“You are going to mess this up. You always mess things up,” they say. “You will fail. You ruined things. You are too old to do that. You are not as pretty as her. You are so dumb.”

They are my inner critic. They sound like a narration behind all my activities, but especially the ones that are challenging, difficult, new, and scary.

Sometimes, when I feel a little stronger, I summon some different voices from the depth to challenge them. Sometimes these voices try and conquer the inner critic by force:

“Shut up! You suck! You are wrong! I will succeed! I am smart! I am pretty!”

Sometimes my inner cheerleader tries to reason with my inner critic:

“Yes, I’ve made mistakes, but this time I really think I can do it. This could all go badly, but I still think I should try? Right?”

During these moments, it becomes an epic back-and-forth conversation between the inner critic and the inner cheerleader. These conversations leave me feeling distracted, frenetic, lonely, and exhausted. All I want to do is escape into my phone or eight hours of Netflix.

Sound familiar? We all carry around inner critics who cause us a lot of pain and suffering. The good news is that Buddhist wisdom offers us a way out of this suffering that is different than running away from it or trying to beat it down with force. The way out is through.

Consider this story from Tibetan Buddhist tradition about a monk named Milarepa: Milarepa lived alone in the mountains. On his way back from gathering wood one day, he arrived at his hut to see it filled to the brim with ferocious demons. Demons were on the table, on the floor—they covered every square inch. Milarepa freaked out. He chased the demons around, screaming and throwing things at them. But they only multiplied and became more ferocious.

Milarepa, terrified, got a hold of himself and switched course. “Okay, fine,” he said to them, “If you don’t want to leave, I will teach you the dharma (path of awakening).” He began to read to them from the Buddhist wisdom texts. After a while, Milarepa peeked up from his book. They were all still there, still terrifying, but now staring at him quietly.

Related: The Fascinating Science of Why You’re So Hard on Yourself

“Okay, okay,” he said. “You win. I surrender. You are allowed to stay. I will try and learn from you. Please teach me what you need to teach me.” One by one, they all disappeared with the exception of one, the largest, most ferocious of them all. Milarepa looked at this demon. The demon looked back, growling and snarling with his enormous jaws and fangs. Milarepa walked up to the demon and slowly laid his head down inside the demon’s mouth. The demon stepped back, bowed low to Milarepa, and disappeared.

Our inner demons are just as ferocious and tenacious as Milarepa’s. We live with them in the tiny huts of our minds, and they make us miserable and afraid. Yelling at them and cursing them out will never work. Reasoning with them by trying to use our inner cheerleader and relentless positivity will also never work. Listening to them and learning from them will get us a lot farther, but ultimately, we have to go deeper. We have to go as close as possible to our scariest demon, our meanest inner voice, and surrender.

What might that look like in real life? One of my life-long demons is jealousy. I have struggled with feeling jealous of other people whom I perceive to have more than me, that get more attention than me, or seem better than me in some way. This mostly comes out in relationships, where I have made many partners feel terrible with accusations and fights.

At the same time, for years, I felt so deeply ashamed of that jealousy and so horrified by it that I tried really hard to repress it (“Stop it, Yael! You are being ridiculous!”), to reason with it (“Jealousy is not helpful in this situation”), and even, begrudgingly, to co-exist with it in times of meditation (which has helped, but not entirely). Like Milerapa, the only times my jealousy has actually subsided in major ways have been when—as lovingly as possible—I went as close as possible to the feeling to see what was there.

What did I see when I got real close and cozy? What was in my jealousy? A tremendous fear of not being enough. The deep well of pain from feeling neglected and unseen as a child. Panic about the scarcity of love and my fear of not getting any. When I looked at these pains and fears, my heart opened to the jealousy and the poor little one inside who was feeling it. I tried to mentally wrap my arms around her. “Poor baby,” I said to myself. “Poor jealousy. I’m sorry I’ve been so cruel to you. I am here for you now.”

What does your inner critic look like? What are your pesky, ferocious, terrible demons? Can you summon the bravery to come closer, put down your weapons, and open your heart?

The post How to Work with Your Inner Critic appeared first on Sonima.

“Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you…” – Hafiz

What does it mean to not “surrender loneliness so quickly”? For most of my life, I would have preferred to surrender my loneliness yesterday. Loneliness felt like a painful, aching, hollow feeling at the core of my gut. It was my constant companion and I most certainly did not want it there. At some point in my twenties, I decided if I was going to spend so much of life being lonely, it was worth investigating what loneliness actually was. What I discovered didn’t stop me from ever getting lonely, but it helped transform my relationship to loneliness from something miserable to a powerful source of information.

Loneliness Hack #1: Make Friends with Desire

My first revelation was that at the center of loneliness was desire. It was a powerful longing for love. And yet, I had learned that that kind of longing was unattractive. I was told that I should stop looking for love, and that it would “happen when I least expected it”. I told myself that I better stop wanting things because not getting them made me feel desperate, pathetic, and disappointed. I told myself that I was too old, too ugly, and just too late for love, and then I told myself that love wasn’t real anyway (given the divorce rate). I tried anything and everything to get me to stop wanting love. Nothing worked. I continued to feel lonely.

One day, I was at the beach with my crush and my crush’s new girlfriend. As they snuggled together on the shore, I morosely wandered into the waves, feeling lost in a haze of loneliness and frustrated desire. Suddenly, I decided that instead of fighting off my yearning, I was going to try and open up to it. With each wave that crashed over my head I called out a new desire. “I want the dress I saw on 5th Avenue,” I started. Crash. “I want to be pretty.” Crash. “I want real love.” Crash. Instead of feeling depressed or lonely, opening up to each desire felt liberating. It felt strong and brave and exciting. Nothing guaranteed I would get these things, but just saying them felt almost as good. Within loneliness is a deep and powerful desire to connect. Trying to get rid of it won’t help. Opening up to the longing will.

Loneliness Hack #2: Learn the Difference Between Your Stories and the Truth

Everybody’s stories are different. Mine sounded like this: “I am so lonely. There must be something wrong with me. I’m too picky. I choose the wrong people. I must be immune to real love.” Sometimes another voice would swoop in: “You will find love! You just have to join a different dating app, cut your hair, and buy some new clothes. You can do this!” And on and on. These voices were part of the overall chorus of mental chatter that accompanied me throughout my day. Much of this “self-talk” was developed as a child to try and navigate my world, and much of it has stayed at the child level in terms of its maturity and problem-solving skills.

So what do we do when we realize we are lost in a maze of depressing self-chatter? First, congratulations! Noticing you are lost in thought (and not just living inside of it) is 80 percent of the battle. Next, notice if there is a feeling underneath the chatter that you don’t want to feel. Desire? Grief? Sadness? See if you can rest and breathe in the feeling itself, not in the mind’s attempt to cover it up. Finally, rather than fighting stories with other stories, try to just notice what is real. The chair underneath you. The wind on your face. Your body as it breathes. These things are real. Wake up out of your circular thoughts by sensitizing yourself to the here and now.

Related: The Fascinating Science of Why You’re So Hard on Yourself

Loneliness Hack #3: Come Home to Yourself

Sometimes loneliness comes to visit us when we are surrounded by people, in a relationship, and/or scrolling through the social media posts of 1,000+ of our “friends”. In my experience, this type of loneliness is a result of being alienated from ourselves. We are not experiencing the richness of life. We have left the building.

There is a Zen quote that says, “A picture of a rice cake cannot satisfy hunger.” In other words, living life glued to our phones, saying things that others want to hear, or being lost in our thoughts leave us feeling hungry, empty, and alone. If you are experiencing this type of loneliness, stop whatever you are doing, and come back to yourself. Meditate with the practice below. Unplug. Exercise. Have an honest talk with a friend or a date with your journal. Your loneliness is a sign of your life calling out to you. Answer it. Come home.

We are deeply interconnected to one another. We breathe the same air, influence one another’s moods, and are made up of the same raw materials. Loneliness is a difficult mind state, but practicing these hacks whenever we feel lonely brings us back to ourselves, to our hearts, and to the interconnected present moment that holds it all. This is how we let loneliness “season” us, emerging more tender and open-hearted on the other side.

The post 3 Ways to Hack Loneliness appeared first on Sonima.

You got married. You got fired. You graduated. You had a baby. You moved. You survived an illness. We’re all dealing with some form of change all of the time. And while a greeting card may exist for the particular type of transition you’re currently experiencing, one thing Hallmark never covers is exactly what you’re supposed to do with the cascade of emotions that accompany any major change, positive or negative, in life.

The good news is, when we wake up to whatever moment of change we are in—major or minor—it becomes a lot less scary and out of control. By figuring out where we are and where we can expect to go, we can begin to gain clarity. We can resist less, open more, and navigate through the waters with some ease.

A helpful map that I like to use is an adapted version of the Transition Framework, developed by William Bridges, PhD, in his bestselling book Managing Transitions. He describes three major stages of transition: Endings, Middle Zone and New Beginnings. Even though these stages overlap and sometimes loop back onto each other, they are helpful guideposts as we begin to chart our journey.

ENDINGS

I always seem to be the last one to realize I am going through a major transition. I notice things seem to be off. I experience periods of depression and anxiety. I long for times past and start thinking if I can engineer my life just right, I can get back to that place in the past where, even if I wasn’t happy, at least I was comfortably unhappy. It always takes more time than I expect, but at some point, either I realize it myself or someone says to me: “Yael, you had a baby earlier this year,” “You moved just a few weeks ago,” “Your job just changed dramatically.” Oh yeah. Right. I am experiencing a transition.

Endings happen at the start of a transition and they are marked by a tremendous amount of grief. Even if the change is a good one, whenever a change happens, the “old you” has to die in order to make way for the new you to emerge. After the birth of both of my sons, I first experienced profound denial about the fact that I had a baby at all. I tried to keep apace with my work responsibilities, despite being on maternity leave and sleeping 2-3 hours at night. I strove to be a hip Brooklyn woman who just happened to have a baby, when in truth the baby was taking over my life, my body, my heart, and definitely my sleep, and resisting that truth was causing a lot of suffering. I needed to accept that the baby-free woman was gone. That life was over and was never going to return. Cue the sense of loss, the tears, the sadness and grief.

And yet, once I opened up to the grief, even though I felt sad, it felt better than fighting with the truth. Once I acknowledged the loss, I could be more present for the new reality that was slowly taking shape. If you are in the Endings phase, you have to be very gentle with yourself. You are shedding a skin, and it can feel very tender, emotional, and difficult. As much as you can, remember that grief is a natural part of this process (even for the good changes) and treat yourself with a lot of kindness as you say goodbye to what is gone.

MIDDLE ZONE

The Middle Zone is the gap. Once you have moved through the grieving of your old life, suddenly you are thrust into a new space with no instructions and no experience of the terrain. It is a time that feels chaotic, uncomfortable, confusing, and disorienting.

These periods are also often marked by low productivity, needing to be alone, a feeling of suspension in time. This is all normal and natural. The old structures that held up your life are gone, and yet you are not comfortable in your new way of life.

When I graduated college, I felt very float-y, very lost. I wasn’t exactly depressed, but I also wasn’t jumping for joy every day. My identity as a student was over (for the time being) and I hadn’t yet started working full-time. Each day was a dizzying vertigo of trying to figure out who I was and what I was supposed to be doing with myself.

It is very hard not to fill this type of silence or gap with distractions, anxiety, or excessive planning. And yet, if you can stay off your phone and open up to the feelings of not-knowing, you will discover a great deal of creativity in this period of time. The Middle Zone is where our new route takes shape, one step at a time. It can feel out of control, but if we practice mindfulness and breathe through it, we will see that we are not just drifting…we are being guided somewhere new.

Related: The Simplest Change You Can Make for Better Health

NEW BEGINNINGS

About two years after I started meditating regularly, I was walking down the street and I stopped suddenly. Wow, I thought, apropos of nothing in particular, I haven’t had a panic attack in about a year! Previously, I was having them about 2-3 times per week. That is what New Beginnings feel like—sudden realizations that you are making your way in new waters with more confidence and skill than you thought possible. Don’t get me wrong. It takes time and lots of work to get there, and New Beginnings can often include many “backslides” back to old patterns and ways of doing things. These “backslides” should not be taken as failures. Change happens in a spiral—not a straight line—gradually getting us to where we need to be. Slowly, eventually, we get there.

The bottom line is, no matter where you are in the transition process, be gentle with yourself and understand that everything changes, and you won’t be in this uncomfortable spot for very long. Breathe. You will make it through this time. YOU’VE GOT THIS.

The post A 15-Minute Guided Meditation for Times of Transition and Change appeared first on Sonima.

Don’t delete your accounts just yet. While simply dropping out of the social media game is an option for some, for those of you who have committed to career goals that require a strong online presence, it can feel unwise to leave the social media universe entirely.

So if you are one of the 88 percent of 18 to 29-year-old Americans who use Facebook or one of the 56 percent in the same age group who use Instagram, or one of the millions who use other social media sites, my suggestion is to implement the following mindfulness hacks into your social media strategy.

1. Clarify your goals, then re-examine them periodically.

Why do you need/want to brand yourself on social media? Is it so that other people in your chosen field take you seriously? Is it to broadcast your message to the world, or to connect with others? Get very specific and write these goals down somewhere where you can refer back to them regularly. As you post, notice whether you are staying true to your goals. Is there a common theme among your posts? Is your feed telling a story, and is it the story you intended?

This is not only a smart branding strategy, it is a mindfulness practice. Without clearly articulated goals about your brand and its purpose, it is easy to fall into the trap of chasing “likes” or seeking approval for its own sake. In that zone, we tend to suffer, comparing ourselves madly against other people, losing our confidence and feeling awful when we don’t receive enough affirmation from the outside world.

2. Cultivate your brand, but don’t believe the hype.

The truth is, that we which we call our “self” is not a fixed thing. Every cell in our body dies and is regenerated every few years. It is true that we all have bodies, brains, personalities, likes, dislikes, and our own unique quirks, but recognizing that every one of those things will shift and change throughout the course of our life helps us to remain flexible and loose in the face of those changes.

If I post an accomplishment on my page, for example, and it receives a lot of likes, I feel really good. There is nothing wrong with that. But if I take myself too seriously and cling too hard to my identity as a fixed thing, I will most definitely suffer when I post something and don’t get any response, or when things actually go wrong in life (which, spoiler alert, they will). Holding ourselves and our “brands” loosely, with as much humor and gentleness as possible, makes lots of room for the ups and downs of life—online and off.

Related: A Meditation for Authentic Communication

3. Be real. Others will see and appreciate it.

This is a tough one for many of us. It is very hard to be vulnerable online, especially when trying to “sell” ourselves. We often present pictures of ourselves and our lives in the most flattering light imaginable, wishing that it were true, while the “real” us sits behind our screens, flailing and failing, struggling and feeling sad, lost and lonely.

Even though it is counterintuitive, every time I see an example of someone being real online—being honest, sharing a struggle, or even just showing up unfiltered—I am filled with love and appreciation. It gives me room to do the same, to share my own messy life and still stand rooted in my own worth and love-ability. I am not advocating for endless posts complaining, whining, or being overly self-deprecating. Those do not usually help you, or the person reading them, to feel better. Just more snapshots of real life, more honesty about the ups and the downs, and more authenticity will go a long way in helping others see you in their own struggles.

4. Spread kindness, go beyond the “like.”

Nothing combats jealousy and what the Buddhists call “comparing mind” like showing love to others on social media. You don’t have to be fake or to say things you don’t mean, but if a portion of your time spent online each day is allotted to writing encouraging comments to people whose posts you appreciate, or to those who are having a hard time, has the potential to transform both of your online experiences.

When I set this as my intention for a trip into Instagram-land or the Twitter-verse, I think of myself like a Jewish-Buddhist Santa Clause, dropping gifts of gratitude and admiration around to my various heroes, friends, and people who I admire, just letting them know how they have affected me. It does not take a long time, and someone who has been on the others side of these loving gifts, it can truly make someone’s day.

I hope that I have convinced you that the social media universe does not have to be such a difficult place to maintain mindfulness and compassion, and that selling ourselves does not automatically mean selling our souls. The good news is, each new day, each new post is a chance to practice. Good luck!

The post 4 Ways to Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul appeared first on Sonima.