Tag: free

Monsters until you flip the light switch on

Andrew Gide - Very few monsters warrant the fear we have of them

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Happy Halloween!

What or who did you think was a monster until you flipped your light switch on?

When we think that a thing is dangerous, unknowable, or scary, and we try to not look at it, it stays scary. It’s why, as kids, we think the stuffed animal under our bed or the shirt in the closet is a monster. They will only stop being scary if you flip the light switch on. And only when they stop being scary do you find freedom.

Fear of vague unknown potentialities keeps us from chasing our dreams. Fear of who-knows-what a bully might do if you upset them keeps us from sticking up for ourselves and others. And the fear from seeing someone in your life as a monster to be afraid of, instead of a person to decide what you think about, keeps you stressed and nervous and sometimes even paralyzed.

Monsters are scary. When you see the world as one big monster, your dreams are scary. When you flip the light switch on and see that there’s really a lot of good happy safe stuff in life, and that everything is usually okay, the scariness fades away and you find freedom to do what you want to do.

Monsters are scary. On the other hand, flesh-and-blood people you decide that you don’t like or don’t want controlling your life are not scary. They stop being scary when you look at them in the light, look at them honestly, look at them plainly. Most people who have scared you are just people. You sure don’t have to like them, support them, or keep them around. But if they’re keeping you up at night or controlling your feelings, flip the light switch on and see them for who they really are. They are not monsters and so they don’t have any mysterious power over you.

I have found a lot of freedom in trading away the monsters I thought were waiting under my bed, for normal life stuff, and for finite, human, limited people who couldn’t really control me.

If you think you, too, might find some freedom in flipping your light switches on, go for it! All the stuff that scared you is normal to someone else. And all the people that you thought were monsters, who you thought you had to be scared of, whose power you thought would affect your whole life–they’re just people. You can choose to stop seeing them as scary monsters. You can be free from the fear.

You can find the courage to choose what you want.

Don’t wait for permission

Terrie Davoll Hudson - the things that excite you

Raise your hand if you often feel like you need permission to do something you’re inspired to do?

I don’t know if it’s just certain types of people. Maybe it’s a part of anxiety. Maybe it’s from growing up in a family where most things weren’t considered a wise use of time. Maybe it goes hand in hand with a codependent need to focus on everyone else’s happiness while neglecting your own.

I’m really not sure where it comes from. And I honestly don’t know how widely shared the experience is. Maybe it’s just a few of us. Or maybe there are lots and lots of us–waiting for permission to do what we’re inspired to do.

Maybe you want to try writing a story. Maybe you want to start running. Maybe you get a craving for chips and salsa. Maybe you want to talk to the stranger sitting next to you. Maybe you want to go for a road trip for no reason. Maybe you want to explore another career. Or maybe the beach is suddenly calling you.

The inspiration hits you. You know you want it. But there’s some voice telling you that of course that’s not for you! At least not today. That there are so many reasons you’re not ready to do that. It’s not like you’d be good at it anyway. And there are better things to do. It’s just not you–that’s for other people. Not you. . . .

Does that resonate with anyone else? Does anyone find that there’s a common theme in their day to day life of automatically assuming that you can’t, shouldn’t, or just won’t do a thing you feel inspired to do?

Big or little, I don’t think it makes a difference. The little ones make me scratch my head more, though. A job change is a big decision with lots of consequences. “I feel like inviting a friend to play catch” is NOT. Why is that hard sometimes?

If you ever feel that way, like you don’t have permission for all the things you’re inspired to do, like you’re never able or allowed to just go for things, like every new decision would be a wrong decision–if that’s you, I encourage you to see what happens if you just do things anyway.

What would happen if when your mind immediately went to every reason you shouldn’t do a thing (not worth it, not valuable, not worthy, not right now), you just told the feelings to go screw off and just did what you were inspired to do anyway?

Baby steps, even. Once a day, or once a weekend. . . . “It’s probably too chilly out.” I don’t care, I’m going for a walk! . . . “You’re not a reader!” I am today!

What would happen? You might find you don’t like it. It might cost you some time. Or you might find it exciting, therapeutic, enjoyable. You might discover a new passion in life. You might find a new hobby. You might make a new friend. You never know until you try. And if you try it, you just might like it. And you just might feel yourself coming alive.

(Side note: You might find something that you like that you’ll never be great at or that won’t “serve you” well. Great! That thing is what life is all about.)

Today’s never the right day if you’re waiting for life to give you permission. Today’s only the right day if you do the thing even though today was the “wrong” day.

Don’t wait for permission when you get inspired.

I think my life is much happier when I can let myself just do stuff.

And it always seems to turn out okay.

Happy adventuring!

~

pasta
Watched a cooking show on Netflix, accidentally couldn’t help making pasta.

What did you do today just because you wanted to?

Be epic.

Sometimes I try to live really safe. To keep a lid on the version of me I’d really like to be. Afraid of what people will think.

I worry a lot that if I let the world see my “awesome,” they won’t think it’s awesome, and somehow that will ruin my life.

Connecting is dangerous. Loving is dangerous. Dancing is dangerous. Shining is dangerous. All the things are dangerous.

So I choose a lot of times not to be bold. Not to be boldly me. Boldly epic.

But here’s the thing . . . you only live once.

So f*** it. Be epic.

7 Words of Hope from a Nazi Death Camp

One of the hardest books to read, but one of the most rewarding. I just finished psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. During the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of an estimated 17 million humans like you and me, Frankl was moved from camp to camp, doing forced labor in brutal conditions, threatened constantly with death. Man’s Search for Meaning serves both as a memoir of sorts for his time in concentration and labor camps and as an explanation of how that experience shaped his understanding of psychology.

I want to share with you just a few of the words of hope that I found in Frankl’s book, and I hope you’ll be inspired to read the rest of the book yourself. I can’t state strongly enough the impact that this book has had. No matter how sad its stories, I found it to be one of the most hopeful books I’ve read.

1. You matter.

Some days you may question whether there’s any point to your being here. But even in the worst of times, Frankl found that if he and his fellow prisoners considered the impact they might still have on others through their love and their work in the future, they could see just how much each of them did matter.

“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how.'” – Viktor Frankl

2. You get to choose your life’s meaning.

Life is a weird path of twists and turns for each of us, and in comparing ourselves to others or to the ideals we think we’ve learned, we sometimes can’t find how we matter. But Frankl learned that peace can be found in giving up the search for an ultimate meaning, and instead choosing what you will live for.

“Everyone has is own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it. . . . Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.” – Viktor Frankl

3. You can always find joy and fulfillment in LOVE.

Love is a powerful and beautiful thing. For me, this was one of the most meaningful and helpful messages in the book. In a strongly individualistic society, it is hard to grasp the significance and fulfillment in just loving another person. It is okay to live for love.

“My mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. . . . A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth–that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.” – Viktor Frankl

4. You can reduce your suffering by observing it objectively. 

It’s hard to imagine suffering worse than prisoners in a concentration camp, but even in such intense suffering, Frankl found relief. He discovered that a simple change in how you observe the present moment can make a bad situation much more bearable. He told a story about when, during a particularly awful day, he started imagining that he was actually retelling his situation in a future psychological lecture. Just this simple mental exercise helped immensely, reminding him that life was bigger than his current hurt, that the present was simply a circumstance that could be observed.

“By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past. Both I and my troubles became the object of an interesting psychoscientific study undertaken by myself. . . . What does Spinoza say . . . ‘Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.'” – Viktor Frankl

5. Feelings of joy and suffering are relative. You’re not stuck in your feelings.

This may be a blessing and a curse, depending on how you look at it and what focus you choose. Frankl observed that the feelings of despair, suffering, frustration, and sadness, weren’t necessarily worse or more overwhelming, in a situation as awful as a concentration camp, than in a less severe circumstance. Humans tend to feel suffering very completely, whether the stressor is big or little. On the one hand, that can mean a small disappointment can be overwhelming. On the other hand, that can mean that you may handle the very worst circumstances much better than you think–which is a hopeful thought. Studies have shown that people who go through awful events often end up much less devastated, at least after a while, than they think they will be. In the same token, feelings of happiness and joy can be extremely strong, even when found in very simple experiences.

“Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the ‘size’ of human suffering is absolutely relative. It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys.” – Viktor Frankl

6. Growing old is going to be okay.

This one sucks. I always hate thinking of growing old, watching my remaining time in this life get shorter and shorter. This book honestly helped with that. Frankl has the most beautiful perspective on this that I’ve heard. It’s a peaceful and hopeful one. I’ll let him speak for himself. I hope it helps you as much as it helped me.

“At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence. . . . I should say having been is the surest kind of being. . . . The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a younger person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? ‘No, thank you,’ he will think. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.'” – Viktor Frankl

7. You are always free to choose and change.

Another one that is near and dear to my heart, that inspires compassion and hope for myself and for others: His life in Nazi death camps persuaded Frankl that people are not stuck being, thinking, speaking, or acting as they have, or as they’re conditioned to. Sure, the deck may be stacked against you. And on average, people tend to stick with their patterns. But at the end of the day, each of us is free to choose. Free to choose how we will react to the circumstances life brings to us. Free to choose who we are.

“Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. . . . one of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them. Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.” – Viktor Frankl

Guys, it’s hard to communicate how much I loved this book. It wasn’t the most impressively written, it wasn’t the most exciting, it wasn’t the most pleasant. But it was full of the raw experiences of real life in all its nitty gritty weirdness. It was honest. And it was full of hope and inspiration. So full of hope. Real hope.

I hope you’ll read it. And I hope that every day for the rest of your life, you’ll find hope.

~

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl

Re-Reexamining: Is That REALLY What You Want?

Debbie Ford - Be Who You Are

Like most kids, I had a plethora of career plans by the time I was about 7. I was going to be a zookeeper, I was going to pilot a spaceship, I was going to be a cowboy, and I was going to be a detective (I even had my briefcase picked out–a plastic hot wheels organizer). Most of all, I was determined to be a soldier back in World War II.

All that had changed by the time I was a young teenager. I knew I had one calling in my life–the best calling–to be a pastor. I attended conferences for kids who were going to be pastors and I bought hundreds of books on theology. I obsessively chased that one life goal.

Granted, when you’re a teenager, getting to the bottom of your feelings can be hard. So I’m not sure if this was the driving cause for my ambition or if it was just a piece of the puzzle, but looking back, this definitely screwed up my thinking: I thought that being a pastor was the “highest calling” a person could have. In other words, being a pastor is better than being other things. Now I would also say, somehow, that every other “calling” could be just as meaningful and good in its own way. But somehow I lived with this cognitive dissonance in my head, where still, in one sense–the most important sense–being a pastor is best.

As I grew older I reexamined a lot of my thoughts on the subject. I discovered that I wasn’t really sure that’s what I wanted to be. I replaced the narrow-minded “pastor-is-best” idea with a more progressive “helping-people-deeply-is-best.” That meant I could be a pastor, a therapist, a life coach, a writer, a leader… as long as my life’s purpose was to help others deep down inside, I could be happy.

Eventually, I became fully convinced that people can and should be happy with just about any kind of life they want to live. There’s nothing “better” about helping people as a therapist than about working for Disney as a junior animator’s assistant (is that a thing?). That it’s just as good and beautiful and amazing and meaningful to chase your dream of being a musician as it is to chase your dream of being a teacher. Movie director or rock climber. Cook or personal trainer. IT professional or pharmaceutical sales rep. A philosopher or a yoga instructor. There’s not a right and wrong choice. There’s not a “best.” At least that’s what I believe now. And I’ve believed that for a long time.

But here’s the problem. I shed my old narrow-minded views years ago. I got rid of my prejudice about “higher callings.” For everyone else in my life. But not really for myself.

I still had never imagined the possibility that I could be happy doing something that didn’t fit that “better calling” of helping people deeply, like being a therapist or life coach. I never let myself be truly free to consider being a happy chef, a happy pianist, or a happy movie buff. I was the biggest cheerleader my friends could have in chasing their own unique dreams, but I still held myself to a different standard.

 

I’ve been discovering lately that this is a very widely shared experience. Maybe you’ve known it or are just finding it out for yourself:

A big principle or belief about the meaning and value of lives and careers and dreams has changed in your mind. You no longer believe that it’s “better” to be a doctor, “better” to be a pastor, “better” to make a lot of money, “better” NOT to make a lot of money, “better” to make a huge impact, “better” to have kids, or “better” to do anything the traditionally “better” way.

So you’ve stopped holding other people to that standard. If your friend asked you for advice, you’d say, “Do what you want! Don’t feel pressure to be or do one thing over another! Find what really makes you tick! Don’t do what you’re ‘supposed’ to do, do what you really love!” You’ve grown out of your old prejudices for others . . .

But not for yourself!

Sometimes it can be totally subconscious: I don’t even realize I’m putting pressure on myself to have a “better calling,” to have a traditional family or relationship, etc…

Or maybe I’m totally aware of the pressure because I think it’s my own true preference: “I WANT to do this meaningful career. I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do this meaningful career!” . . . But was that preference shaped by a standard you no longer believe? If you let yourself truly feel free to be who you wanted to be, would your dream still be the same?

Maybe it would be. For example, I think I’m genuinely very happy when I get to help people feel happier or stronger, or when I get to help people grow or learn. I really think that’s me deep down. So no matter what path my life takes, I think I’ll always be looking for little (or big) ways to do that.

But maybe you’d find you have some new dreams. Maybe there’s a whole world out there that makes you tick that you didn’t know made you tick–because you only ever let the “better way”, the “traditional way,” or your “higher calling” make you tick. Maybe it’s the world of medicine. Maybe it’s the world of sports. Maybe dance. Maybe movies. Maybe food. Maybe education. Maybe family. Maybe business. Maybe volunteering.

We’re all different. I don’t think anyone has this one elusive dream that will make them the happiest, where if I never discover my love for that world, I’ll never be fulfilled.

But I do think a lot of us make choices every day–little choices and big choices–that are subconsciously guided more by old prejudices we shed long ago–standards we’d never hold our friends to now–that keep us living lives in a way we don’t truly want to live them–chasing dreams that “should” be ours, being who we are “supposed” to be.

 

You’re progressive. You’re a free thinker. You no longer hold anyone to some old prejudice you used to have. But maybe that old prejudice is still holding onto you. Maybe you haven’t let yourself be free yet. Maybe it’s time to re-reexamine your old beliefs.

The sooner you can let yourself be free of those “better-choice”/”better-calling” standards you don’t actually hold anymore, the sooner you get to discover worlds that make you happy and excited. And then you get to enjoy diving into those worlds head first.

There’s nothing wrong with being a movie nerd or a CrossFitter. There are so many amazing lives to live and love.

So free yourself. Reexamine every once in a while.

 

The other side of the coin is how we’re affecting others: Please be aware of the web you may be accidentally creating for the people who look up to you. Especially really young impressionable people.

Parents, teachers, mentors, leaders: Your words, the opinions you express, the things you do and don’t celebrate, the activities you require, the comparisons you make–these can all teach an impressionable mind that there’s only one “best” dream they should chase. Or instead, you can carefully choose the words to help a little mind know that they live in a big, beautiful world full of countless amazing things to explore and enjoy.

I’ll try to do my part, too. It’s a big world out there, friends. :)