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Why We Should Stop Trying

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.” ~Edith Wharton

Several years ago a well-known Zen Master accepted me as a long distance student. In one of our first email exchanges I wrote, “Dear Teacher, I am trying to sit every day for thirty minutes and in my practice I am trying to follow my breath.”

“Please,” he wrote back, “stop trying. You are your breath.”

I remember reading his words and feeling perplexed, confused, almost annoyed. What in the world did he mean? Wasn’t it obvious that we had no choice but …

6 Tips to Love and Support Yourself and Become a Happier You

By in Blog, happiness & fun, love & relationships

“Awaken; return to yourself” ~Marcus Aurelius

Darkness. Resentment. Detachment. Extreme discomfort.

Those are the words I would use to describe my internal experience during my adolescent years up to young adulthood.

Depression was something I was all too familiar with. Fear was running my life and I was exhausted. I now understand that a lot of it had to do with the dysfunctional family I grew up in and the pain that ensued.

Determined to break this unhealthy way of being, I’ve been on a road of healing and self-growth over the past few years.

However, my transition into a …

You’re Going to Be Okay

By in Blog, change & challenges, mindfulness & peace

“The mind is everything. What you think, you become.” ~Buddha

“I will be okay,” I repeated to myself. “Deep breaths. You’re okay. Focus on the breath. I am going to be okay…”

I was on a small plane flying over the Rocky Mountains of Colorado on a hot summer afternoon—a notoriously turbulent time to fly.

I’m not afraid of flying. I do it a lot and it’s not something that makes me nervous, although the mantra could work perfectly well if I was. It does, for some reason, make me incredibly motion sick at times—scanning seatback pockets for white bags, …

How to Boost Your Self-Esteem When You’re Insecure

By in Blog, love & relationships

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

When it comes to self-esteem, I’ve had a bumpy ride. Throughout my school life I was severely bullied and, consequently, I grew up intensely insecure and self-critical.

I constantly measured my self-worth against the opinions of others, and when opinions weren’t forthcoming, I simply filled in the blanks by imagining the worst.

By my twenties I measured my self-worth in terms of my popularity, how successful I was compared to my friends, my appearance, and my love …

10 Things to Stop Doing If You Want to Be Happy

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.” ~Dale Carnegie

There was a time when I didn’t think I could ever be happy.

I felt alone. I felt confused. And I felt overwhelmed.

Luckily, that all began to change when I started looking inside. I discovered how I was the cause of my unhappiness.

And I discovered what stood between me and enjoying life.

Here are ten of the things I discovered:

1. Neglecting

…

6 Inspiring Quotes That Can Change Your Life

By in Blog, change & challenges

When I am having a rough day—when I feel tired, sad, doubtful, or stressed—I spend time looking up inspirational quotes.

I’ve memorized several, pulling them out when need be. These quotes are simple but they can help me turn a bad day around.

Short and sweet, here they are…

“When you have a bad day, a really bad day, try and treat the world better than it treated you.” ~Patrick Stump

When I’m traveling around with my own personal dark cloud, I sometimes forget to be kind to others.

I get so wrapped up in my own problems that I …

5 Things to Remember When You Start Worrying

By in Blog, change & challenges, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” ~Benjamin Franklin

Have you every worried yourself to the point of emotional, even physical exhaustion?

Do you often feel stuck, anxious, or mistrustful of the world around you?

I know what it’s like to feel trapped by worry—in fact, I have always been a chronic worrier.

I worried and obsessed mostly about the hypothetical, the imaginary, the infinite variety of “what-if” scenarios. Eventually, I convinced myself that if I worried about every conceivable thing that could go wrong in my life, I would either …

Overcoming Approval Addiction: Stop Worrying About What People Think

By in Blog, love & relationships

“What other people think of me is none of my business.” ~Wayne Dyer

Do you ever worry about what people think about you?

Have you ever felt rejected and gotten defensive if someone criticized something you did?

Are there times where you hold back on doing something you know would benefit yourself and even others because you’re scared about how some people may react?

If so, consider yourself normal. The desire for connection and to fit in is one of the six basic human needs, according to the research of Tony Robbins and Cloe Madanes. Psychologically, to be rejected …

We Can Find Reasons to Be Happy and Grateful Every Day

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” ~Charlie Chaplin

Many people have told me throughout my life that I sound just like my mother when I laugh. I lost her to cancer when I was sixteen, over twenty years ago. I learned from her to laugh and laugh often, even through the toughest of times. “Happiness is a choice,” she always said.

Life has thrown a few curveballs my way over the past five years and tried to test my ability to choose happiness and laughter. My husband, Eric, and I had just started talking about having children when …

How To Design A Happier, More Fulfilling Life

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it’s something you design for the present.” ~Jim Rohn

A few weeks ago I found myself having a bad day. The frustrating thing was that on the outside everything was okay, nothing had explicitly gone wrong, but inside everything was a mess. It was one of those days where you’re in a constant battle with yourself.

At the beginning of the year I saved up enough to be able to quit my job and focus on building my own online/writing career. But on this particular day I felt nothing but …

5 Vital Lessons for People Who Feel Like They’re Not Good Enough

By in Blog, change & challenges

“What if I fall? Oh, my darling, what if you fly?” ~Erin Hanson

Like most people, my life has had its share of ups and downs.

My household growing up could be best described as a roller coaster. There were times of excitement and happiness, then there was the plummeting into darkness, shame, and self-loathing.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I felt that I was a mistake, unloved, and unwanted by my father. His mood swings and verbal abuse would come raging like a storm without any warning, and without any end in sight.

He often told me that I …

Changing Your Life Story and Finding Your Happy Ending

By in Blog, change & challenges, happiness & fun, letting go

“Maybe it’s not about the happy ending. Maybe it’s about the story.” ~Unknown

For the longest ever time, I had no idea what my own story was.

Desperately uncomfortable in my skin as a child, I was equal parts pathologically shy with strangers and fearless with my sisters and brother, running wild over the boulder-strewn southern California land during summers.

As a young girl, I was also, more than once, the target for predators and perps.

The nameless elementary school janitor who invited me into his dark and dirty closet one day. The terrifying neighbor who stopped me in a …

How To Calm Your Worries by Admitting What You Don’t Know

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“Most things I worry about never happen anyway.” ~Tom Petty

There was once a wise farmer who had tended his farm for many years. One day his horse unexpectedly ran away into the mountains. Upon hearing the news, the farmer’s neighbors came to visit. 

“How terrible,” they told him.

“We’ll see,” the wise farmer replied.

The next morning, to the farmer’s surprise, the horse returned, bringing with it three wild horses.

“How wonderful. You are very lucky,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“We’ll see,” replied the farmer.

The following day, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses. The …

A 60-Second Practice That Will Help You Find Peace and Relaxation

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh 

A while back, someone very dear to me entered intensive care. He’s someone I’ve learned so much from, and yet never met. I’ve read dozens of his books, both listened to and watched countless lectures, as well as been inspired to study Zen because of him.

On Friday, November 14th, after suffering a brain hemorrhage, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen master and peace activist, went into a coma. For the past few weeks, Thay, as his students …

We All Deserve to Receive What We Need (and It’s Not Selfish)

By in Blog, love & relationships

“We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving…Accepting another person’s gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.” ~Alexander McCall Smith

We all know the importance of giving. In fact, it feels rather nice to give to others; we have all experienced that warm glow in the stomach when we do something thoughtful for another person or exchange kind words. To make someone smile is one of the best feelings in the world.

But sometimes, do we get so caught up in …

A Simple Shift in Perspective That Can Improve Your Relationships

By in Blog, love & relationships

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” ~Gary Spence

Right after college, I joined AmeriCorps. Not really knowing what I wanted to do with my life, I decided to apply for a program teaching classes on HIV/AIDS. I knew a little about the subject, but I have family members affected by the disease.

A couple of cities hosted the program, and I was accepted into the Chicago one. I’m from a small town in Colorado and, to me, Chicago was a huge city. Well, it is the third largest city in the US, …

Radically Accept What Is Instead of Labeling it “Good” or “Bad”

By in Blog, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.” ~Tara Brach

I was in the heart of my Ph.D. program when I received the diagnoses: OCD, depression, and binge eating disorder.

It explained a lot, of course. All those years of anxiety, self-doubt, and intrusive thoughts were not normal after all. Eating to the point of gaining forty pounds in a few months was foreign to most people.

I wanted an explanation. Why me?

I had done everything right: I made a decent living, I was kind to everyone, and I was presenting my scientific …

Stop Pushing Yourself: 10 Crucial Steps to Avoid Burnout

By in Blog, healthy habits

“I actually think burnout is the wrong description of it. I think it’s ‘burn up.’ Physiologically, that is what you are doing because of the chronic stress being placed on your body.” ~Richard Boyatzis

Some years ago, when my mother told me that a friend of hers had experienced burnout, I didn’t really listen. Actually, I didn’t want to hear about it. I even felt irritated because she felt sorry for people who got burned out.

My opinion was that they were just being ridiculous and exaggerating.

It was an excuse, supported by a medical certificate from some doctor they …

The Value of Following Your Dreams When They Don’t Make Money

By in Blog, meaning & passion

“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” ~Unknown

Five years ago, in a move I wasn’t sure was so brilliant at the time, I quit my career at a rapidly growing ASX-listed financial services organization, packed up my life, and flew to Thailand to pursue my love of scuba diving.

I thought I was just going for twelve months, that I’d get it out of my system then return to Melbourne and settle down—get a job in the not-for-profit industry, buy a house, maybe get married and have kids, …

Why Accepting That You’re Not the Best Is the Key to Getting Better

By in Blog, meaning & passion

“In fear, we expect; with love, we accept.” ~Kenny Werner

It’s easy to let our ego and fear get in the way of our own success. I’m not talking about the aspects of ego that create a desire to “win” over others, which plague some more than others; I’m talking about the more inherent aspects of our inward facing ego that plague us all.

When I was in high school I played a lot of piano. For Christmas one year, my dad (a professional musician) gave me a book called Effortless Mastery.

It was a book that, among other …