Too often in life I find myself apologizing for situations or things that, quite frankly, are out of my control. Why? Because I feel like I have to be at fault for something going wrong because I’m technically the one in charge of my own life.
However, as I go through the growing pains of becoming a “real adult,†I’m realizing that the notion that I’m responsible for everything that comes into my life is absolute, total crap. Sometimes there are things we just shouldn’t apologize for.
So now I’m here to say sorry, but I’m not sorry. Because there are just some things in life I can’t control and neither can you. And that’s perfectly OK to admit.
Below are 12 things you shouldn’t fault yourself for — because the sooner you do, the happier you’ll be.
Photo credit: Anthony Harvie via Getty Images
1. Your emotions.
So what if you cry a lot, or are too concerned, or get too passionate about something that matters to you? There’s no such thing as “too much†when it comes to feelings. The sooner we learn that, the more emotionally healthy we’ll be.
2. The way you handle those emotions.
Write out everything you’re thinking in a letter. Slam a door and don’t feel guilty about it. Go for a run and shut off your phone. Do whatever you need to do in order to process what you’re going through — and do it unapologetically. Everyone handles a challenge in their own way.
3. Another person’s rejection.
It’s not your fault that someone doesn’t like your hair, your stance on politics, or the way you carry yourself. That’s their problem. If you’re behaving in a way that’s most authentic to you, that’s all you can do. The right people — the ones who belong in your life — will accept every part of it.
4. Little failures.
And big failures. We’re human, mistakes are in our nature. We forgive others for their indiscretions — it’s time to start extending ourselves the same courtesy.
5. Someone else’s circumstances.
In the iconic romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally, a patron that overheard Meg Ryan’s — shall we say satisfying — lunch famously stated, “I’ll have what she’s having.†As lovely as that sentiment is, that isn’t always possible.
Don’t compare your own story to someone else’s story. The personal shame that comes from not having what she or he is having is too much for one soul to manage.
6. Your needs.
Humans are incredibly complex so our necessities are going to be incredibly different. Don’t blame yourself for needing certain components from a relationship or a career that someone else may not feel is necessary. Don’t apologize for knowing what it takes to make you feel fulfilled.
7. Your guilty pleasures.
If watching The Bachelorette with a giant container of Pad Thai is your thing, there’s no shame in that. It’s also perfectly acceptable to enjoy going to happy hour, or dating around, or meditating every night. You like what you like — embrace it, don’t hide it.
8. Being terrible at something.
Some of us were born with the ability to craft the heck out of an antique coffee table, others burn themselves with a hot glue gun. Life is a series of trials and errors. You have your own unique gifts to offer the world that are different from someone else’s.
9. Putting yourself before anyone else.
The relationship you have with your own heart, mind and soul is the most important relationship you can have. There’s nothing wrong with being a little selfish when the time calls for it.
10. Trusting someone you shouldn’t have.
Feeling burned or betrayed by someone can swallow you whole. But their actions are their own and have nothing to do with you.
People are flawed. Sometimes those flaws show up in the beginning, sometimes they don’t reveal themselves until years down the line. If we kept walls up every single time we met someone to protect ourselves from getting hurt, we’d live a life of sheer loneliness — and there’s nothing worse than that.
11. A terminated relationship.
Some people aren’t meant to stay in our lives beyond the lessons they’ve taught us. It’s as simple as that.
12. Anything that happened in the past.
Ruminating on the past is like waking up every morning and consciously putting on a puka-shell necklace or some other hideous fashion trend that belongs back in an earlier decade. You have the power to make a deliberate choice to live in the now. Any event, negative or otherwise, belongs in the time period which it occurred. The only direction you can move in is forward — and that’s a really beautiful thing.
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Research published just last month in the journal Health Psychology shows that mindfulness is not only associated with feeling less stressed, it’s also linked with decreased levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
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It lets us get to know our true selves. Mindfulness can help us see beyond those rose-colored glasses when we need to really objectively analyze ourselves. A study in the journal Psychological Science shows that mindfulness can help us conquer common “blind spots,†which can amplify or diminish our own flaws beyond reality.
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Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that college students who were trained in mindfulness performed better on the verbal reasoning section of the GRE, and also experienced improvements in their working memory. “Our results suggest that cultivating mindfulness is an effective and efficient technique for improving cognitive function, with widereaching consequences,†the researchers wrote in the Psychological Science study.
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The U.S. Marine Corps is in the process of seeing how mindfulness meditation training can improve troops’ performance and ability to handle — and recover from — stress.
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A 2011 study in the journal Annals of Rheumatic Disease shows that even though mindfulness training may not help to lessen pain for people with rheumatoid arthritis, it could help to lower their stress and fatigue.
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University of Oregon researchers found that integrative body-mind training — which is a meditation technique — can actually result in brain changes that may be protective against mental illness. The meditation practice was linked with increased signaling connections in the brain, something called axonal density, as well as increased protective tissue (myelin) around the axons in the anterior cingulate brain region.
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Ever wondered why mindfulness meditation can make you feel more focused and zen? It’s because it helps the brain to have better control over processing pain and emotions, specifically through the control of cortical alpha rhythms (which play a role in what senses our minds are attentive to), according to a study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
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Mindfulness meditation improves our focused engagement in music, helping us to truly enjoy and experience what we’re listening to, according to a study in the journal Psychology of Music.
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You don’t have to actually be meditating for it to still benefit your brain’s emotional processing. That’s the finding of a study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, which shows that the amygdala brain region’s response to emotional stimuli is changed by meditation, and this effect occurs even when a person isn’t actively meditating.
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The health benefits of mindfulness can be boiled down to four elements, according to a Perspectives on Psychological Science study: body awareness, self-awareness, regulation of emotion and regulation of attention.
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Doctors, listen up: Mindfulness meditation could help you better care for your patients. Research from the University of Rochester Medical Center shows that doctors who are trained in mindfulness meditation are less judgmental, more self-aware and better listeners when it comes to interacting with patients
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Sure, we love all the things meditation does for us. But it could also benefit people we interact with, by making us more compassionate, according to a study in the journal Psychological Science. Researchers from Northeastern and Harvard universities found that meditation is linked with more virtuous, “do-good†behavior.
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Research from the Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine shows that mindfulness coupled with art therapy can successfully decrease stress symptoms among women with breast cancer. And not only that, but imaging tests show that it is actually linked with brain changes related to stress, emotions and reward.
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Loneliness among seniors can be dangerous, in that it’s known to raise risks for a number of health conditions. But researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that mindfulness meditation helped to decrease these feelings of loneliness among the elderly, and boost their health by reducing the expression of genes linked with inflammation.
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Not only will your health benefit from mindfulness meditation training, but your wallet might, too. Research in the American Journal of Health Promotion shows that practicing Transcendental Meditation is linked with lower yearly doctor costs, compared with people who don’t practice the meditation technique.
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Aside from practicing good hygiene, mindfulness meditation and exercise could lessen the nasty effects of colds. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Health found that people who engage in the practices miss fewer days of work from acute respiratory infections, and also experience a shortened duration and severity of symptoms.
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As many as one in five pregnant women will experience depression, but those who are at especially high risk for depression may benefit from some mindfulness yoga. “Research on the impact of mindfulness yoga on pregnant women is limited but encouraging,†study researcher Dr. Maria Muzik, M.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. “This study builds the foundation for further research on how yoga may lead to an empowered and positive feeling toward pregnancy.â€
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Teaching teens how to practice mindfulness through school programs could help them experience less stress, anxiety and depression, according to a study from the University of Leuven.
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Trying to shed a few pounds to get to a healthier weight? Mindfulness could be your best friend, according to a survey of psychologists conducted by Consumer Reports and the American Psychological Association. Mindfulness training was considered an “excellent†or “good†strategy for weight loss by seven out of 10 psychologists in the survey.
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We saved the best for last! A University of Utah study found that mindfulness training can not only help us better control our emotions and moods, but it can also help us sleep better at night. “People who reported higher levels of mindfulness described better control over their emotions and behaviors during the day. In addition, higher mindfulness was associated with lower activation at bedtime, which could have benefits for sleep quality and future ability to manage stress,†study researcher Holly Rau said in a statement.
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