self-love

Why It’s OK To Care About What Other People Think

June 29, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

My name is Andrea, and I care about what other people think:

I care when I’m sharing stories about my personal life that include my loved ones;

I care when I invite people over for dinner and one of them has a food allergy or can’t fathom the idea of eating mushrooms;

I care when I’m creating digital products that could potentially help others;

I care when I set boundaries for my wellbeing and someone gets upset with me. Not because I’m worried about pleasing them, but because I know they must REALLY be struggling if they feel motivated to challenge a woman’s right to say no to something she is not comfortable with.

Things I don’t care about as much:

Side eye from other women when I’m rocking my 70s jeans, a crop top, and a bright lip (speaking of that…);

A stranger’s inability to be kind to me 😉;

When someone doesn’t want to respond to my message or spend time with me (It’s super duper simple: I invest my time and energy in people who WANT to invest their time in me);

What other people think when I say no to invites to events I’m not comfortable attending.

We care about what other people think and feel because of a thing called Empathy.

There are a lot of people struggling in the world, and I will always care about that. Maybe you can relate?

I know how hard it is when you’re struggling to the degree that you act like a dick to a complete stranger. But if we don’t figure out how to process strong feelings we end up emoting in the shittiest of ways.

That said, it’s OK to care about what other people think, even if/when they are communicating their opinions in void-of-empowerment kinda ways.

But don’t need to let outside opinions be the deciding factor in your life.

Care that other people are struggling and lashing out; Care that you feel rattled by a shitty comment online; Care that someone isn’t capable of being kind to you…

Just don’t make caring about other people’s opinions your top priority.

Instead, choose to dig into understanding the struggle that is being human, meandering the world feeling intermittently lost and misguided, and potentially (and probably) acting like a dick on occasion.

But puhleeaasse, for the betterment of your wellbeing and society as a whole, don’t own other people’s pain.

Become aware of, and disconnect from, the compulsion to make outside opinions a piece of your identity.

What “they” think does not need to decide your moods for you, how you treat others, deliver you into the abyss of shame, or siphon from your well.

While there will always be a part of you that does care, it doesn’t need to be at the forefront of everything you do.

If your intention is to create positive change in the world through a commitment to creating a copacetic inner landscape, you’re on the right path.

‘Cause it all starts with you – You help others by healing yourself.

Remember (and right-click & save to share on Instagram or Facebook):

No debating it: You. Are. Loved.

For more insights and a free wellness resource, connect with me.

Everything is NOT in its place (and that’s OK)

June 4, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

It was 2 am and I had to pee. But I didn’t want to get up because I didn’t want to wake up my cat. 😂

If you’ve got kids, cool, you know what I mean.

Nothing worse than them waking up in the middle of the night thinking it’s time to get up and do day time stuff when you’re trying to take care of business.

Except for me, instead of a human child, it’s a long-haired black cat/parrot.

(The parrot reference = he mimics our voices which is equal parts hilarious and cute).

Jack the cat likes to assume that my late night shuffles down the hallway are invitations to get chatty:

Oh hey! You’re awake! Come on, let’s talk! Also, I need Food!!

That’s what happened last week. He heard me with his hyper Vulcan hearing and came chirping and dramatically meowing down the hallway.

And he wanted stuff from me.

He wanted to be petted and brushed, followed by treats and food – ASAP.

Jack the cat, committing sock felonies and leaving his DNA (read: fur) EVERYWHERE

Hard not to want to oblige – he’s pretty cute.

But he already had food, he just wanted his food a certain way.

His preferred way of being fed is freshly out of the can with the dish placed directly underneath him on the chair (which happens to by MY chair! 😂)

This is funny because it’s not like he has a discerning palate. He’s been busted eating garbage multiple times.

And he doesn’t know the difference between a few hours old and fresh food. I trick him by mixing up his older food, pretending like I just made it, and he falls for it every time!

The real issue is that he wants things a certain way or else he deems them unacceptable.

Cat idiosyncrasies might be cute during the day, but at 2 am when you’re tired and need to pee, they’re overrated.

So I said hello to him, peed, and peaced out behind my closed bedroom door. Then I woke up a few hours later to a startling realization:

I AM EXACTLY LIKE MY CAT.

I am rigid about how things need to be. Sometimes I even reject things because they aren’t the way I want them or expect them to be.

Some of those expectations are in my best interest.

For example, I expect the people in my life to be supportive and loving, or else I don’t allow them into my life.

Boundaries are an important part of the whole mental health mystery. If they aren’t in place, you’re gonna struggle.

But getting caught up in how things need to look and feel and be in other areas is really siphoning the joy out of my life.

I have a lot to be joyful about, just like Jack the cat does. I have good food, good love and support, rewarding work, and stuff and things I’m grateful for.

I am hashtag blessed, yet I let strict expectations run my show, blurring my ability to relax and enjoy all the beauty that comes with the unexpected.

I want to go with the flow more. I want to enjoy the process of life.

I want to experience joy when it’s happening.

To make that happen I need to ditch my drive to control how everything looks and feels.

The 2 am wake up with my fur child has inspired me to investigate my default settings. I’ve begun asking myself some squirm-in-your-seat questions:

Am I allowing the joy to come through in this experience?

Am I shutting myself off from joy by gripping to rigid “ideals” that are anything but?

**It can be really scary to accept that your default response is causing you to suffer.**

All it takes is one unsolicited should-based response from a stranger focusing on your perceived failures instead of the courage it took to be honest about the fact that you don’t have it all figured out, to compel you to clamp your heart shut on stuff that needs to be addressed.

But living with a closed heart is an expensive way to live. It siphons from your ability to experience joy.

So instead of buying into denying or ignoring your issues, focus on taking your power back.

The next time you get uncomfortable about the idea of inquiring into the existence of your own counterproductive default settings – particularly how being truthful about them might be perceived by others – percolate on this statement:

Unless you’re in the arena, too, Brenda, I’m not open or interested in your opinion.

(No offence to any Brenda’s out there. It just felt like the right name for this example.)

If you’re doing this kind of work, you’re on a different wavelength than the should-ers.

Unrequested (and unsupportive) critiques of your journey are coming from people who are not in the same realm of thinking as you, so their comments don’t have a place in your life.

Walk on by unsupportive comments.

Don’t take ownership of them. Just step on over and past them, and keep on walking.

Keep being courageous, ’cause that’s what these kinds of inquiries require: Courage.

FYI: the quote above (minus the Brenda reference) is from Brene Brown’s new Netflix special which I highly recommend you watch.

Watching TV can be self-care if it’s lighting you up like Brene’s show did for me. 😍

I hope something within this post resonated with you. You are loved.

Pssst: If you liked this post you might want to sign up to receive the occasional email from me (anywhere from 1 to 2 per month max.) That’s where this post originated. 🙂

Struggling With Guilt Over How You Reacted? This Might Help.

January 7, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

You want to be loving. You really, really do. Especially with that one person who reliably displaces their fear and frustrations onto others.

You affirm your patience. You ask for guidance. You seek solace in your beautiful, heart-led intentions to be a generous and loving human being.

But you miss your mark in their presence, and quickly hone in on hopin’, and wishin’, and thinkin’, that you woulda’, coulda’, shoulda’ done better.

Good news: Guilt is a sign that you need to prioritize self-kindness.

After a less than stellar interaction with someone whose very presence is an emotional trigger, you need love. Because if you can’t be around someone without pain attempting to do the thinking and speaking for you, you’re still reeling from the past.

To heal from the past you need high-frequency feelings pulsing through your body, mind, and spirit, like love.

Love is…self-compassion when you miss the kindness mark in the company of certain people.

You know the ones I’m talking about…

We don’t need to try to eradicate our guilt. Nope. Nadda. Not productive.

We just need to notice guilt’s priceless message: “Psst! We need some self-compassion in here, Stat!”

Love up on yourself when guilt makes itself known. Notice it and breathe into it. Acknowledge your humanness and the timeline of trauma that has a tendency to interfere with your intentions to be kind on every occasion.

And vow to try again next time. 🙏🏻

This one’s Instagram ready. Right click & Save to share:

It’s never up for debate: You are loved.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger from Pexels

Thoughts About Things Falling Apart

August 3, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

It’s Friday and it’s been one hell of a week. Maybe you feel the same?

Personal issues that have my heart feeling like a yo-yo? Check. Mercury retrograde getting me feeling a certain shade of yikes? Check. Sleep issues? Check.

I can’t help but feel like things are falling apart.

What do we do when things feel like they’re falling apart? I know what I used to do: Make a home in my pain. I felt the return of that act this morning. I was drafting a response to the awful response from the other party in a lawsuit I’m in the midst of when I felt a familiar sort of uncomfortable radiating from my stomach.

It felt constricting, and immediately took away my desire to eat or drink, and yet, I kinda liked it.

It made me feel shaky and sick like I wanted to throw up, yet still, I kinda liked it.

It was volatile, and wavered with intensity depending on the tone of the words I either typed or erased in the document I felt consumed with populating.

To be blunt, it felt fucking terrible, yet still, I kinda liked it.

So I asked myself the obvious: “Why do you like this? Why are you continuing to do this, even though it is causing you to suffer? What is happening here?”

I didn’t wait for an answer or try to diagnose it. I just stopped typing and the feeling went away. And when the idea came up that I should continue to type, the feeling returned.

“Not like this,” I said to myself, though the words didn’t seem to come from me.

I realized then that I was so very, very tired of trying so hard at things that caused me so much emotional turmoil. I was tired of digging my own emotional grave, and I wanted to continue my commitment to doing things differently.

Different to me means not causing myself harm; it means being unwaveringly kind to myself, no matter how other people might treat me. Choosing to take this path dictates that whatever brings me the opposite of that pit of dread responding to an essay of lies and personal attacks initiated is where I need to go.

So I erased the parts of the letter that were harsh, and replaced them with words that were lighter and more loving. And yes – I sent love to the person who tried to minimize me with misogyny.

This is a moment if there ever was a moment; This is profound; This Oprah “aha” worthy.

I am very, very proud of who I am and the strength I have uncovered through my research and my commitment to doing things differently. Every step I’ve taken has allowed me to witness my pain, instead of allowing pain to run my show.

I make the choices now – Not pain, and not other people who are in pain, either.

I am so very grateful for my capacity to forgive, even in the face of unwavering efforts to minimize me. And yes, this week has had some challenges – the last two weeks, really – but it’s all worth it because of this moment, and my capacity to sift the good from the unsavory.

That said, I truly care about all of you. I don’t need to know you personally to wish you well and remind you with my whole heart how important it is that no matter what you do this weekend, you be loving to yourself.

In the face of confusion or feeling like things are falling apart, self-kindness is the answer.

❤️

PS: I’d love to connect with you! I send out an email twice a month-ish with new content and resources.

Subscribers get access to my One Minute Meditation guide for free, so enter your name and email here.

Waiting For Bravery

July 26, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.

– Pema Chodron

Bravery isn’t always with us. Its variable existence is often why we do one hell of a job dancing between keeping our hearts open and closed to one another.

Sometimes we’re not ready to see what’s happening below the surface of our drive to call someone an asshole. Sometimes we’re not ready to hit up the “What’s alive in you is alive in me as well” sweet spot.

To not want to open our heart to someone is the path to opening it. We have to feel how much doing the same thing we’ve always done feels. We have to wait it out in that prickly spot of feeling confused and uncomfortable until bravery comes to guide us in the direction of, “She’s super impatient and rude and thinks everyone else has a problem but her, and I did the same thing yesterday to the hubby.”

Noticing that you’re keeping your heart closed is a great substitute for self-shaming in the absence of bravery to open it. Are you choked at someone? How very OK and human of you. Is it possible you might not be ready to dig into what’s going on below the surface of your anger towards someone? Heck yes. Is there a chance the behavior you witnessed is triggering you ’cause it might be emulating your own? Give me a hell yeah (when you’re ready to give one.)

To summarize: Go easy on yourself while you wait.

The Power Of Not Taking Things Personally

July 6, 2018 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

I was at an event recently when I came into contact with a self-admitted twitter troll.

The dude walked up to me, and followed up his hello by asking me what the name of my blog, Must Love COWS, was all about, and questioned why there was no theme to what I wrote about.

Being human, and having the life experiences I’ve had, I found his interrogation approach pretty gross. I mean, the reference to Cows instead of Crows was a dose of contempt that surprised me for sure – there are no cows in my logo. But I made a vow (Hah! We were at a wedding!) to let that shit go, and process it later.

But life didn’t like my plan to process it later. During a discussion with a cousin, I was interrupted by the dude again, with the question, “Why do you hire a copy editor?” I turned to him with a smile on my face and said, “Because sometimes I hire a copy editor.”

“Oh,” he said, his face softening ever so slightly. And then he began the descent into his admission of love for getting into arguments with people online.

That was the moment my frustration with his shitty behavior instantaneously melted away. His favorite pastime is picking fights with total strangers, I thought to myself. It all makes sense: His interrogation had nothing at all to do with me, it had to do with his own pain.

Thankfully dessert had just been served, so I left the table because I can do that, leave conversations I don’t want to be a part of, and swapped out the sadness in his words for a brownie. And while I ate the food I was already too full to eat I started up a mini internal self-therapy session that went like this:

I’ve experienced pain to the degree that I wanted other people to hurt, too. It’s been a long while since I’ve wanted to take it to the point of trolling strangers online, but I know what it feels like, to boil over with contempt as a result of internalized pain I was too afraid to process.

I started to make guesses about why he felt the need to be so aggressive, too, to help release the need to keep being pissed off:

When it comes to his seemingly calculated interrogation of me, maybe he thinks I need to be taken down a peg for being female and having a platform, like so many people like to do in the Huffington Post comments section?

Maybe he’s jealous, and doesn’t think I deserve a platform? Maybe he thinks he’s smarter, and more talented than me — that his name should be in the byline, not mine?

Maybe he’s lonely? Maybe he’s desperate to connect with others, but no one wants to because he is so aggressive? Because of that, maybe he’s willing to go to any means necessary to get attention?

Maybe he was raised in the absence of important lessons, just like I was? And maybe he doesn’t realize that true connection requires an open heart, not a latched-closed one, and that you can’t create connection when every word and action is led by fear? (’Cause dude is scared shitless of something.)

Whatever the reason might be, my experience, of feeling deeply offended and then quickly being unburdened by those feelings, provided a huge growth moment.

I realized — again — the power of not take things personally.

You can read books about it and know without a doubt in your logical mind that taking things personally is counterproductive. But it’s the stories we tell ourselves that have the power to help us move away from being habitually offended by everyone who is rude to us.

Being human, and living with the program I have running through my head means that I’m not done learning lessons in the Don’t Take Things Personally department. But the turnaround from being offended to knowing that there is always something deeper going on behind the scenes than our habitually hyper-defense tactics allow us to realize, is coming along quicker than it used to these days.

A mentor of mine recently told me something super non-spiritual that I loved, and that is that sometimes, people can be dicks. And there’s a reason they act like dicks, but it’s up to them to figure out why and do the work required to heal, not us.

When we realize it’s not our job to reprimand and correct, we don’t have to work so hard at coming up with sarcastic or equally dick-ish ways to clap-back; rather, it becomes about being kind to ourselves by noticing our feelings without creating more shame to process, and giving the truth some time to surface.

And trust me, the truth will surface. Sometimes it even shows up at the same time dessert does. 😬