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Category “love & relationships”

5 Practices That Helped Me Stop Being a People-Pleaser

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“If you spend your life pleasing others, you spend your life.” ~Cheryl Richardson

Looking back on my life, I came to realize that I spent quite a high amount of my precious time trying. Trying to be perfect. Trying to be appreciated and liked by everyone else around me. Trying to fit in with different groups of people so that I could feel accepted and approved of.

I can recall many situations in my life when I did things I didn’t really want to do to comfort or please others. I was a master of people-pleasing and, to be honest, …

How to Stop Losing Yourself and Giving Your Power Away in Dating

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“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.” ~BrenĂ© Brown

I was a serial dater for a decade.

Dating can be fun and exciting, but it can also come with lots of disappointment and emotional pain.

All those rejections, ghosting, and shattered hopes had a huge impact on me.

They left me feeling exhausted and heartbroken. Probably because I dated too much but also because I didn’t do much to protect myself and my energy on these dating adventures.

I’d say yes to many men who were …

What My Dog Taught Me About Self-Acceptance

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“Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” ~Lao Tzu

We all have recorded messages playing in our heads, from long ago.

Listen to parents talking to young children. Often the message is less than approving.

“Don’t put that in your mouth!”

“Go wash your face right now.”

“If you keep acting like that nobody will like you.”

“Look at Cindy, how well she’s doing. If you worked harder you could do as well as her.”

Those examples are kind compared to what many people will have heard growing up.

Many of these messages enter our brains …

The Top 7 Reasons We Stay in Bad Relationships

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“Some of us think that holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.” ~Hermann Hesse

She knew it sooner than I did. And more intensely than I did.

I, on the other hand, may have considered our differences but never thought of them as deal-breakers. I tried to justify the many struggles we had between us and believed that our marriage could work despite the challenges.

I had this feeling things would get better and stayed hopeful no matter how bad our relationship got.

I told myself that her extraverted personality and my more introversion could …

It’s All About Perception: You Can Look Through the Lens of Love or Fear

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“We are not responsible for what our eyes are seeing. We are responsible for how we perceive what we are seeing.” ~Gabrielle Bernstein

One of the things I love about this journey of personal growth is that we get to learn the same lessons over and over again, until they finally sink in on a visceral level. I love it when I hear or read the same insights repeatedly, from various sources and at different stages along my own path.

Recently, at a low point in my life, I re-encountered this fundamental teaching in Gabrielle Bernstein’s book The Universe Has …

Recognizing the Strategic Manipulation of Financial Abuse

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“I have endured, I have been broken, I have known hardship, I have lost myself. But here I stand, still moving forward, growing stronger each day.” ~Unknown

There was a time, not so long ago, when I was struggling with the heavy hangover of financial abuse.

Did you know there was such a thing? I didn’t. I hadn’t a clue
 until it happened to me.

But it turns out that financial abuse is incredibly common, and is often used as a tactic to keep a victim entangled in a relationship where other forms of abuse also take place.

When money …

You Can’t Change or Fix People, So Listen Instead

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“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” ~Ernest Hemingway

The chances are good that at some point in your life you had to deal with a loved one who consistently frustrated you. They were caught in a destructive pattern of behavior that made life difficult for them and everyone around them. How do you cope when this happens?

Perhaps you start avoiding them. And when that’s not possible, you choose to check out of any difficult conversation or interaction you’re having with them. You resign yourself to the belief that your loved one cannot and will not change …

How to Get Past Blame and Shame and Strengthen Your Relationship

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I used to think that if I told my wife exactly what’s wrong with her, her response would be, “Yes, I see it now! Thank you for showing me the errors of my ways.”

To my surprise, that never happened. Finally, I saw that I was going about things the wrong way. Complaining, blaming, and shaming were simply not an effective strategy for creating more love and harmony with my wife. Duh! Once I realized this, I went in search of what really did create more love and harmony. Fortunately, several great strategies—backed by actual research—helped show me what could …

Understanding the Cycle of Pain: How to Transmute Anger into Empathy

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“When we get angry, we suffer. If you really understand that, you also will be able to understand that when the other person is angry, it means that she is suffering. When someone insults you or behaves violently towards you, you have to be intelligent enough to see that the person suffers from his own violence and anger. But we tend to forget 
 When we see that our suffering and anger are no different from their suffering and anger, we will behave more compassionately.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

There is so much to be angry about every day because life …

How I Uncovered the Root Cause of My Social Anxiety (and Finally Healed)

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“I want to dare to exist, and more than that, to live audaciously, in all my imperfect, lumpy, scarred glory, because the alternative is letting shame win.” ~Shauna Niequist

I kept my head down. Staring at my plate of food.

I could hear the laughter of the other people around the table—work colleagues, my bosses, a couple of high-profile clients. They were having a great time, enjoying the company and their expensive meals.

I felt light-headed and clammy as I battled to fake a calm and relaxed appearance. My fingernails left painful, crimson marks where I dug them into my …

How I Healed My Strained Relationship with My Mother

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“Give without remembering. Receive without forgetting.” ~Unknown

It was Sunday, April 12, 2015. I had just finished my grocery shopping and was about to leave the parking lot when I noticed a call from my dad.

I called him back so we could talk for a few minutes. He said, “Troy died.” I thought of his friend Troy, who I’d met a couple years prior, and said I was sorry to hear his friend had passed. My dad realized I had not heard him correctly. He said “Troy, your stepdad, he died this morning.”

I felt like someone had punched …

The Little Things in Life Are the Ones That Matter Most

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“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” ~Muhammad Ali

I followed a little boy in Walmart today. He didn’t look like my son and yet I trailed him and his mother all over the store. I curled my fingers around the shopping cart so I wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and touch him.

He didn’t walk with Brendan’s bounce or jerk his head back, trying to slide his glasses back onto his nose. He didn’t have his sarcastic smile or those tiny freckles scattered across his cheeks.

But he …

Where My Social Awkwardness Came From and How I’m Getting Past It

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“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known…” – Brene Brown

I’ve recently become increasingly aware of my social awkwardness. In fact, my awareness of it sharpened quite suddenly one day as I was innocently talking to a colleague about work-related matters. When I managed to provide a possible solution to her dilemma, she was full of praise for me.

To make matters worse, she looked me in the eye and told me, “You’re simply wonderful!” Then she remembered a previous comment I’d made about feeling that I did not …

Whatever Is Taken for Granted Will Eventually Be Taken Away

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“They say ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.’ The truth is, you knew exactly what you had. You just didn’t think that you were going to lose it.” ~Unknown

She was a mother of eight children. She lived with her family in a small village in the countryside.

Living in a poor family, with eight mouths to feed, she worked every possible job from dawn till dusk, from working in her family’s own rice field to accepting gigs from anyone who’d hire her.

Many people told her not to put her children in school so she could …

How Forgiving Yourself and Others Changes Your Brain

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“Be quick to forgive, because we’re all walking wounded.” ~Anonymous

People often behave in ways that we find irritating, annoying, or worse. This can happen especially with people close to us.

They can speak with little consideration for the impact of their words. They can criticize us and pounce on our mistakes. Sometimes they do unfair things that seriously disadvantage or damage us. Or they let us down when we’re counting on them.

All these behaviors can lead to us feeling wounded. The scars can persist for years or even decades. The closer the offenders are to us, the greater …

Yes, I Do Matter

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“Love yourself like your life depends on it. Because it does.” ~Danielle LaPorte

Thank you website impersonator. I appreciate you. In fact, you may be one of my best teachers.

Whoa. What?

Most people wouldn’t normally think of extending gratitude for someone who steals your words, impersonates your personal story, and uses your images online. Neither did I when I realized that an anonymous source had lifted not just my blog posts, but images of my daughter and specific characteristics of my life on their website.

Truth be told, I was outraged. This took intent. This took more than just …

Easing a Broken Heart: 5 Ways to Reframe Rejection

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“When the wrong people leave your life, the right things start to happen.” ~Zig Ziglar

The end of a relationship triggers many grief emotions, but when a couple breaks up because one person decides that it’s over, there is a very distinct pain: the sting of rejection. It doesn’t matter whether things had been difficult for some time or if the split came out of the blue; either way, rejection feels cruel.

At the end of my marriage eight years ago, I had no idea that the breakup was coming. On top of the shock that the relationship was …

How I Learned to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions

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“Sometimes I think I need a spare heart to feel all the things I feel.” ~Sanober Khan

I felt her agony and loneliness as if it were my own. Even as I write that sentence, my eyes well up and heaviness fills my heart. Then, I’m reminded to apply the advice I give others.

My mom was a special person, a sensitive soul just like me. Actually, I’m so much like she was, yet so different. One of the differences between us is that I had an opportunity to observe her life’s challenges. I saw her challenges reflected within myself …

Why I No Longer Believe There’s Something Wrong with Me

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“Our thoughts create our beliefs, meaning if you think about yourself a certain way for a long enough period of time you will ultimately believe it.” ~Anonymous

You’re ugly. You’re stupid. You’re a loser.

Imagine thinking this way about yourself every day. No exaggeration. That was me.

When a girl didn’t want to go on a second date with me, I told myself I was ugly. When I didn’t know what someone was talking about, I told myself I was stupid. When my Instagram post only received two likes, I told myself I was loser.

I spoon-fed myself toxic …

No Matter What Life Takes Away, You Still Have Everything You Need

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“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” ~Jean-Jacques Rousseau

On February 21, 2009, I received a phone call that would alter the course of my life. It was my sister, and I could barely make out what she was saying. My mom was in the hospital and had received a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer.

My body absorbed the news before my brain did. Since I had lost my ability to reason, from someplace beyond me I found a way to keep functioning. I asked my sister to put my mom on the phone.

What could I …