Tag: wisdom
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How Gratitude Can Calm Your Nerves and Make You More Effective
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” ~Cicero
Being grateful or practicing gratitude has many benefits, including improving our health, relationships, careers, sleep, and self-esteem, to name just a few.
In recent years, these benefits have been confirmed in scientific studies showing how the brain is “rewired” by continuous grateful thoughts.
However, I recently discovered (and experienced) another significant, and I believe mainly overlooked, benefit of being grateful—in the somewhat unusual setting of a major seniors championship tennis tournament I played in Palm Springs this past January. I learned that:
Practicing Gratitude Calms the Nerves and Mind
As an avid tennis player, I had struggled to play up to my ability in tournament match play. I was constantly over-thinking, too cautious, and too tight during matches.
Before playing in the tournament I read about a mental strategy recommended by sports psychologist Jeff Greenwald in his insightful book The Best Tennis of Your Life:
Play with gratitude.
Feeling there was nothing to lose, I decided to give it a try. Before my first match, I thought to myself how grateful I was that:
I was able to play without injuries.
I could play in such a magnificent setting at the historical Palm Springs Tennis Club.
I could afford to take time off from work and treat myself to so much fun.
I repeated these blessings throughout the match, was calm and focused, and won.
My next match was against a player that had soundly defeated me the year before. I repeated the above blessings and added one more:
I am grateful to have the opportunity to play the same person again to see if my game has improved.
I played the best tennis of my life and won in two sets—and again was calm and focused throughout.
Hmm, I’m now thinking there must be something to this “being grateful reduces-the nerves-and-calms-the-mind” thing. Next match: I played another (and seeded) player who also had soundly beat me the year before.
I again won in two sets.
I’m now in the semi-finals against the #1 seeded player, a former national champion. I’m not only grateful for this, but I have been playing at a whole new level and having the tennis time of my life.
I lost in two hard fought sets, but not because I was nervous or uptight. To the contrary, I played extremely well. I lost because I played a more highly skilled and experienced player who, incidentally, shared with me after the match that he was grateful that he could still play so well in his seventies! (I think he was more grateful than me!)
Upon reflection, it occurred to me that what applies to sports and performance, probably applies equally to most life arenas. Which is to say:
There is a powerful synergy between being grateful and calmness and serenity.
I soon had the opportunity to prove this to myself again, but in an entirely different setting—a courtroom. In April, I was in traffic court for a trial to fight a ticket that I felt I had wrongly received.
While waiting in court, I was nervous as heck as I repeatedly went over in my mind what I would say, what the officer would likely say, and how the judge might rule.
Then an amazing thing happened. I reminded myself to be grateful—yes, grateful. Specifically, I was grateful that I had the opportunity to be heard and present my case, something I was clearly unable to do at the time the officer issued the citation.
I was also grateful that I lived in a country where I could seek justice without a lot of constraints. With those thoughts, my nerves immediately subsided and I became very calm and grounded.
A short while later, my ticket was dismissed!
The Non-Science of Why Gratitude Leads to Greater Calmness and Serenity
I have no doubt that being grateful stimulates the brain’s neurons and in effect re-wires the brain to produce a more happier state of being. I believe, however, there are more basic reasons why gratitude bestows upon us a more calm and serene state of mind. For example, being grateful:
- Redirects our focus from what is troubling or worrying us to what lifts our spirit. We shift from negative to positive thinking, and energy.
- Provides us with a true perspective of what’s at stake (including “how important is it?”)
- Reduces our anxiety creating fears.
- Allows us to let go of the need to control, thereby creating space for greater calmness and serenity.
Test the Gratitude/Calmness Dynamic
I encourage you to see if the gratitude/calmness dynamic works for you as it does for me. For example, consider trying it when:
- You have to give an important talk or presentation
- You have a job interview
- You have to take an important test
- You have to perform or go on stage
- You have writer’s block
- You keep procrastinating in completing an important task
Bottom line, there is no shortage of opportunities where you can test this powerful dynamic!
Please write and let me and others know how it worked for you. Were you less tense? More grounded? What was the final outcome?
Photo by Giuseppe Chirico
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Living an Exciting Life When You Fear Leaving Your Comfort Zone
“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown
What if you realized on evening of December 31st, that the past 365 days were the best yet? Imagine a single year in which you scared yourself into your deepest fears and faced more challenges than you ever had from all the previous years combined?
Moving forward, how would you feel about one-upping that year? Overwhelmed? Anxious? Scattered? Yeah, me too.
This was the question that I asked myself on the last evening of 2013 that left me thinking back on distant memories, adventures, and the beginning of true uncertainty.
The Best Year Yet: 2013.
Last year began my personal journey of fully embracing the uncomfortable.
I decided to seek the truth and hoped to eventually have enough courage to share my experiences with those who were curious. I left with no travel plans, but only a mission. Adventure.
Thailand. Cambodia. Malaysia. Singapore. Laos. Vietnam. Hong Kong. Japan. Hawaii. San Fran.
I experienced most in backpack form over the course of 108 days.
My reality was completely shaken. I moved from confusion to clarity. What I believed to be important in my life no longer mattered. Returning home, I was filled with a deep sense of appreciation, gratitude, and really wide eyes.
I leaned into what I thought was once impossible due to the laundry list of excuses I had created. Not enough money. No one will go with me. It’s not safe. This isn’t the right time.
Those were only four of the hundreds of thoughts that swirled through my monkey brain, which was doing its best to protect me, right?
This is the short form of the journey that scared the pants off of my fears. Along the way, I learned quite a few lessons. Some the hard way, others rather easy, but all well worth it.
You’ll never have everything figured out.
Imagine for just a moment that you stopped allowing your excuses to own you. There’s a part of you that wants to embrace change, yet every time you think about going after your vision, you’re dumbfounded with objections.
Unfortunately, the only time that you won’t have an excuse will be when you’re six feet under. The fear that resides within each of us will always create a story; yet, we are the ones with the power to make the decision. Ready. Fire. Aim.
It only takes one second to be courageous.
Think about how long it actually takes to do anything you’ve ever wanted to do? It takes one second to make the decision.
One second to click the submit button. One second to say hello. One second to smile. One second to jump in. One second to leave no chance for regrets. One second to hand over your two week notice. One second to say, “This isn’t working.” One second to believe. One second to choose. It only takes one second to be courageous.
Befriend uncertainty.
Whether you’re ready for it or not, the unpredictable will show its face. While we have a tendency to negatively associate with the unknown, realize that you can make the empowered decision to accept the reality.
Byron Katie says this best, “When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time.” Try bringing uncertainty along for the ride. You may notice a greater sense of meaning and fulfillment finding its way into your life.
If it makes you feel safely uncomfortable, please proceed.
If you find yourself in a situation that makes you feel safely anxious, awkward, nervous, and/or uneasy, it very well may be the best thing for you. As Tony Robbins says, “The quality of our lives is directly related to the amount of uncertainty we can live with comfortably.”
Remember, though, these uncomfortable experiences must also align with your preferences and values. When in doubt, intuitively listen to your soul.
As you continue to slowly build your uncomfortable muscles, you’ll gain more clarity around what feels right. Each adventure will not only contribute to rapid personal growth, but will also increase your threshold for dealing with such unsettling feelings.
Replace “What will they think of me?”with“What’s really important to me?”
Say hello to your ego. And now, please ask him/her to keep quiet. When we find ourselves in moments where we might be exposed to internal feelings of nervousness, embarrassment, or anxiousness, we usually tend to run the other way.
We’ve got this incredible internal system that was designed to protect us from real danger, the fight or flight response. Unfortunately, our brain can’t distinguish the difference between our fear of public speaking versus being chased by a bear.
However, you have the ability to differentiate between the two situations. When you find yourself safely immersed within an uncomfortable situation, try sitting with it. Before you know it, the related negative feelings will disappear.
Each day, we get to paint our own canvas. What will you be remembered for, soul sibling?
Give yourself permission to live uncomfortably. I dare you.
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Why Your Problems Are Not Nearly as Permanent as They Seem
“When we…go back into the past and rake up all the troubles we’ve had, we end up reeling and staggering through life. Stability and peace of mind come by living in the moment.” ~Pam Vredevelt
There is a way in which we tend to view issues in our lives that makes it seem like the issue is a big, scary monster that chases us around everywhere we go.
We have commitment issues. Or we are bad with money. Or we have an eating disorder, we drink too much, or we follow-through too seldom.
We view ourselves and our lives as if they are stable, consistent entities that probably can change, but rarely do. We surely never change without considerable time, money, or effort.
At one point in my own life, I definitely felt like I had weaknesses and issues, particularly around food. It felt as if they were mine, like I had ownership of them. They were part of who I was.
It felt as if my “disorder” was a living, breathing monster that I would never fully shake.
And that’s the way it goes. It begins to feel like the issue is always there, following you around.
The monster might be right on your heels some days and further away other days, but it’s always there in some capacity. The monster might take naps or even hibernate, but there is the sense that it could wake up at any moment.
If you’re too loud or not careful enough, the monster will wake up and be right at your back again. So there’s no resting, really. You never get too comfortable. I know I certainly never got too comfortable; always looking over my shoulder for the next time the monster would catch up with me.
(It’s easy to see how we came to view it this way, between traditional, past-focused psychotherapy and popular addiction recovery movements that say things like “You’re an addict for life” and “One more drink and you’ll be exactly where you left off.”)
So, guess what happens when it feels like fully resting is out of the question?
You guessed it—you don’t rest. You’re on guard.
You hold in the back of your mind the image of that monster waking up and beginning to run after you again.
You never quite manage to let that thought go because you believe—you’ve been led to believe by well-meaning but misinformed professionals—that the issue is a part of you. Of course it would never occur to you to let go of something you believe you can never let go of.
Each time the thought of your monster passes through your head, it feels ominous and meaningful. When something feels ominous and meaningful, you naturally pay it some attention.
If you believe you are bad with money and you go a little overboard at Nordstrom one day, it’s very serious.
If you believe you have commitment issues and the thought occurs to you to run from your relationship, you might actually act on that thought because it seems real. That thought appears as your reality, not as the fleeting, habitual but arbitrary thought it truly is.
For me, because I was told I “had” a diagnosis and that diagnosis signified a real and stable thing, anything I ate became a very big deal in my mind. The very common and meaningless act of eating a meal began to mean a whole lot about who I was as a person and it said something—in my biased thinking—about my future.
You Can Only Feel What You Think
Aside from the fact that monsters are scary, the other problem with the monster-chasing-you metaphor is that it is completely, factually inaccurate. It is quite far from the truth of how your “issues” and experiences of life work.
Your actual issues are nothing like a monster chasing you.
A closer approximation of how it works is something like this:
Your moment-to-moment experience is a reflection of your moment-to-moment thinking. Said another way, what you feel is only and always what you happen to be (consciously and unconsciously) thinking.
Sometimes you think a lot about your issue. When you’re thinking about it— especially to the extent that your thinking seems real and true, as if it directly reflects reality—it appears as if you have the problem you are holding in your mind.
When the thoughts you are experiencing seem like stable truth, you’re naturally locked into them. You elaborate on them, take them seriously, and inevitably act on them.
But here’s the cool part: Your thinking changes. Often. It’s always changing in obvious and subtle ways. When your thinking changes, your experience changes.
And, the thoughts in your head are not an accurate snapshot of outside reality. They are quite subjective and personal, actually. No two people see the same thing in the same way, so what you think is only what you think, much more than the way it is.
The points above work together because the more you see that your thinking is very subjective and personally biased, the less you rely on and respect it as truth. The less you rely on and respect it as truth, the more frequently and naturally your thoughts change because you’re not holding them in place, identifying with them, and owning them as “yours.”
There Is No Monster
Since your experience in any given moment is exactly equal to what you are thinking in that very moment, that means that when you’re thinking about your monster, you feel your monster.
And when you’re not thinking about your monster, your monster does not exist.
When you’re thinking about your commitment phobia, how your parents damaged you for life, how you’re an incurable alcoholic, or how horrible you’ve always been with money, those issues (monsters) are alive for you in that moment.
My eating issues were alive for me most of the time in those years solely because I was always thinking about them.
But when you’re thinking about your cat, or pondering hard wood versus tile in your kitchen, those issues are not alive for you.
It’s not that the monster is asleep, waiting to strike. It’s that the monster literally does not exist.
You see, each moment of your life, you start anew. The inner slate of your mind is wiped clear.
Because we tend to give some thoughts a lot of respect, and because we believe they reflect outside truth, those thoughts tend to come back often.
In that way, it doesn’t always feel like the slate wipes clear. It feels like the monster is right on your heels.
But actually, we have infinite potential for brand new thought, which equals infinite potential for brand new experience. We tend to get more new thought when we know that.
In other words, when you think of your issue as the monster on your heels, that’s what you get. But only because that’s the way you’re thinking about it.
When you see it more accurately, understanding that you’re only feeling what you’re thinking in any moment and that when your thoughts shift—as they inevitably will—you get limitless new thought which brings limitless new experience, it all changes.
You see that you’re creating your life anew in each moment. There is no monster, unless you create him right now by thinking about him right now.
Nothing is actually carried over from the past. Rather you might think right now about the past, but that’s just where your thoughts wandered.
I’m happy to report that I have had no issues with food for many years. Eating when I’m hungry is a complete non-issue. This is not what my therapists told me would be the case. I was told that because I “had” the issue at one time, I would most likely always have it in varying degrees.
I was told that I could learn to manage it, and that it may lie dormant if I was lucky, but that in times of stress it would most likely flare up again.
Nothing could be further from the truth today.
There is no monster. There never was. There’s only what we think, now. And then now. And then now.
Of course, thoughts of our “problems” will drift into our mind. We’re only human.
But because we see that they will also drift right out, there’s no reason to keep constantly looking over our shoulder.
Photo by Jesus Solana
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How to Redefine Yourself by Letting Go of the Past
“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” ~Maya Angelou
When I was eight years old, my mom had her first mental breakdown. The illusion of a typical suburban family shattered as the household descended into chaos. When the counselors and child protective services stepped in, I knew: I was undeniably different.
When you’re a child, family life is the classroom through which you learn how the world works. Once my mom was hospitalized, I realized how very different my lessons were.
Mortified, I retreated into a world of my own, one in which I wouldn’t have to try to formulate responses to questions I couldn’t possibly know the answers to.
As the years passed, family life grew more chaotic. Addiction and mental illness sunk their teeth deep into the flesh of my family, wrenching apart the bonds that held us together.
By the time I graduated high school, I felt like my family life had completely imploded and my sense of self imploded with it.
I moved out of my parents’ home as soon as I was able to and quickly set to work creating a “normal” life. I bought a car, then a house, and earned my degree. I spent more than six years in an unhealthy relationship for the sake of stability.
I can’t pinpoint the moment I realized that I was acting out a story that did not belong to me.
I had buttressed myself with stability and material comforts not because they were the things I truly wanted, but because they were the things that I could hold as evidence that I had survived my tumultuous past and developed into a responsible adult.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was driven by shame. I was ashamed of my family and I was ashamed of myself. In a culture where addiction and mental illness are stigmatized, I couldn’t bear the fact that those two illnesses, in some ways, shaped the framework through which I viewed the world.
So I hid myself behind the story I had created of who I was. The narrative I shaped began with a girl who was victimized, then broken. Eventually, I began to identify as a survivor, but for many years, I didn’t realize that I was much more than that.
Shame is insidious. It disguises itself as a desire to be a better person, a commitment to moving on. Meanwhile, it burrows deep into your soul and makes a home there until the day that you break open and expose it to the light.
It was heart-wrenching to uncover the truth. I had labeled myself a survivor because I was unwilling to acknowledge the pain that I carried within me. I defined myself by my experiences, and so created a life where every action was driven by my past.
I had to let go of the lies I told myself in order to become my most authentic self.
All of my past experiences have certainly contributed to my perception of life, but I know now that those experiences do not have to shape my present.
I can acknowledge the pain of past experiences while still choosing to experience the present from a place of joy. That choice was made simple by taking just one step: I let go of the labels I had given myself.
I could choose to live life as any number of things: a victim of abuse, an adult child of an addict, a survivor; or I could choose to live my life free of labels: a person who has lived a wide variety of experiences and is open to all of the new experiences that life has to offer.
I found so much freedom in becoming myself.
I no longer make decisions out of fear. Rather than analyze every situation through a framework created by years of dysfunctional relationships, I trust my instincts. I take care to notice the stories I tell myself and I consciously choose whether or not to believe them.
Take a moment to listen to your own narrative. How do you define yourself? Write down a short description of who you are and where you come from. Then, take an honest look at your narrative and decide if that is the person you want to be.
We are all poised to create the lives we want, but we must first uncover and discard the beliefs that no longer serve us. Let go of your labels and greet each day open to the possibilities of who you might be. Your potential is limitless.
Photo by Jesus Solana
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How Self-Acceptance Enables Us to Connect with Others and the Moment
“By accepting yourself and being fully what you are, your presence can make others happy.” ~Jane Roberts
I recently received one of the nicest compliments from a co-worker.
As nice as it was to hear someone validate all of the hard work I do and recognize my passionate desire to use music as a way empower people, I found that the compliment was just one, all-too-brief moment in a day dominated by schedules, meetings, and not nearly enough time for me to enjoy what was happening around me.
I should have felt great, but I was so distracted by my work that I did not have access to feeling good.
As soon as I went to my next appointment, I immediately focused on what that person was thinking of me. Did this co-worker think I was any good at the project? Did I have enough time to finish everything I promised to do that day?
As the afternoon went on, I noticed that I was not present to the people around me, and things that I would normally take in stride were really starting to annoy me.
By the end of the day, I found myself focusing on the negative in a way that that did not coincide with the same person who my co-worker had complimented.
A short five hours later, I had almost totally forgotten the compliment had ever happened.
Then the guilt set in. How could I be the person that the co-worker had complimented when, by the end of the day, I was negative, grouchy, and not feeling deserving of any praise at all?
The negativity was so bad that I found myself thinking, “If he knew the real me, he would probably take back the compliment.”
I was leaving a voicemail for a dear friend, relating the accounts of my day, when the following words came out of my mouth: “Why is it that I am so quick to dwell on the things that are not going the way that I would want, and I miss the magic all around me every day?”
Reaching out to a trusted friend instantly gave me perspective. It also brought me the clarity to see that I was letting my own expectations of myself blind me to all of the good happening right there and then.
It is only when I recognize that the good around me that I feel confident enough to risk just living from my deepest truth.
What is the point of living the life of your dreams without also having the awareness that it is happening?
My life is amazing. I am surrounded by wonderfully supportive people. I always have everything I need, even if it does not come to me in the way or time that I expect. I know this is true, so why wasn’t I able to see that?
Somewhere along the way I started to believe that I needed to pretend to be perfect or have all of the answers to have people accept me. I forgot that it is when I am my imperfect self, who has more questions than answers, that I am able connect with others.
The real me is more than enough. Any time I believe anything different and stop giving of myself, I do a disservice to the people around me and myself.
After having this realization, I slept a deep and peaceful sleep and woke up renewed.
I made a conscious decision to focus on being my authentic self, being grateful for all of the good around me, and ignoring anything that did not match up with that belief.
Through this experience, I learned:
1. Accepting yourself allows you to be present to your self.
That next day was just as busy as the previous, in fact, even more so. Armed with my new outlook, I felt more comfortable risking being who I really am, and the results were amazing.
As soon as something came up that had the potential to knock me out of myself, I checked in with myself and asked, “What does my authentic, deepest self think is the next right thing in this situation?”
I then shared that best part of myself with the people around me and found to my shock, not only did they accept what my truth offered in the situation, but also they were grateful that I was being myself.
When you stop pretending to be something you’re not, you give yourself space to simply be—and like me, you may find that others accept and appreciate you for who you really are.
2. When you are present to yourself, you can be present to others.
I was enough. Not only that, when I stopped pretending to have all the answers, stopped trying to be perfect, when I was able to stop being so attached to what everyone was expecting of me, I was free to enjoy everything that was happening around me.
Being connected with myself allowed me to be more present to the people in my life. I work with large groups of people on a regular basis; being present to large groups people is an integral part of what I do.
Sometimes when you share a part of yourself that you think isn’t your best, it can be that very thing that makes you most compelling to others. Someone else may see your perceived brokenness as a gift.
3. When you can be present to others by being yourself, it allows the ordinary to become extraordinary.
The group I worked with later that day commented that something was different about our performance. One person related that everyone was smiling from the inside out. Colors seemed more vibrant, smells seemed more aromatic, and sounds were more melodious.
When you are able to be present to yourself, you can be present to others, and this allows you to connect to something more than you ever could be on your own.
When I get caught up in my day, I start to lose touch with myself and soon after start to lose touch with others, as well.
When I give myself permission to be less than perfect, it allows me to see that everything is just the way it needs to be, including me.
Photo by s.h.u.t.t.e.r.b.u.g.
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4 Toxic Habits That Can Control Our Lives and Keep Us Unhappy
“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.” ~Charles C. Noble
Until recently, I firmly believed that a classic set of toxic habits consisted of nail biting, smoking cigarettes, and abusing alcohol and drugs.
I completely forgot that there are some behavior patterns that can do equally bad damage to our vital and creative energy, claiming control over our lives and holding us back.
Ignorance is bliss, someone once said. I overstayed my welcome in that state of mind more than once. I thought my bad habits were actually making my life easier, and following the path to personal growth always seemed so cumbersome.
Eventually, my desire to improve became stronger than my fear of getting out of my comfort zone. I realized that the patterns of my behavior were too destructive and the feeling of comfort and familiarity was just an illusion.
So I decided to look long and hard at everything that had to be changed. The first step would be to break a set of toxic habits and take back control.
1. A thirst for approval.
I spent a large part of my life doing things in the hope of getting others’ approval.
I did things I didn’t want to do and not things I felt passionate about. I would sit and learn math to fulfill my parents’ dream of me becoming an economist, while all I wanted to do was to paint, write, and read books about nature, biology, and psychology.
I even stopped writing, which I feel is my purpose, because certain people saw it as a hobby. In chasing their approval, I completely gave up control of my life.
But the ugliest truth is that I valued their opinion of me more than my own. No matter how great I did, no matter how much positive feedback I received, it never seemed to be enough.
When we make approval-seeking a habit, we lose touch with who we are and what we really want, meaning we’ll never be able to truly approve of ourselves.
2. Sit. Wait. Hope.
I used to sit and wait and hope that somehow a complicated situation would magically resolve itself. I thought that if I waited long enough, I would suddenly understand my purpose, write a book in one sitting, and my body would get in shape without doing anything.
I would spend countless hours sitting and procrastinating, believing that “good things come to those who wait,” whereas, in reality, “better things come to those who work hard for it and have patience to wait for the results.”
There is a huge difference between procrastinating and mindfully waiting for something good to happen. When you work toward a goal and you have patience to see it through, you mindfully wait for the fruits of your work to bring you closer to your goal. And there sure isn’t anything mindful about aimlessly procrastinating and not doing anything productive.
I finally understood that waiting and hoping for something good to happen in my life would never bring me any satisfaction. Notice that the word “satisfaction” ends with “action.”
Action is that formula that brings us happiness, as we need to take action to see results.
3. Super competitive-comparative mode.
From childhood, it was somehow wired in my mind that I had to prove that I was better than everyone else in whatever I did. This state of constant competitiveness and stress about being taken over by someone else kept me going for years.
I cared so much about being better, stronger, and about reaching excellence before everyone else that I completely forgot how to breathe normally, how to connect with people, and how not to alienate everyone.
I didn’t have many friends back then. And it’s really lonely up there on the top when you have no one to share even the smallest of your achievements.
Excessive competitiveness brought out the aggressive, rootless, and a little bit obsessive-compulsive part of me.
When I saw my true colors, I simply didn’t like that person in the mirror. I decided mindfully to release the desire to be better than everyone (which isn’t even possible) and only compare myself with myself of all the yesterdays.
After all, it’s not about being better than everyone in this world (that’s a lot of competition); it’s about being better than ourselves compared to who we were before and reflecting on our progress from that point.
4. Relying too much on other people.
When I wasn’t feeling like doing something, I would pass it over to someone else. And then I would rely on that person to do things for me instead of learning how to solve challenges myself.
I relied completely on other people when I moved to London from Saint-Petersburg. I was hiding behind my fear of having to meet new people, learn new culture, and speak a different language.
My partner was extremely supportive, but even he would get annoyed with me sometimes when I would be afraid to go to a shop, call my bank, or try to plan a weekend getaway. He kept insisting that I took more responsibility, because this was the only way to learn how to solve problems.
I didn’t see that the more others did things I didn’t feel like doing, the more opportunities for growth I missed.
When you look at a sequoia tree up close, it is so enormous, you feel like an ant before it. But when you step back and see it from a mountaintop, it looks like a tiny match from a matchbox.
The same goes to our daily challenges in life. Up close, they seem so formidable and unsolvable, but that’s only true if we refuse to try.
And no matter how many challenges we pass on to someone else, life will always have more in store. After all, we receive one lesson that repeats itself until we learn it. And the fastest way to learn it is to tackle it head on. Then, and only then we are ready to move on.
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We all have unhealthy habits. Identifying them and working to eliminate them can dramatically improve the quality of our life. It may take time to introduce changes, but if you do it mindfully and focus on the benefits, you’ll feel less resistance and a readiness to change for the better.
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Trusting Yourself to Make Decisions Instead of Always Seeking Advice
“To thine own self be true.” ~William Shakespeare
No one knows the real you but you. Sometimes it is true that we don’t know ourselves. That’s because we’ve lost ourselves, or maybe because we never knew ourselves to begin with.
I grew up a long time ago on a hill on Bentley road in Puyallup, Washington. I was a very quiet, shy, and reserved little girl. Today, I am a forty-two-year-old woman. I am still introverted, but I am learning to be more assertive.
As a co-dependent people pleaser, I grew up with a lot of self-doubt and shame. I didn’t have a sense of self at all. I was like a leaf that the wind blows away, and I needed to be more of a tree with deep roots, grounded and rooted in love.
Growing up, I received a lot of conflicting and negative messages from my family, such as “you are loved but you are flawed.” I was hungry for the approval of others.
I learned not to trust my ability to make a good decision because the people in my life did not validate my view of reality. My brother used to tease me a lot. I tried speaking up about the mistreatment, but my parents didn’t take my complaints seriously.
They did little to address the situation because of their high levels of shame. It just got swept under the rug, and so I got the message that it wouldn’t matter if I spoke up, because those in authority would not protect me.
It took me a long time to see that I could have a different opinion than other people and still be loved and accepted.
When I did make a decision, I got the impression that people are in your life to change your mind, and guilt and shame were good tactics to achieve that.
This has made it extremely difficult for me to make and stick to decisions.
If you think you aren’t qualified to make a good choice then you’re going to be afraid to make any choice.
I have often run around asking multiple people, “What should I do? What should I do?” I invited them to give me input. But then I was angry with them for “telling me what to do.”
What I was really telling myself is that my opinion didn’t matter. I valued other people’s opinions far above my own. I disowned myself. Somewhere in my mind I thought that they must have known better. After all, what in the world could I know? I grew up believing that if you think you know something then you are very proud.
But there is no shame in speaking from a place of truth.
You do know something and that is not a bad thing. In fact, you probably know more than you think you know. But thinking you don’t know anything keeps you from taking the good advice you would give yourself. And it keeps you dependent on other people.
People seem to lose respect for people who are wishy-washy and can’t make their own decisions. In other words, people who can’t think for themselves are also people who don’t respect themselves because they don’t respect their own opinions.
It takes a lot of courage to stand up and take personal responsibility for your life and actually “own” your decisions.
I have let others play the scapegoat by allowing them to be my decision makers. For example, because of my lack of assertiveness in my marriage, I was handing over my brain and responsibilities to my husband.
I think it was because of fear but also laziness on my part. But no one can really be happy this way. You won’t be happy, and the other people won’t be either when they hear you blame them for your choices.
Ask for advice if you feel you need it, but take it with a grain of salt. In the end, you are the one who needs to live with your decision. The gurus won’t be the one with the consequences of your choice.
Don’t be so afraid of making mistakes. Fear of the choice being “bad” keeps you stuck. Accept that you are human. As far as I know, all humans make mistakes. The only ones that won’t give you grace are the ones that have no grace for themselves. So lighten up a bit.
I know some truths that I need to stop denying and start accepting. That unsettled feeling in my gut is there for a reason.
It’s time for me to stop sweeping things under the rug and start having the courage to speak up. I need to tell myself that I am relevant and my opinions matter, and that by standing my ground I can be a positive force for change, because I have something to say that someone out there may need to hear.
I have come to the conclusion that I need to trust my best judgment, stick to my decision, follow through, and let the cards fall where they may.
I think the important thing to realize is that life has a way of working out. Even if we make the worst possible choice, we still have the freedom to make adjustments.
So let yourself try what feels right for you, and don’t worry about making the “wrong” decision. One of the best things I have learned is that the world is a place to explore, and it will embrace you if you embrace it.
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How to Be Okay When You Have More Questions Than Answers
“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” ~Nancy Willard
I love the color orange. It makes me think of a beautiful ripe papaya, the calming shade of a monk’s robe, and the tapered candles my grandfather held in his hands to pray.
I don’t know if it’s simply this or the prayer chants that rose from temples along the rural Lao countryside, but when I think on these things from my childhood, I feel peace.
Do we romanticize our past? Do we sandpaper out the rough, dark spaces in our memories and label them “the good ‘ole days?” Is that why there is so much longing for simpler times, because our present is too overwhelming and difficult, and the future is uncertain and frightening?
Perhaps there is some truth to that. If I were to look deeper, I’d realize that not all of my childhood memories were the stuff of children’s story books.
Orange was also the color that lit up the night sky when B-52’s were dropping bombs over my childhood country. One minute, I found myself admiring fireworks from an outdoor stairway (typical of Lao homes built on poles), and the next moment, I was flung to the ground.
Someone—a stranger with no thought for his own safety—snatched me from that stairway in the nick of time. When the bombing ceased, we found the stairs and half of the house completely obliterated.
The house had belonged to my mother’s friend, who sat kneeling on the ground crying. She wasn’t crying because her house went up in flames. She was crying because after being separated from her small children, they were now running toward the safety of her arms.
After my own mother found me, only then did the stranger who had been protecting me finally let go of my hand. In my confusion, I didn’t remember his name. And now, even the memory of his face is fading.
But the stranger left an unmistakable legacy. He not only saved a child’s life but also left her spirit intact.
While there was crying all around me, I stared calmly out at the scene of destruction and could only summon up one overriding emotion: invincibility. I escaped death! From this day forward, I told myself, nothing will ever make me afraid again.
But memories have a way of dimming over time, don’t they?
We raced through our pubescent and teen years to become adults. We took adulthood to mean freedom, adventure, and ultimately, reaching the summit of our dreams. We readily followed a prescriptive path. Yet, upon arriving, we learned that the reality was far from the reality we imagined.
We worship productivity and the pursuit of more. To want anything less would turn us into slackers. It goes against the grain of our culture.
To want anything different, we would be swimming upstream. We would be alone. And who wants to be alone? As humans, we learned to survive by getting along with others.
It’s as if we are demonized by our ambitions. We feel the constant need for striving. The call to do more and be more. That we can never be enough. That we can never sit still. We feel compelled to move because if we don’t, we think that we’ll get run over. Then we feel reduced, insignificant.
We stitch ourselves up every morning, create routines to prop us up, hide behind our busyness. We can’t think on our interior life too much because the act of doing so will force us to become undone.
So we go searching for answers outside of ourselves. We go on spiritual retreats. We take expensive vacations. But we still come home to our old selves.
But where else can we go? What else can we do?
For starters, we shouldn’t seek to self-medicate with things that pollute our bodies, dishonor our spirit, and numb our minds. Secondly, we should not lose ourselves to work in order to shut off the questions that need asking. As Rilke sagely advised, live the questions.
The answers lie in the questions themselves. You only need to ask the right ones.
And while you are learning to form those very questions, I offer up these four suggestions.
1. Allow yourself to feel uneasy.
For something that is worth figuring out, there is no simple, prescriptive method for arriving at the answers. Yet, we demand this. Instant fixes that will take away our discomfort and pain.
Don’t settle for Band-Aid solutions. Have confidence in your track record. If you have managed this far to stand on your own two feet, then know that the uneasiness is temporary, much like your circumstances. Remind yourself that you are an amazing human being worthy of your journey.
2. Believe in something larger than yourself.
It doesn’t have to be a particular faith or religion. The “something larger” is anything that expands you and gives you hope when things are at their bleakest. On days when you find absolutely no reason to get out of bed, let this one thing guide you.
For me, it’s the vision of the life I want, the lives I want to touch, the people I want to love. For you, it may be appreciating nature, protecting wildlife, or completing that manuscript.
3. Peel off complexity until you find the core.
It helps to think of yourself as an onion. Keep peeling until you get at the core. This may mean ridding yourself of material things or the beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve you.
4. Create a safe space.
You need a place that is all your own and signifies simplicity. Go to it. Find healing there. And as the poet Rilke wisely observed, “Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Photo by Gabriel Rocha
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Dealing with Difficult People: 5 Effective, Compassionate Practices
“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle
It’s morning; you’re in a great mood. You’re relaxed and have plenty of time to practice your morning routine. After a delicious breakfast, you head out to start your day. Then it happens: You encounter a difficult person, and your calm turns to calamity.
We all have encounters with people who prefer to stay miserable, making everything difficult. They exist, and perhaps there was a time in your past when you once where one of those negative people. Perhaps you still can be at times.
As a former miserable person, I know it was my inability to handle my mental and emotional states that kept me oozing all over others. I felt so disconnected from life, living obsessively in my mind, that I truly felt helpless.
Most often that helplessness manifested into continuous critiquing, judging, anger, and sometimes even pure rage. I was unwilling to take full responsibility for my relationship to life. I wanted peace, joy, and harmony, but I was unwilling to do the necessary work to experience them.
Difficult people are demanding. They demand something from the external world in hopes of filling the disconnection and restlessness they feel within. Whether they are demanding our attention, a certain action or reaction, or a particular outcome, the root of their behavior is a demand for something other than what is.
Difficult people haven’t yet learned to take responsibility for their whole selves—mind, body, and spirit. Feeling disconnected and restless gives rise to their need to argue, judge, critique, and tweak everyone around them.
Their inability to handle themselves adds fuel to the fire, which perpetuates their harshness.
Underneath their personality is a feeling of being separate and a desperate plea for help.
We can’t change another and we can’t make someone want to change. The only way we can help is by being true to our self, finding our power within, and being an example of wholeness.
Here are a few practices I’ve found useful, loving, and extremely effective.
1. Be still and ground yourself.
Naturally, when we are confronted with a rude, irritable, or irate person, we tend to avoid them. We think that if we avoid them they will go away, or at least we hope they will. The truth is that, although this may happen, it is much more likely that they won’t until we learn an alternate way of dealing with them.
Negative energy has a force and it can knock us on our butt, usually in the form of us engaging in toxic behavior. If we are not grounded, we may find ourselves arguing, judging, or stomping out of the room.
Making sure we are firmly planted in our body enables us to look the person in the eye and be completely present. It gives us the opportunity to remain calm and pause rather than engage in behavior we may later regret.
2. Look them directly in the eyes.
Darkness, negativity, can’t stand light, so it can’t remain in the light. Looking someone directly in his or her eyes dispels darkness. Your light pierces through the superficial persona to their being.
When I practice this tool one of two things always happens:
- The person walks away or stops talking.
- The conversation takes a more positive direction.
We all want to be seen, from the cashier at Target to our spouse. Taking the time to look at someone offers them the greatest gift we have to offer: connection.
Try it as an experiment and see what happens.
3. Listen to understand.
I find that whenever a difficult person confronts me, I automatically tense up and mentally consider my defense. When I am calm and open-minded, I know that I never have to defend myself, ever.
The most effective way to diffuse a difficult person is to truly listen to what they are trying to say, which means keeping my mouth closed and hearing them all the way through.
Whether or not I agree with them is irrelevant, and I certainly don’t need to let them know what I think. I can listen and get back to them if necessary such as with a spouse, co-worker or friend.
I find the following responses to be most effective:
“Let me get back to you on that.”
“You could be right.”
When a person is being difficult, it is because they are responding to their perceived reality rather than what is going on in the moment. Often times their frustration has very little to do with us.
I find when someone’s reaction seems over the top for the situation that repeating the same response diffuses the situation.
4. Learn when to be silent.
Some people are extremely closed-minded and impossible to talk to, but we need to speak to them. When I find myself in a situation with someone who just can’t hear me in the moment, I don’t force the issue. Trying to get my point across to someone that can’t hear me only escalates the situation. Sometimes the clearest form of communication is silence.
At a later time I can revisit the conversation with the person and communicate what needs to be said. Regardless of the person’s response, I can share my feelings and thoughts and let go of the outcome. Focusing on them responding a certain way only results in two difficult people unable to accept what is.
5. Be honest with yourself.
If we are repeatedly in a situation with someone who is abusive verbally, physically, and/or emotionally, we must stop trying to change him or her. If we find we are practicing a spiritual way of life and someone close to us isn’t changing, it may be time to get honest with our self and find out what is really going on.
The question of whether or not to end a relationship with a difficult person, whether a friendship, work or romantic relationship, can only come from within you.
If you can honestly say you have done what you know to do, have asked for help from a friend or professionally and nothing is changing, then its time to go within for the answer and trust what you find.
On the other side of a difficult person is an opportunity to grow.
No matter what we are presented with in life, we have an opportunity to choose more or less responsibility. Remembering that true responsibility is our ability to respond in the moment.
Of course, this takes practice and is not easy. However, as we take more and more responsibility for our life, circumstances and people lose their power over us. We learn to choose our responses moment by moment, no longer being dragged around by emotions, thoughts, or circumstances created by another or our self.
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How to Love More and Hurt Less in Relationships
“Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.” ~Ram Dass
In my personal experience, I’ve learned that it is sometimes easier to dance this journey of life solo rather than in partnership. Many of us have experienced life both in relationships and outside of them. Both are just as sweet.
I’d like to offer up some lessons I have learned in my dance in and out of relationships:
1. They are not meant to last forever.
Our society seems to put a lot of pressure on the idea that things will last forever. But the truth is, everything is impermanent.
After a recent breakup, I found myself feeling as though I had failed the relationship. Then I stepped outside of my conditioned thinking and discovered that love and failure do not reside together. For when you have loved, you have succeeded, every time.
It was Wayne Dyer that introduced me to the rather practical concept that “not every relationship is meant to last forever.” What a big burden off my back! Of all the souls hanging out on this planet, it seems to make sense that we might have more than one soul mate floating around.
Relationships can be our greatest teachers; it is often through them that we discover the most about ourselves. In relationships, we are provided with an opportunity to look into a mirror, revealing what we need to work on as individuals in order to be the best version of ourselves.
Each relationship will run its course, some a few weeks, months, years, or even a lifetime. This is the unknown that we all leap into.
2. Attachment is often the cause of suffering.
We sometimes cling to people in an attempt to hold them closer, but this often pushes them further away.
In love there is nothing to grasp; it is so expansive that trying to capture it is like trying to capture water with a net. When we attempt to control where a relationship is going, we become disconnected with the sweetness of the moment.
Ram Dass shared one of the most exquisite paradoxes: “As soon as you can give it all up, you can have it all.”
It is silly to think that we can own someone’s love, but many of us have tried to do it.
I often find myself fantasizing about how my future will unfold with a new partner, but it is in that moment when I fall out of the present.
We have the opportunity to surrender to the natural flow of relationships, letting go of our proposed outcomes and taking ourselves out of the driver seat.
This means being fully present in moments of intense love, conflict, uncertainty, vulnerability, and joy.
3. Being vs. doing.
In the beginning of relationships, we strive to show up as our best selves, hoping to impress the other person and to receive their love in return. In most cases, we are focused on doing simply because we want to make an outstanding impression on the person we fancy.
But if you’re anything like me, being and doing are extremely hard to keep up at the same time.
In relationships there is work, but there isn’t much we have to actively do. In fact, doing can often be associated with attempting to control a situation.
The place where we should hang out is in the being. Being allows us to show up as our authentic selves. When we show up as humans being, something magical happens. Being is our natural state. Love thrives in this space.
4. Allow for change.
Don’t be attached to any particular way your partner is showing up each day. Change is inevitable. As humans being, we are constantly growing and discovering new passions and experiences.
For example, next week your partner might wake up with the realization that they want to leave their job as a lawyer and become a yoga instructor. How will you respond? The news might be shocking and somewhat unusual, but change happens. The question is, can you allow space for that?
Oftentimes it is harder to embrace change within others than it is to accept within ourselves. If you are anything like me, consistency is super important; however, completely unrealistic. Someone once told me “you are consistent with your inconsistency.” I initially took this as an insult, but now I see it as a practical strength. It shows movement and willingness to change.
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Love is the greatest dance in life. Surrender to each step. Hold your partner close to your heart, but don’t grasp. If we can allow ourselves to enter into partnerships with this awareness, it may dramatically shift the way we see and experience relationships and love.
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Tending to Your Garden of Thoughts and Keeping Your Mind Weed-Free
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” ~Buddha
Imagine your mind as a garden. Positive thoughts are the beautiful flowers that brighten your life. Negative thoughts are the ugly weeds that spread and suffocate the flowers.
Tending to my garden is an ongoing process.
I’m not into chemical pesticides, but my natural weed killers are yoga, meditation, inspirational reading, and hanging out with positive people.
Sure-fire weed food is worrying about what other people think, taking things personally, and stressing out about situations that don’t matter or are out of my control.
I used to find myself having drawn-out imaginary conversations: “And if she said this, I would say that…” with absolutely no outcome. Now I catch myself and change the channel.
I’ve seen firsthand how dangerous it is to let weeds snarl and take over.
My dear Grandma Betty lived to be ninety-two. She outlived all six of her children, and had a lifetime of good physical health, yet her mind was tangled with weeds that began growing decades before she died.
She was suspicious, distrusting, and convinced that people didn’t have her best interests at heart or were talking behind her back. I never noticed it when I was a kid, but it became increasingly apparent later on.
Perhaps she felt lonely when my grandfather died early and she had too much time alone with her thoughts.
It’s easy to over-think things, jump to conclusions, or get wrapped in negativity when you don’t have others to give you a fresh perspective. It then becomes a bigger problem when you alienate the ones who love you the most because you’re difficult to be around.
This is what eventually happened. I loved her to bits, but she became challenging to talk to. The cup wasn’t half full; it was bone dry.
This was in sharp contrast to my Grandma Millie. She was always smiling or laughing with a twinkle in her eye.
Life dealt her a crappy deck. She was widowed young and had to raise three kids alone. She nursed her second husband through a nightmare of Alzheimer’s. She also experienced the tragic loss of both of her sons.
But she always picked herself back up and remained positive.
She drove for Meals on Wheels, delivering to people younger than herself.
She went blind from cataracts disease in her early eighties but continued to find volunteer work so she could feel useful and keep active and social.
Insistent on staying in her apartment, she remained fiercely independent.
I used to ask her how she kept her great outlook when she’d been through so much. Her reply, “Well, I could sit around complaining, but then nobody would want to be around me!”
Truer words have never been spoken.
Complaining is pointless. It doesn’t make things any better, and it drains the complainer and everyone else around them.
I loved both of my grandmas equally, but I know which one I was more likely to pick up the phone and call.
Having these two amazing examples in my life gave me huge inspiration. I saw for myself how important it is to tend to my garden regularly and give it high quality fertilizers to keep it abundant and healthy.
My friends are my fertilizers!
My positive Grandma had a gaggle of girlfriends and those gals knew how to have a good time. They got together and played cards or Scrabble, went off on outings, and even went on a camping trip in their eighties. They were each other’s support systems.
She used to say to me, when you get married, don’t ever forget about your girlfriends. They may outlive your husband and be all you have in your old age.
Her very best friend died two days before she did. Both asked after the other in their final moments, neither knowing that the other was dying. They’d been friends for eighty-eight years.
Both grandmas were my mentors in their very own ways. One being an example of how I want to live my life, the other showing what happens if I allow my mind to become overgrown and tangled with weeds.
I wish I could have done something to help my Grandma Betty tend to her garden. If she had the awareness, she could have taken a machete to those weeds and felt a lot happier.
We can all use the garden metaphor to bring an awareness of what helps our own mind grow and flourish, rather than creating a dark, tangled mess.
What’s on your list of fertilizers and weed-killers? How does your garden grow?
Photo by Neil Piddock
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How to Keep Our Thoughts from Making Us Miserable
“Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” ~William Shakespeare
I thought I knew what happiness was. I experienced it, and did so for a while—that is, what I thought was happiness.
What I was calling happiness was merely an emotion. Emotions, feelings that arise in the body, come into existence when we have thoughts related to them.
When I have certain thoughts having to do with anger, then I will feel, actually physically feel, angry. When I have thoughts that are positive, then I will feel the feeling, or emotion, that we call happiness.
In the past, whenever I felt that feeling, I thought, well I am happy. And how sweet it was. The world seemed perfect, in harmony; nothing needed to change. And I felt it most of the time. When I did, everything was good. But then the feeling would leave. The world wouldn’t seem so balanced or peaceful anymore.
The feeling would be gone, and I wouldn’t know why.
I would be able to guess why—maybe I had spent a lot of money recently and didn’t have much left, or a relationship with a woman I liked a lot ended, or maybe I was feeling fearful of the future for whatever reason. I would guess that things like these were the reasons for my lack of happiness.
I looked closely at my mind. I tried to figure out the patterns. But they weren’t so clear-cut. Sometimes, good things were happening in my life, yet I didn’t feel happy. And then sometimes when things weren’t go so well for some reason, I felt that everything was all right.
It didn’t make sense. To add to the mess, I couldn’t always control if things were going well or not. Sometimes, I did everything I could, the same things I did when I was happy, and yet the feeling of happiness would escape me. The patterns escaped me until I read an article that told me to look toward thought.
I looked at what impact my thinking had on my happiness. The article suggested that the thoughts arising in my head were only thoughts and to let them quiet softly.
I practiced this and new patterns emerged.
This time, the patterns were easy to see. Every time I was down, it was because I was thinking so much. The voice in my head would ramble uncontrollably, and I would listen to everything as if it were fact.
The thoughts would pressure me to live and act in a way that would benefit me in the future. They would focus on things I needed to do, things that I wanted, things that would make me happy if I did or attained them.
They would tell me that I was uncomfortable, to change this, to change that; when I was driving, to drive fast so I could hurry up and get to where I was going; when somebody said something mean, the thoughts would be about how awful this person was.
But sometimes I would meditate. I’d become aware that thoughts are only thoughts and let them quiet.
I set time to meditate, but also I tried to do it when I was amongst the regular activities of my life. When I would do this, there would be a period of time when my thoughts became slower, less loud, and they didn’t seem so important that I needed to listen and obey them at all costs.
Those were the times when I was happiest.
But then again there were some times in my life when things were going really well. I was on fire. I was killing it in my career; I had good relationships with friends and a woman I came to love. Everything was great. When things went well, I would feel happy for sure.
I had a hunch, however, that I shouldn’t get too happy just because things were going well. I knew that they could easily change, and they would often; and when things weren’t going great, I would feel miserable. I didn’t want my happiness to become dependent on the circumstances of my life.
Still, it was hard. The way things were going made me feel happy or didn’t. I couldn’t help it. They would bring about the way I felt.
When I looked closely, I saw that this was because my thoughts reflected how I was doing. I realized that however I was doing, if I let go of the thoughts about the circumstances of my life, the feelings would go away. I tried to do this even when things were going well and I felt happy.
I did this because I felt that the happiness that came from the times when I quieted and slowed my thoughts was deeper and more complete than happiness based on my circumstances. It felt more real and less easily shaken.
And so that brings us to the present. I still struggle to stay centered and avoid becoming connected to my thoughts.
I try not to focus my energy on making sure things are going well, but I still struggle with this too. When things do go well, I feel happy, but I try not to get too excited about that happiness. I have seen circumstances change in my life so often that it seems silly to be too caught up in them.
I see others who seem to be going through the same cycles. They seem to get wrapped up in their thoughts, which affects their moods. I see friends whose normal states of mind I know, but when they get caught up in what is going on in their lives and start thinking about it too much, they seem to morph into different people.
We are all in the same boat. We all have this struggle to stay centered instead of responding emotionally to life in a way that pulls us from the present moment.
But if we can try to remember that our thoughts are just thoughts, they will fade away and grow silent, and we’ll be filled with a deep feeling of peace and joyousness.
Photo by Visit Greenland
