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Posts tagged with “happy”

What to Do If Your Life Story Depresses You or Holds You Back

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“The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.” ~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 Introvert’s Hate/Hate Relationship With Spontaneity

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“The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.” ~Miguel De Cervantes

They say you should live in the present, and “they” 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 I’m immersed in, time passes in a heartbeat and I tend to really enjoy myself.

It’s just that I would prefer it if I could …

What to Say (and Not to Say) to Someone Who’s Grieving

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“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

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“We’ve 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.” ~Deepak Chopra

What would it take to befriend time? To see time as an ally, a friend even—an opportunity?

Most of us have a much different relationship with time. One that is based on scarcity. The chorus of “I don’t have enough time” reverberates through conversations, social media channels, and personal mutterings.

Redefining our relationship with time isn’t like flipping a light switch. But it is a bit like pumping gas …

20 Inspiring Gratitude Quotes and Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal Giveaway

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Update – the winners for this giveaway are:

  • Marc Remington
  • Kittenpants13

Hi friends! Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate.

I’m 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 I’ve also put aside two copies of Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal for a special …

Why You Need to Embrace “Beginner’s Mind” to Live a Life of Adventure

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“The don’t-know mind
 doesn’t 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.” ~Byron Katie

I am fifty-five years old. I’ve raised a family, been through two divorces, bought and sold four houses, and had a successful professional career. And right now I’m doing one of the hardest things I’ve 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

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“If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” ~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 “Sure
 Okay 
what’s …

How to Enjoy the Holidays When Grieving the Loss of a Loved One

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This post contains an excerpt from GETTING GRIEF RIGHT: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss, by Patrick O’Malley, PhD with Tim Madigan.

It was spring 1980 when my wife, Nancy, and I received some of the best news of our lives—she was pregnant with our first child.

On a Tuesday morning that September, we found ourselves sitting in her obstetrician’s 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

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“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” ~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 something—anything—solid 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

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I’ve done a lot of things for attention that I’m not proud of. I’ve created drama. I’ve bragged. I’ve exaggerated. I’ve hurt people. I’ve hurt myself. I’ve lied and lied and lied.

No one wants to be labeled as an “attention seeker.” When people say, “She’s just doing it for attention,” they don’t mean it as a compliment. I knew this. And I knew that people said these things about me.

And still, I couldn’t stop.

I spend a lot of time around animals, especially cats. It’s easy to see which ones have experienced starvation. They have constant anxiety about …

How Creativity Heals Us and Why It’s a Gift to the World

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“Creativity is the way I share my soul with the world.” ~BrenĂ© Brown

I wrote a poem today for the woman I love(d).

Just a few weeks ago, I fully believed she was the one I’d 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 couldn’t 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

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“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” ~Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

We’ve 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 …

Leave the Past in the Past: What Matters Most Is Who You Are Now

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“Focus on what matters and let go of what doesn’t.” ~Unknown

When I was in rehab for alcohol addiction, one of the most difficult things for any of us to overcome was the fact that we thought we were beyond redemption.

Why? Because during the depths of our addiction, we had done some things we weren’t too proud of. Unhealthy behaviors that included drinking while driving, calling in sick when we weren’t because we were too hung over to go to work, or neglecting our children for the lure of spending the evening with a bottle of wine instead. …

Seeing Rejection As Redirection: What We Gain When We Lose

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“Every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better.” ~Steve Maraboli

Rejection hurts. Whether it is from family, friends, co-workers, or a new company, when we experience rejection it hits us right in the heart—the control center to our emotions.

We may wonder, what is wrong with me? We might begin pulling ourselves apart with self-criticism. However, rejection also has a way of teaching us, redirecting us, and ultimately making our lives better.

I have learned to look at rejection differently these past couple of years. Actually, many of …

We All Make Mistakes, So Let’s Try to Remember the Good

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Julius Caesar has long been my favorite work of William Shakespeare. I am drawn to the political intrigue, the betrayal, the powerful words of Marc Antony.

One line from the play has always remained lodged in my mind:

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

The line often pops into my head when I feel unjustly persecuted or blamed. Shakespeare understood hundreds of years ago that human nature causes us to feel self-centered and unjustly targeted.

While I recognize I am not now nor was I ever a perfect mother, I …

friends in the fall

Don’t Lose Sight of the Big Picture: Spend Time with People You Truly Enjoy

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“Even if you are on the right track you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” ~Will Rogers

 How is this happening again?

Lying in bed watching The Mentalist at 8 P.M. on a Saturday night, my mind begins to wander.

A year ago I was so happy. I spent almost every night hanging out with amazing friends and now I’m here, alone watching TV.

As my heart sank into my stomach, I shook my head, suppressed my feelings, and pushed play to start the next episode.

A few years earlier I moved to Santa Fe, NM, a state …

Self-Love Means Never Saying “You Complete Me”

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“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

A popular topic in the glossy magazines, learning to “love yourself” always seemed to me to be a self-indulgent first-world pastime.

It seemed obvious that the commonly-repeated mantra “love yourself first” was just a sign of the times in a world where something like half of all marriages end in divorce. …

What Helped Me Move On After Being Cheated On

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“Sometimes walking away is the only option because you finally respect yourself enough to know that you deserve better.” ~Unknown

When I was cheated on, I was hit by an ongoing blizzard of conflicting emotions.

There were the initial tears that I failed to hide from anyone. There was a cold ruthlessness as I told her that I couldn’t be with her after what she did. There was a wave of misery, there was a wave of anger, and all of it was dotted with periodic moments of calm and even gratitude that she was finally out of my life.…

20 Reminders That May Comfort You When You Feel Anxious

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Your heart races. Your body temperature rises. Your hands may shake. Your stomach may churn.

Your thoughts start spiraling to the worst could that happen, and suddenly you feel so unequipped—like everything’s going to fall apart, and you won’t be able to handle it.

It can feel so powerless when anxiety takes over, almost like your brain and body are being hijacked, and there’s little you can do to feel safe or in control.

Except that’s not actually true. Though anxiety can have both physical and mental symptoms, and we can’t just will it away, there are things we …

4 Simple Techniques to Erase Subconscious Negativity

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“As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.” ~Joseph Murphy

The subconscious mind is like a computer’s hard drive.

It saves whatever information you feed it, without any bias. It does not discriminate between useful information and trash information. It just saves everything!

The subconscious mind learns through repetition. So if it’s fed the same information multiple times, it keeps overwriting it until the information gets etched in.

As you would have guessed, such information is harder to erase.

For example, let’s say you write “I am not good enough” on …