We live on a planet that is trying to juggle the wants and needs of 8 billion people. It's not easy, and that means that things can not always go our way. Sometimes there will be setbacks, obstacles and stumbling blocks on the path of life. We can either see these temporary setbacks as the opportunities for growth that they are, or we can let them define us failures.In this…
I know it, and you know it. Terrible things happen to wonderful people and wonderful things happen to people who've done tremendous harm. If even a great man like Gandhi was assassinated, what chance do the rest of us have at a peaceful and good life?! So how can we understand the seeming unfairness in our world? How should we exist in, and respond to, an unfair world? Should we…
To be alive is to be on a lifelong mission of learning. That means that we will have regrets, mistakes, failures, setbacks and difficult challenges in our lives. While we think our past determines our present, it's actually how we relate to our past that matters. In this podcast, I talk about how we can change our relationship with a difficult past. I share ways we can reframe our pain,…
If we were to put all of our focus on one little ant, that ant would take up all of our attention and awareness. Similarly, even though there’s always so much happening within us and around us, if we put all of our focus on our thoughts, those thoughts will become the only things that exist to us. Similarly, when we become triggered because of traumatic events in our past, we…
In Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, we learn how Holocaust prisoners were more likely to survive if they felt there was some meaning to their senseless circumstances. In this evil place and time where life had no meaning, to survive meant finding and creating meaning wherever they could. For many, becoming hopeless meant certain death. Meaning and hope are like oxygen for the soul. So how do we…
Our minds are thinking machines, constantly jumping from thought to thought, constantly looking for something to overthink and obsess about. That's what they do, it's their job. A hand will do hand stuff and the mind will do thinking stuff.But what happens when our minds get out of control? What happens when they no longer think the positive thoughts we wish they would? What happens when they only dwell on…
From Path to Peace With Todd Perelmuter NewsletterIf you are breathing, you deserve happiness. Now, I don’t mean this as some political human right or some new-agey “soul” right. I also don’t mean that we deserve to always be laughing like fools. I don’t even mean that we deserve a perfect world or a world free from suffering, because that would not actually make us happy.If we remove the suffering…
Many of us try futilely to control every aspect of our lives. But control is an illusion. We can do our best to create a perfectly calm life, but life may have other plans for us. While we can't always control our circumstances, we can control how we experience and react to them. That is where mindfulness comes in. In this episode, Todd dives deep into the nature of our…
1. Loving others does need to start with loving ourselves.2. Our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship we have.3. By going through pain and surviving, we become examples to the world that they're not alone, that they can overcome, they can do better, and get better.4. No matter the question, love is always the answer. Forgiveness is freeing.5. Wear your scars proud my friend, for you can do…
From Path to Peace With Todd Perelmuter NewsletterWhen I was a kid, I didn’t always fit in. Growing up in Louisville, KY — a real college sports town — my artsy, peace-loving, and authority-questioning traits weren’t always welcomed. For example, in 7th grade I got suspended because on my school’s Community Service Day they made us rake the school playground. Well, I realized that this was a private school and the…
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