So Much Happier Blog
How Did I Get Here?
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed... Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”
Now that winter is out and it’s officially spring, we’re almost a quarter of the way through 2019. It’s a good time to stop and take stock of how things are going for you compared to any goals you may have set for the year. Without periodic analysis, you may not make the necessary course corrections to keep yourself moving forward efficiently; however, the context for your progress and the messages you take away from your analysis are important, not just the accuracy of the analysis itself.
Yes, it’s helpful to be clear and honest with yourself about how far you have (or haven’t) come, but it’s also important to notice the reasons why you may have gotten off track so that you can learn from your experience and do something useful about it. For instance, did you overestimate how much you could add to your daily routine while still keeping up the maintenance on everything you already like about your life? Did you get completely stuck somewhere, which prevented you from making your expected progress? Did you decide to take another opportunity, or go in a slightly different direction, so that you made a different kind of progress? And will you choose to see these happenings as failures, or will you mine them for the value they may have to offer?
If you got overwhelmed, maybe you need to break your goals down into smaller steps and try to accomplish a little less every day so you can avoid burnout. If you got stuck and didn’t know how to break your logjam, what can you do to solve that? If you branched out in an unexpected direction, will you need to go back to what you skipped later, and if so, when will that make sense? Taking the time to notice what happened allows you to calibrate to your current reality so that you can make clear, efficient decisions grounded in facts rather than muddling through each day confusedly hoping that all this effort will somehow be worth it someday. Creative, mindful tinkering may lead to real results, but blind muddling generally will not!
No process ever unfolds without surprises. This truth can be both frustrating and invigorating, and sometimes both at once! It can seem desirable to plan and execute everything to perfection, and after all, planning is absolutely necessary to peak productivity; on the other hand, fighting the need to adjust and remain flexible will only drain your energy, because life on planet Earth requires it. Where billions of people are running around exercising free will, it will often be hard to predict exact timing and results no matter how skilled you are at planning! If you want to reach your goals, you need to build in time for reflection, honest measurement of your progress, and strategic adjustments.
One last observation I’ll lob at you: Many of us try to gear up and start the new calendar year with a bang, but according to Traditional Chinese Medicine and other traditions, winter is a time to replenish yin energy, sleep, rest, and dream your ideas into being—it’s not the best time for massive action, pushing yourself, and trying to force timing. If you’ve had trouble with New Year’s resolutions you made at the turn of the year, it may be because you were using the collective habit and energy of those around you to try to fire up some change when what you really needed was some rest and restoration. You might need to just slow down your process a bit, or you might need to allow yourself a break, some space to clear your mind and let your natural enthusiasm start to bubble up again. Now will be a better time to start new things, but again, realize that effecting change takes time and patience. It’s not all about willpower, or trying to force your ideas into being. It’s about working with and remaining open to body, emotions, and spirit as well as mind. Change lasts when you take the time to get all your parts on board with the plan and help them adjust.
Wherever you find yourself in relationship to your goals, you know what to do. Examine why you’re there and what you need to do next to address your position. And don’t forget to Tap on any emotions, thoughts, or beliefs that come up as you do, which will help you to clear out internal blocks to seeing a clear path forward. Happy spring!
Can People Change?
“Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness: a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say ‘no.’ But saying ‘yes’ begins things. Saying ‘yes’ is how things grow.”
I don't know if you've noticed, but change is often frightening for humans, in part because we're wired for self-protection, and opening to change requires uncertainty; also, it's difficult to envision exactly who we will be on the other side of change, and that's a threat to one's current life and personality—and can be interpreted as a threat to others in the immediate vicinity depending on their beliefs. I think it's out of these concerns that the "This is just who I am/how things are" excuse arises, and it's a goal killer. If you want to achieve anything on your bucket list, avoid giving yourself this "out" at all costs.
Now, I don't mean that you should feel bad about it if this is your first reaction to the idea of change. We all fall back on habitual defenses sometimes, and again, this is a survival mechanism that evolved for the sake of keeping the species alive. But if you hear this coming out of your mouth, just notice. In order to reach your aspirations, you'll need to address this attitude, and your reasons for digging in your heels in the face of the unknown. Fear can be incredibly potent, causing us to freeze even when doing so makes no logical sense, and even sometimes contradicting our deepest values. Yet it isn't totally in control overall. We retain conscious choice over the direction of our lives even when fear seems very big and loud.
When you feel stuck in your current position, fear is calling you to work through your objections because moving forward seems unsafe, and guess what's an amazing tool for helping you to gently calm your jitters about change? Tapping! But you knew that already! Through Tapping, we can much more easily allow the reasons for our fears (usually adverse experiences from the past) to raise their hands and be heard. When we allow these old truths to come to the fore, be expressed, and allowed to dissipate in intensity while we Tap, it's truly amazing how we can suddenly see things quite differently; stepping forward into position to grab new opportunities is not as big a deal as we thought it was just minutes before. Uncertainty feels more manageable, excitement for the new often surges, and we feel a renewed sense of possibility that allows enthusiasm to carry us forward. Once you're in this state, making plans that are both optimistic and reasonably balanced with appropriate self-protection is much easier. Your chances of success skyrocket, particularly when you're practiced enough in this process to repeat it whenever you find it necessary to get unstuck again. When you're your own one-person fear triage team, it's pretty hard to keep you down!
Nobody who has ever wowed the world with a game-changing invention, artistic vision, physical achievement, or other advance has just sat back down and allowed things to stay as they were instead of following their inspiration. Sometimes the road to success is long and strewn with frightening thoughts and symbols that need to be navigated under, over, or around. Nevertheless, growth is almost always possible. Make excuses now and then if they slip out, but then decide again when you've had a chance to think and take action to surface your fears. Fighting them takes a lot more energy than acknowledging, allowing, and transforming them before you swing into action. What have you been fearing and resisting? Maybe it's time to let yourself acknowledge the reasons why so you can address them start the process of forward motion.
Chasing Your Tail?
“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”
Do you ever find yourself asking, “Why does this keep happening to me?” If so, you’re in good company! You may have encountered this kind of confusion many times. We all get stuck sometimes in patterns that aren’t helpful, but also aren’t easy to solve. You may have no idea what’s going on, or you may know exactly what the problem is and feel powerless to change your outcome. Assuming that you want to start getting better results when this is your complaint, read on. We’ll look at how to break out of a persistent pattern and move toward happier developments.
When you feel stuck, you’re probably also feeling frustration, anger, sadness, pessimism or hopelessness. Since good ideas don’t usually pop up in the midst of strong negative emotions, it’s best to work on changing your emotional state before working on your issue. You might do this by venting how you feel in any number of ways (writing it all down, talking with a friend who won’t mind hearing your tale of woe, working out to let off steam, etc.), or by just getting your mind off the subject for a while. If you’re tired, hungry, or thirsty, you may need to address those physical needs too. At a time when you can feel fresh physically, mentally, and emotionally, you’re more likely to be able to take a good look at what has happened or is happening with curiosity and openness to new insights and ideas.
When you’re ready, here are the steps I recommend for moving yourself forward.
1. Start with your mind, as it helps to figure out what your level of clarity is before troubleshooting. Think through your pattern and how it tends to show up in your life. How have the circumstances played out over time? Have recent experiences been very similar to those further in the past, or are they different lately? Have you made any progress at all on the issue? Can you see any way at all in which you may be contributing to the problem? Treat this like a full-on investigation—feel free to enlist the help of a supportive friend and really get your Sherlock on. Sometimes telling someone else about all the times something similar has occurred gives you a chance to have your experience validated as unusual, which can help you feel like it’s not just all in your head. Sometimes it’s just helpful to have someone there to help as you think about your problem, and bring a different perspective to illuminate aspects you might have missed.
This is a good time to brainstorm, meaning to toss around any wild idea that comes to mind about what’s happening and why, and then try it on to see whether it seems to have any merit. Trying to exaggerate, get creative, and make things outrageous to the point of silliness (without judging yourself) brings in an element of fun, which helps you to remember this is not the only thing in your life, and it may be possible to change things for the better.
2. Hopefully, you now have some clarity about what you know. If this is a case where you know exactly what the problem is and have some ideas about how change it, but you feel a lack of confidence or an unwillingness to try your best options, skip to #3. On the other hand, if you still feel thoroughly confused, it’s now time to find an expert. You can run an online search for information about your problem and see who has experience with this, and who’s offering information about it. You can visit a library or bookstore and see what information is available there. You could find a support group for people with a similar problem, and see if anyone there has valuable insight for you. You could talk to a coach or psychologist or religious counselor, depending on the nature of your issue, and see whether that helps you to gain clarity about your options. Once you have a better idea of how others have dealt with your issue, you should have some ideas about possible steps to take.
3. If the thought of taking any of the steps that would be part of your best ideas makes you want to have a meltdown, you need to go back to physical needs (do you need hydration or nutrition, sleep, exercise, stretching, or other attention to your physical body?) You don’t have to be in perfect condition to move forward, but if any of those physical needs is very loud, you’ll do better to address it first so you’re not distracted. Once those are taken care of, it’s time to look at your emotional state.
How you feel is a powerful indicator of other factors that might hold you back if not given some air time. You can want to make progress all you want with your mind, but if some part of you is afraid to because of previous experiences or outsized worries, you’re going to have a hard time getting anywhere. We’re so often taught by well-meaning mentors that we must ignore and power through fears and other emotions, but I find that emotions are often there for good reason. They may hold important information that can help us understand how to proceed in the most efficient way for our unique needs.
This is where the use of EFT can really save the day. If emotions come up when you consider taking some reasonable step toward a solution, Tapping can help you to get clear on why you feel the way you do; it can then help you to release the fear or other emotion that is keeping you feeling stuck. I’m not suggesting that this is a one-time endeavor, because change is often difficult, demanding, and scary. Emotional management is a crucial component in maintaining motivation and effective action at all times. A persistent fear, for instance, might be difficult or impossible to completely remove from your experience, but having a tool like EFT makes it much easier to keep coming back to a calm, more resourceful state; with it, you can take useful messages from your emotions and settle them with reassurance rather than ignoring or trying to dominate them out of existence.
4. Take action on some of those good ideas you came up with in other steps. There’s no substitute for experience and the feedback it results in. Keep reminding yourself that any change requires practice; your new action may not be a comfortable tool to use at will until you’ve experimented with it numerous times. You will probably make mistakes, or find some of the shortcomings of your new policy, and you will need to start back at #1 with anything that doesn’t work for reasons you can’t quite make out.
Then, rinse and repeat. Your life is unique, and solutions that are right for you may not be such that you can copy them directly from others. It may take a lot of experimentation and refinement to find what works best for you. That’s normal and ok. Only you can decide how to best be yourself! You get to choose how to express who you want to be in every moment, and that’s a privilege. It’s one of the exciting things about being alive. The willingness to concentrate on and truly observe your own life and experience makes understanding and innovation possible. If you want a life that is more to your liking, getting there must involve focus and observation—bringing your desires into being requires that you first notice what is true for you and what you want. While not everything can be solved with the mind, it is our best tool for beginning the process of appropriate and fulfilling change. I challenge you to start paying attention to what you’re not enjoying in life, and activate the power of your curiosity.
Girl Power!
“Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.”
I have a beef with a lot of the language I hear out there in the motivation and personal development arenas. There are many wonderful teachers giving their all and providing excellent information. However, too often I find the available advice to be heavily skewed toward that which boils down to exhortations to students to man up, stop whining, and just do it, whatever the "it" of the moment may be.
We all have access to both masculine and feminine energy and wisdom, but because the past two thousand years or so have been a time of dominance of masculine energy, experience, and thinking, most of us alive now have all been taught that action and tangible results are what matter in life. The measure of success during this time has been how much wealth one could amass (whether or not one had any plan for actually utilizing it) and how much power and influence one could gain over others. Not to say that the desire to gain rewards is bad or that masculine energy is no good! It can be a very helpful and motivating thing to enjoy achievement, rewards, and the process of earning a place of respect in the world. Masculine energy, and men, have a unique and important viewpoint to contribute that is 50% of the necessary picture. But we've been severely out of balance with the feminine energy side of things, which would vote that rewards not be gained at the expense of others' rights, health, and safety; that wealth be used to improve daily life for self and community rather than being endlessly hoarded as a symbol of self-importance; that those who are not the most competitive, aggressive high achievers still have inestimable value that may reveal itself through states of being rather than states of doing.
Through my experiences with clients and my own personal work, I have found that the reasons behind the difficulties most people have in creating the success they want generally lie in accumulated pain and in fear, rather than in laziness or weakness. They don't need to be shamed into action, particularly since shame is a poor motivator—it may spur someone to temporary action, but it's likely to leave him more demoralized than when he started once any challenge appears to block his wave of progress. We don't need to be whipped into a panicked frenzy about how little time we have to spend on this planet through rallying cries like, "You can sleep when you're dead!" Instead, we need to learn motivation techniques that are self-perpetuating, those that have a tendency to build momentum over time; such techniques are built around positive feelings like fun, appreciation, and the satisfaction of personal values. If we try to power our dreams and goals on shame or frenzy, we inevitable burn out, because prolonged exposure to these feelings steals energy rather than creating it. A few people may continue to pick themselves up and keep going through cycles of ultra-high activity and demoralizing crashes, but for most people, the extreme swings that mark the reality of this paradigm are not helpful or productive.
In pursuing what you truly want, here's what I suggest to help you bring the power of the feminine viewpoint into play:
· When envisioning a goal, start with the ideal, whether or not it seems attainable. Then, work forward from where you are now and backward from where you want to be to come up with a sequence of steps to get there. This is essential work, but also, know that the roadmap you're creating is just a draft that you're likely to revise many times unless the goal is very simple. Avoid becoming rigid about adhering to your plan, and attempt to remain open and curious. Curiosity is an aspect of feminine energy.
· Keep in mind that even a master in a given field doesn't know everything, and must constantly adjust plans in order to stay on course as life throws curveballs. Get used to the idea that flexibility is an absolutely necessary life skill, and challenge yourself to build this capacity little bits at a time. For example, you might want to rehearse a sequence of supportive thoughts that you can bring to bear when something unexpected happens. Then, when you’re interrupted or required to reconsider your course, you have that thought string to fall back on to help you remember that this is not a disaster. Compassion for the self and others is a gift of feminine energy.
· Make space for your intuition, by which I mean the mysterious gifts of your unconscious mind's workings, your connection with and experiences with others, and your connection with the divine if that's something you believe in. This is a huge area, but one worth investing in in whatever way you are inspired to do so. Many of the world's most creative and prolific artists and inventors have powered their plans with ideas that seem to flow to them effortlessly in odd moments. We can all learn to be more open to such processes. Intuition is one of the superpowers of the feminine, and we can all learn to make use of it.
· Make sure you think about how your values underlie the goals you pursue. If your goal is not truly an expression of your highest values, achieving it will be unsatisfying. Take time to really listen to what’s in your heart about what brings you joy. Creating harmony with the self, as well as with others, is a feminine-energy strength.
· As long as you take time to celebrate and feel good about your small victories, making progress can and should be fun. Most people almost never stop and appreciate what has gone well and the small achievements they’ve made within a larger process. In failing to do so, they leave a huge source of daily happiness and renewal on the table. If you’re not having fun, you need to focus more on why you want to achieve your goal, and how great it will feel when you do. It’s fine to acknowledge that you’re not sure how you’re going to find your way to success, but then it’s time to get off that topic and get back to feeling great about where you’ve decided to go. This greatly contributes to the creation of positive motivation and energy, and should be part of your daily routine. Fun and playfulness are some of feminine energy’s greatest strengths.
· If you feel stuck, it may be because you’re struggling with one of your emotions; try actually allowing yourself to be open to any messages that the emotion has for you. Even the most unpleasant emotions have wisdom to offer if we’re willing to listen for it. Talk out or write down what you’re feeling. You may uncover something that you’ve been afraid to admit, but is your truth at the moment. If you try to sweep all your emotions under the rug, you’re wasting a lot of energy, because it takes effort to keep them under there. If you let them come up and examine them, you get that energy back, and you can apply it to whatever you want. You get even more energy back if you’re willing to actually feel those feelings so they can be released and transformed. Again, ask for help from a professional if you’re stuck. Refusing to acknowledge emotions is not a sign of strength, it’s a sign of fear, and if indulged, it will lead to brittleness and eventual meltdowns. The willingness to confront your personal truths is one of the feminine aspects of courage.
Here are some of the ways in which it's ok to be uncomfortable as you work toward the fruition of your best ideas:
· Say you find that the next step of your roadmap requires that you learn something that's not fun or natural for you. Does this mean that you're on the wrong track? No! It means that you were not born knowing how to do everything that life requires. Welcome to life on planet Earth! It's usually best to get a basic grounding in the skills you need, even if you decide to find or hire help with that skill going forward. You don't have to master every skill, but you need to know enough to be able to supervise or partner with others effectively. Learning something brand new is uncomfortable, but this discomfort is just part of the process of growth. Flexibility is a feminine aspect of power.
· Working toward a big goal can be frightening. You may need to grow into a more expanded, more competent person in order to get to it, and you may wonder if you can, or even should, do this. After all, who will you be then? What will you have to give up? Will you like yourself? Will your loved ones still like you? How will you cope? If you're confronting issues of identity, but your goal is something you really want, don't be afraid to get help from a friend, a psychological professional, or a coach in finding a way through your dilemma. If you don't resolve your conflict, you're likely to encounter resistance from your unconscious mind. This can take the form of all kinds of obstacles, from illness or injury to confusion and lethargy to fears that stop you in your tracks. Your subconscious mind is the more feminine-energy part of your mind. It’s also a much bigger, more influential part of your mind, so you might as well learn to work with it rather than against it.
· You may worry about how your life will change if you do reach your goal. What if people criticize you? What if you get a lot of unwanted attention? Or you might just worry that you won't be able to make it happen at all. Either way, you need a constructive way to deal with worries and fears. There may be past experiences and traumas you need to heal. As usual, I will recommend EFT/Tapping here. It's a fantastic tool for helping you to calm yourself down and regain perspective so that you can go about your business resourcefully. When we act in states of fear, we have less brain power at our disposal, less access to our creativity, and often less physical coordination. When we act from a sense of confidence, we tend to have a much better experience. It’s worth some effort to change your emotional, mental, and physical state before making decisions or putting plans into action. Healing is one of feminine energy’s superpowers.
· You may encounter the negativity and naysaying of others. While this can be hurtful, no one but you has the right to decide what is appropriate, or possible, for you. Even if Negative Nellie has your best interests at heart, she is not the boss of you! Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something when you feel deep down that it's part of your life's purpose to try. Find more positive people to support you, and work on your own resistance to negativity. Rehearse saying something like, "Thank you for caring about me. I'll think about about what you've said." Then proceed to make whatever you believe is the best decision for yourself. People often think they’re protecting us by discouraging us from endeavors that seem dangerous to them, even if their fears are based in their own personal issues that have nothing at all to do with you. It’s up to you to decide what’s worth your time and effort. Feminine energy can be stubborn, and this can be a good thing!
· Making mistakes and failing at attempts feels bad. It won't generally kill you, though, and through these experiences, we often learn the most valuable lessons about how to get where we want to go in ways that we won't ever forget. Take the time to review what went wrong, talk it over with someone you respect, and put your new awareness to use going forward. The more comfortable you become with the idea that you will sometimes fail, the less likely you'll be to freak out and quit—and the more you'll learn over time. You'll also end up with terrific stories, which will make you a more entertaining human being. Everyone wins! Being able to laugh at oneself and the absurdities of life is another aspect of feminine power.
I hope you can now see that the more feminine-energy parts of you that may resist forward motion have valuable gifts to offer you if you pay attention, instead of trying to trample them under a stampede of frenzied, oblivious action. By all means, get inspired by the ideas of making great contributions and reaping spectacular rewards, but please don't allow anyone to convince you that you should ignore 50% of your own available wisdom. When you’re uncomfortable, allow yourself to pay attention to what’s going on, and write it out or verbalize it so you can decide whether there’s an important message in your resistance. Even if not, it’s best to find a way to care for the resistant parts of you rather than forcing yourself to soldier on despite your discomfort. Fear is a part of life, but there are things you can do to dial it down in a loving, compassionate way and get out of the fearful perspective without self-judgment. Once you do, you’ll be more likely to succeed and more able to enjoy the journey to everything you want. What’s stopping you from making the progress you want? Go ahead, write it down and see if there’s a helpful message in there for you!
Mr./Ms. Independence
“Independence is happiness.”
Following Maslowe’s breadcrumbs, we’ve now arrived at the area of needs related to esteem. Now that we’ve taken care of basic physiological needs, safety, and love and belongingness needs, he postulates that we will become interested in seeing our sense of self-worth reflected back to us from the world around us. One of the achievements we long to feel that we’ve earned is independence, which allows us to know our own strength and our ability to stand alone. While few of us prefer to feel that we must remain alone, being confident that we can handle what comes up in life is an important part of feeling like a competent, whole adult. If it seems that we must always be relying on the support of others to make our lives run, the human spirit within has a tendency to resent the lack of freedom—even if it is we ourselves who refuse to do what is necessary to move toward independence.
When we have done the work to feel self-reliant, the confidence that results can form the basis of endless avenues of growth. Being reasonably sure that we can produce results that consistently avoid complete disaster, we become willing to take some risks, learn by doing, take on adventures that challenge our limits. People who have fulfilling lives have usually acclimated themselves to stretching beyond their comfort zones to some extent in following their desires and goals; this helps to keep life interesting by refreshing our perspective and encouraging creativity. Desire and creativity are natural hallmarks of humanity. If harnessed toward worthy goals, they are the most potent fuels we have behind our journey toward self-actualization, the highest level in Maslowe’s concept of personal evolution.
If we lack the confidence in our own competence and ability to rely on ourselves, we will find it very difficult to get anything done. Nothing kills enthusiasm like the conviction that our efforts are doomed before we’ve even started! The enjoyable journey toward something we’d really love to create becomes incredibly arduous, if not impossible, if we think it’s impossible to arrive. If procrastination is something you struggle with, you’ve likely skipped some steps in the process of building your sense of independence. If you take a look at what’s missing, you may find that filling in the gaps is just a matter of giving yourself a break from blame and worst-case scenarios, realizing that you just need some practice, and devising a simple plan to get it. If your confidence in yourself is very low, you may need to start very small and work up incrementally, which is fine. Whatever works to move you forward is worth doing; since it’s natural for us to have desires and use our creativity, feeling stuck in a rut is never going to be enjoyable.
The growth of independence is a natural part of human development, and most of us do gain some before adulthood. Children who are loved, supported, and encouraged by their parents to challenge themselves appropriately throughout childhood will naturally build confidence in their abilities. However, there are some obvious things that can go wrong, for instance: If a parent is overprotective, the child may not be allowed to be challenged enough; if too dominant, the child may not be allowed the space to develop her own judgment and opinions; if not loving and supportive enough, the child may never feel safe enough to accept a challenge and try it on, as the idea of failure can seem disastrous if you don’t have anywhere to land; if too demanding, the child may feel that they have far too much to do already without adding elective risk in pursuit of a personal goal.
If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you may need to imagine a parent for yourself that you didn’t have. What would the most skilled, loving parent advise you to do in order to build your own skills and confidence? When you look back, what do you wish your parents had done (and not done) in helping you to gain independence? Most of us can come up with some answers here without too much difficulty. Chances are, you’ve thought many times in your life when considering your family, “Why couldn’t they have just…” Once you have some ideas, you can use that imaginary parent as inspiration, brainstorm yourself about what you think would help you, or ask a friend you trust to help you come up with a few small steps you could take to get used to taking manageable risks toward something you want.
If you had the overprotective variety of parent, you may need to just practice taking risks at all, of any kind, like asking a stranger for the time, or taking a slightly different route to a familiar destination. If you had the dominant parent, you might want to start writing in a journal about what you think, and what went well each day, as well as what didn’t and what you might do better next time so that you can develop your own voice. If your parent wasn’t loving and supportive enough, then you need to build the habit of being more loving and supportive of yourself, and gather kind and caring people around you so that you can feel that it’s safe to fail here and there, and ok to take time to recover when necessary. If you had a demanding parent, you may need to practice scaling back on busy-ness in order to create space to try some new things, and find ways to combat your judgmental inner voice.
You may also need to find a coach or a cheerleader who will take an interest in your process and share the journey the way the best possible parent for you would have done. It’s also a great idea to get advice from an expert in your area of interest, whether in person or in book or recorded format. This can help shorten your learning curve, which can make this process seem more likely to end in success, and thus, more fun. As you gain experience and understanding, you can become more bold. Keep in mind that most of us grow more quickly and easily by leveraging positive reinforcement—some kind of healthy reward for small victories, whether it’s a bubble bath or a celebratory dinner with those you love. It also helps to share our ups and downs with others in some way. And for many, thinking about ways in which this learning process might help others in the future can make the process more fulfilling.
No matter what childhood you had, chances are you emerged from it feeling like you missed something or other that everyone else seems to have mastered. We often tell ourselves that we’re hopeless, even broken, because of these missing pieces. This is clearly not an approach likely to lead to growth and happiness. If you can isolate an area or two in which your natural development may have been arrested, even small movements forward in those areas can yield significant returns in confidence, because these movements remind us that reaching a distant goal may be possible after all. We need to know that change and growth is possible to feel like we’re really alive. Do yourself the honor of spending just a little time on considering what you need in order to feel more confident and independent, and I think you’ll find that your horizons broaden such that life’s prospect is suddenly much more appealing.