Posts tagged with “Mindfulness”
How to Find Peace When Your Mind Is Restless
“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse
When I work with people who are suffering from anxiety, fear, grief, or other challenging issues, I like to take them through a simple exercise I call “The Noticing Exercise.”
It’s my first port of call when helping people break free from mind-created suffering.
It’s amazing how quickly, and effortlessly, people can move from suffering to peace, simply through shifting their focus to being aware of the present moment—noticing the sensation of the body touching the chair, …
How I Healed My Anxiety with Simple Mindfulness Practices
“Every step taken in mindfulness brings us one step closer to healing ourselves and the planet.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
When I returned from an extended stay in India at the beginning of this year, I was full of worries and uncertainty. Since I was coming back to a very different life, I had no idea what was next.
I was without a job but determined to build my coaching business full-time. However, I felt lost as to where I was going to be within the next few months and how I was going to figure things out.
Eventually, I settled …
7 Pillars of Mental Health: How to Feel Your Best (Almost) Every Day
“Sending love to everyone who’s doing their best to heal from things they don’t discuss.” ~Unknown
When I was twelve years old, I planned on taking my own life. I had a plan, I had the means, and I thought about it every single day for months. No one was aware—not my family, not my best friends, not my teachers at school or my peers. It would have been a huge surprise in my community had I attempted it, because I didn’t appear as someone who was severely depressed.
Thankfully, I never acted on it, and fifteen years later I …
How Replacing Worry with Gratitude Turned My Whole Life Around
“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” ~Willie Nelson
You know you’re not living the life of your dreams when you’re doing mundane things like brushing your teeth, doing laundry, getting dressed, or preparing a meal, and your constant thoughts are “Oh, we need more toothpaste or laundry detergent, but we can’t get either right now. Money’s too tight.” Or “We should get more milk and lettuce, but we have to put that money toward our utility bill so our lights don’t get turned off.”
This train of thought started to be the norm for me …
Meditation Simplified: How to Find Calm in Our Chaotic World
“Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.” ~Eckhart Tolle
I completed my meditation teacher training in 2022 and continue to practice two to three times each day.
I was initially skeptical of what this practice could possibly offer me. But, as someone who had been riddled with daily anxiety, periodic bouts of depression, and an exhausting inability to maintain focus that left me depleted energetically, I was keen to learn more and discover for myself …
A Mindfulness Technique to Overcome Perfectionism and Step into Self-Love
“When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we are not pretending, we are not hiding—we are simply present with whatever is going on inside us. Ironically, it is this very feeling of authenticity that draws people to us, not the brittle effort of perfectionism.” ~Maureen Cooper
Most of my life I have been really good at following the have-tos and oughts of perfectionism.
I have to keep the house clean. What will the company think?
I ought to be pleasant and pleasing. Stop being stubborn. Worse yet, stop being angry.
I should not have told that long story …
3 Lifestyle Changes I Made to Overcome Dissociative Panic Attacks
“There is no greater wealth in this world than peace of mind.” ~Unknown
A few years ago, I had what could safely be deemed a “bad year.” My live-in partner left me out of the blue, I became un(der)employed and racked with debt, I got in a car accident that totaled my car, and then…my dog died.
After the year that I’d had, the death of that dog, my most treasured friend, was the final straw. It was the final straw for believing that things might turn around soon, and it was the final straw for my mental health.
Shortly …
Riding the Wave of Rage: How Mindfulness Became My Lifesaver
“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
My anger has gotten the best of me more than I care to admit. I’ve smashed windows, broken chairs, had movie-worthy brawls on the beach, and said gut-wrenching stuff that has brought people I care about to tears.
I grew up when mental health was not taken seriously, nor was it even on my radar. I just took my wild nature to mean I was screwed up and hopeless. …
3 Things to Do if You’re Wondering: Why Can’t I Just Be Happy?
Do you sometimes see people running around enjoying life and wonder what you’re missing? Sometimes I used to think I must be a horrible person. I had so many things going for me, and I still couldn’t be happy. I would ask myself, is there something wrong with me? Am I a narcissist?
Then sometimes I would decide I was just going to be happy. I would fake it until I made it and just accept that’s who I was. But it wouldn’t take long for me to feel overwhelmingly depressed.
I had a little dark hole that would …
Anxiety Sucks, But It Taught Me These 7 Important Things
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” ~Soren Kierkegaard
Let’s be clear:
This isn’t an article about positive thinking.
This isn’t an article about how silver linings make everything okay.
This isn’t an article about how your perspective on anxiety is all wrong.
The kids call those things “toxic positivity.”
No toxic positivity here.
This is an article about my lifelong relationship with anxiety and what I’ve learned from something that won’t go away. At times the anxiety spikes and feels almost crippling. I have a hard time appreciating the learning at those times, but it’s still there.
That is what …
One Thing We Need to Survive Crisis, Loss, and Trauma
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” ~Viktor Frankl
A couple of years ago, I was sitting in my little mountain cottage, writing away on a new novel. It was a cold and dark February afternoon. So, first, I felt pleasantly surprised when I saw something bright lighting up behind me: I thought it was the sun coming out. But when I turned around, I noticed that my porch was on fire!
Before I knew what was happening, I was standing out in the …
9 Self-Guided Meditation Courses to Deepen Your Practice and Supercharge Your Spiritual Growth
In a culture that teaches us we need to prove our worth through achievements, it can be challenging to prioritize peace, well-being, and spiritual growth.
We’re bombarded by marketing messages that tell us we’ll be enough, if only we “buy this—do this—look like this,” making it difficult to simply relax in who we are and feel a sense of contentment in our lives. But there is a way out of this cycle of discontent, anxiety, and constant striving.
If you’re yearning to connect with life more deeply and feel a sense of greater peace and acceptance, I highly recommend developing …
3 Life-Changing Insights for Control Freaks (Lessons from an Ant Infestation)
“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” ~Jean-Paul Sartre
“So did you figure out what your shadow totem is?”
This was the first thing out of my husband’s friend’s mouth as I sat down to dinner at a local downtown restaurant, across from my husband and a couple friends we were meeting up with.
I laughed at the choice of question but then paused with wide eyes and replied, “YES, I DID! Oh my gosh. It’s an ant!”
The backstory is that we had previously had a conversation about animal symbolism, and how figuring out …
How I Feel the Best I Can Despite My Struggles with Depression and Anxiety
“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.” ~John Green
I remember being fifteen. I was a high school freshman who loved drawing, books, Harry Potter, and Taylor Swift. I hated math class with a passion. I had a loving family and a small white dog named Maddie. I wanted to be a writer, and to have a boyfriend. I also wanted to die.
It started in seventh grade, when my best friend, Meghan, dumped me. You hear about romantic breakups all the time, but no one seems to talk about friendship breakups. They hurt a …
How Yoga Helped Heal My Anxiety and Quiet My Overactive Mind
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you really are” ~Carl Jung
Yoga is often celebrated for its physical benefits: greater flexibility, increased strength, improved circulation, and so on. But nothing could have prepared me for the transformational effect that yoga has had on my mental health and well-being.
I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression when I was fourteen, and I have struggled with both for most of my life. My mind was my worst enemy, constantly worrying and criticizing to the point where it became hard to do anything. Even the things I really wanted to …
How I’m Accepting the Uncertain Future (with Less Worry and More Joy)
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” ~Ferris Bueller
For as long as I can remember, my life has consisted of change.
I grew up moving around the world. I went from Canada to Pakistan, Egypt to Jamaica, Ghana to Ukraine, then finally China to Australia.
Moving to new countries and adapting to new cultures is like a cold plunge to your entire system and way of being. I felt I had no choice but to fit in as quickly as possible.
By the age of six or …
How I Found Hope in my Father’s Terminal Cancer
“Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty, even in times of greatest distress.” ~Milan Kundera
When my father received a terminal cancer diagnosis, I went through a wave of different emotions. Fear, anger, sadness. It opened a completely new dictionary that I had not had access to before. A realm of experiences, thoughts, and emotions that lie at the very bedrock of human life was suddenly revealed to me.
After the initial horror and dread at hearing the news had subsided, I was surprised to find a new sense of meaning and …
Growing Old Gratefully: How to See Each Year as a Gift
Growing old gratefully. Yes, you read that right. Gratefully. Why on earth would I be grateful for getting older, less youthful, and more wrinkly with every passing year?? I hear you cry. Let me tell you why I’m trying hard to do just that.
One bright Saturday afternoon some years back, while chatting with my uncle, he reminded me that my fortieth birthday was fast approaching. I rolled my eyes and said, “Yes, Uncle, thanks for the reminder.”
He looked at me for a minute and then said, “You know, you should be grateful for every year of life you …
How to Love Mindfully When You’re a Socially Anxious People-Pleaser
“It’s okay to care about what people think. Just know there’s a difference between valuing someone’s opinion and needing their approval.” ~Lori Deschene
My date—an attractive student in her twenties—talked away excitedly, but all I could think of was this:
“How can I make her like me?”
“How can I impress her?”
“How can I make her laugh?”
I agonized over every word that I said, every response from her, every moment of our interaction, and I poured every single detail that I could find—or imagine—under the microscope of my mind… and all of a sudden, the date was over!…
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