Personal Growth & Transformation Archives - Page 32 of 54

How Helping People Can Change Your Life

In the past few years I have made some drastic changes in my life. After 20 years of working as a senior economist at the Central Bank of Israel, I decided to move into the field of art. I make large statues from wood and bronze, and modern art works on big industrial iron plates. Two years ago I decided to write a book, which I named Secrets of Kindness: A Journey Among Good People. The book is a collection of stories about people who help others.

Why did I do this? Why did I leave a safe and steady career to pursue the uncertain calling of art and writing?

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How to Make Peace with Your Dark Past

By Anne - Sophie Reinhardt / 23 Comments

We all have our crosses to bear. We can all recall times in our lives when we were in dire places. Maybe we had a mental illness, maybe we were in a bad relationship, maybe we were in debt or maybe we just made a lot of unfortunate decisions that got us into big trouble.

And as we’re human beings, we beat ourselves up over it. We get stuck in a pattern of trying to figure out why we did what we did, why we were so stupid, so dumb or so naive.

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5 Ways to Change Your Mind About Change

By Dani DiPirro / 7 Comments

Change is inevitable. No matter what you do, you will, at some point (and probably at many points) experience change. Whether it’s good or bad, you will have to deal with it and, even when change is a good thing, you might find it difficult to accept it.

Personally, I struggle with change. Even good change can be tricky for me to deal with. For example, about six months ago I left my job to focus on my site, PositivelyPresent.com, full time. I initiated this change—and was thrilled about it—but it was still a struggle to get used to the idea that I would be in control of my own business.

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A Soul-Freeing Guide to Get Your Life Back

By Marcella Chamorro / 12 Comments

We all have a limited time to live a remarkable life. Some people live for seconds, days, years, decades — but nobody is here forever. All of that seems very morbid — and it is — but there is a powerful motivator behind this concept, as well.

It’s this motivator that is keeping me focused. You can’t forget dying. It’ll make living that much better.

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Welcoming Change

By Bobbi Emel / 63 Comments

Monique sent us a kaleidoscope. But it wasn’t the beautiful, smoothly-sanded wood or the delicate glass end piece that moved us. It was the note in the box.

Dear Ruth and Bobbi, Looking through a kaleidoscope, I find that I love the scene in front of me. It’s so intricate and beautiful, I just want to look at it forever. But eventually, I have to turn the glass. The tiny pieces inside jumble around and, for an instant, there is chaos. Yet soon a new, even more exquisite pattern emerges. One I would not have seen if I had not turned the kaleidoscope. I send you this to remind you that your current journey is much like the turning of the glass: A new, beautiful picture is coming into view.

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How to Improve Your Self-Esteem

By Natalie / 26 Comments

I struggled with low self esteem for most of my life. When I was young, most of the feedback I got from my mother was “You could do better”. If I got a ‘B’ on my report card I was told “You could do better”. It didn’t matter what household chore: dusting, washing dishes, cleaning my room. It was always “You could do better” followed by a series of corrections. Sometimes her reaction was “Can’t you do anything right?”

The meaning I gave to these events was that “I’m not good enough”, “I can never be good enough”, “I’m stupid”, “I’m incompetent”. No wonder I had low self-esteem! It took me years to realize that the negative meanings I gave things were wrong.

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Who’s Cooking Dinner? (The Changing Female Brain)

By Beryl Thomas / 23 Comments

‘What’s for dinner?’ asked my youngest son. ‘I have no idea’, I replied. ‘I’m not that kind of Mum anymore’. Before you castigate me for being a bad mother, this youngest son is actually aged 19 and for a year lived away from home at College on another continent before he flew back to the nest!

Still, it did seem a bit strange even to me. Why had I gone from a stay-at-home Mom who played nurse, taxi, housekeeper, cook and Counsellor to ‘feeling’ almost completely disinterested in these roles?

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Perception of a Changing World. My Journey to a Better Life.

By Justin Harmon / 20 Comments

I was twenty-seven years old when I saw a glimpse of how I would perceive the world in the future. Of course I didn’t realize it at the time, but the events that would follow from that time in my life, would alter my views and beliefs forever.

I went on an inner journey to discover what it was that I should do with my life. I had felt lost most of my life. I never really wanted a regular job. I didn’t like the idea of working until I was 70 so I could “retire”. Heck, I didn’t like the idea of working period. I wanted something more with my life. I wanted meaning. To do something that aligned with my non-conformist ways of how I perceived the world.

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How Breaking the Rules Taught Me to Trust Myself

By Jennifer Boykin / 47 Comments

I’m the strange one in my family. I don’t always follow the rules. In fact, sometimes I’ve intentionally set out to break them. Because I think some of those asinine rules, are sort of – well, asinine. And, if they’re dumb enough and they continue to hurt or limit me, I simply let them go, and live my own beautiful life.

Here are some of the rules I’ve broken over the years:

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How I Quit My Job, Moved to a Foreign Country, and Became a Ninja

By Izzy / 67 Comments

Sometimes people say strange things, odd things, things that make you do a double take. Do you ever think about quitting your job, moving to a far away land, and pursuing some crazy dream? Me too, a few times.

Sorry, I’m being melodramatic. Let me rephrase that. It crossed my mind about a thousand times. Notice the past tense. So I did it. I quit my job, I moved to Japan, I am pursuing my childhood dream: I’m trying to become a ninja. Today I want to share my story in hopes of inspiring and encouraging you to follow your dreams.

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Four and a Half Years of Change … and a Goodbye

By Ali Luke / 67 Comments

It’s well over four years since I first wrote a post for The Change Blog … and during that time, my own life has changed dramatically. Today is also a goodbye (and you’ll understand why when you get to the end of this post).

Today is also a goodbye (and you’ll understand why when you get to the end of this post). Thanks for being part of my journey – and I hope that you’ll find something in my experiences that gives you new inspiration or motivation with your own life. Here are the past four and a half years in my life … and what I learned from them

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