Tiny Buddha's Guide to Loving Yourself: 40 Ways to Transform Your Inner Critic and Your Life (15 page)

Don't get me wrong—opportunity is a marvelous thing, and I only wish my great grandmother had the choices I enjoy today. But I'm slowly coming to realize that my great grandmother might've
been just fine with her lifestyle. She was quite possibly happier than me. Her life was simple, and perhaps there's a clue in that. Maybe the simple life is where we can all find peace.

Yes—embrace everything that comes along. Yes—go out and see the world and enjoy everything this life has to offer. But whenever you feel yourself losing focus and wondering about where you'll be happy next, bring yourself back to the present, look at what you already have, look around you, and enjoy the moments that are happening right now. Find peace in reading a good book, doing some gardening, going for a walk in the countryside. Take in the sights, smells, and sounds, and breathe deeply. Start to notice what is happening right now, and I guarantee you'll find peace.

Because happiness isn't about where you live or the things you do. It isn't about being on an impossible mission to do everything, see everywhere, and accomplish everything you've ever dreamed. Happiness is a state of mind. How you achieve it is by building a life around your current location. Making new friends, settling into a routine, finding ways in which to enjoy “the moment” rather than dwelling on all the things you could be doing or the places you could be visiting.

Remember that all we ever have is right now. Forget about the past. Don't worry about the future. Take each day as it comes. And most of all, stop thinking that the grass is greener, because it never really is.

1. Flip your focus from what you
aren't
to what you
are
.

Focusing on what others seem to have that you think you lack makes you feel less-than. Instead of making comparisons identifying other people as better, reinforce something about yourself that you feel is valuable. For example, if you catch yourself thinking, “He's more successful in his career,” remind yourself, “I'm proud that I do something that makes a difference in the world and operate with integrity.” Keep the focus on what you're doing right, not on what you assume you're doing wrong.

2. Stop the fearful mental stories that lead you into self-destructive territory
.

If you start comparing yourself to others and then shutting down in response to this story, see the story as separate from you—not a truth you need to escape, but an illusion you can release. Instead of responding to the story with compulsive behaviors, see it as a prison that you can escape by letting go. It might help to write them down and burn the paper. Breathe deeply and ground yourself in your body by recognizing the sights, sounds, and smells around you. Then ask yourself, “What would I want to do with this moment if I weren't reacting to my fear of inadequacy?”

3. Get excited about what you can do instead of discouraged by what you think you can't
.

See someone doing something that inspires you? If it's genuinely something you want—a possibility that gets you excited, and not just something you think you
should
do—see this as an opportunity to redefine your goals and dreams. Then focus on what you can do to start living in that possibility today. It's not about getting somewhere in the future; it's about doing something right now that makes you feel passionate, proud, and fulfilled. What tiny action can you take today to be the person you want to be?

4. Focus on what you can enjoy right now
.

Regardless of what else you could be doing and how other people seem to be excelling, you have countless opportunities to enjoy this day. And really, this is what you want—not what other people seem to do or have, but the positive feelings you assume they feel in response. Make it a priority to create those positive feelings for yourself by engaging with the world, connecting with good friends, or appreciating your surroundings. You're more likely to feel good about yourself when you stop pressuring yourself to do and become more and simply let yourself be.

I
T
'
S A COMFORTING ILLUSION
,
THAT EVERYTHING WILL MAKE SENSE
and feel better when we find someone else to share our lives with. If there's one thing we all want, it's enduring happiness, and we learn from a young age that happily ever after is a two-person proposition. So we can easily end up waiting, not with a healthy resolve, for something that feels right, but with a sense that life is somehow lacking until we're able to find it. We end up looking toward
someday
, hoping, wishing, and willing the future to include someone who might complete us.

We may even convince ourselves there's something wrong with us if we're unattached, and start pressuring ourselves to somehow change or improve to better attract our soul mate—as if there's one person out there we're each meant to be with, and we're running out of time to find them. Armed with all this stress, fear, and need, it can be temping to get into a relationship that, deep down, we
know isn't right. It's even easier to stay there, afraid of walking away and never finding something better.

It's natural and instinctive to want connection and intimacy; but it's an entirely different thing to believe we need those things right now in order to feel whole and happy. In fact, we're likely to feel disappointed when we find them if we placed unrealistic expectations on how they'd change our feelings and our lives. It's an ironic thing, searching for love. We often seek it outside ourselves because we feel so unworthy, yet it's that same belief that makes it hard to trust it when we finally find it. We want validation to feel we're enough, but we're never really able to feel worthy if we don't already believe we are. In other words: we can't ever find in someone else the love and acceptance we aren't willing or able to give ourselves. No person, thing, or experience can fill the void of our self-rejection, and none of it will be satisfying until we believe that, just as we are, we are worthy of enjoying it.

Connection, belonging, security—these are fundamental human needs. How do we enable ourselves to meet them without feeding into the idea that we're somehow lacking? How can we learn to feel whole and complete just as we are, and also open ourselves up to healthy, fulfilling relationships? How can we fill the void we feel so that we can appreciate other people for who they are instead of depending on them to help us do the same for ourselves? Countless Tiny Buddha contributors have addressed these questions on the site, sharing their experiences and insights. Some of those include . . .

by Elizabeth Garbee

As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it
.

—E
CKHART
T
OLLE

I have a heart condition. Not one that you could see on an X-ray, or even one that you would find in a medical textbook. For as long as I can remember, I have felt like my heart had a gaping hole in it—and I've been stuffing anyone and anything into that space to try and feel a little less empty. A little less alone.

The first day of my freshman year in college, I met a girl. We spent the rest of the day together and discovered we had an uncanny amount in common, including our values and a passion for the violin. We even had the same name. So I decided then and there that she would be that college friend everyone talks about, that friend with whom you share everything and never lose touch, even after you're both old and gray.

I decided she was the perfect shape to fill the hole in my heart. I then proceeded to spend as much time as possible with her and her friends, ignoring the people I had grown close to in my dorm. I even declined invitations from classmates to go out to eat, get a coffee, or
even just go with them to the library; I wanted to be available in case she and her friends decided they wanted to do something with me. Yet, even though I thought I had finally found a group of people that made me feel complete, there was always this underlying fear—a fear that they were just pretending to like me, that I was a second-class citizen in this clique.

And then she broke the news to me. “You make our group dynamic awkward,” she said. “We think you should go find some other friends.”

I was devastated. My heart now felt even more empty and alone than it did before I met her, because I had built an identity for myself based on a friendship I had forced—a relationship I had made fit simply because it was there and available. After that, I slowly started spending time with my other friends and started enjoying their company again, but I still withdrew and isolated myself. I couldn't imagine that anyone would want to spend time with me if she and her friends didn't, and that perception made it almost impossible to believe anything good anyone said about me.

A few months later, an old crush came back into my life. We had been talking sporadically for years, but this relationship was also forced. I loved him desperately and had told him so on several occasions; while he didn't feel the same, he still cared enough about me to want to keep in touch. But the more we started talking, the more I became convinced that there was finally something there—and I came to believe that he wanted something more than just friendship.

So, a year later, I had completely invested my self-worth and self-esteem in this guy's occasional emails and even rarer phone calls. Though our conversations were a little awkward and a bit strained, I continued to read between lines that simply weren't there. When I asked him if he wanted to try a “formal relationship,” he looked confused and completely blindsided. He said no.

I stopped talking to him and harbored a highly combustible combination of anger and resentment. My carefully constructed identity, made from assumptions and misinterpreted signals, had just come crashing down—and I was left, again, wondering how anyone could love and value me if this man I had known for eight years didn't. At least not the way I wanted him to.

My overwhelming desire to feel loved and wanted by one person in particular had once again blinded me—and this pain I had created for myself, this empty ache in my chest, was the only thing I could feel.

The Buddhists have a word for this:
samskara
. A pattern, a habit you get into that is so seductive you almost want to continue the cycle. In my case, a cycle of self-inflicted suffering and abuse. I was convinced that because I wasn't in a relationship, because I had never had a significant other (I hadn't even been kissed), I wasn't loved. Worse yet, I started to think that I just wasn't the kind of person anyone could come to love in that way.

It didn't matter that I had a good network of friends at school who loved and cared about me; it didn't matter that I had incredibly
loving parents and a brother who adored me; it even didn't matter that I couldn't seem to find a single person I had ever met who didn't like me. I had wanted love from a specific kind of person because I was convinced that was the missing piece in my heart. And because I hadn't found it yet, I had measured my life that was full of love and support and still found it wanting.

This guy and I just recently started talking again, and though we've worked through a lot of the pain and confusion in our relationship, my blood pressure still skyrockets when I simply hear his voice. This reaction isn't because of him in particular, but because he serves as a powerful reminder of all the pain I've created for myself over the years by weaving fantasies around the people I choose to cling to.

I see him again in a week. While most people prepare for guests by cleaning the house, stocking the fridge, and making sure the spare bed is turned down, I'm doing something a little different: I'm working on getting to know myself. If I don't remember who I am independent of what he thinks of me, I'll just get sucked back in; and the disappointment that we aren't what we “could have been” will continue to keep me from being the person I have always wanted to be—the person who loves herself for who she is, not for which person chooses to love her.