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Posts tagged with “adversity”

Does It All Feel Too Hard? Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal Can Help

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Do you ever feel like calling into the day? And I don’t just mean work. I mean everything. I mean turning it all off for a while. Freezing the full gamut of this messy human experience—the regrets, the fears, the adulting, the drama. The constant onslaught of anxiety-inducing news and personal problems to face.

When everyone needs you and everything worries you and nothing helps you feel better, it’s tempting to disconnect. To numb out, shut down, or give up.

But we can’t, at least not for long. And really, that’s not what we want. Or at least, that’s not …

How I Turned My Disability into Desirability with a Simple Perspective Change

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“Stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities.” ~Terry Josephson 

I was affected by the deadly poliovirus when I was six months old. Most people infected with it die. Even today, there is no cure for it. I miraculously survived, but lost my ability to walk.

During the first twenty years of my life, I evolved through crawling on the floor, lifting my leg with my hands, wearing prosthetics, using canes, and finally learning to walk, painfully, with crutches. As I grew up, I experienced post-polio syndrome, which weakened the other parts of my body.…

The One Thing You Need to Make the Best Decisions for You

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“If you are not living your truth, you are living a lie.” ~Joseph Curiale

Her sobs break my heart. We have all been there. When the relationship starts feeling like a war-torn city as opposed to home.

I close in for a hug. “You can’t go on like this,” I whisper.

“Well, I don’t know what to do. Please don’t tell me to break up,” she looks up pleadingly. “I can’t do it. I won’t be able to bear it. I am not as strong as you.”

A familiar musical refrain from Tina Turner comes to mind albeit with …

How to Increase Your Sense of Control and Boost Your Resilience

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“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” ~Maya Angelou

When I look back, I am amazed at how differently I dealt with adversity the first few decades of my life.

Growing up in a stressful home primed me to experience life with caution. Whether it was being afraid of physical harm, loneliness, or failure, I’ve lived my life with an exaggerated fight-flight response to everything. Adversity …

The Six Ps: What to Do and Not to Do When Dealing with Setbacks and Failure

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“Sometimes you get what you want. Other times, you get a lesson in patience, timing, alignment, empathy, compassion, faith, perseverance, resilience, humility, trust, meaning, awareness, resistance, purpose, clarity, grief, beauty, and life. Either way, you win.” ~Brianna Wiest

“Good as gold,” the cab driver replied as I nervously handed him the $20 bill and asked, “Okay?” He jumped in his cab and drove off.

I was pleasantly surprised by his politeness, as I was expecting him to argue with me for extra money because we’d gone around in circles searching for the address that I had given him at …

How I Get Through Hard Times Using Curiosity, Compassion, and Challenge

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“Sometimes the worst things that happen in our lives put us on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us.” ~Unknown

Until I was thirty-seven, I thought I’d led a pretty charmed life: I had a supportive family and good friends, I’d done well academically, always got the jobs I’d applied for, and met and married the perfect man for me.

In 2013, when I was thirty-five weeks pregnant with my second child, I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. My baby was induced at thirty-seven weeks, and my chemo started ten days later. In …

The Wind That Shakes Us: Why We Need Hard Times

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“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” ~William Arthur Ward

I live in the windiest city in the world—Wellington, New Zealand. Perched between the North and South Island, this colorful little city gets hammered by wind. The winds from the south bring cold, and the winds from the northwest seem to blow forever. My body is regularly under assault. But amid all that blustering lies the answer to one of life’s great questions: How do we feel at home in the wind? Or better phrased, how do we live with …

10 Powerful Quotes on Overcoming Adversity (and a Book Giveaway)

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UPDATE: The winners for this giveaway have been chosen. They are Kristie St. Germain and Suzanne Hermary.

As the year is coming to a close, now seems like a perfect time to shine a spotlight on one of my favorite books of 2017.

Tiny Buddha contributor Harriet Cabelly has crafted a masterpiece in her book Living Well Despite Adversity: Inspiration for Finding Renewed Meaning and Joy in Your Life.

Harriet’s faced her share of personal challenges in life, from going through a life-threatening medical crisis with her daughter to rebuilding her life after divorce. But this book isn’t just …

How to Boost Your Resilience So Nothing Can Keep You Down

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“No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That’s the only way to keep the roads clear” ~Greg Kincaid

How is it that some people can breeze through physical and emotional pain, whereas others wince at the mere thought of it?

Is it their genes? Their individual circumstances? Their support network?

Or is it a certain strength of character, something each and every one of us can develop with the right tools and training?

Two years ago I found myself needing to answer these questions.

I was sitting in a cafe in East London wiping the tears …

When Life Takes a Detour: Turning Uncertainty Into Joy

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“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” ~Og Mandino

You know when you get a major wake up call that shakes you to the core and gets you to focus on what’s truly important? That’s what 2014 was for me.

My boyfriend and I had gotten married in May 2014 after moving from Toronto to a small town to be closer to his aging mother.

I was working thirteen-hour days to re-establish my wellness business, and things were slowly picking up. I was finally …

Bounce Back and Thrive: The Secret to Turning Adversity into Opportunity

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“Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.” ~William Shakespeare                                                                        

It’s hard for me to write about this. I suppose it stems from being a mutt of Italian and Irish ancestry, two cultures famous for intense pride and keeping personal things “in the family.”

I wonder if my parents ever loved each other.

By the time I was eight years old, it was clear they did not get along. I never witnessed them getting along, or even being affectionate toward one another. But I always felt …

Interview and Book Giveaway: 10 Habits of Truly Optimistic People

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Update: The winners for this giveaway are:

I have a confession to make—I sometimes cringe when someone tells me to “just be positive.” I’ve often assumed this really means, “Your sadness is making me uncomfortable, so please stop talking about it.”

To be fair, I wouldn’t classify myself as a negative person—not now, anyways—though I have my moments. I do, however, feel for anyone who might be classified that way, as I know from experience that deep negativity often comes from deep pain.

We all face our own battles in life, some more overwhelming than others. And …

There’s a Gift in Every Problem: Finding the Good in the Bad

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“Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.” ~Richard Bach

I bought the magazine because it had pizza on the cover and the headline read: “Yes, you can eat pizza.”

At that point, the idea that I could eat pizza was as absurd to me as the thought of finding a tiny dinosaur living in my flowerbeds.

But oh, how I wanted a slice.

At thirty-two years old, I’d been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It scared the hell out of me, and I was determined to take perfect care of myself so I could be the best …

Uplifting Depression: 15 Unexpected Lessons from Adversity

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“Whenever something negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Two years ago, reading this quote, I would smirk and think, “What a cliché.”

In the last two years, I would read this quote and be in utter disbelief that anything can be learned when one is in the depths of hell.

Today, I read this quote and resonate confidently, that yes, even though I tried to end my life, even though I had to quit a high paying job, even though I still suffer from major depression, good has come out of my …