Small Doses

by Amanda Seales

  When I thought of the big B, I imagined this serene place where all paths converged in an oasis of clarity. I’d read self-help books and listened to people talk about finding a synergy with their worlds and like Liz Lemon I thought, “I want to go to there.” It felt like if I could just figure out how to get everything I am doing, and everything I want to do to line up, precisely and with equal purpose, I would no longer be stressed. The notion is so appealing, and at a glance doesn’t seem like some crazy accomplishment. After you’ve taken out a full head of twists that took two days to put in, balance seems like a goal within reach. We all give measure to things. Relationships, career, hobbies, health, etc. all have their own place in our galaxies. Balance suggests that each receives an amount of attention that doesn’t prevent the other from receiving its own fair share of attention. However, when you look at your life and attempt to deconstruct each aspect of it with the same meticulousness of removing a braid extension so as not to damage the hair hidden within it, you realize that there simply are aspects of it that not only require more attention than others but that these levels are constantly fluctuating. How are you to handle that? The inconsistency can be overwhelming because life is unpredictable and balancing that is taxing. So, perhaps the idea of balance could be better represented through the concept of remaining steady.

  I write this because in my own quest to try to attain balance I became imbalanced! It essentially gave me anxiety that I could not manage to sustain all the things in my life in an equally harmonious way. A deadline would be around the corner and in trying not to stress about it I would stress even more about it. I realized, however, that balance is all about what’s outside of me, and I needed to instead work on steadying my inner self. Steadiness is all about maintaining your own balance within, as opposed to balancing the things that you’re trying to maintain. When the elements of your world become out of whack, and they absolutely will, how do you remain rooted and not dragged behind them like shoelaces on a dirty bathroom floor? It’s just the nature of life. No matter how hard you work to keep things in order, there are outside factors that will always have an effect. When that happens, the hardest thing can be trying to manage the notion of control.

  Imagine that you go out to a gorgeous field on a clear day. You get out your colorful, beautiful kite and let the wind take it up in the air. You’re just out there enjoying your life, minding your own business, when along comes a windstorm, whipping your kite around, reaching down and tugging aggressively on your arms, nearly pulling them out of their sockets. Pulling the kite in might seem like a daunting task. Sometimes you simply have to run after the kite as it whips around. If that happens, how do you stay on your feet to pull the kite in? In fitness you always hear about the strengthening of the core muscles as the foundation of the body’s sturdiness. That same strengthening happens when your mind is steady. Steady is figuring out where your mental and emotional sturdiness lies in order to handle the imbalance that is inevitable in a world full of variables. It is attaining the ability to juggle the rise and fall of the many planets in your solar system and still retain the rotation of your axis. Meditation, deep breathing, and the many other methods associated with stress relief and calming the mind aid in increasing your inner steadiness, which affords you the ability to plant your feet and pull the kite in to a point where you can gain control.

  When I was a gymnast, up on the four-foot-high-by-four-inch-wide balance beam, balance was key. Without it, I would fall. However, it was being steady that allowed me to not merely stay on it, but to thrive on it. The steadiness was the solid feeling that even if I lost my balance, I had the fortitude to recover from it without falling. None of this is easy, and it requires time and patience, trial and error, to truly uncover. The takeaway is to explore what works best for you; the concept of balance or the study of how to remain steady. Either way, there is more than one way to look at how to manage moving in this world and not letting its madness drive you mad!

  Therapy

  THAT ONE TIME

  If I’m lying to myself, I say I started going to therapy because I was moving to LA and wanted to be ahead of the curve in preparing for the stress that moving naturally creates. If I’m being real with myself, I admit that I started going to therapy because three “friends” too many told me, “People don’t like you,” and it was officially getting to me. Also, if indeed I was unlikable, I wasn’t really tryna move across an entire country to have a whole new city not like me either! So, I asked around and I found a black female therapist, which, unfortunately, even in a city as diverse and populated as NYC was like tryna find a flat-top fade at the Country Music Awards. They simply aren’t in abundance (yet). For some people, it really doesn’t matter the ethnic background, race, and/or gender of their therapist. Because, for them, their ethnic background, race, and gender don’t inform their everyday movements and emotional and mental developments. For me, however, it’s a large part of my makeup and makes up a large part of my work, which in turn makes up a large part of how I move through the world and how I react to that which I encounter. That said, I was very fortunate to find a match in my therapist, and we dug in.

  To me, the most eye-opening part of this first run with a therapist was how much I didn’t know about what you even do with a therapist. Our first visit I remember saying, “I’m not even really sure how this works or what I’m supposed to do or if I even need therapy.” She told me that it was a place to talk through interactions, thoughts, desires, failures—really anything that I felt was added baggage to my person. I started with what prompted me to seek her out in the first place, and began talking about my difficulties with certain people and what they voiced as their issues with me. Over time we addressed these issues and basically determined how much of it was bullshit and how much of it was real shit that was in my way. Which brought us to my real true concern: Am I in my own way? When people were telling me that some people don’t like me, it wasn’t so much that I truly cared if they liked me or nah, but rather, I wondered if by not being compatible with them I was hindering the forward movement of my craft. There were traits about me that were consistently called into question. “You’re difficult!” “You’re condescending!” “You’re too direct,” among others, were the hit tunes on the album, Unlikeable: No, Really, People Don’t Like You. But perhaps the biggest epiphany was realizing how much I had internalized their words and had reached a point where I didn’t like myself! My own dag-on self, y’all!

  Even though it was 2015, and I was thirty-four, I was moving, and I didn’t truly feel like I knew what my purpose was. Yes, I knew I needed to get out of New York, and I was loving my new path in comedy, but at the time I began therapy I hadn’t truly actualized it as my skeleton key.* What I didn’t know then but know now is that before I could get to that I had to unpack the baggage that had piled up on my path. Instead of just attempting to debunk what people had said about me and either agreeing with or denying it, we took the approach of exploring each instance and finding out what had caused the comment. We looked at how much of it was construed properly, how much of it was the other person deflecting their own shit, and what I could do to manage the situation in either case. My guided self-exploration with my therapist gave me my self-love back, heightened my self-awareness, and raised my self-esteem. I became able to determine which behaviors I needed to work on and which practices simply required a different audience. Most of all, I got comfortable with the fact that errybody ain’t gone like me and thasalright. This is a big huge world, and thriving in it is not only about continuing to work on your own improvement but also finding your tribe—people who inspire, acknowledge, and appreciate the work you’re doing!

  Therapy is a constant journey that twists and turns and sometimes feels like a plateau. I personally don’t feel it’s necessary for everybody to always be in therapy. You figure out what works for you. For some, life is always a state of chaos that requires regular attentiveness to keep the good in clear view. So
metimes life is peachy, so you take your board to work and ride the wave. Other times life hits you in your face so hard you need extra help to get your (common) senses back. THAT’S OK. Last I checked, nobody is an X-men out here and yet, in my opinion, Jean Grey woulda done well with a weekly talk on the couch!

  PS: I do think it’s imperative to go into therapy with a goal and a direction for both you and your therapist to pursue. It has been very helpful for me in determining if a therapist and I are a match and measuring progress.

  SIDE EFFECTS OF

  Living in Your Truth

  Keeping it real in this

  oh so fake world

  Is no easy feat

  But you need to know

  who you are, and face

  where you’ve been

  To become who you want to be.

  YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION

  When you are living in your truth, it does not mean that you are living without obstacles or challenges. It does, however, mean that your willingness and enthusiasm to conquer those obstacles and challenges is seemingly boundless. It provides a thesis statement of self for you to go back to whenever you’re lost or bewildered on the path. It serves as a heading for others to know where you’re coming from so they know how they should best step to you.

  MICHELANGELO IT UP!

  Your truth is the colors outside the lines that you define as your masterpiece. Meaning, it is what you say it is. To be clear, you will be challenged on it. Whether by the Universe, by individuals around you, or by these innanets, when you define your truth, you will inevitably be forced to demonstrate it/support it/define it/explain it. Be aware that what you may deem your truth, others may consider a lie, and it is your choice on how, or if, you want to address it.

  YOU ALREADY KNOW

  I get so many DMs from people asking for advice on how to handle a breakup, or if they should leave a job, or what they should say to that friend who is not really behaving like a friend. Though I don’t have time to answer most messages, when I do, I find that most people already know, in their hearts, the next prudent step to take, they just want someone they trust to cosign that it’s the right idea. Truth is, the best advice I can give you is to trust your gut, because so often we don’t, and our intuition is the truthiest truth of them all! When you work on letting all the doubt fade, silencing all the outside noise, and tapping into that voice inside, it combines with facts you’ve gathered intellectually and lets you know exactly what you need to do to change the course of your life and live in your truths.

  INTUITION INSHMUITION

  The question is what’s keeping you from doing it? What is keeping you from doing the thing your intuition is telling you to do? It’s fear 99.9 percent of the time. It may be a real, viable, understandable fear, but it is fear nonetheless. So the first step toward tackling what’s in the way of getting to your truth is acknowledging the fear at your feet and figuring out how to stomp it out. Face that, and you’ll see results.

  OHMMMMMM

  Mediation has become all the rage in recent years, but it is nothing new. I think a lot of us consider it something foreign, or for a specific type of person, or simply too still and silent for our taste. The truth is that meditation comes in many forms, and you may already be doing it in your own way. In the most basic sense, meditation is a practice of calming your mind and body from the distractions and dissonance around it. The practice pursues the power of finding peace from within and carrying it through your daily life to limit stress on your mind, body, and soul. The typical image of meditation may be someone sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed, but there are other forms. When we pray, we are meditating. For some, lying still in bed, eyes closed yet awake, and actively taking in the stillness before facing the day can be considered meditation. Simply stopping, taking deep breaths, and clearing your head before making a big decision is also a form of meditation. The power of it is found in the ritual of making it a consistent part of your life, so it can positively affect all parts of your life. Afterall, inner peace is the only weapon against outer fuckery.

  WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?

  My purpose is: ________________. The importance of finding purpose is without limit but, in a nutshell, for many its ability to give clear definition to how we use our time on earth helps to provide a sense of grounding in a life path that is so often out of our hands. It is that groundedness that serves as a cornerstone of contentment for many of us and a springboard off which we leap into living. We are beings made of atoms banging up against each other all day, giving off emissions, radiating light, and constantly combusting. In essence, we are energy. When all that energy lacks intention, it can feel chaotic, depressing, diminishing, and many other harmful feelings. In intentionally pursuing purpose it focuses that energy. In identifying purpose, it refines that energy. Purpose can change; it can shift and morph and does not have to remain static, but the journey to identifying it can’t begin until you first ask yourself, What is my purpose?

  FROM NEGATIVE to POSITIVE AND IT’S ALL GOOD . . .

  Give the negative things in your life positive function. Pain makes us feel powerless. There are things that happen to us that can range from annoying to terrible. There are people who happen to us who can range from a being a nuisance to being a devil. In some cases it feels like there is no healing, or liberation, or release from the negative impacts in our lives. A source of power can come from trying, whenever possible, to give positive function to these negatives.

  • Shifty coworker? Let someone’s attempts to undermine your hard work encourage you to find other outlets to display your skills.

  • Injured? Use the downtime to work on something you never would have taken on were you at full mobility, i.e., reading, writing, binging all eight seasons of Game of Thrones, etc.

  • Broken up about a breakup? Explore some new exercise options to get those endorphins going and up your good vibes.

  • Fired? Apply for new jobs in your field and maybe explore other options outside of your comfort zone that could open new doors of possibility/experiences.

  • Stalker? Take a self-defense class and elevate not only your Jason Bourne–level hand-to-hand combat skills, but gain some piece of mind.

  WHEN KEEPING IT REAL GOES RIGHT!

  Living in your truth does not have to mean that you have only one way of expressing your truth. Honesty has a way of getting misused as tactlessness very easily if not carefully considered. There is no shame in curating your truth to serve the situation best. You might feel that if you do so you’re “being fake nice” or “being phony,” but you aren’t at all. The truth comes in many forms. It ain’t about being nice, it’s about finding a new way to be real.

  “DID I DO THAT??”

  Don’t forget your role in your outcomes. You can’t expect people to be positive about the negative situations YOU create. In living in your truth, you must always look within at how you affected a situation. You may not like what you see, but it is key to identifying if there is any opportunity for you to take accountability, and, at the very least, learn from it, to not repeat your role in wrongness in the future!

  INTUITION

  I legit have an inner voice that is my ancestors. It is a direct line to knowledge that comes from deep deep deep deeep deeeeeeeppp within. It’s what many people refer to as instinct. I’ve worked over the last ten years to perfect the ability to instantaneously shut everything off and speed-dial it for the REAL. But I got there from applying to also really just believing in the truth that our souls are connected to something much wiser and driven by something much stronger than our earthly bodies/brains can truly comprehend. And, no bullshit, this realization came from an episode of Avatar. But I think some people that we label as “crazy” aren’t really crazy, they’re just in touch with their intuition in ways that we can’t see. I believe that intuition is the collective wisdom of all the lives you’ve lived guiding you through this one. Those “crazy” people are listening t
o that guidance, and I’m listening to mine. Some would say that’s crazy, but it keeps me sane.

  HELLA DEEP

  You never stop learning, BUT at some point, searching gets in the way. How do you know when it’s in the way? Some tells:

  • When you’re so entrenched in self-exploration that you are no longer living in the present but always examining it.

  • When you’ve become one of those people who is concerned only with learning but not about actually applying the lessons.

  • When your self-exploration devolves into self-involvement.

  It’s admirable to boldly delve into the depths of the black hole that is you. However, it’s easy to swim so deep you forget which way is up and which is corny. You think you sound deep. You actually sound lost. Make sure to come up for air, interact with those around you, and as the saying goes, “don’t get gassed” from breathing your own hot air from staying down there too long. Come on back!

  GEM DROPPIN’

  Be Nice vs. Be Kind

  ONCE UPON A TIME, BEING NICE AND BEING KIND were kinda the same thing. They pretty much meant you had a pleasant disposition and didn’t piss people off for no reason. However, as serious threats like plagues, world wars, and Jheri curls have died out, political correctness and passive aggression have swelled to commonplace status. And, since everyone’s politics are different, people have gotten a lot easier to piss off and offend. Which has, in effect, changed the meaning of what it is to “be nice.” These days, nice looks a lot more like being understanding of bullshit, pretending you’re unbothered, and being accepting of mediocrity so that everyone can feel calm, untriggered, and at ease in any and all scenarios.