#( and i simply did not have the energy or headspace to educate these people and/or risk alienating myself from the group )

[daybreakrising]

i had to listen to ignorant people spouting bullshit on the dog walk today so i am now in a very.... agitated mood, shall we say

gonna bury myself in some writing or something for a while and try to alleviate said mood

[schmidtchristmasmarket]

With even local trails getting clogged, our editor has some advice for you that he hoped he’d never have to give.

We can’t help ourselves: A hiker’s gonna hike. Hiking is good for your body and soul, and both need nourishment now more than ever.

But this isn’t about you, it’s about the health of others and the bandwidth of first responders, and it’s time to stay home. I know that’s a tough pill to swallow because I feel it, too.

Overflowing trailheads with minimal regard for social distancing isn’t what we need right now. I support the parks and trail systems that have chosen to close because that’s the only way to keep folks at home. And that’s the only way to ensure we’re protecting vulnerable populations and not unnecessarily taxing the limited infrastructure most small outdoor towns have.

I live in a town of about 2,000 in the foothills in between Boulder and Estes Park, Colorado. I moved here for one trail in particular, my favorite mountain bike trail. It doesn’t hurt that there’s a couple trout-filled rivers nearby as well as a few lifetimes of rock climbing. Naturally, it’s a popular weekend destination. It’s now seeing peak summer levels of traffic and taxing local law enforcement and first responders (I’m a volunteer firefighter, and I see it every time I work a shift).

For now, I’m not hiking or biking area trails. I’m turning to home-based stuff like the below. I urge you to do so, too. Frankly, it’s been pretty fun.

Work Out

I love training, and it’s benefits are endless. Stronger bod and lungs are up there, as are fun and camaraderie, but most pertinent right now, in my opinion? Stress relief. An hour in my driveway or garage working up a sweat while blasting Beastie Boys is an hour out of my house and out of my head. Here’s a sample workout from my friends at Boulder Athletics that you can do at home.

Put some weight in a day pack (15 to 20 pounds), then:

5 Rounds for time of

20 Backpack lifts from ground to overhead

15 Burpees, jumping over backpack

4 Rounds for time of

40 Backpack Russian twists

30 Second plank hold

Need a little motivation? Follow along with our recording of a live workout with coach and athlete Jason Antin. Heck, you might just come out of this thing stronger. Train hard now, hike easy later.

Zen Out

Take a few minutes to clear your mind and appreciate where you are and what you’ve got. You can do it on your own simply by sitting quietly with your eyes closed for 10 minutes and focusing on your breathing. Or you can download any of a host of apps. I’ve used Headspace for years and love it. We’re hosting our own guided meditation for our Basecamp membership program.

Read

To learn. To escape. To grow. To travel the world while not moving an inch. We have a few lists of our staff’s favorites here. I turned to Gretel Erlich’s Solace of Open Spaces and am cracking Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars next.

Write a Letter to a Hiking Partner

Take a minute to thank an old friend for an amazing trip, to reminisce about that one time it all came together perfectly, and you hiked with ease, ate well, didn’t see another soul, did see a moose or a griz or the biggest shooting star of your life, and enjoyed it all amidst golden weather. Or commemorate the hard times, that trip you toughed it out together and staggered back to the car grinning. I remember a late summer trip to West Virginia’s Cranberry Wilderness with my college roommate Glen. It was a little of both: We had torrential rain, and Glen had somehow forgotten his shell. I’d decided to forgo my canister stove for an alcohol stove I'd made from a Coors can. Our progress was slow, but that afforded us time to shoot the shit and solve all the world’s problems while drinking just the right amount of Jim Beam. Handwritten is the way to go for style, but email works too.

Address Your Maintenance Backlogs

My favorite sleeping pad, an old Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLight, has a slow leak, which I’ve learned the hard way at least three times. But after each of those trips, I shoved the pad back in my gear closet bleary-eyed without fixing it. Today’s the day. I’m also going to wash my most-used sleeping bags, refresh waterproofing on my boots and gloves, and address long term inattention my cooking and water purification kits have suffered. Might even unbend some tent stakes, if it comes to that.

Video Chat Someone for Fun

Yes, I said fun. You may already be swimming in a sea of video-conferencing. Even my kid has Zoom meetings. But add one to your week with people you’re dying to see, that you miss. Toast to their health. Have a campfire. Human connection, even with a device in between, will do you good. A phone call works too.

Get Hooked on a Podcast

We’re biased for sure, but we have a brand new story from our Out Alive series that’s just dying to explore your headphones. It’s armchair entertainment and educational at the same time.

Learn Something New

If you don’t come out of quarantine with a new hobby, skill, or side-hustle it’s not for lack of time but for lack of desire. Just chillin’ is fine too, if that’s what you need, but make that a conscious decision. But if you and your family are well, consider this unstructured time the rare chance to learn the banjo, practice your conversational Spanish, or master your camp chef skills. And we’re giving this Essential Knots course away free. Grab some cord and show us a bowline or a taut line hitch.

Plan Your Next Trip

This pandemic grounded trips I had on the calendar for the country of Georgia, Colombia, and Oregon. It cancelled a few conferences I was stoked to attend. It closed the ski resorts and climbing gyms. It closed Rocky Mountain National Park. You get it, and I’m sure you have your own unfulfilled list you wish to realize. Use this downtime to plan (or replan) your next great escape. I have some pent up energy and can’t stop thinking about fly fishing and pack-rafting in Alaska, biking a section of the Great Divide, maybe finally hiking the JMT, or climbing in the Wind Rivers. As my friend and 2013 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Mike Libecki says (cheesily, yet guilelessly), “Dream big, and climb those dreams!”

Written by Shannon Davis for Backpacker and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.

[anhed-nia]

some unsolicited information about blogtober

i have absolutely no film education. or, more specifically, my formal film education went only slightly further than a freshman year 101 class in which the professor disliked me so intensely that he invited the rest of the class to fight me about whether or not i had incorrectly identified a bird in a ken jacobs movie as a pheasant. my background in writing doesn’t involve any education specifically *on* writing; anything i know how to do is simply a byproduct of other classes that required it. over time i inevitably notice bad habits that i try to change or good habits that i’d like to adopt, but it’s hard for me to care about the idea of continuing an education or trying to enter a workforce that make me competitively good at writing. to what end? especially when you consider the very limited things i’m writing about.

i don’t read critics unless they’re writing about something i already know i want to hear about. “critic” is perhaps the wrong word, as i more mean historians or other sorts of analytical writers who enrich my understanding of the very narrow range of things that interest me. my occasional attempts to start reading criticism in general immediately remind me that casting a bigger net wider simply gives me the feeling of having my passion diluted by too much disparate information. more than that, once i stick my nose into the world of any sort of industry professionals, i become hyperaware of the competitiveness that seems to be the only thing driving anyone to do anything. be the best writer, have the best opinions. naturally the only way to “win” a competition of this sort is to say things that the most people find agreeable, and i have a hard time even imagining how i could even think of something that would qualify. i don’t even have much interest in debating a film’s virtues with other individuals i actually know; i get pleasure from so few sources in my life, so many of which i already know are irrational, that i don’t have any motivation to narrow them down. (don’t worry, i’ll wind up feeling wrong and stupid eventually anyway, with or without you) 

i still don’t understand how movies are made, or what budgets mean. my occasional attempts to educate myself threaten to drag me into an intimacy with the greater Cinema Industry, with its sub-economies and obligatory appreciation for any and all accomplished craftspeople no matter how distasteful their person or product--all of which is the opposite of the precious little amateur indulgence that i defensively nurture. (also i’m bad at math and terminally impractical so it’s hard for me to understand how anything works even if i look it up) 

i write these things because i have to. it’s really too bad that i don’t feel that way about art, or something else that i could literally make something of for the public, because i think my compulsion is not dissimilar to great artists who can’t stop drawing, even in transit or at parties etc. i can’t bring myself to think about an audience or how to succeed with them. if i get 15 notes on something, that seems huge. if somebody actually replies, that’s very nice. but, two notes or no notes doesn’t stop me. i write because i have this feeling that it’s going to be really fun. when i manage to put something into words and it sounds just the way i want, it feels exactly as satisfying as crushing a bunch of tetris blocks, or scratching an itch, or probably hitting a ball if you’re into that sort of thing. the act of writing is its own reward.

i don’t do any drafts. i usually write directly in an empty tumblr post. in school when i worked on a paper carefully over time, the way you’re supposed to, i got worse grades than if i did it all in a frenzy at the last minute. i just don’t know how to parcel out my energy over a stretch of the future; i experience pleasure or enthusiasm in sustained bursts, and then it’s all gone until something totally different inspires me. i’m given to a little procrastination, but once i start something, i have to finish it as quickly as possible or it makes me feel nervous and unhappy. it usually takes me a couple of hours to complete an average “review”, including the image search and a once-or-twice-over for obvious errors. once i post something, i feel pretty excited about it for a few days, or maybe a week. i’ll compulsively read it over and over again, every time someone reminds me that it exists by “liking” it, and every time i read it i feel really pleased with myself. 

eventually i forget about what i wrote, and i almost never look at it again. sometimes someone likes or reblogs something really old. this is partly flattering, and partly a nightmare. when i see especially old work, i often find that can’t even understand it anymore. what the fuck was i saying? how long is this damn sentence? did i really think this string of words made any sense? there’s usually a moment of confused mental removal, where i think “who the hell wrote this, what sort of voice are they trying to use”--i literally can’t quite remember that it was me, for a minute. this also happens to me sometimes when i’m digging through old emails; if i don’t notice my name in the “from” field, the writing always seems awkward, unfamiliar, desperate and alien. i almost never like it, even before i’m in the headspace of self-criticism. this is pretty curious, it’s too bad that i can’t sustain that out of body experience long enough to get a really good read on exactly what i dislike so much about the way i write.

essentially, this writing is masturbatory in the strictest sense of the term. it’s a compulsion toward self-satisfaction, with no other aim. i can’t help doing it, and while i’m doing it i feel great. when i complete it, i feel even better. but later, after a piece has gone cold, any reminder of it fills me with shame and confusion. it almost feels like it must have been someone else, some other undesirable cretin, who did it. i think, “god, it’s mortifying to imagine anybody knowing i do this, let alone seeing it.” but, i still get up the next day and do it again.

[healthyeating43-blog]

Before and after and forward. From 190 lbs to 157 lbs. to personal training.

New Post has been published on https://dietguideto.com/awesome/before-and-after-and-forward-from-190-lbs-to-157-lbs-to-personal-training/

Before and after and forward. From 190 lbs to 157 lbs. to personal training.

Before and after pics: 190 -1 57 lbs .~ ATAGEND

Every once in a while I jump back in here to post when I hit a milestone. I’ve been on this sub since 2011 or so, when I initially started my slow journey from 225 lbs to 185 lbs. I thought that was a pretty big step, but I stopped and stagnated there, maintaining that weight and shape for years. Here’s some insight.

The first painting is right at the beginning of my most current process. I started roughly 2 years ago with the intent of simply getting healthy. That’s it. Just wanted to tune the engine up under the hood. I signed up with a personal trainer and started learning what to do in order to feel better. More on this in a bit.

The second photo “before” is a few years prior to the first. I did this to show how I basically stayed in that 185 -1 90 lbs zone for a long while. A more accurate representation of my “normal” body.

The last one is my overall shift. My peak was 225 lbs in 2008 -9 and back then I had done P90X to lose the initial weight. No gym. Just P9 0X, cycling, and calorie management. The “after” was just a day ago or so.

What is the milestone now? Well, I’ve started pursuing personal develop. I can’t really believe it, but is not merely have I fallen in love with fitness, it has radiated out and the people around me have started asking me to train them as well. Hell, after a while, it’s all people want to talk to you about. It seems nearly magical and your results speak volumes about the process.

How did I get here? Well, like I said, I hesitantly signed up with a trainer for the technique and, more importantly, the accountability. I merely started so I could feel better. I wanted to remember what it felt like when I was a kid and had all that energy and strength. I wanted to make sure I could stay healthy as I got older before it was too late to start. Turns out it’s never too late.

At first I went 2-3 times a week. Merely acclimating. Learning to use my body and the gym properly. Outcomes were slow at first but they eventually came. My diet was just about portion control. I still feed poorly but I simply ate less when I did. I tried to watch my calories and stay around 1500 a day. Nothing extreme or crazy, just good ol’ CICO. When I worked out though, I really pushed. I focused. I learned.

The diet should’ve been better. It was effective enough to get the job done, but I wasn’t doing myself any favors and I would’ve had abs a LOT sooner had I just meal prepped or built wiser, less sugary, decisions. I have a volatile relationship with fast food.

3 days turned into 4 a week. 2 with a trainer and 2 on my own. It was starting to become my pastime and I was appearing and feeling so much better. I find it virtually criminal that physical results are always represented as the sole reason to pursue fitness when the mental benefits far far far outweigh everything else. Mental clarity, recollection, memory … all vastly improved. Morning fog, run. Confidence going on in here the roof as you start feeling ownership of your own life. The chemical rushed is incredible too.

I could no longer justify the cost of a trainer. If I couldn’t apply what he had taught me, I’d fail at what I started for. Fortunately for me, I had become quite close to my dude and we became very good friends. I had progressed to the point that when I discontinue as a client, started as a develop buddy since I was about 80% of his capacity. We moved to 5-6 days a week and that’s when the real training started. I guessed I was good before but this was the next level.

I received the gym to be the center of my life and it grounded me. It was the one thing I controlled and did for myself. No one told me to go. No financial gain. I ran because I liked is not merely feeling good, but because amidst all the chaos in my life, on social media, with my career, there was a consistent centre to it all and I called the shoots there.

I was also get really good at it. I find it as a game and every day I’d get slightly better than the day before. I went from scarcely being able to do 1.5 sloppy pull-ups on day one, to now being able to rep 15 L-sit pull-ups and do muscle-up sets. Get off the couch had me feeling like a gymnast. Squatting to pet my dog felt like sturdy stretch instead of an impossible feat. Climbing my stairs constructed my legs feel explosive. The progress became quantifiable through physical accomplishments instead of pounds.

Oh yeah, as for my diet, it’s still pretty garbage. I effectively outwork my diet. I’m trying to gain weight now, attempting to eat 2500 – 3000 calories a day. Controlled gaining is very hard. I lift heavy so I need fuel, but I don’t eat enough or properly. That’s my next step. There is always a next step.

So here I am. Sharing my headspace in case one of you is looking for some sort of inspiration or clarity on the process. I’m currently getting my NASM physical educate certification and I’ve already started working with a few clients. It’s wild to learn about the process I went through from the other side and then teach all persons how to go through it themselves. There’s a lot of bonding in the process, as many of you know, and I love it. It’s so empowering to take control of your own state of mind and prove to yourself that a little discipline goes a long way.

Anyway, hope this was interesting. AMA if you want.

submitted by / u/ RebelScumbag [ link ] [ remarks ]

Read more: reddit.com

[remedialmassage]

Mantras 101: The Science Behind Finding Your Mantra and How to Practice It

Discover the neuroscience behind why mantras make potent additions to your yogic practices, and find one that works best for you.

Looking for a spiritually satisfying life after college, musician Tina Malia moved to Fairfax, California, an artsy city north of San Francisco, and began attending sacred music concerts. Something in the ritual and the chanting moved her to tears and kept her going back again and again. Eventually, she started experimenting with the music on her own. One day, friend and fellow musician Jai Uttal invited her to sing backup in his band, the Pagan Love Orchestra, which combined chanting mantra with rock, reggae, jazz, and African music. Malia jumped at the chance to play and sing these sacred sounds and words—believed by practitioners to change states of mind and elevate consciousness.

“I loved the syllables and the way they rolled in my mouth, but I didn’t yet know how much I would grow to need them,” says Malia. Even though she was gaining success as a musician and was surrounded by loving friends, Malia was silently sinking into depression—an ailment she had struggled with on and off since she was a teenager. As a twenty-something, feeling lost and lonely in the world again, she was ensnared by negative thoughts and even contemplated taking her own life. “It was like I was falling down this pit,” says Malia, now 40 years old. Nothing she grasped for to ease her pain—food, sex, movies, alcohol, even spiritual books—gave her anything more than a quick and fleeting fix.

Uttal, witnessing her struggle, offered her a tool that he thought would help her deal with depression—a practice called japa, in which a mantra is repeated, silently or out loud, as the practitioner moves a string of beads (or mala) through their fingers. The mantra Uttal suggested was Ram, which can be interpreted as “the inner fire that burns away impurities and bad karma.” At the time, Malia says, she did not fully understand the meaning of the mantra. She just wanted relief from her despair, and she was willing to try anything.

See also 13 Major Yoga Mantras to Memorize

After nearly two weeks of silently reciting Ram for several minutes (and sometimes hours) each day, Malia started experiencing a shift in how she was feeling.

“What appeared like a small speck of light—a little spot of relief—grew and grew with every recitation of that mantra,” she says. As she began to detach her true, deeper self from her thoughts, she slowly stopped acting on negative ones. “All these feelings of being unworthy, lonely, and lacking a purpose on earth were just thoughts,” she says. “When I gave my mind something to focus on, something besides my thoughts, it gave me relief.” After six months of daily japa practice, Malia says she was able to access true joy deep inside her. “In short, mantra gave me the will to live again,” she says.

See also Lead With Your Heart: How to Practice Bhakti Yoga

The Neurological Effects of Mantra on Your Brain

Malia had tapped what yogis have known for several thousand years: mantra, whether chanted, whispered, or silently recited, is a powerful meditation and therapy tool. Western science is only now starting to catch up.

Neuroscientists, equipped with advanced brain-imaging tools, are beginning to quantify and confirm some of the health benefits of this ancient practice, such as its ability to help free your mind of background chatter and calm your nervous system. In one study recently published in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, researchers from Linköping University, in Sweden, measured activity in a region of the brain called the default mode network—the area that’s active during self-reflection and mind wandering—to determine how practicing mantra meditation affects the brain. From a mental health perspective, an overactive default mode network can mean that the brain is distracted—not calmed or centered.

Researchers behind the Linköping University study asked a group of subjects to take part in a two-week Kundalini Yoga course that included six 90-minute sessions over the course of two weeks. Each session started with yoga exercises (asana and breathing) and finished with 11 minutes of mantra-based meditation. The subjects recited the Sat nam mantra (roughly translated as “true identity”) while placing their hands over their hearts.

The same group also performed a finger-tapping control condition—in which they were instructed to perform slow-paced button pressing on a four-button keypad.

See also The Beginner's Guide to Common Yoga Chants

The subjects’ default mode networks were more suppressed during the mantra meditation than during the finger-tapping exercise—and suppression grew as mantra training increased. “The study suggests that mantra training can more effectively reduce [default mode network]–related distractions than something like tapping along to the beat,” says Rozalyn Simon, PhD, who authored the study.

Research findings such as these do not profess to prove that mantra is a life-saving technique. But as Malia knows well, when we are beholden to our discursive mind, we can easily be led down the path to negative headspace—further away from our true, relaxed nature. In fact, research suggests that it doesn’t matter whether you recite an ancient Sanskrit mantra such as Sat nam, or the Lord’s Prayer, or any sound, word, or phrase—as long as you repeat something with focused attention, you’ll get results.

Since the 1970s, Herbert Benson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and founder of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, has been researching how meditation and prayer can alter mental and physical states. He’s been particularly interested in what brings on a meditative state, which he calls “the relaxation response.” Benson has experimented with subjects repeating Sanskrit mantras as well as nonreligious words, such as “one.” He’s found that regardless of what the practitioner repeats, the word or phrase has nearly the same effects: relaxation and the ability to better cope with life’s unexpected stressors.

More recently, scientists at several universities and institutes have applied modern brain-imaging tools to reach roughly the same conclusions as Benson. A 2015 study from researchers in Israel found that people who silently repeated the word echad (“one” in Hebrew) experienced a quieting of the mind, particularly a deactivation of the typically active default mode network in the brain. “When people said ‘one, one, one,’ everything that had been active during the resting state in the default mode network was shut down,” says Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, a neuroscientist in the Department of Education at the University of Haifa. “Subjects reported that it was relaxing and that they had fewer thoughts.”

See also Intro to Chanting, Mantra, and Japa

The Roots of Mantra: History and Meaning

In understanding how mantra works, it can be helpful to look at its translation. The word mantra is derived from two Sanskrit words—manas (mind) and tra (tool). Mantra literally means “a tool for the mind,” and was designed to help practitioners access a higher power and their true natures. “Mantra is a sound vibration through which we mindfully focus our thoughts, our feelings, and our highest intention,” says music artist Girish, author of Music and Mantras: The Yoga of Mindful Singing for Health, Happiness, Peace & Prosperity. Over time, that vibration sinks deeper and deeper into your consciousness, helping you to eventually feel its presence as shakti—a powerful, if subtle, force working inside each of us that carries us into deeper states of awareness, says Sally Kempton, a meditation teacher and author of Meditation for the Love of It: Enjoying Your Own Deepest Experience.

One of the most universally recited mantras is the sacred Hindu syllable Aum—considered to be the sound of the creation of the universe. Aum (usually spelled Om) is believed to contain every vibration that has ever existed—or will exist in the future. It is also the energetic root of other, longer mantras, including Om namah shivaya (“I bow to Shiva”—Shiva being the inner Self, or true reality), and Om mani padme hum (which essentially mean “jewel of the lotus,” and has been interpreted as, “By practicing a path that unites method and wisdom, you can transform into the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha”).

These popular Hindu mantras are in Sanskrit, but mantra has deep roots in every major spiritual tradition and can be found in many languages, including Hindi, Hebrew, Latin, and English. For example, a popular mantra for Christians is simply the name Jesus, while Catholics commonly repeat the Hail Mary prayer or Ave Maria. Many Jews recite Barukh atah Adonai (“Blessed art thou, oh Lord”); while Muslims repeat the name Allah like a mantra.

See also 5 Self-Awakening and Empowering Mudras and Mantras

How to Start a Mantra Practice

So, how do you get started finding a mantra? In some practices, such as Transcendental Meditation, students hire and study with a trained mantra and meditation leader to learn and receive specific, personalized mantras. But there are plenty of ways to practice mantra independently and free of charge.

See also The Beginner's Guide to Common Mantras

Consistency is key, says Kempton, regardless of your chosen mantra. “You enliven a mantra through regular practice over a period of time—months or even years.” she says. “It’s a bit like rubbing a flint against a stone to strike fire. The friction of the syllables inside your consciousness, the focus of bringing yourself back to the mantra again and again, and especially the attention you give to the felt sense of the mantra’s resonance inside your awareness will eventually open the energy in the mantra, and it will stop being just words and become a living energy that you’ll feel shifting your inner state.”

If you’re interested in incorporating mantra-based practices into your yoga and meditation routines, start by asking a teacher to suggest a mantra for you to try.

See also 13 Major Yoga Mantras to Memorize

Mantra and meditation teachers recommend to begin by lying down or sitting in a comfortable position and silently repeat the mantra, once on the inhalation, once on the exhalation. Don’t fixate on it (you’ll know if your brow starts furrowing). When thoughts or feelings enter your mind, try to simply notice them, and then return to silently reciting the mantra. See if you can set aside 10 to 20 minutes a day to practice. Several traditions suggest staying with one mantra for several months before switching to another, in order to deepen your practice and cultivate a sense of ease, presence, and peace.

“As a beginner or intermediate practitioner, it’s important not to assume that you have the power to enliven a mantra through a thought or awareness,” says Kempton. “You have to practice, often for quite a while, before a mantra really opens for you.”

Years into her spiritual chanting practice, Malia, who credits the Sanskrit mantra Ram with saving her life, has experienced deeper connection with the mantra. “It’s almost as if these mantras start to feel like your friends—even lovers,” she says. As she tours the globe performing in sacred-music and yoga festivals, she shares her love of mantra and its healing effects. “Sometimes I wish I could stand on the top of a building and shout it out to the world: Mantra is free! It has no side effects! It’s simple and so easy!”

See also Chanting 101: 6 Things To Know If You Don’t “Get” Kirtan

from Yoga Journal http://ift.tt/2FXZU5V

[sarahburness]

Growing from Ghosting: 5 Things To Consider While Dealing with Silence

“The important thing to remember is that when someone ghosts you, it says nothing about you or your worthiness for love and everything about the person doing the ghosting. It shows he/she doesn’t have the courage to deal with the discomfort of their emotions or yours, and they either don’t understand the impact of their behavior or worse, don’t care.” ~Jennice Vilhauer

Let’s get this out of the way first: Ghosting is crappy etiquette. There’s no real, concrete excuse for it, except perhaps pure, unadulterated laziness with a touch of cruelty.

We take for granted how much technology has changed the way we interact with people. We are humans first, but it seems we may be conflict-avoiding robots second. Efficiency and avoidance reign supreme in this futuristic dating world of 2017, and because of how easy it is to disregard anything and everything, common courtesy has now become painfully underutilized.

To be frank: it is exceptionally easy to ghost someone who has no connection to your life previous to the one encounter. If you aren’t feeling it with this new person, and you don’t want to use the mental leaps it takes to articulate a rejection to a practical stranger, then more likely than not you won’t communicate at all.

Access to the ignore button has never been easier, and pressing “unmatch” on Tinder equates deleting the person from your headspace and your own personal universe. Here are five things to consider in the land of ghosts.

1. What do you really want from the person who’s ghosting you?

In the land where easy hookups are abundant, polyamory is normal, and ethical non-monogamy sounds like something you’d see at a farmers market, here we all are, trying to figure this new world of dating out. With each generation of dating (and dating apps), we are met with new terminology, new hats to try on for ourselves, and we’re re-focusing our energies on what we are really looking for.

I am a monogamous person. That doesn’t mean that in my fifty-plus first dates, I haven’t been able to recognize some of my own awful behavior (long, dramatic paragraphs of anxiety-ridden texts to a new potential date, anyone?), so I’ve had to reexamine myself a multitude of times, take a major chill pill, and reorganize my needs and desires.

That being said, asking myself, “What am I really looking for?” after I get painfully ghosted is seemingly the best question to ask.

Why exactly was this painful (beyond it being inhuman and previously nonexistent before modern day dating)? Did I just want acknowledgement of my humanity? Closure so I can focus on the next person? Did I even find this person particularly interesting? What other things are going on in my life that are causing me to react so strongly?

Yes, monogamy is important to me, but getting overly upset about a person who feels no attachment toward me is a new kind of character building experience. Ghosting is a reminder that life is unfair and often severe. Technology has made communicating with each other easier to access, and yet has created a strange isolating landscape in which we are all a part of.

This feeling of desertion still applies to people who have been ghosted after several dates, or friendships that have suddenly and painfully disappeared; it just becomes more painful and potent.

2. The sea of excuses don’t feel any better than being ghosted.

I got on my old OKCupid account a couple years after being off. In a cruel twist of fate, I saw a sea of all of the men that I dated previously. We were all in this together, apparently, like some sort of sad loner club no one signed up for.

Here we were, the men that ghosted me and the men that like to me too much, and I didn’t feel the same. Somehow, after years we were all still here, and all using the same tired profile pictures.

After a few days, a man messaged me a lackluster apology that he ghosted me as he was going through “some stuff” at the time. And with that, he walked back into the internet, never responding my follow-up questions. Gee, thanks, I’m glad I could be a vessel in which you exonerated yourself from your strange guilt.

Does it feel better that he weakly apologized and gave a vague excuse for his behavior three years later? Not particularly. So, expecting any explanation at a later time isn’t helpful in this ghosting journey that we are all on.

More common than ghosting, here are some boring/obvious excuses I have heard instead of being ghosted, and they feel about the same as the disappearing act itself. In no particular order:

“Sorry, I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.” (They say, fully aware that I was a monogamous person looking for something serious before meeting.)

“You lied on your profile. You said you were 5’8”, but you’re taller.” (He says, as he lied about his own height, weight, blah, blah, blah. For the record, I’ve been 5’8” since I was twelve, unless I had a spontaneous growth spurt at thirty.)

“I didn’t sense a connection.” (He says, as he talked at me the entire time, completely unaware that I actually possessed a personality that he didn’t want to take part in.)

“You’re too good for me.” (Yes, probably so.)

People are either desperate or not desperate enough. This ebb and flow of dating is equal parts predictable and surprising. Protect your heart, date whoever you want, but know that you will eventually get your feelings hurt. Whether it’s half-baked excuses, or radio silence forever. You know the saying though: better to buy a ticket to the lottery than never to have played, right? RIGHT?

3. Know that you may ghost someone yourself.

Even I, Queen of All Emotions, have accidentally ghosted someone before.

Have you ever met someone so unremarkable you just simply forgot about them? You sat there during your date shrugging your shoulders, stirring your iced tea, wondering if this person had a pulse.

He stared at me blankly, asked me what I did, and I felt as if I was in a weird, monotone interview for a job that I didn’t remember applying for. As careful as I am, I accidentally ghosted someone and they were sad about it. I couldn’t even bring myself to apologize in fear I would open up the strange waves of communication with this person again.

It happens. I get it. It’s a two-way street and I’m human enough to realize my shortcomings. I’m sorry, Kevin. Or was it Brian? James? Steven?

4. You cannot educate a ghost.

This may be the most important realization on my journey through ghost country: You simply cannot educate a ghost. There will always be people perpetuating this stereotype of non-consideration (maybe even you!).

These people are not in your control. Sending them a “wake up call” does not work. It’s not your job to educate them.

This idea has been the hardest thing for me to accept. I have sent paragraphs of texts to men who have ghosted me. This only solidifies the silence. Obviously the person is not texting you back if you’re going to badger him on his shortcomings.

Maybe they’re going through something, you’re not on their mind, they don’t care in the slightest, or their phone was eaten by an alligator. Whatever the case may be, they don’t care enough to contact you, so your novel of setting the balance right in the world will go to blind eyes. It will drive you insane if you allow it. Do not allow it.

As long as you’re honest with yourself about your needs, somewhat earnest in whatever you’re trying to accomplish datingwise, then you can overcome this. It’s all you can do. Getting ghosted means actively becoming a stronger, wiser person, because the alternative is bitterness and never ending frustration.

Technology is still the Wild West of communication. We know how to correctly formulate an email to our boss, a job prospect, your great aunt Mabel, but to someone who is virtually meaningless to us, it’s becomes considerably more of a gray area.

In general, people just don’t know how to socialize properly in a digital format, so we have created a culture where we simply don’t. And because this was a casual encounter, saying something at all could put us in a situation where the other person over-compensates with their hurricane of emotions if the feelings weren’t mutual.

I get it, you don’t want to deal with a hot mess and I don’t want to deal with your issues either, and thus perpetuates the ghosting cycle of life.

5. In other words, relax.

Know that you’re putting in the effort. Know that if things are supposed to work out they will work out. Find a mantra, yoga, meditation technique, eat a giant plate of pancakes, do whatever makes you feel better to get over the first few hurdles of the unavoidable ghosting epidemic.

No one ever promised us that dating was always going to be enjoyable. The funny anecdotes in romantic comedies make it look like a barrel of laughs, but sometimes it simply isn’t. Accepting this is an unfortunate part of the trade off of putting yourself out there is like learning a tedious aspect of your job. You’re going to hate it at first, but if you still want to date, this is part of the job description.

In other words, be brave, certainly put yourself out there, but also send only one follow-up text, otherwise you will drive yourself into certain madness.

About Sarah E. Miller

Sarah E. Miller is a freelance writer, dabbler, collaborator, and an occasionally funny lady. She spends her days writing for various blogs, dreaming up big ideas and trying to put those dreams into action. To learn more about Sarah, visit her website sarahdoesitanyway.wordpress.com.

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The post Growing from Ghosting: 5 Things To Consider While Dealing with Silence appeared first on Tiny Buddha.

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