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Posts tagged with “peaceful”

6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful

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“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.” ~Mary Catherine Bateson

It was a balmy spring morning and I started my day as per usual, but I soon realized that my mind was entertaining fearful thoughts about my financial insecurity.

With many new ventures within the seedling stage, my income flow was erratic and unpredictable, while my financial responsibilities were consistent and guaranteed. At the time I ignored these thoughts as “petty,” like a parent dismissing a crying child after a mild fall on the pavement.

What I didn’t realize was that my mind wanted …

3 Things Panic Attacks Don’t Want You To Know

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“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle 

Sunday started out with a panic attack.

It wasn’t little butterflies in the stomach like right before a first kiss. It wasn’t the feeling of anticipation as a rollercoaster slowly climbs the big hill before the drop.

This panic attack felt like I was about to jump off a cliff, while being chased by clowns. Not cute clowns—scary ones. The kind of clowns that were in the paintings at my pediatrician’s office when I was a kid. The clowns that smiled at me smugly when I was getting …

Interview and Giveaway: A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life

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

The Winners:

Though we may all have varied goals and paths, ultimately, we all have the same objective: happiness. It’s with this in mind that Buddhist monk Lama Marut wrote A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life.

Through a series of meditations, exercises, and insights, he helps us overcome suffering and create contentment—two essential prerequisites to happiness.

Playful and entertaining, A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the …

12 Tips to Create a Peaceful, Passionate Life

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“Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.” ~Osho

Osho’s game was to get people out of their heads. He wasn’t focused on world peace; he was intent on self-peace.

How do you get out of your head? How do you get more present?

For most of my life, I was stuck in my head. “Stuckness” was my primary experience. I always wanted to be somewhere else, someone else.

After years of quietly suffering and pretending to be happy, I came to understand that my stuckness was caused by numbness—physical, emotional, and spiritual.…

Create Better Days with Empowering Routines and Loving Rituals

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“We are what we repeatedly do.” ~Aristotle

This past spring, I found myself floundering—stuck within an alternating cycle of feeling either overwhelmed or paralyzed.

The combination of creative tasks and deadlines typically drives me with a strong sense of purpose and fulfillment. However, though I had both curriculum to produce and blog posts to write, I struggled to form sentences.

Instead of filling pages with words and ideas, I consoled myself by eating chocolate and watching lots of bad TV.

Needless to say, none of this was any help in boosting my productivity or pulling me out of the doldrums. …

Creating Calm and Releasing Anxiety: Go Deeper, Not Faster

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“It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.” ~Lena Horne

Friends, relatives, and the waitress who served me breakfast said I was the most relaxed bride they’d ever seen. “Most brides are ordering the bloody Mary’s right now, not the green tea,” the server remarked.

This was July 9, 2011, and I was about to marry my husband, best friend, and favorite comedian. Our wedding washed over me like a peace I had long forgotten.

Aside from finding the person I always knew I was looking for, the grace I felt that day resulted …

11 Lessons for a Life Filled with Peace, Love, and Happiness

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“A man is not old until regrets take the place of his dreams.” ~Proverb

When Lori wrote her list of thirty-three lessons she’d learned in life (one for each of her years) to celebrate her recent birthday, she gave us some amazing insights (thirty-three to be exact) for someone so young.

It got me thinking of what wisdom I could possibly add to the list from the extra years of life I’ve led, eleven extra years to be exact. (Did I just admit that!)

As someone still so young (well, sort of), I’m still learning too, and hope to keep …

Live the Beach Lifestyle Everyday

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“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” ~Sydney J. Harris

I live on a beach, and I don’t mean in a box under the boardwalk. Rather, my home is just about 60 seconds away. People tell me I’m lucky when they find out that the beach is basically my backyard.

This implies that we all randomly end up living in places strictly by chance, and that my being here is purely accidental. I obviously chose to live here. But beyond that, the beach life can be a choice, even if you don’t live near …

5 Meditation Myths and the Benefits of Starting Today

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“Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept things as they are.” ~Karen Maezen Miller

My personal rock-bottom wake-up call came a few years ago when, despite having achieved all of my personal and business goals, I found that I still wasn’t content or experiencing peace of mind.

Feeling frustrated, I realized that I could no longer rely on my future to fulfill me. I knew continuing to work so hard to accomplish bigger and better goals wasn’t going to relieve my eternal itch that there must be more to life than this.

To make matters worse, my increasing …

Giveaway and Author Interview: Patience by Allan Lokos

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

The Winners:

Patience is one of those qualities we aspire to possess, but sometimes struggle to embody. We associate patience with goodness—and for good reason, since patience enables us to be loving and supportive to others.

But patience is also a fundamental building block of happiness. It just plain hurts to feel harried, stressed, rushed, and eager to get there—whether it’s a physical space or a state of being.

This …

How I Found Inner Peace Despite the Drama in My Life

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“Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict from life, but the ability to cope with it.” ~Unknown

Like many people, I lived my life for a lot of years failing to understand inner peace is a choice. I am not sure what I thought. Perhaps I didn’t believe anyone could feel a lasting peace inside. I did know that my own feelings of peace were always transitory.

There were many ups and downs in my life, too many claims on my time and too many difficult situations to be dealt with. I think I actually believed inner peace …

3 Tools to Help You Crush Your Fears

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“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” ~Pema Chodron

Though there are many events outside of our control, we do have the power to change our own lives. So what’s stopping us?

In a word: fear.

Fear is a great survival instinct. It helped our ancestors survive the rigors of daily life. But nowadays, fear holds us back from achieving what we want to achieve.

My Story

I grew up living in fear. In school, I tried to win the approval of other people by letting them bully me. I was terrified of being disliked, …

The Path to Living Authentically

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“Don’t think you’re on the right road just because it’s a well-beaten path.” ~Unknown

Growing up in Appalachia, women always had grace, class, and sweet iced tea in the refrigerator for unexpected visitors. They smiled when called ma’am or darling and kept an immaculate home.

Many Appalachian women also abided by two rules: It’s impolite to say no, and (my mother’s favorite adage), be as nice as you possibly can and everyone will realize you’re the better person.

For me, this translated as always say yes and play nice. I thought this equated to being compassionate and sensitive.

You’re stranded …

5 Ways to Find Happiness in Nature

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“Turn your face toward the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.” ~Māori Proverb

Imagine a graph showing the number of hours the average person spends out of doors today compared with 50 years ago. Imagine another graph showing how many people suffer from depression, stress, and anxiety compared to 50 years ago.

I’m confident that there would be a direct correlation between the two graphs; as one has declined the other has risen.

As we’ve turned our backs on nature we’ve lost our natural source of happiness. By turning our faces back toward the sun we find lasting …

What Dogs Teach Us about Peace, Joy, and Living in the Now

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“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” ~Marianne Williamson

Are you a dog lover? I know I am.

Animals of all kinds can bring us so much joy, not only when things are going well, but also when we feel pain and are suffering.

“Man’s best friend” can be our true and faithful companions through thick and thin. We look to our pets when we are ready to play and laugh, and they instinctively know when we need their support.

I’ve had a dog most of my life. From purebreds …

How to Be Fully Awake Instead of Living on Autopilot

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“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”  ~Pema Chodron

It’s tempting. Staying in the nest means life feels safe and we are protected. If we get thrown out of the nest we either stretch our new wings and fly or plummet to the ground.

Flight poses new challenges. How do we embrace spaciousness when we desire solidity? How do we stay aloft and open?

A friend of mine recently showed me a nest of robin’s eggs. Beautiful, blue like the sky, and full of bright possibility, we admired the …

6 Questions That Will Make You Feel Peaceful and Complete

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“The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.” ~Swedish Proverb

When I was in my mid-twenties an unhealthy relationship with an unhealthy guy sent me packing off to the corner of New Mexico to find myself. In a new age, self-discovery kind of world—a hubbub of a town filled with people in transition—I was graced to meet many powerful healers, gurus, shamans, and teachers.

I became a workshop junkie. I went on Shamanic power journeys to spiritual centers around the world, chanted with Indian gurus, and became a certified yoga instructor and …

How to Let Go of Fear to Live Passionately and Authentically

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

I’ve done a lot of stripping lately. It’s been liberating. I’ve been peeling away layers of the ego—all the accumulated stuff—to find who I am at the core.

It wasn’t too long ago when I noticed how quickly my life would go from an extreme high to an extreme low—how one moment could seem so perfect and wonderful, and then suddenly something would happen and it would turn into a less appealing scene.

The story went something like this: “Life is good. No …

How to Create a Balanced Life: 9 Ways to Feel Calm and Grounded

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“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton

As a Libra, my sign is the scale, which signifies balance. I’m not sure how much my “signage” plays into my desire to live a balanced life, but I do know that the more balanced I feel, the more free I feel.

In my work I am often reminded that what works for some people does not necessarily work for others, and that one person’s idea of balance may not constitute anything remotely balanced from another person’s perspective.

So I wanted to address the …

How to Find Peace of Mind in Under 500 Words

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“All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” ~Proverb

Practice and patience are like inseparable twins that have the capacity to bring us great joy when in harmony, and great angst when they are not.

Consider the phrase: “Practice and all is coming….”

I didn’t realize the depth of this statement when I first read it in my Ashtanga yoga manual several years ago.

Sri K Pattabhi Jois was the Yogi who said it repeatedly to all his students. And it is perfectly reasonable for one to assume he was referring to the daily practice …