Tiny Buddha

Tag: dreams

  • Book Giveaway and Author Interview: 52-Week Life Passion Project

    Book Giveaway and Author Interview: 52-Week Life Passion Project

    52-Week Life Passion Project

    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:

    It’s not easy to do something you’re passionate about for work—and not only because it’s hard to discover your passion or find a job to leverage it.

    Once we know what we love to do, we then need to work through all kinds of limiting thoughts, beliefs, and fears that may prevent us from taking action. Then we need to decide what that action should be—how and where to start, and how to stay motivated.

    It’s with this in mind that coach and blogger Barrie Davenport wrote the 52-Week Life Passion Project, an insightful, comprehensive guide to identifying what you really want to do and building your life around it.

    I’m excited to share an interview with Barrie, and grateful that she offered to give away 5 books for Tiny Buddha readers!

    The Giveaway

    To enter to win one of five free copies of 52-Week Life Passion Project:

    • Leave a comment on this post sharing something you’re passionate about. (If there’s nothing you’re passionate about yet, then just leave a comment saying hello!)
    • For an extra entry, tweet: RT @tinybuddha Book Giveaway: The 52-Week Life Passion Project: Comment and RT to win! http://bit.ly/W8WUUz

    You can enter until midnight PST on Monday, January 7th.

    The Interview

    1. What inspired you to write the 52-Week Life Passion Project? (more…)
  • 28 Powerful Questions for a Happy Life

    28 Powerful Questions for a Happy Life

    “Keep your head clear. It doesn’t matter how bright the path is if your head is always cloudy.” ~Unknown

    Have you ever noticed that your biggest “aha” moment comes from someone asking a powerful question? Suddenly everything seems to make a little more sense, and you know what you need to do from that point forward, right?

    That’s exactly how it is for me. Someone will ask me a seemingly trivial question and bam! I’m suddenly overflowing with answers, emotions, solutions—I’m practically made of clarity!

    I remember a friend of mine asking me over coffee one rainy afternoon a few years ago, “What are you avoiding, Blake?”

    “What? Nothing. I mean, I guess I don’t want it to fail,” I eventually replied.

    “Yeah, and…” she quipped back. “What happens then?”

    I came to her because her willingness to face challenges head-on amazes me, and I needed her to face my challenge and give me that sage advice I knew she could. I wanted to leave corporate America and venture out on my own, and I wanted her to somehow make that sounds less crazy.

    I wanted to throw caution to the wind and follow what I most passionately believed in.

    I wanted to be my own success story.

    I also wanted someone else to tell me it was going to work.

    Calculating, weighing, analyzing—these things can only take you so far. I subconsciously needed something to get me out of my head and into some clarity. I needed that push.

    We bounced back and forth for what seemed like eternity. When most people have conversations like this, one party inevitably snaps out of the pattern and either says something oddly profound, or simply gets frustrated and tells the other to bugger off.

    I was lucky enough to receive the former rather than the latter.

    “When do you stop calculating risk and rewards and just do it?” she asked. “Because it feels like you’re building a magnificent ship you’re too much of a baby to ever sail. What are more committed to, dreaming it or doing it?”

    Holy cow, I was stunned. She was right. What was I more committed to? What a brilliant question. (more…)

  • Happiness Comes to Those Who Live Their Calling

    Happiness Comes to Those Who Live Their Calling

    “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” ~Rumi

    I was on tour with a famous rock legend, Joe Walsh from the mega-successful seventies band, The Eagles.

    We were riding around in one of those air brushed tour busses, living the party life and flying to exotic places. Staying in the finest hotels. Beautiful women hanging around the backstage door trying to get my attention.

    You would think this would be a dream come true, right?

    Here I was rubbing shoulders with people like Stevie Nicks, Willie Nelson, and The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and yet, I wasn’t happy. Not really.

    And you know what really sucks?

    When you’re so close to your dream you can almost reach out and touch it, but for some reason you can’t. Something is holding you back.

    You spend years working hard just to get next to it. You’re working right there in the area of your passion. But you aren’t actually living it.

    You’re helping someone else to live theirs.

    It feels like your face is pressed up against a glass wall. And there, just on the other side is the thing you’re really supposed to be doing.

    I was his sound engineer. But the dream was to be playing guitar up onstage with him.

    The band and crew were like family because we had done several tours together. Joe knew I rehearsed regularly with the band when he didn’t show up and that I knew the music cold.

    Even the guys in the band agreed it would sound better if I was playing the other guitar parts but it wasn’t their place to say.

    All I had to do was ask. But I couldn’t seem to get up the nerve. I just couldn’t get past the uncertainty of what might happen if I took the leap and got shot down.

    I was poised to jump but paralyzed by fear.

    I guess I was just hoping the other band members would put in the good word and do my bidding for me by asking to have a second guitar player.

    I was wrong.

    Nothing happened. The train kept a rolling with me still behind the soundboard. Still unhappy.

    I figured out in the silent weeks that followed that no one just hands you the keys to the highway. You have to ask for them.

    Finally, I arrived at the place where I could no longer stand by and accept my “close but no cigar” status. The idea that I would have to live with the consequences of not trying was simply too much to bear.

    So I decided to cast my fears and uncertainty to the wind and just ask Joe if I could play the gig.

    And then something very strange happened.

    I never got the chance. (more…)

  • Active Contentment: 5 Tips to Have Both Peace and Ambition

    Active Contentment: 5 Tips to Have Both Peace and Ambition

    “Peace is not merely a distant goal we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.

    Stress equals success.

    I wholeheartedly believed this for many years. Who had led me so astray? I have only myself to blame.

    The concept of peace had no practical application in my life. Peace was something that was necessary in war-torn countries, not in my mind.

    This toxic belief began in college. The library often felt like a boxing ring where my fellow students and I competed to be the most stressed out.

    Who had the most papers to write, the most books to read, the most labs to complete? Who had stayed up the latest the night before? Who had gone the longest without sleep or food? Or a shower?

    If you were stressed out, you were respected. Accepted.

    “I’m stressed out, so that must mean I’m achieving something,” I’d think to myself on a regular basis. Then I graduated, and the stress continued.

    After six months of working a nine-to-five office job, I realized that I didn’t want to spend my life building someone else’s dream. I wanted to carve out a life of freedom for myself, so I decided to start my own business.

    At first, I felt completely liberated. I woke up excited to work every morning. Then guilt set in.

    Oh guilt, what a useless emotion.

    As I sat working from my home office in my favorite sweat pants, I watched the morning commuters. Most looked tired, frazzled, and unhappy. And a big part of me envied them. Envied? Yes.

    I no longer felt “accepted” in the rat race.

    “What did you do to deserve this great life?” said my subconscious mind. “If you want to be happy, you need to be stressed out first. Peace only comes after a life of hard work and huge success. Retirement—now that’s happiness!”

    I have no idea why these thoughts were so prevalent. Perhaps it was because I’d never known there was a different way of life out there.

    And so with this mindset, I set about attempting to becoming as stressed out as possible. I believed that if I wasn’t cramming as much into my day as possible and setting ridiculous goals for myself, I couldn’t truly call myself an entrepreneur.

    And then something happened. Something called yoga.

    I started doing yoga and meditating on a regular basis, and the practice slowly but surely seeped into me and began to unleash a peace I’d never thought possible. I started smiling more and caring less. I experienced fleeting moments of pure contentment.

    My relationships improved, and I learned how to handle stress in a healthy way. I no longer let it run my life.

    I also stopped thinking about the future as much.

    A few months after my turning point, I had coffee with a friend.

    “All I truly want to be in life is content,” I told him confidently. I was sure I had life figured out once and for all.

    “Great,” he replied, “but is content all you ever want to be? What about always aiming for something bigger? What about your desire to continually grow and learn and transform?”

    Sigh. I knew he was right. After almost burning out on creating stress, I had gone too far in the other direction. I had lost sight of my vision.

    I knew that if I gave up on my ambitions, I wouldn’t be content for a long. I had always been a big dreamer.

    Balance, balance, balance.

    Everything I was reading at the time told me to “live in the moment.” Yoga is all about being present in the here and now, and I couldn’t figure out how to factor this mentality into my budding business.

    “How the heck can I apply the concept of living in the moment in a practical way in my life?” I shouted at the universe.

    Finally, a tiny voice in my head answered me. There was no blare of trumpets, no fanfare. It was simple, beautiful:

    Seek active contentment.

    Active contentment. Such a liberating concept. It’s about being completely at peace with who you are and what you’re doing in the moment while simultaneously maintaining a vision for the future.

    The following are five ways to help cultivate an attitude of active contentment:

    1. Make time for downtime every day.

    Downtime could involve meditation, light exercise, listening to music, reading something for fun—anything that puts you at ease and allows you to check out for a while. The recharge time will help you become more receptive to new ideas and inspiration.

    2. Write a list of everything you’re grateful for right now.

    Read it often. Gratitude is powerful, and taking stock of everything you have right now can help ease the pressure in stressful times.

    3. Make two lists of goals: immediate goals for the week ahead and bigger-picture goals to work toward.

    Being able to check off smaller goals grounds you in the present and will help motivate you to keep working toward those bigger, future goals. Momentum is also powerful force.

    4. Celebrate small successes every day.

    The biggest achievements are often a result of multiple small ones. By learning to appreciate the little things, you open yourself up to a world of joy.

    5. Remember that in the end, there is nothing you have to do.

    It’s your life. Just breathe. It’s good to be motivated, but sometimes just taking the pressure off is the most effective way to accomplish a big goal.

    It’s a lesson that took me a long time to learn: just because you’re happy with where you’re at doesn’t mean you don’t want to be inspired or aim higher. Being at peace in the moment will only help you attract more success into your life.

    Peace isn’t some distant goal to work toward. It’s something that can be cultivated on a daily basis to help you achieve your goals in a health way.

    Active contentment is growth. It’s a state of mind that allows for ambition as well as peace. I challenge you to be actively content with your life. Namaste!

    Photo by missportilla

  • Finding Your Special Thing: Connect with Your Passion

    Finding Your Special Thing: Connect with Your Passion

    “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” ~Rumi

    You know what it is; you’ve always known. Maybe it’s been just a shadow in the fog, or it’s crystal clear in amazing Technicolor before your eyes. Either way, it’s there, sometimes stinging you with a numb sense of denial, sometimes scratching at your skin like a bad case of poison sumac.

    It’s existed since the day you arrived on earth with a cry and a gasp.You knew it already when you were small, when you drew pictures with crayons and finger paint, when you learned what a ruler was and how to multiply by three. When you found out that nouns were followed by verbs and that seeds, planted right below the surface of the dirt and given water to drink, would sprout green just days later.

    You knew it then, and you know it now.

    So many things vie for your attention. Job, kids, house, yard. Family, friends, the blessed computer. But your special thing sits right under the veneer of frenetic busy me, counting the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds for you to finally take notice and accept its sacred presence.

    When you see someone else doing something that remotely resembles your special thing, you might react in a panic.“Wait. Her. She’s living my dream!!” But it’s not someone else living your dream that brings on the racing heartbeat; it’s that you are not living your dream yourself.

    Your special thing is your work. It’s your purpose. It’s the goodness that you produce from the center of your heart. You might already be doing it without completely realizing it. You’d do it without having to be paid for it but if you could make your living from it, what joy it would bring.

    When I first started to heed the call of my special thing, my husband and I were working as hard as we could, thinking there would never be another way, wondering how long it would take for us to just burn out and disappear.

    There was something in the distance, though, a chance thought. It was engulfed in mist at first, but emerged into the light as an opportunity.

    In a short span of time, my husband’s and my professional situations changed, and the possibility to buy an abandoned farm in Italy presented itself. We sprang on it, knowing it was the right thing to do at some deep level. (more…)

  • When Your Dreams Change: Let Your Values Guide You

    When Your Dreams Change: Let Your Values Guide You

    “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, for my accomplishments make me proud, but I do regret some of the things they’ve cost me.

    At the end of this 14-year journey, my dreams came to fruition: I was offered the job I had worked my entire life to get, in the perfect location!

    That’s right—the best private school in Florida offered me a job as Physical Education teacher living just minutes away from the gulf, in a city known for its sunshine, St. Petersburg.

    I should have chomped at the bit! Jumped up and down! Ran circles around the house! But I didn’t…

    Something was wrong. How could arriving at the destination I had worked so diligently to reach not bring me all of the happiness I had lost in the journey to get there? How could reaching my life’s goal not bring me to tears—not make my heart sing?

    It took a while but I finally figured it out: It’s because I’m not the same person who chose my path in the beginning. I have changed.

    At one point between now and the fourth grade, I evolved. My life understanding grew and adapted, but my tunnel vision on a preset goal kept me from realizing it.

    It’s good to have ambition, but can too much be harmful?

    Still, what’s to think about right? (more…)

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

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

    “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 for delay.

    And I sometimes feel a need to know where things are going, which means I often need to remind myself to stay open to new possibilities.

    In short, I like to feel that everything is going according to plan—my plan—so that I leave very little to chance.

    Chance can be a scary place. It’s the realm where things could go wrong because you didn’t steer, compel, or manipulate them to ensure that they went right.

    It’s the place where anything could happen because you weren’t clear or pushy enough to make things happen as you visualized them.

    It’s a space where things are unpredictable, random even, where you don’t feel you have a say or a choice.

    These are things I’ve thought before.

    If you have a controlling instinct like I do, it can be difficult to ascertain when you’re being too heavy-handed, causing yourself stress in the process, and when you’re simply being proactive and taking responsibility for your life.

    It’s a thin line between empowering yourself and taking your power away.

    On one side, you know you’ve done your best but accept that other factors contribute to your outcome; on the other side, you cause yourself immense anxiety trying to foresee and eliminate those factors.

    It can feel terrifying to simply let things happen, particularly when the stakes are high—when you care about something so deeply that it feels like a piece of you.

    But ironically, trying to control things can actually limit their potential.

    Imagine you stood in front of a flower all day, trying all kinds of fertilizer to push it to grow faster. In addition to trying too many things, minimizing the effectiveness of any one, you’d essentially rob it of sunlight while casting your overbearing shadow.

    The fear that it might not grow would all but ensure that outcome.  (more…)

  • Finding Direction When You’re Not Sure Which Choice Is “Right”

    Finding Direction When You’re Not Sure Which Choice Is “Right”

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

    Like so many others, I am a recent college graduate who is still living at my parents’ house and working my minimum wage high school job as I scour the web for opportunities and get one rejection email after another.

    However, I don’t know how many others I can speak for when I say that I didn’t see this coming.

    I graduated with a nursing degree and heard from more than a few people in the field that there was a shortage and jobs were plentiful. I had no back-up plan because I was so sure my Plan A would work out.

    I was essentially blind-sided each and every time I got a rejection email because it meant I still had no direction.

    The most terrifying part of all of this, though, isn’t the uncertainty about the future and complete lack of any idea where I’ll be six months or a year from now. Although it is pretty scary at times, there’s also an excitement to not having committed to a career yet and being able to have these kinds of options.

    But of course I haven’t acted on them because the primary, overwhelming fear du jour is that of making the “wrong” choice.

    One of the most freeing moments of my post-grad life was when I realized that no one can say what is the “right” or “wrong” decision for me.

    What’s right for so many people (getting a job, getting engaged, putting down roots in one place) is certainly not right for me, at least not right now. So what’s to say what I want to do is any crazier?

    Just because it’s not what someone else would do, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

    And even if it doesn’t necessarily create a linear path from where I am now to where I think I want to be ten years from now (flight nursing in Seattle, in case you were wondering), who’s to say that where I think I want to be in the future is best or where I should be anyway? (more…)

  • The Difference Between Fulfillment and Achievement

    The Difference Between Fulfillment and Achievement

    “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ~C.S. Lewis

    I have always been ambitious. I have always felt an incredible need to become someone, to do something, to achieve. I have always been a dreamer on my way up.

    I’m a fashion designer. I belong to an industry that I knew was highly competitive from a young age. Ambition and hard work counted, but increasingly, I was getting the message that status, money, and connections were far more important factors for success.

    In fact, fashion as an industry is parallel to the entertainment industry. Just look to all the celebrities whose next career move, often in desperation, is to create a fashion line. I was no celebrity—not even close. I was a plain, quiet girl who was more studious than glamorous.

    In fashion, there are sayings like “You’re only as good as your last season” or “One day you’re in, the next day you’re out.” We live in a go-go-go, high-achieving, fast paced world laced with ambition, goals, and people who want to do it all and have it all. So it had been ingrained in me to always work hard.

    Throughout college, I worked (almost full-time), went to school (actually full-time), and came home to work on design projects, sew into the night, or write for my little fashion blog. I took no time off, worked endless hours, and dedicated myself wholly to my craft, my industry, and my goals.

    All to get somewhere, become something, to achieve my lifelong dream.

    That all came to a halt when I graduated and I started pounding the pavement. I was sure that my hard work and talent would pay off—but it didn’t. For almost an entire year, I didn’t even get an interview.

    It was a shameful part of my life, one that I would not readily admit to anyone. I was working full-time in a different industry making very little money, but could not get in on the one I had worked so hard toward my entire life.

    So I stopped after a year to ask myself, what was I doing wrong? (more…)

  • When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed: Create a To-Live List

    When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed: Create a To-Live List

    “The only pressure I’m under is the pressure I’ve put on myself” ~Mark Messier

    It was enough. I was lying in the bathtub with the water up to my nose when I realized that I couldn’t go on like I’d been going.

    I had been working incredibly hard over the few months prior, so hard that I had forgotten why I was even doing it. And now that I was stressed out and exhausted, I was trying to remember.

    That’s why I had escaped into the bathtub, without any books or magazines to distract me from myself.

    I thought back to when it all began, to the beginning of the year when I was just another college student.

    I had just moved out from my parents’ house. I was constantly broke and not sure if I liked the path I saw laid out for me. The thought of ending up in a cubicle scared me. I had seen so many people fade into misery, their dreams dead and their hopes crushed.

    I didn’t want to grow up just to get by.

    I wanted to live.

    I knew there was a little spark in me that would turn into a big fire if I fed it the right thoughts and worked hard.

    When I learned that there were blogs like Tiny Buddha, solely devoted to your quality of life, I was ready to listen.

    I dove in head-first and studied whatever I could get my hands on, from positive psychology and old school philosophy to conscious business and doing work you love.

    I decided that I would become an entrepreneur. I would find my passion and purpose and turn it into a profitable business so that I wouldn’t have to wait tables after class and get sucked into a cubicle post-graduation. (more…)

  • Letting Go When It’s Time to Dream a New Dream

    Letting Go When It’s Time to Dream a New Dream

    “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.” ~Joseph Campbell

    Growing up in a family of medical professionals, I received an abundance of opportunities with the understanding that my “job” was school. There was immense pressure to bring home straight A’s. I internalized this pressure and spent hours in my room memorizing texts and studying for classes.

    In my mind medicine was the only acceptable career for me. Family, friends, and teachers routinely asked if I wanted to go to medical school, and my grandmother would smile when she saw me studying and say, “Study hard and you’ll be a doctor, just like your father.”

    I felt that everyone was expecting big things from me, and I wasn’t sure what those things were, how to make them happen, or if I even wanted them.

    In the fall of 2007, I was beginning my undergraduate career as a biopsychology and pre-med major at the local university when I became sick with a progressive neurodegenerative disease. I put life on hold as I bounced from doctor to doctor and underwent test after test, which produced few answers.

    In a period of three years, I lost my balance, my mobility, my hearing, and much of my independence.

    The grieving process that accompanied these losses was intense and surreal. I was convinced that finally having a diagnosis would make it easier, but I discovered that labeling an experience does not change its reality.

    Medical science had nothing to offer me, in terms of treatment or a cure for my form of mitochondrial disease, but I found myself moving through grief with a false sense of fluidity and a feigned sense of humor.

    I thought that if I pretended things were okay, I would not have to face the seriousness of my illness or the underlying grief. (more…)

  • Overcome Fears Through Lucid Dreaming

    Overcome Fears Through Lucid Dreaming

    “You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.” ~Yogi Bhajan

    It took me a second to realize what was happening.

    I was hanging onto a rope and headed straight for the sky.

    I must have been around 100 feet in the air. I was looking at the ground and it kept getting smaller and smaller. I couldn’t take it anymore and closed my eyes.

    When I opened them again I was lying in my bed.

    But this was no ordinary dream. I was actually aware of what was happening, as it happened. I was “awake” inside my head.

    Let’s Rewind 7 Days

    I was looking around the Internet and came across something called lucid dreaming. It talked about learning how to hack your dreams, to wake up inside the dream world and manipulate it as you wished.

    I wasn’t skeptical in the slightest. You see, I remembered back to my childhood where I would “wake up” in these strange places then all of a sudden I’d be right back in bed.

    Could it be? Something I’d been puzzled about my whole life was finally to be answered. It was more than I could ever have imagined.

    Not only could I wake up in my dreams, but I could train myself to do it whenever I wanted. I’d heard it can take up to three months for the average person to learn, so I got to work straight away.

    Seven days later when I was thundering toward the sky, it was my first taste of intentional lucidity. Nearly one year later and my eyes have seen things people only dream about.

    Let’s Get One Thing Straight

    I don’t want you to think of lucid dreaming as some weird new-age phenomenon. That couldn’t be further than the truth. Buddhists have been practicing it for thousands of years, and it’s even been scientifically proven. (more…)

  • The World Needs You to Come Alive

    The World Needs You to Come Alive

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

    Three years ago, I found myself in the biggest predicament of my life.

    I had finally found what made me happy. I knew that travel ignited a part of me that otherwise lay dormant. The foreign sights, sounds, flavors, and language of a new country are what make my heart pound, my blood pump, and my soul bloom.

    I love everything about traveling, and how it impacts my life: the Greek words I add to my vocabulary, the delicious cuisine of Morocco, the relaxed evenings in Italy. These are experiences that I want in my life.

    Traveling makes me a better, more well-rounded person, and it makes me exquisitely happy—in a word, alive.

    Travel was my dream—a massive, untouchable dream. A dream that didn’t involve multiple phone lines ringing, my cell phone buzzing, and my inbox flooding as a 40-hour workweek merged into 60 hours.

    I compromised my dream because I was working—for a promotion, for validation, for the almighty dollar. Blindly contented in this role, I kept settling, assuring myself that the day would come when I could fulfill my desire to travel.

    One day the Tiny Buddha weekly email arrived and “10 Questions to Ask Yourself before Giving Up on Your Dream,” by Lori Deschene, loomed out at me.

    I read the questions and tried to defend my current life choices, but I wasn’t able to satisfy my own inquiring. I knew travel made me happy, and I couldn’t justify giving up on that.

    The rest of the day I fought a battle between my head and heart. I knew the right choice, no matter how terrifying, was to follow my dreams.

    Within a week, I bought a one-way ticket to Greece and started writing my 60-day notice for the office.

    Naturally, I was scared. That crippling, nagging feeling came to sit with me—doubt. I doubted myself, my plan, and the decision to leave a great job in a bad economy.

    When I put in my resignation, the General Manager did his best to discourage me, saying, “You’ll never get another chance like this… You think careers are just handed out? You’re making a mistake.” (more…)

  • Go Ahead and Care—It Won’t Break You

    Go Ahead and Care—It Won’t Break You

    “What you do have control over is how you react to what happens in your life.” ~Oprah

    How vulnerable it is to care deeply.

    Because, oh God—the white-hot shame of caring, and having your caring exposed when it doesn’t happen despite your best efforts?

    Humbling.

    The thing I wanted most since I was a little girl was to be a published writer. Published, as in bound book in hand, “by Kate Swoboda” on the cover. 

    As a child, I spent hours writing books—real books, from beginning to end, sometimes illustrating them with pictures.

    I majored in English with a writing concentration in college. I went to graduate school for writing. I continued to write full-length books.

    Finally, when I was 24 years old, I thought I had my chance.

    I had entered my novel to a fiction contest and received an honorable mention. At the awards dinner, the judge told me that I had almost won the first-place award.

    The best-selling author who financially backed the contest said, “I want to read your manuscript.” Another writer at the dinner—a legit writer who has had her books turned into movies—said, “I’ll put you in touch with my agent.”

    I don’t think I drove home. I think I flew home, light as air, high on the possibilities.

    The writer gave me the information, and I overnighted my manuscript, a complete novel, to that agent. Then I spent the next month—every day—thinking about this agent calling, and how this was it, the big break.

    Three months later, I finally got a polite rejection email. I was crushed.

    “I Don’t Care”

    I often wonder if there’s some mechanism that modern-day society is missing when it comes to disappointment.

    Were generations prior better equipped to handle disappointment because they lived in a time when they didn’t get constant, recurring instant gratification? Is that what it takes to learn how to deal with disappointment better?

    (more…)

  • 7 Things to Remember When People Don’t Support You

    7 Things to Remember When People Don’t Support You

    “I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!” ~Theodore Roosevelt

    I’m currently doing the whole “quit my job to pursue a dream” thing. I left the security and stability of having a salary along with a supposed career.

    Back then, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I had no experience in blogging, plus I didn’t exactly have the confidence to market and start running a business.

    Sounds crazy, right?

    You can imagine the reaction I got from my friends and family. The support was next to nothing, and people generally never understood what I was doing—what I was trying to do.

    Does this sound familiar?

    You may not have done something huge, like make a career shift, but perhaps you’ve offered a different opinion and everyone just disagreed.

    You would have expected more from your loved ones. I know how disheartening that can be.

    You expect support and encouragement from people you consider close to you only to be completely rejected, criticized, or worse, laughed at.

    It can be really hard to swallow all the “noise” around you.

    I was taken by surprise by some of the things I heard from friends; some of the comments were particularly hurtful.

    I think it boils down to learning how to not care so much about what others think, and also, conversely, understanding what goes on in their minds.

    I’ve come up with a little guide of reminders that I hope can help you keep going if you feel alone.

    1. Your passion is a priority.

    A lot of people go through the motions in life, not doing what they love. They end up constantly looking back, asking themselves, “What if?”

    Whether people support you or not, do you really want to look back in regret one day down the line? To not know what could have happened if you tried to do what you really wanted to do? (more…)

  • When Giving Up Really Isn’t: Taking a Step Back

    When Giving Up Really Isn’t: Taking a Step Back

    “A bend in the road is not the end of the road…unless you fail to make the turn.” ~Unknown

    A year ago this week I was lying on a pile of laundry on my bathroom floor, sobbing, blowing my nose into a dirty t-shirt. I was in the last stages of packing up my apartment, selling my furniture, putting a few belongings into storage, and at 34 I was moving home to my parents’ house.

    It was not a good month, in a less-than-stellar year.

    It was a year filled with difficult circumstances. Two years earlier I’d given up a steady career as a librarian to pursue my dream of writing a book and becoming a freelance writer. I was accepted into an excellent MFA program in Boston and had spent those two years working day and night to finish the manuscript, which I did.

    But by the end of those two years I had gone through my entire savings. The jobs I had applied to and even interviewed for hadn’t materialized, and my part-time work as a web writer didn’t help much with my astronomical living expenses. I didn’t yet have an agent or publisher, I was out of money, and I was facing the unknown.

    I blamed myself for not being more successful and I was afraid this had been a waste of time.

    On top of that I’d been chasing a relationship with a man who left me hanging when I needed him most. I felt like a failure on every possible level. I had followed a dream, given up a career, wasted time on a guy who flaked, and I had nothing to show for it.

    So I found myself on my bathroom floor, on top of a huge pile of laundry, disappointed in myself and terrified about what to do next.

    I was wrong about having “nothing to show for it,” of course. I just needed to backtrack and figure out the next step.

    Flash-forward a year and I’m doing well as a freelance writer and a section of my book is appearing in an anthology. The last year hasn’t been easy, but these are some of the lessons I picked up along the way: (more…)

  • The Top 25 Excuses to Wait on Your Dreams and How to Overcome Them

    The Top 25 Excuses to Wait on Your Dreams and How to Overcome Them

    “The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses…The gift is yours—it is an amazing journey—and you alone are responsible for the quality of it.” ~Bob Moawad

    If we try, we can always find a reason not to do what we want to do, and it can seem perfectly valid. We can convince ourselves that we’re being smart, realistic, or safe, or that we don’t even really want it.

    We’re great at justifying the status quo, because we know exactly what that’s like, even if it’s dissatisfying.

    The unknown can feel terrifying. But somewhere in that same realm where anything could go wrong is everything that can go right.

    So many times in my life I’ve finally pushed myself to do something and then wondered, “Why did I wait so long?” If I had known the benefits would far outweigh my fear and discomfort, I would have pushed myself sooner.

    But we can’t ever know that in advance. We can only know that our reasons to do something are greater than our excuses not to.

    In my efforts to keep moving beyond my comfort zone, I’ve compiled the top excuses not to go after a dream, along with a few reminders to help us overcome them.

    (more…)

  • Constructive Criticism Is a Sign of Your Potential

    Constructive Criticism Is a Sign of Your Potential

    “Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” ~Aristotle

    Like a lot of kids, I grew up watching sports. Every Sunday afternoon, our family would gather around the big screen TV to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers play.

    As a result, I began to idolize some of my favorite players and wanted to play the sport that brought them such fame, but little did I know that the coaching would be so brutal.

    In middle school, I went out for the football team wanting to earn the privilege of wearing the glorious hoodies that only the athletes were allowed to wear. I was fortunate to be among the ones who would survive tryouts, and was even given the opportunity to start at strong-safety and tight end.

    Being a seventh grader starting at two positions would mean my coach would also have the opportunity to “coach me up” on both sides of the field.

    The week before the first game, the head coach just kept barking at me. Either my routes weren’t crisp enough, I didn’t hold my block long enough, or should have recognized the situation faster to make a better defensive play.

    No matter what I was doing, it just wasn’t enough to meet his high standards.

    I may never in the rest of my entire life amass as many pushups as I had to do that week,

    Moreover, I remember walking to the car with my head hanging, as if it weighed as much as a ton of bricks, and my dad asking what was wrong.

    I vented about how my coach was riding me more than the other players and that it was messing with my confidence. My dad began to tell me that it was a good thing that he was coaching me so hard.

    He said, “When people stop giving you constructive criticism, they have most likely given up on you.”

    I took my dad’s words of wisdom and went into the next practices assured that my coach was merely trying to make me the best player possible, because I had the potential to do better than what I was currently doing. (more…)

  • Extraordinary Passion: Making a Dream Come True

    Extraordinary Passion: Making a Dream Come True

    “Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.” ~William Hazlitt

    As an American living and working abroad in Barcelona with only local Spanish and Catalan television, I often look to the Internet for entertainment when I have downtime. I particularly enjoy looking up songs I’ve heard on the radio.

    I recently fell in love with the song We Are Young by the band Fun. I can still relate to this youthful anthem, even as an almost 40-year-old. I am fully aware that I probably just made the band hugely unpopular by admitting this.

    This is how I found the acoustic version of another Fun song, Carry On on YouTube. The accompanying instrumental music was simple and pure. And when Nate Ruess opened his mouth to sing, it appeared so effortless and natural, and created sounds so beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes.

    I couldn’t believe how emotional I was over watching this young, skinny guy sing!

    What struck my emotions so hard? It was the absolute beauty of someone, who looked like an ordinary guy, doing what he obviously loves, so well.

    The first thing I thought after watching him belt out Carry On was, “I want to do a thing so well that I feel like what he must feel like when he sings, or at least what he makes me feel like when he sings.”

    I was completely fascinated to find that Ruess never had formal musical training, couldn’t play an instrument, and pursued a musical career even in the face of being told that he wasn’t good enough and would never make it professionally. But he was, and he did, it appears purely out of true love for music.

    Had Nate Ruess been a more practical person, he may have forgone making a life out of his passion and pursued a college education and business or law. Had he done this, the world would have missed out on his incredibly unique musical gift.

    I have always stood in awe of people who are able to make their passion a main focus of their life. Many people don’t. And further, many people seem to think that it’s asking too much of life to live one’s passion.

    What makes people like Ruess appear so extraordinary is that they believed in their dreams enough to pursue them.

    I’ve often thought about other people who have realized their dreams by pursuing their passion or life calling: the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho; my cousin who is a gifted actor and musician; a world-class scientist friend of mine; Mother Teresa; the Buddha. (more…)

  • Make Your Life a Mission Not an Intermission

    Make Your Life a Mission Not an Intermission

    “Make your life a mission, not an intermission.” ~Arnold H. Glasgow

    My eyes fluttered open. I could see the sunshine pouring through my rose-colored curtains. For a few golden seconds, there was quiet, there was peace. Then I remembered, “You have an audition today. Two hours away from where you live!”

    I spun around so quickly that I made myself into a human burrito stuck in my blankets. I grabbed my cell phone. Wow—I had woken up, naturally, two hours before I even had to leave for my audition.

    I wrestled with my blanket, and when I finally released myself from its all- encompassing grip, I thought, “Ha! First battle of the day won.”

    Grabbing my iPod, I picked the perfect song and started my morning stretches.

    This audition was my chance to start a new life—a dancing life, one where I was full-time living my dream. It was my chance to be accepted in a Masters program studying dance education.

    Here’s the thing though—let’s flash forward a few months.

    —

    “You are done. Thank you,” I said to group number 10 out of 20 Broadway hopefuls, coming to audition for a local production.

    I released them from the studio, their faces full of worry. I looked down at the list of auditionees, waiting for the next group to arrive, and tapped my pen in a quick, anxiety-ridden way.

    This was a part-time gig for me—auditioning young dancers, teaching them proper technique.

    I loved being able to work with children and pass dance education along, but having to keep my passion of teaching as a “part-time gig” always felt like rubbing sandpaper on sunburn for me.

    I constantly battled this lingering feeling that I wasn’t taking what I felt to be my calling very seriously.

    I stood up to walk across the room, and I just couldn’t anymore. With my back against the wall, I slid down, hands covering my face, tears rolling down my cheeks. How did I get there? (more…)