Posts tagged with “happy”
An Improbable Story of Healing and a Girl with a Wand
āI’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.ā ~Maya Angelou
Itās the worry, I think. The constant worry. Is she safe? Will she make the right choices? Will she find a young man that will cherish and support her? The worry is always there. It never leaves.
She recently visited Los Angeles for the first time. A business trip. She had a few hours to kill. What to do? The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter! The girl is not shy. Flying solo …
Why Anger Isn’t “Bad” and How I Learned to Hear Its Hidden Message
āBitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.ā ~Maya Angelou
Iāve always had a complex relationship with anger.
When I was young, I used to think I was somehow above anger. I would brag to people that I never got mad. Sure, Iād admit, I hated some people, but at least I wasnāt angry.
When I began therapy in my mid-twenties to deal with persistent depression and panic attacks, I started to see the feebleness of that particular story. I did get angry, it turned out, quite …
How to Keep Going When Your Dream Seems Far Off
āDo what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.ā ~Oprah Winfrey
I needed a bit of extra cash last month, so I took on a temporary events role working at a local design exhibition.
Iāve worked in events before, so I didnāt think much about it.
I just knew that I needed some money, I liked doing events, and a short contract had presented itself.
It seemed perfect!
So off I went to my first shift, feeling pretty good about myself and about life.
The first event was at a studio in a deserted …
How I Stopped Chasing Happiness and Started Enjoying My Imperfect Life
āI want to live my life without stress and worries. I donāt need to be rich or famous. I just want to be happy.ā ~Unknown
Have you ever set a goal and then become obsessed with it, making it the center of your life and arranging everything else around it? Did you think that only after you achieved your goal would you be totally relaxed and happy?
Iāve done this many times before.
Throughout my life, Iāve measured my happiness by my achievements. I pushed to get good grades in school, then focused on going to a good college, then …
How to Move Let Go of the Fear of Judgment and Break the Silence of Shame
āIf we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.ā ~BrenĆ© Brown
Every time I think Iāve unloaded most of the pain from my past, something surfaces that tells me I have more work to do.
A couple of weeks ago, my boyfriend and I were cuddling one morning. Iām not sure what the trigger was, but out of nowhere, my thoughts rolled down a hill and into a painful memory that I must have blocked out.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as my whole body curled up into the fetal position. He …
Highs and Lows Are Part of Growth and It All Makes Us Stronger
“Just like a muscle needs to tear to grow stronger, sometimes we need to wade into our own darkness to find a brighter light.” ~Lori Deschene
Sometimes we need to journey into the deepest, darkest, scariest, most painful places inside in order to reach the next level.
This is what happened to me earlier this year.
When I was younger, I was in an abusive relationship that created a lot of stories in my head. These stories became beliefs that I carried around for a long time. Beliefs like, āIām not good enough,ā āRelationships are painful,ā āI donāt …
There Are Some People You Just Canāt Help
āBe there. Be open. Be honest. Be kind. Be willing to listen, understand, accept, support, and forgive. This is what it means to love.ā ~Lori Deschene
A few months ago, I was totally freaked out.
I was having a cup of tea with a soul-sister friend, and we were in deep conversation. I was crying.
I was explaining, between hiccupping sobs, about how there was someone in my life who was suffering deeply.
Sitting at the cafĆ© that day, I said to her, āThere is this person in my life that I love so deeply, but he is suffering.ā
I …
What to Do If Your Life Story Depresses You or Holds You Back
āThe truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.ā ~Pema Chodron
Too often we let stories from our past define us. We tell them over and over to ourselves and to others until it becomes our truth. What if, without deviating from actual facts, we choose to tell different stories? What if these new stories could bring us more freedom and strength?
Below are some true facts about my own life. I’ll follow each one with the stories I could be telling myself about each one, followed by the story I choose to go …
The Introvertās Hate/Hate Relationship With Spontaneity
āThe man who is prepared has his battle half fought.ā ~Miguel De Cervantes
They say you should live in the present, and ātheyā form a chorus of voices that is growing in number by the second. Everywhere you turn these days, the message is loud and clear: life is better when you live in the moment.
I get it; I really do. I know that when I hit that flow state, regardless of what Iām immersed in, time passes in a heartbeat and I tend to really enjoy myself.
Itās just that I would prefer it if I could …
What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone Whoās Grieving
“Remember that there is no magic wand that can take away the pain and grief. The best any of us can do is to be there and be supportive.” ~Marilyn Mendoza
My mother, an articulate and highly accomplished writer, began to lose much of what she valued a few years ago. Her eyesight was compromised by macular degeneration, her hallmark youthful vigor was replaced with exhaustion, and many of her friends began to die. Finally, and cruelest of all, her memory began to go, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed.
Her struggle and her suffering in the last …
The Simplest Way to Make More Time for What Matters
āWeāve all heard the saying, stop and smell the roses. But it would be far better to be the gardener who grows the roses and lives with them constantly.ā ~Deepak Chopra
What would it take to befriend time? To see time as an ally, a friend evenāan opportunity?
Most of us have a much different relationship with time. One that is based on scarcity. The chorus of āI donāt have enough timeā reverberates through conversations, social media channels, and personal mutterings.
Redefining our relationship with time isnāt like flipping a light switch. But it is a bit like pumping gas …
20 Inspiring Gratitude Quotes and Tiny Buddhaās Gratitude Journal Giveaway
Update – the winners for this giveaway are:
- Marc Remington
- Kittenpants13
Hi friends! Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate.
Iām so grateful to all of you who share your experiences and insights on the blog, and to those who you who give your time and energy to help others in the comments and community forums. I am endlessly inspired by your openness, your empathy, and your kindness.
To celebrate this day, I gathered some of my favorite gratitude quotes (mostly from anonymous sources), and Iāve also put aside two copies of Tiny Buddhaās Gratitude Journal for a special …
Why You Need to Embrace “Beginner’s Mind” to Live a Life of Adventure
āThe donāt-know mindā¦ doesnāt fear, has no wish to control or foresee, steps off the cliff of the moment with absolute trust that the next step will land somewhere, and the next step somewhere else, and the feet will take us wherever we need to go.ā ~Byron Katie
I am fifty-five years old. Iāve raised a family, been through two divorces, bought and sold four houses, and had a successful professional career. And right now Iām doing one of the hardest things Iāve ever done, which is learning to host in a busy restaurant.
My coworkers range from mid-twenties to …
How Surfing Helped Me Turn Fear and Anxiety into Confidence
āIf you want to conquer fear, donāt sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.ā ~Dale Carnegie
Not too long ago I went through an extremely chaotic and emotional two-week period. Anything that could go wrong or be difficult did and was. I thought it would never end.
When it began, the little hiccups were easy to let roll off my shoulders. After about a week, I was feeling pretty worn down and was in tears daily. At the end, I felt numb, and when things kept going wrong I would say to myself āSureā¦ Okay ā¦whatās …
How to Enjoy the Holidays When Grieving the Loss of a Loved One
This post contains an excerpt from GETTING GRIEF RIGHT: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss, by Patrick OāMalley, PhD with Tim Madigan.
It was spring 1980 when my wife, Nancy, and I received some of the best news of our livesāshe was pregnant with our first child.
On a Tuesday morning that September, we found ourselves sitting in her obstetricianās office. Nancy, not due to deliver for three months, had been awakened the night before by a strange physical sensation.
She had wanted to get checked out, just to be safe. But after the examination …
Train Your Mind: Overcoming Negative Thoughts Is Half the Battle
āBelieve you can and youāre halfway there.ā ~Theodore Roosevelt
I could not find the bottom of the pool.
The task seemed simple enough: Wearing no more than twenty pounds worth of gear, swim to the bottom of an eight-foot pool, remove your gear, and swim back up.
My feet combed for somethingāanythingāsolid beneath me, to no avail. A shock of fear struck through my veins, clouding my head. Panic. I reached a point of sheer, utter, uncontrollable panic.
Panic is an interesting beast. It is designed to trigger the flight-or-fight mechanism in the human body; it is for survival …
Why I Was Addicted to Attention, Lies, and Drama
Iāve done a lot of things for attention that Iām not proud of. Iāve created drama. Iāve bragged. Iāve exaggerated. Iāve hurt people. Iāve hurt myself. Iāve lied and lied and lied.
No one wants to be labeled as an āattention seeker.ā When people say, āSheās just doing it for attention,ā they donāt mean it as a compliment. I knew this. And I knew that people said these things about me.
And still, I couldnāt stop.
I spend a lot of time around animals, especially cats. Itās easy to see which ones have experienced starvation. They have constant anxiety about …
How Creativity Heals Us and Why Itās a Gift to the World
āCreativity is the way I share my soul with the world.ā ~BrenĆ© Brown
I wrote a poem today for the woman I love(d).
Just a few weeks ago, I fully believed she was the one Iād be with forever. Love forever. My heart was open so deep and wide to her. We talked about marriage and living together in the woods, making art, and being a family.
Then things got tough. We talked, we tried, we read books, jetted our intention out into the universe. But we just couldnāt keep it together.
There was so much pain. But also …
Making the Hurt Visible: How I Stopped Hating the Man and Learned to Listen to Myself
āIgnoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.ā ~Margaret Atwood, The Handmaidās Tale
Weāve just passed the year anniversary of an event that has greatly changed our country. The shock of the election results last year sent waves of powerful emotions rippling through our nation.
Personally, I felt the effects as intense and immediate grief. It was as though I had just lost my dearest companion.
I had days of shock, despair, feelings of intense cold with physical shaking and episodes of vomiting and nausea, followed by weeks of sleepless nights, spontaneous sweating, nightmares …
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