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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 do the same. She recently created the Breaking Barriers to Self-Care eCourse to help people overcome internal blocks to meeting their needs—so they can feel their best, be their best, and live their best possible life. If you’re ready to start thriving instead of merely surviving, you can learn more and get instant access here.

Lori Deschene's Website

Tiny Wisdom: On Perfect Plans

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“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” -Proverb

Tomorrow always seems like a safe bet for action. Then you’ll be ready to get started, or get serious, or get over it, or get on with it. Tomorrow you’ll finally set your plan in motion instead of shaping it into something just right. You’ll take the offer, the plunge, or the road less taken tomorrow, when you feel sure.

Tomorrow can become a moving target while todays pile up and expire.

Sometimes we need to be patient, but oftentimes we use it as an excuse to wait …

Tiny Wisdom: On Enthusiasm

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“Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money, power, and influence.” ~Henry Chester

Money can leave you feeling emptier than you were before you had it; it can buy you everything yet give you none of the feelings you hoped it would provide.

Power gives the illusion of control, when in all reality, everyone must come to terms with our universal vulnerability. And influence—well, it might make people follow you, but it doesn’t guarantee you have something worth following.

Enthusiasm, when directed toward something healthy, gives you the power to imagine, create, and enjoy, all rooted …

How You Made Tiny Buddha Beautiful This Year: Our 2010 in Review

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“We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.” ~Anonymous

Before September 2009, I thought I wanted to run a personal development blog—a place to share the lessons I’ve learned and generally build a community around the idea of teaching people to improve their lives. Then I realized that wasn’t my vision.

There were a couple reasons for that.

I feel the biggest challenge isn’t gaining new information; it’s learning to apply it.

Instead of trying to build authority, I wanted to embrace my humanity—to be both strong and vulnerable, willing to share what I’ve learned …

Tiny Wisdom: On Everyday Change

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“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.” ~Flora Whittemore

Some decisions seem so inconsequential when you make them.

You choose not to go to lunch with your coworkers. You decide against making that call about taking a class. You reconsider your plans to go out with your friends and instead sit alone, in a familiar space, with a familiar level of comfort.

Every small decision affects the next decision you get to make.

If you don’t go to lunch, you might not learn about a new position at your company. If you don’t …

The One New Year’s Resolution That Creates Lasting Change

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“If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.” ~Jack Dixon

I originally started to write a post offering tons of different New Year’s resolutions and tips to stick to them to create lasting change.

After all, that’s what we bloggers do around the end of the year: share our best practices for improving our lives as December rolls into January; compile well-researched suggestions to change, and do it consistently, despite knowing most people give up on resolutions within weeks of setting them.

Then I realized that didn’t feel authentic to …

Tiny Wisdom: On Flaws

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“A beautiful thing is never perfect.” ~Proverb

The vintage couch pillows that don’t even slightly match. The homemade scarf that’s a little too long and yet just the right size. The worn T-shirt that looks like trash but holds too much nostalgia to toss. The hand-made card depicting a child’s version of a happy family—not even slightly realistic and yet precise in all the right ways.

Imperfect beauty surrounds us, and without realizing it, we also own it, with our diverse colors, shapes, sizes, and smiles; in our varying tastes, skills, perceptions, and quirks.

All those little things that make …

Review & Giveaway: The Power of Receiving

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Sometimes in the name of being good we forget to be good to ourselves. We put so much energy into meeting other people’s needs that we fail to meet our own. And yet that doesn’t change that we have needs; it just pushes us to deny them or to find manipulative ways of getting them met.

For the longest time, I felt certain that good people put everyone else first. They stretch themselves, bend over backward, and even completely exhaust themselves if it means making everyone else happy.

I also thought giving would naturally invite reciprocity. Inevitably, after months of …

How to Love Your Authentic Self

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“You, yourself, as much as anybody else in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

In our personal development-focused, life coach-dependent world, it’s all too easy to think you need to change. Not just the things you do, but who you are.

It’s one thing to invite transformation for the sake of growth, improvement, and new possibilities. It’s another thing to feel so dissatisfied with yourself that no amount of change could possibly convince you that you’re worthy and lovable.

This type of intrinsic self-loathing formed the basis of my adolescence and some of my …

Mindfulness Giveaway: Win Awake at the Wheel Mindful Driving CDs

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Update: This winners for this giveaway have already been chosen.Subscribe to the Tiny Buddha List to learn about future contests!

When I was twenty-one years old, I got into a series of car accidents just after getting my license.

The first time, I drove the wrong way down a one-way street. The second time I side-swiped a double-parked car trying to get around it. And the third time, I hit a Channel 7 news van while looking at printed directions in the middle of Big Dig construction madness (not my proudest moment).

In all of those instances, I was …

Tiny Wisdom: On Wasted Time

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“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.” ~Rodin

John Lennon said time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted. The same can be said for time you didn’t enjoy if you decide to find value in the experience of the moment.

It’s easy to do this retroactively—to look back and ascertain that a frustrating moment taught you patience, or a disappointing moment taught you humility. It’s a lot more difficult to ground yourself within a less than ideal moment and decide then to use it wisely; not to remember it wisely later, but actually do something …

Tiny Wisdom: On Resisting Emotions

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“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle

No amount of strength will change the fact that we are human, and to be human means to hurt. We won’t hurt always, and we don’t have to suffer endlessly, but we will feel emotions all through our lives.

Even if we become really adept at dealing with uncomfortable emotions, we will never completely transcend them. And would we even want to? The ability to feel the darkest of moments gives us the capacity to enjoy the lightest.

So I say lets stop fighting our natural duality. …

Productivity and Happiness: Why Are We So Busy?

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“Life is what happens when you are making other plans.” ~John Lennon

There have been times in my life when I believed all my happiness revolved around how busy I was. If I was busy, I was using time wisely. If I was busy, I was proving to myself that I was valuable. If I was busy, I was creating the possibility of a better life in the future. Any threat to my productivity was a threat to my sense of hope.

Being busy didn’t make me feel happy, but it created the illusion that I was somehow …

Tiny Wisdom: On Giving a Gift

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“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. ” -William A. Ward

Everyone likes to be appreciated, yet research shows we are collectively quicker to place blame than offer praise. Perhaps it’s because we’re wired to seek solutions to problems, which means we need to recognize things that aren’t working.

But relationships aren’t problems to be solved. They might come with their challenges, but inherently they don’t need fixing. They need nurturing, and it’s our job to do that.

Today make it a point to express all the gratitude you feel, even for …

8 Ideas for Stress-Free, Meaningful Holiday Gift Giving

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“You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give.” ~Unknown

There’s something magical about this time of year, and it has nothing to do with the Santas posted like soldiers at various points throughout the globe or the million volts of electricity that light up Main Streets the world over.

I’ve always loved Christmastime because the season inspires people to focus on everything that’s important in life.

The usually harried slow down just a little to stop and smell the mistletoe, while humming along to redundant Christmas songs they secretly enjoy. Fighting relatives …

Tiny Wisdom: On Imperfect Days

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“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.” -Unknown

There are far more reasons to be happy right now than there are valid excuses to wait for a better day. For starters, things will never be perfect. Just as everything lines up right with work, your relationship may get complicated. Just as you settle into a healthy relationship, your family might feel neglected.

Life is a constant balancing act, and on most days, some things will work in our favor and other things will appear to be lacking. Perhaps true happiness …

Tiny Wisdom: On Honoring You

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“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.” ~Hardy D. Jackson

There is a big difference between being there for people and being inauthentic to please people. The irony is that we often do this for people we love thinking it’s what they want. It isn’t. They want our needs to be met, but they can’t know them unless we acknowledge and honor them ourselves.

We are the ones who need to decide who we are and what it means to be true to ourselves; and we’re the …

8 Ways to Turn Disappointment into Meaningful Success

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“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 six-month contract to write …

30 Things to Appreciate About You

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“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

Depending on where you’re from, you may celebrate Thanksgiving today. You might get together with your family over a massive gravy-drenched feast. You might celebrate with a chosen family of friends, with traditional food, vegan fare, or a nontraditional fast food spread.

Regardless of who surrounds you today or what meal you all share together, you’ll likely reflect upon your blessings, as we tend to do at this time of year.

You might announce them elocution style as you all take turns at the …

Tiny Wisdom: On What We Create

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“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.” ~Milton Erickson

It’s inevitable we’ll hurt in life, and in it’s inevitable we’ll want more of the good times, less of the bad, and more control over the distribution.

We can’t change that pain is a part of life, but we can choose to  be responsible for joy instead of sitting around waiting for it, wondering when someone will change or something will change and happiness will seem less elusive.

We can do the things we love a little every day. And tell the people we …

Tiny Wisdom: On Being Aware

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“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.” ~James Thurber

When you focus your attention on what’s in front of you, yesterday’s problems feel a lot less catastrophic and tomorrow’s uncertainty seems a lot less scary.

It’s not easy to live in the now because obsessing over yesterday and stressing about tomorrow can seem like gaining control. If only you can analyze yesterday enough, maybe you can make sense of it. If only you can plan for tomorrow enough, maybe you can decide what will happen.

Except neither of those things are universally …