The alternative to feeling like a failure

Posted on June 15, 2018 by oana

As a child, I used to look up to my parents and other adult relatives because they seemed to have figured out who they are and how they wanted to live.

Now when I am an adult, I realise we, adults don’t really know what we are doing. Moreover, we feel like a failure because we should be knowing what we are doing.

Harsh criticism. Tit for tat attitudes. Peer expectations. Social pressure. These are things that disturb the mind.

And then, we can do one simple thing well – we can breathe.

Breathe now

Breathe in life

Breathe out gratitude

Observe the breath

Get curious about the new possibilities to deeper awareness.

How to tame the negative-self talk

Posted on March 20, 2018 by oana

Self-compassion is the ability to be kind with the stream of negative thoughts and emotions that we experience. Most of us have thoughts like, “I’m not good enough.”, “I am a failure.”, “I am a bad person”, which lead to feeling tensed, irritated, defensive and stressed.

If you are like me, you may want to be grounded in a relaxed and joyful state of being. But how can we make the transition from a “stressed most of the time” state to a “relaxed and enthusiastic” state? Self-compassion can create the bridge between these two states.

How could self-compassion become a habit of the mind?

I have practiced short self-compassion meditations on and off, for 2 years now. For me, being self-compassionate is about allowing myself to feel bad when things seem to fall apart. How do I do that?

1. By accepting that my ego wants me to survive and succeed. As a result, it doesn’t like it when there is some evidence pointing in the direction of failure.
2. By reminding myself that my ego is like a little child that needs patience until the day when it grows old enough to understand that the way it perceives the experiences does not reflect the ultimate truth.

Take this example: you are working on a project you care about. At one point, your boss or a colleague gives you negative feedback about your work. Self-compassion comes in to soothe the “I feel like a failure” thinking. By paying close attention to how the negative thoughts are taking form in your mind, you can learn to reformulate them so that you create a shift from negative thinking to constructive thinking.

Instead of thinking, “I feel like a failure now.”, you can overwrite that thought with “Now I can see the work I have done from my boss’s perspective.” This is the tipping point when we can take some distance from the bad feelings, from taking personally the perceived critique to “There are different opinions on my work.”

Everyone has an ego who wants them to succeed and an unique way of perceiving. Let’s be compassionate with all the suffering that results when 2 or more perceptions seem to collide.

Thoughts on the Meaning of Being Together

Posted on March 12, 2018 by oana

One month after father’s physical death, I had a strong impulse to write down some thoughts on what it means to be together. The words are failing me, but I still wanted to give myself a chance to express how I feel about the continuation of strong bonds beyond physical death.

Last December, I was in the office of one of father’s oncologists. I wanted to hear about advanced cancer treatments. At one point, the doctor stopped for few seconds, looked at me sternly and said, “You need to cut the ropes”.

Despite the sting in the heart, I understood the doctor meant well. In her world, cutting the ropes was the best thing for me to do.

But in my world, how could I conceive of cutting the ropes? How could I stop trying to help the man with whom I’ve had a strong bond ever since I’ve known myself. Metastasised colon cancer does not give much room for hope for survival. But I wanted to hope we can find a treatment to extend my father’s life.

Cutting the ropes was not something I was ready to do.

A few weeks later, my father’s illness advanced. I took a break from everything I do in order to be by his side. In one of his lasts days, I whispered in his ear, “We are together. I am with you.”

Ever since, the words, “We are together”, have been on my mind. It’s been four weeks since my father passed away. Would there be another way of being together?

I am now stepping in the territory of metaphysical assumptions about bonds between people who are living and people who pass away.

So, here I go. When you love someone so much, it’s not possible that the love stops when the other person passes away or when you yourself stop existing from the physical world.

Father and I can’t communicate the way we have been used, in this physical reality. We can’t talk on the phone, every day. We can’t have dinner at the same table, in my childhood home. We can’t spend holidays together, the way we used to. And yet, somewhere at another dimension of reality, the pure love must continue and connect us.

Cutting the ropes is not what I want. Instead, I choose to have a better understanding on how our connection can live on. In the last four weeks, I’ve had more dreams about father than ever before. Most of those dreams seem so real.

Maybe dreams hold the key to understanding that being together doesn’t mean, exclusively, two persons in the same physical space. Maybe there is some other unconscious part of ourselves that travels at night and experiences, in a similar way the conscious self experiences when we are awake.

Most certainly, father will live in my memories and the memories of those who love him. Other than that, could meditation and imagination nurture the love between father and myself? In my imagination, I want to believe that a part of myself keeps company to him in whatever reality he is now living.

Physical death can’t be the end.

What I’ve learned from living in Finland about adapting to the local culture

Posted on October 20, 2017 by oana

Allow yourself to be changed by a new culture. Work with yourself even in the most vulnerable moments. The most beneficial change happens when you find a way to combine the old with the new.

According to UN, there are about 244 billion people – 3.3% of the global population – who live in another country than the country where they were born. Some of these global trotters move in search of better economic and social opportunities. Others are forced to live their native places to save their lives.

I moved to another country for the sake of the relationship I was in. Soon after that, the professional life became the reason for living in Finland. Years passed and now, the main reason for being here is my bicultural family.

It’s been an emotionally sinuous journey that shook me up to my core. The reward for the bumps on the road are the lessons, which make me say wholeheartedly that I love my life.

Learn to be flexible

Human beings are made out of habits. We absorb behaviours from the people around us. Each culture has preferred habits. What are the preferred habits of the people in the local culture? Which ones can you see yourself adapting to? Which ones can you influence? Which are the ones you can’t influence but you can accept?

Flexibility is a valuable skill if we want to adapt, love and contribute with something greater than us to the local society.

Start something new

Keep your heart open to new friendships. Keep your mind open to new education. Indulge yourself in new hobbies, etc. Gradually, we build new habits around the activities and people we meet.

There is untapped potential in each one of us, i.e., interests, passions, talents. All we need is a supporting environment. Back in the home country, we may have missed some opportunities that could make us understand how far we can go. Maybe in your home country, you didn’t have snow and have never had the chance to try out your inclination for cross-country skiing. Give it a try in the long days of Winter in Finland. You may like it. If you don’t, what other opportunities would you like to try?

Be open to new experiences. You may not like it when you feel stretched, you may feel tempted to quit. If you persevere, you may be rewarded with a sense of being truly alive. If you persevere and fail, look for a new experience.

Avoid cultural stereotyping

Feeling irritated with the behaviour of the locals is a normal stage of cultural shock. It can be healthy to let some steam off with some friends who are emotionally close to you. Yet, try not to make too big of a deal out of the negative interactions with the locals. In the end, everyone is entitled to an opinion and acts to the best of their judgement. Instead, focus on developing relationships with the locals and other intercultural people who respect and appreciate you.

Stay grounded

Embrace the core home cultural values that are beneficial to you. Revisit sweet memories. The people back in your country of origin who love you and guided you are your safe haven whenever you may feel confused about your living abroad.

Exert Kindness Across Borders

Think good thoughts, for the greater good of humankind. Seek for the good in others. We all feel the need to belong to a place and to someone. Above all, we all belong the the human race.

When you can’t think good thoughts, imagine how it is to be the other one.

I’d love to hear how the living abroad has changed you.

How and Why to Develop Your Everyday Creativity

Posted on August 10, 2017 by oana

A recent study shows that engaging in something creative, on a weekly basis improves our general well-being, by experiencing increased positive emotions. Moreover, this study encourages everyone, no matter the personality types, to tap into their creative energy and find ways to express your creative self.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss what creativity is and what it actually means to experience life more creatively.

What is creativity?

We grow up with favourite figures of writers, musicians, painters, etc that enrich our emotional life. Who hasn’t heard of Dostoyevsky, Queen and Picasso? To normal people, great minds set an unreachable standard of what it means to be creative and gifted. Ever since childhood, my understanding of creativity has been that of a personality trait with which only genius people are blessed with. I only dreamed of writing fiction but didn’t dare to try it out because I knew I was not one of those blessed with the talent of creative writing.

It wasn’t until one fortunate event about 10 years ago, when I got an invitation to join an amateur theatre group and I hesitantly accepted. I started experimenting with playscript writing. Impassioned by developing the stories, my life got a whole new meaning. Ideas were blossoming in my mind like the Spring flowers under the first warm days of sun. Who was this person originating those ideas?

I became more observant of my inner and external life. As a result, I was coming up with new ideas to incorporate into the scripts. Overall, I experienced more joy, although I was very much aware that my scripts would not be brought to life on the stage of the Finnish National Theatre or Svenska Teatern. I was happy not taking myself seriously but at the same time, diligently challenging my writing potential.

Like me, there are others longing after expressing themselves in a creative way but don’t dare to because they believe, without further investigations, that creativity is a personality trait of geniuses.

Geniuses make the world a more beautiful and comfortable place with new books, new songs and new inventions. To this kind of creativity, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as the big C creativity. The big C creativity requires originality, usefulness and a surprising element.

We can’t deny that some people are more creative than others. The less creative ones enjoy the outcome of the work done by the big C creativity individuals. The more creative people are skilled at both solving and finding problems. Most likely, you have bought, at least once, some goods from Amazon, the online store. Behind the successful business story of Amazon, there is one of the more creative minds, with expertise in the field of computers.

Computer engineer, Jeff Bezos, had been observing for a while how the internet is used as an insider’s tool in the USA government and the academic circles, when he had the vision to extend the use of this tool to ordinary people. Jeff came up with another way for people to buy goods. I don’t know about you, but I buy most of my books from Amazon.

The fact that some people are more creative than others in terms of the big C creativity, this does not mean that ordinary people cannot be creative. Neuroscience research suggests that the normal brains have a creative functioning that can be activated and amplified with conscious effort and a little practice.

We are all wired to create in the realm of our personal and work lives. We can all bring in some originality, usefulness and surprising element in the way we dress, we work, we behave and we manage ourselves, day in, day out. This is our small c creativity, which may not result in national and international fame, but can help us feel we live a full life and can have a positive message for the others around us.

Why well-being and small c creativity?

Researchers from different fields analyze different dimensions of well-being: emotional, physical, social, economic, psychological, engaging activities and work, and life satisfaction.

The common aspect of all these dimensions of well-being is the presence of positive emotions, transformation of negative emotions, and fulfilment.

People who engage in small c creativity – like daydreaming, playing guitar in their free time, or findings ways to pleasantly surprise their close ones – report to have a greater sense of well-being and personal growth compared to others less engaged in everyday creative activities.

Small c creativity is about looking at your life circumstances and finding ways to express yourself. The basic human need is to be seen and to be heard. Being creative about how you allow yourself to be seen and heard is a fun and daring way to live.

What does it mean to make a habit out of creativity?

One of my dear friends is a good example of what it means to express yourself in a creative way. Journalist as a profession, he dedicated hours of his time to playing and singing in a band, to directing and acting in theatre plays. The music is his way to express his joys and yearnings. Theatre is his ways to connect with others.

Another example of creative living is an important person for me who has been a long-life entrepreneur. Now when he is at pension, instead of taking it easy, his mind continues to come up with visions about how to improve different aspects of the society.

Once you find your creative way of living, it is harder to let it go. But how can you start? Here are 3 things to consider when embarking on the creative self-realization.

Playful attitude

Have you happened to notice, what is your tendency when you get involved in a new project? Do you take yourself seriously to make everything perfect or do you have a more playful attitude of experimenting with ideas and feelings?

When we learn new skills and make habitual changes, the brain is working harder in order to hardwire these new skills and habits. Therefore, we need to put in more cognitive effort, which may be frustrating at times. But keeping a playful attitude of exploration can keep the motivation up.

Choose your interest

What is the area in your life where you want to be more creative? Is it your morning rituals, finding an engaging activity to boost your energy, your home design, the way you manage your emotions, your love relationship, or your relationship with your child, etc?

Whatever area you choose, find your problem and think how you want to feel when you solve the problem. Then start with the first small solution.

For example, you may want to find an engaging activity to make you experience more positive emotions but you think you are not passionate about anything in particular. Start thinking about few things you are interested in, choose one and try to get curious about what you can do about this interest. It can be playing an instrument, cooking, gardening, building a house, poetry, politics, etc.

Let’s say you choose gardening. It can be that you realize you want to subscribe to a gardening magazine. Or, if you are more of an extrovert, you may go to the flowers shop in your neighbourhood and start a small-talk with the seller about the season flowers.

Find the time and space for curiosity

When we start doing something new and we want to make it a habit, it’s preferable to choose a favourable time of the day and a place where it’s more likely we don’t get interrupted or distracted for the duration we are engaged in this new activity. This means that we may want to pay closer attention to what activities we do daily and make some changes to make room for the new activity.

Continuing with the previous example on developing curiosity for gardening, we may want to dedicate 30 minutes to reading more about it, every Sunday evening, when the house is quiet.

Don’t beat yourself if you fall asleep over the gardening magazine. If your curiosity is not awaken, move on to another field of interest. Explore until you feel the spark of curiosity. This is a good sign that you are in a spot where you have high chances of finding out how to express your creative self.

Music is the first love of my friend I was talking about earlier. This Summer, while driving around the picturesque roads of the French countryside, he got in touch with a stream of consciousness which aroused his interest to get back to his second love: writing. “I need to learn more about developing plots, though. ”, he mused.

The retired entrepreneur could enjoy sleeping late in the mornings. However, his visions, implementation ideas and the perceived obstacles make him continue with a disciplined lifestyle. He wakes up at 5 am to have brainstorming sessions on his own. He frequently goes to the gym and takes walks in the nature.

As for myself, I am exploring my creative potential, as a parent, by making up bedtime stories weekly.

Once you tap into your creative energy and find ways to express it in your life, you become one with your creative potential, you grow with it and you allow it guide you to the next chapter in the adventure of your life.

On Building Inner Motivation To Taking a Break for People with High Sense of Responsibility

Posted on June 20, 2017 by oana

Taking a break from everyday work and family life is crucial for understanding yourself better. Whether you meditate, take yoga classes, or take a walk in the neighbourhood, the aim is to allow yourself to disconnect from the external world and connect to your wisdom, the intelligence that connects you to higher consciousness and that shows with clarity what’s important for you.

When you find yourself in that place of wisdom, you can think deeper about why you do whatever you are doing and what else you would like to do. However, for some of us who have an extreme sense of responsibility, it is more challenging than it sounds to walk out of the office or home and go out somewhere else where you allow your body, mind and soul to relax.

When I meet friends and ask, “How have you been?”, it’s highly likely that I get answers, like “busy” or “I can’t remember”. Daily, each one of us has so many things with priority 1 to deal with that we easily end up thinking we don’t even have time to get sick.

Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit”, talks about the importance of creating habits that allow us to think twice about what do we really want to get done.

For those of us who have a strong sense of responsibility to do everything for everyone and can’t stop easily, the first step in creating such habits is to find the intrinsic motivation for the activities that would create the space for thinking.

Here are some suggestions about how positive emotions can motivate us to start the habit of taking breaks.

Positive emotions

As superficial as it may sound, positive emotions are strong behavioural drivers. Just think why you keep on eating the piece of strawberry cake. It is human to want to indulge ourselves in pleasure, fun, laughter or soothing, nurturing activities for the soul.

So, what is it that you would love doing?

Make a long list of loads of crazy, daring, fun, simple activities you would love doing. Tap into your creative thinking and try to come up with a long list. Then, choose one activity that you can incorporate in your work life, with minimum effort and that takes less than 5 minutes.

You may want to read a joke.

You may want to listen to an energizing song.

You may want to do a breathing exercise.

You may want to look at your child’s photo.

You may want to look through the window at the sky, etc.

What time of the day you would like to take the break? For example, it can be after the dreaded team meeting on Mondays, at 9am. Or before meeting an important client. Or, before leaving the office.

Book a date with your positive emotions

Find one or two words to describe the positive emotions you had during the short break. Schedule the next break and what you want to do during that break. In the second week, try to have two short breaks during the day. By the fourth month, you can have 3 breaks of maximum 5 minutes each.

In addition, after a month, you can choose another activity that you jotted down on the list. This time, choose one activity that takes about 30 minutes and create the opportunity to do it in between work and family time. For this activity, you would need to put in slightly more effort than for the short breaks at work. For example, it may require you to put the sneakers on and go walking, jogging or biking.

Now that it’s Summer in Helsinki, I chose to go walking in the sunny afternoons, for half an hour. This means that I end the work half an hour earlier than before. And since I am one of the persons who can’t go out for a walk just for the sake of it, I think of the lovely flowers I will encounter during my stroll. Some hectic days when thinking of the flowers is not enough, I take a look at the photos I took in the previous walks.

The photos are loving reminders that for me, walking becomes a therapy of colours and scent. This is an experience that makes me want to have the walk.

So, when deciding to move on to doing activities that take longer time, remind yourself what is the positive experience you are going to have. Positive experiences are not a luxury, are a necessity. They are crucial for healthy living.

New thoughts that may come to the surface of consciousness

When we live positive emotions, we become more relaxed and thoughts and emotions from the unconscious part of the mind are flowing in the conscious part.

We become aware of material, emotional, intellectual or spiritual needs that are waiting for further exploration.

It may dawn on you that it’s time to move to the country-side.

You may admit to yourself that you need better sleep.

You may want to be more social.

You may want to learn to live in joy and beyond your own thinking.

You may want to make stress a friend by looking into how you can relate to the uncertainty of life, etc.

Get curious and be mindful about new thoughts in your awareness. These are the thoughts springing from our inner wisdom and that show clearly how it is important to live.

I would love to hear from you. If you are one of those people with a strong sense of responsibility towards everyone and everything in life, how do you motivate yourself to take breaks?

Gratitude Saves the Day When Death Lurks at Crossroad

Posted on April 27, 2017 by oana

We live each day as if our life is about to start tomorrow. Today it’s only the rehearsal. Today, we experiment with negative emotions, toxic thoughts and harmful behaviours.

Tomorrow, the real life will start. In the real life, we feel happiness and meaningfulness, we will observe our thoughts without identifying ourselves with them and we will have a healthy life.

Tomorrow never comes. All we have is today, when we feel trapped in something like a mouse wheel, where we have no energy or willingness to get away from. Until something tragic happens. Something that shakes up our emotions and thoughts and forces us to contemplate the face of death from few inches distance.

We feel small and helpless in face of destiny, like a newborn baby in the arms of the midwife. A tiny bit of regret creeps into our hearts.

Why didn’t I live intensely up until today?

Why did I keep procrastinating the day when I laugh and love wholeheartedly, when I accept myself as I am, and when I would do what represents me the most?

Why?

The tragedy comes unexpectedly today and there may not be tomorrow. Is it Life or Death who is going to win by the end of the day?

In such a day, we have the opportunity to reinvent how to live. When contemplating upon death, I chose to breathe from the very core of myself. I chose to search for the strength to love and hope.

One ordinary afternoon, my phone rang and the friendly voice at the other end announced, in a hesitating tone, that my father and a close friend had a car accident. “They are in the ambulance. The doors to the ambulance closed before I had the have a chance to see your dad, I don’t know how he is. I did see your friend. She looked quite pale.”

In that moment, I instinctively returned to the core of myself, which is FAITH. As the pain in the heart was growing stronger, faith became a necessity, like the air that I was breathing.

Faith, the belief that we come from the same source and we have a deep, yet unexplored, connection with this source, was like an anchor in the sea of uncertainty.

After faith, human connection turned out to be the second pillar of stability. Talking with people who cared and praying together were immediate responses to the bad news.

In the following days, while struggling to accept that the car accident happened and choking in emotional pain, I had a moment of illumination when I felt gratitude about the goodness in my life. I started counting three things I felt blessed for the day. The blessings were small things, like being embraced by my child or feeling the sun rays on my cheeks. Small experiences of life, with a tremendous healing effect on my suffering.

My father survived the car accident. Our friend didn’t.

They say that time heals. Tomorrow I will accept that the tragic accident happened. Today, I thank for having my father alive. Also, I cherish the memory of our friend and feel grateful for having met her, a force of life and embodiment of joy.

Today is time to love, laugh and be kind with whoever crosses my path.

In search of your true self

Posted on February 24, 2017 by oana

Chances are that we have a deeper sense of fulfilment in life when we know who we are. Most of us, when we are new to a group, we introduce ourselves by describing the job title or describing ourselves in relation to someone important in our life, such as your wife, your child, your parent, etc.

These ways of presentation are important because they give to others an idea about what is it that we have achieved so far or what is it that we hold dear.

However, in order to develop the deeper sense of fulfilment, we need to know more about ourselves. We may not need to share it with everyone but it is crucial to have it clear for ourselves. If we gain clarity on that, we have the foundation from where we experience life.

How do you gain clarity into who you truly are?

Recent research on personality , shows that our personality can change for the better as we experience life. The degree of extroversion, the openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional instability can positively change as a result of special attention we give to the different dimensions of our personality and of the positive intention behind the exerted attention.

In different life circumstances, varied and salient sides of ourselves may come to surface. For example, when spending time with the children, the playful trait may surface. When working on a project, the supportive side of you can kick-in. When presenting your idea in front of a group, the insecurity may be dominant.

The key aspect is to be mindful to all the feelings, thoughts and attitudes we embrace and decide to what extend they represent who we truly are.

“When we recognize a subpersonality, we are able to step outside it and observe it. In psychosynthesis we call this process “dis-identification”. Because we all have the tendency to identify with – to become one with – this or that subpersonality, we come implicitly to believe that we are it.” (Piero Ferrucci, What We May Be)

Being present to what we feel enables us to create for few seconds a distance between who we may think we are and who we truly are.

Life circumstances can help us recognize our true self

To my mind, this is one of the reasons we are living this life: to experience who we truly are. An attitude of curiosity and playfulness can ease the discovery. For example, for a person who moves to another country, it may be easier to get in touch with different sides of his personality and with his core by accepting and being interested in other nationalities.

Such a person may be closer to finding his true self by allowing himself to change the perceptions on the world and at the same time, reminding himself about the set of beliefs that keep him grounded in the midst of changes.

Life circumstances make us revisit the most important beliefs. There are times when we may choose life circumstance to fit with these most important beliefs. And there are times when we choose to give up some beliefs that do not serve us very well in the new life circumstance.

Continuing the example with the person moving to a new country, the first step would be to look for like-minded individuals to spend time with. If you are a curious mind, you may want to look for other curious minds in the area of your interest. For example, Internations is a community of foreigners and expats that offers plenty of interest groups for different tastes to ease up the adaptation to the new cultural environment.

At the same time, this person who has recently relocated to a foreign land, may want to reevaluate his nationalistic views to develop a healthier attitude as a foreigner. You cannot have a smooth integration to another country by fostering negative opinions about the new culture.

We know who we truly are when we feel in harmony with ourselves and with the life circumstance we find ourselves in. Meanwhile, we keep on searching, holding onto the belief that each day provides a glimpse into our true selves. We need to be present enough to recognize it. The true self is already in us.

Facing Life Changes With Wisdom

Posted on January 25, 2017 by oana

Life comes with changes, big or small, wanted or unwanted. Since the human nature seeks for certainty and security, one way to cope the best that you can with the unwanted changes is to focus on your inner wisdom. Fumble through the different layers of your identity, recreate your life, reframe the reality, adjust your expectations and experiment with living carefree.

The human brain likes certainty. And when changes come our way, we are faced with the opposite of certainty, which is uncertainty. The limbic system of the brain gets activated and we experience all sorts of emotions, positive and negative, big and small.

As a person who has experienced major and less major changes in the last 15 years, at intervals of 3 to 5 years, I thought I have a good relationship with change. I thought I tamed my mind to look at change straight in the eyes, and say, “Let’s just do it!”

Faced with yet another change, not so big this time, I was surprised to observe my panicky, anxious and sentimental reaction. I was informed ahead of time that the change will come. Yet, when the change happened, there was a dominant voice in my head asking, “Do we really have to go through this?”

Yes, unwanted changes do happen. One of the best things we could do is to go deeper in our inner world, beyond emotions and thinking, and tap into the inner wisdom that can teach us a few things about ourselves.

Layers of personal identity

Change in life makes us revisit the idea of personal identity. Who did you think you were before the change? Who are the people and what are the objects you feel a strong attachment to? What capabilities and qualities do you discover about yourself when managing change? What are the weaknesses that consume you the most? How do you believe your identity is expanding?

In the first phase of change, it can happen that we stubbornly hold onto who we thought we were before. For someone who may go through a divorce, you may think of yourself still as a wife or husband. We refuse to accept that new status is of a divorced person. In the second stage, which can be sooner if you’re lucky or otherwise, later, we may become aware that we experience groundlessness. Groundlessness is the state of being where nothing makes sense anymore, what you thought to be true is not valid anymore.

Personally, I find this groundlessness to be a magical opportunity to expand the personal identity, to grow out of whatever roles we may have in different life circumstances and look upon our identity from a larger perspective – the perspective of eternity.

Let’s play for few seconds with the idea that in 1000 years from now, someone will stumble upon your photo. What would you like that person to know about who you were?

Recreating your life

Changes bring opportunities to do things in daily life, differently. In between the moments of emotional turmoil, when we have few glimpses of peacefulness, we may want to ask ourselves how do we want to live. What higher purpose would we like to have?

We may not be able to control everything in life but we are very much able to test our limits to do the wonderful things in life. For example, now when I moved house, I have a different scenery when I look out of the window. This new image inspires me to dream about new habits, such as the habit of taking action and implementing one of my dreams.

Reframing the reality

Change does bring in some moments that we actually love. Let those moments sink into your soul. For example, when moving to another country, there may be something that you love experiencing in the new culture. And when faced with another round of groundlessness, when you believe everything in your life goes wrong, it’s beneficial to remember to be hopeful about what we haven’t lived yet.

Adjust the expectations

After managing a life change, celebrate yourself for going through whatever it was thrown at you. Make a mental map of the skills you’ve developed. Enjoy observing how the respective skills are now part of you. In hindsight, look upon sensitive moments with humour. Appreciate the people who have been by your side. However, don’t expect to be well-prepared for the next change. Just trust yourself that when the change forges into your life, you’ll be able to tap into your inner wisdom again and tackle the change, one step at a time.

Living carefree

Normally, we have the tendency to worry. There is no limit how much a human being could worry. Someone like myself, living in Helsinki, may worry on a sunny day that in the next hour the clouds may come and the sun will be out of sight for weeks.

Experiencing change may shed light on an important personal decision about how much we want to worry and what are the things it’s worth to worry about.

With each and every change, we have the opportunity to get closer to living freely and embracing life with courage.

I’d love to hear from you. What insights did you gain out of experiencing changes in your life?

Ten abilities that may enable forgiveness

Posted on August 22, 2016 by oana

Letting go of the past suffering is a meaningful process, which requires that we search deeply inside to find our motivation and strengths to continue life with love and light in the heart. In this article, we discuss ten abilities that we may choose to develop as part of the forgiving attitude.

To revenge or to forgive?

In the best slapstick GIF we’ve ever seen, according to James Vincent, London reporter at The Verge, we can observe a hilarious chain of events which ends with the revenge of one of the five players.

The action starts when one of the players, whom James calls The Hitter, enjoys a snack while caressing a cute dog standing in front of him. The second player, The Stander, gets up from the bench to caress the doggy too. The bench tips over the third player, The Faller, who on his way to the floor, grabs the pants of the fourth player, The Spiller. The Spiller happens to pass by, carrying a pan of water in his hands. The tipping bench hits the pan of water which spills in the head of The Hitter. The Spiller turns around to pull his pants up while The Hitter hits him in the head with the pan.

Let’s imagine you are The Hitter. What would you have done if you suddenly got some water spilled over your head, while you enjoyed a snack and caressed a cute doggy?

Would you have reacted differently if the water was warm or cold? Clean or dirty?

Would it make any difference if the person who spilled the water in your head was a complete stranger, your mother, your girlfriend or any other person important to you?

Scientific articles on human forgiveness show that the desire to revenge is built-in the human nature. The desire to revenge is evolutionary explained by the fear to be perceived weak in the enemy’s eyes. Social psychologists have done studies showing that if two people fight in the street and there is the third person passing by, the fighters start fighting even harder.

The action in this GIF ends when The Hitter hits The Spiller. We don’t know how The Spiller reacts to the blow. Now let’s now imagine you are The Spiller. How would you have reacted if you got a blow in the head while pulling your pants up? You turn around and you see that it was The Hitter who caused you pain.

Motivation to forgive – Mandela’s story

The capacity for forgiveness is also built-in the human nature. The environment has a great influence on whether the capacity for revenge or the capacity for forgiveness are developed. One hypothesis for explaining the desire to forgive is the “valuable relationships” one. Primatologists believe that by forgiving and reconciling, our ancestors were more capable for group cooperation, which increased their evolutionary fitness.

The hypothesis of “valuable relationships” may hold as well in the case of The Hitter and The Spiller. Maybe they are brothers and may decide to have a good laugh as a sign of forgiveness and reconciliation.

What if The Hitter and The Spiller are complete strangers who happen to be in the same place, at the wrong moment? What would motivate The Spiller to forgive The Hitter?

When Bill Clinton asked Nelson Mandela how he brought himself to forgive his jailers, Mandela’s answer was “If I continued to hate these people I was still in prison.”

Mandela was part of a society torn by racial segregation, which gave more rights to the White South Africans than to the Black or other ethnicity South Africans. In 1963, at the Rivonia Trial, Mandela was accused to life sentence for revolting against the state.

After 27 years of prison, he became the 1st president of South Africa starting with May 1994 till June 1999. In 1995, the new South African government put in place a “truth and reconciliation” commission to investigate human rights abuses during the apartheid era when the rights of the Black and other ethnic groups were curtailed and the White minority rule was maintained.

Mandela had forgiven his jailers and wanted to help his fellow citizens forgive the abuses they had suffered during the apartheid era.

What motivated Mandela to forgive?

His dream society was the one where people of different skin colors and races live in harmony. He wanted a future of equal opportunities for all South Africans, as he declared in his speech at the Rivonia trial in 1964:

“During my life I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die for. ”

How about you? What wrong-doings did you suffer in childhood, school, romantic relationships, professional life, etc.? What aspects of the environment where you lived so far might motivate you to forgive?

Choose one of the wrong-doings that had the biggest effect on your inner life. Would you choose an inner or an outside motivation so you can commit to forgiving your wrongdoer?

Defining forgiveness

Forgiveness has a unique connotation for each individual who suffered a wrong-doing. What do you think of when you hear the word “forgiveness”?

Researchers at GreaterGood Center define forgiveness a conscious decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance towards a person or group of persons who have wronged you, irrespective they deserve to be forgiven.

When we decide to forgive someone, it doesn’t imply that we accept that the other person continues behaving in a way that could hurt us. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we come up with excuses for the respective behaviour.

Forgiveness means taking responsibility for a non-violent attitude to the wrongs we suffer.

Benefits of forgiveness

“Forgiveness liberates the soul…” says Morgan Freeman who plays Nelson Mandela in the movie “Invictus.”

The Bible teaches us to forgive others so that God may forgive us.

Buddha said: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting hurt.”

Researchers confirm that more forgiving people are in a better physical and emotional health. Practicing forgiveness helps to release all the hatred, resentment, hostility and anger that are accumulated as a result of ruminating over the transgression. On the contrary, dwelling on unforgiveness makes your blood pressure rise, face muscles become tense and heart rate increase. For example, people with unforgiving attitudes towards their romantic partners experience jumps in cortisol, the stress hormone which metabolizes fat in the body.

Second, people who have more tendency to forgive report greater quality relationships and greater commitment to relationships. Try to forgive for the sake of having healthier and happier relationships.

Third, forgive so that you can understand better what it means to forgive. You are more able to teach a forgiving attitude to your children or others you care about.

The Journey of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a unique process of inner life discoveries for every individual who commits to forgiving. For most of us, forgiveness is an emotionally sinuous process, with moments when you think you managed to let go, followed shortly by moments when you find yourself in deep resentment about the wrongdoer.

In the moments when you feel disillusioned that you’ll never be able to forgive, it is time to strengthen one or more of the following abilities in yourself: intention, honesty, acceptance of grieving, expectations, empathy, identity, humility, patience and courage.

1. Intention

Choose your destination – What kind of attitude would you like to have in face of the everyday life challenges?

What is your emotional baggage resulting from unforgiveness?

Your life is now with its present challenges. Are you aware how this emotional baggage mixes with the emotions resulting from the present challenges and how it affects your life?

When you set the intention to forgive for a being able to love again, to trust again, to feel joy again, your psyche is prepared to deal with the resentment and other negativity resulting from unforgiveness.

2. Honesty

Identify your pain – What are your negative emotions caused by the wrongdoing? Try to label them and see what emotions are more frequent.

Be honest with yourself and observe how the pain of not being able to forgive is affecting you. Maybe your self-confidence is low, maybe you don’t trust anyone around you, maybe you become bitter, unhealthily angry and hateful in every day life.

How else does the pain affect your inner life?

How many years do you think that one can live with the pain and other negative emotions resulting from unforgiveness?

For the English historian of Jamaican origins, Colin Grant, it took about 30 years to finally forgiving his father who rejected him. The forgiveness happened when Colin wrote the memoir “Bageye at the Wheel”, in which he explores the emotional differences between his world and his father’s.

Be honest with any negative emotion you might have struggled with for the last 5, 10 or 20 years. Sometimes, it may take a life-time to forgive.

3. Accept the grieving

Accept your grieving, be willing to go through sadness, anger, pain, loss, fear, guilt whenever you are aware feeling that way.

How do you know when you don’t accept your pain? When you see yourself as a victim, thinking “Why did this have to happen to me?”, “I always end up being hurt”, etc. Perceiving yourself as a victim keeps you stuck in the moment when you suffered the injustice.

Instead, try to find an outlet for your pain, which doesn’t involve hurting yourself or others. Find meaning in your grieving. Find your ways to cope with the grieving. For example, some choose to do service to others in need. Some choose to talk about their emotions to someone they trust or complete strangers.

Prayer is a coping technique for many people who seek forgiveness or to be forgiveness. For example, in the biographic novel Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, describes the first time in her life when she prays to God. She starts her prayer by saying, “I’m a big fan of your work” . She hopes that by praying she would get an answer to her indecisiveness of whether to stay married or not. A few months later, after divorcing and after a failed romantic relationship, Elizabeth embarks on a one year trip of self-discovery around the world.

What way would you chose to cope with your grieving?

4. Expectations

When you commit to forgiving one person, it is best if you set the expectation of yourself to develop the habit of forgiving in general. Next time when another person causes you harm at emotional or physical level, it may come more natural to you to let go of the resulting resentment and other negative emotions.

Also, in the daily interactions, review your expectations of things that other people should have given to you and they chose not to.

What are your expectations from the most important people in your life (e.g., family, friends, lover, etc)? Can you remember one expectation you had on one person and in what ways that expectation caused you suffering?

5. Empathy

Practice empathy – think into more detail about the life of the person who hurt you. How his childhood must have been? How much love and affection he must have received as a child? What situations he must have gone through as an adult? What must have made him hurt you?

As we can see from the empathy game we played in the beginning of this article, there can be different versions of the story if we put ourselves in the shoes of The Hitter or of The Spiller. Similarly, by developing your cognitive empathy regarding the wrongdoer, you may understand more about his world. You will inevitably take more distance from your pain.

You may even realize you have something in common with your wrongdoer, like Nelson Mandela did. Mandela befriended a white jail guard who “reinforced my belief in the essential humanity of even those who had kept me behind bars”.

6. Nothing personal

When someone hurts you, it says a lot about the level of consciousness of that person at that moment, his interpersonal skills, ideals and goals in life. He didn’t hurt you because of You, he hurt you because you happened to be in his way at that moment.

The slapstick scene we discussed in the beginning is a good example. The Hitter just happened to be in the way of the Spiller. The Spiller didn’t even mean to spill the pan of water in The Hitter’s head. In a similar way, persons with lower levels of consciousness have sometimes no choice but to react in a hurtful way towards the closest people.

In 1995, Mandela invited for lunch a man called Percy Yutar. Yutar was the state prosecutor at the 1963 Rivonia treason trial and asked the death penalty for Mandela. While enjoying their lunch, Mandela told to Yutar that he forgave him because he was only doing his job.

When you suffer a wrong-doing in professional life, it is slightly easier to understand that there is nothing personal because it is your professional identity which is harmed. This is a good time to ask yourself what do you identify yourself with. Do you identify with your job, with your family, with your country, etc?

Think of this scenario in professional life, when your boss criticizes you in front of your team for making a poor report. How would you feel the moment when you hear the criticism? If you take the criticism very personally, it might be an indication that you identify partly with your profession.

7. Humility

Humility is defined as the quality of having a modest view on one’s importance. How you consider humility, as a virtue or as a sign of weak character?

Seneca, a Roman philosopher and dramatist, said “Errare humanum est”, which translates into it is human to make mistakes. Practice humility by reminding yourself that both you and the ones who wronged you are humans, with bigger or smaller imperfections. We thus avoid the feeling of superiority to the faults of those who wronged us and judge less their intentions.

Can you think of an experience when you hurt someone with your words, for example?

By practicing humility, we learn to understand more than we try to make ourselves understood. Madela’s life was an continuous practice of humility in service of his society torn by the racial segregation, as he declares, “I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people”.

8. Patience

Finding peace in your heart after a being hurt requires lots of patience. In general, how patient would you say you are, on a scale from 0 to 10? How willing are you to build patience in yourself?

The American poet, Mary Oliver describes in her poem, Patience, how the moon cycle inspired her to be more patient.

What is the good life now? Why,

look here, consider

the moon’s white crescent

rounding, slowly, over the half month to still another

perfect circle —

…

I used to hurry everywhere,

and leaped over the running creaks.

There wasn’t

time enough for all the wonderful things

I could think of to do

in a single day. Patience

comes to the bones

before it takes root in the heart

as another good idea.

I say this

as I stand in the woods

and study the patterns

of the moon shadows …

What or Who could inspire you to learn the ability of being patient when forgiving?

9. Self-compassion

The wound in your heart resulting from being hurt needs your kindness. Embrace your pain as if you embraced a frightened child. Smile to your suffering and validate it. Say to it, “Yes, I know it sucks to suffer but I am here with you.”

10. Courage

Courage in forgiveness means to continue life by being true to yourself, your values and principles. For example, courage may mean to continue life with goodness in your heart despite witnessing human cruelty. Courage may mean praying for the wrong doers to find their peace and start spreading goodness.

Mother Theresa wisely portraits what being courageous in forgiveness means.

“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.”

After losing someone you loved dearly, to be courageous may mean accepting your shuttered inner life and hope for the rebirth of a new you, a better you, as Elizabeth Gilbert writes in the biographical novel Eat Pray Love, “Ruin is a gift, ruin is a way to transformation”

Considering the circumstances where you’ve been hurt, in what ways could you show courage to forgive?

Choose your motivation and preferred ability and let forgiveness begin! 🙂

More reading material, useful self-help guides that enable you realize at what stage of forgiveness you are and what to expect next:

Robert Enright’s 4 phases model of forgiveness

Fred Luskin’s Eight nine steps to forgive

Jack Kornfield’s 12 principles of forgiveness