Tag: wisdom
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What to Do If You’re Single and Feel Like You’re Missing Out
“Hope for love, pray for love, wish for love, dream for love…but don’t put your life on hold waiting for love.” ~Mandy Hale
Going to weddings alone, with no plus-one to take along with you. Watching the couples dance, thinking, “Will there ever come a time when that is me on the dance floor?” Going on holidays alone, with no partner to share memories with. Listening to stories of friends’ weekends away, as a reminder of just how solitary your own weekends are. If you are anything like me, you might recognize these signs of single life.
“Will my situation and circumstances ever change?” I’d think as I struggled to fall asleep at night. I’d hold a pillow as a source of comfort, yet this too disappeared in the morning, when I woke up alone to face the day.
Many single people think like this, yet rarely voice these thoughts. But sometimes we hit a turning point when we start to see everything differently—and then start to act differently.
The turning point for me came one Saturday morning. After I had gotten dressed and ready, I sat down on a chair next to my bed. A photo of a couple friends was in front of me. They were on holiday, with smiles on their faces, standing under a bright blue sky with a clear blue sea behind them.
As I looked at this picture of serenity and happiness, I had a sinking, empty feeling in my stomach. I thought, “God, will that ever be me?” I looked down in front of me and felt a sense of despair, worried about what my future held but paralyzed as to what I could do about it.
At that moment I thought, “Enough.” I walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I was tired of feeling sorry for myself. I was tired of watching the world go by. I was tired of the sad thoughts going around in my head like goldfish in a fishbowl.
I asked myself then, “What do I have to be upset about?” I had a roof over my head, clothes on my body, and food in my mouth. That’s not to say it’s not normal to long for companionship when you’re single; it’s just that I had focused so much on what was wrong with my life that I hadn’t focused on what was right about my life. And I’d also focused on what was wrong with myself—as if there must have been something wrong for me to be single for so long.
Until I became my own cheerleader, how could I expect others to start cheering for me? I decided then and there to take action. If I wasn’t happy with myself, I had to go out and change, and do things to change. Not just daydream and hope life would turn around by itself.
So, what did I do?
I’ve worked on enjoying my single life more and joined some dating apps to “get in the ring.” The results have proven mixed. Like with all things in life, there are good days and bad days. But on the whole, it’s been a positive experience because I’ve met some great people in my search for the person who ‘gets me.’
I’ve realized we can only experience true happiness in life if we focus on ourselves instead of waiting for others to focus on us. People can join us for our stories, but we cannot expect them to complete our stories for us. We make our own paths in life. Walking on paths well-trodden will never be as satisfying as carving paths of our own, however rocky or imperfect they may be.
So, what helped me move ahead? Here are four things that may help you:
1. Work on loving yourself and your life.
Work on yourself before trying to attract somebody else. As a natural result of working on yourself you will exude a glow of confidence. Your zest for life will radiate from your face, and you will naturally look and feel better to others.
Work on developing positivity in your life. Embrace what you have, not what you wish you had or what your neighbor has. Read more, study more, travel more. Exercise for twenty minutes a day, try cooking one new dish a week, read or watch something every day that inspires you.
Why should people get to know you? Evaluate the qualities you like about yourself and sing your own praises in your head each time you doubt how worthy you are.
2. Be proactive.
Join a few dating apps, take a few chances, take the time to connect with people. Bumble and Hinge are easy to use. You’ll meet new people and engage a new mindset.
Get active and make the effort to swipe for a few minutes each day. What’s more, enjoy the process. Look beyond the photos. Recognize that there is a whole person behind the photo if you are willing to give that person a chance. Look for the gold in the profiles.
3. Pay more compliments.
If you see something you like on a profile, don’t be afraid to say it. You could make somebody’s day with your words. It costs nothing and it could provide just the lift they need. And the beauty of giving compliments is that you’ll likely get some in return—things people may have thought but otherwise not shared if you hadn’t gone first—which can help radically build your self-confidence.
4. Focus on achieving one big goal a month.
Write down twelve goals for each of the twelve months in the year. Buy a paper diary and write down how you are going to fill your time for the next week. Do something you wouldn’t ordinarily do. The person you seek should not compensate for all the things you are not; they should be an extension of all the things that you are. The more you live life, the more life you will have to share with a significant other.
Review your progress once a week. Ask yourself, are you making too much time for people that do not have the time for you? Ruthlessly discard the things that don’t make you happy (people, pursuits, things) and selfishly embrace the things that do. Be generous with others and selfish with yourself.
So, in summary, what can you do to improve your dating life?
Treat yourself with the care you would treat a friend, broaden your mind and your approach when using dating apps, compliment freely, and give yourself one big thing to look forward to each month.
True happiness in life can only be experienced when we focus on inside joy, not when we look for external fixes. Invite people into your life to join your life story, not to build your life story. Be your own cheerleader first to allow others to cheer for you.
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My Secret to Overcoming the Painful Trap of Perfectionism
“A meaningful life is not being rich, being popular, or being perfect. It’s about being real, being humble, being able to share ourselves and touch the lives of others.” ~Unknown
Hello, I’m Kortney, and I’m a recovering perfectionist.
Like so many of us, I spent the greater part of my life believing that unless something was perfect, it wasn’t good at all. There was really no in-between. If it wasn’t perfect, it was a failure.
One of the problems with perfectionism is that it’s common to believe it’s a positive thing. In our society, people tend to value it. If you’re someone that aims for perfection, you must be accomplished. Driven. Smart.
Have you ever had a sense of pride over being called a perfectionist?
I have.
Have you ever thought about why?
Speaking for my own experience, when someone called me a perfectionist, I felt like even though I didn’t believe I was perfect, it meant that they were perceiving me as being perfect. They saw me as being one of the best, or as someone who was talented. It was validation that I was seen as someone who was good at things.
My rabid thirst for this sort of validation fed the perfectionist machine for years.
If you’re wondering what it means to be a perfectionist, here are a few traits:
- Perfectionists obsess over mistakes, even when it’s not likely that anyone else even noticed.
- Their self-confidence depends on being perfect.
- They think in black and white—things are either good or bad. Perfect or failure.
- They have unrealistic expectations and crazy-high standards for themselves and beat themselves up when they don’t meet them.
- They put up a front that everything is perfect, even when it’s not, because the thought of someone else seeing their imperfection is unbearable.
- Despite their quest for perfection, they don’t feel anywhere close to perfect.
- They can’t accept being second-best at something. That’s failure.
- They spend excessive time on projects because they’re always perfecting one last thing.
- They spend a lot of time searching for external approval.
- No matter what they do, they don’t feel good enough.
At one point in my life, all of those bullet points described me well. I wasted so much time worrying about approval and validation so that I could feel like I was awesome. But I never felt even close to awesome. I never felt good enough at anything.
Sure, there were times when I felt like I was good at something, but then I had to raise the bar. Just being good at something wasn’t enough. There was always another level to reach. The bar kept getting higher and higher, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for people who are striving to make improvements in a healthy way, but for a perfectionist whose self-worth hinges on reaching the bar every time it’s raised, it’s not a positive.
It was exhausting.
After a lot of struggle in my life, I knew I needed to explore my perfectionist ways and find a way to be more compassionate toward myself. Perfectionism was holding me back from loving my life. And to be honest, I don’t think I intentionally set out to rid myself of the perfectionist mentality specifically. It came as a byproduct of a great deal of other personal work.
I began to realize that I had many beliefs that were etched into my brain that weren’t helpful. Beliefs that I never thought to question. These beliefs also severely hindered my ability to be happy and to live the life I wanted to live.
We all have belief systems that we don’t really think to question. We’ve grown up with them. We’ve learned them from the media, culture and society. But if we actually take a step back to notice that these thought patterns that inhibit our ability to grow and progress are there, we can start to question them.
Some common limiting beliefs that keep people stuck in perfectionism are:
- People reward me for having high standards. They are impressed and I gain approval.
- The only time I get positive attention is when I am striving for big things or achieving.
- If I make a mistake, I’m a failure.
- If only I can make so-and-so proud with my achievements, he/she will love me, and I’ll be happy.
- If I fail, I am worthless. Failing is not okay.
- If I don’t check over everything multiple times, I’ll miss something and look like an idiot.
- My accomplishments are worthless if they’re not perfect (i.e.: receiving a “B” instead of an “A” in a class is a failure),
- If others see my flaws, I won’t be accepted. They won’t like me.
The good news is that thoughts like these are examples of faulty thinking—faulty belief systems that keep you stuck in perfectionism. By identifying the specific thoughts and beliefs that keep you stuck in perfectionism, you can start to build new, more helpful thought patterns and belief systems.
I also stumbled upon another secret for overcoming perfectionism.
The secret is that I became okay with being average. I worked to embrace average.
If you’re a perfectionist, you know that being called average feels like the end of the world. It’s a terrible word to hear. My inner critic was not having it. “How dare you even think average is okay?” it hissed.
As a teenager, a twenty-something, and even a thirty-something, my world would have come to an end if I had accepted being average.
But sometimes life has a way of making you better.
Life has a way of putting things into your path and it presents opportunities for you to grow. Everyone has these opportunities at one point or another, but you have to notice them and choose to take advantage of them.
There was a time not too long ago when I went through a really difficult time and had to rebuild my life.
Looking back, I can see that the situation was an abrupt “lane-changer”—a push in a new direction to make a change. I was not living my best life and I wasn’t meant to stay stuck in that lane. I struggled with depression and anxiety, much of which was triggered by perfectionism.
By working on thoughts like the ones I listed above, and working to accept lowering my standards—the ones that told me that achievement and success were the only way I would be worth anything—I gradually learned to replace my old standards with this one:
Just be happy.
Learning to make this my standard led me to a place where I am okay with being average. Eek! I said it. Average.
Today, I can honestly say that I’m pretty happy with being average. Do I like to do well? Sure. But it doesn’t define my self-worth. While it’s created more space for me to fail, at the same time it’s created the space for me to succeed.
The difference is that my self-worth isn’t tied to whether I succeed or fail.
Here’s how I look at it:
I’m really good at some things, but I’m not very good at other things. You are really good at some things. And you aren’t very good at other things too. The good and the not-so-good all average out.
At the end of the day, we are all just average humans. We are all the same. We’re humans trying to live the best life we can. We are more similar than we are different.
Don’t you think that if we all ditched our quest to be perfect, or better than everyone else, we’d feel a little happier? Don’t you feel like we’d all be a little more connected?
If you struggle with perfectionism, I invite you to take a look at the list of limiting beliefs above and see what resonates for you. What evidence can you find that can disprove these limiting beliefs? What would you like to believe instead? Try on those new beliefs and build them up with new evidence to support them.
And along the way, work on accepting that you are enough, even if you’re average.
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Easing Anxiety: How Painting Helps Me Stop Worrying
“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.” ~Kahlil Gibran
Anxiety has followed me around like a lost dog looking for a bone for years now.
I feel it the most acutely when I’m worried about my health or my daughter’s health. I notice a strange rash or feel an unusual sensation and all of a sudden: panic!
My worries are not limited to health concerns though, and my ruminations go in the direction of dread about the future of the world, worries about my finances, and fears that I’m not good enough.
Is my anxiety warranted? My mind tells me it is.
“Remember how you had that bad reaction to a medication? It could happen again!”
“You know how your daughter had that febrile seizure two years ago? You never know what could happen next!”
“Think back to that time you and your family had a slow winter and were extremely worried about money. That could be just around the corner!”
And on and on my mind goes. I know I shouldn’t believe what it tells me, but sometimes I get sucked under and can’t help it.
I don’t think I was anxious like this when I was a kid. I think these underpinnings of nervousness started when I was older, probably my late twenties. I suppose by then I’d lived enough life to know that things can and do go wrong.
I don’t like feeling anxious. I don’t like the way my body feels jangly and my mind races. I don’t like it when I can’t focus on the thing I’m supposed to be doing.
But this is not a sad story, it’s a story of tiny improvements and little steps forward. It’s a journey of finding peace in the middle of a storm.
For me that peace began with painting.
Let me go back a few decades, back to when anxiety wasn’t part of my life. When I was a child, I loved art. I drew, I colored, I took extra art classes on the weekends because that’s what I enjoyed.
I went to college to become an art teacher, switching to a graphic design track later. When I finished school in May of 2001, I had a part-time design job, and after the events of September 2001, I knew I needed to travel, to get out of the safe life I was living in my hometown.
That’s when my creative practices fell by the wayside. I would never give up those years of travel and camping and working random jobs, but when I look back, I see this is where I stopped making art.
Luckily, after the birth of my daughter in 2014, the desire to create came roaring back. At first, I was using a tiny corner of a bedroom in our small mountaintop rental house to paint. Eventually we bought a house, and I had the space to spread out, to keep my supplies on top of my desk, ready to paint whenever the urge struck.
That’s when I started noticing something important: Painting stilled me in a way that nothing else did. It eased my fears and anxieties in a way other practices (deep breathing, meditating) did not, at least not as consistently.
Painting is my peaceful place. Painting brings me directly into the moment, quickly and easily. You know how you’re supposed to stay mindful and present? That’s what painting does for me, no tips or tricks or timers or mantras needed.
Yes, I use other methods to quell my anxiety, but painting is my absolute favorite. I get to bring forth something new. I get to flow with wherever the brush takes me. I get to be still inside while the rest of the world drops away, all while allowing something beautiful to emerge.
When anxious thoughts start to swirl, I know what to do. I head into my studio, grab some materials, and start creating. Soon enough, the spiraling worries are gone and instead my mind is quiet.
Even if you aren’t artistic, even if you don’t have a creative bone in your body, I still think you can achieve the stillness I achieve when painting. You might not have a brush in your hand, though!
First things first: If you struggle with anxiety, you should seek the help of a licensed professional. As helpful as painting is, I also see a counselor, and the tools she’s given me are absolutely priceless.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here are the other ways I think stillness and peace can be found, even if you’re not meditating or breathing deeply while counting to ten.
Think back to what brought you joy and the feeling of flow when you were a child. Maybe for you it was playing sports or a musical instrument; writing your own sketches or training your dog to roll over. Whatever it was, look for ways to add more of it back into your life now.
Start paying attention to your life as an adult and what activities make you forget about the time. When are you fully immersed? When do you fully let go? Maybe it’s during a yoga or meditation class, but maybe it’s when you’re preparing a meal for your family or writing up a budget for work.
Still your mind any time you remember. I do this now, especially when I’m not painting. I know that a still mind releases my anxiety, and I also know I can’t paint all hours of the day. Simply noticing the feeling of my body on the chair below me or listening to the sounds in the room around me helps my mind to quiet.
I think the reason painting is so helpful for my anxiety is that, in order for me to be anxious, I have to be worrying about the future and what it holds. When I’m doing an activity that requires my full concentration, I have to be in the moment; there is no other choice.
All of the practices that we can use to find calm, whether it’s changing our thoughts, following our breath, repeating a prayer or mantra, they all rely on the same thing: bringing our presence to the now.
What activity brings you into the now? What makes you feel fully alive and entwined with the moment? It doesn’t matter if you’re artistic. It doesn’t matter if you like making things. The only thing that matters is finding a way to be here, in the now, instead of in the unknowable future.
**Artwork by the author, Jen Picicci
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The Magic of Rewriting Our Most Painful Stories
“When you bring peace to your past, you can move forward to your future.” ~Unknown
It amazes me how things that happen in our childhood can greatly impact our adult lives. I learned the hard way that I was living my life with a deep wound in my heart.
My father was a very strict man with a temper when I was little, starting when I was around seven years old.
He had a way of making me feel like all my efforts were not enough. If I scored an 8 in a math exam, he would say, “Why 8 and not 10?” and then punish me. It was a time when some parents thought that beating their children was a way to “put them in place” and teach them a lesson. All this taught me, though, was that I was a disappointment.
His favorite phrase was “You will never be better than me.”
As I got older, his temper cooled down a bit, but one thing didn’t change: his painful remarks. “At your age, I was already married, had a house, a car, two daughters, and a piece of land… what have YOU accomplished? See? You will never surpass me.”
It was his way of “inspiring me” to do better with my life, but it had the opposite effect on me. It was slowly killing my self-esteem.
When my father passed away, I was seven-year-old Cerise all over again. At the funeral, I asked him, “Daddy, did I finally make you proud? Did I do good with my life?”
This was the trigger that made me rethink what I was doing with my life. I had to stop for a moment to look at the past. This can be very difficult to do, but sometimes we need to face those painful events in order to understand the nature of our poor decisions and behavior.
It helped me realize that, unconsciously, I was looking for my father’s approval in the guys I dated. And you know what? It got me nothing but disappointment and heartache, because I was looking for something that they couldn’t give me.
Inside, I was still that little girl looking for her father’s love.
When you are a child, you are considered a victim, but when you are a grown up, it is your duty to heal from what was done to you. You just can’t go through life feeling sorry for yourself and complaining about the hand you were dealt. This just keeps you stuck in a sad, joyless life and jeopardizes your relationships.
In my case, I had to give that little girl the love she so needed in order to stop feeling lonely and stop making the same mistakes.
The only approval that I needed was my own! When I realized that, I started learning to love myself—regardless of my accomplishments—and I also developed compassion toward my father because I recognized that he was raised the same way he raised me.
He probably also felt he needed to be the best at everything he did in order to win his parents’ approval. And maybe he thought if I wasn’t the best at everything I did I would never be valued or loved by anyone else.
Understanding this enabled me to forgive him, break the cycle, and finally let him go.
So, what makes us slaves to anger, resentment, and abandonment issues? I think it’s the way we keep telling the story in our heads, and this is something that we can transform.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting we sweep things under the rug and pretend like nothing happened. We cannot change the past, and certainly we cannot turn a blind eye to it, but we can modify the way we retell the story to ourselves, and this can be a step toward inner healing.
I decided to give the difficult parts of my childhood experience another meaning. I edited the way I tell myself the story, and this is how it sounds now:
“My father was a strict man because he wanted me to succeed in life. He taught me to give my best in every task assigned to me; he didn’t make things easier for me because he wanted me to become strong in character and to find a solution in every situation. Daddy constantly challenged me because he wanted me to develop my potential to the fullest so I could face life and its difficulties.
I’m certain that when my father departed from this world, he did it in peace knowing that he left behind a strong and brave daughter.”
This is now the story of my childhood, and you know what? I think I like this version better! It’s helped me close the wound I had in my heart. My childhood left a scar, but it’s not hurting anymore.
My gift to you today is this: Close your eyes and picture a pencil. Do you know why a pencil has an eraser? To remove the things we don’t like, giving us the freedom to rewrite them into something that we feel more comfortable with.
You can’t change the facts from your past, but you can change how you interpret them, so feel rewrite as much as you need.
Your wounds will hurt a lot less when you broaden your perspective, try to understand the people who hurt you, and change the meaning of what you’ve been through.
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How to Stop Procrastinating When Things Feel Hard or Scary
“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise L. Hay
I dreamed of starting my own business for years. Ten years, exactly.
While there are a few reasons it took so long to take the plunge, procrastination is at the top of the list.
It’s hard work to change careers, uncomfortable to leave a steady paycheck, and nerve-wracking to think of failure.
Even after spending months and years learning, studying, and getting certified, when it was no longer a matter of having the skills, the uncertainty of success was enough for me to keep kicking the can down the road to start marketing myself.
I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of not being perfect. I was afraid that people would think I was a joke. And I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be capable of all the work it entailed.
So I dragged my feet and kept passing my work off to “Future Me.”
I did this for everything, though.
“Tomorrow Sandy” can do the dishes. She’ll take care of scheduling that doctor’s appointment. Oh, and sign her up for that tough conversation I need to have with my mom too.
At one point I recognized that I often procrastinated because I needed everything to be perfect.
- I wouldn’t work on a craft project or cook a new recipe unless I knew it would come out flawless.
- Or I would keep tweaking projects at work up to the last second and beyond, at the sacrifice of getting more work done.
- Or I would agonize over every text and email I sent, often opting not to send any message unless I knew exactly what to say.
But, as you can see, I’ve come a long way from that version of me.
I’ve since started my own business (and I’m loving it!), and I’ve pulled my best tools together on paper for how to stop procrastinating—even though I actually procrastinated on writing this post (ironic, I know!).
Today, I didn’t let my fear of “good enough” hold me back from sharing actual, helpful advice and mindset shifts to get moving and stop staying stuck.
Because when we’re stuck, we start telling ourselves stories. So that’s where we’ll start, with this story we tell ourselves about why we procrastinate.
What We Think Procrastination Is
We have this misconception that procrastination is laziness.
But procrastination is an active process. You choose to do something else instead of the task that you know you should be doing.
In contrast, laziness is not caring. It’s apathy, inactivity, and an unwillingness to act. It’s an “I could, I just don’t wanna” kind of attitude.
But when you’re procrastinating, you feel even more stressed because you do care about getting the task done. You’re just avoiding stress and having difficulty with motivation.
Because that is why we procrastinate.
What Procrastination Really Is and Why We Do It
Procrastination is a stress-avoidance technique. It is an active process to temporarily avoid discomfort.
We subconsciously are saying, “Present Me is not willing to experience this discomfort, so I will pass it on to Future Me.”
(We do this as though we’re asking a stranger to do the work for us. Researchers have seen on fMRI that when we think about our future selves, it lights up the same part of the brain as when we think about strangers.)
The really cool news is that by working toward overcoming your procrastination habit, you’re building your overall resilience to distress.
That is how I define resilience: a willingness to experience discomfort.
Examples of Procrastination
Procrastination is tricky. Sometimes it’s obvious that we’re doing it. Sometimes we don’t quite realize it (like when I had to water the plants right then and there instead of writing this blog post).
So here are some examples:
- Scrolling through Instagram instead of getting started on important tasks
- Putting off work assignments until the last minute
- Wanting to start a new positive habit (dieting, exercising, or saving money), but repeatedly delaying it while telling yourself that “I’ll start soon”
- Wanting to start a business but wasting time in “research mode” instead of taking action
- Doing an easy, less important task that “needs to be done” before getting started
- Waiting until you’re “in the mood” to do the task
5 Steps to Stop Procrastinating
Now that we know what it is and why we do it, let’s look at how to stop.
1. Motivate yourself with kindness instead of criticism.
What really holds us back from moving forward is the language we use when talking to ourselves.
Thoughts like:
- I don’t want to.
- It will be hard.
- I don’t know how to do it.
- It might not come out as good as I want it to.
- I’ll probably fail.
- This will be so boring.
This is what we think that drives us to procrastinate. I mean, really, when you read those thoughts, they just feel so demotivating, right?
This negative self-talk has a good intent. It is trying to save us from discomfort.
Unfortunately, it’s achieving the opposite because it adds to the stress by making us feel bad.
If you speak to yourself with kindness, just as you would a friend, it will feel so much more motivating.
So think about what you would say to that friend. It might sound like:
- I get it, it will be uncomfortable, but you’ll be done soon and then you can relax.
- Once you get started, it will be easier.
- You can do it!!
- If it doesn’t come out perfect, at least you’ll have practiced more.
- If you fail, you’ll have learned so much.
2. Create a pattern interrupter.
That negative self-talk has simply become part of your procrastination habit.
Because that is what procrastination becomes—a habit—and habits are comprised of a cue, a routine, and a reward.
- The cue is thinking about a task that needs to be done.
- The routine is to speak that negative self-talk that leads to procrastination.
- The reward is less stress. (Not no stress, because avoiding the task is still somewhat stressful because we know it eventually needs to be done.)
In order to break the habit and create a new one, you need to introduce a pattern interrupter.
Mel Robbins has a great one she calls the 5 Second Rule. When you think “I should do this,” before the negative self-talk starts in, count backwards, “5-4-3-2-1-GO” and move.
I find this helpful when I’m having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.
If I’m having trouble getting motivated to do something difficult like write a post about procrastination, my pattern interrupter is “I can do hard things.” Not only am I interrupting the pattern, I’m motivating myself positively as well.
If I’m having trouble doing a boring and tedious task like my taxes, I use something like “I’m willing to be uncomfortable now so that Future Me can be at peace.”
3. Break down the task.
One of the big drivers of procrastination is overwhelm. Overwhelm happens when we’re looking at a project in full scope, either not knowing where to start or feeling like all the work involved will be too much.
If the next task at hand is too big, or if you don’t know where to start, your first task really is to either 1) make a list, or 2) figure out the smallest thing you can do first.
The whole house is a mess? I bet you know where that one sock goes!
Another example, I had social anxiety and going to the gym was overwhelming to me.
So I broke it down into:
- I just need to put gym clothes in my car, that’s it.
- I just need to drive to the gym. I can turn around if I want once I get there.
- I just need to walk in the door. I can always leave.
- I just need to get changed in the locker room I can do that.
Honestly, I never turned around and went home. Because once I’d taken the small, easy step, the next small easy step was doable.
Which leads me to the next step…
4. Just commit to five minutes.
Studies show that if we commit to five minutes only, 80% of us are likely to continue with the task.
Five minutes is nothing. You can do anything for five minutes.
There is an 80% chance you’ll continue working once you put in those five minutes, but even if you don’t, you’re still five minutes closer to your goal.
And, you’ve taken one more step to breaking the old habit of not starting.
It’s a big win-win!
5. Reward yourself or make the task more enjoyable.
Another problem with looking at a big task in scope instead of the next five minutes is that the reward is too far away or not satisfying enough.
When you’re trying to lose weight, twenty pounds is weeks and months away.
Or, when you’re putting off your taxes, if you aren’t expecting a return then the reward is “not going to jail.”
So bringing in more rewards sooner will fast track creating the new habit of getting started.
But also, making the task itself more pleasant will make it a less monotonous task.
- To write this post, I put on my softest bathrobe and grabbed my baby’s tub from when he was an infant to make an Epsom salt foot bath under my desk while I write.
- I’ll be starting my taxes in the next few weeks, and I already plan to have a glass of wine and super fancy cheese and crackers while I sit down to do them.
- I save listening to super nostalgic nineties music for when I’m exercising just so that it makes that time extra special and fun.
What Would Open Up for You If You Stopped Procrastinating?
We spend so much more time avoiding the discomfort of a task than we do stepping into what it will be like once the task is complete.
If you were to stop procrastinating, what would open up in your life?
- Would you start your business because you’re no longer afraid of experiencing any discomfort if you “fail”?
- Would you simply enjoy life more if you weren’t in a perpetual state of stress because there is a list of things you’re putting off?
- Would you finally lose weight or get in shape and feel good once you push through being able to get started?
The Bottom Line
Procrastination is an active process to temporarily avoid discomfort (it is not laziness!)
By overcoming your procrastination habit, you are building your emotional resilience.
Notice the negative, demotivating self-talk and motivate yourself with kindness over criticism.
Create a pattern interrupter before the negative self-talk starts weighing you down.
Commit to just five minutes and you’ll either keep going to do more, or you’ll at least be five minutes closer to done.
Reward yourself or make the task more enjoyable so there is less discomfort to avoid.
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Congruent Depression: What It Is and How to Overcome It
“Not all of the depression that people experience is an illness… Unlike clinical depression, congruent depression is actually appropriate to your situation.” ~Dr. K
Every day is the same. Every day I’m stiff. Every day I’m tired. These are the two main things that people with fibromyalgia deal with. It’s been like that for a couple of years now. Six to be exact.
I’ve faced so much hardship all at one time: no job, no income, no friends, dealing with an emotionally immature/narcissistic mother, and not living where I want to live. All of this is making me sleep poorly.
It’s all been chaotic and stressful and hasn’t helped my fibro or been helpful since discovering my highly sensitive personality trait a year and a half ago.
I read that when you have fibro, you’re often depressed. However, anyone would feel mentally down in the dumps if they experienced these painful sensations all the time. Then for a little while, I started to believe that maybe I was truly depressed. I met all the criteria, after all.
So I hopped onto the free listener service, 7 Cups. I’ve been using it for almost two months, and it’s helped me somewhat. It‘s good to have somewhere safe to vent, to feel heard and validated. It’s also nice to know someone is actively listening to what you’re saying. Still, despite this intervention I’ve had days where I’ve felt down.
However, today, the clouds parted.
I watched a video on YouTube by Dr. K on congruent depression.
It’s a type of affective depression that occurs:
-When you’re in circumstances that you can’t control or have little control over
-When you have no fulfilling purpose
-When something is lacking from your life
This type of depression is actually normal. You’re experiencing a very human reaction to a slew of negative situations that you feel you have no power over. It is your body telling you that something needs to change.
It can also happen if you feel you have no direction, or the paths you’ve taken have always led to bad outcomes.
Congruent depression can be remedied if one does the following:
1. Find purpose of some kind.
Life purpose is complex nowadays, and our brains haven’t caught up. There’s very little physical labor needed to survive. Most of us don’t have to chop wood, work in fields, or trudge back and forth to a well, and I’m pretty sure no one rides horses on dirt roads. It’s harder to find true purpose when you don’t really need to do anything because everything is done by a machine.
But we can still find purpose by working on something that matters to us personally, fighting for causes that we believe in, finding ways to help other people, and pursuing our interests and passions.
2. Connect with people (to deflect loneliness).
As humans, we are wired to be social/connect, but our modern digital world doesn’t help with this. We’re the most connected we could have ever possibly imagined, yet we are very disconnected. I believe this, aside from social media, is also another factor in the increasing rates of suicide.
We need to connect with friends and family—face to face. And we need to really be present with them, honest with them, and open to their honest feelings so we can connect on a deeper level. When we can’t connect face to face, virtual connecting works just fine, so long as physical distance doesn’t turn into emotional distance. This is why I’m trying to post more to social media—so I can genuinely connect with people and feel less alienated.
3. Find some way to deal with mind-numbing boredom (that doesn’t involve gaming, binge watching, social media, etc.).
Our leisure activities in the hyper-digital age are all about consumption, not creation. There’s less painting, playing instruments, working with our hands—the kind of things that bring pleasure and joy to the person and society at large.
Find a hobby that you can immerse yourself in, something physically engaging and maybe even creative—something that will get you out of your head and into a state of flow.
4. Address the issues that contribute to your feeling of helplessness.
Re-locate, find another job, or break off toxic relationships, if these things are contributing to your depression. None of these things are easy, but just taking steps to create positive change can help you feel empowered and more in control of your life.
I’m actually considering moving at some point, pending COVID updates and my health, because I know this would go a long way toward improving my state of mind.
5. Focus on self-discovery/self-help.
Uncover your past traumas and commit yourself to healing. Work on identifying and overcoming limiting beliefs. Discover how you’re sabotaging yourself or holding yourself back so you can get past the blocks that keep you stuck.
It’s only by learning about oneself, without the input of others prejudices or judgments, that one can find peace and happiness.
*Self-help resources are free and plentiful nowadays. There are eBooks, podcasts, YouTube channels, blogs, websites, and Facebook groups to help with your personal development. You can also use astrology, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the enneagram to get a better look at yourself on an individual level. I personally have been using astrology and tarot to understand myself and have found both very helpful, and I’m loving the book Becoming Bulletproof by Evy Poumpouras.
You can take all the prescriptions you want, do all the therapy there is out there, but for many, these are costly, time-consuming Band-Aids. They are not fixing what’s actually wrong—the drudgery of working a dead-end job you hate, the pain of staying with an abusive spouse, etc.
That’s not to say taking medication or doing therapy is wrong. However, if you’re doing therapy and taking medication and nothing seems to improve, then you need to do more. You have to make actual changes in relationships, jobs, and lifestyles, to really feel different.
Medication and therapies are simply aids to help you regain a better footing in the physiological and psychological sense. The rest is truly up to you.
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10 Quotes You Need to Read If You Struggle with Anxiety
Have you ever received well-intentioned advice while facing intense anxiety, only to feel judged, misunderstood, or condescended?
Like, “Calm down!” Or “Just be positive!” Or “Don’t worry so much!”
The people who try to help generally want to do just that, but it’s always easier to advise someone when you’re not feeling what they’re feeling, because you have the benefit of rational thought—which goes out the window when fight-or-flight mode takes over.
And if you’ve never felt the depth of anxiety some of us experience—perhaps because you weren’t conditioned that way through trauma, or you’ve learned to block or resist your emotions—it’s hard to truly understand what it’s like or what it takes to get through it.
This is why I have appreciated reading stories and advice from people who’ve been there and truly get what it’s like. People who are intimately familiar with anxiety’s blood-pumping, heart-racing, mind-spiraling madness, and have both empathy and insight to offer.
Reading about their experiences and what’s been helpful to them always makes me feel a little less alone and a lot better equipped to handle the tornados in my head and my heart.
With this in mind, I decided to amass a collection of powerful quotes from anxiety posts through the years. I hope something here provides you with the same peace and comfort these thoughts have offered me!
10 Quotes You Need to Read If You Struggle with Anxiety
1. “Without a doubt, the most important thing to remember is that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed and stressed out. It’s okay to feel lost and unsure. It’s alright to have no idea how you’re going to hold it together sometimes. We put so much pressure on ourselves to be happy all the time. It’s okay to acknowledge when times are tough. It’s alright to feel anxious, even if it’s uncomfortable.” ~Ilene S. Cohen (from When You Feel Bad About Feeling Sad and Anxious)
2.”When you observe your thoughts, you’re able to choose which to believe and which to let pass. You can choose not to believe that someone else meant to hurt you, that you did something wrong, or you deserve to be judged. You can see these thoughts as nothing more than knee-jerk reactions to a perceived offense, and not reflections of reality or ideas you need to let influence your state of mind.” ~Kimberly Diaz-Rosso (from How to Stop Dwelling: A Simple Practice to Let Go of Anxious Thoughts)
3. “When you feel like running or fleeing, it’s time to face your fear with courage. Although our automatic response is often to run away, numb our feelings, or somehow distract ourselves, escaping only temporarily relieves anxiety. Fear will return, possibly in a different form, until you choose to confront it with kindness.” ~Carly Hamilton-Jones (from How to Tackle Fear and Anxiety, Cognitively, Behaviorally, and Spiritually)
4. “No matter how close to home anxiety hits, there is always a lie hiding in it somewhere. Maybe it’s based on a false belief. Maybe the problem doesn’t have to be dealt with as immediately as it feels. Maybe there are options we haven’t considered. But anxiety always—always—contains a lie. It might be big and in-our-face, or it could be small, tricky, and subtle. Look hard enough and we will uncover it… Finding the lie takes the teeth out of the anxiety.” ~Jason Large (from 4 Life-Changing Lessons for People Who Struggle with Anxiety)
5. “Instead of stuffing down your depression, anxiety, shame, loneliness—or whatever emotion you’re tempted to resist—ask yourself: What message is it trying to send to me? What would I do differently in my life if I listened to this emotion instead of suppressing it?” ~Kelly Martin (from How Embracing and Loving My “Negative Emotions” Helped Me Heal)
6. “‘I need to be doing something right now.’ This is an incredibly subtle belief that most of us don’t even realize we are holding onto. It stems from our obsession with productivity and achievement, and it manifests as a constant, itching discontent. Though our ego tricks us into believing we need this feeling to get things done, when we can let it go, we see a lot of our anxiety dissolves and our relaxation deepens. We’re also much more likely to enjoy what we need to do without the constant internal pressure of feeling that what we’re doing in this moment is never enough.” ~Benjamin Fishel (from 9 Beliefs You Have to Let Go if You Want to Find Inner Peace)
7. “When we draw conclusions about a situation without checking the facts first, we can escalate it into a full-blown crisis in our minds. In other words, our negative thinking can spiral out of control, rapidly increasing our anxiety, unnecessarily. That’s called globalizing. How we think about our circumstances can make all the difference in the level of stress we feel.” ~Paula Jones (from To Reduce Stress, Stop Globalizing and Put Things in Perspective)
8.“Eventually, it passes. It always does. We are left feeling drained or numb or depressed or ashamed. I tend to get angry… We recover, though, and that’s exactly why people who have panic attacks are warriors. We fight battles every day. We know the nature of The Beast. We don’t always know when he’ll strike, but we know that we will survive whatever he throws at us. We’ve faced death in our own way, and it hasn’t beaten us yet. We survived the last panic attack, and we’ll survive the next one. We have no choice.” ~Haley West (from Inside a Panic Attack: What It’s Like When Anxiety Strikes)
9. “Our primal brain is wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain; and anxiety is often caused by worrying about the potential pain that we might feel in the future. Sometimes we’re so afraid of emotional pain and loss that we forget that they can’t physically harm us. And this is where the saying ‘make peace with discomfort’ will serve you very well, because your ability to be uncomfortable is directly related to your ability to be a relaxed person. Sometimes we assume that we need to be comfortable in order to be relaxed. But sometimes being relaxed simply means feeling uncomfortable and being okay with that. The more discomfort you’re able to tolerate, the less you’ll worry about preventing it from happening.” ~Kari Dahlgren (from 3 Ways to Stop Worrying and Feel Less Anxious)
10. “In the middle of uncertainty-induced anxiety, our vision narrows, literally and metaphorically. Fight-or-flight takes over and our vision literally focuses sharply while our brain diverts resources to survival, leaving no energy for creative problem-solving. So, relax. Know that this is what is happening and remind yourself that there are options that you can’t possibly see right now. Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Acknowledge that there is a whole lot that you don’t know that you don’t know—and that some of those unknown, currently unforeseeable options will make you very, very happy.” ~Dr. Amy Johnson (from How to Feel Less Stressed About the Uncertain Future)
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Which of these quotes resonated most strongly with you? And are there other quotes you’ve found particularly comforting or helpful?
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The Cages We Live In and What It Means to Be Free
“Cages aren’t made or iron, they’re made of thoughts.” ~Unknown
I recently read Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, and like many who have read it, I felt as if it had changed my life—but not because it made me think of all the things I was capable of (as was the case with many of friends who read it), but because it made me realize how capable I had already been.
The book on the whole is beautiful and inspiring, but the part that stuck with me the most was the story about Tabitha, a beautiful cheetah that Glennon and her kids saw at a safari park and a lab named Minnie that had been raised alongside Tabitha, as her best friend, to help tame Tabitha.
Glennon watched as Minnie sprinted out of her cage and chased a dirt pink bunny that was tied to a jeep. Shortly after, Tabitha, who had been watching Minnie, ran out of her cage and chased the “dirty pink bunny” just like her best friend had just done.
Born as a magnificent, wild beast, Tabitha had lost her wild by being caged. She had forgotten her own power, her own strength, her own identity, and had become tamed by watching her best friend. But remnants of Tabitha’s inner wild came back to life when she walked away from the pink bunny toward the perimeter of the fence that was keeping her caged in. The closer she was to the perimeter, the more fierce and regal Tabitha became.
Glennon insightfully notes in the book that if a wild animal like a “cheetah can be tamed to forget her wild, certainly a woman can too.” And that’s when I wondered, had I also forgotten my own inner wild? Was I spending my time trapped inside a cage when I could be pacing the perimeter instead?
I beat myself up over that story for days while desperately trying to think of how I could break free of my metaphorical cage so I could find my way to the seemingly elusive perimeter that others seemed to have easily found and were already pacing.
I questioned why I hadn’t worked harder, pushed further, and done more to create the life I truly wanted, especially when it became painfully clear that the one I was living didn’t fit that description. And that’s when it suddenly hit me. Like a ton of bricks falling on me out of nowhere:
I didn’t need to make my way to the perimeter. I was already there. Truth be told, I had been there for most of my life, and it was so familiar to me that I didn’t even notice it anymore.
As I sat there in the midst of this comprehension, I looked back on my life and suddenly the steps to the perimeter all seemed to fall in place.
When I fell in a bucket of boiling water at two years old and put aside my own discomfort to comfort my mother who had broken down at the sight of my burned body, I took a step towards the perimeter.
When I moved to America at the age of seven and couldn’t understand the language and was instantly labeled as “stupid” but kept going anyway, refusing to let them define who I was, I took another step towards that perimeter.
When I watched my younger sister die of an incurable illness and kept her light alive inside of me by recognizing the beauty of her life and not just the heartache of her death, I moved closer to the perimeter.
When I said no to becoming a teacher or a doctor—an unfathomable and disgraceful choice for women of my culture during those times—I took another step toward the perimeter.
When I refused an arranged marriage, again disgracing my family in the process, the perimeter was directly in my sight.
By the time I took off for law school (much to my parents’ continuing dismay), the perimeter and I were practically face to face.
For a while I stayed at the perimeter, quietly stalking my surroundings with the same pride and inner fierceness as the cheetah who inspired these ramblings. But I now realize I was never meant to stay at the perimeter—I was always meant to go beyond it.
Until I did, I would remain trapped inside my own inner chaos. And the calm I was so desperately seeking would continue to evade me. That inner restlessness that just wouldn’t go away, that indescribable lack of fulfillment and the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach… those were all signs that I was ready to move beyond the perimeter. I was ready to uncage more than just myself—I was ready to uncage my soul.
That’s why I was repeatedly drawn back to certain people, programs, and even books. I was ready to free myself of all restrictions and for that matter, all perimeters.
The process hasn’t been easy. And at times, it has been beyond lonely. But it has also been rewarding, deeply healing, and transformative at the same time. And perhaps most importantly of all, it has allowed me to understand that in one way or another, we are all here to break free of the cages that have encased most of us for the majority of our life.
Some cages are imposed upon us by the thoughts and ideas of those around us, and other times we put ourselves into them, willingly. So we can avoid discomfort, pain, suffering, change, growth, and our own rebirth.
Sometimes they can even be helpful, but other times they do nothing but hold us back. The steel cages often tell us who to be, where to live, what we “should” do for a living, how to behave, and even who to like or dislike.
Often, the cages come in different colors, shapes, and sizes. Some are made of gold and filled with expensive toys and bribes to keep us from going outside of them. Their allure is simply too hard to resist for some people, even though they are often accompanied by gold shackles.
Others are sparkly and filled with all that glitters. The shine is so intense that their occupants don’t even know they’re in a cage. They’re so fixated with the glitter that they spend their entire lives confined inside and never even realize they’re no freer than the people they’ve been looking down on as being “trapped.”
And of course, there are some who live in small, dark, and dingy cages that they desperately want to escape but dare not try to because they’re so convinced that it’s safer, easier, and more comfortable to just stay.
Those are the people that are so afraid of their own power and the taste of true freedom that they probably wouldn’t leave even if the cage door was opened for them.
And then there are the brave. Those that are truly courageous and have no desire to be confined by any cage or any limits. Those are the people who will do whatever it takes to break the cage so they can set themselves and all of humanity free.
Those are the people who are roaming beyond the perimeter and have uncaged far more than their physical body—they have uncaged their very soul, and along with it, the many lifetimes of memories, wisdom, and truth it holds inside.
Those are the people I want to run with. Those are the people I want to call my tribe. Those are the people that, when I meet them, I’ll know I have found my home.
