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Posts tagged with “happy”

10 Ways to Enjoy More: What’s Your Guilty Pleasure?

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“Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.” ~Leo Tolstoy

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an epic list of guilty pleasures.

As a young girl, my top three guilty pleasures included dressing up and dancing in my living room to Madonna (“Annnnd…VOGUE!”), watching over-the-top nighttime dramas with my mom over bowls of Breyer’s vanilla ice cream (“Kevin…I’m pregnant! And you’re not the father!”), and penning addictive, soap-opera-worthy novellas about the kids in my fifth grade class (they’d line up and beg …

Confessions of a Love Junkie: Recovering from Love Addiction

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“The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others” ~Sonya Friedman

Love is a funny thing. According to modern day psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists alike, the consensus is that it is just as easy to become addicted to falling in love as it is to get hooked on street drugs. But I think maybe my favorite drug is love. I guess they’d call it my drug of choice.

The irony in that statement is beyond comprehension. Any one of us who has fallen in love, or struggled with addiction on some level, knows damn well that choice seems to …

Find Yourself Before You Find Love

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“Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.” ~Alan Watts

After a few years of living through the betrayal and anger of my divorce, my friends decided it was time for me to start dating again.

They took me out to the bars, dressed me up, bought me drinks, and showed all the men how cute I was.

I didn’t feel cute. I felt like a fraud.

The bar scene was not for me. I felt like a piece of meat wrapped in cellophane on the shelf waiting for a man to …

How We Can Embody Abundance Regardless of What We Have

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“Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as being able to remake ourselves.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

Embody abundance. I heard someone say those two words the other day. What does that mean, really? To truly embody abundance, do we need to have everything we want? Or can anyone who holds space for truth experience a way of being that is free of lack?

Maybe to embody abundance is to recognize the realness that underlies the illusory film that covers much of what we see in our day-to-day lives. Maybe abundance is always there, but we …

Becoming More Authentic: Accept Yourself and Forget Approval

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“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~E.E. Cummings

For most of my life, I was a chameleon. I stayed under the radar, hoping I’d blend in and not draw attention to myself. I was full of self-doubt, so I molded my personality and beliefs based on my company. I traded my authentic self for the security of being liked by my family and friends because of my fear of being judged.

By suppressing my opinions, I was perceived as easygoing, but at what cost? I disrespected myself by allowing others to influence major …

Imperfection Is Lovable and You Are Enough

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“You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” ~Brene Brown

We are all perfectly imperfect just as we are.

Yes, it’s true. Sometimes hard to believe, but always the truth. Believe me.

I’ve always recognized that I am a perfectionist.

I was the little girl who wanted to know how to play the piano at my first lesson, how to roller blade the first time I tried, how to do the splits at my first gymnastics class.

I’ve always wanted to do it right the first time.

On the one hand, I appreciate …

Why Being Scared Means You’re Fully Alive

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“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” ~Pema Chodron

Last year I decided to do something I’d always longed to do but had never been brave enough to take the plunge: I started my own business. Not only was it a new venture, my business would be based around myself—my skills, knowledge, and experiences.

Holy crap.

My emotions swung from terrified to awkward and uncomfortable. Seriously, that’s how good it got, at least initially! It’s been exciting and exhilarating, but not in the least bit comfortable.

Here …

Good News: Bad Moods Don’t Have to Be So Bad

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“Most of the shadows in life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

How many times have you heard “Follow your heart” or “Let emotion be your guide”?

Too many to count, I’d bet.

It’s generally good advice; it’s certainly wiser to follow your own feelings than to blindly do what other people think you should do.

But reading into your emotions can also lead you astray.

You see, you are always feeling your thinking. You are not necessarily always feeling “the truth,” or even your own personal truth.

Every emotion, feeling, or mood you experience …

Learning to Trust Again When You’ve Been Hurt in the Past

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“The only way to know if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” ~Ernest Hemingway

In a world where it seems as though all we hear about and see is how one person betrayed another, how do we allow ourselves to trust someone to get close at all, let alone trust them to be near the most fragile parts of us?

Over the course of the last year, I’ve been working as an intern-counselor at a residential high school with around seventy teenagers. Many of them have come from unbelievably challenging backgrounds where they have had to learn to …

How I Found My Inner Balance When I Was Tired of Feeling Anxious

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“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse

As a child in ballet I was chastised for my inability to capture attitude or arabesque. With only one foot planted on the ground I reached for anything to prop myself up—the barre, the instructor, an unsuspecting fellow tutu-wearing classmate who would then lose balance herself.

My days at ballet were short lived, but my trouble balancing was not. This persisted for decades, through college and into the early years of my marriage.

Now I was no longer …

8 Things to Do If You Want to Be at Peace with Yourself

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“He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the world.” ~Marcus Aurelius

How can I find peace of mind? It’s a question often asked, but rarely answered in a satisfying way.

Some say peace of mind lies in security. Some say it’s about de-cluttering and finding stillness and calm in life. Some say it’s about acceptance and letting go. I say it’s all about what you do.

Let me introduce myself. I’m an addict. An alcoholic since my teens, I lived most of my life on various edges.

At twenty-one, I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, …

Why We Need to Create Our Own “Normal”

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“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” ~Maya Angelou

I had a glimpse of normal when I was a child. It looked like bright splodges of paint on pieces of cheap paper, animals made from bits of wool and odd buttons, and many, many books. Normal was taking exceedingly long suburban walks while pestering my father to supply me with mental arithmetic, to sate an insatiable love of numbers.

The most normal place in the world, my sanctuary, was the library. I loved the plastic covered window seats that would …

5 Questions To Ask Yourself If You’re Not Where You Thought You’d Be

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“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ~Rumi

When I left high school, I had no idea about what I wanted to be when I “grew up.” I still had no idea when I left university. There wasn’t anything in me that really burned to be a doctor, a translator, a lawyer, or an artist, for example.

I was a bit of an all-arounder and wasn’t really 100% focused in any one direction. I always thought this was the curse of completing an arts degree (namely French), …

Love, Light, and Other Lessons That Crisis Reveals to Us

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“Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” ~Paul Coelho

There have been more shocking and devastating world events in recent memory than I can keep up with. Hurricane Sandy. Sandy Hook Shooting. Shooting at Portland Mall. Australian wildfires. Club Fire in Brazil. Hurricane Nemo. Earthquake in China. Bangladesh Factory Collapse. Boston Bombing. Texas Plant Explosion. Floods in Midwest. Tornadoes in Oklahoma.

So much loss. Devastation. Pain. Piled one on top of the other with little time to regain our footing in between.

I can hear that fearful place inside me questioning, …

After Tragedy: 3 Reasons And 21 Ways to Find Joy Again

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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

My brother died suddenly, at just thirty-nine years old. One moment he was in the midst of a regular working day. Half an hour later he was gone. Twenty-four hours later he was buried.

With things happening so fast, I found myself alternating between paralysis and intense waves of pain, anger, guilt, sorrow, and devastation. I guess we all felt this way. Only it didn’t quite look like we all did/

In between waves of sadness and silence, my brother’s …

We Can Control How We Respond to Things We Can’t Control

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“When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl

Every year, March 13th is difficult for me. This year, I marked the day with a long hike in the woods near my house and an extra-long hug for my wife, Kathleen. My sisters and I called each other and just said his name out loud. Wherever he is, we want him to know he is gone but not forgotten.

March 13th would have been my brother Jimmy’s 64th birthday. He only made it to 26.

But March 13…

5 Lessons from Death to Help You Create Joy, Passion, and Meaning

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

Death is something many of us fear. Perhaps not so much our own death, but the mere thought of losing a loved one can be heartbreaking.

On Sunday May 5th, my grandma had a large stroke. She’d baked her last cake, shared her final story, and within the blink of an eye, she was gone. Six days later her life ended, in a hospital bed, surrounded by her loved ones.

She was not only my grandmother, but also the grandmother to five others, …

The Dangers of Staying Quiet: Learning to Ask For Help

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“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard

My right leg lay twisted, broken and disconnected. As I regained awareness, I could hear a primal scream.

It took a while to register that it was coming from me.

At the time, I was supposedly living my dream, but in truth I was drowning in my loneliness. So I had stood almost directly behind a horse I knew was prone to kicking and pulled her tail.

She wasn’t malicious; if she was, I would be dead now, as I had …

9 Ways You May Unwittingly Deprive Yourself of Love and Fulfillment

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“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

Do you want to let go and live life fully?

If you feel that you are missing out on fulfillment and happiness, but cannot put your finger on why, perhaps there is something deeper going on.

Believe it or not, anyone can develop an unconscious habit of self-deprivation. Usually this habit begins in childhood.

Here’s how mine developed.

When I was younger, if anyone approached and tried to attend to my needs, I’d make …

Don’t Let Anyone or Anything Dim Your Inner Light

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

I was born with it. I know I was. There was a light within me that showed in my smile, my dancing around the house, my love for life, for friends, for family, and my bright future.

I don’t remember the exact day it happened, I don’t remember the last event that did it, but my inner light went out. I was no longer the happy-go-lucky girl I once was; I became lost in an abyss of darkness and sadness. Happiness …