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Whose Mind Is It Anyway? Get Out of Your Head & Into Your Life (Giveaway!)

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

Note – This winners for this giveaway have been chosen. They are:

  • Stephanie
  • Kait Husmann

A few years back, Tiny Buddha contributor Lisa Esile wrote a post about negative thinking that was incredibly eye opening.

Titled 3 Reasons to Stop Worrying About Your Negative Thoughts, her post suggested that instead of trying to suppress negative thoughts or replace them with positive ones—as conventional wisdom suggests—we should observe them, choose not to believe them, and let them naturally pass.

Brilliant, I thought. Don’t feel bad about the thoughts that go through your head (which adds guilt on top of the …

7 Tips to Help You Scale Back on Social Media & Reclaim Your Time

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” ~Theophrastus

We’ve all been there.

We’re supposed to write a paper, send an email, do our job!

We have deadlines, places to see, people to meet, and yet we find ourselves (for the umpteenth time) perusing our Facebook timeline, scrolling our Instagram feed, or catching up on Twitter updates.

Whether it’s YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter, we are all experts at self-distraction, and we wonder where all that time goes!

It’s actually getting a bit scary. Social media addiction is a real thing, and research from the University of Maryland shows …

5 Ways to Show Your Love to Others (and Yourself)

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Love isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” ~Steven Hayes

Things go wrong in life. Distress and confusion can take root, sometimes leading to harsh self-criticism, depression, or anxiety.

We sense that love heals, and it does.

I once visited an orphanage for abandoned infants, and every toddler who I carried clung tightly to me. I can still feel their little arms clasping me desperately.

We crave love as we crave oxygen.

But what is love?

Is it something you wait for?

What if love is more than a feeling?

What if your choices and actions can bring the spirit …

How to Move from Grief to Relief After Losing a Loved One

By in Blog, change & challenges, letting go, love & relationships

“When a person is born we rejoice, and when they’re married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened.” ~Margaret Mead

It was five years ago this month that my father passed away from cancer. About four months before his death, his oncologist gave him a bleak diagnosis, telling him to get his affairs in order because he could die at any time.

Our entire family was dumbstruck. Here was a man who appeared to be strong and generally healthy.

He was a youthful sixty-eight years old. Just months into his retirement after a long …

How to Boost Your Resilience So Nothing Can Keep You Down

By in Blog, change & challenges

“No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That’s the only way to keep the roads clear” ~Greg Kincaid

How is it that some people can breeze through physical and emotional pain, whereas others wince at the mere thought of it?

Is it their genes? Their individual circumstances? Their support network?

Or is it a certain strength of character, something each and every one of us can develop with the right tools and training?

Two years ago I found myself needing to answer these questions.

I was sitting in a cafe in East London wiping the tears …

When Things Go Wrong: 5 Tips for Navigating Your “Why Me” Moments

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” ~C.S. Lewis

Have you ever been cruising down the highway of life only to unexpectedly hit a major pothole that completely threw you off? Maybe you lost a job, ended a relationship, or were betrayed by a friend.

It’s easy to wonder “why did this happen to me?” and stay buried in the pothole. It’s up to us to break free and regain our cruising speed on our life journey. Easier said than done, right?…

How to Create Happiness in Zero Easy Steps

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life.” ~Jill Bolte Taylor

I was fifteen when I first noticed that I was depressed. That was also when I became seriously interested in happiness.

How can I get my hands on it? Where does it come from? Why does it seem so natural to some people?

I wrestled with those questions for quite a while.

Fast forward to ten years later and things look a …

8 Meditation Mistakes to Avoid if You Want to Feel Calm and Peaceful

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“Three things you cannot recover in life: the word after it’s said, the moment after it’s missed, and the time after it’s gone.” ~Unknown

Do you meditate?

I do. I come from a Buddhist family, and meditation is like an heirloom to me.

I didn’t start meditating until I was an adult. But when I did, I meditated diligently. From forming a meditation habit to getting the latest meditation app, I’ve done it all.

And one day I got a little worried.

I didn’t feel much difference. I didn’t feel calm and peaceful like I was supposed to feel.…

7 Decluttering Tips: How to Release Your Attachment to Your Stuff

By in Blog, letting go

“To change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one’s mind and the psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.” ~Anais Nin

I’m attempting to fit my life into ten large boxes (and one red suitcase).

As I enter a new phase in my life I’ve decided that now is the time to reduce the stuff that has been sitting in my storage unit while I’ve been house sitting and declutter my world…

More Information is Not the Answer; More Action Is

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.” ~Bruce Lee

We live in a world where information is literally at our fingertips, twenty-four hours a day, every day. As wonderful as this can be, it can also lead to a number of challenges.

With so much information available to us it can be difficult to know which way is up.

The more we read, the more confused we become.

One source makes a logical argument for one way to do something. Then we read a completely opposing view that is backed by another logical …

You Don’t Have to be Shaken Up to Wake Up

By in Blog, happiness & fun, meaning & passion, work fulfillment

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” ~Andy Warhol

I’m in my late thirties now, but I remember getting my first car like it was yesterday.

Even though I would have loved a shiny new car, my dad had suggested I go for a reliable junk box instead. Since I had been known to take out a few mailboxes and was somewhat of a menace on the road, I begrudgingly agreed.

Dad had a friend who worked on cars, and I proudly purchased my first clunker for $1000.

The catalyst for wanting my …

How to Thrive at Work (Even If You Don’t Love Your Job)

By in Blog, work fulfillment

“Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” ~Jim Rohn

We spend so much of our days at work, it makes sense that we should enjoy it, but many of us are not that lucky.

Too many people work in jobs they dislike or for people who make them unhappy.

Perhaps we don’t get the meaning of our jobs or are caught up in the corporate rat race. So quit, our friends say, but it’s not that easy. I have bills to pay, kids to feed, or things I need …

How to Make Life More Exciting and the Benefits of Switching Things Up

By in Blog, happiness & fun, meaning & passion

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” ~Stephen Hunt

Isn’t it funny how metaphors for life exist in all of our everyday experiences?

I found myself on a mountain the other day (no, that’s not the metaphor), where the route through the particularly rocky bits was marked with cairns. (For those non-mountain runners, a cairn is a man-made pile of little rocks indicating the pathway.)

Even though I was following a fellow runner, I liked to lag behind to enjoy the solitude and absorb the surrounding energy of nature. That’s the hippie in me.…

10 Ways to Cultivate a Positive Mindset and Change Your Life

By in Blog, happiness & fun, healthy habits

“Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” ~Buddha

I remember how I used to think; it was always, “People suck” and “I hate (fill in the blank).” I was constantly focusing on the bad side of humanity, so that was all I could see. It cast a shadow, which took the joy out of life.

It should have been obvious that I was creating my own misery, but I wasn’t able to see how my own thoughts affected my mood.

I had to change my entire outlook by training my mind to see …

Abuse Isn’t Always Physical, and We Never Deserve It

By in Blog, love & relationships

“A bad relationship is like standing on broken glass. If you stay, you will keep hurting. If you walk away, you will hurt but you will heal.” ~Autumn Kohler

It happens little by little, bit by bit. So very slowly that before you know it, you can’t recognize the person you lie next to at night and you hate the person you see staring back at you in the mirror.

Who is that person?

Where is the strong, capable, unflappable, and carefree person that you once were? When did you become someone so pathetic, so small and malleable?

I have …

Breaking Free from Manipulative, Narcissistic Parents

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” ~BrenĂ© Brown

I happened to catch the last scene of the movie Moonstruck on TV a few nights ago. The scene marks the happy resolution of various plot threads, and yet I felt as if I was witnessing the sinking of the Titanic.

It was like watching a demonstration of what I have come to understand as the two ways of being in this world: dominating vs. accepting, narcissism or bullying vs. kindness.

Having come from a narcissistic …

3 Ways to Build Stronger, Deeper Friendships

By in Blog, love & relationships

“No friendship is an accident.” –O. Henry, Heart of the West

Recently I was telling a friend how grateful I was that she had initiated a get-together.

“No one ever reaches out to me,” I complained. “I feel like I am the one driving all of my relationships.”

“Well,” she responded, “don’t think too highly of me. I almost never reach out
to anyone.”

I mulled this over on my way home that evening. I have often felt like the driving force behind many of my relationships. But I have also felt on many occasions that I’m just as bad at …

3 Times When I Wasn’t a Good Friend & How to Avoid My Mistakes

By in Blog, love & relationships

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~Maya Angelou

In this current age of social media, it is easy to have large and wide social circles. I believe that the larger and wider these circles get, the shallower the friendships become.

I’ve always been a person who is very selective when forging friendships. I think that has mostly stemmed from the fact that I value depth over breadth, and quality over quantity.

For this reason, I have had a handful of friendships …

Why It’s Okay to Feel Lost (And How to Find Your Way Again)

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.” ~Alain de Botton

Do you feel lost and alone?

Adrift and confused about which way to go?

Do you long for “something more” but have no clue what’s missing?

Maybe you’re not miserable exactly, but you’re not animated and in love with life either.

Your circumstances may even look pretty good on the outside.

But on the inside, where truth resides, you are bored to tears, unfulfilled, and restless.

Or maybe you are miserable, stuck in a painful place, silently suffering.

Trust me; …

Learn to Reduce Stress: Mindfulness eCourse by Thich Nhat Hanh

By in Blog, change & challenges, mindfulness & peace

Stress can be overwhelming, and sometimes crippling.

Not only does stress suck the joy out of our days and keep us awake at night, it can also take a toll on our bodies.

Headaches, chest pain, digestive problems, hair loss—they’re all potential consequences of stress, not to mention serious conditions like heart disease and diabetes.

Then, of course, there are mental consequences. We feel anxious, restless, and irritable, and often scared and discouraged. Like there’s too much to do and we don’t have enough time or skills to do it.

Everything feels urgent, like life is a series of catastrophes …