road? Feeling anxious about your options (or lack thereof)? Feel old? Regret something? I can’t tell you what will fix it, but I can share three things that have always given me motivation to really move forward and live.

    Walk through a graveyard.

    It seems creepy. It isn’t. A cemetery has a fantastic way of reminding you to live your life. Fear of whatever choices you have ahead, or any paralysis of action you may be experiencing, will melt in the presence of beautifully landscaped permanent resting places.

    Take a walk around your nearest or prettiest cemetery this weekend and try to quiet your mind. For me, this exercise always results in a great dose of perspective on life. Namely, that it ends. So any choice of action, regardless of how it turns out, is a gift.

    Imagine young you.

    Remember the school dance you were too scared to go to? Or the crossroads between starting your career or traveling after graduation? How about the girl you never asked out, or the boy you never told off for hurting you?

    Young you was trepidatious about a few things—occasions you wouldn’t hesitate to rise to now. So, too, would older you appreciate you finding the courage to drop the worries that are holding you both back today.

    Imagine the worst that can happen.

    Got a scary thing you want to do? Think of the worst that could happen and weigh it against how much you’d regret not trying. Or, if you’re not sure what to do at all, weigh the consequences of trying something versus doing nothing.

    Do something. Embrace the fact that you’re living. Failure, success—both are part of a full life. Living with complacency isn’t living at all.

    My favorite question to ask people is what they’d be most upset about if the Grim Reaper showed up and said they’ve got five minutes.

    Why wait?

    Get to it.

  • Saying Goodbye to One Adventure Is Saying Hello to Another

    Saying Goodbye to One Adventure Is Saying Hello to Another

    Dawn of a New Day

    “If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.” ~Paulo Coelho

    When I was born, the nurse lifted me from the bed, placed me on a cold metal operating table, and prepped my umbilical cord to be severed. As my parents put it, I “screamed bloody murder” when she attended to me, then grabbed ahold of the index finger of her latex glove and pulled it clean off.

    “You just wouldn’t let go,” my dad recalls, chuckling.

    That often-told family tale has risen to consciousness many times during the last few months, especially when I’ve found myself overwhelmed, fearful, and grief-stricken at the task of saying goodbye.

    Goodbye to my first love, each of my beloved college friends, my wonderful university and creative writing program, to the Pacific Northwest, and more importantly to a time of my life that had a big role in bearing me into the woman I am today.

    Goodbye, because I picked up and moved to Berkeley, CA to explore, to live, to find new joy. As the move became more real, every “so long” brought with it the coldness of surgical steel at my back, a wet cry, an unwavering grip on those places and people I love.

    The thing about letting go is that it’s unnatural to most and must be learned with great patience and persistence.

    Perhaps it’s difficult because we need attachment to survive—babies need their mothers and the rest of the “village” to thrive physically and emotionally, to adjust to life beyond the womb.

    But letting go is worth learning, because it means risk, and with risk comes growth.

    I crave growth. I crave new experience. I crave adventure. And as much as I loved Bellingham, it wasn’t supplying me with the tools to be happy.

    I want to be a well-known writer, I want to see the world, I want to learn new stories and sing songs with strangers. I just couldn’t do that in a small, bayside city of people I know well. But the inevitability (even predictability) of this goodbye couldn’t make it any easier.

    Intentionally letting go is not any less excruciating than doing so subconsciously, and I would be remiss if I told you so. It requires we savor not only sweet beginnings, but also bitter endings. It requires we face fear and grief in the face, rather than burying them deep.

    The day I left Bellingham, I sat in the middle of the floor of my empty apartment bawling. Whereas we are taught to stay strong, to hold tears in, to look forward with no impulse to go back, I allowed myself a moment to be achingly present in the memories and attachment I have to that place.

    I remembered drinking wine on floor with my roommates until the wee hours; writing story after story on my bedroom carpet; lying in bed and talking most the night with the first boy I’ve ever really loved.

    Okay, so maybe I’m a sap. Or perhaps even a masochist. But I’ve found that if you give fear and grief the time of day, gratefulness and joy greet you on the other side.

    Endings just want to be acknowledged, just want you to pause and remember how beautiful life can be. In that way, how you deal with endings can become a litmus test for how mindfully you are living.

    So, I challenge you to see change not with dread, but as a chance to remember how beautiful your life has been, is, and will continue to be. And whenever you say “so long,” keep an eye out for that new hello. It will come.

    I know it’s true as I sit in a sunny Berkeley coffee shop writing, musing on the courage it took to get me here and watching a little boy in denim overalls holding tight to the hand of his “Papa!” To all this new adventure, joy and love, I say hello, hello, hello.

    Photo by nevena kukoljac

  • Taking a Chance on Happiness and Knowing We Deserve It

    “Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing.” ~Denis Waitley

    I like to tell the story of how I changed my mind about myself and what I was worthy of and how that change almost immediately led me to my husband—or, rather, how it led him to me. On Craigslist.

    But unlike a fairytale, we didn’t go straight from point A (boy meets girl on a sometimes-shady website) to point B (boy marries girl in the church she was baptized and grew up in, across the street from her childhood home) and happily ever after.

    We sorta stalled at first. And it was all my fault.

    See, even though we hit it off in a big way and immediately started emailing each other, like, a dozen times a day (seriously, I kept every single email and treasure them all), I wasn’t fully sold.

    I didn’t think we had a chance romantically. Even though the poor guy did everything but jump through flaming hoops to get the point across that workdays full of emails were just slightly less than he hoped for, I held him at bay.

    I conveniently overlooked his invitations to connect over the phone after work some night. He called me “Beautiful” like it was my name, and I would just conveniently overlook it. There was a big old wall between us, and I was the architect.

    Finally, after a month of this nonsense, the truth hit me like a bus (funny, since I was sitting on a bus at the time).

    I heard a voice ask, “What is wrong with you? You have everything you’ve always said you wanted, and you’re pushing it away!” After I looked around and made sure it wasn’t some weirdo randomly talking to me (you just never know on the bus), I gave the idea some thought.

    Whoa. Yes, I totally was. I was pushing it all away with both hands.

    This was another huge turning point in my life. Right there on the Route 36 bus.

    I explored this idea as I made my way home that night. For once there was a man in my life who was clearly interested in me, who very obviously wanted to take our relationship to a more serious romantic level. There was no struggle, no game playing, no confusion, no chase (at least, not for me).

    And we had so much in common—our values, our beliefs on religion and spirituality, our interests. Sure, there were differences too, but just enough to keep things interesting, to keep us both growing and learning from each other. Enough to give us endless topics to ramble over through countless emails, for sure.

    As long as I’m being honest, I was also totally addicted to talking with him. I looked forward to every single email and would get pouty when I didn’t hear from him right away. I had to check in and wish him a good night before leaving work and had to check my inbox as soon as I got home to see if he wrote back.

    I was clearly smitten. But here I was, holding the poor guy at arm’s length, even as he tried so hard to enter my heart.

    So what was my deal, anyway?

    It boiled down to this: I was miserable with my life the way it was, but it was all I knew. It was what I was comfortable with. I hated being alone, but “alone” was the only way I’d ever known my life.

    I still needed to come to terms with the fact I was worth loving. No matter how awesome I told the world I was, I needed to believe that there was someone out there who would love my wacky self as-is, no strings attached, no holds barred, no weight loss needed.

    Putting it bluntly: I had never known a man who didn’t require me to change in some way for them to consider me dateable. This was a total challenge to my self-image.

    I also needed a hefty shot of courage. After all, I’d been hurt in the past—too many times to count.

    And I hadn’t even had a romance with any of these other guys. I’d shared my heart, but I hadn’t shared my body. I hadn’t shared my secrets.

    They hadn’t heard me snore in my sleep.

    What if I started a relationship with this man and we broke up? How would I handle that, knowing that there was another person out there who knew all about me? This was a whole new world, and I had no idea how to navigate it.

    Still, in the face of all this fear and hesitation, there was a quiet little voice in my heart that pointed out that the easiest thing in the world would be to just give in. To stop fighting it, which took more effort than letting things take their natural course. To believe that I was lovable, if only because this man saw me as such, and to trust that he would never hurt me.

    And he never has.

    I realize now that this way of thinking affects people in more ways than just the example I gave here.

    So much of the time we long for something else, something new, something better, but when the opportunity presents itself, we either miss it completely or we come up with a million reasons why it’s not right for us.

    We’re too busy, we’re not smart enough, we’re not lucky enough, or connected enough; we don’t have the money for it. On and on.

    We let huge, potentially life-altering opportunities pass us by because, at the end of the day, we don’t believe we deserve them or that we could handle them if we gave them a shot. Even if we want them with all our heart.

    It’s not that we’re lying to ourselves about what we want. It’s that we let fear dictate what we’re worth.

    It takes work and a lot of self-awareness, but if we can identify these negative beliefs—all based around fear—we can work on becoming a little more fearless every day.

    Our job is to stop standing in our own way. To drop our limiting beliefs, stop dedicating time and energy to talking ourselves out of what we so richly deserve—fulfillment, love, abundance, joy, and peace. To simply open our arms and our hearts and accept the possibility of something more, right there within our grasp.

    That’s when things start moving and grooving. I promise.

    Let’s stop holding our dreams at arm’s length. Or eventually they’re going to give up on us and continue dating another girl—which is what could have happened had I not texted my man that very night after my fateful bus ride.

    In my excitement, I pulled out my phone and sent this super articulate message: You know what? I think I kinda like you.

    I have never regretted sending that text. To this day I thank the voice in my heart for setting me straight and for giving me the courage to take a chance.

    Photo by Beshef

  • How to Stop Limiting Yourself and Feel Fully Alive

    How to Stop Limiting Yourself and Feel Fully Alive

    “You can only grow if you’re willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.” ~Brian Tracy

    I like my comfort zone and I hate it. It’s safe, but if I stay there too long it starts to feel like a cage. No wild creature is happy in a cage, and we’re all wild creatures at heart.

    Sure, we like the reliability of being well fed, clothed, safe, and loved. It’s my theory though (formed just this second) that we are meant to hunt, to seek, to struggle, to engage with a world that offers no guarantees.

    Like a caged animal, we become depressed when we play it too safe. “Safe” offers no challenge, no growth, and no newness. Without those things we wither and die inside; we watch too much TV, we eat junk food, we numb out.

    Could it be that the prevalence of depression in First World countries is because our lives don’t challenge us as much as we need them to?

    We all need exercise to be healthy. Muscles need to break to become strong. Do our hearts and minds also need challenge to thrive?

    About eighteen months ago I got sick. It was a weird benign tumor that caused a lot of pain, enough pain that I took myself to hospital at three one morning.

    Eventually, the tumor healed and the pain stopped. It didn’t go away; it just stopped hurting me. In the meantime, though, I became very careful, controlled, and I dropped out of my life. I felt afraid and limited. I lost faith in myself.

    My world got very small and I became too dependent on those close to me. I was not much fun. I lost friendships.

    Now I am rebuilding. It’s not always easy, but I’m on the way back.

    I can now see that my comfort zone isn’t comfortable. My fears and limitations have drawn the boundaries of my life, and that’s a small cage to live in.

    That’s not how I want to live. I remember more lively times and I want that power and flow back. I want to break through the darkness into the bright light, where life is colorful again.

    I want my life back.

    If you also need to expand your comfort zone, you may benefit from applying these lessons that are helping me:

    1. Get honest.

    Ask questions. Get really clear on what is true for you. What do you think? What do you feel? What do you want? What is useful? What’s the truth?

    Truth can be hard to take, but it puts you on solid ground. You can walk forward on solid ground.

    For me, right now I am “calling myself out” on the lie that I lack the power to make changes.

    2. Change is possible.

    We can make changes. You may have had a vibrant life before and you can make one again. Know you can change and try new things.

    When I decide I’m a victim, it’s a lie. It is just not true. Granted, while I was sick change may have been too hard, but that’s not true anymore.

    3. Change is uncomfortable, and that’s okay.

    It doesn’t come without risk. We can’t stay in our comfort zones and expand at the same time. Growing is going to be uncomfortable. It’s even going to feel wrong. Do it anyway.

    The only way to get a bigger comfort zone is to do things outside it until they don’t scare you anymore. Then repeat.

    4. Change happens step by step.

    Changes seem big when you start out, but they’re just a series of small steps. They’re just a tiny set of actions. They’re the sum of the things you do, day by day.

    A slight change in trajectory is a huge change over time. It doesn’t happen all at once.

    5. Explore possibility.

    Every day, write a list of things that may take you in the direction you want to go. Write a list of ways to expand your life. Write a list of solutions. Write a list of “could do’s”.

    You don’t even need to keep the lists. The good ones will stick. They’ll pop up again and again like your favourite muppet.

    6. Take one tiny risk a day.

    Set yourself one tiny risk. Commit to doing it. That means you have to do it. No second-guessing. You said you would do it; you’re doing it! It may not be the “right” action, but that’s irrelevant. It’s the thing you chose to try.

    7. Every action is an experiment.

    Not every little risk will pay off, but that’s life, that’s learning. Every action will teach you something.

    I did well in school; it’s taken me a long time to get comfortable with failing and actually “learning to learn.” The school of life is a better teacher and a tougher one. That’s my school right now.

    8. Courage is more important than success.

    I heard Brené Brown say, “Being courageous is more important than being successful.” I have that on my wall. I think it’s true. Taking small risks makes me feel alive. The other name for “fear” is “thrill.”

    9. Risk develops resilience.

    We gain resilience with practice by striving, failing, and getting up again. It’s how we build emotional muscle. Sure, have a cry, share your humiliations with a trusted someone, then get back up and take the next step. Being courageous feels scary and good.

    And so, right now, I extend invitations knowing I may be rejected. I commit to writing projects that may not be published. I open up more to those closest to me and really let them in.

    I open up my world one step at a time, and it’s scary and it’s thrilling. The colors are brighter at the edge of my comfort zone.

    I am learning that my fears are false dragons guarding the gold. The dragons look real, but really, only the gold is.

  • Dare to Stand Out: 3 Ways to Let Your Unique Self Shine

    Dare to Stand Out: 3 Ways to Let Your Unique Self Shine

    Dancing Silhouette

    “If your number one goal is to make sure that everyone likes and approves of you, then you risk sacrificing your uniqueness, and, therefore, your excellence.” ~Unknown

    I can remember many times in my life when I was afraid to stand out.

    When listening to a lecture or panel discussion at school, I always had questions to ask, but the moment I finally raised my hand, my heart would start palpitating and gravity would force my arm down.

    The same thing happened in business meetings. I struggled to articulate my ideas, although I was sure they could have brought some new impulses. In the end, I felt miserable, as I’d missed another chance to join the debate.

    Why was it so difficult to speak out on the topics I was interested in? I’d missed so many opportunities to contribute and make my voice heard; to crack jokes or wear the clothes I wanted to wear; to try crazy things or be the only one on the dance floor.

    I missed out on being me, but I couldn’t manage to overcome my fear of standing out.

    What would others think of me?
    What if I said something stupid?
    What if they laughed?
    What if everybody stared at me?

    Why don’t we dare to stand out more often?

    Starting at a very early age, we learn that standing out is not desirable. When children speak their mind or they’re loud, playing wild games, adults tell them to calm down and be quiet. Many parents fear their offspring standing out in a way that might not be flattering, whereas when it comes to competing with others, kids are absolutely encouraged to stand out.

    In school, when articulating an opinion or questioning what they’ve learned, students are often labeled rebellious. Few teachers manage to appreciate uniqueness, because it means work.

    In adolescence, we’re torn between the desire to express our individuality and the urge to be accepted. Many times, we prefer to fit in because we’ve learned that we’re only going to belong to a group if we are like others expect us to be. But deep inside, we feel that something is missing.

    Showing Your True Colors

    Daring to stand out means being your true self, speaking your mind, dressing the way you want, or laughing out loud, even if you’re the only one who finds something funny.

    It means being different, following your dreams when no one believes in you, speaking up when no one else does, and making a difference in your life or the life of others by being who you are.

    Standing out implies being in the limelight, even if your audience consists of only one person.

    Whether it’s changing your life for good, getting a style makeover, asking uncomfortable questions and touching on sensitive subjects, joining a charity or keeping your lonely neighbor company, taking part in a local theatre play or quitting your banking job to buy your own food truck—that’s what makes you stand out, because you dare and care.

    All Magic Comes at A Price

    We all have talents and aspirations, some small, some big. Some might not be mainstream. This is when things start getting complicated and uncomfortable: in one way or another, we might rub someone the wrong way.

    We will never be able to please everyone.

    When standing out, we show the world that we’re here, and that we’re part of it; that we have something to say that might inspire others or even brighten their day.

    Take a deep breath, step out of your comfort zone, and reveal the person you really are.

    What’s to Lose?

    If others don’t want you to stand out, it’s because they don’t want you to grow. If you started to live the life you wanted, it might make them feel uncomfortable about themselves. Don’t let that hold you back.

    You might lose some acquaintances or false friends, but true friends will encourage and support you. And a lot of people will admire you for your courage. Even better, you will be loved for who you are. Isn’t this one of our deepest longings?

    3 Daring Steps to Let Your Unique Inner Self Shine

    It requires some courage to tackle the fear of standing out. You can always start small and take it one step at a time. But, if you feel adventurous, you might want to try one of these three daring steps to let your unique inner self shine.

    1. Go against the flow.

    If you don’t enjoy what everybody likes, stand by it. If you have another opinion, say it. If you don’t want to join your friends for the hottest event of the year, don’t go.

    What matters is that you feel good about yourself. It might mean not being part of the majority. So what? Dare to be a splash of color in a society of uniformity. You will always find like-minded people you can connect with.

    2. Dare to be unpopular.

    If the only way to popularity is by compromising your true self, then turn down the offer. Let others know what you want and what your boundaries are.

    Accept that you can’t be loved by everyone, and choose not to make your well-being dependent on others. The less glamorous but sustainable kind of popularity comes with authenticity.

    3. Embarrass yourself.

    A moment of embarrassment by choice can be very liberating. You’ll learn that you’re not going to die, and the ground won’t swallow you up (even if you wished for it).

    Quite often, others don’t even notice whatever you’re feeling embarrassed about. It’s mostly in your head. So next time you’re invited to a karaoke bar, grab the microphone and sing your heart out.

    —

    In school and in business meetings, whenever I was anxious to take part in the discussion, the majority of other participants didn’t raise their hands, either, and remained silent like me.

    I wasn’t the only one but didn’t realize it. Instead, I was focused on the chance of embarrassing myself. The fear of standing out is rampant.

    Yes, standing out means being vulnerable, and it opens us up to the risk of being ridiculed, but it also gives us the possibility of letting our uniqueness shine and showing others who we really are. Does this feel so bad after all?

    Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt

  • Owning Our Stories: Overcoming The Fears That Make Us Play Small

    Owning Our Stories: Overcoming The Fears That Make Us Play Small

    Oh So Free

    “I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.” ~Brené Brown

    It’s taken me a long time to figure out my story.

    I kept thinking, “Nothing particularly dramatic has happened to me, so how can I have a story?”

    Yet recently, after years of personal growth work, that’s shifted. I see the golden thread that weaves through my story and what that means for how I show up and what I bring to the world.

    I now see that this whole thing about owning your story isn’t about drama. It’s not about having a story that you feel is significant and worthy enough to share. 

    In many ways, it’s a metaphor. If I own my story, then I put my name to it. I become the author and with that I take the role of protagonist.

    It also makes me ask the question, “If I’m not owning my story and authoring it, then who is?”

    My story is one of learning to accept that I am enough, just as I am, and that what’s in my heart matters.

    For most of my life I’ve strived to be enough without consciously being aware of it. It seemed to be what everyone did in the corporate world to get along. Reach. Stretch. Push. Always seeking more. 

    I can’t say it felt exhausting, because with every new goal I’d have a ton of energy to push through. I would think, “If I get that promotion, then I’ll feel happy.” Or, “If I get that Masters Degree, then I’ll be credible and heard.”

    No, it didn’t feel exhausting. It did feel relentlessly unfulfilling.

    It was as if I kept promising myself it would all be better when—even though I knew on some deep level it wouldn’t.

    I felt so stuck. I knew I had all this powerful energy, but it was locked inside me. It would show up in bursts, but so often I would hold it back.

    I was blaming others for my circumstances. I was arguing for how I had no choice; I had a mortgage to pay and kids to support. I was angrily frustrated and I found it hard to contain. 

    I would start my day at work believing “I can change things and make a meaningful contribution,” yet, I’d keep being met by the story of the organizational culture: “It’s not the right time,” or, “it’s not the way we do things around here,” or, “we just care about the numbers.”

    I was so frustrated that I would come home and complain to my husband about how awful it was and how I should be doing something different but I couldn’t because we needed the money.

    I blamed him on some level. I also blamed myself for not having enough courage to really change my circumstances.

    People kept telling me how lucky I was to work part time while the kids were little, but it felt like such a trade off. Almost as if I could have part-time work but I couldn’t expect it to be meaningful.

    For me to really look inside and discover what I wanted to do, it took a coach to point out that I was being a victim in my current story. 

    I remember when he said it I cried, and, truth be known, I felt embarrassed that I was crying on the phone to a guy when I was supposed to be professional!

    Yet it was a painful release of the truth of how I felt. It was as if in some way he had just lanced a boil. I was being a victim. I had given my power away because I was scared.

    I had lost touch with who I was, what was in my heart, and what I wanted.

    From that moment on, I made a commitment to myself to get to the heart of who I was and what I bring to the world. 

    I wanted to become the protagonist in my story. I made the decision to quit my job and follow my heart.

    It felt completely counterintuitive. My head was going wild with sabotaging thoughts, but somewhere deep inside me I trusted that I could handle what showed up.

    I talked to my boss about what was happening in the organization and how the role wasn’t turning out as we had anticipated. We talked openly about this and I asked for what I wanted. We agreed to negotiate a severance package.

    From there I started to notice opportunities and invest in myself so I could pursue my dream of running my own business.

    I decided I had to manage my fears and made a conscious choice to let courage trump them.  I would say things to myself like, “Seriously, what’s the worst that can happen?” The answer would be “I go and get another job.” More often than not I would say, “You’ve got this. You can do this.”

    I clarified my minimum-squeak-by and dream income amounts and worked out a simple business plan based on these.

    Most importantly, I kept going. I had a mantra that was based on how we learn to walk as babies. I would say to myself when it was tough, “Just one foot in front of the other, Vanessa.” And I would do the next small thing, even though I had a tendency to focus on the big vision.

    That was nearly four years ago now and I’ve been on such a rollercoaster ride of adventure.  Of course it has had ups and downs, and I wouldn’t change it for anything, because I have grown so much and I now know what it means to be fully responsible and at choice.

    I have discovered the golden thread in my story: that my deepest fear is that I am not enough and I need to be more than I am to thrive.

    That thread sabotages me when I believe it, because it makes me try really hard to perfect myself, procrastinate, and play small. It also has me seek approval and validation and hold back my truth.

    Being aware of it helps me consciously work the muscle of radical self-acceptance and self-empowerment. It enables me to learn to practice compassion, kindness, self-love, and enough-ness.

    It helps me to let go of old defensive ways of playing small like people pleasing, avoidance, and perfection.

    It also helps me create connection. When I stand in the story of I am enough, just as I am, I’m great at helping people grow and find their soul truth. I’m perfect at showing up just as I am and every time I fail or show up trying to be something other than who I am, it serves as a wonderful opportunity to help me grow.

    I had two fears when I started to own this story: 

    1. What would people think about me? How could I openly stand up and say, “I practice radical self-acceptance,” because my wound is that I fear I am not enough as I am?
    2. I would come across as egotistical if I fully owned what I’m good at.

    Interestingly, they form a double bind, with being not enough at one end and at the other, being too much. Underneath them is a fear of your opinion of me.

    The key to unlocking my ability to stand in my story and fully own it has been learning to make my opinion the one that counts (at least where I’m concerned).

    Making my opinion count is a practice for me. It requires me to ground my energy and often to slow down, take a step back, and quiet my inner critic.

    In this place, I can connect to my inner wise woman and hear her truth. Then my only job is to trust it. It’s why my word for the year is trust.

    Trust that I know what I know and that I am enough.

    Trust that my heart can lead.

    Trust that I am the protagonist in my story and it’s a worthy story.

    Trust that the fear inside that you might judge my story is part of the old story of not being enough as I am.

    Trust that when you and I stand fully in the center of our stories, we come from love.

    Photo by ByLaauraa

  • Taking Big Chances and Knowing If It’s Worth the Risk

    Taking Big Chances and Knowing If It’s Worth the Risk

    Leap of faith (by Tracie).

    “Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing.” ~Denis Waitley

    Taking risks isn’t the secret to life, but taking risks does mean we are never at risk of doing nothing.

    Nine months ago, almost to the day, I stepped off a plane onto German soil. I left behind everything I knew, and almost everyone I knew. I moved to a place where I couldn’t understand anyone to live with someone I had never lived with before.

    But let’s back up. What exactly made me take the risk of moving to a totally foreign country, without a job, a plan, or any knowledge of the local area or language? The short answer is love. 

    My significant other had been offered a job in Germany, the land of his mother’s birth, and asked if I wanted to come with him. But that is just the short version.

    Lots of people would consider a partner taking a job in a foreign country a deal breaker. A big part of the reason I was willing to take the risk and move across an ocean was love, but the other part is perhaps more important: I weighed the risk of moving to Germany against the risk of doing nothing—and Germany won.

    I was in a life situation that lent itself to my taking this kind of risk. I had just finished my second year of national service with AmeriCorps, and I didn’t have any full time job offers. I didn’t like the city I was living in, I didn’t have any debt or dependents, and my parents and siblings were in excellent health, but lived far away.

    I weighed the risk of moving to a strange land against losing my significant other by staying where I was, with no job, and no family nearby.

    It seemed like an easy answer, although I still went through a risk-evaluating process I had honed through years of previous experiences. In the end, I decided that the risk of doing nothing was far greater than the risk of moving continents.

    Of course, I couldn’t have come to that decision or even developed a risk-evaluating process without experiences in not taking risks.

    During my undergraduate studies, I was offered an exciting opportunity to study in Thailand. Thailand has nothing to do with my studies, and the opportunity would have taken me away from everyone I knew and thrust me into a very foreign country.

    I was afraid of the culture shock, the possibility of extending my studies, the language barrier, and just about everything else. I thought it sounded much more sensible to stay where I was, with my friends, and to continue my studies the way I had planned.

    Later, when I heard the stories from the students who had recently returned from Thailand, I knew I had made the wrong choice. I had blindly let fear be the only deciding factor of my decision, and I promised myself I wouldn’t let that happen again.

    So when I was again faced with an opportunity to move somewhere totally foreign, I knew I had to take the risk.

    Sometimes my hands shook as I packed my three boxes of stuff, which was all I could afford to ship across an ocean. Looking into the unknown was terrifying, but I had weighed the risk, and so I nervously walked onto a plane and moved to Germany.

    To most people, I looked like a total idiot, or at least, I looked like someone who had risked way too much. The fact was I had calculated the risk for myself, based on factors most people couldn’t see or didn’t know, and I knew that emotionally, mentally, and physically I could handle the risk I was taking.

    Nine months after I took what seemed like a crazy risk, but was actually a very calculated one, I am still living in Germany. I speak decent German, I have a part-time job, and I am attending graduate school for free.

    My risk paid off, in part because I was able to think about what I was risking and what I would have risked by doing nothing.

    When you are faced with a decision and are wondering if it is worth the risk, it may help to ask yourself these questions:

    • Am I risking more than I am able, physically, mentally, or emotionally, at this time?
    • Will I be able to take this opportunity again at some other point?
    • Are my fears based on real danger, or just on the fear of the unknown?
    • What other possible opportunities do I risk by taking/not taking this opportunity?
    • Is the risk of doing nothing greater than what I risk by taking this opportunity?

    If we think about risks with these questions and process the risk of doing nothing, we are likely to make choices that seem risky, even crazy, to others, but make sense for each of us in our own lives.

    The truth is that no matter how much we try to avoid risk and hide from pain, it will still find us, even if it is just in the form of regret. It’s far better to weigh each risk for ourselves and decide which risks are right for us to take than to always let the fear of risks force us to take the risk of doing nothing.

    Photo by John Nakamura Remy

  • Finding the Courage to Let Go of the Familiar and Make a Change

    Finding the Courage to Let Go of the Familiar and Make a Change

    Walk Away

    “Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” ~Raymond Lindquist

    I’ve been processing my beliefs on courage since I turned 31.

    When I was in my 20s and teens, my idea of courage was that you fight until the death, never give up, be the one to say the last word, and always, always prove your point. And yet, I spent most of those years feeling unseen and unheard by my family and friends.

    I felt completely isolated and exhausted, yet I wasn’t expressing these feelings. (Not to say I hold regret; in my journey I had to seek and exhaust what didn’t work before fumbling my way to what could.)

    On the day of my 30th birthday, I found myself stuck in an unsatisfying four-year relationship, feeling so much pain, but I lacked the strength to move on. During those four years, I felt more and more isolated.

    Some research suggests that isolation is the most terrifying and destructive feeling a person can endure.

    In their book The Healing Connection, Jean Baker Miller and Irene Pierce Stiver define isolation as “a feeling that one is locked out of the possibility of human connection and of being powerless to change the situation.”

    I felt I had lost my self-respect and power, and that made me feel trapped and ashamed. As painful as it was to feel that way, it also felt familiar and comfortable. I was drowning with no life raft, holding my own head underwater.

    Part of me was staying because I didn’t believe I would feel worthy or complete until I saved my then-boyfriend and the relationship.

    At the same time, I wasn’t voicing my needs or feelings. I was expecting and depending on someone else to change instead of changing myself.

    Perhaps this is the gift when relationships don’t work out: We learn where we are not loving or accepting ourselves. Relationships bring to light the wounds we have yet to heal. For that, I am grateful.

    Once I recognized that the relationship had served a divine purpose—that the experience had happened for me, not to me—I was able to move on.

    I’ve learned that the experience of shame traps us in self-defeating cycles; we feel unworthy and powerlessness to change our life conditions.

    It also prevents us from seeing and representing our authentic selves. Then instead of airing it out and clearing the water, we muddy it further by keeping it all inside.

    Familiarity can be more comforting than the uncertainty of what will happen after we let go and jump into the abyss, but we have to ask ourselves what we value more: comfort or growth?

    Richard Schaub wrote, “Surrender is an active decision, an act of strength and courage, with serenity as its reward.”

    Perhaps courage, for me, meant not hanging on and pushing through, but accepting the hurt, surrendering the need for certainty, and making the active choice to break the silence and begin clearing up the water.

    I have learned that as unique as our stories may be, we all struggle with the same fundamental fears and we all lose our belief in ourselves. We all feel alone and isolated at times, and that leaves us feeling powerless.

    When we get stuck in toxic behaviors and relationships and we feel trapped in this vicious cycle, we need to ask ourselves, “What do we stand to lose by not changing?”

    For me, I stood to lose my authentic self, my integrity, my spirit, and the opportunity to live my best life.

    It takes courage to be completely honest with ourselves about what’s keeping us stuck.

    It took courage for me to accept that I was staying in an unsatisfying relationship because it was familiar, and even harder to acknowledge the shame and unworthiness I felt for being too scared to face the truth.

    To feel worthy and take control back, I first needed to feel accepted and connected.

    Sharing my story helped with that, and helped me release my shame. Shame and fear can hide in silence, but have a hard time lingering around when shared in a loving space.

    When we don’t tell our stories, we miss the opportunity to experience empathy and move from isolation to connection. Breaking the cycle ultimately means breaking the silence.

    To begin my healing, I started by cultivating a loving space within myself. I then stumbled into a Buddhist meditation center.

    I talked and cried with others struggling with the same challenges of fear and uncertainty. I took up yoga and explored the scary places of myself. I even I booked a trip to Thailand to volunteer and experience a new culture.

    I took to heart Red’s advice from “The Shawshank Redemption”: Get busy living, or get busy dying.

    To do that, we need to recognize that the pain of staying the same is greater than the risk of making a change, and it’s worth facing the fear of uncertainty.

    Who knows what the future holds, and perhaps that is part of the beauty of life. Each moment is fresh and new and maybe, just maybe, that’s what makes it so precious.

    What’s your idea of courage and how can you expand your pain into growth? How could you reframe the situations in your life to see them as happening for you, not to you?

    And if you are in a spot in your life where you feel scared to take a risk, ask yourself: what do you stand to lose if you don’t change?

    Photo by monkeywing

  • Opening Up to the Possibility of Love: 3 Things to Remember

    Opening Up to the Possibility of Love: 3 Things to Remember

    Sunset Couple

    “Love takes off the mask that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”  ~James Arthur Baldwin

    I sat silent on one end of the phone. I could hear my own breath and heart pounding in my ears.  I was sitting on the precipice of greatness, and all I had to do was express what I was feeling. Sounds relatively straightforward, so why did I feel so anxious?

    To say that I have worked hard at rediscovering my authentic self would be an understatement. I have been on this quest in one form or fashion since I was seventeen, so about seventeen years now. And I have made significant progress, if that is the most correct way to label my journey.

    I have struggled with eating disorders and self-acceptance and self-love and compassion and kindness for others. I have done away with meaninglessness in my life for the most part. I have gotten away from placing importance on material possessions and have worked to simplify my life.

    I am more content and sure of myself and who I am than I have ever been. So why would uncomfortable silence throw me for such a loop at this stage in the game?

    To be perfectly honest, although I have demonstrated gains in areas of my life, I have yet to find someone who is a kindred spirit. As I have come to know myself better, I have been better able to express and identify what I truly want in a partner. That being said, dating has been less than successful.

    More often than not, dates have ended with blank stares from across the table when I open my mouth about my spiritual journey. I have never been able to fully express to another the very thing that defines my existence on earth, and have it received in kindness and understanding.

    So, when I met Rob for the first time, he literally took my breath away. I immediately detected his soul, his compassion, and passion for life. I recognized his connection with his feelings, and yet his ability to not take the whole process too seriously.

    In him, I saw myself. For the first time, I did not feel alone. I did not feel different. I felt like I was home. 

    So, back to the phone call: the reason I was so nervous was that, although I had this intense connection with Rob, we were at a crossroads. I could sense that we both wanted to address it, and at the same time neither of us wanted to address it.

    We were so early in our developing relationship, I felt like I needed to let him know how intensely I felt about him and how incredibly special I thought our connection was. And boy, was it scary!

    And in that moment of silence, I reflected back to helpful ideas I had used in learning to love and accept myself. Incredibly, they applied in this new relationship and how I needed to proceed in expressing my feelings.

     1. Stay present and stay you.

    During our conversation, I felt this urgent need to run and hide from the emotion building inside me. I felt like I wanted to crawl back inside my shell and disengage from the desire to open up completely to him.

    We were obviously attracted to one another, but the old voices of fear of rejection and fear of not being good enough crept back into my head. I realized that I had gone through that when I was learning how to love and accept myself.

    I had all of the preconceived notions of who I was or should be, and had to demystify all of that and realize that I am enough just the way I am. As is.

    I had to continuously get myself back to my center, to focus on the present moment and trust in the process of being my authentic self, knowing that the person who was supposed to cross my path, would.

    2. Live openly and honestly and speak from your heart.

    As I learned to accept myself, I found that speaking from my heart became easier. It’s not that we deliberately try to deceive others, but we often do a good job of deceiving ourselves.

    Trying to stop emotion and put up your defenses won’t do anyone any good. It may protect you in the short term, but you are the only one who will be harmed in the end. It will be you who misses out on true happiness and joy.

    Things may not always turn out the way you envisioned, but there is no defeat in living with pure intention.

    3. Go all in and accept that it may fail.

    Part of discovering myself again was learning as I went along. But unlike times before when I was harsh and self-defeating when I made a misstep, I was kind with myself. I gave myself some encouragement, the benefit of the doubt, and got back up and continued the best I could.

    When I finally trusted myself and accepted myself fully, I was able to mess up completely, yet be okay with it, because I knew I was doing my best and had set out with good intention.

    In the same manner, I had to realize that I am not perfect and neither is my partner. Showing compassion when there is a misstep is what will make the bonds stronger. That is how I needed to view Rob and our budding relationship.

    We had established similar core beliefs and journeys and now I had to trust in that as being the foundation for whatever was ahead of us.

    If that meant faltering and deciding we were not as compatible as we first believed, then so be it. I couldn’t be disappointed if I gave it my all and at least attempted something amazing.

    The phone call ended with me bumbling through my feelings pretty inefficiently. And wouldn’t you know it, he reciprocated and expressed relief about me bringing it up. He too felt like we had a connection and had great interest in pursuing it.

    If there is one thing I could leave you with it would be this: Don’t harden yourself to that pure emotion. Open up and welcome it in. Let it flow through you. Let the tears well up in your eyes and say the things your heart whispers. The person who is meant to hear those words will.

    Photo by Darren Johnson

  • Why Being Scared Means You’re Fully Alive

    Why Being Scared Means You’re Fully Alive

    I Can Fly

    “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” ~Pema Chodron

    Last year I decided to do something I’d always longed to do but had never been brave enough to take the plunge: I started my own business. Not only was it a new venture, my business would be based around myself—my skills, knowledge, and experiences.

    Holy crap.

    My emotions swung from terrified to awkward and uncomfortable. Seriously, that’s how good it got, at least initially! It’s been exciting and exhilarating, but not in the least bit comfortable.

    Here I was, standing for the entire world to see as a self-proclaimed “person who knows quite a lot about some stuff.” I may as well of had my subconscious make me a T-shirt that read “Who the hell do you think you are?”

    Revealing things about myself was not comfortable at all. Opening up about my years living with depression—an illness whose superpower is convincing its host that they are worthless and weak—left me feeling vulnerable and exposed.

    To acknowledge my depression, and put myself out there as someone who knew quite a lot about a certain subject, was nothing short of excruciating at times.

    But I had my secret weapon. Over the years I’ve gathered a group of people who “get” me. People who love and approve of me and what I do. I’ve always felt like this tribe insulated me from the feelings of exposure and judgment I might get from other people.

    One person in particular, who’s been my teacher on one of my courses, is someone I particularly admire. I basked in the warm glow of his encouragement and positive feedback; I felt approved of, nurtured, and safe around him.

    Because learning is something I hold dear (and I was utterly clueless about it) when I started my business, I decided to take some courses in marketing and business building. This seemed a better strategy than stumbling my way through blindly, so I hovered up new information like I was starved of it.

    I started implementing. I made gazillion mistakes but I kept going. I kept remembering the phrase “There’s no failure, only feedback”—and I was getting a hell of a lot of feedback!

    But I learned that I was much more tenacious than I’d first thought. There were lots of challenges, but I overcame or circumnavigated them. I kept moving forward. I felt a teeny bit proud of myself.

    I gradually became more courageous and shared more of the real me with readers and workshop participants. I became less of the safe, corporate “me” and more of the real, flawed, goofy, “me”—complete with opinions, imperfections, and history.

    I told my story of experiencing depression for years and rather than being lambasted for it, the connections I made with my students and readers were profound and rewarding. No one told me they thought less of me for it; if anything, they thought I was brave.

    Work started to come in—a trickle, but definitely a move in the right direction. As I took my wobbly steps one after the other, I started to feel stronger and more confident. My tribe was great—super supportive and really encouraging. It felt good.

    Apart from one thing.

    The teacher I admired so much didn’t seem approving. In fact, he seemed critical and dismissive of what I was doing.

    And I felt crushed.

    When we’re trying something new we can feel fragile, and any little thing can dent our confidence and break our resolve. It’s even more acute when we’re putting ourselves out there, whether that is through our creative work or our personal stories.

    When someone doesn’t approve of our work, it’s like they don’t approve of us. And this is painful—especially when the person in question is someone we admire and crave approval from.

    I so wanted him to get it—to support and champion what I was doing. But he didn’t. He wasn’t nasty or cruel; he’s a kind and warm person and that would be totally out of character for him.

    But his response was somehow harder to deal with. He was dismissive and uninterested.

    I bundled up my courage and asked him if something was wrong.

    “No,” came the reply, complete with furrowed brow and an edge of confusion in his voice. “I don’t really get what you’re doing. For me, it doesn’t work.”

    Because all of this self-growth stuff is a journey without a destination (the journey is the destination) I know that I would have responded in different ways at different times in this journey. Here are some past options:

    1. Stop completely. This feels too hard/scary and unsafe. I am obviously not good enough and certainly not strong enough to carry on.

    2. Stop, retreat, and go back to my original, “safe” world. Try and replicate whatever advice my teacher gives me, encompassing his philosophy, beliefs, and experience. I disappear but at least I don’t risk feeling unlovable.

    3. Rationalize his behavior; put it down to envy at my emerging success, or insecurity on his part for moving on from his teachings. I mean what’s his problem?

    4. Carry on, feeling the pain but moving through it anyway.

    To be honest, all of these were tempting. Having an excuse not to be “out there” feeling exposed and vulnerable was very enticing. I could go back to being safe, anonymous, and totally invisible.

    Even though it would be like silently dying inside everyday.

    So that wouldn’t really be a viable option then! I needed to do something different. I needed a shift of perspective. My teacher isn’t a cruel or vicious man, and his comments weren’t meant to wound me. So why was I hurt that what I was doing didn’t work for him?

    That was it; that was the shift I needed. What I was doing didn’t work for him. Instead of beating myself up and falling into a pit of “what’s wrong with me?” I realized it wasn’t about me at all.

    I’m a keen cake baker, and if I make a carrot cake (one of my favorites) I don’t get offended if someone says “Oh, thanks but I don’t really like carrot cake.”

    I know that this situation is different from a cake, but the analogy still holds. My teacher wasn’t saying, “I don’t like you.” He was saying that what I was writing about and publishing as part of my business didn’t work for him.

    So this was the response I chose instead:

    Realize that we’re on different paths. I don’t need him to approve of and like 100% of what I do. I know he respects me; it’s just not his thing. It’s my thing.

    It’s carrot cake. And there are plenty of other people out there who really like carrot cake.

    I don’t need everyone to appreciate the same things as me. My sense of self isn’t entirely dependent on what other people think. Hell, I’m still human; of course it still feels great when other people affirm me, but I don’t need it to still be okay with myself.

    Inside the nest feels safe and warm.

    But outside of the nest is where we learn to fly—feeling scared, but awake, alive, and fully human.

    Photo by Anurag

  • Making Difficult Choices: 6 Helpful Tips

    Making Difficult Choices: 6 Helpful Tips

    Deep Thought

    “You are your choices” ~Seneca

    It was supposed to be the most beautiful day of my life. And on the surface of it, it most definitely was:

    Delicious food? Check. Glorious sunshine? Check. Excited guests? Check. Radiantly happy couple? Umm…rain check?

    I hadn’t chosen him. He had been chosen for me. I had agreed to the marriage without a doubt, but as I stared down at my henna-painted hands adorned with gold of the 24-carat nature, I felt poor. I felt cheated. I felt like the victim of my own decisions.

    The heavy fog of doubt started to cloud over my heart. I cannot go through with this marriage.

    I hadn’t even changed out of my wedding clothes, and yet I’d already made the decision to end my marriage. But how? It was clear to me that my family would not approve.

    Their disappointment would only be the start. I would be disowned. I’d be shunned from the community and would be more alone than ever.

    Or would I?

    Despite being full of fear, I had to find the courage to take the first steps in starting the ending. I waited for the courage to come. I waited for quite some time. It didn’t arrive.

    Courage is a combination of many things: perspective, introspection, relentlessness, intention. Courage comes after the act.

    So instead, I pictured how my life would look 20 years later, in a marriage that had not flourished, after a decision that had not served me. The image of a life I didn’t want fueled the momentum toward what I did want.

    And so it was up to me to take the first steps. I had made my choice. And that choice manifested itself in many life lessons that I apply to this very day.

    Accounting for the perspective of everyone is paralyzing. We must own the choices we make. Boldness itself is a conscious choice. These tips may help you make it.

    1. Feel present.

    Yes, you have to deal with the consequences of your choices, but you cannot control what happens as events unfold. It likely won’t be anywhere near as bad as you worry it may be.

    My family did not disown me. They supported me in ways I had only secretly imagined.

    Focus on what you can control—what you do now.

    2. Feel bold.

    Once you make the decision, it’s made. Once you take, action, it’s done. Not everybody will agree with you. But you agree with you. And that’s a start.

    3. Feel thankful.

    I could have been living in a country where marriage laws were gender-biased, where my decision could have remained in my heart and not realized. But I was in a country where the law was on my side, irrelevant of my gender. I had an education; I had the freedom to choose. So many do not have the same opportunity.

    4. Feel contagious.

    That one bold move I made was not the only one in my life. That’s the thing with taking deliberate action; it becomes addictive. It bursts into other areas of your life—your job, your health, your relationships. It becomes a habit.

    5. Feel united.

    There is a difference between thinking you can do something alone and realizing you don’t have to. Those that loved me guided my heart. They held me when I was afraid. They strengthened me when I felt defeated.

    Remember, you’re not alone with your choice.

    6. Feel original.

    Doing everything by the book isn’t always advised. Rules have been written for people who choose to follow them. Are you one of those people? Which rules are you going to challenge?

    What you do defiantly today could impact the decision someone else makes tomorrow.

    What audacious action are you willing to take? Big or small? Right now?

    Photo by mrhayata

  • Overcoming the Fear of Taking a Risk: Just Do It

    Overcoming the Fear of Taking a Risk: Just Do It

    Jumping

    “Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.” ~Isabelle Allende

    About eight months ago I hitched a ride to Buenos Aires, Argentina via a one way ticket with the love of my life. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I wasn’t throwing things in my suitcase and cashing out my bank account while kissing friends and family goodbye, sayin’ “See ya!”

    My boyfriend and I were recent graduates at wits end suffering economic woes with no place to go. We had always wanted to go abroad to teach English, but weren’t sure where we’d end up.

    At one o’clock in the morning after an argument over my apprehension, I just told him to book the tickets and I’d feel better.

    Well, I thought I’d feel better. We finally booked our long anticipated flight. Champagne wasn’t popped and confetti didn’t cascade to the floor. I sat on the bed wondering why I felt so petrified to go. It had been a childhood dream of mine to travel abroad.

    It was rather terrifying, and for the first time in my life I was afraid of an adventure.

    Surprisingly, as I looked at our online itinerary my stomach sank. Nausea filled my days when I looked around knowing I was going to leave everything I knew.

    I rationalized every excuse to get out of going but I reminded myself to persevere and that everything would work out. But the questions still popped up in my mind.

    Was I making a mistake? Was this risk going to be worth every penny and hardship?

    The night before our flight my stomach was curling into knots and my mind was a twisted mess. I tried telling myself to calm down and to just take the risk. I knew that if I could just get my butt into my window seat that everything would be fine. But even then my fear didn’t subside.

    It wasn’t until the plane took off that I realized I had done it. I was twenty thousand miles in the air, and nine hours ahead of me was awaiting an entirely different world. But the fear was ever present. After a week of being a tourist, the fear remained hidden under a layer of excitement.

    I couldn’t sleep, I was thousands of miles from home, only able to utter a few phrases in Spanish that I remembered from middle school.

    I stayed in the apartment as much as possible because I was afraid to go out and communicate with others, let alone take a bus by myself and get lost some bad part of town.

    With time, the fear slowly dissolved, the unfamiliar became familiar. We found jobs and an apartment within three weeks of arrival, a blessing considering we had no idea what we’d do when we got there. I had kept on despite my reluctance and faked a smile when I wanted to scream and run.

    Everything worked out because I kept a positive affirmation despite the fear.

    Many of my friends made excuses for themselves by letting me know how easy it was for me to just up and leave to a foreign country because of my circumstances, especially having a boyfriend who spoke fluent Spanish.

    Yes, some of the opportunities I was afforded made the journey easier, but we worked our butts off, sold everything we owned, and packed up our few belongings into plastic bins.

    My boyfriend, who is an optimist, was ecstatic and I looked calm because I wanted everyone else to believe that I was confident in my decision to up and leave.

    From most people’s expressions and comments they didn’t believe we’d commit to actually boarding the plane, but I surprised everyone and even myself when I handed the boarding pass to the attendant and shook the pilots hand as I entered the plane.

    The fear crippled my mind, but my legs managed to carry me to my seat.

    Of Course There Will Be Doubt

    Despite my crippling fear, sleepless nights, and fake demeanor, I knew deep down that I needed to take the risk; after all, that’s why it’s called a risk. Of course as with any life changing decision, you will doubt yourself.

    You think Neil and Buzz weren’t freaking out before they got into an eight-ton firecracker that was going to take three days to get to the moon? They didn’t even know if they’d sink elbow deep in moon dust, but they took one small step for man, and an even greater leap for mankind.

    I am sure that despite the years of preparation and endless simulations, they still had a sleepless night before one of humanity’s biggest risks.

    Most people who take risks are kidding themselves if they don’t doubt themselves a teeny tiny bit. So do yourself a favor and take one small step toward your goal despite your apprehensions and gut-wrenching fear.

    Fake It Until You Make It

    Like I did, and so many other risk takers do, you have to fake it until you make it. It sounds cliché but it holds a boatload of truth. Use reverse psychology on yourself. You’re your own worst enemy. Tell yourself and others that you are confident about taking the risk and notice how your apprehension will dissolve.

    Nurture the Positives, not the Fear

    Print out some pictures of your risk and tape them on your ceiling so when you wake up with cold sweats, you can remind yourself that you are going to do what it is that you set out to do. I put pictures of Patagonia as my desktop screensaver to remind me of the beauty I would experience in Argentina.

    Write a pros list and forget the cons. Focus on the major pros. Cons can always be worked through.

    Whether it is lack of money, not knowing the language, being thousands of miles away from home, I knew that it was what I had always wanted to do and I could find money by selling all my things, or start learning basic phrases or use Skype to talk to friends and family. There is a positive to every negative.

    No Excuses: Just Do It

    Even worse, don’t make excuses about why you shouldn’t do it. Nowadays, we make excuses for everything. I’m too busy, I don’t have the money, or I don’t want to disappoint others. Make every excuse why you should do it.

    Despite my crippling fear which gave me many sleepless nights, I stuck with it and kept telling myself “We already bought the tickets.” Like the Nike slogan, I needed to “Just Do It.” Perpetual excuses will pour from your mouth, but remember fear shouldn’t be a chain holding you back.

    Don’t let fear paralyze you; close your eyes and imagine that everything will work out.

    Don’t expect the unexpected and focus on what could go well. Just as life will have its highs and lows, taking a risk comes with excitement and terror. Fear is only natural when taking a risk. So go on! Jump out of that plane (with a parachute of course) into the world of your dreams.

    Photo by _overanalyzer

  • 4 Lessons on Embracing a Major Life Change

    4 Lessons on Embracing a Major Life Change

    In a Field

    “If you’re not terrified of the next step, you eyes are still closed. A caged bird in a boundless sky.” ~Jed McKenna

    It was day two of living at the Zen Center. Sitting on the side of the dirt path, I had my head buried in my knees.

    “I can’t do this babe,” I cried to my husband.

    Just 12 days prior to this, I was a corporate banker and real estate agent in Phoenix. Now, I was a full-time Zen student deep in the mountains of Carmel Valley, working in the dining room and serving summer resort guests.

    “I’ve never even waitressed before. I sat in front of a computer the past decade doing seemingly important work. And now—now, I’m scraping food into a compost bin?” I sniffled.

    An hour before then, I’d held back tears the entire time as the dining room crew head was showing me how to set up a tea table and fill tea caddies.

    Before coming to Carmel Valley, we’d rented out our comfortable, suburbia five-bedroom, three-bath home. Now, we were living in a 10 x 8 rustic Japanese cabin at the base of a canyon, completely offline from the digital world.

    I was sharing a bathroom with 10 other women.

    “I’m not a nature girl either. I can’t sleep alongside spiders. Each time I close my eyes, I see a creepy crawler,” I continued to vent, in between an endless stream of tears, gasping for air to get all the words out. “I grew up in suburbia with pest control.”

    This life was a radical change. It felt like I’d decided to go cliff jumping—and there was no net.

    My conscious decision to leave all the worldly ambitions behind and take this sabbatical year came from my deep belief in taking a pause. Iknew on so many levels that I needed to be there. (more…)

  • Leaving the Safety of Something Familiar When You Feel Scared

    Leaving the Safety of Something Familiar When You Feel Scared

    Base Jumping

    “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” ~Pema Chodron

    Winter is a time for hibernation, I told myself, drinking a second cup of coffee under the duvet, flicking absent-mindedly through old magazines and self-help books bought in a brief conviction that I wouldn’t begin another year reading in bed.

    It seems perverse that, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, this time meant for reunion and resolution (neither of which is easy or straightforward) should occur in the darkest of seasons—when the sun barely even rises and the general inclination is to climb into a hole and only reemerge in spring.

    This year I had returned home after a five-year absence, which had seemed longer. During that time, I had spent Christmases in random parts of Asia that, if listed, would sound romantic and exotic—temples, jungles, and mountains.

    But that time had been largely marked by loneliness and bewilderment at why I always choose to be far from those I’m meant to be closest to.

    Travel, in its constant offering up of newness and discovery, always seems to promise another chance at reinvention. Maybe this is in part why I do it, never having found a version of myself I’m comfortable enough to settle with.

    And yet, once back in familiar surroundings and familiar relationships, it never takes long for this promise to fade and for old habits to reappear. Over the past weeks, I’ve had to keep checking photos, maps, postcards, just to remind myself that what had gone before was in fact something I lived, not merely a dream.

    The previous three months I had been traveling, over-ambitiously combining Thailand, China, and India in an attempt to compensate for a year of teaching in a chaotic Asian city.

    My intention had been to get myself out of the dysfunctional routine I had created while teaching—the six-day work-week, an addiction to HBO and my sofa, overreliance on a few good friends—and throw myself back into Life with a capital L.

    Unfortunately, over the course of the year, I had learned to become a person suited to precisely such a routine, cutting off the part of myself that secretly wanted connection and community even as I hid away.

    After all, old habits die hard. During the acute social phobias of my teens and twenties, I had become skilled at avoidance—often not stepping out onto a street for days on end—and while one of my tough-love strategies for overcoming the fear had been to start working as a teacher and traveling the world, it now became painfully clear that it was still there, still part of the baggage.

    So now I was out of the nest all right, but once more I had completely forgotten how to fly. Learning how to travel again was beautiful, awful, and everything in between. (more…)

  • Why Quitting Is Sometimes the Right Thing to Do

    Why Quitting Is Sometimes the Right Thing to Do

    “Celebrate endings, for they precede new beginnings.” ~Jonathan Lockwood Huie

    We often think of quitting as failure. We commend people for carrying on when times get rough. The heroes in our action movies don’t just give up when things get difficult. When was the last time you saw Steven Seagal walk away from a fight?

    As the saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Society expects us to fight back and battle on.

    But sometimes, quitting is most definitely the right thing to do.

    Sometimes, it’s the best option. A lot of people assume that it’s the easy thing to do—that only defeatists and good-for-nothin’ drop outs would even consider such a “cop-out.” This is not the case.

    I learned this myself when I finally made that looming decision to drop out of college. There it is: “drop out.” Even the words sound negative, as if I’ve fallen away from society, failing to meet my expectations. But I don’t see my decision as a negative thing at all, and it wasn’t the easy thing to do.

    I had been at college for a year and two months; I had great friends, and everything was happily laid out for me.

    Nothing was too demanding, especially considering I had only nine contact hours a week. People told me where I had to be and when. This must all sound fairly straight-forward and easy going.

    Why, then, would I decide to give it all up and leave?

    As idyllic as this lifestyle sounds (and probably was), I simply felt no drive to live it. I had no desire to follow these laid out plans, and this was making me extremely unhappy. Going to college was, in hindsight, a bad decision for me.

    I rushed into the decision rather than taking a break to find myself in the world. (more…)

  • Are You Betting On Yourself Or Against Yourself?

    Are You Betting On Yourself Or Against Yourself?

    Jumping

    “The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.” ~Paulo Coelho

    I stood there in the parking lot of my apartment complex, with the hot Phoenix sun beating down on me, as I watched him drive away for what I thought would be the last time.

    With tears rolling down my cheeks, I went inside my apartment after his car had turned the corner and was out of sight.

    When the door closed behind me with that familiar thud, I could almost feel the loneliness swallow me up.

    We met nine months earlier and quickly fell in love. But his time in Arizona had come to an end when he graduated from ASU. With no jobs in sight in Phoenix, he was hitting the highway and driving back to his hometown of Seattle to use his contacts to find work.

    I wanted to go with him, but I was afraid of leaving all that was comfortable and familiar to me.

    When he drove away, with his car filled to the brim with all his belongings, I imagined my life without him. I knew I my life would carry on, as I would wake up every morning, go to work, come home, and hang out with friends and family on the weekends. Perhaps even months down the road, I would probably start dating again.

    Life would inevitably continue—but without him. The thought of being in love with someone who I’d never see again was a hard thing to swallow.

    Step Right Up and Place Your Bets

    Every day, moment by moment, we make choices. Some of those choices seem inconsequential. Most of us only feel the burden of choice when we are faced with one of those “big life decisions.”

    Taking a new job, moving to a new city, starting a business, or having a child, just to name a few. (more…)

  • Book Giveaway and Author Interview: 52-Week Life Passion Project

    Book Giveaway and Author Interview: 52-Week Life Passion Project

    52-Week Life Passion Project

    Note: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

    The Winners:

    It’s not easy to do something you’re passionate about for work—and not only because it’s hard to discover your passion or find a job to leverage it.

    Once we know what we love to do, we then need to work through all kinds of limiting thoughts, beliefs, and fears that may prevent us from taking action. Then we need to decide what that action should be—how and where to start, and how to stay motivated.

    It’s with this in mind that coach and blogger Barrie Davenport wrote the 52-Week Life Passion Project, an insightful, comprehensive guide to identifying what you really want to do and building your life around it.

    I’m excited to share an interview with Barrie, and grateful that she offered to give away 5 books for Tiny Buddha readers!

    The Giveaway

    To enter to win one of five free copies of 52-Week Life Passion Project:

    • Leave a comment on this post sharing something you’re passionate about. (If there’s nothing you’re passionate about yet, then just leave a comment saying hello!)
    • For an extra entry, tweet: RT @tinybuddha Book Giveaway: The 52-Week Life Passion Project: Comment and RT to win! http://bit.ly/W8WUUz

    You can enter until midnight PST on Monday, January 7th.

    The Interview

    1. What inspired you to write the 52-Week Life Passion Project? (more…)