People with Weird Personalities
Source: Power of Positivity
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Hi friends! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Lori, the founder of Tiny Buddha.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been offering a limited edition “Just Breathe” shirt, and I’ve been excited to see the response from the community! The campaign ends this Sunday, so if you’d like to grab a shirt, this is your last opportunity to do so.
A portion of the proceeds will go to the David Lynch Foundation, a nonprofit that …
“I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.” ~Cheryl Strayed
I have weathered my fair share of storms.
When I was in college, I met a boy a month after arriving on campus. I was eighteen, naive, and completely in love. The red flags were there by the truckload. As each red flag appeared, I darkened the tint on …
“Stress happens when your mind resists what is.” ~Dan Millman
A troubling thought, isn’t it? That most of us are too stressed out to even sleep through the night. You try to relax and decompress after a stressful day, but all you do is fight with your frustrations and worries all through the night.
As much as we’d like to, it’s hard to let go of nerve-racking tension. We get caught up in the notion that the world will stop turning if we don’t play our integral part. I know what a burden stress can be.
When I graduated from …
“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
My unwillingness to accept my anxiety disorder (there, I said it, I have a disorder) results in panic.
It results in waking up at night, heart racing, body tingling and trembling.
It results in driving down the road in a thunderstorm thinking I am having a heart attack—but I just keep driving and talking to my beloved on the phone because “if I can just keep driving away from it, it will be okay.”…
“I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
This particular week, I flunked. I’d be lucky if you gave me a D grade in assessing my calmness.
Generally, nobody can question my commitment to leading a life of less stress. I try hard. I try very hard.
You might even be impressed with my healthy diet, my abundance of sleep, and my regular exercise. You couldn’t fault the careful thought and planning that go into my days and weeks. Hell, I can even claim meditation, mindfulness, and …
“If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” ~Ram Dass
I just returned from a four-day trip with my family. It was my own family of four (my husband and two kids), plus my mom, my two sisters, and my brother-in-law.
It was great. We get along well and have fun together.
And, it was four days with family.
It’s a funny thing…although you grow up with your siblings, listening to and being influenced by your parents, you all end up so unique—different from each other and different from the adults who raised you.…
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” ~Carl Sagan
I’m there with a hundred other people. The lights fade to a whisper then vanish, leaving us in darkness. Stars appear. Thousands of them, projected onto the dome screen above.
In the center of the screen is Earth with its emerald and amber lands and sapphire oceans frosted by clouds. We watch the planet’s rotation, and then we’re flying backward through space, and the …
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” ~George Addair
My parents were teenagers when they had their first of three children. I was the middle child. They were uneducated, poor, and had very difficult upbringings.
As I recall my childhood, most of what I remember is how fearful both of my parents were.
They were constantly stressed out about money, the kids, the tattered house, the rusty car, and everything else in their lives.
My mother, my first role model, was so scared of the world. She definitely had an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. She was afraid to …
“I’m stronger because of the hard times, wiser because of my mistakes, and happier because I have known sadness.” ~Unknown
It’s happened to most of us.
Despite our best intentions, something goes dreadfully wrong.
You suffer a heartbreaking loss, make a terrible mistake, or get blindsided by an injury.
In disbelief your mind cries, “Wait. What?”
And then, “No, no, no, this can’t be happening.”
After the initial shock, when the surge of stress hormones has subsided, you realize that yes, this is happening.
And you can’t help thinking: “But how could this happen? It’s not fair. I can’t bear …
“No one saves us but ourselves. We alone must walk the path.” ~Buddha
I got a frantic message from a friend last night.
Everything was going wrong—her job, her relationship, her life—and she didn’t know what to do.
“Help me, please,” she kept saying. “I don’t know what to do.”
I tried hard to stifle a giggle. I know, completely inappropriate. But I found it really funny.
Why? Because I’m the last person anyone should be asking for advice. If I knew what to do, if I knew how to help her, I’d have:
“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” ~Deepak Chopra
For years I allowed everyday struggles, like slight disturbances from schedule, to steal my happiness, peace, and energy. Whenever something disrupted my plan, I got negative and started complaining.
When I realized this, I began taking steps to accept the daily chaos. I shifted my focus to how I percieve my daily life and how I spend the twenty-four hours I get.
I started asking questions, like: Am I being positive? Am I spending my hours in a way that’s productive yet joyful?
And I began …
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” ~Winston Churchill
The day started out beautifully. My friends Shaun, Tina, and I decided to take advantage of a sunny Saturday afternoon with a hike along Ontario’s Bruce Trail. We parked our cars at the trail access, laced up our boots, and headed out for a day of wandering through sun-dappled fields and forests.
A couple hours later, we agreed we had probably gone far enough and turned around to head back.
That’s when the weather changed. Fast. Ominous clouds rolled in, blotting out the blue skies we had been enjoying. The trees …
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.” ~Eckhart Tolle
I recently discovered just how powerful our thoughts can be. I learned that it doesn’t take time for us to accept our current situation; it simply takes a shift in our perceptions and a change in the stories we tell ourselves.
The catalyst for this realization was sent to me, in a small envelope placed under the windscreen wipers of my car. Yes, it came in the form of a parking ticket.
At first I was shocked and quite disappointed in myself for getting …
When your mind is scattered, your head full of worries, and your heart full of fears and doubts, the world is a stressful, sometimes terrifying place.
When you take time to clear your mental space, suddenly everything feels easier. Without the heavy burden of anxiety and rumination, you’re free to simply be—and to see.
It’s like cleaning a dirty window; all of a sudden, the light comes in, light you didn’t even realize was there.
What provides this cleaning, clarifying magic? Meditation, and even just ten minutes a day.
My whole life transformed when I learned that I could free …
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” ~William James
I’ve been meditating for many years, but there are still days when I feel like it’s something I need to tick off my to-do list.
On some days, particularly when I’m in the middle of a big project, it can feel hard to put even ten minutes aside for meditating. The driven voice in my head tries to convince me that this practice of pausing and connecting with presence is a waste of time.
It’s a compelling voice, particularly on days when it feels …