Never Forget That You Have the Power to Choose

a post by Leslie Ralph for the Tiny Buddha blog


“If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Dedicate today to the power of choice. Your choice. You can’t choose everything that you experience in life, but what you can choose is mightier than any circumstance, outcome, or other person’s opinion.

Where you focus your mind, how you use your words, and how you treat yourself and others are all up to you. One chapter at a time, you write your own story.

We all have the power to choose what we absorb and what we release. We ultimately decide what we share, what we keep, and what we let go. How long we stay mad and how long we wait to reach for hope, when we say yes and when we say no, and how long we say only what others want to hear are all up to us. Whether we see the world with gratitude or resentment begins with a choice.

It’s not that anyone chooses pain, though. I can’t think of a single person who’d choose despair or insecurity. No on elects shame to be their shadow. Not even boredom is a choice. We just forget our power sometimes or maybe underestimate the power of our intentions.

For me, forgetting is a quick slide into control or fear. Every doubt, complaint, and fear leads me directly to more to doubt, complain about, and fear. The pressure builds. Tension rises. And even then, as much as I hate to admit it when I’m steeping in it, I have a choice.

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Finding Emotional Freedom After a Toxic Relationship

a post by Sharon Martin for the Happily Imperfect blog [via World of Psychology]



A toxic or codependent relationship can make you feel trapped, small, and deficient. It can feel like an anchor weighing you down, suffocating you.

People who grew up in dysfunctional families, with parents who lacked boundaries, abused drugs or alcohol, or suffered from mental illness, develop a set of coping skills that helped them deal with the chaos and dysfunction in their families. And although these coping skills helped us get through a lot of difficult childhood experiences, they can make it hard for us to manage our emotions and prioritize our needs.

In adulthood, we continue to suppress our feelings, get into relationships with needy or dysfunctional people, and spend so much time and energy focused on other people and their needs that we neglect ourselves. Our lives continue to be consumed with anxiety, efforts to please people who are never satisfied, and feelings of shame and self-blame.

In an effort to survive, many people “lose” themselves.

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Childhood of Dreams. If You Build It…

a post by Will Meecham for the Guideposts to Happiness blog [via World of Psychology]

You grew up with the happiest childhood imaginable. You did! You really did! Or at least you might have. And you know the bumper sticker that says, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood”? I’ve learned it speaks the truth, though not in the way I always thought.

A few months ago I devised for myself a new and helpful meditation. It probably isn’t my creation, but if I heard of it before I’m not sure where. Meditation may be too strong a word; visualization or fantasy might fit better. The basic technique involves imagining a better childhood and family life than I actually experienced.

On my older, less visited blog, I’ve written often about my dismal childhood. It’s tempting to outline it here, but in essence all unhappy childhoods are the same. The details are not important to my current topic. What’s more, in the course of my life I’ve spent far too much time reliving the tragic drama of my upbringing. As a result, my bereaved and abused childhood has become a kind of background legend to explain my life and personality. Although it is an unflattering trait, I admit to building a story of myself as a Ruined Child. My aunt tells me that at my youngest ages I was an exceedingly affectionate and happy toddler. But in my mind, at least, bad luck and cruelty crushed that innate sweetness.

So what is my visualization? I picture a completely different upbringing. The destruction of my childhood was set in motion when my father insisted on moving to Los Angeles, where he had discovered ‘swinging’ and ‘free love.’

My mother, a proper midwestern girl, hated the place and the lifestyle for which my dad yearned, and refused to go along. In real life, they divorced. In my ‘meditation’, they reached a compromise and moved to Berkeley instead.

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Some interesting thoughts there. Personally I think I would worry about living only in my imagination and not coping with the real things in life. But that’s my problem – there are no unpaid bills hiding underneath the coffee table because I have imagined them away! Try telling that to the bailiff when he comes for the money.

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If Your Life Story Depresses You or Holds You Back, Change It

a post by Kelly Pietrangeli for the Tiny Buddha blog


“The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.”
~Pema Chodron

Too often we let stories from our past define us. We tell them over and over to ourselves and to others until it becomes our truth. What if, without deviating from actual facts, we choose to tell different stories? What if these new stories could bring us more freedom and strength?

Below are some true facts about my own life. I'll follow each one with the stories I could be telling myself about each one, followed by the story I choose to go with.

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This post has had a powerful effect on my thinking. I have not followed through with the ideas yet but I know that I need to.
I need to change “my mother pushed me away when I most needed support” to “my mother did what she thought was right for my younger siblings”.

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