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4 Simple Mantras to Help You Stay Positive and Happy

By in Blog, happiness & fun, mindfulness & peace

“The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.” ~Swedish Proverb

Mantra, according to the dictionary:

Any sacred word or syllable used as an object of concentration and embodying some aspect of spiritual power.

Mantra, according to Sirena:

Things I say to myself to help me deal.

There are times we all go through that just straight up suck.

During these times, it can be hard to think about anything other than what’s going on. We can become so consumed in our own misery that we often overshadow any glimmer of hope.…

How to Set Healthy Boundaries: 3 Crucial First Steps

By in Blog, healthy habits, love & relationships

“You change for two reasons: Either you learn enough that you want to, or you’ve been hurt enough that you have to.” ~Unknown

I learned about boundary work when I was teaching in the NYC jails with male prisoners.

After driving onto a maximum security island of electric, clanging gates, I encountered metal detectors, hallways filled with yelling, chaotic inmates, and tension and anxiety in the air that was almost tangible.

I started my workday tensed up and ended it drained, exhausted, and overwhelmed.

In other areas of my life, the same thing was happening. In my personal relationships, I …

Being Kind When It’s Seen as a Weakness

By in Blog, meaning & passion, work fulfillment

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” ~Samuel Johnson

When I worked in the corporate world, I didn’t focus on a race to the top. I enjoyed the day-to-day work of running a product line, finding opportunities for new markets, and helping managers in other countries launch similar lines tailored to their markets.

My approach was to be ethical in all aspects of the work, to have concern for the people I was working with to achieve results, and to share the credit appropriately. This was not the latest …

10 Ways to Love the People in Your Life

By in Blog, love & relationships

“At the end of life, our questions are very simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?” ~Jack Kornfield

We all grow up with some healthy stories about love and some unhealthy ones. I learned some beautiful, life-giving ideas about love, ideas like these:

  • Loving people means believing in their potential.
  • Love means treating people with kindness and gentleness.
  • Loving the people in your life means celebrating their successes and cheering them on.

But I also grew up with some stories about love that I came to see weren’t so helpful. Those ideas about love bred problems in my …

5 Questions to Ask Yourself When You Aren’t Sure What You Want in Life

By in Blog, change & challenges, mindfulness & peace

“The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with.” ~Tony Robbins

There are times in life when we just don’t know what we want. These are the awkward in-between places where we feel uncertain and unsure, and perhaps even question our purpose.

There was a pivotal time in my life, after I got my Counseling Psychology Masters degree and had a private practice, when I knew I did not want to be a therapist.

I left counseling to help my husband start his fashion business, even though this was not …

Improving Your Reactions to Mishaps from the Inside Out

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict from life, but the ability to cope with it.” ~Unknown

I am confident. I am content. I am complete. I am calm.

I decided that this was going to be my new mantra. I decided this at 8:26 a.m. I repeated it to myself over and over while showering, getting dressed, and driving to work.

I ascended the stairs to my office, singing the words in my head. I am confident. I am content. I am complete. I am calm.

This was going to be a good day. I would stay …

Stop Waiting to Live: Scare Yourself Alive

By in Blog, change & challenges

“It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Whenever I’m tempted to play it safe with my life, whenever I start talking myself out of the risks I really want to take, I think about something my friend Jesse said years ago, when we were on a work-sponsored retreat.

After a day of travel, activities, and settling in, we were left with a free evening. As the darkness deepened, a group of us stood together, discussing our options. What would we do on our first night in the woods?

There was …

Leaving a Secure Job When the Risk Feels Scary

By in Blog, meaning & passion, work fulfillment

“It’s not who you are that holds you back. It’s who you think you’re not.” ~Unknown

Over the past four years, I followed a career path that felt soulless.

As I moved from city to city, climbing the corporate ladder, I noticed that, ironically, the bigger my paycheck, the emptier I felt. Something about advertising felt lifeless, cold, and desperate to me.

But I ignored this feeling and worked over it, drank over it, binged, exercised, and ate over it.

I pressed forward like a steel freight train on a mission to find my happiness. When I got to that …

4 Reasons to Let Go of Envy and Celebrate Your Greatness

By in Blog, happiness & fun, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“Why compare yourself with others? No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you.” ~Unknown

When I arrived home after a brief stint living in another state, I was anxious to reconnect with places from my childhood and the friends I’d left behind.

But while I was healing from a heart-wrenching breakup, suffering through sleepless nights on my parents rock-hard couch, and mulling over where all my freelance writing work had gone, my friends seemed to be successful, happy, and right on track.

Realizing that I had hit rock-bottom and that it …

13 Tips for Eating More Compassionately

By in Blog, healthy habits

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~Dalai Lama

As a child, I had no idea that such a concept as vegetarianism even existed, let alone veganism.

Since I grew up on a sheep farm, raising animals and eating them were just what we did.

The sheep, cows, and chickens from my childhood seemed to have pretty happy lives. There was grass to eat and water to drink and space to roam about. The only thing that used to worry me about them was that they’d freeze outside in the …

Overcoming the Power of Suggestion: Make Your Own Choices

By in Blog, change & challenges

“People who urge you to be realistic generally want you to accept their version of reality.” ~Unknown

I’m often open to suggestion. I like to gather opinions and feedback about my writing so that I can use it to improve the impact and make it a better read.

The thing I’ve learned about listening to other people’s thoughts on my writing is that sometimes what seems like good advice is little more than personal preference; changing an image or an entire scene to suit one person isn’t always the right path, especially if my gut is saying, “You know you …

How to Be Fully Awake Instead of Living on Autopilot

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”  ~Pema Chodron

It’s tempting. Staying in the nest means life feels safe and we are protected. If we get thrown out of the nest we either stretch our new wings and fly or plummet to the ground.

Flight poses new challenges. How do we embrace spaciousness when we desire solidity? How do we stay aloft and open?

A friend of mine recently showed me a nest of robin’s eggs. Beautiful, blue like the sky, and full of bright possibility, we admired the …

How to Reduce Stress by Doing Less and Doing It Slowly

By in Blog

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” ~Socrates

In April, NPR ran a story titled, “The Slow Internet Movement.” It reported that hipster cities, like Portland, Oregon, are sprouting Internet cafés that only offer dial-up access to the web.

These cafés give customers, “Slow pours and slow Internet. Here, you can order your coffee and spend four hours checking your email, all for $.99 an hour.”

“Wow,” I thought.” That’s just my speed!” (No pun intended.) But the story didn’t just run in April. It ran on April 1st and was NPR’s little April Fools joke at the expense …

6 Questions That Will Make You Feel Peaceful and Complete

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.” ~Swedish Proverb

When I was in my mid-twenties an unhealthy relationship with an unhealthy guy sent me packing off to the corner of New Mexico to find myself. In a new age, self-discovery kind of world—a hubbub of a town filled with people in transition—I was graced to meet many powerful healers, gurus, shamans, and teachers.

I became a workshop junkie. I went on Shamanic power journeys to spiritual centers around the world, chanted with Indian gurus, and became a certified yoga instructor and …

The Secret to Instant Self-Confidence

By in Blog, happiness & fun, letting go

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” ~Dalai Lama

Self-confidence is an interesting concept.

You see, we all have ways of feeling good, bad, low, light, and peaceful. We all have triggers that tell us when to experience these states.

The really interesting part is that you can challenge how you respond to those triggers and change the strategies you use.

There have been countless times in my life where I haven’t felt absolutely confident.

For example, I used to be very shy around people. I just didn’t believe I had anything to say, so …

51 Things That Will Make You Smile

By in Blog, happiness & fun

Some days, it’s easy to smile. You wake up to the sounds of birds chirping, with the warm glow of the morning sun cradling your face. You take several deep, cleansing breaths standing beneath a perfectly cascading shower, just before drawing a smiley face on the steamed-up glass with your index finger.

Your roommate or significant other makes your coffee, just the way you like it. You hit every traffic light. You sing to your favorite tunes. And you arrive at work refreshed, excited, and anxious to create and collaborate.

But not every day starts this way. Sometimes you wake …

5 Immediate and Easy Ways to Silence Your Inner Critic

By in Blog, change & challenges

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” ~William Shakespeare

I love to paint. I’m not a professional artist. I have no technique, and I am not trained. But I love how the brush feels as it dips into color and moves across a white page.

Painting allows me to be free, to have fun and play. It also does something else: It shows me how I judge myself and how I can get in my own way. It reveals what I believe about myself that stops me from creating whatever I want.

Even as I …

The Relief and Power of Accepting Your Struggles (and Finding Hidden Gifts)

By in Blog, change & challenges

“It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.” ~Pema Chodron

I love acceptance. Acts of surrender create forward momentum.

If we all pause for a moment and observe what we are fighting, right here and right now—maybe depression, anxiety, weight gain, low self-image, or financial stress—we’ll have an opportunity to accept then.

But that’s just the start.

Recently I accepted something I never thought I would. Reframing the way I thought about it changed my life.

I have moderate to severe OCD. Having OCD is basically like …

Set Yourself Free: 3 Ideas to Become More Conscious

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I’m sitting on a straw bail at an unplugged rock concert that’s being held in Barrydale, South Africa, my current home and sanctuary. It’s a big deal for this small town, because nothing much ever really happens here.

Everyone from the area has arrived dressed to the hilt and ready to rumba—except me, that is. I’m sitting to the side (in an outfit that will scare away most normal people) staring forlornly off into the distance.

My buddy Sean sits next to me with …

8 Tips to Help Create a Positive Mental Attitude

By in Blog, happiness & fun, mindfulness & peace

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

For years I lived an uneventful existence. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t unhappy either. I was just sort of stuck.

I had a good career, earned lots of money, and I had great friends and a loving family. You would think that this doesn’t sound too bad, but I felt unfulfilled and unmotivated. I repeatedly lived each day like the one before.

I looked around me and saw that everybody within my own circle of friends, relatives, and immediate family were no different. They too seemed stuck. They …