Tiny Buddha

Tag: Peace

  • How to Reduce Stress by Doing Less and Doing It Slowly

    How to Reduce Stress by Doing Less and Doing It Slowly

    Zen man

    “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” ~Socrates

    In April, NPR ran a story titled, “The Slow Internet Movement.” It reported that hipster cities, like Portland, Oregon, are sprouting Internet cafés that only offer dial-up access to the web.

    These cafés give customers, “Slow pours and slow Internet. Here, you can order your coffee and spend four hours checking your email, all for $.99 an hour.”

    “Wow,” I thought.” That’s just my speed!” (No pun intended.) But the story didn’t just run in April. It ran on April 1st and was NPR’s little April Fools joke at the expense of gullible people like me.

    It got me thinking, though. Life would be much less stressful if I embraced the spirit of the Slow Internet Movement. So, here are four tips for slowing down:

    1. Double the time you think it will take to complete a task.

    How often do you clock in at or under the time you’ve allotted for a task? I rarely do. Take my raised ivy geranium bed. Periodically, the geraniums spill over onto the walkway and I need to cut them back.

    Every time I assess the task, I estimate it will take twenty minutes at most. But it always takes at least twice that long. By the time I’m done, due to chronic illness, I’ve used up my energy stores for the day. I’m “trashed” as we call it my household.

    Inspired by The Slow Internet Movement, when I tackled the task a few weeks ago, I doubled my twenty-minute time estimate. Forty minutes is more than I can handle at one time, so I cut back half the geraniums on Saturday and the other half on Sunday.

    Sure, the box looked odd for twenty-four hours—like half of a buzz cut—but no one seemed to notice. Not only did I spare myself burnout, but I truly enjoyed the activity both times. (more…)

  • 5 Immediate and Easy Ways to Silence Your Inner Critic

    5 Immediate and Easy Ways to Silence Your Inner Critic

    “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” ~William Shakespeare

    I love to paint. I’m not a professional artist. I have no technique, and I am not trained. But I love how the brush feels as it dips into color and moves across a white page.

    Painting allows me to be free, to have fun and play. It also does something else: It shows me how I judge myself and how I can get in my own way. It reveals what I believe about myself that stops me from creating whatever I want.

    Even as I take joy in the process of painting I still hear the inner-critic in my head:

    “This flower is not pretty enough. It should be purple, not red.”

    “Make this face look good so others can recognize what a good painter you are.”

    “You can’t paint just for the sheer joy of it—you need to be doing more productive things with your time.”

    “It’s ugly, and when people see it, they’re going to think you’re weird.”

    The judge inside me likes to tell me how bad I am. He mocks me, teases me, and pushes me around. He’s mean, insensitive, and determined to hold me back.

    When we engage in a project, whether it is the beginning, the middle, or the end, the judge loves to get involved. Although the judge is very unoriginal and speaks to each of us very much the same, his judgments take on hundreds of forms.

    The judge is most definitely a thief, robbing us of our innate goodness, worth, talent, values, and ability. He makes us believe in illusions, wreaks havoc on our spirit, and causes chaos in our mind.

    He likes to break our ego and tell us we are not enough and bad. He likes to tell us we are not loved and not cared about—that we don’t matter.

    He even likes to stroke our ego and puff us up, telling us how good we are, how special and how unique. “Look how beautiful that purple flower is. Look how very talented you are. When people see this, they’re going to find you very special.”

    He loves to break us and stroke us. He loves to seduce us and tempt us. He loves to make us doubt ourselves.

    So how do we silence this inner critic and put him in his place? (more…)

  • Simple Happiness: Choose, Practice, Repeat

    Simple Happiness: Choose, Practice, Repeat

    “Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.” ~Denis Waitley

    I just spent the past 17 months of my life trying to find, travel to, or somehow earn happiness.

    I had just given birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy. I had a loving husband, a home, good friends, and a supportive family. I was supposed to be happy. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t explain why, even to myself.

    This led to more anxiety and major guilt. I felt like I had tripped into a deep, dark, cavernous hole. My family and friends threw me many ropes in various attempts to pull me out. Four months after my son’s birth, I sought help.

    The diagnosis was post-partum depression and anxiety.  For the next year, I tried both therapy and medication, though I was hesitant to ingest anything more than the lowest dosage available. Neither of them seemed to be consistently effective for me.

    Then last April I had a falling out with my boss and a co-worker on the same day. As a perfectionist and people-pleaser, this devastated me. I hit my rock-bottom of sadness. It finally dawned on me that I had spent the past year and a half isolating myself from all that I used to love.  Even my husband and closest family members felt disconnected from me.

    My head was so crowded with feelings of how the hell am I going to get through this day thatthere was no room to enjoy my life. The next morning I awoke with an epiphany—an “aha!” moment, if you will.

    I was reading a magazine article about a frazzled new mother, trying to balance a coffee, a stroller, a grumpy toddler, and a cell phone—all with a glazed-over, vacant look in her eyes.

    “Oh my God, that’s me,” I thought.

    My one-and-only messy, beautiful life was happening, and I was missing it. I needed to wake up. (more…)

  • This Moment Does Not Define You

    This Moment Does Not Define You

    “Things and conditions can give you pleasure but they cannot give you joy—joy arises from within.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    I struggled with anorexia for four years before I went to rehab. Rehab saved my life, and although I am not “completely recovered,” I am in recovery. I am coping. I am living again.

    One of the biggest sources of fuel for my eating disorder was my hyper-focus on the physical and transitory aspects of life.

    In my mind, I over-emphasized the importance of my body. I put the appearance of my body, and how I felt about my body, above my true, underlying nature.

    I would treat fleeting thoughts, feelings, and emotions as crucial, life-and-death matters.

    I did not realize or appreciate my crucial and enduring self, which (I now understand) transcends the fleeting states of the corporal realm.

    During this time, surface feelings took on a villainous and critical role. I know this sounds melodramatic and unrealistic (because it is), but “feeling bloated” literally felt like the death of me. I could not separate my true self from my passing thoughts and feelings.

    A huge part of my recovery and self-discovery has been my ability to separate my identity and the surface mental sewage that blocks my view of reality.

    I realized that I am not my body – kind of weird, but cool and life-changing. I am much more than just my physical form.

    I’m not saying that I’m really some waif-like spirit, floating on the whimsical current of an indefinable world (that would be cool though).

    What I’m saying is that my physical self—my body, my fleeting feelings and thoughts—do not define me.

    I am not just me sitting here typing this blog post. I am not me who ate apples with a whole lot of peanut butter for breakfast. I am not me who will take a sip of black iced coffee in about three seconds.

    I am a conglomeration, a whole melting pot of things and thoughts and feelings and actions and ideas and emotions. I am now and then and I am more to come. (more…)

  • How to Feel Comfortable in Your Own Skin

    How to Feel Comfortable in Your Own Skin

    You Are Beautiful

    “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    From the time I was a little girl, people told me I was pretty, but I never believed them. Instead, I scrutinized myself in the mirror searching for ways to look better, not realizing that what I was really looking for was a way to be me and feel good about myself.

    As I focused even more on my looks throughout my twenties, I became increasingly self-conscious and dependent on how others perceived me. If someone complimented me and gave me attention, I would feel confident, but if I went unflattered or unnoticed, I would return to the mirror in an effort to figure out why.

    I had often heard the expression “what you are inside shows on your face.” However, I didn’t know what these words truly meant until one day at the age of thirty-five.

    That day, I took another long look in the mirror and suddenly something clicked: My looks were not the problem—they never were.

    Somehow I understood that what I didn’t like about my face had nothing to do with my physical features. It was something else, something within myself that was reflecting out and causing me to feel unattractive, ill at ease, and unconfident.

    At that moment I knew there were two things I needed to do. The first was to stop staring in the mirror. The second was to look at what was going on inside.

    A friend recommended meditation, so I gave that a try. I sat, breathed, quieted my thoughts, and shared my feelings in a nine-hour course, which I followed with a two-day silent meditation retreat.

    It’s possible that a silent retreat may not be for everyone, but it was one of the most valuable experiences of my life. The two days forced me to meditate, reflect, and “be” with myself in an environment that did not permit social interaction, not even eye contact.

    There were also no distractions, such as telephone, TV, books, or computers.

    Was the experience disagreeable? Initially, yes. Was it painful? Sometimes, but it allowed me to bring forth a lot of valuable self-information and one remarkable realization: I became conscious of how unnatural I felt.

    In the time I was there, I recognized that I was not uncomfortable in that setting because I didn’t know how to be with myself. I was uncomfortable because I didn’t know how to be myself.

    This was also why I often felt unattractive and ill at ease with others.

    I was frequently projecting someone who didn’t feel “like me,” and that projection habitually depended on who I was interacting with.

    It was this realization that launched my journey to authenticity and the discovery of a beautiful me.

    Slowly, I started to learn about myself and the things that make me happy, and I found that I had a rhythm. I could hardly believe it, but I actually had my own beautiful flow, and as soon as I began to follow it my authenticity started to build on itself.

    I gradually began to feel less self-conscious around others and much more comfortable with myself.

    For the first time in my life I started to feel well and beautiful—and it showed. I saw it in the mirror. My husband noticed it in my body language. He said I carried myself differently, like I had more confidence and ease.

    Of course, many practices assisted me in my journey, but the ones that helped the most are the ones that keep me grounded in myself today. (more…)

  • Why Judging People Makes Us Unhappy

    Why Judging People Makes Us Unhappy

    “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

    A friend of mine likes to joke that dying will be a relief because it will put an end to the “heavy burden of judging,” as she calls it. She envisions herself lying in a hospital bed and, moments before death, noticing the ceiling and thinking, “What a hideous green.”

    Here’s a modest proposal: Vow that for the rest of the day, you won’t judge your friends and you won’t judge any strangers you happen to see. This would include a friend who’s a non-stop talker; it would include a friend who’s always complaining about his life. It would include the strangers you pass on the street or see in a waiting room.

    I call it a modest proposal because I’m not even addressing the issue of self-judgment, let alone BP or Gaddafi. No. I’m just asking you not to judge friends or strangers.

    It’s entirely possible you won’t make it past a few minutes without judging someone!

    So, why not just judge away?

    To answer that, let me start by drawing a distinction between judgment and discernment.

    Discernment means perceiving the way things are, period.

    Judgment is what we add to discernment when we make a comparison (implicit or explicit) between how things or people are and how we think they ought to be. So, in judgment, there’s an element of dissatisfaction with the way things are and a desire to have things be the way we want them to be. (more…)

  • 7 Healthy Ways to Deal with Incessant Worrying

    7 Healthy Ways to Deal with Incessant Worrying

    Woman Meditating

    “I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    When you think about the future, are you filled with hope or worry? If you are like most people, it’s probably anxiety. You have largely been experiencing worry. Your mind feels unsettled.

    Worry arises because you realize that you cannot predict what is going to happen tomorrow and know that you cannot have full control over how events turn out. You are uncomfortable with not having absolute certainty.

    Incessant worrying happens when you find it hard to let go. You fret over the same details repeatedly. A fertile imagination causes you to play out mental scenarios of doom, failure, and fatal consequences over and over again.

    I Was a Worry Wart

    Well, I used to worry incessantly over the smallest of things. Before learning meditation, I did not know how to relax. Worry was my psychological mantra.

    When my children were born, my anxiety levels went into over-drive. Were they eating enough?  Were they having a happy time with their friends?  Were they faring well in school?

    I soon realized that I was not the only one.  In talking with one of my girlfriends, I realized she was excessively worrying over her children, too. I noticed how tense she was. She was not fun to be with.

    Eventually I knew that I needed to reclaim my sanity. Not doing so would mean continued misery.  I realized that it was only when I could lose my back load of worries could I be light and free. (more…)

  • 20 Things to Do When You’re Feeling Angry with Someone

    20 Things to Do When You’re Feeling Angry with Someone

    “If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.” ~Chinese proverb

    As Tiny Buddha grows larger, I find there are a lot more people emailing me with requests. The people-pleaser in me wants to say yes to everyone, but the reality is that there is only so much time in the day—and we all have a right to allocate our time as best supports our intentions, needs, and goals.

    Recently someone contacted me with a request that I was unable to honor. After I communicated that, he made a sweeping judgment about my intentions and character, ending his email with “Buddha would be appalled.”

    As ironic as this may sound given the context of this site, I felt angry.

    I felt angry because I have always struggled with saying no, and this was exactly the type of uncomfortable encounter I generally aim to avoid.

    I felt angry because I felt misunderstood and judged, and I wanted him to realize that he was wrong about me.

    I felt angry because I assumed he intended to be hurtful, and I didn’t feel like I deserved that.

    I ended up responding to his email fairly quickly with a little bit of defensiveness, albeit with restraint. After I pressed send, I felt a little angry with myself for letting this bother me. Then I realized that this was a wonderful exercise in learning to deal with anger.

    It’s inevitable that I’ll feel that way again—and many times, with people I know well and love. We all will. We’ll all have lots of misunderstandings and annoyances, and lots of opportunities to practice responding to anger calmly and productively.

    If we’re mindful, we can use these situations to better ourselves and our relationships. (more…)

  • What It Means to Really Take Care of Yourself

    What It Means to Really Take Care of Yourself

    “Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.” ~Max Ehrmann

    Last year I realized that I lived twenty-eight years without knowing what it really means to love and take care of myself.

    In 2010, I took some wonderful, worldly trips—Costa Rica, Bangkok, Taipei—trekking and exploring.

    My husband and I bought a second home. I fully engaged myself in the improvements and the creativity of decorating a fresh canvas.

    I ran several races, including a half-marathon, and finished well. I joined a swanky health and fitness club where I could take trendy aerobic classes. I was “taking good care of myself.”

    Life was good. I worked hard, I played hard. The end. That was the story I projected.

    But it was hardly that simple or fabulous.

    There was a whole lot of turbulence in my life that I was trying to fix externally. (more…)

  • 5 Easy Ways to Get into Yoga this Spring

    5 Easy Ways to Get into Yoga this Spring

    “Letting go isn’t the end of the world; it’s the beginning of a new life.” ~Unknown

    As we welcomed the Spring Equinox on March 20th, with it came a sense of lightness in the air—in our bodies with healthier food options, in our minds as we flirt with the idea of summer on the horizon, and in our spirits as we are able to enjoy later sunsets with loved ones.

    Spring also welcomes change and renewal, creating an opportunity to cleanse ourselves of hibernating winter habits and find inspiration in nature as wildflowers bloom all around us.

    What better time to introduce (or reintroduce!) yourself to the ancient practice of yoga. Let’s face it: Yoga has stood the test of time, enduring over 5000 years, consistently providing a physical, mental, and spiritual outlet for its practitioners.

    Now more than ever, yoga seems the perfect escape from our increasingly complex, technology-driven, distracted modern lives.

    Finding peace and contentment in the present moment is one of the most challenging things to do, and yoga provides the tools we need to find that much-desired stillness.

    As a yoga instructor, my proudest moment is not when a student who once struggled with Chaturanga perfects a forearm handstand. Well, that is a pretty sweet moment! But, by far, it is watching new students unwrap their first yoga mat. Typically of the drug store, super slippery variety, but still exciting nonetheless!

    This moment resonates with me because I know, in that moment, that yoga will be a part of their world (whether in a big or small way) for the rest of their lives.

    You see, yoga is a lot like chocolate. If you live your whole life never tasting chocolate, you can lead a perfectly content existence, as there is nothing to miss. But, once you have had that first taste, there really is no turning back.

    Sure, you might stray from your cravings as you dabble into non-chocolate permitting diets. But the pleasure induced by that familiar taste always lingers somewhere in the back of your mind, until you finally find your way back home, onto your mat.

    In honor of that joy we all receive from unwrapping our very first yoga mat, I compiled a list of five rather simplistic (and fun!) ways to integrate yoga into your life this spring. (more…)

  • The Gift of Anxiety: 7 Ways to Get the Message and Find Peace

    The Gift of Anxiety: 7 Ways to Get the Message and Find Peace

    “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chodron

    If there’s one thing that has led me the greatest amount of re-invention, it’s anxiety. By anxiety I don’t mean worry or concern. Anxiety is a different animal that grabs a hold of you and halts you in your tracks.

    We tend to reject its milder forms and are really terrified by its intense moments, like with panic attacks. It’s difficult to see when we’re fighting with anxiety that it can have any benefit, but it does.

    Anxiety comes with some great treasures hidden inside, and they can be yours if you know how to get to them. First, you have to stop fighting and listen to the anxiety for clues.

    Getting the Message

    The greatest truth about anxiety is that it is a message. Anxiety is not the real issue. It’s the voice of something else lying beneath that’s calling out to you.

    Most people who experience anxiety try to go after the symptoms more than its cause and try to fight it off as if it were the only thing to deal with.

    That’s not how to go about it if you ever want to know how it happened, why it’s there, and how you can gain long-term freedom from it. (more…)

  • Available Today: Ebook, Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace & Happiness

    Available Today: Ebook, Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace & Happiness

    Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace and Happiness is the ultimate guide of Tiny Buddha wisdom, based on some of the most popular posts and quotes from the site. You’ll also find 4 posts not previously published on tinybuddha.com.

    Through this eBook, I’ve shared myself authentically and vulnerably, and have also offered countless action-oriented suggestions to improve your state of mind, enhance your relationships, identify what makes you feel passionate and purposeful, and find the courage to overcome obstacles and seize your dreams.

    These are my most popular, value-packed posts, as viewed by over 1.2 million readers in the last year and a half, hand-picked and edited into one easy-to-access PDF file. (more…)

  • Giveaway: Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace and Happiness

    Giveaway: Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace and Happiness

    Update: The winners have already been chosen for this giveaway. Subscribe to The Tiny Buddha List to learn about future contests, and click below to purchase this eBook for $10.97!

    Buy Now

    Since I launched tinybuddha.com in September of 2009, I’ve hosted quite a few giveaways for books that moved me.

    Today is a very exciting day for me—one that’s a year in a half in the making: Today I am giving away five free copies of my book.

    If you’ve been reading for a while, you may think I’m referring to my book about life’s hardest questions, which Conari Press will publish at the end of this year.

    This book is something altogether different.

    Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace & Happiness is the ultimate guide of Tiny Buddha wisdom, based on some of my most powerful, popular posts and quotes from the site.

    You’ll also find five posts not previously published on tinybuddha.com.

    With 161 pages, Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace & Happiness explores concepts essential to loving yourself, your relationships, and your life.

    According to feedback throughout the site, the content has helped readers:

    • Feel a sense of empowerment to make positive changes in their lives
    • Accept and love their authentic selves
    • Depend less on external approval for happiness
    • Experience a greater sense of happiness in the present moment
    • Move on from painful events to feel joy again
    • Let go of negative feelings, attachments, fears, worries, and stresses
    • Stay present and peaceful, even when dealing with uncertainty
    • Create and maintain peaceful, loving, meaningful relationships
    • Deal with difficult or negative people
    • Slow down while still achieving goals
    • Find the courage to start pursuing meaningful work
    • Create and seek new possibilities for excitement and adventure
    • Overcome obstacles, mental blocks, and criticism to seize dreams

    I’ve categorized the posts into the following sections:

    1. Developing Self-Love
    2. Happiness and Mindfulness
    3. Letting Go and Letting Peace In
    4. Maintaining Healthy Relationships
    5. Reconciling Busyness and Happiness
    6. Creating the Life You Visualize

    Through this eBook, I’ve shared myself authentically and vulnerably. I have also offered countless action-oriented suggestions to improve your state of mind, and in doing so, change your life. (more…)

  • In Pursuit of Peace: Why It’s Hard to Find Serenity

    In Pursuit of Peace: Why It’s Hard to Find Serenity

    “The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.” ~Robert Pirsig

    The other evening I was I was lying in the bath following yet another hectic day in the office. As I sat there in the bubbles, I could feel my tension rising. I tried my hardest to block out the banging of the washing machine in the next room and the great stomping footsteps from the flat above.

    All of a sudden, this peaceful treat was starting to feel more like a battle of wills—me against the world.

    This made me think: how far do we have to go in the pursuit of peace?

    There’s no denying the fact that we live in an amazing age. We’ve seen unprecedented change in our lifetime and technological developments our grandparents could never have even dreamed of.

    I can share pictures with my emigrated best friend instantly. I can manage my work emails from the park. I can even ‘poke’ my old travelling buddies on a different continent. We truly are lucky, aren’t we?

    Do you ever find yourself wondering why, when we have all this technology that is supposed to help us to do everything quicker, we’ve never felt so busy, frantic, and shortchanged? Or why we feel like shouting Stop the world—I need to get off!? I certainly do. (more…)

  • 5 Lessons about Being Present: Freedom is Where My Feet Are

    5 Lessons about Being Present: Freedom is Where My Feet Are

    Enjoying life

    “Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.” ~James Thurber

    As I begin each day, I must remind myself, “Erin, stay where your feet are.”

    If I keep my attention on the place where my feet reside, I have a better chance of remaining in the here and now. What’s here and now is all there is, so we’re told.

    Most of us know this in our heads, but integrating it into our daily living is another thing. It’s a practice, one that must remain a part of our awareness if we hope to be released from suffering.

    Sometimes when I am running, my head replays old movies—only they’re the movies of my past or the movies I am creating in my mind about the future.

    All too often I notice myself feeling beaten up by my thoughts, because I remember things I’ve said that hurt people or embarrassed me. Sometimes I’m replaying movies of the things an ex-boyfriend or lover said to me, and I either begin to miss him painfully or feel incredibly humiliated for being so stupid to fall for his words.

    “If only I had done things differently” becomes the soundtrack to the movies in my head. When I’m driving, I’ve become aware of the way I take the early stages of a relationship and progress them into the future, deciding how things will turn out in one year or ten years from that particular moment.

    Or maybe I’m having a conversation with a client who isn’t even there, about how angry I am that they don’t pay me on time or respond to my emails about their invoice. All these thoughts are filled with judgment, and by living in them over and over again, I continue to attract more of them.

    This way of thinking takes me away from my present experience.

    When I live in the past or future, I miss out on the freedom and peace in the now.

    Lately, I am becoming aware much sooner and quicker when this happens. (more…)

  • How to Find Happiness through Purpose in 3 Natural Steps

    How to Find Happiness through Purpose in 3 Natural Steps

    “The person who lives life fully, glowing with life’s energy, is the person who lives a successful life.” ~Daisaku Ikeda

    In everything we do, we seek happiness. Or at least what we think will bring happiness.

    But this goal can often get us into trouble. It’s how you find yourself in a career that doesn’t represent you, consuming things lacking real value, and living a life that misses its impact on the world.

    Most of the things we think create happiness don’t.

    We get caught in a spiral and life suddenly becomes a race to be won instead of a game to be played and enjoyed. Our focus on ‘success,’ as society calls it, blurs our more important intangibles of life—our relationships and experiences.

    The fear (and sad reality for many) is that we wake up thirty years from now, stressed, unhealthy, and unfulfilled, wondering what on earth happened to those wonderful dreams we once dared to dream.

    I’ll tell you what happened: We fell into the trap of being what others felt we should be as opposed to who we were meant to be. Others’ dreams became ours, only to realize they never mattered to us in the first place. We adopted the world’s definition of success instead of understanding and pursing our own.

    Well, there is good news. No matter when you wake up to this reality, it is never too late to take a stand and travel down that fresh path.

    In all of my experience as a friend, writer, husband, personal freedom coach, and citizen of the world, I’ve learned that there is nothing more consistent with unhappiness than spending your time in a way that doesn’t serve who you are. And to the contrary, there is no more profound source of fulfillment and happiness than knowing you are traveling your own path and making the dent in the world you know you’re capable of.

    The Simple Answer to Lasting Happiness: Living Your Purpose

    While purpose is a nice concept that is often overused in the personal development space, it can be a lot to sink your teeth into. It’s one thing to believe in the idea but an entirely different one to vicerally experience and live it.

    Until you find your own life path, you will forever be trying to follow someone else’s. The inauthenticity will eat you up. Without a path, your true potential will be lost. But to confidently begin the journey, you must better know the traveler—you. (more…)

  • Finding Joy in Frustrating, Routine Activities

    Finding Joy in Frustrating, Routine Activities

    “The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.” ~Pema Chodron

    Today, I hopped in the company van for a trip I make once a week with one of two primary clients. In the mental health division of my company, driving is a requirement. Most of the clients don’t drive, and they need coordinated transportation to and from their appointments and leisure activities.

    This particular woman goes to visit her husband weekly because she hopes to live with him when recovering from her mental health diagnosis. I’ve been taking her on this trip for several months now, and it’s a two-hour round trip ride.

    I usually fill this trip with aggressive, speedy driving and impatience at every red light. I pass the time with work-related conversations, both to ensure I drive safely and to address work-related issues with this client.

    This time, however, I chose a different route, and I’m not referring to the roads.

    First, I thought of a recent conversation I had about hating driving. I enjoy all other aspects of my job, but work-related driving bothers me because the clientele controls everything about it. They choose the radio stations, the route to drive, and the time to leave; and they frequently make impromptu requests to other locations, sometimes in a dangerous way.

    Next, although somber sounding, I started thinking about people who have passed away. (more…)

  • Zen Business: the Eightfold Path to Peace and Productivity at Work

    Zen Business: the Eightfold Path to Peace and Productivity at Work

    “We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we have a choice.” ~Sogyal Rinpoche

    Our work lives are made up of a million tasks, relationships, deadlines, duties, commitment, and goals. We are often at a loss as to how to communicate difficult news, create consistency, or even just feel less stressed during the day.

    When we work with teams, we can find ourselves trying to be the best to the detriment of the whole or we start gossiping in the break room, even when we don’t want to do those things.

    In my years of working with management of large corporations, community groups, non-profits, and small businesses, I have seen some deplorable communication skills, folks ripping each other apart to get ahead, and teams clueless to their impact to the larger project or individuals. There has to be a better way.

    When I was managing a creative group in San Francisco, I found it difficult to deal with the ups and downs of a changing workplace (this was just after the DotCom bust). It was especially challenging because I wasn’t skilled at addressing the  raw emotions of workers who were undergoing work and family stress.

    This led me to seek a meditation teacher who could at least share some wisdom about finding balance on a black cushion sitting on the tiled floor of a church basement.

    It was in that first introduction that I realized that I lacked a guiding set of rules for dealing with my staff, coworkers, clients, and management. Learning about the ideas inherent to the Eightfold Path I was able to start the timid steps towards a new way of communicating and finding balance both at work and in the rest of my life.

    I did it through the idea of Zen Business. (more…)

  • Embracing the Moment When it Sucks: Dealing with Death

    Embracing the Moment When it Sucks: Dealing with Death

    “Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.”  ~Joan Kerr

    A year ago I lost my best friend of forty-eight years to a pulmonary embolism. It came quickly and unannounced, and it took him instantly.

    I found out about his death on Twitter. Because of the length and depth of our friendship I had never known life without him. As often happens when we lose someone dear, I didn’t know how I would move forward.

    We’re taught that peace and happiness come from embracing and living fully in the moment, but I often wonder what should we do when the moment sucks. How do we embrace the pain of heartbreaking loss without suffering anger and sorrow?

    I don’t know that you can entirely. What my year without Blake has taught me is that to live in the moment, I really have to do just that, whether the moment sucks or not.

    During the first weeks after his death I allowed myself to wallow in my misery, yet at the same time I took action. I didn’t just feel the pain; I did something about it. I responded to it, I listened to its needs, and gave it voice. (more…)

  • 5 Ways to Find Your Balance

    5 Ways to Find Your Balance

    “Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton

    The yoga class I attended yesterday included a number of balance posts, from simple tree pose to a “floating” ardha chandrasana. I am not certain why, but I was struggling to find a steady balance on one side.

    I arrived late feeling flustered, and my mind was spinning and worrying as we worked our way into the flow. I had to struggle to make my gaze steady, and I was starting to beat myself up for the wobbling on my left leg.

    Then I had a realization: This is really the whole point of balancing poses, if not yoga itself. The point is simply to be with yourself, no matter where you are at that moment. Or, as Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Smile, breathe, and go slowly.”

    Later, I thought a lot about balance and how we are always trying to find it in our lives. I talk with patients about it almost every day, and no one seems to feel they have it under control. (more…)