Tiny Buddha

Tag: wisdom

  • Letting Go of Labels and Being Happy in This Moment

    Letting Go of Labels and Being Happy in This Moment

    Happy Woman

    “Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.” ~Byron Katie

    I was watching my go-to show, the one I turn to when I need a pick-me-up or peace, Super Soul Sunday. It’s the episode with Adyashanti, the spiritual teacher and author of Falling into Grace.

    During the show, he said something so profound that it made me have what Oprah calls an AH-HA moment, so I ran to get my computer to put it into words!

    I think Oprah was paraphrasing for him when she said, “When you tell a child a bird is a bird, the child will never see the bird again.”

    You lose the wonderment of this beautiful majestic thing, with wings and freedom that makes a beautiful song with chirps and tweets. Romeo had it right when he said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

    Yet I have spent my entire life searching for labels, thinking a label would hold my identity.

    First it was my name, Reshma, and if people called me Ree-sham, Razma, Rushma, or Rashma, I would get enraged and want them to say it right.

    I would even say it’s like “fresh” without the “f,” like Fresh Resh. My high school lacrosse team even made up a song for Fresh Resh, and I thought, “Yeah, no one will forget my name now!”

    Not realizing that a name is just a name, that there are 20,000 Reshma Patels that show up on Facebook searches, I kept progressing, thinking now that my name was established I needed to solidify what it was that Reshma Patel would do.

    The next part of my life I spent searching for a perfect profession. I wanted so badly to be a doctor. I wanted to help people, I wanted to save people, and I wanted the title.

    Although the people in my life discouraged me, I pushed through, sure that this label would make me complete. I was looking outside of myself for something to make me happy, not realizing that this was the road to never ending unhappiness.

    The greed for more labels kept me motivated and kept me going. I thought I found my purpose in “wife” and “mommy.” And yet, in the deepest part of my being I was lost.

    I needed freedom from the labels I had spent my entire life gathering.

    I had reached the top of my own man-made mountain; I was a thirty-four-year-old woman, daughter, sister, doctor of physical therapy, wife, and mommy—and yet I still didn’t know who I was or how to just be happy.

    I felt something deep within me that was erupting to come out, almost like hot lava inside a volcano that has been kept dormant for so many years. I knew I had to release all the labels to free this beautiful energy inside me and find my way to my true essence, my true potential.

    If you’re also looking to reconnect with who you are, underneath your labels, and find a joy that doesn’t depend on that identity, these tips may help:

    1. Ask questions.

    It sounds simple and almost childlike, but that’s exactly the space I was in. I was back to being five or six years old and finding out who I was.

    At that time, I let my environment, my peers, and my inner ego guide who I was meant to be, and now I was ready to be there again, listening to my internal guidance.

    I asked, “Who am I? What is my purpose?” The answers don’t come right away. As the saying goes, “Patience is a virtue!”

    2. Pay attention.

    You know how people say “Slow down, stop, and smell the roses”? It’s true. My answers came in small moments that I would’ve missed, had I not been paying attention.

    It came when I was giggling and running around with my kids. It came when I went out in the middle of the night to make snow angels in the backyard with my husband. It came when I was laughing louder than I had ever laughed with my best friend, while wide awake at six in the morning, on a girls’ trip.

    I felt a quick burst of peace, joy, and love in these moments, and if I weren’t paying attention I would still be asking questions and getting frustrated.

    3. Create moments of bliss.

    Once I realized where my true happiness lies (in moments of fun, laughter, and being childlike), I started to create those moments, times when I have the wonderment of a little girl—visiting new museums, singing loudly in the car, dancing in the rain, and making grass music with my girls.

    These small, silly moments are so profound for my being and so impactful for my own little ladies. Hopefully, they are getting a small whisper that says, “See, life is more fun when you keep exploring, laughing, and being all the things you want to be from moment to moment.”

    4. Own the space you live in.

    You have just raised your vibration to live in a space of pure joy, pure happiness, and pure bliss, where you ask questions and receive answers.

    That is where you are now, no more labels and names; you are just who you are, in this moment, and then whatever you choose to be in the next. Own that and live there, and look back and recognize that you made it happen.

    You are not your labels. You are the power of your own potential.

    Photo by Nickay311

  • 4 Faulty Beliefs That Cause You to Push Yourself and Do Too Much

    4 Faulty Beliefs That Cause You to Push Yourself and Do Too Much

    Relaxing

    “Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.” ~John De Paola

    Do you ever work past the point where you know it’s time to stop? Where your body, heart, and soul are saying, “Ah, enough already,” only you can’t hear them because your mind is pushing you on?

    And have you ever pushed to such an extent you become physically and/or mentally sick?

    My hand is raised.

    Working hard and pushing the boundaries can be stimulating and rewarding; the problem comes when there’s an imbalance for extended periods.

    Meditation and silence are increasingly advocated as ways to find balance in today’s hyper-connected, “always on” world. But for those of us with a propensity to work till we drop, there’s more to it.

    These four common, though faulty beliefs get to the heart of why it can seem so hard to stop, rest, and rejuvenate.

    Faulty Belief # 1: I have to keep going.

    It’s easy to think you have to keep going, when usually, you don’t.

    “I have to finish my degree.”

    “I have to … ”

    “I have to …”

    The human mind loves to make plans and stick to them, no matter what. The problem is that our mind thinks these things will strengthen our identity and make us feel good.

    This is reinforced by a world focused on achievements, not one that values us for just being.

    It’s often easy to just stop or change course. But we don’t; we become rigid.

    Dogged determination can be useful, like when writing a book, or even this article; if I stopped every time it got difficult, I’d never finish anything. But sometimes the plan isn’t a good one. Sometimes such determination isn’t healthy or useful.

    I spent years thinking the road to “success,” and therefore happiness, was a college degree. But that’s all it was, a thought, a belief. A rule I’d made for myself that simply wasn’t true.

    Who knows if leaving college would have been a less painful route; I just wish I’d seen it as a viable option. Would it have been such a bad thing to get my Masters degree in six years instead of five? Or to not get it at all?

    If you’re feeling strung out, ask yourself, do I really want to do this—not just the assignment, but the degree; not just paying the mortgage, but the house?

    Take notice of what your gut is saying. Can you feel what the right thing for you is?

    And even when there are things you have to do—though really there are very few and they usually involve caring for dependants—they can often be modified so you can reduce your load.

    Keep an eye out for long held beliefs and notice how uncomfortable it feels to consider a new tack.

    It feels scary to go against what your mind says. Why? Because you don’t know what’s going to happen. But in truth, you never do.

    Faulty Belief #2: I’m essential.

    No, you’re not.

    Handsome, talented, and deeply lovable, yes. But essential? No.

    This is a bit embarrassing, but a few years ago if you’d said to me, “You have to come to my party because it won’t be as fun without you,” I would have believed you.

    I could have just arrived back from a two-month trans-arctic trek and I’d still have hobbled in on frostbitten toes trying to be funny and charming. Aside from suffering from an extreme case of self-importance, I didn’t want to let people down.

    I thought I needed a reason to say no. A real reason. Not just, “I feel like writing poetry tonight.” Something big.

    “I have the mumps.”

    “I’ll be in Fiji.”

    But saying no and taking time out isn’t selfish. Putting other people’s needs ahead of your own, especially long-term, doesn’t help anyone. It’s dishonest, it makes you feel resentful, and you miss out on the wonderful things that happen when you rest.

    Consider that you’re not as essential as you think you are. Delegate. Get help where you need it.

    (This applies in the workplace too.)

    Your friends will understand. They want you to look after yourself. And the party/school reunion/church fete you don’t want to go to—everyone will get along just fine without you.

    The only thing you’re essential to is you.

    Faulty Belief #3: My mind is a wise guide.

    Most of us are brought up to believe our thoughts are the best guides for our life. And so we spend our days and weeks doing what seems logical.

    —If I go to the party, people will like me and be there for me when I need them.

    —If I get a bigger car/taller horse, I’ll get a prettier girlfriend.

    (You probably won’t, you know. You might just get one that cares more about your car/horse than you.)

    The problem is—as you may know—the mind is inherently insecure. It wants you to take the safest route, following others or repeating what you always do.

    If working without adequate rest has been modeled as the way to be successful, or if you habitually push yourself hard, then your mind will want you to continue doing this.

    Thankfully, there is another side to us that is often a better guide than our mind. Our heart. I’m not talking about the romantic heart—though this is part of it—but the bit of us that knows, deep down, what’s right for us.

    The challenge is our heart speaks more quietly than our intellectual side, often in the form of a hunch or deep knowing. And because the guidance doesn’t always appear logical, we can easily dismiss it.

    For instance, when you have the idea that you’d like to write songs, that is your heart. The thought you get immediately after, saying, “You can’t even play an instrument,” that’s your mind.

    When I get an inclination to rest, my mind almost always thinks it’s a bad idea.

    But the more I practice ignoring my mind’s taskmaster-like tendencies, the more I trust my inner wisdom. Not only do I feel more refreshed and enthused, I get ideas and see opportunities I miss when I’m in full swing.

    Faulty belief #4: There’s something wrong with me that keeps me going so hard.

    I used to wish I was the kind of person who naturally moved more slowly, and who didn’t wake in the morning with their “on” switch already dialed up.

    I don’t think this anymore. (Well, not often)

    I’ve come to believe there’s nothing wrong with emerging at the end of the day weary and happy. I love my energy and enthusiasm and good intentions. Finding balance isn’t about trying to stop that flow, but working with it.

    I have to factor in stops. Things like turning off my phone and laptop in the evening, going hiking in the weekend, or even something as simple as doing the laundry in a relaxed, pottering way.

    For those times when it’s harder to shift gears, try just sitting, staring into space. It’s a great way to reconnect. Looking at things like social media, does it recharge you or make you feel discharged?

    Celebrate your zestiness! But look after yourself too. You really will get more done and you’ll feel better while you’re doing it.

    And when you forget and overdo things—my hand is up again—don’t worry. It’s no big deal. Us over-workers also tend to overwork at being hard on ourselves!

    Photo by Gerry Thomasen

  • Overcoming Excuses and Believing in What You Can Do

    Overcoming Excuses and Believing in What You Can Do

    Sunrise Acrobatics

    “Your belief determines your action and your action determines your results, but first you have to believe.” ~Mark Victor Hansen

    I still remember how I felt crossing the finish line after my first 10K race. I was elated. I felt like I could conquer anything.

    I realize that for all you marathon runners, 10K may not seem like a big deal. But for me, it was monumental. Up until the two years prior to running my first race, the only running I did was in gym class (and only after trying anything I could think of to get out of it).

    But somehow, one of my good friends convinced me to give it another shot. We enrolled in a “Learn to run” class. I have to admit, I felt pretty embarrassed taking a class that promised to teach me how to run. Shouldn’t I already know how to run?

    But I showed up and I participated. For the first “run,” we practiced running one minute, then walking for two minutes. I thought I was going to die. Running for one minute felt excruciating. It wasn’t that I was out of shape. I went to the gym regularly. I tried to take care of myself.

    But running—that was totally different. It felt impossible. Unachievable. I wanted to quit. I was not a runner after all. Why was I even doing this? What was I trying to prove?

    But somehow, I found myself showing up for the next run. And the next run. And the next. Each time we added an extra minute of running, and less walking.

    As we reached five minutes of running to one minute of walking, I had an epiphany. Running five minutes felt challenging, no question there, but I realized that it felt just as challenging as running one minute did. In fact, it felt exactly the same; I had to push myself in exactly the same way to run five minutes as I did to run one minute.

    As we worked our way up to running ten minutes straight, I realized that this strange phenomenon was still true. Running for ten minutes felt just as hard as running for five minutes. Or, if I switched things around, running for ten minutes was no harder than running for five minutes.

    This switch completely changed everything. I had started out believing that I wasn’t a runner, and that running was too challenging for me. After all, I struggled to run one minute straight. Now, just a few weeks later, I was running ten minutes straight for a total of five kilometers.

    I realized the power that my thoughts had over my abilities, and how by taking small steps to push myself outside of my comfort zone, I was able to completely change how I thought of myself.

    I no longer thought of myself as unable to run. I was now a runner. And as long as I continued to stretch, there was no limit to what I could do. I pushed through and ran my first 10K race the following year.

    I don’t want to pretend that the whole process was easy, or that there weren’t challenges along the way. Each time I came to a plateau, I had to really challenge myself to go just a little further until that new place felt comfortable.

    I learned to celebrate the small victories along the way. I learned that running really is 90% mental.

    The most important piece of this whole experience, however, was learning that I was unknowingly placing restrictions on what I can accomplish. Where else had I decided I “just wasn’t good at that”? Where else was I failing to push myself out of my comfort zone?

    Now, as a business owner, I can see the same process repeating itself. I’ve exposed myself and my work for everyone to see. I’m vulnerable. I wonder if I have what it takes. I come up with excuses for why I can’t show up, just like I did in gym class.

    But this time I know that I have conquered this mental crap before, and I can do it again. It’s not easy, but I can push myself—take those small steps each day—until I reach my goals. I can celebrate the small victories along the way. I know that it is 90% mental, and I’m ready.

    I would invite you to take a look at your life and ask yourself where you’re not showing up fully. For me, this shows up as excuses and stories that I tell myself and others when I feel challenged. It shows up as self-made boundaries that keep me feeling small and safe.

    It isn’t until you begin to recognize your own sabotaging behavior that you are able to start shifting your beliefs. Once you start believing in yourself, you’re able to take those small steps forward that previously felt overwhelming or insurmountable.

    Pay attention to the stories that you are telling yourself. These are the stories that become your reality. These are the stories that have the potential to write your future.

    “Believe in yourself, and the rest will fall into place. Have faith in your own abilities, work hard, and there is nothing you cannot accomplish.” ~Brad Henry

    Photo by Zach Dischner

  • Embracing Change When It Challenges Your Identity

    Embracing Change When It Challenges Your Identity

    Arms Up

    “The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” ~Ralph Blum

    During the worst years of my life, yoga saved me.

    My life was a wreck. I was working seventy to eighty hours a week at a job that took everything from me and made me a monster. My relationship was disintegrating. I was hopped up on espresso shots and sugar. I paraded myself as the self-appointed queen of happy hour.

    But the hour a week I spent on my mat put it all into perspective.

    That single hour turned into several, and somewhere, somehow, I found myself again. I learned to quiet my mind and really listen to what I wanted and needed. I connected with my body in a way I never had before. I learned to slow down and identify what was truly important to me.

    My yoga practice gave me the strength to quit not just a job, but a career that was destroying my life. I felt strong and powerful—like nothing could stand in my way.

    I enrolled in a year-long yoga teacher training program, with the intention of sharing the gift of yoga and everything it had taught me with others.

    That year I learned about asanas, pranayama, and the history of the eight-fold path, but more importantly, I learned about myself.

    For the next three years, I stayed fiercely dedicated to my practice. I taught here and there, but mostly, I was a student. That just felt right.

    But something in me started to change.

    I began to feel disconnected from my practice. I was bored, just going through the motions. There was no heart, no fire, no excitement.

    Yoga had been a good counterbalance for my Type-A go-getter attitude, but perhaps it was just too much of a good thing or maybe I just needed to shake things up.

    My yoga practice had left me passive and stagnant, with a little too much of that “go with the flow” energy and not quite enough of that “get up and go” stuff.

    At the same time, I was feeling stagnant in my life. I’d recently made (another) career change; I took a gap job, one I’d intended to be in for six months, max. But seven months in, I was no closer to leaving than the day I started. I needed passion, purpose, and drive. I needed a real change.

    A yoga studio where I was a sub was looking to partner with the Crossfit gym across the street to offer yoga classes.

    Crossfit? I’d never heard of it, but a quick Google search revealed that these Crossfit people were clearly insane. Totally not my bag. I was a calm, collected yogi, but…

    My interest was piqued. I started paying attention to what went in on the “box” across the street. I’d walk by on my way to yoga and hear grunting, yelling, and the clang of metal hitting the ground. I’d parade by with my husband, “Look at this—isn’t this nuts?”

    I was fascinated, excited, and terrified.

    It took six months, but we signed up for our first class. I conveniently masked it as wanting to do something to support my husband in getting back in shape, but when he went out with an injury, it was clear that I was in it with or without him.

    On the surface, Crossfit is nothing like yoga. It’s brutally physical and it has a reputation for being competitive.

    But in other ways, my yoga experience prepared me well for the transition. Sure, I wasn’t “strong” and I wasn’t particularly fast, but I had awesome body awareness, I was able to focus on my breath when lifting, and each day I learned to focus on just that: how I’d do today.

    Crossfit provided a new outlet for me. For so long, I’d felt like pushing myself was bad, but Crossfit showed me that pushing myself could be good and healthy, if done with awareness and control.

    I’m still learning all the lessons Crossfit has to teach me and I’m sure I’ll never be done learning all the lessons yoga has for me, but here’s what leaning in and letting go of yoga has taught me so far:

    1. It’s okay to focus on yourself.

    As a woman, I was always taught that focusing on myself was bad. But I’ve learned there is nothing wrong with taking time to nourish myself, however that looks. In fact, it has made me a better woman, wife, coach, and friend.

    When I graduated from my yoga teacher training program, I had grown so attached to my own practice that it was hard to share it. I tried teaching classes, but it pulled me away from myself. So I decided to focus on me.

    It was hard for other people to understand, but it really didn’t matter what they thought. I quickly learned to disregard the comments and do what I needed to do for me.

    It’s okay if no one agrees with you. If it feels good to you and it doesn’t harm others, it’s okay to do it.

    2. Be open to the person you’ll become.

    If you’d asked me two years ago if I’d be a crossfitter, my answer would have been an emphatic “No!” But, life has changed in ways I could never have imagined and my needs changed, too. I’m grateful that yoga taught me to embrace changes.

    It’s important to be open to the possibilities that exist for us, whether it’s yoga or Crossfit, vegan or cheeseburger, corporate exec or stay-at-home mom. There’s no right or wrong answer to where our paths will lead us; the important thing is to make the right choice for ourselves right now.

    3. Act on the signals for change.

    I’ve come to recognize there are two types of people: the ones who wait for change to happen to them and the ones who seek change. In my experience, seeking change is where the real growth happens and where true happiness starts.

    Yoga taught me to laser in on how I was feeling and how it manifested in my body. When my practice didn’t feel right, I was prepared to find something to fill the gap, something that gave me exactly what I needed.

    4. Yoga is a way of life.

    When I say I quit my yoga practice, that’s not really true. I stopped attending classes and I stopped practicing poses (asana), but through my years of studying yoga, it was ingrained in me as a way of life.

    For me, yoga is about opening my heart fully to each new experience, wholeheartedly embracing change, connecting to nature, to people, to a higher power, and to my true self, and slowing down to listen and appreciate everything around me.

    Without yoga, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Above all, yoga has taught me to embrace all that I am—the expected and the unexpected—and all that I might be.

    What change do you need to embrace in your life?

    Photo by Nikola F

  • Believe in Yourself

    Believe in Yourself

    Believe in Yourself

  • A Simple Way to Avoid Hurting Other People

    A Simple Way to Avoid Hurting Other People

    “Don’t let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” ~Dalai Lama

    The most straightforward advice I can suggest to make real concrete changes in your life is to practice causing no harm to anyone—yourself or others.

    Try it for a day. Or two. How about a week? You will probably find that it’s harder than you think. Before you know it, someone has triggered you, and either directly or indirectly, you’ve caused harm.

    I am a successful psychotherapist and conscious woman, and I’m also committed to transparency. No more hiding behind the therapist’s veil for me. The one that projects enlightenment and hides the truths of being human.

    With that said, I happen to be a bit controlling. Take a moment and imagine yourself at a Twelve Step meeting. “Hello. My name is Carrie Dinow, and I am addicted to control.”

    It’s really helpful to get to know the ways you cause harm, much like you would a lover in the early stages of a romance when every part of you wants to know the other. You definitely want to get to know your own inner ‘others,’ the pained shadow parts of yourself that can live buried below the surface.

    The ways we cause harm can show up like fifty shades of grey, so the more intimate you can be with your own particular expression, the greater chance you have to let go. Like being overly invested in how many men join my husband’s camping weekend.

    The most obvious expressions, of course, appear as control, blame, withdrawal, and lashing out. With a little gossip and lying on the side.

    What is your harm of no choice?

    You’ve heard the fairy tale about the toads. It involves a princess who, when angered, would start to say mean words, and toads would actually come out of her mouth.

    How many times I have said to myself, “Do not say a word. Keep your mouth shut. It will only cause harm.” Despite our good and sincere intentions, most of us wrestle with our own toads. I know I have.

    I find that I am just like the Buddha—as long as I’m alone. It’s a lot easier to keep my mouth shut when it’s just me, myself, and I. Add a husband (even one of the best ones on the planet) and highly persistent daughter (the love of my loves), and all bets are off.

    The other night my daughter was extremely persistent, keen on getting her way. My husband, who is a revered psychotherapist—adolescents being his specialty—wrestles with his own blaming toads. In the past, his toads would trigger my toads. And faster than you can say Jackie Robinson, we are consumed by a plague of harm.

    So what are the ways for holding our seat, and for making sure the toads of control and blame don’t fly out of our mouths? The one I have found most impactful of all is to just shut up. No matter what, don’t scratch the itch. That’s all! Mmmm….

    That’s one reason I meditate. To court my inner toads and free me from my learned drug of no choice—control. It’s profoundly humbling to sit with my own thoughts, and to sit with an itch and not scratch it, without an escape clause.

    The practice of returning over and over to my breath allows me the choice of whether or not I stay attached to this addiction. When conflict arises or tones don’t meet my approval rating, I have more of a choice of how I want to react.

    Letting go of this lifelong relationship to control allows me to tolerate others’ behavior. No longer a feather in the wind at the mercy of someone else’s emotional breath, my need to escape the scene when things don’t go my way seems to be calming, mostly.

    After many years, meditation has become my new drug of choice. It offers me a chance to pause so I can actively engage in letting go of my control which, in my household, reduces the harm. The benefits are a lot like cooking with Teflon; things don’t seem to stick as much.

    What does it take to change the habitual response and to keep your mouth from spewing poisonous toads? To begin a different practice with yourself? One that honors letting the moment pass without responding to it?

    Most of us could use some basic tips on on how to loosen the grip on our well-ingrained habits of striking out and blaming.
 Each time we lash out with aggressive words and actions, we are strengthening the toad pool. And, the internal scoreboard can start to look like Anger 10, Patience 2.

    In the game of life, we can become easily irritated by the reactions of others. However, each time someone provokes us, we have a chance to do something different, to tend to our own reactions. Either we can strengthen old habits or we can take a moment to pause.
 That’s what it takes, a big fat pause.

    Did you know that patience is the antidote to anger? Learning to pause can help us develop our patience. When we begin to pause instead of retaliating, even if it’s only briefly, we are starting to loosen the pattern of causing harm.

    Have you ever noticed that much of the suffering comes from the escalation from that one moment when someone comes at you with a tone or says something that hurts your feelings, or has an opinion you absolutely don’t agree with? It’s what we do with that one moment to the next that can imprison or free us.

    Each time the toads escape us, we escalate our aggression and solidify our harm habit, which makes it a bit more difficult to calm the waters. If we learn to sit still with the restlessness and the sensations of anger, we can begin to tame and strengthen our mind.

    If only we could pause. Give it a try. No harm done.

  • Learning to Ignore Things

    Learning to Ignore Things

    Learning to Ignore Things

    Source: Live Life Happy

  • How to Create a Happy Future by Accepting the Present

    How to Create a Happy Future by Accepting the Present

    Happiness

    “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    Imagine if every night you wrote the script for your tomorrow.

    You’d tuck it under your pillow and when you woke up, it would begin unfolding just like you envisioned.

    The man or woman of your dreams would appear in the Whole Foods aisle you were perusing.

    A check for a million dollars would show up in your mailbox, with a note reading “have fun.”

    Your friends and family would call you to tell you how great life was and how awesome they felt.

    Seems pretty sweet.

    But is that what we really want?

    I used to put a lot of effort into becoming a great “manifestor.” I thought I’d be happy if and when I could figure out how to make what I wanted come true.

    This desire was grounded in the belief that reality wasn’t okay as it was. Something had to change in order for me to fully enjoy it.

    I remember crying to a friend because “I sucked at manifesting.” Things weren’t coming true in the way I wanted them to, and they definitely weren’t happening fast enough.

    It seems silly, but I was completely devastated by this.

    I wanted so badly to feel fulfilled in the work that I did, but I only saw one possible way to make that happen—to coach others and own my own coaching business. I refused to do anything else, even though I was struggling financially and didn’t give myself nearly enough time or money to grow a business.

    I also wanted the freedom to travel the world, take my work with me, spend extended time in various places so I could truly experience them, and visit my family whenever I wanted. Again, I only saw that one way to make that happen.

    And it wasn’t working.

    I felt disempowered, hopeless, and stuck.

    The rigid need to make things happen blinded me from the millions of opportunities and beauty all around me. I had missed the whole point of manifesting.

    At the time, Eckhart Tolle was my main man. I was re-reading my favorite book of his, and I’m pretty sure it was in his sweet voice when I finally realized “I’m doing this to myself!”

    So, I took my blinders off and became willing to see other ways. My vision became 360 and I saw possibilities—not just one, but many.

    I can’t say that all of the sudden everything changed for the better, but it did change, and the shaking-up felt good. I was working with, not against, the present moment, and with that came trust and patience.

    Within a year, after a random sequence of perfectly orchestrated events, I received an opportunity to work for a company I adore.

    Surprisingly, I was and am fulfilled by what I do, and guess what? It allows me to travel the world, take my work with me, spend extended time in various places so I could truly experience them, and visit my family whenever I want. Go figure.

    What you truly want can only come to fruition by working with the present moment.

    Life is a wild, adventurous ride, and that is exactly what makes it so beautiful and intense.

    Some days are filled with beauty and joy.

    And others, dreams don’t come true, your car dies, you get rejected, you get a really big, unexpected bill in the mail, or you’re forced to deal with difficult people.

    The thing is, you decide how you want to react when you’re caught right up in the middle of the not so pretty stuff. You always have the choice.

    This is how we create the reality in which we want to live in, moment by moment.

    You may find your reactions defaulting to:

    “Life isn’t fair.”

    “I never get what I want.”

    “Why me?”

    “When am I going to catch a break?”

    These thoughts have an intrinsic rigid resistance to what’s really happening. They are unaccepting of reality.

    By resisting reality, you become disempowered, hopeless, and stuck.

    “What you resist, persists.”

    Have you ever noticed that feeling fat and calling yourself fat never worked as a good strategy for weight loss?

    Or, feeling poor and always saying, “I never have any money!” hasn’t made you rich?

    By resisting, you’re actually creating more of what you don’t want because you’re constantly focused on what you don’t want.

    The only way to create what you do want is full acceptance of what is.

    This is the place where you see possibility instead of limitation. Where you get creative. Where you can see solutions. Where you feel hope and maybe even some peace.

    How do you accept the present moment? You celebrate it. You appreciate it. Even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.

    Small acts of appreciation for the present state can cause giant shifts in your life. You become wildly empowered, creative, and resourceful.

    I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s a moment-by-moment practice. It’s a constant decision to take your power back and remember that you create your life and your happiness, always.

    Here are some things to remember when you find yourself fighting the present moment.

    It’s okay to feel it.

    The more you experience your emotions and the sooner you allow yourself to experience them, the sooner you’ll find yourself accepting the present moment.

    Your emotions are there to be felt, seen, and heard. There’s no power in pushing them away, avoiding them, or pretending that they don’t exist, because they will find a way to come out eventually.

    It’s a priority to truly experience your emotions. This is an act of celebration in and of itself.

    As you feel your emotions, you release them.

    Let’s just say during that time above I cried, a lot. My friends might say all the time.

    I’ve never journaled more, cried more, released more, or talked it out more. As I’m writing this, I can see how that was the first time that I allowed all of my emotions to be fully okay.

    I paid attention to them and I let others pay attention to them. This was beyond powerful and ultimately what led me to face reality and move into a place of empowerment.

    Find the silver lining.

    There will always be a positive result of whatever is occurring.

    Even if it feels completely and utterly negative, I promise you, there’s at least one positive result.

    From the most tragic of situations, we can find hope, help others from our experience, and experience compassion.

    Always take a moment to find the silver lining and acknowledge it.

    Saying “thank you” out loud is so powerfully simple.

    Thank you for my humanity. Thank you for this adventure. Thank you for that one positive thing.

    By experiencing your emotions, seeing the positive, and having a sense of gratitude, you can work with anything the present moment brings you.

    By doing this continually, you are actively creating more and more of what you want in every moment.

    Photo by Moyan Brenn

  • When You Think You Need to Know More to Be Good Enough

    When You Think You Need to Know More to Be Good Enough

    Deep Thought

    “All the wonders you seek are within yourself.” ~Sir Thomas Browne

    I’m constantly looking for answers—in books, in yoga classes, in meditation. Everywhere I go I meet people, new and old, and I’m constantly asking questions. I thrive on learning new opinions, spiritualities, lessons, and facts. Relentlessly, I’m always searching for more.

    Aren’t we all looking for the answers?

    How am I going to leave the position that I’ve held for most of my life and start a new job, in a new company? Raise our first child (or puppy!)? Take care of our aging parents? Start teaching yoga classes after just finishing a six-month yoga teacher training course?

    How do we become happy with where we are today?

    These are questions that run through my head, and I’m 99% sure that a form of these questions have run through your head recently, if not today.

    Where do we find the answers? In the latest self-help book on finding happiness in three easy steps? Well, that may work for today. Most, if not all, of the self help books I’ve read have helped me in some form or another, although I still find myself searching for more answers, more knowledge.

    Maybe you and I will be searching for the rest of our lives for the answers that we need to live a happy, healthy, joyful, stress-free life and maybe that is okay.

    I just finished reading Dani Shapiro’s book Devotion. At the end of the book, she is speaking with Sylvia Boorstein, (a meditation teacher she met along her journey) about an upcoming TV appearance that she was nervous about.

    Sylvia reminds her, “This is what you know now.” Dani reflects on this and continues, “I can only know what I know now. That’s all any of us can know. Hopefully, we’ll know more an hour from now. And tonight. And tomorrow. And next year.”

    As did Dani, I reflected on this statement, “This is what you know now.”

    I’ve been struggling with where to put my time and effort. I work full time in the corporate world, just received my certification to teach yoga, and belong to an amazing support group dealing with the loss of my father. I also have my home life, to which I’d like to to continually devote a good portion of my time.

    Ultimately, I want to help others. I want to share yoga/meditation and what I’ve learned from grief. I want to continue to write. But I’m far from an expert in these things.

    There are times during a yoga class when I wonder if I will ever be able to teach a class as well as the teacher because of all the knowledge they have—quoting Buddha word for word off the top of their head, speaking Sanskrit words that I have never heard and bending fully into a forward fold while I’m still struggling to touch my toes.

    Questions start running through my head, and I wonder if I will ever be good enough to teach a class and be able to share what I know and what I’ve learned through my yoga journey and grief. Will anyone give me a chance?

    I’m learning, and all I can do is continue to listen and be okay with what I know right now, which is a lot more than I knew two and half years ago stepping onto my yoga mat for the first time.

    So for now, this is my answer to myself: “This is what I know now.” I can’t speak in Sanskrit yet, I can’t touch my head to my knees yet, and I certainly have no clue how to raise a baby yet. But I will learn, and in meantime, I will continue writing to help heal, and practice yoga/meditate the best that I can right now.

    I hope you, too, can find solace in these words, to understand that we do not need to have all the answers and all the knowledge right now.

    I hope these words come up the next time you are searching for answers or starting something in new life. All you can know is what you know right now, in this moment, and that’s good enough.

    Photo by John Aslund

  • Seek Not to Be Accepted

    Seek Not to Be Accepted

    Seek Not to Be Accepted

    Source: Global Love Project

  • Let Go of Regret by Making a Promise to Yourself

    Let Go of Regret by Making a Promise to Yourself

    Let Go

    “Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places.” ~Unknown

    Regret can be such a paralyzing emotion, yet it is also universal. At some point in our lives, in one way or another, we each wrestle with regret.

    Regret seems to rear its ugly head most when it comes to relationships. It happens when a relationship ends and we feel as if we could have done something more. This feeling intensifies when the other person decides that a second chance is not worth the fight. Most of all, we face with regret once it sets in that the past is just that—the past.

    Almost one year ago to the day, I lost the man that I thought I would spend the rest of my life with.

    At age twenty-eight, after two years of living together, I watched him slam the door on our apartment. My own anxiety and depression led me to keep things inside, secrets, and this slowly built a wall in between us, so thick that we could no longer see each other.

    My own anxiety and need for reassurance or praise clouded my head so badly that I could not even notice that he saw right though me. And anytime he tried to get me to open up, I would convince myself that he was the enemy.

    We were no longer a team working together; we had become opponents working against each other.

    I had created my own nightmare, and now that it was over, all I was left with was regret.

    No matter what, I thought that we would find a way through the darkness. But once he walked out that door, he never looked back.

    In many ways, I still struggle with the regret following the end of my relationship.

    At first, I would enter periods of self-loathing: I could have eaten more so he didn’t have to sleep next to a hollow body made of skin and bones, I could have spent that fourth of July with him instead of choosing to leave him behind for a rock concert, and I could have made him feel like my top priority.

    But the truth is, I was so focused on my distorted self-image that I was blinded to the fact that I was pulling away, physically and emotionally.

    Yet in the last year, I have also come to realize (through ebbs and flows) that the universe has a way of showing you what rock bottom really looks like in order to demonstrate that you are capable of picking yourself up again.

    It is when you are truly alone and forced to face yourself that new opportunities will open up and you force yourself to let love in again.

    In the face of regret, the best thing you can do for yourself is not look back, but to make a promise to yourself that you can learn from the experience and do the right thing going forward.

    My promises to myself include ensuring that I never take anyone for granted again, and act only with love and compassion for myself and for others. The endings we experience in life are the world’s way of showing you that expansion is imminent.

    And if you can’t see through the fog of regret today, know that one day you will. Start making that promise to yourself today that you will no longer sit in your regret, but move forward with integrity, dignity, and self-respect.

    Photo by Conny G.

  • Learn to Love Yourself by Doing Something Good for Yourself

    Learn to Love Yourself by Doing Something Good for Yourself

    Orange Sky

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.

    “I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.” ~BrenéBrown 

    I was happiest when I didn’t know my weight, and that was ironically when I was at my heaviest, which was in high school.

    I was slow to take on the self-loathing and body image issues that plague so many young kids. I rarely felt bad about myself, partly because I had a loving family and a boyfriend who constantly told me how pretty I was.

    The boyfriend and I parted ways when I started college, and, thrust into a different world, I realized that I was fat. Before I knew it, I began absorbing what magazines suggest the ideal woman should look like.

    I tried changing my body, forcing it to do things I hated because I hated myself. Eating too much one day and eating too little the next was the answer to my fat problem, and exercising through the form of dogged running was the punishment for being “bad.”

    The Catalyst

    One year and two months from writing this, I was sexually assaulted. The situation fell into the “blurred lines” category. He bought me a drink and many more to follow, until I saw double, until I couldn’t stand anymore and fell tumbling onto the cobblestone ground of that foreign, lonely country.

    He didn’t need any drugs, all he had to do was talk smoothly like the snake he was, knowing that all it would take was a few drinks for someone of my size to lose her judgment; he knew me better than I knew myself.

    It took me a few days to register what had actually happened. He had gone far enough that I felt violated, used, and disgusted with myself, where looking and touching my own body felt dirty, but not far enough that I needed to go to the hospital take a pill.

    That night, as I moved in and out of alcohol poisoning-consciousness, in a moment of sanity I found my wits and told him to get out. He left peacefully, as though he was a good guy, but there was already enough damage done. I was never suicidal, but I was as close as I’d ever been to those kinds of thoughts.

    Returning to my family for much needed rehabilitation, I sought therapy and friends. It helped, but it didn’t heal. That’s because the love and support I was getting only worked as a Band-Aid. The trauma would never go away until I decided to kick it out of my home. And I tried. I really did try. But I was just too tired, too weak.

    One day a friend told me that maybe in order to kick trauma out, I needed to feel stronger, like I truly owned the place; what would make me feel like the master of the house again? Knowing how to defend myself. Knowing how to fight. Not being afraid of it.

    Perhaps knowing how to throw a punch wouldn’t have made a difference in last year’s situation; however, the experience instilled in me a fear of assault that was ten times stronger than it had been, simply because I knew what the aftermath of such an experience was like, and was so scared of it ever happening again that I became fixated on that one fear.

    That’s when I decided that even if I couldn’t fix the past, even if it had nothing to do with my physical strength, I needed to address the fear. I needed to take my life back and do something for myself. I knew I deserved that.

    I started taking Krav Maga, a form of Israeli combat defense. At first all I wanted was the guilt of the past to go away, with the knowledge that in the future I would never again be caught off guard, mentally or physically. That’s all I was asking: emotional and physical security.

    What I didn’t expect was that one self-defense class would turn into hours at the gym taking kickboxing and partaking in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, getting bruised from head to toe, which sounds like a beating, but I assure you it was a worthy one. I had never felt more alive or stronger in my life.

    The Change

    As I began to witness what my body could do, this new form of “exercise” became the detox for last year’s trauma. When I was knocked to the ground, instead of dwelling on my failure, I got right back up to continue the fight, because I owed it to my body.

    It wasn’t about my weight; it was about doing something positive for myself.

    Allowing myself to learn how to throw a hefty punch and be confident in my ability to do so not only made me feel good, it made me feel loved. For the first time in a long time, I loved myself. I learned how to be my own cheerleader, and not the little devil telling me that I can’t.

    I believe that giving yourself what you deserve and praising yourself can help you learn to love yourself; just getting there can be a little hard.

    I needed to reach a point where I threw aside my worth before I could choose to give my body and mind what they deserved, instead of letting them rot away in sorrow. I just never expected that this choice would not only heal last year’s pain, but also lead me to self-love.

    The Constant

    So I want everyone and anyone who has experienced something negative in their lives—no, I want people with all experiences—to sit down and think about what you need and what you’re going to do about it.

    Does that include taking time out for yoga? Trying out for a spot on SNL? It doesn’t matter. Take that idea, do it, but most importantly of all, be your own cheerleader. Love yourself. Know that you deserve it.

    Today when I look in the mirror and see a little muffin top, instead of spiraling into the abyss of negative thoughts and misery, I try to think of all the good things I do for myself and others. I think about how hard I sweat that morning, how much I read and learned that afternoon, and how the curry I cooked up made my family so happy.

    Miss Muffin Top is not the enemy; she’s a part of me, and should not be the scale for how much I’m allowed to honor my existence.

    Photo by Carlos Pantoja

  • So Grateful

    So Grateful

    So Grateful

    Source

  • More Is Not Always Better: Being Grateful for What Is

    More Is Not Always Better: Being Grateful for What Is

    Gratitude

    “It is not joy that makes us grateful. It is gratitude that makes us joyful.” ~David Rast

    Every New Years Eve I make a list of resolutions that I never keep up with and it just makes me feel guilty every time I don’t. Lose ten pounds, get more involved, go to the gym, develop better relationships.

    Every year I aspire to be more, do more, get more, never living within the present moment.

    My stress to do more comes into play in every aspect of my life. The stress of joining more clubs comes from the competitive environment of school. I am in constant stream of uncertainty. How do I find the balance, solitude, and the calmness in life? 

    I traveled to Puerto Rico with my family for last Christmas. I found that I had been thinking about the semester that lied ahead and what I was going to do to rise above my peers, although I was already involved in four different student organizations and was doing great in school.

    As I sat on the beach, in paradise, on New Year’s Eve, I couldn’t help it. I was starting to form the list I had visited and revisited year after year.

    This was the first time I had spent New Year’s with my family in a while. 

    We enjoyed a fancy dinner of steak and wine and fine desserts, the conversation poured openly as the four of us enjoyed each other’s company. I had missed these times as I was away at college and these moments became few and far between.

    We decided to skip the fancy party the resort provided and went back to our room instead. We watched from our balcony all of the guests in fancy dresses, possibly pretending to have more fun then they actually were having.

    They snapped pictures for Facebook and Instagram, showing everyone at home what they were missing. I asked myself, “What is this all about?” 

    As the thought danced around my head, there came the countdown until the New Year. Ten… nine… eight… I looked around at my family and everything I needed was right there.

    Seven… six… five… I didn’t need to add more to my resume, I didn’t have to join more clubs, I didn’t need to stress about what the future may hold.

    Four… three… two… It finally hit me all I needed was one… One thing on my list: to be grateful. 

    Fireworks started to go off over the water. As I looked around at my family and we wished each other a Happy New Year, colors collided and clashed in the sky, the crackles and booming shaking my light heart.

    We are told about appreciating the moment and being truly grateful, I have read countless books about it; however, I never fully grasped it until this very moment. It authenticated what it really meant.

    I was overcome with a sense of comfort and gratitude for everything I had been given in the past year. I had overcome a rough time and I had not allowed myself congratulations for that.

    I had not been able to see clearly all of the things I had been blessed with, like my wonderful family, my great friends I had made at school and the friendships I had kept from home, and especially my health, which had not been the greatest the previous year.

    That is when I made this promise to myself.

    As I watched the fireworks and looked at the loving faces around me, I remembered that in one the books that had changed my life the past summer, it was suggested to practice gratitude every day.

    Make a jar and put one thing you are grateful for in it every night before you go to sleep. That is what I did when I got home; I painted my gratitude jar, along with one for each member of my family.

    Every night I scribble down something I am most grateful for. Sometimes I am grateful for time spent with family, other times I am grateful for my extra ten minutes of sleep in the morning, and sometimes I am grateful for a night out with friends.

    We have so much to be grateful for and so much to honor within ourselves. We just need to take the time to do so.

    Photo by Yoga4Love

  • 60 Things to Be Grateful For In Life

    60 Things to Be Grateful For In Life

    “We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” ~Cynthia Ozick

    How often do you pause to appreciate what you have in life?

    When I was young, I took things for granted. I believe many other kids did so, as well. After all, we were young and we didn’t know what life could be like on the other side.

    One thing we took for granted was education. In my country, it’s compulsory for all kids to go to school, so it was a given. We never thought about how lucky we were to be educated.

    We also took our teachers for granted. We never thought about how lucky we were to have teachers who cared for our growth so much, and poured their heart and soul into their lessons.

    Then slowly as I grew up, I began to appreciate things around me more. As I saw more and more of the world out there, I realized all the things I’d been given are not rights, but privileges.

    I realized that being literate is a not a right, but a gift. I realized there is a lot of war and violence in the world, and I’m lucky to live in a country where it’s safe and peaceful. I realized there are people out there who don’t have their five senses, and to have mine is a gift. (more…)

  • Using Your Monkey Mind to Redirect Negative Thoughts

    Using Your Monkey Mind to Redirect Negative Thoughts

    Monkey Mind

    “I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    I grew up in what I like to call The Box of Daughter: a rigid structure of rules about values, beliefs, thinking, feeling, and behaving, set forth for me by super-religious parents who grew up in boxes of their own.

    For a large part of my life, my thinking bounced around within the confines of that box—worrying the old worries, thinking the old thoughts, feeling the old pain, and acting out pretty much the same compulsions time after time—stuck in ever-repeating loops of monkey mind.

    I’ve always loved reading about quantum physics and marveling at the infinite possibilities in the universe. But I couldn’t seem to get many of those wonderful possibilities to happen in my life because I was stuck in that old structure, the childhood voices bulldozing their doubts, fears, and negative mumblings right over what I was trying to create.

    As I’ve endeavored over the years to deepen and expand my spirituality, I’ve connected more and more with the divine creative force, the constant, growth-oriented creative energy of life. “This is how I’m meant to live,” I would think, and then I’d go right back to monkey mind.

    I’ve come to believe that there must be a purpose for monkey mind—that nature intended for us to do something with it, that it’s not simply an aberration that evolved in us as life got more complicated.

    One night in the bathtub (which is where I do my best creative thinking), I noticed a correlation between the constant flow of creative energy in the Universe and monkey mind, which is a also constant flow of energy—but in my case, energy that’s ricocheting off the inside walls of the mental box I grew up in.

    After my bath, a hypothesis bloomed in my mind that monkey mind might be a twisted form of what nature originally intended to be constant creative thought.

    My mind turned to one of my favorite pastimes, puttering. When I’m puttering, my mind often flows from one thing to another, seemingly at random, and I usually feel like I’m smack in the now—dealing with one task, then another, in any order I choose to. It may not necessarily be truly creative, but there is a forward flow that I don’t experience with monkey mind.

    When I’m in monkey mind, there are usually only a few selected thoughts going through my mind, circling around and around, bumping up against each other in their rush to be first. There’s no forward movement. I suppose it’s a form of creativity; however, I’m a little fearful of what I create when I’m in monkey mind.

    I’ve been tinkering with different possibilities for manifesting what I want in my life, and that’s led me to discover a way to get out of monkey mind and into creative mind, which not only brings me right into the now, but opens my mind to more and more and more possibilities.

    It’s sort of like the same type of circling thought, but it never returns to the starting place on the circle. The thoughts do not repeat themselves—they curve around from one possibility to the next, to another idea, another way, another dream….

    When I’m working on a task that I hope will encourage something I want to manifest, if I let my creative mind jump from possibility to possibility (“…and then what? And then what happens? And what else?”), I’m able to keep jumping over that little doubting voice that used to create most of my reality (“…it’s not happening, it’s not going to happen, it won’t happen.”)

    As long as I stay in that creative mind, jumping from one possibility to the next like the image I have of a fractal (winding out into more designs and spirals of possibility), that little doubting voice doesn’t have a chance to interject its repetitive thoughts.

    As long as I don’t go back to square one, monkey mind doesn’t get me.

    I’m sure the divine creative force is out there saying to itself, “And what else can I create? What does this make me think of? And what other possibilities might there be?”

    That’s how I think nature intended us to use monkey mind. I can’t imagine It thinking, “Wait, I have to go back and check that flower…Whoops, that tree isn’t quite tall enough… Maybe I shouldn’t have created that volcano…”

    Creative mind is similar to the way I remember thinking as a child: “Why do bumblebees buzz? What do they feel like? Ouch!!”

    But once we get into school, we’re essentially trained to think in monkey mind: reciting facts over and over to commit them to memory, learning the rules of English and using them every time we write (even when we’re writing creatively), and even sometimes having our physical play at recess structured into games full of rigid rules.

    It’s no wonder we learn to think in circles (or in my case, squares) instead of fractally. We learn how to do monkey mind in school, just like we learn how to do everything else.

    So here are a few tips for getting out of monkey mind and learning what creative mind might feel like inside your head:

    1. When doing a repetitive task like washing the dishes, try enumerating to yourself in your mind every step that you’re taking, and start inserting new thoughts.

    “Putting soap on the sponge, rinsing the plate, I wonder who made this plate, rubbing the sponge in a circular motion, and could I rub it the other direction? I wonder what country this sponge was made in, and how are sponges made anyway?” Keep pushing yourself to come up with new thoughts. Don’t let old familiar ones edge their way in.

    2. When you’re making efforts to manifest something in your life, don’t stop with the first picture you get. Keep expanding it.

    “And then what? And what would that mean? And what could I do with that?” Draw other things into the visualization or energy output that aren’t necessarily related in order to keep expanding your vision: “And maybe a surprise would happen, and my health could be better, and I might live somewhere else…”

    I find when I’m trying to manifest that if I try to hold a particular vision for very long, that little doubter elbows its way in and starts telling me how it’s not going to happen. That’s because trying to hold the vision means I’m fixating—same thing as my monkey mind going around in a circle.

    I have to keep changing the vision slightly (preferably growing it) in order to stop fixating, and that prevents the doubter from getting a handhold.

    3. Go for a walk and talk silently to yourself about what you see.

    “That tree’s a little crooked. It’s taller than the others. I saw a bird go by—wonder what kind it is? Sure are a lot of weeds here. I wouldn’t be driving that fast on this curvy road. I can feel my knees every time I take a step…”

    Keep your focus moving, so it doesn’t settle inside your mind. Getting into your body is a great way to get into the now.

    4. When you’ve got the feeling, try it with creating.

    “How would I change that tree so I’d like it better? Can I walk more gently so my knees don’t hurt? If I could change the color of the sky for one day, what would I change it to? What would I put there if there wasn’t a sky?”

    Ever notice how, when children are creating, they say, “And then… And then… And then…”? That’s creative mind: coming up with another possibility, another idea, another option, another dream, like constant brainstorming.

    It’s a little tiring the first few times you get into it, but it “uses up” that monkey mind energy so you can rest afterwards. It does take practice. But I believe from the bottom of my heart that it puts us into powerful alignment with the divine creative force.

    It’s so much easier to keep the mind moving along a creative path than it is to try and shut out negative thoughts. Who knows what you’ll come up with? See if you can get into creative mind, and you won’t have to not think about that elephant that’s not in the room.

    Photo by Hartwig HKD

  • Now is Not Forever: Weathering Uncomfortable Feelings

    Now is Not Forever: Weathering Uncomfortable Feelings

    Weathering the Storm

    “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts

    I recently found myself ruminating about a difficult situation at my new workplace. Considering my high-flying, achievement-oriented personality, the recipe for my malcontent was predictable: A supervisor had disagreed with me, and I left work that day feeling melodramatic and like I wanted to quit… that day.

    I thought, “I am so misunderstood. No one ‘gets’ what I am doing. I am not cut out for teamwork. Why do I hate working so much? I thought this job was the one. Will I ever find a job that satisfies my inner longings for connection and creativity?” And so on.

    I wore the little thundercloud around my head all evening, until I remembered the birthday of a good friend and contacted her to wish her well. As we talked, we began to reminisce about her birthday the previous year, and our conversation viscerally triggered a flood of memories.

    In the twelve months between her succeeding birthdays, I had left a toxic work environment, started a business with my husband, self-published a short book, launched a commercial website, and had also been accepted into my first-choice graduate program. Suddenly, my work conflict seemed a bit less dramatic.

    I was left feeling humbled and filled with gratitude. Due to the nature of life itself—change—and with the help of significant work on my part, the current “weather” in my emotional life was only partly cloudy, not a hurricane. However, I had become so accustomed to my newfound peace that I expected perfection rather than stability.

    I have often heard the emotional landscape compared to weather—we cannot control it, but we do have power over our reactions to it.

    Rain is not a disaster if I remember to bring an umbrella… or don’t mind getting wet. Similarly, my conflict with my supervisor was a fluffy rain cloud scuttling across a generally blue sky—passing as quickly as it arrived, but not fast enough for me!

    Being mindful of the transient nature of feelings and events is very important for our emotional health. I can summarize it in one phrase that has helped me tremendously: “Now is not forever.” Addressing this principle in my life has consisted of three primary concepts:

    1. Embrace the evolving, shifting nature of life to help gain perspective instead of making generalizations.

    When I am in the funk of a bad day (or month, or year), it is dangerously easy for me to create “Aha!” moments in which I diagnose the source of my most acute problems and focus all blame on people, places, and things. I can become surprisingly creative!

    For me, perspective means adjusting my lens. Instead of allowing a difficult situation to consume my entire field of vision into eternity, I must gently remind myself that whatever is current will expire.

    Also, because it is my tendency to externalize blame, it is important for me to welcome difficult situations as a part of my life’s journey.

    These teachers, whether they are challenging work environments, personal relationships, or illnesses, are constantly in flux, for all of us. Our problems today will not be our problems next year.

    2. Take mindful action.

    When we take mindful action, we take advantage of opportunities to improve our lives.

    Sometimes I suffer from one of life’s storms because I am unnecessarily subjecting myself to pain, as though I am standing outside in a hurricane and complaining about the wind!

    Sometimes action can be tiny steps that transform your entire outlook. I have deeply developed my resilience through my practices—yoga and intentional self-work. These skills help me to weather tough times.

    However, occasionally a situation calls for more dramatic change. For example, my former job was like a house with a leaky roof—every time it rained, I got hit with the deluge, and no amount of mindfulness or yoga could change that. Changing jobs was a positive way of acknowledging that I was not in control of my work environment, but I could choose to put myself in the best one possible.

    3. Give service.

    Sometimes we need to enlarge our world and our perceptions by putting our time, effort, and talents into improving the lives of others.

    For me, service work both connects me to other people who share similar life wounds and reminds me to practice gratitude. When I move my focus from my own frustrations to helping others, whether it is volunteer work or simply meeting a lonely friend for coffee, I gain an expansiveness that calms my angst.

    It makes my world bigger, but it’s not just about making my problems smaller. It’s about the power of connection.

    Suffering may be part of the human experience, but our problems, flaws, and tragedies pull us closer to other people and to the divine.

    Whether I struggle with the trauma of grief or the garden-variety frustrations of stress, giving to others reminds me that my individual story line intersects with thousands of others in a web of common experience, as well as common transcendence.

    This—whatever this is—is not everything. But it is inevitable. Just as dark storm clouds roll across the horizon, experiences pass in and out of our lives with regularity and seeming unpredictability.

    When we make the decision to embrace change, we give ourselves the gift of truly enjoying the present, because it is essential to remember that the sunny weather comes and goes, as well.

    This year, when my reminiscence was sparked, my circumstances had dramatically improved, and I was reminded to be thankful for the positivity that currently surrounds me. I was able to see a small work conflict for what it was—a temporary cloud that would soon slide away, probably within a day. The sky is blue, warm, and waiting behind that cloud.

    But next year when I call my friend for her birthday, she will be preparing to relocate across the country. I am not looking forward to her eventual absence, but when I accept change as a consistent part of life, I see the next twelve months with a renewed perspective.

    The result is that I am inspired to celebrate the present, rather than cling to it, because, to be frank, what are my other options?

    The story of my life is going to evolve with or without my permission, and I would prefer to be involved and engaged in its processes rather than unexpectedly find myself in an unfamiliar life that somehow changed form while I was looking away.

    I cannot (nor can any other human on the planet) predict which days, months, or years will hold more sunshine than rain, or vice versa. But when we enlarge our perspective, engage in active participation, and give service to others, we allow ourselves to move with grace, wisdom, and resilience in the shifting emotional horizons of our lifetime.

    Photo by eddi van w

  • Things You Can’t Change

    Things You Can’t Change

    Something You Can't Change

    Source: Live Life Happy

  • How to Get to the Shore When You’re Drowning in Pain

    How to Get to the Shore When You’re Drowning in Pain

    Standing at the Shore

    “The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    Pain can feel like a dark cave with no light to help us find our way out. Or an ocean with waves so big we feel like we can’t ever swim to the shore. Peace is the place we arrive at when we swim to the shore, up and out of the pain we were drowning in. But how do we get there?

    For most of us, the first thing we do when we’re in pain is look for somebody to join us so we’re not alone in the darkness of our experience. We hope that by drawing somebody toward us we’ll feel less uncomfortable, like a security blanket that warms and soothes.

    It works. They wrap their arms or words around us and we feel more ease, less alone, more protected. We feel like there’s someone there for us.

    But it doesn’t take the pain away. I learned this the hard way.

    I know I’m not alone in loving love. The high, the affirmation, the cuddles. Not feeling alone anymore. I was what one of my old high school friends once called “a relationshipper.”

    Not a dater—someone who casually dated—but someone who went straight from one serious relationship right into the next. I’ll never forget the time one of my well-meaning best friends tried to comfort me post-breakup with the words: “You’ll meet somebody else really soon. You always do.”

    That was my wake-up call. I’d been trying to get out of pain by inviting someone else in. It never worked. I just ended up there again.

    I finally decided to sit with loneliness, sit with the pain, and not run away from it. Every time I was tempted to call a friend or meet up with someone just to not feel the pain, I didn’t. I sat in it, felt it, cried, got deeply uncomfortable.

    And in the process, I got deeply comfortable, too—with being uncomfortable. With being alone. With being on my own. I even got to the point where I was happy. Just me, myself and I. It was okay. It was me.

    I feel called to help people in pain. And I was often the one my friends and family called when they were deep in the muck of something terrible. I’d sit and listen, talk soothingly and lovingly, and hope that by the end of the call they’d hang up feeling better—feeling affirmed.

    But I didn’t take their pain away. Something else surprising took place—something I only realized recently. What happened was that I affirmed their pain.

    Instead of lifting them from it and pulling them to the shore, I affirmed the story their ego was telling them. And the ego is the least peaceful part of us. Always either shrieking to great heights or crashing down to great depths, it’s the part of us that is often terrified.

    When I was soothing and listening, I didn’t affirm my friends’ and family’s peace. I affirmed their fear. In a way, I made things worse. Because, although they felt listened to, they hung up without having anything healed. They went on in the same state and space, dragged along up and down by their ego.

    When somebody is drowning, we never jump in the water with them. We throw them a life saver and pull them to the shore. When we call a friend and they say, “That’s terrible, you’re right, this is all too much” they climb in the water with us.

    There’s a part of us that’s drawn to fear. Our ego and the verbal part of our brain tell us all kinds of stories about what’s terrible or missing. And there’s a part of us that’s drawn to peace: our inner observer is always on-watch, like a lighthouse helping us navigate rough waters.

    Somebody who helps us climb out of our pain is much more helpful than somebody who affirms our story. They watch from the place of the observer. And help us get there, too.

    Eventually, we get to a place where we can see what we were thinking—the story our ego was telling us—and see that it was a painful version of events. We get to a place of peace. We arrive on the shore, healed.

    What if you don’t have a friend who can be at peace and help you get there, too?

    Try this.

    1. Write down all the thoughts you’re thinking about the situation.

    For me, in the pain after a breakup, it was always “I’ll never meet someone.” And “I’ll always be alone.”

    2. Then imagine they came from somebody else, that this is a version of events being told by a playwright.

    It is—the playwright is your ego.

    I imagined a sad, scared version of me, not seeing the whole picture, caught up in fear. Stuck in a room when there was an entire world to explore. Missing it all.

    3. Ask yourself if this version of events is bringing you into the power of peace or pulling you out of it.

    If it’s pulling you out of it, it’s not serving you. It’s making things worse.

    Q: Is this version of events—I’ll never meet someone and I’ll always be alone—pulling me out of peace or bringing me into the power of peace? A: Definitely out of it.

    4. Write another version of the situation—a more peaceful one.

    It can be the opposite of the first one. Arrive in the place of the observer and the creator.

    For me: My different version of the original story lead to: “I’ll meet someone and I’ll never be alone,” which lead to something even greater: “I’m meeting someone right now—myself. And, I’m never alone.” This is a much more peaceful version, and one I could only see when I lifted up out of fear.

    Slowly but surely, begin your practice of befriending your ego instead of letting it master you, and stepping out of fear.

    Eventually, you’ll arrive at that shore. And know that the next time, you can do it again.

    Photo by McBeth Photography

  • Overcoming the Painful Desires and Beliefs That Feed Addiction

    Overcoming the Painful Desires and Beliefs That Feed Addiction

    “Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.” ~Byron Katie

    I had spent five horrible years in and out of rehabs and support groups for my substance use problems. Along the way, there were a few periods where I cleaned up for six months, eight months, and almost a whole year one time, but nothing seemed to stick.

    The worst part was that even with all of the painful effort it took to keep the drug and alcohol use going, and all of the painful consequences that were piling up, I was happier in that life than I was during the sober, trouble-free times.

    I believed that getting high and drunk was really great, and I believed that sober life was complete drudgery. These beliefs played themselves out quite predictably.

    I felt tortured and deprived when I was sober. I would trudge to work, then I would trudge home and hope that I could fall asleep quickly to end the misery until the morning.

    Then I would wake up and do it all over again. I lived with a painful desire to get high and drunk the whole time.

    I thought about it when I got up in the morning. I thought about it while I worked. I thought about it when I met with my counselors and therapists. I thought about it before, after, and during the support group meetings that were supposed to help me to resist the desire to get high and drunk.

    I was hanging on by a thread—resisting my desire to get high and drunk one day at a time. Eventually, resisting would become too painful, too unfulfilling, and too unsatisfactory to maintain any longer.

    I was resisting this desire so that I could stop bad things from happening in my life. But then I just ended up lacking bad things. I didn’t have any good things going on.

    When I was abstinent, I didn’t have the thing I believed I needed to be happy and comfortable: heavy drug and alcohol use.

    I took it for granted that I would always have a painful, overpowering desire for heavy drug and alcohol use. I could fight it or give in. I repeatedly gave up the fight and gave in to the desire.

    But then I found a new approach. After years of being taught how to fight the desire, and years of failure, I found a way to change my desire.

    I learned to accept my substance use habits as a simple pursuit of happiness activity (rather than as a compulsion). I learned that I was desiring it and doing it because I believed it was my best shot at feeling good. I learned that I could re-examine that belief once I acknowledged and accepted it.

    I know this might be scary to people who’ve been taught that such habits have nothing to do with choice, but think about it—everything you do is because you believe you’ll benefit from it in some way.

    In some cases the benefits are small, like when smoking a cigarette, which is an extremely mild stimulant that may provide a good feeling for a few seconds or minutes. In other cases the benefits can be big, like when going to college, which can result in more employment opportunities and job security that lasts a lifetime.

    Everything we do is driven by our belief that it will bring us closer to some sort of happiness or benefit.

    Now, getting back to my substance use habit, I had to take responsibility for my beliefs about drugs and alcohol.

    I believed that drugs and alcohol were cure-alls, and that I needed them:

    • For the traumatic pain left over from my childhood
    • For my social anxiety, generalized anxiety, and depression
    • To have a good time at all in any way
    • To feel normal
    • To wake up in the morning
    • To go to bed at night
    • To be creative
    • To clear my mind

    That’s a crazy list of powers I believed that drugs and alcohol had. Several of them are contradictory; yet, these beliefs are not uncommon at all.

    Every time I hear someone express that they’re struggling to stay sober, such beliefs are involved. In fact, I saw someone complain about struggling to stay sober on Facebook recently, and she said:

    “I hate that I can’t have a drink because I know it’ll quiet my mind and I’d relax.”

    This is what creates desire. If you believe you need something to be happy, then you will desire it.

    Unfortunately, our culture has done a great job of convincing us that drugs and alcohol have amazing powers to cure all of our ills. They have also done a great job convincing some of us that we need to “self-medicate” with these substances too.

    The thing is, drugs and alcohol don’t medicate anything. But as long as you believe they are your medicine, you will feel deprived and suffer when you don’t have this medicine. The sooner you stop believing that they are medicine, the sooner this desire will go away.

    The fact is, most of the emotional and behavioral experiences people have while using drugs and alcohol are subjectively created. They’re mostly an effect of expectancy. As a noted addiction researcher observed:

    “Sometimes alcohol may be a relaxant (the martini after the hard day at the office) and sometimes it may act as a stimulant (the first drink at the party).” ~Norman Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, 1986

    Isn’t that a bit unbelievable? It’s a total contradiction and thus literally impossible. Stimulants and relaxants are total opposites. Yet, you probably know from your own experience or watching others that people can have both of these effects while drinking.

    The key is to realize that these effects don’t come from the alcohol itself. They come from you.

    The fact is that you don’t, in reality, need alcohol to relax, and you don’t need it to get wild at a party, because alcohol itself does neither of those things. If you want to relax, you can do it, with or without alcohol. Same goes for getting wild at a party.

    And the same goes for the plethora of things we think drugs and alcohol do.

    The reason for this is that you are actually cognitively creating these states with your intentions. You expect to have these experiences when you drink or drug, and that expectancy itself creates the experience.

    There are plenty of other ways to intentionally put yourself into a relaxed state or any of the other states we believe are caused by substance use. The self-help world offers plenty of good advice on how to do this through mindfulness and other techniques. This website is a great resource for that.

    I encourage readers to seek out such techniques if you feel you need them. However, before you do so, the best thing you can do is rid your mind of the belief that substance use is a cure-all. It is not.

    If you haven’t broken these beliefs first, then in that moment that a new coping skill you learn doesn’t work so well for you (or you just don’t feel like using it—we’ve all been there!), you might feel tempted to return to substance use to deal with the problem.

    If you have broken these beliefs, then you won’t feel tempted to use substances to cope. In this case, when a coping skill doesn’t work out, you’ll rightly look for a different coping method, rather than back to drugs and alcohol.

    Stop giving drugs and alcohol credit for things that they don’t really do. Be mindful of these beliefs, and have the courage to change them. Once you do, you’ll find that you have much less of desire to use substances.

    By severing the connection between stress and substance use, you can permanently end the phenomenon of feeling triggered to use substances when you encounter stress.

    The same goes for severing the connection between substances and any of the other false benefits we’ve been taught to attribute to them. Then it’s up to you to decide how to deal with these life problems, but it will be much easier to solve them without the specter of a “relapse” hanging over your head.

    I embraced the responsibility I had for my beliefs about substance use, and I examined them. I changed them. I ended up believing that drugs and alcohol didn’t have much to offer me anymore, and I believed I could be happier dedicating my time elsewhere.

    Changing my beliefs was my choice. No one else could do it for me. Methadone couldn’t do it for me. Meetings couldn’t do it for me. Even the people who showed me these ideas couldn’t do it for me.

    It was up to me to consciously question what I believed about the objects of my addiction, and how happy they could truly make me.

    As a result of changing my beliefs, I haven’t had an issue with drugs and alcohol for twelve wonderful years now. I don’t feel deprived. I enjoy a drink now and then, without feeling desperation or loss of control.

    When the normal troubles, hard times, and disappointments of life come along, I no longer feel like I need a drink or drug to deal with them, because I no longer believe they’ll help with the situation. When I’m bored, I no longer feel like I need substances to be entertained.

    I now get to live my life feeling free of addiction, and it’s wonderful.