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Tiny Wisdom: When You’re Not Sure If You’ve Changed

By in Change, Patience, Quotes

“Change is not a process for the impatient.” -Barbara Reinhold

A while back, a Tiny Buddha contributor commented that she was feeling like a fraud for struggling to take advice she’d offered in an article. I told her I could relate. I’ve written more than 600 wisdom-themed blog posts over the past few years, meaning there is abundant potential for me to contradict something I’ve previously explored in my writing.

Sometimes when I am not mindful, or kind, or stress-free, or clearly happier and more peaceful than I once was, I start to wonder if I’ve even changed at all. …

Overwhelmed by Your To-Do List? How to Decide What to Do Now

By in Blog, work fulfillment

Overwhelmed Woman

“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.” ~Proverb

I’ve been mentoring writers for years, and one problem many of them run into is that they have so many ideas and projects that they don’t know where to start. They may want to write for big-name magazines, draft a novel, sell a nonfiction book, start a blog, and write an e-book.

Each of these projects has dozens of to-do items associated with it. Where to start? They’re so confused that they do nothing at all.…

Tiny Wisdom: What Fear Really Means

By in Fear, Quotes

“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.” -Unknown

Sometimes we feel certain that we know exactly what we’re seeing. If you’re anything like me, odds are you’ve had plenty of opportunities to recognize your perception is often off.

A friend of mine once told me a story about a near-confrontation in the subway. She saw another woman dressed in what one might call Gothic clothing. Although my friend’s look was more conservative, she loved the other woman’s funky-looking shirt.

Unintentionally, she stared at it for a while, admiring the unique cut and wondering if she could pull that look off. When they …

5 Steps to Push Through Fear

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.” ~Rumi

This summer, I drove up Highway 5 from Los Angeles on my way to Grass Valley to visit my friend Carol, a painting teacher, for a week of painting in her studio. I can’t remember the last time I hit the road on my own for an eight-hour drive to nature.

I forgot what it was like to crank up the stereo listening to old tunes, straining my vocal cords to and singing full voice off key.

On my right, I saw semi trucks making deliveries …

Tiny Wisdom: When It’s Time to Stop Hoping

By in Courage, Happiness, Hope, Quotes, Strength

“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure but from hope to hope.” -Samuel Johnson

You’ll find lots of inspiring posts that suggest you hold onto hope against all odds and push through difficult times with your eye on a light down the road. This isn’t one of them. Sometimes hope is a beautiful thing. It can motivate, empower, and inspire you when you’re tempted to give up. But other times it just keeps you stuck.

When you push through today for a better tomorrow, without doing anything to create that new possibility, your hope …

Finding Beauty in Your Scars

By in Blog, change & challenges

“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 …

Tiny Wisdom: When Things Aren’t Fair

By in Peace, Quotes

“Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.” Dwight Eisenhower

The other night, my boyfriend drove me to the airport for a cross-country flight. After he took a wrong turn, we ended up in a mess of traffic that pushed me dangerously close to my departure time.

When I entered, I saw two lines to check baggage: a long, winding one, and another that was oddly short. I assumed this was for “even more legroom” passengers and decided to upgrade my ticket so I’d be on time.

I made it to the agent within minutes, at which point …

Letting Go of Insecurities with Two Realizations

By in Blog, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly.” ~Carl Rogers

I used to spend an awful lot of time worrying about people liking me. Or what people thought of me. Or what they thought of the clothes I was wearing. Or whatever.

It’s taken me a long time to realize two things:

1. Most people really aren’t even taking notice of us. (They’re too worried about what other people think of them.)

2. Of the few who are noticing us, the people who are judging us harshly are not the people we want around us …

Tiny Wisdom: You’re Stronger Than You Think

By in Quotes, Strength

Buddha

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” -Mahatma Gandhi

When I was twenty-one years old, I starved myself to ninety-five pounds and then spent every ounce of my energy worrying about the potential to gain weight back. It was torturous and yet comforting all at once. Because I obsessed about my body, I never had to think or worry about much else. There just wasn’t any time.

Back then I was rehearsing for a musical holiday show. I loved belonging to that group, and I wanted to form real friendships with the other cast …

Tiny Wisdom: Sometimes No One Is Wrong

By in Anger, Compassion, Perspective, Quotes

“Love is saying, ‘I feel differently’ instead of ‘you’re wrong.'” -Unknown

I’ve written a lot of posts about compassion these past few years, challenging both myself and readers to be open-minded and see things from others’ points of view.

On almost every post, someone has commented that there are times when other people are, in fact, wrong–when the person who cut you off in traffic really is a jerk, not just having a bad day; when the friend who hurt you actually had cruel intentions, and didn’t just make an innocent mistake; or when the person who sees things differently …

How to Help Someone Feel Loved and Understood

By in Blog, happiness & fun, love & relationships

“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. …

Tiny Wisdom: Certainty Is an Illusion

By in Courage, Perspective, Quotes

“More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity.” -Francois Gautier

Last week, I wrote a post about making difficult decisions, which incorporated 30 ideas from the Tiny Buddha Facebook community. The experience of writing it and reading the comments reminded me how certainty can sometimes silence our strongest instincts–when, ironically, certainty is always an illusion.

The secure job could become obsolete. The dependable friend could move away. The stable relationship could run its course.

None of the things that seem secure and safe are guaranteed to endure–not forever, or for any length of time, …

How to Carve Time for Yourself and Pursue Your Dreams

By in Blog, meaning & passion, work fulfillment

“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” ~Etty Hillesum

There was a time that I wished I had more than 24 hours a day to finish everything in my long to-do list. I have a full-time job editing news stories for a media agency while tending to my side business as a content marketing strategist for entrepreneurs.

That’s just the work thing. Like most single women in Asia, I live with my parents, so I do my share of household chores. I’m also writing my thesis for my masters …

Tiny Wisdom: Stop Over-Apologizing

By in Confidence, Forgiveness, Quotes

Buddha

“We must remember that an apology isn’t an apology unless it’s meaningful.” -Unknown

An old friend of mine used to apologize almost once during every sentence. If she interrupted me, she apologized. If I interrupted her, she apologized. If she asked me for the time, she apologized. If I tripped on her shoe, she apologized.

I found this somewhat annoying, and I realized quickly why: I did this, too, and I didn’t enjoy recognizing that.

I’ve noticed that many of us say we’re sorry when it isn’t actually necessary. In my case, it was mostly a people-pleasing tendency–I wanted …

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

By in Blog, change & challenges

“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…

Tiny Wisdom: How to Give People the Gift of Possibility

By in Happiness, Love, Quotes

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Buddha

When I first moved to San Francisco, the only friend I knew there told me she hoped I didn’t get too close to her other friends.

At first she told me that it was better for our friendship if we didn’t completely overlap our lives—and then later, she confessed that she was afraid they’d grow closer to me than they were to her.

It was an honest, vulnerable admission, and I empathized with …

10 Ways to Make Your Life More Playful

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” ~George Bernard Shaw

I was 25 and traveling through Ireland by myself. I was in Cong, a rural small town outside of Galway. It was quiet. Very quiet. Even though I had met people on my trip, I was starting to feel lonely.

I was thousands of miles from home. I had nobody around who knew me well or cared for me, and in the days before cell phones or internet cafes, I couldn’t just get in touch with my friends or family at the …

Tiny Wisdom: Letting Go of Painful Memories

By in Pain, Quotes

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” ~Unknown

Recently, I’ve been listening to a guided healing meditation I found online. I searched for it because I sensed something was wrong with my body, a couple weeks before a doctor confirmed it.

I didn’t expect it would bring up old wounds, but it has. There’s one part where the soothing voice instructs the listener to think back to the confidence of childhood. When I hear this, it reminds me that I wasn’t confident then, and that many painful events chipped away at my self-esteem.

At this point in the meditation, I usually …

Balanced Living: How to Stay on Track

By in Blog, healthy habits, mindfulness & peace

“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 …

Tiny Wisdom: You Can Do More Than You Think

By in Possibilities, Quotes

“If you’re going to doubt something, doubt your own limits.” -Don Ward

There’s a Saturday Night Live sketch that features Kenan Thompson as a middle school student with a broken knee. Scarlett Johansson and his other classmates repeatedly convince him to attempt walking, quoting a teacher who frequently lectures on the power of positive thinking. Despite their promises that anything is possible, he repeatedly falls flat on his face.

I loved this sketch, not because of some schadenfreude-induced need to see children crying. I love it because it reminds me of the many times I’ve seen comments on blog posts …