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Tiny Wisdom: On Being Fully What You Are

By in Confidence, Love, Peace, Quotes

“By accepting yourself and being fully what you are, your presence can make others happy.” ~Jane Roberts

I suspect we all want permission to be exactly who we are—to accept ourselves instead of feeling unsure of ourselves, and then somehow find a balance between being and improving.

When we see someone else who appears to do that, despite their weaknesses and flaws, it’s immensely inspiring and gratifying. Why? Because we all want to believe that even if we can be better, there’s nothing wrong with being exactly who we are.

Yet only we can give that feeling to ourselves. No …

Accepting & Loving Ourselves in 10 Simple Steps

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Why compare yourself with others? No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you.” ~Unknown

The idea of loving yourself often seems cliché. We throw around the phrase, but do we really understand what it means? Do we actually know how to love ourselves? Or what the process of self love even looks like?

I really believe that everything in our lives is directly affected by how much we love ourselves, but I’m often at a loss for words when trying to articulate what is really all about. In my attempts to …

Tiny Wisdom: On Perfect Plans

By in Courage, Mindfulness, Quotes

Green Buddha

“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” -Proverb

Tomorrow always seems like a safe bet for action. Then you’ll be ready to get started, or get serious, or get over it, or get on with it. Tomorrow you’ll finally set your plan in motion instead of shaping it into something just right. You’ll take the offer, the plunge, or the road less taken tomorrow, when you feel sure.

Tomorrow can become a moving target while todays pile up and expire.

Sometimes we need to be patient, but oftentimes we use it as an excuse to wait …

On Planning Less: How to Let Go & Enjoy the Ride

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand – relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.” ~Osho

As I drove home today, I embarked on a familiar exercise: planning out, in ridiculous detail, the next week, month, and year of my life.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that planning is bad. In my world, a complete lack of planning would be anarchy. And anarchy equals anxiety. So I try to avoid it—both the anarchy and the anxiety.

But, historically speaking, I plan to a …

Authentic Communication: 3 Tips for Receiving in Conversations

By in Blog, love & relationships

“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it but to enable it.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Have you ever heard the expression everyone loves a cheerful giver? While there’s a great deal of truth in the philosophy of offering without hopes attached, what about the flip side?

Sometimes we become so focused on providing antidotes or anticipating what we perceive to be the other person’s needs that we steamroll a conversation, taking center stage in our interactions.

In my own day-to-day life, pauses and hesitations in conversation used to make me uncomfortable or even anxious. I would …

Growing through Challenges: How Intentions Shape Our Lives

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~Bernice Johnson Reagon

The last five years of my life involved a lot of self-inflicted stress and tremendous spiritual growth.

In 2003 I made a decision that would have a major impact on my life without realizing my true intentions.

While knowing the financial safety net was not securely in place, I decided to remain at home with my daughter instead of returning to work. Previously, when I left our first child in the care of someone else at ten months old, I …

Tiny Wisdom: On Enthusiasm

By in Happiness, Quotes

 

“Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money, power, and influence.” ~Henry Chester

Money can leave you feeling emptier than you were before you had it; it can buy you everything yet give you none of the feelings you hoped it would provide.

Power gives the illusion of control, when in all reality, everyone must come to terms with our universal vulnerability. And influence—well, it might make people follow you, but it doesn’t guarantee you have something worth following.

Enthusiasm, when directed toward something healthy, gives you the power to imagine, create, and enjoy, all rooted …

How You Made Tiny Buddha Beautiful This Year: Our 2010 in Review

By in Blog, Giveaway, mindfulness & peace

“We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.” ~Anonymous

Before September 2009, I thought I wanted to run a personal development blog—a place to share the lessons I’ve learned and generally build a community around the idea of teaching people to improve their lives. Then I realized that wasn’t my vision.

There were a couple reasons for that.

I feel the biggest challenge isn’t gaining new information; it’s learning to apply it.

Instead of trying to build authority, I wanted to embrace my humanity—to be both strong and vulnerable, willing to share what I’ve learned …

5 Lessons about Being Present: Freedom is Where My Feet Are

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

Enjoying life

“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.” ~James Thurber

As I begin each day, I must remind myself, “Erin, stay where your feet are.”

If I keep my attention on the place where my feet reside, I have a better chance of remaining in the here and now. What’s here and now is all there is, so we’re told.

Most of us know this in our heads, but integrating it into our daily living is another thing. It’s a practice, one that must remain a part of our awareness if we hope …

Tiny Wisdom: On Everyday Change

By in Change, Courage, Quotes

Buddha

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

Some decisions seem so inconsequential when you make them.

You choose not to go to lunch with your coworkers. You decide against making that call about taking a class. You reconsider your plans to go out with your friends and instead sit alone, in a familiar space, with a familiar level of comfort.

Every small decision affects the next decision you get to make.

If you don’t go to lunch, you might not learn about a new position at your company. If you don’t …

The One New Year’s Resolution That Creates Lasting Change

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.” ~Jack Dixon

I originally started to write a post offering tons of different New Year’s resolutions and tips to stick to them to create lasting change.

After all, that’s what we bloggers do around the end of the year: share our best practices for improving our lives as December rolls into January; compile well-researched suggestions to change, and do it consistently, despite knowing most people give up on resolutions within weeks of setting them.

Then I realized that didn’t feel authentic to …

Tiny Wisdom: On Flaws

By in Greatness, Quotes, Weakness

Flawed

“A beautiful thing is never perfect.” ~Proverb

The vintage couch pillows that don’t even slightly match. The homemade scarf that’s a little too long and yet just the right size. The worn T-shirt that looks like trash but holds too much nostalgia to toss. The hand-made card depicting a child’s version of a happy family—not even slightly realistic and yet precise in all the right ways.

Imperfect beauty surrounds us, and without realizing it, we also own it, with our diverse colors, shapes, sizes, and smiles; in our varying tastes, skills, perceptions, and quirks.

All those little things that make …

Overcoming Perfectionism: The Joy of Just Okay

By in Blog, happiness & fun

“The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Yesterday I was talking to my dear friend Erin about all the pressures to be perfect—to be more than just enough. To always be striving to be 100%.

I realized later that this has been going on all my life. Haven’t we all felt it?

In grade school, the importance of getting those A’s, being on the teacher’s list, always getting the gold star.

In high school, being popular, being smart, being a jock—whichever lane we chose to fit …

Cracking Your Comfort Zone: How to Face a Fear

By in Blog, change & challenges

“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown

I’m about to write something that’s freaky and a bit philosophical, but true. Really take this in: You become your comfort zone.

Getting out of your comfort zone is crucial to actualizing your aspirations.

If you want something that you don’t already have, there’s a good chance you’ll have to do things that you haven’t already done.

Doing those things may not feel natural to you. You may even feel uncomfortable and awkward. But ultimately, behind the frightening facade of fear is a bigger version …

Review & Giveaway: The Power of Receiving

By in Blog, Giveaway, happiness & fun

Hand Open to Receive

Sometimes in the name of being good we forget to be good to ourselves. We put so much energy into meeting other people’s needs that we fail to meet our own. And yet that doesn’t change that we have needs; it just pushes us to deny them or to find manipulative ways of getting them met.

For the longest time, I felt certain that good people put everyone else first. They stretch themselves, bend over backward, and even completely exhaust themselves if it means making everyone else happy.

I also thought giving would naturally invite reciprocity. Inevitably, after months of …

Does Life Just Happen to You?

By in Blog, change & challenges

“The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.” ~Shakti

Does life just happen to you?

Would it be safe to suggest that a lot of people wake up each morning, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch television, go to bed, and repeat the same course of events Monday through Friday, without ever being fully conscious of what they’re doing?

The events listed above may differ for some people, but the point is still the same. Does life just happen to you, or do you consciously …

Having Faith: Why Do We Expect the Worst in Tomorrow?

By in Blog, change & challenges, letting go

Having Faith

“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~John Allen Paulos

Over the past few years, as I’ve settled into my late twenties, life seems to have opened the flood gates to a number of lessons and realities. With each of these hardships or challenges I’ve overcome, I’ve taken with me a lesson of new wisdom, deeper compassion, self-awareness, humility, and empathy for others.

On that same note, I have also noticed that with each experience, I seem to begin treading more carefully in my approach to future situations, treating …

How to Love Your Authentic Self

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“You, yourself, as much as anybody else in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

In our personal development-focused, life coach-dependent world, it’s all too easy to think you need to change. Not just the things you do, but who you are.

It’s one thing to invite transformation for the sake of growth, improvement, and new possibilities. It’s another thing to feel so dissatisfied with yourself that no amount of change could possibly convince you that you’re worthy and lovable.

This type of intrinsic self-loathing formed the basis of my adolescence and some of my …

5 Steps to Achieving Your New Years Travel Resolutions

By in Blog, meaning & passion

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” ~Miriam Beard

Next year, I plan to visit two countries as part of my New Year’s “Travel Resolutions.” First is Indonesia, as I’ve always wanted to see Borobudur and, of course, Yogyakarta, center of Javenese culture.

In the second half of the year, I want to reward myself with a big overseas trip because by that time, I’m hopefully done with my master’s thesis (woo-hoo!). It’s a choice between Europe and Egypt.

I will visit at least …

Mindfulness Giveaway: Win Awake at the Wheel Mindful Driving CDs

By in Blog, Giveaway, mindfulness & peace

Open Road

Update: This winners for this giveaway have already been chosen.Subscribe to the Tiny Buddha List to learn about future contests!

When I was twenty-one years old, I got into a series of car accidents just after getting my license.

The first time, I drove the wrong way down a one-way street. The second time I side-swiped a double-parked car trying to get around it. And the third time, I hit a Channel 7 news van while looking at printed directions in the middle of Big Dig construction madness (not my proudest moment).

In all of those instances, I was …