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Category “meaning & passion”

Define Success to Create Success, Starting Now

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“What matters is the value we’ve created in our lives, the people we’ve made happy, and how much we’ve grown as people.” ~Daisaku Ikeda

Ahhh success! It sounds so good. We all want it, but are you brave enough to define what success means to you and go for it?

Society conditions us to define success as being the best, attaining prosperity, making a lot money, or having a fancy CEO title.

I thought I had “success” ten years ago where I spent five years working on Wall Street at Credit Suisse, an investment banking firm in New York City. …

How to Accomplish Anything Leveraging Collective Energy

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“Success will never be a big step in the future; success is a small step taken just now.” ~Jonatan Mårtensson

I love Zumba, the Latin-inspired dance program that has become a worldwide fitness phenomenon. At the three minute mark of every class, I am alive with how much I enjoy the workout: the rhythm, the moves, the music, the collective energy.

The room is filled with non-stop music pounding against the walls and ceiling, as over fifty bodies of all ages and sizes come together in synchronized movement.

At the 12-minute mark, the music is louder and faster. My focus …

How to Achieve Unexpected Success

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“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Success.

A word defined by you and me.

Do not be manipulated by the definitions applied to that word by others. Choose your own definition.

Though I believe we all have the potential to succeed in reaching our dreams, I have found that success reaches to a far greater depth in our lives.

Whenever I hug my wife of 28 years and tell her that I love her, …

4 Simple Ways to Experience Great Happiness and True Freedom

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“It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.”  ~E.E. Cummings

I love to write. For years I wrote in journals and kept them stacked in piles on my shelves.

One rainy winter evening when I was 25, I walked into the Bourgeois Pig bookshop on Franklin Boulevard in Los Angeles and saw a book next to the cash register written by Natalie Goldberg called Wild Mind. I bought it and my life change forever.

Natalie’s book was about writing practice. A Zen monk practitioner, she brings the fundamentals of Zen to the …

Realizing You Have Everything You Need

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“He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope has everything.” ~Thomas Carlyle

I grew up in a small town, Maysville, Kentucky, where I led the perfect, sheltered life. After graduating from high school, I pursued higher education at a local community college, and from there transferred to The University of Kentucky in Lexington.

I had an interest in art, music, and media, pursuing a double major in journalism and communications. I dreamed about either working behind the scenes of a television studio, or becoming a certified systems engineer and working for my father’s employer.

Then a week …

How to Move through Shame, Fear, and Regret

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“If you are never scared, embarrassed, or hurt, it means you never take chances.” ~Julia Soul

The moment comes when you are on your knees.

You are filled with a knowing that there is something better. There is a life for you that you are not living and you are ready to live it.

I call this the moment of awakening—the moment when you hear your soul’s cry for the next step in its evolution. You are ready to live your fullest expression.

Anais Nin said it best, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a …

Get Started on Your Dream: Clear the 5 Most Daunting Hurdles

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“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” ~Buddha

A decade or so ago, when I was twenty, I was supposed to settle into an “arranged marriage,” a common concept in India. I would never have known what it means to be financially independent, to go after my passions, and to be true to myself.

Until then, I had only wished to have a career—to go to a big city, live independently, and explore my identity. But those were merely daydreams. I had accepted that in my …

Giveaway and Review: the 2-Year Anniversary of Tinybuddha.com!

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Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. They are:

It seems like just yesterday I wrote, “It’s a pretty exciting week in Tiny Buddha world,” before crafting a massive year-in-review post for the site’s first anniversary.

Yet here we are again, a full year later.

So much has happened in this year, but instead of creating a lengthy year-in-review list, I’m just going to recap the five biggest highlights, for the site and me personally. I’ll also provide a selection of posts from the year that you may enjoy reading if …

What You Need to Live a Life of Purpose

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“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” ~Robin Sharma

I can remember the feelings so vividly—the emptiness, the yearning, the confusion, the lacking, and the depression. They all merged together, and they always seemed to present themselves at the worst possible times.

The simplest things, like getting out of bed in the morning, felt so heavy. The best joys in life, like being with family and creating new connections, felt unsatisfying. Things were  hard and almost unbearable.

I didn’t understand what was creating these feelings, or what I needed to do to change them.

It sounds like such …

Changing Your Reality: Turning Hurts into Lessons

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“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” ~Mary Engelbreit

I wrote a letter to my dad on his 70th birthday this past May. Since it was a milestone of a year, I wanted to really give him something that would be meaningful; however, my ideas weren’t actual items. I sat at my computer and poured my heart into a letter.

Suddenly my mind flashed to a time when writing and creating were constants in my life. I had been honored and recognized for my writing beginning …

How to Carve Time for Yourself and Pursue Your Dreams

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“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” ~Etty Hillesum

There was a time that I wished I had more than 24 hours a day to finish everything in my long to-do list. I have a full-time job editing news stories for a media agency while tending to my side business as a content marketing strategist for entrepreneurs.

That’s just the work thing. Like most single women in Asia, I live with my parents, so I do my share of household chores. I’m also writing my thesis for my masters …

6 Commitments to Maintain Momentum with New Projects

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“When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless.” ~Pema Chodron

I always wanted to travel to exotic places. When I received an all-expenses-paid invitation to Bangkok after a conference accepted a paper I wrote, I jumped at the chance to go.

I brought my camera and lugged it around in an oversize fanny back worn backwards. Looking like a dork is a small price for the opportunity to catch the wonder of a moment.

The conference became a yearly event, and the overseas flights provided time to reread …

3 Questions to Help You Access Your Intuition

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“Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.” ~Horace

During my second year at an arts conservatory, I took a detailed diagnostic test to determine the hemispheric dominance of my left and right brain.

People who tend to lean toward the left are logical, reality-based, practical, and intellectual, when people who tend to lean toward the right are artistic, intuitive, feeling, and imaginative.

On a horizontal linear scale from 1 to 10—1 being the farthest left and 10 being the farthest right—I tested 4.8. That means that I am basically balanced between both sides of my brain but lean .2 …

Being Kind When It’s Seen as a Weakness

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

When I worked in the corporate world, I didn’t focus on a race to the top. I enjoyed the day-to-day work of running a product line, finding opportunities for new markets, and helping managers in other countries launch similar lines tailored to their markets.

My approach was to be ethical in all aspects of the work, to have concern for the people I was working with to achieve results, and to share the credit appropriately. This was not the latest …

Leaving a Secure Job When the Risk Feels Scary

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“It’s not who you are that holds you back. It’s who you think you’re not.” ~Unknown

Over the past four years, I followed a career path that felt soulless.

As I moved from city to city, climbing the corporate ladder, I noticed that, ironically, the bigger my paycheck, the emptier I felt. Something about advertising felt lifeless, cold, and desperate to me.

But I ignored this feeling and worked over it, drank over it, binged, exercised, and ate over it.

I pressed forward like a steel freight train on a mission to find my happiness. When I got to that …

Find Your Calling: 5 Steps to Identify Your Purpose

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“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” ~Rumi

When I was young, I fell in love with Africa. It was an unsophisticated and amorphous love, not directly related to anything in particular about that vast continent. I now see that the point of my love affair with Africa was to deliver my first calling to me.

Merriam-Webster defines a “calling” as: “…a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action especially when accompanied by conviction of divine influence.”

My first calling was to connect with people who seemed very different from …

Lifestyle Design: How to Create Your Life As You Want It

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“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” ~George Eliot

If you read a lot of blogs or are even remotely tech savvy, it’s highly likely you’ve heard the term “lifestyle design.” Perhaps you’re wondering just what the heck it means, and how you can do it, too, just because it sounds so enticing!

In a nutshell, lifestyle design embodies the attempt on your part to design a life of your choosing, whatever that looks like. It’s your life, your plan, and you call the shots.

Just because your parents lived in a small town, got married …

Creative Types: How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

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“Just as much as we see in others, we have in ourselves.” ~William Hazlitt

Most days I am a dedicated writer and artist, focused and working away with my oh-so-happy hands.

Most days I feel inspired to share adventures and insights from living in Paris for over two years while going to graduate school. Or referencing the intense spiritual work and personal growth I’ve experienced in recent years. Or describing how I quit the unfulfilling rat-race to focus on my passion and my life dreams.

Most days I have confidence and pride in my personal creations and feel pretty darn …

Take a Chance: Seize That Opportunity in 4 Steps

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“It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” ~Unknown

Have you ever paused at a podium, feeling your hands shake as you speak to the senators before you? Have you ever laced your skates, shuddering as you heard your name announced as the next skater to compete? Have you ever found out about an amazing opportunity (say, a chance to post on Tiny Buddha), only to realize that you’re terrified to try?

I’ve been in all these risky scenarios, so I know how intimidating they can be. By definition, risk-taking doesn’t guarantee …

3 Mistakes That Hold You Back in Life & How to Avoid Them

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“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” ~Marianne Williamson

I believe we are here to grow, to expand—to learn and experience and understand. Growth and discovery are the purpose of life.

I also believe we tend to get in our own way.

Our experiences, our cultures, and even our families can create fears and limitations that can hold us back, or hold us down. They don’t do this intentionally. It’s just that we’re all doing the best we can in this beautiful, messy, complicated world.

There are so many circumstances or experiences that …