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Category “work fulfillment”

4 Conscious Choices to Stay Balanced and Happy When You’re Busy

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“Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton

I’m not someone who enjoys busyness or sees it as a sign of importance. In fact, I’ve often sacrificed money and opportunities to have more time to watch movies, roam around my neighborhood, and generally live life at a slow pace.

This is the way I most enjoy experiencing my days—by creating space to just be. And I find this supports my passion as a writer, since it allows me abundant opportunities to play, explore, and expand my understanding of the world and …

Introducing Tiny Buddha’s Community Forums!

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After much time and planning with Joshua Denney of Think Web Strategy, I’m thrilled to announce that Tiny Buddha now has a new responsive design and community forums!

The new design enables for a better reading experience on mobile devices, and also gives you access to forum-related information right on the homepage.

Why Join The Tiny Buddha Community Forums?

The forums are a place to connect with the community, to share ideas, and to give and receive support. You’ll find topics related to:

  • Art
  • Crafts
  • Emotional Mastery
  • Fun
  • Health & Fitness
  • Parenting
  • Purpose
  • Relationships
  • Spirituality
  • Tough Times
  • Work

Since …

10 Ways to Be the Person You Wanted to Be as a Kid

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“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” ~Angela Schwindt

When you’re young, anything seems possible. Whether you want to become a school teacher, a ballerina, or an astronaut, it all feels within your reach.

And you so easily get excited by it.

You can visualize in vivid detail what it would be like to hold your roses at curtain call, or how proud you’ll feel when you save the day—as a fireman, a soldier, or maybe even a superhero. You pretend your way through different roles and stay …

Why Enthusiasm Trumps Worrying When It Comes to Reaching Goals

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“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only saps today of its joy.” ~Leo Buscaglia

They say the greatest joy in life is to be able to live your passion every day, and I only had to look to my teens to remember that what I had always enjoyed doing most—working out. That’s where I wanted to go in life.

Held hostage by worries about the future, status, and money, I decided to head on a different path. I did well in college, graduating with a business degree and a double major in finance and accounting.

A few years …

3 Tips to Be Happier in Work and in Life

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“It isn’t our position but our disposition that makes us happy” ~Unknown

I am just winding down from a business trip that has been both trying and inspiring at the same time. I’ve recently been put into a role to manage a department in a functionality I know nothing about, working with people I’ve barely met, and changing a formerly toxic environment.

To say the least, I have a challenge ahead of me. Now six months into the position, I took my direct reports to breakfast and told them the sole purpose was for them to give feedback on how …

When Efficiency Isn’t Efficient: The Shortest Path Isn’t Always Best

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“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

“The shortest path between two points is a straight line.” That comes straight out of my eighth grade geometry textbook and if you can’t trust math, what can you trust?

That pronouncement rang my chime. It put words to an unspoken feeling I had had for a long time. What could be better, truer, or more perfect than the shortest path?

Kids Do the Darnedest Things

As a teenager, I started putting in place “straight lines” in my life everywhere I could impose them. I got out of bed …

How Mindfulness Can Help You Discover What You Want to Do in Life

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“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.” ~Rodin

When I was in college, I knew what to do and everything clicked along.

But as graduation approached, I got nervous.

I’d always assumed that some “good job” would turn up when I got out of school. But now it was in my face that I had no idea where I was going.

I took a career workshop where we figured out our favorite interests and best skills. What the class didn’t provide was any follow-up to help me actually find the dream job.

I didn’t know …

Changing Direction: It’s Not Too Late to Be Who You Want to Be

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“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ~C.S. Lewis

Growing up, people always saw me as the over-achiever and said, “That girl is really going to make something of herself one day.”

I often felt the pressure of having to live up to these expectations.

I recently turned 30 and it was a day of reflection for me. I always had this idea that by the time I turned 30, I’d be one of the top celebrities in South Africa, living the life of a talented singer, a self-made millionaire, driving a …

Feeling Lost and How It Can Help You Find Yourself

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“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Another day, another class missed, another alarm turned off. No motivation but to turn the pillow over to its colder side and lay there half asleep, unanswered questions gliding in and out of my mind.

This was how most of my mornings went in my last days of college. I had never been too motivated by the promise of college, even in high school, but it had always been set in my head that a college degree was my goal, my path to that elusive happiness …

Why Quitting Is Sometimes the Right Thing to Do

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“Celebrate endings, for they precede new beginnings.” ~Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We often think of quitting as failure. We commend people for carrying on when times get rough. The heroes in our action movies don’t just give up when things get difficult. When was the last time you saw Steven Seagal walk away from a fight?

As the saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Society expects us to fight back and battle on.

But sometimes, quitting is most definitely the right thing to do.

Sometimes, it’s the best option. A lot of people assume that it’s …

How to Believe in Yourself in the Face of Overwhelming Self-Doubt

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“When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.” ~Honore de Balzac

You know what that voice in your head says…

You can’t do it. You’ll never be good enough. You’re going to fail.

This voice taunts you whenever you set a goal. It criticizes you when life gets difficult. It beats you down when you struggle to stand up against its running commentary.

You know you shouldn’t let self-doubt bother you, but it’s a sneaky critter. Sometimes, you just can’t contain it and it slips past your barriers.

And self-doubt is greedy. When it’s loose, it …

Realizing Your Dream: Stop Dwelling on “What Ifs”

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“Excellence can be obtained if you care more than others think is wise, risk more than others think is safe, dream more than others think is practical, expect more than others think is possible.” ~Unknown

I think I always had an idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I sort of tweaked it along the way. I knew I wanted to work in the field of science, but like most kids, I wasn’t exactly sure where I fit in.

When I was 10 years old, I wanted to be an astronaut. At the age of …

Book Giveaway and Author Interview: 52-Week Life Passion Project

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Note: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The Winners:

It’s not easy to do something you’re passionate about for work—and not only because it’s hard to discover your passion or find a job to leverage it.

Once we know what we love to do, we then need to work through all kinds of limiting thoughts, beliefs, and fears that may prevent us from taking action. Then we need to decide what that action should be—how …

Active Contentment: 5 Tips to Have Both Peace and Ambition

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“Peace is not merely a distant goal we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.

Stress equals success.

I wholeheartedly believed this for many years. Who had led me so astray? I have only myself to blame.

The concept of peace had no practical application in my life. Peace was something that was necessary in war-torn countries, not in my mind.

This toxic belief began in college. The library often felt like a boxing ring where my fellow students and I competed to be the most stressed out.

Who had the most …

Direct Your Emotional Memory to Feel Good Now

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“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” ~Henry Ford 

You’re stuck at work and you dream of something better.

This dreaming usually starts off great. You imagine yourself sitting at a desk working on a million dollar project or teaching underprivileged kids how to multiply seven times three.

Whatever your vision is, it’s good to daydream about this, but what usually happens is that we snap out of it, and reality smacks us in the face. We’re answering phones, running errands, and hating our lives.

I’ve been …

When Your Dreams Change: Let Your Values Guide You

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“It is not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” ~Roy Disney

It has been four months now since I made the hardest decision of my life.

In the fourth grade, I made a pledge to work as much I had to until I became successful and moved the heck out of Ohio!

That commitment led me to graduate as valedictorian in high school and summa cum laude in college. However, it also resulted in missed recess (to do homework), missed parties (to research), and missed relationships (to study). Of course, I am not upset, …

Letting Go of Stress Around Your Goals: 4 Tips to Help You Relax

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“Control is never achieved when sought after directly. It is the surprising consequence of letting go.” ~James Arthur Ray

I have always been a bit of a control freak, and if I’m not mindful, it can suck the joy out of my work and my passion.

I like tasks done a certain way, which means I don’t always do well when it comes to delegating to others and can end up overextending myself.

I want things to be done on my timeline, which means I may feel a need to micromanage tasks I have delegated to decrease the potential …

Finding Direction When You’re Not Sure Which Choice Is “Right”

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

Like so many others, I am a recent college graduate who is still living at my parents’ house and working my minimum wage high school job as I scour the web for opportunities and get one rejection email after another.

However, I don’t know how many others I can speak for when I say that I didn’t see this coming.

I graduated with a nursing degree and heard from more than a few people in the field that there was a shortage and jobs were plentiful. I had no …

The Difference Between Fulfillment and Achievement

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“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ~C.S. Lewis

I have always been ambitious. I have always felt an incredible need to become someone, to do something, to achieve. I have always been a dreamer on my way up.

I’m a fashion designer. I belong to an industry that I knew was highly competitive from a young age. Ambition and hard work counted, but increasingly, I was getting the message that status, money, and connections were far more important factors for success.

In fact, fashion as an industry is parallel to the …

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 …