Freedom means waking up and deciding to do something today,
with exactly what you have, for your happiness.
~Lori Deschene

JAN 10 NOTE: A winner has been chosen for the book giveaway — thanks to everyone who entered!

I am very happy to start this new year with a special guest: Lori Deschene, creator of the Tiny Buddha website and now author of the new book Tiny Buddha: Simple Wisdom for Life’s Hard Questions.

There are three important parts to this post, so listen up! I don’t want you to miss anything : )

• First, a mini-review of the book Tiny Buddha.
• Second, an interview that Lori generously gave for Liberated Life Project readers.
  
• And third, a contest! I’m delighted to give away a copy of Lori’s book to one of you. Details on how to enter at the bottom of this post.

MINI-REVIEW

Tiny Buddha: Simple Wisdom for Life’s Hard Questions (Conari Press, 2011)

Here’s what you need to know about this book, in a nutshell:

Insightful — Don’t let the sub-title fool you. The wisdom here may be “simple,” but it is not superficial. This book really does grapple with life’s difficult questions, which fall into nine categories: Pain, Meaning, Change, Fate, Happiness, Love, Money, Possibilities, Control. The questions themselves are compelling. Some of them include:

• “Can people change, and how?”
• “What does it take to be happy?”
• “Why are relationships hard?”

Lori offers her own insights as well as those of other people, and includes some very pragmatic tips for dealing with these challenges, such as a section of tips on how to “meet your future money expectations in the present” in the Money section.

Let me put it this way — there are 272 pages in this book. Not one of them is wasted. This book is dense with wisdom!

Generous — Lori graciously opened up her book (as she does with her website) to many voices of wisdom. This is a collaborative book, in the truest sense of the word. She invited people to contribute their answers via Twitter; nearly 1000 people responded. Lori read each of their answers and shaped the book around the suggestions in the tweets. The result is a fascinating collection of diverse perspectives on life.

Hidden Jewel — I first heard Lori speak at Wisdom 2.0 in 2010, and my impression was that she was one of those people who just has “everything together,” and probably has an easy time of life. So when I read Tiny Buddha, I was blown away by how courageously Lori  shares her own story of facing loneliness, financial challenges, depression, and inadequacy. By the end of the book, I felt like I was given a glimpse of another person’s soul, and I am deeply grateful to Lori for sharing her story so honestly so that others might also be able to grow from it. That, to me, is the definition of a bodhisattva.

To sum up, this is a wonderful book to keep by your bedside as challenging questions and situations come up in your own life. Lori is wise beyond her years, and we can all benefit from what she has created here with Tiny Buddha. If you aren’t the lucky winner in the giveaway below, you can pick up the book here on Amazon. (disclosure: affiliate link)

INTERVIEW WITH LORI

Maia: In the book, Tiny Buddha, you are so honest in sharing about some very difficult passages of your life, including struggles with depression and a deep sense of inadequacy. You point out that you became a master of numbing your own feelings. And then you made huge transformations in your life in the areas of your own spiritual growth, your livelihood, and more. How did you find the courage to look so clearly at those challenges and to make positive changes in your life?

Lori: I got to a point where I felt I simply couldn’t get any lower. In retrospect, that wasn’t true—there were a lot of things I could have done that, thankfully, I did not! But I felt such a total sense of self-loathing, and that had manifested in all kinds of destructive choices.

When I realized I was living my life alone, in a seedy NYC building, surrounded by tragedy and crime, constantly fighting myself and everything around me, I knew I had two choices: slowly die, or at least try to find a different way. At that point, I felt like I had nothing to lose, because all I had was my shame and my pain.

There was one quote that I remember created a profound mental shift me: Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% you react to it.

Suddenly I considered that maybe I didn’t have to be the victim in the story of everything bad that had happened to me—or everything dangerous and foolish I did to avoid feeling pain. I could be the protagonist in the story of accepting and dealing with all of it well.

So I just tried. And failed. And kept trying. And succeeded a little. And failed a little more. And here I am, still trying and stumbling here and there, but focusing on progress, not perfection.

Maia: How do you define liberation or freedom in your own life?

Lori: I define freedom as the ability to be fully where you are and accept what is without exacerbating your pain through negative, defeatist thinking. That being said, I don’t always create that type of freedom for myself! But I now do it more often than not, and that feels like a major victory.

Maia: What guidance would you offer to other people who are seeking to make big changes in their life, in the interest of living a more “liberated life”?

Lori: Start from the inside out. There’s no denying that it can be challenging to change the big external things in our lives—our homes, our jobs, and other parts of our circumstances. But where there’s a will, there’s a way.

We’re more apt to keep going when we need to find and try new ways if we’ve first made efforts to change the thinking that might keep us feeling stuck. We need to believe in the possibility of what we want to create for ourselves, but we also need to know that the future is always uncertain.

There are no guarantees we’ll create tomorrow exactly as we visualize it. But if we focus on making mental shifts that effect how we interpret and respond to the events in our lives, we’re more likely to make the best of tomorrow, whatever it entails—and we’re also more likely to create better conditions.

Maia: Do you have a spiritual practice of some kind? What role does it play in your life, and how do you benefit from it?

Lori: The heart of my spiritual practice is my writing, in that I have the opportunity to explore the issues that affect my sense of peace and happiness, and connect with other writers and readers who want to do the same thing.

That’s ultimately how I define spirituality: thoughts, feelings, and actions that give us a sense that we are part of something greater than ourselves, even if we don’t fully understand what that is.

I don’t hold any concrete religious beliefs. I belong to the church of “I don’t know”! But I do know that I am never alone, and whether or not I feel that way is entirely up to me. Having isolated myself through most of my younger years, I know the value of connection.

I also think spirituality is about having a connection to and with ourselves, and I do that most effectively when I prioritize yoga, deep breathing, and mindfulness in my daily life.

Maia: One of the things that I really appreciate about the Tiny Buddha website is how you have opened it up to other writers and given so many people a chance to share their own wisdom. That’s true of the book as well. Can you tell us more about what inspired you to take this approach in your work, and the consequences of it?

Lori: There are a couple of reasons why I decided to run Tiny Buddha this way.

The first pertains to my own needs, the most important of which is to be part of a community. I recognize that I don’t have all the answers, and that no matter what I learn, there is still so much room to grow.

It provides me with a great sense of joy and satisfaction to know that Tiny Buddha is not about me imparting wisdom to everyone else. It’s about all of us sharing what we’ve learned together.

The second reason is that I made an observation about what I believe people need in general. We may come to self-help sites to find information that we can use to improve our lives; but I think a greater driving need is to feel that we can make a difference in other people’s lives. I’m proud that Tiny Buddha provides that.

Maia: As the book Tiny Buddha goes out into the world, what is your greatest hope for it? What kind of impact would you like to see it make?

Lori: I’d like to see it help people let go of pain and open up to joy. That’s really the extent of it!

Maia: What do you most appreciate about your life right now?

Lori: I appreciate that I’ve made significant progress in multiple areas of my life, and, as a result, I now feel a sense of balance. But most of all, I’m grateful that I no longer torture to myself. There are still times when I can be hard on me in my head, but I’m no longer my own punching bag 24/7, and that truly is the best change in my life.

BOOK GIVEAWAY

Okay, it’s pretty simple! The prize is a copy of Lori’s book, Tiny Buddha. There are three ways you can enter… if you do all three, you have three chances you have to win. Deadline to enter is  January 10th. I’ll choose the winner then, and mail the book to that person shortly after.

1) Leave a comment below. You can say anything you want in your comment, but if you need some inspiration, give your own answer to the last question that I asked Lori: What do you most appreciate about your  life right now?

2) If you’re not already a member of Team Liberation, sign up to receive posts from the Liberated Life Project via email. (I won’t share your email with anyone, and it’s easy to unsubscribe if you ever want to do that.) If you’re already a subscriber, you don’t need to do so again… by leaving a comment below, you’ll automatically have two entries.

3) Tweet about it… post this on your Twitter feed:  RT @LLProject Tiny Buddha book giveaway… enter here! http://wp.me/p1fuuV-Eg

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