Tag: wisdom
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Why I’ve Decided to Accept Myself Instead of Trying to ‘Fix’ Myself
“No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance.” ~Robert Holden
In our culture, we are constantly bombarded with the newest and best things to improve ourselves and/or our quality of life. Unfortunately, this leads to the belief that we need to obtain some sort of thing before we could accept ourselves as we are.
When I was a child, I constantly battled with my weight. By the age of fourteen, I was 225 pounds (mind you, I am 5’2,” on a good day).
Fortunately for me, a doctor pointed out the concern of childhood obesity. She kindly let me know that I was at the perfect time to lose weight before it began to have significant health complications. I was able to quickly learn how to eat better and engage in physical activity. I dropped about eighty pounds within a year, and the attention I received was overwhelming.
I quickly developed a conditioned response of self-improvement, attention, and ultimately, love—meaning I began to see that altering myself would gain me recognition. But come on, who doesn’t want to be loved and accepted by others? Well, this attention introduced a whole different concept.
I realized I was not receiving that positive attention before, as people usually chose to pick me apart for my weight. Therefore, as I grew older, I became addicted to this notion of self-improvement because it brought upon the positive attention and affirmation I had lacked. Furthermore, I had a hard time just being me without trying to change something about myself.
For me, self-acceptance is hard to conceptualize on a good day. On a bad day, it can be in shards of glass on the floor. Through my trials and errors, I have learned that self-acceptance is a skill we can practice. It is not an innate trait that we either have or don’t. It is something that can be nourished and nurtured.
With practice, I began feeling at peace with who I am—with all my strengths and my weaknesses. However, this didn’t just happen overnight.
I had struggled with a lack of self-acceptance for many years. I felt like I needed to be a certain way or look a certain way to be accepted. Immediate access to media and social media fed right into this concept. I fell into the comparison trap, and I fixated on what I didn’t have by putting my attention on what everyone else seemed to have.
I’d think, “Well, she looks a lot better than me,” “Man, their family seems perfect,” or “My career doesn’t seem to be that successful.” These thoughts would consume me, and have a negative impact on my mood and self-esteem.
Let me be clear, I have to be mindful of this trap every single day, multiple times a day, as self-acceptance, love, and compassion issues are deeply ingrained.
When I was a little girl, I consistently received the message that I needed to change parts of who I was to fit the mold of society. Peers would consistently comment on my weight and appearance. Teachers would constantly criticize my work. Coaches would often compare to the “better, more capable” players. I am sure some of these messages came with good intention, but they had a destructive impact on my self-worth and value.
As I have gotten older, I have learned that having a good relationship with myself is one of the most important things I will achieve in my life. However, because I didn’t want others to see my bad stuff, I tended to project an outward image of having it together, or striving to get it together.
I was not as open about my consistent struggle with depression, anxiety, and body image. I would deny some of those internal battles, and in doing so was never being who I truly was. More so, I struggled in knowing who I was and I developed a conditional relationship with myself.
For a long time, I also struggled with self-forgiveness, which was a huge barrier to self-acceptance. I struggled because I was ashamed of my choices and wished I had done things differently. By twenty-six years old, I had a failed marriage, filed for bankruptcy, and was facing some legal consequences due to my irresponsible behaviors.
I began trying to perfect myself in any way possible. I was constantly looking for a new health fad to follow. I purchased several self-help books, always looking for what was wrong with me and finding a way to fix it. Clearly, I had no concept of self-acceptance. I just believed who I was at my core was bad and I needed to change it. I was never comfortable with just being with me; I needed to be improving something.
Soon I began to see that true self-acceptance has absolutely nothing to do with self-improvement. I was always trying to achieve things, which may have helped temporarily, but it was a poor substitute for true intimacy with myself, which is what I needed.
When I set out to improve myself, I attempted to fix something about myself. I couldn’t possibly feel secure or good enough if my worth depended on constantly bettering myself.
I struggled with what I like to call the “destination happiness” illness. It implies “I’ll be okay when…” or “as soon as I accomplish this one thing, I’ll be happy…” With that mindset, I was never happy because I was always looking forward to the future, missing the present. I was also just checking off the boxes in life, never fully embracing the moment.
A turning point in my life was when a friend of mine said, “I feel you are always looking for something wrong with you. What would it take to just accept yourself for who you are?” This was a true epiphany for me. I was always finding fault in myself. So, I began to reflect on this statement and started to make some active changes toward self-acceptance.
I began to celebrate my many strengths.
I started to make time to honor what I brought to the table.
I worked hard to take in praise from others without doubting their statements.
I cultivated a positive support system. I knew I naturally become similar to the people I chose to be around. So, I built a support system that is inspiring and fulfilling, not discouraging and depleting.
I made a commitment to stop comparing myself to others. I could acknowledge others’ strengths without disregarding or belittling my own.
I began to understand and quiet the inner-critic. I didn’t shut this voice out completely, but I worked on it being constructive as opposed to hurtful.
I made a conscious effort to forgive myself. I let go of the regret and began to learn from my past.
Finally, I began to practice self-compassion and kindness. If I wouldn’t say it to someone I love, I didn’t say it to myself.
With all of these steps, I began to understand who I am and know what I want, while being comfortable in my own skin. I value myself and have gained respect from others. I am able to face challenges in my life head-on. I embrace all parts of who I am, not just the good stuff. I recognize my limitations and weaknesses.
I must say, though, that it is possible to accept and love ourselves and still be committed to personal growth. Accepting ourselves as we are does not mean we won’t have the motivation to change or improve. It implies that self-acceptance is not correlated with alterations of who we are at our core.
Nathaniel Branden stated, “Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship with myself.” Many of us live our lives resisting ourselves—comparing ourselves to others, pushing ourselves to be perfect, and trying to fit a certain mold of who we think we are supposed to be. I hope that by shedding some light on the notion of acceptance, I have helped you find courage to let that all go.
We will never know who we are unless we discard who we pretend to be. And it would be a shame not to find out, because we are beautiful and worth knowing, just as we are.
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How Going Offline for 10 Days Healed My Anxiety
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a while, including you.” ~Anne Lamott
I wake up anxious a little past 4am. My heart is beating faster than usual, and I’m aware of an unsettled feeling, like life-crushing doom is imminent. For a moment, I wonder if I just felt the first waves of a massive earthquake. Or perhaps those were gunshots I just heard in the distance.
But no, it’s just another night in my bedroom in the Bay Area, and everything is utterly fine. But somehow, my central nervous system isn’t so sure.
The problem is the thick swirl of news media, social media, and talk among friends I carry with me every day. It’s a toxic milkshake of speculation, fear, and anger that I consume, and it has me deeply rattled. I absorb this stuff like crazy.
I suspect I’m not alone.
I know for a fact that my anxiety isn’t just some vague menopause symptom, but the result of my deep immersion in the current zeitgeist. I know this because recently I left the whole thing behind for ten glorious days. I went to Belize, and left my phone and my laptop sitting on my bureau at home.
For most of that time, my wife and I lived on a small island thirty miles out to sea with only a bit of generator electricity. We avoided the extremely spotty Wifi like the plague. Instead, we woke with the sunrise, and sat on the deck outside our grass hut, watching manta rays swim in the shallow water below us and pelicans perch nearby. The biggest thing that happened every morning was the osprey that left its nest and circled above us.
It was life in slow-mo all the way. And it was transformative.
For ten entire days I didn’t think about politics or how America is devolving into an angry, wild place where public figures regularly get death threats, and social media has become the equivalent of High Noon with guns drawn.
The toxic interplay of who is right or wrong, or the future of our democracy ceased to exist as we sailed toward that island on our big, well-worn catamaran. In fact, by the time we reached our refuge, those tapes had disappeared altogether.
Instead, we swam and we rested. We snorkeled. We read. We had some adventures involving caves and kayaks, and we hung out with the other guests. The two Belizian women who cooked for us observed us Americans with our expensive toys, and they took it all with a grain of salt. In their presence, I could suddenly see how silly and overwrought all this intensity has become.
Ironically, when given the opportunity to present a gift to a school in one of Belize’s small seaside towns, I brought along a laptop and an iPad I no longer used. An elementary school teacher received the gifts with gratitude. Yet, as I gave them to her, I noticed I felt wary.
I could swear she seemed wary as well.
What new layer of complexity was I bringing onto these shores? And was it even necessary for life to go on happily and productively?
When we returned to the so-called civilized world, here’s what I immediately noticed:
1. I was now leery of all my previously trusted news sources.
Suddenly I could clearly see the anguished bias all around me, going in all sorts of directions left and right. The newsfeeds I’d previously consumed with abandon now seemed more biased than I’d realized. I was left with one option—either drop out and start reading the classics for entertainment, or proceed with caution.
2. I had more time to sit alone with nothing in particular to do.
Before my media fast, that was a bad idea. Hey, I had social media to check and emails to catch up on. The day’s events were going by in a high-speed blur, and I had to keep up. But now life had slowed to the pace of my emotions. I could breathe again. And so, for a while at least, I enjoyed spacing out.
3. My anxiety disappeared. For a while.
So did my knockdown ambition, and my desire to overwork. Everything had just … chilled. Enormously. For a while I slept easily. I no longer drove myself to do the impossible, and my to-do list now seemed balanced and reasonable. In turn, I no longer woke up with my heart pounding, nor did I have qualms overcome me during the day. Instead, I got ideas. Inspiration landed on me, and I was energized enough to pursue it.
4. Life became lighter and more fun.
Now I found my day-to-day routine to be far more delightful. It simply was, and for no particular reason. I laughed more. I found myself singing while I did chores around the house. Since I wasn’t consuming the same fire hose of media, I now had time to have more fun.
5. I complained less.
Now that I was unplugged, I found that I didn’t have to share my opinion on every last political matter happening around me. Nor did I need to engage in fights on social media. In turn, I didn’t lie awake as much, gnashing my teeth.
6. I thought about things I’d long forgotten.
Like my childhood. I tapped into long buried feelings sitting in that glorious deck chair of mine, like how it felt to be a vulnerable kid at school, and what joy I found in standing in the water, letting the waves rush my legs. I rediscovered the great internal monologue I have going all the time. It had long been forgotten.
7. I had more time just to hang with people.
This was, perhaps, the greatest gift of all. To quietly sit at a table, chatting over empty coffee cups with relative strangers, or perhaps my wife. There we all were, on our island for days on end. So we might as well talk, right? I found people to be fascinating once again.
In fact, I was discovering JOMO—the Joy of Missing Out. Turns out this is a thing. Those exact words were projected on the screen behind Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, at a recent developer’s conference. Apparently even the tech people want to turn off their screens.
So one must ask the question: did all of this good stuff last?
In a word, no.
It’s been several months since this experiment ended, and I am, of course, back online. The pull is simply too great to ignore and avoid. Since I actually make my living online, disappearing off the grid is not even an option. And yet, I’ve learned a lot.
I no longer subscribe to certain reactionary newsfeeds. While I may be more out of touch, this is alarming material, guaranteed to not make me feel better. So no, I no longer read these emails. And I cherry pick what I read in my newsfeeds with care.
I no longer reach for my phone as soon as I open my eyes every morning. I also try not to check my email on my phone at all, something I often did while waiting in the Bay Area’s many lines. In fact, I’ve learned to leave my phone at home when I go out.
Instead, I chat with other people while waiting in the line, or I just look around. Or I zone out and enjoy what brain scientists call the “default mode,” the fertile, random, and enjoyable hopscotch the brain does while at rest. I realized now that I’d been missing that hopscotch. Instead, I enjoy the fertile luxury of a good daydream.
My late daughter Teal would have understood my need to drop out perfectly. Even at age twenty-two, she refused to have a smart phone. She embraced the world, eyes forward and heart engaged, making friends wherever she went. And she did so until her sudden death from a medically unexplainable cardiac arrest in 2012.
“Life is now,” she liked to say. Usually she reminded me of this as she headed out the door with her travel guitar and her backpack, on a spontaneous decision to busk her way across the other side of the world.
At the time, I couldn’t begin to fathom what she was talking about. “Too simplistic” I thought, dismissively, as I wrote it off to my daughter’s relentless free spirit. But as it turns out, Teal was right. So now I am left with this very big lesson.
Not only is life now, life is rich, random and filled with delight. The trick is to unplug long enough to actually experience it.
Illustration by Kaitlin Roth
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We Have to Own Our Part to Heal Our Broken Heart and Find a Deeper Love
“True love does not only encompass the things that make you feel good, it also holds you to a standard of accountability.” ~Monica Johnson
I remember the confusion I felt as it slowly began to register to me that he had indeed read all of my messages and was indeed ignoring me. Even though my eyes were telling me this, it still didn’t make any sense.
Just the day before, he’d initiated contact, called me beautiful, and wanted to know the details of my day. We’d talked all day that day, as we normally did. But this was a new day. And he ghosted me. He discarded me.
It hurt like hell. My heart felt like it had literally been ripped out of my chest by the Hulk. It was forceful and it was intense.
This absolutely could not be happening. So I ashamedly sent a few more messages, but he still ignored me.
My tears flowed like a steady spring rain. My head hurt. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to do anything but see a notification from him, proving me wrong. Proving to me that he did not ghost me, that this was a terrible dream.
But that solace never came.
For the first few days after this, I craved him like my favorite dish.
But then I started to realize that this man who’d shared so much intimacy with me had just left me with no explanation. No goodbye.
So I became angry.
I was slowly going through the grieving process. Denial. Sadness. Now anger. I was about to enter my next phase, which was acceptance. I reached this phase through accountability. I realized that even though the way he exited our relationship wasn’t mature, I wasn’t innocent.
I’d been needy, desperate, and clingy, and I’d hung my self-esteem on his “hey beautiful” texts like a person gasping for air. He was my air. His validation is where my self-worth started and began.
I began to realize that I had pushed and pressured him. I had made him the source of my joy. I had put a heavy burden on him. I was taking love from him and not giving him love in the way he needed it.
It would have been easy to play the victim, to say “woe is me” and hate him. It would have been easy to be resentful, bitter, and full of venom.
But instead, I chose the road of accountability.
I extended him grace and realized that as humans, we are always doing what we feel is best for us at each moment. I extended him forgiveness and I forgave myself.
I looked back over the last months and realized that I had abandoned myself. I had abandoned the self that was secure and had outsourced my self-esteem to him. It wasn’t fair to him. He hadn’t signed up for that.
Yes, he could have handled it better. He could have had a conversation with me. He could have done all kinds of things. But at the end of the day, that’s his cross to bear. My cross is that I had to begin to heal from this experience, I had to grow from this experience, and I had to evolve into a woman who was ready for true, genuine, reciprocal love.
I knew, deep in my heart, that he was the catalyst. So I thanked him. I released the hurt, anger, and confusion. It turned out that ghosting experience was the best thing that could have happened to me because it put me on the journey to true love.
Through this experience I learned:
-The importance of knowing your worth in a relationship
-To recognize and understand my boundaries
-That it’s okay to be selfish and put your needs first in dating
-What it really means to love and accept myself
The day I thanked him in my heart and released the pain from that experience I learned so much. That day mostly taught me how living as a victor will attract the deepest love you have ever felt. I’m so happy I didn’t listen to my ego and stay in victimhood. I conquered. I took accountability.
If you choose to see what you gain from breakups, even the ones that break your heart into a million pieces, you will be much closer to experiencing a love so strong it will knock you off your feet.
If you want a deeper love, you need to be whole. Wholeness requires healing.
So many people are walking around as empty zombies, full of resentment and bitterness. Usually this happens when we’re unable to take responsibility for our part in a hurtful situation.
I understand you may have been cheated on, lied to, left in the cold, used, or, like me, you were ghosted. But do you see how in some ways you might have ignored red flags, or you were not firm in your boundaries, or how you sought validation outside of yourself, or were clingy, or pressured the other person into a relationship?
I am not blaming you. I am not making you wrong. I am asking you to take accountability for how this situation can teach you where you are wounded, and use it as your catalyst. After you’ve come out the other side you will be so much closer to transformative love.
The purpose of accountability is not to negate what the other person did or to make you feel regret, shame, or guilt. Those emotions do not serve you; they only keep you stuck in a downward spiral.
No, accountability is about realizing you have more power than you think. In many cases we get our hearts broken because we give our power away. We make others responsible for our happiness, joy, and worth. It’s not fair to them.
When we put people in this position, they may feel cornered. They may feel they have no other option but to run. That doesn’t condone immaturity or insensitivity. But odds are, they don’t mean to hurt us; they just don’t know what to do. It happens. If we dry our eyes and ease our anger we will see that this situation provides an opportunity to take a deep look at ourselves and recognize just how much love we are giving ourselves.
In order to get love from anyone else, we have to love and heal ourselves. We then are able to attract whole and healthy people who are ready to love us like we truly deserve.
Guess what?
The next man I met became the love of my life. And six years later, he has never ghosted me.
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3 Healing Practices to Connect with Yourself and Release Your Pain
“Our practice rather than being about killing the ego is about simply discovering our true nature.” ~Sharon Salzberg
One of the symptoms of living in today’s fast-paced world is the underlying feeling of loneliness, overwhelm, and disconnection. Chronically stressed and under financial and familial pressures, we often feel alone in the world, out of touch with others, overwhelmed by our emotions, and disconnected from our own bodies and ourselves.
Our world is ego-driven. We constantly compare ourselves to others, judge our performance (usually harshly), define our worth by our financial and career achievements, and criticize ourselves for failure.
This ego-based drive for success and happiness is of course ineffective. We keep wanting more, never feeling quite satisfied. And that’s because our definition of happiness as something that can be obtained externally is fundamentally misguided.
It’s a good thing to achieve external success and take pride in what we’ve accomplished through hard work. However, happiness comes when we feel fulfilled, and in order to feel fulfilled we need more than material possessions and accolades—we need to feel loved and that we belong.
This feeling was always fleeting for me growing up. A difficult childhood and my highly sensitive personality meant I grew up believing that there was something wrong with me. Feeling deeply insecure, and without an anchor at home, I had a hard time making friends and felt mostly misunderstood, hurt, and alone.
Eventually, chaos at home and bullies at school led me to disconnect, both from my body and myself. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere, so I made myself small, almost disappearing behind a veil of hurt, fear, and shame.
I associated my body with pain, and love with getting hurt. Living in my head was safe, and so I put up big walls around my heart and decided to make the best of what I was given.
I compensated for internal pain and emptiness with external validation: straight A’s, degrees, a career in high tech, people pleasing, perfecting, performing, putting on a mask to make myself look better than I felt. Eventually, I found love and friends, but the internal angst was still there, unexamined.
Unbeknownst to me, my ego was in control and the driving force behind my constant search for approval and validation. This perpetual state of searching for contentment kept me feeling empty, unhappy, and alone.
Running from yourself can only work for so long. Eventually, the walls I built became my prison.
I had to face my pain, confront my fears, and unleash the chains I’d built around my heart so that I could go on living, not just functioning.
If I wanted a fulfilled life, I had to look inside and find love there first. I had to undo years of disconnect and pain, and reconnect with my body and my heart. I had to recalibrate my life toward inner peace and joy, and away from self-focus, fear, and my perceived brokenness and separateness.
Over the years I spent healing and getting back to myself, I discovered that some practices can help us drop the swelled up ego just enough so that we can embrace our life with love. Those practices include…
Reconnecting with Our Body
At some point in our lives, most of us went through a traumatic experience that left us feeling disconnected from our body. Childhood abuse, sexual trauma, a car accident—all those experiences can lead to disembodiment.
Even if we were lucky enough to avoid trauma, we live in a world of chronic stress and overwhelm, which puts a lot of strain on our bodies. We often operate in “survival mode” and experience chronic muscle tension, fatigue, and pain.
When our body has been the source of pain, we might want to disconnect and numb out in order to protect ourselves from the hurt. We end up living in our head, often completely unaware of what is going on in our body.
Getting back in touch with our body is the first step in healing our soul, opening our heart, and dropping our ego. And yoga is a perfect tool here.
Yoga is a gentle practice that can help us reconnect with our body. Yoga means unity, between the body and mind. With breath as an anchor, flowing through poses while holding ourselves gently, we center and reconnect with ourselves in the present moment.
We get out of our head (and our ego-based identity), and back to our body and our true self. We quiet the mind, softening its grip as we turn to movement, being fully present and aware.
As we tune into each pose, we begin to feel every part of our body. We start cultivating a close relationship with ourselves, exploring our own feelings, thoughts, and relationships to the poses. Yoga becomes an intimate practice for self-exploration and self-acceptance. And it slowly dissolves the ego as your heart takes center stage.
Certain poses are particularly good for grounding and centering , like child’s pose, tree pose, and warrior poses. There are also many heart-opening poses—like camel, bow, or bridge poses—most of which focus on rotating our shoulders, opening our ribs, and doing backbends, which release muscle tension and unlock sensation in the heart center (also great for anxiety relief).
Kundalini yoga is another practice for awakening and healing our energy body and releasing trauma/blocks, whether in our heart center, root center, or elsewhere.
The important thing is to focus less on the “exercise” component of it and more on the mind-body-heart connection that happens when you slow down and become really present in your practice.
Befriending and Taming our Mind
Once we’ve reconnected with our bodies, we need to befriend our mind, which can easily be overwhelmed by fears, worries, doubts, self-criticism, and obsessive thoughts. We can do that through meditation.
Mindfulness meditation specifically helps us cultivate a sense of awareness and teaches us to look inward, observe our experience, and learn to let go. It brings to our attention the impermanence of life—as our thoughts and sensations change constantly, so does our experience. This means we can let go of our grip and take life as is, moment by moment.
With the breath anchoring us in the present moment, we gain a sense of freedom from our past troubles and future worries. Our fears fall away and freedom sets in—freedom to choose how we experience life that’s in front of us.
With practice, we learn to notice feelings, and emotions underneath those feeling, and the thoughts underneath those. There’s a freedom in that too—freedom to choose to not buy into those thoughts, to let go of them and choose differently. We learn to respond wisely to what’s in front of us, choosing love instead of reacting from our unconscious programming and out of learned fear.
By observing our thoughts and sensations we learn to recognize when we are afraid, hurt, angry, or ashamed, and that awareness is what allows our ego to fall away.
We begin to understand the meaning behind our experience and surround ourselves with compassion for our pain, holding ourselves with tenderness and care. We learn to drop our fears and our beliefs about ourselves and the world, and begin to live from our heart, our authentic self.
When we meditate, we start to gain a better understanding of ourselves, and our way of being starts to shift. We come into wholeness, the realization that our lives are both joyful and painful, and no, we are not damaged, we’re simply human. And the best thing we can do is to love ourselves in this moment, to offer ourselves the care and compassion we need in order to feel soothed and safe. And then we can extend that love and care to others as well. We all suffer and have moments of struggle; this simple acknowledgement can open our heart and connect us all.
In moments of chaos or anxiety, when our mind is restless or overwhelmed, we can do simple practices that will calm our mind and tame our inner dialogue. A particularly nourishing practice is Tara Brach’s RAIN of self-compassion meditation. By observing our thoughts and feelings without judgment—the core of mindfulness meditation—we can shift from pain to compassion in a gentle way.
Another practice to try is loving-kindness meditation popularized by Sharon Salzberg.
And if sitting meditation is too hard for us, we can tap into a meditative state through movement. Rhythmic exercises such as walking, swimming, or dancing can help integrate our body-mind and reset the nervous system through the rhythmic flow of movements that will relax and soothe our mind. These will ground us in the present moment so that we can be there for ourselves, and others.
Accepting and Rewriting our Story
If we’ve been running from our pain for a long time, as I once did, this pain becomes our story; our ego is entangled in it. It’s time to untangle and release it so that we can make a new ending. It’s time to rewrite our story.
I’ve found journaling to be particularly helpful because it allows me to explore my thoughts and feelings without worrying about being judged, criticized, or rejected for who I really am.
Through journaling, we can uncover our inner pain and suffering and bring to the conscious our fears of feeling not good enough, unlovable, and ultimately alone.
As we explore our deepest thoughts and try to make sense of our experience, we begin to discern our true feelings from adaptations and programming that we’ve accumulated over our lifetime—messages we received from our family, peers, and society as a whole. We tap into our inner wisdom and intuition, and gain a new perspective on ourselves and the events in our lives.
Writing is like having a deep conversation with ourselves. Faced with our shame, grief, and the sheer depth of our pain, we learn to offer ourselves the compassion and care we’ve been searching for outside of ourselves. Tending to the wounds we’ve been avoiding, we develop empathy for ourselves as a vulnerable and wounded person.
Journaling is the ultimate release; we can drop our masks and explore our hang-ups and limitations head on. We slowly unpack our deep-seated beliefs, bringing them to light. This deepens our inner knowing, helping us examine and change our beliefs about ourselves and the world. As we release the pain we’ve been holding onto our whole life, our hearts begin to soften, our armor drops, and our story changes.
There are two main ways you can journal to heal: expressive writing and prompt-based writing.
To begin expressive writing, relax your body and close your eyes. Look inward and wait for thoughts to arrive. Begin writing them down without censoring yourself. Spill it all out onto paper, letting your unconscious step forward, giving it a voice. Bring up your real feelings about yourself and the world—and not just what you’ve been conditioned to believe.
Prompt-based writing can help you think about how your family history, your cultural background, and your religion have all played roles in why you are the way you are.
For example:
- How did your family of origin show (or withhold) love?
- What are you most ashamed about regarding your family?
- What did you not get as a child that you are now seeking as an adult?
- How was anger expressed or repressed in your family growing up?
By examining your past and what shaped you, you can shed a light on your unconscious patterns and the beliefs that you accepted as truths. This is the first step in changing them and rewriting your story.
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These three practices—yoga, mindfulness, and journaling—helped me heal, reconnect with myself, and learn to love myself, and self-love is a prerequisite to feeling the love and belonging that leads to happiness.
Whether you’ve experienced some sort of trauma or you’ve disconnected from yourself as a consequence of living in our stressed out, achievement-focused world, these practices can help you too.
By making a little time to reconnect with your body, befriend your mind, and rewrite old stories that no longer serve you, you’ll soon stop being a slave to your ego and start living a freer, happier, more authentic life.
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Experience the Benefits of Mindfulness: Join eM Life’s Free One Percent Challenge
Whether you’re a regular reader here or you just found your way to Tiny Buddha recently, odds are you’re familiar with the practice of mindfulness, but you may not be aware of the many benefits.
A regular mindfulness practice can not only boost your mood, reduce your stress level, and help you be less reactive, it can also enhance your creativity, improve your sleep, and increase your resilience so you’re better able to handle life’s varied disappointments and challenges.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Studies have shown that a regular mindfulness practice can also give you a higher pain threshold, lower your blood pressure, and even slow down neurogenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.
On a basic level mindfulness is being present and aware of what’s going on within and around you, without judgment. In theory, it sounds simple—it’s simply being where you are. But our minds can be loud and busy, and finding freedom from our thoughts isn’t easy, which is why we need to make mindfulness a regular practice.
Just fourteen minutes of daily practice—one percent of your day—can help you experience the healing, calming benefits of mindfulness in your everyday life. And eM Life’s One Percent Challenge can help you make this a habit.
eM Life’s One Percent Challenge
Each day of this online challenge, you’ll be able to access interactive sessions to help you deepen your mindfulness practice. You can participate live or on demand and immediately exercise the skills you’ve learned with clear strategies for how to integrate them into your daily life.
By participating in this challenge, you’ll learn to quiet your mind by devoting attention to your breath and body, and to practice awareness so you’re less apt to get swept up worries, fears, and unnecessary drama.
The One Percent Challenge is a free, simple way to dramatically transform your life. With just fourteen minutes a day, you’ll cultivate a sense of insight and peace and will be better able to mindfully pause, reflect, and make the choices that best support your health and well-being.
You might even find that after committing fourteen minutes and beginning to experience a positive shift, you feel inspired to practice for longer, which will deepen the benefits.
Give Back While Giving Yourself Peace
By participating in eM Life’s One Percent Challenge, you’re facilitating charitable donations to a number of worthy causes. The more people who practice, and the more minutes they complete, the greater eM Life’s donations to the following organizations:
Mental Health America
The country’s leading nonprofit dedicated to helping break the stigma around mental health
ShatterProof
An organization with a mission to change the conversation about addiction through advocating for research, resources, and change
The Mardy Fish Children’s Foundation
An organization that provides children with opportunities to participate in safe and impactful fitness, nutrition, and enrichment programs
Earn Rewards
After completing ten, twenty, and thirty days of mindfulness sessions, you’ll unlock wellness-focused rewards, like a 1:1 mindfulness session with one of eM Life’s world-class instructors, a Garmin vivomove® HR Smartwatch, a Mindful Daily Practice Guide to keep your mindfulness journey going, and much more.
Make this the year you cultivate mindfulness for a more present, peaceful life, and you’ll not only reap the many rewards, you’ll also make a positive difference for countless people in need.
You can register for eM Life’s One Percent Challenge here. I hope it’s helpful to you!
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How to Help Without Hurting Yourself and Avoid Healer Burnout
“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.” ~Pema Chodron
The technical term is Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. This is when one stumbles upon a new, unfamiliar, or unusual piece of information, and soon encounters that same subject again, within a short time, sometimes repeatedly.
So, for example, you decided to take the plunge for that hipster, purple hair streak that you thought was so punk rock, but now you see it on everyone.
You have recently been car shopping, narrowing it down to a couple of choices, and now Honda Fits are having babies everywhere you look.
Or you just stumbled on the amazing word “phantasmagorical.” See, I passed it along and now I bet you are going to see this word everywhere.
The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon has been showing up for me within the context of healing, helping, and service. They seem to be popping out of the woodwork: people who are searching, no longing, to have their occupation better reflect their desire to help others. And it is a gorgeous, hopeful thing.
Whether it is a natural paradigm swing related to politics, racial injustices, our climate crisis, or just a general craving to hold the warm pulse of our shared humanity, people are wanting to do more. We know the planet does not need more stockbrokers. But we feel an urgent need for more peacemakers, storytellers, teachers, healers, dreamers, activists, and lovers of all kinds.
I have been swimming in this world of service for the last fifteen years, tending to people’s hearts, minds, and bodies through my work as an acupuncturist and herbalist.
I came to this work with a very open heart, deeply wanting to bring a balm of medicine to the suffering of those around me. Even now I can feel the give-the-shirt-off-my-backness that I possessed in the beginning. It was very beautiful, but not very sustainable.
It continues to be a very fulfilling journey, but there are a few things I wish I had known from the beginning. Because only a few short years into my practice, I began to feel the effects of going “all in” without knowing how to hold healthy boundaries for myself and others.
My slow lowering into the fiery pit of burnout began in subtle ways, like taking more naps. Which turned into not being able to make it through a single day without figuring out when I could get horizontal.
I would often spend the weekend afternoons with my friend the couch, not wanting to leave my perch of pillows. A lifelong exerciser, I no longer had the energy for even a stroll with my dogs around the block. And getting in regular snacks and meals became a new part-time job for fear of blood sugar crashes, with shakes and nausea. My physical form was in full revolt, and I was crispy fried exhausted.
I wish I could say that I have only experienced one bout of adrenal fatigue over the last many years, but the truth is, there have been several. And there are a few words of advice that I wished someone had given me a long time ago, that I pass along to you now.
1. Take time every morning to set up your boundaries.
The topic of energy boundaries is vast, but in the simplest of terms, we need to have practices in place so that we don’t absorb the energy, emotions, or vibrations of those around us.
I don’t care if you are a doctor, a firefighter, a teacher, a health coach, a social worker, a massage therapist, or a hospice nurse, when you work with other people, you will sometimes pick up their stuff. We all experience this in our everyday lives.
For example, you are driving home from work, feeling tired but settled, when your best friend calls you. Without warning she launches into her most horrific day, her delayed work project, her demeaning boss and her backstabbing coworkers. At the end of the conversation she apologies for “dumping on you” and hangs up. And how do you feel? Completely slimmed.
Depending on the exact work you do, the intensity level, the number of interpersonal interactions you have daily, and your own health and sensitivity level, you may need more practices than others. But here is a simple one to start off with.
Every morning before you start your day, take ten minutes to set up your “container.” Your container is really a mirror into your attitude toward yourself. You can see it as a bubble, an egg, or the semi-permeable membrane of a cell. It is not an armoring, but a reflection of your own internal fullness. And most importantly you are arranging your container so that it only contains your vibration or higher, that everything else will shed away.
The more time you allow your imagination to create with this, the stronger your container will feel.
2. Take time every evening to clear and let go of anything that is not yours.
Will your container function perfectly all day long? Not usually. It’s natural that when we get tired, overwhelmed, or overworked, your container starts to get some little holes in it. That’s why it’s important to clear all of the energetic debris from your day.
Take ten min before falling asleep to let go of anything you’ve been carrying, or anyone else’s energy that is not yours to hold.
You can do this by welcoming in the elements—letting the water of a shower wash you clean, imagining wind blowing you clear, or seeing your entire old container compost into the earth, like a skin that you are shedding. And then in your mind, make the simple internal request to call your own energy back, any power that you lost over the course of the day while you were in giving mode.
3. Recognize what self-care really is.
Self-care is not some kind of entertainment that allows you to zone out from the challenges of your life. It can’t be bought by shopping therapy. It can’t be applied to the body in the form of more manis and pedis. It is not something that you search for in your external world that you hope will make you feel full and rich inside.
Real self-care is something that fills up your internal well. It’s something that breathes vitality and life force into your container. It adds energy to your system instead of glossing over the surface or giving out more.
Some examples of worthwhile self-care include Qi Gong, Tai Qi, many forms of yoga, chanting, meditation, prayer, and, my favorite of all, being in nature. There is a reason that naturalist, John Muir, so many years ago, figured out that, “into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.”
4. Know that you don’t need to save the world.
Whatever you are doing, it is enough. However small it seems at this time, it’s plenty. When we are really driven by a desire to help others it can often feel like there is always more to do. Or anything we actually do is just a drop in some endless ocean.
Even the word service can be misused and misunderstood. Merriam-Webster defines service as the “occupation of serving,” like you are someone’s servant, or even subservient, which means “below, compliant, obedient.”
Zen Buddhist teacher, Joan Halifax, describes how “it’s sometimes challenging to keep altruism healthy; as we stand at this cliff’s edge, we can be vulnerable to falling into harm.” This is when are we are so excessively focused on helping others that we ignore our own needs. And the truth is that most altruists are really good at giving and really terrible at receiving.
Dr. Barbara Oakley created the term pathological altruism, which she describes as “behavior in which attempts to promote the welfare of another, or others, results instead in harm that an external observer would conclude was reasonably foreseeable.”
This is the teacher that eats a five-minute lunch everyday in order to be ready for her next class and all of her extra responsibilities. This is the nurse that holds her bladder for ten hours, purposely not drinking water, because her rounds are so slammed. This is the activist who “sleeps” on her desk for days and days during a busy voting season.
When the original heart of our giving fades into a kind of exhausted fog, we begin to find our service being dangerously driven by fear, compulsion, and cynicism. When we expect ourselves to save the world, we will inevitably be met with a sense that our work is ultimately of no benefit to anyone, including ourselves.
5. No more wounded healers allowed.
It is time to ask now: What is my original motivation of being in service? How does my own need to feel of value, and ultimately my ego, stand in the way of more authentically doing my work?
Continue to do the deep, personal work of healing and transforming your own wounds, traumas, and dramas so that the lens that you see and heal through is no longer about you.
Continue to strengthen your own rooted sense of confidence and inherent worth so that you don’t need to find it through “helping” other people.
As painter, Georgia O’Keeffe, once said, “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.” Because it is an extremely shaky way to live when your sense of self is entirely tied up in your perceived outcome of helping others.
We live in a very results-driven, outcome-oriented society. But the truth is that we have no control over how and what another person does with our help. Allow it to be an offering with no accolades attached. Every treatment, every session, every day teaching, or every kindness extended. That once it is given, it is gone, and it is no longer about us.
I once tried to explain this idea to a friend who was just starting off teaching meditation. She was having a hard time understanding how you could let go of the outcome of your work.
“Isn’t the entire point to provide value and service? Isn’t your ultimate goal to want to help” she asked?
“Well yes,” I said, “of course your intention is to help. But you don’t have any control over the outcome. So stop ruminating and obsessing over ‘giving people their money’s worth or providing results.’ ”
We had a laugh together a few weeks later when she confessed that while still resisting this idea, she had a session with a new client. During the session, she felt really inspired, like she was making a big impact on this woman, like she said all of the right things. When the session was finished the client felt great, but only because she had fallen asleep and not heard a single word my friend had said.
This story still plays out in my head occasionally when I catch my intentions shifting off course. And then I remember to reorient my work from a place of offering, a candle contained in a little floating basket, gently rocking and drifting out into the sea of life.
I wish this for you too. May you always believe in your unconditional value so that your insecurities or doubts never cloud your highest work. May you continue to feel your own humanness as you more fully connect with the humanness of others. May you enjoy many, long years meeting others with empathy, respect, and integrity.
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How to Take Back Control from the Negative Script in Your Head
“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” ~Dan Millman
I’d love to say I had an “Eat, Pray, Love” moment where sitting sobbing in the bathroom I received divine guidance to leave my husband and go traveling the world eating amazing food. But sadly, it wasn’t quite that profound.
It was more a long series of nights sobbing in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, and concluding “You’re broken.”
I wasn’t depressed and hadn’t been for a long time. My anxiety, a lifelong companion, was under control. So what was wrong?
A general feeling of discontent, a lack of energy and enthusiasm to do more, a loss of my spark, a quietening and turning inward, and these overwhelming onslaughts of negativity and tears whenever I felt criticized or something went wrong, which was often. A sense of resentment and frustration that I’m sure ensured those around me felt less inclined toward being loving and giving me the care that I needed.
So all those nights in the bathroom crying didn’t lead me to any insight, but thankfully the universe did send me guidance in other ways.
Someone posted a video to a Facebook group I was part of by a guy named Richard Wilkins. It was called “My F*ck It Jeans.”
Richard is well in his sixties, yet here he was making a Facebook video about how he doesn’t let his age dictate how he feels, acts, dresses, or his enjoyment of life. He doesn’t worry about others’ opinions or society’s views of how someone his age should be, but instead lives true to himself, and has never been happier. And here I was in my early thirties, feeling wiped out and like my spark for life had been put out before I’d even realized I had one!
Over the next year I followed Richard on Facebook, and was drawn to drive one fateful Saturday morning to Northampton, to his Recharge Day.
Richard always says, “The reason you are there is never the reason you are there.” This certainly proved true for me. I thought I was there to find out if the course would help my husband, but after I cried myself through the first half of the morning, I quickly realized I needed to be there for me.
“You are not broken.” Richard’s words cut into my thoughts.
Did I hear him right? Did he say I’m not broken? Did I dare to believe that? And how did he know that’s how I felt? There were over 200 people in the room. Was it possible that some of them also felt broken? If so, was it likely that I was the only one who really was?
It was this question that led me to turn up on Richard’s front door step a few months later to attend a five-day Broadband Consciousness (BC) course with him and his partner, Liz, and seven other strangers, who have now become friends.
For the next five days I shared things I’d not shared with anyone before. Then I shared more.
I listened and didn’t jump in with advice. I made no plan for what I must do when I got back from the course. I didn’t look at my phone.
I struggled, then I had a breakthrough, then I struggled harder. I spoke up when I did and found others had the same struggles. I supported others and they supported me in return.
I woke up easily and full of energy. I laughed. I cried. I ate lots of biscuits and didn’t care. I felt like a very heavy weight had been lifted from my back. I felt like life didn’t have to be so damn hard anymore.
I learned a way of separating that negative voice in my head (which BC calls “the script”) from the real me.
I learned that the script is anything that doesn’t serve me and I would not choose.
I learned to recognize the real me.
I learned that the script is just thoughts based on incorrect beliefs, and that they are not true.
I learned that if I’m not choosing my experiences, my actions, and my feelings, the script will choose for me.
I learned that it’s not necessary to listen to, analyze, or try to change the script. All I need to do is recognize when it is the script talking and not me. And not believe it. And not act on it.
And I learned this not from talking about myself but from witnessing other people and the script in their heads. Because guess what? The script told them they were broken too. And useless. And they always get it wrong. And they are fat and ugly. And they are not good enough. And they are not loved. And on and on… We were literally all reading from the same script!
Since returning from the course, the impact has stayed with me and grown. After over thirty years of listening to the script, for every month I spend not believing it I get to know the real me more and ignore the script more easily.
So how can we all take steps to turn away from the script and tune into our true selves?
First off, you have to recognize the script and be open to the possibility that what it’s saying isn’t true.
In fact, make it your job to discredit the script, to prove what it’s saying to be fake news.
Remember that time it said you were dying because you were having a panic attack? Not true!
What about the time it said you couldn’t do that thing, but then you did it? Yup, it was lying!
Oh, this is a good one—how about that time it said you were worthless and no one would hire you? Ho ho ho!
Once you recognize the script you will be surprised by how many times it pops up!
Secondly, remember that you are not the script.
Think of the script as a physical book. It has many chapters documenting every mistake we’ve ever made, all the bad things that could or have happened, detailing how we ‘should’ behave, think, and feel about every situation under the sun.
The script also has an audio version, which is what we can hear in our heads each day. But it is not us. It is just the script being read to us.
If the script says you are useless, this is not true, nor relevant. It is just the script’s opinion.
Mentally put down the script and accept that, although we can’t change what’s in it or get rid of it, we don’t need to read it all day long, and we certainly don’t need to act upon what it says.
Lastly, choose! Don’t let the script sit in the driver’s seat.
The script lives in our reptilian brain and is much faster at responding than our conscious brain. If we don’t consciously choose thoughts, feelings, and actions, the script will jump in and choose for us.
Start with small things: What would I choose to eat? What activities do I love? Be mindful of what you say. Cut off the script and choose to think of something else. Get out of bed at the time you planned to. Choose not to engage in arguments. Choose to take a bath or read a book.
Every small choice moves us away from the script and strengthens our choosing muscles.
Here are my top tips for doing so:
1. Laugh or smile.
I recently went to a laughter yoga class for the first time and learned that your body and mind don’t understand the difference between forced laughter and natural laughter.
When you smile or make a laughter sound it makes you feel better. It strengthens your relationship with your true self and draws you away from the script. So as well as remembering to smile and laugh for no reason, building opportunities to laugh into your life can also be a real help.
2. Focus on what the script doesn’t see.
When you’re walking down the street, the script is on high alert for potential threats. It’s trained to look out for all the negatives and potential problems. If you (your higher self) are not alert, you will listen to all the bad things the script has spotted, not just in the street but in your job, your relationship, the activity you’re doing, your children’s behaviour, your body… and on and on.
One way to practice disconnecting from the script and tuning into the real you is to focus in on all the good stuff the script filters out (in BC we call these “pearls”). Pearls don’t have to be anything huge. It could be a text from a friend, a hug for your child, a chance to grab a cup of tea in silence, or a warm bed at the end of a long day.
3. Be mindful of your language.
The more we look for something, the more it will show up in our life. This is true not just in terms of what we see in the world but also the stories we tell ourselves.
The reptilian brain (where the script lives) doesn’t take time to fact-check what it tells us, yet because it’s coming from inside our own head we tend to believe it. It’s like taking in a headline but not reading or researching the article, then accepting that headline as fact and maybe even repeating it to others.
So, if someone asks you how you are and you immediately jump in with “tired” or “stressed,” this is what you will believe and therefore how you will feel. If you moan about your partner or say critical things to them, you are repeatedly telling yourself that your partner isn’t good enough. How do you think this affects how you feel and act toward them? And the response you get in return?
4. Choose.
Start choosing instead of allowing the script to choose for you.
Choose food you know will make you feel good. Arrange activities that bring you joy. Say no to that event you don’t really want to go to. Choose to go for a walk at lunchtime. Choose to give your opinion or choose to forget the ironing and take a bath.
Do whatever you feel called to do when you really tune into your feelings rather than letting autopilot or society’s demands take over.
5. Let it pass.
A food craving lasts three minutes, so if you can ignore it for that long it will be gone. I’ve found it’s the same with the script.
When something triggers the script and you suddenly feel angry, sad, or inundated with critical thoughts, it will generally abate after a few minutes. No need to act on the script either by saying something or doing something. Let it pass, then, when you’re no longer in the script, decide if you need to act.
Also, remember that whatever triggered the script is not responsible for your subsequent feelings, it is the script making you feel bad, not your colleague, partner, or the guy who cut in front of you in the line.
6. Share. Learn. Explore.
The world of self-development can be overwhelming. The script will always tell you that you need to learn more, fix this problem, work on yourself just a bit more. Be conscious of this and instead stick to readings and learnings that align with the simple practices I have mentioned above.
Focus on sharing as you learn rather than feeling drawn to learn more and more and more. This will reinforce the messages and in turn, you will learn through the telling.
Be aware of your learning style. If you learn from sharing, then talk to people about what you have learned here. If you learn from writing, write about your experiences or doodle your own version of how to explain the script to a stranger.
When we share what we have learned and help others, we move away from ourselves and our own problems, and this prevents us from dwelling and drawing more problems to us.
7. Exercise.
Everyone says this, but it’s for good reason. Exercising for twenty minutes a day is as effective in boosting your mood as some antidepressants. So whether you’re depressed or not, that has got to be good for you! It gets you out of your head, where the script is, and into your body.
By getting into your body, you can tune into your conscious mind, and you’ll likely find that ideas, inspiration, and solutions to your problems present themselves.
8. Listen to music that uplifts you.
Similarly, use music to get yourself out of your head and into a chosen state. Choose music that reminds you of happy times, or music that gets you energized and ready for inspired action.
9. Get competitive but not angry.
Try to avoid getting angry with the script, since it’s only trying to help, although ineffectively. Instead, develop a healthy competition with it.
If the script thinks you are too lazy to go for a walk, do it.
If the script thinks you are too scared to do something you’d love to do, do it anyway.
If the script thinks you should say no to an amazing opportunity, ignore it.
If the script wants you to lose it with your partner, choose not to.
Thank the script for its input, but remind it that your real self has the resources, experiences, and skills to deal with life without its help.
10. Keep asking, “Is this true? Would I choose this?”
Odds are, once you tune into your higher self, you’re realize the answer is no. And you’ll be able to choose for yourself instead of letting the script run the show.
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The Mountain of Should by Brady Gill
Many people are living inauthentic lives because of all the “shoulds” they are listening to. Some “shoulds” are from their friends and family, some are from the world around them, and many are the voice inside their own head.
The Mountain of Should reminds us that “shoulds” are a universal experience. It inspires us to imagine what it might take to let go of those “shoulds” and what is possible when we do.
