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How to Release the Fear of Failing: 20 Inspiring Definitions for Failure

By in Blog, change & challenges, Featured, happiness & fun, mindfulness & peace

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” ~Buddha

You didn’t get the job. You couldn’t raise the money. You missed the deadline. You hired the wrong person.

You didn’t ask for help. You let someone you love down. You failed to plan in advance. You bit off more than you could chew. You forgot something important.

Worst of all, whatever the case, you set the stage for a million questions about what it means and what you should have done.

When you don’t do something …

10 Things That Are Real: How to Take a Break & Connect with Yourself

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, healthy habits, mindfulness & peace

“The world doesn’t happen to you, it happens from you.” ~Unknown

It’s easy for me to drown in the sea of day-to-day things. How can I not when technology, social networks, phone calls, and the pressure to be successful in spite of the economic downturn constantly bombard me?

It’s almost as if catching a breath of air, and not a forced one, has become increasingly difficult. The world as we know it is constantly evolving before our eyes. How are we to keep up? Must we keep up if it means losing sight of the simplicities we cherish?

Some of …

How to Enjoy the Journey More by Eliminating the Word “Should”

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, healthy habits, mindfulness & peace

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” ~Proverb

A friend of mine once said, “If there’s a word in the English language I detest, it’s ’should.’ What a pointless, useless, waste-of-space (euphemism for other choice adjective) word.”

I think he’s right on the money. At the risk of sounding hypocritical, you should consider the definition of should, as defined by dictionary.com:

Should: must; ought (used to indicate duty, propriety, or expediency): You should not do that.

There is always something we feel we cannot and should not do for fear of humiliation, regret, having …

50 Things You Can Control Right Now

By in Blog, change & challenges, Featured, happiness & fun, mindfulness & peace

“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown

CNN reports that psychic businesses are thriving in this challenging economy, and the clientele has expanded to include more business professionals who are worried about their financial future.

According to Columbia Business School’s Professor Gita Johar, who studies consumer behavior, the greatest motivation for visiting a psychic is to feel a sense of control.

Sure, there are lots of things we can’t control: businesses may fold, stocks may plummet, relationships may end—the list is infinite, really. But wouldn’t we …

Embarrass Yourself

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, letting go

“To get something you never had, you  have to do something you never did.” ~Unknown

You’d like to start presenting to clients, but you’re afraid of looking like a deer in the headlights if they ask questions you can’t answer. So you keep thinking about it, waiting for a time when you feel more prepared. More ready. More in control.

You’ve considered telling your friends you want to publish your novel, but you can’t stand them knowing you failed if things don’t pan out. So you keep it inside, protecting your ego but reinforcing to yourself that you likely can’t …

Undecide

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, letting go

“Open minds lead to open doors.” ~Unknown

We start forming opinions at an early age and continue all through life.

We decide what we think is right and wrong, what’s good and what’s bad—not just on a larger scale (religion, politics, ethics) but also in every-day interactions.

How people should act. What people should think in certain situations. What it’s okay to feel and express, and when it’s smart or polite to do so.

We develop ideas about how the world should be to support our beliefs and views—things we learned from our environment and experiences—and inevitably feel a sense …

Why You Should Prosper Even Though There’s Suffering in the World

By in Blog, change & challenges, Featured, happiness & fun, meaning & passion, work fulfillment

I write a newsletter every week, and last month a subscriber emailed me with a question I thought was worth exploring.

… I guess what I’m getting at is if everyone had a choice, treating sewage would be the last thing one would want to do. Isn’t it? Well, yes, I’m making that judgment. If everyone was Wayne Dyer or that money guru lady Suze Orman, we’d all be reaching fantasy levels of achievement. That is what they seem to be proposing is possible.

But someone still has to take out the trash. If we’re all living big, then who’s …

50 Ways to Be More Peaceful and Mindful Throughout Your Day

By in Blog, happiness & fun, mindfulness & peace

“Peace is not something you wish for. It’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.” ~Robert Fulghum

Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time visiting 1000 Awesome Things, a blog devoted to the many simple pleasures in life. Some of them remind me of being a kid, like this one about celebrities on Sesame Street. Others remind of me I’m stronger than I think, like this one about getting through difficult situations.

With that in mind, you can imagine how excited I am to receive a copy of Neil’s …

One Simple Way to Make a Big Difference in Someone’s Life

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, love & relationships

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

Just after my mother’s colon cancer surgery, my father was laid off from work.

I was sixteen years old and felt silently helpless and terrified. My mom had been attending church but, on this certain day, she didn’t feel well enough to attend. After this particular church service, an exceedingly thin, frail, elderly woman approached me. She requested if I would please accompany her on an errand.

I felt too afraid of being disrespectful of the elderly, so shyly I …

40 Ways to Use Time Wisely

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, healthy habits, mindfulness & peace

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” ~Annie Dillard

Time. It is arguably our most valuable commodity.

Unlike treasured gems, precious metals, and any other prized possessions, time can’t be hoarded, collected, earned, or bought with hard work, money, dignity, or our soul. It slips away whether or not we choose to pack meaning into it. Use it or lose it, so goes the saying.

Though we all know how limited our lives are in the time-space continuum, we sometimes act like we don’t know the value of time. We use words like spend…

Compare Well

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

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” ~Lao Tzu

Conventional wisdom suggests that if you want to be happy you shouldn’t compare yourself to other people. Conventional wisdom isn’t always realistic.

Try as you may to completely stop making comparisons, you’ll likely come back to the instinct at least on occasion.

Discontent is part of the human condition—the nagging sense that something’s missing, even when you seem to have it all. We’re constantly evolving, growing, and looking for new ways to expand our impact on the world, new ways to …

7 Creative Ways to Turn Everyday Situations into Opportunities

By in Blog, Featured, meaning & passion, work fulfillment

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” -Milton Berle

The people who are the most successful in life are the ones who create their own opportunities. Since I’m a work-from-home freelance writer who prefers beadworking to networking, I have to be ultra creative.

I’ve identified seven simple ways to find opportunities in everyday situations. Here’s what I got:

1. Wear your resume while running errands.

Last year I read an article about a woman named Kelly Kinney who printed her resume on a T-shirt. What a brilliant idea! I always notice words on shirts; I’ve even been known to …

Get Luckier

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, work fulfillment

“Care and diligence bring luck.” ~Proverb

When things aren’t going well for you, it’s easy to blame it on bad luck—to assume other people who are doing better had more help and advantages.

Nothing could be less empowering. This line of thinking just confirms that the world is unfair and you have limited control.

While both those things are true on some level—life isn’t fair, and in many ways, we’re not in control—happy people take responsibility and create their own luck, while their unhappy counterparts sit around blaming misfortune, feeling bitter that other people appear to get all the breaks.…

10 Ways to Slow Down and Still Get Things Done

By in Blog, Featured, healthy habits, mindfulness & peace, work fulfillment

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” ~Gandhi

Both the industrial and digital revolutions promised increased productivity, meaning people could work less and live a more balanced life. We all know that’s not how history has played out.

Even as technology advances, we work longer hours than ever and ironically, struggle financially and accrue more debt with each passing year.

If you haven’t noticed adverse effects on your personal relationships or the other areas of your life, you’ll likely keep plowing full-steam ahead and only stop when you have a compelling reason.

So here’s my proposition: Work as …

8 Ways to Increase Your Joy Factor

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

When I lived in Santa Monica a few years back, I developed a friendship with a woman I learned a lot from. She was a yogini, writer, and actress.

One day she asked if I wanted to take a ride to her dentist’s office with her.  She said it was fifteen minutes away but would take forty-five minutes to get there. Noticing the difference in the times, I asked the obvious question.

“Oh,” she said, “I always …

On Learning to Set Priorities

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, healthy habits

 

“Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life.” ~Sogyal Rinpoche

Sitting in the ICU waiting rooms during recent months waiting to visit Mama, my life slowed down more than I can remember in recent memory. I had a lot of time to think about what I’ve done with my life in recent years.

Many things that seemed important at the time all of sudden seemed trivial. I realized how much my life had gotten out of control. I wasn’t a drug addict or alcoholic, …

4 Ways to Use Envy for Growth and Personal Gain

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, meaning & passion, mindfulness & peace

“To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is: a dissatisfaction with self.” ~Joan Didion

I like to think of myself as a realist. I realize it sounds good to recommend fighting envy with gratitude. As in, “Don’t dwell on what you don’t have—just count your blessings!”

I recognize that this is a wise suggestion and that we’d all be happy if we could just focus of the abundance in front of us.

But I also realize this isn’t a complete solution.

We’re wired for look for two things in life:

  • Solutions to problems—physically, emotionally, spiritually, and professionally
…

On Catching Thoughts Before They Become Emotional Reactions

By in Blog, Featured, happiness & fun, healthy habits, mindfulness & peace

“I am not what happens to me. I choose who I become.” ~Carl Jung

Recently I experienced a big shock, the kind that most of us don’t encounter very often.

I was with a friend when I discovered evidence of a physical disaster near my home. I did not, at that time, know any of the details, nor did I know what kind of impact it might have on my own life.

Now, normally, I am a person who likes, even needs, to process my emotional impact verbally. In other words, I really like to talk things out. (What else …

7 Tips to Travel Well on the Road and In Life

By in Blog, happiness & fun, healthy habits, mindfulness & peace

“It is better to travel well than to arrive.” ~Buddha

I have this thing about road trips. I love them, can’t get enough of them. I could never step on another airplane for as long as I live and be perfectly fine with that—but I love having all the experiences that can only happen on the road.

Like my mom and I sleeping in our car in the parking lot of a closed motel on our way to Sedona, Arizona. We foolishly decided to forego the hotel strip outside of Phoenix and look for something more “quaint”—until, at three in …

On Making the Unreasonable Possible

By in Blog, change & challenges, Featured, happiness & fun, meaning & passion, work fulfillment

“You can do what’s reasonable or you can decide what’s possible.” ~Unknown

When I was in grade school  my teacher had us write down what we wanted to be when we grew up. Honestly, at the time I had no idea.

I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to be but I knew I wanted to be doing something important, so I jotted down careers that, in my young mind, equaled success: doctor, lawyer, dolphin trainer, firefighter, astronaut etc.

Then life happened and all of a sudden I was twenty-four, working for the man, and in a serious relationship that …