How to Build a Better Life — Yours! (Start Here.)
Includes a 5-minute meditation and journal prompt. Scroll down for your free audio version of the meditation.
You’ve watched your peers’ blur of activity and success and felt… envious. And weary. It seems like everyone else gets to build their dream lives while you sit on the bench, nursing another bout of introvert flu. You’ve tried living like your extroverted friends and found it too painful to bear. Something inside won’t let you live that way for long, and it feels terrible. Why do you feel so depleted all the time?
Patience, friend. Your time will come, but not once you’ve hustled and forced your way to it like in the past or learned how to be like everyone else, but when you finally have the courage to accept yourself as you are.
You already have everything you need to live a happy, fulfilling, creative life, my introvert friend — to build an epic swing, as the Hafiz poem goes. You were just given the wrong instructions. You are an “I” trying to live like an “E” and it is costing you every single day.
However, you can start looking for the right instructions to build a life that nourishes instead of drains you, instructions that come from deep within.
Ready to build a better life — yours — but not sure where to start? Try this short guided meditation… (Get your free audio version.)
Get still. Right now. Sit in silence and breathe. Allow yourself to feel the frustration and weariness of living against your personality, constantly swimming upstream, never measuring up, being an outsider — again and again. Find where and how these feelings show up in your body. Is it an ache in your head, tightness in your chest or throat, heaviness in your belly? Place a hand or focus your attention there and breathe deeply.
As you sit quietly, breathing, not resisting, these difficult sensations and emotions will ease. Keep breathing. Wait. Something new will bloom in their place. Feel gratitude for your own acceptance. A sense of relief at being seen as you are. Hope for change. Cultivate those feelings. Let them strengthen into warmth, friendliness and compassion toward yourself. Flood your entire body with the sensation of warmth, all the way into your hands and feet.
Rest. Let your breath flow naturally. Settle the mind in the heart space. Rest.
Journal prompt: Because most creative introverts feel like odd ducks, we struggle with negative self talk. This saps our energy and keeps us from our best, most powerful work. Often, positive affirmations alone aren’t enough to undo the damage. First, we have to make space for the hard stuff too.
Explore the negative feelings and sensations that came up for you as you read this post and meditated. In what other situations do you have these feelings? Do you feel them around certain people, environments, projects? What negative messages live behind your feelings?
A few examples of common negative messages: “I’m not enough. I don’t know enough. I haven’t accomplished enough. I don’t deserve to be heard. I don’t deserve to be happy. My happiness comes at the expense of others. I’m not as smart/pretty/talented/lucky as my peers.” Your words may be different, but you recognize the feelings of unworthiness behind them.
Write down your negative messages. Say them out loud. Imagine saying them to a loved one or friend. Hear how harsh and judgmental they are. Now write down the opposite of each message. “I’m enough. I know enough. I’ve done enough. I deserve to be heard…”
Can you take it a step further? “My uniqueness is brilliant. People want to hear what I have to say. When I’m happy, my loved ones thrive too.” Imagine what it would be like to live this way. How does it feel in your body? What possibilities could open for you?
Ask the questions, and trust that the answers will come. Congratulations. Your new life is already begun.
Christa Hogan is a veteran freelancer and kidlit author, and a yoga and meditation teacher.
