Pretend You're Good At It

We've all heard the saying, "Fake it 'til you make it." It sounds catchy, but it actually sucks as a life philosophy. Ask me how I know. I know because I have tried many times throughout my life to make it my life philosophy, and have always been disappointed by it. First of all, it starts with a word that immediately gets my hackles up. I can't stand fake. I yearn for real and authentic, and fake things and people just leave me feeling distrustful and annoyed. But my other problem with this way of living is the "make it" part. How do you know when you've "made it?" And what is "it" anyway? It feels like a pretty hollow end goal. In my experience, there are many times when you actually just keep faking it indefinitely because there's really no stopping point once you start faking life. Or you give up trying to "make it" because you grow weary of the faking it.

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook an alternative life philosophy: "Face it 'til you make it." To me, this is better because instead of faking feelings you don't feel, you can face the ones you do feel and become master of them. 

But the philosophy I'm enjoying even more right now is "Pretend you're good at it," which was a piece of advice given to journalist and author Jenny Lawson after she published her first book and literally ran sick with anxiety from the studio while recording the audio version. She said she felt there was no way she could do this thing that was in front of her and she felt paralyzed with fear and anxiety. She texted a friend from the bathroom and conveyed her panic, and "Pretend you're good at it" was the reply. This piece of advice gave her the strength to go back in the studio and finish the recording with confidence. She says she still often writes that message on her arm when she has to do a task she doesn't like or isn't excited about or one that gives her anxiety. She shared this story in her second book, Furiously Happy, which I recently listened to and highly recommend if you want to laugh out loud--sometimes at wildly inappropriate things--while gaining a greater understanding of and appreciation for depression and anxiety.

Pretending and faking aren't really all that different in practice, I guess, but the connotations are vastly different in my opinion. Whereas faking feels charged with negative energy from the outset, pretending feels fun and whimsical, like something you did as a child--not to be devious but just because your mind was open to a wider variety of possibilities. Also, the end seems more defined, so it doesn't demand you accomplish some nebulous goal. And the time frame seems limited to the present instead of stretching out into the abyss of forever. This philosophy asks you to pretend just for this moment that you are good at just this one thing in front of you that you are struggling with by asking some relatively simple questions. How would a person who is good at this approach it? What would a person who was good at this say or do or think or feel? To me, it seems to take a lot of pressure off and makes facing the challenges of life seem more approachable. 

I spend a significant amount of time at work training new baristas. And though many people don't realize it, it is a pretty demanding job that requires a variety of physical and mental skills in order to be done successfully. All new baristas feel overwhelmed at first and usually struggle with some aspects of the many roles. A girl I recently trained was struggling on our drive-thru training day to make small talk with customers at the drive-thru window. She admitted to me that she is a little shy and doesn't feel comfortable talking to strangers. With Ms. Lawson's book top of mind, I assured her she didn't have to be good at it, but I wondered if she could just pretend she was good at it for a bit while we completed our training. I could see in her perfectionist eyes that she was relieved to not have to be good at it and that pretending she was might not be so bad. She said she would give it a try, and then she stepped up to the window and began chatting with the customer about the weather or some other innocuous topic. A day or two later, I heard from the store manager that she had worked at the window on a subsequent shift and had done a wonderful job connecting with customers. I'm sure she didn't suddenly find an interest in small talk. But I think she must have been able to find a way to pretend she was good at it.

We all struggle with different things from time to time. And it's absolutely okay to struggle. We don't have to be good at everything we try. But maybe we could pretend it be good at those things just long enough to help us get through them. 

Breathe in Happy

Yesterday I wrote about finding quiet places, and I briefly mentioned something that has helped me quiet my mind is meditation. I wanted to expound on my meditation practice a little and share a bit about how it started and how it's going. 

First of all, when I initially envisioned meditation, I pictured silent, robed monks with shaved heads wandering around in beautiful, but ridiculously remote, mountains, who spent the better part of the day engaged in this mysterious practice. Aside from hanging out in beautiful mountains, I could not see myself having this experience. It honestly seemed torturous rather than peaceful and not like something I would be interested in. 

When I got in to yoga several years ago, meditation was sort of part of the package. I didn't have to put on a robe or shave my head and was encouraged instead to simply focus on my breath. I loved the idea of that, but my mind was the furthest thing from quiet you can imagine, and I really couldn't even spend a few minutes focusing just on my breath. My mind kept darting all over the place, which then created anxiety that I was "doing it wrong," which made my mind bounce even more. As with all things, I got better at it the more I did it, but I still felt like I needed something to ground my mind and something that felt a bit more solid than my breath. 

A couple of years ago I went through the most difficult experience of my life to date, and my mind needed grounding more than ever. That was when I created a two-minute meditation routine for myself (because two minutes seemed like a time commitment I could realistically commit to). Since I wanted to focus on my breath, I decided to tie specific thoughts to my in-breaths and my out-breaths. Further, I decided to make those thoughts opposite pairs, taking in the attributes I wanted to see in myself and releasing those that felt like a burden. I would choose five to ten characteristics, always beginning with the same two: Breathe in happy; breathe out sad. I put an alert on my phone to pop up three times a day entitled "Breathe." When I would see the alert, I would give myself permission to stop what I was doing for just two minutes to breathe in the positive and breathe out the negative. I truly think this practice saved me in the early weeks and months of my personal tragedy. (In truth, it may be saving me still.) And eventually, I didn't need to say the words in my head because my body and mind just knew what each breath meant, and my mind was quiet enough to finally just focus on the breathing. And I didn't need the phone reminders anymore because I could engage in the practice any time I needed or wanted to. (However, I still have the alerts in place to this day because they kind of feel like good friends now, and because some days are busier and more distracted than others and it doesn't hurt to be reminded.) My mind is still not as quiet as I would like for it to be, but I don't feel like it's an exaggeration to say the two-minute meditation has been a life-changing practice for me. 

If you're looking for a place to start with meditation, here is a sample of how I got started. It can be done anywhere because it's literally just breathing, and you can adjust your paired thoughts according to your own needs and the amount of time you have available. You can say the same words every time, or change them up to match up with what you are dealing with at any given time. I also incorporate them into my bedtime yoga routine, adding particular stretches to the breaths. Say the words in your mind as you take deep breaths in to a count of four and as you slowly release them:

Breathe in happy;

Breathe out sad.

Breathe in calm;

Breathe out chaos.

Breathe in forgiveness;

Breathe out bitterness.

Breathe in love;

Breathe out hate.

Breathe in confidence;

Breathe out fear.

Breathe in peace;

Breathe out anxiety.

Breathe in kindness;

Breathe out rudeness.

Breathe in patience;

Breathe out impatience.

Breathe in wholeness;

Breathe out brokenness.

Breathe in hope;

Breathe out despair.

"New"vember Resolutions

Today marks a new day, a new week, and a new month. It is also the day I have arbitrarily assigned to myself as a new year of sorts--a time to make a more concentrated effort to take on new habits to improve my life and ditch habits that are not serving me well. 

Interestingly, it's also the beginning of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which is something I have considered participating in many times throughout the years but have never actually done for one reason or another. It is especially top of mind this year because my 8th grader's English class has been assigned the student version of it as class project and will write 25,000 words of a novel by the end of the month. I genuinely wanted to participate alongside my son as a show of solidarity, and I truly thought I would do that. But, as I started to mentally prepare myself, I realized that the honest truth is I just don't seem to have a story in me right now. My mind feels very loud, and I can't hear characters and stories speaking to me at the moment. I believe they will one day because, when I was a child, writing stories was what I did for fun. It was effortless, and the stories almost wrote themselves. I believe that our child selves--in a time before things had to be done for money or approval but were only done for the sheer pleasure of doing them--are often our truest selves, so I think that story writer spirit still lives in me but has become lost in the noise of adulthood.

The world is so very loud with many voices speaking at once, and sometimes that cacophony leaves little room for true creativity. That's why one of the habits I want to cultivate in myself in this "new year" is the ability to find the silent places and sit in them so I can better hear and know the voice within me. Somehow, the noise of the physical and virtual worlds have become a comfort and an excuse, and sitting in silence now feels hard. 

If you know me in real life, you know sitting is not something I do well (though I have definitely gotten better at it in the last few years as I have become more intentional in my thoughts and actions and more focused on yoga and meditation.) I like to be busy, to be moving, to fill up all the down time with activities or chores or music or really anything as long I don't have to be still in body or mind. When I do sit, I tend to fill up what could be quiet spaces with the loudness of social media, sometimes scrolling for an hour or more, not even engaging in the content but just letting that "noise" wash over me. It's no wonder the voice of creativity can't be heard clearly, and it's not terribly surprising that the storytelling that came so easily in bored, quiet, technology-free moments during childhood is difficult to channel. The need to sit in the silence, in the alone, in the boredom, is very real and is why I am trying, in my spirit of resolution, to take a step back from social media and other similar distractions this month. I don't plan to quit my online "social" life entirely, but I want to stop using it as a crutch, as a time filler, as a means of validation, as a noise to drown out my uncomfortable thoughts. 

Even though I don't feel as if I have a novel in me right now, I do feel the tug to write and to find MY voice in the din. To that end, I am challenging myself to write a blog post a day for the whole month of November. I'm not aiming for 25,000 words (or the loftier 50,000 ascribed to adult participants in NaNoWriMo). I'm just trying to push myself a little and allow myself the space to be still and find my voice and to practice the act of writing so I'll be ready in case the chatter of characters and stories finds its way to the surface of my mind.

I only ever write for myself, and I'm not looking for external approval or validation in this blog space. But if you want to follow along and help keep me accountable to the goals I've set for myself, or if you think there might be a chance my words may strike a cord with you that challenges you or encourages you, I would love to have you join me on this journey.

Getting comfortable with the woman in the mirror

Do you ever stand completely naked in front of a mirror and examine your body with curiosity and wonder? Do you immediately avert your eyes in order to avoid your self-criticism? Do you feel uncomfortable that I just wrote "naked" and "mirror" in the same sentence? 

Unfortunately, we have all been taught to believe that our bodies are inadequate, that they don't measure up to some arbitrary, unrealistic societal standard. We are quick to see our multitude of flaws but very slow to appreciate all the ways that our bodies show up for us every single day and all the unique and glorious beauty they possess. We are occasionally motivated by what the mirror reveals to make positive changes in our lifestyles, but more often, we are simply shamed into putting our clothes on as quickly as possible and hoping no one else will notice our flaws. 

Here's another question: Do you ever look deeply into your own mind and try to examine your thoughts and feelings with curiosity and wonder? Do you look at your naked soul and ask who you really are or what you really need? Or do you immediately avert your eyes, trying not to see who is really there, trying not to know that person, trying to hide your true self from yourself and the world around you because you are so afraid you will be rejected? 

We have a tendency to zealously fill up all the moments of our days with busyness and distractions so we don't have the time or space to examine ourselves. We hold up the distorted, funhouse mirror of social media and measure ourselves against photoshopped (literally and figuratively) versions of people we don't even really respect telling us we are only okay if we think or feel or look certain ways. We are quick to dismiss or ignore our thoughts and feelings, especially the ones that don't line up nicely with arbitrary societal standards. We judge ourselves harshly and refuse to really get to know ourselves because it is kind of an uncomfortable process. And we hide ourselves away, never really knowing ourselves and not allowing anyone else to know us either. 

I have found both of these examinations very difficult in the past. I have shamed my own body and worse, I have shamed my own mind. But recently, I'm getting comfortable staring in the mirror. I'm allowing myself to sit there with myself--physically and emotionally--for as long as I need to to get comfortable with what I see, with what I feel, with who I am. I'm using the feedback not to be critical of myself but to try to know myself, to try to make improvements where I deem necessary, and to see the beauty that has been there all along.

I haven't mastered self-love or self-knowledge by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know it starts and ends in the mirror. It is only my opinion of myself that matters, and my job is to know myself intimately and love myself unconditionally. Someone else can tell me I'm physically beautiful all day long, but it will never be true until I believe it about myself. Likewise, someone else can judge my thoughts and feelings as irrational or untrue, but if I've taken the time to get familiar with myself, I will believe the truth that comes from within and not the lies that come from without. Of course, there are things I won't like, but I don't need to hide from those things. I can always choose to make whatever changes seem appropriate. But I can also choose to appreciate the parts of my mind and body that make me uniquely beautiful just as they are. However, I can only do that if I first get comfortable closely examining my stripped down self. 

Cleaning out the garage (and the mind)

I know there are people in the world who have pristine garages. A place for everything and everything in its place. They use their garage for the purpose for which it was intended and probably feel a flash of pride every time their garage door opens. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people. I tend to use my garage as a catchall storage facility for everything I don't want in my house but can't seem to part with, everything that I have once needed or may ever need again, everything I don't want to deal with in the present but that needs a place to wait while I decide what to do with it. And I have absolutely no system in place to control the chaos. The bigger the mess gets out there, the more overwhelming it becomes and the harder to deal with. I tend to ignore the growing disarray as long as I can. But eventually, the mess has to be dealt with, and today was my day to face mine.

As I forced myself to make a decision about everything I touched--was it trash, something to be donated, a thing to be kept but organized or tidied--I realized that minds sometimes function like garages. We collect thoughts and feelings, all day every day. Some people are really good at keeping their minds in order. They are deeply in tune with their thoughts and feelings and are continually sorting through them to decide which are worth keeping and which need to be removed in order to keep the clutter at bay. But many of us struggle to maintain order, and before we know it, the mess in our heads has gotten big and out of control. But eventually, in order to be sane and happy, we must deal with the mess. We must examine our thoughts and feelings to see which ones are serving us well, which ones are only taking up space, and which ones need to be removed altogether. 

There were things in my garage today that were hard to part with because I've had them for so long or because they had sentimental value or because I thought there was a chance I might need them in the future. There were other things that were easy to dispose of or clean up; it was just a matter of taking the time to do it. As I removed trash and things that no longer serve a particular purpose for me, even though they once did, I began to feel lighter, freer, and happier. I began to feel proud of my effort and proud of the space. I began to have greater access to the things I actually need and want. And I know this is true of minds as well. We all have pet thoughts and feelings that we've clung to for a long time. They may not be serving us well anymore, but still we cling to them. We have sentimentalities that feel like a betrayal to part with. And we all have good and necessary thoughts and feelings that we will enjoy so much more when we can access them easily. 

We have to make decisions about every thought and feeling we have. Will we discard it or keep it, and why? Are the things that are taking up space in our minds actually useful, or are we just too lazy or overwhelmed to filter through them? It's easy to let unhelpful thoughts pile up and become chaotic, but when we are diligent to filter them and clean them up, we become lighter and freer and happier, and we create more space for the good and necessary stuff. The work isn't all easy, but it's definitely work worth doing. 

Happiness Lessons From a Dog

So apparently, today is National Dog Day, which is not a holiday I ever thought I would even have on my radar. Honestly, I've never really been a dog lover, and I certainly didn't desire to have one as a pet. But, as with so many things in life, the plan we have and think is best for us doesn't always align with reality or the lessons we need to learn. So, in a roundabout way and because of my love for a human rather than for any dog, I became the temporary, full-time guardian of a very cute, very sweet-tempered basset/dachshund puppy named Oliver. He has been been part of our lives for about a year, and in that time, he has really grown on me, and I can say I feel genuine affection for him. He has, quite frankly, taught me a lot about how to show up and be happy in life, and I thought those lessons might be worth sharing in honor of this new-to-me holiday. 

Happiness Lessons From a Dog

• Love your people devotedly, intensely, and unconditionally, and show them that you do
• Protect and defend your space and your people when you need to
• Greet the world with curiosity
• Be open to making all kinds of new friends
• Enjoy your own company and be able to entertain yourself
• Leave your mark
• Rest when you're tired
• Snuggle when you can
• Go for walks
• Be silly and playful
• Don't worry about the future or the past, just live for today
• Trust your instincts
• Be yourself unapologetically
• Enjoy the simple pleasures life offers
• Bask in the sunshine and shelter yourself from the rain

Weak is the new strong

It's been a while since I've written, and that's because I haven't really had any words--at least not any happy, sunshiny, encouraging words that this blog is supposed to be made of. I have been trying my best to chase rainbows, but honestly, I really just feel tired of the pursuit. I feel tired of trying to squeeze into my positive pants every day. I feel tired of trying to figure out what lessons I'm supposed to be learning from all the difficult situations that keep coming up. I feel tired of pursuing personal growth because, honestly, it kind of feels futile. I feel tired of everyone saying I'm so strong but not really feeling all that strong. The rainbow feels like a mirage, like a thing that will never be attained. It feels like I will never get to sit down with the pot of gold and reward myself for my efforts. And I'm tired. I just want to sit down and rest--pot of gold in hand or not. I know the words to say to encourage myself and spur myself on and to convince the world that I'm still chasing rainbows, but they haven't been ringing true lately. And when the words don't ring true, it's hard to muster up the energy to even say them, and, really, there's no point.

I wrote the above paragraph several days ago in an attempt to get the words and feelings out of my brain, because writing is therapy for me. I did not intend to publish them. But in the last week, I've had a number of encounters with others that have made me realize I'm not alone in my exhaustion and that there are words that need to be said, whether they feel like sunshine or not. We are all tired. We all want to rest and stop being strong for a minute--no matter what our particular struggle is. I don't want to be fake in the things I write. I want to be real and raw and human. So, I decided to leave the paragraph just as I originally wrote it. 

Unfortunately, as a society, we have made "being strong" seem like a badge of honor when it's nothing more than a plastic participation trophy. It's meant as a compliment or an expression of admiration for someone going through something we don't have personal experience with. "You are just so strong. I could never endure what you're enduring," people say, meaning well but not helping in the least. The person in the situation that requires strength doesn't feel strong, I can assure you. They feel tired. And they would give anything not to have to be strong, even just for a little while. But when a person is going through a situation the requires strength, they simply have no choice. You most definitely would be able to endure what they are enduring if you had to. And you would not feel all that comforted if everyone told you how strong you were for enduring it. 

So much better than telling a person they are strong is creating safe spaces for them to be broken and weak and finding ways to support them in that weakness. This means offering help that was never asked for, getting comfortable with emotions that aren't comfortable, hugging them long and hard, texting or calling just to check on them and to let them know you are thinking of them, not trying to fix them or their problem, looking them in the eye and not flinching when you see the depths of what makes them "strong" in the first place. It's a very hard thing to do, especially when we are all dealing with our own difficult situations that require us to be strong too. We are all tired, and we need people in our lives that invite us to take a seat, put our feet up, and rest as long as we need to, not people that make us feel like we are on our own with whatever we're going through because we are strong enough to handle it. I want to be that place of rest for others, and I want to surround myself with people who can create that space for me.