Living Peacefully in a Big City: A Guide to Maintaining Your Sanity, Health, and Happiness

By Tanna Marshall

Tanna Marshall's book is the must-have survival guide for all big city dwellers and beyond. I love this book and feel certain it will help millions of readers across the country. No Buts about It!
Eddie Conner, Author Kicking the Big BUT Syndrome, Radio Host


Living Peacefully in a Big City is long overdue. It helps you make sense out of a chaotic world, no matter where you live!
Victor Benoun, Author of The Lemonade Stand On The Corner, How To Start A Successful Business After 50

Tanna Marshall has created a practical, informative and entertaining guide that will not only allow you to experience a greater sense of peace, it will change the way you move through the world and the quality of your life!
Erika Morrell, Soul Mate MediumTM
Author of Love is Spooky, Radio Host and Columnist

Living Peacefully is a personal journey that takes the reader step-by-step on the road to inner peace.
John Livesay, author of The 7 Most Powerful Selling Secrets

"Tanna Marshall has written an easily accessible, amazingly helpful and simple to apply tool kit of ideas to help us free the mind, heal the soul and open ourselves to a life of peace and power."
- Mary Manin Morrissey - Author of Building Your Field of Dreams, Marymm.com

Living Peacefully in a Big City: A Guide to Maintaining Your Sanity, Health, and Happiness by Tanna Marshall examines a wide range of environmental, physical, spiritual, and emotional concerns we all face living in an urban environment. It offers hands-on, holistic, and natural healing solutions to waylay those concerns and promote a healthy, happy life. Author Marshall, with eighteen years experience researching healing modalities and health, has written a book that is impeccably researched and intuitively laid out so that readers can find the information they need quickly and effectively.
This practical and handy guide is filled with healing regimens, along with the wisdom of the ages. If you live in a big city, or an urban environment, and face the typical, day-to-day stressors of city life, then this is a book that will calm your nerves, relieve your anxieties, and heal your soul, and you wont even have to buy a plane ticket to Hawaii, you can just stay right at home. This work is sure to be a valued addition to any personal how-to library.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440138683

Tanna Marshall

Tanna Marshall is an expert in understanding how to use your energetic vibration to heal your body, attract your perfect partner and embrace the infinite possibilities of your life. She has invested over 25 years researching, studying, and designing programs that give people the tools and inspiration to understand their emotional vibration and use it to pursue their dreams. As a Certified Law of Attraction Life Coach and Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, she works with women to relieve stress, improve health, release limiting patterns and understand the power of their thoughts and emotions to manifest their desires. In her first book, Living Peacefully in a Big City: A Guide to Maintaining Your Sanity, Health and Happiness, Tanna offers a collection of helpful advice on how to stay balanced in body, mind and spirit. Tanna is also the creator of Infinite Woman, a feminine community dedicated to supporting, encouraging and celebrating women. Tanna can also be seen in her weekly video feature Feel Good Fridays with Tanna Marshall on youtube.com. For more information about Tanna’s work, please visit her on the web at www.TannaMarshall.com.

Book preview

Copyright © 2009 by Tanna Marshall.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Cover Illustration by Dave Calver

Cover lettering design by Michael Doret

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

ISBN: 978-1-4401-3869-0 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-3868-3 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009926799

iUniverse rev. date: 6/26/2009

Contents

Introduction

Stress

Anger

Fear

Anxiety

Driving and Traffic

Electronic Gadgets

Dealing with People around You

Setting Boundaries

Education

Job

Take Regular Vacations

Money

Status

Attitude

Stay in the Moment

Good Days and Bad Days: Decide to Be Happy

Stuck In a Funk: When Bad Days Are Beyond Bad

Peace of Mind

Love

Forgiveness

Growing Pains

Relationships

Romance

Energy

Take Care of Your Body

Dreams and Sleep

Feel Good Things

Your Own Little World

Laughter

Random Acts of Kindness

Silence

Intuition

Gratitude and Appreciation

Goals, Affirmations, and Visualization

White Light

Something to Believe In

Prayer

Unseen Forces

The Law of Attraction

Working on It: Practice, Practice, Practice!

Rest, Relax, and Let Go

And in the End

Recommended Reading

Bibliography

AUTHOR BIO

For the two people whose constant love and support help me maintain my peace: my mom, Bobby Marshall, and my husband, Brad.

Introduction

My purpose for writing this book was fairly simple: I want to be happy and enjoy where I live right now, and I don’t want to move. I know I’m not alone in this. Have you ever wanted to

… walk down the street and smile at people without worrying that you are unconsciously sending out an invitation to be harassed?

… drive to and from work without your neck tensing up with worry and stress about other drivers around you?

… be happy with your whole life—where you live, your job, your co-workers, the money you make, your relationships, who you are as a person, the decisions you make, and the way you live your life?

… be able to handle anyone or any situation that life throws your way?

… breathe clean air, abolish traffic jams, have smiling faces greet you everywhere you go, and have peace in the world? (Well, we can dream…)

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this book is for you.

Although my focus is on big city living, this book is really for anyone—anywhere—who is searching for peace. Whether you live in a big city, in a rural area, or in suburbia, I believe that we all just want to feel good, enjoy life to the fullest every day, and feel supported by our environment and the people in it. I know there are millions of others like me who want a better, happier, simpler life. So I wrote this book.

Although I have been working on self-improvement for most of my adult life, I feel, to a certain degree, that I have been doing this work since I was a child. I have been reading books, listening to tapes, attending seminars, studying with spiritual teachers, and exploring alternative therapies in the realm of self-help for over twenty years. While I gained much valuable knowledge from these diverse sources, I was compelled to condense the information that I had learned and applied to different areas of my life and present it in brief bits of advice that anyone could easily follow and use. The subjects presented here do not go into great depth but instead are meant to be an easy, relaxed, comprehensive guide that will provide the basic tools to better handle various life situations. Obviously, if a certain topic is a substantial issue for you, it would serve you well to obtain additional material or professional help for your subject of interest or concern. For everyone else who just needs a little help and guidance once in a while, it is my goal to provide that assistance to you here.

In order for you to better understand why I chose to put this down on paper and how many of these subjects came to be presented here, let me tell you a little bit about myself.

I was born and raised in Encino, California, and had a pleasant childhood with a wonderful family. I was a good girl, and I didn’t get into much trouble. I studied hard, participated in extracurricular activities, belonged to several youth groups, enjoyed my friends, and always tried to be a good person. When I was younger, I was the classic ugly duckling—chubby, braces, glasses, acne—so I had to rely on my personality to make friends. I was a people-pleaser and tried to be nice to everyone. Kids were not always kind, but I remember knowing that God would take care of me and make my life turn out wonderfully if I was a good person, despite how others treated me.

My spiritual life really began at the age of eight, when my grandfather died. Shortly after he passed away, I began having dreams in which he would visit me, the first visit being only a few days after he died. He continued to visit me in my dreams for many years, especially when I was going through rough times; he would reassure me that everything was going to be all right. I never questioned whether or not it was really my grandpa checking in on me. I just knew that it was.

When I finished elementary school, my parents enrolled me in a small, private Lutheran junior high school because of the bussing situation happening in Los Angeles at the time. I was terrified, because I didn’t know anyone at this new school, so I decided that my plan of action would be to go out of my way to be nice to everyone I met. That worked out well for me. I made friends and enjoyed the way being so conscientious of my words and actions made me feel. I was still in an awkward stage physically, and I was definitely not considered one of the pretty girls. I was always told I had a nice personality. The boys were not interested in me, but the pretty, popular girls were my friends, so I didn’t feel like an outsider as much during those years.

My high school years were spent in an all-girls Catholic school—and I was in heaven. There were no boys around to reject me, make fun of me, or make me feel ugly or stupid. And there was no deciding what to wear every day! I know most of the other girls hated having a uniform, but I loved it. I was proud to wear it and feel part of the little community of my school. I again tried to be a nice person to everyone, although by this time it felt like the natural thing to do with new people. I made friends quickly, and soon we had a fun group that remained close all through high school; I am still very close to several of the girls to this day. We had such an amazing time during those years. None of us really dated much. Instead, we spent most of our free time having slumber parties and going to the mall.

Just after my freshman year of high school, I became very ill. I lost my appetite, was fatigued all the time and my whole body was in pain. I spent the summer taking numerous tests and was finally diagnosed with lupus. When I returned to school for my sophomore year, I was thinner and very tan because I had no appetite and no energy to do anything but lay in the sun. My friends were very understanding and cautious since I couldn’t walk very fast and going up and down stairs was torturous because of the arthritis. Eventually I became more active and my symptoms began to subside. My only continuing problems were occasional fatigue and minor arthritis flare-ups.

I started college in 1984, but I knew the day before classes started that my goals had nothing to do with a college degree. I didn’t want to waste my time or my parents’ money, so I didn’t stay long. My dream was to be a makeup artist, but the schools I found at the time were very expensive. If I was going to follow that dream, I would pay for it myself. That was the stumbling block to a formal education in makeup, but I practiced on faces whenever I had the chance, because I enjoyed it so much. My specialty evolved into gory makeup at Halloween, with the occasional request for a black eye, bullet hole, or slashed throat.

I’ve explored just about everything I’ve wanted to do as far as jobs, and I have no regrets. I worked at various flower shops for a few years, which I loved, but I wanted more money, so I got a job at an insurance company. While I was there, I decided that I wanted to go to beauty school, so I got my manicuring license and went to work in a salon. I was at the salon less than a year, but I had a great time and worked with wonderful, fun, talented people, many of whom have been taking care of my styling and highlighting needs for the past twenty years.

Then I went on to fulfill another goal: to work for a record company. I began my career at Capitol Records in 1988. This turned out to be a major turning point in my life. I met incredible people who seemed to appear at just the right time to steer me in the right direction for my life path, although I didn’t always know it at the time. Most of my closest friendships were formed at this company.

A few years later, while still working at Capitol, I fulfilled another long-standing goal of going to massage school and becoming a massage therapist. Because of having lupus, I had been studying alternative methods of healing, such as hands-on healing, chakra balancing, aromatherapy, herbal remedies, and healing foods. Massage therapy seemed like a natural progression in my exploration of health.

I had seen too many people suffering from the effects of stress—especially in office environments—and I wanted to do something to help people on a larger scale. At that point, I knew that my purpose in this life was to help those around me. At the time, I didn’t know exactly what kind of help, so I simply tried to fulfill this purpose as best I could, and massage seemed like a good place to start.

A few years later, I took another small step toward my goal of helping others. I originally wrote the bones of this book in 1994, when I had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii. I went to Kauai with my best friend, Marlene, and we had an incredible time. I was so relaxed and at peace when I returned that I thought about moving there. But Los Angeles is where my family and friends are, so it would have been hard for me to move so far away. I decided to plan another trip to Kauai as soon as I could save the money.

About nine months later, I was off to the Garden Isle again with another one of my best friends, Jody. This time I had been reading Barbara DeAngelis’s book Real Moments and was working on staying in the moment and appreciating things just as they are. I had a wonderful week before my trip, and I enjoyed my vacation even more because I was present in every moment while I was in Kauai.

While I was there, I was again very impressed by the laid-back, relaxed attitude that is the norm for the island. Everyone is so friendly and happy there. People actually took their time driving and were not maniacs on the road. People smiled and were pleasant to each other. People were happy! It was amazing. When I returned home, I again considered the idea of living there. And again, I knew I didn’t want to leave my family and friends.

The more I thought about it, I realized that when I was younger, I thought Los Angeles—more specifically, the Valley, where I live—was the most wonderful place in the world. This is my home; I don’t want to move away to find peace. I thought, Why can’t the peace, friendly attitudes, and good will that I felt in Kauai be here in my hometown, too? So, I decided that I would find a way to create more peace in Los Angeles. I would also find a way to spread the word to others, living anywhere, by sharing what I’ve been studying and learning on my spiritual journey. I would create something that would inspire an awakening and recognition of the good in people everywhere and in themselves, especially in any city where people may feel lost and crushed underneath the busy-ness and crazed lifestyles.

Once I began writing, this book just came pouring out of me—all of the information that I had absorbed from all of the self-help and spiritual books, audiotapes, seminars, and teachers that I had studied for the previous seven years. That was when I was a young twenty-eight, and although I felt I had a lot to say and a lot of good advice to give on all of the subjects I wanted to address, there were still other topics I wanted to include in this book that I did not yet feel I had enough life experience to comment on. I also thought, I’m only twenty-eight; who am I to be telling people how to live their lives? I’ve barely started living my own!

But, as I have added and revised chapters in this book over the last fifteen years, and as I sit down now, at forty-three, starting a new life and a new business of helping people through holistic consulting, I am re-reading the chapters I wrote so many years ago and thinking that I really did have some wise words to share, even back then.

I have had some extremely stressful situations come up in my life, and time and again I turned to the self-help and spiritual information that I had learned and absorbed over the years, which is documented here. I am sharing with you what has worked for me, with the intention that you will find it useful on your journey through life.

This book came about for the same reason that I am starting a holistic consulting business—my desire to help and be of service to others. I can’t explain why, but since high school, people have come