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Destroy what destroys you.

evolutionyou.net | what destroys you

Everything passes. Everything changes. Just do what you think you should do. —Bob Dylan

Recently a gracious friend featured my words in his essay, How we see. In it, I said that my journey through crippling depression was like crossing a river. There are two sides to the river—the hopeless side and the side of hope & light. When I finally made it across and I was looking back, everything had changed. I was overcome with a deep sense of gratitude for all of it, even the struggle.

I use the metaphor of the river to describe my journey from darkness to light, but it also applies to my life every day. Each day I must choose again which side of the river I will stand on. Each day brings with it new beauty and new struggle. There will always be 1,000 obstacles. But—there will also always be—a choice.

When the obstacles begin to stack themselves against you, will you buckle or endure? Are you willing to fight for this?

Yesterday, I officially submitted my application to pursue my teaching certification. I simply do not have the words to express the enormity of what that means to my life’s path. Suffice it to say, it is huge. My life is changing once again.

The things in your life that have power are the things that you choose to give power to. From fear to hope, weakness to determination—over the past few weeks, my emotions have run the gamut. Here’s how I got through it. The next time that you find yourself struggling, I hope that these tips may serve as a life raft to you, too.

  1. Breathe. Breath is always the first and most important step. Before you do anything else, take control of your breathing. Take a deep breath in through your nostrils. Let the air flow through your chest and deep into the pit of your stomach. Allow your stomach to expand, like a balloon, as it fills with air. Then slowly exhale through your nose and expel all of the air from your body. Breathe in deeply again, allowing the air to fill your stomach as before. Each time you inhale, take in the positive energy & light around you. Let it fill & calm your soul. Each time you exhale, push out your negative energy & fear. Continue to do this until you feel calm.
  2. Trust your struggle. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much you plan or how carefully you’ve lined up your goals. Just when you finally think you’ve got it all figured out, life will pitch a shit storm at your head. Don’t fight it. Trust your struggle. Remember that even though it’s not always easy to see it in the present, when you look back on your life, the struggles are the most beautiful parts.
  3. Choose light. John Wayne said that tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday. I couldn’t agree more.Every day we wake up and we have another choice to make. Choose light. Remember that the things in your life that have power are the things that you choose to give power to. Surround yourself with people that bring you up and shut the others out. Give power to love, hope, and strength. Let the rest go.
  4. Take action. When the time is right, you will know what you have to do. If you open your heart to it, the answer will be crystal clear. If you don’t know now, you will know soon. Have patience, stop fighting, and just listen. When you are ready, move forward. Don’t let anything get in your way.

In love & light,
Dena

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    Let Go of Your Goals & Unleash Your Dreams

    Dreams are Just as Important as Goals

    I’ve written quite a bit about setting & accomplishing goals; overcoming fears; and making the best out of difficult situations. But what I haven’t written enough about is flat out—unleashing your dreams.

    Goal setting is a very mathematical process. It goes something like this: Define your goal. Map out the steps necessary to achieve it. Research, develop, act. Work until you get there. This is great, it makes sense, it gets things done. However, goals are full of limitations. In order to accomplish Z, first I need to do X and Y. If I want to be in this place by this date, then I’ve got to accomplish X, Y, and Z by this date. And so on and so forth it goes. We plan and work and strive.

    Yes, goal-setting & goal accomplishment are crucial elements to success; but sometimes we have to just let go of our goals and start unleashing our dreams! Throw caution to the wind and go for it. But how?, you ask. Well, you start by defining your dreams & broadcasting them to the world. Today I am going to define my wildest dreams & share them with you.

    “Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.” –Ayn Rand

    Why Are We Afraid to Expose Our Dreams?

    To be honest, I am a bit nervous about this. I feel like I am exposing a part of myself that I’ve kept hidden. When you keep your wildest dreams to yourself, you’re safe. If no one knows what you want, then no one can hold you accountable. For example, if your best friend has no idea that you dream of moving to Costa Rica to collect butterflies in the rain forest—then she isn’t going to check in with you once a month and ask where you’re at. If you’re father doesn’t know that you dream of quitting your job to build collectible trains and sell them on Ebay—then he isn’t going to be hounding you with questions about it at the holidays. And when you are not faced with those questions you are safe. Your dreams can stay on the back burner while your life passes you by. You are not held accountable. You don’t experience pressure. But, my friend, today is the day that you must realize something critical: It is pressure that makes diamonds!

    Broadcast Your Desires to the Universe

    Steve Pavlina recently wrote a post called Broadcast Your Desires. In the post, he explains why broadcasting our desires & dreams to the world is the best way to make them a reality. If you can’t broadcast your desires, it’s fair to say that you don’t own them yet. In order to make your desires become real, you’ve got to speak up about them. If you’re going to receive them, then let it be known. If you find it necessary to hide what you desire, that suggests you aren’t ready to receive.

    Well, I am ready to receive! I hope that by taking this step in my own life, I will inspire you to take it in your own. Here I go…!

    My Dreams

    1. Grow evolution you
    I want to take this blog to great heights, attract thousands of readers, inspire people around the world. I want to monetize it so that I can devote myself to improving people’s lives full-time. And as a result, I want to become location independent so that I can travel the world, spreading love & light where ever I go.

    2. Write a book
    I haven’t quite worked out the details of this one yet—it’s a bit ever-evolving. I’ll pin it down soon enough, for now I am just dreaming wildly!

    3. Travel to the Great Pyramids in Egypt
    I feel intimately connected to the people of ancient Egypt. Perhaps it is the beautiful & mysterious way that Ancient Egypt is depicted in films & literature, whatever the cause, the very idea of it thrills me. I have long dreamed of visiting & exploring the ancient pyramids for myself.

    4. Learn to speak French

    5. Spend time living & working in Europe
    Italy, France, and Belgium all seem such lovely places to me. I’d like to spend at least a few months in each place.

    6. Safari in Africa
    This is the only dream on the list that I already accomplished. In the Summer of 2006 I studied abroad in Kenya, studying, on safari, and touring. It was a truly incredible experience and I’ll be making a post about it soon.

    7. Live in the wilderness
    I am insanely attracted to nature. In fact, I am quite convinced that I am a tigress/she-wolf/mermaid trapped in the body of a human woman. I feel most at home in nature—in the mountains, near the sea, anywhere wild. I’ve long dreamed of escaping the civilization circa Into the Wild. It would certainly not be a permanent thing; but I’d love to experience it at least for a few weeks to see how long I’d last.

    8. Have or adopt a baby
    Last February my sister gave birth to me beautiful Godson, Brian. Ever since then, I’ve heard the ticking of my own biological clock a tad louder than before. I am not in any rush, as you can see I’ve got a lot I want to do before I am quite ready to “settle down” but it is definitely an enormous dream of mine, some day.

    9. Spend time on a Native American reservation
    I’d like to spend some time living or at least working/volunteering on a reservation. I am passionate about Native American culture and it would be a great honor to serve the Native American people in some capacity and to learn first-hand their cultures, traditions, and needs.

    10. Serve on the Board of Directors for a prominent wildlife conservation foundation

    11. Visit a Buddhist monastery in Tibet

    ——————————–

    These are not all of my dreams, not nearly, but the list could go on and on. For now, these are the ones that I am working toward—in the near & distant—future. It was not nearly as difficult to share them as I thought it would be! This list will be ever-evolving and I will update it as my dreams are accomplished and as they change.

    Alright, I did my part. Now it’s your turn! I would love to hear about your big dreams in the comments or if you make your own big dream post please let me know about it.

  • · · ·

    Tired of Conflict Bringing You Down?

    Dealing With Conflict

    Conflict takes many forms—misunderstanding, frustration, ignorance, hatred, envy, and so on—but despite the cause, the result is largely the same: someone walks away with hurt feelings.

    The truth is, however, that this is not necessary. You can choose to be unaffected by conflict. It is not an easy thing to accomplish. You have, after all, lived your life believing that conflict equals pain. But with practice & patience you can learn to live above conflict in a place of true peace.

    “True peace can not be disturbed by gain or loss.”

    The reason that conflict hurts us is because we allow it to. Most pain comes from another person(s) or from our own minds. The key to being unaffected by conflict is to understand that anything that another person says to us (out of anger, frustration, etc.) is actually a reflection of her feelings about herself and is rooted in fear. Likewise, anything that our mind says to us (self-criticism, self-hatred, etc.) is also rooted in fear. All forms of discomfort—sadness, anxiety, worry, rage, hatred, envy, and so on—are rooted in fear.

    When you accept that angry words are actually reflections of fear, it makes them much less painful to tolerate. Even the angriest and most cruel of arguments is based in fear & insecurity.

    For example, you have a large project due at work. You bring it into your boss’s office an hour prior to the deadline. She notices that it is riddled with errors. Her face turns red and she begins to scream. “You idiot! How could you be so stupid? This is unacceptable. I can not believe I ever hired you. Get out!”

    On one hand, you are devastated. Her words have stung you at your core. You are insulted, sad, angry, afraid. But if you really stop to analyze the situation, why do you think she acted this way? Most likely, she is afraid. Most likely, she is terrified about the way that your “failure” is going to reflect on her. After all, wasn’t it her who hired you, gave you this assignment, failed to give you proper instruction, and so on? What will her boss think when she turns this project into him? Her explosion was based in fear.

    Another example, it is Saturday afternoon and you are sitting on the couch. Your husband comes in the door and notices that you have not swept the floors. He begins to speak angrily, “Haven’t you swept the floors? Didn’t you see this dirt? You’ve been so lazy recently.” You are crushed and devastated. How could he be so mean? But then again, you stop and analyze. The lawn is not mowed, the gutters are uncleaned, there are piles of crap strewn about the yard. Your husband is insecure about all of his unfinished chores and is projecting his self-frustration onto you. His remarks were based in fear and insecurity.

    If you take the time to truly analyze, you will find that almost every conflict is rooted in fear. Therefore, the vast majority of hurtful things that are ever said to you actually have absolutely nothing to do with you. This is an incredibly liberating concept (not to be confused with the rare scenario when you are actually wrong by the way). Still, just because the other person’s (or even your own self-inflicted) anger is based in fear, that still doesn’t make it right. Yes, perhaps both your boss and your husband were entirely out of line. It is alright for you to tell them so, but what is more important is the way that you process the conflict within yourself.

    Most people internalize the conflict. In any case, you take what was said and push it deep within yourself. Perhaps you believe the other person words. “Yes, I am lazy, stupid, ugly, etc.” The conflict turns into emotional pain and festers within you eventually becoming depression, anxiety, and so on. But as I mentioned at the start, none of that is necessary.

    You must accept the conflict (words) for what they are—someone else’s (or even your own mind’s) fears and insecurities. Fear is nothing to be afraid of or affected by. Most fear is completely unnecessary (read more about that).

    After the conflict, words, and judgments have passed, simply allow all of it to pass through and around you like water or air. Understand that it is something outside of you, that has nothing to do with you at all. It is not inside of you, it did not come from you, and you do not have to absorb it. Simply let it pass and then move on.

    Holding onto the pain of conflict is insane and unnatural. What do the birds do after the great storm has passed? They sing, of course! You will never hear the birds singing so sweetly and so loudly as they do after the storm has passed and the sun shines again. They do not mourn the broken nest, the wet feathers, or the lost supper. They simply sing and praise the light in gratitude. They rejoice that the sun has come again.

    In his book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Eckhart Tolle talks about his observation of duck fights. Two ducks approach one another. They squawk in anger for mere seconds. Then they turn away from one another, flap their great wings a few times, and swim on as if it never happened. This is true wisdom, true peace, in action. There is so much that we can learn from this simple observation.

    There is really no need to hold onto anger or discomfort. There is really no need to suffer. In life, you will find many reason to suffer. But a good reason to suffer, you will never find. Let conflicts pass through and around you. Do not hold onto them. You will almost always find that it never has anything to do with you anyway.

12 Comments

  2. Dena,

    Thanks again for contributing. Your “vision” is so restorative.

    Got me thinking: if I really have anything to share (anything of real value), it’s not charisma or vocab or storytelling.

    It’s what’s been salvaged from deep and inimitable suffering. It has informed my teaching & made it more than a job.

    Kids are suffering little adults and want/need people who’ve been there. The deeper the pit, the greater the comfort we’ve to share.

    Warm regards,
    M

    Reply

    1. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share within your net. Those experiences are some of the best I think. Taking a few moments to step into another person’s terrain and let your heart slip out for a moment, to share what’s inside.
      There are a great many things that you have to share my humble friend. As ever, I am so grateful for your presence in my life.
      Ah, the deeper the pit, indeed.

      Reply

    1. Thank you, my beautiful friend. It’s so exciting, fresh, new. These parts of any journey are so much fun aren’t they. Now to keep up the momentum when the going gets rough. Here I go! <3

      Reply

  4. !! So happy for you, very proud that you made the decision. This is going to be huge for you.

    Enjoyed your writing on mdr.com, three completely different ways to see the world, it was a good mix.

    Reply

    1. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Andrew! Your support, encouragement, and advice have meant so much to me through these recent… adventures.

      Reply

  5. Thrilled for you, you are a teacher at heart and will be great at it. I taught school for 4 years and loved it and then life sorta took a turn and I would up doing something else. I always look back at teaching as a wonderful experience and I try to bring a part of it to whatever I do today.

    Reply

    1. Thanks, Lou. I used to teach, too. I taught for a few years while I was an undergrad — K – 8 grade Spanish. I was teaching nine classes a week. It was a tremendous experience and I am thrilled about getting back in the classroom. The next stage in my adventures. 🙂 Thank you for always being here! I’ll bet you were a phenomenal teacher. (You still are!)

      Reply

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