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Posts tagged with “happy”

4 Myths about Doing What You Love for Work

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“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.” ~Buddha

“Big flud strikes Revere!”

That was the headline of the newspaper I made with my sister when I was six. I hadn’t yet honed my skills as an editor, but I knew a good fake story when I heard it.

Eight years later, while wading through my anger toward several people who’d hurt me, I wrote a short book called The Line of the Virtues about the grey area between good and bad. An older coworker at my afterschool job asked, “Are …

10 Ways to Complain Less (and Be Happier)

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“Instead of complaining that the rose bush is full of thorns, be happy the thorn bush has roses.” ~Proverb

We all complain. Even if you argue that you are the happiest person in the world, you still complain sometimes.

Sometimes we complain without even realizing it, but rarely is it helpful. Sure, a common complaint can bond two people who may have nothing in common, but too much complaining would just break down the relationship.

For example, I once had a friend who constantly griped about her health, her family, her relationships, school, and the list goes on. Every …

Interview and Giveaway: Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project

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Update: The winner for this giveaway has been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for free daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways! The winner: +sp.

I was perhaps the last person on the face of the planet to read The Happiness Project.

Earlier this year, a friend connected me with Gretchen Rubin, which prompted her to interview me for her blog. After I spent some time exploring her archives, I realized I needed to learn more.

If you’ve read The Happiness Project, you know Gretchen balances ancient wisdom with contemporary research to create …

Aid for a No-Good, Terrible, Very Bad Day

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“The outer teacher is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher that will walk with you to the goal, for he is the goal.” ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Recently, I had a very bad day. It was a day when certain life events made me so scared, so panicked I felt like I was floating in a dark void with no connection to anyone or anything, certainly not myself.

It wasn’t one bad thing that happened, just an accumulation of family stresses, worries, questions, uncertainty, and self-doubt that flooded my spirit. I had been going-going for many …

The One Thing That Helped Me Forgive My Father

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“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.” ~Joseph Campbell

I stood in front of my father, man to man, and demanded an apology. His long absence and lack of interest during my formative years had burned within me a resentment that wouldn’t quit. My therapist suggested that I confront him as one adult to another, so there I was.

It didn’t go well. The more I pointed out his failures, the more defensive he got. The more I demanded an apology, the …

60 Life Lessons: Insights from Oprah’s Life Class

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Call me a traitor to my gender, but I didn’t grow up watching Oprah. I didn’t have parties with other ladies that involved a television and tissues. I didn’t fill my library according to her book club recommendations. And I didn’t live my life around the question, “What would Oprah do?”

Considering my penchant for drama back then, I was more likely to curl up to Jerry Springer than a show without paternity tests and chair throwing.

But recently Oprah called to me. Literally.

It started when the network reached out to my friend Mastin Kipp of The Daily Love…

Overcoming Shame at Work When You’ve Made Big Mistakes

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“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” ~ African proverb

Hitchen’s Kitchen. It sounds like a diner straight out of a romance novel. But there I was standing in yes, the kitchen, getting my first dressing down at my first paying job.

At sixteen I had screwed up waiting tables. I got the special of the day, swiss steak, mixed up with sirloin. And so I kept putting in tickets ordering sirloins and the cook kept on grilling them.

And then it struck. The customers were happily eating sirloin while paying the “special of the …

Love Yourself, Accept Yourself, Forgive Yourself

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“Love yourself—accept yourself—forgive yourself—and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.” ~Leo F. Buscaglia 

You mean I am a source of many wonderful things?

Yes. Actually you are. Own up to it.

Leo has it right.

Love yourself.

Despite all the things that you think may be terribly wrong with you, love yourself. Love yourself.

Tattoo it on your brain.

I can think of so many reasons why you should love yourself, but here’s just one: It is incredibly dull and uninspiring to be around people who …

I Hate Hugging: Getting Over the Fear of Intimacy

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

I was a shy kid. My mom said that when I was in pre-school, the teacher asked all of the kids to hold hands and I said, “No thanks, I’ll just hold my own.”

That may have been the beginning of my aversion towards human contact. As a kid, I remember grandparents, aunts, and uncles giving me big horrible hugs. If I didn’t blatantly push them away or wiggle free, I stood there stiff as board, until the torture was over.

They thought this was adorable …

When You Keep Learning Instead of Taking Action

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“Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.” ~Horace 

It was day five without food, meditating in a cave in the Sahara desert.

In 2009, I skipped out on two weeks of my senior year of college to go to the desert.

Ever since I was a young I had been into exploring the boundaries of the self. I had always wanted a period of time when I could totally be alone for days—not a word spoken to me, where I could go deeper into my mind than ever before until I simply evaporated.

So there I was.

Just the …

Interview and Giveaway: The Game of You by Lynn Zavaro

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

The winners:

Lynn Zavaro has very quickly become one of my greatest role models.

When she first submitted a post to Tiny Buddha (50 Creative Questions to Help You Create the Life You Want) I felt like she was living inside my head.

Lynn realizes that the most important factor for our happiness is coming to know ourselves—and she also understands the internal blocks that hold …

10 Ways Overcome Conflicts in Relationships and Grow Together

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

About six months into a serious relationship with my boyfriend, we started experiencing major conflict. Fighting over small things, flipping out over misunderstandings, we just couldn’t seem to get on the same page about anything. This caused me to think about relationship conflict in general, what causes it, and how to deal with it.

It’s clear that relationship conflict occurs because expectations aren’t being met. Each person comes into a relationship with certain expectations. These are based on past experiences, childhood, or how you think things should…

Getting Back Up After You Fall

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“If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.” ~Chinese Proverb

Last year I had emergency open heart surgery. Shortly after the procedure, two nurses entered my room and gave me terrible news: I had to walk.

That may not sound like a big deal, but open heart surgery is brutal. Simple things like being able to sit up or change position once my backside became sore were agony. Getting to the walker, a mere several steps away from my bed, was an extreme effort.

My goal was to walk around the nurse’s station, …

Knowing When to Walk Away from Unrequited Love

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“Love does not obey our expectations; it obeys our intentions.” ~Lloyd Strom

To say that love hasn’t obeyed my expectations would be the understatement of the century.

I have not been lucky in love. I’ve been blessed with some amazing moments over the years, but somehow have managed to choose partners who did not want what I wanted, did not feel what I felt, and did not want to walk beside me into a future together.

I have really had to sit with this and try and figure out what part of this was my doing, and how to change …

Listen to the Moment: Knowing What to Do Now

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“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.”  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Today, out of the blue, I got two connection-request messages on LinkedIn from two children’s authors. I don’t know either one, personally. I’m not involved with children’s literature. Why was I receiving these requests? I could have thought, “That’s strange” and just let it go. Instead, I explored how this unusual coincidence might relate to what was going on in my life at that moment.

For a few days, I’ve been having the urge to write something new and have done nothing about. …

Stop Pushing: The Art of Relaxed Achievement

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“Some people think it’s holding that makes one strong—sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

A few weeks ago, I took a sip of my morning tea hoping that the day would be better than the prior ones. I had somehow tripped over the cracks of life and couldn’t seem to pull myself back. I had woken up feeling eager to start a new day, but like every other day of my life, within the first few hours, things had gotten off track.

I was stuck in a downward vortex of fear, anxiety and self-ridicule. I read my Yogi tea bag message, …

The Real Measure of Your Wealth

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“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” ~Unknown

A wonderful story from the yogic tradition highlighting the true meaning of wealth goes something like this:

There was once a beggar who spent his days sitting under an old banyan tree on the side of a dusty road that led to a bustling town. The man had been begging in that spot for years, rattling an old tin can hoping that passers-by would feel compassion and offer alms.

Yet, at the end of each day he would only have collected …

How to Meditate at Any Time without Meditating

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“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Flour. Salt. Water. Yeast. As I push the warm, soft dough against my palm, I feel the cold stone countertop underneath. I feel my hips leaning up against the cabinets. I hear my breath inside my head.

As I knead the dough, it changes. The dough becomes more elastic and flexible, ready to rise and be baked into a crusty loaf.

As I make bread, I change. My thoughts go quiet. I come into the now.

I have struggled with an inconsistent …

Choose Love, Choose Life

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“I believe that every single event in life that happens is an opportunity to choose love over fear.” ~Oprah Winfrey 

Facing fear came in the form of the death of my father in 1997. He was diagnosed HIV positive and at the time, the world saw this as a death sentence, and so it was.

His goal became to find a level of peace, a level of contentment about what was happening to his body, his mind, and in his soul in preparation for leaving this life. He enlisted my help to choose when and how to die.

I …

How to Stop Being a Victim and Start Creating Your Life

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“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die.  And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”  ~Eleanor Roosevelt

“They” say things happen at the “right” time. For me hearing a presentation, live, by Jack Canfield, came at the perfect time.

I was in San Diego, the traveling babysitter for my precious 5-month old granddaughter, while my daughter attended a nutrition conference. It was an all around win-win situation—a new place to sightsee and of course spend quality (alone) time with baby Rachel and daughter Penina.

When I …