Tiny Buddha: Wisdom Quotes, Letting Go, Letting Happiness In

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Fiona Robyn

“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

I had a terrible morning. I needed to make a short YouTube video to promote my therapy practice, and I thought it would take twenty minutes at the most.

The technology was more complicated than I thought. I struggled on, wanting to do it by myself. Half an hour later, I surrendered and asked my husband Kaspa for help.

Two hours later, we were still trying to make it work.

I started thinking about all the other things I was meant to be doing that morning. A tense knot formed in my stomach. I started snapping at Kaspa—if only he knew how to make it work, I’d be finished by now. Grr!

I finally finished the video (with the help of a very patient husband!), but I was in no state to do any more work. I felt panicky and rushed, and my brain kept talking me through the list of all the things I needed to catch up on, like a stuck record.

Once I allow myself to get into this kind of state, it takes me a while to “come down” again.

After some time sitting at my desk and feeling agitated, I decided to go out into the garden. I walked slowly up the path, noticing the bang of my heart. I looked at the baby pink roses, the inner-most petals still holding onto drops of dew. I heard the clear song of a blackbird. I took a deep breath. And another.

These are the things that help me when I get panicky. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Terri Cole

“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” ~Marianne Williamson

I got my masters in Clinical Social Work and became a therapist in 1997.

A year later, I got my PHD in Fear.

After a decade as a talent agent predominantly for super models, I was burned out. I realized it was time for a career change when I cared more about getting models into rehab, therapy, and eating disorder clinics than a lucrative Pantene contract.

When I landed in the modeling-agent world, I was convinced I would change an exploitive system. I did not, but the system definitely changed me.

I was desperate to get off the crazy nicotine, caffeine, adrenalin-fueled hamster wheel that had become my life, but did not know how. Apparently, though, the universe had just the plan.

In 1996, I applied to New York University’s Clinical Social Work Masters Program, never imagining I would be accepted. Much to my amazement I was accepted and spent the next two years remotely running the television department for Elite Modeling agency, getting my degree, and teaching acting as an adjunct professor at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts.

Immediately following graduation, the single most important life-changing event happened. I fell in love with my now amazing husband, Victor Juhasz. Vic was a widower with three angry, out-of-control teenage boys. As if being the divorced/widowed father of three sons wasn’t enough, he also lived in New Jersey.

I didn’t care. It was perfect. He was perfect. Intoxicated with love hormones, I thought this talented, successful, gorgeous man could have 22 teenagers, and I would still say, “It’s all good. Love will find a way!” Believe it or not, this was the calm before the storm.

Four months into our relationship, my father, 61 years old and in prime health, dropped dead of a heart attack.

Three months after my father’s death, I discovered a plum-size lump at the base of my throat, which was diagnosed as a large, malignant thyroid tumor. My heart ached as I underwent surgery and radiation while building a relationship with the three boys, whose own beautiful mother died of cervical cancer when they were 5, 3, and 1.

A mere five months later, based solely on my intuition, a more aggressive cancer was discovered on the other side of my thyroid. More surgery, radiation, and isolation followed.

On a quiet evening, two months after the second cancer diagnosis, I leisurely walked onto the back porch to find a huge stocking-faced man holding a .22 to the back of my husband’s head. We were robbed at gunpoint with our youngest son in the house.

My PHD in FEAR was officially complete. For the first time in my life I was afraid—all the time.

The therapist in me knew it was a trauma response; the human in me was still incensed. I made the distinct decision to become a fear expert knowing that I, nor anyone else for that matter, could really live life if fear continued to dominate my mind and my decisions.

I worked though my own fear with the help of my therapist and spent the next 14 years in my busy private therapy practice in New York City researching the effects of fear and the mind-body connection.

I turned my pain into purpose and taught thousands of clients and students to transform their own fear into freedom.

Here are a few truths I have learned about transforming fear. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Lynn Zavaro

“When the crowded refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost.  But if even one person on the boat remained calm and centered, it was enough. They showed the way for everyone to survive.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Without realizing it, I spent the majority of my childhood in a constant state of anxiety. In my early twenties, after a break-up with a man I dearly loved (albeit a little obsessively) I tried to medicate my grief with too many cups of coffee, bottles of wine, and many cigarettes.

I found myself one absurd sunny afternoon with shaky, sweaty hands, palpitations that felt like a heart attack, and an overwhelming sense that I was crazy. I called the emergency room and they informed me I was having a panic attack.

Although, I tended toward depression and struggled with not wanting to get out of bed, I didn’t realize depression and anxiety can go hand in hand.

At one point, my doctor prescribed anti-anxiety medication, but it numbed me out to such a degree I could barely function. Realizing that this was not the answer for me, I made it a life-responsibility to care for and self-treat my anxiety.

Back then, if someone suggested that I find “peace,” I would toss it away with a roll of my eyes thinking they were some sort of hippie trying to save the planet, or a born-again with a bumper sticker of a white-winged dove. What was peace anyway? I was just trying to survive my inner turmoil.

Over time, I discovered more about what peace really meant for me. If I could be at peace, I knew then that I could better understand and have compassion for others. But I had to start small and stay simple in order to face the stressors of my life.

I began with the basics and slowly built my foundation over the years. My pattern for so long was trying to build my ship out at sea. The realization was to learn how to build my mast on stable ground.

Once I built a basic foundation, I got a little fancier: I kept journals to have a place to put my rapidly thinking mind. I learned how to meditate, slowly increasing from ten to forty-five minutes a day.

I studied and read countless spiritual books before going to bed (sometimes an excellent remedy for sleep) and found time each week to be creative. I changed my eating habits, learned how to eat more vegetables, legumes, grains, and olive oil, and juiced delicious concoctions to ground me.

Over a long period of time, I created a daily structure that would include all of the above and more, which solidly holds me and gives me inner-strength. Then, I could start thinking about the bigger things, like the views of the world and how to help make it a better place.

Today, inner-peace is tangible and real for me. Even when the going gets tough, even when life slams me with loss and difficulties, I have my tried and true structure to come back to. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Angela Marchesani

“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. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Lisa Stefany

“Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict from life, but the ability to cope with it.” ~Unknown

I am confident. I am content. I am complete. I am calm.

I decided that this was going to be my new mantra. I decided this at 8:26 a.m. I repeated it to myself over and over while showering, getting dressed, and driving to work.

I ascended the stairs to my office, singing the words in my head. I am confident. I am content. I am complete. I am calm.

This was going to be a good day. I would stay focused, yet aware; productive, yet relaxed. Yup, I was on top of the world, strutting my stuff in my maxi dress and strappy sandals.

And then I spilled my water bottle. My dress was blotched in awkward areas for a significant amount of time.

Needless to say, I forgot my mantra.

I forgot that I was supposed to be confident, content, complete, and calm.

For the first hour of my work day, I drifted in and out of an anxious haze of unrest, just because of that stupid water bottle. That spilled seven ounces of water triggered a tidal wave of unease and insecurity.

They say not to cry over spilled milk. “They” didn’t mention spilled water because it’s so insignificant.

I realize that spilled water is a really stupid thing to get worked up over. Logically, I know that.

But it wasn’t the spilled water that was really the problem. Anxiety is something I know all too well. I often allow small and insignificant disruptions to cause me a lot of distress. I blow things out of proportion; I know this.

But that doesn’t mean I have to live with anxiety-on-call for the rest of my life.

“Spilled water bottle” incidents happen. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Juha Kaartoluoma

“Some people think it’s holding that makes one strong – sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

The human mind loves to find things to stress about.

There seems to constantly be something in our lives that causes us to worry. And when the thing that caused the worry disappears, we feel happy, but only for a short period of time until we find something else to stress about.

I’ve witnessed this pattern many times in my own life. As soon as I was able to solve one of my problems, my mind found me a new one.

Compared to other guys, my body is very skinny. It has been that way since I was a little kid. My friends used to tease me because of it. I laughed at their jokes, but inside I always felt horrible.

I felt like there was something wrong with me because I was different.

As I got older I started going to the gym so I could gain weight. Progress was slow since my body naturally leans towards the skinnier side. But slowly I began seeing results in the size of my muscles.

This is, however, where the results ended. I didn’t really get happier with my body at all, which was the main purpose of the training anyways.

I still felt skinny and there was always something in my body that wasn’t quite right yet.

At that point I realized that I was participating in a game that I couldn’t win. My body wasn’t the problem. The problem was what my mind was telling me about my body.

In essence, as long as you are identified and run by your mind, it will come up with “problems” for you to focus on.

Every single time a dilemma is solved, you can be sure of a new one arising that feels equally stressing as the previous one.

The good news is that there is a way to break free from this endless loop of stress. It starts by realizing how pointless and harmful this useless worry actually is.

Once you become aware of the negativity that these thought patterns create, it will be much easier to let go of your “problems” once and for all. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Evelyn Lim

“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. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Geordie Proudfoot

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

I thought I had relinquished anxiety after a few years of mindfulness and meditation. Then I had a baby. It is incredibly easy for us mothers to slide into permanent guilt and anxiety.

After a few minutes of watching my thoughts, I noticed they ran something like this:

“My baby is sleeping too much. Should I wake her? Oh no, she hasn’t slept enough and I woke her. I shouldn’t have woken her, I’ve ruined the day. How am I going to fix this? I can’t fix it. I have no idea. I’m a bad mother. She has no routine. I need to put her into a routine. But it’s too late! How will I do this? I should have done it earlier!”

And so on. Endlessly. Hourly. Daily. It got to the point where I didn’t feel like a caring mother unless I was worrying about something. Then I realized that my anxiety was the only thing that would damage my daughter.

Babies pick up on all of our emotions. That’s why having a child is a great opportunity to grow as a person. We care so much about our children that we don’t want to lumber them with our old habits and negative emotions. We must move past our pointless worries, but how?

I have been trying out a few mindfulness techniques and found them to be extremely helpful.

Prior to this, I was compulsively flicking through endless books by “experts” on sleep, routines, feeding, and general parenting.

None seemed to be right for the individual needs of my child, so I figured it was time to go within and discover the answers for myself. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Ariella Baston

“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. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Patricia Pelayo

“There are exactly as many special occasions in life as we choose to celebrate.” ~Robert Brault

A few years ago it happened, and it couldn’t have come at a better moment.

At the time I was involved in a monthly get together with my cousins. We were a group of eight cousins getting together to talk about family and life in general.

It had started off when my sister was going through a nasty divorce, and one of the cousins came up with the idea of getting together to celebrate my sister’s birthday to bring some cheer into her life.

Once the celebration was under way, we all agreed on how great it would be to make it a once a month gathering of all cousins. And so it began: the once a month ritual of getting together in one of the cousins’ houses for dinner.

We would take turns hosting the event, so that we would each have a turn at being an amazing hostess for a dinner.

We all had different financial situations, so we would go from a very fancy dinner at a very fancy house, to a simple dinner in a simple home where I would find more love and peace than in most.

You could say I was one of the cousins with the middle class lifestyle, yet I opened up my home with the best of intentions, always hoping to give my cousins the best I could.

The first dinner that took place at my home was exciting but also full of anxiety, for I had to prepare my home for the dinner gathering.

I remember making a list of things I wanted to buy. I felt like I was having the president over for dinner—like I had to make my home seem fancy, when in reality it wasn’t. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Lauren Rosenfeld

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

My mother was what you might call a “professional worrier.” She worried with skill, power, and acumen.

She could incisively hone in on the most seemingly benign situation and find within it some kernel of trouble to worry about. Money. Health. Household. Children. Travel. Work. You name it.  She worried about it. A lot.

That is until my father was diagnosed with cancer.

When my father became ill, my mother changed radically—and apparently overnight. Faced with the potential of the greatest loss of her life, she found that she was suddenly free of the many worries that had plagued her for all those many years.

In the wake of the most terrible news imaginable, the many troubles that had been burdening her suddenly fell away like a heavy winter coat on an unexpectedly warm day.

So, strangely and without warning, in the midst of a terrifying life-threatening crisis, my mother became a more light-hearted person. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Francis Tapon

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

Whenever worries and anxiety overwhelm your life, people tell you, “Just relax.”

Thanks, that’s wise advice, but how the hell do you do that? You’d love “to be light and free,” but that seems impossible when you’re feeling heavy and enslaved. How do you do it?

What follows are two practical, yet profound ways to let go of your worries and anxiety. Use these two skills to lighten your load and unchain yourself from everyday frustrations.

I learned these two techniques from pilgrims who walk the 2,168-mile Appalachian Trail. In their honor, I call it the Pilgrim’s Perspective.

A Quick Quiz

First, consider how you would react in these five situations:

1. You’re on a subway train that’s stalled in a tunnel and you’re told to exit and take a bus because of a “mechanical problem.”

2. You have to make an important call when your cell phone battery dies.

3. You’re remodeling your kitchen when the contractor makes an error that sets you back two weeks and $500.

4. You need cash fast and there are 10 people in line at the ATM.

5. You’re going out to a job interview, all dressed up, when a taxi cab hits a puddle of water and drenches you. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene, Photo credit

Tomorrow is my 30^th birthday. For two hours earlier this evening, I felt certain I’d start the day hooked up to an IV in intensive care.

It all started two weeks ago when I visited my family. Shortly after I arrived home I began feeling chest pains, something I experienced frequently in my youth. Back in the day, I spent hours in the high school nurse’s office while my peers were in lunch, study hall, or gym class. Though it was intense and frightening, I wonder, in retrospect, if my mind magnified the pain after the doctor called my damaged esophagus pre-cancerous. Click Here to Read More…