Here are my top ten strategies for stopping anxiety in its tracks, reducing the power it has in your life, and for taking charge when everything feels out of control.
Why You Procrastinate
Five Lies That Keep You Stuck
How to Stop Living in Survival Mode
“Survival mode” happens when you have a dysfunctional relationship to the self-preservation instinct. Rather than truly providing food, shelter, safety—you catastrophize and generalize about possible futures. In this state, you’re a hamster on a wheel, always hustling to outrun the bad-guy, never gaining ground.
Five Questions You Need to Stop Asking Yourself
Blindfolded and Sleepwalking
Lost One
I needed to speak to you: lost one. You know who you are, the one who wrote to me for help. You're the one who reached out in those last hours of your life. You are the one who told me your story. You're the one who doesn't go a day without crying. You're the one at rock bottom. The one whose been too far lost now for far too long.
Finding Refuge in Uncertainty
In an effort to find quiet space in my house, somewhere that I could find solace -- a place to be able to write in peace, I decided to move outside. Our back deck looks over a canopy of oaks stretching from our home down the canyon toward the beach. I created a luxurious outdoor room with a super comfy sectional sofa and overstuffed pillows. I stocked it with cozy blankets (heated ones for cold and foggy mornings) and music (Sonos: I love you). My outdoor living room gets nuclear amounts of sunshine at certain parts of the day, so we hung some extra long outdoor drapes that can pull across part of the deck to shade the patio area.
5 Steps to Finding Joy in Acceptance
Acceptance has never been one of my strong suits. I, honestly, don't have a laid-back bone in my body. I've always found pride in being driven, being a hard worker, being creative and in my ability to get shit done. For years, I shushed away the idea of acceptance, seeing it more akin to apathy, weakness or powerlessness. Don't get me wrong, I knew acceptance was important; many great teachers have spoken about it. It's one of those Big Topics that seems to be required for spiritual maturity, personal transformation, and for being a decent human being. But secretly, I didn't want to accept that I had to accept. (I told you: stubborn.)
The Universe, knowing me and my tenacious ways, had other plans for me and over time relentlessly upped the ante (divorce, losing all my money, single parenthood, blind dates) until I either had to spontaneously self-combust or surrender into acceptance. Under duress, I chose the latter. And I'm so glad I did. I'm a few years into my acceptance practice, and I now see that I resisted acceptance because I didn't understand what it really meant, and how profoundly it would change my life (in a good way)...
