Tiny Buddha

Tag: wisdom

  • I Was Addicted to Helping People – Here’s Why It Made Me Miserable

    I Was Addicted to Helping People – Here’s Why It Made Me Miserable

    “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” ~Maya Angelou

    Growing up in Africa, I was told that the virtue and worth of a woman lies in her ability to take care of everyone around her; that a woman was considered good or worthy when everyone around her was happy and pleased with her. I took this advice to heart, especially since I watched my mother meet this standard to a T. Putting everyone else, including strangers, above herself.

    Most of the Things We Learn as Kids Shape Us

    As a kid, I was taught how to cook, clean, and care for others. As a teenager, I got a lot of practice caring for my younger siblings; at first, it was great, being a caregiver, being the one who everyone went to when they needed something. I loved being needed, and I relished in the label I was given as dependable.

    Family, friends, and even strangers knew that I was the go-to girl for whatever they wanted. If I couldn’t help them with whatever they needed, I would find someone who could. I was determined to never leave anyone high and dry. I loved being needed, and if anyone needed me, I believed that I was their last resort.

    The Joy of Giving

    You see, one thing about giving is that it feels good… until it doesn’t. The moment you get to a place where giving doesn’t feel good anymore, it means that you need to turn the giving around and start giving to yourself. But how does someone who is addicted to being needed realize this?

    When helping people started feeling more exhausting than exhilarating, my first instinct was to give more because I believed that the more I gave to others, the more I would receive from them. But that was not the case. The more I gave, the less I received, and this prompted me to label most of my friends as bad friends because I wasn’t getting as much as I was giving to them.

    When I became isolated from cutting friends off because they were “bad” to me, I realized the problem wasn’t that I was not getting as much as I was giving; the problem was that I was giving to everyone but myself. I had put myself in the back burner and abandoned myself. How can I abandon myself and not expect others to abandon me?

    The Guilt That Comes with Giving to Yourself

    Realizing my deep-seated issues was easy, but addressing them was a whole other thing. Because I was conditioned to believe that my worth was in pleasing others, I always said yes to everyone who needed my help; saying no was extremely difficult.

    This was because I was suppressed by intense guilt and ended up caving in to finding help for the person at my own expense. Everything changed for me when a former classmate said to me out of the blue: “You are nobody’s last resort.”

    You are nobody’s last resort, no matter how bad it is. If you cannot help someone with their problem, another person will. And more importantly, it’s not your responsibility to ensure they get the help they need—it’s theirs.

    This was a turning point in my life because now I knew that telling someone no because I needed the time to invest in my own needs did not mean that they were never going to get help.

    The guilt was still there, but little by little, I persevered in choosing myself over and over again. I started with little things, like saying no to helping a friend walk their dog to stay at home, to take a long bath and read a book (I enjoy reading). And over time I was able to get better at saying no to larger requests that would have been draining and would have negatively impacted my mental health.

    Give to Yourself and You Won’t Expect Too Much From Others

    Slowly but surely, I learned that my worth is determined by me and me alone—by how much love and care I direct toward myself. Guilt still visits me sometimes, but it is not as intense as it used to be.

    I know now it is better to feel guilty for taking care of yourself than to expect others to anticipate your needs and take care of you. News flash: if you don’t take care of yourself from the inside out, no one will.

    Don’t get me wrong, I still take care of my loved ones and help others as well as I can, but I now do it from a complete place, a place of wholeness, knowing that I will be fine whether they invest in me or not.

    I don’t expect much from people, and I don’t get disappointed much because I have learned to prioritize myself. Frankly speaking, I have noticed that the people around me enjoy me more now that I am not a self-righteous person who resents her giving and selflessness.

    “I give and give and give, and what do I get? Nothing.” If you have heard yourself say or think these words, then you are expecting people to make you happy just because you are bending over backwards to make them happy. If you keep bending backwards to make others happy, one day you will break your back. A broken back is very painful to bear, take note.

    Life’s a Journey, Not a Race

    This is not an overnight process; it will take time and patience. I have learned that part of taking care of myself is being nice to myself, whether I’m making progress or not. I’m done talking down to myself. Everything I wouldn’t do or say to another person, I’ve vowed never to do or say to myself.

    There is no glory in stomping all over yourself to please the world, there is no glory in self-deprecation and self-hate. It is not humble to call yourself terrible names or to live in suffering because you don’t want to hurt some else’s feeling or because you want to be called a nice/polite person.

    Our feelings and needs matter as much as anyone else’s, but we can only honor them if we recognize this and prioritize them.

  • Everyone Needs a “No Matter What” Friend

    Everyone Needs a “No Matter What” Friend

  • Before You Reach Out to That Person from Your Past: 3 Things to Consider

    Before You Reach Out to That Person from Your Past: 3 Things to Consider

    “You don’t have to rebuild a relationship with everyone you’ve forgiven.” ~Unknown

    It’s natural, when you’re hurting and lonely, to want to reach out to people you’ve been close to in the past.

    Especially if there’s unfinished business with someone. And especially given the added isolation that comes with a global pandemic.

    Whether or not you do reach out is entirely your prerogative. For what it’s worth, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad idea to try—in most cases, a “Whoops” is better than a “What if…?” Whatever the result, you’ll learn something. It might be an unpleasant truth, but it’ll help you, one way or another.

    But, before you draft that text message, or email, or even pick up the phone, I also believe there are three things to consider:

    1. Why are you reaching out? What’s really behind your impulse?

    If you’re only doing so to take the edge off your loneliness, think again.

    If the relationship with the person you’re thinking of contacting has broken down, there’s probably still some hurt there. For them and for you. Contact will re-open that wound.

    Perhaps a long time has now passed, and any pain is vastly less profound than it once was. But let’s not kid ourselves—if things got so bad between the two of you that you haven’t spoken for months, things are pretty bad. There’s going to be something there.

    The benefits of reaching out have got to outweigh the possible hurt that comes from doing so. And the only way that can happen is if you genuinely miss that person. In short, the person, and that relationship, has got to be worth the pain that might initially come from speaking to them.

    So, ask yourself, honestly, do you really want to speak that person? Is it really them you miss, or is it just the connection you once had with them?

    Are you, in fact, just lonely?

    If, upon reflection, you realize it is just solitude prompting you, don’t reach out. It’s really not fair to either one of you. The pain won’t be worth it. It can’t just be about you, or what you’re currently feeling; the other person has to genuinely matter to you.

    Don’t let them be collateral damage in your war against solitude. Because that’s all they’ll be, a casualty.

    Your loneliness will pass. Like desperation or the need to get something off your chest that feeling is, in most cases, a temporary one. It will abate. And, when it does, so will your need for that person.

    I’ve been on the receiving end of this more than once, and it’s not nice.

    A former partner once contacted me out of the blue. It had been a turbulent relationship; during the time we’d spent together, our lives had both been raging dumpster fires, and we’d never been able to quell those flames adequately enough. Eventually, our relationship was consumed by them. But I still felt there was still something there. Despite the final rites having been administered, I knew I had never truly given up hope.

    Initially, I was beyond happy they’d reached out. I didn’t know if anything could be salvaged, but I was willing to try.

    However, after a short time, I knew my hopes were unfounded.

    A few days after we began speaking, this person began to drift away. They even told me directly that they weren’t feeling desperate or lonely anymore, but I had already guessed that; their waning interest was obvious in the way the messages started drying up, in the manner in which they suddenly avoided the big topics, which we’d freely discussed up until that point.

    I had served a purpose, and I had taken an edge off whatever they were feeling.

    And once I had, I was let go again—I was no longer needed.

    Because it had never been about me; it had been about them and what they were temporarily experiencing.

    I was hurt but not indignant; I’d done it myself before, and it’d be hypocritical to damn them.

    But, overall, there wasn’t a good enough reason to have those wounds re-opened. Reconciliation is a long, painful process; it can’t be built on loneliness. It only works if both people genuinely want to reconcile and be back in each other’s lives.

    If you’re in the same boat, try to find a healthier way to feel connected. I know, I know… loneliness is vile, debilitating. And not an easy thing to tackle. As someone who has battled loneliness for a long time, I am in no way denigrating the devastating impact it can have on your mental health.

    But being aware that you are lonely is a good first step in doing something about it. Knowing that you don’t really miss a particular person, that you just miss people per se, is a foundation. It’s something to build upon.

    However, if you’ve seriously thought about this, and it is genuinely them you miss, then there’s something else to consider…

    2. What do you want to achieve by reaching out?

    In the same way you need to be clear about your reasons for reaching out, you’ve also got to have a firm idea about what you want to achieve.

    It’s okay if all you want to do is try and re-establish contact with the future hope of reconciliation; there doesn’t have to any grand, overly complex plan in place beforehand.

    But there does need to be something, some sort of objective. And it’s got to be realistic based on the relationship you had. If it was a fundamentally unhealthy or codependent relationship that took more than it gave, then expecting all of those flaws to be resolved in one message is simply ludicrous.

    Perhaps you simply want to see if there’s a chance that something has shifted, and that there’s a glimmer of repairing the damage. It’s a small something.

    And you need that something.

    If all you’ve got is, “I don’t know; I don’t know what I want to achieve,” then it is probably the loneliness talking, or another random impulse, and stepping back is the right thing to do.

    Don’t jump into this with no idea about what you want. There’s going to be some hurt, some pain—think about what you hope to achieve by (potentially) re-opening this particular wound.

    If you’ve done that, and the answer works, then there’s only one more thing to consider…

    3. You might not get the response you want.

    Although you might view that past relationship and the other person involved through rose-tinted spectacles, they may not view you and the relationship in the same way. Just because you’re feeling conciliatory, it doesn’t mean they do. They might be perfectly happy with how things are, thank you very much.

    Plus, if it’s someone you haven’t spoken to for some time, you won’t have a clear idea about what’s happening in their life. There’s a global pandemic unfolding around us—people have lost livelihoods and loved ones.

    Your message may arrive while they’re in the middle of dealing with something huge. A message out of the blue from you may be the last thing they need.

    There’s also the simple fact that people change. Not many, but some of us do. And that can be confusing.

    Again, I was recently on the receiving end of this.

    And, again, it was that very same former partner.

    Time had passed since our last abortive communication. And, by this stage, I wasn’t so amenable to their approaches. I still had feelings for them, but those feelings had changed, mutated, in line with the work I’d done on myself in our time apart.

    Simply put, I’d moved on.

    As a result, I now saw that person completely differently. Whereas there was once a deep affection, now there was a solid realization that my own mental well-being was better for having removed them. The sad truth was that I just didn’t miss them anymore.

    Sometimes you need someone from your past to re-emerge to show you how much you’ve changed. I was very aware that, six months earlier, I would’ve been much more open to their words. I simply wasn’t any more; I was happy with how things were.

    The affection (or connection) was gone, and I just wanted to keep moving on.

    I couldn’t give them the answer they wanted, and they didn’t take it well. It wasn’t the happiest of experiences, but it did teach me that this was something to be aware of if the roles were ever reversed.

    If you’re not feeling strong enough to face a response that isn’t overflowing with kindness, a flat refusal, or worse, no reply at all, don’t do it. You’ve got to embrace the possibility that this isn’t going to go as planned.

    And you’ve got to be in a place where you can emotionally deal with that rejection.

    If you are, it might be worth the risk. If you’re not, don’t do it.

    —

    These are strange, lonely times. Reaching out may seem like an entirely natural thing to do. Maybe you’ll get the chance to rekindle an old relationship.

    Or maybe you’ll discover that the relationship truly did die a long time ago.

    It’s always worth taking the risk, but make sure you truly want to, and that you’re prepared for any response, good or bad.

    Reaching out—it can be a chance to reset a relationship, or to deliver the final rites. Both of which can be useful, and you might learn something invaluable.

    Most of all, paradoxically, it might give you both a chance to finally let go.

    And that’s something always worth doing.

  • They Are Your Family

    They Are Your Family

  • I’m Worth It

    I’m Worth It

  • I Was a Bulimic Nutritionist, but I’m No Longer Ashamed or Hiding

    I Was a Bulimic Nutritionist, but I’m No Longer Ashamed or Hiding

    “Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.” ~ Brené Brown

    I felt like a hypocrite. I would tell my nutrition clients to eat a salad with vegetables, then I’d go home and scarf down an entire pizza. After guilt and shame set in, I would purge and throw it up.

    I think I became a nutritionist partly so I could better control my relationship with food. If I learned the secrets behind eating I could biohack my way to putting the fork down, losing weight, and finally being happy. This was back when I thought thinness equaled happiness.

    It’s taken me over ten years to recover from an eating disorder. Years filled with perfectionism, shame, and isolation as I untangled that my worth is not tied to my weight. I share my story in hopes that it sparks a deeper dive into your own relationship with food.

    Growing up I was an over-achieving, people-pleasing perfectionist. Which by itself may have been fine but, paired with a sexual trauma I experienced in early University, it was the perfect storm for developing an eating disorder.

    I used food as a coping mechanism for the trauma I’d endured. It was a way to dissociate from having to feel the shame of being assaulted. I assumed it was my fault this terrible thing happened, and while eating as much and as fast as possible, I could numb out from strong emotions.

    For a short period of time, I was worry-free.

    But then inevitably came the guilt and shame—ironic, since I was trying to numb the shame of my assault with food.

    Why did I have to eat so much? Now I’ll gain weight, and if I gain weight no one will like me. Why don’t I have the discipline to control my food? To control myself? I am truly worthless.

    Somehow my brain had built the association between looking a certain way and being accepted, worthy, and even safe. Having a sense of control over what I ate and how I looked made me feel powerful in a way. And maybe subconsciously it gave me a sense that I could also control what happened to me.

    I knew I needed help in University when after purging for the third time one day I had a sharp pain in my chest. Bent over the toilet, clutching my heart, I realized things had gotten out of control.

    Luckily, before I lost my nerve, I set up an appointment with a counselor. And there began my long and twisty road to recovery from bulimia. A word I would rarely utter in the coming years, instead referring to it as my “food issues,” downplaying the severity of my illness. Bulimia was something only celebrities developed, not something a straight-A student like me could encounter.

    Wow, was I ever wrong! Along this journey I’ve met many others like me, and I discovered we had more similarities than differences. We put immense pressure on ourselves to be perfect, had an insane need to control everything, and we all felt deep shame about our behavior. Many others I met had also experienced trauma and used food to soothe.

    In 2008, when I first sought treatment, I worked in secret on my recovery, only talking with a counselor and a doctor. I needed weekly blood tests to ensure my electrolytes were balanced. Turns out purging is very hard on the body, something my lack of tooth enamel will attest to.

    It was years until I told friends and family, and even now many will be shocked reading this article. It was easy to hide from roommates, as I would binge alone in my room and come up with creative reasons to use the bathroom when needed. Sometimes even purging into bags in my room then disposing of it later.

    In 2013, after a few weeks of some particularly painful binging sessions, a doctor told me I had lesions in my throat. I could barely swallow, having to sip smoothies through a straw. And my first thought was:

    Yay, now I’ll definitely lose weight.

    Thankfully, it was followed by a second thought.

    This is dumb. I’m putting my health at serious risk here… to be thin? That makes no sense.

    That’s when I knew I needed to kick my recovery into high gear. I started out-patient treatment in Toronto and attended support groups with others like me. I learned to sort through complicated emotions and release my need for everything to be perfect. In short, I was on a great track.

    But here’s the thing no one tells you about recovery—it’s not linear. I was settling into my career as a nutritionist, my binging episodes reduced, then someone would make an off-hand comment…

    Wow, you cleaned your plate, you must’ve been hungry!

    And boom, I would spiral out and feel compelled to rid myself of the extra calories. Secretly hunched over the toilet once again, knowing I had failed.

    I didn’t think people would trust my nutritional advice if I gained weight. I was also a yoga instructor at this point and convinced students wouldn’t return to my classes if I didn’t have a lean svelte yoga body.

    I continued the ups and downs of recovery for years. Having to choose recovery every single day was exhausting. Over time, the periods between binges got longer.

    For me, there was no silver bullet cure. It was a combination of using mindfulness to sit with difficult emotions and getting a whole lot of therapy to address the trauma. I never thought I’d get to this place, but eventually I learned to see myself as a worthy person—no matter my past, no matter my size.

    I used to think having an eating disorder was a shameful secret. Now I see that struggle as the source of my strength. It takes an incredible amount of courage to address trauma, and working tirelessly on recovery has taught me how to bounce back over and over again.

    I went through the ringer for many years, having to hide many of my behaviors, and thinking my weight was the most interesting part of me. I share my experience as part of the healing process, to take away the shame that hides in the shadows. I hope it encourages you to examine your relationship with food and your body—and how you might also be using food or another substance to avoid dealing with your own traumas.

    We tend to judge what we’re eating and think of food as something to be controlled, but eating disorders aren’t just about food. They’re a reflection of how we judge ourselves and our need to regain control when we feel we’ve had none.

    If we can come out of the shadows and face our pain and shame, we can start to heal, but it might not happen overnight. It might be two steps forward and one step back, sometimes one step forward and two steps back—and that’s okay. People who struggle with eating disorders are often perfectionists, but we need to accept that we can’t be perfect at healing. It’s a process, and as long as we stick with it, we will see progress over time.

    Now that I’ve worked through the pain of my past, I can finally see that food is something to be enjoyed and celebrated, and I too deserve celebrating, no matter my size. I don’t need to be perfect to be worthy. And neither do you.

  • How Other People Receive Your Energy

    How Other People Receive Your Energy

  • Hurt by Negative People? How to Stop Taking Things Personally

    Hurt by Negative People? How to Stop Taking Things Personally

    “Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light. Try not to take it personally.” ~Kamand Kojouri

    The saying goes that money makes the world go round, but of course that’s not true.

    It’s our relationships.

    How we relate to other people and how they relate to us keeps our world turning. When things go well, all’s right with our world. When things go badly, it can feel as though our world has ground to a halt.

    This is exactly how I felt whenever I had a difficult experience with a loved one or friend.

    Whenever they lashed out at me for no real reason, it felt as if I couldn’t move on again until their negativity or bad temper had blown over. Until that happened, I replayed the scenarios in my mind, trying to work out where I was to blame for their behavior, and feeling awful in the meantime.

    That’s why our relationships will always be the most important thing in our lives—they have such a strong impact on us, both good and bad.

    That is also why it serves us well to try to have the best possible relationship with others, as well as ourselves. That includes improving the connections we have with the difficult and less-than-positive people in our lives and strengthening our boundaries in the process.

    We probably all have several negative people in our lives—those who criticize, complain, belittle us and other people, and say or do cruel things. They can be the closest to us, people we have known all our lives, and that makes their negativity harder to escape and endure.

    I had a family member who was very negative about pretty much everything. Spending time in their company was usually a draining and disheartening experience due to their complaining and sniping comments.

    This person made it very clear whenever I met them that they had little time or affection for me, which of course made family get-togethers less than enjoyable.

    I was also puzzled as to why they were like that: we’d never argued, and I had never, to my knowledge, done or said anything mean to them. Yet, they still acted in a negative way toward me, especially if I mentioned affirmative life experiences such as a great holiday or a new exciting project.

    Unsurprisingly, I responded to their negativity with a sense of apprehension, frustration, and confusion, which stopped me from enjoying the company of my other relatives. It also made me wary about fully expressing myself or talking about my life. And my uneasiness undoubtedly made the atmosphere between my family member and me even more negative.

    We all Have Emotional Scars from the Past

    I eventually recognized that I was hurt by my relative’s treatment in large part because I took it personally and allowed it to affect my self-image and self-esteem—as if I somehow deserved it. Then I realized something that changed everything for me.

    We all have a self-image shaped in large part by other people. Family, friends, and partners, who’ve likely scarred us through anger, resentment, jealousy, judgment, neglect, or even outright abuse. And this affects how we show up in the world.

    Everyone, including the people who have wronged you or been negative toward you in some way, has scars from their past too.

    Maybe your critical mother doesn’t know any better because her mother was critical. Maybe your absent father never knew his father either. Maybe your backstabbing friend was jealous of you for reasons only known to them. Perhaps your cheating partner had abusive parents, and your partner sabotages relationships because they don’t believe anyone can love them.

    Each and every one of us carries around our scars, going out into the world to meet other people who have scars, and when we connect, these combined scars can sometimes tear open.

    We all See Ourselves Through Others’ Eyes

    We all tend to see ourselves through our loved ones’ eyes—starting with our parents when we’re young—because we assume their perceptions of us are accurate and blame ourselves if they’re not flattering. Our self-image can alter based on their comments, emotions, and actions—positive and negative.

    This is a classic case of our relationships shaping our sense of self, an ongoing shaping that begins even before we can fully understand the meanings of what other people say or do to us.

    We are each the result of our experiences within our multiple relationships and interactions. How other people relate to us affects our image of ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we are helpless in the face of other people’s behavior toward us.

    We may not have had much of a choice as a child, but it’s a different matter once we’re adults. With awareness, we’re now able to protect ourselves far better from others’ negativity toward us and set necessary boundaries.

    Learning to Connect in a Different Way

    If you’re dealing with a negative or painful relationship that leaves you feeling bad about yourself, you can of course choose to distance yourself from the person and limit contact. Sometimes, however, this isn’t possible, so you have to learn how to connect in a different way while safeguarding yourself from their negative impact on you.

    I decided I had to respond differently to my family member and their negativity for the sake of my well-being. I began to look beyond their behavior and actions, and in doing so I started to piece together an idea of what might be the real cause of their pain and unhappiness.

    I recalled they had often moaned about how much they hated their job, how they disliked the town they lived in and their neighbors, and they also often complained of tiredness and physical aches and pains.

    I began to see that this person’s negativity—even if it was aimed at me, maybe due to their feelings of envy—wasn’t really about me. They were unhappy with their life in general. Negative people are often unhappy on many levels.

    It also helped me to remember we all have emotional scars, as mentioned before. When you approach people from a place of understanding, compassion, and empathy, you no longer see them as cheats, liars, betrayers, or “bad” people out to get you—even though they might cheat, lie, or betray you. You instead begin to see beyond their behavior and recognize that they’re in pain.

    When you do that a lot of their power over you starts to fade. You begin to see them as vulnerable, like everyone else. You start to realize that their negative actions toward you reflect far more on them than they do on you.

    People often hurt each other because of their own deep pain and because they don’t know any other way to act. This is often a painful lesson to learn.

    But when you finally grasp this difficult truth, you become more accepting of what happened, more forgiving, and ready to let go and move on. You realize you do not need to take on their negativity, brood about it, or feel you are the cause of it.

    That doesn’t mean you have to condone or accept mistreatment. And that’s not to say people’s negativity toward you won’t bother or hurt you ever again, but the effect won’t be so intense. You’ll realize that the situation isn’t really about you at all. Any pain they try to inflict on you is simply a reflection of what they feel inside; it no longer feels so personal.

    When I stopped taking my relative’s negativity personally, I was able to interact with them in a different way. I was much more relaxed in their company and able to enjoy family gatherings much more.

    When you stop taking other people’s negativity personally, you cease to be so susceptible to creating your self-image through their eyes. In fact, you start to focus far more on how you view them.

    Then you’re also free to focus less on their negativity and bad behavior and more on how you respond to it. That might mean setting boundaries and limiting your contact with them, and that’s okay. Sometimes you have to understand and empathize from afar to take good care of yourself.

    We’re All in the Same “Life” Boat

    Essentially, we’re all in the same “life” boat, bobbing up and down on the vast ocean of existence.

    We are all fallible. We all inflict hurt on others, intentionally and unintentionally.

    We all experience negative situations and inevitable suffering, and we simply have to accept this. Without pain and suffering we might not value joy or experience spiritual growth. If we never experienced adversity, we might not appreciate our strength.

    And without negative people we might not be truly grateful for or cherish the loving, supportive people we have in our lives.

  • Lack of Communication Leaves Too Much Room for the Imagination

    Lack of Communication Leaves Too Much Room for the Imagination

  • How I Stopped Feeling Unworthy of Love (And Finally Learned to Receive It)

    How I Stopped Feeling Unworthy of Love (And Finally Learned to Receive It)

    “I hope you find love, but more importantly, I hope you’re strong enough to walk away from what love isn’t.” ~Tiffany Tomiko

    When I was in my early thirties, I briefly dated someone right after my divorce.

    It was one of those fast and furious things that had no label and left me wondering if I made most of it up in my head.

    It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. How many times had I ended up feeling rejected and abandoned? I was trying so hard to impress a partner, but no matter what I did, I only seemed to push them away.

    Tearfully, I shared my pain with a spiritual advisor and psychic and asked for her guidance.

    She suggested I consider the joy that might come out of pleasurable and easeful partnerships. She asked me, “Briana, why don’t you shift your energy and focus to that aim?”

    But it wasn’t so easy. I was attached and hung up on this guy. Why didn’t he love me like I loved him?

    Another thought popped into my head, which I hadn’t realized was there before.

    Before I could voice it out loud, she said, “Oooohhhh, Briana. I can hear you already. You think if you’re not in pain, then your art and other creative works won’t be any good.”

    I burst out into another round of sobs.

    Because it was true. I did think that way.

    I thought I performed at my best when I was at my most miserable, and if you took away my misery, I would not only be common, but worse yet… mediocre. I would truly be the bad artist I always thought I was.

    Every aspect of creative expression would become cliched, trite, and uninteresting. There wouldn’t be anything special about me.

    And so I would become unlovable.

    The drama proved my worth, one way or the other; the drama of performing well enough to earn love. 

    It wasn’t until four years after that conversation that I finally stopped clinging to my pain.

    Because I realized that pain didn’t make something (love) more authentic—it just made it more difficult.

    Maybe you know where I’m coming from. Maybe you feel that you, too, need to “chase” a relationship and suffer for it to really matter. For you to really matter.

    That’s just not true. There is a far better way to build relationships, and that’s what I would previously have called “boring” and “too easy,” but actually is about respecting your own, authentic self and opening up to love.

    Here’s what I’ve learned about letting go of feeling unworthy of love and finally learning how to receive it.

    1. Take off your mask.

    Like me, you might believe that to attract a lover and be worthy of love, you have to pretend to be a perfect partner, through things like making them feel wanted and desired, looking beautiful, and being funny, witty, smart, and interesting all the time.

    All of these tactics might very well appeal to a potential partner. Certainly, it might make them interested enough to get to know you better, and maybe even date you for a while.

    But none of that means it will soften their heart and make them fall into a soul-shaking relationship with you.

    In fact, while I used to think that I needed to pretend that I was something I wasn’t so that I’d be worthy of love, I just kept deterring the other person.

    Why?

    Because while the glitz and glamour are appealing, it also, on a deeper level, left me completely unavailable.

    In the same way, you are pushing away a partner by performing all the time.

    You see, your partner is going to feel as if they have to perform just as well, and while that may be exciting in the beginning, unless the mask comes off, it also gets exhausting very quickly.

    A loving partner will be less concerned about how many degrees you hold or how much you make at your job and more concerned that you’re passionate about what you’re doing.

    A loving partner doesn’t care how many facts you can recite. They may enjoy your company if you’re a great conversationalist, but that won’t necessarily make them feel something for you.

    The way to a partner’s heart is to make them feel safe enough to explore and experience their own authentic self.

    You do that by feeling safe enough to express yourself—without someone else’s permission.

    Because if you don’t communicate that you’re comfortable in your own skin, this partner won’t feel comfortable or safe opening up to you, either.

    And if a person can’t open up to you, warts and all, they can’t fall in love with you. It’s as simple as that.

    When you put on a performance instead of taking off your mask, you unconsciously communicate a fantasy of reality, because that feels safer than vulnerability. And then you energetically and non-verbally tell your partner that you can’t handle their vulnerability, either.

    And isn’t it freeing? You, in all your vulnerability, are the person they want and need in order to be their own, true self.

    2. Get in touch with your own feelings.

    What many of us do when we feel unworthy of love is numb our emotions and pretend we feel something other than we actually do.

    But a loving partner wants to know you’re angry when you’re angry and why you’re angry.

    Guess what happens if you’re acting one way, while feeling something else? That’s right, drama.

    If they think you’re angry, but they are not sure, because you’re trying hard to plaster a smile on your face, say, “I’m fine,” and stuff it down, you’re not really fooling anyone, just confusing them.

    Your energy and your verbal expressions are going to contradict one another, and that is the seed of dramatic conflict.

    And this type of drama is so annoying because you are effectively keeping a partner at bay, and refusing to connect with them, for fear that they wouldn’t like the “real” you.

    But because they can’t access “the real” you, there’s no real glue holding them there, and they wind up leaving you anyway.

    So show them what you feel, while letting go of the fear that they will reject you for doing so. By reconnecting with your emotions, you show up as your authentic self and make it safe for them to love you.

    3. Be open to meeting someone with the same level of consciousness.

    Around the end of August last year, I started dating someone. He wasn’t originally what I would have imagined for myself, but he turned out to be exactly what I need.

    Right from the get-go, things went really well; we talked for hours on end, and I felt an instant connection.

    There were butterflies, yes, but not the kind of gut-twisting, obsessive sensations I have had in the past, which usually means I should run.

    This was more like, “Ah, you fit nicely… and kinda feel like home. What took you so long?”

    He shows up with fresh flowers, texts me “good morning,” and sees the humor in situations like that time my cat got jealous and bit him when he tried to kiss me.

    While before, I would have instantly dismissed this type of relationship as being too easy (and the lack of drama would have shown me that it wasn’t real love), I now see it for what it is:

    A relationship in which partners join together from a place of inspiration, as opposed to a fear-based need to be filled up with the other.

    This is a partner who already has a higher level of consciousness and is looking for purposeful building. There’s no drama, there’s no chasing, and there are no games or acts.

    This is the key to feeling worthy of and receiving love—finding a partner who is open to the same. The criterion for attracting such a partner, however, is that you are ready to meet them.

    I wasn’t ready four years ago. It took me that long to go from believing that relationships had to be a rollercoaster of emotions to opening up to a loving partnership.

    Ultimately, it’s about you finding your authentic self and realizing that this version of you (the real version) is so worthy of love and should be loved. That’s the premise for a relationship that, instead of being soul-sucking and anxiety-ridden, is the perfect space for self-growth and joy.

  • Be Disciplined in What You Respond To

    Be Disciplined in What You Respond To

  • The People you Lose During Your Healing Process

    The People you Lose During Your Healing Process

  • I Can Feel Broken and Still Trust That I Can Rebuild

    I Can Feel Broken and Still Trust That I Can Rebuild

  • Why It No Longer Matters to Me If My Job Impresses People

    Why It No Longer Matters to Me If My Job Impresses People

    “Do not let the roles you play in life make you forget who you are.” ~Roy T. Bennett

    Wherever I go and meet new people, they ask me, “What do you do?”

    I love talking about what I do because I love what I do, but It’s not what I’ve always done, and it certainly isn’t all of who I am. It’s part of who I am, but there is so much more.

    When we’re young, we’re asked to decide on a career. You know, the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The problem is, does anyone in high school truly know what they want to do for the rest of their lives? I’d venture to say that many high school kids don’t even know who they really are yet.

    When I was growing up, I was a straight-A student, a star athlete, a perfectionist, and an overachiever. I learned at a young age that performing well was my ticket to feeling good about myself. My accomplishments garnered the praise and admiration of many and gave me what I needed to feel good.

    Validation.

    As a senior in high school, it was natural that I chose to go to college for aerospace engineering. I was interested in aviation, but more importantly, when I told other people what I had decided on, they nodded their heads in approval. A smart girl should choose a “smart career,” right?

    Validation and approval drove me forward.

    When I got out of college with a BS in aerospace engineering from the University of Minnesota, I went to work for The Boeing Company in Seattle, Washington. I didn’t love it. Part of it may have been homesickness, or the dreary Seattle weather, but a huge part of it was that the corporate cubicle life was not for me.

    I thought there was something wrong with me. After all, I had worked so hard to reach this point in my life. I should love it, right? Hadn’t I finally arrived?

    I struggled with it so much because on one hand, I dreaded going to work. On the other hand, when I told people what I did for a living, they leaned in and listened a little harder. Even my own father was proud to talk about my engineering career and the fact that I worked for one of the top aerospace companies in the world, but I’ve since moved to less impressive pursuits, he has never once asked me about those endeavors.

    My career looked awesome and interesting and impressive on paper, but I was quietly dying inside.

    My husband and I ended up moving all the way across the country to Savannah, Georgia, where I worked for another top aerospace company—Gulfstream Aerospace. I didn’t really feel any different about my position there, until I transferred into a group called Sales Engineering.

    In this area, I was able to interact and collaborate with sales and marketing to create the technical data they would use to pitch Gulfstream’s fleet to potential customers. I enjoyed the challenge, but I really enjoyed the collaboration with other people that weren’t buried in their computers all day. It was here that I first got a glimpse that I loved connecting with other people.

    When my first child was born, I left the aerospace industry. We had just moved cross-country again to Los Angeles, and it made more sense for me to be a full-time mom since I wasn’t the family breadwinner, and we didn’t absolutely need a second income. Plus, I wasn’t enamored with the whole engineering gig either, so in a sense, it was a way out.

    Quitting the career that I didn’t love was, on one hand, so freeing. But on the other hand, without that thick layer of validation that kept getting piled on every time someone asked me “What do you do for a living?”, I felt naked. I felt inferior. I felt like I was a failure who couldn’t hack it in the real world.

    My identity was wrapped up in my career that looked so good on paper but didn’t feel good in my soul.

    My ex-husband is an attorney, and we’d attend events with lots of other attorneys and highly educated people. At these events, I dreaded the question “So, Kortney, what do you do?”

    My response was always a little timid, almost apologetic.

    “I stay at home with our son.”

    There was typically a slow nod, with a bit of feigned interest, as if they weren’t really sure what more to say about the occupation stay-at-home mom.

    Because I also had a side-gig photography business, I’d quickly add, “and I’m also a photographer.”

    That tended to garner a bit more interest.

    “But I used to be an aerospace engineer,” I’d tack on, in a final effort to gain the nod of approval I so desperately sought.

    Bingo. Alarm bells sounded. The crowd cheered. People were reeled back into something more exciting.

    That good, old familiar friend, validation was back.

    I struggled for a long time to find my identity without all the “stuff” on the outside. It wasn’t until I got divorced and had to figure out how I would financially support myself after my spousal support ran out that I even scratched the surface of “Who am I, really?”

    Who am I without my career, the accomplishments, the external validation?

    All those years, I lived with one foot in the world of wanting to love myself for who I am rather than what I did and one foot in the world of doing more, doing better, doing it ALL.

    I lived in between the worlds of self-validation and external validation. 

    I knew I wanted the former, yet I craved the latter.

    In doing the work of figuring out who I really am, learning to love myself fully, and being able to validate myself without any help from the outside, I realized that I was asking myself the wrong questions all along.

    As a society, we ask the wrong questions.

    Instead of asking our kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, I think we should be asking them, “Who do you want to be?”

    I asked my eleven-year-old daughter this, and she looked at me in her quizzical mom-why-are-you-asking-me-such-a-weird-question way and said, “Umm, I just want to be me?”

    Yes!

    Shouldn’t we all just want to be who we are? 

    Instead of pursuing goals that are impressive because they bring us accolades and attention, what if we were to pursue our goals because they lit us up and we were truly passionate about them?

    What if we started asking our kids questions about what lights them up? How do they want to feel? What things do they like to do that make them feel that way?

    Even as adults, we can ask ourselves these questions.

    If you’re in a job that doesn’t feel right, you can ask yourself, “How do I want to feel?”

    What’s authentic to you? How do you want to show up in the world? What jobs or careers would allow you to show up that way?

    This is the work I did after my divorce. I’m in a completely different career now, and believe me, as much as I fought going back to a job in the engineering industry, I had to do a lot of work on my thinking about not having a “smart job” like being an engineer. The validation I craved and was so used to was like a drug.

    Through this work, I learned how I want to feel in my life and that guides everything.

    I discovered that I want to feel freedom, ease, joy, and meaning in my life. 

    Going to a cubicle every day didn’t allow me to create those feelings. I want to show up in the world authentically—I want to be able to be a human being who makes mistakes and can share myself with other people. Corporate life didn’t allow me to be that authentic person that I now so deeply love.

    Some of you reading this may have corporate jobs and love them. You may be able to create the feelings you want to feel and show up authentically with that type of career. That’s awesome!

    The goal is to be able to feel the way you want to feel. The goal is to be able to show up in the world in a way that is true to who you are. 

    Because how you show up to do the things you do in the world is what really matters.

  • FREE Online MindBody Therapy Summit for Healing and Well-Being, June 2-6

    FREE Online MindBody Therapy Summit for Healing and Well-Being, June 2-6

    Hi friends! I’m excited to let you know about the MindBody Therapy Summit, a FREE online event, presented by the Embody Lab, that’s coming up next week.

    In this inspiring 5-day summit, running from June 2nd through June 6th, you’ll hear from some of the most impactful healers, teachers, and researchers at the intersection of wellness, spirituality, psychology, embodiment, and somatics.

    What Is MindBody Therapy?

    MindBody therapy helps us understand and shift what gets in the way of being free, happy, and fully alive.

    While traditional therapy focuses on verbal processing and cognitive meaning making, MindBody therapy invites us into the wisdom of our body as the intuitive place of healing and well-being.

    How Can This Event Help You?

    Blending traditional wisdom and embodiment practices with contemporary neuroscience and psychology, MindBody therapy supports healing and transformation while working with every aspect of an individual—psychological, psychical, spiritual, energetic, and social.

    Through methodologies such as Somatic Experiencing®, Hakomi, Body-Mind Centering®, Gestalt, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Integral Somatic Psychology, and many other body-oriented approaches to psychology, you’ll gain practical tools to connect with your body and your true self.

    Who Is This Summit For?

    The MindBody Therapy Summit is for you if:

    -You’re seeking knowledge about psychology, somatics, trauma therapy, plant medicine, attachment/intimacy work, internal family systems work, experiential developmental psychology, social/cultural justice and therapy, stress and resilience, and applied poly-vagal theory.

    -You feel like you’ve hit a wall in your talk therapy and you’re looking for a fresh perspective on healing.

    -You’re interested in incorporating somatic methods of healing into your daily practice.

    -You’re ready to fulfill the highest expression of yourself and bring a new dimension of joy into your life.

    -You’re looking to connect with like-minded people engaged in psychology, embodiment practices, and self-inquiry.

    If you’re ready to access a new level of healing and wholeness, click here to register for the MindBody Therapy Summit and get FREE access to all 5 days of inspiring talks. I hope you find them healing and transformative!

  • Surviving a Dysfunctional Relationship: What I Wish I Knew and Did Sooner

    Surviving a Dysfunctional Relationship: What I Wish I Knew and Did Sooner

    “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” ~Alice Walker

    When I was a child and in my early teenage years, I was a free bird. I laughed easily, loved life, never worried, and dreamed big. I thought the best of others, the glass was always full. I never dreamed others would hurt me, and I had a joyful and playful attitude toward life.

    That was a long time ago.

    My breakdown started gradually and slowly with judgments from a very close and trusted family member I dare not name. This person, though probably well-intentioned, thought that you make someone stronger by criticizing them. They believed in knocking me down, throwing verbal punches to make me “resilient.”

    They believed in “hard love.” They watched while I faltered and sometimes suffered. They stood back and watched from the cheap seats, then critiqued my performance. Their assessment of me was rarely, if ever, encouraging and was full of arrogance and judgment.

    Well into my adult life, this trusted person threatened me after an ugly incident where they made a terrible judgment call. Instead of admitting their error, they threatened me and made it my fault by saying, “If you ever tell anyone about this, I will disown you.”

    Shuddering under the weight of those words, I decided to sever ties with this person once and for all.

    Those words, “If you ever tell anyone about this, I will disown you…” said so much about this person who I have struggled to understand my entire life.

    For me, it was about as close to the admittance of wrongdoing I would ever get from them. And as always, there was the signature and ever-present judgmental spin. “I will disown you” because, after all, this is your fault, and you deserve punishment.

    I try to come to terms with the aftermath of the ugly side effects that this person has brought to my life.  Someone so blatantly flawed showed me my own weaknesses because I allowed them to erode my confidence and well-being.

    I regret not cutting ties sooner—like twenty years ago.

    As I sat in the aftermath of this situation, I wondered what good can possibly come from such a disappointing relationship? A lifetime of misunderstanding, jarring actions, harmful words, and hurt feelings—all from a person so close to me—someone I should trust, love and respect.

    Perhaps the answer lies in the decisive way I ended it after so many years of abuse. The final decision for me to end this relationship was my first real stand to protect myself. The first time I valued myself more than another person.

    The dysfunction of this relationship would not have come this far if I knew how to establish healthy boundaries early on and knew how to deal appropriately with a difficult person. I am nearly sixty years old and have learned my lessons the hard way.

    I like to share with you some easy strategies you can employ if you are struggling with a dysfunctional person in your life.

    1. Nothing you say or do will ever change them.

    Save yourself a lot of time and energy and come to terms with this reality. The only person you can change is yourself, which is the best place to focus your energy. You can control your reactions to this person, your opinions, and how you deal with them, but you can’t control them.

    They have to accept you for who you are, and likewise, you have to accept them for who they are.

    If you don’t like them or their behavior, you have to decide how you will deal with it. Maybe you only visit once a year or not at all. Perhaps you only call on the phone. Explore all the options that you feel will work for you and keep you safe, and try not to feel guilty about your decision.

    2. Set healthy personal boundaries.

    Healthy boundaries are essential not only for you in this relationship but within all relationships. Setting healthy boundaries with friends, your boss, your wife or husband, your children, with anyone is key to having healthy and fulfilling relationships.

    When you set healthy boundaries, you also allow the other people in your life to know what you expect and what you will or will not tolerate.  They will appreciate you for that.

    Setting healthy boundaries starts with knowing what irritates you, what pushes your buttons, what compromises you might make, if any.  Healthy boundaries have a lot to do with knowing your core values. Start with a shortlist of core values important to you. Know them and stick by them, and when someone challenges those values, be ready to protect them because they are there to protect you.

    Also, choose your words carefully when setting clear boundaries. For example, saying, “You insulted me, so I am out of here,” is not as effective as saying, “Your words (specify the words you find insulting) are insulting to me, and if you continue to talk to me like that I will have to leave.”

    Everyone deserves a chance to change their behavior for the better. However, act decisively and immediately if your boundary is crossed.

    3. Whether it is a friend or family member, people who constantly cross your boundaries and challenge your values don’t deserve your energy.

    Being decisive like this is called standing up for yourself. You can walk away and come back another day—or not.

    If you don’t stand up for yourself early, people will chip away at your inner confidence and make you resentful and even potentially volatile. Don’t let things get that bad.

    Make yourself strong from the inside out, rely on your judgments. Don’t listen to other people who persuade you to ignore your guidance. Only you can know whether someone is violating your inner self.

    4. You are not a bad person for deciding to step back or even end the relationship.

    Tell yourself that you are not a bad daughter, son, wife, husband, mother, whatever. You are not bad for deciding to end a volatile relationship that has left you drained, eroded, and empty.

    Maybe you could have done things differently or better or sooner, but you didn’t and couldn’t, and you did your best. You had good reasons to step away or even leave the relationship; accept that and don’t beat yourself up over it. Self-preservation will always make you a better person in a relationship, and indeed, it will make you a better person out of it as well.

    —

    There is a great deal of wisdom that can be learned from years of perseverance and working your way through challenging lessons. It was my choice to stay in a dysfunctional relationship, perhaps too long, in a place that clipped my wings.

    I now know the true value of standing strong in who I am, and not basing my self-acceptance on the way others treat or view me.  That wisdom is profoundly liberating and once again I can be free, like a bird with newly feathered wings.

  • Anyone Who Hasn’t Walked in Your Shoes

    Anyone Who Hasn’t Walked in Your Shoes

  • When I Thought I Was Being Rejected from Something Good

    When I Thought I Was Being Rejected from Something Good

  • 5 Life-Changing Pieces of Advice I Would Give to My Younger Self

    5 Life-Changing Pieces of Advice I Would Give to My Younger Self

    “I’d go back to my younger self and say, ‘Lighten up. Take it easy. Relax. Don’t be so anxious about everything. Try not to have today stolen from you by anxiety about yesterday or tomorrow.’” ~Bill Nighy

    I believe there is great power in looking back at our past to learn from our experiences, mistakes, and regrets.

    The Spanish philosopher George Santayana remarked, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” I might add that the history we need to study the most is our personal history so that we don’t keep making the same mistakes over and over again in our lives.

    If I had the option to go back to my past, this is the advice I would give my younger self.

    1. Express yourself freely and work to overcome your shyness.

    In the past, there were many opportunities that I didn’t take and many friendships that I failed to make because I was shy and often felt uncomfortable and self-conscious. Some people would interpret my shyness as rudeness, so it was crippling to me in many ways.

    Advice to myself:

    Make a conscious effort to interact and express yourself freely around others, no matter how uncomfortable it may make you feel in the moment. If you struggle, take deep breaths to relax yourself and calm your irrational thoughts.

    Nobody is judging you and analyzing you as thoroughly as you may think. Everybody is too absorbed in their own world to spend time caring about every little thing you say and do.

    Try to do the opposite of what a shy person would do in any given situation. Easier said than done, I know, but if you do that long enough, you’ll start creating a new identity for yourself in your mind. That’s really all you have to do to overcome being shy. The more you do it, the easier it gets and the more confident you’ll become, and soon it will feel natural.

    2. Stop fighting your negative feelings.

    For the longest time, I would try to resist and battle my negative emotions, like anxiety,  hoping they would go away somehow. If I felt that familiar knot in my stomach and started thinking anxious thoughts, I’d tell myself I should be positive because our thoughts create our reality.

    A couple of years ago, I finally realized that the way to free yourself of negative emotions, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, is to accept them.

    The more we try to fight our feelings with the underlying thought “I shouldn’t be feeling this way,” the worse we feel. However, these feelings pass much faster when we allow ourselves to feel them without judging them or thinking that they shouldn’t be happening.

    Advice to myself:

    Let go of the need to try and fix your negative emotions with your mind.

    Accept your unpleasant feelings and focus your attention fully on the sensations these emotions invoke instead of thinking thoughts like “I shouldn’t be feeling this way,” “This shouldn’t be happening.”

    When you do this, you will find that the unpleasant feelings dissolve much more quickly, and you will stop making things worse by feeding them with more energy.

    View your feelings as visitors, for they always come and go. Like most visitors, all they want is your attention and acknowledgement, and once you give them what they want, they will be on their way.

    3. Embrace uncertainty.

    In college, I spent a long time desperately trying to figure out my future, wishing for clarity on what I should be doing with my life.

    Many of us have a compelling need to have our whole lives all figured out. We hate not knowing where life may take us, and we seek the comfort of knowing what the future has in store for us.

    But no amount of mental analysis of our future can provide us with the answers. And that’s okay, because we don’t always need to know what we will be doing a year from now.

    Sometimes the only thing you can do is trust in life. Because when we are not trusting, we automatically start worrying, because that’s our mind’s default tendency.

    Advice to myself:

    Know that it’s okay to be confused and not have all the answers. Learn to be okay with not knowing and make room for surprise and mystery, because that’s a big part of what makes life exciting and interesting.

    Most of your fears and worries about the future, if you closely examine them, are nothing more than mental fabrications and do not exist anywhere else than in your mind. Most of the things you worry about won’t actually happen, and even if they do, you might learn and grow from those experiences. Hence there is no need to take your fears so seriously and get worked up over them.

    4. Stop trying to run away from discomfort.

    Our mind tends to prefer the known and comfortable and likes to seek out the easiest way to feel good.

    We’re often hesitant to do things that require effort or make us feel uncomfortable, since our natural tendency is to avoid feeling any discomfort.

    But many of the things that are beneficial for us and worth doing in life will require enduring some kind of discomfort. To run away from discomfort is to run away from growing and evolving as a person.

    That’s exactly what I did for most of my life. I avoided meditating, exercising, journaling, and spending time alone without technology—habits that have all had a positive impact on my life—during the times when I would have benefited from them the most because I felt resistance whenever I tried to get started.

    I also avoided being vulnerable with other people. But I’ve noticed over the last two years that if I stay with the discomfort of interacting with new people instead of running away, as I used to do, the interactions ultimately become rewarding and enjoyable.

    This is true of most things—reward lies on the other side of discomfort, but first we have to push through.

    Advice to myself:

    The mind can be very persuasive and convincing and come up with an endless list of reasons to procrastinate or avoid feeling any discomfort. But don’t let your mind deceive you.

    Discomfort often points toward what you should be doing, not what you should be avoiding. Be willing to dive deep into discomfort and learn to embrace it. It will help you more than you know.

    5. Accept yourself and stop judging yourself.

    When I was in college, I used to judge myself a lot because many of my interests, such as spirituality and metaphysics, were very different from all my friends’ interests.

    It was a few years later that it finally dawned on me that I needed to stop looking outside for validation and permission to accept myself.

    Once you learn to accept yourself, it doesn’t matter what others may or may not think. Other people’s opinions may bother you fleetingly, but you will need to live with what you think about yourself every day, so don’t make it hard by judging yourself.

    Advice to myself:

    You don’t need to judge yourself or feel embarrassed about wanting to spend your free time journaling, meditating, reading books, or enjoying spending time alone by yourself.

    Don’t feel compelled to be like everyone else, and there is absolutely no reason to be apologetic for following and doing what lights you up.

    Because the truth is, it’s okay to be different and unique. Imagine how boring the world would be if we were all the same.

    —

    If you could talk with your younger self, what would you say? What do you think you would have done differently? What advice would you have for them?

  • Sunshine for Your Soul and Medicine for Your Mind

    Sunshine for Your Soul and Medicine for Your Mind