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Life Is Shaping Us Through Our Dreams

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“With ‘I’ eliminated, this is Nirvana, here and now.”  ~ Buddha

I remember when I started learning Spanish in college. I wanted to visit Spain. I had grand ideas about a romantic voyage. And yes, I had a foreign language credit to fill.

If you know the Spanish language at all, you know that the Spanish construction for pleasure is the reverse of our English language. In English, we say, “I like that.” But, in Spanish, we say “Me gusta” which translates as, “It pleases me.”

In other words, in English we are the actors, the subjects, who actively do …

Sometimes There Is No Right Way

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“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche 

I was raised in a home where a very common phrase was, “There’s a right way and a wrong way.”

The right way was the way my parents wanted things done. There were a great many rules surrounding the right way for nearly everything, in an attempt to ensure that we got it right, and, when the rules weren’t enough to enforce the rightness of our behavior, there were punishments, harsh words, and sometimes …

It Could Be Far Worse

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“If you count all your assets, you always show a profit.” ~Robert Quillen

This weekend someone broke into my apartment and stole everything of significant monetary value that I owned.

They stole my jewelry box, with pieces I got from my boyfriend, his mother, and my sister, after she’d gone through a break-up and wanted to unload a vast collection from her past. They stole several purses in my closet, and confusing it for another, also took my makeup bag.

They took my laptop bag containing my new MacBook, my wallet, my passport, my glasses, and my boyfriend’s old iPhone, …

Why We Need to Embrace the Middle Place

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“The light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion. The tunnel is.” ~Unknown

A dream: I am in a woman’s prison. The cells and halls are dark and dirty. The prison looks like a damp dungeon. Inside the cells are women dressed in rags along with their children.

I am not in a cell, but walking around, observing the faces of desperate, imprisoned women. I need to get out, and find myself in an empty corridor, long and wide.

At the end, I see a glimpse of light: freedom through the corridor. After a long walk, I …

Sometimes We Need to Go Backward Before We Can Move Forward

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“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” ~Albert Einstein

There I was in January, on the floor, physically and emotionally. From the outside, I probably looked like every one else attending yoga class off Robertson Blvd. that Sunday morning, but to me, on the inside, especially within my heart, I was in shambles.

And then, there was a moment I had not expected.

The waterworks came as I heard the teacher say, “Sometimes, you feel as though you are riding the bicycle backwards. You feel like you are backtracking and heading in the wrong direction, but really what’s …

The Difference Between Forgiving and Forgetting

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“Some people think it’s holding that makes one strong. Sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

I will never forget the moment my marriage ended.

My husband and I had fought the night before, about many of the same things we’d been fighting about for the entirety of our four-month marriage.

He was dissatisfied with our sex life and my lack of respect for him. I was struggling with bipolar disorder, changing medications, going back to school, and trying to please a man who seemed to find fault with everything I did.

During that fight, he choked me twice to prevent me …

3 Steps to Help You Achieve Your Truest Dreams

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

From the time my grandmother gave me a copy of Little Women when I was five years old, I knew I wanted to be a writer and create books like that one.

As I grew up, I devoured books left and right, working my way up from The Babysitters’ Club Little Sister to 1984. While other kids were asking their parents to take them to a toy store, I was begging for a trip to the local bookstore.

What can I say? The …

Small Steps to Help You Act in Spite of Your Fear

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“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” ~Nelson Mandela

My dog, Elvis, is a sweetheart and a scaredy cat. When our vet found him, he was roaming free with a wire collar embedded in his neck and a raging case of mange. It took her thirty minutes to chase him down and three months to nurse him back to health.

When we first adopted him, he was afraid of everything: bikes, strollers, loud noises, sprinklers, and people. The only things he was never wary of were other dogs. Through a lot of …

Conscious Healing: The Power of Mindfulness and Meditation

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“Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

One morning I woke up and noticed a few strange red bumps on my arms—bug bites, I thought.

Then, the next day, more bumps. Within one full week, my skin went from being clear and tan to being covered with red, scaly teardrop spots all over my body, including my face.

My self-esteem and confidence were thrown out the window; my comfort zone reduced to about the size of a prisoner’s cell.

I went to the dermatologist, avoiding any possible eye contact or bright office lights, and made my way into …

How to Avoid Burnout and Take a Digital Break

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“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” ~Pema Chodron

By the end of 2011, I was trying my hardest not to see it: burnout.

I’d been going full steam ahead since I turned my part-time business into a full-time vocational mission, back in 2009. When people remarked that I was doing a lot, I would wave away their comments and say facetiously, “Well, you know—I’m a Sagittarius with three planets in Virgo.”

Part of the reason I didn’t want to really look at what was going on was that 2011 had been a banner year. After …

3 Questions Worth Asking to Find the Right Answer for You

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“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.”  ~Nancy Willard

My twenties and thirties were an endless quest for “The Answer.” As if there were only one.

The one answer that would change everything. Make everything right. Make me happy.

What Didn’t Work

I searched high and low for answers. I’d read the latest book, hoping it held the key. I’d watch to see what others said and did, assuming they had the answers.

My M.O. was simple:  read, observe, imitate, emulate.

I was always searching outside myself.

Always thinking finding the “right” answer would hold the key to happiness and …

How Curiosity Can Help Us Heal from Pain and Grow

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“Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness.” ~Bryant H. McGil

I don’t think I’d be alive if it weren’t for my curiosity.

Is that a dramatized statement? Maybe.

For me, curiosity has brought a curious kind of “fun” and “enchantment” to an otherwise bleak, painful, and seemingly hopeless period in my life.

Diagnosed with “burn-out” (a.k.a. adrenal fatigue) in 2009, my life quickly unraveled in front of me. I lost my job, my health, and my social life.

From what seemed like one moment to the next (but in fact was a shift happening over numerous weeks) I …

3 Tools to Help You Crush Your Fears

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“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” ~Pema Chodron

Though there are many events outside of our control, we do have the power to change our own lives. So what’s stopping us?

In a word: fear.

Fear is a great survival instinct. It helped our ancestors survive the rigors of daily life. But nowadays, fear holds us back from achieving what we want to achieve.

My Story

I grew up living in fear. In school, I tried to win the approval of other people by letting them bully me. I was terrified of being disliked, …

Fuel Your Dreams with Simple Daily Habits

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“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” ~Proverb

My name is Katie and I am an over-planner. I spend way too much time laying out meticulous plans as if they were exquisite bejeweled gowns. I spread them across beautiful handmade notebooks, trim them with pink and green headings and sub-headings, and step back to admire them when I’m done.

They are tomorrow’s plans. Each one more stylish, more elaborate, more organized than the last. Each one the perfect plan. But in reality, not one of them is. Once the latest plan has been printed or pasted …

Dealing with a Break Up and Learning from the Experience

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“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown

Relationships end, everyone knows that. The tough part is actually dealing with suffering, accepting, letting go, moving on, and processing a whole lot of other feelings at the same time.

Six months ago my ex-boyfriend decided to end our relationship because he couldn’t forgive me for a mistake I’d made.

During the first weeks of our breakup I decided that it would be best if I just gave him some time to think things out. I accepted the …

Forming A Healthy Habit Starts from Within

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“The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs.” ~James Allen

I recently participated in a 21-day online fitness support group. I needed some external motivation to help re-establish a daily habit of fitness activity. My lazy butt was so reluctant to start this! Nevertheless, by the last day of the challenge, I was enthusiastically back into the habit.

We all know it takes three weeks of daily repetition to form a habit, so my success may not surprise you. What surprised me was why I ultimately met my goal.

It turned out …

What You Do Matters

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“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I used to refer to myself as a white crayon in the coloring box of life.

Have you ever wondered what purpose a white crayon serves? There are all of these other beautiful colors to be put to good use, but the white crayon just kind of sits there and tends to get overlooked.

That’s exactly how I felt. I felt like I was just merely existing and not serving any kind of purpose. And at the time, …

Live Every Day Like You Travel: 4 Lessons from the Road

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“Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves.” ~ Gandhi

What if we lived the way we travel?

It’s been my experience that we let go of many things when we travel. I’d like to propose that those things—the things we loosen our grip on while travelling—are things that don’t need to be held quite so firmly.

1. Notice. Slow down. Reflect.

San Miguel de Allende is one of my favorite places on earth. I’ve visited nine or ten times. If asked to describe heaven, I’d say that it …

The World Needs You to Follow Your Inspiration

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“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.” ~Unknown

As I left the San Francisco head office of the clothing company I worked for, I felt anxious and scared. I knew, in the depth of my heart and soul, that I did not belong there and that I needed to do something about it.

Up until a year before then, I had thought I did. But then I met this new friend who was a very spiritual person. He talked to me about things like universal mind, energy, …

It’s Okay to Ask for Love

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“Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This past week I simultaneously experienced some of the strongest physical pain and immense joy I have ever experienced. While the former has everything to do with the six-inch incision in my abdomen, the latter revolves around a number of lessons about willfully receiving.

As I wrote last week, I had my myomectomy surgery on Tuesday to remove a soccer ball-sized growth in my uterus. On Monday, it occurred to me I’d appreciate reading uplifting notes from the community, but a part of …