Inspiration Archives

How to Achieve Ultimate Success

The ultimate success has nothing to do with money... Or career. It's not the car you drive. The size of your home. The gold and diamonds you collected. The ultimate success has nothing to do with material accomplishment and gain. It has nothing to do with anything outside of you. The ultimate success is to feel joy exactly where you are right now. No matter what your external life looks like. No matter your situation. The ultimate joy is to be complete and whole in this very moment. No matter who you are or where you are or why you…

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Honoring Stephen Levine

  Stephen Levine, who is one of the most amazing hearts on our planet, died on Sunday, January 17, 2016. I am filled with gratitude for his presence and how much he helped so many of us to see through our stories and come home to our hearts. In honor of his life and how deeply he changed mine, I want to share with you an experience I wrote about after I came back from a retreat led by Stephen in 1985. I had been at a 10-day workshop with Stephen, a skilled teacher of consciousness and author of many books on…

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An Invitation For The New Year

It's that time of the year again…that time when you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and decide how you want your life to be in the new year. We call this a New Year’s resolution. Now I ask you, have your resolutions ever really worked? We keep on rising to the challenge of resolutions and yet in the past, most of them have faded by the middle of January!  The reason why they don’t work is in the definition of the word resolution: “a firm decision to do or not to do something.” Resolutions are all about doing because they are made…

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Tips to Get Through the Holiday Blues

For some, the holiday season is a joyous occasion. For others, holidays bring to the surface feelings that are the complete opposite of Christmas cheer, usually unwrapping sad reminders that may start as early as Halloween. The holidays can be a roller coaster ride of emotions for many. Below are some steps to a smoother journey through the holiday season. A lot of people consider the holiday season one of the loneliest times of the year. Many of my clients who come to me for counseling ask whether they are the only ones who feel this way. Coupling this with…

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How To Be Compassionate With Your Compulsions

My friend, Jane, has a very high pressure job, plus she travels a lot. On a Friday morning recently, she arose feeling stressed and anxious about her weekend trip out-of-town. When she got to work, she had a conversation with one of her co-workers that did not go well. Then, when she got to the airport, she discovered that her plane was delayed for many hours. Jane had a traumatic childhood and has struggled with overeating for much of her life. So what did she do to soothe her anxiety and stress? She ate. Then she got angry and berated…

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Find Your Motivation, and Find Your Way to Success

After I resigned my military commission as a naval officer because I lost motivation from the Vietnam War, I wondered what I could do for my future to make my life worthwhile. My best high school friend was in town as a civil rights lawyer and asked if I wanted to watch him argue a case for Cesar Chavez’s fledgling union against wine growers’ attorneys. His arguments demolished the private property claims of the ten slick business attorneys for the wine industry who tried to paint the farm workers as law-breaking scum. I was convinced I could never do anything so…

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Exercises to Develop Your Attention Muscles

Stephen Levine, author and spiritual teacher, once told me that focused human attention is as powerful as taking a magnifying glass and putting it right above a leaf with the sun shining through it. Even weak winter sun will start a fire on the leaf. In other words, focused human attention is phenomenally powerful. Focused attention is the ability to have your attention and your immediate experience come together. How do you bring these two things together? It begins with curiosity. Curiosity is becoming interested in what is going on right here right now without needing it to be any different…

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Honoring Your Process and Your “Bothers”

As a perpetual spiritual student and seeker of ultimate joy, I often find myself stuck in a web of conflict. Self-imposed and created, of course. After contemplation and mind games I play with myself to manage my emotions and implement my "schooling," I am left confused, frustrated and no happier than when I began. I persist in hopes of finding a way, "the" way, to relinquish bad feelings and resume feel-good living. There's something about the spiritual path of evolution that can make one feel "bad" for having thoughts and emotions that are anything less than happy or positive or hopeful…

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7 Simple Reminders to Bring You Back to Soul Space 

So often, we get carried away in the human-ness of our lives. We forget kindness, love, patience, understanding and forgiveness. We forget our interconnectivity. We forget to trust, to have faith. We forget to stop, be mindful and appreciate. Absorbed in dramas, negativity or stress, for example, we spiral into and get trapped in the ego's lair. Sometimes we need a reminder of why we are here, and some simple guidance to bring us back to our Soul, our Self. We are here to experience life in the physical world. We chose our physicality, what we would be born into,…

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Remembering a Leap of Faith

Today is the first full day of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, celebrated in the Jewish religion. Many of you may be asking, "What is Hanukkah?" According to Wikipedia, Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. Hanukkah commemorates the "miracle of the container of oil". According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication, there was only enough consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil…

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How You can Recognize Fear and Be Present

Allowing yourself to be exactly as you are is such an important part of awakening. Author Jeff Foster, who is an amazing voice of consciousness in the world, talks a lot about acceptance and allowing. He says, “You do not have the power to accept this moment. You do have the power to allow it. This moment does not ask for your acceptance. It is already the way it is.” Jeff is saying that whatever is showing up in your life has already been accepted by life. It is all okay because whatever is happening is exactly as it should…

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How to Open Possibility Through Creativity

When I was 25 I entertained on a cruise ship. People would embark stressed, but gradually begin to relax, laugh, be quiet, be rowdy, and revive romance. Wow! Two weeks later, as they disembarked, I’d hear them say “Well, that was fun, but we have to get back to the real world.” - as if being happy, engaged, and heartfelt was reserved for an “unreal” world! To really understand this, I needed to know more so, at 45, I went to university. What an amazing experience. Three Masters degrees later, my new knowledge began to blend with my life experience…

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As Is, I’m Here

During a weekend recently three big challenges came up for me and and I used one of my favorite mantras over and over again, “As Is, I’m Here.”  Saying “As Is” reminds you of the willingness to allow yourself to be exactly as you are in this moment. It invites you to let go of struggling with whatever is (your usual mode), so you can move into the place of healing that comes from allowing yourself to be exactly as you are. “I’m Here” reminds you to be keenly attentive to what is, in a way that invites your heart to be open to…

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Milestones… or Memories?

I've observed a theme throughout life, as I reached adolescence and beyond.  This "theme" or pattern probably begins in our 20s, and I've observed it happen time and again to people in their 30s, 40s and 50s.  Though I have yet to personally hear of this experience from someone in their 60s or older, I am most positive it must occur to them, as well.  I am pretty confident it has the potential to make its way into every stage of our life. So what is this pattern, exactly? It is... milestones.  As we approach any new chapter - in particular, birthdays -…

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You Are Beautiful As You Are

A friend of mind has been struggling recently with her body image. She says she feels a lot of shame when she looks in the mirror, and the stories in her mind keep on trying to convince her there is something wrong with her at her present weight. She is caught in the land of fear, where her mind keeps telling her stories that she is not skinny enough, pretty enough or sexy enough. In other words, she is not enough, period! Our western society basically deems women’s bodies unacceptable unless they are a size 2 or less. Just take…

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Harry’s Perfect Moment, A Tale of Practical Enlightenment

It was a Monday morning and Harry swung his legs over the side of the bed. He knew something was different, but he had no idea that today he would have a “perfect” moment. Donning his cotton robe, Harry made his way to the kitchen and started his day like he always did by preparing breakfast for his wife and two young sons. He got out the usual supplies – knife, cutting board, bowl and fruit – and laid them on the butcher-block center island. Suddenly the morning took a new twist. There was a break in his routine. The…

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Welcome Yourself Exactly As You Are

Welcoming means accepting yourself exactly as you are and also accepting life exactly as it unfolds. It is the ability to allow all of it, including all the parts of yourself and your life that you don’t like, and letting it all flow without getting hooked into the stories created by your mind. Welcoming is not trying to make your life any different than it is.  Easier said than done, right? I know it's not always easy to welcome and accept life, especially your challenges, because you have been conditioned to continuously judge yourself and others. This is the inner voice…

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Do You See What You’re Missing?

My eyesight, or lack thereof, has always taught me lessons. Back in 2008 and in my recent book, From Type A to Type Me: How to Stop “Doing” Life and Start Living It, I shared my experiences of having poor eyesight before receiving my first glasses. I learned a lot about myself through my microscopic view of the world due to my near-sightedness. Then, once I had the right glasses, I began to see the beauty and interconnectedness of the world. Now my eyes are ready to teach me the next lesson. A few years back I received Lasik surgery. For…

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How You can Find Healing that Lasts

How would your life change if you trusted that your challenges are a part of your journey home – back to yourself and back to Life – instead of feeling that your challenges are here because you have done something wrong or you are being punished or God fell asleep on the job? What would happen if your illness, your difficult relationship, your demanding boss, your compulsions, and maybe even your troublesome dog were showing up in your life to help you heal? The healing you long for comes when you discover how to play the warmer, warmer/colder, colder game. Remember that…

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How You can Embrace Change

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.” -  Charles Darwin So many people have a fear of change: changing jobs, changing relationships, changing cell phones, changing lanes…. The good news is, we are all born with only two fears: the fear of falling, and the fear of loud noises. These are quite obviously for our protection. That being said, all the other fears are learned. And whatever is learned, can be un-learned. Thus, we all learned (were taught) how to be afraid of aging, of riding a bike,…

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7 Ways You can become a more Mindful Leader

Most people think that they cannot become leaders. In fact, everybody is a leader. The mother who leads at home; the father who takes responsibility; and the janitor who delivers his goods with excellence is a leader. We are all blessed with huge potential. We can understand this fact and unlock our potential by taking leadership in our lives. Don't waste your precious time by thinking about your unpleasant past which cannot be changed, and worrying about the future, which cannot be predicted. Start taking the steps to becoming a mindful leader now. 1. Leaders are the ones who lead from the front by taking responsibility…

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