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Posts tagged with “Love”

3 Ways to Be Kind and Make Someone’s Day

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“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.” ~Oscar Wilde

It’s the small, everyday things that can make or break a day for us.

While we celebrate the role models who inspire thousands (in person or on Facebook!), for most of us everyday moments—a stranger jostling us in the shops, a driver cutting us up at a light, someone pushing in front of us in line at the post office—can upset us out of all proportion.

But the flip side is that we can also be disproportionately pleased by the small actions of a stranger.

On …

Identity Crisis: When You Aren’t Sure Who You Are or How You Fit In

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

In another life, not too long ago, I was an actress.

I fell into acting when a catalogue showed up on my doorstep for UCLA Extension summer classes, and in my boredom I started flipping through it to see what was on offer. For whatever reason (synchronicity? my intuition?), the Acting 101 class jumped out at me, and something in me said yes.

At the time, I was living in West Los Angeles, only a few years out of college after graduating …

Burn Away Your Barriers to Love: 7 Ways to Live a Beautiful Life

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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

My grandmother is nearing the end. She’s had a good life, a family, a loving husband, dancing and singing, growing things, running a business.

There are some skeletons in the closet though; her early life had some very heavy experiences that made her afraid and may have held her back. On balance, a great life, but there were challenges.

Right now, she’s slipped into a dream world and she is often still there when her …

7 Things to Remember When You Think You’re Not Good Enough

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“We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.” ~Lori Deschene

Sometimes I am really terrible to myself, and I relentlessly compare myself to other people, no matter how many times I read or hear about how good enough or lovable I am.

On an almost daily basis, I meticulously look for evidence that I am a nobody, that I don’t deserve to be loved, or that I’m not living up to my full potential.

There is generally a lot of pressure to “stack up” in our culture. We feel as if there is something …

What We Need to Do Before We Can Have Happy, Loving Relationships

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“Once you have learned to love, you will have learned to live.” ~Unknown

Ever since I was a young girl, relationships have fascinated me, particularly romantic ones. I had beautiful fantasies of my perfect partner appearing and completing me. We would fall in love and live happily ever after.

As a child, I believed that being in a romantic relationship, and especially being married, meant lasting happiness. All the love and joy I would ever want or need would be mine when “the one” arrived. Daydreams of my soul mate filled my tween brain.

This fairy tale view of relationships …

Why Letting Ourselves Be Weak Is Actually the Key to Becoming Strong

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“To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.” ~Criss Jami

“You have to be strong.”

Those were five words I heard without end after my father was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer on Black Friday 2012—a day that couldn’t have been more aptly named.

In the months following, I marched, ran, skipped, crept, stumbled, crawled, and dragged myself through the darkest valley of my life. This was uncharted territory. This was an unprecedented season for us.

My dad was a fitness junkie, running and biking every morning, performing aerobics …

The 3 Most Important Questions to Ask Yourself Every Day

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“At the end of life, our questions are very simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?” ~Jack Kornfield

When I was seven years old, I almost died.

My family and I were at Central Station in Sydney, Australia to celebrate the last steam train to ever depart the station.

It was about eight at night, and I remember it so clearly.

The train was stationary at the platform, about to depart. I heard the whistle from the engine as the wheels started to chug and move ever so slowly.

My older brother and I were excited, and we …

A Small Act of Kindness Can Make a Big Difference

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“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~Dalai Lama

I had an old trench coat that was balled up on the floor of my garage, gathering dust near the washing machine. It was raining. It was unusually cold (for California, anyway).

I was driving home when I saw a man in a short sleeved shirt wandering through our neighborhood, pushing a shopping cart. He was walking painfully slow. He was dripping wet.

I paused at the intersection to my street and watched him for several minutes, thinking. My heart was …

Release the Fear of Not Measuring Up and Share Your Light

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

I believe that it is part of the human condition to want love and connection with others. For some of us this comes much more naturally and abundantly than it does for others.

The universal thing we all share is that at some point along our life journey, there will come a time when our self-worth is on the table for questioning.

I can clearly recall the first time my self-confidence was rocked. I was seven years old and full of energy, life, …

How Do You Motivate Yourself: With Love or Fear?

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“The heart is like a garden: it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?” ~ Jack Kornfield

My whole life has been a story of discipline. I started exercising and eating healthier in eighth grade. I planned out my studies meticulously so I would finish school assignments exactly on time. I always arrived five minutes early for any appointment or meeting. Disciplined.

When I began my yoga studies in earnest at the age of twenty-two, I applied the same disciplined nature to my yoga practice. I had extensive practice plans and had scheduled …

20 Ways Sitting in Silence Can Completely Transform Your Life

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“Silence is a source of great strength.” ~Lao Tzu

For over two years I spent one out of every four weeks in silence. At the time I was living at a Zen Monastery and every month we would have a week-long silent retreat.

During this retreat we sat meditation in silence, ate in silence, worked in silence, and only communicated through hand gestures and written notes.

At first living like this was hard, but over time I learned to grow to appreciate silence. By the time I left I learned that silence was my friend and teacher.

What did silence …

Why Giving to Others Is Also Giving to Ourselves

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“Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities.  Seize common occasions and make them great.” ~Orison Swett Marde

I stood at the library counter waiting to check out a stack of books when I overheard an overworked woman explain to the librarian why her books were late.

“My boss has me running his errands after hours. It’s a miracle I made it on time to pick up my daughter from daycare,” she said.

“Are you a personal assistant?” the librarian asked.

“No, I’m a paralegal,” the woman explained. “But staffing is tight, and if I don’t take on the extra tasks I might …

5 Simple but Often Forgotten Ways to Keep a Relationship Strong

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“Good relationships don’t just happen. They take time, patience, and two people who truly want to be together.” ~Unknown

Out of our six loving years together, my partner and I spent two and a half years in a long-distance relationship. During these years there were times we communicated nearly daily, but there were also times when we couldn’t even email or text for a month at a time while I was living in an African village.

Being separated by an ocean from the person that is the most important to me was of course difficult and painful, but I …

The Difference Between Setting Boundaries and Shutting People Out

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“The most important distinction anyone can ever make in their life is between who they are as an individual and their connection with others.” ~Anne Linden

After growing up in a household with extremely loose emotional boundaries, I soon learned the importance of establishing my own personal boundaries as quickly and clearly as possible. And, in recent years, I have even managed to become more eloquent about when and how to set them.

I grew up in a home with my grandmother, mother, and older sister. Grandmother was an immigrant from Hungary who came to America right after WWI. Her …

Danny and Annie: A Love Story

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This video is three years old, but I just saw it and it moved me. I believe this is the greatest kind of love, the kind that makes the mundane magical and the banal beautiful. It’s the romance of everyday living with someone whose very presence makes the ordinary seem extraordinary.

From the YouTube description:

Danny Perasa and his wife, Annie, came to StoryCorps to recount their twenty-seven-year romance. As they remember their life together from their first date to Danny’s final days with terminal cancer, these remarkable Brooklynites personify the eloquence, grace, and poetry that can be found in …

How Our Attractions Can Help us Learn to Complete Ourselves

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“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” ~H. Jackson Browne

The first time I was stung with the notion of a soul mate, I was twelve years old. I had accompanied my mother to the wedding of a family friend. The church was blissful, the bride beautiful, and the way the groom looked at her had me thinking that one day this would be me.

Almost instantly, I felt that I was already one half of the most beautiful love story, like a divine wave of love magically swept me into thinking that my soul mate, …

The Path of Heart: Live a Passionate Life Full of Love and Joy

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“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

In my late thirties, I attended a workshop that was led by a group of coaches. One of the exercises we did was called the “future self-exercise,” a visualization that took me twenty years into my future.

During the meditation, I was greeted by my future self: a gorgeous, happy, free older me dressed in purple, one of my favorite colors. Her hair was long, flowing, and brown. (So I guess the future me dyed her hair!)

She was walking on the beach in Maui …

A Simple Way to Make the World a Little Better Every Day

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“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” ~Leo Buscaglia

When I was seventeen years old, I decided to make a change.

Instead of keeping my opinions to myself, I was going to start sharing them.

Every time I had a kind thought about someone, I was going to tell them. And anytime I heard a compliment about someone who wasn’t in the room, I would let them know.

If I …

Love What’s Right Before You Instead of Hating What’s Missing

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“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.” ~Walt Whitman

I take stuff for granted. I suspect you take stuff for granted.

It’s almost as if it can’t be helped. When things—family, friends, health, amenities, or money—occupy a place in our lives for years, we naturally begin to view them as commonplace; we assume they’ll forever be, just as they’ve always been.

Yet this mindset—this “Oh, of course that’s there; that’s always been there” perspective—often seems to prevent us from realizing how much it would mean to us if that something wasn’t there anymore.…

How to Fill the Emptiness in Your Life

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“Find your Calcutta.” ~Mother Teresa

Something is missing in your life, isn’t it?

You’re working hard, trying to get ahead, doing everything you possibly can to make life just a little bit better. You’re trying to keep it all balanced, though. You won’t be one of those people who commits every waking second to work and the pursuit of a career.

Not you. You’ve got it figured out. You even make time to exercise, eat right, meditate, or maybe spend time with friends and family.

You’ve got it all figured out—except for that one stupid thing that keeps tugging …