fbpx
Menu

Posts tagged with “happy”

What It Means to Be Loyal to Yourself and Why We All Need to Do It

By

“This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” ~William Shakespeare

A little while ago, a friend gave me a compliment that stopped me in my tracks. “I really admire how loyal you are to yourself.”

In time-honored self-questioning mode, I immediately thought, “Oh my gosh, what does that mean? Does she think I’m selfish?” But once I decided not to go down that road, I started pondering what it might mean to be loyal to one’s self, and how it truly is …

Overcoming a Negative Body Image: 4 Things to Remember

By

TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of anorexia and may be triggering to some people.

“You will never be free until you free yourself from the prison of your own false thoughts.” ~Philip Arnold

I really don’t remember my life before anorexia. I think back to my early teenage years when I ate peanut butter sandwiches and drank hot chocolate without a single thought of how many calories I had consumed. There was no guilt, no worry, no need for perfection. How I wish I could get those carefree moments back.

A few years ago anorexia completely …

We Can Choose Different Ways Without One of Us Being Wrong

By

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Many of us are committed to a journey of change and personal growth. While these are traits to be admired and celebrated, they can also have a darker side. We can become a little militant and dogmatic when we’re on our journeys.

As we focus on our attempts to make changes in our own lives, our views can start to narrow and become very black and white. We become so tuned into what …

Book Giveaway: Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal and The Self-Love Experiment

By

UPDATE: The winners for this giveaway are Alexandra Martinez and Kathy Kortegaard.

Happy October, friends! Over the past several months since I launched Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal, I’ve been excited to receive some wonderful feedback on the thought-provoking prompts and questions, and the coloring pages.

I decided to create this journal because adopting a gratitude practice has been life changing for me; it’s shifted my perspective, boosted my mood, and enabled me to hold on to optimism during some of the darkest times of my life.

And I chose to include coloring pages because I’ve been obsessed with adult …

How to Prevent Blame and Criticism from Destroying Your Relationship

By

“Who is it that’s unhappy? The one who finds fault.” ~Anonymous

If you are anything like me, you yearn to know in your bones that you are showing up in your primary relationship as your best self. You want to be loving, kind, and supportive (and to reap the gifts those qualities sow in your love life). But certain habits of interaction get in the way, making you feel inept and ashamed.

Like many of us, I grew up in a family that was steeped in criticism and blame. Though I rebelled against this behavior intellectually, it found its way …

3 Ways to Decide Whose Opinion of You Matters

By

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” ~Coco Chanel

“You know, Joui, I really like how you look tonight. I always thought your style before was… just a little wacky,” smiled Harry, a man I’d met during a forced networking meeting. He then smirked knowingly, like he was doing me a great favor.

Inside I screamed.

As a stylist one of the biggest fears my clients mention when we discuss any big change is feedback, judgment, and shame from their peers. And they are right to be fearful.

People will have commentary, trust me. …

3 Empowering Ways to Reframe Anxiety: Work With It, Not Against It

By

“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life—and only then will I be free to become myself.” ~Martin Heidegger

If you are a lifelong anxiety warrior like me, you’ve been on a journey of ups and downs.

Anxiety fills our whole bodies. Tension. Heart pounding. Sometimes I feel like my heart must be visibly pulsating so much so that if there are others around, they can see it.

There are varying levels and types of anxiety, including clinical disorders. But …

7 Reasons to Abandon Your Comfort Zone and Why You’ll Never Regret It

By

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” ~Jack Canfield

Imagine with me for a second. You wake up, roll over, and blindly reach to hit your alarm to start the routine of the day. Make the same thing for breakfast. Maybe go to a new coffee place
nah. Same place. Go to work on the same route to the same job you’ve been at for years.

After a long day of struggling through your daily responsibilities, you come home tired and slink back into the comfort of your TV and couch. Watch the same shows. Pass out. Repeat. …

How to Keep Going When You Want To Give Up on Life

By

TRIGGER WARNING: This post references suicidal thoughts and may be triggering to some people.

Since my first post on Tiny Buddha entitled “Why I Didn’t Kill Myself and Why You Shouldn’t Either,” I’ve been doing amazingly well. I thought I had this suicide stuff in the bag. I thought it lived in the past. I thought it was no longer a part of me.

I thought I had found my way forward and that I would never feel that way again. I thought my suicidal ideation was a historical part of my existence.

I was wrong.

Tonight, I …

How Feeling Shame Freed Me from Suffering

By

“Be gentle first with yourself if you wish to be gentle with others.” ~Lama Yeshe

It was October, 2012. The U.S. Presidential Election was around the corner. I was paying an unaccustomed amount of attention to political news on TV and to political discussion sites online. At one site in particular, I was eager to become part of the community, to make a good impression, to build a reputation.

To put it mildly, that didn’t work out well.

One evening I was watching an interview with a politician whose name I recognized, but I didn’t know much about him. I …

How We Can Break the Cycle of Pain

By

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~Gandhi

Pain is and isn’t just like energy. According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed but is merely converted from one form to another.

For example, the light energy from the sun can be harnessed by plants, which, through photosynthesis, convert it to chemical energy. Plants use this energy to grow fruit, which we eat. We store this energy for when we need to exert ourselves, when we convert it to kinetic energy. The energy never disappears, but is instead just displaced.

Pain …

How Expectations Can Drive People Away and How to Let Go of Control

By

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” ~Friedrich Salomon Perls

About five years ago, I had a falling out with a close friend. I was irritated because she didn’t do the things I thought she should and she didn’t give as much as I did. I felt I had been very generous with her, and I expected her to do the same. I felt she owed me.

My anger became unmanageable and started seeping into pretty much every interaction we had. She began cancelling dinner …

License to Hurt: What We Really Need When We’re in Pain

By

“We’ll light the candle together when she’s ready. For now I’ll trust the darkness for us both.” ~Terri St. Cloud

Over breakfast one morning recently, Jeff and I started reminiscing about past years, and something was said that brought back a painful memory for me. My boss at the time had been unimaginably small-minded. He had hung me out to dry. “I still can’t understand why he did that,” I said.

Jeff looked at me levelly. “You need to get over it, Jan,” he said. “It was years ago.”

Wise advice, without question. The only problem was that I didn’t …

Why I Forgave My Father and How It Set Me Free

By

“There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.” ~Bryant H. McGill

The day I chose to forgive was the day I became free

It happened on an ordinary weekday. It was just another ride on a crowded train. It’s been years since it happened, yet I can still recall the faintest details of that moment.

There they were, sitting directly across from me. She pulled out a small mirror and began to apply her lipstick. He playfully nudged her, causing her to mess up. She got mad. He laughed. She couldn’t help but smile despite …

Failing Doesn’t Make You a Failure (and You Can Still Succeed)

By

“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” ~Zig Ziglar

Take a second and imagine little you. running around like the little ragamuffin you were. Imagine as far back as you can—back when you were first able to comprehend feedback from parents, teachers, or whatever other authorities were around.

When considering the cause of low self-esteem, the most obvious answers fall under the umbrella of past abuses or failures: a parent who demanded straight A’s, an abusive spouse, etc. These are common forms of mistreatment that cause some people’s self-esteem to tank.

But for those who’ve lived fairly easy …

How to Identify Your Emotional Triggers and What to Do About Them

By

“Awareness is the birthplace of possibility. Everything you want to do, everything you want to be, starts here.” ~Deepak Chopra

Ever wonder why some people respond in the same destructive way over and over even though they keep getting the same bad results?

Many of us can relate to having unhealthy coping mechanisms and responses to things like stress, fear, or other agitating emotional states. Often, we are unaware of the subconscious processes going on and we may, for example, instinctively reach for an alcoholic beverage at the end of a long, hard day, never realizing we are setting …

Why I’m No Longer Hiding Behind My Privilege and My Spirituality

By

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~Anne Frank

We’re all just spiritual beings, bumbling along in human bodies, trying to make our way.

Trying to find the delicate balance between living in a physical world and embracing our higher selves.

In my quest for spiritual enlightenment, I learned how to narrow my focus. I learned to tune out the noisy Facebook newsfeed, I don’t watch the news, and I avoid saying things just for the sake of controversy.

For a while, this worked. As my vibe rose, I started …

How I Healed My FOMO and Started Saying No

By

“When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying ‘no’ to yourself.” ~Paulo Coelho

My sister-in-law returned to Montreal after spending three months in Portugal. She told me that the biggest adjustment to being back was spending twenty minutes in the pharmacy aisle deciding which shampoo brand to get because the options were endless. She missed life in Portugal, where she only had one brand to choose from.

Ah, the paradox of choice.

I am a recovering indecisive person. I used to stand in line at restaurant counters, telling people to go ahead of me with their …

We Can’t Run from Ourselves and 6 Other Lessons from Living Abroad

By

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you
 so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” ~Unknown

From the outside looking in, my life was picture-perfect. I had a corporate job that paid more than just the bills, a charming little apartment in a boho neighborhood of Denver, a gorgeous SUV that took me on adventures in the mountains on the weekends, a vibrant dating life where I met some pretty amazing guys, and a group of incredible girlfriends that most people only dreamt …

Why People-Pleasers Don’t Get the Love and Respect They Desire

By

“Niceness is the psychological armor of the people-pleaser.” ~Harriet B. Braiker

I used to think that being kind, gentle, and agreeable was guaranteed to win me love and acceptance from others. I’d tiptoe around destructive people’s behaviors, no matter how uncomfortable I felt about it, believing to my core that if only I could be nice enough to them, they would one day lead a better life.

I lived my life constantly avoiding anything that might make me look like a bad, imperfect, antagonistic, or unlikeable person. Because as every people-pleaser knows, being disliked or disapproved of feels …