Tiny Buddha's Guide to Loving Yourself: 40 Ways to Transform Your Inner Critic and Your Life (22 page)

4. Practice saying no when a request would impact your ability to take care of yourself.

Other people will always have requests. You will inevitably feel resentful, not to mention depleted, if you expect them to anticipate your needs and help you honor them. While it may feel selfish to say no, it's actually a kind thing to do. The better you take care of yourself, the better you'll be able to help them—when and how you're able to, without compromising your own needs.

T
HERE
'
S AN INVISIBLE THREAD THAT CONNECTS OUR FEELINGS
about ourselves with our feelings about our lives. The two are inextricably linked. We need to value ourselves or we'll never feel that our efforts are valuable. We need to have faith in ourselves or we won't have faith in our choices. The good news is that strides in one sphere can instantly affect the other. When we work on feeling good about ourselves, we feel better equipped to do things that we'll feel good about. When we do something we feel proud of, we naturally feel prouder of who we are. The beauty of this cyclical nature is that we don't need to wait one more moment to start doing something positive with our lives. Even if we go through times when we don't feel positive about ourselves—and we all inevitably do—we can each choose right now that we can make a difference in the world. And it can make all the difference in how we see ourselves.

We naturally feel more self-assured when we feel like our lives matter—that we're doing meaningful things that will help other people and the world at large. But it's not just about the impact we make; we want to feel purposeful, passionate, and blissfully alive. We want to love what we do with our days. If you don't yet know what would facilitate that, you can easily feel discouraged. You may feel even more disheartened if you know what you love but have no idea what to do with it—or if it's possible to do anything at all. It's a great big world with a lot of people working toward varied goals. It's all too easy to convince yourself there's no room for your talents and dreams.

You could get bogged down in self-defeating thoughts that paralyze you from taking action. You could put pressure on yourself, stressing about the big things you're not doing, wondering what you could possibly try that might feel good enough. You could feel overwhelmed by everything you don't know, and regretful about all the days you previously spent doing things that felt meaningless.

Or you could decide that what really matters is that you do something, anything, today that makes you feel good about you. You could explore, try different things, and use your sense of self-pride and self-satisfaction as a compass to guide your next steps. Even one tiny step in a direction that feels purposeful has immense power to change your perspective on yourself and your life. It might seem like fulfillment lies in the outcome, but once you feel the satisfaction of acting with purpose and passion, you'll realize the real joy is in the
doing—enjoying, getting lost in a moment, and sharing that with others.

How do we identify a path that's right for us? How can we live up to our full potential? How can we change our lives for the better, and feel good about where we are right now? Countless Tiny Buddha contributors have addressed these questions on the site, sharing their experiences and insights. Some of those include . . .

by Madison Sonnier

Your outlook on life is a direct reflection on how much you like yourself
.

—
LULULEMON

“My existence on this Earth is pointless.” That thought crossed my mind every night before I fell asleep.

It had been several months since I graduated from high school, and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. My future plans were falling to pieces, and everyone around me kept telling me that I needed to start accomplishing things that I had not yet accomplished.

I was not where I thought I should be in life. Everyone had expectations that I hadn't met. I became too focused on becoming a version of myself that everyone else wanted, and I constantly compared myself to other people who had already taken the dive into the next chapter of their life.

People relentlessly questioned, and, I felt, judged me for my slower progression in life, which convinced me that no one supported or believed in me. I began to blame everyone around me for the state of misery I had fallen into. My self-esteem began to suffer as the months went by. I felt inferior to everyone, and it made me hate
myself. I still did not know what I wanted to do with my life—and I was starting to not even care.

But several months and hundreds of needless self-judgments later, I decided to block out the negativity, both from myself and other people. I silenced the voice in my head that told me I wasn't good enough and asked myself what would really make me happy.

I've always been creative and expressive. I used to sing, act, and dance when I was younger. But my favorite thing has always been writing. Some of the happiest moments in my life came from opportunities to express myself or put my heart and soul out for everyone to see. Every path I tried to take always led me back to writing.

I got to a point where I realized that I was only trying to pursue other paths because I thought that's what other people would accept. I was afraid that if I let my imagination soar to all the different possibilities, people would tear me down or tell me to be “realistic.” I became paralyzed with this fear of not being accepted. I was afraid to be different or go my own way and pursue what truly made me happy. I'd put myself in a box.

One day, I decided that enough was enough. I had spent an entire year of my life trying to conform to other people's expectations, and I realized that you can't please everyone anyway, so trying would definitely not lead to contentment. Real happiness comes from being content with and proud of
yourself
.

I finally decided that I was going to devote my time to learning about writing and working on my writing skills. I am happy with that decision, and I feel better about myself because I made it for me.

I have learned a few things about choosing the right path for yourself and focusing on what will make you happy. The first thing is to try to let go of worries. They put a burden on your mind, body, and spirit. They can keep you up all night if you let them. Find comfort in the fact that everything happens for a reason, and everything will fall into place at the right time.

The next step is to stop trying to impress other people. The persistent need to please and compare ourselves to others is one of the most common causes of self-loathing. As long as you're trying to live up to other people's expectations, you will not please yourself. Happiness does not come from pleasing other people. Happiness comes from feeling content with your own life and goals.

Remember that everyone is different. Figure out what you're good at and what sets you apart from everyone else. Your mission is to create a reason for being here. When you start to figure out what you want in life, there will be obstacles. Don't let anyone or anything discourage you from continuing on. Believe in yourself and believe in your decisions. Stay positive and keep moving forward.

It may take you a while to figure out what you want. Take your time. I used to think that I needed to be at the same level as everyone else my age. Life is not a race or a contest, and it doesn't come with a rulebook for accomplishing certain things. Trust that you are exactly
where you need to be at this very moment in time, and as long as you're content, don't let anyone convince you that you're
not
where you need to be. You be the judge of what you want to change in your life and then do it for
you
.

Lastly, surround yourself with positivity. Try to limit the amount of time you spend with people who naysay, judge, or ridicule. Choose to completely surround yourself with positive, inspiring influences. You will feel much happier and better about yourself if you do.

Finally, the most important thing to remember is that you
are
worth it and you
can
be happy. Life will not throw you anything you cannot handle or overcome. Once you start to accept and love yourself and your desired path, the smoke will clear and you will breathe easy again. Be kind to yourself and life will be a whole lot brighter.

by An Bourmanne

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years
.

—A
BRAHAM
L
INCOLN

I used to think that I would motivate myself to really live up to my full potential by reminding myself how much I wasn't. Well, that didn't work. Not that I didn't get any results from chanting, “You are so not living up to your full potential!” while getting out of bed, combing my hair, doing the dishes, and driving to work. Any time was a great time to remind myself. So I didn't waste a second doing just that. And I got results. Only not the ones I expected.

I became an expert on mindlessly browsing the web and constantly comparing myself to other people. I became an expert on feeling stuck. I became an expert on driving myself crazy with my nonstop “you are so stuck” chatter in my mind. I felt drained, stuck, and low on energy; those were my daily companions. So it shouldn't be any wonder that I grew less and less fond of my so-called motivational mantra, which was doing anything but, well, motivating.

I've realized that living up to our full potential starts with eliminating three big lies.

First lie: it's productive to beat ourselves up about not living up to our potential. When we spend all our energy telling ourselves we're not doing well enough, we have very little time and energy left to look inside. Don't get me wrong, I was very busy. I was busy searching for my full potential. I read tons of books. I completed lots of quizzes to find my true talents and the right job for me. I browsed the job section of newspapers. I looked at what other people were doing.

In short, I was looking
everywhere
—except inside. I wasn't paying attention to what gave me energy. I wasn't paying attention to what fascinated me. Instead, I was writing the pros and cons for potential jobs but reaching a dead-end time and again as I failed to neatly add and subtract all the items from both columns into one overwhelmingly clear answer.

I've come to believe that we already know what leading a rich, meaningful, purposeful life means to us. It's just a matter of paying attention and listening to ourselves. It's taking action and checking in with ourselves to discover what feels good, what energizes us, what feels bad, what drains us, and what fascinates us. It's allowing ourselves to explore and experiment, one tiny step at a time. And adjusting where needed, using our energy levels and our fascination as a compass to guide us in creating an energizing, brilliant life that inspires us.

Second lie: living up to our full potential means living a life free of fear, failure, and sorrow. I convinced myself that living up to my
full potential meant living happily ever after, in some kind of perpetual state of bliss. I've come to believe that this is a myth. Living up to our full potential means feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It means making mistakes and learning from them.

Living up to our full potential means seeing things as they are, not the way we think they should be, and taking action from that place. It means allowing ourselves to feel the way we do, not the way we think we should feel. It means diving in and exploring
why
we are feeling the way we do. That's when we find our answers. That's when we reconnect with our full potential. That's when we start tapping into our brilliance.

Third lie: we're not good enough. When we tell ourselves, “You are so not living up to your full potential!” we're basically telling ourselves, “You are not good enough the way you are right now.” And that is such a disempowering lie.