Happiness & Success
Achieving Happiness Through Acceptance of Life
The quest for happiness often leads to frustration, as many fail to realize that the...
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- Written by: Therèse Tappouni
It’s necessary to be conscious of the way we store events in the body and how they create layers of similar emotions—grief with grief, joy with joy, anger with anger, and love with love. These layers are like the strata in rocks, building great cliffs of emotions that are touched each time another similar emotion is experienced.
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- Written by: Jude Bijou, M.A., M.F.T.
What’s the downside to not apologizing? Little by little, not fixing our wrongs becomes a pattern. In our relationships it destroys trust, openness, and true closeness. We carry this secret burden and it nags at us.
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- Written by: Alan Cohen
Nearly every religion, family, and belief system plays on guilt to keep its adherents in line. Yet there are ways to escape from the prison of guilt. Here are the top seven, along with practical applications to become free.
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- Written by: Noelle Sterne, Ph.D.
Why do you need forgiveness to reach your Dream? When you’re not forgiving, you’re angry and tight. You’re holding onto old hurts and hugging your rightness around you like a parka against the stinging winds of change. Your arms are crossed and your mind is crossing out possibilities. If you think about it...
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- Written by: Tobin Blake
Ending guilt asks only that you accept what is right now, and stop forcing your mind to dredge up and continually relive old wounds, pains, and regrets. Forget the past; it is gone and is therefore unreal. Healing can only occur by aligning with Reality, which is located in the present.
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- Written by: Barry Vissell
I closed my eyes, preparing to list off my offenses. Within minutes, I felt complete forgiveness for all my actions! My first thought was, “Wait. This was too easy! I haven’t worked and sweated hard enough to earn complete forgiveness. I haven’t even gone through the whole list.”
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- Written by: Ondrea Levine
“You owe me” is resentment. “I owe you” is guilt. And the longer our interactions go on like this, the more impoverished we become. We lose our balance, the heart is thrown askew. The gut tightens. The eyes cannot open fully. But forgiveness rebalances the mind and brings kindness to the senses.
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- Written by: Gary Holz D.Sc. and Robbie Holz
One morning Rose began our session by saying it was time for me to take a very important journey. “It’s a journey we all must take within this lifetime. It’s the journey that takes us from being a child to becoming an adult. And what you need to make this journey are the powers of love and forgiveness.”
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- Written by: Alan Cohen
A fellow set out to find a particular saint who lived in a remote village. The shopkeeper told him he would find the saint under a certain tree, teaching disciples. Excited, the seeker made his way to tree, but instead of finding the saint he saw a drunkard blabbing with a couple of guys.
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- Written by: Michael Jones
When we cut through the smoke and mirrors of guilt, we can see that the thoughts and emotions that ignite guilt are all made up. When our self-awareness “muscles” strengthen, we find that we’re less apt to fall into the default pattern of simply reacting to the unconscious flow of our thoughts and emotions.
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- Written by: Shilo Rea, Carnegie Mellon University
It has been well established that people have a “bias blind spot,” meaning that they are less likely to detect bias in themselves than others. However, it hasn’t been clear how blind we are to our own actual degree of bias, and how many of us think we are less biased than others.
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- Written by: Joyce Vissell
Have you ever been lied to or betrayed by someone you loved and trusted? Has anyone not believed you when you were telling the truth? Has anyone you loved walked away from the relationship and refused to try to work out the differences? Everyone has been hurt by someone else. How do we get rid of the hurt and move on with our lives. How can we forgive?
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- Written by: Joyce Vissell
I like the anonymous quote, “Holding resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” This poison can negatively affect every aspect of your life. Make a commitment towards love and clarity in your relationships.
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- Written by: Alan Cohen
I had a nasty neighbor who regularly picked fights over all kinds of issues. People drove too fast past her rural home; her neighbors partied too loud; vandals were supposedly stealing from her water line; trees encroached on her property line; and on and on...
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- Written by: Shari Rathman
After 9/11, I was writing (and publishing online) inspirational messages that focused on peace... Now twelve years later, we stand at the precipice of who knows what, and peace still eludes the planet...
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- Written by: James Allen
As long as people are determined to cling to their preconceived opinions, mistaking them for Truth and refusing to consider dispassionately the positions of others, they can neither escape hostility nor arrive at blessedness.
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- Written by: Stan Goldberg, PhD
The pain from the past that people experience often follows them to their deaths. I had been visiting Vince weekly for five months, and every week he began by telling me about his distaste for his brother, whom he hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. His animosity had to do with a...
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- Written by: Joyce Vissell
Is there a resentment that lives inside of you? When we first started our counseling practice, a woman came to us that had been raped. We asked her to try forgiveness and compassion. She looked at us like we were crazy. One month later...
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- Written by: Alan Cohen
We can upgrade all kinds of old patterns and situations in a much shorter time than it took to create them. Before we can do that, however, we have to let go of the notion that healing takes a long time, is hard, and requires pain...
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- Written by: Linda Star Wolf
Daily dedication and a willingness to heal our past will automatically move us forward on the spiral path of transformation. When we let go of old, outworn patterns that no longer serve us, we can energetically free up space in our psyches so that learning from the future becomes not only possible but the most...
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- Written by: Marie T. Russell
Many of us find it hard to forgive. Yet, what if we had to forgive the killer of our son, or wife, daughter, husband... Would we be able to forgive in that situation? Would we want them to be sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole?
