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Posts tagged with “Happiness”

12 Habits to Adopt to Make This Your Best Year Yet

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Many of us head into the New Year with big goals and ambitions. We think about everything that seems to be lacking in our lives and imagine ourselves far happier and more fulfilled on the other side of massive change.

There’s no denying that certain accomplishments can amp up our life satisfaction, but I’ve found that our daily habits are the biggest contributor to our happiness.

You can have a job that excites you, the best body of your life, and the perfect partner for you, but none of it will fully satisfy you if you don’t also prioritize the …

When Your Heart Is Broken, Just Keep Moving

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“Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have is not permanent.” ~Jean Kerr

Here’s the thing no one tells you about dating—it sucks. The uncertainty, the inconsistency, the stress. Dating has always been easy for me. Or so I thought.

The more I think back, the more I see I accepted things I really shouldn’t have in all of my relationships. I allowed my needs to be put last, I took on blame, and I stayed when I wasn’t made a priority.  For what reason I am still not entirely sure. But I can tell you …

How I Found Healing and Happiness in a Developing Country

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“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” ~Jim Rohn

For years I dreamed of leaving the winters of Northern Ontario, Canada and basking in the warm golden sun somewhere in Central America from October to May. I would joke with my co-workers every winter “This is my last winter here, I swear!”

I did that for years until finally, one year, it was my last winter there. But it wasn’t because it was the most brutal winter we had experienced so far. Oh no. It was much more than that.

Rewind Back to 2012

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Finding the Courage to Go After What You Want Out of Life

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“Just because you’re not doing what other people are doing, that doesn’t mean you’re failing or falling behind. You’re charting your own course and staying true to yourself, even though it would be easier to join the crowd. You’re creating a life you can fall in love with instead of falling in line. You’re finding the courage to do what’s right for you, even though it’s uncertain and scary and hard. Give yourself some credit, because these are all reasons to be proud.” ~Lori Deschene

I wouldn’t call myself a laid-back person. I have anxiety that leads me to …

How to Mindfully Calm Your Anger and Stop Doing Things You Regret

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“Neurologists claim that every time you resist acting on your anger, you’re actually rewiring your brain to be calmer and more loving.” ~Unknown

One of the most impactful ways that mindfulness has changed my life is how I’m able to work with my feelings of anger.

Anyone who has met me in recent years would never know how anger used to run my life. I often wish that people who are just now meeting me could realize the transformation I’ve gone through from my past. If people could see how mindfulness has changed me from an angry, irritable person who …

7 Amazing Things That Happen When You Start Loving Yourself More

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“When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits—anything that kept me small. My judgment called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving,” ~Kim McMillen

I started learning about self-love a long time ago.

In fact, I started learning about self-love so long ago that when, fifteen years later, a shaman in Peru I told me that self-love was the answer to all my questions, I got really pissed off!

I had struggled with depression as a teenager. For about two years, I lived a very sad life. …

I Spent Years Looking for Happiness in the Wrong Places

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“Never put the key to your happiness in someone else’s pocket.” ~Unknown

About ten years ago I made the mistake of re-reading my journal from high school. Wow, was I ever a miserable, slightly unstable person.

I dated the same (great) guy for three years, but looking back over my handwritten confessions, you would have thought I was dating Mussolini. I had endless complaints, wanted to control everything my boyfriend did, and every other word I wrote was a gripe. And this was about a guy I tried to get to notice me for months before he finally asked me …

A Guide to Peace for Anyone with a Crazy, Messed Up Mind

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“No thought has any power. You have power. And when you identify and believe in the thought, you give power to the thought.” ~Mooji

It was 2004. I was on day three of a six-month meditation retreat, and my restless and turbulent mind was driving me nuts.

The prospect of sitting on this wretched cushion for another five minutes (let alone six months) was freaking me out.

“What on earth have I let myself in for? This is a crazy idea. I want to go home.”

My restless monkey mind was more like King Kong on amphetamines.

“No, remember how …

How I Found Hope and Inspiration After Years of Quiet Desperation

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“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” ~Henry David Thoreau

How many years do we live with a sense of quiet desperation, faking the connection we have with ourselves? Why do we deny ourselves authentic living and exchange our time for mindless living?

Over the years, life silently and slowly eroded my identity away. By the time my son was twelve years old, I’d completely lost touch with reality. I was always busy trying to be everyone’s hero and creating this perfect little world around me. While juggling the …

How I Started Enjoying My Alone Time Instead of Feeling Lonely

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“The only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.” ~Bessel A. van der Kolk

Learning to be alone as an adult has been a struggle for me. It’s taken quite a while for me to adjust to spending periods of time by myself. It may sound strange to those who know me because I am most definitely an introvert and need my quiet time. However, my time alone was never quite as satisfying as I’d hoped it would be.

Often my solitude …

The Negative Impact of Not Feeling Your Feelings

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“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” ~Sidney Banks

I spent most of my life scared of my feelings. Having feelings and expressing them made me mentally ill—or so I was led to believe by a large number of mental health professionals. When I felt sad, they labeled me as depressed. When I showed any signs of anxiety, they gave me another list of mental health disorders I needed medication for. And if I was angry? Oh well, that was the absolute worst. That clearly proved …

The Art of Slow Living: How to Reclaim Your Peace and Joy

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“In today’s rush, we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just being.” ~Eckhart Tolle

We’re going to start with a visualization exercise. Set a timer for one minute, close your eyes, and reflect on your happiest childhood memories…

I was born into a family of wanderers, individuals who held a deeply rooted love of travel, and an even deeper sense of adventure. My happiest childhood memories are the times when we packed up our suitcases and hit the road (or the sky or the sea).

In the quiet stillness of …

What I Did When I Felt Lost and Purposeless

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“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”  ~Lao Tzu

About a year ago, I came across an e-course titled “Find Your Purpose in 15 Minutes.” I found this course during a time when purpose was something I was actively looking for. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure what to do next, and without anything to work toward I was looking for a new motivation to pull me forward.

The e-course I stumbled upon represents a society increasingly concerned with fulfilling its destiny. There is an unsettling pressure, particularly from …

What a Month of Daily Panic Attacks Taught Me About Anxiety

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“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

It happened in the middle of an intimate moment, about a month before my wedding.

One minute I was enjoying a kiss from my fiancé and the next thing I knew, I was clutching my face and writhing in agony.

At first, there was a loud thud in my chest, as if my heart had skipped a beat.

Then out of nowhere I started getting this strange sensation—like the kind of feeling you’d get on an elevator that’s going down too fast. The feeling was so …

How to Step Out of the Drama Triangle and Find Real Peace

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“Keep your attention focused entirely on what is truly your own concern, and be clear that what belongs to others is their business and none of yours.” ~Epictetus

Are you addicted to drama? I was, but I didn’t know it. I thought I was just responding to life, to what was happening. I really didn’t think I had a choice! The drama triangle is so pervasive, and can be so subtle, that it just seems normal. But it’s not, and there’s a much saner way to live, I found.

Dr. Stephen Karpman first described the drama triangle in the …

Living with Depression and Anxiety: How to Lessen the Pain

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“I am bent, but not broken. I am scarred, but not disfigured. I am sad, but not hopeless. I am tired, but not powerless. I am angry, but not bitter. I am depressed, but not giving up.” ~Unknown

Depression and anxiety. Two words we hear often, but unless we have actually lived with them, we cannot come close to understanding the tremendous impact they can have on one’s quality of life.

Depression and anxiety can make people feel as if they are worthless and better off dead. What a horrible plague. But it is 100% possible to tame these two …

6 Ways Meditation Improves Your Life

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“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our hearts, we still cling to anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Back in 2001, I was a freshman in college, and my saving grace from anxiety was a yoga class. More specifically, it was the most glorious of poses we call savasana that kept me sane.

For those unfamiliar, savasana—or corpse pose—is a pose of surrender and noticing thoughts and sensations without judgment, much like meditation. (It’s the pose that looks like everyone is just lying around napping.)

Back then, …

Why I’m Grateful for Accidents, Pain, and Loss

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“If you have nothing to be grateful for, check your pulse.” ~Unknown

I couldn’t feel my legs.

There wasn’t any pain, just this odd “sameness” of non-sensation.

My body was frozen as I turned my eyes downward to scan down my nineteen-year-old body. Below my knees, my legs were splayed out in a very peculiar way. I was halfway underneath my car, pinned down to the dirt and gravel of the road by the back right tire.

The tire had caught my long, curly hair and the puffy left sleeve of my new white peasant blouse, miraculously missing my face.…

Why Positive Thinking Drained Me (and How I’ve Found Peace)

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“Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Eleven years ago I read a book that was life changing for me. It taught me something I never considered during the previous twenty-nine years—that I could change my thoughts.

The book was Loving What Is, by Byron Katie. It set me forth on a journey that included dozens of books that communicated the same thing: We think the same thoughts all day long, over and over, and many of them are negative, filled with …

That Big Life Change Won’t Be Satisfying If…

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“Nothing changes unless you do.” ~Unknown

In the fall of September 2017, after one of the longest summers of event planning I could have imagined, I quit my job.

As I proudly exited the workforce to pursue my creative talents as a writer, I looked confident and excited on the outside. Yet, in that moment and for the years to follow, I was terrified on the inside.

Even though I’d exited my cubicle walls, head held high, the boundaries, fear, and rules of the office environment followed me around daily for over two and a half years.

I was now …