When you try to escape from yourself

May 9, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Do you know what it means to escape yourself? We may avoid ourselves or escape from ourselves for different reasons, which I’ll talk about in a minute.

Forms of escape or avoidance that might be familiar to you are overeating, overdrinking, overspending, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, overworking, over-cleaning, over-exercising, or eating edibles.

It could be ANYTHING, if we’re using that thing/action to prevent ourselves from being present to feeling an emotion.

I call this type of escape “buffering.” What is buffering?

We buffer to avoid feeling emotional pain or uncomfortable emotions. When we buffer, we use external things to change how we feel internally. This means engaging in an action to put a buffer between us and a feeling we don’t want to feel.

We might feel like we’re taking care of ourselves by engaging in some of these actions. Sometimes we are. And sometimes, these things become false pleasures that have a net-negative outcome: when we overeat, we gain weight. When we overdrink, we end up with hangovers and half of the next day is ruined. When we overspend, we go into debt or don’t meet our savings goals. When we eat edibles, we are less present for our lives and those around us.

If buffering is what we do to avoid pain/discomfort, it makes sense that when we stop buffering, we’ll feel pain/discomfort. But most of us don’t understand this, which makes it almost impossible to stop buffering or escaping ourselves.

We have to be willing to feel uncomfortable in order to move past our buffers.

An analogy for this is like stepping into a house and turning on the lights and the house is a mess. The obvious and easiest answer is to turn the lights back off (to buffer) so the mess will “go away.” But the mess doesn’t go away – you just can’t see it now because the lights are off.

It’s similar with emotions. Avoiding an emotion doesn’t make the emotion go away – it just helps us not to see or feel it. We pretend it isn’t there, but it IS there, and it’s there for a reason.

And this is part of the reason WHY we buffer sometimes – to NOT find out what that reason is.

Buffering is a way to tolerate our lives when we know there’s some misalignment occurring.

We may be unhappy at our job, but we need to keep the job in order to support our family. So we buffer by overdrinking wine every night or impulse buying on Amazon or eating edibles.

Or we might be in a relationship that’s not working for us, but instead of having an uncomfortable conversation or making a scary, difficult decision, we stay in the relationship and buffer instead.

Or we don’t like the overall trajectory of our lives but don’t know what to do, so we buffer – which is easy – instead of doing the harder work of looking within, seeking professional help, or making tough decisions to help change our lives.

When we stop buffering, we’ll likely experience temporary pain. And the pain isn’t caused by the lack of buffering. What we need to do is stop buffering ourselves long enough to find the real cause of the pain.

It might mean taking a closer look at ourselves and our lives, our decisions and choices up to this point, and asking ourselves what we really need and how we truly want to take care of ourselves and our lives.

Your turn: What feelings have you been avoiding? What are the false pleasures you’ve been engaging in? In what way would your life be different if you didn’t have these false pleasures? Are you ready to stop buffering and willing to feel some discomfort instead, in order to move towards true knowing and well-being for yourself?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

You’re in charge

April 11, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Of your thoughts and feelings.

It’s easy to think that external circumstances, like other people, things, outcomes, and events, cause us to feel a certain way.

The traffic

The weather.

What someone said to us.

The number on the scale.

The number in our bank account.

These are all facts, things that are circumstances. And they’re NEUTRAL, until we apply a thought to them.

So what really causes us to feel a certain way is how we think about those external circumstances. And this is how we can get in our own way, or get out of our own way.

Do you know why circumstances don’t cause our feelings? Because two different people could experience the exact same circumstance, but depending on how each of them thinks about the circumstance, their thoughts will create their feelings. So it’s not the circumstance. It’s our thoughts.

For example, one person gets cut off while driving. She could immediately get angry and vengeful and try to cut that other person off because she’s thinking, “This person is a jerk! How dare he do that to me. I’ll show him!” And sometimes this anger can start a spiral of negative thoughts and emotions for the rest of the day. She got in her own way and ruined her day.

Another person who gets cut off while driving could feel some annoyance but then get over it easily because he’s thinking, “Yikes! I know how it feels to be in a rush like that. I’ve done that type of thing before without meaning to.” Some initial annoyance, but pretty quickly letting it go and not letting it ruin his day.

Same circumstance, but different thoughts, which create different feelings – and ultimately, different results.

When we let other people have so much control over our feelings, we’re giving our power away to them. We’re saying, “How you’re behaving/what you’re saying/what’s happening ‘out there’ is determining how I feel, so I have no control over my feelings.”

But we DO have control. That control is in our thoughts. Our thoughts are where our power lies.

Most of the time, we make other people’s words and actions mean something about us and we think we have to protect ourselves from something, protect our egos.

For example, when a colleague offers another way of doing something than what we suggested, we might get defensive because we might think, “She doesn’t respect my opinion.” Then we may feel angry and defensive because we made it mean something about ourselves – usually something related to “I’m not good enough.” Then we proceed to act in a certain way that deteriorates our relationship with that colleague. We got in our own way and affected our relationship with our colleague.

What if instead we thought, “She could be offering a more efficient way to do it. Let’s see if it can work”? That thought will create a totally different feeling. We didn’t make our colleague’s words/actions mean anything about ourselves. We didn’t take it personally or need to defend ourselves. This other thought might create the feeling of “curiosity” or “openness,” which leads us to collaborate with that colleague in a cooperative way.

Two different outcomes because of two different thoughts – but the circumstance was the same.

When we take responsibility for our feelings, we stop giving our power away to other people and situations. We stop getting in our own way. We are in charge of how we think and feel.

Your turn: What are you making someone’s words or actions mean about yourself? What if their words or actions don’t have to mean anything about you? Are you open to becoming more aware of the thoughts you’re thinking and how they’re creating your feelings? What are the three most frequent emotions you feel during a typical day? What are the thoughts creating those emotions?

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Joy vs. Buffering

March 21, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

What’s the difference?

Last week we talked about doing things that bring us more joy. And I mentioned that this week we’ll look at the difference between doing things that bring us joy and engaging in behaviors that have a net negative consequence or that are self-sabotaging.

So, what is buffering? Buffering means engaging in an action to put a buffer between us and a feeling we don’t want to feel.

We buffer to avoid feeling emotional pain or uncomfortable emotions. When we buffer, we use external things to change how we feel internally.

The actions might look like we are doing things that bring us joy, like getting a sweet treat, having a nice glass of wine, or purchasing a small gift for ourselves. When we are experiencing joy, there’s a peaceful, easy, celebratory feel to it.

The difference with buffering is that we are likely OVER-doing something and feel out of control with it, like overeating, overdrinking, overspending, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, overworking, over-cleaning, or over-exercising. It could be anything, if we’re using that thing/action to prevent ourselves from feeling an emotion.

These things become false pleasures that have a net-negative outcome: When we overeat, we gain weight. When we overdrink, we end up with hangovers and half of the next day is ruined. When we overspend, we go into debt or don’t meet our savings goals. When we over-Instagram, we lose time that could be used in more valuable ways.

We have to be willing to feel uncomfortable in order to move past our buffers.

An analogy for this is like stepping into a house and turning on the lights and the house is a mess. The obvious and easiest answer is to turn the lights back off (to buffer) so the mess will “go away.” But the mess doesn’t go away–you just can’t see it now because the lights are off.

It’s similar with emotions. Avoiding an emotion doesn’t make the emotion go away—it just helps us not to see or feel it. We pretend it isn’t there, but it is there, and it’s there for a reason.

When we give up our buffers, we’ll still get upset, but we’ll deal with it differently. We won’t head for the ice cream, which will just make us feel sick or regretful. We’ll deal with it by becoming aware and examining why we’re upset. Soon, we won’t even want ice cream or chips because the (false) pleasure we get from food—or whatever buffering actions we’re doing—actually diminishes, and the pleasure we get from taking care of ourselves and fueling ourselves increases.

Instead of using external things to change how we feel, we can use our minds to change how we feel. Or we can keep the emotion and choose to feel and process it in the moment.

Your turn: What feelings have you been avoiding? What are the false pleasures you’ve been engaging in? In what way would your life be better if you didn’t have these false pleasures? Are you ready to stop buffering and willing to feel some discomfort instead, to move towards real well-being?

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“I hate myself”

February 29, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Stop it.

I’ve noticed that people tend to be more interested in other people’s self-loathing than in other people’s self-loving. I wonder why this is?

Is it because we’re so familiar with our self-loathing that we can relate more to hearing about other people’s self-loathing?

Is it because we don’t know how to love ourselves, so we judge others who seem to know how to?

Is it because we’re uncomfortable with loving ourselves, so we feel repelled when we see other people loving themselves?

Maybe. I used to feel frustrated when people said, “Just love yourself!” That seemed so far away, so aspirational, something I didn’t even know how to take a step forward to start.

What does “loving yourself” even mean? What does it look like?

It’s so interesting that hating ourselves seems so much easier than loving ourselves. We pick up all these messages from our culture and society that tell us why we shouldn’t feel good about ourselves the way we are. We need to be more this, less that, smarter, richer, skinnier, stronger, better.

We’re basically told NOT to love ourselves because we need to be “better than” we are before we can even consider loving ourselves.

And that’s just not true. We CAN love ourselves exactly where we are. It starts with being kinder to ourselves.

One of the most powerful things that helped me start being kinder to myself is this:

– Stand in front of a mirror
– Look yourself in the eyes
– Say “thank you” out loud to yourself

Start with once a day for a week and see what happens. It might feel uncomfortable and even unnatural at first, but keep going. This is for YOU.

You are saying “thank you” to yourself for being you, for doing all the hard things you’ve done, for showing up each day even when you don’t want to sometimes, for your body that supports your life, for your eyes that see the world, for your hands that do the work, for you who exists in the world. Exactly as you are. This YOU has done some impressive things. This YOU has learned some important lessons. Let’s celebrate this YOU by saying “thank you” in the mirror.

Keep saying “thank you” to yourself in the mirror at least once a day until it feels comfortable, until you can smile at yourself when you say it, until you feel the gratitude you’re giving to yourself.

When “thank you” starts to feel comfortable (maybe after a month or two, maybe more/less), move to “I love you.” THAT can certainly feel uncomfortable and unnatural at first. Keep going. Do it for a week and see what happens.

This is for YOU. Keep saying “I love you” to yourself in the mirror at least once a day until it feels comfortable, until you can smile at yourself when you say it, until you feel the love you’re giving to yourself.

You might start to find that you can say “I love you” to yourself in more ways than one. You might start feeling LOVE for YOURSELF.

Your turn: Are you willing to try the above activity until “thank you” feels comfortable? What about moving to “I love you”? And remember, our thoughts are optional, they’re choices. We can choose to stop thinking self-hating thoughts and choose to start thinking self-loving thoughts. I’d love to know what impact this has on you if you’d like to share!

Also, if you already practice this exercise, it’s just a reminder of how far you’ve come, how much you’ve done to love yourself, and how powerful this exercise is!

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Does success give you permission?

January 18, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Give it to yourself.

Last week we talked about redefining success. This week, let’s talk about why we want to “be successful” in the first place.

Most of us don’t realize this, but we want to be successful in order to give ourselves permission to believe certain things about ourselves and to feel a certain way. What?

Sometimes, because we don’t have certain things or haven’t achieved certain goals, we think something is wrong with our lives. We think something is wrong with us.

We might think that achieving a goal will fill some hole we think we have in our lives. Why do we think there’s a hole there?

We might think that in order to believe we’re good enough or worthy, we need to accomplish goals first. We might think that in order to feel confident and happy, we need to accomplish goals first. We think the way to “fix” what’s “wrong” is to get something we don’t yet have, something outside of us.

Does this sound familiar?

When I make $X amount of money, then I’ll feel secure.
When I have X job title, then I’ll feel proud.
Once I own a house, then I’ll believe I’ve made it.
Once I weigh X pounds, then I’ll feel comfortable in my body.
When I have a partner, then I’ll believe I’m lovable.
When I have my own business, then I’ll believe I’m legit.
Once I’ve done X, then I’ll feel worthy.
Once I have X, then I’ll believe I’m good enough.

Usually, even if we’ve done or obtained what we want, we wonder why we still don’t feel ____ or believe that we’re _____.

This is because achieving goals doesn’t create our feelings or beliefs. Our thoughts create our feelings and our thoughts create our beliefs. Beliefs are just thoughts that we’ve kept thinking over and over until we think they’re true. After achieving a goal, we might feel something temporarily, but it’s not sustainable without doing the belief and thought work first.

If we’re waiting until we achieve a goal in order to believe something about ourselves or to feel something we want to feel, we might be waiting a long time. What if it’s the opposite? What if in order to achieve what we want, we need to believe and feel FIRST?

If we believe that we’re lovable, how will that impact the way we show up for dates? If we believe that we’re legit, how will that help us start a business? If we feel secure, how will we think about the money we’re currently making? If we feel comfortable in our body, how will we show up differently for ourselves?

We can believe and feel FIRST. Then, going after the goals we want is just to see what’s possible for ourselves, to stretch ourselves, and to have fun. Not to prove anything to ourselves or to fix anything about our lives.

Your turn: What would you allow yourself to believe and feel about yourself if you achieved a certain goal? What if you could start believing and feeling that way about yourself NOW with what you DO have and who you ALREADY are?

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When you redefine “success”

January 11, 2024January 11, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

For you.

I was in therapy for the first time 8 years ago in January 2016. (I can’t believe it was that long ago now!) I realized I needed to talk to someone after going through emergency open heart surgery that saved my life – and also uprooted it.

I’d been living in Manhattan for three years and happened to be back in San Francisco when I got admitted to the hospital in April 2015. I’d been experiencing symptoms for a month at that point, but because back then, I didn’t know how to listen to or understand my body, I wasn’t aware of what was happening or how serious the situation was. I was used to pushing through things. But all that changed after the surgery and I had to recalibrate what was physically possible for me in my body.

I didn’t initially realize it, but I had attached a lot of my identity to work – I was someone who could work 12-14 hour days and get things done no matter what. I physically couldn’t do that anymore. So I felt lost, like I didn’t know how to live in my life any longer. I’d been so used to operating in a certain way for so long: go, go, go, do, do, do.

Because I was “being successful” while doing that.

One of the first revelatory things my therapist and I talked about was what my definition of success was. What did success mean and look like to me? Up until then, it had been unconsciously defined for me, by colleagues, society, media, peers.

Success had looked like making a certain amount of money, having a certain job title, living a certain lifestyle, having that type of car, having these types of clothes, living in a certain neighborhood, eating at those types of restaurants, being “busy” as a sign of worth, stress as a “status” symbol, doing all the things while doing all the things.

Honestly, when I think about it now, I see how exhausting it all was. I can’t imagine going back to that way of living “successfully.”

I had to redefine what success looked like to me post-surgery, in my new state of being in my body. Sometimes success looked like showing up for therapy sessions after being in pain the day before. Sometimes it looked like setting a boundary with a family member. Sometimes it looked like telling the truth to myself. Sometimes it looked like celebrating a new insight that I’d learned.

My therapist empowered me to define what success looked like to me then, through a new perspective, through an internal lens of my own perception and how I felt in my body, not an external lens of other people’s perceptions while disregarding myself.

Doing that took a lot of pressure off – pressure I didn’t even realize I was putting onto myself. Doing that also helped me feel more connected to myself and my life. It helped me show up the way I wanted to for myself, instead of the way I thought I needed to for others. And my definition of success continues to evolve.

How many of us are allowing other people or things to define what success means and looks like for us? Let’s start redefining it for ourselves based on who we want to be, how we feel in our bodies, and how we want to show up for our lives.

Your turn: How might redefining success for yourself be valuable to you? How might redefining success change the way you prioritize things? How do you want to redefine what success means and looks like for you?

Here are three questions to consider in redefining success for yourself:

1. Do I love who I’m being?
2. Do I love what I’m doing?
3. Do I love who I’m doing it with?

Take massive action in 2024

January 4, 2024 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Create vs. Consume

Last week we talked about “deciding to” vs. “wanting to.” This week we’ll talk a little more about what we can DO when we decide to make changes in our lives.

We take two types of actions when it comes to our goals: passive action and massive action.

Passive action is when we’re learning, gaining, and organizing knowledge about our goal. We’re consuming information about it.

Massive action is when we actually DO something with what we’ve learned. We apply it in our lives in an active, creative way that moves us towards our goal.

Here are some examples:

Goal: Exercise 4 days/week

Passive action = Research gyms to join, learn about what exercises to do, make a plan for exercising by working different muscle groups each day, buy new workout clothes, watch social media videos of people showing you their workouts

Massive action = wake up an hour earlier 4 days a week, put on the workout clothes, drive to the gym, DO the exercises each of the 4 days as planned even when you think it’s too hard

Goal: Eat less sugar

Passive action = research low-sugar items, learn about how sugar affects your body, make a plan for how much sugar you want to eat each day, make a list of things that are OK for you to eat, watch social media videos about how to eat less sugar

Massive action = remove extraneous sugary items from your home/office, stick to the plan that you made, decrease your desire for sugar, eat only the items on your OK list, eat only the amount of sugar on your plan, allow the urge to eat more sugar and don’t react to the urge (don’t eat more sugar) even when you think it’s too hard

Goal: Save more money

Passive action = decide how much to save every month, review your expenses and see where you can decrease spending, read a book about budgeting and reducing expenses, participate in a workshop about debt, make a plan for saving and decreasing expenses, watch social media videos about saving money

Massive action = set up automatic savings every month, allow the urge to spend money when you see something you “want” but don’t necessarily “need,” stick to your savings plan even when you think it’s too hard

Goal: Meditate 3 days/week for 20 minutes

Passive action = read about meditation methods, listen to talks by meditation teachers, choose a practice you want to explore, find a meditation group/class, purchase a meditation app/program, watch social media videos about people talking about meditation

Massive action = make a space in your home for meditation, show up to the group/class, sit and practice for 20 minutes even when your mind wanders and you think it’s too hard

Goal: Be kinder to yourself

Passive action = read books about self-love and self-compassion, make a list of ways to be kinder to yourself, heart and save social media posts about self-love and self-compassion, watch social media videos showing people talking about self-love

Massive action = look in the mirror and tell yourself “thank you” every morning for a month; when that feels comfortable, look in the mirror and tell yourself “I love you” every morning; when you feel overwhelmed, ask yourself, “What is the kindest thing I can do for myself right now?” and honor the answer; do some of those things on the list you made every week or every month

The point is to DO the actions that are part of our goal. While we do need to do some amount of passive action by consuming information, we can read, watch, and learn about our goal all we want, but if we’re not DOING the actions that will lead towards our goal, we’re just consuming and not creating. We’re staying where we are. Let’s not get stuck.

Even making a plan is passive – it’s not until we carry out the steps on the plan that we’re creating and taking massive action. Let’s create more than we consume.

This is not to say that we don’t also take care of ourselves while moving towards our goals. A lot of us want to stop when it begins to feel hard because we think it should be easy. Let it be hard. And keep going. We can be kind and take care of ourselves when we need to, but there’s a difference between giving ourselves some grace and self-sabotaging or giving up.

Your turn: Are you able to tell the difference between the passive and massive actions you’ve been taking in your life? How can you become more aware of the amount you’re consuming vs. what you’re creating? What massive action(s) will you decide to commit to?

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When you flake on yourself

December 21, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

You deserve better.

Last week I shared about the second pillar of the 3 pillars of transformative self-care – how we speak about and to ourselves. Let’s talk about the third pillar today: how we treat ourselves.

We might think we treat ourselves pretty well. We practice good dental hygiene, we get a massage every once in a while, we take vitamins, we sleep for several hours most nights, we put food into our bodies regularly, we use the stairs sometimes or park farther away from our destination to get in some extra steps.

These are all beneficial things to do for ourselves. And what else can we do for ourselves to show that we care?

One of the strongest ways we can show ourselves that we care is by doing what we say we’ll do – when it comes to ourselves.

How would we feel about a friend or someone close to us who tells us they’re going to do this or that with us or for us, and then when the day comes to do it, they either call/text to say they can’t make it, or they don’t show up at all?

– After the first time, we’ll likely give them some grace but feel disappointed by the outcome.
– The second time they do it, we might start to question the validity of their words.
– If they do it a third time, we’ll see a definite pattern here and probably feel frustrated and give up on believing them. We might even start to think that they don’t really care about or respect us.

This would be a normal reaction to someone who seems to be unable to follow through on what they say to us – someone who flakes on us.

And yet, how often have we flaked on ourselves? Flaking on ourselves means saying we’ll do something for ourselves, but at the last minute, we change our mind and don’t show up for what we said we’d do.

When we do this, we show ourselves that we don’t take our goals and desires seriously. We’re not caring for ourselves, and sometimes, we’re not respecting ourselves. Is that how we want to treat ourselves?

If we want to start treating ourselves better by keeping our promises and commitments to ourselves, we can start to build trust with ourselves by taking small actions. “Today I’m going to walk around the block at 3pm.”

And then at 3pm, we do what we say. We get up and walk around the block.

When we do this, there’s a sense of empowerment, a feeling of accomplishing something and fulfilling a promise to ourselves – no matter how small. “It feels good to do what I said I would!” Celebrate that and remember the feeling. It will help reinforce following through with future plans.

This is how we start to strengthen the muscle of trusting ourselves more, knowing that we can have our own back. We can continue to make another small commitment to keep each day – it could be the same one! – until it’s just automatic for us to keep our word to ourselves. Until it feels uncomfortable when we don’t keep our word to ourselves.

It might not happen overnight, but it’s worth it to keep practicing. WE are worth it. If we haven’t been in the practice of keeping our commitments to ourselves, it can take time to build that up. Take that time.

When we get even better at keeping commitments to ourselves, we learn to treat ourselves better in multiple aspects of our lives. We start to know what it truly feels like to take care of ourselves and treat ourselves in the way we want and deserve to be treated. We learn how to have our own back, no matter what.

Your turn: In what ways do you want to treat yourself better? What commitments do you want to keep with yourself? What is one small commitment you want to make to yourself today that you’ll do tomorrow? When tomorrow comes, are you willing to build trust with yourself and do the thing?

Dive Deeper: If you still find yourself not doing the thing, are you open to asking yourself if this is something you truly want to do for yourself or is something/someone else telling you “you should” do it?

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Speak no evil

December 14, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

About yourself or to yourself.

Last week I shared about the 3 pillars of transformative self-care – the first pillar being how we think about ourselves. Let’s talk about the second pillar today: how we speak about and to ourselves.

The language that we use can affect us through our mind-body connection.

I hear people say things like:

“That kills me!”
“I’m dying right now!”
“It’s such a pain in my neck!”
“Shoot me now!”
Or even the gesture of a thumb and index finger to the head, creating a pistol going off

These phrases accompany things that relate to feelings: hilarity, annoyance, exasperation, or aggravation. We know they’re just pop culture phrases that people say to emphasize something they’re experiencing. But our words can affect us and those around us.

There’s a book called Your Body Believes Every Word You Say and from it, we learn that we want to become mindful of the language we use about ourselves and to ourselves. Not only to prevent physical manifestations of illness, disease, or pain, but also to reinforce what we believe about ourselves.

If we’re always denigrating ourselves to others – even in playful, joking ways like, “I’m such a dumbass, you’ll never guess what I did” – we might take small hits to our self-esteem without even realizing it. Our words might be reflecting what we really think about ourselves on a deeper level.

This is not a gloom and doom warning, but rather a nudge to become more aware of how we can take care of ourselves – by using our words intentionally about ourselves, when we talk to others and when we talk to ourselves.

AND, even when we talk about or think about others. Sometimes what we think about others and what we judge other people for is also a judgment about ourselves. What is it that they’re doing that we don’t allow ourselves to do? If we judge someone for being late, it’s because we likely never allow ourselves to be late. If we judge someone for being carefree and spontaneous, where in our life are we withholding that from ourselves?

Instead, what if we practice phrases like this externally:

“That’s amazingly hilarious!”
“I’m so gleefully amused right now!”
“Honestly, that’s been really hard for me to manage.”
“I’m recognizing I need support in handling this.”

And internally:

“I’m learning how to really like myself now.”
“I care about how hard this has been for me.”
“I know I’ll be able to figure this out.”
“I love myself no matter what.”

Our words are powerful and we can use them consciously and mindfully. We can use our words to care for ourselves – to support ourselves and build ourselves up.

Your turn: Are you aware of how you speak about and to yourself? What do you notice when you pay closer attention to the words you use? How would you like to shift the language you use in your daily life to support your well-being even more?

Dive Deeper: What are the stories you tell yourself about yourself? (For example, “I’m this [______] way because that [_____] happened to me.”) Are these stories true? What if they’re not and never were? What do you want to change about these stories to make them more empowering?

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When you think it’s “over there”

November 16, 2023 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

It’s right here.

When we set goals for ourselves, it’s easy to start thinking that when we achieve those goals, our lives will finally be better.

Our lives will be different, not necessarily better. We may not have some of the problems we had before achieving our goal. But then we may have new problems after achieving our goal.

Life will still be 50/50, positive/negative.

But it’s tempting to think that “there” is better than where we are right now. We might start thinking:

“Once I get that promotion, I’ll finally feel satisfied.”
“When I find my perfect partner, I’ll feel worthy and complete.”
“Once I’ve lost the extra weight, I’ll love myself more.”
“When I buy a house, I’ll feel successful.”
“Once we have kids, our marriage will be more fulfilling.”

We can get focused on “there” and forget about being here in the present moment. And when we place a lot of weight on getting “there,” we may be disappointed once we are “there” and we still don’t feel satisfied, worthy, loving, successful, or fulfilled.

This is not to say that our goals aren’t important or that we shouldn’t have a vision of what we want for ourselves.

But when we place so much responsibility on the future for the way we want to FEEL, we forget that we’re responsible for the way we’re feeling right now.

“Being aware of the present moment simply means you never believe the illusion that the future is going to be better than what is going on right now.” – Mateo Tabatabai, The Mind-Made Prison

The reason why we want anything is because of the way we think it’ll make us feel when we have it.

We can feel satisfied, worthy, loving, successful, and fulfilled right now by what we’re thinking about our life circumstances and ourselves. Our thoughts generate our feelings. We can fuel ourselves with the feelings we want to feel, take aligned actions, and create the future we want from HERE.

Being “here” and creating our future from “here” is just as valuable and important as being “there” can be.

“Plan, dream, and organize all you want, just don’t start believing that what you have planned for the future is going to be any better than your current moment. You are going to be in the present moment your entire life. If you are focusing on how good the future is going to be, you are just running on the hamster wheel hoping to get somewhere. Life is right now in this glorious moment right in front of you. I believe that if you’re not allowing yourself to be happy right now, nothing external in the future is going to change that permanently.” – Mateo Tabatabai, The Mind-Made Prison

Your turn: What feelings do you think achieving your goals will generate for you? Do you believe you have the capacity to feel those feelings right now? What would happen if you didn’t need to wait for future circumstances to provide the feelings you want and that you can feel that way now? What would it look like for you to move towards your goals feeling NOW the way you think achieving those goals would feel THEN?

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