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Posts tagged with “Love”

No One Should Feel That They Don’t Deserve Love

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“We accept the love we think we deserve.” ~Stephen Chbosky

There are those moments in life when things suddenly shift from a deep, sad shade of blue to a lighter shade of sky, and then eventually the beautiful reds and pinks and oranges of a sunrise.

When a light bulb snaps on in your head and you see something that you’ve been missing for days, months, maybe even years, though it doesn’t change what caused the sea of blue, it makes it look more like a calm lake than a raging ocean.

I had one of those moments not too …

6 Lessons from a Poor Childhood That Lead to a Rich Life

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“If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can’t buy.” ~Proverb

I grew up on a farm with a father that was a hired hand and a mother that took care of the elderly.

I had six siblings and was the fifth in line. We had little money, but I always felt loved, not deprived. In many ways I was a rich person.

When I was four years old I lived in a two-room house, with two bedrooms built on within the year.

We had no real kitchen (it was just a room), no …

Finding Love: A Video About Seeing What We Look For

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After moving to the beach, Filmmaker Hailey Bartholomew decided to search for heart-shaped rocks in the sand and water to prove that “what we see mainly depends on what we look for.” Over a three-week period, she and her loved ones found more than 350 of them–the rocks being a metaphor for beauty in the world around us.

What are you looking for? And where have you found it lately?

You Are the One: 5 Helpful Tips for the Brokenhearted

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“All the wonders you seek are within yourself.” ~Sir Thomas Browne

Anyone who has ever gone through some sort of heartbreak knows what awful pain it can cause, both physically and mentally. It can be devastating, shattering, and overwhelming for your spirit.

In the beginning of 2012 I had my heart broken by a person who I thought was “the one.”

Between tears and desperate calls, I found myself searching the Internet for remedies to get over an ex. I knew I was a strong person, but I just couldn’t see anything becoming brighter or better ever.

I constantly …

Get Unstuck: Stop Believing the Negative Stories You Tell Yourself

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“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” ~Maya Angelou

We’ve all done it, right? Somehow, somewhere, something bad happened to us and since that moment we’ve continued to tell ourselves the story about what might and could go wrong in our future.

For me, the biggest negative pattern I’ve had to release stems from my parents’ divorce. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a positive person. When I was a kid I was happy-go-lucky, nothing much bothered me, and life was pretty awesome.…

What Makes Life Worth Living: Create Tiny Epic Moments

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“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown

What do you think you’ll see as you lie dying?

Upon first reading this quote, I thought “Unknown” was talking about living life large. Filling days with great achievements and big moments. Going for it. Having no regrets.

I lived much of my life to create those major moments.

And maybe that is what “Unknown” was talking about.

But it’s no longer what I’m talking about when I think about the worth of my life.

High school English teacher Monique Cassidy wrote about a short …

How to Find the Motivation to Change Your Life When You Don’t Feel Capable or Worthy

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“Eventually you will come to realize that love heals everything, and love is all there is.” ~Gary Zukav

Following a path of personal development isn’t easy. Oh, it’s rewarding and can be life changing, but it can also be confusing, challenging, and scary.

What if you take the wrong path? How do you know which piece of advice is right? Can you still get the results you desperately want, even if you go against some of the assumed wisdom?

One such piece of wisdom is that people should make changes in their lives and their behavior for themselves, not for …

The One Thing You Need to Know to Overcome Perfectionism

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 “You’re imperfect and you’re wired for struggle but you are worthy of love and belonging.” ~Brene Brown

There’s nothing perfect about me, and I’m okay with that
 now. This wasn’t the case for most of my life, though. In fact, I’ve been a perfectionist for almost thirty years. I’m not counting the first five years of my life when I was free to be as messy and magical as I wanted.

In third grade I asked my mom to buy me a stack of lined notebooks and colored pens. I spent hours neatly labeling each notebook by class, date, and …

Dealing with Loneliness: Hold onto Patience, Not the Past

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“Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.” ~Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Last night, I discovered the tiniest of creatures in my shower: a minute scorpion, no larger than the average human fingernail.

I could not for the life of me work out how it had ended up here because I live on the third floor of an apartment building in a busy South African city. Nonetheless, there it was—a little fellow in the corner of the tiles, receiving ricocheted water droplets on his tiny little carapace.

My main personal learning theme for this year …

Improve Any Relationship by Challenging Your Perceptions

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“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 Nietzsche

This morning, I found my wife desperately trying to make her printer work after having set herself one hour to get some good work done. I told her she should use my printer and concentrate on more important things. Surely her printing goal was to get the document in hand, not to spend her one precious hour fighting the machine?

When our argument had died down (yes, it really did get that far!) …

6 Helpful Things to Consider If You’re In an Unhealthy Friendship

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“Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

For much of my life, I lived for approval and acceptance from family members, friends, and co-workers. I can’t recall not considering what people thought about my actions or what I had said, wondering if I could have done them better. I was always thinking of others and their feelings toward me.

It was a constant battle in my head, and it was starting to drain me of my peace.

No matter what they had done to me in the past, no matter how …

Your Loving Presence Is Enough: Helping Someone Who’s Hurting

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“Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.” ~Robert Gary Lee

As the only child of a single parent, my family of two was small and our relationship could be intense.

My southern belle mom, with her stories and easy laugh, her quick wit, and her love of all things literary was the mom who all my high school friends adored and loved—the one who my teenage friends could talk to when they were too angry or irritated with their own mother.

I loved her too, but I also worried about her. A lot. Because I knew a secret about her …

Discovering the Elusive Truth and Falling in Love with Yourself

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“Pleasure can be supported by an illusion, but happiness rests upon truth.” ~Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

In today’s world, we are bombarded day by day and moment by moment with images and messages of who we should be, what we should be doing, and exactly how we should be doing it.

The promises of happiness and fulfillment in those mirages of ultimate perfection are all too often shallow and elusive, constantly evading us and leading us time and time again to nothing more than dead ends and empty hopes.

With a natural craving for transcendence and supremacy, we grab our …

3 Lessons to Help You Find Peace When Fighting a Hard Battle

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“He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.” ~Proverb

August 3, 2001. I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was around six o’clock in the evening when she sat us down. Luther Vandross was singing in the background on the radio: “And it’s so amazing and amazing, I can stay forever and forever. Here in love and no, leave you never.”

Quite ironic when you think about the news I would soon receive.

I had just finished summer school and my sister had just returned from an internship on the East Coast. My …

Loving Others Without Expecting Them to Fill a Void

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“You must love in such a way that the other person feels free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Conventional notions of what it means to love are populated with expectations for reciprocity, which often gets us into trouble. I know this personally, because whenever I have “freely” given my love and it has not been rewarded with reciprocity, I have often come face to face with my resentment.

This has been especially true of my intimate relationships. I want the people who fall into this category, in particular, to reciprocate my love. I expect them to. But, as Thich Nhat Hanh points …

Emotionally Overloaded: Are You Taking on Too Much of Other People’s Pain?

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“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” ~Havelock Ellis

I would have done anything for my friends, until one of them nearly broke my heart and spirit. He was my best friend. We felt like platonic soul mates.

We had a standing lunch date every week, called each other terms of endearment, cried together, laughed together—the standard best friend things.

Then, tragedy struck him. Over and over.

His long-time partner left him. Then he lost his executive-level job. Next, he had a string of major medical issues that put him in …

How to Recognize and Help When Someone Needs Support

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“When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another-and ourselves.” ~Jack Kornfield

After planning the next three months of my life in my head, trying to focus on my breath and recounting the plans for tomorrow, I decided my battle with insomnia was going to win. I got up, careful not to wake my husband, and decided to start reading.

Nestling into the lines of my latest library book well after midnight, my phone began to beep.

Even in the most quiet of the night, are we ever really alone?

I …

Opening Up to the Possibility of Love: 3 Things to Remember

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“Love takes off the mask that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”  ~James Arthur Baldwin

I sat silent on one end of the phone. I could hear my own breath and heart pounding in my ears.  I was sitting on the precipice of greatness, and all I had to do was express what I was feeling. Sounds relatively straightforward, so why did I feel so anxious?

To say that I have worked hard at rediscovering my authentic self would be an understatement. I have been on this quest in one form or fashion since …

Learn to Love and Accept Yourself, Wherever You Go

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“Wherever you go, there you are.” ~Confucius

The sweat of my palms saturated our boarding tickets. Even as I stepped onto the plane, I still could not entirely believe we were doing it.

My husband and I finished our master’s degrees and instead of immediately securing jobs, buying a house, and starting a family, we decided to travel.

We thought escaping our lives was living on the wild side—rediscovering ourselves. Well, at least that’s what I thought.

I lived in Spain during my undergraduate degree ten yeas ago and had ceaselessly fixated on the idea about returning ever …

Confessions of a Love Junkie: Recovering from Love Addiction

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“The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others” ~Sonya Friedman

Love is a funny thing. According to modern day psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists alike, the consensus is that it is just as easy to become addicted to falling in love as it is to get hooked on street drugs. But I think maybe my favorite drug is love. I guess they’d call it my drug of choice.

The irony in that statement is beyond comprehension. Any one of us who has fallen in love, or struggled with addiction on some level, knows damn well that choice seems to …