Category Archives: happiness

One happy introvert

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I just spent three days—from Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon—with other people, on retreat, then preparing for and holding a celebration of the life of my dear teacher, Tom Best, who died about a month ago, and cleaning up afterwards.

I was with some of the dearest people I know. Smart, good, resourceful people. Beautiful, fun, funny, loving, adorable, competent, capable people. I met new people I’d love to know better. People came in from Serbia, Germany, Arizona, New York, Florida, and elsewhere.

Since nearly everyone there had at least taken NLP practitioner training (Tom taught NLP, but he really taught love), and some much more advanced training, the quantity and quality of resourcefulness present in the circle honoring him was probably more than I’ve ever experienced. Maybe more than I’m likely to experience again. Of course, I leave room for unlikely possibilities. I don’t know the future. But that was one illustrious company to be part of.

And finally, I am home, by myself, and it feels so expansive and relaxing to have this solitude.

I cherish this time to sort through my impressions, understand people more deeply, absorb and integrate the experience at my own pace.

More from the world’s oldest living yoga teacher: she tangos!

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I found this 2006 YouTube video of Tao Porchon-Lynch, whom I posted about recently in The world’s oldest living yoga teacher.

This video was made in 2006, when Tao was “only” 86.

Isn’t she adorable? I aspire to be like her when I’m 86.

Oh, and she also likes to waltz, jitterbug, samba, cha-cha, foxtrot, and tango.

“It lightens up your spirit,” she says.

15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy

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15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy.

I was so impressed by reading 15 Power Things Happy People Do Differently that I checked out more of Purpose Fairy’s website and found another jewel.

This one, as the title says, is about things you can give up to increase your level of happiness.

These are things we often do without thinking, such as believing we cannot do something, talking negatively to ourselves, making excuses, being afraid. All are makers of unhappiness.

It seems easy to say something like “give up your need for control”. Hoo boy, this is a big one! We all would like to have more control over what happens to us! I know I would.

So here’s a way to examine it. Think of something that bothers you. Is it something you yourself do? Then you have some control over it.

If it is something another person does, then you don’t really have control. You might as well give up the needing to control them and just let them be them. Serenity Prayer and all. You will have less inner and outer conflict in your life and more inner and outer peace.

I want that.

You can make this list work for you by first noticing something that makes you feel unhappy. Go down the list. Are you blaming? Complaining? Criticizing? Trying to impress someone? Odds are, it’s on this list.

Now imagine what it would be like if you didn’t do that. How would your life be changed? What if you no longer had the ability to do that?

Try that on and see how it feels. See how you feel.

The beauty is, once you imagine it, you are changed. Your brain now has a choice that you may not have recognized before.

The  more you train your brain to be happy, the more it starts behaving in a happy way.

Before you know it, you’re a lot happier.

15 Powerful Things Happy People Do Differently

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15 Powerful Things Happy People Do Differently.

Worth reading. Some are pretty obvious, like love versus fear, forgiveness versus unforgiveness, praising versus criticizing, challenges versus problems.

Think about this: meaning versus ambition.

They do the things they do because of the meaning it brings into their lives and because they get a sense of purpose by doing so. They understand that “Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life” like Wayne Dyer puts it, and they care more about living a life full of meaning rather than, what in our modern society we would call, living a successful life.

I also discovered a new “life hacking” site, Purpose Fairy: Ideas and suggestions about life. I signed up for their emails because it seems I am on a quest for inspiration!

When the teacher is the teaching: Tom Best.

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I figure I spent a thousand hours with Tom Best between 2007 and April 21, 2012, three days before his death.

I took NLP practitioner training as a student in Austin. Then evolutionary NLP in Dallas. Nightwalking in Wimberley. NLP master practitioner as a student, Austin. evolutionary NLP in Maui. NLP practitioner as a training assistant, Austin. Nightwalking at Buescher State Park, Smithville. NLP master practitioner as a training assistant, Austin. The Tom Best and Steve Daniel workshop using sound, Austin.

Several times I attended the first weekend and last day of practitioner trainings when I wasn’t a student or training assistant, to see him and Bobbi and my friends who also assisted, and to meet the new students and lend my support, and to re-experience “beginner’s mind” with NLP.

On April 21, I took a day of evolutionary NLP at Alma de Mujer, and he died three days later.

He was my teacher, and he was the teaching, my heart realizes now, after he left.


He was not really my friend, in the sense that we didn’t hang out in our off time and let our hair down together. Outside of teaching, he was a private man, a little shy and reserved, already giving a great deal of himself, a world-traveling teacher seriously devoted to spending his non-teaching time at home with his wife Bobbi and their dogs and cats.

But he was friendly from the start, and I felt love for him and from him.

Who knows how he saw me? I don’t think I can even begin to see myself as he saw me in 2007 or how he saw me on April 21. I can tell you that I changed, that his teachings transformed me, and others witnessed that. Among my long-time friends, I am known for having changed.

I have had many teachers in this lifetime. Many were teachers who did not even know they were my teacher because I read their books or watched them on video. Many many many more didn’t know they were teachers — they said or did something I learned from, sometimes what to move away from, and sometimes what to move toward.

I signed up for in-person lessons and cracked myself wide open to take in Tom Best along with his teachings more than I have to any other teacher, besides my parents, in this lifetime. I poured myself into the NLP pot, and he cooked me.

He was at the front of the room, talking, waving his long fingers around, drawing the VAKOG face, telling the Lake Conchas story and so many more, demonstrating a technique, explaining concepts, giving instructions, telling us to take an 11 minute and 17 second break, then ringing a bell to bring us back together…

When I started pract training, I quickly figured out that the academic learning style (dissociated, conceptual) that I had experienced so much of in school and college (and done well with) was not going to work. This NLP required experiential learning, and the only way to do it was to learn with my whole self — to take it in as much as I could, ask for help when I needed it, and then just do it. And then do it again, better. And again and again and again. And to later, to offer my help.

I can hear Tom’s voice right now, explaining the journey from unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence.

I can hear him saying, “There’s no such thing as failure, only feedback.”

He gave us permission and encouragement to put ourselves out there, on the line, and do the techniques imperfectly. Just do it. I learned to accept doing something imperfectly, to forgive myself for being less than perfect, and to recognize that repetition creates mastery (along with tape editing).

I now see that that’s what made him such a great teacher, putting himself out there, on the line, over and over again, for years, around the world. He just got better at it, so that on Saturday, April 21, he almost seemed to consist more of pure energy (the energies of his intent, presence, attention, clarity, and love) than of matter or ego.

Some of my notes from that day:

Intention is of the tonal. It’s about your desired outcome.

Intent requires no thought. It is gratitude, alignment, participation, connection. (It is of the nagual.)

“Intend to align with realization,” I wrote.

That is so him! He was that teaching. See what I mean about him being the teaching?

Learning NLP the NLP way was exhausting. I went home from each day of practitioner training drained, needing to do something that didn’t require thinking, like watch a funny movie or just veg out.

When I assisted, some other students experienced that too.

I realize now that NLP training required my focused attention for hours at a time in a way that not much else had required. In school, I had learned quickly and then stared out the window, lost in my own private thoughts, while others struggled.

In the NLP pract classroom, I was not an A student. I struggled and was lost sometimes, which challenged me to become a training assistant so I could take it again.

Little did I know that I was building attentive stamina. 

Energy flows where attention goes. — Huna wisdom taught by Tom Best

I was also practicing intent, aligning with realization. Gratitude, alignment, participation, connection.

I’m very grateful that I served as a training assistant so I could take pract training again. It was much lighter and less exhausting, and I got even more out of it the second time around. I integrated the concepts and experiences more deeply. I was both student and training assistant for master practitioner too.

I had wanted to assist at each level one more time.

So for a thousand hours, my attention was on him, watching him speak and move, hearing his voice, taking him in with my whole self. His skinny, graceful, long-fingered, elegant, story-telling, teaching, sly, aligned, humble, gracious, personable, receptive, gently challenging, channeling, funny, quirky, fluid, congruent, trance-inducing, masterful, realizing self.

Wisdom is knowing where to put your attention. — Tom Best

I put my attention on you, Tom, over and over again, and it’s like in the grief process where you bring the person into your heart, instead of feeling their absence. You are in here, man. You are so present in my mind and in my heart as I absorb your life and teachings even more and make meaning of it all.

And then you did something a bit surprising and very human. You died. You lived your life well and fully, and then you slipped away, in your sleep, painlessly, quickly, easily.

So I just need to say this one more time, or a thousand more times:

You modeled love, love, love. Mahalo for showing the way.

Thanks to the Facebook group The Grace of Tom Best for all of the photos except the small blue one where he’s seated (that’s mine from April 21).

The rainbow-bridge, huayruro seeds, the long body, and the nagual: a tribute to Tom Best

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Part of Monday’s reading from The American Book of the Dead by E.J. Gold, which I’m reading for my teacher Tom Best, who died this past week, is this:

If my attention is concentrated and clear, I will merge into the heart of the beloved, in a halo of light called the rainbow-bridge, and attain completion in the region known as Endowed-with-Glory.

The heart of the beloved here refers to an unveiled vision of reality. The clear light and the region known as Endowed-with-Glory are metaphors for the sea of the nagual, to my mind.

So much love, and such clear attention. He is still teaching me.

For the past few days, all the readings (and there are readings for 49 days after death) have mentioned the “rainbow bridge” or the “rainbow light.” When I realized that, I got GUS (god-universe-spirit) bumps because of the following story:

For many years, at the end of many of his trainings and workshops, Tom gave out “rainbow seeds” to his students. They are actually the seeds of the huayruro plant, from Peru. They are beautiful hard seeds of shiny red with a black spot. They are believed to bring powerful good luck and are often strung into necklaces and otherwise made into jewelry.

Tom’s instructions were to give these rainbow seeds away, and to give them to either a person or a place that signified excellence or devastation. In other words, a person or place of exceptional excellence, or a person or place in need of healing. (I am hearing his voice speak these words so clearly as I type, as I often do these days.)

I’ve dropped rainbow seeds in areas that have been ugly or devastated, and in spots so beautiful they took my breath away, and I’ve also given them to many people, for one or the other reason. I have also received one, which I mixed in with the others, and I don’t know which one it is now! I will give them all away.

I actually gave one to Tom once, when he was telling my master practitioner class about losing his beloved dog Dakota (whom I met when I first met Tom in the late 1990s), openly weeping as he spoke, sharing his sudden loss with us–and modeling how to let our emotions flow through us.

Tom gave these seeds out at numerous trainings every year all around the world, and the people he gave them to have also distributed them to people and places they’ve encountered. Tom called this “building rainbow bridges.”

We recipients now connect to each other on this planet, through him, the healed and the in-need-of-healing, the beautiful and devastated (because don’t we all–and this planet–have potential for both, and isn’t such a state always fluid?), and this bridge lives on even though he has transcended his earthly life, continuing its transformation in us. It’s almost as if he foresaw this happening.

Now that is wisdom, living through the long body. What a master.

Tom, you have been building rainbow bridges for years before passing. I realize I am doing these readings mostly for me (and with Bobbi Best when she is able to join me), because I don’t think you need my help at all in this transition.

My emotional body finds it hard to say goodbye, although I moved some heavy grief hucha up and out at ecstatic dance on Sunday. My spirit body feels Tom’s presence within and around me.

You were my teacher and also the teaching in how you lived your life. Mahalo for showing me that. You know how to move into the nagual. Love, just love, love, love, Tom.

(Thanks to my friend from Maui, Erich Wolf, for posting the photo of the huayruro seed above, to Istok Pavlovic, Catharine Stuart Lord, and Nikola Jovanovic for the photos and posters of Tom and his words of wisdom and how to save high-resolution versions, and to Luzia Helena Wittman for sharing the photo of the footprints in the sand–taken by Tom of his own footprints in Portugal–on the Facebook group The Grace of Tom Best. Mahalo, my friends.)

For more about Tom, I wrote a later post that you might also like to read: When the teacher is the teaching: Tom Best.

Meeting Tom Best, who became my teacher

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Whew. I can tell this is going to be some blogging that will take a few days to write, as my experience sifts itself into lasting words, and I’ll probably reread and retouch it a few times after posting as the clarifying process continues its magic. I don’t know now how it will come out, but it’s time to start writing.

Someone who has been important in my life, a teacher primarily and also a friend, since 2007 died, shuffled off his mortal coil, transitioned to a higher plane, passed away, left the planet, shed his body, entered the clear light, or however you like to put it.

I like how my friend Katie broke the news to me:

MaryAnn, I have some sad news to share, but not really.

She told me that our teacher, Tom Best, had had a brain hemorrhage on Monday afternoon. He took a nap, and when his wife Bobbi went to wake him up, he was breathing but didn’t wake up. Their dogs licked him, and he still didn’t wake up.

It sort of gets garbled here but he was taken to two hospitals because the first one couldn’t do a brain scan or something like that, and he looked like he was just sleeping and could just wake up at any moment, and with his wife and dearest friends gathered around him, the doctor didn’t hold out much hope but agreed to leave him on a ventilator overnight to see if his condition changed (it didn’t), and on Tuesday afternoon, he left his earthly body surrounded by loved ones.

People who were there said that as they stood around his bed as he was leaving his body, it was as if they sensed someone entering the room, and that energy seemed to be above them, and then it was gone.

I really want to thank Katie for telling me like that. This has been a really different experience of processing a death/absorbing a loss than I’ve experienced before, and much of it has to do with the person who died, and some of it has to do with me.

I first met Tom Best in 1998 or 1999, when I went to visit my friend Linda in Prescott, Arizona. She was close friends with Tom and Bobbi Best. We went to their place to borrow their new adorable white German Shepherd puppy Dakota and take him for a frolic in the forest. Linda introduced me to Tom, and I remember meeting a slight, wiry man with gray hair, kind of average in beauty, greeting me with a gaze that was really different from what I’d experienced before.

His eyes were very blue, a warm blue, and his attention was totally on me for those few moments of introduction with the best eye contact I’d experienced. I felt that he was genuinely interested in me. I felt an openness, a curiosity, a direct energetic connection, and a feeling of caring emanating from him in those few moments of the typical greeting ritual we all know so well in which names are exchanged and hands shaken.

I felt seen. I felt engaged. I felt cared for. Wow, all that in just a few seconds!

As I would later learn from him, I had just experienced news of difference.

I am pretty sure that was the first time I met anyone who transmitted his presence so clearly and directly to me, and I could not have described our first meeting like I just did had I not had him for a teacher later on.

I tucked that memory away, and in 2007, I was dating a man, Norm Sternfeld, who had studied NLP, and I thought of Linda who had studied NLP, and I thought to myself,

Hmm. People who study NLP use their minds well. I want to study NLP.

So I enrolled in practitioner training here in Austin, Texas, and when I showed up the first day, there was that same guy, Tom Best, whom I’d met in Arizona eight or so years earlier, at the front of the classroom, and in a very short time, I knew I was in the right place.

to be continued…

It’s spring cleansing time! Liver/GB cleared, reduced allergies, reduced anger

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I’m reblogging a post about spring cleansing from last March because it got a lot of views back then and it still applies! I’m currently nearing the end of this year’s spring cleanse, which I started a couple of days after the solstice.

Last spring, after doing the colon/parasite cleanse, I finally cleared my liver and gallbladder of hardened bile (green stones). This may seem like not a big deal, but it is. There appears to be a link between the health of the liver and allergies.

In Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, there’s also a link between the health of the liver and the emotions — specifically the emotion of anger and its relatives, irritability, exasperation, annoyance, outrage, hatred, fury, and so on. You can google “liver anger” to learn more.

Since clearing those organs of stones, anger appears less often and dissipates more quickly in my life. Of course anger is part of a full, healthy range of emotions, but have you ever noticed that some people are inordinately angry (at others or themselves)? That is not pleasant to experience or be around!

If you go through life feeling angry, consider that your organs play a big role in your biochemistry, including emotional, and you can change your emotional makeup toward less anger and more happy feelings by cleansing those organs.

Here’s the original post, dated March 30, 2011:

I started the colon/parasite cleanse today. It’s spring! Time to clean out the system! I do this twice a year.

I wrote about this last fall. You can click this link to my earlier post, which contains instructions for the colon/parasite cleanse, which is fairly simple, and information about the liver/gallbladder flush, which is more complex but worth doing.

I didn’t provide instructions for the flush because it’s complicated, and in my opinion, if you’ve never done it before, it’s best done under the supervision of an expert, experienced health care practitioner who’s quickly available should you have any questions or problems.

One new bit of information to note: The company that makes Paracidin, which rids the body of parasites in the liver, gallbladder, spleen, and pancreas, has changed the name of that product to Paratosin. The labels, including dosage and ingredients, are identical except for the name.

Another new bit of information that I’ve heard or read from several sources: allergies are related to liver toxicity. I’m not sure about this, but thought I’d put it out there. If you have experience or information on this, please share.

My respiratory allergies have decreased dramatically over time. I had NAET acupuncture treatment in 2000 (when I moved back to Austin, allergy capital of the world), and it made a substantial difference.

Before NAET, Seldane or Claritin every day, year round, plus at least one sinus infection per year requiring antibiotics.

After NAET, I’d take an occasional Claritin, and I’ve had only one sinus infection in the 10 years since, when I walked to and from work on a windy day last spring after a long dry spell — exposing myself to lots of pollen. Acupuncture helped me recover from that.

NAET worked pretty well for me.

I’ve done the liver/gallbladder flush twice a year (two nights in a row each time) for about 3 years. I rarely take medication for allergies any more. I feel unpleasant side effects if I take Claritin, so if I’m having nasal congestion and sneezing, I take a homeopathic remedy, Histaminum hydrochloricum, and that does the trick. I use it maybe once a week at peak pollen times. My body doesn’t respond to allergens like it used to. (Another day I’ll post on the NLP allergy cure, which has probably also made a difference.)

So it’s possible that the flush has improved my liver’s health and reduced my allergies. They haven’t gotten worse. (This does not apply to my gluten sensitivity, just to airborne allergens.)

Here’s a link to an article I found with much more information on the liver/gallbladder cleanse, including what actually happens in those organs.

The instructions are pretty close to what my acupuncturist says. She has me test my pH before doing the flush to make sure my body is clearly alkaline, and she has me do it two nights in a row. She also suggests taking magnesium malate when it’s difficult to make fresh, organic apple juice in quantity.

More about my trauma recovery process (my hero’s journey)

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Whew. I am going through a period in which I am feeling rather slammed — commuting several days a week 30 miles for a temp job, pet- and house-sitting, running errands after work, trying to do at least a couple of massages a week, and get in a little bit of fun and socializing. I’m squeezing time to get this post done! Oh, the life of a blogger….

I was talking with some friends over dinner last night, and the topic turned to trauma recovery. I want to write more about what that process involved for me.

I don’t believe that everyone else’s recovery process is like mine. Each person’s is different. Some might be shorter or longer, depending on the level of commitment to healing, the quality of help available, how much/how long ago/how suppressed, your self-discovery abilities, and your available time.

I did the majority of my processing over about two years, with the first nine months being most intense. The trauma happened when I was a child, occurred once, and was suppressed for many years. I had access to a psychotherapist for the first six months, and she was not a specialist in trauma recovery. I ended up doing a lot of work on my own using journaling and reflection and talking to people, and I did the most intense work during a three-month period when I was between jobs when I could put all my resources into it.

Of course, the healing process continues even now, but it’s on an as-needed basis.

Today recovery would be faster because the tools have gotten better and I know more now.

During that recovery period, trauma processing was my biggest commitment, besides working to put a roof over my head. Which was good, because trauma recovery requires self-absorption. I had neglected developing myself in this way for years, in hindsight, and I was motivated because I did not want to have PTSD. I was engaged in the recovery process, sometimes emotionally exhausted from putting the pieces back together. It was gratifying and satisfying inner work.

My social life was sporadic while processing. I benefitted greatly from the support of my friends and family, who were tolerant that I was actively involved in remembering and reframing my past. I am still deeply grateful for this. They put up with hearing me say “When Margaret was murdered…” a lot when the revelations were coming quickly and thickly, and only one person told me she was tired of hearing about it. Bless her heart.

I was not interested in dating and would not have considered it during this time. It never crossed my mind that a prospective partner would have been interested in me while I was integrating some emotionally gruesome memories, and if one had been, it would not have been a balanced, healthy relationship. I simply didn’t have the energy to put into a new relationship while I was actively recovering from trauma, and I needed more from others than I could give back.

After, yes. I was a lot juicier after!

During those two years, I accessed a lot of suppressed memories, brought them into consciousness, re-felt the emotions, and sorted these memories into some kind of coherent chronological order, which people traumatized as children often must do. I reframed my life.

I filled well over a dozen composition books with my journaling, including writing down the most vivid dreams I’ve ever had. Those dreams kept me on the path, told me I was moving in the right direction even though sometimes it was difficult. They promised me light at the end of the tunnel, and so it came to pass.

I learned how to tell my story and include not just the dissociated facts, but also my actual experience — what my tender young self saw, heard, and felt. Some of the “felt” part of my experience, and some of what I saw and heard, had been missing from my story before.

I read a lot about trauma recovery and PTSD. The most significant book was Waking the Tiger. I’ve written about this book several times. I understood for the first time that trauma affects the body and mind, the heart and spirit, that humans really are animals no matter how we try to elevate or distance ourselves above the other species, and recovery must include releasing energy blocks in the body as well as cognitive work, social/relational/emotional work, and spiritual work.

I’ve mentioned before that I spontaneously released the trauma from my body one day after reading most of the book.

During recovery, I gained perspective that I had not had before. My view of myself and my life became larger than it had ever been. I understood myself in a new way. I made more sense to me.

I remember sitting on my front porch, journaling and experiencing what I call “brain clicks”. The best way I can describe them is that I was remaking my map of the world, especially updating the parts that had stayed frozen from when I was 11. I literally felt something happen inside my head that was like reality clicking into place. Maybe it was me getting congruent.

I contacted people who’d known my family back then and listened to what they had to say. It was good to reconnect and get a bigger picture of how it affected them.

I planned and held a long-overdue celebration of my sister’s short life.

One of the most momentous days in my life was the day I learned the name of the murderer and that he (as of 2002) was living in Austin, not that far from where I’d lived for 10 years. We could have stood in line next to each other at the grocery store and never known our relationship.

I grew up that day. I developed compassion, not just for him, but for myself. Neither of us were any longer the people we were back then, me at 11, him at 15. I understood that he’s had to live with knowing his young self murdered a little girl for all these years and devastated her family. Not an easy burden to carry. I wish him peace.

All this makes it sound like I undertook a deliberate process. That would be wrong (except for the celebration). Traumatic memories began erupting, I went to therapy, got a diagnosis and a start on processing, and from then on, I just surrendered to the process. I couldn’t have stopped it if I had wanted to, and it was very compelling to have those great dreams, to recover lost memories (even if unpleasant) and know more of my story, to experience those brain clicks, and most of all, to become more and more present, once my past was in order.

When I committed to recovering from my childhood trauma, I made a commitment to my health, which is still in place.

It’s not that I’m the healthiest person around. I am fairly healthy, although I can still be triggered, especially when stressed and presented with an unexpected negative surprise. I am committed to move in the direction of health as best I can, making the happier, healthier choice when I know what that is. Happier does not always mean doing cartwheels, either. It can mean letting go, and it can mean allowing the big picture to unfold over immediate gratification.

I am not a great person but a human one. I feel stupid after I realize I’ve been triggered. Embarrassed. Foolish. You are not that person.

Sometimes I’m at a loss as to what to do, if anything. I just wait, listening and looking for a clear sign. Sometimes needing a lot of space does not mean total disconnection.

I send support to everyone who finds the courage to face themselves and rewrite their story in this way. It requires great valor. It’s truly a hero’s journey, and I recommend learning as much about the hero’s journey as you can, through books and film and reflection on your own journey. Joseph Campbell, Carol Pearson, and Stephen Gilligan provide enlightenment about this process.

You are the hero of your own life, and I honor your path and your courage.

Namaste.

Repost: 12 Life Lessons Learned in 12 Years on the Road

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I loved this post from the blog Marc and Angel Hack Life: Practical Tips for Productive Living. Every single post on their blog is a list of tips that begins with a number.

Some of my favorite bits of this post, 12 Life Lessons Learned in 12 Years on the Road, are below:

What you do every day is what’s most important. – The difference between who you are and who you want to be, is what you do. You don’t have to be great to get started, but you do have to get started to be great.  

You can’t always be agreeable.  – That’s how people take advantage of you.  You have to set boundaries.  Don’t ever change just to impress someone.  Change because it makes you a better person and leads you to a better future.  

You DON’T want perfect people in your life. – Even though you probably sometimes get confused, you don’t really want your friends and lovers to be perfect.  What you do want is people you can trust, who treat you right – people you can act silly with, who love being around you as much as you love being around them.  

The truth is always the best choice. – Respect and trust are two of the easiest things in life to lose and the hardest to get back.  Never make a big decision when you’re angry, and never make a big promise when you’re overjoyed.  Never mess with someone’s feelings just because you’re unsure of yours. 

Everyone’s story is more complicated than it seems. – Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours.  It’s not always the tears that measure a person’s pain, sometimes it’s the smile they fake.  Not all scars show.  Not all wounds heal by themselves.  You usually can’t see the pain that someone feels.  Don’t judge a person negatively for their past or feelings without a full understanding of their situation.  

You are not alone in being alone. – To lose sleep worrying about a friend.  To have trouble picking yourself up after someone lets you down.  To feel like less because someone didn’t love you enough to stay.  To be afraid to try something new for fear you’ll fail.  None of this means you’re dysfunctional or crazy.  It just means you’re human, and that you need a little time to right yourself.  You are not alone.  

Click the link above to read the whole post.