How “Missing the Boat” Led Me Somewhere Better

A few months ago, I found myself wondering whether I had made a mistake.

It is not a question I expected to be asking in my seventies.

Like many people my age, I sometimes think about retirement, savings, and financial security. I look around and see friends who spent decades building stable careers and preparing for the future. Some seem to have arrived exactly where they planned.

Meanwhile, my own life feels harder to explain.

I have spent much of it following opportunities that interested me rather than opportunities that promised security. Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether I should have been more practical.

One morning, after falling into yet another round of comparisons, I found myself thinking a familiar thought:

Maybe I missed the boat.

The phrase stopped me.

Because one of the most important decisions of my life began while standing on a dock looking at a ship.

Years ago, I was hired to teach U.S. history, English, reading, mathematics, and study skills to Navy and Marine personnel pursuing college courses while deployed overseas. My assignment would take me aboard the USS Cleveland during a Western Pacific deployment.

I remember standing on the pier before departure.

The ship seemed impossibly large.

Cargo was being loaded through open bays. Sailors moved quickly across the dock carrying gear and supplies. Forklifts disappeared into the vessel’s steel interior. Everywhere I looked there was motion, preparation, and anticipation.

The USS Cleveland looked less like a ship than a floating city.

I stood there staring upward, feeling something I had not felt in a long time.

Wonder.

As a boy, I had dreamed of going to sea.

I was fascinated by ships, maps, distant places, and the possibility that life might be larger than the world I already knew. While other children seemed to dream of becoming something, I often dreamed of going somewhere.

Standing on that dock, I felt as if I had stumbled into one of those childhood dreams. I did not know exactly where the experience would lead. I only knew I wanted to step aboard. So I did.

Life aboard the ship unfolded within its own rhythm. Days were shaped by classes, duties, meals, conversations, and long stretches of ocean. Outside were endless horizons. Inside was a community of people living and working together in close quarters while moving steadily toward destinations scattered across the Pacific.

I taught my classes.

The sailors and Marines attended theirs.

But looking back, I realize that I was receiving an education of my own.

I learned that teaching was less about delivering information and more about paying attention. I learned that failure could be as instructive as success. I learned that people carrying heavy responsibilities were often capable of extraordinary perseverance.

Most importantly, I learned that the world was much larger than I had imagined.

The ship crossed oceans, but it also expanded my sense of what a life could be.

Without realizing it, I began following a path shaped more by curiosity than certainty.

At the time, that felt natural. Only years later did I begin questioning it.

The older I became, the easier it was to compare my life with the lives of others.

Comparison is persuasive because it usually arrives disguised as wisdom. It tells us we are being realistic. Responsible. Practical.

But comparison rarely asks whether we are using the right measuring stick.

The more I compared myself to people who had chosen different paths, the more dissatisfied I became. I focused on what I lacked rather than what I had experienced. I measured my life according to values that had guided someone else’s decisions rather than my own.

Then one day, while thinking about the USS Cleveland, I asked myself a simple question.

If I could return to that dock knowing everything I know now, would I make a different choice?

Would I tell that younger version of myself not to board? Would I advise him to choose a safer path? A more predictable future? A more secure life?

The answer came immediately.

No.

I would still step aboard.

Not because it was the smartest financial decision. Not because it guaranteed success. Not because it led exactly where I expected.

I would step aboard because it made me feel alive.

And that realization showed me something I had overlooked for years.

The problem was never that I had chosen the wrong life. The problem was that I had begun judging my life by values that were never truly mine.

The young man standing on that dock was not trying to maximize efficiency or optimize his future. He was not asking how the experience would improve his retirement. He was not calculating long-term returns.

He was responding to wonder. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that.

Like many people, I absorbed the belief that a life should be evaluated by what it produces, accumulates, or achieves. Those things matter, of course. We all need stability and security.

But there is another measure of a life. A quieter one.

It asks whether we paid attention. Whether we remained curious. Whether we said yes to opportunities that expanded our understanding of ourselves and the world. Whether we showed up fully for the journey we were given. When I think about the USS Cleveland now, I no longer see it simply as a ship.

I see it as a reminder.

A reminder that not every meaningful choice can be justified in advance. A reminder that wonder deserves a place in our decision-making. A reminder that the life we envy may not be the life we were meant to live.

Sometimes I still worry about the boats I may have missed.

But then I remember standing on that dock, staring up at that enormous ship, feeling the excitement of not knowing exactly where it would take me.

And I realize that if I were given the chance again, I would still walk up the gangway. Not because I knew where the journey would lead. But because something inside me already knew I wanted to go.

See more posts

About Tony Collins

Edward “Tony” Collins, EdD, MFA, is a documentary filmmaker, writer, educator, and disability advocate living with progressive vision loss from macular degeneration. His work explores presence, caregiving, resilience, and the quiet power of small moments. He is currently completing books on creative scholarship and collaborative documentary filmmaking and shares personal essays about meaning, hope, and disability on Substack. Connect: substack.com/@iefilm | iefilm.com

Web | More Posts

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

from Tiny Buddha https://ift.tt/GWp02UC

The Power of Waiting When You Don’t Know What to Do

“Waiting is not mere empty hoping. It has the inner certainty of reaching the goal.” ~I Ching 

Waiting has a bad rap in modern Western society. It’s not surprising that I had to look to an ancient Chinese text (the I Ching) in order to find a suitable quote to begin this article. We don’t like to wait! It’s far easier to find quotes on the Internet about “seizing the day” and making something happen.

I’ve been an impatient person for much of my life. I wanted things to happen to me! I had a definite agenda in my twenties: finish college, start my career, get married, and have a family. So I declared a major and started knocking off my goals. When it was “time” to get married, I picked the most suitable person available and got on with it.

I really didn’t know much about waiting. I thought it was something you did if you didn’t have courage or conviction. It was just an excuse not to take action. I know better now.

What I’ve learned since then is that waiting is one of the most powerful tools we have for creating the life we want.  

The ego, or mind, is very uncomfortable with waiting. This is the part of you that fairly screams, “Do something! Anything is better than nothing!” And, because we are a very ego-driven society, you’ll find plenty of external voices that back up that message.

The mind hates uncertainty, and it would rather make a mistake than simply live in a state of “not knowing” while the right course unfolds.

There’s a term I love that describes this place of uncertainty: liminal. A liminal space is at the border or threshold between possibilities. It’s a place of pure potential: we could go any direction from here. There are no bright lights and obvious signs saying “Walk this way.”

Liminal spaces can be deeply uncomfortable, and most of us tend to rush through them as quickly as possible.

If we can slow down instead, the landscape gradually becomes clearer, the way it does when your eyes adjust to a darkened room. We start to use all of our senses. The ego wants a brightly lit superhighway to the future, but real life is more like a maze. We take one or two steps in a certain direction and then face another turning point. Making our way forward requires an entirely different set of skills, and waiting is one of the most important.

There’s a proper timing to all things, and it’s often not the timing we want (now—or maybe even yesterday). There are things that happen on a subconscious level, in ourselves and in others, that prepare us for the next step. Oddly, when the time to act does come, there’s often a sense of inevitability about it, as if it were always meant to be this way.

Look back over your life and you’ll see this pattern. First, look at the decisions that you forced. How did those turn out? Then look for times when you just “knew” what to do, without even thinking about it. What happened then?

The key to the second kind of decision is waiting for that deep sense of inner knowing.

That doesn’t mean you’re certain that everything will turn out exactly the way you want it. Or that you don’t feel fear. But there is a sense of “yes, now’s the time” in your body that I liken to the urge that migratory birds get when it’s time to leave town. They don’t stand around debating whether to go, consulting maps and calendars. They just go when the time is right.

We’re animals too—we have and can cultivate that inner sensitiveness that lets us simply know what to do when the time is right. But to do that we have to unhook from the mind. Thinking is useful up to a point, but we usually take it far beyond the point of usefulness.

We go over and over various options, trying to predict the future based solely on our hopes and fears.

We talk endlessly with others about what we should do, hoping that they have the answers for us (and, ideally, trying to get everyone to agree).

We think about what we “should” do, based on any number of external measures: common sense, morality, religion, family values, finances, and so on.

And then usually we add this all up and just take our best shot.

A better way is to take stock of what you know (and, even more importantly, what you don’t know) and then… wait.

If there’s some action that calls to you, even if it’s seemingly unrelated to the question at hand, do it! Then wait again for another urge to move. Wait actively rather than passively. That means keep your inner senses tuned to urges or intuitions. Expect that an answer will come. As the I Ching says, wait with the “inner certainty of reaching the goal.”

This is not the same kind of dithering and procrastination that come when we want to try something new but are afraid to step out into the unknown. If your intuition is pulling you in a certain direction and your mind is screaming at you to stop, by all means ignore your mind.

There’s a subtle but very real difference between the feeling of fear (which holds you back from doing something you long to do) and misgivings (which warn you that a decision that looks good on the surface is not right for you).

In both cases, look for and trust that deep sense of inner knowing, even if your thoughts are telling you different. A friend once told me that her father’s best piece of advice to her was, “Deciding to get married should be the easiest decision of your life.” How I wish I had known that when I made my own (highly ambivalent) decision!

My head was telling me that this was the sensible thing to do, and he was a good man. My gut, however, was far from on board. I still vividly recall the many inward debates I held about whether to marry him and even the dreams I had that revealed my inner reluctance. Unfortunately, I went with my thoughts over my instincts.

Now I know this: If you have to talk yourself into something, try waiting instead. More will be revealed if you give it some time.

Ignore that voice in your head that says you need to make a decision now. Don’t rush through life. Linger in the liminal spaces and see what becomes clear as you sit with uncertainty. Learn to trust your gut more than your head. Have faith that the right course will unfold at the perfect time. And then, when the time comes, just do it, as simply and naturally as the birds take flight.

See more posts

About Amaya Pryce

Amaya Pryce is a life coach and writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her books, 5 Simple Practices for a Lifetime of Joy and How to Grow Your Soul are available on Amazon. For coaching or to follow her blog, please visit www.amayapryce.com.

Web | More Posts

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

from Tiny Buddha https://ift.tt/VPJD6E5

Once You See the Relationship Pattern, You Can’t Unsee It

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou

The weekend started like any other family visit. Our family was in town, and it began with real excitement. Kids running everywhere, chocolate chip muffins in the oven, homemade ice cream for our guests, the ordinary, happy chaos of everyone existing in the same space.

On the second day we noticed one of the visiting kids had a runny nose and was rubbing her snot all over herself as she was grabbing our toddler to hold her. She loves babies, and we adore that about her. However, if you have kids, you know a cold moving through the whole family isn’t a minor thing. It’s weeks of sleepless nights and small miserable humans and an exhaustion that makes you question every choice that led you there.

That evening, my husband confided in me about it, and I said, “Yeah, I noticed it too.” This wasn’t the first time, though. Over the past few visits, someone had arrived sick, and once, it ran through our entire family through the course of a month and left us all very ill.

He’d always been hesitant to ask people in his family for anything because of his fear over how they would react. But this time, we agreed it was time that we shouldn’t let fear control how we engage with his family. To us it wasn’t a big deal at all. We just believed in open, honest communication so we could take proper precautions.

So my husband did the radical thing. He asked if the kid was sick. Not an accusation. Not a confrontation. A question. The kind of thing functional adults ask each other every day without incident.

What happened next was traditional behavior. The conversation didn’t come back to us directly. It went sideways and around and was discussed by others except the one person who had actually asked the question. Pretty much how everything has gone since I married into the family.

Then came the passive-aggressive text, the kind that’s heavy in energy, the kind you feel in your chest before you’ve finished reading it.

My husband reassured them it was fine. We only wanted to know so we could wash hands more and hug a little less if someone was truly sick. “No big deal,” he said.

The visit ended, and we went on with our lives. What followed was a blowup that evolved into a slow, painful unraveling that lasted the better part of a year. There was an outburst that I was a problem, how my husband and I always cause drama, and the goal was to pit him against me. My character was ripped apart, and even our marriage was called into question.

Here’s what I eventually understood. It was never about the runny nose.

The runny nose was just the latest scene in a play that had been running for years. And this is how patterns work. They attach themselves to whatever is available and use it to replay the same dynamic that was always there underneath.

Where we chose to get married. A question about a cold. Leaving for much needed naps on a vacation. Making a trip to a library to pick up books without asking before. How we should share my pregnancy. When you start paying attention, you notice the specific incident almost never matters. What matters is the structure underneath it.

Who communicates directly and who resorts to gossip without confrontation. Who takes accountability and who deflects. Who moves toward healthy resolution and who moves toward drama. Who has empathy and who is dismissive. Who owns their feelings and who guilt trips. The structure tells you everything you need to know. And in this family structure, the former never happened.

My husband and I spent nearly a year trying to explain to people that there was an unhealthy pattern that needed to be addressed. One that undeniably started way before I came into the picture. Technically it shouldn’t have even involved me. We wrote letters. We had conversations. He even brought in a neutral therapist.

We did it with real hope. We believed that people who loved us would be willing to do the uncomfortable work of looking honestly at this dynamic that repeatedly unfolded. And we went on this journey because we wanted to have better relationships with the family. Let’s just say it was received very poorly.

Eventually, there was an apology from one party because the therapist had to explain why it was needed. But it was the kind that checks a box with no change in behavior. The verbal equivalent of sweeping everything under the rug and then complimenting the rug. The main party is still in denial that the pattern exists.

And that year taught me the most important thing I know about this: You cannot change a pattern that the other person does not believe exists. You can name it gently. You can write the most honest letter of your life. You can stay calm and lead with compassion and invite in professionals.

And if the other person is committed to a version of reality where they are never the problem and lack accountability, none of it will land. Not because you didn’t try hard enough. But because you are standing in two different worlds.

The pattern isn’t a mistake they’re making. It’s a survival system they’ve been running their whole lives. And survival systems don’t go quietly. So, at some point, the work stops being about them. It becomes about you.

I had to ask myself some honest questions. And I want to gently offer them to you, too.

Are there relationships in your life where the same type of drama keeps happening, just with different furniture in the room? Where you leave almost every interaction feeling worse than when you arrived? Where people are constantly talking about you behind your back as a group and not coming to you directly?

Where you’re forever explaining yourself, justifying basic choices, managing someone else’s reaction to your perfectly reasonable existence? Where adults are constantly unable to regulate their emotions?

That’s not a rough patch. That’s not a hard season. That’s a pattern. And the moment you name it clearly and stop explaining away the evidence is the moment you reclaim yourself. Because you can’t step out of something you keep insisting is a coincidence.

Respect does not need constant coaching or explanations about why behaviors are bad and why your feelings matter. This is the part where most articles would tell you to extend more grace and try one more time, with an open heart and a perfectly worded conversation.

I’m not going to tell you that.

Sometimes the most loving and most spiritual thing you can do is to step back, not as a way to punish anyone or win some kind of argument, but simply because staying in it has started to feel unsafe in a way you can no longer ignore. And that is the part most people never quite realize—that choosing distance isn’t always an act of anger or abandonment, but sometimes the quietest form of self-respect there is.

But you are allowed to stop participating in the very thing that keeps hurting you, without guilt, even if no one around you understands the choice or gives you permission to make it. Because here is the quiet truth underneath all of it, the one that took me far too long to see: some patterns continue only because the people inside them need them to, and your willingness to keep playing your part is the very thing that keeps the whole thing alive.

And as long as you keep showing up to play your old part, writing the letters, managing the feelings, extending the olive branch again and again, you’re providing the one thing the pattern needs to survive. Your participation.

Stepping back is not abandonment or giving up. It’s the moment you stop trying to rewrite someone else’s story and start gently writing your own.

See more posts

About Laura Rosenfeld

Laura Rosenfeld has spent over a decade in management consulting and co-authored Peak Performance: Mindset Tools for Managers before founding her own business in 2024. A longtime practitioner of Kadampa Buddhism and meditation, she writes about mindset, courage, and the art of becoming the exception, marrying high performance with deep inner work. She shares essays and tools at Anomaly Method on Substack. Check out her newsletter for free: anomalymethod.substack.com

Web | More Posts

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

from Tiny Buddha https://ift.tt/AnEoMfI

How a Chronic Illness Changed My Life for the Better

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl

I smiled when the doctor told me I had a disease I would carry for the rest of my life.

He was calling with my biopsy results, and the word he used was “Crohn’s.” I had no idea what it meant. But after months of pain that no one could explain, hearing an actual name for it felt like someone had finally turned on a light in a dark room. I wasn’t scared. I was relieved.

To understand why, I have to go back to the beginning.

It started with a pain low on the right side of my abdomen. Appendicitis runs in my family, so that was my first thought. I kept telling the doctors it had to be my appendix. They kept telling me it wasn’t.

The first doctor looked at me and asked, “Are you under a lot of pressure?”

At that point in my life, a handful of things were going wrong at once, and I felt like I was getting hit from every angle. So I said yes, a lot. He nodded like that explained everything and suggested I relax, maybe take some time off and travel for a few months.

So I did. I traveled for three months. The pain didn’t go away. If anything, it got worse.

I went to a second doctor. Same answer. It’s stress. Exercise more, lower your workload, rest more. I did all of it. I still woke up in the middle of the night with a sharp pain in my lower abdomen that would pull me right out of sleep.

A friend recommended a third doctor. I had some hope walking in. Funny enough, he said the same thing. Stress.

By then, I had started to notice something. “It’s stress” is what you sometimes hear when nobody can figure out what’s actually wrong. Everyone has stress in their life, so the explanation always fits well enough to end the conversation. It isn’t said with bad intentions. It’s just the easiest place to land when the real answer isn’t obvious. But I was the one waking up at 3 a.m. in pain, and I knew this wasn’t in my head.

So this time, I pushed back. I told him, no, it’s not stress. Something is really wrong with me.

He paused, then said, “Okay. If that’s the case, let’s do a CT scan and take a deeper look.”

That one sentence changed everything.

The scan showed something going on in my lower intestine. He referred me to a GI specialist, who recommended a colonoscopy so they could take a biopsy and finally find out what was happening. I did the procedure. A few days later, the phone rang. That was the call where I heard the word “Crohn’s” for the first time and where, to my own surprise, I smiled.

The relief didn’t last long.

As it turned out, it wasn’t going to be that simple. Crohn’s is a chronic disease. In simple terms, my immune system attacks my own digestive tract when it doesn’t like something, which causes inflammation and pain when food passes through that part of the gut.

The specialist was direct with me. Because it’s chronic, he said, this is something you’ll be managing for the rest of your life. He told me to take it seriously because if I didn’t, there was a real chance of needing surgery to remove the damaged parts of my intestine. He prescribed medication and told me that if I wanted to feel better and keep things under control, I would have to change my lifestyle and my diet.

Here’s the tricky thing about Crohn’s: it’s different for almost everyone who has it, and a lot of it comes down to food. Certain things trigger it, but the triggers aren’t the same from person to person. Someone can be completely fine with alcohol but unable to tolerate something as ordinary as orange juice.

In my case, the troublemakers turned out to be alcohol, spicy food, orange juice, greasy fast food, and coffee. I didn’t figure that out overnight. It took about two years of paying attention, cutting things out, adding them back, and slowly learning what my body could and couldn’t handle. Coffee was by far the hardest to give up.

Around that time, I told a friend what I was going through. I expected sympathy. Instead, he looked at me and said, “Dude, you’re so lucky.”

I was stunned. How in the world was I lucky to have a chronic disease?

He explained what he meant. The way he saw it, this was going to force me to eat well, pay attention to my body, and take my health seriously in a way most people never do until it’s too late. In his words, I’d probably end up healthier than the rest of them precisely because I had no choice.

At the time, it didn’t land. I was too busy grieving over the coffee.

But it’s been about fifteen years now, and looking back, I understand exactly what he meant. I cut the foods that hurt me completely out of my life, not most of the time, but all of the time. I’ve gone a long stretch now without a flare-up. The discipline the disease forced on me didn’t stay in the kitchen either. It changed how I treat my body in general.

I’m not going to pretend a chronic illness is a gift, and I won’t make any promises about adding years to anyone’s life. That was my friend’s optimism, not a medical fact. But I will say this: the thing I was most afraid of ended up pushing me toward a healthier life than I would have built on my own.

A few things have stayed with me through all of it.

The first is to trust your body and keep advocating for yourself. If something feels wrong and you keep getting brushed off, don’t stop asking. I heard “it’s stress” three times before someone finally ran the test that found the truth. If I had accepted that answer, I would still be in pain, or worse. You know your own body better than anyone, and you’re allowed to keep pushing until someone listens.

The second is that a hard diagnosis can be a strange kind of turning point. Not because the illness itself is good, but because it can force the changes you’ve been putting off for years. It made me face habits I would have happily ignored forever.

And the third is that silver linings are often invisible while you’re standing in the storm. My friend saw mine before I could. It took me a decade and a half to catch up to him.

If you’re in the middle of your own version of this, waiting for an answer, feeling dismissed, or sitting with news you didn’t want, I won’t tell you it’s secretly wonderful. I’ll just tell you that there are some situations you can’t change, and that’s exactly when life turns the question back on you and asks who you’re willing to become. You might not like the assignment. But you may look back, the way I have, and realize it was the thing that changed you for the better.

See more posts

About Arman Soltani

Arman Soltani is the VP of Design at PastWisdom.com, where he combines his love for technology, design, and self-growth to create thoughtful digital experiences. Explore more at PastWisdom.com

Web | More Posts

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

from Tiny Buddha https://ift.tt/nsFzREy

Why It’s So Hard to Just Rest and Why We Need to Do It

“If you don’t give your mind and body a break, you’ll break. Stop pushing yourself through pain and exhaustion and take care of your needs.” ~Lori Deschene

In November of 2021, my autoimmune issues flared up. My doctor and I are still unsure which of my conditions—rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia—was the culprit, or if they were acting in cahoots, but the overall achiness and debilitating fatigue were a solid indication that something was more active than usual.

I woke up tired, needed naps, and often ran out of spoons—a phrase familiar to many with chronic conditions, based on a gorgeous essay called “The Spoon Theory,” written by Christine Miserandino.

While I may not know the reason, the one thing that was certain was that my body was demanding rest.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to just rest?

I mean it.

Knowing that I needed rest did not grant me the immediate ability to actually pull it off.

I would sit down to watch a show and find myself trying to multitask. Or I would attempt to put off a nap like a recalcitrant toddler. Instead of throwing myself on the floor in a tantrum, I was trying to “push through” so I could finish typing an email or move a load of laundry into the dryer.

Even with a body and brain that were crying out for rest, it was difficult to allow myself to do it. In the end, I had to reparent myself in order to be able to rest, enforcing stopping times and rest periods.

Those of us in the Western world, especially here in the United States where I live, are programmed to be productive. We are told—and we tell ourselves—all of the things that we “should” be doing in order to be busy. Work in all its forms, from job tasks to errands to chores, is what we are “supposed” to do.

We are conditioned to be productive and to stay busy from the time we are young. We hear people say things like “I’ll rest when I’m dead” and “no rest for the weary.” We are exhorted to “pay our dues” and “put in the work.”

If we were somehow fortunate enough to avoid the overt messaging about staying busy and working hard, most of us received those messages indirectly by watching the people in our lives.

We watched our parents come home from work with arms full of grocery bags, only for them to fix dinner while putting groceries away. Or we were asked what we were doing and made to feel wrong if our answer to the question was a child’s honest “nothing.”

Long after dinner, once everything was cleaned up or tidied and it was “time to relax,” we watched our parents do additional work, both paid and unpaid. Or we watched them knitting, ironing, or puttering around the house.

We have been told that we have to “work hard” in order to succeed. That “nothing good comes easy.” That we shouldn’t stop when we are tired, but only when we are “done.”

Sitting down and resting is not prioritized. Those who decide to rest often must justify it: they have to have earned the right to rest.

Rest doesn’t only mean sleep, although sleep is a large part of it. It also includes sitting comfortably doing not much of anything at all.

It could mean listening to music or watching TV or meditating. Or perhaps working quietly on a jigsaw puzzle or craft or reading a book or article. Maybe playing solitaire, or looking out the window, or journaling.

In the fall, as I was struggling with my autoimmune flare, it occurred to me that I should rest more. I was so accustomed to overriding my body’s signals that I hadn’t realized how far I’d pushed myself.

When I tapped into how my mind and body were truly feeling, I was shocked to find that my mind and body were almost buckling, on the edge of collapse.

I waited to notice what was happening until I’d reached the point where I was unable to do many tasks in the day at all. A banner day during that time might have involved doing a single load or laundry or cooking dinner for my husband and me.

I was so fixated on staying busy that I could no longer assess my need for busyness in an honest manner. I had lost the ability to tune into my body to find out if it needed to move and stretch, or even to stretch out and sleep.

Had I continued to push ahead for much longer, I’m certain that I would have fallen ill. As it was, I was dealing with brain fog, fatigue, and both joint and muscle pain, all of which made life unpleasant.

It is easy to see now that I should never have allowed things to get to that state, but fatigue and pain and brain fog have a way of teaming up on you so that you can’t clearly assess much of anything. Nevertheless, when I hit the edge of collapse and burnout, I realized that some serious rest was in order.

I essentially cleared my calendar for at least three weeks. I cleared my work calendar of appointments, scheduled some brief blog posts and emails, and took time off.

It was torture at first.

For one thing, my husband was still getting up and heading out into the world to teach tai chi and qigong classes, so he was modeling “proper” work behavior. For another, I discovered that I was incapable of “just resting.”

I had to relearn how to listen to my body to discover what it needed. 

I also had to reprogram my thoughts about rest as being an inherent right that we all hold, and not a reward for productivity.

I also had to learn how to actually do it.

I did all of the things I listed earlier as forms of rest, from naps to puzzles to sitting quietly. It was ridiculously difficult.

I had to almost force myself to limit myself to single-tasking, which is doing one task at a time. That was especially hard if the task was mechanically simple, such as watching a television show. My inner monologue would kick up, chastising me for “just sitting there,” urging me to “be productive.”

In those moments when I decided that rest meant watching a movie on TV, I sometimes sat on my hands to make sure that I didn’t pick up my phone or a crossword puzzle or something else. I often put my phone on silent and deliberately left it in another room, just to reduce temptation.

Full disclosure: Even with taking affirmative steps to single-task, I didn’t always manage. I did, however, learn through reinforcement that there was nothing likely to arise in an hour or two of time that required me to give up on resting and take immediate action.

I realized that in many ways, I was retraining my nervous system to allow itself to relax. It was so used to being in a state of alertness that resting and allowing it to have some time off took some getting used to.

What I learned when I started to budget rest into my days was that I could start to tell more easily what signals my body was sending. It became easier to converse with my brain and body to find out how they were feeling and what they needed.

It sounds a bit dissociated when put that way, but I have never felt more integrated than I do now. At any given moment, I can pause, tap into what I am feeling (mentally and physically), and act on my own needs in ways that are more nurturing and caring than before.

When I realize that I am losing focus on a project—perhaps while typing a blog post or planning a workshop—I no longer push through. Instead, thanks to months of practice, I pause and check in with my brain and body. Thanks to practice, I can quickly ascertain whether I need to take a simple break, to get up and walk around for a bit, to take a walk outdoors, or to stop for the day.

I am learning to embrace the idea that rest is an inherent right, not something that needs to be earned. It is no longer something that occurs only once I have pushed myself until the point of collapse. 

As it turns out, the more I lean into rest and build it into my days, the more energy I have to actually accomplish all the things I want to get done in life.

When I add time off or breaks during the day, I find I have better focus when I need to be working on a task. When I include rest in my days, I have the energy to exercise in the morning and also make a good meal for dinner.

I invite you to join me in adding actual breaks into your day, where you do nothing “productive” at all. No catching up on phone calls or emails or texts—just rest. I’d love to hear if and how it works for you.

See more posts

About Kelly Ramsdell

Kelly Ramsdell is the founder and CEO of Actually-I-Can, Inc, which helps people to reclaim and redesign their lives with aligned ease. She has written two ebooks, 12 tips to help you sleep and Lower your anxiety to help people through these trying times.  Get them at actually-i-can.com, or follow on Insta, Facebook, or Twitter.

Web | Twitter | Facebook | More Posts

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

from Tiny Buddha https://ift.tt/I7M4jom

The Day I Realized Love Couldn’t Save Someone

“When it comes down to it, that’s what life is all about: showing up for the people you love, again and again, until you can’t show up anymore.” ~Rebecca Walker

The first time my dad admitted he was scared, I felt something shift inside me.

Not uncomfortable. Not worried. Scared.

He had recently been diagnosed with Stage IV colorectal cancer, and we were standing together when he quietly asked, “Is this what takes me out?”

I wish I could tell you I responded with wisdom or grace. Instead, I did what many people do when confronted with something they cannot control. I tried to bargain.

“It won’t take you out if you don’t want it to,” I told him.

Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they weren’t true.

I wasn’t talking to him. I was talking to fate. I was talking to fear. I was talking to the impossible reality that my father might die.

For most of my life, my dad had been larger than life. Stubborn. Funny. Independent. The kind of person who treated rules as suggestions and authority as a challenge.

He was also the person who made me feel safe. And suddenly, he was looking to me for reassurance.

That was the moment I experienced what many adult children eventually face but few are prepared for: the reversal of roles.

The person who once carried you begins to lean on you. The person who once had answers begins asking questions. The person who taught you how to navigate the world becomes vulnerable in ways you never imagined.

People often think grief begins when someone dies. My experience taught me otherwise. Sometimes grief begins the moment you realize they will.

As my father’s illness progressed, everyone in my family found a different way to cope.

One sister organized appointments and schedules.

Another flew across the country and started sneaking avocado into his soup because she had read about the nutritional benefits.

There were green smoothies, supplements, treatment plans, research articles, and endless conversations about what might help.

My mother had a different perspective.

“Let him eat what he wants,” she said. “He’s a dying man.”

At the time, everyone seemed to be speaking different languages. Looking back, I realize we were all doing the same thing. We were trying to create certainty where none existed.

Loss has a way of exposing how uncomfortable we are with uncertainty.

Some people manage. Some research. Some fix. Some avoid. Some become angry. Most of us cycle through all of them.

I wasn’t immune. I simply expressed it differently. Instead of trying to save him, I became obsessed with making things easier.

Could we hire help? Could we reduce his stress? Could we simplify his life?

I was searching for something useful to do because usefulness felt safer than helplessness.

One of the most important lessons I learned during that time is that action and control are not the same thing.

Action can be helpful. Control is often an illusion.

The more I tried to manage the situation emotionally, the more exhausted I became. The more I accepted what was happening, the more present I could be.

That sounds simple. It wasn’t.

Acceptance is often misunderstood as giving up. For me, acceptance looked like acknowledging reality while continuing to love him fully.

It meant understanding that I could not change the outcome, but I could influence the experience. I could choose how I showed up.

One of my favorite memories happened during a hospital visit.

He was getting a port installed for treatment, and the campus was strictly non-smoking. My dad wanted a cigarette. I told him it wasn’t allowed. Then I left to get the car.

When I pulled up, he was sitting in the passenger seat wearing the biggest grin.

“Meg,” he said. “Look.”

He pointed toward the ground. There, next to the curb, was a half-smoked cigarette. Someone had thrown it away. My father had apparently rescued it. He was so proud of himself.

I remember laughing despite myself. The moment was ridiculous. But it was also perfect.

Because in that instant, he wasn’t a cancer patient. He wasn’t a diagnosis. He wasn’t a problem to solve. He was simply my dad. Stubborn. Resourceful. Unapologetically himself.

That memory taught me something I didn’t fully understand at the time.

When people are approaching the end of life, we often become so focused on preserving them that we stop seeing them.

We see symptoms. Appointments. Medications. Decline. We forget the person still exists underneath all of it.

The greatest gift we can offer someone facing loss is not always our solutions. Sometimes it’s our attention. Sometimes it’s remembering who they are.

As the months passed, something unexpected began happening. Memories surfaced without warning.

I would be standing in my kitchen and suddenly find myself transported back to childhood.

I could see us in the driveway in Sonoma, California. I could hear his laughter. I could feel the wobble of my bike as he taught me how to ride.

The memories weren’t dramatic. They were ordinary. And somehow, that made them more powerful.

At first, I didn’t understand why they kept appearing.

Now I think my mind was doing exactly what it needed to do. It was preserving him. Not the version of him that was sick. The version of him that was alive. The version that had shaped me.

Toward the end, something else happened that I’ve since noticed in many families facing significant loss. People began unraveling. Patience disappeared. Arguments appeared out of nowhere. Small disagreements became major conflicts. Everyone seemed emotionally raw.

At the time, it felt chaotic. Now I understand it differently. When people feel powerless, emotions look for somewhere to go.

Fear often disguises itself as frustration. Sadness often masquerades as anger. Grief rarely arrives in the neat, recognizable form we expect. Sometimes it arrives wearing different clothes.

One thing I wish more people understood is that there is no perfect way to navigate these experiences. There is only awareness. The more aware we become of what we’re actually feeling, the less likely we are to project it onto everyone around us.

If you’re facing a difficult loss right now—or any life transition that feels bigger than your ability to manage it—there are a few things I learned that may help.

First, stop expecting certainty.

The need for certainty creates additional suffering because life rarely offers it.

Second, pay attention to how you’re trying to gain control.

Are you fixing? Researching? Avoiding? Fighting?

Understanding your coping strategies doesn’t eliminate them, but it helps you use them more consciously.

Third, don’t wait for perfect moments.

The meaningful moments are usually ordinary.

A conversation in a parking lot. A shared meal. A ridiculous joke. A half-smoked cigarette discovered on the ground. Those are often the moments that stay with us.

Most importantly, remember that being present is enough.

You do not have to solve every problem. You do not have to carry every emotion. You do not have to make an impossible situation feel acceptable.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stay. Stay for the conversation. Stay for the memory. Stay for the laughter. Stay for the heartbreak. Stay for the person.

My father eventually died. But when I think about that season of my life now, what remains isn’t the fear. It isn’t the diagnosis. It isn’t even the loss itself.

What remains is his smile. His personality. His stubbornness. The moments when he was unmistakably, undeniably himself.

That’s when I finally understood what anticipatory grief had been trying to teach me all along.

Love isn’t measured by our ability to save people. It’s measured by our willingness to be with them, fully and honestly, even when we can’t.

See more posts

About Meghan Phelan

Meghan Phelan is the owner of Granny NANNIES of South Florida, bringing eighteen years of experience in elder care. After earning her degree in Health Service Administration from the University of Central Florida, she dedicated her career to helping seniors age safely at home. Based in Miami, Meghan is also an Alzheimer's Association community educator and support group facilitator, committed to providing compassionate care and trusted support for families across South Florida.

Web | More Posts

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

from Tiny Buddha https://ift.tt/kxIvMrw

The Most Helpful Thing Someone Did During My Panic Attack

“Better than a thousand useless words is one useful word, upon hearing which one attains peace.” ~Buddha, Dhammapada

Did he just cut the side of my head open? Am I bleeding out everywhere? Is there blood rushing down my face and onto the floor?

It was the middle of my standard biweekly haircut when my mind suddenly began to spiral.

I felt a slight sting on the side of my head, and my anxiety took over, using its vivid imagination to pivot to the worst-case scenario.

Moments before, my barber and I were laughing about Disneyland. Seconds later, I was convinced he’d accidentally sliced my head open, and everyone in the shop was quietly watching me bleed out.

One of his fellow barbers brought me some trail mix and water, but inside, I felt trapped in a merciless loop, cycling between anxiety and fear, unable to break free.

Voices became muffled. The clippers sounded like they were miles away. My mind felt like it was no longer in my body. I was floating somewhere above it, watching myself simultaneously implode and explode.

“Call 911!” I shouted. Despite being in my early thirties and completely healthy, I was convinced I was having a heart attack. All rational thought disappeared as the physical symptoms overwhelmed me. My chest tightened, my vision blurred, and I was sure this was the end.

“Am I dying?” looped through my mind as I regretted never having written a will.

I leapt from the barber chair and lay on the floor, bracing for the heart attack I was certain was coming. Thinking I’d need CPR, I somehow still had the wherewithal to pull out my wallet, find my insurance card, and toss it onto the ground for when they inevitably rushed me to the hospital.

It had been nearly a decade since I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Since then, I’ve worked hard to manage my mental health through therapy, medication, and self-care, but panic has a very sneaky way of catching you off guard.

My last panic attack had been months earlier, and I’d convinced myself I was in the clear. Obviously, I wasn’t.

“How do I look? Do I only have half a haircut?” were the first questions out of my mouth as I lay sprawled out on the cold cement floor, covered in both hair and shame, as fire engine sirens wailed closer.

My barber crouched down next to me. He stayed calm. He gently told me to breathe and reminded me I was probably having a panic attack.

As I slowly started to settle, my perception shifted from floating above myself to landing somewhat back in my body. My chest still ached, but I started to feel my hands again.

When the paramedics arrived, a wave of embarrassment swept over me. It started to sink in that no, I wasn’t having a heart attack. No, I wasn’t dying. No, I wasn’t in hell. I had just had a panic attack.

The only thing that died that day was a bit of my pride, as a half-dozen firefighters surrounded me in the tiny barbershop while I lay on the ground, drenched in sweat.

They checked my heart rate and blood pressure. Both were elevated.

Then came the real kicker: “Any pre-existing conditions?”

I explained that I live with anxiety and panic attacks. One firefighter sighed audibly as several others turned back toward the truck. That crushed me.

Despite being a vocal advocate for mental health, I felt ridiculously small, like a child who had cried wolf, except the wolf was invisible to everyone but me. It was a raw shame I didn’t expect and wasn’t quite sure how to handle. It was like all my years of advocacy suddenly went out the barbershop’s clear-as-glass window in the face of their impatience.

It wasn’t just the frustration in their sighs, either. It was the dismissal of what I was actually experiencing that stung deeper than any physical symptom.

The one firefighter who stayed asked about my current medications, sighing louder with each prescription I listed, as if my terror were a personal inconvenience to him. It felt like genuinely fearing for my life made him irritated by my very existence.

Once they ruled out a heart attack, the remaining firefighters helped me back into the chair and left.

As I sat down with half a haircut, I couldn’t stop thinking about how common this experience was. More than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental health condition in any given year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Millions of us carry something invisible. Yet here I was, flooded with shame for something I couldn’t control.

Then my barber did the most ordinary, and extraordinary, thing.

“You good, bro?” he asked. Then he picked up the clippers and casually kept cutting my hair, as if nothing had happened, resuming our conversation about Disneyland like I hadn’t just had what felt like a near-death experience on the floor next to him moments earlier.

He didn’t pity me. He didn’t judge me. He didn’t make it a thing. He was simply calm, and his calm told me I was still just me.

That was everything.

Here is what I’ve learned, having lived with panic attacks for years. You cannot reason your way out of one, and no one can reason you out of one either.

When it’s happening, the part of my brain that knows I’m safe goes quiet. Logic doesn’t land, and facts don’t help.

Someone insisting “you’re fine” often makes it worse. It just feels like one more person who doesn’t get it.

What actually helps is presence—a steady voice or a calm body next to mine.

My barber had no training in any of this. He simply stayed calm when I couldn’t. That pulled me back into the room when nothing else could.

I do have my own tools, and I use them regularly. One is the five-four-three-two-one grounding exercise, where I name five things I can see, four I can touch, three I can hear, two I can smell, and one I can taste. The process brings me back to the present.

I also use a small handheld device called a TheraTapper. It sends a gentle pulse to each hand, back and forth, and helps settle my nervous system when it’s racing.

These tools work, but here’s the honest part: in the worst moments, I can’t always reach them.

Flat on a barbershop floor, convinced I’m dying, my thinking mind is offline. That’s exactly when another person’s calm matters most. The tools are mine to practice in the quiet, but the steadiness often has to come from someone else.

I’m sharing this because panic attacks are so often invisible until suddenly they’re not. The shaking, the crying, and the lying on the floor can look dramatic, but most of the suffering is happening somewhere no one can see.

And when it does spill into view, the response of the people nearby can change everything, whether it’s a sigh, a shrug, or a simple “you good?”

I won’t forget the firefighter’s sigh, but I think about my barber far more often.

He reminded me that I’m not crazy, I’m not broken, and I’m not alone, without ever saying those words. Sometimes the most healing thing isn’t advice or reassurance. It’s someone staying calm beside you until you find your way back.

See more posts

About Kyle Elliott

Dr. Kyle Elliott (he/him/his) is a career and executive coach for tech leaders. As a queer person living with mental health conditions, he is proud to use his voice and platform to help others share their stories, get help, and achieve recovery. Download his free self-care guide to discover 30+ quick, practical strategies to reduce your stress, enhance your mental health, and reclaim your time and energy.

Web | More Posts

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

from Tiny Buddha https://ift.tt/wFG8md9

How I Learned to Be More Present with Meditating

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

A few years ago, I moved to a new country with two children under two.

The idea had felt exciting at first—a fresh start, a new place, a life by the sea. But excitement fades quickly when you realize you don’t know a single person. No friends to call. No family nearby. No one to sit with you on a hard day and just listen.

I wasn’t prepared for that kind of loneliness. The deep, quiet kind that creeps in slowly—not dramatic, not visible to anyone else, just a low hum of disconnection that follows you through the day. I had two beautiful children who needed me completely, and I was grateful for them every single day. But gratitude and loneliness can live in the same heart at the same time. I was learning that the hard way.

The hardest part wasn’t the big moments. It was the small ones. The times I wanted to see a friend and remembered there was no one to call. They all lived in another country. The times one of my children got sick and I had no one to help. The times I watched other mothers laughing together at the park and felt invisible, even in a crowd.

Making new friendships takes time. Real ones—the kind that go deep, the kind where someone actually knows you—those don’t happen quickly. So I waited. And in the waiting, I started to disappear a little from myself.

I tried to meditate. Everyone said it would help. I downloaded the apps, I sat quietly, I tried to follow my breath. And I failed, repeatedly, in the most ordinary way. My mind would not be still. I would sit there trying to find peace and instead find a running list of everything I hadn’t done yet.

I still don’t know how to meditate well, honestly. And for a long time, I thought that meant something was wrong with me.

What I understand now is that I wasn’t failing at presence. I was simply trying to enter it through a door that didn’t feel natural to me at that time. I needed movement before stillness. I needed color, air, curiosity, and something gentle to place my attention on.

Photography had always made me happy. Even before I understood why, there was something about picking up a camera that shifted my mood—like a quiet reminder that beauty existed and I was allowed to look for it. So one day, in the middle of all that loneliness, I picked up my camera again.

Not to create anything impressive. Not to build a portfolio or post something beautiful online. Just to go outside, walk, and see what I noticed.

I started breaking the rules I had been taught about photography—the composition, the light, the perfect shot. I became, in my own quiet way, a photography rebel.

I pointed my camera at whatever caught my eye, however imperfect, however small. A shadow on a wall. The color of the sea on a particular afternoon. The texture of something ordinary I had passed a hundred times without seeing.

And something happened that I hadn’t expected.

My mind went quiet.

Not because I forced it to. Not because I was following any technique or program. But because creativity, I discovered, gave my worry less room to take over. When you are truly looking—really noticing what is in front of you, deciding how to frame it, feeling curious about the light—your mind is too busy being alive to be anxious. Too busy playing to be sad.

I call it getting into the happy zone. That place where you forget, temporarily, about the loneliness and the exhaustion and the guilt. Because there was guilt too—the particular guilt that can come when someone depends on you completely. The feeling that you are not entitled to take time for yourself. That stepping away, even for fifteen minutes, is somehow a betrayal.

But I kept going back. Because I came home different every time. Lighter. More present. More myself. Ready for the next day, the next small demand, the next moment of ordinary beauty that I might have missed if I hadn’t trained myself to look.

Mindful photography gave me back something I didn’t know I had lost—my own attention. Not just attention to the world around me, but attention to myself. The practice of noticing outward beauty slowly taught me to notice my own inner state. To check in. To ask: what do I need today? And to answer honestly: fifteen minutes outside with my camera and the willingness to be playful.

You don’t need to be a photographer. You don’t need an expensive camera or a beautiful location or any technical skill at all. You just need your phone and fifteen minutes and the willingness to look for one thing — one color, one shadow, one small detail that catches your eye today.

Let yourself be curious about it. Let yourself be a little bit rebellious with it. Forget the rules. Forget the perfect shot. Just notice. Just play.

Because sometimes the thing that brings you back to yourself isn’t stillness. Sometimes it’s the simple act of looking up and seeing what was there all along.

See more posts

About Maja Kerin

Maja Kerin is an award-winning fine art photographer and founder of Your Daily Pause, a mindful photography practice that helps people slow down, notice, and reconnect through simple creative pauses. Learn more at yourdailypause.com, or find her on Instagram at @majakerinart and @dailypausemethod.

Web | More Posts

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

from Tiny Buddha https://ift.tt/IhafXGn