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10 Ways to Be Who You Really Are

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“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~E.E Cummings

I was a pretty shy and very quiet kid, so going to school for the first time in kindergarten was a terrifying experience for me.

After a short time, though, life brightened for me in my little elementary school. As it turned out, I loved learning and was a natural student. It was my bliss and often a respite from tumultuous home circumstances, the first place that I spoke out loud with confidence.

Unfortunately, in the urban neighborhood where I lived, being smart meant being …

Marry Yourself: How to Commit to Self-Love and Say “I Do” to You

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“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

I married myself at the age of thirty-seven in a quiet ceremony of one near a waterfall in Big Sur, California.

I had prepared my “soul vows.” These vows were my deepest commitment to love, cherish, and deeply care for all parts of myself, in sickness and in health, until my time on the planet comes to an end.

My soul vows became an ode to honoring my highest self always, and remembering that seeking love outside myself will never bring fulfillment unless I …

Are You a Highly Sensitive Person?

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“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” ~Benjamin Spock

I used to believe that I was my thoughts. I really believed that everything happened well because I had analyzed and planned and prepared. I didn’t even know that I was doing this. I didn’t know there was any more to me than my thoughts.

I also used to believe that there was something seriously wrong with me, so thinking about how to fix myself was my main pastime.

All my life people told me, “You’re too sensitive,” “so intense,” “you’re just so emotional.”

I told …

3 Things Panic Attacks Don’t Want You To Know

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“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle 

Sunday started out with a panic attack.

It wasn’t little butterflies in the stomach like right before a first kiss. It wasn’t the feeling of anticipation as a rollercoaster slowly climbs the big hill before the drop.

This panic attack felt like I was about to jump off a cliff, while being chased by clowns. Not cute clowns—scary ones. The kind of clowns that were in the paintings at my pediatrician’s office when I was a kid. The clowns that smiled at me smugly when I was getting …

Interview and Giveaway: A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life

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

The Winners:

Though we may all have varied goals and paths, ultimately, we all have the same objective: happiness. It’s with this in mind that Buddhist monk Lama Marut wrote A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life.

Through a series of meditations, exercises, and insights, he helps us overcome suffering and create contentment—two essential prerequisites to happiness.

Playful and entertaining, A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the …

When Your Dreams Change: Let Your Values Guide You

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“It is not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” ~Roy Disney

It has been four months now since I made the hardest decision of my life.

In the fourth grade, I made a pledge to work as much I had to until I became successful and moved the heck out of Ohio!

That commitment led me to graduate as valedictorian in high school and summa cum laude in college. However, it also resulted in missed recess (to do homework), missed parties (to research), and missed relationships (to study). Of course, I am not upset, …

12 Tips to Create a Peaceful, Passionate Life

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“Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.” ~Osho

Osho’s game was to get people out of their heads. He wasn’t focused on world peace; he was intent on self-peace.

How do you get out of your head? How do you get more present?

For most of my life, I was stuck in my head. “Stuckness” was my primary experience. I always wanted to be somewhere else, someone else.

After years of quietly suffering and pretending to be happy, I came to understand that my stuckness was caused by numbness—physical, emotional, and spiritual.…

The Ultimate Letting Go: Release Your Fear and Be Free

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“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

It seems on some level we must know that nothing lasts forever. That knowledge must be built into our DNA; surely our cells know their own mortality, that entropy is an unavoidable fact of life.

So why do we fight the inevitable? Why do we crave security and consistency? Illusion that it is, we look for promises where it’s not possible for them to be made.

We buy all kinds of insurance, telling ourselves that if we spend that …

Death and Grieving: Breathing Through the Feeling of Loss

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“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” ~Dr. Seuss

The color brown has special significance to me; it’s the color of the robes that my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh and the monastics wear. It’s the color of my children’s eyes. It’s the color of the soil I like to dig in and plant things. It’s the color of my dog, Jake’s, paws and eyes and eyebrows

My husband came home today with a chocolaty brown gift bag. I could practically smell chocolate just looking at it. I find the color brown to be so comforting, so…grounding—and sometimes so …

Letting Go of Stress Around Your Goals: 4 Tips to Help You Relax

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“Control is never achieved when sought after directly. It is the surprising consequence of letting go.” ~James Arthur Ray

I have always been a bit of a control freak, and if I’m not mindful, it can suck the joy out of my work and my passion.

I like tasks done a certain way, which means I don’t always do well when it comes to delegating to others and can end up overextending myself.

I want things to be done on my timeline, which means I may feel a need to micromanage tasks I have delegated to decrease the potential …

Create Better Days with Empowering Routines and Loving Rituals

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“We are what we repeatedly do.” ~Aristotle

This past spring, I found myself floundering—stuck within an alternating cycle of feeling either overwhelmed or paralyzed.

The combination of creative tasks and deadlines typically drives me with a strong sense of purpose and fulfillment. However, though I had both curriculum to produce and blog posts to write, I struggled to form sentences.

Instead of filling pages with words and ideas, I consoled myself by eating chocolate and watching lots of bad TV.

Needless to say, none of this was any help in boosting my productivity or pulling me out of the doldrums. …

Your Happiness Can Make a Difference in the World

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“Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~Howard Thurman

When I was eight years old I saw a news report on a war. A wounded woman was crying on a stretcher, and soldiers were carrying guns running around her. Up until that point I had thought war was like dragons or knights in armor. It was fictional or happened a long, long time ago. I couldn’t believe it was real.

At that realization, my experience of life changed. It felt …

10 Ways to Get Happy

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“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” ~Aristotle

I think having lived in 3 different countries, traveled to 21, studied 5 languages, had 17 different job titles, taken 36 courses (in social media, getting in touch with my intuition, sexual psychology, journalism, marketing, and spiritual guidance, to name a few subjects), given birth to 3 healthy kids (1 boy and 2 girls), lost 1, and suffered through 3 broken relationships has given me some insights in life.

But also, having been part of 1 religious group and managed to get out, done some serious soul searching, written 393 articles, surrounded myself with 5 …

Groove for Good and Inspirational Bracelet Giveaway

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Buddha Groove was one of the first sponsors on tinybuddha.com, and a natural fit given the company’s mission and message—to share wisdom through inspiring Buddhist art and artifacts, including statues, home accents, and more.

A family-owned business based in New York, Buddha Groove offers products made by skilled artisans from Indonesia, China, Tibet, Nepal, and the United States, to name a few places.

Recently, the company launched a new initiative that I’m happy to share with you today: Groove for Good.

Groove for Good is a social initiative created to positively affect humanitarian causes within the United States.

Offering a …

Loving Your Whole Body, Even the Jiggly Parts

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“When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.” ~Miguel Ruiz

When I was in fifth grade, the boy who shared the desk next to me said that I had a “roller coaster nose.”

At that age when things were starting to sprout from places I didn’t know things could sprout, and everyone’s watching each other develop under the microscope of pre-pubescent angst, that little comment sent me into a 10-year-old tailspin.

I would spend hours examining my nose from every angle in the mirror, only to affirm that indeed …

4 Powerful Tips to Reduce Resentment and Feel Happier

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“Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.” ~Buddha

Life is short. Time spent feeling angry or resentful about things that happened or didn’t happen is time squandered.

What’s that? You think those feelings motivate you and help you get things done? Hogwash! If you’re honest with yourself, you realize getting things done isn’t the end goal. The goal is to feel fulfilled and happy.

Accomplishments fueled by resentment and anger seldom contribute to serenity and fulfillment. More importantly, the moments you spent crossing things off your to-do list with a scowl slip away without giving you …

Feeling Gratitude for All the People We Sleep With

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“We are all connected in ways we cannot even begin to fathom. Our lives unfold through each other and within each other.” ~David Rhodes

I can’t help myself—I love sleeping with people.

The more the better!

There’s nothing like crawling between the sheets with a lot of people. Female. Male. An armload of ethnicities. It’s all good!

Hey, don’t look at me like I should be ashamed of myself, because I’m not!

Besides, I know you do it, too.  And you probably love it just as much as I do.

You think you know what I’m talking about, but I …

Relieve Physical Pain by Releasing Your Grievances

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“Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind.” ~Buddha

When the mind is burdened by a perceived wrong for an extended period of time, the body automatically steps in to carry part of the load. We store many of our painful life experiences deep within the framework of our physical bodies.

If we don’t consciously feel and heal these hurts as they occur, they linger in our muscles, organs, and tissues long after the mind has consciously forgotten the specifics of the event.

The body is actually a repository that faithfully carries this load until the essence …

How We Judge Others Is How We Judge Ourselves

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“Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest.” ~Sri Chinmoy

Oh yeah, this has been a big one for me. Huge.

I’ve had a long, tedious journey toward recognizing that many of my thoughts were based in judgments of others. I didn’t realize it for years.

I used to think I had strong opinions, was decisive, and able to “evaluate” others. I “got” people. I understood where they were coming from, their motivations, and why they said what they said and did what they did.

I was a highly skilled …

JUICE Energy-Tracking App Launches Today with Tips from Tiny Buddha

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I may be the only person within my social group who doesn’t own an iPhone—but I’m seriously considering changing that now.

It’s largely because I recently contributed a series of tips to a fun new energy-tracking app called JUICE, which I got to try on a friend’s iPhone; and I recognized how using this type of tool can be helpful in creating and maintaining healthy habits.

JUICE officially launches today, and I’m excited to share it with you!

The latest offering from interactive media company Mindbloom and workplace wellness company Vivacity, JUICE helps you develop awareness around your daily …