I turned 40 last week. It has caused me to think about how I view time with relation to happiness. I graphed the time I have left according to 3 significant factors that bring happiness. The results might surprise you…
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There are four types of confidence; we need all of them but we can rely on different types of confidence at different times. As you learn about the different types, it might surprise you that you have more confidence than you thought.
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What is your value as a human being? Can it be created or changed? What you believe about this question can make all the difference in your life.
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Most of us trying to improve our confidence by being more perfect or at least trying to convince others we are. There is a much more powerful, fun an effective way to improve our self-concept.
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As powerful as grit and willpower can be for getting us going, eventually it runs out! But there is an easier and much more fun way to change behavior without white knuckling our way through it.
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I love the statue “Man Carving His Own Destiny,” by the Czech-American sculptor Albin Polasek. Polasek was an immigrant to the United States and created this sculpture as an autobiographical work depicting his own journey and struggle as he created his own destiny as an immigrant, an artist, and a human. Shortly after finishing this work, Polasek lost the use of his left side due to paralysis. But he continued to shape his destiny even after this setback. Polasek married for the first time in his 70s and continued to produce more works of art by having someone help to brace the material while he carved. I love the image of Polasek literally carving out his own destiny, despite his substantial setbacks.
Man must carve himself from the rock that he is made of,
which is the very same rock in which he is bound. –S. Balthazar
Most of us have things we feel bound by—it may be a difficult relationship where we feel trapped by the behavior of someone else. It might be a physical issue, or mental illness, divorce, or lack of financial means. It may be limited time or ability. It may be trauma from our past or a regret we have. These things can feel like they literally trap us—it can feel like we are stuck in stone. Most of us wish we could just be rid of these things. We feel like they are preventing us from being our best selves.
But what if the process of chipping away at that rock around us and sculpting ourselves IS the very thing that forms us into who we need to be? If we never engage in the process of dealing with these obstacles and challenges, if we never engage in the process of sculpting, we may simply end up as a slab of plain rock.
As I look back on my life and think about the things that have helped form the way I look at the world, that have determined the things that matter most to me, and that have shaped me into who I am today, I have to acknowledge that they are the hard things in my life. At the time I went through the major challenges in my life, I would have loved to avoid them or have them disappear. The challenges felt like they were paralyzing me, and they were painful to move through. Some of these things have included moving many times, losing my mom to cancer, struggling with depression, having children who struggled, personal health issues etc.
But I’ve realized that it was the process of sculpting through these “rocks” that has formed me into be the person I am today. I wouldn’t give back any of those challenges now, even knowing how hard they were, because I recognize the shaping influence they had on my life.
I want to share just one of the challenges that have sculpted me into what I am now:
About ten years ago I was diagnosed with depression.
I think depression is a fascinating word. In one sense it means deep feelings of discouragement and even despondency. In sculpting, however, “depression” means a deep groove or indentation.
When I was diagnosed with depression, in many ways it felt as if I had fallen down into a deep chasm. It was dark, and I felt low and alone. At times I would come up, but I would fall back into the chasm and it seems that no matter what I tried, I didn’t know how to get out.
I felt stuck like the man in the stone in Polasek’s sculpture, bound by this darkness and misery.
My journey of living through depression and learning how to manage my mind and emotions in a healthier way has been a long process of chipping away old ideas and ways of seeing the world and behaving, and slowing carving new ones. It’s been painful, scary, and hard. But it has also been exhilarating and it has shaped who I am now. In the beginning, I thought my goal was just to get back to my old self—full of happiness and the love of life. But what I discovered in the sculpting process was an even better version of myself—one that had deeper grooves and more defined features. One that was more compassionate, better able to help and love others, one who was braver, more deliberate, and more confident.
Here are a few of the ways my depression journey sculpted a better version of me.
After living in the dark valley of the soul, I have a deep compassion for those who suffer with depression or anxiety. I can often recognize people who suffer and I feel an instant affinity with them. I have some cherished friendships with people who have also suffered.
Because the process of breaking free from depression (which is something I continue to work on) has been such an empowering journey, I have wanted to help others learn how to break free of depression as well. Sharing my experience and the tools that have helped me has become an important part of my life’s work. Without suffering from depression, I never would have found these amazing tools or pursued the things I’m doing now with life coaching or blogging.
Because how we feel is determined by what we think, I have had to learn to be a watcher of my own thoughts. This skill has allowed me to be much more aware of myself and much more educated in human nature in general.
This meta-skill has changed the way I think and the way I behave. Now I can see the results of my thoughts and I can often choose my thoughts more deliberately. Different thoughts allow me to create a different outcome. I’ve been able to create things in my life I never thought possible.
If I had always been happy and healthy, I would never have lived such an intentional life.
Depression feels terrible. It’s heavy and foggy and the human spirit resists it. The brain tells us that negative feelings are dangerousin order to change the way I feel—we should fight or flee! In order to move through negative emotion, I realized I finally had to stop resisting it. I had to stop distracting myself from it, and I had to stop reacting to it. I had to process it.
Before I dealt with depression, I had never learned how to process emotions. Unwittingly, I had spent much of my life avoiding negative emotion. When I finally learned how to feel it, I realized it wasn’t that bad to feel emotion—the feelings created an uncomfortable sensation in my body, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Interestingly, when I finally allowed myself to just feel, the feelings eventually subsided and went away. I could hardly believe all the time I had wasted trying to avoid negative emotions!
This meta-skill of processing emotion has given me confidence that I can handle any difficult emotion. That confidence has opened a totally new set of opportunities for me in life because I’m not afraid to fail, or be disappointed, or have others not like me.
Who I’ve been formed into—and continue to be formed into—is intricately intertwined with my experience with depression. This rock that entraps me is also the rock that helps shape who I am.
Your best self and your best life are not outside of you, they are just beneath the surface of all the rock enshrouding you. It is the process of chipping away at that rock that will form you into who you need to become. That rock around you is not a setback, it is the key to you becoming your best self.
Just as Polasek continued to sculpt through his own personal difficulties, whoever you want to become is available to you. It will require some carving and chipping away to get there. Sculpting yourself hurts. It means getting rid of parts of yourself. It means realizing you are wrong about some things. It means being willing to think differently, to be uncomfortable sometimes, and to do things you’ve never done before. It means processing difficult emotions. You can’t get a new result by doing the same things you’ve always done. The result is worth it, because the result is better and happier version of you.
The first step is to stop thinking of the rock around you as unfair or as something that has gone wrong. Instead of hating the rock around you, use it.
What difficult things have helped you become who you are today?
What is the rock that binds you now? How will you use it sculpt yourself into the next and better version of you?
It feels wonderful when others believe in us, but sometimes others don’t. It’s our job to believe in ourselves and see what others can’t.
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I like it when people respect me and admire me. Most of us do. We spend a lot of our time in social situations managing the way others feel and think about us. If you really believed that it was okay for people to be wrong about you, how would that change your behavior? This idea has radically changed my life, improving my relationships and allowing me to focus on what really matters.
When one of my daughters was a toddler she had some health issues and cried almost constantly. A lot of the day was spent in tantrums and tears. We felt so badly for her. We read lots of parenting books, tried lots of things and worked hard to find her the medical care she needed.
However, caring for a child who was so emotionally volatile was exhausting. It was also humiliating to bring her out in public because I felt so judged.
I remember the looks on people’s faces as they watched me with her in a store or when we were at church. They stared. They lifted their eyebrows. They rolled their eyes. They walked away. They pretended to ignore me, but their faces told a different story.
Sometimes people made comments like, “Wow, she’s loud,” or “She’s a handful.” It wasn’t uncommon to receive unsolicited parenting advice, “Have you tried just ignoring it?” or “She really needs some consequences and boundaries.” Sometimes people we knew a bit better would say things like, “I used to think you just couldn’t handle your daughter, but now that we have a tough one I feel bad for judging you.”
We aren’t perfect parents, but we were trying earnestly and had tried A LOT of things. I believe most people were just observing what they saw. Because I felt awkward about the way my daughter was acting and I worried people would judge me, their comments felt a lot like judgement.
Occasionally some good soul would say something like, “I’ve totally been there.” One time my daughter had a tantrum in the entry way of a large building. She was large enough that it was difficult to lift her up and take her out. I remember a woman who stopped and said, “You’re doing great.” I loved that human being! I had some wonderful friends and family who were supportive and loving during this difficult period. I am still so grateful for this.
One day though, I confided in a friend how discouraged I was feeling about how my daughter acted in public. She said, “There is nothing wrong with your daughter—there is only something wrong with you!” I don’t think she meant to hurt my feelings, but it hit at the core of what I worried people were thinking. “Because your child is acting so difficult, there is something wrong with you!” I found myself not wanting to go out with my daughter in public.
Every time my daughter had a meltdown, I not only had the very real emotional, mental, and physical work of helping her, I also felt like I had to defend myself, my daughter’s situation, my actions and my parenting. I didn’t want to be judged. Though MANY people were loving and compassionate, it was hard for most people to understand. I felt a lot of resentment that I was misunderstood.
I could see resentment was eating me away. It was eroding my relationships, my happiness and enjoyment socially. So I made a decision: it was okay if people judged me. Of course people didn’t understand! How could they unless they had been through something similar? People judge. There isn’t much we can do about it. It’s part of being human.
I decided to believe in myself. I knew I was doing my best, and it was okay if people thought I was a “bad mom.” It was so freeing!
Once I let go of trying to prevent other people’s judgement, my life changed. I remember going to Michael’s with my daughter screaming the whole time and being able to genuinely return smiles for the rude looks I got. I remember just being able to listen to people’s comments of sympathy or concern and keep an open mind without feeling defensive when friends shared ideas about how to help her.
With so much mental and emotional space cleared up from worrying about being judged and trying to defend myself, I was able to use the space to be more creative and have more energy to help my daughter and get in a healthier place myself. Also, because I was less defensive I was able to actually accept some of the good ideas people offered. Some were helpful, others weren’t. But I was able to think of them as offerings of love instead of darts of judgment.
I learned a powerful lesson through this experience. The things that I notice in others are often reflections of how I feel about myself. When I feel confident that I’m doing my best, I was able to be okay with other’s judgement of me because I didn’t believe it. I realized they could think whatever they wanted and I could still sincerely know I was doing my best. This was a tremendous relief.
Who do you try to please?
Stop trying to convince them you are right or good, and start believing in yourself enough to let them be wrong about you.
Problems can feel overwhelming and impossible to solve at times. If we continue to think about them the same way as we always have, then they likely always will be overwhelming. However, changing we the way we see the problem and changing the way we see ourselves can make all the difference in our ability to solve the issues in our lives.
I recently visited a gigantic boulder in India called Krishna’s Butterball. The rock is so large that a human pales in comparison. I took a humorous picture of me trying to push the gigantic rock. Sometimes our problems can feel a lot like Krishna’s Butterball—so large we are incapable of solving them.
I learned a powerful lesson from my great-grandmother Genevieve about how handle a problem that feels completely overwhelming.
Genevieve was a strong woman—she had ten children after being told by a doctor she would never be able to have any at all; she and her husband created a successful coal business after losing everything in a previous business venture; and she was the first woman elected to the Salt Lake City School Board, despite opposition from many due to her gender.
When Genevieve felt a problem was getting the best of her, she would stand in front of the mirror ask herself: “Who is stronger, me or the problem?” She would square her shoulders on her tiny 90-lb. frame, lift up her chin, and declare, “I am.” Then she moved forward to solve the problem.
A few simple changes in our thinking can help us see that we are stronger than any problem we may have.
We usually think about a problem through the filter of our beliefs about it. This often causes the problem to seem much larger and more challenging to overcome.
Stripping a problem down to the “facts” can help us see the challenge in a much more manageable way.
As a young mom one of the biggest problems I faced was sleep deprivation. I constantly felt miserable. I never felt rested and as a result I often felt irritable. Then, to make matters worse, I felt guilty for feeling irritable. No matter what I tried, my baby would not sleep through the night. The problem felt hopeless. I felt I had to get up with my baby in the night to be a good mom. But yet, I felt like I was not a good mom all day because I was so tired. I felt like I had tried every book and every system to get my baby to sleep at night, but nothing seemed to work. The problem felt impossible to solve—it felt miserable and hard. I felt like I couldn’t be the mom I wanted to be and I couldn’t enjoy my baby because I was so tired!
When I stripped down my story to the facts it was simply this:
I have a child. I put my child to bed at 7. They wake up at 2 and 5 to nurse and go back to sleep. They wake up at 7 for the day. I sometimes feel tired in the day.
When I looked at it this way, the story didn’t seem quite as dramatic. I was just a mom with a young baby—a baby who was healthy and growing and eating well. In fact, I noticed that actually it sounded normal to be tired and I even felt lucky to have a healthy baby.
Most of us underestimate our own abilities. But our brains are powerful, and as we change our thoughts we realize we have a lot more control over our circumstances than we think.
When we think of problems, most of us unconsciously choose thoughts like “This is impossible.” “It will never change.” “There’s no way that I can do that.” “It’s too overwhelming.” “I don’t know how.” These thoughts keep us from taking action and are often self-fulfilling—the problem seems so big that we don’t solve it because we don’t even try.
Instead, more empowering thoughts could be: “I got this.” “I’m going to try this, and if that doesn’t work I’ll try something else.” “I don’t have to fix all of it, I’ll just work on one piece.” “I wonder how much of this I can do?” “It’s possible.” If these thoughts don’t work at the beginning, try to add on a phrase like: “What if this is possible?” “What if I do know how to solve this?” Sometimes offering your brain a question can help open it up to think about solutions.
With my last baby, I had some better tools to keep myself emotionally healthy. My baby still woke up during the night. I still felt tired. However, I also reminded myself that I could feel tired and still be pleasant. I didn’t have to choose to be grumpy and irritable when I was tired. I could still have a pleasant day and be tired.
This simple shift in my perception—sizing down the problem to the facts, and sizing up my own ability to deal with the problem—changed everything. Instead of constantly feeling resentful and irritable because I was exhausted, I was able to really enjoy mothering my baby. My circumstance never changed, but my perception of it did. Essentially, I looked the problem in the mirror and saw it for what it really was—not the drama I had made it into. Then I sized up my own ability to handle it. The result was that I got to be the pleasant mother I wanted to be, and I got to enjoy my baby, something I had felt deprived of previously.
Problems in our lives only have the power to overwhelm us if we don’t see them and ourselves accurately. When we fix our perceptions, we are often able to come up with solutions and carry them out. Sometimes that means we change our circumstance. But sometimes the problem is solved simply by changing the way we think about it, which in turn changes the way we feel about it. And when we feel better, sometimes there’s nothing else that needs to change.
Essentially, when we size down the problem and size up our abilities we make the problem something manageable—instead of looking like Krishna’s Butterball, it appears like a large but moveable rock. When we see our problems in this way, we can have the courage to look at our problems head on and say, “Who’s stronger, me or the problem?” “I am!”
What’s a problem that feels impossible or overwhelming to you?
Bring the Problem Down to Size
Write down your “story” about the problem. Then strip the story down to only the facts. Everything else you wrote down is just thoughts about your facts. Those thoughts you are choosing are causing the stress, overwhelm, and drama around your problem. The good news is, those thoughts are optional and you don’t have to think them if you don’t want to.
Size Up Yourself
You are absolutely capable of dealing with this issue. Your brain is the most amazing tool on the planet. Look what you believe about yourself. Are those beliefs helping you solve the problem. If not, then change them. Our beliefs are all optional. Often, I love to imagine how someone I admire might think about this problem. Then, I like to adopt the thoughts I imagine they would think.
Take Back the Power
Now that you see the problem in its true size, and have also recognized your own true strength, look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m stronger.” Then move forward and start solving.
