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Overcoming Excuses and Believing in What You Can Do

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“Your belief determines your action and your action determines your results, but first you have to believe.” ~Mark Victor Hansen

I still remember how I felt crossing the finish line after my first 10K race. I was elated. I felt like I could conquer anything.

I realize that for all you marathon runners, 10K may not seem like a big deal. But for me, it was monumental. Up until the two years prior to running my first race, the only running I did was in gym class (and only after trying anything I could think of to get out of …

Embracing Change When It Challenges Your Identity

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“The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.” ~Ralph Blum

During the worst years of my life, yoga saved me.

My life was a wreck. I was working seventy to eighty hours a week at a job that took everything from me and made me a monster. My relationship was disintegrating. I was hopped up on espresso shots and sugar. I paraded myself as the self-appointed queen of happy hour.

But the hour a week I spent on my mat put it all into perspective.

That single hour turned into several, and somewhere, somehow, …

A Simple Way to Avoid Hurting Other People

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“Don’t let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” ~Dalai Lama

The most straightforward advice I can suggest to make real concrete changes in your life is to practice causing no harm to anyone—yourself or others.

Try it for a day. Or two. How about a week? You will probably find that it’s harder than you think. Before you know it, someone has triggered you, and either directly or indirectly, you’ve caused harm.

I am a successful psychotherapist and conscious woman, and I’m also committed to transparency. No more hiding behind the therapist’s veil for me. The one that …

How to Create a Happy Future by Accepting the Present

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“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Imagine if every night you wrote the script for your tomorrow.

You’d tuck it under your pillow and when you woke up, it would begin unfolding just like you envisioned.

The man or woman of your dreams would appear in the Whole Foods aisle you were perusing.

A check for a million dollars would show up in your mailbox, with a note reading “have fun.”

Your friends and family would call you to tell you how great life …

When You Think You Need to Know More to Be Good Enough

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“All the wonders you seek are within yourself.” ~Sir Thomas Browne

I’m constantly looking for answers—in books, in yoga classes, in meditation. Everywhere I go I meet people, new and old, and I’m constantly asking questions. I thrive on learning new opinions, spiritualities, lessons, and facts. Relentlessly, I’m always searching for more.

Aren’t we all looking for the answers?

How am I going to leave the position that I’ve held for most of my life and start a new job, in a new company? Raise our first child (or puppy!)? Take care of our aging parents? Start teaching yoga …

Let Go of Regret by Making a Promise to Yourself

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“Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places.” ~Unknown

Regret can be such a paralyzing emotion, yet it is also universal. At some point in our lives, in one way or another, we each wrestle with regret.

Regret seems to rear its ugly head most when it comes to relationships. It happens when a relationship ends and we feel as if we could have done something more. This feeling intensifies when the other person decides that a second chance is not worth the fight. Most of all, we face with regret once it sets in that the past …

Learn to Love Yourself by Doing Something Good for Yourself

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TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.

“I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.” ~BrenĂ©Brown 

I was happiest when I didn’t know my weight, and that was ironically when I was at my heaviest, which was in high school.

I was slow to take on the self-loathing and body image issues that plague so many young kids. I rarely felt bad about myself, partly because I had a loving family and a …

More Is Not Always Better: Being Grateful for What Is

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“It is not joy that makes us grateful. It is gratitude that makes us joyful.” ~David Rast

Every New Years Eve I make a list of resolutions that I never keep up with and it just makes me feel guilty every time I don’t. Lose ten pounds, get more involved, go to the gym, develop better relationships.

Every year I aspire to be more, do more, get more, never living within the present moment.

My stress to do more comes into play in every aspect of my life. The stress of joining more clubs comes from the competitive environment of …

60 Things to Be Grateful For In Life

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“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” ~Cynthia Ozick

How often do you pause to appreciate what you have in life?

When I was young, I took things for granted. I believe many other kids did so, as well. After all, we were young and we didn’t know what life could be like on the other side.

One thing we took for granted was education. In my country, it’s compulsory for all kids to go to school, so it was a given. We never thought about how lucky we were to be educated.…

Using Your Monkey Mind to Redirect Negative Thoughts

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“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I grew up in what I like to call The Box of Daughter: a rigid structure of rules about values, beliefs, thinking, feeling, and behaving, set forth for me by super-religious parents who grew up in boxes of their own.

For a large part of my life, my thinking bounced around within the confines of that box—worrying the old worries, thinking the old thoughts, feeling the old pain, and acting out pretty much the same compulsions time after time—stuck in ever-repeating loops of monkey …

Now is Not Forever: Weathering Uncomfortable Feelings

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“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts

I recently found myself ruminating about a difficult situation at my new workplace. Considering my high-flying, achievement-oriented personality, the recipe for my malcontent was predictable: A supervisor had disagreed with me, and I left work that day feeling melodramatic and like I wanted to quit
 that day.

I thought, “I am so misunderstood. No one ‘gets’ what I am doing. I am not cut out for teamwork. Why do I hate working so much? I thought …

How to Get to the Shore When You’re Drowning in Pain

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“The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Pain can feel like a dark cave with no light to help us find our way out. Or an ocean with waves so big we feel like we can’t ever swim to the shore. Peace is the place we arrive at when we swim to the shore, up and out of the pain we were drowning in. But how do we get there?

For most of us, the first thing we do when we’re in pain is look for somebody to join us …

Overcoming the Painful Desires and Beliefs That Feed Addiction

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“Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.” ~Byron Katie

I had spent five horrible years in and out of rehabs and support groups for my substance use problems. Along the way, there were a few periods where I cleaned up for six months, eight months, and almost a whole year one time, but nothing seemed to stick.

The worst part was that even with all of the painful effort it took to keep the drug and alcohol use going, and all of the painful consequences that were piling up, I was happier in …

The Secrets to Happiness: Lessons from a Toddler

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“Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.” ~Chuang Tzu

My niece is nineteen months old and the most present person I have ever hung out with. If you have children or are around them, you know exactly what I am talking about.

I know you want more joy, health, and lasting happiness in your life, we all do.

Could it be that instead of only teaching our children the lessons of life perhaps we should let them teach us the lessons of happiness?

I don’t live in the same city as my niece so time with her is very …

5 Unusual Ways to Meditate for Simple Daily De-stressing

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“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

Meditating even for just two minutes every day could help reduce your anxiety, calm your mind, and energize the senses. That’s two minutes of your twenty-four hours. Two minutes that could lengthen your life as you get rid of the negative energy surrounding you and welcome the positive.

Contrary to what you may think, meditation doesn’t have to be in an empty house or room overlooking gorgeous scenery. It would be a bonus, yes, but I have proven that you can clear your mind …

Moving Beyond Pain to Find Happiness and Meaning

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“When something bad happens you have three choices. You can let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.” ~ Unknown

Most of us have experienced a day or event in our life that changes us forever.

I remember that day vividly, and it still invokes incredible pain in my heart. It was the middle of the night in February. I was twelve years old, and I awoke to my mother screaming and crying to my brother that our dad was dying. He died in his sleep from a massive heart attack.

I will …

Accepting Imperfection and Making Peace with Our “Piece in Progress”

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“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.” ~Unknown

I’m back in New York City after touring for the last five years as a global musical scientist.

My international and domestic sonic experiments took me all over the world to exotic lands and faraway locales.

I climbed the Inca Trail for four days straight while combating altitude sickness, learning how to speak at low capacity oxygen levels (imagine Darth Vader), and hemoglobin adaptation became my mantra.

I also wrote and recorded a number one single in Copenhagen, Denmark. Likewise, I traveled …

Releasing Negative Beliefs: How Letting Go Sets Us Free

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“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~Andre Gide

I have walked on water.

The frozen wasteland known as Chicago had kept me inside, wary of the intense cold that was breaking records that particularly frigid winter. But after interminable snow days, I began to feel like a caged animal that needed to break free.

I woke early one morning, overcome with the urgent need to connect to something living, something wild. I wrapped myself in countless layers like the kid in The Christmas Story and ventured out into the …

Stop Waiting for Tomorrow: 3 Ways to Love Your Life Now

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“Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” ~Paul Coelho

My husband had been unemployed for more than two years before it hit me that I was dealing with it all wrong. During that time, I kept thinking that any day he would find a new job. And every day that went by I was disappointed, frustrated, unhappy, and even angry at times.

For two years I felt like we were in limbo. I was always thinking, “We’ll do this or that after he finds a job.” Everything seemed to be put on …

You’re One Moment Away from Being Who You Want to Be

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“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” ~Maria Robinson

Two years ago I was in a meeting room, Monday morning, just before nine. I remember sipping on my second coffee of the day and swallowing yawns as I waited for everyone to show.

The chairperson arrived, a particularly intimidating woman who had been with the company for thirty years and held the reigns of both the finance and HR departments. No decision was made without her approval, even if you were the CEO.

I wished her good morning, …