Tiny Buddha

Tag: self love

  • For the First Time in a Long Time, She Says Yes to Herself

    For the First Time in a Long Time, She Says Yes to Herself

    “You owe yourself one hour a day of self-maintenance. It can include reading, writing, yoga, exercise, dancing, meditation, painting, or whatever, but you owe it to yourself. One hour, 1/24 of your day. That is less than 5%. It matters, it really does. Make it count.” ~Sarah Brassard

    The alarm rings at 5:45 a.m. She’s been awake for half an hour already, her mind running through everything she has to get done. Her son’s project is due today, her daughter has a well-visit appointment, and her inbox is bursting with urgent requests from work. She’s exhausted, but there’s no time to dwell on that.

    She quietly slips out of bed and heads to the kitchen, careful not to wake her husband. The house is still, but her thoughts are already spiraling—her own silent storm.

    She starts the coffee, opens her laptop, and immediately sees the email she’s been dreading. There’s another crisis at work that needs to be taken care of today. She checks her phone—texts from her mom asking for help with groceries, messages from her kids’ teachers about volunteering. She types “Sure, I’ll take care of it” without a second thought.

    By 7:00 a.m., the house is alive with noise. Her son is whining about breakfast, her daughter can’t find her shoes, and the dog is barking. She rushes to keep everything moving while her coffee grows cold on the counter. “Mom, can you…” echoes through the air from all sides. Yes, she responds—yes to every request, every demand, as if she’s on autopilot. Of course she’ll help. Of course she’ll handle it.

    In the car on the way to school, she’s ticking off her mental list: drop off the kids, hit the grocery store, squeeze in a work call before the dentist. Her hands grip the steering wheel a little too tight. She turns on the radio to drown out the rising panic.

    At work, the day is a blur. Meetings she can barely focus on, emails she drafts with one eye on the clock. Every time her phone buzzes, her stomach tightens. Another person needing something. Yes, she types, even as her neck cramps from tension, even as the headache starts to pulse behind her eyes.

    It’s 3:30 p.m. when she’s back in the school pickup line. Her phone vibrates again. Another work email, another urgent ask. Her heart sinks. She hasn’t eaten since breakfast. Her head feels heavy, like it’s too full, about to spill over. She’s scrolling through her phone when her son climbs into the backseat. “Mom, can we stop by Rocco’s house? I promised him I’d come over.”

    “Yes, sure,” she says again.

    Later, at home, it’s dinner time. Her husband’s late from work, her kids are fighting, and she’s trying to cook while answering another email on her phone. Her chest feels tight, like she’s barely holding it together, but she pushes through, as always. She has to keep saying yes. What happens if she doesn’t?

    It’s 9 p.m. now. The kids are in bed. The house is quiet again. She sits on the couch, her laptop open, staring at the screen. Another request. Another task to be done. She hovers over the keyboard, about to type another yes, but she hesitates. Her hands are trembling, her body pleading for rest, but she’s forgotten how to give it to herself.

    And then it hits her: she’s drowning. Not in work, not in tasks, but in all the times she’s said yes when her body, her mind, and her heart were begging her to say no.

    She feels the sting of tears. She’s been running on empty for so long, she’s forgotten what it feels like to be full. She’s spent so much time saying yes to everyone else that she’s never left space to say yes to herself.

    Her breath catches in her throat as she leans back, eyes closed, and lets the weight of the day sink in. For once, she lets herself feel it. The exhaustion, the resentment, the guilt that’s been her constant companion. And in that moment, she realizes something: It doesn’t have to be like this.

    She closes her laptop. She picks up her phone and texts her team, “I’ll get to it tomorrow, but tonight I need to rest.” Send.

    Her hands are still shaking, but now there’s a feeling of relief. She walks upstairs, past the pile of laundry she hasn’t touched, past the emails waiting in her inbox. She peeks in on her kids, watching them sleep, her heart full but finally light. Then, she does something she hasn’t done in years: she runs herself a bath.

    For the first time in a long time, she says yes—to herself.

    She is me. Is this you too? And is it time you said yes to yourself?

  • 5 Lessons Pain Taught Me About Love

    5 Lessons Pain Taught Me About Love

    “If there is love in your heart, it will guide you through your life. Love has its own intelligence.” ~Sadhguru

    Love was something I craved for most of my life. I dreamed that one day, a person would come into my life, preferably a man, who would love me and save me from my painful suffering filled with emptiness and desperation.

    Even when I was single, which I was quite often and for prolonged periods, I would fantasize about a perfect relationship with someone who’d understand and accept me even in my worst moments. I wanted a partner and a best friend.

    When mister BIG wasn’t coming, I turned to my parents. I wished for a loving mom and dad—parents who would heal themselves and give me all that I felt I’d missed out on.

    This led to unmet expectations and a series of disappointments and relationships in my life that were borderline abusive and unhealthy.

    It all resurfaced and pushed me to my limits when I met another man. It was one of those situations where I knew it wouldn’t work out but proceeded anyway. He ended up returning to his previous relationship, and we remained friends. Or rather, I pretended to be a friend while secretly hoping things would change one day and we would live happily ever after.

    After a year and a half of deliberately staying in this dynamic, feeling depleted and deeply depressed, our paths split, and I began healing myself. This time, for real.

    I think that many of us hold the idea that love is beautiful. And although it is one of the most empowering emotions, love is also an emotion that brings pain. When we care about someone and they are struggling or hurting themselves, we feel pain. When we lose people we love, we feel pain. A willingness to love is a willingness to hurt.

    But what if we are hurting because we don’t believe we are worthy of love? What if we are looking at love from a limited perspective?

    It’s been a couple of years since I promised to change the relationship I had with myself. Seeing what the desperation to be loved made me do, I got quite scared.

    Throughout this time, I went through different stages of growth while addressing and looking at every relationship I’ve had, from my childhood through my marriage and divorce to the last encounter with a romantic relationship. Here are five lessons I learned about love.

    1. Love can only exist within. 

    A while back, I watched a video with a yogi named Sadhguru.

    In the video, he asked, “Where do you feel pain or pleasure, love or hate, agony or ecstasy?”

    The answer: only within.

    Our emotions can’t be felt or created outside of our inner experience.

    Growing up, I believed I could only feel and receive love from external sources. It didn’t occur to me that I could awaken this feeling without an outside presence since it is something I can only feel and create within.

    This helped me realize that the love I was seeking had been with me all along, and there must have been a way to access it.

    I decided to focus on my thoughts and overall perception of myself while questioning every belief that told me I wasn’t worthy of love. Then, I would dissect these beliefs while intentionally looking for evidence that they weren’t true.

    I focused on pleasurable things and people who I loved and adored. I could see that any time I focused on the sweetness and kindness of my environment, my emotional state became pleasant.

    2. Love is always available. 

    Love is always available, and you can feel it if you choose to.

    Since I know this is a bold statement, try out this experiment.

    Close your eyes and bring to your awareness someone you love dearly. Maybe it is your child, a puppy, or someone else. You can see something they do that you absolutely love and cherish or simply think of their presence. Focus all your attention on this vision, fully immerse yourself, and stay with it for at least three to five minutes.

    Then open your eyes and check with yourself how you feel. Do you feel that the sweetness of your emotions has increased?

    And all you did was close your eyes and work with your imagination. I am not suggesting you should go live on an abandoned island all by yourself. But as you can see, love is within you, and you can access it through simple exercises like this one.

    3. Love doesn’t guarantee happiness. 

    At the beginning of my recovery, I had to face a question: “What do I expect to gain from others offering me their love?”

    I realized that I never went into any relationship with the idea of giving but, rather, taking. I wasn’t thinking to myself, “Well, I am overflowing with goodness and joy, and I want to share it with someone.”

    Instead, I was looking to fulfill a need. Whether it was in a relationship with my parents or different men in my life, I was looking for a payoff.

    When it didn’t come, my starving soul would throw a tantrum. Since I didn’t have a healthy relationship with myself, I naturally attracted relationships that reflected that.

    Often, we go into relationships looking for something. Whatever our intention is, we unconsciously hope to receive love to make us feel better and happier.

    Initially, we may feel ‘it’ as the dopamine of a new relationship floods our nervous system. But eventually, as the excitement from the newness subsides, we are back to our old challenges, with the persistent longing for something more while missing the fact that it only and always exists within all of us.

    4. Self-love doesn’t always feel good at first.  

    When we say the word love, it has a soft and pleasant connotation. Therefore, when we look at the fact that, let’s say, setting boundaries is an act of self-love, it doesn’t quite fit our ideology because it can evoke discomfort.

    This one was hard for me to accept. I thought that loving myself should always feel good. So, when I did positive things for myself and felt the fear of rejection or worried that others wouldn’t understand or accept me, something that the unhealed part of me struggled with, I felt uncomfortable and scared.

    Eventually, I learned that love goes way deeper, beyond immediate pleasure or comfort.

    Sometimes self-love means setting boundaries, standing up for yourself, looking at your toxic traits, speaking your truth, saying no, loving some people from a distance, or putting yourself first.

    It’s about respecting yourself enough to honor your needs and well-being, even if it means someone else is displeased.

    5. Loneliness results from disconnection. 

    When I was married, I felt lonely. Then I got divorced, and the loneliness was gone. Eventually, I got into another relationship and felt lonely again. After I broke it off, loneliness disappeared again.

    This dynamic got me curious.

    Typically, we expect to feel lonely when we are alone. But I realized that loneliness isn’t about other people’s presence but rather the connection we have with ourselves.

    Since I was staying in abusive and toxic situations, I knew I was betraying myself. But because I ignored it and denied it, I was naturally disconnected from who I was and what I was worth. And that brought painful feelings of loneliness.

    On the other hand, when I stood up for myself and left the situation that was hurting me, my higher self understood that I was taking a healthy step and led me back to myself. This is when loneliness started to dissipate.

    At the time of this writing, I am choosing to be single. I feel that for the first time, I am truly taking care of myself and honoring my worth and value—things that were so foreign to me all my life.

    I see this as a time of deep recovery and healing while peeling away every layer of past conditioning and trauma. Seeing that love is always available to all of us, I am beginning to understand that who I am, where I am, and what I do are and always were enough.

    —

    Although approaching emotional pain will always be a challenge for me, I am beginning to see that my pain was never meant to make me suffer. Instead, it showed me the love I was capable of feeling and taught me how I can use it to heal myself.

  • Choosing Yourself: How to Prioritize Your Personal Well-Being

    Choosing Yourself: How to Prioritize Your Personal Well-Being

    “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” ~Oscar Wilde

    “Choose me!” I heard the voice clearly as I sat across from my therapist one day in her office.

    It was my fourth visit, and we were working through this feeling I had, like I was crying on the inside but nothing was coming out on the outside. I was explaining how this feeling had been recurring quite frequently lately and how my response was to ignore it and push through it.

    In response to this, my therapist asked me, “What would happen if you attended to this feeling instead of pushing through?”

    And that’s when it happened. A voice as clear as the greatest truth you’ve ever heard called out from my crying heart: “Choose me!” All the tears I had been crying on the inside began to fall down my cheeks.

    From a young age, we are taught to consider others and put their needs above our own. Especially if we are raised in certain religious or cultural settings, this message can be prevalent from the beginning.

    As babies, when we needed something, we’d cry, and our needs would be met. However, as we grew older, we started to receive messaging around being polite, not being selfish, or treating others as we wanted to be treated. Slowly, our needs became less important than the needs of those around us, and we learned to become more attuned to their needs than our own.

    We learned that we were responsible for the well-being and happiness of others. Putting ourselves first became selfish and irresponsible and was met with resistance.

    It’s a message we have been receiving for generations, which is why it is so hard to imagine choosing ourselves over others. It’s especially hard for women, who are often taught to put the needs of their family and community before their own.

    The longer we ignore ourselves, the greater the toll it takes on our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

    According to Deloitte’s Women @ Work: A Global Outlook report, 50% of women in this year’s survey describe their stress levels as higher than a year ago, and a similar number say they’re concerned or very concerned about their mental health.

    Half of women who live with a partner and have children at home bear the most responsibility for childcare, which is up from 46% last year. And nearly 60% of women who are involved in the care of another adult say they take the greatest responsibility for this, a significant increase from the 44% who said so in 2023.

    Given these alarming statistics, it’s no wonder that we feel exhausted, burnt out, and emotionally unwell. So how do we make a change? How do we heed the call of our inner knowing that longs for us to choose ourselves?

    Let’s walk through the five steps that I took when I heard the call, which I continue to take every day to attend to my own well-being.

    Make space for your interests.

    “Play is the stick that stirs the drink. It is the basis of all art, games, books, sports, movies, fashion, fun, and wonder—in short, the basis of what we think of as civilization. Play is the vital essence of life. It is what makes life lively.” ~Stuart Brown

    Stuart Brown has written a wonderful book called Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. In it, he walks through the science of play and how it fuels our happiness in life.

    To witness this in your own life, take a walk around your neighborhood and observe children playing—running, hiding, screaming, and laughing. Their sense of freedom and inhibition is inspiring. Now think back to your childhood. What did you used to enjoy doing? What made you laugh? What made you feel alive? What made you lose track of time? What makes you feel calm now? What brings you joy?

    Give yourself permission to find your interests and passions again. Make space for them in your day or week and watch yourself come alive.

    Make space for stillness and reflection.

    “When everything is moving and shifting, the only way to counteract chaos is stillness. When things feel extraordinary, strive for ordinary. When the surface is wavy, dive deeper for quieter waters.” ~Kristin Armstrong

    Making space in my day for stillness and reflection has become a key contributor to my overall well-being. This never used to be the case, but almost every day for the past six months, I’ve started my day with a ten-minute meditation and thirty minutes of journaling.

    I wake up an hour before the rest of the family to fit this in, and it has become such a special time of my day that I find myself jumping out of bed instead of crawling.

    There are numerous studies on how meditation and journaling are good for mental health, reducing our stress, enhancing our self-awareness, improving our sleep, and so on. I find that the more I take this time for myself, the more I crave it. Diving deeper into the quiet waters before the day begins keeps me grounded for the day ahead.

    Make space for self-care.

    “If you don’t love yourself, nobody will. Not only that, you won’t be good at loving anyone else. Loving starts with the self.” ~Wayne Dyer

    To counteract the messaging of giving to others, we need to remember the power in giving care to ourselves. In the words of Lalah Delia, “Self-care is how you take your power back.” We cannot continue to give and give and give until our well runs dry. That will benefit no one.

    Dr. Kristin Neff is a research psychologist who studies self-compassion. Her book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself was a game-changer for me and showed me how closely self-care and self-esteem were related. It introduced me to the practice of treating myself with the same care and compassion I would offer a good friend.

    In practice, self-care can look like adopting healthy lifestyle habits like going for walks, eating a healthy diet, getting a good amount of sleep, and following treatment plans. For me, it includes meditation, journaling, walking, getting regularly scheduled massages, having spa days, and spending time in nature. Find what works for you and build it into your schedule as best as possible.

    Make space for pushing your limits.

    “You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.” ~Andrew Murphy

    When I think of limits, there are two questions that come to mind:

    1. Where am I getting too comfortable, and how can I push myself out of that comfort zone?
    2. What beliefs do I have about myself or my situation that are holding me back?

    The first question challenges me to think about situations that would force me to be uncomfortable but would also enable me to grow.

    In the words of Dr. Brené Brown, “Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.” Read that one more time. You learn courage by couraging. Pushing your limits takes courage, but it’s only by doing this that we will learn how much bigger, stronger, and more powerful we can grow.

    The second question challenges me to think about my own limiting beliefs. For this, I look to the work of Byron Katie, who challenges me to ask, “Is it true? Can I absolutely know that it’s true? How do I react when I believe that thought? Who would I be without that thought?” This framework has been life-changing for me and is an exercise I often bring to my journal. I encourage you to explore your thoughts and try to determine which beliefs are holding you back.

    Make space for envisioning how you want your life to be.

    “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” ~Carl Jung

    I recently did a “future me” vision exercise that I found in the book Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead. Going through this exercise, I was introduced to my future self—where she lives, what she looks like, how she behaves, and how she got to where she is in life. It was a truly eye-opening experience and provided me with a vision of my true and higher Self. This is the me I wanted to be in twenty years, and now I had an example to follow.

    Another way to create a vision for the life you want is to create a vision board. A vision board is a collection of images, drawings, and other visuals that represent your goals, dreams, and aspirations for your life. It’s something that you can pin on your wall or even keep on your phone to refer back to on a regular basis in order to keep you connected with who you want to be. It’s a powerful reminder to keep you on track.

    In Summary

    Six months ago, I heard my inner wisdom calling out, “Choose me!” This marked the beginning of a transformative journey of unlearning societal norms and embracing the power of self-love. It has been a path of making space for myself—my play, my rest, my care, my beliefs, and my vision. While it may seem selfish on the surface, deep down, I feel my soul being nourished and my mind finding peace.

    By prioritizing my well-being, I have discovered that I am more capable of showing up fully for those in my life—my partner, my child, my parents, my friends, and my community. Choosing yourself is not about neglecting others; it’s about ensuring you have the strength and clarity to be there for them. This journey has taught me that self-love is the foundation of a fulfilling and balanced life.

    After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? Being the best version of ourselves so we can truly contribute to the well-being of those we love.

  • How to Boost Your Self-Esteem: 6 Tips to Like Yourself More

    How to Boost Your Self-Esteem: 6 Tips to Like Yourself More

    “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

    I have, as I believe many of us do, grappled with the thorny issues of self-esteem for much of my life. But it was only when I became terribly unwell with an autoimmune disease six years ago that I began to see how much low self-esteem was affecting my day-to-day life and my health.

    I started to see how focusing on external validation and bending and folding, putting the needs of others ahead of mine, like a reed being dragged back and forth by the currents of a river, was a damaging way to live.

    As I began to heal, I could see how not really valuing or trusting myself was filtering into almost every aspect of my life. I began to understand how even the little decisions that said “yes” or “no” to my true self were affecting my health and happiness.

    I didn’t really know what I liked or didn’t like, who I was, or what I wanted from life. Well, at that point, I mostly wanted to be well, but I knew that emotional work was an important component of that. I also knew that developing greater self-worth would be key to my healing.

    I began reflecting on what I value and enjoy. I began listening to messages from my body and from my intuition. I started to ask myself questions like, “Am I people-pleasing from a place of low self-esteem, or is my true self saying yes in all its honesty and wisdom?” and “Am I bending to please or placate someone else’s wishes just to accommodate them, to the detriment of my health and happiness?” I began to believe in myself and to recognize the value I add to this world.

    Having high self-worth or self-esteem can be one of the most transformational and wonderful things for your happiness, health, and success, but how do we get from not holding ourselves in high regard to having high levels of love and esteem for ourselves?

    Self-esteem is the way we value and see ourselves. It is our assessment of our overall worth or value. It is how much we like ourselves. It is something that forms over time, but, along with the rest of our subconscious beliefs, it is mostly formed at a young age.

    Many of us suffer from low self-esteem, but it is totally possible to change and reframe our limiting beliefs.

    “Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your handbrake on.” ~Maxwell Maltz

    Having low self-esteem can really hold us back from living a full and happy life. We might feel anxious and awkward around others because we feel unlovable or paralyzed by low self-esteem, unable to move forward and succeed in life because we don’t feel we’re worthy.

    Low self-esteem often leads to high levels of self-criticism and ideas of not being good enough. It’s a feeling of generally thinking negatively about yourself and your life.

    It may stem from things like bullying or abuse, mental or physical illness, stress, work, or relationship problems. It can often begin in childhood and develop over the years.

    Low self-esteem can manifest in numerous ways, such as:

    • people-pleasing
    • being indecisive
    • not having positive relationships
    • getting angry or irritated easily
    • regularly feeling overwhelming sadness
    • Having difficulty creating boundaries
    • holding a pessimistic outlook on life
    • doubting your capabilities and capacity for success

    The great news, however, is that developing love for yourself and creating a happier, more successful life is totally possible. Here’s how.

    1. Work on developing self-compassion.

    I can be hard on myself at times—much harder on myself than on others. Nurturing self-compassion has helped me soften toward myself and, in doing so, view myself with a kinder lens.

    Kristen Neff explains, “Tender self-compassion is the capacity that allows us to be with ourselves just as we are—comforting and reassuring ourselves that we aren’t alone, as well as validating our pain. It has the gentle, nurturing quality of a mother toward a newborn child.”

    A useful technique for being kinder to yourself is to think about how you might respond to a good friend or a young child if they were beating themselves up about something. Just noticing how differently we speak to ourselves and beginning to adjust that to something kinder and gentler is an excellent way to start building compassion toward ourselves.

    Loving-kindness meditations have been very helpful for me in cultivating self-compassion. Incorporating one into your routine is an excellent way to develop self-compassion as a tangible practice.

    2. Set goals, and don’t break your promises to yourself.

    Building trust in yourself and your capabilities is an important part of developing self-worth. However, be careful not to allow goal-setting to be just another stick to beat yourself with.

    I live with a chronic illness, so setting goals can be challenging. My health can often dictate what I can achieve, so I have to be gentle in my approach to this. I keep my intentions reasonable, realistic, and compassionate. That means if I have a setback with my health, I don’t end up feeling bad for not keeping my promises to myself.

    Showing up for yourself and not letting yourself down tells your subconscious that you’re worth it. As long as you remain flexible and kind to yourself, setting small goals and then reveling in your accomplishments can begin to change the narrative you might have created around your abilities and not being good enough. Set realistic goals so you don’t set yourself up for failure, and build up over time as you develop your confidence and self-worth.

    If, like me, you have health woes, perhaps one of your goals might be to make sure you do a gentle yoga flow that you know helps with your pain. Or maybe even something as simple as making sure you spend ten minutes outside first thing in the morning so you get some sunlight and fresh air. The crucial thing is to show up for yourself and let your subconscious know that you matter.

    Or, if you are terrified of speaking up in meetings at work, set yourself a goal to say something once in the coming week. This small goal will feel more manageable than committing to speaking up in every meeting, and you’re more likely to achieve it, thereby swerving the shame spiral and negative self-talk trap. When you do speak up, really celebrate it!

    3. Take stock of your achievements.

    Make a list of things you’re good at. Start with small things like: good at being kind, funny, on time, tidy, whatever it may be. Come up with as many as you can, but ten is a good goal. Just writing this list will boost your confidence and shift you out of negative thought patterns.

    Then think about things you’ve achieved over your life—things like excelling in a sport or learning to cook or play an instrument.

    Next, consider what you’ve achieved at school, university, or work. Chances are, you excelled somewhere along the way, but you’ve told yourself a story to the contrary. It’s time to rewrite that story. Really revel in those successes. Maybe you could even write some words of praise next to each one. Go on, give yourself a gold star—you know you want to!

    I have an evening journaling practice, and sometimes, especially at times when I’m feeling a little down on myself, I write three things I did well that day. This always helps boost my mood and affects how I feel about myself.

    4. Accept compliments.

    I don’t know how many times I’ve deflected a compliment I’ve received: “You look nice today.” “Ugh, no, my hair’s awful” or some other such brush-off.

    I’ve started making a conscious effort to simply say, “Thanks very much” when someone pays me a compliment. I can’t say I feel totally at ease with it all the time, but it’s a warmer experience of receiving appreciation. I think it probably feels nicer for the person bestowing their kind words too.

    When we don’t feel good about ourselves, accepting a compliment can feel really awkward because we just can’t imagine how it’s true. It’s also considered culturally polite to modestly negate or refute a compliment, so it almost feels like a natural reflex to bat it away quickly and move on. But doing this keeps you in low self-worth and maintains the narrative of negativity you spin for yourself.

    The next time someone pays you a compliment, I invite you to just say, “Thanks so much” or “How nice of you to say.” The more you practice responding in this way, the more you will start to elevate your thoughts and feelings about yourself and develop higher self-esteem.

    5. Practice self-care.

    Looking after yourself is such an act of love. Consistently putting yourself and your needs first tells your brain that you’re worth it. Putting yourself first does not make you selfish. It actually enables you to give more fully to the people and things in your life that matter. It really is true that you can’t pour from an empty cup.

    Self-care absolutely looks like meditation, yoga, etc., but it also looks like getting enough sleep, eating well, moving your body, getting out in nature, and doing things you enjoy.

    Add it to your plan for the week. Build it into your calendar because it’s just as important as the meetings or whatever else you have filling up your week (more so, IMO!). Self-care is a way to keep showing up for yourself, showing yourself that you are worthy of care and love, which will raise your self-esteem to no end.

    One of my favorite self-care practices is to light a load of candles and incense, get some relaxing music on, and read a book. It makes me feel cozy and comforted and relaxes me. It can be all manner of things—whatever helps you show yourself the love you deserve.

    6. Try positive affirmations.

    Affirmations are a wonderful tool to help improve your self-esteem, but they need to be done right. Until I learned more about how affirmations work, they felt a bit meaningless to me.

    For them to work, our subconscious mind needs to accept them as true.

    If you have low self-worth, for example, chances are you won’t just immediately believe, at a subconscious level, the affirmation “I am worthy of love.” Once your self-esteem is a little higher, affirmations like that will work well, but when you’re coming from a place of low self-worth, your critical faculty won’t let “I am” affirmations pass go.

    While you’re developing your self-esteem, try using affirmations like “I am learning to feel worthy of love” or “Every day, in every way, I am learning to show myself the love and respect I deserve.”

    Affirmations like these feel much more credible to your belief system. Over time, they will help rewire your subconscious and, in doing so, help you raise your self-esteem.

    —

    I know firsthand that raising self-worth can be a slow and bumpy road, but it’s a journey well worth taking. Self-esteem is a crucial aspect of having positive relationships with yourself and others.

    By being gentle with yourself, accepting loving words from others, focusing on your achievements and skills, continually showing up for and looking after yourself, and reprogramming your subconscious mind, you can make a huge difference to your levels of happiness and success in life.

    A better relationship with yourself is the first step toward creating better relationships with those around you, and, if you ask me, loving, joyful relationships are what life is all about. As RuPaul says, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?”

  • How to Make Shame Your Ally

    How to Make Shame Your Ally

    “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” ~Brené Brown

    I was walking to my office one day when one of my colleagues gave me a compliment about what I was wearing. I was a little surprised and, without thinking, said something disparaging about my dress and darted off into my office.

    As I sat down, I noticed an intense wave of discomfort all over my body, and dark churning thoughts started attacking me.

    What is wrong with me? I asked myself. Why did I say such a stupid thing? Why couldn’t I just be normal and say thank you, take the compliment, and move on? Why am I always so awkward? 

    As I sat by my desk, I felt like I just wanted to shrivel up and disappear. If the ground had opened up for me right there, I would have willingly jumped into it.

    The reply I had given my colleague started to replay in my mind, each time bringing fresh waves of nausea in my stomach and icy chills running down my back.

    What was happening to me, and why was such a seemingly innocent event feeling so uncomfortable, so painful even?

    When I started to learn about emotions and the role they play in our lives, I noticed a standout feeling that seemed to be quieter, subtler, more invisible than other emotions, but that had possibly the most powerful force of them all. It felt like this emotion’s impact, and how it affected my life and that of many others, was stronger than gravity.

    That feeling was shame.

    When I talk to people about shame now, many people don’t even recognize they feel it. That’s why I consider it an invisible emotion. It exerts a powerful force in our lives, affecting how we behave and what we think of ourselves, and it leads many of us to get lost in loops of self-blame, punishment, and vicious, nasty, self-hating thoughts. 

    When we don’t recognize that we are feeling shame, not only does it erode our self-confidence, but it’s very hard to do anything about it. It’s hard for us to release ourselves from that vicious voice of an inner critic.

    Shame was what I was feeling in the office that day. Shame that I hadn’t been able to make an effortlessly charming reply to my colleague. Shame that I might have sounded stupid. Shame that I was getting it wrong socially, again.

    When I learned about shame, I realized how natural it was that it arose in a situation like this. How so many people feel shame in social situations—in different ways than perhaps me, but shame around other human beings nonetheless.

    Shame isn’t a useless emotion whose job is solely to torment us; it actually has a positive purpose. Shame can be an incredible guide and ally for us when we learn how it operates and why it shows up in our lives, then learn how to work it.

    The first barrier that we face in working with shame is that most of us are carrying too much of it.

    We have accumulated shame throughout our lives—shame that has perhaps been passed on to us by our families; shame that people have thrown at us because they couldn’t deal with their own; and the continuous drip that many of us experienced of being shamed as children, as our parents and caregivers might have used it as an easy and effective way to get us to do what they needed.

    There are myriad ways we accumulate shame, but we know that we have too much when we have this belief that we just aren’t good enough as human beings.

    When we accumulate too much shame but don’t know how to release it, it stays hidden within us, growing as we hide more of ourselves, judge more of ourselves, and continue to believe in the wrongness of who we are.

    We don’t ‘let shame out’ because shame is perhaps one of the most socially unacceptable emotions. If you are talking to friends and someone says, “Oh, I feel so guilty I missed that text you sent,” it would most likely be considered okay.

    But if you said, “I feel so ashamed of myself that I missed your text,” it would likely make the conversation awkward.

    People don’t talk about shame because that in itself can feel inherently shameful. It can activate other people’s shame, and it can add to our own expanse of shame when not properly handled. 

    There were many areas of my life where shame showed up. In my relationship, how I responded to my kids. I even started to notice intense shame when a childhood back injury would flare up, and I wouldn’t be able to walk properly. I would start feeling shame for not being mobile, like I needed to apologize for my injury.

    When I started learning about emotions, I realized how much I needed to unravel the shame I was carrying. So I made it my mission to learn and share everything I could so that I could start to live a life where I felt proud and free of who I was—not trying to make myself smaller or more acceptable, but brazenly free and confident instead. Here are some ideas to support you on your journey to healing and releasing shame.

    The Purpose of Shame

    Shame is a natural emotion that has a purpose, like all emotions. Shame’s job is to help us stay connected to our group by adhering to the group’s social rules, to keep us safe by being connected, and to ensure we stay in line with both the group and our own values and needs.

    For example, if we were told as children that we should be quiet, and at a family gathering we were very loud, shame might have appeared to remind us that our parents would be unhappy with us, so the shame would come to try to slow us down and not risk our connection.

    It makes sense for us to have these shame activations when we are children because our safety and survival relies on us staying in connection with our caregivers. But all too often we carry this shame from childhood into our adult life, where it inhibits us from thriving.

    Or as an adult, we’re going on holiday with a friend, and they suggest a much more expensive hotel than we’d normally pick. We start to feel uncomfortable and notice shame has arisen, and when we explore it, we see that shame is trying to remind us of our values of not spending our money in ways we don’t feel good about.

    This is where shame is trying to be our guide, our ally, so that we can retain both connection with our group and our ability to be authentic to our own needs and values.

    Of course, these shame activations don’t feel good, but when we learn why shame exists, it can support us to work with this emotion so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

    Shame Often Binds with Other Emotions

    Do you notice that when you feel certain emotions like fear or anger or grief, shame can appear as well? Like I feel bad for feeling how I am. That I shouldn’t be feeling angry, sad, lonely, fearful, etc.?

    This is because shame often binds with emotions that we might not have been allowed to feel as children, or we would get into trouble for. We might have been told off for feeling angry and shamed for doing so. So shame comes up to try and reduce the amount of anger we feel so we don’t get into trouble. And that pattern stays on into adulthood if we don’t recognize it and start to dismantle this shame bind.

    For me, I had a strong shame bind with fear. I would often be made fun of for always being a “scaredy cat” by my friends as a child, or told not to feel fear by the adults around me—that I was being silly.

    Shame identified fear as an emotion that caused problems in my relationships, so it would appear when fear came up to try and slow the fear down so I wouldn’t show it to other people, thereby protecting my relationships.

    How to Melt the Shame You Are Carrying

    Recognize it’s shame and not a factual report of all of your wrongdoings.

    For me, the first step in working with shame is recognizing that I am feeling shame, and that I am not getting a long, factual report of all the things I am doing wrong in my life.

    Shame is a lens that distorts our vision of ourselves. We don’t see who we really are when shame is activated within us.

    Ask yourself: What does shame feel like for me?

    Shame can feel like:

    • Being uncomfortable in your body.
    • Feeling shy and pulling away.
    • Having a flushed face.
    • Feeling tightness in your throat or nauseous.
    • Struggling to breathe.
    • Needing to look away; having trouble keeping eye contact.
    • Feeling like the bottom is falling out from underneath you.
    • Freezing, shutting down.
    • Being lost for words.

    What does shame feel like for you? What happens to your body when shame activates?

    The next step for me is noticing what I do when I feel shame. How do I respond?

    Potential reactions to shame include:

    • Putting yourself down.
    • Attacking or blaming others—trying to throw the shame onto someone else.
    • Suddenly forgetting what you are going to say.
    • Going blank or freezing.
    • Denying or avoiding.
    • Using an activity to numb out.
    • Withdrawing and pulling away or pulling in.
    • Wanting to disappear, vanish.

    For me, putting myself down and withdrawing from people are my two biggest reactions.

    When we know what it feels like for us, it’s easier to spot when it arises. And when we can acknowledge the shame we are experiencing, and not judge ourselves for having this very natural and normal human emotion, it can help us move out of the shame activation more quickly.

    Use gentle movement to move out of shame’s freeze qualities and connect to your body.

    When we experience shame, we often have this urge to shrink or disappear. And this comes with some rigid freezing sensations in the body. We can feel stuck in our bodies and find it hard to move.

    To support ourselves with this freezing, rigid state, we can offer ourselves some gentle, slow movement. Making sure we are staying connected to our breathing, and that we are indeed breathing, we can rock, sway, hug ourselves, move our hands, wrists, and arms—whatever feels both possible and positive in the moment.

    It can also feel very supporting to give ourselves some comforting physical touch—stroking our face and arms, putting a hand on our heart and giving ourselves a gentle rub, rubbing our arms and giving ourselves a hug, wrapping ourselves up in cozy scarves or blankets, offering gentle, kind, and loving physical support.

    Connect to your breath.

    Keeping in touch with our breath is vital. When we are emotionally overwhelmed, we can either hold our breath or have very shallow breathing, so taking some short inhales and long exhales can start our breathing again and also give us a sense of calm. (The long exhales activate the ‘rest and digest’ part of our nervous system.)

    Offer empathy, validation, and connection.

    All emotions yearn for empathy and validation. Emotions want to be acknowledged, to be seen, to be felt and heard. When we ignore our emotions, or judge ourselves for having them, we inhibit their ability to integrate and release from our bodies.

    Giving ourselves empathy in acknowledging our experience can be so soothing in the midst of a shame activation.

    “It’s so hard to feel all of the uncomfortableness of shame.”

    “It was so painful to feel so much shame around this experience. It makes so much sense though that I felt that.”

    “Shame isn’t easy for anyone to feel! I am going to stay and support myself while I move through this emotion.”

    Remember that curiosity is an antidote to shame.

    Curiosity is a very powerful tool to start melting shame. Curiosity can help us process and support any emotion, but it really supports us in working with shame.

    It feels pleasurable to be curious, so we can ask questions like: Might anyone else feels like this? What is happening to me? In my body? In my thoughts? How are my past experiences affecting how I am feeling now?

    It breaks some of the rigidity that shame creates with “always” and “never” statements: I am always getting this wrong. I never make any progress. I’m always a terrible person.

    When we start being curious and looking for new ideas, new ways of seeing, it can break us out of the tunnel vision, fixation part of shame. And when our vision expands, it feels better for our whole physiology.

    When we learn how to reduce the amount of shame we are carrying, as well as learn the message it’s trying to deliver, shame can be a powerful ally. It can show us where we are straying away from our authenticity and our own boundaries. It can remind us of what is important to us, and how we can stay in safe connection with each other.

    Learning the messages our emotions are trying to deliver is one of the most empowering journeys we can take toward self-healing, confidence, and authenticity.

  • What Toxic Shame Feels Like: 9 People Share Their Experiences

    What Toxic Shame Feels Like: 9 People Share Their Experiences

    “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.” ~Carl Rogers

    My heart races as I raise my hand, eager to contribute yet terrified of the attention it brings. When the teacher picks me, the entire classroom turns toward me, putting me in the spotlight. I feel exposed. Shame floods over me like hot lava, twisting my stomach into knots and flushing my face with heat. I try desperately to stop it, but the throbbing intensity only grows. 

    I mutter words I can barely comprehend, feeling like a stranger in my own skin.

    In that moment of shame, I was an embarrassment to myself and all I wanted to do was vanish. This forty-year-old memory is as fresh as if it happened yesterday.

    Growing up in a status-oriented, conflicted home where love and connection were both unpredictable and scarce, I learned early on that I wasn’t safe to be myself in this world. I learned that to get my needs met, I had to change myself. That love and connection were unpredictable, and that I couldn’t just relax and be myself; I had to hustle for it.

    So, when the eyes of the classroom turned toward me, I couldn’t just be myself and answer the question. My programming told me that being myself equals abandonment and leads to rejection and pain. So I hustled to do things “right” to control the situation and avoid the pain of being exposed.

    But here’s the thing:

    When we’re disconnected from our authentic selves, we’re like a house on a shaky foundation—insecure, weak, and ready to fall into a mess at any moment.  And we feel that instability deep within. It’s precisely because of this disconnection that we’re overwhelmed with fear and anxiety, stumbling like fools through unfamiliar territory.

    These moments of shame were a regular part of my childhood. And it wasn’t limited to the classroom.

    When my piano teacher made eye contact, I instinctively looked away, wanting to vanish into the bench.

    When police cars passed me on the street, I’d quickly hide behind parked cars, fearing arrest for finding change under a school vending machine.

    I couldn’t explain these feelings; all I knew was the desperate need to escape that painful exposure.

    The constant anticipation of shame, never knowing when I would be engulfed in excruciating humiliation and loneliness, consumed me. It felt like a full-time job, and I fought against it with everything I had, desperate to regain control over the unpredictable.

    At school, I excelled, earning straight-A grades; at home, I became the perfect peacemaker, striving to manage the chaos of conflict. Eventually, I turned inward, seeking solace in a world consumed by counting calories, restricting food intake, and obsessing over numbers on the scale—a world where I exerted absolute control.

    Anorexia, perfectionism, and peacekeeping became my shields against shame for years. Despite the hospitalizations and brushes with death, they seemed like a safer refuge compared to confronting the raw agony of shame head-on, even if it wasn’t a conscious choice.

    There came a turning point in my journey. After years of battling anorexia, perfectionism, and the relentless pursuit of control, I hit a moment of truth. I realized the shields I’d built to protect myself were suffocating me, trapping me in a cycle of self-destruction.

    I then faced my inner turmoil head-on. With my boyfriend’s (now husband’s) support, I dove deep into studying everything I could about shame, healing, and self-discovery, eventually finding the most success with my own mix of radical acceptance, mindfulness, and somatic emotional release.

    Slowly, I started tearing down the walls I’d built, opting for vulnerability and authenticity instead. It wasn’t easy, and was full of setbacks, but it was a journey that enabled me to reclaim my true self from shame’s grip.

    Looking back, I wish I had known that shame is a fundamental part of the human experience—a challenging emotion that is especially prevalent among shame-sensitive individuals and those of us who’ve endured childhood trauma. Perhaps then, I wouldn’t have overlaid my shame with harsh self-judgment, letting those moments of shame carve themselves so deeply into my self-image.

    Instead, I might have understood that shame, while incredibly tough, is a universal emotion, particularly prevalent among those of us who’ve faced childhood traumas.

    As a culture, we need to grow in our collective understanding of shame. It’s high time we engage in open conversations about shame, fostering empathy and support for those struggling with it.

    That’s why I reached out to my newsletter subscribers and asked those who are living with shame to describe how it feels for them. Nine people shared their experiences. I hope through reading their quotes, it will help you deepen your own understanding of shame, and perhaps help you feel less alone. Here’s what they shared.

    1. I’m constantly trying to hide how messed up I am.

    “Shame feels like a constant pressure to not just do well but to go all out, trying to hide how messed up I am. I’m always worried that if someone sticks around or sees the cracks in my armor, they’ll never really love the true me. It’s like climbing this impossible mountain, always striving for perfection just to deserve love.” —Shelly P., 36

    2. I feel like I don’t belong with “normal” people.

    “I feel like I don’t belong with others. I cringe when I hear myself talking. I read too much into facial expressions and the look in people’s eyes, and it’s a constant reminder that I’m different from everybody else. It’s as if I’m from another species and I don’t belong with ‘normal’ people. I get this overwhelming feeling of being an alien, of being wrong, of being off, of having no right and place to belong. I have the urge to disappear. I want to curl into a ball, be smaller, and evaporate.” —Jen R., 24

    3. It’s discrediting any success I have.

    “I discredit any success I have as being expected. I view it more as‘ Great! You did what a normal person should be able to do’ or ‘Wow, am I that far gone in life that I’m celebrating bottom of the barrel normal behavior??’” —Kalisha C., 49

    4. It feels like every setback is deserved, even expected.

    “It’s a never-ending feeling of unworthiness, being unwanted, and an overall feeling that I’m utterly disgusting in every conceivable way. It’s feeling like I don’t deserve happiness; that every setback is deserved, even expected, because I’m so terrible. It’s not being able to look in the mirror without cringing, and every photo I see of myself is a reminder of my disappointment and failure.” —Angela H., 52

    5. It’s like I’m at war with myself.

    “There’s always something that needs to be changed, improved. If I’m shy, something is wrong with my shyness. If I speak up, I sound stupid. If my opinion isn’t popular, my opinion must be wrong. Everything about me is invalidated. It feels like I live in a self-imposed prison of self-hatred.” —Michele L., 50

    6. I’m always curating myself.

    “It feels like wanting to hide, to be unseen, unheard, and nonexistent to others. I’m always very cautious about what bit of information about myself I share, and with whom. When people get to know me, they’re often surprised by what I’m really like and they tell me how they had a different image of me in their minds. It’s like how I show up doesn’t match who I really am.” —Tina R., 28

    7. I can’t make eye contact.

    “It’s very physical for me: My skin feels hot and tingly, especially on my chest, my face, upper back, and the backs of my upper arms. I hunch forward, my head and eyes lower, and I feel frozen. I can’t make eye contact. My mind goes blank, and I struggle to think properly. And I often get angry and start blaming others. I get resentful and bitter. I hate everyone and I hate myself. It’s awful.” —John T., 32

    8. I’m always anticipating more shame.

    “Shame feels like being sucked into a black hole. It feels like everyone’s looking at me and judging me because I’m so pathetic. It’s so painful that I’ll do anything to avoid it. Anticipating shame and trying to avoid it causes me a huge amount of anxiety.” —Brianna F., 47

    9. And it feels like it will never go away.

    “I’ve done so much work on myself, had so many years of therapy, but it still feels like shame is untouchable, like nothing will ever make it go away  People tell me it’s possible to overcome chronic shame, but I’m not so sure. No matter how hard I try, every day still feels like a struggle. I feel like I’m broken, and nothing can fix me.” —Julia G., 32

    Can You Relate?

    If you’re nodding along with those quotes, rest assured you’re not alone in your journey to heal from shame. It’s entirely possible to heal, though it takes time and dedicated effort. Surround yourself with people, books, or therapists who understand shame from a positive perspective—those who can guide you with empathy and insight.

    It’s crucial to work with professionals who are at peace with their own relationship with shame. Therapists or friends who approach it with fear or condemnation may unintentionally perpetuate the cycle of self-loathing and judgment you’re striving to overcome. Seek out those who offer a non-judgmental space for exploration and healing.

    By engaging with shame compassionately and curiously, you open the door to profound transformation. Embracing shame as a teacher rather than an enemy reveals its hidden wisdom and leads to genuine self-acceptance and empowerment.

    After years of battling shame, I found my way out of the suffocating darkness not by burying or suppressing it, but by turning toward it. Educating myself about shame, I learned that it isn’t merely a byproduct of trauma; it’s a misunderstood yet inherently normal emotion with its own intrinsic value. This new understanding shifted my perspective from fighting against shame to approaching it with curiosity.

    I discovered that, despite its weight, shame holds invaluable power because it can teach us how to love ourselves—even in the darkest of times. When we experience ourselves as inherently flawed, it’s the perfect training ground for cultivating compassion and true self-love. And by caring for ourselves during the hardest moments, we’re reminded that even in our most vulnerable states, we are deserving of love and acceptance.

    Just as we cannot understand light without darkness, we learn to love ourselves through moments of feeling utterly inadequate. These moments, though excruciating, serve as catalysts for profound personal growth and transformation.

    Today, when I raise my hand to speak up in a public forum, I expect to feel a bit awkward and shy, and my face may even blush a little. But it doesn’t stop me from speaking up because I am no longer at war with shame. I know it’s just part of being the exquisitely sensitive human that I am. And I’m okay with that.

    *These quotes have been edited and condensed for length and clarity. 

  • If You Don’t Love Yourself

    If You Don’t Love Yourself

  • Bulletproof Self-Love: How to Build an Unshakeable Relationship with Yourself

    Bulletproof Self-Love: How to Build an Unshakeable Relationship with Yourself

    “Before you put yourself down, please consider everything you’ve accomplished to get to this point, every life you’ve touched, and every moment you’ve pushed beyond your fears. You are a champion, a fighter. You are worthy of nothing less than the deepest love you have to share.” ~Scott Stabile

    It seems that we’re being bombarded daily with heart-felt messages to love ourselves more. It’s everywhere—from our Instagram newsfeed to handprinted tote bags to the “You are worthy” mural at your local coffee shop.

    I appreciate the society-wide agreement we seem to have made to remind ourselves to choose self-love.

    But endless commandments like “Put yourself first!” and “Remember your worth!” rarely explain how to actually follow through with it. We talk about self-love and self-worth as though it’s a matter of remembering to floss your teeth at night—as if you can choose better relationships, set healthy boundaries, and take care of your body by just remembering to do so.

    If it doesn’t come easily, loving yourself might feel like walking into a new job with no training and being expected to figure it out without a manual or supervisor. Through no fault of your own, you may not have developed the muscle for self-love and care.

    I know this because I’ve had in-depth conversations with people who flat out told me, “I don’t know how to have compassion for myself.”

    You don’t have an arduous, uphill struggle to feel worthy and self-loving because you lack the inner capacity for it.

    If you know how to feel hand-on-chest, lower-lip-puckered-out sympathy and compassion for others—even if it’s for endangered polar bears—then you have the capacity to cultivate this feeling for yourself. And it’s not your fault if you feel lost on where to begin.

    Working with Your Unloved Parts

    The culprits that thwart your best efforts to practice self-love often come from your shadow—an unconscious receptacle that safeguards all the parts of yourself that’ve been rejected and pushed away. Your shadow deploys a lot of unconscious strategies to make sure you keep sabotaging yourself and avoiding your rejected parts.

    Because laziness was deeply entrenched in my shadow, I learned early in life to cope with my unlovable parts by overworking myself. Every nook and cranny of my calendar was chock full of social outings, chores, hurried “leisure” walks, and things to occupy my mind. I only felt good enough when I was constantly busy, so I developed a wicked good avoidance strategy that kept the inner scarcity just below my level of awareness.

    Eventually, I noticed this endless game of tag between me and the horrific emptiness. I learned to stop pushing it away and instead developed a capacity to be with the sensations it stirred up in my body.

    There are remarkable benefits to working with any fear or disgust you have toward your shadow parts, but a lot of folks run into roadblocks because we’re wired to avoid pain and move toward pleasure.

    When the terror of shadow parts arises in the body, our visceral reaction is often to push it away, lodging it further away into our psyche.

    Neuroscience has also shown us that negative self-talk can actually give you a dopamine hit if it’s what your brain thinks is “correct,” even if the beliefs are negative and sabotaging.

    This leads us to push away our unloved parts and berate them.

    Thankfully, there’s another option.

    Integrate your shadow parts by creating a safe space for them—more specifically, for the uncomfortable emotions that emerge around them. For example, if you habitually feel anxious in social situations because you think of yourself as being awkward, you can practice integrating your “awkward self” by creating space for the disgust or fear associated with it.

    Being with difficult emotions means being with the sensations without feeding them negative thoughts. This actually sends signals of safety to your brain and nervous system that lowers the internal red flags. With continued practice, your brain loses a reason to push the pedal to the metal on stress responses like anxiety, and the uncomfortable sensations begin to subside. This is the true meaning of “facing your fears.”

    When you reach the other side of a difficult emotion, it often feels divinely euphoric and empowering—like you’re walking across the finish line of a marathon. Allowing emotions to pass through your body builds resilience. Every time you practice the art of allowing, it becomes easier to anchor back into your power.

    Practicing Self-Love

    Nurturing your capacity to think self-loving thoughts, be self-loving, and feel the sensations of self-love is also a necessary practice.

    You might be surprised to learn that you could be projecting all your love onto other people. Whether it’s a romantic partner, friend, or tv character, if you shower them with adoration, there’s love inside you, but perhaps it doesn’t feel quite at home. Parts of you might feel deeply flawed or incomplete—whether you’re conscious of it or not—so you’re shoving your love into the hands of someone else instead. Projecting love onto others is a way of defending yourself against inner parts you’ve deemed unlovable. Everyone does this in some form or another.

    The remedy to this situation is taking back those projections and investing time and energy into finding and loving those qualities in yourself.

    We all have a negativity bias in our brains, so we pay more attention to what’s wrong, unsafe, or not good enough about ourselves and the world around us. If this default setting is left unchecked, it leads to major brain ruts—and well, we’ve all met a curmudgeon before!

    If you want to lean into what’s radiantly loveable about yourself, you have to shamelessly focus on what you want to love about yourself. If you’re not sure what that is, then choose something and nurture the hell out of it. Tenacity goes a long way when you want to reverse old patterns.

    Around the time I began learning to face my own inner void, I took myself on a journey of self-love and self-care through embodied sensual movement and pole dancing.

    I call it my divine intervention.

    Seemingly out of nowhere, I instinctively knew one day I wanted to become a pole dancer. Even though I had literally zero background in dancing or physical exercise in general, I realized that I had a dancer’s heart inside of me. As luck would have it, a brand-new studio had just opened up in my city six months earlier.

    I signed up for an assortment of classes, but it was the feminine movement pole dancing class that captivated me. I’d been in a rush my whole life—for no particular reason at any given moment—but this slow-as-honey practice forced me to start paying attention to myself in ways I never had before.

    I invested in myself by taking these classes. It allowed me to stop feeling guilty for being lazy. I didn’t need to overstuff myself with work, relationships, or other outside sources of validation anymore. I learned to slow down, feel my body, and take better care of myself.

    Learning to love yourself and know your worth is like having direct access to your inner authority. The self-doubt, sabotage, and low self-esteem lose their power and you finally get to take the helm. If you’re ready to stop second-guessing and minimizing yourself, here’s how to get started.

    5 Ways to Start Loving Yourself

    1. Expand your capacity to be with your unloved parts.

    Every time you create space for an unloved part, you’re changing the relationship between you and that part. Even if you have lots of deep wounds, your relationship to yourself is always changing. The key to creating safe space for your parts is staying with the sensations of fear or disgust and away from stories. If you allow thoughts of worry or self-judgment to run the show, the unloved parts won’t get reconditioned.

    The best way to do this is to work with emotions in real time. Find a quiet place to breathe through the sensations. Emotions run a lifespan of ninety seconds at most if you don’t retrigger the emotion with negative thoughts.

    2. Open up your nervous system to receive love.

    This is about practicing the art of receiving goodwill and kindness in all forms—positive feedback, compliments, and words of affirmation.

    How often do you fully accept a compliment? How often do you pause to let kind words—whether it’s a thank-you email from a friend or gratitude from a stranger—land in your body? We’re so quick to brush off affirmations, so what if you rewarded yourself by unapologetically receiving them instead? Make a practice of slowing down enough to take it all in. When you do, you’re reinforcing the pathway to connection and self-love in your nervous system.

    3. Affirm yourself with the love you give to others.

    If you already have the capacity to love others, then there’s an existing pathway to self-love. It just needs to be rerouted back to you.

    On a neurological level, if self-love feels like a stranger to you, the neural networks related to your self-image probably have a poor association with the biochemicals related to emotions around love and worthiness. Thankfully, neurons that fire together, wire together!

    Try this exercise in front of a mirror. Think of someone you deeply love and would describe as being super “loveable.” Close your eyes, see that person in your head, and think about why you love them so much that you can literally feel the tingly sensations coursing through your body. Then quickly open your eyes and repeat to yourself while looking in the mirror, “I am so loveable” with an extra emphasis on “I.” Make sure to work up the feeling on a visceral level in your body before you open your eyes. You’re “borrowing” the feel-good neurons while activating the self-image neurons to create new neural pathways.

    Have fun with this and change out “loveable” with other qualities you want to feel toward yourself in each round. Repetition matters, so make this a regular practice.

    4. Create actionable self-love.

    If you truly loved yourself in the way you wanted to, what would you do differently? Make a list of specific behaviors you want to change. For each one, ask yourself, “What’s the absolute smallest step I can take to work toward creating this behavior—something so small, I can do it right now?”

    Hint: the smallest step is always smaller than you think. For instance, if you want to ask for the pay raise you deserve, you might think the next smallest step is writing a letter of justification. If you feel head-to-toe inspired to do that right now, by all means, please do! But give yourself permission to start even smaller if the thought of drafting a letter immediately gives you anxiety. The goal is to start building momentum right NOW, so keep the steps super small and easy to do.

    5. “Drop in” to your embodied self-worth.

    You have access to your self-worth any time you want because it’s inherent. There’s nothing you ever need to do to earn it. Even if you’re not sure what it feels like, your worthiness is always there, waiting for you to reconnect to it.

    Getting into your body senses is a fantastic way to find where dignity lives in your body so that you can deepen your relationship with it. Make it a regular practice to take a few minutes to turn inward and “get to know” your non-negotiable worthiness. Where is it located? If it was a color, what color would it be? If it was a shape, what shape would it be? What’s the texture, movement, and sound of your self-worth? Bring it to life and revisit it often. Remember that every good relationship requires nurturing.

  • 22 Things That Have Helped Me Grow and Love Myself

    22 Things That Have Helped Me Grow and Love Myself

    “Be brave enough to take off the masks you wear out there and get to know who you are underneath. Be vulnerable enough to accept your flaws and know that they are what make you human; they are what make you real. Be confident enough to accept and cherish your strengths. Don’t minimize them or hide them. They are your beautiful gifts to share with the world. Be brave enough to say, you know what, all of this is who I am. I make so many mistakes. I can be forgetful, I am messy. But I am doing my best with what I’ve got. And I am so proud of that. I am so proud of me. And I am proud of who I am becoming. ” ~Nikki Banas

    A few years ago, a kindergartener came up to me with a small Valentine’s balloon. He handed it to me and said with a sweet and innocent smile, “This is for you. Since you probably aren’t getting anything else.” I laughed so hard I wet my pants.

    Over the years I have learned the importance of being your own Valentine. There is no greater love than the love you can give yourself. And if I know one thing for sure, it is that we have the rest of our lives to spend with ourselves. So we might as well learn to love ourselves. Am I right?

    In that moment, I was reminded of just how far I had come on life’s wild ride.

    I remember on Valentine’s Day, about ten years ago, I walked into a Target to do some serious retail therapy. I barely made it twenty steps before I saw a shelf filled with coffee mugs. You know, the ones that have one initial on the front, but you can never find your exact initials. You can only find X, Q, and Z. Well, I kid you not, there were three lined up perfectly that spelled out J-E-N. Jen, my ex. The one I thought I would marry.

    As her name glared at me from the shelf, “Since You Been Gone” played on the loudspeaker. I nearly had a breakdown on aisle four. At that moment, my world felt like it was imploding. It seemed as if the world was against me. Loneliness and grief flooded my body.

    I darted straight for the alcohol aisle, then I went home and drank myself into oblivion. I don’t even know what oblivion is, but I know I drank myself there. I didn’t know any other way to soothe myself. Drinking was my answer for everything.

    Two months later, I would almost drink myself to death. Self-love, self-compassion, and self-worth were not words in my vocabulary. I had heard them before, but I had never fully put them into practice.

    People had told me that I was loved. But what do those words mean if you don’t believe it yourself?  If you don’t love yourself, those words sound a lot like Charlie Brown’s teacher. “Muah. Muah. Blah blah blah blah blah.” Telling me that I was loved was a sweet sentiment, but it felt rather meaningless for me at that time in my life.

    I did attempt the journey of self-love before I got sober. But addiction stunts your growth. You can only grow so much when you are numbing out to some of life’s greatest opportunities for learning.

    My sobriety propelled me into a real and authentic journey of self-love. A journey that I was able to fully envelop and embrace. Self-love changed my entire life. It changed how I viewed myself. And, in turn, it changed how I viewed the world.

    Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein, president of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, wrote, “Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological, and spiritual growth. Self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others. Self-love means not settling for less than you deserve.”

    For years I had cared so much about what other people thought, and I would often put on a show to try and convince other people of my worthiness—when, in fact, I was the one that needed convincing. “Hustling for worthiness,” as Brené Brown calls it, is exhausting.

    And a foundation built on what others think of you is about as unstable as a foundation built of candy corn. Why candy corn? I have no idea. But one tiny windstorm or a small bit of turbulence and you are screwed.

    Self-love, self-compassion, and self-worth are not just things you hope for; they are things you work for.

    I had to start by letting go of anything that might be holding me back from stepping into my true self. I had to peel away the layers. Years of using alcohol to cope and survive, shame around my sexuality, trauma and grief related to my family’s deaths, the way religion tried to convince me that I was broken… the list goes on and on. I had to face these things head on and fully accept all parts of myself. The light and the dark.

    Brené Brown, one of my all-time favorite authors, states in one of my all-time favorite books, The Gifts of Imperfection, “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.”

    I worked through some tough stuff and began to see myself in a different light. Realizing that I was not broken was an incredible gift. A gift that I would not have been able to unwrap without first healing some past wounds and facing some hard things that I had so long avoided. And I continued to love myself through the entire process.

    Self-love, in my opinion, is the most powerful kind of love. Without it, I find it almost impossible to authentically love someone else. Without self-love, my life would become a bit of a dark alley. Without self-love, I would stay stuck in that dark alley. And the good Lord knows, ain’t nothing good going on in a dark alley.

    Self-love gives me the lantern I need to help light the way out of the darkness, back to my authentic self. Back to my truth. Back to my own light. 

    Brené Brown also makes reference to this courage and this light. She says, “Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of OUR light.” Self-love guides the way.

    Self-love is more than just the state of “feeling good.” It is much more than buying yourself some chocolates and taking a bubble bath, although chocolates and bubble baths are nice too. Self-love is about diving and digging deep into your own life. It is about letting go of those limiting beliefs and negative loops that have been telling you lies for years.

    It is about learning to talk to yourself in the loving way that you deserve. It is discovering how to feel comfortable in your own skin and recognizing that you matter. It is standing up for yourself in areas that might scare you at first but will empower you in the end. It is about letting others see you. The real you.

    Self-love is a way of life.

    It is about rewiring your brain and changing your old story. It is about having compassion for ourselves and celebrating ourselves. All parts of ourselves. It doesn’t happen overnight. You can’t do one abdominal workout and wake up with a six-pack the following day. Otherwise, I would be rocking a six-pack.

    Just like training and toning our muscles takes commitment and time, training and toning our minds and our hearts takes consistent dedication and a willingness to stay on course. Unlearning is hard work. But hard work that is worth it, since it means living happy, joyous, and free (most of time).

    My old ways of thinking certainly make “cameos” in my life these days. The difference is, they don’t run the show.

    At forty-five, I have the confidence to say that self-love has changed my entire life. My self-love journey is ever-evolving, and I certainly still have my rough days. But, if we are looking at the big picture, I have become quite fond of my qualities. I truly feel like I am light in this world rather than just a useless bump on a log. Actually, who is to say that those bumps on logs are useless? Maybe someone loves those bumps. Okay, that might be stretching it.

    Anyway, when I used to experience any type of emotional disturbance, I would often choose unhealthy and negative ways to deal with my feelings. Now, I have a laundry list of practices that help promote a healthier and more productive response so that I can move through the disturbances with grace and dignity rather than self-pity and self-sabotage.

    The triggers don’t ever go away, but the way we respond to them most certainly does some shifting.

    Where does one even start to discover self-love? I think you have to see what works for you. Some things that have been and still are vital to my growth include:

    • therapy
    • breathwork
    • meditation
    • writing
    • taking time for myself
    • getting to know myself
    • forgiveness
    • being of service
    • listening to others’ stories of hope
    • unplugging
    • long baths
    • doing things that make me happy
    • not shaming myself for needing medication for my depression
    • getting outside of my comfort zone
    • staying sober
    • laughing and not taking everything so seriously
    • making empowering choices
    • interrupting negative thoughts
    • reading a lot of Brené Brown books
    • vulnerability
    • being open and honest about my own story
    • nature

    These are just some of the things that are in my self-love satchel. Do people still use that word, satchel? Satchel. Satchel. Now it sounds weird. Anyway, those are just a few things that have helped and continue to help keep my train on the tracks.

    The journey of self-love is hard work. But nothing that is worth it comes easy. What challenges you, changes you. And getting to know myself and accepting all parts of myself was one of the most challenging things I have ever tried. And at the same time one of the most rewarding.

    I’m looking forward to the day that I meet my other Valentine.

    That kindergartener was right, though. The balloon was the only gift I would get on that particular Valentine’s Day. But I had already given myself the greatest gift on earth: the gift of self-love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I’ll share an example from my own life.

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

    Maybe you’ve heard of the Indus Valley civilization.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Close your eyes and feel this love.

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

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

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

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

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

  • How Being Alone Made Me Fall in Love with Myself

    How Being Alone Made Me Fall in Love with Myself

    “Solitude is where one discovers one is not alone.” ~Marty Rubin

    “No one invites me to their party.” That’s what middle school was like for me, anyway. No matter how hard I tried, I could never really fit in with any friend groups.

    It seemed like everyone got the instructions on who to hang with and where to sit except me.

    I was the serious, quiet type. And the gossipers and sleepover crews didn’t want serious and reserved. So I bounced around, making a buddy here and there. But I was never fully brought into the social scene.

    At first, I figured it would sort itself out and I’d find my people. But middle school turned into high school. And high school turned into my first year of college.

    I was still on the outside looking in.

    No matter how often I put myself out there to try and squeeze into different circles, I’d end up alone again before long—feeling even more lonely than when I just kept to myself.

    The worst part was when I pretended to be someone else, just trying to fit in. And it would work…for a minute. Then I couldn’t keep up the act anymore.

    I was back to being an outsider. But now I also felt like I lost some inner part of me that made me, me. I was drained. I was bummed.

    Eventually, I realized I had hit rock bottom. I was tired of criticizing myself and trying to contort into someone I was not just to please people who didn’t actually care about me.

    I had already chased after so many groups and friends, desperate for that connection, but all I was left with was emptiness.

    Finally, one day, I asked myself, “Who has been here through it all? The highs and lows, wins and losses?”

    The answer was me, myself, and I. ‘I’ was the constant.

    ‘I’ was the one listening and providing answers when I talked myself through difficult situations. ‘I’ was the one patting myself on the back when I succeeded at something.

    That realization—that I already had the most loyal companion imaginable—brought me more comfort than any superficial friendship or party invite could. I had myself, and I was enough.

    I decided to stop begging for validation or acceptance from others. I was going to validate myself.

    I started actively spending more time alone, without distractions or social media. Reading, writing, and taking myself on solo dates.

    I discovered so much about my interests and strengths. I found inspiration and magic in solitude I had never known before.

    For the first time in ages, I was at peace. I felt whole, not like some fractured version of myself. I was alone but not lonely. I was independent yet fulfilled.

    I became my own best friend. And that made all the difference.

    It taught me that I alone am enough, even if others don’t see my worth. Their approval is meaningless unless I have self-approval first.

    Further, an interesting thing happened once I stopped desperately chasing friendships—I started attracting people who liked me for me. Turns out when you’re confident and self-assured, you give off good vibes that draw others in.

    I made some fantastic friends in college who didn’t care that I was an introvert. And you know what’s the best part? I even found my love partner! Everyone valued my insight and quiet persistence.

    For the first time, I felt like I belonged while still being fully myself.

    I learned four vital lessons from my lonely middle school days:

    1. You are your own best friend or worst critic. How you talk to yourself matters. Build yourself up rather than tear yourself down.

    2. Embrace what makes you different. Don’t hide your unique gifts and talents away in some quest to fit in. The right people will appreciate them.

    3. Connections can’t be forced. Friendships and relationships worth having tend to come when you least expect them. Stop chasing and let things unfold.

    4. It’s better to be “alone” than in bad company. Having toxic or fake friends is far lonelier than having just yourself.

    My middle school self would never believe me if I told him one day, he’d have true friends and a partner who adores his little quirks.

    But by making peace with being alone, I found the relationships I had craved for so long and discovered that all the acceptance I needed was my own.

    I still consider myself an introvert. I enjoy my solo time and quiet hobbies. But now I don’t feel pressured to be someone I’m not just to keep friends around. The connections I do have are based on authenticity from both sides.

    And when I need advice or just someone to listen, I turn inward. I explore my feelings through journaling. I tap into my inner wisdom through long, contemplative walks alone. I’ve become my own counselor and cheerleader.

    I’m so grateful that the younger me kept striving to find his place. All that perseverance led me right where I needed to be—firmly rooted in myself.

    If you’ve been going through something similar, I see you. And I want you to know that you are enough, exactly as you are. You don’t need to earn a spot at anyone’s table for your life to have meaning.

    The people who will love you most deeply are on their way. For now, love yourself. Treat yourself kindly. Pursue your passions unapologetically.

    Speak encouraging words into the mirror each morning. Put in the work to be your best friend.

    And know that wherever you end up in life—surrounded by a tribe of people who adore everything that makes you different or embracing solitude and forging your own singular path—you can’t lose as long as you have yourself.

    I am my own closest companion. You can be your own, too.

    Whatever stage you’re at in your journey of self-discovery, keep going. Know that the loneliness and feelings of not belonging won’t last forever.

    Have faith that things will get better, especially when you nurture your relationship with yourself above all else.

    Maybe today is an awkward day where you’re struggling to find your place. That’s okay. Breathe through it. Tomorrow holds new possibilities.

    Maybe you’re entering a season of solitude that first feels uncomfortable but will ultimately lead to profound growth. Lean into it entirely rather than resist it. There is a treasure to uncover.

    Or maybe you have finally attracted a “tribe” that appreciates the unique shades of who you are. Congrats! But never lose sight of your own worth that exists with or without them.

    Wherever you’re at, you’ve got this. And you’ve got yourself. That’s all you’ll ever really need.

    So stay true to yourself. Don’t shrink parts of you to appease others. Keep taking chances on yourself, even when no one else will.

    Trust that by being loyal to your own soul, you will find both inner fullness and meaningful connections with time.

    For now, chin up, sweet soul. I’m proud of you for how far you’ve come. How far you’ll go from here is breathtaking. Onward.

  • Why I Love My Sober Life: Everything I Gained When I Quit Drinking

    Why I Love My Sober Life: Everything I Gained When I Quit Drinking

    “Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself.” ~Rob Lowe

    I tried and failed to have a fabulous relationship with alcohol for many years.

    When my children were tiny, I drank far more than was good for me, thinking I was relaxing, unwinding, socializing, and having fun. I’d seen my life shrink down from a world with lots of freedom and vibrancy to a socially restricted void, and I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to join in with everyone else.

    All my birthday cards had bottles of gin or glasses of fizz on them, all the Friday afternoon memes on social media were about “wine o’clock,” and I wanted to be part of that world.

    The opening of a bottle in the evening had me thinking I was changing gear, moving from stressed to relaxed, and treating myself to some self-care. Nothing could have been further from the truth; the alcohol made me wake during the night and gave me low-level anxiety and an almost permanent brain fog.

    I’m not proud of the drinking I did when the kids were small. I now feel a deep sense of shame about that time. I’d created such a happy life for myself—lovely husband and kids, nice house in a great town, wonderful friends. What was I drinking to escape from?

    On the outside I looked like I had it all, but I didn’t—I had overwhelm.

    I was a wife and family member, a mum to two small children, an employee, and a freelancer… I had all the roles I’d longed for, and yet it was all too much.

    I didn’t know how to let go of some of my responsibilities, and I didn’t know how to cope with everything that was going on in my life. Alcohol felt like the treat I deserved. It took me a while to figure out that alcohol was the common theme in my rubbish decision-making, tiredness, and grumpiness.

    I’d spent a long time feeling trapped and stuck. I knew I wanted to stop drinking, but I was worried about what others would think of me, how I would feel at parties without a drink in my hand, and whether I’d be able to relax properly at the weekends.

    I kept going back and forth, deciding I’d stop, then changing my mind, thinking I wouldn’t or couldn’t. It was a hellish merry-go-round. When I was forty-one, I finally made the decision to quit alcohol for a year as a little life experiment. I wanted to see how I would feel without it for an extended period of time.

    I decided to take a bold action in autumn 2019. I told a group of online friends that I was not going to drink alcohol for the whole of 2020, and once I had said it out loud, I knew I would have to do it.

    This step toward accountability really helped me to move forward with my sober mission. I started to count down to 2020 (still binge drinking), wondering how this experiment was going to go!

    Toward the end of 2019, my mindset began to shift. Instead of dreading the start of 2020, I started to look forward to it. I made plans that I knew would lead to a successful sober year. I read books about quitting, listened to inspiring podcasts, and watched films or documentaries that didn’t show alcohol consumption in a glamorous light. I followed people who were a few steps ahead of me on their sober journey. I asked questions and I followed advice.

    I had my last drink on Dec 8th, 2019—nothing monumental, out with a few friends and no hangover the next day. It was a total non-event!

    I wanted to have a year without alcohol to know if life would be stressful, lonely, or boring like I’d led myself to believe, or if it was possible to relax, connect with others, and have fun without a drink. The hangovers and brain fog were getting worse. In my late thirties and early forties, I just couldn’t get away with it like I had in my twenties.

    I wanted to be a more patient parent—no more selfishly rushing the kids through bedtime because I wanted to get back downstairs to my drink.

    I wanted hangover-free weekends to enjoy my time away from work.

    I wanted to maximize my nutritional choices—no more rubbish food choices dictated by low-level hangovers, or high-level ones for that matter.

    I wanted to sleep deeply and wake up feeling rested and ready for the day ahead.

    I wanted to know I was giving myself the best chance at not getting high blood pressure, heart disease, liver disease, cancer, dementia, or a compromised immune system.

    I went through the whole of 2020 without a drink. There were some tough days to navigate, some challenging events to negotiate, and awkward conversations to have with friends, but I did it all, and I did it all sober.

    When 2021 rolled around, I knew I wasn’t going to go back to how I’d drunk before. I had changed my relationship with alcohol for the better. I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually a different person, and I didn’t want to go back to numbing my feelings.

    It’s easy to name all the benefits to our bodies and minds when we cut alcohol out—deeper sleep, clearer skin, better mood, more energy, and less anxiety, to name a few—but for me, the real shift has come a couple of years down the line. I feel more spiritually open than I’ve ever felt before, and I cannot wait to see what unfolds next for all of those of us on this sober-curious journey.

  • How I Went from Approval Seeking to Authentic Living

    How I Went from Approval Seeking to Authentic Living

    “My life transformed when I stopped caring what people in the stands thought.” ~Brené Brown

    One afternoon, I had coffee with a friend who told me that she and her family all have a garden campfire every Friday night and toast marshmallows. It sounded so rustically idyllic compared to our normal frozen pizza and movie tradition that I asked my husband if we could do the same that evening.

    He sat down to pick up the remote control and casually replied that he was too tired to build a fire, then thought nothing more of it. But I felt devastated and stormed out for my evening run.

    As I pounded the pavement, the ranting in my head about my selfish husband grew, and so did my anger. As I prepared to return home, full of rage, I became aware of the suffering I was creating in myself and realized I was sick of feeling resentful toward my husband when we weren’t doing what I thought we “should” do.

    When I walked through the door, rather than give my husband the silent treatment, I decided to sit and reflect on my anger. At the time, I was a trainee therapist, and I remember being told that anger was a secondary emotion.

    So I asked myself, “What’s underneath my anger?” “Fear” was my response. I inquired further, “What am I scared of?” I knew my husband loved me, so it wasn’t about that, and then it hit me. I was scared of disapproval from others. My anger toward my husband was related to my need for approval from everyone else.

    Something about his refusal to light that fire made me worry that people would think we were boring. Particularly my friend!

    But why did I need approval so much? The awareness was like waking from a trance. I had zero self-worth.

    I realized that my lack of self-worth and need for approval had impacted my entire life, with extreme consequences.

    For example, I’d ditched nice friends for the cool ones at school only to be bullied by the “cool” ones later on. I pretended I liked certain music and nights out to get boys to like me in my teens, only to end up alone anyway. I spent my twenties and thirties never knowing who I was, always adapting my opinions and lifestyle (even what to wear and eat) depending on who I was with at the time.

    The self-criticism never went away, and my inability to be myself left me isolated and struggling with depression. Meditation and exercise have all been useful in improving my mental health, but before that experience with my husband, I’d never been able to shake the feeling of not being good enough.

    As I had just entered my forties, I was determined things would be different. I embarked on my own “self-worth boot camp.”

    Before I explain the steps I took to improve self-worth and stop seeking approval, it’s helpful to be aware that we all need approval to some degree, as we are evolutionarily designed to seek it.

    In prehistoric times, we relied on being accepted by our tribe for survival, so we have a part of the brain that scans for how we are perceived in the eyes of others. The problem is that if we also struggle with low self-worth, usually due to experiences in childhood, that need to fit in with others takes over and prevents us from knowing ourselves. Until we do the work to get past this, we will lead inauthentic lives and be prone to depression and anxiety.

    Excessive approval seeking is a survival skill you have learned as a means to cope with feeling (not being!) unlovable. Unraveling this means building your self-worth and loving yourself.

    Taking the First Step: Radically Accept Yourself

    My journey to self-worth started with the acknowledgment that constantly putting myself down and changing myself to feel loved hadn’t worked so far. I never felt good enough, as it was a slippery pole I couldn’t get to the top of.

    Something radical was needed, and the phrase “radical acceptance” popped into my head. I thought I had come up with that phrase all by myself, but I later discovered it’s the title of an amazing book on self-compassion by Tara Brach. (I like to think I channeled it through collective consciousness, but I probably just noticed it in my local bookstore and forgot.)

    However, my take on radical acceptance at that time (which is slightly different from the book) was no matter what I was doing, thinking, wearing, being, etc., I 100% accepted myself.

    If I found myself scrolling social media, comparing myself to friends, and thinking I should have done more with my weekend, I paused and said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m still good enough.”

    If I caught myself analyzing social interactions, wondering how I came across, I paused and said, “I don’t care what people think. I’m loveable.”

    If I got upset that a friend had not texted back or I felt excluded from the different cliques in mummy land, I would take a deep breath and say, “It’s okay…you are loveable.”

    Change Your Feelings: Loving Kindness Meditation for Self-Worth

    Obviously, deciding to radically accept yourself is easier said than done, so I supplemented this mindset shift with a powerful self-loving meditation. This was a game changer and made a big difference to how I felt about myself.

    Loving-kindness meditation is an ancient Buddhist practice that involves cultivating well-wishing toward people (including yourself) with certain thoughts and phrases (i.e., “may you be well, happy, and free of suffering”). First you say it to yourself, then a close friend, a stranger, and an enemy before finally expanding the sentiment to the rest of the world.

    I’d dabbled in this before but felt something more intense was needed for my self-worth boot camp.

    I first thought of someone I truly loved, and my kids came to mind. I thought of how much I loved them; that they weren’t perfect, but I knew they were loveable. But crucially, I also made an effort to connect to the effect these thoughts and feelings had in my body.

    My body felt warm, pleasant, and tingly as I mentally offered this unconditional love to them.

    Still holding on to the physical sensations of unconditional love in my body, I replaced this with a vision of myself. I reminded myself that I, too, was imperfect but worthy of love. I felt love toward myself and told myself that I was okay, doing the best I could, and was good enough as I was. I even told myself I loved myself.

    I made sure I practiced this every day, and after about three to four weeks I noticed an internal shift, and my need to please started to fall away.

    Find Out Who You Are: What Would You Do If…

    Another sign of low self-worth was my chronic indecisiveness and self-doubt. I felt on the fence about so many things. Was I into running or yoga? A vegan, vegetarian, or carnivore? Did I love museums or mountains? Whenever I tried to decide something, the white noise of “how would that come across?” clouded my judgment.

    Trying to please people all your life means you’re already disconnected from how you feel about things, but then if each decision continues to be based on what others will think, that path gets well-trodden, leading to inauthenticity and unhappiness.

    Being all things to all people got more stressful as I got older. For example, as a working mum with limited time, I stretched myself thin thinking I should also be a mum who home baked, did crafts, and planned perfect birthday parties. Nobody could be all those things, but God, did I try. This just increased my stress and irritability and, ironically, worsened my presence as a mum.

    My new approach meant that when I found myself stuck in indecision or feeling overwhelmed, I paused and said, “What would I do if I already felt good enough?”

    This led to so many breakthroughs as I let go of the things I thought I should do and did what I wanted and needed instead. Yes, I was interested in yoga, but as I loved running and meditation, I didn’t have time. I accepted I was rubbish at kiddy crafts and would rather take my kids up a hill instead. I also discovered, amongst other things, I loved time on my own, with early nights and herbal tea rather than hangovers and a big social circle.

    I discovered myself, and it felt fantastic.

    Letting Go and Being Courageous: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

    Moving toward new, authentic living involves letting go of what you think other people want and having the guts to be true to yourself. This is where mindfulness and self-compassion are your friends.

    However, my self-imposed “self-worth” boot camp may not have been possible unless I’d already been practicing mindfulness and self-compassion for a while. In my early thirties, I fell in love with mindfulness and became a teacher after it helped me stop self-critical thoughts from spiraling into depression. But it hadn’t really changed how I felt about myself until I combined it with the steps above.

    When I decided to radically accept myself, mindfulness helped me to pause and notice my automatic thoughts about other people’s (imagined!) opinions long enough to generate some alternatives. The self-compassion practices I’d gained as a mindfulness teacher helped me tune into and accept the uncomfortable feelings that came with fear of rejection and offer myself kindness instead.

    To get started with mindfulness and self-compassion meditations, it’s important to remember you are not trying to clear your mind but rather increasing your ability to notice your thoughts and feelings arising with non-judgmental awareness.

    If you have time for a daily practice, you may notice changes after a few weeks, and an app can help you stay on track. Self-compassion means reminding yourself that you cannot help how you feel while cultivating the courage to respond to your feelings differently. Look up Tara Brach and Kristen Neff for some self-compassion practices to try.

    Self-Worth Is a Journey: How I Feel Now

    Waking up to (what Tara Brach calls) the trance of unworthiness really has been life-changing for me. Ultimately, recognizing that only I can decide I am loveable was key, and then making an effort to believe that myself rather than seeking validation.

    It’s always a work in progress, and although I noticed changes quickly, I continue to use the steps on a regular basis when I notice falling back into old habits.

  • How I Overcame Self-Hatred and 6 Ways to Love Yourself

    How I Overcame Self-Hatred and 6 Ways to Love Yourself

    “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Sharon Salzberg

    When was the last time you looked at your reflection and extended love to yourself? Before I discovered the life-changing power of self-love, I had not extended love to myself for years. This is the story of how I transformed my self-hatred into self-love, how it changed my life, and several tips to practice in your life.

    For a long time, I believed self-love was something to be avoided at all costs. Like many, I had become habituated to the “hustle and grind” mindset. Little did I know, I used this as an excuse to continue with my same habits of self-hatred.

    I was surrounded by voices telling me I needed to work harder. There was no escaping the voice that said, “You are not good enough yet! You’re a loser! You don’t deserve success! Keep working harder, or you will remain the same!”

    Was this voice telling the truth?

    I isolated myself because I thought I did not deserve to have time with friends. The needs of myself and my loved ones were disregarded.

    Every day was a constant struggle to get through. There was nothing to look forward to. I was living the same day repeatedly, constantly engulfed with an overwhelming feeling of shame and guilt.

    Of course, this only made my circumstances worse, although I overlooked the issue. All that mattered was getting things done.

    Self-punishment became my first response if I got off track, lost focus, or made a mistake.  

    One tiny mistake would throw my whole day into chaos. I would feel like there was no point in continuing the day because “I already failed.” It felt like a sober rain cloud circled over me, raining down with all its might.

    Even more saddening was how this affected the way I treated others.

    The hatred I extended to myself snowballed into how I perceived and treated my fellow humans, including friends and family.

    I had set extremely high standards and expected others to have the same standards. I was judgmental, critical, and rude to others, all without realizing it.

    I was living in a state of unconsciousness. I had no idea what harm I was inflicting on myself and others. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I only created more struggle.

    Things had gotten to a point where I didn’t know if I could continue to move on. The feelings of guilt, shame, and anger became the only thing I was familiar with. It had been ages since I experienced joy.

    Like many, I dwelled in these familiar feelings because they had been part of my life for so long. Only briefly would I feel happy, but I would quickly return to despair and hopelessness not long after.

    I suspected life was supposed to be like this, that I was supposed to suffer. I made things so much more challenging than they needed to be without even knowing.

    The Realization 

    After becoming acutely aware of the damage my lack of self-love created, I knew something needed to change. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep up with this.

    I was not making the progress I expected to be making. Never did I pause to reflect on my purpose, values, or goals. All that mattered to me was productivity, not relationships, happiness, or health.

    My current behaviors had landed me here. Clearly, I was doing something wrong.

    This is when it hit me.

    My perfectionism and negative self-talk were the creators of my pain, hindered my personal growth, and created constant challenges and hopelessness.

    The hatred I was extending to myself not only made me less kind to others. It made me harder on myself.

    The anger I inflicted on myself took away the self-encouragement, optimism, and positivity needed to move in a new direction, so I remained stuck in the same patterns.

    After witnessing accomplished individuals change history with love, I decided to take a different approach. Few have achieved beauty in a state of lack and anger.

    Let us not forget about Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa. Every one of these transformational leaders changed the world without using violence. They experienced extreme forms of struggle but continued to move forward with peace, stillness, and determination.

    It was time to break free and take a different approach, an approach these history-changers would take.

    The Switch 

    After realizing that I had been doing things wrong for so long, I began making subtle changes in my life.

    I started to change how I viewed myself. Instead of seeing myself as some monster, undeserving of happiness or success, I began to see myself as another human being on a journey, just like everyone else.

    Embracing Imperfections 

    We are all imperfect beings on a journey. What we need is not more hatred. We need more encouragement, love, kindness, and compassion.

    My imperfections were not an obstacle or something to be angry about; they were beautiful opportunities to learn, grow, and develop. Every flaw I uncovered became a powerful motivator to keep pushing forward.

    My imperfections were not something to be upset about; they were something to celebrate and appreciate. Without my flaws, I could not enjoy the journey of personal development. Flaws inspire us to become a better version of ourselves, but only if we change our perception of them.

    Self-Love: The Portal to Transformation 

    Self-love did not just help me uncover the beauty of imperfections. It opened a magnificent portal to transformation.

    Self-love is like the key to the door of development. It frees us from our past mistakes and allows us to soar into the future with excitement, gratitude, and joy.

    I started to see just how powerful this whole self-love thing is. The more loving I was to myself, the more inspired and motivated I felt to overcome my limitations.

    At last, I could escape from the negativity loop instead of repeating the same thoughts, feeling the same feelings, and acting in the same ways.

    Transforming how we think about ourselves daily influences how we feel. How we feel affects what we do. What we do determines the results we get, and the results we get determine our future.

    I chose to embrace self-compassion and self-encouragement instead of the usual self-aggrandizement. Do not get me wrong, this was hard to do, but it helped me tremendously.

    Having embraced imperfections and recognizing the transformational power of self-love, I embarked on the journey of redefining it.

    Redefining Self-Love 

    One of the most challenging changes I had to make was how I viewed self-love. I previously viewed it as a weakness or something that would not help me. I held the belief that self-love would move me farther back.

    Many of us hold beliefs like these, but they are largely incorrect.

    Self-love is simply about doing what is best for us regardless of how we feel. It is a habit, just like self-discipline.

    I started to see self-love as a catalyst for growth, not something that would hold me back. I was already holding myself back tremendously with my current behaviors, so something had to change.

    Self-love is like a healthy, nourishing meal that energizes and motivates us to keep moving forward. The more nutritious the meals we consume, the more energy we obtain to transform our lives.

    How can we become the best version of ourselves if we neglect to nourish ourselves?

    A Catalyst for Compassion

    After discovering the unwavering power of self-love, I came to realize that the more love and compassion I gave myself, the easier it became for me to show empathy toward others. This was one of the most immediate and valuable lessons I learned from practicing self-love.

    When we cease to hold ourselves to impossible standards, we stop doing the same to others. Breaking free from my high standards was difficult but necessary to reduce my constant misery.

    We are all unique human beings with different goals, values, and visions. We each have our own standards and purpose in life. Just because I might have higher standards does not make me a better person.

    Shifting My Mindset

    Self-love even made it easier to overcome challenges. Approaching challenges with a mindset of optimism, positivity, and trust produces much better results than pessimism.

    It became easier to see opportunities and possibilities. Before, everything felt like an insurmountable obstacle. Instead of giving up like usual, I chose to persevere, trusting that things would be okay.

    I encountered a plethora of obstacles along my journey. There were times when practicing self-love became a burden, but I knew that all I needed to do was trust in the transformational power of it.

    It is time for us all to step into the portal of self-love. Doing so will change our lives in more ways than we can imagine.

    How to Practice Self-Love 

    1. Honor your intentions.

    This is one of the most essential aspects of self-love. To show how much we love ourselves, we must keep the promises we made to ourselves. Extending love to yourself is about staying committed to your goals, values, purpose, and vision.

    2. Get clear on your values and purpose.

    Knowing who you are, what matters to you, your life’s mission, and the person you want to become allows you to align your actions with these values. The more you know about yourself, the easier it will be to love yourself. Self-understanding is the key to self-love.

    3. Embrace self-appreciation and gratitude.

    Dedicate a few minutes to write characteristics or qualities you admire about yourself. These can be material or nonmaterial. You may even enjoy writing something seemingly unimportant, such as “I am proud of myself for getting out of bed this morning.” Only when we reflect on our achievements and honorable qualities do we recognize how accomplished we are.

    4. Encourage yourself.

    Instead of resorting to self-hatred or self-criticism after making a mistake, move into a state of encouragement. Encourage yourself to keep moving forward despite obstacles. Encourage yourself to try a little bit harder. Move forward in a state of love, joy, and forgiveness.

    5. Embrace your imperfections and flaws.

    The more imperfect we are, the more opportunities we gain to learn, grow, and evolve. Imperfections are a gift to be cherished, not an obstacle to be pushed aside. Without imperfections, we would not get to enjoy the journey of personal growth. Life would be monotonous and boring.

    6. Surround yourself with love.

    Spend time with people who encourage you, hold you accountable, and inspire you. The people we spend time with influence who we become. If we surround ourselves with optimistic and loving people, we will cultivate the same qualities in ourselves. Not only should we surround ourselves with loving people, but we should also alter our outer environment to support our habits. This might be hard to do at first, but making minuscule changes to our environment and friend group will program us to engage in self-love.

    Before I go, remember, “You yourself, as much as anybody in the universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Sharon Salzberg

    I look forward to hearing which self-love practice you will implement!  

  • Giveaway: Win a 2024 Day-to-Day Calendar, Gratitude Journal, and More!

    Giveaway: Win a 2024 Day-to-Day Calendar, Gratitude Journal, and More!

    UPDATE: The winners for this giveaway have been chosen. The winners, chosen at random, are:

    Please send your mailing address to me at email@tinybuddha.com so I can mail you your books and calendars!

    Hi friends! To celebrate the holiday season, I’m running a special giveaway today. Two people (US only) will win a bundle including Tiny Buddha’s 2024 Day-to-Cay Calendar, Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal, and Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself.

    Uplifting and healing, this calendar offers daily reflections from me, Tiny Buddha contributors, and other authors whose quotes have inspired and encouraged me.

    Featuring colorful, patterned tear-off pages, the calendar is printed on FSC certified paper with soy-based ink. Topics include happiness, love, relationships, change, meaning, mindfulness, self-care, letting go, and more.

    Here’s what Amazon reviewers had to say about this year’s calendar:

    “I discovered the Tiny Buddha site a couple years ago and loved it, so I decided to get the calendar and I’m so glad I did. The quotes/advice are short and sweet but so incredibly profound. I hang my favorites on the bulletin board above my desk.” ~Elizabeth

    “Absolutely love these daily tidbits that always remind me of what’s really important in life and how to deal with stress and life’s difficult situations. I bought one for myself last year and two this year so I can share with my sister.” ~LV 

    —

    Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal includes thought-provoking questions and prompts to help you recognize and celebrate all the good things in your life, as well as fifteen coloring pages depicting awesome things we often take for granted.

    Here’s what some Amazon reviewers had to say:

    “This is the best little gratitude journal. The prompts are easy and thoughtful. I absolutely love the little coloring pages as well. Highly recommend.” ~Trisha Coonce

    “I use the Tiny Buddha Gratitude Journal on a bi-daily basis to perk up my spirits. When I am stressed or irritated, this is my go-to for a spot of happiness. I really appreciate purchasing the book.” ~Unnamed reviewer

    —

    Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself is a collection of stories, tips, and insights to help you silence your inner critic, stop judging yourself, and start treating yourself with kindness and care.

    If you focus on your flaws, fixate on fixing yourself, or have a hard time believing in your worth, Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself can help you learn to value, honor, and care for yourself.

    Here’s what Amazon reviewers had to say about this one:

    “I love this little book. It is an incredible read and helped me have so much more compassion for myself and a broader perspective for my life. I’ve read it multiple times and each time I glean something new. I’ve bought this book for a lot of friends and family as well. Highly recommend!” ~CM

    “Hands down the best self help book I have ever read. Bought this as a gift for my honey, who has been struggling lately. Turns out its the book that I didn’t even know I needed. This book is helping me understand a lot about myself and why I act the way that I do. If you’re struggling with yourself, do yourself a favor and buy this book.” ~Samantha

    How to Enter the Giveaway

    –Join the Tiny Buddha list, if you’re not already a subscriber. You can subscribe for daily emails (Monday – Friday), a weekly digest of blog posts on Fridays, or just occasional emails about freebies and special offers.

    –Leave a comment on this post sharing one thing you’re grateful or one thing you love about yourself (or both!).

    You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, December 3rd. I will update this post with the winners’ names sometime on Monday. Please check back on Tuesday to see if you’ve won so you can email me your mailing address.

    If you’d like to grab any of these resources for yourself or for a holiday gift now, you can find the calendar here, the Gratitude Journal here, and the Guide to Loving Yourself here.

    Happy Thursday, friends!

  • How I’ve Learned to Love My Inner Weirdo

    How I’ve Learned to Love My Inner Weirdo

    “I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable, beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.” ~Mary Oliver

     I was a beautiful, wild, and exhilarating kid. I marched to the beat of my unicorn drum and, to the confusion of adults, I did not fit into the typical boxes they had been anticipating.

    This little kid was ready to thrive!

    The freedom did not last long. My zest for life and unicorn drum beat quickly symbolized my weirdness. Adults tilted their heads in perplexity as they pointed out my offbeat thinking. I frequently found myself in “time out” or enforced “alone time” for being disruptive, lost in my inner world, and not listening.

    I did not understand. I was thrilled to be me!

    Without my consent, my self-expression was labeled as problematic.

    Looking back, I know what I needed. This kid needed to run around in the forest, study wildlife in the river, and have a science teacher like Ms. Frizzle in the Magic School Bus.

    At six years old, my mom died. This loss added a new layer of complexity, amplifying my “issues.” I was weirder and wilder and, suddenly, these qualities didn’t feel fun anymore.

    I felt alone.

    In first grade, my teacher gave us a test: how to read an analog clock with hour and minute hands tucked inside the belly of a teddy bear. I was shocked. WHEN HAD WE LEARNED THIS? Everyone filled in their test knowingly, and I just colored the bears in neon marker.

    ADHD was in its infancy as a diagnosis. Nobody had heard of it. My parents found a doctor researching the nascent disorder, and he believed I was outside of a (subjective) range of ‘normal behavior.’

    Before I understood what was happening, I was on medication.

    Learning to Mask

    As I hit high school, I started taping my meds to the inside of my journal to hide them. I had officially learned to mask. Masking is an act where an individual attempts to hide, suppress, or overcompensate for symptoms to appear neurotypical.

    The good news is that I learned the necessary skills to navigate a conventional lifestyle.

    But deep down, my inner fire was brewing. And the pressure to be normal was soul-crushing.

    The Lesson of the Platypus

    At this juncture, I want to introduce you to the gloriousness of Ornithorhynchus anatinus, also known as the platypus. #egglayingbreastfeedingduckbeaverotter,

    This semi-aquatic mammal, native to Australia and Tasmania, is a biological enigma, boasting a suite of features that defy categorization. They lay eggs like a reptile and nurse their young with milk like a mammal.

    They sport a bill and webbed feet like a duck and come equipped with venomous spurs on their hind limbs. And let’s not forget their ability to sense electric fields through the bill, a skill typically associated with certain fish species.

    Scientists continue to argue over which (imperfect) scientific category we need to stuff this little soul into. Does it occur to us that the categories are restrictive if everyone doesn’t fit into them? I mean, without a label, how will we know how to make sense of the world?!

    I love the platypus.

    The Strange World of Adulting

    Adulting is confusing. I watched my friends achieve career status, navigate the dating world, and generally appear to function in society. Go to work, hang out with friends, and do it again.

    But I was sinking. I was an alien on a foreign planet. My spacecraft had landed here, and I was in culture shock. Keeping up the pretense was now the leading cause of my turmoil.

    I wanted to run wild and free and live without expectations or restricting rules. I was terrified to follow the rigid path before me.

    My inner fire was turning into a massive flame.

    I felt deep shame for not just doing the obvious: college, job, don’t rock the boat, wear these outfits, something about a house with a fence. What if being the real me meant I would fail at all of life?

    Even simple acts of wearing office-approved outfits felt like extreme acts of self-betrayal. Why was I having a dramatic reaction to simple requests from society? I felt shame and guilt.

    Most of all, being different was going to disappoint my family. I was embarrassed that I was different.

    The harder I tried to squish the inner flame, the more I stoked the fire.

    The masking was not working. It was causing crushing anxiety and self-destructive behavior.

    Fire. It cannot be ignored.

    Thus began my journey toward radical self-love. To embrace my inner platypus.

    I found myself at my first underground party involving a sidewalk corner drop-off point, a second bus ride, and an abandoned warehouse. I was sitting on a handcrafted platform that looked directly down at the DJ controls.

    My eyes were wide, and I was quiet. Soaking in the people, the art, the music.

    As I looked down, with my feet dangling over the edge, a magical woman was turning dozens of knobs; with her elbows tucked in, her hands were moving at the speed of light, and from my intimate view, she was in her creative zone.  She was wild and free, effortlessly and manically matching beats. She was in the flow.

    My inner flame sparked. My unicorn drum was ready to come out of the closet.

    Who was this magical being who used her music to express her inner light?

    The tonic to isolation was going to be a community that valued expression.

    I needed to find my fellow Platypuses. My divergent community.

    Turns out, this community is everywhere!

    They were at the bookstore, in yoga class, at my job, and they were my friends. The very ones that I thought had it all together.

    The wall I had built that made me feel separate from others was an illusion. Everyone is weird! Of course I created my wall for protection. I had been informed for most of my life that being me was a not-so-good idea. Tone it down. Way down. Well, no more.

    Once I found an expressive community, I felt safe to explore my wild. I danced in the desert in my underwear, spinning fire toys. I spent a year on a farm in Costa Rica planting pineapples and chocolate, and I ignored my fancy college degree, favoring a career at a dog hotel where being yourself is 100% encouraged by said dogs.

    I created awkward moments, voiced my imperfect opinions proudly, let my career swerve, and followed my serotonin to dead ends, risky decisions, and messy lessons.

    Insights and Lessons from the Wild

    The qualities I was embarrassed by—too impulsive, unproductive, out of control, unfocused, too much energy—are a beautiful part of me. They deserve to be nourished, explored, and encouraged to grow.

    My value as a human is inherent.

    In the case of our platypus friends, scientists created an entirely new scientific class just so our beloved platypus didn’t collapse the labeling system for evolutionary theory.

    The platypus inspires me to be authentic and allow myself the freedom to create my own labels and my own rules. Like a platypus, we are all originals, one of a kind, who deserve even brief moments of wild expression.

    I now explore in the forest and protect wildlife in the river. I am that science teacher I always needed.

    If you are curious to embrace your inner platypus and embrace your weirdness, I encourage you to test a few undisciplined and unproductive practices.

    Exploration One: Dance in the Dark (with Mood Lighting)

    Dance out loud in the darkness and solitude of your own space. Play your favorite songs. Be you with you. As Bessel van der Kolk states in his book, The Body Keeps the Score, “Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies.” I encourage you to fall in love with yourself in your safe space.

    Exploration Two: Blow Your Own Mind

    Dare to be unproductive and revel in being distracted.

    Go outside, find a favorite leaf, and save it for an art project you never intended to complete. Head out to a workout class and go to lunch instead. Read the last page of a new book.  Brush your teeth with your other hand.

    By stepping outside of our routine, we invite our brains to forge new pathways, and in these unscripted moments of beingness, we might find ourselves deeply connected to a part of us that enjoys just being alive.

    Exploration Three: Live and Let Live

    Wild authenticity starts with coexisting with each other. Our planet is exploding with diversity, with extremes, with the unusual, the weird, and the specialized. Commit to being so honest with yourself that you can appreciate all the other weird around you. Let’s celebrate each other!

    As Mary Oliver asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

  • Take Good Care of Yourself When You Do Well AND When You Fall Short

    Take Good Care of Yourself When You Do Well AND When You Fall Short

    “Kindness is choosing love over hate, light over darkness, compassion over judgment.” ~Raktivist

    One of the things about being “good” (and for me that includes things like patience, kindness, and being agreeable) is that people assume things about me. They think I’m always patient, I always make the right decisions, and I’m an all-around great person.

    Well, I’m not always anything—except human. And that means I make mistakes, big ones even. This week I did NOT set an example of perfection. I had a moment when I became the exact opposite: loud and emotional. I melted down.

    Why did this happen?

    The answer was my lesson.

    It came to me during my apology: I didn’t take care of myself. I made no time to decompress, to slow down, to breathe and recenter.

    When I’m run down, everyone feels it. And when I’m full, everyone feels it. It’s not an excuse for my behavior; it’s awareness that is teaching me how my needs fit into the equation of life. 

    That one question led me down a rabbit hole. All week I stayed curious. Why did this happen?? And all week, I kept getting answers.

    It happens because when you’re perfect, good, and strong, other people think you can handle anything because you normally handle everything. But the truth is that being seen this way makes it hard to ask for help.

    It happens because you don’t want to let people down.

    It happens because you’re taught that if you’re not giving, you’re taking.

    It happens because you’re taught to believe that everyone else’s needs are just a little more important than yours.

    It happens because you believe that you need to do it “all” because it’s proof that you’re worthy (of love, space, time… you name it).

    It happens because everything your family, culture, and society teach you revolves around giving.

    And there’s nothing wrong with giving. But if you don’t learn how to receive, you’ll end up burned out, overworked, and underwhelmed with your life. Instead of giving with love and joy, you’ll give from a place of frustration and resentment. 

    Receiving is how you get to keep giving. It’s the part of the puzzle no one teaches us about. It’s the missing piece that we beat ourselves up over, judging and criticizing ourselves for not being able to be everything for everyone.

    Whether it’s boundaries, food, sleep, work, or family, we believe we’re lacking some quality that’s the answer to how we can meet our own needs without guilt. Like the ability to be nice to ourselves is a personality trait we don’t possess.

    But there’s nothing wrong with any of us. We’ve all just been practicing some old, unhelpful habits.

    Lately, I’ve been wondering what happens when you start practicing constructive habits instead of destructive ones.

    So I gave it a try.

    This time, after my meltdown, I caught myself mid-act and saw it as opportunity to take care of myself by being kind to myself.

    I paused, picked myself up, and turned things around. I apologized, checked-in, and even found a win. Imperfection, as ugly as it can look, holds the chance for connection when we accept ourselves instead of judging ourselves. All that judging and shaming is so distracting from the one goal we all want—to be happy.

    I’ve noticed constructive habits keep offering me insight from somewhere deep inside. I don’t know if it’s intuitive knowledge or universal wisdom. Either way, it supports me and my loved ones. My response to my own actions ended up being the example I want to set.

    What if this could happen every time we messed up or mis-stepped? What if instead of telling ourselves something like, I always yell or I never say the right thing, we ask ourselves a question? Instead of being mean to ourselves, we get curious…

    Ask, why did this happen?

    What kind of insight might this lead to? And what doors does it open up for us? Certainly, we will make mistakes again in the future, but what if we made new ones instead of the same ones over and over again? What if our compassion allowed us to evolve?

    It’s taken me a long time to feel like making mistakes is acceptable and even longer to feel comfortable sharing them. But of all the lessons, this is one of the biggies. Take good care of yourself when you do well AND when you fall short. 

    You will make mistakes. You will be wrong sometimes. But you can say sorry. You can forgive yourself. You can learn. You can hold the lesson close to your heart and still move forward.

    You can stop judging yourself and replaying your lowest moments. Guilt, embarrassment, and self-loathing are not great motivators, but great ruminators that keep us stuck.

    Getting unstuck is our greatest challenge and how we evolve. Imperfection isn’t your flaw. It’s your opportunity to grow.

    We’re all better at celebrating our wins than we are at finding the gold buried in our losses. But I believe that’s a new habit worth developing. Building this new muscle has the power to move us away from the toxic and lonely nature of perfectionism, people-pleasing, and regret.

    Take good care of yourself.

    It’s how to experience the life you want.

    It’s how to have deep, meaningful, and lasting relationships.

    It’s how to achieve and feel good.

    Take good care of yourself—so you don’t get burned out and so you don’t waste your limited energy getting down on yourself.

    It has the greatest positive ripple effect you can create in the world.

  • When You’re Desperate for Love

    When You’re Desperate for Love

  • Why I Didn’t Love Myself (and All the Suggestions That Didn’t Help)

    Why I Didn’t Love Myself (and All the Suggestions That Didn’t Help)

    “Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise Hay

    There is a lot of hype around self-love these days. The media and marketing world often bombard us with messages insinuating that the key to self-love lies in consumerism. For a long time, I bought into this idea.

    I would see an advertisement urging me to treat myself to a high-end face cream for a dose of self-care. Or a promotional email landing in my inbox might suggest that a calming lavender bubble bath was just what I needed to boost my self-love. Or I would receive a text notifying me of the latest designer bag on sale—isn’t self-love about indulging in what you fancy?

    Despite buying all the things, incorporating self-care routines, and generally doing all the things these mediums recommended for self-love, I still felt unfulfilled.

    I questioned why, despite following all the guidelines, something still felt amiss. I felt that emptiness creeping in, even when I had checked all the boxes these commercial messages prescribed.

    Through navigating this journey, I’ve come to recognize an overlooked issue that often lurks in the shadows of the pursuit of self-love: low self-worth. The belief that I am not worthy of love, exactly as I am. 

    For most of my life, I found my self-worth through doing instead of being because this is what I learned from my church and home life. Serve, give, think of others. And I always got affirmation from my parents when I did something that was helpful to them. I don’t recall ever being asked what I wanted to do, and I really had no idea what I needed.

    I thought that in order to be worthy of my own approval and love, I had to first receive it from others. I thought that by being the helper, the healer, the giver, I would gain the love of others and then be lovable.

    I now realize that developing and believing in my own self-worth and loving myself is an inside job. All the healing, giving, and helping should have started with myself. You know, fill your own cup.

    What I learned does not work is seeking something outside of me for approval and validation. You see, we cannot control how others perceive us, or whether they understand us. We cannot control if someone likes the way we look, the art we create, or the words we say. Nor should we allow their opinions to dictate who we are, what actions we take, what we say, or how we feel about ourselves or our lives.

    For me, low self-worth showed up in very subtle ways that I am only now starting to see and understand because I now have an awareness of it.

    For me, low self-worth showed up as me giving my body to men before I was ready, or not saying anything when they took my body without permission, instead acting as if everything was fine.

    It manifested in me working at a job that had unrealistic expectations of me, that did not provide an environment to learn, grow and flourish—constantly giving my all and feeling it was never enough.

    Low self-worth meant marrying someone because they loved me, not because I loved them.

    It meant silencing my truth, my opinion, my feelings for the sake of not wanting to feel uncomfortable or make anyone else feel uncomfortable.

    It meant giving more than I had to give expecting others would do the same.

    I now know that my worthiness does not lie in what brand I am wearing, how big my house is, or how much money is in my bank account. And it’s not tied to how much I give or do for others, or whether someone likes me or not. 

    My worthiness lies in how I feel about myself. It starts with loving and approving of myself.

    It was amazing to see the changes that occurred when I began to deem myself worthy for simply existing. Suddenly I found myself less interested in getting drunk to escape myself and the world, and less interested in pleasing people.

    I began to ask myself why I was choosing to make a particular decision. Was it because I felt like I should, or was it because I genuinely wanted to? What I found was that many of my choices had a motive—to get approval from others.

    As I navigate this space, I give myself permission to change my mind, to cancel plans, to do my best to lean into the discomfort of change.

    I validate myself daily through mirror work, affirmations, and making choices that are beneficial for me.

    I make an effort to speak kindly to myself and forgive myself for past mistakes, which in turn allows me to forgive others more easily, and to understand that we are all here doing the best we can do, with the awareness that we have.

    If you are on this journey of self-love and find that you are not making the progress you would like, ask yourself the following questions:

    • Where does my self-worth come from?
    • Do I believe that I am worthy of love?
    • If not, why? When did I form this belief, and how can I let it go?
    • What actions can I start taking to show myself that I love and honor myself?
    • What type of thoughts am I thinking about myself?
    • What proof can I find that my negative thoughts are actually untrue?

    On this journey of discovering my worth and loving myself I’ve had my fair share of tripping, face plants, and “oh NOO, not again” moments. There have been ups and downs, good days and bad days, periods of rapid progress followed by times of stagnation or regression.

    This journey will be lifelong for me, but despite the obstacles, I have discovered a deeper sense of peace (at times) than I ever imagined possible, experienced more joy and laughter than I thought could exist, and found more moments filled with gratitude than ever before.

    As I choose to uphold the idea of appreciating progress rather than pursuing perfection, I realize that it is all worthwhile.

  • A Mindfulness Technique to Overcome Perfectionism and Step into Self-Love

    A Mindfulness Technique to Overcome Perfectionism and Step into Self-Love

    “When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we are not pretending, we are not hiding—we are simply present with whatever is going on inside us. Ironically, it is this very feeling of authenticity that draws people to us, not the brittle effort of perfectionism.” ~Maureen Cooper

    Most of my life I have been really good at following the have-tos and oughts of perfectionism.

    I have to keep the house clean. What will the company think?

    I ought to be pleasant and pleasing. Stop being stubborn. Worse yet, stop being angry.

    I should not have told that long story to my coworker. They looked bored. Oh, yes, they were probably bored.

    Doing what I thought other people wanted and doing it in just the right way was my attempt to use perfectionism to belong.

    We all want to belong, and some of us, myself included, learned that belonging comes with strings attached. If I could control those “strings,” then I wouldn’t have to feel rejected and judged. Perfectionism was a way of exercising that control.

    The intense need to meet my too high expectations filtered into every area of my life: relationships, academics, body image.

    I remember from an early age becoming obsessed with getting straight A’s in school. Anything less than a 100% was not good enough. Anything below an A- was a moral failing.

    I worked out until my BMI was low enough to still be considered “healthy” because I wanted to be pretty enough for other people.

    All the perfectionism in my life was a way to protect myself against the inevitability of being judged. Of being seen as someone less than, flawed, failing—human.

    And if I wasn’t judged, then I might be liked? Accepted? Maybe even loved? Even if I didn’t like, accept, or love myself.

    Perfectionism, at its core, is a drive toward accomplishment, characterized by an internal pressure to avoid harsh criticism and failure.

    The problem with this way of thinking is that you can’t control other people. No matter how perfect you try to be, someone will judge you. You will fail. No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to maintain the facade of perfection.

    Perfectionism is the armor I have worn through my life to protect myself from what is underneath the judgment and criticism. Perfectionism protects me from the fear that I am not good enough. If I am not good enough, then I am not worthy of belonging.

    I desperately wanted to be loved, but in trying, I stopped loving myself.

    From small details, like what to wear to a party, to big problems, like the realities (and conflicts) of an authentic and healthy relationship, my high expectations made it impossible for me to relax into who I am.

    I was constantly beating myself up. I didn’t wear the right outfit. I look too dressed up/not dressed up enough.

    I was constantly biting my tongue, hesitating to share bits of myself. What will he think? That part of my personality is too weird, too different, too messy to be valued?

    My life was a constant struggle to meet unattainable ideals. The maintenance of which was stressful, all consuming, and riddled with anxiety. Furthermore, no matter how hard I tried, I still didn’t feel like I belonged.

    It was not until I decided that my relationship to myself was the problem that I started to see changes.

    If I wanted to feel connected to other people, belong to a community, a friendship, a partnership, I had to let go of being perfect.

    I had to let people see me authentically, and I had to be willing to let go of the too high expectations that were keeping me from being myself.

    To help me let go of perfectionism, I started practicing the art of mindful self-compassion.

    The tenants of mindful self-compassion are based off of the work of mindfulness teacher Tara Brach. To explain mindful self-compassion, she coined the term RAIN.

    RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture.

    Recognize and allow your perfectionism to be what it is.

    Based on RAIN, the first two steps of mindful self-compassion are the basis of any mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is the practice of bringing non-judgmental awareness to your present moment experience.

    In other words, you first recognize or bring awareness to your lived experience in the now and then you allow, without judgment, that experience of thoughts and feelings to flow through you.

    When it comes to perfectionism, this means recognizing the need to worry over, hustle through, force, or avoid a particular way of being. It also means allowing those same feelings and thoughts to exist without trying to change them and without trying to act on them.

    For example, if I notice I am feeling the need to write and rewrite, edit and re-edit this essay because isn’t “good enough,” then instead of continuing on the track of perfectionist behavior, I can recognize that I am feeling worried and allow those feelings to exist without doing anything to change them.

    Investigate the deeper why.

    The next step of the RAIN mindfulness technique is investigate. Investigating and the last step of nurture are the two aspects of this technique that have helped me see the biggest changes in my own habit of perfectionism.

    Investigating means you dig a little deeper. You ask yourself, why are these feelings and thoughts here? What is actually at the heart of my need to control?

    Investigating requires you to be vulnerable with yourself. Are you worried about failing? Do you think that if you let go of control people won’t like you?

    In what ways are your perfectionist tendencies guarding your heart?

    If we go back to my writing example, the reason why I am trying to perfect the outcome of this essay is because deep down I really, really want you, dear reader, to like it. If you like it, then that means that I am a “good” writer, and I so desperately want to be a good writer.

    By investigating my feelings around perfectionism, I get to the real reason for my actions, which is that I want to be accepted. I want to be liked. I want to belong.

    Which brings me to the last component of RAIN, nurture.

    Nurture the feelings and thoughts behind the perfectionism.

    The last step of RAIN, nurture, asks you to take all of your feelings and care for them. How can you give love to the person you are today who is worried about being good enough and worried about belonging?

    Maybe this looks like reaffirming you are good enough and that everyone feels like you feel right now from time to time.

    Maybe this looks like journaling about your feelings or talking it out with a good friend.

    Maybe this looks like giving yourself a hug, taking a warm shower, or doing some breath work, then going back to the task when you feel ready.

    Ultimately, nurturing what is underneath the perfectionism means giving yourself a bit of a break. You don’t have to do everything just the right way for it to be enough.

    For me, in the context of perfectionism related to publishing this essay, I would take a break, go for a walk, and remind myself that 80% is good enough.

    Overall, RAIN is an incredible mindfulness technique for letting go of perfectionism.

    By using this technique, perfectionism is less at the forefront of my life. RAIN helps me let go of the big feelings and thoughts associated with perfectionism and tend to the underlying beliefs and assumptions I have about myself that contribute to it.

    Ultimately, I have learned that I don’t have to be perfect to be loved and that being imperfect still makes me worthy of belonging. The RAIN technique helps me see that I am good enough for others and, most importantly, I am good enough for myself.