Tag: Life
The Summitless Path
What an unexpected hike revealed about life’s in-between seasons Last weekend, my friends and I decided to go on what was supposed to be an easy, well-trodden mountain hike that ended with a beautiful panoramic viewpoint — perfect for people who weren’t avid hikers. But when we got there, the trail was closed due to ...
For those who can’t get unstuck (even if they want to)
The past five years of my life have felt like continuous upward momentum — an era of growth, healing, discovery and expansion (despite a few setbacks, of course). But a couple of months ago, that momentum suddenly came to a halt. It was as if my body had hit the emergency brakes before my mind ...
How to Overcome Indecision, Doubt, and Dissatisfaction with Your Life Choices
The more I've had to make life-altering decisions, the more I've come to realize that it's nearly impossible to make the perfect choice. That's because the "perfect choice" rarely exists. Every path requires sacrifice. Saying "yes" to one path means saying "no" to another, and walking through one door means leaving another one unopened. We ...
Finding Self-Respect: The Power of Walking Away
When I was younger, I used to pride myself on constantly making a martyr of myself for other people. While I do still pride myself on having the self-control to be kind to people who are not kind to me, to refuse to fight fire with fire, to stay classy when I could easily be ...
Learning to Tell the Truth, Even If It Hurts
Early childhood experiences led me to believe that my real opinions and feelings didn't matter. I learned that the quickest way to gain approval was through compliance and agreeableness, and that I was responsible for regulating people's emotions for them, even if it meant abandoning myself. Whatever would cause less friction, keep the peace, or ...
Nostalgia: Reverence for the Moments that Shape Our Lives
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” – Dr. Seuss It's crazy how smallest things can trigger a sense of nostalgia. Like the smell of cigarette smoke, reminding you of the first time you moved out of home to live in that dingy apartment that you adored, ...
My Grandmother’s Memoir: Finding Meaning for the Past, Present, and Future
I never really knew my grandmother. But that all changed when I discovered she had begun writing her own memoir. It turned out that nine notebooks that made up my grandmother's memoir had been sent to my mom in Canada from the Philippines several years ago. They were handwritten in English and Tagalog, collecting dust ...
Enjoying vs. Enduring Life — Which One Are You Doing?
Last week, Vancouver was hit with its first snowfall of the season. As expected, the rain-accustomed city basically shut down when the snow reached its peak; bridges started to close, buses stopped running, cars got stuck, and classes got cancelled. And, sure enough, my lovely but prone-to-worry mother sent me a flood of texts urging ...
Challenging Your Assumptions and the Need to Predict
In an effort to minimize risk, we all have the tendency to predict possible outcomes and plan accordingly. To make these predictions, we can't help but draw from past experiences and preconceived notions of the world in order to keep ourselves safe. And this is not always a bad thing. Predicting and falling back on ...
A Meditator’s Advice for Measuring Progress with Anxiety or Depression
When it comes to mental health challenges like anxiety or depression, it can be tricky to measure progress in a tangible way than, say, weight loss. Progress is often slow, subtle, and incremental, and the changes we make on the inside are often barely detectable on the outside (at first). It's incredibly frustrating to feel ...
Celine Diaz: Real Talk 