Unbinding the Heart really means to bring awareness to those areas we have restricted in our hearts and start to let go, open up, and practice staying open no matter what happens or doesn't happen.
A friend of mine helped me find my confidence by trusting the knowledge that I was not alone in writing my first book. She helped me wake up to the fact that I had a source of creativity that was my true creative nature and when I embraced it and asked for this presence in my life, I felt as if the dam of the Niagra Falls had burst and all sorts of wonderful things started to happen when I found my voice. It has been a process ever since and I am now a big advocate in the message that we are not alone and we all have ample creativity within us if we just trust it.
What inspires me is helping others to become more of who they are and to learn to become radically generous with each other.
My mother found a way out of a little one-bedroom apartment in Athens, Greece to bring Arianna to Cambridge to study economics and bring me to the Royal Academy in London with very few financial resources and no connections. She didn't know anybody in England, but she found a way. Her love for her daughters and seeing what they could be, motivated her and gave her the chutzpah, the courage, to break down barriers. When you have the motivation of love, you will find the way.
I'm not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.
Treat yourself as if you were someone inexpressibly dear to you.
When something isn't coming my way, I believe it was not meant for me.
You wake in the morning and proclaim yourself to be the bearer of goodness. "I will bring good. I will attract good. I will create good. Good things happen to me, and my life is good. " You start to move into the track of goodness, and that becomes a place of abundance, a place of rest, a place of relaxation, and a place of trust.
We are not alone and we all have ample creativity within us if we just trust it.
If we strive for happiness, it's going to be elusive because things constantly happen with human beings that disrupt that happiness. But if you focus on euphoros, the Greek word for "the bearer of goodness," you will be inhabited by the divine source of life.
One of the things I tell young people - and older people too - is that when things don't happen that you want, don't drown in discouragement. We say, "Oh, this didn't happen, so nothing good will happen. " Don't barricade yourself.
If you're going to live in the anxiety of the surface of this world, you're never going to find the depth, the source. If you want calmness, you've got to go deeper.
I feel there is a great spiritual awakening on the planet right now. More than any previous time, people are drawn to meditation, to mindfulness, to yoga. These have become mainstream in the West because there is a hunger.
Be generous with your heart. The more we spontaneously give, the more connected and enriched we will feel. What if we use each other as our living temples, and put our best offering foot forward to see what direction life points us? I believe that if we live in a state of offering - even if we think we have nothing to offer - life blesses us and we feel more at peace with who we are and what we have.
My greatest life lesson has been to not wait for the opportunities to come to me. I realize how important it is to be proactive and to create the opportunities myself.
I urge people to be a scientist about what they want and ask themselves why they want it so badly. Perhaps they are chasing an illusory dream. But if you want to learn, to expand, to be of service, you will find a way.
We all have something that centers us in our lives. That linchpin is something that when we don't do enough of it, we start to feel off center.
If your own strong ego clashes with other strong egos, you not going to get anywhere. I studied psychology and learned about the many parts of us that we need to integrate so we don't walk around feeling disconnected: personality, soul, ego. If you do feel disconnected, you need to ask which part is feeling that way. Your ego is there to boost you up, if recognized and used correctly.
Let's say you're auditioning for a part or you're going for a job you really want. You have to go in with a sense of self or you're not going to get the job. You need your ego to get what it is that you want to make things happen in your life.
We are all born with an open heart, but at some point as we are growing up, things happen in our lives where we start to shut down, like rejection, not fitting in, wanting approval, judgments, comparisons, and criticism of others.