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Search Results for "6 mistakes" — 611 posts

Why We Need to Stop Hiding and Share the Beauty in Our Brokenness

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“Out of perfection nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up. The earth must be broken to bring forth life. If the seed does not die there is no plant. Bread results from the death of wheat. Life lives on lives. Our own life lives on the act of other people. If you are lifeworthy, you can take it.” ~Joseph Campbell

Head on my pillow, tears in my eyes, a list of to-dos in my brain, I felt unable to move my body. I’d worked so hard to leave behind this person who stayed in bed avoiding life. …

How to Rebuild a Relationship with Someone Who’s Hurt You

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“Holding a grudge doesn’t make you strong; it makes you bitter. Forgiving doesn’t make you weak; it sets you free.” ~Unknown

My situation is probably not unlike that a lot of people reading this.

I grew up in a single-parent home. Don’t get me wrong, I had a pretty happy childhood, and my mom did an unbelievable job raising me. She worked four jobs to make sure I always had the best of everything. But I could never shake the feeling that I always wanted a father figure in my life.

My parents had separated when I was very young. …

Why I Can’t Always Be the “Strong One” and What I Do Now Instead

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“She was strong and weak and brave and broken… all at the same time.” ~Unknown

My mom was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when I was seven years old. It’s a chronic condition that doctors say can be managed but not cured. The symptoms included manic high energy, depression, delusions, hearing voices, reduced need for sleep, and loss of touch with reality.

There were many times of stability for her, when she was on the right medication, taking it routinely, and attending regular psychotherapy. But if any of these elements were missing, those moments were often short-lived.

She was the …

5 Psychological Strategies to Ease the Stress of Perfectionism

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“Striving for excellence motivates you, striving for perfection is demoralizing.” ~Harriet Braiker

The last three months I’ve been trying an experiment. It’s something that I’ve never done before, and in a certain way, it’s been a huge challenge. However, in other ways, it’s been an enormous stress relief, and I would say a largely successful effort.

What I’ve done seems to go against conventional wisdom, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a wise choice.

So what exactly is this challenge? Well, I have actively gone out of my way to be average.

Yep, sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? …

When I Stopped Competing, I Set Myself Free

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“With nothing to compare yourself to, aren’t you perfect?” ~Byron Katie

I have never liked competition. Every time I compete, I feel pressured and disconnected from others. I love harmony, peace, collaboration, and win-win situations, kind of like “me happy, you happy.” I don’t need to watch another person lose the game to feel good about myself. I don’t need to dominate or put someone else down in order to feel superior and worthy.

In some cultures, competing is perceived as a sign of ambition, power, and strength. Most of us grew up hearing constant comparisons, which turned into …

Freeing Your Truest Self When You’re Anxious to Please

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“Stress, depression, and anxiety are caused when we are living to please others.” ~Paulo Coehlo

I came from a broken and very poor family. My father left the house during my teenage years, and it was just my mother, little brother, and I remaining.

Like most single parents going through the hardships of singlehandedly caring for two children, my mother was often anxious about my well-being. And she overcompensated for her anxiety by being overbearing.

I unfortunately inherited this anxiety.

For the longest time, it was a daily battle for me.

You know the feeling.

Your muscles tense up, you …

Why Social Media and My Addictive Personality Don’t Mesh

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Twitter didn’t give me the flu or bronchitis, but it made me sick. Unhealthy. Ill-feeling. And it could have been any social media platform that did it, I just happened to have chosen Twitter.

For years I avoided creating any sort of social media account. I complained to companies the old-fashioned way: calling or emailing customer service. I didn’t need to know what people I wasn’t in touch with in real life were doing.

As someone who was married and not dating, there simply wasn’t the requirement to be on any kind of social media. With two kids, I spent …

How Failure Holds the Key to a Meaningful, Successful Life

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“Perfectionism doesn’t believe in practice shots.” ~Julia Cameron

Within each of us lurks a perfectionist. And perfectionists set themselves up for a lot of pain in life.

How so? I’ll come to that.

First let me describe how our first child took her first step. She was less than ten months old. A very bright girl, who wanted nothing less than my approval at all times.

On one occasion, a few months previous to that, she was crawling on the carpet and picked up some small thing. As she started to put it in her mouth, I called out loudly …

Why “Focus on the Bright Side” Isn’t Helpful Advice

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There are so many memes and quotes out there that say, “Be positive, not negative. Focus on the bright side.” I’ve never been very good at ignoring the negatives and focusing on the positives.

Call me a critical, over-analytical over-thinker if you want, but at no point in my journey of self-love and self-discovery have I learned to ignore all my flaws, all my mistakes, all my regrets. At no point in my journey of compassion have I learned to ignore all the times that someone has hurt me or all the destruction caused by abuse. That never felt right …

This Weekend I Fell Apart, and That’s Okay

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“Look for something positive each day, even if some days you have to look a little harder.” ~Unknown

This weekend I hurt more than I have in a very long time.

It all started on Friday, when my boyfriend and I headed out to spend the weekend with friends—two couples, both with babies in tow.

I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to get pregnant since the start of the year, yet I didn’t anticipate that it would be emotionally taxing for me to be around two little families. I was just excited to see our friends, who live in the Bay Area, …

The Most Powerful Tool for Healing: Tell the Right Stories

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TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.

“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful parts of ourselves.” ~David Richo

In my mid-thirties, I had what I experienced as a breakdown.

If you had asked me ten or even twenty years earlier whether I had been sexually abused, I would have said no. But in my mid-thirties, strange and scary memories started surfacing in my body—along with pieces of story and language.

These pieces of memory and my responses to them seemed to glue together …

A Simple Practice to Help You Appreciate How Wonderful You Are

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“Stop criticizing yourself for everything you aren’t and start appreciating yourself for everything you are.” ~Unknown

Are you your own best friend, your own worst critic, or somewhere in between? Do you tend to focus on what you see as your flaws, mistakes, and imperfections, comparing yourself to others you think are better than you? Sometimes, do you even wish you were someone else?

It’s easy to get trapped in that way of thinking, especially in today’s consumer culture. From magazine ads to TV commercials, we are trained to compare ourselves to others and are subtly told we are not …

Healing, Forgiving, and Loving After a Painful Break Up

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“People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you will know exactly what to do.” ~Anonymous

About five years ago, I learned the biggest lesson of my life about self-love and losing oneself in a relationship, through a breakup that almost killed me.

After going through another night of three hours of sleep, I drove myself to the ER to save my own life. I hadn’t eaten or slept much in three weeks, and the scale pointed to ninety-seven pounds. I felt weak, malnourished, and unloved.

Three weeks …

The Past May Have Shaped Us, But We Have the Power to Change

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“If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.” ~Toni Morrison

Our very first relationship is the one we develop with ourselves. However, even that one is shaped by outside forces.

You may or may not believe that we choose our family. Regardless of your position regarding how your soul made it to your parents’ household, the truth is that the environment we are born into determines a great deal of the rest of our lives. This is especially true about the way we relate with ourselves and others.

We learn by observing …

Made a Big Mistake? What to Do Instead of Beating Yourself Up

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“Note to self: Beating yourself up for your flaws and mistakes won’t make you perfect, and you don’t have to be. Learn, forgive yourself, and remember: We all struggle; it’s just part of being human.” ~Lori Deschene

When I was in twelfth grade I took a World Issues class and learned about colonization, child soldiers, and how some children, by no fault of their own, had a much more challenging life than I’d had. After that, I wanted to help but wasn’t sure how.

Then, at age twenty-three, I was hired at a non-profit organization where I had the opportunity …

What Really Makes Us Feel Successful

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“Congratulations on becoming successful and best wishes on becoming happy.” ~John Mayer

I was living the life of my dreams.

Or so I thought.

I’ve been very fortunate to have had some very awesome opportunities all over the world.

I’ve worked to help victims of human trafficking in the shady streets of Thailand, I’ve helped build a positive community with drug traffickers in the extremely violent favelas of Brazil, and I’ve cared for terminally ill patients who were picked up from the streets die with dignity at Mother Theresa’s famous House of the Dying in India.

I also got …

Everyone Has Struggles, So Don’t Stigmatize Yourself

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“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” ~Brené Brown

From a psychological point of view, my childhood sucked.

I didn’t have many friends, I rarely left the house, I was terribly shy, and I used to get bullied a lot, both physically and mentally.

My teenage years weren’t any different. The psychological issues I had as a child amplified further and created more profound problems.

When I started college, I didn’t magically become more confident or develop high self-esteem. I was almost the same person.

Now, I proudly (and humbly) can say …

How I Uncovered the Root Cause of My Social Anxiety (and Finally Healed)

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“I want to dare to exist, and more than that, to live audaciously, in all my imperfect, lumpy, scarred glory, because the alternative is letting shame win.” ~Shauna Niequist

I kept my head down. Staring at my plate of food.

I could hear the laughter of the other people around the table—work colleagues, my bosses, a couple of high-profile clients. They were having a great time, enjoying the company and their expensive meals.

I felt light-headed and clammy as I battled to fake a calm and relaxed appearance. My fingernails left painful, crimson marks where I dug them into my …

How I’ve Learned to Free Myself from Depression When It Hits

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“No feeling is final.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

I’ve battled depression for most of my life. In my younger years, it gripped me pretty frequently. I was first hit with suicidal thoughts at the age of fifteen, and it scared the bejesus out of me. I was young and dumb and had no idea what was happening.

When I was twenty-five it hit again. This time, however, I understood the cause. I was getting divorced, and my entire life was in turmoil.

It was at this time that I decided that I was going to do something about it. So, I …

Don’t Forget to Appreciate How Far You’ve Come

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“Remember how far you’ve come, not how far you have to go. You are not where you want to be, but neither are you where you used to be.” ~Rick Warren

We’re always talking about how we should live in the now and “be present.” We shame ourselves for looking back at the past or into the future, thinking that we shouldn’t look too far ahead or worry about what’s to come, and we shouldn’t get too caught up in events that have already happened. We want to be focused on being the best person we can be …