fbpx
Menu

Search Results for "trust " — 1349 posts

How Social Media Is Helping Me Cope with Grief

by

“Grief, no matter where it comes from, can only be resolved by connecting to other people.” ~Thomas Horn

We had just landed in Chicago. I had spent the last three hours on a flight from New Jersey sitting next to grown-ups who didn’t ask me fifty questions every two minutes, while my kids watched a movie with their dad, two rows behind.

I was looking forward to spending one whole week in Chicago, despite the freezing temps. This was my first real break in eight months, and boy, I had plans! Sleeping in, long baths, reading, and no laptop!

I …

What To Do When the Voices in Your Head Disagree

by

“Ego says, ‘Once everything falls into place, I’ll feel peace. Spirit says, ‘Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place.” ~Marianne Williamson

Muse: I’d love to get another job one day. One where I can feel inspired and give my best gifts to the world! One where they have a casual dress code and summer Fridays. Ah, I can just feel it now!

Critic: What are you, crazy? You’re always talking about quitting and starting over. Do you remember how hard we worked to get the job we have? (That you’ve only been at for one year, may …

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

by

“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 …

How Failure Holds the Key to a Meaningful, Successful Life

by

“Perfectionism doesn’t believe in practice shots.” ~Julia Cameron

Within each of us lurks a perfectionist. And perfectionists set themselves up for a lot of pain in life.

How so? I’ll come to that.

First let me describe how our first child took her first step. She was less than ten months old. A very bright girl, who wanted nothing less than my approval at all times.

On one occasion, a few months previous to that, she was crawling on the carpet and picked up some small thing. As she started to put it in her mouth, I called out loudly …

Loving Yourself When You’ve Become Addicted to Self-Improvement

by

“Whatever purifies you is the right path.” ~Rumi  

I’m tired of being good. It’s time to be deliciously free.

How I wish I could say that without rushing in to assure you that I promise I’ll still be good.

The truth is, I worry. Less than I used to, but still, I do.

I’ve probably had every kind of worry you could imagine. There’s the kind about things that haven’t happened yet, things that didn’t but very nearly could have, things that are highly unlikely if not impossible, things that are commonplace; I’ve worried about the things I want and …

Maybe It’s Not All Good or All Bad

by

“You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.” ~Pema Chödrön

A farmer has a horse for many years; it helps him earn his livelihood and raise his son. One day, the horse runs away. His neighbor says sympathetically, “Such bad luck.”

The farmer replies, “Maybe. Who knows?”

The next day, the horse makes its way back home bringing with it another horse. The neighbor says with a smile, “Such good luck.”

The farmer replies, “Maybe. Who knows?”

The following day, the farmer’s son rides the new horse and seeks to tame it. In the process, he breaks his leg. …

What to Do If You Feel Trapped by Your Circumstances

by

“As long as we know we’re trapped, we still have a chance to escape.” ~Sara Grant

Talking to someone last week who had to ‘volunteer’ to return to their country of birth, a country defined by the United Nations as one of the least developed in the world in terms of its economic conditions, was humbling.

While I often find myself feeling trapped by the longevity, monotony, and intensity involved in child rearing, I wasn’t sure what I could say that might help someone who had been the victim of identity theft and, through lack of resources, had no option …

What If You Were Suddenly Forgiven?

by

“Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.” ~Marianne Williamson

Twenty-seven years ago I made a terrible mistake that led to losing the friendship of someone important to me. I was twelve and I very vividly remember that I was at her front door, asking for her forgiveness and she was telling me she couldn’t do this.

Friendship is one of those areas of my life that I have always felt I need to work on. I …

When Life Hurts: 3 Tips for Hard Times

by

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Life is an unpredictable experience filled with peaks and plateaus. One thing is certain, at some point on this wild ride you will find yourself in hard times. Not everyone experiences the same kind, but life does offer each person struggle in some way. When you find yourself in this situation be gentle with yourself.

There is no true way to ever be fully prepared for hard times. Similar to a hurricane, you can have an understanding that they will happen, but …

Swipe Right on Mindfulness: My Apprehensive Journey into Meditation

by

“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 …

Healing Chronic Pain Is an Inside Job

by

“Time is not a cure for chronic pain, but it can be crucial for improvement. It takes time to change, to recover, and to make progress.” ~Mel Pohl

Let’s face it, living with any kind of physical pain is a challenge. I understand that completely. In the fall of 2007, I contracted an extremely painful and debilitating condition, Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, a structural collapse that compresses the muscles, nerves, and arteries that run between the collarbones and first ribs.

Yet, as most of us do, I believed my condition would, naturally, clear up soon and the pain would leave. …

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

by

“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

by

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

by

“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 …

8 Things I Learned from Watching My Mum Die

by

“Pain changes your life forever. But so does healing from it.” ~Kayil York

In 2012 my mum got diagnosed with cancer. After an operation, she was cancer-free for some time when in March 2017 it was discovered that the cancer had returned and had spread everywhere, notably to her lungs.

She was adamant that she did not want further treatment, which would have been palliative at best anyway and would have had significant side effects. Nobody was able to make a prognosis regarding how much longer she had left. Being seventy, there was a chance that it would develop slowly.…

Why I Got Caught Up in the Drama of an On-and-Off Relationship

by

“One reason people resist change is because they focus on what they have to give up instead of what they have to gain.” ~Rick Godwin

Dave and I met earlier this January. I was immediately attracted to his aquamarine eyes and his tattoos. I met him on the eve of my twenty-sixth birthday and, based on our interaction, I assumed we’d have a casual fling. Things didn’t end that simply, to my surprise.

When we were lying in bed together that first night, holding hands, he turned to me and asked if there was any chance we could get to …

How Journaling Helped Me Heal from Grief and How It Can Help You Too

by

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” ~C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

The day I was told that the man I loved was going to die from cancer, I did two things: I made a pact with myself never to have more than one bottle of wine in the house. I knew the risks of numbing pain and I knew that it didn’t work. Then I went to a stationery shop and bought a supply of fine moleskin journals.

My journey through grief started the day the pea-sized lump behind my husband’s ear was given a …

“You’re Too Sensitive” Is a Lie

by

“I used to dislike being sensitive. I thought it made me weak. But take away that single trait, and you take away the very essence of who I am. You take away my conscience, my ability to empathize, my intuition, my creativity, my deep appreciation of the little things, my vivid inner life, my keen awareness of others pain and my passion for it all. ~Unknown

My phone rang and it was my boyfriend. I slipped out into the hall. “Hey you,” I answered. We’d been texting about getting together that night.

“Why don’t you just come over to my …

Healing, Forgiving, and Loving After a Painful Break Up

by

“People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you will know exactly what to do.” ~Anonymous

About five years ago, I learned the biggest lesson of my life about self-love and losing oneself in a relationship, through a breakup that almost killed me.

After going through another night of three hours of sleep, I drove myself to the ER to save my own life. I hadn’t eaten or slept much in three weeks, and the scale pointed to ninety-seven pounds. I felt weak, malnourished, and unloved.

Three weeks …

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

by

“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 …