*The deadline to submit a story has now passed. Thank you to everyone who submitted one! You will receive an email by the end of November if your story will be included in the book.

Tiny Buddha is all about bringing people together to share their experiences and what they’ve learned—both on the blog and in print.

Tiny Buddha: Simple Wisdom for Life’s Hard Questions, published in 2011, includes 150 tweets of wisdom addressing some of life’s most complex topics, like meaning, pain, love, fate, and control.

Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself, published in 2013, features forty stories of overcoming challenges related to self-love, including shame, perfectionism, comparisons, and the need for approval.

The next Tiny Buddha book will hit the shelves in November 2015, and you could be a part of it!

The Book 

Tentatively titled 365 Tiny Love Challenges from Tiny Buddha, the book will feature a year of simple daily activities to help you give and receive more love.

It will be published by Harper One, an imprint of Harper Collins, and it will be available on Amazon, in Barnes & Noble, and in various stores where books are sold.

The challenges will focus on increasing self-love, strengthening current relationships (romantic or otherwise), building new relationships, and taking tiny steps to help build a more loving world.

Sharing Your Story in the Book

The book will feature short stories related to a number of relationship themes, including:

• Releasing Anger & Forgiving
• Acceptance & Non-Judgment
• Compassion & Understanding
• Authenticity & Vulnerability
• Attention & Listening
• Releasing Comparisons & Competition
• Kindness & Thoughtfulness
• Support & Encouragement
• Appreciation & Admiration
• Giving & Receiving
• Fun & Playfulness
• Honesty & Trust

You can submit an original short story, never before published online or in print, 400 words or less, with a lesson related to any of these themes.

Contributors will not receive monetary compensation, but will receive credit with a byline and their URL listed in the contributor index, along with a free copy of the book.

Not sure what kind of story to submit? Click here to read two examples related to appreciation, taken from the Tiny Buddha blog.

How to Submit Your Story

-Share an experience from your life, with a related lesson, on any of themes listed above.

-Ensure your story is 400 words or less.

-Submit your story using the form below, including your first and last name, your email address, and the theme of your story (one of the twelve listed above).

-You can submit a story until Monday, September 15^th.

Due to the high volume of submissions Tiny Buddha receives, you will only receive a response if your story will be included in the book.

Example Stories

My brother Greg and I were going through another one of our tiffs in the fall of 1997 when I was awoken by a phone call from my grandmother one morning. She told me that he had been hit head-on by a drunk driver the night before—and was killed instantly. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

After I hung up the phone, I screamed and wailed for nearly two hours straight. I just couldn’t articulate my pain in any other way. There was such a strong bond between me and Greg that I felt like half of my body had been cut in half. And on top of the pain of losing him, I was reminded of that one final argument we never got to resolve. It took me years before I stopped thinking about it and began to appreciate the valuable lesson life had taught me.

I’m a lot more cautious these days about leaving things unresolved with people I love, or with anyone else for that matter. Life is short. We’re all given a set amount of days in which to enjoy this life and appreciate one another—and none of us know just how much time we actually have left. Today is the time to work out our differences and disputes with the people we love, and to ask ourselves an important question: Is my stubbornness really worth it? Is it possible that I’ve been making a big deal out of something trivial—a position that I’d feel awful about if this person died tomorrow?

I hear stories all the time from people who never got to tell a parent how much they loved them before they passed, and even siblings who never buried the hatchet before it was too late. Regret is one of the hardest things in the world to live with. Challenge yourself to resolve an issue with someone you’ve been feuding with for a long time, especially if it’s a family member or friend. Let them know they mean much more to you than your old stubborn position in a past argument.

~Shawn W. Larson

—

My husband and I were going through a difficult time a few years ago. We had several issues, one of which was my husband being out of work, and suffering with anxiety, depression, and a lack of self-esteem and confidence as a result. We were not spending any quality time together, nor were we going out together as a couple. (My husband didn’t want to face anyone, including friends and family.) We didn’t feel like each other’s friends, let alone the lovers and best friends we had grown to be. At times we even felt like strangers—or even worse, each other’s enemies. We were forever fighting, bickering, and whining at each other.

After a lot of heartache and many heated arguments, we realized we could no longer go on like this. We each made a commitment to start treating each other differently. We hoped that, with a new perspective and our mutual love and respect for each other, we could start working together and make the change we so desperately needed. We hoped that a change in attitude and behavior would salvage our marriage.

He and I were feeling a lot of resentment toward each other, and not feeling loved and appreciated, so we put in place a daily appreciation diary. Keeping a personal gratitude journal is a great asset; it makes you focus on the positive in your life and leads to happiness. Keeping a gratitude diary as a couple had the same benefits and gave us hope. It forced us to focus on the positives of the day and not just the negative events or what the other person did or didn’t say. It made us appreciate the other person and see them for the person we fell in love with.

It also made us feel good to be acknowledged and appreciated for what we had done on a daily basis. It helped to hear the other person say “thank you,” even though we were being thanked for doing our expected roles—me, for going to work full time, and my husband, for taking over the home duties. It was important for us to hear the gratitude from the other person so we didn’t feel like we were being taken for granted.

~Clare Barber

Ready to share your story? You can share it here.