Tag: wisdom
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How to Get Your Joy and Vitality Back When You’ve Been Depressed
“When everything seem to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” ~Henry Ford
We all have this image of how depression looks. It’s a person looking all sullen and grim. Rain is usually involved. It’s dark. It’s cloudy. It’s depressing.
But what about the sunny depression, the one that almost never shows its face in public, the one that looks just… normal.
I’m a naturally happy person. I wake up smiling. I go to bed smiling. I even smile in my sleep, or so I’ve been told. Yet I’ve been depressed, depressed to the point where I was struggling to find reasons to go on, knowing in my rational mind that I need to find them, yet unable to get there emotionally.
I was never diagnosed with depression, partly because I refused to actually see a professional about it and partly because I wanted to believe I could somehow find my way out without medication, since it wasn’t induced by a chemical imbalance.
In a brilliant TED Talk, Andrew Solomon says that “the opposite of depression is not happiness, it’s vitality.” And that’s what I was lacking—the vitality, the drive to do something every day, the desire to step out of the numbness.
I would spend my weekends alone in my apartment. I would pretend to be sick or tired, and when I would go out, I would go out of my way to not let anything seep through the armor I had built for myself.
Most of the time, when driving back home, I would start crying in the car and would continue crying until I’d finally fall asleep.
Sometimes I would sleep, even have happy dreams; other times, I would continue to cry in my dreams until the next morning when I would get up, go through the motions, put on make up to cover my swollen eyes, and start pretending everything was okay once again.
If you’re reading this wondering if this applies to you and your life, take a look at the signs that finally made me realize I was depressed.
- I would always find excuses not to do things.
- I’d look the same in public, pretending everything was okay.
- I thought I was tough, that I didn’t need help; therefore, I didn’t ask for it.
- I would cover my lethargy with smiles.
- I didn’t actually feel unhappy, just uninterested in everything.
- I started questioning if there was something at the other end, if I would ever get out of this state.
The more I thought about everything, the sadder I got, and nothing seemed right anymore. I missed the happy me, the one who would wake up with a huge smile on her face, the one who believed that magic happened every day, who made everyone feel better and radiated light wherever she went.
I looked around and realized I had no idea how to ask for help. I had never done it before and I considered it an act of weakness. But I still decided to try to ask for help.
Who was I going to ask? My friends? My family? My boyfriend? I felt ashamed, as if asking for help would make me seem less worthy of their love, as if I would turn into a disappointment. So I didn’t, at least not directly.
I hinted toward the fact that I was depressed. I may have actually phrased it as “being sad,” but I never asked for what I needed, mainly because I didn’t know what I needed. I didn’t want to be coddled or have anyone feel sorry for me. I just somehow wanted to be loved and supported, but I didn’t really know how.
And then it hit me. I would never have back the time I was wasting now; I would never have that moment when I could have woken up happy with a giant smile on my face.
Every moment I spent being sad and depressed was a moment I wasn’t happy, a moment I could have spent with my family, my friends, and my boyfriend. For every moment I was depressed, I was losing a moment of happiness.
I made a commitment to myself to find that happy me, that person full of love and vitality, the person that I knew still existed inside of me. It wasn’t easy. I had so many moments when I just wanted to crawl back into the cocoon of sadness and numbness I had created for myself, but I still tried every day.
I knew I didn’t want to go on like this anymore. Here are a few things you can do when you find yourself in a somewhat similar situation.
1. Stop putting yourself down for not waking up with a smile on your face.
Instead, create a routine that will help you start the day off right. I did a short, guided meditation every morning. It was only five minutes long and at first it annoyed me, but I stuck with it and soon enough I started waking up and looking forward to it. And after a while, I was starting to do it every time I had a few minutes to myself. This allowed me to step into a place of acceptance and a place where I loved myself no matter what.
2. Start looking for the little moments.
Instead of demanding for the entire day to be happy, look for those little perfect moments in every day. Those little perfect moments can be as simple as your coworker bringing your favorite coffee to work one day or someone calling you just to say they missed you.
For me, the perfect moments I will probably always remember were going to my favorite pizza place in the middle of the night, getting tickets to a concert I was dying to go to, yet it had been sold out for months, getting text messages that just said “I miss you” or “You’ve been on my mind.”
3. Surround yourself with joyful people.
And stay away from the ones who only see the bad side of things. We all have those people in our lives that charge us with energy and lift our spirits, and then we have those people who bring us down.
I tried as much as I could to spend time with those high-energy people that filled me with love and joy.
Sometimes when I was around those joyful people, I would feel a little sadness and anxiety, as if the pain inside me just wanted to come out. And many times, I decided to talk about it with them, knowing that they would always find the best thing to say to bring me up and help me release that tightness inside.
4. Allow yourself to feel your feelings.
If you feel happy for a moment, allow yourself to be happy; if you are feeling sad, allow yourself to be sad without judging yourself, but also without dwelling on that feeling of sadness.
5. Don’t dwell on the negative.
Whenever you feel like talking about all the bad things in the world, find a tiny little thing that was good and hang onto that one.
When those moments come when you feel full of anxiety, as if you’re going to break into a million pieces, allow yourself to talk about how you’re feeling, to get it all out, to release it and then to let it go.
I always found it helpful to talk about things with a positive person who did nothing else but listen. They didn’t push their advice on me, they didn’t convince me it was all in my head; they just listened and asked questions that helped me understand what was going on, and supported me as best as they could.
6. Start working out.
I worked out even more than before, to the point where exercise became my therapy. I would always pick the classes or the home videos with motivational trainers who lifted my spirit. Soon enough, I not only felt good during and after working out, but I also felt good when I looked in the mirror.
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Throughout this journey of coming back to my happy and joyful self, I took big steps and little steps. I just took everything as it came and looked for reasons to keep me on my path every day.
Some days it was easy, other days it felt like a pain, and other days I just felt numb, as if I was waiting for my life to pass and get to a better place all on its own. Then I would remember once again: I will never get this time back; this time might be all I have. How do I want to spend it?
Do I want to be numb, full of pain, or full of fear? Or do I want to live it to the fullest, to enjoy every moment as much as I can, to be kind and loving?
I don’t know if I laugh in my sleep, but I do wake up smiling. My dreams are back, my desire to live life regardless of the challenges and circumstances thrown at me is back, and my sunny sky is real now.
It’s not always easy, and the days when depression rears its ugly head can still show up when you least expect it. But if you’re kinder to yourself, if you set healthy boundaries, and allow yourself to be happy and sad, then you’re already winning
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Letting Go of Expectations and Letting Joy Find You
“The best things in life are unexpected, because there were no expectations.” ~Eli Khamarov
Are there situations in your life where letting go of a desired outcome could potentially improve the outcome?
I’d been invited to the Stern Grove festival, the free summer concert series, to see Andrew Bird. A friend of mine texted me the night before, letting me know he was setting up a picnic for it.
I was feeling agitated that evening after spending more than I’d wanted to at a birthday dinner (which I was happy to attend, notwithstanding), and I anticipated wanting to recharge the next day, in solitude. (Pretending to have more money than you do is exhausting.) So I turned him down. “Enjoy it!” I texted.
“Of course I will—it’s Andrew Bird!” he replied.
The next morning, I settled into a café to work. But I couldn’t even start. As I stared at my laptop screen, resisting the pull to work on a Sunday and mildly resenting myself for need-choosing to freelance, I found myself Googling the Stern Grove website.
I clearly wanted to go. So I closed my laptop and got out of there.
Here’s where non-attachment comes in, because I knew that if I were going to actually haul my butt to that show, I’d have to mind-hack the excursion every step of the way.
That part of me who resists working on a Sunday? She also resists not working. And going out. And being social. And stress in general, which of course is everywhere, relentlessly. So I do a lot of inner work on her behalf.
As I walked to my car, I thought, “Well, I’m just going to take a nice Sunday drive to a new part of the city. If I decide at any point to not go, I won’t. I’ll turn it into a joyride around the Bay, which I enjoy doing anyway and would probably be doing later today.”
That allowed me to relax, and I could take in the views, the landscape, even the traffic—because hey, I wasn’t on any timeline. “If I don’t make this in time, I just won’t go!” Win-win.
I navigated my way to the park; I’m a Bay Area native but had never been! I was pleased to put the different neighborhoods together for myself.
I drove past groups of blanket-clad concertgoers carrying coolers and maintained my detached stance toward my rising stress. “If I can’t find parking, I just won’t go. No problem.”
I drove around for five minutes and parked four blocks away, in a residential goldmine others were pulling into as I walked.
I arrived, alone and new to the venue. If you’ve never seen it, Stern Grove is gorgeous; you have ocean views as you’re headed there, and once you’re inside it’s as if the city doesn’t exist.
I breathed in eucalyptus and felt the cool San Francisco air on my skin. I observed the crowds spreading out on the ground level and nesting on tiered ledges facing the wooded stage.
Not a bad start at all. But I wanted to find my friend.
Again, the mind-hack: “If I don’t find him, that’s okay. I’m just here to check this place out and watch a show.”
The thing about all this self-talk is that I really believed it. That’s the rub: you have to sincerely buy it. There’s no gaming the system when it comes to enjoying the unexpected.
This is a story about a concert, but the concept applies broadly to the more serious, high-stakes parts of life, too.
What are your expectations in your relationships, for your career, of the world? What are you holding on to that letting go of might ease? (And understand that letting go does not mean giving up.)
The next time you notice yourself attaching to an expectation, pause and check out how that feels inside. I’ll bet that your mind and body probably don’t like it very much. How can you soften it?
As I wandered the aisles, scanning for my friend, I ran into an old roommate. We hadn’t seen each other for three years until the week before, at a house party. “Text me if you find your friend,” he told me. “I’m with a big group up front and we have plenty of space and booze and food.”
Well okay, then! I did find my friend (with another mutual friend who’d come along), and despite some minor stress over hand stamps and ground access, we joined my ex-roommate and his buddies for wine and beer, fruit, deviled eggs, and vegan snacks mere yards from the stage and Andrew Bird’s spinning double-horn speaker.
I stared at my surroundings in gratitude and awe. A perfectly unexpected Sunday afternoon with lush grove, loving company, and the atmospheric sounds of Andrew Bird and the Hands of Glory to match.
Letting go can be the key to letting joy find you. Try it out sometime—it’s worth it.
Man in the sky image via Shutterstock
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Unbecoming Who You Are and Embracing Your True Self
“View your life with kindsight. Stop beating yourself up about things from your past. Instead of slapping your forehead and asking, ‘What was I thinking,’ breathe and ask yourself the kinder question, ‘What was I learning?’” ~Karen Salmonsohn
I’ve never been particularly risk adverse.
If you asked my friends or family, they’d tell you I’d be the first person to try something new and challenging. I did things in my twenties with very little thought about the consequences and dove headlong into many situations without batting an eyelid.
Except, I was avoiding one thing and that was the real me. Each time I signed up for the latest challenge, I upped and moved home for the fifteenth time, or I jumped into a new relationship thinking this would be “the one,” I carried one huge secret with me.
That secret was my overwhelming fear of being vulnerable.
I know what you are thinking: “How could I take so many risks, dare to do what other people couldn’t, without being vulnerable?”
It was easy, the whole time I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I wore a mask—a mask of someone who pretended to be adventurous, who lived by the seat of her pants, to make herself look interesting, and who in the end couldn’t pretend any more.
When you try so hard to be someone you’re not, you lose sight of yourself. You end up doing things to please other people, resulting in living by their expectations. In the end, you become what they want you to be, which can lead anyone down the wrong path to self-destruction.
I didn’t love myself enough to say, “No, this isn’t me” or “No, I won’t do that because that’s not what I want to do.” I just didn’t feel worthy enough to make my own decisions, to be happy with who I was, so I lived in fear never showing my true self.
Being vulnerable was opposite to who I was. It mean showing myself to the world, even those bits I didn’t like. It meant expressing my true feelings and taking risks, even with no guarantees. When it came to risking it all in love, I just couldn’t do it.
Then one day I couldn’t pretend anymore. I remember the moment: I was sitting on my bed crying, I was in yet another disastrous relationship, I was doing a job that sucked the very life out of me, I didn’t have the right people around me, and I was heading for a future of more fear.
It had to stop now, so I did just that.
I took off the mask. I ended the relationship, I quit my job, I sold nearly everything I owned, and I moved back home to my mother’s house. I knew I had to start over from scratch, to be reborn and learn how to be me again.
I started exploring what really made me tick, what I was passionate about and what I loved to do. I ended friendships, I moved away from negative environments, and I worked hard at taking care of myself. I had to become “undone” to do that, to go back to basics and start again.
It wasn’t easy. It has been a lonely journey at times and very painful, but I’ve come out the other side and I have to say I’ve never been happier. I’ve found a side to myself I never knew existed. I am creative, I am passionate, I am happy to be me, and, most of all, I am single and proud of it.
Here are a few things I had to do to do to get me to this point and what I have learned.
It’s possible to be single and happy.
It’s funny, but each time I ended a relationship I always felt a sense of release, like it was always meant to be that way. I guess for years I thought that I had to have someone else to be happy, yet it turns out that it’s not my only avenue for joy and purpose.
Since I got single, I’ve learned to love myself. I rely on myself and I no longer look to others to decide my future.
It’s gotten to the point where I am so focused on my own life that I don’t think I’d have time right now for a partner. The main thing is I that I learned to be happy without being in a relationship, and when it does happen, it will be because it’s right.
Singleness can be celebrated, as it allows us to truly reconnect with who we really are and uncover who we were all along.
Sometimes we need to go back to our roots.
I chose to go back home because it just seemed right. I had no money, my mum was happy to have me back, and I knew it would give me time to work out what I wanted to do with my life.
I still feel this way today, now six months on, but it hasn’t been easy. Old feelings have come up, past resentments and disagreements.
But what has been most apparent is the reflecting I have done about my relationship with my mum and myself. It has taught me that trying to change people is fruitless, and that if a situation is going to change, it’s up to me and how I respond to it.
We don’t all need to move back home, but sometimes we need to go back to our roots to move forward. When we heal old wounds, forgive, and let go of the past, we create space for transformation to occur.
Loneliness can be the beginning of true connection.
I didn’t choose to be lonely; it just happened. I had no money, so I had to decide where my priorities were—and spending the money I didn’t have on nights out or other such frivolous things weren’t at the top of the list!
I had to turn down many an invite out with friends, and the more I did that, the fewer people asked until in the end I never went out.
That period of time was my lowest point. I’d never felt that lonely, but it taught me so many things. It taught me about those who were there for me, and those who weren’t. It taught me about how I dealt with those feelings, to rely on myself more; yet, in the same breath, it also spurred me on to find other people who got me and accepted the person I was becoming.
I believe that the people we meet come into our lives to teach us things about ourselves. Some stay for the long haul, while others come and then go just as fast. Being lonely is never easy, but if you decide that it’s not forever and it’s all part of the process, then you’ll be at peace with it.
Today, I still live at home. I am still gloriously single, but now I hardly ever get lonely. I am still on this journey, except now I am no longer unbecoming who I was; I am finally becoming the person I was all along.
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If you feel that you’ve been pretending for too long, fitting in with those around you, perhaps now is the time to take some steps to change that, to un-become who you are.
My steps where mine alone, they may not be for you. They were, however, the best things I have done, and I am grateful for that.
Woman and reflection image via Shutterstock
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5 Tips to Create a Loving Relationship, With Fewer Disappointments
“Love does not obey our expectations; it obeys our intentions.” ~Lloyd Strom
Have you ever felt less about a relationship when it didn’t exactly pan out like a fairy tale? I sure did.
I had it stuck in my mind that a great relationship should be picture perfect.
When reality would give me a sobering slap showing it was far from perfect, I would walk away from a relationship that refused to meet my standards.
I thought that a relationship is like a flower in a pot, ever blooming by itself. No hard work whatsoever. But the “flower” also has a tremendous thirst for nourishment and requires time and dedication to ensure it grows and blossoms.
Stubbornly, I believed that when I met my one and only, my life would change for the better. Just like in a romantic movie, I was expecting the credits to roll up the much anticipated “Happy Ending” sign.
Real relationships have nothing in common with a fairy tale.
I had to learn that in order to find genuine happiness (in any relationship) I needed to let go of that silly, romantic movie-like metaphor. When I let go of what a relationship should be like, I started enjoying relationships as they were by looking beyond the flaws and releasing false expectations.
5 Tips to Create a Loving Relationship
1. Find wholeness instead of expecting someone else to complete you.
Give yourself and your partner the greatest gift by becoming whole so that you won’t look for a relationship to complete you, or lose yourself and dissolve into another person completely.
It was challenging to break free from the notion that in order to be whole, I had to find my other half. I also struggled to find a connection with myself outside the walls of relationships. But I was convinced that it was crucial to be able to find comfort in my own company.
We all want to be happy, and happiness comes from within. Solitude allows us to clear our mind and unwind. It gives us to chance to reflect on what we want to experience to create fulfillment in life.
Put some time aside. Nurture yourself with the love and attention you deserve. The more you fill yourself with love, the more love you’ll be ready to give. Be kind to yourself. Find your peace and comfort in solitude.
All great love stories start with loving ourselves first. When we nourish our internal light, then we are ready to share it with the rest of the world.
2. Focus on yourself instead of trying to change someone else.
I was determined to change my partner and teach him something that just didn’t appeal to him. I’ve only recently realized that it’s fruitless to try to change someone else, and better to focus on yourself, acting as an example of what’s possible.
For instance, two-and-a-half years ago I started eating healthy and exercising daily. I became a vegetarian and was excited about the way I felt and the weight I dropped in a matter of a couple of months. Of course I wanted my significant other to feel what I felt. I wanted him to feel good.
I was forcing him to attain my new healthy habits. It turned into an obsession to see dramatic changes in him in a heartbeat. The result? He became furious and resentful.
When I quit nagging about what he should do, I gave him space to breathe and be himself. And eventually, when he was ready to change, my significant other turned his eating habits around. He followed my example because he felt compelled, not forced.
3. Learn to see the extraordinary within the ordinary.
We often do just about anything to avoid the ordinary, don’t we? For years I couldn’t see the magic in sharing the day-to-day life with the person I love.
I was comically obsessed with avoiding ordinary, so I wished that each moment would take my breath away, or that my partner would do something that would. I wanted each moment to be epic and filled with glory.
I had my expectations way up high and forgot how to appreciate all the “little” things—things that might seem ordinary, like going for a walk in the park hand-in-hand.
I’ve learned how to see the beauty in each moment shared with my loved one knowing that ordinary is extraordinary when you see things through the heart.
4. Let go of conditions and expectations.
Have you ever placed conditions on your love? I did.
When we expect people to give us love in a precise way we yearn for it, we put our contentment in someone else’s hands and suffocate our relationships with impossibly high standards.
If you’re not happy with something, share your feelings, but consider that love won’t always look exactly as you expected it would. Letting go of heavy expectations gives our relationships room to breathe and allows us to appreciate everything that’s going right instead of focusing on what we think is wrong.
5. Listen to understand.
Arguments are awful, aren’t they? They leave us with that bitter aftertaste. Arguments have also made me think less of myself, and the relationship.
I failed to realize back then that the more we communicate and listen, the fewer challenges we face.
State your point patiently and listen to what your partner has to say without interrupting them. Construct the bridge of understanding through the chasm of the argument.
We all want to be heard and understood.
The biggest problem with communication occurs when we don’t listen to understand; we listen to reply or to fight back.
I still struggle with the whole “not acting upon emotion” thing; however, I understand that emotions are temporary, but the situations created by them may resonate for much longer period of time.
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When we allow our relationships to be imperfect and accept that we all have imperfections too, that’s when tiny yet noticeable changes occur. We all deserve nourishing relationships that are filled with love, respect, and warmth. Share your light and let yourself be loved in return.
Happy couple image via Shutterstock
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Healing from Heartbreak and Loving Life, No Matter Your “Status”
“Getting over a past relationship is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point to move forward.” ~C.S. Lewis
I recently stumbled into a clothing store where everything was full of life and color, until I saw the sales clerk.
She had obviously been crying. I perused the merchandise and hesitatingly asked her a question about an item. Tears welled up in her eyes and she said, “I’m sorry, I’m so overwhelmed. My boyfriend just broke up with me.”
I wasn’t prepared for that answer, but as I looked at her more closely I saw my former self in her eyes.
I had, in fact, been that same heartbroken girl a few years back. I can still picture my ex-boyfriend standing in his driveway just before the July 4th holiday, me with tears in my eyes. He simply said, “I’m sorry, I can’t be what you want” and got into his car to drive off to the beach.
Talk about devastation. I felt paralyzed, thinking, who will love me now? How can I continue life without being part of a relationship? What is my status?
It took a while, but I did manage to get through that hurt. Here are some of the small steps that I took to learn how to love my life, regardless of being single or in a relationship.
Give yourself a period to grieve, and then set an alarm to get moving again.
Just like the sales clerk, I cried until my eyes were blurry. I refused to see my friends and family, and I sent every phone call straight to voicemail. I even stopped eating because I lost my appetite.
That was okay for the first three days, but then I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that it was time to start functioning again. So, I literally set an alarm clock and chose the date and time that I would pick myself up off of my couch and return to the land of the living.
Obviously, relationships take time to heal and we have every right to mourn their endings, but once the grief consumes us to the point that we lose productivity, there is a danger of it leading into a much darker place, or even a depression.
So when that alarm went off I got up, took a shower, got dressed, and decided that even if I simply made it to the grocery store that day, or took a walk in the park, it was better for me than sitting home to sulk.
Of course, I still had bouts of tears and got down at times, but at least I was out of a place where I would solely focus on my pain. After a while my grief was still there, but it began to lessen.
Find a cause that captures your heart and throw yourself into helping.
I always wanted to adopt a dog, so I sought out a pet rescue organization online and adopted my very own dog. She was a handful, and the first week alone she broke out of her crate, howled all night long, and needed to be walked every fifteen minutes.
I was exhausted, but prioritizing her needs above mine forced me to stop concentrating on my problems. Occasionally, I sent the rescue organization photos to show how well she was progressing, and they asked me to write an article for their newsletter.
Before I knew it, I was volunteering my marketing skills to post Facebook and Twitter updates about adoption events, collecting old bed sheets and towels for other animals in need, and advising other families on pet rescue. To this day, that is the cause that captured my heart and helped me to become a passionate advocate of pet rescue.
Be open to the power of saying “yes.”
As much as I was embarrassed at my newfound single status, I wondered what would happen if I decided to embrace the break-up as if I had chosen it. Then I made a decision to accept social invitations and say “yes” whenever possible.
I had a blast that summer! My days and nights were full of activities ranging from dog park meet-ups to planning an art exhibition, learning to plant flower boxes, and doing country karaoke at a local dive bar. Suddenly, I loved the power and thrill of saying “yes,” because I never knew where it would lead.
A couple of years later, my neighbor invited me and seven of her friends (none of whom I knew) on a girls weekend trip. I said “sure, what the heck?” That same weekend I ended up meeting my current boyfriend, and I eventually relocated from Boston to Miami.
Now we live together with his children and my rescue dog is our family pet. If you have a little faith in the unknown and are open to saying yes, you never know what path it can take you down.
Take your ego out of your hurt to make an “I” statement.
Oftentimes, at the end of relationships we over-analyze them, letting our egos get in the way, and asking ourselves, “What could I have done to make him/her stay?” or “What qualities didn’t I have that he/she wanted?”
Try writing every question down that you still have about the relationship. Then re-phrase it from your point-of-view. For example, my ex-boyfriend said, “I can’t be what you want,” so I wrote down “Can he be what I want in a boyfriend?”
Doing so made it so obvious to me that we fell into a relationship where we were simply going with the flow. I realized that I wanted a partner who was seeking a long-term commitment and wasn’t afraid to verbalize that up-front.
In changing my outlook on my past relationship I eventually got to spend time getting to know and falling in love with my own life. Regardless of if I am single or with a partner, my relationship status no longer defines me, and that is freeing.
Happy woman in the rain image via Shutterstock
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Why Uncertainty Isn’t So Bad and How to Embrace It
“Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible.” ~Mandy Hale
Sitting in the auditorium during orientation, I listened to various deans, distinguished alumni, and student leaders drone on about the rigors of earning a law degree.
There were obligatory mentions of not everyone making it to graduation (or even the end of the first week) and of the intense strain on personal relationships.
But the message I remembered most clearly was about uncertainty.
“You better get comfortable with gray areas. And fast. Because the legal field is not a place where black and white distinctions often exist. If you’re a person who thrives on certainty and absolutes, you will be an extremely frustrated attorney.”
Being a comparative religion and psychology double major, I dealt with ambiguity and the unknown a fair amount. But I wouldn’t say I was comfortable with them.
I mean, is anyone really comfortable with uncertainty?
And with that superficial examination of my tolerance for uncertainty, I trudged onward to lawyerhood.
Unfortunately, I was decidedly uncomfortable with uncertainty.
Although I always wanted to become an attorney, it was a relatively uninformed desire. But it gave me a goal to work toward—a path to freedom and financial independence beyond high school and college.
Or so I thought.
I dreaded going to class. I even contemplated dropping out. A lot.
I worried that I’d lost my academic edge.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t always have the answers when questioned by professors. I wasn’t engaged by the subject matter either. So I procrastinated, which made everything worse.
Looking back, it’s clear I was in denial.
I couldn’t even entertain the idea that law school wasn’t for me, let alone accept that I may be better suited to a different career. You know, admit that I had made a hugely expensive mistake, cut my losses and start over from scratch.
So I did what any self-respecting high-achiever would do: I threw myself into my studies and made damn sure I landed a job after graduation.
In other words, I did whatever I could to avoid the appearance of failure.
Which meant I was a complete and utter control freak. And by control freak, I mean high-strung hypercritical crabby pants.
(I’m sure I was an absolute delight to behold.)
It seems crazy to me now that it took three agonizing years of law school, seven miserable years as an attorney, a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder, and a two-year battle with infertility to get me to realize that uncertainty is the only true certainty in life.
Did I really need all that time and heartache to accept this universal truth?
Apparently, I did. The religion scholar in me shakes her head.
And even though I was finally able to acknowledge the omnipresence of uncertainty, I wasn’t immediately able to embrace it.
It took a lot of yoga, meditation, acupuncture, psychiatry, and life coaching for me to see that I hadn’t ever escaped the discomfort of uncertainty. Despite my best efforts.
I busted my butt in law school and landed a job offer before graduation, which was rescinded when the organization lost funding for my position.
I planned out future pregnancies assuming I was a fertile myrtle like all the other women in my family, who didn’t have the rare birth defects I had.
I slogged through my legal career thinking after “paying my dues” and earning six figures I’d finally enjoy my profession, only to feel more and more hopeless every day.
And those are just some ways uncertainty bested me over the last decade.
But thanks to the luxury of hindsight, I grew to embrace the inevitability of uncertainty, and the fruitlessness of trying to elude it.
Yes, I had the rug pulled out from under me when my first job offer fell through. But I found a higher paying job within weeks of graduation, where I met my mentor and some of my dearest friends.
Yes, I endured the agony of infertility for two years. But after corrective surgeries (that also improved my overall health), I became pregnant with a baby girl who has brought exponentially more sleep-deprivation joy into my life than all the despair caused by those years of infertility.
And, yes, my childhood “dream” of becoming an attorney turned out to be a nightmare. But like a bad dream, I finally woke up and realized it wasn’t my future.
Although my current career didn’t exist when I was a kid, I have a feeling that even if it did I wouldn’t have found it by following a structured path.
Because uncertainty is not only inevitable, it’s necessary.
If we really were able to control every outcome in our lives, we’d most likely never experience failure. Or be forced outside our comfort zone. Or discover something previously unknown to us (or the world!) by way of happy accidents.
We’d never truly grow.
So now when I feel the urge to control all the things, I do what sounds incredibly simple to most, but has always been difficult for me.
I breathe.
I realize “breathing” isn’t what most people want to hear. But learning to slow down and focus on my breath has been life changing.
Plus, it’s science.
I catch myself holding my breath all the time. When I feel the need to check in with my breath, odds are it’s because my body is tense from oxygen deficit.
Our brains need oxygen to think clearly. And without sufficient oxygen, the brain goes into fight-or-flight mode. All too often my battlefield is the supermarket or a blog post—situations in which breath is preferable to adrenaline.
And while I am an advocate for mindful breathing in times of uncertainty, I’m not saying it’s a cure-all for everyone in every situation. But you know what is?
Again, it’s science. Studies show that regularly expressing gratitude increases feelings of happiness and well-being.
I admit I was skeptical when I first learned about gratitude practice as a way to boost happiness. Especially since it advocates keeping a gratitude journal.
I am such a resistant journaler. Which is strange because I’ve gained some incredible insights into my psyche through journaling. (Okay, maybe it’s not so much strange, as it is the very reason I resist journaling. Note to self: Work through fear of journaling…through journaling.)
Luckily, keeping a gratitude journal is nothing like the feelings poured onto page upon page that I imagined. At least, it doesn’t have to be.
My only rule is that I need to write down at least five things for which I’m grateful each day. Some days it takes me ten seconds, others it’s more like ten minutes.
But that’s the point.
Those days when feeling thankful isn’t easy are the days you need gratitude the most.
Someday you’ll probably be grateful for the struggle you’re in right now. But until then, maintaining a gratitude practice will ease the discomfort uncertainty brings.
Even if it does involve a journal.
I sometimes wonder how my life would be different today if someone at my law school orientation had outlined some practical ways of coping with uncertainty—like basic mindfulness—instead of characterizing an aversion to uncertainty as a personality flaw.
Maybe I would have embraced the certainty of uncertainty sooner, possibly avoiding countless hours of heartache and anxiety. Perhaps I would’ve had the guts to drop out of law school and avoid a mountain of debt.
Or maybe everything would have unfolded in exactly the same way.
And you know what?
I’m okay with that.
Man walking image via Shutterstock
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Finding a Window of Opportunity When Life Closes a Door
“Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.” ~John Wooden
“Why don’t you just take up swimming?” the doctor asked.
I was twenty years old, single-minded in my pursuit of a dance career, visiting yet another doctor about the vicious tendinitis that had forced me to give up my spot at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City.
What the doctor didn’t understand is that dance isn’t just a sporting activity; it’s a way of life, an identity.
Telling a young dancer to “just take up swimming” is about as helpful as telling a woman receiving treatment for infertility to “just take up knitting.”
Needless to say, I didn’t follow the doctor’s advice. Instead, I spent a good five years on the quest for the miracle cure, hopping from doctor to doctor, from treatment to treatment.
Life went on, I graduated from college, I got a job, but in many ways I was stuck. I couldn’t really invest myself in anything else, because surely I might be able to start dancing again at any moment, and I refused to do anything that might jeopardize that possibility.
As a result, I lived my life in a sort of painful limbo.
I was unable to dance, but I was unable to move on either. Dance was like a bad lover who never truly cared for me, but kept me on a string, waiting in the wings, sighing my life away.
Thankfully, I eventually did move on. It took about five years, but I finally accepted that a career as a dancer was not in the cards, and though I had to grieve this loss, once the fog of grief cleared, I found to my surprise that my chances for happiness had not died along with my dream of being a dancer.
Perhaps it was my youthful naiveté that led me to believe that dance was my one and only passion. Perhaps I was influenced by the false, but sadly very prevalent, notion that we each have only one soul mate for all of time.
Whatever the reason, I truly believed that I’d burned through my one shot at passion, and that I was destined to live the rest of my life in black and white.
(This may sound overly dramatic, but remember, I was barely out of adolescence at the time, and young people do tend to be dramatic.)
Just a few years after I decided to move on from dance, not long after getting married, I discovered a love of calligraphy and making things with my hands. Lo and behold, it turned out I wasn’t limited to one passion after all! I became just as passionate about art as I’d ever been about dance, and even started a business selling my art.
Then my marriage fell apart. During the painful year of my divorce, now that my tendinitis had finally cleared up, I started going out salsa dancing for fun, and I discovered that lost things sometimes come back.
Yes, I’d lost my dream of a dance career, but it felt like dance was being given back to me, in a new form.
Now I had not one, but two passions: art and salsa dancing!
The Universe has a wicked sense of humor, though, and a year into my salsa mania, a new foot injury flared up. I could barely walk, let alone go out salsa dancing. Once again, the thing I loved to do was barred from me.
This time around, though, things were different. This time, I didn’t hang around in limbo.
I still got to have my art, for one thing, but I didn’t settle for that alone. Some friends had taken me to see Teatro Zinzanni in San Francisco for my thirty-fourth birthday (imagine Cirque du Soleil plus a five-course meal) and I had been transfixed by the aerial artists.
“I want to do that!” I thought. And instead of putting the idea on a shelf (as I had with so many other ideas in my life), I thought, “Heck, why not? If I can’t dance on the ground, I will dance in the air!”
They say that when the Universe closes a door, it opens a window, and I leaped through that window! I found a circus school about an hour away, enrolled in an aerial arts class, and for the next year I did dance in the air.
What a difference from the first time I lost dance!
The first time, I refused to accept how things worked out. I admire my persistence, but I must say it didn’t lead to happiness.
I don’t have any regrets about how things turned out, but I sometimes wonder how things might have been different if, instead of just doggedly aiming down a path that no longer existed, I had also kept my eyes open for an alternate path.
What if, for example, I had discovered aerial arts at twenty instead of thirty-four? What if I had opened my mind to the possibility of a completely different passion?
Of course, that’s exactly what happened eventually anyway.
Eventually the crappy things that happened in my life fertilized some rich harvests; I just spent a lot of miserable years first.
It’s not always easy to move on. It’s not always easy to see the windows that the Universe opens after closing a door. Processing a loss happens in its own time, and it cannot be rushed.
What I’ve learned, though, is that I’ve been happier when I’ve made the best of how things work out. When I’ve made the best of what was in front of me, things have always rather miraculously worked out.
With an open mind (and a liberal dose of patience and self-compassion), the worst things in my life have alchemized into unexpected gold.
It can be hard to keep an open mind when things go terribly wrong, but the happiest people do just that. Challenging as it is, I know it has done me immeasurable good to let go of my attachment of how I think things “should” be.
This, if you think about it, is the ultimate dance: dancing with the Universe. Whatever tempo or style of music it throws at you, our job is to make the best of it, say yes, and take a spin around the floor.
Is there a place in your own life where things have worked out differently from how you wanted? How might you turn the crappy things in your own life into a rich harvest?
Man at window image via Shutterstock
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How to Quit or Move On Without Feeling Guilty
“Some people think it’s holding on that makes one strong–sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown
When I accepted a position with a small company, I thought I had found everything I wanted: challenging work in my field, flexible hours, a laid-back atmosphere, and a short commute.
My new job seemed to be perfect, but soon I realized it wasn’t.
While I loved the kind of work I did, the “casual” atmosphere ended up being too casual. Hearing racy jokes and mocking comments became part of my workday. The jokes seemed to become more offensive as days went by.
Then the gossip and criticism started.
When I expressed how uncomfortable I felt, others called me “too sensitive.” I promised myself to develop a thicker skin and stick with the job.
As time went by, my body started to show the effects of the negativity in my office. I had trouble sleeping and felt nauseous every morning on my way to work. I watched the clock several times a day, wishing for the day to speed up so I could finally go home.
That’s when I decided to quit.
You might be toying with the idea of leaving a job, a project, or a relationship. You might have already left. When you quit something that is not serving you, you take a healthy step toward joy and fulfillment
But that’s not the end of the story. Quitting can produce a fair amount of guilt. Why? Because our society teaches us to “never give up.” If we’re “quitters,” we are supposed to feel bad about ourselves.
How to do what is right for you without experiencing guilt or shame?
Ask yourself if you’ve exhausted all resources.
Did you express your feelings about the negative situation? Did you take a good look at the role you played in what happened?
After months of tolerating a toxic work environment and trying to change the situation, nothing changed. I realized the only action I could control was my own, and I left. I felt at peace because I knew I had done everything I could to make the job work.
Take some time alone to contemplate your situation and what you have done to improve it. You’ll know whether you’ve run out of resources.
Determine why you are quitting.
It’s easy to give up because of fear of the unknown, because someone said you should quit, or because what you want to pursue is “too difficult.”
If you leave your marriage because it’s “too difficult” to work things out with your spouse, or you stop writing because your mother said you’ll be another starving author, you might not only be making a decision you’ll regret, but you’ll be more likely to be plagued by guilt.
Two of my top values are health and respect. It was clear to me that my work environment had violated both, so I felt free to quit.
Push aside fear, negative self-talk, and outside influences. Are you in an environment, project, or relationship that violates your values? If so, you know you can leave without guilt.
Avoid explaining yourself.
I tried to explain to those around me why I was leaving my seemingly perfect job, and I quickly learned I had made a mistake. Telling your friends and relatives why you quit opens the door to argument and criticism.
There will always be someone who will tell you that you’re crazy for quitting, or that he or she knows someone who did what you did and ended up bankrupt or socially ostracized.
You know why you quit. That’s enough.
Don’t overanalyze the negative experience.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of overanalyzing, playing possible scenarios in your head, and wondering if you really did everything you could to avoid quitting.
I spent nights lying awake, wondering whether I should have been more vocal about my discontent, or whether I really was “too sensitive.” The result? More time feeling negative emotions. I still came to the conclusion that quitting was for the best.
Overanalyzing will take up valuable time you could be using to plan the next step in your career or personal life.
Focus on what’s next.
Place your attention on what you want to create. A fulfilling and well-paid career? A relationship based on love and respect? An exciting new venture? Paint a detailed mental picture of what you want to achieve, and take action to make it happen.
My experience taught me what I didn’t want in a job environment and motivated me to explore other career options, including the small business I eventually founded.
When you’re working toward something you clearly know is right for you, there’s no room for guilt.
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When You Lack Focus and Direction: Stop Looking for Your “Thing”
“More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity.” ~Francois Gautier
Isn’t it funny—and annoying and brilliant—how often things turn out to be nothing like we thought they would?
Six years ago I was recovering from a breakdown and reacquainting myself with my long dormant artistic side, and I remember spending a lot of time wondering what my “thing” was.
You know, that one specific thing in this life that I was destined to do to be fulfilled, and ideally from which I would earn a comfortable living.
I had always loved creativity, and particularly art, and had always wanted that to be my thing; I would be an artist, sell my work, and live comfortably on the proceeds.
There were a couple of problems with my plan, however. One was my upbringing, which told me that art was unrealistic as a way to make a living. As a result, I had done all sorts of things that were nothing to do with my original dream, many of which I hated (hence that final breakdown).
That mindset is not at all unusual in Western culture and is something many of us have to move beyond, but there was something else too.
I could not seem to pin down my love of art and creativity to one single focus. I experimented endlessly, on my own and in classes, with everything from acrylics to oils, from printing to sculpture.
And still I kept thinking, how will I ever know which is my thing? What’s the one thing I’ll be really good at and so endlessly enthused by that I won’t continue this constant dabbling?
How will I ever be a credible artist if I paint in a different style every time I put brush to canvas? How will I ever fulfill my dream of making a living doing what I love when I seem so scattered and unfocused?
Since no clear answer was forthcoming at that point, I just kept going.
Sometimes I envied those who seemed to be born already knowing what their thing was, like my friend who always knew she’d be a vet. I thought they must have or know something I didn’t. That perhaps there was something wrong with me for being so fickle and apparently unable to settle on just one thing.
But as it turns out, that seemingly flighty, unfocused, shallow dabbling was an essential part of the story, and not at all the waste of time I feared.
I learned two key things about what I’ve come to see as the “myth of the thing.”
1. There is what you are passionate and curious about and would do for free (and often do), an
2. There are all the ways in which that comes through you.
You are like a prism, full of your own unique mix of colors that join together to radiate a single beam—you.
In my experience, it’s unhelpful and limiting to assume that you’ll whittle it down to a single thing or work it out with your mind. After all, your mind has no real knowledge of your heart.
Your “thing that is not a thing” is already there inside you, but without taking action over and over from a place of curiosity and passion, you won’t give your personal and utterly unique filter a chance to make itself known.
I’ll always be insatiably curious and I think that’s a fantastic trait to have, not a handicap. Today, I love to paint, draw, write, bake, tend my plants, make things, research, gather and share information, read books and blogs, spend time at the beach, explore spirituality, travel, and learn whatever I can about whatever catches my magpie eye.
You might think I’m still dabbling. But all those things feed and become my thing that is not a thing.
So what is my “thing”? It’s being what I can’t help being. It’s being curious and creative; it’s exploring, playing, demonstrating and sharing what I learn through the filter of art and creativity; it’s helping, supporting, and encouraging people to find their own unique ways to express themselves creatively.
It’s doing what I’d do anyway and letting it evolve into something that feeds both me and others, and yes, it’s even starting to bring in an income. I am an artist, only in many more ways than the single one I envisaged.
My magpie eye isn’t hindering me from finding my thing; it’s part of how my thing manifests. That realization has changed everything, and my life is infinitely richer for it.
Without it, I would not have tried or learned so many things. I would not now have both a wealth of techniques and experiences and ideas to share, nor the understanding and empathy that comes with having trodden the messy meandering path myself. Both of those important factors unexpectedly became part of my work now.
While there are many things we all know to do to help us find out who we really are and what we’re here to do, like journaling or meditation, I have found the following also helpful in my quest.
It takes time, so give it time.
I know that’s hard, especially if you feel stuck in an unfulfilling job or other restricting life situation. Patience and perseverance will stand you in good stead, so do what it takes to cultivate them. (I suggest a spiritual or energy practice.)
Widen your view.
Your “thing” won’t only show up in the obvious places. My creativity doesn’t just appear in the studio; it’s in how I put a meal together, how I arrange my desk, how I use my day, right down to the tiny moments.
Listen to intuitive nudges.
Have you developed an unexpected interest in historical fiction? Head to the library. Do you have a sudden urge to grow something? Visit the garden center.
Not only might you find what you think you’re looking for, you also increase the chances of discovering something new that contributes to your clarity or brings a new opportunity.
Think of a task you do regularly that you find mundane.
Ask yourself, what could I change about how I approach this to make it fun or interesting? How can I apply my unique way of seeing the world here? It could be a mindset change, an intention or affirmation, or it could be the actual physical way you perform the task.
I have a system for folding my laundry that allows my mind to roam freely for a few minutes; that inner roaming brings in new ideas and insights. Thus laundry becomes not something that wastes my precious time but something that enhances it and brings me more into who I am.
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Stop looking for that elusive “thing.” Start living your life in all the ways that are exciting and interesting to you, right down to the tiny daily details. Explore, create, discover, absorb.
With some thought and imagination you can do this within your current job, with your children, when you’re doing daily tasks. It doesn’t have to be grand and time-consuming.
And then you will find that your thing is simply who you can’t help being. The more of your unique inner rainbow you reveal, the more it will become clear who you are and what you are here to do. Just be prepared for it to look a little different—and a lot more beautiful—than you thought.
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Rethinking Mistakes and Recognizing the Good in “Bad” Choices
“Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places.” ~Unknown
For most of my life, I’ve seen the world in black and white, and I’ve felt constricted and pained as a result.
When I was a young girl, I believed there were good people and bad people, and I believed I was bad.
When I was an adolescent, I believed there was good food and bad food, and because everything tasty fell into the latter category, I channeled the shame from feeling bad into bulimia.
And when I grew into adulthood, I believed there were good decisions and bad decisions, which may sound like a healthy belief system, but this created extreme anxiety about the potential to make the “wrong” choice.
When you see life as a giant chess game, with the possibility of winning or losing, it’s easy to get caught up in your head, analyzing, strategizing, and putting all your energy into coming out victorious.
Back then, I thought for sure that if I made a misstep, I’d end up unhappy and unfulfilled, not to mention unworthy and unlovable—because there was a right path and a wrong path, and it was disgraceful to not know the difference.
One pointed toward success and bliss (which I desperately wanted to follow), and one led to certain doom.
With this in mind, I thought long and hard before moving to Spokane, Washington, at twenty-two. To live with a stranger I’d met on the Internet. And had only known for two months and met in person once.
Okay, so I didn’t really think long and hard. But I felt in my gut, when we first connected, that this was the right choice for me.
In fact, I felt certain, something I rarely felt about anything (except my innate bad-ness).
He told me we were soul mates, which was exactly what I wanted to hear, especially after spending six months bouncing from hospital to hospital, trying find the worth and substance locked somewhere within my cage of bones.
It made sense to me that, if I had a soul mate, he wouldn’t live right next door.
Disney may tell us it’s a small world, but it’s not; and I thought for sure there was something big awaiting me 3,000 miles from my hometown near Boston.
People told me I was making a mistake when I shared the details of my plan.
Some said I was too fragile to move out of my parents’ house, even if I’d planned to move close to home.
Some said I was a fool to think this man was my soul mate, or that I had one at all.
Some said I’d one day regret this choice and that they’d have to say “I told you so.”
But I felt absolutely confident in my decision—until he came to Massachusetts, two weeks before I was scheduled to move, to meet me for the first time.
I knew right then it was wrong, somewhere in my gut. I didn’t feel even the slightest spark, but my “soul mate” and I had already planned a new life together. Before we’d even met.
And I didn’t want to admit I’d made the wrong choice—not to him, who I was sure would be devastated, and not to the others, who I feared would be smug and self-righteous.
So I moved across the country anyway, thinking that maybe I’d feel differently after getting to know him better.
If you’ve ever seen a movie, you know exactly how things didn’t pan out. Since life isn’t a romantic comedy, I didn’t eventually realize he was my soul mate and fall madly in love.
Instead, our individual demons battled with each other, we fought for the better part of six months, and we eventually broke each other’s spirits, broke down, and then broke up.
You could say, after reading this, that I had made the wrong choice—especially knowing that I knew, the day I met him, that he wasn’t the man for me.
You could say I’d chosen a bad path, running away from home in a misguided attempt to outrun who I had been.
These are things I assumed I’d think if I ever decided it was time to leave.
And yet I didn’t think these things at all. In fact, this was the very first time I broadened my vision to see not just shades of grey, but a whole rainbow of vibrant colors.
Yes, I’d made an impulsive choice, largely driven by fear and fantasy. Yes, I’d acted against my instincts. And yet I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it had not been the “wrong” choice.
Because right then, I realized that, despite things not working out as I planned, I’d learned and grown through the experience, and it had served a purpose, even if not the one I originally envisioned.
Our demons colliding was a blessing, not a curse, because it forced us both to more closely examine how our issues affected our relationships—mine being toxic shame and destructive tendencies, and his being his business, and not for public consumption.
Moving so far away was valuable, not shameful, because it taught me the difference between running away from what I didn’t want and running toward what I did—a lesson I struggled to apply for many more years, but, nonetheless, now understood.
And acting against my instinct was a good thing, not a bad thing, because it taught me to listen to my intuition in the future, even if I might disappoint someone else—a lesson I may never have fully embraced without having had this experience.
That’s the thing about “wrong” choices; they usually teach us things we need to know to make the right choices for ourselves going forward, things we can only learn in this way.
Notice that I wrote “the right choices for ourselves”—not the “right choices.” Because the thing is, there are no right choices.
There isn’t one single way that we should live our lives, or else we’ll be unhappy. There isn’t one path that will lead us to success, bliss, and fulfillment.
There isn’t a straight ladder we’re meant to climb, hitting milestone after milestone until we emerge at the top, victorious, with the view to show for it.
There’s just a long, winding road of possibilities, each with lessons contained within it—lessons that can help us heal the broken parts of ourselves and find beautiful pieces we never knew existed. Pieces we couldn’t know existed until we made choices and saw how we felt.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned since that very first move, over a decade ago, it’s that life never offers any guarantees. And it can also be incredibly ironic.
Sometimes the people who seem to make all the right choices are the least happy with the people they’re being and the lives they’re leading.
We could spend our whole lives looking for external validation that we’re following a path that’s “good”—living in a narrow, black-and-white world, feeling terrified of making mistakes.
Or, we could commit to finding something good in every step along the way, knowing that the only real mistake is the choice not to grow.
I don’t know if this is right for everyone. But I know this is right for me.
On this Technicolor journey of unknown destination, I am not good nor bad, not right nor wrong, but most importantly, not restricted. In this world of infinite possibility, at all turns, I am free.
Thinking woman image via Shutterstock
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5 Helpful Things to Do When You Think Life Sucks
“It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.” ~Pema Chodron
You know that foreboding fear we all have—that something will go terribly wrong and life will never be the same again?
Mine is that something will happen to our daughter. She is our only child. We battled infertility for years before conceiving her. I keep telling myself that it’s just an irrational fear and that every parent probably has it to some extent, but it’s a constant companion that stealthily follows me around everywhere I go.
So, on a Saturday evening, when we returned from an evening out to pick her up from the playcare and were greeted by the sight of blood on her face and the sound of inconsolable weeping, my heart just stopped.
She had fallen off a playscape headfirst. It had happened minutes before we arrived. All the caretakers could tell us was that a tooth was knocked off. We rushed her to the emergency room.
After what seemed like hours, they gave the all-clear—no head trauma or fractures—and sent us home with a prescription of painkillers and instructions to rest.
She spent the next twenty-four hours in pain and throwing up. She couldn’t even hold water down.
I tortured myself with fears that it must be a devastating head injury that the emergency room staff had failed to catch. She felt better the next day, so I brushed my fears away.
The next week was a whirlwind of visits to the dentist to extract fragmented and loose teeth. During one of the visits, the dentist noticed that her jaw was misaligned. We rushed to an oral surgeon.
The emergency room staff had failed to catch it—her jaw had broken. And now it was too late. The bone had already started to set in a crooked manner.
She’d need major surgery to reverse it. She was too young to do the surgery yet, but by the time she turns eighteen the misaligned jaw will likely bother her so much that surgery will be unavoidable.
A couple of weeks later, as the dust started to settle, I took her to the park to let some steam off. As luck would have it, she had another fall, and this time she broke her arm.
We hadn’t had any major trauma in her entire life. And now we had two sets of broken bones in as many weeks.
Waiting for the orthopedic to put the cast on, I couldn’t help but think, “Right now, our life sucks.”
And this wasn’t the first time I’d thought that.
A few years back, I’d felt much worse when my husband was in the emergency room, I waited outside with her, and the doctors had no answers for us.
And before that at work when a colleague was bent on making my life a living hell.
And when my best friend was lost to depression and wouldn’t take my calls.
And when I broke up with my first boyfriend.
And a million other times.
Every single one of us has these moments. It’s just the way life is. It’s what we do in those moments that matters.
For the better part of my life, I’ve felt flustered and incapable of handling these moments. Over time, I feel like I’ve figured out a few things that I can start doing to bounce back.
I’m sharing these with the hopes that some of you will find them as useful as I do.
1. Replace “Why me?” with “What next?”
It’s natural; when things go wrong, one of our first thoughts is likely to be “Why me?”
Here’s the thing though: “Why me?” is a weakening phrase. It only serves to increase our feeling of victimhood and makes us feel incapable of dealing with the situation.
By intentionally catching ourselves thinking “Why me?” and replacing it with “What next?” we not only gain back a feeling of control, but also figure out what we can actually do.
Anytime my daughter had a mini accident after that, she would panic. I’d put on my calmest voice, even when I felt like screaming “Why us? Can we please catch a break?” and say, “Aww, poor baby. Are you hurt? Accidents happen. Do you think a boo-boo pad might help?” And yes, a boo-boo pad always helped.
Ever so slowly, we were back to being resilient in the face of mini accidents again.
2. Force yourself to practice gratitude.
It is hard to feel grateful when you are dealt a blow, no matter how big or small it is.
I was devastated by my daughter’s jaw fracture verdict. I had to practically force myself to practice gratitude.
Every time I talked to someone, I’d say, “Well, we’re lucky it wasn’t a head injury.” After repeating it a few times, I actually started to believe it and started to feel the gratitude. And that eventually helped deal with the news of the misaligned jaw.
No matter what you are dealing with, there is always, always something to be grateful for. Force yourself to say it out loud a few times. Your heart and your mind will soon catch up.
3. Quit blaming.
When you’re hurt, it is equally natural to look for someone to blame.
In my case, I was tempted to blame myself, the caregivers at the playcare, the doctors at the emergency room, and so on.
But blame only serves to prolong the hurt. It makes it harder to let things go. It makes us angry and corrodes us from the inside. It brings negativity into our life.
So just stop.
If something is meant to be, it will happen. That’s it. Deal with it and move on.
4. Don’t give in to fear and despair.
This is a tough one. It’s so much easier to just give in and surrender to the fear and grief. But we need to stand tall, even when we feel two feet too short.
It was very hard for me to mask my worries from my daughter and project confidence. But I’m so glad I did.
Back then, for a while, I’d actually started to wonder if something was wrong. The foreboding fear that was my constant companion kept telling me that something bad was going on.
But slowly, she gained from my projected confidence and grew more confident herself. And got back to her monkey business. And didn’t having any more accidents.
And my worries started to fizzle.
When it comes to fear and despair, you have to fake it till you make it. And, sooner or later, you will make it.
5. Never give up.
We didn’t like the jaw surgery verdict. We sought out another opinion even though it seemed pointless.
The new oral surgeon was old school. She suggested physical therapy. We set alarms on the phone, and my daughter diligently did her exercises (bless her soul, she’s just a wee little kid, but such a sport).
After a month, the jaw was starting to get aligned again. Things are beginning to look good. Maybe we won’t need that surgery after all. We can only hope for the best.
No matter where you’re at or what you’re going through, don’t give up. Try just one more thing; maybe it’s just the thing that will resolve it for you.
It ain’t over, until it’s over.
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As I type this article, I hear my daughter biking around the house.
And then I hear a loud thud. I catch my breath and wait. And there it comes: “I’m okay,” she calls out.
Yes. I think we’re indeed okay.
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Are You Frustrated in Your Search for True, Unconditional Love?
“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi
Have you ever wondered if there is such a thing as true love, like in the good old movies of Casablanca or The Notebook? Maybe you’ve found your true love. Or perhaps you’re still searching.
When I was a teenager, I was mesmerized by this dream that someday there would be someone who would love me so unconditionally that he would literally die for me. After all, you see that all the time in the movies.
After the tangible basics of food and water, love is our most essential need for surviving and thriving as living beings. We first experience love through our parents when we’re young. This lays the basic foundation for our growth and journey in life.
Since I was unable to recall being loved or shown any affection as a child, I held onto this dream that someday, somewhere, someone would truly love me. Subconsciously, this underlying desperate craving and desire for love drove all my relationships.
I expected romantic relationships to fill a spot deep inside me where there was a colossal empty hole. Whenever I fell in love, my heart would open up totally and engulf the other with an ocean of love. But my love came with a condition, that they should and would love me back unconditionally.
I’d asked my first true love once, “Why do you love me?”
He replied,“Because you love me so unbelievably much, I can’t not love you.”
That was my dream come true, or so I thought. I ended up marrying my true love, had three beautiful children, and committed diligently to a roller coaster ride of a nineteen-year marriage.
My marriage of true love had intense polarities similar to my emotions and mental states. I would swing from divine happiness when he met my expectations to the crushing and wrenching of my heart when my needs remained unfulfilled.
To avoid painful conflicts, I trended toward being accommodating and then slowly progressed into being passive and abject—just to make sure I would always have his love.
We shouldn’t let another person or event define our sense of self and worth, for this places us into the role of the lesser or the victim. When we play that role, then obviously we will attract or sustain relationships that will mutually fulfill that role.
This passive submission became quite natural for me, as my sense of worth was totally defined by my husband. I thought I knew he loved me, so I would do anything to maintain his approval and love.
The dynamics of our relationship remained such over the course of our marriage until I started to heal from my childhood past and my true self started to emerge.
Gradually as my true self of worth, esteem, and courage started to take shape, I started to look for respect and mutual understanding. This challenged my husband’s passive controlling role, and we started to drift apart.
Divergence toward opposite poles led to differences in values, interests, and wavelengths until our soul connection died a slow death and we eventually parted ways. I used to cry myself to sleep, alone, on most nights. My true love was not as real or lasting as I thought.
Later, I met a beautiful African drummer who freed my spirit, as his music would touch and fill that colossal hole that was still there. His exotic, handsome looks and charming manners made me feel like I was the most important and beautiful woman in the world. Again, I poured my heart open and gave all my conditional love.
In the early part of any relationship, we can be blinded to the true nature of the person if our internal lack and need form our filters of perception. We will only see what we seek to find, and the other will consciously or unconsciously reflect what we crave and need.
As our relationship progressed, I started to see his true colors.
My African god wanted me to marry him as a free ticket into my country as much as I wanted unconditional love in return. He played on my neediness for love by using demanding and chauvinistic behaviors to control me.
I ended that relationship promptly and spent weeks nursing the pain and tears of a broken heart. Why was I not able to find someone to love me as much as I loved them? That was all I wanted in life, to be loved unconditionally.
If we love from the place of lack, no person or event can ever fill that hole. Moving from one person to another might change the scene and scenario, but eventually the same conflict, issues, and imperfections will surface again.
A few years later I went on a trekking trip to the Nepal Himalayas and fell in love with a mountaineer and his quiet strength.
In him, I sensed the spirit of the mountains and the freedom of his soul. He carried within him the peace and calm that filled my colossal hole again. In him, I experienced tenderness and wholeness.
He carried my photo with him to the summit of highest mountain in the world. No man had ever declared such extent of love for me. I was certain this was true love. But alas, he was a married man. So the only love that I thought was true love was not to be had.
This was the most devastating pain since my marriage ended. I knew that true love simply did not exist, or if it did, I didn’t deserve it.
In deep grieving I wept, curled up for days in bed, and slinked back into the hole of despair. Without love, this life was void. It was like breathing without air and living without a heartbeat.
In the depth of that suffocating pain, my soul was stripped bare, and in that totally exposed and vulnerable state, I surrendered to life. In the total surrender, acceptance held me within the pain and hopelessness. And I slept.
Over the days that followed, a peace emerged, and then as spontaneous as the sun can shine again after the clouds have moved, something shifted within me.
I was already present there as unconditional love itself. Unconditional love for the imperfect me, the hurting, lost, unloved child; the desperate woman I had grown to be, who sought for the definition of my worth through everyone else but myself.
I thought I would find it in another human being who would be the love of my life because I never had it from my parents. I craved unconditional love but I never loved unconditionally because I never knew it in myself.
When I dropped the search and surrendered, it simply unfolded. I realized my true love had been right here all along, within me. It was me, in my purest form, when all my layers of pain and perceptions had dropped. There was no more hole, for I had found my true and divine love, and this love now overflows not from lack but from abundance.
So if you’re still searching or wondering what true love is, know that it’s right here within you. It’s your purest essence—unconditional love for yourself and for others.
Heart in clouds image via Shutterstock
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The Most Important Thing to Ask Yourself After a Breakup
“The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” ~Ralph Blum
Divorce. Not an activity that I ever had on my to-do list and not something I contemplated when I got engaged in Paris. Who does?
We’ve all heard the statistics that one in three marriages ends in divorce. Yet this is something that happens to someone else and certainly not a possibility to focus on while skipping down the aisle.
People change or they don’t, as the case may be. Unless both parties are exceptional communicators, it can be challenging to stay on the same page as time passes. The meltdown of my relationship was such a surreal experience and not something that I could have prepared for.
The vision of the future, with my husband playing a starring role, was completely shattered. All those plans, expectations, and assumptions were no longer relevant. That delightful man, once my best friend and lover rolled into one, was suddenly behaving like an unpleasant stranger.
It was the shock of this new situation each morning that brought me back to the reality that the present moment is the only guarantee. That concept was no longer a platitude but something that was agonizing and raw. The feelings of failure and betrayal were overwhelming.
Months of an avalanche of painful emotions brought me back in touch with deep self-inquiry. Yet another life experience to show me that the relationship with myself was the only guaranteed long-term relationship. Cliché as it sounds, the breakdown of my marriage was a breakthrough I’d been seeking.
I was forced to examine where we had been applying a Band-Aid solution to cover some deeper problems. This grieving processing of letting go of this man cracked me open and forced me into deep vulnerability. It was time for me to bring the focus back to me and ask myself some big questions.
Who am I outside of this relationship?
What’s important to me?
How do I suddenly stop loving him? (Is that even possible or necessary?)
When did I become so out of touch with how I feel?
How can I fulfill my own desires and potential?
Is there anything in my life I have been putting on hold?
What is best for me now?
Some of the answers to these questions were extremely painful to acknowledge. In the eleven years we were together I had been so focused on whether or not he was happy that I had forgotten to focus on making myself happy, to a degree.
A wise lady said to me, “Don’t worry about whether or not he’s fulfilling his potential. The question you need to ask yourself is, are you? That’s the only potential you can do anything about.”
However, I will always be grateful to my ex-husband for this soul contract. Divorce was my doorway to enter into a sacred partnership with myself.
It forced me into the unpleasant realization that I was very out of touch with my own needs.
I felt unsatisfied in my career, unsure as to whether I wanted to have a child, and unclear about my direction. I was regularly frustrated by how indecisive he seemed and yet he was a wonderful reflection.
I was far too focused on him and it was a perfect distraction. His actions forced me to examine my own levels of denial about my part in our relationship.
There I was, judging him for being dishonest, and yet I had not been honest with myself about being unhappy for a long time. How was that fair to him or me? We all know the answer.
I share these insights in the hope that you do not wait until a health crisis occurs or a relationship ends before you create a more loving relationship with yourself.
It is impossible to experience true intimacy with another if we are ignoring the needs of our own heart. How can we truly be with someone if we are avoiding ourselves?
So often in our intimate relationships, we are focused on what the other will provide in terms of emotional support. It is easy to point the finger, blame them for being disappointing and letting us down. Yet, are we willing to commit to ourselves?
Life is short and fragile, and we never know whether today is our last day. Bringing ourselves deeply back into our hearts allows us to choose our next steps from a place of self-love.
Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and ask yourself this important question: “What do I most need from me right now?”
It can take time to recover from the end of a long-term relationship and readjust to these life changes. I spent a long time processing painful emotions that arose and sadness I felt while adjusting.
There was deep self-reflection, even resulting in spending time at a retreat in Brazil. I stripped my life back to the bare essentials, withdrew from much socializing for a long time, and began to reacquaint myself with myself. I began to reinvest in the relationship with my own heart rather than seeking love from someone else’s.
The more we nourish ourselves, the more able we are to share this love with others from a place of surplus and not deficit. This brings such freedom and joy, both to ourselves and others. Is it time for you to commit to self-love?
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3 Keys to Jumpstarting Your Life If You’ve Been Living on Hold
“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole lives waiting to start living.” ~Eckhart Tolle
One key lesson I learned on my journey to developing my business knowledge base is that everything is built from the ground up, and each stage has important lessons for the subsequent stages. Sometimes we are only privy to the first stages.
Other times, we only see the middle and final stages. These are the times when we are wowed at how fast things have happened for others, and we become insecure and worried about the pace of our growth.
No one comes to Earth fully equipped with all the skills to make and sustain a successful business. For some, it takes years to even figure out what our business is. Plus, in this fast-paced world, we can quickly come to find out that there is no constant.
We may be in one business today and another tomorrow. In life, as in business, we are challenged to constantly reinvent, identify what does and does not work for us, and find ways to enhance the things that do.
Making successful life pivots requires an understanding that each phase of life brings its own set of challenges and lessons.
We create space for joy through flexibility and a willingness to love ourselves in and through each stage.
Too often we get stuck because where we are now does not look like we had envisioned. We waste precious time wishing things were otherwise, forgetting that we have the power to change our circumstances by merely choosing the way we interpret them.
Sometimes we stop living, hoping that if we just get through now we can have the life we want. This sometimes painful process holds significant lessons for growth and development.
This lesson in clarity and the importance of remaining in the now came to me while I was in graduate school.
I remember rushing through college, just trying to get done so that I could move on to graduate school—all the while rushing to finish my thesis, then finish practicum, then finish my dissertation in the hopes that I could finally start living my life.
I spent ten years of my life chasing the next starting point.
I lived, ate, and breathed school, all the while neglecting those experiences that were happening around me.
Opportunities to learn from others, and to connect and network with colleagues and friends in different fields, passed me by while I wished time would hurry up so that I could get started with my life.
It wasn’t until I was about to complete graduate school with no real social life, no significant relationships, and no real plan that the realization hit me. I had pegged so much on getting done that I had no idea who I was and what it meant for me to be an individual outside of academia.
As graduation neared, the pain of losing the structure hit me like a ton of bricks. I had relied so much on an institution to provide my social life and identity that living on my own terms elicited a truckload of existential angst and panic.
Many nights, I would lie awake wrangling my brain to figure out where to go next and what I could make happen, neglecting the fact that life is a process and the universe takes care of you if you let it.
What ensued was a frantic soul-searching and confidence-building initiative. Sadly, what had happened as I gave up my self-determination was that I lost confidence in my ability to make decisions.
I didn’t trust myself to make the best decisions for myself because I had allowed the academic process to lead my life. I had become a bystander in my own life and climbing back was no easy task.
In order to move away from waiting to live to living wholeheartedly I chose to:
1. Acknowledge that while I was waiting, life was happening.
The things I was waiting to happen were happening all around me; I was just not a part of them.
Life doesn’t stop because we’re busy. Children grow up, family members and friends grow, and the world keeps turning.
What happens in those moments can never be relived and regrets can never give them back.
We can start to help this process by opening our eyes and hearts and paying attention to what is happening around us.
While we might not be fully ready to wake up, realizing that things keep moving while we’re standing still may be the very thing that you need to cross over and start living the life that changes your entire being.
2. Stop second-guessing whether I was on the right path; no experience is wasted.
The emotion that we normally experience after realizing that life is passing us by is fear—fear that we have made the wrong decisions, that we have missed our calling, that where we are is not where we are meant to be.
What results is a frantic searching for purpose. We begin to think that, because we have not been participating in life as we were thought it would look, we must be on the wrong path.
While it’s true that we may not have experienced some things that may have had the potential to change our lives, careers, and family life choices, what we experience is what we are meant to.
Every path brings its own purpose and lessons for growth and happiness. The issue is not whether the path is right or wrong, but whether we have been paying attention to the opportunities for growth that the path presented.
Often, when we feel like life has passed us by, we have been awake at the wheel but paying very little attention to the lessons we were there to learn.
3. Start living in the moments I had knowing that now was as perfect a time as any.
As Eckhart Tolle wrote in his book The Power of Now, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.”
Remember that you can’t go back and change the past. You can choose how you will live the moments in front of you.
A decision to live these moments to the fullest will enhance your perception of the past and help you to identify the lessons that you can take with you into the present and future.
The memories of the past all have a place, to teach you lessons to move you closer to where you can be your best self. Nothing else. Not regret, anger or animosity.
Now provides the perfect opportunity to create the life you want. Take hope from the realization that now is the perfect time. It is all you have, after all. Do your best with it and live your life.
Jumping man image via Shutterstock
