Tag: advice

How Are You Going to MAKE YOUR RESOLUTIONS LAST?

Published on by LeeLeave a comment

We’re all guilty of entering the new year with the greatest of intentions. We want to turn our lives around and kick-start all these healthy habits we hope will change our lives for the better.

It’s great … in theory.

But then, when we try to stick it out long-term, we fail. But why?

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Work from the inside out

Around 60% of us will make New Year’s resolutions, but only 8% of us will be successful in achieving them. And this is because we don’t tend to approach them in the right way. Often, the biggest issue with making grand plans for the new year is that we don’t tackle these changes from the inside out.

If you don’t start by looking at the internal factors that got you into the position you’re in today, then you will be relying on nothing more than sheer willpower to change your external life. And willpower is like a battery; it needs to be restored and will eventually run out altogether.

The biggest difference between those who succeed and those who don’t, in anything, is consistency. And expecting to change purely from the outside isn’t sustainable. I always say it’s like trying to polish a turd. You can’t stay consistent that way. If the internal landscape doesn’t change, the external landscape doesn’t change—or at least it won’t change long-term.

The only way to work toward a new you is to take a long, hard look at how you became the way you are now. Now, this isn’t an exercise in beating yourself up. It’s an exercise in looking at what you need to succeed, why you feel a need to change, and what hasn’t worked for you so far.

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In many cases, large-scale changes come about when something big happens—a huge internal shift that pushes us forward. For example, the child in school who was told they wouldn’t make it grows up with this big motivation to prove people wrong, manifesting in their hard work and success. Or the unfit dad who smokes suddenly realizes he can’t even play in the park with his kid anymore and decides to kick the habit once and for all.

It’s about suddenly recognizing something about ourselves—a turning point—be that a photo that shocked us, a death, one putdown too many, or an opportunity being waved at us. Something happens and we suddenly see something we don’t want for ourselves or something we want. At that moment, something shifts inside us, and we start doing things a little differently as a result. And it empowers us toward success.

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Ask yourself why

Say your resolution this year is to drink less alcohol. It might be easy enough to succeed at this, just changing your weekly schedule slightly. But if you can’t, and you’re finding it more challenging, you need to ask yourself why. What does the drink do for you that you’re not addressing?

When the internal isn’t shifted, the root cause of why you’re drinking more than you’d like doesn’t either, so you can’t expect the behavior to change. Ask yourself why. Is it boredom, emotional needs, a lack of inspiration, or stress? Why have you gotten to a point where you feel a need to change this about yourself? What have you lost along the way?

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Sometimes, you can engage in new behavior and feel so good about it that it helps clear this blockage. But usually, you need to unblock it first, uncover the root cause, and change the behavior that way. Your behavior and the result you currently have to live with are only the symptoms. The root cause is what you need to identify to change.

Similarly, we need to hold strong to our goals. We all say “ah, fuck it” from time to time and engage in behaviors we know we shouldn’t. That’s normal. But it’s when we don’t get back on the horse and we allow all the progress we’ve made to come undone that we stay where we are, or worse, go further backward.

If saying “fuck it” means one step forward, three steps back, it’s going to be a long time before you get anywhere, and we’ll have increased feelings of failure to deal with for not succeeding. It’s a way to ensure we feel worse about ourselves, not better. Identify what triggers you to say it. What makes you put off the changes you want to make? It might be a lack of willpower, an overwhelming sensation, or feeling worn out. But whatever it is, you want to get down to those root that created the situation you’re now trying to deal with.

New Year’s resolutions can be a great way to establish better habits and start the new year as healthily and happily as possible. But they take a lot of hard work and internal progress. You can’t just change behavior overnight and expect it to stick. You need to change your internal landscape first. Once you identify why you want or need to change something, your resolutions will become a lot easier to stick to. When the internal landscape shifts, the external one soon follows.

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How to Handle Things THE SECOND YOU’RE TRIGGERED

Published on by Lee2 Comments

None of us is above being triggered. Even the most evolved person in the room—someone with a healthy, trained mindset—will struggle from time to time. We all have moments when we’re tired, we’re drained, and our batteries are running low. And it’s at times like these when we’re most open to being triggered.

Everything goes wrong one day, and suddenly we can fall victim to our situations. Someone says something that doesn’t sit right with us and we get defensive, or vice versa. When we’re triggered, we tend to react as if everything we’re feeling in that moment is the unequivocal truth. In actuality, it’s usually just our one-sided perception of the story, and it’s driven by past hurts.

And so begins our downfall.

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Adding fuel to the fire

The second someone feels triggered, their defenses go up. And the reaction will often create an equally defensive reaction in whoever else is involved. It’s like a chain reaction.

When somebody feels like they’ve been made into the bad guy in a situation, they’ll naturally want to defend themselves and justify their actions. During tense moments, those reasons are often at each other’s expense. We say, “You made me so mad,” pushing that discomfort onto them. But they fight back with “Well, I wouldn’t have said that if…,” getting defensive themselves. It’s a deflection of guilt or upset, and we begin the blame and justification dance that has no winners and often leaves all parties feeling sore.

When both parties are triggered and defensive, neither is dealing with the truth of the moment. Neither is accepting the role they may or may not have played. Perhaps nobody did anything wrong, but defensiveness has certainly escalated matters. And now both sides are fighting completely different fights based on differing views of the same situation, and no one is dealing with what’s going on at the moment. Which is that both sides are dealing with some past sore point.

We react like the complaint now is the truth—when we’re just triggered by an emotional echo. Whether one person feels triggered or both people do, we fall victim to our reactions, focusing on the often minor current issue. Both add fuel to the fire, and nobody wins. Before we know it, two people who love each other have just fallen out over something utterly trivial.

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Everything links back

In these instances, the exact details of why we became triggered in the first place are largely irrelevant. The point is that, even though a real comment or action might have triggered us, our reaction isn’t about the actual situation at hand.

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We’re only ever triggered by the past, and our triggers will always stem back to something from our childhood. For the first 20 years of our life, life happens to us. Then, we spend the rest of it dealing with what happened to us.

But if we’re not aware of this—and neither is the other party—how can we find a resolution? We aren’t walking in each other’s shoes. We can’t know exactly where they’re coming from. We’re two people with different pain points and perspectives. It’s like a conversation where both parties are speaking different languages and wondering why no one is making any sense.

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Learning to let go

What has us stuck in these triggered moments is running over things again and again. We’re trapped trying to make sense of truth in the present moment that simply doesn’t exist there but in our past.

So, to move past this, we need to work on our awareness and try to catch ourselves. If someone is consistently talking over us or not listening and it triggers us, we should ask ourselves, who first did this to us? Was it a parent? Or a sibling? When did we first not feel heard or respected in conversations? If we can look back and grow our awareness of what we need at the moment, we can explain to someone what triggers us now, what our sore point is, and what we need to help us feel heard and understood.

Also, it’s worth knowing we will often put ourselves around people who will repeat behaviors we didn’t like when we were younger, so we can continue working out how to handle it and grow past it. This is a subconscious choice, but one we all make. Ever noticed someone dealing with the same things again and again, like repeating the type of significant other they go for? The more we engage with the tense, defensive moments today, the more we are buying into them being real and about us now. They aren’t about now.

Instead, we want to notice the moments when we’re triggered. Or when we might be triggering someone else. It’s no easy feat. It’s an ongoing exercise in strengthening our awareness and ability to detach from what is here, to see what is going on there in our minds and our past. And the more we practice this, the more evolved we become, the more we strengthen this muscle, and the quicker we will let these moments go when they arise.

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OLD VS. YOUNG PARTNER: What’s Better?

Published on by Lee1 Comment

In high school, I always had a crush on the “older” guy (me a freshman, him a senior—back then, it seemed like such an age disparity), and I never looked twice at the dudes my year or in the grades below me. I had concocted this fantasy that an older man and woman would save and protect me. Some may call it “daddy issues;” I’ll leave that to the experts.

At 18, I encountered my first taste of the ubiquitous older man. The story is so cliche. I worked in this Orthopedic Center and met this 40 something-year-old who worked in the mall I would travel to for my boss. Long story short, we had an epic romance. No, sex was involved. Yes, feelings were. I look back on this tryst with somewhat fond memories, and I know now that it was the beginning of a pattern that I would come to live out for a good portion of my 20s: the older man/younger woman scenario.

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Without going into my entire sexual and dating history, let’s say I’ve had more than one dalliance with a (much) older man and woman. I’m not talking two or even five years older; we will leave it at that. What I’m noticing in my early 20s is that I gravitate toward older men/women because I found them to be more mature and stable. They were successful and (in many cases) powerful. They took care of business, in more ways than one. 

And then, one day, as I was rehashing my evening with one said an older man to a girlfriend, she stopped me mid-sentence and blurted out: “Just imagine his a** in five years.” I gasped. OMG. Think Jack Nicholson in the hospital scene of Something’s Gotta Give, and you’ll get the image that plagued my mind from that moment on. I’ve never been able to get it out of my head.  

Soon after, my love affair with the older man ended, and as I approached my mid-20s soon, I noticed a new trend emerge: the younger man. To be fair, this seemed to be a trend that exploded in pop culture too: Madonna, Janet Jackson, JLo—they were all fans of the younger man. And the 30-somethings are starting to bore me; even the 40-somethings now wanted the 20-somethings, but the 20-something dudes? Well, let’s just say they were very eager to accommodate. After a rather tumultuous breakup with a boyfriend of two-ish years, my ego yearned for some serious boosting, and the more I hung out with guys my age, the more I remembered what FUN was all about. Sure, perhaps it was all a bit more no strings attached when it came to partnering up, but for a flirty fling, the younger man had me at “you’re hot.”

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So, yes, I’ve sampled both younger and older partners. I’m in no way a dating pro, but here are my pros and cons to each.

NOTE: I am not generalizing age groups here. OK, I am slight—but these are my experiences, and if even one of them rings true for you… take it, comment, and feel free to leave the rest.

OLDER MEN

PROS – They know what they want. They’ve had enough time to test the dating waters and—unless they cannot commit, which could certainly be the issue—the older man is laser clear on what he’s looking for.

CONS – They know what they want, and they’re less malleable to change, which likely means that if they are inept at communicating or if they don’t remember important dates like your birthday or anniversary, chances are they never will. That ship has sailed, to keep with the water metaphor.

PROS – They have their sh*t together. At least when it comes to a job, a place to live, a means of transportation—and if they don’t have these things… run, don’t walk, away. 

CONS – They come with their fair share of baggage (and I’m not just talking about the bags under their *slightly* older eyes). The older you date, the more baggage your partner will have. It just comes with the territory. Think exes, kids, business failings, insecurities, etc. 

PROS – They tend to provide the compelling conversation. If you’re one who likes talking politics, international relations, distilling whiskey, etc… the older man can be a veritable teacher of sorts. 

CONS – They have a schedule, which isn’t necessarily a con for everyone—for some this may even be a pro. But I’m not into the 10 p.m. lights out, 6 a.m. rise and shine, and can’t even meet me for an impromptu lunch because… he doesn’t take lunch, and work comes first—how do you think he can afford that nice house and those pristine wheels? YAWN.

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YOUNGER MEN

PROS – Confidence. They haven’t been burdened by as many rejections, or it just hasn’t bothered them yet. So they barrel in at 65 miles per hour… with the compliments, the texts, and the kisses. The dating rules? Not in their vocabulary. 

CONS – The thing about an overly confident male is that you’re likely not the only one he’s DMing, sexting, or even kissing. Protect your heart (and your other precious parts).

PROS – They’re spontaneous. Think of a weekend jaunt (whatever town is drivable from where you live) at a moment’s notice. Sex in the hotel lobby bathroom. Showing up at your place in the middle of the night because you were on their mind. Spontaneous gestures are exciting and, for some, a great reminder that your partner doesn’t just talk the talk but can also walk the walk. Aka: actions speak louder than words.

CONS – They can be immature. Like the younger guy who invites you to the house in Miami that he rented for the weekend. You show up, only to find that a dozen other youngsters are milling about, smoking weed, drinking, playing video games. You just wanted some sexy time, so you manage to pull your dude away from the keg and find a random room with a futon and an overflowing ashtray. The next thing you know it’s 5 a.m., your back is killing you from the futon mattress, and some half-naked guy just walked past you to puke in the bathroom. And your guy has slept through all of it. 

PROS – They speak the language of flirtation—and they’re damn good at it, too. This complements the confidence pro above, but in my experience, younger men are just so much less intimidated with what they say and what they do to their lover.

CONS – They’re less serious about everything in life—and that includes you. When the BBD comes along, you’re lucky if you even get a “sorry, we’re done” text. Much more likely he’ll ghost you and you’ll find out about his new girl after some blog writes about him and his new girl. Don’t try to have a “closure” conversation with the younger man, it’s not his “vibe.” 

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FINAL THOUGHT: As people love to say, age is just a number. But it truly is… (as long as everyone is 18 and older) what matters most is timing and compatibility. What you want will change at different stages in your life, so go for the person who makes you feel like the best version of yourself, regardless of their birth year. Older guys ain’t shit either so do what makes you feel good ladies and gentlements. Just be careful though because soul-ties do exist.

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Understanding Our FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT RESPONSES

Published on by LeeLeave a comment

Do you feel like anxiety runs point in your day? Do you wonder what in the world is going on with you that you have these stressed-out reactions that feel disproportionate to the reality of what’s at hand?

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The truth is that your reactions can get triggered in response to a real or imagined event. The part of you that overrides reality and kicks up a sometimes-surprising physical response does not know the difference between what’s actually taking place and what’s not real. That can be baffling because it can make you do things that don’t make sense. And no one likes to be the foolio or feel hijacked by their fight-or-flight response.

Let’s discuss: say you’re at a campground with friends, and you hear a loud noise that scares you. You then find you’ve hightailed it across the campground into your tent before you’ve had time to even sort through if that noise is actually a real and present danger. Stay with me—here’s what has happened. Your subconscious mind hijacked your conscious mind (the part that feels like you). You heard the noise. Your subconscious, which stores all your memories, downloaded a memory of a threat (i.e. a bear growl) that it had stored in its complex hard drive; your imagination envisioned a bear in your immediate environment. It then sent a message to your autonomic nervous system, which houses all hormones (like adrenaline, which makes you move fast), your senses became hyper-alert, and your heart rate increased—all for your survival. Before you could check to see if there indeed was a bear about to eat you, your body drove you to seek safety—all in seconds. But then what if your friends, while you were cowering, began to laugh at your folly, as one of them had merely opened the zipper on their bag, and that was the sound your subconscious deemed dangerous that caused you to run for shelter? It would undoubtedly feel like a bodily betrayal.

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But you have to give thanks for the fight-or-flight response, because it has literally kept humankind alive for thousands of years of evolution as a species. It’s not as necessary day to day now because we aren’t being hunted by lions as we once were. We aren’t always fighting for our survival, and yet, our body still gets flooded with messages to flee or fight back. Makes you question how often you have automatically reacted in that irrational mode because of an unconscious download, then responded in kind, with an over-the-top, inappropriate response because you felt threatened—and that wasn’t actually the case. Anxiety disorders come into focus when that response becomes triggered easily and often, and the brain learns to perceive the world as more dangerous than it actually is. It becomes the norm, and that’s taxing on your whole system and your quality of life.

The more you can realize when the fight-or-flight is happening, the more you can be present with the reality of what’s truly unfolding. You can then allow your life to be directed by responding instead of reacting to daily events that pose no real threat. You start to see where your anxiety has you by the nose, where you consistently allow yourself to fly off the handle to attack, defend, or find yourself running from conflict. All are good indicators that these are areas where you can work on being more mindful, more present, more conscious. Breathing through automatic responses of fight-or-flight to stabilize your anxiety levels is helpful. It allows you to feel more in control and, ultimately, happier as a result. And your flight-or-flight response can show up for you in instances where it’s actually useful, when there’s a real need for its gift.