One of my dear friends is going through a serious relationship issue. She is very upset and has sought my advice. I try to make it a practice not to actually give advice, but to just share what I would’ve done in a similar situation. As I thought about what to suggest, I realized that I had borrowed a technique that I have used with my students for years to lift myself out of a similar state of emotional desperation. In this week’s post, I’m sharing the details of my experience with all of you because the results were nothing short of spectacular. Enjoy!
Who Knew the Door Wasn’t Stuck?
The Religion of Effort
Sometimes you’re so convinced a door opens by pushing that when it doesn’t open, you don’t question the method. You blame yourself. Obviously, you must not be pushing hard enough. So you put your shoulder into it. You lean. You strain. You give it everything you’ve got. Because if there’s one thing we’ve been taught, it’s that force is noble. That’s how a lot of self-improvement feels. For a long time, I thought that if something in me wasn’t changing, the answer was more effort, more discipline, more analysis, more work. If I wasn’t getting better, clearly I needed to apply myself with even greater enthusiasm to the exhausting task of improving my personality. I’d tried all the usual things, and I still felt bad. I was in a dark place with myself. By the time I turned to the Self-Acknowledgment Hug, it felt like a Hail Mary.
A Writing Tool, Not a Life Strategy
What’s interesting is that the Self-Acknowledgment Hug didn’t begin for me as some grand method for personal change. I’d used it in my teaching for years to help people relax before they began writing. It was a simple way to help students settle down, feel safer, and stop glaring at the blank page as if intimidation might help. But I’d never thought of using it repetitively to create personal change in my own life. Then I began doing it at least three times a day. Not as a theory. Not as a spiritual campaign. Not as a makeover project. Just as a practice.
What Safety Taught Me
After doing it for a while, I began to realize something very inconvenient for the religion of effort: maybe the door could simply be pulled open. No need to push. That’s what the hug gave me. Not a new ideology. Not a better personality. A felt sense of safety. And that feeling of safety began to change the way I experienced everything. The first thing I noticed was that I became more aware of what actually mattered to me: my friends. That may sound obvious, but it wasn’t. It’s easy to stay busy, stay functional, and lose touch with your actual life while still appearing completely competent. The hug seemed to bring me back into contact with what I loved.
A Softer World
Then I noticed something else. I began to feel more warmth not only toward my friends, but toward acquaintances, colleagues, and people in general. The world felt softer. Friendlier. Less like a badly managed endurance exercise. What changed wasn’t that I’d finally succeeded at self-improvement. What changed was that I began to feel safe. And once I felt safe, a lot of what I’d been trying to force started happening on its own. This included love. And, somewhat inconveniently, a sharper irritation when people do stupid things. Honestly, I take this as good news. Because feeling safer hasn’t made me vague. It hasn’t turned me into a scented cloud of universal acceptance. It’s made me warmer, yes, but also clearer. I feel more affectionate toward people, but I also have less patience for nonsense. Apparently, those two things can coexist.
Why Repetition Matters
What the Self-Acknowledgment Hug seems to have done is shift the internal conditions. It has made me feel safer in myself, and that has changed the way the world appears to me. Not dramatically. Not theatrically. Just steadily.
At least three times a day, I stop and say, “I love you. We’ll always be together. We’ll always be safe. We are enough. We demand and expect better.” Simple, yes. But apparently, simple and effective is still allowed, despite the objections of the self-improvement industry. Over time, the repetition seems to have taught my nervous system that safety is possible. And once that happened, the whole struggle-based model of change began to look a lot less profound.
The Gentle Pull
The door didn’t open because I finally pushed hard enough. It opened when I realized it only needed a gentle pull. If you’d like to learn more about the technique, join my FREE workshop on Monday, April 27.
Here’s to your personal success,
Professor Marilyn Horowitz
National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month, a celebration launched in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets to honor the role poetry plays in our lives. It’s a reminder that even a few carefully chosen words can hold meaning and emotion.
Whether you’re grounding yourself with the Self-Acknowledgment Hug, clustering a Word of the Day, or shaping a Three-Minute Story, you’re already doing what poetry invites: giving form to your experience. This week, give yourself a hug, choose a word that reflects where you are, and let it guide a few lines, but with no pressure, no rules. If you feel inspired, we’d love to hear it and share your poem with our community.
Writers need to write.
It sounds obvious. Almost embarrassing to say out loud. But it’s one of those truths that keeps proving itself whether we acknowledge it or not. Writing isn’t just…[READ MORE]
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