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How Your Ego Thrives on Fear and Keeps You Panicked

By in Blog, change & challenges, love & relationships, mindfulness & peace

“The ego is the false self—born out of fear and defensiveness.” ~John O’Donohue

“The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy.” ~Parker Palmer

Does it sometimes seem like the world is just a little too much for you? Do you feel that you need to protect yourself from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? (Thank you, Hamlet.) Are you a fragile flower being buffeted by life’s storms?

Then I think you’ve been listening to your ego too much. I understand all of those feelings very well, but I’ve recently discovered something life-changing…

The First Steps Toward Creating a Life You Love

By in Blog, happiness & fun, meaning & passion

“My goal is to build a life I don’t need a vacation from.” ~Rob Hill Sr.

The other day I had an interesting conversation with a friend, who asked me the question “Who is the happiest person you know?”

Ask yourself this question now. It’s difficult to answer, isn’t it?

There are certainly people around me who seem to be happy, but the happiest person I know? I couldn’t easily come up with an answer.

The conversation with my friend proceeded with him saying, “You seem happy, but it’s so easy for you; you live in Cornwall by the sea, …

How Gratitude Shifts Your Perspective When Things Go Wrong

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” ~Melody Beattie

Yesterday, while praying in the Ganges River, my purse got stolen.

Standing in The Holy River Ganges, praying up to my neck in her healing waters, the outside world felt as if it had stopped.

The feeling of happiness to be back in Rishikesh was so strong it bordered on invincible. Instant immersion into the healing waters of Maa Ganga was the only …

Ask Why: How to Motivate Yourself to Keep Going When Things Get Hard

By in Blog, change & challenges

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

My father was an amazing man. I’m sure most sons think that about their fathers, but it’s a belief held by more than just myself. I’m not saying he was a great father, but he was a great man.

He was a Vietnam veteran, a carpenter, and a social paragon in the small town I grew up in. Our neighbors declared him the “Mayor of Bluebank” (the road he lived on.) His funeral was one of the most attended events that our small town in …

How Listening to Depression Can Help Us Overcome It

By in Blog, change & challenges

“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” ~Rumi

My first diagnosis of depression came at the age of fifteen. Depression runs in my family; it wasn’t a case of overmedicating. It was genuine, and the black dog has followed me all my life.

I’ve been on eight different antidepressants and a handful of anti-anxiety drugs. I’ve been in and out of therapist offices and hospitals for most of my life, and I expect that I’ll continue to do so.

My mindset (and that of my family and doctors) was that depression is an adversary to be defeated. If …

Love Is In the Little Things

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ~Robert Brault

Valentine’s Day has never been a big deal to me. It always felt commercialized, so forced. I’ve never felt I needed Hallmark to remind me to do something special for my husband, or vice versa.

This certainly isn’t a reflection of how we felt about, treated, or appreciated one another; it just wasn’t a priority to us.

In our more than seventeen years together, some years I would receive a card, flowers, or chocolates, but other years it would …

Your Anger is a Guide: Embrace It and Set Yourself Free

By in Blog, change & challenges, love & relationships

“Where there is anger there is always pain underneath.” ~Eckhart Tolle

In the sixth year of marriage, my husband shocked me by telling me that he had decided on an open marriage. This would give him permission to do what he was already doing, having an affair.

In one of my rare times of anger I argued and struggled with him. I can still see myself hitting him in the chest as he tried to put his arms around me to reassure me of his love.

As he defended his position, he reminded me that I wasn’t being rational. I …

East vs. West: Major Cultural Differences That Impact Our Happiness

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” ~John Milton

I’ve been living in Asia for over a year now, spending six months each in Nepal and Vietnam, with a bit of traveling around India and Sri Lanka in the middle. I wanted to put pen to paper on what strikes me as a few of the major cultural differences between the East and the West. I can see things that each side could do with a bit more of. But here I’m going to concentrate on what I’ve …

Healing from Childhood Abuse: Get Help and Take Your Life Back

By in Blog, change & challenges

TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.

“No one loses their innocence. It is either taken or given away willingly.” ~Tiffany Madison

Childhood innocence. When I think of it I always picture a baby lying on their back, playing with their feet. They are laughing, cooing, smiling, and lost in a sense of wonder. Full of joy, love, curiosity, and awe. When you look at them you can’t help but smile, and their joy and laughter are infectious. At this moment, they are perfect.

Now have all that taken …

How Defensive Pessimism Can Help Ease Your Worries

By in Blog, change & challenges, mindfulness & peace

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.” ~Corrie Ten Boom

You know if you’re a worrier.

You worry about all kinds of negative things happening, without any evidence that they’re likely to happen.

I’m a recovering worrier.

It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve become conscious of the extent of my worry and the impact it has on me, and of how ineffective it is.

My worry paralyzes me, making it hard to think, plan, or act.

But, as anyone who is prone to worry knows, worry can feel …

You Never Know How Much Time You Have, So Forgive While You Can

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Forgiveness is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.” ~Corrie ten Boom

I sat next to my stepmother Elaine in her hospital room. I was thirteen. We’d met six years prior as she took a stepmother’s role and had a strained relationship and didn’t speak to each other for parts of it.

Elaine was facing terminal brain cancer. So far she had kept herself together and composed, remaining strong on the outside. I was trying my hardest to do the same for her.

It had all started back when I was seven and my dad took …

What to Do When Someone You Love Is Sick and Struggling

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Love is not what you say. Love is what you do.” ~Unknown

As a graduate student in public health, I spent my days talking about illness and death. Normal lunchtime conversations among students covered topics like: how to define a case of multiple sclerosis, the most effective strategy to stop HIV transmission among injection drug users, and the probability you’d be alive in five years after a breast cancer diagnosis.

None of this talk about illness remotely prepared me for the experience of illness. I was blissfully naive when I started dating a man named Evan with a cough …

How to Tame Your Inner Critic: A Simple Habit to Rewire Your Brain

By in Blog, change & challenges, mindfulness & peace

“I acknowledge my own worth. My confidence is growing.” ~Unknown

Sometimes I feel like a spider whose web is repeatedly torn down. I plan something and start taking action. Then life happens, and setbacks threaten to sap my energy and enthusiasm.

Whenever I take on too much, I can feel as if I’m juggling a million balls. And doing it badly.

You’ve probably seen T-shirts saying, “Things are a bit crazy around here.” That could easily describe me when I allow myself to become overloaded.

It’s easy to feel stressed and to slip into harsh self-criticism. Especially when I hold …

5 Things I Wish I Did When Dating an Addict

By in Blog, change & challenges, love & relationships

“Don’t let people pull you into their storm. Pull them into your peace.” ~Kimberly Jones

I was finally in a solid place when I met my now-ex-boyfriend earlier this year. I had created some healthy habits for myself and was fully recovered from the eating disorder that had ruled my life for eight years prior.

Things had turned around completely for me, as now I was getting my first novel published and had a flourishing greeting card line.

When I first met my ex, who I’ll call Alex, it was love at first sight. I was completely infatuated with this …

5 Life-Changing Realizations About Fear and Anxiety

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.” – Isabel Allende

I was lying on the sofa in my tiny flat in Vienna.

My feet were elevated on a cushion and the room was spinning in a brisk waltz around me. My stomach was cramping and cold sweat was trickling down my spine. I gasped for air whenever choking fear forced my racing heart to skip a couple of beats.

The situation was all too familiar.

Back then I suffered from generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety. I was also plagued …

6 Toxic Thoughts That Keep You Battling with Food

By in Blog, healthy habits

“Eating is not a crime. It’s not a moral issue. It’s normal. It’s enjoyable. It just is.” ~Carrie Arnold

Like many women, I was introduced to diet “tricks” and “hacks” at a young age. In my case, that was around twelve to thirteen years old.

I consumed magazines and movies that constantly reminded me about the importance of dieting, losing weight, and looking skinny.

As a self-conscious teenager, I began to compare myself to the women in music videos with flat bellies, the slim actresses in movies, and models in magazines with their perfect “beach bodies.”

This self-consciousness only grew …

5 Simple but Powerful Practices for a Happier, More Present Life

By in Blog, happiness & fun, mindfulness & peace

“There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that?” ~Ernest Hemingway

It was a Wednesday afternoon, just like any other. I’d spent the last three hours bent over my laptop at a coffee shop, trying to nail down the revisions to a research report that was already three days late.

I’d been distracted all afternoon, checking my e-mail every five minutes for news about a proposal I’d submitted a few weeks earlier. When I’d found nothing to satisfy me in my inbox, I’d stumble …

How I Changed My Life by Remembering Who I Was Before the Pain

By in Blog, change & challenges

“If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.” ~Unknown

For a skinny, curly haired five-year-old girl, life was magical.

Buried in books and living in my imagination, I was constantly scribbling stories and dreaming of far away places. My inquisitive mind and persistent curiosity led me further than I ever thought possible. I was a little girl with big dreams, in a world where nothing seemed impossible, where life was bliss.

Then school started.

It wasn’t easy. In fact, at times it was horrifying. And not academically, no, I enjoyed it very much. But being different and not trying to …

Awaken Your Creative Side: Interview with Melissa Dinwiddie and Book Giveaway

By in Blog, happiness & fun

UPDATE: The winners for this giveaway are Alba and Nette Jordan.

Like most of us, I spent much of my childhood creating, making everything from finger paintings and friendship bracelets to leaf collages and Lego castles.

I also spent weeks rehearsing for community theater performances and hours writing poems and stories, with no thought of whether I could make money off any of it.

I created because it was fun and fulfilling, and that alone was enough.

Then, like many of us, I got caught up adulting and began spending far more time working and worrying than imagining and playing.…

Surviving Loss: You Always Have Choice

By in Blog, change & challenges, letting go, love & relationships

“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” ~Stephen Covey

One ordinary night after an ordinary day of work and family, I went to bed a mother, wife, teacher, writer-person.

I remember falling asleep between sentences exchanged with my husband after an evening spent with just the two of us on our patio, something we rarely seemed to find the time to do in our busy lives. We promised each other that we’d make a concerted effort to have more of these “dates.”

The next morning, on what was supposed to be another …