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Search Results for "gratitude" — 798 posts

50 Amazing Gifts from Living In The Now

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

Recently something truly amazing happened. I was sitting at the beach feeling the warm winds, taking in the gleaming blue Pacific. It was the time of day when the sunlight turns the ocean into waves of sparkling radiance.

The beauty touched me deeply. In that appreciation of the moment, something shifted inside me. I became so present that my identity of self dissolved into the background.

I was not only in the universe, but the universe was now in me.

As I write …

Stop Waiting for Life to Happen and Start Living It Now

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“The grass is always greener where you water it.” ~Unknown

For a while there, I was a little peeved with the world. I’ve just recently snapped out of it, and I just want to sing and dance and share this message with everyone: Stop waiting!

Last year, after living through some profound experiences—travelling extensively, soul searching, attending incredible life-changing events, shedding massive masks, overcoming huge obstacles, and deciding to change the course of my life completely—I came back to my life, to my home, and sat back and thought to myself, “This is what life is about!”

I was on …

Recognizing Our Patterns and Learning How to Change Them

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“What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher.” ~Chuck Palahniuk 

Life has a funny way of teaching us lessons. When there is something you need to learn, something that you need to work on, the same situation will continue to repeat itself until you either learn your lesson or find a healthy way of dealing with that particular issue.

Think of the movie Groundhog Day. It was one of my favorites. Once Bill Murray realized that he was living the same day over and over again, he …

Learning to Embrace Change as Opportunity, Not Loss

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

Two years ago my life as I knew it changed forever. No, I was not diagnosed with a disease, nor did I lose someone special or have a near-death experience. I actually gained some pretty amazing things: a new house, two dogs, living with my partner, and the chance to be a full-time stepmom to his two children.

But I did not initially view this change in a truly positive light.

After the dissolution of a long-term relationship, I had spent several years …

Tiny Wisdom: Remembering the Good Things

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“Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.” ~Albert Einstein

As I was walking to my apartment just now, I heard the voice of a child who was walking in the same direction with an adult across the street.

With his enthusiastic, high-pitched voice he asked, “Remember we went on a plane? And it was really, really high in the sky?”

Then just a few seconds later he asked, “Remember we saw a baseball game?”

And then a few seconds after that, “Remember we had spaghetti?”

A part of me wanted to keep walking parallel from them, even …

8 Reasons to Buy the Tiny Wisdom eBook Series (Available Now!)

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Since Tiny Buddha launched in 2009, I’ve written hundreds of “Tiny Wisdom” blog posts. In the beginning, I kept these short and peripheral.

Over time, I started putting more of myself into them and giving them a lot more love and attention. Suddenly, these posts became far more popular than I ever thought they’d be.

They aren’t lengthy how-to posts with lists of action steps. They’re short reflections on the little things that make a huge difference in our daily lives. They’re reminders of what matters and how to embrace it, right now, instead of focusing on all the things …

Life is Happening FOR Us: All Things Are Gifts

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“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

Up to a certain point in my life, I was always seeking approval and validation from everything outside of me. All I ever wanted was to feel loved. I longed for this feeling and wondered how the world could be so cruel as to reject me when I was so loving and available.

I have since learned that I was not as available as I thought.

It has been my experience that everyone that crosses …

Living in the “Yes” of Life

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“In chaos there is fertility.” ~Anais Nin

The word fertility formerly had a one-dimensional meaning for me, but I’ve come to broaden its definition.

In my time living in Seoul, Korea, it has played a big part in defining my experience. You see, my husband and I have been trying to conceive since 2009 and have not been lucky.

There’s a long story behind this that includes testing and monitoring and modifying our diets and trying acupuncture. And, for about a year, I became that person I did not want to become—swallowed up by the pain and stress surrounding …

How to Forgive When You Don’t Really Want To

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“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” ~Jean Paul Sartre

Like so many other women, I had a complicated, often fractious relationship with my mother. I had moved thousands of miles away, but an email or a phone call was enough to irritate me.

Visits were tense, nail-biting experiences, where I couldn’t help but analyze each thing that she said to see if it contained a passive-aggressive double meaning, at which point an argument would brew.

For years it had not mattered what anyone told me about how to forgive, and they had told me …

Peace Is Learning the Lesson

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“No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.” ~Buddha

It’s strange to feel peace while a part of your heart is being chipped away.

I’m in the middle of a heart chipping, but the longer it goes on, the more I’m realizing that it needs to be removed before it hardens the rest of the organ. Maybe the chipping is kind of like pruning a diseased tree so the remainder grows stronger and more resilient.

The cuts hurt like hell though.

The last few months have been some of the most difficult of my life. I’ve been …

Build Yourself an Army for Happiness

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“Count your joys instead of your woes. Count your friends instead of your foes.” ~Irish Proverb

I’ve always believed that happiness is a choice. I thought that I was the only one who could truly make me happy.

That was before my life disintegrated before my very own eyes.

My husband and I built a business together. For four years we poured blood, sweat, and tears into it. We lived and breathed it. Before we knew it, and a lot sooner than you would probably imagine, it had consumed us.

I felt like it had eaten me alive. I …

It Could Be Far Worse

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“If you count all your assets, you always show a profit.” ~Robert Quillen

This weekend someone broke into my apartment and stole everything of significant monetary value that I owned.

They stole my jewelry box, with pieces I got from my boyfriend, his mother, and my sister, after she’d gone through a break-up and wanted to unload a vast collection from her past. They stole several purses in my closet, and confusing it for another, also took my makeup bag.

They took my laptop bag containing my new MacBook, my wallet, my passport, my glasses, and my boyfriend’s old iPhone, …

Sometimes We Need to Go Backward Before We Can Move Forward

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“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” ~Albert Einstein

There I was in January, on the floor, physically and emotionally. From the outside, I probably looked like every one else attending yoga class off Robertson Blvd. that Sunday morning, but to me, on the inside, especially within my heart, I was in shambles.

And then, there was a moment I had not expected.

The waterworks came as I heard the teacher say, “Sometimes, you feel as though you are riding the bicycle backwards. You feel like you are backtracking and heading in the wrong direction, but really what’s …

The Difference Between Forgiving and Forgetting

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“Some people think it’s holding that makes one strong. Sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

I will never forget the moment my marriage ended.

My husband and I had fought the night before, about many of the same things we’d been fighting about for the entirety of our four-month marriage.

He was dissatisfied with our sex life and my lack of respect for him. I was struggling with bipolar disorder, changing medications, going back to school, and trying to please a man who seemed to find fault with everything I did.

During that fight, he choked me twice to prevent me …

Dealing with a Break Up and Learning from the Experience

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“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown

Relationships end, everyone knows that. The tough part is actually dealing with suffering, accepting, letting go, moving on, and processing a whole lot of other feelings at the same time.

Six months ago my ex-boyfriend decided to end our relationship because he couldn’t forgive me for a mistake I’d made.

During the first weeks of our breakup I decided that it would be best if I just gave him some time to think things out. I accepted the …

What You Do Matters

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“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I used to refer to myself as a white crayon in the coloring box of life.

Have you ever wondered what purpose a white crayon serves? There are all of these other beautiful colors to be put to good use, but the white crayon just kind of sits there and tends to get overlooked.

That’s exactly how I felt. I felt like I was just merely existing and not serving any kind of purpose. And at the time, …

It’s Okay to Ask for Love

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“Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This past week I simultaneously experienced some of the strongest physical pain and immense joy I have ever experienced. While the former has everything to do with the six-inch incision in my abdomen, the latter revolves around a number of lessons about willfully receiving.

As I wrote last week, I had my myomectomy surgery on Tuesday to remove a soccer ball-sized growth in my uterus. On Monday, it occurred to me I’d appreciate reading uplifting notes from the community, but a part of …

5 Steps to Deal with Self-Doubt and Trust Your Self Again

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

A while back I began to feel out of sorts with my writing. It happened after coming down from the high of creating almost nonstop with my inner muse. I noticed that I began to feel down, like the feeling one gets after being at the amusement park when the excitement is over.

Creating and finishing my projects had been a wild ride. It was exciting and intense at times. But once done, an insidious feeling began to over take me.

My thoughts began to wander …

A Reason to Be Grateful for Our Most Difficult, Painful Experiences

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“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” ~Melody Beattie

I’ve never had a problem with forgiveness.

In high school my mother and I would argue endlessly. Her lectures and my rebellion both had no end. While it was true that my mother had her faults, my independence caused me to be less than willing to follow her direction.

At one point we were arguing, as we usually did, which meant hours of crying and lecturing. As I pointed out to her yet another of her faults, she said something that …

How to Create Joy Today: 7 Tips for a Happy Life

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“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” ~Dalai Lama

I have recently come face to face with mortality—not my own, my friend’s. At only thirty-seven, Daniel left behind an army of people whose lives he had touched in some way, including my own.

At thirty-three I have just qualified as a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. At the time Daniel passed away I was working as a human resources manager, a profession I had originally trained in and remained in for over ten years.

A number of factors and events led me to make the leap and …