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Search Results for "uncertainty" — 367 posts

How to Meditate at Any Time without Meditating

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“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Flour. Salt. Water. Yeast. As I push the warm, soft dough against my palm, I feel the cold stone countertop underneath. I feel my hips leaning up against the cabinets. I hear my breath inside my head.

As I knead the dough, it changes. The dough becomes more elastic and flexible, ready to rise and be baked into a crusty loaf.

As I make bread, I change. My thoughts go quiet. I come into the now.

I have struggled with an inconsistent …

Realizing Your Self-Worth and Believing in Your Path

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“Your outlook on life is a direct reflection on how much you like yourself.” ~ Lululemon

“My existence on this earth is pointless.”

That thought crossed my mind every night before I fell asleep.

It had been several months since I graduated from high school and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. My future plans were falling to pieces, and everyone around me kept telling me that I needed to start accomplishing things that I had not yet accomplished.

I was not where I thought I should be in life. Everyone had expectations …

Tiny Wisdom: What It Means to Be Free

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“Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

  • When you choose to forgive instead of seeing the world through bitter eyes, you are free.
  • When learn from your mistakes instead of letting them define or cripple you, you are free.
  • When you love yourself regardless of what other people think, you are free.
  • When you accept uncertainty instead of stressing about what you don’t know, you are free.
  • When you embrace chaos, instead of struggling for control, you are free.
  • When you recognize that we are all imperfect, and then resist the urge to fight that, you
…

Book Giveaway and Interview: One Minute Mindfulness

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Update: The winners for this giveaway have been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha to learn about future giveaways!

The winners:

As you can likely tell from the number of author interviews/giveaways I’ve posted during these last few weeks, I’ve been receiving and reading a wide selection of books lately. One-Minute Mindfulness is now sitting on my coffee table, where I know I will refer it often.

The full title reads One-Minute Mindfulness: 50 Simple Ways to Find Peace, Clarity, and New Possibilities in a Stressed-Out World. It delivers on its promise.

From the Amazon Description:…

5 Reasons It’s OK to Not Know What the Future Holds

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“The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with.” ~Tony Robbins

We spend a lot of time in life not knowing.

There are a lot of things that we’re comfortable not knowing. Not knowing a stranger’s name. Not knowing our credit card number or a friend’s address. Not knowing the capital of Vermont.

We’re comfortable with these things because we know there are answers. Even if we have to get on our smartphones for few minutes to find them, we know these things are all facts that actually exist.…

The Art of Ambivalence: Not Knowing Can Be a Good Thing

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“The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with.” ~Tony Robbins                              

I drive my wife nuts. She has absolutely no trouble deciding how she feels or what she likes and dislikes. For me, those decisions don’t come easily.

She loves comparing notes with people about their favorite movie, favorite dessert, you name it. I can never pick just one. When someone asks me what I think, the answer’s almost always some version of “It all depends.”

This puts me at a disadvantage when my wife and I argue. Not …

Career Transitions: How to Cope with the In-Between Stage

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“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.” ~Proverb

If you’re a passionate person with goals for your life, you’ve probably been at the “in between” stage more than a few times. This is the stage when you’ve identified your goals, broken them down, identified steps to reach them, and started on that plan—but you’re not yet seeing the fruits of your labor.

Ambitious and excited at the goal-setting stage, you embarked on this path with a vision in front of you. Now you’re in the throes of it—or maybe …

Love the Adventure of Life: 3 Ways to Enjoy Everything More

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“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” ~Helen Keller

Ever since I can remember I liked to travel. It does something to me, something strange and oddly uncharacteristic: I am suddenly very laid back.

When I travel I’ve got the right mind-set. I know I will stand in lines, have to schlep heavy bags, or perhaps have delays. I know that I will be eating at restaurants for the first time, without knowing if I will like them.

At home, when I am stressed out and worried, my mind likes to give me lists of things to do …

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 …

The Power of Change: How Leaving Home Can Bring You Home

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“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” -Pema Chodron

Seven years ago, I packed everything I owned into my little red Honda Civic and sold, gave away, or tossed whatever didn’t fit. I was 24 years old and I was on my way from Florida to Los Angeles to pursue the American Dream.

I was consumed with swirls of intense emotions—anxieties, excitement, fear, and joy, all mixing together in one little body. I was crossing the country on a new adventure, filled with hopes and dreams, seeking something I …

Book Giveaway and Review: A Lamp in the Darkness

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

The 5 winners:

“Sometimes we have to go right into the fire in order to find our true healing.” ~Jack Kornfield

No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve accomplished, no matter how well you’ve planned, you will deal with challenges in life. We all will. And many times, they will hit us unexpectedly.

We will all lose things and people we love. We will all make mistakes and …

3 Things Tweens Teach Us about Living and Enjoying Life

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“If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.” ~Bob Basso

Work, Eat, Sleep. Work, Eat Sleep.

We all get wrapped up in this humdrum cycle of life consisting of working, eating, and sleeping, then waking up a few hours later to do it all over again.

This year it’s been particularly challenging for me to find ways to create balance and keep ahold of my sanity when the grind includes growing my small business, completing a new home with my husband, and settling into our first year as newlyweds who have yet to take a honeymoon.

And then it …

Finding Beauty in Your Scars

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“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Beauty is a concept I struggle with—what it means, why it matters. I struggle because huge chunks of my life have not been beautiful. They have been ugly, marred by trauma, with pain, and anger.

We think of beauty and often visualize glossy magazine pages and wafer thin models. We see beauty as superficial—eye color, hair texture, and numbers on a scale. We see beauty as something to be measured and weighed.

I don’t see beauty that way. I see beauty as the grace point between what …

How to Help Someone Feel Loved and Understood

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“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”  ~Ralph Nichols

Did you know that one in ten U.S adults suffer from depression? (This is according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.) How do I know? I was one of them. Starting in 2008, I suffered from depression for more than a year.

Many factors contributed to my depression. Of course loneliness and lack of social support were the obvious factors, but the major contributor was that I didn’t feel understood. …

How to Make a Difficult Decision: 30 Ideas to Help You Choose

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“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.” ~Flora Whittemore

I have been running this website for almost two years. A few months back, I met a goal I set for myself: I eliminated most of my other freelance work and focused my energy on Tiny Buddha.

Since I don’t require much money to live—and since my eBook has been selling regularly—I was able to transition in the spring. As a consequence, I decreased my workload dramatically.

Now that I have more time, I realize that I need to discover a sense of purpose…

Balanced Living: How to Stay on Track

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“Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential.” ~Winston Churchill

I declared myself a mess a long time ago. I lived in a constant, dull state of fear and anxiety. My emotions were more volatile than hurricane season, and not even I could predict how any given situation would affect me.

I may not have known it at the time, but I was miserable. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t and fit into a fast-paced life that I just wasn’t made for.

I was constantly overwhelmed by just about everything—being stuck in traffic, waiting …

5 Questions to Ask Yourself When You Aren’t Sure What You Want in Life

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“The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with.” ~Tony Robbins

There are times in life when we just don’t know what we want. These are the awkward in-between places where we feel uncertain and unsure, and perhaps even question our purpose.

There was a pivotal time in my life, after I got my Counseling Psychology Masters degree and had a private practice, when I knew I did not want to be a therapist.

I left counseling to help my husband start his fashion business, even though this was not …

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 …

Overcoming the Power of Suggestion: Make Your Own Choices

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“People who urge you to be realistic generally want you to accept their version of reality.” ~Unknown

I’m often open to suggestion. I like to gather opinions and feedback about my writing so that I can use it to improve the impact and make it a better read.

The thing I’ve learned about listening to other people’s thoughts on my writing is that sometimes what seems like good advice is little more than personal preference; changing an image or an entire scene to suit one person isn’t always the right path, especially if my gut is saying, “You know you …

Tiny Wisdom: On Doing What You Love for Work

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“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” ~Buddha

Whenever I write or publish a post about following your heart professionally, inevitably someone comments that it’s far easier said than done. I completely understand this instinct. After all, most of us don’t start with a massive nest egg that allows us to explore our passions without concern for financial security.

I also understand when people get frustrated by articles that suggest making a living with your passion is a simple step-by-step process.

It’s not always easy to do what you love …