Susan Piver gives advice on working with a mind that can’t stop working over every detail. Question: I am a constant worrier. I replay every event, stress about any little mistake I make, and often fear I haven’t done a good enough job, even when I have done my very best. How do I work on this? Answer: Anxiety is so tricky. The nature of this trickiness is revealed by [...]
About Susan Piver
Loving the Many Sides of You
Susan Piver shares her practice for loving all of your imperfections and contradictions. Begin by offering loving-kindness to yourself in your ordinary form. This is the “you” that you see in the mirror. Next, imagine yourself as a beloved. See yourself through the eyes of love and offer loving-kindness to this version of yourself. No matter how puny you may feel right now, [...]
5 Ways Not to Bite the Trump Hook
Getting hooked by your habitual reactions isn’t going to help anyone, says Susan Piver. She suggests five ways you can respond more skillfully. Pema Chödrön famously introduced us to the notion of shenpa, which she defines as "biting the hook" of our habitual reactions. When someone leaves us, we may bite the hook of grasping. When something unfair happens, we may bite [...]
Offer Your Depression
Once I was in a meeting with a publisher to discuss a book I was writing (for which he had paid a tidy sum). He hated it. He hated me. We did not understand each other at all. I came to the meeting having thoughtfully considered his perspective, prepared to defend the points I was passionate about and compromise where possible. He came to the meeting with only two words for me: [...]
Six Ways to Make It Work
After the honeymoon, real life sets in—budgets to balance, toilet seats left up, and in-laws coming for dinner. Relationships aren’t easy, says Susan Piver, but if we practice the six paramitas, or transcendent perfections, we can discover how to live in love. Dharma practitioners are taught the critical importance of developing nonattachment (noticing without holding on as [...]
Going Beyond Republican and Democrat
It's a day before the 2012 US presidential election. Susan Piver knows who she's voting for. As for who she's rooting for? The answer to that one, you'll see, is "all of us." As you may know, I am a writer and blogger. I’m fortunate to have an active, caring audience and when I upload a post, it may get 10 to 100 comments, depending on the topic. One post, from May 2, [...]
Wisdom of a Broken Heart — a blog by Susan Piver. Part 2: Dashboard Confessional
My Wisdom of a Broken Heart book tour has taken me many places: DC, Durham, Asheville, Atlanta, Nashville, Austin, Boulder, and to the Shambhala Mountain Center where I taught a weekend workshop -- and tried to catch my breath. It has been a privilege to sit and talk with people around the country about their broken hearts and witness the extremely touching, tender strength [...]
Wisdom of a Broken Heart – Part 1: The Reluctant Road Warrior
So what the hell am I doing out here on a book tour, lugging around 6 weeks of outfits, staying in friends’ spare bedrooms, and generally hoping to hold the humiliation factor to a minimum? (There’s almost nothing more embarrassing than showing up at a place where they have giant posters of your joyful-yet-understanding face, Shaq-sized stacks of books framing them—and it’s [...]
My Vows
Love all beings? Love even one? Either way, your heart breaks open. Susan Piver ponders the choiceless choices. So far, I’ve made two vows that have changed my life. One was related to my Buddhist practice—to become a bodhisattva. The other was to become a wife. A bodhisattva is a person who vows to help all beings reach enlightenment, no matter how many lifetimes it [...]
Out of Fear
Meditation wasn't the great panacea Susan Piver had hoped for, because fear and the other negative emotions didn't just go away. But it did lead her to a surprising discovery—to fear less you've got to open more. When I began practicing Buddhism in 1995, I hoped it would help me cope with depression, make me more loving, and, mainly, decrease the level of fear that seemed [...]
