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Posts tagged with “acceptance”

Why You Don’t Need to Eliminate Self-Doubt and Fear

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“The more you hide your feelings, the more they show. The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow.” ~Unknown

Self-doubt has been a companion that has followed me around like a trained dog follows his master. Every step I’ve made outside of my comfort zone, it’s been there, right beside me.

Moving from Germany to England to attend high school, I was full of high hopes and aspirations. But despite my intensive English course and hard work, I could hardly understand anyone in the first few weeks.

Feeling left high and dry by my so-called “English skills,” I …

3 Surefire Ways to Embrace Being Different

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“To be nobody but yourself in a world doing its best to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human can ever fight and never stop fighting.” ~e.e. cummings

I’m gay. I’m married to a woman and we have a beautiful daughter together. I also have an ex–boyfriend that I was with for quite a significant time. Most of my friends are straight, and I thought I was too until about five years ago when I fell in love with my now-wife.

It was a crazy time, and I suddenly had to deal with being different…

A Mindful Way to Find Relief from the Pain of Envy

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“The more you hide your feelings, the more they show. The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow.” ~Unknown

Envy is such an overpowering and overwhelming feeling, often something hidden, or masked by a smiley face, or fuelled into rage and resentment. I’ve experienced all of these emotions in my life, and as I neared my fortieth birthday, I felt that I could not go on. I was crippled by the “envy story” stuck on repeat mode inside my mind.

As I watched friends and family swoop by me in terms of outer achievements and success, the envy …

From Loathing to Love: What Makes Us Feel Worthwhile

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“Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.” ~Unknown 

My healing journey can be described through what I call the “self formula”:

Self-Doubt > Self-Loathing > Self-Destruction > Self-Awareness > Self-Love

Mine is the oldest story in the book. Adolescent angst. Mental deception. Physical revulsion. I feel fat. No, scratch that. I am fat. This girl in the mirror is ruining my life. Woe is me.

Groundbreaking drama, right? How original of me to “feel fat.” Surely, you’ve never heard that complaint before.

Except it wasn’t just a complaint. I …

When We Try to Change Others and Avoid Ourselves

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“I’ve discovered that you can’t change people. They can change themselves.” ~Jim Rohn

This is indeed a fact—a fact I took a long time to learn.

You may argue that we help each other change, and it’s true. But the deepest truth is that only we are responsible for our own growth.

The most difficult work is the seemingly minuscule shift from resistance to willingness, which allows us to face the difficult things we’ve been hiding from, and only we can do this for ourselves. 

I had boyfriends who had issues. One of them lacked ambition; he was already lost …

Finding a Window of Opportunity When Life Closes a Door

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“Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.” ~John Wooden

“Why don’t you just take up swimming?” the doctor asked.

I was twenty years old, single-minded in my pursuit of a dance career, visiting yet another doctor about the vicious tendinitis that had forced me to give up my spot at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City.

What the doctor didn’t understand is that dance isn’t just a sporting activity; it’s a way of life, an identity.

Telling a young dancer to “just take up swimming” is about as helpful …

Why Life Is A Lot More Fun When We Stop Trying to Be Perfect

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“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” ~Anna Quindlen

“Oh, my god,” she said, “I forgot to shave my left leg!”

That may not sound like a particularly dramatic announcement, but Jenny and I were sharing a seat on the chartered bus taking our senior class to the beach for “Senior Cut Day” a few weeks before graduation, and her discovery horrified me.

An unshaved leg, it seemed to me at the time, was scandalous in the extreme.

Had it been me who forgot to …

Accepting Things for What They Are Instead of Resisting Change

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“What we see is mainly what we look for.” ~Unknown

Years ago I was fortunate enough to travel on a Mediterranean cruise. I had just graduated from college and was in that difficult transition stage where I didn’t know what would come next. I was looking to relax, but also hoping that some soul searching would lead to clarity, epiphanies, and answers.

One day I thought I found them on the island of Santorini, Greece.

Between the blinding whites, the sapphire blues, the sun-kissed streets, and the black-sand beaches, I felt like I had been dropped in a utopia.

There, …

The Key to Happiness: Accept Yourself & Stop Seeking Approval

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“Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgment of the facts of a situation, then deciding what you’re going to do about it.” ~Kathleen Casey Thiesen

I think many of us get caught in a vicious cycle of thinking that leads us to believe we can only be happy if we gain acceptance from others. We think to ourselves, “The only way I can ever love myself is if others do.”

This leads us down a path of self-deprecation and hopelessness. We end up making decisions purely for the sake of gaining approval and acceptance, when really we should make decisions …

How Meditation Can Help You Find the Perfect Friend

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“When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

I meet with a lot of people who say things like, “Oh, I’ve tried meditation before but I’m just not good at it.” When asked to explain, the most common answer is, “I just can’t make my mind get quiet.”

I’ve heard responses like this so often that I’ve come to realize that this is the single greatest misunderstanding about meditation. In truth, meditation is not about calming our mind or achieving a state free …

When Someone Blames You: How to Cope with Misdirected Anger

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“Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.” ~Robert Brault

My ex-boyfriend is angry with me.

I met him soon after he had broken up with his then fiancée, and he thought he was ready to move on, but wasn’t. After many months of messing me about, we ended it. I cut off contact because it still hurt me and I still cared for him.

Eventually, I wrote to him to see if I could get some closure and to consider if we could salvage a friendship. His reply was scathing, vitriolic, angry. He blamed …

Why We Don’t Need to Feel Bad About Feeling Bad

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“Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go.” ~Mooji

I once thought that the goal of meditation was to reach a state of constant positivity, a natural euphoria in which a person simply does not get angry or depressed.

I think that a lot of people begin practicing meditation thinking that their teacher has reached this euphoric state of being. I have learned, though, that these negative feelings are never permanently banished from anyone’s mind.

As someone that has been struggling with anxiety and depression disorders since early childhood, I turned to meditation as a teenager as a …

The One Thing You Need to Change If You Want to Accept Yourself

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“Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance.” ~Unknown

I quit Weight Watchers this week and I have never felt happier.

To be clear, quitting this weight loss program was not an act of defeat, nor was it an example of me running away from something difficult or painful. Cutting ties with Weight Watchers was truly an acceptance of self.

A couple of weeks ago I had a heart-to-heart conversation with a friend. I was feeling really down, and I confided to him that not only do I lack self-confidence in nearly everything I do, I also seem to not …

3 Tiny Phrases That Can Help You Solve Big Problems

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“At any given moment, you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.” ~Chris Mason Miller

I was faced with an impossible problem, so like all the great thinkers throughout history, I shut myself in the bathroom and vowed not to come out until I had solved the problem.

It had plagued me for two-and-a-half years, and for seven years—the length of time during I’d lost my voice for and had suffered from chronic tendonitis respectively.

Such was the consequence of an obsessive guitar habit, one that saw me practicing up to fourteen …

How to Create a Happy Future by Accepting the Present

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“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Imagine if every night you wrote the script for your tomorrow.

You’d tuck it under your pillow and when you woke up, it would begin unfolding just like you envisioned.

The man or woman of your dreams would appear in the Whole Foods aisle you were perusing.

A check for a million dollars would show up in your mailbox, with a note reading “have fun.”

Your friends and family would call you to tell you how great life …

Seek Not to Be Accepted

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Source: Global Love Project

Stop Waiting for Tomorrow: 3 Ways to Love Your Life Now

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“Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” ~Paul Coelho

My husband had been unemployed for more than two years before it hit me that I was dealing with it all wrong. During that time, I kept thinking that any day he would find a new job. And every day that went by I was disappointed, frustrated, unhappy, and even angry at times.

For two years I felt like we were in limbo. I was always thinking, “We’ll do this or that after he finds a job.” Everything seemed to be put on …

3 Self-Honoring Ways to Deal with Low-Energy Days

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“Being who you are is another way of accepting yourself.” ~Unknown

A few months ago I woke up with what my good friend and I call “the rage.” I was automatically annoyed by the tone of people’s emails in my inbox. I was frustrated by the lack of response from others. My tea tasted too strong. I felt cooped up in the house. Need I go on?

So I went to the gym to increase my endorphins. I figured that a good workout would be the perfect cure-all.

It wasn’t. I left my HIIT (high intensity interval training) pleasantly exhausted …

What to Do When People in Your Life Don’t Want to Change

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“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” ~Mary Engelbreit

We all know at least one person who we think needs a self-help course or book more than we do. They’re the “wrong” ones, at least in our minds.

I once was in a relationship with a man who seemed to have placed me at the bottom of his priority list. He would always be too busy playing sports or going out with his coworkers to spend time with me.

I found myself modifying my weekend schedule to match …

Dealing with Life’s Inevitable Pain: 4 Lessons to Help Reduce Your Suffering

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

Pain is everywhere. Whether through heartbreak or a broken bone, we all struggle with unavoidable hurt at some point in our lives. Often, even the suggestion of suffering is enough to send us running for cover.

One of our most basic instincts is to avoid being hurt, and for good reason. The world is full of sharp objects and hot frying pans. While our instinctive wiring is helpful when it comes to cooking, it only contributes to our suffering when applied to the pain of relationships and physical discomfort …