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Showing posts from August, 2016

How to Fill the Emptiness in Your Lif

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“Find your Calcutta.” ~Mother Teresa Something is missing in your life, isn’t it? You’re working hard, trying to get ahead, doing everything you possibly can to make life just a little bit better. You’re trying to keep it all balanced, though. You won’t be one of those people who commits every waking second to work and the pursuit of career. Not you. You’ve got it figured out. You even make time to exercise, eat right, meditate, or maybe spend time with friends and family. You’ve got it all figured out—except for that one stupid thing that keeps tugging at your heart. You don’t really know what it is, but it is there, and it is driving you a little crazy. Yeah, I know. I get that feeling sometimes too. It is often mistaken as unhappiness, fatigue, depression, or being stuck in a rut. Many people will go off and do wild vacations or try things they would never try in a million years just to see if those activities settle the strange, inexplicable emptiness they feel inside. When

10 Clever Ways to Deal with the Ups and Downs of Life

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“I think everybody has ups and downs in their lives. We learn from the biggest disappointments, right? You learn how to be humble to yourself and to be humble to others.” ~ Carolina Kostner You know, lately I have been feeling very strange. Strange in the sense that one moment I’m up, flying high as a kite, feeling ecstatic, grateful and full of love. While the next moment I am down, feeling all fearful and anxious, as if something horrible had happened, or is about to happen. And I have to confess that I’ve learned a lot from these ups and downs and that’s why I decided to write this blog post. What follows are 10 clever ways to deal with the ups and down of life. Enjoy! 1. Stop looking for the source of your unhappiness. Life has it’s ups and downs. It’s perfectly normal. Trying to find the source of your unhappiness will only bring you even more unhappiness. So stop it! Stop asking yourself: “Why do I feel so bad? What is causing me to experience al these ups and downs? Why am

CONTROL YOUR STORY, OR YOUR STORY WILL CONTROL YOU

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The stories that we believe have the power to define us – they become our reality.  If we create an empowering story about life, and what we will do with it, it will become a reality. However, if we cannot change our story, and if a negative narrative consumes us, it will drag us down and create a reality that we don’t want. Our negative stories don’t inspire us, they don’t help us to reach our potential or break through our fears. They keep us safe, but it isn’t a good safe.  It is a safe that is unsettling because we aren’t living what we could otherwise live if we’d take risks. What are some negative, disempowering, stories that we face?  I bet you’ve dealt with a couple of these.  I know I have: I don’t know where to start. None of us know where to start when we begin.  So what do you do?  You find someone who knows (someone who has experience in your field), you figure out what they did, and then you take the same action.  At least to start, and over time you develop your own

THE PENDULUM OF LIFE AND SUCCESS

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Life is a lot like a pendulum. On the one side of the pendulum is the potential for happiness, fulfillment, excitement, variety, interest; and on the other side is the potential for failure, risk, disappointment, and criticism. If the pendulum stands still and doesn’t swing then nothing happens. Sure you don’t have failure, you don’t have any risk, you don’t have any disappointment, and no one says anything bad about you, in fact nothing bad ever really happens to you, you are insulated from disappointment; however, nothing really good happens to you either, you miss out on all the excitement of life, the fulfillment, the variety, the interest and the happiness. YOU CANNOT SWING A PENDULUM ONLY ONE WAY. Think about this for all aspects of your life. In every relationship there is a risk that your heart can be broken, but that doesn’t stop you from entering the relationship. When you raise a family there is a risk that your child will make bad choices that bring pain to themselves a

How to Bounce Back from a Hard Time and Come Out Stronger

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“How we remember, what we remember, and why we remember, form the most personal map of our individuality.” ~Christina Baldwin Look in the mirror. Who returns your gaze? Is the face looking back at you a fulfilled being, or a mere shell of longing for something better? If you would’ve asked me these questions a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. Fresh out of college and on a mission to convince my ego of its importance, I began down a path that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would teach me more about myself than I’d ever committed to learning before. It taught me who I am. As I suffered through recovery from a brain tumor, the wild emotional rollercoaster of becoming a tech entrepreneur, social insecurities, and the straining of interpersonal relationships, my ego assumed the form of a beaten and battered soldier, pushed to the brink of surrender. And that’s when the magic happened. Three things occurred in this process. If you’re going through a hard time, these

Why You Aren’t Living Your Dreams and What to Do About It

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The car engine’s loud revving got quiet. The tires came to a screeching halt. This towering, slender, intimidating man, with a beard like the skin of a shaved porcupine, shut the driver side door behind him and approached me with thunder. “Is this what you’re doing?!” he demanded. “On the corner—with a girl?” It wasn’t her fault, but his expression almost made me turn around and look at her with utter disgust. Instead, I was too busy quieting the butterflies in my stomach, looking up everywhere into his chiseled face except his eyes. His head blocked the sun like a solar eclipse on that urban street while his eyes burned a hole in my forehead. “You’re going to throw away the championship for this.” Never explicitly saying out loud what I did wrong, as he put me to shame, it made the unspoken truth stab my heart like a dagger, over and over, especially because I had deep admiration for this man. “Your belief determines your action and your action determines your results, but firs

4 Crucial Steps to Make Your Dream Come True

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A little over forty-eight hours from now, I’ll be on a plane to Europe where I plan to spend three months traveling (and working) with my boyfriend. Saturday is the first day of a dream I’ve held for well over a decade. It was my second year in college when I did my semester abroad, staying in a castle my school owns in The Netherlands. I was one of less than seventy students there, part of an intimate group that traveled together on three weekend trips to Paris, Amsterdam, and Koln. Aside from those group excursions, we all had three-day weekends and two full weeks off to travel. I visited Italy and Spain during my weeks off, but spent most weekends on site, largely due to financial constraints. Still, a weekend doing nothing at a castle in Europe is, in itself, an adventure. After returning home, I spent the next year working 40+ hour weeks as a hostess at an upscale Boston restaurant (while also studying full-time) to pay off my charged travel expenses. My schedule was tight

5 THINGS YOU DON’T DISCLOSE TO A NEW PROSPECT

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When you meet a new person and you start getting up close and personal, there is the tendency to get so familiar that you are tempted to empty the good, bad and ugly things that has happened to you from the day you were born. Sometimes, this can backfire especially if you give too much information too soon to the people involved. You need to measure people’s ability to handle some information at certain times. Too much too soon can ruin a potentially good relationship. This also doesn’t mean that you totally hide important things they should know from them; it just means that you should be very tactical in your approach when revealing some sensitive issues. What exactly are those dreaded details that can spoil a promising relationship? 1.THE HEALTH DEFICIENCIES IN YOUR FAMILY:     If you start dating someone, you don’t begin to tell them all the health history or deficiencies in your family or you would scare them away. dont tell a new prospectIf you have a mental history or a genet

The Top 50 Inspirational Quotes by Joel Osteen

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1. “You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‘Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.’ See the positive in negative events.” – Joel Osteen 2. “I believe if you keep your faith, you keep your trust, you keep the right attitude, if you’re grateful, you’ll see God open up new doors.” – Joel Osteen 3. “Don’t go into the new year holding a grudge from last year. Leave the hurts and disappointments behind.” – Joel Osteen 4. You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‘Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward. – Joel Osteen 5. “Life’s too short to spend it trying to keep others happy. You can’t please everyone. To fulfill your destiny, stay true to your heart.” – Joel Osteen 6. “Nothing in life has happened to you. It’s happened for you. Every disappointment

4 Things Every Man Wants In A Woman

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While every man is different, there are certain things about a woman that will make any man stand up, take notice, and make him decide he wants to get to know you on a deeper level. If you want to win the right man’s heart, you need to know what it is that makes a man go from just feeling casual about dating you to wanting and needing you on a deeper level.  I’m going to take you inside a man’s mind you so you understand what it takes to trigger this kind of connection. And I’m talking about a real man – one who is mature and grounded on a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual level. They are on a great path and open to growing on a deeply personal level.  I’m betting that’s exactly why you’re on this site: to find a quality kind of guy – a real man looking for a real relationship. So what does a mature, REAL man want in a woman? #1) A Real Man Wants A Woman Who Is Playful There’s something that drives men wild and invites them into a deeper level of “connection” – play. Men

10 Ways to Create a Strong, Intimate Relationship

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“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” -~Sam Keen Before I married my wonderful husband, I dated a lot of men. For most of my 20s (and even my early 30s) I had a perfect fairy-ideal of what romantic love was, probably because I was an actress and loved drama back then. It took years for me to realize a relationship is not a romance movie. At some point in our lives, we may believe that love should be like the kind of romance we see portrayed in films, television, and novels. For some reason, I always thought my romantic relationships were less if I did not experience this kind of fairy-tale relationship. Maybe this is why I kept meeting frogs. At times, I bought into the belief that if I had a relationship with the perfect prince, then all would be well in my life. I thought, Now, I will be safe forever. In truth, I did marry a prince—but a prince who is also human, who has faults and issues just like every person,

The Myths and Realities of ‘Doing What You Love'

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One issue that you’ll see constantly debated in books and articles about choosing a career is the idea of “doing what you love.” Should a person “follow their passion” as a primary guiding light for their career? Or does it make more sense to choose a career based on income and aptitude? There are pros and cons behind each path. Following your passion means that you’re going to usually end up spending a significant part of your workday doing something you deeply enjoy. However, jobs like those often have a low average wage (though there are often high-end rewards for high performers). On the other hand, choosing a career based on average income and your personal aptitude will lead you to a job with a strong income level and a career path you’re naturally suited for, but you may not end up enjoying your job or your career at all. My own life has been full of the push-and-pull between these two paths. When I first went to college, I studied something I’ve been passionate about my ent