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Posts tagged with “Happiness”

Are You Limited by the Fear of What Other People Think?

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“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.” ~Eckhart Tolle

A few months ago, I found myself on the busy streets of London’s Covent Garden.

It was a mild Friday evening in the capital and the masses were out celebrating the end of the working week, looking forward to the weekend ahead.

But that’s not why I was there.

I’d come to Covent Garden on that day for a special project.

For most of my life, the fear of what other people thought of me had kept me trapped. It had prevented me …

Burn Away Your Barriers to Love: 7 Ways to Live a Beautiful Life

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“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

My grandmother is nearing the end. She’s had a good life, a family, a loving husband, dancing and singing, growing things, running a business.

There are some skeletons in the closet though; her early life had some very heavy experiences that made her afraid and may have held her back. On balance, a great life, but there were challenges.

Right now, she’s slipped into a dream world and she is often still there when her …

Recognizing and Overcoming the Fears That Make Us Settle

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“Fear, uncertainty, and discomfort are your compasses towards growth.” ~Celestine Chua

Settling feels awful. Take it from me—for the past few months I’ve been holding the Scepter of Settling in both my personal life and my business.

And it hasn’t felt good.

The other morning, as I sat waiting in LaGuardia Airport to board a plane for a three-day intensive business retreat in North Carolina, I had this sudden, radical a-ha! moment in which pieces of my life, both personal and business, just clicked into place.

Have you ever had that happen to you?

I realized I was settling in …

7 Things to Remember When You Think You’re Not Good Enough

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“We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.” ~Lori Deschene

Sometimes I am really terrible to myself, and I relentlessly compare myself to other people, no matter how many times I read or hear about how good enough or lovable I am.

On an almost daily basis, I meticulously look for evidence that I am a nobody, that I don’t deserve to be loved, or that I’m not living up to my full potential.

There is generally a lot of pressure to “stack up” in our culture. We feel as if there is something …

How to Reduce Stress and Focus More on What Truly Matters

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“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” ~Socrates

Did you ever wish you could just take off from work and get away from it all?

This past summer I had the opportunity to do just that.

I was wrapping up a twenty-four-year career in the Air Force and had saved up two months of vacation time. So my wife and I decided to visit Rio de Janeiro and live by the beach.

The tropical weather was everything you would expect it to be: sunny, warm, and gorgeous.

But surprisingly, the time off gave me so much more.

Being away from …

5 Questions to Discover Who You Are and What Will Make You Happy

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

At twenty-five I was happily married and had a great career, many friends, and lots of money. During that time I also became deeply depressed, was put on medication for anxiety, and entered what would be a very long relationship with psychotherapy.

It was a real struggle for me to understand why I wasn’t happy when I had everything that I thought was important in life. Was I selfish? Were my expectations too high? I honestly couldn’t understand what was missing and …

A Simple, Tiny Exercise to Help You Make a Big Change

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“Change is inevitable. Growth is intentional.” ~Glenda Cloud

Growing up, I never had that many friends. The concept of best friends is still foreign to me. For the first seventeen years of my life, I found myself happier alone than in the presence of other people.

I wanted to join them; I just didn’t know how.

In order to protect myself from people I’d rather not mention, I decided to join a karate class. For the first time I belonged to a group that was slowly starting to accept me.

In the months that followed, I began to go out …

How to Maintain Healthy Habits and Stop Sabotaging Yourself

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

About two years go, I felt horrible about myself and where I was in my life: single, struggling to lose weight, miserable in my job (and no clue what to do about it), and unfulfilled in general.

I kept trying to bully myself in order to be the person I wanted to be and have the things I wanted to have.

I kept saying to myself, “I can’t believe you said/ate/did that. There’s something wrong with you” and giving myself strict rules to follow, …

Why We Don’t Do What We Want to Do and How to Start

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“If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.” ~Unknown

“The truth is,” she said, “if you can’t put fifteen minutes a day into your art, then you’re making an excuse.”

I squirmed in my seat.

It was February 1, 2011, and I was on the phone, interviewing Michele, a professional artist and artist’s mentor, for an online course I created.

Michele was sharing what she tells the artists in her mentorship program who complain of not having enough time to do their art. Her words were intended for her mentees, but …

5 Ways to Seize the Moment and Live Without Regrets

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“Accept your past without regret, handle your present with confidence, and face your future without fear.” ~Unknown

Samara is my colleague at work. She is one of the most pleasant ladies I know. She always has a smile and an encouraging word to give.

She really is the kind of woman you want to speak to on the days you feel like life has dealt you a bad hand, because she always has something comforting to say. As we got closer, I confided more and more in her about the challenges I was going through in my life.

I envisioned …

How to Improve Your Relationships and Make a Kinder World

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“If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind.” ~Buddha

I once attended a lecture given by a world-renowned expert on post-traumatic stress disorder. The lecture made two points that I have never forgotten. I call them “brain tricks.”

1. Given a choice, our primitive brain will naturally select for the negative. It’s a survival thing.

2. When in crisis, the part of our brain that conceptualizes time and space goes off line. In other words, our brain increases the urgency of the problem by making us think the crisis will never …

Things Will Never Be Perfect: Making Peace with Everyday Challenges

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“Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance.” ~Unknown

A few weeks ago, I walked into my studio apartment and found it quite messy, which isn’t that hard to do with 325 square feet shared by a couple.

I’m talking clothes on the floor, dishes on the couch, and paper strewn everywhere. It had been one of those weeks where both my husband and I were ripping and running, having little to no time to manage household chores.

I looked around, took a deep breath, and sat down on the couch after moving some papers. I enjoyed some dinner with …

How to Feel at Home Wherever You Are

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“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” ~Basho

For over three years, I’ve been living out of a suitcase and traveling around the world doing a combination of volunteering, housesitting, and couch surfing.

This journey started after I decided to drastically change my life. In the span of a week, I filed for divorce, quit my high-paying job in New York, left my PhD program at an Ivy League school, sold all my stuff, and flew to South America.

After spending six months volunteering in Brazil, I began to realize that, while I was born and …

How to Embrace Your True Beauty (Not the Media’s Ideal)

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“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” ~Kahlil Gibran

A few years shy of my fiftieth birthday, I went on a road trip with one of my best friends from high school. We’d taken some version of this trip many times during our teens and twenties, but as we started raising young children, we didn’t have much time for getaways.

But on this occasion, our kids were old enough to fend for themselves, and we hit the road with same excitement and silliness that characterized all of our youthful adventures.

We spent the next …

How to Stop Judging and Being Hard on Yourself

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

For a long time I joked that if I had a time machine, I would go back to 1989 and give my sixteen-year-old self a swift butt kicking. But then a few months ago, on my fortieth birthday, a friend posted a picture of me at sixteen on Facebook.

Seeing this image of myself totally threw me for a loop. Other than a school photo, it’s probably one of the few pictures I am aware of from that time in my life.

I spent …

How We Can Reduce Our Suffering by Feeling Uncomfortable Feelings

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“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Just about everyone experiences sorrow at times. I know I do.

The other morning, in fact, I was caught off guard by a very particular sorrow. Nothing happened, per se; but from the moment I awoke, I felt an aching sense of sadness and loss at the fact that my career path has taken me away from the field of mental health counseling.

As I became aware of my sorrow, it filled my heart and mind like …

How to Release Disappointment and Thrive When Life Isn’t Fair

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“When you learn to accept instead of expect, you’ll have fewer disappointments.” ~Unknown

At thirty-six weeks pregnant, I was in the fetal position on my bathroom floor, screaming with pain. It was excruciating, the worst pain I had ever experienced, and I had experienced lots.

As the ambulance officer supported me out the front door and into the back of the ambulance, all I could think was, “How is this going to affect my baby?”

After two ambulances, two hospitals, and a barrage of tests, I was sitting on the hospital bed, absolutely exhausted—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

My thoughts started …

How to Be Hurt Less by So-Called Evil People

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“Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

There were monsters in my closet—or so my five-year-old self believed. As soon as my mother kissed me goodnight and flipped the lights off, they would appear.

See, in my room, the sliding closet doors were kept open, and on the top three shelves, monsters would magically appear in the darkness. Their wide mouths closely resembled folded towels and their eyes looked like the buttons of my sweaters, but I was too scared to notice.

I could only see evil creatures staring at me, and after a …

What We Need to Do Before We Can Have Happy, Loving Relationships

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“Once you have learned to love, you will have learned to live.” ~Unknown

Ever since I was a young girl, relationships have fascinated me, particularly romantic ones. I had beautiful fantasies of my perfect partner appearing and completing me. We would fall in love and live happily ever after.

As a child, I believed that being in a romantic relationship, and especially being married, meant lasting happiness. All the love and joy I would ever want or need would be mine when “the one” arrived. Daydreams of my soul mate filled my tween brain.

This fairy tale view of relationships …

Finally Letting Go of the Pain and Moving On after a Breakup

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“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” ~C. S. Lewis

Another year over and you’re still troubled by a relationship that ended last year or in years past. The whole thing is dragging on too long—why can’t you just get over it? But every time you think about it or bump into your ex, you feel ruined again

How about giving your feelings another shake?

Rattle them in any direction—a new one. If it turns out to be the wrong direction you …