Tag: wisdom
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How to Break the Bad Habits That Hold You Back in Life
“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success if found in your daily routine.” ~John C. Maxwell
We all have bad habits. The problem is that many of our habits are so deeply ingrained that we don’t even notice them anymore. If we do, we make excuses to hang onto them.
If you’ve tried to change your habits to no avail, maybe it’s time to try something different. The steps below will help you succeed.
1. Become aware of the status quo.
Does this sound familiar? You set your mind to do something good for yourself. Maybe you tell yourself that you’re going to make better use of your time or lose weight. You’re excited and committed. You set a goal, and you plod ahead.
A few days go by, and you’re doing great. Then something happens to make you fall off the wagon. You feel like a failure. Your goal seems impossible. You go back to your old ways.
This cycle happens over and over again.
Your first mistake is setting a goal without becoming fully aware of your current situation.
You have to define the problem before you can even contemplate a solution.
Instead of jumping straight to change, start by noticing what is going on now. Do this for a week.
Some questions you can answer during your observation include:
- What is your bad habit?
- How do you feel when you’re engaging in your bad habit?
- How do you feel when you’re not doing it?
- Do you typically do anything before or after the bad habit?
- Is there a behavior or emotion that brings on the bad habit?
- Why do you want to break this habit?
It’s not enough to simply read these questions, nodding and telling yourself that you’re going to make an effort to think about them over the next week.
The best way to approach this exercise differently is to take notes. Write in a journal every night, or keep track of the answers to these questions every day on your smartphone. Call a friend to let them know what you observed every day.
The best part of this step is that you can’t fail. You’re not trying to meet a goal; you’re just observing.
The current bad habit I’m trying to fight with is watching too much TV.
I’m telling myself that after work I need to do X, Y, and Z, but I end up watching new episodes of my favorite TV series, then a movie on Netflix. Bam! All evening is gone, and I didn’t do anything productive. From time to time, it’s great to have a free evening and just do nothing, but it shouldn’t be most evenings during the week.
2. Use visualization.
Goals are great. You can’t get to where you’re going if you have no idea what your destination is. However, a goal needs to be more than words on paper to be meaningful.
Many people never achieve their goals because they don’t have a clear picture of what they’ll do when they succeed.
Someone who is trying to break the habit of spending frivolously may have trouble staying away from shopping because they don’t have a specific plan for what they’ll do with the money they save. That person may not have visualized the rewarding feeling of saving money in the first place, so the rewarding feeling of shopping wins out.
Instead of just setting a verbal goal, feel the outcome with every part of your being. Visualize what your life will be like when you break the habit. What will your daily routine look like? Will there be different people in your life once the habit is broken?
In addition to visualizing the logistics, try to access the emotions you’ll feel when the habit is broken. Will you feel excited, calm, or balanced? Sit with those emotions for some time every day. Conjure them up so that you begin to adopt the motivation for change throughout your body and mind.
What do I see for myself? Working more on my website, changing my job, going to the gym, spending more time with my family and close friends, and feeling more fulfilled and happier with my life.
3. Recognize when you’re making excuses.
Everyone makes excuses, including me.
- I still have time. I’ll start doing it tomorrow.
- I did enough this week. It can wait few more days to be done.
- I don’t have time to do it today (because I wasted it playing games).
The most common excuses in the book? “I can’t” or “I don’t want to.”
What you really mean is, “I don’t do that now, so it seems too hard to change.”
Change is hard, especially when you haven’t yet been rewarded. Change means work.
This takes us back to steps 1 and 2. If you are aware of what you’re doing and what’s not working, you can get a better sense of what will work.
Step 1: You notice that you’re starving at work every day at 11:00, and because you’re so busy, you gorge on sweets as soon as you get a chance and feel awful after that.
Step 2: You visualize yourself wearing your favorite suit comfortably all day long once you lose weight and having consistent energy throughout the day to come up with novel ideas at work. This leads to a promotion.
Going through step 1 and two allows you to push past your excuses every time they flood your brain. You know what you want to change and how you’ll feel once you’ve made the change. Now it’s just a matter of challenging the voices that tell you not to do it.
I see myself as a consultant in one of the best companies in the world, traveling around the globe for different projects, solving issues for my clients, improving their solutions. I know that I cannot achieve it sitting in front of the TV watching next episode of Breaking Bad.
4. Be consistent.
Research shows that you have a better chance of breaking a bad habit if you’re consistent. If you tell yourself that you’ll go to the gym on Monday mornings, Tuesday evenings, and Friday afternoons, you’re more likely to lose momentum than if you go every day.
Although it may not be realistic to do something every day for the rest of your life, it helps to set it up this way while you’re breaking a habit.
Maybe you want to stop eating sugar. If you let yourself have a little treat every night, this habit can easily expand into eating a larger treat every night, and before you know it, your sugar cravings are triggered at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Make the change small enough that you can do it every single day. Although researchers say that the length of time necessary to change a habit differs from person to person, it averages from twenty-one to sixty-six days.
If you can make a small change every day for that long, you can begin to play around with flexibility after you feel like the bad habit has been broken.
I don’t watch as many movies as I watched in the past, and in the last couple of weeks I’ve made tremendous progress regarding my future and prospective job. From time to time I allow myself a lazy evening in front of the TV, but I don’t fault myself for that since I’ve broken the habit and now do this in moderation.
5. Have a plan.
Just like you can’t reach your destination if you don’t know what it is, you’ll have more trouble if you don’t have a map to show you how to get there.
If you can’t find a program that’s already out there to help you break your bad habit, make your own plan. Write it down.
When you leave room for guessing or experimentation, you’re less likely to succeed.
When you’re creating a plan, if you set guidelines for what happens when you cheat, want to take a break, or fall off the wagon, you won’t have to speculate about how you’ll get back on the path to your goals. A plan can help you kick start the healthy habit when you’ve gotten off track.
Going back to step 1, if you know what typically sets you off toward failure, you can work that into your plan too.
If you’re trying to quit smoking, but you know that you always want a cigarette after you eat dinner, make specific plans for what you are going to do during and after dinner instead. Maybe you’ll eat in a different location to break the association. Come up with several options for rewarding things to do after dinner to keep you distracted and occupied. Think of a treat that you can give yourself every time you follow that plan, like a candlelight soak in a sumptuous bubble bath.
The great thing about having a plan is that you know where to start again if you do veer off the path. You know you start again because you’ve started before. Every time you hit an obstacle, you may have to start over, but at least that starting point will become more and more familiar.
When you’re breaking a bad habit, remember not to see every step away from the plan as a failure. The way we learn is by making mistakes.
Imagine what happens when a musician learns a new piece of music. That musician doesn’t just pick up the sheet music and play through it flawlessly; she goes through a few measures, makes a mistake, and then goes back to the beginning.
With time, she’ll continue to play a few more measures. As she does this, she’ll solidify the earlier behavior until the entire piece of music is embedded in her cognitive and muscle memory.
The same process applies to breaking a bad habit. The bumps in the road are part of the process and will only make your eventual success sweeter.
What bad habit are you going to bust by using these steps? I told you mine. Now it’s your turn!
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The First Steps Toward Creating a Life You Love
“My goal is to build a life I don’t need a vacation from.” ~Rob Hill Sr.
The other day I had an interesting conversation with a friend, who asked me the question “Who is the happiest person you know?”
Ask yourself this question now. It’s difficult to answer, isn’t it?
There are certainly people around me who seem to be happy, but the happiest person I know? I couldn’t easily come up with an answer.
The conversation with my friend proceeded with him saying, “You seem happy, but it’s so easy for you; you live in Cornwall by the sea, you work for yourself, and you have all the freedom in the world because you’re single.”
It made me smile to think about how people perceive others’ lives. If you ask the next person they might say the absolute opposite: “It must be hard for you living so far away from anything, starting a heart-centered business from scratch with nothing. You must be so lonely being single and doing it all on your own.”
And the truth is, all the above is true. I feel each and every variation of the above on occasions because I’m human! I think and dream just like a regular employed person, I love just like a married person, and feel and breathe just like a city dweller. We are all the same.
But the conversation made me reflect on my own happiness. What does it mean to be happy? I feel the happiest I’ve ever been right now, whether I look at my life with glass-half-full or half-empty eyes. I asked myself why, and the only answer I could think of is, right now I feel authentic.
I wake up each morning and my work feels like a joyful adventure, so I don’t have to drag myself through days, questioning the point of what I’m doing.
Feeling complete deep down for the first time in my life soothes the loneliness of not being in a loving partnership right now, and walking the beach with my dog every morning watching the sunrise, instead of being on a packed London commuter train, makes my heart burst with happiness.
This isn’t a recipe for happiness in any shape or form. These are just my things. My choices leading to the life I am creating for myself, from a place of authenticity.
I have started to understand and accept that my life is up to me—my choices, my creation. The life I am living right now resulted from the choices I made before now, and yet they are no longer important; only the choices I make right now are. Right now I am free from the past but have a choice in creating my future.
So often we look outward and feel trapped by things that aren’t real. For me it was my past, my CV, other people’s perceptions, my own fears, and those pesky little shoulds, from myself and others. Or we think that we’re slaves to the choices we made in the past. But the beauty of life is you always have a choice.
I understand that some things in life we literally can’t change—maybe you’re a parent or caregiver or have other responsibilities that limit you—but you still have a choice.
You can choose to resist and focus on the negative, the struggle, or you can choose to see differently, create opportunities for change, and ask for help. No matter what your life looks like right now, you can still create a life you love.
I believe that everyone can dig deep to find out what feels right for them, be honest with themselves and others, and align their life with that place of authenticity.
Perhaps you’re wondering, how an earth do I go about creating an authentic life? Where do I start? Well, this is obviously vastly different for everyone, but my advice would be to just start somewhere, and what better place than where you are right now?
By that, I mean start by looking within.
A simple daily meditation practice has changed my life, and I truly believe it can help anyone.
Meditation, for me, is about carving out a few moments each day to sit quietly, breathe, connect with myself, and recognize my part to play in a bigger whole.
Even if it’s just a few moments after I wake up or before I hop into bed at night, this is time free from distraction, free from the roles and responsibilities I identify myself with, free from the complications in life that I might identify as stress. It’s time for just me, to connect with myself and my truth.
Creating a life you love is really about aligning your life with your own core values—those things that are most important to you personally. Regular meditation will help you discover what those are.
It might also help to think about the activities you loved doing as a child and find some time to do one of those things one day soon. Express yourself and be creative—journal, draw, sing. Join an activity group, take a class, volunteer, be of service. Move your body with exercise or yoga.
The point is to listen to yourself and take action on what you discover. Connect with how you really feel and use that as your guide when making choices so you can create a life you truly love.
If you do this, you may eventually realize, as I did, that it doesn’t matter one teeny, tiny bit who the happiest person you know is; all that matters is that you’re happy with yourself and the life you’re living.
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How Gratitude Shifts Your Perspective When Things Go Wrong
“Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” ~Melody Beattie
Yesterday, while praying in the Ganges River, my purse got stolen.
Standing in The Holy River Ganges, praying up to my neck in her healing waters, the outside world felt as if it had stopped.
The feeling of happiness to be back in Rishikesh was so strong it bordered on invincible. Instant immersion into the healing waters of Maa Ganga was the only thing on my mind.
I had casually left my bag on the beach before going in the river. Since I had never had any problems here in previous trips, my guard was down.
India, a magnified mind mirror, reflects back exactly what I think about at lightening speed. It also has a knack of teaching me exactly what I need to learn.
Upon getting out of the river, I didn’t notice my purse was missing, because it had been piled under clothes and nothing seemed amiss.
Sitting on the beach, absorbing the feelings of my post prayer bliss, a dodgy Indian man approached, asking me if the beach was safe.
“That’s weird,” I thought. “Why is he asking me if the beach is safe?”
My internal alarm bell started ringing and I took it as a sign to check my belongings. Sure enough, my purse was gone.
Now what? Here is the real test. How do I respond?
Well, first, I went after the dodgy guy, assuming he was the thief, and told him to give me back my purse. He denied up and down that he knew anything about it.
After badgering him for a while to return the purse, I realized it was a lost cause.
Now what?
Searching the rocky beach, hoping maybe he had stashed it, seemed like a good idea, but there was no luck on that front either.
Two other western girls, who were sitting farther down the beach, kindly helped me to look for it after hearing my story.
No luck.
Feeling as though I had exhausted all possible options at the scene of the crime, the next logical step was to return to my room, call the bank, and cancel my ATM card.
In the purse was $100 worth of Indian Rupees, my ATM card, and both room keys. Amazingly, the rest of my cash and passport were still safe in my room.
Listening to the little inner voice that told me to leave them there, just prior to the beach excursion, was proving to be a massive blessing.
I had switched out the padlock on my room door with a lock I had brought, thinking it would be more secure, and both sets of keys were in my stolen purse.
Upon hearing the lost key predicament, the Ashram manager, without blinking an eye, set out to help break into my room.
It wasn’t an easy mission.
It took him about an hour of trying to saw through the un-sawable lock, until finally he decided to saw through the hardware on the door, which worked. I was able to enter my room, while the manager quickly ran to the market to buy new hardware for the door.
Meanwhile, I called my bank and cancelled my ATM card. The bank people were absolutely lovely, empathetic, and helpful.
My neighbor in the Ashram offered to make me a cup of tea, and the neighbors on the other side offered us some of their beautiful meal they had just cooked.
In the midst of my vulnerability, I felt supported on all sides!
Immediately, I began searching for the lesson in my purse getting stolen.
Acceptance, gratitude, humility, and letting go were the words that came.
Instead of focusing on what I had done wrong and beating myself up about it, I chose to focus on what was actually good:
- I still had my phone and money I had left in my room.
- I had a spare ATM card and credit card in the room.
- I still had my passport.
- Coincidentally, I had run into a friend the day before who remembered he owed me money, and it was the exact amount I just lost.
- My neighbors were generous and kind.
- The Ashram manager was lovely and helpful and didn’t bat an eye at destroying the door hardware.
- The bank people were helpful.
- The kind girls at the beach helped me search for my purse.
- I had everything I needed!
After making this gratitude list, I realized how much I truly have, how blessed my life is, how many kind and generous people are in the world, and how I am always provided for.
Sometimes the lowest times are what make us stronger.
Coming to India always shakes me out of my comfort zone, and this was no exception. I am still absorbing the lessons, and they are powerful ones:
- This experience has made me want to give more.
- It has made me realize I only need to take with me what I need.
- I felt the vulnerability of having nothing for a short period of time, and that made me want to help others.
- It showed me my inner progress: I didn’t panic. I didn’t beat myself up. I don’t feel like a victim and am not blaming the person who stole my purse.
- It snapped me back into respect—respect for all that I have and respect that there are people that have a lot less. It reminded me to treat all people as equal regardless of their financial status.
- It reminded me to give others not only what I can monetarily, but also acknowledge the presence in others, by giving them my full attention.
- It also reminded me that have a choice where I focus my thinking and attention; I can choose to accept the things I can’t change, and have the courage to change the things I can.
What happened, happened. Now I have a choice to learn the lessons and receive the gold out of the situation.
Today I went back to the same beach to do my prayers in the river. This time I didn’t take anything with me except my change of clothes, bringing only bare essentials. Keeping a close watch on my bag, I didn’t let yesterday’s event tarnish my heartfelt love for this place.
Feeling blessed, grateful, and humbled to be in Mother India again, I feel love for the people here, and especially the ones who have nothing.
The Power of Gratitude is Astonishing
It’s amazing how gratitude can shift your perspective when things go wrong. The next time you face a challenging situation, hit your internal pause button, breathe, and survey the situation. Don’t panic.
Ask yourself, what can I do right now? What is the number one priority?
Accept that what has happened, happened. Don’t beat yourself up for what you didn’t do. Drop resistance and fighting what is and instead focus on what you can do now.
Focus on what’s good in the situation. Ask yourself, what are the lessons to be learned from this? And make a gratitude list as fast as possible.
Talk about the good that came from the event rather than constantly repeating a negative story to others. Integrate the lessons, let it go, and move on.
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Ask Why: How to Motivate Yourself to Keep Going When Things Get Hard
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche
My father was an amazing man. I’m sure most sons think that about their fathers, but it’s a belief held by more than just myself. I’m not saying he was a great father, but he was a great man.
He was a Vietnam veteran, a carpenter, and a social paragon in the small town I grew up in. Our neighbors declared him the “Mayor of Bluebank” (the road he lived on.) His funeral was one of the most attended events that our small town in Kentucky had ever held.
Dad believed in working hard, and, true to his word, his health began to sharply decline after having a lung removed (the unfortunate “cure” to lung cancer caused by Agent Orange exposure). He passed away on Veteran’s Day, 2012. A cruel twist of irony.
I had the pleasure of working with my father on many projects, from building homes to cutting staves at a sawmill. I was fortunate to learn what a real work ethic looks like by working with Dad.
When Things Seem Impossible
Even though Dad isn’t here to give me advice, I still ask myself what he would do when I’m faced with something that seems impossible.
“I feel too tired to work today…”
“Where will I find energy to tackle this project?”
“I don’t know where to start…”
Everyone faces situations that seem impossible at times. It’s an unfortunate lack of grit and resilience that’s common to my generation.
Luckily, I have one invaluable piece of advice that I managed to get from my father before he passed away.
Advice on Working Hard
When I was in my late teens and doing irresponsible crap, I once asked my father how he worked so hard. He enjoyed socializing on the weekends, but he seemed to enjoy working his butt off just as much (even with the occasional hangover.) I didn’t understand it.
His response stuck with me. He smiled and told me, “Stop asking how I work so hard, son. Ask me why.” His response was rhetorical; he didn’t want me to actually ask him “why.” His point was that the reason he worked was how he found the energy to work.
Dad’s wisdom didn’t quite click with me until my son was born. I’d always had what I considered an inherited strong work ethic, but it wasn’t truly tested until I was kept up all night for weeks on end with a crying baby.
Babies, a Day Job, and a Side Gig
It can be lonely at 3:34 a.m., especially when you’re awake with a crying newborn. The three minutes and fifty-five seconds it takes to heat four ounces of refrigerated breast milk can seem like an eternity when you want to go back to sleep.
Once I manage to get the boy fed and back to sleep, I crawl into bed to wink before the alarm goes off at 6 a.m. so I can get ready for work. Quietly.
In situations like this, energy at work can seem fleeting. You know your job performance is suffering, but you manage to grit your teeth and get back to it. Somehow. Your shift takes forty hours longer than it used to, but you push through.
To top it off, I write articles in my downtime. That means research, writing, editing, submitting, promoting, etc. Work ethic seems like a stupid thing when the beautiful Siren of Sleep is calling you.
Staying Strong to Get Things Done
Fortunately, I remember the lessons that my father taught me. Not just, “If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re late, you’re f*&^ed.”
All I have to do is ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” when I feel like giving up.
“Why am I working overtime at my day job?” So I can keep the heat on this winter for my family. So I can put food on the table.
“Why am I pushing myself to write another article?” So I can build a business and legacy for my son. So I can spread ideas and wisdom.
“Why am I feeding this thing that causes so much exhaustion and frustration?” Because it’s my son and I love him. I want him to grow up so I can teach him how to be a great person.
Why Is “Why” So Powerful?
Asking the wrong questions can get you stuck. We want to avoid questions that carry negativity.
When you ask yourself why you’re doing something, you tend to attach a larger motivator to your actions. This becomes your motivating reason.
Make sure you have a strong positive emotion attached to your motivating reason. When I ask myself why I’m doing something, it’s always attached to something large and promising, like my family and my future.
A Recent Time When I Needed This Advice
I was reading Smarter Faster Better, by Charles Duhigg, when I came across the following passage (edited for brevity):
Quintanilla had been marching for two days by this point. He had slept less than four hours. His face was numb and his hands were covered with blisters and cuts from carrying water-filled drums across obstacles. […]
“Why are you doing this?” Quintanilla’s pack buddy wheezed at him, lapsing into a call-and-response they had practiced on hikes. When things are at their most miserable, their drill instructors had said, they should ask each other questions that begin with “why.”
“To become a Marine and build a better life for my family,” Quintanilla said.
His wife had given birth a week earlier to a daughter, Zoey. […] If he finished the Crucible, he would see his wife and new child.
If you can link something hard to a choice you care about, it makes the task easier[…] Make a chore into a meaningful decision, and self-motivation will emerge.
My dad’s motivating reason was the same. He worked hard for his family.
For the Impossible
Going to work and writing articles with a newborn in the home is difficult, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.
For the tasks that truly seem impossible, it’s important to break them into more manageable pieces. If I want to build a business so that I can eventually work from home, I can’t tackle the entire thing at once.
Break your huge project into multiple SMART Goals—goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based (even if you have a newborn in the home). Don’t forget to ask why you pursue your “impossible” goal. The bigger the goal, the bigger your motivating reason will need to be.
Check my goals again to see this tagging in action—I work overtime for food and electricity for my fiancé and my son. Not that big of a deal, still a big reason. I work on my articles so that I can grow my business and spread ideas. That’s a big deal to me, and ultimately a larger goal, so I have much larger motivating reasons.
Find a Motivating Reason
“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” ~John F. Kennedy
Whether you have one purpose or multiple areas of your life that can give you incentives to tackle the impossible, find a reason and hold on to it.
When things are getting too hard to move forward, when the baby is crying and you’re trying to get one more sentence typed out, when your day job seems like Hell and your alarm is the devil, just ask yourself why.
The impossible becomes possible when you break it into manageable pieces and fuel the fire in your belly with a motivating reason. You’ll come out the other side of the “impossible” as a stronger person with more grit and resilience than you ever thought possible.
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How Listening to Depression Can Help Us Overcome It
“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” ~Rumi
My first diagnosis of depression came at the age of fifteen. Depression runs in my family; it wasn’t a case of overmedicating. It was genuine, and the black dog has followed me all my life.
I’ve been on eight different antidepressants and a handful of anti-anxiety drugs. I’ve been in and out of therapist offices and hospitals for most of my life, and I expect that I’ll continue to do so.
My mindset (and that of my family and doctors) was that depression is an adversary to be defeated. If only we found the right medication or the right therapy, we could solve the problem. But that mindset ignores a positive effect of such a negative condition: depression’s ability to induce change.
Depression lies to you, but it also tells you the truth. And that truth leads to change.
Silencing
As I began my career as a lawyer in New York City, my depression worsened. Law is a perfect profession for depression to get worse. I was taught to look for mistakes, to be cynical. A pessimistic mindset is an advantage for a lawyer.
Lawyers have high rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. I don’t know whether depressed people become lawyers or becoming a lawyer makes people depressed. It’s probably a combination, though ultimately it’s irrelevant.
My depression found expression physically and emotionally. I had chronic tension headaches; when I woke up feeling like head was squeezed into a vice, I knew the pain would last all day. My back and neck were steel cables of tension.
I gained weight from a combination of lack of exercise and poor diet. On the weekends, I would order huge amounts of food, seeking solace and finding only regret.
Emotionally, I was ashamed. Ashamed for being depressed and ashamed for hating my job. It was the prize so many of my law school classmates had competed for. Why didn’t I want it?
More than the shame was an overarching sense of sadness, like a gray filter applied across the screen of my life. It felt like other people were seeing in color, but for some reason I was seeing in black and white.
I remember discussing a medical leave with my therapist (she was supportive, and I owe her much). But I was crushed as I realized that a leave was only that—I’d have to return to the office.
Late one night, unable to sleep, I found myself scrutinizing my apartment’s lease agreement, looking for a way out. My apartment was bathed in darkness. In the pale glow of my laptop’s screen, I broke down, shoulders heaving with sobs.
I had been trying to kill the messenger. I wanted to silence my depression, as if I could put my hands over my ears and make the noise stop. But instead, I needed to listen to what my depression was telling me.
Listening
In those times, depression felt intractable. It was a heavy stone that I wasn’t strong enough to move. But I think, more subtly, depression can signal change. Pain is a messenger.
Just like physical pain, emotional pain is a signal. Your body is telling you to change what you’re doing. And those changes can’t take place if you don’t stop and listen.
And how to listen? Sit in stillness, observing what thoughts and emotions arise in the silence. No control, only observation.
I learned to focus on my breath, observing its rising and falling, without focusing on a specific object or mantra. I learned this meditation technique at a vipassana retreat near Kathmandu, Nepal, and it still serves me well.
Meditation clarifies the difference between genuine pain and temporary discomfort. Genuine pain is a messenger of change. Temporary discomfort is a passing phenomenon we all experience at one time or another.
It’s like exercise at the gym: it can be unpleasant and uncomfortable, even though you know it’s good for you. In contrast, some pain is like breaking an ankle. You have to take time to heal.
In this sense, meditation is a guide to distinguishing between depression’s truth and lies. Depression tries to trick you: it lies to you (in the form of cognitive distortions like catastrophizing) while sometimes telling you the truth (the genuine pain that you’re in). Meditation separates the truth from the lies.
Recognizing
I relied on meditation to help me recognize the pain I was in. Not only had I run away from my depression, I had chastised myself for even feeling it (“you shouldn’t feel this bad”) then felt guilty for being depressed. Meditation cleared this fog of avoidance and guilt.
It also taught me to stop trying to figure out my depression. Attempting to intellectualize how I felt was a fool’s errand. I had to recognize my depression in a visceral, bodily way.
When a stove is hot, you pull your hand away so you don’t get burned. It doesn’t matter if the stove is gas or electric, or who turned it on. None of that information will prevent you from getting burned. It’s happening; the exact causes don’t need to be figured out to act accordingly.
And this is exactly what meditation taught me: to focus on the sensations (breath, bodily discomfort, thoughts) instead of attempting to rationalize those sensations. That’s why vipassana retreats require you to surrender your books and journals. Experience the phenomena, don’t intellectualize them.
Acting
In the end, my thoughts were just excuses. When my lease was up, I told myself, I’ll quit in six months after I get my bonus. When I got my bonus, I told myself, I’ll quit in six months when my lease is up.
Once I stopped attempting to reason with myself, it became clear that I had to quit. My depression had lied to me before, but it wasn’t lying this time.
I’m not recommending recklessly quitting a job without a plan. I had to sublet my apartment and figure out my finances before I left. But my depression had led me, finally, to make a decision.
Then I had to take the leap. As I told my boss I was quitting, I felt a strange combination of anxiety and exhilaration. I shook.
I left New York City. I remember sitting at the airport and deleting my work’s email app from my phone. It sounds like a millennial’s cliche version of catharsis, but deleting that app felt immensely freeing.
I’m still in the process of letting myself be sad sometimes, and I doubt that process will ever truly end. I’m still on medication. But the gray filter over my life has lifted.
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Love Is In the Little Things
“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ~Robert Brault
Valentine’s Day has never been a big deal to me. It always felt commercialized, so forced. I’ve never felt I needed Hallmark to remind me to do something special for my husband, or vice versa.
This certainly isn’t a reflection of how we felt about, treated, or appreciated one another; it just wasn’t a priority to us.
In our more than seventeen years together, some years I would receive a card, flowers, or chocolates, but other years it would pass by like any other day. I’ll admit on a couple of those occasions I felt a little hurt, even slightly unappreciated.
In November 2009 my husband Bill was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. It was a total shock, as cancer always is. Breaking the news to our three children was almost as devastating as the diagnosis itself.
Bill was a very involved father, never missing a special event or game. He coached our ten-year-old son’s hockey team at the time. His life was his family.
While Bill had a very successful and demanding career as an electrical engineer, he always put us first. Sometimes that meant staying up until 3am to do work, just so he could make it to our daughter’s soccer game.
After Bill was admitted to hospital, his concerns were still about the kids and me. He was actually worried that I had to put out the garbage myself and shovel the driveway. He liked taking care of things like that. He was always trying to make things easier for me.
During Bill’s time in hospital we did a lot of reminiscing. We laughed, we cried—more laughing than crying. Bill and I shared an unusual sense of humor, sometimes making light of things that weren’t funny. It was our little way of coping.
Life with three kids is busy, especially without any family nearby. Couple time was hard to come by, and as sad as our situation was, it gave us a chance to reconnect.
Bill began an intense four-week cycle of chemotherapy. The first cycle would prove to be unsuccessful, and a second cycle was also a failure.
On New Year’s Eve, Bill’s hematologist told us things didn’t look good. The doctors said they could make one more attempt at a very risky, experimental treatment. We decided to go ahead with the treatment, despite the risks.
A few weeks later Bill developed fungal pneumonia, a very dangerous situation for someone with a compromised immune system. On February 13, Bill’s doctor asked to speak with me privately. I was told he was dying, maybe only having a week or so left.
I was heartbroken and devastated. What was worse, he didn’t know. We decided it was best not to tell him since he was already so sick.
I spent that night at his bedside, and the following day he deteriorated quite quickly. He was struggling to speak and breathe. The medical team increased his medication to make him as comfortable as possible.
Bill remained in and out of sleep that day. He briefly woke up and asked me, “Am I going home tonight?” I said, “No, not tonight honey.” He responded, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I went home tonight?”
I told him I loved him, and he whispered the same. I spent the rest of the night holding his hand while he slept. Then it hit me: it was Valentine’s Day. The realization brought me to tears, tears I had been fighting back for weeks.
I didn’t give a damn about roses, chocolates, or jewelry. I just wanted my husband to live. He was only forty years old and I was thirty-seven. We had so many things we wanted to do together as a family and a couple, so many dreams for our future.
I didn’t sleep a wink that night; I just held his hand and prayed. The next afternoon while standing at Bill’s bedside, I placed my hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat. Moments later it stopped. He was gone.
It hasn’t been an easy seven years since Bill’s passing, but I am grateful we had the opportunity to say what we needed to say and have a real understanding of how much we truly appreciated each other.
Now when Valentines Day rolls around, it’s a reminder of how life’s tender moments have the most impact on us.
It’s the feeling of contentment that I miss most. I had no idea what an underrated emotional state it really is. We don’t need a dozen roses once a year to make us feel loved. It’s the little, everyday things that give us that feeling… even taking out the garbage.
