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Category “mindfulness & peace”

Death and Grieving: Breathing Through the Feeling of Loss

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“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” ~Dr. Seuss

The color brown has special significance to me; it’s the color of the robes that my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh and the monastics wear. It’s the color of my children’s eyes. It’s the color of the soil I like to dig in and plant things. It’s the color of my dog, Jake’s, paws and eyes and eyebrows

My husband came home today with a chocolaty brown gift bag. I could practically smell chocolate just looking at it. I find the color brown to be so comforting, so…grounding—and sometimes so …

Create Better Days with Empowering Routines and Loving Rituals

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“We are what we repeatedly do.” ~Aristotle

This past spring, I found myself floundering—stuck within an alternating cycle of feeling either overwhelmed or paralyzed.

The combination of creative tasks and deadlines typically drives me with a strong sense of purpose and fulfillment. However, though I had both curriculum to produce and blog posts to write, I struggled to form sentences.

Instead of filling pages with words and ideas, I consoled myself by eating chocolate and watching lots of bad TV.

Needless to say, none of this was any help in boosting my productivity or pulling me out of the doldrums. …

Your Happiness Can Make a Difference in the World

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“Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~Howard Thurman

When I was eight years old I saw a news report on a war. A wounded woman was crying on a stretcher, and soldiers were carrying guns running around her. Up until that point I had thought war was like dragons or knights in armor. It was fictional or happened a long, long time ago. I couldn’t believe it was real.

At that realization, my experience of life changed. It felt …

4 Powerful Tips to Reduce Resentment and Feel Happier

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“Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.” ~Buddha

Life is short. Time spent feeling angry or resentful about things that happened or didn’t happen is time squandered.

What’s that? You think those feelings motivate you and help you get things done? Hogwash! If you’re honest with yourself, you realize getting things done isn’t the end goal. The goal is to feel fulfilled and happy.

Accomplishments fueled by resentment and anger seldom contribute to serenity and fulfillment. More importantly, the moments you spent crossing things off your to-do list with a scowl slip away without giving you …

Relieve Physical Pain by Releasing Your Grievances

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“Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind.” ~Buddha

When the mind is burdened by a perceived wrong for an extended period of time, the body automatically steps in to carry part of the load. We store many of our painful life experiences deep within the framework of our physical bodies.

If we don’t consciously feel and heal these hurts as they occur, they linger in our muscles, organs, and tissues long after the mind has consciously forgotten the specifics of the event.

The body is actually a repository that faithfully carries this load until the essence …

How Pain Teaches Us to Live Fully

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“The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.” ~Anais Nin

There have been times when I’ve experienced pain when all I wanted was for its cessation.

I’m not sure whether I’m “unique” in my experience of pain or in how many times in my life I’ve had to deal with physical pain. While I don’t consider myself “cursed” by it, I’ve endured enough of it to become somewhat of an “expert” on its presence and its effects.

Besides the normal cuts and scrapes that we all experience, I’ve had the (un?)fortunate luck of having had—at separate times in my …

Be More by Doing Less: Removing the Distraction of Busyness

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“It’s not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” ~Henry David Thoreau

Growing up I didn’t think much of myself. I grew up poor, and spent much of my childhood alone. My father wasn’t around and my mother worked full-time, so I had to look out for myself from a very young age. This created emotional baggage, which I carried for many years.

Even though things started rocky, I was committed to myself and consciousness at an early age. I always felt like I knew there was something greater out there, …

5 Ways to Validate Yourself: Be Part of Your Support System

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“You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise L. Hay

We all have techniques we depend on to lift our spirits when we’re feeling down about ourselves or our lives.

A while back I realized something about the ones I’d found most effective when struggling to forgive or accept myself: Many of them involved seeking validation from other people.

Some of my most effective mood-boosters included:

  • Reading emails from readers who’d benefitted from my writing
  • Calling loved ones and reminding myself of how much they valued me
  • Sharing
…

When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed: Create a To-Live List

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

It was enough. I was lying in the bathtub with the water up to my nose when I realized that I couldn’t go on like I’d been going.

I had been working incredibly hard over the few months prior, so hard that I had forgotten why I was even doing it. And now that I was stressed out and exhausted, I was trying to remember.

That’s why I had escaped into the bathtub, without any books or magazines to distract me from myself.

I thought …

30 Ways to Improve Your Mood When You’re Feeling Down

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“The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.” ~ Anais Nin  

When I was eighteen, I got depressed and stayed depressed for a little over a year. For over a year, every single day was a battle with myself. For over a year, every single day felt heavy and pointless.

I have since made tremendous progress by becoming more self-aware, practicing self-love, and noticing the infinite blessings and possibilities in my life, but I still have days when those familiar old feelings sneak up on me.

I’m not always self-aware, I don’t always love myself, and sometimes I …

The Surprising Secret to Being on Time

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“Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

For many years, the only way I knew to get from one place to another was to rush. I was chronically “running late.” In fact I couldn’t conceive of managing time in any other way. I usually would get to an appointment in the nick of time, but never without a rush.

Now, if rushing occurred in a vacuum, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. But the truth is, when we rush, it’s not just about moving faster. It’s an entire frame of mind. The world becomes our enemy—a jungle to machete …

Stop Overextending Yourself to Please Others: 6 Simple Tips

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“Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places.” ~Unknown

In a span of one month, my beloved little red Toyota catches on fire, burning to a molten blob; I land in the emergency room with a ruptured disc after lifting a child out of her wheelchair; and I try a do-it-yourself hair highlighting kit, which leaves me looking, well, think Phyllis Diller.

I feel confused. I have tried so hard to do all the right things. How could my life have gotten so off track?

I am in the grip of a disorder some people might call manic …

The Zen of Dogs: On Mindfulness, Compassion, and Connection

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“Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” ~Karl Barth

We were lying in bed. I said, “We can’t do it.” She said, “I don’t see what else we can do.” We lay there in silence, trying to figure it out.

It was the third big decision of our relationship. The first was when I asked Nicole to marry me. The second was when she said yes. And the third—the one we couldn’t figure out—was what to do about Ralph.

She’d had Ralph—a female German Shepherd—for a little over a year. Nicole had been waiting for years to get a dog, …

How to Drop the Extra (Mental) Weight and Set Yourself Free

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“Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness.” -Thich Nhat Hanh

Most people I know are carrying extra weight—and I’m not talking about gaining a few pounds.

I’m talking about the mental and emotional weight we lug around with us. We carry it everywhere—like a backpack full of bricks—and it weighs us down.

Personally, much of my extra weight comes from the expectations I have for myself to be more—more present, more productive, more enlightened. Although these might be wonderful things to work toward, wanting to be more can easily translate to not being enough …

Giveaway and Interview: Turning Dead Ends into Doorways by Staci Boden

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Editor’s Note:

The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen:

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Especially when we’re going through challenging times, it can feel tempting to try to control the future—but this doesn’t change that much lies beyond our control. Try as we may to avoid the unknown, the future remains uncertain.

How do we navigate change knowing that nothing is guaranteed? How can we develop inner strength to grow, heal, and evolve?

Healer practitioner Staci Boden answers these questions in her …

Happiness is the Value of Every Moment

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“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

“What is happiness?” What a completely dense and loaded question this is.

During my studies in psychology, one of the main principles we learned about writing a manuscript is the importance of defining what you are discussing. If I were to write a paper about happiness, I would then need to operationally define happiness in terms that allowed everyone to understand what I was referring to.

The problem with this, however, is that we then merely repeat the best …

Are You Too Busy? 5 Signs of Chronic Stress

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“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” ~Socrates

A few years ago, the focal point of my life was my work. It took up and made up a huge portion of my life. In retrospect, I would even say that work became a sort of obsession. I became so obsessed with being productive that I set aside almost every minute of my waking hours for some work-related activity.

I even coupled meals with work; toilet breaks meant mentally drafting reports and traffic jams signaled the start of phone meetings. You may look at this picture and think of me as …

When You Feel Angry More Often Than Not

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

I spent a lot of time in my life being angry. At one point I hated everything and almost everyone. I had a saying for a while: “God, I hate people.” I hated the people driving in front of me on the way to the store, then in the parking lot of the store, then inside the store.

I hated my job. I used to love my job. It’s what I chose to do, what I went to school …

How to Turn Pain to Joy: 11 Tips for a Powerful Gratitude Journal

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“Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot” ~Hausa Proverb

In my early, dark days of first acquiring a disability, I didn’t feel I had an awful lot to be thankful for.

It was like I had spent my whole life getting to the point where I had a thriving holistic therapy practice I loved, an amazing social life with great friends, and my beautiful dog, who I would regularly take into the country for long walks and my adrenaline pumping exercise routine.

Life was perfect. I had so much to be grateful for, but then it …

Dealing with Exhaustion: How to Function Better When You’re Tired

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I’ve written about ways to get better sleep, and yet I am writing this post from a state of exhaustion.

Despite knowing all the right things to do, sometimes it’s difficult to follow through.

You can have the most calming, zen bedroom, and still toss and turn because of an ache or something on your mind. You can avoid stimulants and start unwinding early in the evening, and still wake up to the sound of a blaring siren at 2:00 AM.

Sometimes the best laid plan can fall apart when you can’t seem to remove that pea from under …