One thing that might help you find your direction in life

I spent this past week in DC, having a picnic dinner in front of the capitol building and wandering in some adorable neighborhoods – just walking through new neighborhoods (and stopping in new bakeries) is my absolute favorite thing to do when I’m in a new place.

And I was thinking about something I wanted to ask you.

Something that might sound impossible.

Who would you be if you stopped pushing?

No really.

What would it be like?

What would your day look like if you stopped just making yourself do things because there’s so much to get done and you’re always behind?

What would happen to your life if you were abstinent from the okay, I know I don’t feel like it but I really have to get this last thing home and then run those three errands and then do dinner.

If you thought to yourself: Everything would fall apart, I can relate. I used to be an excellent pusher. Pushing to do homework, pushing to do job work, pushing to be a good friend, a good girlfriend, an accomplished woman in the world.

But when I started to investigate why I was always eating in ways that made my life painful – eating more than I wanted, or not actually getting pleasure from food – I found that it was often linked to the Pushing.

Almost every time I was overeating, I was pushing myself – to work when I didn’t want to work, to be social with people I didn’t want to be social with, to achieve things that I didn’t actually want.

Some deeper part of me was saying no, stop! But the pusher part wanted to keep going. So I continued, but I needed something to dull the pain.

And so there was food. And also Facebook. And Internet browsing. We all have our peccadillos that we use to tranquilize the pain that comes from not listening closely enough to our deepest selves.

The peccadillos themselves aren’t the problem – food, Facebook, and Internet browsing are all great, in and of themselves. So are Instagram and Twitter and HGTV and reading the news, or whatever it is that you use to disconnect and numb. The problem is that when we use these things to quiet our internal truth, we lose the opportunity to get incredibly valuable information about our likes, dislikes, hopes, and dreams. 

So instead of allowing that information to affect us, we push through, pretending that it doesn't exist. And as a result, we feel hard, stiff, and tight in our chests and our backs and our jaws. And tired.

But what does the alternative feel like? What would it feel like not to push?

I mean, what would your body actually feel like if you stopped pushing it to do errands and be nice and get things done and go and do and try and strive and smile and plan and push?

If you can, close your eyes and just feel that for a second.

When I imagine taking the push away, it’s like I lose my bones and muscles, and my arms, legs, fingers, and toes. It’s like I’m suddenly a blob of Jell-O – tingly, bobbing Jell-O.

Is that how you feel?

I’ll admit, it’s very scary to take the push away. Even thinking about it might make you nervous.

I need to work!

I need to tell people I love them!

I need to pay my bills and buy groceries!

I definitely have those fears when I think about not pushing.

But then I ask myself (or, frankly, my very wise boyfriend asks), why are you assuming that if you don’t push, you won’t work or take care of people you love or pay bills or buy groceries?

Yes, it might shake things up in your life.

If you took away the push, you might realize that the work you actually want to do is different from the work that you’re doing now, or that the people you want to spend time with are different from the people you’re spending time with now.

You might even find that what you’d like to eat is different from what you’re eating now.

And yes, we all have responsibilities. If you have a job, you probably can’t suddenly decide that you’re not going to “push” and make yourself go this week. But by integrating more and more non-pushing moments into your life, you can begin to ask whether your life is aligned with your true desires.

But maybe you’re wondering: How do I stop pushing?

My recommendation is that you mentally give yourself permission to give up all of your to-dos or supposed-to-dos, for an hour or an afternoon. Starting with a defined period of time – even 15 minutes – is a good idea.

And you start by sitting in a chair and noticing what it feels like not to have to do anything.

I’ll be honest, it usually feels uncomfortable. You get fidgety.

You'll also notice that feelings and sensations come up when you stop having to do anything.

And, eventually, you feel a genuine urge to do something. To walk or eat or call a friend or even (it really does happen) to work or exercise or pay your bills. I’m always shocked when I find myself wanting to do something practical when I’m not “pushing” myself to do it, but it really does happen, and it happens often.

It’s a subtle difference, but an important one.

So that’s my challenge to you this week. Pick at least an hour (or better yet, a whole afternoon) when you don’t absolutely have to do something and let go of the Push. Sit down in a chair and feel how uncomfortable it is to not be moving onto anything else that your brain has decided is on your to-do list, and also not numbing out. Wait until you are pulled to do something.

If you are someone who struggles with a compulsive relationship to food, alcohol, money, etc., notice how this affects that relationship. When the push drops away for me, I find myself much, much less interested in food.

What do you think of this idea? Have you ever tried it, or would you? Let me know in the comments below!

I know you’ve got this.

Katie

How do you handle conflict if you hate conflict?

I know there are some people who always say what they feel, who tell people exactly what they think of them and never put up with shit from anyone.

But those aren’t the people I tend to work with.

The people I work with tend to be extremely caring and thoughtful, are always aware of what others are feeling or thinking, and hate the idea of upsetting them or being rude.

They don’t want to tell a family member that their actions or words make them feel uncomfortable.

They don’t want to tell a friend that they are tired and would rather go home after an hour of hanging out.

They don’t want to tell a loved one that they aren’t hungry when they are over for dinner.

I’ll admit it: I’m one of those people, too.

In my family, for example, my brothers seem to have no problem being in conflict with my mom. I’m always amazed, and kind of jealous, how they will be having a mild disagreement about something random and suddenly blow up and speak sharply. And then, just a few minutes later, they talk it over and everyone feels totally fine.

I’ve never been that way. I’ve always hated conflict. But I’ve gradually learned how important it can be, so I wanted to write to you about it today.

First of all, let’s be clear: you don’t have to tell the truth all the time. Heck, there are tons of situations where it just isn’t appropriate to tell the truth, or when a white lie is a far better thing.

But, at the same time, sometimes you do have to tell the truth. 

Sometimes the only way to move forward is to honor your own needs and desires, to ask for what you want, or tell another person how they are affecting you.

And sometimes, telling that truth will cause a conflict.

So in those times:

Prepare yourself for that achy, swirling, frantic feeling inside your chest.

Prepare yourself for your stomach to feel queasy.

Prepare yourself to have a head spinning with thoughts – Should I have said that? Was that totally crazy and unreasonable? 

Prepare yourself for the rumble.

We can’t live a life without at least some conflict. But we can learn to recognize our own aversion to it and get better at sitting with those uncomfortable feelings when they are in the service of something greater.

So here is my advice for you: whenever you find yourself in that situation (either before or after you tell a truth that leads to conflict), try these two things:

1. Ask yourself: “Is a bit of conflict necessary to get me closer to my true needs and desires?”

Sometimes the only way to get something that you genuinely want or need is through coming into conflict with someone else. It’s just how it is. A friend, a loved one, or a colleague may want something different from what you want, and that’s okay.

2. Say to yourself: “I’m in a situation where only one of us gets to be happy. And I get to choose who that is.”

I know that might sound harsh, but it can be powerful. Sometimes people don’t want us to do what we definitely want to do (go home, feel good about ourselves, take that job). And they’ve put us in a situation where not everyone will be happy.

If you’re a nice, sweet, caring person (and I bet you are!), you might be tempted to always let the other person be happy. And that’s fine. But just notice that. Why shouldn’t you be the one who gets her way, at least sometimes?

3. Remind yourself: “It’s okay to feel a little jumbled up inside when I clash with someone. Nothing about this is wrong or unusual.”

I know it sounds kind of cheesy, but honestly, I repeat that to myself all the time when I am in conflict with someone I care about and it is making me feel a lot of feelings. To remind myself that conflict is a normal part of being alive, and just because I have a lot of feelings, it doesn’t mean that I did the wrong thing.

…

You can’t take away the conflict in your life, but you can remind yourself that it’s not at all unusual.

And then, of course, you can work to find a compromise.

I’d love to hear from you. Do you find you dread or avoid conflict with people you care about? How does it make you feel inside? What do you do to deal with conflict? Let me know in the comments, so I can tell you that you are not a crazy person. 

And of course, I’m rooting for you.

Katie

How to feel more confident at your college reunion, or any social gathering

As I write this to you, I’m preparing to go to my college reunion. I’m really excited about it, but also a little nervous.

It’s the kind of nervousness I often feel when I’m about to go to an event where I’ll be meeting and chatting with a lot of different people, and I begin to think to myself:

I hope everyone likes me.

Will I sound impressive enough?

I wonder if I seem kind of weird or awkward. 

Have you had those thoughts before? Maybe before going to a networking event or holiday parties where you don’t know anyone, or even when you go to your parents’ for the holidays or see friends you haven’t seen for a while.

You feel vulnerable, and like you want the people you meet to like, accept, and approve of you.

A few years ago, I read something that gave me a lot of strength and inspiration for these moments, and I wanted to share it with you. It’s from Brené Brown’s lovely book, The Gifts of Imperfection:

I try to make authenticity my number one goal when I go into a situation where I’m feeling vulnerable. 

If authenticity is my goal and I keep it real, I never regret it. 

I might get my feelings hurt, but I rarely feel shame. When acceptance or approval becomes my goal, and it doesn’t work out, that can trigger shame for me: ‘I’m not good enough.’ 

If the goal is authenticity and they don’t like me, I’m okay. If the goal is being liked and they don’t like me, I’m in trouble. I get going by making authenticity the priority.

This is such a deep sentiment, and it was truly a game-changer for me.

If I go to a party where I don’t know anyone, and the goal is authenticity, it’s okay if everyone doesn’t think I am hilarious and charming, or if I have no one to talk to for a bit and spend some time looking at the bowl of chips.

If I go into a performance review and the goal is authenticity, it’s okay if my boss doesn’t shower me with compliments. It might sting, but I don’t have to be adored by everyone.

And, I remind myself as I prepare for the weekend ahead if I go to my college reunion and the goal is authenticity, it’s okay if I have some awkward conversations or don’t wow my classmates by explaining how I cured cancer while on a research trip to the Arctic Circle.

As long as I come out feeling like I’ve been myself, it can be a success.

It’s also worth mentioning that this whole “authenticity” thing has had big implications for me in terms of my eating. When I go into a social event and feel like I want people to like or approve of me, I feel like I have to hold everything together to project a certain image.

And honestly, that pressure is tiring and straining. Without realizing it, I will often find myself gorging on food before, during, or after the event to keep down all of the feelings of insecurity and nervousness that would otherwise be coming up.

But when I let myself make authenticity the goal, then the stakes aren’t so high and the outcome is within my control. I don’t need other people to like or approve of me; I just need to be myself.

And I am able to enjoy the food that goes along with these events, and not end the night feeling like I ate 100 tiny spring rolls or mini tarts.

Over to you: Do you have any upcoming social interactions that make you feel vulnerable? How would your attitude towards them change if you didn’t need acceptance, approval, or to be “liked,” but instead you let yourself make authenticity the goal? I’d love to hear from you!

You’ve got this!

Katie

On finding a deeper relationship

It was fall, and I was walking with a girlfriend between brownstones in New York as she told me about this guy that she was crazy about.

Smart, handsome, generous. He was the perfect guy.

“He’s just so much better than anyone I’ve ever dated,” she said as we weaved around a tree on the sidewalk. “And so I want to be really strategic about this. I just don’t want to come on too strong.”

I don’t know about you, but I can relate to that feeling. 

I’ve been in a lot of relationships where I’ve held parts of myself back…

• I let him call me 

• I ended conversations first 

• I let him initiate times for us to hang out 

• When I had big feelings, I didn’t like to really show them to him. I might show him a little bit of my sadness or anger or hurt, but I certainly wouldn’t let it all hang out, the way I would with my friends or my mom.

• I wouldn’t bring up little things that he did that bothered me, because I didn’t want to seem whiny

I was sure that if I called him as much as I wanted to call him, if I talked for as long as I wanted to talk, or if I suggested that we hang out whenever I wanted to hang out, he would get tired of me. 

If I really told him all the feelings I had, all day every day, he would realize how emotional and crazy and what a mess I am, and he wouldn’t want me anymore. 

I also often felt like I couldn’t say no – to hanging out, to social events, to intimacy, or whatever – as much as I’d liked. Not that I was ever forced into anything, but I just sometimes didn’t quite feel like doing whatever it was, and didn’t feel like I could say so without causing a rift in the relationship.

In the end, it came down to: I was convinced that if I showed up authentically – if I said yes in as big a way as I wanted to say yes, and no in as big of a way as I wanted to say no, if I was emotional and volatile and moody in the way that I truly am emotional and volatile and moody, he wouldn’t be able to handle it. And our relationship couldn’t handle it. 

And, let’s be clear, this wasn’t a terrible strategy. There were lots of guys in my life who couldn’t handle it.

The brilliant Med School/Ph.D. student who is going to be a wonderful neurosurgeon but couldn’t handle my feelings when I’d had a bad day, the sweet and generous Russian investor who just couldn’t handle the time alone that I needed. And there were the other relationships, where I never really tried to show up authentically with my strong and argumentative opinions or my existential thoughts because I could just sense that they couldn’t handle it.

So there were some relationships that were failures, and many more relationships that should have been failures, because I said “no” when I meant “yes” or “yes” when I meant “no.”

Eventually, I decided that I was exhausted by all this time not being myself, and needed to find a better way. 

Ironically, at this time I met a guy who frightened me by how honest he was. On our first phone call, his first question to me was, “What’s important to you in life?” But I figured that I had nothing to lose by being honest in return. 

That was the beginning of a nearly five-year relationship that has changed everything that I thought was possible about relationships.

When he’d ask me about my day, I was used to just saying “good.” But when I really thought about it, I realized that wasn’t true. 

What was true was well, I had a nice morning but then work was stressful and I started doubting everything, but by the afternoon I took a walk outside and everything felt a lot better and I had pizza for dinner so that was definitely a highlight. 

I feel comfortable being as messy and sad and angry and confused and happy and delighted with life as I truly am. And since he sees the “real” me, I feel more supported, heard, and loved than I’ve ever experienced before. 

This isn’t a fairy tale. Our relationship is still very much a work in progress, and I don’t know how it will turn out. But it was the first time in my life that I made the decision to show up as I truly am, and it has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. We're getting married in March.

So at the end of the day, here’s what I know:

You get to make the choice, and some people don’t want a super “authentic” relationship. But it’s important to think about what you’re choosing when you hold some of yourself back. What happens when you choose not to expose who you truly are in a relationship because you don’t want to be “too much”? 

It’s important to be clear about what you lose and what you gain, and to be okay with that.

And so, here’s what I said to my friend, who is warm, intuitive, generous, and accomplished, as we walked on that fall day in New York City:

“If you never let yourself be yourself with him, you’ll never really know if he can handle you.”

You’ll always kind of wonder if, yes, maybe you are just too much. And then you won’t see that the real problem is that he is not enough for you. A guy who can’t handle you – all of you – might be a great guy, but he probably isn’t the perfect guy for you. 

And is that really the way you want to live?

On the other hand, if you show up as yourself – as big and overwhelming and too much as it is – you’ll know for sure. Some people won’t be able to take it, and yes, you might lose that relationship. But you’ll also know for sure when you’ve found a good one. 

Over to you: Are you really showing up authentically in your romantic relationships? What would have to change in order for you to do so? I’d love to hear from you, and cheer you on.

I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.

Katie

Something that helped me when I felt sad

Today I wanted to write to you about sadness, about feeling down or depressed or lost.

I’ll be totally honest with you: I don’t remember feeling sad much until I was in my twenties. I had moments of sadness — someone I loved died, or a relationship ended, or I felt homesick. But somehow this sadness was always relatively confined. I would feel sad, I would cry (for 10 minutes or two hours), and then it would pass.

I never feared my sadness.

I will also say that I am very lucky — I had a childhood with a nice family and good health and few “real” problems. I am absolutely aware that not everyone gets to be so lucky.

But starting in my twenties, I started to feel a totally new kind of sadness.

A sadness that would stick with me, when I might just feel “down,” for no particular reason. Of course, there were always things in life to worry or feel nervous about, but my sadness wasn’t always directly “related” to something. Sometimes I just felt sad, for no particular, immediately identifiable reason.  

And also, it wasn’t just sadness. I seemed to feel everything more deeply. I felt more scared, more anxious, more hurt. I also, for the record, felt happier and more joyful, and more curious, but that’s not what this post is about :)

But this sadness? It was freaking me out. It wasn’t there every day or even every week, but it was present in a deeper and longer way than I had ever experienced.

I didn’t quite know what to do about it.

One day, when I was moping on the couch, my boyfriend pointed something out to me that totally changed my perspective.

He said:

“What if you didn’t need for it to go away? What if you were okay being sad forever?”

At first, I felt my brow furrow and anger coming on: I can’t possibly be like this forever! I will explode! 

But he kept going: “So often, our feelings linger on because we are resisting them. But when we really let them stay, it just stops being a problem.”

“What if you knew that you were going to be sad and depressed and down every day for the rest of your life? How would feel?”

When he first said it, it was a very scary thought. Feeling like this? Feeling scared and sad and down, forever?

I think that’s really normal — we don’t want to look at our sadness too deeply because we’re afraid we’ll make it worse.

But then I thought about it. I really thought about going to sleep and waking up and brushing my teeth and making dinner every single day, feeling like this.

And suddenly, confusingly, I felt like a weight was lifted.

When I thought about spending my entire day, and tomorrow, and the next day, feeling sad, it felt…okay. It didn’t feel great. Far from it. But it did feel like I could do it. It felt like I would be tender and a little delicate and like I’d need to be very, very gentle with myself.

It felt like I wouldn’t force myself to do a million things or lift weights or change the world. But it was also very clear to me, in that moment, that i would still love the things I loved: Tea. New soft socks. Reading novels. Eating baked goods and getting brunch with people I cared about. Taking walks and calling my mom. Writing + coaching.

I think that that was almost the most interesting realization: 

I would still love what I loved.

I would still want to help people who are struggling and frustrated with their eating.

I would still be me.

I would just do it a little more gently.

And then, once it was totally okay for me to feel sad forever, I oddly stopped feeling so intensely sad.

There was a little bit of feelings there, like when you have a cold. But it didn’t really bother me anymore, and I got up and continued with my day.

Look, I can see you reading and thinking oh, whatever, I don’t need this feelings stuff. 

If so, great. You might not struggle with your feelings too much. You might be like I was for the first part of my life. If so, file this away in case you ever do find yourself face-to-face with overwhelming emotions. 

But also, if you have ever struggled with feeling “down” in a way that you couldn’t quite resolve, my challenge for you this week is to try this:

• The next time you feel down, be really gentle with yourself. Sit on your couch, make a cup of tea, wrap yourself in a soft blanket. And then ask yourself, “What would it be like if I felt this way forever?”

• At first, that feeling might bring up panic. That’s okay. But really sit with it. Ask what it would be like to make dinner, to take a bath, to do your work and cuddle with a loved one, all while feeling this way. It might not feel great, but could it feel okay? Bearable? Like you had a cold, but could still manage?

• Notice how your feelings change and evolve. They might not immediately go away — they might spike and go up and down before ebbing away. What does it feel like to notice their progression? Stay with it as much as you can.

And, of course, please let me know in the comments how this goes for you, or if you are freakin’ terrified to even contemplate it. I’d love to support you, and it would be a great support to others who feel the same way.

…

You’ve got this.

Katie

p.s. — one more thing, from my heart to yours:

Everyone experiences feeling “down” or depressed in different ways, and if you are afraid that you might be struggling with clinical depression, get set up with a therapist. And if you find yourself contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK