Carousel — 02.05.10

Hello Dear Readers! Welcome to the first Carousel of February. I am really excited this morning because this blog is about to go through some big changes! I will be making an important announcement early next week. (My Twitter followers may even get a sneak-peek shortly!)

For now, I am happy to share with you this week’s link round up of the best stuff I found on the web to help you live the life of your dreams today. Here we go!

1. Less than Perfect is a Perfect Start: Lovely advice if you are starting out on a new adventure or even if you just need an extra bit of motivation to get you through today.

2. How To Be Extremely Productive – Total Immersion: Wow, this extreme hands on approach to learning & living sounds amazing. I’m not certain how practical it would be in some circumstances, but I would love to give it a try.

3. By Any Means Necessary: Amazing article from Chris Guillebeau about Black History Month & the life of Malcolm X. His insights are truly inspirational and can teach us all something about compassion & acceptance.

4. Ever Evolving: The author of Epic Self shares her challenges with nutrition during her 8 month nomad adventure. She talks about how to find what works for your body & ignore the incessant nonsense from everyone else (which can be quite difficult on the road). Good stuff.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” —Aristotle

5. Taking Control of Your Life Once and For All: Excellent post by JD at Wage Slave Rebel. He teaches us how to stop using our circumstances as a crutch to justify failure and to start creating the lives of our dreams through positive thinking.

6. Feelings about Yourself Should Come From Yourself:
Jared talks about why the way that others view us is not nearly as important as they way that we view ourselves.

7. Nineteen Tips for Cheering Yourself Up — from 200 Years Ago: Oh, I just love this advice from the past! It amazes me how certain things — the basics of happy living — will never change. “Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.”

8. Quitting Time: I have mixed feeling about this topic, as I’ve written previously. While there are certainly ways to survive & thrive when you hate your job, it is also necessary to identify your quitting point and stick to it.

9. How You Give Your Power Away: Steve Pavlina has a tendency to push people’s buttons. His recent decision to publicly discuss his divorce (and his subsequent exploration with domination/submission), ruffled many feathers. However, he is an undeniable genius at what he does. His personal development advice is always spot on and that is why he is a thought leader in his field.

This post about how we give our power away is absolutely worth the read.

10. The End of Negativity: “Complaining makes for a crap state of mind.” ENOUGH SAID!

“There is not enough negativity in the entire world that can eclipse the power of one pure, positive thought.” —Unknown

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What are your big plans for this weekend? Forecast calls for lots of snow here in New Jersey. I might be house-bound with hot chocolate. Not such a tragic fate…

Adieu, adieu… until we meet again.

photo credit

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  • Carousel — 02.19.10

    sunset, lake

    Oh, what a week! I’ve been busy catching up after my recent trip to South Carolina last weekend. (Thanks for all of the positive energy that sent my way—the presentation was a great success.) For the past two days, I’ve spent 14 hours participating in new database training, so that’s been… interesting. On the bright side, I learned a lot and it’s been exciting to see my company transform as we implement this big change.

    I couldn’t be happier that it’s Friday. I have lots of lovely adventures planned with family, friends, & loves this weekend. So let’s get the party kicked off with this week’s Carousel then. Shall we?

    1. self hatred: beneath sugar-coated criticism + self improvement: Danielle lays it all on the line in the post about how we degrade ourselves with little insecurities. The first step to stopping it, is admitting that you do it.

    2. Phoning It In, The hidden power of a gift, and Frightened, clueless or uninformed?: Three excellent posts from Seth Godin. How have I not discovered this brilliant man sooner? A couple of months ago, I won Seth’s book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us in a Twitter contest. I finally made the time to read it this past weekend during my flights to & from South Carolina. OH. MY. GOODNESS. The book was brilliant. Now I am head over heels for Mr. Godin and of course, have since subscribed to his blog.

    I’ll be posting a review of Tribes in the near future.

    3. Nine Things You Can Do Every Day – Even When You Can’t Do Anything Else.

    4. The Only Problem Standing in Our Way: I loved this post by Marc. It teaches us why sometimes the only problems standing in our way are the ones that we create in our heads.

    5. A panorama of tea: At Vagablogging, Colleen Wilde explores the drink of philosophers—tea! Her lovely descriptions of delicious tea across beautiful cultures warmed my heart.

    6. Giving Up TV and 8 Changes I Experienced After Giving Up TV: A few years ago, I moved out of my parents house & out on my own. One of the first decisions I made at that time was to opt out of cable television. There are a lot of things that I dislike about modern television: glamorization of sexism, violence, addiction; in-your-face ridiculous marketing, etc. I find that I am much more productive without the distraction of television—I read, write, create, love, and live more without it.

    In these posts, Steve talks about his initial decision to take a break from TV and his subsequent decision to give it up altogether. I think it is something that we should all consider. Currently, my partner & I have basic cable which is great because I only watch it once in awhile for programs that enrich me (cultural documentaries, environment/wildlife, home &garden, etc). And it’s a good compromise because he can still tune into his favorites, like Family Guy, while I graciously opt out… most of the time.

    7. “The View” of What’s In a Name?: Dr. Oz talks all about names. Why do some names evoke images of strength & beauty? What things should we keep in mind when naming children, or even pets? What does your name say about you? (I now this isn’t exactly self-improvement; but I’ve always been a fan of names. We’ve all got one!)

    8. be inspired: the “special problem” of strong women looking for love: Sarah Wilson writes about dynamics in man/woman relationships and how it is often necessary for men to be the “stronger” ones. I thought it was interesting & it made me ask questions about the dynamics/expectations within my own relationships.

    9. 8 Helpful Ways To Deal With Critical People: Lucky for me this isn’t much of a problem. I genuinely like criticism— be it constructive or even harsh. Criticism serves as a catalyst for me to be better myself or remove unkind people from my life. For me, criticism is a win-win. However, it hasn’t always been this way & there have been instances in my past where I could have used the good advice in this post.

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    That’s it for this week’s round up. Have a great weekend, friends. Remember to spread love & light wherever you go.

    P.S. I am super sore (in a good way) from a fitness class I took at New York Sports Club last night—Will Power and Grace—I highly recommend it if you have an NYSC in your area!

  • Carousel—03.12.10

    Sunset

    Every Friday, I post my favourite links, posts, & resources from around the Web. Expect to learn, grow, & be inspired.

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    1. You rock & On self determination & Try different: Three must-read posts from Mr. Seth Godin, genius, this week. Enjoy!

    2. Great Financial Advice from the in Flight Safety Handbook: How is financial planning like a plane crash? Find out in this excellent post. It might just save your life… or at least your bank account.

    3. Video Interview: Unautomate Your Finances with Baker & Video Interview: Untemplate your mind, body, and spirit with Amber Zuckswert: Awesome video interviews with two of my favourite bloggers—Adam Baker from Man vs. Debt & Amber Zuckswert from Epic Self.

    4. 10 Shattered Financial Templates: One more from Untemplater this week (to go along with my credit card debt freedom theme) I had to share this great post about shattering financial templates. Bottom line: out with the old & in with the new!

    5. The Story of Stuff: My boyfriend saw Annie Leonard on the Colbert Report the other night. In true minimalist fashion, he called me up right away to tell me about it. Annie is an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats. In her story, she talks about the real costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. In other words she tells us why we should all be minimalists. Amen! Check out the site for more and to view the “Story of Stuff” short film.

    6. What James Cameron Taught Me About Passion: I love this post by JD where he talks about why reaching our goals & living our passions sometimes requires doing things that we don’t want to. In his case, it’s Internet Marketing. I love his metaphor, “…everybody who is involved with Internet Marketing has an underlying passion that pushes them forward. [It’s] a lot like playing the bass guitar. Few people actually have a passion for it, but if you’re willing to do it you can get in the band.”

    7. Rescue Time & Leech Block: Two awesome productivity tools that I found via Location180. Rescue time is an “automagical time tracking & tools to help you focus (from light ‘nudges’ to blocking for short periods of focus) and track project time.” LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.

    8. Live your Life as if Everything is a Miracle: Inspirational words & beautiful photographs & quotes, a wonderful guest post on the Good Life Zen blog. “I am realistic. I expect miracles.” —Wayne Dyer

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    Have a great weekend, loves of my life. Spread love & light where ever you may go.

3 Comments

  2. @Karen – I am so glad to hear that! The week really does get hectic so having a little space that sorts out the good stuff is a definite plus. Glad you enjoy it. ;o)

    Reply

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