“Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.” –Robert Gary Lee

In a college acting class, my teacher had my peers surround me in a circle so that I could toss my body in various directions, while improvising a scene based on my past. She did this because I had no access to my feelings about certain events.

I could recount the most painful events in my life without a shred of actual emotion—which meant that I was often play-acting when I got into another character’s head, because in many ways, I was shut down.

When I’d thrust myself at another student, she’d push me across the circle to another one who would push me to someone else, and this would stir something in me. I’d start to feel angry, and agitated, and alive—things I didn’t feel very often back then.

I’d slowly start reliving the moments that hardened me, and actually connecting with the feelings they inspired. That circle of people felt both harsh and safe, because I was both terrified and desperate to go back—to understand what hurt me so that I could heal.

Not everyone has trauma in their past, but we’ve all been hurt before–and it can be tempting to move on without every really addressing it. It’s not always comfortable to look backwards, and many times we convince ourselves it’s smart not to do it since life happens in the now. But we can only thrive in this moment if we understand and work through the emotions we avoided to survive in the past.

We can only address what keeps us stuck if we understand why it feels safe that way—what we gain by ignoring what happened—and then recognize that we gain far more by working through it, learning from it, and then making smart choices based on what we learned.

We have an amazing ability to lie to ourselves—to say that we’ve moved on when we haven’t, and to say that we’re fine when we’re not. We may even convince ourselves these things are true.

But if we want to truly let go and feel free, we need to create that circle for ourselves—to address whatever hurt us before and why and how it did—so that we don’t just forget about the past; we shape the future with the wisdom we’ve gained from having lived it.

Photo by zeze57

“Suffering is not caused by pain but by resisting pain.” -Unknown

The other day I was watching TV when one of those pharmaceutical commercials came on.

You know, the kind that shows a blissful looking woman running through a field of flowers while a voiceover extols the virtues of some drug—and then concludes with a list of possible side effects, including tremors, agitation, drowsiness, nausea, diarrhea, hair loss, blurred vision, night sweats, blood clot, stroke, and in some cases, death.

It might have been for psoriasis or restless syndrome; regardless, I found myself wondering if solving one of these unpleasant but non-life threatening problems was actually worth the risk of so many more uncomfortable, and in some cases, dangerous ones.

Then I started to think about how this type of thinking often prevails in everyday life, when a drink, a cigarette, or a bucket of chicken can seem like a quick fix for an unpleasant feeling.

While any of these things might provide relief in the present, they open us up to a great deal of potential pain in the future.

I’ve turned to all of these crutches at different points in my life; and despite making tremendous progress over the years, sometimes it still takes a conscious effort to resist instant gratification when I’m hurting.

It can feel like a reflex—I want this feeling to end, and I know exactly the fix that will numb it.

What we don’t always remember in that moment when we reach for the pill—whatever it may be—is that dulling the symptom rarely removes the cause. It’s really just an avoidance tactic. It’s a way to feel better right now without doing anything to help you feel better on the whole.

It may dull the pain of a fight, but it doesn’t change that there’s conflict. It may soften the blow of a loss, but it doesn’t change that someone or something is gone.

It may cloud the reality of what is, but in no way makes it different.

Oftentimes we feel the need to do something to make pain go away, but most often what we really need is to sit with it, learn from it, and then act on what we’ve learned.

It might be uncomfortable to go against what we usually do, but it’s the only way to create the possibility of feeling better than we usually feel.

Note: I just updated the submissions guidelines page.

I will be accepting new posts again on January 1st, if you like to contribute to the blog. I look forward to reading your post! =)

Photo by Wonderlane

“Don’t postpone joy until you have learned all of your lessons. Joy is your lesson.” -Alan Cohen

There have been times when I’ve hurt tremendously and then felt a strong need to punish myself for my part in causing that pain. Usually it’s when I’ve made a mistake, and I feel ashamed, like I should have known and done better.

This is kind of ironic when you think about it—clearly I wanted to know and do better to avoid hurting, and yet instead of letting it go, I’ve continued to make myself feel bad.

When I was younger, someone once told me the more we hurt, the more we learn. While I agree that pain can be one of our greatest teachers, I’d like to challenge the presumption that there’s a direct correlation between learning and pain.

I think a better belief about pain is that each time we hurt, we learn a little about hurting less. I’m not suggesting there will ever be a time when we stop experiencing pain. We’re human, and we will always feel the full range of emotions—which is a good thing, since there would be no light without a little dark.

But every time we deal with something painful, we have an opportunity to learn how to decrease our suffering.

With each difficult experience we can learn how to more effectively let go, forgive ourselves, and move on.

With each challenge, we can learn how to think about things a little more positively and respond a little more proactively.

With each struggle, we can learn to attach to our feelings less so that they do not define or control us.

We can live our lives feeling frustrated with ourselves for having room for improvement, or we can accept that life is constant growth and give ourselves as much room as possible for joy.

Photo by Emse_Vos

“As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it.” -Eckhart Tolle

This weekend, a reader presented an interesting question about letting go of old beliefs and attitudes to make room for happiness and open up to a relationship.

He suggested that this would require a lot of sacrifice on his part, and would leave him humbled and lost—as if he’s somehow “giving in” and losing touch with who he really is.

He asked how he can reconcile the instinct to change with his resistance to becoming something he is not.

I suspect a lot of us struggle with this. We know we want to transform our lives, but we’ve thought and behaved in certain ways for so many years that we identify ourselves with those ideas and actions.

For a long time, I believed people were basically selfish, which made me feel constantly defensive. I thought I “earned” this belief because I had been hurt. Letting go of it felt like letting the people who’d hurt me off the hook—like saying they didn’t cause my pain, I did.

But the reality was that my defensiveness hurt me more than anything anyone else had ever done—and for far longer. Sacrificing it might have been humbling, but the alternative was (and is) to sacrifice my potential for joy.

We are not the beliefs that we, at one point, decided serve and protect us. We are not the thoughts that, if we’re honest, only cripple us. We are not the sum of our internal workings.

Of course letting go of these will feel like giving in if we believe they define us. It will feel like a sort of death—like acknowledging there’s something wrong with us, and the only way to find happiness is to essentially rid ourselves of ourselves.

Freedom is realizing that letting go isn’t losing anything—it’s gaining everything. It’s stepping into the present moment free from limiting thoughts, beliefs, memories, fears, and judgments, to see what’s in front of us with clear eyes.

We have the potential to become anything—in fact, if we learn to let go, we will never stop becoming. But that means we need to want presence and happiness more than we want to cling to the past and our pain.

Photo by Aschaf

“The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming it.” -Helen Keller

There’s a child wailing five feet away from where I’m sitting in the Farmer’s Market at The Grove. This is my least favorite sound in the world, and I often tear up when I hear it.

While I realize children often cry for reasons that have nothing to do with danger, I associate hysterics with fear and powerlessness, and it makes me want to do something. Since I generally can’t, it manifests in my body as anxiety–a fight or flight response with no outlet.

I’ve had full-on panic attacks when confronted with a hysterical child. It’s an emotional trigger–and a strong one.

We all have these triggers, though some of us don’t have such overpowering reactions. Maybe you lost someone you love on a rainy day, so you feel angry when the clouds turn gray. Or maybe you sustained a serious injury at the beach, so the sound of the ocean makes you feel ill.

These associations can be limiting, and sometimes downright paralyzing. They can cause physical and mental sensations that are completely unrelated to our present circumstances. In short, they divorce us from the present and thrust us into a painful past.

There are times when we need professional help to fully release traumatic associations. But other times we only need a modicum of self-awareness and a willingness to breathe and let go.

The past is over. What happened, happpened. Today is a new day, and freedom comes from seeing it with new eyes. It comes from recognizing what’s going on in our minds, and then choosing to release those thoughts and feelings. We all deserve to feel peaceful, but no one else can do it for us.

Today if you get lost in a trigger that thrusts you to a painful event, take a deep breath and remember: we can’t change that we’ve hurt before, be we can choose not to suffer now.

Photo by ZeePack

“Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.” ~Jack Kornfield

Photo by Rose_Zhang

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” ~Unknown

Recently, I’ve been listening to a guided healing meditation I found online. I searched for it because I sensed something was wrong with my body, a couple weeks before a doctor confirmed it.

I didn’t expect it would bring up old wounds, but it has. There’s one part where the soothing voice instructs the listener to think back to the confidence of childhood. When I hear this, it reminds me that I wasn’t confident then, and that many painful events chipped away at my self-esteem.

At this point in the meditation, I usually shift my thoughts to a moment when I felt self-assured performing onstage, but yesterday something different happened. Instead, I cried. And shook. And shivered. Right then, it all came back–anger, shame, and a sense of powerlessness.

I was surprised to feel those raw emotions, after so many years of healing and forgiving. It reminded me that letting go truly is a journey, not a one-time choice.

A while back, in an interview, someone asked me if I think letting go is easy. I think she was surprised when I said, “No.” In theory, it is. Just like you would simply drop your arms and release something heavy you’re holding onto, letting go feels freeing.

The hard part is that we often need to let go over and over again. It isn’t like pulling off a band-aid. Old wounds have a way of resurfacing as we stumble, learn, and grow.

This doesn’t make us weak. It makes us human. We don’t need to let go of anything forever. We just need to learn what it means to let go in a moment, and then remember what that looks and feels like to do it again when necessary.

It may mean practicing mindfulness, or reminding yourself that it wasn’t your fault, or revisiting what you learned through the experience. What matters isn’t that we find letting go to be easy; it’s that we find it to be possible.

Today if you find yourself clinging to a painful memory, ask yourself: How can I focus on healing in the present, instead of living in the past?

Image by Sofan Chan, The Art of Happiness Gallery

“When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.” -Miguel Ruiz

Years back, in a group therapy circle, I met a man who provided an interesting definition for paranoia: It’s when you’re sitting in the bleachers at a football game, watching the players in a huddle, convinced they’re talking about you.

While I’ve never suspected professional athletes were secretly laughing at me between plays, I have taken responsibility for a lot of things that likely had nothing to do with me.

Just recently, I emailed a friend of mine from back home, only to question myself when days went by and she didn’t respond. I wondered if I’d somehow written the wrong thing. Or if there was something offensive I did previously that I completely forgot about.

I created all types of needless drama in my head about her opinion of me, when in all reality, it’s highly unlikely her slow response time had anything to do with me. People get busy, and most of us have way too many online accounts to check on a given day.

Even if her actions did have something to do with me, it was pointless speculate about it. She’d either tell me what was bothering her or she wouldn’t–and if she didn’t, it was on her, not me.

I don’t know if it’s possible to be immune to other people’s opinions and actions. Because we value our relationships, we care about what those people think. But there is a difference between respecting what people think and worrying ceaselessly about what they think of us.

As a recovering people-pleaser, I often need to remind myself that what really matters is what I think of me–and that I’ll think far more of me if I resist the urge to create stories about other people’s actions.

Today if you start reading into something another person and stressing about his opinion of you, remember: There’s a distinct possibility it’s not about you. Until you know, it’s pointless to worry about it.

Photo by hildgrim

“Never apologize for showing feelings. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.” -Benjamin Disraeli

As I’ve been preparing my presentation for the Wanderlust Yoga and Music Festival, I’ve been watching a lot of powerful speeches related to my topics of authenticity and connection. I found my way to Dr. Brené Brown, who researches vulnerability.

In her inspiring talk, Brené explains how shame can be one of the biggest barriers to connection. If you believe there is something wrong with you—that you are somehow unworthy—you may hide who you are in fear of being judged and rejected.

This is why I spent most of my early and mid-20s completely isolated. Because I felt overwhelming shame for mistakes I’d made, and I believed that they defined me, I chose to fester in a prison of my own making to avoid people’s judgment.

Though I have now joined the land of the social, there are still times when I think my true feelings are an admission of weakness. I get a lot of emails from readers who seem to feel the same way—that they shouldn’t be feeling angry, or frustrated, or hurt, or whatever. They think they should be stronger or more evolved than that.

This only exacerbates the pain because you pile guilt on top of the initial feeling.

There is no shame in having emotions. And as Brené points out, it’s nearly impossible to numb the uncomfortable ones without also diluting the positive.

If we want to know joy, elation, excitement, and everything else that makes life worth living, we need to give ourselves permission to feel the full range of emotions. And if we want to connect with each other, we need to accept and love ourselves in every moment, even when our truth feels heavy.

Today if you start judging what you’re feeling, remind yourself: Everyone deals with difficult feelings. What separates us is what we do with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0

“Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict from life, but the ability to cope with it.” -Unknown

There are some days when I want everything to stop.

I want the calls to stop, the emails to stop, the requests to stop, the expectations to stop, the confrontations to stop, and the struggles to stop. Essentially, I want everything to feel quiet and easy.

Then I realize that if everything stopped, life would boring, uneventful, and static.

If everything stopped, I wouldn’t have any opportunities to create, grow, learn from other people, or share what I’ve learned with them. Life would not be peaceful–life just wouldn’t be happening.

What I really want on those chaotic days isn’t for the world to stop. I just want to stop seeing the world as a million fires I need to put out. I want to stop interpreting everything as a conflict or crisis. I want to stop living life in a constant state of reaction, and instead focus on the actions that matter to me.

I suspect that’s what we all want: the ability to nurture a sense of peace that doesn’t crumble every time our circumstances get challenging.

The truth is we can access that on any day we choose to. We just need to choose–and then keep choosing instead of responding with stress, fear, and angst.

Today if your world seems less than peaceful, remind yourself: I can deal with whatever happens outside me. It starts by taking responsibility for what happens inside.

Photo by Kaspalita