We must face the painful truth…

About our experiences and how they’ve shaped the lies we’ve constructed in our heads.

About our world, the people around us and how we live.

About our mundane lives that lack meaning.

About our work that feels like endless suffering by making us sick.

About our loveless lives surrounded by people that make us feel empty.

About our unwillingness to be alone in silence.

About our neurotic behaviors that keep us in an endless cycle of distraction and asleep.

About the nameless dread we feel inside once the noise finally clears.

About our willingness to do more and inability to doing less.

About our underlying motivations and where they come from.

About our endless pursuit of happiness that doesn’t ever come.

About our inability to live in the present, while constantly reliving the past.

About those painful experiences in the past that we unknowingly keep buried.

About the horrible things we do to our bodies and the planet.

About the long-term effects it has on ourselves and the world.

Until we face these painful truths, we will not live the lives we deserve.

 And the cost of an unexamined life is simply too high.

The Reality Of Shame

We all have dark parts of our past or present. Those secrets we hide from ourselves and the world.

Our loveless marriage or traumatic childhood we’d rather forget. That one-night stand we never told anyone about.

Our soul-crushing job with that pretty title so eloquently masking a torturous reality of meaningless work and mind-numbing tasks that belittle our intelligence.

All of these experiences fill us with shame, leaving an imprint and dictating our life choices.

Shame creeps in without us even knowing. It keeps us in the same job and relationship too long. It causes our shoulders to curl and our heads to hang low.

We carry shame all of our lives and continue to make choices that validate its presence.

Shame terrifies us so much that we sit in silence and hide–hoping no one will discover our pain.

It’s the darkness that creeps in, killing our creativity and growth–keeping us feeling small.

Shame has the power to eat us alive because of our fear of being rejected or appearing flawed.

Shame feeds our fear of being seen and silences our deep desire to be seen.

But little do we know; our suffering is all the same–all of those things we’ve done or experienced, have happened to someone else.

Which is why we crave other people’s stories so much. Because it’s these stories that momentarily relieve us of our pain and distract us from our neurotic tendencies.

And those people whose judgment we fear­—they are too caught up in the misery of their own shame to pay attention to yours. 

So we must give the pain of our experience a voice and dethrone our shame.

And when we unpack and process it, we soon realize that shame is a story that we’ve constructed in our head.

But we can always rewrite our stories and be set free.

And finally, let the light in.

Band-Aids That Never Heal

Life is full of problems. And we humans love to solve them.

Quite frankly, we do it well. You could safely say that we are professional problem solvers trying to eliminate suffering at all costs.

Yet, little do we know that simultaneously we also create problems. In fact, most of them. Particularly the ugly murky ones that have everything to do with the reality we live in.

The truth is, most human problems are related to that of emotion. And these are the ones we don’t like to deal with because they involve the greatest amount of pain–the unresolved conflict that resides in our internal world.

Our earliest experiences become the stories we carry with us throughout our lives–as our ancestral demands become the fabric of our being. And while we know they’re there, we hide from these painful truths.

The trickiest part about our emotional wounds is that we become blind to them. Yet, slowly they seep into our lives and create madness all around us–effecting how we show up in the world.

Whenever pain rises to the surface, we avoid acknowledging it because the cost is too high–the threat of taboo too great.

So we live in denial, terrified of judgment–keeping ourselves locked in a prison as we continue to live our lives based on other people’s opinions.

To soothe our pain, we treat it the best way we know how–the band-aid approach.

We quickly replace our lover or job. We become slaves to our addictions–work more, eat more, drink more, spend more, chase love–in hopes that someone or something from the outside world will save us from ourselves.

But our gross attempt at hacking our emotional wounds fails and our problems perpetuate.

Completely numbing ourselves–we become hedonists, workaholics or robots.

We surrender. We settle. Our lives prove mundane, predictable and mediocre at best.

And yet still, we rationalize and tell ourselves that nothing is perfect­–and we accept our sad realities. We continue on in survivalist mode, remaining a victim.

We quiet the hopeful romantic inside, let our creative artist sleep–and hide our gifts from ourselves and the world.  

But we can only run for so long until our emotional problems turn our life upside down.

So we must ask ourselves…What if facing the pain of our darkest demons is actually the answer to redemption?

What if instead of seeking a quick-fix, we did the real work­ of resolving our painful emotional wounds? What if this was the path to ultimate freedom–to the everlasting peace that leads us to nirvana?

What if….

Beware Of The Noise

Although you wouldn’t have a clue from social media, most people hate what they do for a living.

And since Linkedin has basically become Facebook for professionals, you generally see a curated version of what people want you to believe about how they think of themselves and their career.

Don’t get me wrong–it’s an incredible tool to learn more about thriving business’, people and making connections. And of course, marketing.

I’m more referring to the excessive self-promotion of people and companies.

It’s typically those who consistently boast about their work lives that are simultaneously scrolling and searching to find some way out of their bullshit job.

And what we neglect to remember is, companies ask their employees to self-promote and advertise for them. It validates that they are drinking the cool-aid and helps attract talent and clients.

The truth is most people that are engaged in meaningful work or making a difference in the world don’t have time to be on social media all day.

Because their time is spent doing just that.

We must try not to blur the lines of marketing vs. self-promotion or company advertising vs. fulfilled employees.

And we should question everything. Always.

A New Year, A Brighter Perspective

As the remnants of holiday stress fade away, we finally have time to reflect.

Although I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s resolutions, I do believe in the value of contemplating the gifts and misfortune the year has brought.

Yet the tricky part about this process is, we tend to automatically measure our outward achievements—the money we made, material objected we acquired and whether or not we found our “dream” job or “soulmate.”

And while these accomplishments may look great on paper or change our social status, they don’t make us better humans. So, before we get out our measuring stick—perhaps we could reconsider what and how we measure­.

Because when we look back at our experiences and understand how they’ve shaped us—we gain wisdom and clarity—motivating us to move forward.

So let’s remember all the battles we fought, challenges we faced and pain we endured—the breakup, the lost job, the diagnosis we received or loved one we lost. And lest we forget about the new skills we acquired, bonds we formed or vulnerable acts we braved.

It’s these important parts that we often overlook, and yet they profoundly change who we are. They build our strength, give us courage and allow us to understand ourselves better.

And when we know ourselves better, we can then make quality choices and be present in our lives.

I propose we look at the year in a different light and celebrate what matters most. Because the truth is, some of our biggest achievements can’t be measured.

And when we focus more on how our lives feel on the inside, and less on how they look on the outside, our whole world opens up—and hope arrives.