grow Archives - Tiny Buddha

How I Stopped Shrinking to Please People and Started Reclaiming My Space

By Dr. Jess

“A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and herself only.” ~Maya Angelou

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness. I’ve grappled with the unshakable feeling that I am not enough no matter what I do.

As a child, I was labeled by my family as being “too much.” Too bossy, too selfish, too energetic, too emotional. So I did what many little girls do when faced by those messages: …

You Wouldn’t Be Here Without Them

By Lori Deschene

The Tiny Seed Knew That In Order to Grow…

By Lori Deschene

When Family Members Push Our Buttons: How This Helps Us Grow

By Marshall Dunn

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.” ~Pema Chodron

You love them most of the time. You can’t stand them some of the time. But in the end, family is family.

I’ve never liked to admit it, but I am just like my dad. Close in birthday, same number 5 life path in numerology, both risk takers, very passionate and adventurous, fun-loving, and witty, and we lead by example. That’s positively speaking.

However, it becomes a negative pattern to focus on the other side of the coin. We …

A Friend Is One Who…

By Lori Deschene

You Must Grow Through Dirt

By Lori Deschene

How to Intentionally Embrace Change in the New Year

By Patsie Smith

“Change is inevitable. Growth is intentional.” ~Glenda Cloud

What do you do when you come to the end of a calendar year as it approaches the start of another one? Do you get caught up in the festive season hype and then, as you roll into the new year, find it all a bit anticlimactic? Or, are you a bit like me and prefer to keep it a quieter, reflective time?

We know that calendar time is really artificial, for true time is simply an infinite and continuous cycle of day and night, seasons, birth and death, and change.…

How to Find Yourself By Losing Yourself

By Patricia Thompson

“Our lives improve only when we take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.” ~Walter Anderson

Growing up in a small town in Western Canada, I was known as the kid who accomplished things.

I was the well-mannered and conscientious child who skipped grade two, was at the top of her class, played three musical instruments, took ballet lessons, French lessons, swimming lessons, and any other lesson in which I expressed an interest.

While this might sound like the calendar of an over-scheduled kid, it actually never felt that way. …

6 Secrets to Moving On From Serious Struggles

By Beth Burgess

“Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.” ~Unknown

People who knew me ten years ago would probably expect me to be dead now. They wouldn’t expect me to have escaped my problems. They wouldn’t expect me to have stopped drinking, drugging, taking overdoses, and cutting my arms.

People who knew me ten years ago saw a scared shell of a girl, terrified of her own shadow and on a mission to self-destruct. They wouldn’t expect me to have turned my life around completely. They certainly wouldn’t expect me to …

Make Your Soul Grow: A Letter from Kurt Vonnegut

By Lori Deschene

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 Use Comparisons for Growth Instead of Feeling Inferior

By Hannah Braime

“The heart is like a garden: it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?” ~Jack Kornfield

Comparison is something we all struggle with at one point or another. Although it’s something that conventional self-help wisdom urges us to avoid, it’s also a way of gauging where we fit in the world.

Usually, when we engage in comparison, we do so from an ego-based perspective and find ourselves (or others) lacking. This approach doesn’t benefit anyone involved, but, until recently, this was my predominant experience of comparison.

I also had the belief that healthy …

Encourage, Don’t Criticize; Help Instead of Trying to Fix

By Heather Day

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” ~Thich Nhat Hahn

When you think you’re an evolved and conscious woman and your partner tells you in no unclear terms that you’re “hard to be with,” it does a number on you.

Those words landed like a well-aimed boulder, smashing the immaculate vision I’d created of evolving myself: an exemplary girlfriend who was “doing the work” to grow, to become generously loving, spiritually awake, and to wholeheartedly support and encourage her beautiful partner to open to his fullest potential.

We met under messy circumstances. Both …

Patience Is a Virtue but Don’t Wait to Be Happy

By Hannah Eagle

“Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever; you just have to live.” ~Natalie Babbitt

And don’t wait to say what you need to say. And don’t wait to live the life you want to live.

Yesterday we lost a dear friend to cancer. Ken was sixty-eight. Five months ago he and I hung out on the beach drinking out of coconuts with a straw. We were at a personal growth retreat that my husband and I conduct every winter in Mexico.

He was the happiest I had ever seen him …

Learning to Love and Live Again When Life Gets Hard

By Haiku Kwon

“The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.” ~Unknown

It’s when you’ve woken up with a full day ahead of you after only two hours of sleep.

It’s when there’s nothing for you to do but sit by your friends as they deal with tragedies and all the hard stuff life throws at us.

It’s when you don’t know how to handle the situations in your life that are anything but black and white.

It’s when you feel utterly helpless and powerless as you watch someone you care about aching with the deep soul wounds that …

How to Find the Motivation to Change Your Life When You Don’t Feel Capable or Worthy

By Jo Casey

“Eventually you will come to realize that love heals everything, and love is all there is.” ~Gary Zukav

Following a path of personal development isn’t easy. Oh, it’s rewarding and can be life changing, but it can also be confusing, challenging, and scary.

What if you take the wrong path? How do you know which piece of advice is right? Can you still get the results you desperately want, even if you go against some of the assumed wisdom?

One such piece of wisdom is that people should make changes in their lives and their behavior for themselves, not for …

How to Adopt a Growth Mindset and Stop Fearing Criticism and Failure

By Michelle McQuaid

“There are no failures. Just experiences and your reactions to them.” ~Tom Krause

Ever found yourself working for a bad boss? I was shocked to learn recently that three out of every four people report that their boss is the most stressful part of their job and that it takes most of us up to twenty-two months to free ourselves of them.

I thought it was just me!

A few years ago I joined a large accounting firm to help them manage their employees. Though they were nice enough people outside of work, at the office, their professional pride …

Letting People Challenge You So You Can Learn and Grow

By Kate Corrine Van Vliet

“The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.” ~Elbert Hubbard

My self-awareness grows while watching an eight-year-old boy navigate Sudoku.

He wants to be good at the game, but he doesn’t want to do the work. He wants to know the next right answer without having to think.

His approach to the puzzle is one box at a time, filling in a number at random. He doesn’t realize each little mistake right away; he may get through a row or column, but eventually it catches up with him.

He then tries to backtrack, which …