So Much Happier Blog
When the World Breaks Your Heart
“There’s always failure. And there’s always disappointment. And there’s always loss. But the secret is learning from the loss, and realizing that none of those holes are vacuums.”
Tomorrow is Election Day here in the U.S., and on the following day we will know the result of the races so many have been running and working on for well over a year. The time, energy, and money spent on these campaigns amount to a massive investment, and passions are running hot about who the winners will be. Anytime we commit to a goal and pursue it with abandon, we run the risk of being sorely disappointed, and one thing that’s clear from late-breaking polls is that there will be large numbers disappointed in the aftermath of most races. These feelings will only be intensified by the convictions many hold about the dire importance of their candidates’ victories; political policy is one of the things that gets at our most strongly held worldviews about what is right and good.
This blog, then, is for everyone who will be disappointed in some way on November 9th, but also for anyone who has worked for a deeply significant goal of any sort, only to miss the mark in a heartbreaking letdown. No one can escape moments of disappointment and loss in life—this is part of what it is to be human—so how do we cope and regroup on the other side of such loss?
Before I address this question, let’s take a moment for a side trip to review some relevant principles found in many traditions of thought:
· Nothing that happens to us has only a single possible interpretation. We get to decide what the events in our lives mean. This truth gives us the opportunity to learn, grow, and become empowered by everything we experience if we so choose
· Even if you don’t believe that things happen for a reason, your choices about how to react to life events can allow all experience to serve your own and others’ highest good
· In the face of difficult, even awful, events, we can uphold what is best about humanity just because that is the kind of person we choose to be. We only have the power to govern our own actions, so that is where we can most effectively focus our efforts
· On a planet that now sustains billions of people, and more every day, we cannot avoid other people, or the natural differences of opinion that result from the interaction of billions of unique viewpoints. Cultivating compassion for others means challenging ourselves to appreciate our common humanity even when our differences irritate us
· The vast majority of people are basically after all the same things: A safe, peaceful environment and the prosperity to take care of their families so that they can enjoy long, happy lives
· People who are violent, selfish, and fearful are not happy, healthy people. (People who feel loved, safe, and secure, and who are able to receive necessary health care in the case of serious imbalance, do not behave this way.) Such people deserve our compassion and help, at the same time that everyone else deserves to be protected from their violence
· Nothing is permanent. In order to live a happy life, it helps to work on the ability to let go of rigidity about what should happen at any given moment; instead, we can strive to maintain a sense of humor, being present in the here and now, and appreciating what is good already even when our eyes are on an attractive goal
Now, on to our question. When the battering ram of a major disappointment knocks us down, we’re likely to confront a wash of emotions, including confusion, anger, sadness, and possibly jealousy or resentment, among others. Because we’re not generally taught how to process emotions, sometimes the best we know how to do is to stew in those emotions until the intensity subsides a bit and we’re better able to sweep them under the rug. They’re then hidden, but still gnaw at our faith and sense of self for as long as they remain undealt with. We then jump to mental decisions about what our experience means, and these are likely to follow what we learned by observing family members’ thinking patterns. You may do this without even noticing, thinking that the interpretation is obvious, whether that’s “The world is going to hell in a handbasket,” or “Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid and corrupt and ruining everything,” or simply, “I can never get what I want.” It’s normal to experience disappointment sometimes and have difficulty reimagining life without the hoped-for results. However, if we don’t make an effort to be conscious and constructive with our thinking about what happened, we’re likely to spiral downward into the swamp of those hidden feelings every time the subject comes up again.
Feelings follow thought, so if you want to feel better about something, part of doing so is elevating your mental game. Challenging yourself to find the good that has, or might, come out of an upsetting loss can make space for awareness of new potential paths that will both honor and build on your experience. When you find yourself mentally harping on the negative aspects of the situation, mistakes you made, ways in which you feel you were victimized, work to redirect your thinking to how going through that made you stronger or deeper, and make note of the ways in which that remains difficult. You may need to talk through things with a friend, or find a book about someone who endured disappointment to become someone you admire, in order to find new ways to mentally frame your experience. Unlearning old mental habits takes time and effort, so don’t be surprised if it’s harder than it seems like it should be. There’s a lot of great work being done on positive thinking, but don’t misunderstand—this is not all we have to do to work out of disappointment. It’s not a replacement for feeling, expressing, and allowing the transformation of your emotions.
The emotional side of things is where I see a lot less work being done and made available to others, but it’s absolutely essential to our health and well being, as well as our ability to return to effectiveness in everything we do. If we don’t deal with the lingering emotional effects of disappointment, it’s all too easy to let them fester and shape our sense of identity. So here’s a process for clearing out old emotional stuff that isn’t serving you:
· As mentioned above, first you give yourself license to feel it. We’re so often taught through the words and actions of others that emotions are weak, useless impediments to be steamrolled so that we can live life on our own terms. I find this to be horribly inaccurate, and dangerous in the long term, as repressed emotions have very real effects on our health. Feeling uncomfortable emotions is not the point, but it is a necessary step in the process. Emotions have messages for you that will help you, but you have to buck common thinking and be willing to tune into them in order to receive and leverage those messages.
· Next, you need to express your emotions. I find that the most helpful way to do this is by speaking out what you feel while Tapping. Doing so helps your body to relax and let go of the stressful effects of difficult emotions until they’re far less bothersome. Expression while Tapping also helps to enable new insights and thinking that will be more helpful. It can greatly accelerate your ability to let go of those old negative thought loops that are otherwise extremely difficult to disrupt.
· Lastly, you need to reach for a willingness to allow change. Even if you’re not sure how it could come about, just the openness to finding comfort and positive transformation will allow your body and emotional system to continue to release old, stuck impediments and poor thinking patterns, particularly if you continue to use EFT throughout this part of the process.
All of this can sound pretty foreign in the beginning, but with a little practice it becomes such a relief to be able to actually admit and transform how you feel, and free up your thinking so you can make real progress. Disappointment and loss need not define how you think of yourself or what you can achieve in the future. There is actually a process you can follow that will lead you upward and onward toward better things. You can learn to work with and customize it until it works well for your unique needs. Periodic heartbreak at disappointment is something you may continue to experience throughout your life, since there will always be injustice, mistakes, accidents, and clashes. Learning to honor and eventually transform it can make you a better, more compassionate, more sane human being.
Since we started within the context of political elections, I’ll round back with a few parting thoughts for when your disappointment is a matter of a goal missed or postponed (though of course these apply beyond the political sphere as well). It’s fine to want what you want, but let’s recall that no one can know everything, or clearly see all the future effects of any event; it’s helpful to have the humility to acknowledge that your interpretation of what’s best for the world is just that—an interpretation. Of course you’re important! You’re also one of billions of people on this planet. Sometimes your ego is going to want to be able to dominate the whole world, but I’m pretty sure that’s never going to happen, so let’s maybe try to have a sense of humor about that! Even the most famous historical figures never commanded absolutely everything in creation, and there’s more competition now than ever before! On the upside, though, there’s also more cooperation than ever before, and exciting possibilities for future solutions in which you can take part. Give yourself some time to recover, address your thinking and your emotions, and you can find a new path forward to pursue whatever excites your interest next. A world of opportunity will be waiting for you when you’re ready to rejoin it.
The Parade Approaches
“I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up—they have no holidays.”
It’s November 1st, and we might as well acknowledge that the holiday season is upon us, love it or hate it! Many of the world’s most prominent religions celebrate important holidays in the course of the next two months, and while this means something different to each of us, there are commonalities. We’re likely to be busier than usual with social engagements. We may travel to be with loved ones at the most traffic-jammed times. We may be planning to host festivities, and be preparing for both fun and lots of unusual tasks and people underfoot. We may be feeling trepidation about spending time with people who we don’t really enjoy. Dreading seeing (or being!) that crazy uncle, or difficult memories from prior years. Most families, and groups of friends, experience plenty of love and fun, and also inevitable complexity. It’s a mixed bag of joy and obligation. Strap in. It’s on!
If you love it, you still need to remind yourself to take time to breathe, rest, and rejuvenate periodically throughout the coming weeks. As the calendar year draws to a close, it’s a natural time to start reflecting on what happened this year and start envisioning what we might like to work toward and experience in the new year. Don’t miss this moment, this opportunity. If there’s no contemplation at this time, you’re more likely to ring in the new year with a scattered, frantic, overstressed desire to turn back to and turn up the volume on your routine and your own personal priorities, and this can escalate into poorly chosen New Year’s resolutions; if we try to legislate ourselves into unrealistic changes, we end up disappointed and demoralized. I think it’s a much better policy to make resolutions throughout the year as needed—when we’re in a calm, centered state and we can choose sustainable plans that support our deepest desires and purpose. But if you must jump on the resolution bandwagon in January, you’ll do a much better job of it if you allowed yourself some room to breathe and reflect in November and December.
In order to really be present and drink in the enjoyment of the moments with loved ones that we’ll be given, that same allowance of breath and self-care is important. If you’re going like a speeding Mack truck for months at a time, running on too little sleep and no personal downtime, you’re more likely to resent what you give to others, and more likely to be a little irritable all throughout. If you’re not getting in a few workouts per week of whatever variety works for you, you won’t feel vital and healthy as you pile on the extra busy-ness. Instead, you’ll end up feeling slower, heavier, and you’ll likely have a harder time managing stress. If you’re not planning healthy meals among the indulgences, you’ll become nutritionally depleted to some extent, which will impact your stamina for the worse. If you’re giving no thought to your internal world, you’re likely to let your own needs go for too long before you tune in and rebalance, and it’s when we’re out of balance that we’re more vulnerable to getting hit with colds or the flu. You can’t party if you’re coughing and sneezing up a storm! To keep yourself in the game, start thinking now about how you can reserve at least some time every week for catching up on your own rest and other physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.
If you tend not to enjoy this time of year, now’s the time to give some thought to why that is. Make sure you’re clear about the factors in play and see if you can proactively address at least some of them in a new way.
· If you tend to overschedule yourself, block out time every week that’s for your relaxation and catching up on things so you don’t have to feel so overwhelmed, and don’t compromise it!
· Build in time doing, watching, or listening to things that make you laugh. This helps in regaining perspective, plus it’s really good for you!
· If you like to give gifts but tend to procrastinate and make yourself miserable, put time on your calendar starting now so you can spread this out over time and enjoy it more.
· If there’s someone you dread seeing, enlist the help of someone else who knows how you feel, and brainstorm about how you might improve the encounter. Ask for help from someone who might be willing to run interference, for instance. Read up on ways to communicate more effectively. Don’t just tell yourself that nothing can be done! You might find ways to make everyone more comfortable so that more good times can be had by all.
· If you tend to feel down at this time of year because of unhappy memories, or the anniversary of a sad event, plan ways to honor how you feel, and again, get help if you need it. There are lots of people who have this kind of experience at this time of year; those people can understand much of what you’re going through. You don’t have to go it alone, and that’s not a healthy thing to try to do. Seek the help of a professional or find a support group or a friend who can listen when you need some caring attention.
· EFT/Tapping can be a great help in getting your true feelings up and out in a productive way, and in restoring your calm as challenges come up. If you haven’t taken the time to learn the basics, now is a great time to do it! Don’t wait until you desperately need it to get comfortable with this simple yet very powerful tool.
Perhaps you’ve noticed I’m suggesting that you work to become conscious of where the pitfalls are, and map a route around or over them rather than just allowing them to take over again this season, whatever they may be for you. Sometimes it takes time to improve your experience, but if you just keep inching forward, it can be done.
There are wonderful opportunities for enjoyment and fulfillment during this season. Take some time before things kick into high gear to look around and remember what tends to go wrong and plan for the things you’d like to go right. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan, but why not give yourself an advantage and see what happens? Time with family and friends is precious, and it deserves the same kind of care and attention we would give to any important goal or endeavor. When you turn your conscious attention on something and pursue it with clear intent, chances are you will improve it. I’ll be cheering you on! I wish you happiness in all your holiday festivities and solemnities, and I hope that the remainder of 2016 is filled with blessings for you and those you love.
A Small Light in Darkness
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
In a previous blog, I wrote about the importance of basic meditation as a foundational tool, and the balancing effect of having a regular, deep experience of quiet and focus. Now I want to move on to one of the practical uses of this tool: Leveraging your intuition.
Now, before you decide that this is a “woo woo,” impractical concept, give me a moment to illustrate one of the ways in which your intuition can make a positive difference in your life. Every day in my coaching, as I use EFT (meridian tapping), my clients and I are often struck, and sometimes astonished, by the useful information that surfaces from unseen depths of the self. This is particularly noticeable in cases where we’re working on physical pain that we suspect or know has an emotional component. If the client has any experience at all with meditation, it’s usually not hard for her to ask a leading question of herself and wait quietly and calmly for an answer. That question might be something like, “What is the upside to having this problem, in other words, why might I be afraid to let it go?” While the client’s conscious mind might be certain that she is ready, willing and eager to move beyond the problem, given a few moments of quiet and space, some other part of the self may answer that the problem is a part of her identity, and she’s not sure who she would be without it. Other objections that surface might be that once the problem is gone, there’s no excuse for not being successful, and that might feel like a lot of pressure, or that if the client lets go of the problem and is able to succeed, others might not like her anymore. Often, when such an answer reveals itself, she will say that she truly had no idea that this objection was in there. With the new information on our side, we can make progress for her. Without her ability to find quiet, that little voice would have been impossible to hear. Usually once we start working with the new information, the pain will move, change, and lessen, sometimes permanently. This process is just remarkable to be a part of. But if the mind is always whirring like a hamster on a wheel, it will be harder to bring these natural moments of insight to the surface where we can leverage them for real, noticeable change.
Some people seem to be born with more intuitive talent than others, and some people are sure that they don’t have this capacity at all. I think it’s possible for everyone to have a valuable relationship with their intuition, but cultivating that relationship takes some time and effort—just like any relationship, whether we’re talking about one with other people, your body, mind, or spirit. Some other areas in which a relationship with your intuition can bear fruit are your ability to zero in on what you need in any given moment, or what direction will be best for you to take in the pursuit of a goal. Getting more in touch with it can also help you get a clearer “gut feeling” about someone else’s character or intentions, or whether someone you’ve just met has potential as a good friend or business associate for you. What’s difficult about opening up this capacity is that in the beginning, you have no idea whether an impression is right or not, and you’re likely to feel like you’re just making it up. Your conscious mind will try to tell you that only it is valuable, and that your efforts in this regard are ridiculous and futile. It’s only by allowing yourself to relax and wait, acknowledging but then releasing mind chatter, that you have a hope of becoming more adept at sensing something genuinely helpful.
When I’m going for an intuitive answer, I have made it a habit to stop when I feel unsure if my logical mind is making things up, clear thought away, and try again. If the impression really came from my intuition and not my mind’s machinations, it will come back in a similar way a second and even a third time, and I gain confidence that this idea might be helpful enough to run with. It’s fine to apply your mind to the question of how to use that information, and it’s a great idea to keep your wits about you as you choose how much to invest in it, especially in the beginning. This is not an exact science, and it’s always good to have a backup plan! As you keep playing with this process, you may find yourself gaining confidence in your relationship with the less conscious parts of yourself. I can tell you from experience that they have a lot to offer.
If you want to get started on opening up that intuitive box, experimenting with Tapping really is a great way to start. For instance, if there’s something you’ve been resisting tackling, you might not be sure why you keep finding reasons to procrastinate. If you start tapping and state how you’re feeling, how you just don’t want to do that thing even if your own inaction is starting to frustrate you, and then ask yourself why you don’t want to do it, you might be surprised as the clarity that results. The tapping will probably increase your ability to focus and be patient, and wait for any answer that might come up. If nothing does, well, no loss! You’ve just spent some time doing something that calms the body’s stress response and increases the likelihood that you’ll get a good night’s sleep! If you do this for just a few minutes each day, I strongly suspect that you will have an experience before too long that will prove to you that this Tapping thing really does do something. As mentioned last week, if you stay focused on your intention to improve the flow of your intuition and just keep trying without pressuring yourself too much, you increase the likelihood of success, as well as your ability to notice it when it happens.
Once you start to build some confidence in your ability to intuit information that is personal to you, you can then move on to greater orders of magnitude (for most people, at least), such as sensing information about subjects less related to you. I do find that we all have different intuitive propensities, just as some people find that they’re better at math or learning languages rather than learning about history once they start delving into those subjects in school. Some find it naturally easy to understand what someone else is feeling, while others might find that they can sometimes get a sense for who is calling on the phone without consulting caller ID. This can be a fun area to experiment in. Again, just use your common sense and tread lightly in relying too heavily on this kind of information. It’s only one aspect of the sum total of all information available to you in any given moment.
I hope you are able to see how even just this one benefit of a meditation practice can contribute measurably to your progress, even if only in very specific pursuits like using EFT. Sometimes people don’t make an effort to learn to meditate because the benefits don’t seem immediately practical, but what if your practice could lead to letting go of even some of a physical discomfort you might have? What if it could help you become more confident in the life choices you make for yourself every day? Getting started with meditation may not be the easiest thing you’ve ever done, but you can start small with just a few minutes here and there and still make overall gains. I know I’m never sorry that I’ve spent time on this because of all the ways in which it contributes to my life positively. There are many different philosophies and techniques out there. Dig around and find one that makes some sense to you and give it a try. Even if you never become more than a casual meditator, there are benefits waiting for you.
The Enigmatic Turbo Boost
“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
Last week we considered a systematic, structured approach to planning out strategies for change in your life. Using a template like that one can be extremely helpful to keep you on track. Doing so also helps to remind you that it’s normal for change to be a process that requires a continuing loop of thought, work, and experience—most of us don’t have a functioning magic wand to make change instant and effortless, unfortunately! However, there’s also another side to this coin…a more feminine-energy aspect of the change process as I see it, and that’s intent.
Just deciding that you’re going to do something and holding the intent as you go about the business of the structured approach opens you to unpredictable leaps of insight that might not favor you otherwise. Inventors and artists often say that the idea just appears, or the story tells itself. In order to benefit from this kind of serendipity, it’s important to pose a request to the unconscious parts of yourself (in which you could also include your connection to a higher power if that makes sense to you) to send you answers your conscious mind might not find. I call that request intent. It really does have a power that’s hard to describe because the experiences it creates are not structured or linear, but more like the capricious comings and goings of a bird in the night.
Here’s the process I recommend:
· Once you’ve gained some clarity using the more structured approach, define the problem you wish to solve as specifically as you can. Use positive language, as in, “I intend to come up with an idea/find information that will help me to become well easily and in an enjoyable way” rather than “I don’t want to be in pain.”
· Even if you have absolutely no idea how this could happen or doubt that it could, be open to finding a solution. Invoking an open state allows help to arrive in ways that can be surprising.
· Be willing to be a little stupid while you wait. In other words, refuse to worry about how inspiration might strike, and ignore anyone who tries to tell you that a solution is impossible. I personally know some people who have done “the impossible,” and there are plenty of people you can read about who have too. Sometimes finding what you need just takes some time.
· Know that the subconscious deals in the language of symbol. Some people find it useful to keep a pad of paper by the bed at night in case they have a dream that seems meaningful, or some interesting idea that might be helpful. You might think you’ll remember it in the morning, but often you won’t if you don’t write it down.
· Be on the lookout, in a relaxed way, for anything you come into contact with in daily life that might apply to your problem. Keeping your intent in mind can do wonders to help you notice things you otherwise wouldn’t—an overheard conversation, an advertisement, a passage from a book that sparks an insight you can use to move forward.
· Holding your intent in mind also helps you to focus on what you want to move toward rather than the thing you don’t want. For most people, this feels a lot better and helps in maintaining openness to possibility. That’s more productive than dogged pessimism that can result when you harp mentally on the problem. That tends to drain people’s energy and creativity in a hurry.
· When you think about reaching a solution, enjoy the vision of how that will be, how it will feel, and what it will enable you to do. This helps to make the end result seem more real and keep you excited about the prospect as you wait.
· It’s also a good idea to share your intent with others you can rely on to be supportive. Those others can then keep an eye out with you, and may become the source of new information and ideas you wouldn’t have come across yourself.
· Avoid sharing your intent with anyone who might not be supportive.
· Take moments throughout the day to be grateful for what is good in your life already, and for solutions you’ve already found that were a big help in reaching a goal or a milestone.
While you don’t have to become a single-minded, obsessed weirdo about this, I do recommend that you bring your intent back to mind several times per day. Otherwise it’s easy to become busy and forget all about it for days or weeks at a time, and then you’re losing all the benefits you might have enjoyed with a bit more focus. And don’t worry if all of this seems a little awkward at first. It may take you some time to become comfortable with the idea of focusing on an intent that might seem unlikely; your mind may tell you that there’s no point, but the mind is not in control of all things. Working with your intent is not a substitute for structure and strategic action, but it can be a real boost to a process you’ve begun to move your life forward. Try it out and see what happens. You just might find that interesting experiences are set in motion in ways you couldn’t have predicted. Structure and intent together form a synergistic whole that you might find to be a new adventure in the pursuit of your ideal.
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.
Silence Is Golden
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
Even if you’ve never meditated, you’ve probably heard that one of the benefits of many kinds of meditation practice is supposed to be a quieter mind. Since most cultures today place great value on the use of the mind, the benefits of a quiet mind can seem mysterious. Use it or lose it, right? Aren’t we supposed to be exercising our minds in order to stretch their capacities and keep them nimble? Well, just as our bodies need both weight-bearing exercise, cardio, stretching, AND rest in order to function at peak capacity, our minds need various kinds of use and rest in order to provide us with the capacities we want from them.
Modern life is so hectic, demanding, and distracting that we don’t generally get much time for silence and reflection. This leaves is with a mind that is mostly running at high speed all the time. With a mind so busily engaged, it’s harder to notice the patterns that are running on autopilot, keeping us stuck in ruts that we never seem to be able to break out of for reasons that elude us. When we put ourselves into a situation where nothing is required of us, and practice meditation with the aim of quieting the mind, we allow the mind to rest a bit; by the way, this in turn allows the body’s stress response to calm down, which is great for physical health—a bonus side effect! While it definitely takes practice to make progress in disengaging from normal patterns of thought, so that benefits may not be immediately felt, over time, it’s possible to build familiarity with new mind states. This familiarity makes it easier to take them with you, or recreate them when you’re experiencing something difficult, so that you can function more smoothly throughout your life. A hyper mind isn’t necessarily a resourceful mind, just as a chronically tense muscle isn’t always useful—it needs to be able to relax and stretch in order to do everything it’s meant to do.
When you’re meditating for the ability to quiet the mind, there are numerous benefits that I know I immediately experience, and you may as well, such as:
· As I head toward greater quiet, my mind will usually chime in a few times to reveal things I need to do or remember, which is legitimately helpful. I can make note of these and continue the process. Without giving myself a few minutes of quiet, I would not have remembered these, and opportunities would have been lost.
· As my mind slows down, I become more aware of my body, and anything about it that I need to address.
· I start to notice more about what is really going on with me, how I really feel about things that have been going on recently in my life. I begin to feel more like myself and less like someone just running around at the behest of every distracting thing I encounter every day.
· I begin to feel that there’s more time available to me than I would otherwise.
· I begin to feel calmer, more at peace, and more powerfully able to define what’s important and where I will choose to put my energy and focus.
· I feel more in touch with my intuition.
· My body feels more pleasantly calm and peaceful.
· I feel like my to do list falls away and I’m able to recognize the goodness of just being alive, which at this point is much more a feeling than a thought.
Once you’ve practiced an expanded state of mental quiet, there are many other meditation techniques to pursue depending on what you want, but being able to create that quiet space is a foundational skill without which only certain kinds of progress can be made. This state also becomes something you can remind yourself to revert to when you find yourself getting hyper for any reason. It can immediately help you to regain helpful perspective on the ways in which you may have been contributing to your own stress. Bringing a greater sense of calm to challenge allows you to stay more creative, less reactive, and more reasonable. You’re then more likely to be able to solve problems and work well with others, which makes you less likely to spend your time feeling stuck and confused.
In a seemingly unlikely way, spending time creating mental quiet leads to greater focus and energy, which can make it seem like you have more time rather than having lost it in the pursuit. Even if you don’t think you can spend more than a few minutes practicing, you can still benefit from the attempt to create a few minutes of internal quiet throughout your day here and there. I highly recommend making this a little game that you play with yourself. You may have other mental games you already play, like doing crossword puzzles. This is just another category of game that builds capacity your brain needs to function with excellence.
Gene Pool: Sink or Swim?
“Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”
The unfortunate effects of aging, like lower energy levels, physical discomforts, waistline increase, and grumpiness, are normal. Right? That's what we're told, and it seems like these things are inevitable. After all, older people who manage to avoid the worst of these seem few and far between; we tend to think of them as lucky ducks who inherited gold-standard genes. But recent discoveries are showing us that we actually have far more power to affect our own gene expression than we've been taught. Bruce Lipton’s book, The Biology of Belief, examines how cells function in relation to their environment, and explains how genes are turned on and off by environmental factors; he also touches on how many areas of scientific study, including biology, are woefully behind the times because the discoveries of quantum physics have never been accepted and incorporated into their thinking. The book is a fascinating explanation of how much power we have to affect the way our bodies function, and about how much of the body’s functioning happens at the non-material, energetic level. Dr. Lipton is one of the pioneers of the new field of epigenetics, which delves into the mechanisms behind how environment (everything but gene sequence) affects physical functions. Dawson Church’s Genie in Your Genes is also chock-full of interesting data about how our environments and actions affect life span and quality of life. For example, he writes that according to James W. Vaupel at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, identical twins, who may lead very different lives and develop different habits, die an average of ten years apart! They have the same genes. Environment, physical and mental/emotional, seems to be what makes the difference.
The idea that stress adversely affects our health in myriad ways may be familiar to you. That's been borne out in numerous studies over decades now, and you may have observed in your own life that when you're stressed out and worn down, that's when you're most likely to get sick. I know that this seems to be true for me. Learning to change one’s mindset to better cope with upsets, then, is an obvious way to decrease wear and tear on our bodies. In The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief, Nick Ortner writes about the surprising fact that pain is not an inevitability even when physical condition would suggest it should be, and vice versa: “Studies show that many people whose X-rays reveal a herniated disc have no pain, while others whose X-rays reveal no herniated disc (or any other abnormalities) report excruciating pain.” There is clearly something going on here that’s not purely physical. The placebo effect, which is widely acknowledged in the medical community, allows people to improve in health only because they think they will; the nocebo effect is the opposite, and causes a person to decline in health only because they think they must. I find it heartening knowing that these effects operate with such regularity. That means I have the power to affect my own health with the choices I make every day.
In fact, in my own work, I've found it amazing how lightening the load of one's long-standing emotional buildup can relieve both physical discomforts and the negative beliefs and thought loops that feed dissatisfaction. As we move through life, it's inevitable that we will encounter disappointments and difficulties large and small. If we don't have healthy ways to release the confusion, resentments and bitterness that often result, these will begin to affect us in ways that are profound, but often remain hidden. Tension mounts, whether we are aware of it or not, and I believe that this is a primary cause of the collection of symptoms that we ascribe to the process of aging. When someone uses EFT/Tapping (or other effective techniques that combine physical, emotional, and mental elements) for a physical issue, he can take care of the portion of the cause that may have been emotional in nature, and effects may be noticeable immediately. However, there are also many accounts of people using EFT and finding that it didn't seem to work, only to notice a few days or even weeks later that the problem they addressed with EFT is suddenly gone. When this happens, it seems to me to demonstrate that when we can get ourselves out of the way mentally and emotionally, the body can do its thing and heal itself with much greater efficiency.
I love that there are so many brilliant people now studying the complicated, holistic functioning of the human form, and I enjoy reading about what these people are learning every day. But I still find that what’s most exciting to me is having tools at my fingertips that make it possible for me to make progress of my own each day in a way that’s safe and satisfying. EFT fits that bill for me, helping me to make change toward a calm, peaceful inner life every time I use it, and to leverage a more buoyant perspective over time. While nothing will solve all your problems at once, and there will always be a place for professional medical help and advice, there are many wonderful techniques you can learn to support your health and happiness. I hope knowing that what you think about and how you feel contributes meaningfully to your body’s health as well will inspire you to learn and use some of these helpful techniques sooner rather than later. Old age need not require an inevitable decline. The sooner you build your tool box for supporting your own daily rebalancing, the sooner you can start discovering benefits and building your confidence in your own resourcefulness.
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!
We're Not Gonna Take It!
“Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.”
This week, I’ll be addressing a subject that is right up there with politics and religious debates in its ability to annoy just about everyone: The virtues of patience. Now, before you run screaming and try to pretend you didn’t even read this far, let me assure you that this blog post won’t be about trying to make you feel bad for not having any. I hope it will give you a few new angles from which to consider the concept of patience.
Let’s start by addressing the opposite, which is, I think, far more familiar to most of us leading a typical modern life. Things are hectic and we’re trying to balance so many different parts of life and self all the time. This is demanding and difficult. Here are some specific thoughts on why we tend to spend so much time in some variation of this state:
· With the advent of hyper-connectivity, we are constantly aware of hordes of other people anytime we glance at one of the many screens to which we have access. We can see what millions of other people are thinking, doing, and achieving at the click of just a few buttons. It can seem like others have a lot more of the good stuff in life than we do, at least if their own narratives are to be believed. Those who are at all competitive may feel the need to do more in order to keep up at every turn.
· The world seems a lot more crowded than it used to because of the constant crush of new information. With all the people out there doing things, it seems less likely that what we have have to contribute will be seen, acknowledged, and valued. Before the free flow of information was possible, you could be a major contributor in any market by following rules that had been in place for thousands of years in business interactions. Now the rules have changed almost overnight, and continue to evolve at a rapid pace.
· We need a great deal of flexibility and a willingness to learn constantly in order to succeed now. Until you become comfortable with always being in flux, which may take time to learn, all your discomfort might build up in ways that boil over and stop your momentum until you can regroup.
· The world population is growing at unprecedented rates. If you're paying attention, you notice that there are new and worrisome problems connected with this change for which we don't currently have solutions.
· In many places, there are more people on the roads and riding public transportation than ever before, as well as in lines at supermarkets and other necessary stopping points. It can seem like everything is more difficult and time consuming because of the crowds everywhere you turn.
So what is this mythical thing called patience? There's a cultural idea many of us have inherited that tells us patience is a virtue of the very good, and very boring. Patience is not fiery or exciting, and we're often told that people need to be a hot, brightly burning mess in order to get anything great done. We’re given examples of all the great artists who lived hard and flamed out early. Well, that might be fine if you knew what you were passionate about early in life and had the means to pursue it; on the other hand, what if you'd like to live past the age of 30 and have the option to continue learning and doing new things as you go? You’re going to have to last and be able to keep yourself moving. There will always be ample reasons to be impatient in this fast-paced world, but impatience is not a fun or creative state to be in. Because it destroys our ability to apply ourselves in a focused manner over time, mastering impatience is necessary if we want to achieve anything that requires consistent effort.
I like to think of patience as the ability to wait for glorious results and enjoy the work you need to do all along the way to achieve your goals, avoiding having a meltdown that stops your progress anytime something real or imaginary gets in your way. When I put it this way, it probably sounds pretty reasonable and necessary, right? I think the idea that being a patient person means being either deeply, impossibly good or passionless really needs to go!
Here are a few ideas for increasing your capacity for patience, broken out into the areas of self that is involved. Since most cultures today emphasize the mind, the mental solutions may seem more familiar, but they all work together and should be considered:
Mental solutions:
· Read biographies/autobiographies of people you admire. I guarantee that these will not read, "I was born, and then everything I ever wanted happened without my lifting a finger." Even if the person was born into wealth and privilege, his success was not that simple. This puts you in the good company of others who have worked for what they wanted. It also reminds you of the value of a good story, which is what you will create by staying in the game.
· Contemplate how more people on the planet also means more brain power and creativity available to solve the world’s problems and improve quality of life for everyone. Would you want to go back to a time in which there was a lot of unoccupied land, but no essential services? No dentistry? No emergency medical care? I wouldn’t. No, thanks.
· Remind yourself that reality T.V. tempts us to believe that succeeding overnight with little effort is a viable route to our goals. In fact, most of those featured in these programs have done plenty of work behind the scenes to get where they are, if only the work of promoting themselves—which still counts as work!
· Make an effort to become aware of mental nosedives when you are indulging in them. You don't have to be in a deep meditative trance to notice your own thinking. Let's say you just got your 5th book rejection, and you're frustrated. You might think something like, "This book is going nowhere. I don't know why I bother. No one cares about what I have to say. No one likes me." We all string together thoughts like this sometimes, but it's probably clear to the observer that a few publishers passing on your project has no correlation to whether or not people like you. You actually do have power over what to think about yourself and your life, but first you have to practice noticing your mental habits. Then, you can begin to change them by talking gently to yourself as you would a friend in distress. In the above example, you could say to yourself, "Wait a minute. I have plenty of people in my life who like me, and if not, I can make new friends. I bother because I like writing and know I have something to say." Time to be your own best friend! This is another essential life skill that most people never acquire, but being able to give yourself an effective pep talk can be invaluable when you’re working on challenging projects.
Physical solutions:
· In short, take care of your physical body. Ignoring these needs makes it a lot harder to be patient.
· If you're not sleeping enough, you will be irritable and reactive, and you won't be able to think clearly. There's really no way around it. Find the number of hours that works best for you by experimenting.
· You also need high-quality nutrition in order for your body to function well. Learn about nutrition yourself or get help with a basic plan.
· Regular exercise increases your energy, stamina, and strength and helps manage stress. Find something you like to do to get your body moving.
Emotional solutions:
· Anger is the enemy of patience. Most of us have huge stores of built-up anger caused by a lifetime of incidents, which we've swept under the rug because we've been taught that it's rude and unacceptable to express it. If you want to build your capacity for patience, you're going to have to deal with your anger. While there are lots of suggestions you can find for doing this, in my experience, nothing is as effective as EFT/Tapping for processing old emotions without any destructive side effects. Plus, you can do it yourself anytime, anywhere, for free.
· Other old emotions and traumas may be partly behind those previously mentioned negative thought spirals. You may find that processing old disappointments, humiliations, and other discomforts makes it a lot easier to avoid the nosedives over time, because now those memories aren’t dragging you down every time you’re challenged. Some things you can't just think yourself out of because they’re not purely mental. That’s why modalities with physical and emotional aspects are so important.
Spiritual solutions (these are best when they respect your beliefs and traditions, so you’ll need to find what works best for you):
· Ask for help. You can ask people you know or ask for help from some spiritual force, but the act of being willing to ask and being open to receiving help can be transformative on its own. Sometimes if you can relax a bit, you can find creative insights coming to you that were not available before.
· Acknowledge that you don’t know everything about how things you want could come into being. Everyone has different strengths and talents, and that’s ok. If we work with ours and let others work with theirs, and trust that it can all work out, life is more enjoyable and holds more opportunity. Embrace mystery. Allow blind faith to work in your favor.
· Spend some time every day thinking about things you’re grateful for. This is not about denying what may be wrong in your life or trying to discipline yourself about having negative feelings. It just helps you to remember that those aren’t all your life is about. It helps you look forward to enjoyment that you already have access to. Some people like to write these things down. When you’re in bed going to sleep or just after waking up can be a nice, relaxed time to appreciate what’s good in your life.
Allowing yourself to be more patient doesn’t mean you have to deny that you want things, or that there are things in your life that you don’t like. It’s healthy to learn to dial down your moments of full-on freaking out so you can smooth out your experience of life, exhaust yourself less with needless lows, and make faster progress toward your goals. Don’t be afraid to consider ways to bring more of this virtue to life. If it helps, tell yourself that this means you’re being a rebel in this stressed-out, stretched-thin world. I dare you to start making serenity trendy!
Walking the High Wire
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
With an estimated 7.4 billion people on the planet in 2016, it can seem as though there can be nothing new under the sun, and yet new discoveries are made every day. New songs are written, paintings made, books completed, gizmos prototyped, with every passing day. Humans are a busy lot! This is possible because genetically, there has never been anyone identical to you in history. We’re all intrinsically unique, and with so many moving parts, both concrete and intangible—hopes and desires, likes and dislikes, talents and challenges; physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual progress and happenings. Every day is a kaleidoscope of your interacting elements, which never cease to run through their individual cycles; yet those cycles are all timed differently, and rarely align in the same way because of the complexity of the model. To a certain extent, in trying to maintain our balance with all of our parts, we’re all trying to slog our way across a high wire bucking in a high wind.
One of the great challenges in life is that, because of our uniqueness, no one can create a formula for living that is perfect for more than one person. We can share our wins and losses with each other, and we can offer the wisdom we feel we’ve acquired, but sometimes others won’t even be able to hear the messages we’re sending let alone duplicate our successes and failures. We must all tinker with the models that have been passed down to us if our greatest possible success and happiness is what we’re after. And there’s a sort of catch-22 at play, in that we have to be in a reasonably balanced state in order to make good decisions for ourselves, but without making “good” decisions that suit our needs, it’s hard to find balance. We start by making decisions that others have told us are good, but whether they will suit our uniqueness and get us where we want to go is always the question.
When how we operate, or what we want, is sufficiently different from those around us, whether in one way or in many, we may feel particularly bewildered about what to do. Maintaining some semblance of balance is a lifelong endeavor, and there is no “done,” but it’s even harder when you’re young or when you’re striking out in new directions. Luckily, in this age of information, we have access to guidance from sources well outside our own communities, and that can be incredibly helpful in broadening our horizons. You still have to put advice into practice and try it out for yourself, and you need the patience to do this over time, as every day is different. For instance, sometimes your first attempt at something will be disastrous, but with practice you realize its merit. I once watched a fellow participant in a meditation class, a first-timer, have a full-on meltdown because she was so frightened by the prospect of confronting her internal world in silence. As soon as she tried to do it, she panicked and essentially ran screaming from the exercise. In this case, I don’t know whether she ever tried again, but I do know that many people who initially find meditation to be extremely challenging learn to love some form of it with experimentation and practice. And when I first tried EFT/Tapping, I was not even sure that I felt anything at all, but after several practice sessions, I became more and more astonished with its efficacy and usefulness. I just had to put it into practice and experiment with it for myself.
I wish I had all the answers and could make everything easier for everyone, but that’s a tall order! I’ll just have to offer some ideas here for constructing your own tool kit for navigating your own personal high wire:
· Start simply. Address your physical needs first: Eat the highest-quality food you can get your hands on, including plenty of vegetables and fruits grown with the fewest and least possible pesticides (poison to you and me); avoid refined sugars and other empty calories, in other words those foods lacking in nutrition; aim for 7+ hours of sleep per night, and try adjusting up and down to see what works best for you; get some form of exercise on a regular basis—find a way to move your body and sweat at least a little. These items form the basis of any life lived in some semblance of balance. You can’t skip them, nor can anyone who wants to remain alive in a physical body, so when you’re out of sorts, come back to these first, always.
· Ask yourself what your mental and emotional states are generally like, and spend some time noticing. Find daily practices that support healthy attitudes and emotional expression. I’ve written other blogs on these issues that you may want to check out, but in short, meditate, do affirmations about your values and your intentions, talk to supportive friends and family, write in a journal, read books about people who inspire you, use EFT or hypnosis recordings, attend meetings of like-minded others; adding a spiritual component to any of these is even better, whatever your tradition of choice might be.
· Take a look at the overall shape of your life. Are you doing work you like, are you making enough money to meet your needs, are your relationships supportive and satisfying, are there activities you look forward to experiencing when you wake up in the morning? When you answer no, think about baby steps you could take to move toward situations you’d like better. If you’re stuck, ask for help or find it in a library or online. Choose a small step to make and put your plan in motion. It’s ok if you can’t see the whole path to your destination. Just do something. Every time you make an attempt, you learn and grow.
· Do you feel a sense of purpose in life? If not, it will be hard to stay engaged in life, let alone feel inspired; look for clues in the things you loved to do as a child, in the achievements you feel best about as you think back over your life, and in the kinds of things that move you deeply in movies and books. If you suddenly had all the money in the world, and you had a year off to rest and travel and regroup, what do you think you could do all day and not get tired of? (This can take some serious imagination if you’re someone who has lived with a lot of obligations or who is chronically exhausted, but it can also be a lot of fun, and is worth trying.) You can start with a very basic idea like wanting to “help people,” “motivate others,” or “clean up messes,” and then think about your favorite skills to use to see what might be up your alley. If you love to cook, you might find that helping others could combine with that so that you envision starting a catering company that donates a percentage of meals to those in need. If you feel satisfied by cleaning up messes, and your favorite skills are in information technology, you might be able to work as a consultant to people and companies who need to get organized in the digital space. This can take effort to think through, but having a purpose that feels important and expressive of who you are is an essential component in maintaining your energy levels and your commitment to persisting in the face of difficulty, which we all face every day!
Creating and maintaining good functional balance is never going to be easy, especially in today’s fast-paced world, but if you yearn for a better life, this is unavoidable work. If you can become fascinated with the process of learning about what you need and what is key for you, that is the best solution. If you make some noticeable progress in your overall balance, your success stories will likely drive you as you continue learning and experimenting with new ideas. No one knows you as well as you know you, so trust your hunches, and try not to freak out if something you try goes badly. After all, every day is different. If you try the same thing on a different day, you might find that you get a different result. Keep reminding yourself that this is work that feeds everything you’re able to do and become, and it’s worth a great deal of effort. Over time, your ability to maintain balance will build naturally if you keep at it. Confused? Go back to basics, and as you do this repeatedly, you’ll build helpful habits that make greater flexibility and creativity possible. Celebrate your successes, learn from both success and failure, and just keep inching along that wire.
It's Not You, It's Me
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
In last week’s blog, we looked at how disappointments large and small, sustained over time, can tempt us to take on limiting and destructive beliefs about ourselves and the world. This week I want to focus on a related tendency I’ve observed, equally as problematic and possibly even more pervasive. This is the tendency that many of us have to feel disappointment or frustration, and then turn it quickly and harshly back against ourselves as anger.
In her excellent book Tapping into Wealth, Margaret Lynch includes some great work on how to notice what you’ve decided certain experiences mean about you, who you are and what is possible for you. Uncovering the beliefs about yourself that came about in response to difficult events can be a real eye-opener, because while the beliefs may seem quite familiar when you think about it, you may have no idea where they came from or why they’re there. They probably just seem true, the way things are. Working with these beliefs and reshaping them is a revolutionary experience that can change the entire tenor of your life. However, it’s just as important to look forward and find ways of not forming brand-new limiting beliefs every passing day, and this can be even more tricky. You have to notice how it happens to stop doing it.
I recently had an experience through which I realized very clearly how vicious my self-talk can become when I’m upset or disappointed about something. It wasn’t even triggered by anything all that important, just something that was causing me some garden-variety stress and annoyance that I was tapping about, and I suddenly had a vivid memory of being a young child that seemed connected to the problem at hand. I was probably under ten years old in the memory, and I was so angry and frustrated at myself because there was a skill I was trying to learn that I just could not do correctly yet. All the feelings of frustration, and a seemingly disproportionate sense of rage, as well as feelings of being trapped, welled up. (I never cease to be amazed that such a volume of emotion can be stored and flare with a vengeance when an old memory is triggered, even one you haven’t thought of in years, and that now seems unimportant from an intellectual standpoint!) In this memory, I was just so angry at myself, and I felt that anger in the present as a physical burning sensation all throughout my torso. I remember telling myself that I couldn’t do anything right, and that I’d never learn the new skill because I was just hopeless.
I’m not sure where I got all this, because my parents really tried to encourage us to be positive, persistent, and to put in the work when we were trying to learn something. Who knows? We all get angry and frustrated, and maybe I was just tired and burned out that day. Whatever the reason for the pattern, I recognized this as something I do from time to time internally to this day, and I barely even notice it happening. I generally don’t stop to think about it, and I’ve never seen it so clearly as I did in this memory. I kept tapping on the anger, frustration, and the feeling of being trapped until it all subsided. I was left with a resolve to watch for this habit of thought in the future and work to arrest negative self-talk when I get frustrated by something. I also felt much less concerned with the thing that was contributing to my original stress and annoyance in the present day.
It’s obvious to me in retrospect that when we’re learning new skills, we always have to endure a period of rank incompetence, which really isn’t any fun, but is completely normal. No one is born with skills at, really, anything. Learning is always a process; just because we can’t do something on the first try, that doesn’t mean we’re not able to learn it at all, or that we’re stupid, or useless, or anything else dire. But in the moment, when emotion overtakes us, we’re not thinking logically. We’re far more likely to overreact and decide that our current difficulties “mean” something about us that they don’t actually mean at all. Boy, did I ever do that in that childhood memory! If we can gain clarity about some of the formative experiences that set a negative pattern for us, that creates a path toward undoing them by targeting those experiences with tapping, or NLP, or hypnosis, or some other technique that involves both the memories and a physical element. Techniques that involve the body have proven to be the most successful in creating positive emotional change that sticks.
Next time you find that you’re ranting at yourself when you’re angry or frustrated, ask yourself what this feeling of self-recrimination reminds you of, and think back to the earliest time you can remember feeling something like this. You might be surprised at the answer you get from the old memory banks, and the outdated anger at yourself you might still be holding onto. If you haven’t learned how to tap, hop to it! It’s easy, and I know I’m grateful for it every day that I use it to ease my stresses, whether old or new. When you diminish the power of old emotions, it can be astonishing how your current emotions will calm as well. And keeping your current emotions from spiraling too far out of control diminishes the likelihood that you will reinforce habits of reflexive anger at yourself that have no earthly use in the creation of a happy life.
Slings and Arrows
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
It’s normal to experience disappointments in the course of your daily life. These can stop you short many times each day, if we’re talking about small disappointments such as just missing a green light, finding that your grocery store is out of one of your favorite items, or having a friend cancel an outing you had planned together. Now, while they might be jarring, most of these don’t make much of an impact on your overall picture—but larger disappointments certainly can. In fact, they can be the genesis of negative beliefs that don’t serve you at all, and that may run your behavior for decades after they’re created. An event that may have seemed insignificant to others can start you down a path of fear and limited thinking, whittling the cornucopia of possible choices you have in any given moment down to a handful of uninspiring options.
Let’s look at a few ways in which this can play out:
· Most of us have a memory of a parent, even the most excellent one, overreacting to something we did when we were relatively small. Perhaps we were playing happily and decided to add a work of art to the wall of the family home. There was a sense of excitement in the idea of making something beautiful (at least to us) and sharing that with a parent. When it came time for the big reveal, we displayed the opus proudly only to be faced with the fury of someone who now had to find a way to clean it up, and thought we should have known better. That feels like a slap in the face when our intentions are innocent and happy. An unfortunate memory like this can impress us in ways that last a lifetime. We may come away from it with beliefs such as, “I can’t do anything right,” “No one wants what I have to give,” or “My family doesn’t understand or appreciate me.” And such beliefs can corrode one’s enthusiasm, creativity, and confidence in subconscious ways that are powerful, but can remain mysterious, because you may not even remember the event as you get older.
· The first few years of school usually hold some difficult social situations. Kids start relating to each other in more complex ways, and experience the results of others learning through trial and error. Most of us experience at least a betrayal or two, fights, resentments, and competitions for attention. While everyone learns, so many disappointments and hurt feelings proceed from these social experiments. If patterns emerge, we may come away with beliefs like, “No one likes me,” “Everyone is mean and it’s not even worth trying,” or even just “I hate school.” There’s often little formal instruction at educational institutions on general communication, conflict resolution, negotiation, sharing, and other essential skills, and these beliefs can remain ingrained if we don’t figure out better ways of relating and coping on our own.
· In high school, most kids experience life with a high degree of angst in the areas of identity, social acceptance, and achievement, whether academic, athletic, or artistic. Popularity is often the coin of the realm, so everyone jostles for position both through both attempting to prove their own worth and attempting to disprove others’ worth in order to seem more important. It’s normal for kids to play with dominance tactics, including those designed to provoke or humiliate others. Less competitive, more naturally cooperative kids can have a hard time dealing with these status games, and end up feeling stung and embittered by confrontations. Most of us rack up more experiences of betrayal, embarrassment, and disappointment during these years; these memories can remain particularly painful because we’re experiencing many things for the first time. We may assume that this is how all such situations will go in the future. We don’t realize that our peers will continue to grow and mature, as well as gain experience, confidence and clarity, and so will we. A humiliation experienced at this time of heightened hormones and emotions can seem like death and destruction on a scale that adults find hard to understand. We may begin to believe that, “I’ll never get what I want,” “I’m not attractive,” or something general like “People are horrible.”
· As we enter adulthood, we understand that we are now more responsible for our own choices. We start having to sink or swim, making decisions independently about relationships and leisure time, life direction, health, diet and fitness, and financial matters, and bear the consequences. Mistakes made here can quickly color our faith in our own abilities, since we’re “supposed” to be able to handle ourselves by now, but in reality may still have many gaps in understanding of basic mechanics, and a lack of supportive habits, which must be built over time. Beliefs like, “I can’t keep up with everything I need to do,” “I’ll never be able to support myself financially,” or “I’ll never be able to get where I want to go in life” may result from early failures.
· At any time, we can experience life-changing disappointments such as the death of a loved one, the failure of a relationship, or the sudden loss of a job. Unfortunate beliefs like, “I’ll never recover,” “I’ll never find love again,” or “I’m a loser” may spring into being.
Did any of those beliefs sound familiar to you? Disappointments affect all of us, and yet there isn’t much help available for actually processing the often overwhelming emotions and the negative beliefs that result from them in everyday life. Most people either talk things through with family or friends, or see a psychological professional to gain perspective on the situation, but usually neither of these addresses the trauma we may be holding in the physical body or the emotional patterns that keep us limited. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know what I’m going to say here—techniques with a somatic (meaning involving the body) element seem to be the most helpful for supporting rapid change in these areas. In my world, there’s just nothing like EFT/Tapping for shaking limitations loose and helping us to shift our understanding of past events and their role in shaping who we are. Using it helps us to gently but effectively let go of the adverse effects of painful events that are now part of the distant past. Once you have a chance to lighten the emotional load you’ve been carrying from past disappointments, a new world of possibility opens, and that, to me, is one of the most exhilarating experiences there is.
Interview with The Feng Shui Guy
“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.”
Ariel Joseph Towne, The Feng Shui Guy
Have you ever been curious about Feng Shui? You're in luck! I sat down with Ariel Joseph Towne, a.k.a. The Feng Shui Guy, to talk about this ancient art form: What it is, how he came to know it, and how it can help to create balance in your life. Our lively conversation ranged over topics such as how he helps people support good sleep, his secrets on fostering synchronicity, the dynamic connection between inner and outer work, and the importance of inner quiet and gratitude. Be sure to check out his Web site for more information about his books and coaching services.
Who's Driving This Thing?
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”
I’ve noticed in my work with clients that many people are much harder on themselves than they would be on anyone else, especially people they love and care about. Something for which one would easily forgive a friend becomes unforgiveable in oneself for reasons that are hard to fathom. Sometimes the client will even say that it seems irrational for him to feel so guilty about something relatively minor, and yet he does. What gives? And why is this such a common experience?
I think the answer is that we have learned this behavior, usually from people who had no idea what was being passed down, in two different ways. First, the conscious part of the equation: When we’re children, we hear from all the adults around us, as well as from friends and peers, about what constitutes being a “good” person. We may have trouble unifying everything we’re told into a cohesive theory about how to behave, but we do know that we’re supposed to try to be “good.” We doubtless remember times when we were accused of behaving badly and intentionally embarrassed by someone, whether publicly or privately. We may learn that life tends to go more smoothly when we behave in a pleasing way toward others; we then take on the job of policing our own behavior, taking on the voices of people we respected or feared and obeying them even in their absence. This is relatively easy to recognize if you think about it—by which I mean that it may take some work to notice when you’re trying to please someone who’s not there, but if you pay attention to how you make decisions, you’ll probably start to see some of these habits before too long.
And now for the second part that is not conscious. Figuring out how this piece is affecting you can be quite a bit trickier. In The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton writes about how recent scientific study has revealed that children under the age of six spend most of their time in different brain wave states than adults. Until the age of two, children exhibit mostly delta brain waves, which in adults are associated with sleep states, and from ages two to six they spend most of their time in theta brain wave activity, which in adults is associated with the kind of “suggestible, programmable” state that hypnotherapists lead people into in order to help them accomplish change. In other words, young children are generally not in a fully conscious state that adults would recognize. They do not have access to conscious decision-making and analytical abilities. Therefore, whatever a small child hears is downloaded into her subconscious directly. Did you get that? Young children have no filter; what they hear is recorded directly into their subconscious minds as truth. When you were young, you learned a great deal that you are not aware of now, and it’s still affecting you today unless you’ve taken concrete steps to update that information.
That explains a lot about why it can be so hard to change old habits and beliefs even if we want to. The reasons why we feel a certain way may well be rooted in events and verbal commands we can’t even remember! We have years’ worth of programming that we’ve never had the opportunity to examine. We may remember plenty from childhood, and still be unaware of some pivotal beliefs that were instilled in us very early. The people who taught them to you have changed or may not be alive anymore, but the messages have not. Part of your mind is being run by ghosts.
We all know that parenting is a tough, demanding, and often exhausting job. Parents do what they can to keep us safe and healthy and stay sane at the same time. One of the methods most use is the application of shame to keep us in line—a sharp tone of voice telling us to stop it and a withering look, questions about what we were thinking when we did something that seemed really dumb or dangerous from an adult perspective, maybe a slap upside the head to let us know just how unacceptable our choice was. (Some of this is non-verbal, or even learned from things we just overheard rather than experiencing them personally.) If they can make us feel bad about certain choices, it’s less likely that we’ll make them again. While this can be effective, its continued use can also leave us with a general feeling of not being good enough/as good as others, or the feeling that we need to talk to ourselves harshly in order to avoid bad decisions and consequences. Once it’s installed, this habit of self-talk can run for decades or a lifetime without your awareness of what it’s really about, or that there are other alternatives. The only thing that really makes this second half of the equation different from the first is that it occurs before we can be fully aware of what’s happening, and we may not be able to recall it later.
Some of this may not seem very empowering. After all, what can we do about things we don’t even remember in the first place? In fact, there are ways to clean up even the mysterious things that may be holding you back. Making positive change happen in your life often requires the use of tools that can open a dialogue between your conscious and your unconscious mind. My favorite of these is EFT/Tapping because it’s highly effective, and it’s a self-help tool that almost anyone can learn and use safely. Once you’ve spent some time getting the hang of it, it’s astonishing what you can learn about yourself and what might be keeping you stuck in a particular area of your life. It takes practice to become confident in this dialogue, but it’s well worth the effort if you’re someone who would like to feel better physically, emotionally, or spiritually, or to work toward more positive mental habits. Despite what we may have been taught, it is possible to learn to treat yourself more kindly, and think and problem-solve more constructively. Quieting habitual negativity can free up a lot of energy for better physical health and greater creativity. And now that you know more about how children function, you might want to spend some time thinking about how you talk to the little ones in your life. What you say to them will shape their habits more directly than you might think. Choose your messages carefully to support their long-term health and happiness just as you learn to be more careful with how you speak to yourself.
Onward and Upward
“The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favor. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist, the more likely your success.”
Just keep going. This is one of the most important principles I know of in the grand scheme of creating a successful life. You don’t have to always be running—you can walk, skip, hop or dance—and it’s ok to take a breather now and then when you need it. But if you can build the habit of just doing what you can to move forward a little bit every day, your progress toward what you want will be much faster than if you tend to exhaust yourself and drop out, or reconsider everything when you don’t get immediate results.
In such a fast-paced world, one in which we’ve been shown that everyone can become an “overnight” success by just getting on a reality T.V. show, our expectations may have become a bit unrealistic. For most people, success is the result of years of effort, which invariable include lots of ups and downs. Even those who seem to have gotten a big, lucky break have usually spent plenty of unglamorous time preparing and wondering at times if they’d ever get anywhere. Just like the rest of us!
I would suggest that this time of uncertainty and constant application yields precious abilities, even when it seems like nothing is happening. When we keep going despite resistance, worry, boredom, and annoyance, we’re building a habit of focus and healthy stubbornness that can serve us throughout life. Of course, I’m not implying that we should be so stubborn that we never consider our results and adjust course, or listen to the constructive feedback of others. I am in favor or each person dancing to their own drummer, though; you must ultimately be the one who decides what is right for you, and sometimes even the most well-intentioned advice must be ignored if it doesn’t seem right to you and for you. Some of the people who have invented the most astonishing things throughout history have been told over and over that creating what they saw in their mind’s eye was impossible. They kept going and perfected those things anyway. Healthy stubbornness in action!
There are many ways to keep yourself going when it’s difficult and uncomfortable to do so. I suggest broadening your tool set so that you have a better chance of staying in the game when the going gets frustrating. For example:
· Figure out what motivates you and roll with it. Are you someone whose abilities wake up when you’re moving toward something good, or working to outrun something you fear? Most of us respond somewhat to both, but you may find that one or the other is more effective for you. If you like to imagine moving toward something you want, remind yourself at least once a day what you’re working toward by imagining it vividly—preferably numerous times per day. This will bring you little surges of energy and the ability to recommit to your task every time you do it. You can also give yourself a little pep talk here and there and remind yourself of the progress you’ve made. If you get fired up when you imagine moving away from something bad, you can imagine something like that instead—see, hear, and feel people talking about how you failed and they knew you’d never amount to anything, etc. For most people, far more repetitions of the positive style of motivation is best, but throwing in a vision of what you definitely don’t want can sometimes add some spice to the mix.
· Take care of your physical needs without fail. Don’t skip meals, but keep them healthy. Get regular exercise, which builds energy and helps manage stress and lift your moods, and stretch your muscles to stay limber. Get at least seven hours of sleep per night. Brush and floss. You get the picture.
· Tell only the people you know you can trust to be supportive about your big goals. The last thing you need is a lot of negativity from people who think small, or are threatened by your unique vision.
· Commit to being a lifelong learner. No one starts off as an expert. We all build expertise in the areas we choose over time, and it never happens overnight. You don’t have to keep up with all information all the time, but you do need to keep up with your chosen field of interest, and again, it’s a fast-paced world out there. This will take some time and attention always if you want to be good at what you do, but it will also keep exposing you to the brilliance of others, which is inspiring.
· Find ways to blow off steam when you hit road blocks. Do or watch something that makes you laugh yourself silly. Spend time with friends. Volunteer for a worthy cause and get your mind off your own troubles. Spend some time on a hobby that just makes you feel good. Read biographies of successful people, who I guarantee went through hard times before they became famous and respected for their contributions. Write out your woes in a journal. Go outside and enjoy the natural world.
· Be willing to rethink your strategy as you try things and learn from your experiences. Consult others who have done something similar for advice and a change of perspective.
· If you crash and burn or fall off the wagon in some way, know that everyone experiences failure sometimes, and we often learn far more from these episodes than from we do from smooth sailing. Failures and mistakes may feel terrible when they’re happening, but they are not the end unless we decide they are. If you’re still alive, there’s still more left within you.
· Remind yourself that what you have to give is unique and important. Even if it’s not yet ready or not yet connecting with an audience or customers, someone out there needs and is waiting for what you have to offer.
For some people, succeeding to a level that feels satisfying takes far longer than they ever hoped or imagined. If this is you, it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong—this is a very common human experience. We can’t always know beforehand exactly what will get us to our destination. Just keep taking a step forward every time you can, keep learning, and above all, just keep going.