Family, Health, Mindfulness, News, Relationships

If you’re tired of being stressed and anxious….

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I decided I’d rather love than divide. Loving keeps my stress way down and dividing makes my stress go way up. But sometimes choosing to love rather than divide is not so easy, such as right now during our country’s current political state of affairs. People feel very, very strongly one way or the other, and I’m no different. But in the midst of a heated argument with someone I care about – each one of us taking a different political side – I stopped and took a breath. I hated the way I was feeling by being all heated up in an argument. Hated that I was getting angry with someone who means a lot to me. I really hated the way I could see this argument dividing us from each other. So I took a big breath and stopped. I said to him, “I’m sorry for not listening […]

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Family, Health, Home, Mindfulness, News, Relationships, Style

Why perfection can’t make you happy – but this will

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Our culture of perfection is bringing up more insights for me. You know, we’re supposed to have perfect hair, perfect bodies, perfect kitchens, perfect homes, perfect relationships, be fabulous foodies and cooks, and we’re even supposed to have perfect thoughts. You’re probably like me in that you hardly notice what’s going on because we’re swimming in this culture. For me, once I started paying attention, I realized I was telling myself stuff like this: “If I just exercise more, I’ll have a perfect body. If I take some cooking classes I’ll be able to be a foodie, too. If I get more spiritual, I’ll have more perfect thoughts,” and so on. Our consumer culture feeds this stuff to us constantly and it’s hard to ignore. We’re being told all of the time that we can do more and be more. We’re inspired by blog posts about the latest exercise routine, […]

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Health, Mindfulness, Relationships

A beautiful life is a messy life

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Here is what a beautiful life looks like to me. It’s messy. It’s not all flowers and roses. But there is absolute beauty in mess, especially the mess of our emotions. I just had my own experience of beautiful grief that I want to share with you. But before I tell you about my experience, I want you to know something important. Even though our election is what inspired my beautiful grief – this is by no means a post about politics. I am absolutely not advocating for liberal versus conservative. I think both sides have merit and shortcomings. As you may know from my last post – my grief is that someone with Mr. Trump’s character is now our role-model-in-chief. I’m sad because I want our president – liberal or conservative – to be a fabulous role model, lifting us up and inspiring us to be better human beings. […]

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Mindfulness, News

Donald Trump has lit a fire in me

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Donald Trump has inspired me. Lit a fire, to be exact. I know we’re up to our eyeballs in angry, divisive, political rhetoric and we can’t stand it for one more minute.   But Mr. Trump’s Access Hollywood tape has stirred me to write about something deeply important  –  to all of us. I’m talking about the tape where Mr. Trump brags about sexually assaulting women. And I’m talking about the way he has demeaned both both women and men all throughout this political season. The put-downs, the threats, the demeaning talk. As human beings, we can do so much better than this. So, why would this inspire me –  light a big fire? Because I write about how to simplify your life, and Mr. Trump’s demeaning talk has awakened in me the true meaning of simplicity – the heart of it all. Let me explain. Most people think that simplifying your […]

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