Yogis Anonymous

Remembering

For me, like so many others, this is always going to be a day of remembering. I was born and raised in NYC, and there that morning, thirteen years ago. And I can remember every detail, including every minute of the four and a half hours we didn’t know if my stepdad was okay (he was), because he worked in the World Trade Center, and all the phone lines in the city went dead. But I don’t want to talk about the specifics. I’ve done that before. I want to talk about what it’s like to be shocked by violence, because so many people in the world right now are living that experience every day.

You might not have had an idyllic childhood. Maybe you lost your innocence too soon. Maybe burdens were placed upon you at an early age, or you had to take the role of parenting your parents, or you saw and heard things no child should have to see or hear. That’s one way of being stripped of your innocence. Once you know something, you can’t not know it. And it’s the same when we’re shocked as a people, as a culture. I believe we all thought we were invincible in that way, that we were the super-cop of the world, that we were impervious to violation. But because of the way we’ve set things up, no one is immune. And no one is innocent. When we turn our backs, we aren’t innocent. We have a cultural idea that only the strongest survive, and that we have to compete if we want to succeed. We have lots of ideas that have led us to where we find ourselves today, with too many innocent children dying, too many parents grieving in the streets, too many people suffering.

How it is within us, is how it is around us. If you’re filled with love, you’re going to spread love. If you’re filled with pain or rage, so too, you’re going to spread those things. Anything we see around us is a reflection of something that exists within us, either personally, or culturally. This is why I believe it’s essential that each of us does the healing and the work to make the worlds within us loving and peaceful places to be. Of course that makes each of our individual lives easier and happier and more fulfilling, but it’s also a gift we give to each other. We love to blame “society’ for its ills, but society is made up of human beings.

There are some people who will never do this work. They’re too far gone. Rage has infected their hearts and eaten their brains and made them capable of inhumane thinking and actions. So be it. But that’s a small percentage of the human population. And I have no doubt that if the large majority of us got to work doing a better job of finding peace and steadiness within, we’d begin to do a great job of spreading that around. It’s not the tiny percentage of violent extremists who pose the biggest threat to our well-being. It’s the huge percentage of people who numb out so they don’t have to feel the pain of being human. Because it is painful. It’s also incredibly beautiful. It’s wildly interesting and unpredictable. You never know what’s going to happen from day to day, and you can let that reality terrify you or inspire you to live fully. We’re afraid of pain. We’re averse to discomfort, let alone suffering. But we’re all going to suffer to some degree or another, and we’re all vulnerable. It’s not a level playing field as far as what happens. Some people are born with amazing advantages. Some people endure knifing, piercing losses that make you wonder how they’re going to move forward. But as far as vulnerability goes, we all get the same parameters. We’re all going to die at some point. We all have an incredible capacity to love. Everyone we love will die eventually. We don’t know how long we have, we don’t know how long they have, we don’t know what happens after this. Welcome to the human race, these are the rules of this game. How we live up to them is what defines us.

When you numb out, you turn your back on your own precious heart, and the hearts of all the people who hold you near and dear, but you also turn your back on your place in the whole. You turn your back on all your brothers and sisters. Because as far as I’m concerned, we are one huge family living on one planet. We have some members who are bat-sh&t crazy and full of venom, and there’s no denying that. But most of our family members are decent people with beautiful hearts struggling to manage their own vulnerability and fear. And we could help each other so much by simply acknowledging that.

We don’t need more people who feel alienated and alone, we need more connection, empathy, compassion and understanding. We need that individually, and we need that as a people. Everything you do, matters. You’re an energetic being, and you spread and take in energy wherever you go. The more accountable each of us is for the energy we’re spreading, the more we mindfully try to up the happiness quotient of the world around us with our small actions every day, the more we contribute to a better and more loving world. So don’t underestimate your own power. You’re one of seven billion people, and you’re completely unique. You have a spark to offer that only you can. But if enough sparks come together, we have a raging, burning fire of love we can let loose together. And I really believe the time is now. We don’t have time to keep feeding the old story of us versus them. We need to be a we. Sending you love, and sending extra love out there to anyone who’s lost a family member to an act of violence.

You Can’t Negotiate with a Raging Bull

crazykeys People can only drive us crazy if we let them. A person can spin his or her web, but we don’t have to fly into the center of it to be stunned, stung, paralyzed and eaten. Remember that your time and your energy are the most precious gifts you have to offer anyone, and that includes those closest to you, and also total strangers. Your energy and your time are also both finite, so it’s really important to be mindful about where you’re placing those gifts.

It’s hard not to get caught up when someone we love is suffering, or thrashing around, or in so much pain they don’t know what else to do but lash out. It’s hard not to take that to heart, or to defend yourself, or to try to make things better for them. But you’re not going to walk into a ring and calm a raging bull with your well-thought out monologue, you’re just going to get kicked in the face, at best, and I use that analogy intentionally. People in pain–whether we’re talking about people with personality disorders or clinical depression, people suffering with addiction, or people who are going through mind-boggling loss–are dealing with deep wounds. They didn’t wake up this way one morning. Whether it’s a chronic issue, or an acute and immediate situation, when you’re dealing with heightened emotions including rage, jealousy, or debilitating fear, you’re not going to help when a person is in the eye of the storm. If someone is irrational, trying to reason with them makes you as irrational as they are. You can’t negotiate when someone is in the midst of a fight or flight reaction. We’re all beyond reason sometimes. We all have days when we feel everyone is against us, whether that’s based in any kind of reality or not.

You can offer your love, your patience, your kindness and your compassion if someone you care for is suffering. You can try to get them the support they need. You can make them a meal, or show up and just be there to hold their hand, or take them to the window to let in a little light. But if someone is attacking you verbally or otherwise, we’re in a different territory. You are not here to be abused, mistreated, or disrespected. You are not here to defend yourself against someone’s need to make you the villain. You don’t have to give that stuff your energy, and I’d suggest that you don’t. It’s better spent in other places.

We can lose hours and days and weeks getting caught up in drama or someone else’s manipulation. That’s time we’ll never have back. Of course things happen in life; people do and say and want things that can be crushing sometimes, but the real story to examine is always the story of our participation. If someone needs you to be the bad guy, why do you keep trying to prove you’re actually wonderful? Are you wonderful? Brilliant, get back to it. If someone has a mental illness and they are incapable of controlling themselves, keeping their word, or treating you with respect, why do you keep accepting their invitation to rumble? You already know what’s going to happen. Don’t you have a better way to spend your afternoon? My point is, life is too short.

When a person is in the kind of pain that causes them to create pain around them, your job is to create boundaries if it’s someone you want to have in your life. You figure out how to live your life and honor your own well-being, and deal with the other party in a way that creates the least disharmony for you. That means you don’t get in the ring when they put their dukes up. You don’t allow yourself to get sucked in. Do you really think this is the time you’ll finally be heard or seen or understood? People who need to be angry cannot hear you. It doesn’t matter what you do or say, they have a construct they’ve built to support a story about their life that they can live with; it doesn’t have to be based in reality. Not everyone is searching for their own truth or their own peace; some people are clinging to their rage, because that feels easier or more comfortable, or because they really, truly aren’t ready to do anything else yet. You’re not going to solve that. But you can squander your time and energy trying. You can make yourself sick that way. I just don’t recommend it.

You really don’t have to allow other people to steal your peace, whether we’re talking about those closest to you, or people you don’t even know, like the guy who cuts you off on the freeway, or the woman talking loudly on her cellphone at the bank. You don’t have to let this stuff get under your skin and agitate you. You don’t have to let someone’s thoughtless comment or action rob you of a beautiful afternoon. Of course we give our time to people who need us. I’m just saying, don’t get caught up in the drama. If you need help, try this.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Aisle 5

douglass At the time that I write this, I have an almost-eight year old, and a five year old, and so I spend a lot of time with little kids, and not just my own, and I’ll tell you something about kids, in case you don’t hang around with them very much: Kids know themselves. If they’re angry, they’re fully red-in-the-face angry. If they’re sad, they’re fat-tears-streaming-down-your-face sad. If they’re scared, or frustrated or confused or cranky, they’re all of these things fully, and because they allow their emotions to arise and peak and subside, they cycle through their feelings quickly, and one of the great gifts of being this way, is that you don’t push things down, or edit things out. You just feel how you feel, and you let it out. If you love someone, you wrap your arms around them, and kiss their whole face. If you don’t like something, you tell everyone within earshot how you feel about it. If you want something, you aren’t shy about asking for it. It doesn’t occur to you to shrink yourself, or question your right to take up space in this world. It doesn’t occur to you that you aren’t special and important. At least, that’s how it is if you’re loved and nurtured. These feelings are natural to us.

Now, look, I’m not suggesting that we should all behave the way we did when we were three in every area of life. If you go to the store and they’re out of your favorite brand of peanut butter, it’s not going to be appropriate for you to throw yourself on the floor of aisle 5 and wail, and pound your fists on the tiles at the injustice of it all. If you do that, you will very likely meet a whole bunch of police officers, paramedics, and firemen. Part of the reason a nurtured child lets things out, is that his or her nervous system isn’t yet developed enough to do anything else. Good parenting requires that you teach your children what is okay, and what is not okay, but as a society, I believe we ask our children to edit out and push down too much, and as result, we end up with generations of people who are lost to themselves.

Every loving parent wants her or his child to be happy, healthy, safe, joyful, confident, curious, kind, open, loving and trusting, but human beings are complex, and life is full of everything. We don’t just get the light, we get the shadows, too. We are not going to be happy in every moment. Not everything in life goes into the “positive” category. Some things are brutal, some things are devastating, some things will break your heart wide open. Sometimes, loving parents are so invested in the idea that their children are happy, it’s hard for them to hold space for them to be anything less than that, even for a moment. I hear parents all the time telling their children not to be sad, or scared, or angry. It’s not much different than treating the symptom, instead of the underlying cause. If it were as simple as saying “Don’t be sad”, if that would magically make us all happy, I’d say it myself, but of course that doesn’t work. Is it hard to watch your child struggle or cry or endure disappointment? Absolutely. But teaching your child to push down or edit out her or his emotions because they’re making you feel uncomfortable or inadequate or frustrated or ashamed or confronted, just feeds the cycle of repression. I don’t say that in any kind of shaming way. Shame is the least productive feeling we can have about places where we might need to shine some light.

Many of us received this kind of parenting, because this is what we’re taught as a culture, right? Happiness lies in external things. Push down your feelings of longing and confusion, and just make things look right on the outside, then you’ll feel better. I think we’ve all come to understand that doesn’t work. It’s just going to take time to change the conversation and the story we’re telling as a people. It’s going to take effort and awareness and a desire to check ourselves when we’re tempted to smooth things over, or distract or manage how other people are feeling, whether they’re our kids or our partners or our friends, because people do this with their friends, too. Have you ever reached out to someone when you’re in need, only to be met with advice you didn’t want, that doesn’t help to do anything but make you feel more alienated and alone? When all you wanted was to be heard and understood?

It takes time to shift and breathe when someone we love is struggling. It takes effort to be able to sit with someone’s despair or loneliness or fear without trying to fix it, and I believe the best way to make that shift, is to start with yourself. When you have moments of discomfort or jealousy, of shame or rage or blame, of despair or longing or fear, of loneliness or guilt, instead of trying to distract yourself or numb yourself or run anyway, you lean into it. You breathe into it. You acknowledge how things are for you in this particular moment, which is already morphing and shifting and changing into something else. You allow the feelings to arise and peak and subside. You allow the tears to come, or you allow yourself to feel enraged or bitter or insecure. You sit with that stuff without judging it, because they’re just feelings, they’re not you. You aren’t defined by the fleeting emotions and thoughts that cruise through your being from moment-to-moment and day-to-day. You’re defined by what you do with and about those feelings, by how willing you are to hold some space for yourself just to be human, and by how much you’re able to do that for other people, because that’s a lot more comforting than unwanted advice. That way, you aren’t lost to yourself, you’re known to yourself.

There are many great things we can learn as we grow. We can learn how to listen deeply. We can learn about compassion and empathy. We can learn about showing up for ourselves and for other people. But there are also some things we might have to unlearn. To me, this is a big part of the yoga practice. So much of it is about stripping away anything that isn’t real for you, that isn’t authentic to you, because I do think we know most of the important stuff when we arrive here. We know we need people. We know we need connection, and warmth, and touch and love. We know that it feels good to give love. We know that it’s okay for us to take our place in this world, and to shine. I don’t wish you a melt-down on aisle 5, but I do wish you the gift of coming home to yourself.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Trust Your Gut

hesse Many years ago, I met a guy in the practice room of the Ashtanga class I attended. My boyfriend at the time was also in the class, and this guy showed up one morning and joined the crew. After awhile, we all became friendly, and would sometimes have tea after practice. He was new to L.A., and didn’t know many people out here. He was trying to get his massage business off the ground. We would go on hikes, or try new restaurants together, or have him over for dinner. He’d come take my class, or my boyfriend’s, who was also a yoga teacher. Sometimes the two of them would go out for a beer. Anyway, after a few months this way, we considered him a friend.

One day, he asked if he could give us free massages. He was hoping we’d feel comfortable recommending him to students, private clients, and other yoga teachers, so of course we said yes. It’s a win-win, right? So I went over to his place where he had his table set up in his second bedroom. Dim lights, a fountain going, mellow music, everything you’d expect. I got on the table face-down while he was outside, talking to my then-boyfriend on the phone, giving him the code so he could let himself in when he arrived. He was planning on having his massage after mine. In came our friend, and started giving me this massage. I went in feeling totally relaxed, but after a few minutes, I started to feel really uncomfortable.

The way he was touching me did not feel professional or friendly, and I began to have this argument in my head. Was he touching me inappropriately? Was I wrong? Misreading? I mean, he wasn’t doing anything blatantly wrong. It’s not like his fingers were traveling to places they shouldn’t be; that would have been a no-brainer. It was the energy and the vibe. So I second-guessed myself. I thought, he can’t be touching me in a sexual way. There’s no way he’d do that. He’s our friend. He knows we’d never recommend him to anyone. I must be misinterpreting. Instead of relaxing, I was tensing up, and he was saying my name, and telling me to breathe, and to let go.

I tried to relax, but after a few more minutes, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Everything in my body was screaming that things were not right, and I grabbed the sheet and sat up abruptly, and he was clearly, visibly aroused. I told him to get out so I could get dressed. I told him the massage was over, and he said he was sorry, that he’d had feelings for me. To say I felt sick to my stomach is an understatement. I felt violated and angry and betrayed by a friend. I told him again to get out, which he did. I got dressed and told him I was leaving. He followed me outside, all the way to my car telling me he was sorry, that he shouldn’t have offered the massages, that then, this never would have happened.

Anyway, that was the end of the friendship. He stopped coming to class, and after awhile we heard he’d moved away, but the thing that stayed with me was the ten minutes I stayed on that table, fighting my intuition with my mind. I knew what I was feeling, I wasn’t wrong about it, but I didn’t want it to be true and I didn’t trust my gut. It’s not that it was such a horrendous experience; I’ve certainly been through worse, but it was a huge reminder to me that it’s always dangerous to fight what you know to be true. I really think we do this all over the place.

Maybe it happens in a work situation. We’re unhappy or unfulfilled, or maybe we’re even being mistreated, but we start to talk ourselves out of leaving because we need the money, or we need health insurance, or we have nothing else on the horizon. It can happen in romantic relationships. We know in our heart it isn’t right or it isn’t growing or we aren’t communicating in a healthy way, but we talk ourselves out of rocking the boat, because maybe we’ve invested a lot of time, or we’re thirty and think we should get married, or we want to have a baby, or we have children and can’t even fathom what life would look like if we spoke up. There are a lot of reasons we might try to fight the truth of our experience, and some of them are laudable. When other people are in the mix, like your children, for example, it’s understandable that you might think very carefully about what you’re doing and saying, and I think you want to do that in that case. That doesn’t mean you push down what’s true for you, though, it means you do everything in your power to communicate with clarity and compassion. Maybe you start with, “I’m in pain, and I need to talk to you about this.” You’ll never change anything or save anything by repressing or denying what you know to be real for you; that isn’t sustainable.

You might be terrified, and there’s no doubt it takes guts. Sometimes it takes planning, too. Maybe you need to embark on a serious job search before you give notice at your current job, because you need to be able to keep a roof over your head. Maybe you’ve let a personal situation erode to a point where you feel hopeless, but nothing is hopeless if two people are willing to work. One person can’t do it, but two have a shot. Honesty is everything, and by that, I don’t mean you have to share every single thing that’s ever crossed your mind, or every poor choice you’ve ever made. Some things are better left unsaid. What I’m talking about is clear communication about where you are and what you want and how you feel. Sometimes we allow fear to stop us from sharing those dark and unchartered places, but if you want to be known and loved for who you are, you cannot expect that to happen if you’re hiding or numbing out or running away. You have to trust your gut. You have to be willing to show yourself, and work with reality as it is. Then you see what you can do from there. Then, at least, you have a foundation to build upon. Without that, you’re lost.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Lean Into It

maclaren Sometimes it’s really hard to just “be where we are” because where we are is deeply uncomfortable. Maybe we’re grappling with envy, despair, rage, grief, heartbreak, rejection or feelings of being powerless. Maybe we’re frustrated because we’re making self-destructive choices, and even though we’re conscious of it, we can’t stop ourselves. Maybe we’ve screwed up and need to apologize, but instead we’re digging our heels in. This business of being human isn’t easy, and it isn’t always pretty. But when we try to skip over where we are and rush to something that feels better by running, denying, numbing, or trying to avoid, we simply prolong our pain, and miss a chance to know ourselves more deeply. We’re also less likely to be accountable for the energy we’re spreading.

Learning to witness your experience without judging it, is one of the huge gifts of a consistent yoga and/or seated meditation practice . Maybe you’re on your mat and you feel tight and tired. Maybe you’re confronted with a pose that’s challenging for you, and you decide to take a water break, instead. Maybe you go to sit, and your mind is racing and spinning, so you make a phone call or get on your computer. What we resist, persists. When we avoid, we also miss not just a chance to know ourselves, but also to know someone else. We all long to be loved for who we are and how we are, with all our beauty and all our flaws. A lot of people struggle to do that for themselves, let alone other people. Learning to lean into those uncomfortable feelings and experiences without grasping or recoiling or contracting, takes the power away from the feeling, and gives it back to us. Feelings arise and they peak and they subside. Feelings are not facts, and no feeling is forever, as the saying goes. How we feel now is not how we will always feel, and that includes the great feelings, too. That euphoria and all-consuming heat of new love would be exhausting if it never leveled out into something sustainable day-to-day. Not that you shouldn’t enjoy every second if that’s where you are, and not that you don’t want to stoke the flame every day to keep the fire burning, but that’s a choice; that’s different than being consumed.

The more we open to reality as it is, the less we suffer, and the less we create suffering. The more we accept other people as they are, and where they are, the less we create suffering for ourselves, and for them. No one wants to be a disappointment to themselves, or anyone else, but when we refuse to embrace a person as they are, we set them up to fail. I’m not saying that we don’t all have work to do, and places where we can heal more or understand more, or open more. I’m just saying when a person makes it clear to us where they are and how they feel, either through communication or through their actions, it’s not loving to try to superimpose what we want on top of that, even if we’re motivated by our feelings of love. Instead, our job in that moment is to lean into the rawness of accepting that how we feel is not how they feel. What we want is not what they want. Dancing like a monkey to try to be perfect for someone else, selling yourself, running, chasing, cajoling or manipulating, convincing yourself or them that you can settle for less than what you really want in your heart—all of these are ways we might attempt to deny or avoid the painful reality in front of us.

You will never find peace when you ignore the truth, that much I can guarantee. Of course we want what we want. Are we going to get everything we want? Is every longing going to be met? No. Is life going to unfold exactly like the picture in your head? Probably not. So how do we maintain our center, our feelings of “okayness” under these conditions? We tell ourselves this is how things are right now, for us, or for the people in our lives. We remember that everything is always in a state of flux, including ourselves, those closest to us, and perfect strangers. We remember that we never know what life has in store for us, and that perhaps it will be better than anything we could have imagined. We use our suffering to grow and open more, to become more sensitive, more empathetic, more tolerant, more patient, more forgiving, because we understand we are not alone in this experience. We all cry ourselves to sleep sometimes, or think we’ve made a total mess of everything, or have to face the fact that we haven’t been treating ourselves or others well. Shame, blame and rage will keep you stuck; they’re not a good foundation for growth. Feel your feelings so you can release the heat of them, and move onto whatever is coming next with an open heart, an open mind, and open hands.

Give yourself the gift of getting quiet, so you can hear the voice of your intuition. If it isn’t yoga or meditation for you, then find something—windsurfing, hiking, salsa dancing, something that gets you out of your head, and into your body, and into the flow and the realm of sensation and intuition. I used to long to be happy, but now I’m hungry for the truth, because somewhere along the way I realized that’s the key to peace. You won’t find it in events, milestones, or other people. You’ll find it within yourself when you get hungry for what’s true, and by that I mean, what’s true for you, and what’s true for other people. It makes life so much simpler.

Wishing that for you, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Love vs. Control

michaeljfox One of the key components to a lasting, healthy and happy relationship of any kind, is a foundation of trust and acceptance. This applies to our familial, romantic and personal relationships. The people with whom we feel closest are also the people with whom we feel we can be completely ourselves. This seems so obvious, and yet, we screw it up all the time. We start putting our shoulds on other people. For so many people there’s confusion between control and love, and if you’re dealing with someone who has a harsh inner critic, you can bet that voice is going to reach out and give you a lashing on a pretty frequent basis, too. What we have within us is what we spread around us.

Love requires our vulnerability. It’s a paradox. If you want to love, you have to be soft. You have to be willing to expose the parts of you that aren’t so pretty, that are still raw, and in order to be soft like that, you have to be really brave. Most controlling people did not become that way in a vacuum. A person who longs to control circumstances and other people has been hurt. It’s natural to want to protect your heart after you’ve been disappointed, but you can’t defend and open your heart simultaneously.

Most people believe in their own stories about themselves and other people, and controlling people do this to an even greater degree. In order to justify the need to tell you what you should or should not be doing, they have to build a construct that supports the idea that they know more about what you need to be happy than you do. For many people, “I love you” means, “I love you when you do what I want you to do”; it’s conditional. If love can be withdrawn that way, it isn’t love.

When we go and sit by the ocean, we don’t think, “Wow, the ocean would be so much more majestic if it were just a little bigger or bluer. If those waves were crashing just a little differently.” We don’t look up at the sun and think, “That’s great, but too bad the sun doesn’t shine with a little more pink or gold or orange.” We just take these miracles as they are. People are no different. We all long to be seen and heard and understood as we are. We long to be accepted and known. That doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do, or areas that might need a little more of our kind attention. It just means we long to be embraced with all our beauty and all our flaws. When someone who purports to love us can only seem to find our faults, it’s very defeating.

Fear and love do not play well together. When we’re trying to control someone else, even if we’re doing that because we think it’s in their best interest, we’ve really become confused. We humans are solitary creatures in many ways. We have interior worlds that other people can know only if we let them. I will never know what the right thing is for someone else. Obviously I can recognize if someone I love is putting himself or herself in harm’s way, and I can try to hold up a mirror with concern and compassion. If someone I care for is struggling, or feeding destructive habits, I can try to get them support and help, and offer my shoulder, my ear and my heart, but short of those situations, we each have to find our way.

Sometimes we need the struggle to break free of an old pattern, just like the butterfly needs to struggle to get out of the cocoon. The struggle strengthens the wings. Without that effort, it would never fly. When we try to jump in and tell someone we love that they’re crazy or they’re making a mistake, or they’re screwing up their lives, when we try to save someone from misery or pain, we may be robbing them of an experience they needed in order to grow and open. When we try to manage another person’s path, that’s a marker for us to step back on our own.

The same applies when we chase people down for their love, time, affection or reassurance. If a person is telling you they need space, you really have to respect that. If a person is telling you they are not where you want them to be, you really want to be able to take that in, for your sake and for theirs. It’s not loving or accepting to refuse to embrace the reality of someone we say we love. People are where they are. They want what they want. They have the tools they have. The more we open to reality as it is, the less we suffer and the less we cause those around us to suffer. Reality is not always going to meet your expectations or longings. Things are not always going to unfold like the picture in your head. In fact, most of the time they won’t.

Whenever possible, accept where you are on your journey, and accept where other people are on theirs. Work when you need to work. Give those raw places within you your kind attention. Learn to listen to yourself with an objective ear, instead of pushing away thoughts that frighten or disgust you. You are not your thoughts. You don’t have to believe everything you think, as the saying goes. You don’t have to act on every feeling you have, but you do wan’t to know yourself. You really can’t be at peace if you’re rejecting essential components of who you are, and you can’t love other people well if you’re unable to embrace them and meet them where they are.

Wishing you strength, bravery, clear-seeing, and a lot of love,

Ally Hamilton

May All Beings Be Happy

When we lived in tribes and villages, we were constantly connected. The whole was only as strong as each member. If one of us had food, we all had food. If one of us had a sick child, we all had a sick child. We lived off the earth, we read the stars, we respected the planet, and all the living creatures on it, but we don’t live that way anymore. We buy food in boxes. We live in boxes, and we drive in boxes with wheels, and we go sit in a box and stare at a box all day, and then we go home at night and stare at another one. We like our information in small chunks. We want instant gratification. We’re incredibly quick to create an “us” and a “them.” We’ve really separated ourselves from each other, and I believe this is why so many people are so unhappy. Do you know how many dating sites there are out there? I don’t, but I know there are a lot because somewhere, deep down we understand that happiness is tied to connection and love. It’s just that we go about finding it in such absurd ways. Maybe you’ll find it romantically, but in the meantime, it’s available every time you interact with anyone.

We think about our surroundings as they pertain to us. We get annoyed when it rains as if it’s a personal inconvenience, when we ought to be celebrating. We treat our animals horribly, except for the ones we think are cute. We cut down trees to erect more buildings. We think of the tree in our yard as ours, but it isn’t, not unless we planted it, and even then it isn’t ours. It belongs to the earth and the sun, and it provides oxygen for all, but we’ve lost the thread of connection. Your kid is sick? How awful. Let me distract myself so I don’t have to think about how horrendous that must be, or how it could happen to my kid, too. Some journalists were beheaded? That’s heartbreaking, but let me go to rage and indignation right away because I don’t know how to process the pain of that. I don’t want to sit with that and breathe that in, and think about those two mothers, those two families who are suffering and grieving and trying not to think about their children’s last moments. It’s so hard to lean into that, isn’t it? It’s messy and awful and it feels absolutely devastating, but that’s what we need to do. We need to think about all the people everywhere who are suffering as a result of violence, because regardless of race or gender or religion or culture, they are part of our tribe.

And obviously, there are grieving mothers and fathers all over the world right now. Grieving sons and daughters, sisters and brothers. Blame and rage aren’t going to help us. You know the saying, “If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting”? We need to try something else, and my suggestion would be that we attempt to understand and tolerate each other more, and let me be clear. There are some things that are incomprehensible. There are some people with whom conversation is impossible, because they’ve built walls against anything rational. They’ve created constructs to justify reprehensible actions. I’m just suggesting that wherever possible, we open the door toward more communication. If the majority of us are working together to solve our problems, it’ll be a lot easier to handle small groups of people who’ve lost their minds and closed their hearts, but when division is everywhere, our energy is scattered, and then we’re really in trouble.

The more we create an “us” and a “them”, the more we set the stage for division, rage, bitterness and misunderstanding. I’m sure we can all look to certain parts of the world and recognize how this thinking plays out. People suffer and people die. I posted about how sick I felt after I heard about Steven Sotloff the other day, and someone asked me why I felt sick. If it’s happening to one of our sons, it’s happening to all of our sons. This isn’t a political issue, it’s a human issue, and we need to care; to sit up and take notice and offer our empathy, because we were built for that. If you don’t know what I mean, check out “mirror neurons”. It’s natural for us to care, to extend ourselves, to reach out, but we’ve cut ourselves off.

The village doesn’t gather for dinner every night. We’ve built in so few opportunities for community. You have to seek it out. You won’t find it on line at Starbucks, because everyone’s looking at their phones. One of the reasons communities spring up over social media is that we’re all desperate to know we aren’t in this thing alone. It’s not like it’s an easy gig, but it’s so comforting when we come together and understand we’re so much more alike than we are different. Hatred is taught. Love is natural to us. The more we remind ourselves of that, the faster we change the world around us.

It occurred to me right away that the best way we can practice tolerance is by starting with those people who challenge us the very most. Those people in our lives who are suffering from personality disorders, or a lack of empathy, or the effects of their own trauma or abusive history, because those people are so hard to understand, aren’t they? Don’t we think to ourselves, “How could someone do that? I could never do that.” But maybe you could if you’d lived the life they have. We just can’t know what another person is carrying, what fears or bitterness or rage they’re harboring, what abuse or neglect they’ve endured. It takes a lot to make a person cold and hard and capable of creating knifing heartache. That doesn’t just happen overnight. I believe if we can try to find compassion for those people in our lives who trigger us to our very marrow, then we have a shot at extending compassion to strangers whose actions seem completely foreign to us. I’m not saying you need to reach out to someone who’s incapable of doing anything but lie to your face and stab you in the back. Why set yourself up for more of that?

I’m just saying, try to imagine what life must be like for people who behave with no thought of how their actions are affecting those around them. Or worse, how life must be for a person who’s intentionally and unapologetically hurting other people. That cannot be a peaceful way to move through life, filled with hatred and a thirst for vengeance. Obviously, if someone is hurting us, we do everything in our power to remove ourselves from their reach. But from a safe distance, perhaps we can see that meeting hatred with hatred won’t work. We can forcefully and fully meet hatred with love. We can take the power of that love and defend ourselves against bitterness and rage, because that stuff will erode any sense of hope we have. We can make ourselves safe, but we won’t get there by creating more division. What we need is more connection. We spread around us what we have within us. Our only power lies in our commitment to make the worlds within ourselves more loving and peaceful and compassionate, because that’s the stuff we need to be spreading. In the meantime, if it feels right, maybe we can all think together, “May all beings be free from suffering.”

Sending you so much love,

Ally Hamilton

A Bridge Takes Two

lonelywalls If you have a long history with someone, and you have healing to do around your relationship, or events of the past, understand you can never do one hundred percent of the work. I’m talking about important long-term relationships in your life, with family members, or spouses, or your best friend for years and years. Life is not easy. It’s amazing and interesting. It’s filled with incredible beauty, the potential for love so intense you feel your heart might burst, and pain that can bring you to your knees. It’s always changing, so it’s certainly an adventure, but there’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty, and not everyone is able to handle that easily. Sometimes people cling to their pain or their anger because that feels safer than letting go, and the reality is, the people in the most pain are also the people who create the most pain. It’s not usually intentional. What we have within us is what we spread around us.

If you’ve been disappointed, neglected, abused or abandoned, those are all experiences which might have hardened you, or broken your trust in people. I understand that, but I think it’s important to believe in the goodness of people, and to understand when you’ve been betrayed or abandoned by someone, it’s not a reflection of you, or your worthiness or ability to receive love, it’s a reflection of where the other party is on his or her own path. That doesn’t mean it’s okay if someone abuses you or mistreats you, it just makes it easier not to take those things personally. I think the key is to be discerning, and to understand that it takes a long time to know a person. We all want love and connection, but your heart is precious and it’s important not to be reckless with it. There’s a big difference between living in fear, which is not really living, and taking your time.

The thing is, human beings are complicated. We all have our histories, our pain, our various upbringings, ways we were nurtured, loved, supported, or not so much, so when you bring any two people together, it’s exponentially more complex. And when you increase that number to three or four or five (as in, a family), you can bet the chances for different dynamics to arise just multiplies. I get emails from so many people in pain over their strained or nonexistent relationships with their mothers or fathers, sons or daughters, sisters or brothers, friends from childhood. Things happen in life. Sometimes a person is moving through pain and they lash out, or there’s a family system in place and roles are being played and maybe it’s not a healthy situation, and then one day, one of the players doesn’t like his or her role anymore, and everyone panics as the system collapses. Maybe the whole family is held hostage by one member’s addiction, depression, or mental illness. There’s no shortage of different scenarios. People fight over money (it isn’t usually really the money they’re fighting about), or something someone said at a wedding when they were drunk and full of salmon.

If you have healing to do with someone, understand you need some kind of bridge. It takes two to tango, and it takes two to mend a bridge that’s collapsed. I don’t think a person has to meet you halfway; it’s ideal, but not everyone will be up to that. A person has to step onto the bridge. If you feel motivated to walk the rest of the way, that’s enough, but if a person won’t even take that first step, you’ll be dealing with a chasm and it will be up to you how you want to manage that. Sometimes we can’t have a person in our lives, and sometimes we have to accept that a relationship will never be quite what we want it to be. Not everyone is capable of fearless and honest communication and acceptance. Not everyone can open his or her mind to a different point of view. You can’t force someone to be somewhere they aren’t.

Sometimes we have to choose between two painful options–not having someone in our lives, or having them in our lives in a way that falls incredibly short of what we know is possible. That’s a choice only you can make. You can keep your hands open. You can offer the chance for healing, but you can’t make someone take you up on it, and I know that can hurt. I think closing yourself down and shutting yourself off hurts more, though.

Sending you love, and wishing you peace,

Ally Hamilton

Grow from It

neil Pain creates empathy. Whether we’re talking about physical pain, or emotional, nothing teaches us more about how things are for other people, than moving through pain ourselves. Of course we wouldn’t invite it. No one wants to break a bone, or blow out a knee or a shoulder, nor does anyone want to have his or her heart broken. We wouldn’t ask to be betrayed, or invite grief into our living rooms to sit down for tea, but when you look back on your life, I’m sure you can recognize how your pain has made it possible for you to understand and empathize with people going through their own.

Years ago, I injured my right (dominant) shoulder. I wasn’t listening to my body, I was listening to my teacher. Intense hands-on adjustments were part of the practice, so I just accepted that how I was feeling was “normal”, even though it was hard to breathe during certain “shoulder openers.” Eventually the discomfort turned to pain, and when I mentioned it, I was told it was, “an opening, not an injury.” It got to the point where I couldn’t lift a glass of water without feeling fire in my shoulder, like someone was sticking a knife into it. Chaturanga? Impossible. And at that point, I demanded a cessation of anything hands-on. It took months to heal. My whole practice was about listening to, and accommodating my shoulder. I had to modify a LOT. I was scared and humbled and I wondered if it was going to get better. I was angry at my teacher, but underneath that, I was really angry with myself. What more does your body have to do to grab your attention? Does your shoulder need to burst into flames? Eventually, through patience and rehab and compassion for myself, it healed completely, but I refused certain adjustments from then on because nobody is a better teacher than your own body. Apparently, that was a lesson I still needed to learn. Beyond that, it opened a whole new way of communicating with students with injuries. Prior to that, I knew what to tell someone anatomically. I knew what poses they should avoid or modify, and how. I knew what to tell them to do in order to strengthen, but I didn’t really understand the fear involved, the confrontation, the grappling with being attached to practicing the way we want to, and are used to practicing. As always, attachment leads to suffering.

I think for most people, fear is the worst part. We start to panic, and think things will always be this way. It’s the same when we’re heartbroken, grieving, depressed, or feeling stuck. Instead of opening to how things are, we contract. We resist. We tense up and try to push the experience away, or tear through it. Either of those responses prolongs the suffering. We don’t have to receive everything as a gift. We don’t have to be grateful for every loss or heartache we’re going to endure. That stuff does not have to go into your, “Thank you for this experience” file, but we never want to lose the opportunity to grow and open, and to pull some value out of our painful experiences, to allow them to soften us rather than harden us.

There are some things that happen in life that forever change us, and that’s just the truth. Certain knifing losses can change the shape of our hearts, and the way we’re moving through the world. There are some things we’re simply going to carry within us, but even those can make us softer and braver and kinder. That’s the amazing thing about the human heart. It’s resilient; it wants to heal. The most compassionate, insightful, empathetic people I know are also the ones who’ve suffered the most, and there’s beauty in that. Of course there are certain lessons we’d rather not know. Certain pain we’d prefer to keep in the box of “not me, thanks, I’ll pass on that opportunity to grow more”, but of course we don’t get to choose. Whenever you can, open more, reach out more, and trust that everything is always changing, and how things are now, is not how they will always be. Pull the beauty out of the pain, so you can withstand it and grow from it.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Feed the Love

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of backlash about the #ALS #icebucketchallenge (http://www.alsa.org/about-us/ice-bucket-challenge-faq.html). If you aren’t familiar with ALS, it’s a progressive neurodegenerative disease that effects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. There are a few instances where ALS “burns out”, or the progression slows, but for most people with this disease, it’s about prolonging survival. At this point, we don’t know the cause of the disease, and are only able to offer one drug to slow its progress, although there are many drugs going through clinical trials. In case you’ve somehow missed it, the ice bucket challenge is a charity endeavor gone viral, wherein people dump a bucket of ice water over their heads, and then donate to ALS, after nominating three other friends to follow suit. If your friends don’t want to douse themselves, they’re invited to donate instead. So far, this effort has raised $94.3 million since July 29, 2014. This challenge was a grass-roots effort that was started by families with members suffering from ALS, and caught on when celebrity athletes and professional sports teams began taking the challenge.

In California, we’re dealing with a record-breaking drought (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/28/californias-drought-what-losing-63-million-gallons-of-water-looks-like/), so it’s totally understandable that people are concerned about a viral challenge involving buckets of water being wasted. There are people who are in areas of the country where the drought isn’t an issue, but still feel we shouldn’t waste resources. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I gave a TEDx talk about this very thing, not too long ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw0EE2poWSA.

I’ve seen people posting a meme of a child who looks utterly dehydrated as a person holds a cup to his lips, clearly meant to depict a third-world country (where many people are suffering due to a lack of clean water), next to pictures of “stupid Americans” dumping water over their heads. Then yesterday, my beloved friend Paige Elenson, who moved to Kenya years ago to teach yoga, and to teach locals to teach yoga with Africa Yoga Project http://www.africayogaproject.org/, posted a video of her birthday celebration at work. Apparently in Kenya, when it’s your birthday, they…dump buckets of water over your head to “wash away the past”! Here’s Paige, in Africa helping, and not just helping, but shining her light all over the place. So let’s talk turkey for a minute.

I’m in California, and I did the #icebucket challenge. As it happens, my mom nominated me, and after I educated myself about ALS, the ALS Association, the challenge itself, and the amount of water we were talking about (a couple gallons), I decided I’d do it over my parched lawn, and take a shorter shower that day. When you run your shower, you’re using 7-10 gallons of water per minute http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.faces. So you can do the math on that. If I had it to do over again, I’d take a bucket and a little ice down to the ocean, use ocean water, and call it a day. If a person wanted to be totally awesome, they could pass on the ice bucket part, make a donation, AND shorten their shower. But you know what doesn’t help anyone at all? Getting self-righteous about this stuff.

There are plenty of things we, as Americans, can improve upon. Like, a lot of things, but one thing we’re pretty good about is caring for each other. I was in New York City on 9/11, and I’ve rarely seen such an outpouring of help, empathy, activism and kindness. We could use more of that, not less. In fact, I’d argue that the more we build upon and feed that natural tendency, to help each other when we need support, the faster the world around us would improve. There are so many things you can do to get involved and make a real impact if you want to. You can support Paige’s efforts in Kenya. You can make a donation to ALS research. You can donate or volunteer for Matt Damon’s Water.org, dedicated to bringing clean water to everyone everywhere (and you can check out his awesome #icebucket challenge here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlGhuud-s4w), but knocking other people down for trying to help out won’t serve anyone. Let’s build on the love. That’s really all we need to do.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

What You Allow

gaskins You can’t control what other people will do or say, but you can choose the way you’ll respond. This comes up in so many areas. Maybe you have a family member who has a history of being verbally and emotionally abusive, and now you’ve gotten to the point where you simply don’t want to subject yourself to that treatment any longer. Lots of things can get us to that place; we’re always evolving. Maybe you’ve reached a point in your healing process where you’re ready to set boundaries. Maybe you have children now, and you’re able to speak up on their behalf, even though you’ve never been able to stand up for yourself. Whatever it is, you won’t change the offending party, but you can definitely change the way you interact with him or her.

Speaking calmly but with confidence about your experience is a gift you give yourself, and everyone in your life. Being able to say, “When you do this, it makes me feel X, and X is not okay for me anymore. So from now on, when I come to town for a visit, I’ll stay at a hotel. We’ll see how things go. If you’re unable to not do or say X, then at least I can remove myself from the situation.” You’re taking responsibility for your feelings. You’re not blaming them or making them wrong, you’re just stating how things are for you, and how you’ll be honoring what’s true for you. If the other party tells you not to come if that’s how it’s going to be, so be it. You aren’t here to be a punching bag for anyone. If the requirement is for you to subject yourself to behavior or comments that are hurtful, that’s too great a cost. If a person can’t be kind and loving, if that’s too much to ask, they don’t belong in your life. If you want them in your life anyway, then you have to set boundaries that work for you, and if even those can’t be respected, then you’re left with no choice but to walk away.

When we start to make changes in the way we relate to the people around us, you can bet there’s going to be push-back. This is especially true if we’re shifting a role we’ve always played. I used to be a lot less assertive. Sometimes people would say hurtful or inappropriate things to me, and I’d collapse in on myself and internalize the experience. I’d have the feeling of being punched in the stomach, way down where it really hurts, but no words would come out of my mouth. When that started shifting for me, I was met with resistance and threats and rage. How dare I stand up for myself? But that’s your job, that’s your work. You carve out a place for yourself and a way of being that brings you peace and joy, and you don’t sacrifice that for anyone. Most people come around. They might scream and yell and wave their arms, but eventually, most people will quiet down and shift the way they deal with you. So you’re not changing them or teaching them or making them wrong, you’re just requiring a certain level of respect and consideration. You’re changing the rules of engagement.

This is an essential component of healing. You have to be able to act on your own behalf. You have to value your own tender heart, and your peace of mind, and your ability to look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day when you’re brushing your teeth. When we allow ourselves to be mistreated, we also betray ourselves, and it’s hard to face that. If you grew up feeling powerless, it’s likely that you regress to that stance when you feel confronted, and when you start trying to assert yourself, it will probably come out with more force than you intend and that’s okay. You can tell the people in your life that you’re trying to change some profound things about the way you’re moving through the world, because the way you’ve been doing it so far is not working for you. You can explain that you’re working on standing up for yourself, and speaking up when things don’t feel good or right, but that this is a new experience, and you’re still birthing into this new way of being, and it isn’t all going to be pretty. Maybe they’ll take that in, and maybe they won’t. You’re not responsible for managing anyone else’s reactions or path, you’re just responsible for your own clear communication. Practice with people you trust. Like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

Moving through life allowing yourself to be disrespected is not going to work; it’s too much to bear. If you need support with this, reach out. I do coaching sessions, but I can also recommend wonderful therapists. Hitting a bag or taking a kick-boxing class might not be a bad idea, either.

Sending you love and wishing you strength and peace,

Ally Hamilton

The Voice Inside Your Head

negativecommittee Yesterday afternoon my son, who’s seven, was practicing the guitar. He’s been taking lessons for less than a year, but he’s doing really well. I love to listen to him play, it brings tears to my eyes. This week, his teacher told him to stop whenever he makes a mistake, and “loop back.” This is a new way of working; in the past, if he made a mistake he’d keep going. Anyway, he was having an “off day.” He couldn’t make his fingers move as quickly as he wanted to, and he couldn’t make the notes sound the way he wanted them to sound. After about twenty minutes, he came out of his room frustrated and in tears, and told me he was “never going to get it.”

So I went in and sat down with him, and asked him to breathe a little before he started again. I also talked to him about the voice inside his head. I asked him if he was aware of that voice, and he looked at me like I’d discovered some huge secret of his. He asked how I knew he had a voice inside his head, and I told him we all do. I told him about a ballet teacher I had when I was thirteen. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, it was never good enough. He’d berate me in front of the whole room of dancers with scathing remarks. I felt the burn of shame so many times as I spun and spun on my toes in that room with him. In the years I studied with him, he only “broke” me once. There was an afternoon when a tear slid down my cheek, and even though I wiped it as I danced, he saw. It was the only time he asked me if I was okay. Years later, after I’d quit, I ran into him on Broadway. He asked me where I was dancing, and I told him I wasn’t. He was shocked. He said he’d always been especially hard on me because I had what it took. I told him for me, personally, hearing that then would have made all the difference in the world. I didn’t need “tough love” and I didn’t need shaming. Someone who believed in me would have worked wonders.

The thing is, we often internalize those voices we hear growing up. If we’re told we’re loved and cherished, if we’re made to feel that we have an impact on the people and the world around us, we’re likely to have a pretty kind and forgiving inner voice. If our effort is acknowledged, we learn to appreciate our process, instead of getting hung up on the results, but if we’re met with constant criticism, if we get the message that we never measure up, we’re very likely to develop a loud and relentless inner critic. My son’s guitar teacher is an incredible guy. Kind, loving, patient, encouraging, and tough in all the right ways. He’s bringing out the best in my son. Anyway, I explained to my boy that an inner voice that roots you on is a huge help as you move through life. Shame is a poor teaching tool, and it’s a horrible constant companion. Telling yourself you’re having a tough moment is a lot kinder than saying you’ll never get it, and it’s a lot more accurate.

I get lots of emails from people who are in pain, and so many of them are incredibly hard on themselves. We all make mistakes. We all have pain, and we all struggle. None of us acts from our highest self in every moment, or in every situation. Sometimes we have healing to do in a certain area, and maybe we’ve been avoiding that work, and then it springs up and bites us in the ass, this raw place within us that’s crying for our kind attention. Sometimes we make a mess of things out of sheer confusion and desperation. Beating yourself up isn’t going to serve anyone, and it isn’t going to aid you in your growth process. It really isn’t. Telling yourself you’re a terrible person who screwed up and made your own bed which you now deserve to lie in isn’t going to help you get to the source of what caused you to move in the direction you did in the first place. It’s okay. You’re human. Just start where you are and examine what happened with a compassionate eye. You’re not a terrible person who deserves to suffer. You didn’t set out to hurt anyone. If you were that kind of person, you wouldn’t torture yourself about it. You see what I mean? If you feel badly, it’s because you have a kind heart. Maybe you made some really poor choices. So be it. Get to work figuring out why you weren’t respecting yourself. Or why you didn’t speak up and say that you were feeling unseen or unheard or unloved.

Life is short and amazing, or long and painful. I’m pretty sure those are the options. And I think the key difference is how you’re talking to yourself. If the world within you is loving, it makes it so much easier to move through the world around you. I can say for myself, I worked this out on my yoga mat. I took that loud, shaming voice and I starved it. I stopped believing in it. I stopped giving it power or credibility, and I fed a loving, kind, patient, compassionate voice. I still worked my ass off, but I did it with a smile on my face, because it feels good to be in a healthy conversation with yourself.

Wishing that for you so much, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

How to Love People in Pain & Still Love Yourself

Earlier this week I wrote about being held hostage by someone else’s depression, addiction, personality disorder, or general instability, and I heard from a flood of people who wonder what to do when these challenging people are cherished loved ones. I heard from many mothers, struggling with their children, grown, or almost-grown, or very little, and from people who are having difficulty with one parent or the other, a sibling, their partner, their best friend.

I’m going to say the most excruciating thing is watching your child suffer. That’s a pain and powerlessness that’s simply brutal, and if that’s what you’re grappling with, walking away is not an option. If we’re talking about depression in a small child, you have to find help; a great therapist would be step one, there are brilliant people who specialize in working with children. If finances are an issue, and you’re here in the states, go to http://www.nami.org/ and get some support for yourself and your little one. This is a great resource for anyone suffering from mental illness, or loving someone with mental illness, at any age.

Parents who watch their grown children struggling often blame themselves. I’ve heard a lot of that over the last few days; the heartache and feelings of failure and shame, so I think the first thing I’ll say, is please try to stop beating yourself up. If you were there, if you were present, if you loved your child with everything you had and did the very best you could, you have to release yourself from feeling that you’re the root of your child’s suffering, whether your child is 19 or 49. If you didn’t do a great job with your parenting responsibilities because you were a child yourself when you had your babies, or because you were suffering from your own mental illness, personality disorder, addiction or depression, that’s a heartbreak for you and your kids, but blaming yourself just perpetuates and feeds the pain. Let go of blame.

We’re all going to suffer. This is not an easy gig. The parameters make us all vulnerable, and some people have a harder time with that reality than others. There are people who always see the glass as half empty. People who look on the dark side of things, expect the worst from people, and feel frequently disappointed in themselves. If you’re seeing that tendency in your little one, I’d get in there and point out a different perspective whenever you can. Keep re-framing things for your child, but also be sure to normalize their feelings. There’s such a desire to make everything okay for our little people, and loving, well-meaning parents say things like, “Don’t be sad”, or, “Don’t be angry”, or, “Don’t be scared,”, but the truth is, these are normal human emotions we’ll all experience. When we, as children, get the sense that certain feelings are not okay, like fear, or sadness or anger, we start to push things down. We start to edit ourselves, and that’s the beginning of loss and confusion. We become lost to ourselves. Also, show them what it looks like to be a forgiving and compassionate person. When you make a mistake, acknowledge it, but don’t berate yourself. Our kids do what we do, not what we say.

If you see your little one feeling down, you might just speak out about it, as in, “Hey buddy. You seem a little blue today. Everything okay?” If you don’t get far with that, you can get more specific. “What was the best part of your day today?” and, “What was the hardest part of your day?” Just keeping the lines of communication open is huge. Making your child understand that s/he is safe to talk to you about anything, any feeling or any situation, or any confusion that might arise creates a foundation of trust. Naming what you’re seeing in a loving way is also good. “It seems like you’re focusing on everything that isn’t going well. Can you think of three good things that happened today? Or one thing you’re really thankful for?” Basically, you are your child’s nervous system when they’re little. They can’t always self-regulate, so you’re helping them learn how to process and integrate all the things life is putting in their path, whether that’s the changing structure of your family, a friend who’s moving away, a new school, bullying or exclusionary behavior from someone else, or their own acting out. Any intense emotion that’s flooding their little nervous system might require some help from you. The steadier you are, the easier it will be for them to lean on you, and the more you’re accepting of all their feelings, the more comfortable they’ll be to share everything with you.

If you’re dealing with your older child, and this could mean your teenager, but it could also include your 50 year old child, you’re in a different area. With depression, I’m going to recommend what I did above; a great therapist is the place to start. If you’re dealing with addiction, then chances are the whole family is being held hostage, and you’re going to need help for everyone. There’s always a family system in place, roles each person is playing, a dynamic between all parties which needs to be examined and, in most instances, changed. If it’s serious, rehab may be your best hope, with additional support for every member of the family. Al-anon is a great resource here, both for people suffering with addiction, and the family members around them, but search for yourself, because there isn’t just one way, or one solution. There are obviously so many different situations with all their complexities, but understand when you’re living with and loving someone who’s addicted to drugs or alcohol, you’re also in the mix. You can’t save them, but you can do everything in your power to get them some help, and I think radical honesty is a good bet in that case, too. If you have things you want to own, own them. If there’s anything you wish you’d done differently, tell them, but also let them know they’re on their own path now, and they have the power to make it great, or to stay stuck and that you’re going to help them, but you’re not going to enable behavior that keeps them powerless.

If you’re dealing with mental illness or a personality disorder, it’s rough. Certain behaviors can’t be helped, they can only be regulated. It’s not easy to love in the first place. It requires that we make ourselves vulnerable, and it’s really hard to do that, and even reckless, when we don’t feel safe. So loving someone you cannot rely upon to be steady is no easy feat. It’s hard to love and protect yourself simultaneously. I think the best thing you can do in that case is have enormous compassion for yourself and set up a solid support system, so you don’t feel isolated in your experience. Find those people you can trust, and lean on them when you need to; sometimes our feelings of being hijacked and imprisoned make it hard to reach out. Think about what you need to feel respected and understood. This is where boundaries come into play. You can love someone who’s having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. You can love someone who careens from high highs to low lows. You can love someone who says one thing to you one day, and something completely different the next. But it’s not easy. As always, your first responsibility is to your own heart. If you betray that, you won’t be able to help anyone.

Sending you love and hugs,

Ally Hamilton

Free Yourself

Sometimes you realize you’re being held hostage by someone else’s instability, mental illness, or addiction. This can only happen if you care deeply in the first place; that is, if you’re invested in the relationship, or if this person is in your life and it’s not easy to extricate yourself from all communication or connection (your boss or colleague, for example). Often, we meet people and they may present one face to us, but inside it’s a whole different story. It takes time to get to know people, and even time won’t get the job done if a person wants to keep things from you. We only ever know the interior world of another person if they give us access to it.

If you’re a warm, trusting, open person, you probably project and assume that other people are also that way. That’s what we all tend to do, we make assumptions about other people based on how things are for us, and that’s a great way to have your eyes opened, but it probably won’t feel very good because we can never assume, and we can never project. We all have our various upbringings, experiences, ways we were supported or neglected, different tendencies and dreams, varied emotional lives, relationships, things that are driving us consciously or unconsciously, heartbreaks, levels of resiliency, disappointments, achievements and fears. How things are for me is not how they are for you, but we exist in this same world. We just cannot expect other people to see what we see, even the things that seem totally obvious to us.

People with addictive personalities are usually very good at hiding their addictions or tendencies, and I don’t say that without compassion and understanding. It’s awful to be a slave to a numbing agent, to feel like you have to have access to your “fix” at all times, whether we’re talking about drugs and alcohol, or sex, or the internet, or shopping, or eating disorders. So you might observe erratic behavior in someone you’re getting to know, but think it’s just an “off day” here and there. Mental illness can work the same way. Maybe you’re dealing with a personality disorder that renders a person unable to consider how their actions impact the people around them, but unless you’re a target, you might go a good long while before feeling like something isn’t right.

Sometimes, in order to be close to someone, you have to accept their version of reality. Maybe you’ve known people like this. I once had a girlfriend who had a serious drinking problem. When I’d try to talk to her about it, she’d say she was a social drinker, and I was over-worrying, but I poured her into a cab enough times to know this wasn’t something to sweep under the rug. I talked to her mother about it, but she wasn’t ready to face it, either, and when I refused to be quiet about it, my friend wrote me off. In certain situations, there’s nothing you can do but walk away and hope a person decides to get help before it’s too late.

There are many people attached to their stories about what’s happened in their past, and why things are the way they are, and why they are the way they are. I lived that way during my late teens and early twenties, and it was awful. Blame keeps you stuck pointing, when you really want to be digging. You’ll find most people living this way are angry or bitter or depressed, and probably all three. I once became friends with a guy who had story after story about how he’d been screwed professionally. First by this company, then by another, and I believed him, I believed he’d been unfairly overlooked, unappreciated, and mistreated. Then he went to work for close friends of mine, and I watched him blatantly sabotage every opportunity he had to grow. He was more attached to the sad story than he was to writing a new one. When I tried to point that out to him, he became enraged. Sometimes people cling to their stories because they aren’t ready to take ownership of their lives yet. They use their anger like a shield, and anything you try to say or do bounces off. It’s understandable. We all have our coping mechanisms, and you can’t make a person be somewhere they are not.

If you’re attracted to the “walking wounded”, you’re probably going to encounter people like this, and I’ll just remind you in case you need to be reminded, you cannot save anyone. You can love people and you can try to get them help and support, but you can’t make another person happy, or compassionate or kind or loving. You can’t make anyone fall in love with you. You’re not going to change the way someone moves through the world. This is all inside work; everyone has to do their own journey. You can decide who you want to bring close, and who you want to keep at a distance. Often, you won’t have to make these decisions, they’ll be made for you. If you back someone against the wall and ask them to be accountable for what they’ve done, and they aren’t ready to do that, they’ll head for the hills, anyway. Pay attention to your tendency to draw people close who aren’t able to do anything but hurt you. Don’t participate in someone else’s instability. You can’t fix it, but it also doesn’t help when you enable it. It doesn’t help them, and it doesn’t help you. Create boundaries where necessary, and defend them when you must. You can’t control what other people do or say or feel or want or need, but you can control the way you choose to respond. Just keep your own side of the street clean, the rest will take care of itself.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Breathing Through Sensation

thichclouds Emotions create sensations. When we say we’re enraged, we’re describing the feelings that are flooding through our bodies—maybe our blood pressure is rising (thus we’re “hot-headed”), or the breath is shallow, or the jaw is clenching or the shoulders are up around our ears. When we say we’re depressed, we’re describing the weight of being listless and hopeless, of having no energy to get out of bed, or take a shower or “start the day”; we’re describing that ache that’s settled into everything. When we say we’re in love, we’re talking about the endorphin rush that’s coursing through the system, making us feel giddy and excited and “drunk” on someone else. If we’re feeling jealous, we’re really talking about that burning deep in the belly, that primal instinct that tells us we’re threatened.

The next time you’re having an intense emotion, observe what’s happening in your body. Get quiet if you can, sit up tall, close your eyes, and see if you can just breathe in and breathe out, witnessing your experience. For so many people, when uncomfortable feelings arise, the tendency is to run, or numb, or deny, to “push” the feelings away, or sit on them, but no feeling is forever and when we race from how we feel, we lose an opportunity to know ourselves, to figure out where we are, what we need, and why we’re feeling what we’re feeling. Why are we enraged? Are we feeling disrespected, unseen, unheard, or invisible? Is that an old, familiar feeling, and if so, when did it first arise? When we understand what’s happening within us, it’s a gift we give to ourselves, and all the people in our lives; it’s a relief. Things that felt skewed and uncomfortable suddenly fit, even if we’re left with a feeling of grief, rawness, and deeper understanding of where we still have healing to do. Now we can be accountable for the actions we’re taking, the things we’re saying, and the energy we’re spreading.

Conversely, racing to numb a feeling robs us of all this very valuable information. This is the source of all addiction, this idea that we “can’t take it”, that we have to do something, that the feeling is going to do us in unless we act. When I say addiction, people jump to drugs and alcohol, and of course those are big ones, but plenty of people are addicted to shopping, or the internet, or exercise, to eating or not eating, to throwing themselves into relationships or turning to sex to make the painful feelings go away.

If we want to be at peace, we have to come to an understanding about who we are and what we need. Not knowing yourself is the loneliest feeling there is, and it’s also a sure way to flail around through life. Happiness will be short-lived and accidental, something you just fall into by chance. One of the biggest gifts of a consistent yoga practice is the ability to breathe through intense sensation. Sometimes the quadriceps are on fire, or there’s a “fire in the belly”, and we breathe and observe. Then in life, when painful or pleasurable sensations arise that threaten to throw us off our centers or rob us of our peace, we breathe and observe. I think when we say we want to be happy, we really mean we want to feel that inner steadiness. We want to feel we’re living in alignment with what’s true for us. We want to be able to identify what’s blocking us, or inspiring us, or terrifying us, so we can work with that stuff. When we come up against some pain, some jagged, raw place within us that still needs our kind attention, we want to be responsible with our feelings. We want to show up for ourselves and other people in a way that feels good. We want to believe in our ability to have a positive impact on the world around us. There’s no way to do any of that if we run every time a difficult feeling arises.

Sending you love, and wishing you peace,

Ally Hamilton

The Game of Life

A few weeks ago, my kids and I were introduced to “The Game of Life” when friends of ours brought it over to play one night. If you aren’t familiar with it, you start off in a car and you make choices along the way. Maybe you decide to go to college. You might pull over to get married and have babies. You might hit the jackpot, find your dream job, or lose big if you decide to take the risky route. Anyway, you get the picture. Since we’d never played before, we read the directions before we started, and under the section, “How to Win”, it says, “The person with the most money at the end wins the game of life.” So, of course, we had a big conversation about how untrue that is in real life, not that this is a new topic around our house.

But it got me to thinking. Can you imagine if the board game resembled actual life? Okay, folks, here are the rules! You’re going to start off in your little car, and the road underneath you is going to be shifting all the time, so there’s no point in giving you a map; good luck figuring out which way to turn! Maybe you’re going to get a great car, and maybe your car is going to be running on fumes, because all the players start out with different advantages. Your home might be full of love, or you might live with an abusive alcoholic, who knows?! Then, you’ll start making your choices, mostly in the dark because you’re supposed to know what you want to do and who you want to be by the time you’re eighteen. And some of you will be nurtured and supported and you’ll have good self-esteem, and some of you will be neglected or mistreated and you won’t believe in yourself at all, so you’ll all have different tools at your disposal. Also, at any time, you could be killed, and so could any of the people you hold most dear. We can’t tell you what happens after you die, or they die, and we can’t tell you how long anyone has, this is all part of the game! Okay, everybody, let’s have some fun!

I mean, seriously, who would want to play that game? It’s crazy, right? But this is the gig. Now, of course, I’m being a little facetious. Because there’s so much that’s amazing and incredible about this experience of being human. So much beauty and depth and love and light and emotion that just fills your heart with yes. Being able to love the way we do, for instance. Being able to care, to extend ourselves, to share, to connect. It’s pretty awesome. But the parameters are crazy, and for a lot of people, they make the game of life a painful journey. You don’t get to know what’s coming. You don’t get to have any reassurance that your big life decisions will pan out the way you hope they will. You don’t get to “pin people down”, or depend on any kind of stability, unless you nurture that within yourself.

And that’s really the key to this game. Figuring out what will bring us peace as we journey onward. It’s the moments. When you look back on your life so far, I’m sure there are moments that stand out. Some of them are beautiful and some of them are devastating. Time folds in on itself, and we can travel back to moments inside of a single blink, a scent on the air, something someone says that jogs a memory we haven’t thought of in years. Maybe we have moments when we felt humiliated, ashamed, caught with our pants down literally or figuratively. Maybe we have moments when our trust was betrayed and we stood in the shower at 3am, our tears and the water mixing together, the pain in our hearts overwhelming. Maybe we have moments when we thought we wouldn’t make it, only to be gifted with the greatest treasure we’ll ever know. But they’re moments that make up the fabric of each of our lives. And they’re borne of our ability to be present and engaged with our intuition. That’s the only worthwhile map you’re going to get. You can’t count on the road to curve a certain way, even if it did yesterday. You can’t count on people to stay the same, because they won’t, and neither will you. You can’t count on conditions around you, because those are also part of nature, and as such, constantly in flux. If you want to “win” this game of life, you have to be true to yourself.

This will almost undoubtedly mean you’ll have some dragons to slay. We all have pain, and our pain is our path, but most people run like hell from it, sending their cars careening this way and that, running into trees, walls, telephone poles, blowing out their tires, and stopping only to get gas. Not a fun way to journey. When you fight for peace within yourself, you might have to pull off to the side of the road for awhile, and it might be deeply uncomfortable or painful, but at least you find liberation that way. So you can get back in your car and slow down, since you now understand there’s no need to race, and that racing will actually cause you to miss precious moments that could have happened if you hadn’t been in such a rush, to what? Escape death? You’ll realize the thing is to roll down your windows and take in the sights and the smells and the colors, to feel the wind whipping through your hair, and the sunlight or the rain on your face. You’ll realize the sound of laughter always trumps the sound of a text message coming in, and that a look from the right person can take your breath away.

The rules aren’t easy, but the experience is incredible. Hoping you’re slowing down and letting in the light. Sending you love, Ally Hamilton

Let’s Get it Together

Yesterday as I walked out of a grocery store carrying a case of coconut water to my car, two guys on the street passed me, and as they walked away, one of them turned around and said over his shoulder, “Great ass”, and his buddy said, “Damn, girl.” I was immediately thrown into a state of conflicting feelings about this: part of me wanted to laugh, because really? I’m not a girl, I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m a yoga teacher and a writer and a business owner, and these two guys just treated me like a piece of meat. Another part of me felt enraged and frustrated. That’s a compliment, right? These guys thought that what they said was going to make me feel good. I’m supposed to enjoy the fact that someone thinks I have a great ass, but I’ve also just been casually reduced to a body part. This is so acceptable in our society, I’m expected to blow it off if I don’t like it, roll my eyes or shake my head and go on about my day as if it isn’t a big deal to be stripped of what makes me, me, by two complete strangers. That’s what my daughter is supposed to do one day, too.

I grew up with a dad who loved women and struggled with fidelity. He especially loved tall thin women with big boobs and tight butts, and long flowing hair. I met so many of my dad’s “women friends” growing up, the mind boggles, but I came to understand from him that most of the value of a woman had to do with how she looked. I don’t think he meant to teach me this. He always encouraged my writing and reading and creativity, so it wasn’t that he didn’t like smart women, because he did, but on the street his head would turn, or he’d point out some feature he really liked about this one going by, or that one over there, and as his daughter I got lessons in his preferences like I was his wingman. I also saw the way men looked at my mother as I grew up. She’s very attractive and never had trouble turning heads, and that seemed to give her some power. When we diminish women this way, and when we, as women, buy into this idea, we do a disservice to both genders. We also have a whole bunch of people who are transgender, or don’t relate fully to either gender. The way we think about roles is really outdated.

Last week I took my kids to meet friends of ours at a sushi place on Main Street. We like avocado rolls, so sushi restaurants are usually a good bet. When we got to the place, though, there were 3 big-screen televisions on the walls. In the chaos of sitting down and getting settled, I wasn’t paying attention to what was on the screens, but after we’d figured out who was sitting where and ordered, I noticed my daughter, who’s five, looking up at the television facing us. On it, were very young Japanese girls in tiny shorts and skirts, and little midriff tops, gyrating, and playing with their hair, and blowing kisses to pop songs. If it was just me, I’d shrug it off and not look, but I don’t want her taking that in. Not at five, and not ever. I leaned over and said, “You don’t need to look at that. Those are just girls who think they have to dress that way and dance that way so people will like them. They’re confused.“ I told her the conversation we were having with our friends was a lot more interesting. Then I look across the table, and see my son staring at the screen behind me. I turn to look, and it’s a beer commercial, with a girl with her boobs sticking out. I told my son he didn’t need to be watching that, either. It turned out it was a football game. I look to my left, because I’m hoping for National Geographic or something. My kids don’t get much television time. A few shows that are educational and cool, but that’s about it. So of course it’s enticing to be in a place with three huge screens. On the third screen, I kid you not, is “Shark Week.” It happens to be an episode about a rescue mission to save people who were on a boat that capsized near a hungry shark. The shark started eating people, and they had this on film, and I thought, things are bad when there are three choices, and I’d pick having my kids watch people getting eaten by sharks. We ate our rolls and got out of there, and won’t be going back.

Here’s the thing. Nothing is black and white in life. We all have our masculine and feminine sides, and we are beautifully different, but completely equal. We balance each other out. When you get too much testosterone in the mix, and not enough estrogen, I’m sorry, but things start to explode. We start shooting things up. We need each other. We need the action and the fire and the strength to get things done, and we need to be able to be soft. We need to be brave enough to be soft.

We’re training our boys, who turn into our men, to think of women as pretty objects, to separate them into different body parts. “Nice ass”, “great tits”, “long legs.” We’re visual beings. Women are, too. “OMG, that guy is so HOT.” It’s just, as a society, we’re taught to think of men as virile and powerful, so even if you try to reduce a man to the sum of his parts (and I hope you don’t), those parts are still holding the cards. When we, as women, dress ourselves in tiny skirts and push-up bras, what we’re saying to men is, “I know you can only really think with your small head.” We need women who are not spending the vast majority of their time and energy obsessing over how they look or what they weigh. If you see a woman, and you think, “Great ass”, I hope you immediately remind yourself that she’s a human being with an interior world you know nothing about. Maybe she’s carrying a lot of pain. Maybe she’s grappled with loss, fear, shame, insecurity. I know when I look at a man all those things are probable because it isn’t a gender thing, it’s a human thing. This is a tough gig. We don’t need to be reducing each other, we need to be uplifting each other. We have real problems in the world. We need to work together, and we could help each other so much if we recognized and acknowledged that. If we taught our girls and our boys to value people for who they are, not how they look, or what body parts they have.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

You Might Not Get Everything You Want, But…

allow Depending on your personality, and many other factors including the way you grew up, your level of self-esteem, and your ability to speak out about how you feel, creating boundaries with people may be a great challenge for you. I really get that, because I struggled around this issue for years.

What makes it difficult to speak up when you want to? Maybe you’re worried about disappointing other people, or not being able to show up the way they want you to show up. Maybe you grew up and felt you had no impact on the people or the world around you, so it never occurred to you to value or investigate what you felt or what you wanted. Maybe you’ve decided that your worth as a person, a friend, and a partner is based upon how much you’re able to do for the people in your life. And maybe, you don’t know how you feel, so when you come up against a strong-willed person, you let them take the lead.

The thing is, your job while you’re here is to shine. I really believe that; you have something precious and unique to offer that only you can. I don’t think you’ll be able to do that without some belief in yourself and your own value, so I’d look at that first, if you find it difficult to act on your own behalf. If you don’t feel good about yourself, why is that, and when did that begin? Upon what evidence did you come to the conclusion that you don’t measure up, or have anything enormously special to offer? When we don’t stand up for ourselves, it’s often because we’ve grown up feeling powerless. We’ve internalized that, and sewn it into the fabric of our being. When confronted, we collapse in on ourselves. We cope, when we should fight back. But if you’re grown up, you’re not powerless anymore. Sometimes we really have to unlearn ideas or ways of being that are not based in our current reality, and are also blocking our ability to both give and receive love to our maximum capability (which is huge).

A few weeks ago, I took my daughter with me when I went to get my eyebrows waxed. This place is nice, and they have organic cruelty-free nail polish, and they’ll paint your kid’s nails while they wax your eyebrows and whatever other parts you might want waxed. So there we were. My daughter went to pick out a color, but she’s five, so she picked four colors. She wanted a rainbow. They don’t charge to paint your kid’s nails. You tip, of course, but they don’t charge for it. So I was debating whether to tell her that might be asking for a bit much, when the woman called her over, and the waxing woman started talking to me. When I turned back to my daughter, she had pink nail polish on every nail, and was looking down at her hands, and up uncertainly at the woman painting them, and then she looked at me. I knew she was disappointed about the lack of a rainbow. Before I could step in and explain to the woman what it was my daughter had wanted, this grandmotherly woman at the table next to her, also getting her nails done, leaned over and said, loudly but nicely, “She wanted a rainbow. She wanted a different color on every nail.” My daughter beamed at her, and the woman said, “Always ask for what you want, dear. You might not get it, but you definitely won’t if you don’t ask!” And the woman who was painting her nails promptly and happily gave her her rainbow.

Communicating how you feel, what you need, and what you’d like is a gift you can give to the people who are close to you. It’s so refreshing when people are just honest about where they’re at, and what’s happening within them. As my friend at the nail place said, you might not get everything you want, but it never hurts to clearly state what that is. It takes the mystery out of the thing. No one can read your mind, and sometimes we project and assume so much. We think other people must think and feel the way we do, so certain things should be obvious. But you know what? I would take nothing for granted. What’s obvious to you might not even occur to someone else.

So there’s clear communication, and then, sometimes, there’s the need for boundaries. Maybe you have someone in your life who hurts you, intentionally or otherwise. Sometimes, even when it is a family member, your only healthy option is to step away, but there are certain situations where that isn’t possible or desirable, and that’s when boundaries come in. You may not get everything you want in life, but you deserve respect. Ideally, you shouldn’t have to fight for it, but that’s not always how it goes, and sometimes we have a long history with someone, and there are ingrained patterns and dynamics. When we seek to shift that stuff, there’s always resistance. Most people struggle with change, and if you’ve been playing a certain role for a long time, don’t expect to be able to calmly give your two weeks’ notice. People in your life have probably gotten used to you being the way you’ve been. That’s understandable, but that doesn’t mean it can’t change, it doesn’t mean you can’t change. You may lose some relationships if you’re making big shifts in your life. Those close to you may feel threatened, they may feel like they’re losing you. Or they may get angry and say they liked the “old you” better. Of course. The old you didn’t confront them.

Anyway, my point is, there are times in life when you have to stand up for yourself and say, “Enough.” That’s part of the responsibility you bear; you have to be able to protect your, “little spark of madness” as Robin Williams called it. You can’t let people trample on that. If this is new for you, it will take time, like anything else. The first several times you speak up when you’re not happy with the way you’re being treated, it might come out with more force or aggression than you intend. Of course, you’ve been bottling up your voice for so long, it’s not surprising it might explode, but if you stay with it, and explain to the people in your life that you are in pain and are trying to change some essential things about the way you move through the world, the people who are meant to travel with you will support your efforts. Over time, you’ll be able to speak out with confidence, clarity and compassion about what’s real for you. It’s worth the effort. You deserve a rainbow if that’s what you want.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Grappling with Your Truth

plans Most of us know what’s true for us long before we act on it, especially when we’re talking about making huge life shifts. Sometimes we agonize for weeks, months, or even years, because so much hinges on maintaining the status quo. This can happen in our personal and professional lives. People stay in jobs that crush their souls for all kinds of reasons. Some are practical—they need to keep a roof over their heads and food in their refrigerators, or they need health insurance for themselves and their families. Sometimes the reasons have more to do with low self-esteem, or a lack of self-respect. People tell themselves every day that they are not good enough, that they don’t measure up, that they should be thankful for what they have, because who are they to think that things could be different? Who are they to pursue their dreams? There are all kinds of reasons we convince ourselves we’re stuck, and when you’re speaking about the necessities of life, of course those are real. But if you’re in a job that’s sucking the life out of you, I wouldn’t accept that as “the way things have to be.” I’d do everything in your power to seek out another opportunity somewhere, because 80 hours a week is a lot of time to spend feeling like you want to scream.

It happens in relationships, too. Sometimes two people come together, and despite all their best efforts, they grow in different directions. Maybe they came together when they both had healing to do, and attempted to cover their individual pain with a relationship. Maybe there are kids in the mix, and now it’s brutal; staying is painful, and leaving is painful. Sometimes those are your choices. It’s human to agonize when we’re faced with a decision that impacts the people we love, but ultimately, if you’re in a situation that’s crushing you, you’ll never be able to nurture yourself, or anyone else to the best of your ability. Maybe you can get creative. Maybe you can go for radical honesty with your partner, and come up with a way to stay, and not feel like you’re losing yourself, and maybe you can’t, but allowing your light to go out is never the way. Numbing yourself or editing yourself until there’s almost nothing left of you won’t serve anyone. Distracting yourself, running, denying, keeping everything on the surface level will not be sustainable for the long haul.

So what do you do? I think first you get quiet so you can really allow yourself to feel whatever it is you’re feeling, and face those realities head on. There’s no point hiding from yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to act on your feelings. It’s just that it’s such a relief to acknowledge them, to lean into them, to accept them, and accept yourself. Then, at least, you’re dealing with your own truth. Getting support from someone objective is also a great idea, and communicating honestly is a must. I don’t believe anyone would thank you for keeping them in the dark, or staying in something out of guilt, shame or pity. Maybe you can resurrect the thing, but the only chance you have of that, is if you start building with blocks of truth. You can’t build anything that lasts on top of lies, bitterness, resentment or rage. You want to be seen, right? You want someone to see you, to understand you, to cherish you for the person you are, but you give no one the opportunity to do that if you repress what’s real for you. Is it scary to start a conversation that may change the course of your life, and the lives of those you love? Absolutely, but it’s less scary than decades of betrayals, emotional or otherwise, and I’m talking about the betrayal of your own heart, as much as anything else here.

If you want to be at peace, you have to allow what is true for you to rise to the surface and spill out of your mouth, kindly, confidently, and with compassion.

Sending you love, and wishing you peace, in the coming year, and always,

Ally Hamilton

Tackle It

writingonthewall Sometimes people get really clear on what their tendencies are, but that’s as far as they go. Maybe you know people like this. I used to date a guy who was brilliant in this regard; if something came up between us and I talked to him about how I felt, he would focus and listen and completely own his end. He could tell me what had driven him to do what he did, or say what he’d said. He would acknowledge that he understood why I would feel the way I did, and he’d apologize, and I’d think, awesome. He really heard me. We understand each other. We’ve had some really good communication. But then the next time a similar situation presented itself, nothing at all would change. It was like “Groundhog’s Day”, only not funny.

Identifying our stuff is a huge step. It’s definitely a big part of knowing ourselves, so we can be accountable for the energy we’re spreading and the actions we’re taking, but if that’s as far as we go, we’ve landed in a ditch. Sometimes I get emails from people, and they say things like, “Well, I have an addictive personality, so sometimes I lie,” and I’ll ask, “Is that the end of the story? You have an addictive personality, so you lie?” Or I’ll hear, “My dad left when I was four, so I have abandonment issues.” I may have said that once or twice in my own life. The thing is, your abandonment issues don’t make it okay for you to cling or manipulate or bend over backwards to be perfect so people won’t leave you. Life isn’t going to feel good like that. Knowing what your issues are is huge. Then you can be aware when you’re in a danger zone. If you have fear of being left and you keep picking people who are unavailable, you can rightly assume you still have some healing to do around the first time you felt abandoned. You don’t have to let that one ancient event predetermine your whole destiny. You don’t have to keep replaying the old tape again and again.

Other classic examples of identification without the follow-up work? “I have fear of commitment”, “I have fear of failure”, “I felt invisible as a kid so I need attention all the time”, “I felt invisible as a kid, so I cringe when people notice me”, “I learned you can’t trust anyone, so I don’t.” You get the picture. It’s what we do about what we know that matters. If you have fear of being abandoned, that’s yours to grapple with and tame, it’s not your partner’s work, it’s yours. Do you want to choose people who are compassionate when you’re going to be intimate? Of course. Do you want to be able to share your struggles and allow yourself to be vulnerable? Yes. But your pain and disappointments and heartbreaks do not give you free reign to act out all over the place. It’s never okay to check your partner’s emails or text messages, even if your last partner cheated on you, or you grew up in a house where infidelity was the norm. That has nothing to do with your partner, and it is not their job to allow you to violate their privacy because you feel triggered. Having a conversation about your feelings is fine, but even that will get old after awhile. A therapist is a great call if you’re struggling with internal demons. I can tell you I slayed quite a few on my yoga mat, and in a therapist’s office. I find that to be a winning combination by the way. Therapy is a great place to become aware of what’s scaring you, or blocking you from living life in a way that feels good to you, and a yoga mat is a great place to start to starve the voice that tells you this is how you are, or this is how things are. You don’t have to believe everything you think, as the saying goes. Everyone is different, of course, and part of the work is searching for healing modalities and combinations that are going to work for you.

In order to liberate ourselves from our issues, we have to heal the original wounds we’re carrying. We can’t play this stuff out in the present and expect that to be the balm that soothes us, because in order to create a similar dynamic of pain, you’ll have to pick people who cannot give you what you want. That’s the hook, that’s what snags you. All you’ll accomplish that way is the creation of more pain for yourself, and more information that affirms your false assumption that “everyone leaves”, or “everyone cheats”, or whatever it is you’re telling yourself. If you want to heal, you’ll have to dive into the source of your pain and face it head on. This is the only way I know to free yourself. If you could run, I’d tell you to run. If you could solve it be pretending it isn’t there, I’d say go ahead, pretend. If you could numb it without killing yourself in the process, I’d say do your thing, and if you could heal by replaying ancient pain in your present, with people who don’t know how to do anything but hurt you, I’d say go right ahead. But none of that works. You’re just on a train, crashing into a wall, and that becomes less and less pleasant, no matter how many words and explanations you give it. Who cares why you’re crashing into a brick wall? At a certain point, don’t you want to just not do that anymore?

It’s wonderful to be able to know yourself and articulate how things are for you, but ultimately, these things are more interesting to us than they will be to anyone else and they’re more useful to us, as well. Stopping at the identification process is like picking a dish off the menu, but not eating it. Time to grab your fork if you need to!

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Don’t Chase Love

chaselove Whenever you find yourself trying to force or control an outcome, it’s time to perk up and take a look at what’s happening within you. We’re all going to be attached to certain ideas; this is the nature of being human. For example, we’ll all want our loved ones to be happy; perfectly understandable. But if we start to assume that we know what will make someone else happy, then we’re in trouble. The minute you try to manage someone else’s path, you’re losing a chance to keep your own side of the street clean.

A lot of the time, we’re taking things personally. Maybe there’s someone we really care for, and we’re chasing. Right there, it’s a problem. You don’t chase love, you open to it. If you have to take off after it, that’s a huge red flag. Instead of spending your time and energy wondering what you can do to be perfect for this other person so you can get their attention and make them fall in love with you, you could be examining why you’re feeling so badly about yourself you’d tie up your Nike’s and chase your worthiness. You’re worthy. You’re the only one of you we get. You think you aren’t worthy of love? If someone isn’t offering it to you fully and openly, what are you doing? Have you ever talked to a couple who’s in love, and has been for thirty, forty, fifty years? I have. I make a habit of it any chance I get. I love to see couples who make it, and not once, in all the conversations with all the people I’ve met over the years, has any couple told me a story about a beginning that involved one person feeling deeply insecure all the time, and the other not treating them well. That’s not a solid foundation, and it won’t lead anywhere good. Also, it isn’t loving to race after someone who doesn’t want to be caught. If you love someone, you have to want for them what they want for themselves. If someone is making it clear to you that they aren’t available the way you want them to be, it’s disrespectful to refuse to accept that. It’s not just disrespectful to them and their feelings, it’s disrespecting yourself to keep trying.

It can hurt like hell when people we love don’t want what we wish they would want. This happens when we relate to the world and the people around us as if it’s about us, as if we’re in the center of this thing, and everything is happening around us or to us. When you can remove yourself from the center of the story and look at it from the sidelines, you’ll see it usually has very little to do with you. People want what they want. They are where they are. They have the tools they have. They may not want you, or anyone else the way you wish that they would. It’s also a bit nuts of us to imagine we can ever know what’s right for someone else. Isn’t it hard enough to grapple with what you need for your own inner peace? As long as a person isn’t intentionally hurting you or anyone else, you really have to assume they’re doing the best they can to work life out in a way that will feel good to them. Sometimes people don’t know what they want, and that can be hard to watch and hard to walk away from if you’re hoping maybe they’ll finally realize they want you, but you aren’t here to wait, because there’s not enough time for that.

When we start to try to control situations or people, when we find ourselves attempting to manipulate or cajole, or dance like a monkey to get what we want, it’s time to stop and check ourselves. Life is not about forcing the picture in your head onto the people around you–that picture of “how things should be.” No one will thank you for trying, and not many things cause us more pain than our attachment to that picture. It can be so hard to let it go, I really understand that, but grasping and waiting and hoping and struggling and doubting and obsessing….that is no way to live.

It’s brutal to have to release an idea, or another person, or a hope we held close, but you can’t cling and fly at the same time and you don’t have all the time in the world. I wouldn’t spend too much of it refusing to accept and open to things as they are; there’s so much power in that. Your self-respect is in the mix. So is your self-esteem. This is the stuff that has far-reaching consequences for your life, the way you move through the world, and the way life feels to you, day in, and day out. Let life feel good. It might hurt a lot in the short-term, but intense pain for a little while is so much better than a lifetime of suffering.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Ways That Life Will Feel Good

innerguidance When you start to live in alignment with what’s true for you, life becomes so much simpler. It’s easier to say no when you mean no. It takes away the murkiness between people and around situations that might have left you scratching your head in the past, because now, you can just open your mouth and say, “I feel really weird. What’s going on?” It gives you the power to direct your energy, because you know what you want, and so do the people in your life. You don’t have to waste time or energy making excuses for yourself, or anyone else.

It’s not always easy to get there, and you can multiply that by nine million if you have certain tendencies, like people-pleasing, or feeling you aren’t supposed to be taking up any space. There are genuine problems in life; all we have to do is read the paper for three minutes to verify that, but a lot of the problems people grapple with are self-created. Not all of them, so let’s be clear. There are heartbreaking, piercingly painful losses we endure sometimes, and some people more than others, but I’m not talking about that right now. I’m talking about a loud inner critic you may have been living with your entire life. A relentless voice inside your head that is unforgiving and full of should. I’m talking about ideas you may have about yourself that are blocking your ability to be happy, to be at peace.

What stops us from listening to our hearts, and calmly but confidently moving in the direction we know we must if we want to rock it out in this life? Fear. Fear that we aren’t enough. Fear that our deepest desires may not be in line with what others had hoped we would want. Fear of hurting the people we love. Fear of trying, and failing. Fear of change and of loss. Fear of proving to ourselves that we aren’t able to do it, after all.

Here’s the thing. You’re alive. You’re living this life, and it’s going to feel good, or it isn’t. Ways it will definitely not feel good: If you let your shoulds rule your life. If you don’t try because you might not pull it off. If you allow yourself or other people to talk you out of your dreams. If you never act on your own behalf because you don’t feel good about yourself. If you believe everything you think, especially the nasty, mean-spirited stuff. If you marinate yourself in envy or bitterness or rage. If you keep a mental list of every way you’ve ever been wronged, betrayed, abandoned, and disappointed. If you never let anyone know you, really know you because you’re so caught up in worrying about what people would think if you dropped the mask. These are all ways life will feel very long and painful.

Ways that life will feel good: If you take ownership of the one thing you can, namely, how you face what you’ve been given. If you look your pain, losses, heartbreaks and betrayals in the face and say, okay. That happened. That hurt. Here’s what I’ve learned from these experiences, here’s how I’ve grown, here’s how I’ve become more empathetic and compassionate as a result. If you remind yourself every single day of all the things you do have, right now. If you remember to let the people in your life know how you feel about them. If you feel the fear of not being enough, but go for it, anyway. Because you’re going to be here, right? You’re going to be living these days, and living truthfully feels a lot better than living in fear or blame or powerlessness. Maybe all your dreams will come true, and maybe they won’t, but you’ll feel a lot better about yourself if you’re following your heart. It’s not like tomorrow is promised, or that life is going to start somewhere out ahead of us after we get everything figured out. Life is happening right now, this minute.

If you’re stopping yourself from following your intuition, it’s time to get some support. We all need that sometimes. It might be a teacher who inspires you, or reading something that raises your consciousness, or it might be a good time to try therapy, but I wouldn’t just wait for things to get better magically. You know the saying right? If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting. If what you’ve been doing isn’t working out so well, it’s time to try something else.

There’s only one of you. I really do not believe you’re here by accident. You have something to offer only you can, but you won’t be able to do that if fear is blocking you at every turn, or if that voice inside your head tells you you can’t. I can share with you that for me, personally, yoga was the way I eroded that inner voice that was so harsh and critical and relentless. I got on my mat, and I just didn’t feed that. I didn’t heed it, either. I kept feeding a loving, patient kind voice. For me, I needed an experience that was happening in my body. I needed the visceral feeling of hitting a challenge and seeing what came up for me. It wasn’t pretty or easy. It took a number of years, but knowing yourself and accepting yourself is certainly worth the investment of a few years, right? Developing a healthy, happy relationship with yourself is the thing, wouldn’t you say? I can tell you it feels a helluva lot better having a voice in my head that roots for me, than one that tears me down and says I’m unlovable at my core. Life does not have to feel that way, but you have to meet yourself where you are. It won’t get better unless you get off your a$$ and make it better. That’s the truth. You have to work, but what better use of your time is there than to make the world within you a more peaceful, loving, kind, compassionate place to be? So you can make the world around you, and between you and those you love, a more peaceful place to be; what’s more pressing than that? If you need help along these lines, try this series, or if you’re looking for community, interaction and support, you still have 48 hours to sign up for my next online course! See if that sparks something within you, but don’t let life go by for too long feeling stuck. We don’t have forever.

Sending you so much love,

Ally Hamilton

You Take the Keys

pemahearts When I was in college I had a roommate for one semester, I’ll call her Jane. I didn’t know her, we were just placed in a room together. Jane liked boys. A lot. I walked in on Jane with so many different Tarzans, we finally devised a system. Not that Jane was ever troubled if I showed up in the middle of her eggs being scrambled, I just found it awkward, and Jane was annoyed by the fact that I found it awkward. When I wasn’t interrupting something, I’d come back to our room and find sweaters of mine thrown in a corner, sometimes stained, or I’d go looking for a pair of shoes only to discover Jane must be wearing them. She was catty, and cold, and never had a kind word to say about anyone, not that she talked to me much. I tried to get to know her, but she really wasn’t open to that, nor did she have any other girlfriends. If I saw her on campus, she was almost always with a group of guys, and might acknowledge me with a look, but not a friendly one, and not usually. One morning I walked into our tiny shared kitchen and howled because I stepped on a shard of broken glass. Jane had knocked over a vase, and simply thrown a towel over the mess. Finally, frustrated and done, I requested a new roommate. The paperwork took a few weeks, but there was light at the end of the tunnel.

One afternoon after I knew my days with Jane were coming to an end, I walked in to find her alone in her bed. She looked awful, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were glassy and she was groaning. She had the kind of flu where you just want to dig a hole and bury yourself until it’s over. Her fever was incredibly high, but she refused to let me take her to the nurse, so I went to the store and bought soup and juice and bread for toast, and came back and made her a little lunch. I sat on the edge of the bed and put my hand on her forehead, and Jane started crying. Not just a tear or two streaming down her face, but the kind of crying that sounds more like keening. Primal, deep wailing. I was stunned, but I just held onto her until she quieted. It turned out Jane’s mom had left when she was a baby, and never looked back. Her dad had raised her but he wasn’t the most emotional guy. No one had ever made her soup before. I wish I could say this was the beginning of a close and lasting friendship, or tell you that I still know Jane and that all is well with her, but that moment with the soup was all there was, because the next day Jane was back to her dismissive ways. In fact, she was even more hostile. When I packed up my things before winter break, I left Jane a card with my new phone number and a note that said she could always call me for any reason. I never heard from her, but I think about her a lot. Especially when I meet someone who’s challenging to be around, or whose behavior is difficult to understand. Everyone has pain, everyone is struggling with something.

When you feel as though someone is “driving you crazy”, understand they can only do that if you let them. Checking in with yourself when you’re feeling enraged, frustrated, trapped, or shut down with someone is really essential. Sometimes a complete stranger can “drive you crazy” by talking loudly on their cellphone in a cafe, or not holding a door open, or letting you merge on the freeway. Sometimes it’s someone you like who isn’t responding the way you wish they would. The story that matters is always the story of our participation. What about the situation is triggering us? Why, for example, would you allow the driving habits of a stranger, no matter how annoying they might be, rob you of your own peace? Or affect your blood pressure, or the way you’re driving, or what you’re doing with your own middle finger? What is the real source of the anger or insecurity or lack of trust this person is tapping that already exists within you, and did long before s/he came into the picture? If you’re really tweaked, consider whether it’s old stuff. Are you feeling powerless? Rejected? Abandoned? Are you repeating a pattern of interaction that feels awful and very familiar at the same time? This is the way challenging people can become some of our best teachers. The potential for growth and greater understanding about who you are and where you’re at is always available. If someone cuts you off on the freeway and you feel a surge of heat rush to your face, you really ought to be yelling, “Thank you!” and not, “F&ck you!” out the window, because they just helped you release and explore some of the rage that was already within you. Next time you’re dreading hanging out with that person who drives you up and down a wall, see if you can turn it into an experiment where you drive instead. They can do and say anything at all, and you will still drive your own car, peacefully and mindfully, slowing down whenever you need to hop out and explore the terrain.

Sending you love, and wishes for a peaceful ride without the use of your “traffic finger” 😉

Ally Hamilton

Just Be There

Sometimes the very best thing we can do for someone is hold some space for them to be where they are, to listen intently, and reflect back our understanding with love. To say, “Yes, of course that would hurt. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.” That’s often the best we can do for people, reassuring them that they are not alone in their experience, that we get it, that we’ve been there, or that we haven’t been there, but still, we can mourn with them, or just be there to make a meal, or take them for a walk. It’s very hard when people we love are suffering, or grieving, or enraged, or feeling bitter, or maybe all of those things at once. It’s natural to want to get in there and fix it, to brainstorm about solutions, or to offer our unsolicited opinions about what our friends should do. The reality is, we never know what another person needs for his or her own healing or grieving process or growth. Sometimes people are in so much agony, the people around them become uncomfortable, and this discomfort propels them to give their friend a push to “get back on their feet.” That’s really the last thing a person needs to hear when they have no way of doing that for themselves. As Earl Grollman rightly states, “The only cure for grief is to grieve.”

Some wounds are self-inflicted. Sometimes we need painful lessons again and again until we get it. That isn’t easy to watch, and of course if someone you love is harming themselves, we’re in a different territory. Then, you step in and do everything you can to get them some support, or you find some for yourself so you can honor your own needs and boundaries while you try to offer a hand up, or a shoulder to lean on. But you can’t save anyone, and if you’re confused about that, you’re in a precarious position. We can never carry the burden of another person’s pain, nor can we be responsible for anyone else’s happiness. Each of us must do our own journey. We all have to find a way to be at peace within ourselves, and sometimes the journey to that peace is fraught with roadblocks, self-imposed, or provided by the twists and turns and losses of life.

Whatever we have to bear, having loyal and understanding friends with whom we feel safe can be such a comfort. Knowing that there’s at least one person we can share our fears or insecurities or doubt or shame or guilt or jealousy with, without hearing a solution we didn’t ask for and don’t want, is really a gift. It’s hard to just listen. I think a lot of people feel like that isn’t enough, that if someone is coming to them in some pain or discomfort, implicit in their sharing is a request for advice. People will ask for our opinions if they want them. Most of us don’t listen to advice, anyway. We tell ourselves that’s the way it is or was for our well-meaning friend, but it’s not the way it is or will be for us. I’ve gotten into the habit of asking close friends when they share with me, “Do you want me to just listen, or do you want to know what I think?” People will tell you. Most people just want a safe space, and some understanding. Hoping we can all be, and have, friends like that, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Carpe Diem

If you’re alive, you’re vulnerable; this is the nature of reality as a human being. We have our bodies with their unknown expiration dates. We don’t know what will happen from one day to the next. We love people. They also have unknown expiration dates. We don’t know what happens after this. That right there is the stuff–what more needs to be acknowledged for all of us to embrace the fact that to be human is to be vulnerable?

A lot people run from this reality, even though we all know it’s right there, under the surface. There’s a desire to numb out, to distract ourselves with busyness, to make our plans and meet our deadlines and workworkwork, because that’s what we’re supposed to do. We’ve set it up so there isn’t a choice. If we want to keep a roof over our heads and food in the fridge, if we want to be able to pay for healthcare and send our kids to college, we need money, and lots of it. So we put our heads down and we work. We look forward to the weekend, and we (maybe) take a week or two a year and go travel somewhere and think, “this is the life.” We’re so tired most of the time, we have coffee houses on every corner, and we have our devices to save time, except they suck time. We go meet our friends and text other people, missing moments to connect, to be present, but we’ve all heard this before, right? We know this. It’s just, what’s the option?

Tomorrow isn’t promised. I know no one likes to dwell on that, and I’m not suggesting we should. Living in fear isn’t really living. There’s no point getting worked up over all the things that could happen. Hopefully we will all live to see many tomorrows, but I think if we can be brave enough to face our circumstances consciously, that can inspire us to truly live every single day, and to be kind to one another. Not everyone can meet the pain of this thing with ease or grace. For a lot of people, it’s a messy, thorny thing. A great many people struggle with the big picture, and the unanswered questions. We lose gorgeous souls every day to depression and addiction, because the weight of their despair is too much, the pain is too great.

Sometimes a person has one face for the world. Maybe that face is always lit up, always smiling or laughing, or spreading joy, but inside, the pain is crushing. We feel so shocked when we lose people with huge gifts, but everyone has an interior world, and everyone suffers to one degree or another. Loss is a constant. We lose our keys. We lose a moment to say something. We lose our innocence, maybe too soon. We lose our possibility to not know something, like what it feels like to be abused or betrayed. We lose someone we love because they need something we can’t give them. We lose someone we love because they’re taken from us. We lose, and we grieve, and you never know from the outside what someone is carrying, unless they tell you. Even then, we each carry our own pain. You can’t take it over for anyone. You can’t make things all better. We all have our demons to face, and we face them the best way we can.

It lacks empathy and understanding to suggest a person who fails to manage their pain in a healthy way is selfish. Depression robs a person of hope. Imagine feeling the worst sadness you’ve ever felt, and believing it would never, ever get better. No one wants to be in pain. No one wants to hurt the people they love with all their hearts. No one wants to be a slave to addiction. Sometimes people lose the battle. They get tired. Maybe they’ve been fighting for years, for decades, and they just can’t find the strength anymore. When depression and addiction take over a person’s life, they also stamp out the light, the beauty, the joy, the possibility to connect in a meaningful and sustainable way, and we have to understand that, and let it inspire us to reach out more, to put our phones down and connect with each other. To hold the door open, or let someone merge on the freeway, or acknowledge the person who just handed you that much-needed cup of coffee. You never know what someone is going through, but you know there’s the potential that whatever they’re facing may not be easy.

Life can be brutal, and loss is inevitable, but along with that exists so much beauty. The feeling of your child’s chubby, soft little arms around your neck. The genuine smile of someone you love. The sound of laughter, sunlight on your face, the ocean, the breeze on your check, a moment of recognition, of breakthrough, of being seen with all your flaws and all your gifts, the happiness of those you love, tears between friends, the overwhelming feeling of gratitude just for the experience of being alive, finding those things that light you up, traveling with people who understand you. All these things exist simultaneously. As much as you can, pay attention to the gifts. Try not to get caught up in racing through your life. You’re only going to have this one life in this body you’re in, that much we know, and love and connection are the best things we have here. Immerse yourself in that stuff. Uncover your gifts and share them. Open to love, give it, receive it, spread it. Celebrate the people you cherish, and celebrate yourself. Try to do each day that way, and you’ll have a beautiful life.

Wishing that for you, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Take the Road Inward

dalaiactions The desire to be happy drives all of us, but sometimes it drives us in the wrong direction. Anything we do, we do because we believe it will bring us peace or contentment or feelings of joy or gratitude, even things we do for other people. I teach because I love it. I love the feeling of being in a room full of people who are breathing and sweating and focusing and looking at themselves in an honest way, in a safe space. I love the co-creation of that space, and I feel grateful that I can offer ideas that might help someone to heal, drawing from my own healing journey over the last twenty years. It feels good. Doing things for my kids makes me happy, even if I’m exhausted and have answered nine million “why” questions by the end of the day. Folding those tiny tee shirts, or pairing up those little socks makes me smile, because it’s so fleeting. Soon my son’s socks will be bigger than mine, and my daughter will be rolling her eyes as she heads out the door with some guy I’m going to vet like I work for the FBI.

Anyway, my point is, if you ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing, or why you want what you want, I can almost guarantee you’ll find it’s because you think this course of action will lead to your happiness. If you’re on a diet, maybe it’s because you haven’t been treating your body well, and are now trying to make friends with it again, eating whole foods, and drinking lots of water, and tuning in to your body’s needs and desires. Or maybe it’s because you’re buying into the insanity that you can never be skinny enough, but if only you could, you’d meet someone fabulous. See what I’m saying? Whether it’s a healthy or unhealthy motivation, you’re doing it because you believe it will lead you somewhere good.

If you’re working a ninety hour week because you think a lot of money will make you happy, and someday you’ll be able to retire and enjoy yourself, I’d say that’s not a good course of action because tomorrow isn’t promised. If you’re chasing someone who isn’t really giving you the time of day because you believe if only you could “have them”, then you’d be happy, I’d say you’re also on a thorny path, but sometimes we’re in pain, and that’s what’s motivating us. We’re coming from a place of lack, and we attach our happiness to external things, people, events or circumstances, and so here we are on this quest to be happy, but we’ve taken the road to misery. I think a lot of people are living this way.

Ask yourself why you want the things you want. It’s a good exercise, and you don’t have to share your findings with anyone (although a great therapist can be very helpful in this regard). Make a list of those things or people or brass rings you’re chasing, and hold them up to the light, because you don’t want to spend too much time racing down Misery Lane. You really might need to recalibrate your GPS, and set a new course. Happiness is inside us. You don’t have to run or race or travel to find it. You really have to get quiet, so you can hear the voice of your intuition, so you can tap into that inner knowing. It’s got a very clear voice. It will tell you “yes, this”, or “no.” It’s just that sometimes we’ve drowned it out with a lot of shoulds.

It took me a long time to be happy. I spent a lot of my young adult years convinced I’d be happy, when…and you can fill in the blanks with so much stuff. I also spent a lot of time blaming other people for my unhappiness. Those are flip sides of the same coin. If your happiness lies in something or someone outside yourself, your lack of this person or thing or event becomes responsible for your unhappiness, but the truth is, no one is responsible for your peace of mind, or lack of it, but you. We each have our own work to do to unearth our joy, our passion, our gifts, those things that light us up, or terrify us, or inspire us. We all have to look at what’s holding us back, where we might be blaming, where we might be stopping ourselves with self-limiting beliefs. You have to know yourself if you want to be happy. A huge house isn’t going to help you with that, and neither is the “right” person. You’re the right person. Knowing yourself and accepting yourself is inside work. So if you’re looking for a road to get you there, pick the road inward.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Healing After Rejection, Betrayal or Abandonment

oprah Few things feel worse than being betrayed, left, or rejected, and yet, most of us will experience all of these at least once. The first time something like this happens is the worst, because we don’t have a frame of reference for it; we’re left to piece together the “new normal”, even if it happens when we’re little. I still remember the morning I woke up and my mom told me my dad didn’t live with us anymore; I was four. I remember going to his drawers and closets, and opening everything up, and trying to make sense of this new reality. At four, you have no tools, you just have feelings, but it’s not much easier at twenty-four, or ever.

When someone hurts us, for whatever reason, particularly someone with whom we were very close, it’s knifing. If you have any doubt about your value as a beautiful human being with something special to contribute, few things will bring it into greater question than the feelings we suffer when someone leaves us, because the deep fear is that they got close enough to see the truth of our unworthiness. They got to know us, and actually, they decided we were not so special. Most of the time, that’s not at all what has happened, though.

First of all, if someone betrays you, they’re in a place where they are not respecting themselves. Anyone who lies to your face, or fails to communicate information that deeply impacts you, is lost to themselves. Lying feels terrible. Resorting to sneakiness because you’re unable to express what’s in your heart is a certain kind of agony. Even worse is when a person is in a place where they can justify terrible behavior by making everything your fault. Sometimes people are so desperate to feel something, anything, to break the chains of their own apathy or discomfort or despair, they just act out. My point is, a person who acts in a hurtful or careless way is not in a good place on his or her own path. Their current lack of kindness or integrity is not a reflection on you, or anything lacking within you. It’s a reflection of where they find themselves on their own journey.

If you’ve been left in the dark, that’s so painful, and I’m sorry you’re going through that; a lack of communication when something comes to an end is a coward’s choice. The inability to honor what was once beautiful is a real shame. No one deserves to be ignored or shunned, or left in a vacuum to try to figure out what’s happened, but sometimes it goes down that way. Understand that sometimes people are not ready or able to face themselves, and so they can’t face you. It’s nothing you did or said, it’s nothing you didn’t do, it’s not a character flaw of yours. Remember we can’t do each other’s journeys. People have the tools they have, that’s all they’ve got to use.

Also, closure is a bit overrated. Even if you understand every nuance of why something has ended, you’re still going to suffer. Do I think it’s easier if you are able to end something with respect and honesty and integrity? Of course. I’m just saying it takes two, and if you’re in a situation with someone who is unable to do that with you, your best hope of closure may be simple acceptance. I say simple, not easy.

Try to recognize there are all kinds of things that might lead a person to act in a way that’s so hard to comprehend. Maybe they’ve been so deeply hurt, they know no other way than to lash out or shut down or take off. Imagine if your choices were limited like that. There are people in the world who don’t feel empathy. There are known personality disorders that can lead a person to act in ways that make you shake your head. The lack of love when it’s most needed can do that to a person. Imagine growing up without feeling seen or heard. I’m not saying it’s okay when people treat us poorly, or unconscionably, I’m saying it might help you to consider the source. That probably wouldn’t be a happy place to find yourself.

If you’ve been hurt, your best response is to seek out the tools that will help you to heal, and learn and grow from your experience. Life gives us a choice: we can be hardened by what happens along our journeys, or we can be softened by it. I highly recommend softening. We don’t need more hard people. We need people who have insight and who understand compassion and kindness. We need more people who are willing to examine their participation in situations that dimmed their light. We need more people to understand they’re worthy, just by the fact of their own existence. Use the “stuff” of your life to open and grow. The human heart is resilient and we all naturally want to heal. Pain is part of the journey toward liberation from suffering, facing it and working with it and leaning into it. That’s how you release yourself.

Wishing that for you, and sending love,

Ally Hamilton

Believe Them

A few years ago, I went on a date with a guy who travels around the country giving talks and interviews about compassion and kindness. He’s written books, he’s been on all kinds of television shows. He’s extremely charismatic and funny and smart. We met through mutual friends and he asked me out, and of course, I was very excited. I thought we had a similar outlook on life, and I liked the fact that he seemed down-to-earth.

The night of the date came, and he picked me up, and off we went. The conversation was easy and deep. Definitely no small talk. By the time we were at the restaurant, we were so in the flow, the waiter stopped asking us if we wanted to order. We never made it past a pitcher of mint lemonade. We sat at the table for three hours, drunk on conversation. He made all kinds of references to things we had to do, friends of his I had to meet, places we had to go. There was not an inch of me wondering whether we’d be going out again. We exchanged a few emails the next day, but he didn’t mention plans, and I just assumed he was going to call to do that. So you can imagine, when I hadn’t heard from him a week later, I was surprised and confused.

I decided to be direct, and sent an email letting him know I’d had a great time. I told him I was really looking forward to getting to know him better. I told him about a public speaking engagement I’d since had, that we’d discussed the night we went out, and how I was pleased I hadn’t died from fear, after all. Radio silence. He never wrote back, and I was left with the sting of having made myself vulnerable. I didn’t say anything to our mutual friends, because I didn’t want them to feel badly, and I also didn’t want anyone else to get involved. After numerous conversations with trusted girlfriends, and a couple of close male friends, I let it go. I figured it must have been smoke and mirrors or something, because it’s one thing to talk about kindness and compassion, but it’s another thing to have some.

I found out much later he’d been dating someone off and on for a long time. When we went out, they’d been off, but at some point the week after our date, they were on again. I’ve been in those relationships before, the ones that are so hard to end. The ones where you feel so hooked in you’re convinced it must be love so you keep going back even though you know nothing will be different. Anyway, when I realized what happened, I felt a little soothed, but also angry. It would have been so easy to simply shoot me an email and let me know. It would have been kinder than leaving me to second guess my own experience, to replay the night in my mind and wonder if I’d missed something.

Anyway, who knows why he handled it that way. Probably, he wanted to keep me on the back burner for when his on again went off again, because I did get an email a few months later, asking if I’d like to have dinner but by then I was done. I would never pursue something with someone who can’t or won’t communicate honestly. Most of the time people are not setting out to hurt us, and this was not a major heartbreak, obviously. It was one date. It just so happened it was my first date out of the gate after my divorce, the first date I’d been on in eight years. So the timing wasn’t great, but it was a sting, not a wound. Usually people are doing the best they can with the tools they’ve got. Sometimes people are selfish and prioritize what’s good for them over what might be hurtful for someone else. The thing is, it’s really never okay to put your discomfort ahead of another person’s heart. Awkward conversations aren’t fun, but they’re so much better than leaving someone in the dark.

The other thing to remember, is that sometimes a person presents themselves one way, but one-on-one, it’s a whole different story. This is a guy who does a lot of good, legitimately, but his interpersonal skills need a lot of work. It was a good reminder to me that we should never look at someone’s public persona, and assume that’s what’s happening behind closed doors. Not everybody has every piston firing. It’s easy to take things personally, but most of the time, it’s just a reflection of where someone is on their own path; it’s not a reflection of anything lacking in you. I get so many emails from people struggling with this stuff. The truth is, if a person is into you, it’s not going to be a mystery, you’re not going to have to wonder, or chase, or second guess yourself. I really wouldn’t waste time with any of that, life is too short, and you are too precious. Save your time and energy for people who are coming at you with everything they’ve got, and keep your eyes, ears and mind open, so you can see clearly when there’s a disconnect between someone’s words and their actions. It’s really good to remember the Maya Angelou quote, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Take Your Power Back

dalaisuffer Everyone makes mistakes, it’s part of the reality of being human, but sometimes people cling to their rightness. I was friends with someone many years ago who could never say he was sorry. In his view, he was never wrong about anything, and if ever I went to him with a question or concern or disappointment about something that had transpired between us, he would tell me it was my own negativity and/or lack of gratitude. Needless to say, the friendship did not stand the test of time. In order to be close to people, you have to be willing to allow them access to your interior world. You have to be willing to stand there, with all your flaws and all your beauty, and hold the gaze. And when you do not show up the way you want to or mean to, you have to be able to own it and say, “I’m so sorry, I blew it” That way, you give the other person the chance to look you in the eye and say, “It’s okay. I see you for who you are, I understand you have some pain. I forgive you.” Then, you know you have a true friend.

Sometimes people reject parts of themselves. There are few things more painful than an inability to accept something essential about yourself. If you want to be at peace, I really don’t know any other way, than to face those places within you that are still raw; those places where you still have some healing to do. Anything you push beneath the surface will rise up to bite you in the a$$, again and again until you reckon with it. You’ll repeat the same patterns in all your close relationships, at work, as you’re driving in traffic. If you have rage, it will erupt, if you have shame, you’ll find yourself pushing people away, not because you want to, but because you can’t stand to have them get close enough to see what you really are. Not that your perception is accurate, because shame will cloud your ability to see yourself clearly, but you’ll believe you’re unworthy at your core, and that will seep out in more self-destructive ways than you can count, until you face it and deal with it head-on.

Anyway, my point is, sometimes people have a construct they’ve built to cope with their pain or their heartbreak or their disappointment or their rage or their feelings of being on the outside looking in. Maybe in order to live with themselves, they’ve had to make “the way things are” someone else’s fault, or they’ve decided the world at large is unfair, and most people can’t be trusted. So when you approach someone in that state and you ask them to be accountable for something they’ve done, they simply cannot do it, because their whole life philosophy hinges on this idea that they are always right, or that bad things always happen to them.

The thing is, when you dig your heels in and point fingers, you give your power away. You make your unhappiness someone else’s fault. It’s no different than hinging your happiness on external events, like, “I’ll be happy when I lose ten pounds, or drive a different car, or have a bigger house, or meet the right person…” Happiness becomes something you chase, instead of something you dig to find within you. That’s the only place it can exist, after all. Your happiness cannot lie in someone else, or in some future event. It has to be unearthed, and you may have noticed you cannot dig and point at the same time.

I’m not saying awful, heartbreaking things don’t happen, because they certainly do. Sometimes people are careless or self-absorbed or lost to themselves, or nine million other things, but it’s always in our power to decide how we’re going to respond to what it is we’re given. We can’t control circumstances. We can’t manage another person’s path. The only true power we have lies in facing ourselves, and making the world within us a peaceful place to be. That takes enormous strength and courage, but it also gives you your power back.

Wishing that for you, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Look Beneath the Surface

Life will never fail to offer you opportunities to practice patience and compassion. Challenging people or circumstances can be incredible teachers. We can’t control who or what shows up on the path in front of us, but we can choose our response. You can look at the surface of a person and judge or condemn them, and when I say the surface, I don’t mean their appearance, I mean their way of being. The quality they’re bringing to whatever it is they’re doing. There’s a whole complex world happening under the surface, and you may not get a glimpse into it. If you see someone on line ahead of you at the supermarket, for example, and you notice they’re talking loudly on their cellphone while the person behind the register is trying to ring them up, all kinds of thoughts and labels might stream through your mind. The minute you start thinking, “selfish, inconsiderate, unaware, self-absorbed, thoughtless”, you’ve lowered your own vibration. You’ve made a decision to become a character in their story. The disgruntled, righteous shopper! You could take that same moment to come back to your breath. To catch yourself if you’re starting to spin toward dark, hopeless thinking. To remind yourself that’s their story, and it doesn’t seem to be a very happy one. You could direct your energy to the person ringing them up, and send love. You might even smile at them and wink. When it’s your turn at the register, you could make their day by being present and kind. If you really wanted to do an advanced practice, you could send some love to the person on the phone, because how many beautiful moments must they be missing? Chances to connect in a meaningful way with other human beings, lost because they’re somewhere else.

It happens all the time, all day long. You’re driving along and someone cuts you off in an insane way. You get an adrenaline rush if it’s a dangerous move they’ve made; that can’t be helped, but some people become irate, as if it’s personal. They roll down their window and flip their traffic finger, yelling expletives and feeling their blood pressure go up. You might be thinking, it IS personal, I’m the one who was just cut off, but that’s on the other person, it’s not a story you have to join. They may have a genuine problem. Maybe they’re dealing with an emergency, and maybe they drive like that all the time. Who knows? Their driving persona may not sync up with the person they are most of the time. Some people have road rage. People who seem calm and reasonable in most cases can get behind the wheel of a car and do a fairly winning impression of Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” Maybe your old Aunt Marge struggles with that.

Sometimes people write in about family members, and it goes something like: “This person in my life makes me feel powerless. This person makes me feel invisible. No matter what I do, this person won’t listen to me.” You can’t control other people. You can’t make someone see you or hear you or love you. It’s all a choice, but for some people they haven’t realized their own power yet. Things happen, and they react. A person says something hurtful, and they respond in kind, even though that isn’t really how they feel. We’re all having this separate experience, together. I think it’s really important to realize that. Feelings are feelings, and stories are stories. You have all these complex, often wounded people coming together interacting with each other, each with her or his own ideas about what’s happening, and all knowing that one day we will die. Not that anyone loves to think about that, but we all know it’s there. Not everyone handles it well.

Sometimes people just repeat what they know. If they weren’t treated with consideration, maybe they don’t understand the concept. Maybe they grew up in a house where no one ever stopped to really listen to them, where they had little to no impact on the world around them. Maybe they grew up thinking what they said and what they did didn’t matter much to anyone. Or maybe everything was handed to them, and perhaps they grew up thinking other people were there to serve them. Can you imagine a childhood where you thought you were to be served? Isn’t that sad? The best thing in life is being of service, of feeling you’re able to make a meaningful contribution to the people and the world around you. Imagine if no one ever taught you that. Would it be nice if you figured it out on your own along the way? Of course, but we never know what another person needs in order to grow and learn and be happy. Perhaps you’re crossing paths with them at a time when they still have a lot to understand. Does anything good come from condemning them? Is it any kind of reflection on you if a person can’t see you, or doesn’t know how to be kind and compassionate?

The thing is, you only get so many minutes in a day. Life doesn’t have a rollover plan for wasted moments. And you can let the challenging people you encounter, or the difficult situations you may face rob you of entire afternoons if you aren’t careful, but I don’t recommend it. Life will bring enough for you to deal with; it’s plenty of work keeping your own side of the street clean. You might try something if you feel like it. When I wake up in the morning, I remind myself of all the amazing gifts I have to be grateful for, starting with having another day to open my eyes and be in my body and hug my children and love people firecely and try to do something meaningful with my time, something that might be helpful to someone else. Most of the time things work out pretty well that way. I don’t succeed in every moment of every day, of course. I’m a human being, and there are times I’m deeply disappointed in myself. Especially if I realize I allowed too many moments that could have been beautiful become sour instead. But I think when you move through the world with that idea of spreading love, of being in love, you’re a lot less likely to get thrown off center for too long. It’s easy to love the people who are awesome; thoughtful and present and open and full of life. It’s harder to love those who push our buttons. But if we ever want peace, that’s the work, to love those people we can’t understand. That doesn’t mean we have to agree with them. And to remember when we’re confronted, we really never know someone’s struggles, fears, doubts, shame, or old wounds unless they share them with us. People who’ve been badly hurt usually have some pretty solid walls built up. It’s not easy for everyone to tear them down and be vulnerable. I’m saying, whenever possible, practice compassion, and then get back to the work of choosing love as your storyline. It makes the journey a lot more fun.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Take Care of YOU

Sometimes people tell me they really want to do yoga on a regular basis, but just don’t have the time. I understand what it’s like to wish there were more hours in the day. For example, as I write this, it’s after midnight, but my two kids are asleep, and I’ve answered all the emails and private messages for the day. Things are quiet now, and I can think. Do I wish it was 9pm, so I could get more sleep? Yep. Earlier today, I taught two classes, one in the morning and one this evening, and in between, I played “The Game of Life” with my kids, chased them around outside, took our dog for a walk, squeezed in two business calls, and threw my mat down in the middle of the living room for 30 minutes, in the midst of a mad dress-up game that involved ninjas, scientists, and a hunt for poltergeists. Sometimes that’s how it is. Of course I prefer a nice, quiet ninety minutes on my mat, and a solid thirty for seated meditation, but I’ll take thirty minutes total over nothing, even if my kids are running back and forth through the room. It’s summertime. They’ll be back in school before I know it, and I’ll have a little more time to take care of myself. It’s a different kind of yoga, but just as powerful. And there’s something sweet about it; sometimes they join me. I’ll take ten or fifteen minutes for some sun salutes and a chance to connect to my breath, align myself, and open things up, if that’s all I can work in. Maybe some pigeon pose while my kids sit on my back. When we say we’re “too busy” to take care of ourselves, something has really gone awry.

It might surprise you to know that ten minutes is better than nothing. And please don’t misunderstand me, here, I think you deserve more time than that to nurture yourself, but if you’re someone who isn’t doing anything at all because you feel overwhelmed and frustrated at the thought of trying to squeeze in two hours to drive somewhere, park, throw your mat down in a class and head home, I get it. It’s one of the many reasons we wanted to offer online options for people. I have a whole bunch of classes called “Yoga for Busy Moms.” (Dads can take it, too, and so can busy people with dogs, cats or fish). We have another section called, “Fully Cooked in 45 or Less.” A lot of studios, including ours, are offering 60-minute and 75-minute classes in addition to the traditional 90, because not everyone can carve out that kind of time in their days. Doing something to nurture and strengthen yourself is always better than doing nothing. Always. Saying you don’t have the time to commit to yourself is really really sad. Your relationship with yourself is the foundation for all the relationships in your life. If you don’t fill your tank, where do you expect to find the fuel to care for anyone else well? How can you pursue your passions if you don’t allow yourself some time, every single day, to tune in and get quiet, so you can hear the voice of your intuition, and allow yourself to be pulled by it?

Everything feels better after I’ve practiced, for any amount of time. If this is a new concept for you, just commit to 15 minutes a day for 2 weeks, and see how you feel. I guarantee you’ll find you have more energy, and you feel calmer and steadier. I mentioned I played the game of Life with my kids today. I’d never played it before, so we read the directions together before we started. If you’ve never played it, you spin a wheel and take your car a certain number of spaces, and you land on an “Action”. The action might be to start a rock band, and pay the bank 50k. Or you might land on a house and have to pay the bank 300k. Sometimes you get paid, because your cake was the tastiest, or you had the best disco moves. But right there, in the directions, before we’d even started, it said, “At the end of the game, the person with the most money wins.” And I looked up at my kids and I said, “This might be how you win this game called, ‘Life’”, but in real life, at the end, the person with the most money does not win.” They already know this, because we talk about this stuff, and you already know this, too, I realize that, but sometimes we need reminding. You can’t take it with you. Your house isn’t going with you, and neither is your car, your wardrobe, your shoes, your promotion, your corner office, or your degrees. My son was funny. Every time he had to pay the bank for something, he said, “That’s okay, because now I get to have a cool farmhouse with a sheep on top, and sheep are cool.” Or, “That’s okay, because I got to go on a trip and see the world.” The most valuable assets you can accrue are experiences. Experiences that include cultivating the relationships in your life so they grow and blossom and take your breath away. Spending time with your children because they grow so fast, and soon they’ll be taller than you, and soon you’ll be teaching them to drive, and one day they’ll drive away from you. If you nurture them and listen to them and laugh with them and talk to them, my guess is, they’ll also come back because they’ll want to be near you. Especially if they feel safe and heard and understood. And this goes for all the people in your life. Maybe you don’t have kids, but you have parents and friends and family members, and you have the relationship you’re having with yourself. You need to cultivate that, too. Please don’t say you don’t have time for that. Because that really is losing the game of Life. If you sign up for our site here, you get a free 15-day trial. Let me meet you in your living room for 2 weeks. It’s time for you to start winning this game.

Sending you love, and a giant hug,

Ally Hamilton

Weathering the Storms

Sometimes life feels like a huge storm that sweeps in and throws us off center, carrying us up and spinning us around until we can’t tell north from south. This can happen when someone with whom we’re close is in pain, and we feel helpless to stop their suffering, and end up suffering ourselves. It can happen when we lose someone we love and are faced with that gaping hole where a whole world used to be. It can happen when unexpected events turn our plans upside down, and it can happen when we, ourselves feel pulled to make changes.

The reality is, we are in control of so very little. The only thing you can really control is the way you respond to what life puts in your path, and even that takes enormous effort. We can make a practice out of choosing the thoughts that strengthen us, rather than the ones that weaken us. We can make a daily, hourly effort to see all the gifts around us, whether they exist in the fact that our heart is beating for us, or in the sunlight streaming through the window, or the rain pattering on the roof. Maybe there’s a gift in the eyes of a stranger, or someone who knows you and sees you for who you are. We can think about what we say before we say it. We can try to align ourselves with the truth in our hearts, and move from that space. We can share our gifts, we can give away our love, because we’ll never run out. When we love people, we can tell them, and not as a throw-away thing, but in a way that makes them understand we see them, really. These are all things we can do.

We’ll never control what other people do or say or want or need, nor should we try. Everyone has to do his and her own journey. Most people just want to be happy. A lot of people attach their happiness to external events, markers, or milestones. It’s not surprising, it’s what we’re taught culturally. Sometimes people feel frustrated or enraged or in despair because they just can’t seem to grab that brass ring. They can’t get that great job, or meet the right person, or look the way they want to, or get life to bend to their will, and so they lash out, or shut down or numb out or run away, thinking maybe a different direction or path or person or house or job or car or diet will finally solve it. But it’s an inside thing, and you don’t need to pick up and go anywhere. You really just need to sit down and get quiet. Mostly, we have the answers. We know what we need, but we are not always ready to accept what we know.

One of the greatest and best things we can all work on, is non-reactivity. There will always be storms, after all. Things will happen that we don’t expect or want. People will always surprise us, sometimes in good ways, and sometimes in ways that rip our hearts out. If you work on inner steadiness, no one can take that from you. This, to me, is one of the most powerful and amazing gifts of a consistent yoga and seated meditation practice. The ability to connect with your breathing, slow it down, and feel it happening, is both simple and profound. It’s a way of reminding yourself that you are here, right now. You have that, and because you’re present, you can see how things are with you. You can scan your body for tension, and when you exhale, maybe you can soften a little. Maybe you can relieve yourself of the illusion that you’re in control and have life by the reins. When you do that, you grant yourself the greatest power you’ll ever have. Fighting reality is exhausting. Creating constructs where you’re in the center of the world, and everything is happening to you and around you is not going to bring you any peace or strength. Recognizing that you’re part of something so much greater, that you’re connected to everyone and everything around you, is a much more expansive and accurate way to perceive reality.

Most people are not trying to hurt you, or me. Most people are trying to piece together some happiness for themselves. Having a breathing practice gives you the power to pause when things or people around you get intense. When you’re on your yoga mat, and you hold a lunge pose for eight, ten, twelve long deep breaths, you train your nervous system and your mind to breathe through intense sensation. Rage creates intense sensation in the body. Loneliness does as well. So, too, do fear, resentment, bitterness, jealousy, envy, joy, excitement, and gratitude. All of these feelings create chemical reactions in the body. Most people have an easy time holding the emotions and sensations that feel good (although not everyone has an easy time receiving love, embracing joy, opening to contentment), and most people struggle with the emotions and sensations that hurt like hell, such as grief, despair, and hopelessness. The thing about feelings is that they don’t last forever. Storms come and go. People may also enter and exit our lives. It’s incredibly likely things will not go according to our plans. For so many people, an uncomfortable feeling arises and they want to flee, or to numb out, or deny its existence.

If you can’t sit with uncomfortable and painful feelings, there’s no way to know yourself. Knowing yourself is at the heart of every spiritual practice. Otherwise how can you know which way to turn? How can you discover what scares you, what’s holding you back, what frees you up? How can you recognize your unconscious drives if you numb out every painful feeling that fights its way to the surface? How can you feel good about the way you’re leading your life if you lash out whenever you feel threatened or angry or envious or unheard? You don’t want to be a storm yourself, but that’s what it’s like when we can’t stop and breathe and lean into our painful feelings. We’re just an unpredictable storm barreling through life, leaving pain in our paths. Not intentionally, but just because we don’t trust ourselves. We think if we do that, if we stop and give our rage a chance to catch up with us, it will overwhelm us, but it’s the running away or pushing it down that does that. Creating some space between your feelings and what you decide to do with them is brilliant. It’s powerful. That’s a skill you can put to good use so you can direct your energy toward ideas, people, and pursuits that will uplift you, and not the stuff that tears you down. As always, you’re welcome to try a little yoga online with me if you’d like. You can sign up for a 15-day free trial, here: http://pages.yogisanonymous.com/preview/1995. You have nothing to lose but your feelings of being powerless in the face of life’s storms. Life does not have to be that way.

Sending you love, and wishing you peace,

Ally Hamilton

Your Most Important Relationship

jimrohn It might sound strange to some, but you are currently, and have always been, in a relationship with your own body. Like any relationship, you may have healthy and unhealthy patterns, but thinking in these terms is a very good way to get clear on whether your relationship could use some work.

Your body is full of information and wisdom. If things are going well between your body and your mind, then you’re in a fairly constant conversation, and you’re honoring each other, but for so many people, that’s not what’s happening. We aren’t taught to listen and respond to what we’re feeling. Sadness creates sensations in the body. So do fear and rage. Many of us grew up hearing things like, “Don’t be sad”, “Don’t be angry”, “Don’t be scared”…as if we could just turn the feelings off, make the sensations go away through sheer willpower, and we’re taught the same as far as feeding ourselves, too.

If you bought into the idea that you could just shut a feeling down, chances are you lost touch with your intuition long ago. Why should a child not be sad sometimes? Because it’s making the adults around him or her feel uncomfortable or inadequate? Sadness is a normal human emotion we will all experience. When we’re taught to edit out our emotions, we become lost to ourselves. Where a feeling ought to be, instead we find shame, self-loathing and confusion. Thus the desire to numb out.

The more you relax, the more your body opens. I say this in the context of a yoga class, but also in the context of your life. If you’re gripping and clinging and “white-knuckling” your way through life, it’s going to be hard to breathe. You’re probably going to observe tension in your body, because it takes effort to hold on so tightly. The more you release the idea that you’re in control, the more your body releases tension. This doesn’t mean we don’t work and try and put our effort in, it just means that we watch the quality we’re bringing to the effort we’re making. There’s a difference between working hard and killing yourself.

If your body is tired, are you listening and responding? For the sake of this exercise, think of your body and your personality as the two players involved. Is your body saying no, while your personality is saying, “hell, yes!”? Are you forcing your way through life? Discipline and determination are good; if you want to get things done, they’re essential, but so is compassion for yourself.

How are you feeding yourself? Are you eating stuff with seventeen syllables and wondering why you’re exhausted all the time? Your body talks to you when it’s hungry, but it never asks for aspartame or red dye #40. If you want your body to feel good, you have to treat it nicely, and give it fuel it can use. Try an organic fuji apple, they taste great. Or an avocado. Or a million other things that aren’t processed or bagged or shot full of chemicals. Give it a month and see how you feel. You’ll be amazed if this is new to you.

What kind of listener are you? When your body talks, do you take in the information, or think you have all the answers? Do you treat your body like it’s an object you own? Do you think it should bend to your will? Would you treat another person the way you treat your own body? Are you disgusted with it? Do you lament the way it looks and feel disappointed that this is the body you have? What if you expressed those feelings to another person? What if you told someone you hated the way they looked and that they were an enormous embarrassment to you? What if you called someone else names, or told them to stay up when they desperately needed to sleep? What if you told them they didn’t know anything and you had all the answers, and they should just be quiet? Wouldn’t that be a horrendous way to treat someone? If your body was your partner, would she or he want to break up with you? How are you treating yourself?

Your body is your home, it’s where you’re going to live for your whole life. You don’t want to terrorize it or abuse it. Like any relationship, the kinder you are the more trust there will be. The more you listen and respond, the more your body will pull through for you when you ask, but if you want to open and release, you can’t force that. You know that’s true if you’ve ever had anyone scream at you to relax. We respond to love and compassion. That’s the stuff that opens and strengthens us. When we feel safe, we blossom. If you don’t know how to be kind to yourself, or you’ve lost the ability to be in conversation with your body, your yoga mat is a great place to work this stuff out.

Wishing that for you, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Free Yourself

lifecareer Sometimes we’re held hostage. Maybe we have an idea in our heads of how things “should” be, and we just can’t open to other possibilities; we’re chained to our vision. Or we might feel oppressed by fear about something we’re feeling that threatens the “way things are.” Sometimes we’ve become prisoner to someone else’s instability. It’s a terrible feeling when we aren’t free to do and say what feels right in our hearts. There are certain practicalities in life; we need a place to sleep that’s warm and safe, and we need food, and we also need connection, and sometimes we sacrifice a lot in service to those realities.

The thing is, it’s incredibly draining to engage with people who make us worry that they can’t handle the truth, whatever the truth may be for us. Having to sit on your hands or shove a metaphorical sock in your mouth so you don’t rock the boat, is not a sustainable way to go. At a certain point, you’re going to burst, and anyone in the near vicinity is going to get hit in the face with the shackles that were binding you.

We can allow ourselves to be held at bay by someone’s manipulation. Maybe we’re allowing ourselves to get sweet-talked, or we’re feeling guilty even though we haven’t done anything wrong, or we’re feeling guilty because we’re afraid we have. We may be stifled by our own self-limiting beliefs. We may be hostage to self-loathing or shame that was planted within us long ago. Whatever the case, and whatever the cause, you’re here to be free. You can’t utilize all of your energy if you have to divert a lot of it to dealing with what someone else insists you be for them, or what you insist on being for other people. You really have to be true to yourself to be free.

That means you have to heal old wounds, or they’ll own you. You have to reckon with your pain to liberate yourself. Free people aren’t on the run, and they aren’t numbed out, either. Living in alignment with what’s true for you is necessary if you want to be at peace. Sometimes you have to fight for your freedom, and then you have to guard it with boundaries. You have to get to a place where you can speak up and say, “No, that is not okay for me.” Living in fear isn’t really living, it’s like trying to breathe with an elephant sitting on your chest. You can’t manage other people’s pain, you can only keep your own side of the street clean.

Also, if you have some expectation of yourself that you aren’t supposed to make mistakes, you’re going to be disappointed a lot. If you feel the need to apologize to someone, and you don’t think doing so will be painful to them, or disruptive to their own healing process, by all means, go for it. Maybe you’ll be forgiven, and maybe not. Sometimes people have a story they’re holding onto to avoid doing their own work (sometimes we are all those people), but usually, eventually, we get bored of telling ourselves stories that keep us stuck, or make us powerless. Whatever the case, eventually you have to forgive yourself. Guilt doesn’t serve anyone. It doesn’t make things better for those we’ve disappointed, and it doesn’t help us do better moving forward. Shame rides with guilt, same scenario.

Life is too short to spend a lot of time living a life that isn’t everything it could be if you listened to your heart. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to do whatever you have to do with compassion and care for those who might be affected, but it does mean that the best thing you can give to yourself, to this world, and to the people you love is your heart, on fire.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Like the posts? You can check out my books, here.

Be a Survivor, Not a Victim

victimvillian One of the worst things you can feed is a victim mentality, and let’s get right to it—sometimes horrendous, heartbreaking things happen to kind and beautiful people. Maybe you grew up in an unsafe environment and spent most of your childhood trying to be invisible or indispensable. Maybe you saw things and experienced things no one ever should. Maybe you grew up and had a terrifying interaction that turned everything you thought you knew inside out, and maybe you’ve endured a loss that feels impossible to comprehend. These things are all possible. I hope none of them have happened to you, but they’re all possible.

I say this to you with total compassion and empathy, I really truly get that life can break your heart sometimes, but it will never ever serve you to define yourself as a victim. Your much better option is to choose the role of survivor. Life is not fair. We all want to make it make sense, we want to create order out of chaos and uncertainty, but it can’t be done.

The pain in this life is real, and it’s not dosed out in equal amounts, so if you’re reading this and you’ve had to carry something that hurts so much it’s hard to breathe, I get it. Of course there are less dramatic events that might cause a person to feel that life isn’t fair, and that they have a rotten hand to play. Again and again, it comes down to what you’re going to feed. Of course if you’ve suffered losses you have to give yourself time and space to mourn and grieve, and how much time and how much space is completely personal, and something only you can move through.

I’m not talking about grieving, though. I’m talking about letting your losses and experiences harden you, so you move through the world bitterly. When we tell ourselves that things have happened that have “broken” us for example, when we define ourselves as broken, the implication is that we cannot be healed. When we clutch a story to our chest that explains and excuses why we are the way we are, we’re also letting ourselves off the hook for doing anything about it. You can’t control what’s happened, but you can certainly decide how you’re going to respond.

I see so many people who cling to their rage like a shield, who dig their heels in and demand that everyone acknowledge their version of reality. Who recite the list of ways they’ve been wronged. The thing is, it’s exhausting. It’s like a full-time job to be that enraged, you really can’t get much else done. It’s such a miserable state to be in, of course you want to numb out and check out, and look to external things or people to “make it better.” It’s not like bitterness tastes good.

Whatever has happened might shape you, but it doesn’t have to own you; at a certain point, at any point, you can decide to take ownership of your life. You can figure out what you might be able to change, and get to work changing it. This might be the way you interact with people, it may be the tone and message of your inner voice that needs work. Some things you won’t be able to change; other people would fall into that category. You can never change what someone else needs or wants or says or does, but you can always change the way you respond. You can decide to rise up; with every breath, there’s the potential to begin again.

If we’re pitying ourselves, we’re stuck in the past. We’re dragging the past along with us into our present, and holding it up for everyone to see, even our brand-new friends, and we’re demanding that other people reckon with our past, when that job is ours. If they want us, they have to accept this whole bunch of baggage we come with, but they don’t, and we don’t have to drag it along with us, either. A pity party isn’t very fun; you’ll probably have a tough time getting people to show up. Someone who looks their pain in the face and then deals with it (whether that means reaching out for support, or exploring healing modalities until they find something that works for them), that’s a person who’s ready to live. If you want to be free of your pain, you have to reckon with it. You don’t bow down and let it own you, you challenge it to a duel on a bright day, so you can bring all that darkness into the light and take a look at what you’re facing. Sometimes we think the face-off will do us in, but it’s the running that does it.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If you like the posts, check out my books here <3

Say Yes to Yourself

coelho It’s really important to be conscious of where you direct your energy. It’s easy to get caught up in all kinds of mental gymnastics that will do nothing but exhaust and deplete you. For example, you really don’t need to spend your energy on anyone else’s drama. You may have friends who always have some urgent thing happening—a fight with their neighbor, a disagreement with a friend or colleague, an ongoing frustration with their partner—that they want to discuss endlessly with you. You might also realize you’re drained when you walk away from these interactions. Or, maybe you’re allowing yourself to obsess about things over which you have no control (that would include most things). Perhaps you’re spending an inordinate amount of time daydreaming and fantasizing about a person who would be with you, “if only they could.” You only have so much energy, and you only have so much time.

Sometimes we overextend ourselves and say yes to everyone else, sacrificing our own needs and wants in the process. If you’re miserable, you’re not going to have a lot to offer anyone. Self-care is not selfish; it’s necessary. If you’re someone who’s a natural giver and helper, you really have to watch your tendency to leave nothing in the tank for yourself. You might be able to show up for other people, but you’d have so much more to give if you took care of yourself, too. If you’ve ever ridden on a plane, you’re familiar with the directive in case of a “water landing”—you’re supposed to secure your own oxygen mask first, before you try to help anyone else, including your children. If you pass out, after all, then they’re really in trouble.

Sometimes we spend a lot of our energy thinking about how we look, and that usually includes our dissatisfaction with where we’re at right now. And in the time it takes to berate yourself, you could have gone for a quick walk around the block, elevating your heart rate, and taking in the trees, or the sun, or the breeze on your cheek. You could have done ten minutes of yoga, which might have served as a reset button for your day, or might have brought you into alignment with what’s in your heart. Ten minutes to connect to your breath and open yourself up is more powerful than you might imagine. It sure beats ten minutes of staring at a “beauty” magazine, which is not about beauty at all.

Everything you eat, read, watch and think about is food for your mind, your heart, and your body. They work together, and the more you feed yourself well, the better you’ll feel in all these areas. If you gossip about someone, you’re going to walk away from that exchange feeling crappy about yourself, because you’ll know you fed a weak part of who you are. You really want to choose the thoughts and activities that will strengthen you and fill you up with yes. Then you can take that yes, and spread it all over the place.

Carve out some time in your days that’s just for you. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time, but let it be enough that you can hear that inner voice. Without that, you’ll really be lost at sea, and may find yourself saying yes, when you really mean no. You may find you’re running on empty at a time when you need to be able to fire things up (which is most of the time). You’re precious, and you have gifts to share that only you can. In order to do that, you need to direct your energy. Don’t waste it on the meaningless stuff.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Check out my books here, and please send me love as I work on book number three 🙂

You Always Have Some Power

changednotreduced Few things are worse than feeling powerless. Sometimes we’re betrayed by someone we thought was a friend, sometimes our own bodies betray us, and sometimes we fail to act on our own behalf. Whatever the cause, when we feel we do not have an impact on the world around us, or that we can’t save those we love from pain and anguish related to our own situation, it’s just crushing.

The truth is, we are not in control of anything except how we respond to what we’re given; we’re certainly not in control of circumstances. You may have noticed you can’t control what other people will do or say or want or need, nor is that ever your job. Sometimes the repercussions are devastating, and yet we always have some power. If you’re at the mercy of someone else, whether that someone be an ex, a family member, a judge, or your own internal demon, the key is always compassion for yourself. This human experience is incredible and wildly interesting, but I don’t believe anyone would argue that it’s easy.

We arrive here, and our parents have whatever tools they have to love us and nurture us. We arrive here, and some of us have a cozy and safe roof over our heads, and others of us never feel safe. Right off the bat, it’s not a level playing field. Then, we have unknown expiration dates; it’s not like you can count on living to one hundred, it’s not like you can take tomorrow for granted (although we do it all the time). Every single person you know and love is in the same boat, so if you want to deny your vulnerability, have at it, but it’s still a reality.

Here are other things—so many people struggle to be happy in the face of all this. Most people take a good twenty to thirty years just to have a sense of what they might most like to do with their time. The majority of people in our culture run down paths that are supposed to lead to happiness, but don’t. As a society, we’re taught the mantra of “survival of the fittest” at an early age, and we grow up thinking we’re supposed to compete with each other, which doesn’t tend to engender happiness for other people’s good fortunes. So we breed an environment of envy and despair. Also, we do a woefully inadequate job of teaching what it means to love ourselves, and others. We have crazy notions about love that lead to disappointment and ridiculous expectations.

In short, it’s very easy to find yourself in a mess. Human beings are complex, and we each have an interior world that we choose to share or hide to varying degrees. The more you hide from yourself and others, the less likely it is that your path will be clear. Sometimes two unhealed people come together, and there’s so much happening under the surface, it’s only a matter of time before things start exploding or imploding. Unfortunately, this is how some of us learn. This is how we begin to understand what love is, and what it is not. The webs we weave can be very painful to unravel, but sometimes that’s the only chance for peace. Thread by thread, we have to dismantle the thing, and start to build something new.

Often, our hearts break as we move through an experience like this, and if you’re in the thick of it, try to remind yourself of two things: one, it’s not forever, and two, you get to decide how you’re going to respond to reality as it is. You can’t manage anyone else’s journey, but you can keep your side of the street clean. When you’re starting to head off down a new path, feeling like you’re moving with integrity is very strengthening. You don’t have to get down in the mud with anyone else, and you don’t have to condemn people if that’s where they are. If you have it in you, you can try to find compassion for people when they lash out, because a person doing that is in pain. That doesn’t excuse cruelty, manipulation or abuse, but it might help you not to take it as personally. What another person does or says is a reflection of where they are at this point in time, and not of anything lacking in you. You have the power to be kind to yourself if the picture you had in your head is now in pieces around your feet. You have the power to move through this heat with some grace and strength. You have the power to breathe deeply. You have the power to remind yourself that no feeling is final. You have the power to create a loving and nurturing environment for yourself, and anyone close to you, to blossom within. No one can take that power away from you, you just have to own it, and do your best to trust that if you do your part, the rest will be okay. That’s all you can do, anyway.

Sending you love, as always,

Ally Hamilton

If you like the posts, you can find my books here 🙂

Make Peace with the Shape of Things

woolf We all have our plans and our ideas. We have a picture in our heads of “how things should be,” or “how things will be”, but most of us get the lesson early that life just doesn’t work that way. I know very few people who can say that everything has gone according to their plan. In fact, I don’t know one person who can say that.

Few things cause us to suffer more than our attachment to that picture in our minds or our hearts of how things should be or look or feel. Sometimes it’s so f&cking hard to let go of what you’d hoped for and wanted with your whole heart, but I really think a huge part of maturing, and of opening to things as they are has to do with this: at a certain point, you have to make peace with the shape of things. The shape of your world, the rhythm, the colors, the feel of it. Maybe things are more jagged or fractured than you’d hoped; maybe they’re spread out in a way you hadn’t envisioned and didn’t want. Life can be incredibly complicated sometimes. It’s not always obvious which way to turn, especially when your life and your choices and your feelings affect other people, and so you may look around at some point and wonder what exactly happened. How your life looks the way it does, when none of it was anywhere on your plan.

Sometimes the ship sails and the storms come and you do your best to go with your gut as you make decisions while you’re getting hit in the face with hail, and couldn’t find north from south even if you had a compass, because the compass wouldn’t be a crystal ball, would it? Maybe you end up in a country you’ve never traveled to before, with customs and a language you don’t understand, and you think, “I can’t do this,” but you can.

You start again, you come up with a new plan. Or maybe you’ve landed in the exact spot you were trying to avoid, and somehow, some insane way the GPS on your ship landed you right back where you began, because maybe, just maybe, your plan did not include healing yourself first, before you took off on your great adventure. Maybe the language and the customs are all too familiar, and you can’t believe you have to deal with this sh&t again, but it’s not the same, because you aren’t the same. Maybe you need to get the lesson that you can’t always change a situation, but you can change the way you deal with it.

Anyway, here’s the thing. We cling and we grip and we refuse to let go and we suffer. Or, we trust that we can forge a new way and work with a changing set of circumstances. We acknowledge that we were never in control of this thing, and our plans look funny to us, or we feel a little naked, or foolish or naive, like we got caught with our pants down because we just didn’t see the folly of it. Have your passions and pursue your dreams all the way with everything you’ve got. Set your intentions and work your a$$ off, and put some action behind what you want, because you’re here to share your gifts freely and with abandon. Just watch your attachment to things (or people) feeling the way you think they should feel, or the way you want them to feel, because people are going to feel however they need and want to feel and things are going to happen you never could have imagined, and all your fine plans could easily get turned upside down on any given morning. It could be that your plan goes flying out the window, and you watch it float, fly away, out of reach and maybe something more amazing than you ever could have imagined happens instead. It’s not all doom and gloom, life can be quite the adventure if you let it.

However things are right now, whether they look like that picture you’ve had in your head, or nothing at all like that, try to make peace with the shape of things. If you cling and grip, you will suffer. If you draw a huge heart around all of it, you’ll find your way with love. Maybe you can draw a heart so big, there’s space around things and life has the room to surprise you.

Start small if you need to—make peace with the shape of your body. We spend so much time obsessing over the external stuff. The body is a freaking miracle, but we get caught up in numbers. How many pounds is it? How many inches? Like we’re going to the butcher’s or the tailor. This is life, this is the party, it’s happening right now. It’s not the butcher. How’s your heart? Is it beating for you? Marvelous. Can you look outside and see the sun? The rain? The green of the trees? Can you walk outside because you have two working legs? Brilliant. Can you hug the people you love because you’re alive and they’re alive and you have two working arms? Oh my god, how fantastic. Make peace with the shape of things. Draw a big, huge heart around it all. See what you can grow that way.

Sending you love, as always,

Ally Hamilton

You can find my books here <3

Don’t Worry

doctorow As much as possible, try not to “future-trip.” It’s so easy to get caught up in worries about things that may never come to pass, to start envisioning worst-case scenarios, to formulate conversations in your head, or come up with plans you might not ever need. While you’re busy boiling yourself this way, your nervous system is tensing up and sending cortisol through your body, as if these events are actually occurring. In other words, you can make yourself sick with worry. You can raise your blood pressure with your thoughts.

When are we most likely to do this to ourselves? When we’re feeling vulnerable, tested, or threatened, and maybe it’s part of our inclination toward negativity bias, too. We survived as a species by being alert to possible danger, but there aren’t too many sabertooth tigers waiting to chase us down to eat us for lunch these days. We aren’t built for longterm stress, we’re built for short bursts. If we’ve been hurt before, we try to set things up so we won’t be hurt again, and that’s understandable, but you don’t want to live defensively. You know the saying, right? “Hurt me once, shame on you…hurt me twice, shame on me.” But the thing is, living in fear isn’t really living, it’s gripping. When we start to spin out, and imagine all the things that could go wrong, we’re losing the potential for peace in the current moment. We’re feeding fear instead of love. If you’re dealing with survival, keeping a roof over your head, and caring for your loved ones, that’s real stress, but worrying won’t help, action will. Any small thing you can do to try to right the ship or get some momentum happening is going to make you feel more energized and hopeful, and optimism in the face of difficulty is often the difference between turning things around, or staying stuck.

The same is true when we travel back in time, with regret, despair, or longing. Whatever has happened, it’s behind us. Of course we all have treasured memories, and there’s nothing wrong with visiting old friends and cherished loved ones we can’t hug anymore, in our minds and in our hearts. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about traveling backward as if we could redo or undo something. There’s no potential left in the past. We can learn from it, we can be softened by it, but we can’t rewrite it.

For so many people, the mind catapults from one to the other. Longing and sadness over things behind them, fear and anxiety over things out ahead of them, and the poor nervous system goes along for the ride. The most powerful way I know to land yourself fully in the now, is to become aware of your breath. That’s the greatest gift of yoga, and seated meditation—they both center around your breath. Those inhales and exhales are always happening in the present moment, and if you can feel your breath, you know you’re here; awake, aware, engaged with life, which isn’t happening behind you, or out in front of you. It’s happening right now.

Worry doesn’t change the outcome of a thing. Believe me, if worrying about something could prevent it from happening, we’d know about that by now. We’ve all had the experience of making ourselves ill over something that never came to pass, right? It’s especially hard when we love people and we’re concerned for their well-being. Maybe someone you love beyond words is putting herself in harm’s way. How do you not worry about that? First of all, when we love people, we make ourselves vulnerable, so you may as well accept that. And, you can’t save anyone but yourself, and you may as well accept that, too. There are certain answers we’ll never have until we exhale for the final time, and perhaps, not even then and that also makes us vulnerable.

Anyway, my point is, we can’t control the outcome of anything except how we face what we’re given, and even that takes tremendous effort. We can love people with everything we’ve got. We can offer an ear, our shoulder, a hand up if we’re in a good position. We can listen, we can grieve with people, or make them a meal, or try to find help for them if we aren’t sure how to help them ourselves, but our worry doesn’t help anyone. If someone is afraid for themselves, you really don’t help by reflecting that fear back to them. If someone is suffering, you don’t serve them by getting down in the mud and wailing with them.

I believe you can help a lot simply by being present with someone, being able to hold a space for someone’s grief or anger or loneliness or confusion or shame. That’s a huge thing you can do, but you can only do that if you show up with open ears, an open heart and an open mind. You won’t find those things behind you or in front of you. They’re within you. When you can show up that way for yourself, and for all the people in your life, then I believe you’re really living. Life is short and precious, or it’s a long and painful; I believe those are the options. Try not to miss too many moments. Life brings enough heartbreaks of its own, we don’t have to make this stuff up. It also offers a million gifts a day if we’re paying attention. It’s easy to take it for granted that we all woke up today, right? But that is a gift. If you have your health, it’s a gift. If you have people in your life whom you love with your whole heart, that’s a gift, even if they’re causing you some pain right now. Loving people so deeply that we hurt when they hurt, is a gift. Try not to miss too many gifts if you can help it.

Sending you love and a hug,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful to you, you might check out my books here <3

Regret

regretfear Most of us spend too much time looking in the rear-view mirror. It’s always good to examine our choices and behavior, especially when we’ve landed ourselves in situations we never intended and didn’t want, but once you’ve looked at what happened, once you’ve plunged the depths of what was motivating you and what went wrong, it isn’t productive to swim in those waters.

Most of us can look back on our lives and point to choices or decisions we’ve made wishing we could go back and do things differently, but screwing things up is how we learn. Maybe you didn’t show up for yourself the way you wanted to; maybe you weren’t able to act on your own behalf in a timely fashion. It’s possible you participated in a situation that was very damaging to your tender and precious heart. If that’s the case, of course you want to get really clear on why you were feeling so badly about yourself that you allowed someone else to mistreat you, or felt unable to remove yourself from a toxic situation. The information you really need, though, has much less to do with the other party or the events around you, than it does with your own emotional and psychological drives.

So many people get caught up in the particulars. Maybe you wish the story went a different way, and you find yourself time traveling, going backward in your mind and rewriting conversations. Maybe you’re stuck on wanting to be right, or wanting someone else to embrace your version of events. The thing is, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about you. It matters what you think about you. If you blew it, whether that means you let yourself or someone else down, I’d look at that, but I wouldn’t marinate yourself in regret and despair, that isn’t productive, and it keeps you stuck in a cycle of shame and self-loathing. You’re better off swimming with hungry sharks.

The best we can hope for is to learn and grow. We start with the tools we develop as kids. We enter young adulthood armed with information, some of it good, some of it really, really off-base. We do the best we can with what we know, and most of us make plenty of mistakes. We get hurt. We unintentionally hurt other people. We try to figure out how to be happy, and for most people it’s a messy process because we’re sent on so many quests that lead nowhere. Starve yourself and you’ll be happy. Accrue money and buy things and you’ll be happy. Meet the right person and you’ll be happy. None of that works, and in the meantime we’re walking in circles in the dark, banging into things and stubbing our toes or breaking our hearts.

The main thing is to learn as you grow. To make better mistakes every time until you find your way, and to do your very best not to hurt other people. Release the stuff that’s weighing you down so you can fly. We only have so much time. I wouldn’t spend too much of it kicking yourself.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you might check out the books for in-depth work!

Don’t Give Your Power Away

peacepilgrim When we allow outside forces to upset us, we’re giving our power away. Yesterday as I was driving, waiting to take a right on red, the man behind me started laying on his horn. He couldn’t see the oncoming traffic because his view was blocked by a van to my left in the next lane, but I could not have taken that right safely, so I was waiting. My kids were in the car, and as they do, they were asking me for a play-by-play of what was happening. “Why is that man honking at you?” “Because he wants me to drive.” “Why aren’t you driving?” “Because it isn’t safe.” “So why is he honking at you?” “Because he’s full of rage.” “Why is he full of rage?” Anyway, you get the picture.

Not only was this guy honking, he had his other hand up in the air, and I have no doubt he was shouting expletives at me, because his face was red and his lips were moving in my rearview mirror. When I took the turn, he pulled up next to me at the next light, and my kids were looking out the window at him, even though I told them not to worry about it. My son, who’s like an investigative reporter, wanted me to roll down the window so he could ask the guy why he was angry. I did not oblige, but we did talk about anger, and how it’s a natural feeling everyone experiences and that the important thing is what you do about it. We also talked about frustration, and about inner power.

We’re all going to have our moments, I certainly have mine. It’s possible that guy was having an exceptionally bad day. Maybe there are really challenging things happening in his life right now. Maybe there was an emergency at home. Or maybe he always drives that way, because he feels deeply dissatisfied with his life, and the way it’s unfolding. The thing is, if something that small gets a person that upset that quickly, that rage or despair was just underneath the surface.

Sometimes my kids get upset about something someone else has said or done (sometimes they get upset with each other, too, haha), and a big phrase at our house is, “Don’t give your power away.” If, for example, my daughter wants to play with her older brother, but she doesn’t want to play the game on his terms, sometimes she’ll come find me with her lip quivering and her voice about 10 decibels higher than usual. Other times she’ll yell and I’ll tell her to take a couple of deep breaths so she can talk to me in a “regular voice”, and that she doesn’t have to give her power away, just because she’s upset about something her brother is doing or not doing, and sometimes it’s reversed. Sometimes my son will do something he knows he shouldn’t, and when I ask him what’s going on, he’ll try to tell me his sister did something that caused him to do this thing he shouldn’t have done, at which point we have a conversation that goes something like:

Me: “Is your sister in control of you?”
Him: “No.”
Me: “Who’s in control of what you do and say?”
Him: “Me.”
Me: “Okay, then who’s in trouble right now, you, or your sister?”
Him: “I’ll go apologize.”
Me: “Great.”
Him: “Do I still get dessert?”

Anyway, my point is, we all do this stuff, all the time. Someone we don’t even know flips us off in traffic, and we allow it to affect our blood pressure. Or someone we do know says something thoughtless, and we stew about it for hours, losing a whole afternoon we can never have back. Or someone we’ve just met rejects us, and we feel stung and desperate for days or weeks. Something amazing happens and we’re elated. Something painful happens and we’re depressed. There’s no power in that. If we’re victims of circumstance, we may as well accept that life isn’t going to feel very good a lot of the time.

It doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to let the guy behind you at that light get you riled up at all. You could allow that to be his problem to solve. You could even send him some compassion if you have it in you, because maybe it really is unusual behavior for him. If it isn’t, he probably needs even more compassion, because that can’t be a fun way to live.

A lot of people struggle with anger. Some let it out in unhealthy ways, so it explodes all over them, and everyone in the near vicinity. Other people repress it, and end up depressed, because it takes a lot of energy to sit on an active volcano. Some people numb out, feeling they’d better blur the edges and check out, or their rage will overwhelm them. Not facing this stuff is what does us in. Learning to sit with intense sensation is one of the major ways we retain our power, and our peace. Intense emotion creates intense sensation. So when you feel enraged, you might notice your breath is shallow, or your shoulders are up around your ears, or your face feels hot, or your heart is racing or your fists are clenched. If you can observe sensation, you’ll draw yourself into the present moment. Then you might be able to examine what’s come up for you, and why you’re feeling so triggered. That way you create space between an event, and the way you choose to respond to it, and that’s power. Don’t give yours away.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here.

It’s Not “All Good”

changingseasons You do not have to be grateful for every experience you’ve ever had in your life. I almost feel the need to write that again. I think there’s enormous confusion around this topic, at least in the “spiritual community”, and I think it’s important to shine some light on it. You can, in retrospect, appreciate how certain tragedies may have made you a more compassionate and insightful person. You might acknowledge that you would not be the you that you are, had you not endured certain piercing heartbreaks. Maybe you’ve even taken this knowledge and used it to help people going through the same kind of loss, and perhaps you can feel grateful that something of value has risen out of the ashes of your grief. That’s all beautiful, but you do not have to look back on your life, on everything that may or may not have happened to you, and feel grateful for it all.

You may think I’m splitting hairs, or that this is just semantics, but I assure you that’s not it. I watched a close family member lose his six year old son to brain cancer, and I can tell you, no one in my family is grateful for having gone through that, least of all his parents. Having said that, his mother helps other families facing loss like that. So is that gorgeous of her? Yes. Can she appreciate that she would not be able to comfort people going through something that horrendous in the same way had she not gone through it herself? Of course. But would she gladly give back that experience and be less insightful in that area? Yes. One hundred percent, yes.

I get really fired up when I see these quotes, or hear people spouting platitudes about everything being wonderful and positive. It’s so alienating for people who are in pain, who are grieving or suffering, to also feel they’re supposed to somehow trust that it’s “happening for a reason”, or to have faith that “someday it will all make sense to them.” Some things will never make sense. Some things fall so far outside of anything we could call sense, it’s asinine to try to put them in the same sentence.

I recognize we all want to make order out of chaos, create stability in a vulnerable world. I know we’d love to feel there’s some quid pro quo, and that it’s all cause and effect. “If I’m a good person, then nothing bad will happen to me, or to those I love,” but it doesn’t work that way. Knifing things happen to incredibly kind people sometimes. Perhaps you believe there’s a larger picture, and that it all works out in the end. Maybe you’re right, and maybe you’re wrong. We could shout our opinions from the mountaintops all day long, but ultimately we all have to figure out what makes sense to us. We all have to grapple with these questions and piece together answers we can sleep with at night. When we tell a grieving person their tragedy has befallen them for a reason, even if we believe that and we mean well, we are showing an enormous lack of understanding and compassion, and there’s nothing spiritual about that.

There’s the “normal” amount of suffering, and then there’s the kind that brings you to your knees with your mouth full of why, the pain so great it takes up all the space in your lungs, the breaking of your heart something you can feel in real-time. Then there’s the way you respond to what you’ve been given, and that’s pretty much all you can control. How do I work with my history, my pain, my fears, my tendencies, my gifts, my strengths, my joy? How do I lean into all of it, and do my life in a way that feels good and right to me? How do I learn and grow and use what I know to have a positive impact on the world around me? What within me still needs my kind attention? Where do I have room to heal more, to open more? If you force yourself to feel grateful for everything, or you feel disappointed in yourself because you can’t, you’re simply getting in your own way.

Examine your “shoulds”, as in, “I should be able to handle this.” Says who? How old is that should? Is it even yours, or is it something that was instilled in you, that you’ve internalized? You feel how you feel. You are who you are. Obviously, we want to focus our minds on all the things we do have, like our health, and the people in our lives who love us, and whom we love beyond measure. We want to feel grateful for the sound of laughter spilling from our children, our partners, our best friends, and total strangers. We want to feel grateful for the sun on our faces, or the breeze across our skin, for kindnesses bestowed upon us by those we know so well, and those we don’t know at all. Gratitude is a beautiful state that makes us feel all the abundance around us and within us, but you can’t force it, and it isn’t even a sane response in many cases. Facing reality as it is, is my religion. Give me the truth, whatever it is. Let me know myself and the people in my life well, and deeply. That way I can love them for real. When I’m angry, let me examine what’s happening within me. When I’m joyful, let me spread that far and wide. Let me start and end and fill my days with all the reasons I have to say yes, and thank you. But when I’m suffering, grant me a spiritual practice that makes space for that, too. That way I can breathe.

Wishing that for you, and sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

~ Find my books here ~

You Have to Choose It

failurepickford We all have our stuff; ways we’ve been hurt or disappointed, longing that’s gone unmet, grieving we’ve had to do. We also have our histories, our patterns, those dynamics we grew up with that shape (but needn’t define), who we are. The more work we do to know ourselves, the easier life becomes. Otherwise we’re being pulled by unconscious drives, and are along for a bumpy, painful and confusing ride.

Having said that, consciousness is not the final destination. You might know yourself well. You might recognize your tendencies and know exactly what’s driving you. You might understand and embrace in your heart what’s true for you, what scares you, what excites you and inspires you. That’s all amazing, and what we work toward, because that way we can be accountable to ourselves and to everyone else. But in large part, happiness is a choice, and it can take enormous willpower to choose it.

Don’t get me wrong, here, because there are heartbreaking, stressful, lonely times in life when it would be unrealistic to think or expect that you could simply choose to be happy. When we lose people we love, for example, it’s appropriate and healthy to grieve. When we’re under enormous pressure to keep a roof over our heads, it lacks compassion for someone to suggest to us that we should just choose to be happy. I’m not talking about those times.

I’m talking about the day-to-day rhythm when we can easily allow the mind to get snagged on what isn’t going well, on what we don’t have that others seem to, on everything that hasn’t happened yet. You can look up “negativity bias” if you like, because we’re naturally inclined to be on the alert for any potential dangers. This is a life skill we don’t need the way we used to, but old habits die hard. Since we don’t have to worry about saber tooth tigers chasing us down for dinner, we might dwell on paying the mortgage, or our inability to feel like life is flowing the way we wish it would, and lose sight of all we do have, like our health, the ability to put our hands over our hearts and breathe in deeply and breathe out fully, which feels great (try it if you don’t believe me), the sun shining in a particular way, or the laugh of someone we love so much, the way their nose crinkles when they smile.

The other thing is, just knowing we have unhealthy tendencies in some areas is not always enough to stop us from playing them out, even though we know they lead to a head-on collision with a brick wall. This, once again, is where willpower and vigilance come in. If, for example, you have a history of dating people who are unavailable in some way, and you’ve come to understand that pursuing people like that leads to your own heartbreak, you may still feel pulled to head in that direction should the opportunity present itself, even if you’ve worked on bringing this pattern to the surface, even if you’re extremely self-aware. This little (or big) pull may always be there; it’s what you do, or don’t do about it that matters. Whatever you feed will grow and strengthen, and this goes for your habits, too. Don’t feed your pathology. If you meet someone at work and you start having a coffee here and there, and you find out along the way that they live with someone, but you’ve already developed a little crush, I would say get the f&ck out of Dodge, and do it now, no more coffees, no more flirting, just shut the thing down. If you meet someone and they’re in all kinds of pain, and you can tell they just really need to be loved, and you feel like you’re the one who can love them the way no one else has ever been able to love them before, if you tell yourself you’re the missing link, and your love can heal them and save them, even though you’ve done this in the past and you know it’s futile, I would say, get the f&ck out of Dodge, and do it now.

It’s not okay to be reckless with your heart. If you are, you’ll find your heart will harden eventually, and out of your mouth will come words like, “You can’t trust anyone”, or “People suck”, and neither of those things are true. Also, you’ll prevent yourself from diving in all the way when things are good, because some part of you will still be pulled toward those things that bring you pain. As I’m writing this, it’s 12:45am, and a woman is walking by my house on her cellphone, crying loudly between bursts of words. I don’t know who’s on the other end of the phone, but it’s clear she doesn’t feel heard because she’s raising her voice, and she’s sobbing about why it always has to be this way, why this person has to keep hurting her. The real question is why she’s choosing to participate. Because I really think life is too short to spend the wee hours of a morning that way. People can’t “keep hurting us” unless we give them the power to do that (I’m not talking about things that may have happened when you were a child. Children are powerless in abusive situations, and some adults feel that way, as well. If you fall into that category, you need to reach out for help).

Feeling pulled in an unhealthy direction is fine. Acknowledging that it’s happening is good, especially when we do that with people we can trust. Bringing our darkness into the light takes the power away from it. But feelings aren’t facts, and we don’t have to act on every feeling we have. In fact, there are a lot of feelings we’d do best to observe, because all feelings have one thing in common: they arise, they peak, and they subside. No feeling lasts forever. Once again, I’ll suggest to you that yoga is an excellent way of training yourself to sit with uncomfortable feelings, calmly. Holding Warrior II when your quad is burring, and sweat is dripping down your face, teaches your mind and your nervous system to breathe through sensation. That’s all a feeling is—it’s a sensation. If you need help with this, or want to try practicing with me online, you can sign up for a free trial here. Sending you love, and reminding you to starve your pathology. Your heart will thank you for it.

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here.

How to Rise Up in the Face of Our Own Fragility

lovefragility Yesterday morning I woke up from a nightmare that I was on a plane with one of my best friends, and the plane suddenly started plummeting toward the ocean. Alarms were going off, things were falling from the overhead compartments, oxygen masks dangled in front of us, and people were screaming. My friend grabbed my arm, and I said, “We’re going to have a water landing.” Which is hilarious in retrospect, because if that isn’t a euphemism we’ve been taught, what is? All I could think of was my children. I woke up as the nose of the plane hit the water. Needless to say, it was not a great way to start the day.

There are all kinds of dream interpretations we could talk about with a scene like that, but honestly, I was just so happy to wake up and realize it wasn’t real, and that my kids were sleeping soundly, and that I wasn’t dead. The thing is, we get reminders all the time that we’re vulnerable. We have the seasons which teach us about birth and blossoming and withering and death, and birth again. Sometimes we’re reminded when we lose someone we don’t know how to live without, and sometimes we get smaller nudges when someone exits our life by choice or through necessity. If we pay attention, we realize the impermanence and ever-changing nature of our feelings. We see that everything is in flux, all the time.

We’re vulnerable because we don’t know day-to-day what will happen, even though we try to pin things down and make our plans. We simply have no idea what’s in store for us, or for our loved ones. Of course I hope we all live to be a sprightly 103 like my Great Aunt Tess, but we just don’t know, and that’s not an easy gig. In fact, it’s so uncomfortable, many people try not to think about it at all. A lot of us seem to accept that death is a reality, but not when it applies to us, or to those we treasure. That’s why there’s always such a shock, such a stopping of the spinning of the earth when we lose someone, even if we knew it was coming. It seems impossible that a whole life, a whole person, a whole world is just…gone. I think because of this, because being human is such a vulnerable gig, we ought to have some compassion for ourselves. We’re in huge mystery together, and we won’t really know what’s going on until our final exhale, and maybe that will be that, and maybe not. I believe in the continuation of consciousness myself, but you may believe we become worm food, and we just won’t know until we know. Or we don’t. I could go on like this for hours.

In light of this, we could be more forgiving with each other, too. Life is too short for grudges and lists of ways we’ve been wronged. It’s too short for score-keeping. It’s too short to cling to your rage like a shield. It’s too short to blame other people if you’re unhappy. It’s too short to leave important things unsaid or undone. And it’s too short to do anything but follow your intuition and your heart. Since we only have 103 years, let’s blaze through the world and give it everything we’ve got. Let’s sing those songs that are in our hearts. Let’s let people merge on the freeway. Let’s celebrate when something wonderful happens, and let’s be there for each other when we’re in pain.

Let’s not ever “waste” time, or “kill time,” because it’s so precious. Let’s look the vulnerability of this thing in the face, and throw our arms in the air, and let’s enjoy the ride. Let the not knowing inspire you to live every single day as if it were the last one, and hug your children too hard. If there’s someone in your life you love, tell them right now. Text them, call them, post it in your update, or tag them in this thread and tell them why you love them. Let’s make a little magic happen, shall we?

Wishing and sending you love.

~Ally Hamilton

Self-Forgiveness

Self-forgiveness isn’t always easy, but sometimes it’s the only forgiveness you’re going to get. It’s hard enough when someone else does something hurtful or confusing or thoughtless, but I think it’s even worse when we’re the ones who’ve blown it, and forgiveness is withheld. There’s only so much you can do.

I’d say the first thing is to examine what happened. Were you in a bad place, were you feeling triggered or raw, or what, exactly, when you failed to show up the way you wish you had. Did you allow something to fester and boil underneath the surface? Were you feeling threatened or envious or desperate or cornered? Did something in the interaction force you to look at stuff about yourself you weren’t ready to face? Did you do something in anger, without giving yourself time to breathe and reflect? These are the kinds of questions we need to answer in order to know ourselves more deeply, and so we can show up in a different way the next time.

After you’re clear on what happened, communication is your next move. Share, in whatever way you’re able, and preferably in person, what you’ve come to understand about what happened. Tell them your understanding of how they’re feeling, and ask them if you’re getting it right. Ask them what they need from you to move forward feeling good about things. And let them know you’ve really examined yourself, and this won’t happen again in the future.

If you can’t get an audience with someone, then try a voicemail, and make it short but from your heart. If that also fails, you email, but reread your email and save it as a draft, and reread it again before you hit send. Make sure it’s an apology and not a justification. Be clear that it’s your responsibility, and nothing that the other party did or said. And say you’re sorry.

You will, or will not, be forgiven. That’s out of your hands, but what is in your power is the ability to forgive yourself. We are all human and we all make mistakes, that’s just the nature of this gig. No one shows up as their highest self in every moment. Sometimes something old and raw gets tapped and we lash out, or we’re feeling vulnerable already, and we start to feed the green monster of envy. Be as unflinchingly honest as you can when you seek forgiveness. This way the other party knows you really mean it.

If you aren’t granted the chance to communicate, at a certain point you’ll have to forgive yourself. It’s a sad thing when someone with whom we were once close, suddenly pulls away and refuses to remember who we are (assuming who we are is a kind and loving person in this friend’s life), you really have to give them some space and time. There are also times a person is so attached to their anger, there’s nothing you can say or do. Except send them love and compassion. There are certain things that are very difficult to forgive. Betrayal is a big one, and if you’ve betrayed someone, chances are you’re not feeling very good about yourself, and it’s time to look at that. But we don’t do ourselves any good when we marinate in shame and rage. Look at yourself honestly but kindly, pick up the pieces, and move forward with the intention of doing it better the next time.

If you’re in a place where you’re longing for forgiveness but it isn’t forthcoming, and you’ve done all you can to own what happened and say you’re sorry, at a certain point you have to let it go. Maybe time will bring the person back to you, and maybe not. Obsessing won’t affect the outcome. If you’re in a spiral like that, you have to pull yourself out, and the best way is to choose one thought over another. Once you’ve examined a situation from every angle, continuing to turn it around in your head doesn’t serve anyway. Pick the thoughts that strengthen you. If you need help with that, seated meditation is a good place to start. That’s where we learn we are not our thoughts, we don’t have to believe everything we think, and feelings are not facts. If you need help, I have meditation classes online. Sending you love, Ally Hamilton

Closure Doesn’t Save Us from Grief

goodbyehello Most of us torture ourselves at some point or another looking for closure regarding a heartbreak. Sometimes it’s something that’s happened with a family member or close friend, often it happens when we’re grieving the loss of a romantic relationship. Here’s the thing. There are some situations we’ll never understand, and our best hope for closure is acceptance of that fact.

It’s completely understandable that we’d want to know why something has happened that’s caused a rift or a split, especially when we feel devastated, bereft, confused and untethered. When these things are left shrouded in mystery, it’s so hard to let go. Sometimes we can’t wrap our heads around why someone is doing what they’re doing, because we’re on the wrong end of displaced rage. Sometimes we’re dealing with someone who’s coming from a totally different place philosophically or emotionally, and we just can’t comprehend what would make a person do, say, want or need whatever it is they’re doing, saying, wanting or needing. Sometimes we’ve blown it, and no matter how much we might apologize, the door is shut with no hope for communication or healing.

Some people communicate well, and others really struggle. There are many people who have a difficult time putting words to their feelings, and sometimes resentment or despair is mounting for ages, and one day it blows up all over the place, leaving us to wonder what’s happened, and why something so small has caused an apocalypse. We only know other people, even those closest to us, to the extent that they allow us to know them. You will only know the interior world of another person if they choose to share it with you. Sometimes, for some people, the truth feels too painful to speak, or it requires the speaker to confront weaknesses or anger they aren’t ready to face. If that’s the case, you’ve cornered a person, and even if you’ve done so inadvertently, it’s not surprising that they’ve lashed out. You can’t force a person to tell you what’s going on in their heart of hearts.

This is like a small version of how we feel when we lose someone through death. We can’t and don’t have all the answers we long for, we don’t have the information that would soothe and reassure us. We are left to hold a space in our hearts for someone we once loved. We’re invited to let the trace of that love soften us instead of harden us. We can carry some of the good stuff forward with us. We can hope this person who’s lost to us is okay, and that they know they were loved. Eventually, we’ll have to accept that some questions will simply go unanswered, and that we’ll move forward, allowing the questions to inspire us to do that with love and compassion for ourselves and other people.

When you’ve done all you can, you have to release your grip on the story, and allow it to unfold on its own. Time does not heal all wounds, but it does lessen the piercing pain of loss. Time also invites us to stop clinging and start living again. You don’t want to lose too much of today making yourself sick over what happened yesterday, last week, or last year. The day is calling, and it has its own fresh mysteries and beautiful potential. Breathe in and breathe out, and trust your heart to heal.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

Make Better Mistakes

failureexperience Often people think of their weaknesses or mistakes as failings or short-comings, when really, they’re just places where there’s still some healing or growing to do. If you notice patterns in your life, repeated choices you’re making that aren’t serving you, it’s actually a good thing, because we can’t change anything that’s happening outside our awareness, and many habits fall into that category.

A habit can be a habitual way of thinking about yourself that weakens you, such as, “No one likes me.” This idea may be so ingrained, you’ve come to accept it as the way of things, but if you dig a little, and get yourself some support, you’ll find you can choose a completely different thought. You could flip that idea around and say, “I’m longing for connection. I want to be seen and known and cherished, and that’s a beautiful and natural thing to desire.” Or, “I have deep doubts about my worth, and it’s time to figure out when and why that began.” Then you can get to work figuring out how to let down your defenses and reach out more. How to move outside your comfort zone, and let some love in.

The thing is, when we look back and try to organize our lives into lists of successes and failures, we really lose an opportunity to grow. I hear people describe shame when they get divorced, for example, because they feel like they failed, but usually, so much growth comes out of a situation that falls apart. Obviously no one would ask for heartbreak like that, but it isn’t a failure. It might even be a triumph, if you looked a piercingly painful situation in the eye and decided to release your grip on a story that wasn’t and isn’t yours to write. Perhaps you and your ex needed to release each other, so something beautiful and truthful could emerge. That isn’t a failure.

Maybe you quit a job with financial security to pursue your dreams, and everyone told you you were nuts. Maybe you had to downsize and simplify, but now you’re happy. Now you wake up excited about the day, and grateful to be alive. Not a failure.

Maybe you’ve had a series of romantic relationships that have ended badly. Maybe you have intense fear of commitment, or you find it hard to stay with one person because the grass always looks greener. Maybe you’ve hurt people because you’re in pain. The real issue isn’t what’s happened, it’s what you’re going to do about it. As long as you keep learning and growing and understanding more about yourself and other people, as long as you’re doing the best you can to be true to yourself without hurting anyone else, you’ll do fine. I think it’s a realistic goal to try to make better mistakes as you go along. It’s not that you’re looking for this moment when you’ll be “done”, because that doesn’t happen until your final exhale; it’s that you’re taking the information from each situation, regardless of the outcome, and learning from it. If you’ve hurt people in the past due to your fear or your anger or your confusion, you grapple with all that stuff, so that you don’t continue to hurt people out in front of you in those same ways.

Sometimes we set completely unrealistic goals for ourselves, or we have some very definite picture in our heads of how things should be, or how things should look or feel. Things are as they are. You can’t change what other people will do or want or say or need, but you can certainly work on how you respond. Getting down on yourself won’t get you far. Beating yourself up, or putting yourself down are two sure ways to stay right where you are, feeling awful. Apologize when you have something to be sorry about, be strong enough not to use people for your comfort, and move forward with the intent to take what you’ve learned and show up for yourself, and the people in your life, in a different way. That’s a realistic goal.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can check out my books here.

Courage–Take Heart

couragewayne Fear can hold us back in so many ways. It’s a completely natural feeling that we’ll all experience, but as with everything, it’s what you do with your fear (or don’t do), that matters. The root of the word “courage” is “cor”—the Latin word for heart, and when we fail to grapple with our fear, this is really what happens—we end up betraying our own hearts.

If you tell yourself that you’re irrevocably broken at some root level, if you worry that you may not be good enough, or “something” enough, you set yourself up to reject love, to doubt the sanity or judgment of the people who offer it to you. If you ask yourself who you are to follow your dreams, if you tell yourself you’re better off toeing the line because you probably aren’t special enough to do anything else, you’ve let fear stop you from exploring how life would look and feel if you were living in alignment with your intuition.

The best definition of courage or bravery I’ve ever heard is, “feeling the fear, and doing it, anyway”, whatever “it” may be. It could be that you long to ask someone on a date, or you want to ask for a raise, or quit your job, or have an uncomfortable conversation with someone. There are all kinds of situations that are challenging, that might elicit fear, and the only thing worse than someone telling you you can’t do something because you don’t have the right stuff, is telling that to yourself. Self-limiting beliefs are like the bars of a prison cell you set for yourself. If you believe in them, you’ll be stuck. If you take a chance and gather yourself up, you’ll find there’s no “there” there.

Maybe you’ve been carrying around doubt for years. Perhaps you grew up hearing that you didn’t measure up, or would never amount to anything. Maybe you’ve been hurt, betrayed, abandoned or abused, emotionally, or otherwise. So many things can damage our confidence in our ability to see things through, but feeling the fear and doing it, anyway, is such a great way to rebuild that belief in yourself.

A painful conversation might seem daunting, but it’s better than living in quiet desperation, and you’ll probably find it’s the first sentence that’s the hardest. If it’s a personal situation, you might try, “I’m in pain, and I need to talk to you.” If it’s a business associate, your boss, your colleague, or anyone else who might hold some power over you (the power to keep a roof over your head, for example), practice with someone you trust, first. You might start with, “I’m glad we have the chance to talk about something that’s been on my mind for awhile.” The same goes for asking someone on a date; practice, and remember that it’s not even the outcome that matters. What matters is that you’re feeling good enough about yourself to ask for what you want.

Few things feel worse than wanting something and being unable to act on your own behalf. Usually the fear of stepping up has to do with a lack of self-esteem, and the paradox is, if you can make yourself rise to the occasion, you’ll automatically feel better about yourself. You don’t have to repress your fear, deny it or run from it. Go ahead and feel it, but then do it, anyway. You can be scared and brave at the same time, they aren’t mutually exclusive feelings. Life is too short to leave your deepest desires unmet.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If you enjoy the posts, you can find the books here.

Freedom

futurepast It seemed like a a good day to write about freedom. When we haven’t done the work to heal, and by that I mean, get real with ourselves and seek help if we need it, we are owned by our pain. If we have doubts about whether we are truly lovable, worthwhile, special, unique…that doubt and fear will permeate everything. Following your heart takes enormous courage, and in order to be courageous, you have to believe in your ability to shine; to offer up something only you can. So many people are owned by the idea, “Who am I to chase my dreams?”, or, “Who am I to color outside the lines?”

If you doubt your worthiness to be loved, you’ll play that out by chasing people who seem on the fence about being with you. Rejection will be like a hook, because you’ll see your own doubt in yourself reflected back at you, and in your effort to heal, you’ll pursue, thinking if you can convince other people, maybe you’ll also convince yourself. But it doesn’t work that way, and this is what I mean about being a slave to your pain. Anything we repress, deny or run from, owns us. It might be unconscious, we might not even realize what’s driving us; people suffer without knowing why, it happens all the time. You will never be free from your past, or free from your rage or your fear or your grief until you allow these feelings to catch up with you, until you turn around and sit down and allow this stuff to wash over you. I realize that doesn’t sound like fun, but it’s a lot better than the alternative, because you might be deeply uncomfortable in the short-term, but you’ll be on the path to your own liberation. The other way, you’ll be on the run your whole life.

Knowing yourself is the most freeing thing there is, and not knowing yourself is the loneliest thing I know. When we aren’t sure what lights us up, what scares us, what excites and inspires us, or where we have healing to do, we’re left to flail around in the dark. When we don’t have a strong center, the chances that we’ll betray ourselves in important ways increase exponentially. If you want to be free, you have to take ownership of your life, and you may have to abandon your way of being if it isn’t working for you. When I say “your way of being”, I mean your way of being in the world. If life doesn’t feel good, whatever you’ve been doing so far isn’t working well. Maybe you’re owned by ideas like, “Everybody leaves”, or, “Everybody cheats”, or, “You can’t trust anyone.” How about, “Life isn’t fair”? Or, “I never get any breaks”, or, “No one likes me”? If any of that sounds familiar, I’d get busy breaking those chains, because that’s a prisoner’s mentality.

We can’t control or rewrite what has already happened, any more than we can predict the future. What we can do is lean into our pain and look unflinchingly, but with compassion, at how we’ve been managing ourselves. How we’ve been showing up for ourselves and the people we love. How willing we’ve been to reach out and ask for support when we need it. How much we’re trying to control, and how much we’re able to face reality as it is. To be curious about how things are, instead of being attached to a picture in our heads of how things should be.

The more able you are to work on the things you can control (the way you respond to whatever life puts in your path), and let go of the things you cannot (pretty much everything else), the more you’ll free yourself from suffering. Wishing that for you, and for all of us. May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings be free.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you might like the books!

OPR (Other People’s Rage)

neededwanted Once when I was about sixteen, I was walking up Columbus Avenue with my dad. We were having a conversation about something I can’t remember, and suddenly, my dad lashed out and hit me on the side of my head with the back of his hand, hard. I was completely stunned, because I hadn’t said anything of note, and I turned to him and asked why he’d done it. It turned out he’d misheard me, and had thought I’d said something disrespectful. I know he’d take that moment back if he could. It’s one of those things I hope he’s forgotten, but to me, it stood out. The other thing that stands out for me is that I squelched my feelings about what had happened. I didn’t want him to feel any more terrible about what he’d done than he already did, so I blinked back my tears, and tried to make my voice sound normal, but I had this wave of deep pain, as low in your body as you can feel something. Even though our conversation continued, part of me was back in the middle of that block, getting smacked on the side of the head, again and again. Like instant replay in slow motion, my brain and my heart trying to make sense out of it.

Life is like that sometimes. We’re going along, doing our best to put one foot in front of the other and stay open, and BAM! We get hit upside the head, out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, or because we’ve been misunderstood. Maybe we’ve crossed paths with someone at a time when s/he is full of anger or pain or confusion. Maybe you came into your parents’ lives when they were in the midst of chaos like that. It’s so hard not to take things personally, especially when our ears are ringing or we feel we’re on the wrong end of someone’s unjustified attack.

People can only be where they are, and they can only use the tools they’ve got. If someone lashes out at you, it’s an expression of pain that exists within them, and there’s nothing you can do to fix that or cure that. You can care, and you can try to get them some help if they’re open to that, but you have to take care of your own tender heart. You are not here to be anyone’s punching bag while they figure out their stuff. We all have our stuff. It’s what we do about it that matters. When we try to take the hit for someone else’s bad behavior, we do ourselves, and them, a disservice. It would have been completely appropriate for me to tell my dad I wanted to go home, or be by myself. It would have been fine for me to hail a cab. It would have been okay for me to allow him to see how much I was hurt, but I didn’t do any of those things. I tried to spare him the consequences of what he’d done, and in doing so, I absorbed that pain and robbed him of a chance to grow. I told him it was okay, even though it was not.

If you’re like me, you feel awful when you make a mistake. I can forgive other people pretty easily, but man, do I put myself through the wringer when I don’t show up the way I want to. Part of that is appropriate, but some of it is not good. It’s taken me years to shorten the time I beat myself up when I blow it. It used to be days I’d replay a thing. Eventually I got it down to a day, then an afternoon, then a few hours. These days, I remind myself regularly that I’m a human being, and as such, I will make mistakes. I examine what was happening for me when I let myself down, so I can be more aware of who I am, and do it differently next time. When someone around me makes a mistake, I assume they’ll also have to go through this tedious and uncomfortable process of forgiving themselves, which really might not be the case.

This desire to prevent those we love from having to deal with the consequences of their own actions is not actually a loving impulse, although it feels like one. Sometimes a person needs to see the pain they’ve caused in order to make a change. Robbing them of that process is not a loving act. Forgiving someone for lacking the tools to show up for you in a different way might be a loving act, as long as you don’t forget to love yourself as you do that.

When we take a thing personally, we internalize it. We process what’s happened in terms of cause and effect. If Y happened, X must have happened first, and we start to examine ourselves to see what we’ve done to cause this event, or what we haven’t done. What we are, or what we’re lacking. When really, it may have nothing at all to do with us. When we try to manage another person’s path by sparing them the suffering they might need to feel in order to grow, we are also internalizing pain. Internalized pain leads to rage and sadness. Don’t get me wrong, here. I am not talking about times when we’ve done something to hurt someone and they’ve lashed out. I’m not saying we’re always blameless. I’m saying in those situations when you really feel blindsided, when you are not guilty of doing anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that is not a moment when you need to swallow the monster of someone else’s rage, and carry it with you.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton