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How I Went From the Pain of People-Pleasing to the Freedom of Being Me

By in Blog, letting go, love & relationships

“How hurtful it can be to deny one’s own true self and live a life of lies just to appease others.” ~June Ahern

Growing up I felt lost, separate, and different from everyone else in my family. After all, everyone else was a fit; they pursued the same hobbies, had the same aspirations, and even thought in the same way (everything was very black and white with hardly any grey areas). I was interested, it seemed, in everything they were not interested in.

I had a different way of looking at the world. Any task I was asked to …

Create More, Consume Less: How to Feel More Excited About Life

By in Blog, meaning & passion

“Creating means living.” ~Dejan Stojanovic

We live in a consumer culture. We love to eat, drink, and be merry—while binge watching whatever’s trending on Netflix and getting a dopamine hit for every item added to our cart on Amazon Prime.

We love to take it all in—information, entertainment, status updates, news reports, substances, and an endless array of stuff. There’s never a shortage of things we can consume, often to keep our minds distracted and our feelings silenced.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love a good meal, a Jim Beam or two, and an afternoon spent zoned out on …

Say Yes to What Excites You and Make This the Year You Really Live

By in Blog, meaning & passion

“I imagine that Yes is the only living thing.” ~e.e. cummings

During the fall of 2017 I began openly dating, four years after my separation and divorce of a twenty-plus year relationship. It was scary. And I was clear—I didn’t want a commitment, I just wanted the experience and some fun.

My third round of online dating, I finally went out with some younger men who I assumed lined up with my non-commitment goal. It was different and fun, but also not quite what I wanted.

In December of that year, my friend, who was interested in getting to …

Sometimes We Are the Ones Who Need to Change

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means.” ~Albert Einstein

When I was younger, I had a lot of opinions about what other people needed to change.

“Why can’t people conserve more?” “Why can’t people stop throwing cigarette butts on the ground?” “Why can’t so-and-so stop being so annoying?”

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I’ve recently realized that as I focused on all of the things that others needed to do, I was avoiding taking a look at my own very real flaws and failures.

I used single-use plastic …

Be Kind, Retrain Your Mind: 3 Tips to Overcome Negative Self-Talk

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

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

In 1990, in an early encounter between the Dalai Lama, the foremost Tibetan teacher of Buddhism, and Western students, the Dalai Lama was asked a question about how to deal with self-hatred. He was confused and didn’t understand the question. The translator translated the question again, and still the Dalai Lama was confused.

Finally, the Dalai Lama understood that the question was about how to manage negative feelings about the self. This was a new concept to him: he knew that people had negative …

Why I Focus on the Now Instead of What I Want for the Future

By in Blog, happiness & fun, mindfulness & peace

“The next message you need is always right where you are.” ~Ram Dass

I want you to go back to New Year’s Day 2009 with me for a second. I’d recently left a job and was embarking upon a new career, one in which I was self-employed.

I pulled out all the stops and created a vision board that contained all of the things: how much money I wanted to earn, how I wanted to dress, where I wanted to vacation, how I wanted to eat, and everything else I could think of. I thought if I created this …

How Expressing Myself Helped Me Release Chronic Pain

By in Blog, change & challenges, meaning & passion

“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” ~ Rumi

It can be frightening to experience physical or mental pain. It’s not something anyone wants to deal with; nobody wants to race against the clock hoping that some future experience will take away their pain. Nobody wants to question the purpose of anything, like seeing a friend or even traveling, just because they feel their pain will ruin it.

During my freshman year at college, I woke up one day with horrific nerve pain in my legs and in my pelvic area. What was this? My instinct told …

How I Overcame Childhood Emotional Neglect and Learned to Meet My Needs

By in Blog, love & relationships

“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.” ~Mitch Albom

“Your feelings are valid,” said my life coach during one of our sessions, as we were working on an issue I had with my parents.

I had to do a double take. My feelings are valid? She actually accepts them as they are?

Eventually it started to dawn on me: My parents never validated my feelings. This sudden revelation earlier this year threw me into a dark period of my life.

When I was …

Let’s Get Real: Why I’m Done Pretending to Have It All Together

By in Blog, letting go

“If you’re not really happy, don’t fake a smile on my behalf. I’d rather you spill your guts with tears every day until your smile is real. Because I don’t care about the show, the disguise, the politically correctness. If you’re in my life, I want you to be in your own skin.” ~Stephanie Bennet-Henry

This is the story of my inner child, the insecure part of myself that I am ready to respect and recognize.

My thoughts and views are as follows: I’m not a superior mom, probably just an average psychologist, and am way too sensitive about …

5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Trying to Lose Weight

By in Blog, healthy habits

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

I struggled to maintain a healthy weight for a large part of my life.

Had I known these five things before my weight-loss journey, I would have had a much easier time shedding the pounds and would have realized that weight loss isn’t a magic fix-all solution to my issues.

If you’re trying to lose weight, perhaps some of my lessons will be helpful to you.

Here we go…

1. This has to be for you, not someone else.

Growing up as a closeted …

Why I’ve Decided to Accept Myself Instead of Trying to ‘Fix’ Myself

By in Blog, change & challenges

“No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance.” ~Robert Holden

In our culture, we are constantly bombarded with the newest and best things to improve ourselves and/or our quality of life. Unfortunately, this leads to the belief that we need to obtain some sort of thing before we could accept ourselves as we are.

When I was a child, I constantly battled with my weight. By the age of fourteen, I was 225 pounds (mind you, I am 5’2,” on a good day).

Fortunately for me, a doctor pointed out the concern of childhood obesity. …

How Going Offline for 10 Days Healed My Anxiety

By in Blog, change & challenges, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a while, including you.” ~Anne Lamott

I wake up anxious a little past 4am. My heart is beating faster than usual, and I’m aware of an unsettled feeling, like life-crushing doom is imminent. For a moment, I wonder if I just felt the first waves of a massive earthquake. Or perhaps those were gunshots I just heard in the distance.

But no, it’s just another night in my bedroom in the Bay Area, and everything is utterly fine. But somehow, my central nervous system isn’t so sure.

The problem is …

We Have to Own Our Part to Heal Our Broken Heart and Find a Deeper Love

By in Blog, love & relationships

“True love does not only encompass the things that make you feel good, it also holds you to a standard of accountability.” ~Monica Johnson

I remember the confusion I felt as it slowly began to register to me that he had indeed read all of my messages and was indeed ignoring me. Even though my eyes were telling me this, it still didn’t make any sense.

Just the day before, he’d initiated contact, called me beautiful, and wanted to know the details of my day. We’d talked all day that day, as we normally did. But this was a new …

3 Healing Practices to Connect with Yourself and Release Your Pain

By in Blog, change & challenges, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“Our practice rather than being about killing the ego is about simply discovering our true nature.” ~Sharon Salzberg

One of the symptoms of living in today’s fast-paced world is the underlying feeling of loneliness, overwhelm, and disconnection. Chronically stressed and under financial and familial pressures, we often feel alone in the world, out of touch with others, overwhelmed by our emotions, and disconnected from our own bodies and ourselves.

Our world is ego-driven. We constantly compare ourselves to others, judge our performance (usually harshly), define our worth by our financial and career achievements, and criticize ourselves for failure.

This ego-based …

Experience the Benefits of Mindfulness: Join eM Life’s Free One Percent Challenge

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

Whether you’re a regular reader here or you just found your way to Tiny Buddha recently, odds are you’re familiar with the practice of mindfulness, but you may not be aware of the many benefits.

A regular mindfulness practice can not only boost your mood, reduce your stress level, and help you be less reactive, it can also enhance your creativity, improve your sleep, and increase your resilience so you’re better able to handle life’s varied disappointments and challenges.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Studies have shown that a regular mindfulness practice can also give you a …

How to Help Without Hurting Yourself and Avoid Healer Burnout

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.” ~Pema Chodron

The technical term is Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. This is when one stumbles upon a new, unfamiliar, or unusual piece of information, and soon encounters that same subject again, within a short time, sometimes repeatedly.

So, for example, you decided to take the plunge for that hipster, purple hair streak that you thought was so punk rock, but now you see it on everyone.

You have recently been car shopping, narrowing it down to a couple of choices, and now Honda Fits are …

How to Take Back Control from the Negative Script in Your Head

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

“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” ~Dan Millman

I’d love to say I had an “Eat, Pray, Love” moment where sitting sobbing in the bathroom I received divine guidance to leave my husband and go traveling the world eating amazing food. But sadly, it wasn’t quite that profound.

It was more a long series of nights sobbing in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, and concluding “You’re broken.”

I wasn’t depressed and hadn’t been for a long time. My anxiety, a lifelong companion, was under control. …

We Get to Define Our Experiences and Decide What We Take from Them

By in Blog, change & challenges, meaning & passion

“When something bad happens you have three choices. You can let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.” ~Unknown

It’s massively important how we define our world and the experiences we have in it. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to learn that early in my life.

When I was twelve, my stepfather was a homicidal-leaning, violent alcoholic. I believe my mother must have suffered a Stockholm Syndrome kind of relationship with him. They were together for thirteen years even though they separated several times.

He tried to kill us all on more than …

How to Push Through Phases of Uncertainty

By in Blog, change & challenges

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

I once trekked on my own along the Salkantay Trail …

How to Break Free from the Past and Start Feeling Good Enough

By in Blog, change & challenges

“My biggest fear is that I’m not good enough. I have this voice in my head that I’ve been battling for years that says, ‘You’re not really talented enough. You don’t really deserve this.’ ” ~Rachel Platten

When we’re continually surrounded by unrealistic beauty standards in the media and highlight reels of others’ success on social media, it’s no surprise that many of us feel like we don’t measure up or fit the ideals of perfection.

At some point in our lives maybe we were rejected for the color of our skin, the shape of our bodies, or for the …