Believe in Yourself
A Simple Way to Avoid Hurting Other People
“Don’t let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” ~Dalai Lama
The most straightforward advice I can suggest to make real concrete changes in your life is to practice causing no harm to anyone—yourself or others.
Try it for a day. Or two. How about a week? You will probably find that it’s harder than you think. Before you know it, someone has triggered you, and either directly or indirectly, you’ve caused harm.
I am a successful psychotherapist and conscious woman, and I’m also committed to transparency. No more hiding behind the therapist’s veil for me. The one that …
Make Your Soul Grow: A Letter from Kurt Vonnegut
In 2006, a group of high school students in New York wrote to their favorite authors and asked them to visit their school, as part of an assignment. Only one author responded, offering his wisdom in the form of a letter.
Dogtooth Films made this short film with a group of students in the UK. It offers a powerful message: create, not for what it can get you, but for who you will become through the process. Make your soul grow.
How to Create a Happy Future by Accepting the Present
“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” ~Eckhart Tolle
Imagine if every night you wrote the script for your tomorrow.
You’d tuck it under your pillow and when you woke up, it would begin unfolding just like you envisioned.
The man or woman of your dreams would appear in the Whole Foods aisle you were perusing.
A check for a million dollars would show up in your mailbox, with a note reading “have fun.”
Your friends and family would call you to tell you how great life …
When You Think You Need to Know More to Be Good Enough
“All the wonders you seek are within yourself.” ~Sir Thomas Browne
I’m constantly looking for answers—in books, in yoga classes, in meditation. Everywhere I go I meet people, new and old, and I’m constantly asking questions. I thrive on learning new opinions, spiritualities, lessons, and facts. Relentlessly, I’m always searching for more.
Aren’t we all looking for the answers?
How am I going to leave the position that I’ve held for most of my life and start a new job, in a new company? Raise our first child (or puppy!)? Take care of our aging parents? Start teaching yoga …
Let Go of Regret by Making a Promise to Yourself
“Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places.” ~Unknown
Regret can be such a paralyzing emotion, yet it is also universal. At some point in our lives, in one way or another, we each wrestle with regret.
Regret seems to rear its ugly head most when it comes to relationships. It happens when a relationship ends and we feel as if we could have done something more. This feeling intensifies when the other person decides that a second chance is not worth the fight. Most of all, we face with regret once it sets in that the past …
Learn to Love Yourself by Doing Something Good for Yourself
TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.
“I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.” ~BrenéBrown
I was happiest when I didn’t know my weight, and that was ironically when I was at my heaviest, which was in high school.
I was slow to take on the self-loathing and body image issues that plague so many young kids. I rarely felt bad about myself, partly because I had a loving family and a …
5 Things That Make Summer Awesome (And a Great Cause)
Summertime is awesome, just like the adorable Kid President says, but not for everyone. More than twenty-one million kids receive free or reduced-price lunch when they’re in school. During the summer, the vast majority of them have no or limited access to food.
Soul Pancake teamed up with ConAgra Foods to raise awareness for child hunger. For every view, like, or share of this cute little video, they’ll donate the equivalent of one meal to Feeding America.
To learn about more ways to fight hunger in your own community, visit ChildHungerEndsHere.com.
More Is Not Always Better: Being Grateful for What Is
“It is not joy that makes us grateful. It is gratitude that makes us joyful.” ~David Rast
Every New Years Eve I make a list of resolutions that I never keep up with and it just makes me feel guilty every time I don’t. Lose ten pounds, get more involved, go to the gym, develop better relationships.
Every year I aspire to be more, do more, get more, never living within the present moment.
My stress to do more comes into play in every aspect of my life. The stress of joining more clubs comes from the competitive environment of …
60 Things to Be Grateful For In Life
“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” ~Cynthia Ozick
How often do you pause to appreciate what you have in life?
When I was young, I took things for granted. I believe many other kids did so, as well. After all, we were young and we didn’t know what life could be like on the other side.
One thing we took for granted was education. In my country, it’s compulsory for all kids to go to school, so it was a given. We never thought about how lucky we were to be educated.…
Using Your Monkey Mind to Redirect Negative Thoughts
“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I grew up in what I like to call The Box of Daughter: a rigid structure of rules about values, beliefs, thinking, feeling, and behaving, set forth for me by super-religious parents who grew up in boxes of their own.
For a large part of my life, my thinking bounced around within the confines of that box—worrying the old worries, thinking the old thoughts, feeling the old pain, and acting out pretty much the same compulsions time after time—stuck in ever-repeating loops of monkey …
Now is Not Forever: Weathering Uncomfortable Feelings
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts
I recently found myself ruminating about a difficult situation at my new workplace. Considering my high-flying, achievement-oriented personality, the recipe for my malcontent was predictable: A supervisor had disagreed with me, and I left work that day feeling melodramatic and like I wanted to quit… that day.
I thought, “I am so misunderstood. No one ‘gets’ what I am doing. I am not cut out for teamwork. Why do I hate working so much? I thought …
How to Get to the Shore When You’re Drowning in Pain
“The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment.” ~Eckhart Tolle
Pain can feel like a dark cave with no light to help us find our way out. Or an ocean with waves so big we feel like we can’t ever swim to the shore. Peace is the place we arrive at when we swim to the shore, up and out of the pain we were drowning in. But how do we get there?
For most of us, the first thing we do when we’re in pain is look for somebody to join us …
Overcoming the Painful Desires and Beliefs That Feed Addiction
“Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.” ~Byron Katie
I had spent five horrible years in and out of rehabs and support groups for my substance use problems. Along the way, there were a few periods where I cleaned up for six months, eight months, and almost a whole year one time, but nothing seemed to stick.
The worst part was that even with all of the painful effort it took to keep the drug and alcohol use going, and all of the painful consequences that were piling up, I was happier in …
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