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Posts tagged with “joy”

10 Ways to Deal with Negative or Difficult People

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“Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.” ~Shirley MacLaine

I love her to death, but it’s draining to talk to her.

Every time I call this friend of mine, I know what I’m in for: a half-hour rant about everything that’s difficult, miserable, or unfair.

Sometimes she focuses on the people she feels have wronged her, and other times she explores the general hopelessness of life. She never calls to see how I’m doing, and she rarely listens to what’s going on in my life for more than a minute before shifting the focus back to herself.

I …

8 Easy Ways To Spread Happiness Around You

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“All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” ~Proverb

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to contribute to the world somehow. I’ve always dreamed of starting a charity organization. I bet that, just like me, you walk around with some sort of wish in your heart to change the world in some way, but you might not do anything about it. How come?

My excuses were time, money, fears, and not knowing how to go about it. I’m guessing you have similar hindrances.

Until recently I held on to the limiting belief…

10 Happiness Tips for People Who Have Been Hurt

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“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” ~Unknown

Maybe someone hurt you physically or emotionally. Maybe you’ve survived something else traumatic—a natural disaster, a fire, an armed robbery. Or maybe you’ve just come out of a trying situation, and though you know you’ll eventually recover, you still feel pain that seems unbearable.

Whatever the case may be, you’ve been scarred and you carry it with you through many of your days.

Most of us can relate on some level to that feeling. Even people who excel at taking personal responsibility have at least one story of having been hurt. Though some …

Getting to the Root of Pain to Work Through It and Be Happy

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

I come from a family of runners. They run from pain, emotions, and uncomfortable feelings.

My mom was 17 when she moved to Texas to get away from her overbearing mother. She couldn’t deal with the pain of never being enough for her parents or herself. She left her parents, extended family, and friends behind in Mississippi without a second glance.

A recovering anorexic, she was looking for something, anything that would ease the pain and prove she was okay.

My father arrived in Texas in his …

How to Stop Betting Against Yourself: 7 Keys for Personal Freedom

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“Nothing reduces the odds against you like ignoring them.” ~Robert Brault

Do you ever wake up feeling like you’re battling yourself?

What’s worse is waking up in that battle and feeling like you’ve already lost before you’ve even started the day.

But think about that for a second: isn’t living this way crazy? We think it’s normal to be fighting ourselves. We’re taught we need to grind it out and make something of ourselves to be successful. We’re taught we need to become something.

And the underlying message is this: who we are right now isn’t good enough.

We’re starving …

Why Enthusiasm Trumps Worrying When It Comes to Reaching Goals

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“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only saps today of its joy.” ~Leo Buscaglia

They say the greatest joy in life is to be able to live your passion every day, and I only had to look to my teens to remember that what I had always enjoyed doing most—working out. That’s where I wanted to go in life.

Held hostage by worries about the future, status, and money, I decided to head on a different path. I did well in college, graduating with a business degree and a double major in finance and accounting.

A few years …

Finding Peace and Joy When Dealing with Pain and Loss

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“Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.” ~Richard Bach

There are times when nothing seems to move in the right direction. We either feel stuck or lost in chaos and confusion. Days follow nights as pages on the calendar turn into months, but you remain at the same place.

A few years back I suffered a miscarriage in the eighth month of pregnancy. I lost my baby and my dreams of motherhood. In the deep void I experienced both physical pain and mental agony.

At such times despite your efforts, the situation turns from bad to …

Determine What Will Make You Happy by Identifying Your Values

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“Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.” ~Ayn Rand

For too many years, I played the part of the perfect little southern girl: I kept my mouth shut and my opinions to myself. I dressed properly, including panty hose, slips, and girdles. I didn’t laugh too loudly in public. I did what I was told.

You see, I learned at an early age that I had to do this in order to always be seen as a “good little girl” (and avoid getting punished). I continued the same behavior after I got …

You Are Worthy of Receiving: 10 Things to Let into Your Life

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“Happiness is really a deep inner satisfaction and approval” ~Francis Wiltshire

At the start of the year many of us make resolutions about what we want to give up, what we need to let go—from quitting smoking (did that 20+ years ago), to cutting back on alcohol (a work in progress), to cutting back on not-so-healthy foods (also in progress), to letting go of past “demons.”

There’s a lot to be gained by letting go of past pain, by breaking bad habits. But what if we thought more in terms of what we might welcome into our lives—what we …

How to Find Happiness Through Gratitude When Life Gets Hard

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“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” ~Brother David Steindl-Rast

In the summer of 1993, my father was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

He was only fifty-eight. Still just a kid.

This was a devastating development, to say the least. Things had already been challenging for my family for several years before this blow.

Dad had lost his corporate banking job in Boston—quite unjustly, in our view—kicking off a nearly three-year-long bout of unemployment.

This was not an easy time for our family, but we …

6 Tips to Find Your Bliss So You Can Follow It

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

I’m betting you’ve heard the advice to “follow your bliss.” While I find there to be much value in those words, I submit that this mindset can become a trap.

It’s not the bliss I have an issue with. It’s the part about following.

If you are going to follow your bliss, the supposition is that you already know what it is. Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t. Yet.

When I was in my early twenties, my mother invited me to join …

Create Peace by Imagining a World Beyond It

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“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.” ~Dalai Lama

What comes after peace? Have you ever stopped to think about this?

We spend so much of our time and energy working to attain both inner and global peace, but have we ever stopped to think about what this really means?

What is on the other side of peace?

Twice in my life, I have broken a board with my bare hand.

There is one simple rule to this technique. You must not focus on breaking the board but rather on breaking through …

35 Simple Ways to Be Beautiful

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“Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.” ~Sophia Loren

Even though I got Joey McIntyre from The New Kids on the Block to sign my scoliosis back brace in the sixth grade, I still felt ugly wearing it.

I didn’t realize the irony back then, but in retrospect it seems a little funny that I grew crooked considering I convinced myself I was wilting in my sister’s shadow. (I also had braces and headgear, but that’s another story.)

I was a kid who wanted to be beautiful, but more desperately …

Being Grateful for the Imperfect Present

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“If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” ~Oprah Winfrey

I live in an old house.

It is 212 years old this year, to be exact.

We’ve added onto it over the years so it presents itself as more youthful than its age. The old bones remain, though, as well as many of the quirks. Those “quirks” give it character, right? It’s much like my emerging crow’s feet give my face character.

That’s the positive spin on crow’s feet, at least.

We have uneven floors, to the point where most of our furniture is …

The Illusion of Waiting for the Future to Be Happy

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“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 …

Finding Your Special Thing: Connect with Your Passion

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“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” ~Rumi

You know what it is; you’ve always known. Maybe it’s been just a shadow in the fog, or it’s crystal clear in amazing Technicolor before your eyes. Either way, it’s there, sometimes stinging you with a numb sense of denial, sometimes scratching at your skin like a bad case of poison sumac.

It’s existed since the day you arrived on earth with a cry and a gasp.You knew it already when you were small, when you drew pictures with crayons and finger paint, when you …

Your Happiness Can Make a Difference in the World

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“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 …

4 Powerful Tips to Reduce Resentment and Feel Happier

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“Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.” ~Buddha

Life is short. Time spent feeling angry or resentful about things that happened or didn’t happen is time squandered.

What’s that? You think those feelings motivate you and help you get things done? Hogwash! If you’re honest with yourself, you realize getting things done isn’t the end goal. The goal is to feel fulfilled and happy.

Accomplishments fueled by resentment and anger seldom contribute to serenity and fulfillment. More importantly, the moments you spent crossing things off your to-do list with a scowl slip away without giving you …

Choose Love Now

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“Eventually you will come to realize that love heals everything, and love is all there is.” ~Gary Zukav

Growing up, I was lucky that my parents surrounded me with a strong and steady current of love, despite our family’s own little dysfunctions and a knowingness that I wasn’t like other kids.

In truth, once I got past my shyness, I was a pretty confident young girl who actually enjoyed being the “different” one, immersing myself in the creative outlet of dance and soothing my soul with frequent trips into nature.

Broken Bits

It wasn’t until I fell in love with …

Happiness is the Value of Every Moment

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“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

“What is happiness?” What a completely dense and loaded question this is.

During my studies in psychology, one of the main principles we learned about writing a manuscript is the importance of defining what you are discussing. If I were to write a paper about happiness, I would then need to operationally define happiness in terms that allowed everyone to understand what I was referring to.

The problem with this, however, is that we then merely repeat the best …