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When (and When Not) to Take Advice

By in Blog, change & challenges

 

“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.” ~Erica Jong

I’ve received all kinds of advice in my life, both welcome and unwelcome. Most of this advice is easy to divide into two piles: “good” or “bad.”

“Good” advice: when somebody makes a suggestion and I think, “Oh, of course!” It might be advice about how to improve a poem, or how to peel a mango. This kind of advice is easy to take.

“Bad” advice: when somebody makes a suggestion and I have a clear sense that I don’t agree …

Book Giveaway and Review: A Lamp in the Darkness

By in Blog, Giveaway, letting go, mindfulness & peace

Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The 5 winners:

“Sometimes we have to go right into the fire in order to find our true healing.” ~Jack Kornfield

No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve accomplished, no matter how well you’ve planned, you will deal with challenges in life. We all will. And many times, they will hit us unexpectedly.

We will all lose things and people we love. We will all make mistakes and …

4 Key Questions to Feel Fully Fulfilled and Content

By in Blog, happiness & fun, mindfulness & peace

“The person who lives life fully, glowing with life’s energy, is the person who lives a successful life.” ~Daisaku Ikeda

More often than not when we want to create something new or different in our lives, our true yearning is not about what we want to do on the outside that will make us feel fulfilled and content, but a certain way we want to feel in ourselves.

That fancy car might give us a feeling of power, or esteem, or pride. That successful business might make us feel like we “arrived” or we are recognized. That trip to Nepal …

Being Patient through Transformation: Trust, Change, Believe

By in Blog, change & challenges, work fulfillment

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” ~Charles R. Swindoll

Ever noticed a chrysalis hidden within its cocoon? The final few moments before it emerges as a butterfly compose what science terms as metamorphosis, a transformation.

If you have been lucky enough to observe this process, which I highly recommend watching, you’d notice it has to struggle quite a bit before it gets all the attention for being the magnificent creature it is.

It’s long and painful. However, while watching it, you may be tempted to clip off the outer covering of …

What You Need to Live a Life of Purpose

By in Blog, meaning & passion

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” ~Robin Sharma

I can remember the feelings so vividly—the emptiness, the yearning, the confusion, the lacking, and the depression. They all merged together, and they always seemed to present themselves at the worst possible times.

The simplest things, like getting out of bed in the morning, felt so heavy. The best joys in life, like being with family and creating new connections, felt unsatisfying. Things were  hard and almost unbearable.

I didn’t understand what was creating these feelings, or what I needed to do to change them.

It sounds like such …

How to Maintain a Relationship with a Loved One Who’s Hurt You

By in Blog, love & relationships, mindfulness & peace

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~Paul Boese

In a previous post about forgiveness, I mentioned that I spent years holding onto anger toward someone who hurt me repeatedly years ago.

I eventually realized that forgiving this person was the only way to set myself free. The resentment, bitterness, and sometimes pure rage were slowly killing me. They manifested in emotional and physical illness, constricting my life so that I was little more than the sum of my grievances and pains.

At many points I strongly believed my emotions would consume me, bit …

Changing Your Reality: Turning Hurts into Lessons

By in Blog, change & challenges, meaning & passion

“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” ~Mary Engelbreit

I wrote a letter to my dad on his 70th birthday this past May. Since it was a milestone of a year, I wanted to really give him something that would be meaningful; however, my ideas weren’t actual items. I sat at my computer and poured my heart into a letter.

Suddenly my mind flashed to a time when writing and creating were constants in my life. I had been honored and recognized for my writing beginning …

How to Ask for Help from People You Respect

By in Blog, change & challenges

I’m in the middle of self-publishing my first book. Ever since college, I dreamed of publishing my work and now I’m enjoying the reality of going for it.

For weeks, I’ve gathered testimonials. As you may know, they are powerful tools, especially when the people providing them are recognizable to the target reader.

My challenge: how do I get testimonials from all these people I respect? Well, I’ll tell you what I did and how I failed before I understood what worked best.

Asking

The first answer to how one gets help is “by asking.” Yes, some people miss that …

3 Things Tweens Teach Us about Living and Enjoying Life

By in Blog, happiness & fun


“If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.” ~Bob Basso

Work, Eat, Sleep. Work, Eat Sleep.

We all get wrapped up in this humdrum cycle of life consisting of working, eating, and sleeping, then waking up a few hours later to do it all over again.

This year it’s been particularly challenging for me to find ways to create balance and keep ahold of my sanity when the grind includes growing my small business, completing a new home with my husband, and settling into our first year as newlyweds who have yet to take a honeymoon.

And then it …

Overwhelmed by Your To-Do List? How to Decide What to Do Now

By in Blog, work fulfillment

“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.” ~Proverb

I’ve been mentoring writers for years, and one problem many of them run into is that they have so many ideas and projects that they don’t know where to start. They may want to write for big-name magazines, draft a novel, sell a nonfiction book, start a blog, and write an e-book.

Each of these projects has dozens of to-do items associated with it. Where to start? They’re so confused that they do nothing at all.…

5 Steps to Push Through Fear

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.” ~Rumi

This summer, I drove up Highway 5 from Los Angeles on my way to Grass Valley to visit my friend Carol, a painting teacher, for a week of painting in her studio. I can’t remember the last time I hit the road on my own for an eight-hour drive to nature.

I forgot what it was like to crank up the stereo listening to old tunes, straining my vocal cords to and singing full voice off key.

On my right, I saw semi trucks making deliveries …

Finding Beauty in Your Scars

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Beauty is a concept I struggle with—what it means, why it matters. I struggle because huge chunks of my life have not been beautiful. They have been ugly, marred by trauma, with pain, and anger.

We think of beauty and often visualize glossy magazine pages and wafer thin models. We see beauty as superficial—eye color, hair texture, and numbers on a scale. We see beauty as something to be measured and weighed.

I don’t see beauty that way. I see beauty as the grace point between what …

Letting Go of Insecurities with Two Realizations

By in Blog, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly.” ~Carl Rogers

I used to spend an awful lot of time worrying about people liking me. Or what people thought of me. Or what they thought of the clothes I was wearing. Or whatever.

It’s taken me a long time to realize two things:

1. Most people really aren’t even taking notice of us. (They’re too worried about what other people think of them.)

2. Of the few who are noticing us, the people who are judging us harshly are not the people we want around us …

How to Help Someone Feel Loved and Understood

By in Blog, happiness & fun, love & relationships

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”  ~Ralph Nichols

Did you know that one in ten U.S adults suffer from depression? (This is according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.) How do I know? I was one of them. Starting in 2008, I suffered from depression for more than a year.

Many factors contributed to my depression. Of course loneliness and lack of social support were the obvious factors, but the major contributor was that I didn’t feel understood. …

How to Carve Time for Yourself and Pursue Your Dreams

By in Blog, meaning & passion, work fulfillment

“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” ~Etty Hillesum

There was a time that I wished I had more than 24 hours a day to finish everything in my long to-do list. I have a full-time job editing news stories for a media agency while tending to my side business as a content marketing strategist for entrepreneurs.

That’s just the work thing. Like most single women in Asia, I live with my parents, so I do my share of household chores. I’m also writing my thesis for my masters …

How to Make a Difficult Decision: 30 Ideas to Help You Choose

By in Blog, change & challenges

“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.” ~Flora Whittemore

I have been running this website for almost two years. A few months back, I met a goal I set for myself: I eliminated most of my other freelance work and focused my energy on Tiny Buddha.

Since I don’t require much money to live—and since my eBook has been selling regularly—I was able to transition in the spring. As a consequence, I decreased my workload dramatically.

Now that I have more time, I realize that I need to discover a sense of purpose…

10 Ways to Make Your Life More Playful

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” ~George Bernard Shaw

I was 25 and traveling through Ireland by myself. I was in Cong, a rural small town outside of Galway. It was quiet. Very quiet. Even though I had met people on my trip, I was starting to feel lonely.

I was thousands of miles from home. I had nobody around who knew me well or cared for me, and in the days before cell phones or internet cafes, I couldn’t just get in touch with my friends or family at the …

Balanced Living: How to Stay on Track

By in Blog, healthy habits, mindfulness & peace

“Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential.” ~Winston Churchill

I declared myself a mess a long time ago. I lived in a constant, dull state of fear and anxiety. My emotions were more volatile than hurricane season, and not even I could predict how any given situation would affect me.

I may not have known it at the time, but I was miserable. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t and fit into a fast-paced life that I just wasn’t made for.

I was constantly overwhelmed by just about everything—being stuck in traffic, waiting …

6 Commitments to Maintain Momentum with New Projects

By in Blog, meaning & passion, work fulfillment

“When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless.” ~Pema Chodron

I always wanted to travel to exotic places. When I received an all-expenses-paid invitation to Bangkok after a conference accepted a paper I wrote, I jumped at the chance to go.

I brought my camera and lugged it around in an oversize fanny back worn backwards. Looking like a dork is a small price for the opportunity to catch the wonder of a moment.

The conference became a yearly event, and the overseas flights provided time to reread …

3 Questions to Help You Access Your Intuition

By in Blog, meaning & passion

“Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.” ~Horace

During my second year at an arts conservatory, I took a detailed diagnostic test to determine the hemispheric dominance of my left and right brain.

People who tend to lean toward the left are logical, reality-based, practical, and intellectual, when people who tend to lean toward the right are artistic, intuitive, feeling, and imaginative.

On a horizontal linear scale from 1 to 10—1 being the farthest left and 10 being the farthest right—I tested 4.8. That means that I am basically balanced between both sides of my brain but lean .2 …