Posts tagged with “happy”

Body Betrayal: How to Cope with Chronic Pain and Illness

“As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Up until fairly recently, I often felt betrayed by my body. It was always breaking down, leaving me frustrated and bitter.

No one else seemed to have as many problems.

I’ve had Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, an inflamed gall bladder riddled with stones that ended in surgery. Chronic migraines, chronic hives, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Whenever I get sick, it never seems to be something trivial. A cold becomes bronchitis. Hayfever leads to a sinus infection.

One year after holidaying in Thailand, …

5 Powerful Things to Do for Yourself When You’re Sick

By Samuel Gentoku McCree

“Your body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

Getting sick is rarely, if ever fun for anyone, but we all get sick. You can cheat on your taxes, but you can’t cheat on sickness.

When we get sick, we all have a choice of how to work with illness. We can choose to be miserable or we can choose to learn about ourselves and grow from the experience. Since I have had such a hard time with the latter, I’ve investigated 5 ways to practice with illness.

1. Reflect on the benefit

…

The Illusion of Waiting for the Future to Be Happy

By Henri Junttila

“The future is always beginning now.” ~Mark Strand

Do you ever feel like there’s something missing in your life? It feels like you’re always waiting for something to arrive. You want the future to come, because it’s better there.

But that’s all wrong.

The future is an illusion. It’s just a concept in your head. This is what I’ve realized in the past few months.

I’ve suddenly become acutely aware of what’s going on. I’ve entered the present moment more powerfully than ever before.

If you go and read my previous articles here at Tiny Buddha, I talk about how …

7 Tips To Help You Slow Down and Enjoy Your Life As It Is

By Alison Roberts

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” ~Gandhi

I have always been a person who wants to be one step ahead. I think my parents would say that I liked to push the boundaries. I wanted to experience many things, and I wanted to experience them quickly.

When my brother went to sleep-away camp, I had to go the next year despite being three years younger than him.

At age thirteen I had to ski with the older kids, racing faster and harder than I was ready for.

When I was fifteen I pushed to take a trip …

Does Your Day Start Out Perfect and Then Fall Apart?

By Whitespaceme

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

I really needed to finish up a task. I’d already spent five more days than the one I’d estimated it would take. My boss was getting edgy; my co-workers were looking at me funny.

Every day I’d come in, have my plan-of-attack all thought out. It should have progressed well—quickly even. And then something would happen.

One day, the computer hardware I was using for months suddenly stopped and wouldn’t turn on. (Motherboard bad—two days.)

Another day, the software I installed, which runs flawlessly on several other systems, randomly crashed with …

The Zen of Writing: 7 Lessons About Living Wisely

By Nicholas Montemarano

“Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” ~Albert Einstein

I feel grateful to be a writer not only because I love to write, but also because writing has been one of my greatest spiritual teachers. Challenges I face as a writer teach me important life lessons, just as life teaches me lessons I can apply to my writing.

Here are seven spiritual lessons I’ve learned—some the hard way—that can apply to writing and to life in general.

1. Be mindful.

Showing up—really showing up with all your attention—is the first and most important …

How to Maintain a Healthy Relationship When You’re Depressed

By Lisa Esile

“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun, like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” ~Fred Rogers

When you’re depressed, your perception about many things changes—so how does this affect your relationships?

I’m thinking about this today, because—drum roll, please—I’m a little depressed.

Now, I’m not depressed in the suicidal “I want to drive off the road” kind of way, but in the far less dramatic but still deeply unpleasant “mild to moderate” kind of way.

For me, one of …

Finding Your Special Thing: Connect with Your Passion

By Anonymous

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” ~Rumi

You know what it is; you’ve always known. Maybe it’s been just a shadow in the fog, or it’s crystal clear in amazing Technicolor before your eyes. Either way, it’s there, sometimes stinging you with a numb sense of denial, sometimes scratching at your skin like a bad case of poison sumac.

It’s existed since the day you arrived on earth with a cry and a gasp.You knew it already when you were small, when you drew pictures with crayons and finger paint, when you …

5 Tips to Help You Embrace Extreme Change

By Anonymous

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance” ~Alan Watts

My obsession at an early age became to follow my heart—a life’s search for meaning, adventure, and enlightenment.

This search has been remarkable, a journey that has brought me to fascinating places for extended stays (Japan, the UK, Australia, you name the place) and has led me to relationships with some of the most interesting, loving people from around the globe.

As exhilarating the feeling of following your heart can be, it’s not always the yellow brick …

How to Choose Peace Instead of Stressing About the Future

By Lacy Edney

“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” ~Unknown

I was entering a completely new stage in my life. It could have been the beginning of something great, but it was entirely foreign to me. I could handle being productive, I could handle struggling to survive, but what was hard to handle was wading through the unknown.

After working for six months in Italy and six months in Brazil I was back in the US—floating. I didn’t feel any closer to having a career. I was without a car, job, …

Courting Chaos: Embrace the Unexpected and Grow Into Yourself

By Bronwyn Kienapple

“In chaos, there is fertility.” ~Anais Nin

“You know you’re eating tongue tacos, right?” asked the slight Mexican hipster beside me. I choked, wide-eyed.

“I thought it was just beef,” I stuttered, surveying the thick slabs of juicy meat I’d just been scarfing down. He subtly rolled his wide brown eyes. What a gringa, I’m sure he was thinking.

It was an inauspicious start, but this unexpected event ended up setting off a chain reaction of positive events in my life.

My new friend Juan invited me back to a studio where his friend’s rock band was recording. …

10 Ways to Be Who You Really Are

By Paula Grieco

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

I was a pretty shy and very quiet kid, so going to school for the first time in kindergarten was a terrifying experience for me.

After a short time, though, life brightened for me in my little elementary school. As it turned out, I loved learning and was a natural student. It was my bliss and often a respite from tumultuous home circumstances, the first place that I spoke out loud with confidence.

Unfortunately, in the urban neighborhood where I lived, being smart meant being …

Marry Yourself: How to Commit to Self-Love and Say “I Do” to You

By Tarra Christoff

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

I married myself at the age of thirty-seven in a quiet ceremony of one near a waterfall in Big Sur, California.

I had prepared my “soul vows.” These vows were my deepest commitment to love, cherish, and deeply care for all parts of myself, in sickness and in health, until my time on the planet comes to an end.

My soul vows became an ode to honoring my highest self always, and remembering that seeking love outside myself will never bring fulfillment unless I …

Are You a Highly Sensitive Person?

By Ane Axford

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” ~Benjamin Spock

I used to believe that I was my thoughts. I really believed that everything happened well because I had analyzed and planned and prepared. I didn’t even know that I was doing this. I didn’t know there was any more to me than my thoughts.

I also used to believe that there was something seriously wrong with me, so thinking about how to fix myself was my main pastime.

All my life people told me, “You’re too sensitive,” “so intense,” “you’re just so emotional.”

I told …

3 Things Panic Attacks Don’t Want You To Know

By James Gummer

“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Sunday started out with a panic attack.

It wasn’t little butterflies in the stomach like right before a first kiss. It wasn’t the feeling of anticipation as a rollercoaster slowly climbs the big hill before the drop.

This panic attack felt like I was about to jump off a cliff, while being chased by clowns. Not cute clowns—scary ones. The kind of clowns that were in the paintings at my pediatrician’s office when I was a kid. The clowns that smiled at me smugly when I was getting …

Interview and Giveaway: A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life

By Lori Deschene

Note: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The Winners:

Though we may all have varied goals and paths, ultimately, we all have the same objective: happiness. It’s with this in mind that Buddhist monk Lama Marut wrote A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life.

Through a series of meditations, exercises, and insights, he helps us overcome suffering and create contentment—two essential prerequisites to happiness.

Playful and entertaining, A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the …

When Your Dreams Change: Let Your Values Guide You

By Brock Black

“It is not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” ~Roy Disney

It has been four months now since I made the hardest decision of my life.

In the fourth grade, I made a pledge to work as much I had to until I became successful and moved the heck out of Ohio!

That commitment led me to graduate as valedictorian in high school and summa cum laude in college. However, it also resulted in missed recess (to do homework), missed parties (to research), and missed relationships (to study). Of course, I am not upset, …

12 Tips to Create a Peaceful, Passionate Life

By Oriya Pollak

“Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.” ~Osho

Osho’s game was to get people out of their heads. He wasn’t focused on world peace; he was intent on self-peace.

How do you get out of your head? How do you get more present?

For most of my life, I was stuck in my head. “Stuckness” was my primary experience. I always wanted to be somewhere else, someone else.

After years of quietly suffering and pretending to be happy, I came to understand that my stuckness was caused by numbness—physical, emotional, and spiritual.…

The Ultimate Letting Go: Release Your Fear and Be Free

By KC McCormick

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

It seems on some level we must know that nothing lasts forever. That knowledge must be built into our DNA; surely our cells know their own mortality, that entropy is an unavoidable fact of life.

So why do we fight the inevitable? Why do we crave security and consistency? Illusion that it is, we look for promises where it’s not possible for them to be made.

We buy all kinds of insurance, telling ourselves that if we spend that …