Tag: wisdom
-
How Embracing a Good Enough Life Gave Me the Life of My Dreams
“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” ~Eckart Tolle
It was perfect. Well, almost.
I was doing the work I love, with someone I love, my two boys were thriving, and we seemed to finally be on the road to retirement. What could possibly be wrong with this picture?
A lot, apparently.
I was waking up worried and unsatisfied. Always feeling like life was missing something, like I was missing something, not doing enough, asking: How can my business be better? What will my kids do next year? Is my partner gaining weight? Did I run yesterday?
Anxiety crept into my mind and contracted my body before I had a chance to get ahead of it. It was an unease that something just wasn’t quite right. And if it was, then it wouldn’t be for long.
I knew enough about neuroscience and anxiety to know what was happening.
Negative thoughts are a protective pattern that come from scanning our environment for potential threats.
Our ancestors were wired this way to survive, thankfully, and we are probably in the first generation that can even talk about the word “abundance,” at least in this part of the world. The intergenerational trauma of feeling unsafe is in the recent past and runs deep in our DNA, especially for women.
But even armed with all the knowledge of trauma and all the best practices of breathing, meditation, and yoga, there was still a missing link.
My worries seemed trivial given the war that was raging in the world. It seemed self-indulgent to want more, to even consider that this was not enough. Even when it felt enough, it was because all the factors were lining up in that moment, but it felt precarious, like a house of cards—even though I knew it wasn’t.
All the self-help books promised I could “reach for my dreams” and “have my best life ever” if I only changed my habits and my mindset and lived like I thought all the people around me were.
In fact, I was so busy working on my life that I felt exhausted and still felt like I wasn’t doing or giving enough. Even when deciding what charity to donate to, to help those in need, I felt like I had to choose the “right” one!
It was through my work with people in chronic pain that one day something shifted. I was teaching about the difference between acceptance and giving up in the search for a cure, and I said something like “It’s not so much what you are doing but how you are doing it.”
Doing something from a place of pressure and intensity, with a worry about making a mistake or not getting it right, creates fear. Fear creates more fear in the end, and it creates pain.
My inner perfectionist gasped and took a step back. She was outed.
Not only did I see how my inner perfectionist had been running the show, I knew that if I wanted to negotiate with her, I was going to have to come from a different energy other than “getting this right.”
She had helped me; she had worked so hard to stay on top of everything and got me through some tough times.
She had guilted me when I felt like a bad mother, a bad friend, a less-than therapist, or a mediocre spouse and showed me all the ways I could be better. She even lent her expertise to my family, telling them how they should behave, what they should eat and not eat, and how they should conduct their lives.
This was sometimes done directly, but she also worked coercively behind the scenes through people-pleasing, manipulation, and other passive-aggressive behaviors.
She was based in fear and shame as a trauma response, learned early on in my childhood years, that told me my authentic self was clearly not good enough. So I employed her services to keep me safe, help me fit in at school, get good marks, and be an all around “good girl” on the outside. But the inner pressure of a perfectionist is unbearable and soon morphed into an eating disorder when life felt out of control.
Many of us live in a nasty triangle that can be difficult to see and even more difficult to disrupt. It goes: shame-inner critic-perfection, and it balances itself precariously inside our mind and body leaving its imprint of “not good enough” to guide our lives.
This is compounded by a culture that primes us to feel like we’re not okay and there is always something to buy, change, or fix, because it is not normal to just be okay.
Even though my trauma happened decades ago, the vestiges remained. I could not quite relax into my life without something or someone, mostly myself, feeling “not quite good enough.” I also found this same core belief to be at the root of many if not all of my clients’ struggles with anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.
It was the constant feeling of being here but wanting to be… somewhere or someone else. A knee-jerk resistance to life or an inability to truly sink into all life has to offer without finding fault or a hiccup somewhere. Or worse, thinking that I had to earn my worth by doing more and being more, and all without effort!
Not. Good. Enough.
Not good enough for what? For whom? This is an unanswerable question because it is a lie. But it is one thing to know that and another to let my inner perfectionist know I was safe now and she could take a backseat because, well, I’m good enough.
I thought about the times I felt free and at peace.
I thought about the people I knew whose lives had the biggest impact on me.
I had a chat with my future self twenty years from now about the qualities she had, how she moved, and what she valued.
And it came down to a word: simplicity.
Here is where I had to tread carefully. My inner perfectionist would make finding simplicity very, very complicated and approach it with an all-in attitude, as she did everything: live in a tiny house, two chairs, two sets of cutlery, and a bed.
No, there had to be another way, an easier way.
It turns out, it was the easiest way possible: Embrace what is here now.
What if everything was good enough, just as it is, in this moment? What if I was good enough, just as I am, in this moment? What if my body, my health, my relationships, all the ways I tried, were just good enough?
It felt radical, revolutionary. It felt like I was disrupting all my programming about what it means to live a good life. It was not the energy of giving up or rationalizing that I didn’t deserve more and I should settle for less. It wasn’t even the energy of gratitude or appreciating what I have and how privileged I am.
It was the opposite.
Embracing my life as good enough busted the myth of inferiority and superiority that tells us some people are more or less worthy than others. It let me relax into the fact that we are all doing the best we can with what we know at that moment. If I was good enough, then others were too.
It busted the myth of needing more and being more, because I didn’t have anything to prove to anyone. It also busted the myth that if I truly accepted my life as it is, I would just lie down on the couch and never get up. Again, the opposite happened.
Energy was freed up for more of what I love, not what I should do. Worry and struggle were replaced with self-forgiveness.
Embracing my life as good enough gave me the doorway I needed to a quality of life I couldn’t imagine.
I realized I was good enough to show up just as I am.
I realized I was good enough to set boundaries around what and who aligned with me.
I realized I could write, speak, and create in a messy, fun, good enough way.
I realized I was good enough to rest.
I realized I was good enough to embrace my own wants, needs, and desires.
I realized I was already good enough for pleasure right here and now in a million ways I couldn’t see before.
I realized my life was not about being better, improved, fixed… it was about being who I am, and that was enough.
I realized I could work less and make more money.
I realized my body was a remarkable organism that was to be loved and held, not manipulated.
I realized that every decision I made was right for me because it was good enough.
I realized that struggle was never meant to be my life, but giving, loving, and contributing were.
I realized I was already good enough to live a life of joy, comfort, and ease.
One of the most beautiful parts of this is looking in my children’s eyes and knowing that they, too, are so perfectly good enough just as they are. They don’t need to prove their worth to anyone.
Embracing my good enough life has allowed me to enter my life, just as I am, and has turned “good enough” into “how good can it get?” It gave me the safety I needed to “do what I can, with what I have, where I am” (Theodore Roosevelt).
Can you imagine a world where everyone knew they were just good enough? Where we all lived life from a place of forgiveness, grace, and compassion for ourselves?
What are you already good enough for that life is just waiting to give you?
-
Why It’s Worth the Temporary Discomfort of Sitting with Intense Emotions
“Whatever you’re feeling, it will eventually pass.” ~Lori Deschene
Can you feel an intense emotion, like anger, without acting on it, reacting to it, or trying to get rid of it?
Can you feel such an intense emotion without needing to justify or explain it—or needing to find someone or something to blame it on?
After successfully dodging it for two years, I recently caught Covid-19. The physical symptoms were utter misery. But something much more interesting happened while I was unwell.
The whole experience brought some intense emotions to the surface. Namely, seething anger about something that had nothing to do with the virus.
In the handful of days that my symptoms were at their worst, I was absolutely livid. And while on some level it made sense that I was angry that getting this sick was both extremely unpleasant and delaying work on a project I was all fired up about, the anger was manifesting with a deeper-rooted blame.
I grew up in a religious denomination that had a profound effect on my childhood and adolescence. It taught me through debilitating fear, division, and confusion. It ingrained black-and-white rights and wrongs for living, thinking, and being that had never made sufficient sense to me, no one could adequately explain, and were damaging for me on a number of levels.
In the past couple of years, I worked through its various effects with shadow work, inner child healing, forgiveness, and even quantum energetic healing. Each of these modalities supported me immensely with healing different layers.
But the emotion of deep anger I harbored clearly hadn’t gone away, and it simply needed to be felt.
The more we learn to observe and witness our emotions, the more acutely aware we become of where they’re stemming from, and the more we’re able to notice and catch ourselves when we’re associating our emotions with narratives and situations that are not in fact to blame for how we’re feeling.
Although I’d initially managed to fashion some connection between being unwell and the church I still harbored so much anger toward, I became increasingly aware that there was none. My inclination to blame the church was part of an ongoing pattern. And it was time to break this pattern.
At the same time, I’d recently become very aware that whenever I’d hear mention of the church or any of its associated beliefs, a brief surge of anger would leap up in me. I was still feeling triggered.
I was very ready to move beyond these patterns of blame and anger. And getting to that inner peace I so wanted to feel meant addressing this on an emotional level. I realized that what I needed was to actually sit with these feelings so they could be fully acknowledged and allowed to move through me.
The only person who is ever responsible for your emotions is you. And your emotions are simply powerful feedback. They show up for one of two dominant reasons.
Either they’re unresolved past emotions that are surfacing because they’re ready to be acknowledged and felt now, or they’re feelings that demonstrate how a situation is resonating for you—in other words, they’re your own inner compass.
Sadly, although traditions like Buddhism have been teaching us how to develop emotional awareness for thousands of years, we’ve somehow landed on two dominant, ineffective responses.
Acting on our emotions or trying to brush them under the rug.
Brushing an emotion under the rug will only keep it trapped inside of you. Meaning it will resurface to bother you as many times as it needs to in the future until you deal with it.
And the practices of toxic positivity fall under this category. Write a gratitude list and look for the best-feeling thought you can find, they say. In other words, avoid the “negative” emotion for now and let it fester under the surface a little while longer.
Newsflash: No emotion is negative unless it’s fueling a negative action or reaction. It’s simply feedback pointing you toward growth or clarity.
Which brings me to the next dominant response we resort to. Acting on the emotion (by yelling at someone, for example) will at least give it an opportunity to release but will most likely create consequences that won’t serve you. We’ve all been there and done that, so no judgment here.
As I emphasized earlier, the only person who’s ever responsible for your emotions is you. And we tend to act on our emotions by deflecting this responsibility. So we learn, understand, and gain nothing from them.
So, I sat with the anger. I was fully present with it—by itself, separate from any experience or event that I could possibly associate it with.
I acknowledged it, felt its full intensity, and breathed through it. I sat with the parts of me that felt this emotion with compassion. I surrendered to letting it move through me.
Despite having felt the intensity of this anger for a few days, it released fairly quickly when I leaned into it. And when it released, I was able to see pretty clearly why being ill had triggered this anger.
I’ve also noticed that since this whole experience, the little surges of anger I’d previously felt have gone away. So far I haven’t felt those triggers since, which is a relief.
Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that many of us are carrying deep trauma that’s often too painful to even fathom triggering. So have compassion for yourself in whatever you feel, and don’t put off seeking the right support to work through your emotions if you feel you need this.
Now, this might sound counterintuitive, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable to do at first. But real emotional awareness—and maturity—means sitting with the emotion and feeling its fullness.
It’s identifying what this emotion is and how it feels. Including where you can feel it physically.
It’s giving yourself some time and space to focus on really leaning into the emotion and separating it from any narrative or incident it may be associated with. Focusing on the emotion by itself in isolation allows us to process it. Without blame, justification, or self-pity.
When you can truly feel, acknowledge, and breathe through it, it releases. And when it’s released, you’re able to understand what it represented for you. You grow through it.
This may take time, but a feeling is only ever there to be felt. And until it is, it will be increasingly vociferous in how it tries to get your attention.
This can require a lot of courage, especially because too many of us have been conditioned to fear feeling our emotions and believe that we can’t handle them.
But if you need to cry, cry. If it feels intense, this is where deeply buried stuff is surfacing for release.
And when you let an emotion move through you, you let it move out of you.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll never feel another “negative” emotion ever again.
But it does mean that you’ll understand how to respond to these emotions and allow them to be felt and understood with a lot more compassion.
And that’s more than worth the temporary discomfort.
-
Living a Meaningful Life: What Will Your Loved Ones Find When You Die?
“At the end of life, at the end of YOUR life, what essence emerges? What have you filled the world with? In remembering you, what words will others choose?” ~Amy Rosenthal
Most people believe sorting through a loved one’s belongings after death provides closure. For me, it provided an existential crisis.
After glancing at the angry sky in my father’s driveway for what seemed like hours, I mustered up the courage to crack open the door to the kitchen. The eerie silence stopped me in my tracks. Wasn’t he cooking up a storm in this cluttered kitchen just a few days ago?
I started with the mounds of clothes and cuddled them gently before pitching them. The sweet aroma of his fiery cologne still lingered. The air smelled just like him.
My father’s belongings served as physical reminders of how he spent his time on Earth. Some of my favorites included:
A weathered yellow newspaper clipping of his parents. Cherished family photos, with him grinning ear to ear. A collection of homemade cookbooks. Framed quotes such as Mi casa es su casa. A prestigious Pottery Barn leather chair, distressed by puppy claw marks. Nostalgic t-shirts from the early 90’s.
Chipped and heavily-used Williams-Sonoma platters. An entertainment center that mimicked a NASA operation center, with 70’s CDs left in the queue. Invitations to neighborhood block parties. An embroidered apron which read “World’s Best Grill Master” paired with still fresh barbeque sauce stains.
Homemade recipe cards with quirky quotes like “It’s good because it’s cooked on wood.” An entire closet of camping gear. Leftover birthday celebration goodies. Glazed pottery from local North Carolinian artists. Entertaining sports memorabilia on full display. And a tender card from me:
Dear Dad,
You’re the best dad ever! I hope you have a birthday filled with tasty BBQ, blaring seventies music, and a pepperoncini pepper to start the day off right. Thank you for being there for me. You are my hero. I can’t wait to celebrate with you this weekend!
My father collected items that brought him joy, and, clearly shared them with others.
While you may not know him, or think you have anything to do with him, you do.
You will be him one day. We will all be him one day. At some point, someone will rummage through our drawers. Scary, isn’t it?
Weeks later after organizing his possessions, I returned to my lavish apartment with cloudy judgment. As soon as I arrived, I dropped my luggage near the door and waltzed into my closet. The items that once made me proud, made me nauseous. If someone rummaged through my keepsakes, they would find:
A closet full of color-coordinated designer brand clothes. Scratched CDs listing my favorite nineties bands. An entire drawer filled with vibrant, unused makeup. A high-end collection of David Yurman rings, necklaces, and bracelets. Wrinkled Nordstrom receipts. An assortment of gently used designer handbags. And, pictures of fair-weather friends scattered throughout.
Do you know what they all had in common? Me.
ME! ME! ME!
Comparing my life to my father’s led to a life-changing decision. Should I continue to splurge on meaningless items or start completely over?
After a moment of contemplation, my life mirrored a blank slate. Products related to “keeping up with the Jones’s” were no longer my jam. Instead, my money was reserved for incredible moments that produced long-term joy and warm memories.
My new spending habits derived from the following financial values:
- Seek experiences that make me feel alive.
- Purchase life-changing products.
- Invest in creative hobbies that I’m proud of.
- Provide others with joyous moments.
- Initiate celebratory activities.
- Make financial decisions out of love.
With a little trial and error, I traded in frivolous shoulder bags for top-rated camping gear. Saturday shopping days transformed into baking Sundays. And most importantly, I went from feeling not enough to experiencing fulfillment.
Twelve years later, I’m happy to share that I continue to evaluate my purchases using a “Will this make a good memory?” lens. In retrospect, mending my financial habits was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Why? I’m no longer impressed by status. I prefer art, learning, and the outdoors over any invitation to shopping. In return, my life is filled with purpose, meaning, and long-term satisfaction.
What I know for sure is that most commodities on their own overpromise and underdeliver, unless we intentionally create an evocative memory with them. Materialistic purchases provide us with fleeting moments of happiness. On the contrary, curating beautiful moments with others delivers long-term joy.
While you won’t find many luxurious products in my house now, you will find:
A four-person picnic backpack for sunny days at a park. Bird feeders galore. A fine assortment of tea to share with others. Homemade bath bombs for birthdays. Color-coordinated self-improvement books. Aromatic sea salt exfoliants that replicate a spa experience. Cheery holiday decorations.
An assortment of various vision boards and bucket lists. Seasonal candles galore. A bathroom drawer filled with citrus soaps, shampoo, and lotions for overnight guests. A collection of homemade scrapbooks featuring beloveds.
An emerald green trekking hiking backpack for outdoorsy adventures. Crinkled Aquarium tickets. Handwritten family cookbooks. Seeds for a blooming garden. Hygge and cozy themed library nooks. A bright blue hybrid bike, for nomadic quests. A closet full of board games. And my most prized possession of all, a sentimental card from my darling father, John:
Happy Graduation, Britti!
I am proud of who you are and proud to be your dad. I like how you hold your head high. You are becoming a beautiful young woman and fun to be around. You have taught me things. You are so important to me. I treasure our time together and will always be here for you! It’s not always easy, but, you have a lot of love around you. I hope that life keeps blessing you. Keep spreading your wings and following your dreams!
Love, Dad
The real question is, when someone organizes your belongings, what will they find?
-
How Weight and Food Obsessions Disconnect Us and Why This Is So Harmful
“We are hard-wired to connect with others, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it, there is suffering.” ~Brené Brown
I was inducted into diet culture in my early teens and then into the health and fitness industry in my early thirties, when my “fitness journey” had finally really taken off, and I ultimately became a personal trainer and nutrition and wellness coach.
Once we’ve given enough years of our life to diet culture, many of us begin to recognize the ways that it’s harming us and all the things it’s stealing from us.
Peace of mind. Self-worth and self-trust. Mental, emotional, and physical health and well-being.
My grandmother’s cookies.
The ability to just eat and enjoy food without fear.
Self-respect.
Body trust.
But we don’t notice all the ways “health and fitness” are promoted in our culture and how they do the same thing. And there are so many other things it steals from us that we often don’t think about or notice.
One of the biggest examples of this for me, and the women I work with, was connection.
Connection with myself and connection with others.
I didn’t start losing my ability to connect because of my induction into diet culture. That started earlier as a result of growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father.
But those industries preyed on it, fueled it, flamed it, and then ran away with it for decades.
Feeling connected is a core human need. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, love and belonging are right up there after things like food, water, and safety.
We are hardwired to connect.
Recent research has suggested that the brain processes the pain of feeling disconnected or rejected the same way it processes physical pain. Nearly every aspect of our health and well-being relies on connection.
And while it may seem like we’re constantly connected, especially now through things like social media or video calls, it’s not actually the case.
Loneliness has been on the rise, worldwide.
Chatting about what food we should or shouldn’t eat; commiserating over how much we hate our bodies, how much weight we gained, the latest diet attempt we just failed; bragging about how we did in the gym, how much weight we lost, how many steps we took, or how “clean” we’re eating—this isn’t connection. It’s not connecting with others, and it’s definitely not connecting with ourselves.
In fact, those things keep us from being able to connect with ourselves because we’re so focused on controlling external “shoulds.”
We may form friendships around those things, but they aren’t based on genuine connections.
Curating the picture-perfect Instagram feed, gathering around mutually hated or demonized “others,” and sharing memes or videos of the latest TikTok trend are also not the same as real, genuine human connections.
It’s all just filling space with mindless, external distractions.
It’s not truly allowing ourselves to be raw, real, and vulnerable. To be seen, heard, and valued for who we uniquely are as individuals—not just the perfectly curated image we present to the world but the messy, raw, and real parts we try so hard to hide.
The parts we fear make us most undeserving of love and belonging.
I certainly hid behind many of those things. I used them as a cover, as a tool to hide behind. A mask. A role I played, behind which I could feel (somewhat) safely tucked away and protected.
My “passion for health and fitness” allowed me to play the badass.
(In reality, I was scared all the time.)
It allowed me to play the inspirational “success” story.
(In reality, I was terrified of putting an ounce of weight back on because I desperately craved the praise and validation I was receiving. And it was destroying my mental, emotional, and physical health and well-being).
The strong, fearless, confident “fitness freak” that could do anything she put her mind to.
(Which, in reality, hid the fact that I was so scared and emotionally fragile and felt so broken that I needed the physical strength I could build through exercise just to get through the day.)
I was good at these roles. I loved these roles, at least in the early years.
Just be what people expected. Be what I’d seen get celebrated in others. Easy, right? Sure, until it isn’t.
The longer I wore the mask, the more it started to hurt.
The harder I worked to keep up those appearances, to maintain that external image of perfection through my body and what I was eating, the more damage it was doing.
Externally, I was doing everything “right.”
In reality? I ended up a binge eater, bulimic, clinically depressed, and living with generalized anxiety disorder and panic attacks. For many reasons, not the least of which because I was completely disconnected—from myself, my body, and from others.
I was so focused on trying to be something I thought I was supposed to be, so I’d be liked, admired, impressive, that I lost who I was and what I needed.
I lost what truly mattered to me and in life.
I lost the ability to trust myself, to trust others, to let them in and truly see me.
In fact, I was terrified of being really seen.
Because I didn’t like myself and I didn’t believe anyone else would either if they knew the real me.
So I hid behind what my body looked like. My external strength. The image I built.
Holy cow, it got exhausting. And soul-crushing.
You simply cannot simultaneously spend your life worried about what other people think about you (or your body), trying to micro-manage and control the image you project, and also be truly connected to yourself and others in any meaningful way.
Because in order to keep up those appearances, you have to actively work to hide parts of yourself—large parts of yourself that you’re terrified will be seen if you dare take off the mask.
If you’re actively hiding parts of yourself, you’re not able to truly feel seen, heard, and valued… because you are hidden away. Locked in some dark, dusty corner of your inner world, and in my case, stuffed down with food.
After a while, I didn’t even remember who I was. My identity became so wrapped up in who I thought I was (a worthless failure who was completely undeserving of love or acceptance) and who I was trying to be (the perfect, badass inspiration) to hide it, that I was lost.
And completely disconnected. From myself and others.
What I wanted or needed didn’t matter because my entire existence was being driven by fear and the disconnection that causes.
Fear of rejection and abandonment if I stopped playing the role.
Fear of weight gain and not looking “good enough.” Fear of not being good enough. Fear of what the binge eating was doing to my health. Fear of what would happen if I stopped micro-managing every morsel of food I ate and just trusted myself with food.
Fear of judgment.
And every time I turned around, there were diet, “health and wellness” cultures swooping in and stoking those fears.
Eventually, I recognized that I couldn’t keep it up. I couldn’t keep playing the role. I was too tired, and it had completely broken me. I couldn’t keep caring about trying to be impressive or accepted. I had to start caring about being healthy and at peace with myself.
In order to do that, I needed to find my way back to myself. I needed to shut out the garbage that was keeping me disconnected and learn how to connect.
First with myself, because how could I ever truly connect with others if I didn’t even know who I was when I wasn’t playing the role?
And how could I heal all that weight and food stuff if I stayed in the fear and obsession that kept me so disconnected from myself?
I couldn’t.
So I started working on being present with myself, not an easy feat when you don’t much like yourself. But required, nonetheless.
I started getting curious and practiced connecting with my body, my thoughts, my emotions, my needs… my inner world.
Who was I, really?
What really mattered to me in life?
Forget what I thought I should eat or do… what did I need?
Was I really put here to spend my life hating myself, obsessing over these things that are destroying me, distrusting myself, and fearing real, meaningful connection with others?
What if I could find a way to unconditionally accept myself and my body? How would that change the way I treated it and showed up in the world?
What did I want to eat? Forget what I was “supposed to” eat; what did I want? How were the foods I was eating making me feel? How did I want to feel in my body?
Forget what it was supposed to look like or weigh; how did I want it to feel to live in? How were my thoughts and conditioned patterns with food and exercise impacting that? Were they helping or harming? How could I learn to change them if they weren’t?
And I started practicing being more intentional with my thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Intentionally making choices that were loving and kind, that helped me feel better, in general and about myself. Anything that wasn’t helping me live or feel better, and more connected with myself, could have no place in my world anymore.
Once I started feeling deeply connected with myself and my body, I slowly started working on learning to connect with others.
That’s still something I find difficult and am learning to do, but I’m still practicing. In baby steps.
Because what I learned when I started reconnecting with myself was how much living with an alcoholic father impacted me as an adult.
It taught me that not only is the world scary, but people are. They’re scary and unpredictable. It also created abandonment issues, and it’s where the fear of not being good enough, and the feeling that I needed to play a role to be loved or accepted, had actually begun. No wonder I had so much trouble connecting.
I share this story because I’ve come to realize that most of us have an underlying fear around not being good enough that started in childhood for one reason or another. And those predatory industries sneak into every corner of our world, capitalizing on our fear with broken promises that do nothing but make things worse.
The weight and food obsessions are a diversion.
A socially acceptable, surface-level distraction that keeps us so externally focused and consumed that we spend most of our adult lives not even knowing that we’re disconnected—or that we’re living in fear and we’re just trying to “fix it” by making ourselves feel more socially acceptable.
All while disconnecting us more and more. From ourselves and others.
Because we’re hiding behind diversions and masks.
Well, my mask is finally off.
Under it, I have belly rolls. I have wrinkles. I have gray hair. I dye it because I prefer dark hair, but sometimes I put it off and rock a solid skunk stripe of gray down the middle of my head.
Like all bodies, mine changes.
None of that means I let myself go. It means I let myself just be.
I’ve overcome a lot of things in my life, but still struggle with some others.
I screw up a lot, even fail sometimes. Often, actually.
I’m exceptionally good at some things and full-on suck at even more.
I can’t do everything myself. Sometimes I need help and support. I’m still not very good at asking for it, but I’m working on it.
All of that simply means that like you, I’m human. And I cannot connect with myself or anyone else if I’m trying so hard to be impressive that I’m not being real.
So I don’t anymore.
-
Abuse is Like an Iceberg: The Cruelty and Pain You Never See
“What we see is only a fractional part of what really is.” ~Unknown
On the surface, in the public eye, it can seem trivial. It might look like the seemingly harmless teasing of a child or romantic partner, joking about words they have mispronounced or silly mistakes they have made. Inane mistakes like putting on a shirt backward, burning something in the oven, or losing their keys. Mistakes that everyone makes.
Abuse might sound like judgmental comments that appear to come from a place of compassion. Comments like:
My daughter doesn’t apply herself; she’s lazy, and I wish she would care about her education so she can make something of herself.
At the moment she likes girls, but I’m sure she’ll grow out of it because I just want her to be happy and get married and have a family.
I wish he would make plans and stick to them instead of changing careers every five minutes; he would be so much happier.Sometimes on the surface abuse can sound like frustration:
I wish she would just pick up after herself; it annoys me that I have to live in a pigsty.
She doesn’t do well in school, which is embarrassing for me because I am a teacher.
He never has any time for me; he’s so selfish, and all he thinks about is his work.Abuse can also sound like statements of compassionate control:
If she doesn’t do better in school, I’m not going to pay for her cello lessons.
If he doesn’t help out around the house, I’m not going to make time for him.
If she doesn’t try to dress nicely, then why would I make time for date night?I’m not saying that all teasing or comments expressing frustration necessarily mean that someone is being abused. I am only drawing your attention to them and encouraging you to look closer.
The victim might give you subtle hints. Hints like:
My parents really don’t care what I do; my parents only care if I do well in school and that’s all.
My partner is only happy when I’m doing things for him.
I don’t get a lot of me-time because me-time is selfish.The victim might show you emails or texts the abuser has written. Oftentimes, these emails or texts may seem benign or contain subtleties that can be easily overlooked. They might have a few verbally abusive comments and a handful of demands, or they might even be disguised as messages of concern.
Sometimes these messages may be written so persuasively you might find yourself siding with the abuser or wondering why the victim is so upset about something so trivial.
Beneath the teasing, the frustration, and the deprecating comments disguised as compassion lies a world of abuse that you are not looking for.
Behind closed doors teasing turns into putdowns and verbal abuse:
You will never amount to anything.
You are incompetent.
You are lazy.
You are fundamentally a failure.
You will never be able to support yourself.
You’re a fag.
How can you be so dumb?These harsh words may come with physical violence, but even on their own, they can be devastating.
Compassionate control that appears on the surface may be an indicator of neglect or financial abuse.
I have the money for music lessons, but you’re not doing what I want, so I’m not going to support you. I’m not giving you money for shampoo because it wouldn’t change the fact that you look ugly.
You have not become the person I had hoped you would become, so I’m not going to pay for your educational opportunities.
Sometimes you might look at abuse victims, like me, and wonder why we don’t wear better clothes, get regular haircuts, or take better care of ourselves. However, many times these simple choices were not within our power to make.
Victims of abuse often make self-deprecating comments. Comments like:
It was no big deal; anyone could have done it.
I’m not good at a lot of things.
I can’t do anything right.Over the years we have been groomed to put ourselves down before you do. We have internalized the abuse narratives to the point where we no longer see our lack of self-esteem, or our talents.
Victims of abuse often don’t know how to accept a compliment and at times can feel uncomfortable in the spotlight. We’ve learned to make ourselves small and build you up so that we can keep ourselves safe. We downplay the favors we have given to you or the kindness we have shown you because we have learned the needs of others matter much more than our own.
We become overly anxious when we made a mistake, when we’ve expressed an opinion contrary to yours, or when we think we might have offended you.
We put your needs first, and we act overly agreeable and easy to please. We don’t mind where we go or what we eat when we are out with you. We don’t tell you if we’re feeling tired or cold, and we hyperfocus on you because we have learned that our needs don’t really matter to anyone.
Because we have been gaslit and our reality has been denied over and over, we have learned to downplay the abuse and even to deny it. We might say contrary things about our abuser, such as:
My mother loves me; she just doesn’t know how to express it.
Yes, that was a nasty thing that he said, but if I had been kinder to him or done a better job, he wouldn’t have felt the need to say that.You might occasionally hear us expressing frustration about the way our parents have treated us. You might hear our longing for love and acceptance, but in response you may find yourself saying:
Your mother really loves you; she just wants what’s best for you.
I know you’re frustrated with your dad, but you should really try and forgive him.You might hear us expressing frustration about our partners and you may find yourself saying:
You should be grateful for all that they have provided for you and done for your family.
I don’t believe you; he or she doesn’t seem like the type of person to do a thing like that.Your comments leave us feeling invalidated, so we become silent.
Abuse was always there in plain sight, but like an iceberg you only saw the tip. A tip you could easily normalize, rationalize, and dismiss.
If you suspect that someone is being abused, here are some small steps you can take to protect them.
First, realize that the victim may not know that they are being abused or that the way they are being treated is wrong.
Oftentimes, they have been groomed to believe that they deserve to be treated poorly and that the abuse is somehow their fault. If they do realize that they are being abused, they may not be in a position to do anything about it; therefore, their denial serves as a temporary coping mechanism. The best thing that you can do is to treat them with kindness and compassion.
Ask questions that encourage the person to get in touch with their feelings or needs. For example, I noticed that your mother makes a lot of negative comments about your abilities. How does this make you feel? Or, last night when we were out your partner said some harsh things about your appearance. How did you feel about this? I notice that you look thirsty. Would you like some water?
By encouraging them to get in touch with their feelings, you validate their lived experiences and help them recognize that the way they have been treated is not appropriate or healthy. By encouraging them to focus on their needs, you help them to prioritize self-care even if only in a small way. This allows them to take back the power they have lost and helps them realize that they deserve to be treated better.
Sometimes the simplest compassionate questions can help them take small steps to decrease the amount of abuse they are exposed to and eventually take drastic actions to remove the abusers from their lives entirely.
If you witness someone being teased or shamed during a social event, firmly tell the perpetrator that their behavior is not kind or appropriate. If the perpetrator does not stop, invite the victim to walk with you to another part of the room or engage in a different activity to give them a break.
Never join the perpetrator in teasing or criticizing the victim even if you believe that the teasing is just for fun.
When you join the perpetrator in teasing you are engaging in a benign form of abuse and reinforcing their power and control. You are unknowingly teaching the perpetrator that you are a person they can use against the victim. Additionally, you are affirming and normalizing the perpetrator’s opinions of the victim, making it hard for the victim to break free from toxic narratives and limiting beliefs.
Never engage in discussions about the victim with the perpetrator. Oftentimes, abusers use people who are close to the victim to convince them to do things they are not comfortable doing. Sometimes these conversations are disguised as concern for the victims, their well-being, or their financial future. If you suspect that you are being used in this manner, make it clear that you are not comfortable engaging in these sorts of conversations. Keep your communications with them brief yet firm.
Never confront the abuser or tell them that you think their behavior is abusive. This may prompt them to encourage the victim to cut you out of their life. If you need to call the abuser out on their actions, talk specifically about why you do not like their behavior or why it is not appropriate. If you suspect that the victim is in serious physical danger, contact the police, a social worker, or a local women’s shelter for professional advice.
Abusers tend to isolate their victims in order to maintain control over their lives. Invite them to activities you both enjoy so you can spend quality time together and give them a break from their home life.
If you have a friend or family member who cancels plans at the last minute or frequently declines invitations, they may not be making this choice of their own free will. It is important not to take this personally or wall the victim out of your life. This is what the abuser wants you to do.
Instead, continue to call your friend and invite them to social events even if you think that they will not attend. Knowing that you are in our lives even in some small way can make us feel less isolated.
Make it clear to your friend or family member that you are always there if they need to talk and frequently remind them of this. If you feel comfortable you can also let them know that they are always welcome to stay at your home if they ever need a safe place to go. You can also offer to help them create a safety plan should they ever feel unsafe.
By taking these small steps you are choosing to see the abuse that lies beneath the tip of the iceberg and helping your loved one make it safely to the surface.
-
Why I Broke Down Mentally While Striving for Work/Life Balance
“Maybe it’s time for the fighter to be fought for, the holder to be held, and the lover to be loved.” ~Unknown
I was breastfeeding my infant son when he bit me. That bite set the stage for a deeper unraveling then I could have ever imagined.
I unlatched him, handed him to my husband, and got in my car. As I was driving I began to lose the feeling in my hands and feet. My vision started to blur, and my breathing was fast and shallow. I was terrified I was not going to make it back home. I pleaded with the powers that be to allow me to safely pull over to the side of the road.
I was about a mile away from our house, but that mile felt like eternity. My vision continued to blur and my whole body was starting to tingle.
When I got home, a miracle not lost on me, I couldn’t shake this fear. I couldn’t be left alone. I was afraid if I was alone, I would take my life.
I couldn’t reconcile this. How could I so badly want to live and be afraid I’d end my life at the same time? What an interesting, terrifying place to be in: a place where you can no longer trust yourself to keep you safe and alive.
Turns out what I had in the car was a panic attack, and what I was feeling at home was suicidal ideation.
My sister and brother-in-law drove down to Southern California in the middle of the night to be with me and insisted I seek help that next morning. I was incredibly reluctant because I had a huge project due at work and didn’t want to let my team down. They didn’t care.
I went to see a doctor the next day, and that landed me in a treatment center for mental illness. I reluctantly admitted myself into an inpatient program.
I had to go on medical leave, just three weeks after returning to work from maternity leave. I was so afraid of how that would impact my career. What would people think? Would my boss resent me? Would I ever be able to get promoted? Even though this was truly a choice of life or death, it was still one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. I was terrified of the outcome.
What I received in treatment, albeit begrudgingly, was more than just mental health support. I also gained a healthy dose of perspective and clarity. This wasn’t just postpartum anxiety. This was trying to balance work and life and leaving myself out of the mix. Not only that, but I didn’t feel worthy of taking time for myself.
I realized I no longer knew who I was. I had become everything to everyone and there was no space for me. I felt empty and defeated. I had exchanged every last piece of me to fulfill the roles that were prescribed to a woman of my age.
This was a shocking realization, as I’m a self-proclaimed feminist. I spent most of my life keenly aware of the loss of identity that mothers often face once they have children. I didn’t want kids for that exact reason. When I met my partner, that piece changed, but I was dead set on making sure I didn’t lose myself in the process.
It’s funny how that works. You can be acutely aware of what you don’t want in life and still end up smack dab in the middle of the exact situation you swore would never happen to you.
When I thought of work/life balance I always thought of it as making sure I was showing up as a career woman and mother in the most balanced way possible. But where was the room for me in that? Where did my needs and desires come into play?
After treatment, I began working with a life coach in addition to continuing to take care of my mental health (it’s important to note that life coaches are not medical professionals). In working with my coach, I was able to integrate more of myself into my day and reconnect with my needs and desires.
I was held, supported, and cared for, and that empowered me to care for myself and feel worthy of taking up more space in my life.
I took the time to reconnect with who I was before I became a parent, and I brought that version of me into the fold.
I created a list of non-negotiables that I would implement in my daily life. For instance, I go for a walk daily. No matter what. Movement is a literal life saver for my mental wellness. It doesn’t matter what is going on at home. It’s happening. And, I do it guilt-free!
I also keep a journal by my bedside. Every night, before I lay my head down on the pillow, I write out what I got “right” that day. It’s so easy to focus on all the ways I came up short that day. For me, my mind defaults on the negative, so having to come up with a list of at least three ways I showed up for myself is a powerful way to end my night thinking of the positive.
Do I think that we can do all of the things all of the time? Absolutely not. I feel work/life balance is a bit misleading. I don’t think we can evenly split work, life, and self-care. One will constantly outweigh the other, even if just by a small margin.
But what we can do is try our best to fulfill our needs and desires so that we can show up for each aspect of our life as grounded in our authenticity as possible. If we can remain grounded, we can remain fully present. And for me, being fully present is balance.
-
3 Ways to Help Someone Who’s Recovering from Trauma
“Feeling safe in someone’s energy is a different kind of intimacy. That feeling of peace and protection is really underrated.” ~Vanessa Klas
I’m now fourteen months into my recovery from complex post-traumatic stress syndrome (c-PTSD aka complex trauma). I’d been in therapy for a number of years before I was diagnosed. I’d been struggling with interpersonal relationships and suffered from severe anxiety and depression, although you wouldn’t have guessed it from looking at me.
There are so many misconceptions about trauma, and before my diagnosis in 2020 I wasn’t very trauma aware.
I was your typical millennial thirty-something woman, juggling a successful corporate career with a jet-setting lifestyle. My Instagram feed was filled with carefully curated photos of me adventuring through Europe, eating flashy dinners at Edinburgh Castle or entertaining friends with cocktails in my flat just off the Water of Leith.
Then 2020 hit. The world was thrust into a global pandemic that saw me lose my job and livelihood, and with it my visa and right to live and work in a place that I had fallen in love with. I went from having a thousand distractions at my fingertips to being confined in a house with nowhere to go and no one to distract me.
I was facing deportation since I no longer had the right to live in the UK, but wasn’t able to leave, as all flights back to Australia were stopped. I was in purgatory, stuck between where I wanted to be and where I had to go, with no way out
Everything unraveled. It’s the only way I can describe the slow, torturous unpicking of my carefully pieced together life. Illusions of control disappeared. Choice and freedom were stripped away, and in the prison of isolation I was facing all the shadows I had so carefully avoided.
In solitary confinement you are forced to face the parts of yourself you can ignore when you have a packed social calendar. We often think of trauma as something that happens if you’ve experienced a sudden violent incident, like a car crash, or if you’ve been assaulted, or if you’ve been in a warzone. Those are all true.
Trauma can also occur over time with prolonged exposure to incidents and events that dysregulate your nervous system.
The conflict in my parents’ relationship created the perfect breeding ground for c-PTSD, as my formative years (before I turned seven) were very volatile with a lot of upheaval, travel, and change.
The stress and anxiety my parents were experiencing, first trying to migrate to Australia from India for five years and eventually going to Canada, resulted in an unfriendly divorce and custody battle. The result: neither parent was available to meet my emotional needs.
What is Trauma?
The American Psychological Association describes trauma as an “emotional response to a terrible event such as accident, rape, or natural disaster.” Dr Gabor Mate goes further, describing trauma as “…the invisible force that shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we love and the way we make sense of the world. It is the root of our deepest wounds.”
Not everyone who experiences a violent or terrible event will develop PTSD. In fact, only a small portion of the population will develop trauma, even though the majority of people will be exposed to at least one traumatic event during their lifetime.
What is PTSD?
Post-traumatic stress disorder is considered to be a “severe reaction to an extreme or frightening traumatic event” and can include flashbacks of the event, intrusive memories and nightmares, avoidance of activities, situations or people that trigger these memories, and hypervigilance and hypersensitivity.
What is complex-PTSD
Complex trauma, or complex post-traumatic stress disorder, occurs after repeated and prolonged incidents that disrupt the nervous system’s ability to regulate itself. Complex trauma occurs from events experienced early in childhood development, and it causes problems with memory and the development of a person’s identity and interpersonal relationships.
Symptoms of complex trauma include negative self-belief, problems maintaining healthy relationships, difficulties expressing emotions, people-pleasing, substance abuse, and ongoing feelings of emptiness.
My diagnosis of complex trauma in early 2021 felt like coming up for air after being held underwater. It was painful; my lungs burned. But there was also relief.
At first it felt like I would never be able to fill my lungs with enough oxygen, and then slowly, incrementally, my body started to trust that the oxygen was there, and I could stop gulping, grasping, floundering.
For years I had been wrapped up in a toxic relationship with a man who was battling his own demons from childhood. For years I never felt like I was doing enough. I was never good enough or smart enough or pretty enough to deserve the relationship, the career, or the life I desired.
I dipped my toes in the shallows of life; I yearned for community and at the same time I pushed it away. I wanted closeness, but it felt suffocating. I wanted success, but it felt terrifying. Every time life would get good, something would unbalance and everything would crumble, so I would have to pick up the pieces and rebuild.
I was stuck in a spiral of going one step forward and five steps back in every area of my life. The pandemic only highlighted this as I was forced to move back to Australia, jobless and in debt.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this constant spiral of stress and loss was a subconscious play that I kept re-enacting. Subtle, insidious self-sabotaging mechanisms from childhood that had kept me safe now tripped me up and kept me trapped. I kept repeating cycles that triggered familiar responses within my nervous system—ones of unsafety, loneliness, and abandonment.
Working on my trauma over the last fourteen months with a trauma-informed therapist, rebuilding safety within my nervous system, learning to self-regulate, to reconnect with my body, with myself, has been at times a harrowing process.
Through it all, it was interesting to see how different people reacted to my pain and loss and grief.
We’re not taught how to sit with our own uncomfortable feelings, let alone someone else’s. We live in a culture that thinks “positive vibes only” qualifies as a spiritual practice, when in reality, we need to be able to witness and love our shadows in order to fully heal.
If someone you love is going through a hard time, if you know someone who is struggling, here’s some advice on how to hold space for them, from someone who has been on the receiving end of well-meaning but unhelpful suggestions throughout my recovery.
Holding space for someone is essentially about being fully present for someone else. This means no agenda, and a judgment-free zone.
Be Present
Check in with yourself first. Are you ready, willing, and open to being fully present with this person right now? Are you able to leave your opinions, suggestions, and personal experiences at the door?
If not, that’s okay. Self-care starts with you, and forcing yourself to be present with someone when you aren’t in the right head space will not help the other person.
Let them know that you aren’t in the right head space right now and refer them to a helpline or specialist. Check back in with them to make sure they have followed through and have someone to talk to.
You will be doing both of you a favor. This comes down to co-regulation.
When you are grounded and fully present with someone who is going through a hard time, you are allowing them to “borrow” your nervous system to down regulate when they are in a heightened state of arousal and activation. If your own nervous system is activated, this will just exacerbate what they are feeling, causing more sensations of dysregulation and unsafety.
When you are able to sit with someone and be fully present for them, without judging their thoughts or trying to fix things, this can be a profoundly healing experience for the other person.
Being witnessed in our grief without judgment, pity, or awkwardness removes some of the shame we’re experiencing as we’re processing our difficult emotions.
Often, those with complex trauma did not have their needs met and didn’t have their feelings validated as children. It’s a deeply healing experience to be with someone who cares about you and to feel seen and validated at your most vulnerable moment.
Practice Conscious and Reflective Listening
When we are listening to someone, we’re only half paying attention to what they are saying. Half of our attention is already formulating our response, so we’re rarely ever focused on their words.
Holding space for someone means being fully present and listening, not only with our ears but with our full attention to what they are saying and how they are saying it. Pay attention to their words, but also observe their body language.
Allow for pauses. Silence can feel uncomfortable, but when we’re processing difficult emotions, sometimes we need a little silence to gather our thoughts or sit with what we’ve just said. Don’t try to fill the pauses in the conversation straight away.
Reflect and mirror back what the person has said. This doesn’t have to be verbatim. It could be as simple as “I can see that this situation has really hurt you. I hear that you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out because you’ve lost your job. I can image that’s really scary. Can you share more?”
This allows them to expand and clarify if they want to, or to just feel like they’ve been heard if that’s all they wanted to share.
Observe Without Judgment
Be willing to listen without judging what the other person is saying or how they’re interpreting their experience. Those of us with complex trauma grew up being hypervigilant and aware of the emotions of the people around us. This was integral to our survival in childhood.
This means you need to be aware of your responses, both verbal and non-verbal, to what we are expressing. Listen with empathy and compassion, and stay open to what we are sharing, even if you disagree.
Even if you think other people have it worse.
Even if you have a solution.
You may feel like we are overreacting, but often trauma triggers reactions to something we experienced in the past. When we’re triggered, we’re not only reacting to the situation we are currently facing, but also the unprocessed emotions from the previous situations. We’re dealing with the past and the present simultaneously, and it can feel overwhelming.
Being witnessed by someone who cares about us without judgment when we’re triggered is a deeply healing experience. Often, those of us with trauma, depression, and anxiety already feel ashamed about our emotions and reactions, so having someone witness us without judgment can be liberating.
-
How to Reclaim Your Joy After the Pandemic: 3 Things That Helped Me
DISCLAIMER: Though vaccines have allowed many of us to return to more normal activities, the pandemic isn’t over, and it’s still crucial that we all follow the evolving CDC guidelines to keep both ourselves and others safe.
“Perfect happiness is a beautiful sunset, the giggle of a grandchild, the first snowfall. It’s the little things that make happy moments, not the grand events. Joy comes in sips, not gulps.” ~Sharon Draper
It was a rainy, late Sunday afternoon. The sun was already going down, and it was getting dark outside.
“How are you?”
“Oh, good. Nothing special. It’s quiet,” my mom responded when I called her a couple of months ago.
“It’s quiet” had been her response for the past two years, possibly before that. My mom is retired. Since the pandemic, her life became even more “quiet” than before—fewer friends, fewer activities, less fun.
I’m not retired, but I work from home, and the same happened to me. To some degree, I let it happen.
I got used to not seeing people, not laughing, and not dancing. I got used to being alone, and it became more comfortable to stay home on Saturdays than going out for social activities. Was I developing a mild form of social anxiety? Maybe.
Two things were for certain: my social skills had atrophied, and I had forgotten how to have fun. What was joy like?
“I feel like this must be what it’s like for the elderly; when no one visits them and they don’t have many friends and activities, they sort of start dying inside.”
“That’s how I feel right now,” my mom responded.
Have you experienced that too at some point? Not feeling like doing anything and seeing people because you forgot how to connect with them and what you even enjoy doing?
“I think it’s a slippery slope. We should do something about it. We should make an effort to break the pattern and start socializing and doing activities again before we die inside,” I told my mom.
After hanging up the phone, I reflected upon what I had just said. I knew that “shoulds” wouldn’t make the situation better; I had to be proactive and do something about it. I took out a pen and a notebook and started writing an action plan.
Here are the three things I wrote down that day that have most helped me to reclaim a sense of joy in my life.
1. Do one thing on your list of “joys.”
A piece of advice that was very helpful came from a friend who lost his partner to cancer a couple of years ago, just a few months after she was diagnosed.
It was a shock to him. They had projects together, like buying a campervan, traveling around North America, and building a house off-grid. Suddenly, those plans were gone, and my friend had to learn to live alone again while coping with grief.
One thing that helped him get out of depression and slowly regain his spark for life was to make a list of things that made him happy (even just a little). Every day for the next three months, he did as many things on his list as he could.
I took that advice and created my list of fifteen “little joys.”
They’re not complicated. They include things like watching the sunset, reading a book while drinking a mocha latte in the morning, walking in nature, wearing my favorite outfit, dancing to progressive trance music in my living room, and watching funny dog videos.
Every day, I picked at least three things on my list to do that day; if I could do more, great! But I did at least three. Over a few days, this simple practice started making me feel happier.
Of course, you’ll first have to create your own list of “joys,” but once you have it, it’s a wonderful tool to bring more joy into your daily life.
2. Do one thing to trigger the “helper’s high.”
Another thing that significantly impacted my mood and energy was to do one act of kindness every day.
I had read articles about the science of altruism and happiness, and I knew that helping or being kind to others makes us happy. There’s even a specific term for it: the “helper’s high.”
I began asking myself every morning, “What’s one act of kindness I will do today?”
Since I don’t always feel creative first thing in the morning, I made a list of fifteen acts of kindness ideas that I could choose from. Like my list of “joys,” they aren’t complicated. They include writing a nice comment on someone’s Tik Tok video, posting an uplifting quote on Facebook, and complimenting someone.
Just doing this one thing, intentionally, every day made me feel more alive. But in case you don’t feel inspired to do one act of kindness a day, here’s another idea.
Another thing I started doing recently, which I learned from Tim Ferriss’s book Tools of Titans, is a ten-second loving-kindness exercise created by Chade-Meng Tan, the man behind the popular mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course for employees at Google called Search Inside Yourself.
The exercise is very simple: A few times a day, randomly choose two people you see and secretly wish for each of them to be happy. You don’t have to do or say anything—just think, “I wish you to be happy,” with a sincere intention from your heart.
I find both the ten-second loving-kindness exercise and doing one act of kindness a day therapeutic. They take our focus away from our problems and increase our sense of connection to others, even when the act of kindness is anonymous, and we don’t physically interact with the person.
3. Do one thing every day to nurture your social circle.
It took me some time to realize that my mental health was being affected by a sense of isolation. I’m an introvert and enjoy my own company. It wasn’t obvious that my desire to eat more ice cream than usual and my lack of motivation to get out of bed in the morning had something to do with spending too much time alone.
Some weeks during the height of the pandemic, I talked to no one except my clients on Zoom and the cashier at the grocery store. And the more time I spent alone, the less I wanted to see people. The idea of socializing began to feel daunting, and I chose to stay home (alone) more and more often.
But it was killing me inside. I had to break the solitude pattern before the hole I was digging and putting myself in became too deep.
I started small but did something every day to revive my social life.
One day, I commented on an acquaintance’s Facebook post. Another day, I messaged a friend on Messenger. The following week, that friend suggested we go for lunch, and I went.
Friendships must be nurtured to grow stronger and thrive; otherwise, they atrophy.
So, perhaps you can ask yourself every day, “What’s one thing I can do today to nurture and expand my social circle?”
Start small.
—
I did a few other things to bring more joy into my life in the past few months as well, like taking on a new hobby (learning to play the djembe) and attending social events every other week. But the three actions I mentioned in this article are the ones that made the most significant difference in my well-being in the long run.
What do you do to feel alive and inspired? Share with us in the comments so we can all benefit from each other’s wisdom.
