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How to Meditate at Any Time without Meditating

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“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Flour. Salt. Water. Yeast. As I push the warm, soft dough against my palm, I feel the cold stone countertop underneath. I feel my hips leaning up against the cabinets. I hear my breath inside my head.

As I knead the dough, it changes. The dough becomes more elastic and flexible, ready to rise and be baked into a crusty loaf.

As I make bread, I change. My thoughts go quiet. I come into the now.

I have struggled with an inconsistent …

Choose Love, Choose Life

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“I believe that every single event in life that happens is an opportunity to choose love over fear.” ~Oprah Winfrey 

Facing fear came in the form of the death of my father in 1997. He was diagnosed HIV positive and at the time, the world saw this as a death sentence, and so it was.

His goal became to find a level of peace, a level of contentment about what was happening to his body, his mind, and in his soul in preparation for leaving this life. He enlisted my help to choose when and how to die.

I …

Giveaway: Pema Chodron Uncertainty and Change Virtual Retreat

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

The winners:

Last week, Shambhala Publications contacted me to let me know about their upcoming retreat with Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change.

An ordained Buddhist nun, Pema is best known for her many books and courses on meditation and Tibetan Buddhism, including When Things Fall Apart and The Fearless Heart: The Practice of Living with Courage and Compassion.

Her upcoming three-day retreat will take place at the …

How to Stop Being a Victim and Start Creating Your Life

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“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die.  And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”  ~Eleanor Roosevelt

“They” say things happen at the “right” time. For me hearing a presentation, live, by Jack Canfield, came at the perfect time.

I was in San Diego, the traveling babysitter for my precious 5-month old granddaughter, while my daughter attended a nutrition conference. It was an all around win-win situation—a new place to sightsee and of course spend quality (alone) time with baby Rachel and daughter Penina.

When I …

12 Gifts You Can Enjoy Now: Improve Your Outlook on Life

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

About 10 years ago, I started on a journey any college dropout would embark on to quell the little voices in my head that said, “If you want to be happy, earn good money, and validate your choice of quitting college, you better get moving.”

This epiphany fueled my mission. What was my mission of choice?

Get rich quick schemes. The guy on the TV said it would work so it must be legitimate, right? Needless to say, …

Realizing Your Self-Worth and Believing in Your Path

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“Your outlook on life is a direct reflection on how much you like yourself.” ~ Lululemon

“My existence on this earth is pointless.”

That thought crossed my mind every night before I fell asleep.

It had been several months since I graduated from high school and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. My future plans were falling to pieces, and everyone around me kept telling me that I needed to start accomplishing things that I had not yet accomplished.

I was not where I thought I should be in life. Everyone had expectations …

Cherish Your Challenges and Find Your Authentic Self

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“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~Bernice Johnson Reagon

My quarter-life crisis kicked into high gear about six months ago.

Take this as evidence: I quit my job. I quit my apartment and moved back home. I quit booze and boys. I quit gluten and sugar. I quit friendships I’d imagined would last a lifetime.

I’m not asking for an A+ or gold stars for my “self” work. I wasn’t hit by a spark of spiritual lightening and magically committed to this transformation. In a lot of ways, the …

Define Success to Create Success, Starting Now

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“What matters is the value we’ve created in our lives, the people we’ve made happy, and how much we’ve grown as people.” ~Daisaku Ikeda

Ahhh success! It sounds so good. We all want it, but are you brave enough to define what success means to you and go for it?

Society conditions us to define success as being the best, attaining prosperity, making a lot money, or having a fancy CEO title.

I thought I had “success” ten years ago where I spent five years working on Wall Street at Credit Suisse, an investment banking firm in New York City. …

How to Create the Life You Want Using Anchors

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“Put your future in good hands—your own.” ~Unknown

They say that in life, we are never given more than we can handle.

But sometimes it’s a matter of not accepting more than we can handle. Putting your foot down. Proclaiming, “That’s enough!”

Recently, a number of stressors confronted me simultaneously. This jolted me out of my comfort zone and forced me to take action toward transforming my life.

On one fateful Tuesday, I felt so much pressure from the culmination of professional demands, relational conflicts, parenting duties, and financial stressors that I found myself at a familiar crossroads. …

Giveaway and Interview: Cultivating Radiance by Tamara Gerlach

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

The winners:

Have you ever wondered how authors live their messages—if writers who explore mindfulness are generally present and peaceful, or if others who research happiness are predominately upbeat and joyful?

This often goes through my mind when I read a book that inspires me. I didn’t have to wonder this as I read Cultivating Radiance: 5 Essential Elements for Holistic Self-Care. I’d recently met the book’s …

How to Accomplish Anything Leveraging Collective Energy

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“Success will never be a big step in the future; success is a small step taken just now.” ~Jonatan MĂ„rtensson

I love Zumba, the Latin-inspired dance program that has become a worldwide fitness phenomenon. At the three minute mark of every class, I am alive with how much I enjoy the workout: the rhythm, the moves, the music, the collective energy.

The room is filled with non-stop music pounding against the walls and ceiling, as over fifty bodies of all ages and sizes come together in synchronized movement.

At the 12-minute mark, the music is louder and faster. My focus …

Why We Sometimes Choose Judgment Instead of Compassion

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“In separateness lies the world’s great misery, in compassion lies the world’s true strength.” ~Buddha

We talk about boys these days at our dinner table.

Boys are sneaking into our home now—or at least the idea of boys. Although I love watching my daughters grow up—it’s much more fun (and much more challenging) than I ever could have imagined—I sometimes feel a certain sadness as their days of early childhood innocence slip behind us.

Their battalion of stuffed animals, for example, who were accustomed to a life of travel and adventure—and a well-dressed one at that—often live in boredom …

11 Simple Ways to Supercharge Your Time in the Now

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“To be alive is to totally and openly participate in the simplicity and elegance of here and now.” ~Donald Altman

Five years ago my life was a mess. I was anxious, worried, afraid, and running away from my feelings. I was running away from the present moment.

So, what happened?

I started applying what I knew, which were really simple things such as breathing, visualization, and being aware of my thought patterns.

I haven’t found the Holy Grail; I simply took action. I had no idea how much my life was about to change, I just knew something had …

Lost Love: What It Means to Move On

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“‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” ~Alfred Lord Tennyson

I met a special someone. It was my first taste of love and I was sheepishly drunk with it. His were eyes I could look into forever, and he had a voice I could hear till the end of time. It was absolutely frightening.

We were colleagues. I unwittingly got involved in his life and eventually found myself wanting to get even more involved.

After a period of ambiguous yes-no-maybes, he exited the picture for good. He never wanted to talk about it, …

11 Ways to Turn Strangers into Friends

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“Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.” ~Shirley Maclaine

Up until a year ago, I saw the world as a place where very few doors opened for me. At first I thought it was due to being extremely introverted. But as time went on, I started to struggle with making friends.

I didn’t have many of them—and opportunities only knocked a few times a year. That’s when I realized my problems stemmed from my passivity and fear of actually going out and talking to people.

My few closest friends always told me to join a club …

How to Achieve Unexpected Success

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“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Success.

A word defined by you and me.

Do not be manipulated by the definitions applied to that word by others. Choose your own definition.

Though I believe we all have the potential to succeed in reaching our dreams, I have found that success reaches to a far greater depth in our lives.

Whenever I hug my wife of 28 years and tell her that I love her, …

4 Simple Ways to Experience Great Happiness and True Freedom

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

I love to write. For years I wrote in journals and kept them stacked in piles on my shelves.

One rainy winter evening when I was 25, I walked into the Bourgeois Pig bookshop on Franklin Boulevard in Los Angeles and saw a book next to the cash register written by Natalie Goldberg called Wild Mind. I bought it and my life change forever.

Natalie’s book was about writing practice. A Zen monk practitioner, she brings the fundamentals of Zen to the …

Giveaway and Interview: Uncertainty by Jonathan Fields

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Editor’s Note: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. They are:

Several years ago, when I lived in New York City, I developed a love for yoga that started in a studio previously owned by Jonathan Fields. I didn’t know it then, but I would eventually look to Jonathan as a role model, mentor, and friend.

Author of Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love, Jonathan Fields is (in his own words) a dad, husband, New Yorker, author and speaker, serial wellness-industry entrepreneur, recovering S.E.C./mega-firm hedge-fund lawyer, slightly-warped, …

You Can Control What You Do Today

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“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” ~Pericles

Life is full of challenges. These obstacles are the greatest teachers we can have.

As I’m sure is true for all of us, I have struggled with many things throughout my life. I used to feel a sense of “woe is me,” but I’ve learned to leverage these experiences to make positive changes in life.

Don’t let your history dominate your life. We have a choice. You can let your past be the ruler of your life—or…

Love is a Choice: 30 Ways to Love in Action

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“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” ~Sam Keen

I recently went with girlfriends to hear one of our favorite beach bands play. Since I turn into a pumpkin at midnight, I talked a friend into taking me home early.

While walking to our car, we witnessed a couple fighting. There was no pushing or shoving.  Fists weren’t involved.  Bizarrely enough, this couple was on opposite sides of the parking lot having their fight over their cell phones.

Due to the volume of their voices, the fight was …