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Posts tagged with “Happiness”

What It Means to Really Take Care of Yourself

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“Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.” ~Max Ehrmann

Last year I realized that I lived twenty-eight years without knowing what it really means to love and take care of myself.

In 2010, I took some wonderful, worldly trips—Costa Rica, Bangkok, Taipei—trekking and exploring.

My husband and I bought a second home. I fully engaged myself in the improvements and the creativity of decorating a fresh canvas.

I ran several races, including a half-marathon, and finished well. …

3 Causes for Judging People (And How to Accept Yourself)

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

Every person you meet has something special to give you—that is, if you are open to receiving it.

Each encounter offers you the gift of greater self-awareness by illustrating what you do and don’t accept about yourself. An honest look will show you that the reactions you have to others give you more information about yourself than about them.

You can never know for sure what motivates other people, but you can learn what you are accepting or judging …

How Being Vulnerable Can Expand Your World

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“What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.” ~Brene Brown

Vulnerability has never been my strong suit. It’s no wonder. In order to be vulnerable, you have to be okay with all of you. That’s the thing about vulnerability that no one tells you about.

Being vulnerable is not just about showing the parts of you that are shiny and pretty and fun. It’s about revealing what you deny or keep hidden from other people. We all do this to some extent. I bet you’ve never said to a friend, “Oh my god, I just love that I’m insecure.”

But …

2 Things You Need to Form a Strong Friendship

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“To have a friend and be a friend is what makes life worthwhile.” ~Unknown

Extreme Makeover: Friendship Edition! That would be the best phrase to describe a year in the life of a cross-cultural friendship with my best friend Marisa.

This is the first deep and meaningful relationship I’ve ever had with someone who doesn’t speak a word in my own language.

My relationship with her has exposed and challenged many of my cultural beliefs and ideas about friendship.

There is nothing wrong with being influenced by culture. We all are.

But it’s good to recognize where some of our …

How to Start a Gratitude Practice and Change Your Life

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“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” ~Lao Tzu

Somewhere in the distant past, out here in New Zealand, I recall someone saying to me “Be grateful for small mercies.”

Back in the 1950s, when I was a small girl, that meant being grateful for the simple things that made up the better part of my life.

As I grew, I forgot that piece of advice that someone, probably my beautiful grandmother, gave me way back then. But in 2010, I remembered it again.

Like so many people in the world in 2010, troubles …

3 Steps to Make a Bad Day Good

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“To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.” ~Chuang-Tzu

The beauty of life is that we constantly have the opportunity to change it.

We always have the power to recreate it. We can change our thoughts, remember how to live instead of planning each moment, forgive the past, be present for the now, slow down the speed, and push the reset button on a day that has escaped us.

I recently had one of those days.

This past Saturday was wonderful, or so I thought it would be when I woke up.

I’d been invited to a traditional …

7 Things That Influence Happiness That You Don’t Need to Have

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“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.” ~Unknown

When someone asks, “Are you happy?” we tend to look around at our peers and see how they are living.

If we’re better off than our peers, it’s likely that we decide to be happy. Therefore, one of the tricks of being happy is to change the group we compare ourselves to.

Silicon Valley gossip columns enjoy pointing out that Oracle’s software titan Larry Ellison, whose $40 billion net worth makes him one of the top ten richest people in …

Tiny Wisdom: On Fear-Based Decisions

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“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” ~Marianne Williamson

Sometimes I look at people who appear to be confident, successful, and happy and imagine that they always feel that way—that they never feel insecure or afraid, and they always operate from a place of trusting love.

Then I remember that every person who has a pulse deals with human emotions. What confident, successful, happy people have going for them is that they feel fears, but they make decisions from a place underneath them.

They push through discomfort, fully aware that it’s impermanent, and …

Overcome the Fear of Success: 6 Ways to Start Thriving

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“He is able who thinks he is able.” ~Buddha

How would you answer the question: “Are you successful in life?”

I know many people who would say that they are not successful; at least they have not reached success in the areas that feel important to them. I have been one of those people.

One day I asked myself “What keeps me from being successful?” It took me a while to come up with the answer but I realized that I was holding myself back.

Why? Well, maybe I was afraid that when I started something I would fail. …

Available Today: Ebook, Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace & Happiness

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Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace and Happiness is the ultimate guide of Tiny Buddha wisdom, based on some of the most popular posts and quotes from the site. You’ll also find 4 posts not previously published on tinybuddha.com.

Through this eBook, I’ve shared myself authentically and vulnerably, and have also offered countless action-oriented suggestions to improve your state of mind, enhance your relationships, identify what makes you feel passionate and purposeful, and find the courage to overcome obstacles and seize your dreams.

These are my most popular, value-packed posts, as viewed by over 1.2 million readers in the last year …

6 Tips: Work/Life Balance for People with Big Dreams

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“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton

The vast majority of people I know have two different types of work: the kind that pays the bills and the kind they wrap their heart around.

For some people, those are one and the same, but often that takes time, dedication, and a willingness to blur the traditional boundaries that separate work and social life.

Because let’s face it: It’s not always easy to make a living doing something you love.

The first challenge is to figure out what that is, and it’s …

Giveaway: Tiny Buddha’s Handbook for Peace and Happiness

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Update: The winners have already been chosen for this giveaway. Subscribe to The Tiny Buddha List to learn about future contests, and click below to purchase this eBook for $10.97!

Since I launched tinybuddha.com in September of 2009, I’ve hosted quite a few giveaways for books that moved me.

Today is a very exciting day for me—one that’s a year in a half in the making: Today I am giving away five free copies of my book.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you may think I’m referring to my book about life’s hardest questions, which Conari Press …

Tiny Wisdom: On Being Vulnerable

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“What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.” ~Brené Brown

To be vulnerable is to be free.

It gives you a break from trying to pretend you’re always right and you don’t have any flaws. It gives you permission to show your authentic self and stop taking responsibility for the way other people perceive you. It allows you to try new things and take the risk of feeling awkward or uncomfortable.

It also opens you up to the possibility of pain. We never know when we let our guard down that other people won’t hurt us, unintentionally or otherwise.

We can…

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

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“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 …

Growing through Challenges: How Intentions Shape Our Lives

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“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 …

The One New Year’s Resolution That Creates Lasting Change

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“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 …

Overcoming Perfectionism: The Joy of Just Okay

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“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 …

The Beginner’s Guide to Simple Daily Happiness

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“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”~Dalai Lama

Some days I wake up with rocket fuel in my veins, ready to take the day by storm. Happiness comes totally natural. But on others it can feel like I have lead weights strapped to my shoes.

Have you ever been there?

We all have.

Happiness is a practice. It’s on us to learn it.

While some days are easier to find a smile than others, happiness is a daily choice. It’s a mindset we can nurture and train. That doesn’t mean it’s there every second, but …

Finding Joy in the Ruins of a Crushed Dream

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“Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin

Five months ago, my partner Mike and I were offered jobs as English teachers in a school in China. Excitedly, we moved everything we owned into storage, organized our passports and visas, said farewell to our loved ones, and left our home in Melbourne within a month, not to be home again for a year.

We had just started to settle in …

5 Tips to Accept Your Weaknesses: The First Step Toward Growth

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“Growth begins when we begin to accept our weaknesses.” ~Jean Vanier

I went out with my mom this Sunday, a beautiful, sunny, fall day in San Francisco. As we sat on a bench looking out over the bay and ate our vegetarian spring rolls, she reminded me of an incident that happened when I was a teenager when she and I had traveled to the Grand Canyon.

In a nutshell, I had gotten irate over a family that was feeding the ground squirrels French fries right next to a sign that said “Don’t Feed the Squirrels.” I went up to …