• Read Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional

    Emotional Intelligence, Mindfulness, Well Being

    Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional

    The title of today’s blog is a quote that has been attributed to many notable talking heads, including the Dali Lama.  And it’s the events of last week that really brought it home for me, as in the wee hours of Friday morning, when I should have been peacefully sleeping, I was awakened by a massive migraine attack, complete with nausea and all the fun things a migraine can throw one’s way.  The bottom line – it was an unrelenting 24 hours of hell.  And not just on the physical front.  Especially not only on the physical front.  In-between unsteady trips to the bathroom my mind was awash with anxiety.  What’s going to happen to all my client appointments tomorrow?  Cancelled.  What’s going to happen to my blog I need to finish and get out by the end of the week?  Not happening. What if this wrecks my business?  Clients are going to think I’m unreliable.  How am I supposed to plan and manage my engagements when something like this can strike without a moment’s notice? What if this puts undue stain on my marriage?  Me being up keeps him up.  How much can my husband really take?  It left me drained, emotionally and physically, but also quite reflective.  Because at some point, in the midst of all the strife, strain and obsessive worrying, I realized I had a choice.  Not a choice of whether I get to have migraines – unfortunately I don’t have that kind of power!  But a choice on what perspective I get to take on the situation.  And it’s the perspective I take that leads directly to how much suffering I must endure. What does it mean to suffer? To break this down, let’s think about what suffering means.  It’s worth noodling on this considering the Buddha said many a time that “life is suffering.”  On the surface of it, not the most upbeat way to view our journey around planet earth.  But it depends on how you look at it.  I’ve often defined suffering as “resistance to what is.”  Resistance creates pressure.  And pressure creates stress.  And so, when folks enter my virtual office these days and say things like they’re burned out and stressed out, I believe them.  They are.  But I also say the solution lies not so much in having more time in the day to address a never-ending list of to-dos, but more in the way we manage our energy relative to the problems life throws our way.  Because unfortunately, like it or not, life will throw us problems.  That’s the one thing we can always count on.  The real problem is we think we shouldn’t have problems.  And therefore, we spend a lot of time resisting said problems, which creates a lot of suffering. Recognize any of these? If only I’d had a better childhood, then I wouldn’t be navigating all the difficulty I am right now. They were wrong to fire me.  If they had really valued me, […]

    February 26, 2024

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    5.5 min read

  • Read An antidote for impostor syndrome – but it’s not quite what you think

    Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Spirituality, Well Being

    An antidote for impostor syndrome – but it’s not quite what you think

    Impostor syndrome is one of those interesting and universal things – in my opinion we all suffer from it.  It shows up in many ways – failure to try new things because we’re afraid we’re going to fail, we don’t speak up in a meeting and so we never get credit for the idea, we don’t ask for the promotion, we don’t ask for help, we avoid asking for feedback or we over defend if we do get it, we overwork something to death because it’s not quite perfect yet, we fail to advocate for ourselves… We all suffer silently and repeat the same patterns I could go on and on.  And we’re somewhat aware of the cost of this, as it makes life a lot more painful to live.  We KNOW in our heads that we suffer from impostor syndrome.  We might read books on it, we’ve taken the online quiz, maybe even our therapist told us.  So we look for new techniques on how to solve this problem, we look to apply a new perspective and think carefully about what the morning affirmation needs to say (that is, if we remember to do it.). Maybe we practice meditation hoping and praying it will disappear, or we call our doctor and ask for a prescription for the daily anxiety we’re battling and just can’t seem to shake no matter how successful we are, no matter how many things get ticked off the to do list.  Because there’s always more.  We practice self-care because that’s the solution, right?  A massage, getting the nails done, we tell ourselves that we need to be kinder to ourselves.  But deep down we KNOW we don’t deserve it.  Our nails look great and inside we’re still a mess.  And we go about our business of repeating the same cycles, the same patterns of suffering, because obviously there’s no real fix to this, otherwise somebody would have figured it out by now. Impostor syndrome can’t be solved by the same thinking that creates it There is a fix.  The problem is we’re often looking in the wrong place.  Impostor syndrome can’t be solved by the same problem that creates it.  It’s not a thinking problem.  It can’t be solved in the head.  It can only be solved in the heart.  The heart – an interesting concept for many of us to take in.  It’s a place many of us aren’t super familiar with and frankly don’t have much experience with.  And yet we all have one.  How does this happen and how can this be?  Because adulthood often entails learning how not to feel things.  Learning how to hide things.  Learning how to cope with the difficulties of life, and feelings will just get in the way and get us in trouble.  We learn early on as children that feelings are often scary and if we express them, we’ll probably get punished, or worse.  We learn how to not take emotions to work because emotional […]

    October 17, 2023

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    5.7 min read

  • Read Nothing Worth Splitting Hairs Over

    Authenticity, Well Being

    Nothing Worth Splitting Hairs Over

    I normally don’t share my creative writing that I do for fun, but this piece I want to share with you.  It’s a vulnerable one recently published in the spring 2022 issue of Please See Me, an online literary journal dedicated to health and wellness.  While the topic deals with an anxiety disorder related to hair pulling ( the technical name is Trichotrillomania) I’ve suffered with over the years, the deeper themes in the piece relate to things we all struggle with.  I hope you enjoy a humorous dive into an important topic, and how learning to laugh at ourselves and how ironically, sometimes surrendering and letting go can open the door to something very special indeed… Nothing Worth Splitting Hairs Over I remember the first time it happened. I was sixteen and it was advanced algebra class. It was our final exam, and I was struggling as usual. I’d never liked math. I looked down at the floor at the end of the period and there it was. A large pile of thick, curly, blond hair was lying innocently on the floor. I looked around the room, wondering whose it was—had some poor soul lost a wig? The confusion was quickly replaced with a sinking feeling in my stomach. It was my hair. But how? Why? I didn’t have time to make sense of it. My face flushed with shame, my eyes darted nervously around the room, looking for my nemesis, Shannon Clark. Had she seen? She’d be sure to tell everyone. I reached down to the floor with all the nonchalance I could muster, quickly grabbed the pile, and stuffed it into my backpack. I disposed of the blond wad later in the girls’ bathroom. I wondered later how many pieces of hair it was. One hundred, two hundred? It was a lot. I didn’t think to stop and count each strand in my mad dash to destroy the evidence. And then panic set in. Did I have a bald spot now? Frantic, I checked my hair in the bathroom mirror multiple times for signs, searching for little patches of scalp peeking out from underneath my frizzy mop. But there were none. My secret was at least safe for now. Up to that point I had craved the long, straight, luxuriously silky-smooth hair many of my classmates sported, like the girls in the Pantene commercials: “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” I hated them. But in that moment, I was secretly thankful for my big, blond mop, which Shannon often referred to as a blonde afro. I had more than enough hair to spare. I was in my early thirties when I finally went in for treatment. I kept pulling out my hair all through the remainder of high school, all through college and my first master’s degree, all through my first job and my second master’s degree. Never enough to be bald. I always conveniently pulled from the underneath on the left side of my head. The result was the […]

    April 26, 2022

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    12.8 min read

  • Read Why it’s Okay to Wake up on the Wrong Side of Bed

    Authenticity, Motivation

    Why it’s Okay to Wake up on the Wrong Side of Bed

      A Bad Case of the Mondays I woke up on the wrong side of the bed the other day.  It was just one of those days.  The kind of day when your entire body feels heavy and lethargic, almost as though someone sucked all the energy out of you with a Dyson turbo.  Every movement felt slow and labored, like I was pulling my limbs through an endless chest deep river of water.  I forced myself out of the house at 7:15 am with a double espresso and made my heavy legs carry me all the way to boot camp.  Of course it was the day coach the boot camp coach decided on a power burpee session.  10 burpees a minute.  Minute after minute after minute.  Four minutes in my body was screaming and I wanted to burst into tears.  No amount of “mental reframing” worked.  It was just one of those days when you have to suck it up. When the torture had finally ended and I arrived back home, I warned my husband to stay a good 15 feet away from me at all times, because I was having “one of those days.” At this point you might be wondering what the heck had crawled up my ass and died.  But nothing bad had happened.  Nothing had changed from the day before.  Nothing was technically wrong.  Except for the fact that I felt like shit and my mood was beyond foul. Now, ordinarily when something like this happens, as a life coach my first thought is to resolve it.  What affirmation can I say that will make me feel better?  What gratitudes can I journal that will bring about a sense of open heartedness?  Perhaps I need to dust off Pema Chodron’s Practicing Peace in Times of War?  What 7 steps to happiness blog can I find on facebook?  What book can I read? I looked down at my kindle and eyed my newest purchase, a book on positive psychology by the highly notable Tal Ben – Shahar, “Choose the Life You Want:  The Mindful Way to Happiness.”  I stared at it on my kindle and took it all in.  The bold colors.  The lofty promises on the cover which spoke of endless happiness and serenity.  Perhaps the secret to my unhappiness lay somewhere in this treasure trove of self-help solutions? But the book stayed closed. Let it Be It was at that point I had a sudden flash of inspiration, and did something quite different than my usual life coach reporitee:  I let it be. Let it be, you may ask?  “Okay Shelley, I know it’s a great song, and was one of the most popular Beatles hits ever, even despite the fact John Lennon hated it.  But really, let it be?” Yes, let it be. It was in that moment I decided to let myself feel the frustration, the sadness, the melancholy, the hopelessness, the lethargy. I didn’t try to analyze it.  I didn’t try […]

    April 11, 2018

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    3.8 min read