Source: NaturalLife.com
Tag: wisdom
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How Technology Makes It Easy to Flake Out (And How to Stop It)
“If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.” ~Unknown
How many times have you made plans with friends, only to receive the dreaded, “Sorry, need to reschedule” text just minutes before you were meant to meet?
Is it any wonder that you get tired of trying, that you struggle to feel secure in relationships?
But before we get carried away castigating others, let’s take a look at ourselves. We hate it when other people bail at the last minute, but do we do it too?
As humans, we have an astonishing capacity for denial. People I love and respect tell me how much they despise it when other people text and drive. Then five minutes later, what are they doing? Texting and driving.
Many of us use our phones and social media accounts to flake out on our people, and it’s messing with our heads.
That’s why every major world religion emphasizes a version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When left to our own devices (pun intended), we are really bad at it.
Much as I dislike when other people flake out, I’ve done it. I did it to my friend Jozzy a few weeks ago. I’d verbally expressed interest in attending a book group he led, speaking as though I’d be there. In fact, I even put it on my calendar. But when the day arrived, I was feeling exhausted.
So I messaged Jozzy and told him the truth: I didn’t have the energy. He was gracious and forgiving. It would have been easy to forget about the incident, but I took a closer look. What had happened?
First, I didn’t take a pause before committing. Instead of realistically assessing my week, I let my enthusiasm take the reigns. You might say, “You couldn’t have known that you’d be exhausted!” But a cursory glance at my calendar told me otherwise.
Next, I took my own words too lightly. Before messaging Jozzy, I’d spent a few minutes pretending that I hadn’t ‘really promised’ anything. This made it easier for me to go back on my word.
You could argue, “You just made a casual agreement; it’s no big deal!”
I understand the lure of this reasoning, but I don’t bite. If we can’t rely on one another to mean what we say, then we don’t have much of a relationship.
Technology also gets us into trouble by making it easier to renege on our commitments. And if we don’t resist that tendency, it can erode the fabric of our friendships.
Years ago, if you wanted to cancel an engagement you’d need to speak to the person you were letting down. Now, you can tap a text or change your status with the swipe of a finger.
As psychologist and author Andrea Bonoir writes in There’s A Modern Affliction Ruining Our Friendships – And We’re All Guilty Of It, “Technology makes it so much easier to flake out … It’s infinitely easier and less awkward than having to talk to someone by phone or, worse, tell them in person.”
Yes, technology makes it more convenient to flake out and lie. But that doesn’t make it right. So the first and most important thing for us to do is walk the walk.
As Alex Cornell jokes in Cellphones Are Making People Flaky as #%@*, most people fall into three categories: latecomers, no-shows, and optimizers (that is, people who won’t commit to your plan until they’ve scoped out every other possibility first).
Cornell says, “… There is potential for a fourth category—those that show up on time, but … this is unlikely.” In other words, people who do what they say they will are rare.
Be that unlikely person. People will respect you for it.
But what do you do when you’re on the receiving end of repeated flake-outs? Martha Beck’s paraphrase of the Golden Rule is helpful here: “Never let others do to you what you would never do to others.”
The next time a friend bails on you yet again, don’t swallow your anger and pretend that it didn’t affect you. Your time and trust matter; when they’re trampled upon, it hurts.
Emergencies happen, and everyone makes mistakes. I’m not talking about such isolated instances here, but rather a pattern of getting left in the lurch. If that’s what you’re dealing with, say something.
People only get away with flake-outs because we are too scared to call them out and set the necessary boundaries:
I care about our friendship, and it’s not okay that you are consistently late. If it happens again, I will leave after [X] minutes. I need to respect my own time.
I love you, and I find it so frustrating when you cancel our plans at the last minute. Please either show up when you say you will, or don’t make plans with me at all.
You are allowed to value your own time. And when you begin to respect this most precious currency, you’ll teach others to do the same.
Texting image via Shutterstock
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How I Used My Phone as a Crutch and What I Know Now
“People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” ~Joseph F Newton
Can you imagine your life without a cell phone?
It’s hard, right?
For most of us, we use our phones every day, whether it’s for talking with others, looking up information, or entertaining ourselves during those lulls in the day.
A short while back, my phone contract expired and I was left without a cell phone. It felt strange at first, since my phone was something that was beside me almost every second of the day.
But a thought came up: What would my life be like without relying on a cell phone all the time?
I decided to run an experiment to see how it impacted me. And what I learned surprised me.
When my eyes weren’t glued to my phone, I was able to look up and notice different things around me. I became more aware of how people used their phones, especially when there weren’t any other electronic devices around to engage them.
One day, I went to a restaurant for a meal and noticed a family of four sitting beside me. Two adults and two preteen children were seated in a cozy corner, gazing at their menus.
It looked like they were out having an enjoyable meal as a family. Wasn’t it the perfect time for them to reconnect with one another and share what was happening in their lives?
But as soon as the orders were given and menus were taken, the dad whipped out his cell phone and began browsing away. The mom followed suit and pulled out her phone as well.
The little chatter that happened over the table died out, and the two children each pulled out their phones to play with the apps on their phones.
A while later, the meals arrived.
Everyone put down their phones to admire their dishes. A few comments were made before digging in. A sip here, a bite there, and soon they went back to staring at their phones again during the meal.
As the meal progressed the table was silent, save the occasional clink of utensils against plates.
Ironic, isn’t it? A device that was made to ease communications can end up being a hindrance to talking with others in real life.
After I left the restaurant, I thought about what happened and couldn’t help but cringe. Not for them, but for its reminder of how I used my phone in the past.
I would use my phone on the subway, at work, during meals, and almost every other spot in between.
My phone usage was especially obvious at social gatherings. When the conversation died down and the silence became uncomfortable, it was easy to flip through my phone as a distraction. It was my way of trying to say: “It’s not that I can’t stand the silence—it’s just that I need to check my phone right now.”
Which, of course, wasn’t true. But it took not having my phone on hand to realize the way I had been using my phone as a crutch. It protected me from uncomfortable situations, from looking bored, and from being unproductive.
Or so I thought.
When I didn’t rely on my phone, I shared conversations more easily, became more conscious of my surroundings, and found more meaning in my actions. There are four big realizations I’ve come to about phones—and by extension, a lot of the technology that we rely on today.
1. You don’t need to be available every second of the day.
The vast majority of us are in positions that allow us to turn off our phones from time to time. Unless you’re in a job that requires being on call, you can step away and give yourself time off from electronic devices.
I used to worry that if I didn’t reply to someone’s instant message or email right away, the person would become impatient or I would miss out on an opportunity. I felt myself getting stressed when I forced myself to constantly check for updates.
But now I know that if I wait to get back to someone, it isn’t the end of the world. It can actually help me develop clarity in how to respond and also gives me peace of mind.
I’ve learned to appreciate the present moment more now.
2. Phones are made for communicating with people, not avoiding them.
Have you ever tried speaking with someone, only for the person to mumble a response while staring at a phone or laptop? Or, maybe you found yourself so preoccupied with your phone that you didn’t notice anyone around you?
It’s interesting how the urge to fiddle with our phones strikes us when we’re put in a strange situation. Like being in a room with new people. Or running into someone we haven’t seen for a while.
If you find an urge to use your phone during these situations, stop for a second. Ask yourself, why do you feel more comfortable using your phone at certain moments? Does it have to do with something urgent popping up on your phone, or an effort to avoid feelings of discomfort?
Not all discomfort is bad. Discomfort can be a sign of growth. It’s an opportunity for you to connect with others and learn something new.
3. A phone is not a substitute for companionship.
I have a friend who enjoys spending his time messaging acquaintances and friends that he hasn’t seen for at least several months. When I asked why he didn’t see them even though they lived nearby, he said, “Why should I? I already message them all the time.”
I admit, I laughed at the response. I believe (and I think you’ll agree) that nothing beats meeting someone in person. Even if we spend months, or years, communicating with someone online or through a phone, we don’t feel like we truly know the person until we’ve met.
I like to keep a mindful balance between the time I’m using an electronic device and the time that I spend with people. If you’ve been staring at something for most of the day, it’s probably time to put everything down and take a break.
4. Phones are useful, but use them wisely.
If you’re thinking about what to do with your phone right now, don’t worry. There’s no need to chuck it in the garbage!
Phones are great for many things, I can attest to that. They’ve helped me reschedule meetings, get access to information instantly, and choose a wonderful restaurant from time to time.
Keep in mind, though: phones, laptops, tablets, and other electronics are made to help your life, not consume it. If we set boundaries between technology and our lives, we can use these gadgets to get even more out of our experiences in everyday activities.
So whatever you choose to do, remember that phones cannot replace the joy of laughing with a loved one, of discovering new places, or the sense of content you feel after making a positive contribution to the world. But if used properly, they can help you get one step closer to achieving those things.
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You Are Worthy Regardless of What You Achieve
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” ~Albert Einstein
I am pathetic. I am a walking, talking cliché (well, maybe not walking—I use an electric wheelchair).
I am one of those people who is so desperate to overcome their own sense of lack that they create some giant obstacle to overcome, or some massive achievement to attain, in order to feel that they might just be worth something.
I am an over-compensator, so desperate to feel okay about the fact that I am, in some ways, not as capable as other people that I seek to achieve the impossible—purely to show the whole world, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am enough.
The great irony, of course, when you do this is that the only one you’re really trying to please is yourself. You’re just afraid that you aren’t worthy, so you seek to prove that you are, through your achievements. It doesn’t work. Everybody can see what you’re trying to do.
Your desire to achieve is fine, but it’s silly and fruitless to pin your self-worth on it.
You might wonder why I’m being so down on myself. And the truth is, I’m just being honest. This is how I operated until recently. It’s part of personal growth, something we have to go through before we begin to realize the deeper truths about life.
No grand achievement will fill any emotional hole in me. It just won’t. The more I hope it will, the less likely I am to achieve it. It makes a man (or woman) weak and pathetic to be reliant on achievement for his sense of self because ultimately, he’s giving over his power to things he can’t control.
Rather than move me toward my goals, all the hoping, struggling, wishing, and trying to improve myself only seemed to make the hamster wheel spin faster.
In actuality, it was just teaching me how to have control over myself. I learned that in order to try and get the things I was so desperate to have, I had to do things that were against my nature and control my emotional state.
I had to fight to turn lethargy into energy, anger into desire, or boredom into enthusiasm instead of embracing my feelings and allowing myself space to explore them. It works, but it’s exhausting. Not quite as exhausting, however, as actually trying to do things.
Forcing yourself to get up for the alarm, to work toward the goal that you desperately ‘need’ to feel worthy or complete, and yet makes you incredibly anxious and miserable, is one of the hardest and most trialling things you’ll ever do. And I’ve experienced a lot of trials. The better you get at it, the more stupid it seems, because you just get more miserable.
You become a slave to your goals and desires. A robot. A cog in a machine of your own making. At least if I was just going to work for somebody else I’d be paid to work in a machine I wasn’t responsible for. Being a slave to the machine of your own dreams and ambitions is like being the owner, repairman, operator, and cog all in one. It’s impossible.
Eventually you start to wonder: “Hang on, I thought this was supposed to make me free. And happy. Not a slave.” You’re right. That’s what it was meant to do. But it never could. You’re asking for the impossible.
Dreams and ambitions are wonderful. They bring fire to your belly, light to the distant future, and meaning to your miserable failings. That’s all it does, though. It doesn’t change your present moment. It doesn’t change the reality. Right. Now.
On my journey in life so far, I’ve experienced three distinct phases, each of which has taught me an important lesson.
The Leaf in the Wind Phase
I am just one little leaf being blown around in the giant storm of life, and my only real power is to observe and absorb the world around me. I have to accept the good with the bad as well as my place in the world. However, this left me feeling like a passive observer.
Self-Improvement
I discovered the power of self-direction, that I could change my beliefs, habits, and desires through effort. I could teach myself things, and direct my life toward that which caught my eye.
I gained an incredible, if misguided, sense of control over my future and started to believe I could literally control my destiny. Even when this led to success, I became more and more like an automaton—a slave to the habits and beliefs necessary to achieve the goals that I believed would make me worthy.
Waking Up
I realized using my self-improvement as a measure of my self-worth was a bit obnoxious, not to mention futile. Even if I got what I wanted, there would always be something bigger and better to measure myself by; I’d never be enough.
Waking up involves discovering that you don’t need to change who you are; you are enough, just as you are. That doesn’t mean you can’t pursue change. You just do the things you have to do, step by step, without any attachment to a particular outcome. That’s it. You simply act.
You start to like yourself, primarily because you get to know yourself. And you find that actually, you were pretty cool all along.
The irony is, the outcomes we become attached to prevent us from ever getting what we really seek. Nobody wants to be rich or famous; they want to be significant and connected to other people. Those things come as a result of your process, the actions you take every day, not the outcomes we tie our self-worth to.
The biggest part of ‘waking up’ for me was realizing that my obsession with audacious goals was my way of avoiding the real changes I needed to make, which were broadly around learning to like myself.
Now that I’ve made some of those changes, my goals are less important to me and simultaneously more likely to come to fruition. All because I want to achieve my goals, I don’t need them to feel worthy or complete.
I no longer feel that I have to change who I am to get what I want, which means I no longer repress my feelings. If I’m feeling moody, sad, or lazy, I embrace that and give myself a break instead of telling myself I’m wrong to feel how I feel.
I’ve learned that we don’t need to control everything around us. We couldn’t even if we wanted to. There is only now. This very second is all we have, and will ever have.
You can have goals, that’s fine, you can work toward them, that’s also fine, but to tie yourself up in a tight knot of stress and mental chatter is just a recipe for misery.
Waking up begins when you realize that you don’t need to achieve anything specific to be worthy, happy, or at peace.
Woman looking up to the sky image via Shutterstock
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Freedom Is Knowing We Don’t Need to Be the Best
“Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego.’” ~Frierich Nietzsche
At a young age, the bar for the rest of my life was set very high. I was a natural at anything I tried to do, and I was lucky enough to have my friends and family support me in just about every venture, so I became incredibly confident in my abilities and hopeful that life would always be easy and painless.
Eventually, I solidified the expectation for myself to always be number one because that is what my identity was based upon.
To give you a couple examples of my pre-adolescent stretch of glory: I was an all star swimmer (better than even the boys on my swim team); no one dared challenge me in verbal warfare due to my incredibly intellectual argumentative skills; I was “popular” for a pre-teen and had close friends; and I was very good at school.
Then I was humbled by reality.
I transferred from my safe 100-student private school to a public school of over 400 students in sixth grade, and my world was literally flipped upside down.
I lost my identity in a sea of kids who went toe to toe with my vivacious personality, and my ego took a big hit.
I was not the best at anything anymore, so who I was and my contribution to the world, in my young mind, was compromised, because those things that I attached my value to as a human being were challenged.
This identity (ego) I refused to let go of ate me up inside, as I internalized it to mean that I was somehow not valuable as a person. My intrinsic value was somehow diminished because I was not the best at everything anymore.
And that is where my mind failed me, because that pattern of thinking is not true. Problems arise when we believe our value comes from our accomplishments and achievements.
The world makes it very hard to avoid attaching our value to our success because success is defined, measured, and standardized in many cultures by what we do, who we do it for, what we have (materialistic things and money), and how far we get.
What I came to realize was that these things can’t even begin to explain the person you are on the inside. What matters is your intention, the worth and depth of your relationships, and your values. These qualities make you who you are.
Let me back up a bit. Before I came to this conclusion, I was hurting badly for a number of years. Not only did my life get considerably harder after entering the sixth grade, but I also stopped asking for help and maintaining the close relationships I had made when I was at my “peak,” because I felt unworthy.
To protect my precious ego, I started blaming and judging everyone to keep them at a distance so they wouldn’t see my self-perceived faults. And that, my friends, is the ugly nature of the ego. Call it competitive, stubborn, or hardheaded—it is an insatiable monster that will eat you up inside if you let it.
I would like to say that I grew up and had an awakening of sorts, but to tell you the truth, I am still very much in the process of accepting and loving the true me. Here are some tips on how I manage the monster that you may want to try:
Identify any beliefs regarding achievement and access that cause you to suffer.
Can you let these go? Why or why not? Oftentimes, we hold on to beliefs for our survival and comfort even when they make us unhappy. We also hold onto beliefs because we are afraid to discover our true selves, which would mean big changes for everything around us.
Ask yourself what you genuinely value in others that has nothing to do with success, appearance, or other “worldly” objects.
Can you see these qualities in yourself? What would it feel like to acknowledge, grow, and love these values/qualities in yourself? Think of qualities in others that make you feel safe, respected, and cared for. Usually the good qualities we see in others are direct reflections of what we do not see in ourselves but possess deep down.
Honestly ask yourself what you need, and seek help.
Oftentimes, people like me try to prove they have it all together but end up overwhelmed because they wind up juggling too many balls, saying, “No, it’s okay, I got it.”
I realized I stopped asking for help because I needed to maintain the illusion (primarily for myself) that I knew everything so I wouldn’t feel incompetent.
Being vulnerable enough to admit you can’t do everything and need help actually brings people closer to you because it opens the door for the most basic of human needs—empathy, validation, and most importantly, the need to feel like you are not alone in your experiences.
Be gentle and patient with yourself. Allow yourself some room for error and be humble enough to seek other perspectives to issues that arise. It can be extremely freeing to learn that you do not, in fact, have all the answers.
It is a process to let go of the unrelenting demands created by past experiences and accomplishments. Life has a funny way of showing what you need to relinquish in order to be at peace and congruent with your inner values.
Be aware of what causes you to suffer on a regular basis and try to make a habit of acknowledging your core inner qualities that give your life meaning and value. When you start living in congruence with the values and truths you discover inside yourself, everything else naturally falls into place.
“Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.” ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Happy woman image via Shutterstock
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How to Move On: What It Really Means to Let Go
“Don’t let the darkness from your past block the light of joy in your present. What happened is done. Stop giving time to things which no longer exist, when there is so much joy to be found here and now.” ~Karen Salmansohn
If you are lucky enough to spend time in mindful communities you will hear the phrase “letting go” used frequently. The practice of letting go is used to support our acceptance of the way things are, and I believe it’s a cornerstone of creating a happy, full life.
But what happens when you’re being asked to let go of something that is deeply emotionally charged or something that directly relates to how you identify yourself?
When we have a deep emotional attachment to an event or circumstance in our life and we’re being asked to let it go, it can often feel like we’re being asked to move on and forget about the past, person, or event that we’re deeply connected to.
In 2010 my oldest son passed away unexpectedly. At that time I had been a practicing yogi for almost ten years and had navigated what I thought were significant opportunities for practicing detachment and letting go.
For example, during my divorce from my son’s father I let go of my long held dream of having a happy marriage, white picket fence, kids, and a dog (though I did get the kids and the dog).
Following my divorce, when my middle son, at the young age of fourteen, had to be sent away to a drug treatment facility, I let go of the typical teenage dreams of homecomings, proms, varsity sports, and so on; after all, I wasn’t sure he would live to see those years. Not only did Daniel live through those years, he has since become a vibrant soul, who never needed all those typical experiences to thrive.
So when my oldest son passed away while home on leave from the army I felt I had a head start in the letting go department, and therefore, I would find my way to healing more quickly. Not true.
Some attachments are so deeply woven into the fiber of our beings they seem almost impossible to let go.
Fortunately (but not really), we live in a culture that allows 365 days to ‘let go’ of the death of a loved one.
After Brandon died everyone was patient, loving, kind, and willing to support me going through the first year. However, on day 366 our culture seems to think it’s time to get over it, let go, and move on.
Even with my prior experience of letting go, it took me almost three years to really figure out what it means to let go when what you’re letting go of is an essential piece of your heart, soul, and identity.
Below I have identified three action steps you can take to use your practice of letting go to deepen your personal growth and attract joy and happiness in your life.
1. Future thinking—believing you can’t be happy or you’ll be happy when…
As a bereaved parent I struggled for a long time with believing that I had ‘the right’ to be happy. I struggled with reconciling happy moments in my life (with friends or my other children) with the deep grief I felt for losing Brandon.
Once I learned that life isn’t making a choice between the two emotions, but rather learning to balance and integrate them both into each situation, I was able to let go of my belief that I couldn’t be happy and begin to hold both feelings.
Another way we set ourselves up for struggling with letting go is defining our happiness in terms of if-then.
If I get the raise at work, lose ten pounds, meet my soul mate, then I’ll be happy. Those events may change certain qualities about your life, but the achievement alone doesn’t bring happiness.
When you find yourself if-then thinking, bring your focus back to the present and appreciate what is already wonderful in your world.
2. Past thinking—attachment to how things should be
As we grow up we often become attached to how we think our life should be, and we create beliefs about universal truths.
Perhaps you believed you should get a college degree, get married, have two kids, and live in the burbs. But instead you are struggling to make ends meet, don’t have a significant other, and live in your parents’ basement.
Staying fixated on how you think your life should be focuses your attention of lack rather than abundance, and on wishful thinking instead of reality.
Recognizing should-be thinking is a powerful way to shift our thoughts toward appreciation for what we do have, enabling us to come from a place of gratitude. Gratitude is a key element to joyful living.
It’s harder to let go of should-be thinking when our thoughts involve universal truths. I believed, and it’s a commonly accepted truth, that children will outlive their parents. But no one ever guaranteed me that Brandon would outlive me. The universe did not break a sacred promise with me when Brandon died.
The reality is, and I know it’s hard to hear and harder to accept, how things should be are exactly how they are right now. (I know, I don’t always like it either)
3. Definitive thinking—believing there are some wounds you can never heal from
Do you remember how you felt when you were twelve and your first boy/girlfriend broke your heart? It felt like a wound that would never heal! But it did, and you learned so much about love, life, and your own capacity to be resilient.
Unfortunately, we often experience other events in our lives that feel much bigger than that and leave us with a void that feels insurmountable. Perhaps it’s abuse, or the abandonment by a parent. These types of events leave us with wounds that are carved deep into our souls and can be much more challenging to overcome than your seventh grade love.
The human spirit has the capacity to overcome almost anything. When we let go of the thought that we can’t heal from something that has deeply wounded us, we open ourselves up to the growth potential this event holds.
It might take a lot of time, help from professionals, and deep soulful work on our part. But healing from these types of wounds can be the most transformative and powerful things we do in our lives.
What Letting Go Is Not
Letting go of an ideal, thought, or experience is not some laisse-faire, woo-woo thing.
Letting go often takes work on our part and requires us to do some introspection about what’s true and what we’re actually attached to. Neither is letting go the same as moving on without doing the work or simply forgetting about an important life-changing event or experience.
Another important aspect to recognize about letting go is that it’s not the same as forgiving someone who has wronged you. Forgiveness is an important aspect of wholehearted living, and it’s separate from letting go of attachments that keep you from becoming the incredible individual the world needs you to be.
Letting Go Is a Work in Progress
Begin the practice of letting by noticing the small ways in which you let attachment create unhappiness in your life. For example, what do you do when you’re really looking forward to your morning cup of joe and realize you’re out of coffee? Or when a friend cancels a date that you’ve been looking forward to?
Learning to let go of the things that are not serving you will free up energy and resources and you will begin to reap the benefits of a grateful, joyful life.
Woman walking on the beach image via Shutterstock
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How to Stop Blaming Your Parents for Messing Up Your Life
“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.” ~Pema Chodron
I was nineteen when it happened.
Legally an adult, but in no way equipped with what I was expected to deal with.
As I found myself agreeing to a marriage arranged by my mum, my thoughts turned to my dad.
We had buried him two days prior. He’d suffered a lot before he died. I wondered what he’d make of all this.
What followed my agreement was nothing short of a whirlwind, but not the romantic whirlwind that’s often associated with marriage.
Sure, there was the buying of clothes and jewelry, the organizing of venues, and the excited congratulations.
But then came the serious part. The living together. The getting to know your partner. The complete indifference to each other.
And before I’d even acknowledged that I was a married woman, I was getting divorced.
We weren’t suited. We didn’t agree on anything. I refused to live my life with someone I couldn’t stand the sight of. And despite my own shortcomings, there was one person I blamed for everything I experienced: my mom.
If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have been married in the first place. I agreed to it because she asked me to—and because I wanted to see her happy.
I’d been the black sheep in my family up until that point. Agreeing to something she wanted for me could be a fresh start, especially since she’d lost her husband merely days before.
I felt guilty for saying anything but yes.
So the fact that I agreed to the marriage for her was justification enough to blame her for everything that went wrong.
It started with her, and so it had to end with her.
I lived with this feeling for years. The resentment turned to anger. The anger turned to bitterness. And the bitterness led me to blame her more.
Over time, I grew pretty tired of feeling like that. I didn’t see what function it had in my life. I was ready to feel differently.
But my feelings towards her didn’t change after some miraculous revelation or insightful discussion. They changed gradually, and with a lot of questions.
What had influenced her at the time?
How had her life experiences shaped what she’d asked me to do?
What had she gone through that led up to that moment?
The more I questioned her, the more I understood her. And the more I understood her, the more compassion I felt toward her.
Compassion didn’t have any room for judgment, resentment, or bitterness.
It did, however, have a lot of room for understanding.
And compassion taught me three clear steps that led me to forgive her:
Step One: Recognize that parents are human, too.
As the children of our parents, we often forget they had a life before us.
They had experiences and challenges; they made mistakes and felt joy and regret.
They had parents of their own, a childhood, friends, and relationships.
They had an entire life before we came into the picture.
Once I started seeing my mum as another human being, the dynamics of our relationship changed.
Each experience we had was no longer a parent-child interaction. It was an adult-adult interaction. And this made all the difference.
Rather than seeing her as my mother, who should be the adult in the relationship, I started relating to her like any other adult in my life, and I saw her for who she was—a woman who had lost her husband sooner than she expected, and was struggling with her own demons.
Start seeing your parents as human beings.
Recognize that they struggle in the same way you struggle. They feel fear, and loss, vulnerability, and joy.
Once you do this, you can then move to:
Step Two: Question them to understand them.
This is both the most difficult and the most rewarding of the three steps, especially if your parents have done something seemingly unimaginable.
If you’ve had parents that have abused you in any way, questioning why they did this can be incredibly challenging.
It means you have to take yourself back to when it happened. Replay it in your head and put yourself in their shoes.
By asking more questions, and seeing events from their perspective, your mind begins to open.
If your parents abused you, ask: Why would someone do this to their child?
What did they experience in their childhood and life before you that may have influenced this behavior?
What was their relationship like with their parents?
This doesn’t condone what they did; it just helps you understand.
When I started questioning my mom’s motives to arrange my marriage, it became clear to me that she had been under an entirely different kind of pressure than me.
She’d had pressure from her relatives to do the right thing and marry her children off soon. Having been born and raised in Pakistan, she had been conditioned to believe marriage was imperative for everyone.
She had also become a widow at a very young age. After my dad had died, she was in no emotional state to respond to that pressure in a healthy way.
The more I questioned her, the more I understood the context of what she had been experiencing.
And this took me to the last step.
Step 3: Forgive them.
The understanding that you build about your parents could lead you to feel more resentment toward them.
But this is unlikely.
Because questioning leads to compassion, and compassion has a tendency to lead to forgiveness.
And forgiveness means you can start to heal.
Forgive them because it’s a remedy to your pain.
Forgive them because they, too, can make mistakes.
Forgive them because they’re human.
I found myself forgiving my mom far quicker than I thought I would. Once she told me the pressure her relatives put her under to arrange my marriage, I saw that she acted in the best way she thought at the time.
It became impossible not to forgive her and move on.
This article comes with one huge caveat: your parents’ cooperation in this isn’t guaranteed.
They must be willing to open up a dialogue with you for you to have your questions answered.
And it will be tough, especially when they are forced to face their actions, demons, challenges, and frustrations.
This means you have to see the bigger picture and be the bigger person.
It means you must have the courage to take the first step. And you have to accept that there is some understandable explanation for their behavior if they aren’t willing or able to share it, even if they aren’t able to take responsibility for what they’ve done.
None of this is easy, but it’s worth it to heal the wounds from your past.
Parents image via Shutterstock
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Something Good Can Come from Pain and Struggle
“How thankful I am today, to know that all my past struggles were necessary for me to be where I am now.” ~Unknown
Ten years ago when I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, my first thought was “Why me?” and it was this thought that followed me throughout my journey. It wasn’t until I was well enough to look back that I realized how much of my life was shaped by my anorexia. But not in a bad way.
Today, I am thankful for the struggles I endured, for the deepest lows I dragged myself through, and all the places my illness took me, good and bad. If not for this experience, I believe I would not be who I am or where I am today.
Today I am happy. I am happy with the life I live and the people I surround myself with. I am happy about my body and my eating habits, and I am happy to have survived. I didn’t think I would.
Being thankful for our past experiences, our struggles, and our demons can be a hard thing to do. We sometimes wish events in our past could be erased so we could start anew. But without these events, we wouldn’t grow, learn, and change.
The day I realized this I was sitting in a small church that I had just started attending with my boyfriend at the time (who I asked to join me).
The preacher’s wife came up to me to see how I was and to meet my friend. She asked me how school was, and I said I didn’t like it that much. She then responded by saying, “Well, if you hadn’t gone, you wouldn’t have met him” and pointed at my boyfriend (who later became my husband).
This really opened my eyes, and after I left I started seeing everything in my life through this perspective.
If I hadn’t gone to that school, I would never have met my future husband. If I hadn’t worked at that job I disliked, I would have never met one of my best friends. If I hadn’t battled anorexia, I wouldn’t have found my true self.
When we are caught up in the moment, sometimes it’s hard to take a step back and look at the full picture. We see ourselves as victims and find it hard to identify what we could learn.
One of my favorite authors, Christine Hassler once wrote, “Instead of asking yourself why this is happening to you, ask why this is happening for you.”
Of course this advice is nice and everything, but at times our struggles seem pointless and we fail to recognize what they are teaching us. We may even see them as burdens or setbacks in our lives, but the way we look at these challenges can change everything.
At first I didn’t see how having anorexia could have ever been a blessing. But when I looked at it as an experience for me, rather than to me, I started to see that I had a lot to be thankful for.
I grew closer to my mother while healing. I gained knowledge about myself that I could only have gained through struggle, and learned how to take care of my wants and needs in a way that made me happy.
I found weightlifting, which allows me to confidently accept my body and move through my life with more vigor and strength (both physically and mentally). I also found my purpose, which is to help others in some way with their own struggle with food and weight.
When we see our pain as just that, we tend to overlook the positives, or feel there are none. We also prevent ourselves from finding some way to leverage our pain for good. Some of the world’s most helpful resources and beautiful works of art likely wouldn’t exist if someone hadn’t endured immense pain and struggle.
There is something from your pain or struggle that is now helpful to you, or could be helpful to you in the future. Whether it allowed you to see something from a new angle, find new friends you never thought you’d have, or create a new life purpose, there is always something to be thankful for.
Challenge yourself to look for the light rather than the darkness. I promise, you can find it. And if not you can create it.
Girl in the rain image via Shutterstock
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3 Things to Remember When Facing Emotional Pain
“We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us—how we can take it, what we do with it—and that is what really counts in the end.” ~Joseph Fort Newton
Life is messy. Sometimes it’s so beautiful that I feel blinded by the glory I have the privilege of bearing witness to. Other times, I have felt such deep despair that I thought my tears would never end.
Unfortunately, my husband and I endured the deepest despair we could possibly imagine immediately following what should have been our happiest memory—the birth of our son.
After he was born he could not take his first breath and we almost lost him. Our beautiful little boy that I had nurtured in my belly, prepared for, sang to, and dreamed about for nine months was struggling to hang on to life before our very eyes.
He was resuscitated and could not breathe on his own for a number of hours while we waited with baited breath and mostly in silence, praying that he would be okay. Thanks to the brilliant nurses and our amazing hospital, our little miracle took his first breath on his own.
When the immediate shock was over and he was stable, emotional pain crept in as if it was waiting for the right moment to pounce on us.
In the days following his birth our brains started to process the horror we witnessed that we could not immediately comprehend when it was happening right in front of us, and we felt the deep despair of it all.
I wish I could say that was the only traumatic experience in my life, but of course there are many more. This just happens to be one that I will share on a public forum. I am far from alone in this. We’ll all inevitably feel emotional pain many times throughout our lives, but we are hard-wired for this emotional turbulence.
Yes, that’s what I said. We’re hard-wired and made for this, for any unwelcomed pain and anguish that stumbles on our path. For some reason in today’s society there continues to be a taboo against feeling down, even though it’s a normal and inevitable part of the human experience that we are neurologically prepared for.
In recent years the taboo against feeling down has somewhat improved. Our willingness to accept that things are not always ‘perfect’ has helped many of us face emotional turbulence in a more honest and effective way.
Over the years I gradually accepted that emotional pain will come and go. I can now see that the more I accept emotional pain as a necessary part of life, the more I can handle it with grace when the waves of sadness wash over my heart.
Ironically, the more we accept emotional pain as a natural part of our human-ness, the more emotional freedom we come to find when we are faced with despair.
I am thankful that, at this point in my life, I can acknowledge my pain and sit with it to heal from my tragedies. Many years ago I would feel miserable for feeling miserable. Today, I am likely to think, “I accept myself even though I feel miserable right now and I know I won’t feel miserable forever.”
Throughout my life and by witnessing others go through despair, I have come to learn three ultimate truths about handling emotional pain that have nothing to do with denying its existence.
If you find yourself in emotional pain, keep these truths in mind so that you can navigate the waters of anger, sadness, or hopelessness as peacefully as possible.
1. Memories cannot hurt you.
After something terrible happens to us, we might respond to memories with fear, anxiety, or deep sadness.
Months after my son was born, I still had flashes of the hospital staff rushing in to resuscitate him, and my poor husband had intrusive thoughts about our son turning blue. These memories left us feeling hopeless and fearful, as if it were happening again.
We naturally want to push those thoughts away as quickly as possible or distract ourselves with anything else that takes our mind off of it. However, the more we push away negative memories, the longer we prolong our emotional freedom from it.
It often helps to acknowledge that this is indeed a negative memory; however, it already happened and cannot hurt you any more in the present. Sometimes you actually need to talk your way through it and give yourself reassurance that you are okay right now in this moment.
2. Every emotion is temporary.
Any emotion known to man is a fleeting, impermanent state (even the happy ones). Think of them like waves. Sometimes you can see it coming, other times it catches you by surprise. Some waves are bigger than others; however, by their nature they come and go.
It is hard to imagine how my husband and I were able to sit in the same room and get through the hospital staff resuscitating our baby boy, but we did. The emotions that we felt in that moment did not stay with us. They were a temporary state of being. We will never be fully ‘healed’ from this experience, but the emotional state changes with time.
When you are experiencing despair acknowledge that this, too, is temporary (even if it doesn’t feel like it at the moment) and will inevitably pass or change into a different emotional state.
3. It’s okay to give yourself a ‘time out’ from your feelings and negative thoughts.
Even though our emotions are transient states, sometimes we need to temporarily avoid negative thoughts and feelings to get through something specific (like a meeting at work, grocery shopping, or other necessary parts of life).
After my son was born there was no time to feel sorry for what he went through or for myself to have almost lost him. He had to be fed, changed, held, and loved. When negative thoughts interfered I needed to find ways to stop ruminations quickly (even if only for a few minutes).
There are many ways to temporarily stop negative thinking. Here are a few things I used to help myself cope when negative thoughts and memories crept in:
- Deep Breathing: Counting the breath is very therapeutic. I would breathe and count on the exhale up to ten, and then start over at one again. I recommend doing this two to three times until you have successfully stopped rumination. If negative thoughts interrupt you, notice that it happened, let it go, and continue the practice.
- Soothing Sensations: Comforting sensations such as a hot bath, a warm cup of tea, or a pleasant smell can bring a sense of peace. Focus on this completely to self-soothe and stop negative thoughts.
- Laughter: I often distracted myself from negative thoughts and memories with humor. Watch a funny clip on the Internet or call a friend that always makes you laugh. In a time crunch, you can simply think of something that always helps you laugh or smile.
We are stronger than we give ourselves credit for. It’s amazing that we have the power to handle emotional distress by simply acknowledging its presence and giving ourselves permission to feel our feelings.
At the end of the day, these unwelcomed moments give us rich emotional experience because we couldn’t appreciate the gift of happiness if it were not for moments of despair to compare it to. This is not to say that we should welcome more anguish, but to instead remember the cliché, “no rain, no rainbows.”
Sad boy image via Shutterstock
