dyamz

If you’re Still Hung Up on a Past Love, Here’s How to Change your Perspective. There must come a moment in our efforts to let go when we fully realize our own value. Instead of looking at our loss and what we miss about the other person, we need to absorb the fact that they lost us, too. It doesn’t matter who ended the relationship. It doesn’t even matter if it ended amicably or not. When we’re grieving for a relationship that’s ended and missing the other person like a lost limb, we’re doing it because all of our thoughts are focused on their absence, and not our own presence. I loved someone like that. I missed him so much it hurt. I wanted him back in my life for all of the ways that he made it seem brighter and better. The loss was overwhelming because the focus was so much on what I was missing. When we realize our full worth and accept ourselves for the fabulous beings that we are, we can start to shift our perspective. Just think about that: they lost us. They lost our wonderful selves. They will wake up each day without us in their lives and will miss out on all of the changes we’re going through—some of which were prompted by their loss. I had a holy sh*t moment when I realized this. When I was able to change my perspective and realize that the one I missed would be missing me, I had to take a step back. I had to take a moment to sit down. Because I know my value. Instead of constantly feeling lucky that someone chooses to be with us, we need to remember they’re also lucky if we allow them into our lives. When we start to realize our own value, we can begin to feel the tiniest bit sorry for the ones who don’t choose to share our lives when we’re inviting them to do so. We come to a point where we realize that they weren’t doing us a favor by sharing our journey. We begin to embrace the fact that they were lucky to have the opportunity to be there with us, and our absence is a loss to them whether they acknowledge it or not. They may not even feel the loss of us, but we can know that they did indeed lose something special. Sometimes our grief is wrapped up in the loss of who we were inside of that relationship, the way we felt and the magic of falling for someone. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that I don’t have a fear of heights; I have a fear of falling. And deeper than that, I have a fear of landing more than falling. Because the fall can be exquisite. Perhaps we need to fall a little more in love with ourselves. When our grief for someone else becomes too heavy a load to bear, it may be time to shift our focus inward on all the reasons that we’re a great partner. When we acknowledge and embrace our true value, we can begin to understand that we need to be with the people who understand how wonderful we are and truly want us in their lives. We can also take the time to become the type of partner we’re seeking, if we’re not already there. We can eat well and take care of our bodies, learn new hobbies and embrace every aspect of our lives. And in the meantime, we can feel a little sorry for any fool who let us go. On a good day, I feel pretty damn sorry for anyone who chose not to share this life with me. How sad for them! And this isn’t about ego—this is about understanding that maybe we’re a little too wonderful to settle for those who could so easily leave us. We need a love that’s stronger than that, and a lover who’s up to the task of being who we need. Will this help us let go? I think so. I think that when we realize that we’re worthy and of extraordinary value, we’ll stop feeling like we’re the only one who’s lost something special. We’ll realize that they, too, lost something beautiful and extraordinary. And maybe knowing that they’ve lost out when they lost us will help us to let go of them. When we finally let go, we can fall into a deeper love with ourselves and trust that our beautiful journey will lead us toward a love that sees our true worth.

When the stress and wear and tear of everyday life gets us down, there are small things that we can do that will allow us to take a break and improve our well-being. Here are some research-supported practices that can help us feel better and less stressed or troubled: Express Gratitude. Research in positive psychology has discovered the benefits of expressing gratitude—appreciating what we have, or thanking someone for something positive they have done for or given us. Not only can gratitude make us feel better and more optimistic, but it increases empathy, and, if expressed to a friend or loved one, makes them feel better, too. Laugh and Be Happy. Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it certainly can make us feel better. Laughter can increase energy, and it’s hard to feel stressed when you are laughing. Even smiling can have an effect. Research on the facial feedback effect found that when participants were made to smile (by holding a pencil between their teeth), it increased their feelings of happiness. In addition, laughter is infectious and can lighten a tense situation, or make another person feel better. Take a Break. Taking a break from the everyday grind—a weekend getaway, a round of golf, a good workout, a shopping spree—can provide welcome stress relief. The critical element, however, is to truly “take a break,” and not sit ruminating on what you are not getting done. Rewarding yourself with a break is a quick way to get some relief. Count Your Blessings. Related to gratitude, this is actually taking inventory of the good things in your life. Focusing too much on the negatives, leads to pessimism and, in extremes, can make us feel hopeless and helpless. Focus on the positives—good friends, good times, your talents and strengths—and you should feel better. Visit Someone Who Needs You. Being a support to friends or loved ones in their time of sickness or trouble not only makes them feel better, but can improve your well-being, both through the shared camaraderie, and from knowing that you are helping them get through a difficult time. Spend Quality Time With a Loved One. Nothing is more rewarding than spending focused, positive time with someone you love. Whether it is a romantic dinner, an outing with a child, reminiscing with parents, or an enjoyable activity with a sibling or best friend, these intense, focused interactions lead to the positive memories that will get us through future hard times. Volunteer or Help Someone. Many people engage in volunteer work simply because it makes them feel good to know that they are helping others. And it's an easy thing to do because there are so many structured volunteer organizations. You may notice connections between these positive practices – helping others, positive emotions, sharing. These are the elements that lead to a positive and psychologically healthy life. #itsjustdyamz

You Are Not Your Thoughts Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what's past. "We're living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence," says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We're always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm. When we're at work, we fantasize about being on vacation; on vacation, we worry about the work piling up on our desks. We dwell on intrusive memories of the past or fret about what may or may not happen in the future. We don't appreciate the living present because our "monkey minds," as Buddhists call them, vault from thought to thought like monkeys swinging from tree to tree. Most of us don't undertake our thoughts in awareness. Rather, our thoughts control us. "Ordinary thoughts course through our mind like a deafening waterfall," writes Jon Kabat-Zinn, the biomedical scientist who introduced meditation into mainstream medicine. In order to feel more in control of our minds and our lives, to find the sense of balance that eludes us, we need to step out of this current, to pause, and, as Kabat-Zinn puts it, to "rest in stillness—to stop doing and focus on just being." We need to live more in the moment. Living in the moment—also called mindfulness—is a state of active, open, intentional attention on the present. When you become mindful, you realize that you are not your thoughts; you become an observer of your thoughts from moment to moment without judging them. Mindfulness involves being with your thoughts as they are, neither grasping at them nor pushing them away. Instead of letting your life go by without living it, you awaken to experience. Cultivating a nonjudgmental awareness of the present bestows a host of benefits. Mindfulness reduces stress, boosts immune functioning, reduces chronic pain, lowers blood pressure, and helps patients cope with cancer. By alleviating stress, spending a few minutes a day actively focusing on living in the moment reduces the risk of heart disease. Mindfulness may even slow the progression of HIV. Mindful people are happier, more exuberant, more empathetic, and more secure. They have higher self-esteem and are more accepting of their own weaknesses. Anchoring awareness in the here and now reduces the kinds of impulsivity and reactivity that underlie depression, binge eating, and attention problems. Mindful people can hear negative feedback without feeling threatened. They fight less with their romantic partners and are more accommodating and less defensive. As a result, mindful couples have more satisfying relationships. Mindfulness is at the root of Buddhism, Taoism, and many Native-American traditions, not to mention yoga. It's why Thoreau went to Walden Pond; it's what Emerson and Whitman wrote about in their essays and poems. "Everyone agrees it's important to live in the moment, but the problem is how," says Ellen Langer, a psychologist at Harvard and author of Mindfulness. "When people are not in the moment, they're not there to know that they're not there." Overriding the distraction reflex and awakening to the present takes intentionality and practice. Living in the moment involves a profound paradox: You can't pursue it for its benefits. That's because the expectation of reward launches a future-oriented mindset, which subverts the entire process. Instead, you just have to trust that the rewards will come. There are many paths to mindfulness—and at the core of each is a paradox. Ironically, letting go of what you want is the only way to get it. Here are a few tricks to help you along. 1: To improve your performance, stop thinking about it (unselfconsciousness). I've never felt comfortable on a dance floor. My movements feel awkward. I feel like people are judging me. I never know what to do with my arms. I want to let go, but I can't, because I know I look ridiculous. "Loosen up, no one's watching you," people always say. "Everyone's too busy worrying about themselves." So how come they always make fun of my dancing the next day? The dance world has a term for people like me: "absolute beginner." Which is why my dance teacher, Jessica Hayden, the owner of Shockra Studio in Manhattan, started at the beginning, sitting me down on a bench and having me tap my feet to the beat as Jay-Z thumped away in the background. We spent the rest of the class doing "isolations"—moving just our shoulders, ribs, or hips—to build "body awareness." But even more important than body awareness, Hayden said, was present-moment awareness. "Be right here right now!" she'd say. "Just let go and let yourself be in the moment." That's the first paradox of living in the moment: Thinking too hard about what you're doing actually makes you do worse. If you're in a situation that makes you anxious—giving a speech, introducing yourself to a stranger, dancing—focusing on your anxiety tends to heighten it. "When I say, 'be here with me now,' I mean don't zone out or get too in-your-head—instead, follow my energy, my movements," says Hayden. "Focus less on what's going on in your mind and more on what's going on in the room, less on your mental chatter and more on yourself as part of something." To be most myself, I needed to focus on things outside myself, like the music or the people around me. Indeed, mindfulness blurs the line between self and other, explains Michael Kernis, a psychologist at the University of Georgia. "When people are mindful, they're more likely to experience themselves as part of humanity, as part of a greater universe." That's why highly mindful people such as Buddhist monks talk about being "one with everything." By reducing self-consciousness, mindfulness allows you to witness the passing drama of feelings, social pressures, even of being esteemed or disparaged by others without taking their evaluations personally, explain Richard Ryan and K. W. Brown of the University of Rochester. When you focus on your immediate experience without attaching it to your self-esteem, unpleasant events like social rejection—or your so-called friends making fun of your dancing—seem less threatening. Focusing on the present moment also forces you to stop overthinking. "Being present-minded takes away some of that self-evaluation and getting lost in your mind—and in the mind is where we make the evaluations that beat us up," says Stephen Schueller, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Instead of getting stuck in your head and worrying, you can let yourself go. 2: To avoid worrying about the future, focus on the present (savoring). In her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about a friend who, whenever she sees a beautiful place, exclaims in a near panic, "It's so beautiful here! I want to come back here someday!" "It takes all my persuasive powers," writes Gilbert, "to try to convince her that she is already here." Often, we're so trapped in thoughts of the future or the past that we forget to experience, let alone enjoy, what's happening right now. We sip coffee and think, "This is not as good as what I had last week." We eat a cookie and think, "I hope I don't run out of cookies." Instead, relish or luxuriate in whatever you're doing at the present moment—what psychologists call savoring. "This could be while you're eating a pastry, taking a shower, or basking in the sun. You could be savoring a success or savoring music," explains Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California at Riverside and author of The How of Happiness. "Usually it involves your senses." When subjects in a study took a few minutes each day to actively savor something they usually hurried through—eating a meal, drinking a cup of tea, walking to the bus—they began experiencing more joy, happiness, and other positive emotions, and fewer depressive symptoms, Schueller found. Why does living in the moment make people happier—not just at the moment they're tasting molten chocolate pooling on their tongue, but lastingly? Because most negative thoughts concern the past or the future. As Mark Twain said, "I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." The hallmark of depression and anxiety is catastrophizing—worrying about something that hasn't happened yet and might not happen at all. Worry, by its very nature, means thinking about the future—and if you hoist yourself into awareness of the present moment, worrying melts away. The flip side of worrying is ruminating, thinking bleakly about events in the past. And again, if you press your focus into the now, rumination ceases. Savoring forces you into the present, so you can't worry about things that aren't there. 3: If you want a future with your significant other, inhabit the present (breathe). Living consciously with alert interest has a powerful effect on interpersonal life. Mindfulness actually inoculates people against aggressive impulses, say Whitney Heppner and Michael Kernis of the University of Georgia. In a study they conducted, each subject was told that other subjects were forming a group—and taking a vote on whether she could join. Five minutes later, the experimenter announced the results—either the subject had gotten the least number of votes and been rejected or she'd been accepted. Beforehand, half the subjects had undergone a mindfulness exercise in which each slowly ate a raisin, savoring its taste and texture and focusing on each sensation. Later, in what they thought was a separate experiment, subjects had the opportunity to deliver a painful blast of noise to another person. Among subjects who hadn't eaten the raisin, those who were told they'd been rejected by the group became aggressive, inflicting long and painful sonic blasts without provocation. Stung by social rejection, they took it out on other people. But among those who'd eaten the raisin first, it didn't matter whether they'd been ostracized or embraced. Either way, they were serene and unwilling to inflict pain on others—exactly like those who were given word of social acceptance. How does being in the moment make you less aggressive? "Mindfulness decreases ego involvement," explains Kernis. "So people are less likely to link their self-esteem to events and more likely to take things at face value." Mindfulness also makes people feel more connected to other people—that empathic feeling of being "at one with the universe." Mindfulness boosts your awareness of how you interpret and react to what's happening in your mind. It increases the gap between emotional impulse and action, allowing you to do what Buddhists call recognizing the spark before the flame. Focusing on the present reboots your mind so you can respond thoughtfully rather than automatically. Instead of lashing out in anger, backing down in fear, or mindlessly indulging a passing craving, you get the opportunity to say to yourself, "This is the emotion I'm feeling. How should I respond?" Mindfulness increases self-control; since you're not getting thrown by threats to your self-esteem, you're better able to regulate your behavior. That's the other irony: Inhabiting your own mind more fully has a powerful effect on your interactions with others. Of course, during a flare-up with your significant other it's rarely practical to duck out and savor a raisin. But there's a simple exercise you can do anywhere, anytime to induce mindfulness: Breathe. As it turns out, the advice my friend got in the desert was spot-on. There's no better way to bring yourself into the present moment than to focus on your breathing. Because you're placing your awareness on what's happening right now, you propel yourself powerfully into the present moment. For many, focusing on the breath is the preferred method of orienting themselves to the now—not because the breath has some magical property, but because it's always there with you. 4: To make the most of time, lose track of it (flow). Perhaps the most complete way of living in the moment is the state of total absorption psychologists call flow. Flow occurs when you're so engrossed in a task that you lose track of everything else around you. Flow embodies an apparent paradox: How can you be living in the moment if you're not even aware of the moment? The depth of engagement absorbs you powerfully, keeping attention so focused that distractions cannot penetrate. You focus so intensely on what you're doing that you're unaware of the passage of time. Hours can pass without you noticing. Flow is an elusive state. As with romance or sleep, you can't just will yourself into it—all you can do is set the stage, creating the optimal conditions for it to occur. The first requirement for flow is to set a goal that's challenging but not unattainable—something you have to marshal your resources and stretch yourself to achieve. The task should be matched to your ability level—not so difficult that you'll feel stressed, but not so easy that you'll get bored. In flow, you're firing on all cylinders to rise to a challenge. To set the stage for flow, goals need to be clearly defined so that you always know your next step. "It could be playing the next bar in a scroll of music, or finding the next foothold if you're a rock climber, or turning the page if you're reading a good novel," says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who first defined the concept of flow. "At the same time, you're kind of anticipating." You also need to set up the task in such a way that you receive direct and immediate feedback; with your successes and failures apparent, you can seamlessly adjust your behavior. A climber on the mountain knows immediately if his foothold is secure; a pianist knows instantly when she's played the wrong note. As your attentional focus narrows, self-consciousness evaporates. You feel as if your awareness merges with the action you're performing. You feel a sense of personal mastery over the situation, and the activity is so intrinsically rewarding that although the task is difficult, action feels effortless. 5: If something is bothering you, move toward it rather than away from it (acceptance). We all have pain in our lives, whether it's the ex we still long for, the jackhammer snarling across the street, or the sudden wave of anxiety when we get up to give a speech. If we let them, such irritants can distract us from the enjoyment of life. Paradoxically, the obvious response—focusing on the problem in order to combat and overcome it—often makes it worse, argues Stephen Hayes, a psychologist at the University of Nevada. The mind's natural tendency when faced with pain is to attempt to avoid it—by trying to resist unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and sensations. When we lose a love, for instance, we fight our feelings of heartbreak. As we get older, we work feverishly to recapture our youth. When we're sitting in the dentist's chair waiting for a painful root canal, we wish we were anywhere but there. But in many cases, negative feelings and situations can't be avoided—and resisting them only magnifies the pain. The problem is we have not just primary emotions but also secondary ones—emotions about other emotions. We get stressed out and then think, "I wish I weren't so stressed out." The primary emotion is stress over your workload. The secondary emotion is feeling, "I hate being stressed." It doesn't have to be this way. The solution is acceptance—letting the emotion be there. That is, being open to the way things are in each moment without trying to manipulate or change the experience—without judging it, clinging to it, or pushing it away. The present moment can only be as it is. Trying to change it only frustrates and exhausts you. Acceptance relieves you of this needless extra suffering. Suppose you've just broken up with your girlfriend or boyfriend; you're heartbroken, overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and longing. You could try to fight these feelings, essentially saying, "I hate feeling this way; I need to make this feeling go away." But by focusing on the pain—being sad about being sad—you only prolong the sadness. You do yourself a favor by accepting your feelings, saying instead, "I've just had a breakup. Feelings of loss are normal and natural. It's OK for me to feel this way." Acceptance of an unpleasant state doesn't mean you don't have goals for the future. It just means you accept that certain things are beyond your control. The sadness, stress, pain, or anger is there whether you like it or not. Better to embrace the feeling as it is. Nor does acceptance mean you have to like what's happening. "Acceptance of the present moment has nothing to do with resignation," writes Kabat-Zinn. "Acceptance doesn't tell you what to do. What happens next, what you choose to do; that has to come out of your understanding of this moment." If you feel anxiety, for instance, you can accept the feeling, label it as anxiety—then direct your attention to something else instead. You watch your thoughts, perceptions, and emotions flit through your mind without getting involved. Thoughts are just thoughts. You don't have to believe them and you don't have to do what they say. 6: Know that you don't know (engagement). You've probably had the experience of driving along a highway only to suddenly realize you have no memory or awareness of the previous 15 minutes. Maybe you even missed your exit. You just zoned out; you were somewhere else, and it's as if you've suddenly woken up at the wheel. Or maybe it happens when you're reading a book: "I know I just read that page, but I have no idea what it said." These autopilot moments are what Harvard's Ellen Langer calls mindlessness—times when you're so lost in your thoughts that you aren't aware of your present experience. As a result, life passes you by without registering on you. The best way to avoid such blackouts, Langer says, is to develop the habit of always noticing new things in whatever situation you're in. That process creates engagement with the present moment and releases a cascade of other benefits. Noticing new things puts you emphatically in the here and now. We become mindless, Langer explains, because once we think we know something, we stop paying attention to it. We go about our morning commute in a haze because we've trod the same route a hundred times before. But if we see the world with fresh eyes, we realize almost everything is different each time—the pattern of light on the buildings, the faces of the people, even the sensations and feelings we experience along the way. Noticing imbues each moment with a new, fresh quality. Some people have termed this "beginner's mind." By acquiring the habit of noticing new things, says Langer, we recognize that the world is actually changing constantly. We really don't know how the espresso is going to taste or how the commute will be—or at least, we're not sure. Orchestra musicians who are instructed to make their performance new in subtle ways not only enjoy themselves more but audiences actually prefer those performances. "When we're there at the moment, making it new, it leaves an imprint in the music we play, the things we write, the art we create, in everything we do," says Langer. "Once you recognize that you don't know the things you've always taken for granted, you set out of the house quite differently. It becomes an adventure in noticing—and the more you notice, the more you see." And the more excitement you feel. Don't Just Do Something, Sit There Living a consistently mindful life takes effort. But mindfulness itself is easy. "People set the goal of being mindful for the next 20 minutes or the next two weeks, then they think mindfulness is difficult because they have the wrong yardstick," says Jay Winner, a California-based family physician and author of Take the Stress out of Your Life. "The correct yardstick is just for this moment." Mindfulness is the only intentional, systematic activity that is not about trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, explains Kabat-Zinn. It is simply a matter of realizing where you already are. A cartoon from The New Yorker sums it up: Two monks are sitting side by side, meditating. The younger one is giving the older one a quizzical look, to which the older one responds, "Nothing happens next. This is it." You can become mindful at any moment just by paying attention to your immediate experience. You can do it right now. What's happening this instant? Think of yourself as an eternal witness, and just observe the moment. What do you see, hear, smell? It doesn't matter how it feels—pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad—you roll with it because it's what's present; you're not judging it. And if you notice your mind wandering, bring yourself back. Just say to yourself, "Now. Now. Now." Here's the most fundamental paradox of all: Mindfulness isn't a goal, because goals are about the future, but you do have to set the intention of paying attention to what's happening at the present moment. As you read the words printed on this page, as your eyes distinguish the black squiggles on white paper, as you feel gravity anchoring you to the planet, wake up. Become aware of being alive. And breathe. As you draw your next breath, focus on the rise of your abdomen on the in-breath, the stream of heat through your nostrils on the out-breath. If you're aware of that feeling right now, as you're reading this, you're living in the moment. Nothing happens next. It's not a destination. This is it. You're already there. #itsjustdyamz

Save this and read it when you’re in a bad mood You will always mean the world to someone. Your smile can make someone who doesn’t even like you happy. Every night, someone thinks about you before they fall asleep. If someone seems to hate you, very often it’s only because they want to be like you. There are at least two people in the world for whom everyone is ready to lay down their life. On average, at least a dozen people out there love you in there own way. Life’s too short to wake up every morning with regrets. Therefore love the people who treat you right, forget about those who don’t, and remember that everything happens for a reason. Even when you make the biggest mistake of your life, something good will come out of it. When you feel that the world has turned against you, try to look at it from a different perspective, and you’ll understand it’s just not the case. Always remember: when life offers you another chance, this time everything will work out for you! If a new opportunity appears, take it. And if your whole life changes because of this, let it happen. No one said life was going to be easy. But we promise you, it’s worth it. #itsjustdyamz

5 Reasons We Don't Let Ourselves Be Happy When it comes to our own happiness, many of us are familiar with the pattern of taking two steps forward, one step back. For example, if we want to lose weight, we may find that after having some success, which makes us happy, we drift up to a higher weight than we started at. If we find a new activity which fills us with joy, like hiking or yoga, we may realize months later that we have not made any time for doing it. We may even start a new friendship with someone we really enjoy, yet we soon find that we are somehow too “busy” to fit them into our schedule. If we fall in love, we start making excuses to pull away. And if we succeed in one area, we find ourselves sabotaging ourselves in another. When these instances occur, we often tend to blame circumstances or sheer bad luck. In reality, we are all—to varying degrees—intolerant of our own happiness. In her bestselling book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, author and nurse Bronnie Ware reported that one of the most common regrets people have at the end of their lives is that they wish they’d let themselves be happier. This response indicates that people felt that while attaining their happiness was in their control, they somehow didn’t allow themselves to do the things that would make them happy. Why might this be? Many of us are more self-denying than we realize. We tend to think that pursuing the things that light us up is selfish or irresponsible. We all have moments when we listen to an internal critic that encourages us not to set goals or expect too much for ourselves and our lives. This “critical inner voice (link is external)” is actually triggered when we take steps forward. It reminds us to stay in our place and not to venture out of our comfort zone. The reasons we harbor these dark, self-sabotaging thoughts are complex, but they lie at the root of much of our maladaptive behavior. By understanding why we listen to this critic and take actions that defeat our wellbeing, we can gain a stronger foothold in overcoming these obstacles and allowing ourselves to be open to our own happiness. Here are the 5 most common reasons we don’t let ourselves have what we most: 1. It disrupts our sense of identity. No matter how negative our self-perception may be, like a heavy blanket, it can feel familiar, comfortable, and safe. If we start to develop or change ourselves in some way that counters our cruel self-attacks, we can start to feel extremely uncomfortable and anxious. It can feel scary to surpass the way we’ve previously seen ourselves or been seen. Our critical inner voice is built on old attitudes we were exposed to, usually very early in our lives. Negative ways we were viewed in our family or the ways people around us saw themselves seeped into our consciousness. As adults, we self-parent by maintaining these old attitudes and failing to differentiate (link is external) from destructive early influences. Yet, methods exist for differentiating ourselves to become our own unique person with a strong sense of self. 2. It challenges our defenses. Our defenses (link is external) are like armor we built against whatever hurt us. If we had an absent or rejecting parent or caretaker, we may make a vow to never let anyone too close. If we were often mistreated, punished or misunderstood, we may feel scared to stand out, succeed, or be noticed. We build defenses to adapt to undesirable elements of our early environment, but when we grow up and are in a new situation as adults, these behaviors and patterns are often no longer adaptive. We may find it hard to maintain intimate relationships or to excel in our careers. We may self-sabotage in countless ways by failing to challenge our defenses. We may even unconsciously seek out situations that were similar to those we experienced growing up, for example, finding a partner who reminds us of someone from our past. We may recreate dynamics from our childhood that, although unpleasant, are familiar and fit with our defenses. If we take the risk and drop our defenses, we make it more likely we will achieve true happiness. 3. It causes us anxiety. Going after what we want makes us feel more anxious and alive. When we act against our critical inner voice and break with our defenses, we tend to feel pretty stirred up at first. The voice in our head gets louder, and our desire to act against our own interest gets stronger. In these moments, giving up can actually soothe our anxiety by returning us to what’s comfortable and familiar. Yet, it isn’t long before we punish ourselves for messing up. Our inner critic becomes like a sadistic coach, and the self-destructive cycle starts again. It’s helpful to realize that any effort to change is likely to be met with anxiety. If we hang in there and sweat through this uncomfortable feeling, however, the anxiety will subside. The way to deal with our anxiety is to overcome it by ignoring our inner critic and continuing to take those steps forward. 4. It stirs up guilt. Choosing to be happy in the present can represent a break from our past, particularly when we are challenging defenses and choosing a different life for ourselves. It’s very common to feel guilty to be our own separate person and especially to surpass people from our past. Breaking a point of identity can shatter what my father, psychologist Robert Firestone (link is external) described as a “fantasy bond (link is external),” which we experienced with influential figures in our upbringing. Even a parent who was hurtful to us in many ways was someone we once depended on for survival. Therefore, it may have been more favorable to maintain a fantasy that we were connected to them in some way. This can be frightening to break later in life. Recent studies have shown that there are very strong links between a parent’s happiness and their children’s, even long after the child has grown up, moved away or entered into a relationship. This correlation illustrates how powerful this sense of connection can be and calls to question the role of guilt in surpassing a parent. If we push past our guilt and achieve more happiness than our parent, it will make us feel alone, but free. 5. It forces us to face pain. Psychologist Pat Love (link is external) once said that “when you long for something like love, it becomes associated with pain.” In many ways, getting what we want makes us feel pain and sadness, because it reminds us of something we didn’t get in our past. New, positive experiences can open up old wounds. In an often unexpected way, times when we are chosen can make us feel the sadness of times we were rejected. As we come alive, we’re forced to feel the pain of the old reasons we created our defenses. A fuller, more rewarding life tends to be more full of feeling in general. We can’t selectively numb pain without also numbing joy. If we allow ourselves to feel more love, gratitude and pleasure, we can expect to feel more sadness over the poignancy of time, loss, and the inherent vulnerability of the human condition.