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A Simple Way to Make the World a Little Better Every Day

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” ~Leo Buscaglia

When I was seventeen years old, I decided to make a change.

Instead of keeping my opinions to myself, I was going to start sharing them.

Every time I had a kind thought about someone, I was going to tell them. And anytime I heard a compliment about someone who wasn’t in the room, I would let them know.

If I …

Happiness Doesn’t Make Us Grateful; Gratitude Makes Us Happy

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“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

A few years ago, my life was chaotic. I drank too much, slept too little, and always went with the flow. I didn’t look out for myself emotionally and physically. I burned the candle at both ends and eventually wore myself out.

I often felt depressed. After my parents’ divorce when I was 18, I lost the closeness I used to feel with my family. My entire focus was on what I didn’t have anymore.

I …

Love What’s Right Before You Instead of Hating What’s Missing

By in Blog, happiness & fun, love & relationships, mindfulness & peace

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.” ~Walt Whitman

I take stuff for granted. I suspect you take stuff for granted.

It’s almost as if it can’t be helped. When things—family, friends, health, amenities, or money—occupy a place in our lives for years, we naturally begin to view them as commonplace; we assume they’ll forever be, just as they’ve always been.

Yet this mindset—this “Oh, of course that’s there; that’s always been there” perspective—often seems to prevent us from realizing how much it would mean to us if that something wasn’t there anymore.…

How to Fill the Emptiness in Your Life

By in Blog, love & relationships, meaning & passion

“Find your Calcutta.” ~Mother Teresa

Something is missing in your life, isn’t it?

You’re working hard, trying to get ahead, doing everything you possibly can to make life just a little bit better. You’re trying to keep it all balanced, though. You won’t be one of those people who commits every waking second to work and the pursuit of a career.

Not you. You’ve got it figured out. You even make time to exercise, eat right, meditate, or maybe spend time with friends and family.

You’ve got it all figured out—except for that one stupid thing that keeps tugging …

How to Activate the Life Purpose That’s Right Under Your Nose

By in Blog, meaning & passion

“Our obligation is to give meaning to life, and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.” ~Elie Wiesel

After surveying 3,000 people, psychologist Cynthia Kersey discovered that 94% had no clue as to their purpose in life—94%!

As painful as this statistic is, it’s even more painful in light of how relatively simple it is to discover a worthy and fulfilling life purpose.

For most of us, a meaningful purpose lurks just beneath the surface of conscious awareness and can be discovered in a few minutes.

This is the easy part. What happens after you discover your life …

When Life Feels Crazy: 6 Questions for Cracking Up & Breaking Through

By in Blog, change & challenges, happiness & fun

“Every really new idea looks crazy at first.” ~Abraham H. Maslow

Once, when I was in a painting workshop, I hit a wall of resistance, totally stumped by what to paint next.

My painting teacher came over to explore some questions that could help unblock me. But my “wall” was concrete, or industrial metal, or super-duper spy-movie-like with some computer-code contraption locking all security systems down.

“What if a crazy woman came into the room?” she asked me. “What if the crazy woman painted for you? What would she do?”

“She would explode everything up!” I answered.

“What would she …

Your Reality Is a Reflection of What You Believe You Deserve

By in Blog, change & challenges, happiness & fun

“You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are.” ~Yogi Bhajan

Over the last ten years I have learned time and time again that our reality is a reflection of what we believe we deserve, often on an unconscious level.

I discovered this about a decade ago while living in Belize—a diving vacation hotspot on one end and gang-infested, poverty-ridden land on the other.

Back then I was avoiding the 9-5 life. You may say I was running from something, such as routine and following the status quo, but I was also looking to find my worth by …

5 Ways You Attract Great People When You Like Yourself More

By in Blog, love & relationships

“By accepting yourself and being fully what you are, your presence can make others happy.” ~Jane Roberts

Several years ago, I was so unhappy with my harsh loneliness that I decided that I was going to try anything under the sun to build a social life and have friends that cared about me.

I read all the books I could find and tried all the techniques they shared, but I still had to make a lot of effort to build friendships and hold my social life together.

Then I started to learn and apply the principles of self-esteem.

I used …

The Greatest Act of Love Is Letting Go

By in Blog, letting go, love & relationships

“Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be.” ~Sonia Ricotti

I was brought up in a family and culture that was riddled with fear.

My elders were terrified of the world and always on the defensive for something bad to happen. They believed that love meant closely protecting others from the dangers of the world and the pain of life.

This smothering behavior kept me small, and left me totally ill-equipped and ill-educated for living in the real world.

With this as the root of my upbringing, breaking free and learning to …

How to Practice Self-Compassion: 5 Tips to Stop Being Down on Yourself

By in Blog, love & relationships, meaning & passion

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” ~Jack Kornfield

I never wanted to see a therapist. I imagined settling onto the storied couch and seeing dollar signs appear in concerned eyes as I listed the family history of mental illness, addiction, and abuse. I feared I’d be labeled before I’d ever been heard.

But after experiencing the emotional shock of witnessing a murder, I knew I needed a space to grieve. So I gathered all of my courage and laid myself bare to a very nice woman who had Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements on her …

Encourage, Don’t Criticize; Help Instead of Trying to Fix

By in Blog, love & relationships

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” ~Thich Nhat Hahn

When you think you’re an evolved and conscious woman and your partner tells you in no unclear terms that you’re “hard to be with,” it does a number on you.

Those words landed like a well-aimed boulder, smashing the immaculate vision I’d created of evolving myself: an exemplary girlfriend who was “doing the work” to grow, to become generously loving, spiritually awake, and to wholeheartedly support and encourage her beautiful partner to open to his fullest potential.

We met under messy circumstances. Both …

The Antidote to Criticism: Turn Others’ Doubt Into a Standing Ovation

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” ~Aristotle

Gangly and skinny, I never attracted much attention from the opposite sex during high school. I was the friendly and funny sidekick to the popular girls—fun to hang out with but not to date.

When an older guy approached me during my last year of high school, I thought it would be a normal high school romance.

It turned out that our relationship wouldn’t be anything close to “normal.”

As I began to get to know him, everyone around me started to object to …

You’re Not Behind; You’re Just on Your Own Path

By in Blog, healthy habits

“To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.” ~Sven Goran Eriksson

Endlessly comparing ourselves to others and idealizing their best qualities while underestimating our own are self-defeating behaviors, and they hurt our self-esteem. Yet in the competitive nature of our world, many of us do this.

As a result of my own self-defeating thoughts, throughout my life, I’ve repeatedly felt like I was five years behind where I “should” be.

After high school graduation, many of my peers went away to school and into a new wave of social experiences.

I stayed home, worked, and …

The Labels We Take On: How They Limit Our Potential

By in Blog, letting go

“Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.” ~Alan Watts

We live in a society of labels. Everyone will try to label you, including yourself. It’s been happening since the beginning. It takes some honesty and objective reflection to see it, but take a moment or two and really think about it.

Eventually, we each begin to subconsciously believe those labels and we start to feel as though to be whole, to be someone in this world, we need to appease our egos and the voices around us by “fitting-in somewhere,” …

How Simple Mini Habits Can Change Your Life

By in Blog, change & challenges, healthy habits

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts

It was late 2012, just after Christmas, and like many others I was reflecting on the year.

I realized that I had ample room for improvement in too many areas of my life, but knowing that New Year’s Resolutions have a poor 8% success rate (University of Scranton research), I wanted to explore some other options. I knew I wanted to start before January 1st too, because arbitrary start dates don’t sit well with me.

On December …

4 Ways to Know If You’re Ready for a Simpler Life

By in Blog, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“Be who you want to be, not what others want to see.” ~Unknown

Growing up in a consumer society has its obvious advantages—technology is abundant, restaurants are everywhere your eyes can see, and grocery store shelves are always full. All of this leads to the illusion that everything is available, in quantity, all of the time, and for the most part it is.

I was born and raised in a consumer culture and I thought I had it all; the ability to buy whatever I wanted and needed was deeply ingrained in my psyche. In my childhood I had …

Finding a Good Match: Know What You Want and Need in a Relationship

By in Blog, love & relationships

“You’ll never find the right person if you never let go of the wrong one.” ~Unknown

I recently left a relationship that I was not happy in. Although my ex was definitely an unconditional lover, it painfully bothered me that the man I loved was not taking care of his responsibilities.

Since I’ve entered my twenties, I’ve been looking for more than just a good time; I need a stable partner who will be able to meet our shared expenses and obligations in the future. So, I was faced with the crucial, inevitable decision of calling it quits.

I cried …

A Lasting Romance Is Built on Flaws: 6 Tips for a Strong Relationship

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Let our scars fall in love.” ~Galway Kinnell

We all bring our own baggage to any relationship. I know that my past relationships have shaped my approach to love and romance. When we seek out that special someone to share our life, the disappointments of our past relationships tend to get in the way of new discoveries.

It’s human nature to size up a potential partner by drawing from past experience.

There are so many ways to catalog the possible flaws: He’s too short. She’s too tall. Too fat. Too thin. Not enough education. Too much education. Or you become …

We Have the Strength to Move Through Pain and Uncertainty

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Suffering is not caused by pain but by resisting pain.” ~Unknown

Earlier this year our beloved puppy got sick. Not just a poorly tummy kind of sick, but proper, life-threatening, blood transfusion-requiring sick. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. She was at death’s door.

The vet was talking to us in quiet and kindly tones. Using words like “grave.”

Her illness was apparently unusual in a dog her age. Her prognosis was uncertain. She would require months of treatment that may or may not work. We were to watch her for signs of deterioration. Note changes in her appetite and energy levels.

And then …

4 Tips to Help You Keep Going When You’re Filled with Doubt

By in Blog, change & challenges, work fulfillment

“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake.” ~Francis Bacon Sr.

“Just research, research, research. That’s what grad school is.”

It seemed as though that was all I was hearing from my professors, and it wasn’t helpful.

Since returning to school to get my master’s degree, I had maintained a 4.0 average, but I also hadn’t taken more than two classes at a time. Until now.

When I enrolled for the fall semester, I chose to take twelve …