Tag: wisdom
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3 Tools to Help You Calm Your Mind and Let Go of Anxiety
“I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
I’ve struggled with anxiety throughout my life. A difficult childhood and my highly sensitive personality meant I grew into an anxious kid—there was just too much pain and emotional overwhelm for my young brain to handle.
My anxiety most often manifested as perfectionism and people pleasing, so from the outside everything seemed great. I excelled in school and I was a good kid who did as she was told. But there was a war inside me.
I felt broken, unable to navigate these huge feelings of fear and uncertainty on my own. Full of negativity and self-criticism, I felt like an outsider, misunderstood by the world, scared and alone.
Over the years, as I stuffed down these feelings of inadequacy and isolation, I internalized the belief that somehow I was not good enough, that there was something inherently wrong with me.
Afraid of being found out, ridiculed, and humiliated, I became invisible. I masked my fears, shame, and feeling rejected with arrogance. I became rigid and controlling. I was super hard on myself. I felt restless, angry, and defective even more.
In denial about all of this until my late thirties, my children finally cracked me open.
Motherhood was full of its own challenges, and my perfectionism shifted into high gear—the image of a wonderful, ever caring, ever patient mother was front and center. Hell bent on giving my children everything I was missing growing up, I put an enormous amount of pressure and responsibility on myself.
The stress was too high and I started breaking down. I began to unravel.
Anxiety happens in the presence of danger you can’t do anything about. Fear is a healthy and helpful response when you’re in an immediate danger. It alerts us and mobilizes us into action. But if you’re safe at home thinking about something that might happen or something that happened long time ago, you’re suffering needlessly.
Anxiety can show up in many ways and on many levels: physically, emotionally, and mentally. For me, it’s being negative and super critical of myself—my anxious voice telling me I’m messed up not good enough, inherently wrong.
I get easily stressed and overwhelmed. I become a perfectionist; I get restless, on edge. I’m unable to relax, sleep, focus. I’m so caught up in my head with worries that I’m not present, I’m not there for people who matter most. My chest is tight, my arms and legs tingly, headache and backache show up unannounced.
And then I reject how it feels, wanting it to do away—my resistance only making things worse. Fear feeds on itself. I feel broken, I feel shame, and so I disconnect from others. Depression kicks in. I get stuck.
3 Steps Toward Healing Anxiety
Anxiety is often embedded deep into the subconscious, especially if there is a history of childhood trauma or neglect. Past events and experiences are stored in the body. Thinking patterns and defense mechanisms become habitual, and we carry them throughout our adult life, unaware of their negative consequences. These are all hard things to deal with.
Fortunately, we have the capacity to change our brain by learning to be present, and becoming more aware of our habitual thoughts and behaviors. The brain is “plastic”; it can adopt new behaviors and learn new ways of looking at the world. This process is slow, but it’s our opening into healing anxiety.
Mindfulness is the foundation of change.
The first step in calming anxiety is mindfulness—becoming aware of the here and now, without judgment or trying to change our experience. The good news is that our physical body is a perfect vehicle for bringing ourselves into present awareness. And we start with out breath.
Anxiety moves us out of the present moment and into our habitual reacting to the perceived threat. It overwhelms our brain and blocks us from seeing things clearly, entangling us in ceaseless fears and worries.
We can’t heal what we don’t know. Mindfulness is the tool that can shed the light on our habitual thinking, feeling, behaving, and holding patterns—that is, where in the body we’re holding onto our fear and pain. Bringing these patterns to light allows us to break the cycle.
When you are triggered (someone says something critical to you, your child comes home from school crying, you argue with a friend or spouse), start by anchoring yourself in your breath.
Take a deep breath in, then slowly and fully exhale. Keep breathing deeply and slowly while allowing your experience to be as is, without judgment. This is truly hard—you may want to have a guided meditation handy for moments like this.
Slowly move your attention to your entire body and start tracking your sensations. This allows us to get out of our head and embody our current experience. We can begin to notice where in our body the fear and anxiety are being stored, where we might feel frozen, afraid, or on fire.
Observe, where is anxiety locked in your body? What does it feel like? What does it look like? What’s the texture, color, temperature?
A lot of tension from anxiety is stored around our eyes, jaw, neck. Notice this and consciously release the grip. Let those points relax.
If we’re able to stay present and open—with breath as our anchor—we will slowly calm the physical part of anxiety. This in turn, slows us down mentally, allowing us to calm down the racing thoughts and emotional reactions.
Observe your mind for a moment and notice any difference from when you began this meditation. Come back to your breath if you notice you’re drifting into your thoughts.
If you feel strong enough, you can notice and acknowledge any feelings and emotions you are now experiencing. You can commit to witnessing the fear, your vulnerability, allow and feel it so you can finally move past it.
Another helpful tactic is visualizing peace flowing into your body with each breath in, and tension leaving your body with each breath out. Breathe in calm, breathe our fear.
Again, if you’re feeling anchored, you can now observe your internal dialog in order to reframe your experience and learn new ways of responding in challenging situations.
You have to be willing to observe your negative thoughts and emotions with openness and clarity. You can then look at what triggered you and why? You can dissect your reactions to figure out better ways of responding next time. This way you learn new ways of coping and responding in the moments that push our sore spots.
Self-compassion is the engine that keeps us going.
Kristin Neff defines self-compassion as “being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism.”
No positive change can happen in the atmosphere of criticism and self-abuse. We can’t force ourselves to do better. We have to offer ourselves support and encouragement in order to heal and grow.
Negative self-talk is the hallmark of anxiety.
Perhaps, growing up, our caretakers criticized, shamed, or punished us for our mistakes and weaknesses and so we learned to treat ourselves this way. Perhaps we learned to believe that if we’re hard on ourselves, we’ll accomplish more, become a better version of ourselves.
Tune into that inner voice. What is it telling you? Does this voice remind you of someone from your past?
Tapping into self-compassion can help us break our entrenched patterns of self-criticism, while still allowing us to be honest about our fears.
We can remember that no one is perfect, and everyone struggles in one way or another. And we can offer ourselves kindness and understanding. We are not weak or defective. We are human, and all humans go through moments of struggle.
Think of your self-compassionate voice as a supportive and kind friend who’s encouraging you to see things in a clearer, more balanced way. Don’t add to the pain by putting yourself down, judging yourself harshly. Offer yourself understanding, love, and care. This is hard work, and you are doing the best you can with what you’ve got.
This is not about excusing your behavior or bathing yourself in self-pity. It’s about giving yourself love and support so you can do better, be stronger, so you can rise above your past pain and better handle struggles ahead.
Self-expression is the outlet for letting go.
The hardest part of anxiety is learning to let go. Letting go is difficult, even if consciously we understand that our hurt and fears are a heavy burden to carry. This is the stuff that weighs us down, physically and emotionally diminishing our life force.
The enormous energy needed to protect ourselves from pain and anxiety is depleting, and so we must learn to release the fears and unburden our soul.
As Della Hicks-Wilson tells us, we have to “let the truth exist somewhere other than inside your body.”
We have to get it out of our body, remove the stored pain, anxiety, fear, trauma, shock, and shame so we can make room for joy, peace and vitality.
One of the best forms of emotional release is by writing. When we write we give our internal world a voice. We slow down and clear our head, and gradually deepen our understanding of ourselves. We are then able to process and makes sense of what’s happening with us and around us. We gain a new perspective, discover new choices, develop new mindset.
Writing is an act of courage. You show up for yourself, expose your vulnerabilities bringing the ugly parts into the light to look at it up close. But the act of writing is liberating. It gives us permission to release.
By putting our fears and hurts down on paper, we can let them go without judgment or worry. Our journal becomes a safe space for us to free ourselves, get unstuck, move forward. When we write we release, and when we release we heal.
Healing Takes Time and Devotion
I still get anxious sometimes, as does everyone else, but over the years I’ve picked up strategies that allow me to cope and manage my anxiety so it doesn’t control my life. My most reliable tools are daily meditation, yoga, making art, journaling, spending time in nature, surrounding myself with people who love and support me, and being mindful of my internal dialog.
Writing has been the most transformative, however. When done mindfully, writing allows us to step back and shift our mindset, rewiring our brain over time. We can safely process our experience, integrate and heal it, all while staying present and kind to ourselves.
Slowing down is the key to successfully transforming anxiety, and both mindfulness and writing allow us to slow down the rollercoaster of reactions so we can unpack and integrate our experience.
We have a deep capacity to heal and grow, but we can only do with enough self-awareness, a healthy dose of self-compassion, and an empowering belief that we are inherently good.
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Don’t Lose Sight of the Big Picture: Spend Time with People You Truly Enjoy
“Even if you are on the right track you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” ~Will Rogers
How is this happening again?
Lying in bed watching The Mentalist at 8 P.M. on a Saturday night, my mind begins to wander.
A year ago I was so happy. I spent almost every night hanging out with amazing friends and now I’m here, alone watching TV.
As my heart sank into my stomach, I shook my head, suppressed my feelings, and pushed play to start the next episode.
A few years earlier I moved to Santa Fe, NM, a state I had never even visited before. Excited to start a new journey, I set out to meet new people and create a life full of amazing friends.
Although that’s exactly what happened, the first few months were extremely difficult. I spent a lot of time trying to make new friends while having zero success. After a couple months, this went from frustrating to depressing.
Luckily, I was able to solve the problem and learned how to make new friends from scratch. It was amazing. I was having some of the best times of my life.
Every week I had friends inviting me to birthday parties, barbecues, camping trips, river rafting excursions, and typical nights out on the town. And when I invited people to places, like my New Year’s Eve party, people showed up.
It was a high I’ll never forget.
After an exhilarating two years in Santa Fe, I moved back to Huntington Beach, CA, the city I was born and raised in.
I was excited for yet another new page in my life. Huntington is a beautiful city with great weather (and waves!). My family, best friend, and other great friends live here.
Kim, my girlfriend at the time (now my wife), and I decided to have a long-distance relationship and I chose to save some money by living with my parents.
The next year was a disaster.
It might not have looked terrible from the outside, but I was eating myself alive on the inside.
Even though I had friends in the area, I was only hanging out with them about once every two months. And about just as often, Kim and I would travel to see each other.
But that was it. The only other people I hung out with were family members. And as much as I love them, this was not healthy for me.
I may have seemed happy, but I was faking it. I was hurting. Instead of fixing it, I kept going with the status-quo.
This feeling was very similar to the one I had when I moved to Santa Fe. A feeling of sadness, hurt, and longing that comes from a lack of spending time with people who make you feel alive.
But this time was different. I knew I could make friends if I wanted to and I already had friends living here. I just didn’t make the relationships a priority like I should have.
My laziness was striking me down and I got stuck in a comfort zone of my own making.
It was easy to say yes and go out with friends when I was living by myself in Santa Fe. But living with my parents made it a little less appealing, which was enough to prevent me from doing it. I’d think to myself:
I’ve already showered and I’m in my comfy clothes. I can hang out here with my parents, have a couple drinks, and watch this movie, or I can get ready again and meet up with my friends. Ah, I think I’ll just stay here tonight.
That’s literally how many of my nights played out. And it was similar for the day time too. I’d decline an invite to go surfing because I already showered or because I was about to go to breakfast with my parents, something I easily could have skipped.
When we finally moved Kim out here to Huntington, I thought my problem would be fixed. Instead, it was more of the same. Mexican food with my parents, cooking chicken piccata with Kim, staying home watching Prison Break, and trail running by myself in the wetlands.
As much as I love hanging out with Kim and my family, I need that outside energy with friends who share some of my deepest interests and passions. So finally, after way too long, I made this realization:
I need to spend more time with people who make me feel truly alive.
My parents and Kim do fill a big part of that need. But I need other friends to fill the rest.
I started making changes to my life that helped me meet new people and spend more time with existing and past friends.
I joined a music production class. Kim and I played on a beach volleyball team with her coworkers and a separate flag football team with strangers. I also joined a soccer team.
I started hanging out with my friends more. I’d text my buddy during the week and say, “Hey, wanna grab sushi Friday night?” I’d send another text to my surfing friends and say, “Surf’s supposed to be good Saturday. Who’s down?”
On top of that, I’ve been reaching out to people I lost touch with. I recently hit up a friend who I hadn’t talked to in years and said, “Long time no see. Miss you dude. Hope all is awesome. You still running?”
That text conversation ended with my wife and I scheduling a San Diego day trip and a twelve-mile running adventure for my buddy and me.
I’ve even been getting together with friends I haven’t hung out with since high school!
Ever since I put more focus and effort into spending time with my good friends, while still maintaining healthy relationships within my family, my life has improved drastically. I’m happier and more enjoyable to be around. Even better, I’m back to being my old, goofy self again.
What steps can you take to make sure you don’t fall into the same trap I did?
If you’re not careful, the same thing can happen to you. In the moment, it’s easy to stay home and watch Netflix because that’s easier and more comfortable. However, in the long-term that can be detrimental.
Here are three steps you can take to get you on the right track:
First, determine whether you have the right people in your life to keep you happy. Do you feel like you can be yourself around them? Do you feel free and alive when you hang out with them?
Second, figure out if they are willing and able to spend enough time with you. Invite them to hang out and see if you can fill the free time you set aside for hanging out with friends.
If you haven’t spoken to the person for a while, try pinging them first. Shoot them a text, a Facebook message, or even just comment on one of their posts. The main things you want to get across are that you miss them, you hope all is well, you’re curious how they’re doing, and you were thinking about them and wanted to say, “Hi.”
If you’ve been in touch with them lately, just shoot them a message and say, “Hey, let’s get together soon. I was thinking of hiking El Morro this weekend. Interested?”
It’s good to invite them to do something specific that you know they would enjoy. If you just ask to hang out, it might be hard for them to imagine what you would do together, which can make them less likely to accept. And if they do want to hang out but can’t or don’t want to do the original activity you proposed, they’ll likely respond with a different idea, still giving you a chance to hang out.
Third, if your friends don’t have the time or you’d rather hang out with different people, it’s time to consider meeting new people. Join a photography class, sign up for a kickball team, find a book club, or attend a young professional’s social mixer.
Go out into the world and meet new people. If you can find people while doing activities you already enjoy, even better.
Once you understand how important your friendships are, you’ve cleared the first hurdle.
From there, it’s on you to stay proactive to create and nourish the relationships that are so vital to your well-being.
It might take a little more effort to pick up the phone, text your friend and schedule a hangout, or get outside and join that soccer team, but when you look back on your life you’ll be thankful you did.
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Self-Love Means Never Saying “You Complete Me”
“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha
A popular topic in the glossy magazines, learning to “love yourself” always seemed to me to be a self-indulgent first-world pastime.
It seemed obvious that the commonly-repeated mantra “love yourself first” was just a sign of the times in a world where something like half of all marriages end in divorce. When I dug a little deeper I often found either a list of new spa treatments or a litany of new age catchphrases.
All meaningless—that is until a series of failed relationships taught me the hard way why you have to love yourself first.
I had always walked into relationships from the standpoint of something I needed or wanted. I wanted to feel valued and loved. I needed to feel that my struggles had meaning, and I found this in external validation. I craved for someone to stand by me and tell me that I was worth it.
In my extremely busy and fast-paced life, I was surrounded by people so very lonely, starved of meaningful connections in a world of transactional relationships. Always the alpha-male, I craved a safe space where I could lower my defenses and be affectionate. A relationship became my way of getting what I thought I needed.
For a decade of my life, this didn’t go well, and it certainly didn’t end well. It ended with me on the floor of my living room surrounded by pills and full of suicidal thoughts. But, after I picked myself up, this and many other truths revealed themselves to me.
A need arises from something we find missing in ourselves.
We need someone to tell us we’re important because we don’t feel worthy to begin with.
We feel lonely because our lives aren’t full, and we’re waiting for someone to fill them up.
We so crave those affectionate and reassuring words from someone we care about because we don’t feel pretty, smart, promoted—or whatever—enough. If he or she is a good mate, our need is satiated. This is why “you complete me” became such a widely expressed notion of the power of love. Unfortunately, that sort of thinking leads to dangerous places.
We aren’t “complete” to begin with because of the very thing(s) we feel we’re lacking, or the inadequacy of our being.
We make ourselves as attractive, accommodating, or desirable as we can to cover up these faults and fool an eligible partner into looking past our shortcomings. Eventually, we win, and then the prize is ours. And they both lived happily ever after. Except that rarely happens because that void always needs to be filled.
We’ve told ourselves the story of our lives and convinced ourselves of the short (or long) list of things our partner can give us that will make us happy at last. But somehow it’s never enough, and when we get it, we want more of it, or something else entirely. Our demands to be listened to or supported or valued somehow seem to increase over time.
And maybe we even become resentful. After all, we need to keep our partner fooled into continuing to see past our inadequacies, so we “hustle” for love.
We have put so much effort into making ourselves attractive to begin with, and it’s very difficult to ever let the mask slip, lest he or she find the truth and see us for who we are. It all takes so much effort, and maybe we begin to think “It’s his fault I feel this way.”
This is where coming into love from a place of inadequacy leads. But, when we accept ourselves for who we are, when we recognize our flaws but do not doubt our worth, we don’t seek wholeness in another person. Perhaps we even work on our perceived flaws, but we recognize these as suboptimal behaviors, not something wrong with us. We do bad, but we are not bad.
It’s still totally natural and healthy to have a set of desirable characteristics when we seek out that someone and boundaries for acceptable behavior, but this is a matter of choice, not need.
When we enter a relationship from a place of worthiness and self-acceptance, we don’t hold our partner accountable for our shortcomings or expect her to fix us. We can focus on joy—which is happiness from within—rather than expecting or demanding that the other person supply it from without.
After all, when we expect our partner to supply stuff to us in order to make us happy, crudely put, he or she becomes our dealer. Though of course it’s a bit more emotionally complicated than that, we are in a sense using the other person to fulfill our own ends, and guess what? He or she is probably doing the same to us. It somehow works!
And what does it mean to accept yourself wholly, warts and all? What is it to say: “Maybe I let my jealousy get the better of me sometimes, but my heart is in the right place, and I don’t need anyone to prove that to me”?
How is it that someone can say, “I’m responsible for my own happiness, and I want so very much to share that with another person”? That is loving yourself first, and that love has to stem from a deep place of worthiness.
Love is many things, but one of them is total acceptance with no barriers. If we can’t feel that way toward ourselves, then how can we feel that way with someone else? What we do not accept about ourselves, we do not reveal to someone else.
Love is also the most highly evolved, pristine form of connection, and connection is what gives meaning to people’s lives. This then leads to the false assumption that we need to be given love by other people in order to feel whole.
In fact, the reverse is true. When we feel whole, we are able to love other people, and that is how we connect.
This took so many years and so much heartache for me to figure out. When I looked back on all those failed relationships, though I typically still felt justified in some of the grievances I had, I took responsibility for the fact that it never would have worked out as long as I was seeking validation from another person.
It would be nice and neat for me to say that now, possessed of this understanding, I found the one and am in the midst of my happily-ever-after. That’s actually far from the case! But, what I can say is that I’ve been in a couple of relationships since, and although their endings hurt, they in no way destroyed me or shook me to my core the way they had previously.
Never again did I doubt if I was worthy of that kind of happiness or having those kinds of boundaries of self-respect. The grieving process happened, but it ended, and I remained who I was.
To love myself first is to never have to say “you complete me” again, because I am complete just the way I am. It is to stop hustling for love and allowing myself to be loved. Far from being self-indulgent, it is such a humbling feeling, and it will set you free.
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What Helped Me Move On After Being Cheated On
“Sometimes walking away is the only option because you finally respect yourself enough to know that you deserve better.” ~Unknown
When I was cheated on, I was hit by an ongoing blizzard of conflicting emotions.
There were the initial tears that I failed to hide from anyone. There was a cold ruthlessness as I told her that I couldn’t be with her after what she did. There was a wave of misery, there was a wave of anger, and all of it was dotted with periodic moments of calm and even gratitude that she was finally out of my life.
There were also random spikes in my productivity as I sought to get on with my life, followed by horrifying loneliness, feelings of betrayal, doubting my own self-worth, and the inevitable relapse back into misery at the discovery that she had hooked up with the guy she had cheated on me with less than twenty-four hours after I had ended our relationship.
Grief, I learned, is non-linear. It will go, and it will come back. Sometimes I’ll be perfectly happy doing the food shopping, and get depressed over a memory of us doing it together. There’s no predicting when this will happen.
It was an ongoing spiral, as we had a number of mutual friends, and on top of that, two of our mutual friends lived right below me, and she would visit them often. So she was sticking to my life like gum in hair. There was no escape.
It wasn’t the first time that she had cheated on me. On the first occasion, the man in question told me that my girlfriend had justified her actions by saying that I had hit her.
This allegation swept me off my feet. In fact, I was speechless. I mean, it’s one thing to be cheated on, but to have the person I am in love with say a lie like that, something potentially so damaging, it actually broke my heart more than the act of cheating.
I broke up with her then, and she burst into tears. Her tears were so genuine, the pain of losing me was so obvious, but at the same time contradicted by what she had done.
The following day she begged me to take her back, and with tears streaming down her face she told me that she had been manipulated, and that the other man had made up all that stuff about me hitting her just to split us up. And she seemed so genuine. I took her back.
Things proceeded as they had before, both of us determined to put this into the past and move on together, into a bright future. We got a place together, and poured all of our efforts into making it our dream home.
At some point she lost her job, but I told her to leave the rent to me, since we were partners and money shouldn’t come between us. And during the months that I was supporting us both financially, she cheated on me again, this time with a guy who she insisted was just a friend.
In the past I had noticed a lot of flirting between them, but she had always told me that I was being paranoid, and hanging on to what had happened in the past. It was like my memory of the first guy had been weaponized to use against me if I dared mention that she was making me uncomfortable with her flirtatious behaviour toward her new guy.
When it came to light that there was more between them than she was letting on, I ended things, and instantly fell down this well of despair.
Several of our friends had given me plenty of emotional validation in the sense that I had treated her perfectly, and that anyone in their right mind would be appreciative. But at the initial time of heartbreak, such words do little to stand against the relationship grieving process.
Our mutual friends informed me that she was officially dating this guy less than twenty-four hours after I ended the relationship. That was expected but painful. What wasn’t expected was the revelation that there was a third occasion where she cheated, in the months in between the two that I knew about.
This was with a friend who she had mysteriously fallen out with, and urged me not to speak to. We had mutual friends who knew about this third occurrence, but had kept silent in the hopes that my girlfriend would tell me.
When this all came out, I did speak to this mysterious third person, and found out the horrifying realization that my girlfriend had also told this person that I had hit her. What a coincidence.
This statement not only hurt, but it unravelled all of the trust she’d rebuilt with me when she convinced me that the first guy was lying and had manipulated her. Now it not only hurt to have my partner lie about me, but I learned that she was lying to me, too.
Her mysterious fall out with her friend was caused by her refusal to leave me, her friend feeling led on, and when confronted by why she wouldn’t leave me, giving the explanation that as long as she stayed with me she could live somewhere rent-free.
Cue emotional tidal wave. I mean, this is a lot to process. It was as if the person I had spent every day with was suddenly a completely different person. I had been lying in bed next to a stranger. Behind every “I love you” had been a hidden smirk. I felt like the punchline to a colossal joke that everyone knew about except me.
I coped badly at first, ending the relationship but being unable to embrace the sudden void of free time, which would otherwise have been spent on her. And in the free time, my mind wandered back to the good times, unable to match the person I had fallen for with the person who I had just broken up with. I couldn’t quite believe that they were the same person.
I sought out moments where she could have changed, and wondered what had changed her. Had she been manipulated by the people she cheated on me with? I grasped at a lot of straws in a vain attempt at thinking that maybe this relationship was fixable.
The apartment we had moved into together was our creation, having decorated and furnished it together. It was our dream home. Now it was just mine alone, but haunted by my memory of her presence. And at the core of all of this was my own self-doubt. Had I done enough? Why was I so easy to just casually hurt? Is she evil? Am I just undeserving of love?
But all of my time wallowing in our apartment alone did give me time to think, and I came to the conclusion that all I had to do was think differently.
A lot of my trains of thought had elements of truth, but were completely lacking in logic. Here are the things that I told myself in order to move forward.
Firstly, what was my ideal scenario?
I was mourning the relationship, but what did I hope to happen as an alternative to what was actually happening? In my head I said, “I would love to have her back, having decided that this guy she’s with isn’t actually that great.” Or better yet, “I would love it if she’d never met him.”
But you see, even if she had never met him, she’d still be capable of doing what she did. In fact, her repeat offences were proof enough that this was a very real side of her, and I needed to acknowledge that.
If she’d never met this guy, she would have met another guy. So really what I’m ultimately saying to myself is “I would love it if she was the person I thought she was, and not who she actually is.”
This can be simplified and translated to “I’m wishing for a different person. A better, more suitable partner, that isn’t her.” This thought came as a shock because at the time I didn’t want to accept it, but it’s the truth—she isn’t suitable for me.
So secondly, what did I actually lose?
On the surface, it’s easy to say that I lost my girlfriend to another man. This isn’t the case. All I lost is time out of my life that I had spent committed to the wrong person. I didn’t lose the relationship because it was a lie. And I was losing more time out of my life by fixating on it. Again, it’s a harsh truth but one I had to accept.
So thirdly, it was time to address my own thoughts of self-doubt.
Was there self-esteem to be recovered?
I told myself repeatedly that I’d failed her, and that I wasn’t enough, while those who had seen our relationship grow and collapse had reassured me that I had done all that I could. How does one get out of this rut of self-doubt?
A friend pointed out that the questions I was asking myself, such as “Did I do enough?” in spite of its negative tone, revealed a strong commitment to my relationship. When we were together I was doing my best out of fear of not doing enough. My doubts about this now were the exact same caring, positive characteristics that I was proud of when we were together. I had nothing to be ashamed of.
So my fourth train of thought: Is she evil?
It’s a perfectly rational conclusion to come to. Logic would say that if the blame isn’t on me then it must be on her. At first it feels great to say that she’s evil. Misery transformed into anger works, for a little while. But it isn’t productive, nor is it healthy. And I had to come to the hard conclusion that no, she wasn’t evil. In fact, when I last met her, she was downright miserable.
I asked her, “Why aren’t you happy? You got everything you wanted. You got the guy you wanted, you got rid of the guy you didn’t want. You still have your family and your friends. I just get to live alone in the home we decorated together, with all of our memories.”
Okay, so I was slightly bitter when I said those things, but one look at my former partner revealed that in spite of everything, she wasn’t happy. Nor was she prepared or willing to make amends. She just shook her head sadly and said that she still felt empty. And that’s when I realised that she was very lost too.
Her cheating on me was not a reflection on me as a person not good enough for her. It was a reflection on her insecurities.
She was trying to fill a void in her life, and she was making the classic mistake of looking for the answers in other people, but being unsatisfied because the problem was in her. I was just unfortunate to fall into her destructive path, a path that was just as destructive to herself long term as it would be for her short-term partners.
Maybe she’ll continue this cycle. Maybe her current boyfriend is the one that will snap her out of it. But in that moment I just felt sorry for her.
I told her goodbye when she confessed that even though I dumped her, she was planning on leaving me for this guy anyway. I may feel sympathy, but I don’t think a sympathetic side should mean that I’ll let her insult me.
I still know my worth. Many would say that letting her back after the first time was me being a doormat, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I never lost sight of my own worth.
I think it’s worth pointing out that even though I’m lessening the pain with these lessons, it’s also important to still let myself feel things. Sometimes I’ll be so sure of myself, and then walk past the place where we first met, or something will remind me of her, often something odd and obscure, and tears will form in my eyes. And that’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. The trick is to let myself feel it without letting it hinder my own productivity.
An important lesson is that it’s okay to be sad.
It’s hard to display emotions when people throw out phrases like “Man up” and “Get over it.” Phrases like that invalidate emotions that are perfectly valid. Why should I hide my emotions? Something bad happened to me, I sometimes feel sad as a result, and that is 100% okay.
A friend told me recently, don’t bury it alive. Deconstruct your relationship, through communication and letting your emotions breathe. Give the relationship a metaphorical autopsy. Do not bury it alive, or it will come back to bite.
The things I tell myself have aided the healing process. They won’t erase the sadness completely, but nor should they. Our emotions are good for us.
On a final note, one of my areas of concern is my trust issues. I have yet to encounter them because I haven’t yet attempted to get close to someone else, but I know that they’re waiting to pounce on me.
After what I endured, it would be crazy to assume otherwise. But does this mean I’ll be avoiding relationships altogether? No, it doesn’t. I’m re-writing my train of thought, and as far as I’m concerned, my trust issues are just another part of the screening process. I know what to look out for. I know my worth. I will not be hurt like this again.
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20 Reminders That May Comfort You When You Feel Anxious
Your heart races. Your body temperature rises. Your hands may shake. Your stomach may churn.
Your thoughts start spiraling to the worst could that happen, and suddenly you feel so unequipped—like everything’s going to fall apart, and you won’t be able to handle it.
It can feel so powerless when anxiety takes over, almost like your brain and body are being hijacked, and there’s little you can do to feel safe or in control.
Except that’s not actually true. Though anxiety can have both physical and mental symptoms, and we can’t just will it away, there are things we can do to calm ourselves.
I know because, like most of us, I’ve been there many times before, and I’ve coped both poorly and well.
I’ve panicked about panicking, believed every anxious thought, judged myself as weak, and tried to numb my feelings with alcohol—these are things I’ve done more often than I care to admit.
I’ve also breathed deeply, observed my thoughts, treated myself with compassion, and chosen to embrace my feelings—more and more often as I’ve gotten older.
Since I know we have a lot more power than we think when it comes to managing anxiety, I recently asked this question on the Tiny Buddha Facebook page:
What’s one thing you try to remember when you feel anxious?
More than 1,000 people responded, which I appreciated both because their thoughts were comforting and also because this reminded me just how common anxiety is. It’s natural. It’s human. But we don’t have to let it control us.
Next time you’re feeling anxious, remember what these Tiny Buddha community members shared:
1. This will pass, and more quickly if you don’t resist it.
It’s a wave I must let hit me and ride until it passes. Fighting it prolongs it and turns it into a riptide. ~Lori Craven
If you just let the current carry you to where it will for a little while, the river will eventually spit you out. Just go with it and it’s going to be okay. ~Renee Breuer
2. You can and will get through this—and this can make you stronger.
I verbally acknowledge and remind my inner child that it’s okay, and “Adult Doug” will take care of it. That’s where the anxiety arises from. I know as an adult that my success rate of surviving any crises I’ve faced is 100%. My little inner “Doug” gets scared and feels anxious, afraid, and insecure, so I just tell him that I have it in control. ~Doug Marcum
I can handle whatever happens. I always have, one way or another. If things don’t work out the way I expect then that’s okay too. The anxiety will pass and I will be stronger afterward. ~Suzy Wedley
3. You are safe.
I breathe and repeat to myself: “I’m safe. I’m okay. I can take care of myself. I am powerful. I am significant.” Repeating it helps me refocus. ~Ida Zakin
The situation isn’t life or death. I’ll live to see another day despite the outcome. ~Claire Denney
My mantra: “It’s just adrenaline. It can’t hurt you. It will pass.” ~Chuck Striler
4. Your body is trying to protect you.
I’m not a dying zebra! I watched something that said stress is a natural part of our fight or flight response, which is helpful if you’re on the savanna running from a hungry lion. ~Jenn Miles
Anxiety is my body’s way of trying to protect me. My body has good intentions. It’s just a little misguided. I’m grateful for my body’s protection. ~Jenny Britt
5. The past and future cannot hurt you in the present.
I try to think about what is causing me anxiety, and it is typically a thought or thoughts about the past or future. I remind myself that I am okay in this moment, and all we ever have is this moment. It helps me. ~Angela Regan-Storvick
6. Thoughts can only hurt you if you give them power.
Since mine stems from thoughts that then spiral, I remind myself that thoughts are just that. They do not have to have meaning attached to them if I do not let them. Let them come in and out and give them no power, no meaning. Do not fuel them but let them come and go. They do not have to be reality, and most times they are not a reflection of reality or my true self, just plain old thoughts, and I do not have to react to every single one. ~April Rutledge
7. Worrying will not change the outcome.
I remind myself that my worrying will not change the outcome—never has and never will. Then I focus on what I’m grateful for, things that are beautiful and wonderful in my life right now. And lastly I repeat this: “I let go and I trust that I am being taken care of.” ~Joie Kreze
8. What’s worrying you is temporary.
I try to remind myself that whatever is causing my anxiety is temporary and if I’m patient, it will be resolved. ~Jess Swanson
I try very hard to remember that for most situations, they will pass whether I get all stressed out or not. ~Karen Jane Lehman
9. You have everything you need.
I try to remind myself that I have what I need: air, water, food, clothing, shelter. Then I remind myself to keep things in perspective and that I can choose how I am. ~Lorna Lewis
10. You’re stronger than you think.
I get anxiety over little things and I have to remind myself of how much I have overcome. If I can get through two brain surgeries, four different types of radiation treatment, Thyroidectomy for Thyroid Cancer, and a left neck dissection, I can get through the little stuff. Sometimes you just have to push through the discomfort of the situation and see it will be fine. ~Sara Ruggiero
11. There’s a lot going right.
I concentrate on what positive is going on right now this minute. I am safe, I am not hungry, I have a good job, a husband that loves me, my family is safe and healthy. I keep going until I feel the tension fading. Then slowly but surely I can clear my head enough to take on what lies ahead of me. ~Birgit Gerwig
Things could be worse. I have my health. I try to count my blessings. ~Colleen Tayler
12. You are loved and supported.
I think of all the people who love me. I picture their faces and I imagine myself surrounded by a bubble of love, and as I’m breathing deeply I’m breathing that love in and out. ~Conni Wrightsman
13. Things often aren’t as bad as they seem.
Four by four, how will I feel about this? Will it still seem huge and overwhelming looking back in four days, four weeks, four months, four years? It helps me to put things in perspective . ~Jacqui Learmonth
I ask myself, “Am I, or is someone I love in danger right now, in this moment?” 99.9% of the time, the answer is no, so I do some breathing and relaxation exercises to calm my mind and deal with the situation from a healthier perspective. ~Celeste Rothstein
I ask myself: What are the most important things in my life, and then focus on that. What I am stressing about usually isn’t one of the important things. ~Nicole Neubauer
14. You can calm yourself by focusing on your breath.
Give your brain a simple task. Sit and breathe. Stare at a wall. Put yourself in time out and inhale slowly. You are not wasting your time. Thoughts will float into your mind. Let them keep floating. Re-align your spine as you sit. And breathe. Take ten minutes if you can. If you can’t, even a minute is better than nothing. ~Dabe Charon
Inhale for four counts, hold for seven counts, exhale for eight counts. ~Lisa Martinez
Breathe. If that doesn’t work I run. It forces me to regulate my breathing. This will calm my body down forcing my mind to calm down as well. ~Carolyn Stennard
15. Trust can sometimes be the antidote to anxiety.
Trust and anxiety are mutually exclusive so focus on trust, whatever you can trust at the moment, and anxiety moves out. ~Alexia Bogdis
16. It helps to focus on what you can control.
“One step at a time.” I tend to become anxious because I worry and overthink things that I can’t control and may or may not happen in the future. So I started to think this in my head whenever I notice the feeling creeping up. To take action one step at a time on something that I can control and let the rest run its course. ~Adelia Benalius
17. You don’t need to have everything figured out right now.
Sometimes it’s not enough to take it day by day. Sometimes, it’s hour by hour, or even minute by minute. And if I breathe and stay calm, I can make better decisions to effect positive change with the situation with which I’m dealing. ~Susan Stephenitch
18. Getting it out can help you let it go.
Write it down, get it off your chest, relax, make a plan of attack. Do something instead of worrying. Don’t let it take away today’s peace. Nothing stays the same! ~Lisa Marie Wilson
19. You deserve your own love and compassion.
Anxiety can often come from a place of judgment of the self. Stop, breathe, and surrender to self-compassion. ~Christine Strauss
20. You are not alone.
Know you’re not alone. Others are struggling with something as well. We’re all in this together! ~Melanie Rn
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What helps you when you feel anxious?
**Most responses were edited for spelling and grammar, and some are part of larger comments not included in full.
UPDATE: Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal is now available for purchase! You can grab your copy here.
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4 Simple Techniques to Erase Subconscious Negativity
“As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.” ~Joseph Murphy
The subconscious mind is like a computer’s hard drive.
It saves whatever information you feed it, without any bias. It does not discriminate between useful information and trash information. It just saves everything!
The subconscious mind learns through repetition. So if it’s fed the same information multiple times, it keeps overwriting it until the information gets etched in.
As you would have guessed, such information is harder to erase.
For example, let’s say you write “I am not good enough” on a piece of paper. Now keep overwriting on top of this. The more you overwrite, the bolder the text becomes and the harder it gets to erase it later.
Let’s look at another example. When you first learned to ride a bicycle, you found it hard to balance. But you kept trying and could maintain balance for five seconds and then ten seconds and so on. Finally you could maintain balance for longer periods of time. Because of the repetitions, your subconscious mind picked up what it takes to maintain balance.
Once the subconscious mind learns, it falls back on this information whenever it is required.
So the next time you sit on a bicycle, the subconscious mind automatically switches on the default bicycle-riding program and without any effort, you start to ride your bike.
What is interesting is that if you learned to ride the bike in a faulty manner, you will keep riding the bike in a faulty manner.
For example, there are people who find it difficult to drive a car while wearing shoes. They can only drive the car barefoot! This is because when they were learning to drive, they did so barefoot. How do I know? Well, I am one of them!
For me, learning to drive a car while wearing shoes was like learning to drive the car all over again.
So what does this tell you?
Once the information is fed to the subconscious mind, and is repeated enough times, it simply gets etched in the mind and is hard to erase later.
Yes, it is erasable, but erasing it would require extra effort. This is exactly the reason why bad habits are so difficult to break. And this holds true for both physical habits and mental habits.
Physical habits equate to stuff that you do. Like your daily routines.
Mental habits are thought cycles like your self belief, your insecurities, your view of the world etc.
In a way, your mental habits fuel your physical habits and vise versa. It’s cyclic in nature.
Rewriting Negative Subconscious Programs
As mentioned earlier, your subconscious mind is like a computer’s hard drive. And just like we can erase and put new software into a hard drive, we very well can reprogram data into the subconscious mind.
Hypnotists have been doing this for ages.
But the technique we are going to look at is far stronger than hypnosis. Plus it is very simple to do. In fact, the technique is so simple, you might be forced to think, is that it?
So let’s see what this simple technique is.
The best and most effective technique to alter your negative subconscious mind patterns is awareness.
That’s right, you simply become aware of the subconscious patterns.
Once you become aware, the additional actions required to make the change follows automatically.
Becoming Aware of Subconscious Mind Patterns
Subconscious mind patterns are called subconscious for a reason. They are below (sub) your level of consciousness. In other words, you are not consciously aware of them.
For example, I used to have the habit of shaking my leg non-stop when sitting down, also known as restless leg syndrome. It would be many minutes, sometimes even hours before I would become aware that my leg was shaking and I would stop doing it. But moments later when my attention shifted to something else, my leg would start shaking again.
What helped me eliminate this issue was to develop body awareness. I started to become more and more aware of what my body was doing at any given point. So whenever my leg would start shaking, I would become aware of it within a few seconds as opposed to many minutes like before.
Over a period of time, the shaking stopped. I still do it occasionally but it is very rare. And each time I can catch myself quickly and stop doing it.
Body awareness not only helped me tackle this issue, it also helped me become aware of tense body parts so I could relax them more often.
For instance, I noticed that whenever I worked on my computer, the muscles around the base of my skull (known as the suboccipital muscles) would tense up badly. This would cause fatigue, headaches, and back pains. Body awareness helped me sense this and consciously relax my muscles whenever that happened.
This is just one very small example of how you can overcome a subconscious habit by becoming aware of it.
This habit is easy to catch as it is happening on a physical level. But there are many mental habits that happen on a mind level. You cannot see them; they just happen.
For example, just like me, you might have the habit of judging others. The strange thing is that the judging happens automatically. The problem with this habit is that you not only judge others, you judge yourself too. It always works both ways. Also, what you perceive of the other can be massively different from reality because you perceive from your own belief system.
The way to become free from this habit is, again, to become aware of your thinking patterns.
As you become more and more aware of your thinking patterns you will be able to catch your mind judging others. As you catch yourself judging, you do not blame yourself or force yourself to stop; you simply become aware of it—“Ah, here I go, I am judging again!”
As you continue to do this, slowly but surely, your judgments of other people will start to reduce.
Developing a Deeper Awareness
Awareness is a habit and the more you practice it, the more it becomes second nature. I find the following four techniques to be extremely useful in developing awareness of your physical and mental processes:
1. Consciously watching your thoughts
In our day-to-day life, we are lost in our thoughts for the most part. The goal is to detach from your thoughts for a few moments and watch them as a neutral observer.
This practice can help you become aware of negative thought patterns. You will find yourself questioning your beliefs and thereby weakening negative beliefs and consciously replacing them with positive ones.
Here’s what you can do:
Sit comfortably, take a few deep breaths, and calm yourself down. Start to become aware of your mind producing thoughts without engaging with them. If you find yourself getting engaged with the thought, take a moment to acknowledge that and return back to watching.
If certain thoughts produce strong emotions in you, feel the emotions instead of trying to suppress the thoughts. Divert your attention within your body and feel the energy behind these thoughts.
As you watch your thoughts, you will become aware of many negative thought patterns running in you. Simply becoming aware of these patterns is enough for them to start disintegrating.
2. Consciously feeling your emotions
Becoming aware of your emotions helps you understand the thought-emotion connection—in other words, what kind of thoughts produce what kind of emotional responses in your body.
This can help you weaken and release the hold of strong negative emotions.
What I find works best is to consciously recreate emotional responses when you are by yourself.
Let’s say certain situations cause strong anxiety in you.
For example, there were times when simple things like walking into a crowded restaurant made me feel anxious. There was this feeling that everyone is looking at me and judging me negatively, and that thought gave rise to a set of emotions that clouded my thinking and made me feel extremely anxious and unwelcomed.
When you are in such a situation, it is hard for the untrained mind to do anything. But there is a workaround. You can use this situation to train your mind when you get back home.
When you are back home, you can sit down in a calm place and recreate that exact scenario by running it in your mind. Doing so will evoke pretty much similar emotions. This time though, instead of being lost in your thoughts and overcome by the emotions, you have a choice to consciously feel your emotions. Feel them fully as they arise without becoming afraid of them. As you feel your emotions this way, they start to lose their power over you.
What you are doing here is becoming aware of thought patterns and the reactions they create in your body. This awareness slowly starts to dissolve existing thought patterns and their corresponding emotional responses.
Next time you visit the same restaurant, you will be aware when certain thoughts start getting generated and your body’s emotional response. But because you have already felt your emotions consciously and because you are aware of your thought patterns, you will find that they have significantly weaker reactions. Continue this and soon the reactions would die down completely.
3. Consciously feeling your body
Becoming aware of your body can help you learn how to relax your body and thereby aid healing.
For example, you might have body parts that tense up when you are engaged in work or some activity. For me, as I mentioned before, it was the back of my head and the suboccipital muscles (muscles near the base of the skull) that tensed up when I was engaged in work.
This would lead to extreme headaches and back pain and would cloud my thinking, leading to frustration. It was only after I started becoming aware of my body that I could feel these muscles all tensed up and relax them consciously. I had to relax them consciously many times over while working and after a few months they automatically started to stay relaxed.
A simple technique you can use to become aware of your body is to feel your body from within during a meditation practice. Simply feel the inside of your body starting from the soles of your feet to the tip of your skull. As you scan your body this way, find and relax various tension points along the way. If you find certain parts aching, spend some more time there and relax these parts.
Relaxing your body is key to healing. The more relaxed your body feels the more rejuvenated you will feel. This exercise is best done before going to sleep, so you feel fresh and rejuvenated when waking up. In-fact, you can do this lying down in bed.
Getting in touch with your body can also help you better feel and release your emotions.
4. Consciously focusing your attention
In any given point of time, our attention is divided between a myriad of things. Most of us don’t have any control over our attention. It just wanders like a wild beast anywhere it wants to go.
This method will help you gain control over your attention. The more control you have, the better you will be able to practice the above-mentioned methods.
For instance, you can feel your emotions for longer periods of time without getting pulled into thinking. Similarly, you can watch your thoughts longer without getting lost in the thoughts often. You can also stay mindful for longer periods of time.
There was a time I found it extremely difficult even to read a few paragraphs of an article. Within just the first few lines, my attention would drift away into my thoughts. I would be reading, but not understanding anything. I would then have to re-read the lines again. This is what happens when you don’t have mastery over your attention.
And the most effective way I found to gain mastery is focused meditation. All it involves is to divert your attention to your breath and keep it there for as long as possible. If your attention wanders, bring it back again. As you keep doing this practice, you will start to gain control over your attention and your ability to focus.
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These four methods are the gateway to deeper awareness. They can be practiced together or separately, depending on what you find beneficial at the moment. I believe these techniques can help anyone become free from low self-worth, limiting beliefs, anxiety, depression, and all other types of issues related to the mind.
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7 Things You Need to Know to Live Your Best Life and Make a Better World
You know those “moments of truths”?
When what you hear, or come to realize, turns your world around. When one or several things turn out to be exactly what you needed to hear at the exact right time. Ba-boom.
For the past couple of years, I’ve had several ah-ha moments that have made my life better. Here are seven of those realizations. Some were harsh to come to terms with (like #1), while others brought me the greatest relief and hallelujah moment (like #7).
Read them, ponder them, and let them move in with you. See if they can alter your life and perhaps amp up your awesomeness even more.
1. You’re 100% responsible for your life.
First time I heard this I got a tiny bit uncomfortable, to say the least. Did that mean I had to take responsibility for everything? Even areas in my life where I had felt mistreated, misunderstood, and clearly had my reasons as to why things weren’t ideal? Like my financial situation and why I wasn’t working with something I love.
At first, I didn’t like the idea of taking full responsibility for everything. But, then it hit me: If I want to own the solution, I have to first own the problem. This doesn’t mean that what someone else did to us was okay; it just means that we accept what happened (because, let’s face it, it did happen) and then take responsibility for how we let it affect our life onward.
We can’t change a situation in our life that we don’t take full responsibility for, because that means that the power sits with someone or something else. Excuses, blames, and reasons might cushy-comfort us for a while, but it won’t change the game.
Try this: Look at one area of your life that you’re not fully satisfied with. Then, choose to take 100% responsibility for it, no matter what has happened or how things are now. (If you find it difficult to start, just imagine that you do it for two minutes).
Taking responsibility means taking your power back to where it belongs: to you.
2. The thing that annoys you about others is a reflection of you.
What really pisses you off about others? What frustrates you and makes you go through the roof? Yeah, that’s all a mirror of you.
Realizing this for me gave me so many ah-ha moments (after I passed my denial phase). For example, I was frustrated with one person who always interrupted me and others. Why wasn’t she capable of listening? Why did she always have to interrupt people half way through?
As you might have guessed, this was also something I did. (Now I’m aware, so hopefully I don’t do it as much anymore.) Realizing this was powerful. Not only could I reveal sides of myself I wanted to work on, it also allowed me to practice compassion instead of judgment with others’ behavior. Win-win!
Look at things that annoy you about others and then turn the focus toward yourself. What’s the message here? How can you grow and develop from it?
3. What you admire about others is a quality you long to express.
Here’s a simple exercise that can reveal some pretty cool things about yourself. Who do you admire? What qualities in them do you look up to?
What you admire in others—or perhaps secretly envy—is also a mirror. It shows what qualities or desires that longs to be expressed in you.
If you admire Oprah’s way of connecting with people, know that you also have that ability. If you admire Richard Branson’s bravery and positive outlook on life, know that these also exist within you.
I always get really inspired when I see someone talking in front of other people, while looking really relaxed. So, I figured that this was a side of myself that wanted to play out more.
Since then, a friend and I started organizing workshops in Stockholm so we could practice speaking in front of others. Now, those events are a place to meet and connect with others who also wants to grow, learn, and create their ideal life.
Think about someone you look up to and become specific in terms of what you love about them. Then see if you’re currently expressing this quality. If not, what can you do to start expressing it more? Take small steps forward to play with those qualities.
4. You can’t drive out darkness with darkness.
In today’s world we’re constantly exposed to attacks, shootings, and other tragedies. It’s everywhere—in the newspaper, on TV, and social media. We can’t ignore it, but what we can do it decide how to deal with it.
Either we can react to these situations with the first impulse that comes up, or choose to consciously respond to them. Those are our two options. But, here’s the thing: We cannot react to frustrating, fearful, or stressful situations with frustration, fear, and stress and expect a positive outcome.
If we’ve learned one thing throughout history, it’s this: War feeds more war. Anger triggers more anger. Fear leads to more fear. We cannot drive out darkness with darkness—only light can do that.
This applies to all situations, big and small. So, next time someone cuts you in traffic or arrives late, try to step into their shoes. Maybe they were in a hurry. Maybe their partner had just broken up with them. Maybe they’re having a really crappy day.
Or next time you hear about a terrorist attack, send love to those affected, and love in action by helping in whatever small way you can. After you’ve processed what happened, try to even send healing energy to the person who did it. Who knows what this person has gone through, or what their mental state is like? Who knows his pain, threats, and beliefs about this world?
Hate, anger, and resentment only create separation between us and others. They don’t lead to a better world; they lead to more pain, for all of us.
What we all need right now isn’t greater separation; it’s greater connection. So focus on giving light where there’s darkness. Put love where you can’t find it.
5. People are always doing the best they can.
Now, you might not agree here, but stay with me. What if everyone, including the most greedy, hurtful, and ill-tempered people on this planet, are doing their best at all times? That is, based on their experience, mood, and beliefs.
If this statement is true or not, we’ll never know. But, acting like it is will save you time, energy, and frustration. Maybe the slow waitress has severe sleeping problems. Maybe the guy who’s not meeting his deadline has family issues. Maybe the criminal had parents with drug problems and the only way he got attention was by breaking rules and causing pain.
We never know what someone else is going through. We never know their thoughts, experiences, or what caused them to do something. All we can know is that if we were in their shoes, we might do the same.
Replace judgment with curiosity. Use your empathy and try to imagine life as the other person. Just for a while, be them, act like them, and think like them. Things tend to look completely different from another perspective.
6. You have to accept what you don’t like about your life to move forward.
Some things are hard to accept. Maybe it’s a situation, a limiting belief, or your own or someone else’s behavior.
For a long time I tried to ignore the fact that I didn’t like my job. I tried to numb my feelings by focusing on party weekends, alcohol, and friends. But, I was never able to create change by pushing away what I didn’t want. It just gave more power to the unwanted. Eventually, I had no other option but to accept what I felt. To realize that it was okay not to feel satisfied where I was.
Once I had accepted what was, I was able to change it. Then I could paint out an ideal situation and take small steps forward in that direction.
Work with what is—see things exactly as they are and then act.
7. You matter immensely.
You do. And knowing it to be true will make you a better person. You matter to those around you, to the society you live in, and to this world.
Not one person has the same set of interests, skills, and experience as you. Your talents, curiosities, and qualities aren’t random—I believe they were given to you for a reason.
Put them to use. Let the world see what you’re capable of. Let others take part of your gifts and caring. When you thrive, you give permission for others to do the same. Playing small or staying stuck in worries or fears serves no one.
Act, speak, and believe that you matter immensely—because you do.
