Buddha Balboa Archives - Liz Esquirol

The Pet Peeve (or Can You Not Do That, Please?)

Look. I say please…a lot. I was taught Please and Thank You and Bless You and Excuse Me and all the other niceties we share on a daily basis. But pet peeves, or things that annoy, are a whole different ball of wax. Different game, different rules. There are things that get under our skin – actions by others that we don’t get – and they bother us to beat the band. These pet peeves we’ve developed in life are subjective – your peeve may not be my peeve…by a mile. So what makes them grate against our sense of well-being? I mean, what does it matter if someone chews with their mouth open? Or taps their pencil incessantly when you’re trying to work? Or blows their nose at the dinner table while you’re still eating? (Oh, sorry, that’s my husband. He has a bit of a sinus issue and I forgive him because, well, that’s love.)

To Paragraph or To Post

A writer’s dilemma – do I paragraph or do I post? Producing content – consistently – is part of the game. And so I struggle with having to produce posts for my social media accounts to keep followers engaged AND to actually get down to the writing, the paragraphing, the story telling.

Time management gurus would say we all have the same 24 hours in a day – ok, sure, they are right. No one’s yet to create a formula to time travel or to magically attach an extra 60 minutes onto the earth’s rotation. There are places on our planet where they get more daylight, and others where darkness is predominant at certain times of the year. (Side note – how do people manage that? Talk about messing with your natural sleep cycles! I guess it’s a good thing I live in the northeast United States so I don’t have one more sleep obstacle to hurdle.)

The Art of Nothing Matters

Nothing matters. Nothing. No thing. Nada. Zip. Zero.

No, really – think about it. Your perceived insurmountable annoyances – your problems at work, your dwindling bank account, your bad knee, your ex, your age, your place in line, your broken toilet. These are but potholes in the highway of life. And dare I say, don’t really matter.

I want to be clear here – I’m not saying that what you experience and feel – and what you feel about those feelings isn’t real – they are. But they don’t really matter. Why? Because our judgement is cloudy at best – formed by our flat tires and the man-made belief in the concept of lack.

How to Beat Perfectionism: To “ER” is Human

Are we conditioned to have “er” thinking?

Moving through the department store, laden with beautiful fashion, I found my brain working overtime. As my eyes scanned the racks and my fingers grazed the clothes, my mind kept saying, “I wish I was younger, thinner, richer…I would love to wear all these beautiful things.” I could just picture it – that long lean midriff baring dress, that gorgeous designer silk top, that adorable short skirt. In my next life, I would come back as some greater form of my current self and be all these “er” things.