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Things Change When You Do (and Small Changes Add Up)

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” ~Victor Hugo

A year-and-a-half ago, I was diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Every day, I felt like I was travelling through an endless tunnel. The only way I could fall asleep was by pretending that I was dying.

My life felt pointless. I felt like I was on the wrong path. The combination of my two mental illnesses made me feel like I was a prisoner in my own body, like I could not control my brain.

Since this point in time, a lot …

4 Things to Keep You Going When You’re Stressed at Work

By in Blog, work fulfillment

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” ~Charles Swindoll

I remember working at a job where I absolutely could not do anything right.

This was one of those jobs where it was extremely fast paced and you received 100 tons of work that must be completed by an unrealistic deadline. And here’s the kicker: your time at work was spent in meetings, all day. I’m talking about four to seven hours of your day. You get the picture.

So you may ask when I had time to do the work. Unfortunately, after …

Fear Is Inevitable but It Doesn’t Have to Paralyze Us

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.” ~Isabel Allende

I woke up with a knot at the pit of my stomach, yet again. For as long as I could remember, I carried this intangible lump inside me. It went with me everywhere.

I am fairly certain it woke up with me, and there was a small span of time when I was in the deepest of sleep when it took a break.

Terrified—that’s how I felt all the time. Muscles taut and butterflies in my stomach. I was a wreck, ready …

A Reason to Forgive Your Parents (And How to Soften Your Anger)

By in Blog

“If you cannot forgive and forget, pick one.” ~Robert Brault

I used to hate my parents.

I despised them. I blamed them for most of my issues.

I couldn’t do what I wanted to do in life because they would disapprove of it. I couldn’t be a cop or firefighter because those professions didn’t make enough money. I could only study a major that would be beneficial in getting me a job and not one that they thought was pointless, such as psychology or sociology.

I hated my dad for never being there when I was a child. I hated …

6 Mindful Ways to Calm Your Mind and Heal Your Heart

By in Blog, love & relationships, mindfulness & peace

“We do not heal the past by dwelling there; we heal the past by living fully in the present.” –Marianne Williamson

As the last moments of my thirties are fading away, I’m preparing for the dawn of a new age, the age at which life is said to begin.

I’m like a butterfly preparing to break free from her chrysalis into the light, ready to spread her wings and feel what it is to be free—a freedom that has been born from six long months of deep introspection.

The catalyst for this journey of introspection was the breaking of my …

Life is a Gift: How to Enjoy It and Find Happiness After a Tragic Loss

By in Blog, change & challenges, happiness & fun

“If we could see that everything, even tragedy, is a gift in disguise, we would then find the best way to nourish the soul.” ~Elizabeth Kubler Ross

Sometimes a tragedy can give new energy to life and bring awareness we have been living on autopilot.

I still remember the night like it was yesterday. It was late and my husband and I had just turned off the light when my phone rang. It was my aunt saying my dad pushed his life alert and was transported to the hospital.

I fumbled to find my clothes and hurried to the …

Keep Hope Alive: How To Help Someone Who’s Struggling

By in Blog, love & relationships

“He who has health has hope and he who has hope has everything.” ~Proverb

I write this today seemingly healthy.

My doctors say I’m healthy. I feel healthy. I look healthy. But over the last six months this was not the case.

In April of this year I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Melanoma. I am thirty-five years old. I am a wife and a mother to a four-year-old and six-year-old. I have my own business. I am busy. I did not have time for cancer.

But cancer had time for me.

I’ll never forget the day that I got …

We Don’t Need to Change to Please Other People

By in Blog, love & relationships

“One of the most freeing things we learn in life is that we don’t have to like everyone, everyone doesn’t have to like us, and it’s perfectly OK.” ~Unknown

I am thankful from the bottom of my heart to that relative who dislikes me.

As Mother Teresa famously said, “Some people come in our life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons.”

She came in my life as a lesson. The more she dislikes me, the more I love myself and appreciate those who love me.

This carefree attitude didn’t come overnight. I had to go through a …

4 Ways to Have More Affectionate, Loving Relationships

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” ~Simone Weil

This morning I was busy French pressing coffee for my husband and me. Everything was going great; I was happily humming along, looking forward to starting my day. My lovely husband came up behind me and bear hugged me gently.

Now, I’ll admit that I don’t usually take this well when I’m in the middle of something. If I’m cooking (which I’m particularly serious about), I’ve been known to push him away and say something along the lines of “I’m cooking! Back!”

This is not sensitive or caring. It’s …

Don’t Let the Outside World Control Your Happiness

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do.” ~Eckhart Tolle

We have this strange need or conditioning to not take responsibility for our own happiness. We expect it to come from an outside source.

It can happen, but it’s fleeting. True happiness has to come from within.

True happiness comes from a connection to our true being.

Years ago my family and I took our dog to obedience school, and the trainer told us, if we have more than one dog, to never let them share …

Why Joy Trumps Happiness (And 3 Ways to Coax It Into Your Life)

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.” ~Henri Nouwen

Once upon a time I was on a relentless hunt for happiness. I’d root around for it in romantic relationships, search for it in visits to exotic locales, and scour self-help sections of bookstores, hoping to run across a volume that, once and for all, would reveal its thorny secrets.

The books I read said happiness couldn’t be found outside of me, but I was always skeptical of that advice. I longed to believe that if I got what I …

Taking the Shame and Fear Out of Mistakes

By in Blog, change & challenges

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard

There have been times in my life when I knew I was stuck, but instead of dealing with it I chose to backpedal to the “safest bet” for me at the time, whether it was the steady paycheck from a soul-crushing job or an abusive relationship.

Then, one day, I suddenly realized that I had spent precious years just going through the motions.

One reason I had gotten so stuck was because I had been trained from early childhood to avoid making …

When You’re Hurting and Healing: Give Yourself a Break

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

“Stop beating yourself up. You are a work in progress, which means you get there a little at a time, not all at once.” ~Unknown

Often these days, I would like nothing more than to move forward. If I could only figure out which way was forward, I would definitely start heading in that direction. If you couldn’t already tell, I’m going through a break-up, the most major break-up of my life so far.

Again, I’m often disappointed that if I were to check a box to describe my “relationship status” it would most likely be “It’s complicated.”…

When You Fear Emotional Abandonment: Do You Know Your Worth?

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” ~Unknown

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…says Lady Liberty. She was speaking to immigrants wanting to start a new promised life in America, but those words could be my tagline for the men I have had my most intimate relationships with.

If you were broken, emotionally unavailable, complicated, and confused, I was your girl.

I would love you more than you loved yourself, or could love me. 

I would put all my energy in trying to make it work, trying to …

Stop Holding Yourself Back and Start Proving What You Can Do

By in Blog, meaning & passion

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~Sylvia Plath

Singing professionally has always been something I have wanted to do. Always. The home I grew up in wasn’t a particularly musical household, unless you count playing the radio as playing an instrument.

To my benefit, there was a lot of music in our home ranging from gospel to the Beach Boys; but really nothing beyond the sixties was allowed unless it was a spiritual song of some kind. So, I sang in the church choir and later I helped lead the music for Sunday morning services. Anything to sing.

As …

Why You Don’t Need to Eliminate Self-Doubt and Fear

By in Blog, change & challenges

“The more you hide your feelings, the more they show. The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow.” ~Unknown

Self-doubt has been a companion that has followed me around like a trained dog follows his master. Every step I’ve made outside of my comfort zone, it’s been there, right beside me.

Moving from Germany to England to attend high school, I was full of high hopes and aspirations. But despite my intensive English course and hard work, I could hardly understand anyone in the first few weeks.

Feeling left high and dry by my so-called “English skills,” I …

I’m Not Broken, and Neither Are You

By in Blog, happiness & fun, meaning & passion

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” ~Marianne Williamson

I used to have this secret habit of flipping through the DSM—The Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders—and diagnosing myself with every disorder in the book.

Reading over the criteria for borderline personality disorder, cigarette in hand and eyes wide open, I scanned the diagnosis criteria.

Frantic efforts to avoid abandonment? Check. Unstable and intense interpersonal relationships? Check. Unstable self-image? Check. Impulsivity that’s self-damaging? Check. Suicidal behaviour? Check. Unstable moods? Check. Chronic feelings of emptiness? Check. Inappropriate and intense …

5 Choices to Help You Overcome Your Demons and Be Happy

By in Blog, happiness & fun, mindfulness & peace

“If you believe it will work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you believe it won’t, you will see obstacles.” ~Wayne Dyer

I sat, exhausted and alone after a long night, on the stairs outside the train station.

It was 3:00AM, and it was raining. I’d been drinking all night and I wanted nothing more than the warmth of my bed.

But my journey home hadn’t even begun. The gates weren’t due to open for another two hours, the wait for the train would be yet another hour, and the ride itself another hour on top of that.

My misery was …

3 Tips to Embrace Imperfections and Bounce Back from Mistakes

By in Blog, letting go

“There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.” ~Conrad Hall

Back when I was a teenager, I was kind of a perfectionist. Or, well, I wasn’t really a perfectionist—I was actually a “fake” perfectionist.

Allow me to explain: I put on the perfectionist persona. I acted and behaved in a certain way so that everyone (including both my fellow classmates and teachers) thought and believed that I was the perfect student when I wasn’t.

Everybody thought I was the student who got straight A’s, was a bookworm, was involved in every extracurricular activity that ever existed, never got in trouble …

Releasing Painful Memories to Live More Fully in the Present

By in Blog, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.” ~Eckhart Tolle

For thirteen years I’ve lived a high-risk lifestyle that focuses very much on the here and now, because I’m an entrepreneur, and that means making lots of fast decisions that affect the future.

It took a while for me to develop confidence in myself, as we tend to doubt ourselves much more than other people might doubt us. Our thoughts form our doubts, so I knew I had to do something to move forward from the thoughts …