Motivational Stories

“Give up being perfect, for being authentic. Give up the need to be perfect, for the opportunity to be authentic. Be who you are. Love who you are. Others will too.” ~Hal Elrod I’m not perfect. Not that this would come as any kind of surprise to anyone who knows me. But I often feel pushed in the direction of trying to represent myself as someone who has it all together. Especially because of the nature of my work as a coach and facilitator. What about you? Do you ever feel like you’re putting on a show for others? The more I find myself trying to represent a perfectly put-together person, the less confident I feel in who I am because I know I am being inauthentic. It’s a big part of what took me off social media a few years ago. I don’t like that social media has the ability to mold what you think about yourself by way of comparison and encourage posturing. It’s a slippery slope, as we’re hardwired to yearn for love and connection as part of our survival. For me, it didn’t feel li...

“Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light.” ~Spike Milligan Ever since I was a little girl, Disney films, story books, family, and friends unconsciously conditioned me to believe that the definition of happiness was a knight in shining armor galloping into my life to rescue me, sweeping me away, soothing all my problems as we ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. However, it’s fair to say, that fairytale didn’t play out how I’d expected in real life. Nor does it for most, if any of us. For much of my teenage years, I had a turbulent relationship with my dad, who was absent a lot of the time (both physically and emotionally), as he battled with a toxic relationship with alcohol and mental illness. He was inconsistent, distant, and showed little interest in me or any of my achievements as I went through school and university. The story I told myself and the belief I adopted was that I clearly was not enough for this man, my own flesh and blood, to love me an...

**If you’re reading this in in your inbox, click here to enter on the site ! The other day, while scrolling through my Facebook feed, I came across the kind of uplifting story that makes my exhausted-mom-bleeding-heart melt. It was from a mother who’d decided to fly alone with her two-year-old and five-year-old, only to find herself overwhelmed by two screaming, overtired children. I can imagine the stress and anxiety she felt, given that I often feel that way just sitting in my living room with my poor-sleeping baby and high-energy toddler—which is why I almost shed a tear when I read about the other moms who stepped up to offer help. One fellow mama let the solo mom cut her in the security line, another helped carry all her bags, and a third woman held one of her children for a long stretch on the flight and carried him all the way to baggage claim, where she left with a hug and a “Merry Christmas!” Right when she needed it, this mother found herself the proverbial village it t...

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” ~Audre Lorde When you hear the word “productive,” you likely think of something positive: busting through that work assignment, making your house sparkly clean, or crushing your hobby. Productivity is what we all aim for, right? On workdays and even on our days off, we seek to make something happen. Grinding and hustling are seen as admirable, and something to work toward, always. If we fall short, we beat ourselves up, and sometimes even drag ourselves off the couch to force ourselves into productivity. We feel if we don’t complete all of the tasks, we’ve failed. We set crazy high expectations for ourselves then hate ourselves when we don’t meet them. What would happen if we scaled back, even just a little? What if we included rest in our practice? It seems we’d fall apart, we’d become piles of mush, not contributing to society or our own lives. This is bullsh*t. Toxic ...

“Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul. But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here.” ~Mariska Hargitay At 6:07 pm on July 18, 2020, I was sitting on the couch with my boyfriend. It was a Saturday night, and I had canceled plans with my friends because I had a migraine. I had eaten dinner already, and I was in my pajamas, watching TV. My phone rang—my dad. “I’ll call him back later,” I said, flipping the phone over on the couch and returning my attention to the television. Three minutes later, I received a text from my dad to my sister and me. “Girls, I do not want to alarm you, but I am at the emergency room in Asheville. Your mother and I were riding our bikes, and she was hit by a car. An ambulance came very quickly, and they have her right now. I am doing some paperwork at the front desk, so I don’t know her condition. I will keep you posted. Love.” I read i...

“ I’ve always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. ” ~ David Benioff I can feel the night converting into day. Hooting owls pass the baton to chirping birds before flying off into the slowly fading night. Low-grade panic sets in as total silence gives way to minor stirrings, and I realize my time to carve out at least a tiny patch of sleep amidst this mostly sleepless night is running out. These words, which I wrote during one of my first face-offs with insomnia back in college, aren’t reflective of my life-long sleeping patterns. Sleep and I hadn’t always had such a complicated relationship. As a child, I’d nod off without any struggle, pretty much as soon as I entered my bed. It wasn’t until I reached early adulthood that it started playing hard to get with me. Sometimes sleep’s elusiveness could be attributed to my surroundings. ...

Hi friends! First things first, happy December. I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday season so far! I’m excited to share that I’ve launched my first ever day-to-day desk calendar, along with an eco-friendly planner , for 2022. The colorful daily calendar pages feature quotations (all from the Tiny Buddha blog) on happiness, love, relationships, change, meaning, mindfulness, simplicity, self-care, letting go, and more. With an easel backer for desk and tabletop display, the calendar will hopefully keep you encouraged, uplifted, and motivated all through 2022! As I write this, Amazon only has three calendars left in stock, with more on the way, but it’s available on other sites as well, including Barnes & Noble . As for the planner, it also features quotes from the blog, on colorful patterned pages, and it’s made entirely of recycled materials. The lay-flat sewn (exposed) binding is a unique feature—it uses cloth thread and is free of glue, plastic, and metal. And becaus...

“People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” ~Joseph F. Newton “Oh my God, Mom…” she said with a verbal eye roll. “What?” I responded, sure that I had said too much or overshared like I normally do. I can’t recall what my daughter and I were discussing openly about while standing in line at the grocery store checkout, but I do remember the girl ringing us up laughing and saying we sounded just like her and her mom. I paused, unsure what that meant. “Is this what a healthy mother/daughter relationship sounds like?” I questioned to myself. It was a completely foreign concept to me. I wanted to create a strong bond with my daughter, but my own relationship with my mother was dysfunctional and boundary-less when I was a child, leading me to overthink everything when it came to creating a relationship with my daughter. My mother had significant mental health challenges, which eventually led to her death by suicide. I had no idea what healthy felt like. Insecuri...

“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anyone.” ~Maya Angelou How do you measure your self-worth ? By the salary you make each year? By the number of lines on your resume? By the amount of people who follow you on social media? Now what if you never had to measure your self-worth again? That is what I want to do. I grew up as a gifted kid with high expectations to boot, always pushing myself to meet them. I earned the best grades I could, secured a full-ride scholarship to a local university, and soon enough ended up at one of the top law schools in the country. Thanks to all the achievements, my self-worth was high. I believed I was outshining my peers, boosting my ego. I felt safe in this comfort zone I’d created.  Law school drastically changed my perspective of the world. My peer group became some of the smartest and most talented people in the country. I tried competing against them to prove myself, but I struggled more than ever to stand out and feel a...

“There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.” ~ Charles Dickens “It’ll be okay, just…” If I could have taken that expression and thrown it at each person who said it to me when I was struggling with depression, it would have felt much better than hearing it each time. Here are a few ways people ended that sentence: “Try not to think about it.” “Cheer up.” “Get some exercise.“ “See someone about it.” All well-intentioned, true, and completely unhelpful. I didn’t need to hear advice, or pointers or solutions. I just needed them to be present, to remind me I wasn’t alone. I was in a new town, totally broken, in despair, having had no physical rest for weeks. I couldn’t pray, couldn’t read (I tried), couldn’t sleep, and felt like moving forward was the most insurmountable task of my life. I could write a book about my journey to and through dep...