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Posts by Lori Deschene

Lori Deschene is the founder of Tiny Buddha. She started the site after struggling with depression, bulimia, c-PTSD, and toxic shame so she could recycle her former pain into something useful and inspire others to do the same. You can find her books, including Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal and Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal, here and learn more about her eCourse, Recreate Your Life Story, if you’re ready to transform your life and become the person you want to be.

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Tiny Wisdom: What It Means to Be Free

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“Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

  • When you choose to forgive instead of seeing the world through bitter eyes, you are free.
  • When learn from your mistakes instead of letting them define or cripple you, you are free.
  • When you love yourself regardless of what other people think, you are free.
  • When you accept uncertainty instead of stressing about what you don’t know, you are free.
  • When you embrace chaos, instead of struggling for control, you are free.
  • When you recognize that we are all imperfect, and then resist the urge to fight that, you
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Tiny Wisdom: The Triggers That Lead to Pain

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“The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming it.” -Helen Keller

There’s a child wailing five feet away from where I’m sitting in the Farmer’s Market at The Grove. This is my least favorite sound in the world, and I often tear up when I hear it.

While I realize children often cry for reasons that have nothing to do with danger, I associate hysterics with fear and powerlessness, and it makes me want to do something. Since I generally can’t, it manifests in my body as anxiety–a fight or flight response with no outlet.

I’ve …

Tiny Wisdom: Keeping Your Heart Open

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“A person’s world is only as big as their heart.” -Tanya A. Moore

Last week, I wrote about John Robbins, who presented at Bonfire Heights. He and his son Ocean shared a number of stores about loving fully and unconditionally. Sitting in the audience at their presentation felt like participating in a massive, 45-minute group hug. They were just that openhearted–and the audience that receptive.

This got me thinking about my capacity for vulnerability. Though I write a lot about the benefits of being open, I’ve noticed I have a limit, so to speak–a point at which I …

Tiny Wisdom: The Benefits of Slow Progress

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“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.” ~Proverb

Sometimes it can be challenging to operate with complete integrity in business—particularly because bigger and faster can be seductive.

Case in point: I have a strong aversion to many traditional marketing methods, as I find much of it to be psychologically manipulative.

I feel it’s wrong to sell people things by playing to their deepest fears and insecurities, and implying my book or product will be the magic bullet they’ve been waiting for all their lives.…

Tiny Wisdom: Stop Thinking and Get Moving

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“Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it” -David Starr Jordan

Have you ever felt so frustrated with your inability to do something that you committed to doing nothing else until you figured it out?

I have done this many times before.

I’ve confined myself to a chair, trying to force inspiration to form into written words when it just wasn’t happening. I have sat around intellectualizing about which decision I should make—as if the act of thinking really hard for hours on end would somehow make it …

Giveaway and Interview: Uncertainty by Jonathan Fields

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Editor’s Note: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. They are:

Several years ago, when I lived in New York City, I developed a love for yoga that started in a studio previously owned by Jonathan Fields. I didn’t know it then, but I would eventually look to Jonathan as a role model, mentor, and friend.

Author of Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love, Jonathan Fields is (in his own words) a dad, husband, New Yorker, author and speaker, serial wellness-industry entrepreneur, recovering S.E.C./mega-firm hedge-fund lawyer, slightly-warped, …

Tiny Wisdom: Choose to Be a Hero

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“A hero is a man who does what he can.” -Romain Rolland

Two weeks ago, a group of brave bystanders in Utah banded together to lift a burning car and save a man trapped beneath it.

In 2009, a passenger on Northwest Flight 253 leapt onto a burning man to prevent him from detonating an explosive device on Christmas Day.

Four years ago, a 50-year old man threw himself onto the subway tracks in Manhattan, just as a train was arriving, to save a man who had fallen after having a seizure.

These men and women all had one …

Tiny Wisdom: Less Pain, More Love

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“The most important thing in this world is to learn to give out love, and let it come in.” -Morrie Schwartz

There are some people we feel we’ll never understand. They make choices we’d never make, they don’t understand why we do what we do, and they don’t give us what we need in our relationships with them.

Vegetarian author and advocate John Robbins had a man like that in his life. That man was his father, and the thing he didn’t know to give was love.

I saw John speak this weekend at Bonfire Heights, the retreat I …

Tiny Wisdom: The Power of Flexibility

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“Stay committed in your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.” ~Tom Robbins

This is the post that almost wasn’t—and it’s chock full of irony.

This weekend I spoke at the first annual Bonfire Heights retreat.

The founder, Darius, promoted this event as a meeting of “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” Listening to the stories presenters shared, it occurred to me that “ordinary” was a modest assessment. The lineup included the youngest TED speaker ever—a twelve-year old organic farmer; a teenage paraplegic who started a non-profit foundation called Walk and Roll; and multiple CNN Heroes, to name just a …

Tiny Wisdom: Stillness in a World that Moves Quickly

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“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” -Hermann Hesse

Before I started this site, I had a different blog where I frequently posted uplifting videos. I quickly learned that the average web reader will devote one to two minutes before deciding that a video drags on. It’s a consequence of the rapidly moving digital era: our attention spans have decreased.

And we tend to get desensitized to concepts fairly quickly. Perhaps it’s because very little feels fresh in an information-overloaded online world, where there are millions of …

Tiny Wisdom: When You Fear Making Mistakes

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“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” -Elbert Hubbard

The other day I read that most of our fears can be boiled down to a fear of inadequacy, and, consequently, rejection. I know this is true for me.

When I feel a sense of panic about the potential to fail, it’s really more about being seen as a failure. When I make mistakes without witnesses, assuming the mistakes don’t cause me immense discomfort, I generally rebound fairly quickly. It’s almost like a tree falling the wrong way in the woods–if …

Book Giveaway and Interview: One Minute Mindfulness

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Update: The winners for this giveaway have been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to learn about future giveaways!

The winners:

As you can likely tell from the number of author interviews/giveaways I’ve posted during these last few weeks, I’ve been receiving and reading a wide selection of books lately. One-Minute Mindfulness is now sitting on my coffee table, where I know I will refer it often.

The full title reads One-Minute Mindfulness: 50 Simple Ways to Find Peace, Clarity, and New Possibilities in a Stressed-Out World. It delivers on its promise.

From the Amazon Description:…

Tiny Wisdom: The Time is Now

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“To be alive is to totally and openly participate in the simplicity and elegance of here and now.” -Donald Altman

We can find reasons to smile, if we look for the good in the now.
We can silence the thoughts that cause us pain, if we focus on what’s in front of us now.
We can change the things that aren’t working, if we make different choices now.
We can let go of the past and start from where we are, if we realize we’re free in the now.
We can be the people we want to be. The only …

Tiny Wisdom: Stressing and Pushing for Success

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“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” -Albert Schweitzer

Last week, I was part of the studio audience for a taping of the Jay Leno show. One of the guests was Glee’s Jane Lynch, who I learned has a new book out called Happy Accidents.

What struck me during her interview was her confession of struggling with chronic anxiety throughout most of her rise to fame. She always felt apprehensive about her decisions, unsure of whether or not she was doing the …

Tiny Wisdom: Not Taking the Easy Road

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“There are always two choices. Two paths to take. One is easy. And its only reward is that it’s easy.” -Unknown

I need to constantly remind myself to not do what’s easiest.

As I’ve mentioned before, I work from home. Many days, it’s tempting to pull open my laptop the second I wake up—which means I’ll likely spend the first couple of hours working in my pajamas, only to find myself feeling somewhat disconnected from the day outside my door.

I know this happens. I know that I feel better about myself when I get ready for the day as …

Tiny Wisdom: You Need to Forgive Yourself

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“Love yourself—accept yourself—forgive yourself—and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.” -Leo F. Buscaglia

There’s a scene in the movie Good Will Hunting where a therapist named Sean repeatedly tells the wayward genius Will, “It’s not your fault.” This comes on the heels of a conversation about the severe abuse Will suffered from his foster father, which led him to a life of legal battles and underachievement.

The first time Sean says, “It’s not your fault,” Will responds with a nonchalant, “Yeah, I know.”

But as he repeats …

Tiny Wisdom: We Want to Fly

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“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.” -Helen Keller

The other day my boyfriend and I went to Disneyland, as we often do, since we’re annual pass holders.

Though my younger self would be ashamed to foresee this about adult me, I generally avoid rides with intense drops, because I have the stomach of a 90-year old. Yet somehow, the other day, I found myself in line for a roller coaster ride.

During the wait, I kept a laser focus on the part of the coaster that climbed to an inevitable plummet, completely dulling …

Giveaway and Interview: Spirit Junkie by Gabrielle Bernstein

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Update: The winners have already been chosen for this giveaway. They are:

Have you ever met someone, and then instantly felt a sense of rapport and respect? That’s how I felt earlier this year when I met best-selling author and speaker Gabrielle Bernstein.

After a stellar introduction from a mutual friend, I felt intrigued to meet this woman, known as a “happiness guru” in the mainstream media. Much to my dismay, I woke up that day feeling slightly under the weather and far less, well, happy, than usual.

It was just one of …

Tiny Wisdom: The Joy of Non-Events

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“Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving, make every day a holiday and celebrate just living!” -Amanda Bradley

In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll coined the term “un-birthday,” which means exactly what you might expect—a day you celebrate that isn’t actually your birthday. You might not feel inclined to send out Evites and buy a helium tank in honor of a non-milestone, but there’s something to this idea.

We often live life waiting for reasons to get excited. We save the good china for special occasions, reserve fancy clothes for yet-to-be-determined big events, and generally wait for …

Tiny Wisdom: Living in the Now and Planning for Later

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“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it but to enable it.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It’s a common misconception that being fully present means not setting goals. After all, if you’re truly connected to the now, you’re not thinking of building for later. If you’re awake instead of living on autopilot, you’re more concerned with the wonder of what’s in front of you than the wonder of what’s ahead of you.

I’ve spent a lot of time weighing the options, as if I needed to choose one way of being: peaceful or productive. This left me feeling …

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