Tiny Buddha

Author: Laura Fenamore

  • The Path of Heart: Live a Passionate Life Full of Love and Joy

    The Path of Heart: Live a Passionate Life Full of Love and Joy

    Path of Heart

    “Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

    In my late thirties, I attended a workshop that was led by a group of coaches. One of the exercises we did was called the “future self-exercise,” a visualization that took me twenty years into my future.

    During the meditation, I was greeted by my future self: a gorgeous, happy, free older me dressed in purple, one of my favorite colors. Her hair was long, flowing, and brown. (So I guess the future me dyed her hair!)

    She was walking on the beach in Maui near her home. She told me that her name was “Warrior Woman.” I was uncomfortable at first with that word, warrior, as my mind associated it with violence.

    When I told her that, she explained that being a warrior meant feeling one’s power with a relaxed, gentle heart. She was supremely calm and peaceful, and I instantly trusted her in every cell of my body.

    Her energy, like that of a child’s merry-go-round, represents the circle of life: moving around and around slowly and happily, experiencing everything joyfully.

    I still have a ways to go—my current energy is closer to that of Disneyland’s Space Mountain: in the dark, not exactly sure where I’m going yet clearly on the right path, loving action, loving speed.

    But what my encounter with Warrior Woman gave me was a vision of myself to work toward.

    Being human, I fixate on what is outside me. I feel the pain of wanting to control things I cannot control. My ego acts like it’s in charge, which can lead to my complaining or acting like a wounded puppy. It is in these times that I remind myself of the warrior’s path.

    The path of heart, the path that leads to love, is a warrior’s path.

    A warrior protects and empowers him or herself and their world. A warrior is centered in their love and therefore experiences deep peace. A warrior is worthy of love and knows this through and through. A warrior knows how to balance being proactive with simply being.

    But warriors are not born. We are made.

    You have a warrior sleeping within you. He is a master of life, of his domain and body. You sense him when you feel the will to do what’s right in the face of adversity. You hear her whisper when you know deep down that the harder path is the one you must take. You feel her rejoice when you experience moments of worthiness, joy, and love. 

    There are five steps on the warrior’s path:

    1. Know and accept who you are now—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

    This step is about revisiting who we are and seeking what is true, even if it’s challenging. This truth is both where you’ve come from and where you are.

    For example, for years I had denied the truth of my abusive childhood in an effort to protect myself. I refused to reflect on the experience or acknowledge that it had influenced my life. But actually acknowledging it was the way out of my pain.

    I also woke up to the truth of my adult life—the fact that I was still making choices from that place of abuse. Acknowledging the truth empowered me instead of enraging me.

    2. Have something worth striving for.

    As we first move into self-love, we often need something beyond ourselves to strive for. It’s easy to fight for someone you love, but you might not love yourself just yet. So until we can fully experience and know that we ourselves are worth it, we must find what or who is worth it in the meantime.

    It can be a relative, a friend, or a personal goal. Having that motivation helps us to actualize our true potential, and in doing so, we realize our own true worth. 

    3. Take action toward your vision.

    When we identify what in our life is worth striving for, we feel the power of our will. We feel as though we are being carried on the tide of purpose. This energy must be channeled into action.

    Consider what you’re saying to yourself and your life when you identify something worth striving for and then do nothing. That’s like researching a fantastic hike, packing your bags, driving to the mountain—and then sitting in the parking lot.

    If you’re struggling to know what to do, I suggest you get quiet and ask for an answer. “Dear Universe: I am unsure of my next action step. Please help me see it and make it clear to me.” Then watch and notice what begins to show up in your life (observation is action).

    4. Let go of the outcome.

    This seems counterintuitive and maybe even ridiculous.

    You’ve just connected with a powerful desire about what you want your life to be like. Then you found something near and dear to your heart worth striving for. And now I’m telling you that you have to move forward completely unattached to the outcome of whether you’ll get the life you want.

    Growth begins with looking at those things we desire most and finding the bliss in working toward them—not in achieving them. Achievement is still the goal, but you only get there by letting go of the need for it.

    In other words, I invite you to fall in love with the process, with the transformation, growth, and healing you are experiencing for its own worth. 

    5. Choose to contribute. 

    It’s only human to think of ourselves first. But now, grow beyond yourself. We do this to fully become ourselves—yet another irony.

    What can I give? How will my life have mattered? These are the questions that lead our feet onto the path of the warrior.

    Their answers provide the heart. Service is at the core of love. This may be calling an elderly relative once a week, working at a soup kitchen, or volunteering at your child’s school, not out of guilt or obligation, rather out of love.

    Transformation won’t come overnight; periods of obsessing and anger over old wounds are all part of the ride.

    Of course I laugh when I find myself using my frenetic, Space Mountain energy—the energy that says I have to do something, and do it quickly (I have always loved amusement parks, and now I understand why).

    I still talk to my warrior and ask her for her wisdom. She feels like the mother in me. I consider my teaching how I do my mothering in the world. The knowledge that warrior is both someone I aspire to be and someone I already am carries me through this adventure called life.

    There’s a warrior in you too. Can you feel it?

    Photo by h.koppdelaney

  • We Can Control How We Respond to Things We Can’t Control

    We Can Control How We Respond to Things We Can’t Control

    Deep in thought

    “When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl

    Every year, March 13th is difficult for me. This year, I marked the day with a long hike in the woods near my house and an extra-long hug for my wife, Kathleen. My sisters and I called each other and just said his name out loud. Wherever he is, we want him to know he is gone but not forgotten.

    March 13th would have been my brother Jimmy’s 64th birthday. He only made it to 26.

    But March 13th is also a time to reflect on what Jimmy meant to me, because although his death was a tragic event, it inspired me to choose a better life.

    April 23rd, 1975. A day that will be in my consciousness as long as I breathe.

    It was my sister Elizabeth’s 17th birthday and the day that my brother Jimmy, whom I worshipped, died.

    I was 11; Jimmy (as I said) was 26. My other older brother Robert (I am the youngest of eight) broke the news to me and my three other closest siblings, Michael, Madeleine, and Elizabeth.

    Robert told us and then held me in his arms as I screamed, “That’s not true! Jimmy can’t die! It’s a mistake!”

    But it wasn’t. He was gone, and my life changed that day forever.

    This devastating change was not my choice, but what I did next was. It was always my brother’s dream that his seven other siblings would escape our abusive father. I knew that, to honor Jimmy, I would never go back home.

    My mission from that day forward was to grow up and take control of my life. In the darkest moments—fighting with my foster parents, for example—I would say to myself, “Stay strong for Jimmy.”

    My path was far from smoothly paved; many bumps lay ahead. But I knew at that early age that whatever the universe threw at me, I could at the very least control my reaction and my journey forward, out of darkness into light.

    We choose to quit jobs, get married, adopt an animal, but of course there are many life events we don’t choose—a divorce, an accidental pregnancy, or the death of a loved one. Yet we can still choose how we deal with and react to these occurrences in our lives. 

    During tough times, our emotions run the gamut: denial, anger, fury, despair, numbness, isolation, desperation. In order to heal, we must feel. But we have a say in what we do with our feelings. 

    There are no right or wrong reactions, only what serves us and what doesn’t.

    It may help you to be angry and express your rage; it may help to be alone for some time. What is crucial when moving through a crisis is maintaining self-awareness.

    Check in with yourself daily, perhaps through meditation or journaling, and ask yourself: Where am I today? Is this helping me? What might be the next phase of this transition?

    While we have to relinquish control over the circumstances, we can still maintain our connection to ourselves. We can work with this knowledge, to paraphrase Victor Frankl, to face the challenge of changing ourselves.

    “Change” has become a dirty word in today’s world; advertisers avoid it because consumers associate the word with challenge and difficulty. 

    But whether we like it doesn’t really matter—life-altering events will change us, in one way or another. Instead of tuning out to avoid the pain, dealing with and even embracing tragedy and its consequences gives us an active role in guiding our own change and growth.

    Transformation is all around us. Transitions are the birthing pains, alternately exhilarating and difficult, that can bring wondrous, challenging, beautiful changes into our lives.

    What change are you dealing with now, and how are you responding to it?

    Photo here

  • 5 Ways to Turn Simple Daily Tasks into Meaningful Rituals

    5 Ways to Turn Simple Daily Tasks into Meaningful Rituals

    “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ~ Robert Brault

    “Routine” can seem like a dirty word; we can get stuck repeating the same actions over and over again and feel like slaves to our habits.

    Yet there are some things we simply cannot get around—sleeping, waking, eating, working, and engaging with others. There are also repetitions that we embrace as rituals—Friday afternoon with its promise of the weekend, weekly religious observances, a favorite TV show even.

    What if we could turn regular, seemingly mundane daily activities into ritualistic celebrations instead of nagging chores?

    Turning quotidian activities into rituals, or creating new daily practices, transforms the little stuff into opportunities to stop, show gratitude, and marvel at the beauties of regular life.

    One of my rituals is praying. I pray on my knees every day and have been for 20 years. For me, it is a place of comfort and self-love. I love it. It’s like breathing—just happens no matter what.

    1. Affirm, affirm, affirm again.

    Affirmations remind us of what we value and put us on a path toward a happier, more mindful day. An affirmation is a statement about what we would like to experience, stated in a way that invites this new reality because we state it as already being true.

    Studies show that repeatedly saying affirmations physically creates new pathways and connections in your brain.

    Write your own affirmation to repeat to yourself at a pre-determined time each day. When writing, remember: (more…)

  • Letting Go of Your Past to Create a New Future

    Letting Go of Your Past to Create a New Future

    Woman with outstretched arms

    “As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it.” -Eckhart Tolle

    I grew up in what looked like a happy, all-American household—eight children, a dutiful housewife for a mother, and a father who was both a janitor at my school and a member of the Knights of Columbus and American Legion.

    However, in the background, terror lurked. My father, verbally and physically abusive, terrorized us every day. Even after growing up, taking back my life and moving across the country, I still wore my victim story like a badge.

    The subtext of everything I ever shared about my childhood was: “I am so screwed up because of my father.”

    Some years ago, I was having lunch in Los Angeles with my friend Paul, going over all the horrible things that had happened to me in my life.

    Suddenly, Paul said to me, “Laura, how long are you going to tell that story and be a victim of that story?”

    I was shocked. I responded, “You don’t understand!  This man—my father—tried to ruin my life!” and, “You don’t understand what hell I’ve been through!” and, “You just don’t understand!”

    He said, “I understand. I just want to know how long you are going to tell the story.”

    Fortunately, beneath my initial reaction, I knew he was right. It was in that moment that I realized I’d been going through my life thinking I was earning purple hearts for having the worst childhood story.

    The truth was that my story was holding me back from healing. I had this sad core belief that my story made me friends by getting people to pity me.

    In reality, my defining myself only by my pain was actually pushing people away. My suffering was leading me nowhere. (more…)

  • Create Solutions, Not Resolutions

    Create Solutions, Not Resolutions

    New Day

    “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    With the New Year approaching, resolutions are on everyone’s mind.

    I’ve never liked the word “resolution.” As defined in the dictionary, resolution means “a firm decision to do or not do something,” and anyone who’s ever done, well, anything knows that life rarely works like that.

    I prefer to think of my January decisions as New Year’s solutions. Defined in the dictionary as “a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation,” solutions are useful and practical. Thinking about them now helps us find peace in whatever may happen in the year ahead.

    The best solution I can think of, and one that is especially helpful after the excess of the holiday season, is letting go.

    I often hear stories from people who decide at the beginning of a year that this will be the one when they’ll be able to fix their bodies.

    They want to “fix” themselves; they want to look like their high school pictures or their super fit best friends or whoever’s on the cover of Vogue.

    My feedback for all who are constricted by a negative diet mentality: let go.

    This seems counterintuitive, ironic, cruel, and maybe even ridiculous. You’ve just connected with a powerful desire about what you want your life to be like, and now I’m going to tell you that you have to move forward completely unattached to the outcome of whether you’ll get the life you want and will now be working toward.

    The crux of this philosophy is that in order to get that which we want, we must let go of our need and desire for it.

    This may sound impossible, unattainable, and completely contradictory; however, this is where freedom lies.

    I know firsthand that letting go is the path to freedom and joy. My struggle with weight started when I was a toddler. When I got older, I thought that if I could only lose the extra weight, I would be happy.

    I did lose the weight—a hundred pounds—between my twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth birthdays. I had finally achieved what I thought was my goal; I was thin, so I should be happy, right?

    I was more miserable than ever. I was so worried about gaining the weight back, so scared that I might relapse, that I couldn’t enjoy my newfound health.

    I was stuck living in fear that the future would not be what I wanted, that I would lose control, that my hard work would be for naught.

    It was only when I figured out how to live in the present, how to be focus on the now and not concern myself with worrying about things that had not even yet happened, that I was able to be happy.

    After learning to do that, not only was I content for the first time in my life, but I also was able to keep the weight off without worrying about it. I have kept that a hundred pounds off for twenty-four years.

    We achieve the life we desire when we begin living for the moment, in the moment, and because of the moment. Finding happiness in this New Year will not be an outcome or a result. It is doing; it is being.

    How can your foster this way of being in your life? It begins with looking at those things we desire most and finding the bliss in working toward them in the present—not in achieving them in the future.

    Achievement is still the goal, but ironically, you only get there by letting go of the need for it. (more…)

  • It’s Time to Make a Change: If Not Now, When?

    It’s Time to Make a Change: If Not Now, When?

    “What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now.”  ~Buddha

    These words resonate for me in a deeply personal way. The importance of being in the here and now, of recognizing that every moment is an opportunity to wake up to what is happening and what is possible, saved my life.

    I was a compulsive eater out of my mother’s womb. The youngest of eight children in an abusive home, I used food to feel safe. I overate every day, hated myself for it, and yet could not stop.

    I started addicted to food, and by my teenage years I was addicted to alcohol and drugs as well. By age twenty-four, I was designing my ending and talked regularly about taking my life. I was a fat, depressed drunk who hated herself, until a major shift happened.

    I had recognized my self-harming behavior and had been in Overeaters Anonymous (OA) for months, but my patterns were the same. After meetings, I would go straight to the grocery store and then binge my brains out in the car, thinking, “Well, I’m not ready yet, and I am doing the best I can right now.”

    Part of me was seeking something better and the other part was desperate; one part wanted to live and the other did not, but still I hung on to the belief that something might change.

    Then came the day when I heard four words that rocked my world forever.

    It was February, 1988. My latest New Year’s resolution to heal had died, and I was using food like crazy and drinking like a fish. There was a daylong OA conference, and as disappointed as I was in myself yet again, I knew I needed to go.

    The very first speaker, a normal-sized woman, had a story similar to mine—a lifetime of yo-yo diets and self-hate. She talked about feeling desperate and determined at the same time, of living her life in two parts: the one who knew there was more and the one who felt defeated.

    She talked about all of her excuses and stories and lies and self-betrayals, and how they were digging her grave deeper.

    She, like me, had wanted out of the quicksand, and could never find a hand or a rod or anything to pull her out. Then, one day in a meeting, she had heard a woman share a similar story of attempts to save herself until her life was changed by four words. Those words would forever change the life of this woman and, as soon as she shared them, they changed mine too.

    “If not now, when?”

    When she shared those words, I burst into tears and experienced an actual physical release in my body, an earthquake in my cells. My world was literally rocked and my life forever changed. Just then, I got it. (more…)