Ed and Deb Shapiro

It’s My Ego, Not Yours

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Ever caught yourself trying to defend your words or protect your actions, despite them being clearly inappropriate or even downright wrong, but your egomind just won’t let you do it? No way will you admit you were off the mark! Sound familiar? The ego is the “me-centered” part that gives us a strong sense of […]

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Dinner with Monica Lewinsky or How to Make Friends With Yourself

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Monica Lewinsky has been in the news recently, which reminded us of the time we met her at a friend’s dinner party in London, England. As we left we thought about how tough it can be to move on in life beyond difficult or challenging times, such as Monica had experienced when her life played […]

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Are You Hanging Out With Fear?

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There are many things to feel fearful about these days. While anger is hot and loud, fear is more subtle and pervasive. It also has many different disguises. On the one hand, fear is a natural response to physical danger, but on the other it can be self-created, such as the fear of failure, of […]

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Taming The Dragons In Your Mind

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Soon after Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years in jail Bill Clinton asked him if he was angry about how he had been treated. “Tell me the truth, when you were walking to freedom, didn’t you hate them?” Clinton asked, referring to Mandela’s jailors. “You must have been so angry!” “Sure I was,” Mandela […]

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Why Santa is the Coolest Dude Of All!

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If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.  Legendary Comedian Bob Hope Don’t let his appearance fool you. Santa may not look like a movie star but neither is he just a jolly old guy in a red outfit. He has the biggest heart, gives fabulous hugs, […]

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How To Get Your Motivation Going

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We watched as an eager young CNN television reporter asked the Dalai Lama what was the first thing he thought of when he awoke in the morning. We thought that this revered teacher and probably the world’s most well known meditator would say something deeply profound or insightful, such as along the lines of vowing […]

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Why We Look For Happiness In All The Wrong Places

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Our search for happiness becomes ever more urgent in our increasingly crowded and competitive world. An article on the HuffPost stated there are “over 75 million Google search results for the term and 40,000 happiness-related books available for purchase on Amazon… And it’s not necessarily helping us to become any happier.” Maybe that’s because happiness […]

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Are You Here And Now? If Not, Where?

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Do you live in your head? In your body? In your emotions? In your desires? Normally, we spend our time either living in what-could-have-been or what-might-have-been or if-only, or in the expectation of what-could-be or what-might-be, anywhere but here, constantly in either the past or the future. This is like being in a dream as […]

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Are You Happier Today Than You Were Yesterday?

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We were in Thailand, attending a ten-day silent meditation retreat in the middle of a coconut grove. Every day Ajahn Maha Dharma Tan, a Thai monk, would come to teach, and each day he would ask us the same question: “Are you happier today than you were yesterday?” As he said this, a wide smile […]

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Mindfulness & Meditation: What’s the Difference?

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“In any one day there are moments where there is nothing going on, but we link up what is happening from thought to thought without any space. We overlook the spaciousness that it’s all happening in,” Gangaji, from our new book The Unexpected Power Or Mindfulness & Meditation. Nowadays, mindfulness and meditation are often used […]

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