Cut emotional baggage out of your life

There a lot of ways to be good to your heart.

 The physical aspects, of course, are important. Eating right, exercising, and getting regular check-ups can add years to your life, and improve the quality of the years you do get. If nothing else, getting a new model is nearly impossible (and costs a lot of effort and trouble even if by some miracle you do manage it).

But there are more subtle ways to take care of your heart. Stress can also take years off your life, forcing your heart to do a lot more work than it would normally have to. Some stresses can't be avoided – work and bills, for example – and we're forced to turn to de-stressing techniques from yoga and meditation to taking long, relaxing walks and thinking about the positive elements in your life. 

One of the best de-stressing techniques, however, is surprisingly simple. We're taught from when we're young that we should just cope with emotional stress, powering our way through sadness and swallowing anger or worry. Men aren't supposed to be allowed to cry, and women aren't supposed to make a fuss. Adulthood, we're always told, is about growing up and just accepting the mess that life sometimes insists on shoveling at us.

But just swallowing our emotions causes its own level of emotional stress on our hearts. If nothing else, it can lead to one of those awful moments when we "snap" – suddenly screaming at a child, spouse, co-worker or other driver over some relatively small infraction. Often, moments like that happen as the result of a bunch of tiny stresses, piling one on top of the other until the entire load becomes overwhelming.

We hear a co-worker's comment and let it eat at us, or we second-guess a decision we made until we drive ourselves crazy. Recognizing those smaller moments and working through them rather than letting them eat at you, can do wonders for lowering your overall stress.

The best way to do this is to talk through your feelings with someone you trust. If it's a problem with a co-worker or a family member you can go straight to them, but even if you're not ready for that another friend can sometimes help you get a different perspective on whatever happened. Someone outside the situation can always see it more clearly, and without the emotional coloring that you inevitably feel. And even if they can't give insight on the situation itself, there's pretty good odds that they'll say something that can make you feel better.

(It's important to find someone who respects your feelings, though. Having your emotional reaction be completely dismissed will only increase your stress, as well as your chances that you'll punch whoever dismissed you).

No matter what anyone says, being an adult doesn't mean it's your job to carry around unnecessary emotional baggage. Talking your feelings out, rather than just suffering through them, is one of the best gifts you can give your heart.

Excerpt: Piper's Song

Here's a little something from the most recent chapter of what I'm working on right now. I should maybe apologize....

000

Jess hadn't quite been lying when she said Crispin wasn't going to kill her. 

It was more like an exaggeration, really. It made sense that he wouldn't kill her – he couldn't get a power boost off her death, and if he put any thought into it Crispin would realize she was no use to him dead. He needed a captive audience too badly, and the fact that she habitually insulted him would only make her subjugation that much sweeter. Killing her would stop all his fun way too quickly.

Of course, the fact that Crispin had turned out to be an insane killer pretty much threw her entire ability to read people into question. And even if she was right, there were any number of incredibly painful things Crispin could try that wouldn't technically kill her. 

But as long as Thomas stayed in the shadows, as long as he was as safe as she could possibly make him, she'd accept "technically."  

Keeping her eyes fixed on Crispin, she took a few more casual-looking steps forward. She couldn't let herself even glance over at Thomas's hiding place, and the further she was out of range the easier that would be. "So, I'm still a little fuzzy on the details," she said, seemingly ignoring the threat he'd just delivered. "Clearly you're a sorcerer now, which I'm sure is very exciting for you, but it seems like a relatively new development. Did you discover your parents were secretly evil sorcerers? Pick up a new skill while taking night classes?"

Crispin narrowed his eyes at her, clearly annoyed that she wasn't more impressed. He didn’t look like he had either the cloak or scythe activated, but if Thomas was right he wouldn’t need either to cause her damage. "I could kill you at any moment, you know.” He tightened his hand around the ID, making it even more impossible to read any information off of it, then muttered something as light started glowing around his fingers. There was an instant for Jess to wonder whether dodging would do any good, then he flicked his fingers at her. “I have more than enough power left in me for one little waste of space.”  

Searing pain suddenly shot across her upper arm, and she wasn’t quite able to swallow the pained sound completely. She doubled over, gritting her teeth as she slapped a hand over the now-burned skin. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see movement in Thomas’s alleyway, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a second and silently begged him to stay where he was. 

Our Perception Makes Our Reality

Our sense of time passing is an illusion, determined largely by how quickly our brain processes what's happening around us. Color is another thing determined by our brain, each specific shade determined by the way our brain interprets information received from the cones in our eyes. Our taste buds actually do relatively little to tell us about the food we eat – instead, our brain takes the information received by our nose, adds in backup data from our tongue, and cooks up an entirely new sense known as taste.

Most of what we perceive as reality, in fact, happens inside our head. Even when other parts of our bodies are what's actually receiving the data, it's useless to us until our brain translates it into something we understand. And, unlike computers,  each set of neurons and stem cells is even more unique than our fingerprints. It's more than a cliché that no two people see the world in exactly the same way – it's scientific fact. And, when you're human, how you see the world determines how your world actually is.

That's even more true when it comes to less tangible things. If brain waves determine color, taste and even time itself, then they're definitely in the driver's seat when it comes to things like beauty, goodness and wonder. That's why everyone's taste is different – what one set of neurons sees a beautiful may not be what another set of neurons sees as beautiful. So if someone doesn't find you attractive, that's says nothing about how you look. It just means that their way of perceiving the world simply wasn't compatible.

It can't change the data of your life – horrible events will happen, no matter what our attitude is – but it can change how you translate that data. It's the inside of your head that tells you whether to focus on the good things or the bad things in your life, or if a particular challenge is something you're capable of overcoming.  You don't get to decide what happens to you, but you do get to decide what it all actually means.

It also determines how we see ourselves. Your perception of your own attractiveness has an effect on how attractive you actually are to people, because it changes how you carry yourself and the confidence you project when you interact with others. If you see yourself as brave, you won't get intimidated by challenges that come your way. You will, in fact, will yourself into bravery.

If you see yourself as stupid, you'll get easily frustrated by tasks and give up on things you decide are "too hard." If you see yourself as smart, on the other hand, you'll set yourself to the challenge of problem solving because you know you're intelligent enough to succeed. You'll be more likely to solve the problem simply because you were willing to use all of your energy and intelligence to tackle it. Your IQ and skill sets don't change, but the results do.

We can help program our brains, shifting our perceptions inch by careful inch. It's not easy, and sometimes you need help in order to make it happen, but you can literally change your life by adjusting your mind.

There's an entire world being built inside your head. Make sure it's the one you want to be living in.

Representation, or finding our place in the story

We all deserve our own stories.

For a long time, I didn't realize that so few of them were made for me. I was never really the princess type, too stubborn and loud and average-looking for the lost princesses who filled the stories of my childhood. There were only a few warrior women and lady knights, but they didn't really work either – I wasn't strong, I wasn't noble, and I always thought there was a smarter way to fight than charging ahead with a battle cry. They were all good characters, but there was no place in their lives for someone like me.

But oh, I loved the thieves, the pirates, the charming rogues with a secret heart of gold. They didn't necessarily have to be attractive – a way with words was so much more important than how they looked. They didn't have to have powerful muscles – their brains did most of the work, and sometimes they could even best big, scary swords people without blinking. They didn't have to be even particularly good – they thought rules were bendy, twisty things, but they were usually at least helpful to the hero and sometimes even stood on the sides of angels.

When you feel like you're different from everyone else, it's too easy to also feel like there's something wrong with you. Like you're broken, or even just meant to fade into the background while the "hero" goes off and lives an exciting life. For a little girl with a plain face, a facile tongue and a squirrely mind, these characters felt like I had a place among all the pretty people. There wasn't anything wrong with me – I was just meant to be a charming rogue.

But ... all the charming rogues I had ever read about were boys. I wasn't a boy – I didn't even want to be one – and so for a long time I was just a lost girl in the corner with dreams she could never quite figure out how to reach. It took me years to steal the role, to cut it up and piece it back together into a shape fit an angry little girl. It took me even longer than that to find the self-confidence I'd lost so many years before, letting the rogue's boldness sink into my skin and teach me everything I'd always been meant to know.

And I was lucky. There are so few white girl characters when compared to boy characters, but there's even fewer for people of color or those who aren't heterosexual. They don't have the luxury to care about personality – they're grateful for the few they can find, and cling to them because they don't have anything else. And inside, they end up feeling that there's no place for them in the great story of life.

Feeling like there's someplace you're meant to be can change your whole life. No one deserves to only see their own faces, their own hearts, as background characters or villains. Or worse, to not see them at all.

So please, write more stories. Give your heroes and heroines your skin, your history, your fears. Give them your dreams, and in turn you pass those dreams onto all those little boys and girls who want a story to live up to.

Protecting our tough, fragile hearts

When we’re young, we think our hearts are indestructible.

We throw ourselves headlong into everything, without a thought for caution, sense or what might happen next. We date the boy who dropped out of high school to become a “famous rock star,” despite the fact that he wouldn’t know the first thing about getting an agent. We date the girl who is “too good for us” and knows it, and we spend every cent we have trying desperately to keep her attention. We tell our friends all our secrets, never imagining that we won’t be speaking to each other in just a few years.

We’re just as reckless when it comes to our physical health. Heart attacks are distant, imaginary things, as impossible to comprehend as depleted energy and failing bodies. We chow down on our triple cheeseburgers with gusto, joking about how we can “hear our arteries clogging” as we eat. Heart attacks are the things that kill grandparents, not us, and though we’ve heard the term “stroke” we’re not even entirely sure what it is.

We demand all this from an unassuming little organ about the size of a human fist, a tough but fragile thing that ancient Egyptians used to believe was the seat of the soul itself. We not only ask it to keep our bodies going for generations, far longer than we’d expect any human-built engine to keep working, but we insist on such things without giving it a second thought. As if time, or those triple cheeseburgers, won’t touch it just because we believe it won’t.

But when we get older, we realize that nothing is indestructible. This is especially true of our hearts, which never entirely rid themselves of all the marks we leave on it. We’re never quite the same person we were after falling in love with entirely the wrong person, whether it’s a lesson learned or a scar that never quite heals. Sometimes, we see ourselves differently. Other times, it’s harder to fall in love again. Even if we’re stronger in the end, we don’t bounce back in quite the same way we were before.

On a physical level, though, being careless with our hearts doesn’t just “work out in the end.” It’s said that each heart only has so many beats in it, a finite amount of strength it has to push the blood through abused arteries. The more we make it do in our reckless youth, the fewer beats we’ll have when we get old enough to appreciate them more. When we realize that time won’t just spin on forever, so we have to cherish every second we have.

The problem is, we can’t go back and grab all those heartbeats we wasted when we were younger. Faithfully taking your blood pressure medication and losing weight when you’re 40 can extend your life, but think how much further you could extend it if you lost that weight at 30. If you got a nice chicken sandwich instead of that triple cheeseburger, and maybe walked to places that were nearby instead of always taking your car. Maybe you could even put down those cigarettes and give those nicotine patches another try.

Hearts can break. Hearts can stop. We should all learn to be a little more gentle with the ones we’re given.