Let’s break the vicious cycle of trying to be like others.
“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” — Maya Angelou
This phrase expresses very well how a good part of our lives ends up being wasted. How much of our life is spent trying to be normal? How much effort do we make to be like others?
How many of our tears are filled with the anger and sadness we feel at not being able to be like others? How many of the people we know look like copies of each other?
Why we want to be like others
Much of this effort is the result of…
A personal assessment of my path to a better life
At the end of one more year in which I dedicated more time and attention to mindfulness and meditation, I tried to make a small assessment to see how I evolved throughout 2020.
This article is my first personal written annual evaluation. The first one I do in detail and in public. Doing it this way is a little scary but, even so, I decided to take the risk of sharing this experience/exercise.
Something I also learned this year is that we are more like each other than we realize or we want to admit. Because of that, sharing our…
Discover simple ways to reduce stress
Most of the time we think we want to be able to control everything around us.
If we have a problem, a small or big one, we think we must have the power to solve it.
To be able to make sure things goes the direction we want it’s the only way we feel powerful.
But where does that take us? What do we do in those situations?
We rush to make decisions and when things do not result as expected we feel frustration.
We feel we were unable to deliver what was expected — expected from others or expected…
The first step is to accept what you feel
“They tried to bury us, but we were seeds.”
This quote summarizes very well what we mostly do with the negatives emotions we experience. We try to forget them, erase them, throw them behind our backs.
However, we will not achieve that result. In most cases, it will just send those emotions to a closed space inside us, a dome, in which some of these negative feelings will concentrate and grow.
Our emotions, desires, and needs will join in that space and will feed on each other. …
Learn simple ways to reduce stress
You can become a peaceful person by learning to take some time to do nothing.
Can you remember the last time you took a few minutes to do nothing?
The habit of regularly dedicate a few moments to doing nothing can increase your ability to focus and have many other positive effects on your mental and physical health.
Once you try it, you will probably feel the benefits almost immediately. Don’t believe me? Try it!
Do nothing
Try doing nothing for a few minutes right now.
Seat in a comfortable position.
Close your eyes.
Just relax.
Notice how you feel.
Tell your…
Use awareness to create no more problems, no more pain
We often like to complain that our life is full of problems. We say that every time we solve a problem, several other problems immediately arise to complicate our life.
However, if we look closely at what we call “problems”, we will conclude that many of these problems do not just happen to us, they do not just have external causes. In fact, many of them ended up being expanded, enlarged by our habits of complexifying situations, by our accelerated thinking. …
May we accept what it brings us, at every moment
2020 was a challenging year, full of unexpected moments, circumstances, and situations that we had never dealt with.
Despite all the difficulties, we are still here.
Moment after moment.
We are
We are still able to read and write, to share ideas, thoughts, and emotions.
We still have hope in our abilities and maybe we trust now even more in ourselves than before.
We still know that we can handle better our day-to-day challenges. …
