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Posts tagged with “Pain”

When Struggles Keep Reappearing: How to Learn the Lesson and Move On

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“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chodron

I’ve been self-employed for many years now. This is no accident. I’ve always liked to do things my own way. I like to arrange my diary in exactly the way I want to and make my own mind up about how I do things. I like to work without having to justify anything to a manager.

I’m not always comfortable in working relationships where the other person is “higher up” than me—when they’re in authority. You could say that I’m a teensy bit of …

4 Simple Tips for Confronting Someone Who Hurt You

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“To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.” -Unknown

For many years I maintained a relationship that I was not happy with. I’m sure a lot of people have been there, or are there right now. I didn’t feel there was equality in the relationship; I always seemed to be the one giving, yet I consistently felt I was getting nothing out of it.

A close friend of mine asked me why I tolerated the behavior of the person in question.

As usual, a few excuses passed through my mind: the other person was …

Book Giveaway and Review: A Lamp in the Darkness

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

The 5 winners:

“Sometimes we have to go right into the fire in order to find our true healing.” ~Jack Kornfield

No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve accomplished, no matter how well you’ve planned, you will deal with challenges in life. We all will. And many times, they will hit us unexpectedly.

We will all lose things and people we love. We will all make mistakes and …

How to Maintain a Relationship with a Loved One Who’s Hurt You

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“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~Paul Boese

In a previous post about forgiveness, I mentioned that I spent years holding onto anger toward someone who hurt me repeatedly years ago.

I eventually realized that forgiving this person was the only way to set myself free. The resentment, bitterness, and sometimes pure rage were slowly killing me. They manifested in emotional and physical illness, constricting my life so that I was little more than the sum of my grievances and pains.

At many points I strongly believed my emotions would consume me, bit …

Finding Beauty in Your Scars

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“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Beauty is a concept I struggle with—what it means, why it matters. I struggle because huge chunks of my life have not been beautiful. They have been ugly, marred by trauma, with pain, and anger.

We think of beauty and often visualize glossy magazine pages and wafer thin models. We see beauty as superficial—eye color, hair texture, and numbers on a scale. We see beauty as something to be measured and weighed.

I don’t see beauty that way. I see beauty as the grace point between what …

How to Deal with a Break Up

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“No feeling is final.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

I met him the last semester of college and was instantly attracted to him.  I was definitely attracted to him physically, but it was the way he sat in class with such quiet confidence and mystery that made me long to know him.

I practically drooled all over my desk whenever he spoke, but couldn’t even bring myself to say, “Hello.”  One night out, I saw him standing by the bar. I told my friend that I had a crush on him and she promptly gave me two choices: Go speak to him …

Forgive and Set Yourself Free

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“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realize that prisoner was you.” ~Lewis B. Smedes

We’ve all heard the saying “forgive and forget.”  It seems easy when you say it like that. The forgetting part can be daunting, though. I can say that when you let go, the memory dims. That’s a start.

I didn’t understand the importance of forgiveness until I was in my mid-forties. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve forgiven people over the years. I just never understood how it related to my own well-being.

Let’s face it, not forgiving someone for standing you up …

Why Judging People Makes Us Unhappy

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“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

A friend of mine likes to joke that dying will be a relief because it will put an end to the “heavy burden of judging,” as she calls it. She envisions herself lying in a hospital bed and, moments before death, noticing the ceiling and thinking, “What a hideous green.”

Here’s a modest proposal: Vow that for the rest of the day, you won’t judge your friends and you won’t judge any strangers you happen to see. This would include a friend who’s a non-stop …

How to Open Yourself to Love When You Didn’t Grow Up with It

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

I was always someone who craved love and attention. This is not to say that I accepted love willingly—quite the opposite, in fact.

If someone decided to like or even love me they would have to pass through a path of obstacles, being pushed, pulled, and tested at every corner. Only then, upon arrival at the finish line, would they gain my acceptance.

As you can imagine, this eliminated a number of potential friends and partners, and I often found myself lonely and disappointed.…

How to Help Someone Who Won’t Help Themselves

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“We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.” ~Pema Chodron

Recently I got into a hypothetical conversation with someone who very quickly turned hostile and accusatory. Let’s call her Jane. My first instinct was to get defensive, but then I realized this subject was quite raw for Jane, and there was likely something going on below the surface.

Usually when people are combative seemingly without cause, there’s some underlying pain fueling it.

As we got to the root of things, I learned that Jane was holding onto anger …

The Right Direction: Releasing the Past and Getting Unstuck

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“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.” ~Proverb

It’s been a year since I stumbled upon Tiny Buddha. At the time I was in a difficult place, emotionally, mentally, and physically.

I felt as if life was pointless and that there was nothing for me in the world: no room, no hope, no opportunity, no relief from the chronic tiredness and pain, and no love. I’d given up.

I spent my days staring at the walls and at my computer, trying to find something to make me feel better, to …

How to Deal with Pain and Uncertainty

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“The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it.” ~C.C. Scott

A blueberry muffin, that’s the last thing we spoke about before she went under.

I didn’t know it then, but it was to be the final conversation my (middle) daughter and I would have for a very long time. I was trying to distract Nava by talking about food; in this case, the promise of the rest of her muffin when she came back from the bronchoscopy.

We were thrown a steep curve ball out of left field when Nava went for an exploratory procedure and …

Embracing the Moment When it Sucks: Dealing with Death

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“Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.”  ~Joan Kerr

A year ago I lost my best friend of forty-eight years to a pulmonary embolism. It came quickly and unannounced, and it took him instantly.

I found out about his death on Twitter. Because of the length and depth of our friendship I had never known life without him. As often happens when we lose someone dear, I didn’t know how I would move forward.

We’re taught that peace and happiness come from embracing and living fully in the moment, but I often wonder what should we …

6 Steps to Work Through the Pain of Change

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“Change is the only constant.” ~Heraclitus

Life can be a constant barrage of new and exciting experiences. Still, even the most savvy and confident of us can get thrown off balance during the unexpected changes life throws our way.

My husband’s job means that we move—a lot. I dislike moving, but every time there is an opportunity to move through the pain and find a new sense of peace.

There is nothing I could do, short of leaving my husband, to change that we move often. But I love him, and almost all other elements of our lives …

40 Ways to Let Go and Feel Less Pain

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“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.” ~Ajahn Chah

Eckhart Tolle believes we create and maintain problems because they give us a sense of identity. Perhaps this explains why we often hold onto our pain far beyond its ability to serve us.

We replay past mistakes over and over again in our head, allowing feelings of shame and regret to shape our actions in the present. We cling to frustration and worry about the future, as if the act of fixation somehow …