Tiny Buddha

Tag: Mindfulness

  • 50 Amazing Gifts from Living In The Now

    50 Amazing Gifts from Living In The Now

    “If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.” ~Thich Nhat Hahn

    Recently something truly amazing happened. I was sitting at the beach feeling the warm winds, taking in the gleaming blue Pacific. It was the time of day when the sunlight turns the ocean into waves of sparkling radiance.

    The beauty touched me deeply. In that appreciation of the moment, something shifted inside me. I became so present that my identity of self dissolved into the background.

    I was not only in the universe, but the universe was now in me.

    As I write this I feel the energy of heightened awareness flowing through me, and have the privilege of enjoying that goose bumpy moment again. This is the universe affirming a moment of true significance.

    Two insights stand out for me as I explore the significance of this early evening experience:

    First, as I entered into full appreciation for the beauty of the moment, I became completely in the now. In the present, love, joy, higher consciousness, and peace naturally arise.

    Second, in the now, I entered into unity consciousness where my self-identity shifted to a place of oneness with all of life.

    These two insights led to a list of expanded possibilities that I would like to share with you. But first, here is a practice you can explore that will assist you in becoming fully present:

    This simple but powerful practice is mindful breathing.

    Find a peaceful place. Quiet work’s the best. Begin by feeling your chest expand as you breathe in, then notice your chest relax as your breathe out.

    As you tune in and feel your body in response to the breath, you become fully present. Each mindful cycle of the breath brings you more fully into the moment.

    When your mind wanders, gently bring your focus back to your body’s response to the breath. Breathing in this way brings peace to your mind, aliveness to your body, and joy in the moment.

    After a while, you can do this practice even in noisy places. My favorite time for breathing mindfully is on a walk.

    Now, 50 gifts from living in the present, as promised: (more…)

  • When Thoughts Cause Stress: Steps on the Path to Mindfulness

    When Thoughts Cause Stress: Steps on the Path to Mindfulness

    “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” ~Charles Swindoll

    The notion that how we feel is directly caused by events around us, or directly involving us, is a scourge of our modern times. To believe that the external world and its perceived relationship to us is the major determinative factor in how we feel (“I can’t believe he/she said that to me—that’s so outrageous!”) is disempowering and self-destructive.

    We impose our “shoulds” on what we perceive as “the world out there,” and then when it fails to live up to our arbitrary and abstract standards, we pout, mope, grumble, and complain that it “should” have been different.

    Rather than tweaking our perception, we demand that the thing we perceive should tweak itself!

    When people fail to conform to our whimsy, we often fall into yet another error avoided by the mindful: we replay upsetting events (events that we perceived as upsetting) and our emotional responses to them in our heads over and over, further upsetting ourselves.

    Many people like to imagine how they would have responded differently to an unpleasant scenario—perhaps with some pithy and scathing repartee to put the aggressor in their place, or some supremely composed nonchalance in the face of adversity.

    But these mental rehashings and rehearsals have various detrimental effects. For one, they further worsen your state of mind, which, if sustained, simply serves to draw more people and events to you that correspond to your bad mood.

    The remedy?

    First, we need to drop our “shoulds” in the moment, adopt a more “go with the flow” mindset, and accept that there will always be things that crop up that we won’t necessarily be overjoyed about.

    Believe that that is okay (and that it may ultimately be in your best interest), and, as Niebuhr said, try to cultivate the serenity to accept the things you cannot change.

    Next, we need to learn not to RE-act unconsciously to stimuli, rehashing our established habitual response to some perceived stressor. (“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me again!”)

    Instead, we need to develop a modicum of detachment and learn to observe what is occurring without identifying with it. That goes for both external processes and internal thought processes.

    People forget that no matter what happens, there is always a multitude of angles to view it from, all of them complimentary. Too easily do we adopt the idea that our own personal viewing angle trumps any other. (more…)

  • The Beauty of Nothing: Reflections on Impermanence

    The Beauty of Nothing: Reflections on Impermanence

    “Everything flows and nothing abides, everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.” ~Heraclitus 

    I’m reclining on a pebble beach, my bag tucked under my head, a can of Fanta to the right of me, above me, the sky and before me, the sea. It’s a few miles out.

    I came here alone. Friends had no time for me today. I’ve been reading instead, the cast of Anna Karenina filling the places where friends should be, and eating rich Italian ice cream, fudge flavored, even though it’ll give me an upset stomach later.

    The sun is scorching everything today, partner-in-crime with the wind. I arch back to look at a heap of discarded oyster shells. A sign reads: DO NOT REMOVE. The shells are recycled back into the oyster beds, keeping the nursery alive and sustainable.

    I roll my spine into the pebbles and wonder what oysters taste like; I don’t eat animals, fish, crustaceans, or insects.

    A couple strolls down the concrete slipway on my left, stopping before the slippery green of the sea’s memory becomes a hazard. The guy is distracted; the woman looks bored and isolated.

    You see, her partner has a video camera, one of those expensive HD ones. He’s looking at the world through it—the waning of the afternoon and the hot sun coming to settle atop the horizon.

    The people, the beaches, the bustle, the oyster shells; all are turned into a copy and later that copy will become a copy too. In the meantime, this moment will, and already has, passed.

    I look at the woman through the secrecy of my sunglasses. Her hands open and close around a bottle of water, and she lets her shoulders roll forward, creating cupped shelves from her collar bones. The sun sits in them. She’s very beautiful, very bored. She’s in the moment, but so alone.

    Her partner continues to look at the world on the screen until her hints of moving on filter through the peripherals of the camera. They leave as they came. (more…)

  • Simple Reminders to Focus on What Matters in Life

    Simple Reminders to Focus on What Matters in Life

    “Before someone’s tomorrow has been taken away, cherish those you love, appreciate them today.” ~Michelle C. Ustaszeski

    As tough as it sometimes feels, change and loss are woven into life. We cannot live a full life without them.

    Although both can be painful, they push us into a greater understanding of what matters in life, and they can help us become clearer about who we are since they provide a platform for substantial growth.

    Over the past couple of years I’ve experienced many changes as I’ve transitioned from one chapter to the next. The one constant through all of that change has been my right hand man, my best friend: my dog Tucker.

    My 80-pound golden retriever buddy came to me at the darkest period of my life. I adopted him when I was suffocating in a deep depression, and he became my earth angel that helped pull me out.

    He has been by my side through all the failed romantic relationships, horrible bosses, and seemingly wrong turns in life. Through all the chaos he’s calmed me down and kept me grounded.

    After a series of layoffs, a break up, and overcoming drug and food addictions, I thought everything would be fine because Tucker and I had made it through the darkness—until a couple weeks ago, when a veterinarian found a tumor in his nose attached to his brain. The likelihood of it being cancerous was extremely high.

    Although Tucker is sick, we still have time together. Through this experience, I’ve learned a lot about what matters in life.

    Here are some of the top lessons I’ve learned from Tucker:

    Make Your Time Count

    I spent so much time trying to be somewhere else—in another job, another relationship, another place. In my effortless pursuit to get to the greener grass, I was missing life. It wasn’t until my best friend was diagnosed with a life threatening disease that I saw the grass I’m standing on just needs a little water.

    I realize now that I have been sleepwalking through life. I was awake but always looking ahead to feel fulfillment. I couldn’t be happy with where I was, whether it was with boyfriends, my job, or where I choose to live. (more…)

  • 8 Reasons to Buy the Tiny Wisdom eBook Series (Available Now!)

    8 Reasons to Buy the Tiny Wisdom eBook Series (Available Now!)

    Since Tiny Buddha launched in 2009, I’ve written hundreds of “Tiny Wisdom” blog posts. In the beginning, I kept these short and peripheral.

    Over time, I started putting more of myself into them and giving them a lot more love and attention. Suddenly, these posts became far more popular than I ever thought they’d be.

    They aren’t lengthy how-to posts with lists of action steps. They’re short reflections on the little things that make a huge difference in our daily lives. They’re reminders of what matters and how to embrace it, right now, instead of focusing on all the things that only bring us down.

    They’re concise. They’re focused. Most importantly, they’re relevant to the challenges we all face every day.

    In recent months, I’ve received countless emails from readers asking me to compile some of these posts into an eBook—so I decided to do something even better.

    I created 5 short eBooks with posts on the following topics:

    • Self-Love
    • Happiness
    • Mindfulness
    • Love
    • Pain

    These eBooks are all available today, individually or as a complete package. On it’s own, each eBook costs $4.97. The full package of five costs $19.97—which essentially means you get one free if you buy the whole series.

    (more…)

  • Living in the Now When It’s Stressful: 4 Mindfulness Tips

    Living in the Now When It’s Stressful: 4 Mindfulness Tips

    “If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” ~Unknown

    A few weeks ago, I learned that my beloved dog, Bella, had become ill with kidney disease—a condition that will most likely not allow her to live longer than a year. I was devastated when I heard this news.

    At only eight years old, Bella didn’t seem old enough to be so sick, let alone be a year (or less) away from dying. Coping with her condition and the impending loss has been incredibly difficult—nearly impossible at times—but amid all of the pain and anxiety, I’ve come to one powerful conclusion: Life is too unpredictable not to enjoy the moment.

    The number of moments I have left with Bella—or with anyone, for that matter—are unknown. For the past three years (ever since I launched my blog, Positively Present), I’ve tried to focus on living in the now, but nothing has made that goal clearer than Bella’s recent diagnosis. Realizing my time with her is limited makes every minute even more important.

    That being said, staying present is still a daily battle. In the throes of my constantly racing thoughts—How long will she live? Is she feeling okay? Why isn’t she eating? What does the vet’s tone really mean?—it’s been incredibly difficult to enjoy the time I have with Bella.

    And, unfortunately, more often than not I find myself living not in the moment, but in the future, worrying about what will become of Bella and my life without her.

    Worrying about the future has been severely hindering my ability to live fully in the present moment, which is what I need to do most in this limited time I have left with my precious pup.

    Knowing the importance of living in the moment is one thing; taking action is another. It can be challenging to live in the now when then now is tough, but I’ve discovered a few tactics and tips to help me stay focused on the moment—and enjoy every minute I have with Bella. (more…)

  • Eliminate Proxies for a More Authentic, Present Life

    Eliminate Proxies for a More Authentic, Present Life

    On the web, there is something called a proxy server. It often sits in between a request (for example, let me watch YouTube!) and what is requested (in this case, the YouTube video file) and “passes” the request, and the result, back and forth between two computers.

    In the early days of the Internet, it was created as a way to make easier and more efficient the incredible complexity of so much information and so many people wanting to access it. There are other benefits, too—security, speed, protecting identities and information. But, it’s still an intermediary between Thing A and Thing B.

    There is, however, another kind of proxy. Whenever I hear the word, I think of Afghanistan and the notion of a “proxy war.”

    The USA and USSR might not have faced each other in battle, but in Afghanistan and so many other places, fought a “proxy war” by taking different sides in a different conflict and letting others fight it out on their behalf.

    I’ve reflected on the notion of proxies as relates to the human experience, and wanted to share some observations from my own life.

    Let’s say work is stressful; I’m facing the reality that I am, in fact, middle age; I’m out of shape and not happy with what my lack of exercise says about my discipline or, given the history of heart disease in my family, my priorities.

    We’re late for school, and my son is slow to put on his shoes.

    “Son!” I yell. “Come ON! Put on your shoes. We’re late for school. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR!”

    Valid points. My son needs to learn responsibility, and understand the importance of commitments—in this case, the implicit contract between him and his school, as to his obligations and what he gets in return in the form of an education.

    But, he’s only 6. A clear and direct, but supportive and loving, reiteration of why he should remain mindful of the time would be more appropriate. Losing my temper makes my son an unwitting proxy for other things.

    These proxies are not productive. I try to keep an eye out for them—whether I’m the proxier or the proxied—and I try not to let people, situations, or things become transformed into something that they aren’t. (more…)

  • Be a Master of Where You Are Now

    Be a Master of Where You Are Now

    “Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion.  With these, you can handle anything.” ~Jack Kornfield

    I hadn’t taken a yoga class in a while, and in the midst of my busy schedule I finally gave myself permission to go. Needless to say it had been a few months since I found myself in a downward dog position.

    Something was different about my participation in two classes I recently took. I wish I could say I was able to go deeper into the poses, but it was actually challenging because my flexibility is not where it used to be.

    What struck me were the many great metaphors that these two women, Michelle and Debbie, were sharing in their yoga instruction.

    I confess, I’m a metaphor junky and look for them everywhere. I can probably blame my dad for that since he spoke to me in metaphors while growing up.

    What I noticed and appreciated about my instructors was that they were both very passionate about the practice of yoga. They were cognizant in educating us about position names and consistently reminded us to breathe.

    I also loved that there were so many other rich messages to be heard, metaphorically of course, being that I was paying attention to them.

    There were some gentle reminders that could be related to many different areas of life—career, relationships, wealth and finances, material purchases, and health. As I share them with you, I‘m curious as to how you would relate to them in your own unique way. (more…)

  • Conscious Healing: The Power of Mindfulness and Meditation

    Conscious Healing: The Power of Mindfulness and Meditation

     

    “Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    One morning I woke up and noticed a few strange red bumps on my arms—bug bites, I thought.

    Then, the next day, more bumps. Within one full week, my skin went from being clear and tan to being covered with red, scaly teardrop spots all over my body, including my face.

    My self-esteem and confidence were thrown out the window; my comfort zone reduced to about the size of a prisoner’s cell.

    I went to the dermatologist, avoiding any possible eye contact or bright office lights, and made my way into the office. The doctor came in and I watched her eyes go straight to my arms and hands. By the look of it, she immediately knew what it was.

    I’ve had Psoriasis before but nothing this excruciating. She explained to me that I had Guttate Psoriasis. In short: no magic pill to cure it. Creams alleviate it (although they never worked for me, ever). Light therapy helps, but the ultimate cure: meditation and believing that I would get better.

    Just put yourself in my shoes for a second and imagine your skin completely shifted gears on you over the course of one week, and the only answer that you get from a professional with a foreign-sounding name, holding an iPad, is meditation and belief. Sounds like a load of crap, right?

    But when you’re in the mercy of the unknown, and you literally feel like jumping out of your own skin, you will do anything to get better.

    I’m not here to complain or give you a medical testimony on Psoriasis. I’m here to tell you how my skin alleviated tremendously in about two months by being mindful of my actions and thoughts, harnessing the effectiveness of words, and exercising the practice of meditation. (more…)

  • Giveaway and Interview: The Mindful Manifesto

    Giveaway and Interview: The Mindful Manifesto

    Note: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to receive free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

    The winners:

    If you read this site regularly, odds are you’re familiar with mindfulness, and you may even meditate regularly.

    It’s a simple practice that can dramatically improve our physical, mental, and emotional well-being, since it helps ground us in the present moment, and frees us from the burden of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.

    Whether you’re new to mindfulness or not, you’ll likely find some helpful tools in The Mindful Manifesto: How Doing Less and Noticing More Can Help Us Thrive in a Stressed Out World. Straight-forward and comprehensive, the book offers detailed instructions to retrain our minds—and be kind to ourselves in the process.

    Mindfulness teacher Ed Haliwell, who co-authored The Mindful Manifesto with Dr. Jonty Heaversedge, took some time to answer a few questions about the book; and he generously offered to give away 5 copies to Tiny Buddha readers.

    The Giveaway

    To enter to win 1 of 5 free copies of The Mindful Manifesto:

    • Leave a comment below.
    • Tweet: RT @tinybuddha Book GIVEAWAY & Interview: The Mindful Manifesto http://bit.ly/H7vMTw

    If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still enter by completing the first step. You can enter until midnight PST on Friday, April 6th.

    The Interview

    1. Tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to teach mindfulness?

    I came to mindfulness practice when I was experiencing a lot of stress, depression and anxiety. I kept searching for ways to change how I was feeling, and several people suggested learning to meditate. (more…)

  • Why the Grass is Never Greener and How to Be Happy Today

    Why the Grass is Never Greener and How to Be Happy Today

    “If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” ~Unknown

    Lifestyle. Opportunities. Wealth. Just think how far we’ve come in the past 100 years—especially when you look at what we have today compared with our great grandmothers’ generation.

    My great grandmother married very young, lived in the same place her whole life, and had 11 children. She never had a “career” and never got a chance to go on a vacation. Her life was hard, poor, and lacking in any real opportunity.

    I wonder if she ever dreamed about moving to another city, or transforming her life, or about seeing the world with just a backpack. I bet she did, but back then there weren’t as many opportunities as we have today.

    Thanks to technology, the Internet, and an improved society, our lifestyles are completely transformed. We have choices. We can live pretty much anywhere we want. We can travel and see the world.

    We can secure jobs on the other side of the planet. We can start our own businesses and serve clients thousands of miles away. It’s definitely an exciting time.

    But when there is a wealth of opportunities, choices, and places where we could choose to live, you’d think we’d all be happy, right? Wrong.

    You see, the problem with having choices is that we become restless. We can’t settle on what we already have or be satisfied with what we’ve got because we’ll always be wondering about the next big thing.

    It’s called “the grass is always greener” syndrome. We think someone else is having a better time elsewhere. We make ourselves miserable by constantly thinking about the unknown in an endless quest to find happiness. (more…)

  • How to Stop Dwelling on the Life You Could Be Living

    How to Stop Dwelling on the Life You Could Be Living

    “If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” ~Oprah Winfrey

    I’ve often compared myself to others and imagined that they have a better life than I do.

    The youngest of eight children, I grew up with a mother who often said, “So and so must really be happy! Look at them! They know how to live life.”

    Becoming a widower at the age of forty with eight children to raise was not easy on her, which is why she constantly wished her life were different. And somehow, those thoughts and words stuck with me.

    I’ve frequently felt that I’m not enough, despite being a professor and researcher, having published books, and having presented at conferences in Brazil and abroad.

    No matter how much I’ve done and accomplished in my life, I usually catch myself looking at other people´s lives and thinking they´re better off (despite all the webinars, self-development books, self-improvement mp3s, and meditations I have done).

    I compare myself to people who somehow “seem” to lead a more fun life. In the beginning of my career, I thought that other researchers were always “producing” more than I was.

    This type of thinking also manifests in the suspicion that I could be living another life.

    Let me explain: We sometimes get stuck, thinking the past, or our “lost opportunities,” as we like to label them, are better than the present.

    Our thinking might sound like this:

    “If I had done such and such, I would be living my dreams.”

    “I could be living this adventurous life in another city doing something else.”

    “I´d be so happy if only I had…”

    This is where the problem lies.

    Lost opportunities happen when we are nowhere instead of now here.

    We are nowhere when we live in the present lamenting the past, dreaming of a future that may never come if we are not mindful about our present, about the now here.

    No one can be happy if not in the present. (more…)

  • Simple Tips and Reminders about Living in the Now

    Simple Tips and Reminders about Living in the Now

    “If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    A person I work with recently left me an article about the unproductiveness of multitasking. On it was a sticky-note saying, “I think you’ll like this article. I wish I could do better in this area. I find it difficult, if not impossible, to not look at e-mail for a couple of hours if I’m at my desk.”

    I immediately thought of my dad. He and I had met for lunch a few days earlier. He’s in his mid-70s and still loves his career, continuing to work nearly full-time.

    At one point in the meal it occurred to me that unlike everyone else I know (myself included), he wouldn’t be receiving a call or a text message during our time together. He has a cell phone, but he always turns it off when he’s meeting with someone, whether a business meeting or a personal get-together.

    He doesn’t put it on silent. He doesn’t put it on vibrate. He turns it off.

    What a nice feeling for me, to be with someone who was totally present—and what a nice thing for him, to be living fully in the present moment.

    My smartphone isn’t set to notify me when I get a new e-mail, but I regularly feel the temptation to check it, particularly in moments when there is a “lull in the action.”

    For example, I recently checked my email (under a jacket so as not to disturb anyone else) when I was bored during a movie. That’s just the kind of thing that caused me to hold out on making the move to a smartphone in the first place—the concern that I would let the ease of access to things like e-mail suck me in at times when I previously would have been happy to do without.

    Back to my eating with my dad. Here’s another thing that anyone who has a meal with him will notice: He’s an incredibly slow eater—likely the slowest eater you have ever met. He chews for a long time, and he savors every bite.

    He eats mindfully. (more…)

  • Living Fully Book Giveaway and Interview with Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche

    Living Fully Book Giveaway and Interview with Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche

    Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to receive free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

    The Winners:

    Have you ever felt like the present moment is passing you by while you’re caught up worrying, analyzing, planning, and trying to protect yourself from pain and loss?

    It’s one the pitfalls of the human condition: we often paralyze ourselves in the pursuit of happiness and abundance, and in the process, miss out on the joy right in front of us.

    Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche has devoted his life to helping people live joyful, mindful lives, free from the burdens of their minds.

    In his new book, Living Fully, Finding Joy in Every Breath, Rinpoche summarizes his teachings in succinct, easily digestible sections. The result is a guide for living in the moment, peacefully, connected to the people and the world around us.

    The Giveaway

    To enter to win 1 of 2 free copies of Living Fully:

    • Leave a comment below
    • Tweet: RT @tinybuddha Book GIVEAWAY & Interview: Living Fully (comment on the blog to win!) http://bit.ly/ydAMit

    If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still enter by completing the first step. You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, March 11th.

    The Interview

    1. You were trained to be a Lama from the age of four. Did you always feel certain you wanted to be a spiritual teacher?

    Even though I was trained in the most ancient Tibetan Buddhist spiritual tradition from a very young age, I personally never intended to become a spiritual leader. (more…)

  • Dealing with Uncertainty: 5 Tips to Create Trust and Patience

    Dealing with Uncertainty: 5 Tips to Create Trust and Patience

    Calm Woman Meditating on Sunset Beach, Relax in Open Arms Pose

    “If you’re going to doubt something, doubt your own limits.” ~Don Ward

    So far I’ve gone from Sydney to Melbourne, Melbourne to Moruya, Moruya to Sydney, and Sydney to Brisbane, and my Australian adventure continues.

    I’m now about to depart from Brisbane and settle in on the Gold Coast in Queensland for the next few months while I get my yoga teacher certification and continue to explore this beautiful country.

    It’s been five months, ten days, and four hours since I landed at the Sydney International airport from Los Angeles. When I first left, I had no real expectations other than to fully experience as much of this country as I could.

    I had no specific plans other than to allow myself to be guided closer toward inner peace and freedom. There was no way of knowing how or if things were going to work in my favor.

    How can we ever really know if things will ultimately work in our favor?

    We can’t necessarily know, but we can absolutely believe they will.

    When we re-commit ourselves each day to the possibilities of a bright and incredible life, each day begins to reveal more direction, and the clarity we seek emerges from the uncertainty.

    I recently heard Tony Robbins say, “The quality of our lives is directly related to the amount of uncertainty we can live with comfortably.” This has become a daily mantra for me.

    When we don’t know where we’re headed, that doesn’t mean we’re heading somewhere undesirable. We can focus on everything that could go wrong, or we can focus on everything that could go right.

    Happiness depends upon our ability to make friends with the unknown, to respect and enjoy it, and to fully embrace and welcome it.

    Some of my personal goals has been to start my own business and continue finding writing opportunities that pay me and allow me to help others through sharing my experiences. (more…)

  • Create Solutions, Not Resolutions

    Create Solutions, Not Resolutions

    New Day

    “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    With the New Year approaching, resolutions are on everyone’s mind.

    I’ve never liked the word “resolution.” As defined in the dictionary, resolution means “a firm decision to do or not do something,” and anyone who’s ever done, well, anything knows that life rarely works like that.

    I prefer to think of my January decisions as New Year’s solutions. Defined in the dictionary as “a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation,” solutions are useful and practical. Thinking about them now helps us find peace in whatever may happen in the year ahead.

    The best solution I can think of, and one that is especially helpful after the excess of the holiday season, is letting go.

    I often hear stories from people who decide at the beginning of a year that this will be the one when they’ll be able to fix their bodies.

    They want to “fix” themselves; they want to look like their high school pictures or their super fit best friends or whoever’s on the cover of Vogue.

    My feedback for all who are constricted by a negative diet mentality: let go.

    This seems counterintuitive, ironic, cruel, and maybe even ridiculous. You’ve just connected with a powerful desire about what you want your life to be like, and now I’m going to tell you that you have to move forward completely unattached to the outcome of whether you’ll get the life you want and will now be working toward.

    The crux of this philosophy is that in order to get that which we want, we must let go of our need and desire for it.

    This may sound impossible, unattainable, and completely contradictory; however, this is where freedom lies.

    I know firsthand that letting go is the path to freedom and joy. My struggle with weight started when I was a toddler. When I got older, I thought that if I could only lose the extra weight, I would be happy.

    I did lose the weight—a hundred pounds—between my twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth birthdays. I had finally achieved what I thought was my goal; I was thin, so I should be happy, right?

    I was more miserable than ever. I was so worried about gaining the weight back, so scared that I might relapse, that I couldn’t enjoy my newfound health.

    I was stuck living in fear that the future would not be what I wanted, that I would lose control, that my hard work would be for naught.

    It was only when I figured out how to live in the present, how to be focus on the now and not concern myself with worrying about things that had not even yet happened, that I was able to be happy.

    After learning to do that, not only was I content for the first time in my life, but I also was able to keep the weight off without worrying about it. I have kept that a hundred pounds off for twenty-four years.

    We achieve the life we desire when we begin living for the moment, in the moment, and because of the moment. Finding happiness in this New Year will not be an outcome or a result. It is doing; it is being.

    How can your foster this way of being in your life? It begins with looking at those things we desire most and finding the bliss in working toward them in the present—not in achieving them in the future.

    Achievement is still the goal, but ironically, you only get there by letting go of the need for it. (more…)

  • Book Giveaway and Interview with Rick Hanson: Develop a Buddha Brain

    Book Giveaway and Interview with Rick Hanson: Develop a Buddha Brain

    Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

    The Winners:

    I read a lot of books about mindfulness; this was by far one of my favorites. In his book Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time, Rick Hanson offers practical, daily practices, backed by the latest in brain research, to help us avoid stress, improve our mood, enjoy life more fully, and develop emotional resilience.

    This is not merely a book of mindfulness exercises; it’s a guide that helps us rewire our brains for increased happiness and overall well-being. I highly recommend Just One Thing to anyone who’s felt overwhelmed by disempowering, negative thoughts.

    The Giveaway

    To enter to win 1 of 2 free copies of Just One Thing:

    • Leave a comment below.
    • Tweet: RT @tinybuddha Book Giveaway & Interview with Rick Hanson: Develop a Buddha Brain http://bit.ly/rW3u3N

    If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still enter by completing the first step. You can enter until midnight PST on Sunday, December 11th.

    The Interview
    1. Your work is based on the idea that meditation and mindfulness can change the brain. Can you expand on this?

    Actually, I’d put this a little more broadly: my work—and that of many other scholars and clinicians—is grounded in the general fact of “experience-dependent neuroplasticity,” which is the capacity of mental activity to change neural structure.

    For example, researchers studied cab drivers who must memorize London’s spaghetti snarl of streets, and at the end of their training their hippocampus—a part of the brain that makes visual-spatial memories—had become thicker: much like exercise, they worked a particular “muscle” in their brain, which built new connections among its neurons.

    Similarly, another study found that long-term mindfulness meditators had thicker cortex in parts of the brain that control attention and tune into one’s body.

    In the saying from the work of the Canadian psychologist, Donald Hebb: “neurons that fire together, wire together.”

    Fleeting thoughts and feelings leave lasting traces in neural structure. Whatever we stimulate in the brain tends to grow stronger over time.

    A traditional saying is that the mind takes the shape it rests upon. The modern update would be that the brain takes its shape from whatever the mind rests upon—for better or worse. The brain is continually changing its structure. The only questions are: Who is doing the changing: oneself or other forces? And are these changes for the better?

    In this larger context, my focus is on how to apply these new scientific findings: how to use the mind to change the brain to change the mind for the better—for psychological healing, personal growth, and (if it’s of interest) deepening spiritual practice. I’m especially interested in: (more…)

  • The Days Will Run Out

    The Days Will Run Out

    “If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    I heard this story recently while listening to a favorite radio show of mine. It was about this homeless man who was detailing some of his experience with homelessness.

    He told stories of sleeping outside in the rain and waiting for hours to get into an overcrowded shelter. He even told a story about another homeless man, who could speak no English, who told him about how he had spent a sleepless night in a trash compactor because he felt safer and was drier than sleeping out on the street.

    He didn’t get much sleep, however, because all night he kept worrying that someone might press “the button.”

    The single story he told that stood out in my mind, however, was the story of the time he was offered the job of house-sitting for a friend.  As you could imagine, the thought of existing somewhere safely, of being sheltered from the weather, of being able to relax on a couch and watch TV was overwhelming for him.

    He was excited like a child might be excited before being told that his parents had decided to go out and buy him a brand new bicycle.

    There was no doubt that he was thrilled about all these things, and he certainly had a right to be. With all that he was about to experience, however, the thing that he looked forward to the most was sleeping. 

    Really? Sleeping? I wondered, how could he be excited about sleeping when he had a house all to himself?

    The thing is, sleeping in a warm bed, to most of us, is something we take for granted. Something we don’t ever think about. But, as this man detailed, sleeping is tough when you’re homeless.

    You don’t get much sleep when the cold and wet are invading every inch of your body. Most of the time, when you do sleep, you sleep with one eye open for fear of having something stolen, or being attacked.

    So when he first fell like a rough heavy stone into the softness of his friend’s bed that first night, all he could do was lay there looking at the dark quiet ceiling and feel grateful. Then he said something that was special to me. Something that resonated inside me like the assertive crisp ring of a bell.  (more…)

  • 5 Ways to Find Your Center When Life Feels Overwhelming

    5 Ways to Find Your Center When Life Feels Overwhelming

    “Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse

    We’ve all had moments when life’s demands left us feeling stressed and scattered. In these moments, it’s helpful to have some simple tools to help us gain composure and come back to our center.

    Let me paint a picture for you of a scene from my daily life at its most overwhelming.

    On a recent Tuesday, I drafted my evening’s “to-do” list, which contained the following items: Go clothes shopping for my son, get groceries, cook up some dog food, cook dinner, give my son a bath, put laundry away, walk the dog, and prepare for a workshop that I was to present that weekend.

    Like most working parents, I have to fit a lot of tasks into a brief period of time on weeknight evenings.

    Clearly all of those items weren’t going to get accomplished. But I felt compelled to try.

    And then, mid-afternoon, a feeling of illness began to creep over me, starting with a headache and progressing into nausea and profound fatigue. By the time I got home, I had revised my list, and whittled it down to: Bathe my son.

    I felt incapable of anything else.

    Still, even with a truncated list, my evening became chaotic very quickly. Our newly-acquired dog was dripping blood all over the house, including the white slipcover. She was not sick—she was in heat.

    As I tried to attend to the mess, my son called to me from the kitchen. He held his cupped hand out to me, and proudly exclaimed, “I caught it so it wouldn’t fall on the kitchen floor!”

    I will allow you to draw your own conclusions about what his hand held, but I’ll give you a hint: He’s potty training.

    In the mean time, my head was throbbing, my stomach was retching, dishes from the previous day were piled up in the sink, laundry from the week sat haphazardly on my bedroom chair, and the workshop I was to present in four days had not been planned or prepared for. Not to mention, I had a hungry child and dog to attend to.

    Sometimes, when external factors like these seem overwhelming, we feel unable to remove ourselves from the situation long enough to gain perspective and compose ourselves in order to move forward.

    Very often, these external factors become internalized, and our minds start reeling. “I’ll never get it all done, my life is spiraling out of control, I can’t get myself together…” The internal loop can be loud, persistent, and ultimately paralyzing. And once it begins, it is hard to stop. (more…)

  • CD Giveaway, Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress

    CD Giveaway, Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress

    Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to receive free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

    The Winners:

    Last year, a representative from More Than Sound reached out to me to share the publishing company’s new mindful driving CD, Awake at the Wheel.

    As someone who frequently deals with Los Angeles traffic, I especially appreciated the opportunity to hear and share a CD focused on making the roads more peaceful.

    Recently, More Than Sound connected with me again to introduce their latest offering, a CD by emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman titled Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress.

    I’m grateful for the opportunity to share it with you and offer 5 free copies as a giveaway!

    The Giveaway

    To win one of 5 free copies of Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress:

    • Leave a comment on this post.
    • Tweet: RT @tinybuddha Giveaway – Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress http://bit.ly/vr9r6O

    You can enter until midnight PST on Friday, November 11th. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still enter by completing the first step.

    About Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress

    Chronic stress can disrupt almost all of your body’s processes. It’s been shown to increase the risk of numerous health problems including heart disease, sleep issues, digestive complications, fatigue, depression, anxiety and obesity.

    Daniel Goleman, Harvard-trained psychologist and author of Emotional Intelligence, developed Relax, a 45-minute audio program to help listeners effectively and naturally reduce stress. Since there’s no one universal antidote to stress relief, Dr. Goleman’s guided session offers several exercises to suit a variety of personal preferences:

    • Deep breathing exercises
    • Deep muscle relaxation techniques
    • Guided auto suggestion exercises
    • Relaxation countdown
    • Breath focus and tension release techniques
    • Breath count exercises
    Learn more about Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress at More Than Sound. You can also “like” the Facebook page for Relax for stress reduction tips.