How to Anchor Your Life by Letting Go

by | May 20, 2018 | Blog Post

I want to make a disclaimer at the beginning of this post that I am not in any way stating that someone in an abusive relationship, extreme difficult circumstance, or who has serious mental health needs to accept these situations and continue allowing these situations to occur. It is important to seek help when necessary and sometimes really digging down deep into these difficult circumstances will help us realize changes that need to be made.

It’s pretty crazy the lengths humans will go to sidestep discomfort inside of ourselves, isn’t it? From avoiding a conversation with a loved one, to living in denial about our true feelings about something, we constantly avoid, overlook, or try to micromanage other areas of our life to help compensate for the lack of control we feel about this difficult situation or emotion in our lives.

The problem with this approach is that we ultimately can’t control everything around us. When we respond to a disruption in our lives or emotional well-being by resisting it, we are in essence trying to control it or change it instead of accepting it. We are trying to change what is. Doing so removes us from the reality we are in and since our lives are always unfolding in the “now”, it creates painful cognitive dissonance and added feelings of frustration. What I’m getting at is that the very moment we don’t accept something that already is, we begin mentally living in a state other than reality. This can cause feelings of helplessness, denial, control, anger, prolonged grief, anxiety, and depression – to name a few.

There is ample research that indicates that people who deal with emotions healthily, who “let things go” and move on, so to speak, rather than bottling their emotions, live happier, longer, healthier lives! Perhaps the reasons I stated above have something to do with that.

Life is unpredictable, for better or worse. Each circumstance that passes through us is like a balloon, impermanent and floating along at the whims of the wind and circumstances surrounding it. Sometimes these balloons may look appealing – they are an escape from the true reality of whatever we are dealing with. We can choose to identify with this balloon and its accompanying emotions as it floats by, at which point we sign over the control of our own experience and are at the mercy of where this circumstance or emotion goes. This is draining and exhausting. It also puts us in a position where we are no longer in control and although it was an impermanent event, it has now become part of our current story for much longer than it ever needed to be.

The other option is that we can choose to root ourselves in the rich soil of reality and the present moment, and let the balloons float through us and past us. We can be aware of the difficult circumstances we are in, and aware of the emotion balloons that may be passing by us, but we can view them for exactly what they are: impermanent. We are no longer identifying with them and grabbing on for the wild ride. Occasionally a balloon may blow around us and in our face, obstructing our vision for a bit, but they will float past eventually.  

This isn’t easy. We hold on to our experiences and emotions for dear life. Sometimes our difficult emotions and circumstances have shaped who we are and the thought of letting go of them makes us feel like we are releasing a piece of our identity with them. We are afraid of who we are without them. Other times the thought of facing these circumstances may make us shrink out of fear of pain, or you may feel too far down your path to change now.

In Buddhism there is a concept taught by Buddha called the Second Arrow. The idea is that if someone strikes you with an arrow, it’s very painful. That arrow represents pain from circumstances in life. This pain is unavoidable and part of the experience of being alive. However, humans do a curious thing. Rather than pull the first arrow out, painful as that would be, we often will drive a second arrow behind that first arrow and force more pain onto ourselves. The second arrow represents our own shame, anger, re-living experiences, and beating ourselves up over something we did. This is pain that is both unnecessary, and usually even more painful than the first arrow to come our way.

What in your life are you wasting precious energy and time resisting, or driving a second arrow into yourself? What balloons have you identified with and given your control over to, which no longer serve you anymore? It might be painful, just like pulling that first arrow out, and we need to acknowledge what has happened to us, or what we have done to ourselves. But we also need to be willing to dig in and really look at the situation or emotion, see it for what it is, and then move forward from it. In doing so, we plant our feet in the soil of reality and allow ourselves to experience life more freely and be at peace with ourselves.

Why Loving Yourself is the Most Important Thing You Will Ever Do

by | May 6, 2018 | Blog Post

Before I started meditating I didn’t think much about self-love. The whole concept seemed a little new-agey and wreaked of over-used phrases like “self-esteem” and “treat yo self” for me to take it too seriously. I figured if there was something I didn’t care for in myself it was my problem to deal with. I didn’t see how it affected anyone else.

Brene Brown, the contemporary foremost authority on shame and vulnerability research, has studied and interviewed countless individuals on topics surrounding vulnerability, shame, and resilience. Do you know the number one common trait she found in people who live “wholeheartedly” as she calls it? Those rare people she discovered who lead their lives from a place of worthiness and compassion for themselves and others? Obviously, they must have lead lives of privilege, they couldn’t have known the dark holes of mistakes or years wasted in anguish over something. Was it that they were well-liked, or made a certain amount of money? None of the above. These people who lead shame-resistant lives were just as likely to have made large-scale mistakes, experience heartache and failure, and every other marker for difficulty as everyone else interviewed. The only difference? They believed they were worthy of love and connection. That’s it.

Hold up. So she is telling me that if I want live “wholeheartedly”, I don’t have to change a single thing about myself. I could go to bed tonight with all my annoying habits, my big nose, my past regrets, and wake up – with no changes! – and experience the deepest of human connections, the truest of human love, the kind of unencumbered joy that comes with no strings attached? Every day for the rest of my life? The only thing keeping me from my best life is my belief that those feelings aren’t for people like me?

Pretty much. Well, with the caveat that I would need to let go of all the baggage that comes with a lifetime of self-loathing overnight (insert Brene maniacally laughing as she knows she’s got my attention but I have no idea how much courage this is going to take).

Um. Ok? But still…why does loving myself matter so much?

Let’s pretend for a minute that I grew up in a family where sports were super important and I always really wanted to be good at sports but after a few painful experiences in middle school, I let go of that dream. There are many routes I could take, but let’s say that I decide that even if I’m not on a team, at least I can stay relevant by being in the know about sports. All my clothes proclaim my favorite teams. I always know the stats on the game and it’s my go-to topic of conversation. I don’t realize it, but I’m hustling for my worth and for my place in my tribe. I’m hustling because I don’t believe I’m enough without sports.

Ok, fine, you say. So you’re insecure about sports and you like to catch the game after work, there are worse things in life.

Sure. But it doesn’t end there. There are a lot of areas where this will haunt me throughout life. What about in college, how do I act every time I meet an athletic person? Hustling. How do I act when I meet someone who is bad at sports? I probably spit my own self-judgement right in their face. Hustling. Lastly, what if I have a child who reflects the part I hate the most about myself back at me. What if they try out for sports and they are “that” same kid that I was? Hustling. It’s very hard for me to offer compassion to that child when I’ve never extended it to myself for the exact same thing. And this time, my child is going to learn to hustle too.

Maybe it’s not sports for you – maybe it’s stretch marks, impatience, maybe you were a bully for years, maybe it’s a harsh internal dialogue from years of emotional abuse. Whatever it is, it doesn’t just affect you.

The first thing you can do is become aware of what you loathe in yourself. Judgement is a great signal for this because when we judge someone else it is almost always because we are trying to distance ourselves from something we are afraid of or dislike about ourselves. Do you judge that woman who is always late to work meetings because as a child it was instilled in you that being late it was a sign of laziness? What does your internal dialogue look like when you are running late? How about that bad habit you can’t get on top of? How do you respond when you see someone else exhibiting that same habit you hate? How about when your child expresses anxiety about a situation and you tell them to stop being a baby? How do you respond when you feel vulnerable or weak in a situation?

It’s important in these times when you realize how deep the well of frustration with yourself may run, to take a deep breath and try to suspend judgement for yourself. Get curious. Instead of judging yourself – ask yourself why you are acting or feeling this way? It’s a little scary, right? If I stop hating the things I hate about myself – even for a second, won’t I just keep doing that thing forever? Isn’t it the hatred and loathing that motivates me to be my best self?

The answer is a resounding “no”. When has hatred or anger ever inspired someone to change for the better? We can easily hear how ridiculous this sounds for relationships, yet we don’t apply it for our own personal relationship with yours truly. As long as you resist the things you hate and fear the most about yourself, you can’t really look at them. When you hold the things you loathe about yourself in judgement and shame, they are too rigid and condemning to conquer. Holding your self-hatred in compassion and understanding allows those rigid sharp edges to relax ever-so slightly. For the first time maybe we can acknowledge that we screwed up but we aren’t A screw-up. Maybe we can admit that while, yes, we knew better, we are still human. Maybe we can start to believe that we are still worthy of love and the best experiences life has to offer – even if we can’t offer that love to ourselves in every aspect just yet.

Learning to love ourselves is critical in meditation for another reason. Meditation is bringing us into the present, it’s making us aware of our true nature. Most of our self-loathing, however, is rooted in the past. Whether it was a bad experience, or endlessly wishing you could get back to your “ideal weight”, whatever it might be, your self-loathing isn’t serving this moment. Releasing your self-loathing allows you to fully explore the present moment, experience it, un-strangled by tendrils from the past.

Despite what I said earlier, learning to love yourself isn’t going to be an overnight process. But maybe tomorrow you can become aware of ways that you could eventually love yourself more. Maybe you’ll be inspired to intend to love yourself someday, which is fine. Take it one step, one situation, one thought at a time. And plan on mistakes and mess-ups and learning to love yourself through them along the way. You might find that clearing out all the baggage and festering insecurity brought on by self-loathing leaves behind deep, cavernous scars with just the right environment to become the birthplace of deeper relationships, more connection, more love, and deeper peace than you could have ever imagined.

-Alicia