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Posts tagged with “Love”

If Self-Love Seems Difficult, Start with Self-Like

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“It’s not your job to like me. It’s mine.” ~Byron Katie

Self-love is a word that gets used a lot. Overused, in fact.

The pressures and associations around the phrase “self-love” are immense. At school, we actually tore apart girls who loved themselves, as if it was such a bad thing. As teenagers, we saw self-love as big headed and arrogant.

If only we knew the harm that we were doing, not just to others but most of all to ourselves.

So how about we begin with self-like?

I definitely felt that I had to try to get people …

It’s Not Selfish to Take Care of Yourself

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Why We Can’t Have Healthy, Happy Relationships Without Self-Love

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“Worry about loving yourself instead of loving the idea of other people loving you.” ~Unknown

Body image and self-love have been my biggest struggles. They’ve affected every area of my life, including relationships.

I developed anorexia in high school after experiencing a number of losses in a short period of time.

During my high school years I didn’t date much. I had a few boyfriends, but the relationships never progressed because I was afraid of intimacy, due to the fact that I was uncomfortable in my skin and didn’t like my body.

I had body dysmorphia, thinking I was overweight …

3 Ways to Tell If You’re in an Unhealthy Relationship

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“The harder you fight to hold onto specific assumptions, the more likely there’s gold in letting them go.” ~John Seely Brown

It was Christmas night and I was ecstatic. He would be there any minute.

I touched up my gloss and gave myself a quick once over in the hallway mirror. Despite having had a hearty dinner at my Mum’s, my stomach was flat and my dress fit me like a glove, enveloping my curves perfectly. I was ready and raring to go.

Glancing at the clock, I wondered where he was. I double checked my phone to see if …

Why Self-Help Shouldn’t Be About Trying to “Fix” Yourself

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“Stop trying to ‘fix’ yourself; you’re not broken! You are perfectly imperfect and powerful beyond measure.” ~Steve Maraboli

The other day I had some time to kill before a meeting, so I decided to go to one of my favorite places, Chapters Bookstore. When I walked in, I immediately headed toward the self-help section to pick up Brene Brown’s Rising Strong (great read, by the way).

As I was searching for her book, I noticed an unusual number of people browsing the same shelves, searching for their self-help book of choice.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with this. The …

Why We Put Ourselves Last and Why Self-Care Should Be a Priority

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“Be there for others, but never leave yourself behind.” ~Dodinsky

Sometimes, when we’re feeling stressed and running around taking care of everybody else, the healthiest thing we can do is to stop and consider how we can take care of ourselves.

While this seems obvious to some people, many of us struggle with the idea of putting ourselves first. We were raised to think we should always put others before ourselves and ignore our own needs—that it is somehow arrogant or self-centered, and not a nice thing to do.

So why is self-care not held in high regard as the …

Why It Takes Strength to Be Vulnerable, and Why It’s Worth It

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“Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage.” ~BrenĂ© Brown

When we’re younger, we’re fearless. We don’t mind climbing trees, making friends with strangers, or telling our secrets to people we’ve just met. We open our eyes and hearts to new experiences and people, and we trust that everything is going to be okay.

Somewhere along the way, we learn that being vulnerable can hurt.

We get teased or laughed at, and we learn that not everyone can be trusted with our secrets. Our knees get bruised and our hearts get broken.

I don’t fall in love easily. So, when …

Our Lives Are Measured in Love, Not Numbers

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“In the end, these are the things that matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?” ~Buddha

Last year my yoga teacher told a story in class about Hanuman, an ancient Hindu god depicted as a monkey. When asked what he was devoted to, Hanuman opened his chest and there were Sita and Ram, sitting on his heart, always with him. He was their greatest devotee.

The story stuck with me.

“What do I hold closest to my heart?” I asked myself quite often, and I was not getting the …

The World Isn’t Filled with “Haters” and “Toxic People”

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You Never Know What Someone Is Going Through, So Be Kind

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“Give everyone the benefit of the doubt today
” ~Lori Deschene, Tiny Buddha’s 365 Tiny Love Challenges

Here’s something I’ve learned firsthand: No matter how someone looks or acts, you truly never know what’s happening in their lives.

Five years ago my husband Walter was dying from cancer. Twice during a thirteen-month period he was hospitalized, thirty minutes away from our home.

I spent about ten hours a day at the hospital, plus travel time during those long weeks. I was a wreck.

I don’t know what I looked like to the outside world. Inside, I felt impatient, angry, sad, out …

Why Playing Hard to Get Doesn’t Work (and What Does)

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“Confidence isn’t ‘They will like me.” It’s ‘I’m perfectly fine if they don’t.’ ” ~Unknown

After the death of my husband, I spent my thirties as a single mother of four children. It was a tough decade. I often felt lonely and frustrated, and dating was a nightmare.

I constantly gorged on self-help books, hoping that they’d reveal whatever my “problem” was so that I could fix it and finally find the love I so desperately craved.

Many of these well-intentioned books contained dating tips designed to make someone fall in love with me. They invited me to …

Love Is Not About Possession

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Book Giveaway: Tiny Buddha’s 365 Tiny Love Challenges

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UPDATE – The winners for this giveaway are:

  • Melissa Ballinger Dees
  • Julie C. Perry
  • Bobby Irion
  • Michael Jon Piper
  • Hannah

Sometimes the world can feel like a lonely place. There are billions of people on the planet, and many of us encounter hundreds in the course of our daily lives. Yet it’s easy to feel disconnected from most, if not all of them.

The many strangers we pass on a given day, who may avert their eyes to avoid awkwardness, can start to feel like part of the scenery—like cars parked in a lot or leaves floating in the wind.…

3 Relationship Myths (and Why We Need to Stop Believing Them)

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“Love isn’t always perfect. It isn’t a fairytale or a storybook. And it doesn’t always come easy. Love is overcoming obstacles, facing challenges, fighting to be together, holding on and never letting go.” ~Unknown

When I started dating, I idealized love. I had many false notions about relationships, which I formed from my friends, watching movies, and reading romance novels. Many of the beliefs I had about how relationships should work caused me pain and disappointment because reality turned out to be different from what I expected.

Dating became a journey of resetting my expectations and letting go of false …

Do You Constantly Think and Worry About Your Relationships?

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

Sometimes it’s easy to define ourselves by our roles and relationships.

We can look at ourselves as a daughter, or someone’s employee, or so in so’s husband. These things mean a lot to us, and we often subconsciously use a variety of behaviors and mental constructs to protect these roles and relationships.

It can take form in innocuous ways, like buying clothes you don’t really want or feigning interests in order to fit in. (Go sports team!) But it also affects more serious things, …

How to Prevent Fear and Insecurity from Ruining Your Relationship

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

Buried deep within the broken heart of every great loss is a nugget of wisdom. I experienced the greatest grief of my life just a few months ago, and with it came an opportunity to uncover ugly truths about myself I’d been hiding from.

In facing my pain, I have discovered that underneath the conscious, big-hearted, beautiful person that I am lives a small girl who is terrified of being misunderstood and abandoned by those she loves most.

The surface signs alerting me to these fears looked something …

4 Relationship Traps to Avoid & Other Ways to Keep Your Love Strong

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“Love does not obey our expectations; it obeys our intentions.” ~Lloyd Strom

When I started dating, I did a terrible job of it.

I fell in love at the turn of a unique smile and fell out of it with the first sign of a stubborn bad habit. Despite that, I was a serial monogamist. I didn’t know how to develop the mental fortitude one needed to end things when they were ready to be ended, so I let them crawl on.

Teenage emotions are hard. Adult ones are hard, too.

Three years, four years, three and a half …

The Art of Being Happily Single

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“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~John Allen Paulos

Over the past ten years, I always had a man by my side. I was always in a relationship.

I was in a relationship for eight years before my ex and I got engaged, then broke it off because of the distance—my ex’s reason. Not long after that I got into a two-year relationship with a man who loved, yet cheated on me. It was a messy breakup.

So after ten years in relationships, I found myself …

6 Empowering Lessons Death Taught Me About Life

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“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss in life is what dies inside us while we live” ~Norman Cousins

I am not dead and I am not dying, so you may wonder why I write that death has taught me what I need to know about life.

I lost my mother when I was fifteen. Being a teenager, thoughts of anyone close to me dying had not entered my head. My mother had a brief illness and passed away unexpectedly at age forty-seven.

I remember that my schoolmates came to see me, and I kept thinking …

How to Defeat Your Insecurities and Tell Someone You Love Them

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“Our own ego judges us, so we become afraid of self-awareness. If it’s not puffing us up to look better than others, it’s tearing us down—anything to block us from feeling at one with reality and who we are.” ~Beth Maynard Green

Have you ever had insecurities stand in your way?

Have you ever felt afraid to tell someone how you feel?

Have you ever felt like someone could never love you the same way you love them?

We all have insecurities that hold us back in our professional life, our social life, and most of all, our love life…