Where Happiness Comes From
All you want is happiness. Deep down, you long to reach a state of mind that's completely unburdened by conflict and suffering. The desire to find this inner harmony is universal. It is the motivation behind everyone’s actions. This common drive and ultimate goal is what makes you equal to everybody else. It is also what makes you absolutely innocent. Happiness results from the perception of harmony. This harmony you seek comes in two flavors: harmony with yourself and harmony with the world. Harmony with yourself is the belief that you are good, worthy, and lovable. Harmony with the world…
Worthiness Will Definitely Come up on the Path of Spirituality
This topic is one that is bound to come up during each person’s path of spirituality: Worthiness. The deeper we go within ourselves, the more beautiful the internal world becomes. We tap into our purpose. We begin to understand what feeling good is all about. And even though this is all very natural: We are meant to feel good at all times… It is also new territory. The reality is most people have been conditioned into states of mind such as fear and worry – and sometimes these conditionings come from childhood. It’s almost as if we have to reverse…
Deserving
So often we don’t we have what we want. Why? The more I think about this question and review my own life attitudes, the more I come up with the same answer: We don’t feel we deserve it. So many of us feel we must earn worthiness. Repeating Hail Marys, trekking to Mecca, toiling in the Amazon, writing incessantly, doing massive loads of laundry, cooking massive amounts of meals, denying ourselves massive amounts of what pleases us. Sometimes we think we can earn worthiness by stockpiling money, houses, fame, titles, awards, degrees, publications. When we’ve achieved these, we may look…
How Self Esteem May Be Holding You Back
I recently read an interesting excerpt from the book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. The book focuses on teaching and parenting styles, but I think it also provides an interesting glance into the power of self-empowerment over self-esteem. Let me try to explain how I see the difference between self-esteem and self-empowerment. Self-esteem comes from the praise of others, therefore it is outside ourselves and something we can not control. Self-esteem is based on the belief in unchanging facts, like “you are smart.” Self-esteem is a noun. It is a descriptor. On the other…
Bouncing with Style: Where Do I Start?
Recently, I was asked by a group of women in recovery: How do you start? Where do you start? What do you do first? What does it mean to take care of yourself? This is not that uncommon a reaction, especially from women coming out of long-term marriages or having spent the last decade raising small children. We as women, and men too, get so enmeshed in the needs and wants of others that they get totally disconnected from who are they are. What they want and need is so under-exercised that if you ask one of these people what…