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Category “Quotes”

Tiny Wisdom: Not Taking the Easy Road

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“There are always two choices. Two paths to take. One is easy. And its only reward is that it’s easy.” -Unknown

I need to constantly remind myself to not do what’s easiest.

As I’ve mentioned before, I work from home. Many days, it’s tempting to pull open my laptop the second I wake up—which means I’ll likely spend the first couple of hours working in my pajamas, only to find myself feeling somewhat disconnected from the day outside my door.

I know this happens. I know that I feel better about myself when I get ready for the day as …

Tiny Wisdom: You Need to Forgive Yourself

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“Love yourself—accept yourself—forgive yourself—and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.” -Leo F. Buscaglia

There’s a scene in the movie Good Will Hunting where a therapist named Sean repeatedly tells the wayward genius Will, “It’s not your fault.” This comes on the heels of a conversation about the severe abuse Will suffered from his foster father, which led him to a life of legal battles and underachievement.

The first time Sean says, “It’s not your fault,” Will responds with a nonchalant, “Yeah, I know.”

But as he repeats …

Tiny Wisdom: We Want to Fly

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“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.” -Helen Keller

The other day my boyfriend and I went to Disneyland, as we often do, since we’re annual pass holders.

Though my younger self would be ashamed to foresee this about adult me, I generally avoid rides with intense drops, because I have the stomach of a 90-year old. Yet somehow, the other day, I found myself in line for a roller coaster ride.

During the wait, I kept a laser focus on the part of the coaster that climbed to an inevitable plummet, completely dulling …

Tiny Wisdom: The Joy of Non-Events

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“Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!” -Amanda Bradley

In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll coined the term “un-birthday,” which means exactly what you might expect—a day you celebrate that isn’t actually your birthday. You might not feel inclined to send out Evites and buy a helium tank in honor of a non-milestone, but there’s something to this idea.

We often live life waiting for reasons to get excited. We save the good china for special occasions, reserve fancy clothes for yet-to-be-determined big events, and generally wait for …

Tiny Wisdom: Living in the Now and Planning for Later

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“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it but to enable it.” -Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry

It’s a common misconception that being fully present means not setting goals. After all, if you’re truly connected to the now, you’re not thinking of building for later. If you’re awake instead of living on autopilot, you’re more concerned with the wonder of what’s in front of you than the wonder of what’s ahead of you.

I’ve spent a lot of time weighing the options, as if I needed to choose one way of being: peaceful or productive. This left me feeling …

Tiny Wisdom: Let Yourself Be As You Are

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“Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.” ~Buddha

“My brain has been moving slowly all day.” As I told my boyfriend this, I felt each word roll out of my mouth with all the speed of a hill-climbing turtle. Like everything else I’ve done today, I’ve been speaking at a glacial pace.

I’ve retraced my footsteps over these last few days, double-checking how much I’ve eaten and how well I’ve slept. But despite playing low-energy …

Tiny Wisdom: Missing Out Can Be a Good Thing

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“The next message you need is always right where you are.” -Ram Dass

Everything seems urgent in an always-on world, where we can access each other at any time. When we’re not engaging through emails, @replies, and Skype messages, we frequently check various online portals to keep up with who’s doing what and what’s trending. Even if we manage to tune everything out, we often end up feeling distracted.

There’s a bustling world of instant updates and constant connection that never sleeps, and it lives on our desks, in our purses, in our pockets.

Who knows what we’ll miss if …

Tiny Wisdom: Let Your Light Shine Bright

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“As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” ~Marianne Williamson

We all have it: a little voice inside that tries to hold us back.

It tells us not to say what we feel so we won’t make any waves. It tells us not to define what we want so that things can stay predictably easy. It tells us not to go for our dreams because we may not be good enough.

It may also tell us that it’s selfish to focus on our own desires and goals–that good people are more …

Tiny Wisdom: Letting Other People Hurt

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“The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.” -Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday I helped a friend with a project that he’d spent a lot of time, money, and energy planning as a surprise for someone he loves. I knew it meant a lot to him to do this–and do it well.

Things didn’t work out as he had planned, partly due to some misguided advice I gave him. Since he’d been working on it for days, it was an incredible disappointment. I could see the sadness in his face as he saw the final product …

Tiny Wisdom: Open Your Eyes and See

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“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” ~Unknown

This weekend, I devoted an extensive amount of time to writing something I’ve been struggling to complete. I wrote and rewrote so many times that it felt like more like destruction than creation, but I’ve come to realize that chaos is often the path to clarity.

There were times when I knew it could be beneficial to do something else, clear my head, and come back to it with fresh eyes, but a part of me felt this drive to push …

Tiny Wisdom: Receiving without a Sense of Obligation

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“The best things in life are unexpected, because there were no expectations.” -Eli Khamarov

There was a time when I hesitated to accept unsolicited offers of support. If someone suggested a way they could help me, I assumed they were looking for something specific in return. This made me somewhat defensive, because there were and are a lot of things I don’t want to do.

I don’t want to personally recommend products I haven’t tried myself. I don’t want to tweet promotional links of any kind. I don’t want to send dedicated email blasts about books, or seminars, or teleconferences.…

Tiny Wisdom: We Get to Decide if Today Counts

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“The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment.” -Pema Chodron

A while back, a reader commented that it’s easy for me to suggest tomorrow is full of possibilities, since I am relatively young. An older woman, she believed her options were far more limited, and that even if she could do the things she wanted to do, they wouldn’t count–not at her age.

My first instinct was to start a conversation about mindfulness, since no one is ever guaranteed more than the present. Even young people don’t know for certain that they have decades more …

Tiny Wisdom: Are You Afraid of Success?

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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

We often talk about releasing the fear of failure to create motivation and momentum, but I’ve found that there’s another obstacle that can keep us from taking risks: the fear of success.

Success in any pursuit requires responsibility. At one point, I decided this was one thing I didn’t want. I didn’t want people to depend on me. I didn’t want to create conditions in my life that I needed to maintain with consistency, both in effort and earning.

I …

Tiny Wisdom: You Make a Difference

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“Act as if what you do makes a difference.  It does.”  -William James

Last year, someone emailed me Seth Godin’s inspiring blog post You Matter. That one act made a huge difference in my day, so I’d like to build on that now.

  • When you show up for the people in your life, even though you’re having a hard day, you make a difference.
  • When you share what you’re dealing with, even though it makes you feel vulnerable, and help other people through your honesty, you make a difference.
  • When you practice what you preach, you make a
…

Tiny Wisdom: What Is Truly Great

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“To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.” -Charles de Montesquieu

There is a very specific type of post I look for when reading guest contributions. It’s not expert advice, though clearly it helps to have a thorough knowledge of a topic. It’s not beautiful prose, though obviously it’s enjoyable to receive a post that reads like poetry.

What I look for is bravery in honesty. You can clarify the wording and expand on the advice, but you can’t create authenticity through editing.

I’d far prefer to read a post about depression from someone …

Tiny Wisdom: Not Taking No for an Answer

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“Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

Many times in life we ask questions of people and then put way too much weight on their answers.

We ask people we admire if they think we have what it takes, and then consider their opinions fact. We ask people we respect if they think we should take a chance, and then follow their advice as law. We ask people if they’ll take a chance on us, and then interpret their response to be a reflection of our potential.

Other people …

Tiny Wisdom: The Real Meaning of Abundance

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“Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance.” ~Epicurus

It’s such a cliche, but true: money cannot buy happiness. It can influence happiness, since it can afford us necessities, a comfortable lifestyle, and opportunities that may increase our overall life satisfaction; but money, in itself, is not the abundance we seek.

The other day, I read about a research study that revealed the majority of participants would rather earn more money than their peers than earn more over a period of years. In other words, they’d sacrifice wealth for an increased sense of pride and status.

I …

Tiny Wisdom: When You’re Not Sure If You’ve Changed

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“Change is not a process for the impatient.” -Barbara Reinhold

A while back, a Tiny Buddha contributor commented that she was feeling like a fraud for struggling to take advice she’d offered in an article. I told her I could relate. I’ve written more than 600 wisdom-themed blog posts over the past few years, meaning there is abundant potential for me to contradict something I’ve previously explored in my writing.

Sometimes when I am not mindful, or kind, or stress-free, or clearly happier and more peaceful than I once was, I start to wonder if I’ve even changed at all. …

Tiny Wisdom: What Fear Really Means

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“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.” -Unknown

Sometimes we feel certain that we know exactly what we’re seeing. If you’re anything like me, odds are you’ve had plenty of opportunities to recognize your perception is often off.

A friend of mine once told me a story about a near-confrontation in the subway. She saw another woman dressed in what one might call Gothic clothing. Although my friend’s look was more conservative, she loved the other woman’s funky-looking shirt.

Unintentionally, she stared at it for a while, admiring the unique cut and wondering if she could pull that look off. When they …

Tiny Wisdom: When It’s Time to Stop Hoping

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“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure but from hope to hope.” -Samuel Johnson

You’ll find lots of inspiring posts that suggest you hold onto hope against all odds and push through difficult times with your eye on a light down the road. This isn’t one of them. Sometimes hope is a beautiful thing. It can motivate, empower, and inspire you when you’re tempted to give up. But other times it just keeps you stuck.

When you push through today for a better tomorrow, without doing anything to create that new possibility, your hope …