Tag: wisdom
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Blinded by Our Diet Culture? How to Stop Hating Your Body
“Don’t change your body to get respect from society. Instead let’s change society to respect our bodies.” ~Golda Poretsky
Age thirteen—that was when my eating disorder kicked into full gear because our diet culture had its tentacles wrapped around me tightly. All I thought about all day was how I was going to control and restrict my food, then how I was going to burn it off.
I sought to burn off every calorie I ate. I couldn’t go to sleep at night unless I’d burned off most of what I’d consumed. I was obsessed with exercise and trying to morph my body into an unreasonable shape.
Thinness, that’s what I was seeking. I’d scroll through “ana” or anorexia forums online and gain inspiration from others. I’d swoon over protruding collarbones and thigh gaps. I was in eighth grade.
I have a distinct memory of tears streaming down my face, when I was fourteen, in the parking lot of the YMCA in my boyfriend’s car. Desperation and regret were washing over me like waterfalls. I couldn’t believe I had eaten something outside of my diet plan.
I had a roll of cookie dough in hand that I had just binged on. I wrapped it up and angrily threw it on the floor. Then I vowed to burn the sweet off by sweating on the elliptical and to never do that again.
Though inevitably I had sweets again. Or something that was high in fat. Or something that was too carb-y. There was no winning, I had myself trapped.
I’d even berate myself when I ate two granola bars because that was too many calories. I’d hide in the bathroom while at the beach in fear of being “too big.” Diet culture dogged my every step.
I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me, like I was broken, largely because of the messages I’d received from our culture—that I’d always have something that needed to be “fixed.” I lived my life as if that were true.
I read in Jes Baker’s book, Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls, that 81% of ten-year-olds are afraid of being fat, and these same ten-year-olds are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of cancer, war, or losing both of their parents.
That was me, terrified of weight gain. As a teenager headed into adulthood, I let the fear of gaining weight run my life. I developed a binge eating disorder, where I ate in private, and the shame, guilt, and remorse mounted.
At seventeen years old I was the heaviest I’d ever been, though still small by most people’s standards. My dad was hoping to buy me a car for high school graduation, but instead, I convinced him to pay $4,000 to send me to fat camp for thirty days. There I starved and worked out until I was ill.
They had us working out for hours a day, barely eating anything, and they restricted us from bringing in food from outside. We’d play running games, but also row on the lake that the camp resided on. Sometimes we would workout for upwards of six hours a day, so I got sick.
Sun sickness, exhaustion, and insufficient nutrition knocked me on my butt. I went home a few days early.
I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. The camp felt like a prison, but I also felt good about being there because I was on my way to being thin.
I hoped that maybe this weight loss would mean that I’d finally be enough. I felt like I had to be good enough for my boyfriend, despite him thinking that I was just fine as I was. I was convinced that I needed to be skinny in order to keep him around.
My weight continued to fluctuate: up, down, up, down. And you know what? No matter what diet, weight loss plan, or “lifestyle change” I tried, my total disdain for myself remained. When I hit my goal weight, I still hated myself.
It was baffling. I told myself when I hit x weight I would be good enough, but even when I reached my goal, my level of misery was the same. I was still stuck with me, the same me that is the same no matter what I weigh.
When I was talking to my AA sponsor about my dang weight plateau (even though I weighed less than my original goal), she asked me, “But, when will the weight loss ever be enough? What weight is ‘enough?’”
It didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks that day. I had been hearing the sentiment over and over again. When is enough, enough? But I knew then I was sick of the cycle.
What if I was enough just as I was? I began reading books like Health at Every Size and Bawdy Love. While reading these books I kept asking myself if diets and restriction were really the way to happiness. These books and others taught me, bit by bit, that I might just be an okay human without weight loss.
I started questioning the way I thought about things and vocalized my feelings about my body. Like, what if I played hockey for enjoyment rather than to burn off food I’ve eaten? What if I stopped berating myself to others and instead chose to talk positively about my body?
I slowly realized that I had more important things to worry about than how many calories I’d consumed and if I was thin enough for my date. Even before I was calling it body positivity, I was on a journey of self-acceptance.
I’d been so convinced that I possessed innate badness, but I started to wonder, what if that was a lie? Can I really be all that horrible? What if there was another way?
I had been studying Buddhism for years but got deeper into it right around the time that I was learning about body acceptance. That was when I found basic goodness, which is Shambhala’s Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s idea of discovering our inherent worth, our fundamental nature that cannot be obscured by anything like body dysmorphia or diet culture.
It didn’t happen overnight, but I slowly began to learn about my inherent worthiness.
I fought along the way. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a sense that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Trying to turn that around has been quite a feat. It’s taken daily kind self-talk, a body positive community, and professionals like a therapist and a Health at Every Size nutritionist.
It’s also taken my sangha’s love and wisdom. When I’m in the space of my center, whether it’s my local one or the land center tucked away a few hours north, I feel a sense of peace with myself and the world.
It’s not always so simple to say everything’s okay. There are many things that feel difficult to accept about me. Some days it’s my “fat” thighs (which are actually average-sized) and other times my jiggly tummy. Neither of these are bad things.
My “flaws” are actually things to celebrate about myself. My legs are strong enough to carry me around day-to-day and sometimes even go hiking! And I have a belly that digests all the delicious food I eat.
While it’s important to feel positive about certain aspects of myself, basic goodness runs a little bit deeper. It’s not “good” or “bad” in the sense we’re familiar with, rather it’s a naturalness that’s difficult to describe.
It started seeping into my life, though, and became very real for me. I started to have this deep feeling in my chest that reminded me that I’m fundamentally okay no matter what mistakes I make or flaws I think I have.
It helped that I tattooed the words “basically good” in giant letters on my forearm. I needed the reminder!
It didn’t just affect my relationship with my body, it bled out into different parts of my life. In connecting to my nature and understanding my own worth, I interacted with people differently. For example, I was better at setting boundaries and saying “no” because I realized I deserve respect. I also had more empathy for people who made horrible mistakes.
When I started to believe in my basic goodness I began to treat myself differently. When I heard those voices in my head telling me that I was broken, I gently dismissed them and moved on with my day. I replaced them with new thoughts like “you’re lovable just as you are.”
I dove right into body acceptance work. I started to practice intuitive eating, subscribed to the Health at Every Size movement, and became a body positive advocate on social media.
Experiencing intuitive eating manifested as learning to tune into my body and dropping the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” There were no longer “bad” foods in my life that I “shouldn’t eat,” and there were no longer exercises that I “should” be doing.
Rather, I learned that my body has inherent wisdom. It sends me hunger and fullness cues. It tells me when it doesn’t like something. It’s naturally emotional, providing me the opportunity to share joy with friends through a birthday cake.
My relationships with food and exercise go hand-in-hand. Exercise became an outlet to move my body and have fun. What a revelation! I didn’t have to punish myself in order to get moving. I could move just fine by playing hockey and taking walks.
Health at Every Size taught me many things, one of the biggest being that diets don’t work.
In the book Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight—and What We Can Do About It, author Harriet Brown cites statistics that show “over 45 million Americans will go on a diet at some point each year. All but 5% of them will gain the weight back in a year, and all but 3% of them will gain the weight back plus some extra in three years.
Many of us throw ourselves into dieting, thinking that it’s going to cure our problems and we’re finally going to be thin. It’s a sinkhole. The real solution isn’t an attempt to change your body. It’s connecting with that goodness deep inside of you.
From there, you can take better care of yourself. A meta-analysis of twenty-four studies published between 2006 and 2015 found that people were actually more motivated to exercise when the drive wasn’t from shame and guilt and instead focused on enjoyment.
The same goes for eating and anything else we do. When shame is the drive, everything suffers. On the other hand, if we’re operating from an understanding of our basic goodness, we actually want to care for ourselves.
One of the best tools I’ve found to care for myself and connect to my basic goodness is meditation.
Meditation isn’t the only answer to connecting to your basic goodness, but it’s the biggest. This practice may drum up images of monks on mountaintops, but everyone can do it and everyone can benefit from it.
It’s not about being perfect. It’s not even really about quieting your mind or becoming happy, though these are often welcomed side effects. Instead, it’s about making friends with what’s going on inside your own mind and in turn connecting with your body and realizing it’s doing a great job.
To listen to your body, things have to be clear. Pema Chodron made the analogy of a glass of water. If you put a tablespoon of dirt in the water and start stirring, everything’s all muddied.
This is equivalent to negative diet culture thoughts churning in your mind. Thinking about weight loss, calories burned, and steps taken are the dirt swirling. These kinds of thoughts often take you away from your intuition, or your state of calmness.
What if you stopped stirring, though? The dirt would go to the bottom and you could see clearly again; you could connect to your body’s needs.
Pema identifies this as our natural state, or state of basic goodness. When our relationship to our body comes from a place of love instead of punishment, many benefits can occur.
I’ve done much healing of my relationship with my body (and mind and spirit for that matter). I still have days where the old voices and habits creep in, but I connect to my basic goodness on a daily basis.
The best advice that I can share is to become connected to a body positive community. Connect with others who are on the same journey. Follow Instagram influencers like Megan Jayne Crabbe, Tess Holiday, and Virgie Tovar.
Learn about the topic of basic goodness. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche writes a lot about it, but you can also find more on the matter in books by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and Pema Chodron.
Tap into that basic goodness. Use meditation to connect and use Health at Every Size and Intuitive Eating practices to be embodied. Know that you are so good, no matter what.
Drop that diet culture garbage; it isn’t serving you. Remind yourself that your health is about so much more than weight. Lastly, work toward accepting your body; it’s the only one you’ll get.
For me, it’s a journey. I’ll never achieve the perfect level of accepting my basic goodness and my body. We can talk all day about the best tactics to achieve freedom, but there are going to be plenty of days when I fall short.
I just want to make it clear that, like many things, having a healthy relationship with our bodies is a practice. Fundamental worthiness and body acceptance have changed my relationship with myself for the better, for sure. But I’ll always be learning and growing.
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How to Make Vulnerability Your New Superpower
“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” ~Leonard Cohen
We human beings are social creatures. For the most part, we like to be with people, and we want people to like to be with us. The trouble is that we get all tied up in trying to communicate a version of ourselves that we think people will find attractive.
We want to appear successful, interesting, in control—and a winner! To keep up this image, we work hard to hide away the parts of ourselves that we are not sure about, or we feel don’t work so well. The last thing we want to do is appear weak or somehow insufficient. So, we project some kind of perfect version of ourselves that will ensure that we are loved and wanted.
The truth is that it’s impossible to keep this act together. Inevitably a moment comes when something gets to us so strongly that we can’t pretend any longer. We appear as we actually are—flawed, brave, struggling, and absolutely human.
This is the moment when we can experience vulnerability as a superpower. When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we are not pretending, we are not hiding—we are simply present with whatever is going on inside us. Ironically, it is this very feeling of authenticity that draws people to us, not the brittle effort of perfectionism.
Zero Tolerance for Vulnerability
For many of us, our upbringing did not teach us how to be vulnerable; we’ve had to learn as we’ve faced the challenges life’s put in our way.
My mother was an Ulster Protestant from a large, working-class family with no patience for emotional frills. Her family was loving but tough, and she brought me up in the same way. I was her first child—emotional, sensitive, curious—and had to bear the brunt of everything she missed about Ireland when she decided to marry an Englishman and settle in London.
From my early years, I can remember my mother urging me to hide my feelings from other people and never, ever let them see when I was hurting or in pain. She warned me that if I did, then I would be seen as showing weakness, and then I would be fair game to be taken advantage of, and ultimately, made a fool of.
She was my mother, and she was trying to protect me by instilling in me the values she herself had grown up with. It took me years—and sometimes I still fall back—to realize that the voice in my head urging me not to make a fool of myself, to keep my distance, was my childhood internalization of my mother’s fears.
The idea of finding strength in allowing myself to be vulnerable was a remote flicker on the edge of my consciousness.
Shame as Vulnerability’s Implacable Enemy
Brené Brown is a leading researcher into shame and vulnerability. She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”
Kristen Neff, a well-known self-compassion researcher, tells us that shame was the evolutionary way of hiding our defects from others so that they would include us in the group. Being kicked out of the tribe meant certain death.
For shame to exist, it needs secrecy, silence, and a sense of judgment. It’s very hard for us to speak out about the things we are ashamed of. So, when we make a mistake, it’s more automatic to try and cover it up or blame someone else than to admit that we got something wrong—because then we’d be showing that we are vulnerable.
My Own Story of Shame and Vulnerability
There came a moment in my life when it became clear that I was unable to have children. I had always wanted a large family, and the idea of having no children at all was devastating.
Of course, there was a tremendous grief to deal with, but what took me unawares was the intense feeling of shame. My younger sisters were starting families, as were several of my friends, and I felt excluded from an important female rite of passage. My parents’ disappointment was palpable—never mind that other areas of my life were going well; I was not going to be a mother.
I remember how drawn I was to babies and young children, viewing them as if from the other side of a huge divide. One awful day I found myself walking around the baby department of a large department store, looking at all the tiny outfits and toys. I realized how nervous I was, guiltily looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching me.
There was a voice in my head saying, “You are not a proper woman. Don’t hang around in here; they will be on to you and throw you out. You have no right to be here!”
It was so insidious that I left the store.
Instead of caring for my sorrow and accepting my feelings of vulnerability, I felt inadequate and ashamed. It seemed I was the worst person on the planet, someone who had no right to even think of being a mother. Eventually I was fortunate enough to find an excellent counselor at a woman’s center who helped me work it through and accept my situation without shame.
Recognizing Another Person’s Vulnerability Helps You Accept Your Own
I remember feeling so ashamed of not being able to have children that I forgot all the other people who discover that they are infertile for one reason or another. My feeling was that I was the lowest of the low and that nobody could be as pathetic as I was. Many years later, while having radiotherapy treatment, a very different perspective opened up for me.
Anyone who has had cancer and undergone a period of radiotherapy knows that it involves a daily visit to the hospital, five days a week, for a number of weeks. You show up to the same place every day and meet the same hospital staff—you become a regular.
The thing you don’t tend to think about so much is that just as you are turning up every day, so are a whole bunch of other people. You get to recognize some of them; you maybe even get to talk a bit. Most of the time, people come with a partner, a family member, or a friend.
You can always tell which person is sick—they have an air of vulnerability about them. You can see their friend doing their best to care for them. There was a deep sense of care and even love in the waiting area.
I remember an elderly woman who had obviously already been through chemotherapy. She was wearing a wig, but it did not fit so well. I saw her husband gently straighten it on her head with such tenderness. It brought home to me that vulnerability is part of the human condition.
We all have to face stuff that challenges us and frightens us. No one is immune to suffering and pain. As human beings we are all in the same boat, doing our best to navigate our way through whatever life puts in our way.
Seeing other people as vulnerable helped me to accept my own vulnerability. Allowing myself to be vulnerable was a tremendous relief, a starting place for some kind of self-awareness.
Observing all these people facing their fears and anxieties with patience, and quiet dignity, brought home to me that it’s when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable that we can find our deepest courage and strength.
The Japanese art of Kintsugi
I came across this art form almost by accident. Broken pottery is mended with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Instead of trying to mend the pieces invisibly, hiding the fact that they were ever broken, the cracks are transformed into decorations. The pieces become more valuable because of their flaws.
For me, this is the perfect symbol of vulnerability as a superpower. We move from trying to hide it to accepting that it is there and arrive at a place where we can transform the lessons we have learned into wisdom and understanding.
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How a Creative Hobby Can Boost Your Mental Health
“The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.” ~Neil Gaiman
A few years ago I wrote an article about my personal experience with bulimia. The piece was published by several different media channels, and some time afterward I was interviewed by CNN.
It was the first time I had publicly and explicitly spoken about that particular part of my journey. But the desire to acknowledge and address the emotional effects of my experience had been present for some time.
Prior to writing the article, I hadn’t felt ready to lay myself bare in such a direct way. However, I instinctively knew that I needed a means of self-expression that would allow me to speak of what I’d been through without being quite so specific.
That’s where creativity came in.
I began using photography as a way of expressing everything I was still too vulnerable to verbalize. It was a beautiful revelation for me to realize that I could share my thoughts and feelings in an abstract way. I could pour my pain into the creation of something new. This was a crucial step in my recovery.
I’d begun binging and purging as a way to avoid my feelings after the breakdown of my marriage. I had fallen out of love with my husband, and I was carrying a tremendous amount of guilt inside me, constantly feeling as though I’d failed my family and friends by not being able to make my relationship work. I hated myself for walking away from my marriage, for daring to want more.
I was also dealing with intense pressure at work and financial stress, all of which had left me feeling as though everything was out of control.
Bulimia had given me the illusion of control, but it was also a way of punishing myself for not being able to stay in a relationship that everyone else expected me to be content with.
Mental health issues are often accompanied by feelings of shame and guilt. We tell ourselves that we should be able to handle everything, that we shouldn’t be placing a burden on our loved ones. It’s a self-destructive cycle that has the potential to send us spiraling.
Although creativity doesn’t act as a magic wand, it does give us an opportunity to take a breath and gain a greater understanding of what’s going on internally. We can use creativity as a means of translating ourselves to ourselves.
Photography became a lifeline for me. I could capture texture and shadow, play around with light and motion. I could convey some of the darkness that was still haunting me, but instead of succumbing to my feelings, I was able to build something from them.
I also began to use poetry and creative writing as tools to help me channel my emotions. The personal value of this was enormous. In creativity I had a friend, a means of telling my own story in my own way, and a source of strength and support that I could rely upon to be there for me.
Here’s how a creative hobby can help us cope with mental health issues:
1. Creativity reminds us that we have the ability to effect change, and it also helps us be more present.
When we are experiencing mental health challenges, it can be easy to fixate on the fear that there won’t be any light at the end of the tunnel. When I was dealing with bulimia, I would obsessively weigh myself every morning and every night. If I were away from home or in a place where I didn’t have access to a bathroom scale, I would feel a sense of rising panic. I couldn’t imagine a time when I would be free of the need to control my weight.
Immersing ourselves in creativity can help us believe in our ability to heal, grow, and change because we are actively participating in the production of something new.
Whether it’s baking, gardening, painting, dancing, sculpting, or any other creative pursuit, we are taking an idea and breathing life into it.
This not only helps to keep our focus on the present moment, thus alleviating future fears, but it also gives us the additional benefit of shaping and impacting an outcome through our efforts.
When we create, we are combining imagination and resourcefulness. We are envisaging an end result and then taking action to make it happen. This adds to our personal skill set and emboldens us to have the same courage in other areas of our life.
Whenever I’m revisited by old demons that threaten to topple me, I create something. Anything. The act of creating helps me to re-center and focus on my abilities, rather than obsess about my perceived shortcomings. It also helps me step outside myself, shift my perspective on my challenges, and remember what’s truly important.
I recently herniated a disc in my back and was unable to practice yoga with as much ease as usual. As I lay on my mat at home one morning, feeling frustrated at my body for failing me, I began to slip into some old self-talk about not being good enough.
But then I noticed the pattern that the sunlight was projecting on the wall beside me. I took my phone and snapped a photo. As the light shifted again once more, I was reminded that nothing is static and everything is always changing. My energy automatically lifted.
Creativity teaches me about trust and impermanence and also expands my sense of awareness. The simple act of witnessing and photographing the moving light was enough for me to remember that each day is full of beauty. I don’t want to miss any of it by wasting my energy on criticizing my body.
2. Creativity enables us to process some of what we’re feeling without the intensity of putting ourselves under a microscope, and it can also help us meet our needs.
We’re not always ready to closely examine every experience. We’re not always comfortable talking things through, or wading into the depths of our pain or trauma. But we need to work through these feelings, or else they’ll lie beneath the surface, limiting and controlling us.
Creativity can offer us a safe space in which we’re able to release some of our emotional weight without over-analyzing. We eliminate the scrutiny but still receive the benefit of self-connection.
When we’re able to connect with what we’re really feeling—whether it’s anger or regret or disappointment—and then channel that into a creative project, we are less likely to engage in behaviors that are numbing or harmful. Which means we actually work through the feelings instead of just distracting ourselves from them.
Creativity can also be a compass. It’s a way of identifying an inner need and then permitting ourselves to meet that need.
Perhaps you are craving more vibrancy or flavor in your life. Being creative might mean choosing bright, bold fabrics to make a clothing item, or being experimental in the kitchen with new cuisine.
And just as creating something from nothing can help us believe in our ability to create change in other areas of our lives, meeting some of our needs through creativity can empower us to meet other needs—the need for self-care or boundaries, for example.
When we’re struggling with mental health issues, it’s easy to minimize or neglect our needs, but this only prolongs our healing. Creativity helps us trust our intuition and follow our instincts. It isn’t necessarily a substitute for therapy, but it can play a pivotal role in helping us build confidence and resilience, enabling us to both work through how we’re feeling and take good care of ourselves.
3. Creativity enables us to connect with others and build community.
Common mental health issues such as depression or anxiety can lead to social withdrawal and isolation, increasing feelings of loneliness and heightening the body’s stress responses.
Creativity is a wonderful way to connect with others. Social media platforms provide us with ways to share our creativity and spark conversation with people who have similar interests. When I first began blogging online, I was amazed at how quickly I was able to become part of a supportive community, many of whom I’ve since met in person.
Most libraries or community centers offer group arts and crafts classes. These are fantastic opportunities to establish local connections and circle with others. I recently attended a free creative sculpture workshop at the New York Public Library. I had no previous experience, and my creation was far from perfect—none of that mattered. It felt amazing to come together with other people and make something.
We are all creative beings. Experimenting with different mediums can be a wonderful way to find out what sparks joy and brings comfort. You don’t have to be an expert. Remember, perfection is not the goal; you’re simply making your world a little brighter.
My journey with creativity has given me more than I could ever have anticipated. It may not always change external circumstances, but inwardly there’s a shift every single time. An easier breath. A blank canvas and a fresh start. A reminder that I can begin again and again, as many times as necessary. And sometimes that’s all we need to be okay.
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How to Make Your Life Matter (Even If It Lacks Purpose and Direction)
“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
“Calm yourself down. It’s okay. All is well.”
I clung to the sterile white table while the laboratory was spinning around me.
“It’s just an anxiety attack. It will be over soon.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, forcing my lungs to expand against the tightness in my chest. Cold sweat trickled down my spine as I battled the all-consuming feelings of overwhelm, panic, and disappointment.
My life was going nowhere.
How had this happened? I thought I had a plan.
I had chosen a promising career in science to make a positive contribution. I’d dedicated myself to changing the world, gaining recognition, and creating a legacy. So my life would matter.
And yet, I felt empty. Aimless. Unhappy.
I was stuck in a pointless treadmill of work, eat, sleep, repeat. I had no social life, no hobbies or passions. I focused solely on my research, hoping to enrich other people’s lives.
But instead, I added to pharmaceutical companies’ profits. I made no difference to anybody. And I was way behind in my career compared to other people my age.
I lay awake at night, disillusioned and frustrated, beating myself up for my miserable failure, drowning in hopelessness, anxiety, and worries.
What if I died tomorrow without leaving a mark on the world? Vanished without a trace, my insignificant life instantly forgotten?
What if my existence was meaningless?
I stood in the middle of the deserted lab, tears streaming down my face. Everybody else had left to enjoy their evening. Their lives had direction, happiness, purpose. They counted.
What was wrong with me?
As despair washed over me, I knew I couldn’t go on like this. I had to find my true purpose in life. Before it was too late.
My Hopeless Search for Purpose and Direction
After my fateful (and humiliating) breakdown in the lab, I embarked on a quest to find my true purpose, determined to make my life matter.
I studied countless blog posts, articles, and self-help books. Desperate to discover the secret to filling my life with meaning, I absorbed every piece of information available on the topic.
Most writers agreed that we have to focus on the things we love, and use them to contribute to society.
The problem was that I had concentrated all my time and effort on pursuing an academic career. It had seemed a sensible choice at the time, with excellent prospects of achieving purpose and impact. But it had never been my passion.
And I was now at a dead end, without a clue about what I loved, because my whole life was purpose-driven.
I never went for a walk in the sun unless I could pick up some shopping on the way. I never spent time in the garden unless I could pull out some weeds at the same time. And I had abandoned my favorite hobbies of jigsaw puzzles and crochet because I thought they were useless activities.
I felt guilty and lazy when I wasted precious time on them. Time that could be spent doing something productive and significant.
For months, I obsessed over finding something I loved that also had purpose, but nothing I felt passionate about seemed important enough to lend meaning to my life.
Growing more anxious, frustrated, and desperate by the day, I prepared myself to settle for an unfulfilling half-life, devoid of purpose, meaning, and direction. Maybe I had no purpose; maybe my life was too irrelevant to matter.
But then, a thought popped into my mind that changed everything.
What if the crucial question wasn’t “What’s my purpose in life?” but “Why is having purpose so important to me?”
My True Motivation for Seeking Purpose in Life
Having purpose enriches us. Knowing we can use our gifts to improve our community, better society, and enhance people’s lives, we experience joy. A deep feeling of satisfaction, connection, and fulfillment.
But, as I dug deeper, I discovered that none of this really motivated my relentless search. At least not primarily.
The truth was that I so desperately sought purpose in my life because, somehow, I believed that I had to justify my existence.
It was as if I didn’t deserve to live if I didn’t have a purpose. As if I was unworthy of love and happiness until I could offer something useful to the world—until I had important achievements and contributions to show for myself, and was somehow special, somehow more.
So, the pursuit of purpose became the sole purpose of my life. And my failure to identify what could give my life meaning left me feeling pointless, stressed, and ashamed.
All because of one devastating misunderstanding.
The Tragic Reason Why We Obsess About Our Purpose
I spent my entire life chasing my purpose—desperate to achieve the one important contribution to mankind that would make me special, that would earn me recognition and approval and justify my existence—because, deep down, I believed that I was worthless.
I considered myself an empty vessel, devoid of value and significance. I assumed that I had to gain worth through my accomplishments, successes, and qualifications. That I needed purpose and a clear direction in order to gain some worth and finally deserve happiness.
The absence of purpose in my life created a painful worth deficit. I felt inferior to others who made valuable contributions and earned admiration, approval, and status.
I mattered less. I was irrelevant because I was useless to society.
It was my perceived lack of worth that made me feel empty and meaningless. And the only cure I could see was to find that extraordinary purpose that would make me worthy.
So, I searched more and worked harder. I sacrificed every activity that didn’t seem meaningful and important enough to increase my worth, irrespective of how much I loved it.
Foregoing all joy, I burnt myself out hunting for my purpose. So I could prove that my life mattered. So I could convince the world of my worth—and my right to exist.
In the process, I missed the purpose of my life altogether.
The Empowering Secret to Living a Worthy Life
I thought I would never be useful enough to have worth, which meant my life would never matter, but I was wrong.
And I realized it on the day I first cradled my newborn daughter. Looking down at the tiny bundle in my arms, there was no doubt in my mind that she was worth. That she deserved all the happiness and love in the world.
Yet, she had no accomplishments to her name. She’d made no contributions to mankind and society. She had no concept of purpose, goals, or direction.
Yet she mattered, simply because she existed.
In this very moment I understood that we cannot have worth. It’s not something we earn, gain, or lose.
Worth is the essence of our being. An absolute, inherent, unchangeable part of who we are.
We are worth personified. Every one of us is 100% worth. From the day we are born to the day we die. And beyond.
Having a purpose, a goal to work toward, can enhance our life, add to our happiness, and enable us to contribute to the world. But it won’t change anything about our worth, which is unconditional, unlimited, and independent of our actions.
Success, accomplishment, and focused direction won’t increase our worth. And failure cannot diminish it.
Because we are worth. We are wonderful expressions of life. And as such, we matter.
Finding a Way Out of Worthlessness
And so, five years after the day in the lab that started my journey, I abandoned my unhealthy quest for purpose and focused on accepting my true, inner worth instead.
Countless times a day I affirmed: “I am worth.”
I reminded myself of my infinite worth every time I felt useless. I repeated the affirmation when I struggled with my meaningless, aimless existence. And I tried to remember the truth whenever I beat myself up for not being important enough.
At first my mind resisted, stressed by the change of priorities.
Too many years it had held the belief that I was worthless, and that purpose was a prerequisite for worth and, ultimately, happiness.
I ignored it as well as I could, stubbornly affirming my worth, over and over again.
And step by step, day by day, my understanding of my true worth grew, and the compulsive need for purpose weakened.
Until one day I was liberated. I felt free to explore my passions, enjoy all my unproductive hobbies, and fill my entire house with crochet doilies. Without guilt, without feeling I was wasting my time on idle indulgences.
I even found joy in my profession as a scientist once the crushing pressure to achieve, outperform, and impress had been lifted. Once I no longer expected it to give me purpose.
And I could relax. Knowing that, sooner or later, some purpose would reveal itself to me, without having to be forced, simply because I was focusing on the things I loved.
The Liberating True Purpose of Your Life
When I was convinced of my inherent worthlessness, I sought purpose as a means to deserve happiness, while I abandoned the things that actually made me happy because they lacked purpose!
Looking back, the irony makes me cringe.
I now believe the purpose of life is to be happy. To grow, thrive, and experience life to the full. To worry less about our achievements, productivity, and the meaning of our life and to prioritize the things we enjoy. Even if they serve no purpose at all.
Because the only way to make your life matter is to make it matter to you. To know your true worth and contribute your unique perspective to this world.
So, be kind and compassionate. Take care of your loved ones, and yourself.
Help and support others. Not because you have to earn worth, but because you want to improve their lives.
And do what you love as often as you can. Walk in the sun, sit on the beach, lie in the grass. Just because it feels good.
Do it without feeling guilty or beating yourself up for the lack of purpose. Without fear over whether you are important enough, useful enough, influential, significant, or deserving enough.
Because, at the end of the day, purpose can add to your happiness, but it’s not a prerequisite for it. You don’t need a mission, purpose, a direction for your life to be worth living.
You don’t have to justify your existence or prove your worth. Not to your parents or your family; not to your friends, your boss, or society.
Not even to yourself.
Because you are worth personified. You matter. Right here, right now.
And as long as you enjoy walking your path, no matter how aimlessly, your life has meaning.
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How I’m Healing the Vulnerable, Rejected Kid Inside Me
“In case no one told you today: You’re beautiful. You’re loved. You’re needed. You’re alive for a reason. You’re stronger than you think. You’re going to get through this. I’m glad you’re alive. Don’t give up.” ~Unknown
I was fourteen years old and it was a holiday of firsts: my first holiday away from my family with my school and my first holiday abroad, where I had my first real crush.
For the two weeks I was away, I was caught up in a flirtation with a boy from one of the other schools. I had to pinch myself when he said yes after I’d struck up the courage to ask if he would meet me at the disco on the last night.
The disco was everything I wanted it to be; we laughed, we danced, and I had my first kiss. If there is such thing as cloud nine, that’s where I woke the next morning. Still in a romantic haze (well, as romantic as a fourteen-year-old can get), I went to wave off the boy I’d begun to think of as my “Prince Charming” for what would be our last goodbye.
But the fairy tale romance didn’t work out the way it had played out in my fourteen-year-old imagination. As I walked up expecting an embrace, he didn’t even want to make eye contact, then he turned his back on me.
I’ll never forget the feeling of rejection. It was like my whole being was blocked off and cast aside.
Still hoping for that dream goodbye, I waited until he got on the bus, thinking maybe I had been mistaken. That’s when it happened: surrounded by his friends, looking through the window, he was pointing at me, pretending to stick his fingers down his throat, implying being sick, and making gestures about my weight.
“Prince Charming” had actually led me on as a bet, as a joke to his friends. I was the joke. I don’t know how, but somewhere inside I had the strength to keep my tears in, probably because I didn’t want to deal with the humiliation of what had just happened in front of everyone (including my friends).
Twenty-one years on, and for as long as I can remember, when I recall the experience I feel the exact pain—the feeling of rejection and not feeling good enough—as I did at that very moment.
That, right there, was the beginning of my low self-esteem, which later manifested into an eating disorder, anxiety, and being in toxic and abusive relationships. I accepted physical, emotional, and sexual abuse because I didn’t want to feel the feeling of rejection again.
It was only recently, when I retold the story to my therapist, that I realized what a life-defining moment it had actually been, and recognized the narrative I had given myself.
As I began recalling the experience, I started “When I was fat, ugly, and spotty I had this experience… No wonder he didn’t like me.” There it was: that one life-defining moment had played out a narrative that all my being wasn’t good enough. As a result, I sought acceptance and approval from others, and accepted their opinions of me as my truth.
As I’ve started to process not only what happened but also the huge impact it’s had on my life, these are the things I have learned and what has helped me to begin to heal:
1. We are good enough, and what really matters is how we feel about ourselves.
At first I found it difficult, but I had to start believing that I was lovable, good enough, and that the only opinion of me that really mattered was my own. As I began practicing telling myself “I love you,” my whole body would tense, and I’d feel wrong for saying it. As I kept practicing, I slowly began to realize that I could love myself. I even had a small ceremony sealing my commitment to myself!
Having struggled with self-love for nearly thirty years, I found it easy to slip into seeking approval from others at times. On the days I felt weak I looked at my commitment ring as a reminder of my love and acceptance for myself. On these days I gave myself the permission to feel whatever emotion I needed to feel.
I’ve learned that we are each the one person we are guaranteed to wake up with for the rest of our lives, so we need to make ourselves our main priority. Instead of putting others on a pedestal and seeking their approval, we need to instead change our hierarchy of love so that we’re sitting at the top.
We deserve love, but that love needs to begin within us.
2. What would your present self like to say to the hurt person from long ago?
As I sat with the pain of my fourteen-year-old self, I had an overwhelming urge to hold myself tight, providing a force field of safety where no one could hurt me.
As the tears began to flow, I told myself how beautiful I was compared to the boy who had ridiculed me; any person who feels the need to humiliate a person for a joke is not deserving of my love or respect.
As I stayed with the moment I felt every emotion I could feel—sadness, fear, anger, and then, just as the feelings flooded through me, the weight of the emotions I had held for so many years began to dissolve.
Talking to our vulnerable self may seem a bit weird at first, I get it, but it’s worked for me. By going back in our minds and being there for our vulnerable younger self, it’s like having a superhero swoop in to protect us, only even more empowering because we are the superhero, minus the spandex and cape.
No matter what has happened in our pasts, we have the opportunity to give ourselves the wisdom and words of hope we wish we had heard at the time. If it’s difficult to do this, think about what you would say to a best friend if they had a similar experience. We’re often much more compassionate toward our friends, so try to see yourself in that same loving light.
3. Where has the need for validation from others come from?
Having committed to love and accept myself, I knew I owed it to myself to go deeper to work out why I had relied so much on others for approval.
My reflections led me to think of my upbringing, growing up with parents affected by alcoholism. Following violent outbursts I felt I was to blame for what had happened; I felt that I deserved the abuse. In fear of further violent outbursts I began people-pleasing and seeking approval from others in order to feel safe. At my core I felt unlovable.
I then realized that when the fourteen-year-old boy had ridiculed me it had only reinforced how I had felt inside, and made me further believe that I was unlovable. I was then able to look at how I had acted and behaved from then onward, reinforcing those core beliefs.
I realized I had accepted poor behavior and abuse from others because I felt I “deserved it.” I also engaged in self-sabotaging behaviors in the form of an eating disorder and drinking to excess.
Delving deep inside may not be an easy task, and it may be something that we put off, or don’t do at all. We may be connecting to a part of ourselves that we may have kept hidden for years, even decades, for fear of being rejected. But, when we have the ability to do this important work, we are finally giving that vulnerable part of ourselves a voice and an opportunity to say what it needs to heal and finally get its needs met.
4. Nourish, nourish, nourish.
For close to three decades I had hidden that vulnerable part of myself and turned to my eating disorder for comfort, believing that others would reject me for being fat and ugly if I let it go. I now know I need to connect to the part of myself that has been abandoned for so long. I need to nourish it, and give it the love it has deserved all this time.
While hard at first, when I’ve eaten, I’ve reminded myself how the food will nourish me. When I’ve exercised, I’ve remembered how the exercise is nourishing my body. When I’ve sat in meditation, I’ve reflected on how good it has felt to nourish my soul.
These small acts of kindness have already had a positive impact. I haven’t found the need to emotionally eat or purge. I have more motivation, as I’m doing things from a compassionate place of self-love. I am also finally able to look in the mirror and utter the words “I am enough” and “I love myself” (and mean it).
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No matter what happened to us in the past, we have the opportunity to rewrite our narrative for our future. We have the opportunity to love and accept ourselves as a whole, including the vulnerable parts that we may have hidden as a way of self-preservation.
With each day we begin to meet our own physical, emotional, and spiritual needs the layers of self-loathing will be replaced with self-love and acceptance.
Be kind to yourself. xx
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How to Heal a Broken Heart Using Mindful Self-Compassion
“It’s not your job to like me—it’s mine.” Byron Katie
Why are breakups so painful? Whether we are the dumper or the dumpee, the range of emotions we feel is universal: devastation, sadness, and anger. Oh, and there’s the acute pain, as if your heart had been gouged from your chest, stabbed a dozen times with a butter knife, and booted to the curb.
Am I right?
Of course I am. I’ve been there. We all have. I intimately experienced a broken heart and its rippling effects when my partner and I ended our seven-year relationship. I admit that I was the architect of the break-up. I was mostly shut off, insecure, and jealous during the tenure of the relationship. Our breakup was sticky. It was messy. It was ugly…downright.
As if the pain isn’t enough, we can’t sleep, we lose our appetite or eat like a cow, we stop bathing, we look homeless, and we watch YouTube playlists of How to Get Your Ex Back in Thirty days. Sad days.
You see, a breakup is a loss. It’s a death of a relationship. It’s a death of an identity that was entangled with our ex partner. The stages of a breakup are similar to grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It’s no wonder we’re a mess when we split from an ex.
The good news is that there is an antidote to our hot-messed-up heart: mindful self-compassion.
What is Mindfulness?
When I first came across the practice of mindfulness, I had a difficult time grasping it: to be aware on purpose, in the present moment, without judgment. Huh?
What I found helpful was to understand its opposite: mindlessness.
In the past I often turned to food to make myself feel better. During the breakup I gorged mindlessly, frequently finishing pints of ice cream and large bags of chips and popcorn without ever being present to the eating.
For example, one particular day I was listening to music and a song came up that reminded me of my ex. Instantly, I became sad. This prompted me to grab a bag of popcorn and start eating. Next thing I knew the bag was almost empty. Then I muttered to myself, “I’m such a fat cow.”
When our brain is on autopilot, we are not present in our experience of life. In the case of the popcorn, I had been mentally checked out, lost in my thoughts of my ex, as I nearly finished the bag. Then I chastised myself for it.
Studies have shown that when our minds wander, we’re unhappy. When I look at my own life, I see that being mindless, not mindful has led to a lot of suffering in the forms of anger, shame, anxiety, and depression.
The practice of mindfulness, then, is to pay attention, on purpose, to what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling (emotions and bodily sensations), and what is happening in our environment, without judging it.
In other words, we are an engaged and impartial observer to what we’re experiencing in the present moment. We don’t use labels or preconceptions, and we don’t believe our thoughts or take them personally.
How Can Mindfulness Mend a Broken Heart?
A stressful event, such as a breakup, can cause our minds to explode. Often, we’re spinning on our thoughts and we don’t know how to stop it. There may be thoughts and feelings of rejection, regret, shame, and unworthiness, and a host of destructive beliefs.
After my ex and I split, I had a lot of regret, and my thoughts involved punishing myself for how my actions had led to the undoing of the relationship. I replayed past events over and over in my head. I kept wishing that I could have done things differently.
I thought I could have been more open, trusting, and loving. And I wished I hadn’t been so scared to share my vulnerability and fears, because if I had, perhaps that would have strengthened the relationship instead of weakened it.
The breakup was excruciatingly painful, yet I felt it necessary to hurl more insults at myself.
Fortunately, there are many forms of mindfulness that can help us get over a breakup and our ex. This is what I did to heal myself.
Mindful Self-Compassion
Self-criticism is very common. And in the context of a breakup, when we’re in pain, we tend to open the floodgates of self-berating thoughts. We are ruthless, and very good at it.
We might think:
- “I’m such a loser.”
- “I’m fat and ugly.”
- “I’m such an idiot for screwing things up.”
- “I’ll never find someone as good as my ex.”
- “My ex is dating and happy, and I’ll always be alone and miserable.
- “I deserve to hurt.”
When we believe these harsh thoughts it exacerbates our suffering.
According to Kristen Neff, author of Self-Compassion – The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, self-criticism has a strong association with depression and dissatisfaction with life. And underneath our self-attacks are deep insecurities about our own personal worth and value.
This was true for me. I had often discounted my talents and abilities because I had a core belief that I wasn’t good enough. And my breakup only further triggered my negative self-perception.
Fortunately, mindful self-compassion can snap us out of our mindless self-judgment, and provide us comfort when we need it most.
Being compassionate means recognizing that there is suffering, being moved by the suffering, leading us to alleviate it, and understanding that suffering is part of our shared human experience.
The practice of mindful self-compassion is being aware of the self-critical thoughts that cause us pain, offering kindness and love to ourselves to allay it, and recognizing that we’re not alone—what we’re going through is part of life, and we all have imperfections.
There are many self-compassion exercises, but this is one of my favorites:
Self-Compassion Exercise: A Letter to Yourself
1. Grab your journal or a piece of paper and pen, and write about the thoughts and feelings of inadequacy and insecurity you may have as a result of the breakup. Write about any emotions that arise—shame, regret, anger, or sadness.
2. Think about a real or imaginary friend who is kind, gentle, compassionate, and unconditionally loving. This friend knows you intimately—what you’re going through, your life history, your strengths, your weaknesses, your thoughts of inadequacies and insecurities.
3. From the viewpoint of your compassionate friend, write a letter to yourself. Using deep compassion and loving kindness, what would s/he say about your thoughts of inadequacy? How would s/he address the suffering that you’re experiencing as a result of your self-attack? How would s/he point out that you are only human and that we all have strengths and weaknesses?
4. Once you finish writing the letter, put it down. Do something else like go for a walk or make a cup of tea.
5. Pick up the letter and read it. Let the words of kindness and compassion penetrate your being. Receive the love, the tenderness, and the acceptance.
The “aha” moment for me when I first did this exercise, in the context of my breakup, was that I was shocked at how harsh I had been toward myself. How had I allowed the self-attack when I would have considered the same behavior, if inflicted on others, unconscionable?
As a result of the exercise, I recognized that I was hurting and I gave myself permission to receive kindness and love from myself instead of rebuke.
The practice of self-compassion allowed me to hold space around my thoughts and feelings, and it created an expanded awareness of who I am—that, even if I’d made mistakes in my relationship, I am lovable, I have wonderful qualities, I am capable of a lot of things, I am resilient, and most importantly, I am enough. Further, it helped me realize that we are all connected through similar experiences, whether good or bad. We are never alone.
Benefits of Mindful Self-Compassion
Some of you may be thinking, why bother with this self-compassion thing, when I can just go to my best friend or mom and have a good cry with them and they’ll make me feel better? This is fine as well. It’s important to have a good support system.
The thing is, when we learn how to be self-compassionate, we become our own source of love and happiness. We stop relying on the external to feel good about ourselves.
To boot, there is evidence that the practice of self-compassion can make us more resilient, more joyful, more productive, and less depressed. I can attest to this, having come out of my rut happier, stronger, and more at peace. I also learned ways to offer myself love and kindness, which I can apply whenever I feel the slightest of discomfort.
Some of the ways I give myself care are:
- Loving-kindness meditation
- Daily gratitude practice
- Self-compassion soothing touch
- Walking in nature
- Yoga
When we experience a devastating event, we have a choice in how to respond. Some choose to get out of dodge mentally and deny their feelings through unhealthy coping mechanisms. Others take the route of self-punishment for their flaws and inadequacies.
There is an alternative: mindful self-compassion. If you want to get over a broken heart, this practice should be at the top of your healing arsenal.
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Knowing When to Let Go of Relationships: 3 Signs It’s Time to Move On
“Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” ~Deborah Reber
Thanks to the Internet, our lives are full of people. We’re connected literally all the time.
And yet, despite our ceaseless connection, we feel disconnected.
As the pace of life becomes ever more frenetic, we’re like charged atoms, bumping into each other more and more, pinballs in the machine. We come into contact (and conflict), but we don’t commune so much.
As real relationships of depth and quality become harder-won in this busy new world, their value is more keenly felt. Simply put, in the words of Brené Brown, “Connection is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. It’s why we’re here.”
As we fight to carve out space for these connections whose value has become so apparent, it’s natural that we cling to them more dearly.
However, sadly, often the tight clinging to something is the sign that the time has come to let it go. With something as valuable as a relationship, how do we know when that time is? How do we know when it’s time to move on?
I’ve unintentionally become an expert at moving on. Having lived in perhaps a dozen countries and had jobs with as many as 200 days of travel a year, I am keenly aware of the centrality of relationships. Living out of suitcase and having a rented apartment fully furnished by IKEA, they are all I have. They are my lifeblood. But sadly, I have also become far too practiced at needing to let them go.
Traveling so much and relocating so often, my life has been enriched by the people I know. So many nights alone in my hotel room, I wasn’t alone. I was writing, speaking, and despite the physical distance, connecting with my dear friends.
I’d arrange business trips or weekend travel so that I could meet them in some city somewhere in between. It was an effort that I would gladly expend, but I learned to see when that effort was no longer worth it, as difficult as that was to accept.
Here are the three simple signs that tell me when it’s time to move on:
1. When you need to plan and strategize how to present yourself
As life moves forward, we change. Our jobs, our looks, our economic situation, our habits, our interests—everything changes all the time. It’s the one constant in life.
As two peoples’ lives change simultaneously, gaps inevitably form between them. In a relationship that will stand the test of time, these gaps are bridged with each meeting. It’s the classic case of “We haven’t seen each other for five years, but when we met, it was like no time has passed!”
However, there are times when, with each meeting, the gaps get wider, and soon they’re more like gulfs. In these cases, we often spend time before the meeting fretting about how to explain, obfuscate, conceal, or excuse. Shame has crept in, and we feel like we can’t be ourselves. We’re either embarrassed of who we’ve become, or we suspect the “new” us somehow will not be acceptable to the other person.
I’ve put on too much weight—she’ll never like me this way. My career hasn’t taken the same trajectory as his. I got that divorce, while he has the same wife and now three kids. When the joy and anticipation you should feel when reuniting with someone is replaced by anxiety and inadequacy, that’s a really bad sign.
Of course, it could be all in your head. You don’t give up on the first go. You should make an effort to “be real” and lay it out there that things have changed. You might find it was a lot of worry about nothing. However, if your fears are confirmed and your efforts repeatedly result in awkwardness and shame because the other person rejects this new you, then it’s probably time to move on.
It’s important to understand that this is not a matter of blame. True love is knowing someone fully. It’s when two people become one but maintain their individual integrity. If you need to be someone else in order to get along, then you cannot be in a truly loving relationship.
2. When the relationship drains more energy than it gives
There is almost nothing more nourishing, refreshing, and perhaps even exhilarating than truly connecting with someone. All life is energy, and when someone opens up to you, they share their energy with you, and your share yours with them. Both parties are enriched.
That laugh you share with your old friend who calls unexpectedly. The warm feeling in your stomach when he smiles at you. The rush you get when she tells you she feels the same way about you. That is all our life force.
However, some relationships do just the opposite: they drain us. Our interactions with these people do not involve connection, but instead armoring up and deflection, and that requires energy.
What does this look like? It’s the stressful gaming out of what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it in order to avoid conflict with that person. It’s the unease you feel when you learn that she’s going to be at that party. It’s the constant bickering with your boyfriend into which otherwise joyful occasions degenerate.
How does this feel? After being with the person, you feel tired, relieved to be away, or annoyed. Beforehand, you may feel nervous, low-energy, or simply like you’re going through the motions or doing your duty.
Two big caveats:
First, if this was a relationship that you considered important to begin with, this does not mean you give up on the first bad vibes. Of course you try and try and try again to make things work, but at a certain point the act of pushing the square peg in the round hole becomes too much. It’s just too draining.
A single negative interaction cannot be enough—in fact, an intense argument shows, if nothing else, that you care about what’s at stake in the relationship.
Second, this is not a recipe for selfishness. Getting energy does not equate with being the recipient of another person’s affections and generosity. In fact, quite the opposite: anyone who has loved knows how much better it feels to give than to receive; it’s a cliché that happens to be completely true.
And yet, if over time you are the only one giving, it starts to feel wrong. At some point you realize the person comes to you for help, not to share. A lasting relationship is inevitably one of mutual sharing and generosity. Anything else will start to wear.
3. When you’re the only one making the effort
I never thought I would need to face this topic, but today’s world of constant connecting without connection has given rise to a terrible new phenomenon—ghosting.
Always having access to a connected device, people can easily just switch to some other form of distraction when there is any negativity (or even effort) associated with reaching out or responding to another person. As our reach expands, our time in each other’s physical presence shrinks, and hence it’s now possible to erase people from our digital lives.
Now, it’s rare to be the recipient of a “hard” ghosting—to literally be blocked. To get to that point would involve a clear and unmistakable rupture in the relationship. However, “soft” ghosting—consistently not responding to messages in a timely manner or not at all, and opting for quick texts over thoughtful outreach and connection—this is something you’ve likely experienced.
Responses to your outreach become fewer and further between, and at some point you realize that you’re basically out of contact.
In these cases, the other person has either consciously chosen to focus on other things they deem more important, or they’ve gotten lost in the world of easy connecting. Or, they may simply have decided they no longer care to maintain the relationship and want to avoid the awkwardness of telling you.
As I began to encounter these painful situations some years back, my first instinct was action and confrontation.
I made an effort to increase my touchpoints with the person in question, invited him/her to dinners and other meetups if possible. When rebuffed (or more likely ignored), I got to a point where I directly conveyed my distress about where our relationship seemed to be heading and asked if he/she wanted to turn it around and what we could do the change the situation.
Never once was this route successful. If someone is moving on with his or her life, and there’s no more space for you, no amount of guilting, cajoling, passive aggression, or begging is going to turn it around. That person needs to value your relationship above the alternatives that constantly compete with all our time each second of every day. He or she needs to want to keep you as an important part of his or her life.
In these cases, the best you can do is reach out, but that outreach needs to taper off—pushing and insisting and pleading will only serve to create negative emotions and likely lead to conflict, or even worse, the person feeling the need to respond to you out of a sense of guilt or obligation. Your relationship lingers on and becomes more stilted and forced and loses its value.
In fact, in any of these cases—when you feel like you can’t be yourself, the relationship becomes draining, or you’ve been ghosted—it’s difficult not to generate a lot of emotional or actual drama. It’s a sad situation involving someone who at least was once very important in your life. You naturally want to fight for it, and you should, to a point.
But, like life itself, in relationships you have to learn to trust the flow. You can swim against the current for a little while, steer yourself this way and that, but in the end you cannot control the river. Instead of ratcheting up your response to the situation and effecting an emotional crescendo, do your best to reach out to your friend with honesty and compassion.
There will come a time when you know it’s not worth it any more. You will feel the negative emotional vibration in the form of resentment, frustration, fear, hopelessness, etc. At that point, however, you risk tainting even the good memories of your time with that person with the bitterness of the breakup. Rather than gratitude for the time you had together, you feel loss. You rob yourself of the relationship you had.
There is no way of knowing when to act, but in this case you’re not taking action, you’re letting go. The best way to know when to do that is to follow your instinct, and when your time being with and thinking about the person becomes a negative experience, that’s probably a good time.
The other benefit of letting go rather than fighting is that you allow space for a reckoning if the other person decides to reengage. And though that’s unlikely based on my own experience, it could happen someday.
After all, you rarely know the exact reasons and motivations for the other person’s behavior. Indeed, they’re often unknown even to the other person, and perhaps unknowable. So, one day you may find your phone ringing, and it’s your friend—people always retain the capacity to surprise you!
And as hard as it might be to imagine, there may be a good reason for the person’s behavior. You never really know the suffering they’re feeling, but if they’re letting go of a dear friendship, the least you can say is they’re not thinking clearly. Some other suffering is taking hold, and it’s your friend’s loss. Don’t make it a terrible loss for yourself too by creating a drama.
This is of course easier said than done, but if you stay conscious and draw on your compassion, you can do it.
Recently, a dear friend of ten years ghosted me. She and I had been through it all: moving countries, marriages, deaths, international travel—all the major life milestones.
A little over two years ago, she became more and more distant and less responsive. Not surprisingly, this coincided with her becoming much more active on social media and followed a period of tragedy in her life. I reached out repeatedly for about a year, but my efforts eventually led to total silence, and I let go. I haven’t heard from her in a year and a half.
The moment I knew it was time to let go was when I was tempted to write her something passive-aggressive. At that point I realized I was experiencing the relationship with negativity, which would inevitably come through in my communication with her.
I would be lying if I said it didn’t hurt, but more futile efforts would have hurt even more and put a possible future reconciliation at risk. I also needed to have the compassion to understand that she had recently gone through a tragic time, and undoubtedly that had an impact on her thinking, feelings, and behavior. I hope she’s alright and remain open to the possibility that one day she might come knocking on my virtual door.
But the truth was clear—it was time to let go.
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The Secret To A Happy Life Is Hidden In Your Daily Habits
“The key to being happy is knowing you have the power to choose what to accept and what to let go.” ~Dodinsky
It hit me as I cruised along at full speed on a busy motorway on my way to a friend’s house.
Shaking like a leaf, I pulled myself out of the car and stood by the side of the road. I desperately gulped in the fresh air, a frantic attempt at calming myself down.
This was the ninth day in a row I’d experienced a wave of panic so intense, it felt like I was about to die. It was utterly unbearable.
I’d been worrying about all the work I had left to do on my Master’s dissertation and berating myself for taking a day off to spend time with friends when I should have been working. All of a sudden, my throat closed up, my chest tightened, and my hands shook so much that I was convinced I would lose control of the car.
This was the final straw.
I’d been waiting for a magic solution, a miraculous savior, a quick fix that would snap me out of my near-constant state of worry. I’d been waiting for the universe to wave its wand and finally grant me a normal life. It wasn’t happening.
I wasn’t willing to face up to the work I needed to do in order to stop indulging in my bleak hypothetical predictions about the future. And more importantly, I didn’t even know what the work was. But that day, I made the decision to find the key to a happy life and to start putting in some serious elbow grease.
I just couldn’t live like that any longer.
That was three years ago.
What You Practice, You Get Good At
The problem is, for a very long time, I practiced worrying. About everything.
I worried about what people thought about me. I worried about what might happen to my health. I worried about whether I would have the career I wanted.
I also practiced managing this worry, and the myriad of unpleasant emotions that accompanied it, with food, alcohol, and sex. I used substances (and other people’s bodies) to make myself feel good, to take my mind somewhere else, and to give myself a moment to relax.
But underneath, the worry was still there; these “fixes” just masked it. Instead of paying attention to what was actually going on in my head and realizing that my thoughts were creating a reality that didn’t actually exist, I practiced covering up my desperation, hoping that this fix would be the one that actually worked.
I was constantly feeding habits that gave me short-term satisfaction or relief, that I knew were ultimately destructive. And I know I’m not the only one.
Many of us spend our days acting mostly out of habit—the foods we eat for breakfast, the route we take to work, even the thoughts we entertain. These become the actions we practice, over and over again.
And what we practice, we get good at.
What Do You Practice?
Here’s a little something to reflect on: What habits are currently running your life? What thoughts do you think every single day? And are these serving you, or not?
We might not think of habits as a practice, but that’s exactly what they are. Each and every day, we’re practicing being the type of people we want to be, whether we realize it or not.
My anxiety, despite being a very real (and often terrifying) experience for me, was a habit. I was practicing being the type of person who was constantly stressed out and worried about everything. Nowadays, however, I practice being the type of person who recognizes these thoughts, knows her limits, takes care of herself, and makes a different choice each time her old pal worry comes out to play.
Think about it:
- How many times a day do we complain about things not being the way we want them to be?
- How many times a day do we disengage from connection with others and allow ourselves to be distracted by technology?
- How many times a day do we worry about things that haven’t even happened yet?
The answer is likely: a lot.
We’re experts at this stuff. After all, the key to mastering any skill is repetition; if we repeat a specific action enough, eventually we’ll gain fluency and competency at it.
This is why the true secret to happiness lies in our daily habits rather than in the “magic fixes” we often think will make us happy.
Daily Practices for a Happier Life
So what if we became conscious of the habits that are running our lives and switched them on their head?
What if we started practicing things we actually wanted to get better at? And what if, instead of making it some huge, life-changing mission, we simply set the intention to live this way, making small steps toward it wherever we could?
Remember: What we practice, we get good at.
With this in mind, here are a few suggestions for habits we could start practicing daily in order to live a happier life:
- Kindness
- Compassion
- Generosity
- Acceptance
- Non-judgment
- Presence
- Listening
- Forgiveness
- Relaxation
The way these look in our lives will be different for everyone, but the intention behind them is the same—to notice our destructive habits and to make a different choice.
Personally, I’ve found three super effective ways to start bringing new practices into our lives.
1. Notice your autopilot.
We have to recognize our habitual autopilot mode in order to do something about it.
Becoming aware of the way we live our daily life—the choices we make, the people we surround ourselves with, and the stories we tell ourselves—helps us to remember who we really are and what we really want. It also helps us make more conscious decisions about how we act so that we choose our response rather than react out of habit.
The best way to do this is to first make a list of all the times you already know you tend to slip into autopilot.
For example, you might recognize that you frequently spend your lunch break scrolling through Facebook, and then you feel bad about yourself after comparing yourself to other people. Or, you might notice you regularly worry about worst-case scenarios when you’re lying in bed at night.
Once you’re aware of what you’re doing, you can commit to making a different choice the next time you’re in that situation, practicing a habit that doesn’t serve you.
I have to be honest here. This takes time.
In the beginning, it was difficult for me to recognize when my “worry” head was on because it felt so natural to me. But once I started paying more attention to my habitual thoughts and behaviors, I found it much easier to switch the script in those moments and instead practice some deep breathing to relax myself.
Action step: Take a moment to think about the times you already know your habitual autopilot-self takes over. What could you do to in those moments to break that pattern, re-engage with the world, and make a different choice?
Remember: What we practice, we get good at.
2. Focus on your physical sensations.
Another great way to practice new habits is to focus on how they make us feel in our bodies. I like to think of this in terms of openness (expansion) and tightness (contraction). I usually feel pretty open and soft in my heart space when I practice kindness, for example, and tight and tense in my belly when I practice being rude.
Our sense of expansion or contraction in our body can act as an “mindful shortcut,” giving us an easy way to determine what might be going on in our heads.
If we focus on how we physically feel in our bodies and the sensations our habits bring up for us, we can really start to distinguish between the ones that currently serve us and the ones that definitely don’t. Since our physical sensations often directly relate to our emotional experience, it’ll also provide us with a little motivation to continue practicing the things that make us feel expanded.
The issue most of us run into here is that we mostly walk around feeling completely out of touch with our bodies. In fact, it wasn’t until I really started to dive deep into yoga that I realized my body was constantly giving me important signals—and I was totally ignoring them.
The best way to begin observing your body is to sit in stillness and just notice your bodily experience, even if you start with just a few moments a day. The more you “check in” with your body, the more you’ll be able to tune in to what it’s trying to tell you.
When I started paying attention to my body, I noticed how different thoughts affected me in completely different ways. My worry made my body feel tight, tense, and achy, for example, whereas calm thoughts made my body feel soft, relaxed, and open. This helped draw my attention to my worrisome thoughts and choose to focus on my breathing in the present moment instead of on my “faux” reality.
Action step: Start your day by asking yourself one of these questions:
- “How do I want to feel today?”
- “What do I want to practice today?”
- “How do I want to live today?”
Then check in with yourself regularly throughout the day (setting up a reminder on your phone helps!) to observe how your body’s feeling. Pay particular attention to your heart, solar plexus, and belly areas. Is there a sense of expansion or contraction? Does this align with how you want to feel? What are you currently practicing? And does this align with what you want to practice?
Remember: What we practice, we get good at.
3. Set an intention.
We can also practice new habits by simply affirming to ourselves that it’s our intention to practice them.
Intentions are perfect because they’re designed to be a guideline rather than a goal. With goals, it’s far too easy to beat ourselves up if we don’t reach them, but with an intention, we can just start over again.
If we set an intention to be kind, or compassionate, or generous in the morning, we’re also far more likely to jump at opportunities to practice this as we move through our day. It helps us make decisions that are more aligned with the people we want to be, since our intention will still be fresh in our mind.
For example, I’ve recently been setting an intention to practice forgiveness. I realized that I’d been holding on to so much resentment, anger, and blame toward myself (and others) about my anxiety. I felt so much rage about my past—the years I’d spent constantly trying to please other people at the expense of my own needs; my first boyfriend’s extremely controlling behavior, which left me feeling utterly weak; and the pressure I’d felt growing up to be “perfect.”
So every morning I listen to a forgiveness meditation, which includes repeating to myself, “I see and feel the pain you’ve caused me, and it’s my intention to forgive you.” Then, as I’m about to go into my day, I remind myself that it’s my intention to continue to practice forgiveness.
Have I forgiven everyone (or myself) yet? No. But that’s beside the point.
The point is that every single day, I’m practicing.
Action step: Decide on at least one new habit you’d like to start practicing. How can you set this intention for yourself each day? How can you remind yourself of this intention when you go off track?
Remember: What we practice, we get good at.
