TruthOrator's Blog

“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 t...

“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 m...

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 th...

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 th...

“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...

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 d...

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...