I consider myself a tough cookie.  I am an intrepid adventurer who is ballsy, bold and bring it on baby when it comes to travelling off the beaten path. I also consider myself brave.  I stand up. You can count on me in a crisis. I have elevated Spidey sense for danger and call spiders and snakes my friends. I’m also strong and resilient; I have a high tolerance for physical pain – tested by dozens of broken bones, a busted back and my ability to still do a mean cartwheel. I am courageous – I speak my mind and my heart.  I eat fear for breakfast, snack on dares daily and foster an indomitable spirit that always chooses hope, peace and love.

What slays me is rejection.

Now everyone will experience rejection over his or her lives. It’s a part of life and whether it’s in love, your career, friends, or a book proposal – it hurts.  Sometimes it hurts like hell.  As people, we have a strong need to feel secure. If you’ve been rejected, your sense of security is threatened – you may feel judged, abandoned and scared.  I turn into “Mud Girl”…a depressive state of stuck in the mud, covered in heavy dirt, can’t move, trapped at the bottom of a deep hole, eating worms and can’t get out”.   Not a great place to be.

My heart has a boo boo and no band-aid is gonna help.

Physical pain, like a broken bone often needs outside intervention to make it go away – a visit to the doctor, pain meds or a crutch. Emotional pain needs you to go inside. You need to feel it, in order to deal with it and ultimately heal it.

Feeling painful emotions can be painful, really scary and often result in more pain. Awesome sauce!  But it is also the only remedy to free yourself, to learn how to cope, experience some self reflection and quite possibly learn an important life lesson.

Here are a few tips to help you get through the grind, find peace and let it go from my book “How to Live Like a Chipmunk and Other Tips on Living an Awesome Sauce Life”.

1. Talk it out. Scream it out. Stomp it out. Cry it out. Wish it out. Beg it out. Think it out. Feel it out.
2. Hold on really, really, really tight – so tight that it actually hurts and you simply have to let it go in order to stop the pain.
3. Make friends with your emotions, give them a hug, let them know it’s safe to feel, have a tea with them, heck have a glass of wine and toast to the wisdom they will bring.
4. Train your brain to feel. Reward it with chips when it is good… open, aware and spewing out a frenzied soliloquy of vomitus but authentic emotional puss. Deny it chips when it spirals into a negative vortex of self-loathing, avoidance or isolation.
5. Create calm. Go to your magic place. Breathe a lot. Surround yourself in love.
6. Know it takes less energy to love, and let it go than it does to hold on to hurt. Be love.
7. Find perspective. Find the silver lining.
8. Make peace.
9. Release it. Better out than in.
10. 5 words…Taylor Swift – Shake it Off!