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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.

Lori Deschene's Website

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 …

Tiny Wisdom: Let Yourself Be As You Are

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“Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.” ~Buddha

“My brain has been moving slowly all day.” As I told my boyfriend this, I felt each word roll out of my mouth with all the speed of a hill-climbing turtle. Like everything else I’ve done today, I’ve been speaking at a glacial pace.

I’ve retraced my footsteps over these last few days, double-checking how much I’ve eaten and how well I’ve slept. But despite playing low-energy …

Giveaway and Review: the 2-Year Anniversary of Tinybuddha.com!

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

It seems like just yesterday I wrote, “It’s a pretty exciting week in Tiny Buddha world,” before crafting a massive year-in-review post for the site’s first anniversary.

Yet here we are again, a full year later.

So much has happened in this year, but instead of creating a lengthy year-in-review list, I’m just going to recap the five biggest highlights, for the site and me personally. I’ll also provide a selection of posts from the year that you may enjoy reading if …

Tiny Wisdom: Missing Out Can Be a Good Thing

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“The next message you need is always right where you are.” -Ram Dass

Everything seems urgent in an always-on world, where we can access each other at any time. When we’re not engaging through emails, @replies, and Skype messages, we frequently check various online portals to keep up with who’s doing what and what’s trending. Even if we manage to tune everything out, we often end up feeling distracted.

There’s a bustling world of instant updates and constant connection that never sleeps, and it lives on our desks, in our purses, in our pockets.

Who knows what we’ll miss if …

Tiny Wisdom: Let Your Light Shine Bright

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“As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” ~Marianne Williamson

We all have it: a little voice inside that tries to hold us back.

It tells us not to say what we feel so we won’t make any waves. It tells us not to define what we want so that things can stay predictably easy. It tells us not to go for our dreams because we may not be good enough.

It may also tell us that it’s selfish to focus on our own desires and goals–that good people are more …

Tiny Wisdom: Letting Other People Hurt

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“The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.” -Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday I helped a friend with a project that he’d spent a lot of time, money, and energy planning as a surprise for someone he loves. I knew it meant a lot to him to do this–and do it well.

Things didn’t work out as he had planned, partly due to some misguided advice I gave him. Since he’d been working on it for days, it was an incredible disappointment. I could see the sadness in his face as he saw the final product …

Tiny Wisdom: Open Your Eyes and See

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“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” ~Unknown

This weekend, I devoted an extensive amount of time to writing something I’ve been struggling to complete. I wrote and rewrote so many times that it felt like more like destruction than creation, but I’ve come to realize that chaos is often the path to clarity.

There were times when I knew it could be beneficial to do something else, clear my head, and come back to it with fresh eyes, but a part of me felt this drive to push …

Tiny Wisdom: Receiving without a Sense of Obligation

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“The best things in life are unexpected, because there were no expectations.” -Eli Khamarov

There was a time when I hesitated to accept unsolicited offers of support. If someone suggested a way they could help me, I assumed they were looking for something specific in return. This made me somewhat defensive, because there were and are a lot of things I don’t want to do.

I don’t want to personally recommend products I haven’t tried myself. I don’t want to tweet promotional links of any kind. I don’t want to send dedicated email blasts about books, or seminars, or teleconferences.…

Book Giveaway and Review: A Lamp in the Darkness

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Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The 5 winners:

“Sometimes we have to go right into the fire in order to find our true healing.” ~Jack Kornfield

No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve accomplished, no matter how well you’ve planned, you will deal with challenges in life. We all will. And many times, they will hit us unexpectedly.

We will all lose things and people we love. We will all make mistakes and …

Tiny Wisdom: We Get to Decide if Today Counts

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

A while back, a reader commented that it’s easy for me to suggest tomorrow is full of possibilities, since I am relatively young. An older woman, she believed her options were far more limited, and that even if she could do the things she wanted to do, they wouldn’t count–not at her age.

My first instinct was to start a conversation about mindfulness, since no one is ever guaranteed more than the present. Even young people don’t know for certain that they have decades more …

Tiny Wisdom: Are You Afraid of Success?

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“Success will never be a big step in the future; success is a small step taken just now.”  ~Jonatan Mårtensson

We often talk about releasing the fear of failure to create motivation and momentum, but I’ve found that there’s another obstacle that can keep us from taking risks: the fear of success.

Success in any pursuit requires responsibility. At one point, I decided this was one thing I didn’t want. I didn’t want people to depend on me. I didn’t want to create conditions in my life that I needed to maintain with consistency, both in effort and earning.

I …

Tiny Wisdom: You Make a Difference

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“Act as if what you do makes a difference.  It does.”  -William James

Last year, someone emailed me Seth Godin’s inspiring blog post You Matter. That one act made a huge difference in my day, so I’d like to build on that now.

  • When you show up for the people in your life, even though you’re having a hard day, you make a difference.
  • When you share what you’re dealing with, even though it makes you feel vulnerable, and help other people through your honesty, you make a difference.
  • When you practice what you preach, you make a
…

How to Maintain a Relationship with a Loved One Who’s Hurt You

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“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~Paul Boese

In a previous post about forgiveness, I mentioned that I spent years holding onto anger toward someone who hurt me repeatedly years ago.

I eventually realized that forgiving this person was the only way to set myself free. The resentment, bitterness, and sometimes pure rage were slowly killing me. They manifested in emotional and physical illness, constricting my life so that I was little more than the sum of my grievances and pains.

At many points I strongly believed my emotions would consume me, bit …