Tiny Buddha

Tag: wisdom

  • Making Big Decisions: How to Discern the Whispers of Your Soul

    Making Big Decisions: How to Discern the Whispers of Your Soul

    “Intuition is the whisper of the soul.” ~Jiddu Krishnamurti

    “I can’t believe they are taking her side over mine. I gave this job so many years, and she decides to walk in and mess it all up for me,” I said to my husband.

    A few years back, when I was working full time at my corporate job, I got into a disagreement with a team member. It spiraled out of control to the point where my boss then had to have a sit-down with us. I was so humiliated and angry that he could not see my side.

    They will realize when they lose you, whispered my ego.

    That was when I decided to leave. I started to look for new jobs and got offers.

    Now here is the thing—I did have a great job, I had a great team, no long hours, and I liked what I did. But at that moment, due to that disagreement, I made a decision to leave it all from a place of anger.

    Tony Robbins often says It is in your moments of decisions that your destiny is shaped. I wish I knew this back then. I took the new job, but the moment I accepted the offer, I realized the colossal mistake I had made. I remember going to my farewell party and feeling like I might throw up. I remember trying to hide my tears.

    Your intuition often speaks to you through your body, and my body was clearly saying no. Unfortunately, the voice of my ego was stronger. It was too late to turn back. That wrong decision cost me two years of my life that I could have used toward my personal goals and business.

    Instead, I was stuck at the wrong job, working long hours, in misery, and hating every minute of it.

    There are many times when we feel the need to react, and the need to feel validated. The untrained mind often reacts the way I did, from fear and from anger. This is where the process of discernment comes in—discernment between whether you are making a decision to sate your ego or to truly evolve and expand yourself.

    The primitive, reactionary mind is not the best for making decisions because we are in a downward spiral and are tackling multiple negative thoughts in our heads. Nothing good can come out of this space—we are neither neutral nor can we listen to our intuition.

    In the grand scheme of things, when we ignore our intuition, we introduce complexities to our path. The reality is that in order to get to the next level, we must get out of victim mode and learn to take
    responsibility for our actions. There is always a choice in any decision that you make. That choice is between fear and love, between blame-shifting and personal responsibility.

    The easiest way to listen to your intuition is to ask yourself if you are making the decision out of fear or out of love. While this experience was unfortunate, it also taught me a very important life lesson. I rarely make big decisions in my life without “consulting” with my inner guidance or when I am not in the right headspace.

    The tool that I use for this is meditation. Over years, I have learned to use the art of meditation to hear the whispers of my soul. Anytime I get into a conflict or my life spirals out of control, I turn to my
    meditation pillow.

    Before I get into the meditation, I ask myself: Why is this happening to me? What is the lesson that I need to learn from this? Help me see the way. I am willing to do what it takes to feel and do better.

    And then I go into silence and complete surrender, without expectations that any insights or solutions will come through. The answer usually comes quite unexpectedly when the world around me is reduced to a silent hum. It is usually not the answer I was hoping for, but the answer I need at that moment.

    I often get asked what to do if the answer does not come. This just means that you are not detached enough and that you are still expecting an answer to come. This is fear itself.

    “Why is the answer not coming?”

    “Am I not doing this right?”

    “Maybe my intuition is broken?”

    Intuition comes when you are in a place of faith rather than fear.

    If this happens, try working out or watching or movie, anything that helps you not think about your problem. Then go back into meditation again with zero expectations, and you will be surprised at how soon the answer comes to you.

    It will be a quiet whisper, an inner knowing. It will happen in complete silence or when you are thinking about something completely different.

    It is akin to that little whisper that tells you that it may be a good idea to take the umbrella before you leave the house. But then you choose to ignore that whisper, and you later wish you hadn’t because it
    rained so much.

    One of the biggest benefits of meditation aside from intuition is that it helps you silence your mind. This helps you take bigger and bolder actions because there is no silent critic in your head judging and second-guessing your every move. Meditation helps you become more mindful and present. What others say or do does not affect your as much.

    Over time, you start experiencing the “observer effect,” where you feel as if you are directly experiencing life as a series of moments rather than evaluating and analyzing it.

    If you cannot meditate, journaling can help with this process too. Put on trance music in the background and free write. The trick to journaling is to let your pen flow without thinking.  You will notice that twenty to thirty minutes into it, your handwriting will start changing and your words will start looking different. The message will become more loving and compassionate. This is when you know that you are tapping into your intuition.

    Intuition is a powerful gift, but one that you can experience and learn how to recognize only in silence.

  • Pay Attention to the Loyal People

    Pay Attention to the Loyal People

  • How Perfectionism and Anxiety Made Me Sick and What I Wish I Knew Sooner

    How Perfectionism and Anxiety Made Me Sick and What I Wish I Knew Sooner

    “Perfectionism is the exhausting state of pretending to know it all and have it all together, all the time. I’d rather be a happy mess than an anxious stress case who’s always trying to hide my flaws and mistakes.” ~Lori Deschene 

    “That’s not how you do it!” I slammed the door as I headed outside, making sure my husband understood what an idiot he was. He’d made the appalling mistake of roasting potatoes for Thanksgiving instead of making stuffing.

    He was cooking while I studied, trying to make sure I got a semblance of a holiday. We lived away from our families, and I had exams coming up. I was on the verge of losing it most of the time—and he was walking on eggshells. Or roasted potatoes.

    I was in my first year of law school. Every student knows that if you look to your left and then to your right that one of those people won’t be there next year—they will have dropped out or failed. I was terrified of failing.

    Every morning, I had a pounding headache that no amount of painkillers touched. My shoulders sat permanently around my ears (try it, you’ll see what I mean). I had insomnia, was highly irritable, and often felt panicked. 

    My friendly barista made me a triple vanilla latte each morning at 7:00, and by 10:00, I was out of energy. I bought Red Bull by the case to get through the rest of the day, and in the evening, I’d switch to red wine. My digestive system was distressed to say the least.

    I was hustling so hard, trying to get it all right. And then, I got a C on my Torts midterm. And sobbed for three days.

    I know this must sound ridiculous. A big part of me thought it was. I beat myself up for being such a “drama queen” and not being able to move past it.

    But at the time it was devastating. My sense of self-worth was so inherently tied to my achievements that I felt like a giant failure.

    I didn’t tell anyone. I was too embarrassed. What would they think of someone who got that upset?

    I knew that I appeared to be highly functioning externally, and that was something. I had friends, I went out to dinner, I went to the gym, I walked on the beach. Internally, though, I was in turmoil.

    My husband encouraged me to go to the doctor. He could see how hard I was on myself and how it was impacting me. As I relayed my physical symptoms, she asked whether I was under much stress. I replied, “No, not really. Just the usual.”

    I didn’t know what to tell her. Partly because I’d lived much of my life this way and didn’t know it was anxiety, partly because I felt so out of control, partly because I was ashamed, partly because I assumed she’d only be able to help with the physical.

    And … part of me knew that saying it out loud would shatter the illusion of having it all together. 

    So, I went away with a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome. It wasn’t funny, but it makes me laugh now. My bowel was definitely irritable, but that irritability was nothing compared to what was going on in my head. It was a piece of the problem, but certainly not the whole problem.

    It wasn’t so long ago that I figured out I’d struggled with anxiety for a long time before I even knew what it was. Like many of us, I learned that if a feeling wasn’t “positive,” it wasn’t acceptable. So I stuffed down all the “negative” emotions we’re not supposed to have: fear, rage, jealousy, and sadness.

    Because I’m a highly sensitive person, I have a lot of big, deep feelings. A lot to shove down, or suppress, deny or project. I was good at this, and I looked down on people who expressed their feelings.

    I thought they must be needy. The truth is, I was scared of my feelings. And I didn’t know I had needs.

    Rather than daring to let either my feelings or needs show, I used perfectionism to make it seem like I had it all together. Perfectionism made me feel like an anxious mess. But I couldn’t admit that because it would be acknowledging a problem.

    That makes it hard to ask for help. It’s also exhausting. As Lori Deschene said in her quote at the beginning, “I’d rather be a happy mess than an anxious stress case always trying to hide my flaws and mistakes.”

    Life is hard enough without stressing about how we appear to everyone else. It’s just not worth it. When I allow myself to be fully human, I can laugh at myself, talk about my struggles, and show up in my imperfections. It makes life so much easier.

    Here are five things I wish I’d known earlier:

    1. Perfection is unattainable because it can’t be quantified.

    What is perfection anyway? Do we actually know? I don’t.

    It’s something I kept setting up for myself—an arbitrary standard I thought I was supposed to meet. But once I’d achieved something, I was already looking for the next thing.

    Where does it end? It doesn’t, and that’s the problem.

    2. No one looks back on their life and wishes they’d had worse relationships.

    This seems obvious, but it’s something I think about. I don’t know if I’ll ever completely untie my self-worth from my achievements, or find an amazing balance where I feel fulfilled yet not striving. Maybe? One can hope.

    I do know that when I’m on my deathbed, that’s not what’s going to matter. My people will matter. And I don’t want my striving or perfectionist tendencies to get in the way of those important relationships.

    3. Anxiety feels very real, and it’s just a feeling.⁠

    If you’ve experienced anxiety you’ll know how awful it feels. For me, it’s a racing heart, shaking hands, flushed face, and a feeling of dread.

    It’s important to remind yourself to breathe. And to keep breathing. It will pass.

    Anxiety is fear, and fear can’t hurt you, as much as it can seem like it might.

    4. Anxiety is the stress response in action. It’s physiological and nothing to be ashamed of.

    Anxiety was my brain telling my body that it believed there was a dangerous situation. That’s it.

    While the fear of falling short is hardly a saber toothed tiger running toward you (as our cavemen ancestors had to worry about), my brain didn’t know the difference. And where’s the big stigma in that? To be clear, I believe there should be no stigma around mental health either, but I’m painfully aware that there is.

    Reminding myself there was no tiger, and thus no real danger, was useful.

    5. Imagining the worst in every situation isn’t as helpful as you’d think.

    Going straight to the worst-case scenario did seem helpful at the time. On some level, I believed if I could plan for the worst, I’d be prepared for it. But it can also create a lot of unnecessary anxiety about unlikely (even extremely unlikely) possibilities.

    For example:

    “If I get a C, I’m not going to make it through the first year. I’ll get kicked out. That would be a disaster. It also means I’m a failure. People might pity me. They will definitely think differently of me.”

    Helpful thoughts would have been:

    “If I get a C, that means … I got a C. Nothing more. Perhaps I could learn differently. Perhaps I could seek extra help. Or perhaps I could remember that I’m doing my best and that is enough.”

    Unravelling what fuels anxiety, learning to manage it differently, and being able to extend a lot of compassion to myself has been a journey. Wherever you’re at with yours, I hope something here makes a difference for you.

  • If You Were Ever a Close Friend of Mine

    If You Were Ever a Close Friend of Mine

  • 5 Tips to Stop Comparing Yourself to Other People

    5 Tips to Stop Comparing Yourself to Other People

    “No matter what you do, someone won’t be pleased. Someone will think your choices are wrong. And someone will tell you what you should do instead. No matter which path you take, someone will seem to be doing better. Someone will have more than you. And someone else’s life may look more impressive on paper. If you’re being true to yourself, none of that will matter because you’ll have something more satisfying than approval and the illusion of “success”: a life that feels right for you, based on your own wants, needs, values, and priorities.” ~Lori Deschene

    Have you ever walked past a grand-looking house, or driven through an upmarket neighborhood and thought, “I wish I lived here” or “The people living here are so lucky”?

    If you have, then we’ve been part of the same club! I used to do this a lot.

    While walking my dog, I’d look at a house and assume that the people living in that house must have been very happy with life. My assumptions were based on nothing more than the look of the front yard and the frontage of the house.

    When I think about it now as I write this post, I wonder, “How could I have been that naive?” Despite being aware of the expression “never judge a book by its cover,” that’s exactly what I used to do. How can one ever guess what lies behind the grand entrance of a home? Who knows what stories the plush homes of exclusive neighborhoods hold inside them?

    My regular bouts of comparisonitis got jolted by a sobering dose of reality through a shocking and tragic news story some years ago.

    One of the homes that I used to admire became the location of a horrific murder-suicide that wiped out an entire family! I could not believe my ears and eyes as I read the news and watched the coverage on television.

    My mind was thinking, in all its naivety, “How is that possible? What could have gone wrong for residents of that beautiful home? They had everything anyone could ever want, didn’t they?”

    Do I Know You?

    Have you heard the expression “human beings are like onions”? We have so many layers that hide our core self. As you peel away one layer, another appears!

    It is extremely difficult to know another person deep down to their core. How often have you found yourself wondering about the unexpected or puzzling behavior of someone you thought you knew well?

    The reality is that each one of us is unique, and it can often take a whole lifetime for us to understand our own selves. So, is it any wonder that we never manage to truly understand another person?

    Yet, we compare! We do it day in and day out, without even being aware of how easily and how often we slip into comparison mode.

    Humans are naturally prone to comparisons because this phenomenon begins quite early in our lives.

    As young kids, we might have experienced the feeling of being compared to other children—by parents, teachers, relatives, friends, peers, etc. As we grow into adults, we start comparing ourselves to other adults. Sometimes the comparisons might be in a favorable light, and at other times, the comparisons could be unfavorable. Either way, it leads to feelings that are unhealthy—a sense of superiority or inferiority.

    Feelings of arrogance or bitterness are never healthy, are they?

    Whether your comparison results in thoughts of “Oh, I’m so much better than this guy!” or “How does she do it? I’ll never be as good as her!”, there’s little doubt that “the thief of joy,” as coined perfectly by Roosevelt, has taken residence in your head and is busy ransacking your mind of all joy, happiness, and contentment.

    Why is it so difficult to avoid falling victim to the tendency of constant comparison?

    Social Comparison Theory

    Psychologist Leon Festinger proposed in his social comparison theory that the human species engages in comparison as a way of evaluating ourselves, like a benchmarking process. We get to know more about our own abilities, attitudes, or skills by comparing ourselves to our peers.

    Festinger’s theory contends that human beings can only define themselves in relation to other people. I wonder if that’s why the age-old existential question “Who am I?” seems so difficult to answer, as we seem to be incapable of defining ourselves independent of others.

    As mentioned earlier, social comparison can work in two ways.

    1. Upward social comparison

    This is when we compare ourselves to those who we believe are better than us. This type of comparison can lead to two kinds of thoughts, emotions, or outcomes.

    The first kind is where we might want to improve ourselves to reach the level of the person that we are comparing ourselves to, or even go past them. This is one possible benefit of comparison if we’re prepared to learn, as it could lead to personal growth.

    If comparison can be seen in this positive light, then “the thief of joy” might be entitled to a change of title and live inside us as “the giver of motivation.”

    The second and more common outcome of upward social comparison is envy, jealousy, and bitterness—obviously an undesirable outcome that can only lead to disappointment and frustration.

    2. Downward social comparison

    This happens when we compare ourselves to people who we believe are worse off than us. This is like an “artificial boost to self-esteem” exercise. The “at least I’m not as bad as him/her” attitude might help us feel better about our talents, achievements, or life situation, even if only temporarily.

    Social comparison begins early in life (for instance, a child in a kindergarten wanting the same toy that another kid has in his hands), gains momentum through school (new fads, fashions, and gadgets that kids want to follow or possess), and becomes deep-rooted in adulthood through comparisons in career, family, wealth, status, and lifestyle.

    This tendency to compare completes a full circle when the phenomenon moves on to adults comparing their children on how well they’re doing in academics, sports, or any other activity.

    Escaping the Comparison Trap

    To feel mentally and emotionally healthy, it is essential to free ourselves from the comparison trap. I’m sure none of us wants to experience the feeling of unworthiness from upward social comparison, or superiority from downward social comparison. So what can we do?

    Here are five simple ideas to get better at saying NO to the disease of comparisonitis:

    1. Define what success means to you.

    If we nailed down our own definition of success, the number of times that we indulged in comparisons would be significantly reduced. For instance, if our success definition were about raising healthy, happy kids, we wouldn’t really be bothered about someone else’s thriving business, would we?

    2. Discover your own strengths.

    Becoming aware of our strengths will help in minimizing the tendency of comparing our weaknesses with other people’s strengths. The great physicist Albert Einstein failed his French exams. Fortunately, he didn’t let that failure define him, as he was aware that his strengths lay elsewhere!

    3. Think of the big picture.

    Whenever you find yourself slipping into comparison mode (which will inevitably happen… we are human after all!), just remind yourself that there’s always more to a person’s life than what you’re seeing or hearing.

    Don’t let a peek through a small window into someone’s life lead to disillusionment or disappointment with your entire life. In other words, don’t compare your whole movie with another person’s highlights reel!

    4. Always be a student.

    Develop the “continuous learning” philosophy. If you always think of yourself as a student with lots more to learn in life, it becomes easier to think in terms of collaboration, not competition, with peers. If you think of yourself as an artist who is still painting his/her masterpiece, you might not be tempted to feel inferior when you view other people’s paintings because your job’s not done yet!

    5. Focus on small successes.

    When comparisonitis strikes, take up a small project that you can complete in a relatively short time, and do well. It could be something that you might’ve been putting off for a while.

    For example, let’s say you’ve started a new online business and you start to feel unsatisfied about the lack of progress. Maybe you’re looking at peers in your industry who are at a similar stage of the business cycle but seem to be gaining a lot more traction.

    Instead of letting this get you down, how about you focus on something small—like writing a blog or doing a podcast? Doing that specific task well could help lift your spirits.

    Unique Journeys

    Have you seen pieces of driftwood floating in a river? They come together at some point due to the action of the waves, might stay together for a little distance, and at some point down the river, the force of the waves separates them and they go their own ways.

    Our lives are like that.

    People come into our lives and go out of our lives at different stages of our life’s journey.

    We all begin our journeys at different points, end them at different points, and often our paths take different routes. Why then should we compare ourselves to others? After all, we are not running the same race.

    Try this exercise…

    Take a little trip down memory lane by rewinding your life some fifteen to twenty years. Think of someone that you always compared yourself with back then. It has to be someone that you’ve lost all contact with for many years. You also haven’t heard about them from anyone.

    Do you have any idea what they’re doing now? In fact, let’s go one step further—do you know if they’re still alive? Chances are your answer is “I don’t know.”

    So, my friend, in the long run, do comparisons really matter?

  • You’re Holding Onto Too Many Bags

    You’re Holding Onto Too Many Bags

  • Are You Sick of Waiting, Wanting, and Wishing for a Better Life?

    Are You Sick of Waiting, Wanting, and Wishing for a Better Life?

    “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” ~Walter Elliott

    I often find myself impatient with the pace of my progress. Waiting for my life to move forward can sometimes feel like I’m watching paint dry.

    There are so many moments when we feel like our life is at a standstill. This is generally where I double down with my intensity. I hit it with everything I can. The crash comes soon after from the inevitable violent collision of my mind, body, and spirit as they’re pushed beyond their limits.

    The idea of having to wait for anything is a first-world problem. The thought that your cat’s costume might not arrive in time for Halloween is enough to bring some people to tears. Just thinking of Mr. Whiskers having to go out as a plain ol’ cat is a bloody crime.

    And that’s waiting for a cat costume.

    What about that book you wish would just write itself?

    What about that scale that still shows you being forty pounds heavier than you want to be?

    What about that bank account that still isn’t bigger than your credit card bill?

    These are not things we want to wait for. We want the juice without the squeeze.

    We’ve grown so impatient with the idea of waiting for results that we act like moving slowly is a poison to progress. We default to believing the antidote is a shot of intensity straight to the veins. But all that gives us is further frustration, anger, guilt that we’re not doing enough, and the feeling that we need to push harder.

    It’s such a horrible way to approach life. Especially since the only finish line comes when you take your final breath. And I don’t know about you, but I’m in no rush to get there early.

    It’s exhausting even thinking about that period of my life when I wanted to write a book, lose forty pounds, and stop feeling broke. Not a day would pass when I wouldn’t be consumed by feelings of doubt and hopelessness. I should have been pushing out diamonds with the amount of pressure I was putting on myself.

    That struggle led to a life-changing aha moment for me. I realized that there are two ways to approach making progress. You can hit it hard with intensity. Or you can set a long-term aim with consistency.

    Which of these do you think is sustainable for making progress?

    Think back to the children’s story of the tortoise versus the hare. These are lessons worth revisiting for their simple and profound principles on approaching life.

    We all overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year with steady momentum.

    How do you write a book? By establishing a daily writing habit.

    How do you lose forty pounds? By moving your body every day and eating less than you burn.

    How do you get out of debt? By making a daily choice to spend less than you earn (and invest the difference).

    You’re not going to write a book in a day, but there’s a damn good chance you’ll have one in a year.

    You’re not going to lose forty pounds in a day, but you could in a year.

    You won’t get out of debt in a day, but you’ll set a trajectory for wealth creation that lasts the rest of your life.

    How different could your life be a year from now if you committed to something that’s important to you?

    Sit with that idea for a moment. Soak it in.

    What would it feel like to hold that book in your hands?

    What would it feel like to look at that scale and see the number you want to see?

    What would it feel like to be debt-free and investing in your future?

    I’m serious. Feel it. Wait till you get goosebumps.

    That is peace of mind, relief, and a sense of fulfillment tied up in a bow on Christmas morning. That is the realization that you can have almost anything you want in your life if you stay disciplined with your priorities. That is the power of consistent daily habits.

    There’s a saying about hope not being a strategy for change. I do believe hope is a beautiful emotion. But I’ve seen myself get stuck for years waiting, wanting, and wishing for a better life. Hope didn’t give me a way out because it left me at the mercy of my current circumstances.

    Writer Lu Xun said, “Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”

    This is the power of action and putting one foot in front of the other.

    Every action you take is a vote toward the person you want to be. The more we align the things we do on a daily basis with the person we want to become, the more fulfillment we feel in the little things that get us there.

    What do you wish you could change if only it didn’t feel so hard? And what could it mean for your life if every day you prioritized this change and did one small thing to work toward it?

    Make the decision to commit to a simple daily habit that reflects the person you want to be and the life you want to live. When you do this, you’re deciding to take back control of your life. You’re deciding to give yourself a better future. You’re deciding that you matter.

  • When Things Have to Change: How to Find the Willpower to Achieve Your Goals

    When Things Have to Change: How to Find the Willpower to Achieve Your Goals

    “When it is obvious the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” ~Confucius

    Do you want to know my biggest fear?

    I’ve just come out of the closet, my parents have rejected me, and I am terrified, really, really terrified, because I’m completely alone, and the pain is unbearable.

    But it’s not just the rejection that terrifies me—it’s also what happens after that.

    With no one to turn to, I find comfort at the bottom of a bag of chips.

    Three months and thirty pounds later I’ve yet to leave the confines of my bedroom. I’m wasting away, haunted by dead dreams, dirty dishes, and empty soda cans. The depression is unbearable. I feel like I’ll never be able to turn things around.

    I look in the mirror and don’t recognize this person looking back at me. I’ve resigned myself to a life of sadness, solitude, and self-neglect. It feels as though everything is hopeless and I’ll never to amount to anything in life.

    Feelings of depression, lack of confidence, and fear of failure drive me to seek comfort with Aunt Jamima instead of with a new diet plan. This vicious cycle of depression and binge eating leads me to a state of paralysis, and obesity. I’ve completely stopped taking care of myself. I feel like I may as well die because my life is over!

    Yikes! Dramatic much?

    The secret is, not only is this one of my biggest fears, this actually happened!

    Spoiler Alert: Eventually, with therapy, I was able to break out of the depression and drop thirty pounds. Equally important, my parents have grown to love and accept my gayness! But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the five strategies that helped me crawl my way out of the hole and get back to a healthy place, physically and emotionally.

    If you’re feeling discouraged and unmotivated to create positive change in your life, these five strategies may help you alleviate your emotional triggers, increase your willpower, and achieve your goals.

    Strategy #1: Chunking

    Many of us cannot complete the tasks we set out to do because we get overwhelmed thinking of all the work required, which leads to a state of paralysis. Overwhelm is one of my main emotional triggers, and chunking is a great way to alleviate this and follow through with my goals.

    Chunking is when you take a large task and break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces. With chunking you will find you have increased confidence and willpower and are able to complete more tasks with less stress.

    We basically have unlimited willpower (it’s true! See tip #3: Perception), but when presented with a momentous task the brain becomes overwhelmed and says, “ENOUGH! I’M DONE! BRING ME CHIPS!”

    When my depression was at its height I had many days where I didn’t feel like going to the gym and hitting the weights. When I was in this negative emotional state, I found my mind focusing on the long, tiring workout I had planned ahead while feelings of inadequacy and not measuring up to my peers came creeping in. It’s exhausting just thinking about it!

    It’s called paralysis by analysis—when you’re overthinking something and you get stuck in a place of inaction. During times like this I feel things are hopeless. I plop my ass down on the couch and prepare for a good long Netflix binge, with a side of chips of course! Then comes the uncomfortable feeling of my potential being wasted and my waistline slipping further and further away.

    To get over this state of inaction, I use chunking. I focus on the task at hand and think, “What is the next right move for me in this moment?”

    I tell myself that I’ll go to the gym and I’ll do just a five-minute workout. If I want to exercise more after that, I have the option to do so. After the first five minutes is complete, I tell myself I’ll do five more minutes. And repeat.

    Eventually the resistance to working out subsides, an hour goes by, and the workout is complete! I’m always in a better mood after I leave the gym, and the emotional triggers that were holding me back oftentimes seem insignificant once my workout is complete and I’ve gotten out of the house.

    Strategy #2: Confidence

    Confidence is the belief you have in yourself to achieve your goals. After coming out to my parents and feeling alone and abandoned, my confidence was basically non-existent. I needed to get my confidence back if I was going to be successful. Approaching a task with confidence will decrease the willpower required to complete said task, and feelings of self-doubt and insecurity will begin to melt away.

    How is it possible to increase confidence, you ask? It’s not as hard as you might think! Start by changing the way you frame your goals.

    When I wanted to lose thirty pounds, for example, I felt an extreme lack of confidence pursuing such an ambitious goal. Feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt became debilitating. I felt like I was permanently stuck in a place of inaction, never to achieve my goals.

    The truth is, the way I was framing my goal was setting me up for failure.

    I found success by chunking my goal down into something I felt was easy, manageable, and achievable. I shifted my focus from losing thirty pounds to losing just one pound. One pound is easy to lose, so I felt confident in my ability to achieve this small chunk of my ultimate goal.

    I started paying attention to the small wins and milestones. I began tracking my progress with a fitness app on my phone. A Virginia Tech study found that having a visual representation of your progress provides motivation to reach your goals; the easier a goal is to see, the closer it seems.

    Tracking your progress is another great way to increase confidence. It also decreases the amount of willpower required to stick to your routine and diet.

    With my renewed confidence, a strategically planned diet, and training regime, I achieved my goal weight and lost thirty pounds! Once I truly believed in myself, I was able to accomplish something that I thought was impossible.

    Strategy #3: Perception

    Perception is everything when it comes to maintaining willpower. It will make or break your chances for success.

    A recent study conducted by Stanford University found that if you believe you have unlimited willpower, you will in turn have more willpower than the average person.

    This means that when you believe you have a finite supply of willpower, you’re right! When you believe you have an infinite supply of willpower, you’re right about that too!

    You create your own reality. The beliefs you hold dictate the world around you. The limitations you put on yourself are the limitations that also hold you back. Create a new narrative for yourself, one in which you are empowered to achieve your goals, and you will transform limitations into strengths.

    Remember back when my depression was at its height and I gained thirty pounds in three months? l had lost all respect for myself and my body. I stopped believing I could achieve my goals. Feelings of hopelessness took over. I was sinking deeper and deeper into an intense and painful depression.

    Eventually, I began to realize how my perception was limiting my ability to lose weight. If I didn’t believe in myself, how could I expect to achieve anything? Through meditation, and with a lot of support from some amazing friends, I was able to shift my perception from hopeless to hopeful!

    With this shift in perspective, and a newfound love for myself, I began to take care of my body properly. The weight began to melt off and I became the success story you see today.

    Strategy #4: Identity

    Identity shapes the way we view ourselves and what we believe we are capable of, and it dictates our response to emotional triggers.

    Are you a smoker? Do you love to jog? Are you a fat, lazy slob who will never amount to anything? These are all examples of the identities we create that can hold us back or lead us to success.

    We constantly use our identity to quickly recognize the things we are good at and things we suck at. Did you ever stop to think about how this identity is based out of past experiences—many of which do not even hold true today? These beliefs will hold you back from reaching your full potential if you let them.

    When I gained thirty pounds I had allowed myself to take on the identity of victim, and as a result I became disempowered to change my situation. Eventually I learned to shift my identity from disempowered to empowered, by changing the stories I was telling myself.

    No longer was I a victim of circumstance. I accepted full responsibility for my situation and let go of the victim identity. Once I chose to stop playing the victim, I directed my energy toward creating the life I’ve dreamed of.

    By shifting my identity so that it was aligned with my life goals, I changed the narrative and opened the door for real change in my life. I also decreased the willpower required to achieve my goals and began my journey on the path to success.

    So I know you’re thinking, “How the hell do I change my identity!?”

    You can start by changing the stories you tell yourself. Flip the script!

    I’m reminded of a time when I was trying to quit smoking (for the tenth time). When I had a bad craving I would tell myself things like “I’m not allowed to smoke.” The language I was using—“I’m not allowed”—is of someone who identifies as a smoker. By speaking that way I was creating a sense of deprivation and giving away my power to the identity of being a smoker.

    I found that by changing the story from “I am not allowed to smoke” to “I do not smoke” I decreased feelings of deprivation. It also empowered me to create a new identity of someone who does not smoke.

    With this new identity, I decreased the amount of willpower required to quit smoking. I became empowered to make the changes necessary to achieve my goal, and I was able to successfully stop smoking with a slight shift of identity. I felt so proud of myself for this one too!

    Strategy #5: High-Level Thinking

    We essentially have two types of thinking: high-level and low-level.

    Low-level thoughts focus on how to complete a task, short-term goals, and execution of plans.

    “How am I going to workout today?” is an example of a low level thought.

    High-level thoughts focus on why you want to complete a task, and are charged with a sense of meaning and purpose. They help us to find that extra bit of willpower we need to carry us through tough times.

    “Why do I want to workout today?” is an example of a high-level thought.

    The high-level thought shown above focuses on the motivation behind the goal. It re-enforces the belief that working out is what’s best for me. Thinking in this way reduces the resistance to the task at hand and reduces the amount of willpower required to accomplish goals.

    A study by Professor Fujita in 2006 concluded that people who often engage in higher-level thinking have a higher amount of willpower than those who regularly engage in lower-level thinking.

    When I was in a full-blown depression I found low-level thoughts were much more common than high-level thoughts. With my focus on logistical things like the endless steps involved in getting in shape, I would feel overwhelm and sink deeper into depression. Just leaving the house to go workout became an arduous task.

    Eventually, I changed my focus to why I was going to the gym and connected to my overall goals of being fit and healthy. With less focus on the mundane day-to-day tasks, a lot of the resistance to leaving the house subsided, and I was more frequently able to get my workouts in as planned.

    With continued practice I’ve become more mindful of opportunities to choose between high-level and low-level thinking throughout the day. Just this morning I had an insatiable craving for cream in my coffee! I’m currently experimenting with intermittent fasting, and one of my rules is no cream till after 4:00pm.

    The struggle got real. I was ready to give in and make that coffee creamy and delicious. I didn’t care how wrong it was because it felt so right!

    Suddenly, as I was about to pour the cream, I started thinking at a higher level. I realized this cream would stop me from progressing toward my larger goal of being fit and healthy and inspiring others. After thinking at a higher level, the cream became much less tempting and I was able to put the cream down.

    Thanks to higher-level thinking, I found the willpower I needed to not break my fast!

    Conclusion

    These five strategies—chunking, confidence, perception, identity, and high-level thinking—are all tools to add to your tool box to help you alleviate negative emotional triggers, increase willpower, and ensure you reach your goals.

    These techniques have helped me through some very tough times, but they will help you with any goal in life that requires persistence and dedication. Implement these tools in your life today and see how much they help you!

    Let me know how this works for you—leave a comment in the comments section below!

  • Handling a Situation Better

    Handling a Situation Better

  • What Your Anger Is Trying to Tell You and How to Hear It

    What Your Anger Is Trying to Tell You and How to Hear It

    “When we embrace anger and take good care of our anger, we obtain relief. We can look deeply into it and gain many insights.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    It just took a few words from my husband before I felt my body move from calm to a boiling cauldron of rage. My whole being was alight, in flames. Energy felt like it was moving through me and shattering everything inside me.

    I hated it. Anger is so intense, and so big, that most of us can’t bear to feel it in our bodies.

    I wanted to do a lot of things—shout at him, throw things, scream the house down, offer rageful thoughts to anyone who would listen.

    I wanted this anger out of my body. NOW.

    In the past I have reacted to these inner sensations and launched arguments that could last hours or even days. I would rarely get anything other than anger back from my husband, and a continuous wrangling over who was wrong and why.

    It was painful and corroding to our relationship, feeling like a bomb would go off and we would spend days dealing with the damage.

    Until I learned that the source of my anger wasn’t my husband. Or my kids, or that person on Facebook, or politicians or corrupt business people.

    The source of my anger wasn’t outside of me, but within. And it was situations that were activating this anger. Until I learned how to deal with the anger, it would keep coming up over and over again, in ways that felt too overwhelming and painful for me.

    I was suppressing anger most of the time because I didn’t feel safe letting it out, but when it did come out it felt too strong and too damaging. It felt repulsive, overwhelming, dominating.

    Boiling rage. Painful flames of righteous anger tearing through my body. A sensation that the anger was smashing bits inside me.

    Anger is a hard emotion for most of us to feel. It’s got so much energy, so much force, so much intensity to it. And as an emotion, if we express anger, we usually get the most negative response back.

    Anger is frightening. It’s unbearable to hear, it sends shivers through us if we walk past someone angry and fuming.

    But when we suppress anger, when we don’t allow it to come up it gets trapped in our bodies, the energy of it creating havoc inside. For me it felt like it was trapped in my jaw, which was so often sore from clenching and squeezing my muscles.

    I didn’t want to feel overwhelmed by anger anymore. I wanted to be a woman who could be with it, feel it, and not explode or fall apart or trap its tension in my body.

    I started to become intimate and friendly with my anger. I started to recognize when it was coming up in my body—in small doses sometimes, activating minor annoyances in my life.

    “Oh, anger! There you are, I see you lurking there in the shadows.”

    And the times when I would feel a huge surge of it in my body, when my kids would say something, or I’d receive an unpleasant email or read something on Facebook.

    “Oh, lots of anger here now! Okay, I see your anger. You’re here, I understand.”

    And by noticing when it came up inside of me, I began to see how often it was a thread in my life. And by noticing it I started, in a small way, to provide some relief for myself.

    The thing that I would then do, which made such a beautiful and healing difference, especially when huge surges of anger came my way—like when my husband said that thing and I wanted to shout shout shout at him—is to give myself time, space, love and support

    I stay with myself and don’t react externally.

    I don’t blame what I see as the source of my anger, but really isn’t.

    I tend to myself with a loving touch of my heart. (When touch on the body lasts over twenty seconds it releases oxytocin, the love hormone.)

    I give myself loving words—Di, I see this anger is really painful. It’s so big, so overwhelming.

    I ask myself, where is this in my body, how is it feeling?

    All of this attention on myself, at my reactions and how I am feeling, gives my body the signal that I am being deeply and lovingly cared for. I am safe to feel this feeling.

    I might do some relaxing breathing, giving a short inhale, followed by a long exhale which activates the rest-and-relax mode.

    I stay with myself as long as the emotion is there. “I’ve got you, Di! I can be with you through this feeling. I love you, Di.”

    And if I need to move and do something to help the energy pass through me, I do. I go for a walk, smash some rocks, squeeze or punch a pillow.

    Why this is so very important, why this makes so much of a difference in how we handle our emotions, is that it gives us the chance to let the energy of the emotion pass through. And when we do this repeatedly, we teach our system that emotions like anger are safe to be experienced, that we can hold and support ourselves through what life brings us.

    It also doesn’t make the situation worse by exploding at the person who may or may not have said or done something you didn’t like.

    If this is a situation that needs to be sorted out, if what was said or done needs discussion, it is infinitely more effective to wait for your anger to move through you until you are out the other side, than to talk to someone when you are in a rage.

    That’s because you are highly likely to activate their anger, as anger in others can feel like an attack on ourselves.

    And when we are deeply emotional, we can’t truly hear and empathize with other people, so we are just giving a speech, which the other person can’t hear if they’re also emotional!

    We risk escalating the situation further by saying and doing things we deeply regret. And, of course, we can also put ourselves in danger.

    If we want to be truly heard by someone, and if we want to create change, we have to wait until the emotion has passed. Then we have the best possible chance of coming to a positive agreement with someone else about what we didn’t like or want.

    Anger, like all emotions, can give us a unique understanding of what needs we have that aren’t being met. When we see the roots of what has activated the anger, we can see that there are often unmet needs to explore.

    For me, after that big rageful explosion, after I moved through the flames of anger and out the other side, I saw that I wanted more private space for myself to work uninterrupted so I could fully concentrate.

    It was a need I had been thinking about on and off for a while, but that I hadn’t really realized that it was upsetting me. It gave me the sense that I was last on the priority list as everyone else in the family had a space for private time.

    And so seeing that, I could then work on meeting that need, and reducing the chances of anger being activated around that subject again.

    Anger, what are you trying to tell me? I asked, and it told me.

  • A Good Life Is When…

    A Good Life Is When…

  • Until You Learn the Lesson

    Until You Learn the Lesson

  • Here’s My Advice to You

    Here’s My Advice to You

  • The Simplest Ways to Find Calm in the Middle of Life’s Constant Chaos

    The Simplest Ways to Find Calm in the Middle of Life’s Constant Chaos

    “When you are resting because you are worn out, you need to remember that you are not wasting time. You are doing exactly what you need to do. You are recovering.” ~Unknown

    I woke up at 3am when I heard my alarm ring. I slowly pulled my arm away from my son, who was half holding my arm and half lying on it, so that he didn’t wake up. I tip-toed out of bed while my husband and my son were sleeping.

    My eyes ached and were blurry from sleep deprivation. My head felt like I was floating in the air. But even so, I couldn’t sleep any longer.

    Knowing that just in a few hours, I would have another fully busy day at work, with deadlines all over my head, and I’d have to deal with all the mails marked “urgent” yesterday before getting to today’s mail.

    My sleepiness went away quickly as I started to feel butterflies in my stomach. Not in a good way.

    The deadlines, the rush and anxiety, all kicked in. I felt like I wanted to cry. And so I did a little.

    But I felt like I shouldn’t feel that way, that I should be grateful instead.

    The whole pandemic gave people hell. And I am so lucky that my family is safe, and we are doing fine.

    My husband could not work for six months, and I have been the sole provider since. But I am lucky that I still have a job.

    Compared with how other people go through their days, I should be grateful.

    But on a wild thought, I just wanted to open my laptop and send a resignation mail right away.

    Because I was tired.

    I was tired of being the sole provider.

    I was tired of trying and pushing so hard.

    I was tired of taking care of other people.

    I was tired of getting tired but not being able to sleep.

    I was tired of getting up so early alone.

    I was tired of working at different jobs all the time.

    I was tired of not getting enough breaks or not saying “screw it.”

    But I can’t. I have a family to take care of, I have a little boy to worry about.

    Being strong, being resilient is the only choice I have.

    So I turn on some music when feeling lonely, wipe my own tears when having a mental breakdown. Tell myself to stay strong, and always keep going forward.

    But today, I woke up and realized, I don’t have to feel that way.

    Life gives me responsibilities not to break me down. Responsibilities are the sublimation of love.

    Because of love, I wake up early and work while others are still sleeping.

    Because of love, I agree to do different jobs to be able to take care of my loved ones.

    Because of love, I need to take care of myself first.

    Because not only do I love them, but they also love me and want me to be happy.

    I realize I am not a superhero that never makes a mistake. I am a human being. I screw up sometimes. I oversleep sometimes. I miss deadlines sometimes. I act stupidly sometimes. I get lazy sometimes.

    And it is okay.

    It is okay for me to slow down and take a deep breath.

    It is okay to take a break so that I don’t get burnt out.

    It is okay to make mistakes and say “I don’t know” with pride.

    It is okay to know that I cannot control every single aspect in my life, and the good thing is I don’t have to.

    Because that’s how unexpected things happen. That’s the fun of life.

    And I know there is always a place that I belong and find peace: my home, my family, my heart.

    If you are like me, feeling the world is fighting against you, here are a few simple ways to find calm in the chaos.

    1. Stop what you are doing and take a deep breath.

    I learned this technique through one of Louise Hay’s books. You take a deep breath, tense your body as hard as you can, and hold it for a few seconds. Then release and exhale.

    Do it a few times whenever you feel worried or stressed. The butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling quickly dissolves.

    2. Find a peaceful place.

    No, you don’t have to call your boss to ask for an immediate vacation on a beach, nor do you have to go to the bathroom and cry (though you can do either if you think it would help).

    Look inside yourself and find your peaceful place—or person.

    Who do you love? Who do you do this for? Remember, responsibility is the sublimation of love.

    When I’m at work and I am about to have a panic attack, after taking a few deep breaths, I pull out my son’s videos and pictures. I remind myself that I love him, and he loves me no matter what.

    He gives me a reason to believe that I am worthy and I am loved and gives me the strength and motivation to keep going.

    3. Meditate daily, even just for five minutes.

    I learned that meditation is not about clearing your mind and thinking of nothing; it is about accepting who you are and not letting your wild thoughts control you.

    Don’t worry about learning how to meditate, just sit down in stillness as an act of love for yourself. Be present, aware of your thoughts.

    You will soon realize that meditation helps to untangle your thoughts so you don’t feel controlled by the chaos in your life.

    4. Thank yourself.

    Have you done it today? Have you thanked yourself for all the good you do and stopped to think about how proud of yourself you are?

    Look at how amazing you are taking care of your loved ones, how their lives are much better because of you, or how brave you are in all the things you do, or even how you are aware of this moment. There are thousands of reasons to be proud of yourself.

    Most of us focus more on what we think we’re doing wrong than all the things we’re doing right, and this creates a constant sense of anxiety. If you give yourself a little credit instead, you’ll likely feel instant relief. So remember to thank yourself at every chance you get.

    —

    When life gets busy and overwhelming, it’s tempting to think you can’t relax until everything gets easier. That you need to escape or make it all stop, which generally isn’t an option. Fortunately, we don’t have to make major life changes or run away to find a little peace.

    Calm is not when you are at the beach enjoying a drink. Calm is right there in the middle of the storm. Calm is in your heart.

  • Instead of Over Explaining Myself

    Instead of Over Explaining Myself

  • How I Broke My Stress Eating Habit When Nothing Else Worked

    How I Broke My Stress Eating Habit When Nothing Else Worked

    “The pain seems so much more difficult than the cookies. But it’s not. The pain covered in cookies becomes pain covered in fat covered in more pain.” ~Brooke Castillo

    Do you ever eat when you’re stressed, sad, tired, alone?

    Bag of chips after a hard day?

    Ordering the take-out when your partner’s away?

    I did.

    Seven years ago, my newborn baby cried every evening.

    I’d feed her, change her, and blow raspberries on her neck. Still, she screamed—like a smoke alarm you couldn’t stop.

    I tried singing to her, burping her, begging her…

    I felt useless, desperate.

    In my journalism job, before maternity leave, I’d often doubted my capability. But my new job as a parent? Totally out of my depth.

    I envied my husband, swanning off to the office. The second he got back, I’d thrust the howling baby at him.

    “Tell me what to do!” he’d yell over the din.

    At my wits’ end, I’d put on the sling, wrestle her in, and head into the Berlin streets.

    If I bounce-walked, muttering “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to sleep we go” four billion times, she’d sleep. Then I’d feel like I deserved a medal. Or, failing that… an ice cream? (My district was renowned for boutique ice cream shops.) Black cherry and mascarpone! Perfect.

    “Dinner’s ready,” my husband would say when we got back. I’d wipe my chin. Afterward, I’d be mega full.

    First few times it happened, I promised myself I’d nix the habit before anyone noticed. But every day from then on, when the witching hour arrived again, you know where I’d go. Before long, I knew every kiosk, every flavor, and often ran to double scoops.

    Honestly? I was overeating at home too.

    When my baby girl dozed off breastfeeding, I didn’t dare move a muscle. I’d sit there, peeling slices of Emmental out the packet.

    It was fifteen years since I’d recovered from binge eating and bulimia, so this new eating problem was scary. Plus, my post-baby waist already bulged over my leggings.

    Over the next couple of months, I Googled emotional eating tips for what to do instead.

    I tried substituting healthier snacks, but ate whole bags of carrots and prunes.

    I tried to “feel my feelings” more, but as I wallowed in self-pity, I wondered if I was doing it right.

    I talked to my friends. Over coffee and cake, of course.

    I read a book about mindful eating. On my phone, over lunch.

    The fact is, I was just trying superficial fixes, without understanding how my mind worked.

    When I finally understood how emotions fuel our behaviors, it changed not just my eating, but my handling of life too. I even lost my baby weight, eventually.

    But more importantly, my emotional eating has shown me how to manage my mind.

    So, if you’re eating when you’re not hungry, whether through stress from parenthood or something else, this is for you.

    Let me show you where I got confused so you can solve your eating more easily. Because solving emotional eating isn’t complicated. It only seems hard because we get it mixed up with self-judgment, and because we think we need to take the stress away to stop the eating.

    Confusion 1: I spent time dealing with feelings that were just drama, not the real scary emotions.

    I probably should have cried more after my baby screamed so much. But I didn’t want to scare her.

    I would have liked to kneel on the floor and wail with exhaustion, and anger at the rejection I felt. Those were my heartfelt feelings. Real, raw, ugly, unflattering and immature, but true.

    By eating instead of feeling, I brushed those emotions under the carpet. And then covered the area with more mental mess: food-related self-doubt, regret, blame, failure, victimhood, despair, more eating.

    I’m not saying decluttering your brain of food drama is a waste of time—actually, in the process we learn to cut ourselves some slack, and that’s golden.

    But the shame from all the self-judgment is only the surface layer of mess, and ultimately, you have to aim to clean deeper.

    Feel deeper. Feel beyond guilt.

    Confusion 2: Believing it’s wrong to use food to numb your feelings.

    I hold my hands up: eating ice creams was pure escape. Afterward, I’d feel like I’d abandoned myself and my baby. That didn’t feel right, but it doesn’t make it wrong.

    If you’re eating to avoid your emotions, you’re not naughty, or bad, or wicked, or greedy, or weak.

    Sure, in an ideal world, we’d eat when we were genuinely hungry, not just craving relief. But eating when you’re physically hungry is a skill, not a rule. You have to learn skills. Not just beat yourself up.

    “I didn’t need to eat. Why do I always do this? I’m getting fat.” 

    It makes no sense to bully yourself into changing when you’re still figuring out how. It’d be like me yelling at my baby for not being able to communicate with words.

    My husband laughed once when I called myself an emotional eater. He was like: “What is that?”

    So I could ask that too, and tell myself: “I’m not sure what’s going on yet, but bit by bit, I’m going to understand this.”

    Big difference!

    Confusion 3: Labeling yourself as a problem person if you eat in a disordered way.

    I kept having this thought:

    I can’t help it, it’s my personality. I had eating disorders.

    To be fair, I did act like an addict.

    I mean, one minute I’d be breastfeeding. And the next minute I’d come to my senses with an empty muesli box on my side table and wheat flakes crusted onto my pajamas.

    And I’d go: What is wrong with me??

    So I Googled. Took personality tests on the internet. Felt helpless and doomed.

    Then, I read something cool: “Your personality is just a collection of habits.” Bingo! I didn’t have to label myself an “overeater” or a “binge eater” or “an addict,” which made me feel bad about myself and made it harder to stop.

    For now, I could just be “someone who overeats sometimes.”

    The grace I gave myself when I said that washed through my body like a relief.

    From thereon in, I started figuring it out, one tiny change at a time.

    Confusion 4: Playing wac-a-mole with triggers.

    A habit, as I’m sure you know, is a chain reaction. Something sparks a thought that food would be good. That trigger can be a feeling, a time of day, that buttery croissanty smell…

    So, you might think you’re at the mercy of whatever presses your buttons and start trying to avoid your triggers. But tiptoeing around triggers isn’t the answer.

    First: not practical. Avoiding your mum because she mentions your weight. Walking past Delice de France with a clothes peg on your nose.

    Second: pointless. Why? Because the reason your emotional eating began isn’t the reason you keep doing it.

    Let’s go back to Berlin—I want to show you how my emotional eating habit evolved.

    The first day I went out with my crying baby, I wasn’t intending to eat ice cream. I saw the Eis kiosk, and I thought, “I want something for myself.” That day and that day only, there was a fully conscious decision.

    My brain took notes. After that, any time I felt less-than, it said, “Let’s eat again! That was easy!” Pretty soon, I was eating whenever I felt rubbish.

    Eating biscuits, overwhelmed by my messy flat.

    Eating biscuits, resentful of others’ great sleep.

    Eating weird instant soup, because I’d run out of biscuits.

    You can’t eradicate triggers. You’d have to solve life. But breathe. You don’t have to.

    The solution to emotional eating is to not rush to solve anything.

    When I was stress eating in Berlin, I was so busy trying to solve my stress—or eating—I wasn’t really paying attention to the thoughts or feelings in each moment.

    It was all flying under my radar in a hailstorm of pretzel crumbs and salt crystals.

    I started noting the actual sentences that I’d told myself in the moments before I had overeaten. Sometimes I just wrote a word in a circle. A feeling. An urge!

    Bit by bit, I realized, I’d avoided my feelings because I thought it was bad of me to have them.

    For instance, I resented the enormous responsibility and daily duty of caring for a baby, and feared my creative, rock ‘n roll life was over—but I dismissed that feeling as selfish.

    I envied my husband for going to work and I missed my ambition—but I judged that sadness and jealousy as “ungrateful.”

    I desperately missed getting praise, or pay, or achieving things on a to-do list—but I cringed at my neediness for someone else to tell me I was doing a good job.

    Turns out, I did want something for myself. Not just an ice cream! An identity beyond motherhood.

    But with self-judgment so harsh, I can see why I couldn’t admit those feelings.

    I didn’t need to express my true feelings—to paint huge canvases, or sing my lungs out in my car.

    Or shove them down.

    Or spend any time on a psychiatrist’s couch exploring the gaps in my own upbringing.

    Or instantly solve them.

    I just had to live with the dilemma for a while. Acknowledge the emotional conflict. I needed to witness it.

    Same as I had to be there for my daughter.

    I couldn’t stop her crying! She got born, she wasn’t cool with that, and I don’t blame her—it’s a pretty exposing, vulnerable business being alive.

    My job was just to hang in there with her, going, “I know you’re crying, I’m here, I can’t make it better, but I’m not going to abandon you.”

  • Lessons and Gifts from Grief: What I Learned After Losing My Baby

    Lessons and Gifts from Grief: What I Learned After Losing My Baby

    Today marks the twenty-year anniversary of when I lost my first baby.

    I was, at the time, happily married and we were excited to start our family. My pregnancy was planned, wanted, and blissful. I was six months along. I was showing, and the baby was kicking vigorously. We had just moved into a wonderful house only a few blocks from my parents. Everything was absolutely golden.

    It took me a little while to find an OB-GYN in the area, so I was about a month late for my baseline ultrasound. We were very excited to get a clear view of our baby and find out the sex.

    The tech performed the ultrasound and was very quiet while my husband and I chatted excitedly. She told us it was a boy and then rushed out of the room to get the doctor.

    At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We discussed painting the nursery blue and confirmed our choice of name. But then I turned to my husband and said, “Did she seem weird to you?” It suddenly struck me that she was kind of abrupt.

    The next thing I knew, the radiologist was there delivering news that sucked all the air out of the room. Our baby was not viable. He had severe brain defects: Dandy-Walker malformation, an absent cerebellum, and extreme hydrocephalus. 

    I wailed. My husband stared blankly in shock. And then came the next news. We had to do something.  We had to end our baby’s life…and do it that day.

    Because of the laws governing “late term abortion,” I was right at the deadline for a procedure called a Dilation and Extraction. If I was past the deadline, I would have to be induced, labor, and deliver a dead baby. The doctor fudged my gestation by a week, just to be on the safe side.

    I called my mom to tell her. I will never forget the sound of her scream. I went straight to her house and my parents, my husband and I all piled into the car.

    I remember being shocked by what a lovely sunny day it was. How could the sky be so blue when this was happening?

    I went to a clinic to begin the dilation process. And they euthanized my child in my womb.  I won’t get into details, but it was so painful, I threw up from the pain and couldn’t get out of bed for hours afterwards. At the hospital a day later, I was put under and they took my baby.

    Sometimes, you have to make a decision without a choice. It didn’t seem right to me to continue with the pregnancy knowing my baby could die at any time. The doctors were shocked he had made it so far. I didn’t feel right about bringing a baby into this world to suffer and die. I was also mindful that I needed to preserve my own physical and mental health because I wanted to be a mother. In fact, eight weeks later, I was pregnant with my older son. He will be nineteen on December 19th.

    The grief was horrible. The shock amplified it. The happiest time of my life was turned into the saddest. 

    My family and friends rallied around me. My next-door neighbor, who is a yoga teacher, told me to “just come” to class. I did. Every day.

    I covered all the mirrors in my house because I couldn’t stand the sight of my body. I looked postpartum. My breasts were ready to nurse. But no baby.

    I made recovering from grief my full-time job.

    I painted an oil painting every day. I spent time in my rose garden. I prayed. I cried. I worked my way through the grief as expediently as I could so I could continue on my journey to motherhood. And I did.

    On the one-year anniversary of losing my first baby, I was just about full term with my older son. I was terrified I would lose him too. My pregnancy was fraught with anxiety, and it culminated at the end. But of course, the joy of delivering my son insulated me from the grief. It wasn’t until the second anniversary that I was finally able to process what had happened.

    Grief finds a way. There is no around, only through. Fighting it only makes it hurt more.

    I can remember feeling like shards of glass would come flying at me, and I needed to just let them pass through. There were times when I felt absolutely fine, and then the grief would overcome me. I called them cloudbursts. These were lessons I took into other experiences. I always say grief brings strange and beautiful gifts.

    I was with my grandfather as he died. I was one of my grandmother’s caregivers as she moved toward death. I was at my father’s bedside the moment he passed. Grief is different, but also the same every time you go through it. It will not be denied.

    I remember telling a family friend that as I healed from losing my baby, I could feel it becoming a part of me. I knew it would always be there, like a vein running through me.

    On this day, two children and two decades later, I honor my experience. I bless it for the lessons it taught me—not only about grief but about life in general.

    I had very black-and-white thoughts about abortion. I was raised Catholic. I was pro-choice for other people while “knowing” there were no circumstances under which I would have one. I was certain.

    And then something literally unimaginable happened. I learned that a huge portion of life is grey. 

    I learned that ambivalence is common.

    I learned that you don’t really know what you will do until you are faced with a situation. It’s not a question of knowing your own mind or having faith or holding certain values. It’s a question of the circumstance. It’s a matter of not having all the information until you are faced with it directly, in the moment. This has served me well.

    I have come to understand I will feel discomfiture, and it’s alright. I realize I will not always know what to do. I now know that sometimes I will do what I believe is “right” and I may never, ever be okay with it. Ever.

    And I also realize that judging someone else’s circumstances is nonsense. We all have struggles, and we all do the best we can. None of us can ever understand someone else’s challenge because it’s for them. The best we can do is be kind, supportive, and respectful.

    These are the lessons my lost baby taught me.

  • Perception Is a Key Component of Gratitude

    Perception Is a Key Component of Gratitude

  • What If I Fall?

    What If I Fall?

  • How I Find the Courage to Keep Jumping (Even Though the Net Never Catches Me)

    How I Find the Courage to Keep Jumping (Even Though the Net Never Catches Me)

    “The future never comes. Life is always now.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    “Jump, and the net will catch you.” “Leap, and the net will appear.”

    This piece of writing is to make a case for the following argument: there is NO net.

    Before I put forward my reasoning, please bear with me for a moment while my ego rattles off the times I have jumped (but the net never appeared).

    1. I quit my well-paid marketing role and traveled across the world to pursue a humanitarian dream job. I failed at the job interview and was jobless and in despair in a foreign land.
    2. I invested some of my savings into launching an online e-commerce site selling organic products but was diagnosed with blood cancer shortly after launch and had to give it up.
    3. I threw myself into the wellness industry in an attempt to heal my cancer. Nothing worked, and I ended up on the medication I was desperately trying to avoid.
    4. I poured my heart and soul into a memoir but have, so far, only received nice rejections from the publishing industry.

    Okay, I’m glad that is off my chest.

    Point number 4, my current life situation, has got me thinking about “the net.”

    The writing of my memoir felt different to points 1, 2 and 3. The writing process was one in which there was no outcome attached to it. I simply sat down to write the longings and yearnings and realizations that came from within. Four years of writing from that place flowed, quite naturally, into a book. There was no thought of a net. I just had to write.

    The net came later.

    The net came when I had finished my memoir, and people told me to publish it.

    The net came when I started researching the publishing industry and the how-tos and what-not-to-dos.

    My research began to form a perception. That perception started to develop a belief. A belief that said: to be signed by a literary agent and traditional publisher means you “have made it.” You are literary success. That belief grew stronger with every industry blog I read and podcast I listened to. The ropes of belief grew thicker and intertwined and formed what I perceived to be a net. A net in the form of a book deal from one of the top five publishers.

    My mind whirled and looped with the following thought: If I’m brave enough to share my story, if I jump, the net will catch me, I will get a book deal.

    I believed that thought. And I was brave. I put myself out there. I jumped.

    But, as I write, I have yet to be caught by any net.

    My ego looks back up at points 1 to 4 and screams, “FAILURE! The net never catches me. Stay small!”

    It is easy to get stuck in that stream of thought. That place is familiar. The is an almost comfort there. The ego blankets me with perceived safety—safety in the form of remaining small and quiet.

    But then I remember there is another aspect of myself. A place beyond the ego and beyond even thought. It is my core. My essence. The truest, most authentic part of me. When I carve out time for silence, I remember that place. I bring awareness into the present (without hanging on the past or projecting into the future) and get still. When I do that, the thought of a net dissipates.

    From this place, I see that the net was only a future concept. It was no more than a thought about something great that would happen in some distant time. The net was always only a thought about what success should look like: saving the world, a thriving business, healing from an incurable disease, and now a bestselling book.

    But freedom was found beyond the thoughts about how life should be. And every day, I come home to that place, home to myself. I get pulled into ego. I come back. I get pulled into thought. I remember.

    When my true nature aligns with the present moment, there is clarity in knowing what to do.

    Some moments my children want to play. And sometimes, I feel called to send a pitch off to a literary agent. There is a sense of surrendering to whatever is in front of me. When I’m flowing with life, there is no net. Or more, the net is no longer a result but rather a deep trust that everything will happen as it should.

    I have no idea how my book will be published. All I know is that if I keep coming back to the present moment, those seemingly minuscule steps pave the way for my soul to live out its true purpose: to bring awareness into the present and live life from that place.

    There is no net. There are only small awakened steps. Some steps are ordinary. Some ask us to be excruciatingly vulnerable. It is the latter that can feel like a leap of faith into the ether. But I no longer see those moments as a leap.

    Looking back, it was only ever one step, a simple stride on the path home to myself. Inch by vulnerable inch, moment by conscious moment, that is how I have come to feel whole. It is all perfect, even with a rejection letter to boot.