Posts tagged with “Peace”

Overcoming Anxiety: Moving from Fear to Presence

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” ~Nelson Mandela

When I was a trainee teacher at a Cambridge University, I attended one of the oldest, most sought-after colleges, where most of the other graduate students were astrophysicists and economists, and 90% male.

They also seemed to come from families that were in some way related to the Queen of England, whereas I was a young, pregnant, trainee high school teacher whose nearest connection to Queens was owning a Freddie Mercury single, and I was a little shy.

Formal college dinners were a …

6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful

By Nicolas Perrin

“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.” ~Mary Catherine Bateson

It was a balmy spring morning and I started my day as per usual, but I soon realized that my mind was entertaining fearful thoughts about my financial insecurity.

With many new ventures within the seedling stage, my income flow was erratic and unpredictable, while my financial responsibilities were consistent and guaranteed. At the time I ignored these thoughts as “petty,” like a parent dismissing a crying child after a mild fall on the pavement.

What I didn’t realize was that my mind wanted …

10 Powerful Gifts to Give and Receive Today

By Lori Deschene

“Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons.” ~Ruth Ann Schabacker

Regardless of what holiday you celebrate, or how you honor it, there’s no denying this is an emotionally loaded time of year.

We either remind ourselves how grateful we are for all the people we love, or we remember how much it hurts that we don’t have people like that in our lives.

We either celebrate all our blessings, or we look toward the year to come, wondering if we’ll have more then.

You may find yourself reflecting on last Christmas in awe of how much …

Active Contentment: 5 Tips to Have Both Peace and Ambition

By Rachel Small

“Peace is not merely a distant goal we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.

Stress equals success.

I wholeheartedly believed this for many years. Who had led me so astray? I have only myself to blame.

The concept of peace had no practical application in my life. Peace was something that was necessary in war-torn countries, not in my mind.

This toxic belief began in college. The library often felt like a boxing ring where my fellow students and I competed to be the most stressed out.

Who had the most …

Catch Anger Before It Catches You

By Sandra Pawula

“For every moment you are angry, you lose 60 seconds of happiness.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m not an angel. In fact, my husband used to lovingly call me a “fierce creature.” This fiery inclination can be due to inborn temperament, but it can also be a result of post-traumatic stress or similar brain-impacting life events.

It’s taken a concerted effort, over many years, for me to become more loving, tolerant, and peaceful.

But I still lose it from time to time. Like today, for example, it must have been a triple critical day because I lost it three times in …

The Illusion of Waiting for the Future to Be Happy

By Henri Junttila

“The future is always beginning now.” ~Mark Strand

Do you ever feel like there’s something missing in your life? It feels like you’re always waiting for something to arrive. You want the future to come, because it’s better there.

But that’s all wrong.

The future is an illusion. It’s just a concept in your head. This is what I’ve realized in the past few months.

I’ve suddenly become acutely aware of what’s going on. I’ve entered the present moment more powerfully than ever before.

If you go and read my previous articles here at Tiny Buddha, I talk about how …

7 Tips To Help You Slow Down and Enjoy Your Life As It Is

By Alison Roberts

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” ~Gandhi

I have always been a person who wants to be one step ahead. I think my parents would say that I liked to push the boundaries. I wanted to experience many things, and I wanted to experience them quickly.

When my brother went to sleep-away camp, I had to go the next year despite being three years younger than him.

At age thirteen I had to ski with the older kids, racing faster and harder than I was ready for.

When I was fifteen I pushed to take a trip …

The Zen of Writing: 7 Lessons About Living Wisely

By Nicholas Montemarano

“Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” ~Albert Einstein

I feel grateful to be a writer not only because I love to write, but also because writing has been one of my greatest spiritual teachers. Challenges I face as a writer teach me important life lessons, just as life teaches me lessons I can apply to my writing.

Here are seven spiritual lessons I’ve learned—some the hard way—that can apply to writing and to life in general.

1. Be mindful.

Showing up—really showing up with all your attention—is the first and most important …

How to Maintain a Healthy Relationship When You’re Depressed

By Lisa Esile

“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun, like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” ~Fred Rogers

When you’re depressed, your perception about many things changes—so how does this affect your relationships?

I’m thinking about this today, because—drum roll, please—I’m a little depressed.

Now, I’m not depressed in the suicidal “I want to drive off the road” kind of way, but in the far less dramatic but still deeply unpleasant “mild to moderate” kind of way.

For me, one of …

How to Choose Peace Instead of Stressing About the Future

By Lacy Edney

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

I was entering a completely new stage in my life. It could have been the beginning of something great, but it was entirely foreign to me. I could handle being productive, I could handle struggling to survive, but what was hard to handle was wading through the unknown.

After working for six months in Italy and six months in Brazil I was back in the US—floating. I didn’t feel any closer to having a career. I was without a car, job, …

3 Things Panic Attacks Don’t Want You To Know

By James Gummer

“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Sunday started out with a panic attack.

It wasn’t little butterflies in the stomach like right before a first kiss. It wasn’t the feeling of anticipation as a rollercoaster slowly climbs the big hill before the drop.

This panic attack felt like I was about to jump off a cliff, while being chased by clowns. Not cute clowns—scary ones. The kind of clowns that were in the paintings at my pediatrician’s office when I was a kid. The clowns that smiled at me smugly when I was getting …

Interview and Giveaway: A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life

By Lori Deschene

Note: 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:

Though we may all have varied goals and paths, ultimately, we all have the same objective: happiness. It’s with this in mind that Buddhist monk Lama Marut wrote A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life.

Through a series of meditations, exercises, and insights, he helps us overcome suffering and create contentment—two essential prerequisites to happiness.

Playful and entertaining, A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the …

12 Tips to Create a Peaceful, Passionate Life

By Oriya Pollak

“Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.” ~Osho

Osho’s game was to get people out of their heads. He wasn’t focused on world peace; he was intent on self-peace.

How do you get out of your head? How do you get more present?

For most of my life, I was stuck in my head. “Stuckness” was my primary experience. I always wanted to be somewhere else, someone else.

After years of quietly suffering and pretending to be happy, I came to understand that my stuckness was caused by numbness—physical, emotional, and spiritual.…

Death and Grieving: Breathing Through the Feeling of Loss

By Susan Poulos

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” ~Dr. Seuss

The color brown has special significance to me; it’s the color of the robes that my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh and the monastics wear. It’s the color of my children’s eyes. It’s the color of the soil I like to dig in and plant things. It’s the color of my dog, Jake’s, paws and eyes and eyebrows

My husband came home today with a chocolaty brown gift bag. I could practically smell chocolate just looking at it. I find the color brown to be so comforting, so…grounding—and sometimes so …

Create Better Days with Empowering Routines and Loving Rituals

By Debra Smouse

“We are what we repeatedly do.” ~Aristotle

This past spring, I found myself floundering—stuck within an alternating cycle of feeling either overwhelmed or paralyzed.

The combination of creative tasks and deadlines typically drives me with a strong sense of purpose and fulfillment. However, though I had both curriculum to produce and blog posts to write, I struggled to form sentences.

Instead of filling pages with words and ideas, I consoled myself by eating chocolate and watching lots of bad TV.

Needless to say, none of this was any help in boosting my productivity or pulling me out of the doldrums. …

Your Happiness Can Make a Difference in the World

By Lillian Moore

“Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~Howard Thurman

When I was eight years old I saw a news report on a war. A wounded woman was crying on a stretcher, and soldiers were carrying guns running around her. Up until that point I had thought war was like dragons or knights in armor. It was fictional or happened a long, long time ago. I couldn’t believe it was real.

At that realization, my experience of life changed. It felt …

How Pain Teaches Us to Live Fully

By Jerome Stone

“The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.” ~Anais Nin

There have been times when I’ve experienced pain when all I wanted was for its cessation.

I’m not sure whether I’m “unique” in my experience of pain or in how many times in my life I’ve had to deal with physical pain. While I don’t consider myself “cursed” by it, I’ve endured enough of it to become somewhat of an “expert” on its presence and its effects.

Besides the normal cuts and scrapes that we all experience, I’ve had the (un?)fortunate luck of having had—at separate times in my …

How to Drop the Extra (Mental) Weight and Set Yourself Free

By Dr. Amy Johnson

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

Most people I know are carrying extra weight—and I’m not talking about gaining a few pounds.

I’m talking about the mental and emotional weight we lug around with us. We carry it everywhere—like a backpack full of bricks—and it weighs us down.

Personally, much of my extra weight comes from the expectations I have for myself to be more—more present, more productive, more enlightened. Although these might be wonderful things to work toward, wanting to be more can easily translate to not being enough …

How to Keep Your Strengths from Becoming Weaknesses

By Angela Marchesani

“Our strength grows out of our weaknesses.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

In my youth, I strived to be “nice.” I tolerated a lot from others. I forgave easily and learned to “turn the other cheek.”

I made myself constantly available to other people and asked nothing in return. I remained loyal even if people mistreated me. I helped friends even when my need for help was greater. When friends started calling me their “angel,” I was proud at first.

But soon I became resentful of what that implied.

If my purpose was solely to help them, then who would help me?…

Your Thoughts Create Your World: Patrol Your Mind

By Dr. F. Emelia Sam

“Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them.” ~Paramahansa Yogananda

In my second year of residency, I went through my internal medicine rotation. I had just been assigned to a particular patient and was responsible for his care during that part of his stay. His medical chart stated he had multiple systemic issues, including more than one terminal condition.

He had been admitted to the hospital numerous times, but this was our first encounter. As I entered his room, I wasn’t sure what to expect. After all, this was a man with a limited …