Tiny Buddha

Tag: wisdom

  • Healing, Forgiving, and Loving After a Painful Break Up

    Healing, Forgiving, and Loving After a Painful Break Up

    “People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you will know exactly what to do.” ~Anonymous

    About five years ago, I learned the biggest lesson of my life about self-love and losing oneself in a relationship, through a breakup that almost killed me.

    After going through another night of three hours of sleep, I drove myself to the ER to save my own life. I hadn’t eaten or slept much in three weeks, and the scale pointed to ninety-seven pounds. I felt weak, malnourished, and unloved.

    Three weeks prior to that morning, I had found out that the love of my life, whom I had to break up with in March 2013, had started dating the girl we’d had the most painful fights over.

    He’d met her at a party when I was visiting family and continued flirting with her, despite saying he chose me. Though he would have been happy to stay in a relationship with me, I knew I couldn’t be with someone who openly flirted other women.

    When I learned he was now dating her, I heard a thump on my heart. Literally. It ached sharply as if there was a chestnut-sized rock sitting in the middle of it, vibrating strongly in response to a transmitter signal far, far away. I half-died that day.

    As I climbed back up from that point, I discovered truths about love, forgiveness, and healing.

    Maybe you are in the middle of such a painful breakup, or maybe you are in the aftermath of a breakup that left you shattered and undone. You are sitting on a ball of emotions you don’t know how to unravel.

    Although I can’t give you a personalized plan to heal and grow from your experience, I can share some pointers, as someone who is on the other side of it all, looking back over the five years of her recovery. These ideas may help you fine-tune your own healing process.

    1. Don’t make an event your whole life story.

    What I learned about letting go is that the pain starts changing form into wisdom when we make a decision to not make one specific event from the past our whole story.

    Instead of thinking your life is over because you’ve lost this one relationship, gain a broader perspective and try to see the breakup as valuable to your personal growth.

    The purpose of the pain was to reveal what needed healing and to gain the wisdom you will need further along your path. A relationship that taught you something about how to love and be loved is a win. A relationship full of mistakes but expanded by wisdom and forgiveness is a successful one.

    We are story-making machines. It is natural to make a recent event the focus of our current experience. But your story is not over. You are still writing your story with the choices you make today.

    2. To heal, you have to  be an active participant in your life.

    People often say, “Just let it go. Let the past stay in the past,” but this is misleading. Letting go isn’t as easy as turning off a switch or erasing words off a whiteboard.

    I didn’t know what letting go meant. As far as I was concerned, that part of my life was still alive in me, balled up and tangled. Every time I heard those words, I pictured removing an organ out of my body. That didn’t make sense. I wondered how other people let go and why I couldn’t just let go and live happily ever after.

    Here is what I discovered: You are never going to forget those relationships with deep soul connections. You just won’t be dwelling on them daily when you are busy exploring life and the depths of your own inner being.

    You don’t need to have forgiven or be completely healed to participate in life around you. I spent a year and a half in isolation. Nothing healed. Not even a feather moved during that time. My healing didn’t start till I started living.—by volunteering, going on lunch dates with friends, and going to events to meet new people. Sometimes letting go means simply living a full life, without the other person.

    3. Allow for forgiveness to unfold in its own time.

    I must admit, making the choice to forgive was not easy, but being patient while the process took place was even harder. Letting go, forgiving, and healing from a relationship is not like hitting a reset button. It takes time to build up the courage to face that buried pain and allow it to leave you. And sometimes, before we can forgive, we need time to experience enough joy and connection with others to dilute the pain of how we were hurt.

    Forgiveness is about digesting pain into wisdom. Into acceptance. Into compassion. Into an expanded heart that can hold space for it all. It is not about living like nothing painful happened, because life does not stop for us to heal. Flowers still bloom and the sun comes out every day. We heal while we take in more of life. The death-rebirth cycle in nature that exists in life also exists within us. It is a never-ending cycle.

    As I started opening up to new experiences and actually living, I allowed new insights to come in. My heart had time to breathe. I put myself in his shoes. I asked myself, “What would I do if the person I loved but kept hurting unintentionally left me when I didn’t want the relationship to end?”

    When I eventually developed enough courage to admit that I would have gone onto the next best thing (the other girl) to ease the pain, compassion came. It took me nearly two years to register the depth of his loss and how he must have felt left out in the cold. We all do what we can to find relief from pain, and that was his way. I didn’t need to judge it or to see it as a transgression against me.

    When you want to increase the temperature of water in a bath tub, you don’t take out the cold but add hot water until it reaches your desired temperature. That is how grief, healing, and forgiveness work. Trust your body and soul to hold you through the processing of a whole chapter in your life.

    4. Update your perception on relationships.

    I loved my ex deeply. I can carry that in my heart’s memory and still know that we were teachers to each other who were not destined to be together for a lifetime. I am no longer hurting because of not being with him. I have done my releasing ceremonies and let memories run through my mind, bringing up various emotions—anger, resentment, grief, jealousy, and lots of tears, too. I sat through them. Some of it hasn’t been pretty.

    We are taught that a ‘good relationship’ is one that lasts a lifetime. If it didn’t last, we believe that it was a failure. If we have several ‘failed relationships‘ behind us, we assume that it is because we are just unlovable. Success seems to be the most prized value in our modern society. But wisdom through experience can be even more valuable.

    I realized that the way I had been viewing relationships was outdated. What if relationships were intensive training programs for our souls to learn about love? What if they were the perfect set up to practice being loving, kind, understanding, forgiving, and accepting both toward ourselves and the other person?

    If you learned the lessons you needed to, the relationship was a success, whether it lasted three months, three years, or for decades. Take your wins and carry them forward with pride. You are a survivor. No one can take that away from you.

    —

    I am now in a relationship that is continuously growing and teaching me more about love than any book on the planet could. I am in love and enjoying practicing new ways of doing relationships.

    I have spent time and energy recognizing how I put up walls, respond from a place of immaturity when I feel hurt, or disregard my partner’s needs because my inner child was triggered into her pain.

    I’ve learned to give him space, to do things that make me happy, to recognize and own my projections, and to practice self-love so I don’t expect it all to come from him. These were some of my mistakes in past relationships. I had to get honest with myself, own them, and work on them.

    Our love is not fickle; it is resilient because we both are. I found out that two people who have walked through fire and excavated their soul truths with their bare hands create a relationship that can stand the test of time and the tricks of their own egos. I can’t know for certain this relationship will last forever, but I now know all relationships are valuable and there there is life after a breakup.

  • Try Not to Resist the Changes That Come Your Way

    Try Not to Resist the Changes That Come Your Way

  • Why I Stopped Trying to Fix Myself and How I Healed by Doing Nothing

    Why I Stopped Trying to Fix Myself and How I Healed by Doing Nothing

    “Everything in the universe is within you.” ~Rumi

    When I was twenty-three, I lost my job through chronic illness. I thought my life had ended, and I spent the next few years an anxious, panicky mess—often hysterical. Eventually, I took off to scour the globe for well-being techniques, and searched far and wide for the meaning of life and how to become well again.

    If you’re chronically ill, like I was, whether physically or emotionally, you’ve probably experienced the same misunderstanding, the same crazy-making “well, you look okay to me” comments, the same isolation, depression, and frustration that I felt.

    You’ve probably been on a bit of a quest for self-recovery. And so, you’ve probably also felt the same exasperation when trying to figure out which self-help theories actually work. It can be overwhelming, right? I thought so, too, but I came to find it was actually really simple!

    Searching the Globe for Self-Help Techniques

    So many people are full of advice: “Try CBT/ tai chi/ astrology/ vitamins/ rest more/ exercise more/ zap yourself with electricity/ eat better/ stop being lazy (always helpful!)/ do affirmations/ yoga/ meditation/ wear purple socks…” Okay, so no one ever actually recommended trying purple socks, but there were so many weird and wonderful recommendations that I found myself lost, which might explain why I went away to find myself!

    I traveled far and wide with my illness, training in every holistic therapy there was (which I loved; I’m curious, and well-being is my passion). But I was always searching for a ‘cure’ for my brokenness. I connected with yoga, meditation, and mindfulness on my journey, and I heard the very familiar Rumi quote: “Everything in the universe is within you.” This served only to confuse me even more as I struggled to analyze what it meant!

    In Bali, though, I felt I had found home in yoga, meditation, and mindfulness. I felt connected to myself. I felt like I understood that all I needed was within. My anxiety had gone, my panic had gone—and my chronic illness had gone, too! Then, I came home to the UK, and it immediately returned.

    I was disheartened. I still lived yoga and mindfulness—I loved it and I taught it at home—but the joy had gone from what I had once thought of as the answer. So, how was I absolutely okay in Bali and not at home? Was I a fraud? What was going on? There was so much thinking…

    What I Learned About Being Human

    It wasn’t until a year later that I discovered why, when I heard something differently. A colleague introduced me to a mentor who shared some profound insights about how the world really works.

    She explained the basic underlying reality of humanity: that underneath all of our thinking about “how to be happier” is a healthy wholeness and perfection that is already innate—without having to do anything. You see, the reason that I had felt any anxiety or panic at all was because I had just forgotten the truth of what it is to be human.

    The Power of Thought: All You Need Really Is Within

    Our human reality operates entirely through thought in the moment. Everything we feel is a result of our thinking. If we feel anxious, it’s because we are experiencing anxious thinking. If we feel happy, it’s because we are experiencing happy thinking. Our entire reality, therefore, really does come from within! It is an inside-out world.

    When we were born, we were perfect and whole, and not anxious. Then, when we gained the beautiful power of thought, we learned that the external comfort blanket was super comforting, because “it made us feel better,” right? Wrong. The blanket is an object, with no capacity to make us feel anything. One hundred percent of the comforted feeling came from our own thinking about the blanket. It’s the same with all of life.

    So, when I was in Bali, I thought I was okay because I was enjoying yoga and meditation, which I loved with all my heart. Thinking that the external could impact me, I felt 100% whole. I returned from Bali and my thinking about the external changed; it felt like I wasn’t happy, because I thought that I needed to be back in Bali. But the thinking came from me: the happiness or unhappiness was all dependent on my thinking in each moment.

    I didn’t remember this, so I attributed my happiness to the external. But it wasn’t, because we are always living in the feeling of our thinking in any moment. Everything comes from within.

    The Innate Wisdom Under Our Thinking

    The funny thing is that as much as this seemed profound to me when I heard it, it was also as if I already knew. It is innate wisdom that we just forget to tap into as we bustle through what feels a hectic pace of life.

    As I began to remember this wisdom, I found that I would start to notice my thinking; I’d become an observer of it, almost in a mindful, meditative kind of way, but I no longer needed to sit and meditate to be happy.

    New insights would come up as I stayed in the conversation about life, and more and more would drop away: the absolute reliance on meditation and affirmations in particular (though the joy returned for meditation when I realized there was less pressure to love it and just followed it because it was in my heart).

    Because under my thinking—under your thinking—is an innate wholeness that is always accessible to you in any moment, if you just see that your reality is entirely experienced through thought in each moment.

    Analysis Paralysis

    We spend hours of our lives analyzing how to be happy, how to stop being negative, how to meditate, how to be less attached, how to be more empowered, how to be more creative, how to be more whole. Don’t get me wrong, this can be interesting, if (like me) you have your own small self-help library! But it’s more important to drop out of your head and into your heart—like I did in Bali, and like I did when I allowed my thinking to just flow and stopped analyzing it.

    I still love yoga and meditation—I teach both and connect with them—but it’s to follow my heart, and I don’t need it. I’ve observed with clients, though, that sometimes it’s easy to misunderstand these concepts and get wrapped up in over-complication, analysis paralysis, denying true feelings, and forcing, trying to be ‘positive.’ This is why I ditched affirmations completely.

    Don’t Miss the Point: Clarity Through Trusting and Flowing, Not Forcing

    Some people miss the truthful essence of this beautiful wisdom. I’m a believer that we often try and force happiness and positivity through techniques like affirmations—and even in some meditation practices that suggest people need to “let go of thinking.”

    We can’t let go of thinking; it’s part of being human. And affirmations serve only to suppress our true feelings, which is dangerous. When we allow our thoughts to just flow through us instead, dancing with them through life, we create space where we would once have analyzed how to solve them; and it’s in this space where clarity can arise and we can see the truth.

    The truth is, we humans are a vessel of energy, and, I believe, part of something greater that has a plan for us—and through this human life, we are blessed with the amazingly abundant, creative power of thought. All we really need to do is let go and flow.

    All we really need to do is allow the feelings that arise from our thinking, conscious of the fact that our reality is constructed through thought. We just have to observe what comes up, embracing pleasant feelings and allowing the darkness without paying it much attention. Like an uninvited guest, it will eventually pass through, without you needing to do anything to get rid of it.

    These days, I laugh at the thoughts that come up and watch them with curiosity, marvelling at the creative capacity of beautiful brain, and knowing that underneath all of my thinking is the real truth: that I am entirely whole, perfect, and complete. Just like you. And you know what? I’ve not been anxious, panicked, or chronically ill ever since I remembered this truth of being a human living life through thought.

    I’m not suggesting that our illnesses are “all in our head” and that we can think (or stop thinking) our way to health. Everyone is different, and there are many different causes for the illnesses we experience, chronic or otherwise. But for me, everything changed when I allowed my thoughts to just flow.

  • Tell Someone You Love Them Today

    Tell Someone You Love Them Today

  • You Cannot Heal in the Same Environment That Made You Sick

    You Cannot Heal in the Same Environment That Made You Sick

  • The Greatest Gifts You Can Give Someone

    The Greatest Gifts You Can Give Someone

  • How I Stopped Chasing Highs and Self-Destructing

    How I Stopped Chasing Highs and Self-Destructing

    “Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.” ~Albert Einstein

    In our culture, it’s pretty common to think of rock ‘n’ roll hedonism a little wistfully. From Keith Richards to Hunter S. Thompson, the wild nights and strung-out days of the world’s most iconic party animals are seen as integral to their sparkling creativity, rebellious nature, and untouchable glamour.

    So many people, especially if they want to make it in the creative industries, idealize and inevitably attempt to mimic these lifestyles. Whether they want to be a “work hard, play hard” music producer, channel Hemingway as a bar-frequenting writer, or fulfill the image of free-spirited artist, artificial highs come with the territory.

    When I was in my twenties, I fell for this concept hook, line, and sinker. I was working in the music industry and quickly cemented my image as the consummate party boy. Up for any new experience and the person you came to for a good night out, to an outside observer, it would seem that I was having the time of my life.

    However, after the months turned into years of living this way, it became clear that all those hard-drinking, pill-popping creatives have produced their canon of work in spite of their lifestyles, not because of them.

    When you hear the amazing tales of fun and debauchery, you don’t see the crashing hangover the next day, or the sense of hopelessness and despair that comes with being trapped in yet another comedown, while life refuses to move forward.

    I was relying on various kinds of chemical highs to hide the fact that in every other part of my life, I was stressed and strained to breaking point.

    Plagued by chronic insomnia, I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for years. But within my industry, this pleasure-seeking and self-destructive behavior felt normalized, because that’s how most people behaved.

    Instead of living the dream, I felt trapped in an endless cycle of stress and anxiety. Letting my hair down one too many times a week was a shortcut to feeling okay—at least for one evening.

    The fact is that this kind of hedonism doesn’t make us feel better in any meaningful long-term sense. It’s a distraction. It’s a way for us to temporarily feel good, and potentially open us up to interesting experiences—but the highs never last. In fact, I spent much of my twenties feeling utterly drained, with no time or inclination to nurture anything truly worthwhile.

    There’s an idea that all this “stay up all night, work all day” overindulgence is fine, or even laudable. That’s until the day when we step over the shadowy and undefined line into addiction, and our behavior is suddenly viewed as embarrassing and shameful.

    I never came close to this point; in fact, to some of my peers and colleagues, it would have been far weirder and more uncomfortable socially if I were teetotal. But my lifestyle was still undeniably self-destructive.

    My own health and well-being fell behind every other consideration, especially my career. Whether it was taking a second job and running myself into the ground in order to keep it all going, or staying up all night at events before getting up for another day of work, it simply didn’t end.

    It was when I found myself completely exhausted, yet entirely unable to sleep at 2am on my ex-girlfriend’s couch—thinking of nothing but how my life was going nowhere, and convinced that there was no point left—that I realized things had to change.

    Moving Away from Hedonism

    I walked for hours that night, feeling like I was at the bottom of a pit full of regret, fear, and bitterness. But the simple action of getting up, getting out, and allowing myself to feel these emotions rather than mask them with my busy non-stop lifestyle was one of the first positive actions I’d taken for months.

    It was a dark time, and I still used partying to numb myself to the realities of my life, but a chink of light had been let in. My friends could see I was in trouble, and after they whisked me away for the week, I decided to remove myself from the life I’d created and go to South America for a few months.

    I got lucky in the fact that a big record deal finally paid me enough to extricate myself from the music business, but it was a shift in thinking that made me want to do this in the first place.

    I learned that when something isn’t working, we can’t be afraid to let it go. Being a success in the music industry was my dream, but I had to acknowledge that this wasn’t a healthy or enjoyable part of my life anymore.

    The realization had landed that we need something more meaningful and fulfilling to enjoy our lives than a series of fleeting and artificial highs.

    It became ever clearer that success didn’t equate to working all hours and pursuing a unsustainable lifestyle in order to make a broken and inadequate “Plan A” work. I had to figure out why exactly I had chosen to pursue such self-destructive behaviours, and get to the root cause.

    Seeing Clearly and Moving Forward

    With far less hedonism and hard work to hide my issues, solving my anxiety-induced chronic insomnia became a priority. However, like many people I found myself focusing on the symptoms of my problems, completely unaware of and failing to tackle their hidden source.

    I tried herbal sleeping tablets, but was instinctively reluctant to try anything pharmaceutical (which was interesting, considering I’d been so willing to take any number of illegal substances in order to have a good time).

    Ear plugs and eye masks made no difference, and it was apparent that, as with my hedonistic life choices, I was simply skimming along the surface of things rather than looking deeper. It was as if there was a patch missing from the roof of my house, and instead of going up and fixing it, I was putting up a leaky umbrella each time it rained.

    It was only the chance recommendation from a friend of a friend that led me to Vedic meditation—the technique that changed my life. After my first lesson I slept soundly for the first time in years, and within a few weeks my insomnia had eased entirely.

    It was through meditation that I learned about a different kind of hedonism. Years later, I have left my partying days far behind, but live a far more vibrant, creative, and enjoyable life. By swapping late nights for bird song and record deals for teaching, I moved away from self-destruction, and toward self-growth.

    Of course, this took a long road of self-discovery (which isn’t over yet!). But I feel there are some pointers which can help people if they’ve found themselves trapped into a similar situation to mine.

    Here are three ways to move on from self-destructive behavior.

     1. Allow yourself to learn from the lows.

    It’s all too easy, after enduring the depths of a hangover all through Sunday and a drawn-out week at work, to get to Friday night and think the answer to all that sadness and frustration is another night of overindulgence.

    I’m not saying this is easy, but instead of relying on your usual route to a good time, make yourself sit with your feelings. Without the (ultimately counterproductive) balm of alcohol and other such substances, you will start to see things as they really are, and work out if there’s anything that needs to change.

    2. Switch up your routine and break the cycle.

    Getting away from my life in London was a key part of breaking the bad habits that had me repeatedly making bad choices, which did nothing but make me feel worse (as the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result).

    It could be something as simple as suggesting to your usual drinking buddies that you try a different, sober activity on a Sunday night, or catching up with friends you haven’t seen in a while rather than sticking with the same crowd.

    The important thing is to show yourself the possibility of a different kind of lifestyle, and to build confidence in the fact that you can manage without your usual self-destructive coping mechanisms.

    3. Think about what’s driving your behavior and address the root cause.

    Hopefully, by taking a step back, you’ll be able to see what compels you to work too hard, party too hard, or indulge in your particular vice (for some people, this could even be over-exercising and obsessing about health).

    Perhaps you are a high achiever and have worried yourself into chronic stress and anxiety. Maybe you have low self-esteem, and don’t believe you are worth looking after. Whatever it is, once you are aware of your motivations it is much easier to address them.

    For me, the key to becoming a much happier person was meditation, and I thoroughly recommend it in all its various forms. But you may find that it is therapy which helps you most, or simply practicing gratitude. Even the most basic act of keeping a journal each day could make the difference.

    Whichever proves to be the most beneficial thing for you, the important thing is dedicating some time to your own self-care. By acknowledging your problems, you give yourself the best chance to fix them.

  • When You Stop Worrying About What Other People Think

    When You Stop Worrying About What Other People Think

  • You’re Smarter, Stronger, and Wiser Than You Were Yesterday

    You’re Smarter, Stronger, and Wiser Than You Were Yesterday

  • What Helped Me Love and Accept My Imperfect Body

    What Helped Me Love and Accept My Imperfect Body

    “You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.” ~Amy Bloom

    “Just look at yourself!”

    “That chubby face, those massive hips and thighs. The stumpy legs.”

    “No wonder he doesn’t love you anymore. No wonder he left you for her! She is so much prettier than you are.”

    I stood in front of the mirror. Tears streamed down my face. My body was shaking uncontrollably as I stared at it in disgust.

    Resentment and anger accumulated in my chest. Heavy, dark, and painful, the all-consuming emotions tried to crush me. My throat felt tight, I couldn’t breathe, my mind was racing in desperation.

    If only I was beautiful. Tall, slender, delicate, and fair. If only my body was perfect.

    He wouldn’t have rejected and betrayed me. We would still be happy. The plans we made for a future together intact and alive.

    I collapsed on the floor, sobbing and shivering. Blaming my flawed appearance for all the despair, the unbearable suffering, my shattered life.

    I had always been insecure about my body and the way it looked. But now, I condemned it for failing me, destroying my life. Judged all its blemishes and cursed its unattractive features that were too ugly to love.

    I hated my body.

    And that’s how it started.

    The Miserable Consequence of Fighting Your Own Body

    In the weeks after my boyfriend left me in May 2005, negativity consumed me.

    I was furious at him for choosing another woman over me, and I beat myself up for not noticing the affair earlier. Toxic thoughts about my inadequate body and insufficient looks circled endlessly in my mind.

    I was obsessed with the improvement of my appearance. I cut my hair, changed my wardrobe, waxed, plucked, and dyed. I considered plastic surgery to remove the visible effects of a genetic skin condition that had never bothered me before.

    And I deprived myself of food, forwent sleep to have more time to exercise fanatically every day. I ignored any hunger, discomfort, and exhaustion, lashing myself on.

    I was determined to make my body better. Fitter, slimmer, more attractive. I would never allow it to let me down again.

    And my body reacted to the verbal and physical abuse.

    Within a few weeks I suffered from a stomach ulcer, bowel issues, and frequent migraines. My hands and legs were covered in eczema. And I was plagued by hypoglycaemia that made me dizzy, faint and, on a couple of occasions, temporarily blind.

    My body and I were at war. I knew I couldn’t go on like this. I had to make peace with the way I looked.

    I had to accept my body for what it was to restore my health, emotional balance, and sanity.

    For months, I forced myself to look in the mirror and reconcile with every part of my body. I reasoned with myself that the failed relationship had long run its course and my looks had nothing to do with the break-up. I cried as I tried to forgive myself for every flaw, wrong proportion, and imperfection.

    After a while, I could look at myself and accept what I saw. Free from condemnation, shame, or judgment. Without the self-hatred, it became easier to take care of my body and my health improved together with my opinion of my appearance.

    I thought I had learned to love my body. But I was wrong.

    Realization #1: Accepting your body doesn’t equal loving your body.

    For eight years, my body and I upheld our truce. I could walk past a mirror without criticizing myself and look at myself without disgust, upset, or resentment. I had found a loving husband who frequently told me how beautiful I was.

    And I believed that he really meant it. For the most part I was okay with my looks.

    But then I gained twenty pounds during my pregnancy, and the disastrous body-shaming cycle started again.

    At first, I didn’t notice.

    I thought that I kept my husband at a distance because I was too preoccupied with my daughter. But, in reality, I felt too self-conscious and ashamed to allow him to see my flabby body.

    I deluded myself into thinking that life with a new baby was too busy to visit friends. But I just didn’t want them to think, “Blimey, she’s gone fat.”

    I believed that I stuffed myself with chocolate and greasy junk food because I had no time to cook from scratch and needed the energy while breastfeeding. In truth, I punished my body for its shortcomings.

    I had worked so hard to accept my appearance. But now, my new, changed body had once again become an enemy. I blamed it for my marital problems with a dissatisfied husband and held it accountable for my social isolation. I hated it for its ugliness, for letting me down again.

    Because the truth was that, back in 2005, I didn’t accept my body for what it was, embracing all its imperfections.

    Instead, I made peace with the fact that I wasn’t beautiful. I accepted my body as “just not good enough.” And convinced myself that, despite the inadequacies, I could live with the specific looks of the body I had back then.

    But as I gained weight and my body changed, the acceptance vanished because I never learned to love my body.

    Realization #2: The true reason why your body deserves your love.

    As I searched for ways to truly love and accept my body, I realized what a miracle the human body is.

    Trillions of cells work in harmony to perform millions of tasks that guarantee survival. Day after day, they communicate via chemical, electrical, and hormonal signals to regulate, defend, digest, filter, breathe, regenerate.

    The heart beats 42 million times every year, pumping over 2.7 million liters of blood. Bones, muscles, cartilage, tendons, ligaments, and joints work together, orchestrated by the nervous system, to allow us to sit, walk, run and jump. It takes the coordinated cooperation of around 100 muscles to simply say “Hello”!

    And yet, we are mostly unaware of our body’s accomplishments. It works in the background. Tireless, faithful, reliable, expecting nothing in return.

    As a health scientist, I knew how bodily functions worked to preserve life. At least in theory. But somehow I had never truly understood what my body did for me every second of every day.

    My body gave me life and served me unconditionally. It allowed me to experience the sunshine and all this world’s joys and pleasures. It enabled me to love, laugh, cry, and contribute.

    It created my daughter.

    But, instead of being grateful, I ignored and neglected it, sabotaged its efforts to maintain my health, and damaged it with abuse and negativity. Instead of loving the miracle that it was, I reduced it to its outer form, condemned its looks, which I denounced as unacceptable.

    Despite knowing what an amazing marvel of creation my body was, I still couldn’t look beneath my body’s exterior appearance. I obsessed over my figure and physique.

    Why did I believe my body was somehow wrong or not good enough? Why was it so difficult to love and accept it?

    Realization #3: Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder.

    As I looked into it more deeply, I started to understand that I had become a victim. All my life, I was bombarded with set definitions of beauty. Every TV show, movie, and newspaper highlighted the standards required to be beautiful.

    Every commercial, billboard, and fashion magazine implied how I had to look to be desirable. And they established beauty, attractiveness, and physical perfection as prerequisites for happiness, success, and love.

    Society seemed to prescribe specific measurements for every part of the human body.

    A certain height, weight, and hip-to-waist ratio defined a gorgeous body. Symmetrical features, flawless skin, and full lips made an attractive face. And every scar, lump, blemish or departure from the perfect body proportions destroyed all prospects of ever being beautiful.

    I had allowed my mind to become conditioned and accepted society’s version of beauty without questioning. I believed that I was destined to be ugly because I didn’t meet the criteria. I accepted the fact that beauty was out of my reach because my body shape didn’t make the grade.

    I felt like a failure for not being beautiful.

    But now it dawned on me that the society-imposed criteria were haphazard. The beauty I yearned for was a set of randomly selected dimensions, arbitrary proportions, and subjective features. Ever changing according to trends dictated by the media and beauty and fashion industries.

    Yet I bowed to them. I fixated on my appearance and compared myself to photoshopped idols. I beat myself up for my too broad hips, short legs, and round face.

    But these features were out of my control, genetically determined by the miraculous fusion of my parents’ DNA. My body was so much more than its looks and I was so much more than my body.

    So why was it so important for me to be beautiful?

    Realization #4: The true reason why we strive for beauty and perfection

    I now knew that beauty was nothing but a man-made concept. A random phantasm imposed upon us by relentless conditioning.

    But still I craved to be beautiful, I obsessed over my body’s appearance, I wanted others to admire my looks.

    And the reason was low self-worth.

    All my life, I felt inferior to others. I thought that I was inherently worthless.

    Yet, I believed that, in order to deserve happiness, love, and fulfilment, I had to be worthy of them. I had to have worth.

    So I dedicated my life to the accumulation of worth. And again, society had strict criteria to fulfill in order to be worthy of what I desired. Impressive possessions, qualifications, wealth, and other people’s approval increased my worth. And so did beauty.

    The more beautiful, flawless, and perfect a person is, the more worth they possess in society’s eyes.

    And my unremarkable looks were not good enough, leaving me with a painful worth deficit.

    Because not being beautiful made me worth less compared to others. Unworthy of a happy life, undeserving of a loving relationship. And there was nothing I could do about it.

    Or so I thought.

    The Incredibly Irony of Our Obsession with Beauty

    All my life I had been stuck in a disastrous, depressing loop.

    I wanted a life blessed with happiness and love. And in order to deserve it, I had to be worthy. But I couldn’t be worthy because I wasn’t beautiful enough.

    My body’s looks didn’t meet the requirements.

    And that’s why I could never love my body. Because it doomed me to a miserable, worthless life full of heartache, disappointment, and suffering.

    But all my self-loathing, self-condemnation, and the inability to love and accept myself were based on a mesh of lies.

    Because the truth is that beauty is a myth, a random set of society-imposed criteria. And not falling into the narrow range of qualifying measurements does not make us worthless.

    Our worth doesn’t depend on beauty, desirability, popularity or other people’s admiration and approval. It is an inherent part of who we are. An intrinsic, absolute feature of our being.

    We are worth personified, every one of us.

    We all equally deserve to be happy and loved. No matter what we look like, how tall we are, or how much we weigh.

    Our body’s outer appearance will never change anything about our worth. Our scars and imperfections cannot diminish our deservedness. Excess weight won’t make us inferior to others.

    Because we never were worthless. Nor will we ever be.

    How to Finally Love Your Body

    After these life-changing realizations, I went to work to improve my self-worth and break my mind’s conditioning.

    I must have repeated the affirmations “I am worth” and “I love and approve of myself” thousands of times. I ignored my mind’s resistance to the new paradigm and forgave myself when I slipped back into old self-criticising habits for a while. I persevered.

    I kept reminding myself that our commonly accepted concept of beauty was society-imposed, arbitrary, and unfounded. My body was a miracle regardless of whether its outer appearance met the criteria. As such, beauty wasn’t a prerequisite for loving it. Or for my worthiness as a person.

    As my mind got used to the new way of thinking, I started to accept my body as a wonderful part of the infinitely worthy being I was. I broke free from the misguided untruths I used to bow to.

    I am in a loving relationship with my body now. We are a team. I listen to its needs and allow it to look after me.

    Every day I thank it for being awesome and serving me so well. When my body changes or is unwell or in pain, I bless it with love instead of cursing it for being weak or letting me down.

    I still carry the twenty pounds I gained during my pregnancy. I might lose them eventually, for health reasons. But they don’t destroy my beauty; they don’t deduct from my worth.

    I no longer look in the mirror and see vast hips, a flabby belly, and imperfections. I see a miracle. I see life.

    I see worth.

    Beauty isn’t restricted to a chosen few who happen to meet the requirements. It is an expression of the marvel of human existence. Beauty is within all of us.

    Your body is a miracle. You are worth.

    And you are be-you-tiful.

  • Every Situation in Life Is Temporary

    Every Situation in Life Is Temporary

  • What Little Chance You Have in Trying to Change Others

    What Little Chance You Have in Trying to Change Others

  • Always Keep Singing Your Own Song

    Always Keep Singing Your Own Song

  • Don’t Allow Someone to Treat You Poorly Just Because You Love Them

    Don’t Allow Someone to Treat You Poorly Just Because You Love Them

  • Coping with Your Partner’s Life-Altering Medical Condition

    Coping with Your Partner’s Life-Altering Medical Condition

    “We don’t know what’s causing it,” I say to friends for what feels like the hundredth time. My boyfriend has been unable to walk or stand without pain for two years. And no doctors can seem to figure out why.

    We were in our early twenties and had only been dating for a few months before his leg issue started. What ensued was a harsh transition from a highly active couple hiking mountains on the weekends, to a sedentary couple that needed to take an Uber to a coffee shop just a few blocks away.

    Our identities as individuals and as a couple were forced to adapt as we struggled to balance our budding relationship and the crippling reality of being unable to walk, bike, run, swim, or do any other form of physical activity together. But this wasn’t the only issue; other areas of our relationship struggled as well.

    Our conversations became strained, our intimacy more limited. We had become much less carefree as we battled to adapt to our new constraints. My partner now seemed to lack the confidence and assuredness he once had, and my plans about how the relationship would grow suddenly had a huge wrench in them with no timeline for when things would get better.

    Along the way I’ve shared our journey with others, and it turns out there are a surprising number of people with similar stories. Their partner was happy and thriving when they met, then they unexpectedly developed a debilitating medical condition that changed everything. I’ve heard examples of several friends whose partners have unexplained chronic pain, nausea, headaches, heart conditions, and more.

    While these are personal anecdotes from my own small circle, I know we are not alone. There are millions of active Reddit threads and support groups in community forums by desperate partners reaching out the internet to answer “When will the person I fall in love with be back?”—“What is going on?!”

    Every situation and relationship is different, and many have been enduring the struggle for much longer than the two years I have been, with much more life-threatening conditions. Hats off to you! However, I have learned a thing or two over the course of my journey that have helped me turn a corner in my relationship even though the issue is still going on.

    Here are my top six tips for coping with a partner’s life-altering medical condition. In other words, here are things I keep telling myself in order to get through one of the hardest things I have ever experienced.

    1. Stop planning for the day they get better.

    In the first few months of our journey, I would create timelines in my head for when it seemed “reasonable” he would be better (“In three months it should be better, right?”… five months… a year, etc.). But those timelines were based purely in blind faith despite not even knowing what the problem was. I would set myself up for disappointment again and again while there was still no progress.

    After enough failed treatments and milestones (birthdays, holidays) that passed when he still wasn’t better, I realized I needed to be open to the harsh reality that today’s medical system is not perfect: it’s slow and often trial-and-error, especially if the doctors aren’t sure what the issue is. There is no time he “should” be better.

    Releasing myself from these expectations, and the pain they created, allowed me to stay more level-headed and focus on the things we can control and enjoy in our relationship.

    2. Do your own research.

    Google everything, study the anatomy of the body, familiarize yourself with Western vs. Eastern medical treatments, take a minute to focus on a dense, peer-reviewed medical journal, educate yourself. This will help with #1, as you will know what is going on, why it’s complex, and why it’s taking so long to figure it out. Knowledge will give you peace of mind.

    You will be able to meaningfully contribute to conversations with your partner as they navigate their appointments and decisions. As a result, you will feel more involved in the journey rather than victimized by it. It’s something you are doing together, and you are empowered to help each other since you are both experts in all the possibilities of what the issue may be.

    3. Seek out others in your situation.

    For the first year or so, I felt entirely alone on the journey. It felt like a secret struggle between my partner and me that my friends and family didn’t understand, or they assumed it was probably better by the next time they asked about it. Finding friends who were going through something similar was instantly comforting.

    With them, I can speak more freely about the emotional toll it is taking on the relationship, swap stories of failed doctor’s appointments, and discuss the next thing we are trying. Hearing about someone else’s unique story has helped provide perspective and get outside of my own head on my relationship.

    If you don’t have any friends going through the same thing, I found a couple people online here and here. Seeing them struggle with their own medical journeys inspired me to stay strong and keep going.

    4. Grow the parts of the relationship that you still can.

    As much as it seems like your partner’s issue is taking up all the space in the relationship, remember there are still other aspects of the relationship that are ready and willing to grow. Try your hardest to not talk about the medical issue all the time. Set up a regular check-in cadence on how you and your partner are feeling about the situation, and spend time outside of that enjoying life together.

    Find new activities to do together, new hobbies to be into together, new conversations you may not have gotten into otherwise. Don’t be ashamed if the activities you do with your partner aren’t exactly what you thought you’d be doing or what your friends are doing with their partners. Cherish your special relationship with one another.

    5. Own your choice to stay in the relationship.

    You may struggle with whether or not you should stay. If you are still in your relationship despite the way the medical issue has changed it, you have likely developed a rationale for why it makes sense to stay, such as “It’ll get better soon so I just need to stick it out,” or “I don’t believe in leaving when there are hard times,” or “We have kids who need us.”

    While those things may be true to you, they represent more about your personal belief system than anything else. This is how you choose to look at the issue, and, in turn, why you choose to stay. In reality, you are not obligated to stay. You do it because you want to do it. This self-awareness will free you from feeling stuck, or like you “have” to be there. It will help you to focus on why you are staying and validate that choice.

    6. Be proud of yourself.

    This is tough! Pat yourself on the back for what you can do and the little wins you have along the way. You and your partner are both learning together, and you should be proud of yourselves individually and as a couple. While these situations can create friction that drives you apart, it’s actually not you two versus each other—it’s you two versus the problem. Stick together and lean on each other. You’re doing a great job.

  • Someday This Will Be Funny

    Someday This Will Be Funny

    “A great attitude becomes a great mood. A great mood becomes a great day. A great day becomes a great year. A great year becomes a great life.” ~Unknown

    I was already in a terrible mood by the time we arrived at the hotel around 7:30pm. It was Thanksgiving, and my family and I had spent four hours in the car in order to visit out-of-town family. My daughter had an accident in car seat on the way out there, and my husband and I were both battling colds. Oh, and it was my birthday.

    We’d spent the afternoon with my husband’s family, and had enjoyed the meal and the visit, but left on the early side to give ourselves time to get to the hotel before our three-year-old daughter could get overtired.

    We’d stayed at this hotel before; it offered a suite at a reasonable rate, which allowed our daughter to go to bed at her normal bedtime and for us to be in a separate room and be able to stay up until our own normal bedtime. I’d called months in advance to book a room, as soon as we knew we’d be making the trip to Raleigh, as I wanted to have that box checked off in my mind.

    In other words: I thought the hotel would be no problem.

    Unfortunately, it didn’t go as smoothly as I’d imagined. The person at the desk was new, and I had difficulty figuring out what he was trying to tell me; I just understood something was wrong. Finally he said it: We overbooked the suites and you’ll all have to be in one room together.

    One room together? On my birthday, when I have a cold and am exhausted and frustrated and grumpy? I have to go to bed before 8pm? With no chance to talk to my husband or read a book?

    Yup.

    I didn’t find this acceptable, and the front desk clerk half-heartedly called around to see if any other hotels were available, and I did the same. Being a holiday, though, there was nothing. Meanwhile, my daughter was getting more and more irritable and tired, actually asking when we could go upstairs and go to bed.

    My mood got worse and worse, and I’m not proud of the way I behaved. I was surly to the hotel employee, something I try to never, ever do after my own years in the hospitality industry. I was rude, unpleasant, and downright mean.

    It changed nothing. Well, we did get a discount on the room, but we probably would have gotten that either way. I felt terrible.

    We went upstairs, rushed to get unpacked and settled, me grumbling and agitated the whole time, then put our daughter to bed. She passed out instantly, out so cold that my husband and I were able to whisper in the dark for more than an hour, which was actually kind of fun.

    At some point during our talk in the dark, I realized this moment, this experience, this exact second, was an opportunity to stop and ask myself how I wanted to feel and behave.

    I told myself something that shifted my attitude in just one moment: “Someday this will be funny.”

    I felt an enormous energy shift and actually began to smile. My mood was completely changed.

    I saw that not having the right hotel room was so, so not a big deal. Yeah, it was an inconvenience, but it wasn’t worth being so upset over.

    And having a minor cold? And spending a lot of the day in the car? Also not big things to worry about.

    All of this happening on my birthday? It’s not like it was my sweet sixteen or the big four-oh. It was just not worth getting upset over.

    I wish I could let you feel the way I felt in that hotel room, because the shift happened so quickly and so completely. One minute I was stewing over everything that had happened in the past hour, getting more and more upset, and the next I felt complete and utter peace and relief.

    Looking back, I can also see that there was so much space for gratitude and appreciation, and not just because it was Thanksgiving.

    My family could not only afford to stay in a hotel, but we could afford to switch to a more expensive one the next night (one with a suite!). We have family to celebrate the holidays with. We have an awesome, reliable, and safe car to get us to wear we need to go.

    Appreciation is such a beautiful thing, and it goes hand in hand with shifting negative thoughts to more positive ones. Once you start looking around for things to appreciate, letting go of anger and frustration is much easier.

    This experience was really powerful and important to me, so I wanted to share what I’ve done differently since then. Perhaps these tips will help you improve your mood when dealing with inconveniences that aren’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

    Use the power of words to bring yourself back down to a calm place.

    I’ve started saying “someday this will be funny” whenever I can, because it brings me back to that hotel room and the way it shifted my mood. I also regularly ask myself if whatever is happening will matter tomorrow, or in a week, or in a month. Those all help me put things in perspective.

    Remind yourself things will turn out fine.

    Depending on your belief system, you may even take the long view and know that your spirit is completely safe and protected regardless of what happens in this life. If that doesn’t do it for you, simply ask yourself if this incident will even matter in a week or a month; often you’ll see that this isn’t going to have much of an impact on your life or well-being.

    Remember THIS IS IT.

    This thing that’s happening right now, even as you read this article, is your life. If you spend it going from sour mood to sour mood, your life is going to turn out pretty sour. You are the only one who has the power to change that.

    Think of the Chinese parable that teaches there is no good or bad.

    I’ve heard a few different versions of it, but the gist is that no matter what comes our way, it can be good or bad, who’s to say? Something may seem bad on its face, like losing a job, but it may bring something wonderful, like a new career you’re more passionate about.

    Use every possible opportunity to take a few deep breaths and reset.

    I know I get stuck in patterns, and feeling sorry for myself is one of them. I have to really, really work to notice when I’m getting sucked down into bad feelings and take the time to shift my perspective, so do it every single time you think of it.

    Remind yourself that like attracts like.

    You’ve probably noticed that when you’re in a bad mood and acting grouchy or defensive, other people react to you with that same energy, which doesn’t feel good and can put you in an even worse mood. You’re also more likely to notice negative things happening all around you when that’s what you’re focused on. Likewise, when you’re noticing the good stuff, you’re calmer and happier, and people you encounter reflect that back to you, too.

    This incident happened more than six months ago, but it’s stuck with me. You and I both get to decide how we will react in any given moment, in any given situation. Let’s take a collective deep breath and try to laugh.

  • My To-Do List for Today

    My To-Do List for Today

  • When the Euphoria Fades: Dealing with the Highs and Lows of Love

    When the Euphoria Fades: Dealing with the Highs and Lows of Love

    “We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” ~Sam Keen

    When we fall in love, we feel excited to experience some of the most joyful moments of our lives. Because love is supposed to be the source of the best feelings, right? But what about when that relationship churns up some hard stuff and leaves you feeling hurt, annoyed, sad, and irate?

    For many of us, especially deep-feelers like me, when we start to experience these inevitable lows in our relationship, we may conclude that something is inherently wrong with it.

    But what if that assumption is just smoke and mirrors? What if it is preventing you from truly experiencing the real love you crave?

    Believing something is wrong with your relationship might, tragically, lead you to conclude that the relationship has failed and should be ended, even though it’s actually pretty healthy and promising.

    “I’ve been annoyed with him a lot lately,” and, “We just haven’t been connecting much” are common complaints I hear from people I talk with. Followed frequently by the sentence of doom, “Maybe I made a mistake by marrying him.” “Maybe they aren’t meant for me.”

    I’ve made that same jump of reason in the past. Multiple times in my twenties, I ended relationships full of potential because bad feelings were arising more often than I thought they should. I thought it meant something was wrong with him or with us.

    Being someone who is highly attuned to what I feel, I have always taken my feelings really seriously. When I feel bad, I feel really bad. And when things feel, well, blah, I feel that deeply, too.

    As had been my norm in past relationships, when my partner and I began to get over those hormone-stoked, bursting-with-love early months of our relationship, I started to feel moments when things didn’t feel “good” anymore. When it all felt “dull.” When he wasn’t behaving how I thought he ought to. When we weren’t “connecting” like I thought we should.

    Like I had done in the past, I could have taken this as a sign that something was wrong with our relationship, and that he was the wrong man for me.

    But I was gifted with a powerful secret that changed everything at a relationship workshop we had attended together to preemptively deal with the normal stuff that sabotages great relationships (we were committed to this relationship thriving): This dullness was normal and healthy.

    What?

    As I let the power of this one mental shift sink in, and marinated in the subtleties of what it meant, my relationship began to full-on thrive—and continues to years later.

    My hope is that it can change your relationship for the better, too.

    Let’s Investigate This Further

    Imagine your emotional life as a spectrum from terrible to wonderful, with neutral in the middle. It is completely normal to spend one-third of the time on the negative side of the emotional spectrum, one-third on the positive, and one-third in a neutral state.

    When we believe that love should always feel good, we often experience the neutral times as less-than good, which we interpret to mean bad. We turn “okay” into “bad” and “bad” into “terrible.”

    This is especially true for sensitive souls like me, because we feel things so deeply: anything less than positive registers as uncomfortable, or negative.

    When I realized that two-thirds of the time it is absolutely normal to not feel “good” when it comes to my love life, I felt immense relief.

    It means that there is nothing wrong with my experience. It means I can stop feeling upset that I’m upset, or mad when things are just okay. I can stop feeling so disappointed when I feel unhappy, dull, irritated, sad, or confused.

    I now see that it’s the measuring of my experience against some ideal and unrealistic standard that feels so extra bad. It’s my resistance to what I am actually experiencing that feels terrible.

    So now I say, so what if I feel a bit of discomfort, or things are a little dull inside me, or between my man and me? So what if I am experiencing numbness or just okay-ness? I can just let it be what it is, knowing that it is normal and healthy, and it will change soon anyway.

    I’m not suggesting we tolerate abuse or mistreatment for any percentage of time; just that it’s normal to not always feel head-over-heels in love and blissfully happy.

    One of the biggest benefits of “embracing neutrality,” as I call it, is that my joy is amplified during the times my partner and I are really connecting well. How could I even know what good was if I never felt it’s opposite?

    Contrast is the truth of life. Contrast is part of our humanity. To have a rich love life, embracing all our feelings is the only healthy path. Because, as we allow it all, we fall deeper in love with life, and everyone in it.

    Though my life is filled with the same amount of sad, annoyed, frustrated, bland, and ho-hum moments as ever, the way I experience them has entirely changed: so much softer, so much less agonizing.

    And as I have practiced being accepting of the neutral times, I’ve actually begun to appreciate them more. When I welcome neutrality, the ho-hum moments almost start to feel good, too. That means I now feel more good feelings than bad ones, by far.

    If you’d like to recognize and get comfortable with feeling less-than-great so you can avoid ruining a good thing, here are a few tips:

    1. Use gentle awareness and be really honest with yourself.

    When you notice you are feeling less-than-great (just less-than-great for your first few times, not terrible), get curious about what you are really sensing. Feel your emotions. Notice what physical sensations are there. Do you feel constriction? Or openness? Or a vague sense of nothing?

    2. Assess your feelings.

    Rate this body-feeling on a scale from one to ten, ten being the best you could feel, five being neutral, one being terrible.

    3. If you rate below a six, really investigate with curiosity how that feels in your body.

    Allow it to be as it is. Notice that it isn’t a problem to not feel good. It’s just a bunch of interesting sensations. Even unhappiness isn’t so bad when you look at it with gentle curiosity. You are safe to experience what you feel.

    When you do this a few times a day you will expand your capacity to tolerate discomfort. You may even realize that you can actually enjoy your significant other’s imperfect behaviors and human quirks that were bothersome in the past.

    Like the nights he is mentally absorbed by a work issue and acts distant. The times he says, “uh-huh” before you even finished what you were saying, as if he wasn’t really paying attention. When he picks his nose in public…

    Because most of us, let’s be honest here, are a far cry from perfect. No one will ever truly fulfill and delight you all the time.

    That is actually your job, not your partner’s! It is your work to drop the expectations, comparisons, judgments, fears, and beliefs that are interfering with the health of your relationship and to learn to care for the normal, bland, day-to-day humanness of your sweetie.

    Because if you don’t embrace the dull times, you are much more likely to lose the whole glorious package by rejecting your experience and your partner a majority of the time.

    When I notice I’m resisting feeling dull or I’m a bit uncomfortable about something going on in my relationship, I now use this powerful affirmation to remind me that discomfort is simply part of being a human in love: “My relationship is most authentically and deeply loving when I allow the seasons of my heart to come and go, experiencing them all with presence and acceptance.”

    If you embrace neutrality like I have, instead of believing it means something has gone wrong, the neutral times become like a glass half full (instead of half empty). The good times become rich and wonderful. And those truly hard moments? They are simply reminders of how delightful the good times actually are, and reinforce their joy.

  • You Will Grow, Life Will Change, Things Will Work Out

    You Will Grow, Life Will Change, Things Will Work Out

  • Embrace the Time You Have Alone

    Embrace the Time You Have Alone