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Posts tagged with “Love”

The One Thing You Need to Know to Overcome Perfectionism

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

There’s nothing perfect about me, and I’m okay with that… now. This wasn’t the case for most of my life, though. In fact, I’ve been a perfectionist for almost thirty years. I’m not counting the first five years of my life when I was free to be as messy and magical as I wanted.

In third grade I asked my mom to buy me a stack of lined notebooks and colored pens. I spent hours neatly labeling each notebook by class, date, and …

Dealing with Loneliness: Hold onto Patience, Not the Past

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“Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.” ~Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Last night, I discovered the tiniest of creatures in my shower: a minute scorpion, no larger than the average human fingernail.

I could not for the life of me work out how it had ended up here because I live on the third floor of an apartment building in a busy South African city. Nonetheless, there it was—a little fellow in the corner of the tiles, receiving ricocheted water droplets on his tiny little carapace.

My main personal learning theme for this year …

Improve Any Relationship by Challenging Your Perceptions

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“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

This morning, I found my wife desperately trying to make her printer work after having set herself one hour to get some good work done. I told her she should use my printer and concentrate on more important things. Surely her printing goal was to get the document in hand, not to spend her one precious hour fighting the machine?

When our argument had died down (yes, it really did get that far!) …

6 Helpful Things to Consider If You’re In an Unhealthy Friendship

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“Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

For much of my life, I lived for approval and acceptance from family members, friends, and co-workers. I can’t recall not considering what people thought about my actions or what I had said, wondering if I could have done them better. I was always thinking of others and their feelings toward me.

It was a constant battle in my head, and it was starting to drain me of my peace.

No matter what they had done to me in the past, no matter how …

Your Loving Presence Is Enough: Helping Someone Who’s Hurting

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“Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.” ~Robert Gary Lee

As the only child of a single parent, my family of two was small and our relationship could be intense.

My southern belle mom, with her stories and easy laugh, her quick wit, and her love of all things literary was the mom who all my high school friends adored and loved—the one who my teenage friends could talk to when they were too angry or irritated with their own mother.

I loved her too, but I also worried about her. A lot. Because I knew a secret about her …

Discovering the Elusive Truth and Falling in Love with Yourself

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“Pleasure can be supported by an illusion, but happiness rests upon truth.” ~Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

In today’s world, we are bombarded day by day and moment by moment with images and messages of who we should be, what we should be doing, and exactly how we should be doing it.

The promises of happiness and fulfillment in those mirages of ultimate perfection are all too often shallow and elusive, constantly evading us and leading us time and time again to nothing more than dead ends and empty hopes.

With a natural craving for transcendence and supremacy, we grab our …

3 Lessons to Help You Find Peace When Fighting a Hard Battle

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“He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.” ~Proverb

August 3, 2001. I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was around six o’clock in the evening when she sat us down. Luther Vandross was singing in the background on the radio: “And it’s so amazing and amazing, I can stay forever and forever. Here in love and no, leave you never.”

Quite ironic when you think about the news I would soon receive.

I had just finished summer school and my sister had just returned from an internship on the East Coast. My …

Loving Others Without Expecting Them to Fill a Void

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“You must love in such a way that the other person feels free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Conventional notions of what it means to love are populated with expectations for reciprocity, which often gets us into trouble. I know this personally, because whenever I have “freely” given my love and it has not been rewarded with reciprocity, I have often come face to face with my resentment.

This has been especially true of my intimate relationships. I want the people who fall into this category, in particular, to reciprocate my love. I expect them to. But, as Thich Nhat Hanh points …

Emotionally Overloaded: Are You Taking on Too Much of Other People’s Pain?

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“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” ~Havelock Ellis

I would have done anything for my friends, until one of them nearly broke my heart and spirit. He was my best friend. We felt like platonic soul mates.

We had a standing lunch date every week, called each other terms of endearment, cried together, laughed together—the standard best friend things.

Then, tragedy struck him. Over and over.

His long-time partner left him. Then he lost his executive-level job. Next, he had a string of major medical issues that put him in …

How to Recognize and Help When Someone Needs Support

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“When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another-and ourselves.” ~Jack Kornfield

After planning the next three months of my life in my head, trying to focus on my breath and recounting the plans for tomorrow, I decided my battle with insomnia was going to win. I got up, careful not to wake my husband, and decided to start reading.

Nestling into the lines of my latest library book well after midnight, my phone began to beep.

Even in the most quiet of the night, are we ever really alone?

I …

Opening Up to the Possibility of Love: 3 Things to Remember

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“Love takes off the mask that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”  ~James Arthur Baldwin

I sat silent on one end of the phone. I could hear my own breath and heart pounding in my ears.  I was sitting on the precipice of greatness, and all I had to do was express what I was feeling. Sounds relatively straightforward, so why did I feel so anxious?

To say that I have worked hard at rediscovering my authentic self would be an understatement. I have been on this quest in one form or fashion since …

Learn to Love and Accept Yourself, Wherever You Go

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“Wherever you go, there you are.” ~Confucius

The sweat of my palms saturated our boarding tickets. Even as I stepped onto the plane, I still could not entirely believe we were doing it.

My husband and I finished our master’s degrees and instead of immediately securing jobs, buying a house, and starting a family, we decided to travel.

We thought escaping our lives was living on the wild side—rediscovering ourselves. Well, at least that’s what I thought.

I lived in Spain during my undergraduate degree ten yeas ago and had ceaselessly fixated on the idea about returning ever …

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 …

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 …

Why Empathy Can Sometimes Help More Than Advice

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“I have just three things to teach simplicity patience compassion these three are your greatest treasures.” ~Lao Tzu

I have two teenagers. Anyone with children knows these years can bring their challenges. One minute they behave like a four year old and the next they are as mature as an adult. These fluctuations can pose difficult times.

One day, after a particularly emotional and tough interaction with my son, I called my mother for advice. She had by all accounts raised three successful sons.

After a long and detailed discussion of what had happened, she said, “Oh honey, I’m so …

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 …

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, …

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 …

4 Steps to Let Go of Blame in Your Relationship

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“When you blame others, you give up your power to change.” ~Dr. Robert Anthony

After living alone for five years, I moved in with my girlfriend just eight months ago. I knew that I would have to make some adjustments, but I had no idea what they might be.

I expected most of the changes to be around the dynamics of our relationship and spending too much time together. I didn’t foresee any personal growth coming out of it.

But that’s exactly what happened. I grew, and I evolved.

What Sparks a Fight

For both me and my girlfriend, cleaning …