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

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Anne Samoilov

“Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin

I’ve always been an optimist, looking for the good in situations, even when they seem like the bleakest thing that could happen to me or the people around me.

But failure is a difficult one to turn on its ear.

You know when you don’t reach your goal. You know when you don’t get what you wanted.

Now I know the Rolling Stones sang “You can’t always get what you want…but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” And you know what? Those lines never sat well with me—to just sit and accept it.

So, even though I know there are reasons I didn’t make it big as a recording artist—and that my Pilates business didn’t fulfill me, and that I’ve experienced the sting of working at companies that decided to shut down—I have always refused to simply shrug my shoulders and say, “Oh well!”

I decided to find a new way to handle failure and to not only look at in a more optimistic way, but also find within it clues for my next move.

Here’s what I discovered.

Failure is a step toward your ultimate success.  It’s a lesson.  A challenge. A chance.

When I struggled with my Pilates business, for example, I realized I needed to ascertain where the bulk of my money was coming from and then do more of that. So I made a plan and moved forward. I started doing more of what I loved and what was bringing in income, and less of what wasn’t. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Lida Shaygan

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” ~Dalai Lama

A year ago, I hit rock bottom. Until that point, I had put all my energy into my dream of becoming a physician. Last year my life slammed into a brick wall, and my plans seemed to be torn into pieces.

After high school, I took every opportunity to immerse myself in the medical profession while maintaining my grades in college.

During the summer of my freshman year, I worked as an Emergency Medical Technician and practiced being a first responder during medical emergencies. Over the next three years, I woke up at 6:00 AM on the weekends and drove an hour to work as a Patient Care Assistant on the Trauma floor at Parkland Hospital.

However, none of my hard work, experiences, or ambitions seemed significant last year when I didn’t gain acceptance to medical school.

All the work I had put into achieving my dream meant nothing. The energy that I had expelled to become a physician felt meaningless. I was a senior graduating from college, but I no longer had a life plan.

After a challenging year, I finally let go—and then I got into medical school. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Mark Bryan

“If you lose today, win tomorrow.” ~Daisaku Ikeda

From the moment we learn to walk and touch things, we hear the word no far more than we will ever hear the word yes.

“No, don’t touch that.” “No, that’s not for you.” “No, you shouldn’t eat paint chips.” OK, maybe that last one was just me, but you get the picture.

We are told no so much more than we are ever told yes during the course of growing up, so why is it as adults that hearing the word no can be so devastating? Shouldn’t we be used to it by now?

As a rookie salesmen every time I heard the word no I got discouraged and thought I must be doing something wrong. I would constantly beat myself up.

“What am I doing wrong?” “What can I do different?”

These were great questions to ask myself, however it’s the answers I supplied myself that turned out to be misleading.

I figured that if people were saying no, it was because the process was failing me. How wrong I was.

With sales, as in many aspects of life, there is a process—a start and a finish. Whether it’s setting and achieving goals, getting dressed, or cooking dinner, everything has a process, whether we consciously think about it or not.

Like a naïve cocky rookie, I decided to abandon the process and started to do things my own way. Much to my surprise, I now heard no twice as many times.

I just could not understand what was going on, so I got even harder on myself. Click Here to Read More…

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution by Karen Mead

“The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment.” ~Pema Chodron

Statistically, a lot of people have given up on their resolutions by now. The definition of a resolution is “a firm decision to do or not to do something.”

When I examine the firm decisions I’ve made, I can’t help but notice that we all have the same lists. Why is that?

Could it be that the same media, the same books, and the same friends have written all of our lists? I’m not making a value judgment of these shared desires—I just find it interesting that we all seem to feel the need to include so many of them.

So now I find myself questioning where my resolutions and intentions are based. Did they come from some other source, or do they reflect my heart’s desires?

I hadn’t actually made any resolutions for 2011, but for the sake of exploring this idea, I got out a notebook and pen and began writing.

I looked down and saw—yes, you guessed it—that I had written what appeared to be the universal generic resolution list: exercise more, eat more healthy foods, meditate daily, lose weight, call my mother, etc., etc., etc..

And although all these desires are good—in fact, they are wonderful and I truly would like them in my life—I was surprised that I felt no real energy reading the list.

It just felt like another list among hundreds, written and then forgotten. Of course I would have issues keeping these decisions. They held no passion, no energy for me at this moment. They were just lots of words on a piece of paper. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene

“Don’t let today’s disappointment cast a shadow on tomorrow’s dream.” -Unknown

Have you ever looked back on your life, exactly a year ago, and felt amazed by how much has changed?

Last year at this time, I’d only just started this site and I was competing in a blogging contest. Ignite Social Media, the marketing company behind the mood supplement SAM-e, had come up with a clever crowdsourcing campaign to generate awareness for the product.

In the beginning of the fall, they advertised a contest to win a dream blogging job. The winner would get a 6-month contract to write one short daily “good mood” blog post—as well as a new laptop and $5,000 per month, totaling $30,000.

In order to win, candidates needed to get enough votes to be in the top 20—out of over 800 people—and then needed to get even more votes in a second round that involved a video.

At the time, I was still collecting unemployment after being laid off earlier in the year. I was also putting all my heart into building Tiny Buddha around the ideas of wisdom and happiness and running my old blog, Seeing Good.

I knew Brigitte Dale was in the running. In case you aren’t familiar, Brigitte Dale is a popular vlogger who used to make videos for ABC Family. I wasn’t certain if I—or anyone—had a chance up against a bona fide web celeb who could clearly bring in big traffic for SAM-e. And then there was her obvious charm—even I fell in love with her watching her videos.

Still, I was going to do everything in my power to try. The judges said ultimately they would choose the winner, regardless of who had the most votes, so I reasoned that it was anyone’s opportunity to earn. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to leave the world a better place; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

My father is my hero, and one of the most successful men in the world.

When I was a kid he worked two full-time blue-collar jobs to support me and my siblings. He didn’t have a college degree—he attended briefly on a golf scholarship and then got hurt—but he compensated with hard work.

Though many people wouldn’t be happy with that type of life, I never once heard him complain. Being someone who prefers a simple routine over ambition, he stayed in the printing industry until he got laid off last year.

Though he’s inspired me in a million ways, he’s done two things exceedingly well: enjoy his life, and treat everyone with kindness and respect.

I thought about this the other day while flipping through Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list. As I read about leaders and luminaries who’ve made huge impact on the world, I started to think about the important little things we all do on a daily basis.

You may not have won the Nobel Peace Prize, but that doesn’t mean you’re not influential in making the world a peaceful place. You may not have created a tool that connects millions of people the world over, but you’re still the glue that holds people together in more ways than you even realize.

I haven’t always given myself credit for all the good I do. If you can relate, you may enjoy this reminder of all the ways you make the world a better place. Click Here to Read More…

by Brian Flatt, of Positive Blatherings

“Whenever you fall, pick something up.” ~Oswald Avery

There are plenty of people in this world who know how to be successful. But how many of them know how to fail?

When you fail, that’s when you become stronger—you learn to pick yourself back up, dust yourself off and move on.

These are also opportunities to learn and to help others as you come back up. As the quote above says, when you fall pick something up. I would add that when you fall, you should pick someone up too.

I used to envy other people, thinking them more successful than I may have been. But I have done a lot in my life, seen a lot of things, worked with lots of different kinds of people. I have been successful and I have failed, and I think it is this that has allowed me to be a more grounded human being.

I have learned that it takes all kinds of people to run the world, and that the ones running the world are not always the smartest.

I have worked underneath supervisors who make you wonder how they graduated from high school, and I have met truck drivers out on the road who are smarter, more educated and more widely read than some of our recent US Presidents and CEO’s of fortune 500 companies. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” ~Buddha

You didn’t get the job. You couldn’t raise the money. You missed the deadline. You hired the wrong person.

You didn’t ask for help. You let someone you love down. You failed to plan in advance. You bit off more than you could chew. You forgot something important.

Worst of all, whatever the case, you set the stage for a million questions about what it means, and what you should have done.

When you don’t do something you wanted to do, oftentimes your disappointment has less to do with the results you failed to create and everything to do with your interpretation of what that failure means. That you’re not talented enough. Or competent enough. Or confident enough. Or good enough in general.

The only way to change your reaction to failure is to challenge the beliefs that create it–those ideas about what failure means. And the best way to change those beliefs, is to change the thoughts that shape them. Click Here to Read More…

by Lori Deschene

“Being right is highly overrated. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” ~Unknown

We all know someone who always needs to be right.

She turns everything into an argument worthy of a courtroom, complete with counter arguments and below-the-belt accusations. She finds holes in everything you say, even if you were actually agreeing with her. And in the end she needs the last word, even if means belittling you or ignoring your feelings.

Not everyone acts this righteous all the time, but we’ve likely all tried to win in an argument at least once before.

Maybe it’s the rush of feeling like the more powerful or intelligent person; or perhaps it’s just a stubborn resistance to bending. Whatever the case, we all play to win in conversations on occasion.

The irony here is that winning rarely feels as sweet as the fighter imagines it will. Research shows competitve people take less pleasure in their successes than their less combative counter parts because they’re rarely satisfied with their accomplishments–ever-ready to seek the next win. Click Here to Read More…