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Category “mindfulness & peace”

Anxiety Is Not My Enemy: How I’ve Learned to Accept It And Cope

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“You are strong for getting out of bed in the morning when it feels like hell. You are brave for doing things even though they scare you or make you anxious. And you are amazing for trying and holding on no matter how hard life gets.” ~Unknown

I couldn’t take it anymore. I no longer wanted to answer to the heart beating on my ribcage, my sweat on my palms, or the breath that got caught in the upper part of my lungs. I wanted the swirling thoughts in my brain to settle. I imagined them falling like leaves finding …

How Practicing Patience Can Relieve Stress and Anxiety

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“Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.” ~Joyce Meyer

I used to say, “Patience is a virtue I don’t have.” So, of course, that is how I lived my life. Hurried, exasperated, impatient, and stressed out.

Not only was I a creating a world where I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off—because everything had to be done now, and anything that got in the way of that had to be removed immediately—but I was creating this world for those around me.

My children often …

5 Psychological Strategies to Ease the Stress of Perfectionism

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“Striving for excellence motivates you, striving for perfection is demoralizing.” ~Harriet Braiker

The last three months I’ve been trying an experiment. It’s something that I’ve never done before, and in a certain way, it’s been a huge challenge. However, in other ways, it’s been an enormous stress relief, and I would say a largely successful effort.

What I’ve done seems to go against conventional wisdom, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a wise choice.

So what exactly is this challenge? Well, I have actively gone out of my way to be average.

Yep, sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? …

How to Release Emotions Stuck in Your Body and Let Go of the Pain

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“The human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.” ~Daniel J. Siegel

We are emotional creatures, and we were born to express emotions freely and openly. Somewhere along the way, however, many of us learned to repress emotions, especially those deemed “negative,” in order to fit in, earn love, and be accepted. This was my experience.

I grew up in a home where the motto was “Children are to be seen, not heard.” There was little emotional expression allowed, let alone accepted. No one was there to validate or help us …

Trust Your Intuition: If It Feels Like a No, It’s a No

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“You will never follow your own inner voice until you clear up the doubts in your mind.” ~Roy T. Bennett

One evening my husband and I decided that we, along with our daughter, would go together to a neighboring town about thirty minutes away the following morning. He had an errand to run, and I was going to take our daughter to a nearby playground.

The morning arrived, and as I thought about it, I had a wave of feeling/thought that said, “I don’t really want to go,” or maybe it was more like, “I’d rather just stay around here …

What It Means to Live Life with Open Palms and How This Sets Us Free

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“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Roughly one year ago, I was having the time of my life.

Everything seemed to be going well. My stress levels were at an all-time low. I was enjoying myself in a new city. Work was engaging. My meditations were deep and fulfilling.

And when I looked back on things one year later, I was kind of, well, frustrated.

Because things haven’t been going that smoothly lately. Don’t get …

Swipe Right on Mindfulness: My Apprehensive Journey into Meditation

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“You have to be where you are to get where you need to go.” ~Amy Poehler

I sat there and listened, pretending to be interested.

Did he really just say he meditates every morning? Don’t roll your eyes. At least he’s really attractive. You can just ignore the hippy meditation stuff. 

But c’mon. Meditate every morning at 6am? Who does that? How ridiculous.

So I did ignore his hippy meditation stuff; he eventually ignored me.

I have an endless supply of ill-fated dating-by-way-of-phone-app tales. Most of them end in a relatively similar fashion, but that’s for another blog or a …

Why We All Need Time Unplugged

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“Life is what happens while we’re busy worrying about everything we need to change or accomplish. Slow down, get mindful, and try to enjoy the moment. This moment is your life.” ~Lori Deschene

Technology is everywhere today, integrated into our lives from the moment we wake up and check our email to the twenty minutes we spend checking our Twitter feed before falling asleep.

From smartphones and tablets to Fitbits and multi-display work computers, it’s hard to use technology mindfully, and most of us spend a great deal of time throughout the day looking at screens.

Choosing to unplug, …

Accepting People You Dislike as They Are: How It Benefits You and How to Do It

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“We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.” ~Aesop, The Eagle and the Arrow

We can sometimes have difficulty accepting our friends, family, and loved ones as they are when their habits, quirks, or behavior annoy us. Our natural tendency is to try to change what we don’t like about them, which often leads to resentment. Nonetheless, given their importance and presence in our lives, we are usually willing to make an effort to accept them as they are.

But what about people we dislike—people who cause us grief? For example, an overbearing boss, a scheming …

The Most Powerful Tool for Healing: Tell the Right Stories

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

“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful parts of ourselves.” ~David Richo

In my mid-thirties, I had what I experienced as a breakdown.

If you had asked me ten or even twenty years earlier whether I had been sexually abused, I would have said no. But in my mid-thirties, strange and scary memories started surfacing in my body—along with pieces of story and language.

These pieces of memory and my responses to them seemed to glue together …

To Reduce Stress, Stop Globalizing and Put Things in Perspective

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“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” ~Mark Twain

Life happens. And sometimes when life happens, we can get pretty stressed out. I’ve found that the way we view situations can either reduce our stress or make it worse. Here is just one way we aggravate situations, possibly unnecessarily, and how we can adjust our perspective to keep stress in check.

A colleague of mine claims that he is “calendar-challenged.” He is often unable to attend meetings at the last minute or shows up late. I am, by contrast, a planner. I live …

Why I Stopped Trying to Fix Myself and How I Healed by Doing Nothing

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“Everything in the universe is within you.” ~Rumi

When I was twenty-three, I lost my job through chronic illness. I thought my life had ended, and I spent the next few years an anxious, panicky mess—often hysterical. Eventually, I took off to scour the globe for well-being techniques, and searched far and wide for the meaning of life and how to become well again.

If you’re chronically ill, like I was, whether physically or emotionally, you’ve probably experienced the same misunderstanding, the same crazy-making “well, you look okay to me” comments, the same isolation, depression, and frustration that I …

Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal – Last Day for Three Free Bonus Gifts!

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Hi friends!

Today’s the day! Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal is officially available for purchase, and today is the last day to claim the three free bonus gifts.

Stored high in my closet I have a collection of more than a dozen journals from my childhood and teenage years.

The early ones are full of angst, pain, and rage. During the later years I began to use journaling not just to vent my feelings but also to reframe my thoughts and recognize and overcome negative patterns. This helped me feel less stressed, depressed, and fearful and more peaceful, empowered, and optimistic.…

Why I Chose Authenticity Over Fitting In or Standing Out

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“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” ~EE Cummings

For many years I felt like a fish out of water, but I desperately wanted to belong in the pond. I grew up wanting to be ‘normal,’ to fit in and be like everyone else. As a result, I was not in touch with who I was because I didn’t think there was another choice.

The blueprint was clear: find a …

Perspective Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal

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Hi friends! We’re now less than two weeks away from the launch date for Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal. As you may have noticed, I’ve been sharing some of the coloring pages over the past few weeks, all colored by yours truly, to give you a sense of what the journal has to offer. So far I’ve shared:

In addition to coloring pages, the journal includes questions, written prompts, and doodle prompts to help you reframe your worries and minimize …

How to Stop Worrying About the Future and Start Living Your Life Now

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“Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.” ~Henry Ward Beecher

Retirement. A word that fills people with both excitement and fear.

On the one hand, we’re excited about the possibilities that retirement brings. The possibility to travel, to try new hobbies, to live our lives the way we want.

On the other hand, we worry about whether we’ll have enough money to survive until that unknown age at which we’ll die. And maybe not just survive but to actually thrive in our later years.

That …

Our Future Is Bright—Why Worry?

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“How much pain has cost us the evils that have never happened.” ~Thomas Jefferson

When my friend said she worried about the kind of future world her grandkids would live in, her daughter and I stared in disbelief.

I hear it often, the concern for the future. There’s concern for many things, from the Earth itself to the concern for the lack of community and the implications of generations reared in a world where social media appears to be the new community.

My friend’s daughter is quite a bit younger than me, but our kids are the same age—she came …

Accept Yourself Coloring Page from Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal

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Hi friends! If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve recently been sharing some of the coloring pages from Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal, which includes questions, written prompts, and doodle prompts to help you work through worries and minimize anxiety in your daily.

So far I’ve shared:

Today’s page is one of my favorites, and not just because I love Rose Hwang’s beautiful illustration and enjoyed using so many bright colors.

I love this page because it reminds me that imperfection is all …

Why We May Have Already Won the Lottery of Life

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“Be thankful for what you have, you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” ~Oprah Winfrey

Occasionally, I experience moments of what I can only describe as “pure bliss.”

It’s like a cool wave of peace washes over me, cleansing me momentarily of my worries, stress, and issues. Last week, I had such an experience.

You may be curious, what was happening for me to experience such a state?

The truth may come as a surprise.

Because my outer reality was, well, rather underwhelming.

I was walking home …

You Always Were and Always Will Be Whole and Complete

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“Always engage in the quest for life’s meaning, which is inner peace.” ~Longchenpa

When is a person complete? When have they finally “made it”?

Is it when they find love? Success? When they prove themselves?

I must have asked myself these questions a thousand times growing up. As soon as I recognized that you could be deemed successful or not, accepted or not, loved or not, I wondered where I fit in.

I questioned whether I was on the right path and when I would finally arrive. I wanted to be a total package. You know, the real deal. …