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Category “change & challenges”

The Power of Acceptance: Stop Resisting and Find the Lesson

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“Of course there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.” ~Arthur Rubinstein

Sometimes you’re an observer of other people’s lives and you think you’ll never experience what they’re living, whether it’s a positive or negative situation. You think, “That will never happen to me.”

Part of the real beauty of life is that it’s unpredictable. Nothing is permanent, everything changes, and of course, a lot of things can happen that will transform who you are and have an impact on your life. The problem is that we need to cultivate the …

How to Feel Less Stressed About the Uncertain Future

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

“Uncertainty” may be one of the least popular places to hang out.

I hear this all the time from my clients, friends, and truth be told, from the voice inside my own head. Certainty is almost always preferable to uncertainty. Humans like to know.

I wanted to know when our house was on the market last year. Would it sell? When would it sell? How much would we get? Should we start packing up closets now, or wait until …

How Pain Can Guide Us and Make Us Whole

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 “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~Bernice Johnson Reagon

We all internalize our suffering to one extent or another. Some of us instinctively take it to a point where it manifests as various physical aches and pains. When I was little, my body learned to carry the burden of the pain that was too big for my heart.

In some ways, it’s served me very well. It let me compartmentalize enough to function beautifully in certain areas. I have an Ivy League education, many work accolades, and all that …

4 Easy Steps to Deal with Difficult People

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“There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.” ~Don Miguel Ruiz

It seemed like a simple task. Please switch my gym membership from gold to silver level. I’m not cancelling, just switching.

That was now the third time I repeated my request, each time a little more calmly and a little more slowly, despite the beginnings of blood boiling feelings.

The person on the other end of the phone could not have been ruder. It was as if I was asking for a kidney instead of a membership change. A harsh tone …

Life is Happening FOR Us: All Things Are Gifts

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“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

Up to a certain point in my life, I was always seeking approval and validation from everything outside of me. All I ever wanted was to feel loved. I longed for this feeling and wondered how the world could be so cruel as to reject me when I was so loving and available.

I have since learned that I was not as available as I thought.

It has been my experience that everyone that crosses …

Living in the “Yes” of Life

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“In chaos there is fertility.” ~Anais Nin

The word fertility formerly had a one-dimensional meaning for me, but I’ve come to broaden its definition.

In my time living in Seoul, Korea, it has played a big part in defining my experience. You see, my husband and I have been trying to conceive since 2009 and have not been lucky.

There’s a long story behind this that includes testing and monitoring and modifying our diets and trying acupuncture. And, for about a year, I became that person I did not want to become—swallowed up by the pain and stress surrounding …

Letting Go and Starting Over When It’s Hard

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“Letting go isn’t the end of the world; it’s the beginning of a new life.” ~Unknown

This June marked twelve years since I got divorced and moved 1,000 miles away from my hometown. It’s an anniversary that I usually remember, but not one that I tend to dwell on… until this year.

This year, the memories of the demise of my first marriage were hovering at the forefront of my mind.

Maybe it’s because I saw a friend who is roughly the same age I was, going through similar hard decisions. Maybe it’s because my spouse and I were struggling …

When It Feels Too Hard To Keep Trying: Rest or Push Harder?

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“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” ~Pema Chodron

When working toward a goal becomes difficult, it’s hard to know whether to push or take a rest.

In my early twenties, living 3,000 miles away from home as a live-in nanny in a very different lifestyle became very stressful. I quit. I felt I couldn’t adjust to it, and I also couldn’t tolerate feeling out of my element every day for months.

It was a decision I quickly regretted. The family I worked for was amazing, and as soon as I moved home I missed them—and …

How to Forgive When You Don’t Really Want To

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“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” ~Jean Paul Sartre

Like so many other women, I had a complicated, often fractious relationship with my mother. I had moved thousands of miles away, but an email or a phone call was enough to irritate me.

Visits were tense, nail-biting experiences, where I couldn’t help but analyze each thing that she said to see if it contained a passive-aggressive double meaning, at which point an argument would brew.

For years it had not mattered what anyone told me about how to forgive, and they had told me …

Why You Have 43 More Choices That Matter in Life (or Not)

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“Life is the sum of all your choices.” ~Albert Camus

Ever wondered what might have been?

Ever thought about where and who you’d be if only you’d done something differently, gone somewhere else, chosen something or someone else?

Probably so, if you’re like most.

But have you ever imagined where you might go and what you might still become, with the choices you yet have left?

My friends and I were hanging out not too long ago, before I moved away from them (totally escaping their awesome grasp) to start a new life of sorts in this surface-of-sun-like heat …

When Painful Things Happen and You Can’t Stop Obsessing Over Why

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“We all have problems. The way we solve them is what makes us different.” ~Unknown

I used to be a “why” person. Why, you ask? Because after receiving my middle daughter Nava’s diagnosis of a neurological condition, I got really hooked into “why me” mode, and it just ate away at every fiber of my core.

I obsessed over “why.” Why did it happen? I needed to make sense out of a senseless fluke of nature.

I was devastated and beside myself with the raging emotions of grief—the anger, bitterness, and resentment—and the dance in my head …

Peace Is Learning the Lesson

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“No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.” ~Buddha

It’s strange to feel peace while a part of your heart is being chipped away.

I’m in the middle of a heart chipping, but the longer it goes on, the more I’m realizing that it needs to be removed before it hardens the rest of the organ. Maybe the chipping is kind of like pruning a diseased tree so the remainder grows stronger and more resilient.

The cuts hurt like hell though.

The last few months have been some of the most difficult of my life. I’ve been …

When Friends Fear We May Judge Them

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“When you judge another, you do not define them. You define yourself.” ~Wayne Dwyer

One of the times I felt my lowest was when I found out a best friend didn’t tell me something important that had happened in her life. I felt about an inch tall when she said she feared I would judge her if she told me, and that’s why she kept it a secret.

At that point, I broke down. Do all my friends feel this way? Why? I’ve always felt very protective of them and tried my best to be a great friend.

I’m an …

3 Keys to Staying Present under Pressure

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“The only pressure I’m under is the pressure I’ve put on myself.” ~Mark Messier   

Back when Earth was cooling, I was a broker at Shearson Lehman Brothers. I still have nightmares about the pressure there—the pressure to sell stocks and bonds, to succeed, to be the best in the office, and to forget what is really important in life.

Now I write books and lead workshops. I live on thirty-three acres with a couple hundred blueberry plants, foxes, incredible people, sunrises, sunsets, and cold dips in a mountain pond all in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains.

While it …

Speaking Up When You’re Bullied, in School and Beyond

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“Sometimes the biggest act of courage is a small one.” ~Lauren Raffo

During the summer of 2001, I experienced three months of torment.

My days were filled with verbal lashings, public humiliation, and pushing my body to its physical limits. I was being broken down. I chose to accept this as my normal. I accepted my punishment like I thought I should. I was seventeen.

Nothing made my anxiety fly away and quieted the constant chatter in my brain like dance. I may not have been the best, or most technically proficient dancer (my fouettes would never land …

Knowing How Far You’ve Come: 8 Tips to Celebrate Your Growth

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“Always concentrate on how far you’ve come, rather than how far you have left to go.” ~Unknown

It is laughably easy to forget to stop and take stock of how far we have come in our lives. Our world focuses so much on what we lack—be it money, beauty, prestige, or romantic success—that it is far too common for us to get trapped in the loop of needing to have, be, or do “more” before thinking that we might be good enough. I, for one, do it all the time.

A year and a half ago I was unemployed …

Giveaway and Interview: Saying Yes to Change

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Editor’s Note: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to receive free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The Winners:

Have you ever formed a friendship with someone whose beliefs differ from yours only to realize you have quite a bit in common?

This is exactly the type of friendship I’ve formed with Alex Blackwell. We’ve had many of the same experiences, and formed many of the same insights, but we’ve found peace and comfort in different understandings of spirituality.

Alex runs The Bridge Maker, where he …

Knowing Which Advice is Right

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“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense.” ~Buddha

The old cliché, “I say tomayto, you say tomahto,” has been popping up in my head recently, mainly because of a lesson I recently learned after years of trial and error.

For the last several years, I have been closely listening to and reading the advice of “experts” on subjects related to life, love, business, and the pursuit of happiness. I have come to an astonishing (for me, anyway) conclusion: …

Growing from Pain and Using it to Discover Who You Are

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“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you; they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~Bernice Johnson Reagon

At the age of 37, my beautiful young mother, who I considered my best friend, crashed her car in light rain just around the corner from our home. We will never know what really happened because she woke up from her brain injury a very different person from the one who drove away that morning.

The experience of suddenly becoming a caregiver at the age of 16, along with my 13 year-old brother and the rest of our family, could …

The Power of Community: 6 Reasons We Need Each Other

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“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.” ~Emily Kimbrough

Even though it was 18 months ago, I still remember my climb up Kilimanjaro like it was yesterday.

Taking those final steps toward the summit with tears in my eyes because I never believed that I—someone who grew up this sick little kid who held a deep-seated belief that she’d never be “an athlete”—would do something that thousands each year, including world-class athletes, cannot.

Yet there I was.

But I certainly didn’t get there alone. I had help—a lot …