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Category “letting go”

On Dealing with Fear: Stop Judging Yourself and Be

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

I’m arachnophobic. Last night, a large spider took up residence on the wall in my room. The shock of seeing its dark mass seated comfortably against the stark white of the paint made the blood drain from my head.

I have ways of dealing with my fears. Sometimes I ignore them and plunge in head-first without thinking; sometimes I avoid them altogether and run for the hills. When it comes to spiders though, I humanize the situation.

I gave Richie, as I named my new roommate, the …

How to Have More Fun in Life: Keep Your Thoughts from Pulling You Down

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“If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.” ~Bob Basso

A couple weeks back, my boyfriend and I went to our local county fair. I love—love—fairs.

Forget for a minute that adult-me now gets vertigo just looking at a roller coaster; and that my thirty-year-old digestive track nearly explodes when I catch a whiff of carnie food. When you factor in my increasing interest in crafts and farm animals, it somewhat evens out.

If you’re the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, thrill-seeker type, that might sound as exciting as watching paint dry. But I really do love petting furry little creatures …

How to Let Go of a Past Relationship: 10 Steps to Move On Peacefully

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“The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Nine years ago my heart was in a million little pieces that formed the basis for a million regrets.

I had my first serious relationship in college, when all my insecurities came to a head. My ex-boyfriend had to juggle multiple roles, from therapist to cheerleader to babysitter.

The whole relationship revolved around holding me up. I realized this soon after it ended—that I’d spent three years expecting someone else to love me when I didn’t love myself. The …

How to Correct Your Mind to Get Out of a Funk

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“If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.” -Lao Tzu

You’re stuck.

We’ve all been there. Even the things that normally make you happy begin to bring you down. Worst of all, you can’t seem to understand why.

So you give it time, let it take its course, and just when you think you’ve escaped the funk, something drags you back in. You know it’s happening but you can’t stop from slipping back under.

What’s happening here is simple. Something—be it your job, peers, or general lifestyle—is contaminating your mind. You’ve lost track of …

3 Steps To Practice Acceptance & Have a Peaceful Life

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“Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day.” ~Unknown

I was in a motorbike accident in 1987. The physician in the emergency room delivered the bad news and told me the right knee cap had cracked. That day changed my life forever.

How could I accept that I wouldn’t ever be able to run again?

The physical injury took years to heal, and a lot of time passed before I slowly started to accept my new situation. In the meantime, I got depressed.

Life Can Be Beautiful

That might seem like an ironic heading coming …

How to Let Go of the Past So It Won’t Anchor You Down

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“A bend in the road is not the end of the road…unless you fail to make the turn.” ~Unknown

Let’s face it, we all dwell on the past from time to time. That’s okay—we’re human beings with emotions. As we live life and experience it to its fullest, it’s only natural that we sometimes cling onto what once was.

But when our desire to cling to the past affects our future, we begin a potentially unhealthy and seemingly endless battle with anchors that can hold us down and sink us.

For the past six years I’ve dreaded spring. While many …

10 Ways to Let Go of Work on the Weekend

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“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown

Sometimes, for me, it’s not a matter of if I’ll work on the weekend; it’s a matter of how.

On the one hand, I’m committed to being mindful and creating balance in my life.

On the other hand, I have a lot of dreams and goals and I enjoy giving my all to pursuing them. Even if it sometimes means I write on a Saturday or edit on a Sunday.

I’ve decided that what’s most important is not to create a black-and-white understanding of …

20 Ways to Let Go of Regrets

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“Every new day is another chance to change your life.” ~Unknown

You know the moment. It happens right after you realize you did something you wish you didn’t do. Maybe you broke someone’s trust and now the guilt is overwhelming you. Maybe you compromised your job in some way and now you’re terrified your world will come crashing down.

Regardless of what you did, you can feel your anxiety like a stack of red hot bowling balls surgically implanted in your stomach. (Dramatic? Yes. Regret is rarely reasonable!)

It’s that dreaded “Good God! Oh no! What was I thinking? Why …

10 Ways to Let Go and Overcome a Bad Mood

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“Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day.”  ~Unknown

We all get in bad moods, no matter how positive we try to be.

Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep last night. Or you feel overworked and overwhelmed. Or perhaps something happened and you keep dwelling on it, going over and over in your head how you froze up in a meeting or spoke too aggressively to someone you love.

Whatever the case may be, you feel something you don’t want to feel and you’re not sure how to change it. You just know you need …

40 Ways to Live Life Without Regrets

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“The saddest summary of life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.” ~ Unknown

We all have something stored in our memory banks of the past that we wish we could have done differently, or something we wish we didn’t do.

As we get older we learn and grow, but that doesn’t mean we have to regret what we did before we learned how to do things differently. If we didn’t go through those experiences, we might not have grown into the strong and knowledgeable people we are today.

What I’m proposing is that we get rid …

Embarrass Yourself

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“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

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“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 …

7 Ways to Get Past Tough Situations Quickly

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“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.” -Charles Swindoll

One day everything seems great in your world—maybe not perfect, but overall things are going to plan. And then something happens.

You lose your job, or someone you love, or your home, or maybe even your health.

It isn’t fair. You don’t deserve it. You didn’t see it coming. You didn’t plan for it. You have so many feelings and frustrations you don’t know what to do first, or if you want to do anything at all.

It would be easier to sit around …

How to Let Go and Embrace an Uncertain Future

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“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~John Allen Paulos

I used to love uncertainty. I wandered my way all around this country with little more than a suitcase and a journal. Committing to anything felt limiting, suffocating even.

One day I realized it wasn’t enlightenment that pushed me to embrace the unknown; it was a paralyzing fear of creating something certain. You can’t disappoint people when you don’t form relationships with them, and you can’t fail when you never start.

One day I decided to do the scariest …

5 Ways to Let Go of Resistance

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“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Recently I was on a phone call with Brad Yates. Although I know this to be true, when he said it, it made me reflect again. He said (and I’m paraphrasing):

“To the extent that we are not living our lives exactly as we want—with the love and friendships we want, the abundance we want, and the happiness we are seeking—it’s to that extent we are resisting it.”

It’s that word again: resistance. What does it mean? What do we do

…

40 Ways to Let Go and Feel Less Pain

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“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.” ~Ajahn Chah

Eckhart Tolle believes we create and maintain problems because they give us a sense of identity. Perhaps this explains why we often hold onto our pain far beyond its ability to serve us.

We replay past mistakes over and over again in our head, allowing feelings of shame and regret to shape our actions in the present. We cling to frustration and worry about the future, as if the act of fixation somehow …

Let Go

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“Some people think it’s holding on that makes one strong—sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

Maybe your life doesn’t look like you want it but you’re not sure how to change it or even if you can, so you feel hopeless, frustrated, and even a little bitter.

Or maybe someone hurt you so deeply that you don’t know if you can trust them anymore, so you feel angry, defensive, and indignant.

Every day we can find a million and one reasons to feel discouraged, or incompetent, or vulnerable, or harried—all things that hurt when we hold them inside like a …

Need Less, Have More: Life Expands When We Eliminate the Excess

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“Knowledge is learning something new every day.  Wisdom is letting go of something every day” ~Zen Saying

Simplicity, at its heart, comes down to eliminating the excess in our lives.

Excess needs, wants, possessions. The list goes on.

Society tries to sell us on the idea that having more in our lives should be the goal and is the answer. But is more really improving the quality of our lives?

Do more possessions beyond a certain point really add value to our lives?

Do more commitments in our diaries really help us feel less stressed and rushed?

Does always wanting …

10 Ways I Know There’s Nothing Wrong with You (or Me)

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“On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a joyous energy behind what you do.” ~Eckhart Tolle

At seventeen I had it all. I made straight As, was the vice president of the Honor Society, held two jobs, took the lead in four community theater performances, and joined Donnie Osmond onstage as part of the children’s chorus in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

I was busy. I did things well. I got attention. I was ready to snap.

I was so hungry for success and approval I’d do anything to get it, …

11 Ways to Laugh it Off

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“If you are too busy to laugh, you are too busy.” ~Proverb

Last night a few of my friends and I went to see Chelsea Handler perform stand-up comedy. Whether you’re a fan of her show on E! or not, most would have found her pretty hilarious. I laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more. And you know what? It felt pretty awesome.

Every time I go to a comedy show, probably once or twice a year, I ask myself “Why don’t I do that more often?”

I always have a great time and leave feeling so relaxed and refreshed. …