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Posts tagged with “stress”

How to Feel Less Stressed About the Uncertain Future

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“The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with.” ~Tony Robbins

“Uncertainty” may be one of the least popular places to hang out.

I hear this all the time from my clients, friends, and truth be told, from the voice inside my own head. Certainty is almost always preferable to uncertainty. Humans like to know.

I wanted to know when our house was on the market last year. Would it sell? When would it sell? How much would we get? Should we start packing up closets now, or wait until …

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 Interview: Learning to Breathe by Priscilla Warner

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In the past decade, I have read more than my fair share of self-help books.

Though I’ve enjoyed the ones with countless action steps and workbook sheets to change my life, I’ve felt the most moved and inspired by honest, personal stories of overcoming adversity.

That’s how I felt in reading Priscilla Warner’s brave book, Learning to Breathe—like I was seeing straight into the heart of someone else …

Giveaway and Author Interview: The Misleading Mind

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Have you ever felt like your mind was controlling you, dragging you along for a persistently bumpy ride?

Research shows the majority of us feel this way, but the good news is that we can do something about—and Karuna Cayton’s book The Misleading Mind teaches us how.

A psychotherapist and practicing Buddhist, Karuna has written an easily digestible book that offers solutions to the mental anguish we often perpetuate …

Giveaway and Interview: The Mindful Manifesto

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If you read this site regularly, odds are you’re familiar with mindfulness, and you may even meditate regularly.

It’s a simple practice that can dramatically improve our physical, mental, and emotional well-being, since it helps ground us in the present moment, and frees us from the burden of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.

Whether you’re new to mindfulness or not, you’ll likely …

Maybe We’ll Never Arrive

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“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” ~Matsuo Basho

Once, one of my friends shared a line of wisdom that summed up the dance of wholeness and aspiration I often find myself absorbed in:

“Everything is quite all right; our worth secure and true. Everything’s not quite all right; we’ve worthy work to do…”

Part of the longing and neediness I tend to feel comes from a rift between who or where I am, and where I believe I should be to be “successful.”

My life has been colored by this dichotomy: the strange see-sawing dance …

Keep Moving Forward: 4 Tips to Enjoy the Journey More

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

Five years ago, I decided to fulfill my dream of getting a doctorate. I knew from talking to friends who took on the same endeavor that it would mean many sleepless nights and tons of reading and writing. But nothing prepared me for the path that lay ahead.

Graduate school is often compared to a marathon. Why? At each moment, when you think you’ve completed a major milestone, you realize you have a long road ahead. You just have to keep going …

Control Less, Trust More: How I Learned to Relax and Let Go

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“The closest to being in control we’ll ever be is in that moment when we realize we’re not.” ~Brian Kessler

My nine-year-old son said something so profoundly right that it kept me awake. He said that in order for him to be happier I would need to let go of controlling him all the time.

Now granted he is young, and believe me, if I didn’t tell him to get dressed he’d run outside in PJs, but I was struck by his wisdom because this is also my obstacle to becoming happier.

In the past, the more I felt out …

Releasing the Urge to Push and Being Kind to Yourself Instead

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“Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.” ~John De Paola

Pushing has always been the way I get things done.

Actually, I should be more specific: pushing myself harder has been the way I get things done.

I grew up believing that life was hard, and that the only way to survive was to give up indulgences, buckle down, and trudge forward. Uphill. Against the wind.

In my small, suburban high school, I spent hours after my classes ended wrestling with quadratic equations.

I had the overwhelmingly generous help of my teachers, who tutored …

Why Too Much Choice is Stressful and 7 Simple Ways to Limit It

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“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

When I bought my car, I visited only one showroom. I’d made the decision that this was the car for me in around one hour, and chose not to spend more hours or days of my time going from one place to another to check other deals and different cars.

If I hadn’t have found this car, I would have gone to another dealer. However, I’ll never know if I could have saved money by haggling elsewhere, and I don’t care.

I’ve had my trusty and …

6 Ways to Find Composure When You Feel Panicked

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“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

I had a terrible morning. I needed to make a short YouTube video to promote my therapy practice, and I thought it would take twenty minutes at the most.

The technology was more complicated than I thought. I struggled on, wanting to do it by myself. Half an hour later, I surrendered and asked my husband Kaspa for help.

Two hours later, we were still trying to make it work.

I started thinking about all the other things I was meant to be doing that morning. …

Being Happy in the Present: See the Tree

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“Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.” ~Jack Kornfield

I sometimes find myself smiling for no reason—a good mood, perhaps, or maybe a thought about friends and loved ones. What I notice is that every time I contemplate my own smile, it comes back to the thought of being here, now, and feeling for those around me with understanding instead of judgment and love in place of anger.

It is in the here and now that I find happiness.

Contemplate a tree: In the blazing heat of the summer, does it cry and …

Prescriptions for Peace: How to Combat Anxiety

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“When the crowded refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost.  But if even one person on the boat remained calm and centered, it was enough. They showed the way for everyone to survive.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Without realizing it, I spent the majority of my childhood in a constant state of anxiety. In my early twenties, after a break-up with a man I dearly loved (albeit a little obsessively) I tried to medicate my grief with too many cups of coffee, bottles of wine, and many cigarettes.

I found myself one absurd sunny …

How to Stop Being a Neat Freak & Stressing About Keeping Things Tidy

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“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you; they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon

Have you ever hung up a towel and not straightened it or folded it or arranged it in some way as you did so? Have you ever just casually tossed a towel over the towel rail?

I did that last weekend and it was a big event. I had to laugh at myself for having this obsessive quirk, but doing that was almost impossible. I was in a hurry putting away the laundry, and there were those two clean …

5 Ways to Find Your Center When Life Feels Overwhelming

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“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse

We’ve all had moments when life’s demands left us feeling stressed and scattered. In these moments, it’s helpful to have some simple tools to help us gain composure and come back to our center.

Let me paint a picture for you of a scene from my daily life at its most overwhelming.

On a recent Tuesday, I drafted my evening’s “to-do” list, which contained the following items: Go clothes shopping for my son, get groceries, cook up some …

CD Giveaway, Relax: 6 Techniques to Lower Your Stress

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Last year, a representative from More Than Sound reached out to me to share the publishing company’s new mindful driving CD, Awake at the Wheel.

As someone who frequently deals with Los Angeles traffic, I especially appreciated the opportunity to hear and share a CD focused on making the roads more peaceful.

Recently, More Than Sound connected with me again to introduce their latest offering, …

Stop Pushing: The Art of Relaxed Achievement

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“Some people think it’s holding that makes one strong—sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

A few weeks ago, I took a sip of my morning tea hoping that the day would be better than the prior ones. I had somehow tripped over the cracks of life and couldn’t seem to pull myself back. I had woken up feeling eager to start a new day, but like every other day of my life, within the first few hours, things had gotten off track.

I was stuck in a downward vortex of fear, anxiety and self-ridicule. I read my Yogi tea bag message, …

Simplify Your Life by Eliminating These 7 Problems

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Life has a tendency to become overly complicated and stressful, particularly because things change so quickly. I’ve identified seven problems that you can eliminate to make your life a whole lot simpler (which doesn’t mean boring or less interesting).

Problem #1 – Too Much Responsibility

Think back to a year or two ago. How much extra responsibility has come into your life since then? You may have too much stuff, too many possessions, too many projects, and too many commitments.

Spreading yourself too thin reduces focus, increases stress, and lowers overall performance.

Too much stuff could include anything from a …

How to Carve Time for Yourself and Pursue Your Dreams

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“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” ~Etty Hillesum

There was a time that I wished I had more than 24 hours a day to finish everything in my long to-do list. I have a full-time job editing news stories for a media agency while tending to my side business as a content marketing strategist for entrepreneurs.

That’s just the work thing. Like most single women in Asia, I live with my parents, so I do my share of household chores. I’m also writing my thesis for my masters …

Improving Your Reactions to Mishaps from the Inside Out

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

I am confident. I am content. I am complete. I am calm.

I decided that this was going to be my new mantra. I decided this at 8:26 a.m. I repeated it to myself over and over while showering, getting dressed, and driving to work.

I ascended the stairs to my office, singing the words in my head. I am confident. I am content. I am complete. I am calm.

This was going to be a good day. I would stay …