Tiny Buddha

Tag: trust

  • If You’re Afraid to Ask for Help Because You Don’t Trust People

    If You’re Afraid to Ask for Help Because You Don’t Trust People

    “Ask for help. Not because you are weak. But because you want to remain strong.” ~Les Brown

    I sat in the doctor’s office, waiting—linen gown hanging off me, half exposed—while going through the checklist in my mind of what I needed help with. I felt my breathing go shallow as I mentally sorted through the aches and pains I couldn’t seem to control.

    Fierce independence and learning to not rely on others are two of the side effects of my particular trauma wounds, stemming from early childhood neglect and abandonment. During times of heightened stress, my default state is one of significant distrust.

    Letting people in and asking for help has never been my strong suit.

    Not only did it prove painful at times, asking for help has also proven to be unsafe. I’ve been given poor and damaging advice from people I assumed knew more than me. I’ve emotionally attached to people who disappeared when I least expected it. I’ve been lied to, betrayed, and left behind when my help was no longer useful.

    I’ve been injured both physically and emotionally when relying on others to care for me and have been let down more times than I can possibly recall.

    I have plenty of reasons to convince myself that no one can help me. That I’m in this life all alone. Some days I feel just that.

    Other days, I sit in my doctor’s office ready to make myself vulnerable one more time looking for support that I’ve been unable to give myself. Hoping, fingers crossed, that maybe this time I’ll be seen, heard, and cared for.

    When the doctor walked in, I was writing a note on the depression screening form justifying why I feel sad some days. I know it’s normal to feel sad doing the work I do as a mental health therapist. Working with people’s sad can be sad. I wanted to be upfront.

    And also, I’ve been focusing on healing the trauma in my body that injured my nervous system starting in infancy. Actively inviting my body to retrieve its pain to set it free and regulate my system to a state that is considered normal. Except I don’t know what normal feels like.

    Her very first questions to me: “Are you getting back what you put into your work? Is it worth it?”

    I blink, unsure if I heard her correctly.

    “Are you asking me if the work I’m doing is more depleting than rewarding? Am I receiving as much as I’m giving?” I ask.

    “Yes,” she responds assuredly.

    I exhale.

    She sees me. She actually sees me. I ask myself this very question every day.

    This one question cracks me wide open. I know I can trust her.

    I hear words pouring out of my mouth explaining the work I’ve been doing with myself. My intention to heal my nervous system and my body, how hard it’s been to feel all the emotional pain that’s come up and the subsequent physical pain that comes and goes to remind me just how deep all this stuff runs.

    I shared with her my most recent discovery—my earliest known physical trauma at nine months old, when my mother gagged me to make me throw up to “protect” me.

    When her behavior was discovered, she was admitted to a hospital for psychiatric services for over a month. My brother and I were placed in the care of anyone who was available to watch us.

    At the most important time for healthy attachment and trust to form, I was taught that survival meant staying clear of those who are assigned to protect you. They can hurt you. And the world was not a safe place.

    This was the first of many experiences in my life that would drill in the same belief. My body spent years trying to protect me by tensing up, shaking, or wanting to flee when I sensed any kind of danger—being trapped, pressured, controlled, or trusting authority figures was high on my list of subconscious nos.

    To me, there was no logic to the way my body reacted to what seemed the smallest threat, so I shamed myself for it.

    I couldn’t understand why driving on the highway put me in an instant state of hypervigilance. Why I would wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. Why the bright lights and enormous amount of stimuli in the grocery store made me freeze the moment I walked in. Why perceived conflict made me want to curl up into myself or attack and bail.

    All I knew was I was not “normal,” and I felt like I had no control over it.

    I recall the first infomercial that serendipitously came across the screen during a sleepless night while I was traveling in my early twenties. At the time I always slept with the television on to drown out the noise of my thoughts in the silence of night. A woman talked about her struggle with anxiety and the way it internally took over her life. I immediately tuned in.

    She was talking about me. She was talking about so many of us. I couldn’t believe someone understood what I desperately tried to hide and despised about myself.

    It was the first of many books, programs, methodologies, and practices I would try. It was the first time I felt seen and sought help.

    It wasn’t that I didn’t want help. I just didn’t trust it, nor was I comfortable with being vulnerable enough to ask for it. Particularly because I had proof that when I did rely on people, they could turn on me, or even worse, leave.

    And then there was the cultural push to just “suck it up” or accept that “it is what it is.” Key words to encourage us to abandon ourselves.

    Sucking it up is exhausting, and it doesn’t help. It doesn’t change what’s hard, and from what I can tell, years of sucking it up never made me stronger. Just more certain I was stuck in this mess of myself alone.

    Even though I help people for a living, and fully understand that I am the help I encourage people to seek, I forgot that I, too, was able to ask for help.

    This meant I had to have the courage to let my guard down. To let go of the feeling of burden I was afraid to put on another. To remember that every single one of us has our hardships, and we actually want to be needed and helpful to another when we have the space.

    It’s why we are here as humans. To give love and receive it. When I give someone the opportunity to love or support me, it gives them the chance to feel the fullness of my gratitude. To receive love back from me in return and feel needed and wanted as well. It is also the most solid reminder for both of us that we are never actually alone.

    We need each other.

    It is a practice for me to remember this. It’s also a practice to remind myself that I have been cared for far more often than I’ve been hurt. That those who have harmed me or left me had their own burdens to bear that I was not meant to be a part of. And that every time I do ask for help, like in my doctor’s office, and receive it wholeheartedly, I am able to keep myself filled and balanced to be able to help the people I care about even more.

    I exhaled when my doctor acknowledged me. I knew it was safe to let her in, yet I still swallowed tears while I did so. Her validation of my challenge felt comforting; her support, the extra oxygen I needed. Knowing the value of support has never made it easy for me to ask, but it has made it easier.

    As humans we are regularly encouraged to give, yet it is equally important to learn to receive. We need both to keep ourselves balanced and in flow so we can be the love we want to feel. To give is a powerful feeling, while receiving can make us feel a little vulnerable. That’s okay. The more courage we use to ask for help, the more strength we have to give out in return.

    If you are feeling resistance to seeking help, ask yourself where your fear lies. Is it a current concern or is it one from the past? Does vulnerability make you uneasy or bring up insecurities you have around being judged or feeling like a burden? Or do you feel it’s hard for you to let your guard down and trust another?

    When resistance lingers, choose people who’ve been loyal and consistently supportive in the past. If you don’t have any relationships like that, or if involving your personal relationships feels too uncomfortable, consider professional support. There are affordable and even free resources available, if money is an issue.

    The key is to remember that you, too, deserve a place to be you and invite in the help that everyone needs at times. To release your burdens so you can stand back up and move forward with more ease and a lighter load. So you have the strength to be a support for others and also for yourself.

    When feeling weighed down, ask for help—whatever that looks or feels like for you. The past may have taught you what you don’t want, but you have the power to choose what you do want in the present. There are people out there who you can rely on and who want to be there for you. They are simply waiting for you to ask.

    So go ahead and let someone in. No one needs to or is expected to navigate this wild life alone. Not even you.

  • When Life Forces Your Hand, Embrace the New Chapter

    When Life Forces Your Hand, Embrace the New Chapter

    “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” ~Seneca

    Like most people, I’ve tried to control many aspects of my life, and this hasn’t always worked in my favor. Just when I thought I had it all under control, life has inconveniently shown me many, many times that I was getting a little too cocky.

    You name it, I’ve tried to control it—from my schedule and time (hello, Type A personality) to forgoing random opportunities because my mind was made up on going a certain direction. I even tried calorie counting at the height of my exercising routine because I wanted ultimate control of what I put in my body.

    Now, none of these are necessarily bad. Planning your time leads to efficiency, forgoing things because you are on a mission means you might be on the path to your purpose, and calorie counting could help you get the body you’ve always dreamed of. But when you do these things day in and day out, all at the same time… well, let’s just say the process can be stressful.

    But I tried anyway because I figured I might as well try to control what I could since life was going to be random no matter what. It also gave me satisfaction, almost a somewhat false sense of accomplishment, that I was shaping my own destiny.

    I think most of us fall into this way of thinking because we all want to foresee things before they can potentially happen in order to feel safe. But ironically, when we try to control life, we end up missing out on possibilities that may have come our way if only we’d let go and allowed life to happen.

    It’s hard to say what exactly I’ve missed out on because of my former desire to control most aspects of my life. I won’t worry myself too much about it because it’s a pointless exercise. But I can think of a couple of big areas, one of them being a complete career shift that could have happened much earlier on in my life had I not resisted so much.

    Instead, I was rigid and decided that I wanted to stick to a career that I didn’t enjoy because it was my college degree and I was making great money. I did end up switching careers eventually, just not in the area I had a unique opportunity in at that time.

    The Three Golden Rules

    Try as we may, we can’t always control life, and sometimes painful things happen that we couldn’t possibly predict or prevent.

    Recently I lost a job that I was excelling at and actually enjoyed. My performance was on fire, I got along great with all my coworkers, and then one day, out of the blue, I got called into the CEO’s office and told that, due to ongoing strategy changes at the company, my time was up.

    Talk about knocking the wind out of my sails. I had just gotten back from a work conference and was slated to lead a new project before receiving the bad news.

    Has this been easy since it happened? No way. I still struggle with it daily. But somewhere, deep down, I know that life happens for me, not to me. And that this has created an opportunity for something bigger and better.

    What is that something? If I could predict the future, then I’d probably be playing the lottery knowing I’m picking the right numbers. But I can’t foresee what’s coming down the road. I can only choose my attitude when I hit roadblocks along the journey, which ultimately shapes my choices.

    What helps me maintain an optimistic attitude and cope when things go wrong? Three very important ideas:

    1. Life happens for you, not to you.

    2. This too shall pass.

    3. Be with what is.

    When life doesn’t go to plan, we must embrace the change and realize that our lives are composed of chapters; one has ended, and another one is about to begin. But we can’t move on to the next chapter if we continually reread old ones. We have to willingly accept that life goes on, and that we have a chance to create something bigger and better.

    I lost my job, but I don’t want to play the victim card. Yes, life has forced my hand, but that doesn’t mean I need to feel sorry for myself. This just means I have a better opportunity coming my way, whatever that may be.

    I also realize that time plays a crucial factor in our lives. Our time is limited, and it consistently passes at the same speed, with no bias. This means that, with time, the inner turmoil I am currently dealing with will, without a doubt, pass.

    Last but not least, I know that I must be with what is. In other words, stop resisting. Fighting the fact I lost a job won’t suddenly bring it back. Fighting the fact your relationship ended won’t necessarily have them running back into your arms.

    Before we can move on, we must accept what is happening in the present moment. Then and only then can we proceed forward with calmness and clarity.

    But There Is No Golden Formula

    I understand this may not be easy to digest when you’re hurting, especially in situations that involve a loved one. Grieving is a natural part of this process, and I am not discrediting it in the least. It’s part of the human experience, and it’s okay to take as long as you need as you internalize.

    I lost my father over five years ago. The death of a loved one is probably the hardest loss to deal with. How are you supposed to see the space that has been created from such a tragic event? I understand if you don’t, because I fully admit it’s been hard, even five years later.

    But at the same time, I trust that life is working for me somehow. I just have to stop resisting. I have to understand that the feelings of loneliness, desperation, fear, and loss will pass. I have to stay in the moment and fully accept all that is happening to me.

    No, it will not be easy, and it isn’t meant to be.

    Trust The Process

    You’ve probably heard the proverb “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

    Our lives are a lot happier when we strive to make the most of what life gives us, but the step before it is equally important: Trust the process and embrace the change, whatever it is. Only then, once you stop fighting it, can you go about making your lemonade.

    We’ve all been faced with situations in our lives that force our hand. And we likely will be faced with these kinds of situations again in the future. In these moments, it’s important to hold onto the notion that life could be creating space for you to do something differently.

    If you lost your job and didn’t enjoy the work, life is potentially giving you a hint to pursue something further aligned with your passions and purpose. If you went through a breakup, life is potentially giving you a hint that you deserve and can do better.

    When I look back on my past, I realize that every loss has taught me beautiful, valuable lessons that now help me in the present. The same is likely true for you. In these moments of inner turmoil, or let’s just call it life turmoil, you are taking mental notes. Mental notes that will help you grow and help you in the future when dealing with whatever else life throws your way.

    You’ve made it through loss and hardship before; what makes you think you can’t now? You can. You just need to remember three things: life happens for your benefit, not against it; everything heals with enough time; and it’s pointless to keep resisting.

    With these ideas in mind, it should be exciting to think about the potential you have in your life.

    The next chapter could be even more amazing than the previous one. And you may even have chosen to start that chapter eventually. Your schedule just got moved up a bit.

  • 4 Things I Learned from Being Possessive and Controlling in a Relationship

    4 Things I Learned from Being Possessive and Controlling in a Relationship

    As she stood there watching the puppet show, our eyes locked. I was instantly attracted.

    After what felt like the longest fifteen minutes torn between the desire to talk to her and the fear of rejection, I mustered the courage to introduce myself.

    She gave me a smile, then without saying a word, walked away.

    “What just happened? How can such a beautiful lady be so rude?” I stood there in disbelief, overtaken by embarrassment, pretending nothing had happened.

    Two weeks later, as if by pure serendipity, a mutual friend reconnected us. That was the beginning of a relationship I could only dream of.

    Oh boy, did I misjudge her! Her attractive appearance was an exact expression of the beauty of her soul.

    One year and a half later, we were dating. Yes, I spent one year and half chasing after her. I guarantee a minute spent with her would convince you it was well worth my while.

    They say it takes longer to build a castle than a chicken coop. One and a half years must be the foundation for a skyscraper that not even the worst storm could break.

    For about a year, it felt that way. We were inseparable. Both our parents gave us their blessings. We moved in together. We even made wedding plans.

    It was like a relationship out of a fairy tale. We had every reason to believe we would live happily forever after. Life without each other was inconceivable.

    But there a problem… I was excessively possessive and controlling.

    I couldn’t stand my girl talking to another guy. I had the passwords to all her social media accounts. Whomever she was talking to, I knew. If she had to meet a male friend, I was present.

    Little by little I was withdrawing from her emotional bank account, as Stephen Covey put it. Worst of all, I was taking more than I was putting in.

    As a fervent Buddhist who believes in “letting go,” she was very tolerant. That gave me plenty of room to throw tantrums, ruminate, and blow the littlest issue out of proportion.

    Well, patience has its limits. After three and a half years, she had reached hers. I had emptied her emotional bank account.

    It was over. She had broken up with me.

    I was so clingy that I wouldn’t even accept her decision. I spent eighteen days trying every trick under the blue sky to get her back, to no avail.

    How did that happen? We’d spent so much time building our relationship, cherishing and loving each other. What went wrong?

    The eighteen days that followed were like a living hell. I suffered panic attacks, lost my appetite, and couldn’t sleep. Life became meaningless. I was at a breaking point.

    On the eighteenth day after the breakup, when I realized she wasn’t coming back, I had a reckoning. My desperation suddenly gave way to a wave of frustration, anger, and shame.

    As I was engulfed in deceit and embarrassment, I made a solemn decision to never again get rejected by a girl for being overly possessive, irrational, and intolerant.

    Such a momentous decision! I didn’t know if that was even possible and how I was ever going to reach such a lofty goal.

    That breakup and the three years spent self-examining taught me the big four lessons I am about to share with you.

    Are you in a relationship? Does your overbearingness prevent you from spending quality time with your partner? Are you ready to make changes?

    If you answered yes to all three questions, you are reading the right article. Hopefully, you won’t have to lose a partner and spend three years in self-introspection to find out you need to make changes.

    First thing first, love thyself.

    I know that sounds cliché, but I couldn’t find any fancier way to put it..

    Enjoying the company of your partner starts with you feeling good in your own skin. I’m guessing you would agree that one cannot love if they don’t possess it.

    A lack of self-love will cause you to center your entire being around the other person. And just like any host-parasite relationship, it will eventually fail. Your partner can’t let you feed off them indefinitely.

    Self-love is not selfishness. Loving yourself first doesn’t mean disparaging the other to elevate yourself. It’s acknowledging and embracing yourself while selflessly attuning to your partner’s needs and whims.

    Forget the “other half” mantras. Neither you nor your partner is a half, each of you possess their unique interests, weaknesses, strengths, and aspiration. It’s only when you both commit to each other, while staying true to your individuality, that genuine love happens.

    If I had espoused that idea then, I would never have considered suicide when my ex left me. I had based so much of my life on her I just couldn’t find meaning outsider of her.

    Learn to trust or you lose.

    Trust is the pillar of every human relationship, especially romantic ones.

    My lack of trust in my ex had nothing to do with her but rather with my deep sense of insecurity. I had the recurring thought that she would leave the minute she met someone better than me.

    Not only did my baseless fears cause me my peace of mind, they also created a wedge in our relationship.

    My trust issues caused her to lose all sense of vulnerability and safety around me. The only option she had was to confide in someone else.

    To learn to trust, I had to remind myself of this simple truth: We can’t control someone’s thoughts and actions. The best we can do is to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    Now, I choose to respect and trust my girlfriend unconditionally. Not only is she more willing to open up to me, I also enjoy a dramatic increase in self-esteem.

    Forgive and forget.

    Do you know those people who catastrophize and ruminate long after they got hurt? Well, that’s my past self!

    I did this every time my ex did something that displeased me. It didn’t matter if she apologized, I would internalize it and bring it up every time we were in an argument.

    For the last two years of our relationship, I made her life miserable. Imagine someone who never forgets even your most trivial mishap and uses it to attack you every time you’re wrong.

    Ironically, I learned to forgive and forget during the eighteen-day period while I was trying to get her back out of desperation.

    After flowers, long letters, and constant phone calls failed, I thought I could use religion to get her attention. That idea brought me to Google searching for “Buddha’s quote about forgiveness.”

    I came across this wisdom by Buddha: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

    As I copied and pasted the quote in a text message, I realized it was more relevant to me than her. I had an instant awakening.

    Instead of sending the quote to her, I decided to internalize it and use it for myself. How many times have I burnt myself by holding to anger? That was a genuine eye opener.

    When I started to remind myself of the danger anger poses to one’s mental health and peace of mind, not to mention its disastrous consequence on our relationships, I became more tolerant and accepting.

    Understand that nothing is guaranteed to last forever.

    I learned the hard way that no matter how well things are going between you and your partner, they may leave you at any time.

    When you accept the temporal nature of everything, you can stop clinging and worrying about the future and simply enjoy what you have in the moment.

    This means we must balance enjoying the company of our partner, while accepting the relationship might not last forever.

    Ironically, accepting that they could leave might decrease the odds of them leaving any time soon because people feel a lot happier when they don’t feel suffocated or controlled.

    —

    Today, I understand my ex breaking up with me was a blessing in disguise.

    Would I change things if I could go back in time? Not for the world! I grew more in the three years following our breakup than I had in the twenty-one years before that. Why would anyone trade that?

    Exactly three years after that breakup, I got into a new a relationship that’s been going strong for almost two years now. I know when to invest in myself and when to give my girlfriend my undivided attention. I respect, trust, and give her all the affection she deserves.

    I don’t know what the future holds, but I don’t worry. I seize the day, prepare for the worst, and hope for best.

    Did I reach my lofty goal to never again get rejected for being overly possessive? Geez, I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. All I know is that if my girlfriend leaves me tomorrow, it won’t be because I was being intolerant, overbearing, and bossy.

  • The World Is Not My Enemy – Why I’m Trying to Let My Guard Down

    The World Is Not My Enemy – Why I’m Trying to Let My Guard Down

    “Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the centre of meaningful human experiences” ~Brené Brown

    From a young age I learned that the world is not a safe place—that there are bullies out there that want to harm me and that I have to watch my back. I developed defense mechanisms in order to protect myself, or perhaps those mechanisms had been there all along, programmed into my psychology by millions of years of evolution.

    Maybe these mechanisms served me in certain situations as they did my ancestors; telling me when to fight and when to run away. But as I got older, I began to see how these mechanisms would often kick into gear when I didn’t want or need them to. Sometimes I would fight when there was no need to fight. Other times I would be afraid and hide when I wasn’t really in danger. Sometimes, I still do.

    This isn’t just my story; it is the story of all of us. Just pay attention to how people behave on the roads—especially when they’re stuck in traffic—or how they behave in comment threads on social media. Pay attention to how people behave in work situations, especially when their skills, capabilities, or ideas are being questioned. We walk around with psychological armor, and we use a lot of energy trying to prevent even the slightest kink in that armor.

    Some of us are also armed and will go off like an automatic rifle at the slightest touch of the trigger, leaving bullet-ridden relationships in our trail.

    Although these defense mechanisms are meant to protect us, they also cut us off from each other. Basically, most interactions are just egos interacting with other egos. Moments of real connection between people don’t happen every day, because that would require us to put down our armor and be vulnerable. But a couple of days ago, I had one such a moment…

    My kids stay with me over the weekends, and I usually pick them up at a golf course where their mom works and my oldest son plays golf. Before I can gain access, the guard at the gate has to scan the license disc of my car.

    As if 2020 wasn’t crazy enough, this year has already thrown a couple of curve balls my way. This particular Friday was just one of those days; I had a lot on my mind, and I wasn’t paying attention. So, while the guard was scanning my license disc, I took my foot off the break for just a second and rolled my car over his unsuspecting foot… crunch…

    Needless to say, he wasn’t happy. I felt like an idiot and could immediately feel my defenses going up—not just because of his reaction but because I’m programmed to get defensive, and this affects how I interpret situations, even when the other person hasn’t done anything wrong.

    “Why was his foot under my wheel?” I thought. “It was only an accident. I have a lot on my mind, okay.” At the same time, I realized that I had messed up, so I apologized profusely and drove off to pick up my kids.

    When I left, I felt compelled to stop at the gate and ask him if he was okay and whether he needed a doctor. He was limping a bit, but he said that he was okay. I gave him my business card anyway and told him to call me if he needed medical attention.

    Great, I thought as I drove away, this is the last thing I need, another potential bill to worry about. And what if he tries to take advantage me? What if he tries to sue me or something? Now I have made myself vulnerable to attack by giving him my details. But fortunately for me, the next few days came and went without any calls from a doctor’s billing department, or a lawyer.

    The next Friday I once again found myself at the gate to the golf course to pick up my kids, and I had to face the guy whose foot I potentially crushed. But I was relieved to see that he was no longer limping.

    I asked him how he was doing, and he assured me that he was okay. I expressed that I was really happy to hear that and before I could drive off, he stopped me. He told me that most people would have gotten defensive and just left it, and as you’ll remember, I almost did. But then he said that I came back and showed him support, which meant a lot to him, so he wanted to thank me.

    I was a bit surprised to be honest, because the last thing I expected was a thank you. But I felt good about this interaction. Not only was I happy that his foot was okay, but I was happy that we could part ways with good vibes between us. I appreciate how cool he was about it.

    An incident that could easily have turned ugly turned out pretty good. Somehow, we had both managed to drop our armor, and this allowed us to show compassion for one another. It was beautiful.

    The honest truth is that I still struggle with this all the time. I would be lying if I said that I have this stuff fully figured out and that I never get defensive or go on the attack. I am still learning, and what this incident taught me is that the world is not my enemy. Sometimes we can be vulnerable and drop our defenses. And most of the time, people will love us for it.

    Seeing the world as something we have to defend ourselves against or hide from cuts us off from those around us. But when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and authentic, we allow for greater connection. This takes courage and sometimes we do get hurt. But when we start treating the world like a friendlier place, somehow, it starts feeling like one.

  • The Only Way to Form Meaningful Relationships with People Who Get You

    The Only Way to Form Meaningful Relationships with People Who Get You

    “A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.” ~Jim Morrison

    When I left my full-time position at an ad agency and ventured out on my own, I had a clear goal in mind—to connect with like-minded people who align with my highest good. As far as how I was going to do that, I had little clue.

    My life was full of relationships built from forced, sometimes toxic circumstances where we found each other out of need or convenience. I am grateful for each of those people because they were there when I needed them most, but there was always a part of me that felt unknown or misunderstood. They did not speak my language.

    After a couple of decades of those experiences, it became natural to think that no one understood who I was, and no one ever would.

    Being an idealist, I’ve always believed in true heart-to-heart connections with other human beings as the most fundamental component of strong relationships, above cultural backgrounds, titles, properties, or romance.

    Most of the people around me, however, seem to pursue relationships to either avoid being alone or to create financial security, without the desire to form a deeper connection with others. Perhaps they don’t believe in the type of connection I know exists and think of it as a fantasy. In the past, I was often criticized as being naive and impractical.

    My idealistic nature often shows up in work environments, too, unguarded and without an agenda, while I watch others focus only on their own goals.

    I’ve always cared about coworkers as well as clients, and I’ve been enthusiastic about creating great designs to help them succeed. Those efforts were often seen as an agenda to get promoted, even perceived as a threat at times by supervisors fearing I was after their job. So, I finally gave into conformity and kept these idealisms to myself and pretended I had the same drives as everyone else.

    I wanted to be perceived as professional, to have friends, and to live every day drama-free, so I showed the world just enough of me in order to fit in comfortably.

    It is no wonder, in hindsight, I never met anyone who truly got me, because no one really knew about the existence of that part of me. And if I ever mustered enough courage to share those deep thoughts and visions, the slightest pause in our conversation or a split-second blank stare would scare me back into my shell all over again.

    Interestingly enough, after my “release” into the ocean (as I like to call it) from the corporate pond, and since taking full advantage of my freedom to work with whomever I choose, I find myself attracting more and more like-minded people. Whenever I marvel at the miraculous synchronicities, I begin to realize more and more why that is…

    I unknowingly started to come out of my shell and show the world all that I am.

    I was no longer met with judging eyes, passive-aggressive statements, and indirect criticisms that conditioned me to refrain from expressing myself in ways that I wanted to. Without having to deal with constant judgment and negativity, I naturally opened up and let my walls down.

    I spent the three-month grace period I granted myself following the leave nurturing feelings of self-appreciation and comfort and self-reflecting. What kind of relationships did I want moving forward? And what type of professional relationships would I want to build for my long-term success? The answer from deep within brought tears to my eyes—whatever business endeavors awaited, I always wanted to be as happy as I was right then.

    This morning, on an introductory Zoom call with a client who came to us for marketing and PR services, I had déjà vu listening to her echoing my own recent experiences.

    She is a veteran in her industry, well-educated across all subjects, has a rich cultural background, and is already a highly successful entrepreneur; yet she expressed discomfort in telling her personal story because she felt she would be seen as weird and unrelatable, at the same time wondering how her unique perspective and her desire to better the world could come across to the right clients.

    I immediately felt my pulse a little stronger, blood flowing, and wasted no time in sharing what I had just gone through.

    I gave her the following advice in hopes she would be encouraged to share all that she is with the world and build the clientele she truly desires. I got my confirmation immediately when her eyes lit up and her wonderfully mischievous childhood stories began to flow out naturally and comfortably… (Joy!)

    Your “weirdness” is your uniqueness.

    Since I’ve allowed myself to be more authentic, I’ve crossed paths with many people who share the same fear of being seen as “weird.”

    Many of us carry this heavy weight, the shame we felt perhaps from a young age of being judged, reprimanded, or made fun of, just for being ourselves. We then spent decades trying to fit in, prove we were “normal,” and worthy of love and respect. We diminished all the amazing qualities that make up exactly who we are as unique individuals.

    If you ever feel the need to hide your history, struggles, or emotions to appear “normal” to the rest of the world, consider this: You are actually depriving the world of getting to know you.

    What if the world needs your unique personality? What if the world is waiting to hear your personal story? Every single one of your qualities, even those some may consider “weird,” is a contribution to who you have become and what you have to offer the world.

    If you have read this far, you most likely have a desire to be known, to be acknowledged, and you are likely already sharing pieces of yourself with others, at least on a surface level. I encourage you to gently peel off another layer and share a deeper part of yourself. Because not doing so will keep you wondering and feeling caged.

    Like-minded people are trying to find you, too.

    Finding people who click with you can seem like a challenge, even if you lead a dynamic and interesting life and/or have a rich inner world.

    As I get older, I value deep connections more and more because I enjoy getting into a state of flow over effortless, meaningful conversations. I spent many frustrating years trying to figure out how exactly to meet the right kind of people, but it had never occurred to me they were looking for me, too. And I hadn’t made it easy for them to connect with me.

    When I met new people, I stuck with superficial conversations because, again, I didn’t want to be perceived as “weird” and be rejected. When I formed a friendship, I tried to maintain it the same way I had earned it, by not being who I truly am. Needless to say, those relationships were unfulfilling and short-lived.

    Sharing who you are authentically in each present moment not only helps connect you to those similar to you but also filters the relationships that are incompatible from the get-go. By bringing your inner world to light, you acknowledge your own uniqueness and allow others to fully see you, thereby making a connection with you.

    The more you let other people in, the deeper the connections you will form.

    The levels of connection you can create with another person can be exhilarating but also a little intimidating. Relationships can form from a fun-loving, surface-level interaction into something that touches the most intimate parts of your souls. But you have to be willing to risk discomfort and rejection in order to find the right people.

    If you are tired of superficial relationships that bear little fulfillment and want deeper connections you can build on, then your only option is to be brave, open up about your inner world, and let other people in.

    How deep the connections are will depend on how vulnerable you allow yourself to become and whether or not others reciprocate. Not everyone will, and that’s okay. It’s worth opening up to people who’ll reject you to find the one who won’t.

    Conversely, you need to be prepared to reciprocate just the same when someone else trusts you enough to show you their inner world. While this may take some courage to build up to, it’s also well worth the risk.

  • Feel Hurt in Your Relationship? How to Get Your Needs Met and Feel Closer

    Feel Hurt in Your Relationship? How to Get Your Needs Met and Feel Closer

    “The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.” ~Deepak Chopra

    I used to handle hurtful situations in relationships the same way. I’d get angry, shut down, get irritated, or just give my partner the silent treatment. This just led to more of what I didn’t want—separation, loneliness, and frustration.

    So one day I made up my mind. I was going to change my approach and try something different. Cause we’ve all heard that famous saying from Albert Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

    I was tired of not getting the level of intimacy in my relationships that I longed for. I was tired of feeling alone, frustrated, and separated from my partner, especially during the moments when I felt most hurt.

    It all turned around in one single moment.

    People think that change happens incrementally over time, but in my experience it’s often a defining moment in time where you make a new decision that changes everything.

    Turning Separation into Intimacy

    Let me take you back to this moment… I was upset, lying in bed next to my partner. Earlier that evening we had attended a birthday party, and my partner’s ex was there. Truth to be told, it made me jealous.

    Looking back, I had no real reason to be jealous, but that’s the innate nature of jealousy—it’s never rational, it’s emotional. On instinct, I handled the situation as I always did when I felt jealous, inferior, or threatened. I shut down, got irritated and cold, and gave him the silent treatment.

    “What’s the matter?” my boyfriend asked for probably the hundredth time that evening. (Have you ever been in a situation where your partner asks you the same question over and over again, and you repeat the same answer over and over again, secretly wishing that he’d read your mind?)

    “It’s nothing,” I replied with a cold tone, and turned my back on him. That’s where I started to ask myself what was really going on. What I realized was this: At the core, I was not really angry, upset, or irritated. I was hurt and afraid. I felt exposed and rejected.

    So I made a new choice there and then. I told him what the situation was really about: me not feeling pretty enough, not lovable enough, scared that he would choose someone else and leave me. And believe me, it was extremely scary to be vulnerable and expose myself in that way. I was way outside of my comfort zone, but it was truly worth it.

    When I dared to communicate honestly from my heart, I received what I needed: love, connection, and confirmation. This shift that I made during the conflict changed everything and made us, as a couple, closer than ever before. It opened up the door to a new level of communication and intimacy.

    Today, instead of pointing fingers at each other, we always try to take responsibility for our own thoughts, actions, and emotions. To stay honest and vulnerable, even when the stormy weather of negative emotions desperately tries to separate us and impose conflict.

    Assuming you’re in a healthy relationship with someone who would never intentionally hurt you, you too can turn conflict into deeper intimacy and not only feel closer to your partner, but also better meet your needs. Here’s the process that I follow to turn hurtful situations into intimacy:

    1. Stop and notice your emotions.

    The first step is to become aware of your emotions. Just stop and catch yourself when you feel hurt, angry, disappointed, jealous, irritated, lonely, etc. Don’t beat yourself up for having those emotions. To become aware of them is the first vital step in the process.

    For me, it was feelings of jealousy, irritation, anger, and separation that came over me.

    2. Ask yourself what story you’re telling yourself about the situation.

    What thoughts and beliefs do you have? It’s often very helpful to write down your story. The story in your head generates the emotions in your body, and it’s therefore crucial to become aware of your specific story.

    In my case, the story was the following: “My boyfriend still has feelings for his ex. He’s mean and doesn’t respect me. I don’t want to be close to him. I want to punish him and make him suffer. Also, I knew it; I can’t trust people, they always leave and hurt me.”

    3. Scrutinize your story.

    The stories that we play in our minds are often influenced by past memories and experiences. And they tend to trigger strong emotions, which makes us blindfolded; we aren’t capable of acting or thinking rationally.

    So, what we need to do is to scrutinize and question our story. Is this really true? Do I know for sure that this is the way it is? What are guesses, assumptions, and projections, and what are the actual facts?

    In my case, I had very few facts. My boyfriend had not left me, nor had he said or done anything that implied that he had feelings for his ex. When I scrutinized my negative and destructive story, I realized that there was little evidence to support it.

    4. Identify the root cause.

    Ask yourself what it’s really about. What are you not willing to see or feel that needs to be seen or felt?

    In my case, the root cause was me not feeling pretty enough, not lovable enough, and scared that he would choose someone else and leave me.

    This can be a tough one, but give yourself some love and credit for being brave enough to acknowledge your shadow. It’s key to be kind toward yourself, because this stage requires vulnerability. Trust me, the reward of doing so is immense!

    5. Reveal your true needs.

    When you know the root cause, ask yourself: “What is the underlying need that is not being met right now?” Is it to be loved? To feel connection? To feel special and significant? To feel safe? To tell what your heart is experiencing?

    Also, separate the needs that stem from fear and the needs that stem from love.

    Instinctively, I would have answered that I needed space and some time alone to think and reflect. That may sound rational and sound, but that was only my ego trying to avoid facing the real issue and pain. That only increased the distance and separation between me and my partner. To help you navigate this and to find the real, underlying need, ask yourself, “Is this need based on love or fear?”

    For me, the underlying needs were love and connection. I needed to feel my boyfriend’s love and presence. What I desperately longed for was a hug from him. A sincere hug that made me feel safe and seen. A loving hug that ultimately made me feel loved, significant. and special.

    6. Dare to be vulnerable with the other person.

    “Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.” ~Brené Brown

    If this is a person that you truly want in your life, that you like a lot or love, then you have to take the risk of being vulnerable. You have to open up and tell the other person what you really feel. But really take time and contemplate this one. Not everyone deserves your vulnerable communication.

    I know that this can be very scary. The first time I did it, I stumbled on my words and I wasn’t able to look my partner in the eye. That’s how scared I was. But I did it anyway. And the reward was huge.

    So take a deep breath and speak your truth, tell the other person how you’re experiencing the situation right now, and dare to express your real underlying need(s).

    7. Take responsibility and own your thoughts and feelings.

    See the situation as an opportunity to acknowledge what you need to work on in life. See it as an opportunity to get closer to yourself and other people. Most importantly, don’t expect others to fix you.

    On my side, I realized that I have a hard time loving myself. But that was not my partner’s problem to fix. At the end of the day, I had to find a way to love myself, with or without his love.

    —

    Next time you are in a situation where you feel hurt, stop and reflect. Use the steps outlined above to move from separation to intimacy with the people you love.

    And remember to be loving and kind to yourself while you do it. No one is perfect, and you show courage by even wanting to look at the situation from a new angle. So stay curious and compassionate toward yourself and others. You got this!

  • How I Stopped Dismissing Praise and Started Believing Compliments

    How I Stopped Dismissing Praise and Started Believing Compliments

    “I’ve met people who are embattled and dismissive, but when you get to know them, you find that they’re vulnerable—that hauteur or standoffishness is because they’re pedaling furiously underneath.” ~Matthew Macfadyen

    It was impossible to miss the dismissive hand gesture and distasteful look on her face in response to my comment.

    “You ooze empathy,” I had said in all sincerity to my therapist.

    “And what’s it like if I blow off or disregard that compliment?” she countered. Then, as usual, she waited.

    “Ah, it feels terrible,” I sputtered as the lights of insight began to flicker. I was acutely aware of an unpleasant feeling spreading throughout my chest and stomach. I sensed I had just deeply hurt someone’s feelings.

    That experience hung in the air for several moments, providing plenty of time to push the boundaries of awareness.

    Was I really so unaware and quick to disregard compliments? Was that the terrible feeling others experienced when I didn’t acknowledge or subconsciously snubbed what they offered in the way of a compliment or kind word? Was that what it felt like to be on the receiving end of dismissiveness?

    Leaving that session, I began the usual reflection of mulling over all that had transpired and the feedback I’d received. Growing up with minimal encouragement, I was beginning to see it was taking an enormous amount of time for me to recognize that compliments from others were genuine. I tended to be skeptical and often did not actually hear them.

    I hadn’t realized compliments could be accepted at face value and didn’t always come laden with hidden agendas and ulterior motives. I hadn’t thought that compliments were given as a result of merely wanting to offer appreciation. Something great was noticed—something great was acknowledged. Period.

    So where did such a suspicious nature come from?

    As a kid, I didn’t readily trust the motive behind a well-spoken piece of praise, as it often was a double-edged sword for me. I’d receive a compliment from my mom, but it quickly turned into a way for her to talk about how wonderful she was and how the great parts of her trumped mine by leaps and bounds.

    I recall an experience when I was feeling great about interacting with student leaders. I started to share my feeling of pride with my mom and got out a few sentences before she interrupted.  The topic changed to the ways she worked with her students and influenced them. The message I had internalized: sharing doesn’t mean you will receive validation or compliments for what you share.

    After excelling academically, my dad dismissed my master’s degree as “Mickey Mouse garbage.” He rarely acknowledged positive experiences with more than a, “Hmmmmm” or “Oh.” The message I had internalized: sharing doesn’t mean there’s and understanding or appreciation for what you share.

    Without a lot of experiences that offered encouragement, acceptance, or recognition, I lacked a backdrop on which to deal with compliments. My strengths and talents were unacknowledged, and I hadn’t learn to appreciate them. I tended to mistrust sincerity and downplayed positive input.

    With the assistance of an attuned therapist, I started on a journey of learning to trust what was offered to me rather than dismissing it. With a delicate offering of insight, I was able to repair my automatic deflect button and understand others were genuinely recognizing and affirming my strengths when they offered compliments.

    Here are several ways that helped me repair dismissiveness after I became much more aware of my tendency to deflect positivity.

    1. Pay attention to the positive.

    I started to observe anything good around me, challenging myself to see and focus on what was positive instead of indulging our natural negativity bias (the tendency to focus more on the negative, even when the good outweighs the bad).

    I looked for examples of encouraging feedback and genuine compliments that came my way or that were given to others. I kept a gratitude journal, reminding myself of what I appreciated each day. I was training and rewiring my brain to truly see and focus on positivity.

    2. Recognize when my old conditioning is resurfacing and how this may affect someone offering a compliment.

    I consciously challenged myself to believe other people had only good intentions instead of projecting feelings from my childhood experiences with my parents. I challenged any inner suspicious dialogue that came along. And I remembered how good it would make others feel if I allowed myself to feel good when they praised me instead of dismissing what they’d said.

    3. Receive and acknowledge compliments.

    I practiced listening more carefully when I received compliments and risked absorbing and feeling delighted by them, allowing warmth, pride, and happiness to settle internally. I watched for them and I became less inclined to snub what I heard.  I practiced offering an appreciative and gracious “Thank you” instead of allowing my mind to doubt, dispute, deflect, or dismiss the positive feedback.

    A wonderful by-product of working against dismissiveness is that I am more naturally positive and appreciative of others. I spontaneously offer more heartfelt and earnest appreciation, thanks, and compliments to others. I actively look for ways to do that in my everyday interactions and work to express empathy.

    Just recently, having watched a mom interact positively with her young boys in the local park, I risked offering a compliment. “Excuse me. I just wanted to let you know I noticed how wonderfully you interacted with your sons and how happy they seem.”

    The woman was delighted to receive the feedback said how pleasant it was that someone noticed. She then turned to her boys and shared with them what had happened. All four of us felt encouraged!

    I am grateful that I am now much more able to hear, believe, and absorb positive feedback. I make a deliberate effort to relish positivity, and I feel a lot more appreciative of myself and life as a result.

  • The Signs of a Strong Friendship (and an Unhealthy One)

    The Signs of a Strong Friendship (and an Unhealthy One)

    “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” ~Oprah Winfrey

    “How on earth am I supposed to survive? I have no friends whatsoever!”

    These were the thoughts that ran through my mind then when I first set foot in London five years ago. I felt raw and vulnerable in the beautiful new city that I had to make my new home, alone, with my two kids, while my husband was overseas. I wondered how I was supposed to do it all.

    Well, I had J, a friend I’d met on my honeymoon in Bali, but we had only kept in touch occasionally, so I didn’t expect much from her. I couldn’t really call her my friend, maybe a pleasant acquaintance, but surprisingly she turned out to be my much-needed rock-solid support system and guardian angel.

    Every Saturday after work, she came over to my place, and we hung out. Sometimes we would walk to the park. Other times she would encourage me to drive (something I resisted). She visited my daughter when she fell and was in a cast and made my four-year-old daughter’s birthday memorable. She even helped me put up my garden table and chair. To say that I was grateful for her kindness would be an understatement.

    I was grateful—one, because the help and friendship she offered was unexpected. Secondly, because she did it with a great and open heart. And lastly, because she accepted me for who I was and what I could offer at that point.

    For the first time in my life, I was a ‘receiver’ in a friendship. Until then, I was always the giver.

    But with J, things were different. Her generosity touched me so much, so I thanked her often and told her how much I truly appreciated the trouble she took. But she always shrugged it off. One day as I was thanking her for the millionth time, she said, “Lana, the friendship goes both ways. I too appreciate hanging out with you and your little kids. They add a lot of joy to my life also!”

    She then proceeded to tell me that she lost two of her friends to cancer in the last few years, and the sudden losses left her feeling devastated. She said spending time with us helped her through that. I was shocked to hear it but was also pleased to know that my kids and I could fill that void for her in our imperfect selves.

    Her honesty and generosity taught me some essential lessons on friendship and helped me differentiate between a healthy and unhealthy one. So, let’s unpack them.

    The Tell-Tale Signs of Healthy Friendship

    1. There is an equal amount of give and take in the relationship. Both people’s needs are considered essential, and the friendship doesn’t feel lopsided.

    2. You’re both honest and transparent with each other. When J honestly opened up to me, it cemented our friendship because it made me feel equally important. Till then, I thought I was the vulnerable person in need of her, and I was surprised to know that she needed me as well.

    3. You’re both kind and compassionate, and you completely accept each other. Whenever J arrived, she was always considerate of how overwhelmed I was. She was happy to have an overwhelmed, scared, and disoriented friend and accepted me for who I was.

    4. Good friends don’t try to control, dictate, or tell you how to live your life. Though I was new to many things, she didn’t try to control me. She offered suggestions and sometimes pushed me out of my comfort zone but never crossed any boundaries. She gave me the space I needed.

    5. Good friends are generous—with their time, resources, or whatever they have to give. J was generous with her time and company and took me to various places. I was happy to have another adult with me as I visited new locations with my girls.

    6. Good friends appreciate each other and don’t try to take advantage of each other’s vulnerabilities.

    7. Good friends don’t try to manipulate the other for personal gain. They may help each other, but they don’t use each other. They spend time together because they care for each other and enjoy each other’s company, not because they want something from each other.

    Whenever there is an equal amount of give-and-take in a relationship, honesty, respect, and empathy for one another, you can be sure it is a keeper.

    Through J, I learned that friendship is a two-way street. Before that, I had no standards and welcomed anyone and everyone in my life as friends. Even the ones who walked all over me and took advantage. J upped the bar for me.

    So, what are the signs of an unhealthy friendship?

    1. It feels one-sided. The other person dominates the friendship and prioritizes their needs and wants over yours.

    2. They’re insensitive to your needs—they don’t consider them essential, or they trivialize them as unnecessary, either by joking or making your needs sound insignificant.

    3. They subtly undermine you, implying that you aren’t good enough, can’t do what you want to do, or shouldn’t bother pursuing your wants, needs, and interests.

    4. They see you as a means to an end, meaning you are useful for some specific purpose. Maybe you can help them move forward with their career, or you’re a bridge to connecting with someone else.

    5. They do not respect you—they ignore your boundaries, talk to you in a condescending tone, and/or treat you like you’re not a priority.

    6. They don’t respect or appreciate your time or effort.

    7. They’re demanding and think everything rotates around them.

    8. They have numerous issues that they can never sort out on their own. They never ask about you; you’re only there to listen to their problems and service their needs.

    9. They’re always competing with you, and everything is a game where they want to be the winner.

    10. They don’t want to know about you—your past, your feelings, or your interests.

    11. They repeatedly bail on you unexpectedly, as if they don’t value your time together.

    Walter Winchell says that “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” Here’s hoping you find that real friend who understands you, lifts you, and brings out the best in you!

  • Shoutout to Those with Anxiety and Trust Issues

    Shoutout to Those with Anxiety and Trust Issues

  • He Broke My Heart But Taught Me These 5 Things About Love

    He Broke My Heart But Taught Me These 5 Things About Love

    “Sometimes the only closure you need is the understanding that you deserve better.” ~Trent Shelton 

    I’ll never forget the day we met.

    It was a classic San Francisco day. The sky was a perfect cerulean blue. The sun sparkled brightly.

    I ventured from my apartment in the Haight to Duboce Park to enjoy the Saturday. Dogs chased balls in the dog park. Friends congregated on the little hill. They giggled, listened to music, and ate picnic food. Kites flew high in the breeze. Adults tossed Frisbees in their t-shirts and bare feet.

    And I sat, bundled up in my scarf, zippered fall jacket, warm wool socks, and cable-knit sweater.

    This was summer in San Francisco. I had recently moved to the city at the end of May from the east coast with steamy eighty-degree weather, and now in July I sat on a hill and shivered. The famous saying fit perfectly, “The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer I spent in San Francisco.”

    I decided to venture to a nearby café, a French café called Café du Soleil (The Café of the Sun) and warm up with a hot beverage. I loved their outdoor seating.

    When I arrived, the café was packed. Every seat in the patio and the whole place was taken, except for one free stool at the bar next to a tall, handsome man.

    I sat down next to him with my hot chocolate and commented on how crowded the café was. He smiled and agreed, no longer interested in his salad or his glass of white wine. He was interested in me instead. His eyes sparkled.

    Fireworks!

    He was an artist, a photographer. He was a creative like me. Recently, he purchased his first house in Oakland, which included a lovely garden and was close to his work at a fine Japanese restaurant. Our conversation flowed easily, but from the moment I met him, I noticed a dark cloud over his head.

    “Are you married?” I asked.

    He jiggled his left fingers to show an empty hand.

    “No. No ring,” he said.

    “Kids?” I asked.

    “No,” he said, “but I would like some.”

    Our eyes locked. He sighed.

    “But… I’ll never have kids,” he said.

    I pressed my lips.

    “Oh, I think you’ll have kids one day,” I said in a lulling voice, looking sweetly into his eyes.

    He melted.  He really saw me. His eyes were full of adoration, love, and awe.

    We started dating immediately. It was fun and easy. He came to see me perform in Berkeley and I visited him in Oakland (in Fruitvale where he lived), where it was warmer and sunnier. He cooked me meals at his home with fresh fish and vegetables from his garden.

    Hummingbirds danced in the air when we were together. We drove to romantic rendezvous, danced, and he introduced me to the important people in his life: his best friend and his boss.

    The more time we spent together the sunnier and brighter he became, the happier we both were.

    Later, he admitted that he actually made most of his money selling drugs, followed by bartending, and that photography was only a hobby, not a profession. Also, he confessed that he had an alcohol and drug addiction. This was the reason his previous relationship ended even though they were both in love.

    I became sober before I moved to California. I overlooked the red flags because of our remarkable chemistry. Since I didn’t drink, he only drank one glass of wine with me at dinner and didn’t seem to want another. Because I didn’t do drugs, he never did drugs around me and he never talked about missing them.

    Everything was going perfectly, or so I thought. We never fought. Then Malik took his annual vacation to an event called Burning Man in Nevada while I stayed in San Francisco looking for a new apartment. Burning Man was very popular among the San Francisco locals and I was intrigued, but my sublet was up and I had to find a new place fast.

    Described as the “biggest party on earth” or “the only place where you can truly be yourself without judgment,” Burning Man was where people could party all day and night, dress up in outrageous costumes, see fantastic art and performances, and be completely uninhibited.

    When Malik returned from Burning Man, the storm cloud over his head reconvened above him and overshadowed him. He was jittery and paranoid. In fact, I didn’t recognize him; he became distorted and ugly. His eyes were glassy and darted back and forth like Gollum in The Hobbit. Hunched over, he tapped his fingers incessantly.

    “Everything happened too fast,” he blurted. “I told you, I don’t want to fall. I just wanted to have fun. I didn’t want to fall. I can’t sustain a relationship longer than two years. You want more than that. You should have kids. You’re getting older. You’d be a great mother. You need to have kids while you still can. You deserve that. You’re beautiful. There are plenty of handsome men in San Francisco. Why would you pick me? Pick one of them!”

    “Malik… we are having fun. I won’t let you fall. Let’s glide. Why are you talking about marriage and kids?”

    “You want more. I know it. I see it.”

    “We’ve never talked about the future.”

    “It’s not going to work. It’s over.”

    “Why are you breaking up with me? It makes no sense. Things were good before you left. We never fought. You were only gone a week. You mentioned having fun with a girl. Did you meet someone else?”

    His jaw hung open; his eyes bugged, and he took a large melodramatic step backward and gasped. He was shocked by my directness and accusation. But perhaps he was also stunned by my keen intuition.

    Sure enough, over the magical week, he met a beautiful redhead from Arizona, a single mother, who was interested in doing drugs with him in the desert, to escape her demons.

    They had so much fun together, isolated in a made-up city, laughing in the temptress of the sweltering heat. They experimented with Molly on the floor of his tent and “died together.”  Like Romeo and Juliet.

    I was devastated. Malik was no longer the person I thought he was. I had envisioned a life together. I had imagined traveling the world together.

    He told me he didn’t want me to text him any longer, and I didn’t. But the pain seared inside of me. and I held on for hope that he would see his faults and come back to me. How would he maintain a long-distance relationship with someone he did drugs with in the desert for a week? It made no sense. But that was how much he valued drugs over me.

    I never felt closure. I never felt that I was able to express all of my feelings. I wondered if I had been more vulnerable with him, if he knew how much I cared, if he would have had second thoughts and returned to me. He never came back. He never texted. It took me a long time to let him go. He was a big love for me.

    Looking back today (years later), I learned:

    1. Trust a soulmate connection.

    I felt it deep in my heart. I had met a soulmate. There was no denying it. Even though it didn’t work out, he opened my heart to love.

    2. See the red flags.

    I didn’t understand it at the time, but now I know that you can’t help anyone get over drug addiction. They have to want it for themselves.

    3. Don’t cling to love.

    Don’t cling in a relationship and don’t cling once it’s over for it to return. This was a hard lesson for me because when I love, I love hard.

    I have learned if you love someone and they cannot commit, do not hold on. If you love someone and they don’t want to be in a relationship with you, don’t think that in time, they will come to their senses and see how great you were and regret it and come back apologetically. People sometimes move on fast. Set them free. Holding on only hurts you. Allow yourself some peace too.

    4. Value honesty.

    A relationship without honesty is not a deep relationship. One shouldn’t have to drag it out of someone that they are dating someone else or that they have a drug addiction.

    5. Be with someone who has the same vision of the future.

    If you don’t have the same vision of the future, it’s not going to work. It shouldn’t be assumed that you know their wishes or that you have the same vision. It must be communicated.

    Meeting Malik opened my heart. Even though our time together was brief, it changed me forever. After overcoming the grief of losing a soulmate, it taught me not to settle, that I deserve better, and to trust that I will experience an even greater love next time.

  • 4 Reasons to Let Go of the Need to Plan Your Future

    4 Reasons to Let Go of the Need to Plan Your Future

    “No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living in the now.” ~Alan Watts

    I went to college a little bit later in life. Because of that, people often mistakenly believed I was operating on a specific (and somewhat urgent) timetable—as though I was running to catch up with the rest of the people my age.

    However, I was already in a career I loved (teaching yoga) that supported me financially. For me, going back to school was mainly about enjoying the process of getting an education without any pressure to get it over and done with.

    As it came time for me to graduate, I frequently got asked, “So, what’s next?”

    I never quite knew how to answer this question, and to be honest, it always made me a little bit uncomfortable. Mostly it made me uncomfortable because I could sense others’ discomfort with my answer, which was: “Nothing’s next.” People seemed to bristle at my reply and worse, give me a list of reasons why they thought it was risky not to have anything lined-up after I graduated.

    Even though their reactions weren’t personal, and for the most part, didn’t really have anything to do with me, the truth was: I was still insecure about making my own way through life and taking the path less traveled—which in this case was teaching yoga full-time and not making any concrete plans for the future.

    People clearly thought I should go out and get a “real” job (as if teaching yoga didn’t qualify as a real job). Another yoga teacher even asked me if I was going to get a “big girl job” when I graduated. Ouch.

    It seemed as though everyone expected me to launch into a new career or go on to higher education, and in spite of myself, I subconsciously agreed that perhaps I should just make a nice solid plan for my life.

    The problem was A) I already had a plan (which was not making any plans) and B) up until that point, my whole life had been spent making plans, and that hadn’t worked out so well. Over-planning had led to a lot of wasted time and energy. Plus, it had become readily apparent that life doesn’t always go according to plan (and thank God for that!).

    While plans aren’t in and of themselves bad, and they can certainly help lend direction to life, equally, I found it was generally in my best interest to leave things wide open to possibility, and here’s why:

    1. Planning tends to solidify life, and life is simply not meant to be frozen solid.

    Cliché as it may sound, life is a lot like water, and making plans is like placing a whole lot of logs and rocks and other obstructions in life’s way—it clogs up the current. Plans create resistance, and life is usually best when not resisted.

    2. When you’re looking for a specific outcome, you’re often not looking at anything else.

    A whole world of fantastic prospects could be surrounding you, but when you have on what I like to call the “focus-blinders,” all you can see is what you think you want, and nothing more.

    3. This one’s sort of an addendum to number two: We might miss out on opportunities.

    For the most part, people are inclined to think they’ll recognize opportunity when it comes knocking, but it’s been my experience that opportunity comes in all shapes and sizes, and it might easily be missed (or severely delayed) if we’re expecting it to look a certain way.

    4. This last one might be the most important, and it’s that over-planning can cause us to overthink and end up second-guessing or compromising ourselves, as well as our values and goals.

    I’ve learned the hard way (on more than one occasion) that having a plan and sticking to it like glue can be a fast path to rock bottom.

    All those years ago, when I was on the eve of graduating from college and on the verge of having a major planning relapse, I looked back at my life so far and could see that everything had always worked out in one way or another, and often in ways I could never have orchestrated (or predicted) myself.

    While the future certainly looked intimidating from where I was standing, I had the sense that I could trust things would continue to work out. Even if I wasn’t the one carefully planning everything out.

    The story we tend to tell ourselves is that if we don’t make plans, then nothing will happen. And if we’re not in control, then things might fall apart.

    But the gentle truth, which is actually the glorious truth, is: we’re not in control, anyway. Not fully. And that’s such a lot of pressure to take off your shoulders. Even if you don’t plan your life down to the last detail, things will still happen. Opportunities will still show up.

    Phew, it’s not all up to you!

    That doesn’t mean you can’t also have some idea of where you’d like to go—there’s nothing wrong with having dreams and goals. But there’s something to be said for staying open instead of being rigidly attached to a specific outcome.

    That compulsive urge to plan comes from the urge to avoid uncertainty, a protective instinct that’s literally hardwired into our biology. Planning is a powerful impulse to minimize risk and ensure our continued safety and security.

    However, if you can find a way of making peace with a future that is largely unknowable, and also recognize that unknowable doesn’t automatically mean bad, it will help soothe that part of your brain that instantly wants to launch into planning mode.

    Ultimately, real security doesn’t come from the outside—from making plans or holding office jobs or earning Master’s Degrees. Real security comes from within.

    The most control we can exercise is to keep on doing the next right thing, taking steps that move us closer to the center of our Self, and living our lives in a way that reminds us of who we are.

    I still occasionally fall under the spell of planning, but every time I get wrapped up in the false sense of security planning offers, I come once more to the realization that life simply does not function according to my made-up agenda (no matter how well-crafted).

  • Trust Yourself

    Trust Yourself

  • Do You Remember When You Didn’t Worry About Your Weight?

    Do You Remember When You Didn’t Worry About Your Weight?

    “We need to start focusing on what matters—on how we feel, and how we feel about ourselves.” ~Michelle Obama

    Do you remember the little girl (or boy) in you? The kid who ran, jumped, danced, laughed anywhere and everywhere they felt like it—before someone told them to shush, that they were too big, too loud, too much.

    The kid who didn’t even know what a scale was before someone told them their size was wrong.

    The kid who just ate—before someone gave them a mile-long list of “bad” foods and made them scared of food and distrusting of themselves.

    After over two decades of fighting with food and my body, I’ve spent the last four years reconnecting with and relearning to trust the little girl in me. And it’s been glorious. The little girl in me, before she was taught to suck in her stomach, lift her boobs, hide her flaws, ignore rumblings of hunger in her belly,  or endure the excruciating pain of the perfect heels because beauty is pain and only skinny matters.

    We were born into bodies that we loved. Bodies that fascinated us. We learned to run, jump, dance, with no thought of how we looked while we were doing it.

    Our relationship with food and our bodies was easy, joyful, and magical.

    We’re born into bodies that know how to eat. They know what they need, when they need it. They know what makes them feel their best and what doesn’t, and they instinctively want to move and feel good.

    They also come with all kinds of built-in functions designed to communicate with us so we hear their signals.

    But slowly, it all changes. We hear people making jokes about weight gain. We hear those around us talking about being fat, needing to lose weight, or otherwise being self-critical. We’re warned against “bad” foods—“Careful, you’ll get fat if you eat that,” as though it’s something we should be afraid of.

    And we’re told we are what we eat, as though we’re good or bad based on what food we choose to consume on any given day.

    We start looking at ourselves and our bodies critically. We start learning that food comforts and we start learning to numb—to ignore the messages we get from our bodies.

    The little kids in us get pushed aside. They get quieter and quieter. We stop trusting them and eventually we forget all about them.

    All of a sudden, the wonder and joy with which we used to look in the mirror is replaced with feelings of disgust, distrust, and shame. We feel frustrated, discouraged, stuck…

    Rather than carrying the joy and wonder for our bodies that we’re born with, we waste decades stuck in the never-ending trance of self- (and body-) criticism, chasing external fixes to make it all go away. 

    Because we’re taught to. The sickest part of all is that it’s usually in the name of “health.”

    Like you, I grew up in a society where I learned that certain ways to look, eat, live, and be are good, and everything else is bad.

    Those messages first became destructive for me in my teens, when I read my first diet book and started my first attempt to lose weight, get fit, and eat healthier.

    I was already fairly small, but every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a reflection I hated because no matter how small I was, I was never small enough.

    There was my life before that awful Atkins book and my life after. Before the book, I just ate.

    After the book, every time I ate my favorite chocolate bar or even just a piece of toast, I felt bad and worried about getting bigger.

    Over time, as I continued to try to “stick to” someone else’s rules about what I should be eating to “be good,” only to keep failing and gaining weight, the guilt turned into shame and judgment every time I ate almost anything.

    My inner world was consumed with one ever present concern: I have to get my act together and get healthy. I have to get this weight under control.

    I’d start and stop a new “weight loss” or “fitness journey” every other month. Vowing that this time would be different because this time, I had the perfect plan, the perfect goals. This time I’d be strict. This time, I’d be good. This time, I was motivated enough to stick with it and I was going to work extra hard.

    It never lasted very long. I’d always “screw up,” lose motivation, “fall off the wagon” only to end up feeling even worse.

    We pray for the day we’ll finally lose weight and all our problems will be over, the day we’ll finally be able to stand in front of the mirror and feel the way we used to feel—before the world told us our bodies were a problem we needed to solve and gave us a thousand different “solutions” that only end up making things worse.

    And we’re taught the solutions to getting there lie in hitting goals. They lie in achievement. They lie in restriction. Deprivation. Suffering. Harder work. More discipline. More motivation.

    If we just hit those weight, food, water, lift, run time/distance, step goals (and stick to them), then we’ll be happy and healthy. Then we’ll be living the “good” lifestyle.

    So we try. Most of us have spent our entire lives trying, failing, and trying again.

    What part of any of that is healthy?

    Exactly none.

    But it’s how our population has been programmed to chase health and happiness. Through this warped need to achieve—to reach goals or see visible progress via the mirror or the scale or whatever.

    But human health and well-being has never been about achievement or goal-setting. It’s not the result of how much you can restrict or deprive yourself, how much you suffer, or how hard you work.

    It’s a moment-to-moment measure of our mental and physical condition, and it’s constantly changing based on a ton of different factors—only some of which have to do with our choices and none of which have anything to do with whether or not we have a thigh gap or what the scale says.

    Yet, those things can make or break our mood, our inner peace, the way we feel about ourselves, and what we think we’re capable of or worth as humans.

    We ride or die based on whether or not external measurements of success make us feel like we’re doing something right.

    Forget about how we feel and what we need—just be good. Be successful. Follow the rules, hit the goals, look good on the outside.

    Less than 5% of people will ever be “successful” at the whole “weight loss/fitness journey” thing, and since I was eventually one of them, I have to ask: How do you define success? We’re “successful” at what cost? 

    Yes, I failed for years, but I was also “successful” for years. I finally had what everyone spends their life chasing through all the diets, lifestyle change, fitness journey attempts, etc.

    Was I happier? A better person? Healthier? No.

    Sure, I looked it. I was celebrated for how amazing I looked, how hard I worked, how inspiring my “discipline” and “self-control” were. My Instagram account was peppered with #fitspo and before and afters. I regularly had comments like #bodygoals and questions from desperate followers asking how they too could achieve the same “success.”

    But in reality? It destroyed me mentally and physically.

    Even after I lost the weight, my life still revolved around the internal war I felt between what I thought I wanted to eat versus what I was “supposed” to eat to “be good” or “make progress” or hell, even just try to maintain the progress I had made. Because by that time, I used food as a coping mechanism for everything. And because reaching goals, forcing “lifestyle changes,” and even weight loss success doesn’t magically solve those kinds of food issues or self-destructive, self-sabotaging behavior patterns.

    I ended up with bulimia and binge eating so severe that many nights I went to bed afraid I may die in my sleep because I’d be so sick from what I’d eaten.

    But at least I was being celebrated every day for my “weight loss success.” At least I looked good. Right?

    It’s all so toxic.

    Because we’ve been taught to demonize certain bodies.

    Because instead of self-trust, kindness, and compassion, we’ve been taught rules and restrictions, hard work, self-control, and “success at any cost,” while ignoring the underlying causes of weight and food struggles.

    Forget about how we feel. Forget about what we need. Forget about the cues we’re getting from our bodies when they’re trying to communicate. Don’t listen to those.

    Just behave and do what everyone else tells us we’re supposed to do.

    We get so caught in this trance of obsessing over it all that we don’t even realize how miserable it’s making us, how much of our life it’s consumed, or how much damage that obsession and all those messages is doing to our health, happiness, and peace of mind.

    We waste decades not only distrusting and disconnected from our bodies, but full on rejecting and fighting them.

    Why? For health? Happiness? To feel good about ourselves? Because it’s just what everyone does so we think it’s what we’re supposed to do?

    We wonder why we struggle so much while being completely disconnected from, and even at war with, not only ourselves but our our bodies.

    No matter what it weighs, your body can and should feel like home. It should feel safe, loving, calm, and centered. But it’s very difficult to ever get there if you’re always fighting with it.

    Taking care of ourselves and our bodies should never have become associated with work, punishment, suffering, or something that required motivation, discipline, or even lifestyle changes.

    What do you suppose determines your lifestyle? Your daily choices.

    And what determines your daily choices? Your programming.

    That is, your thoughts, beliefs, and patterns of behavior. The vast majority of which have developed and been wired into your brain over the course of your life so completely that they run on autopilot.

    That’s why they’re so hard to change and it can feel like we have no control over them—because until we actively work to change those things, we kinda don’t have control over them.

    We just go through life in a trance being driven to repeat the same thoughts and behaviors day after day. If we’re not happy where we are for whatever reason, that’s all that needs to change. Change what’s going on inside and the outside falls into place.

    The greatest tragedy of all is that all the outside noise has made us stop trusting ourselves, our ability to decide what we should eat, and follow through, and often, even our worth as humans. 

    All of which affects our choices because we treat ourselves the way we believe we deserve to be treated.

    Really, all most of us want is to feel better, am I right? We want to feel healthy, happy, good in our skin, comfortable in our clothes, at peace and fulfilled.

    Stop trying to punish and suffer your way there.

    Healthy living shouldn’t make life harder. It should all make life easier, better, and make us feel better about ourselves.

    It’s time to ditch the healthy living goals, the lifestyle change attempts, and hopping on and off the fitness journey wagon every few months. It’s not working.

    Ditch the food rules and restrictions.

    Ditch the plans and goals and to-do lists.

    Ditch deprivation, suffering, and struggle.

    Ditch the fear and distrust.

    Trade them in for love. For self-acceptance. Self-kindness. Self-compassion. Awareness.

    Get to know yourself so you can start understanding what’s going on inside that’s keeping you stuck in patterns that aren’t serving you. That’s where the power is.

    Start finding your way back to that little kid, the one who felt like a superhero before the world taught her (or him) to fear, doubt, and live for achievements and goals.

    Forget all the things you think you “should be” doing and start reconnecting with yourself and your body.

    Pause and notice. Emotionally and physically—what do you feel? Where do you feel it? What is it trying to tell you?

    Try putting your hands over your heart and just breathing.

    Ask yourself, “What do I really want right now? What do I need?”

    Tell yourself and your body, “I love you and I’m listening.”

    Pay close attention to how you feel, physically and mentally, before and after you eat. Before you reach for that thing that you know is going to make you feel terrible ask yourself, “Why do I want it?” Is your body physically hungry, or is it a mindless, learned behavior?

    Ask yourself, “Do I really want to feel the way that’s going to make me feel if I eat it?” If you notice yourself answering, “I don’t care” ask yourself why. Why are you purposely eating something that makes you feel terrible?

    When I started asking myself those questions, I realized I was doing it to myself on purpose because I didn’t believe I deserved to feel good. That was super helpful information because then I could start practicing compassion and figuring out what I was punishing myself for, and ultimately stop.

    We’re born instinctively knowing how to eat, but by the time we reach adulthood, most of the ways we eat and live are learned behaviors.

    The beautiful thing about learned behaviors is that we can learn to change them if they’re not serving us, but it starts with awareness and kindness, not goals and restrictions.

    The more you love and honor yourself and your body, the more at home and connected you’ll feel. The more at home and connected you feel, the more you’ll be able to hear your body when it tells you what it wants and needs. 

    You’ll recognize and trust hunger and fullness cues. You’ll recognize emotions and manage them more easily, without always needing to numb or stuff them. You’ll naturally start feeling compelled to move in ways that make your body feel better because you’ll hear your body when it asks for it.

    The more you live from this place of love, trust, and connection, the more at peace you’ll be, and the better you will naturally start treating your body.

    That’s when health and happiness really have a chance to thrive.

    You don’t need another weight loss or fitness journey; you need a journey back to the place in you that is just love and trust.

    That little kid I spoke of earlier? That kid loves you, trusts you, and knows what you’re worth and capable of.

    That kid is still in you and you need each other.

  • How to Welcome Uncertainty into Your Life and Release Your Worry

    How to Welcome Uncertainty into Your Life and Release Your Worry

    “Fear, uncertainty, and discomfort are your compasses toward growth.” ~Celestine Chua

    Uncertainty can be the glue for anxiety if you allow it. One thing can snowball into another and soon you are looking at the road ahead, absolutely dumbfounded about which way to go. It shakes us to our core; it disrupts our security, our stable foundation and makes us feel unsettled, even a bit lost.

    But can our lives change without uncertainty?

    I don’t believe they can.

    Two years ago, I found myself wondering: Is this all there is? The road I’ve been on is where I’ll stay; no passionate youthful ambitions, no joyful exuberance; just working and paying the bills, day in and day out. That’s being an adult, isn’t it?

    At least I have a comfortable life, I told myself, with little disruptions, no drama, and nice friends that I have trouble feeling close to.

    There must be something better, I told myself.

    I searched everywhere.

    Then I found my passion. It was buried deep. I dusted the cobwebs off. I wondered why I had abandoned such a beautiful passion. Then I remembered, convincing myself decades ago, that my passion had no real use, especially in a world that valued money above everything else.

    But it made me happy, so I worked at my passion twice a week in the evenings when I had time. It was a very busy time. I had little space left for my distant friends, superficial dating, or any of the other things that were slowly draining my soul.

    Miraculously, my passion had quickly filled my cup in a way nothing else could, not dating, not friends, and definitely not work. I made a choice to give it all I’ve got; to make a big change.

    This was happiness! I had found it!

    I sold my business and pursued change. I chased it, shedding the old chains that bound me, blazing my own path. Then something happened that I didn’t fully expect.

    Uncertainty.

    It shook me to the core.

    Here I was, with little money, a fixed income, and no clear path ahead of me. Do I turn right or left? Do I go straight or take this side road? Which path is the best path? Will I succeed or become a failure?

    Anxiety gripped me, threatening to choke the air out of my lungs. What have I done? How could this be? I’ve ruined everything.

    I put all my heart and soul into my passion, continuing tirelessly. The negative thoughts tugged at my brain at night, raising my anxiety levels. My sleep was disturbed, and my life was in chaos. Nothing was for certain anymore.

    I analyzed every direction. One direction must be better than the other! But they all seemed the same, fraught with obstacles and inconsistences.

    I started making plans to move but froze. I felt unable to make a decision.

    I mulled things over and over in my mind until I could no longer think about anything. My path was so wide, and the waters were unchartered. I felt like I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or where I was going.

    How could this be? How could the path to happiness be so rough and riddled with peril?

    Then I forced myself to breathe. It was going to be alright, I told myself. Exercise and take care of things every day but accept that there will be mistakes. You are human after all.

    I began talking myself out of the crippling anxiety and came up with a list of positive messages to counter the worry:

    1. You are intelligent; you make good choices. You always have. Look at all your past achievements. They are tangible proof.

    2. Trust yourself. You’ll make it.

    3. Change is better than going back to where you were before.

    4. Release your power over things if you want them to evolve.

    5. Go ahead, analyze your situation, but leave many margins for error.

    6. Take a break sometimes and focus your mind on other things that have absolutely nothing to do with your decisions.

    7. If you don’t know the right path, just start swimming in the right direction. The river will eventually take you there.

    So, I started swimming. The river slowed down along the rocks a few times, but I found clever ways to get around them. Sometimes the water was freezing cold and I learned if I kicked my legs faster, I would stay warm. A few times, I just waded in the water, enjoying the scenery.

    While I was admiring the scenery, I wondered if maybe the journey was more important than the destination. Those moments were precious.

    I still have crippling anxiety often, but I have grown an impressive amount of faith in myself. I believe things will work out; they always do somehow eventually.

    Every day I wake up with uncertainty hovering over my head. I wonder how I could rid myself of this unwelcome guest.

    Then I had an epiphany.

    If you want change in your life, you must open the door to Uncertainty. He might stay awhile, so be sure to invite him in and shake his hand. It’s okay, he’s not the bad guy. Uncertainty is actually the guy that’ll introduce you to Future.

    Oh, and that guy Anxiety? Don’t listen to a thing he says; better yet, tell him he’s not welcome and slam the door in his face.

    And remember, you’ll be okay.

  • If You Think You Have to Be a People-Pleaser to Be Kind

    If You Think You Have to Be a People-Pleaser to Be Kind

    “I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” ~Plutarch

    People-pleasing can seem Iike a way of connecting with others. We believe that if we keep people happy, then they’ll like us and want us around. While it may be true that pleasing others will win us approval and a place in their lives, changing and editing ourselves can’t create the connection we long for.

    We confuse people-pleasing with kindness. After all, aren’t we, as people-pleasers, described as too nice? People-pleasing can be seen as giving of ourselves to put others first, but people-pleasing isn’t the kindest way to treat ourselves or the people around us.

    Honesty is Kinder than People-Pleasing

    My friend, Amy, would occasionally invite other people to join us without letting me know. I’d arrive at the park or the coffee shop and find myself unexpectedly part of a group.

    To Amy, this wasn’t a big deal. She was generous about introducing me to new people and for her it was genuinely the more the merrier. I, however, prefer one-on-one interactions to groups, and I really dislike being surprised in social settings.

    The thing is, she never knew it bothered me because I never told her. I was so worried about making sure she liked me that I pretended to be happy about these surprise additions to our outings. I told myself I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

    Unfortunately, the result was that I resented the other people and didn’t give them a fair chance to see if we might also become friends. It undermined my trust that Amy really saw me and valued my friendship. It reinforced my belief that I wasn’t good enough for someone to want to spend time with just me.

    When I wasn’t honest about how I felt, it wasn’t kind to anyone involved. I knew Amy to be a caring and thoughtful person. Most likely she would have been glad to let me know when she was extending additional invitations and to check in about what I wanted for a particular meet-up if only I’d been honest about how I felt.

    When we people-please, we say and do things that aren’t really true for us. We may accept an invitation that is inconvenient or agree to do a favor we resent doing. We might claim to want to eat at a certain restaurant or do a certain activity even though we’d actually prefer something else.

    We may keep our opinions and beliefs to ourselves unless we’re sure they line up with those of the person we’re trying to please. We might base our decisions—from what clothes we wear to what jokes we laugh at to what career we pursue—on what we think will win approval. We may hide how the other person’s actions are impacting us.

    None of these things are honest. We’re not being kind to others when we try to manipulate them into liking us instead of letting them really see us.

    We get tripped up because honesty can feel unkind if we think it will disappoint someone or make them unhappy. Of course, honesty can be used in an unkind way. People will say intentionally hurtful things and then justify their cruelty under the guise of honesty, but we can be honest with kindness.

    When we are honest in our relationships, we give others a true representation of who we are. We are clear about what we will and won’t do, what we do and don’t want. When we are honest we build trust with others that they can take us at our word and learn to see ourselves as a person who can be trusted.

    Presence is Kinder than People-Pleasing

    When I spent time with Amy, I worried a lot. I watched to see how many cookies she ate before helping myself to another. I worried about whether she was offering tea just to be nice or whether she’d actually be disappointed if I didn’t want to try the new blend she’d been sent as a gift.

    I avoided conversation topics where I wasn’t sure we’d agree. I was cautious when answering her questions about what I was up to. I’d offer only a glimpse and then try to gauge her levels of interest and approval before sharing the next little bit.

    The thing is, I wasn’t able to relax and just enjoy spending time together. It was obvious to her that I was trying to do things the way I thought she wanted me to. She tried to reassure me that it was okay to be myself, which was embarrassing for both of us.

    I appreciated Amy’s ability to ask thoughtful questions and how encouraging she was about anything I did share with her. The main things I remember about the time we spent together, however, don’t tell me much about who she is. I remember more about what I said and did because my focus kept turning to how I was measuring up.

    When we engage in people-pleasing behaviors, we watch the people we hope to please for cues about what they want and need and who they expect us to be. It can seem like we’re being very present with them because we’re paying such close attention.

    Too often, however, our attention is strategic—we’re using it to meet our own ends instead of really engaging with them as people. We watch for how each thing we do or say is received and use that data to continually adjust ourselves to be more pleasing.

    What if, instead, we approached our time with another person with curiosity—seeking to know them for the joy of knowing another human being? Curiosity requires presence—being open and welcoming to what is there instead of what we expect to find. One of the kindest things we can do for someone is to set aside our expectations and see them for who they are—and that includes ourselves.

    Trust is Kinder than People-Pleasing

    It didn’t matter how kind and encouraging I believed Amy to be, I didn’t trust that she would want to be my friend if I ever let her really see me. I didn’t trust that relationships could survive disappointments, differences, or disagreements. I struggled to believe that anyone really wanted to know me and that I would deserve their friendship if they did.

    When I didn’t trust that Amy would want to be my friend unless I went out of my way to please her and I didn’t trust that I was worthy of her friendship, it made for an uneven relationship. I saw her as better than me and was trying to control her perception of me so I could keep a place in her life. Our interactions were based on my striving to please instead of on two humans seeing and supporting each other.

    People-pleasing is characterized by a lack of trust. We people-please because we don’t trust that we are good enough to be wanted just as we are. We don’t trust others to see the value in us and treat us well unless we always give them what they want or stay within the parameters of who they expect us to be.

    A kinder approach is to cultivate trust. As we unhook from people-pleasing, we build trust in ourselves. We develop trust that we can meet our own needs and that we can express our preferences with kindness. We learn to trust that we will be okay if not everyone likes us and that there are new opportunities even after disappointment.

    There is also kindness in trusting others. When we choose to trust someone, we give them a chance to see and support us. We open up the possibility for a mutual relationship.

    Trust others and trust yourself to build a relationship that is genuine and satisfying for you both. Some relationships will not survive if we cease people-pleasing, but those relationships were not built on true kindness to either person. Invest in relationships that are based on kindness instead of control—where you can know and be known.

    Consider your closest relationships. Are they a space where you are honest, present, and trusting? If not, what gets in the way? How can you bring a little more honesty, presence, and trust into your relationships this week?

  • How I Overcame My Relationship Anxiety and Doubts

    How I Overcame My Relationship Anxiety and Doubts

    “To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure. But risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in my life is to risk nothing.” ~Leo Buscaglia

    It was the day after my boyfriend proposed and I felt sick with anxiety. I couldn’t understand this feeling. I loved my boyfriend; we were living together, and I didn’t want to break up with him, so why was I so anxious?

    I googled furiously in search of answers. I worried this was a sign that the relationship wasn’t ‘right,’ and this made me feel even more anxious. I worried that it was my gut instincts speaking to me and I would regret it if I didn’t listen. But there was another part of me that didn’t want to leave the relationship. That was very confusing.

    “Maybe I am just afraid to be alone,” I thought.

    However, as someone with a tendency toward anxiety I also wondered if this was just another expression of that. Finally, after about a month of sleepless nights, worrying, and googling, I came across a forum that mentioned relationship obsessive compulsive disorder (ROCD) or relationship anxiety.

    What is ROCD?

    “Relationship OCD (ROCD) is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in which the sufferer experiences intrusive, unwanted, and distressing thoughts about the strength, quality, and ‘true nature’ of their love for their partner. Obsessions in ROCD include a preoccupation with a partner’s appropriateness as a mate, overall level of attractiveness, sexual desirability, or long-term compatibility, and often arise in otherwise entirely healthy relationships.” (Center for OCD Los Angeles)

    It gave me a huge sense of relief to know that what I was experiencing was indeed anxiety-related and I didn’t need to leave my lovely fiancé.

    I took a relationship anxiety course and it was of enormous help to me. I learned so much about myself and am now able to enjoy my relationship again. I want to share what I learned in the hope that it will help someone else.

    The Difference Between Anxiety and Gut Instincts

    My main concern before and after learning about ROCD was “What if this is actually my gut instincts telling me that I need to leave?” This is a scary question, and a very common one for sufferers of ROCD. There is also no definitive way of answering this question, which is frustrating. Anxiety hates uncertainty.

    One thing that helped me was to remind myself that I have worried obsessively about lots of things for most of my life. For instance, when I was single, I wanted to know with absolute certainty that I would meet someone and be happily married one day. I would seek reassurance from friends and family and worry about it endlessly. This anxiety felt similar to that.

    If I’d worried unnecessarily in the past, it stood to reason I could be doing the same thing in my relationship.

    Fear of Conflict

    The interesting thing about healing from relationship anxiety is that it seems to uncover different wounds for different people. In this way it can be a gift, as it triggers a lot of self-discovery and growth.

    For me, it uncovered a fear of conflict and losing myself.

    When I was growing up, I felt like I had to put aside my feelings in order to “keep the peace.” As a result, my adult relationships sometimes feel like a choice between losing the person I love and losing myself. I have had to learn that conflict can be healthy; it doesn’t mean a relationship isn’t right.

    I used to find it hard to voice my opinions and needs in my relationship. I needed to test the assumption that conflict is unsafe.

    Thankfully, I found that the opposite is true. You can’t have a healthy relationship with out conflict. My partner has strong opinions, he doesn’t let me off the hook easily, and we are very different in some ways, but I have never felt unsafe when we are debating an issue.

    Without conflict we are either not being honest or sacrificing our needs, which can lead to the feeling of losing oneself.

    Fear of Making the “Wrong Choice”

    I love my parents and I know they did their best, but there are things about their relationship that I would not want to repeat in my own.

    Often relationship anxiety is related to the first relationship we were exposed to. There is a myriad of things that we may have been witnessed in our parents’ relationship: domestic violence, infidelity, divorce, abandonment. It is easy to become hypervigilant about not repeating our parents’ mistakes, at least as we perceive them. Add to this is the idea of “the one” and our fear of missing out or “settling” and we have a recipe for relationship anxiety.

    When my partner says something insensitive or we have a different view on things, I still feel anxious at times. But I am able to recognize that I am triggered and stabilize myself again. Sometimes this involves talking it through with him. But often I just need to take some time to process the emotions, to see what in my past my has been triggered, and practice some self-soothing.

    Recognizing your particular areas of sensitivity can help you differentiate between doubts about your partner and old wounds being triggered.

    Unhelpful Beliefs About Love

    Our culture’s ideas about love are very unhelpful. We are brought up on Hollywood movies showing love as passion, desire, and finding “the one.” This is not a fair reflection of the daily grind of loving someone.

    Sometimes we feel in love with our partners and sometimes we don’t, and that’s okay. The feeling of love comes and goes, but we can choose the action of love every day. Life gets busy, we all have annoying quirks, and sometimes we are tired and grumpy. This is not conducive to constant feelings of passion!

    I have learned to watch the loving feelings ebb and flow. To enjoy loving feelings when they arise, knowing that when they are not there they will return.

    I believe there are lots of people we could be happy with, not just one single perfect person. My partner is certainly not perfect, but he is a good person who I love and respect. We have lots in common, but we are also very different in some ways, which means we learn a lot from each other. I am so grateful that I didn’t throw away our relationship, as it is now one of the most precious things in my life.

    If You Think You’re Struggling with Relationship Anxiety

    If you are in a generally healthy relationship and you have experienced anxiety in the past, particularly when it comes to relationships, then there is a good chance that what you are experiencing is relationship anxiety. I encourage you to look deeper. Read more about it and perhaps see a therapist who understands ROCD.

    Be careful of well-meaning friends and family who may suggest that if you aren’t sure, then it means you should break up. Many people, including therapists, don’t understand relationship anxiety. I would also suggest staying away from romantic movies and TV shows, as this will most likely lead to unhelpful comparisons.

    There is no way of knowing the future and there are no guarantees in life. There is no way of knowing if our partner is 100% “right for us” or not. And if there was, I don’t think that anyone would pass the test, as we are all flawed in some way.

    Loving is a risk, and there is no way of escaping that. Of course, that is scary! But in time we can learn to manage the fears and, in the process, become better at loving ourselves and our partners.

  • How My Fear of the Unknown Sabotages Relationships

    How My Fear of the Unknown Sabotages Relationships

    “Let go of the need to control the outcome. Trust the process. Trust your intuition. Trust yourself.” ~Unknown

    I was talking with a friend one day at work, and we were discussing dating and the rejection that comes with that and the sense of failure and disappointment.

    We were talking about how we struggle to even get close to dating someone because we get in our own way, and our thoughts stop us from moving forward because we’re scared. We’re scared, so we blow the situation up with our inability to sit with the uneasiness of not knowing what the other person’s intentions are and whether or not this new potential partner can be trusted.

    We second-guess, we doubt their intentions, and we worry about where the relationship may be going. We assume and we make stories up in our heads and ask random and abrupt questions out of nowhere hoping to get an answer to end our anxiety-ridden suffering.   

    Just recently I was rejected by a guy I wanted to know more about because I pushed for answers and for things to move faster than he may have been ready for. I struggled to let things evolve naturally because I feared the unknown and felt uncomfortable with my uneasiness.

    I’ve since begun dating again and putting myself out there, but I continuously find that I sabotage any potential relationship before it even becomes a relationship because my thoughts get in the way. But also because the hurt child within myself, who feels scared when she is vulnerable, repels all that may be good for her to return to what is familiar, the aloneness. Because there, she can’t be hurt. However, through this process I continue to hurt myself deeply.

    Time and time again this has happened, and I find it extremely frustrating and annoying to be stuck in this loop.

    Rejection

    I also find that when I am rejected it’s like this insurmountable blow to my hurt inner child, and I take the rejection personally, as though there is something within me that isn’t good enough. Or I feel as though I have done something wrong and that’s why they’ve rejected me.

    It struggles to come to me that we simply are not compatible or that it just wasn’t meant to be. The rejection runs all the way to the hurt child within, and I struggle to reconcile this within myself.

    Sense of Failure

    I then interpret this rejection as a personal failure on my part, since I wasn’t calm and open enough to allow things to evolve naturally. I feel bad about myself because I failed to be out of my head and in my heart, and I allowed my hurt inner child to once again to take over, consume my thoughts, and overrule rational thought.

    It’s frustrating for me that I keep struggling to stay calm and let things just be in flow since I’ve been trying to master for some time now.

    Recovery

    However, I know that this isn’t what I want to do anymore, and I know that one day I will master this sense of calm within the uneasiness life tends to bring, and I will have the loving relationship I so desire.

    If we recognize our patterns and work on the underlying issues, it’s just a matter of time till we see progress.

    I am not scared to keep trying and to keep putting myself out there. Even though I was recently rejected, I’m proud of myself for taking a chance, stepping out from my comfort zone, and breaking down the façade I’ve built up over the years.

    I’m also proud that during my interactions with this man, I was engaged, present with what was occurring right in front of me, and from that I take note that every step forward is one more step in the right direction.

    I’m also trying to focus in on the now and to stop my thoughts from running away from me. Yes, the man I was hoping to develop a relationship with has retreated, but I see that I am okay and that my world has not fallen apart because one man has rejected me, so I know I will be able to try again.

    I focus on what I have in my life to be grateful for, and I’ve been flooding my brain with positive affirmations and remembering my daily mantra that “I am deserving.”

    I know that I am a smart, brilliant, and amazing woman who has had a phenomenal journey of healing and recovery and who is simply trying to do her best with this new hurdle. I continue to reiterate this message to myself, and my level of rejection and sense of failure continue to improve as time goes on.

    I look at how far I have come and the growth that has occurred in the past year, and I am pleased to see that I now have trust within myself, to where I am at least comfortable to put myself out there in the dating world.

    I will continue trying not to force things so relationships can naturally evolve as they will. I know this will happen for me. I just need to keep trusting myself and keep showing up for me.

    Have you ever felt scared and uneasy at the beginning of a relationship? What helps you relax, let go, and let things happen?

  • How to Trust That You’ll Be Okay No Matter What

    How to Trust That You’ll Be Okay No Matter What

    “The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.” ~Ursula K. Le Guin

    Did you play with cootie catchers as a kid?

    You picked a number and watched anxiously as your friend counted it out. Open. Close. Open. Close.

    You chose a color or picture or word and waited in anticipation as your friend unfolded the flap and read your destiny.

    Or how about that MASH game? Mansion, apartment, shack, house?

    I played these games with an insatiable desire for all the details.

    How is all of this going to play out?

    Where will I live?

    What will become of me?

    I was fascinated with details, and anyone who could supply them. Fortune cookies, horoscopes, and psychic phone readings all held the promise of telling me exactly what I yearned to know.

    Will I be okay? 

    With time, curiosity gave way to hard-core, type A planning. I’d plan everything out in excruciating detail and get my heart set on one specific outcome.

    I’d make a deal with the cosmos. Everything will be okay if it turns out just like this, okay? Okay.

    I craved certainty and the illusion of control.   

    The answer “surprise me,” made me uncomfortable. Playing it by ear was torturous. Penciling it in felt like the easy way out.

    I’ve made a lot of plans along the way: graduation plans, wedding plans, birth plans, career plans. Yet, no matter how painstakingly crafted these plans were, I was always a little surprised with where I ended up.

    My actual wedding dress was nothing like the pictures I collected with friends in high school.

    My thirty-eight-hour, two epidural labor was nothing like my 100% all natural birth plan.

    My house in Arizona is nothing like the one I’d dreamed of having in Northern California.

    And I’ve been okay.

    Okay, universe. I get the message.

    It’s not really about the details.

    We can make the best of difficult times, rising up after we’ve been dragged through the muck. We can surprise ourselves with what it turns out we actually want. And we can rain all over our own parades.

    The details are delicious, though.

    It’s so satisfying to make a list and check things off. It feels so good that sometimes we’ll even write down the things we’ve already done. And there’s something so soothing about having the who, what, when, and where sorted out.

    Best of all is knowing that the whole plan is exactly, perfectly the way you want it. It’s positively intoxicating.

    The only trouble is that the details hardly ever turn out as planned.

    This whole attachment to details thing is getting harder as time goes on. At a time when I most want to know if we’ll all be okay, I suddenly can’t figure the details out. Maybe I’ve lost my touch, or maybe the plans are getting more complicated.

    There are so many more variables and people involved now. Where it was once just me and my cats, there’s now me, my husband, my children, our families, old friends and new friends, employers, clients, school systems, licenses, and a mortgage to consider.

    With each new piece comes countless questions. So many, in fact, that I can’t even picture what all of this is going to look like.

    That’s got to be okay.

    I’m learning to accept that I’ll be okay if I don’t know the details because I know how I want to feel and what I want to leave room for in my life.

    As much as we’d like to take credit for them, the details are often things that just present themselves when they’re good and ready to be seen, anyway. They tend to sort themselves out in ways that we never could have planned.

    We take one step, then another. We prepare the best we can with what we know, knowing how we want to feel when it’s all said and done. Then we reassess along the way.

    Part of me really wants to fight that because it still believes that having all the answers now will guarantee that everything will be okay. Maybe it’s time to start having a little more trust that I’ll find a way to be okay no matter what happens.

    The more comfortable I get with letting the details reveal themselves when the time is right, the more aware I am of all the people who want to know the plan right now.

    They want to know when you’re visiting or moving back to your hometown or having your next child or finally graduating or asking for that raise.

    They ask all kinds of detailed questions about your plan, so much so that it can leave you feeling ashamed for not having figured it out.

    I get it, too.

    People want to feel closer to you or important or useful. They want to be heard.

    Maybe they’re kind of nosy. Or bossy. Or maybe they’re bored.

    Maybe they just really care and want to solve what they think is a problem for you.

    And maybe they also have a deal with the cosmos that everything will be okay if…

    I get it because I’ve been them. I’ve interrogated, and I’ve demanded answers. Even after understanding that I can’t have absolute certainty (or control), I’ve been that person squeezing out the details before it’s time.

    Understanding is different from knowing deep in your bones that you’ll be okay no matter what.

    When you know, you live and breathe it. Instead of seeking control, you seek clarity. Instead of certainty, you seek courage.

    When you know the truth, you also know that it’s supposed to be a little scary to look out into the uncertain future. It’s unnerving to say, “Here goes nothing.”

    It takes courage to walk into the future knowing that you don’t have all the details nailed down. Your next step may be right, it may be wrong, it may lead you nowhere, and people may think you’re crazy, but you have to take it at some point.

    The truth is, no one ever really knows how it’s all going to look, but you probably have a good idea of how you want to feel and what’s most important to you. And if you don’t, maybe that’s why the details are so elusive.

    (But all the same, you don’t need the details.)

    You don’t need to see the details to trust that you’ll figure them out when the time is right, and you don’t need to see your path to know in your heart that it’s there waiting for you to take that step.

    You don’t need to know exactly how every piece will play out to know what the most important pieces are.

    And you don’t need absolute certainty to know that you’ll find a way to be okay no matter what happens.

    I’m not saying, “Let’s all throw caution to the wind from now until forever.” Make plans, yes, but there’s no need to obsess over the details if the details aren’t clear. Meet planning with flexibility and trust. Be curious about what happens next, not controlling.

    So go ahead, daydream, plan, manifest, make a vision board, or whatever calls to you. Just remember to begin from living and breathing the truth: that you will find a way to be okay no matter what.    

    I have no idea where I’ll be working five years from now, what our house will look like, what we’ll do on the weekends, if I’ll have lost the baby weight, or if I’ll dye my greys, but I do trust myself to make the call when the time is right.

    I don’t know all the when’s, where’s, or even how’s, but I do know how I want to feel and what I hold nearest to my heart.

    I want to feel light, energized, and free.

    I want to find meaning in my work.

    I want to be home in time for dinner.

    I want to create space for contemplation and creativity.

    I think I’ve had enough of the heaviness that comes from dragging around a lifetime of plans. It’s too much pressure, and even the most carefully made plans might change in the end.

    I still make plans, and I’m not throwing my bullet journal away any time soon. I’m just not letting my fear that I won’t be okay or that I’ll choose wrong or that people will disapprove suck the life out of living any more.

    So go ahead, universe. Surprise me. I’ll be okay no matter what.

  • How I Learned to Like and Trust Myself When It Was Hard

    How I Learned to Like and Trust Myself When It Was Hard

    “Loving yourself starts with liking yourself, which starts with respecting yourself, which starts with thinking of yourself in positive ways.” ~Jerry Corsten

    Useless. Hopeless. Broken.

    This was how I saw myself.

    I didn’t completely loathe myself, but I didn’t like myself either. At best, I tolerated myself.

    I felt I had good reasons to.

    I’d gotten myself into, as we say in England, a right old pickle.

    If you’re not familiar with this charming expression, I had gotten myself into a big mess.

    In my early twenties, over a painful period of about eighteen months, I’d gradually buried myself in personal debt with several pay-day loan companies.

    The ever-growing pressure to pay off this debt played havoc on my mental health. I often found myself running into the work toilet to secretly have panic attacks, throwing water on my face like a madman, and reassuring myself that I wasn’t losing my sanity. I was suffering, and misguidedly, I’d convinced myself I would have to suffer alone.

    To make myself feel better, each week I partied from Thursday through to Sunday, chain smoking and knocking back pint after pint of Guinness. Or anything else that was available. I wasn’t fussy.

    I’d wake up on a Sunday, often still drunk, with a dizzy head and a heavy heart.

    Do I dare to check my bank balance? How long can I go on living like this? What’s wrong with me?

    Sunday evenings were the worst. I dreaded Monday morning. I disliked my job but needed to stay there to keep my head above water. It was a vicious cycle.

    I’m pleased to say those days are behind me. I’m still far from being perfect, but I’ve come a long way.

    I’ve learned to like and even love myself. Which I’m proud of, because I honestly believe the most important relationship we will ever have in our lives is the one we have with ourselves.

    The quality of the relationship we have with ourselves determines the quality of all other relationships. Plus, I came into this world alone and I’ll leave alone. Other people will come and go, but I will always have myself. I best make sure I like the man I see in the mirror.

    Here are three ways I learned to like and trust myself again.

    1. Recognizing I’ve always done my best, given my level of awareness at the time

    I often shock people when I tell them I believe there is no such thing as self-sabotaging behaviors. They ask, “Well, what about procrastination? Drinking? Drugs? Surely, they are self-sabotaging?”

    Yes and no. Yes, they are destructive, but I wouldn’t call them self-sabotaging.

    A more revealing question than what those behaviors are, is why do they exist?

    I believe it’s not self-sabotage but misguided self-love.

    Let’s take my binge drinking and smoking, for example—behavior that, in the eyes of many, would seem self-destructive. On top of the harmful physical and mental affects, these habits put me further into debt. But why did I indulge in those behaviors in the first place? Because my life situation was painful, and temporarily, they helped.

    For a few short hours, those behaviors made me feel better. I became less anxious and happier. As far as my mind was concerned, this was helping.

    The issue, as I’ve come to learn, is that the subconscious mind (the part of the mind responsible for habits and behaviors) focuses on the present moment.

    What is also important to understand is that the mind’s #1 role is to maintain our survival. If you’ve ever almost stepped into the path of a speeding vehicle, you’ve seen this truth. Without even consciously thinking , your incredible mind jolted you back onto the path and off the road.

    Given that the mind’s #1 role is our survival, the idea that it would allow self-sabotaging behaviors is nonsensical.

    Furthermore, believing I had a sneaky self-saboteur living inside me, hell-bent on destroying my life, made me feel utterly powerless. If I couldn’t even help myself, how could anyone else?

    Now I view those destructive behaviors differently, for what I believe they are: short-sighted self-love. “Helpful” in the short-term but costly in the long-term.

    I wasn’t sabotaging myself on purpose. My mind allowed those behaviors because they were moving me away from perceived pain, or toward perceived pleasure.

    With more awareness, I was able to stop beating myself up, stop the behaviors that were holding me back, and start making better choices. Which included asking for help and setting some goals for myself.

    2. Setting small and achievable goals

    Once I realized I’d always done my best in the past, given my level of awareness, it was time for me to think of positive steps I could take toward the future. Starting by gaining direction through goal-setting.

    In the past, I’d set myself up for failure by trying to change everything overnight. After a few days, however, I’d become overwhelmed by trying to maintain so much change and fall back into old, familiar patterns.

    This time, instead of attempting to change everything I wanted to change at once, I created small and achievable goals for myself.

    I started by addressing my personal debt, which was the biggest stressor in my life at the time, and a huge contributor toward my anxiety. Once I made some progress with my goal of getting debt-free, I created small and achievable goals in other areas. For example, I set a goal of meditating once per day. It wasn’t long before I was seeing improvements in my mental state.

    Over time, my confidence in myself began to grow, as I could look back and see tangible results. I was beginning to like and trust myself again.

    3. Self-praise

    A huge contributing factor in forming a better relationship with myself was praising myself along the way.

    As I child, I was fortunate in that I was often praised by the adults around me.

    Sadly, as we transition into adulthood, outside praise tends to become less frequent, doesn’t it? It did for me at least.

    As I grew older, instead of hearing words of praise, I heard more words of criticism from mean teachers and bosses who used shame and fear to motivate me to do better.

    No wonder, then, that my inner dialogue became more negative and I learned to beat myself up.

    Although I may no longer be a child, I’m not ashamed to admit, I still love to be praised!

    So, to encourage myself when making positive changes, I use self-praise each evening before bed. When brushing my teeth, I look myself in the eyes, reflect on the day that has passed, and think of three things I can praise myself for.

    Big or small, I find three things I did well and wish to acknowledge.

    Even on those days when I feel like I’ve achieved next to nothing, when I ask myself “What can I praise myself for today?” my mind searches for answers and will always find some. Even if it’s something small, like resisting the urge to overdo it when drinking with my friends or not oversleeping on the weekend.

    As Tony Robbins said, “Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”

    I used to go to bed and ask myself “Why am I so useless?” I’d fall asleep with a feeling of dread in my heart, resentful toward myself.

    By asking myself “What can I praise myself for?” I fall asleep feeling positive about myself, as someone who likes and trusts themselves.

    —

    If you’re having a hard time liking yourself, let alone loving yourself, start by recognizing you’ve always done the best you could. Even when you made choices you later regretted, you were trying to help yourself; you just didn’t have the awareness or resources to do better.

    Then focus on taking small steps to create change you can be proud of. Don’t try to make major changes overnight; you’ll likely get overwhelmed, feel even worse about yourself, and give up. Just do one tiny thing every day to help you move you in a better direction.

    And give yourself a little credit. Ask yourself questions about what you’re doing right, not what you’re doing wrong. You’ll likely feel a lot better about yourself and your life. And when we feel better, we do better—which means you’ll keep giving yourself reasons to be proud.

  • You’re in a Powerful Place of Transformation

    You’re in a Powerful Place of Transformation