Opening the heart to love creates opportunity for a greater sense of peace, happiness, and wellbeing. Staying in hurt, angry, or even feelings of hatred and resentment is easy. It’s a default pattern. I’m continually surprised, when someone is hurting or angry, how resistant they are to the idea of opening the heart and extending […]
Open hearted and awake, we are grounded in the present moment with mindful awareness. We are more resilient. Much of our suffering comes from resisting the present moment and wanting things to be other than they are. We harden our hearts to the reality of our experience in an attempt to protect ourselves. This hardening […]
Mindfulness and fear. When we meet fear with mindfulness, we practice noticing the fear with mindful awareness. We meet It with kindness and curiosity, treating ourselves with compassion. With curiosity, we become interested in the source of the fear. We might become curious about what in us needs to be brought into the light of […]
Finding clarity becomes easier when approaching our lives with mindful intentions. In moments when we long for clarity related to a decision or circumstance in our life, we often try to think our way to clarity and force a solution. This typically leads to further confusion and uncertainty. Clarity comes when we focus our attention […]
Creating intentions with mindfulness supports us in living intentionally and living mindfully. Unless we’ve learned a different strategy, most of us spend the New Year coming up with resolutions regarding things that we feel we should do based on things about which we criticize ourselves. Most people develop resolutions (like exercise) that don’t even really […]
Cultivating patience is a practice that we can access in our mindfulness and meditation practices. We live in a world of instant gratification. We have microwaves for quick cooking, instant oatmeal, 5-minute rice, and technology that allows us to receive communication through text within seconds. As a result, we grow to expect instant gratification in […]
When you believe in yourself, anything can feel possible. Many of us struggle with something about ourselves that we want to change but have trouble changing. Creating mindful change is tricky and requires a balance between accepting ourselves exactly as we are and creating clear intentions about who we want to be. Applying our mindfulness […]
Belonging is a basic human need. As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, social media is buzzing with articles about gratitude, giving thanks, and family. While this is lovely, and studies do show that focusing our minds on gratitude leads to greater happiness, I’m more concerned about the buzz that I hear behind the closed door of […]
Forgiveness meditation practice is for our own benefit as well as the benefit of others. Each painful experience that we encounter in relationships with others is an opportunity to learn and grow. Forgiveness does not mean condoning someone else’s hurtful behavior. It doesn’t mean that you have to allow unkind people to remain in your […]
Embracing life with mindfulness means that we turn toward our life with acceptance. A good deal of our suffering comes from turning away from anything that creates pain or discomfort—uncomfortable sensations, difficult emotions, difficult thoughts. In our attempts to turn away from discomfort, we reach for whatever numbs the pain—alcohol, food, TV, Internet, creating drama […]