Saying Yes!

There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life.

-Tara Brach

We’ve all got them—fears, pain, triggers, bad memories, hopes and desires. This is part of what makes us human, and what has kept our species going generation after generation.

It’s not the presence of challenges or even our dislike of them that is the source of our suffering; it is our resistance to the present moment. It is our saying no, this shouldn’t be happening. But here’s the thing—it is.

And we’ve all become experts at saying no and we all have our coping mechanisms—substance abuse, withdrawal, perfectionism, just to name a few. So, what do we do?

Well, we don’t beat ourselves for being human! We don’t tell ourselves we shouldn’t desire or feel fear or be sad. What we can do is what Tara Brach calls learning to pause. Rather than habitually slipping into those patterns that make us and those around us unhappy, we pause and check in and find out what is really happening, what wound is being touched, where we feel it in our body, and we wait, and we breathe.

This might not sound as fun as binge-watching the latest Netflix series or downing a few vodka shots, but in the long run, it is much more fulfilling, and as Tara Brach says, wonderfully bold and liberating.