Authors: Lori Deschene
When the new pair of high heels I've been wearing to work every day go unnoticed, start to slowly destroy my feet, and still haven't prompted an invite to the “right” parties, I give up and start to search the fridge. I discover a tub of ice cream or a pack of cookies that may not make me more beautiful or accepted, but they help fill my stomach up and create a fullness in the exact place that fear is beginning to dig a deeper and deeper hole inside of me.
When that sick feeling starts rising again, this time from the mix of cookies and cream atop a base of fear, I sit in the comfiest chair I can find and reach for the remote control. Rather than listen to the personal derision on repeat in my mind, I watch reruns of my favorite reality show. I can then cheer the reality star on as I would a friend. Or, I can sit and degrade them to make myself feel better by deflecting the meanest thoughts I have going through my head from myself onto them.
I would love to say that after this fear-based pity and hatred party I would choose to hit the shore with my trusty longboard to work off that ice cream, but unless that board comes with a
QWERTY keyboard, I'm more inclined to stay at home. Only after watching other people live their busy lives does it actually register that I should reach out and connect with my friends.
After having destroyed my feet in high heels, eaten an entire quart of ice cream all by myself, and vegged out in front of the TV in my PJs, I hardly feel like getting dolled up to go out for some face-to-face time. Therefore, the next best source of connection is my new best friend—the Internet. After returning a few pokes, commenting on a couple friends' pictures, and then checking my homepage incessantly to see if anyone online has responded to my posts, the night drags on. I continually stare at the glowing screen as the minutes tick by, unable to disconnect myself from the cyber world and face the fear of being alone with my self-pity and self-hatred.
Can you believe that this entire fear-based cycle of self-pity and hatred grew from a simple comparison of what I was wearing to those around me? Unbelievable, right? Not really. Having observed my mind, I've come to understand that a good amount of my suffering starts by making comparisons and then creating stories in my head.
Encouragingly, I am not alone in this. However, it is unfortunate to realize that many people who suffer in the same way I do will never learn how to curb their own suffering. They will never give themselves the time to sit, reflect, and watch what comes up in their minds without becoming involved in the stories.
If you would like to take more control over your mind and your suffering, the best practices I know are meditation and mindfulness. To become more mindful, recognize first that you are solely responsible for the thoughts your mind produces. While you can't stop your mind completely, you can take control over it and create moments of peace for yourself.
When thoughts or fear arise, try to do the following as soon as you are aware of what's taking place in your mind and body: Stop. Take a long, deep breath in and out. In your mind say “in” as you breathe in and “out” as you breathe out in order to ground yourself in the present moment. Then, feel the ground beneath your feet. Notice the way your clothes feel against your skin, the wind against your face, the sun on your cheeks. Listen to the birds singing, the rain falling around you, or the ticking of a nearby clock. All this will ground you in the present moment. Even if thoughts want to drag you away with them, coming back to recognize the breath will give you the control you need to prevent this from happening.
Follow these steps until you feel that the thought or storyline in your mind has moved on, or until you feel that the pull of your thought or fear has dissipated slightly. At this point you can return to whatever you were doing, and hopefully you will have prevented yourself from suffering in that moment.
Unfortunately, these steps are by no means a quick fix in saving you from the suffering we all encounter every day. In fact, at first it
will take all your energy and resolve to not react to what your mind and ego are doing. It's also quite possible that even after you've covered these steps you will still get lost in your thoughts and fears by comparing yourself to others.
Whether you compare yourself to others or not isn't the point. The point is that you've finally managed to sit down and look at your thoughts and fear. Once you have done this, you've begun the process of taking back control of your mind and your life.
No doubt, occasionally you'll also stop and find yourself right in the middle of buying something you don't really need or switching on the TV without thinking about what you're doing. As long as you notice when you're midway through handing your credit card to the lovely salesperson, you're on your way to conquering your mind.
The more you practice mindfulness, the better you will get at it. The key to all this is not giving up. I'm not saying you'll be able to climb to the top of the Burj Al Khalifa on your next trip to Dubai or take a shower with eight beady spider eyes hanging out on the showerhead above you. But you will be able to stop the stories in your head instead of feeling a pull to distract yourself from all the pain they cause you.
So why not give it a shot. Can it really hurt? Well it might, but it'll hurt for all the right reasons.
by Kayla Albert
Why compare yourself with others? No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you
.
—U
NKNOWN
When I arrived home after a brief stint living in another state, I was anxious to reconnect with places from my childhood and the friends I'd left behind. However, while I was healing from a heart-wrenching break up, suffering through sleepless nights on my parents' rock-hard couch, and mulling over where all my freelance writing work had gone, my friends seemed to be successful, happy, and right on track.
Realizing that I had hit rock bottom and that it had crippled my self-esteem, my friends gathered around me, taking shifts to ensure that I wouldn't drown in my overwhelming grief. Yet, while their love and support was what got me through, seeing each of their lives so clearly flourishing added another emotion to my already full load: jealousy. Jealousy is a sneaky bugger—a pot-stirrer that likes to aid the ego in pointing out flaws you'd rather just sweep under the rug. It serves as a reminder of all the success you don't have, the
experiences you haven't had, the relationships you'd like to have—basically everything that makes you feel “less than.”
I spent the next few months wallowing in comparisons, staring longingly at couples clutching hands as they walked down the street, watching people hustle to their well-paying jobs, and picturing myself in the beautiful homes that others had the ability to purchase. While I knew with every cell in my body that I wanted to be somewhere different, doing something different, jealously kept me rooted firmly in place—a place plagued by lack and thoughts of “if only.”
Once I realized that the circumstances wouldn't change until I did, I noticed that entertaining this toxic emotion was getting me nowhere but deeper in my hole of self-pity. That was when jealousy and I parted ways, leading me to some very powerful realizations.
First, I realized that being anything less than happy for others was blocking my own chance at happiness and success. Like attracts like, so by ruminating in the idea that you don't have what someone else has, you're simply attracting more of what you're feeling: lack. This means you are actually pushing away the very things you're craving. Yet, if you are able to celebrate in the successes of others, you are sending a very clear message to the universe: “I'll have some of that too, please!”
It all comes down to the energy of the emotions you're carrying. Frowning on another person's good fortune doesn't feel good; therefore, it can't be creating good things. Feeling excited for someone
feels good; therefore, it can help create more good things, for you and for them.
Second, seeing the positive experiences other people were having opened me up to possibilities. When someone else lands a killer job with an impressive paycheck, it gives you something to shoot for. It can show you the amazing possibilities that are already present in the world. This also allows us to confront one negative belief we carry with us as a society: there isn't enough to go around. So, if one person gets something we want, the chances of us getting the same thing are significantly diminished. The truth is, there are more opportunities out there than we think. We simply have to work for them.
Finally, I realized that everything is temporary, and the tables are constantly turning. Realizing that things are always changing can do wonders in all areas of your life—especially when it comes to dealing with jealousy. The monetary wealth you see a friend experiencing could be gone within a year. The relationship you witness and long for could be over within a month. The string of unfortunate circumstances you've been struggling with could turn around in a day. I'm not implying we should take solace in knowing that other people's blessings are temporary, but rather that it helps to realize
everything
in life is, for all of us. We are not the only people who go through hard times. Circumstances are constantly changing, so to spend a great deal of time and energy fretting over them or wishing for something different is, frankly, a waste.
Appreciating
what is
makes “what could be” even sweeter. If you're able to express gratitude for the experience you are having right now—no matter how negative it may look on the surface—you'll have a greater capacity for appreciating the positive experiences when they begin to show up. Maybe you don't have the career success or relationship satisfaction of those around you, but by working through anything that is less than ideal, you are achieving something great: growth. And growth will make room for the changes you've been waiting for.
Jealousy planted one glaring misconception in my mind: who I was simply wasn't enough. I have since realized that the hardships I was experiencing weren't meant to point out my inadequacies, but to create an entirely new life experience that was more fulfilling and more . . . me.
What jealousies do
you
need to kick to the curb?
by Katy Cowan
If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is
.
—U
NKNOWN
Lifestyle. Opportunities. Wealth. Just think how far we've come in the past hundred years—especially when you look at what we have today compared with our great grandmothers' generation. My great grandmother married very young, lived in the same place her whole life, and had eleven children. She never had a career and never got a chance to go on a vacation. Her life was hard, poor, and lacking in any real opportunity.
I wonder if she ever dreamed about moving to another city, or transforming her life, or seeing the world with just a backpack. I bet she did, but back then there weren't as many opportunities as we have today. Thanks to technology, the Internet, and an improved society, our lifestyles are completely transformed. We have choices. We can live pretty much anywhere we want. We can travel and see the world. We can secure jobs on the other side of the planet. We can start our own businesses and serve clients thousands of miles away. It's definitely an exciting time.
When there is a wealth of opportunities, choices, and places we could choose to live, you'd think we'd all be happy, right? Wrong. You see, the problem with having choices is that we become restless. We can't settle on what we already have or be satisfied with what we've got, because we'll always be wondering about the next big thing. It's called the “grass is always greener” syndrome. We think someone else is having a better time elsewhere. We make ourselves miserable by constantly thinking about the unknown in an endless quest to find happiness.
We lie awake at night torturing ourselves over what we should do next, wondering if we're missing out on something big. We feel we're wasting our lives if we're not doing something more important. There's also this sense of time pressure, particularly with my generation, who had the saying, “The world is your oyster” drilled into us from a young age. This means there can be a sense of urgency, because we feel like we're running out of time and should be doing something greater or somehow we'll fail.
We also want to think that we're special and that our lives are destined to be adventurous, thrilling, and hugely successful. And when they're not turning out that way? We become depressed. We want more. And we spend all of our time and energy on focusing on what we don't have rather than counting our blessings.
Some of us might start to move around a lot—often to find the “perfect” city or town, somewhere we can call “home,” somewhere we'll be happy. Others might jump from one job or relationship to
the next, never fully committing to anything. But once we've made that leap to the other side—once we've moved to where we thought the grass would be greener and where we'd be happy—we discover that it is no different. We start to wonder about the grass being greener elsewhere. We are never truly happy when we have “grass is greener” syndrome.
Focusing on things we don't have is a recipe for disaster. It only leads to a miserable existence and causes us to forget what's most important—and that's what's happening right now. As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” And that's certainly true.
We all seem to be victims of ignoring what's actually happening right at this very moment, which is only natural when we have so many choices and opportunities available to us. We can forget the whole point of happiness, and that's peace of mind, acceptance, and mindfulness. Essentially, it's being happy no matter where you are in the world, or what you're doing, or whom you're with.
Being mindful quiets the mind and brings us a sense of peace that no other quest for a “perfect life” could ever bring. Mindfulness helps you to appreciate life as it happens. It stops us from agonizing over what might've been or what could be. It just brings us back to the present.