Posts tagged with “wisdom”
How Meditation Can Help You Find the Perfect Friend
“When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
I meet with a lot of people who say things like, âOh, Iâve tried meditation before but Iâm just not good at it.â When asked to explain, the most common answer is, âI just canât make my mind get quiet.â
Iâve heard responses like this so often that Iâve come to realize that this is the single greatest misunderstanding about meditation. In truth, meditation is not about calming our mind or achieving a state free …
Mind Over Melodrama: 5 Lessons on Self-Awareness and Healing
âBe what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.â ~Julius Charles Hare
In a few months it will be the two and a half year anniversary of my mental breakdown.
I donât really celebrate the date, partially because I donât know itâitâs not the sort of thing that you remember to mark on your calendarâand partially because my entire life since then has been a celebration of what I began to learn that night.
I began to learn about myself.
Itâs been a wild ride of healing, helplessness, forgetting, and remembering. Many times, I …
Developing Confidence Without Becoming Arrogant
âWhat you think of yourself is much more important than what people think of you.â ~Seneca
I used to labor under the gross illusion that confidence was elusive, like a Sasquatch.
Or fleeting, like a shooting star.
Itâs there for a moment, then poof! Gone.
Did I dream it?Â
To deepen this illusion, I believed that only a select few were anointed with confidence by an unseen hand upon their birth (this same mysterious hand also granted natural athletic ability), leaving the rest of us to muddle through, solely reliant on glancing blows of confidence that would hopefully show up …
Overcoming the Worst Part of Finding Your Passion
âYou gain courage, strength and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.â ~Eleanor Roosevelt
Finding my passion made me fat.
Not fat in an âI have to wear a Homer Simpson Mumuâ kind of way, but in an âI eat cookies and chocolate all the time and Iâm not sure what happened to my muscle. Oh, and these pants, they donât really fit anymoreâ kind of way.
I always was a stress-eater. Not early in my life, but as soon as I arrived, confused and distracted, into the world of corporate …
Ending a Toxic Relationship: When Itâs Time to Say âNo Moreâ
âWorry less, smile more. Donât regret, just learn and grow.â ~Unknown
The day finally came when my heart was strong enough to speak up.
I had spent many years trying to be the calm, sensible one. The one who would try to rationalize my sisterâs behavior just to keep the peace.
For years the strategy was to keep everything in its place and accept what was said, done, or requested. The day finally came when the weight of accepting the burden was too much to bear.
No amount of talking would convince my sister that I was being reasonable. It …
When Someone Blames You: How to Cope with Misdirected Anger
âLife becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.â ~Robert Brault
My ex-boyfriend is angry with me.
I met him soon after he had broken up with his then fiancĂ©e, and he thought he was ready to move on, but wasnât. After many months of messing me about, we ended it. I cut off contact because it still hurt me and I still cared for him.
Eventually, I wrote to him to see if I could get some closure and to consider if we could salvage a friendship. His reply was scathing, vitriolic, angry. He blamed …
Love Shows Up When You Do
âSlow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.â ~John de Paola
After six months of being single after my divorce, I wanted to date again. I was still afraid of failure and rejection, but I wanted to try. I felt the best way to get over it was to dedicate my time to finding someone new.
I didnât know where to begin, but I knew I had a clearer understanding of what I wanted in a relationship. I definitely knew what I didnât want in a relationship. I thought if I could just find someone …
How to Deal with Criticism Well: 25 Reasons to Embrace It
âCriticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.â ~Aristotle
At the end of the day, when I feel completely exhausted, it often has nothing to do with all the things Iâve done.
Itâs not a consequence of juggling multiple responsibilities and projects. Itâs not my bodyâs way of punishing me for becoming a late-life jogger after a period of laziness. Itâs not even about getting too little sleep.
When Iâm exhausted, you can be sure Iâve bent over backward trying to win everyoneâs approval. Iâve obsessed over what people think of me, Iâve …
We Can Be Happy Despite Pain from Our Past
âThink of all the beauty that is still left in and around you and be happy.â ~Anne Frank
At first glance, the happiest person I’ve ever met appeared to be a simple man. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly sophisticated or spiritual about him.
Srulik was five-feet tall, with a big round belly and a wide smile permanently plastered on his face. He enjoyed the small things in life: a good joke, a familiar television show, a wholesome meal. He radiated such joy, and was so unassuming in his demeanor that one would assume he was blessed with an …
10 Ways to Let Go and Open Up to Love Again
âA thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.â ~Rumi
When I met my first love, my dull black and white life became as bright as a double rainbow. The intense hues of love flooded over me with extreme joy and happiness.
Soon after meeting, we married and lived together for ten years. Yet, like rainbows and raindrops, our love evaporated and I took our divorce especially hard, soaking in self-pity and sadness while grieving for the past several years.
After experiencing a painful breakup, you never, ever want to be in a relationship again. A broken …
Finding Kindred Spirits by Honoring Your Inner Misfit
âThe thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.â ~Anna Quindlen
It should theoretically be simple but being authentic is not easy. It takes gumption to assert with courageous conviction âThis is me!â and grace to accept what comes after.
From my first discordant bear cry in a nursery full of normally crying babies, I was different, quirky. My own way of doing thingsâdresses over jeans, art over sportsâmade me an early outcast. Nothing I naturally did fit me within my particular society.
For a while, during …
How to Hear Your Intuition When You Donât Know What to Do
âYour mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.â ~William S. Burroughs
Sitting in my office, I stared at the email in front of me.
My heart sank.
All energy and joy left me, to be replaced with confusion, anxiety, and a deep sense of frustration.
As adrenalin rushed through my veins, one question engulfed my mind leaving little room for the answer.
What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?
I just didnât know.
The email was from a client. Someone who I had worked with for a …
Are You Missing Out on Life While Checking Your Smartphone?
“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
âYeahâŠUh huhâŠUh huhâŠYeahâŠNo way! Uh huh.â
This was the response I got when talking to a friend the other day. I could tell he wasnât really listening, because he was browsing Facebook at the time.
Why was his smartphone more important than me? It didnât used to be this way.
I know Iâm at risk of sounding out-of-touch and technophobic. But I really do think this is a much bigger problem than we perceive.
Weâre talking about our lives here. …
Wanting More Time: Have You Lived Enough?
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be aliveâto breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” ~Marcus Aurelius
I remember attending a lecture by the Tibetan monk Sogyam Rimpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, in which, smiling all the while, he confessed, âSo many people, they say, âIâm not afraid of death.âI tell you, theyâre lying! Death? Very scary. Me? Iâm very scared of death.â
And I thought to myself, âPhew, if heâs scared, then itâs certainly okay that Iâm scared too.â
For many years after that, …
How to Turn Worries About the Future Into Action Right Now
âEvery day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.â ~Joan Borysenko
After years and years of living with anxiety, I canât tell you exactly what I have been anxious about.
Is it a pervasive thought about how my life will end? Is it a constant worry about my financial security? Is it simply that Iâm nervous to give a speech in front of people? Or a combination of all of them?
Even thinking about anxiety causes more anxiety. Ahhh!
Anxiety is also really hard to define. It’s so subjective.
I donât think my anxiety will ever truly …
That Horrible Job You Hate Might Just Change Your Life
âWhat you do today can improve all your tomorrows.â ~Ralph Marston
Before I started my business, I spent three years at an ad agency and a little over a year at an international furnishings retailer. I also waitressed, wrote freelance articles, designed and developed a church website, and worked in an incredibly boring mailroom.
Some of those jobs (letâs be honest, most of those jobs) totally sucked.
In the mailroom, my boss was a sexist jerk with a Napoleon Complex.
In waitressing, I spent too much of my time being other peopleâs emotional punching bag.
And at the ad agencyâthe …
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